It was fear talking through my own mouth. Some kind of thing like that is always wrecking my reunions. Within half a mile of a friendly face or a familiar ear I always retreat and some other damn thing grabs me. Self-inflicted wounds. You can lose a lot of friends that way. Also, you can talk yourself back into the jug. But some people are just downright patient. Or long-suffering.
“We can shape you up,” she said. I knew I was in for hard labor.
“Okay.” I shrugged, and lit a new cigarette off the butt of the old one. They wouldn’t trust me with a lighter.
“Mike Sobieski’s dying,” she said, pulling it right out of the blue.
“We all die,” I said.
“Cancer of the prostate gland,” she said.
“People don’t die of that. They can operate.”
“Not on him,” she said. “He’s an old man. Prostate inflammation — even cancer — isn’t uncommon at his age, but he’s not as strong as most. Complications. He’s always had asthma. He’s got bronchitis. They couldn’t operate, or they’d kill him.”
“Even in this climate, he gets bronchitis?” I queried.
“Not so bad. But he’s had a lifetime of it. It’s weakened him badly. Every little cough is a killer now. And the cancer is spreading. It’s affecting his bladder. Pretty soon it’ll be his gut, his kidneys. He can’t last the year.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Pretty much. They didn’t want me to tell him. But he knew. I told him just the way I told you.”
“I’ll bet he loves you.”
“He was grateful.”
“It must have broken his heart.”
“His heart was already broken. He isn’t a fool, Harker, and if he isn’t quite the orator he was when you knew him, it’s only because he’s old, not because he’s any less of a man. He was bluffing the doctors while they were trying to bluff him. I opened the whole thing up. It’s easier for everyone.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m all in favor of honesty.”
“He’s been director ever since titan four,” she said. “The old director lost his head in the flood of bad publicity after the first disaster. Mike stepped up into his shoes. But Mike’s been on the Project since it was only a gleam in a few pairs of eyes. You know what Mike used to be like when he was in college. He was probably just the same when he was a kid. He was probably on this Project from the moment he read his first science fiction magazine. He was always full up with space fuel. And he’s not burned out yet. He still wants to go. Inside his head. Even though his body’s giving out.
“The assistant director runs things now, in effect, but he remains AD in name. Mike’s bedridden — has been for a month — but he won’t hand in his resignation and the man who’d have to take it doesn’t want it. Sure, there are murmurs in high political places, but there are too many fingers in this pie for any one axman to grab the whole of the ax. Titan is Mike’s child. The dead men — and the live wreck — are on his conscience. If titan nine comes back, it’s his victory. Everybody knows that.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Everybody has hearts, these days. I thought hearts went out with paper roses. Even the military, hey?”
“Henneker has a heart. He’d be a general if he hadn’t. Maybe president. He’s a hard man and all Army with a capital A. But he and Mike have been hand in glove all the way. They’re just about all that’s supporting one another.”
“If I were a taxpayer,” I said, “I’d scream like hell about the way this Project is being run.”
“You’re not a taxpayer. You never were.”
“True,” I conceded. “But how do you get away with it?”
“We get away with it because people think we can do it. And just for once, in all history, we need to do it so badly that people are prepared to care more about doing it than about the way it’s done. I don’t say there isn’t a kiloton weight up there in the sky just waiting to drop on us the moment the string burns through, but for now we hold the stage.”
“And you’re pinning your last hopes on little old me.”
“That’s right.”
“You have to be crazy.”
“You have to be crazy. That’s all we need.”
“Whose big idea was I? Yours?”
“That’s right.”
“You’ve come a long way since the old mind-bending days.”
“That’s right.”
“We need titan nine to bring home a live cargo,” she said. “Mike needs it. Henneker needs it. I need it. The Project needs it — so far it’s cost seven men and two ships, but it would still be operating if it had cost seventy men and twenty ships. The losses aren’t important. What’s important is politics.”
“Surprise, surprise,” I said, unsurprised.
“You’ve been away a long time,” she said. “It’s getting worse every year out in the good old world. The cities, the people. The conditions are getting to the point where they’re intolerable. When there are too many people, people die. That can be handled. There might not be much left of America the Beautiful, but that can be handled, too. We’ve had contingency plans for years. But what the men at the top need desperately, need more than all the guns and the plagues, is a flag to wave. You know and I know that faster-than-light travel is no kind of solution to any kind of human problem. It’s not an instant answer to the population problem or to the resource problem. But it is God’s gift to the political problem, and that’s the one by which the Earth moves. If we can give the president just one successful Proxima loop, we can give him a weapon to keep the people controlled for years. And that’s what he needs — time to implement the contingency plans under full control. Time to kill the people discreetly. Time to save himself. The people are just beginning to realize that the world is a cage, and that they’re imprisoned here. All they can see around them is darkness. They have to be shown a way out of that cage of darkness. If we can show them a road to the stars, we can make them all the promises they want. titan nine is the bribe to buy off the world, Harker. We can’t afford another army hot-shot cookie-chewing toothpaste-ad hero. We need a survivor. We need the ultimate survivor — a man who’s spent the best years of his life practicing nothing but survival. We want a man who can live with schizophrenia, because that’s what deep space is. We want, above all else, a man whose mind we can read, because if this one goes wrong we absolutely must know what went wrong, so that titan ten is a sure thing.”
“You paint a pretty rosy picture,” I said. “We’re doing all this for the president, hey? He needs the publicity.”
“It’s the only game we get to play,” she said. “Any kick and they wheel us out and a new team in. Who d’you want to work for? The good of humanity? Freedom and justice? The American Dream? Not you, Harker. You prefer a dirty game, if there’s one available. You wouldn’t do it for the human race, and I wouldn’t ask you. Do it for yourself, Harker. Do it because it gives you the laugh on the people. That’s you, Harker.”
“Quite honestly,” I said, “I don’t think I’m that bad. I’m tempted to tell you where you can put titan nine. And one of your sweet army flyboys with it.”
“But you won’t.”
“How can I?”
“Precisely.”
“But it’s a hell of a dirty game for you to be up to your neck in. And cynical about it, too. What happened to the nice, sweet, dedicated person that deciphered my mind way back when?”
“Her troubles have aged her. What am I supposed to do, become a nun?”
“Good idea.”
“Well, there you go.”
“There, as you so correctly state, I go. Up, up, and away. Out into the far wastes of galactic space at fifty parsecs a minute. To S Doradus and back before the kettle boils. And why? Because if I don’t you’ll stick me back in my cell. And why? Because you ask me to go? And why? Because you’re
as mad as I am and figure that only a lunatic can do it. What happens when I come back, little girl? Do you announce to the world that a homicidal maniac has opened up the road to the stars — to other homicidal maniacs?”
“You’re not going to get any credit, either,” she said.
“A stand-in does the press conferences and shakes hands with the prexy, hey? Yes, boys, while I was out there in the mighty deep I occupied myself with readin’ holy words an’ writin’ home to my de-ah old ma, who has the cookies all a-bubblin’ on the stove. Do cookies bubble?”
“There are compensations,” she said.
“Name three.”
“If you bring titan nine back, you get to go out again on titan ten.”
“I could die laughing. Also pigs might fly. That’s a real fine offer.”
“It is,” she said. “It makes you the only man in the world capable of taking wings and flying out of the cage — not just the cage you’ve spent your life in, but the cage we’ve spent our lives in as well. We’re offering you freedom, Harker. More freedom than any of us is ever likely to share with you. We’re offering you the one thing that means more to you than anything else.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“It’s not for you.”
“Who is it for? Fuck that stuff about the president and the politics and the publicity. You tell me, from your point of view. Who is it for? Mike? The greater good of humanity?”
“It’s for me.”
“You. Just you. Stars in your eyes, too. What did they do? Give you rocket ships instead of dolls? Give you Doc Smith to read instead of Little Women?”
“Just about.”
“You have the wrong crew, you know,” I told her. “Mike should be the brave old captain, with you his stalwart friend and second in command. You’d look well with pointed ears. And Henneker, too? Henneker the cabin boy? There’s no room for me, except maybe as Fu Manchu the stowaway. What the hell game is this? Old Maid? It sure as hell isn’t poker.”
“If I were you, Harker,” she said, “I wouldn’t worry about anybody’s motives but your own. I wouldn’t trouble yourself to get bitter about our little game because everyone involved in the Project is involved with it as well. Just concentrate on your end. Just go and come back. You’ll only torture yourself worrying about other people.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I know.”
“I am. I’ve been away for a long time. I don’t know how people think — not out here. I don’t know how the world works out here. I wouldn’t know an honest motive if you gave it to me on a silver plate.”
“I know.”
“You honestly think I can do it?”
“Yes.”
“You honestly think I’m a logical choice?”
“Yes.”
The shrinking, sinking, stinking feeling inside me wouldn’t go away. I was a mess. She had to be right — where else could I get a second opinion? But it was all set wrong anyway. All going wrong. I wished that I loved her.
“Good night,” she said.
“Those prison documents,” I said.
“Yes?”
“I exaggerate.”
“I know,” she said. “Good night.”
Madman’s Dance
A Question of Characterization
The everlasting crisis of identity, of course, has no meaning except in terms of characterization. . . .
Perhaps I should say that the crisis of identity has all meanings — is, in fact, total meaning. But identity is a question of self, and here, ipso facto, where there is no being there is no self. Only ego.
Who am I?
Certainly not Harker Lee, who is blasted into every last cranny of this crazy nonworld. Here, there is no Harker Lee, because there is only that which is Harker Lee, and the name becomes meaningless. I cannot be Harker Lee — I am a character in Harker Lee’s dream, and I must find a part to play, a character to be.
It is not the character who becomes real in the actor, but the actor who becomes unreal in the character. So to be given access to an unreal frame of reference and context of experience is a privilege, for it gives us a viewpoint from which to see ourselves, not as others see us, but as we might see ourselves if we were not cursed with subjective existence tainted with the objective selfhood. By virtue of characterization we become free to act, to know what it is like to be without a being-in-the-world in a world without real being.
I am here, dwelling with the stars, in the guts of what was once Harker Lee and is now a universe.
I am in inner space, the inner space of ego. Perhaps I might clarify my position better by asking: Who are you?
Who are you?
Not pure ego, nor id, and certainly not superego. What are you made of, shards of Harker Lee? You are a God, and I am your Doppelgänger, your gray brother, your son of the shadows. I am your alter ego.
I am a traveler upon the face of your Earth, an observer and a commentator. I am your judge and your jury, but I am your prisoner and your victim also.
I am your biographer, your prophet, your friend. I am also your guardian, who will see that you return safe and sound to your existence.
Who am I? What is my name and my part?
What can my part be but that of Lucifer, of Iblees, of Beelzebub?
Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
I am the devil.
I dance as Judas dances, to the madman’s tarantella. We are allies, Judas and I. If you get out of line, Godman, we will straighten you out. Look out for us, Godman. Judas and I are a red-hot team.
You cannot drown us with your dreams. . . .
Her hair swirls like marsh mist about her shoulders and her neck. Its fragrance is cold and fragile — a breath of morning wind would blow it all away with a touch of its self. Her entire form is crystalline in the clouded darkness such as lingers after dawn, and she flees to her daylight slumbers within the casket of a dead tree in a stagnant swamp.
She is as old as the stones which mark her resting place. A whole far-away world that is long forgotten but which never died is hiding in the canyons of her memory. She is sister to the darkness beneath the earth, and the unlit oceans and the anaerobic fires.
You want me to follow her there, to her rendezvous with the bones of men and the stony imprints of the passage of the evolutionary procession. You would have me ride upon the frail carriage other floating tresses, or let her ride upon my own broad back to wherever she cares to spur me. You would have me share her deathlike dreams and her dreamlike days. You want me to go with her to her distant destinies and her macabre ports of call. You want me to drink the death that is her life from the same carven cups, and open wide my embrace to encompass all her multitude of forms, and guard her from all anger and harm.
You know that I should love to plunge myself into the black depths of her nightshade existence, and swim in her sea of shadow and shame, to stay by her side whether she was allowed to fly or condemned to crawl. My mind could always tell the truth, and I could not be deluded by the mocking tyranny of your bribery. But nevertheless . . .
She dreams of an everlasting, moonless midnight, lit only by the quiet, careless stars. She dreams of a cloak of shadows which might hide her tenderness from the brightest lightning. She dreams of the ultimate end to time, when all is night and desolation, and she is equal with the whole stock of the tired human race, and the sun is an ember.
I will pass by her then, for but a moment, and perhaps I will offer her small gifts of pearls and diamonds, pouring them liberally into the ocean of her hair. She would know me even then, and we might laugh together, and make a chrysalis of our dreams in the blackened ruin that was once the universe, knowing that long after we are gone it will break and give birth to a new monadic existence.
In the meantime, we might drink strange drinks and build ruin
ed, night-filled cities out of poisoned memories. And we would not dread the second morning of time. But while there is life in everywhere, our marriage is not even the stuff of dreams. It is a futile temptation.
Get thee behind me . . .
I am forced to pass through a town infested by a foul plague. I walk quickly along the sweat-stained, tear-stained, blood-stained, tainted road, with my collar upturned and my eyes entrenched behind guarded lids, and my tongue pressed to the floor of my mouth. I pause only once, daring no more, as my feet grow heavy, and I watch a young man who cradles in his arms a sleeping girl-child whose body is marled with the signs in red and black.
“Awaken,” murmurs the youth, into the ear of the sleeper, breathing on her pockmarked cheek. Slowly, she stirs, and her dead eyes look into his.
“I am dead,” she says quietly, and without remorse.
“I have healed you,” he says. “I am a healer of the dead.”
“Only the dead may heal the dead, may love the dead, may dance with the dead, may pay the dead their due,” quotes the child. “Are you dead?”
“No,” answers the young man, “I live yet a while.”
But he falls upon the road, and the child runs away to command the driver of the death-cart to bring his cargo this way, as the darkness eats his eyes and gorges upon his virility.
The child, which was only a lifeless burden, becomes so once more as the driver of the death-cart reaches down to greet her, and the driver spits on the young man, saying, “Healer of the dead, heal thyself!”
We will never have enough of masks, you and I. They are the moves in our game, the substance of our existence.
But let me test your pride, for just one moment. Let me tempt you. Let’s not think that because you have all the power and all the knowledge, that I am completely without talent in this matter.
Man in a Cage Page 7