*
JAMES HENRY .4.3.1957 .29.10.2003.
*
IDA HENRY .3.3.1980.1.2.2004.
*
FELICITY HENRY .3.3.1980.1.2.2004.
*
Everything is as it should be. Everybody is sleeping peacefully.
Only Ryan is awake.
He blinks.
Only Ryan is awake because it is better for one man to suffer acute loneliness and isolation than for several to live in tension.
One strong man.
Ryan raises his eyebrows.
And leaves Hibernation.
*
Ryan reports to the computer: JOSEPHINE RYAN. CONDITION STEADY.
RUPERT RYAN CONDITION STEADY.
ALEXANDER RYAN. CONDITION STEADY.
SIDNEY RYAN. CONDITION STEADY.
JOHN RYAN. CONDITION STEADY.
ISABEL RYAN. CONDITION STEADY.
JANET RYAN.
CONDITION STEADY.
FRED MASTERSON. CONDITION STEADY.
TRACY MASTERSON. CONDITION
STEADY.
JAMES
HENRY
CONDITION STEADY.
IDA HENRY. CONDITION STEADY.
FELICITY HENRY. CONDITION
STEADY.
The computer says: ******EARLIER YOU REPORTED YOURSELF LONELY*
***"
"DOES THIS CONDITION STILL OBTAIN******
Ryan replies: ******CONDITION EASIER SINCE THEN**************
He moves to his desk and picks up his diary.
He writes: land.
A short while ago the computer reported an oversight of mine. I'd forgotten to report on the condition of the personnel. The first time I've done anything like that! And the last, I hope. Then I discovered that the emergency locks in Hibernation had been sealed and I had to come back and unseal them. I must have done that, too, when I made the above entry. I feel relaxed and at ease now. The previous mistakes and, I suppose, mild blackouts must have been the result of the strain which I now seem to have overcome.
Ryan winds up the entry, closes the log, puts it away, leaves the control room.
He goes to his cabin and sets aside the educational tapes. Too much concentration, he thinks. Mustn't overdo it. It's incredible how one has to watch the balance. A very delicate equilibrium involved here. Very delicate.
He starts to watch an old Patriot propaganda play about the discovery of a cell of the Free Yorkshire underground and its eventual elimination.
He turns it off.
He hears something. He turns his head from the viewer.
It is a year since he heard a footstep not his own.
But now he can hear footsteps.
He sits there, feeling sweat prickle under his hair, listening to what seems to be the sound of echoing steps in the passage outside.
There is some stranger aboard!
He listens as the steps approach the door of the compartment.
Then they pass.
He forces himself out of his chair and gets to the door. He touches the stud to open the door. It opens slowly.
Outside the passageway stretches on both sides, the length of the ship's crew quarters. The only sound is the faint hum of the ship's system.
Ryan gets a glass of water and drinks it.
He switches the viewer back on, half smiling. Typical auditory hallucination of a lonely man, he thinks. The programme ends.
Ryan decides to get some exercise.
He leaves his cabin and makes for the gym.
As he walks along the corridor he feels footsteps moving behind him. He ignores the feeling with a shrug.
Then comes a moment's panic. He gives way to the impulse to turn sharply.
There is, of course, no one there.
Ryan reaches the gym. He has the impression that he is being watched as he runs through his exercises.
He lies down on a couch for fifteen minutes before beginning the second half of the exercise routine.
He remembers family holidays on the Isle of Skye. That was in the very early years, of course, before Skye was taken over as an experimental area for research into algae food substitutes. He remembers the pleasant evenings he and Josephine used to have with Tracy and Fred Masterson. He remembers the evening walks through the roof gardens with his wife. He remembers Christmases, he remembers sunsets. He remembers the smell of the rain on the fields of the place where he was born. He remembers the smell of his toy factories—the hot metal, the paint, the freshly cut timber.
He remembers his mother. She had been one of the victims of the short-lived Hospitals Euthanasia Act. The Act had been repealed by the Nimmoites during their short period of power. The only sensible thing they did, thinks Ryan.
He sleeps.
Once again he is on the planet, in the valley. But this time he is panic-stricken that the ship and the others have left him. He begins to run. He runs into the jungle. He sees a dark woman. He is in his own toy factory among the dancing toys.
He takes pleasure at the sight of these things he has made. They all function together so joyfully. He sees the musical building blocks. They still spell out a word.
AMU...
With dawning fear he hears, above the bangs and clangs of the mechanical toys, the drone of the dirge-like music which in other dreams accompanies the dancers in the darkened ballroom.
The music rises, almost drowning out the sounds made by the moving toys. Ryan feels himself standing rooted with fear in the middle of his gyrating models. The music grows louder. The toys spin to and fro, round and round. They begin to climb on top of each other, lamb on dredger, girl doll on piles of bricks, making a huge pyramid close to him. The pyramid grows and grows until it is at the level of his eyes. The music grows louder and louder.
In his terror Ryan anticipates a point in the music when the pyramid of still moving toys collapses on him.
He struggles to free himself from the toils of little mechanical bodies.
As he struggles he awakes. He lies there and hears himself groan: 'I thought they were over. I've got to do something about it.'
He gets off the couch and abandons the idea of exercise.
He stares around at the exercising machines. 'I can remain master of myself,' Ryan says.
'I can.'
He goes back to the control room, adjusts various dials, checks that his time devices are working accurately and makes the following statement to the computer: *******! AM TROUBLED BY NIGHTMARES***********
The computer replies: ******! KNOW THIS"
"INJECT 1 CC PRODITOL PER*
DIEM"
"DO NOT TAKE MORE"
"DISCONTINUE THE DOSE**AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND AT ALL COSTS AFTER 14 DAYS*** *********************************
Ryan rubs his lips.
Then he bites the nail of his right forefinger.
*
Ryan paces the ship.
Passageways, engine room, supplies room, exercise room, control room, own cabin, spare cabins, observation room, library...
He does not look at the door of the Hibernation room. He does not walk along the passage towards the door.
He continues his angry prowling for half an hour or more, trying to collect his thoughts.
The footsteps follow him most of the time. Footsteps he knows do not exist.
Echoing up and down the passageways he begins to hear fragments of the voices of his companions, the men and women now suspended in green fluid in the containers that must remain sealed until planetfall.
'Daddy! Daddy!' cries his youngest child Alexander.
Ryan hears the thud of his feet in the passage. He overhears an argument between Ida and Felicity Henry: 'Don't keep telling me how you feel. I don't want to know,' Felicity snaps at her pregnant twin sister. 'You don't realise what it's like,' says the other on a familiar note of complaint. 'No, no. I don't,' he hears Felicity say hysterically. He hears the noise of a slap and Ida's weeping. A door bangs. 'Let me see to it, Ryan,' he hears James Henry say impatiently. The voice seems to echo all over the ship. He hears Fred and Tracy Masterson's feet coming rapidly along the passageway.