Sunstroke: And Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  So I’m blind.

  What overwhelms me is David’s offer to give me one of his own eyes. Or loan it—loan, was how he put it. But I can’t accept his offer. David is a planetologist; he needs to see the new world in depth. Besides, he’s rated as a pilot for the helicopter we carry.

  And the flask was my own damn fault.

  “I might have to order you to accept an eye from him,” Captain Neuman told me two weeks ago, when we were just beginning to get good telescopic data on the two bigger gas-giant worlds. “Obviously a blind doctor can function with the help of an assistant, but there could be emergencies where eyesight is essential, don’t you think?”

  I shook my head.

  “The microbiology work …”

  “Toni is good enough. I shan’t tear out one of David’s eyes because of a stupid mistake of my own.”

  “An accident,” said Neuman gently.

  “A mistake. I can get a new set of eyes when we return home.”

  “But you won’t have seen the Worlds of Vega, Mary. You’re punishing yourself.”

  “I can watch films and holograms to my heart’s content.”

  “Will that be the same?”

  “It’ll have to be. I’m not going to carry on like that hag in Ancient Greece who borrowed an eye to see with and a tooth to eat with!”

  Was I, perhaps, a hag right now? How badly had the explosion seared my face? My skin felt crinkly. Perhaps it was this that I didn’t wish to see …

  “All right, Kyprianos,” he said formally. “It’s your choice.”

  But my friends certainly make sure that I join in the excitement of our arrival in the Vega system—as though I would have spent the time sulking in my cabin, otherwise!

  Here we are, one day out from putting Lyrebird into orbit around the fifth planet.

  “It’s looking better all the time,” comes David’s voice, nearby. “That’s definitely dense vegetation covering The Goat. We’ve got a beautiful view of most of the land masses today. Clouds are mainly over the oceans … Anticyclone down there.”

  I try to imagine it.

  A beautiful view …

  We’ve christened three of the land masses already, with names borrowed from their shapes: The Goat, Nutcracker, and The Crown. The planet itself will be ‘Crown’, named after the narrow spiky continent that encircles the whole top of the Northern hemisphere below the polar ocean.

  The inner planets are Topaz, Ruby, Cameo and Sapphire, then further out beyond an asteroid belt are the two gas-giants Orb and Opal. Crown is further from its sun than the Earth is. But then, Vega is so much brighter than Sol. To me, Vega is as black as the rest of the universe.

  All eight of us are in the Command Centre right now: Neuman, David, Toni and Natasha, Witold, Sigrid and Hans (and me). I think we’re all here—I’m not sure, of course.

  Shall I steal David’s eye from him, to behold the wonder of a habitable world?

  Oh no.

  *

  After a week spent mapping Crown from orbit, we land on Nutcracker, latitude sixty north—and even so, it’s warm outside.

  The others dutifully tell me everything—and nothing.

  Umbrella trees, violet in hue, surround the meadows of scarlet pseudo-pampas grass we have set down in. Some deerlike creatures bound about from time to time. Flocks of butterfly-birds swoop and veer kaleidoscopically …

  They saw no hint of any civilisation from orbit. Here on the ground there’s no sign of any higher life form on the verge of intelligence, within the range of our robot drones. So one dubious hope evaporates; and with it, one possible ethical problem.

  “We have us a world,” says Toni, grinning I suppose.

  The business of sampling the world commences. For the first few days our teams wear full atmosphere suits, then they shift over to filter masks, and finally Witold exposes his nostrils to the air.

  Three days pass, and Witold hasn’t fallen ill or even caught an alien cold. (“Too warm for that,” he jokes.)

  The inflatadome goes up outside.

  Ten days after landing, Sigrid takes my arm to steady me while the lift platform descends the outside of the hull. As though I am a cripple … (They say ‘Would she like?’ and ‘Will she have?’ about me, as though I’m deaf and dumb as well as blind. They do it without realising.)

  How sweet the air smells after the ship. Something caresses my scarred face: a breeze.

  Before this could happen, though, there was one unpleasant, awkward moment …

  “Don’t be a fool,” I heard Neuman growl at someone.

  “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  “It’s nothing, Mary.”

  “What is it? Don’t keep secrets from me!”

  “It’s my fault,” said Hans. “You see, we’re all wearing sunglasses out there. The light’s so bright, so blue …” (No, I don’t see.)

  “He was holding some sunglasses out for you,” explained Sigrid.

  I decided to laugh it off. After all, this was to be my first step on to our fresh new world—the moment oughtn’t to be spoilt.

  “Sunglasses are the last thing I need, Hans old friend. Still, it’s nice to know that I don’t look blind.”

  “The glasses aren’t much use, anyway,” he said uncomfortably. ‘They cut down the glare a bit, but it’s still damn bright.”

  “First local industry: darker sunglasses, eh?”

  Sigrid squeezed my arm softly.

  “You should have brought your bikini, Mary!”

  Meaning, that I was no use for anything else other than sunbathing? No, she didn’t mean it that way at all.

  “You’d better all be careful of that sun,” I warned them. “Too much sunbathing can cause skin cancer.”

  “But we’ve all had cancer shots,” said Toni, stupidly. “Anyhow, we’re too busy for sun …”

  Oops. He shut up.

  So I breathe the air of Crown, and I listen to the voices of my friends as they come and go. I hang about on an unseen mental tether in the immediate vicinity of the inflatadome, and I wonder what this world really looks like. And try not to cry.

  The days seem interminable, though they’re actually half an hour shorter than Earth days. Perhaps that’s because there’s no day or night, for me—it’s one long night.

  Am I the only one who notices …

  … that something is wrong with all my friends?

  How terrifying it is, knowing that some strange change is coming over them all, and not being able to see what it is, or how it’s happening.

  Here I sit, cross-legged in the heat of the sun, with a sun-hat on, stroking one of the bushy feathers of the pseudo-pampas grass.

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me: Hans. I have something to tell you, Mary. The elder Vegans still live here.”

  “What elder Vegans? This world isn’t inhabited! It never has been. The helicopter has been out a hundred kilometres … hasn’t it? There isn’t any sign of ruins or anything of that sort. No one has reported anything.”

  “Of course not. Their material civilisation ended long ago, Mary. They went, not out to other worlds, but into their world. Into the rocks and streams, the trees and air.”

  My heart freezes.

  “They speak to me. I hear them on the wind. The Vegans disembodied themselves to become immortal—till their sun burns out. It’s easy to put off the flesh, Mary.”

  He touches my arm. And then my breast. He squeezes me, as though I’m an inflatable rubber doll and my nipple is a valve to release the air.

  “Don’t, Hans. You’re scaring me. You’re hurting me.”

  “Nothing need hurt you, when you’re joined with them. They’re wise.”

  “This is a rotten, wretched joke!”

  “Ah, you can’t hear them … Poor Mary. Listen to what they say: here is a world blessed with air and soil and water, and with plants and trees and lower beasts. So it must have given rise to higher creatures too! Where are they? That ecol
ogical niche is entirely empty. I’ll tell you where they are …”

  “They’re in your head.” (And you’re going off your head …)

  “Why, so they are! That’s how they speak to me.”

  “Go away, Hans. Go away! Is anyone there? Help me, someone!”

  Hans goes away, but nobody else comes for what seems like a long time.

  “What was all that shouting?” Neuman sounds irritated.

  “Hans was bothering me, Karl.”

  “And you’re bothering me. You’re ruining my train of thought. I’ve had a great idea, Mary: about how the universe really began. You see, it didn’t explode out of a cosmic egg at all. It’s been contracting inwards since eternity… but the space-time metric has a negative bias …” He begins to talk in mathematics, but they’re like no mathematics I have ever heard.

  “It’s piling up in my head, like a castle! It’s … inspiration, it’s a stroke of genius! This is what Einstein must have felt like. You see, God is hollow. He’s concave.”

  “Have the elder Vegans been whispering in your ear too?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hans said …”

  “Screw Hans. I’m talking about the whole goddam universe.”

  “And God is hollow: that’s your discovery?”

  “I’m getting there, Mary.”

  He wanders off, muttering, “God is a cave.”

  Sigrid comes.

  “What were you talking to Hans and Neuman about?”

  Glad of any friendly ear, I tell her.

  She sucks in her breath.

  “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? They’re saying things about me behind my back. Are you on their side?”

  “I’m on nobody’s side. There’s something wrong, Sigrid!”

  “I’ll say there is. I suppose now you’ll try and tell me you can’t see what’s going on!”

  “That’s cruel and unnecessary, Sigi. What’s happened to you? … Sigi, are you still there?”

  No, she isn’t.

  Orientating myself by the heat of Vega, I make my way over to the inflatadome, almost missing it even so. Time has passed.

  “David? Are you inside?” I hear none of the normal noises of work.

  “I’m listening to Blue Voice, Mary,” he says, close by me—but very far from the David I knew. “They were here before us. We can’t see them because they’re invisible. They’re energy beings: a different sort of life from any we imagined. They’re so loving. Blue Voice is making love to me. She’s thrilling my nerves. Physical copulation doesn’t hold a candle to this …”

  “You’re ill. You’ve got sunstroke or something—believe me! Come back on board Lyrebird, and help me to give you a check-up. Phase.”

  “Not now. Later, maybe.”

  “Promise me?”

  “When it gets dark.” His lips brush my cheek. “The flesh is sad, alas.”

  “I’m going to the ship to get things ready. I’ll be waiting for you. What time is it now?”

  “Oh Mary, what does time matter?”

  *

  Voices. Persecution mania. And wild speculations …

  They’re all part of the classic furniture of schizophrenia, aren’t they?

  It has to be some sort of virus, in the air, in the soil, on the breeze …

  Sitting blind at the computer, I ask it questions about viral psychoses. Thank heaven the machine has voice access and response as well as a keyboard and display screen! I seek precedents like a desperate lawyer with an impossible case.

  “No data,” says my computer.

  I review the possible cures for schizophrenia.

  “Insulin shock,” suggests the computer.

  Oh yes, I should synthesise sufficient insulin to shock all the crew into comas for days on end, and enough dextrose to awaken them from shock.

  Or I could try therapeutic convulsions by means of electroshock.

  Or I could feed them all chlorpromazine.

  One blind doctor on an alien world with seven mad patients should have little difficulty!

  Chlorpromazine? Well, it’s in stock.

  But if the cause is a virus …

  At last, David comes. Maybe it’s midnight, I don’t know.

  “I can’t hear Blue Voice so clearly now,” he says ruefully. “She faded a bit.”

  “What time is it, Dave?”

  “I dunno. Been dark a while.”

  “Will you let me have a blood sample, and some urine?”

  “If it gives you something to do.”

  “Yes,” but I’m careful to keep the bitterness out of my voice, “it’ll give me something to do.”

  First, I’ve got to get some sleep. Alone, locked in my cabin.

  The diagnostic equipment cannot find any signs of viral contamination, reports my computer in the morning. How far into the morning are we? Half way?

  Maybe I would see things differently from the computer, if I had my eyesight.

  Maybe I would see things …

  God, I’ve been blind.

  And that’s the only difference between me and all the others!

  I’ve been blind. And I’m sane.

  David pops in.

  “I can hear her okay now. Thanks.”

  Does he think I was worried last night because his Vegan mistress’s voice was fading?

  “It’s a beautiful day outside. Shall we go for a walk? I’ll hold your arm. Don’t worry, Blue Voice isn’t jealous.”

  “Sorry, Dave. I’ve got some work to do.”

  “Oh well. Another time.”

  So the sun shines brightly outside, and his Voice is back at full strength …

  Maybe there are invisible creatures here—energy beings—and they migrate around the world with the sun. Otherwise they fade.

  “Bye, David.”

  What next?

  “Review the brain chemistry of schizophrenia,” I order the computer. “Cross-correlate with blood and urine results from subject David Mercer. Draw deductions. No, speak your deductions.”

  A footfall.

  “Is that you again, David?”

  “It’s Toni.”

  “Toni, will you help me?”

  “Help you? I’m helping myself to a gun, and a full camping pack.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, Sigrid went for Hans. She got him with a stone. Now she’s after me.”

  “Is Hans badly hurt? Help me get to him.”

  “Hurt? No, he’s dead. Witold’s teamed up with Sigrid. Neumanns holed up in the inflatadome, but he’s no use. He’s too busy figuring equations. They’re not going to get me. I’m off. Time for a hike!”

  “Look, Toni, I want to give you a pill to calm you down. You can’t go running off into the wilds. I’ll find the damn thing in a moment. Please take it.”

  Where is it? Where?

  “I’m not taking any damn drugs! In thick with Sigrid, are you?”

  “Of course I’m not.”

  But he’s off, rummaging somewhere else in Lyrebird, throwing things around.

  At last I find a bottle, which I think is chlorpromazine.

  “Goodbye,” calls Toni, from the door.

  “Toni, please read this label for me?”

  “No time to. The enemy’s gathering strength. Hey, your computer’s winking at you. Dumb thing doesn’t know.”

  And off he goes too, so my ears tell me.

  “Report,” I tell the machine.

  Yes, I’m blind; and that’s why I’m sane.

  It’s all so obvious now.

  The light—the intensely bright light with its peculiarly blue hue … which I haven’t seen, which I can’t see—is the cause.

  Fact number one: no blind person ever is a schizophrenic.

  Fact number two: the level of the fatty acid prostaglandin El is always critically low in the brains of schizophrenics.

  Fact number three: the hormone melatonin, secreted in the pineal gland—the o
ld ‘third eye’ of the mystics—enhances prostaglandin manufacture in the brain. Good old pineal gland! There’s nothing mystical about it at all; it’s the sanity control meter in every human brain …

  Fact number four: light reduces the output of melatonin …

  From all of which I must deduce that the intensely bright light of Vega reduces melatonin output to nil …

  Consequently people go nuts. Bananas. It is a kind of sunstroke, after all.

  The sunglasses they’ve been wearing are no use, so it must have something to do with the unearthly bluish hue of the light as well as its intensity. The blue wavelengths pass right through the glasses. They need special Vega goggles.

  And before that, they need a long period spent in total darkness—in my kind of darkness—to build up their melatonin output again.

  How long in darkness do they need? Five days or ten? Something like that, I guess. To be on the safe side.

  “Is anyone there?” I cry out from the lift platform, as I take it down. “Come to me—please?”

  Come and lie down in darkness, with bandaged eyes, for a few days…

  “Watch your step, Mary.” (It’s Witold. He’s dangerous.)

  “I heard about the accident—about Hans.”

  “Accident, nothing! It was self-defence. Me and Sigi are taking over command from Neuman, Mary. Neuman’s useless, and Hans was his crony. Fellow Germans, right? Hans was going to boss us all around. He said he was the Voice. Of the Captain, I suppose. Anyway, the idea was just to knock him out. Sigi didn’t know her own strength. Now that rat Toni has run out on us. Pasta-eating fascist pig.”

  I have a hypodermic in my pocket, but Witold is a heavy man. Besides, I don’t know who else might be watching me at this moment.

  “Where’s David?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Witold, don’t you feel that something is very, very wrong? I mean, if you compare how it was on the voyage with how we’re behaving now?”