In Deep by Damon Knight Page B

to know if we can count on it. Because,” he says, “you know what would happen if it stopped?” Do you know, Aunt Jane?”
    “It would be,” said the voice, “a catastrophe.”
    “That’s right,” Wesson said respectfully. “It would. Like, he says to me, ‘What if the people in the Nefud area were cut off from the Jordan Valley Authority? Why, there’d be millions dying of thirst in a week.
    “ ‘Or what if the freighters stopped coming to Moon Base. Why,’ he says, ‘there’d be thousands starving and smothering to death.’
    “He says, ‘Where the water is, where you can get food and air, people are going to settle, and get married, you know? and have kids.’
    “He says, ‘If the so-called longevity serum stopped coming…’ Says, ‘Every twentieth adult of the Sol family is due for his shot this year.’ Says, ‘Of those, almost twenty per cent are one hundred fifteen or older.’ Says, ‘The deaths in that group in the first year would be at least three times what the actuarial tables call for.’ ” Wesson raised a strained face. “I’m thirty-four, you know?” he said. “That Gower, he made me feel like a baby.”
    Aunt Jane made a sympathetic noise.
    “Drip, drip,” said Wesson hysterically. The needles of the tall golden indicators were infinitesimally higher. “Every twenty years we need more of the stuff, so somebody like me has to come out and take it for five lousy months. And one of them has to come out and sit there, and drip . Why , Aunt Jane? What for? Why should it matter to them whether we live a long time or not? Why do they keep on coming back? What do they take away from here?”
    But to these questions, Aunt Jane had no reply.
    All day and every day, the lights burned cold and steady in the circular gray corridor around the rim of Sector One. The hard gray flooring had been deeply scuffed in that circular path before Wesson ever walked there: the corridor existed for that only, like a treadmill in a squirrel cage; it said “Walk,” and Wesson walked. A man would go crazy if he sat still, with that squirming, indescribable pressure on his head; and so Wesson paced off the miles, all day and every day, until he dropped like a dead man in the bed at night.
    He talked, too, sometimes to himself, sometimes to the listening alpha network; sometimes it was difficult to ten which. “Moss on a rock,” he muttered, pacing. “Told him, wouldn’t give twenty mills for any damn shell… Little pebbles down there, all colors.” He shuffled on in silence for a while. Abruptly: “I don’t see why they couldn’t have given me a cat.”
    Aunt Jane said nothing. After a moment Wesson went on, “Nearly everybody at Home has a cat, for God’s sake, or a goldfish or something. You’re all right, Aunt Jane, but I can’t see you. My God, I mean if they couldn’t send a man a woman for company, what I mean, my God, I never liked cats .” He swung around the doorway into the bedroom, and absent-mindedly slammed his fist into the bloody place on the wall.
    “But a cat would have been something ,” he said.
    Aunt Jane was still silent.
    “Don’t pretend your damn feelings are hurt, I know you, you’re only a damn machine,” said Wesson. “Listen, Aunt Jane, I remember a cereal package one time that had a horse and a cowboy on the side. There wasn’t much room, so about all you saw was their faces. It used to strike me funny how much they looked alike. Two ears on the top with hair in the middle. Two eyes. Nose. Mouth with teeth in it. I was thinking, we’re kind of distant cousins, aren’t we, us and the horses. But compared to that thing up there—we’re brothers . You know?”
    “Yes,” said Aunt Jane, quietly.
    “So I keep asking myself, why couldn’t they have sent a horse, or a cat, instead of a man? But I guess the answer is because only a man could take what I’m taking. God, only a man. Right?”
    “Right,” said Aunt Jane with deep sorrow.
    Wesson