The Pleasure Tube (2 page)

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The Guam sun floods through the dusty window.

"Why can't I see Cooper?"

"Partly it's quarantine, standard procedure. Partly it's because
today
he's in Houston. He's been transferred to Houston."

Smug bastard; I have been asking to see Cooper for a week. He wrote the report; I cannot imagine what SciCom is after that's not in the report. Cooper and I avoided one another on the way back—there was the affair with Maxine, and he always seemed to me odd, reclusive, a huge, bearded man who never said what was on his mind—but I never saw him break. Where was he in the ship then? Does it matter?

It has taken me a day to see this information officer. Guam is a morass of requisition systems, authority flows, activity program officers; bad enough before, incredible now. The island landscape—lazy, flapping palms, eroded red hills patched with dusty green scrub, an absolute sun—only fertilizes my growing boredom. Houston. Werhner will sigh and shrug.

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It is Taylor I see one day; his dark, bushy eyebrows never move. He alternates with Knuth, an intense little man who acts as if he were a foot taller—I wonder if his neck hurts sometimes. Today Knuth.

"The exact sequence," he begins, tapping his pencil. Several times before he has asked the same question, in precisely the same way, with the identical emphasis on
exact.

I tell him what he can read in the log, what he has read in the log, everything is there. I remember hearing Werhner saying, seeing the silver-blue ball of earth, how lucky we were to have come back. Lucky?

RETRIEVE//

R/V Daedalus//

Station/Rawley Voorst//

Log Entry 1446//

Flt yr 3/Day 350+//

Codex 292-1446+//

RETRIEVE IN FULL BEGIN BEGIN BEGIN

Proper Time: See Codex//Postevent record.
Something terrible has happened, we have blown part of the ship. Three dead, we have lost port pontoon and program, hatch seared at the console room, Damage Control has secured the ship, we are on auxiliary. I don't think they had a chance. There just wasn't any warning. SciCom reading data. Committee Pilot reading data, I am holding at powerdown but we are screaming—we are still being propelled by the shock—I am going to use that to ride through this sector and use the vanes for what's ahead. What instruments we have now read impact event, unanalyzed interstellar material, data on what we hit must have gone in the blow. My recollections: I was holding vane angle in the lull, taping the log and watching Werhner eat. I felt myself become violently ill, I first thought it was from watching him, then focusing on the panel I saw lull figures then everything going red— instantly, don't know if it was a trick of vision, but the red seemed to sweep the panels right to left along with the first strong jolt I felt even in my bones. I don't remember anything else. I blacked out quickly, Werhner says that happened to him, too. It happened so incredibly fast, falling, my perceptions seemed to become detached, then a chill, as if I were diving into darkness. When I came to, I had a gash on the heel of my hand—and this is the strangest thing—it had coagulated. I mean almost healed. It must have been a vane trigger key I fell against, or a whole row. I immediately began resetting instruments, we were just getting auxiliary, when I noticed Werhner lying in a pool of vomit, coming around. Then the rescue attempt. There were only small fragments. Trace. The bodies, the debris, must have just been blown away, vaporized. The ship is responding well, under full control, but we still have no program and damn near lost. Repeat, I am going to retain propulsion from the shock to ride through the weather ahead, we are just getting navigation. When we blew there was nothing showing, absolutely nothing, other than that lull, that zero condition. Nothing.

Werhner is lying on his back, staring at the ceiling in the cottage we have been assigned on Guam. The air is heavy, the light trade winds ripe. He is still wearing his bathing suit. Sweat beads on his chest, runs as he raises himself on his elbow.

"Somebody went through my things," he says. "Somebody went through your things. Nothing missing, but somebody was in here."

I have just returned from another series of encephalograms, kinesthograms, redundant examinations. My torpor dissipates. I fold through my clothes, my books, my papers.... "What the hell?" The cover of Dean's
Deep Space Transpositions
is creased; my clothes are in disarray.

Werhner is sitting on the edge of the cot now, popping a pinkish pill into his mouth, swallowing it without water.

"I'm going to get out of here," I tell him. "This is too much. We've been here three weeks."

"Cooper's the only one who's left the base," Werhner says flatly. "I don't know what the hell is going on—these goons spend half their time questioning each other about procedure, the whole dome crew is still here on Guam— Tamashiro, Levsky, Dawes. I think... Look, Rawley, I think they're trying to set us up, to stick the blow on
us.
What did your tests show?"

"Nothing abnormal. The same readings as last week. And the week before. And the day after we landed."

"Still having those nightmares?"

"Werhner," I say, "they go away.
This
is a nightmare, this place. Who can live this way? The same questions, steamed food, and look at that cot, that cot's killing my back. I'm going to get out of here."

"Me, too," Werhner says—he is picking up his diving mask and snorkel and fins. "To the reef? Utama Bay?'

"Not now. I've got something to do."

"No swim? Gonna watch the vidi?"

"I wish I were flying," I tell him. "I didn't think I'd ever miss it, but I do now. I need to get out of this place."

"Good luck." He smiles sardonically.

light sensuous sauna

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foods of the world

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THE PLEASURE TUBE

reserve now

fourteen days and nights

a world of your own

twenty-eight to two-eighty credits

orgo-toto                       

three separate program classes

CONTINUOUS MOVEMENT

LasVenus

suborbitai/deep space

LA SoCal

olde earthe/moonloop

TRIP TO THE SUN

risk venture vector

symphonic synesthetic harmonics

the EnergyWest grand prix

megastars in sidereal concert

NoAm biosphere reserve

SoPac tropical reserve

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Movement itself has made me feel better—and for the last few minutes more exhilarated than I have been since we danced back into the silvery upper atmosphere with our microweather show a month ago, the tenuous landing of our lame ship. I can't say much for the lower atmosphere of the continent, it is on the brownish side of yellow, but now in descent I can see L.A. through the window rolling from hill to hill, its traffic pattern elegant and intestinal from our altitude, its air light haze beneath its dome. My hand throbs as we lose altitude quickly, the stretched skin of the old scar, hidden in the healing of the new cut, changing cabin pressure.

Werhner is spooked, too—in the month back on Guam he's left his data entirely to others and now just drifts all the time, psychologically and physically. He spends his days diving around the reef—not fishing or collecting shells—just floating around, swimming past the breakers at Utama Bay and coming in slowly only when the light is almost gone. I told him he should come along, but he said no, he was on too high a dosage. He wasn't about to go through what I did, and even if he had, there was no guarantee they would have let him go.

My guess is that he's out there right now, suspended in the blue-green water. I wonder if we're doing such different things after all. That's ironic—all the trouble I went through, those obtuse bastards.