“Call me Amy, please. Joel, I think there are four questions you urgently need to consider.”
“That many?” I said sourly.
“I don’t think you’ve thought through any of them yet.” Perhaps my least favorite criticism; I swallowed a comeback. “And you must. They’re all very important.”
“Somehow, Amy, I have an idea you’re going to tell me what they are soon.”
She shook her head. “Not if you’re going to get cranky right at the jump, just because I said you have some thinking to do. If you like, we can spend this whole session dicking around. But we’re going to get to it eventually. Suit yourself.”
I think if she had looked back down at her screen, I would have gotten up and left, then. But she didn’t. She just kept looking me in the eye, waiting, not offended by my antics, just waiting patiently until I decided to move on instead.
“Hell of a thing to say to a man, that he doesn’t think things through,” I grumbled. But it was clearly a backing-down grumble.
She nodded sympathetically. “It is an embarrassing thing to be caught at. But, Joel, face it: you’re caught. Your presence here is not voluntary, remember? Ergo, you have screwed up big-time. The embarrassment is one of the smallest things you’re going to have to deal with.”
She paused, visibly giving me a few seconds to see if I was going to jump salty again.
Well, God damn it, Joel, is she right or isn’t she? Can you face facts, or not?
“The majority of clients I deal with have been driven into this room by their own egos. You have not, for once, so I don’t want to waste as much time dealing with yours. Can we simply assume goodwill on both sides, and start with the basic agreement that you need help, and that I may have some?”
The stars themselves knew I needed help. And I knew she had some. I’d known that before I’d gotten from her door to the chair I sat in.
“I guess…” I began.
And a stuck switch somewhere in my brain went spung, and I burst out laughing—a hold-your-belly-and-fold-over guffaw.
She was not offended in the least, just surprised. And interested. I wanted to explain but was laughing too hard. But she was in no hurry. Finally I got enough air to hoot, “I do!… I do!… Honest!” which only further confused her until I was able to get one arm free and point to the clip art pictures on the side of her bookcase that had puzzled me earlier. “I do know!” At once she began to laugh, too.
I do know the difference. Between my ass, and a hole in the ground. “Sometimes, anyway—”
She had a great braying loon hoot of a laugh, and knew it, and was not at all self-conscious about it. So we had us a good one. By the time was done, I was pretty sure I trusted her. It’s humorless people who frighten me, because I can’t begin to understand them.
At last I said, “I’m sorry, Amy. Please tell me the four questions you think I need to address first.”
She nodded. “Who. What. Where. Why.”
I blinked. “Not ‘when’?”
She shook her head. “The answer to that is always ‘now’”
I took a deep breath. “In that case, let’s do it.”
“First, ‘who.’ That’s almost always a good place to start. Who are you? Not, who did you plan to be, or who are you expected to be, or even, what would you like to be. Who are you? Who the hell is this Joel Johnston, when he’s at home? I don’t think you know. And I’m certain I don’t. It would be a useful thing to know, don’t you think?”
I was past sarcasm or irony. “Yes, Amy, it would.” My voice was hoarse. From the laughing.
“Next, ‘what.’ What led you to this place? To this ship, this twenty-year voyage to the back of beyond? What led you to abandon literally every single thing you’ve ever known except the concept of associating with other humans? Why did you leave the world, leave the rest of the race, leave the Solar System, for good? This is probably the question you think you know the most about, and I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. Or only part right.”
It was a broken heart! Wasn’t it?
Wait. Had I expected heartbreak to be permanent? Did I really intend to die a virgin? If my Jinny was not to be with me, nor I with her, how was it any better if she was eighty-five light-years farther away?
“The third question, ‘where,’ might actually be your best place to start. Where are you going? I mean that not rhetorically, but literally”
I didn’t understand. “Literally? That’s easy. To Peekaboo Two. Brasil Novo, if you want to be formal. The second planet of Immega Seven-Something.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Huh?”
“Tell me about the planet. When it was discovered. Its physical parameters. Its atmosphere. Its geography, and geology. Climate. Seasons. Flora. Fauna. Most intelligent-seeming organism identified. Most dangerous-looking predator identified. Intended location of our First Landing site.” She paused expectantly.
“Uh…it’s real hot and damp, for…for extended periods, and there’s a whole lot of oxygen,” I said, and realized with dismay that I had shot my bolt.
“You’re going to spend twenty years getting there, and you’ll stay there the rest of your life. I would spend some of the twenty years studying just what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
All at once I felt immortally stupid. She was absolutely, shockingly right. Not thought this through? Hell, I hadn’t started thinking. Look before you leap, my father had often said. I hadn’t even looked after I’d leapt. After weeks on board a starship, my principal curiosity about my destination so far had consisted of wondering what to wear to work on the Upper Ag Deck. I had just sort of assumed there’d be a planet of some sort at the end of this, and what of it?
Could a broken heart cause brain damage? On this scale?
“Finally, why. Once you know the destination, the question becomes, why are you going there? Why go anywhere, for that matter? For what reason? What will you do there? Above all, why will it matter? Here, take these. Basket over there.”
I accepted the box of tissues she offered out of politeness, and was startled to discover that my face was soaking wet and I really did need to blow my nose. The wastebasket had been placed so that it was a hard shot to miss. I hit it six times running before I was done. By then I was seeing little black spots overlaying everything.
“So that’s it?” I said, my voice quavering. “That’s everything? Shit, I thought I had a problem.”
“You do,” she said simply. “And that is a lot to chew on. So much that twenty years might not be enough time. And I promise you it will be painful. And you may fail completely. Would you like the bad news, now?”
I giggled. “Sure.”
“You have no fucking choice.”
“Tell me there’s good news.” I tried to parody desperation, but did too good a job.
She smiled. “You have the best Healer on the ship. I will give you some good tools, and yell encouragement, and take your crap, and share your breakthroughs, and tell you when your exciting new profound insights are horseshit.”
“Tools?”
“Techniques. Disciplines. Attitudes. Drugs. In addition, I will listen to anything you want to tell me, and give advice if I happen to have any.”
“That sounds good,” I said. “When do I start?”
“Now.”
“Okay. How do I start?”
“First, you have to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Everything.”
“Huh? I mean, Crave pardon?”
“To grow, you must learn about yourself. To learn, you must listen to yourself. To listen, you must first learn the hardest trick of all: to shut the hell up.”
I was so startled, I did. And then realized it would have been a not unclever reply, if I’d done it intentionally. So I tried to pretend I had, and made an elaborate show of obligingly cocking my ear to listen to some imaginary sound, and then tried to pantomime hearing some transcendent insight. She just kept looki
ng at me with no expression, and suddenly I had a sense of seeing myself from the outside, watching myself mug and fidget. And finally began to get a sense of what she was driving at. I let my face go as blank as hers, took a deep breath, and tried my best to listen. To myself…to her…to whatever. After a few seconds I closed my eyes to help myself concentrate.
I don’t hear a damn thing/wait/is that the air circulator?/it’s gone now/this is silly/really silly/stupid kid’s game/hide and go fuck yourself/wait, now/a hum/a note at the very upper limit of audibility, somewhere right around 20,000 cycles per second/no, two of them/dysharmonic/I never diss harmonic/what’s wrong with dat harmonic?/God, I’m sleepy/hey, why can’t I hear my own pulse?/I wonder if—
“There’s a certain interior monologue that never stops, isn’t there?”
Her voice startled me, enough that I opened my eyes. “Yes. Yes, there is.”
“Try and make it stop.”
“Stop thinking? Completely? Hell, that’s one of my best tricks.”
“Go ahead.”
About five minutes later, I admitted defeat.
“Whose is the voice you hear?”
“My own.”
“To whom does it speak?”
“To…to me.”
“Why?”
It was a good question. How could it be so important to tell myself things I already knew that I couldn’t seem to stop, even for a second? I had always prided myself on controlling my own mind…but it now seemed I only had limited control of what it thought about. But I could not make it stop.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It must be terribly, terribly important, because I can’t make it stop even as long as I can make myself stop breathing. It’s like my heartbeat—if it ever pauses, even for a few seconds, I’ll die. But that can’t be true: I’ve stopped thinking altogether a lot of times. Drunk…stoned…sedated…anesthetized for surgery…” I trailed off, realizing I wasn’t sure whether I’d stopped thinking at those times, or just stopped recording the thoughts. “Maybe not. I don’t know.”
“You don’t need to be afraid of it, I promise.”
“Are you sure?”
“Your record says you’re a musician and composer, but is vague about what kinds of music you’re interested in. Do you know the classics? The Beatles?”
“Sure.”
“Turn off your mind. Relax, and float downstream. It is not dying. That advice was ancient back then.”
I shrugged. “Okay. How?”
“People have been trying to make their minds stop for thousands of years. It’s called meditation. There are some useful tricks that have been passed down. Come here and I’ll show you some.”
She got up and moved to an area with no furniture. I could tell she was a Loonie by the way she handled herself in a third of a gee, but it wasn’t so much awkward as unpracticed. She had the necessary strength to handle twice her normal weight, and would get more graceful at it with time, like perfecting an accent. I got up and followed her. She was just placing on the floor two objects like giant black cloth hamburgers. Pillows, it seemed: as I watched, she dropped effortlessly into a cross-legged seat on one of them, seeming to melt slowly like the Wicked Witch of the West despite the double gravity. She gestured at the other. “Sit down, Joel.”
I did so far more clumsily, despite being in my native gravity. Pillow? It was just barely a cushion—made of soft cloth, but filled with something unyielding, as soft-but-firm-underneath as a…
“It’s called a zafu,” she said. “Don’t sit square on it, but a little forward on it, almost falling off the edge, and put your legs like so.” She demonstrated.
I dug in my heels. “Hold on a minute. Is this some kind of religious thing? Buddhism or something?”
She smiled. “Atheist?”
“Agnostic.”
“Fear not. Buddhists are only one of many groups of humans who have found this a useful posture for meditation. So have Hindus, Taoists, TM’ers, and a dozen other groups. And in any case, Buddhism isn’t a religion, strictly speaking.”
“It isn’t?”
“No god, or gods, or goddesses—except in a couple of the more obscure sects. No heaven or hell in the theological sense. No patriarch or matriarch, no Prophet or Pope. They don’t go in for holy wars, or heresy hunts.”
“Really?”
“Buddhists believe the Buddha himself was simply a man, who woke up one day. As far as I understand it, anyway. I know hardly anything at all about Buddhism. If you’re interested, you can talk to Tenzin Itokawa, the Relativist. He is a Zen priest, of the Rinzai school. Right now, forget Buddhism. Forget religion. Just put your legs like this and trust me, okay?”
I tried. “Show me again.”
She unpretzeled, and then pretzeled again slowly. I tried to copy it. This time I came closer.
“Other way round. This one over that one. There—that’s it. Now work your knees around a little until they’re comfortable.”
Suddenly I seemed to just snap into place. “Like that?”
“That’s it. Good. Okay, now. Spine straight. Stack those vertebrae. Hands together, palms up, left hand on top, with the thumb tips touching. Settle your skull on those stacked vertebrae. You’ve got it.”
It did indeed feel like a position I could hold for a while in relative comfort. “Now what?”
“Don’t just do something: sit there.”
I mentally shrugged and did so. Or rather tried to stop doing anything. As before I tried to stop thinking, too—with no better success. But I did become aware that I was starting to relax. My thoughts didn’t exactly slow down…but they became less intense, somehow.
After a few minutes of silence, she said, “Now we do a breathing exercise so childishly simple it can’t possibly have any effect.”
“Sounds good.”
“There really is nothing to it. In your head, count to four, at intervals of about four seconds, or a little longer.” I did as she asked. “Okay. Now, you inhale for a count of four…then hold your breath for a count of four…then exhale for four…then hold for four. In, hold, out, hold. Repeat, and keep repeating. Try it.”
I played along. A full cycle, then another, then another. After half a dozen or so, I found the rhythm, and settled into it. Easy as pie. Considerably easier than pi. Stop that, Joel.
“Good. Now with each cycle, slow it down just a skosh. Not much, and when it seems to be too much, let it come back up again, until you find your slowest natural speed. As soon as you’re sure you’ve found it, stop counting and just breathe.”
It wasn’t hard. It was mindless, was what it was. Silly, and pointless, and…
…and I could feel my shoulders settling. Feel my facial muscles relaxing. Feel my pulse slowing, and deepening, and steadying. Hear my pulse, playing bass under the alternating E-A E-A organ chords of my breath. As I became aware of it, I had the idea I could hear it slowly changing from electric bass guitar to acoustic standup bass, quieter but more resonant.
I let myself sink into it. I closed my eyes, and paradoxically as I did I became more aware of the room, of my position in it, of its position in the Sheffield—and as I followed the thought to its logical next stopping place, it was as if the ground fell away beneath me without warning. Have you ever been so stoned or drunk that you suddenly fancied you could actually perceive the vast slow spinning of whatever planet you live on? Not just as something known intellectually but as something felt in the gut? Ever find yourself clutching the ground, to keep from falling off? Well, something like that happened to me then. For the very first time, I suddenly got where I was.
I was in an incredibly, pathetically flimsy bubble of moist air, hurtling through interstellar space at a speed so intrinsically terrifying that its friction with nothingness was enough to require powerful and clever shielding, propelled by a force no man really understood, so powerful it could have wrecked my star if invoked too near it. With a would-be village of other misfits and refugees I was plum
meting through the universe so fast Time itself couldn’t keep up—living by Dr. Einstein’s Clock, while behind me the rest of the human race continued to age as God or random chance had intended. In these hair-raising conditions I would, if I was very lucky, spend approximately the next fifth of my life racing toward a destination I had not given a second’s serious consideration, a place where, if I was incredibly lucky, it would prove possible to raise turnips and keep hogs, and the monsters wouldn’t be able to kill me.
All this in a microsecond—then in the time it took me to open my eyes the feeling popped like a bubble and I was back in my body again, was just a guy sitting in a room doing nothing at all. It happened and then was over so impossibly fast that I was still relaxed: there hadn’t even been time for my heartbeat or breathing to increase. But when I did get my eyes open the first thing they saw was Dr. Amy’s eyes looking straight into them, and I knew at once that she knew what had happened to me. She’d been expecting it to happen. No, that was wrong. She had known it might happen, and had hoped it would. My whole head vibrated for a few seconds, like a hummingbird in denial. “Whoa!” I croaked.
“See, Joel? You sat still and quieted down…and you noticed where you are. Sit still longer and you’ll start to notice where you’re going. Sit still long enough and you may figure out why you’re going there. You could end up with some clues to just who the hell is doing all that.”
“And that would be a good thing?”
“Yes,” she said, raising her voice two notches higher in volume for the single word. “Stop looking dubious. When you peel back enough layers of your own bullshit to finally get a good glimpse of yourself, you are going to find you respect yourself a good deal more than you expected to.”
I said nothing.
“I promise that, Joel. The journey you need to take isn’t going to be easy…but you’re going to like the destination. Certainly a lot better than where you are now. Now lie to me.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Tell me you believe me.”
I tried unsuccessfully to suppress my grin. “I believe you believe it.”
She nodded. “Close enough. That’s enough for one session. Here’s your homework. First, I want you to spend an hour a day sitting zazen—that’s what you just did—and I’d like you to do it in a Sim Room.”