Seeking the Mythical Future Read online

  TEMPORAL

  FLUX

  INJECTION

  VEHICLE

  but now most of the letters were obscured, leaving a garbled hieroglyph to be pondered over by someone with an inquiring mind; someone from another world, another time, another future.

  *

  Days and nights passed; he lost track of how many. The days were empty spaces without events to fill them except the neverchanging panorama of yellow sun, azure sky, red ocean. The nights were black voids, the lapping of the waves close at hand, a sultry breeze on his face, the inverted bowl of sky above him a blazing starscape of strange unrecognizable configurations. Once he thought he detected the Great Spiral in Andromeda but it turned out to be a hazy mist of nothingness that moved independently of the surrounding constellations. Was the sun of his own planetoidal home out there somewhere? If it was – if one of those needle points of light was home – then it brought little comfort: he was seeing it as it had been several thousands of years ago, possibly millions of years in the past. The light had crossed an immense distance of interstellar space to bring news of a world upon which the dinosaurs reigned. His own familiar world, that containing everything he knew and loved, his wife Oria, was a billion molecular transmutations in the future, while Queghan, alive and breathing, his heart beating inside his body, was witnessing the world as it had been before Colonization.

  With each daybreak he looked with gnawing expectancy towards the four points of the compass. The flat, boring horizon surrounded him like a movable prison, always keeping him by some mysterious alchemy in the dead-centre of a perfect circle. Perhaps he had landed on a dead planet? A powerful gravitational field had shifted everything towards the red (which would explain the colour of the ocean) and prevented the genesis of life. He was the only living speck on its surface, the only consciousness inhabiting Stahl’s mythic projection; the rest were blurry phantoms which had evaporated into thin air: walk-ons who had been paid off and gone home. Another day passed in a haze of blank detachment, and during the calm, lapping night he thought he heard the Vehicle speaking to him. A residue of intelligence, presumably, was still lurking in its shell, in the dish in which he lay, more dead than alive. The Vehicle’s words were as fragmentary and unintelligible as those written on its surface. He attempted to decipher the words, to comprehend them, for it was communication of a sort, but they made little sense. His lips moved, under the spread of stars, forming a reply. The reply went on interminably through the long hours of darkness until the sound of his own voice became that of a stranger. He listened to the stranger’s voice, the low murmur of uninterrupted monologue filling the vacancy in his head and ascending into the warm dark air. At daybreak, his friend and enemy the yellow sun appeared, smiling and scowling down upon him. ‘Still here?’ it seemed to say, ‘all alone?’ in a chiding, reproachful tone. And, ‘Still alive? Not dead yet?’ He answered, ‘Mythic projections cannot die, they exist in perpetuity.’ Then he would scan the horizon, knowing what he might find, praying for it and dreading it too: the flash of yellow vinyl that would signify the arrival of the barque.”

  8

  And Then Fall

  It was no longer in any doubt: Benson intended making his bid for medikal fame: it was as plain as a pikestaff to Dr Mathew Black. Using his patient and his valuable work Benson was going to publish a monograph on the results of Gestalt Treatment by the application of galvanology. The technique would become known as ‘Benson’s Procedure’, and he, who had pioneered it, nursed and nurtured it, would sink into the shadows of neglect and anonymity. It was a nasty, cruel, unfair world (not so long ago it had been bright and filled with promise) and there were times when he almost felt like crying. He racked his brains, trying to think of a way to beat Benson at his own game, but apart from hiding a King snake in his bunk no brilliant, daring, infallible plan of action occurred. Instead, he had nightmare visions of being posted on permanent duty to the High Intensity Complex, his career finished once and for all, wasting his life away in the back of beyond while Benson rose in eminence to the position of Royal Physician.

  In the black fury of malicious desperation he summoned the girl to his quarters and used her again as swiftly and brutally as he had done before; the release was soon over and short-lived, because after dismissing her the future loomed up as bleak and forbidding as ever. It refused to go away. He paced up and down beside the narrow bed, the armpits of his shirt ringed with sweat, in a torment of frustration and indecision. Already the heat of another day was bouncing off the hard earth, the walls and roofs, making the horizon shimmer and tremble so that it seemed to dissolve before his eyes. My God, he couldn’t bear the place much longer, it was addling his wits, sending him crazy.

  There was craziness in the report too. The patient had spoken of other worlds existing in space, of machines that could think and converse like human beings – and, for the first time, there was an explanation of a kind of how he had arrived ‘mysteriously’ from nowhere. Of course it was imaginative nonsense, the product of a deranged mind, and yet, as Black caught himself thinking in an unguarded moment, there was an eerie consistency about it, too. It explained a number of things: Q’s unnatural paleness for one, and the unidentifiable fluid that sustained him. It also explained his calm indifference and ironic stoicism, for if Q actually believed in these ‘mythic projections’, then everything here on Earth IVn must seem as a dream, insubstantial as the craziest imaginative leap.

  Black had been disturbed when Benson pointed out that the two of them had counterparts in Q’s private fantasy world. Though he tried to repress it, the silly thought passed through his mind that perhaps he was an extension, a ‘projection’, to use Q’s term, of the man Blake: he himself was a phantom of another person’s consciousness. But it was nonsense, he could prove in a moment that this wasn’t true. He could prove it by … by looking at the solid world around him, by touching something, by the sensation of the sweat running down his back. The heat was certainly real, he could feel it pressing against his eyeballs, and the girl was real, no doubt about it, he still had a slight aching soreness resulting from the quick shafting poke. Yet a nagging uncertainty lingered. He couldn’t leave it alone, as a tongue continues to explore a hole in a tooth, for it had occurred to him that not only would he be a phantom projection but so, too, would the world surrounding him. The ‘realness’ of everything around, for all its apparent substance and solidity, might equally be part of the same illusion.

  There had, it seemed to him, to be a way, one way, of proving conclusively that this world, his world, was the real one and that Q’s ridiculous fantasy was just that and nothing more. But where to find the proof? What test could he devise that would leave no possible area of doubt? He stood at the window watching the shimmering haze and swirling dust clouds and an idea so audacious formed in his head that his limbs trembled and a delicious thrilling chill patterned his spine with goosepimples. The test he had in mind was simple, it was conclusive – but it was also irrevocable. It would prove beyond the slightest doubt which was the real world and which the so-called ‘mythic projection’. The pity of it was that Q would have to die in order to prove it; it was indeed a pity, considering all the valuable research yet to be carried out, but Black could see no alternative. If Q died and the world continued (as, of course, it would) then all his babblings would be shown to be so much stuff and nonsense, imaginative leaps of the most dangerous and subversive kind.

  The problem remained of how to persuade that shtank Benson that this was the course of action to take. Naturally, he would want Q to remain alive so as to continue his experiments. Without them his attempt to make a reputation in medikal circles would be stillborn – in fact he’d be lucky to last out until the next purge. Come the purge, thought Black exultantly, come the purge and I’ll be top dog again. He rubbed his hands and shivered with dreadful excitement. But first he had to think of a way to get rid of Q. And if he got rid of Benson in the process, so much the better.

>   *

  Q had been removed from the pre-screening compound and was being kept in isolation, well away from the other deportees. He had undergone a change: his physical condition was deteriorating rapidly, it seemed to Benson, who had appended a note to that effect to the report. ‘The patient’s flesh appears to be losing all substance,’ he had written. ‘Its transparency is even more marked than before and the bones and organs themselves are losing definition and fading away. The patient’s mind is at times quite lucid and he can communicate intelligibly, while at others he seems to withdraw into himself and holds what can only be described as “interior conversations”. I can suggest no satisfactory explanation for either his physical condition or his behaviour and am continuing observation and treatment as outlined above.’

  ‘Are you prepared to endorse the report?’ Benson asked, tapping his long brittle fingernails on the green folder.

  ‘I was under the impression I’d been taken off the case,’ Black said; he was seated in a rickety chair facing Benson across the trestle-table. ‘Your memorandum was quite explicit.’

  ‘Sensitive tyke, aren’t you?’ Benson drawled. ‘I’d rather we were colleagues than adversaries. There’s no earthly reason why we shouldn’t collaborate on this. Benson and Black. Has a ring to it, don’t you think?’

  Black shrugged noncommittally. His eyes were downcast, not wishing to meet the bulbous gaze of the other. Was this another ploy? More deceit, more mocking trickery?

  ‘The Authority, as you’ve probably gathered, are very interested in this case.’ Benson tapped the folder once again. ‘They’re of the opinion that Q is a mystic.’

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ Black commented dryly.

  ‘They also believe—’ Benson placed his sharp elbows on the table and leaned slowly forward ‘—that he comes from the future.’

  Black stared at him. His first thought was that this was some kind of test. His loyalty was in question and it was Benson’s job to sound him out. He said carefully, holding his voice steady, ‘That wouldn’t seem to be a logikal deduction.’

  ‘Logik isn’t everything,’ Benson said flippantly. And then, adding treachery to his blasphemy: ‘There are some of us who believe that Logik holds back progress.’

  ‘Is that sentiment contained in the latest directive?’ Black said, keeping strictly within the limits of MDA protocol.

  Benson smiled briefly, as if humouring a child’s naive curiosity. ‘It’s a non-official view shared by a number of people. However, as for the patient himself, the Authority have been sufficiently – shall we say intrigued by the reports so far submitted as to grant that this other world of which Q speaks might possibly be our world several hundred, maybe several thousand, years in the future. They point out that he did arrive in rather unusual circumstances: he was many miles from any land formation when the ship picked him up, and we have no other explanation, other than Q’s own, of how he got there.’

  Black was aware that he had begun to breathe heavily. He cleared his throat nervously before speaking. ‘This all sounds very irregular to me. By a process of logikal thought we shouldn’t be concerned in the slightest how he arrived or where he comes from. Our concern is, or should be, with the present. Q is here, he exhibits strange symptoms – that and only that should be our field of investigation.’

  ‘What a pompous little man you are,’ Benson said, smiling faintly. He clasped one bony hand in the other and cracked his lean knuckles.

  ‘Pompous perhaps, but correct,’ Black said stiffly. His hatred for Benson fed upon itself, a deep gnawing pit of hunger which had to be filled, which craved to be appeased. He sensed a trap; all this loose easy talk was meant to lull him into relaxing his guard and inadvertently betraying himself. But he wouldn’t be caught. It would take someone far cleverer than Benson to catch him out. He said, ‘Have the MDA seen all the reports?’

  ‘All except this one.’

  ‘And they conclude there’s some truth in his story.’

  ‘They conclude nothing. They’ve merely put forward the idea.’

  ‘The idea?’ Black said incredulously. ‘They’ve put forward an idea?’

  ‘Ideas are in vogue, or hadn’t you heard?’ Benson was smirking openly. ‘I forgot: you aren’t, of course, privy to the confidential minutes of Court business. Great pity, they make fascinating reading.’

  Black’s grasp on reality was slipping. With the panic of uncertainty came a feeling he sometimes had that the entire world was in conspiracy against him, everyone sharing some colossal joke at his expense. People who smiled at him he suspected of plotting in secret, giggling and snorting with hilarity behind closed doors. They all knew something he didn’t, had invented a monstrous subterfuge with which to fool him, and all the while he was the trusting innocent, taking it in, honest and credulous to the point of imbecility. At times he expected those around him (Benson, the guards, even the inmates) to collapse in helpless laughter, with him as the focal point of their insane amusement. He had that feeling now, watching Benson’s smirking grin; it was as if the world was about to tumble around his ears like a house of cards.

  ‘And if Q is from the future,’ he managed to say. ‘What then?’

  ‘Use your imagination, man.’

  Imagination, Black thought. More blasphemy!

  ‘The Court is of the opinion that the patient should be thoroughly investigated. We should seek to learn all we can, and if possible devise a method for testing the validity of his statement.’

  ‘You don’t seem to understand,’ Black said. Frustration chafed him like a constricting rope. ‘It’s quite evident from the reports that Q doesn’t believe in this world. He thinks of us as products of his imagination, that we’re projections, and only exist through him. There’s only one way to prove him wrong.’

  Benson’s large watery eyes gazed at him unblinkingly. ‘I hope you don’t mean what I think you mean.’

  ‘What other way is there?’

  ‘I don’t think,’ Benson said deliberately, ‘I like your attitude.’

  ‘Stuff what you think. This is my patient. I conducted the initial experiments. You’ve become involved because you see it as an easy way of making a quick reputation. Not so long ago you were all for bunging him in the High Intensity Complex and letting him rot. You’ve soon changed your tune.’ Black’s forehead felt hot, yet the back of his neck was cold and clammy. Had he gone too far? He didn’t care. He was sick of being patronized by this thin stick with the bulging eyes and bobbing Adam’s apple. Come the purge, come the cogging purge …

  Benson stood up abruptly. ‘I’m sorry you feel like this,’ he said in a tone that meant he wasn’t. ‘I was hoping we could work together. But if you want to be stubborn, two can play at that game.’

  Black felt a chill of apprehension. Everything was moving too fast, he couldn’t keep a check on it all. Why was Benson offering him this opportunity? Benson and Black. It did, after all, the more he thought about it, have a certain ring to it. Perhaps he had been hasty. Yes, on reflection perhaps he had. Benson was doing the decent thing, he was prepared to share the credit with a colleague. And why not? Their relationship in the sanatorium had always been cordial, professional and one of mutual respect. They had worked together in the past, they would continue to work together in the—

  ‘I shall put in a request for your immediate transfer to HIC. I’ve gone out of my way to be fair, but you won’t have it; very well. Be it on your own head.’

  ‘What have I done now?’ Black said whiningly. ‘Tell me what I’ve done first. It’s not fair otherwise.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Benson said, jerking his head vigorously. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, you’d lap it up,’ and suddenly screamed at the top of his voice, ‘You’ve had your last swinting chance, you gingy crole!’

  Black swayed back in the chair, faint and puking ill.

  *

  Q was indeed a shadow of his former self. He lay in rags and tatters in t
he shadowed corner of the small room, a slanting grille of sunlight imprinted on the wall above his head, his feet lost in the evil-smelling straw which littered the packed earth floor. For much of the time he chatted with Prosser and Stratters, though Johnny kept pestering him to play a game of chess. He replied, untruthfully, that he had forgotten how to play. The truth was that he hated a game to be interrupted by a call to ‘scramble’ over the tannoy: his mind couldn’t accommodate a cerebral exercise and the adrenalin-pumping action of chasing the Hun over the fields of France in direct sequence, one after the other. So he preferred to chat idly and read the London Illustrated News in the lulls. The round-backed wicker chairs were comfortable, and sometimes he fell asleep in the hot French sun. Prosser took his photograph once and they got the film developed in the nearby town of Châlons-sur-Marne, showing him sprawled out fast asleep with his flying jacket and mouth open. It was the hottest summer he could remember, so stifling that sometimes he had difficulty breathing.

  The bright rectangle moved imperceptibly across the wall. From outside came sounds of shouted commands and shuffling feet: the deportees were being moved from the pre-screening compounds to their final destinations. Some would be sent to camps in the Western Province, some would join the labour gangs working on the construction of new camps, others would embark on the one-way trip north to the High Intensity Complex. The compounds had to be cleared within the day to make room for the new consignment – a bumper crop of six thousand which was at the moment disembarking at a number of ports on the southern coast. The recent purge had rooted out many more dissidents who, up until now, had masqueraded as model citizens. The King of New Amerika had instructed the Medikal Direktorate Authority to issue a new set of even stricter directives which in effect made anyone, under certain circumstances, liable for deportation. Nobody knew what those certain circumstances were. Even some of the Authority’s own medikal staff had been caught in the net, and it was rumoured that not everyone at Court was above suspicion. Psy-Con was growing at a rate no one had anticipated; soon Australasia would be one vast concentration camp, filled from coast to coast, and in order to accommodate any more, the liquidation programme would have to be implemented. The Authority had been asked to suggest the simplest, cheapest and most effective methods of disposal, and this had provoked a lively debate in the medikal journals. One suggestion had been that they set up a breeding centre for two-headed King snakes, several thousand of which could be turned loose on the inmates; but it was pointed out that this would prove dangerous for the medikal staff and guards – besides which, the shrunken decomposing bodies would constitute a health hazard. Far better to extend the network of alligator pits; this method had the dual advantage of disposing of the corpses while at the same time ensuring that the alligators had a regular and nutritious diet.