A World for Dreams

Chapter Twenty

Extraction
(Reed)

I have no idea how much time has passed when one day I wake to find many more people than usual staring in at me through the glass.

I've been a goldfish for so long that I hardly notice the people who come and go every day, looking in at me. They seem happy enough just to look, and I'm happy enough to ignore them. Now and again they bring me gently right to the top, where the glass is unaccountably missing, and rub some kind of nice-smelling stuff into my skin; I don't know why they do this, but it feels good. More often than not, it is the Nice One who does this, and she makes sure I don't feel afraid, so that's just part of my routine. I spend most of the time dozing or dreaming, and the dreams are so pleasant that I never want to leave them. I know so much about life in that other Enterprise now, about the life that not-me lives there. Of course it's not real, it never could be real, but in my few periods of dim reflection, how much I wish it was. How I wish that there was such comradeship, such trust, such friendship. How I wish that I could work and talk and even laugh with people I respect.

How I wish it was real.

But my existence is so vague now that I only remember intermittently that it isn't, and those periods don't seem to consist of anything much – just propelling myself idly around the tank, and feeling the slight bump as I bounce off the sides. I seem to have plenty of room, and if the tubes start to get wrapped around me and bothersome someone will always lean in and untangle me. The tank's not very deep, so they can reach me without actually having to get in, but it's long enough for me to kick off one end and drift a few seconds before I reach the other, and I can turn around again easily enough, though lately I've found it oddly and increasingly awkward, as though my body's become somewhat ungainly for some reason. Definitely I have periods of strange discomfort, almost as though my internal organs have acquired a mysterious life of their own, and on the odd occasion when I glance downwards I do seem to be somewhat on the large size, though without exception a wash of drowsiness prevents me from taking too much notice. So life's pretty comfortable, on the whole. Not that I have any inclination to complain ... that would take far too much effort.

Today, however, the slow routine is broken. The sight of all those faces stirs a vague disquiet, though none of them is familiar enough to bring the muffled sound of the alarm-wail from my box. Twos and threes are normal, but there must be many more than two or three, and they are all looking at me very hard, with something more than the usual almost passing interest.

The caretaker I think of as the Nice One is here, watching me with the others. Her expression is as placid as always, but her eyes are troubled. I know she would never hurt me, or let anyone else hurt me, but seeing her worried and trying to hide it worries me, at least until the expected calm washes over me. Then all thoughts of some terrible thing she is helpless to prevent flow away and I am content to float in my pink pool again.

The strange doctor is among my visitors, too. Although I know he must be a very nice person, something about his expression makes me shiver, and it's with a slightly stronger movement than usual that I push off the glass wall opposite him and turn away.

But the pink pressure all around me seems different, and after a moment it dawns on me that it's growing less. The not-water is slowly and silently draining out of the tank, and for the first time I discover that even when I'm right at the bottom of it, there's not enough left to cover me. And it goes on sinking, uncovering me to a world that now seems cold and frighteningly intangible.

After so long of being practically weightless, the return of gravity would naturally be exhausting. My languid progresses around the tank have afforded my muscles some activity, with the resistance of the pinkness helping to increase the effort required, but I'd have had to swim around an Olympic swimming pool like a barracuda every day to have kept up the muscle tone that would cope with this sudden re-emergence into the grip of normal gravity.

And if the weight weren't enough, I soon find that I'm running out of pink to breathe in. Although for some reason it's horribly uncomfortable putting any pressure on my abdomen, I grind my face into the last few centimetres as best I can, and thrash desperately as I feel hands gripping me.

Not for long, of course; the familiar wash of tranquillity stills me once again. But all the same, I can't stop myself gasping frantically as I'm lifted and alien air clasps my face, invading my mouth and nose as the pink runs out of me.

At this point most of the world goes away. There are mercifully vague impressions of being carried and lowered again, and of things being done to my face and throat while many hands hold me still. The Nice One strokes my cheeks with her thumbs as she cradles my face in her hands, holding me and soothing me while the others do I know not what. Although I'm still helpless to move and certainly can't speak, her gaze is a lifeline to which I cling, the only thing now that offers me even a tiny measure of security. But when the world begins to eddy back to me again there is the strange, dry feeling of air hushing in and out of my lungs, and blearily I remember that there was a time when this was quite normal.

Normal, however, is not a word that even my brain of congealed cotton wool can apply to the absolutely crushing weight of my body. Wisps of memory tell of whales dying on beaches, suffocated by the pressure of their own mass, and I am a whale, stranded and helpless, stupefied by my own inability to do more than rock the appalling prison in which I suddenly find myself. My own bones are the bars, and I am trapped inside them. The concept is so horrible that I struggle to get my brain around it; surely my thoughts were not always this slow, this difficult?

I miss the pink. I miss its pressure, its warmth. Even though I am breathing air again, and it is growing easier, the lack of it around me is like the chill of space, and the people who shoulder the Nice One out of the way to surround me are no comfort. Very quickly they fasten straps to my wrists and ankles again (I had forgotten those), and although the surface on which they lay me is soft enough, I remember the sensation of being unable to move. As the strap settles on my forehead again, it is like waking from a dream into a nightmare.

Their voices are loud. After so long of hearing them only distantly, they batter on my eardrums.

"The medication will have to be reduced gradually," the doctor says. "We don't know if a sudden withdrawal would be too stressful."

"There haven't been any contraindications with regard to development?" somebody asks.

"None whatsoever." His voice is fat with confidence. "In human terms, we're approaching the midpoint of the third trimester. I'm ready to administer all the additional hormones. There should be no problem at all."

"And what about the..." the Nice One starts to ask, but she is instantly glared into silence by all the faces that whip in her direction.

"Everything has been taken into consideration," the doctor says bitingly. "There will be no danger whatsoever. I have orders to intervene immediately if there is the slightest sign of a problem."

The Nice One retires, crushed. Everyone nods, satisfied.

And they all smile down at me.

=/\=

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