Russell Hoban - Fremder

IT’S A SHORT TRIP TO THE CANDY SHOP, …

At a desk opposite me was a tall bald man with glittering spectacles. He was wearing faded jeans, hiking boots, a denim shirt, and an old green cardigan. Through the window behind him I could see the lights of the flicker docks passing in the black sparkle of space and just beyond them Mikhail’s Quadrangle 4 Snackdome (24 HRS — FREIGHTERS YES) revolving like a beacon with a ring of bright rubbish in slow orbit as it majestically receded from view with the turning of the station. Far beyond Mikhail’s there came and went the occulting blue flash of the Hawking Threshold light, beyond it the pale planet Ereshkigal with its seven circling Anunnaki, and beyond those the jewelled fling of Inanna’s Girdle.

The tall bald man’s spectacles were twinkling as if he had ways to make me talk. I had no idea why I was sitting in a chair in his office; I couldn’t remember anything between flickering out of Nova Central and waking up at Hubble Straits and I rather thought I’d like to keep it that way. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell me’, I said, ‘what I’m charged with.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘Deep Space Command might possibly have one or two questions about the disappearance of the rest of the crew and a spacecraft and cargo worth two hundred million credits.’ His accent was like waving fields of American grain. ‘And I expect the Ziggurat will want you to help with enquiries but here at Newton Centre the only thing you’re charged with is survival. We’d like to know how you did it.’ His spectacles sparkled cordially as he leaned over the desk to shake my hand and the rest of me vigorously. ‘I’m Waldo Simkin, Head of Research here.’ The room smelled of paper, the floor under my feet hummed and shook a little. In the ceiling the fluorescent lights sizzled faintly: Si, Si, Simkin. Si, Si, Simkin.

You needn’t keep repeating it, I thought. I heard you the first time.

‘I wasn’t repeating it,’ he said. ‘Have you got some kind of echo in your head?’

So I must have spoken aloud; he didn’t look like a telepath. Some of the time I could see him clearly but much of the time not. I was getting ringed centres of bright emptiness in my vision, circles of nothing. They kept expanding and wiping one another out so new circles of nothing could appear. Beyond the Hawking Threshold, beyond Ereshkigal and the Anunnaki and Inanna’s Girdle the dead howled and whistled.

‘ “Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,”’ I said.

‘How’s that?’

‘It’s a line from the First Duino Elegy.’

‘I don’t think I know Duino’s work.’

‘He’s a dead guy. I know a lot of dead guys.’

‘You’re alive. Keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole. You’re shaking.’

‘Isn’t everything?’

‘No. Are you wearing bio?’

‘No.’

‘Let’s do an AFR, OK? I want to see what kind of shape you’re in.’

‘OK.’ I opened my shirt and he got a biofeedback kit out of his desk. He placed the electrodes on my head and chest and slid the lancet sleeve over my thumb. I jabbed myself and we watched the numbers climbing on the gauge.

‘That’s an ambient-fear reading of 727.2,’ he said. He removed the thumb sleeve, replaced the lancet, opened his shirt, hooked himself up, and did his own AFR. It was 214.7.

‘Between 200 and 400 is what you expect from somebody in a reasonably functional state,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen one over 600 till now. What’re you afraid of?’

‘Everything.’

YES! bellowed the mind in my head, SAY IT, SAY THE EVERYTHING-FEAR, THE ALL-TERROR. I TOO FEAR EVERYTHING. I FEAR MY LONG-AGO BEGINNING AND THE AWAKENING OF DREAD, I FEAR THE UNCEASING BECOMING OF ME. I FEAR THE HUGE AND THE TINY, THE FAR AND THE NEAR OF ME, AND I FEAR THE MOMENT THAT IS NOW AND NOW AND NOW WITHOUT RESPITE.

The power of that utterance and the relief of it! With those words my fear seemed all at once a mighty fortress in which I was no longer alone. No, not a fortress — not something that stood still but a voyaging thing, a black boat rising and falling in the sea-dark, a vessel in which I could journey far. You again! I said. It’s been so long! Will you be with me from now on?

No answer.

Simkin was looking at me oddly, so I must have been speaking aloud again. ‘I think this might be a good time to turn you over to our head of Physio/Psycho,’ he said. I followed him down the hall to another office where I was introduced to Dr Caroline Lovecraft, a tall, handsome woman: red hair in a Psyche knot, green eyes, horn-rimmed glasses, heroic figure wonderfully enhanced by a tightly-belted green overall with many pockets. As she came towards me I think a little sigh may have escaped me.

‘Hi,’ she said, gripped my right hand firmly, and shot some of her voltage into me. ‘Remember me?’

‘No, but I will from now on.’

‘Well,’ said Simkin to me, ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ and vanished.

Lovecraft sat down at her desk, motioned me to a chair, and gave me her full attention. ‘Bad night?’ she said.

‘I got through it.’

‘I can hear your teeth grinding. Have an E-ZO, have a couple of them — loosen you up a little.’ She offered me a green foil ten-strip of tablets.

‘No, thanks. My problem isn’t loosening up, it’s staying together.’

‘Together is for squilches. The real thing is what comes through the cracks when you fall apart.’

‘I don’t think I can handle that just yet.’

‘Yes, you can — you’ve handled it already or you wouldn’t be here. What we need to do is get it out in the open and see what’s what.’ Like Simkin she had an American accent but not from the same place: hers was suggestive of huge green breakers and shining people on surfboards. She took my hand again. ‘You’ve got the balls for it so let’s do it, yes?’

‘OK, but first tell me, are you related to H. P. Lovecraft?’

‘No. You like H. P. Lovecraft?’

‘Oh yes, I’ve been a heavy user for a long time.’

‘I can do Cthulhu-speak.’

‘Show me.’

‘“ Ph-nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn ,”’ she said in a menacing alien voice that gave me goosepimples. ‘“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”’

‘I’m impressed. That stuff’s hard to memorise and it’s quite scary the way you do it.’

‘It’s my only accomplishment — I don’t tap-dance or play the piano.’

You don’t have to, I thought — your accomplishment is being you. I closed my eyes and tried to hold her voice in my head where I waited for the rain with my face between my knees. Then I settled into my chair and looked around. Her office had the usual Hubble Straits revolving view of Mikhail’s Snack-dome, the flicker docks, the Hawking Threshold light, Ereshkigal, and so on. It was a large and busy-looking place containing a hurly-burly of professional impedimenta with knobs and dials, an overflowingness of books in shelves and stacks, a shadowy black-and-white drawing of a female nude on the wall, a platoon of file cabinets, a small jungle of plants, a big couch heavily burdened with books and papers, and a well-littered desk on which was a museum replica of a small head of a goddess, a thin shell of bronze with a dark green patina, almost a mask because there was no back to it, the edges of its incompleteness following pleasingly the undulations of the hair.

‘Greek, second century B.C.,’ said Lovecraft, ‘found near Mersin, Cilicia. It’s only a replica.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I used to visit her at the British Museum.’ As on the original the whites of the eyes had been painted in and the wearing-away of the paint had been duplicated: the dark and light gave the impression of an upward seductive glance when viewed from above; when I brought my face down to the level of her eyes her look changed to one of fear and doubt. The card on the plinth said, HEAD OF A GODDESS.