The Atrocity Exhibition (Illustrated Edition) by J. G. Ballard

Author:J. G. Ballard [Ballard, J. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Relato, Otros
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 1970-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

YOU AND ME AND THE CONTINUUM

The attempt to break into the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Good Friday, 197—, first assumed to be the act of some criminal psychopath, later led to inquiries of a very different character. Readers will recall that the little evidence collected seemed to point to the strange and confusing figure of an unidentified Air Force pilot whose body was washed ashore on a beach near Dieppe three months later. Other traces of his ‘mortal remains’ were found in a number of unexpected places: in a footnote to a paper on some unusual aspects of schizophrenia published thirty years earlier in a since defunct psychiatric journal; in the pilot for an unpurchased TV thriller, ‘Lieutenant 70’; and on the record labels of a pop singer known as The Him—to instance only a few. Whether in fact this man was a returning astronaut suffering from amnesia, the figment of an ill-organized advertising campaign, or, as some have suggested, the second coming of Christ, is anyone’s guess. What little evidence we have has been assembled below.

Ambivalent.[71] She lay quietly on her side, listening to the last bars of the scherzo as his hand hesitated on the zip. This strange man, and his endless obsession with Bruckner, nucleic acids, Minkowski space-time and God knows what else. Since meeting him at the conference on Space Medicine they had barely exchanged a word. Was he wholly there? At times it was almost as if he were trying to put himself together out of some bizarre jigsaw. She turned round, surprised by his dark glasses six inches from her face and the eyes burning through them like stars.

Brachycephalic. They stopped beneath the half-painted bowl of the radio-telescope. As the blunt metal ear turned on its tracks, fumbling at the sky, he put his hands to his skull, feeling the still-open sutures. Beside him Quinton, the dapper pomaded Judas, was waving at the distant hedges where the three limousines were waiting. ‘If you like we can have a hundred cars—a complete motorcade.’ Ignoring Quinton, he took a piece of quartz from his flying jacket and laid it on the turf. From it poured the code-music of the quasars.

Coded Sleep. Dr Nathan looked up as the young woman in the white coat entered the laboratory. ‘Ah, Doctor Austin.’ He pointed with his cigarette to the journal on his desk. ‘This monograph—“Coded Sleep and Intertime”—they can’t trace the author . . . someone at this Institute, apparently. I’ve assured them it’s not a hoax. By the way, where’s our volunteer?’

‘He’s asleep.’ She hesitated, but only briefly. ‘In my apartment.’

‘So.’ Before she left Dr Nathan said, ‘Take a blood sample. His group may prove interesting at a later date.’

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