Alyx - Joanna Russ Read online

  Damn it! Damn them all! Boots without spikes, damn them! What do they expect us to do, swim over the mountains? She did not sleep for a long time, and when she did it seemed that everyone was climbing over her, stepping on top of her and sliding off just for fun. She dreamed she was what Gunnar had described as a ski-slide. Then she dreamed that the first stepped on to her back and then the second on to his and so on and so on until they formed a human ladder, when the whole snow-field slowly tilted upside down. Everyone fell off. She came to with a start; it was Gavrily, waking her for the dawn watch. She saw him fall asleep in seconds, then trudged a little aside and sat cross-legged, her bow on her knees. The two nuns had moved, back to the group, asleep, sprawled out and breathing softly with the others. She watched the sky lighten to the left, become transparent, take on color. Pale blue. Winter blue.

  “All right,” she said, “everyone up!” and slipped off her pack for the usual handfuls of breakfast food.

  The first thing she noticed, with exasperation, was that Raydos had stolen back his art equipment, for it was gone. The second was that there were only six figures sitting up and munching out of their cupped hands, not seven; she thought that's right, Maudey's dead, then ran them over in her head: Gunnar, Gavrily, Raydos, Machine, the Twins, Iris—

  But Iris was missing.

  Her first thought was that the girl had somehow been spirited away, or made to disappear by The Holy Twins, who had stopped eating with their hands halfway to their mouths, like people about to pour a sacrifice of grain on to the ground for Mother Earth. Both of them were watching her. Her second thought was unprintable and almost—but not quite—unspeakable, and so instantaneous that she had leapt into the circle of breakfasters before she half knew where she was, shoving their packs and themselves out of her way. She dislodged one of Raydos’s eye lenses; he clapped his hand to his eye and began to grope in the snow. “What the devil—!” said Gunnar.

  Iris was lying on her back among the packs, looking up into the sky. She had shut one eye and the other was moving up and down in a regular pattern. Alyx fell over her. When she scrambled to her knees, Iris had not moved and her one open eye still made the regular transit of nothing, up and down, up and down.

  “Iris,” said Alyx.

  “Byootiful,” said Iris. Alyx shook her. “Byootiful,” crooned the girl, “all byootiful” and very slowly she opened her closed eye, shut the other and began again to scan the something or nothing up in the sky, up and down, up and down. Alyx tried to pull the big girl to her feet, but she was too heavy; then with astonishing lightness Iris herself sat up, put her head to one side and looked at Alyx with absolute calm and complete relaxation. It seemed to Alyx that the touch of one finger would send her down on her back again. “Mother,” said Iris clearly, opening both eyes, “mother. Too lovely,” and she continued to look at Alyx as she had at the sky. She bent her head down on to one shoulder, as Maudey’s head had been bent in death with a broken neck.

  “Mother is lovely,” said Iris conversationally. “There she is. You are lovely. Here you are. He is lovely. There he is. She is lovely. We are lovely. They are lovely. I am lovely. Love is lovely. Lovely lovely lovely lovely—” she went on talking to herself as Alyx stood up. One of the nuns came walking across the trampled snow with her hands clasped nervously in front of her; she came up to the little woman and took a breath; then she said:

  “You may kill me if you like.”

  “I love shoes,” said Iris, lying down on her back, “I love sky. I love clouds. I love hair. I love zippers. I love food. I love my mother. I love feet. I love bathrooms. I love walking. I love people. I love sleep. I love breathing. I love tape. I love books. I love pictures. I love air. I love tolls. I love hands. I love—”

  “Shut up!” shouted Alyx, as the girl continued with her inexhaustible catalogue. “Shut up, for God’s sake!” and turned away, only to find herself looking up at the face of the nun, who had quickly moved about to be in front of her and who still repeated, “You may kill us both if you like,” with an unbearable mixture of nervousness and superiority. Iris had begun to repeat the word “love” over and over and over again in a soft, unchanging voice.

  “Is this not kinder?” said the nun.

  “Go away before I kill you!” said Alyx.

  “She is happy,” said the nun.

  “She is an idiot!”

  “She will be happy for a day,” said the nun, “and then less happy and then even less happy, but she will have her memory of the All and when the sadness comes back—as it will in a day or so, I am sorry to say, but some day we will find out how—”

  “Get out!” said Alyx.

  “However, it will be an altered sadness,” continued the nun rapidly, “an eased sadness with the All in its infinite All—”

  “Get out of here before I alter you into the All!” Alyx shouted, losing control of herself. The nun hurried away and Alyx, clapping both hands over her ears, walked rapidly away from Iris, who had begun to say “I’ve been to the moon but you won’t. I’ve been to the sun but you won’t, I’ve been to—” and over and over and over again with ascending and descending variations.

  “Messing up the machinery,” said Machine, next to her.

  “Leave me alone,” said Alyx, her hands still over her ears. The ground had unaccountably jumped up and was swimming in front of her; she knew she was crying.

  “I don’t approve of messing up the machinery,” said Machine softly. “I have a respect for the machinery; I do not like to see it abused and if they touch the girl again you need not kill them. I will.”

  “No killing,” said Alyx, as levelly as she could.

  “Religion?” said Machine sarcastically.

  “No,” said Alyx, lifting her head abruptly, “but no killing. Not my people.” She turned to go, but he caught her gently by the arm, looking into her face with a half-mocking smile, conveying somehow by his touch that her arm was not inside an insulated suit but was bare, and that he was stroking it. The trip had given him back his eyebrows and eyelashes; the hair on his head was a wiry black brush; for Machine did not, apparently, believe in tampering irreversibly with the Machinery. She thought I won’t get involved with any of these people. She found herself saying idiotically “Your hair’s growing in.” He smiled and took her other arm, holding her as if he were going to lift her off the ground, she hotter and dizzier every moment, feeling little, feeling light, feeling like a woman who has had no luxury for a long, long time. She said, “Put me down, if you please.”

  “Tiny,” he said, “you are down,” and putting his hands around her waist, he lifted her easily to the height of his face. “I think you will climb it,” he said.

  “No,” said Alyx. It did not seem to bother him to keep holding her up in the air.

  “I think you will,” he said, smiling, and still smiling, he kissed her with a sort of dispassionate, calm pleasure, taking his time, holding her closely and carefully, using the thoughtful, practiced, craftsmanly thoroughness that Machine brought to everything that Machine did. Then he put her down and simply walked away.

  “Ah, go find someone your own size!” she called after him, but then she remembered that the only girl his size was Iris, and that Iris was lying on her back in the snow in a world where everything was lovely, lovely, lovely due to a little white pill. She swore. She could see Ins in the distance, still talking. She took a knife out of her sleeve and tried the feel of it but the feel was wrong, just as the boots attached to their suits had no spikes, just as their maps stopped at Base B, just as Paradise itself had turned into—but no, that was not so. The place was all right, quite all right. The place, she thought, is all right. She started back to the group of picnickers who were slipping their packs back on and stamping the snow off their boots; some were dusting off the rear ends of others where they had sat in the snow. She saw one of The Heavenly Twins say something in Iris’s ear and Iris get obediently to her feet, still talking; then the other nun sa
id something and Iris’s mouth stopped moving.

  Bury it deep, thought Alyx, never let it heal. She joined them, feeling like a mule-driver.

  “D’you know,” said Gunnar conversationally, “that we’ve been out here thirty days? Not bad, eh?”

  “I’ll say!” said Gavrily.

  “And only one death,” said Alyx sharply, “not bad, eh?”

  “That’s not our fault,” said Gavrily. They were all staring at her.

  “No,” she said, “it’s not our fault. It’s mine.

  “Come on,” she added.

  On the thirty-second day Paradise still offered them the semblance of a path, though Gunnar could not find his mountain pass and grew scared and irritable trying to lead them another way. Paradise tilted and zigzagged around them. At times they had to sit down, or slide down, or even crawl, and he waited for them with deep impatience, telling them haughtily how a professional would be able to handle this sort of thing without getting down on his——to go down a slope. Alyx said nothing. Iris spoke to nobody. Only Gavrily talked incessantly about People’s Capitalism, as if he had been stung by a bug, explaining at great and unnecessary length how the Government was a check on the Military, the Military was a check on Government, and both were a check on Business which in turn checked the other two. He called it the three-part system of checks and balances. Alyx listened politely. Finally she said:

  “What’s a-?”

  Gavrily explained, disapprovingly.

  “Ah,” said Alyx, smiling.

  Iris still said nothing.

  They camped early for the night, sprawled about a narrow sort of table-land, as far away from each other as they could get and complaining loudly. The sun had not been down for fifteen minutes and there was still light in the sky: rose, lavender, yellow, apple-green, violet. It made a beautiful show. It was getting extremely cold. Gunnar insisted that they could go on, in spite of their complaints; he clenched his big hands and ordered them to get up (which they did not do); then he turned to Alyx.

  “You too,” he said. “You can go on for another hour.”

  “I’d prefer not to go on in the dark,” she said. She was lying down with her hands under her head, watching the colors in the sky.

  “There’s light enough to last us all night!” he said. "Will you come on?”

  “No,” said Alyx.

  “God damn it!” he said, “do you think I don’t know what I’m doing? Do you think I don’t know where I’m taking you? You lazy sons of bitches, get up!”

  “That’s enough,” said Alyx, half on her feet.

  “Oh no it isn’t,” he said. “Oh no it isn’t! You all get up, all of you! You’re not going to waste the hour that’s left!”

  “I prefer,” said Alyx quietly, “not to sleep with my head wedged in a chasm, if you don’t mind.” She rose to her feet. “Do I have to kick you in the stomach again?” she said calmly. Gunnar was silent. He stood with his hands balled into fists. “Do I?” she said. “Do I have to kick you in the groin? Do I have to gouge your eyes out?”

  “Do I have to dive between your legs and throw you head foremost on the rocks so you’re knocked out?” she said.

  “So your nose gets broken?”

  “So your cheekbones get bloody and your chin braised?”

  She turned to the others.

  “I suggest that we keep together,” she said, “to take advantage of each other’s warmth; otherwise you are bound to stiffen up as you get colder; it is going to be a devil of a night.”

  She joined the others as they packed snow about themselves—it was more like frozen dust than snow, and there was not much of it; they were too high up—and settled in against Iris, who was unreadable, with the beautiful sky above them dying into deep rose, into dusty rose, into dirty rose. She did not look at Gunnar. She felt sorry for him. He was to take the first watch anyway, though (she thought) what we are watching for I do not know and what we could do if we saw it, God only knows. And then what I am watching for . . . What I would do. . . No food. . . Too high up. . . No good. . .

  She woke under the night sky, which was brilliant with stars: enormous, shining, empty and cold. The stars were unrecognizable, not constellations she knew any more but planes upon planes, shifting trapezoids, tilted pyramids like the mountains themselves, all reaching off into spaces she could not even begin to comprehend: distant suns upon suns. The air was very cold.

  Someone was gently shaking her, moving her limbs, trying to untangle her from the mass of human bodies. She said, “Lemme sleep” and tried to turn over. Then she felt a shocking draught at her neck and breast and a hand inside her suit; she said sleepily, “Oh dear, it’s too cold.”

  “You had better get up,” whispered Machine reasonably. “I believe I’m standing on somebody.

  “I’m trying not to,” he added solemnly, “but everyone’s so close together that it’s rather difficult.”

  Alyx giggled. The sound startled her. Well, I’ll talk to you, she said. No, she thought, I didn’ say it, did I? She articulated clearly “I—will—talk—to you,” and sat up, leaning her head against his knee to wake up. She pushed his hand away and closed up her suit. “I’m cross,” she said, “you hear that?”

  “I hear and obey,” whispered Machine, grinning, and taking her up in his arms like a baby, he carried her through the mass of sleepers, picking his way carefully, for they were indeed packed very close together. He set her down a little distance away.

  “You’re supposed to be on Watch,” she protested. He shook his head. He knelt beside her and pointed to the watch—Gunnar— some fifteen meters away. A noble figure, thought Alyx. She began to laugh uncontrollably muffling her mouth on her knees. Machine’s shoulders were shaking gleefully. He scooped her up with one arm and walked her behind a little wall of snow someone had built, a little wall about one meter high and three meters long— “Did you—?” said Alyx.

  “I did,” said the young man. He reached out with one forefinger and rapidly slid it down the opening of her suit from her neck to her—

  “Eeeey, it’s too cold!” cried Alyx, rolling-away and pressing the opening shut again.

  “Sssh!” he said. “No it’s not.”

  “He’ll see us,” said Alyx, straightening out distrustfully.

  “No he won’t.”

  “Yes he will.”

  “No he won’t.”

  “Yes he will!” and she got up, shook the snow off herself and immediately started away. Machine did not move.

  “Well, aren’t you—” she said, nettled.

  He shook his head. He sat down, crossed his legs in some unaccountable fashion so the feet ended up on top, crossed his arms, and sat immobile as an Oriental statue. She came back and sat next to him, resting her head against him (as much as she could with one of his knees in the way), feeling soulful, trustful, silly. She could feel him chuckling. “How do you do that with the feet?” she said. He wriggled his toes inside his boots.

  “I dare not do anything else,” he said, “because of your deadly abilities with groin-kicking, eye-gouging, head-cracking and the like, Agent.”

  “Oh, shut up!” said Alyx. She put her arms around him. He uncrossed his own arms, then used them to carefully uncross his legs; then lay down with her in the snow, insulated suit to insulated suit, kissing her time after time. Then he stopped.

  “You’re scared, aren’t you?” he whispered.

  She nodded.

  “Goddammit, I’ve had men before!” she whispered. He put his finger over her lips. With the other hand he pressed together the ends of the thongs that could hold a suit loosely together at the collarbone—first his suit, then hers—and then, with the same hand, rapidly opened both suits from the neck in front to the base of the spine in back and ditto with the long underwear: “Ugly but useful,” he remarked. Alyx began to giggle again. She tried to press against him, shivering with cold. “Wait!” he said, “and watch, O Agent,” and very carefully, biting one lip,
he pressed together the right-hand edges of both suits and then the left, making for the two of them a personal blanket, a double tent, a spot of warmth under the enormous starry sky.

  “And they don’t,” he said triumphantly, “come apart by pulling. They only come apart by prying! And see? You can move your arms and legs in! Isn’t it marvelous?” And he gave her a proud kiss—a big, delighted, impersonal smack on the cheek. Alyx began to laugh. She laughed as she pulled her arms and legs in to hug him; she laughed as he talked to her, as he buried his face in her neck, as he began to caress her; she laughed until her laughter turned to sobbing under his expert hands, his too-expert hands, his calm deliberateness; she raked his back with her fingernails; she screamed at him to hurry up and called him a pig and an actor and the son of a whore (for these epithets were of more or less equal value in her own country); and finally, when at his own good time the stars exploded—and she realized that nova meant—that nova meant (though she had closed her eyes a long time before)— someone had said nova the other day—she came to herself as if rocking in the shallows of a prodigious tide, yawning, lazily extending her toes—and with a vague but disquieting sense of having done something or said something she should not have said or done. She knew she hated him there, for a while; she was afraid she might have hurt him or hurt his feelings.

  “What language were you speaking?” said Machine with interest.

  “Greek!” said Alyx, and she laughed with relief and would have kissed him, only it was really too much effort.

  He shook her. “Don’t go to sleep,” he said.

  “Mmmm.”

  “Don’t go to sleep!” and he shook her harder.