The Pleasure Tube (4 page)

Moments later I am waiting for the energy to move again, the quease entirely gone from my stomach. I think Collette is moving my belt in a notch, but then she says, "Welcome to thePleasureTube," and I see that her hands are at my waist, adjusting a safety belt—no, a liftoff rig.

"To the... ?" I can feel the jiggle of hydraulics, the entire
lounge
is moving. Lights through the window slip by, some disappear—we are being moved into a ship.

Collette strokes my forehead and offers me a drink that looks like orange juice. "Take some of this," she says.

"I, mmm, don't think I need..."

"Take it," she says; "you'll feel better."

The lounge thumps into position, loose equipment rattles, she giggles and kisses me. She puts her tongue between my teeth, then moves away toward her clothing. I want to say thank you, but my mouth is going numb with a feeling that is spreading through my body. I am blacking out even as I feel the pressure of a vast and tidal acceleration.

*    *    *

I am asleep but then vaguely aware of a sensation in my fingers and palms. I inhale the rich odor of gardenias and come awake enough to make out Collette kneeling beside the recliner, massaging my hands. Through ship noise I can hear Bartok violins—my own favorite from the Daedalus library.

"Time to get up?" I say, though the room is dim, and no light comes through the window. The ship vibrates with the low howl of sustained acceleration.

"No," Collette says. "I'm going to bed. I just wanted to tuck you in."

I rise on an elbow. "What are you doing here? Are you coming along?"

"I'm your service." She grins. "Lie back."

"I'm not sleepy."

"You've passed through five time zones and you surely are sleepy. The computer and I know all your body rhythms. Just listen to me."

"My service?"

"Mmmm. You like to touch, too. I think we're going to enjoy each other. I like you," she says, her hand drifting up, stroking my temple. "The way your hair curls here at your ears."

The lounge has changed—my recliner doubled into a bed, the couches rearranged, draperies along the window/wall. A light illuminates the large painting of pink, fleshy women in an embrace.

"Do I—I mean, is this my cabin?"

Only when she puts her hand on my shoulder to make me lie back do I realize that I am naked. I inhale deeply, and the rich, sweet odor of gardenias fills my lungs.

"Drink this," she says, passing me the orange juice again.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see tomorrow. Where doesn't matter, does it?"

For the moment I can't think of an answer. I close my eyes as Collette makes me promise to tell her stories from my trip, where the Daedalus expedition went, what we saw on survey. Her asking me, the Bartok, this peculiar motion, tug at my concentration, and for a frightening moment I feel myself on the precipice of my nightmare on the Daedalus, my mind's eye beginning to shape the awesome figure of a howling, whirling sun....

As I struggle for consciousness I breathe an odor of Guam, tropically rich, ripening. Guam: the drowsy questions, the limpid air. Knuth smiling at my requests for leave, not a smile of sympathy, but a smile of collusion with a pattern that will not let me go. I cannot rise past the same numbness I felt weighing on me then.

"The exact position of the thrusters?"

"No readings on any of the mag sensors, Rawley? Let's go over them one by one."

"Don't blame me, Rawley, this is a slow process. This is how it has to be."

"Let's consider analogies, Voorst. What was your personal relationship with each of the other members of the dome crew? How would you describe your feelings toward the Committee Pilot? Let's begin with them."

I feel about them as I feel about you,
runs through my mind.
Don't you ever act?

"Dead in Houston," Taylor says finally to a question about Cooper one day, his voice flat and even, his gold lighter hissing as he pauses to light his pipe. "Cached his drugs." The news of Cooper's suicide slices through my numbness like a razor through my flesh, Cooper perhaps psychotic, I believe, but suicide doesn't seem right; and Taylor had known for two days.

I can feel anxiety rising as a presence within me, my heart is pounding, and Yes, I want to say to Collette, it does matter where, I want to wake....

Then I feel her silky hand slipping across my chest, a satin sheet pulled across my midsection, her lips beginning to nibble at my thighs.

The image of the cold, howling sun, the memories of Cooper howling at Committee Pilot from Damage Control, of Guam, recede from my mind and I am transported. I smile a smile of satisfaction which Collette could only partially translate, as the last music I remember from the lull becomes, not a vivid memory, but simply present Bartok and the piercing sweetness of violins.

"Yes," I whisper, running my hand through the lush softness of her hair, "I like to touch." The tropical odor refines itself, it is hers. Gardenias are everywhere.

ITINERARY//

FIRST-CLASS PASSAGE// Prog. 2NdCoord.

DA1 WELCOME AND FLYAWAY --- I/o-0926

DA2 FLT TO OE//DTRIP//LAYOVER
_{2, 3}
bid i/f-1021

DA3 BIOS RESERVE//MOVALLEY bid i/f-1951

DA4 SYNESTHETIC HARMON//VIDEON bid i/f-cont
     SPEC

DA5 FANT CO-OP//EPICUREAN bid i/f-cont
     CONSENSUS

DA6 ARR LASVENUS//CLUB EROTICA bid i/f-0900

DA7 LAYOVER//RISK VENTURE VECT bid cont

DAS RISK FEST
_{2, 3}
//SIDEREAL CONC bid cont

DA9 UKIYOE FLYAWAY bid I/O-0623

DA10 SENS SEVEN SPEC//MOONLOOP bid i/f-cont

DA11 SINS SEVEN SPEC//VIETAHITI bid i/f-cont

DA12 AQUAPLEASE//HOLO PREP bid i/f-cont

DA13 HOLD PROG//TOTAL HOLO
₄
 bid i/f-cont

DA14 TRIP TO THE SUN bl- i/f-----

CONTINUOUS VIDEON PROGRAMMING

THE PLEASURE TUBE IS AN EXPERIENCE/INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS ARE COMMON AND PRECISE DESTINATIONS VARY//CONSULT YOUR SERVICE FOR DETAILS

2, INTERSECTION ITIN CLASS 2

3, INTERSECTION ITIN CLASS 3

4, MEDICAL CLEARANCE REQUIRED

OUR SERVICE IS PLEASURE//YOUR PLEASURE OUR SERVICE

 LIE BACK // RELAX

thePleasureTube corp.@  106codex

Light in the unit. My body slides, stretching on satin sheets, muscle pulling against muscle in an envelope of warmth—I stretch my back and a few cot-twisted vertebrae quietly pop into place, finally straightening out.

Morning light. Through the window/wall the sun is hovering on the arc of an horizon. It looks to be earth a hundred or more kilometers away. The entire window/wall holds a planet's arc in two separating horizons, dark below, bright on a line above. The sun shoots orange-yellow fans through the atmosphere—yellow-brown fans.

"Something bothered you, didn't it?"

I couldn't speak if I wanted to; a thermometer is beneath my tongue.

"You came right up through the drug again. Nightmare?"

A sequence, I think; which?
Key on a color,
Werhner says,
you remember everything.

The girl—Collette—draws a last drop of blood into a vial. I am in program for tests, final readings to establish my circadian rhythms for the trip, my own day, she tells me. Another way to say proper time.

Remember everything? Or is it a memory at all? Werhner also says that dreams are predictions. The woman frozen in space, the whirlpooling sun: these are not simple memories, they are not sequential points in a time line. My teeth grate the glass of the thermometer, my tongue slides along its side. I remember... yesterday, Collette on my thighs. And now she is wearing a light green satin robe, barefoot. I am still slightly groggy.

Collette finally slides the thermometer from my mouth and gently tugs at the tiny suction electrodes on my wrist, massages the puckered skin. "Anyway," she says, "you've got good figures so far. You're a healthy man, you have healthy appetites, you can pretty much do as you like. You're cleared for total hologram, no restrictions."

I ask her what a total hologram is, exactly. She tells me it's a holographic projection system whose image, is actual, substantial, to the user, not just an optical effect. There is a feedback connection with the user's neurology.

"I'm willing to try anything," I say. Like Werhner's water, the recliner module gives, floats with my weight. When I woke at first light, I remembered no dream, felt only the floating in space, slept again.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Collette asks, adjusting the fall of her robe at her knee.

"About... ?"

"What made your EEG go bump in the night."

She sounds like a member of the screening committee back on Guam. What I want is breakfast. "I'm fine," I tell her. "I haven't felt so well in weeks."

"Then how's your appetite for breakfast?"

I laugh at how she anticipates me. "Ravenous," I say.

A sweet juice, purplish and thick,
guava,
Collette suggests. An egg on thick bacon and a scone. The mild bite of a sauce balances the buttery slide of the egg. Melon, cheese, coffee. I ask Collette for another egg, she answers there are only so many eggs in the world, I eat scones and butter, drink glass after glass of guava juice.

Already the cabin seems familiar—perhaps because its spaces analogue starship quarters. This recliner module is set against a side wall, halfway between a dark velvet couch and the window/wall. Like a coffee table, the inlaid table which opens into an ivory-keyed computer and codex terminal sits before the couch.

The rich furnishings are washed now in the atmosphereless spacelight. On the wall opposite the window/wall the fleshy pinks of the Rubens are radiant, and the painting's stark, black frame casts a rhomboid shadow on the wall's soft, textured surface. I notice only now a subtle geometry in the dark brown rug—hexagons with shared lines. The figures are the barest tone lighter—the precise shade of the draperies—and outline a reversed dome. Ghostly, soft, optically active. Off this lounge, or living-room arrangement, the kitchen/bar behind a divider of shelving modules glows with the spun-steel finish of instrumentation and machinery. I can see Collette through the divider, holding a dish in one hand, licking a cream-colored sauce from two fingers of the other.

Werhner, I think, what are you doing? Taylor, what questions are you imagining for me now?

I almost lose myself in the bath: its ceiling and walls are mirrored, a lush green rug is on the floor, and the fixtures are cast in the shape of seashells. The sink is a giant, opening scallop, its surface iridescent, the john a tun shell with its operculum hinged. The shower water has a faint aromatic oil added to it, as rich as cinnamon but lighter. The shower head pulsates, massages as it runs, with a half-dozen different rhythms. I could spend my two weeks standing in that one spot.

Collette is laughing at a chart she is showing me:

MEDEX// CODEX292VOORST// CIRCADIAN RHYTHM

INTERNAL DESYNCH= -2.7