Watson, Ian - SSC (24 page)

 
          
She
remembered so clearly the surprise of that first cathexis with Earth across the
light-years, in company with Habib . . .

 
          
Every
Navy man had the right and
duty
to
cathect with Earth through the ship’s telemedium. At the other end of the link
would be a home-based telemedium ridden by one of Bu- Psych-Sec’s professional
“Mermaids”: forging what the Reichian-Tantric adepts of Bu-Psych- Sec liked to
refer to as “libidinal cathexis” with Someone Back Home, therefore with Mother
Earth herself.

 
          
The
energies of the libido, bottled-up deliberately by sex depressive drugs until
the time of trance, were unleashed upon the responsive nervous system of the
medium in a copulation that was both physical and transmental. The energy that
ejaculated thought impulses across the light-years, through a symbolic
landscape of the medium’s own devising, had been called different things at different
times in history. In the twentieth century Wilhelm Reich named it Or- gone
Radiation. The Tantric sexual philosophers of Old India called it, more
picturesquely, the Snake of Kundalini.

 
          
Reich
had built crude machines to harness and condense this sexual energy that he
believed permeated space. The Tantrics used yogic asanas to twist the body into
new, prolonged forms of intercourse; they used the Om chant to make the nervous
system a hypersensitive sounding board; and hypnotized themselves with yantra
diagrams to send this energy soaring out of the copulating body through the
roof of the skull toward the stars—toward some subjective cosmic immensity, at
least.

 
          
Bu-Psych-Sec
had rationalized and blended Reichian therapy with the Tantric art of love and
yantra meditation. In its crash course for sensitizing the potential
telemediums, much of this learning was force-fed hypnotically in deep sleeps
from which the medium woke, haunted by erotic cosmic ghosts, to days of pep
talks on such topics as “The Spaceman’s Psychological Problems” and “The Need
for Cultural Unity in an Age of Translight.” Yet there could be no live test
runs of the contact techniques till a novice was on his or her way,
light-months from Earth with a supervisor medium, able to draw on the
repressed sexuality of the crew to reach out to another medium at
Bu-Psych-Sec, Annapolis. And every single trance-trip had to figure
economically in terms of vital Navy information transmitted. Each crew member
riding a medium was subliminally primed with data that the mermaid at the other
end received the imprint of, to be retrieved by the drug Deepsee. The
Annapolis
data banks were thus constantly updated;
and the data copied to other banks hidden deep in the
Rocky Mountains
. Earth’s Navy was not a string of ships,
but an integrated nervous system spread out over thousands of cubic
light-years.

 
          
Yet
the doctrines of Reich and Tantra would have been nothing without the
development of the trance drug 2-4-Psilo-C. It was an unforeseen spin-off from
Bu-Psych-Sec’s routine work on psychedelic gases for military and civil
policing.

 
          
The
two crew members who were going to ride Habib and Mara’s bodies for the first
liberty of the voyage stood twiddling their thumbs with sheepish sleazy grins
on their faces, their anticipation of pleasure somewhat muted by the
supercilious, sophisticatedly brutal aura of Lew Boyd and his assistant.

 
          
The
previous Bu-Psych-Sec officer had been more of a therapist in the Masters and
Johnson line, with less of the policeman about him. This man Boyd knew his
Reich and Tantra inside out, but he carried the stamp of a trouble-shooter from
the moment he joined the ship, along with that enigmatic bitch Liz Nielstrom.
What kind of relationship had they had been involved in before? Their degree
of mental complicity indicated more than a mere working relationship. Yet they
didn’t seem to have been lovers in the ordinary sense. Rather, they appeared
bound together by the cruel magic of their roles, this ugly woman and this smart
cop, in a mutual indifference to sex itself except as an instrument of power.
Sternly they reveled in the dialectic of the twin faces of authority, the
repressive and permissive, gaining their private accord from the games they
could play with this psychosexual coin. For them, the galaxy was a gaming table
they could amuse themselves at, with the induced Tantric orgasms of others for
chips. Professional croupiers of the cosmic naval brothel they were, dedicated
to seeing that the Bureau always won, and hunting endlessly for cheats. (But
who could possibly cheat?
And how?)

 
          
There
were two couches with encephalographic commune helmets at one end; these
helmets swivelled to accept a prone or supine posture. . .

 
          
“You
can get stripped, the four of you,” Liz Nielstrom told them, glancing at her
watch. “Earth’s standing by.”

 
          
One
of the sailors shuffled about on his feet.

 
          
“Excuse
me, ma’am, but who’s riding the girl; do I get to ride her? I hear it’s her
first time out,” he pleaded.

 
          
“It
must be your first time too,” Nielstrom responded sarcastically.
“Since it makes not the least difference to you whether you’re
riding male or female.”

 
         
 
“It’s just the idea of it,” the
sailor mumbled. “So as I’ll Imow afterwards—”

 
          
“Think
what you like then, sailor. Believe it’s her, not him, for all I care. But your
request’s out of order, and denied.”

 
          
It
was true that it made no difference . . .

 
          
Habib
slipped off his haik and aba, and stretched out his slim knotty Bedouin body
prone on the couch while Nielstrom was busy injecting the two naked sailors in
their upper arms. They soon lolled upright in a stupor, awaiting the “Simple
Simon Says” command.

 
          
Turning
to Mara, she gestured the naked girl to take up a supine position on the other
couch, where Boyd maneuvered her head carefully into the commune helmet as he
had already done for Habib. He pricked her arm with the injection of
2-4-Psilo-C. While Nielstrom carried out her ointmenting of Mara’s shaven sex,
the light sensation of the other woman’s fingers was already slipping away. In
the dark of the helmet Mara concentrated her attention on the meditation pattern
of the shri yantra diagram. This was an interweaving of upward-pointing and
downwardpointing triangles, unfolding from around a central nub. The
downward-pointing triangles were female; the upward, male. The central dot was
the stored energy, compact in a bud.

 
          
Remotely,
she heard Boyd give the command—his words slowed down and booming dully, like
a tape played at the wrong speed.

 
          
“Simple
Simon
says,
make love to Habib, Mr. Monterola! Simple
Simon
says,
make love to Mara, Mr. Nagorski!”

 
          
(But
it was Monterola who had wanted her.)

 
          
Libidinal
cathexis started. Time drew further out for her. Distantly, she felt her
central bud opening slowly to the man Nagorski’s slow thrust. A clammy smell of
sweat and the heavy pressure of a body on top of hers receded utterly from her
awareness. The yantra opened up hugely, to reveal a vision of symbolic grace
through that sexual eye embedded in its heart.

 
          
The
vision was a beautiful, wonderful thing; something that preliminary training at
Bu- Psych-Sec and all the jokes on shipboard had never hinted at . . .

 
          
There
was a world of magic and beauty, after all. The dreams she’d dreamed as a girl
were realities—but secret, hidden realities.

 
          
As
the drug increased its effect, and Nagorski thrust into her, her sensitivity
spread outward: the starship dissolved, her body dissolved, and her mind became
a shining mirror seeking for mental images of reflect out there. She was conscious
of the nearby presence of Habib; the sense of him varied between shining light
and robed, hooded figure whose robes were like sails, like wings. She began to
pick up speed together with him, till they were skimming over dunes and dimes
of empty golden desert, hunting for the oasis of Earth.

 
          
“Beware
of mirages,’’ his mind whispered to hers. “Beware of pools that seek to reflect
yourself—pools of illusion that would lock you up in their waters. You have to
seek the far-off mirror that bears the imprint of another mind within it, like
the hallmark on a piece of silver. That’s the telecontact you must seek.”

 
          
He
was no dirty-fingered, runny-nosed urchin
now,
he was
the desert hunter, the bird that flies to
Mecca
, the prophet in the wilderness.

 
          
It
wasn’t so far to Earth, that first cathexis: a half light-year or so. Oasis
Earth was still nearby.

 
          
The
flow of her sensitivity streamed above the empty, thirsty dunes, clutching at
Habib’s hem. Soon she was flowing into the crowded Oasis where so many streams
mixed together, aiming at the tent where Habib beckoned her. Habib held the
tent-flap aside for her and they skimmed inside.

 
          
The
telecontact was a clear pool within the tent; a mirror with the hazy image of
the shri yantra floating in it. The two mirrors came together, becoming
screens for other minds to use.

 
          
The
yantra image dissolved: it was no more than a call-sign. There was a time of
calm and silence and clarity.

 
          
The
telemedium was the mirror itself, not the image in the mirror; was the white
wall, on which puppet shadows briefly danced and postured and copulated; was
the vase of wine for others to get drunk at—but the vase itself doesn’t get
drunk; was the drum-skin—but not the sticky fingers tapping a rhythm out on to it
to set the player’s nerves on fire . . .

 
          
Mara
found herself whispering words to Habib: one slave whispering to another. The
words she whispered were poetry.

 
          
There
stood upon auction blocks
In
the market of
Isfahan
A thousand and one bodies A thousand and
one souls . . .

           
The souls were like women
The
bodies were like men . . .

           
Habib, his clear mirror pressed
tight to the mirror of his telecontact beside her in the tent, heard. He
asked:

 
          
“What
are those words, Mara?”

 
          
“He
was a poet in my own country,
Sweden
/’ she thought. “But he never lived in his
own country, inside his mind. He lived in the East—in your East, Habib. He
sang about the desert of the soul before it became real for a starcruising
world.”

 
          
“What
was this man’s name?” A hint of sincere curiosity reverberated in the question.

 
          
“Gunnar
Ekelof. He lived in the twentieth century—but inside his mind he lived in
another time. Thank you, Habib, for showing me this desert. I understand his
poems now ...”

 
          
Then
the mirrors were flying apart. Wind rushed out of the torn drum. They were both
back in the desert outside the tent again, forced to fly home to their bodies.
The sailors had climaxed. Their energy was vented.
Their own
commune helmets were switching the experience off. Time was up.

 
          
Mara
and Habib flew back across the desert of golden dunes to the lonely, isolated
caravan of the
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
—a
single camel plodding far out on the sand of stars . . .

 
          
As
Mara woke up on the couch, the two sailors were already exiting from the trance
room, grinning sheepishly. Spurning her tenderness, Habib was his dirty urchin
self again.