Tanith Lee - A Day In The Skin or, The Century We Ran Out of Them

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2024-11-23 0 0 33.85KB 16 页 5.9玖币

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A DAY IN THE SKIN

(OR, THE CENTURY WE WERE OUT OF THEM)

Tanith Lee

When we go out to colonize the planets of other stars, odds are that there will be unexpected catastrophes.

Science fiction has told of such things often, but we must bear in mind that by the time we achieve interstellar travel

our technology will be greatly advanced, so we may by then have the means to cope with great problems. Of course,

coping will always remain basically a human task, as Tanith Lee shows in this story.

Tanith Lee is one of the most accomplished science fiction writers of the past ten years, in both short stories and

novels. She's been so prolific and accomplished that even a sample list of her books would be impractical; this story

will give an example of why that's true.

And the first thing you more or less think when you get Back is: God, where's everything

gone? (Just as, similarly, when you get Out you more or less think, Hey where's all this coming

from?) Neither thought is rational, simply out-raged instinct. The same as, coming Back, it

seems for a moment stone silent, blind dark and ice cold. It's none of those. It's nothing. In a

joking mood, some of us have been known to refer to it, this-what shall I call it? this place-as

Sens-D (sensory deprivation). It isn't though, because when your Outward senses-vision,

hearing, smell, taste, touch- when they go off, other things come on. The a/fer-senses. Hard to

describe. For a time, you reckon them as compensa-tion, stand-ins, like eating, out in the skin

world, a cut of sausage when you hankered for a steak. Only in a while it stops being that. It

becomes steak. The equivalent senses are just fine, although the only non-technical way I can

come up with to express them is in terms of equivalents, alternatives. And time itself is a

problem, in here, or down there, or where the hell ever. Yes, it passes. One can judge it. But

one rarely does, after the first months. In the first months you're con-stantly pacing, like some

guy looking at his watch: Is it time yet? Is it time now? Then that cools off. Something happens,

in here, down there… So that when at last the impulse comes through Time to get up (or Out)

you turn lazily, like a fish in a pool (equivalents), and you equivalently say, Oh really? Do I

have to?

"Sure, Scay. You do have to. It's in the Company con-tract. And if I let you lie, there'd be all

hell and hereafter to pay H.Q. Not to mention from you, when you finally get Out for keeps."

So I alter-said, in the way the impulse can assimilate and send on, "How long, and what is

it?"

"One day. One huge and perfect High Summer day. Forty-two hours. And you got a good

one, Scay, listen, a real beauty."

"Male or female?"

"A/ee-male."

"All right. I can about remember being female."

"First female for you for ten years, ah? Exciting."

"Go knit yourself a brain."

Dydoo, who manages the machines, snuffled and whined, which I alter-heard now clearly,

as he set up my ride. I tried to pull myself together for the Big Wrench. But you never manage

it. Suddenly you are whirling down a tunnel full of fireworks, at the end of which you explode

inside a mass of stiff jelly. And there I was, flailing and shrieking, just as we all flail and

shriek, in the middle of a support couch in the middle of Transfer.

"Husha hush," said the machines, and gentle firm me-chanical arms held me and held me

down.

Presently I relapsed panting-yes, panting. Air.

"Look up," said Dydoo. I looked. Things flashed and tickered. "Everything's fine. You can

hear me? See me?"

"I can even smell you," I gasped, tears streaming down my face, my heart crashing like surf

on the rocks. There was a dull booming pain in my head I cared for about as much as Dydoo

cared for my last remark. "Dydoo," I continued, speech not coming easy, "who had this one

last? I think they gave it a cranial fracture."

"Nah, nah. 'S all right. Mike tied one on with the wine and brandy-pop. It's pumped full of

vitamins and de-tox. Should take about a hundred and fifteen seconds more, and you'll feel just

dandy, you rat."

I lay there, waiting for Mike Plir's hangover to go away, and watched, with my borrowed

eyes, Dydoo bustling round the shiny bright room. He is either a saint or a masochist (or are

they the same?). Since one of us has to oversee these particular machines, he agreed to be it,

and so he took the only living quarters permanently available. The most highly developed local

fauna is a kind of dog-like creature, spinally adapted for walking upright, like the Terran ape,

and with articulated forepaws and jaw. With a little surgery, this nut-brown woolly beast, with

its floppy ears and huge soulful eyes, was all ready for work, and thus for Dydoo.

"My, Dydoo," I said, "you look real sweet today. Come on over, I'll give you a bone."

"Shurrup," growled Dydoo. No doubt, these tired old jests get on his furry nerves.

Once my skull stopped booming, I got up and went to look at myself in the unlikely

pier-glass at one end of the antiseptic room.

"Well, I remember this one. This used to be Miranda."

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