Alyx - Joanna Russ Read online

  But Machine had stopped breathing some time before.

  She managed to wind her own rope loosely around her neck and climb the other by bracing herself against the side of the well: not as smoothly as she liked, for the rope wavered a little and tightened unsteadily while Alyx cursed and shouted up to them to mind their bloody business if they didn’t want to get it in a few minutes. Gavrily pulled her up over the edge.

  “Well?” he said. She was blinking. The four others were all on the rope. She smiled at them briefly, slapping her gloves one against the other. Her hands were rubbed raw. The wind, having done its job, had fallen, and the snow fell straight as silk sheets.

  “Well?” said Gavrily again, anxiously, and she shook her head. She could see on the faces of all of them a strange expression, a kind of mixed look as if they did not know what to feel or show. Of course; they had not liked him. She jerked her head towards the pass. Gavrily looked as if he were about to say something, and Iris as if she were about to cry suddenly, but Alyx only shook her head again and started off behind Gunnar. She saw one of the nuns looking back fearfully at the hole. They walked for a while and then Alyx took Gunnar’s arm, gently holding on to the unresponsive arm of the big, big man, her lips curling back over her teeth on one side, involuntarily, horribly. She said:

  “Gunnar, you did well.”

  He said nothing.

  “You ought to have lived in my country,” she said. “Oh yes! you would have been a hero there.”

  She got in front of him, smiling, clasping her hands together, saying “You think I’m fooling, don’t you?” Gunnar stopped.

  “It was your job,” he said expressionlessly.

  “Well, of course,” she said sweetly, “of course it was,” and crossing her hands wrist to wrist as she had done a thousand times before, she suddenly bent them in and then flipped them wide, each hand holding a knife. She bent her knees slightly; he was two heads taller and twice as heavy, easily. He put one hand stupidly up to his head.

  “You can’t do this,” he said.

  “Oh, there’s a risk,” she said, “there’s that, of course,” and she began to turn him back towards the others as he automatically stepped away from her, turning him in a complete circle to within sight of the others, while his face grew frightened, more and more awake, until he finally cried out:

  “Oh God, Agent, what will you do!”

  She shifted a little on her feet.

  “I’m not like you!” he said, “I can’t help it, what do you expect of me?”

  “He came and got us,” said Iris, frightened.

  “None of us,” said Gunnar quickly, “can help the way we are brought up, Agent. You are a creature of your world, believe me, just as I am of mine; I can’t help it; I wanted to be like you but I’m not, can I help that? I did what I could! What can a man do? What do you expect me to do? What could I do!”

  “Nothing. It’s not Jour job,” said Alyx.

  “I am ashamed,” said Gunnar, stammering, “I am ashamed, Agent, I admit I did the wrong thing. I should have gone down, yes, I should have—put those things away, for God’s sake!— forgive me, please, hate me but forgive me; I am what I am, I am only what I am! For Heaven’s sake! For God’s sake!”

  “Defend yourself,” said Alyx, and when he did not—for it did not seem to occur to him that this was possible—she slashed the fabric of his suit with her left-hand knife and with the right she drove Trans-Temp’s synthetic steel up to the hilt between Gunnar’s ribs. It did not kill him; he staggered back a few steps, holding his chest. She tripped him onto his back and then cut his suit open while the madman did not even move, all this in an instant, and when he tried to rise she slashed him through the belly and then— lest the others intrude—pulled back his head by the pale hair and cut his throat from ear to ear. She did not spring back from the blood but stood in it, her face strained in the same involuntary grimace as before, the cords standing out on her neck. Iris grabbed her arm and pulled her away.

  “He came and got us,” whispered Iris, terrified, “he did, he did, really.”

  “He took his time,” said Gavrily slowly. The five of them stood watching Gunnar, who lay in a red lake. The giant was dead. Alyx watched him until Iris turned her around; she followed obediently for a few steps, then stopped and knelt and wiped her hands in the snow. Then putting on her gloves, she took handfuls of snow and rubbed them over her suit, up and down, up and down. She cleaned herself carefully and automatically, like a cat. Then she put the knives away and silently followed the four others up the pass, floundering and slipping through the still-falling snow, hunched a little, her fists clenched. At dusk they found a shallow cave at the bottom of a long slope, not a rock cave but soft rock and frozen soil. Gavrily said they were over the pass. They sat as far back against the cave wall as they could, watching the snow fall across the opening and glancing now and again at Alyx. She was feeling a kind of pressure at the back of her neck, something insistent like a forgotten thought, but she could not remember what it was; then she took the medicine bulb out of her sleeve and began playing with it, tossing it up and down in her hand. That was what she had been trying to remember. Finally Iris giggled nervously and said:

  “What are you doing with that?”

  “Put it in your pack,” said Alyx, and she held it out to the girl.

  “My pack?” said Iris, astonished. “Why?”

  “We may need it,” said Alyx.

  “Oh, Lord,” said Iris uncomfortably, “we’ve still got enough to eat, haven’t we?”

  “Eat?” said Alyx.

  “Sure,” said Iris, “that’s lecithin. From synthetic milk,” and then she clapped both hands across her mouth as Alyx leapt to her feet and threw the thing out into the falling snow. It seemed to Alyx that she had suddenly walked into an enormous snake, or a thing like one of the things that cleaned up houses in civilized countries: something long, strong and elastic that winds around you and is everywhere the same, every where equally strong so that there is no relief from it, no shifting it or getting away from it. She could not bear it. She did not think of Machine but only walked up and down for a few minutes, trying to change her position so that there would be a few minutes when it would not hurt; then she thought of a funnel and something at the bottom of it; and then finally she saw him. Wedged in like broken goods. She thought Wedged in like broken goods. She put her hands over her eyes. The same face. The same face. Iris had gotten up in alarm and put one hand on Alyx’s shoulder; Alyx managed to whisper “Iris!”

  “Yes? Yes?” said Iris anxiously.

  “Get those damned women,” said Alyx hoarsely for now he was all over the cave, pale, eyes shut, on every wall, irretrievably lost, a smashed machine with a broken arm at the bottom of a rock chimney somewhere. It was intolerable. For a moment she thought that she was bleeding, that her arms and legs were cut away. Then that disappeared. She put out her hands to touch his face, to stay awake, to wake him up, again and again and again, and then this would not stop but went on and on in a kind of round dance that she could not control, over and over in complete silence with the cold of the rock-chimney and the dim light and the smell of the place, with Machine still dead, no matter what she did, lying on top of his pack and not speaking, wedged into the rock like a broken toy with one leg dangling. It kept happening. She thought I never lost anything before. She cried out in her own language.

  When the sister came with the pill-box to comfort her, Alyx wrenched the box out of the woman’s hand, swallowed three of the things, shoved the box up her own sleeve—above the knife-harness—and waited for death.

  But the only thing that happened was that the nuns got frightened and retreated to the other end of the cave.

  And Alyx fell asleep almost instantly.

  She woke up all at once, standing, like a board hit with a hoe; Paradise—which had been stable—turned over once and settled itself. This was interesting but not novel. She looked outside the cave, forgot wha
t she had seen, walked over to the nuns and pulled one of them up by the hair, which was very amusing; she did it to the other, too, and then when the noise they made had waked up Iris and Gavrily, she said “Damn it, Gavrily, you better be careful, this place has it in for me.”

  He only blinked at her. She pulled him outside by one arm and whispered it fiercely into his ear, pulling him down and standing on her toes to do so, but he remained silent. She pushed him away. She looked at his frightened face and said contemptuously “Oh, you! you can’t hear,” and dropped her pack into the snow; then when somebody put it on her back she dropped it again; only the third time she lost interest. They put it on again and she forgot about it. By then they were all up and facing out onto the plains, a flat land covered with hard snow, a little dirty, like pulverized ice, and a brown haze over the sky so that the sun showed through it in an unpleasant smear she wanted to look at it and would not go anywhere until someone pushed her. It was not an attractive landscape and it was not an unattractive one; it was fascinating. Behind her Gavrily began to sing;

  “When I woke up, my darling dear, When I woke up and found you near, I thought you were an awful cutie And you will always be my sweetie.”

  She turned around and shouted at him. Someone gave a shocked gasp. They prodded her again. She found Iris at her elbow, quite unexpectedly pushing her along, and began to explain that her feet were doing that part of the work. She was very civil. Then she added: “You see, I am not like you; I am not doing anything idiotic or lying in the snow making faces. I haven’t lost my head and I’m going on in a perfectly rational manner; I can still talk and I can still think and I wish to the devil you would stop working my elbow like a pump; it is very annoying, besides being entirely unnecessary. You are not a nice girl.”

  “I don’t know that language,” said Iris helplessly, “what are you saying?”

  “Well, you’re young,” said Alyx serenely, “after all.”

  At midday they let her look at the sky.

  She lay down flat in the snow and watched it as the others ate, through a pair of binoculars she had gotten from someone’s pack, concentrating on the detail work and spinning the little wheel in the middle until Iris grabbed her hands and hoisted her to her feet. This made her cross and she bit Iris in the arm, getting a mouthful of insulated suit. She seriously considered that Iris had played a trick on her. She looked for the binoculars but they were not around; she lagged after Iris with her gloves dangling from her wrists and her bare fingers making circles around her eyes; she tried to tell Iris to look at that over there, which is what that which it is, and then a terrible suspicion flashed into her mind in one sentence:

  You are going out of your mind.

  Immediately she ran to Iris, tugging at Iris’s arm, holding her hand, crying out “Iris, Iris, I’m not going out of my mind, am I? Am I going out of my mind? Am I?” and Iris said “No, you’re not; come on, please,’’ (crying a little) and the voice of one of the Hellish Duo sounded, like an infernal wind instrument creeping along the bottom of the snow, in a mean, meaching, nasty tone, just like the nasty blur in the brown sky, an altogether unpleasant, exceptionable and disgusting tone:

  “She’s coming out of it.”

  “How can I come on if I’m coming out?” demanded Alyx, going stiff all over with rage.

  “Oh, please!” said Iris.

  “How,” repeated Alyx in a fury, “can I come on if I’m coming out? How? I’d like you to explain that”—her voice rising shrilly— ’’that—conundrum, that impossibility, that flat perversion of the laws of nature; it is absolutely and utterly impossible and you are nothing but an excuse, an evasion, a cheap substitute for a human being and a little tin whore!”

  Iris turned away.

  “But how can I!” exploded Alyx. “How can I be on and out? How can I? It’s ridiculous!”

  Iris began to cry. Alyx folded her arms around herself and sunk her head on her chest; then she went over to Iris and patted Iris with her mittens; she would have given up even the sky if it made Iris unhappy. She said reassuringly “There, there.”

  “Just come on, please,” said Iris. Subdued, Alyx followed her. A great while after, when she had put down the other foot, Alyx said “You understand, don’t you?” She took Iris’s arm, companionably.

  “It’s only the pills,” said Iris, “that’s all.”

  “I never take them,” said Alyx.

  “Of course not,” said Iris.

  Curiously Alyx said, “Why are you shaking?”

  They walked on.

  Towards evening, long after the immense day had sunk and even the diffused light died out so that the bottom of the plain was nothing but a black pit, though even then the snow-luminescence glowed about them vaguely, not enough to see by but enough (Alyx thought) to make you take a chance and break your neck— she realized that they had been handing her about from one to the other all day. She supposed it was the pills. They came and went in waves of unreason, oddly detached from herself; she dozed between them as she walked, not thinking of suggesting to the others that they stop, and when they did stop she merely sat down on the snow, put her arms around her knees and stared off into the darkness. Eventually the light from the snow failed. She felt for the box in her sleeve and laughed a little; someone near her stirred and whispered “What? What?” and then yawned. The breathing fell again into its soft, regular rhythm. Alyx laughed again, dreamily, then felt something in back of her, then turned around to look for it, then found nothing. It was in back of her again. She yawned. The darkness was becoming uncomfortable. She fought the desire to sleep. She felt about and nudged the person nearest her, who immediately sat up—to judge from the sound—and gave out a kind of “Ha!” like a bellows. Alyx laughed.

  “Wha’—huh!” said Gavrily.

  “Look,” she said sensibly, “about these pills. What do they do to you?”

  “Muh,” said Gavrily.

  “Well, how many can I take?” said Alyx, amused.

  “Take what?”

  “Take pills,” said Alyx.

  “What? Don’t take any,” he said. He sounded a little more awake.

  “How many,” said Alyx patiently,“can I take without hurting myself?”

  “None,” said Gavrily. “Bad for the liver. Meta—metabol— give ’em back.”

  “You won’t get them,” said Alyx. “Don’t try. How many can I take without making a nuisance of myself?”

  “Huh?” said Gavrily.

  “How many?” repeated Alyx. “One?”

  “No, no,” said Gavrily stupidly, “none,” and he muttered something else, turned over in the dark and apparently fell asleep. She heard him snore; then it was turned off into a strangled, explosive snort and he breathed like a human being. Alyx sat peering keenly into the dark, feeling them come closer and closer and smiling to herself. When the world was about to touch her—and she would not stand for that—she took out her little box. She broke a pill and swallowed half. She came to the surface nonetheless, as one does when breaking the surface of water, blinded, chilled, shocked by the emptiness of air; the snow solidified under her, her suit began to take shape and grate like iron, the sleepers next to her emerged piecemeal out of the fog, grotesquely in separate limbs, in disconnected sounds, there were flashes of realization, whole moments of absolute reality. It simply would not do. She grinned nervously and hugged her knees. She blinked into the darkness as if her eyes were dazzled; she held on to her knees as a swimmer holds on to the piles of a jetty with his fingertips, she who had never been drunk in her life because it impaired the reason. She stuffed the box back up her sleeve. Eventually something happened—she shook her head as if to get rid of a fly or a nervous tic—the water rose. It closed over her head. She yawned. With her mouth wide open, water inside, water outside, she slid down, and down, and down, singing like a mermaid: I care for nobody, no, not I. She slept.

  And nobody cares for me.

  The false dawn came over
the flats, bringing nothing with it.

  She sat and considered her sins.

  That they were vast was undeniably true, a mental land as flat and bare as a world-sized table, and yet with here and there those disturbing dips and slides: concave surfaces that somehow remained flat, hills that slid the other way, like the squares on a chessboard which bend and produce nausea. Such places exist.

  Her sins were terrible. She was staring at a pink marble bathtub, full of water, a bathtub in which she had once bathed in the palace of Knossos on Crete, and which now hung on the ceiling overhead. The water was slipping. She was going to be drowned. The ocean stuck to the sky, heaving. In her youth she had walked town streets and city streets, stolen things, been immensely popular, it had all come to nothing. Nothing had come out of nothing. She did not regret a single life lost. In the snow appeared a chessboard and on the chessboard figures, and these figures one by one slid down into squares in the board and disappeared. The squares puckered and became flat. She put her fingers into them but they would not take her, which was natural enough in a woman who had not even loved her own children. You could not trust anyone in those times. The electromagnetic spectrum was increasing. Slowly the plains filled with air, as a pool with water, an enormous racket went on below the cliff that was the edge of the earth; and finally the sun threw up one hand to grasp the cliff, climbed, clung, rose, mounted and sailed brilliantly white and clear into a brilliant sky.