2001_ A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke [84]
Then he walked quickly back into the kitchen and began to inspect the “cereal” box at closer quarters.
The blue bread pudding had a faint, spicy smell, something like a macaroon. Bowman weighed it in his hand, then broke off a piece and cautiously sniffed at it. Though he felt sure now that there would be no deliberate attempt to poison him, there was always the possibility of mistakes — especially in a matter so complex as biochemistry.
He nibbled at a few crumbs, then chewed and swallowed the fragment of food; it was excellent, though the flavor was so elusive as to be almost indescribable. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine it was meat, or wholemeal bread, or even dried fruit. Unless there were unexpected aftereffects, he had no cause to fear starvation.
When he had eaten just a few mouthfuls of the substance, and already felt quite satisfied, he looked for something to drink. There were half a dozen cans of beer — again of a famous brand — at the back of the refrigerator, and he pressed the tab on one of them to open it.
The prestressed metal lid popped off along its strain lines, exactly as usual. But the can did not contain beer; to Bowman’s surprised disappointment, it held more of the blue food.
In a few seconds he had opened half a dozen of the other packages and cans. Whatever their labels, their contents were the same; it seemed that his diet was going to be a little monotonous, and that he would have nothing but water to drink. He filled a glass from the kitchen faucet and sipped at it cautiously.
He spat out the first few drops at once; the taste was terrible. Then, rather ashamed of his instinctive reaction, he forced himself to drink the rest.
That first sip had been enough to identify the liquid. It tasted terrible because it had no taste at all; the faucet was supplying pure, distilled water. His unknown hosts were obviously taking no chances with his health.
Feeling much refreshed, he then had a quick shower. There was no soap, which was another minor inconvenience, but there was a very efficient hot-air drier in which be luxuriated for a while before trying on underpants, vest, and dressing gown from the clothes closet. After that, he lay down on the bed, stared up at the ceiling, and tried to make sense of this fantastic situation.
He had made little progress when he was distracted by another line of thought. Immediately above the bed was the usual hotel-type ceiling TV screen; he had assumed that, like the telephone and books, it was a dummy.
But the control unit on its swinging bedside arm looked so realistic that he could not resist playing with it; and as his fingers touched the ON sensor disk, the screen lit up.
Feverishly, he started to tap out channel selector codes at random, and almost at once he got his first picture.
It was a well-known African news commentator, discussing the attempts being made to preserve the last remnants of his country’s wild life. Bowman listened for a few seconds, so captivated by the sound of a human voice that he did not in the least care what it was talking about. Then he changed channels.
In the next five minutes, he got a symphony orchestra playing Walton’s Violin Concerto, a discussion on the sad state of the legitimate theater, a western, a demonstration of a new headache cure, a panel game in some Oriental language, a psychodrama, three news commentaries, a football game, a lecture on solid geometry (in Russian), and several tuning signals and data transmissions. It was, in fact, a perfectly normal selection from the world’s TV programs, and apart from the psychological uplift it gave him, it confirmed one suspicion that had already been forming in his mind.
All the programs were about two years old. That was around the time TMA-1 had been discovered, and it was hard to believe that this was a pure coincidence.