MacRoscope (58 page)

A supermarket.

Ahead of her was an aisle bordered by towering promontories of canned goods: on one side beans — lima, pinto, kidney, navy, great northern, vegetarian, pork , black-eyed peas. On the other side, other vegetables — potatoes, canned sliced white; corn, whole kernel; corn, cream-style; tomatoes, stewed; peas, baby; peas, dried; beets, cut. To one side beyond the near islands were the fresh vegetable bins, leafy green, round red, puffy white. To the other side was the main portion of the store, neat hanging signposts identifying the aisles; there were pyramidding displays of canned fruit juice, boxed powdered milk, cartoned cigarettes, bagged charcoal and the eleventh volume of a cheap coupon-encyclopedia.

Shoppers moved with their wire push-baskets, their noisy children running free to sneeze into the wilting lettuce, splatter bottles of grape-juice on the worn tiles, and eat bananas before they were weighed and marked, dropping the peels behind the larger boxes of detergent where the cleanup crews wouldn’t discover them for days. Harried housewives changed their minds about half-gallon cardboard containers of ice cream and left them melting on the racks of chewing gum by the cash registers. Pot-bellied, sun-baked men ambled along in shorts and the hairs on their chests, picking up six-packs of beer. Freshly nubile girls clustered titteringly near the magazine rack, ignoring the PLEASE DO NOT READ IN STORE sign.

Afra stood there, absorbing it all. This was not the kind of vision she had anticipated. The market was ordinary, the people typical. Everything was routine middle-class, and there was nothing alien or even outré about it, apart from its slightly old-fashioned aspect. Certainly it illuminated the “truth” about the Traveler signal in no obvious way.

She turned about, seeking the exit. It was her conjecture that this vision would endure for an established period, and that whatever was to be manifested would
be
manifested regardless of her own actions. All she could do was wait it out, and act to preserve her equanimity.

Her eye fixed on a man standing in the nearest checkout line. He was muffled up as though braced against a storm, though the temperature within the store was comfortable, and he wore a tall silk hat tilted at a rakish angle. His hand was buried in a pocket as though he were searching for small change, and there was something familiar about him.

And she was screaming and running down the aisle away from that sight, terrified. She lurched into the bean shelf, hurting her shoulder and sending cans toppling down about her and bouncing to the floor and rolling across the aisle. People turned to look at the commotion, surprised.

“No!” she cried shrilly. “I reject it! I refuse—”

So negative was her reaction that the scene itself wavered, losing its reality. She
knew
it was a vision, and she had a strong will and a fundamental aversion, and it was enough. The setting could not hold her any more than a nightmare could hold the sleeper who once consciously realized that it was dream-fabric and rejected it.

The room in the destroyer station came into view, the other people floating in their places. She had broken out.

Harold and Beatryx appeared to be conscious also, until she saw that they were not reacting to tangible events. Their eyes moved, their limbs worked, and now and then one of them would speak — but they paid no attention to her or to each other. They were deep in vision.

Ivo still played his instrument. His hands did all of it; he did not need to blow into any type of mouthpiece. The sounds were a medley of instruments, an entire orchestra, but with four predominating: the violin, the flute, the French horn and the bassoon. She could even pick out the individual themes. Strongest, for her, was that of the bassoon, though she knew it to be a difficult instrument to play effectively. Once someone had told her a story of a bassoonist who had gone crazy because of the reaction of his body to the reed vibration, tight lip-compression and extended breath pressure; he had suffered from chronic suffocation during long passages because he never had enough time to breathe
out
, and so his brain had been starved of oxygen. She had rejected this notion even in childhood, but knew that the bassoon in certain respects defied the conventional laws of sound, and that standard fingering did not guarantee proper notes.

She remembered hearing — minutes ago? hours? — one of the distinctive bassoon passages that composers were fond of; they were typically enamored of the coloring of this instrument’s tone, and of the clownlike propensities of its upper register. She had experienced both a short while ago, when she had been a—

A goat?

She shrugged away the suggestion. Evidently music did have power — the power to project the members of the present company into individual visions. Was Ivo himself having a vision? He was playing — yet his eyes moved and his lips parted as though in speech, without a sound. A partial vision, perhaps.

She had escaped the nightmare planned for her, but did not seem to be much better off. She was with the others physically, but in effect alone. What had gone wrong? Surely she should have entered an illumination of history or philosophy, not a supermarket!

Beatryx spoke: first an embarrassed laugh, then words. “I am not fair! I’m almost forty!”

Almost. Harold had of course made up one of his horoscopes on her, saying something about a “seesaw” planetary typing. From that, ironically, he was able to conclude that Beatryx was the proper wife for him. Was he right? It did seem so. And what did he have to say about Afra’s own marital propensities, determined by her moment of birth? She had never admitted it to him, but she was quite curious.

As though in answer to his wife, Harold said: “One static brush for the Queen.”

Ivo went on playing, and from his weird instrument the music of the symphony projected throughout the chamber. Afra continued to respond to the passages of the bassoon, neither loud nor sharp yet truly penetrating in their fashion. Almost, as she watched, she could make out the outline of the unique woodwind within the framework of his moving hands. Eight feet of tubing, narrowing and folding back upon itself, with the tilted slender mouthpiece containing the double reed, and with holes to govern the notes. The theme was expressive, distinctive, evocative, expert, soulful; it moved her, drew her down into—

She yanked herself out, refusing to reenter that vision.

“It’s very nice,” Beatryx said. “But—”

“The Drone
will
assume command,” Harold replied.

A pause. “Thank you so much.”

Afra watched and listened, confining the encompassing music to the background of her awareness. They were participating, and she was not, and that bothered her — but her own vision was unacceptable. Could she enter one of theirs?

“What is the immediate objective?” Harold asked. Afra arched an eyebrow at him. “The immediate objective? To find out exactly what is—”

“And the mines will prevent subsequent attacks?”

“That depends what—”

“How does the Felk armament compare to ours?”

Afra shrugged. “I don’t think you’re paying proper attention, Harold.”

“How much time do we have?”

She looked at Beatryx and at Ivo. “We may have forever, Harold, if we don’t get out of here before we starve.
If
we can starve in vision-land. Dreaming may be entertaining, but, as Frost said—”

“How much time do we have before the enemy breaks through and destroys the station?”

“Really, Robert Frost is hardly an enemy. He—”

“You plan to wait for them to attack?”

“As Frost said: ‘The dreams are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And—’ ”

“Why?”

“Harold, you don’t ask ‘why?’ to a poem!”

“Yet with their ships massed and traveling at high velocity, our scattered forces cannot hope to stop them all. And one ship should be sufficient to blast the station.”

“Of course Frost said ‘woods’ rather than ‘dreams’ but I thought I’d—”

“You have no manuals of strategy?”

“No I don’t, damn you! I stick to simple sex appeal.”

“Provided he lives.”

“Provided
you
live. You are impossible, Harold.”

“And the Felks are similarly organized? No study of the lessons of history?”

She turned away from him, finding the amusement shallow. The mellow bassoon theme surrounded her again, and she fought it off again. She could even make out the rosewood length of the instrument, the distinctive circle of ivory around the top opening. Despite the bizarre circumstance she was moved by the poignant beauty of Ivo’s music. He had taken this alien contraption and produced — a symphony, each theme, each instrument of which was discrete and perfect. He
was
a skilled bassoonist, as well as a remarkable flutist. If only she had known about his musical gifts earlier!

Beatryx looked unhappy. “Here?” she inquired.

Afra wondered what it was that so disturbed the woman; then, observing her actions, began to understand. Inadequate sanitary facilities, in that particular vision. She went to help Beatryx, so as to spare her embarrassment when she came out of it. It turned out to be the motions only, and a little later the older woman slept.

Time passed.

Harold talked again, of ships and tactics and negotiations. Never, oddly, of astrology. She would have been happier if he had.

Afra practiced swimming in the air, and made her way away from the others. She searched for the boundaries of the chamber, but the mist became dense — “lovely, dark and deep,” she thought — and in this free-fall state she had no internal sense of direction. She realized that she could lose herself here, from even that pseudo-companionship the others provided, and did not relish the prospect.

She returned to the group, fixed her eyes on Ivo and his mythical band, and allowed herself to drift toward sleep. When this was over, there would be — oh, important matters — to discuss with him. His — well, his talents, and… his…

Nothing had changed when she woke.

“I really don’t know anything about campsites,” Beatryx was saying.

Several hours had passed, certainly — yet she was not hungry or otherwise in distress, physically. It was as though bodily processes had ceased for the duration, except as suggested (but not consummated) in the visions for verisimilitude. Somehow consciousness, direct or indirect, persisted in each person in spite of this stasis. Another marvel of galactic science? Why not.

Ivo still played. She wondered how his steadily agile hands were enduring. No fatigue either, here? At any rate, the visions were likely to end when the music finished. Then what?

Their mission —
her
mission — had brought them to this dread place, yet the climax was oddly insubstantial. Where was the enemy? Where the denouement? She had not really expected to struggle bloodily against a horde of ravening monsters; but
this
?

More hours passed. Harold slept. Beatryx went through a mysterious episode of terror, crying “Kill it!” and after subsiding from that, “That’s a man!” Then she was very quiet.

Harold talked to someone or something evidently inhuman, unhuman. Portions of his dialogue were revealing. “You are the one-in-a-thousand! The species that is immune to the destroyer… You — you built the destroyer!… Why are you doing this? Why are you reserving true space travel for yourselves?” Then: “And I am supposed to — to participate in the other side too? When I’m not even certain I agree with
this
side?”

Waking or dreaming, at least Harold seemed to know which side he was on. He was putting up, in his fashion, a good fight. Afra, in his (assumed) position, would have deleted the polite qualifications and told somebody to go to hell sideways.

“The destroyer — only destroys evil minds?”

Afra was forming more of the picture. Evil minds — like that of Bradley Carpenter? Surely Harold would not succumb to casuistry of that ilk.

But certain other bits he uttered stirred the beginnings of a profound doubt in her. Had they misjudged the destroyer, after all this? Impossible — yet…

Beatryx began to speak again. She was talking with someone about fire, and water, and humanity. Before that she had spent considerable time calling “Black — black — where are you?” Afra had had to tune out the plaintive repetition. Now they were talking together, and Harold was finally on the subject of astrology. It was difficult to follow both conversations simultaneously, and she had to settle for snatches from one or the other.

Then: “You were
not
wrong, Dolora.”

Beatryx went through an inexplicable series of contortions, then was walking or swimming strenuously, while Harold continued blithely discoursing on astrological technology. Then a sudden outburst: “But you don’t understand! You have to listen—”

Her voice was cut off by an inarticulate noise, and Beatryx doubled over, her face twisted in agony.

Afra paddled over as rapidly as she could, aware that a new and ugly element had been added. A crisis of some sort was at hand.

Ivo went on playing.

Beatryx was lying quietly by the time she got there. Afra tried to lift the older woman, but in the null-G only wrestled herself around. It was pointless, anyway — position made no difference, when there was no weight to support. She was acting without thinking, and to no avail.

Suddenly she realized that Beatryx was not breathing.

Afra clasped the woman’s head, poked a finger in her mouth to clear it of any possible obstruction, and applied the kiss of life: mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

There was no immediate response, but she kept on, exhaling into Beatryx’s lungs, breaking to inhale herself while hugging the inert chest to force out the air. Again, she could not depend on gravity to assist.

As she labored in such measured desperation, hearing Ivo’s bassoon and Harold’s intermittent remarks in the background, scenes of their association illuminated her vision.

Beatryx, at the torus-station, carrying a platter of food in to their first meal as a foursome: She and Harold, Afra and Ivo… and Brad too, then. Beatryx, beside her as Joseph blasted into space with the macroscope. Beatryx, trying to comprehend a difficult concept during an early discussion. Beatryx, declaring “Meeting come to order!” Beatryx in spacesuit, tentatively exploring the Schön-moonlet of Triton.