Hawksbill Station

IV

That evening, as every evening, the men of Hawksbill Station gathered in the main building for dinner and recreation. It was not mandatory, and some men chose to eat alone. But tonight nearly everyone who was in full possession of his faculties was there, because this was one of the infrequent occasions when a newcomer had arrived to be questioned about the world of men.

Hahn looked uneasy about his sudden notoriety. He seemed to be basically shy, unwilling to accept all the attention now being thrust upon him. There he sat in the middle of the group while men twenty and thirty years his senior crowded in on him with their questions, and it was obvious that he wasn’t enjoying the session.

Sitting to one side, Barrett took little part in the discussion. His curiosity about Up Front’s ideological shifts had: ebbed a long time ago. It was hard for him to realize that he had once been so passionately concerned about concepts like syndicalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat and the guaranteed annual wage that he had been willing to risk imprisonment over them. His concern for humanity had not waned, merely the degree of his involvement in the twenty-first century’s political problems. After twenty years at Hawksbill Station, Up Front had become unreal to Jim Barrett, and his energies centered around the crises and challenges of what he had come to think of as “his own” time—the late Cambrian.

So he listened, but more with an ear for what the talk revealed about Lew Hahn than for what it revealed about current events Up Front. And what it revealed about Lew Hahn was mainly a matter of what was not revealed.

Hahn didn’t say much. He seemed to be feinting and evading.

Charley Norton wanted to know, “Is there any sign of a weakening of the phony conservatism yet? I mean, they’ve been promising the end of big government for thirty years, and it gets bigger all the time.”

Hahn moved restlessly in his chair. “They still promise. As soon as conditions become stabilized—”

“Which is when?”

“I don’t know. I suppose they’re making words.”

“What about the Martian Commune?” demanded Sid Hutchett. “Have they been infiltrating agents onto Earth?”

“I couldn’t really say.”

“How about the Gross Global Product?” Mel Rudiger wanted to know. “What’s its curve? Still holding level, or has it started to drop?”

Hahn tugged at his ear. “I think it’s slowly edging down.”

“Where does the index stand?” Rudiger asked. “The last figures we had, for ’25, it was at 909. But in four years—”

“It might be something like 875 now,” said Hahn.

It struck Barrett as a little odd that an economist would be so hazy about the basic economic statistic. Of course, he didn’t know how long Hahn had been imprisoned before getting the Hammer. Maybe he simply wasn’t up on the recent figures.

Charley Norton wanted to find out some things about the legal rights of citizens. Hahn couldn’t tell him. Rudiger asked about the impact of weather control—whether the supposedly conservative government of liberators was still ramming programmed weather down the mouths of the citizens—and Hahn wasn’t sure. Hahn couldn’t rightly say much about the functions of the judiciary, whether it had recovered any of the power stripped from it by the Enabling Act of ’18. He didn’t have any comments to offer on the tricky subject of population control. In fact, his performance was striking for its lack of hard information.

“He isn’t saying much at all,” Charley Norton grumbled to the silent Barrett. “He’s putting up a smokescreen. But either he’s not telling what he knows, or he doesn’t know.”

“Maybe he’s not very bright,” Barrett suggested.

“What did he do to get here? He must have had some kind of deep commitment. But it doesn’t show, Jim! He’s an intelligent kid, but he doesn’t seem plugged in to anything that ever mattered to any of us.”

Doc Quesada offered a thought. “Suppose he isn’t a political at all. Suppose they’re sending a different kind of prisoner back now. Axe murderers, or something. A quiet kid who quietly chopped up sixteen people one Sunday morning. Naturally he isn’t interested in politics.”

Barrett shook his head. “I doubt that. I think he’s just clamming up because he’s shy or ill at ease. It’s his first night here, remember. He’s just been kicked out of his own world and there’s no going back. He may have left a wife and baby behind, you know. He may simply not give a damn tonight about sitting up there and spouting the latest word on abstract philosophical theory, when all he wants to do is go off and cry his eyes out. I say we ought to leave him alone.”

Quesada and Norton looked convinced. They shook their heads in agreement; but Barrett didn’t voice his opinion to the room in general. He let the quizzing of Hahn continue until it petered out of its own accord. The men began to drift away. A couple of them went in back, to convert Hahn’s vague generalities into the lead story for the next handwritten edition of the Hawksbill Station Times . Rudiger stood on a table and shouted out that he was going night fishing, and four men asked to join him. Charley Norton sought out his usual debating partner, the nihilist Ken Belardi, and reopened, like a festering wound, their discussion of planning versus chaos, which bored them both to the point of screaming. The nightly games of stochastic chess began. The loners who had made rare visits to the main building simply to see the new man went back to their huts to do whatever they did in them alone each night.

Hahn stood apart, fidgeting and uncertain.

Barrett went up to him. “I guess you didn’t really want to be quizzed tonight,” he said.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t have been more informative. I’ve been out of circulation a while, you see.”

“But you were politically active, weren’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” Hahn said. “Of course.” He flicked his tongue over his lips. What’s supposed to happen now/

“Nothing in particular. We don’t have organized activities here. Doc and I are going out on sick call. Care to join us?”

“What does it involve?” Hahn asked.

“Visiting some of the worst cases. It can be grim, but you’ll get a panoramic view of Hawksbill Station.”

“I’d like to go.”

Barrett gestured to Quesada, and the three of them left the building. This was a nightly ritual for Barrett, difficult as it was since he had hurt his foot. Before turning in, he visited the goofy ones and the psycho ones and the catatonic ones, tucked them in, wished them a good night and a healed mind in the morning. Someone had to show them that he cared. Barrett did.

Outside, Hahn peered up at the moon. It was nearly full tonight, shining like a burnished coin, its face a pale salmon color and hardly pockmarked at all.

“I looks so different here,” Hahn said. “The craters —where are the craters?”

“Most of them haven’t been formed yet,” said Barrett. “A billion years is a long time even for the moon. Most of its upheavals are still ahead. We think it may still have an atmosphere, too. That’s why it looks pink to us. Of course, Up Front hasn’t bothered to send us much in the way of astronomical equipment. We can only guess.”

Hahn started to say something. He cut himself off after one blurted syllable.

Quesada said, “Don’t hold it back. What were you about to suggest?”

Hahn laughed. “That you ought to fly up there and take a look. It struck me as odd that you’d spend all these years here theorizing about whether the moon’s got an atmosphere and wouldn’t ever once go up to look. But I forgot.”

“It would be useful to have a commute ship from Up Front,” Barrett said. “But it hasn’t occurred to them. All we can do is look. The moon’s a popular place in ’29, is it?”

“The biggest resort in the system,” Hahn said. “I was there on my honeymoon. Leah and I—”

He stopped again.

Barrett said hurriedly, “This is Bruce Valdosto’s hut. He cracked up a few weeks ago. When we go in, stand behind us so he doesn’t see you. He might be violent with a stranger. He’s unpredictable.”

Valdosto was a husky man in his late forties, with swarthy skin, coarse curling black hair, and the broadest shoulders any man had ever had. Sitting down, he looked even burlier than Jim Barrett, which was saying a great deal. But Valdosto had short, stumpy legs, the legs of a man of ordinary stature tacked to the trunk of a giant, which spoiled the effect completely. In his years Up Front, he had totally refused any prosthesis. He believed in living with deformities.

Right now he was strapped into a webfoam cradle. His domed forehead was flecked with beads of sweat; his eyes were glittering beadily in the darkness. He was a very sick man. Once he had been clear-minded enough to throw a sleet bomb into a meeting of the Council of Syndics, giving a dozen of them a bad case of gamma I poisoning, but now he scarcely knew up from down, right from left.

Barrett leaned over him and said, “How are you, ’t Bruce?”

“Who’s that?”

“Jim. It’s a beautiful night, Bruce. How’d you like to come outside and get some fresh air? The moon’s almost full.”

“I’ve got to rest. The committee meeting tomorrow—”

“It’s been postponed.”

“But how can it? The Revolution—”

“That’s been postponed too. Indefinitely.”

“Are they disbanding the cells?” Valdosto asked harshly.

“We don’t know yet. We’re waiting for orders. Come outside, Bruce. The air will do you good.”

Muttering, Valdosto let himself be unlaced. Quesada and Barrett pulled him to his feet and propelled him through the door of the hut. Barrett caught sight of Hahn in the shadows, his face somber with shock.

They stood together outside the hut. Barrett pointed to the moon. “It’s got such a lovely color here. Not like the dead thing Up Front. And look, look down there, Bruce. The sea breaking on the rocky shore. Rudiger’s out fishing. I can see his boat by moonlight.”

“Striped bass,” said Valdosto. “Sunnies. Maybe he’ll catch some sunnies.”

“There aren’t any sunnies here. They haven’t evolved yet.” Barrett fished in his pocket and drew out something ridged and glossy, about two inches long. It was the exoskeleton of a small trilobite. He offered it to Valdosto, who shook his head.

“Don’t give me that cockeyed crab.”

“It’s a trilobite, Bruce. It’s extinct, but so are we. We’re a billion years in our own past.”

“You must be crazy,” Valdosto said in a calm, low voice that belied his wild-eyed appearance. He took the trilobite from Barrett and hurled it against the rocks. “Cockeyed crab,” he muttered.

Quesada shook his head sadly. He and Barrett led the sick man into the hut again. Valdosto did not protest as the medic gave him the sedative. His weary mind, rebelling entirely against the monstrous concept that he had been exiled to the inconceivably remote past, welcomed sleep.

When they went out Barrett saw Hahn holding the trilobite on his palm and staring at it in wonder. Hahn offered it to him, but Barrett brushed it away. “Keep it if you like,” he said. “There are more.”

They went on. They found Ned Altman beside his hut, crouching on his knees and patting his hands over the crude, lopsided form of what, from its exaggerated breasts and hips, appeared to be the image of a woman. He stood up when they appeared. Altman was a neat little man with yellow hair and nearly invisible white eyebrows. Unlike anyone else in the Station, he had actually been a government man once, fifteen years ago, before seeing through the myth of syndicalist capitalism and joining one of the underground factions. Eight years at Hawksbill Station had done things to him.

Altman pointed to his golem and said, “I hoped there’d be lightning in the rain today. That’ll do it, you know. But there isn’t much lightning this time of year. She’ll get up alive, and then I’ll need you, Doc, to give her her shots and trim away some of the rough places.”

Quesada forced a smile. “I’ll be glad to do it, Ned. But you know the terms.”

“Sure. When I’m through with her, you get her. You think I’m a goddam monopolist? I’ll share her. There’ll be a waiting list. Just so you don’t forget who made her, though. She’ll remain mine, whenever I need her.” He noticed Hahn. “Who are you?”

“He’s new,” Barrett said. “Lew Hahn. He came this afternoon.”

“Ned Altman,” said Altman with a courtly bow. “Formerly in government service. You’re pretty young, aren’t you? How’s your sex orientation? Hetero?”

Hahn winced. “I’m afraid so.”

“It’s okay. I wouldn’t touch you. I’ve got a project going, here. But I just want you to know, I’ll put you on my list. You’re young and you’ve probably got stronger needs than some of us. I won’t forget about you, even though you’re new here.”

Quesada coughed. “You ought to get some rest now, Ned. Maybe there’ll be lightning tomorrow.”

Altman did not resist. The doctor took him aside and put him to bed, while Hahn and Barrett surveyed the man’s handiwork. Hahn pointed toward the figure’s middle.

“He’s left out something essential,” he said. “If he’s planning to make love to this girl after he’s finished creating her, he’d better—”

“It was there yesterday,” said Barrett. “He must be changing orientation again.” Quesada emerged from the hut. They went on, down the rocky path.

Barrett did not make the complete circuit that night. Ordinarily, he would have gone all the way down to Latimer’s hut overlooking the sea, for Latimer was on his list of sick ones. But Barrett had visited Latimer once that day, and he didn’t think his aching good leg was up to another hike that far. So after he and Quesada and Hahn had been to all of the easily accessible huts and had visited the man who prayed for alien beings to rescue him and the man who was trying to break into a parallel universe where everything was as it ought to be in the world and the man who lay on his cot sobbing for all his wakeful hours, Barrett said good night to his companions and allowed Quesada to escort Hahn back to his hut without him.

After observing Hahn for half a day, Barrett realized he did not know much more about him than when he had first dropped onto the Anvil. But maybe Hahn would open up a little more, after he’d been here a while. Barrett stared up at the salmon moon and reached into his pocket to finger the little trilobite before he remembered that he had given it to Hahn. He shuffled into his hut. He wondered how long ago Hahn had taken that lunar honeymoon trip.