Barry N. Malzberg by Beyond Apollo

Author:Beyond Apollo
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2011-12-27T03:41:22+00:00

Chapter 39

On their first day together in the simulator the Captain, Joseph Jackson, turned to Evans and against the whining and bucking of the machinery, said, “For all we know, we could be on our way to Venus now.

Perhaps we aren’t in a laboratory at all. Doesn’t that frighten you?”

Evans shook his head, not willing to speak, trying to hold his teeth against the retching which seemed at any moment calculated to send his insides into the bucket thoughtfully provided. The simulator was bearing down with jolts of eighteen gravities in short bursts to prepare them for the actual shock of acceleration and orbital maneuver, and Evans found himself in and out of consciousness all the time: spacing out the faints with dry heaves and blinding gurgles of pain, waiting for the next jolt. He had never been in the simulator with the Captain before nor had he been under such heavypressure. But flight time was approaching and he understood that they wanted to move closer to actual conditions and into a dual-occupancy situation.

“Nothing frightens me,” Evans said, at that time being distracted by terror and in addition being locked deep into what he would come to think of afterwards as his Gray Period. “There’s nothing that they can do to me that I don’t know…” and then the next jolt hit him like a pint of gin and he found himself gasping, holding on for balance against the slick walls, his shoulders pinned to the floor, his detumescent—in fact, vanishing—phallus sending its own peculiar messages of travail to him. “Well, maybe not,” Evans said.

“You see,” Jackson said with something approaching imperturbability, although if Evans had cared to look, he might have seen the distinct madness in his eyes, “we have absolutely no control over our lives. None whatsoever; they have taken that away from us. We exist only for their pleasure.” He rubbed his hands against one another with immense casualness, studied his palms. He could be sitting as dummy at a bridge table, Evans thought, considering the intricacies of a hand. “The control they give us is only an illusion,” the Captain said and then with an absent distinctness retched, allowed dry heaves to overtake him as once again they went into a spin. “But I know the secret,” he said when they returned to normal pressure, “I still have something over them.”

“What could that be?” Evans said with mild, polite curiosity, wondering if he would live to get out of the chamber. “What do you have over them?”

“Oh, not now,” Jackson said with a cackle and gave Evans a light tap on the shoulder as once again the gravities increased. There was very little time for conversation in the chamber. “I couldn’t possibly tell you now; they might be monitoring everything in here, our reactions and so on. No, I will tell you that later. Later, Evans, on the way to Venus,” said Joseph Jackson and the chamber spun, the walls contracted, Evansfainted and the preparations thus

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