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Kitabı oku: «Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 1», sayfa 16
Marionettes, Inc.
They walked slowly down the street at about ten in the evening, talking calmly. They were both about thirty-five, both eminently sober.
‘But why so early?’ said Smith.
‘Because,’ said Braling.
‘Your first night out in years and you go home at ten o’clock.’
‘Nerves, I suppose.’
‘What I wonder is how you ever managed it. I’ve been trying to get you out for ten years for a quiet drink. And now, on the one night, you insist on turning in early.’
‘Mustn’t crowd my luck,’ said Braling.
‘What did you do, put sleeping powder in your wife’s coffee?’
‘No, that would be unethical. You’ll see soon enough.’
They turned a corner. ‘Honestly, Braling, I hate to say this, but you have been patient with her. You may not admit it to me, but marriage has been awful for you, hasn’t it?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘It’s got around, anyway, here and there, how she got you to marry her. That time back in 1979 when you were going to Rio—’
‘Dear Rio. I never did see it after all my plans.’
‘And how she tore her clothes and rumpled her hair and threatened to call the police unless you married her.’
‘She always was nervous, Smith, understand.’
‘It was more than unfair. You didn’t love her. You told her as much, didn’t you?’
‘I recall that I was quite firm on the subject.’
‘But you married her anyhow.’
‘I had my business to think of, as well as my mother and father. A thing like that would have killed them.’
‘And it’s been ten years.’
‘Yes,’ said Braling, his gray eyes steady. ‘But I think perhaps it might change now. I think what I’ve waited for has come about. Look here.’
He drew forth a long blue ticket.
‘Why, it’s a ticket for Rio on the Thursday rocket!’
‘Yes, I’m finally going to make it.’
‘But how wonderful! You do deserve it! But won’t she object? Cause trouble?’
Braling smiled nervously. ‘She won’t know I’m gone. I’ll be back in a month and no one the wiser, except you.’
Smith sighed. ‘I wish I were going with you.’
‘Poor Smith, your marriage hasn’t exactly been roses, has it?’
‘Not exactly, married to a woman who overdoes it. I mean, after all, when you’ve been married ten years, you don’t expect a woman to sit on your lap for two hours every evening, call you at work twelve times a day and talk baby talk. And it seems to me that in the last month she’s gotten worse. I wonder if perhaps she isn’t a little simple-minded?’
‘Ah, Smith, always the conservative. Well, here’s my house. Now, would you like to know my secret? How I made it out this evening?’
‘Will you really tell?’
‘Look up, there!’ said Braling.
They both stared up through the dark air.
In the window above them, on the second floor, a shade was raised. A man about thirty-five years old, with a touch of gray at either temple, sad gray eyes, and a small thin mustache looked down at them.
‘Why, that’s you!’ cried Smith.
‘Sh-h-h, not so loud!’ Braling waved upward. The man in the window gestured significantly and vanished.
‘I must be insane,’ said Smith.
‘Hold on a moment.’
They waited.
The street door of the apartment opened and the tall spare gentleman with the mustache and the grieved eyes came out to meet them.
‘Hello, Braling,’ he said.
‘Hello, Braling,’ said Braling.
They were identical.
Smith stared. ‘Is this your twin brother? I never knew—’
‘No, no,’ said Braling quietly. ‘Bend close. Put your ear to Braling Two’s chest.’
Smith hesitated and then leaned forward to place his head against the uncomplaining ribs.
Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.
‘Oh no! It can’t be!’
‘It is.’
‘Let me listen again.’
Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.
Smith staggered back and fluttered his eyelids, appalled. He reached out and touched the warm hands and the cheeks of the thing.
‘Where’d you get him?’
‘Isn’t he excellently fashioned?’
‘Incredible. Where?’
‘Give the man your card, Braling Two.’
Braling Two did a magic trick and produced a white card:
MARIONETTES, INC.
Duplicate self or friends: new humanoid plastic 1990 models, guaranteed against all physical wear. From $7,600 to our $15,000 de luxe model.
‘No,’ said Smith.
‘Yes,’ said Braling.
‘Naturally,’ said Braling Two.
‘How long has this gone on?’
‘I’ve had him for a month. I keep him in the cellar in a toolbox. My wife never goes downstairs, and I have the only lock and key to that box. Tonight I said I wished to take a walk to buy a cigar. I went down cellar and took Braling Two out of his box and sent him back up to sit with my wife while I came on out to see you, Smith.’
‘Wonderful! He even smells like you: Bond Street and Melachrinos!’
‘It may be splitting hairs, but I think it highly ethical. After all, what my wife wants most of all is me. This marionette is me to the hairiest detail. I’ve been home all evening. I shall be home with her for the next month. In the meantime another gentleman will be in Rio after ten years of waiting. When I return from Rio, Braling Two here will go back in his box.’
Smith thought that over a minute or two. ‘Will he walk around without sustenance for a month?’ he finally asked.
‘For six months if necessary. And he’s built to do everything – eat, sleep, perspire – everything, natural as natural is. You’ll take good care of my wife, won’t you, Braling Two?’
‘Your wife is rather nice,’ said Braling Two. ‘I’ve grown rather fond of her.’
Smith was beginning to tremble. ‘How long has Marionettes, Inc., been in business?’
‘Secretly, for two years.’
‘Could I – I mean, is there a possibility—’ Smith took his friend’s elbow earnestly. ‘Can you tell me where I can get one, a robot, a marionette, for myself? You will give me the address, won’t you?’
‘Here you are.’
Smith took the card and turned it round and round. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what this means. Just a little respite. A night or so, once a month even. My wife loves me so much she can’t bear to have me gone an hour. I love her dearly, you know, but remember the old poem: “Love will fly if held too lightly, love will die if held too tightly.” I just want her to relax her grip a little bit.’
‘You’re lucky, at least, that your wife loves you. Hate’s my problem. Not so easy.’
‘Oh, Nettie loves me madly. It will be my task to make her love me comfortably.’
‘Good luck to you, Smith. Do drop around while I’m in Rio. It will seem strange, if you suddenly stop calling by, to my wife. You’re to treat Braling Two, here, just like me.’
‘Right! Good-by. And thank you.’
Smith went smiling down the street. Braling and Braling Two turned and walked into the apartment hall.
On the crosstown bus Smith whistled softly, turning the white card in his fingers:
Clients must be pledged to secrecy, for while an act is pending in Congress to legalize Marionettes, Inc., it is still a felony, if caught, to use one.
‘Well,’ said Smith.
Clients must have a mold made of their body and a color index check of their eyes, lips, hair, skin, etc. Clients must expect to wait for two months until their model is finished.
Not so long, thought Smith. Two months from now my ribs will have a chance to mend from the crushing they’ve taken. Two months from now my hand will heal from being so constantly held. Two months from now my bruised underlip will begin to reshape itself. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful … He flipped the card over.
Marionettes, Inc., is two years old and has a fine record of satisfied customers behind it. Our motto is ‘No Strings Attached.’ Address: 43 South Wesley Drive.
The bus pulled to his stop; he alighted, and while humming up the stairs he thought, Nettie and I have fifteen thousand in our joint bank account. I’ll just slip eight thousand out as a business venture, you might say. The marionette will probably pay back my money, with interest, in many ways. Nettie needn’t know. He unlocked the door and in a minute was in the bedroom. There lay Nettie, pale, huge, and piously asleep.
‘Dear Nettie.’ He was almost overwhelmed with remorse at her innocent face there in the semidarkness. ‘If you were awake you would smother me with kisses and coo in my ear. Really, you make me feel like a criminal. You have been such a good, loving wife. Sometimes it is impossible for me to believe you married me instead of that Bud Chapman you once liked. It seems that in the last month you have loved me more wildly than ever before.’
Tears came to his eyes. Suddenly he wished to kiss her, confess his love, tear up the card, forget the whole business. But as he moved to do this, his hand ached and his ribs cracked and groaned. He stopped, with a pained look in his eyes, and turned away. He moved out into the hall and through the dark rooms. Humming, he opened the kidney desk in the library and filched the bankbook. ‘Just take eight thousand dollars is all,’ he said. ‘No more than that.’ He stopped. ‘Wait a minute.’
He rechecked the bankbook frantically. ‘Hold on here!’ he cried. ‘Ten thousand dollars is missing!’ He leaped up. ‘There’s only five thousand left! What’s she done? What’s Nettie done with it? More hats, more clothes, more perfume! Or, wait – I know! She bought that little house on the Hudson she’s been talking about for months, without so much as a by your leave!’
He stormed into the bedroom, righteous and indignant. What did she mean, taking their money like this? He bent over her. ‘Nettie!’ he shouted. ‘Nettie, wake up!’
She did not stir. ‘What’ve you done with my money!’ he bellowed.
She stirred fitfully. The light from the street flushed over her beautiful cheeks.
There was something about her. His heart throbbed violently. His tongue dried. He shivered. His knees suddenly turned to water. He collapsed. ‘Nettie, Nettie!’ he cried. ‘What’ve you done with my money!’
And then, the horrid thought. And then the terror and the loneliness engulfed him. And then the fever and disillusionment. For, without desiring to do so, he bent forward and yet forward again until his fevered ear was resting firmly and irrevocably upon her round pink bosom. ‘Nettie!’ he cried.
Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.
As Smith walked away down the avenue in the night, Braling and Braling Two turned in at the door to the apartment. ‘I’m glad he’ll be happy too,’ said Braling.
‘Yes,’ said Braling Two abstractedly.
‘Well, it’s the cellar box for you, B-Two.’ Braling guided the other creature’s elbow down the stairs to the cellar.
‘That’s what I want to talk to you about,’ said Braling Two, as they reached the concrete floor and walked across it. ‘The cellar. I don’t like it. I don’t like that toolbox.’
‘I’ll try and fix up something more comfortable.’
‘Marionettes are made to move, not lie still. How would you like to lie in a box most of the time?’
‘Well—’
‘You wouldn’t like it at all. I keep running. There’s no way to shut me off. I’m perfectly alive and I have feelings.’
‘It’ll only be a few days now. I’ll be off to Rio and you won’t have to stay in the box. You can live upstairs.’
Braling Two gestured irritably. ‘And when you come back from having a good time, back in the box I go.’
Braling said, ‘They didn’t tell me at the marionette shop that I’d get a difficult specimen.’
‘There’s a lot they don’t know about us,’ said Braling Two. ‘We’re pretty new. And we’re sensitive. I hate the idea of you going off and laughing and lying in the sun in Rio while we’re stuck here in the cold.’
‘But I’ve wanted that trip all my life,’ said Braling quietly.
He squinted his eyes and could see the sea and the mountains and the yellow sand. The sound of the waves was good to his inward mind. The sun was fine on his bared shoulders. The wine was most excellent.
‘I’ll never get to go to Rio,’ said the other man. ‘Have you thought of that?’
‘No, I—’
‘And another thing. Your wife.’
‘What about her?’ asked Braling, beginning to edge toward the door.
‘I’ve grown quite fond of her.’
‘I’m glad you’re enjoying your employment.’ Braling licked his lips nervously.
‘I’m afraid you don’t understand. I think – I’m in love with her.’
Braling took another step and froze. ‘You’re what?’
‘And I’ve been thinking,’ said Braling Two, ‘how nice it is in Rio and how I’ll never get there, and I’ve thought about your wife and – I think we could be very happy.’
‘Th-that’s nice.’ Braling strolled as casually as he could to the cellar door. ‘You won’t mind waiting a moment, will you? I have to make a phone call.’
‘To whom?’ Braling Two frowned.
‘No one important.’
‘To Marionettes, Incorporated? To tell them to come get me?’
‘No, no – nothing like that!’ He tried to rush out the door.
A metal-firm grip seized his wrists. ‘Don’t run!’
‘Take your hands off!’
‘No.’
‘Did my wife put you up to this?’
‘No.’
‘Did she guess? Did she talk to you? Does she know? Is that it?’ He screamed. A hand clapped over his mouth.
‘You’ll never know, will you?’ Braling Two smiled delicately. ‘You’ll never know.’
Braling struggled. ‘She must have guessed; she must have affected you!’
Braling Two said, ‘I’m going to put you in the box, lock it, and lose the key. Then I’ll buy another Rio ticket for your wife.’
‘Now, now, wait a minute. Hold on. Don’t be rash. Let’s talk this over!’
‘Good-by. Braling.’
Braling stiffened. ‘What do you mean, “good-by”?’
Ten minutes later Mrs Braling awoke. She put her hand to her cheek. Someone had just kissed it. She shivered and looked up. ‘Why – you haven’t done that in years,’ she murmured.
‘We’ll see what we can do about that,’ someone said.
No Particular Night or Morning
He had smoked a packet of cigarettes in two hours.
‘How far out in space are we?’
‘A billion miles.’
‘A billion miles from where?’ said Hitchcock.
‘It all depends,’ said Clemens, not smoking at all. ‘A billion miles from home, you might say.’
‘Then say it.’
‘Home. Earth. New York. Chicago. Wherever you were from.’
‘I don’t even remember,’ said Hitchcock. ‘I don’t even believe there is an Earth now, do you?’
‘Yes,’ said Clemens. ‘I dreamt about it this morning.’
‘There is no morning in space.’
‘During the night then.’
‘It’s always night,’ said Hitchcock quietly. ‘Which night do you mean?’
‘Shut up,’ said Clemens irritably. ‘Let me finish.’
Hitchcock lit another cigarette. His hand did not shake, but it looked as if, inside the sunburned flesh, it might be tremoring all to itself, a small tremor in each hand and a large invisible tremor in his body. The two men sat on the observation corridor floor, looking out at the stars. Clemens’s eyes flashed, but Hitchcock’s eyes focused on nothing; they were blank and puzzled.
‘I woke up at 0500 hours myself,’ said Hitchcock, as if he were talking to his right hand. ‘And I heard myself screaming, “Where am I? where am I?” And the answer was “Nowhere!” And I said, “Where’ve I been?” And I said, “Earth!” “What’s Earth?” I wondered. “Where I was born,” I said. But it was nothing and worse than nothing. I don’t believe in anything I can’t see or hear or touch. I can’t see Earth, so why should I believe in it? It’s safer this way, not to believe.’
‘There’s Earth.’ Clemens pointed, smiling. ‘That point of light there.’
‘That’s not Earth; that’s our sun. You can’t see Earth from here.’
‘I can see it. I have a good memory.’
‘It’s not the same, you fool,’ said Hitchcock suddenly. There was a touch of anger in his voice. ‘I mean see it. I’ve always been that way. When I’m in Boston, New York is dead. When I’m in New York, Boston is dead. When I don’t see a man for a day, he’s dead. When he comes walking down the street, my God, it’s a resurrection. I do a dance, almost, I’m so glad to see him. I used to, anyway. I don’t dance any more. I just look. And when the man walks off, he’s dead again.’
Clemens laughed. ‘It’s simply that your mind works on a primitive level. You can’t hold on to things. You’ve got no imagination. Hitchcock, old man. You’ve got to learn to hold on.’
‘Why should I hold on to things I can’t use?’ said Hitchcock, his eyes wide, still staring into space. ‘I’m practical. If Earth isn’t here for me to walk on, you want me to walk on a memory? That hurts. Memories, as my father once said, are porcupines. To hell with them! Stay away from them. They make you unhappy. They ruin your work. They make you cry.’
‘I’m walking on Earth right now,’ said Clemens, squinting to himself, blowing smoke.
‘You’re kicking porcupines. Later in the day you won’t be able to eat lunch, and you’ll wonder why,’ said Hitchcock in a dead voice. ‘And it’ll be because you’ve got a footful of quills aching in you. To hell with it! If I can’t drink it, pinch it, punch it, or lie on it, then I say drop it in the sun. I’m dead to Earth. It’s dead to me. There’s no one in New York weeping for me tonight. Shove New York. There isn’t any season here; winter and summer are gone. So is spring, and autumn. It isn’t any particular night or morning: it’s space and space. The only thing right now is you and me and this rocket ship. And the only thing I’m positive of is me. That’s all of it.’
Clemens ignored this. ‘I’m putting a dime in the phone slot right now,’ he said, pantomiming it with a slow smile. ‘And calling my girl in Evanston. Hello, Barbara!’
The rocket sailed on through space.
The lunch bell rang at 1305 hours. The men ran by on soft rubber sneakers and sat at the cushioned tables.
Clemens wasn’t hungry.
‘See, what did I tell you!’ said Hitchcock. ‘You and your damned porcupines! Leave them alone, like I told you. Look at me, shoveling away food.’ He said this with a mechanical, slow, and unhumorous voice. ‘Watch me.’ He put a big piece of pie in his mouth and felt it with his tongue. He looked at the pie on his plate as if to see the texture. He moved it with his fork. He felt the fork handle. He mashed the lemon filling and watched it jet up between the tines. Then he touched a bottle of milk all over and poured out half a quart into a glass, listening to it. He looked at the milk as if to make it whiter. He drank the milk so swiftly that he couldn’t have tasted it. He had eaten his entire lunch in a few minutes, cramming it in feverishly, and now he looked around for more, but it was gone. He gazed out the window of the rocket, blankly. ‘Those aren’t real either,’ he said.
‘What?’ asked Clemens.
‘The stars. Who’s ever touched one? I can see them, sure, but what’s the use of seeing a thing that’s a million or a billion miles away? Anything that far off isn’t worth bothering with.’
‘Why did you come on this trip?’ asked Clemens suddenly.
Hitchcock peered into his amazingly empty milk glass and clenched it tight, then relaxed his hand and clenched it again. ‘I don’t know.’ He ran his tongue on the glass rim. ‘I just had to, is all. How do you know why you do anything in this life?’
‘You liked the idea of space travel? Going places?’
‘I don’t know. Yes. No. It wasn’t going places. It was being between.’ Hitchcock for the first time tried to focus his eyes upon something, but it was so nebulous and far off that his eyes couldn’t make the adjustment, though he worked his face and hands. ‘Mostly it was space. So much space. I liked the idea of nothing on top, nothing on the bottom, and a lot of nothing in between, and me in the middle of the nothing.’
‘I never heard it put that way before.’
‘I just put it that way; I hope you listened.’
Hitchcock took out his cigarettes and lit up and began to suck and blow smoke, again and again.
Clemens said, ‘What sort of childhood did you have, Hitchcock?’
‘I was never young. Whoever I was then is dead. That’s more of your quills. I don’t want a hideful, thanks. I’ve always figured it that you die each day and each day is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you’ve died a couple of thousand times in your life, and that’s a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don’t know or understand or want to understand.’
‘You’re cutting yourself off, that way.’
‘Why should I have anything to do with that younger Hitchcock? He was a fool, and he was yanked around and taken advantage of and used. His father was no good, and he was glad when his mother died, because she was the same. Should I go back and see his face on that day and gloat over it? He was a fool.’
‘We’re all fools,’ said Clemens. ‘all the time. It’s just we’re a different kind each day. We think, I’m not a fool today. I’ve learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact that we’re not perfect and live accordingly.’
‘I don’t want to remember imperfect things,’ said Hitchcock. ‘I can’t shake hands with that younger Hitchcock, can I? Where is he? Can you find him for me? He’s dead, so to hell with him! I won’t shape what I do tomorrow by some lousy thing I did yesterday.’
‘You’ve got it wrong.’
‘Let me have it then.’ Hitchcock sat, finished with his meal, looking out the port. The other men glanced at him.
‘Do meteors exist?’ asked Hitchcock.
‘You know damn well they do.’
‘In our radar machines – yes, as streaks of light in space. No, I don’t believe in anything that doesn’t exist and act in my presence. Sometimes’ – he nodded at the men finishing their food – ‘sometimes I don’t believe in anyone or anything but me.’ He sat up. ‘Is there an upstairs to this ship?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve got to see it immediately.’
‘Don’t get excited.’
‘You wait here; I’ll be right back.’ Hitchcock walked out swiftly. The other men sat nibbling their food slowly. A moment passed. One of the men raised his head. ‘How long’s this been going on? I mean Hitchcock.’
‘Just today.’
‘He acted funny the other day too.’
‘Yes, but it’s worse today.’
‘Has anyone told the psychiatrist?’
‘We thought he’d come out of it. Everyone has a little touch of space the first time out. I’ve had it. You get wildly philosophical, then frightened. You break into a sweat, then you doubt your parentage, you don’t believe in Earth, you get drunk, wake up with a hangover, and that’s it.’
‘But Hitchcock don’t get drunk,’ said someone. ‘I wish he would.’
‘How’d he ever get past the examining board?’
‘How’d we all get past? They need men. Space scares the hell out of most people. So the board lets a lot of borderlines through.’
‘That man isn’t a borderline,’ said someone. ‘He’s a fall-off-a-cliff-and-no-bottom-to-hit.’
They waited for five minutes. Hitchcock didn’t come back.
Clemens finally got up and went out and climbed the circular stair to the flight deck above. Hitchcock was there, touching the wall tenderly.
‘It’s here,’ he said.
‘Of course it is.’
‘I was afraid it might not be.’ Hitchcock peered at Clemens. ‘And you’re alive.’
‘I have been for a long time.’
‘No,’ said Hitchcock. ‘Now, just now, this instant, while you’re here with me, you’re alive. A moment ago you weren’t anything.’
‘I was to me,’ said the other.
‘That’s not important. You weren’t here with me,’ said Hitchcock. ‘Only that’s important. Is the crew down below?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you prove it?’
‘Look, Hitchcock, you’d better see Dr Edwards. I think you need a little servicing.’
‘No. I’m all right. Who’s the doctor, anyway? Can you prove he’s on this ship?’
‘I can. All I have to do is call him.’
‘No. I mean, standing here, in this instant, you can’t prove he’s here, can you?’
‘Not without moving, I can’t.’
‘You see. You have no mental evidence. That’s what I want, a mental evidence I can feel. I don’t want physical evidence, proof you have to go out and drag in. I want evidence that you can carry in your mind and always touch and smell and feel. But there’s no way to do that. In order to believe in a thing you’ve got to carry it with you. You can’t carry the Earth, or a man, in your pocket. I want a way to do that, carry things with me always, so I can believe in them. How clumsy to have to go to all the trouble of going out and bringing in something terribly physical to prove something. I hate physical things because they can be left behind and it becomes impossible to believe in them.’
‘Those are the rules of the game.’
‘I want to change them. Wouldn’t it be fine if we could prove things with our mind, and know for certain that things are always in their place? I’d like to know what a place is like when I’m not there. I’d like to be sure.’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘You know,’ said Hitchcock, ‘I first got the idea of coming out into space about five years ago. About the time I lost my job. Did you know I wanted to be a writer? Oh yes, one of those men who always talk about writing but rarely write. And too much temper. So I lost my good job and left the editorial business and couldn’t get another job and went on downhill. Then my wife died. You see, nothing stays where you put it – you can’t trust material things. I had to put my boy in an aunt’s trust, and things got worse; then one day I had a story published with my name on it, but it wasn’t me.’
‘I don’t get you.’
Hitchcock’s face was pale and sweating.
‘I can only say that I looked at the page with my name under the title. By Joseph Hitchcock. But it was some other man. There was no way to prove – actually prove, really prove – that that man was me. The story was familiar – I knew I had written it – but that name on the paper still was not me. It was a symbol, a name. It was alien. And then I realized that even if I did become successful at writing, it would never mean a thing to me, because I couldn’t identify myself with that name. It would be soot and ashes. So I didn’t write any more. I was never sure, anyway, that the stories I had in my desk a few days later were mine, though I remembered typing them. There was always that gap of proof. That gap between doing and having done. What is done is dead and is not proof, for it is not an action. Only actions are important. And pieces of paper were remains of actions done and over and now unseen. The proof of doing was over and done. Nothing but memory remained, and I didn’t trust my memory. Could I actually prove I’d written these stories? No. Can any author? I mean proof. I mean action as proof. No. Not really. Not unless someone sits in the room while you type, and then maybe you’re doing it from memory. And once a thing is accomplished there is no proof, only memory. So then I began to find gaps between everything. I doubted I was married or had a child or ever had a job in my life. I doubted that I had been born in Illinois and had a drunken father and swinish mother. I couldn’t prove anything. Oh yes, people could say, ‘You are thus-and-so and such-and-such,’ but that was nothing.’
‘You should get your mind off stuff like that,’ said Clemens.
‘I can’t. All the gaps and spaces. And that’s how I got to thinking about the stars. I thought how I’d like to be in a rocket ship in space, in nothing, in nothing, going on into nothing with just a thin something, a thin eggshell of metal holding me, going on away from all the somethings with gaps in them that couldn’t prove themselves. I knew then that the only happiness for me was space. When I get to Aldebaran ll I’ll sign up to return on the five-year journey to Earth and so go back and forth like a shuttlecock all the rest of my life.’
‘Have you talked about this to the psychiatrist?’
‘So he could try to mortar up the gaps for me, fill in the gulfs with noise and warm water and words and hands touching me, and all that? No, thanks.’ Hitchcock stopped. ‘I’m getting worse, aren’t I? I thought so. This morning when I woke up I thought. I’m getting worse. Or is it better?’ He paused again and cocked an eye at Clemens. ‘Are you there? Are you really there? Go on, prove it.’
Clemens slapped him on the arm, hard.
‘Yes,’ said Hitchcock, rubbing his arm, looking at it very thoroughly, wonderingly, massaging it. ‘You were there. For a brief fraction of an instant. But I wonder if you are – now.’
‘See you later,’ said Clemens. He was on his way to find the doctor. He walked away.
A bell rang. Two bells, three bells rang. The ship rocked as if a hand had slapped it. There was a sucking sound, the sound of a vacuum cleaner turned on. Clemens heard the screams and felt the air thin. The air hissed away about his ears. Suddenly there was nothing in his nose or lungs. He stumbled and then the hissing stopped.
He heard someone cry, ‘A meteor!’ Another said. ‘It’s patched!’ And this was true. The ship’s emergency spider, running over the outside of the hull, had slapped a hot patch on the hole in the metal and welded it tight.
Someone was talking and talking and then beginning to shout at a distance. Clemens ran along the corridor through the freshening, thickening air. As he turned in at a bulkhead he saw the hole in the steel wall, freshly sealed; he saw the meteor fragments lying about the room like bits of a toy. He saw the captain and the members of the crew and a man lying on the floor. It was Hitchcock. His eyes were closed and he was crying. ‘It tried to kill me,’ he said, over and over. ‘It tried to kill me.’ They got him on his feet. ‘It can’t do that,’ said Hitchcock. ‘That’s not how it should be. Things like that can’t happen, can they? It came in after me. Why did it do that?’
