Sputnik Caledonia

by Andrew Crumey

  ‘For all we know,’ Harvey whispered, ‘those old codgers might be making a report to send to Rosalind. They could be part of the selection panel.’

  ‘That’s fucking mental,’ Forsyth opined. ‘Look, if we’re going to live in this place without turning into headcases there’s two things we need sorted. Regular fanny, that’s priority number one, and the other is treating this place like any normal town – they work hard enough to make it look like one so we’d best go along with the pretence.’ He quaffed the rest of his beer in a few gulps, then scrutinized the foam-lined glass in his hand with the tenderness of a connoisseur. ‘I’m for another. Whose round?’

  Harvey’s glass was still half full. ‘I’ll get you it next time. I need some air.’

  Robert, too, had drunk enough. ‘I’ll join you.’

  Forsyth was unconcerned. ‘I’ll have that second one on my tod, then,’ he said, calling to the barmaid for another measure. ‘And one for yourself, pet,’ he added as she began to pour, to which she nodded in customary gratitude. Forsyth got up to collect his ale; Robert and Harvey rose too, and took their leave, walking out to the bright street with shouts and laughter behind them, from the old men whose game had ended.

  ‘Let’s do some sightseeing,’ Robert suggested. ‘Should take us at least ten minutes.’

  They walked along the main street, looking through shop windows at the sparse displays. Harvey was still preoccupied. ‘This place is so weird,’ he said, gazing at a newsagent’s magazine rack.

  ‘It’s like an ordinary town – that’s what’s so weird.’

  Harvey shook his head. ‘No, there’s more to it.’ His voice dropped to a whisper while they walked. ‘It’s like everyone’s brainwashed, hypnotized. But we’re different.’

  ‘The medication must have changed over the years,’ Robert guessed.

  ‘Or they’re trying something new on us. Sending signals into our heads, controlling us.’

  At the butcher’s there was a queue of women, wrapped in thick coats, stretching out onto the pavement, and through the open doorway the volunteers heard the shopkeeper’s gruff patter. ‘Right, ladies, no more than one kilo each and don’t ask me for anything but mutton because mutton’s what I’ve got.’

  ‘Nothing strange about that,’ Robert observed.

  Further along they stopped to look at a naked mannequin in a clothes-shop window; a hairless woman made of plastic, her arm raised, upturned palm outstretched. Harvey gazed at the dummy, then said, ‘Do you reckon Forsyth’s all talk?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘And what about you? Have you ever … ?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither.’ He continued to stare at the sexless static figure whose smooth breasts lacked nipples and whose groin was completely featureless. ‘I like looking at a woman as much as any man but it’s never been too much of a problem for me, not having a bird. Expect it’s the bromide.’

  Robert smiled. ‘That story was made up in the Patriotic War because soldiers couldn’t understand why they’d lost their sex drive. It was stress that did it, not something in their tea.’

  Harvey glared at him. ‘And what makes you so sure it was something in your tea that made you ill?’ He looked at the mannequin again, his face a mixture of fascination and loathing. ‘In this place everything’s the other way round. Since we got here yesterday it’s like I’ve had sex on the brain – they’re messing with our minds. When Rosalind was flashing her legs at us and we all got hard, that wasn’t natural, was it?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Robert, remembering the delicious but illusory moment in the lift, and wondering what truth there is in anything we feel.

  Harvey glanced both ways along the street to make sure there was no chance of being overheard, then said quietly, ‘When I left you after lunch to go to the toilet, I sat down in one of the cubicles in the gents, had a smoke and a crap, then reckoned I needed some relief.’

  ‘Sounds perfectly natural to me.’

  ‘I was sat there with cig in one hand and knob in the other when I heard the outer door swing open, somebody coming in. Another bloke needing the loo, I thought, but no. A few quick footsteps – a woman’s walk. Cleaner? Maybe – best stop tossing, have a drag and start whistling. Then who should I hear but Rosalind. “Volunteer Harvey?” she says. “Yes,” I say back, “what’s up?” And she says to me, “Are you masturbating?” Just like that. And I say no, of course, but she says, “I think you are.” What do you make of that?’

  ‘That’s her style. Clinical, no nonsense. Did she leave you then?’

  ‘No, she stood outside the cubicle, waiting. I could hear her shoes on the floor when she shifted position now and again. I could hear the movement of her clothes. After a while I could even hear her breathing. I said to her, “Are you needing in?” and she said no. I said, “Are you wanting me to come out?” and she said, “Only when you finish what you have to do.” Too bad, I thought, save it for later, but then something else sparked in my head, like a switch. Fuck her, I thought. And the next thing I knew I had my chopper in my hand, pumping it like nobody’s business, making no effort to keep quiet. I don’t know what happened to me – I was like a madman, all I could hear was the sound of her feet, her clothes, her breath, my own gasping, and her voice in my head telling me what to do. Yes, she was controlling it, I don’t know how, but she was. I shot my load all over the door. Instantly felt a complete fool. And she says, “Are you finished, Volunteer Harvey?” She even waited while I wiped it off the door – she must have heard all of that. I came out and washed my hands, hardly able to look her in the eye, and we came back to find you in the dining hall. I’m embarrassed enough even talking to you about it. Don’t tell Forsyth.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Robert promised, moving away from the shop window, prompting Harvey to follow.

  ‘I don’t like any of this,’ Harvey said earnestly. ‘Forsyth’s right, we’re lab rats – and it’s got fuck all to do with spaceships. The simulator’s only a way of conning us.’ They reached the end of the main street; there was a small park ahead with a dry fountain and some empty benches. Harvey gave a contemptuous laugh. ‘Lab rats in Toy Town. My mum’s in a wheelchair and lives on the fifth floor of a block of flats where the lift never works. They said if I volunteered they’d move her up the rehousing queue, so here I am. Wanking for welfare. Funny way to help your old lady, isn’t it?’ He pulled his sleeve to inspect his wristwatch. ‘Ages till we get picked up. Mind if I take a bit of time on my own?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Robert. ‘See you later.’ He watched Harvey walk dejectedly away and felt glad that the alteration in his own mind had been more beneficial. Then, wondering how best to fill the next two hours, he decided to visit the library. Rosalind had indicated it from the bus yesterday; a red-brick building, unimpressive in appearance but easy to find after a few minutes’ walk, its entrance open. Going inside, Robert half expected to see Miriam again, but the only staff member – in fact the only other person visible in the place – was a spectacled woman sitting at a desk, busying herself with a dog-eared card index. She remained ostentatiously unaware of his presence.

  Robert made his way to the contemporary literature section, intending only to kill time, and among the books soon noticed Brian Willoughby’s Shipbuilders. Smartly bound and frequently borrowed, judging from the date stamps crowded on the label inside, the book’s cover offered a condensed version of the author’s illustrious career; an Alpine range of dizzying achievements whose peaks were various prizes, honours, professorships and distinctions, including presidency of the Writers’ Union. Robert turned to the first chapter and made a start on it, finding it to be about an old, dying woman looking out of her slum window at smoke from factory chimneys, then expiring just before her son could get home from his night shift, having been refused leave by the shipyard foreman. Robert could see it all in his head – the woman, the slum, the grimy yard – and this was the mark of great literature, he supposed, in which case
he grudgingly understood Rosalind’s admiration. But then he reread the first paragraph, in which the old woman beheld chimney smoke ‘curdling like sour milk against the anaemic dawn’, and the sheer impossibility of this fine-sounding phrase was like a welcome revelation. What he had been seeing while reading the story, Robert realized, was the work of his own imagination, not Willoughby’s, whose only achievement had been to elicit stock responses, like those aroused by Rosalind’s bare legs. To call Willoughby great because of the effect he could produce in a receptive mind was like calling Rosalind beautiful because she had made brainwashed men go hard.

  Robert put the book back on the shelf and wondered if he ought to do some private cramming. He had left Rocket to the Stars at home but could surely find something equally relevant. So he went to the desk where the woman sat, still thumbing cards as if computing the futility of her employment, and waited for her to notice his existence. Eventually she looked up. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Have you got anything by Einstein?’

  Her eyebrows rose behind her spectacles. ‘If you’re looking for technical literature you need signed authorization, you ought to know that.’

  Robert shrugged. ‘I thought you might have something about relativity. Something that isn’t technical.’

  She looked penetratingly at his uniform, his haircut, his eyes. ‘Come back with a properly completed green form and I’ll be happy to assist you.’

  ‘But where do I get a green form?’

  ‘You should know that already.’ She returned to the more pleasant company of her faded cards, and Robert went back to the book stacks. He was damned if he was going to spend any more time reading Brian bloody Willoughby; instead he tracked down a volume of Goethe’s poems. He wanted to find the one Kaupff had mentioned, about being in the woods at night. But although the book had German and English texts alongside one another, and lists of titles and first lines in both languages, it lacked the one thing that would have been really useful: an index of what the poems were about. Robert searched in vain, trying to make sense either of the German texts or of what in many cases were equally obscure translations. So let me seem, until I become: what the hell was that supposed to mean?

  Eventually it was time to go. Trying to borrow the book would be another exercise in bureaucracy, so Robert returned it to its place and walked towards the exit, pausing however at the desk where the librarian looked up. ‘Remember the green form next time.’

  This wasn’t what he had intended to raise. ‘Miriam Frank works here, doesn’t she?’

  The librarian’s face was like ice. ‘I can’t discuss that.’ She was in the lowest-rated part of the Installation and treated every piece of information within reach of her polished fingernails as if it were the most precious state secret: it was how she maintained her self-respect when all she did was stamp books and fill in cards. ‘Just remember that green form.’

  He left without a further word. Outside, the sky had grown dark, a few stars were shining, and when he reached the main street he found it even less animated than before. Forsyth was already waiting at the Freedom Monument.

  ‘Hey, college boy. Find any fanny?’

  Robert shook his head. ‘What about you?’

  ‘No luck. And both the pubs here are shite.’

  ‘How many more beers did you have?’ Robert was surprised at how perfectly sober Forsyth appeared.

  He put a finger to his nose. ‘Classified info. Want a mint?’ Forsyth brought a packet from his tunic pocket. ‘Here’s Harvey coming.’

  Robert turned to see the third recruit arrive behind him, looking more cheerful now, greeting them with a laugh. ‘All right, lads?’

  ‘You get your end away?’ Forsyth asked, offering him a mint too, though it was only Forsyth whose breath needed masking.

  Harvey shot a glance at Robert, then said to both, ‘Fresh air did me good. Chance to get things in perspective.’

  A pair of headlights swung into view; not the bus that had brought them, but a car that halted beside the monument and stood waiting with its engine ticking, the driver looking towards them in silent instruction.

  ‘Here’s our ride,’ said Harvey, going towards the rear door.

  ‘Hope it won’t be the only kind we get,’ Forsyth quipped, taking the door on the other side and leaving Robert to sit in front. It was the same driver who had taken him last night, the same car, but the driver said nothing to the recruits, merely putting the vehicle in gear and trundling off along the familiar route out of the darkening Town.

  10

  They stopped in the courtyard of the Lodge, where Robert had been delivered previously. Forsyth whistled appreciatively. ‘Nice place.’ The three got out, the slamming of their doors momentarily breaking the dignified calm; but once the car had crunched away over the gravel they were all struck by the peace of the fine mansion.

  A distant voice called to them from the darkness. ‘Over here!’ They turned, and Robert realized it must be Kaupff on the bowling green.

  ‘This way,’ he instructed, leading his companions through a gloom which slowly eased as their eyes adjusted. When they came out onto the lawn they saw Kaupff’s face glowing in the red light of a filtered torch held in his hand. There were other people with him – Davis, Vine, Willoughby and Rosalind clustered around Professor Kaupff’s impressively large telescope.

  ‘Now that we’re all here,’ said Kaupff, ‘we can begin this evening’s training session.’ Using his red flashlight he outlined the workings of the telescope; a Newtonian reflector whose parabolic mirror, fixed at the bottom end of the tube, served the magnifying purpose of a lens. A handle on the heavy mounting, Kaupff explained, had to be turned at regular intervals so that the telescope’s aim could keep pace with the stars’ slow procession, induced by Earth’s rotation. ‘Who’s first?’ he asked.

  Forsyth stepped forward and put his face close to the eyepiece. ‘Oh my … !’

  ‘What can you see?’ asked Robert.

  ‘It’s incredible, like a picture in a book. Go on, see for yourself.’ He moved away and Robert took his place, stooping towards the eyepiece and trying to locate in the darkness the small lens whose view had so captivated his colleague. Then he found it, and as he positioned himself properly he saw a bright globe circled with a ring.

  ‘It’s Saturn!’ he gasped.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Kaupff laid a hand on Robert’s shoulder. ‘Can you see the planet’s colours? Yellowish towards the upper part, greyer further down. And look carefully at the rings, Coyle – do you notice the thin dark gap between them?’ Robert struggled to see any of these features, too dazzled by the little world that slowly drifted across his field of view. ‘We’d better let Harvey take a turn now,’ Kaupff suggested, though when Robert stood away it was Kaupff himself who moved to the eyepiece, giving the crank handle on the mount a few turns so as to re-centre the planet for the benefit of the remaining recruit.

  ‘Have all of you seen it already?’ Robert asked the others, and they nodded.

  ‘A very pretty sight,’ Willoughby conceded, offering a description of the experience somewhat less elaborate than the curdled smoke of his novel.

  Harvey, awestruck, stepped back from the lens. ‘It’s like flying in space.’

  ‘I couldn’t get the thing to focus,’ said Davis. ‘Maybe I need to have my eyes tested.’

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ Kaupff continued, calling the recruits to order. ‘Why exactly have I brought you here this evening? To entertain or to educate? Both, I hope. Seeing another world in vivid detail is an experience no civilized person should miss. Whether through a piece of glass, or enacted in a Shakespeare play, or summoned by a Beethoven string quartet, these other realms help us place ourselves more solidly on the one beneath our feet.’

  ‘An attractive sentiment,’ said Willoughby. ‘You are one of those few scientists who recognize the equal if not superior value of art.’

  ‘We live in an age of specialization,’ Ka
upff continued. ‘But a factory worker whose only job is to pull a lever or turn a spanner can easily become estranged from the end-product of his labour. Specialization begets alienation: that is the secret of capitalism.’

  ‘And that is why we have political-education programmes in every workplace,’ Commissioner Davis reminded him.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Kaupff. ‘Yet go to any of our universities and you will find physicists who think they have no need of Shelley, or novelists who suppose they can live without Newton. I have always worked hard to resist this attitude within the Installation, which is why I am so pleased that I have been able to arrange for Academician Willoughby to visit us.’

  ‘The pleasure is mine,’ said Willoughby, who was standing, Robert noticed, closely beside Rosalind.

  ‘I, too, was delighted,’ Davis added, ‘to have been instrumental in obtaining approval for such an unusual request.’

  ‘Academician Willoughby, I’m sure you recall what Schiller said about the unity of art and science,’ Kaupff continued. ‘And do you remember Goethe’s scene, when Wilhelm Meister is invited to look through a telescope?’

  ‘Hmm,’ Willoughby said, then gave a cough expressive of the effort involved in summoning the appropriate passage from a vast memorized stock. ‘It rings a bell – though eighteenth-century German literature isn’t my field, of course. And having wide interests is certainly admirable, Professor Kaupff, but if we all tried to learn everything there is to know, we would have no time for anything. We must always be on our guard against the dangers of eclecticism.’ With this last word, a standard form of condemnation issued by Writers’ Union headquarters against anyone deemed to have wavered from approved ideology, Willoughby’s voice momentarily took on a frostiness which touched everyone present, as palpably as the cooling air.