Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume Two (13 page)

“Plague, brought in by Haitian smugglers. And the water was going bad, salt intrusion destroyed the whole system. Four years of drought had aggravated everything. Then the biggest hurricane of the century hit and that was just too bloody much. Thirty thousand deaths. They never recovered.”

She was shaking her head now. “You have the chronology all mixed up. First the drop in population, the exodus, then the plague. It was like that everywhere. First the population began to sag, and in industrialized nations that spelled disaster. Then flu strains that no one had ever seen before, and plague. There weren’t enough doctors; plants had closed down because of a labor shortage. There was no defense. In the ten years before the epidemics, the population had dropped by twenty percent.”

I didn’t believe her, and she must have known it from my expression. She stood up. “I don’t know what’s in the water, Sax. It’s crawling with things that I can’t identify, but we pretend that they belong and that they’re benign. And God help us, we’re the ones teaching the new generation. Let’s swim.”

Lying on my back under the broiling sun, I tried again to replay the scene with my boss. Nothing came of it. He hadn’t told me why he was sending me to Miami. Report back. On what? Everything you see and hear, everything they all do. For the record. Period.

Miami hadn’t been the first city to be evacuated. It had been the largest up to that time. Throughout the Midwest, the far west, one town, one city after another had been left to the winds and rains and the transients. No one had thought it strange enough to investigate. The people were going to the big cities where they could find work. The young refused to work the land. Or agribusiness had bought them out. No mystery. Then larger cities had been emptied. But that was because of epidemics: plague, flu, hepatitis. Or because of government policies: busing or open housing; or the loss of government contracts for defense work. Always a logical explanation. Then Miami. And the revelation that population zero had been reached and passed. But that had to be because of the plagues. Nothing else made any sense at all. I looked at Corrie resentfully. She was dozing after our swim. Her body was gold-brown now, with highlights of red on her shoulders, her nose, her thighs. It was too easy to reject the official reasons, especially if you weren’t responsible for coming up with alternative explanations.

“I think they sent you because they thought you would come back,” Corrie said, without opening her eyes. “I think that’s it.” She rolled on her side and looked at me.

“You know with Trainor gone, maybe none of us will get back,” I said.

“If we hug the shore we should make it, except that we have no gas.”

I looked blank, I suppose. She laughed. “No one told you? He took the gas when he left. Or the snake that killed him drank it. I think he found a boat that would get him to the Bahamas, and he went. I suppose that’s why he came, to get enough gas to cruise the islands. That’s why he insisted on getting down by sail, to save what gas Evinson had requisitioned for this trip. There’s no one left on the islands, of course.”

I had said it lightly, that we might not get back, but with no gas, it became a statement of fact. None of us could operate the sail, and the boat was too unwieldy to paddle. The first storm would capsize us, or we would run aground. “Didn’t Trainor say anything about coming back?”

“He didn’t even say anything about leaving.” She closed her eyes and repeated, “There’s no one there at all.”

“Maybe,” I said. But I didn’t believe there was, either. Suddenly, looking at Corrie, I wanted her, and I reached for her arm. She drew away, startled. They said that sun-spot activity had caused a decrease in sexual activity. Sporadically, with some of us. I grabbed Corrie’s arm hard and pulled her toward me. She didn’t fight, but her face became strained, almost haggard.

“Wait until tomorrow, Davidson. Please. I’ll ovulate tomorrow. Maybe you and I…” I saw the desperation then, and the fear—worse, terror. I saw the void in her eyes, pupils the size of pinpricks in the brilliant light, the irises the color of the endless water beyond us. I pushed her away and stood up.

Don’t bring me your fear, I wanted to say. All my life I had been avoiding the fear and now she would thrust it upon me. I left her lying on the beach.

Evinson was sick that night. He vomited repeatedly, and toward dawn he became delirious.

J.P. and I took turns sitting with him, because the women weren’t strong enough to restrain him when he began to thrash about. He flung Corrie against the wall before we realized his strength and his dementia.

“He’s dying, isn’t he?” J.P. said, looking at him coolly. He was making a study of death, I thought.

“I don’t know.”

“He’s dying. It might take a while, but this is the start of it.” He looked at me fixedly for a long time. “None of us is going back, Sax. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going back. You’re all a bunch of creepies, crazy as bedbugs, all of you. But I’m going back!”

“Don’t yell.” His voice remained mild, neutral, an androgynous voice without overtones of anything human at all.

I stamped from the room to get a beer, and when I got back, J.P. was writing in his notebook. He didn’t look up again. Evinson got much worse, louder, more violent, then his strength began to ebb and he subsided, moaning fitfully now and then, murmuring unintelligibly. Corrie checked him from time to time. She changed the dressing on his hand; it was swollen to twice its normal size, the swelling extending to his shoulder. She looked at him as dispassionately as J.P. did.

“A few more hours,” she said. “Do you want me to stay up with you?”

“What for?” I asked coldly. “I must say you’re taking this well.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. What good would it do if I put on an act and wept for him?”

“You might care because he’s a man who didn’t deserve to die in this stinking city.”

She shrugged. “I’ll go on to bed. Call me if there’s any change.” At the doorway she turned and said, “I’ll weep for myself, maybe even for you, Sax, but not for him. He knew what this would be like. We all did, except possibly you.”

“You won’t have to waste any tears for me. Go on to bed.” She left and I said to J.P., “You all hate him, don’t you? Why?”

J.P. picked up his pen again, but he hesitated. “I hadn’t thought of it as hating him,” he said thoughtfully. “I just never wanted to be near him. He’s been trying to climb onto the glory train for years. Special adviser to presidents about urban affairs, that sort of thing. Absolutely no good at it, but very good at politics. He made them all think there was still hope. He lied and knew he lied. They used to say those that can do; those that can’t teach. Now the saying goes, those that can’t become sociologists.” He put his pen down again and began to worry at a hangnail. His hands were very long and narrow, brown, bony with prominent knuckles. “A real scientist despises the pseudoscientist who passes. Something unclean about him, the fact that he could get permission for this when his part of it was certain to be negligible from the start.”

“And yours was important from the start, I suppose?”

“For fifteen years I’ve wanted to get back into field research. Every year the funds dwindled more. People like me were put into classrooms, or let go. It really isn’t fair to the students, you understand. I’m a rotten teacher. I hate them all without exception. I crammed and worked around the clock to get as good a background as I could, and when I was ready, I forced myself on Albert Lanier.” He looked at me expectantly and I shook my head. Only later did I recall the name. Lanier had written many of the books on marine biology that were in the libraries. J.P.’s look became contemptuous. “He was a great man and a greater scientist. During his last years when he was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, I was his eyes, his legs, his hands. When he died all field research died with him. Until now.”

“So you’re qualified for this work.”

“Yes, I’m qualified. More than that fool.” He glanced at Evinson, who was breathing very shallowly. “More than anyone here. If only my work is made known, this farce will be worth ten of him, of all of you.

“If?”

“If. Would any one of my own students know what I’m doing? My own students!” He bit the hangnail and a spot of blood appeared on his thumb. He started to scribble again.

At daybreak Evinson’s fever started to climb, and it rose steadily until noon. We kept him in wet sheets, we fanned him, Corrie gave him cool enemas. Nothing helped. He died at one-thirty. I was alone with him. Corrie and Delia were both asleep.

J.P. knew when he looked at my face. He nodded. I saw his pack then. “Where the hell are you going?”

“Down the coast. Maybe down the Keys, as far as I can get. I’d like to see if the coral is coming back again.”

“We leave here Saturday morning at dawn. I don’t give a damn who’s here and who isn’t. At dawn.”

He smiled mockingly and shook his head. He didn’t say good-bye to anyone, just heaved his pack onto his back and walked away.

I rummaged on the
Loretta
and found a long-handled, small-bladed shovel, and I buried Evinson on the beach, above the high-water mark.

When I got back Corrie was up, eating a yellow fruit with a thick rind. I knocked it out of her hand reflexively. “Are you out of your mind! You know the local fruits might kill us.” She had juice on her chin.

“I don’t know anything anymore. That’s a mango, and it’s delicious. I’ve been eating the fruits for three days. A touch of diarrhea the first day, that’s all.” She spoke lightly, and didn’t look at me. She began to cut another one.

“Evinson died. I buried him. J.P. left.”

She didn’t comment. The aromatic odor from the fruit seemed to fill the room. She handed me a slice and I threw it back at her.

Delia came down then looking better than she had in days. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes livelier than I had seen them. She looked at Corrie, and while she didn’t smile, or do anything at all, I knew.

“Bitch,” I said to Corrie bitterly. “Wait until tomorrow. Right. Bitch!”

“Take a walk, Sax,” Delia said sharply.

“Let’s not fight,” Corrie said. “He’s dead and J.P.’s gone.” Delia shrugged and sat down at the table. Corrie handed her a piece of the mango. “Sax, you knew about me, about us. Whether or not you wanted to know, you did. Sometimes I tried to pretend that maybe I could conceive, but I won’t. So forget it. What are you going to do?”

“Get the hell out of here. Go home.”

“For what?” Delia asked. She tasted the slice of mango, then bit into it. She frowned critically. “I like the oranges better.”

“These grow on you,” Corrie said. “I’ve developed an absolute craving for them in the past three days. You’ll see.”

“I don’t know about you,” I said furiously, “but I’m leaving Saturday. I have things to do that I like doing. I like to read. To see a show now and then. I have friends.”

“Are you married? Do you live with a woman? Or a man?” Delia asked.

I looked at Corrie. “We’re in trouble. It’ll take the three of us to manage the boat to get back. We have to make plans.”

“We aren’t going back,” Corrie said softly. “We’re going to the Seminoles.”

“Corrie, listen to me. I’ve been out farther than either of you. There’s nothing. Ruins. Rot. Decay. No roads. Nothing. Even if they existed, you’d never find them.”

“There’s the remains of the road. Enough for us to follow west.”

“Why didn’t you try a little bribery with me?” I yelled at her. “Maybe I would have changed my mind and gone with you.”

“I didn’t want you, Sax. I didn’t think the Seminoles would want to take in a white man.”

I left them alone for the rest of the day. I checked the
Loretta
again, swam, fished, groomed. That night I pretended that nothing had been said about Seminoles. We ate silently.

Outside was the blackness and the silence, and somewhere in the silence a scream waited. The silence seemed to be sifting in through the mosquito netting. The wind had stopped completely. The air was close and very hot inside the building. “I’m going out,” I said as soon as I finished eating.

Delia’s question played through my mind as I walked. Did I live with a woman? Or a man? I stopped at the edge of the water. There were no waves on the bay, no sound except a gentle water murmur. Of all the people I knew, I could think of only three that I would like to see again, two of them because I had lived with them in the past, and our relationships had been exciting, or at least not abrasive, while they had lasted. And when they were finished, the ending hadn’t been shattering. Two women, both gone from my life completely. One man, a coworker in my department. We did things together, bowled, swapped books, saw shows together. Not recently, I reminded myself. He had dropped out of sight.

A gust of wind shook me and I started back. A storm was coming up fast. The wind became erratic and strong, and as suddenly as the wind had started, the rain began. It was a deluge that blinded me, soaked me, and was ankle deep in the street almost instantly. Then, over the rain, I heard a roar that shook me through and through, that left me vibrating. A tornado, I knew, although I had never seen or heard one. The roar increased, like a plane bearing down on me. I threw myself flat, and the noise rocked the ground under me, and a building crashed to my left, then another, and another. It ended as abruptly as it had started.

I stumbled back to our building, shaking, chilled and very frightened. I was terrified that our building would be demolished, the women gone, dead, and that I would be alone with the silence and the black of the night.

Corrie opened the door on the first floor and I stumbled in. “Are you all right? It was a tornado, wasn’t it?”

She and Delia were both afraid. That was reassuring. Maybe now they would be frightened enough to give up the nonsense about staying here. The storm abated and the silence returned. It didn’t seem quite so ominous now.

“Corrie, don’t you see how dangerous it would be to stay? There could be a hurricane. Storms every day. Come back with me.”