A MOMENTARY TASTE OF BEING
James Tiptree, Jr.
. . . A momentary taste Of Being from the Well amid the Waste— — Khayyam/Fitzgerald ... It floats there visibly engorged, blue-green against the blackness. He stares: It swells, pulsing to a terrifying dim beat, slowly extrudes a great ghostly bulge which extends, solidifies ... it is a planet-testicle pushing a monster penis toward the stars. Its bloodbeat reverberates through weeping immensities; cold, cold. The parsecs-long phallus throbs, probes blindly under intolerable pressure from within; its tip is a huge cloudy glans lit by a spark: Centaur. In grief it bulges, lengthens, seeking release—stars toll unbearable crescendo ... It is a minute or two before Dr. Aaron Kaye is sure that he is awake in his temporary bunk in Centaur’s quarantine ward. His own throat is sobbing reflexively, his eyes are weeping, not the stars. Another of the damn dreams. Aaron lies still, blinking, willing the icy grief to let go of his mind.
It lets go. Aaron sits up still cold with meaningless bereavement. What the hell is it, what’s tearing at him? “Great Pan is dead,” he mutters stumbling to the narrow wash-stall. The lament that echoed round the world . . . He sluices his head, wishing for his own quarters and Solange. He really should work on these anxiety symptoms. Later, no time now. “Physician, screw thyself, he jeers at the undistinguished, worried face in the mirror.
Oh Jesus-the time! He has overslept while they are doing god knows what to Lory. Why hasn’t Coby waked him? Because Lory is his sister, of course; Aaron should have foreseen that.
. . .
