At their heads is a panel revealing the active working of their bodies. On the plastic cover is a small identification panel, giving their names, their dates of birth and the date of their engulfment into suspended animation. On the indicator panel is a line marked DREAMS. On each panel the line is steady.
Ryan looks tenderly down into the faces of his family and friends.
JOSEPHINE RYAN .9.9.1960 .7.3.2004. His wife. Blonde and plump-faced, her naked shoulders still pink and smooth.
*
RUPERT RYAN .13.7.1990.6.3.2004. The dark face of his son, so like his, the bony shoulders just beginning to broaden into manhood.
*
ALEXANDER RYAN .25.12.1996.6.3.2004. The fairer face of his younger son. Eyes, amazingly, still open. So blue. Thin shoulders of an active small boy.
*
Ryan, looking on the faces of his closest relatives, feels close to tears at their loss. But he controls himself and paces past the other containers.
*
SYDNEY RYAN .2.2.1937.25.12.2003. His uncle. An old man.
False teeth, very white, revealed through open mouth. Eyes closed. Thin, wrinkled shoulders.
*
JOHN RYAN .15.8.1963 .26.12.2003. Ryan's brother. Ryan thinks that now he is thinner, less muscular, he must look more like John than he has ever done, even when they were children.
John has the same short face, thick brows. His exposed shoulders are narrow, knotted.
*
ISABEL RYAN .22.6.1962 .13.2.2004. His brother John's first wife, her crowded teeth exposed in a snarl in her narrow jaw.
Pale face, pale hair, pale, thin shoulders. Ryan feels a spasm of relief that Isabel is lying in her container instead of around him, erect and needlelike, talking to him in her high voice. Ryan does not notice the passing thought, does not need to correct himself.
*
JANET RYAN .10.11.1982 .7.5.2004. So lovely. His brother John's second wife. Soft cheeks, soft shoulders, long wavy black hair suspended in the green fluid, a gentle smile through pink, generous lips, as if she were dreaming pleasant dreams.
• *
FRED MASTERSON .4.5.1950 .25.12.2003. Narrow face.
Thin, narrow shoulders. Furrowed brow.
*
TRACY MASTERSON .29.10.1973 .9J0.2003. Masterson's wife. A pretty woman, looking as stupid in her container as she did out of it.
*
JAMES HENRY .4.3.1957.29.10.2003. Shock of red hair floating, sea-green eyes open in the green fluid. Looking like some drowned merman.
*
Ryan moves past him and stops at the eleventh container.
*
IDA HENRY .3.3.1980.1.2.2004. Poor girl. Matted hair, pale brown. Sunken young cheeks, drooping mouth.
*
There are two arrested lives in that container, Ryan thought.
Ida, Henry's wife, and her coming child. What would be the result of that long gestation of mother and child, both in foetal fluid.
*
FELICITY HENRY .3.3.1980 .1.2.2004. Henry's other wife and Ida's twin sister. Her hair is smoother and shinier, her cheeks less sunken than her sister's. Not pregnant.
*
Ryan reaches the last container and looks into it. The white bottom of the container shines up at him. Surrounded by his sleeping companions he has the urge to get into the container and try it out.
Suspecting his impulse, he squares his shoulders and walks firmly from the room. The door hisses shut behind nun. He touches the stud that replaces the screws. He walks back down the silent corridor and re-enters the control cabin. He makes rapid notes on a small pad of paper he takes from his breast pocket. He moves to the computer and runs his calculations through.
If necessary the computer could be switched to fully automatic, but this is not considered good for the psychology of crew members.
Ryan nods with satisfaction when the replies come. He returns to the desk and puts the charts back in the drawer.
As he does this another spurt of paper comes from the computer. Ryan examines it.
It reads: REPORT ON PERSONNEL IN CONTAINERS NOT SUPPLIED.
Ryan purses his lips and punches in the reports: 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 *******
************************************************
*******YOUR OWN CONDITION suggests the computer.
Ryan pauses and then reports: I AM LONELY The computer tells him instantly: *******FILL YOUR TIME ACCORDING TO THE SUGGESTED PROGRAMME. IF THE CONDITION CONTINUES INJECT ICC PRODITOL PER DIEM * DO NOT TAKE MORE * DISCONTINUE THE DOSAGE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND AT ALL COSTS AFTER 14 DAYS****
Ryan straightens his shoulders, signs off and walks away from the computer.
He walks down the corridor to his own accommodation. He inflates a red easy chair, sits down and presses a stud on the wall.
The TV screen in front of him begins to roll off a list of its offerings.
Films, plays, music, dancing and discussion and educational programmes. In his weakness Ryan does not choose the agricultural information he is committed to studying. He selects an old Polish film.
Soon the screen is full of people walking, talking, eating, getting on streetcars, watching scenery, kissing and arguing.
Ryan feels tears on his cheeks but he has an hour of relaxation due to him and he will take it, in whatever form it comes.
As Ryan watches, bearing his expected melancholy with stoicism, his mind wanders. He hears, echoing in his head, the report on his undead companions in their cavernous containers: JOSEPHINE RYAN. CONDITION STEADY. RUPERT RYAN. CONDITION STEADY. ALEXANDER RYAN...
SIDNEY RYAN... JOHN RYAN... ISABEL RYAN...
JANET RYAN... FRED MASTERSON... JAMES HENRY ... IDA HENRY... FELICITY HENRY...
The parade of the faces he once knew passes in front of him. He imagines them as they were, before they were immersed in their half-life in the sea-green fluid.
CHAPTER FOUR
James Henry's pale hands, stubby and freckled, shook as he bent forward in his chair and stared into Fred Masterson's face.
'Do something, Fred, do something—that's what I'm saying.'
Masterson gazed back, thin eyebrows raised cynically, long forehead creased by parallels of wrinkles. 'Such as?' he asked after a pause.
Henry's hands clenched as he said: 'Society is polluted physically and morally. Polluted by radioactivity we're continually told is within an acceptable level—though we see signs every day that this just isn't so. I cannot allow Ida or Felicity to bear children with the world as it is today. And worse, in a way, than the actual environment is the infinite corruption of man himself. Each day we grow more rotten, like sacks of pus, until the few of us who try to cling to the old standards, try to stay decent, are more and more threatened by the others. Threatened by their corruption, threatened by their violence. We're living in a mad world, Masterson, and you're advising patience...'
Beside him on the Ryans' couch were his two wives, tired, identically pale, identically thin, as if the split cell which produced them had only contained the materials for one healthy woman and had been forced to make two. As Henry spoke they both gazed at him from their pale blue eyes and followed every word as if he were speaking their thoughts.
Masterson did not reply to James Henry's tirade. He merely stared about him as if he were thoroughly tired of the discussion.