The Mind Like A Strange Balloon | Page 5

All very
interesting but nothing for me there.
Back in the rooms on the outer rim very little was happening, despite
her claims of urgent work. I became convinced that she was hiding
something, but I couldn't imagine what. I decided to brace her with the

accusation and see what happened. It was time for me to show some
progress or move on. So one night I called her, she was working in her
office, twin tan cables snaking out of her neck. "When are you going to
show me what's going on?" I said.
"I suppose you won't just go away, will you?
I was wondering how long you would wait. Why don't you come on
over?"
Eyes behind smoke, cables gone, she sat at her desk. "Do you take
drugs?" she said.
"Not as much as I used to. What have you got in mind?"
"Psilo-d." Nothing halfway. I said, "The Russian roulette of drug
experiences."
"Aleph can take blood samples and administer the proper doses. Are
you willing?"
"I suppose. I don't understand why, though . . . why you want to do
this."
"Because things are very strange, and we don't have time."
"Time for what?"
"For this, Jerry ... the usual reticence, embarrassment. Getting to know
each other. Do you want me?" Very nice-blind eyes looking through
me. Maybe she used wave-lengths outside the visible spectrum. "Yes,"
I said, "I do."
"See? I've embarrassed you. We need a corrosive, an acid bath to wash
all this away "
"That's drastic. Not complaining, mind you, just pointing it out."
"I know . . . and maybe it's a mistake. But I can't be passive, I can't be

patient, not in this, not in anything. Understand that. And I want you,
too. She keyed in a CLOSE AND SECURE command and said, "Let's
go. The computer will close everything down after we leave." I reached
for her arm, thinking she might need help once we got outside, but she
said, "Don't bother, Jerry I know the way, and everybody knows me.
No one will run into me."
We walked through passageways thick with acronyms, abbreviations,
and corporate logos. I thumbed my nose at the SenTrax sunburst. She
strolled with head erect and features composed. We passed through a
radial tube and into a living-quarters ring. It was quiet there, the walls
were bare steel, and the spin gravity had lessened. She stopped me with
her arm in front of her door. Inside we kicked off our slippers and went
into the main room.
Walls of Wedgewood blue tapered to a flecked eggshell ceiling. A
cream carpet covered the padded floor. A futon rolled against the wall,
a few low tables in black lacquer, and a console were the only furniture.
A touch-sculpture, visually formless, gray and volcanic, sat in the
middle of the room, and a multitude of ferns and vines hung from the
ceiling.
She unrolled the futon, and we sat. Each of us had a small vial of clear
liquid, the doses Aleph had determined were safe. "Shall we?" she said.
"Cheers ."
Psilo-d moves on you slowly but with pressure. Things begin to acquire
an inner illumination, people a visible aura. There is a sense of
immanence, of an unnameable emergence. Emotions build in
waves--eventually all will be lost in an oceanic presence.
But that was some time away for us yet. She reached out and touched
my face, and bare nerve endings received her.
The lust and love I had felt for her flamed, but I was incapable of
moving because every word or gesture seemed so powerful I could not
make it. One hand touching my face, she unbuttoned her blouse--the

same silky peach one she had been wearing when I first saw her. Her
hands ran over me. Then I reached out to undress her, and she did the
same for me. Kneeling, we faced each other--touching, tapping,
caressing, taking hold.
We coupled so quickly, there was no time for anything but a bright
sexual flare.
Still we pushed our bodies together, striving to melt flesh into flesh.
Sparks of silver and gold showered from her hair, the room lights
strobed with our pulses, and calm faces--bearded, with angular
profiles--appeared in fresco surrounding the room, watching, nodding
to a slow beat that I could not hear.
Cupping her breast, I laughed. I could feel inside my skull the arcing of
circuits gone from their usual pattern. Vines stretched across the ceiling,
twisted about one another in helices, drenched us in green radiance that
filled the room.
"It grows like a tree," I said, among other things--Edenic babble she
understood and responded to in kind; lalling of infants struck with the
light. The room was vast, filled with labyrinths of brilliance and caves
of darkness,