by John Gardner
*
Just before two in the afternoon the Sorcerer was leading Boysie to the main entrance yet again, prattling on about the count down and using incredible technicalities. The monologue passed over Boysie’s head. He merely nodded and said ‘yes’ and ‘naturally’ when it seemed best. As they reached the foyer, in sight of the Landrover waiting outside, the loudspeaker system let out its shriek. The shrill whine died. The Sorcerer stood still.
‘Sorcerer and Apprentice to Launch Lecture Room One.’ The Loudspeaker gave the order twice before the Sorcerer broke into a double.
‘Something drastic has happened,’ said the Sorcerer as he reached the Landrover,
‘For instance?’ yelled Boysie, climbing in beside him.
‘For instance with the count down or something.’
The Landrover set off at a speed which made the vehicle bounce and roll so that, to the passengers, it gave a passable simulation of what life was like bronco busting.
The Seducer and Silversmith stood outside the low building a couple of hundred yards from the launch pad. They turned and walked slowly down the steps and into the building as the Landrover drew up. Boysie followed the Sorcerer from the vehicle into the building.
It was a simple bare room with wooden folding chairs marshalled in neat rows facing a raised dais and a blackboard wall.
At the blackboard end stood the Silversmith, Seducer and Solomon. In the front row, her back to the door, sat Sonya.
‘Good,’ the Seducer called out. ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is being elevated to a more lofty station.’
‘So what’s wrong?’ The Sorcerer looked puzzled.
‘Yetsofar,’ said the Seducer crisply. ‘Yetsofar has been taken ill. The doctor has diagnosed food poisoning of a particularly virile nature. You are all right?’ He looked at Boysie.
‘Fine. Never better,’ said Boysie with a sheepish grin.
‘You will have to be fit. You will now take Yetsofar’s place. Come. Come and sit next to Sonya, your partner on this venture. A partner in more ways than one.’
Sonya turned and looked at Boysie as though he was the only man in the room.
It had worked, but now Boysie began to feel misgivings. The old lusts of escape stirred inside him and he returned Sonya’s look with a dividend of lechery.
CHAPTER NINE
SONYA
So Sonya, like a leaf
Was borne into the heady air,
And thus did come and keep her tryst
With Olaf brave and fair.
THE MATING OF OLAF: Trans. by Sigmund Dross
‘Come and sit next to me.’ Sonya’s voice had a smouldering texture.
‘Sure,’ said Boysie, swallowing and edging in.
‘Good, it is necessary that you should get acquainted.’ The Seducer was smiling. A lascivious smile. Almost a full-blooded drool.
It was not usual for Boysie to blush, but somehow the atmosphere and Sonya’s unspoken words made him colour up.
‘You approve, Sonya?’ asked the Sorcerer.
Sonya lifted a hand and brushed back an exquisite fall of hair. ‘Of course I approve. Naturally I am sad about Yetsofar. He was a truly magnificent creature.’ She turned her head and looked at Boysie, scrutinizing him as a farmer will examine a horse. The blush on Boysie’s cheeks became more pronounced. ‘Yet, looking at this one,’ she continued, ‘it might turn out even better than we hoped.’
‘You realize,’ the Seducer was facing Sonya, ‘that a great deal will depend on you now.’
‘My apprentice will handle Sext,’ the Sorcerer interposed.
‘I’m sure he can.’ The Seducer said. ‘I am worrying a little about the mechanics of the capsule.’
‘There is no need for worry. I have had your training. It is all that is necessary.’ Sonya gave a pout in Boysie’s direction.
‘God help you, young woman, if anything goes wrong, then.’ The Silversmith took a pace forward into the group. ‘That goes for all of you. I haven’t poured money into this concern for nothing and it strikes me you’ve already ridden near to disaster, courted it even. So, if anything happens to upset the plans, like old Shylock have my pound of flesh. From each one of you.’ He gave a brusque motion with his hand in Solomon’s direction, indicating that he wanted the man to come with him. ‘You’d better get your new boy briefed. While we run over the method of extracting the largest amount from the highest bidder.’ Hands behind his back, the Silversmith stalked from the room. Solomon in his wake.
There was an embarrassed silence, eventually broken by the Seducer.
‘To work, then, to work.’ Even the Seducer sounded less confident after locking metaphorical horns with the Silversmith. ‘Sonya, this gentleman knows only half of the experiment. The half with the lifting body.’
‘He has a pleasant surprise in store then.’ She turned to Boysie. ‘That is if you don’t find me repellent.’
‘Repellent?’ said Boysie, speaking in the upper register. ‘You, repellent? I’d say just the opposite.’
‘It will make things easier.’ She smiled a full-blown summer smile, the kind of smile that Boysie remembered from his youth, when there was sport among the village girls, round and round the hayricks and among the Berkshire corn.
‘Much easier.’ agreed the Seducer turning to Boysie. ‘You see the main purpose of the experiment is not simply to check on my friend’s lifting body. Your main purpose is to procreate.’
‘To do what?’ squawked Boysie as though hit by falling masonry.
‘Procreate,’ said the Sorcerer.
‘Procreate,’ said the Seducer.
‘In your quaint idiomatic English,’ said Sonya. ‘They mean that you have to get me in the club.’
‘In a space capsule?’ Boysie spoke weakly.
‘That is the whole point,’ replied the Seducer. ‘You and Sonya must couple while in orbit …’
‘I’ve heard of flying high but this is ridiculous,’ said Boysie, still blushing crimson.
The Seducer shook his head in a distinct negative. ‘Not ridiculous. You and Sonya will be founder members of the new race. The space babies. The sky children. It is an exciting project, yes?’
Boysie gabbled unintelligibly. At last he got out, ‘If you bloody well think I’m going to be tossed round the earth at lord knows how many miles per hour and make love to this lady at the same time you’ve got another thing coming.’
‘And so have you, Mr. Oakes.’ The Seducer came up close. He smelled of garlic. ‘You are being most churlish to the lady. You must not refuse her.’
‘I’m not refusing her. I’m just a shade put out.’ Boysie decided he had played the coward long enough. Now he would have to cool it slowly. It would be comparatively easy to be a hero. Especially if one knew the rocket would never get off the ground. Old Mostyn would see to that. ‘Say I decided to go through with this. What sort of … er … remuneration would I get?’
‘What Yetsofar would have got. Ten per cent of the final price,’ said the Sorcerer. ‘You see what we are doing? As soon as you are in orbit we put the results up for auction. America, Russia and Great Britain will all bid. In fact what country wouldn’t like to own the first space child and its mother.’
‘What about the father?’ Boysie indignant.
‘You are of little importance once Sonya is impregnated. You can be paid off. Of course if America or Britain win you can be sure of more hard currency from the tabloid newspapers. The story is what I believe they call a natural.’
Boysie chuckled to himself. It would be almost worthwhile going through with it. He could see the headlines. COME OFF IT, MR. OAKES - Daily Mirror. MY SECRET ASSIGNATION IN SPACE. AMAZING REVELATIONS - News of the World. THIS FILTHY EXPERIMENT IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE - The People.
‘Okay, start the clock.’ Boysie grinned at the Sorcerer and the Seducer, happy in his knowledge that there was no danger.
The two men looked relieved and Sonya stood up to plant a kiss on Boysie’s cheek.
‘There,’ beamed the Sorcerer like a marriage guidance counsellor. ‘It is a love match.’
‘You are too sentimental.’ The Seducer spat. ‘This is a scientific experiment. Love matches do not come into it. We must approach this clinically.’ He looked at Boysie. ‘Now perhaps the medical we gave you on arrival makes sense. We have a very good working knowledge of how you function sexually. We know what smells, words and colours give you stimulus. We also know which are the most sensitive areas of your body. All that information will be passed over to Sonya and a similar dossier, concerning Sonya will be passed to you for perusal.’
Boysie had been looking at Sonya during the last sentences. She returned the look and the physical attraction of male for female and female for male bleeped out between them. Boysie imagined a row of hearts going from head to head like in the comic pictures. He missed the first few words of the Seducer’s next sentence.
‘… the launch and re-entry procedures you already know, what we have to do now is simply give you a more detailed pattern of how the flight will take place and which instruments you need to know within the capsule.’
‘Just a minute.’ Boysie raised his hand. ‘There is one thing I would like to ask. Why, if we are just going into orbit, do you need such a damn great rocket?’ He looked at the two German scientists as if to say, caught-you-that-time.
‘But I have just been explaining. You obviously don’t take this seriously.’
‘I do, I do,’ chanted Boysie, trying to make good his lapse. ‘It’s only that I find it difficult. Difficult to adjust to the idea of being shot into space.’
‘Well, for your information.’ The Seducer sounded every syllable. ‘We have to use a very large launch vehicle for two reasons. First, the pay load is considerably heavier than normal. Second, before we can get you into orbit we have to fire you on a low trajectory. This is done by two small computers in the launch vehicle guidance system. The first stage takes you to a point quite near the Tropic of Cancer. Somewhere over India we reckon. Then, as the first stage falls away your direction will be changed …’
‘To straight up?’ said Boysie.
‘As you observe, to straight up. The second stage will take you into orbit. The Sorcerer must have already shown you the instruments in Sext which will supply you with information from the capsule during the launch and just prior to re-entry.’
‘Yes, he did.’ Boysie remembered the panel of lights, and the digital counter, below the flight instruments.
‘Good.’ The Seducer rubbed his hands. ‘Then you must realize there are duplicate instruments in the capsule. So between both sets of instruments you will be told automatically when to go down to the capsule from Sext, and when to make the journey back before re-entry.’
‘Don’t worry. I show you.’ Sonya still smouldered pleasantly. ‘As easy as …’
‘Falling off a log,’ Boysie finished.
‘Yes,’ chorused the brace of scientists.
‘Yes,’ said Boysie. ‘But there are a couple of other things I don’t quite understand.’
‘Perhaps you will when we go up to the capsule.’
‘Maybe. But tell me, and stop me if I’m wrong, I seem to remember that when people go into orbit they have to be dressed up in spacesuits and helmets with damn great visors on them to keep off radiation.’
‘So?’ The Seducer looked puzzled.
‘So, if we’re done up in all that gear how the heck are we going to … well … copulate.’
Gentle chuckles emanated from both the scientists and Sonya.
‘It is quite safe,’ wheezed the Seducer. ‘Once in orbit you can remove all clothing. The warning buzzer for re-entry goes at the start of your final orbit. Probably the fourth orbit. So, as each orbit takes roughly ninety minutes you have that space of time to readjust your clothing.’
‘I see,’ said Boysie patiently, like a male nurse talking to a ninny. ‘Well how about this one. We will, I presume, be in a weightless condition once we’re in orbit.’
‘Yes.’ There was a slight trace of razor’s edge in the way the Seducer answered him.
‘Well, I should have thought there was an obvious difficulty. I don’t see that I need to elaborate on it.’ Boysie stopped, looking lamely at the Seducer, waiting for him to say something. The Seducer simply looked straight into Boysie’s eyes. ‘I mean, how do you …’ Boysie began. ‘How do you … er … manage it? I mean with being weightless and ‘all that. Everything’ll float won’t it? Everything?’
‘Do you think we are absolute fools?’ The Seducer was purple with rage. It was as though someone had disputed his parentage. ‘I have spent months, years, preparing for this. You think we didn’t take the weightless condition into account? It was the first thing. The very first thing we did was to work out a method by which humans could procreate in a weightless zone. We go up to the capsule now. From there you will be able to see for yourself. And what you do not understand Sonya will teach you.’
*
Heights were not Boysie’s strongpoint. As the lift whipped them up to the capsule towering at twice the height of Nelson’s column, Boysie breathed a silent prayer. This was pure madness, even though he knew in his heart of hearts that Mostyn would call down the wrath of NATO upon the island and its strange inhabitants long before the rocket could shift a fraction. It was madness to tempt fate. Fate? Fête? A fete worse than death. Boysie giggled like a schoolgirl as his mind ripped back to the memory of the corny old joke.
The elevator whined to a halt.
‘Unterkleider,’ announced the Sorcerer with a loud guffaw.
‘What’s he on about?’ Boysie whispered to Sonya.
‘It’s supposed to be a joke. He said we had arrived at the underwear department.’ She put out her hand. Their palms met and Boysie felt the delicious tingle up his arm and down the spinal cord.
‘What a beautiful way to go,’ he said quietly. ‘Shot out to infinity with a magnificent female.’
‘That is a nice compliment. Yetsofar never paid me compliments. I think I shall like you better.’
‘Attagirl. It’s just what my old pappy would have wished. After you with the capsule.’
‘Take him inside.’ The Seducer addressed Sonya. ‘I will listen to what you tell him and correct any errors.’
‘There will be no errors, comrade. I do not make mistakes.’ Sonya bent low to climb into the capsule. Boysie followed suit and groped his way through the hatch.
To his surprise the interior was roomy. He could almost stand upright while touching one of the two aluminium ladders which reached down from the nose in which Sext was comfortably mated. The bulk of the capsule was taken up with a large, raised and leather-padded couch. Sonya laid herself back on the yielding surface, and motioned to Boysie to lie beside her. On his back, looking straight up, Boysie found himself gazing at a small panel of lights, two digital computers and a small battery of switches.
‘You should be able to reach the switches from this position,’ said Sonya. ‘You see, if all goes well, the two central lights go on and a warning buzzer sounds as we are entering the final orbit. The whole thing is remotely controlled.’
‘What if it doesn’t operate?’
‘If we lose contact, or if anything goes wrong, we can activate the system by manually switching in the guidance computers.’ She wagged a hand in the direction of the line of switches. ‘The lights will come on, the buzzer will sound and the digital counter goes into operation in exactly the same way as they respond to the remote control. Which ever way it goes we have around ninety minutes to get back into Sext.’
‘And what about the experiment in here?’ Boysie thought that for a second he detected a slight flush across the Russian girl’s face.
‘We have to be ingenious,’ she said. ‘There are the Seducer’s aids. Stirrups for my feet and arms.’ Sonya indicated the rubber padded half circles at the bottom and top of the couch. ‘In this centre piece at the back behind our heads,
there are other aids. A weight belt for each of us. Feet weights for you. Lockers in which to stow our clothes and a weighted net to throw over ourselves if necessary. We will manage.’
‘Yes,’ said Boysie. ‘Suppose we will.’
Half an hour and many explanations later, they left the capsule. As the lift dropped them to ground level Boysie asked the Seducer, ‘When do we go on board? For real, I mean?’
‘If the count down goes on normally you go on board at noon tomorrow. Lift off should be at around fourteen hundred hours.’
‘Two o’clock,’ Boysie mused, his thoughts trained on Mostyn and his liaison with the NATO people in Spitzbergen. ‘One other thing,’ he said cheekily. ‘How can you be sure that Sonya … Well that she …?’
‘Is made pregnant?’ The Seducer helped him out of the embarrassment. ‘We have regulated her like watch-makers. I promise you that the twenty-four hours between midnight tonight and midnight tomorrow will be the most fertile hours her body has ever known.’
‘Satisfied, daddy?’ Sonya said.
Boysie began to feel extreme trepidation.
*
‘And they want me to be the father,’ Boysie whispered to Mostyn.
It was now gone ten in the evening. Following their return from the capsule, the party decided that Boysie should have at least a minimum of training. Watched by the Seducer, Sorcerer, and later, the Silversmith and Solomon, Boysie tumbled around in a weightless condition inside a simulator.
‘You have to give them credit,’ he said, later, to Mostyn. ‘They’ve got every mod’ con.’
‘You launch tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock?’ said Mostyn.
‘On board at noon, into the stratosphere at two. That’s the plan.’
‘I don’t really see you as an astronaut, lad. Not you at all, so I’d better call down the strike at thirteen hundred hours tomorrow. One o’clock. Does that suit?’
‘It suits fine, but for heaven’s sake get it right,’ said Boysie. ‘If you happen to slip up I’m going to have a harrowing experience, apart from the possible paternity suit and that’s a thing I’ve always managed to avoid.’
