Contdown to Midnight vers 2, page 20
Pure light pulsing … and pure sound droning. And just the feeling of letters I couldn’t read between the pulses—not-yellow and not-blue—too quick and too faint to be visible, but important, very important… .
And then a voice that seemed to be singing from inside my head, almost as if it were my own:
“Oh. oh, oh … don’t I really wanna know. … Oh. oh, oh . . . don’t I really wanna know. . . .”
The world pulsing, flashing around those words I couldn’t read, couldn’t quite read, had to read, could almost read… .
“Oh. oh, oh .. . great God I really wanna know… .”
Strange amorphous shapes clouding the blue-yellow-blue flickering universe, hiding the words I had to read… . Dammit, why wouldn’t they get out of the way so I could find out what I had to know!
“Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me… . Gotta know gotta know gotta know gotta know…
T minus 7 minutes … and counting …
Couldn’t read the words! Why wouldn’t the Captain let me read the words?
And that voice inside me: “Gotta know … gotta know … gotta know why it hurts me so… Why wouldn’t it shut up and let me read the words? Why wouldn’t the words hold still? Or just slow down a little? If they’d slow down a little, I could read them and then I’d know what I had to do… .
T minus 6 minutes … and counting …
I felt the sweaty key in the palm of my hand. … I saw Duke stroking his own key. Had to know! Now—through the pulsing blue-yellow-blue light and the unreadable words that were building up an awful pressure in the back of my brain—I could see the Four Horsemen. They were on their knees, crying, looking up at something and begging: “Tell me tell me tell me tell me. …”
Then soft billows of rich red-and-orange fire filled the world and a huge voice was trying to speak. But it couldn’t form the words. It suttered and moaned—
The yellow-blue-yellow flashing around the words I couldn’t read—the same words, I suddenly sensed, that the voice of the fire was hying so hard to form—and the Four Horsemen on their knees begging: “Tell me tell me tell me…
The friendly warm fire trying so hard to speak—
“Tell me tell me tell me tell me. . . .”
T minus 4 minutes . . . and counting …
What were the words? What was the order? I could sense my men silently imploring me to tell them. After all, I was their Captain, it was my duty-to tell them. It was my duty to find out!
“Tell me tell me tell me …” the robed figures on their knees implored through the flickering pulse in my brain and I could almost make out the words … almost… .
“Tell me tell me tell me. …” I whispered to the warm orange fire that was trying so hard but couldn’t quite form the words. The men were whispering it too: “Tell me tell me… .”
T minus 3 minutes … and counting …
The question burning blue and yellow in my brain, what
WAS THE FIRE TRYING TO TELL ME? WHAT WERE THE WORDS I COULDN’T READ?
Had to unlock the words! Had to find the key!
A key… . The key? the key! And there was the lock that imprisoned the words, right in front of me! Put the key in die lock. … I looked at Jeremy. Wasn’t there some reason, long ago and far away, why Jeremy might try to stop me from putting the key in the lock?
But Jeremy didn’t move as I fitted the key into the lock….
T minus 2 minutes … and counting …
Why wouldn’t the Captain tell me what the order was? The fire knew, but it couldn’t tell. My head ached from the pulsing, but I couldn’t read the words.
“Tell me tell me tell me …” I begged.
Then I realized that the Captain was asking too.
* * * *
T minus 90 seconds . . . and counting …
“Tell me tell me tell me …” the Horsemen begged. And the words I couldn’t read were a fire in my brain.
Duke’s key was in the lock in front of us. From very far away, he said: “We have to do it together.”
Of course … our keys … our keys would unlock the words!
I put my key into the lock. One, two, three, we turned our keys together. A lid on the console popped open. Under the lid were three red buttons. Three signs on the console lit up in red letters: armed.
T minus 60 seconds … and counting . . .
The men were waiting for me to give some order. I didn’t know what the order was. A magnificent orange fire was trying to tell me but it couldn’t get the words out… . Robed figures were praying to the fire… .
Then, through the yellow-blue flicker that hid the words I had to read, I saw a vast crowd encircling a tower. The crowd was on its feet begging silently—
The tower in the center of the crowd became the orange fire that was trying to tell me what the words were—
Became a great mushroom of billowing smoke and blinding orange-red glare. …
T minus 30 seconds … and counting …
The huge pillar of fire was trying to tell Jeremy and me what the words were, what we had to do. The crowd was screaming at the cloud of flame. The yellow-blue flicker was ; getting faster and faster behind the mushroom cloud. I could almost read the words! I could see that there were two of them!
T minus 20 seconds … and counting …
Why didn’t the Captain tell us? I could almost see the words!
Then I heard the crowd around the beautiful mushroom cloud shouting: “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!”
T minus 10 seconds . . . and counting …
“DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!”
What did they want me to do? Did Duke know?
9
The men were waiting! What was the order? They hunched over the firing controls, waiting… . The firing controls … ?“DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! !”
8
“DO IT! DO IT! DOIT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!”: the crowd screaming. “Jeremy!” I shouted. “I can read the words!”
7
My hands hovered over my bank of firing buttons…. “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!” the words said.
Didn’t the Captain understand?
6
“What do they want us to do, Jeremy?”
5
Why didn’t the mushroom cloud give the order? My men were waiting! A good sailor craves action.
Then a great voice spoke from the pillar of fire:“DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!… !”
4
“There’s only one thing we can do down here, Duke.”
3
“The order, men! Action! Fire!”
* * * *
2
Yes, yes, yes! Jeremy—
1
I reached for my bank of firing buttons. All along the console, the men reached for their buttons. But I was too fast for them! I would be first!
0
EVERYTHING BUT LOVE
Mikhael Yemstev and Eremei Pamov
Like many other popular science fiction writers in the Soviet Union, both Mikhael Yemstev and Eremei Parnov are trained scientists. Yemstev, born in 1930, is a physicist. Besides fiction, he has published numerous scientific works and frequently lectures about new frontiers in science. Pamov, who has worked as a chemical engineer, was born in 1935 and began publishing at the age of eighteen. He has authored more than forty books on a wide variety of subjects; he is also well known as a critic of science fiction and he has won a special prize of the European Science Fiction Convention.
Yemstev and Pamov started their collaborative writing of science fiction in 1961. They have jointly produced several important novels and many stories, a few of which have appeared in English-language collections published in Moscow and the United States. In 1978, Macmillan brought out a translation of their spectacularly innovative and terrifying novel World Soul.
Readers unfamiliar with Soviet science fiction may be surprised by the richness, complexity, and daring of “Everything But Love.” As the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki go by, the microcosmic and macro-cosmic worlds collide in the dying consciousness of a brilliant young physicist who realizes too late the consequences of “working for death.”
Splashes of crimson on fresh shavings. Drip … drip … drip… . Barton bent over to avoid staining his clothes. The oozing rivulets gurgled warmly. He felt light-headed, yet intensely weary. A motor seemed to be pounding in the head. Nausea bubbled in the darkness deep down.
He sank to his knees and gingerly slipped down on all fours. Then he cautiously turned over onto his back and thrust out his chin as high as he could to stop the hemorrhage. A salty, viscous liquid at once attacked the taste buds. The blue haze above swam round, and then again and again. Before he blacked out he felt the dry grass beneath him prickling, the sharp filings jabbing into his hands, and the blood caking on his upper lip. Hie screaming sirens failed to penetrate.
An ambulance screeched to a halt. Orderlies carefully lifted him up onto a stretcher and slid him into the car through the tailgate. On the way to the hospital, they took a blood count, measured his temperature, and felt for his flickering pulse.
When, four hours later, Alan Barton awoke, to find himself closeted within a green-tinted ward of the army hospital, the diagnosis was as definite as the Boltzmann constant. The post-irradiation syndrome, more commonly known as radiation sickness, or the White Death, as the soldiers in the guard detail had nicknamed it.
The only noise that interrupted the clinical carbolical hush was the humming of the air conditioner.
“He simply couldn’t’ve taken a dose, I swear.” Major Tawolski of the Medical Corps repeated over and over again, like an incantation. “The last range tests were four days ago.
Post-test checks showed everyone at normal, including Barton. I’ve got it all down here. Barton. July 26. eleven hundred hours, indications normal.*’
“Sure he didn’t go out to the range later,” the MO asked. “He’s not nuts, is he?”
“But, old man, miracles just don’t happen!”
“Not if you discount the Immaculate Conception. But this is about the same.”
“You think I ought to tell the general that?” the MO raised an ironical eyebrow.
“After all, it’s none of our business. Let him worry.”
“I bet he’s forming a board of inquiry this very moment.” “And putting you on it, too!”
Tawoiski pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. The MO at once switched the fan on.
“What have you done so far?” the MO asked wearily, stretching out his large, heavily veined hands.
. “Two hundred thousand of heparin, plus, of course, temperature, heartrate and blood pressure measurings.”
“Do a puncture, too, and take an epidermis scrape.”
‘T’ve already issued instructions for that to be done. And daily urine tests too. If we only knew where! We could try to check the circulation of the destroyed cells then.” ,
The MO nodded. He seemed half asleep.
“When will you be able to determine the exact dose?” The MO’s voice was dry and brusque.
“In another two days. When we get the WBC picture.” “That’s not the best way.”
“I know. But what would you suggest?”
The MO shrugged and thrust his nether lip out still further. “What about a hematologist, eh?”
“Cowan, perhaps?”
“Yes. Please get in touch with him and ask him for me to come. Not for long. Tell him that.”
“What?” Tawoiski mumbled.
“I’ve seen too many cases to think differently. A bad beginning. Very bad.”
“But that’s only on the fifth day.”
“Well, there’s nothing good in it either.” The MO shook his head. “What’s the temperature right now?”
“98.6 Fahrenheit.”
“I suppose it’ll slowly start to climb… . Well, we shall see what we shall see.” With an effort he rose from behind his desk and stretched his limbs. “Get in touch with Cowan at once. But right now let’s have a look at him.”
AUG. 1. 19**. 10 A.M. Temp. 98.8. Pulse: 78. BP: 135/80
Barton had long been awake. However, he did not open his eyes. Everything was as clear as day. They’d fixed up a whole bank of hemocytometers in his ward last night. These frequent tests, with blood samples thrice a day, spelled little hope, he knew that. From time to time he heard the lab assistants drop such hardly comprehensible words as “febrins” and “metamyelocytes.”
It was all most ominous.
Barton felt Tawolski take his wrist, hold it for a few moments and then let it sink back on top of the blanket. “Well, what’s the answer, Abe?”
“What, awake, Alan? A pretty strong pulse. How’s my boy, generally?”
“Odd, major. Awfully queer.”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“I really don’t know bow to put it. It’s like a hallucination.
I look at myself, touch myself and see no change. And I feel more or less okay. Just a bit weakish. Which is nothing. Nothing that a cuppa coffee or a good dry martini couldn’t cure. So what’s wrong then? Why do I have to bloody well lie here? Who said that my sound and healthy body’s been riddled with billions of invisible bullets? Quien sabe? And why should I believe it? I’ve got more faith in my own body, it looks so hale. N’est-ce pas? And then I sit up and put up a pillow to rest back on. Gradually the face grows feverish, I find myself gasping for breath, I break into a cold sweat and a lump of hot phlegm rises in my throat. I feel just horrible. I fall back and my head goes into a spin. Not a limb, not a thing, body, eyes, logic, or memory, nothing obeys me.” ”That’s the kinda feeling I got, Abe. Just too damned queer. Get what I mean now?”
“Sure, doc. But I don’t advise you to do that again.” “What don’t you advise me to do? Feel queer?”
“No, not that. You mustn’t lift yourself up, that’s what you mustn’t do. You’ve just gotta keep flat on your back.” “What on earth for?”
“Listen, doc, you’re a wizard at physics aren’t ya? Doncha ya understand?”
“No! Explain it all to me please. I can’t understand a thing. I’m doomed. I’m gonna the and I’ve gotta lie flat on my back. What for? But what’s the use of arguing, I can’t get up anyhow. A queer thing, this invisible death is. You see nothing, feel nothing, know nothing, like the three monkeys, but you’re already done for. The clock’s wound up and set and bomb’ll explode. Medics or no medics, it’s gonna explode! That’s how it is, Abe, me boy! Better tell me what’s new.”
“Lordy, what can be new! Everybody’s terribly anxious about you and wanna see you.”
“But I don’t wanna see them!”
“Sure. But why give up? The devil’s not so black as he’s painted, y’know. We’ll get you back on your feet again, you’ll see. Of course, you won’t be the man you were before, but still. … So far, it’s not as bad as all that!”
“Be frank, Abe. How big a dose did I get?”
“Alan, I really don’t know! We’ve not the slightest notion how and where it all happened. So how should we know? Have a little patience, Alan, we’ll get the picture soon.” “But roughly, Abe, roughly! Above or under six hundred?“ “Can’t tell you really. And why d’you think six hundred lethal?”
“I read about it somewhere.”
“Bunk! It all depends on the type of irradiation and the organ hit. There was a guy I knew who took twelve hundred. Still, he pulled out. Another chap had only … listen, get all that crap out of your head, will ya? … Tell me, is there anyone in the family you’d like to see? I’ll see it’s done.”
“No, thanks. There’s nobody I’d like to see … at least not now. Later, perhaps … but not now.”
“Any particular book you’d like to read, perhaps? It’ll take your mind off. You see, I’ve prescribed drop injections of glucose in a physiological solvent. That’s rather tiring and boring. Reading helps. A mystery, perhaps?”
“A kind thought, Abe. But better SF.1 It gets your mind off work as well. And you feel in the midst of things … like an omnipotent divinity, not a living cadaver. We physicists always need something to work on. We mustn’t vegetate! That destroys the mind. And SF’s very happy substitute. So make it SF, Abe.”
AUG. 2.19**. 10 P.M. Temp. 99. Pulse: 78. BP: 137/80
Anyone in the family I’d like to see? Anyone I love? What about Denise? Why does my head spin? Space seems to have curled up into a tube and assumed a conical form. How vibrant the echo. Come, hurry into this tunnel of light rings! Come, hurry back, further back, still further back in time. And I’ll see Denise again.
Night is all aglow. The neon advertisements iridesce. The light-filled, seemingly translucent skyscraper hotels wink like misty yellow crystals. The road is deserted. There’s not a soul around. The araucaria and the dracaena stand immobile, as if carved of granite. The beach is as desolate and dark. A fairy-tale forest of drooping cones—really, lowered, multicoloured awnings—rises up to meet us. The tide laps dreamily at the shore, in time with the strains of music that can barely be heard from somewhere far away. To our left stretch the gambling halls and night clubs, from which comes the fragrance of perfume and wrinkled fruit. To our right extends the black void of ocean and seemingly sunken beach. The lights of ships anchored far out twinkle faintly. The cyclopean eye of the light-house blinks white. We are walking down a path in the shadows beneath a canopy of leaves. The path runs past the flashing advertisements and brightly-lit shop-windows, parallel to the ghostly beach.
