Nova 1 Read online

  But it wasn’t much of a success when you tried to join in. I mean, as a game. As a lesson, it was a success. You learned how different it feels to throw from mid-air or to throw pushing off from a wall; you began to get the feel of why we do almost everything with back arched and feet drawn up behind—and why we belay our belts to wall cleats for a lot of things, including throwing; you tried adapting your own throwing habits to our games.

  That was the trouble: this was too good a hope, wasn’t it, to be able to play catch. You know how to play catch. It was frustrating to find that, by our standards, you couldn’t, and that’s the only time I ever saw it really get to you.

  Ruth’s voice came soothing over the intercom again, “I’ve tried doing that their way too, Frank, and I don’t think I’ll ever learn. But you’re young,” very casually.

  “I’ll learn,” you said, very determined.

  Without the ball it was less frustrating. You had to learn our posture, which makes it possible at any moment to push off from a wall on any side. With your posture, what would you do if you drifted up to a wall back first? And you had to learn that one tumbles while in mid-air, back-somersault-ways, pretty constantly all day—just to remain conscious of what’s around. Ruth and Jay aren’t sure that’s necessary, and I know you still find it dizzying, but all these habits which we developed before we were four may help in free-fall, and the more you pick up the better.

  The fourth day you spent many hours trying direct trajectories the length of one of the arms. Trying to read something on the way, or to land on a particular spot—things like that. You were good-humored and maybe we were too condescending. (Just as we’d never had a friend, we’d never had a puppy.) But we were merry, and getting back to our old freedom. If you were ever going to fit into it, that was the day it would have had to begin.

  Instead, that was the day you made a pass at Vara.

  Is that the right term? It’s never clear in the books what “make a pass” means concretely. She held your arm when you came up to her; your eyes glinted, you squeezed her arm back and smiled.

  Less than we do—did—every day among ourselves? So much less. Why should I feel jealous? Sure, why should I feel jealous.

  When we touched, we were just being ourselves. When I saw you squeeze Vara’s arm, I was stunned with a word, “sex,” big and ugly and jangling. All those other words followed it through my mind, and they weren’t names for anything beautiful, the way good-hearted Earth authors tell adolescents. Just there was such a hot constriction of my throat . . .

  And it kept on! I kept on thinking about it, watching you, not knowing what to do. I couldn’t say anything about it to Vara or to any of the others.

  That doesn’t mean the relationship between the Initials could crumble to nothing at the first sight of an unfamiliar face. But when this struck . . .

  Let’s see if I can say what happened. Our whole daily life, everything we knew how to do and feel, had been among the six of us. In order to live at all we had to keep living the way we knew. What would you do if you suddenly had a thigh muscle paralyzed? You’d keep trying to walk in the old way, and get a little sick twinge as you canceled that no-longer-possible movement and began something self-conscious and poorer. Have you had that twinge from crossing our room or taking a drink of water in space, Frank Coglan? Well, for me, during those weeks, every response of my whole life gave me that twinge.

  It would have been hard for you to be there and shut out of our relationship. But to have you there and superseding it . . . We hadn’t imagined.

  In my dreams you were metallic. Your skin was shiny gray, your eyes were pink and molten, and you neither saw nor thought. Awake, I could work and talk with you along with the others, even joke sometimes, but the image I had of you from my dreams never really disappeared. And I was miserable.

  This was that whole period, I’m talking about, more than three weeks.

  The fight was what freed us. I think it would have, even if Ruth and Jay hadn’t overreacted the way they did.

  You were asking us how we had got through infancy without seeing Ruth and Jay. That didn’t annoy us, even me. We laughed.

  “It seems hard to change diapers without being seen, eh?”

  “Yeah, what did they do, put anesthetic into the air supply?”

  “No, they just—changed our diapers,” grinned Maria. “In the first place, we had harnesses like these on, and we were anchored pretty close all the time while we were still helpless. And then when we had to be handled, or put into hammocks to sleep—” She led the way to the end of one of the corridors. “Jay, would you show him?”

  He said over the intercom, “Just a second.”

  Maria pointed to a rubber diaphragm in a comer of the wall, and presently it bulged toward us, showing five spread fingers: Jay was reaching his arm through and the rubber made a glove for it. He wiggled his fingers. You were startled. You laughed. We, of course, had never seen his arm except this way.

  You said to Jay, “Dr. Gercen, how many years since you and your wife have been on Earth?”

  “Since the start of the project. Over sixteen years.”

  “Gee. Why did you ever decide to do that? I mean, nobody asked the Initials, they just took six orphan babies . . . but you had to decide.”

  You know I had never wondered that?

  Jay said, “Well, Frank, you joined this program, you know, and you’re going to be away from Earth for long spells too, I assure you.”

  “I hope I’m never all alone for sixteen years.”

  “We see the Initials every day.”

  “Yeah, but you know what I mean. And I sure hope I never have to change six pairs of diapers through a wall.”

  Jay laughed easily; but I looked quickly at your face and got a shock. That was another moment where some things we had read about personal relations suddenly turned out to apply to me. You were baiting me: I was supposed to get angry! If I’d thought of myself as somebody who could get angry, I probably would have right away.

  Vara laughed too. There was a silence.

  Your blue eyes slitted, you laughed through tight lips. “Especially stupes who never grow up.” And you pushed off the wall, in the narrow corridor, toward me.

  So I had to push you back when you collided with me, and the physical act was what made me able to be angry—not your silly remarks.

  I pushed you. The other five had sped down to the other end of the corridor; I followed them as far as the central area, then caught a stanchion and swung back on you again. You didn’t know what was hitting you. I didn’t need experience fighting; I didn’t even need room for maneuver. I always knew how to move to get where I wanted to be, while you were groping for something to hold onto.

  You might say, you didn’t know which side was up.

  I hardly noticed the others. They laughed a little, in a terrified voice.

  You said, “Don’t hit a guy from behind!” Of course I was. I’d push more than hit, just once or twice until reaction carried me away from you, then I’d come back in. You were helpless.

  Would you have been willing to quit at that point? I didn’t know how to stop any more than I’d known how to begin.

  Coming back at you one more time, I was on guard only against the possibility of you hitting me. You were away from any wall, and facing the wrong way.

  You caught my wrist in one hand. I hadn’t thought of that. Pulling, you spun yourself around to face me, and your other hand grabbed my shoulder.

  You shook me. I didn’t know anyone could be so strong.

  I was terrified. You didn’t hurt me . . . Well, that hurt; it still hurts, to have been that scared.

  You know who it was that saved me? I might as well tell you. It was Vara who came up behind you, grabbed your head, planted both feet in the middle of your back, and pulled till you had to let go.

  “Emilio!” Jay was calling me over the intercom. How long had he been calling?

  You drifted free, your
hands to your eyes, blinking to focus. When you looked, you saw us together in a corner, arms linked, staring at you. I was panting, and I got a little whiff of nausea with each breath.

  “Emilio! Frank!” No alarm in Jay’s voice. “Enough of that already. Listen, don’t you think Frank’s had enough just learning to maneuver? Let’s start showing him around the station.”

  “Separate the brawling boys, Jay?”

  He chuckled. “You saw through me.”

  “For once. Jay, there’s no need. We’ll be all right.”

  Jay was implacable. “Why don’t Vara and I make a start of this—take a few days going through the layout of the station with him, the operation of the station, and so forth.”

  You answered something intelligent, but I was stunned. Vara and the Gercens showed you around the station together—not like our previous tours when Ruth and Jay had followed us, out of sight, and guided us by intercom.

  So for the next two days I was tortured by an anxious feeling left over from the fight, of something unfinished and overdue. Resentment that you had taken Vara away from us. And I must admit, envy that Vara and not I was the first Initial to see Ruth and Jay face-to-face.

  I don’t know if I looked tortured. Unresponsive, anyway. Out of touch with A-Dzong and the others: I don’t know whether any of them were feeling the same.

  When I finally started whispering with them, I’m sure Ruth and Jay knew we were planning to ask for more of us to join you outside our quadrant. I don’t think they could tell exactly what we were planning.

  We worked it out together. But still without rapport; when I’d propose something I’d do it persuasively, speaking as if they’d of course agree, but feeling unsure the whole time. Between the Initials, it’s not normal to have to be persuasive.

  For the plan to work, Ruth and Jay had to misread our attitude. We asked for me to join you and Vara, and tried to sound like defiant adolescents in asking. Of course Ruth agreed.

  We didn’t ask to have the door of our room permanently unlocked (though she would have agreed to that too) because we didn’t want her to detect too much unprecedented independence and take alarm. Maybe that wasn’t the only motive. We enjoyed liberating ourselves.

  Ruth let me out to join you and Vara; as I was leaving, Maria took advantage of the movements when the door was open to rig the lock.

  It just takes a plastic tab on a yoke of fine wire, left in the lock when the door closes. You figure out things like this when you live in the same station all of your life and learn the operation of every pipe and circuit. Maria probably wasn’t noticed doing this even if Ruth was looking right at her.

  We had chosen a time when Jay would be asleep. Ruth seemed safer to deal with. Facing her, going down the corridor with her to join you, was anticlimax actually. After sixteen years of her omnipotence, and one day of scheming audacious rebellion, I saw her white, round face and curly hair—quite a resemblance to Haidee, really—and she was so much smaller than me, it was hard not to laugh.

  She holds her body the way you do. Of course. Something else, unexpected: she looks at me when she talks, as you do, and expects me to look at her. Hard to adjust to, when for all these years she’s been for me a directionless voice on an intercom.

  I felt awkward. At the end of the corridor, before we went into the solar battery service room where you and Vara were, I had to leave Ruth standing a few moments while I did a twisting spin in mid-air. “You make me dizzy,” she said gently, but to me it was like stretching—getting back a necessary sense of freedom.

  We came into the room with you and Vara. You were embarrassed, I think. Talk was strained, and the four of us kept a physical distance between us.

  Then something happened which you may not understand. I said softly, “Culu, ekke.” It was in our secret language. What children ever needed one more than we did? What I told her to do in that language, I knew Vara would be sure to do. We were out the door before you or Ruth had time even to turn around.

  In another second the door was locked. Ignoring your calls, winking at Vara, I took about two minutes to jam the door so it would be very slow business to open from the inside. Something we had noticed months earlier; two lockers unclipped from the wall are almost long enough to fill the corridor so the door won’t open; to fill up the remaining centimeters, I pulled out a spare inflatable airlock section, crammed it into the gap, and inflated until it was wedged in good and tight.

  I beckoned to Vara; we flew back along the corridor.

  Over the intercom, Maria announced with glee, “Ruth and Frank are locked into the solar battery service room, and Jay, if you get out of your hammock you’ll find that you’re locked into your quarters. Don’t worry. You know the Initials are perfectly able to run the station by ourselves. Well, we’re taking a turn.”

  Then she turned the volume on the intercom way down, and the station was all ours. We stopped listening to you, the three of you. We didn’t hear a word you said.

  It was easy, but it felt good. It might have been still better if it hadn’t been so easy . . . Say, if Jay had taken the precaution of skipping his regular sleeping shift, and kept an eye on us. Then the other four Initials would have had the gratification of surprising him.

  We don’t have many more facts about him and Ruth, just from having seen them; but our thinking about them is changed, like black-and-white to color, or flat photo to holography, now that we’ve had power over them. And now that we’ve been shaken up by you, who aren’t tempted to regard the Gercens as the entire surrounding universe. We knew them all along, but now we can perceive them.

  I can think about Ruth, locked in the room with you those hours right after we took over. I didn’t listen in, but I know how she felt. She wasn’t worried or shocked. She thought the rebellion was normal. She may even have been relieved.

  I can imagine, now, that Ruth and Jay may have worried about this for years: what limits could they set us that we would refuse to observe? Or should they try to get us to squabble among ourselves? What would make us able to go after something we wanted, and make sure we got it?

  They’ve devoted their lives to the Initials. We’re their family, their friends, and their job. They raised us under conditions people aren’t made to take—the isolation, I mean, more than the free-fall. And the project succeeded, eh? It produced the information about weightless living. But I don’t think they’d have felt satisfied with their work if it had also produced six emotional cripples.

  So excuse our prank. I know that when we turned up the intercom after your hours in lock-up, subjected you to a little unnecessary taunting, and then let you out, you were pretty impatient with us. Well, I’m likely to be working with you off and on the rest of my life, Frank Coglan, and we’ll have to know how to deal with each other. I want you to understand.

  It was no prank. I think it was important, if Initials’ lives are important. None of us, even Ruth and Jay, knew how Initials grow up.

  Point one, they need a serpent in their Garden. Thanks.

  Point two, they don’t need to draw blood—at least, not if their “parents” have been like Ruth and Jay—but they do need to take power.

  We learned something else about what happens to six kids who touch each other every day and never see anyone else.

  Frank Coglan, Vara didn’t tell me, but I know you and she had made it together the night before.

  Frank Coglan, here’s point three. During the hours that the Initials had control of the station, I tried to make love with Vara. Tried to. It’s not a question of her being willing—I mean, she’s Vara and I’m Emilio, there’s no such thing as one of us refusing the other. We tried to, and we couldn’t make it.

  She’s for you, Frank Coglan. If you and she want it that way. You won’t have competition from me, or A-Dzong, or Ted.

  Just the other day I overheard Ruth saying something to Jay involving the word “exogamy.” Maybe they understand us better than we understand ourselves, again.
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  Certainly when little Diann came to the station a couple of days later, there was something new. Incredible. She can be just as clumsy as she wants to, with her Earthside posture; she’s beautiful, her awkwardness is beautiful, everything’s part of it. It doesn’t matter if I pity her when she has trouble catching on to space life. It doesn’t matter if I envy her her Earth childhood. Just everything’s okay. I laugh into her eyes, and tingle with anticipation waiting for her to laugh back at me, and right away she laughs back and by the time she does I’m crying.

  Diann is for me.

  Just the same, there will always be that deep-glowing backdrop to everything in my life, that peaceful kingdom in which we flowered. It’s not there for you; not for Diann. It will always be there for me and Vara, and we can’t give it to you. You’ll never know, Frank Coglan.

  AND THIS BID DANTE DO

  by Ray Bradbury

  When science fiction is mentioned to the non-addict, nine times out of ten the response will he something like, “You mean the kind of stuff Ray Bradbury writes.” Yet the kind of stuff the un-repining Mr. Bradbury now writes includes motion pictures, plays, articles, poetry—and scarcely enough science fiction stories. But he has done a science fiction poem that it is a pleasure to present here, all about the great Dante and his Marvelous Invention. A wickedly satisfying poem.

  The truth is this:

  That long ago in times Before the birth of Light,

  Old Dante Alighieri prowled this way

  On continent unknown to mad Columbus;

  Made landfall here by sneaking, sly Machine,

  Invention of his candle-flickered soul

  Which, wafted upon storms,

  Brought him in harmful mission down.

  So, landed upon wilderness of dust

  Where buffalos stamped forth