The Tethered Man

by John Michael McNamara

  Every day at midday I talk to Ship. Every day, with The Poison Dwarf in front of my nose, I talk to Ship.

  ‘Well, Ship, here we are on another fine day in Deep Space. Bloody awful, isn’t it? Just empty dark blackness, silence, nothingness. It’s a wonder I don’t go stark, staring mad, you know, a great wonder indeed. What’s happening lately with you, Ship? I’ll tell you what’s happening with me. Shall I do that? I’ll tell you what’s happening with me…’

  I do this a lot. Repeat myself a lot. There’s no reason not to repeat myself a lot.

  It fills Space and time both, and gives me something to listen to, something to do. The formation of words and phrases. The regular repetition of them. All keeping me occupied.

  I wouldn’t say it keeps me out of mischief. Instead, I would say it’s my preferred form of mischief.

  ‘What’s happening with me is that I’m thinking, Ship. I’m thinking about the past. I’m thinking back. All the way back to the day when we first met.’

  Nothing from Ship. But I don’t expect there to be. Ship doesn’t like it when I talk like this.

  ‘My memory’s not up to much. I can’t remember who I am, or what my life is like. But I can remember when we met, Ship. I’m thinking back to the day when we first met. I remember when we first met as if it happened just now. Do you remember the day we met, Ship?’

  SECTION SIX

  * * *

  ‘Permission to come aboard, Ship?’ I said.

  Permission granted, Courier J.

  ‘Thank you, Ship.’

  I swung myself into Ship’s boarding tube. The Station airlock irised shut behind me. Boarding tubes are how Space travellers pass between Stations and Ships. One day we might be able to teleport directly aboard Ships. That day is yet to come.

  This is a flashback to when I boarded Ship back at Station.

  About two hours from now, Ship will interrupt me in my Space hammock and ask me to go outside.

  I pulled myself along the boarding tube, hand over hand. Ship opened its outer airlock door and I floated inside. Half-gravity gently asserted itself. My feet sank into the carpet.

  ‘Thank you, Ship,’ I said.

  You are welcome, Courier J. Your fellow Couriers all arrived some time ago. We have been waiting for you. Your late arrival has delayed Departure by over one hour.

  ‘Sorry. My Wipe took a bit longer than usual, they said. And I missed my connecting Shuttle. And I slept-in this morning…’

  I stared at Ship’s inner airlock door. Why wasn’t it opening?

  ‘Why isn’t it opening?’ I said.

  You have not spoken the truth, Courier J. Your memory was only just now Wiped on Station. You cannot possibly have any memory of your day, or of your life, prior to the Wipe.

  I grinned good-naturedly. This was the persona I had decided to adopt. The persona of one who grins good-naturedly.

  ‘Bloody hell, Ship, do you give all your passengers the third degree like this?’

  Ship said nothing.

  The inner airlock door slid open. Silently and smoothly. If this was a holodrama, the airlock door would’ve opened with a nice low hum, or a beep. Or with a nice low hum and a beep both together. And probably there’d have been dry ice billowing everywhere for no reason.

  In real-life Space travel, everything is silent and smooth. There are no beeps or hums and there’s no billowing dry ice to speak of.

  Please come inside, Courier J.

  ‘Said the spider to the fly,’ I said.

  I beg your pardon?

  ‘A little joke. Look it up.’

  I entered full Ship gravity. My feet sank deeper into the carpet. I exhaled, long and hard, for the sheer enjoyment of it all.

  Thank everything for gravity! Thank everything for up and down, past and future, self and other. Thank everything for the common-sense, clockwork Universe in which we live and move and have our being.

  ‘Welcome aboard!’ I said, bright as a shiny Courier’s button.

  A pause. Only a short one, but a definite one. The first of a great many.

  I do not understand, Courier J. That is something I would usually-

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  I looked around: bland functional corridors, blank grey walls, soft carpet. A bog-standard Ship’s interior.

  ‘My cabin?’

  This way, Courier J.

  Every Ship is the same as every other Ship. I already knew the way, but I let Ship lead me there anyway.

  Down empty corridors. I’d even call them empty and echoing corridors, but the carpet took care of any echoing.

  The door swooshed open and I stepped into my cabin.

  ‘Thank you, Ship.’

  Departure is currently scheduled for twenty-five hundred hours, pending final systems checks. Everybody will be gathering in the Departure Lounge. Will you be attending?

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘As if you need to ask.’

  I unpacked my bag, got myself settled.

  There’s nothing much inside a bag packed for travel in Space. A single change of clothes is all that’s required. Every Ship has laundry servitors nowadays.

  The only thing the Space traveller should give thought to is whether or not to pack a luxury item. And if so, what.

  A personal floatscreen projector is favoured by many.

  Me, I always brought books along on Courier missions. Poetry books.

  I was currently reading an anthology of Far Realm poets. Everybody makes fun of the Far Realm and their snooty ways, but they really have produced some of the finest verse since the Diaspora. And it’s not just me who says that. Everybody who cares about poetry says that. All fourteen of us.

  I summoned my Space hammock from the cabin wall. I slid into it and read a few pages from the anthology. Augustus Chu’s several contributions impressed me greatly. I made a mental note to follow up on his complete works when I got my full memory back.

  Reading other people’s stuff always inspires me to compose a poem of my own. I closed my poetry book, flipped open my notebook, and composed the poem that you will find overleaf.

  Tricked you. I composed no poem – not yet. I just lay there, day-dreaming. Doing absolutely nothing but laying in my Space hammock and withdrawing my intention from all purposeful activity. Letting my mind drift along its own length and breadth.

  If you were doing this, your mind would have a lot more territory to drift across than my mind did.

  What did I have to look back upon?

  Almost the entire contents of my memory consisted of the last half an hour. From the moment I opened my eyes in the Wipe booth back on Station, up to this moment.

  Granted, there was just a little more substance to it. I had a theoretical understanding that I was working as a Courier. That I had undergone (voluntarily) a process whereby a giant portion of my memory was sealed away from conscious inspection. That things would remain this way for the duration of my mission.

  I lay in my hammock, making it swing gently, letting time drift, watching my mind range across the surprising wealth of my immediate past.

  Soon I’d caught up to the present moment, and reviewed the time I’d spent laying in my hammock. Then I reviewed these moments of recollection — and here, at this point, is when I did write a poem.

  I uncapped my antique pen.

  I tested my pen on the corner of a blank sheet, and composed the lines on the next page.

  CIRCUSES AND BREAD

  A different girl

  has glorified

  her promise.

  Pellucid orange,

  burnéd red,

  torrential cities smoked,

  unlost utensils

  and clapped-out suits –

  uncertain spirit of life!

  * * *

  Not re-inventing is

  a way of un-inventing,

  dismantling time itself.

  * * *

  Such was the fruit

  of my boisterous arm.
>
  Serve me now.

  Let the sentence stand.

  Let swarms of bouncing acrobats

  uplift my heart with pride.

  Departure in fifteen minutes.

  ‘Thanks, Ship,’ I called from the depths of my poetic reverie.

  Ship had spoken on a Ship-wide channel. It was not speaking directly to me.

  You are welcome, Courier J.

  ‘Uh?’

  I cocked an eye at the ceiling.

  A Ship would not normally acknowledge an individual’s comment.

  Here was my first indication that there was something not quite right about Ship. Just a tiny, and I mean a really teeny-tiny, brush stroke in the remotest corner of an otherwise blank canvas. How was I to know?

  I got up and changed from my lounging clothes into my only change of clothes: full dress Courier’s uniform. Black tunic, black trousers, black belt, and to top everything off, a flat black hat with just a hint of a peak.

  I commanded the wall of my cabin to turn itself into a mirror. I beheld myself in full black-clad Courier glory.

  Nodding, feeling almost indecently satisfied with myself, I set off for the Departure Lounge.

  There to meet my fellow Couriers for the first and, it would turn out, almost the last time.

  I was hoping to be the last arrival for Departure. It’s easier. If you’re the last one to arrive for something, then as soon as you arrive, everything can get going. Nobody tries to make smalltalk with you. Or if they do, it can’t last for long.

  But I’d miscalculated, how I don’t know, and was only the second Courier to arrive.

  The only Courier already in the Departure Lounge shook hands and introduced himself as Courier B. He complimented me on the cut of my dress uniform, a standard occupational compliment. Both uniforms were identical. I returned the compliment and we took our seats on the communal bench facing the viewscreen. We lapsed into silence.

  I braced myself for Courier B to say something. When it comes to making smalltalk, I’m not too bad for short periods. I can hold my own for a minute or two before I start twitching.

  Courier B said nothing. The quality of the silence told me he’d chosen not to do smalltalk. I decided there was a lot to like about Courier B.

  Couriers H and N rolled in together. Courier N almost tripped over his own feet and we all smiled as if it was a lot funnier than it was.

  Courier Y followed. Courier Y was a woman. I stared. She glanced around our faces, giving us a quizzical frown each. The raised corners of her eyebrows made the shape of a Y. I looked away before she caught me staring.

  Female Couriers are not common. Nobody knows why this is so.

  Finally, the last Courier showed up. I forget his alphabetical designation now. That made six of us. We seated ourselves equidistantly on the bench and faced the viewscreen in complete silence. Ready to begin.

  Departure in t-minus thirty seconds.

  At the sound of the ancient words, we Couriers rose to our feet as one, and faced the viewscreen.

  The viewscreen showed a false view of Space outside Ship. I call it ‘false’, the view, because it was a projection on a screen rather than a direct view through a window. Spaceships don’t have windows. Spaceships haven’t had any kind of windows, or portholes, since the earliest days of the earliest Spaceflights on Old Earth, may she rest in peace.

  Holodramas have accustomed you to think that there always should be umpteen portholes dotted liberally around the walls of Spaceships.

  But you can file this Spacetravel misconception alongside all the other Spacetravel misconceptions you have, and continue to deal with them all as you please.

  Ten seconds.

  We braced ourselves, the six of us, for Transition to hypertravel. Standing not quite shoulder-to-shoulder, but close enough for it to make no difference.

  All this quasi-ceremonial stuff was the Spacefarers’ traditional expression of solidarity and shared purpose. A communal wish for safe passage. An acknowledgement that we were setting off together into the most hostile environment known to exist and there was a chance we might never return home again.

  And then there was the fact that we were Couriers and none of us knew where home was or who we were or what our real lives were even like.

  Five, four…

  I was very conscious of Courier Y to my right. Conscious of her breathing.

  I fixed my eyes on the grey-green planet below. Soon to vanish, when we Departed.

  Thanks to the Wipe, I only knew the planet’s name and its most basic features: population, key industries, famous celebrities who’d come from there, its general position in the story of the human Diaspora, and so on.

  I had no idea if I was from there, or whether I had family and friends there.

  For all I knew (you’ll have been expecting me to start thinking in this direction), I had only just now come into existence.

  For all I knew I had no home at all.

  No family.

  No friends.

  No past, no future.

  Nothing.

  Two, one…

  Somebody down the line cleared his throat. This was the permission the rest of us needed to sniff and cough. Get it all over with.

  Departure is always special.

  Ships don’t actually move anywhere. Not in the way you think. Hypertravel is just a mathematical operation. Hypertravel could be described in poetic terms. Everything could be described in poetic terms, but don’t worry, I won’t go off on one now.

  When a Ship ‘moves’ in hypertravel, the common-sense Universe moves around it. The hypertravel boffins have a saying between themselves that they share with the rest of us. If you think you understand it, you definitely don’t understand it.

  Zero.

  We got underway. The viewscreen turned a milky, glowing white. We Couriers smiled and shook hands and wished each other a safe journey, and all the rest of it. Two weeks is a long time in a small Ship.

  Departure Lounge cleared. Everybody withdrew to their own cabins to do their own things. We Couriers are a private breed.

  I found myself face-to-face, and alone, with Courier Y.

  Her eyebrows, I noticed again from up close, were uncannily like the letter Y, giving her a permanently curious, faintly mocking look.

  She picked up a beaker of orange juice from the table, sipped it once, grimaced, and put it back down.

  ‘I hate orange juice,’ she said.

  I said nothing.

  ‘Are you a poet?’ she asked.

  I stared. ‘How…?’

  She nodded at my waist and I glanced down. The top of my notebook peeked out of my uniform’s waistband. How had it got there?

  ‘That’s a relief. Nobody else should be carrying one of them around,’ said Courier Y. She was pleased with her own cleverness. She put her head on one side. Now she wanted me to see her thinking. ‘You know, this means I must have met poets before, in my real life. Pre-Wipe. Otherwise, how would I have known that you’re one?’ Her arms fidgeted. ‘Can I see the pages?’

  I shielded my notebook with one hand and shook my head. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re very nice and everything, but I just… I mean…’

  The Y of her eyebrows collapsed for a moment, and perked up.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘At least let me see your pen. You do have a pen, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I have a pen,’ I said. ‘It’s a–’ I couldn’t remember what kind of pen I had. ‘I haven’t got it with me.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘It’s-’

  The tips of the Y reached a new height. ‘It’s-?’

  ‘It’s in my cabin. I left it in my cabin. That’s where it is.’

  A broad grin, white teeth, the Y smoothed almost to invisibility.

  ‘Then let’s go to your cabin.’

  It wasn’t a long walk from Departure Lounge to cabin, but with a beautiful woman at your side and your mind fizzing with thoughts
of what might happen when you reach your destination, time behaves in a strange fashion.

  ‘Any idea what the mission is? Our cargo?’ I said to fill the time. Courier shoptalk.

  She shook her head. She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know, and she didn’t want to know why she didn’t want to know.

  ‘Same here,’ I said. ‘I’m a good little programmed Courier, too.’

  There followed one of those silences where you know you’ve struck the wrong note, but you’re not sure exactly how, and you’re not sure if you should call attention to your awareness of the wrongness.

  Whoever I am, I’m not good with women.

  I’m not — what’s the correct word for it?

  Surefooted.

  That’s definitely the word. Women prize surefootedness in men. A man has to be surefooted with women, or he’s nothing. The only bumbling, clumsy men who are successful with women are fictional men.

  I don’t know how I know this. Maybe it’s just one of the things people say that isn’t true at all. Maybe the deciding factor with women is something else. The right place, the right time. Blind luck.

  ‘How long have you been a poet?’ said Courier Y into the awkward silence.

  We’d just turned a corner. My cabin was at the other end of the corridor.