Barry Malzberg has published most of his science fiction novels and short stories under the penname “K. M. O’Donnell,” but is now going back to writing under his own name. What bizarre or baroque reasons he may have had for these machinations, I don’t know precisely. The following story (maybe the Borgesian term ficcion would be more precise) gives ample evidence that Malzberg’s mind doesn’t work in established ruts, though.
FIRST SHIP EVER TO VENUS
Barry N. Malzberg
I
It is 2119. The space arm of the government amalgamated with the military a century ago and now owns everything. Five million people are employed directly in this program and fifty-eight million others work in wholly space-related projects.
For a hundred and twenty years a self-sufficient colony of forty thousand has dwelt on the moon. Satellite colonies on space stations orbiting the moon and Earth contain some ten thousand other souls. There has not been a manned exploratory flight for a long time but until a decade ago it was not deemed quite necessary as things seemed to be working out so nicely otherwise. Most of the mass media now emanates from orbit and from the moon since it has been found far less expensive to segregate the entertainment and news industries in an artificial environment. Intricate rocketry devices implanted upon the moon in 1985 allow its orbit to be juggled and rearranged and there is always a full moon for national holidays.
* * * *
The captain of the Venus expedition is forty-two years old. He is the cream of a selection process which picked him from over four thousand men and women eligible for the position. He commands a crew of eight hundred and sixty-one, of whom more than fifty are entertainment and political personalities who will participate in the broadcast. A slight tendency toward aphasia which came upon him in the latter stages of the preparation-program is well compensated by two grains of disulfiamazole taken three times daily. His blood pressure under stress is one hundred and thirty over sixty-five. In his youth he was prone to premature ejaculation but has not been bothered by this problem for twenty years. He is happily married and the father of two grown children who accompany him on this flight. His wife must remain home due to imminent liver troubles but remains of good disposition and will take part in some of the broadcasts.
* * * *
III
The chief engineer of this project, a man named Willoughby, knows that it is headed for disaster. No exploratory flight of this nature has taken place for over thirty years, the moon being approached through remote devices and the unmanned flights to Venus having occurred in ships one-twentieth the size of the one being prepared. Willoughby knows that the training procedures are both inadequate and fallacious because the equipment itself will not work on the long, difficult flight being planned, and time and again he has thought of bringing his opinions to the heads of government. Nevertheless, he cannot: his life is committed to the space program and he understands the desperate reasons underlying the expedition to Venus; to hinder the project in any way would bring the program, massive as it may be, into total disrepute and destruction. (Because he is something of a bureaucrat, he cannot allow himself to think of what will happen to the program if the expedition aborts spectacularly; he will worry about that when the time comes.) Also, Willoughby does not totally trust his judgment; none of the scientists who are over him or the technicians underneath seem to share his fears about the project and he cannot be the one to break the news. He does not discuss this with anyone but continues his work on an elaborate diary of suspicion and predicted failure which he decides he will release when the ship explodes in orbit
* * * *
IV
The captain and Willoughby have known one another vaguely for many years and do not seem to get along. This is because many years ago Willoughby laid the captain’s then-youthful wife in secret at a large holiday party conducted by the agency on the moon, bringing her to a violent orgasm during which she confessed that he was much better than the captain. Since then, the two men have not been able to truly confront one another although Willoughby has no evidence that the captain is certain what happened.
He found the captain’s wife vague and out-of-synchronization while he fornicated with her and decided that the captain was a man in need of sympathy. He has no idea whether this incident plays any part in his decision to suppress his fears about the project but hopes that it does not since he has always prided himself upon being an objective and competent man.
* * * *
V
Wilt Okun, the celebrated knuit player, will be on the Venus expedition and it is planned that he will play the National Anthem as the ship touches down on Venus. His presence on the flight will be concealed from the general public until then since his performance is supposed to be in the nature of a surprise and his stature as an entertainer this year promises that he will do excellent things for the public relations of the expedition. In order to get Okun, the agency was forced to guarantee his agent three percent of the flight budget plus a percentage of all eventual cassettes of his landing, but this expenditure was lumped with general procurement and thus is not public knowledge. In any event, the expenditure is well worth it as Okun is the best knuit player since 2112 and the days of Lester Carter. Appeals to his patriotism failed and bureaucratic threats were met with defiance, making the expenditure necessary.
* * * *
VI
Massive riots, in 1972, resulted in the destruction of important equipment and personnel in many of the agency centers. Since then, security has been increased to the point that the centralized agency, located over three hundred square miles in the state of Nebraska, is totally-self-contained and impregnable to assault. More importantly, the agency moved in the wake of the riots to improve its public relations and to educate the public into understanding that their fate and importance as human beings devolved totally upon the ability of humans to pierce the heavens and it was the agency who was going to pierce the heavens for them so why not be reasonable and respond to the agency the way people used to respond to archaic religious totems and slogans?
* * * *
VII
The efforts of the agency in this regard have, by this year, 2119, succeeded in convincing over ninety percent of the electorate that the human condition is inextricably bound to landing on Venus and if the mission fails, their lives will be utterly worthless. Population engineers in the higher level of the bureaucracy issued covert warnings about 2108 that this was dangerous because if the mission failed a good deal of disenchantment might devolve upon the agency, which could find its base of popular acceptance undermined and the lives of some of its employees might even be endangered. These population engineers were overruled however since the agency had decided by 2105 that a really large, effective push had to be undertaken within the lifetime of most people in the country; otherwise its position might erode. By 2110 Venus had been selected as a near and likely target and the enormous appropriations and efforts had commenced. Researches indicated that eight years was the longest effective period of public involvement and so, when plans were finalized, June 4, 2119 was selected as the date of Venus landing and the countdown began at V minus two thousand, nine hundred and twenty (days). Millions were invested in accompanying materials and national holidays were declared on V minus two thousand, V minus fifteen hundred, V minus one thousand and V minus five hundred. Also V minus four hundred, V minus three hundred and V minus two hundred. Also V minus one hundred and fifty, V minus one hundred and V minus fifty. Also V minus forty, thirty, twenty, ten and five. Also V minus one.
* * * *
VIII
On V minus three Willoughby decides that he can no longer live a lie and through extraordinary efforts secures an appointment with the Chief of Cabinet. He tells the Chief that the Venus flight will fail to reach orbit and will definitely fall into the sun. The Chief, who really has no authority whatsoever, and whom the agency has enlisted to participate on the voyage as head of state, immediately places Willoughby under state arrest and has him shot the morning thereafter.
* * * *
IX
On the way toward Venus a massive spectacle is presented by the personalities on board which is sent back via transistorized devices to the five billion people remaining on Earth. Wilt Okun, who is not part of the performance, being held back as the surprise of surprises, sits hunched over his knuit under the dome of the ship, staring out into the wasteland of space and playing diminished sevenths and quadruple-stopped arpeggios on his instrument while his mind, so to speak, wanders free over his history. He recalls a girl with whom he had sexual intercourse fifteen years ago, when he had insinuated his way in the project as a messenger, and thinks of what a truly splendid, if asymmetric fuck she was. Although Okun does not know this, this girl is the wife of the captain; she is in a hospital in West Town at the moment and she will, in some cunning way, be the key to any understanding of this novel.
* * * *
X
Crowds gather in the streets, watching enormous monitors suspended by dirigible in the sky, carrying the progress of the ship. There is to be an enormous celebration at the moment of landing and a series of national holidays which will continue until the ship is safely home again.
Screens have been set up on the periphery of the project in Nebraska; for a circumference of hundreds and hundreds of miles, people have come to park in their transport against the screens and share the experience together. A small number of revolutionaries with incendiary devices have joined the parked transport but with no hope of doing anything unless the mood of the crowd, inexplicably it would seem, should turn ugly.
* * * *
XI
As the first jolt hits the ship, the gravitational devices fail and the captain finds himself suspended in ozone, crouched tailor-fashion near the ceiling, rubbing his hands uselessly together as the ship falls toward the sun. He realizes immediately what has happened because of his excellent training and background, and transmits an order to have the transmission halted immediately, but because all intra-ship communications are wrecked in the jolt the order is neither heard nor followed. The ship falls toward the sun at a speed of several thousand feet a second. It takes twelve hours, altogether, for the ship to be cut off and all of these twelve hours are seen on Earth by two and a half billion adults and many million children.