Beyond Apollo Barry N. Malzberg

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.I don’t even know how I got involved with you; I hate spacemen.You won’t leave, will you?”“Why not?” I say.I am twenty-five years old and somewhat reckless; also, the feeling of her breasts palpitating slowly under my hands, just the suggestion of a nipple, excites me.“Why not?”“I’m not saying I will or won’t marry you unless you get out, but I wouldn’t be happy.Not really.”“I could get out.”“I wouldn’t force you to leave, but I’d make you miserable; I couldn’t help that.Don’t go any further; I can’t stand it.Don’t excite me.”“No,” I murmur, “I won’t excite you, won’t excite you,” and draw her against me, put my lips into her neck, teeth into her neck, teeth leaving gentle marks all around her, and closing my eyes, falling against her feel the sounds of her body overtaking me; her body sounds like the inside of a capsule, the wicker of her blood the sound of motors, and perversely aroused I go further and further with her, careless of intention finger her unresisting cunt until she is moist, and then just at the point of captivity hear her say with enormous detachment, “Harry, if you marry me, it will never work out.We don’t believe in the same things, not at all, but if you want to get married, I will,” and I do not know what seizes me first, the emotion of knowing we are affianced or the flower of my coming, but I am taken by an orgasm right then and hold her helplessly, whimpering, sealing our engagement with a groan as one absent spotlight from the project sweeps past us and cutting through the grass turns to show us the hard shadows of the town as it lies below, receptive.Go to ContentsChapter 20“This will not work,” a fat nervous man says to me, tapping a pencil on his desk.He sits behind a nameplate indicating that his name is Claude Forrest and that he is a doctor of medicine, clinical neurology.“It is not working at all.” He shakes his head, then spits into a wastebasket beside him.“If I didn’t understand the syndrome so well I’d say that you were being perverse.I’d say that you were faking it! Faking it, do you hear me!” he shouts, half-rising from his seat and then sitting just as quickly, shaking his head.“But you’re not, are you?”“No,” I say.I want to be cooperative with Claude Forrest, clinical neurology, just as I have tried to cooperate with all of the institutional personnel.They are only doing their jobs and I owe them courtesy and restraint.Occasionally they will do stupid things like introducing me to my wife and I will lose my temper, but this is really not my fault and most of the time I try to be reasonable.“Of course not.”“You’re so calm,” Claude Forrest says.” So calm.Deadly, implacable—” He stops, takes out a handkerchief, wipes his forehead.“Excuse me,” he says.“We’re all under consummate strain here.Caused to no small degree by you.”“I’m sorry.”“Do you realize that hundreds of people, this entire facility, have been mobilized for you? Hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent to give you the best of care, and in return—”“I’m truly appreciative,” I say.I mean this.I have nothing against the institution; the program has always tried to take care of its own.“You know that.”“What happened?” he says.“Tell me, what happened?”“What happened where?” I ask mildly, inquiring, curious.“I don’t understand what you mean.”“What happened on the ship ?” Forrest puts the handkerchief away, leans toward me.“This can’t go on indefinitely, you know,” he points out.“We’re going to have to take drastic action.We have as much respect for you as anybody could, but we have to get at the information and we know you have it.It’s buried somewhere in that disassociated skull of yours and if you won’t yield it routinely, we’re going to have to go in and get it, no matter what the cost.Re-enactment therapy has its points and I’ve been very much in favor of it, but if we have to implode—”“But you don’t have to do that,” I say.“There’s no need for you to threaten me; I’m perfectly willing to tell you exactly what happened.The Captain and I had a disagreement just as we were settling into orbit and I murdered him.He wanted to skip the telecast because he thought that we should concentrate upon the experiments, and I felt that the telecast was very important and that we owed the world this reassurance.I tried to reason with him, but he became stubborn and pulled his rank on me.Then he said that he had never cared for me anyway and he was going to throw acid in my face.Somewhere he had secreted a vial, which he took from one of the bulkheads and showed me.I became terribly frightened and he started to make gestures as if he would toss it in my face.Pleading with him to stop, to no avail, I took a wrench from one of the cabinets and raised it to show him that I had a weapon; he lost his temper entirely and lunged toward me.I struck him heavily on the temple and he fell in his tracks, the acid spilling harmlessly on the shielding, where it caused almost imperceptible damage.Instantly I became frightened because I felt the fact I had killed him in self-defense might not seem credible, and in any event, all of this would be horribly embarrassing to the program.I entirely lost my calm.Clumsily picking him up, I managed to put him into an evacuation chamber and then discharged him with enough force to hurl him free of the Venus orbit and directly toward the sun.He fell into the sun.That is exactly the way it happened and I hope that I’ve settled the matter.”“I can’t stand it,” Forrest says, leaning back in the chair, looking up at the ceiling.“I realize my obligations and from the professional point of view I understand the situation, but—”“I’m truly sorry,” I say.“I see that I can’t mislead you any more and it was my mistake.I should have realized that the monitors did not cut out until much later; therefore you have reviewed the tapes and see that I’m lying to you.So I won’t try to protect the Captain or the program any more and I’m now willing to tell you the final facts of the matter.The Captain made an unspeakable sexual attack upon me.The rays in space or the pressure of the voyage must have unsettled his mind, and he said that he had always had homosexual impulses and by God now he was going to act on them; if you couldn’t do what you wanted to do thirty million miles from earth, when were you going to get to do it? He came toward me and I was so stunned that I just sat there frozen.Just as he came toward me the excitement must have become too much for him: his face suffused and he lost his balance; he fell to his knees and just then the ship pitched in orbit and he rolled straight into the open evacuation capsule, which was filled with fecal wastes that we had been about to discharge, and the pressure of his rolling body pushed him and the capsule out into space, the door closing behind him.I was terribly shocked, of course, but did what I could to repair the situation.I closed the exit hatch and canceled the transmissions; I studied the machinery carefully so that I would be able to give the launch signals and counterbalance my weight in such a way that the path of the return voyage would be smooth.Up until now I have concealed the truth from you because I have been ashamed; have felt emotions that I could never, until this moment, have admitted.“I have always had homosexual impulses too.I was no different from the Captain [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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