Alyx - Joanna Russ Read online

  “All right,” she said, “it’s my show.

  “Come on, come on!” she snapped, with all the contempt she could muster, “what’s the matter with the lot of you? You’re not dead; you’re not paralyzed; look alive, will you? I’ve been in tighter spots than this and I’ve come out; you there” (she indicated Machine) “pinch them awake, will you! Oh, will you snap out of it!” and she shook Gunnar violently, thinking him the most likely to have already recovered. He, at least, had cried. She felt surrounded by enormous puppies.

  “Yes—yes—I’m all right,” he said at last.

  “Listen,” she said, “I want to know about those things. When will there be another air vehicle?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “How long will it take them to unpack, unload, whatever?”

  “About. . . about an hour, I think,” he said.

  “Then there won’t be another box for an hour,” she said. “How far can they see?”

  “See?” said Gunnar helplessly.

  “How far can they perceive, then?” persisted Alyx. “Perceive, you idiot, look, see, hear, touch—what the devil, you know what I mean!”

  “They—they perceive,” said Gunnar slowly, taking a deep breath, “at about three meters. Four meters. They’re meant for close work. They’re a low form.”

  “How do you kill them?”

  He indicated the center of his chest.

  “Can we do it with a crossbow?” she said.

  “Ye-es,” he said, “very close range, but—”

  “Good. If one of them goes, what happens?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, sitting up abruptly. “I think nothing would happen for a few seconds. They’ve—” (he lifted the binoculars to his eyes again) “they’ve established some kind of unloading pattern. They seem to be working pretty independently. That model—if it is that model—would let one of them lie maybe fifteen-twenty seconds before radioing down for a removal. . . Perhaps longer. They might simply change the pattern.”

  “And if all four went dead?”

  “Why, nothing would happen,” he said, “nothing at all. Not— not for about half an hour. Maybe more. Then they’d begin to wonder downstairs why the stuff wasn’t coming in. But we do have half an hour.”

  “So,” said Alyx, “you come with me. And Machine. And—”

  “I’ll come!” said Iris, clasping her hands nervously. Alyx shook her head. “If you’re discriminating against me,” said Iris wonderingly, “because I’m a girl—”

  “No, dear, you’re a lousy shot,” said Alyx. “Gunnar, you take that one; Machine, that one; I take two. All of you! If they fall and nothing happens, you come down that slope like hell and if something does happen, you go the other way twice as fast! We need food. I want dried stuff, light stuff; you’ll recognize it, I won’t. Everything you can carry. And keep your voices down. Gunnar, what’s—”

  “Calories,” said Machine.

  "Yes, yes, lots of that,” said Alyx impatiently, “that—that stuff. Come on,” and she started down the slope, waving the other two to circle the little dell. Piles of things—they could not see very well through the falling snow—were growing on each side of the box. The box seemed to be slowly collapsing. The moving things left strange tracks, half-human, half-ploughed; she crossed one of them where a thing had wandered up the side of the hollow for some reason of its own. She hoped they did not do that often. She found her bare hands sweating on the stock of the bow, her gloves hanging from her wrists; if only they had been men! she thought, and not things that could call for help in a silent voice called radio, or fall down and not be dead, or you didn’t know whether they were dead or not. Machine was in position. Gunnar raised his bow. They began to close in silently and slowly until Gunnar stopped; then she sighted on the first and shot. They were headless, with a square protuberance in the middle of the “chest” and an assemblage of many coiled arms that ended in pincers, blades, hooks, what looked like plates. It went down, silently. She turned for the second, carefully reloading the bow, only to find Machine waving and grinning. He had got two. The fourth was also flat on the ground. They ran towards the big box, Alyx involuntarily closing her eyes as she passed the disabled things; then they leaned against the big box, big as a room. Piles of boxes, piles of plastic bladders, bags, cartons, long tubes, stoppers, things that looked like baby round cheese. She waved an arm in the air violently. The others came running, skidding, stumbling down the slope. They began to pick up things under Gunnar’s direction and stuff them into each other’s packs, whispering a little, talking endlessly, while Alyx squatted down in the snow and kept her bow trained dead-steady on that hole in the ground. There was probably not much sense in doing so, but she did it anyway. She was convinced it was the proper thing to do. Someone was enthusiastically stuffing something into her pack; “Easy, easy,” she said, and sighted on that hole in the ground, keeping her aim decent and listening for any improper sounds from above or below until someone said in her ear, “We’re done,” and she took off immediately up the slope, not looking back. It took the others several minutes to catch up with her. Thank God it’s snowing! she thought. She counted them. It was all right.

  “Now!” she gasped. “We’re going into the mountains. Double quick!” and all the rest of the day she pushed them until they were ready to drop, up into the foothills among the increasingly broken rocks where they had to scramble on hands and knees and several people tore holes in their suits. The cold got worse. There were gusts of wind. She took them the long way round, by pure instinct, into the worst kind of country, the place where no one trying to get anywhere—or trying to escape—would go, in a strange, doubled, senseless series of turns and returns, crossing their path once, up over obstacles and then in long, leisurely curves on the flattest part of the hills. She kept carefully picturing their relation to the abandoned Base B, telling herself They'll know someone was there; and then repeating obsessively Part of the landscape, part of the landscape and driving them all the harder, physically shoving them along, striking them, prodding, them, telling them in the ugliest way she could that they would die, that they would be eaten, that their minds would be picked, that they would be crippled, deformed, tortured, that they would die, that they would die, die, die, and finally that she would kill them herself if they stopped, if they stopped for a moment, kill them, scar their faces for life, disembowel them, and finally she had to all but torture them herself, bruise them and pinch them in the nerves she alone knew about until it was less painful to go on than to be goaded constantly, to be terrified, to be slapped and threatened and beaten. At sundown she let them collapse out in the open and slept immediately herself. Two hours later she woke up. She shook Gunnar.

  “Gunnar!” she said. He came awake with a kind of convulsive leap, struggling horribly. She put an arm around him, crawling tiredly through the snow and leaned against him to quiet him. She felt herself slipping off again and jerked awake. He had his head in both hands, pressing his temples and swinging his head from side to side.

  “Gunnar!” she said, “you are the only one who knows anything about this place. Where do we go?”

  “All right, all right,” he said. He was swaying a little. She reached under the cuff of his suit and pinched the skin on the inside of his forearm; his eyes opened and he looked at her.

  “Where . . . what?” he said.

  “Where do we go? Is there any neutral area in this—this place?”

  “One moment,” he said, and he put his head in his hands again. Then he looked up, awake. “I know,” he said, “that there is a control Embassy somewhere here. There is always at least one. It’s Military, not Gov; you wouldn’t understand that but it doesn’t matter. We’d be safe there.”

  “Where is it?” she said.

  “I think,” he said, “that I know where it is. It’s nearer the Pole, I think. Not too far. A few hours by aircraft, I think. Three hours.”

  “How long,” said s
he, “on foot?”

  “Oh,” he said, slipping down into the snow onto one arm, “maybe—maybe twice this. Or a little more. Say five hundred kilometers.”

  “How long,” said she insistently, “is that?”

  “Oh not much,” he said, yawning and speaking fuzzily. “Not much . . . two hours by aircraft.” He smiled. “You might have heard it called,” he said, “three hundred miles, I think. Or a little less.” And he rolled over on his side and went to sleep.

  Well, that's not so bad, she thought, half asleep, forgetting them all for the moment and thinking only of herself. Fourteen, fifteen days, that’s all. Not bad. She looked around. Paradise had begun to blow up a little, covering the farthest of her charges with drifts of snow: eight big, fit people with long, long legs. Oh God of Hell! she thought suddenly. Can I get them to do ten miles a day? Is it three hundred miles ? A month ? Four hundred? And food—! so she went and kicked Machine awake, telling him to keep the first watch, then call Iris, and have Iris call her.

  “You know,” she said, “I owe you something.”

  He said nothing, as usual.

  “When I say ‘shoot one,’” said Alyx, “I mean shoot one, not two. Do you understand?”

  Machine smiled slightly, a smile she suspected he had spent many years in perfecting: cynical, sullen, I-can-do-it-and-you-can’t smile. A thoroughly nasty look. She said:

  “You stupid bastard, I might have killed you by accident trying to make that second shot!” and leaning forward, she slapped him backhanded across the face, and then the other way forehand as a kind of afterthought because she was tired. She did it very hard. For a moment his face was only the face of a young man, a soft face, shocked and unprotected. Tears sprang to his eyes. Then he began to weep, turning his face away and putting it down on his knees, sobbing harder and harder, clutching at his knees and pressing his face between them to hide his cries, rocking back and forth, then lying on his face with his hands pressed to his eyes, crying out loud to the stars. He subsided slowly, sobbing, calming down, shaken by less and less frequent spasms of tears, and finally was quiet. His face was wet. He lay back in the snow and stretched out his arms, opening his hands loosely as if he had finally let go of something. He smiled at her, quite genuinely. He looked as if he loved her. “Iris,” he said.

  “Yes, baby,” she said, “Iris,” and walked back to her place before anything else could happen. There was a neutral place up there—somewhere—if they could find it—where they would be taken in—if they could make it—and where they would be safe—if they could get to it. If they lived.

  And if only they don't drown me between the lot of them, she thought irrationally. And fell asleep.

  Paradise was not well mapped, as she found out the next morning with Gunnar’s help. He did not know the direction. She asked him about the stars and the sun and the time of year, doing some quick calculating, while everyone else tumbled the contents of their packs into the snow, sorting food and putting it back with low-toned remarks that she did not bother to listen to. The snow had lightened and Paradise had begun to blow up a little with sharp gusts that made their suit jackets flap suddenly now and again.

  “Winter has begun,” said Alyx. She looked sharply at the explorer. “How cold does it get?”

  He said he did not know. They stowed back into their packs the detail maps that ended at Base B (Very efficient, she thought) because there was no place to bury them among the rocks. They were entirely useless. The other members of the party were eating breakfast—making faces—and Alyx literally had to stand over them while they ate, shutting each bag or box much against the owner’s will, even prying those big hands loose (though they were all afraid of her) and then doling out the food she had saved to all of them. The cold had kept it fairly fresh. She told them they would be traveling for three weeks. She ate a couple of handfuls of some dried stuff herself and decided it was not bad. She was regarded dolefully and sulkily by seven pairs of angry eyes.

  “Well?” she said.

  “It tastes like—like crams,” said Iris.

  “It’s junk,” said Gavrily gravely, “dried breakfast food. Made of grains. And some other things.”

  “Some of it’s hard as rocks,” said Maudey.

  “That’s starch,” said Raydos, “dried starch kernels.”

  “I don’t know what dried starch kernels is,” said Maudey with energy, “but I know what it tastes like. It tastes like—”

  “You will put the dried kernels,” said Alyx, “or anything else that is hard-as-rocks in your water bottles, where it will stop being hard as rocks. Double handful, please. That’s for dinner.”

  “What do we eat for lunch?” said Iris.

  “More junk,” said Raydos. “No?”

  “Yes,” said Alyx. “More junk.”

  “Kernels,” said Raydos, “by the way,” and they all got up from the ground complaining, stiff as boards and aching in the joints. She told them to move about a bit but to be careful how they bent over; then she asked those with the torn suits whether they could mend them. Under the skin of the suits was something like thistledown but very little of it, and under that a layer of something silver. You could really sleep in the damn things. People were applying tape to themselves when there was a noise in the air; all dropped heavily to their hands and knees, some grunting—though not on purpose—and the aircraft passed over in the direction of what Alyx had decided to call the south. The equator, anyway. Far to the south and very fast. Part of the landscape, she thought. She got them to their feet again, feeling like a coal-heaver, and praised them, saying they had been very quick. Iris looked pleased. Maudey, who was patching up an arm, did not appear to notice; Gavrily was running a tape-strip down the shoulder of one of the nuns and the other was massaging Raydos’s back where he had apparently strained something in getting up or down. He looked uncomfortable and uncaring. Gunnar had the professional smile on his face. My dog, she thought. Machine was relieving himself off to one side and kicking snow over the spot. He then came over and lifted one cupped hand to his forehead, as if he were trying to take away a headache, which she did not understand. He looked disappointed.

  “That’s a salute,” said Raydos. He grimaced a little and moved his shoulders.

  “A what?” said she.

  “Army,” said Raydos, moving off and flexing his knees. Machine did it again. He stood there expectantly so she did it, too, bringing up one limp hand to her face and down again. They stood awkwardly, smiling at one another, or not perhaps awkwardly, only waiting, until Raydos stuck his tall head over her shoulder and said, “Army salute. He admires the army. I think he likes you,” and Machine turned his back instantly, everything going out of his face.

  I cannot, thought Alyx, tell that bum to shut up merely for clearing up a simple point. On the other hand, I cannot possibly—and if I have to keep restraining myself—I will not let—I cannot, will not, will not let that interfering fool—

  Iris burst into pure song.

  “OH, SHUT UP!” shouted Alyx, “FOR GOD’S SAKE!” and marshaled them into some kind of line, abjuring them for Heaven’s sake to hurry up and be quiet. She wished she had never gotten into this. She wished three or four of them would die and make it easier for her to keep track of them. She wished several would throw themselves off cliffs. She wished there were cliffs they could throw themselves off of. She was imagining these deaths in detail when one of them loomed beside her and an arm slid into hers. It was Raydos.

  “I won’t interfere again,” he said, “all right?” and then he faded back into the line, silent, uncaring, as if Machine’s thoughts had somehow become his own. Perhaps they were swapping minds. It occurred to her that she ought to ask the painter to apologize to the boy, not for interfering, but for talking about him as if he weren’t there; then she saw the two of them (she thought it was them) conferring briefly together. Perhaps it had been done. She looked up at the bleary spot in the sky that was the sun and ran down the li
ne, motioning them all to one side, telling them to keep the sun to their left and that Gunnar would show them what constellations to follow that night, if it was clear. Don’t wander. Keep your eyes open. Think. Watch it. Machine joined her and walked silently by her side, his eyes on his feet. Paradise, which had sloped gently, began to climb, and they climbed with it, some of them falling down. She went to the head of the line and led them for an hour, then dropped back to allow Gunnar, the amateur mountain-climber, to lead the way. She discussed directions with him. The wind was getting worse. Paradise began to show bare rock. They stopped for a cold and miserable lunch and Alyx saw that everyone’s bow was unsprung and packed, except for hers; “Can’t have you shooting yourselves in the feet,” she said. She told Gunnar it might look less suspicious if. “If,” he said. Neither finished the thought. They tramped through the afternoon, colder and colder, with the sun receding early into the mountains, straggled on, climbing slopes that a professional would have laughed at. They found the hoof-prints of something like a goat and Alyx thought I could live on this country for a year. She dropped back in the line and joined Machine again, again silent, unspeaking for hours. Then suddenly she said:

  “What’s a pre-school conditioning director?”

  “A teacher,” said Machine in a surprisingly serene voice, “of very small children.”

  “It came into my mind,” she said, “all of a sudden, that I was a pre-school conditioning director.”

  “Well, you are,” he said gravely, “aren’t you?”

  He seemed to find this funny and laughed on and off, quietly, for the rest of the afternoon. She did not.

  That was the night Maudey insisted on telling the story of her life. She sat in the half-gloom of the cave they had found, clasping her hands in front of her, and went through a feverish and unstoppable list of her marriages: the line marriage, the double marriage, the trial marriage, the period marriage, the group marriage. Alyx did not know what she was talking about. Then Maudey began to lament her troubles with her unstable self-image and at first Alyx thought that she had no soul and therefore no reflection in a mirror, but she knew that was nonsense; so soon she perceived it was one of their points (by then she had taken to classifying certain things as their points) and tried not to listen, as all gathered around Maudey and analyzed her self-image, using terms Trans-Temp had apparently left out of Alyx’s vocabulary, perhaps on purpose. Gunnar was especially active in the discussion. They crowded around her, talking solemnly while Maudey twisted her hands in the middle, but nobody touched her, it occurred to Alyx that although several of them had touched herself, they did not seem to like to get too close to one another. Then it occurred to her that there was something odd in Maudey’s posture and something unpleasantly reminiscent in the breathiness of her voice; she decided Maudey had a fever. She wormed her way into the group and seized the woman by the arm, putting her other hand on Maudey’s face, which was indeed unnaturally hot.