The Pleasure Tube Read online

  our service is pleasure//your pleasure our service

  @ thePleasureTube corp.

  Videon 33 displays a pleasant, young Oriental couple, identically dressed in white body stockings, seated together on a suede sofa in an elegant cabin—they're describing the total hologram, a familiar sequence I think I've seen before.

  "Where brain-wave anticipation is immediately translated into full spectrum sensation," the male says soothingly, describing the hologram's loop.

  "Where, best of all, you are in control," the woman adds.

  "Sometimes," he laughs; they laugh together.

  "In the comfort of your cabin—chemical, electrical, visual, audio, tactile—all systems. Full spectrum sensation for an ecstasy beyond compare."

  "The only such system known to man is on this ship," she reminds the camera. "A hologram that's more than a hologram, controlled by you, automatically, unconsciously, instantaneously...."

  "You are in control."

  "Or out of it," the Oriental woman laughs, her teeth are sparkling white, her leg rising as she runs her hand from her knee down the back of her thigh, sensuous flesh electrically firm in the body stocking.

  "Where brain-wave anticipation is immediately translated into full spectrum sensation," the Oriental male is saying again on the screen.

  "Not for everyone"—his twin smiles—"but..."

  "But riding thePleasureTube without experiencing the total hologram is like climbing a mountain and not reaching its peak."

  "Like leaping from a precipice and never reaching the sea."

  "The option that is extra but extra-ordinary. Come with us to the sun."

  "Come with me." The woman smiles lusciously, touching her teeth with her tongue, just touching them. "Come with me to the sun."

  We meet Werhner and Erica for lunch at the on-board club where Massimo and I had dinner the night he was drunk, teasing the dancer. During the day the small platform stage is replaced by more round tables, and its entire side wall opens into a bank of window/wall ports through which, now on the other side of the ship, we can view the receding sphere of the earth. Framed by bright blue seas, the storm we passed through at launch is visible as a macroweather whirlpool lying over the South Pacific—from our distance, easing into the lush-pillowed, hand-carved chairs, the storm seems as fierce as a white flower. The ship's motion hasn't quite smoothed out, though, and Erica looks a little pale, slightly glassy-eyed and staring, her lips tight. Feeling the motion, I think.

  That becomes clear enough from her expression as Werhner starts raving about the looks of the curry brought to the adjacent table, nodding hello to the middle-aged couple seated there. It does look meaty, rich, though on the far side of green.

  "Drink something," Collette tells Erica. Collette herself is radiant, she's been lost in her yoga all morning.

  "Maybe I should," Erica says, pulling down the zip-lock of her jump suit. "I'll take another pill. Really, this leg of the flight..."

  The service waitress arrives, a saronged woman with a ruby set in the middle of her forehead. Erica orders milk, Werhner his curry, Collette and I will split a rack of lamb.

  "It's the distance." Erica takes it up again. "It's bad enough in orbit. Flying across half the solar system—I don't see why we have to. God, we've left orbit already, look," she says, wincing at the receding earth through the restaurant's window/wall. "So long to my nice, still beach. Land. Flat, steady land. Firm land."

  "Construct a point horizon," I suggest, remembering how I've felt at times myself. "Watch something steady in space. Of course, that's a lot easier to do in the dome."

  "You don't want to spoil your trip," Collette says. "You should eat something."

  Erica moans. "How many times have I been through this?" she sighs.

  Werhner's drumming his fingers on the table, says he's been offered a chance to ride up in the dome himself for a while. He can understand why the launch was rough but is curious why we are now flying with noticeable pitch and yaw—this began a half hour ago.

  "It starts in the stomach," Erica says. "Then it's like my whole body, it gets into my blood. I have a hard time focusing my eyes. God, and my stomach. My poor stomach."

  The saronged woman with the ruby brings our food over on a carved teak cart. Erica sips at her milk as it is handed to her, sets it down, then makes a face, a horrible face, when Werhner's curry is put on the table, steaming and ripe.

  "I can't sit here," Erica says as its odor spreads; her napkin to her lips, she's rising. "I'm sorry. I have to go back to the cabin."

  We watch her leave, then Collette and I start carving up the lamb. In a minute Werhner is calling the service waitress over again, asking her to take the curry and transfer it, please, to a thermos container; he's leaving, too.

  "You haven't even touched it," Collette says.

  "Ummm," Werhner answers sheepishly, sipping Erica's milk. Now he looks a little green himself. "Might be last night, uh, catching up with me. Going up to the dome for a while, have a look around. Anybody interested in coming?"

  "Werhner," Collette says with a smile, "we haven't begun to eat."

  "Right," he says, getting up with a lurch. "I'll just get my... curry on the way out. S'long."

  Collette's foot is stroking mine under the table, feels very nice. I've eaten most of the food, on the theory that a full stomach is a good way to face instability. A small, birdlike man with prominent ears comes through the restaurant with flowers, and I sign for a dozen roses for Collette, red roses. She's touched, smiles against some nervousness that's begun to show, her green eyes are flashing.

  She's explaining how one loses track of time in the hologram, how she's pleased we'll be able to share portions of the experience, it really is spectacular. I hope the instability of the ship doesn't spoil anything for her, or for myself—I can just barely feel its effects now. And then I remember a third way to conquer motion sickness: to have sex; nothing takes your mind off a pitching ship like sex.

  "It's tomorrow that it begins," she says. "So pay attention to Videon 33."

  I put my hand on Collette's across the linen tablecloth. Her skin is smooth, warm, solid in a way the ship no longer seems to be.

  "Let's go back to the cabin," I say.

  The instability remains for hours on the ship, not a very smooth ride. I can't understand it: we're traveling rapidly, but not at speeds which create macroweather effect. Lost for a while at the window/wall, the earth's sphere far gone by this time, I gaze into the blue-black reaches of deep space, the stars blue-white, red, and yellow diamonds in the vastness; can't quite get my bearings. And then I realize the instability has gotten worse, it takes balance to walk from the recliner to the shower. In the rushing water of the shower I feel at sea, unhinged—like riding a working ship rather than a pleasure cruise. I begin to feel apprehensive, as if a chasm is opening beneath me in the white void of the cubicle. I don't stay long. Just as I am toweling dry I swear I can feel the ship shudder, and there is a live line link coming through on the videon from the ship's dome.

  It's Werhner. Bigger than life and in electronically vivid color; beyond him the head-high computers, the desklike, long vane consoles in pastel blues, greens, beige. The dome looks almost deserted, Werhner intense as always with a touch of motion sickness showing in the concentration he pays to his breathing. I can see his thermos of curry still unopened on the navigator's chart table.

  "Thought you'd like to know the reason we're catching the bumps," Werhner says. "You're going to find this interesting. SciCom split the casing on an aft reactor jettisoning waste—they were launching the big dispoz cans out the port pontoon, then changing the whole damned course to avoid them. Timing themselves, like morons. And if that doesn't shake things up enough, one of the cans hits the casing on that aft reactor, spills half the works into space. Remind you of something?"

  I look up into the lens above the screen with a frown: "That happened to us once."

  Werhner looks at me with
a shrug. "In the Pleiades," he says. "Just like old times. Wish I would have known this was going to happen. I guess the joke's on me. Hong Kong at least kept still."

  I want to ask Werhner whether he's heard anything new on the military tracers after Cooper, but know he'd tell me if he had. It's better unsaid for now, I think.

  "So look what we've got," Werhner sighs. "Everybody's sick up here, we're way the hell off course. You're better off staying amidships, more stability there."

  "Thanks for telling me what's going on," I say. "At least it's not serious. They should have things straightened out soon enough."

  "Soon enough," Werhner agrees.

  We eat again, caviar, canapes, and a very light champagne, watching the instructional transmission on Videon 33 to take our minds off the ride. The hologram's electronics are contained in a velour headrest that plugs into the recliner. A dark-haired woman, dressed in a robin's-egg-blue uniform, is stroking the forehead of a heavy, middle-aged man who's just settled in the unit. Then the screen cuts to a stark printout and the audio to a soothing voice-over:

  ALL CLASS//ALL CLASS//ALL CLASS//

  NOTICE OF PROGRAM CHANGE//

  NOTICE OF PROGRAM CHANGE//

  ATTENTION ALL PASSENGERS AND SERVICE PERSONNEL//

  NOTICE OF PROGRAM CHANGE//

  NOTICE OF PROGRAM CHANGE//

  //DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES THE SHIP IS EXPERIENCING TEMPORARY INSTABILITY //THESE DIFFICULTIES ARE IN THE PROCESS OF BEING CORRECTED BY THE COMMITTEE PILOT//

  //AS OUR WAY OF SAYING THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE, ALL-CLASS OPTIONS BECOME IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE WITHOUT ADDITIONAL CHARGE FOR THE LENGTH OF THE DELAY//EARLY HOLOGRAM ENTRY IS ALSO AVAILABLE WITHOUT ADDITIONAL CHARGE//

  Our service is your pleasure//Your pleasure our service

  I moan; Collette asks if this means something else has gone wrong. She's been annoyed with me because I haven't taken the damage very seriously; but I know well enough that it can be fixed, they only need to blow that reactor away.

  "It's not that," I tell her. "It's just that they've started using the Committee Pilot. Now it'll take a day to reach a half-hour decision."

  "Well, we can plug in," she says. "We can enter the hologram now or just after dinner. We can eat and use the hologram all night."

  "Tonight, then," I say.

  Collette tells me that once we start, we'll be consumed for the remainder of the trip. She asks me if there's anything I want to do beforehand, if there's one of the other programs I want to run through, anything else on the ship I want to try.

  I mull the matter over for a long moment. "No," I say. "The only thing that seems unfinished to me is Massimo's death. I wish I had had the chance to pay my respects before we left Las Venus. I wasn't thinking very clearly, I guess, too interested in getting out of there. But I wish I had gone to where they took his body."

  "I haven't been thinking very clearly, either," she says. "I should have thought to tell you. His body is probably on the ship."

  "On the ship?"

  She nods, looks at me seriously. "Passenger remains are taken back to L.A. They always are."

  "Is there a way I can... see him? There must be."

  "There is a morgue on the ship, he's probably there. But you have to get clearance, we'd have to make a request."

  Collette does the checking for me. Sure enough, Massimo's remains are in the morgue. But she says no requests for downship activity are being authorized because the main lifts are out of operation for the duration of the instability.

  "Is there a back way, a way through the superstructure of the ship? I'd like to go now,"

  "Without clearance?" Collette asks, checking the time by punching it up into a corner of the screen. "Well... I suppose there's no reason to worry now; what can they do, after all? Sure, there's a way. I'd have to show you."

  "Just give me directions," I tell her. "You can get the electronics set up for the hologram. I'll go alone. I've been through ships before, just tell me where it is."

  "Well, I'd have to get you through a hatch. Are you sure you want to do this just before we plug in?"

  "I'm sure," I tell her, cracking off a piece of flat bread, spooning on the last of the caviar. "And the hologram after will be just the thing. I'm the sort who lays one on after a funeral."

  Before I leave the cabin, Collette pulls a soft, stylish leather coat from the narrow closet off the kitchen/bar in which she keeps her clothes. "It's going to be cold," she says, easing the coat from its hanger, passing it to me.

  It is a man's coat, a warm golden shade, like a flight jacket. It has the supple texture of glove leather, fits as if it had been cut for me, less a kilo or two. I admire the coat and thank Collette—it really fits well.

  "It was my brother's," she says. "I didn't want to sell it."

  I put my hand on the leather. I want to ask her about her brother, she's mentioned him before, yet I can see pain in her eyes. I hesitate, but my curiosity is too great. I ask her why he didn't want to keep the coat.

  "He died," she says quietly. "He was given the wrong drugs. Who knows why."

  The man who said that paranoids are survivors, I think.

  Collette takes me back to the pool area, where the air turns chemical and humid. We pass the thinning crowd, slip into the locker room, and she leads me across the thick carpeting to a door marked SERVICE ONLY/DO NOT ENTER. She opens the heavy door by slipping her blue card into a lock slot on the satiny metal door frame, tells me to go all the way down, kisses me goodbye.

  Once through the doorway, I pass from rug to metal grating, from the sleek redwood benches to ranks of bare metal pipes, valves, and scaffolding. The door shuts behind me with a slam. She was right when she said it was going to be cold: I can see my breath. I am in the cavernous maw of the interior of the ship, just alongside the works for the pool. Beyond the pumps lie vacant stretches of space between this first-class hull and the other two hulls that make up the second-class and third-class sectors of the ship. TheTube is constructed just like a tripled starship with a skin—three long starship cylinders, three domes, each with its port and starboard pontoons high overhead. I guessed something like this, seeing the ship on the pads in LasVenus; still, I am startled by the sight. When I consider for a moment where we will be flying, I know I shouldn't be. Yet in the bowels of this ship, each hull so resembles the Daedalus that I have an eerie sense of never having touched down, of walking in space.

  I've already climbed down the flight of steep metal stairs past the pool works, enter a series of hatch passageways in the hull on the next level; the stairway continues down, narrow, there are hatches at every level, stenciled numbers. I clamber down more steps, read 022. It is a long way to go, I guess two hundred meters beneath me.

  I reenter the ship sector through the very last hatch. I open it, a little rubber-legged from the descent. The morgue is achingly stark white, dispassionately institutional. I am struck by its size once inside it, for the single level I've reached through the service door descends two levels further through wide inside elevators. Instead of two or three mordant attendants, I find the office area is staffed by a half-dozen people. I'm told to go below by an angular-faced, pale woman in white.

  A chemical odor seems to radiate from the smooth walls and tile floors, from the interior of the elevator in which I descend. The lowest level is again dazzlingly white. Leaving the elevator, I have the sensation that I am inside the white heart of a vast machine—ducts, pipes, fittings, valves, line the ceiling of the hallways and the racks on the walls. I recognize hatchways leading to the engine room of the ship. A hum seems to come from everywhere—the long thin tubes of lighting, the machine fittings and ducts, the thick steel doors leading to rooms visible through small squares of wire-reinforced glass, rows upon rows of oversized drawers tagged at their handles. Collette was right about the number of deaths. I feel a formless blindness creeping into my vision, a nervous tremor runs through my body—slightly spooked, I guess, at the atmosph
ere of this place, raised to an unknown power by its size.

  I cannot escape the notion that Massimo still has something to tell me. I recall our first meeting on the A-line tram, the sense I had then of being impelled with him toward something new to me yet known somehow; we never arrived at it, yet we seemed sure to, I could feel it in my bones. And the idea of his intercession intrigues me. Judging from the way he orchestrated a connection for me with Eva Steiner, he could very well have seen to my appeal without telling me, had it taken care of even though he didn't know who Eva Steiner was. The hygienic chill seems cruel and unjust, just as his death still seems wrong, the gorgeous Ferrari smeared along the wall, its orange-red fireball a young, seething sun.

  In C-l there is a two-man crew seated at a desk playing chess on a magnetic board—the vault beyond stacked ceiling-high with drawers that recede down a corridor bathed in light.

  "Well, let's see," the older of the attendants says, moving his fingers through a card file. He looks queasy from the motion of the ship. "Giroti. G.G.G.G.G.G.G. You say you're not a member of the immediate family?"

  "I'd just like to pay my respects. The man was a friend of mine."

  "You can see what we have," the older man says, peering at the card he's pulled.

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Looks like he was pretty well busted up. He's in drawer thirty-three, right down there. I guess we have effects, says here personal effects are in there, too."