Screaming Science Fiction (23 page)

“One of them,” he gasped finally, his eyes full of pleading. “You’ll give me—I’ll buy—just one of them…?”

But Gaddy shook his head. “The gloves are mine, kid. I earned them. And anyway, you couldn’t stand it. The only time I don’t hurt is when I take them off and climb into bed. And then I dream I’m hurting.”

“But
you
can stand it. So why not me?”

“We’re not built the same,” said Gaddy. “And anyway, I’ve got used to it—almost.”

“But—”

“I’m taking you in,” Gaddy cut him off. “The police will have to figure out what’s to be done with you. And afterwards…they can do wonderful things these days, Pavanaz. You’ll have hands again. Clumsy, maybe, but hands. Of sorts….”

Halfway across the bridge it all came crashing down on Pav. His dream blew itself away in his head. You can’t be a champion and win a million with plastic fingers that don’t feel anything. He turned abruptly and faced Gaddy, and without emotion said: “Frurk you.” And he lifted his arms high and brought his screws crashing down on the hardwood handrail.

Hot blood splashed scarlet where altered flesh split open; and before Gaddy could do anything to stop it, if he wanted to, Pav flopped over the rail and down into the water. He surfaced once and screamed high and thin, went down in crimson foam and didn’t surface again. And Gaddy turned away….

Drop a bent pin in the water on Shankov’s and you’ll pull out a fish. Put something edible on the hook…and the water boils.

Two thousand thirteen and the exploration of space—by men, not robot spaceships—was well underway. Men had built Moonbase, landed on Mars, were now looking towards Titan, though that was still some way ahead. But then, from a Darkside observatory, Luna II was discovered half a million miles out: a black rock two hundred yards long and eighty through, tumbling dizzily end over end around the Earth, too small to occlude stars for more than a blip, too dark to have been (previously) anything but the tiniest sunspot on the surface of Sol. But interesting anyway “because it was there,” and also and especially because on those rare occasions when it lined itself up with the full moon, that would be when Earth’s lunatics gave full vent. Lunatics of all persuasions, whether they were in madhouses or White Houses, asylums or the army, refuges or radiation shelters, surgeries or silos.

Men had known for a long time that the moon controlled the tides—and possibly the fluids in men’s brains?—and it was interesting now to note that Luna II appeared to compound the offence. It seemed reasonable to suppose that we had finally discovered the reason for Man’s homicidal tendencies, his immemorial hostility to Man.

Two thousand fifteen and a joint mission—American, Russian, British—went to take a look; they circled Luna II at a “safe” distance for twelve hours, took pictures, made recordings, measured radiation levels. When they came back, within a month of their return, one of the two Americans (the most outspoken one) went mad, one of the two Russians (the introverted one) set fire to himself, and the two British members remained phlegmatic, naturally.

One year later in August 2016, an Anglo-French expedition set out to double-check the findings of the first mission: i.e., to see if there were indeed “peculiar radiations” being emitted by Luna II. It was a four-man team; they were all volunteers and wore lead baffles of various thicknesses in their helmets. And afterwards, the ones with the least lead were discovered to be more prone to mental fluctuations. But…the “radiations,” or whatever, couldn’t be measured by any of Man’s instruments. What was required was a special sort of volunteer, someone actually to land on Luna II and dig around a little, and do some work right there on top of—whatever it was.

Where to land wasn’t a problem: with a rotation period of one minute, Luna II’s equatorial tips were moving about as fast as a man could run, but at its “poles” the planetoid was turning in a very gentle circle. And that’s where Benjamin “Smiler” Williams set down. He had wanted to do the job and was the obvious choice. He was a Brit riding an American rocket paid for by the French and Russians. (Everybody had wanted to be in on it.) And of course he was a hero. And he was dying of cancer.

Smiler drilled holes in Luna II, set off small explosions in the holes, collected dust and debris and exhaust gasses from the explosions, slid his baffles aside and exposed his brain to whatever, walked around quite a bit and sat down and thought things, and sometimes just sat. And all in all he was there long enough to see the Earth turn one complete circle on her axis—following which he went home. First to Moonbase, finally to Earth. Went home to die—after they’d checked him out, of course.

But that was six years ago and he still hadn’t died (though God knows we’d tried the best we could to kill him) and now I was on my way to pay him a visit. On my way through him, traveling into him, journeying to his very heart. The heart and mind—the living, thinking organism, the control centre, as it were—deep within the body of what the world now called Big “C.” July 2024, and Smiler Williams had asked for a visitor. I was it, and as I drove in I went over everything that had led up to this moment. It was as good a way as any to keep from looking at the “landscape” outside the car. This was Florida and it was the middle of the month, but I wasn’t using the air-conditioning and in fact I’d even turned up the heater a little—because it was cool out there. As cool as driving down a country lane in Devon, with the trees arching their green canopy overhead. Except it wasn’t Devon and they weren’t green. And in fact they weren’t even trees….

Those were thoughts I should try to avoid, however, just as I avoided looking at anything except the road unwinding under the wheels of my car; and so I went back again to 2016, when Ben Williams came back from space.

The specialists in London checked Smiler out—his brain, mostly, for they weren’t really interested in his cancer. That was right through him, (with the possible exception of his gray matter), and there was no hope. Try to cut or laser
that
out of him and there’d be precious little of the man himself left! But after ten days of tests they’d found nothing, and Smiler was getting restless.

“Peter,” he said to me, “I’m short on time and these monkeys are wasting what little I’ve got left! Can’t you get me out of here? There are places I want to go, friends I want to say goodbye to.” But if I make that sound sad or melodramatic, forget it. Smiler wasn’t like that. He’d really
earned
his nickname, that good old boy, because right through everything he’d kept on smiling like it was painted on his face. Maybe it was his way to keep from crying. Twenty-seven years old just a month ago, and he’d never make twenty-eight. So we’d all reckoned.

Myself, I’d never made it through training, but Smiler had and we’d kept in touch. But just because I couldn’t go into space didn’t mean I couldn’t help others to do it, I’d worked at NASA, and on the European Space Program (ESP), even for a while for the Soviets at Baikonur, when
détente
had been peaking a periodic up-surge back in 2009 and 2010. So I knew my stuff. And I knew the men who were doing it, landing on Mars and what have you, and the heroes like Smiler Williams. So while Smiler was moderately cool toward the others on the space medicine team—the Frogs, Sovs and even the other Americans—to me he was the same as always. We’d been friends and Smiler had never let down a friend in his life.

And when he’d asked for my help in getting him out of that place, I’d had to go along with him. “Sure, why not?” I’d told him. “Maybe I can speed it up. Have you seen the new Space Center at the Lake? There are a lot of people you used to know there. NASA people. They’d love to see you again, Smiler.”

What I didn’t say was that the Space Center at Lake Okeechobee also housed the finest space medicine team in the world, and that they were longing to get their hands on him. But he was dying and a Brit, and so the British had first claim, so to speak. No one was going to argue the pros and cons about a man on his last legs. And if that makes me sound bad—like maybe I’d gone over to London to snatch him for the home team—I’d better add that there was something else I hadn’t mentioned to him: the Center Research Foundation at Lakeport, right next door. I wanted to wheel him in there so they could take a look at him. Oh, he was a no-hoper, like I’ve said, but….

And maybe he hadn’t quite given up hope himself, either, because when they were finally through with him a few days later he’d agreed to come back here with me. “What the hell,” he’d shrugged. “They have their rocks, dust, gasses, don’t they? Also, they have lots of time. Me, I have to use mine pretty sparingly.” It was starting to get to him.

In the States Smiler got a hero’s welcome, met everybody who was anybody from the President down. But that was time-consuming stuff, so after a few days we moved on down to Florida. First things first: I told him about the Foundation at Lakeport. “So what’s new?” he laughed. “Why’d you think I came with you, Yank?”

They checked him over, smiled and joked with him (which was the only way to play it with Smiler) but right up front shook their heads and told him no, there was nothing they could do. And time was narrowing down.

But it was running out for me, too; and that’s where I had to switch my memories off and come back to the present a while, for I’d reached the first checkpoint. I was driving up from Immokalee, Big “C” Control (“control,” that’s a laugh!) Point Seven, to see Smiler at Lakeport. The barrier was at the La Belle-Clewiston crossroads, and Smiler came up on the air just as I saw it up ahead and started to slow her down a little.

“You’re two minutes early, Peter,” his voice crackled out of the radio at me. “Try to get it right from here on in, OK? Big “C” said ten-thirty a.m. at the La Belle-Clewiston crossroads, and he didn’t mean ten-twenty-eight. You don’t gain anything by being early: he’ll only hold you up down there two minutes longer to put you back on schedule. Do you read me, old friend?”

“I read you, buddy,” I answered, slowing to a halt at the barrier’s massive red-and-white-striped pole where it cut the road in half. “Sorry I’m early; I guess it’s nerves; must have put my foot down a little. Anyway, what’s a couple minutes between friends, eh?”

“Between you and me? Nothing!” Smiler’s voice came back—and with a chuckle in it! I thought:
God, that’s courage for you!
“But Big ‘C’ likes accuracy, dead reckoning,” he continued. “And come to think of it, so do I! Hell, you wouldn’t try to find me a reentry window a couple of minutes ahead of time, would you? No you wouldn’t.” And then, more quietly: “And remember, Peter, a man can get burned just as easily in here….” But this time there was no chuckle.

“What now?” I sat still, staring straight ahead, aware that the—tunnel?—was closing overhead, that the light was going as Big “C” enclosed me.

“Out,” he answered at once, “so he can take a good look at the car. You know he’s not much for trusting people, Peter.”

I froze, and remained sitting there as rigid as…as the great steel barrier pole right there in front of me. Get out? Big “C” wanted me to get out? But the car was my womb and I wasn’t programmed to be born yet, not until I got to Smiler. And—

“Out!” Smiler’s voice crackled on the air. “He says you’re not moving and it bothers him. So get out now—or would you rather sit tight and have him come in there with you? How do you think you’d like that, Peter: having Big “C” groping around in there with you?”

I unfroze, opened the car door. But where was I supposed to—?

“The checkpoint shack,” Smiler told me, as if reading my mind. “There’s nothing of him in there.”

Thank God for that!

I left the car door open—to appease Big “C”? To facilitate his search? To make up for earlier inadequacies? Don’t ask me—and hurried in the deepening gloom to the wooden, chalet-style building at the side of the road. It had been built there maybe four years ago when Big “C” wasn’t so big, but no one had used it in a long time and the door was stuck; I could get the bottom of the door to give a little by leaning my thigh against it, but the top was jammed tight. And somehow I didn’t like to make too much noise.

Standing there with the doorknob clenched tight in my hand, I steeled myself, glanced up at the ceiling being formed of Big “C”’s substance—the moth-eaten holes being bridged by doughy flaps, then sealed as the mass thickened up, shutting out the light—and I thought of myself as becoming a tiny shriveled kernel in his gigantic, leprous walnut. Christ…what a mercy I never suffered from claustrophobia! But then I also thought:
to hell with
the noise
,
and put my shoulder to the door to burst it right in.

I left the door vibrating in its frame behind me and went unsteadily, breathlessly, to the big windows. There was a desk there, chairs, a few well-thumbed paperbacks, a Daily Occurrence Book, telephone and scribble pad: everything a quarter-inch thick in dust. But I blew the dust off one of the chairs and sat (which wasn’t a bad idea, my legs were shaking so bad), for now that I’d started in on this thing I knew there’d be no stopping it, and what was going on out there was all part of it. Smiler’s knowledge of cars hadn’t been much to mention; I had to hope that Big “C” was equally ignorant.

And so I sat there trembling by the big windows, looking out at the road and the barrier and the car, and I suppose the idea was that I was going to watch Big “C”’s inspection. I did actually watch the start of it—the tendrils of frothy slop elongating themselves downwards from above and inwards from both sides, closing on the car, entering it; a pseudopod of slime hardening into rubber, pulling loose the weather strip from the boot cover and flattening itself to squeeze inside; another member like a long, flat tapeworm sliding through the gap between the hood and the radiator grille…but that was as much as I could take and I turned my face away.

It’s not so much how Big “C” looks but what he is that does it. It’s knowing, and yet not really knowing, what he is….

So I sweated it there and waited for it to get done, and hoped and prayed that Big “C”
would
get done and not find anything. And while I waited my mind went back again to that time six years earlier.

The months went by and Smiler weakened a little. He got to spending a lot of his time at Lakeport, which was fine by the space medics at the Lake because they could go and see him any time they wanted and carry on examining and testing him. And at the time I thought they’d actually found something they could do for him, because after a while he really did seem to be improving again. Meanwhile I had my own life to live; I hadn’t seen as much of him as I might like; I’d been busy on the Saturn’s Moons Project.

When I did get to see him almost a year had gone by and he should have been dead. But he wasn’t anything like dead and the boys from Med. were excited about something—had been for months—and Smiler had asked to see me. I was briefed and they told me not to excite him a lot, just treat him like…normal? Now how the hell else would I treat him? I wondered.

It was summer and we met at Clewiston on the Lake, a beach where the sun sparkled on the water and leisure craft came and went, many of them towing their golden, waving water-skiers. Smiler arrived from Lakeport in an ambulance and the boys in white walked him slowly down to the table under a sun umbrella where I was waiting for him. And I saw how big he was under his robe.