The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [133]
We were already holding one another loosely, so it didn’t require any acrobatics to hold one another more tightly, but neither of us could have expected that there was anything to be gained by clinging to one another — except, perhaps, that we would die together.
It would have been the ideal moment to have come out with some stylishly witty last words, but I couldn’t think of any. In any case, there wouldn’t have been time to whisper more than a couple in Christine’s ear before our fragile heads hit something horribly solid.
Part Three
Babes in the Wilderness
Thirty-Four
An Untrustworthy Interlude
When I regained consciousness, or imagined I did, my head was hurting like hell and there was a terrible stench in my nostrils. I tried with all my might to lose consciousness again, but I couldn’t do it.
The pain was very insistent, but its force was not quite sufficient to convince me that what I was experiencing was real. There was a frankly paradoxical sense in which the pain I felt was both mine and not mine, which translated itself into a sharp awareness that my personality had been split in two, creating a me that was somehow not me. I had a vague memory of having felt not quite myself many times before, but this was something else entirely.
The “me” that was “not me” — although “I” embraced both of them — seemed to be suspended in an upright position, supported under the arms and in the crotch. I seemed to weigh at least as much as I had for all but the tiniest fraction of my experienced life.
When I opened my eyes my head seemed to be trapped in something like a goldfish bowl, whose curved wall was by no means optically perfect — not that there was much to see beyond it, except for more not-very-transparent clear plastic walls.
It occurred to me that if ever there was a good time to be someone else entirely this was probably it, but the thing that was not me continued to defy all conceivable logic by continuing simultaneously to be me.
I tried to move, but I couldn’t. There was a strange redoubling of the sense of helplessness generated by this failure, as if the impotence in question were strangely and impossibly multilayered.
I tried to murmur a curse, and almost succeeded — but even the success seemed weirdly coincidental, as if the effort and the achievement were disconnected.
After trying to take more careful note of my surroundings I decided that I must be inside an old-fashioned spacesuit: a very old-fashioned spacesuit, antique even by the meagre standards of Charity. I also decided that my skull must be fractured, because the only bit of my head that wasn’t hurting was my nose, which seemed to be both broken and unbroken, but was in either case quite numb.
The stink inside the spacesuit was horribly reminiscent of rotting flesh; I hoped that it really was the suit that was stinking and not me — or, to be strictly accurate, not “not me.”
“Madoc?” whispered a voice in my ear. “Are you awake, Madoc?”
The voice was strangely familiar, although it was slightly distorted by the telephone link. I knew I’d heard it before, and often, but I couldn’t put a name to it, partly because some mysterious instinct was telling me that its presence in my nightmare was not merely impossible but somehow insulting.
“Madoc?” the voice repeated. “Can you hear me? It’s Damon, Madoc. Just give me a sign.”
Damon! I understood, suddenly, why this supposed experience was impossible, and insulting. Or was it? Was this my real awakening? Was this the way things had always been, and always would be?
No, I decided, while knowing perfectly well that it was not a matter for decision. It couldn’t be real. This had to be a dream of some kind: a Virtual Experience.
“Damon?” I croaked. That surprised me, because I hadn’t formed any conscious intention to say the name aloud. I hadn’t expected the not me part of me to be able to speak at all — but when it did, I had to wonder whether it was the me part of me that might be a mute prisoner in alien flesh.
“Madoc! Thank God. They got to you, Madoc.