Letters to the Cyborgs

by Judyth Baker

  “That’s what I said,” Alt told him yawning and leaning back in the plexicurved hemisphere that began to fold like a flower around him. “You kids never know anything.”

  Alt’s vibrafloat began to fluoresce. “If anything happens,” Alt mumbled, Dreamglo already suffusing his features with a sickly orange tint, “just call Centra. This old tub don’t5 even need the robocomp. She could make Mars on the gravitlogs alone.”

  “Damn it,” Crawley said, very softly. Alt was asleep. Crawley looked with envy – again – at the6 black-haired slender man7 who looked younger than he did. Alt would have ten thousand I-Cs of profit coming if he lived through Fourth. The holds were filled with sanelacium8 essence and the basic components for Dreamglo itself. Crawley knew that Alt’s immediate sleep under the Vibrafloat afforded some protection from the coming jump; that he, too, should be saving up the weeks and years and get under the Vibrafloat’s second eye , fold himself into the plexicurved bed, and not play the fool.

  But space, and its brilliance, still insisted itself upon him; Crawley would look awhile, like all Firsters did.

  He could already feel the exhaustion sucking at his tissues, draining him, as the ship like a leaping trout banked sideways in the first time-jump. It struck him deep in the gut, and when it was over, he staggered gratefully to the Vibrafloat, flexing and unflexing his fingers with pain. The ship would swiftly decompose and recomposit itself like a pebble skipping over water. Then, at the proper interval, it would splash down, into the medium of ordinary time that stretched like curtains between rooms, and Mars would be there, opening up her red arms.

  Crawley slipped under the Vibrafloat’s eye. He pulled a tiny, ancient thing from his lace cuff and opened it. It was a thing called a book, a curiosity the administrator of one of the museums had asked him to take, under the Vinbrafloat for greater safety, to a friend at Mars station. Both Crawley, and Clark, the administrator, enjoyed collecting the ancient legends and myths that permeated men’s history even to the present. Did the ordinary man realize that the color red, used as the period in retina reading, was chosen on the old legend that red lights made wheeled vehicles come to a halt?

  Crawley didn’t squirt Dreamglo. He had the Book, instead.9 He would read until sleep came with the next jump. He wanted to see what the jump would bring to his dreams when they popped in and oiut of time along with the bucking ship. The Vibrafloat began to sing. On the viewers, Crawley could see the deep black of space going silver and yellow.

  The tiny golf-ball-sized sphere of violet was rapidly fading from the central viewer. All after-visions, Crawley remembered. There’s really nothing there at all. Just retinal post-impressions, put together10 from a miscellany of instantaneous light impulses which sparked as the inner synchronization of his biological processes grew increasingly disrupted. He was feeling sick again, but he tried to keep his eyes open because he was mildly worried about the entire panel of lights that suddenly went out … or were they on, but no longer perceivable to him? Crawley groped up, touched the autoswitch which would alert him if anything went wrong. He wondered if the autoswitch was working. All his spacerunning had been on models, he said to himself, over and over again. He realized that he was not making sense now, and a black band crossed before his eyes and mild pain hit him as the ship bounced into another jump.

  The Book slid from his hands. The Vibrafloat sang louder, cacophonally, its components humming under the blast of noise like the ancient gears of the Ontario.11 Crawley tried to keep his eyes closed, tried to concentrate on the random music which spared his wildly careening, suffering brain … synapses coming loose at the seams, Crawley thought. Then his mind was slipping, like gray oozing, over the edge of a broad plastic rim, and falling…

  Unnah was writing his report with the customary deliberation. Beloved High Feeler, he began, putting broad flourishes on the tips of each dash-dot, Beloved High Feeler, this is the requested terrifying Report which thou hath pleaded of my generosity.

  Outside, space was vibrant with yellow and silver. The ghost-image of planets and stars superimposed each other on the Broad Valley of Emotions. Unnah shivered with delight, looking at it. He tapped his spatioreceptor gratefully on its nodlue and BubbaBubba, his adopted pacquila,12 wriggled under his benevolent gaze. Unnah scratched Bubba-Bubba on its spatioreceptor too, and chuckled. Then he commenced to write, still animated by the happiness spawned by his chuckling. This was a heavy task. Unnah tried to lighten his burden by sneaking glances out at the paradise of color that was the Broad Valley of the Emotions. Smewhere out there Untarah was waiting for him with her webbs quivering. Unnah sighed.

  “Beloved, beloved High Feeler, he wrote, this being the final reportage of the gratifying spectacle which we have propriocepted for thy amusement, having followed HER, lo, these many hours through the forests of Desires and past the Broad Valley of the Emotions into the fourth quadrant of the hinterland. Listen. therefore, with amusement and conceited glory to our poor discoveries brought before thee in the name of Joy.

  Bubba-Bubba had to excrete. Unnah was grateful.13 He caught the excretion and helped Bubba-Bubba roll it into a feathery ball. They both smiled broadly when Unnah splattered a passing asteroid with the missile. Since it was only good for a broad smile, Unnah knew that this boring task must be quickly finished, else he would be in no condition to enjoy the Moment of Joking and Selfhood, which would open the floodgates of happiness and relief as reward for this undesired discipline. Therefore, that his heart would soon be relieved of this burden, Unnah set his pappypen grimly to the line.14 The Elixir ink spilled out its dot-dashes slowly, excruciatingly slowly. But he wrote steadily.

  And Adored One, we sought HER unflinchingly, without laughter, and our path was strewn with the obstacles of dullness and obscurity, for SHE had chosen the garb, for this HER plunging, of HER most gloomy and ancient ancestress;15 for we were not, I say with regret, and speaketh with heart heavy, able to dissuade HER from breeding, for HE came up like a god of light and thunder,shaking HIS vast emotions, and SHE fled unto HIM, and they joined, and mighty was the union between them, so that we beat our breasts and ceased to laugh, in a mourning, for twenty spaces of Joy, Happy Prince. Then bewildered we followed the errant child, SHE who escaped from thy royal house, where all was pleasantries, and wanton laughter, on this HER evil course, set as our books have said, in the inevitable and inimitable16 wickedness of HER ways. This I bethought me: that SHE was afforded every pleasure, and we sought to keep HER happy always, and to save HER from thinking of the final Joy, that hollow joy, of destruction, so fearful and empty and without ending, My Lord.

  Bubba-Bubba was playing with the Capsule that it had snatched from the portal. Unnah saw that the things inside no longer moved, and were shrivelled. He had hoped to find a moment to feed the things, but they were lifeless in the space of ten Joys. He would take the stenchy things to Untarah, who giggled always at the tiny things Bubba-Bubba caught and gave to him.17 But though it was an uncommon way to pleasure, Unnah often felt curiosity in how the parasites who clung to HER talons grew and multiplied: therefore, he often inspected the capsules or fragments Bubba-Bubba snatched from whistling space. Such were these dead things that rattled inside the glossy peapod capsule that Bubba-Bubba fondled.

  Ah, me, Unnah thought, I must finish this Taletelling. The High Feeler would not wish to see it again; but to send it once, even to pucker his mighty notocord, was necessary, since he was responsible for the loosing of HER, who had waxed so unhappy.

  “Release HER,” he had commanded, to the instantaneous applause of the Lessers, who confused spectacle with true amusements, and let the heavens be HER dominion, that SHE find joy before HER dissolution.”

  For aeons, she had been caged, though SHE wept, and would not learn of Joy but transiently. They fed HER the worms of Madda, which gave HER visions fulfilling, but it was not enough. HER spiracles shrank and groaned, puffing out dust and destroying the musics they fed HER. Reluctantly, the Adored One proc
laimed that SHE be free, but followed by a Recorder, that HER end might be known, and understood. The Happy One knew that this task might destroy the Recorder; Unnah was chosen not because he had achieved ultimate happiness (for did not Untarah wait for him still, with quivering webbs?), but because his youth might save his sensitive hedoniceptors from irreparable damage. Certainly the more aged among the Serene Ones would dissolve under the strain of watching and recording a single object for so long a time, even though that 0bject be SHE. It was necessary to follow HER even to the hinterland, alas! If he survived, Unnah would be greeted by the Radiance Himself; if not, the Report would be greeted by the Radiance Himself. So Unnah tried to console himself/ That he needed consolation was an unhappy sign. He could see a dangerous glistening laid along his notocord, the only material portion remaining in this high state of Joy. But the salve and Bubba-Bubba’s cavortings were enough to divert his attention from any perception of pain. If he could avoid pain only a little while longer – if he could dissociate himself from what he had experienced, and write of it with the calm Radiance – then he would be saved.

  Unnah closed his Eye. He concentrated on the happy fact that SHE could only destroy one segment of space at a time, that SHE was dead now. Of course, HER death had spawned nine more SHEs and one viable HE; these Unnah must not think about , but hope with benevolent laughter that the Pleasant Zoo Reporters would enmesh and entangle the material feathers of these ones together, to put them, dissolving, into the form of a single SHE/HE. There were few wild HEs remaining, and when the last one was entangled, the Two could be finally, totally entertwined [sic] and mingled, and there would come an end to the impatience and unhappiness and destruction of HER way.

  Pain. He felt it stretch across the webbs. He withdrew his central gatherer from Bubba-Bubba’s wriggling orifice and looked seriously at his image in the Funny. He laughed. He was dripping, but not disintegrating. The pain was from the Report, still waiting to be finished. Remove that weight, finish that duty, and the dripping would heal. Surely it would heal. Unnah tried to laugh [again], but a faint tracery of dust emitted from his spiracle. He began to write, worried and trying to forget the creeping pain.

  Prescient Joyful One, he wrote, SHE moved swiftly into the fourth part of the black zone of the hinterland, where it was difficult to follow. For the period of eighteen Celebrations and one Festivity, SHE hung there, spawning. HER eggs were some large, some small.

  He tried hard to smile again, but it was impossible. Reeling, seeing the whirl of yellow and silver that was the Broad Valley of Emotions, the last beauty his eye would ever register, Unnah felt a most blinding and most excruciating painful tremor travel down his notocord, so that it pulled at the vestigial filament around his spiracle, and his orifice Frowned. Unnah slowly spiralled to the shallow center of his seat, dust rising in a milky cloud around him. He tattered into quicksilver strands that split and split again, pulsing and thrumming, then finally lying in dim, round beads. The beads lay scattered in fading silver over the tube in which rested the Report, soon to transmit itself to the Adored One’s presence.

  And BubbaBubba chortled, gazing out at the rainbow play of colors which shot into view as the vehicle transcended the Valley and entered the Hills. Sometimes BubbaBubba giggled at the funny silver beads which rolled over the desktop and across the Report’s ovule18 tube. Sometimes he reached out a tentative, teasing pseudopod to touch the [tiny] capsule and its rolling dead things inside. The vehicle traveled on and the silver beads dwindled, dimmed, faded…

  “Alt!” Crawley shouted. “ALT!”

  There was no need to yell. Alt was awake. Alt was awake too.19 He could hear the thin man’s breath sucking in and out, gasping.

  “My Lord,” Alt said, slowly getting to his feet and staggering closer toward the viewers. “What IS it?” The ship’s motors whined. The ship was stuck between-space.20

  “Ontario’s conked out,” Crawley said, wiping his face.

  It was hot, getting hotter. The engines raced, but something had slipped. The stars were going around in spirals; shimmering colored waves emerged in bands around each star, spiralling oscilloscopically. The star in the center of the viewers, the sun, was not spinning. It seemed to be rocking, back and forth. The Ontario was spinning, in space, caught between two space-slides.21 But that was not what was bothering either of the two men. No, not nearly so much as the massive Thing, the gigantic Presence, something shadowlike, almost without substance, yet so heavy that it seemed to push them against the riveted floor like an enormous paw. And this force increased, even as the shadow part of it seemed to consolidate and to become smaller and denser.

  “It’s impossible,” Alt was saying, pushing the words slowly from his mouth as if they were blocks of stone. “This is a hallucination. That damned Dreamglo must have been contaminated.”

  “Shut up,” Crawley exploded. “Look at it. Just LOOK at that thing.”

  “It’s fantastic,” Alt murmured, subdued. Sweat was standing out all over his face. Crawley stilled his shaking hands by pressing them together.22 “it reminds me,” Crawley said, slowly, “of a legend. Ancient earth legend–”

  They both grabbed behind them. Suddenly, the ship was jerking backwards. The sun rapidly dwindled in size. And the enormous shadow took on definite shape, the shape of a flying thing.

  “–Legend–” Crawley repeated. “A bird–”

  “What’s that?” Alt asked him, straining to keep standing. They were both braced against the Vibrafloat, which was whimpering.23

  “They’re things in the Plutonian Interzoo. Don’t you know anything?”

  Crawley could see Alt’s face getting crimson. He felt stupid, yelling about birds like that. He rubbed his eyes. They were watering, from gazing too long at the brilliant, magnified image of the sun that almost filled the central viewer.

  The flying thing on the screen was getting smaller and smaller. It was a clean black cutout against the sun now, cleaving the disk into two jagged parts.

  “We’re leaving the solar system,” Alt said, suddenly.

  Crawley tried to fight the backdragging, tried to get to manual.

  “Forget it, it didn’t work back on Neptune,” Alt told him.

  Rage filled Crawley. He tried to jump at Alt. “You know it’s against the Mandates!” he roared.

  “Anything for profit, huh? Kill both of us, huh?”

  “No use, anyway,” Alt said, imperturbably. “And it’s put of synchro. At the rate we’re backing out, the old ship could never jump back in. We’re too far from the coordinates now.”

  “We’re going to die,” Crawley said, starting to shiver. The heat was dissipating rapidly. He got himself strapped into manual anyway, vainly pulling at first one control, then another.

  “I never even saw half this stuff before in my life,” he groaned. “Go ahead. Just stand there. Don’t try to help. Damn you!”

  Alt was behind him.

  “You little jerk,” he said to Crawley, “I said, it don’t work.7 Maybe we can think of something. But pull yourself together.”

  Crawley vainly continued his efforts, trying to get the stuttering engines to cool down, to work together. They were moving backward more slowly now, so that Alt was able to stand upright, and Crawley no longer had to brace himself away from the control board.

  A second shadow was growing over the viewer. Dimly behind it, the sun, with the great bird-shaped form stretched across its face, glimmered in eclipse.

  As this second shadow drew close, the engines suddenly began to purr like young Nepcats. And Crawley discovered that he was shivering.

  “I’m freezing,” he said, locking his hands on the manual’s useless steering gear.

  “I said we were leaving the solar system,” Alt said. “The only power we’ve got left now is Alternate.”

  A benign happiness was melting around Crawley’s bones.

  “You know, it’s beautiful out there–” he began, gazing at the viewer. Then his mouth dropp
ed: he could feel it drop, heavy and sullen and incredulous.

  “Alt. Look.”

  Alt was looking.

  “It’s impossible,”24 he said, switching up the magnitudes.

  There was the solar system, conveniently enlarged spheres, all in their usual places, magnified sun sitting squat and serene in the near-center – and there was the flying Shape, the Thing, moving closer and closer to the sun, a Thing so much more magnificent and – alive – than the sun that Crawley suddenly loved it, loved it with his whole heart. The secondary shadow tinged the viewer ever more deeply, but both men ignored that, concentrating on the brilliant Thing which was going faster and faster toward the sun’s very center…

  Alt was gazing not at the viewer, anymore, but at the wall.

  “I love this damned old ship,” he suddenly spouted, tears running down his face. “I thought she could make a fourth trip, I did, honest I did. Forgive me, Crawley. You know I didn’t mean to hurt you, or my ship or–” And the tears saved Alt from more excessive pronouncements. Crawley’s heart was beating so hard that his ears were filled with its [po]und[ings].25 He suddenly realized how much he loved the ship, too, and how much he loved the sun, and how much he even loved that bastard Alt. The incongruity of his thoughts made him notice, for a moment, the encroaching coldness, the deepening darkness [of] the26 secondary shadow that hung just over the viewers.

  Alt had moved close to the viewercase, and was rubbing his body affectionately against the chair, like a satisfied cat. The ship’s engines were making little self-satisfied sounds, too, tiny humming sounds and little laughing sounds which Crawley had not thought a ship’s engine could not have the construction to produce. Alt and his outspread hands were facing the viewercase, and Crawley looked again at the Thing, while Alt made giggling sounds.27

  “Lookee there,” Crawley said, laughing out loud. “It’s going to fly into the sun, Alt baby.”