Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume One (5 page)

John felt chilled; a cold, hard weight seemed to be filling him. Herb laughed. “The story line will be something like this,” he said. “Anne has fallen in love with a stranger, deeply, sincerely in love with him. Everyone knows how deep that love is; they’ve all felt it, too, you know. She finds him raping a child, a lovely little girl in her early teens. Stuart tells her they’re through. He loves the little nymphet. In a passion she kills herself. You are broadcasting a real storm of passion, right now, aren’t you, honey? Never mind, when I run through this scene, I’ll find out.” She hurled her glass at him, ice cubes and orange slices leaving a trail across the room. Herb ducked, grinning.

“That’s awfully good, baby. Corny, but after all, they can’t get too much corn, can they? They’ll love it, after they get over the shock of losing you. And they will get over it, you know. They always do. Wonder if it’s true about what happens to someone experiencing a violent death?” Anne’s teeth bit down on her lip, and slowly she sat down again, her eyes closed tight. Herb watched her for a moment, then said, even more cheerfully, “We’ve got the kid already. If you give them a death, you’ve got to give them a new life. Finish one with a bang. Start one with a bang. We’ll name the kid Cindy, a real Cinderella story after that. They’ll love her, too.”

Anne opened her eyes, black dulled now; she was so tight with tension that John felt his own muscles contract. He wondered if he would be able to stand the tape she was transmitting. A wave of excitement swept him and he knew he would play it all, feel it all, the incredibly contained rage, fear, the horror of giving a death to them to gloat over, and finally, anguish. He would know it all. Watching Anne, he wished she would break now. She didn’t. She stood up stiffly, her back rigid, a muscle hard and ridged in her jaw. Her voice was flat when she said, “Stuart is due in half an hour. I have to dress.” She left them without looking back.

Herb winked at John and motioned toward the door. “Want to take me to the plane, kid?” In the cab he said, “Stick close to her for a couple of days, Johnny. There might be an even bigger reaction later when she really understands just how hooked she is.” He chuckled again. “By God! It’s a good thing she trusts you, Johnny, boy!”

As they waited in the chrome and marble terminal for the liner to unload its passengers, John said, “Do you think she’ll be any good after this?”

“She can’t help herself. She’s too life-oriented to deliberately choose to die. She’s like a jungle inside, raw, wild, untouched by that smooth layer of civilization she shows on the outside. It’s a thin layer, kid, real thin. She’ll fight to stay alive. She’ll become more wary, more alert to danger, more excited and exciting… She’ll really go to pieces when he touches her tonight. She’s primed real good. Might even have to do some editing, tone it down a little.” His voice was very happy. “He touches her where she lives, and she reacts. A real wild one. She’s one; the new kid’s one; Stuart… They’re few and far between, Johnny. It’s up to us to find them. God knows we’re going to need all of them we can get.” His face became thoughtful and withdrawn. “You know, that really wasn’t such a bad idea of mine about rape and the kid. Who ever dreamed we’d get that kind of a reaction from her? With the right sort of buildup…” He had to run to catch his plane.

John hurried back to the hotel, to be near Anne if she needed him. But he hoped she would leave him alone. His fingers shook as he turned on his screen; suddenly he had a clear memory of the child who had wept, and he hoped Stuart would hurt Anne just a little. The tremor in his fingers increased; Stuart was on from six until twelve, and he already had missed almost an hour of the show. He adjusted the helmet and sank back into a deep chair. He left the audio off, letting his own words form, letting his own thoughts fill in the spaces.

Anne was leaning toward him, sparkling champagne raised to her lips, her eyes large and soft. She was speaking, talking to him, John, calling him by name. He felt a tingle start somewhere deep inside him, and his glance was lowered to rest on her tanned hand in his, sending electricity through him. Her hand trembled when he ran his fingers up her palm, to her wrist where a blue vein throbbed. The slight throb became a pounding that grew, and when he looked again into her eyes, they were dark and very deep. They danced and he felt her body against his, yielding, pleading. The room darkened and she was an outline against the window, her gown floating down about her. The darkness grew denser, or he closed his eyes, and this time when her body pressed against his, there was nothing between them, and the pounding was everywhere.

In the deep chair, with the helmet on his head, John’s hands clenched, opened, clenched, again and again.

• • •

The Planners

(Orbit 3 — 1968)

Rae stopped before the one-way glass, stooped and peered at the gibbon infant in the cage. Darin watched her bitterly. She straightened after a moment, hands in smock pockets, face innocent of any expression what-so-goddam-ever, and continued to saunter toward him through the aisle between the cages.

“You still think it is cruel, and worthless?”

“Do you. Dr. Darin?”

“Why do you always do that? Answer my question with one of your own?”

“Does it infuriate you?”

He shrugged and turned away. His lab coat was on the chair where he had tossed it. He pulled it on over his sky-blue sport shirt.

“How is the Driscoll boy?” Rae asked.

He stiffened, then relaxed again. Still not facing her, he said, “Same as last week, last year. Same as he’ll be until he dies.”

The hall door opened and a very large, very homely face appeared. Stu Evers looked past Darin, down the aisle. “You alone? Thought I heard voices.”

“Talking to myself,” Darin said. “The committee ready yet?”

“Just about. Dr. Jacobsen is stalling with his nose-throat spray routine, as usual.” He hesitated a moment, glancing again down the row of cages, then at Darin. “Wouldn’t you think a guy allergic to monkeys would find some other line of research?”

Darin looked, but Rae was gone. What had it been this time: the Driscoll boy, the trend of the project itself? He wondered if she had a life of her own when she was away. “I’ll be out at the compound,” he said. He passed Stu in the doorway and headed toward the livid greenery of Florida forests.

The cacophony hit him at the door. There were four hundred sixty-nine monkeys on the thirty-six acres of wooded ground the research department was using. Each monkey was screeching, howling, singing, cursing, or otherwise making its presence known. Darin grunted and headed toward the compound. The Happiest Monkeys in the World, a newspaper article had called them. Singing Monkeys, a subhead announced.
monkeys given smartness pills
, the most enterprising paper had proclaimed.
Cruelty Charged
, added another in subdued, sorrowful tones.

The compound was three acres of carefully planned and maintained wilderness, completely enclosed with thirty-foot-high, smooth plastic walls. A transparent dome covered the area. There were one-way windows at intervals along the wall. A small group stood before one of the windows: the committee.

Darin stopped and gazed over the interior of the compound through one of the windows. He saw Heloise and Skitter contentedly picking nonexistent fleas from one another. Adam was munching on a banana; Homer was lying on his back idly touching his feet to his nose. A couple of the chimps were at the water fountain, not drinking, merely pressing the pedal and watching the fountain, now and then immersing a head or hand in the bowl of cold water. Dr. Jacobsen appeared and Darin joined the group.

“Good morning, Mrs. Bellbottom,” Darin said politely. “Did you know your skirt has fallen off?” He turned from her to Major Dormouse. “Ah, Major, and how many of the enemy have you swatted to death today with your pretty little yellow rag?” He smiled pleasantly at a pimply young man with a camera. “Major, you’ve brought a professional peeping tom. More stories in the paper, with pictures this time?” The pimply young man shifted his position, fidgeted with the camera. The major was fiery; Mrs. Bellbottom was on her knees peering under a bush, looking for her skirt. Darin blinked. None of them had on any clothing. He turned toward the window. The chimps were drawing up a table, laden with tea things, silver, china, tiny finger sandwiches. The chimps were all wearing flowered shirts and dresses. Hortense had on a ridiculous flop-brimmed sun hat of pale green straw. Darin leaned against the fence to control his laughter.

“Soluble ribonucleic acid,” Dr. Johnson was saying when Darin recovered, “sRNA for short. So from the gross beginnings when entire worms were trained and fed to other worms that seemed to benefit from the original training, we have come to these more refined methods. We now extract the sRNA molecule from the trained animals and feed it, the sRNA molecules in solution, to untrained specimens and observe the results.”

The young man was snapping pictures as Jacobsen talked. Mrs. Whoosis was making notes, her mouth a lipless line, the sun hat tinging her skin with green. The sun on her patterned red and yellow dress made it appear to jiggle, giving her fleshy hips a constant rippling motion. Darin watched, fascinated. She was about sixty.

“…my colleague, who proposed this line of experimentation, Dr. Darin,” Jacobsen said finally, and Darin bowed slightly. He wondered what Jacobsen had said about him, decided to wait for any questions before he said anything.

“Dr. Darin, is it true that you also extract this substance from people?”

“Every time you scratch yourself, you lose this substance,” Darin said. “Every time you lose a drop of blood, you lose it. It is in every cell of your body. Sometimes we take a sample of human blood for study, yes.”

“And inject it into those animals?”

“Sometimes we do that,” Darin said. He waited for the next, the inevitable question, wondering how he would answer it. Jacobsen had briefed them on what to answer, but he couldn’t remember what Jacobsen had said. The question didn’t come. Mrs. Whoosis stepped forward, staring at the window.

Darin turned his attention to her; she averted her eyes, quickly fixed her stare again on the chimps in the compound. “Yes, Mrs. uh …Madam?” Darin prompted her. She didn’t look at him.

“Why? What is the purpose of all this?” she asked. Her voice sounded strangled. The pimpled young man was inching toward the next window.

“Well,” Darin said, “our theory is simple. We believe that learning ability can be improved drastically in nearly every species. The learning curve is the normal, expected bell-shaped curve, with a few at one end who have the ability to learn quite rapidly, with the majority in the center who learn at an average rate, and a few at the other end who learn quite slowly. With our experiments we are able to increase the ability of those in the broad middle, as well as those in the deficient end of the curve so that their learning abilities match those of the fastest learners of any given group…”

No one was listening to him. It didn’t matter. They would be given the press release he had prepared for them, written in simple language, no polysyllables, no complicated sentences. They were all watching the chimps through the windows. He said, “So we gabbled the gazooka three times wretchedly until the spirit of camping fired the girls.” One of the committee members glanced at him. “Whether intravenously or orally, it seems to be equally effective,” Darin said, and the perspiring man turned again to the window. “Injections every morning…rejections, planned diet, planned parenthood, planned plans planning plans.” Jacobsen eyed him suspiciously. Darin stopped talking and lighted a cigarette. The woman with the unquiet hips turned from the window, her face very red. “I’ve seen enough,” she said. “This sun is too hot out here. May we see the inside laboratories now?”

Darin turned them over to Stu Evers inside the building. He walked back slowly to the compound. There was a grin on his lips when he spotted Adam on the far side, swaggering triumphantly, paying no attention to Hortense who was rocking back and forth on her haunches, looking very dazed. Darin saluted Adam, then, whistling, returned to his office. Mrs. Driscoll was due with Sonny at 1
p.m.

Sonny Driscoll was fourteen. He was five feet nine inches, weighed one hundred sixty pounds. His male nurse was six feet two inches and weighed two hundred twenty-seven pounds. Sonny had broken his mother’s arm when he was twelve; he had broken his father’s arm and leg when he was thirteen. So far the male nurse was intact. Every morning Mrs. Driscoll lovingly washed and dressed her baby, fed him, walked him in the yard, spoke happily to him of plans for the coming months, or sang nursery songs to him. He never seemed to see her. The male nurse, Johnny, was never farther than three feet from his charge when he was on duty.

Mrs. Driscoll refused to think of the day when she would have to turn her child over to an institution. Instead she placed her faith and hope in Darin.

They arrived at two-fifteen, earlier than he had expected them, later than they had promised to be there.

“The kid kept taking his clothes off,” Johnny said morosely. The kid was taking them off again in the office. Johnny started toward him, but Darin shook his head. It didn’t matter. Darin got his blood sample from one of the muscular arms, shot the injection into the other one. Sonny didn’t seem to notice what he was doing. He never seemed to notice. Sonny refused to be tested. They got him to the chair and table, but he sat staring at nothing, ignoring the blocks, the bright balls, the crayons, the candy. Nothing Darin did or said had any discernible effect. Finally the time was up. Mrs. Driscoll and Johnny got him dressed once more and left. Mrs. Driscoll thanked Darin for helping her boy.

Stu and Darin held class from four to five daily. Kelly O’Grady had the monkeys tagged and ready for them when they showed up at the schoolroom. Kelly was very tall, very slender and red-haired. Stu shivered if she accidentally brushed him in passing; Darin hoped one day Stu would pull an Adam on her. She sat primly on her high stool with her notebook on her knee, unaware of the change that came over Stu during school hours, or, if aware, uncaring. Darin wondered if she was really a Barbie doll fully programmed to perform laboratory duties, and nothing else.