Tau Zero by Poul Anderson

Author:Poul Anderson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: SciFi-Masterwork, SciFi-Collectors
ISBN: 9780795307423
Publisher: Rosetta Books
Published: 2006-02-08T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Reymont paused at the entrance to commons. The deck lay empty and quiet. After an initial surge of interest, athletics and other hobbies had become increasingly less popular. Aside from meals, the tendency was for scientists and crew-folk to form minute cliques or retreat altogether into reading, watching taped shows, sleeping as much as possible. He could force them to get a prescribed amount of exercise. But he had not found a way to restore what the months were grinding out of the spirit. He was the more helpless in that respect because his inflexible enforcement of basic rules had made him enemies.

A propos rules— He strode down the corridor to the dream room and opened its door. A light above each of the three boxes within said it was occupied. He fished a master key from his pocket and unlocked the lids, which passed air but not light, one by one. Two he closed again. At the third, he swore. The stretched-out body, the face under the somnohelmet, belonged to Emma Glassgold.

For a space he stood looking down at the small woman. Peace dwelt in her smile. Doubtless she, like most aboard, owed her continued sanity to this apparatus. Despite every effort at decoration, at actual interior construction of desired facilities, the ship was too sterile an environment. Total sensory deprivation quickly causes the human mind to lose its hold on reality. Deprived of the data-flow with which it is meant to deal, the brain spews forth hallucinations, goes irrational, and finally collapses into lunacy. The effects of prolonged sensory impoverishment are slower, subtler, but in many ways more destructive. Direct electronic stimulation of the appropriate encephalic centers becomes necessary. That is speaking in neurological terms. In terms of immediate emotion, the extraordinarily intense and lengthy dreams generated by the stimulus— whether pleasurable or not— become a substitute for real experience.

Nevertheless….

Glassgold’s skin was loose and unhealthy in hue. The EEG screen behind the helmet said she was in a soothed condition. That meant she could be roused fast without danger. Reymont snapped down the override switch on the timer. The oscilloscopic trace of the inductive pulses that had been going through her head flattened and darkened.

She stirred. “Shalom, Moshe,” he heard her whisper. There was nobody along of that name. He slid the helmet off. She squeezed her eyes tighter shut, knuckled them, and tried to turn around on the padding.

“Wake up.” Reymont gave her a shake.

She blinked at him. The breath snapped into her. She sat straight. He could almost see the dream fade away behind those eyes. “Come on,” he said, offering his hand to assist. “Out of that damned coffin.”

“Ach, no, no,” she slurred. “I was with Moshe.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

She crumpled into sobbing. Reymont slapped the box, a crack across the ship’s murmur. “All right,” he said. “I’ll make that a direct order. Out! And report to Dr. Latvala.”

“What the devil’s going on here?”

Reymont turned. Norbert Williams must have heard them, the door being ajar, and come in from the pool, because the chemist was nude and wet.

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