Alyx - Joanna Russ (21 page)

“But you will do a lot of things,” she said. “Yes, you will get out of it. You will lose your body and Gunnar will lose his—his self-respect; he will make one more ghastly mistake and then another and another and in the end he will lose his soul at the very least and perhaps his life.”

“You know all this,” said Machine.

“Of course,” said Alyx, “of course I do. I know it all. I know that Gavrily will do something generous and brave and silly and because he never in his life has learned how to do it, we will lose Gavrily. And then Iris—no, Iris has had it already, I think, and of course the Heavenly Twins will lose nothing because they have nothing to lose. Maybe they will lose their religion or drop their pills down a hole. And I—well, I—my profession, perhaps, or whatever loose junk I have lying around, because this blasted place is too good, you see, too easy; we don’t meet animals, we don’t meet paid professional murderers, all we meet is our own stupidity. Over and over. It’s a picnic. It’s a damned picnic. And Iris will come through because she never lives above her means. And a picnic is just her style.”

“What will you lose?” said Machine, folding his arms across his chest.

“I will lose you,” she said unsteadily, “what do you think of that?” He caught her in his arms, crushing the breath out of her.

“I like it,” he whispered sardonically. “I like it, Tiny, because I am jealous. I am much too jealous. If I thought you didn’t like me, I’d kill myself and if I thought you liked Iris more than me, I’d kill her. Do you hear me?”

“Don’t be an ass,” she said. “Let me go.”

“I’ll never let you go. Never. I’ll die. With you.”

Gunnar backed ponderously out of the bubble. He closed the door, running his hands carefully over the place where the door joined the rest of the ship until the crack disappeared. He seemed satisfied with it then. He watched it, although nothing seemed to happen for a few minutes; then the bubble rose noiselessly off the snow, went up faster and faster into the evening sky as if sliding along a cable and disappeared into the afterglow. It was going north. Alyx tried to pull away but Machine held on to her, grinning at his rival as the latter turned around, absently dusting his hands together. Then Gunnar groped for his gloves, put them on, absently looking at the two, at the others who had shared the contents of Raydos’s pack and were flattening the pack itself into a shape that could be carried in an empty food container. There was the corpse, the man everyone had forgotten. Gunnar looked at it impersonally. He looked at Iris, the nuns, Gavrily, the other two: only seven of them now. His gloved hands dusted themselves together. He looked at nothing.

“Well?” drawled Machine.

“I think we will travel a little now,” said Gunnar; “I think we will travel by starlight.” He repeated the phrase, as if it pleased him. “By starlight,” he said, “yes.”

“By snowlight?” said Machine, raising his eyebrows.

“That too,” said Gunnar, looking at something in the distance, “yes—that too—”

“Gunnar!” said Alyx sharply. His gaze settled on her.

“I’m all right,” he said quietly. “I don’t care who you play with,” and he plodded over to the others, bent over, very big.

“I shall take you tonight,” said Machine between his teeth; “I shall take you right before the eyes of that man!”

She brought the point of her elbow up into his ribs hard enough to double him over; then she ran through the powdery snow to the front of the little line that had already formed. Gunnar was leading them. Her hands were icy. She took his arm—it was unresponsive, nothing but a heavy piece of meat—and said, controlling her breathing, for she did not want him to know that she had been running—“I believe it is getting warmer.”

He said nothing.

“I mention this to you,” Alyx went on, “because you are the only one of us who knows anything about weather. Or about machinery. We would be in a bad way without you.”

He still said nothing.

“I am very grateful,” she said, “for what you did with the ship. There is nobody here who knows a damn thing about that ship, you know. No one but you could have—” (she was about to say
saved Raydos’s life
) “done anything with the control board. I am grateful. We are all grateful.

“Is it going to snow?” she added desperately, “is it going to snow?”

“Yes,” said Gunnar. “I believe it is.”

“Can you tell me why?” said she. “I know nothing about it. I would appreciate it very much if you could tell me why.”

“Because it is getting warmer.”

“Gunnar!”
she cried.
“Did you hear us?”

Gunnar stopped walking. He turned to her slowly and slowly looked down at her, blankly, a little puzzled, frowning a little.

“I don’t remember hearing anything,” he said. Then he added sensibly, “That ship is a very good ship; it’s insulated; you don’t hear anything inside.”

“Tell me about it,” said Alyx, her voice almost failing, “and tell me why it’s going to snow.”

He told her, and she hung on his arm, pretending to listen, for hours.

They walked by starlight until a haze covered the stars; it got warmer, it got slippery. She tried to remember their destination by the stars. They stopped on Paradise’s baby mountains, under the vast, ill-defined shadow of something going up, up, a slope going up until it melted into the gray sky, for the cloud cover shone a little, just as the snow shone a little, the light just enough to see by and not enough to see anything at all. When they lay down there was a pervasive feeling of falling to the left. Iris kept trying to clutch at the snow. Alyx told them to put their feet downhill and so they did, lying in a line and trying to hold each other’s hands. Gunnar went off a little to one side, to watch—or rather to listen. Everything was indistinct. Five minutes after everyone had settled down—she could still hear their small readjustments, the moving about, the occasional whispering—she discerned someone squatting at her feet, his arms about his knees, balanced just so.

She held out one arm and he pulled her to her feet, putting his arms around her: Machine’s face, very close in the white darkness. “Over there,” he said, jerking his head towards the place where Gunnar was, perhaps sitting, perhaps standing, a kind of blot against the gray sky.

“No,” said Alyx.

“Why not?” said Machine in a low, mocking voice. “Do you think he doesn’t know?”

She said nothing.

“Do you think there’s anyone here who doesn’t know?” Machine continued, a trifle brutally. “When you go off, you raise enough hell to wake the dead.”

She nudged him lightly in the ribs, in the sore place, just enough to loosen his arms; and then she presented him with the handle of one of her knives, nudging him with that also, making him take step after step backwards, while he whispered angrily:

“What the hell!

“Stop it!

“What are you doing!

“What the devil!”

Then they were on the other side of the line of sleepers, several meters away.

“Here,” she whispered, holding out the knife, “take it, take it. Finish him off. Cut off his head.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” snapped Machine.

“But not with me," she said; “oh, no!” and when he threw her down onto the snow and climbed on top of her, shaking her furiously, she only laughed, calling him a baby, teasing him, tickling him through his suit, murmuring mocking love-words, half in Greek, the better to infuriate him. He wound his arms around her and pulled, crushing her ribs, her fingers, smothering her with his weight, the knees of his long legs digging one into her shin and one into her thigh; there would be spectacular bruises tomorrow.

“Kill me,” she whispered ecstatically. “Go on, kill me, kill me! Do what you want!” He let her go, lifting himself up on his hands, moving his weight off her. He stared down at her, the mask of a very angry young man. When she had got her breath back a little, she said:

“My God, you’re strong!”

“Don’t make fun of me,” he said.

“But you are strong,” she said breathlessly. “You’re strong. You’re enormous. I adore you.”

“Like hell,” said Machine shortly and began to get up. She flung both arms around him and held on.

“Do it again,” she said, “do it again. Only please, please, more carefully!” He pulled away, making a face, then stayed where he was. “If you’re making fun of me—” he said.

She said nothing, only kissed his chin.

“I hate that man!” he burst out. “I hate his damned ‘acceptable’ oddities and his—his conventional heroism and his—the bloody amateur!

“He’s spent his life being praised for individualism,” he went on, “
his
individualism, good God! Big show. Make the Civs feel happy. Never two steps from trans and ports and flyers. Medicine. High-powered this. High-powered that. ‘Ooooh, isn’t he marvel! Isn’t he brave! Let’s get a tape and go shooting warts with Gunnar! Let’s get a tape and go swimming undersea in Gunnar! ’ He records his own brain impulses, did you know that?”

“No,” said Alyx.

“Yes,” said Machine, “he records them and sells them. Gunnar’s battle with the monsters. Gunnar’s narrow escape. Gunnar’s great adventure. All that heroism. That’s what they want. That’s why he’s rich!”

“Well, they certainly wouldn’t want the real thing,” said Alyx softly, “now would they?”

He stared at her for a moment.

“No,” he said more quietly, “I suppose they wouldn’t.”

“And I doubt,” said Alyx, moving closer to him, “that Gunnar is recording anything just now; I think, my dear, that he’s very close to the edge now.”

“Let him fall in,” said Machine.

“Are you rich?” said Alyx. Machine began to weep. He rolled to one side, half laughing, half sobbing.

“I!” he said, “I! Oh, that’s a joke!

“I don’t have a damn thing,” he said. “I knew there would be a flash here
—they
knew but they thought they could get away—so I came. To get lost. Spent everything. But you can’t get lost, you know. You can’t get lost anywhere any more, not even in a—a— you would call it a war, Agent.”

“Funny war,” said Alyx.

“Yes, very funny. A war in a tourist resort. I hope we don’t make it. I hope I die here.”

She slid her finger down the front of his suit. “I hope not,” she said. “No,” she said (walking both hands up and down his chest, beneath the long underwear, her little moist palms) “I certainly hope not.”

“You’re a single-minded woman,” said Machine dryly.

She shook her head. She was thoughtfully making the tent of the night before. He helped her.

“Listen, love,” she said, “I have no money, either, but I have something else; I am a Project. I think I have cost a lot of money. If we get through this, one of the things this Project will need to keep it happy so it can go on doing whatever it’s supposed to do is you. So don’t worry about that.”

“And you think they’ll let you,” said Machine. It was a flat, sad statement.

“No,” she said, “but nobody ever let me do anything in my life before and I never let that stop me.” They were lying on their sides face to face now; she smiled up at him. “I am going to disappear into this damned suit if you don’t pull me up,” she said. He lifted her up a little under the arms and kissed her. His face looked as if something were hurting him.

“Well?” she said.

“The Machine,” he said stiffly, “is—the Machine is fond of the Project.”

“The Project loves the Machine,” she said, “so—?”

“I can’t,” he said.

She put her arm around the back of his neck and rubbed her cheek against his. “We’ll sleep,” she said. They lay together for some time, a little uncomfortable because both were balanced on their sides, until he turned over on his back and she lay half on him and half off, her head butting into his armpit. She began to fall asleep, then accidentally moved so that his arm cut off her breathing, then snorted. She made a little, dissatisfied noise.

“What?” he said.

“Too hot,” she said sleepily, “blasted underwear,” so with difficulty she took it off—and he took off his—and they wormed it out of the top of the suits where the hoods tied together and chucked it into the snow. She was breathing into his neck. She had half fallen asleep again when all of a sudden she woke to a kind of earthquake: knees in a tangle, jouncing, bruising, some quiet, vehement swearing and a voice telling her for God’s sake to wake up. Machine was trying to turn over. Finally he did.

“Aaaaaah—um,” said Alyx, now on her back, yawning.

“Wake up!” he insisted, grabbing her by both hips.

“Yes, yes, I am,” said Alyx. She opened her eyes. He seemed to lie trembling all over and very upset; he was holding her too hard, also.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“This is not going to be a good one,” said Machine, “do you know what I mean?”

“No,” said Alyx. He swore.

“Listen,” he said shakily, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me; I’m falling apart. I can’t explain it, but it’s going to be a bad one; you’ll just have to wait through it.”

“All right, all right,” she said, “give me a minute,” and she lay quietly, thinking, rubbing his hair—looked Oriental, like a brush now, growing into a peak on his forehead—began kissing various parts of his face, put her arms around his back, felt his hands on her hips (too hard; she thought
I'll be black and blue tomorrow),
concentrated on those hands, and then began to rub herself against him, over and over and over, until she was falling apart herself, dizzy, head swimming, completely out of control.

“God damn it, you’re making it worse!” he shouted.

“Can’t help it,” said Alyx. “Got to—come on.”

“It’s not fair,” he said, “not fair to you. Sorry.”

“Forgiven,” Alyx managed to say as he plunged in, as she diffused over the landscape—sixty leagues in each direction—and then turned into a drum, a Greek one, hourglass-shaped with the thumped in-and-out of both skins so extreme that they finally met in the middle, so that she then turned inside-out, upside-down and switched right-and-left sides, every cell, both hands, each lobe of her brain, all at once, while someone (anonymous) picked her up by the navel and shook her violently in all directions, remarking “If you don’t make them cry, they won’t live.” She came to herself with the idea that Machine was digging up rocks. He was banging her on the head with his chin. Then after a while he stopped and she could feel him struggle back to self-possession; he took several deep, even breaths; he opened the suit hoods and pushed his face over her shoulder into the snow; then he opened one side of the little tent and let in a blast of cold air.