The Pleasure Tube Read online

  "Yes," Collette says.

  "Reverse the physics for a black hole and you find yourself like light trapped in its gravity field, trapped in space; but free in time instead, since time depends on the movement of light."

  "Feeling champagne," Collette laughs. "Still, you'd be crushed, wouldn't you, by its density, your own gravity? What did you call that state, Rawley? Naked singularity. You'd be pulled to the center of the collapsing black hole and crushed beyond the smallest particle of matter. Staggering to imagine."

  As Collette hands me my champagne I tell her about ring singularity, the kind of naked singularity exhibited by spinning black holes. Because they spin, their naked singularity is expressed along their pole axes. And presumably, along the equator, if the black hole were large enough, a traveler could enter and survive, with enough power to orbit within. One theory suggests passing through. "Though if he did pass through, a traveler would find himself in another universe, one that shares with his universe the identical black hole. And that's not exactly passing through."

  "Or just be pulsed out somewhere, maybe, pure energy," Werhner says, pushing back his hair. "I don't agree that if the Daedalus had gotten into the rotational black hole we were surveying, we'd have wound up in another universe. Vaporized and pulsed out, maybe. Levsky's idea—Levsky did the physics—is that in the right kind of black hole, with just the right orbit, you'd be caught up in some kind of loop, free in time, so your experience of the loop would be your experience of... Dead enough, Levsky used to say. Stone-cold dead."

  "Yet in some paradoxical way always alive," I add; that's also what Levsky used to say.

  "Now I am feeling champagne," Collette says. "The freedom reminds me of the hologram."

  Werhner holds up his paper cup, swirls the last of the champagne. "The hologram, yes, but the hologram you can shut down. You don't come back from the black hole. Well, one last toast. Reunion of the crew. And thank God we did get back. Theoretical ideas don't get to drink even warm champagne."

  After we drink the tart, flat remains of the champagne, we sit in silence for a time, listening to the surf. The rollers far out in the surf line crest and fall into themselves, one after the other, the sets growing with the rising tide. As I swam the outside reef I rose and fell with the waves, the surge and drop still with me. I am on the mat, barely touching Collette, watching a seabird skimming just over the water, so near the surface he disappears behind each crest. Collette asks me where I'd like to be, free in time. I laugh, push my hand through the sand, and say, just where I am. She says she'll file that information for the hologram.

  Collette's arms are spidered behind her back, she's untying the scanty top she's wearing. Her breasts jostle free, dark nipples erect. Now she's slipping off her string bottom. "Join me?" she asks, motioning with her eyes toward the calm water inside the near reel.

  "Later," I say, watching her rise, run in her side-to-side woman way to the sea. I grip the sand in my hand to feel its presence. It runs through my fingers, filters through in fine streams to the sand below. I grip so hard the sand which remains, the pain shoots through my wrist; squeeze it so tightly it is as if I want to fuse it into glass.

  "Some woman," Werhner says.

  "I agree." I am thinking about Taylor, though, as I watch Collette laze in the shallow water past the rubber boat, floating on her back, arms straight out, legs spread-eagled, glistening brown in the sun. "God, it's good to be alive. Do you think we're actually through with SciCom?" I ask Werhner.

  "That's my guess," he says. "I've seen my new orders, so... You'll feel a little more convinced when you're holding that paper in your hands in another two hours. If nothing happens after a few days... then what difference does it make? SciCom's always watching flight crew, you know that, we'll never be through with that part of it. But this crap we've been going through? The only thing that still has me on edge is the data on Cooper. I don't understand what's going on."

  "They must know," I say.

  "Not according to Knuth. Knuth says if there was no transcript there was no interview, and what I pulled was probably a visit from a nurse," Werhner shrugs. "A blind? Or a..." He sighs, then smiles, looking at the Zodiac, looking past it at Collette. "You know, this is some place, this whole arrangement."

  Handful by handful, I filter sand through my fingers. A woman, I think.

  When I plug the electronics back together on the Zodiac, the message pager starts right in, almost as if on cue. It is the same traffic operator with a reminder from Taylor that I'm to meet him in Dome A at 1800 hours, he wants a confirmation.

  "Tell him I'll be there," I say. "I wouldn't miss it for the world. Tell him that."

  We have a small cocktail-hour snack, a party, at the Palace Garden Club; there are five of us; Collette and myself, Erica and Tonio, Werhner. I'm preoccupied with what I'd like to say to Taylor in an hour, but Werhner's no help. He's really taken by the place, the lush garden setting, the Balinese women dancing, the red snapper, which, he says, has never been frozen. I can see he's also taken with Erica. I think she's playing up to him, and she looks great, her blonde hair bleached by the sun, blown back. She looks as if she's lost some weight; with the food set before us in the last two weeks I can't figure out how, then I recall her bouts of flightsickness. Right now she doesn't look as if she's ever been flightsick: trim, smiling; the sun has given her a glow. She's telling Werhner she spent the afternoon snorkeling, asking him if he's ever been frightened by a shark.

  "The only kind were SciCom sharks," Werhner laughs, glancing at me. "I've seen some real sharks. They never bothered me.. Underwater, you have a different sense of danger, it's less direct. I think that's because the medium is heavier. Blue sharks, white tips—seen those, they're pretty common. I expect they're harmless."

  "Werhner lived in the water," I tell Erica. "Look at his neck. Beginnings of gills."

  "Well, it happens to be very relaxing," Erica says. "It eases your tensions. Your physical tensions."

  Tonio is distant, picking at a bright red lobster. There's something as well between him and Erica. He did drag her over to the horseshoe bay at the west end of the island to watch the hydroplanes, but they only watched from a distance and went somewhere else, so that's not it.

  "I saw some eels once," Collette says. "They gave me tensions. I'd like to try tanks someday, though."

  "Didn't use tanks much on Guam," Werhner tells her. "Body chemistry sets a three-hour limit—and, well, Rawley knows the swim off Utama Bay."

  "We'd always wonder if he'd come in at sundown."

  "It passed the time." Werhner smiles. "The only advantage of tanks is that you can go deeper."

  I see Erica guzzle a full glass of champagne, set the glass down with decision. "Deeper. That's something I'd like to try. Tonio didn't even put on the fins I got for him. He was too busy chasing boys. That's where we went. He said he wanted to tape the canoe racers, but he never left the beach. He barely left a certain beach blanket. Isn't that right, Tonio?"

  So that's it, I think—Tonio barely looks up from his lobster, Collette is looking at me with wry, raised eyes. I am trying to stifle a smile, look at Werhner—he's turned flush, hopelessly embarrassed. A kind of dead weight falls on the table. Poor Tonio clears his throat.

  "So, ummm," Collette begins. "Tell us more about, uh, Hong Kong."

  "Not much to tell," Werhner says with relief. "Crowded, run-down. It's not the same. And it smells like a sewer. I was sorry I went."

  "This is the place," Erica says. "Hong Kong's been out for years."

  "Sure, the women here, ahh..." Werhner begins. "I mean..."

  Tonio has folded his napkin, he's rising from his seat. He puts one palm up nervously, smiles, uses the other to smooth his white suit. "I do have to meet someone," he says to us all. Erica rolls her eyes and he gives her a sharp look. "Bitch," he mutters. "Bitch," she answers back. He manages to smile at us all. "Good meeting you," he tells Werhner. "See you again, perhaps." Then Tonio, working hi
s fingers, walks away.

  Werhner smiles nervously at Erica, she smiles back. Then a long silence falls over the table as we eat. "How did you two meet?" Werhner finally says to me, nodding at Collette. "I don't quite understand the, uh..."

  "If a woman's interested in you, she lets you know," Erica says firmly, running her statement right into the middle of his sentence.

  Werhner stops for a moment, grins weakly, clears his throat.

  "I'd like to sleep with you tonight," Erica says before he can say another word. "And see one of the shows."

  Werhner nods a little breathlessly, looks at me open-mouthed, looks at me as if to say, thank you, Rawley, you have somehow managed to set me up. I take the credit with a grin; of course, the credit isn't mine.

  "You take good care of this woman," I tell him. "She's a friend of mine, too, and she needs careful handling. Listen to what she says. There's a real woman in that bikini."

  Now Erica looks at me with a grateful, romantic sigh. Collette gives me a soft punch in the ribs.

  The ride up the crew elevator of the large ship is achingly familiar—twice during the thirty seconds I have the certainty I'm going on watch for the thousandth time. There's a salt scum on the edges of my lips from this afternoon, I lick them to recall exactly where I am.

  As usual, Dome A is almost empty—the circular room, twenty meters across, is ringed with electronics of the same order as the Daedalus—and the consoles grouped in the center still use whole rows for vanes. The transparent dome is canted toward the center of the three-cylindered ship. Through the slightly blue glass of the dome's ground the tropical evening sky is just beginning to show; the day's light is failing, but within this chamber there are no interior lights. I spot Taylor standing in the dimness at one of the consoles near the chart table.

  "Does feel like home," I say, walking over the familiar magnesium-alloy floor—and I am blithely there before I feel my blood come up, before I realize we aren't alone.

  "The technology has not changed very much," the other party says crisply, her voice agonizingly familiar, absolute in the silence. "All new preprogramming, new autopilots over there. But technology develops only to a point. Beyond that point, the interesting instruments are human."

  It is Eva Steiner who steps from the vane consoles. Taylor clears his throat, sets down an amber envelope with my name on it, and takes off his glasses, begins wiping one lens. "You once were anxious to meet my commanding officer," Taylor says flatly, nodding to Eva Steiner. "Well..."

  The cutting edge of my feelings turns against myself. The sight of Eva Steiner, the dawning realization that she is Taylor's superior, slice through me like a knife. I had never thought this through—feel myself flush, feel the anger I had earlier today bleed through and to the sight of her, standing with a tight, thin smile before me in a shiny black flight suit, the crop she held in Las Venus at her side, the amber double loops of SciCom insignia on her shoulder, faint on the handle of her crop.

  "I'm glad you are surprised," she says, her thin eyebrows raised, her nostrils wide. "So not even Massimo Giroti knew. Well, very good. I don't go on vacations, Captain. Not even on this ship."

  "I don't know if surprise is the right word," I say, thinking, So that's how she knew of my orders, that's why Collette was transferred to her after the first leg. It stuns my imagination. My God, I think, the ship so familiar around me, thinking of the Daedalus crew, what did we do to unleash this?

  "You look surprised," Taylor says, his full eyebrows furrowing. "You're right," he says to Eva Steiner. "It was worth it to see his expression."

  I reach past him for the amber envelope he's set on the navigator's table. He draws away from my approach, as if my move were to grab him. A small wave of satisfaction' runs through me, at least he knows my mind.

  "We're a little embarrassed at the way things have turned out," Eva Steiner says in an oily voice as I break open the envelope's seal. "I can't tell you how much trouble this whole affair has caused between us and military."

  I pull out and unfold the stiff sheet within. Formal orders: through Washington via military cable, copies to SciCom. Clean leave orders; military's worked again.

  "So I'm authorized to tell you you're officially on leave," Taylor says as if he's doing me a favor.

  "I've been on leave since my appeal was approved," I tell him, folding my orders, pulling on the fold, slipping the sheet into my breast pocket. "Neither of you seems to understand that. You're going to hear from Flight, I can guarantee that."

  "Oh, Rawley," Eva Steiner says, purring. "We've already heard from Flight."

  I look past her pale, lined face and down the row of vane consoles, light green instruments, winking lights at rest. Microweather systems look the same, the principle of propulsion and control identical. To work again, I think, to get away—I've had to put flying out of my mind, but in this instant I find myself wanting to work a ship again, to feel the bump and roll of light-speed flight, I've been away from it long enough. Yet how little difference there's been, I think with a shock of recognition. On board the Daedalus, ship SciCom kept up a running battle with dome crew, bogged us down with Committee Pilot, multiple logs, redundant information, five-copy corrections. In the end it's the same, I think, it's an attitude. But at least we weren't spied on then, not manipulated. Or were we? I wonder now, wonder about Cooper's strangeness to all of us.

  "So we're through," Taylor says. "I'm supposed to thank you for your cooperation. I don't think I will."

  "Not through, exactly," I tell him.

  "I don't think so, either, Voorst," Taylor says, becoming engaged. "I'm not satisfied. There are just too many..."

  "You're finished here, Colonel," Steiner says.

  "We're through on Guam," Taylor says, slightly surly. "I don't see what difference—"

  "I want to know exactly what happened to Cooper," I say firmly. "And I'm going to find out."

  Taylor takes a deep breath, exchanges hardening looks with Eva Steiner, then tells me he doesn't doubt that I will. As for himself, he's got nothing more to say. I bite my upper lip, my heart thumping. I stare blankly at the pastel charts laid out on the navigator's table: tomorrow's launch orbit and the sunloop are plotted, overlaid with interstellar courses. What's going on? I look into Taylor's eyes, they swim behind the thickness of his glasses as if underwater. I have the feeling I've been here before, looked into that face with the same exasperation, I have been here forever.

  And then Taylor's gone.

  "You know something about Cooper," I say, alone with Eva Steiner in the fading light, a mauve tropical sky huge through the dome above us, the consoles in deepening shadow.

  Eva Steiner turns a little pale. "There are problems," she says. "When Cooper came down, he was experiencing a gross psychotic episode. We held him on Guam for observation, then we had to ship him to Houston. He overdosed while he was there by ingesting a full gram of pure hallucinogens. We brought part of him back, part of him. And what there is of him is ours. He didn't come back quite human. The man is not a human being."

  "He's alive?”

  "After a fashion."

  "What do you mean, after a fashion? What are you talking about? Cooper's alive?"

  "I can show you something," she says with a thin smile. "Draw your own conclusions." Steiner punches up a security code, then a video link, on the navigator's rack of monitors. The small screen flips, then steadies in an eerie blue light to show what appears to be a cell, there's a white-haired man sitting in a cell, broad shoulders, full bushy beard—the man is Cooper. His hair is white and he is slumped over on a stained cot, behind bars. The picture is fuzzy, its resolution poor, but there appear to be a series of dark patches on his exposed forearm, an ashtray overflowing with cigarettes on the floor beside the cot. He is slumped over, propped against a metal wall, his feet on a metal floor. No, Cooper never smoked, I am thinking as I watch him raise his face—he's drooling, looks twenty years older, his eyes dark, blank sockets, horrifyin
g.

  "My God," I say. "Where is he? Is this a tape?"

  Steiner is looking at the monitor intently, small beads of perspiration show on her upper lip, her eyes are wide, filled with the eerie light. "Live," she says.

  "Live? Where is he?"

  She switches the monitor off, leaves me looking at my reflection in the glass; before I turn away I see in my own face the horror I am trying to contain. Dear God, I think, the sight of him—think it could have been me as well, could have been Werhner. "Belowdecks," I hear Eva Steiner say; can't quite believe what I hear.

  "I brought him along to question him myself, but it's been... useless."

  "You've got him here? You've got him here in a damned cage?" I say. "You've got that man in a cage?"

  "He's in a security cell in detention," she says flatly. "It's for his own safety."

  "Taylor knew?"

  "Colonel Taylor has been working since the beginning on the sensible theory that what's been missing in the analysis of the blow has been double-blind evidence. And since he was coming here, I let him know Cooper would be... available."

  "You don't have any right to hold him," I say. "The crew's on leave. As of today, the whole crew is on leave." "If you can say that was a man whom you saw," Eva Steiner says. "We brought him back. What's left is ours. Look, Rawley, I know there was no love lost between you. He took your woman for a time, I know that."

  "You were the nurse," I say, the pattern dawning on me. "You were the nurse who interviewed him on Guam. And Christ, that's why his name never appeared on a death list. How in God's name can you—"

  "Yes, there are problems, I know there are problems," Steiner says quickly. "Military's inquired because of a tracer from someone on your ship—Schole, you know him, he's a friend of yours. There are problems, but we can solve them."

  I can see a strange, smoldering look in Eva Steiner's gray eyes. "Let's say this," she goes on. "He came in on a death list, he was already dead when you splashed down, a corpse in reentry. That would clear up the tracer."