Star of Gypsies
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Star of Gypsies». Краткое содержание книги:
"None." "I did. But I had no choice." He laughed. "Not that anyone ever has any choice. But at least I knew what I was getting into." He showed me how to attach myself to the recording equipment. My hands were shaking so much that he had to force them down on the arm-rests and press hard as he strapped me in. "There. You have to fulfill your quota, you know. You should hook yourself up the moment you come in. There's no use wasting time."
"What causes it, the way I feel here?"
He shrugged. "No one understands it. Some say it's an ionization effect.
Some say it's something in the atmosphere. Some even that there are invisible and unmeasurable alien intelligences floating around everywhere here that simply like to give us psychic hotfoots. But all that sounds like vapor and bullshit to me. I think this place is simply the Devil's playground. He comes here for holidays and has a glorious time. It stands to reason that what the Devil loves would make ordinary people feel utterly shitty. And-" He paused. "Oh. Oh, God. Oh, Jesu Cretchuno! Melalo Ana Lilyi!" He doubled over again. I heard him sobbing and retching. After a time he sat up, white-faced, forehead shiny with sweat. His eyes had a haunted look. He managed a grin all the same.
"How much longer do you have to go here?" I asked. "I've been here three weeks," he said. "Out of five years."
We were the only Rom in the synapse pit and we liked each other at once; and soon we were inseparable day and night. I suppose it was an attraction of opposites. I was big and even-tempered, he was little and volatile. I was Kalderash, he was Lowara. I tended to be hardworking and almost plodding in some ways, Polarca believed in cutting corners wherever he could. But we both knew how to laugh when what we really felt like doing was crying. His laugh was marvelous. If they could bottle Polarca's laugh it would outsell Hasgard Level Two anywhere. I loved him for his laugh alone. And for being Rom in this dreadful place where there were no others of our kind. Not just any sort of Rom, either. We were both of the true blood, which is not only a matter of genetics. You need to know a loyalty to something other than your own skin to be true Rom. Take Shandor. Shandor is a Rom by genetic heritage but I refuse to accept him as being of the true blood even though he is my son. Polarca, now-ah, Polarca is a Rom of the Rom!
It took me some time to realize that he was dying down there in the synapse pit of Mentiroso.
He tried to hide that from me. When the waves of terror rolled through him and made him quiver and sob he snapped back as fast as he could, grinning and winking and telling jokes. I didn't know what a price he was paying for those grins and winks. Mentiroso was wearing him down very fast. Just how fast was something he wanted to keep secret. True, he seemed weary and worn most of the time and seemed to be making an effort to hold his shoulders square, but we were none of us exactly sparkling under Mentiroso's constant psychoactive bombardment. All the same, though I had no way of knowing how bouncy and vigorous Polarca might have been before coming to this place, I could see that the man I had met in the synapse pit must be a badly frayed and weakened shadow of his true self. Over the weeks that followed he grew even weaker. He shook, he fell down in seizures, he had difficulties focusing his eyes or remembering the beginnings of his sentences by the time he came to the end. Plainly he wasn't going to be able to last much longer. I had already seen a couple of men die of exhaustion right in the pit.
Once I knew what was happening I began asking around, trying to find some way of helping him. He was too proud to tell me anything useful himself but there were others to ask. I didn't want to lose him. Without Polarca beside me jabbing away with his irreverence and his sarcasms I would go out of my mind in this place. But I learned what I had to do.
One day I got to the synapse pit a short while ahead of him and did a little improvised rewiring of his equipment. It wasn't hard. I jacked his electrodes into my headset and mine into his; and then I disabled the connector that ran from my transducer coil to the storage cell. And a couple of other minor things. The net effect of these rearrangements was that he would be cut out of the pumping circuit altogether and my output of neural energy would go to fulfill his six-hour daily quota. He would still have to cope with the round-the-clock torment of life on Mentiroso but at least he wouldn't be subjected to the strenuous demands of the Hasgard equipment as well.
Of course, that meant that my own quota would go unfulfilled. Sooner or later that would show up on the company records. So I began slipping back into the synapse pit during my free time to make up the shortfall. An extra three hours in the morning, maybe three more late at night. I could manage it. The chief problem was making excuses to Polarca for my disappearances in the off hours. Some days I was a little too tired to handle the full double shift, but I tried to make up the time somewhere else along the way. A few of the other workers figured out what I was doing and contributed some hours here and there to my account to help out. Even so I was gradually falling behind. But that was all right. Polarca was visibly gaining in strength.
"What the fuck are you up to?" he asked me finally, months later. "Up to?"
"In the pit. Why don't I feel so tired any more? Why are you starting to look five thousand years old? Are you pulling my shifts, Yakoub?" "What does that mean?" I said, all innocence.
"It means that someone is doing my work for me, and it has to be you. Don't pretend you aren't the one."
"I-well, that is-" I faltered. "Damn it, Polarca, I couldn't just sit there and let you burn out! I had to do something."
"Who asked you to? Who gave you the right to commit such a miserable lousy sin against my manhood?"
"Listen to him. A sin against his manhood." "You think I'm a weakling?"
"I'm the weakling, Polarca." He looked astounded. "What?"
"I need you too much to let you die. You're the only thing that keeps me sane in this filthy place. And you were going to die sure as anything if I didn't do something to help you."
"But you had no right-" "No right? No right?"
"You didn't even ask my fucking permission. You just went ahead and took charge of my life." He was shouting. A vein was standing out on the side of his head. "You think I'm a child? You think I need some sort of a protector? You think I can't take care of myself? Where did you come off doing that to me?' And a lot more of the same, getting louder and louder as his righteous indignation turned into spitting anger.
I can shout pretty well myself. Louder than he can. And I was even angrier than he was, now. I shouted him down. "Damn you, Polarca, don't give me any more shit about your manhood, okay? Just sit there with both your hands on your goddamned manhood and let this fucking machinery suck all the life out of you. And when you've died a manly death I'll start going crazy because there'll be no one else here I can talk to. But that's all right. You'll have died a manly death, and that's what's important. I'm sorry I got in the way of your manly death. Okay? Okay, Polarca? I'm sorry. Here. Go be a man. Be a hero." I showed him what I had done with his equipment. Then I put it back the right way and plugged myself in and turned my back on him. I was so pissed off that I hardly even felt the usual Mentiroso horrors, though they were rippling along through my mind at the standard pace all the time.
After maybe half an hour Polarca tapped me on the shoulder. "Yakoub?"
"Don't bother me. I'm working."
"I just wanted to thank you," he said in a very small voice.
I had never heard Polarca sounding humble before. I never have since, for that matter.
There was no question of my continuing to pull his shifts for him after that, of course. If I had done it much longer it would have killed me, anyway. But I had seen him through a tough time, however much of an insult to his manhood it may have been. And he was Rom enough to admit that once in a while you have to forget about your precious balls and your indignation and your manly pride and simply accept help, if you really need the help. Polarca is tough and resilient but a stint on Mentiroso could destroy anybody. It had been destroying him and he knew it. I got him through. Two or three times later on, during the years when we were on Mentiroso together, I had to get him through again. He was furious with me each time, and I don't think he's ever really forgiven me; but he let me do it. When his indenture was up mine still had almost three months to go, because of the various shortfalls I had accumulated, and he volunteered to stay the extra time and contribute three hours a day to my account to get me off Mentiroso sooner. And I let him. I had to, to survive. It has been like that between us ever since.