(Since then the call-boxes have subsided. Though not operable in reverse, or not by us, we think of them as ever on the ready, a solace from waning corridor to corridor. The cabin keeps bright. The video never revived.)
Can you imagine us then, having to construct our position via your brilliantly wigged juries of the newsbreaks (we recognized the anchormen & women’s voices), of the self-perfected faces in which a jaw by Daumier, a wrinkle by Breughel, never appears? Perhaps you no longer find it a peculiar way to learn one’s destiny, since so many of you do, but by now we have had a perspective. We thank you for it, and for the news as well.
Gradually it became clear to us from those dutifully opaque releases and guarded voices that it might be a while before the world was revealed our whereabouts—that intransitive phrase being theirs. We were a security matter. Joint Command was quoted only, their location also being under risk. What was happening on the platforms of the world? On the subject of civilian missions, Congress performed loudly, and on us in particular very affectingly. The laiety stormed predictably, falling back like a well-divided apple, in equal parts. The broadcasters kept the best faith with us after all, mentioning us hourly, especially when signing off.
Then you left us. One fact seemed to have been spared us. We did not know where we were. Yet an impression persisted that everybody else did.
So we have taken what we could from you, putting together what Wert suspected, Mulenberg had not yet told us and Mole had let drop. To which we have since added that intuited sense of its own motion which even the babe in arms, fearful of falling yet trusting some arms subliminally, is said to have.
We are in orbit, quite apparently. We assume ourselves to be in orbit around Island Five. Perhaps—indefinitely? Or perhaps you are pursuing the matter. We await your call. Giving you news of us meanwhile, which you may never receive. We have had our conferences on whether you may or may not wish to.
We, on the other hand, wish to reveal all.
Log of the U.S. Civilian Shuttle Courier, on what we have decreed to be the thirty-first of May.
Orbiter Characteristics
(Values are approximate)
LENGTH: 74 m (244 ft.)
HEIGHT: 34 m (144 ft.)
WINGSPAN: 48 m (156 ft.)
WEIGHT: Gross lift of 4 000 000 kg (9 000 000 lb.)
THRUST: Main Engines (6)
4 200 000 N (940 000 each)
CARGO BAY: Said to be at least four times that of commercial shuttle dimensions, which last were 18 m (60 ft.) long; 5 m (15 ft.) in diameter
ACCOMMODATIONS: Unmanned spacecraft to fully equipped scientific laboratories
(My apologies for any error. We study as we can.)
When Lievering emerged from the cargo or Payload Bay, saved by those very protections which had overzealously guarded the two beauties in there, he was not surprised to find himself alone. On the other side of the bay, massive shiftings had effected little breakage, but a creative disorder. Consumables were in siege supply. One nearby box had already been raided—beer. He took a bottle along with him to the flight deck, to which he had been instructed, if equivocally, to report back, but found it sealed, as all forward hatches appeared to be, perhaps for secret operations. The vehicle must already have been engaged in that wide sweep of the heavens which has continued. (You will excuse the word heavens; a log engenders such usages—and perhaps our present life.) When he had twice tried the signal-plate on the flight deck entry and the alarm as well, he sat down on a housing and had his beer. Finding himself alive had made him meditative. He may have slept.
On his way aft to us through the length of the ship, he tried every hatch along the path. Cabin Two was as silent as the flight deck—not a whistle. On Cabins Three and Four, which quartered the replacement personnel, he admits to having fudged or delayed his report to us, wanting to spare us immediate decisions which might be hard to make. Though he was never to admit that there had been any reply.
It had by now occurred to him that all sectors of the vehicle might be sealed. He knew from the viewing that Cabin Five contained further Priority Payload (inventory since found shows it to harbor a complete lab for the manufacture of viral insecticides). He tried that door too, as he says—For luck. His humor grows increasingly Germanic. I mean to say—his humor grows. No doubt concomitant with those duties which (for some months, we think?) he soon set himself, shanghaiing Jack Mulenberg to help.
After Cabin Five, he says, he stood at the entrance to our own sector for some time, unable to make himself go on. When he found by the signal-plate that it was unsealed, though apparently immovable, at first he told himself that this was all a friend could ask for, then stood narcotized by how much it was not—all. When he tells us this, as he often does now, we are embarrassed, for he tends to spell out to each of us our value to him, one by one. And we must all be wary here. Emotion takes energy. The median is best.
He must then have been emerging from one of those attacks, now familiar to us, which lend him temporary powers beyond any of ours. The entry, like all throughout the ship perhaps, was sealed only to those inside; from his side it was merely stuck fast to any except extraordinary strength. Perhaps this was true of Cabins Three and Four also. I would not care to say.
He decided to urge his way in—one doesn’t slam-bang an airlock. If successful, he would find himself in our general corridor. At last he did so. There he found Mole.
Death does not need to be intuited. Much else about Mole did, on which we have all since collaborated, though I have had the main hand. By a second effort at our own cabin’s hatch, Lievering was able to satisfy his need to see all of us summoned at once—which is interesting in the light of what our conduct was to be. I shall give a name to that, but not yet—to the way we act in concert more and more.
I have myself seen early shots done with box cameras of a group of people standing over one of their own tumuli, hands hanging. The presence of burial mounds may even affect an otherwise primitive drawing. Druid groups around their dolmens or cromlechs may well have been in similar attitude. Longboats come to mind. I saw such a group once around a dory which had no man in it. There need not be a body, but there has to have been a ritual death. The group is always consanguineous, or as with us now, has the look of it. They are assigning the death its role.
Mole’s body lay in a triangle no living body could make, its head doll-sideways on the neck, though looking straight up. The left forearm, lying on the gun, looked most natural. Mulenberg was the first to bend down to him. There was no connection other than his posture to remind me that this was the same man who had once torn open the dress of a corpse dear to him, but I was so reminded, as perhaps the others were. When many in a group know bits of each others’ history, these tend to unite. Delicacy has so grown upon Mulenberg here. We were watching its growth in us.
He turned upward Mole’s left wrist. I could report aeromedically on the progress of rigor mortis in partial G-force, but will not trouble you here. What we saw was that the purple identification mark was gone.
Lievering at once jerked his own wrist upward. We followed suit. We were all still clearly marked. Later we would recall that since these brands have a time limit—two years—we may at least once be able to know accurately the duration of our stay here—but as yet we had no apprehension it might be that long.
Veronica was the next to kneel. I felt our collective presence nudge her to it. She made no attempt to close Mole’s eyes, but then she was not his next-of-kin. I thought at first she might not have heard of this kindly custom of shielding the eyes of the living from the dead ones. For of course—as Jack has said since—it is done for us. Instead, in one whip-tip motion she laid her head alongside Mole’s. Her body’s angle, though fearfully contorted, was alive; that is, comparing the two bodies, one saw what life was. Then though still lying there, she moved, her face traversing the 180-degree arc from the base of one wall, up and across the ceiling, down the other. “He saw something.
I know Mole.” We thought both of those allegations unlikely. Increasingly though, it is our habit not to contradict. The data will in time shape itself to our needs.
She stood up then, tossing her head with the defiance I saw in her at seventeen, and thought then would keep her limber. “I didn’t close Vivie’s eyes either. My stepmother’s. They have to know what they know.” The word know is the key to Veronica, isn’t it.
When she stepped back into our group Soraya shrank from her, shuddering against Wert, and I saw who would comply most in the burning of widows. Soraya pointed at the body with a long Muslim nail. In Persian art there is often one such fluid extension, snaked from the phalanx of faces behind. “He was the mascot, yes? The mascot is always the youngest, yes?” From behind her waist Wert clasped hands over his child. “Not if you don’t name it. A mascot has to be named.” Their relationship has changed. His face was almost sly. Though he will not win that battle, we can understand why he resists having a child called Hossein. And once you name them, the gods do notice them.
“He was the messenger.” Lievering said no more.
It was my turn. I could assent to that. From my own classical education. But I am always a little out of the ritual. Or that is my hope. I knelt down. All heard my knee snap. It has never recovered. I prefer that. Little enough. A man must have a mark of what he has been and seen. Though the knee worsens, it serves as a spur to my own duty, this log, and we need constant reminders here. Orbiting ultimately penetrates the inhabitants of any heavenly body, man-made or not—just as the cyclic patterns of your own earth—one or more of which has caused us to be where we are, attest. So far, we experience only those brief hazes of forgetfulness which occur in people of middle age. Perhaps we age quicker here; certainly the skin does. My own face is riddled as if from bittern, which is what my island called the salt lye crystallized from seawater. All six of us are what the elders there used to call cabin-thin, a phrase descended to them from the days of sail. Otherwise it seems to us that our mental faculties per se have been quickened, the way a body in a centrifuge might have all its blood fly to its brain. In an orbit like ours we seem to ourselves constantly flung toward the a priori principles—and to brood on them.
Nevertheless, it is my opinion that with one sad exception we continue to be what is called sane. During this first period, perhaps what one might call hyper-sane. Stress takes its toll, and we are human still. I trust you will be glad to hear that. Though reassurance would be welcome.
To return to Mole. I knelt to him. In that other corridor, the germ-proofing one, through which we had been passed like show animals being defleaed in the anteroom of a good veterinary, he had approached me to inquire my identity, or award me it. I could only do the same for him. “You Mole?”
The eyes answered as I had known they would. I was just getting to my feet awkwardly when Soraya screamed.
Left of the body where the wall curved into the floor, we saw two—how shall I describe them to you? Not gnats, for they did not fly. Perhaps midges, if any of the Chironomidae move that infinitesimally. We could not see their motion by any stare. But Mulenberg interrupting to check what we saw, when we bent again, they had shifted position in tandem. Toward the body.
None of us moved. I suppose we might have. I doubt I need to explain, though. The motives from which one does or does not kill a midge.
“We must bury him,” Wert said.
We shifted our stare. One does not bury in that sea.
But Wert never suggests what can’t be done. In the face of constant rebuff he keeps the practicality of his lost statesmanship, plus a store of handy items observed. He led us to the Sick Bay.
Lievering was too spent to help us there. Mulenberg pushed the hardest, cursing loudly. He thinks the sealing can only have been intentional. I would prefer to blame the vehicle. Wert won’t say. But we got into the Bay, carrying Mole in cortege.
The medic is our live casualty. You may think it pitiable that a man who hates priests, if not the fecundity of Catholic wives, should expend his madness in crossing himself. We think it the way he stays in touch with his family. Otherwise he keeps to his corner, considering us his jailers. He saw too many prisons perhaps. But as you and we know, it’s no use becoming a space-buff because of that.
He still has his uses. Sometimes we can get a sharp medical hint from him, especially if we petition as a group. And if we have a task which falls outside the assigned, he likes to have us throw his dice for it. But as yet, while we lifted the hasp of the box-bed Wert indicated, the two women holding up the lid, and lowered Mole into it, what the medic was doing seemed as yet only appropriate. He never makes a sound at it.
Then they all looked to me. For the rites of emphasis, I suppose, and continuity. A role ridiculed behind one’s back, though my cabinmates are kinder than you below ever were. All groups must have someone like me. And I am used to it.
I did not kneel again, though perhaps I could have. Nor did I look into the box. While I hunted for words, Wert, waving Soraya off, took her corner of the lid. No one dared relieve Veronica. Though the lid, as you no doubt know, is on a spring which takes strength to resist. I knew without question that he and she would uphold the lid until words were found. We had already begun to be a group, but were only halfway along, and if we had docked, would have been dispersible. Your command sealed us; that is what gods do. The rites evolve.
I spoke first for all of us. Perhaps pompously, though I saw no one wince. I can’t say as to any of you, if you had been monitoring. Including Perdue. Though I spoke for him, too. “It’s possible to remember in one’s own cells the morality of the young—” I said, “and to do nothing.”
Then I spoke for Mole. Telling why I did not need to see his face again. I could hear his voice: People when they sleep, they look so Unknown. “You are not Unknown,” I said.
These boxes you have provided us with make fine platforms. Better even than the ones marked X. Anyone may make use of them.
U.S. Courier, on what we have decreed to be the fourteenth of July.
Bastille Day? Seems the day for it. To set forth for you what are the major divisions of lives anywhere, but are more starkly evident for groups like ours. I won’t say—primitive ones. Though we exhibit certain—reversions, your anthropologists might call them, or retreats. We think of these, or begin to, as advances.
After Mole, we were hungry, and since our respects had been paid, not ashamed of it. One eats to live, and to be able to remember among whom. The Galley’s consumables, weighed in for the voyage, were almost gone. Did we still think we were only in delay? People in any kind of craft which keeps them one or more steps away from the elements—even a sinking boat in sight of those drowning or blown away from it—are until the last optimistic. We are so yet.
“I felt—”
Each of us said it, still trying to phrase that moment of non-impact. Suddenly the table was pounded. The debris there jumped like a second meal offered.
Lievering has never made loud gestures, or anti-social ones, or those of personal enmity. Yet he can never be private enough for our comfort; his is a channel which can neither close nor be stanched. Now he seemed to us at last outside himself. In his effort to get closer to us? Or away from you?
“When the Moment came—” he said, Germanizing it, “ah you knew it at once. That stone in the heel, the brace in the back. That wooing in the hands—ah you knew.” This was the gentle chiding of the pulpit, drawing out the better or worse side of a constituent but always the unconscious one. I was never that good at it. Pure reason can never take its place. As soon as he spoke even I recognized the identity of that once-simple reaction: the tendency of every particle of matter toward every other.
“Gravity. Gravity. We felt gravity.” Not all of us shouted. But it was a chorus. “Yes, perhaps that’s what it was. The Moment.”
Afterward, we each confessed to doubts. His is the shaman-face in which our century professes not to believe. But we were agre
eing with the essence of this man—which we seem now to do in turn for each of us—and it is true that gravitation, the full-force variant, no longer haunts our dreams. Even I, who craved it most, am ascetic now. What I remember instead is—that moment. Which in our folklore—yes, call it that—is now the birth one, the big or little bang which initiated our present small voyage—and universe. With your same gods holding our fate in the balance—your Joint Command. As they hold yours.
Do I mock? Yes. When I can.
When it came to us we were not in dockage?
When it came to us that we were in orbit?
When it came to us that the flight deck was no longer with us
When it came to us that we might be alone in our universe
We were passing through these shocks in that timeless state in which peoples form religions to help explain where they are, and in what condition. We were to go over those statements again and again, as I have printed them. They had become our psalter.
As you will know from similar sessions on us, we were preparing our excuses. After which we set about paying our tithe.
How much time elapsed before we gave thought to whether others were alive behind those sealed hatches, I hesitate to say. Once we got to it, we debated agreeably long. If they were alive, were they in willful non-communication? If so, then were we the ones being left to wither as we might, on what they assumed were our scant remaining rations. “To twist in the wind?” Wert said. He still smiles.
That old government phrase for the expendable was the first tonic one. Crisping us in mind. For as I strive to show here, though except for the medic we are not in any sense mad, we go in and out of psychic states ranging from the depressed to the exalted—just as you. And in somewhat tighter quarters. With information at best restricted and now entirely withheld. We do have one advantage over you. I’ll come to it.
Mysteries of Motion Page 63
