Read Online The Balloonist by MacDonald Harris - Free Book Online Page B

sheepishness, suspecting now that both his legs are being pulled in different ways and feeling that it is hardly fair ganging up on a fellow in this way.
    â€œD’you knowwhat I think, Theodor? I think the Major’s paradoxes of Zeno are catching. You’re as big a wag as he is. I would never have suspected it of you. I thought you were a more serious young fellow.”
    Waldemer’s American and pragmatic head is screwed squarely on his shoulders. Now that he has caught the expressions on our faces, he isn’t going to buy either of these theories. He grins a little himself. Actually, of course, the spiral isn’t a paradox of Zeno but a chimaera, a mythical beast existing only in the world of abstract mathematics. This wind if it continues to blow will bring us to somewhere in the neighborhood of Wrangel Island on the eastern coast of Siberia, an unattractive itinerary. But I know too that the cyclonic system to the east will very likely deepen and pass south of us, so that in a day or two this deflection in our course will be self-correcting. Still, I will leave Waldemer to wrestle in his mind with the spiral, even if he suspects—knows now—that it is only a joke. I have to confess that another of my vices (the first one is thinking) is that I am not candid by nature. In order for me to feel quite myself there must be something in me that I have not confided to my fellow human beings, even one I am as fond of as I am of Waldemer. For my
self
, to me, is simply—what I know and the others do not. Waldemer is afraid that if he can’t see himself in a mirror he will cease to exist, and I fear that if I tell all I know, I will cease to exist. I am aware of course that such a stance is petty and insincere, and also leaves me open to a charge of being unscientific. For a scientist—is he not?—is one who seeks selflessly for the truth in order to share it with his fellow men. If you discover secrets in your alembics and don’t publish them in the accepted journals, instead hug them to yourself and use them to carry out the schemes of your private will, then you are not a scientist but a sorcerer. Give us the truth! they clamour, like children pestering for candy. Well, probably they are happier without it. And what would they do with it if I shared it with them, this poetic and intoxicating thing I have discovered? Make a toy out of it, or a weapon.
    My two companions, at least, are content to leave these mysteries of the ether to me. “The wind may change tomorrow; if not we may decide to do something about it.” Waldemer nods, Theodor silently studies the penciled sworl I have drawn on the chart. It is getting somewhat colder now. The thermometer on the instrument ring reads minus four degrees centigrade. Perhaps this is due to our altitude, perhaps to the disturbance approaching from the east.I put up the hood of my reindeer-skin coat and remove my arms from its sleeves, hugging them over my chest. The coat is roomy enough that, taking out the arms in this way, it is possible to turn around inside it as though it were a small tent. Waldemer has pulled down the flaps of his hunting cap and buttoned them under his chin. I can see that he is cold but resolved to say nothing about it even if his nose and ears fall off. The end of this first organ has already turned a faint violet, the colour of the wax used to seal hermetic instruments in laboratories. Theodor is impassive. His ivory skin has only assumed a slight grey cast, as though the blood has drained out of it. His military cap has no flaps and it is his ears, I predict, that will be the first to be frostbitten. It is curious that the sun gives so little heat. It has now risen almost to its maximum altitude. But it has not seemed to rise very much; instead, it only gives the impression of trotting around the horizon from east to south, as though it were following us at a distance and trying to get a glimpse of what we