Again, Dangerous Visions Part 68

Sunday, June 3, 2084 Her face is every bit as lovely as her mask.

Last night after another deadly dull emergency drill I approached her in the outer perimeter arcade, removed my mask, and introduced myself.

"Ah yes," she murmured through unmoving silver lips, "the oboe. And my name, since I see I must surrender it now, is Aspera."

"Per Aspera ad Astra," said the Star-Mouse, with a gallant flourish.

"It is a readymade pun, Mr. Regan, but I fear that I'll encounter it in the next century as many times as I am introduced. You can, if it suits you better, call me Hope. Many of my friends do."

"Aspera is a lovely name. Your mask is lovely too."

She removed the mask. She was smiling. There was a natural beauty-mark (mole seems too harsh a word) high on her left cheek, an unusual feature, surgery being the preferred course. Close-grained procelain skin of the sort Ingres delighted to paint. Silver-blond curls in a careless, crafty tumble-not unlike the curls of the mask. And such eyes-large, dark, vulnerable, a doe's eyes beseeching a hunter to come after her. Ah, she turned me to jelly, like an inverse Medusa.

As simply as that.

Afterwards I checked at the library (where Slade recounted another of his dreams; he seems to have made an art of dreaming). Aspera Donatio is 54, an Olympic swimmer, and a noted psychotherapist, specializing in the psychoses of children and addicts. An unusual specialty to bring aboard the Extrovert Extrovert. Except in the ghettoes of the mortals, there are few enough children these days even on Earth. As for drugs, we stable stolids are virtually teetotalers. And, as I already knew, she acts.

There is something about the woman, something that haunts, like a telephone ringing in a bricked-up room.

Later: The haunting is solved. It came to me as I was going to sleep. She has the same eyes as that child, the dark eyes of mortality and old earth.

Wednesday, June 13, 2084 Slade seems a more unaccountable fellow each time I visit him. I visited the library again today to see him, though maintaining the pretext of impersonality-i.e., a request for book-films of Proust, whom I have been exhorting myself to reread for the last month. At first glance Slade strikes one as being a most unprepossessing sort, anomalous, an error on the part of the selection committee. Shy, Coptic eyes; a Turkish moustache to mask his overbite; a reticence in ordinary conversation that takes him to the brink of invisibility. After I'd gone on a bit in my own bland way, parroting the usual textbook things about Proust, Slade smiled and started to tell me, with his usual disconcerting directness, of his latest dream: "I dreamt that I had written Remembrances of Things Past Remembrances of Things Past, though in the dream they became Things Lost Things Lost. I've never read the book, and so the only thing it had in common with the original is probably that it was written in the first person. In the part I can remember I was walking through a French village with Gene Shaw. Perhaps you know her-she programs some of our environments? Well, no matter. Gene and I used to be very close years and years ago, during the pogroms in the States, and that's surely the significance of 'Things Lost.' We came to a square at the center of the town, and as I've never seen any more of France than Paris, the square was a replica of the little park in front of the courthouse in Clarion, Iowa, where I grew up. It was ringed round with bright brick houses plagiarized from Vermeer and de Hooch. A public lav that looked rather like a bandstand-my notion of a French urinal, I suppose-stood at the center of the square. Gene and I looked in through the stained-gla.s.s windows. A nasty-faced little boy was whipping the toilet bowl with a length of heavy chain. He destroyed it completely. While I wrote the story, I kept changing the boy's name. At first it was Genet, but that looked too much like Gene. It was a huge novel, but I forget the rest of it. Do you like it?"

"I think it's one of your best."

"Oh, I'm not sure. In some ways it's quite transparent. Gene and Genet, for instance. Still, it has its points." Then, as though embarra.s.sed by his candor (no matter that these dream-recitals have by now become almost a tradition between us), he muttered an excuse and retreated into the fastness of his archives.

Little danger that I'll get to know this fellow too quickly. In a way it even seems a pity, for he's quite likeable.

Friday, June 15, 2084 Inundations of memory, Proust's and my own alternately, keep me from my proper work.

The U of M. I had entered the business school there in 2009, the year before the Berkley Rumor, with no other intention in the world than to serve my time and get a Master's in Business Administration. A follower in my father's footsteps and a Young Republican. $40,000 a year, a vice-presidency at Freedom Mutual or any company with as good a retirement program-these were my goals. I had even persuaded myself that I wanted wanted these things, much as a mortal, told of his cancer, or after a stroke, will persuade himself that he really wants to die, that death is a boon and a culmination. So soon did the sense of the limits of our time wrap its iron bands about us in those days. Eighteen years old, and I was already as fearful of 'wasting myself,' of letting the sand slip through the hourgla.s.s, as any invalid octogenarian. these things, much as a mortal, told of his cancer, or after a stroke, will persuade himself that he really wants to die, that death is a boon and a culmination. So soon did the sense of the limits of our time wrap its iron bands about us in those days. Eighteen years old, and I was already as fearful of 'wasting myself,' of letting the sand slip through the hourgla.s.s, as any invalid octogenarian.

It all returns with such vividness: the dreary brick-and-gla.s.s buildings; the torpid hours in the cla.s.sroom; the frightened, mean-souled, bickering teachers; the cafeterias of hasty, ill-synthesized food; the occasional psychedelic blast that illumined with such terrible clearness the drab texture of the everyday; the ritual fun of the frathouse and secret despair; the attrition, almost day by day, of the alternatives left before one. I recall these things with a strange sense of disbelief. Was I ever such a caterpillar as that that? I was, and but for the gruesome bounty of the Plague I would have never left the coc.o.o.n, I would, in all probability, be dead.

What power that word used to have, how feebly it rings today.

"My proper work."

I have shied away from that subject, as I shy away from the task. Essentially it is the feeling that they will laugh when I sit down to play.

I introduced myself to this journal in the role of a novelist (unpublished). I am unpublished for the una.s.sailable reason that I have never written a novel. I am a novelist, therefore, only in the Platonic sense. Somewhere in the Empyrean there is an Ideal Form of Oliver Regan, and it is shaped like a Novelist.

The novel I balk at will be based on the voyage of the Extrovert Extrovert. My characters will be the 246 of us, no more nor less. Their dialogue will be of their invention, not mine. I have trained myself (and this is my meager credential as a novelist) to reproduce conversations I have heard with 95% accuracy. To invent nothing, to include everything, each word and gesture, and yet it must be a work of art as well, it must gleam. I ask no more than any realist asks-the impossible. And, in consequence, I write nothing.

Still, the conditions here are uniquely well-suited for one to attempt the impossibility: a finite environment and cast, a vast but bounded span of time. I am far from being the only voyager engaged upon the task. There is something absurd, indeed, about the degree to which we voyagers chronicle our voyaging-as though Columbus were to staff his three ships with nothing but historians and diarists. But then, why not? The age of tar-buckets and windla.s.ses is past.

Sat.u.r.day, June 16, 2084 Immediately I say a thing I begin to see it as a misrepresentation. For of course the Extrovert Extrovert is maintained by the labor of human mind and muscle, even if no larger effort is required, often, than that of uncorking the genie-jug of automation. Thus, concerning 'my proper work,' it would be more honest to say I am a farmer or, at most, a cook. I am in charge of all the ship's organic synthesis operations, exclusive of the hydroponics system. My background in molecular biology prepared me to take over this task with a minimum of pre-flight training. The technics of the factory differs only in magnitude from the technics of the laboratory, and the ship's plant is so abundantly supplied with genies that my supervisory visits have taken on the tone already of church-attendance, a moral rather than a practical necessity. is maintained by the labor of human mind and muscle, even if no larger effort is required, often, than that of uncorking the genie-jug of automation. Thus, concerning 'my proper work,' it would be more honest to say I am a farmer or, at most, a cook. I am in charge of all the ship's organic synthesis operations, exclusive of the hydroponics system. My background in molecular biology prepared me to take over this task with a minimum of pre-flight training. The technics of the factory differs only in magnitude from the technics of the laboratory, and the ship's plant is so abundantly supplied with genies that my supervisory visits have taken on the tone already of church-attendance, a moral rather than a practical necessity.

As an administrator I have also a non-priestly function: I am training two other crew-members as replacements, a process that is going on at all levels of the ship's organization and will continue for decades, until, ideally, a crew of only twenty, taken at random, should be able to keep the Extrovert Extrovert running smoothly. running smoothly.

My trainees are Khalid Hatoum, 38, and Amelia Borman, 45. Hatoum is a ritualist (it was he who pointed out to me the priestly character of our work) and was responsible for the parade and launching ceremonies. Suspicious as I am of "The New Forms" (Can a compulsion neurosis be a work of art?), I find Hatoum immensely impressive, a decathlon champion of the intellect. His is the sort of a.n.a.lytic that can mount whole staircases of thought at one bound. Already I feel played out as a teacher. Borman is more my own intellectual size. She comes to this work with a background in cybernation, though most of her programming experience has been in the applied arts. She has been responsible for the quarter-mile stretch along the outer arcade that I've most consistently admired. A superb color-sense and dazzling kinetics. I eavesdropped once, over the plant intercom, on an argument she had with Hatoum over the merits of her 'quotations' from art history. Hatoum (who is, outside his own speciality, wholly intolerant of the traditional) savaged her. I've been pleased to see that his arguments haven't affected her programs.

Wednesday, June 27, 2084 I am going to be psychoa.n.a.lyzed!

"At my age?" I asked, but Aspera insists that it is exactly my age that provides the fascination-rather the way an archaeologist might enthuse over the seven layers of Troy. If nothing else, a.n.a.lysis will provide a frame for all these intruding memories. Not to mention that it guarantees two hours a week alone with Aspera.

Orchestra rehearsals are being cut down. The ship starts to come alive. Ghosts whisper to each other, doors open, masks are put aside. We are two months out, and the old Copernican sun is very dim, a mere star among a million others. We approach ever nearer the speed of light.

Friday, June 29, 2084 Today Slade, instead of telling me his latest dream, handed me this typed note: "Dream, June 28, 2084 "Part of it was talking with a psychiatrist who looked something like Hemingway and something like Jung. I showed him my written-down dreams. It seems that I had never remembered the important parts. I can't remember the rest."

Slade's dreams have come to have a peculiar fascination for me, as they seem to have so often a bearing on my own preoccupations. It is as though he were dreaming for me. When I told him this, he became quite embarra.s.sed.

Sat.u.r.day, June 30, 2084 My first session in Aspera's cabin. We sat on cushions and drank a mild scopolamine tea. We had both learned the tea ceremony when that fad went round in the '30's, and we resurrected it today with a good deal of panache, considering.

The mask I had so much admired proves to be Aspera's own handiwork. Her cabin is decorated with others she has made, the most striking of which was a crown and visor in clear polly thickly set synthetic diamonds. Though I expressed my admiration by no more than a smile, she was quick to apprehend my wish and put on the mask. Ravishing!

Then I began to put on my masks-or to take them off, it amounts to the same thing. Somehow I got to talking about my three years in Mexico-from 2011 to 2014-and though I spoke under the influence of the tea I can't help but think there was something crafty in that choice, for I've seldom appeared in such a good light as I did in those years. The President had just confirmed the Berkley Rumor, and I-and anyone else younger than 40-had to cope with the disquieting idea that my probable life-span was of unknown extent. I left the U of M without much hesitation. What did I want with that Master's now? Was I going to spend an unending lifetime drudging in the brick-and-gla.s.s buildings of some monster corporation? Such a life had become unthinkable. I didn't know what I wanted then, but it certainly wasn't that. Also, our mortal elders, still holding the reins of power, were starting to make ugly innuendos; one got the distinct impression, like Isaac walking alongside his father on the way to Mount Moriah, that it wasn't quite safe in that neighborhood. Though why we should have thought Mexico any safer, I don't know.

But they were wonderful, lazy, wildly cerebral years while they lasted. Truly, I believe I must have been half-dead until that time. I would tumble long guiltless weekends in the sand-there was time for it-or read any book I took a fancy to-there was time for it-or, if that was all I wanted, I could get the ultimate suntan-there was time for it. Perhaps there had always been time for it, but I, craven mortal that I had been, had not believed it. There is still a little part of me that refuses to believe it, but I think the younger generation, anyone born after 2025 or so, lacks that feeling altogether. Aspera, for one, claims to find the idea quite alien. I pointed out that it was curious to find a psychiatrist who claims to be a Freudian of the most reactionary stamp and who denies the central importance of the sense of death.

"But I don't deny it," she protested. "We've changed, but death has changed too."

"What is death if not the darkness at the end of every corridor? And what does it mean if the corridor doesn't end?"

"You've answered that question yourself, Oliver. Death is a symbol."

Leapday, 2084 Here in s.p.a.ce every day is Leapday, the day that is part neither of any week nor of any month. To commemorate the day, the entire crew a.s.sembled in the auditorium where we were addressed by Captain Gray and Doctor Stillhven, who pushed through the calendar reform in 2000, the first of his many famous exploits with the U.N. 2000: I can just barely remember that. I was in third grade and Miss ? (I don't recall her name, but she wore a lavender sweater and a string of pearls. She had come over from England, and we all made fun of her accent behind her back), who had just taught us that "Thirty days has September, April, June, and November, etc.," was under the onus of explaining that from now on February, March, May, June, August, September, November, and December all have thirty days. How Miss ? must have hated Dr. Stillhven.

Another little atavism of mine: before Dr. Stillhven came up to the podium I had expected to see a venerable, white-haired patriarch. He is is III years old. I was shocked to see that he wore a codpiece and powdered his hair like the youngest dandy among us. III years old. I was shocked to see that he wore a codpiece and powdered his hair like the youngest dandy among us.

Later: Harness. Her name was Harness, and she was nutty about flowers.

Tuesday, July 3, 2084 The doe has fallen to the hunter's arrows. How quickly things happen, after all!

Friday, July 6, 2084 The a.n.a.lysis proceeds apace. Aspera tells me now that her surrender and our continuing liaison are diagnostic tools. Well, she has her tools and I have mine. She complains that I don't have enough dreams, so I have begun borrowing Slade's.

An outsider listening to these sessions would have trouble discerning more than the ordinariest teatime duelling. Everyone, after all, is always 'psychoa.n.a.lyzing' everyone else; it is part of our culture, the basic form of modern romance, in which one party tries to invade the psyche of another, the victim agreeing provisionally to a.s.sist the invader. Rather, in a way, like an old vampire movie.

Nevertheless, there is something piquant in making love to a woman who is so forthright in her a.s.saults. Yet the curious thing-the feeling just the other side of my power to define it (and isn't this always the most interesting kind?)-is this: that despite that she has a.s.sumed the role of vampire and I am, for the moment, her willing victim, I am convinced that it is she who is basically the more vulnerable, that she is, despite all she can do, my my predestined victim. Such are the paradigms of love. predestined victim. Such are the paradigms of love.

Of what what, Oliver?

Sunday, July 8, 2084 On reading over all of the above, I sense a curious lack of-is it?-texture. The world I present here is so intangible intangible. A bubble drifting through the void. No, that isn't it exactly.

It is as though I were a fetus in a jar-a curled-up, withered, half-formed little homunculus-one of a series lining a long shelf. Aspera inhabits the bottle next to mine, and we occupy the long hours tapping messages to each other on the gla.s.s.

We are the figures in the novel that Slade dreams he is writing.

Wednesday, August 8, 2084 A month gone by, and yet it seems that I have only just closed this journal upon the last entry. I have still to begin my novel, unless I can count it to my credit that I have been eavesdropping extensively and transcribing what I like in another notebook. I have been neglectful of my priestly duties, since Hatoum knows them now as well as I do and claims to enjoy them. I have wasted hours and hours trying to read Genji Genji in the j.a.panese, a hopeless task. And I remember things... in the j.a.panese, a hopeless task. And I remember things...

For the humor of it let me transcribe a little sc.r.a.p of paper that I found addressed to myself in my shirt pocket: "I must learn to hold to a more commonplace tone, even at the risk of seeming ba.n.a.l. I shall hold up, as an exemplar, my father, who was-and who essentially remains-a businessman."

Sunday, August 12, 2084 Genji and his three friends were watching a dance called the "Warbling of the Spring Nightingales," following which they recited appropriate poems to each other on the subject of nightingales, each of which entailed a page of footnotes. Suddenly the book struck me as intolerably insipid. Tides of adrenalin began to spill through me, and I could think but one fearful thought: "Spring! Good G.o.d, I won't see spring again for centuries. Or never-never again!" I tore out of my cabin without a mask. I had to do do something. something. I had to go outside I had to go outside.

This being impossible, I went to the gym, which seemed unusually crowded. (How often what seem our most private emotions turn out to have been part of an epidemic!) I competed in an obstacle race (and lost) and wrestled (and lost). To the extent that my panic had been due to excess adrenalin, I rid myself of it. I was still reluctant to return at once to Lady Murasaki, so I looked at the Activities Board to see what alternatives I had. It was a toss-up between a Silent Dance recital (shades of Genji!) and a seance conducted by our own medium, Mme. St. George. Aspera (who saw her in London) says she is a droll performer, but it was booked solid.

Though I pride myself on the catholicity of my tastes, I have never been able to enjoy Silent Dance. I always sit there trying to imagine music to go along with it. A gaucherie, but one I can't help. Also I find that a nude body can give rise to thoughts extraneous to High Art. (I said this once to Aspera, and she was outraged. She thinks me an awful Philistine.) Today's performance was an astonishment of beauty, and my conversion has been complete. I shall never be able to look at a ballet again. There was, in effect, but a single dancer (the other bodies on the stage were mere ornaments to her own commanding presence)-but she was a G.o.ddess. Sheila Dupont. It seems almost criminally wasteful that such an artist should be cloistered aboard the Extrovert Extrovert.

How she radiated youth! How she gloried in the fact of it! How vast a footnote it would have required to lay bare all the significances implied in the turning of her wrist. After all, I have breathed spring air today.

Aspera was present too, in a mask I haven't seen before. Though we were no more than twenty in the audience, and though I went unmasked, I don't think she noticed me. She too was under the enchantment of that child.

Monday, August 27, 2084 An embarra.s.sing pa.s.sage-at-arms with Aspera. Embarra.s.sing partly because she aggressed so blatantly, partly because she found me out in a small deception.

I had been teasing her about her professed orthodoxy and the lack of science in her methods. Taking my taunts in earnest, she suggested that I submit to a test case.

"Anything you name," I promised.

"Then I propose that you see me, and have seen me from the first, as your mother. And I'll prove it to you."

I shrugged. "Well of course. The resemblance is incontrovertible. No doubt I see Captain Gray as my father too. He's the same age."

"You can't wriggle out of it that easily. I'm not speaking in parables. There is some very specific point of correspondence, something that caught your attention from the first. This, and nothing else, was the reason you came bounding after me."

"To be candid, Aspera, what first attracted me to you was your mask. My mother was dead long before masks came into fashion."

"Tell me about her. You've scarcely mentioned your mother, you know, all this time you've been seeing me. That in itself is significant."

"By that token, what wouldn't wouldn't be significant?" be significant?"

"You're resisting like all Ireland."

"I am, aren't I? Well then, which mother shall I tell you about? I had two."

"How morbid." Aspera settled herself on a cushion and, like a wise, hungry cat, waited. "Siblings?"

"One, a half-brother. He was mortal."