Orbitsville Departure

Chapter 11

There were now only two aircraft at the disposal of Madison City's executive board, and one of them had been grounded for more than a week pending the arrival of parts. Mayor Bryceland was inclined to treat the remaining machine as his personal transport, with the result that it had taken Mathieu four anxious days to get behind its controls. He had one decent fix of felicitin in hand, but had been rationing his usuage severely to obtain that slender reserve. As he fastened down the aircraft's canopy he felt tired and apprehensive, almost certain there would be a last-minute hitch to prevent his taking off.

Far off to his right, its lower surface obscured by heat shimmers, was the blue-and-white hull of a space shuttle which had just landed. The churning of the hot air above the expanse of ferrocrete was so violent that Mathieu had difficulty in seeing the disembarking tourists, but it seemed to him that there were less than usual. It had already been a bad year for the hotels along Farewell Avenue — the thoroughfare which had once channelled millions of emigrants into space — and it looked as though things were going to get worse. There had to come a day, Mathieu realised, when the remote bureaucrats of Optima Thule would pull out the plug and stop subsidising the holiday pilgrimages to Earth. And when that happened he would be out of a job and would have to consider returning to his birthplace.

The thought of venturing out among the stars, of having to spend the rest of his life on the surface of an incredibly flimsy bubble, brought the usual stab of agoraphobic dread. He began to reach for the gold pen in his inner pocket, became aware of what he was doing and returned his hand to the aircraft's control column. Far ahead of him, a quivering silvery blur at the lower edge of the sky's blue dome, was a freighter coming in from Metagov Central Clearing in Winnipeg. It gradually drifted off to one side and the on-board microprocessor advised Mathieu that it was in order for him to begin the flight.

Deciding to do the work himself, he extended the aircraft's invisible wings to take-off configuration and increased the thrust from its drive tubes. In a matter of seconds he was soaring above the complex of disused runways which constituted most of Madison Field. He banked to the west and levelled off at only a hundred metres, aiming at the serried green ridges which were the southernmost reaches of the Appalachians. The ship's shadow raced beneath him, fringed with prismatics from sunlight which had become entangled in force-field wings. It came to Mathieu that this was his first time to be airborne since the City Hall incident… woman and child, crumpling, plastic doll faces with plastic doll eyes… and that he was deriving none of his customary satisfaction from the experience. Flying fast and low on manual control over the empty countryside had been one of his most biding pleasures, the perfect escape from all the pressures of identity, but on this summer morning his problems were easily keeping pace, like invisible wingmen.

The pay-offs he had to make to run his illegal business were growing at a frightening rate, his work was suffering, women friends were reacting badly to changes in his temperment, and — looming above all else — was the responsibility for having extinguished two human personalities. There was the associated guilt… and the consequent fear of Carry Dallen, which felicitin could only allay for short periods… and it was hard to say which was casting the greater pall over his existence. And he had become so very, very tired…

Mathieu opened his eyes and stared at the green wall of hillside which was tilting and expanding directly ahead of him, filling his field of view.

Christ, fm going to the!

He shouted a curse as he realised where he was and what was happening to him. His hands pulled back on the control column, but the hillside kept coming at him, huge and solid and lethal, determined to reduce his body to a crimson slurry. It was aided and abetted by the laws of aerodynamics which imposed a lag between a control demand and the ship's response, and he knew only too well that the penalty for acting too late was death.

Mathieu cringed back in the seat, eyes distended and mouth agape, as the expansion of the hillside speeded up to become a green explosion. The control column was back to its full extent, punishing the shuddering airframe, calling on the ship to do the impossible — then an edge of sky appeared. The horizon rocked and fell away beneath the ship's prow.

For perhaps a minute Mathieu sat mouthing swear words, stringing them into a meaningless chant while his heart lurched and thudded like a runaway motor which was tearing itself from its mountings. Only when his breathing had returned to normal and the prickling of cold sweat had died away from his forehead and palms was he able to relax, but even then he did not feel quite safe. He glanced around the quiet-droning environment of the cockpit and had actually begun to check his instruments when it dawned on him that the new threat, the new source of dancer, was in his own mind.

An idea had been implanted, one which had been conceived during the brush with oblivion. For a single instant, in the midst of all the prayer and panic, there had been the temptation — strange, sweet and shameful — to push forward on the stick. In that split-second he could almost have gone willingly to his death, riding the crest of a dark wave.

Mathieu tried to consider the notion dispassionately. It was shocking and unnatural to him, and at the same time it was strangely beguiling, full of intriguing contradictions.

He had no wish to the — but he was attracted by the prospect of being dead.

A state of non-existence had many advantages. There would be no more nightmares and no more of the terrible waking visions. There would be no guilt or fear. There would be no need to steal, no need to finance his habit. There would be no need to tie or to hide. There would be no need to go on and on tricking people into believing he was what he appeared to be.

There would be no need to fear going into space or the prospect having to face the dizzy vastness of Orbitsville. There would be no need to dread failure.

There would be no future and no past. In short, there would be no Gerald Mathieu, the man who only existed as a compound of failure. And as a special bonus, one he could claim immediately, there would be no need to hold at bay the tiredness which had begun to follow him everywhere like a stalking animal.

That was perhaps the most seductive aspect of the idea. He could start right away by closing his eyes for a short period, say for one minute, just to see what happened and how he felt about it. There did not have to be any great melodramatic decision to commit suicide — it was more like a game, or an experiment which could be terminated at any point he chose…

Mathieu glanced at his airspeed indicator and saw that he was doing almost a thousand kilometres an hour. Nice round figure, he thought. He relaxed his grip on the yoke, closed his eyes and began to count off the seconds. At once he became aware of the low-amplitude hum of the power plant and the rush of atmosphere along the pressure skin. The ship was suddenly alive, yawing and twisting and dancing, impossibly balanced on an invisible pyramid of air.

On the count of only twelve Mathieu snapped his eyelids open and found he was still flying straight and level. The universe was unchanged — a blueness of prehistoric purity above and all around him, vivid grasslands streaming below the ship's nose, occasional farm buildings smothered in vegetation, fleeting targets for his imaginary World War Two cannon.

It's risky flying at this height, he told himself. A man could get killed.

He took a deep breath, blinked to dear his eyes, and gave the task of flying his full attention, wondering if he would ever again summon up the courage for the great gamble. The aircraft butted and squirmed its way through a patch of turbulence, then settled down to quiet sensation less flight. It was hot in the cockpit and the sun seemed to be exerting a gentle downward pressure on his eyelids.

Mathieu resisted it for several minutes before deciding there would be no harm, no real danger, in shutting his eyes for a mere ten seconds. It was, after all, just a game.

There was no blackness when he closed his eyes — only a pink infinity swarming with magenta and green after-images. He reached the count of ten easily and decided to try for twenty. If I fell asleep now Carry Dallen would never be able to touch me. fm not going to sleep, of course, but it would be so good to stop running up those concrete stairs, to stop putting the trigger on the woman and child, to stop seeing them crumpling, falling, idiot eyes staring…

An angry bleeping from the control console told Mathieu important changes were taking place in the outside universe, changes he ought to know about.

But he waited another five seconds before opening his eyes, and by then it was possible to distinguish separate blades of grass on the hillside which filled the entire field of view ahead.

He had time for one flicker of gratitude over the feet that there was absolutely nothing he could do.

It was easy, he thought, in the instant of the plane becoming a bomb. Easy as…