At last, I cry for help, and the sound of my voice, being the only thing in the whole chain of universes to be found within sleep within sleep within sleep . . . is an infinite scream.
But the answer . . .
Now I stand on top of the largest mountain in the world, and it is firm beneath my feet. The western horizon is a hundred and three miles away, but the road which leads to the eastern horizon is only sixty-four miles long, because the mountains of the east are quite large.
On top of the mountain grows a single flower. A lotus. Which opens its petals every morning to give birth to a tiny (not altogether human) child which grows until the sun is at its zenith, and which spends the afternoon placidly decaying into old age and senility.
I watch the child during the whole of a morning, while he plays, and learns not to play.
In the afternoon, I talk to him, about the possible existence of life after birth. Our conversation is pleasant, and we have a mutual understanding, despite the fact that we disagree.
But in the evening, he grows maudlin; he curses and abuses me, his envy and his anger spilling out from his lips and blackening his image. He complains of the coming agony of darkness and the eternal oblivion which will only pass when he is born again into the same day, over and over.
I speak to him softly, but I cannot console him.
In the end, he has only one thought in his wizened head, and that is a somewhat bitter one.
“If only,” he says, “the sun might rise tomorrow in the west and set in the east.”
I ask him, very quietly, for help, though I know he is already dead.
But the answer . . .
Then there is a cold wind and a cold night wrapping my face with wax and needles of pain. There are faceless people huddled all around me. They do not know one another, but they press closer and closer in fear and misery, hoping to avoid death by freezing. They do not try to know one another; they dare not even speak. They do not want to know one another, but they all need to share the little warmth which they have between them.
One of them might live through the night.
They do not touch me.
Someone approaches, hidden by the darkness.
In sudden fear, the people find their voices, and they cry out, “Who are you? What do you want?”
No voice answers them.
“We can give you nothing,” they say. “We do not know you. Show yourself so that we can know whether you are a man or a creature of the darkness.”
Suddenly, there is light, as the stranger lights the hair upon his head. It burns with a fierce, unquenching flame.
“I am a man,” he says.
But with his face haloed by fire, his eyes gleaming like sapphires, his voice hot and sweet, his hands catching and holding great sparks which he holds forth as gifts for the people, he seems so like a god.
I cry to him for help. My voice is sharpened by the icy air, and my words fly like a dagger to his face.
I see his face now, and it is no face at all, but a death-mask.
The face behind the death-mask, I have every reason to believe, is my own face.
And the answer . . .
Titan Nine
Just Lie Down and Relax — This Isn’t Going to Hurt a Bit
The physical side of titan was, so far as I was concerned, a good deal less troublesome than the psychological. The hardware — such of it as I was allowed to feast my unsecurity-cleared eyes upon — was fearsome in aspect, but dedicated to reducing life to the utmost simplicity.
High gee and low gee were not particularly demanding to one of my asthenic physique. It took a little practice, certainly, but I soon adjusted myself to the sensations involved. I had no predilection toward skysickness.
However, high and low gee in a centrifuge rig-out is one thing; an iron maiden is quite another. You all know about iron maidens — boxes full of spikes beloved (it is said) by Torquemada and his merry bunch of religious enthusiasts. The titan iron maiden was less picturesque, and they were more careful inserting the spikes, but the principle was exactly the same. You know the hole at the bottom where the blood runs out? That was there, too.
Liquid food was delivered into the femoral vein. Urine was taken out of the bladder at about the same location (but through a different tube). Gut, testicles, and sundry other bits of apparatus were placed under metabolic suppression, so they didn’t miss out on their habits too much. Wrists, legs, and waist strongly manacled.
I pointed out that I couldn’t scratch my nose. They assured me it wouldn’t itch. I didn’t believe them.
They gave me courses in isometrics and transcendental meditation, and they were just as serious about both. I had no illusions about the potential usefulness of either.
“If I was determined,” I said, while they were locking me in for the first long practice run, “I could pick a hole in myself with my growing fingernail and short-circuit all the apparatus with the leaking blood.”
“Your fingernails won’t grow,” they assured me.
“Exactly how much of me is going to function in the way that nature intended?” I asked.
“All of you,” they told me. “We’re just giving nature a helping hand.”
“What about my brain?”
“If your brain operated as nature intended,” they pointed out, with commendable wit, “you wouldn’t be here. We’ll put you in a state of light tranquilization for the duration of the flight. Not enough to make you high or knock you out. Just enough to keep your adrenal cortex in line and give the rest of your bodily emergency mechanisms a sense of responsibility. You’ll probably notice a slight psychotropic effect; you won’t be allowed to get as scared as you otherwise might.”
“You try and stop me,” I threatened. “I shall be scared shitless every light year of the way. I’m a coward through and through.”
“You’ll die laughing,” they promised me, undiplomatically.
“Are you sure this Heath Robinson affair will stand up to the gees on takeoff?” I asked.
“Easy,” they assured me. “How d’you feel?”
“Just terrible,” I said, with winning honesty. “How long am I scheduled to be locked up for the dummy run?”
“Twelve hours the first time.”
“You’re joking.”
“Two days the second time,” he said. “The third time it’ll be the real thing. Full dress and remember your cues, or else.”
“When’s takeoff?” I asked, innocently.
“Zero hour,” they informed me, helpfully. “Classified.”
“You’ve been in a flat rush lately,” I said. “Must be close.”
“No rush,” they said. “We always work this way. We never hurry. Just work fast. No corners cut. You’ll be fine.”
Promises, promises.
“Right,” said the medic, before he left me alone to my torture, “we’re on our way. There’ll be someone to talk to at all times” — he indicated the mike over my head — “so scream all you like.”
“Does Hurst have to do this, too?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” he assured me. “Anything else?”
There was no way of passing the time. It had to pass all by itself. I didn’t talk much to begin with, but soon I realized that the mike was a good friend. I’d thought it would be easy; after all, I spent years in the deprived environment of Canaan. But at least, even in Block C, I had room to move, and I could scratch my nose any hour of the day or night whether it itched or not.
There’s freedom and freedom.
Twelve hours felt like twelve days. I wondered what the weeks of the real thing would seem like. . . .
Cage of Darkness
We All Need Somebody to Look Down On
Manny Madoc was, by profession, a purveyor of pornography. By implication, this made him a corrupter of t
he innocent and a destroyer of society — a menace second only to that of Cain Urquhart and his happy band of bombers.
In actual fact, he was a rational, even-tempered guy with a kind face and a helpful disposition.
The world was not kind to Manny. Which shows what lousy taste the world has, because Manny belonged to a class of person whose presence on Earth is absolutely vital to the well-being and peace of mind of the common man. (Need I emphasize that I am not referring to his stock-in-trade?)
Manny Madoc was a much-arrested man in his early days (his days in Block C are most definitely his later days), owing to the fact that he was generally too poor to raise the protection money adequate to safeguard his calling. The substance of the charges irregularly laid against him used to vary over quite a range, but usually consisted of (or were at least inspired by) public-spirited attacks upon the morality and the propriety of the material which he marketed somewhat inefficiently. (He also printed it himself, in a small way. He was devoted to his vocation.) Occasionally there was a drunk-and-disorderly or a petty larceny thrown in to add insult to injury. Once they nailed him for slander, and another time they came within an inch of crucifying him with a blackmail allegation. If he’d been black, foreign, or Jewish it might well have stuck, but despite his name he was lily-white and a good Protestant.
He spent, in all, fifteen or sixteen of his best years being hustled by the nasties and busted by the gendarmes. Five of those years he spent in the jug — two of them because one time he figured he couldn’t possibly do worse on his own than his last lawyer had done for him (a four-hundred-dollar fine) and discovered how wrong he could be. Being neither an efficient legal diplomat nor an orator of genius, he neatly avoided the statutory fine and ran straight into the jail term.
As a further guide to the guilelessness (nay, even stupidity) of Manny’s character, it may be productive to proceed further with the tale of that particular sentence. He was sent first of all to a pleasant open prison where, except for digging the occasional field or resurfacing a road here and there, life was moderately bearable. However, having been assigned the rather comfortable and enviable job of painting the prison outhouses, he conceived a daring and pathetically simple plan of escape. Needless to say, he was picked up within a matter of days while in bed with his wife. He was not returned to the pleasant establishment but sent instead to a more secure place of confinement, where he found himself for the first time among murderers rather than among thieves. (Murderers of somewhat lesser talent than the Canaanites, the Law would have us believe.) Although minor murderers tend to be of considerable moral standing (and therefore out of sympathy with Manny’s outside career), he found them more congenial company than he was used to.
Of the crime(s) which resulted in Manny’s becoming a member of our own select group in Block C, I have nothing to say save that they occurred at a much later date than the part of his life which I am studying here. If you remember, I am painting this word-picture of Manny the jaded pornographer in order to preface an argument to the effect that Manny is one of the people we need.
Argument follows immediately:
Manny is a failure. Manny is a sucker. He was custom built to be a modern-day scapegoat. He is a perfectly proportioned fall guy.
Manny is a walking joke. The world could ill afford to lose such a man. There may be a hundred more like him, but the world of today cannot afford to lose a single one. We need a thousand.
The desperation of our need for this kind of social victim can be seen in the millions of people who pay close attention to the grotesqueries inhabiting the scandal pages of many a top-selling newspaper; in the millions who wallow thrice weekly in television soap operas chronicling the shame and humiliation of common people who may easily be identified as the Joneses next door; in the millions who can gloat over the horrific intimacies of agony columns and courtroom dramas and brutal cartoons and deodorant commercials.
Manny is the guy you score off. Manny is the guy who finishes behind you in the human race. Manny is the guy who cops your share of the world’s deluge of bad luck. Manny is the guy who slips on the banana skin, who is comically impotent, who is firmly trodden into the dirt by the weight of authority which you can carry with ease. Every time Manny gets a bit part in a newspaper carve-up, he does his bit for your edification and gratification and self-glorification. You only have to pass him on the street to feel good and clean and human inside your sweaty skin.
You need Manny — Manny and a million others. You, the self-satisfied people, the comfortable people, the I-know-what’s-right-and-what’s-wrong people. The bitchers and the binders and the vicious mockers who delight in the failure of the victims trapped and tortured in the communal net authored by your wishes and knotted by your silent voices.
You.
Manny’s shoulders are the platform for the tenuous pride of the common man. Manny’s misfortunes are the vicarious delight of the respectable man. Manny’s failures are the safe foundation for the contentment of the common man.
And the punch line of the joke?
Block C, where else?
You need these people to live so you can kill them. Block C, for crimes too hideous to contemplate and quite irrelevant.
Go ahead and laugh. It’s your joke.
There’s Cain, too. I mentioned Cain, if you remember, when I began to describe Manny. Cain Urquhart was a man who used to place the blame squarely where it belongs — on everybody. His own share of the blame, needless to say, was ameliorated by all kinds of extenuating circumstances — primarily that he, at least, had tried (is trying still, and intends to go on trying) to do something about it.
Cain always knew the world was all wrong, as does everyone else, but perhaps he used to feel it more than most, because he was definitely not prepared to tolerate it.
In fact, like most people whose lives are deeply steeped in dogma and belief, Cain was extremely intolerant of anything and everything which met with his disapproval, no matter whether that disapproval arose from an emotional reaction, a conditioned fear, a whim, or simply because his beliefs insisted that he hate. All the other sources of disapproval, of course, became interpreted in the dogmatic terms of those beliefs (you can’t just hate things; you’ve got to have a belief which lets you). Dogma, as you well know (unless you are dogmatic yourself), can accommodate any amount of perversion by fear, greed, hatred, lust, and sheer meanness, and still remain absolutely inflexible.
To sum up Cain, he was a man who believed in right and wrong.
It was probably a mere accident of fate that he didn’t happen to be a devout Catholic or an Orthodox Jew or a Nazi, a spiritualist, a conservationist, a sex maniac, or a psychiatrist. He was stamped by a stamp of a different color, that’s all. Cain was an anarchist.
There was a time when anarchy was a proud word standing for the absence of anything in the form of organization or government. In those days it was a sensible philosophy and by no means dogmatic. It spoke for itself (so to speak). These days, however, the word has assumed a dogmatic meaning by virtue of the fact that it has been taken over by the believers and made to stand for the absence of anything in the form of wrong organization or wrong government (Or right, if you happen to be a different kind of believer) Cain, of course, was an anarchist in the recent sense of the word.
His behavior was 90 percent similar to that of the other brands of believer (Nazi, sex maniac, etc.) in that he went around nursing a strong dislike for disagreement and worrying about things. His dogma leaned toward the activist philosophy, which meant that instead of reacting to disagreement by dignified ignorance (like, say, Flat-Earthers) he believed in killing them (like, say, in the Spanish Inquisition).
Cain Urquhart was not a leader of men who could sway vast crowds with hysterical shouting. He was an underfed, undersized, undersexed, underdeveloped, underrated underdog. He had a few friends, though, and they used to meet occasionally
for a communal hate-in and to make a few bombs.
He was grossly misunderstood, mainly because most people didn’t seem to share his deep love of social explosions.
He was never credited with any really spectacular bangs. The Golden Gate Bridge, the Washington Monument, the Taj Mahal, the Church of Christ the Saviour in Addis Ababa (full) and the East Chicago nuke were all the explosions of other, more charismatic bombers.
All in all, at a rough guess, I don’t suppose Cain killed more than twenty or thirty people, whose cash value was only a matter of a few thousand (they were all capitalists), and probably no more than three were cops. If you add this up, it credits Cain with destruction of about .00000000000000001 of the gross national product and about the same (perhaps a little larger) fraction of the human race. The population explosion undid Cain’s explosions people-wise in about seven seconds, give or take a Chinese or two. Still, as Karl Marx and Jesus are both reputed to have remarked, every little bit helps.
But what would you do without Cain’s intrepid band of outlaws? Where would you find your society demons? Your political crusades? Where else could you buy such absolute sincerity and purity and rationality in which to clothe your hatred? Cain is just one more of the vast legion of off-the-peg victims who enables you to destroy without a qualm. You need him. You really do.
If you’re lucky, you might live next door to a Cain Urquhart, in which case you have an ever available laugh at the bastard’s expense. You don’t have to wait for the aphids to wreck his roses. He only has to step out of the door.
Go ahead and laugh.
Everybody needs a good laugh once in a while.
Madman’s Dance
Vanished from My Hand, Left Me Blindly Here to Stand
There was a time, in my earliest childhood, when my life was like any other, unless my memory, or my sense of timing, plays me false.
Man in a Cage Page 19