Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

by The wind's twelve quarters - vol 2

  H. Just that. He stopped answering. Stopped talking. Stopped noticing. Dwight thought it was cafard. Is that what they're still calling it?

  D. It's mentioned as one possibility. Was there anything special happened, there at the site?

  H. We found the room.

  D. The room, yeah. That all came back on your reports. I've seen them, and some of the holos you brought back with you. Fantastic. What the hell is it, Gerry?

  H. I don't know.

  D. Is it a construct?

  H. I don't know. What's the whole City?

  D. It was built, made; it must have been.

  H. How do you know, how can you tell, when you don't know what made it? Is a seashell 'made'? If you didn't know, if you didn't have any background and couldn't assume any likeness, and you looked at a seashell and a ceramic ashtray, could you tell, could you say which was 'made'? And what for? What does it mean? Or what about a ceramic seashell? Or a paperwasp's nest? Or a geode?

  D. Yeah, OK. But what about those things, that...

  arrangement that you call 'pigeonholes' in the reports? I saw the holos. What did you make of them?

  H. What did you make of them?

  D. I don't know. They're weird. I thought of running the spatial arrangements through a computer, looking for meaningful pattern.... You don't think much of that.

  H. No. Fine. Only what are you going to program for 'meaning'?

  D. Mathematical relationships. Any kind of geometrical pattern, regularity, code. I don't know. What was the place like, Gerry?

  H. I don't know.

  D. You were in there a lot?

  H. All the time, after we found it.

  D. That's where you noticed this kind of eye trouble you've got? How did it start?

  H. Things going out of focus. Like eye strain. It was worse outside the room. Came on over several days. I could still make things out all right when we were taking the ML up to the ship. But getting worse. There'd be these flashes of light, left my depth perception all screwed up, I'd get dizzy. Dwight and I set up the course, one or the other of us was functioning most of the time. But he was getting kind of wild. Didn't want to use the radio, wouldn't touch the onboard computer.

  D. What was... wrong with him?

  H. I don't know. When I told him about my eyes he said he'd been having something like shaking fits. I said we'd better get the hell up to the ship while we could. He said OK, because Joe was really beginning to not function. Before we even launched he started having some kind of seizures, like epilepsy — Dwight, I mean. When he came out of one he was shaky, but he seemed rational. He took us up OK, but as soon as we docked in he went into another fit, and they kept getting longer. He started hallucinating in between them. I gave him some tranquillizers and strapped him in; it was wearing him out. When I took the sleep, I don't know, he could have been dead already then.

  D. No, he died in the sleep. About ten days out from Earth.

  H. They didn't tell me that.

  D. There wasn't anything you could have done, Gerry.

  H. I don't know. Those attacks he had, they were like overloads. Like all his fuses blew. Burned him out. He talked, while he was in them. Sort of in bursts, like barking — as if he was trying to say a whole sentence at once. Epileptics don't talk, do they, when they're having a seizure?

  D. I don't know. Epilepsy's so well controlled now you don't hear much about it. They catch the tendency, and cure it first. If Rogers had had the tendency....

  H. Yeah. He never would have been in the program. Christ, he'd had six months in space. D. What had you had - six days? H. Like you. One Moon hop.

  D. It isn't that, then. Do you think...

  H. What?

  D. Some kind of virus?

  H. Space plague? Martian fever? Mysterious ancient spores madden astronauts? D. All right, it sounds dumb. But look, the room had been sealed. And it does sound like all of you— H. Dwight gets a cortical overcharge, Joe goes catatonic, I start seeing things. What's the connection? D. Nervous system.

  H. Why different symptoms in each of us?

  D. Well, drugs affect people differently—

  H. Do you think we found some kind of God damned Martian psychogenic mushrooms in there? There isn't anything there, it's dead, like all the rest of Mars. You know, you've been there! There aren't any God damned germs or viruses, there's no life there, no life.

  D. But there may have been—

  H. What makes you think so?

  D. The room you found. The City we found.

  H. City! For Christ's sake, Barnie, you talk like some damned pop journalist, you know damned well the whole thing is a set of mud concretions for all we can tell. There's no way to tell. It's too old, conditions are too different, we have no context. We don't understand, we can't understand, it's something the human mind is outside of. Cities, rooms, all that - we're just analogizing, trying to make sense in our terms. But it's not in our terms. There is no sense. I can see that now. That's the only thing I can see!

  D. See what, Gerry?

  H. What I see when I open my eyes!

  D. What?

  H. Everything that isn't there and doesn't make sense. Oh—I— D. Here, come on. Take it easy. Look, it'll be OK. It's going to be OK, Gerry, you'll be OK. H. [unclear] light, and the [unclear] try to see what I touch and I can't, I don't understand and I can't [unclear] D. Hang on. I'm right here. Take it easy, old man.

  Hughes, who had entered the space program from astrophysics, came with a very good record, in fact a brilliant one. This troubled many of his military superiors, to whom high intelligence was a code word for instability and insubordination. His performance had been solid and his behavior irreproachable; but now it was frequently recalled that he was, after all, an intellectual.

  Temski was harder to explain. He was a crack test pilot, an Air Force captain, and a baseball fan, but now his behavior was even more aberrant than Hughes's.

  All Temski did was sit. He was capable of looking after himself, and did so. That is, when he was hungry and food was present, he ate some with his fingers; when he had to relieve himself, he went to a corner and did so; when he was sleepy, he lay down on the floor and slept. The rest of the time he sat. He was in good physical condition and quite calm. Nothing said to him produced the slightest reaction, nor did he take any interest in anything that went on. His wife was brought in to see him in hopes of producing a response. She was taken away weeping after five minutes.

  Since Temski wouldn't respond, and Rogers, being dead, couldn't respond, it was quite natural to look upon Hughes as being, somehow, responsible.

  There was nothing wrong with him except a case of something like hysterical blindness, so it was to be expected that he should answer questions rationally and explain precisely what had happened. This, however, he could not, or would not, do.

  A psychiatric consultant was brought in, a distinguished New York doctor called Shapir. He was requested to work with both Temski and Hughes. It was of course unthinkable to admit that the mission had been a failure (the word 'disaster' was not even mentioned), but a couple of rumors had leaked out to the press despite all security precautions. Irresponsible journalists demanded to know why the crew of Psyche XIV was being held incommunicado, and claimed the 'right' of the American people to 'know', etc. It had been necessary to issue a statement concerning a new health test being run on astronauts who had spent over fifteen days in space, due to Commander Rogers's unexpected and tragic death from heart failure, and to have a whole new series of articles written for the papers concerning plans for a 'Little America' dome city on Mars, to maintain a positive attitude in the public. The real people of course knew that the rest of the Psyche program was in jeopardy; and they instructed Dr Shapir to diagnose and cure the astronauts with all deliberate speed.

  Shapir talked with Hughes for half an hour about the food in the hospital, Cal Tech, and the latest Chinese report on their Alpha Centauri probe, all very relaxed and trivial. Th
en he said, 'What is it you see, when you open your eyes?'

  Hughes, who was up and dressed now, sat silent for a while. Opaque goggles covered his eyes entirely, giving him the arrogant, staring look of people who affect dark glasses. 'Nobody's asked that,' he said.

  'Didn't the oculists?'

  'Yes, I guess Kray did. Early on. Before they decided I was a mental case.'

  'What did you tell him?'

  'It's hard to describe. The point is, it's indescribable. At first it was things going out of focus, going transparent, going away. Then the light. Too much light. Like overexposing a film, bleaching everything out. But with that, a kind of whirling. Changing positions and relationships, changing perspectives, constant transformation. It made me get dizzy. My eyes kept sending signals to my inner ears, I guess. Like that inner-ear disease, only in reverse. Doesn't it foul up your spatial orientation?'

  'Meniere's syndrome, I think it's called, yes, it does. Especially on stairs and slopes.'

  'It's as if I was looking from a great height, or ... up at a great height....'

  'Heights ever worry you?'

  'Hell no. They don't even mean anything to me. What's up and down, in space? No, see, I'm not giving you the picture. There is no picture. I've been trying to look more, to learn to ... how to see ... it's not much good.'

  There was a pause. 'That takes courage,' said Shapir.

  'What do you mean?' the astronaut said sharply.

  'Well... To have the sensory input which is most important to the conscious mind - sight - reporting non-existent and incomprehensible things, in flagrant contradiction with all other sensory input - your touch, your hearing, your sense of balance, and so on - to have that going on, every time you try to open your eyes, and not only to live with it but to attempt to investigate it... It doesn't sound easy.'

  'So mostly I keep my eyes shut,' Hughes said, dour. 'Like a damned see-no-evil monkey.'

  'When you do have your eyes open, and you look towards some object you know is there - your own hand, for instance -what do you see?'

  ' "A blooming, buzzing confusion." '

  'William James,' Shapir said with satisfaction. 'What was he talking about - how a baby perceives the world, eh?' He had a pleasant voice with a mild, glancing quality to it, non-percussive; one could not imagine him scolding or yelling. He nodded several times, thinking out the implications of what Hughes had said. 'To learn how to see, you said. To learn. That's how you feel about it?'

  Hughes hesitated, then said with a sudden, marked increase of trust, 'I have to. What else can I do? Apparently I'm never going to be able to - to see the way I used to, the way other people do, again. But I still do see. Only I don't understand what I see, it doesn't make sense. There are no outlines, no distinctions, even between nearer and farther. There is something there - only I can't say that, because there aren't any things. No forms. Instead of forms, I see transformations -transfigurations. Does that make any sense at all?'

  'I think it does,' Shapir said, 'only it's enormously difficult to put a direct experience into words. And when the experience is new, unique, overwhelming...'

  'And irrational. That's it.' Hughes spoke now with real gratitude. 'If only I could show it to you,' he said wistfully.

  The two astronauts were being kept on the tenth floor of a big military hospital in Maryland now. They were not permitted to leave that floor, and anyone who visited it still spent ten days in quarantine before he rejoined the outer world: the Martian plague theory was currently on top. At Shapir's insistence, Hughes was allowed to go up to the roof garden of the hospital (after which the elevator was elaborately sterilized and roped off for three days).

  They demanded that Hughes wear a surgical mask; and Shapir had asked him not to wear his goggles. Docile, he went up the elevator with his mouth and nose covered, his eyes uncovered, but tightly shut.

  The change from the dusk of the elevator to the hot smoggy sunlight of July on the open roof did not, as far as Shapir could see, affect those shut eyes. Hughes did not screw them tighter against the flooding light, though he raised his face to it as if he felt the heat pleasant on his skin, and took a deep breath through the binding gauze.

  'I haven't been outside since March,' he said.

  It was true, of course. He had been in a spacesuit or in a hospital room, breathing canned or conditioned air.

  'Have you got your compass bearings?' Shapir asked.

  'Not the faintest. It makes me feel blinder, being outdoors. Afraid to walk off the edge.' Hughes had refused assistance coming through the corridors and in the elevator, feeling his way adeptly with his hands, and now despite his joke about falling off he began to explore the roof garden. He was exhilarated: an active man released from long confinement. Shapir watched him, brooding. The low furniture was a hazard to him but he learned at once how to feel for it; he had tactile intelligence; there was grace in his movements, even as he blundered in blindness.

  'Will you open your eyes?' Shapir said in his glancing, reluctant voice.

  Hughes stopped. 'All right,' he said; but he turned towards Shapir, and his right hand came up gropingly. Shapir came forward and let that hand take his arm.

  The grip of it tightened, as Hughes opened his eyes. Then Hughes let go, and took a step away, stretching out both his arms. A cry broke from him. He reached forward and upward, his head back, his eyes wide open, staring at the empty sky. 'Oh, my God!' he whispered, and dropped, like a man hit by a sledgehammer.

  Psychiatric counselling session, 18th July. S. Shapir, Geraint Hughes.

  S. Hello. Sidney... I won't stay long. Listen, that wasn't such a bright idea of mine. The roof. I'm sorry. I had no idea. But no right, either... Would you rather I left?

  H. No.

  S. All right... I'm getting stir-crazy myself. Need a good walk. I walk a good deal, usually. About two miles to my office and the same back. Then I add detours. Whatever they say, New York is a beautiful town to walk in. If you know how to pick your route. Listen, I have a queer story about Joe Temski. Not a story, just a queer fact, actually. Did you know that they have written on his record that he is 'functionally deaf'?

  H. Deaf?

  S. Yes, deaf. Well, you know, I began to wonder. I go in and talk to Joe, you know, touch him, try to make eye contact, any kind of contact, to get through. No go. I've had patients tell me in so many words, 'I can't hear you.' A metaphor. But what if it isn't a metaphor? It happens sometimes with little kids, they're called retarded and it turns out they've got thirty, sixty, eighty percent hearing dysfunction. Well, maybe Joe really can't hear me. Just like you can't see me.

  H. [pause of forty seconds] Do you mean he's hearing things? Listening?

  S. It's possible.

  H. [pause of twenty seconds] You can't shut your ears.

  S. That's what I thought, too. It could be rough, couldn't it? Well, what I thought was, what about trying to shut them for him? Put earplugs in his ears.

  H. He still wouldn't be able to hear you.

  S. No, but he wouldn't be distracted. If you had to watch your light show all the time, you wouldn't be able to pay much attention to me or anything else, right? Maybe it's like that with Joe. Maybe there's this noise drowning out everything else for him.

  H. [pause of twenty seconds] It would be more than noise.

  S. I don't suppose you want to talk about...on the roof...

  No, all right.

  H. You'd like to know what I saw, wouldn't you?

  S. Sure I would. But in your own time.

  H. Yeah, I've got so much else to do here besides talk to you.

  All the books I can read and the beautiful women I can look at. You know damned well I'll tell you eventually, because I haven't got anybody else to talk to.

  S. Oh, hell, Geraint. [pause of ten seconds]

  H. Shit. I'm sorry, Sidney. If I didn't have you to talk to, I'd have cracked completely. I know that. You're very patient with me.

  S. Whatever you saw, up
there, disturbs you. That's one reason why I want to know what it was. But what the hell, if you can handle it alone, do. That's the idea, after all. My curiosity is my problem, not yours! Listen. Let's forget talking. Let me read you this article in Science. Your Colonel Wood gave it to me, said you might be interested. I was. It's on what they found inside the Argentinian meteorite. The authors are suggesting we go comb the Meteor Belt for remnants of a trans-stellar fleet that came to grief in our solar system about six hundred million years ago. They would have landed on Mars first, of course. Are these guys nuts?

  H. I don't know. Read the article.

  Temski slept heavily, and it was easy for Shapir to insert ordinary wax plugs like those insomniacs use into his ears while he was asleep. When Temski woke he did nothing unusual at first. He sat up, yawned, stretched, scratched, looked lazily around to see if anything to eat was handy, in that serene way which Shapir privately felt was altogether unlike any psychotic behavior he had ever seen, and in fact unlike any human behavior he had ever seen. Temski reminded him of a healthy, poised, contented, tame animal. Not a chimpanzee; something milder, more contemplative, an orang, maybe.

  But the orang began to feel uncomfortable.

  Temski looked around, left and right, nervous. Perhaps he was not looking but moving his head trying to find the vanished sounds. The lost chord, Shapir thought. Temski grew more and more disturbed and alert. He got up, still turning his head restlessly. He looked across the room. For the first time in seventeen days of daily contact, he saw Shapir.

  His handsome face was now contorted with anxiety or bewilderment.

  'Where,' he said, 'where—'

  His hands, groping at his ears to find the cause of silence, found the earplugs and removed one. That was enough. 'Ah,' he said, and stood still. His eyes were still directed towards Shapir, but he did not see him. His face relaxed.

  Later attempts were more successful. Though bewildered at first, Temski was cooperative while artificially deafened, and responded readily to Shapir's attempts to communicate with him by touch, by sign, and finally by writing. After the fifth such session, Temski consented to longer sessions involving the use of a drug which would deaden his auditory nerve endings for about five hours at a time.