Year's Best Scifi 7 Part 17

Of course it was a matter of mathematics. Everything has changed.

Back at human beginnings, perception was locked in a shuttered house. One by one, the shutterssnapped open, or were forced open. The "real" world outside was perceived. Because perception-like everything else-evolved.

We can never be sure if all the shutters have yet snapped open.

At one time, "in the old days," it was well known that the caves of Altamira in northern Spain had been accidentally discovered by a girl of five. She had wandered from her father. Her father was an archaeologist, and much too busy studying an old stone to notice that his daughter had strayed from his side.

It is easy to imagine the fine afternoon, the old man kneeling by the stone, the young girl picking wildflowers. She finds blue flowers, red ones and yellow. She wanders on, taking little thought. The ground is broken. She attempts to climb a slope. Sand falls away in a toytown version of an avalanche.

She sees an opening. She has no fear, but plenty of curiosity. She climbs in. Just a little way. She is in a cave. There she sees on the wall the figure of an animal, a buffalo.

That does frighten her. She climbs out and runs back to her father, crying that she has seen an animal.

He abandons his stone and goes to look.

And what he finds is an extensive gallery of scenes, painted by Paleolithic hunters or magicians, or hunter/magicians. The great artistry of the scenes changes human understanding of the past. We came to believe we comprehended that sympathetic magic when we had in fact failed to do so. Our mind patterns had changed: We were unable to comprehend Paleolithic thought, however hard we tried. We accepted a scientific, mathematical model into our heads, and had to live by it.

Clues to a true understanding of the universe lie everywhere. One after another, clues are found and, when the time is ripe, can be understood. The great reptiles whose bones lie in the rocks waited there for millions of years to be interpreted. They expanded greatly humanity's knowledge of duration and the planet's duration. Frequently women are a.s.sociated with such shocks to the understanding, perhaps because they contain magic in their own persons (although there seemed little magic to Joyce Bagreist's person). It was a Mrs. Gideon Mantell who discovered the bones of the first reptile to be identified as a dinosaur.

All such discoveries seem little short of miraculous at the time; then they become taken for granted. So it has proved in the case of Bagreist's Short Cut.

It has been forgotten now, but an accident similar to the Altamira accident brought Joyce Bagreist to understand and interpret the signal of the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis. For untold years, the lights had been explained away as the interaction of charged particles from the sun with particles in the upper atmosphere. True, the signal was activated by the charged particles: But no one until Bagreist had thought through to the purpose of this phenomenon.

Joyce Bagreist was a cautious little woman, not particularly liked at her university because of her solitary nature. She was slowly devising and building a computer which worked on the color spectrum rather than on mathematics. Once she had formulated new equations and set up her apparatus, she spent some while preparing for what she visualized might follow. Within the privacy of her house, Bagreist improvised for herself a kind of wheeled s.p.a.ce suit, complete with bright headlights, an emergency oxygen supply and a stock of food. Only then did she track along her upper landing, encased inside her novel vehicle, along the measured two point five meters, and through the archway of scanners and transmitters of her apparatus.

At the end of the archway, with hardly a jolt to announce a revolution in thought, she found herself in the crater Aristarchus, on Earth's satellite, the Moon.

It will be remembered that the great Aristarchus of Samos, in whose honor the crater was named, was the first astronomer to correctly read another celestial signal now obvious to us-that the Earth was in orbit about the Sun, rather than vice versa.

There Bagreist was, rather astonished and slightly vexed. According to her calculations, she should have emerged in the crater Copernicus. Clearly her apparatus was more primitive and fallible than she had bargained for.

Being unable to climb out of the crater, she circled it in her homemade suit, feeling pleased with the discovery of what we still call Bagreist's Short Cut-or, more frequently, more simply, the Bagreist. There was no way in which this brave discoverer could return to Earth. It was left to others to construct an archway on the Moon. Poor Joyce Bagreist perished there in Aristarchus, a last jam sandwich on her lap, perhaps not too dissatisfied with herself. She had radioed to Earth. The signal had been picked up. s.p.a.ce Administration had sent a ship. But it arrived too late for Joyce Bagreist.

Within a year of her death, traffic was pouring through several archways, and the Moon was covered with building materials.

But who or what had left the color-coded signal in the Arctic skies to await its hour of interpretation?

Of course, the implications of the Bagreist were explored. It became clear that s.p.a.ce/time did not possess the same configuration as had been a.s.sumed. Another force was operative, popularly known as the Squidge Force. Cosmologists and mathematicians were hard put to explain the Squidge Force, since it resisted formulation in current mathematical systems. The elaborate mathematical systems on which our global civilization was founded had merely local application: they did not extend even as far as the heliopause. So while the practicalities of Bagreist were being utilized, and people everywhere (having bought a ticket) were taking a short walk from their home onto the lunar surface, mathematical lacunae were the subject of intense and learned inquiry.

Two centuries later, I back into the story. I shall try to explain simply what occurred. But not only does P-L6344 enter the picture; so do Mrs. Staunton and General Tomlin Willetts, and the general's lady friend, Molly Levaticus.

My name, by the way, is Terry W. Manson, L44/56331. I lived in Lunar City IV, popularly known as Ivy. I was General Secretary of Recreationals, working for those who manufacture IDs, or individual drugs, those enhancing drugs tailored to personal genetic codes.

I had worked previously for the Luna-based MAW, the Meteor and Asteroid Watch, which was how I came to know something of General Willetts' affairs. Willetts was a big consumer of IDs. He was in charge of the MAW operation, and had been for the previous three years. His last few months had been taken up with Molly Levaticus, who had joined his staff as a junior operative and was shortly afterward made Private Secretary to the general. In consequence of this closely kept secret affair-known to many on the base-General Willetts went about in a dream.

My more serious problem also involved a dream. A golf ball lying forlorn on a deserted beach may have nothing outwardly sinister about it. However, when that same dream recurs every night, one begins to worry. There lay that golf ball, there was that beach. Both monuments to perfect stasis, and in consequence alarming.

The dream became more insistent as time went by. It seemed-I know no other way of expressing it-to move closer to my vision every night. I became alarmed. Eventually, I made an appointment to see Mrs. Staunton, Mrs. Roslyn Staunton, the best-known mentatropist in Ivy.

After asking all the usual questions, involving my general health, my sleeping habits, and so forth, Roslyn-we soon lapsed into first names-asked me what meaning I attached to my dream.

"It's just an ordinary golf ball. Well... No, it has markings resembling a golf ball's markings. I don't know what else it could be. And it's lying on its side."

When I thought about what I was saying, I saw I was talking nonsense. A golf ball has no sides. So it was not a golf ball.

"And it's lying on a beach?" she prompted.

"That's right."

"So it's not on the Moon."

"It has nothing to do with the Moon." But there I was wrong.

"What sort of a beach? A resort beach, for instance?"

"Far from it. An infinite beach. Alienating. Stony. Pretty bleak."

"You recognize the beach?"

"No. It's an alarming place-well, the way infinity is always pretty alarming. Just an enormous stretch of territory with nothing growing on it. Oh, and the ocean. A sullen ocean. The waves are heavy and leaden-and slow. About one per minute gathers up its strength and slithers up the beach. I ought to time them." She said, "Time is never reliable in dreams." Then she asked, "Slithers?"

"Waves don't seem to break properly on this beach. They just subside." I sat in silence thinking about this desolate yet somehow tempting picture which haunted me. "I feel in a way I've been there. The sky.

It's very heavy and enclosing."

"So you feel this is all very unpleasant?"

With surprise, I heard myself saying, "Oh no, I need it, it promises something. Something emerging ...

Out of the sea, I suppose."

"Why do you wish to cease dreaming this dream if you need it?"

That was a question I found myself unable to answer.

While I was undergoing three sessions a week with Roslyn, the general was undergoing more frequent sessions with Molly Levaticus. And P-L6344 was rushing nearer.

Molly was an intellectual lady, played a silver trumpet, spoke seven languages, was a chess champion, was also highly s.e.xed and inclined to mischief. Dark of hair, with a pert nose. A catch for any man, I'd say. Even General Tomlin Willetts.

The general's wife, Hermione, was blind, and had been since childhood. Willetts was not without a s.a.d.i.s.tic streak, or how else would he have become a general? We are all blind in some fashion, either in our private lives or in some shared public way; for instance, millions of Earthbound people, otherwise seemingly intelligent, still believe that the Sun orbits the Earth, rather than vice versa. This, despite all the evidence to the contrary and the true facts having been known for centuries.

This type of people would say in their own defense that they believe the evidence of their eyes. Yet we know well that our eyes can see only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. All our senses are limited in some fashion. And, because limited, often mistaken. Even "unshakable evidence" concerning the nature of the universe was due to take a knock, thanks to P-L6344.

Willetts' s.a.d.i.s.tic nature led him to persuade his fancy lady, Molly Levaticus, to walk naked about the rooms of his and his wife's apartment, while the blind Hermione was present. I believe she simply enjoyed the s.e.xual mischief of it. Roslyn agreed. It was a prank. But commentators variously saw Molly either as a victim or as a dreadful predatory female.

n.o.body considered that the truth, if there was a unitary truth, lay somewhere between the two poles: that there was an affinity between the individuals involved, which is not as unusual as it may appear, between the older man and the younger woman. Molly undoubtedly had her power, as he had his weakness. They played on each other.

And they played cat-and-mouse with Hermione Willetts.

She would be sitting at the meal table, with Willetts placed nearby. Into the room would come the naked Levaticus, on tiptoe. Winks were exchanged with Willetts. She would circle the room in a slow dance, hands above her head, showing her unshaven armpits, in a kind of t'ai chi, moving close to the blind woman.

Sensing a movement in the air, or a slight noise, Hermione would ask mildly, "Tomlin, dear, is there another person in the room?"

He would deny it.

Sometimes Hermione would strike out with her stick. Molly always dodged.

"Your behavior is very strange, Hermione," Willetts would say, severely. "Put down that stick. You are not losing your senses, are you?"

Or they would be in the living room. Hermione would be in her chair, reading a book in Braille. Molly would stick out her little curly pudendum almost in the lady's face. Hermione would sniff and turn the page. Molly would glide to Willetts' side, open his zip, and remove his erect p.e.n.i.s, on which her fingers played like a musician with a flute. Then Hermione might lift her blind gaze and ask what her husband was doing.

"Just counting my medals, dearest," he would reply.

What was poor Hermione's perception of her world? How mistaken was it, or did she prefer not to suspect, being powerless?

But he was equally blind, disregarding the signals from MAW, urging an immediate decision on whatto do to deflect or destroy the oncoming P-L6344.

Willetts was preoccupied with his private affairs, as I was preoccupied with my mentatropic meetings with Roslyn. As our bodies went on their courses, so too did the bodies of the solar system.

Apollo asteroids cross the Earth/Moon orbit. Of these nineteen small bodies, possibly the best known is Hermes, which at one time pa.s.sed the Moon at a distance only double the Moon's distance from Earth. P-L6344 is a small rock, no more than one hundred and ninety meters across. On its previous crossing, the brave astronaut, Flavia da Beltrau do Valle, managed to anchor herself to the rock, planting there a metal replica of the Patagonian flag. At the period of which I am speaking, the asteroid was coming in fast at an inclination of five degrees to the plane of the ecliptic. Best estimations demonstrated that it would impact with the Moon at 23:03 on August 5th, 2208, just a few kilometers north of Ivy. But defensive action was delayed because of General Willetts' other interests.

So why were the computers not instructed by others, and the missiles not armed by subordinates?

The answer must lie somewhere in everyone's absurd preoccupation with their own small universes, of which they form the perceived center. Immersed in Recreationals, they were in any case disinclined to act.

Perhaps we have a hatred of reality. Reality is too cold for us. Perceptions of all things are governed by our own selves. The French master Gustave Flaubert, when asked where he found the model for the central tragic figure of Emma in his novel, Madame Bovary, is said to have replied, "Madame Bovary?

C'est moi." Certainly Flaubert's horror of life is embodied in his book. The novel stands as an example of a proto-recreational.

Even as the Apollo asteroid was rushing toward us, even as we were in mortal danger, I was looking-under Roslyn's direction-to find the meaning of my strange dream in the works of the German philosopher, Edmund Husserl. Husserl touched something in my soul, for he rejects all a.s.sumptions about existence, preferring the subjectivity of the individual's perceptions as a way in which we experience the universe.

A clever man, Husserl. But saying little about what things were really like if our perceptions turned out to be faulty. Or, for instance, if we did not perceive the crisis of an approaching asteroid soon enough.

Running promptly to timetable, P-L6344 struck. By a coincidence, it impacted in the Crater Copernicus, the very crater for which Joyce Bagreist had initially been aiming.

The Moon staggered in its...o...b..t.

Everyone in Ivy fell down. Hermione, groping blindly for her stick, clutched Molly Levaticus's hairy little pudendum and shrieked, "There's a cat in here!"

Many buildings and careers were ruined, including General Willetts'.

Most lunarians took the nearest Bagreist home. Many feared that the Moon would swan off into outer s.p.a.ce under the force of impact. I had my work to do. I disliked the squalid cities of Earth. But primarily I stayed on because Roslyn Staunton stayed, both she and I being determined to get to the bottom of my dream. Somehow, by magical transference, it had become her dream too. Our sessions together became more and more conspiratorial.

At one point I did consider marrying Roslyn, but kept the thought to myself.

After the strike, everyone was unconscious for at least two days. Sometimes for a week. The color red vanished from the spectrum.

Another strange effect was that my dream of the golf ball lying on its side faded away. I never dreamed it again. I missed it. I ceased visiting Roslyn as a patient. Since she no longer played a professional role in my life, I was able to invite her out to dine at the Earthscape Restaurant, where angelfish were particularly good, and later to drive out with her to inspect the impact site, once things had cooled down sufficiently.

Kilometers of gray ash rolled by as the car drove us westward. Plastic pine trees had been set up on either side of the road, in an attempt at scenery. They ceased a kilometer out of town, where the road forked. Distant palisades caught the slant of sun, transforming them into spires of an alien faith. Roslyn and I sat mute, side by side, pursuing our own thoughts as we progressed. We had switched off the radio. The voices were those of penguins. "I miss Gauguins," she said suddenly. "His vivid expressionist color. The b.l.o.o.d.y Moon is so gray-I sometimes wish I had never come here. Bagreist made it all too easy. If it hadn't been for you..."

"I have a set of Gauguin paintings on slides. Love his work!"

"You do? Why didn't you say?"

"My secret vice. I have almost a complete set."

"You have? I thought he was the great forgotten artist."

"Those marvelous wide women, chocolate in their nudity. The dogs, the idols, the sense of a brooding presence..."

She uttered a tuneful scream. "Do you know Vairaumati Tei Oa? The woman smoking, a figure looming behind her?"

"And behind them a carving of two people copulating?"

"G.o.d, you do know it, Terry! The sheer color! The sullen joy! Let's stop and have a screw to celebrate."

"Afterward. Fine. His sense of color, of outline, of pattern. Lakes of red, forests of orange, walls of viridian..."

"His senses were strange. Gauguin learned to see everything new. Maybe he was right. Maybe the sand is pink."

"Funny he never painted the Moon, did he?"

"Not that I know of. It could be pink too."

We held hands. We locked tongues in each other's mouth. Our bodies forced themselves on each other. Craving, craving. Starved of color. Cracks appeared in the road. The car slowed.

My thoughts ran to the world Paul Gauguin had discovered and-a different matter-the one he opened up for others. His canvases were proof that there was no common agreement about how reality was. Gauguin was Husserl's proof. I cried my new understanding to Roslyn. "Reality" was a conspiracy, and Gauguin's images persuaded people to accept a new and different reality.

"Oh G.o.d, I am so happy!"

The road began to hump. The tracked vehicle went to dead slow. In a while it said, "No road ahead,"

and stopped. Roslyn and I clamped down our helmets, got out and walked.

No one else was about. The site had been cordoned off, but we climbed the wire. We entered Copernicus by the gap which had been built through its walls some years previously. The flat ground inside the crater was shattered. Heat of impact had turned it into gla.s.s. We picked our way across a treacherous skating rink. In the center of the upheaval was a new crater, the P-L6344 crater, from which a curl of smoke rose, to spread itself over the dusty floor.

Roslyn and I stood on the lip of this new crater, looking down. A crust of gray ash broke in one place, revealing a red glow beneath.

"Too bad the Moon got in the way..."

"It's the end of something..."

There was not much you could say.

She tripped as we made to turn back. I caught her arm and steadied her. Grunting with displeasure, Roslyn kicked at what she had tripped on. A stone gleamed dully.

She brought over her handling arm. Its long metal fingers felt in the churned muck and gripped the object-not a stone. It was rhomboidal-manufactured. In size, no bigger than a vacuum flask.