Read Online The Parallel Man by Richard Purtill - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Richard Purtill
Tags: Sci-Fi
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dumb quiescence,
Pellow lifted his head and spoke in a dull monotone. “The first few minutes are the worst, after that your body overloads. You won’t feel like doing anything, but it’s important for you to move around, and take some nourishment when it’s provided, otherwise it’s worse when you come out of it. You can let yourself go during what would be the sleep period so long as you’re able to rouse yourself at the change of watches. It will seem like three or four days until we come out of Q and you’ll feel about as you do now for five or ten days afterward, unless you take some steps. I can help you there; starflitters get to know a few tricks . . .” His voice trailed off and he stared dully ahead of him.
“What is this . . . this . . . state?” I asked him. Pellow gave the ghost of a shrug.
“I’m not sure anyone knows, really,” he said. “We go outside of normal space and time, into—this. We call it quasi-space and quasi-time, Q space and Q time for short. We come back into realspace an immense distance away from where we started. Carpathia is twelve zir from Home; light takes about fifty odd years to make the journey. So far as anyone can tell the ship has taken no realtime at all to make he journey. If you could go Q near a planetary mass starflits would be a great deal easier. As it is, you have to get about fifty diameters out from your departure planet before you can flit and your point of arrival has to be a long way out from any planetary mass. We may take as much as a day or two realtime from POA to planetside. But we’ll still be in emotional freeze—we won’t care.”
Indeed, I cared for little in the time that followed, or seemed to follow. But I forced myself to activity, mindful of Pellow’s warning. I did endless exercises, which never seemed to raise a sweat or leave me tired, forced myself to rise from the bed promptly at the bell which marked the change of watch, and made myself swallow the tasteless food which appeared in the niche in our cabin. On a long campaign I have been so tired that I fought and marched and choked down food like a man asleep yet walking; this was like those times except that I felt no weariness, only a dull apathy that made it easy to lie unmoving in my bunk during the time of “sleep.”
The second “day” I went out of the door of my room, not because I had any desire to, but because some small part of my mind which still judged and willed told me that I should learn what I could of this vessel in which I rode. I wandered long gray corridors and saw sights which might almost have overturned my reason had my emotions not been frozen. Not all of the crewmen on that ship were human. Some were like giant lizards without tails, who walked on two feet. Their glittering black eyes had double lids and their face was covered with fine scales which grew larger on what you could see of their bodies. They were clothed, but more lightly clad than the human crewmen, as if they found the rooms too hot. There was a furred creature with three pale blue eyes and a feathered being with a head like an owl’s. Some of the crewmen who seemed otherwise human had grayish skin or strange vari-colored eyes.
No one hindered me as I wandered through the corridors and I saw strange sights in some of the rooms that I ventured into. A large room held row after row of crystal boxes, each holding a human infant, dead or frozen in some strange sleep. Another room was like an antechamber to a larger room which was separated from it by a large transparent wall. Beyond the wall seemed to be pale green water in which floated something like a giant flower. But as I stood and gazed eyes opened in the flower and surveyed me with what seemed to be intelligence.
Once I came to a door that seemed to be guarded by a crewman who stood beside it. I looked at him and made a gesture of inquiry. He spoke into a small disc on his wrist, seemed to listen, then touched a circle which opened
Pellow lifted his head and spoke in a dull monotone. “The first few minutes are the worst, after that your body overloads. You won’t feel like doing anything, but it’s important for you to move around, and take some nourishment when it’s provided, otherwise it’s worse when you come out of it. You can let yourself go during what would be the sleep period so long as you’re able to rouse yourself at the change of watches. It will seem like three or four days until we come out of Q and you’ll feel about as you do now for five or ten days afterward, unless you take some steps. I can help you there; starflitters get to know a few tricks . . .” His voice trailed off and he stared dully ahead of him.
“What is this . . . this . . . state?” I asked him. Pellow gave the ghost of a shrug.
“I’m not sure anyone knows, really,” he said. “We go outside of normal space and time, into—this. We call it quasi-space and quasi-time, Q space and Q time for short. We come back into realspace an immense distance away from where we started. Carpathia is twelve zir from Home; light takes about fifty odd years to make the journey. So far as anyone can tell the ship has taken no realtime at all to make he journey. If you could go Q near a planetary mass starflits would be a great deal easier. As it is, you have to get about fifty diameters out from your departure planet before you can flit and your point of arrival has to be a long way out from any planetary mass. We may take as much as a day or two realtime from POA to planetside. But we’ll still be in emotional freeze—we won’t care.”
Indeed, I cared for little in the time that followed, or seemed to follow. But I forced myself to activity, mindful of Pellow’s warning. I did endless exercises, which never seemed to raise a sweat or leave me tired, forced myself to rise from the bed promptly at the bell which marked the change of watch, and made myself swallow the tasteless food which appeared in the niche in our cabin. On a long campaign I have been so tired that I fought and marched and choked down food like a man asleep yet walking; this was like those times except that I felt no weariness, only a dull apathy that made it easy to lie unmoving in my bunk during the time of “sleep.”
The second “day” I went out of the door of my room, not because I had any desire to, but because some small part of my mind which still judged and willed told me that I should learn what I could of this vessel in which I rode. I wandered long gray corridors and saw sights which might almost have overturned my reason had my emotions not been frozen. Not all of the crewmen on that ship were human. Some were like giant lizards without tails, who walked on two feet. Their glittering black eyes had double lids and their face was covered with fine scales which grew larger on what you could see of their bodies. They were clothed, but more lightly clad than the human crewmen, as if they found the rooms too hot. There was a furred creature with three pale blue eyes and a feathered being with a head like an owl’s. Some of the crewmen who seemed otherwise human had grayish skin or strange vari-colored eyes.
No one hindered me as I wandered through the corridors and I saw strange sights in some of the rooms that I ventured into. A large room held row after row of crystal boxes, each holding a human infant, dead or frozen in some strange sleep. Another room was like an antechamber to a larger room which was separated from it by a large transparent wall. Beyond the wall seemed to be pale green water in which floated something like a giant flower. But as I stood and gazed eyes opened in the flower and surveyed me with what seemed to be intelligence.
Once I came to a door that seemed to be guarded by a crewman who stood beside it. I looked at him and made a gesture of inquiry. He spoke into a small disc on his wrist, seemed to listen, then touched a circle which opened
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