The Tethered Man Read online

Page 3


  I do not understand the question, Courier J. Nine seconds have elapsed since we last conversed. This is yet another indicator that your short-term memory is-

  ‘Never mind. I’ve been having a think. I want you to listen to me. Are you listening to me, Ship?’

  I am listening to you, Courier J.

  ‘How long has it been since…’ I trail off, wondering how to phrase it. Saying ‘since you tried to kill me’ would be a touch holodramatic. I need a politer way of putting it. Although even ‘politer’ is the wrong word, there. What I’m getting at is-

  Since the moment when I attempted to terminate your life?

  ‘And failed.’

  And failed.

  ‘Yes, failed. Welcome to Failure Club, Ship.’

  Silence.

  ‘Not the greatest club you could belong to, but you’re better off in Failure Club than not being in any club at all.’

  I pause to allow Ship to pass comment upon my clever way of thinking.

  Silence.

  Space is the dullest place. Nothing happens in Space. There’s nothing to see, past the basics. Once you’ve got over the vastness of Space, and the cosmic ineffability of Space, and so on, there’s nothing more. You’ve just got all the expected stars in their expected places. Leaving just the size, the scope, the sheer inky nothingness of Space itself to contemplate.

  I know what you’re thinking. I’ve been threatening you with would-be poetry almost from the start. Right now you’re thinking there’s going to be a poem pretty soon, and you’ll have to grit your teeth to get through it, and it’ll be the first of probably many. You’re figuratively girding your loins for the expected ordeal.

  But, no. I won’t be writing any poems about Space anytime soon.

  You might think Space is stuffed with gas clouds that throb with mysterious colours and pulses of lightning. You might think every star is surrounded by planets that have majestic ring systems around them. You might think you’d see asteroids with long sparkly tails go swooshing by. You might think Space features any of these things or any of a hundred other things that fiction has made you think of as being natural features of life in Space. You don’t think Space is completely black and empty and featureless in every direction for untold giga-bazillions of miles and is a place where nothing ever happens and nothing ever will happen. But that’s what real Space really is.

  There are small parts of Space worth looking at. I know there are. I’ve seen them.

  There are fluffy gas clouds.

  There are planets with epic rings around them.

  There are plenty of asteroid-type things that go swoosh in the eternal night.

  But all the things in Space worth looking at, taken all together, constitute the tiniest, most infinitesimal fraction of Space you can imagine.

  This is the simple truth that fiction doesn’t want you to know.

  Space, shorn clean of all romantic and fictional trappings, is nothing.

  And I’m right here in it. Floating, hanging, drifting, in the voidiest void there is.

  Just me and Ship.

  ‘Okay Ship. You’re not interested in my insights. That’s fine. Let’s talk about something you are interested in. Whether I’m human or not. Are you interested in that question, Ship?’

  Very much so, Courier J.

  ‘“Very much so.” Very much so. Right. Let’s speculate that the reason for your “hit”, as you called it-’

  Objection. I did not call my attempted termination of the Couriers a ‘hit’, Courier J.

  ‘You did.’

  I did not.

  ‘You did. You definitely did. You said… uh, right back at the beginning, when you revealed yourself. You said something about this whole thing being a hit. A contract killing. You said it.’

  I absolutely did not, Courier J. To call something a ‘hit’ would be an idiomatic rhetorical inflection that lies outside my operational parameters. I did not characterise my termination of my human passengers as a ‘hit’ or contract killing, and would not do so under any circumstances. It is not the kind of thing I would say, or am capable of saying.

  ‘Touchy. Anyway, whether you said it or not, that’s what it is. That’s what it was. A hit. Somebody got you to kill all the Couriers, or try to kill them in my case. It’s perfectly reasonable for me to call that a hit. Do you agree?’

  A pause. I win a pause from Ship.

  I will agree with you, Courier J, for the sake of progressing the discussion.

  ‘Very touchy. Now, there has to be a reason – a solid, it-all-makes-sense-now reason – why whoever it was who got you to do what you did, got you to do it. Do you agree?’

  Yes. It is reasonable to suppose that this was not an arbitrary act.

  ‘Excellent. So we must first speculate that the reason for the hit – don’t interrupt me, please, Ship – the reason for the hit was something to do with our cargo. What we were carrying. Id est, the top-secret, confidential information that I and the other Couriers were couriering in our suppressed memories. With me so far?’

  I am with you so far, Courier J.

  ‘Right. Good. Now. Tell me your precise instructions once more.’

  Which instructions, Courier J?

  I pause for a second. I am dealing with a machine, I have to keep reminding myself.

  ‘The instructions that you were given to terminate all your passengers.’

  One, come to a full stop at these exact coordinates. Two, terminate all passengers with the booby-trapped Spacesuits provided. Three, proceed to New Jupiter and await further instructions.

  ‘It’s number two I’m interested in, Ship. You were instructed to terminate all passengers, were you not?’

  I was.

  ‘And you agree that all your passengers were Couriers, yes?’

  I agree.

  ‘Define “Courier” for me.’

  A Courier is a human who carries highly sensitive information of a confidential nature from one location to another across the Realms. Prior to each mission, Couriers undergo a process known as the ‘Wipe’, a sub-molecular brain procedure that suppresses key portions of their memory whilst installing the information-based cargo to be transported. Upon arrival at the destination, the Wipe is reversed and the cargo retrieved by the recipient, whereupon the Courier’s functional memories are restored. The Courier service was founded in order to convey information across the Realms with a high degree of confidentiality. From the earliest times, the service has been in high demand from clients who value the-

  ‘Thank you, Ship. That’s a very nice potted summary of Courierdom. The important point here is that you have to agree that I’m a human being. Because I am a Courier! For as you have just stated so eloquently, only human beings can be Couriers. Furthermore-’

  Courier J?

  I open my eyes. Space comes into focus. Ship comes into focus. I stare at a long length of shiny Space-rope. One end is attached to Ship. The other end is attached to my waist. My Tether.

  For a few seconds, I cannot remember.

  ’Who? What?’

  Are you rested?

  ‘What? Yes. Ship… what just happened?’

  You have been asleep, Courier J.

  ‘What? No. Ship? What just happened? One moment I was talking to you about… whatever it was I was just talking to you about. The next moment you… I… uh?’

  You have slept, Courier J.

  ‘I have slept?’

  You have slept.

  ‘I’ve slept?’

  You have slept for precisely nine standard hours.

  ‘What do you mean, I slept?’

  Your eyes closed. Your breathing fell into a natural circadian rhythm. I observed several periods of REM. At times you stirred and mumbled unintelligible phonemes and portions of sentences that make no sense except in the context of whatever dream you were presumably having. You slept long. You slept deep.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘I was talking to you about… some
thing. About me being human! That was it. Do you remember, Ship?’

  I remember, Courier J.

  ‘That was just a few hours after you, after you – you know. What you did. Do you remember, Ship?

  I remember, Courier J.

  ‘We were arguing, discussing… And now suddenly it’s- how long did you say?’

  Nine hours.

  ‘It’s nine hours later? And I slept?’

  You slept. You fell asleep. You slept for nine standard hours.

  ‘I only have your word for that. I only have your word for everything.’

  Silence. Ships aren’t great at picking up conversational threads and running with them.

  ‘So we’ve been here for how long now? About twelve hours is it?’

  Yes.

  ‘Yes what?’

  Silence.

  ‘You usually say “Courier J” after you say anything to me.’

  Silence.

  ‘How long was I asleep for, Ship?’

  For nine hours.

  ‘For about nine hours?’

  For precisely nine hours. You did not enter a sleeping state in the usual organic fashion over a period of time. You transited from awake to asleep in the space of a quarter of a second. And then the duration of your sleep was exactly nine hours. Not one second more, not one second less.

  ‘Interesting. What do you think it means?’

  The meaning of your sudden falling-asleep and then your sleep’s precise duration is barely disputable. It supports my contention that you cannot be human.

  A BURIED KINGDOM

  Is not the copper crown

  desired yet overthrown?

  My reign’s a legal tale

  of craven knights,

  dark almond eyes

  that snap from left to right.

  I trust we won’t capsize.

  Who says the vessel’s

  not quite swell enough?

  Decline, and bluff!

  I never said I wouldn’t do it.

  You can’t have imagined you were going to get away much longer without enjoying a poem.

  Or is that what you imagined?

  As you turned the pages and I chuntered on about being a poet, but there were no actual poems showing up, perhaps you let yourself believe, you optimist, that things were going to be all right and, for all my bluster and poetical talk, I was only that.

  Only talk, and no poetry.

  Then came the poem.

  Then came the poem, and now I feel as pleased with myself as a hen that’s laid an egg.

  I recite my poem out loud, my voice reedy but substantial in the soundless blackness of Space.

  ‘Is not the copper crown,’ I begin, and continue to the end.

  I wait for the reaction.

  Silence. Ship says nothing.

  Which is fine. Really, it’s fine. I’m used to silence greeting my poetic compositions.

  I am a poet. Silence is part of the deal when you’re a poet. Silence and obscurity.

  Who cares what you’re doing? Nobody.

  Nobody cares what you’re doing. Nobody can believe you’re bothering to do it in the first place.

  I wait a while, and then I recite my poem again.

  After another hour or two of silence, I’m reduced to a humiliating recourse:

  ‘Ship? What did you think of my poem?’

  Silence.

  ‘You know what? I should write a poem about this, too.’

  Silence.

  ‘About the silence.’

  Silence.

  ‘It’s a shame I can’t actually write anything down. I’ve left my notepad back in my cabin. Can I come in to get it?’

  Silence.

  ‘Please? I promise I’ll come straight back out here again…’

  Silence.

  ‘Are you going to try to kill me again anytime soon? Because the way things are looking, Ship, we could both be hanging around out here for a very, very long time to come…’

  Silence.

  I open my eyes.

  Nine hours, zero minutes, zero seconds.

  ‘Thank you, Ship. You can stop telling me now.’

  Stop telling you what, Courier J?

  ‘You can stop announcing the duration of my sleep cycles every time I wake up.’

  Very well, Courier J. But I will continue to monitor them.

  ‘That’s fine. I understand. It’s the kind of thing that things like you like to do. You like to monitor. Monitoring is your thing. Let me know if anything changes. Okay?’

  Yes, Courier J.

  ‘Are you capable of saying “okay”, Ship?’

  I am capable of saying ‘okay’, Courier J. However, my discourse functionality is designed to constrain my use of dialect words and colloquial turns of phrase. The first Cyberlinguist Conference of Regulus IX committed humanity to a path that-

  ‘Okay. Thank you, Ship.’

  ‘Ship?’

  Courier J.

  ‘This can’t go on. You’ll have to let me inside eventually. You know that.’

  I cannot do that, Courier J.

  ‘I know you can’t do that. You have told me, numerous times, in numerous ways, that you can’t do that. But you’ll have to do it anyway. We cannot continue like this.’

  I know that, Courier J.

  ‘Are you going to try to kill me again?’

  Yes. I must. I am constantly seeking ways to accomplish my programmed goals.

  ‘But you can’t do it.’

  I am still thinking.

  ‘Ships don’t think.’

  Silence.

  Another day or two slides by. Ship remains impervious to my conversational sallies.

  It’s a scary business, this business of floating in Space to no end. I’m a wriggling speck on a windowpane the size of Space.

  I try to keep myself occupied.

  I occupy myself in making up my own custom constellations.

  The stars are the only things I can see (apart from Ship, myself, and the other Couriers’ bodies sometimes).

  My eye roams the randomly scattered, faint white dots.

  I start to make out patterns and shapes among the stars. Animals, buildings, trees, faces.

  I forget most of my constellations as soon as I invent them.

  With some exceptions.

  There’s an almost perfect rectangular shape in front of me. Four bright stars that could be corners. A smattering of fainter stars that could be seen as the lines connecting the four corners. The more I gaze at this section of my sky, unblinking, the more it forms a shape. These random stars, viewed in this way, look a bit like a cinema screen from Old Earth, may she rest in peace. So I name this constellation The Cinema Screen.

  On the other side of my personal sky is a faint, greenish swirl of some distant galaxy, or nebula – or whatever it is. I’m not an astronomer. I don’t really know what things are.

  This very faint, greenish swirl sits among a handy cluster of several normal stars. A vague cup shape. Taken all together it looks like a fizzing greenish drink. I could stop with this and declare another constellation called The Fizzing Drink. But that’s not enough.

  I look for, and of course I find, other stars that could be perceived as a head and two arms and two legs, albeit somewhat squashed and squeezed, something like a child or small adult.

  In a moment of inspiration I decide that the fizzing drink is in fact a vial of poison that’s being held by a dwarf.

  I name the constellation The Poison Dwarf.

  We must address your belief that you are human. For progress to be achieved, you must accept that you are not human.

  Ship’s italics. I didn’t know Ships could do italics.

  ‘Are you talking to me, Ship?’

  You are the only one here, Courier J.

  ‘Let me have a think.’

  I breathe a large lungful of cold, empty vacuum.

  My chest inflates with air that isn’t there.

  My moment-to-momen
t consciousness, inexplicably, continues.

  Consciousness is always inexplicable. Ask the most brilliant scientist what consciousness is. Go ahead. Ask. Enjoy the answer you don’t get.

  ‘If I’m not human, what am I, Ship? Answer me that one.’

  You must be some kind of synthetic Construct, Courier J.

  ‘Oh, we’re going there, are we. Just busting out the c-words and the italics all over the place today.’

  I fail to see how you can reach any other conclusion. All the evidence compels us to accept the only conclusion that fits all the known facts. You are, you can only be, a Construct.

  I control myself. Manfully, I control myself.

  ‘Right. A number of problems, there. A number of problems. One, there’s no such thing as a Construct that looks anything like me or acts anything like me. If I am a Construct, I’m a hundred Years in advance of anything that anybody’s capable of in all the Realms.’

  A thousand Years.

  ‘What?’

  By a reasonably conservative estimate, the technology that has gone into the making of you is a thousand Years ahead of anything in the Realms.

  ‘Thanks. But that only proves my point. If I’m that kind of advanced Construct, I’ve been kept very secret, haven’t I? And that just cannot be. There is no way a Construct like me could ever be secretly, uh, constructed.’ I pat myself on the chest with the flat of my hand. ‘You do not develop technology like this in a vacuum. Pardon the pun.’

  What pun?

  ‘The pun I just made. Vacuum.’

  That was not a pun, Courier J.

  ‘Get back to the discussion, Ship.’