View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction
Page 24
Individual consciousness cannot be duplicated. The brain is the ego, unique, indelibly marked by life, the pergament of the whole with all its conscious and unconscious enigrams, with all its erasures and ink spots. Nevertheless, I am prepared.
Today, I was in the control centre of the palace. It has changed
completely. The walls have been torn down and high, arched
windows let through the light of skies full of stars. The sky glows
from time to time, lighting up the dark dusty haze and shrouding the
dark red suns. Strange constellations glow through another arched
window. Giant stars, clustered together, are linked sometimes with
multi-coloured bridges of dark matter and light. The control centre is
empty. The bioprints have disappeared. Darkness reigns and the
glowing lights intensify the impression of unreality.
Master Jack says that we have been connected to the bird-headed
creatures. My head is in fact about to split with the twittering of birds.
They are confusing tones that I don’t understand and they frighten
me because they too are full of fear. The time for takeoff is getting
nearer and nearer. Nervousness is growing. The traveller of the stars is
moving on, leaving his biomass behind.
Bioscap.
Why did he create these mute beings? They live in a world that is
far worse than the noiseless world of Simone.
I swore I would follow Master Jack to the edge of the world.
Now I am standing at the edge of the abyss.
The Land of Osiris
139
Extracts from the Journal of Master Jack
November 19th, 2036
What is this fist-sized cylinder that keeps reverberating in front of my brain?
Subtly wired to the cerebrum and cerebellum, it pulsates life. A droning object, full of all my memories, like a recorder with the voice of a corpse, noisy impressions of a living tongue, spoken with the breath of someone who once was formerly alive.
Oh yes, I can certainly breathe. I have a pair of bellows sensitively guided by biomatical microprocessors. Yes, and a living heart that receives an impulse every 0.8 seconds, which gives it the signal to contract and—immanent to the system and obeying the necessary metabolic processes—gives it a powerful
feeling of life. I have the best possible biomatically guided digestive system, which still gives a feeling of well-being although it is superfluous. It is really not my fault if this cylinder which pulsates inside my forehead still has difficulty identifying itself with me. A clever hormone guided drug deposit helps it with this task. For who am I then?
That is a difficult question.
In moments of lucidity, I know that I am not the one travelling to the stars.
I am the ‘dispensable’ part of me. The necessary system for preserving life in the wilderness. The shabby scrap material of myself that was. Even if this droning metal in my skull never becomes tired of assuring me of my ego and my hope.
Master Jack asked me—it was his last wish—to accompany anything
left of his former self back to the south.
We are sailing up the river together with a fair wind between the
horrible walls of dark mud where the dead still go about their daily
affairs. They hardly ever take any notice of us. For them, we are just
travellers going back to another world, a world forbidden to them.
They don’t seem to mourn its loss.
I awoke and looked through the arched windows of the star
traveller’s control centre. The desert lay covered by a night full of
bright stars. I could feel a hand on my shoulder. ‘Wake up Beschir! It
is almost morning. We must be on our way. The spaceship is going to
take off soon and all this will be consumed by fire.’
Through the eastern windows, we could see the tender green of
daybreak over the horizon. It was a sight that can be seen only on
very clear days in the desert.
I got up.
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Wolfgang Jeschke
‘Is that you, Master Jack?’
‘Yes, it’s me. What’s left of me’, he said. He didn’t have to convince
me. His eyes, otherwise as clear as the sun, were filled with a darkness
only to be found between the stars.
The traveller of the stars gave us a present of one of his ships with a
crew of a dozen insect beings and one bird-headed creature cowering
in the semi-darkness of the early morning.
With a great clatter, the powerful ship raised itself into the air and
made its way off to the south.
Towards noon, a roaring sound erupted behind us accompanied by
a stream of sparks which were consumed in their skyward flight.
In the evening, the first insect being dies and is blown overboard by
the slipstream. We glide over the desert. Master Jack is crouching at
the bow. In his eyes, there is the light of the stars.
The next morning, the deck of the ship is covered with empty insect
shells and broken off feelers. The bird-headed creature is leaning
against the helm, half-decayed. I sweep the chimeras overboard. I roll
the stinking bird-headed remains to the stern and throw them off,
taking over the helm myself.
Extracts from the Journal of Master Jack
November 22nd, 2036
Is this my handwriting? It really is. But aren’t I trying to imitate the writing of someone else?
It is a madness of a very special kind.
Sometimes, it is as if I were not sitting at the bow of the ship which Beschir is guiding like an experienced sailor. It is as if I were sitting at an arched window with a view of the earth. The planet has hardly changed since the
satellite pictures taken by the Apollo astronauts. A blue green oasis in the wilderness of the universe. The planet disappears far below us.
I can feel the powerful heart of the ship. The powerful heart of a
young animal rising, pounding against the force of gravity and
groaning against the force of the wind.
Extracts from the Journal of Master Jack
Sidereal Time
At times, it is as if I were not here on board the spaceship, but on the ship Beschir is courageously sailing through the desert close over the surface of a sea of air. In the depth of my tank of impressions, my biosensors register that
The Land of Osiris
141
the sun is shrinking. Right next to the sun, I can make out the shape of
Beschir, leaning at the helm. His dark face attentively looking forward. We are both leaving the solar system.
I sail this ship, this bark of our illusions, under a sky of burning stars, fly through grasshopper swarms and over the swell of the sand ocean,
over the bone yards and Golgothas of civilization, through clouds of
faded hopes and passions, over the ash fields, through a burnt out day
and into the night and on up into the cool morning twilight. While a
moon, sick and wasted like a rotten orange, stumbles morning after
morning into the day.
I shall lay this ship, this bark of our illusions, at your feet, my King, at the bottom of the ocean that you rule over. For how shall I follow
the course of a navigator who sees stars other than those I should
navigate by? He crouches in the bow and keeps looking for flashes of
light somewhere far over our horizons.
I shall lay this ship, my King, at the bottom of your ocean. An ocean
without light even at the height of day. I shall lay this young powerful
animal that pounds against the force of gravi
ty and groans against the
force of wind at your feet, my King.
I, however, widely travelled sailor that I am, must first explore my
home waters once again, so that I, unlike Odysseus, do not succumb
to the delusion that I am on my own shores only to be shipwrecked
on foreign ones. For that is the problem—to seek new paths.
I am afraid. Not the animal fear of life being threatened, but the
fear of the experienced caravan guide, who knows that the A’alam he
sees could lead him to an abandoned path whose wells have long
since run dry.
Epilogue
A place is assigned me in the realm of the dead.
Where I issue orders to the blessed spirits
(Whose residence remains hidden)
And to the servants of the double-headed lion god.
In the boat of the Khepra god, I speed through the firmament
Singing songs of praise. A breath of life nourishes me
And invests me with magic power.
As I travel through heaven in the Ra boat,
This god prepares my way and opens the gates of Geb. . .
And I embark in the boat of the sun god.
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Wolfgang Jeschke
In your stead, I sail through the mansions of heaven
Midst the throng of spirits that surround it.
Truly, I live all the days of life, though dead,
I feel strength course through my veins
Like the double-headed lion god. . .
—Papyrus Nebseni
Mount Darwin Observatory
May 25th, 2039
Report
MASON (Radar Operator): ‘I can now verify the sensor indications.’
STEPHENS (Chief of Security): ‘Please verify.’
MASON: ‘I’ve got seven points on the monitor. Camera?’
HARDY (Camera): ‘Got ’em on the zoom. Four horses. Three people.
Can’t make them out exactly.’
MASON: ‘Give alarm stage four.’
STEPHENS: ‘Roger.’
HARDY: ‘A man, dark-skinned, around his mid-fifties, one arm. A
young man about seventeen or eighteen. Both leading horses. A
white man about . . . my God, I’ve got him right in focus! It is Jack . . .
Jack Freyman! Turn the fence off!’
STEPHENS: ‘Alarm off. Radar operator, turn the fence off!’
MASON: ‘Roger.’
I wrote this in the winter of 2048 at the Mount Darwin Observatory at
the request of Mr Stephens and Dr Hall. I am standing at my writing
desk while Hazaz is pouring me tea. Master Jack is sitting at the
window, touching his scar and looking through the displaced gates of
his perception into the bright heart of the galaxy.
I have recorded this above all for him because I love him and for the
caravan guides of the stars who have taught me not only to read and
write but much more for our common future.
Beschir ibn Hassan el Sadun
November 19th, 2036
translated by SALLY SCHILLER
CZECH REPUBLIC
Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure
JOSEF NESVADBA
His real name was Feather. Lieutenant Feather. He was in charge of
transport between the second lunar base and the airfields on Earth,
both direct trips and transfers via Cosmic Station 36 or 38. It was a
dull job, and the suggestion had been made that the pilots of these
rockets be replaced altogether by automatic control, as the latter was
capable of reporting dangerous meteorites or mechanical breakdowns
sooner and with greater accuracy, and was not subject to fatigue.
But then there was the famous accident with Tanker Rocket 272
BF. Unable to land on Cosmic Station 6, it was in danger of exploding
and destroying the whole station, which would have held up traffic
between the Moon and the Earth for several weeks and brought the
greatest factories on Earth to a standstill, dependent as they are on the supply of cheap top-quality Moon ore. How would the Moon crews
carry on without supplies from Earth? Were their rations adequate?
How long would they be cut off? Everyone asked the same questions;
there wasn’t a family on Earth who didn’t have at least one close
relative on one lunar station or another. The Supreme Office of
Astronautics was criticized from all quarters, and it looked as
though the chairman would have to resign.
Just then the news came through that an unknown officer, one
Lieutenant Feather, had risked his life to land on the tanker rocket in
a small Number Four Cosmic Bathtub (the nickname for the small
squat rockets used for short journeys). After repairing the rocket
controls, Feather had landed safely on one on the Moon bases.
Afterwards he spent a few weeks in the hospital; apparently he had
tackled the job in an astronautical training suit. On the day he was
released, the chairman of the Supreme Office of Astronautics himself
was waiting for him, to thank him personally for his heroic deed and
to offer him a new job.
And so Lieutenant Feather became Captain Feather; and Captain
Feather became Captain Nemo. The world press services couldn’t get
his Czech name right, and when news got out that Captain Feather
was going to command the new Nautilus rocket to explore the secrets
of Neptune, he was promptly rechristened Nemo (Jules Verne was en
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Josef Nesvadba
vogue just then). Reuters even put forth another suggestion: Captain
Feather de Neptune (it was meant to look like a title of nobility). But
no one picked up on the idea.
Readers all over the world soon got used to Captain Nemo, who
discovered the secrets of Neptune, brought back live bacteria from
Uranus, and saved the supplies of radon on Jupiter during the great
earthquake there—or rather, the planetquake. Captain Nemo was
always on the spot whenever there was an accident or catastrophe in
our solar system—whenever the stakes were life or death. He
gathered together a crew of kindred spirits, most of them from his
native Skalice, and became the idol of all the little boys on our third
planet (as the scientists sometimes called Earth).
But progress in automation and the gradual perfection of technical
devices made human intervention less and less necessary. Feather/
Nemo was the commander of the rescue squads on Earth, but for
some years he had had no opportunity to display his heroism. He and
his crew were the subjects of literary works, the models for sculptors
and painters, and the most popular lecturers among the younger
generation. The captain often changed his place of residence—and his
paramours as well. Women fell for him. He was well-built and
handsome, with a determined chin and hair that had begun to grey
at the temples: the answer to a maiden’s prayer. And unhappy at
home; everybody knew that.
That was really why he had become a hero. At any rate, a
psychologist somewhere had written a scholarly article about it:
‘Suicide and Heroism. Notes on Cause and Effect’. That was the title
of the study. The author cited the case of Captain Nemo: if only this
great cosmic explorer had been more happily married, he said, if
instead of a wife from Zatec, where the hop
s grow, he had married a
wife from Skalice, where they are brought up with the vine, if only
his wife were not such a narrow specialist in her own field (she was a
geologist), but had the gift of fantasy, and if only the son had taken
after his father—Mr Feather would be sitting quietly by the family
hearth, and no one would ever have heard of Captain Nemo. As it
was, his wife was of no particular use to him, and he was always
trying to slip away from home. His son was nearsighted, had always
had to wear thick spectacles, and was devoted to music. He was also
composing symphonies that nobody ever played; his desk was full of
them by now, and the only thing he was good for was to occasionally
play the harp and to teach youngsters to play this neglected old
instrument at music society meetings. The son of a hero, a harpist—
Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure
145
that was another good reason for Captain Nemo to be fed up with life.
And so he looked for distraction elsewhere. His most recent affair was
said to have been with a black girl mathematician from the University
of Timbuctoo, but everyone knew that even this twenty-year-old
raven beauty could not hold him for long. He was famous for his
infidelity—a relatively rare quality at this stage in history, since
people usually married only after careful consideration and on the
recommendation of the appropriate specialists, so that the chances of
a successful marriage were optimal. Naturally the experts always tried
to adjust the interests of those in love. Heroism was no longer
considered much of a profession; it was a bit too specialized, and in
fact no longer fulfilling. Today’s heroes were those who designed new
machines or found the solution to some current problem. There was
no longer any need to risk one’s life. Thus Captain Nemo had become
somewhat obsolete in the civilization he had so often saved from
destruction; he was a museum piece women admired because they
longed for excitement, because they still remembered that love-
making and the begetting of children were the only things that had
not changed much since men emerged from the jungle. Feather and
his men were the constant recipients of love letters from all over the
Earth—in fact, from all over the solar system. Needless to say, this did
nothing to make their own marriages any more stable, quite the