“I am going to the outpost now,” he said.
There was no answer. He repeated it in all of his languages, but no one seemed to want to talk. That was a disappointment. Sometimes two or three of them would be eager for company, maybe even more. Then they could all have a nice, long chat, and it would be as though he were not really alone at all. Almost as though he were part of a “family”, a word he knew from the books and from what the Dead Men told him, but hardly remembered as a reality. That was good. Almost as good as when he was in the dreaming place, where for a while he could have the illusion of being part of a hundred families, a million families. Hosts of people! But that was more than he could handle for very long. And so, when he had to leave the outpost to return for water, and for the more tangible company of the Dead Men, he was never sorry. But he always wanted to come back to the cramped couch and the velvety metal blanket that covered him in it, and to the dreams.
It was waiting for him; but he decided to give the Dead Men another chance. Even when they were not eager for talk, sometimes they were interestable if addressed directly. He thought for a moment, and then dialed number fifty-seven.
A sad, distant voice in his ear was mumbling to itself: “...tried to tell him about the missing mass. Mass! The only mass on his mind was twenty kilos of boobs and ass! That floozy, Doris. One look at her and, oh, boy, forget about the mission, forget about me. . .
Frowning, Wan poised his finger to cancel. Fifty-seven was such a nuisance! He liked to listen to her when she made sense, because she sounded a little like the way he remembered his mother. But she always seemed to go from astrophysics and space travel and other interesting subjects directly to her own troubles. He spat at the point in the panels behind which he had elected to believe fifty-seven lived-a trick he had learned from the Old Ones-hoping she would say something interesting.
But she didn’t seem to intend to. Number fifty-seven-when she was coherent she liked to be called Henrietta-was babbling on about high redshifts and Arnold’s infidelities with Doris. Whoever they were. “We could have been heroes,” she sobbed, “and a ten-million-dollar grant, maybe more, who knows what they’d pay for the drive? But they kept on sneaking off in the lander, and-Who are you?”
“I’m Wan,” the boy said, smiling encouragingly even though he did not think she could see him. She seemed to be coming into one of her lucid times. Usually she didn’t know he was speaking to her. “Please keep on talking.”
There was a long silence, and then, “NGC 1199,” she said. “Sagittarius A West.”
Wan waited politely. Another long pause, and then she said, “He didn’t care about proper motions. He made all his moves with Doris. Half his age! And the brain of a turnip. She should never have been on the mission in the first place-“
Wan wobbled his head like a frog-jawed Old One. “You are very boring,” he said severely, and switched her off. He hesitated, then dialed the professor, number fourteen: although Eliot was still a Harvard undergraduate, his imagery was that of a fully mature man. And a genius at that. ‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws.’ The self-deprecation of mass man carried to its symbolic limit. How does he see himself? Not merely as a crustacean. Not even as a crustacean, only the very abstraction of a crustacean: claws. And ragged, at that. In the next line we see-“
Wan spat again at the panel as he disconnected; the whole face of the wall was stained with the marks of his displeasure. He liked when Doc recited poetry, not so much when he talked about it. With the craziest of the Dead Men, like fourteen and fifty-seven, you didn’t have any choice about what happened. They rarely responded, and almost never in a way that seemed relevant, and you either listened to what they happened to be saying or you turned them off.
It was almost time for him to go, but he tried one more time: the only one with a three-digit number, his special friend, Tiny Jim. “Hello, Wan.” The voice was sad and sweet. It tingled in his mind, like the sudden frisson of fear that he felt near the Old Ones. “It is you, Wan, isn’t it?”
“That is a foolish question. Who else would it be?”
“One keeps on hoping, Wan.” There was a pause, then Tiny Jim suddenly cackled, “Have I told you the one about the priest, the rabbi and the dervish who ran out of food on the planet made of pork?”
“I think you have, Tiny Jim, and anyway I don’t want to hear any jokes now.”
The invisible loudspeaker clicked and buzzed for a moment, and then the Dead Man said, “Same old thing, Wan? You want to talk about sex again?”
The boy kept his countenance impassive, but that familiar tingle inside his lower abdomen responded. “We might as well, Tiny Jim.”
“You’re a raunchy stud for your age, Wan,” the Dead Man offered; and then, “Tell you about the time I almost got busted for a sex offense? It was hot as hell. I was going home on the late train to Roselle Park, and this girl came in, sat across the aisle from me, put her feet up, and began to fan herself with her skirt.
Well, what would you do? I looked, you know. And she kept on doing it, and I kept looking, and finally around Highlands she complained to the conductor and he threw me off the train. Do you know what the funny thing was?”
Wan was rapt. “No, Tiny Jim,” he breathed.
“The funny thing was I’d missed my regular train. I had time to kill in the city, so I went to a porn flick. Two hours of, my God, every combination you could think of. The only way I could’ve seen more was with a proctoscope, so why was I slouching out over the aisle to peek at her little white panties? But you know what was funnier than that?”
“No, Tiny Jim.”
“She was right! I was staring, all right. I’d just been watching acres of crotches and boobs, but I couldn’t take my eyes off hers! That wasn’t the funniest thing, though. Do you want me to tell you the funniest thing of all?”
“Yes, please, Tiny Jim. I do.”
“Why, she got off the train with me! And took me to her home, boy, and we just made out over and over, all night long. Never did catch her name. What do you say to that, Wan?”
“I say, is that true, Tiny Jim?”
Pause. “Aw. No. You take all the fun out of things.”
Wan said severely, “I don’t want a made-up story, Tiny Jim. I want to learn facts.” Wan was angry, and thought of turning the Dead Man off to punish him, but was not sure whom he would be punishing. “I wish you would be nice, Tiny Jim,” he coaxed.
“Well-“ The bodiless mind clicked and whispered to itself for a moment, sorting through its conversational gambits. Then it said, “Do you want to know why mallard drakes rape their mates?”
“No!”
“I think you really do, though, Wan. It’s interesting. You can’t understand primate behavior unless you comprehend the whole spectrum of reproductive strategies. Even strange ones. Even the Acanthocephalan worms. They practice rape, too, and do you know what Moniliformis dubius does? They not only rape their females, they even rape competing males. With like plaster of Paris! So the poor Other Worm can’t get it up!”
“I don’t want to hear all this, Tiny Jim.”
“But it’s funny, Wan! That must be why they call him ‘dubius’!” The Dead Man was chuckling mechanically, a-heh! A-heh!
“Stop it, Tiny Jim!” But Wan was not just angry any more. He was hooked. It was his favorite subject, as Tiny Jim’s willingness to talk about it, at length and in variety, was what made him Wan’s favorite among the Dead Men. Wan unwrapped a food packet and, munching, said, “What I really want to hear is how to make out, Tiny Jim, please?”