anyone. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it. I saw it flapping against the window, and Dorky was trying to reach it, and I lifted Dorky up, and I don’t know why but Dorky grabbed it-”
“Sit down, Victor.” Martine led him to the overstuffed chair
and made him seat himself. “Something’s wrong,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “Something terrible is wrong. I’m responsible for the taking of a life, a precious life that can never be
replaced. I’m sorry. I wish I could make it okay, but I can’t.”
After a pause, Martine said, “Call Ray.”
“The cat-” he said.
“What cat?”
“There.” He pointed. “In the poster. On Fat Freddy’s lap.
That’s Dorky. Dorky killed Ray.”
Silence.
“The presence told me,” Kemmings said. “It was God. I
didn’t realize it at the time, but God saw me commit the crime.
The murder. And he will never forgive me.”
His wife stared at him numbly.
“God sees everything you do,” Kemmings said. “He sees
even the falling sparrow. Only in this case it didn’t fall; it was grabbed. Grabbed out of the air and tom down. God is tearing this house down which is my body, to pay me back for what I’ve done. We should have had a building contractor look this house over before we bought it. It’s just falling goddam to pieces. In a
year there won’t be anything left of it. Don’t you believe me?”
Martine faltered, “I-”
“Watch.” Kemmings reached up his arms toward the ceiling;
he stood; he reached; he could not touch the ceiling. He walked to the wall and then, after a pause, put his hand through the wall.
Martine screamed.
The ship aborted the memory retrieval instantly. But the harm had been done.
He has integrated his early fears and guilt into one interwoven grid, the ship said to itself. There is no way I can serve up a pleasant memory to him because he instantly contaminates it. However pleasant the original experience in itself was. This is a serious situation, the ship decided. The man is already showing signs of psychosis. And we are hardly into the trip; years lie ahead of him.
After allowing itself time to think the situation through, the
ship decided to contact Victor Kemmings once more.
“Mr. Kemmings,” the ship said.
“I’m sorry,” Kemmings said. “I didn’t mean to foul up those
retrievals. You did a good job, but I-”
“Just a moment,” the ship said. “1 am not equipped to do psychiatric reconstruction of you; I am a simple mechanism, that’s all. What is it you want? Where do you want to be and what do you want to be doing?”
“I want to arrive at our destination,” Kemmings said. “I want
this trip to be over.”
Ah, the ship thought. That is the solution.
One by one the cryonic systems shut down. One by one the people returned to life, among them Victor Kemmings. What amazed him was the lack of a sense of the passage of time. He had entered the chamber, lain down, had felt the membrane cover him and the temperature begin to drop
And now he stood on the ship’s external platform, the unloading platform, gazing down at a verdant planetary landscape. This, he realized, is LR4-6, the colony world to which I have
come in order to begin a new life.
“Looks good,” a heavyset woman beside him said.
“Yes,” he said, and felt the newness of the landscape rush up
at him, its promise of a beginning. Something better than he had known the past two hundred years. I am a fresh person in a fresh world, he thought. And he felt glad.
Colors raced at him, like those of a child’s semi animate kit. Saint Elmo’s fire, he realized. That’s right; there is a great deal
of ionization in this planet’s atmosphere. A free light show, such as they had back in the twentieth century.
“Mr. Kemmings,” a voice said. An elderly man had come up
beside him, to speak to him. “Did you dream?”
“During the suspension?” Kemmings said. “No, not that I
can remember.”
“I think I dreamed,” the elderly man said. “Would you take my arm on the descent ramp? I feel unsteady. The air seems thin. Do you find it thin?”
“Don’t be afraid,” Kemmings said to him. He took the elderly man’s arm. “I’ll help you down the ramp. Look; there’s a guide coming this way. He’ll arrange our processing for us; it’s part of the package. We’ll be taken to a resort hotel and given first-class accommodations. Read your brochure.” He smiled at the uneasy older man to reassure him.
“You’d think our muscles would be nothing but flab after ten
years in suspension,” the elderly man said.
“It’s just like freezing peas,” Kemmings said. Holding onto the timid older man, he descended the ramp to the ground. “You can store them forever if you get them cold enough.”
“My name’s Shelton,” the elderly man said.
“What?” Kemmings said, halting. A strange feeling moved
through him.
“Don Shelton.” The elderly man extended his hand; reflexively, Kemmings accepted it and they shook. “What’s the matter, Mr. Kemmings? Are you all right?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’m fine. But hungry. I’d like to get something to eat. I’d like to get to our hotel, where I can take a shower and change my clothes.” He wondered where their baggage could be found. Probably it would take the ship an hour to unload it. The ship was not particularly intelligent.
In an intimate, confidential tone, elderly Mr. Shelton said, “You know what I brought with me? A bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. The finest bourbon on Earth. I’ll bring it over to your hotel room and we’ll share it.” He nudged Kemmings.
“I don’t drink,” Kemmings said. “Only wine.” He wondered if there were any good wines here on this distant colony world. Not distant now, he reflected. It is Earth that’s distant. I should have done like Mr. Shelton and brought a few bottles with me.
Shelton. What did the name remind him of? Something in his far past, in his early years. Something precious, along with good wine and a pretty, gentle young woman making crepes in an old-fashioned kitchen. Aching memories; memories that hurt.
Presently he stood by the bed in his hotel room, his suitcase open; he had begun to hang up his clothes, In the comer of the room, a TV hologram showed a newscaster; he ignored it, but, liking the sound of a human voice, he kept it on.
Did I have any dreams? he asked himself. During these past ten years?
His hand hurt. Gazing down, he saw a red welt, as if he had been stung, A bee stung me, he realized. But when? How? While I lay in cryonic suspension? Impossible, Yet he could see the welt and he could feel the pain. I better get something to put on it, he realized. There’s undoubtedly a robot doctor in the hotel; it’s a first-rate hotel.
When the robot doctor had arrived and was treating the bee sting, Kemmings said, “I got this as punishment for killing the
bird,”
“Really?” the robot doctor said,
“Everything that ever meant anything to me has been taken
away from me,” Kemmings said. “Martine, the poster-my little old house with the wine cellar, We had everything and now it’s
gone. Martine left me because of the bird.”
“The bird you killed,” the robot doctor said.
“God punished me. He took away all that was precious to me
because of my sin. It wasn’t Dorky’s sin; it was my sin.” “But you were just a little boy,” the robot doctor said. “How did you know that?” Kemmings said. He pulled his
hand away from the robot doctor’s grasp. “Something’s wrong.
You shouldn’t have known that.”
“Your mother told me,” the robot doctor said.
“My mother didn’t know!”
The robot doctor said, “She figured it out. There was no way
the cat could have reached the bird without your help.”
“So all the time that I was growing up she knew. But she never
said anything.”
“You can forget about it,” the robot doctor said.
Kemmings said, “I don’t think you exist. There is no possible
way that you could know these things. I’m still in cryonic suspension and the ship is still feeding me my own buried memories, So I won’t become psychotic from sensory deprivation.”
“You could hardly have a memory of completing the trip.”
“Wish fulfillment, then. It’s the same thing. I’ll prove it to
you. Do you have a screwdriver?”
“Why?”
Kemmings said, “I’ll remove the back of the TV set and you’ll
see; there’s nothing inside it; no components, no parts, no chassis-nothing, ”
“I don’t have a screwdriver.”
“A small knife, then. I can see one in your surgical supply
bag,” Bending, Kemmings lifted up a small scalpel. “This will do. If I show you, will you believe me?”