The Pleasure Tube Read online

  The rest house—what Collette calls it—is protected by woods on three sides. We are on a gentle rise on rocky ground. Behind us the land slopes uphill to a series of granite bedrock faces which rise from the ground; around the base of the nearest is apparently the tramrun. Ahead the landscape runs downhill and opens in a widening swath to a meadow, a vast, parklike space, again only barely groomed, perhaps three or four kilometers off. I can just make out a series of pavilions on the meadow's far side, perhaps eight kilometers away.

  Since the tram whined away, the air has seemed soundlessly light. The absence of machine hum recalls the beach at Utama Bay on Guam; this kind of stillness is unnerving. I pick out the possible sound of wind in the taller trees, insects, and the faint songs of birds. The sun is a sun of late earth afternoon, bright but hazed over; its light falls into the woods in patches the size of children. In the woods the greenery collides, tumbles over itself. I feel both tranquil here and apprehensive—how can that be?

  Collette and I drink champagne and pick at a whole salmon, poached, cold. The salmon is delicate and clean-tasting, the champagne light. She knows of a strawberry patch just downhill, we are going to pick dessert.

  * * *

  The strawberries grow near the edge of the sparser woods to our left, downhill. Small strawberries, but they are exceptional: bright red, tantalizing in texture, ripe, sweet, firm. We eat them out of our hands, propped up against a thick tree, sitting on the soft loam.

  "Perfect," I say. "Paradise."

  "To me," Collette says, putting strawberries in a ceramic can to take back to the ship, "this is as perfect as a place can be. We'll stop again at a tropical reserve, but there's too much to do there to actually relax. This place... There aren't many people who get the chance to be here, you know. I have a plant room at home, a small one. I wish I had this. It's so peaceful—you're right, perfect."

  "Just like my last twenty-four hours," I say. "Everything's seemed... to click into place. Spooky. The first music I heard in the cabin? My space music, Bartok, I wore out a tape of it once. I must have wanted just that breakfast for a year. And a woman like you. It's as if you remember things I've forgotten I really wanted..."

  Collette smiles, passes me a strawberry. "You're a pleasure," she says. "There's something about you, it's your tan, the way you look at me. I'd like to do you any time."

  I bite into the fruit and feel its juices pique my tongue. Sweet, sticky, almost tart enough to be dry, but sweet nonetheless. "Mmmm. And that blonde woman. Yet... something about her is familiar."

  I lean back on my elbows in the softness of the earth, layers of decaying leaves and loam among thinning vines along the shady edge of the woods, at the foot of this tree. "There are moments," I tell her, "when I don't feel very far from the screening committee that kept me on Guam. Taylor and Knuth; then Birnbaum, Lodge.... They think I know something I know I don't."

  "A SciCom screening committee?' Collette asks, sitting up straight.

  "Yes."

  "Are you in trouble?"

  "Am I?" I ask after a moment. "You tell me."

  Collette is reading my face, I am trying to read hers, she sets down the half-filled container. "Not that I'm aware of," she says, moving forward onto her knees. "Well, you're not in any trouble with me."

  I shrug and suggest that what data there is on me, she's probably seen.

  "I saw the program we retrieved," she says, "and I sure can't recall any screening-committee report." Collette pauses. "But I'll guess. Something happened to you on the expedition, didn't it?"

  "To the ship," I tell her after a moment. "We blew part of the ship. Three people died—then there was a suicide."

  "My God," Collette says. Could she have known? Her expression denies it utterly; she sees my own pain, I think. No, I've never met her before. I want to tell her what happened; I can feel her sympathy.

  "We were tracking energy source off the entry horizon of a black hole, near the Crab. We went as far as anyone's gone. Did you know that?"

  "No," she says, blushing a little. "The Crab nebula? That's some way. And a black hole? I'm not really sure..."

  "A black hole is an old star that's fallen in on itself, collapsed," I tell her. "It's so dense its own light doesn't escape, so dense its gravity attracts light. The physics is still speculation—one theory has it that within a black hole the laws of physics are reversed, and a traveler, say, becomes trapped—trapped in space, and free in time instead. Another theory has it that each is a throat to another universe, another a loop in time—well, that's all on the other side. I don't want to exaggerate. We were tracking well off an edge. Spinning black holes might be a cost-free energy source, that's why we were tracking. That's where it was that we blew."

  "Blew? Out there? My God," Collette says, goes silent for a moment. "How lucky you are to be back, alive and back. There's an investigation?"

  "The investigation was finished almost four years ago, out on range. But since I've been back, maybe it's just bureaucracy, it's like thick glue in gears on Guam. They don't want me to leave. At all. I've filed a dozen reports, answered every question. But still..."

  Collette looks away, she picks at grassy weeds growing among the strawberries. "There's truth to that anywhere, nowadays," she says. "My brother used to say that soon enough nothing will happen. Maybe it's already gotten to the point where there are so many administrative strata to go through that nothing happens, nothing changes. That's the way it seems. An investigation can last forever. But look," she says, turning her palms up, tossing grass into a breeze, "right now you're here. You're traveling first class. People wait months for this, people who can afford it. You came right on. Somebody must be looking out for you."

  I push my hand at the soil and run my fingers through—dank, spongy, sweet. I did that myself, I think. I rewrote my program at the military office, punched it through while the wormy program clerk was at morning meditation. Technically I have military status. I had such an overload of leave time I went right out. I wonder if SciCom even knows yet; by now there is nothing they can do. I tell Collette just how it was that I got here.

  She looks at me for a long moment. "You really entered your own leave program?"

  "I was only a member of the Committee Pilot, but I flew the ship," I tell her. "So that was by default. Same thing. As far as I'm concerned, they've defaulted ever since I've gotten back to Guam. They write off the suicide, they're encouraging a friend of mine to kill himself, I think, they don't seem to care. Except they do want to keep their hands on me—I've got that pretty clear."

  "And why am I assigned to you?" Collette asks slowly, asks herself. "There's security on the ship, you had to clear it, you may not even have known when you were..."

  "The blonde woman... ?"

  Collette stares at me hard. "She's just one of the things that happen here," she says. "They happen all the time— casual pairs, we call them. I can't conceive that it's anything else; I cannot conceive of the possibility."

  I sigh and apologize for the question.

  "You don't have to apologize," Collette says quietly. "It's all right with me. You can ask questions if you want to, but if you just let things happen here, it works out just as well. Knowing isn't going to make a difference." She pauses, looks at her still hands, at me. "I live by what's inside a program," she continues. "I don't go any further than that. I live by what's inside. Like coming to this place, eating these strawberries, sitting here with you. I like you."

  "Thanks," I say, wondering—am I being entirely fair to her?—if that isn't just what she should say, would say, to anyone? I ask Collette if she felt that way—to live only by what's programmed, no matter what—when she was a kid.

  "No." Collette smiles, leans back. "I was going to be a volleyball player, an Olympic volleyball player. Then I was going to fly, as a vane analyst, or... Well, I fly. I wound up one day assigned to do this."

  "And that's all right?"

  Now Collette shrugs. "The flyin
g I like, the food is good, I'm done by someone almost every day. But, well, the truth is, I usually feel like a nurse. First-class passengers run pretty old."

  "That puts my self-image back into perspective." I smile.

  "You'll survive."

  Collette wants to rub my back. She comes around behind me and massages first the nape of my neck as I look toward the light green meadow. I can feel a slight tightness in my muscles only begin to dissolve. I tell Collette I need some exercise.

  "Tomorrow we can take a hike if you want to," she says. "There's a trail right near here. Or you can shoot in the game harvest. Did you ever hunt? There are usually so many people."

  "A hike," I say, lying down, my face almost in the strawberries. "I don't want to shoot in a crowd. But don't prelog the trip, let's just see."

  I meet the European-looking man on the return tram. His name, he tells me, is Massimo Giroti—white-bearded, Italian, and a UN Governor in SoAm. He describes himself in a thick accent; he is a large man with steely eyes and an elegant handshake, and seems slightly bored. As the tram hums through the twilight, shadowy woods, Massimo tells me that no, he has not always been an administrator; when he was my age he had been an automobile driver on the world circuit, he had been a champion.

  I tell him that I have been on a starship and out of touch because of it; yet his name is familiar somehow.

  "Perhaps Fiat Massimo," he says. "They have name a car after me. Although it was never Fiat I drive. It was only Ferrari and Lancia. I drive the last Ferrari. But you were on starship? What position did you do?"

  I tell him that I was a Flight Vane Engineer.

  "Ah, sorprendente!" he says, the lines, on his face disappearing, his grin wide. "Piloto, pilot, you mean. That is like building the curves and driving them at once, you fly the starship! We are simpatico, my friend."

  He shakes my hand again. I laugh and say that control of the ship we are returning to seems more like building the curves and driving them with a car that had marshmallows for wheels.

  He laughs at that, he denies it. It turns out he has ridden the Tube before.

  "I suppose it depends on the program they run you through," I say. "I've never seen such tight programs for so many people."

  "Ah, like everywhere nowadays—but you do not program Giroti," he laughs. "Nor do I think they program you." And then he tells me that a PleasureTube program is unique and interesting for another reason. It must be looked at from some distance, I will see eventually. TheTube is a process, he goes on—you don't realize what's happening to you, it builds toward the total hologram. You don't understand thePleasureTube's dynamics until then.

  As we pass over the last rise before the cozily glittering terminal, I think of the strawberries. Collette had worn a strawberry scent in the morning—my appetite must have been focused on, intensified by, that scent to precondition my satisfaction in the strawberries we ate. In part the system of this ship proceeds from the appetites it creates and sustains, a kind of loop.

  The terminal we enter is as crowded as it was when we left it. Most of the people are third-class passengers who watch with the disdainful awe of the poor as our spun-steel tram hums in. What Collette says—let it happen, what does knowing the system change?—let's say I agree marginally. The knowledge of another system accounts for my being here, accounts for my presence on this class tram as well. Yet another kind of loop, I think, even as the tram quietly clicks to a stop at the very spot from which we had begun.

  After a shower under the whirlpool head I join Massimo at a small club on the A level of the ship. The out-cabin facilities of the ship have begun to operate: the club; a spa, Massimo advises, which opens tomorrow morning; a pool; an exercise room; another club; a D-bar. His second trip, Massimo complains about the out-cabin facilities: few, too small, hours irregular. The club is only the size of three or four cabins; tonight is India—three musicians in a dim recess, a triangle of sitar, sirode, drums. The service and the dinner are entirely Indian; we eat pandoor fowl as a well-muscled woman dances the "dance for Vishnu" behind a gauze curtain. Backlit, dusky and sensual, after a time she is joined by a man, then the curtain parts and he dances alone.

  Massimo is already slightly drunk when the food is served. He's on a high dosage as well—as he came in I saw him put four pills on his tongue to bait the club's stuffy manager; he swallowed the pills conspicuously and with a grin. This trip, as a matter of fact, he is using the hologram against medical advice. We talk about women, he has some outrageous stories about Buenos Aires to tell. By the time we are finished eating he is calling for the Vishnu dancer again, insisting that he's seen her before, fueling the ship. With the gauze curtain gone, the lines of her muscles clearly show—Massimo announces loudly that he will be ready to wrestle after dessert. She glares at him; she is, in fact, attractive; we laugh for a long time—but I rise to leave before the second cup of thick, black coffee, still slightly desynched from Guam. Massimo becomes concerned. He checks the time with the waiter, then he insists, in a drunken, fatherly way, that yes, I must return to my cabin to keep up my strength.

  When I return to my cabin, I find an Indian girl in a gauze and silk sarong waiting for me. Collette hasn't returned. A raga is on the audio. The girl—who, I wonder, is she?—weaves, smiling, toward me right at the door, slowly places the palm of her warm hand on my stomach, slides it fingers downward beneath my belt. As I start to speak she opens her other hand to reveal a vial of snowy-white crystals and a tarry black ball, like a soft pebble. "Compliments," she says, "of Governor Giroti." Her accent hints at something other than Indian. When I look closely I see she is Spanish, not Indian, perhaps South American. One of Giroti's women, of course.

  "Colombian cocaine, Afghan hashish, both extremely rare. You are not getting your service," she adds. "I need a pipe for the hashish. The woman should be here."

  "Collette?"

  "Whoever, handsome man. I'd take better care of you. I will."

  "I can't complain," I say with a smile.

  "You could not only complain, you could have her transferred. She should be here. I need body oil; the recliner should be turned. We need a pipe." She inhales the odor of the hashish, offers it for me to smell.

  "I have a small tobacco pipe in my bag," I say. "It'll do."

  "Very interesting," the girl says—she is small-boned, dark-eyed; the sarong gives her a doll-like presence. "Just like kiddies playing with daddy's drugs."

  I raise my hand, I don't know why, maybe the idea that she is so young—or is it the sneer that has come to her lips, her fleshy, glistening, and sensual lips?

  "Slap me if you want to," she whispers. "Slap my bare skin, I'll undress. I want to be your slave."

  DA3//I spend the morning working out in the A-deck pool, swimming laps. The spa complex includes a paddle tennis court, an exercise room, a bar, and the Olympic-sized pool itself, ringed by a narrow artificial beach. Its half-dozen butterfly palms are yellow-green, drooping; the sand, I'm not certain it is sand, is dusty, it is a place without life. The pool, small as its deck is, is an obvious place for—casual pairs. Perhaps thirty men and women lie tanning themselves under SunBanks on the far side; the people are oddly private toward one another, most rather old, their flesh doughy, the investors and administrators who Collette told me usually rode first class. On the other hand, there are five extremely attractive women and four men at the thatch bar in the corner, all Oriental. Service, I wonder? I see that one brought a basket of drugs, so I don't think so. I consider asking what they are taking, meeting the extra woman, but I concede to my sluggishness from last night and dive back into the pool instead. I swim twenty-five laps, the water thin and chemetic after the soft salt wash of the Pacific, its dead calm bathlike after the surge and rip of the sea off Guam. I dreamed last night of Cooper, an unsettling dream, saw him crouched over a downhatch ladder in the dome, a wild look in his eyes, his mouth open as if he were howling in pain, but there was only silence and the dome had lost almost all
of its light. I see his broad, bearded face again even as I swim, do not shake the vision until I finally leave the water.

  Back at my cabin, I cannot resist the whirlpool shower head again. I towel off before the blank window/wall, then punch through the videon and do sit-ups with Erica's exercise class, Collette's and my private joke. Collette has left instructions to meet her at the biosphere rest house where we spent yesterday. I'll be late enough. Yet I frankly wonder where she's been.

  Collette is standing outside the screened porch in the early-afternoon sun; evidently she heard the tram. She's tall, has a dancer's body, both more graceful and slimmer than the Vishnu dancer at the club. But she is better filled out than the Spanish girl from last night, an entirely different body under her halter and sleek denim pants. Collette is woman to that girl: her cheekbones are as high as the girl's were shallow. Collette has the slightest scar above her lip, thin, obviously well sutured; it gives a sense of mystery to her face, to the cafe au lait of her skin. Her hair is drawn back under a silver bandana pulled around her forehead and tied at the nape of her neck; her green eyes are catlike; she has the most gorgeous smile.

  "I did the craziest thing," she tells me. "I missed the crew tram last night, called in O.D. I stayed out here last night."

  "Alone?" I say.

  She nods, she is grinning.

  "You'll get paranoid, too," I tell her with a smile.

  "Paranoids are survivors." She shrugs. "That's what my brother used to say."

  "Where did you sleep?" I ask, then see a set of rumpled sheets on the daybed. I kiss her neck, stop her answer; somehow I've begun to trust her implicitly, anyway. "Is it serious?"

  "Cold poached salmon again. Short on champagne. Were you lonely?"

  "Not exactly," I admit. Paranoid? I think. What spooks me? It's not her. But now I have the feeling that I've been here before.