Russell Hoban - Fremder

‘Maybe we could go somewhere dark and quiet and have a drink?’

‘We’re still on Corporation time.’ She stood up, retrieved her underwear, picked her overall off the floor, zipped herself up, and re-did her Pysche knot.

‘Dr Lovecraft, tell me the truth — do you do this with every Level 4 subject?’

‘Did it feel that way to you?’

‘No.’

‘Then don’t ask stupid questions. You got into my knickers because desperation turns me on and you’re the most desperate man I’ve met in a long time.’

‘You haven’t got anyone now? No partner?’

‘No.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-eight.’

‘How can it be that a woman like you hasn’t got anybody?’

‘What can I tell you? Lot of frogs out there. Let’s look at the Fremder Gorn video.’ She ejected the brain-scan disc and there was F. Gorn drifting through space as seen by Sun Ra ’s nose camera. As we watched me tumbling over and over in frozen stillness she advanced the audio beam to its next track and The Art of Fugue , performed by Marie-Claire Alain, came stalking into the room on its centuries-high legs. It was as if Bach had with spells and numbers called forth some cosmic monster that would eat me up, eat up the world with its implacable and insatiable logic. And yet the terror in that music was what I’d held on to when Clever Daughter disappeared from around me.

‘“Be the music” is what you said on November 7,’ said Caroline’s voice from far away.

‘I’m trying to remember.’ But all that came to me was Rilke’s line ‘Every angel is terrible’. In German it sounds more so: ‘ Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich ’.

‘“Thou?”’ said Caroline.

‘Are you getting familiar?’

‘I’m looking at the 7 November transcript. After “Be the music” you said, “Thou.” Or maybe it was “Thowl”. Thowl, thowl-the owl?’

‘Shit.’

‘Owlshit?’

‘Could we take a break?’

She looked at her watch. ‘OK,’ she said, and began to clear the books and papers off the couch again.

‘Are you trying to kill me or cure me?’ I said as she unzipped her overall.

She gave me a quick leer over her shoulder. ‘A change is as good as a rest.’

*

Although I still think of huge green breakers when I remember that time it turned out that Caroline wasn’t from California but from Pennsylvania and she’d never done any surfing. She’d played lacrosse at college, though; I’d like to have seen that.

After the break we went to the Cyberspace Lab for a reality-envelope run in which the Clever Daughter/Sun Ra episode was simulated in real time with a model developed from the Clever Daughter automatic transmission, the Sun Ra disc and log, and Bill Charteris’s recall. The whole thing was then analysed with ten-permutation parameters but none of it helped me to remember anything.

Then a hypno session with Caroline. Here’s the transcript:

L : Can you hear me?

G : Yes.

L : You’re aboard Clever Daughter and it’s the 4th of November.

G : Happy Birthday, Frem.

L : Right, Happy Birthday, Frem. Now it’s 04:06.

G : OK for flicker on 47.7 Ems. Hit the switch, Plessik. Bye bye Hubble.

L : Bye bye Hubble. What now?

G : What?

L : What’s happening?

G : Oh no. Hold on.

L : Hold on to what?

G : No, no, no.

L : What are you seeing?

G : Not seeing.

L : What then? Hearing?

G : (VIBRATES TONGUE AGAINST ROOF OF MOUTH WHILE EXPELLING BREATH) Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

L : What’s that? Did you hear a sound like that?

G : No.

L : What then?

G : Riffling.

L : What? What riffling?

G : Like a great big pack of cards.

L : This is something you heard?

G : No.

L : It was in your mind?

G : Piss off, Dr Lovecraft.

Caroline gave me that to read after the session. When I finished I put it back on her desk so that it was lying at an angle in front of her. She lined it up parallel to the edge of the desk. ‘Why did you tell me to piss off?’ she said.

‘I don’t know — I suppose I don’t like having too many people inside my head.’

‘OK, I can understand that; I know it’s an intrusion but we need answers. Do you remember telling me about the riffling?’

‘No.’

She put the transcript in the file. ‘Can you tell me anything else at all?’

‘No.’

‘Straightsies?’

‘Straightsies.’

‘You’re not bleeping for a Section 10, are you?’ Section 10 is Contract annulled without censure due to job-related illness or injury; full pay and compensation as stipulated in Clause 86.

‘All I’m bleeping for is a little peace and quiet.’

‘You won’t find it in this world, Frem.’

That was where the first day of the Level 4 ended. When somebody in a white jacket came to take me to my quarters I found various colours in my head for which there were no words. I wanted to demonstrate these colours to the somebody in the white jacket but he seemed to want me to keep still so I had to knock him down, after which he got up and knocked me down and sat on me while somebody else zapped me with a large shot of Be-a-Good-Chap and I woke up the next morning feeling very well rested.

‘You ever been to Badru?’ said Caroline next morning.

‘It’s one of my favourite places.’

‘Feel like going there today?’

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know. It’s nothing official — I just want to see what it feels like, the two of us on Badru. We’ll drink Krasnaya Kola and eat Galaktik Miks with Spudnik Fry and spend the night in a Q-BO SLEEP. How’s that grab you?’

‘Hard. But is this a you-and-me personal thing or is it a new approach to the Level 4?’

‘Look, Frem — the you that’s part of the you-and-me personal thing is the same you that’s nilsponding the Level 4. So I don’t really know how much of it is for me and how much is for Corporation. Is that OK?’

‘OK, let’s do Badru.’

There was a 10:00 jet so we caught it. The other passengers were mostly lingerie salesman from a company called Flauntees Ltd, all of them wearing badges with their first names on them and all of them bound for Yamomoto Pleasure Station 7 for their annual sales conference. Several of them looked at Caroline with eyes that were obviously undressing her and putting her into something more comfortable but they were quiet about it.

‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,’ said a husky female voice after we buckled ourselves in. ‘Welcome aboard the Pandora , your Interjet shuttle service to Badr al-Budur. I’m Captain Kurtz and I’ve got a green board in front of me so as soon as we get the word from Traffic Control we’ll be off. Our jump time to Badru is eight minutes, give or take the odd half-hour depending on the El Niños. Today’s forecast is fifteen per cent so it shouldn’t be too bad. A final reminder: if you haven’t already checked all electronic equipment, please buzz a cabin attendant and do it now.’ There was a pause while three or four laptops were collected, then the clear for blastoff sounded. ‘Cabin attendants, please buckle up,’ said the captain, and there was a bone-rattling roar as we blasted off. Once in our flight path we lurched, wobbled, shook, rattled, and rolled as we hit the El Niños and Pandora and all of us grew alternately longer, shorter, and otherwise, bending and twisting with the varying force fields. Strange colours surged around the ship and faded into blackness on the seatback monitors. Some of the Flauntees Ltd first-names began to chant, ‘Tees-Flaun, Tees-Flaun,’ then became quiet as sick bags were brought into play and the cabin staff were kept on the hop with urgent calls for aid of one kind or another. Eventually the spaceport at Badru appeared in the seatback monitors, the captain said, ‘Layzen gemmen, than kyoufer flynnerjet, hopesee yougen. Hava plenstop Badru,’ and we were down after an hour and sixteen minutes of jump.