The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (35 page)

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Authors: Vernor Vinge

BOOK: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
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But this sort of thing seemed to happen all the time: Sanda trying to do something different, some hurt being caused to property or Grandma, and then sincere apology and reconciliation. Sanda began to feel a little haggard, and to watch the calendar for a different reason than before. Just being with Grandma had been one of the big attractions of this summer. Both she and Grandma were
trying
, but it wasn’t working. Sometimes Sanda thought that—no matter how often Grandma said Sanda was a young grown-up now—she still thought Sanda was five years old. She had seriously wanted Sanda to take afternoon naps. Only when the girl assured her that her parents no longer required naps did she relent. And Grandma never told her to do anything. She always asked Sanda “wouldn’t you like to” do whatever she wanted. It was awfully hard to smile and say “oh yes, that would be fun” when in fact it was a chore she would rather pass up. At home it was so much easier: Sanda did as she was told, and did not have to claim to love it.
A week later the fair weather broke. It rained. And rained. And rained. And when it wasn’t raining it was cloudy; not cloudy as in La Jolla, but a dripping, misty cloudiness that just promised more rain. Grandma said it was often this way; Sanda had just been lucky on the previous visits.
And it was about this time she began to be afraid of the upstairs. Grandmother slept downstairs, though she stayed up very late at night, reading or sewing. She would be easy to call if anything … bad happened. That did not help. At first it was like an ordinary fear of darkness. Some nights a person is just more fidgety than others. And after the weather turned bad it was easy to feel scared, lying in bed with the wind and the rattle of rain against the windows. But this was different. The feeling increased from night to night. It wasn’t quite a feeling that something was sneaking up on her. More it was a sense of utter desolation and despair. Sometimes it seemed as if the room, the whole house, were gone and she was in just the antarctic wilderness that Grandfather had explored. She had no direct visions of this—just the feeling of cold and lifelessness extending forever.
Grandfather’s ghost?
Late one night Sanda had to go to the bathroom, which was down on the first floor next to Grandmother’s bedroom. It was almost painful to move—so afraid was she of making a sound, of provoking whatever caused the mood that filled her room. When she passed the terrarium in the hallway, the feeling of cold grew stronger and her legs tensed for a sprint down the stairs. Instead she forced herself to stand still, then to walk slowly around the glass cage. Something in there was causing it. The terror was insidious, growing as she stood there—almost as if what caused this now knew it had a “listener.” Sanda slept at the foot of the stairs that night.
After that, when night came and Grandmother had tucked her in, Sanda would creep out of bed, unwrap her sleeping bag, and quietly carry it onto the balcony that opened off her room. The extra distance and the extra wall reduced the psychic cold to a tolerable level. Many nights it was rainy, and it was always chill and a bit windy, but she had bought a really good sleeping bag for the Scouts, and she had always liked to camp out. Nevertheless, it wore her down to sleep like that night after night, and made it harder to be diplomatic and cheerful during the days.
In the daytime there was far less feeling of dread upstairs. Sanda didn’t know whether this was because the second floor was basically a sunny, cheerful place or whether the ghost “slept” during the day. Whenever she walked past the terrarium she looked carefully into it. After a while, she thought she had the effect narrowed down to one particular rock—the skull-sized one with the strangely regular patterns of gray and black. As the days passed, the position of some of the rocks changed. There had been five plastic flowers in the terrarium when Sanda first saw it; now there were three.
There was one other mystery—which under other circumstances would have been very sinister, but which seemed scarcely more than an intriguing puzzle now. Several times, usually on stormy nights, a car parked in the grass just off the other side of the street, about forty yards north of the house. That was all; Sanda had noticed it only by accident. It looked like a ’54 Ford. Once a match flared within the cab, and she saw two occupants. She smiled smugly, wistfully to herself; she could imagine what they were up to. But she was wrong. One night, when the rain had stopped yet clouds kept out the stars, the driver got out and walked across the street toward the house. He moved silently, quickly. Sanda had to lean out from the balcony to see him crouch in the bushes next to the wall where the electric power meter was mounted. He spent only half a minute there. She saw a tiny point of light moving over the power meter and the utility cables that came down from the telephone pole at the street. Then the phantom meter
reader stood and ran back across the street, quietly relatching the door of his Ford. The car sat for several more minutes—as if they were watching the house for some sign of alarm—and then drove away.
She should have told Grandma. But then, if she were being as open as a good girl should be with a grandmother, she would have also confessed her fear of the upstairs and the terrarium. Those fears were shameful, though. Even if
real
, they were the type of childish thing that could only make her situation with Grandma worse. Grandmother was a clever person. Sanda knew that if she told her about the mysterious car, the older woman would either dismiss the story—or question her in sufficient detail to discover that Sanda was sleeping on the balcony.
So she dithered—and in the end told someone else.
FINDING THAT SOMEONE ELSE HAD BEEN A SURPRISE; SHE HADN’T REALLY known she was looking. Whenever the weather dried a little, Sanda tried to get outdoors. The city library was about three miles away, an easy ride on her father’s old bicycle. Of course Grandmother had been uneasy about Sanda carrying library books in the saddle baskets of the bike. There was always the risk of splashing water or a sudden rainstorm. It was just another of the polite little conflicts they had. One or the other of them could always see some objection to a given activity. In the end—as usual—they compromised, with Sanda taking grocery bags and a little waxed paper for the books.
Today wasn’t wet, though. The big blocks of cloud left plenty of space for the blue. To the northwest, the plume from the paper mill was purest white across the sky. The sun was warm, and the gusty breeze dry. It was the sort of day she once thought was every day in Eureka.
Sanda took a detour, biking back along the street away from town. The asphalt ended about thirty yards past Grandmother’s lot. There were supposed to be more houses up here, but Grandma didn’t think much of them. She passed one. It looked like a trailer used as a permanent home. A couple old cars, one looking very dead, were in front. The trees came in close to the road here, blocking out the sun. It felt a little like those great forests they’d driven through to get to Eureka. Even after a half day of sun, there was still a slow dripping from the needles. Everything was so green it might as well be dipped in paint. Once she had liked that.
She went a lot farther south than she had before. The road stopped at a dead end. A one-storey, red-shingled house was the last thing on the street. It was a real house, but it reminded Sanda of the trailer. It was such a different thing from Grandmother’s house. There were a lot of small houses in La Jolla, but the weather back home was so dry and mild that buildings didn’t seem to wear out. Here Sanda had the feeling
that the damp, the cold, and the mildew were forever warring on the houses. This place had been losing the fight for some time.
She circled around the end of the road—and almost ran into a second bicyclist.
Sanda stopped abruptly and awkwardly. (The center bar on the bike was a little high for her.) “Where did you come from?” she asked a bit angrily.
The boy was taller than Sanda, and looked very strong. He must be at least fifteen years old. But his face was soft, almost stupid-looking. He waved at the red-shingled house. “We live here. Who are you?”
“Sanda Beauchamp.”
“Oh, yeah. You’re the girl staying with the old English lady.”
“She is not an old lady. She’s my grandmother.”
He was silent for a moment, the baby-face expressionless. “I’m Larry O’Malley. Your grandmother is okay. Last summer I did her lawn.”
Sanda untangled herself from the bicycle and they walked their bikes back the way she had come. “She has regular gardeners now.”
“I know. She’s very rich. Even more than last year.”
Grandma wasn’t rich. It was on the tip of her tongue to contradict him, but his second statement made her pause, puzzled.
Even more than last year?
They had walked all the way back to Grandmother’s before Sanda knew it. Larry wasn’t really sullen. She wasn’t sure yet if he was smart or stupid; she knew he wasn’t as old as he looked. His father was a real lumberjack, which was neat. Most of Sanda’s parents’ friends were geologists and things like that.
They parked their bikes at the steps, and Sanda took him in to see Grandmother. As she had expected, the elder Beauchamp was not thrilled with Sanda’s plans for the afternoon.
She looked uncertainly at the boy. “But, Larry, isn’t that a long ride?”
Sanda was not about to let Larry blow it. “Oh no, Grandma, it’s not much farther than the library. Besides, I haven’t been to a movie in so long,” which was true, though Grandmother’s television did a great job of dragging in old movies from the only available station.
“What’s the film? It’s such a nice day to waste inside a theater.”
“Oh, they’re playing movies from the early fifties.” That sounded safe. Grandma had complained more than once about the immorality of today’s shows. Besides, if she heard the title, she would be sure to refuse.
Grandmother seemed almost distraught. Then she agreed, and walked out to the screened porch with them. “Come back before four.”
“We will. We will.” And they were off. She didn’t know if it was the weather, or meeting Larry, or the prospect of the movie, but suddenly she felt wonderful.
THE THING FROM OUTER SPACE
. THAT’S WHAT IT SAID ON THE MARQUEE. SHE felt a little guilty deceiving Grandma about the title. It wasn’t really the sort of show her parents would want her to see. But just seeing a movie was going to be fun. It was like home. This theater reminded her a lot of the Cove in La Jolla. After they got their tickets they drifted down to the movie posters.
And Sanda began to feel a chill that was not in the air and that was not the vicarious thrill of watching a scary show. This
Thing
was supposed to be from outer space, yet the posters showed arctic wastes … .
She found herself walking more slowly, for the first time letting the boy do most of the talking. Then they were inside, and the movie had begun.
It was a terrible thing, almost as if God had created a personal warning, a personal explanation for Sanda Rachel Beauchamp.
The Thing
was what had been after her all these weeks. Oh, a lot of the details were different. The movie took place in the arctic; the alien monster—the Thing—was crudely man-shaped. Sanda sat, her face slack, all but hypnotized by these innocently filmed revelations. About halfway through the movie, Larry nudged her and asked if she were okay. Sanda just nodded.
The Thing had been stranded. In the polar wastes the temperature and lack of predators allowed it to survive a very long time. The dry antarctic valleys Grandpa discovered might be even better; Things from long, long ago would be right at the surface, not hidden beneath hundreds of feet of ice. The creature would be like a time bomb waiting to be discovered. When exposed to light and warmth—as Grandma had done by putting it in the sunny terrarium—it would come to life. The movie Thing looked for blood. Sanda’s Thing seemed after something more subtle, more terrible.
Sanda was scarcely aware when the movie ended, so perfectly did its story merge with the greater terror she now felt. It was still middle afternoon, but the berglike clouds had melded together, thick and deep and dark. The wind was picking up, driving through her sweater and carrying occasional drops of wet. They recovered their bikes, Sanda dazed, Larry O’Malley silently observant.
It was uphill most of the way back, but now the wind was behind them. The forests beyond the town were blackish green, sometimes turned gray by passing mist. The scene didn’t register with her. All she could think of was the cold and the ice and the thing waiting for her up ahead.
Larry reached out to grab her handlebars as the bike angled toward the ditch. “Really. What’s the matter?”
And Sanda told him. About the strangely mottled antarctic rock and the terrarium. About its movement and the desolation it broadcast.
The boy didn’t say anything when she finished. They worked laboriously up a hill past neat houses, some of them Victorian, none as beautiful as Grandmother’s. As usual, traffic was light—nonexistent by the standards of home. They rode side by side with the entire road to themselves. Finally they reached the top and started down a gentle slope. Still Larry hadn’t said anything. Sanda’s haze of terror was broken by sudden anger. She pedaled just ahead of him and waved her hand in his face. “
Hey!
I was talking to you. Don’t you believe me?”

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