Alyx - Joanna Russ Read online

  “How long do these go on?” said Alyx, a little wearily.

  "A couple of days,” he said quickly, holding on to the frightened woman, “only a couple of days. They get better.”

  “Then take care of her until they do,” said Alyx, and she was about to add the usual signal for the morning (COME ON!) when a voice somewhere above her head said:

  “Agent?”

  It was Iris, that great lolloping girl, almost as high as the bear, looking down at her with the unfathomable expression of the very young, twisting and twisting a lock of silver hair that had escaped from her hood. She was really very pretty.

  “Agent,” blurted Iris, her eyes big, “will you teach me how to shoot?”

  “Yes, my dear,” said Alyx, “indeed I will.”

  “Come on!” she bawled then. They came on.

  Later in the morning, when she allowed them to stop and eat the soggiest of their protein and dried starch kernels for breakfast, one of the nuns came up to her, squatted gracefully in the snow and made the complicated sign thrice: once on her own forehead, once on her own breast and once in the air between her and the little woman who had shot the bear.

  “Violence,” said the nun earnestly, “is deplorable. It is always deplorable. It corrupts love, you see, and love is the expansion of consciousness while violence is the restriction of love so that violence, which restricts love and consciousness, is always bad, as consciousness is always good and the consciousness of the All is the best and only good, and to restrict what may lead to the consciousness of the All is unwise and unkind. Therefore to die is only to merge with the All so that actually violence is not justifiable in the postponing of death, as we must all die, and dying is the final good if it is a dying into the All and not a dying away from it, as in violence.

  “But,” she said, “the recognition of consciousness and the value of expression of consciousness go hand in hand; there is no evil in expressing the impulses of the nature of consciousness, so that there can be no evil in action and action is not violence. Action is actually an expansion of the consciousness, as one becomes more aware of one’s particular hue nature and thence slowly more aware of one’s ultimate all-embracing Nature which unites one with the All. Action is therefore a good. It is not, of course, the same thing as the true religion, but some of us go the slow path and some the quick, and who will attain Enlightenment first? Who knows? What is, is, as the sage said: One way is not another. I hope you will attend our services when we return home.”

  “Yes,” said Alyx. “Indeed I will.” The tall lady made the sign again, this time on Alyx’s forehead and breast, and went sedately back to her breakfast.

  And that, thought Alyx, is the damndest way of saying Bravo that I have ever heard!

  She decided to teach them all to shoot, including the nuns. It was understood, of course, that the nuns would shoot only bears.

  Later in the afternoon, when the snow had stopped and before visibility became bad, she lined all of them up on a relatively level snow-field, assigning the two nuns to Gunnar, Gavrily and Raydos to Machine and herself teaching Iris. Maudey rested, a little dazed from the nervous spasms that had been shaking her all day, though perfectly clear in her mind. Most of them tired of the business after the first hour, except for Raydos, who seemed to enjoy handling the new thing again, and Iris, who kept saying “Just a little more, just a little more; I’m not good enough.” When Machine laughed at her, she loftily explained that it was “rather like dancing.”

  “Which you have never done for pleasure, I am sure,” she added.

  During the late afternoon they slogged up an ever-narrowing path between cliffs, towards what Gunnar swore was a pass in the mountains. It seemed, however, as if these mountains had no pass but only plateaus; no, not plateaus, only peaks; that even the peaks had no down but only up, and on and on they kept in the red light of the setting winter sun, holding the glare always to the proper side of them, plodding up a steeper and steeper path until the red light turned purple and dim, and died, until each of them saw the other as a dim hulk marching in front of him.

  She called a halt. They sat down. For the first time during the whole trip they bunched together, actually touching body to body, with only Maudey a little away from them, for she was still having her trouble. (Alyx had one of the nuns put her to sleep and the spasms stopped instantly.) It was very cold, with the stars splendid, icy points and the whole tumbled waste of jagged rock shining faintly around them. They did not, as they usually did, begin to analyze the events of the day, but only half-sat, half-lay in silence, feeling the still air around them drain away their warmth, which (Iris said) “seemed to flow right up into the sky.” They watched the stars. Then out of nowhere, for no reason at all, Gavrily began to sing in a reedy tenor a few lines of what he called a “baby-song” and this nursery tune—for it was not, Alyx was made to understand, real music—put them all into tears. They sobbed companionably for a little while. It got colder and colder. Gunnar suggested that they pack the snow around them to keep in the heat and Alyx, who had noticed that her buttocks seemed to be the warmest place about her, agreed, so they all built a round wall of snow, with Maudey in the middle of it, and then crawled in around her and pulled the whole thing down on top of them, each packing himself in his own little heap. Then it all had to be disrupted and put right again because the first watch had to climb out. This was Iris. She still seemed very excited, whispering to Alyx “Was I good enough? Will you teach me again?” over and over until somebody poked her and she exclaimed “Ow!” There was yawning, sighing, breathing.

  “Will you,” said Iris, bending over the little heap of persons, “teach me again? Will you tell me all about yourself? Will you tell me everything? Will you? Will you?”

  “Oh, be quiet,” said Machine crossly, and Iris took her bow and went a little aside, to sit watch.

  It was the eighteenth night.

  The nineteenth. The twentieth. The twenty-first. They were very quiet. They were idealizing, trusting, companionable, almost happy. It made Alyx nervous, and the more they looked at her, asked her about her and listened to her the more unnerved she became. She did not think they understood what was happening. She told them about her life with one ear on the sounds about them, instantly alert, ready to spring up, with her crossbow always across her knees; so that they asked her what the matter was. She said “Nothing.” She told them legends, fairy tales, religious stories, but they didn’t want to hear those; they wanted to hear about her, what she ate, what she drank, what she wore, what her house was like, whom she knew, all the particulars of the business, the alleyways, the gutters, the finest houses and the worst houses in Tyre. She felt it was all being dragged out of her against her will. They were among the mountains now and going very slowly, very badly; they went far into the night now whenever it was clear and as soon as they settled down for the night (everyone had got into the long underwear one clear and frosty morning, hopping about from one bare foot to another, and discovering wrapped within it what they declared to be artificial arches) they bunched up together against the cold, interlacing arms and legs and squirming together as close as they could, saying:

  “Tell us about—”

  She told them.

  On the twenty-fourth night, when she woke Machine to take the dawn watch, he said to her “Do you want to climb it?”

  “Climb what?” muttered Alyx. She was chilled and uncomfortable, stirring around to get her blood up.

  “Do you want to climb it?” said Machine patiently.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, “let me think.” Then she said “You’d better not use slang; I don’t think I’m programmed for it.” He translated. He added—off-handedly—“You don’t have to worry about pregnancy; Trans-Temp’s taken care of it. Or they will, when we get back.”

  “Well, no,” said Alyx. “No, I don’t think I do want to—climb it.” He looked, as far as she could tell in the dim light, a little surprised; but he did not tou
ch her, he did not ask again or laugh or stir or even move. He sat with his arms around his knees as if considering something and then he said “All right.” He repeated it decisively , staring at her with eyes that were just beginning to turn blue with the dawn; then he smiled, pulled back the spring on his crossbow and got to his feet.

  “And keep your eyes open,” she said, on her way back to the snow-heaped nest of the others.

  “Don’t I always?” he said, and as she turned away she heard an unmistakable sound. He had laughed.

  The next day Raydos started to sketch her at every halt. He took out his materials and worked swiftly but easily, like a man who thinks himself safe. It was intolerable. She told him that if anything happened or anyone came he would either have to drop his sketchbook or put it in his pack; that if he took the time to put it into his pack he might die or betray the lot of them and that if he dropped it, someone might find it.

  “They won’t know what it is,” he said. “It’s archaic, you see.”

  “They’ll know it’s not an animal,” she said. “Put it away.”

  He went on sketching. She walked over to him, took the book of papers and the length of black thing he was using away from him and stowed them away in her own pack. He smiled and blinked in the sunlight. The thing was not real charcoal or gum or even chalky; she considered asking him about it and then she shuddered. She stood there for a moment, shading her eyes against the sun and being frightened, as if she had to be frightened for the whole crew of them as well as herself, as if she were alone, more alone than by herself, and the more they liked her, the more they obeyed, the more they talked of “when we get back,” the more frightened she would have to become.

  “All right, come on,” she heard herself say.

  “All right, come on.

  “Come on!”

  Time after time after time.

  On the twenty-ninth afternoon Maudey died. She died suddenly and by accident. They were into the pass that Gunnar had spoken of, half blinded by the glare of ice on the rock walls to either side, following a path that dropped almost sheer from the left. It was wide enough for two or three and Machine had charge of Maudey that day; for although her nervous fits had grown less frequent, they had never entirely gone away. He walked on the outside, she on the inside. Behind them Iris was humming softly to herself. It was icy in parts and the going was slow. They stopped for a moment and Machine cautiously let go of Maudey’s arm; at the same time Iris began to sing softly, the same drab tune over and over again, the way she had said to Alyx they danced at the drug palaces, over and over to put themselves into trances, over and over.

  “Stop that filthy song,” said Maudey. “I’m tired.”

  Iris continued insultingly to sing.

  “I’m tired!” said Maudey desperately, “I’m tired! I’m tired!” and in turning she slipped and fell on the slippery path to her knees. She was still in balance, however. Iris had arched her eyebrows and was silently mouthing something when Machine, who had been watching Maudey intently, bent down to take hold of her, but at that instant Maudey’s whole right arm threw itself out over nothing and she fell over the side of the path. Machine flung himself after her and was only stopped from falling over in his turn by fetching up against someone’s foot—it happened to be one of the nuns—and they both went down, teetering for a moment over the side. The nun was sprawled on the path in a patch of gravel and Machine hung shoulders down over the verge. They pulled him back and got the other one to her feet.

  “Well, what happened?” said Iris in surprise. Alyx had grabbed Gunnar by the arm. Iris shrugged at them all elaborately and sat down, her chin on her knees, while Alyx got the rope from all the packs as swiftly as possible, knotted it, pushed the nun off the patch of dry gravel and set Machine on it. “Can you hold him?” she said. Machine nodded. She looped the rope about a projecting point in the wall above them and gave it to Machine; the other end she knotted under Gunnar’s arms. They sent him down to bring Maudey up, which he did, and they laid her down on the path. She was dead.

  “Well, how is she?” said Iris, looking at them all over her shoulder.

  “She’s dead,” said Alyx.

  “That,” said Iris brightly, “is not the right answer,” and she came over to inspect things for herself, coquettishly twisting and untwisting a lock of her straight silver hair. She knelt by the body. Maudey’s head lay almost flat against her shoulder for her neck was broken; her eyes were wide open. Alyx closed them, saying again “little girl, she’s dead.” Iris looked away, then up at them, then down again. She made a careless face. She said “Mo-Maudey was old, you know; d’you think they can fix her when we get back?”

  “She is dead,” said Alyx. Iris was drawing lines in the snow. She shrugged and looked covertly at the body, then she turned to it and her face began to change; she moved nearer on her knees. “Mo—Mother,” she said, then grabbed at the woman with the funny, twisted neck, screaming the word “Mother” over and over, grabbing at the clothing and the limbs and even the purple hair where the hood had fallen back, screaming without stopping. Machine said quickly, “I can put her out.” Alyx shook her head. She put one hand over Iris’s mouth to muffle the noise. She sat with the great big girl as Iris threw herself on top of dead Maudey, trying to burrow into her, her screaming turning to sobbing, great gasping sobs that seemed to dislocate her whole body, just as vanity and age had thrown her mother about so terribly between them and had finally thrown her over a cliff. As soon as the girl began to cry, Alyx put both arms about her and rocked with her, back and forth. One of the nuns came up with a thing in her hand, a white pill.

  “It would be unkind,” said the nun, “it would be most unkind, most unkind—”

  “Go to hell,” said Alyx in Greek.

  “I must insist,” said the nun softly, “I must, must insist,” in a tangle of hisses like a snake. “I must, must, I must—”

  “Get out!” shouted Alyx to the startled woman, who did not even understand the words. With her arms around Iris, big as Iris was, with little Iris in agonies, Alyx talked to her in Greek, soothed her in Greek, talked just to be talking, rocked her back and forth. Finally there came a moment when Iris stopped.

  Everyone looked very surprised.

  “Your mother,” said Alyx, carefully pointing to the body, “is dead.” This provoked a fresh outburst. Three more times. Four times. Alyx said it again. For several hours she repeated the whole thing, she did not know how often, holding the girl each time, then holding only her hand, then finally drawing her to her feet and away from the dead woman while the men took the food and equipment out of Maudey’s pack to divide it among themselves and threw the body over the path, to hide it. There was a kind of tittering, whispering chatter behind Alyx. She walked all day with the girl, talking to her, arm clumsily about her, making her walk while she shook with fits of weeping, making her walk when she wanted to sit down, making her walk as she talked of her mother, of running away from home—“not like you did” said Iris—of hating her, loving her, hating her, being reasonable, being rational, being grown up, fighting (“but it’s natural!”), not being able to stand her, being able to stand her, loving her, always fighting with her (and here a fresh fit of weeping) and then—then—

  “I killed her!” cried Iris, stock-still on the path. “Oh my God, I killed her! I! I!”

  “Bullshit,” said Alyx shortly, her hypnotic vocabulary coming to the rescue at the eleventh instant.

  “But I did, I did,” said Iris. “Didn’t you see? I upset her, I made—”

  “Ass!” said Alyx.

  “Then why didn’t you rope them together,” cried Iris, planting herself hysterically in front of Alyx, arms akimbo, “why didn’t you? You knew she could fall! You wanted to kill her!”

  “If you say that again—” said Alyx, getting ready.

  “I see it, I see it,” whispered Iris wildly, putting her arms around herself, her eyes narrowing. “Yesss, you wanted her dead�
��you didn’t want the trouble—”

  Alyx hit her across the face. She threw her down, sat on her and proceeded to pound at her while the others watched, shocked and scandalized. She took good care not to hurt her. When Iris had stopped, she rubbed snow roughly over the girl’s face and hauled her to her feet, “and no more trouble out of you!” she said.

  “I’m all right,” said Iris uncertainly. She took a step. “Yes,” she said. Alyx did not hold her any more but walked next to her, giving her a slight touch now and then when she seemed to waver.

  “Yes, I am all right,” said Iris. Then she added, in her normal voice, “I know Maudey is dead.”

  “Yes,” said Alyx.

  “I know,” said Iris, her voice wobbling a little, “that you didn’t put them together because they both would have gone over.”

  She added, “I am going to cry.”

  “Cry away,” said Alyx, and the rest of the afternoon Iris marched steadily ahead, weeping silently, trying to mop her face and her nose with the cleaning cloth Alyx had given her, breaking out now and again into suppressed, racking sobs. They camped for the night in a kind of hollow between two rising slopes with Iris jammed securely into the middle of everybody and Alyx next to her. In the dim never-dark of the snow fields, long after everyone else had fallen asleep, someone brushed Alyx across the face, an oddly unctuous sort of touch, at once gentle and unpleasant. She knew at once who it was.

  “If you do not,” she said, “take that devil’s stuff out of here at once—!” The hand withdrew.

  “I must insist,” said the familiar whisper, “I must, must insist. You do not understand—it is not—”

  “If you touch her,” said Alyx between her teeth, “I will kill you—both of you—and I will take those little pills you are so fond of and defecate upon each and every one of them, upon my soul I swear that I will!”

  “But—but—” She could feel the woman trembling with shock. “If you so much as touch her,” said Alyx, “you will have caused me to commit two murders and a sacrilege. Now get out!” and she got up in the dim light, pulled the pack off every grunting, protesting sleeper’s back—except the two women who had withdrawn to a little distance together—and piled them like a barricade around Iris, who was sleeping with her face to the stars and her mouth open. Let them trip over that, she thought vindictively.