Seahorse in the Sky

CHAPTER SEVEN

Extract from the diary of Robert Hyman:

THIS IS THE fifteenth night of our stay on a world which it amuses Russell to call Erewhon. I doubt if he has ever read Samuel Butler; but no matter. The name fits for obvious reasons. As far as the rest of the human race is concerned, we are indeed nowhere. Some of us will be missed and mourned greatly. One consolation is that I shall not. I was alone there, and I think I shall still be alone here. That is the privilege of being a homosexual without the courage of one’s convictions. For a while, I had hopes that Andrew—poor Andrew, the lean and languid star of that terrible television spy series— might be similarly afflicted/blessed.

But no. Andrew, dear boy, is just effeminately masculine. And now, God knows if he will ever be any use to anybody. He’s quiet enough at the moment; and perhaps we shall shortly be able to take our homemade strait-jacket off him. Certainly, we can’t hope to nurse him for ever. I am beginning to think he would have been better off if he had made a good job of cutting his throat.

His babbling about great metal spiders has unnerved us all. From the few coherent phrases he has given us, it sounds as if he got up in the middle of the night to take a turn along the one short street in our little ghost town. He claims he saw these creatures heading for the supermarket with armfuls of groceries—though the two night guards saw and heard nothing. All that is really certain is that we found Andrew just before dawn, lying outside the hotel stiff as a board, eyes wide and staring: We finally got him literally to unbend. But at that stage he went deadly quiet and wouldn’t say a word. The next thing we knew, he had locked himself in his bathroom and was sawing away with a razor blade, shouting his head off and making one hell of a mess.

I suppose it’s a good thing that Marion Redman knows a little about nursing. He hadn’t done any real damage, but it looked as if he might have bled to death. And now the poor boy does nothing but sit there in his bandages and strait-jacket, rolling his eyes a little and muttering occasionally about metal spiders with packs of detergents and canned goods.

Still, there remains the question of how our supplies are replenished. We have guards, but nobody has ever seen anything except Andrew. John Howard has a theory that we have been conditioned not to see. Tore has an even wilder theory that our captors can ‘switch us off’ whenever they wish. He claims they simply forgot to switch off Andrew.

However, we are still no nearer to solving any of the mysteries that surround us. Perhaps we are just not meant to solve them…

Tonight I confessed. I don’t know why. It seemed important. Perhaps because everyone seems to be pairing—or tripling—off. Tore Norstedt has taken both Janice and Andrea into his room. Nobody seems to care. Why should they? Mohan das Gupta is having a wild and tempestuous affair with Simone.

She, apparently, wants to paint him but he wants to make love all the time. And poor little Selene Bergere—what an impossible name—is wistfully and distantly lusting for our revered leader. Meanwhile, John and Mary remain placidly devoted and Paul and Marion only quarrel when they think they are alone.

I like Russell. Perhaps that is why I confessed. He is the first person apart from Sammy—and Sammy, poor sweet, died so long ago I can hardly remember his face—who ever knew. I thought Russell might wonder why I didn’t try to ‘comfort’ one of the girls. Hell, no, I didn’t! I just wanted to tell him. He didn’t give a damn.

All he said was: “Robert, old boy, you are among friends. I only wish it was a bit easier for you.”

I knew what, he meant, of course. Still, loneliness is something I’m familiar with.

Apart from experiencing two deaths and one breakdown, and apart from reports of fairies, medieval knights and savages, we are really no wiser now about our predicament than when we first arrived. The zoo theory is the most popular one. It is also the most reasonable one. But how tantalizing not to know who runs the zoo!

Anna is convinced they want us to breed. Being methodically Russian, she is not offended by the notion. In fact, she threatens to provide Russell with half a dozen sons—in the fullness of time.

We have done a bit more exploring, of course. Or, at least, we did before Andrew encountered his spiders. But it was only a bit because Russell has insisted that we all do it together. Safety in numbers, and all that. If the zoo keepers have an efficient observation system they must laugh themselves silly when they see us go trailing off for ‘field exercises’ armed with bows and arrows, spears and homemade bludgeons.

Actually, I think Russell is less intent on exploring at this stage than on making us all a bit tougher and a bit more self-reliant. I think he is working up to something.