Read Online Fremder by Russell Hoban - Free Book Online
Authors: Russell Hoban
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and I came to the lounge at the end of the first week he was playing ‘Where or When’ and talking a throwaway vocal in the Sun Ra manner:
Some things that happen for the first time,
Seem to be happening again.
‘Maybe there’s no such thing as a first time for anything,’ saidCaroline. ‘Maybe the same things keep happening over and over.’ Her voice was lower than usual and she wasn’t looking at me. Flim and his piano continued to suggest that we had met before and laughed before and loved before but who knew where or when? 24 HRS – FREIGHTERS YES, said Mikhail’s Snackdome silently.
I’ve mentioned before this the little tribunal of the dusk. There’s no dusk at Hubble Straits but the little tribunal were sitting anyhow, this time as twelve eagle owls, each on a child’s coffin. Please, I said to the mind that had spoken to me of the everything-fear and the all-terror, tell me how to be.
To my inner eye came white mist on the ancient waters of time’s beginning but there were no words as the Snackdome came round again.
‘Freighters yes,’ said Caroline. ‘Everybody’s carrying some kind of a load.’ I let that lie there. She held up her empty glass and I signalled the waiter to bring two more of the same.
‘One more river to cross,’ said Caroline as she looked into her fresh gin-and-tonic.
I didn’t ask her what she meant. We had several more of the same; the bright circles of emptiness in my vision spangled into soft focus and the effect was not unpleasant.
‘Maybe this will get us to Level 5,’ she said. ‘Level 4 certainly hasn’t amounted to much.’
My head was singing:
PACK UP ALL MY CARE AND WOE,
HERE I GO, SINGING LOW,
BYE BYE BLACKBIRD.
‘Coward,’ said Caroline.
‘That’s your professional opinion, is it?’
‘Yes, it is: I’ve given you four openings and you’re afraid to get into it with me.’
‘Into what?’
‘You know very well what – you’ve stonewalled the one-on-ones and somehow you’ve managed to jam the RE runs and the hypno sessions. We’re seven days into the Level 4 and I haven’t got diddly-poo to show for it.’
‘I’m sorry if I’m making you look bad with the Sheela-Na-Gig but there are things I just can’t remember.’
‘You’re not sorry. When it’s ooh-ooh time you’re out of your pants like greased lightning but when it’s Level 4 time you zip your mouth shut and you don’t care how it makes me look.’
‘Oh, I see. This is the first time that you’ve made it absolutely clear that this was a sex-for-answers deal. And for a little while I thought it was my desperation pheromones that were lighting your fire.’
‘Goddam it, Frem, give me a break, will you? What I said about you and me was true but I
have
got a job to do.’
‘And we both know what your priorities are, don’t we.’
‘That’s not fair – I haven’t been trading sex for answers but you’ve been using me while giving nothing.’
‘Giving nothing! I’ve been giving you whatever I am, and what I mostly am is desperation – I thought that’s what you liked.’
We went on like that for a while and the evening came to an end early. The remaining two weeks were strictly business and not very productive from Caroline’s point of view – I wasn’t giving her the answers she wanted and even elephant-sized shots of Epiphanol couldn’t get them out of me.
At the end of the Level 4 there was a DSC Board of Enquiry and the finding of the suits and uniforms was that no action was to be taken pending further investigation and a Pythia session back on Earth. The Level 4 material, such as it was, had been sent to the Ziggurat for processing. When my orders came through, Caroline, who’d been hoping to go Earthside for thenext stage of things, didn’t get that assignment.
‘You can see how impressed they were with my work,’ she said. ‘I’m lucky they didn’t bust me to emptying bedpans.’
On my last night at Hubble Straits we went to the
Some things that happen for the first time,
Seem to be happening again.
‘Maybe there’s no such thing as a first time for anything,’ saidCaroline. ‘Maybe the same things keep happening over and over.’ Her voice was lower than usual and she wasn’t looking at me. Flim and his piano continued to suggest that we had met before and laughed before and loved before but who knew where or when? 24 HRS – FREIGHTERS YES, said Mikhail’s Snackdome silently.
I’ve mentioned before this the little tribunal of the dusk. There’s no dusk at Hubble Straits but the little tribunal were sitting anyhow, this time as twelve eagle owls, each on a child’s coffin. Please, I said to the mind that had spoken to me of the everything-fear and the all-terror, tell me how to be.
To my inner eye came white mist on the ancient waters of time’s beginning but there were no words as the Snackdome came round again.
‘Freighters yes,’ said Caroline. ‘Everybody’s carrying some kind of a load.’ I let that lie there. She held up her empty glass and I signalled the waiter to bring two more of the same.
‘One more river to cross,’ said Caroline as she looked into her fresh gin-and-tonic.
I didn’t ask her what she meant. We had several more of the same; the bright circles of emptiness in my vision spangled into soft focus and the effect was not unpleasant.
‘Maybe this will get us to Level 5,’ she said. ‘Level 4 certainly hasn’t amounted to much.’
My head was singing:
PACK UP ALL MY CARE AND WOE,
HERE I GO, SINGING LOW,
BYE BYE BLACKBIRD.
‘Coward,’ said Caroline.
‘That’s your professional opinion, is it?’
‘Yes, it is: I’ve given you four openings and you’re afraid to get into it with me.’
‘Into what?’
‘You know very well what – you’ve stonewalled the one-on-ones and somehow you’ve managed to jam the RE runs and the hypno sessions. We’re seven days into the Level 4 and I haven’t got diddly-poo to show for it.’
‘I’m sorry if I’m making you look bad with the Sheela-Na-Gig but there are things I just can’t remember.’
‘You’re not sorry. When it’s ooh-ooh time you’re out of your pants like greased lightning but when it’s Level 4 time you zip your mouth shut and you don’t care how it makes me look.’
‘Oh, I see. This is the first time that you’ve made it absolutely clear that this was a sex-for-answers deal. And for a little while I thought it was my desperation pheromones that were lighting your fire.’
‘Goddam it, Frem, give me a break, will you? What I said about you and me was true but I
have
got a job to do.’
‘And we both know what your priorities are, don’t we.’
‘That’s not fair – I haven’t been trading sex for answers but you’ve been using me while giving nothing.’
‘Giving nothing! I’ve been giving you whatever I am, and what I mostly am is desperation – I thought that’s what you liked.’
We went on like that for a while and the evening came to an end early. The remaining two weeks were strictly business and not very productive from Caroline’s point of view – I wasn’t giving her the answers she wanted and even elephant-sized shots of Epiphanol couldn’t get them out of me.
At the end of the Level 4 there was a DSC Board of Enquiry and the finding of the suits and uniforms was that no action was to be taken pending further investigation and a Pythia session back on Earth. The Level 4 material, such as it was, had been sent to the Ziggurat for processing. When my orders came through, Caroline, who’d been hoping to go Earthside for thenext stage of things, didn’t get that assignment.
‘You can see how impressed they were with my work,’ she said. ‘I’m lucky they didn’t bust me to emptying bedpans.’
On my last night at Hubble Straits we went to the
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