Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (62 page)

I wish I could hear and feel the motion of gas molecules in the upper
air, the whisperings of subtle energy transfers …

In the Pacific, weather control engineers guided the great storm into an
electrostatic basket. The storm would provide usable power for the rest of
its natural life.

 

Praeger awoke a quarter of an hour before his watch was due to begin. He
thought of his recent vacation Earthside, remembering the glowing volcano
he had seen in Italy and how strange the silver shield of the Moon had
looked through Earth's atmosphere. He remembered watching his own Station
Six, his post in life, moving slowly across the sky, remembered one of the
inner stations as it passed Julian's Station 233, one of the few private
satellites, synchronous, fixed for all time over one point on the Earth.
He should be able to talk to Julian soon, during his next off period. Even
though Julian was an artist and a recluse, a water sculptor as he called
himself, Julian and he were very much alike. At times he felt they were
each other's conscience, two ex-spacemen in continual retreat from their
home world. It was much more beautiful and bearable from out here. In all
this silence he sometimes thought he could hear the universe breathing. It
was alive, the whole starry cosmos throbbing.

If I could tear a hole in its body, it would bleed and cry out for a
bandage …

He remembered the stifling milieu of Rome's streets: the great screens
which went dead during his vacation, blinding the city, the crowds waiting
on the stainless steel squares for the music to resume over the giant
audios. They could not work without it. The music pounded its monotonous
bass beat: the sound of some imprisoned beast beneath the city. The cab
that waited for him was a welcome sight: an instrument for fleeing.

In the shuttle craft that brought him back to Station Six he read the
little quotation printed on the back of every seat for the ten thousandth
time; it told him that the shuttle dated back to the building of the giant
Earth station system.

"… What we are building now is the nervous system of mankind
… the communications network of which the satellites will be the
nodal points. They will enable the consciousness of our grandchildren to
flicker like lightning back and forth across the face of the planet
…"

 

Praeger got up from his bunk and made his way back to the watch room. He
was glad now to get away from his own thoughts and return to the visual
stimulation of the watch screens. Soon he would be talking to Julian
again; they would share each other's friendship in the universe of the
spoken word as they shared a silent past every time they looked at each
other across the void.

Julian's large green eyes reminded him each time of the view out by
Neptune, the awesome size of the sea green giant, the ship outlined
against it, and the fuel tank near it blossoming into a red rose,
silently; the first ship had been torn in half. Julian had been in space,
coming over to Praeger's command ship when it happened, to pick up a spare
part for the radio-telescope.
They
blamed Julian because
they
had to blame someone. After all, he had been in command. Chances were that
something had already gone wrong, and that nothing could have stopped it.
Only one man had been lost.

Julian and Praeger were barred from taking any more missions; unfairly,
they thought. There were none coming up that either of them would have
been interested in anyway, but at the time they put up a fight. Some fool
official said publicly that they were unfit to represent mankind beyond
the solar system—a silly thing to say, especially when the UN had
just put a ban on extra-solar activities. They were threatened with
dishonorable discharges, but they were also world heroes; the publicity
would have been embarrassing.

Julian believed that most of mankind was unfit for just about everything.
With his small fortune and the backing of patrons he built his bubble
station, number 233 in the registry; his occupation now was "sculptor,"
and the tax people came to talk to him every year. To Julian Earth was a
mudball, where ten percent of the people lived off the labor of the other
ninety percent. Oh, the brave ones shine, he told Praeger once, but the
initiative that should have taken men to the stars had been ripped out of
men's hearts. The whole star system was rotting, overblown with grasping
things living in their own wastes. The promise of ancient myths, three
thousand years old, had not been fulfilled …

In the watch room Praeger watched the delicate clouds which enveloped the
Earth. He could feel the silence, and the slowness of the changing
patterns was reassuring. Given time and left alone, the air would clean
itself of all man-made wastes, the rivers would run clear again, and the
oceans would regain their abundance of living things.

When his watch was over he did not wait for his relief to come. He didn't
like the man. The feeling was mutual and by leaving early they could each
avoid the other as much as was possible. Praeger went directly to his
cubicle, lay down on his bunk, and opened the channel, both audio and
visual, on the ceiling com and observation screen.

Julian's face came on promptly on the hour.

"EW-CX233 here," Julian said.

"EW-CXOO6," Praeger said. Julian looked his usual pale self, green eyes
with the look of other times still in them. "Hello, Julian. What have you
been doing?"

"There was a reporter here. I made a tape of the whole thing, if you can
call it an interview. Want to hear it?"

"Go ahead. My vacation was the usual. I don't know what's wrong with me."

Julian's face disappeared and the expressionless face of the reporter
appeared. The face smiled just before it spoke.

"Julian—that's the name you are known by?"

"Yes."

"Will you describe your work for our viewers, Julian?"

"I am a water sculptor. I make thin plastic molds and fill them with
water. Then I put them out into the void, and when they solidify I go out
and strip off the plastic. You can see most of my work orbiting my home."

"Isn't the use of water expensive?"

"I re-use much of it. And I am independently wealthy."

"What's the point of leaving your work outside?"

"On Earth the wind shapes rock. Here space dust shapes the ice, mutilates
it, and I get the effect I want. Then I photograph the results in color
and make more permanent versions here inside."

Praeger watched Julian and the reporter float over to a large tank of
water.

"Inside here," Julian said, "you see the permanent figures. When I spin
the tank, the density of each becomes apparent, and each takes its proper
place in the suspension."

"Do you ever work with realistic subjects?"

"No."

"Do you think you could make a likeness of the Earth?"

"Why?" Praeger saw Julian smile politely. The reporter suddenly looked
uncomfortable. The tape ended and Julian's face reappeared.

"See what they send up here to torment me?"

"Is the interview going to be used anywhere?" Praeger asked.

"They were vague about it."

"Have you been happy?"

Julian didn't answer. For a few moments both screens were still portraits.
Both men knew all the old complaints, all the old pains. Both knew that
the UN was doing secret extra-solar work, and they both knew that it was
the kind of work that would revive them, just as it might give the Earth a
new lease on life. But they would never have a share of it. Only a few
more years of routine service, Praeger knew, and then retirement—to
what? To a crowded planet.

Both men thought the same thought at that moment—the promise of
space was dead, unless men moved from the solar system.

"Julian," Praeger said softly, "I'll call you after my next watch." Julian
nodded and the screen turned gray.

On impulse Praeger pushed the observation button for a look at Station
233. It was a steel and plastic ball one hundred feet in diameter. Praeger
knew that most of Julian's belongings floated in the empty center, tied
together with line. When he needed something he would bounce around the
tiny universe of objects until he found it. Some parts of the station were
transparent. Praeger remembered peering out once to catch sight of one of
Julian's ice sculptures and seeing a pale white ghost peer in at him for a
moment before passing out of sight.

Praeger watched the silent ball that housed his friend of a lifetime.
Eventually, he knew, he would join Julian in his retirement. A man could
live a long time in zero-g.

The alarm in his cubicle rang and Higgins's voice came over the audio.
"That fool! Doesn't he see that orbital debris?"

Praeger had perhaps ten seconds left to see Station 233 whole. The orbital
junk hit hard and the air was gone into the void. The water inside,
Praeger knew, had frozen instantly. Somewhere inside, the ruptured body of
Julian floated among his possessions even as the lights on the station
winked out.

Praeger was getting into his suit, knowing there was no chance to save
Julian. He made his way down the emergency passage from his cubicle,
futilely dragging the spare suit behind him.

The airlock took an age to cycle. When it opened he gave a great kick with
his feet and launched himself out toward the other station. Slowly it grew
in front of him, until he was at the airlock. He activated the mechanism,
and when the locks were both open he pushed himself in toward the center
of the little world.

Starlight illuminated Julian's white, ruptured face. Through the clear
portion of the station Praeger saw the Earth's shadow eclipse the full
Moon: a bronze shield.

 

For a long time after Praeger drifted in the starlit shell. He stared at
the dark side of the Earth, at the cities sparkling like fireflies; never
sleeping, billions living in metal caves; keeping time with the
twenty-four hour workday; and where by night the mannequins danced beneath
the flickering screens, their blood filled with strange potions which
would give them their small share of counterfeit happiness.

Praeger tried to brush away the tears floating inside his helmet, but with
no success. They would have to wait until he took his suit off. When the
emergency crew arrived an hour later, he took charge.

The station was a hazard now and would have to be removed. He agreed. All
this would be a funeral rite for Julian, he thought, and he was sure the
artist would approve.

He removed all of Julian's written material and sent it down to his
publishers, then put Julian's body in a plastic sack and secured it to the
north pole of the station bubble.

He left the sculptures inside. On the body Praeger found a small note:

When we grow up we'll see the Earth not as a special place, but just
as one place. Then home will be the starry cosmos. Of course this has
always been the case. It is we who will have changed. I have nothing
else to hope for.

The hulk continued in its orbit for three weeks, until Praeger sent a
demolition crew out to it and blew it out of existence. He watched on the
monitor as they set the charges that would send it into a new orbit. Station
233 would leave the solar system at an almost ninety-degree angle to the
plane of the ecliptic, on a parabolic path which would not bring it back to
Sol for thousands of years. It would be a comet someday, Praeger thought.

He watched the charges flare up, burn for thirty seconds, and die. Slowly
the bubble moved off toward the top of the screen. He watched until it
disappeared from the screen. In twenty-four hours it would be beyond the
boundaries of Earth. Interstellar gas and dust would scar it out of all
recognition: a torn seed on the wind.

The End

© 1970 Lancer Books, Inc. as "The Water Sculptor of Station 233."
First published in
Infinity No.1
edited by Robert Hoskins.
Copyright reassigned to the author 1972. Revision copyright © 1985
George Zebrowski.

Painwise

James Tiptree, Jr.

He was wise in the ways of pain. He had to be, for he felt none.

When the Xenons put electrodes to his testicles, he was vastly entertained
by the pretty lights.

When the Ylls fed firewasps into his nostrils and other body orifices the
resultant rainbows pleased him. And when later they regressed to simple
disjointments and eviscerations, he noted with interest the deepening
orchid hues that stood for irreversible harm.

"This time?" he asked the boditech when his scouter had torn him from the
Ylls.

"No," said the boditech.

"When?"

There was no answer.

"You're a girl in there, aren't you? A human girl?"

"Well, yes and no," said the boditech. "Sleep now."

He had no choice.

Next planet a rockfall smashed him into a splintered gutbag and he hung
for three gangrenous dark-purple days before the scouter dug him out.

" 'Is 'ime?" he mouthed to the boditech.

"No."

"Eh!" But he was in no shape to argue.

They had thought of everything. Several planets later the gentle Znaffi
stuffed him in a floss cocoon and interrogated him under hallogas. How,
whence, why had he come? But a faithful crystal in his medulla kept him
stimulated with a random mix of
Atlas Shrugged
and Varese's
Ionisation
and when the Znaffi unstuffed him they were more hallucinated than he.

The boditech treated him for constipation and refused to answer his plea.

"
When?
"

So he went on, system after system, through spaces un-companioned by time,
which had become scrambled and finally absent.

What served him instead was the count of suns in his scouter's sights, of
stretches of cold blind nowhen that ended in a new now, pacing some giant
fireball while the scouter scanned the lights that were its planets. Of
whirl-downs to orbit over
clouds-seas-deserts-craters-icecaps-duststorms-cities-ruins-enigmas beyond
counting. Of terrible births when the scouter panel winked green and he
was catapulted down, down, a living litmus hurled and grabbed, unpodded
finally into an alien air, an earth that was not Earth. And alien natives,
simple or mechanized or lunatic or unknowable, but never more than vaguely
human and never faring beyond their own home suns. And his departures,
routine or melodramatic, to culminate in the composing of his "reports,"
in fact only a few words tagged to the matrix of scan data automatically
fired off in one compressed blip in the direction the scouter called Base
Zero. Home.