Seeking the Mythical Future (10 page)

‘In that case I shall have to be careful what I say.'

‘Too late for that,' Black said smugly. ‘You probably don't remember, but back in the sanatorium you ranted and raved like a madman. The stuff that came out, you wouldn't credit.'
He sat back in the chair, idly surveying the red ocean through the slanting windows. The sun was a vast yellow orb in the hazy azure sky. He said morosely, ‘They should have let me continue the experiment. Galvanology has a tremendous future in medikal science. The Authority are so damn pig-headed—'

He checked himself and glanced along the saloon: several people were dozing in wicker chairs but the two black-uniformed guards were for the moment absent. He would have to be careful, remain tight-lipped when others were near by. There was no telling who might be taking note of the conversation.

‘You regard everything I said as hallucination, then?' Q asked. He noticed that Black's fingernails were ragged.

‘What else? You're cursed with too much imagination, like most of the other deportees. I wanted to purge you of all that stuff, get you to puke it out. You rambled on for hours but there must be a lot more to come out.' He tilted back in his chair. ‘In a way it was quite an interesting story. Your mind must be a cess-pool of non-associative thoughts and random ideas. The thing I couldn't understand was that this other realm, or whatever it was, where all this was supposed to be taking place, didn't seem to be here on Earth IVn. It's a syndrome I haven't come across before—'

‘What did you say?'

Black sighed. ‘I said it was a syndrome I haven't encountered before in my case-studies.'

‘You said “here on Earth IVn”. Is that where we are, on Earth IVn?'

Black's face creased into a strained and weary smile. ‘If you ask questions like that they'll put you straight into the
High Intensity Complex
. Psy-Con is bad enough without winding up there.'

‘Let me ask another foolish question. Why is it called Earth IVn?'

‘Why is anything called anything?' Black said irritably. ‘Why is the ocean red, the sky azure? This is Earth IVn because it's Earth IVn. What cod-laddle you talk.' He lowered his voice. ‘I advise you not to ask such questions. If the Authority get to
hear of them they'll slap you in the Complex, and there's not a gingy crole I can do to help you.'

Q then did something which infuriated Black: he smiled.

‘And don't grin like that! They'll think you're a loon and feed you to the alligators, and I might just let them.'

‘Why should you want to help me, anyway?' Q said. He tried to work his hands to restore the circulation: the skin on his wrists was pinched cruelly by the ropes. ‘Aren't you putting yourself at risk?'

‘Maybe.' Black looked over his shoulder. He said, ‘The Authority don't agree, but I think your ramblings should be investigated further. There's an element of Logik in them which I find interesting; and this “other-world” syndrome is something I haven't heard of before.' He paused and clicked his fingers. ‘“Other-world” syndrome. I like that.'

‘You're beginning to believe in my mythic projections, after all. They're not simply the ravings of a madman.'

‘Do you take me for a fool?' Black's thin dark face was twisted with contempt. ‘I'm a medikal doktor, not a quack. If I believed in them I'd be as crazy as you are. I've had patients who believed they were reincarnations of Franko, and others who thought they were second cousin to President Disraeli. Do you expect me to believe every bit of nonsense I hear?'

Q moved himself stiffly in the chair, attempting to stretch his pale thin body. He was a giant compared to Black, almost half as tall again as the slight, narrow-shouldered, lisping man.

Q said: ‘There's one question you haven't answered.'

‘Well?' Black said sullenly.

‘Where am I from?'

Was there, Black wondered, a hint of amused provocation in those flat grey eyes? He decided that there wasn't, but at the same time a great constricting gorge of fury rose up in his chest and threatened to suffocate him; he felt his grip slackening, the world sliding.

‘We know you came from the sea,' he managed to say at last. ‘It was all in the report. The Captain of the
Slave Trader
was most thorough.'

‘He said I came from the sea, but did he say how I got there?'
Those flat grey eyes were fixed on Black and he had to give way, to lower his head and gaze down on the ocean. Sarah had been right, the fellow was a dangerous influence on a calm, self-collected personality. Black felt intimidated and strangely weak: it was as though (had he believed it possible) his energy and purpose were being drained away. By God, if only they had let him continue the Gestalt Treatment he would have made the fellow suffer!

‘Did the question never occur to you?' Q inquired mildly.

‘Of course it did.'

‘But you never sought an answer.'

The canaries in their cages were twittering, filling the airship with their noise. The yellow sun blazed in through the windows, its rays illuminating the dust-motes circulating in the still air.

Black said, ‘Where you came from is of no consequence. The MDA concerns itself with practicalities, not with vague curiosity or blind guesswork. We don't need to know where you came from, it isn't important. We live in the real world, not in some—'

‘What about the things you don't understand?'

Black said, ‘Sarah was right when she said you were disruptive. I'm beginning to think the Complex is the best place for you.'

‘Yet you have an idea that my “babblings” might be closer to the truth than the Authority are prepared to admit. You abide by their rules, but underneath you're not sure—'

‘Non-associative claptrap,' Black said, waving his hand dismissively. ‘My only interest is in the pursuit of medikal knowledge. You just happened to be available. If it hadn't been you, some other patient would have done just as well.'

Q tried to ease his cramped position but the ropes held him firmly. ‘Does Dr Hallam agree with this philosophy? Does she think that everyone who has non-associative thoughts is fit only for Psy-Con?'

‘Dr Hallam did believe that.' Black gazed down on to the ocean. He said, ‘Sarah's dead. The rats got her.'

*

The
Torremolinos
sailed on sedately through azure, skies, the quiet days unbroken by anything more remarkable than the occasional vessel below, its sails full and yellow under the glare of the sun; once, they saw a pirate ship, the skull-and-crossbones plainly discernible to the naked eye, but they were too far from land to telegraph its position, and even had they been able to do so, the King's fleet would have taken days to intercept.

It was approaching high summer in the southern hemisphere, the days becoming longer and the air noticeably warmer: the trades stiffened at these latitudes so that the airship picked up speed as it neared the Australasian continent. There was a daily contest to see who could estimate the distance travelled, though the Captain, had he been prepared to admit it, wasn't altogether certain of the precise mileage. But it was a harmless diversion and the Captain saw to it that everyone won the contest at least once on the voyage.

Each evening, after dinner, the passengers retired to the saloon deck and played bridge or read outdated periodicals or simply gazed out upon the ocean, its colour fading with the darkness until it became a black shifting mass – on the western horizon a faint line marking the division between sea and sky, dusk and nightfall.

Dr Black wrote up his notes, taking care not to be too explicit lest the Authority suspect him of having a more than professional interest in the patient; he was there to observe, to keep the patient under control, to ensure that the initial phase of screening was carried out smoothly and according to regulations. He certainly wasn't there to further his career by investigating such new-fangled techniques as galvanology and the like.

He wrote: ‘The tendencies exhibited by the patient conform to the general pattern (imaginative leaps, etc) but diverge in two respects which are perhaps worth noting. First, the patient displays few, if any, signs of agitation. His behaviour is subdued, almost dreamlike, and he accepts without question or complaint the situation in which he finds himself. Secondly, his hallucinatory flights are characterized by an unusually high degree of coherence: that is to say, his imaginings, however
fanciful, are consistent
within themselves
and do contain a weird Logik which …'

He was about to write ‘gains in conviction with the accumulation of data' but hesitated, his pen hovering over the page. He couldn't write that, they would smell a rat for sure. (Poor Sarah.) Instead, he would put something about ‘standard procedure', which was sure to please them. How careful one had to be! His hands felt suddenly cold, there was a dryness in the roof of his mouth; it had occurred to him out of the blue that there might be an ulterior motive in having assigned him to accompany Q to Psy-Con. And why two guards? He felt the sweat prickle on his forehead. Why not one, or three? Was he being stupid to get so worked up into a panic; and then he decided that, stupid or not, he couldn't think of a single logikal reason why, on reaching Psy-Con, he shouldn't be imprisoned there too. The Authority worked that way, they led people blithely along and then, quick as a wink, everything changed, the benign smiling faces became scowls and you found yourself in the High Intensity Complex.

Somebody put a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Dr Black,' He jumped.

‘Yes?' Black said, ashen-faced.

The guard said, ‘I think you'd better come along. The patient seems to be having a fit.'

Black followed him up to the middle deck where the sleeping-cubicles were arranged along each side of the gondola; there was just enough room for a bed and a wicker chair; a small bureau folded down from the wall containing two drawers and a swivel mirror, and underneath the bed a large flat skip was provided for the passenger's clothing.

Q was strapped to the bed and the bed was bolted down, but it seemed to Black that, even so, the patient might wrench the entire assembly from the deck. He was paler than before, his flesh transparent, with the bones, musculature and blood vessels clearly visible, his eyeballs turned upwards into his head so that the sockets were a blind staring white. There was a foam on his lips, flecks of it flying off with his exhalations.

‘You better do something,' one of the guards said unemotionally. ‘He's going to tear that bed loose.'

Black said, ‘It's an excess of poison in the blood. We'll have to bleed him.'

‘Well, for God's sake, do it,' the other guard said. ‘He's your responsibility.'

‘Hold him down,' Black said. He went to fetch his bag from the next cubicle. The guards were kneeling on Q's arms, but they couldn't control his body which, even though bound by the straps, was jerking frenziedly from side to side, bucking like a stranded fish.

‘Hold him, hold him,' Black said. ‘I'll try for the forearm.' He took the pointed instrument and was about to make an incision when, all at once, there was no need to do anything. The patient went rigid, his breathing stopped and he lay still. The guards released his arms which fell either side of the bed, slack as a doll's.

‘Is he dead?' one of the guards asked.

‘If he is, he'll make the angels happy,' said the other.

‘He's got a hard on like a flagpole.'

Black fumbled for the pulse and found it, weak and erratic, and when he checked the heart it was fluttering like a frightened dove's. He said: ‘This is very similar to a state of galvanic shock.' He turned to one of the guards. ‘Has he been given stimulants of any kind?'

‘I gave him nothing,' the man said stolidly.

‘What happened exactly?' Black demanded. (He was in charge now, the doktor with his mysterious rituals, and he felt a new surge of confidence and authority.)

‘I was doing the hourly check, according to regulations, and when I opened the door he was trying to sit up, and staring at me and babbling like a madman. I tried to restrain him but he went berserk, gabbling something about “time” as near as I could make out. Then I came and got you.' He scratched his chin with a broad thumbnail. ‘Is he a loonie?'

‘I can't discuss the patient's case-history,' Black said officiously. ‘He said something about “time”. What was it? Try and remember.'

The guard frowned. He stared at the wall for a moment. His face cleared. ‘He said “There shall be time no longer”. Whatever that's supposed to mean.'

‘That was all? Nothing else?'

‘There was, but I couldn't catch it. I told you, he was babbling, it sounded like nonsense to me.'

‘Yes,' said Black. ‘It would to you.' He leaned over the patient and raised one of his eyelids. ‘There's nothing we can do except let him rest.' He adjusted the straps, tightening them another notch. ‘Keep checking every hour but don't disturb him.'

‘Disturb
him!' one of the guards said. ‘He disturbs
me
.

Black stepped into the corridor. ‘This is a medikal matter and so I don't expect you to understand.' He stretched himself to his full five feet four. ‘If you need me I shall be in the lower saloon,' and went quickly away while he still had the advantage.

*

Q appeared to have fully recovered the next morning and didn't seem to be suffering any ill effects following his ‘attack'. He was fed, as usual, by one of the guards who performed the task with ill grace, shovelling the mush into the patient's mouth and hardly caring how much went in and how much ran down his chin and dropped into his lap. But Q never complained; he seemed indifferent to physical discomfort, unfailingly calm and composed.