Ian Watson: The Embedding

Sam Bax stared irritably at Sole’s body lying sedated on a second stretcher.

“With this little escapade I rather fear our Dr Sole has cooked his goose.”

Rosson looked at Sole too. His head was hurting him.

“He’s been under strain. Let’s not make too much fuss about it, Sam. We’ll all need to pull together to clear this mess up,” he said generously—though he cursed Sole for a bastard and a fool.

Sam shrugged, unimpressed. He looked round for Eileen.

“Ah—Mrs Sole. Your husband will have to go into the Unit for observation, you realize. I’ll see you’re kept informed. It might be as well if you didn’t visit him immediately.”

“Quite,” she answered dryly.

Shortly after, the ambulance drove away.

“Unless Sole’s mind is cracked as bad as the boy’s,” Sam Bax purred at Rosson, ushering him impatiently towards his own car.

Rosson tossed his mane of hair, winced as it tugged at his broken scalp.

A thousand miles over the Solomon Islands, travelling northward, minds weren’t cracked at all, but deepfrozen—to a degree above absolute zero…

To the north of Las Vegas, beside the Atomic Energy Commission testing ground, minds weren’t cracked at all, but dispersed in lightly radioactive debris drifting slowly south before settling into the desert.

The casinos were far enough south for nobody to need worry. The gambling went on. Minds reckoned the odds.

Five thousand miles further south, a Xemahoa Indian named Kayapi wasn’t much worried either.

To Judy

Ian Watson (1943 - )

Ian Watson was born in England in 1943 and graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a first class Honours degree in English Literature. He lectured in English in Tanzania (1965-1967) and Tokyo (1967-1970) before beginning to publish SF with "Roof Garden Under Saturn" for the influential New Worlds magazine in 1969. He became a full-time writer in 1976, following the success of his debut novel The Embedding . His work has been frequently shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula Awards and he has won the BSFA Award twice. From 1990 to 1991 he worked full-time with Stanley Kubrick on story development for the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence , directed after Kubrick’s death by Steven Spielberg; for which he is acknowledged in the credits for Screen Story. Ian Watson lives in Northamptonshire, England.