Seeking the Mythical Future Read online

  When he returned to the small dusty cubby-hole they had given him for an office, bathed in perspiration, there was a note awaiting him – on paper headed with the seal of the King’s Commission – scrawled in Benson’s hand. It read:

  I’ve decided, as part of the new ruling on standard procedure, to take charge of further investigation of the deportee Q. I shall require all medikal records and notes, also details of the galvanology procedure used so far and how applied. If you would like to assist I’ll give it consideration.

  M. Benson

  Special Envoy (Designate)

  Black stood trembling at the trestle-table. He felt ill: he had a fever: the heat was like a blanket wrapped round his head, shutting off the air. How had he come to this in only a few weeks? He was angry to the point of palsied shaking, and so frightened that the future seemed to have gone suddenly dry and wrinkled, drawn in on itself like an old mildewed prune. Was there a plot? the thought shrilled in his head. Was Benson compiling a dossier on him? Was Benson’s threat that he could have him seconded to the High Intensity Complex a devious hint, a piece of sly humour that even now Benson was chuckling over with his cronies in the mess, gathered in the corner under the trophies on the wall?

  It seemed that it didn’t take very long for the world to collapse. In no time at all you could fall from security to a level of shifting uncertainty, never sure from one minute to the next who you were supposed to be and what was expected of you and whether you would still be here in a week’s time. He was losing control, and Q was to blame. Why was the MDA so interested in him? Had they directed Benson to take charge of the case or was it Benson’s own idea, scenting glory and distinction in presenting the Authority with a fully-documented case-history of a type of delusional illness not so far recorded in medikal annals? Conflicting emotions fought within him. Should he make a formal protest about Benson taking over the case, his case, or should he offer to assist, discretion being the better part of numbed uncertainty?

  And there was an even more pressing problem. Black summoned one of the guards and gave him a description of the kind of inmate he wanted to see. The guard looked at him with barely concealed insolence and said that there were probably forty or fifty inmates in the compounds who tallied with such a vague description.

  ‘Any one of them will do,’ Black said, pretending to sort through the papers on the trestle-table so that he wouldn’t have to meet the guard’s eye. ‘Pick one at random. Young.’ He felt himself trembling under the guard’s stare and could feel the sweat tricking down from his armpits. The papers were a fuzzy white blur covered in black squiggles. The guard went away, banging the door unnecessarily.

  When he returned he pushed the door open with his foot and thrust the girl into the room; Black busied himself with his papers, saying curtly, ‘Right, that’ll do. You can go.’ He daren’t look up right away, mustering his nerve while at the same time trying to control the fever in his blood. Eventually when he did so the breath seemed to solidify in his throat: she was young, slender, a stunner. He said:

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  Her answer was instant, on the tip of her tongue, as if she had prepared herself for interrogation. He wrote the answer down, as if it mattered.

  ‘Virgin?’

  She faltered, her fine eyebrows drawing together.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ Black said, writing something down, his other hand touching himself under the table. The delicacy of suspense was unbearable and yet he wished to prolong its exquisite tenseness, the girl standing vulnerable and unsure before him, his hand touching himself secretly in her presence.

  ‘Have you ever seen a man’s naked body?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ His head snapped up. The words were thick in his mouth as he said, ‘It is in your own interest not to lie. It will go better for you if you tell the truth.’

  ‘I never have. Truly.’ Her eyes were very dark, her hair black, rats’ tails trailing her shoulders. The musculature of her arms and shoulder was delicate as pencil-shading in the room’s dim light. She made a small gesture with her hands, an appeal, a willingness to comply. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  Black relented a little. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘You’ve kept your mind and body clean. I shall enter that on your report. Perversion is one of nature’s deadliest sins, I suppose you realize that?’

  ‘I didn’t know. They never told me.’

  ‘Well, it is. You have no perversions, have you?’

  The girl shook her head. She was so sincere in her eagerness to please.

  ‘Nothing you’re ashamed of? No dirty little secrets, things you do to yourself, that you want to tell me about?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Good.’ Oh God, he was failing fast. He worked his mouth to moisten it. ‘Very well, then.’ He cleared his throat. ‘What is your name, girl?’

  ‘Nellie.’

  ‘Do you want me to make out a favourable report, Nellie? Would you like that? It all depends on you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Yes please sir.’

  ‘Mmmm, now then … ’ He appeared to be considering the matter deeply. ‘It would certainly go down well with the Authority if we could show that you were a virgin and had kept your mind and body clean. Of course they won’t tolerate lies, you do realize that?’ He brought his hand up on to the table.

  ‘Yes – sir.’

  ‘Well then, let’s see,’ Black said heartily, standing up. ‘We’ll have to see what we can do, won’t we?’ He came round the table, smiling. ‘Stand up straight, girl. Chest out, stomach in, shoulders back.’ He went behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders, thumbs facing inwards towards her spine, adjusting her stance and bearing. The feel of her warm flesh through the grey sleeveless smock tingled his fingertips like an electric current; his eyelids half closed in a heavy throbbing swoon, ecstasy and torment at war within him.

  ‘Now then,’ he said in a gruff voice, moving closer, his hands sliding from her shoulders to her waist, ‘I shall say in my report that you’re an eighteen-year-old virgin who has never seen a man’s naked body. That’s true, isn’t it? Of course it is. I believe you, I believe you.’

  ‘It is true,’ the girl whispered standing stock still.

  ‘Of course it is, of course it is.’ Black pressed himself against her, the firm-packed softness of her buttocks against his hardness. Oh God. He said, ‘But you’ve thought about men’s bodies, haven’t you? You’ve wondered to yourself how they looked naked. I bet you’ve wondered what happens to their bodies when they get excited. Haven’t you wondered?’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Oh, you have, you have,’ Black crooned in her ear. ‘You must have wondered. You’re eighteen years old, a virgin, with a fine full ripe body. You’re dying to know, aren’t you, dying to know what it feels like.’

  ‘Please, I’m not, sir.’

  ‘Oh yes you are,’ Black said, intoning it. His voice heightened a pitch. ‘You want to feel it, I’ll bet,’ fumbling with the smock and thrusting forward so that she was forced over at an angle, supporting herself on the table. He worked himself at her, thrusting between the satin buttocks, frantic with impatience. ‘Don’t worry,’ he breathed in her ear, ‘I’ll see to it that you get a good report.’

  ‘I’m hurting,’ the girl said. ‘It’s burning me.’

  She was (it was true) rather difficult to get into; he was having trouble after the first couple of inches. ‘You’re a cogging tight-holed bitch,’ he said, losing his temper. ‘Bend over so that I can get up you properly.’

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ the girl cried out in real pain.

  There was something wet and sticky enfolding him, a sudden release of stuff like seeping hot engine grease. The girl was screaming.

  ‘That’s better,’ Black said, ‘that’s a lot better,’ sliding in and out with th
e slippery ease of a blood-red piston rod.

  *

  They came for him in the dead of night. He was taken without word of explanation and marched to one of the medikal huts where Benson, wearing his black uniform with the insignia picked out in gold thread above the left-hand breast pocket, awaited him with riding crop in hand. It was an appurtenance of authority; there were no horses in Psy-Con.

  ‘You’re the fellow causing all the commotion,’ Benson said, pacing back and forth in front of him, swishing the crop.

  ‘So it seems,’ Q said, bleary-eyed.

  ‘The fellow with an endless supply of imaginative leaps and flights of fancy. You’ve concocted quite a tale. You’ve even managed to include me in it, and Dr Black.’

  ‘Have I?’ Q said in mild surprise. ‘I can never remember anything about them afterwards.’

  Benson struck him across the head with the crop. ‘Don’t be insolent. You may have received special consideration in the past but that’s all over and done with.’ He was bulkier, more substantial in the black uniform, though his thin veiny hands and long neck were indicators of the physique underneath. His lips – red and protruding slightly – were moist with repeated lickings.

  ‘It’s the truth, I’m afraid,’ Q said, and checked himself when Benson again raised the crop.

  ‘I will remind you,’ Benson said ominously, stooping over him, ‘that you no longer enjoy the protection of Dr Black. There is a new order, a new regime, and I am its Royal instrument. I have been appointed by King’s Commission to expedite the purge here in Psy-Con and to make all necessary decisions affecting both the medikal staff and deportees awaiting screening.’ He stooped even closer. ‘You would do well not to bandy words with me.’

  Q said nothing, waiting, watching.

  Benson resumed his slow, deliberate pacing, thrashing the air now and then with the crop, pleased at the sound it made. The guards stood in the corners of the room, squat black shadows merging into the creeping gloom which stealthily tried to engulf the central hanging lamp. A few mosquitoes whined invisibly.

  ‘It appears from the report that you make predictions. You warned Dr Black and Dr Hallam that should anything happen to you there would be dire consequences.’ He paused and waited. ‘Well, is this true?’

  ‘The discussion was about the nature of perception, the subjective versus the objective. It wasn’t a prediction so much as a metaphysical hypothesis.’

  ‘But is it true?’ Benson demanded, his eyes oddly bulbous in the bleak narrow face, the line of the jaw like a cutting edge.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Benson had halted in front of him and was gripping the riding crop with both hands. ‘Will there be another purge? How will the power structure be affected? Who will rise and who will fall?’ He stamped his foot. ‘I must know. Tell me!’

  ‘I can’t answer,’ Q said. ‘I don’t know.’ He bent his head so that his eyes might be protected from the blow.

  ‘You do know, you do know!’ Benson shouted, hitting him several times on the head and shoulders. He fell back a pace, a spot of colour burning in each cheek, a trace of spittle on his full red lips. ‘You will tell me, I will make you tell me. Black didn’t go far enough with his experiment. Another dose of galvanology at full power, that’s what’s needed. We’ll soon have those arms and legs jerking.’

  Q said, ‘I should have thought wanting to know the future was dangerously non-logikal. Couldn’t it be interpreted as an imaginative leap?’

  ‘You,’ Benson said softly, ‘you are in no position to make assertions about my motives. At midday you could find yourself pegged out in the sun with molasses smeared on your eyelids. The white ant has a very sweet tooth and would start there before moving on to other tit-bits of anatomy. You would go blind, staring at the sun, as you were being eaten.’ He spoke over his shoulder. ‘Is the equipment set up?’

  ‘There’s no galvanic belt. We’ve had to make do with wire.’

  ‘Will it pass current?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Turning back, Benson said sweetly, ‘Providing it doesn’t kill him straight away it should be suitable for our purposes.’

  ‘Has it occurred to you that you might hear something you don’t wish to know?’ Q said. ‘The date of your death, for instance?’

  Benson squatted and reached out his hand, the fingernails chalky and brittle-looking, like pieces of sea shell. He touched Q between the legs, the light from the lamp cast directly on the angular planes and hollows of his face. ‘I shall enjoy the experiment,’ he said, smiling with his raw red lips. ‘In particular the erection quotient.’

  *

  Black slept late and awoke, feeling dreadful. The heat had already begun, drilling into the roof above his head, turning the room into a basting oven. He washed in an inch of tepid water and staggered across the baked red earth to his office, hoping to be at his desk before Benson carried out the daily tour of inspection or had the chance to summon him; but he was too late. Among the debris on the trestle-table lay a green folder, pristine and unbearably self-righteous in having arrived first and being in the official line of business. Black opened the folder, averting his eyes as if not actually reading the report it contained, but reading it all the same.

  7

  Into the Mythical Future

  “The satellite-Control laboratory orbiting in the internal frame of reference Theta2 Orionis in M.42, the gaseous nebula known in the old star charts as the Sword of Orion, was the result of technical and financial collaboration between the nine planetary and five planetoidal states – the culmination of many years’ intensive effort by astro-technologists, cosmologists, neurochemists, EMI Field engineers, cybethetic specialists and mythographers. There were some severe technical problems to overcome – the erection of the Dyson Electromagnetic Sphere being the trickiest and most complex. This was a construction in space consisting of seventeen artificial asteroids of solid iron-ore circling in the opposite sense (direction) to the Temporal Flux Centre. These made up the points of a matrix through which a current was passed, enclosing the region of Temporal Flux in a one-million-volt electrical field which stabilized and maintained its rate of spin. Without the Dyson Electromagnetic Sphere the Temporal Flux Centre would have behaved erratically, emitting huge quanta of radiation which would have decimated all matter within a mean radius of 3 of a parsec. Within the field it was possible to exercise a degree of control, and most importantly to pinpoint the precise coordinates of the event horizon by the ‘shadow’ it cast, in much the same way that an invisible barrier can be detected by bombarding it with negatively-charged particles which, by their sudden disappearance, outline the barrier’s ghostly presence.

  The technical arrangements were now complete, the Psycho-Med preparation in its final stages. Following the transfusion of body fluid the injectee was placed in hyper-suspension and linked neurologically to the Injection Vehicle. From now on his thoughts would be the machine’s and the machine’s his: a human brain and a cyberthetic complex existing together, each inside the other, sharing every impulse and emotion. His commands would be processed and implemented without having to lift a finger, while the machine would provide a constant feedback of information, already digested and pre-computed, directly into his mind. In certain circumstances his decisions could be questioned and referred back for further consideration; and in the event of human error or failure the machine could subvert all previous instructions and self-program herself to take over. She was then completely on her own, a machine intelligence thinking and deciding and acting, independent of human agency.

  Launching was delicate. Upon release from the satellite-Control laboratory the Injection Vehicle was programmed to orbit the ergosphere – that area of space surrounding the event horizon – and be held in position there by the interaction of the one-million-volt field generated by the Dyson Electromagnetic Sphere. Its coordinates were fixed and it would remain in that location, as a particle in an accelerometer, until a suitable i
njection point had been located and verified. The Vehicle was still under direct visual observation by those in the Control laboratory, and radio contact was still possible; once injection was achieved, however, and the Vehicle passed beyond the event horizon, no further contact of any kind was possible. Yet to the outside observer the image of the Vehicle would remain frozen on the periphery of the event horizon, the light waves held in suspension by the immense gravitational force. It was the time dilation effect once again: light struggling to free itself but slowed to a dead stop by the gravitational aura exerted by the Temporal Flux Centre. And, just as lightspeed registered zero, so too would time stand still, absolute cosmic time arrested and held fast, static and unchanging while the rest of the Metagalaxy moved on.

  Then the injectee and the Vehicle would find themselves totally alone in a limbo of infinite spacetime curvature, passing through the one-way membrane in search of the time throat into another universe, seeking the mythical future.

  *

  He was flying (Queghan) over a blue ocean at angles one-five, the sun a hard glare to port making him sweat in his leather helmet and fur-lined flying jacket. Green section of B Flight climbed gradually, five machines in tight vic-formation, with Queghan astern of Prosser, a little to the left and underneath. Stick between the knees, open the throttle, keep an eye on his tailplane. Over the R/T, from the Squadron Leader (‘the Bull’): Tor No 5 attack – deploy – Go!’ There goes Johnny. Now Pussy. Prosser’s turn next. Now Queghan. Down he goes. Take it steady. Pull back. Fire. Break away. Right over and down to the left. Rejoin. Full throttle. Up and up, cut the corner off. Where the hell’s Prosser? Can’t see a damn thing. There he is, up there. Throttle back. Throttle back or we’ll overshoot! Easy does it.

  The Bull is shaking his wings. Form vic. ‘Come on, B Flight, re-form. Section echelon to starboard – Go.’ There goes Bull. Now Johnny. Don’t watch them, watch Prosser. Down we go, down, down, and left a bit. Keep right in – tucked right in. Stratters is okay the other side. Right a bit. Controls getting stiff, must be doing a good 380. Flattening out now. Don’t waffle. Nice and low. Keep in. Hold it. That’s good, that’s fine.