Alyx - Joanna Russ (15 page)

“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 line, 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.

“She’s sick,” said Alyx.

“Oh no,” said everybody else.

“She’s got a fever,” said Alyx.

“No, no,” said one of the nuns, “it’s the drug.”

“What—drug?” said Alyx, controlling her temper. How these people could manage to get into such scrapes—

“It’s Re-Juv,” said Gavrily. “She’s been taking Re-Juv and of course the withdrawal symptoms don’t come on for a couple of weeks. But she’ll be all right.”

“It’s an unparalleled therapeutic opportunity,” said the other nun. Maudey was moaning that nobody cared about her, that nobody had ever paid any attention to her, and whereas other people’s dolls were normal when they were little, hers had only had a limited stock of tapes and could only say the same things over and over, just like a person. She said she had always known it wasn’t real. No one touched her. They urged her to integrate this perception with her unstable self-image.

“Are you going,” said Alyx, “to let her go on like that
all night?"

“We wouldn’t think of stopping her,” said Gavrily in a shocked voice and they all went back to talking. “Why wasn’t your doll alive?” said one of the nuns in a soft voice. “Think, now; tell us, why do you feel—” Alyx pushed past two of them to try to touch the woman or take her hand, but at this point Maudey got swiftly up and walked out of the cave.

“Eight gods and seven devils!” shouted Alyx in her own language. She realized a nun was clinging to each arm.

“Please don’t be distressed,” they said, “she’ll come back,” like twins in unison, only one actually said “She’ll return” and the other “She’ll come back.” Voices pursued her from the cave, everlastingly those damned voices; she wondered if they knew how far an insane woman could wander in a snowstorm. Insane she was, drug or no drug; Alyx had seen too many people behave too oddly under too many different circumstances to draw unnecessary distinctions. She found Maudey some thirty meters along the rock-face, crouching against it.

“Maudey, you must come back,” said Alyx.

“Oh, I know
you,
” said Maudey, in a superior tone.

“You will get lost in the snow,” said Alyx softly, carefully freeing one hand from its glove, “and you won’t be comfortable and warm and get a good night’s sleep. Now come along.”

Maudey smirked and cowered and said nothing.

“Come back and be comfortable and warm,” said Alyx. “Come back and go to sleep. Come, dear, come on, dear,” and she caught Maudey’s arm with her gloved hand and with the other pressed a blood vessel at the base of her neck. The woman passed out immediately and fell down in the snow. Alyx kneeled over her, holding one arm back against the joint, just in case Maudey should decide to get contentious.
And how,
she thought,
do you get her back now when she weighs twice as much as you, clever one?
The wind gave them a nasty shove, then gusted in the other direction. Maudey was beginning to stir. She was saying something louder and louder; finally Alyx heard it.

“I’m a living doll,” Maudey was saying, “I’m a living doll, I’m a living doll, I’m a living doll!” interspersed with terrible sobs.

They do tell the truth,
thought Alyx,
sometimes.
“You,” she said firmly, “are a woman. A woman. A woman.”

“I’m a doll!” cried Maudey.

“You,” said Alyx, “are a woman. A woman with dyed hair. A silly woman. But a woman. A woman!”

“No I’m not,” said Maudey stubbornly, like an older Iris.

“Oh, you’re a damned fool!” snapped Alyx, peering nervously about and hoping that their voices would not attract anything. She did not expect people, but she knew that where there are goats or things like goats there are things that eat the things that are like goats.

“Am I damned?” said Maudey. “What’s damned?”

“Lost,” said Alyx absently, and slipping her gloved hand free, she lifted the crossbow from its loop on her back, loaded it and pointed it away at the ground. Maudey was wiggling her freed arm, with an expression of pain. “You hurt me,” she said. Then she saw the bow and sat up in the snow, terrified, shrinking away.

“Will you shoot me, will you shoot me?” she cried.

“Shoot you?” said Alyx.

“You’ll shoot me, you hate me!” wailed Maudey, clawing at the rock-face. “You hate me, you hate me, you’ll kill me!”

“I think I will,” said Alyx simply, “unless you go back to the cave.”

“No, no, no,” said Maudey.

“If you don’t go back to the cave,” said Alyx carefully, “I am going to shoot you,” and she drove the big woman in front of her, step by step, back along the narrow side of the mountain, back on her own tracks that the snow had already half-obliterated, back through Paradise to the opening of the cave. She trained the crossbow on Maudey until the woman stepped into the group of people inside; then she stood there, blocking the entrance, the bow in her hand.

“One of you,” she said, “tie her wrists together.”

“You are doing incalculable harm,” said one of the nuns.

“Machine,” she said, “take rope from your pack. Tie that woman’s wrists together and then tie them to Gavrily’s feet and the nuns’ feet and Iris’s. Give them plenty of room but make the knots fast.”

“I hear and obey,” said Raydos dryly, answering for the boy, who was apparently doing what she had told him to.

“You and Raydos and I and Gunnar will stand watch,” she said.

“What’s there to watch, for heaven’s sake,” muttered Iris. Alyx thought she probably did not like being connected to Maudey in any way at all, not even for safety.

“Really,” said Gavrily, “she would have come back, you know! I think you might try to understand that!”

“I would have come back,” said Maudey in a surprisingly clear and sensible tone, “of course I would have come back, don’t be silly,” and this statement precipitated such a clamor of discussion, vilification, self-justification and complaints that Alyx stepped outside the cave with her blood pounding in her ears and her hands grasping the stock of the crossbow. She asked the gods to give her strength, although she did not believe in them and never had. Her jaws felt like iron; she was shaking with fury.

Then she saw the bear. It was not twenty meters away.

“Quiet!” she hissed. They went on talking loudly.

“QUIET!” she shouted, and as the talk died down to an injured and peevish mutter, she saw that the bear—if it was a bear—had heard them and was slowly, curiously, calmly, coming over to investigate. It seemed to be grayish-white, like the snow, and longer in the neck than it should be.

“Don’t move,” she said very softly, “there is an animal out here,” and in the silence that followed she saw the creature hesitate, swaying a little or lumbering from side to side. It might very well pass them by. It stopped, sniffed about and stood there for what seemed three or four minutes, then fell clumsily on to all fours and began to move slowly away.

Then Maudey screamed. Undecided no longer, the animal turned and flowed swiftly towards them, unbelievably graceful over the broken ground and the sharply sloping hillside. Alyx stood very still. She said, “Machine, your bow,” and heard Gunnar whisper “Kill it, kill it, why don’t you kill it!” The beast was almost upon her. At the last moment she knelt and sent a bolt between its eyes; then she dropped down automatically and swiftly, rolling to one side, dropping the bow. She snatched her knives from both her sleeves and threw herself under the swaying animal, driving up between the ribs first with one hand and then the other. The thing fell on her immediately like a dead weight; it was too enormous, too heavy for her to move; she lay there trying to breathe, slowly blacking out and feeling her ribs begin to give way. Then she fainted and came to to find Gunnar and Machine rolling the enormous carcass off her. She lay, a swarm of black sparks in front of her eyes. Machine wiped the beast’s blood off her suit—it came off absolutely clean with a handful of snow —and carried her like a doll to a patch of clean snow where she began to breathe. The blood rushed back to her head. She could think again.

“It’s dead,” said Gunnar unsteadily, “I think it died at once from the bolt.”

“Oh you devils!” gasped Alyx.

“I
came out at once,” said Machine, with some relish. “He didn’t.” He began pressing his hands rhythmically against her sides. She felt better.

“The boy—the boy put a second bolt in it,” said Gunnar, after a moment’s hesitation. “I was afraid,” he added. “I’m sorry.”

“Who let that woman scream?” said Alyx.

Gunnar shrugged helplessly.

“Always know anatomy,” said Machine, with astonishing cheerfulness. “You see, the human body is a machine. I know some things,” and he began to drag the animal away.

“Wait,” said Alyx. She found she could walk. She went over and looked at the thing. It was a bear but like none she had ever seen or heard of: a white bear with a long, snaky neck, almost four meters high if it had chosen to stand. The fur was very thick.

“It’s a polar bear,” said Gunnar.

She wanted to know what that was.

“It’s an Old Earth animal,” he said, “but it must have been adapted. They usually live in the sea, I think. They have been stocking Paradise with Old Earth animals. I thought you knew.”