Tau Zero

“You’re drunk.”

“Sort of.” Wistfully: “You should’ve come along.”

“What for? Why not confess how weary I am of the same faces, the same actions, the same inane conversations? I’m far from unique in that.”

Her voice dropped. “Are you tired of me?”

“Why—” Nilsson’s Kewpie-doll form clambered erect. “What’s the matter, my dear?”

“You haven’t exactly bowled me over with attention, these past months.”

“No? No, perhaps not.” He drummed a dresser top. “I’ve been preoccupied.”

She drew a breath. “I’ll say it straight. I was with Joha

“Frewald? The machinist?” Nilsson stood speechless for a humming minute. She waited. Soberness had come upon her. He said at length, with difficulty, watching the tattoo of his fingers: “Well, you have the legal and doubtless the moral right. I am no handsome young animal. I am … was … more proud and happy than I knew how to express when you agreed to be my partner. I let you teach me a number of things I did not understand before. Probably I was not the most adept pupil anyone ever had.”

“Oh, Elof!”

“You are leaving me, aren’t you?”

“We’re in love, he and I.” Her vision blurred. “I thought it’d be easier than this to tell you. I didn’t figure you cared a lot.”

“You wouldn’t consider a discreet — No, discretion isn’t feasible. Besides, you couldn’t bring yourself to it. And I have my own pride.” Nilsson sat down again and reached for his snuffbox. “You had better go. You can remove your things later.”

“That quick?”

“Get out!” he shrieked.

She fled, weeping but on eager feet.

Leonora Christine re-entered populated country. Passing within fifty light-years of a giant new-born sun, she transited the gas envelope that surrounded it. Being ionized, the atoms were seizable with maximum efficiency. Her tau plummeted close to asymptotic zero: and with it, her time rate.

Chapter 12

Reymont paused at the entrance to commons. The deck lay empty and quiet. After an initial surge of interest, athletics and other hobbies had become increasingly less popular. Aside from meals, the tendency was for scientists and crew-folk to form minute cliques or retreat altogether into reading, watching taped shows, sleeping as much as possible. He could force them to get a prescribed amount of exercise. But he had not found a way to restore what the months were grinding out of the spirit. He was the more helpless in that respect because his inflexible enforcement of basic rules had made him enemies.

A propos rules — He strode down the corridor to the dream room and opened its door. A light above each of the three boxes within said it was occupied. He fished a master key from his pocket and unlocked the lids, which passed air but not light, one by one. Two he closed again. At the third, he swore. The stretched-out body, the face under the somnohelmet, belonged to Emma Glassgold.

For a space he stood looking down at the small woman. Peace dwelt in her smile. Doubtless she, like most aboard, owed her continued sanity to this apparatus. Despite every effort at decoration, at actual interior construction of desired facilities, the ship was too sterile an environment. Total sensory deprivation quickly causes the human mind to lose its hold on reality. Deprived of the data-flow with which it is meant to deal, the brain spews forth hallucinations, goes irrational, and finally collapses into lunacy. The effects of prolonged sensory impoverishment are slower, subtler, but in many ways more destructive. Direct electronic stimulation of the appropriate encephalic centers becomes necessary. That is speaking in neurological terms. In terms of immediate emotion, the extraordinarily intense and lengthy dreams generated by the stimulus — whether pleasurable or not — become a substitute for real experience.

Nevertheless…

Glassgold’s skin was loose and unhealthy in hue. The EEG screen behind the helmet said she was in a soothed condition. That meant she could be roused fast without danger. Reymont snapped down the override switch on the timer. The oscilloscopic trace of the inductive pulses that had been going through her head flattened and darkened.

She stirred. “Shalom, Moshe,” he heard her whisper. There was nobody along of that name. He slid the helmet off. She squeezed her eyes tighter shut, knuckled them, and tried to turn around on the padding.

“Wake up.” Reymont gave her a shake.

She blinked at him. The breath snapped into her. She sat straight. He could almost see the dream fade away behind those eyes. “Come on,” he said, offering his hand to assist. “Out of that damned coffin.”

“Ach, no, no,” she slurred. “I was with Moshe.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

She crumpled into sobbing. Reymont slapped the box, a crack across the ship’s murmur. “All right,” he said. “I’ll make that a direct order. Out! And report to Dr. Latvala.”

“What the devil’s going on here?”

Reymont turned. Norbert Williams must have heard them, the door being ajar, and come in from the pool, because the chemist was nude and wet. He was also furious. “You’ve gotten to bullying women, huh?” he said. “Not even big women. Scram.”

Reymont stood where he was. “We have regulations about these boxes,” he said. “If a person hasn’t the self-discipline to obey them, I have to compel.”

“Yah! Snooping, peering, shoving your nose up our privacy — by God, I’m not going to stand for it any longer!”

“Don’t,” Glassgold implored. “Don’t fight. I’m sorry. I will go.”

“Like hell you will,” the American answered, “Stay. Insist on your rights.” His features burned crimson. “I’ve had a bellyful of this little tin Jesus, and now’s the time to do something about him.”

Reymont said, spacing his words: “The regulation limiting use wasn’t written for fun, Dr. Williams. Too much is worse than none. It becomes addictive. The end result is insanity.”

“Listen.” The chemist made an obvious effort to curb his wrath. “People aren’t identical. You may think we can be stretched and trimmed to fit your pattern — you and your dragooning us into calisthenics, your arranging work details that a baby could see aren’t for anything except to keep us busy a few hours a day, your smashing the still that Pedro Barrios built — your whole petty dictatorship, ever since we veered off on this Flying Dutchman chase—” He lowered his volume. “Listen,” he said. “Those regulations. Like here. They’re written to make sure nobody gets an overdose. Of course. But how do you know that some of us are getting enough? We’ve all got to spend time in the boxes. You too, Constable Iron Man. You too.”

“Certainly—” Reymont was interrupted:

“How can you tell how much another guy may need? You don’t have the sensitivity God gave a cockroach. Do you know one mucking thing about Emma? I do. I know she’s a fine, courageous woman … perfectly well able to judge her own necessities and guide herself … she doesn’t need you to run her life for her.” Williams pointed. “There’s the door. Use it.”

“Norbert, don’t.” Glassgold climbed from the casket and tried to go between the men. Reymont eased her aside and answered Williams:

“If exceptions are to be made, the ship’s physician is the person to determine them. Not you. She has to see Dr. Latvala anyway, after this. She can ask him for a medical authorization.”

“I know how far she’ll get with him. That louse won’t even issue tranquilizers.”

“We’ve years ahead of us. Unforeseeable troubles to outlive. If we start getting dependent on pacifiers—”

“Did you ever think without some such help, we’ll go crazy and die? We’ll decide for ourselves, thank you. Get out, I said!”

Glassgold sought again to intervene. Reymont had to seize her by the arms to move her.