Screaming Science Fiction (3 page)

Nor was that the whole thing; for he’d also become more sensitive to the agonies of the smaller creatures, whose myriad ravages had grown that much more sharp to him. A huge cloud of desiccated, exhausted migratory butterflies spiraled down out of the aching Mediterranean sky to drown in the tideless sea, and Andrew gaped and gasped and began to turn blue before the last of them had expired. He felt the dull shuddering of the tiny clam devoured by the starfish, and the intolerable burning of the stranded man-o’-war evaporating on the sand. And now he couldn’t get back into space fast enough.

Except…he never made it.

It was on every vidscreen in the world and dominated every newscast for a month: the blow-up at Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas.

There were two launches scheduled for that day. The first was a French relief team going up to Luna Orbital Station, and the second was supposed to be Andrew shuttling up to W-Sat III. But the French team never got off the pad, which meant that Andrew never got on it. We were only a mile away from that mess, waiting out the countdown when it fireballed—and my twin brother felt every poor sod of them frying! If they’d all gone up at once in the bang it would have been bad enough—but three of them, blazing, managed to eject. And Andrew blazed with them.

The medics took him back then, and called in the shrinks too, and I found myself excluded. Now it had to be up to the specialists, because I couldn’t reach him any more. He’d gone “inside” and wasn’t coming out for a while.

We were twins and I loved him; I might easily have gone to pieces myself, if the Old Folks had let me. But they didn’t. “You’ve earned a lot of money, son, you and Andrew,” my father told me. “Which is just as well because your brother is going to need it. Oh, I know, there are a lot of good people working on him for free—but there are other specialists who haven’t even seen him yet, and they cost money. Money doesn’t last for ever, Ray—it comes and it goes. If you want to do something for Andrew, want to take care of his future, then the best thing would be to get yourself back into space. Let me and your mother look after this end a while.”

Andrew’s future! It hadn’t even got through to the Old Folks that he didn’t have one. It was something they couldn’t allow themselves to believe, and so they didn’t. But at least their advice was good and kept me together. I went back into space, and up there where I could look down and see everything clearly (so clearly that I used to believe it allowed me to think more clearly, too) I’d sometimes wonder: why him and not me?
We’re twins, so how come it skipped me?
But even in space there was no answer to that. Not then….

I did two months on W-Sat HI standing in for Andrew, and almost without pause a further three months on the vast, incredible wheel which was Luna Orbital, watching the EV engineers laboriously putting together the miracle that would one day become Titan Station. And finally it was back to Earth.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t been out of touch: I got coded radio mail which my personal receiver unscrambled on to disks for me. The Old Folks kept me in the picture regarding Andrew.

“We found a specializing chemist who designed a drug for him,” my mother told me, her languid American drawl still very much in evidence for all that she’d been expatriate for thirty years. “It has side-effects—makes his whole skin itch and upsets his balance a little—but it does cut down on the pain. And it’s non-addictive!” Fine for anyone else; but my brother, my double, the athlete who was my twin? In private I cried about it.

“He’s out of dock,” the Old Man’s gravelly English tones cheerfully informed me towards the end of one message, “house-hunting off Land’s End!”

That last had me stumped. What the hell was “off” Land’s End? I called up the atlas on my computer and got the answer: the Isles of Scilly. But it was the wrong answer. There were also several lighthouses.

When I got back down I had three months’ accumulated R and R and plenty to do with it, but first the Program Officer I/C wanted to see me. In Lyon I went up to Jean-Pierre Durant’s office and was ushered in. Durant was a short, sturdy man in his fifties, wide as a door, short-cropped graying hair, big hard hands, very powerful looking. And he was powerful in every way; but big-hearted with it, a man who loved his fellow men. Right then, however, I had a down on ESP because of Andrew (to me, they’d seemed too eager to write him off) and possibly it showed in my face. Also, I was in a hurry to get across the Channel to England, and down to Land’s End, and out to see my brother in the old deserted lighthouse he’d made his home. So Durant was the Big Boss—so what? I considered this an intrusion into my time. And perhaps that showed, too.

“Sit down, Ray,” Durant invited, smiling, waving me into a chair. He spoke English which his accent made warm and compassionate, salving a little of the anger and frustration out of me. “And don’t worry,” he contin-ued, “I don’t intend to waste your time. I’ll get right down to it: we think there’s maybe something we can do for Andrew—if it’s at all possible.”

My heart gave a leap and I started to my feet again. “The medics have come up with something?”

Durant shook his head, pointed at the chair. Frowning, I sat. “The psychoanalysts!” I burst out again, leaning forward. “It was psychosomatic, right? Some kind of mental allergy?”

“Ray,” he said, again shaking his head, “they’re working on those things—and getting nowhere fast. And Andrew isn’t helping by making it hard for anyone to see him. So…we’re not making much progress. Not along those lines, anyway.”

I was still frowning. “So how can you help him?”

Durant looked tugged two ways; he sighed, shrugged, stroked his chin. “Personally, I think he should go back out into space again.”

I stared at him for a moment, then slumped. “We tried that,” I said, disappointed.

He ignored my expression and my answer, and said: “Way out in space.” But it was
how
he said it. This time there was no way I could remain seated: I jumped up, leaned forward across his desk. If Durant meant what I thought he meant…it had always been our wildest dream!

“Titan?” I finally got it out.

He nodded, and repeated himself: “
Way
out! Far beyond the influence of whatever it is that’s killing him. If we can get him up to Moonbase for a year…we think we may have the Titan hardware ready by then. You’ve been up on the Luna Orbiter and know how hard they’re all working up there. The Titan wheel was going to be unmanned at first, as you know, with its life-supports on green just waiting for a crew when we were ready to send them. However—” And he smiled again, and shrugged.

I took a pace back, collapsed into my chair, dazedly shook my head as a mixture of emotions flooded through me. “But…why tell me? I mean, haven’t you told Andrew?”

Now the smile, a worried one at best, left his face. “I told him last week—by letter, special delivery, a jet copter—and his answer…wasn’t satisfactory. I told him yesterday, and when he could bring himself to answer the phone I got the same response. And I’ve tried to tell him again this morning, but apparently he’s not taking calls. So maybe you’d better tell him for me.”

“Unsatisfactory?” Over everything else he’d said that one word had stuck in my mind. “His answer was unsatisfactory? In what way?”

“Ray,” Durant looked straight into my eyes, “your brother is convinced he’s going to die—of other people’s pain. He says he’s given it plenty of thought and knows there’s no way of stopping it. And he says that since it’s coming, he’d prefer it came here on Earth than out there. Going out into space would only delay it anyway, he says. So you’re his last chance. Possibly he’s already too far gone physically for the job, in which case you’ll not only have to talk him into accepting it, but also get him back up on his feet one last time. You did it before, between you, so maybe you can do it again. That’s the whole thing, and that’s why I sent for you….”

“Do my parents—?” I started, but he cut me off.

“Your parents are your parents, Ray. I know them almost as well as you do. In some respects I know them better. Andrew has forbidden them to visit him, says not to baby him and that he’s doing fine, and when he’s ready to see them he’ll turn up on their doorstep. Do you think it’s likely—or even right—that I should tell them he’s going downhill? But I have told them we
might
send him out to Saturn if he wants it, and that it’s up to him. Though in fact it now looks like it’s up to you. When are you seeing him?”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “As soon as I can get there. Right now, if there was any quick way.”

“There is,” he told me. “Get your things together, whatever you want to take with you, and be at the helipad in one hour. I’ll clear it and see that you’re jet-coptered over. Two and a half hours and you’re there, OK?”

And of course I said yes, that was OK….

I didn’t try to call Andrew first; it was to be a surprise, and it was. But on the way across I talked to my pilot, the one who’d taken Durant’s letter to Andrew on Perring’s Rock. “How did he look to you?” I asked him.

Josh Bertin was a Belgian and had been a jet-copter pilot for ESP as long as I’d been around; I knew him personally and he knew our history. “Andrew…wasn’t his brightest,” he answered, carefully. And, before I could quiz him further: “You know why he bought the Rock, of course?”

“Oh, yes,” I nodded. “Miles out to sea. No people. No pain. Not so much, anyway.”

Josh glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Yes…and no,” he said. “Oh, that’s the reason he settled there, for sure, but—”

When his pause threatened to go on indefinitely, I prompted him: “But?”

“He mentioned something you and he call the PE? Something to do with how close people were to him? Well, he told me it’s breaking down. All the way down.”

“Josh,” I was really alarmed now, “I think you’d better tell me—”

“But,”
he broke in on me, “he’s coping with it—so far. Learning to live with it. All he has to do is keep telling himself it’s not real, that’s all—that the pain belongs to someone else—and then he’ll be OK. As long as nothing big happens. But right out there in the sea? Well, he’s not expecting any disasters, you know? And Ray, that’s it. No good asking me any more, ’cos that’s all he told me.”

I said nothing but simply turned over what he’d said in my mind. And while I was still turning it over, that’s when the pain hit me. Andrew’s pain—and I knew it!

It came from outside of me, slamming into me like an explosive shell and fragmenting deep inside. It was like a tankful of pain had overflowed into my guts. Someone was crushing my heart, yanking it this way and that, trying to tear it out of me. I had thought I knew what pain was, but I hadn’t.
This
was pain! Big Pain!

It would have driven me surging to my feet, but I was strapped in. I cried out, or gurgled, and then I must have blacked out….