Table Of ContentOrbit 12
By Damon Knight Proofed By MadMaxAU
Contents
Edward Bryant
SHARK
Ursula K. Le Guin DIRECTION OF THE ROAD
Michael Bishop THE WINDOWS IN DANTE’S HELL
Brian W. Aldiss Four Stories SERPENT BURNING ON AN ALTAR
WOMAN IN SUNLIGHT WITH MANDOLINE
THE YOUNG SOLDIER’S HOROSCOPE
CASTLE SCENE WITH PENITENTS
Kate Wilhelm THE RED CANARY
Mel Gilden WHATS THE MATTER WITH HERBIE?
Edward Bryant PINUP
Vonda N. McIntyre THE GENIUS FREAKS
Steve Chapman BURGER CREATURE
Doris Piserchia HALF THE KINGDOM
Gene Wolfe CONTINUING WESTWARD
Arcs & Secants
Edward Bryant
SHARK
THE WAR came and left but returned for him eighteen years
later.
Folger should have known when the clouds of smaller fish
disappeared. He should have guessed but he was preoccupied
stabilizing the cage at ten meters, then sliding out the upper
hatch. Floating free, he stared into the gray-green South
Atlantic. Nothing. With his tongue he keyed the mike embedded
in his mouthpiece. The sonex transmitter clipped to his tanks
coded and beamed the message: “Query—Valerie—location.”
He repeated it. Electronics crackled in his ear, but there was no
response.
Something moved to his right—something a darker gray, a
darker green than the water. Then Folger saw the two dark
eyes. Her body took form in the murk. A blunt torpedo shape
gliding, she struck impossibly fast.
It was Folgers mistake and nearly fatal. He had hoped she
would circle first. The great white shark bore straight in, mouth
grinning open. Folger saw the teeth, only the teeth, rows of
ragged white. “Query—” he screamed into the sonex.
Desperately he brought the shark billy in his right hand
forward. The great white jaws opening and closing, triangular
teeth knifing, whipped past soundlessly.
Folger lifted the billy—tried to lift it—saw the blood and the
white ends protruding below his elbow and realized he was
seeing surgically sawed bone.
The shock made everything deceptively easy. Folger
reached behind him, felt the cage, and pulled himself up toward
the hatch. The shark flowed into the distance.
One-handed, it was difficult entering the cage. He was half
through the hatch and had turned the flotation control all the
way up when he blacked out.
Her name, like that of half the other women in the village,
was Maria. For more than a decade she had kept Folger’s house.
She cleaned, after a fashion. She cooked his two meals a day,
usually boiled potatoes or mutton stew. She loved him with a
silent, bitter, unrequited passion. Over all the years, they had
never talked of it. They were not lovers; each night after fixing
supper, she returned to her clay-and-stone house in the village.
Had Folger taken a woman from the village, Maria would have
knifed both of them as they slept That problem had never
arisen.
“People for you,” said Maria.
Folger looked up from his charts. “Who?”
“No islanders.”
Folger hadn’t had an off-island visitor since two years
before, when a Brazilian journalist had come out on the
semiannual supply boat.
“You want them?” said Maria.
“Can I avoid it?”
Maria lowered her voice. “Government.”
“Shit,” said Folger. “How many?”
“Just two. You want the gun?” The sawed-off twelve-gauge,
swathed in oilcloth, leaned in the kitchen closet “No.” Folger
sighed. “Bring them in.”
Maria muttered something as she turned back through the
doorway.
“What?”
She shook her matted black hair. “One is a woman!” she
spat
Valerie came to his quarters later in the afternoon. The
project manager had already spoken to Folger. Knowing what
she would say, Folger had two uncharacteristically stiff drinks
before she arrived.“You can’t be serious,” was the first thing he
said.
She grinned. “So they told you.”
He said, “I can’t allow it.”
The grin vanished. “Don’t talk as though you owned me.”
“I’m not, I’m just—“ He floundered. “Damn it, it’s a shock.”
She took his hand and drew him down beside her on the
couch. “Would I deny your dreams?”
His voice pleaded. “You’re my lover.”
Valerie looked away. “It’s what I want.”
“You’re crazy.”
“You can be an oceanographer,” she said. “Why can’t I be a
shark?”
Maria ushered in the visitors with ill grace. “Get along,” she
said out in the hallway. “Señor Folger is a busy man.”
“We will not disturb him long,” said a woman’s voice.
The visitors, as they entered, had to duck to clear the
doorframe. The woman was nearly two meters in height; the
man half a head taller. Identically clad in gray jump-suits, they
wore identical smiles. They were—Folger searched for the right
word—extreme. Their hair was too soft and silkily pale; their
eyes too obviously blue, teeth too white and savage.
The pair looked down at Folger. “I am Inga Lindfors,” said
the woman. “My brother, Per.” The man nodded slightly.
“Apparently you know who I am,” said Folger.
“You are Marcus Antonius Folger,” Inga Lindfors said.
“It was supposed to be Marcus Aurelius,” Folger said
irrelevantly. “My father never paid close attention to the
classics.”
“The fortune of confusion,” said Inga. “I find Mark Antony
the more fascinating. He was a man of decisive action.”
Bewildered, Maria stared from face to face.
“You were a component of the Marine Institute on East
Falkland,” said Per.
“I was. It was a long time ago.”
“We wish to speak with you,” said Inga, “as representatives
of the Protectorate of Old America.”
“So? Talk “
“We speak officially.”
“Oh.” Folger smiled at Maria. “I must be alone with these
people.”
The island woman looked dubiously at the Lindfors. “I will
be in the kitchen,” she said.
“It is a formidable journey to Tres Rocas,” said Per. “Our
airboat left Cape Pembroke ten hours ago. Unfavorable winds.”
Folger scratched himself and said nothing.
Inga laughed, a young girl’s laugh in keeping with her age.
“Marcus Antonius Folger, you’ve been too long away from
American civilization.”
“I doubt it,” said Folger. “You’ve obviously gone to a lot of
trouble to find me. Why?”
Why?
She always asked him questions when they climbed the
rocks above the headland. Valerie asked and Folger answered
and usually they both learned. Why the Falklands’ seasonal
temperature range was only ten degrees; what were quasars;
how did third-generation computers differ from second; how
dangerous were manta rays; when would the universe die.
Today she asked a new question: “What about the war?”
He paused, leaning into a natural chimney. “What do you
mean?” The cold passed into his cheeky numbed his jaw, made
the words stiff.
Valerie said, “I don’t understand the war.”
“Then you know what I know.” Folger stared down past the
rocks to the sea. How do you explain masses of people killing
other people? He could go through the glossary—romary,
secondary, tertiary targets; population priorities; death-yields—
but so what? It didn’t give credence or impact to the killing
taking place on the land, in space, and below the seas.
“I don’t know anything” said Valerie somberly. “Only what
they tell us.”
“Don’t question them,” said Folger. “They’re a little
touchy.”
“But why?”
“The Protectorate remembers its friends,” said Per.
Folger began to laugh. “Don’t try to snow me. At the peak
of my loyalty to the Protectorate—or what the Protectorate was
then—I was apolitical.”
“Twenty years ago, that would have been treason.”
“But not now,” said Inga quickly. “Libertarianism has made
a great resurgence.”
“So I hear. The boat brings magazines once in a while.”
“The years of reconstruction have been difficult. We could
have used your expertise on the continent.”
“I was used here. Occasionally I find ways to help the
islanders.”
“As an oceanographer?”
Folger gestured toward the window. “The sea makes up
most of their environment. I’m useful.”
“With your talent,” said Per, “it’s such a waste here.”
“Then too,” Folger continued, “I help with the relics.”
“Relics?” said Inga uncertainly.
“War surplus. Leftovers. Look.” Folger picked up a dried,
leathery rectangle from the table and tossed it to Per. He looked
at the object, turning it over and over.
“Came from a killer whale. Got him last winter with a
harpoon and shaped charge. Damn thing had stove in three
boats, killed two men. Now read the other side.”
Per examined the piece of skin closely. Letters and
numerals had been deeply branded. “USMF-343.”
“See?” said Folger. “Weapons are still out there. He was
part of the lot the year before I joined the Institute. Not
especially sophisticated, but he had longevity.”
“Do you encounter many?” said Inga.
Folger shook his head. “Not too many of the originals.”
The ketch had been found adrift with no one aboard. It had
put out early that morning for Dos, one of the two small and
uninhabited companions of Tres Rocas. The three men aboard
had been expecting to hunt seal. The fishermen who discovered
the derelict also found a bloody ax and severed sections of
tentacle as thick as a man’s forearm.
So Folger trolled along the route of the unlucky boat in his
motorized skiff for three days. He searched a vast area of
