Thorns (12 page)

The tape was graphic and explicit. Three hidden cameras, only a few molecules in lens diameter, had recorded everything. Chalk had viewed the sequence three times, but there were always new subtleties to derive. Watching unsuspecting couples in the act of love gave him no particular thrill; he obtained his pleasures in more refined manners, and the sight of the beast with two backs was interesting only to adolescents. But it was useful to know something of Burris's performance.

He sped the tape past the preliminary conversation. How bored she seems while he tells of his adventures! How frightened he seems when she exposes her body! What terrifies him? He is no stranger to women. Of course, that was in his old life. Perhaps he fears that she will find his new body hideous and turn away from him at the crucial instant. The moment of truth. Chalk pondered it. The cameras could not reveal Burris's thoughts, nor even his emotional constellation, and Chalk himself had not taken steps to detect his inner feelings. So all had to be by inference.

Certainly Burris was reluctant. Certainly the lady was determined. Chalk studied the naked tigress as she staked out her claim. It seemed for a while as though Burris would spurn her—not interested in sex, or in any event not interested in Elise. Too noble to top his friend's widow? Or still afraid to open himself to her, even in the face of her unquestioned yearning? Well, he was naked now. Elise still undeterred. The doctors who had examined Burris upon his return said that he was still capable of the act—so far as they could tell—and now it was quite clear that they had been right.

Elise's arms and legs waved aloft. Chalk tugged at his dewlaps as the tiny figures on the screen acted out the rite. Yes, Burris could make love even now. Chalk lost interest as the coupling ran to its climax. The tape petered out after a final shot of limp, depleted figures side by side on the rumpled bed. He could make love, but what about babies? Chalk's men had intercepted Elise soon after she had left Burris's room. A few hours ago the lusty wench had lain unconscious on a doctor's table, the heavy legs apart. But Chalk sensed that this time he was bound to be disappointed. Many things were within his control; not all.

D'Amore was back. "The report's in."

"And?"

"No fertile sperm. They can't quite figure out what they've got, but they swear it won't reproduce. The aliens must have done a switch there, too."

"Too bad," Chalk sighed. "That's one line of approach we'll have to scratch. The future Mrs. Burris won't have any children by him."

D'Amore laughed. "She's got enough babies already, hasn't she?"

FIFTEEN

THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS

To Burris, the girl had little sensual appeal coming along as she did in the wake of Elise Prolisse. But he liked her. She was a kindly, pathetic, fragile child. She meant well. The potted cactus touched him. It seemed too humble a gesture to be anything but friendliness.

And she was unappalled by his appearance. Moved, yes. A bit queasy, yes. But she looked him right in the eye, concealing any dismay she might feel.

He said, "Are you from around here?"

"No. I'm from back East. Please sit down. Don't stand up on my account."

"It's all right. I'm really quite strong, you know."

"Are they going to do anything for you here in the hospital?"

"Just tests. They have an idea they can take me out of this body and put me into a normal human one."

"How wonderful!"

"Don't tell anyone, but I suspect it isn't going to work. The whole thing's a million miles up right now, and before they bring it down to Earth—" He spun the cactus on the bedside table. "But why are you in the hospital, Lona?"

"They had to fix my lungs some. Also my nose and throat."

"Hayfever?" he asked.

"I put my head in a disposal sac," she said simply.

A crater yawned briefly beneath Burris's feet He clung to his equilibrium. What rocked him, as much as what she had said, was the toneless way she had said it As though it were nothing at all to let acid eat your bronchi.

"You tried to kill yourself?" he blurted.

"Yes. They found me fast, though."

"But—why? At your age!" Patronizingly, hating himself for the tone. "You have everything to live for!"

The eyes grew big. Yet they lacked depth; he could not help contrasting them with the smoldering coals in Elise's sockets. "You don't know about me?" she asked, voice still small.

Burris grinned. "I'm afraid not."

"Lona Kelvin. Maybe you didn't catch the name. Or maybe you forgot. I know. You were still out in space when it all happened."

"You've lost me two turns back."

"I was in an experiment. Multiple-embryo ova-transplantation, they called it. They took a few hundred eggs out of me and fertilized them and grew them. Some in the bodies of other women, some in incubator things. About a hundred of the babies were born. It took six months. They experimented on me last year just about this time."

The last ledge of false assumptions crumbled beneath him. Burris had seen a high-school girl, polite, empty-headed, concerned to some mild extent about the strange creature in the room across the hall, but mainly involved with the tastes and fashions, whatever they were, of her chronological peer group. Perhaps she was here to have her appendix dissolved, or for a nose bob. Who could tell? But suddenly the ground had shifted and he started to view her in a more cosmic light. A victim of the universe.

"A hundred babies? I never heard a thing about it, Lona!"

"You must have been away. They made a big fuss."

"
How
old are you?"

"Seventeen now."

"You didn't bear any of the babies yourself, then?"

"No. No. That's the whole thing. They took the eggs away from me, and that was where it all stopped, for me. Of course, I got a lot of publicity. Too much." She peered at him shyly. "I'm boring you, all this talk about myself."

"But I want to know."

"It isn't very interesting. I was on the vid a lot. And in the tapes. They wouldn't leave me alone. I had nothing much to say, because I hadn't
done
anything, you know. Just a donor. But when my name got out, they came around to me. Reporters all the time. Never alone, and yet always alone, do you know? So I couldn't take it any more. All I wanted—a couple of babies out of my own body, not a hundred babies out of machines. So I tried to kill myself."

"By putting your head in a disposal sac."

"No, that was the second time. The first, I jumped under a truck."

"When was that?" Burris asked.

"Last summer. They brought me here and fixed me up. Then they sent me back East again. I lived in a room. I was afraid of everything. It got too scary, and I found myself going down the hall to the dissolver room and opening the disposal sac and—well.... I didn't make it again. I'm still alive."

"Do you still want to die so badly, Lona?"

"I don't know." The thin hands made clutching motions in mid-air. "If I only had something to hang onto.... But look, I'm not supposed to be talking about me. I just wanted you to know a little of why I was here. You're the one who—"
      
"

"Not
supposed
to be talking about yourself? Who says?"

Dots of color blazed in the sunken cheeks. "Oh, I don't know. I mean, I'm not really important Let's talk about space, Colonel Burris!"

"Not Colonel. Minner."

"Out there—"

"Are Things that catch you and change you all around. That's what space is, Lona."

"How terrible!"

"I think so, too. But don't reinforce my convictions."

"I don't follow."

"I feel terribly sorry for myself," Burris said. "If you give me half a chance, I'll pour your shell-like ear full of bad news. I'll tell you just how unfair I think it was for them to have done this to me. I'll gabble about the injustice of the blind universe. I'll talk a lot of foolishness."

"But you've got a
right
to be angry about it! You didn't mean any harm to them. They just took you and—"

"Yes."

"It wasn't decent of them!"

"I know, Lona. But I've already said that at great length, mostly to myself but also to anyone who'd listen. It's practically the only thing I say or think. And so I've undergone a second transformation. From man to monster; from monster to walking embodiment of injustice."

She looked puzzled. I'm talking over her head, he told himself.

He said, "What I mean is, I've let this thing that happened to me
become
me. I'm a thing, a commodity, a moral event. Other men have ambitions, desires, accomplishments, attainments, I've got my mutilation, and it's devouring
me
. Has
devoured me. So I try to escape from it."

"You're saying that you'd rather not talk about what happened to you?" Lona asked.

"Something like that."

She nodded. He saw her nostrils flicker, saw her thin lips curl in animation. A smile burst forth. "You know, Col—Minner—it's a little bit the same way with me. I meann being a victim and all, and feeling so sorry for yourself. They did something bad to me, too, and since then all I do is go back and think about it and get angry. Or sick. And the thing I really should be doing is forgetting about it and going on to something else."

"Yes."

"But I can't. Instead I keep trying to kill myself because I decide I can't bear it." Her eyes faltered to the floor. "Do you mind if I ask—have you—have you ever tried—"

A halt.

"To kill myself since this happened? No. No, Lona. I just brood. Slow suicide, it's called."

"We ought to make a deal," she said. "Instead of me feeling sorry for me, and you for you, let me feel sorry for you, and you feel sorry for me. And we'll tell each other how terrible the world has been to the other one. But not to ourselves. I'm getting the words all mixed up, but do you know what I mean?"

"A mutual sympathy society. Victims of the universe, unite!" He laughed. "Yes, I understand. Good idea, Lona! It's just what I—what we need. I mean, just what
you
need."

"And what
you
need."

She looked pleased with herself. She was smiling from forehead to chin, and Burris was surprised at the change that came over her appearance when that glow of self-satisfaction appeared. She seemed to grow a year or two older, to pick up strength and poise. And even womanliness. For an instant she was no longer skinny and pathetic. But then the glow faded and she was a little girl again.

"Do you like to play card games?"

"Yes."

"Can you play Ten Planets?"

"If you'll teach me," Burris said.

"I'll go get the cards."

She bounced out of the room, her robe fluttering around her slim figure. Returning a moment later with a deck of waxy-looking cards, she joined him on the bed. Burris's quick eyes were on her when the middle snap of her pajama top lost polarity, and he caught a glimpse of a small, taut white breast within. She brushed her hand over the snap an instant later. She was not quite a woman, Burris told himself, but not a child, either. And then he reminded himself: this slender girl is the mother (?) of a hundred babies.

"Have you ever played the game?" she asked.

"Afraid not."

"It's quite simple. First I deal ten cards apiece—"

SIXTEEN

THE OWL, FOR ALL HIS FEATHERS, WAS A-COLD

They stood together by the hospital power plant, looking through the transparent wall. Within, something fibrous lashed and churned as it picked up energy from the nearest pylon and fed it to the transformer bank. Burris was explaining to her about how power was transmitted that way, without wires. Lona tried to listen, but she did not really care enough about finding out. It was hard to concentrate on something like that, so remote from her experience. Especially with
him
beside her.

"Quite a contrast from the old days," he was saying. "I can still recall a time when the million-kv lines were strung across the countryside, and they were talking of stepping the voltage up to a million and a half—"

"You know so many things. How did you have time to learn all that about electricity if you had to be a starman, too?"

"I'm terribly old," he said.

"I bet you aren't even eighty yet."

She was joking, but he didn't seem to realize it. His face quirked in that funny way, the lips (were they still to be called lips?) pulling outward toward his cheeks. "I'm forty years old," he said hollowly. "I suppose to you forty is most of the way to being eighty."

"Not quite."

"Let's go look at the garden."

"All those sharp pointed things!"