The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF

by Mike Ashley

  “And we’re the only two people in the universe who can say that and still say it’s great because, before, we were making love by postcard.” They had another long hysterical laugh over that.

  “How bad is it at your place?” he finally asked.

  “Not bad at all. Everything we need is humming. I can give you a bath . . .”

  “A bath!” It sounded like the delights of heaven. “I wish you could smell me. No, I’m glad you can’t.”

  “I wish I could. I’m going to run the tub full of hot, hot water, and then I’m going to undress you and lower you into it, and I’m going to scrub all those things I’ve been staring at for a year and take my time with it, and then – ”

  “Hey, we don’t need stories anymore, do we? Now we can do it.”

  “We need them for another two days. More than ever now, because I can’t reach the place that’s begging for attention. But you didn’t let me finish. After I get in the tub with you and let you wash me, and before we head hand in hand for my bedroom, I’m going to get Rock Rogers and Maryjane Peters and The Black Widow and Marc Antony and Jo-jo and his wild mate and hold their heads under the water until they drown.”

  “No you don’t. I claim the right to drown Rock Rogers.”

  THE PEACOCK KING

  Ted White & Larry McCombs

  Ted White (b. 1938) has a well-established reputation not only as a leading magazine editor and author, but also as a premier science-fiction fan, and a music columnist and aficionado. White edited science-fiction fanzines in the 1950s, and was able to make the step to editing professional magazines in 1968 with Amazing Stories and Fantastic. Under his editorship the magazines published some of the most innovative material of the 1970s, but they were seriously underfunded and White eventually stood down as editor in 1978. He subsequently edited Heavy Metal and Stardate. He has written several novels, starting with Invasion from 2500 (1964) with Terry Carr, though perhaps his best work includes By Furies Possessed (1970) and the super-hero novel, Doc Phoenix (1977). “The Peacock King” was written early in his career based on a draft by fellow SF and music fan, Larry McCombs, who was at the time a physics teacher. It was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction but had previously been submitted to Analog, where the legendary editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., rejected it as scientifically inaccurate. White and McCombs were exploring a topic previously covered by Stanley G. Weinbaum and Arthur C. Clarke as to whether a human being could survive for a brief period unprotected in a vacuum. White also believes it was one of the first SF stories to legitimately incorporate psychedelic drugs. The combination of the two elements is a potent mix.

  THE FIRST SENSATION was like the initial nausea they’d known with the LSD. It was the nausea of total special disorientation, and worse. Before he’d lost touch with his body, Eric had felt it fragmenting, wrenched into disintegration. Then his last consciousness of the controls, the ship – and even his physical self – was gone, and there was no longer time nor space, but only their still-linked awareness of each other’s spirits, freed into a void between motion and fixity.

  Karen’s touch was an emotional caress to which he readily responded. Their link, carefully built and fostered over the long months before, transcended the cleavage from physical reality that had come from the hyperspace jump.

  They were free! Once again, their consciousness expanded out into the universe, this time with even greater exultation.

  “We’ve been here before!” Was that Karen’s thought or his own? He felt emotionally entwined with her; his thoughts were her thoughts. No matter whose, that thought voiced their mutual elation.

  “Tao,” was the reply.

  There was no longer any boundary between their inner selves and the Outside, no boundary between them. All was Tao, all was now. Briefly they’d known this before, the uncrippling of release from the stunted senses of their bodies, the blossoming perception of wholeness. Now they experienced it to a far greater extent, feeling themselves unfolding, outward . . .

  Then, suddenly, they were not. They were hanging in space, their skin-suited bodies joined by bare hands, pivoting on a common axis amid the empty stars. Eric had only just enough shocked awareness to hold his breath.

  Where was the ship? Where was the Peacock?

  Eric rolled over lazily and stretched. The auto-clock had gradually raised the lights in the room and wafted a fresh breeze across the sleeping floor to gently wake them. With a soft grin at the figure next to him, still stubbornly curled into a hedgehog curl, he waved a hand at the wall panel controlling the infrared lamps in the ceiling. As the cozy warmth died away, he ran a tender hand along Karen’s bare back and tweaked her ear. “Wake up, Porkypine. It’s our big day.”

  With a great show of reluctance, Karen slowly rolled over and stretched out, rubbing and arching her back against the resilient plastic-covered foam floor like a friendly feline. Noting with pleasure Eric’s continually fresh delight in the sight of her body, Karen wiggled provocatively. “Always interested in business, are you?”

  “No time for that this morning,” he replied decisively, digging a commanding finger into her navel. “Up and at ‘em!” Suiting his actions to the words, he sprang limberly to his feet and made a mock grab for her hair.

  “Okay, boss, okay. I’m coming.”

  Eric palmed a door open and stepped into the bathroom. While the walls sprayed him with alternating soapy and clear water, he washed his face and scalp clean of stubble with a depilitory cloth.

  While blasts of hot air dried him, he felt his crown. “I still haven’t gotten used to this bald head,” he complained as he emerged into the bedroom again, where Karen had folded down the wall to cover the sleeping pad and reveal closets and drawers.

  She took one wincing glance at her own reflection in a large vanity mirror, and turned to the bath. “Don’t believe that stuff they give you about convenience for attaching the control electrodes,” she said at the door. “It’s just to keep us faithful to each other – no one else would take a second look at us! Romantically, anyhow!”

  By the time Karen had emerged from the bathroom, Eric had slipped into the one-piece suit that fit him like a second skin. He remembered wryly the many almost embarrassing sessions of measurements and fittings that had gone into the making of the suit. Looking down his front, he announced in mock doubt, “I still feel like I ought to wear a pair of pants over this thing.”

  “What’s the matter? Ashamed of it?” Karen wriggled her way into her own suit.

  “No, but just don’t make any provocative gestures in that thing before we’re strapped in, or I may be embarrassed on nationwide television.”

  “It’ll give the columnists something new to write about,” Karen tossed back over her shoulder as she palmed another door and walked through it.

  Eric followed her into the living room, where a breakfast sat steaming fragrantly on the low Japanese table. While Karen busied herself with the tea, he carefully chose a scroll from a rack hidden in a wall panel. He carefully unrolled it until it hung its full silken length against the rear wall of a tall recess opposite the breakfast table.

  “For today, a special blessing from the Peacock King.” The silk hanging depicted in faded subtle colors a six-armed figure seated upon the back of a peacock, whose many-eyed tail spread out as a background to the resplendent king. The scroll was an eleventh century Buddhist painting, and they’d fallen in love with it during one of their tours through Japan. No amount of money could persuade the monks of the Ninnaji temple to part with it, but with some reluctance they had finally agreed to loan it to these peculiar Americans who seemed so well to understand the beauty and meaning of the treasure.

  As he seated himself cross-legged on the mat before the table, Eric brought his palms together in imitation of two of the king’s hands and bowed to the scroll. “May the Peacock live up to its billing,” he intoned, only half seriously.

  Buddhist legend had it that the Peacock King r
emoved the evil thoughts and passions from the minds of humans, while his peacock devoured the poisonous snakes, insects and plants in his path. The government had initially resisted their desire to name the ship the Peacock, but had finally given in to what some higher officials regarded as sheer frivolity.

  Meantime Karen had taken the three perfect jonquils which lay on the breakfast tray and carefully arranged them in a jet black vase before the scroll. Their delicate fragrance blended with that of the tea.

  They ate in silence, slowly savoring the good food, eyes and minds fixed upon the ominous and yet benevolent face before them. When they had finished, and swallowed one last ceremonious cup of tea, they rose and bowed towards the scroll, and then passed through a door which had thoughtfully slit open at their gesture.

  The apartment which they were now leaving was cleverly designed to simulate the open grace of a Japanese pavilion. While its walls were not actually sliding screens, and indeed were loaded with automatic machinery, the basic design and decoration had skilfully suggested fresh air and sunshine lurking in the corners. This effect they’d contributed to with their own choice of furniture and hangings.

  But there were no windows.

  And this for a simple reason: the apartment was located in a vast government complex buried deep underground. Now that they had deserted the apartment, this fact was obvious. No pretense had been made with the long steel-grey corridor which stretched austerely before them. Their padded footsteps scraped loud echoes from the featureless walls.

  They had taken perhaps twenty steps down the corridor when Eric suddenly stopped, snapping his fingers. “We almost forgot to consult the oracle.”

  “Not thinking of backing out now, are you?” Karen taunted lightly, but she followed him back into the apartment.

  From another concealed shelf in the living room Eric removed a well-worn pair of black volumes and a handful of thin sticks. While Karen sat silently watching, Eric began casting the yarrow stalks.

  It was a complex ritual, containing within it the rhythm and beauty of a dance. One could find justification enough in the action of the ritual itself, but at the end of each section of the dance, he made a mark on a piece of paper with a brush pen, until at last he had twelve symbols arranged in a pattern.

  For a time he silently studied the pattern. Then he turned to the book. For a longer time he studied the pages related to the diagram he’d drawn. Finally he spoke softly, with a puzzled note to his voice.

  “The symbol is Ming I, ‘Intelligence Wounded’. The good and intelligent officer goes forth in the service of his country, notwithstanding the occupancy of the throne by a weak and unsympathising sovereign. In the circumstances it will be wise to realize the difficulty of the position and maintain firm correctness.”

  “It seems clear enough to me,” Karen suggested. “The government still insists that we must claim any habitable planets for the United States and take whatever measures might be necessary to keep them from the knowledge of the Communist Bloc or the Chinese. We must ‘maintain firm correctness’ – do whatever seems right to us in the circumstances.”

  “Yes,” Eric replied, “but I have two moving lines, in the second and sixth places. ‘He is wounded in the left thigh. He saves himself by the strength of a swift horse. He is fortunate.’ But in the sixth line, ‘There is no light, only obscurity. He had at first ascended to the top of the sky. His future shall be to go into the earth.’”

  For a few moments they pondered the reading in silence. Eric shrugged, and then a quiet belltone sounded. “We’re late,” he commented needlessly, and then quickly but respectfully replaced the I Ching and the yarrow stalks in their cabinet.

  The corridor took them to an elevator, and when that disgorged them they were met by others, who escorted them, hand in hand, into the briefing room where a handful of reporters and a barrage of cameras and microphones waited for them. The air was faintly blue and stale; the refreshers were unable to cope with the concentration of nervously smoked cigarettes.

  As they entered, the pool announcer was speaking suavely into the microphones, following an outline being held for him on cue cards by a grip behind the cameras.

  “. . . as you all know, culminates over a year of training and preparation for this trip. The Peacock represents the fifth in the experimental class of faster-than-light ships and is a last-ditch attempt to conquer the problems of interstellar flight. All four of the previous hyperspace ships are presumed lost, and the project would’ve been abandoned, had not Captain Arbogast of the Lucifer II managed to radio back a report on their transition to normal space just outside the orbit of Pluto. He reported that not only had the jump created a period of temporary insanity – analysis indicates extreme schizophrenia – but that his crewmate was missing. He then took the Lucifer II on the long jump to Alpha Centauri, never to regain contact with us or return. Since one more ship was ready, a radically new training program was instituted. Eric Bowman and Karen Hamblin, who are with us here now, have been thoroughly trained in all possible techniques of interpersonal communication, until they are able to function almost as a single person, and . . .”

  A slight pressure from Karen’s hand told Eric she was thinking the same thing. On the monitor screens behind the glittering lenses of the cameras and to one side he could see their images. Only their heads and shoulders showed; linked hands were discreetly ignored. As the announcer droned on, his mind wandered back over the preparation so briefly recapped . . .

  They had originally been chosen among a thousand others in a test of intuitive abilities administered at colleges, universities and schools across the country. Eric had been a graduate student at Harvard, pursuing a course in the philosophy of science and delving into the interrelationships between oriental philosophy and modern physical science. He had taken the tests for the fun of it, and had almost laughed it all off when he was informed he’d been chosen for further testing.

  Karen had been living with a jazz musician in Chicago and had heard about the tests at the University of Chicago, where she occasionally modelled for art classes. She’d taken the tests on a whim, having always suspected her intuition was more reliable than most, and on another strange whim, much to the disgust of her boyfriend, had decided to go to California for the further tests and training.

  Eric and Karen had met soon after arrival, and had instantly been attracted to each other. The project was isolated in the high Sierras, almost ten miles beyond the end of the nearest paved road, and conducted in greatest secrecy. The secrecy was not so much due to any fear of sabotage or spying, but rather fear of public opinion and pressure, were news about the activities there to leak out. For, much to the dismay of the government authorities, the project had been put in the charge of a rather far-out philosopher who had written many books on the adaptation of Eastern mystic philosophies to the Western mind. While there was general higher echelon approval of Dr Tompkins’ goals, there were many misgivings about his methods. Basically what was desired was a piloting team who could function together as a fully autonomous unit, and maintain their sanity when exposed to the mind-wrenching schizophrenia apparently experienced in hyperspace.

  Little was known about hyperspace. Popularly it was referred to as a translation from one level of reality to another. One of its immediately obvious uses became apparent when it was discovered that in returning to normal space one could return to a different sector of it. The new reality of hyperspace bore a remarkable resemblance, Dr Tompkins decided, to descriptions in some Buddhistic writings of Nirvana. His decision was to crash-train his candidates to accept, at least temporarily, such a state.

  After a few months of basic tutoring in Taoism, Zen, and – on their own, Tantrik Buddhism – Karen and Eric found themselves achieving a certain serenity and control over their own mental processes. And, because they had become lovers, they had found a closeness accented by their practice of maithuna, the yoga of love – reaching that rare state of love where they moved in co
mplete awareness of each other. Meantime, the original thousand had been inconspicuously weeded down to about fifty of those who showed the most promise.

  Along with the disciplines of Buddhism, drugs were also used. First, Eric and Karen took part in a group of fifteen who chewed the root bark of the Africantabernanthe iboga. This was one of the lesser known of the psychedelics, the so-called consciousness-expanding drugs.

  The drug produced several hours of euphoric hallucinations, in which they took great delight. At first they watched, fascinated, as they became aware of familiar objects in new detail and marvelously glowing colors. There was a great deal of easy laughter among the fifteen, and Eric and Karen found themselves drawn into a deep affirmation of each other which rose and peaked upon the waves of their delight.

  After the heady sensations had worn off, there followed almost twenty-four hours of sleeplessness during which time they found their brains highly sharpened. It was unlike the stimulation of such drugs as dexadrine; there was no nervousness or excitation. It was simply as though all the mental fog which normally obscures thought had been blown away and replaced by brilliantly illuminating sunshine. During this period they devoted themselves to the final digesting of all they had learned earlier. It would be impossible, Eric knew, to ever lose it now: the products of their momentary brilliance would always be with them.

  When Dr Tompkins felt that they had been adequately prepared, he brought the last six survivors of the course together to take lysergic acid diethylamide, popularly known as LSD-25. This drug, the most potent of the psychedelics by far, could be used, when taken in a comparatively large dosage, to simulate schizophrenia. It was to be the final test.

  The eight hours they spent together under that drug were a time that Eric and Karen would never forget. At first it went as before, a tingling euphoria bringing with it halucinatory powers. But while before they had felt some vestige of personal control, this time they did not. Eric felt himself slipping over a vast precipice, and knew he was powerless to halt himself.