'What is hard?'
'To be that far away, connected only by computers and radios. No one has ever traveled as far before. That's interesting. It's not the reliance on all the equipment, it's that no adventure ever has been quite like it.'
Mister Evil nodded. 'What about explorers in Africa or the North Pole?'
'They faced elements. Unknown. But astronauts face something different.'
'What's that?'
'Myths,' Francis said. He looked around at all the others, and then asked, 'Where is Peter?'
Mister Evil shifted about. 'Still in isolation,' he said. 'But he should be out soon. Let's get back to the astronauts.'
'They don't exist,' Cleo said. 'But Peter does.'
Then she shook her head. 'Maybe he doesn't,' she said. 'Maybe all this is a dream and we're going to wake up any second.'
An argument broke out then, between Cleo and Napoleon and several others about what really existed and what didn't, and if something took place where you couldn't see it, did it really happen. All of this caused the group to snort and wave their hands excitedly in contradiction and dispute, which Evans allowed to ricochet back and forth. For a moment or two, Francis listened, because, in an odd way, he thought there were some similarities between his position in the hospital and men on their way to space. They were adrift, he thought, the same way he was.
He believed that he had recovered from his fright from the night before, but he had little confidence in his ability to greet the night to come.
He probed his memory for all the words the Angel had spoken, but it was hard for Francis to remember them with the sort of precision that he thought was necessary. Fear, he realized, skews things about. It's like trying to see accurately when staring into a fun house mirror. The image is wavy, indistinct, distorted.
For an instant, he told himself: Stop trying to see the Angel. Start trying to see what the Angel sees.
Deep inside him, voices shouted out in sudden warning. Stop! Don't do that!
Francis shifted about in his seat uncomfortably. The voices wouldn't have warned him, if they hadn't seen something important and dangerous. He shook his head slightly, as if to restore his connection to the group that was continuing to argue, and he looked at the others, just as Napoleon was saying, '… Why do we need to go up into space anyway…' and he saw that Cleo was eyeing him from across the circle with a slightly bemused, slightly curious, almost impressed look of attention. She leaned forward in her seat, ignoring Napoleon, which infuriated the small round man, and she quietly said to Francis, 'C-Bird saw something, didn't he?'
Then she cackled, her body quivering with some joke that only she understood, just as Peter stepped into the room.
He immediately waved to the group, and then made a sweeping, formal bow to his fellow patients, like a king's attendant in some sixteenth-century court. Then he grabbed a steel folding chair and pulled himself into the circle.
'None the worse for wear,' he said, as if anticipating the question.
'Peter seems to like isolation,' Cleo said.
'Nobody snores,' Peter replied, which got everyone to grin and chuckle.
'We have been discussing astronauts,' Mister Evil said. 'In the time remaining, I'd like to conclude that discussion.'
'Sure,' Peter said. 'Didn't mean to interrupt anything.'
'Well, fine. Now, does anyone have anything else to add?' Mister Evil turned away from Peter and examined the collected patients. He was met with silence.
Evans let a few seconds pass. 'Anyone?'
Again, the group, so vociferous a few minutes earlier, was quiet. Francis thought that this was like them; that sometimes words flowed from all of them almost unchecked, flooding the air, and other moments, they disappeared, and with almost religious fervor, everyone looked inward. Shifts in mood were commonplace.
'Come on,' Evans said, exasperation creeping into his voice. 'We were making progress a moment or two before we were interrupted. Someone, Cleo?'
She shook her head.
'Newsman?'
For once, he didn't have a headline to spout.
'Francis?'
Francis didn't answer.
'Say something,' Evans said stiffly.
Francis was at a loss and he saw Evans shifting about, his own anger increasing. It was, Francis thought, a matter of control. Mister Evil liked to control everything in the dormitory, and once again Peter had disrupted that power. More than any patient, no matter how rigid with madness they were, none of them could compare with Mister Evans's need to own every moment of the day and night inside the Amherst Building.
'Say something,' Evans repeated, even colder. This was an order.
Francis hurried about within himself, trying to imagine what it was that Mister Evil wanted to hear, but, in reply, he was only able to blurt out: 'I'll never go into space.'
Evans shrugged and snorted, 'Well, of course not…' as if what Francis had said was the silliest thing he'd ever heard.
But Peter, who'd been watching and listening, suddenly leaned forward. 'Why not?' he asked.
Francis turned to the sound of the Fireman's voice. Peter was grinning. 'Why not?' he said again.
Evans looked upset. 'We don't encourage delusions here, Peter,' he snapped.
But Peter, fresh from the padded walls of the isolation cell, ignored him. 'Why not, Francis?' he asked a third time.
Francis waved his hand about, as if to indicate the hospital.
'But C-Bird,' Peter continued, his voice picking up momentum as he spoke, 'why couldn't you be an astronaut? You're young, you're fit, you're smart. You see things that others might fail to notice. You're not conceited and you're brave. I think you'd make a perfect astronaut.'
'But Peter…' Francis said.
'No buts at all. Why, who's to say that NASA won't decide to send someone crazy into space? I mean who better than one of us? I mean, people would surely believe a crazy spaceman a helluva lot quicker than some military-salute-the-flag type, right? Who's to say they won't decide to send all sorts of folks up into space, and why not one of us? They might send politicians, or scientists or maybe tourists even, someday. Maybe they'll find that when they send a crazy guy up, that floating about in space without gravity to hold us on earth, well, it helps us? Like a science experiment. Maybe…'
He paused, taking a breath. Evans started to speak, but before he could, Napoleon hesitantly added, 'Peter might be right. Maybe gravity makes us crazy…'
Cleo jumped in. 'Holds us down…'
'All that weight right on our shoulders…'
'Prevents our thoughts from zooming up and out…'
From around the room, patient after patient started to nod in agreement. Suddenly each seemed to find his tongue. There were first murmurs of assent, then abrupt acclaim.
'We could fly. We could float.'
'No one would hold us back.'
'Who would be better explorers than us?'
