She ascertained that although I looked like an odd-shaped ice lolly I was not dead but in a state of suspended animation. After a long soaking in warm water my clothes were peeled off me with the care usually reserved for ancient manuscripts. When naked I was coated with synthoderma and floated in a nutrient solution while they gave me a variety of anti-freeze injections and hooked me up to several drip-feeds. I was monitored constantly and after three days Lovecraft made verbal contact as shown in this transcript from 7 November 2052.
CL: Hi.
FG: Hi.
CL: I’m Caroline Lovecraft, Head of Physio/Psycho at Newton Centre. Will you state your name for the record?
FG: Johann Sebastian Bach.
CL: Do you know where you are now?
FG: Contrapunctus One. (HUMS BEGINNING OF THE ART OF FUGUE)
CL: Mr Bach, can you tell me what happened to Clever Daughter and the other seven crew members?
FG: Very, very high, the legs of Contrapunctus One. Centuries and centuries — mustn’t look down.
CS: About Clever Daughter — can you remember anything at all?
FG: If you can hold on to the terror you can hold on to the world, (HUMS AGAIN THE BEGINNING OF THE ART OF FUGUE) B said. (OR ‘BEA SAID’ OR POSSIBLY ‘B.Z.’ SPEECH BECOMING SLURRED)
CS: What did B say?
FG: Be the music. Thou. (OR POSSIBLY ‘THOWL’)
CS: Couldn’t quite catch that. Please say again.
FG: Is he? (SPEECH MORE INDISTINCT)
CS: Is he what?
FG: (LOOKING AROUND) Not here. Gone. (OR POSSIBLY ‘GORN’)
CS: Did you say ‘gone’ or ‘Gorn’?
FG: (SHAKES HEAD, THEN OPENS MOUTH AND POINTS TO IT)
CS: You’re hungry?
FG: (SHAKES HEAD, COVERS FACE WITH HANDS, FALLS ASLEEP, TERMINATING INTERVIEW AT 15:32)
I have no recall of that conversation but I do remember the next one, which took place two days later in another part of Newton Centre. I was vibrant with fear at the time; I felt as if I was a puzzle of many pieces, all of them speeding outward from me in all directions. I was afraid I’d never get them back together and at the same time I was afraid that I would. The song in my head was:
ON THE GOOD SHIP LOLLIPOP,
IT’S A SHORT TRIP TO THE CANDY SHOP, …
At a desk opposite me was a tall bald man with glittering spectacles. He was wearing faded jeans, hiking boots, a denim shirt, and an old green cardigan. Through the window behind him I could see the lights of the flicker docks passing in the black sparkle of space and just beyond them Mikhail’s Quadrangle 4 Snackdome (24 HRS — FREIGHTERS YES) revolving like a beacon with a ring of bright rubbish in slow orbit as it majestically receded from view with the turning of the station. Far beyond Mikhail’s there came and went the occulting blue flash of the Hawking Threshold light, beyond it the pale planet Ereshkigal with its seven circling Anunnaki, and beyond those the jewelled fling of Inanna’s Girdle.
The tall bald man’s spectacles were twinkling as if he had ways to make me talk. I had no idea why I was sitting in a chair in his office; I couldn’t remember anything between flickering out of Nova Central and waking up at Hubble Straits and I rather thought I’d like to keep it that way. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell me’, I said, ‘what I’m charged with.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘Deep Space Command might possibly have one or two questions about the disappearance of the rest of the crew and a spacecraft and cargo worth two hundred million credits.’ His accent was like waving fields of American grain. ‘And I expect the Ziggurat will want you to help with enquiries but here at Newton Centre the only thing you’re charged with is survival. We’d like to know how you did it.’ His spectacles sparkled cordially as he leaned over the desk to shake my hand and the rest of me vigorously. ‘I’m Waldo Simkin, Head of Research here.’ The room smelled of paper, the floor under my feet hummed and shook a little. In the ceiling the fluorescent lights sizzled faintly: Si, Si, Simkin. Si, Si, Simkin.
You needn’t keep repeating it, I thought. I heard you the first time.
‘I wasn’t repeating it,’ he said. ‘Have you got some kind of echo in your head?’
So I must have spoken aloud; he didn’t look like a telepath. Some of the time I could see him clearly but much of the time not. I was getting ringed centres of bright emptiness in my vision, circles of nothing. They kept expanding and wiping one another out so new circles of nothing could appear. Beyond the Hawking Threshold, beyond Ereshkigal and the Anunnaki and Inanna’s Girdle the dead howled and whistled.
‘ “Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,”’ I said.
‘How’s that?’
‘It’s a line from the First Duino Elegy.’
‘I don’t think I know Duino’s work.’
‘He’s a dead guy. I know a lot of dead guys.’
‘You’re alive. Keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole. You’re shaking.’
‘Isn’t everything?’
‘No. Are you wearing bio?’
‘No.’
‘Let’s do an AFR, OK? I want to see what kind of shape you’re in.’
‘OK.’ I opened my shirt and he got a biofeedback kit out of his desk. He placed the electrodes on my head and chest and slid the lancet sleeve over my thumb. I jabbed myself and we watched the numbers climbing on the gauge.
‘That’s an ambient-fear reading of 727.2,’ he said. He removed the thumb sleeve, replaced the lancet, opened his shirt, hooked himself up, and did his own AFR. It was 214.7.
‘Between 200 and 400 is what you expect from somebody in a reasonably functional state,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen one over 600 till now. What’re you afraid of?’
‘Everything.’
YES! bellowed the mind in my head, SAY IT, SAY THE EVERYTHING-FEAR, THE ALL-TERROR. I TOO FEAR EVERYTHING. I FEAR MY LONG-AGO BEGINNING AND THE AWAKENING OF DREAD, I FEAR THE UNCEASING BECOMING OF ME. I FEAR THE HUGE AND THE TINY, THE FAR AND THE NEAR OF ME, AND I FEAR THE MOMENT THAT IS NOW AND NOW AND NOW WITHOUT RESPITE.
The power of that utterance and the relief of it! With those words my fear seemed all at once a mighty fortress in which I was no longer alone. No, not a fortress — not something that stood still but a voyaging thing, a black boat rising and falling in the sea-dark, a vessel in which I could journey far. You again! I said. It’s been so long! Will you be with me from now on?
No answer.
Simkin was looking at me oddly, so I must have been speaking aloud again. ‘I think this might be a good time to turn you over to our head of Physio/Psycho,’ he said. I followed him down the hall to another office where I was introduced to Dr Caroline Lovecraft, a tall, handsome woman: red hair in a Psyche knot, green eyes, horn-rimmed glasses, heroic figure wonderfully enhanced by a tightly-belted green overall with many pockets. As she came towards me I think a little sigh may have escaped me.
‘Hi,’ she said, gripped my right hand firmly, and shot some of her voltage into me. ‘Remember me?’
‘No, but I will from now on.’