J. G. Ballard The Drowned World

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in-command might have instilled, and which would have soon made life
unbearable. The loose fragmentary relationships aboard the base, where a
replacement was accepted as a fully paid up member of the crew within five
minutes and no-one cared whether he had been there two days or two years, was
largely a reflection of Hardman's temperament. When he organised a basketball
match or a regatta out on the lagoon there was no self-conscious
boisterousness, but a laconic indifference to whether anyone took part or not.
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Recently, however, the more sombre elements in Hardman's personality had begun
to predominate. Two months earlier he complained to Kerans of intermittent
insomnia--often, from
Beatrice Dahl's apartment, Kerans would watch him long after midnight standing
in the moonlight beside the helicopter on the roof of the base, looking out
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across the silent lagoon--and then took advantage of an attack of malaria to
excuse himself from flying duty. Confined to his cabin for up to a week on
end, he steadily retreated into his private world, going through his old
note-books and running his fingers, like a blind man reading Braille, across
the glass display cases with their few mounted butterflies and giant moths.
The malaise had not been difficult to diagnose. Kerans recognised the same
symptoms he had seen in himself, an accelerated entry Into his own 'zone of
transit', and left the Lieutenant alone, asking Bodkin to call in
periodically.
Curiously, however, Bodkin had taken a more serious view of Hardman's illness.
Pushing back the door, Kerans stepped quietly into the darkened room, pausing
in the corner by the ventilator shaft as Bodkin raised a monitory hand towards
him. The blinds over the windows were drawn, and to Kerans' surprise the
air-conditioning unit had been switched off. The air pumped in through the
ventilator was never more than twenty degrees below the ambient temperature of
the lagoon, and the air-conditioner normally kept the room at an even 70
degrees.
But Bodkin had not only switched this off but plugged a small electric fire
into the shaver socket over the hand basin mirror. Kerans remembered him
building the fire in the laboratory at the testing station, fitting a dented
paraboloid mirror around the single filament. Little more than a couple of
watts in strength, the fire seemed to emit an immense heat, blazing out into
the small room like a furnace mouth, and within a few seconds Kerans felt the
sweat gathering around his neck. Bodkin, sitting on the metal bedside chair
with his back to the fire, was still wearing his white cotton jacket, stained
by two wide patches of sweat that touched between his shoulder blades, and in
the dim red light Kerans could see the moisture beading off his head like
drops of white-hot lead.
Hardman lay slumped back on one elbow, his broad chest and shoulders filling
the backrest, big hands holding the leads of a pair of headphones clasped to
his ears. His narrow, large-jawed face was pointed towards Kerans, but his
eyes were fixed on the electric fire. Projected by the parabolic bowl, a
circular disc of intense red light three feet in diameter covered the wall of
the cabin, Hardman's head at its centre, like an enormous glowing halo.
A faint scratching noise came from a portable record player on the floor at
Bodkin's feet, a single three-inch disc spinning on its turntable. Generated
mechanically by the pick-up head, the almost imperceptible sounds of a deep
slow drumming reached Kerans, lost as the record ended and Bodkin switched off
the player. Quickly he jotted something down on a desk-pad, then turned off
the electric fire and put on the bedside lamp.
Shaking his head slowly, Hardman pulled off the headphones and handed them to
Bodkin.
"This is a waste of time, Doctor. These records are insane, you can put any
interpretation you like on them." He settled his heavy limbs uncomfortably in
the narrow cot. Despite the heat, there was little sweat on his face and bare
chest, and he watched the fading embers of the electric fire as if reluctant
to see them vanish.
Bodkin stood up and put the record player on his chair, wrapping the
headphones around the case. "Perhaps that's the point, Lieutenant--a sort of
aural Rorshach. I think the last record was the most evocative, don't you
agree?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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