The World At The End Of Time Part 20

Viktor tried to focus on him and failed. "All right, Daddy," Viktor said.

When he woke again his throat felt less like sandpaper, but his other parts were worse. Nor was his mind much clearer. He had a confused memory of being wakened and ordered to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e again into one of the soft, crystalline plastic vials, and of men's voices around him when he slept, but it was all hopelessly cloudy.

The voices were still going on. He lay trying to follow what they were talking about, with his eyes closed. Manett's voice drowned out the others. He was saying smugly, "You know what they want. They want you to jerk off into bottles. That's why they brought you up here, for sperm. It's like cross-breeding animals, you know? They've been out here for thousands of years and they want to get some lost genes back into the pool. Oh, it isn't just you guys. There are a couple of dozen of us real men around in one habitat or another that they've thawed out already. Not counting the stiffs-there's maybe a hundred of those stashed away in Nrina's cryonics place, waiting until she needs them."

"Is that where we were?" somebody asked.

"In the freezer? Of course that's where you were, where else? Nrina thaws out a few guys at a time for samples, then mostly they get sent away when she's through with them. But I stay here. I'm the only one on this habitat permanently. Nrina kept me to help her out, you know?"

Viktor heard a leering, sycophantic chuckle from one of the others. It sounded like Mescro. Then Manett's voice picked up again. "They collect a batch of corpsicles from the freezers on Newmanhome and bring them here. Nrina takes cell samples from each, then she thaws out the ones that look interesting. You know that jab on your a.s.ses?" Viktor remembered the bandage clearly enough. "Well, that's where she gouged out a piece to get a DNA sample."

"I don't remember that part," one of the others objected-Jeren, Viktor thought.

" 'Course not. How could you? You were frozen-that's why it made such a big hole." Manett pulled down the waistband of his skirt to display the spot on his own hip where only a puckered little dimple still showed. "Don't worry, it heals up. Then after she checks the sample out, if your genes look interesting, she thaws you out and turns you over to me."

"Is that why they tattooed us, to show we're like gene donors?" Korelto asked.

Manett laughed. "You think they need a tattoo to show that? Don't you see what they look like-skinny as skeletons? No, they can tell that much just by looking at us. That mark," he said, sounding prideful, "is kind of a like a warning, warning, you know? It tells all the women that we're still potent sperm donors. All the other males around here have that stuff turned off as soon as their b.a.l.l.s start working. They can make love, all right-believe me, it's one of their favorite things! But they don't produce sperm. The women don't want to get pregnant, you know." you know? It tells all the women that we're still potent sperm donors. All the other males around here have that stuff turned off as soon as their b.a.l.l.s start working. They can make love, all right-believe me, it's one of their favorite things! But they don't produce sperm. The women don't want to get pregnant, you know."

"But if they don't get pregnant, then how-"

"You mean babies? Sure they have babies, only they do it in a test tube, like. That's what Nrina does in her laboratory. They match up the sperm and the ovum in a kind of an incubator and they carry it to term, and when the baby's ready they pull it out and put it in a nursery. Listen, these people don't do anything anything that hurts. Or even makes them sweat-except for fun," he added, grinning. "Don't worry about it. If they ever decide they've got enough of your DNA they'll fix you, too, and then they'll take the mark off your forehead and you can plow right in." that hurts. Or even makes them sweat-except for fun," he added, grinning. "Don't worry about it. If they ever decide they've got enough of your DNA they'll fix you, too, and then they'll take the mark off your forehead and you can plow right in."

Jeren, who was somewhat slow of thought, had just gotten to the question that interested him. "Wait a minute," he said. "Are you saying that, you know, some of these women might want to . . ."

Manett looked smug. "Has happened," he announced.

"Even the cute one that thawed us out?"

Manett scowled. "Never mind about her," he said darkly. "Change the subject."

"Sure, Manett," Mescro said, grinning. "Only I notice you don't have the tattoo any more, and I was just wondering-"

"I said change the subject!" Manett roared. And then, as he saw Viktor trying to sit up, he said, "Oh, look, sleeping beauty's awake. What do you want, Viktor?"

"Well," Viktor said, trying to get the words out in spite of the sudden, almost breathless feeling that had hit him, "is it all men? I mean, if these people are so hungry for different genetic traits, don't they thaw out women, too?"

"h.e.l.l, no. Why would they do that? They don't really use the sperm, you know. It's just easy for them to work with, so they just extract the gene fragments they want, and then they mix them up with other strains to get the kind of genes they need for-for whatever they need them for, anyway. That's not my department. Nrina's told me all about that, but I guess I didn't listen. Anyway, that," he said, preening himself, "is one way we have an advantage over the women. We guys can produce a million sperms a day. Women can maybe do one ovum a month, if they're lucky, so if they want genes from a female they just do it the hard way, from tissue samples." He peered in a friendly manner at Viktor, who wasn't smiling. "What's the matter, you afraid you can't make your million a day?"

Viktor shook himself. "I-no. Nothing," he said.

But it hadn't really been nothing. It had been a quick flare-up of unexpected and quite unjustified hope, quickly blighted. No. There was no point in hoping along those lines.

Because that one little corner of his mind had suddenly come clear, like the desk that had showed him Nergal, and he had remembered Reesa.

For the next few days of Viktor's new life he thought of Reesa almost constantly-while he was falling asleep, while he was just coming awake, while he was donating his sperm samples, while he was eating, while he was trying to learn the new language-all the time. But he could think of her only as you think of the dead. Of the long dead, at that.

He wondered, in an abstracted sort of way, if Reesa had had a happy life after his freezing. He wondered if she had missed him, or if she had reconciled herself sooner or later to his loss and, say, married someone else. Someone like Mirian, perhaps. She would have been a prized sort of wife for a Great Catholic, Viktor thought, because she was quite capable of being s.e.xually active but no longer of complicating his life by becoming pregnant.

He told himself that he hoped she had married. He hoped she'd been happy-as happy as anyone could be in that world, anyway.

He didn't go so far as to hope she hadn't missed him. And he did miss her, certainly he did. But it was a sort of remote, somehow well-aged pain. As soon as he had heard the present date he had almost felt the quick, irrevocable shifting of gears in his mind. That history was ancient. ancient.

No one could mourn for four thousand years.

The curtain had come down on the first two acts of his life. He was just beginning Act Three.

It might not be the life he wanted . . . but it was the only life he had left.

Viktor forced himself to plunge into studying the language of these frail, remarkable people who had brought him back to life. It wasn't easy. The fog around his brain made everything difficult, but there was help for him.

The biggest help was the desks.

They were actually like his old teaching machines, he saw. They provided him with hours on end of conversation with the image of a friendly, helpful, wise teacher talking to him from the desk.

The teacher was certainly not real. real. Viktor knew that; it was a computer-generated, three-dimensional picture, and the fact that it looked like an amiable (if exceptionally skinny) young man did not deceive him. It was real enough to correct his accent, straighten out his grammar, and provide him with the translation of every word and thought he needed. Viktor knew that; it was a computer-generated, three-dimensional picture, and the fact that it looked like an amiable (if exceptionally skinny) young man did not deceive him. It was real enough to correct his accent, straighten out his grammar, and provide him with the translation of every word and thought he needed.

The others who had been revived with him were, of course, busy at the same thing. Only Jeren, the gentle giant, was finding the process as hard as Viktor. Jeren was not a bright man. It wasn't freezer burn in Jeren's case. The man had just been born with a few slow linkages in his brain. Even with the cobwebs that cluttered his own mind, Viktor was far quicker than Jeren.

All the same, it was Jeren who became Viktor's friend.

The little weasel Mescro was too busy trying to make a friend of Manett to pay attention to anyone who had no power, and he had attached Korelto to himself. It was Jeren who helped Viktor when he stumbled, Jeren who brought Viktor food in those first days when Viktor was too weak, or too dazed, to get up for it. He stood chastely by Viktor, eyes averted, while Viktor performed the rite of masturbation, and helped him back to bed when he was done. And he sat by Viktor, talking when Viktor felt like talking, silently watching while Viktor dozed.

Jeren was a big man-taller than Viktor, far taller than most of the people of Newmanhome's Ice Age. He was solid, too, a hulking bear of a man, with a voice that was deep but so soft it was almost inaudible. He seemed to try to stay out of everyone's way. When he spoke to anyone he averted his eyes, so as not to challenge the other person.

With all of Viktor's own problems, there was something about Jeren that made Viktor feel sorry for him-or feel contemptuous of him. Why would such a big man try so hard to efface himself? Only because he felt somehow small-and if a man thinks himself small, who is anyone else to say he isn't?

Viktor never succeeded in reconciling himself to what he had to do to earn his keep-most of all, because there was almost always someone there with him while he did it. Usually the person was Manett. The man seemed to enjoy humiliating his crew of sperm donors, and Viktor more than the others, it appeared. If there had ever been anything about s.e.x that Viktor disliked, it was trying to perform in the morning, but Manett was adamant. "Do your job," he ordered. "Then you eat. Then you get back to studying the language, and don't argue with me!" So, minutes after awakening every day, Viktor was standing in the sperm-donation cubicle, trying to think erotic.

What made it even more difficult was that sometimes Nrina, the woman who had supervised his thawing, followed him into the chamber. Viktor hated it when she stood behind him, because for some reason she had taken to watching with evident interest. Viktor glared confusedly at her. What he could see through her transparent, open-meshed smock stirred something inside him, all right, but it wasn't enough. He appealed to Manett. "I don't like her being here. It makes me-uh-it interferes." interferes."

Manett guffawed and translated. The woman replied politely. Viktor thought he could almost understand what she was saying now, in her husky, sweet voice, but he was glad when Manett translated anyway.

Manett didn't seem glad. He spoke sourly, as though he didn't like what he was saying. "She says she likes watching you, so go ahead."

"I don't think I can." can."

"What's that got to do with it? She-wait a minute." He listened to Nrina and then, glowering, addressed Viktor again. "She wants to know if you were really born on Old Earth."

"Of course I was. I told you." And then, turning to the woman, Viktor said haltingly in her own language, "This is true, yes."

"Get on with it!" Manett ordered, looking angry. "Or would you rather go back in the freezer?"

But the woman was laughing. She paused to say something to Manett and turned to leave the room. Manett looked annoyed. "Do it and then come out," he ordered. "And then Nrina says to hurry up and finish learning the language. She wants to talk to you."

The language wasn't as hard as Viktor had first feared. A long time had pa.s.sed, but there were still English words embedded in their vocabularies, or at least the ghosts of the words. The difference was far less than that between the language of his own day-whatever you took that day to be-and that of Beowulf. The vowel sounds had changed. The words were sometimes clipped and sometimes slurred, and there were many hundreds of wholly new words to learn, words that Viktor had never heard before because the things they referred to had never existed before. But within a week he could understand some of what Nrina was saying to Manett, and before long he could speak to her directly.

The "desk" teaching machines were marvelous tutors-and a good deal more. The desk was not simply for teaching. It did that function very well, but it was also an atlas, and an encyclopedia, and a patient tutor, repeating the same thing over and over again as long as Viktor wanted it, until Viktor's slowly recovering brain could absorb it.

It was especially fine as a picture book. Even though Viktor's brain was still fogged part of the time, and his memory sketchy almost always, he could follow what the machines told him about his new world he was living in. The human population of Newmanhome had not only recovered from its ice age (though not on Newmanhome), it had flourished madly. There were three hundred million people alive now, and they lived very well. Most of them were in what an earlier human would have called O'Neill habitats, and those were various but uniformly fine. Some were like an ancient English countryside, with trees and flowering plants and hedgerows; animals like rabbits and foxes lived in the wooded parts; songbirds and hummingbirds flew in their air. Some were like cities a mile through, with ten million people huddled together. Some were quite strange-there was even a wilderness habitat here and there with grizzly bears and tigers, jungles and forests, even great slow waterfalls. Viktor discovered that not everyone lived on the habitats. A few preferred to live on Nergal's natural moons, now terraformed and quite comfortable. Most people tried to spend a little time on one of them now and then. It was a form of sport for them, moving about in a real gravity field, though a tiny one. They did it to keep their bodies in shape.

Considering how their bodies had stretched out in those scores of generations in micro- or low gravity, they did that very well. As Viktor caught occasional glimpses of other inhabitants of the place, he could easily see that that was true. The people of this place didn't wear much in the way of clothing-a cache-s.e.x, a simple strip of cloth that covered their s.e.xual organs and the cleft between their b.u.t.tocks, was good enough for most practical purposes. Sometimes they wore a bit more. When Nrina was busy in her laboratory she wore a smock to keep the messes off her body, and sometimes she wore other things, just for the prettiness of them. Women wore nothing on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, most of the time. They didn't need to. In the gentle gravity of the habitat the b.r.e.a.s.t.s didn't sag.

The other side of that coin was that the males were less macho than Viktor was used to-much less. less.

The males were not much bigger than the women. Not much stronger, either, Viktor thought; large muscles weren't needed where they lived. (The man, Dekkaduk, from Nrina's laboratory turned out to be a puzzling exception.) Particularly since none of them did much physical labor. Compared to them, Viktor was a giant. He was bigger than most of his reawakened colleagues in the sperm banks, for that matter, since the Newmanhome of their time had not provided its children with a generous diet, and certainly never any fresh air.

When Viktor began to explore outside the immediate confines of Nrina's laboratory he encountered still more strangers. He even tried speaking to some of them now and again, for language practice, but he was wary. When he looked at them, he did not fail to see that they were looking at him as well, and with just as much speculative interest. He thought that the branding on the forehead was probably a useful precaution. Some of the glances from females were frankly s.e.xual, and Viktor appreciated that very much . . . the memory of Reesa slowly fading from his mind.

Some of the s.e.xually charged looks, however, were from people who were definitely male, and about that Viktor was far less pleased.

By the time Viktor could make himself understood to people like Nrina his life had fallen into a routine. He ate when food was offered. He slept when he was tired. He made his required four donations of sperm each day-a little surprised at himself, and not unpleased: after all, he was pretty nearly a middle-aged man now! And between times, all the time, he tried to learn this world he was in.

Of course, Viktor was not the only newcomer in the habitat. Jeren, Mescro, and Korelto were as innocent as himself, and two of them, at least, were curious. (Jeren wasn't. Jeren took what came without complaint or question. His main interest was in following Viktor around.) But those three had an advantage Viktor didn't share. All the things they wanted to know Manett, the veteran of more than eight months ahead of them out of the freezer, already knew-and told them. But it seemed that Manett just didn't like talking to Viktor.

For some reason, Viktor could not guess why, Manett had taken a dislike to him. More than a dislike. Viktor pondered, without resolving, the curious idea he had formed that sometimes, when he caught Manett's eyes on him, the expression in them looked almost like fear.

Then Nrina called him in for another examination.

When Viktor greeted her, careful with his p.r.o.nunciation, the woman looked pleased, but she just waved him to a table. There she did all the things she had already done to Viktor-touched his head with various instruments, studied the polychrome readings, and felt the part just above his temple that had hurt so badly, looking satisfied when he said it hurt no more.

"Your leg, then," she said, speaking slowly so that he could understand. He raised it obediently to the table, and she touched a buzzing rod to the dressing.

The pink sausage fell neatly open. Viktor looked, and smelled, and squinted his eyes shut, trying not to be sick. A big piece of his calf was gone. gone. What was left stank of dead meat and decay. What was left stank of dead meat and decay.

Nrina didn't seem to mind. She bent close to study it, by eye and with more of the instruments that flashed rainbow colors for her. Then, satisfied, she sprayed it with something that felt like nothing at all, but quickly dissipated the terrible odor and left the exposed raw meat covered with a film of metallic gold. She pressed the two halves of the wrapping back together and sat down facing Viktor, her knees hugged to her breast, regarding him.

When she spoke to Viktor it was slowly, a word at a time. "You have . . . suffered . . . damage . . . from improper freezing. For . . . a long time. Do you understand?" He nodded. "So . . . there are two things. Your leg. It will . . . I think . . . be all right . . . in a season. It will . . . heal completely."

"That is good," Viktor said.

She nodded seriously. "The brain . . . I do not know."

Viktor blinked at her. "What?"

"I have . . . inserted . . . additional material . . . in your brain . . . to replace . . . what was lost. It may take. I think it has . . . partly."

"Partly?"

"Perhaps more. We must wait."

"I have been waiting," he said bitterly.

She studied him thoughtfully for a moment. Then, smiling, she said, "You will . . . wait some more. Now go. You will help Manett. You must learn . . . to do his work."

Manett was waiting for Viktor outside the examination room, and his expression was even more dour than usual. When Viktor asked him what Nrina had meant, Manett flared up. "It means she's going to give you my job, job, d.a.m.n your hide!" he rasped. "Come on. I'll show you what to do-but just don't d.a.m.n your hide!" he rasped. "Come on. I'll show you what to do-but just don't talk talk to me!" And he led the way to the outermost sh.e.l.l of the habitat, where the wraithlike but oddly muscled man who had tattooed Viktor in the first place was waiting impatiently for them. to me!" And he led the way to the outermost sh.e.l.l of the habitat, where the wraithlike but oddly muscled man who had tattooed Viktor in the first place was waiting impatiently for them.

The man wasn't wearing a filmy robe now; he was dressed in shiny, copper-colored things like overalls, which covered everything from neck to feet, and he had a hood of the same material in his hand. "This is Dekkaduk," Manett said, short and surly. "Get dressed."

Dekkaduk looked at him inquiringly, but didn't say anything either. He waited while Viktor struggled into the same sort of garment. It was light and flexible, but it felt metallic. Still, it was elastic, too, because it slid over the sausage around Viktor's lower leg easily enough.

"Now," Dekkaduk said, "we go inside." He was speaking the language of the habitat people. Because Viktor was concentrating on what he was doing it took a moment for him to understand. Manett helped him along with a shove.

"Dekkaduk said move," move," he snapped. "Get your d.a.m.n hood on!" he snapped. "Get your d.a.m.n hood on!"

Then Viktor found out what his job was. All three of them donned their hoods, then crowded all together into a tiny cubicle; Manett pulled the outer door closed-it was thick but light-and opened a door on the other side.

Immediately the transparent front of Viktor's hood clouded over and he felt a stinging cold. A moment later he could feel Manett roughly poking at his back, doing something that resulted first in a faint click, then a hiss. The icy cold of the suit warmed; warm air began to flow through the hood. Gradually the frosted inside of the faceplate began to clear.

Viktor could see Manett's face bending toward his, and through the two visors he could see the man's look of sour satisfaction. When Manett spoke Viktor could see his lips move, but the voice came from inside the hood, right next to his ear. "You're all hooked up," Manett announced. "Now let's shift some stiffs."

And so they did. For an hour or more. Warm inside their heated suits, with their warmed air supply from the cables that connected them to sockets in the wall; and the stiffs they moved were corpsicles from the cryonics chambers on Newmanhome.

What Manett and Viktor did was the hard work-pulling out the old capsules, opening them to show the frozen bodies inside. The air in the freezer must have been searingly dry, for no frost had collected on either capsules or bodies. Some were facedown, and they were the easiest; all Viktor or Manett had to do was to pull or cut away the hard-frozen fabric over the hip and then stand aside while Dekkaduk thrust a triangle-bladed instrument into each patch of rock-hard flesh to gouge out a tiny sample. The ones who had been frozen faceup were more difficult. They had to be lifted out, or at least turned to one side, so that Dekkaduk could get at them; and then Viktor could see the frozen faces. Some were almost as though only asleep. Some were contorted. Some seemed to be silently screaming.

Then they slid the capsules back-each marked with its star or cross or crescent. Viktor was glad when it was over, because it was frightening to look on the corpsicles and know that not long before he had been just like them-and not very far in the future, maybe, might well be back there again.

Back in his own study room, as he leaned over the teaching desk, he blew on his fingers. They weren't really cold. It was his soul that was cold. He thought it would never be warm again.

But as he talked to his unreal mentor in the desk he began to forget the freezer. "What shall we study today, Viktor?" the simulacrum greeted him. "It is up to you to choose."

"Thank you," Viktor said, aware that he was thanking no one real. "Can you show me some more pictures, please?"

"Of course. Incidentally, your accent is getting much better. But what pictures would you like to see?"

"Well," Viktor said, "I used to be interested in astronomy. Can you show me what the skies look like now? I mean, not just Nergal, but everything?"

"Of course," the tutor said. "Perhaps it would be best to display it as a surround." It disappeared from the desk, and at once an image sprang up all around Viktor. The image blotted out everything but itself, and it was almost all black. "You are looking," the disembodied voice went on, "at every astronomical object that is visible from your present position. The habitats have been omitted." Indeed, Viktor saw, there was the glowing cinder of Nergal. There, behind Viktor, the sun blazed-not very bright, he thought, but then they were much farther away than Newmanhome; perhaps it really had regained all of its luminosity. A couple of quite bright things had perceptible disks-some of Nergal's moons, no doubt. He picked out a few smaller, bright objects-stars and a couple of planets . . .

Apart from that, nothing.

Nothing? Viktor sat up straight, staring around at the spa.r.s.ely featured sky. "But where's the Viktor sat up straight, staring around at the spa.r.s.ely featured sky. "But where's the universe?" universe?" he cried. he cried.

"You are referring to the optical concentration that was visible for some time," the calm, disembodied voice said. "That began to dim one thousand three hundred years ago, Viktor, and by eight hundred years ago, it was no longer detectable at all. What you see is is the universe, Viktor. There isn't anything else." the universe, Viktor. There isn't anything else."

And then, with a sickening certainty, Viktor at last began to believe. It had indeed been four thousand years.

Two days later what Manett said came true. When Viktor and the others started toward the room with the sample tubes, ready to do their work of filling them, Manett appeared. He looked angry and frightened at the same time. "Forget it," he said. "Nrina says she's got enough from you guys. We-" He swallowed. "We're leaving. All but Viktor, he stays here."

"Leaving for where?" Korelto demanded, startled.

Mescro looked searchingly at his mentor's face. "You've been fired," he guessed accusingly.

"Shut up, Mescro!" Manett snarled. "Let's go. There's a bus waiting."

"But-but-" Jeren cried, blinking as he tried to take the new situation in, "but we need to get ready!" ready!"

"For what? You've got nothing to pack," Manett said cruelly. "Come on. Not you," he added to Viktor, with poison in his voice. "Nrina wants to see you. Now."