Alyx - Joanna Russ Read online

  “Why not?” she said.

  “Because,” said Machine, “I am going to begin again.”

  “All right,” said Alyx, complaisantly and raised her knees. He began, as before, to kiss her neck, her shoulders and so on down et cetera et cetera, in short to do everything he had done before on the same schedule until it occurred to her that he was doing everything just as he had done it before and on the same schedule, until she tried to push him away, exclaiming angrily, feeling like a statuette or a picture, frightened and furious. At first he would not stop; finally she bit him.

  “What the devil is the matter!” he cried.

  “You,” she said, “stop it. Let me out.” They had been together and now they were sewed up in a sack; it was awful; she started to open the jointure of the suits but he grabbed her hands.

  “What is it?” he said, “what is it? Don’t you want it? Don’t you see that I’m trying?”

  “Trying?” said Alyx stupidly.

  “Yes, trying!” he said vehemently. “Trying! Do you think that comes by nature?”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “I’m sorry.” They lay silently for a few minutes.

  “I was trying,” he said in a thick, bitter voice, “to give you a good time. I like you. I did the best I could. Apparently it wasn’t good enough.”

  “But I don’t—” said Alyx.

  “You don’t want it,” he said; “all right,” and pushing her hands away, he began to open the suits himself. She closed them. He opened them and she closed them several times. Then he began to cry and she put her arms around him.

  “I had the best time in my life,” she said. He continued to sob, silently, through clenched teeth, turning away his face.

  “I had,” she repeated, “the best time in my life. I did. I did! But I don’t want—”

  “All right,” he said.

  “But I don’t,” she said. “I don’t want—I don’t—”

  He tried to get away from her and, of course could not; he thrashed about, forgetting that the suits had to be slit and could not be pulled apart; he pushed against the material until he frightened her for she thought she was going to be hurt; finally she cried out: “Darling, stop it! Please!”

  Machine stopped, leaning on his knees and clenched fists, his face stubbornly turned away.

  “It’s you I want,” she said. “D’you see? I don’t want a—performance. I want you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, more calmly.

  “Well, I don’t know what you're talking about,” said Alyx reasonably.

  “Look,” he said, turning his head back so that they were nose to nose, “when you do something, you do it right, don’t you?”

  “No,” said Alyx promptly.

  “Well, what’s the good of doing it then!” he shouted.

  “Because you want to, idiot!” she snapped, “any five-year-old child—”

  “Oh, now I’m a five-year-old child, am I?”

  “Just a minute, just a minute, athlete! I never said—”

  “Athlete! By God—”

  She pinched him.

  He pinched her.

  She grabbed at what there was of his hair and pulled it; he howled and twisted her hand; then both of them pushed and the result was that he lost his balance and carried her over on to one side with him, the impromptu sleeping-bag obligingly going with them. They both got a faceful of snow. They wrestled silently for a few minutes, each trying to grab some part of the other, Machine muttering, Alyx kicking, Machine pushing her head down into the bag, Alyx trying to bite his finger, Machine yelling, Alyx trying to butt her head into his stomach. There was, however, no room to do anything properly. After a few minutes they stopped.

  He sighed. It was rather peaceful, actually.

  “Look, dear,” he said quietly, “I’ve done my best. But if you want me, myself, you’ll have to do without; I’ve heard that too often. Do you think they don’t want me out there? Sure they do! They want me to open up my” (she could not catch the word) “like a God damned” (or that one) “and show them everything that’s inside, all my feelings, or what they call feelings. I don’t believe they have feelings. They talk about their complexities and their reactions and their impressions and their interactions and their patterns and their neuroses and their childhoods and their rebellions and their utterly unspeakable insides until I want to vomit. I have no insides. I will not have any. I certainly will not let anyone see any. I do things and I do them well; that’s all. If you want that, you can have it. Otherwise, my love, I am simply not at home. Understood?”

  “Understood,” she said. She took his face in her hands. “You are splendid,” she said thickly. “You are splendid and beautiful and superb. I love your performance. Perform me.”

  And if I let slip any emotion, she thought, it will—thank God—be in Greek!

  He performed again—rather badly. But it turned out well just the same.

  When Machine had gone to take over the watch from Gunnar, Alyx returned to the sleepers. Iris was sitting up. Not only was it possible to identify her face in the starlight reflected from the snow; she had thrown back her hood in the bitter cold and her silver hair glowed uncannily. She waited until Alyx reached her; then she said:

  “Talk to me.”

  “Did you know I was up?” said Alyx. Iris giggled, but an uncertain, odd sort of giggle as if she were fighting for breath; she said in the same queer voice, “Yes, you woke me up. You were both shouting.”

  Gunnar must know, thought Alyx and dismissed the thought. She wondered if these people were jealous. She turned to go back to her own sleeping place but Iris clutched at her arm, repeating, “Talk to me!”

  “What about, love?” said Alyx.

  “Tell me—tell me bad things,” said Iris, catching her breath and moving her head in the collar of her suit as if it were choking her. “Put your hood on,” said Alyx, but the girl shook her head, declaring she wanted it that way. She said, “Tell me—horrors.”

  “What?” said Alyx in surprise, sitting down.

  “I want to hear bad things,” said Iris monotonously. “I want to hear awful things. I can’t stand it. I keep slipping,” and she giggled again, saying “Everybody could hear you all over camp,” and then putting one hand to her face, catching her breath, and holding on to Alyx’s arm as if she were drowning. “Tell me horrors!” she cried.

  “Sssh,” said Alyx, “ssssh, I’ll tell you anything you like, baby, anything you like.”

  “My mother’s dead,” said Iris with sudden emotion. “My mother’s dead. I’ve got to remember that. I’ve got to!”

  “Yes, yes, she’s dead,” said Alyx.

  “Please, please,” said Iris, “keep me here. I keep sliding away.”

  “Horrors,” said Alyx. “Good Lord, I don’t think I know any tonight.”

  “It’s like feathers,” said Iris suddenly, dreamily, looking up in the sky, “it’s like pillows, it’s like air cushions under those things, you know, it’s like—like—”

  “All right, all right,” said Alyx quickly, “your mother broke her neck. I’ll tell you about it again. I might as well; you’re all making me soft as wax, the whole lot of you.”

  “Don’t, don’t,” said Iris, moaning. “Don’t say soft. I keep trying, I thought the cold—yes, yes, that’s good—” and with sudden decision she began to strip off her suit. Alyx grabbed her and wrestled her to the ground, fastening the suit again and shoving the hood on for good measure. She thought suddenly She’s still fighting the drug. “You touch that again and I’ll smash you,” said Alyx steadily. “I’ll beat your damned teeth in.”

  “It’s too hot,” said Iris feverishly, “too—to—” She relapsed into looking at the stars.

  “Look at me,” said Alyx, grabbing her head and pulling it down. “Look at me, baby.”

  “I’m not a baby,” said Iris lazily. “I’m not a—a—baby. I’m a woman.”

  Alyx
shook her.

  “I am almost grown up,” said Iris, not bothered by her head wobbling while she was being shaken. “I am very grown up. I am thirty-three.”

  Alyx dropped her hands.

  “I am thirty-three already,” continued Iris, trying to focus her eyes. “I am, I am” (she said this uncomfortably, with great concentration) “and—and Ma—Machine is thirty-six and Gunnar is fifty-eight—yes, that’s right—and Maudey was my mother. She was my mother. She was ninety. But she didn’t look it. She’s dead. She didn’t look it, did she? She took that stuff. She didn’t look it.”

  “Baby,” said Alyx, finding her voice, “look at me.”

  “Why?” said Iris in a whisper.

  “Because,” said Alyx, “I am going to tell you something horrible. Now look at me. You know what I look like. You’ve seen me in the daylight. I have lines in my face, the first lines, the ones that tell you for the first time that you’re going to die. There’s gray in my hair, just a little, just enough to see in a strong light, a little around my ears and one streak starting at my forehead. Do you remember it?”

  Iris nodded solemnly.

  “I am getting old,” said Alyx, “and my skin is getting coarse and tough. I tire more easily. I am withering a little. It will go faster and faster from now on and soon I will die.

  “Iris,” she said with difficulty, “how old am I?”

  “Fifty?” said Iris.

  Alyx shook her head.

  “Sixty?” said Iris hopefully.

  Alyx shook her head again.

  “Well, how old are you?” said Iris, a little impatiently.

  “Twenty-six,” said Alyx. Iris put her hands over her eyes.

  “Twenty-six,” said Alyx steadily. “Think of that, you thirty-three-year-old adolescent! Twenty-six and dead at fifty. Dead! There’s a whole world of people who live like that. We don’t eat the way you do, we don’t have whatever it is the doctors give you, we work like hell, we get sick, we lose arms or legs or eyes and nobody gives us new ones, we die in the plague, one-third of our babies die before they’re a year old and one time out of five the mother dies, too, in giving them birth.”

  “But it’s so long ago!” wailed little Iris.

  “Oh no it’s not,” said Alyx. “It’s right now. It’s going on right now. I lived in it and I came here. It’s in the next room. I was in that room and now I’m in this one. There are people still in that other room. They are living now. They are suffering now. And they always live and always suffer because everything keeps on happening. You can’t say it’s all over and done with because it isn’t; it keeps going on. It all keeps going on. Shall I tell you about the plague? That’s one nice thing. Shall I tell you about the fevers, the boils, the spasms, the fear, the burst blood vessels, the sores? Shall I tell you what’s going on right now, right here, right in this place?”

  “Y—yes! Yes! Yes!” cried Iris, her hands over her ears. Alyx caught the hands in her own, massaging them (for they were bare), slipping Iris’s gloves back on and pressing the little tabs that kept them shut.

  “Be quiet,” she said, “and listen, for I am going to tell you about the Black Death.”

  And for the next half hour she did until Iris’s eyes came back into focus and Iris began to breathe normally and at last Iris fell asleep.

  Don't have nightmares, baby, said Alyx to herself, stroking one lock of silver hair that stuck out from under the girl’s hood. Don’t have nightmares, thirty-three-year-old baby. She did not know exactly what she herself felt. She bedded down in her own place, leaving all that for the next day, thinking first of her own children: the two put out to nurse, the third abandoned in the hills when she had ran away from her husband at seventeen and (she thought) not to a Youth Core. She smiled in the dark. She wondered if Gunnar had known who was carrying on so. She wondered if he minded. She thought again of Iris, of Machine, of the comfort it was to hear human breathing around you at night, the real comfort.

  I’ve got two of them, she thought, and damn Gunnar anyway.

  She fell asleep.

  The thirty-fifth day was the day they lost Raydos. They did not lose him to the cats, although they found big paw-prints around their camp the next morning and met one of the spotted animals at about noon, circling it carefully at a distance while it stood hissing and spitting on a rocky eminence, obviously unsure whether to come any closer or not. It was less than a meter high and had enormous padded paws: a little animal and a lot of irritation; Alyx dropped to the rear to watch it stalk them for the next three hours, keeping her crossbow ready and making abrupt movements from time to time to make it duck out of sight. Gunnar was up front, leading the way. Its persistence rather amused her at first but she supposed that it could do a lot of damage in spite of its size and was beginning to wonder whether she could risk a loud shout—or a shot into the rocks—to drive it off, when for no reason at all that she could see, the animal’s tufted ears perked forward, it crouched down abruptly, gave a kind of hoarse, alarmed growl and bounded awkwardly away. The whole column in front of her had halted. She made her way to the front where Gunnar stood like a huge statue, his big arm pointing up straight into the sky, as visible as the Colossus of Rhodes.

  “Look,” he said, pleased, “a bird.” She yanked at his arm, pulling him to the ground, shouting “Down, everyone!” and all of them fell on to their hands and knees, ducking their heads. The theory was that the white suits and white packs would blend into the snow as long as they kept their faces hidden, or that they would look like animals and that any reading of body heat would be disregarded as such. She wondered if there was any sense to it. She thought that it might be a bird. It occurred to her that distances were hard to judge in a cloudless sky. It also occurred to her that the birds she knew did not come straight down, and certainly not that fast, and that the snow-shoed cat had been running away from something snow-shoed cats did not like. So it might be just as well to occupy their ridiculous position on the ground until whatever it was satisfied its curiosity and went away, even though her knees and elbows hurt and she was getting the cramp, even though things were absolutely silent, even though nothing at all seemed to be happening . . .

  “Well?” said Gunnar. There was a stir all along the line.

  “Sssh,” said Alyx. Nothing happened.

  “We’ve been down on our knees,” said Gunnar a bit testily, “for five minutes. I have been looking at my watch.”

  “All right, I’ll take a look up,” said Alyx, and leaning on one arm, she used her free hand to pull her hood as far over her face as possible. Slowly she tilted her head and looked.

  “Tell us the color of its beak,” said Gunnar.

  There was a man hanging in the air forty meters above them. Forty meters up in the sky he sat on nothing, totally unsupported, wearing some kind of green suit with a harness around his waist. She could have sworn that he was grinning. He put out one bare hand and punched the air with his finger; then he came down with such speed that it seemed to Alyx as if he must crash; then he stopped just as abruptly, a meter above the snow and two in front of them. He grinned. Now that he was down she could see the faint outline of what he was traveling in: a transparent bubble, just big enough for one, a transparent shelf of a seat, a transparent panel fixed to the wall. The thing made a slight depression in the snow. She supposed that she could see it because it was not entirely clean. The stranger took out of his harness what even she could recognize as a weapon, all too obviously shaped for the human hand to do God knew what to the human body. He pushed at the wall in front of him and stepped out—swaggering.

  “Well?” said Gunnar in a strained whisper.

  “His beak,” said Alyx distinctly, “is green and he’s got a gun. Get up,” and they all rocketed to their feet, quickly moving back; she could hear them scrambling behind her. The stranger pointed his weapon and favored them with a most unpleasant smile. He lounged against the side of his ship. It occurred to Alyx with a certain relief that
she had known him before, that she had known him in two separate millennia and eight languages, and that he had been the same fool each time; she only hoped mightily that no one would get hurt. She hugged herself as if in fear, taking advantage of the position to take off her gloves and loosen the knives in her sleeves while Machine held his crossbow casually and clumsily in one hand. He was gaping at the stranger like an idiot. Gunnar had drawn himself up, half a head above all of them, again the colossus, his face pale and muscles working around his mouth.

  “Well, well,” said the stranger with heavy sarcasm, “break my---” (she did not understand this) “I’m just cruising around and what do I find? A bloody circus!”

  Someone—probably a nun—was crying quietly in the back.

  “And what’s that?” said the stranger. “A dwarf? The Herculean Infant?” He laughed loudly. “Maybe I’ll leave it alone. Maybe if it’s female, I’ll tuck it under my arm after I’ve ticked the rest of you and take it away with me for convenience. Some--!”

  and again a word Alyx did not understand. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Machine redden. The stranger was idly kicking the snow in front of him; then with his free hand he pointed negligently at Machine’s crossbow. “What’s that thing?” he said. Machine looked stupid.

  “Hey come on, come on, don’t waste my time,” said the stranger. “What is it? I can tick you first, you know. Start telling.”

  “It’s a d-d-directional f-f-inder,” Machine stammered, blushing furiously.

  “It’s a what?” said the man suspiciously.

  “It’s t-to tell direction,” Machine blurted out. “Only it doesn’t work,” he added stiffly.

  “Give it here,” said the stranger. Machine obligingly stepped forward, the crossbow hanging clumsily from his hand.

  ‘'Stay back!” cried the man, jerking up his gun. “Don't come near me!” Machine held out the crossbow, his jaw hanging.

  “Stuff it,” said the stranger, trying to sound cool, “I’ll look at it after you’re dead,” and added, “Get in line, Civs,” as if nothing at all had happened. Ah yes, thought Alyx. They moved slowly into line, Alyx throwing her arms around Machine as he stepped back, incidentally affording him the cover to pull back the bow’s spring and giving herself the two seconds to say “Belly.” She was going to try to get his gun hand. She got her balance as near perfect as she could while the stranger backed away from them to survey the whole line; she planned to throw from her knees and deflect his arm upward while he shot at the place she had been, and to this end she called out “Mister, what are you going to do with us?”