The Pleasure Tube Read online

  "What are you getting at?"

  "Military is going to find him in a few days. But if we can show that he came in on a death list, say we simply forgot to post the data, if just one other crew member, like the pilot, will corroborate that he came in on a death list... Perhaps if you talked with him, you'd see. I'm making you a proposition. Name your next assignment, your own ship, if you want. Or this ship, you see what's here. And there are more interesting places, special places."

  "Did he tell you something?" I ask, my heart thumping. "Did he tell you something different from what's in the report?"

  She says he told her nothing, says so flatly, begins saying that she wants to keep him, he belongs to her.

  "I've heard enough," I say.

  "No, don't go. Talk to me! Talk to me!"

  My impulse descending in the hum of the dome lift is to leave the ship as quickly as possible, yet once in the secondary lift I punch the lower working lobby, leave the elevator there. There is only a skeleton crew for the layover; across the carpeted floor two service personnel are lazily chatting at the counter. If the ship is set up as I imagine, then the detention area is only one level up from here. I am almost right—up one level, but over in third-class hull, a man with small eyes tells me. With a coolness I did not think I still had, I turn him back to his word game with a casual wave of my hand and pass through the hatchway otherwise in his view, my mind racing as my legs carry me on what I hope looks like a visit to a drunken friend.

  On the metal grating in the dim, low-ceilinged passageway between hulls, I am gripped for an instant by the sense that I am doing something foolish, that once I am in detention, the hatch lock could close with a firm click behind me and give Eva Steiner two of us to play with instead of one.

  "Cooper!"

  There he is, slumped against the metal wall in a poorly lit cell, his hair white, his broad face blotchy and drawn, his eyes glazed over, unfocused.

  "Cooper!"

  He looks up slowly, looks at me without comprehension, his mouth slowly coming open with drool in the corners, gravity in folds on his face as if he has aged terribly or has been beaten up, worked over, the look of a man lost from the world, lost beyond his ability to remember. Then, making me out, his eyes widen and he begins to grin—a terrible grin, his upper lip drawn back, stretched back. No, not a tape; I shudder, thinking, How long can he have been here?

  "Do you recognize me? It's Voorst, Rawley Voorst." Now I see stains on his flight suit, the overflowing ashtray on the floor, crumpled papers—and there is an odor, an odor like ozone.

  Cooper's eyes are shining. "Voorst..." he says, his voice hollow, eerie, still grinning. "... you, too... dead."

  "Listen to me, Cooper. I'm as alive as I'm standing here," I say tightly, gripping the cold steel bars, shaking them. "And so are you. I'll try to get you out of here, get you to a hospital. Can you understand me?"

  Cooper only looks at me, his eyes narrowing, wiping his hand across his mouth.

  "Do you remember what happened on Guam? You talked with a woman. What happened then? Did you tell that woman something?"

  Cooper smiles crookedly, raises his hand from his face to turn a forearm to me blotched with scars. A cackle runs through his voice. "I'm a corpse, Voorst. She burns me and... I can't... feel it."

  I bang the steel bar with my fist; there is a low thud. "Cooper. Werhner Schole is here, too. We all came back. You're as alive as I am, Cooper, there's a world outside. Listen to me. Tell me what they've done to you."

  Cooper turns his haggard face away, he is chewing his lower lip, spittle at the corner of his mouth. He looks back at me; I hear him say: "Do you see things, Voorst?"

  The hair rises on the back of my neck. Behind me there is a sound, quick footsteps padding on metal, nearing. Around the corner through the hatchway comes the small-eyed security man, rushing down the passageway, paling. "Hey, no visitors. I got a call down, no visitors. Get out, you gotta get out," he says, shooing me with his hands.

  It is as if there is something crawling on me, on my skin, crawling.

  I take one last look at Cooper, his mouth awry with contempt, his eyes, dark with hate, directed at me or the warden, I cannot tell; I see the burns again on his forearm as Cooper raises his hands to his eyes and turns to the wall, the security man is pushing at me now.

  The moon is spectral, huge. Werhner and I sit in the wicker chairs at the cabana, spooked into drinking rum, watching the almost full moon rising over the ocean. It has taken me a long time to tell the story, a long time to unwind. "It never did feel straight," I tell Werhner finally. "And seeing him... My God, man, it was like seeing a ghost."

  "What did Cooper mean?" Werhner wonders aloud, wonders again. "How can he think he's a corpse? What did they do, exactly? Well, not so much difference now. But if Eva Steiner hadn't wound up needling you, if it wasn't for that, who'd know about Cooper? Who'd know?"

  "Your tracers," I remind him. "She did say it seemed like a matter of days. But what might happen in the meantime?" I sigh. "Christ, am I glad we get our orders through military. Imagine what it would be like if SciCom was hooked into that."

  My visions of Cooper still haunt me, the shock of seeing him blue and eerie on the monitor in the dome, the greater shock of seeing him gaunt and ghostlike in the detention cell, the weight of his presence, the strange things he said, wondering if he knew what he was saying. Having seen him, I feel vindicated somehow, though shaken: as if a bridge over which I have just crossed has collapsed behind me.

  But it's hard to know what we can do for the man; I don't want to see him again. It's better, we decide, to let military handle his case than to try to do something ourselves. I really can't bear the thought of seeing Cooper; can only think he belongs in a hospital. So Werhner leaves to see what he can do—a series of tracers, asking for replies with requests to expedite.

  When he returns I am still sipping rum, still watching the full moon, its light a gleaming swath on the calming sea.

  "It'll take a little while," he says. "All things considered, I think it's the best we can do."

  "I wonder what he told her, if he told her something in that Guam interview."

  "Doesn't matter now," Werhner says quietly.

  "God, I just want to forget," I tell him, Cooper's Do you see things, Voorst? running through my mind. I rise and stretch to shake it off. "Put this behind me. I just want to forget."

  Late in the evening we are lounging at the PastPacific Show, sitting on mats at long, low tables in the center of a mocked-up village of palm-thatched huts. A Balinese ceremony has just ended and the smell of incense hangs in the air, mingles with the odors of roast pig, fish, baked taro, fresh tropical fruits. A Polynesian troupe dances into the center circle, the men in mylar lava-lavas, the women's hips furious and sensual to fast Tahitian drums, their long grass skirts small waves above their flower-circled feet. What a feast we have had, how it's cleared my mind. Werhner reclines, nuzzling Erica. I haven't felt so well in months. I lie with my head in Collette's lap, among the layers of frangipani and pikake falling in strings from her neck, looking up into her face. She is illuminated by torchlight.

  She is simply the most beautiful woman I've seen in this evening of beautiful women. Her high cheekbones, her sexy big lips, catch the light in ways that seem to me magical; she seems supernatural tonight. She looks down at me with a fine, tender smile, her eyes green-gold in the light. I mouth the words "I love you." She is puzzled; I say the words. She understands and breaks into a wide grin. When she leans over to kiss my forehead, I am smothered in flowers for a delicious moment.

  "You've been good to me," I tell her, thinking back over this last leg of the trip.

  "I've been trying my best," she says. "Lover."

  "Tell me something I can do for you. Really. Take your turn for once, Collette. You show me yours."

  She laughs, looks away. The drums have shifted to a slower, sensuous rhythm, the light begins to flash as torches are whirled.
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  "There is something," she says.

  I ask her what.

  "It's something I've never done before, and I want to now, with you. It's a marriage," she says shyly. "Not a legal marriage, but a sort of wedding in the way of my ancestors. This place... well, this place makes me think of it. I have a few things my brother gave me, they're very old. He told me what to do with them. Will you go through the ceremony with me, Rawley?"

  "A tribal wedding?" I ask. I'm not quite certain what she means. "Here?"

  "No, not here. I need the ocean, there isn't anyone from my tribe. But you'll be. We can go to the island, the island where we were this afternoon. That'd be perfect. I'd have to get some things from the ship—could we reach that island in the dark? We'd have to build a fire, I'll need a fire. It's such a nice night. Rawley?"

  I look up through the smoky atmosphere and see the large moon poking through the fronds of coconut trees. Really, what Collette's suggested thrills me to the bones. If we can get a Zodiac, I think, there's no problem getting to the island in the moonlight. I look over at Werhner—both he and Erica are sound asleep, arms entwined, before a massive pile of pork bones and coconut pudding.

  "It's all right with me," I say. "I'm ready to go."

  * * *

  On the island's beach, above lapping, low-tide waters, in the still beauty of the night, we make a small camp around the wide mats which Collette has brought along. Collette builds a small fire from scrub and hardwood she's also brought along in the Zodiac. Once she lights it, we recline on the woven straw mat. She draws a diagram with a stick in the sand to show me what she's done, where we find ourselves:

  We are in the center of the four elements, the air above, the earth below, fire and water to either side.

  She's given me a loose thong, an animal-skin loincloth, to wear; she's wearing a long, sheer embroidered robe, eggshell-white. She asks me to repeat a series of phrases in a language I've never heard before. I watch her bowed head as she speaks, her voice soft and guttural, as if she speaks from the origin of language itself. Her eyes are directed downward; as she lifts her face when she is finished, the fire behind me becomes an intense spot of light in her pupils.

  Then she takes my hand, holds it palm upward in her lap, and makes a small, quick incision in my wrist with an old ivory knife. The blood comes. She cuts her own wrist, a precise centimeter cut, drops the knife, and firmly pulls our wrists together with her other hand. The sensation is warm, viscous; for a moment as I feel our pulses pounding in unison I experience a strange sense of oppression and joy at the same time.

  After a minute Collette sprinkles a powder on both our wrists and the bleeding stops. As she does so she tells me that her people will stand by me until death, and I must stand by them; that with her people I will always find protection, food, drink, shelter, and warmth. Her people, I think... there is a sadness in her eyes as she speaks, but her smile is full and sexy when she finishes, the kind of wide smile that really shows her teeth. When we next make love, she says, we will be married.

  I begin to reach for her, but she stops me with her hand. There is another step, she tells me, her eyes brightening. She removes a small drawstring pouch from the basket she is kneeling beside. She tells me she will speak the taala, a phrase she translates as "the words which must not be hesitantly spoken." As she begins I have the feeling that she has known these words for a long time.

  "This is the gift," Collette says, her voice incantatory and distant, "given of the gods, which lets the eye see to behind the sun. It opens the ear to sounds which only the specters of the ancestors can hear. It opens the nose to smells which only the best of hunting dogs can smell, and, smelling, grow restless. This is the gift that gives wings to the feet for the journey to the unknown land where all totems are silent. Then shall the voice resound like the sound of the antelope and every gesture endure forever and the darkness shall be lifted and the great mysteries revealed...."

  As she speaks I chew a powder that tastes of bone meal and seaweed, my mouth dry. I gesture to reach for her after a prolonged silence and she says, "Shut your eyes, Rawley. Shut your eyes." When I open them again she has disappeared into the inky darkness; I didn't hear her move. I sit absolutely still, listening, but I hear nothing. I close my eyes again.

  My heart is pounding. I wait for minutes and the minutes stretch; I find myself wondering how long my eyes have been closed. I lose my grip on time, look up. The sky above is a vast well of darkness, a sea of stars, snow at the Milky Way. I see Vega, the first star of the evening, a star whose light I first saw appear through the ship's dome as I talked with Taylor at sunset. And the first star of the navigator's triangle. The points of light separate themselves, they lead me automatically to a search for the Crab nebula. It is directly overhead. I look, and in looking I begin to feel the sky widen and I begin to fall through it, falling among the stars as the infinity of space opens before me like a window, like a door. I can feel the blood coursing through my veins and arteries, the rhythm of my heart the rhythm of my body.

  A sound nearby. Collette steps out of the dark, naked, glistening with oil, bright beads in her hair. She holds her arms close against her body, her breasts jutting out. She kneels before me and I loosen the loincloth. When I quickly thrust inside her, she wraps her arms around my head and only her fingers move through the hair on the back of my neck. A series of jolting shocks pass through my groin, a stream of delight which does not seem to belong to me but takes the last breath from my lungs. I make no sound, do not move. Within me, muscles relax and contract, I don't even feel my breathing. Then Collette falls, lies by the fire, her eyes shut, the only sign of her orgasm an internal shudder.

  After a long moment Collette rises to her feet, sends her arms outstretched to the stars. The posture resonates in my mind, brings back our first hours together. And my vision, the vision of a woman suspended in space, arms spread, enigmatic—she becomes all women, Maxine, Collette, the Spanish girl, Erica; the fright from Cooper means nothing to me now. The low fire gives Collette a golden glow, her skin glistening with the sheen of the fragrant oil as the light plays over the curves of her body. "Collette," I say, my own voice slightly strange to me, as if from a distance, yet my mind so clear and my heart so taken with her that the voice speaks with affection and conviction. "Collette. You are a goddess."

  "A goddess," she says softly, tenderly, looking at me with a gentle smile. "Yes. And you are a god, Rawley."

  I look down, gaze at the fire, watch it for a long moment. "I do feel like a new man."

  "You are a god, Rawley," she laughs, holding out her hands. "You'll see."

  Two hours later, long after midnight, a huge, rolling clap of thunder comes from a great distance. I turn and see a bank of faint lightning on the horizon, the first signs of a large storm that's come from nowhere. The air remains still, but now I notice the sign of weather in it, a weight. I tell Collette we have to go now, we'd better load the Zodiac. It seems a shame to leave.

  "What an adventure this has been," I say.

  "You think it's over?" She grins, rolling the mat, laughs. "You think this is all? Oh, Rawley."

  Chapter 9

  Trip to the Sun

  We lift off through the glowering tropical storm that blew in from nowhere last night, its gusts buffeting the ship as we sat on the pad. Now, thirty seconds into launch, the winds have risen to gale force and theTube yaws and lurches through layers of low clouds, their light gray-green. At the same time the ship vibrates with the low howl of sustained acceleration in trying to shake loose. The layers of weather swirl past the window/wall as the tidal forces of acceleration build—we are shaken one way, then another, so many rattles in the cabin a loop of soft music is drowned in this other kind of music. Something crashes in the kitchen/bar, then something larger. I manage to turn my head to see Collette, strapped into a liftoff rig at the couch, a worried expression on her face. Heavy weather, dangerous to launch. My surprise that we have lifted off at all ha
s melted into aggravated resignation. Too committed now to abort, hanging on, the weather beyond the skin of the ship palpable and thick.

  Then we punch through the last heavy layer of cumulus—vibrate still, but it is as if we go from water to air. A nice sensation of lightness, made manifest in the yellow-white light of the naked sun through the window/wall. I am finally pressed so far back into the recliner that I can no longer see.

  The first thing I do once we reach stable flight, the heel of my hand throbbing again, is to check the program through on Cooper's status. I am relieved to find that military has a pair of high-priority tracers cross-checking their way along Cooper's path since splashdown, SciCom slow in responding, but the tracers moving inexorably, step by step.

  RESIDUAL ITINERARY//

  FIRST-CLASS PASSAGE// Prog. 2NdCoord.

  DA12 VIETAHITI LAUNCH/TRIP bid I/0-0600

  TO THE SUN

  DA13 HOLD PREP/TOTAL HOLOGRAM, bid i/f-cont.

  DA14 TRIP TO THE SUN bl- i/f-----

  CONTINUOUS VIDEON PROGRAMMING

  THE PLEASURE TUBE IS AN EXPERIENCE//INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS ARE COMMON AND PRECISE DESTINATIONS VARY//

  CONSULT YOUR SERVICE FOR DETAILS

  2, MEDICAL CLEARANCE REQUIRED

  TOTAL HOLOGRAM///TOTAL HOLOGRAM///TOTAL HOLOGRAM///

  //the option that is extra and extra-ordinary///medically cleared passengers who have prereserved and preprogrammed arrangements will receive instructions DA12//passengers are encouraged to tune in to Videon 33 for continuous briefing on hologram procedures, options, and benefits//shipwide total hologram begins 0000 DA 14.

  TRIP TO THE SUN//TRIP TO THE SUN//TRIP TO THE SUN//

  //along with the culminating experience of the total hologram, to complete this flight thePleasureTube will fly in a deep-space orbit which will bring it within three million kilometers of the sun//this orbit course, impossible without the special facilities of theTube, is preprogrammed and self-correcting//the increasing blue-gray shade of theTube window/walls increases the reflectivity of the ship and should not be adjusted//this rare experience is a standard feature for all-class passengers//relax and enjoy the journey.