Fiasco Read online

  To examine the internal organs of a man in various planes and sections was an anonymous, abstract activity. The sight of naked corpses encased in nitrogen ice under helium, however, especially with their faces crushed, was such that Gerbert preferred to spare the physicists the experience. (The eyeballs of both bodies were intact—a secret grief for the doctors, this, because unquestionably the blindness of one would have made the decision for them: namely, to revive the man whose vision was unimpaired.) When the physicists left, Davis sat down on the platform with the split-open cryocontainer and said nothing. Finally Gerbert could stand the tension no longer.

  "Well then?" he asked. "Which one?"

  "We could get Vahradian's opinion…" Davis muttered uncertainly.

  "Why? Tres faciunt collegium?"

  Davis got up, stabbed the keyboard, and the screen obediently displayed, side by side, two rows of green numbers, and one number in red, on the right, which blinked in warning. He switched off the unit, unable to endure it, but again reached out to press a key. Gerbert put his arms around him, restraining him.

  "Stop. That's useless."

  They looked at each other.

  "We might consult…" Davis began, but did not finish.

  "No. No one can help us. Vahradian—"

  "I wasn't thinking of Vahradian."

  "I know. I was going to say that, officially, Vahradian will make the decision if we turn to him. He has to, as the Head Physician—but that's a cowardly way out. Anyway, look how the man has made himself scarce. Let's not prolong this. In an hour—in less than an hour, now—Yusupov will throttle the drive."

  He released Davis and threw the switches on the console to prepare the reanimating room, saying:

  "The dead do not exist. It is as if they had never been born. We are not killing anyone. We are re-creating a single life. Look at it that way."

  "Fine," replied Davis, his eyes glittering. "You're right. It's a good deed. And you can have the honor of performing it. You choose."

  The two white snakes that were coiled around the winged staff on the wall above the control panel lit up: the room was ready.

  "Very well," said Gerbert. "On one condition. That this remains between us and no one ever learns about it. Especially he. You understand?"

  "Yes."

  "Think about it. After the operation, all the remains go overboard. And I will erase all the data in the holofile. But you and I will know; we will know because we cannot erase our own memory. Will you be able to forget?"

  "No."

  "To be silent?"

  "Yes."

  "To everyone?"

  "Yes."

  "To the end?"

  Davis hesitated.

  "But … they all know, after all. You said yourself at the council that we would choose either—"

  "I had to. Vahradian knew the score. But after the data are destroyed we will lie and tell everyone that this man was objectively preferable in a way discovered by us only here and now."

  Davis nodded.

  "I agree."

  "We'll write the protocol, sign it together, falsify two of the items. You'll sign?"

  "Yes, with you."

  Gerbert opened the wall compartment. In it hung silvery suits with white boots and face masks of glass. He took out his and began to put it on. Davis did likewise. In the central rotunda of the room a door parted, revealing the bright interior of an elevator. The door closed, the elevator went down, and the empty room grew darker, but above the point lights of the control panel glowed the snakes of Aesculapius.

  III

  The Survivor

  He returned to consciousness blind and without a body. His first thoughts were not formed of words; his feelings were confused, inexpressible. He receded, disappeared somewhere, and returned. It was only when he found his internal speech that he could put questions to himself: What was I afraid of? What kind of darkness is this? What does this mean? And when he made this step, he was able to think: What am I? What is happening to me?

  He tried to move, to locate his arms, legs, torso, knowing now that he had a body, or at least that he should have one. But nothing responded, nothing moved. He could not tell if his eyes were open. He felt no lids, no blinking. He exerted all his strength to lift the lids, and perhaps succeeded. But he saw nothing except the same darkness as before. These attempts, requiring tremendous effort, again led him to the question: What am I? I am a man.

  This obvious answer was a revelation to him. Then, immediately, he knew its obviousness and smiled at himself, because what kind of brilliant discovery was that?

  Words returned slowly, from where he did not know, and at first were scattered and without pattern, as if he were pulling them up like fish out of unknown depths. Am. I am. Where, I do not know. I cannot feel my body. Why is that? Now he began to feel his face, the cheeks, possibly the nose. He was even able to move the nostrils, though that took an enormous exertion of will. He stared, moving the eyeballs, in all directions, and concluded, because his ability to reason had returned: Either I am blind or it is completely dark. The darkness brought to mind night, and night a great space full of pure, cold air, and air suggested breath. Am I breathing? he asked himself, and listened carefully to his darkness, which was so like nothingness and yet so unlike it.

  It seemed to him that he was breathing, but not in the usual way. The belly, the ribs were motionless, held in incomprehensible suspension; the air entered by itself and gently left. There was no other way he could breathe.

  He had a face now, lungs, nostrils, a mouth, eyes, though unseeing. He decided to make a fist, remembering perfectly what hands were and how to close them tight. Still he felt nothing, and fear returned, this time rational, from logic: This is either paralysis or I have lost my arms and possibly my legs. The conclusion seemed false—he had lungs, that was certain, and yet no body. Into his darkness and fear intruded tones, measured, distant, dull. Blood?

  His heart? It was beating. Then he heard, like the first tidings from the outside, the sounds of speech. His hearing opened suddenly, though it was muffled. There were two people speaking—he distinguished two voices—but he did not understand what they were saying. The language was known to him; the words, however, were indistinct, like objects seen through misted glass or a fog. As he focused his attention more, his hearing sharpened, and—strangely—it was through his hearing that he emerged from himself, finding himself in a space that had a bottom, top, and sides. This meant gravity, he realized. Then he started to concentrate completely on the hearing. The voices were masculine, one higher and softer, the other low, a baritone, very close. Perhaps he could speak himself, it he tried. But he wanted to listen first, not only out of curiosity and hope, but also because it was a pleasurable thing to hear so well and to comprehend more and more human speech.

  "I'd keep him in the helium." This was the nearer voice, suggesting a large, heavyset man, there was so much strength in it.

  "I wouldn't," said the farther, younger voice.

  "Why not? It does no harm."

  "Look at his brain. No, not the calcar avis. The right temporal. The Wernicke's center. You see? He's listening to us."

  "The amplitude is small. I doubt that he understands."

  "Both frontal lobes now. It's really up to norm."

  "I see."

  "Yesterday there was practically no alpha."

  "He was hibernating. That's normal. But whether he understands or not, there's still too much nitrogen. I'm adding helium." A long silence, and soft steps.

  "Wait—look—"

  That was the baritone.

  "He's awake… Well, then…"

  The rest he did not hear. They whispered.

  He regained his clarity of thought. Who was speaking? Doctors. Did I have an accident? Where? Who am I? He thought more and more rapidly while they whispered back and forth, raising their voices in their excitement.

  "Good, the frontals are perfect. But the thalamus, I don't know… Switch it on lo
wer down. Use Aesculapius here. No, better, the medicom… Right. Adjust the picture. How's the medulla?"

  "Almost at zero. Curious."

  "Curious, rather, that it's not on zero. Let's see the respiratory center. Hmm…"

  "Activate it?"

  "No, for what? He'll start breathing on his own. It's surer that way. However, above the optic chiasma here…"

  Something pinged.

  "He can't see," said the younger voice with surprise.

  "The nine is functional. We'll find out now if he can see anything…"

  In the following stillness came metallic clangs. At the same time, the dark gave way to a grayish, feeble glow.

  "Aha!" said the baritone in triumph. "It was only on the synapses. The pupils have been reacting for a week now. Anyway," he added more quietly, "he won't be able to—" A whisper.

  "Agnosia?"

  "No. It would be a good thing if… Look at the higher components…"

  "The memory is restoring itself?"

  "I don't know. I can't say yes or no. And the blood picture?"

  "Normal."

  "The heart?"

  "Forty-five."

  "Pressure?"

  "One-ten. Disconnect it?"

  "Better not. Wait. A small impulse to the medulla…"

  He felt something twitch in him.

  "The tonus returns. You see?"

  "I can't watch the myograms and the brain at the same time. He's moving?"

  "His arms … uncoordinated."

  "And now? Observe the face. Is he blinking?"

  "He opened his eyes. Does he see?"

  "Not yet. What's the stimulus threshold for the pupils?"

  "Four lux. I'll up it to six. Does he see?"

  "No. He only feels the light. It's a thalamic reaction. The medicom will fix the electrodes and give the current. Ah, excellent—"

  In the darkness he saw something pale pink and shining over him. At the same time, he heard the voice say breathlessly:

  "You've been saved. You'll be all right. Don't try to talk. If you understand me, close your eyes twice. Twice."

  He did this.

  "Excellent. I'll speak to you. If you don't understand, blink once."

  He tried hard to make out what the pale-and-pink was, but couldn't.

  "He's trying to see you," came the farther voice. How could the voice know that?

  "You'll see me and everything else," said the baritone slowly. "You must be patient. You understand?"

  He said yes with his eyelids. He wanted to speak, but something in him croaked, that was all.

  "No, no," the same voice scolded. "It's too early for conversation. You can't talk, you have a tube in your trachea. It is supplying you with air. You cannot breathe on your own—we are breathing for you. You understand? Good. And now you will sleep. When you wake and are rested, we'll have a talk. You'll learn everything. But now… Victor, put him to sleep slowly, slowly… Pleasant dreams…"

  He stopped seeing, as if a light had gone out not above him but inside him. He didn't want to sleep. He wanted to jump up on his feet. But the darkness that was himself had already vanished.

  He had many dreams, odd dreams, beautiful dreams, and dreams that could be neither remembered nor related. Sometimes he was a multitude of feeling things at once. He would go far away and then return. He saw people, recognized their faces, but could not recall who they were. Sometimes all that remained to him was his sight, boundless, full of invisible sun. It seemed to him that eons passed in these dreams and in the voids between them. Suddenly he awoke. With consciousness he also regained his body. He was lying on his back, bundled in a fluffy, soft material. He tensed the muscles of his back. He felt a tingling in his thighs. Above him was a flat, pale-green ceiling; nearby gleamed pipes of some kind and glassware, but he was unable to turn his head. Something held his head in place, a bolster that was soft but reached up to his temples, resiliently firm. His eyes he could move freely. On the other side of a transparent wall rose apparatuses of some sort, and at the very edge of his field of vision little lights danced on and off. He soon noticed that the lights had some connection to him, because when he inhaled more deeply and his rib cage lifted, they lit up with the same rhythm. Outside his field of vision, something glowed pink in a steady, slow tempo, and the period of that pinkness also kept pace with him—with his heart. He had no doubt now that he was in a hospital. An accident, then. What kind, and where? He knit his brow, waited for an explanation to emerge from his memory, but in vain. He lay still, shut his eyes, and concentrated his will on the question. No answer came. His ability to move his legs, arms, fingers as he liked, except for the enfolding material, no longer satisfied him. He tried clearing his throat, touched the inside surface of his teeth with his tongue, and finally spoke:

  "I. I!"

  He recognized his own voice. But whose it was, his own voice, he did not know, and did not understand how this could be. He tried freeing himself from the restraining padding and tensed his muscles several times. Then a lethargy fell over him with strange suddenness, and again he went out like an extinguished candle.

  He did not count the passing days. Life on the ship was divided in the simple, conventional way, according to Earth rhythm. During the day all the decks, corridors, and tunnel passageways between the sections of the hull were brightly lit. At ten o'clock dusk began as a dimming of the gold-tinged white that emanated from the ceilings and walls. For about an hour there was a blue semidarkness, until the illumination ceased and all that showed the solitary wanderer the way was a thin fluorescent line that ran down the center of the ceilings. He liked this time the best. He could tour the Eurydice during the day, too—all the quarters were accessible to him, and he was assured that he would not be disturbing anyone. He could go where he liked, ask any question, but he preferred the night for his walks.

  Physically proficient, he exercised early each morning in the gym, then went to school. That was what he called it. He would take a seat in front of Mnemon, to regain his memory through picture-and-word association games, and also to learn things completely new to him. With the machine, which was infinitely patient and incapable of showing any emotion, any surprise, any feeling of superiority, he was at ease. If he failed to grasp something, Mnemon would resort to visual aids, simple diagrams, and skillfully apply teaching programs, borrowing from the stores of other machines on the ship. The holofile contained in its archives tens of thousands of films (though they were not films) and photographs (though unlike the photographs of the past, since each image, when summoned, became a surrounding scene, and each word was made flesh—a flesh, granted, that was transitory). If he wished, he could visit the inner chambers of the pyramids, the Gothic cathedrals, the castles on the Loire, the moons of Mars, cities, forests, but he did this only because he knew that such visions constituted an important part of his therapy. The doctors tried to treat him like one of the members of the crew, never like a patient; he even had the impression that they avoided him, as if to emphasize that he was in no way different from anyone else.

  His visual memory returned, along with his life experience, his professional skills as a navigator and expert in striders. True, ships had changed no less than planetary machines; regarding them, he was a little like a seaman from the days of the sailing ships finding himself on a great ocean liner. But it was not difficult to fill in these gaps. The outdated information he replaced with new. More and more keenly, however, he felt his worst loss, a loss possibly irreversible. He could not dredge up in himself any names—first names, last names, including his own. What was more curious, his memory seemed divided in two. Things that he had once experienced returned to him faded though full of detail, just as a child's possessions found in a closet of the family home after many years evoked not only images of the past but also an emotional aura. One time, in the physicists' lab, the smell of an evaporating liquid from a distillation, acrid in his nostrils, instantly summoned up more than a picture: a chance landing
field, brightly lit though at night, when he, standing beneath the still red-hot cones of the rockets, beneath his saved ship, breathed the same smell of nitric smoke and felt a happiness that he was not aware of then, but which now, remembering, he understood.

  He did not tell Dr. Gerbert about this, though he really should have, since the doctor had said to come immediately with any unexpected recollection, because it would lie in one of the buried places of his memory. It was necessary to deepen the recollection, not for psychotherapy but in order to reestablish and reopen the paths in the brain that had been erased. In this way he could return more fully to himself. The advice was rational, professional, and he considered himself a rational person; still, he kept this from the doctor. Being taciturn was definitely one of his traits. He had never liked to confide—particularly not private things. He told himself that if he ever remembered who he was, it would not be by smell, like a dog. A stupid thought, he realized. It never crossed his mind to set himself above the doctors—but he stuck to his decision.

  Gerbert soon became aware of the man's reticence. He gave him his word that the sessions with Mnemon were not recorded, and that he could clear each session from the pedagogue's memory himself if he wished. And the man did that. He kept no secrets from the machine. It helped him reclaim a multitude of memories, but without the names of the people—and without his own. Finally he asked the machine why.

  Mnemon was silent for a long while. The memory training, as it was called, took place in a cabin that was strangely furnished. There were several pieces of antiquated furniture in it, veritable museum pieces, in an almost royal style—armchairs with gilding and curved legs—and every wall had an oil painting by a Dutch master, the paintings that he had remembered were his favorites. They appeared after he recalled them, as if to help him on. The oils were changed several times—but the canvas in the carved frames was no canvas, though imitating well the fiber and the daubs of paint. Mnemon had explained to him how these excellent, temporary replicas were made.