[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

He thought he had forgotten about it. The woman's face clouded over.
"Oh, that's too bad," she said, and she fiddled with something behind her
ear. A control? Jai thought. She looked disappointed. "It's nice to have
visitors," she said finally; "thank you. Please start up. You can be sure I'll
watch you all through because my eye reflexes have been altered. No
trouble there. Beat her up, please," and spreading her fingers over a bar in
the metal framework, with a polite smile to hide her disappointment, she
commenced pressing herself heavily against the metal tangle. Earnestly.
Determinedly. Resignedly. Working hard. A slight glaze on her face. It
would be shocking to laugh. Evne sat straight up on the bed, purely
vindictive; the heroic exercises were taking the lady of the house up and
down now (though without much success); "Go on!" she shouted
impatiently. "What are you waiting for?" Evne merely drew her knees
under her chin and stared. The woman began, "Don't look at me, for
goodness' sakes; I'm supposed to look at you " but a phantom man, the
bare idea of a handsome, faceless man, formed on the exercycle, replaced
it, received her, cradled her, loved her, whispered, crooned, bit
"It's not working quite right today," said the woman, oddly worried. "I
don't like it. I think it's your fault." Evne put her arms around her knees.
That could be a real man, she said, and Jai saw or thought he saw the
smoky body around the woman settle and thicken, press her, acquire
features. The exercise seat plunged and rose, plunged and rose. The
woman herself stiffened, knees together.
It was a real, true idea. It was a real thought. It was inside her head.
She couldn't think of herself but only of a man, not of her own body, her
lovely twin sister, but only of a man who had skin, bones, teeth, fingers, a
penis, a brain, and whose lungs were breathing air into her own.
Worst of all, he would have a face.
Her name is Mrs. Robins, said Evne. Can you imagine? She has a
name.
Vicious, provincial bitch! shouted Jai, diving after her into the lines
that swarmed through the ship.
Worst of all, he would have a mind.
From far, far away, Jai heard Mrs. Robins screaming.
He made her settle Mrs. Robins' mind. He argued with her, pulling her
hair; Evne, like a woman of salt, fled into the walls in metal crystalhood,
where he followed her, turned into a bee (all eyes), a fountain (all mouth),
wrapped herself around her own bones inside out, spread herself one
molecule thick along all the lines in the ship: the two of them, pulsing
miles across, breathing with the lungs of incurious strangers, seeing
through other eyes, petrifying in flashes, pursuing each other in the shapes
of walls, floors, volumes of contained air. He followed her.
Evne lay face down in an airless space, sobbing.
She was round, like a porthole.
She twisted his little fingers, sat on his head, screamed as he slapped
her, ran away on glass feet in which he could see the frightened convulsing
of her organs.
She surrounded him and bit him, a daisy with a single stomach/eye.
With arms turned to clouds, Jai seized a cloudy woman, and meaning to
beat her, billowed into her instead, his forehead an elongated dome, his
body furrowed with windy spaces, his limbs weeping rain. So THAT'S a
quarrel! he sighed into Evne's cowering, cavernous ear, holding her even
as she dissolved into a sea of blue air, holding her as she turned into a dry
desert wind.
Far away Mrs. Robins shuddered satisfactorily and then dozed off.
They were seated on the corridor carpet, upside down, sideways,
sprawling between the ceiling and the wall. The spin was off. Evne said:
I will not put myself out any more for any woman. I will not live
among these people. I will not think of them as people. I will not listen to
you. I'm going home. God made these people on the eighth day, out of
scraps.
You don't believe in God, said Jai, and reading her thoughts, which
were the thoughts of a Swan Princess when the fisherman is standing on
her clothes, he added, "Don't be frightened. Don't be foolish." The Big
One three weeks from destination reached its coordinates, was instantly
destroyed and instantly created; contracted to its own size, with the spin
coming on. They tumbled slowly down the wall. Foolish Evne, as she fell,
developed a leathery hide and starfish's prickles; her brains got hungry,
her fingers tough; she could spin resource from a hard vacuum the way
the girl in the story was supposed to have spun gold. Far down the curving
corridor a door opened and through the door came six stupid people: five
men and a woman with a notebook. Strange particles were killing
themselves in a blaze of glory on the outside hull of The Big One. One of
these blind, deaf, anesthetized, insensitive, ambulating corpses cried with
false heartiness, "Ah, there you are!" and took out a sedation pistol.
With a wink, Evne put on an act and passed out.
He himself was dragged along the corridor, pretending to be
unconscious, for a quarter of a mile; he enjoyed the luxury of his position.
If that was what they wanted, that was what they got: his beard scraping
the floor, eyes turned to whites, eighty kilos of lead, and a traitor a grim
business. There was an interesting layer of sweat between themselves and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]