I remember holding toys in my open hands, and finding that water tastes bitter, and cursing the world for it.
I remember shouldering arms against a sea of troubles.
I remember erasing in my mind all attempts to find love, to pretend hope, to regret the death of happiness. I strangled every strangling frustration. With barbed wire.
I remember the weaponless executioners, passing by, knowing and uncaring, as I suffocated beneath the plague of indifference.
I never blamed luck. I never could believe in luck.
I never blamed myself. I never could believe in myself.
I cursed, but I could never find the delicacy of hand to make the soap doll anything but faceless.
I laughed, like an idiot, when anything died.
I cannot go back to such strange and heartbreaking beginnings, not armed with the knowledge that could make those days of innocence into an everlasting tragedy. What I did not know, I will not tell myself. I cannot return, in any case, because the child that grew up to become half a man is beside me now. I cannot enter his spirit, nor he mine. We coexist. We understand each other exactly insofar as the crocodile brain which shelters behind the pig brain which shelters behind the human brain can understand its playmates. We each have our journeys, we are each in the middle of them.
They are not the same. We have different goals and different values.
Because I am only half of a man, and that half mostly words, I am often called upon to settle disputes when I pause momentarily in my journey. The three goddesses, who have decided to set aside the infamous judgment of Paris on the grounds of corruption and dubious constitutional validity, come to me with a rotted apple from which one bite — and all the gold — is missing.
They ask me to award it to the most beautiful. They have one-track minds.
The first of the three, and the tallest, who has eyes flashing with star-glare, approaches me and says, “I can give you the knowledge of the world, and a lot of power.”
I am a man without ambition, and I certainly have not the vanity of kings.
“No,” I say.
When the second comes to me, I ask her, “What is the nature of your bribe?”
She replies, “The future. The gift of success. What you can do, that you will do.”
No one knows better than I my intrinsic limitations. I prefer her serenity and quietness to the bold, offensive beauty of the first, but I am not in the habit of working for nothing.
I go looking for the third, who is slender and shadowy and — insofar as my own poor judgment can possibly tell — the most beautiful of the three in actual fact. She is glowing with golden light and life.
“What have you to offer me in return for the apple?” I ask her.
“Only dreams,” she says. Either she has confidence in my honesty and in herself, or she has lost interest since Paris. It is not, when all is said and done, a very nice apple. Not any more.
I pause to contemplate my decision, in the meantime taking another bite out of the unsavory fruit. I discover a large maggot within it. At the sight of the maggot, all three goddesses shudder and turn into old hags.
I throw the apple away, and it falls into a fast stream, to be borne away by the current. When I look back, all three of them are still chasing it. The maggot is chasing them.
I console myself with the thought that I have the dreams anyway, though the promises they make me are forgotten as soon as I awake. No one, after all, can hold fine sand or cool water in his clenched fist.
Helen of Troy stands on the terrace which tops the wall where it curves away from the sea. She is accompanied by a guard.
Her eyes are roaming the distant horizon of the sea, and she stands with such intense stillness that it seems she has been there for some hours. She might be waiting for a sail to appear in the distance, or for the rising of a special star.
Her mouth forms words, but she does not speak aloud. The name of Harker Lee forms on her lips several times, and it seems that she might be praying. But her eyes are steady and staring, not closed, and her head is high, not bowed.
She wears a long garment of silky white material, folded but not pinned at the shoulder or tied about the waist. Her long black hair is decorated by clasps formed into golden wreaths, and spiraled by a ribbon of creamy lace. She wears scarlet moccasins upon her feet. Around her waist is a bracelet of wrought glass, carrying tiny patterns of metal filaments, which send silver hyphae into the flesh of her arm, reaching for the autonomic nerves.
She begins to hum a slow, sad tune, while her gaze still lingers on the face of Alio Shan and the pearly path of moonlight which crosses the sea toward the giant wall.
Her face is very thin. The cheekbones stand out. Her complexion is distinctly yellow. Her eyes, instead of irises, have tiny skulls, each with two black pupils.
I am a thousand ships too late.
Still, I can become addicted to the sight and taste and touch of her body, which she still wears well. Especially in such times as she extends herself upon a couch, or dances by starlight. The shimmering wraiths of her jet black hair fall like waves of a restless ocean, or sway as though at the ministrations of a warm wind. My eyes are transported into distant dimensions, where I can see only a universe of cut glass and dark skin, with the parts of her body and the elements of my soul dissipated into the slashed lines and the many-shaped translucent faces.
Her skulled eyes continually search through this many-colored mosaic chaos, like two identical liquid globes of gold and chrome and anguish. They move to a secret cadence, following an invisible scent that trails like the wake of a fleeing snake over and between the light-filled surfaces of this crystalline space.
She is lost in the magic of my own liquidness, trapped by the shapelessness of her form, the easy disconnection of her attributes, but she retains a gentle rhythm, an integrity, a unity, which defied the cutting edges of the diamond leaves and the angry sapphire thorns of the mallarmite roses. She does not bleed; she cannot weep. She flows like purple wine or heavy oil. Her omnipresence is overpowering, a folded, cloaking sky woven with a multitude of silver sperm.
this is titan base calling canaan. titan base to canaan. acknowledge please. . . .
And the answer. . . .
Titan Nine
Standing on the Brink of Infinity, Looking at My Watch
When they took me out of the iron womb, I couldn’t walk. Nobody was even sympathetic. After all, I’d had nothing to do but sit around, had I? Everybody else had been working. There were a lot of people worse off than me, weren’t there?
Name two.
Only I still couldn’t stand up. Hurst had to carry me out of the mock-up into the jeep, and then out of the jeep into the apartment. He was a big, strong lad, and I didn’t promise to return the favor. Jenny was waiting for me at home, and Hurst disappeared discreetly.
“It’s nice to have friends,” I commented, as he disappeared.
“Him or me?” asked Jenny.
“It’s nice to have more than one friend,” I said, too tired to make meaningless discriminations.
“How d’you feel?” she asked. She really was a one for asking silly questions.
“How the hell d’you think I feel?” I sat down on the couch and massaged myself lovingly.
“You want some food?”
“Damn right. And a cigarette. And a drink. Not necessarily in that order, but all now. Then I’ll feel human enough to take a shower.”
“You don’t have to be human to wash.”
“No, but it helps. Come on, woman, move. Weeds, booze, and food, and don’t waste time.”
She gave me a cigarette and lit it for me. “No drink on premises,” she said. “Blame yourself. I told them to send some around with the food.”
“I thought you’d be only too happy to cook it with your own sweet han
ds,” I said.
“Housework ruins sweet hands,” she told me. “Don’t you ever watch TV?”
“Not where I was,” I told her. “Beyond even the reach of TV.”
“Next time,” she said, “it’ll be for real.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said. “But not tomorrow morning, please.”
“When do you want to go?”
“I have a choice?”
“All the choice we can give you. As soon as humanly possible, but it’s up to you to decide what’s humanly possible. You’re cleared now. It’s your party from here on.”
I was suspicious. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?” I said. “This is a line. You’re trying to get me to voluntarily take away some of your precious responsibility. You were right a while back when you said it’s easier to be the fall guy than the guy who has to push him over the edge. I’m falling. Like a sack of potatoes. I’m ready when you are, only not tomorrow morning. Please.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment or two. I guess I’d sounded a little sharp. But I’d just been in the maiden for two days, and I was sore.
Finally, she caught my eye and looked hard at me, to prepare me for the fact that what she was about to say was serious. Not that I ever thought any of it wasn’t.
“Monday,” she said.
“It’s not my birthday,” I said. “It’ll do. It’s been Monday all along, hasn’t it? I didn’t really have a choice?”
“We’d have postponed it if you’d said so.”
“No point in hanging around.”
“I don’t think waiting would do any of us any good.”
“No.”
There was a discreet knock at the door. Jenny answered it, and came back with a tray. There was steak and potatoes, but only in very small quantities. The rest was all mush. The booze was beer. I don’t like beer.
“Got to take it easy,” she said.
“So it seems,” I said. “Don’t get the choice, do I?”
She shoved the tray into my lap. I’d recovered enough by now to sit up and make use of the coffee table. It was at an awkward height, but you can’t have everything.
“Tell me,” I said, “one way and another I’ve accumulated quite a cache while I’ve been here. After the flight, I’ll be modestly well off. What can I actually do with my money?”
“Whatever you want.”
“They’ll let me off base, then.”
“Under escort, yes. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with the company of a Major Hurst or similar for pretty much the rest of your life.”
“They won’t get bored. I suppose the idea is to drive me back into space in order to get away from them.”
“You’ll go back.”
“Do I get a choice about that?”
“Some. But you won’t have much competition in the field of starship piloting. And we will put pressure on you. But I think you’ll ride titan ten without having your arm twisted. And eleven. And . . .”
“I can count.”
“Quite so,” she said.
“I see,” I said. “When I come back, I count. I’m one of the family. I matter. My opinions have weight. I’m not just a pawn. I get promoted to queen. Or thereabouts.”
“Thereabouts,” she said.
“I always wanted to run a Project,” I said.
“All you have to do is come back,” she assured me. Promises, promises.
“I’ll tell you what I do want,” I told her. “I want a crew. I want some choice about the boys I take out with me. I want Judas Dancer and Luis Dalquier. I want Sam and I want Con.”
“You want them all out of the prison.”
“That’s right,” I said. “All of them. Bedbug, too. Will I have the weight to pull that?”
“I think so.”
“The army and the prison won’t stop me?”
“I don’t think they’ll have the weight.”
“The army gets the publicity — Hurst poses for the pretty pictures.”
“That may figure outside the perimeter fence, but inside the base — inside the Project — you’re the man that counts. Mike will back you. If Mike retires, Fred Jacobson will back you. I think it can be done.”
“I’m not fooling,” I said. “I want those men out. All of them. Including Bedbug. No matter how old they are, or in what physical shape. Even if we can’t use them as pilots and/or passengers.”
“We’ll use them,” she promised. “We’ll find a use for them.”
I hoped she wasn’t stringing me along. I really hoped that she meant what she said. I wasn’t making any threats, but I knew in my own mind that I wasn’t going anywhere near the stars if those men were still locked in their filthy dungeon. Once was to try. If it got serious, well then, I could turn my attention to the serious side of life.
“It could be worse being right than being wrong,” I said, absently intruding into the conversation another thread of thought I’d been working on.
“No,” she said. She knew what I meant. She’d thought, too. She’d been thinking for years.
“Mike Sobieski’s dream died with Lindquist,” I said. “The human race can’t have the stars. Not the way he wanted it.”
“You’re a member of the human race,” she told me.
“I wonder.”
“We’ll adopt you.”
“Because you need me. Big deal. All these years an outcast, and then, Come back, Harker — all is forgiven. I don’t even have to forgive. I don’t get the choice. It’s you that hands out the labels. Human, schizo.”
“When you pilot that ship,” said Jenny, “you’re human. You’re carrying Mike Sobieski, and you’re carrying me.”
“Are you sure?” I said. “Are you sure that come next year, or the year after, both you and Mike might not sit down and think: the road to the stars isn’t open. It’s as firmly shut as it was before FMA was ever thought of. Only madmen can go to the stars. Only our filth and our vermin. Do we really want that? Can the human race really permit the stars to be polluted as the Earth was polluted before we invented places like Block C? Do we really want the stars on those terms? Isn’t that the way it’ll be when the truth does eventually leak out? What happens when they begin to line up for their tickets to the stars and they find a notice on the ticket office saying schizoids only? Are you sure that when I come back from Proxima Centauri and I say Hello, how are you, I’ve just conquered the stars, you won’t hate me for it? Are you?”
“I’m sure,” she said.
“And how many others?”
“I don’t know.”
“Quite.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Listen to you. Like hell it doesn’t matter. You could turn around in ten years’ time to the assembled ranks of your starmen, culled from the finest asylums in the country, and you could say: Sorry, boys, the taxpayer has decided that if his little boy can’t be a spaceman he’s damned if he’ll let some punk out of a funny farm be one either. We can probably channel you into sewing mailbags and making road signs, provided that you put up with the environment provided. Otherwise, we could shoot you. How d’you feel?”
“That’s childish,” she said.
“Precisely,” I said. “That’s why it’s such a real possibility. Have you seen your local taxpayer recently?”
“Have you?”
“No. But I have seen that scientists never consider the consequences of their actions. Not the real consequences. Think of the silly bastard who invented the wheel.”
“Now you’re simply retreating into foolishness.”
I finished eating, and I put the knife and fork down very carefully.
“That’s right,” I said. “Put to flight by contemplation of the enormity of it all.”
She poured me a drink and offered it to me. I shoo
k my head, and she sipped it herself instead.
“If I come back,” I said, “will you marry me?”
“What would that prove?” she said. “Either way?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t press for an answer, either. At that particular moment in time, it was a pretty silly question anyway.
“You might wish you were wrong,” I said. “You might.”
“Harker,” she said, “you’re a fool. I hope with all my heart that you come back. And if you come back, we win as well as you. Some of them might hate you, but since when has that been new? No matter how much they hate you, we can’t afford not to make use of you. We need the stars.”
“Don’t we all?” I said. “Don’t we all?”
Cage of Darkness
Time Isn’t on My Side
The men who live in Block C didn’t voluntarily shoot themselves full of cocaine or chew peyote in order to give themselves a special kind of experience. They weren’t momentarily dropped from the routine of life like the victims of diseases or car crashes. They were put into their present circumstances as a punishment (a debt to society).
They have been given time. Somebody else’s time. Their own time has been taken away from them, in order to pay that debt. (What does society do with the debts they collect? When is the big payoff?) Mind you, it could be that fair exchange is not robbery (courts don’t commit crimes), and the time the Canaanites are given is equal in value to the time that is taken away from them. How can you measure it? (No one in Canaan has a watch.)
The men in the deep cage aren’t the only ones who make big deals in time, of course. Look around you, at the civilized world. Are most of those people selling their labor, selling their skills, their talents, their abilities? Hardly. Three men (and women) in four deal almost exclusively in time. They trade in their own time and get, in part exchange, derelict factory time or tattered office time. Plus, of course, a wage. Time is money. (Would you buy a secondhand car from Father Time?)
But the worker’s time is measured by the hands of the clock. Only a segment of the day has to be traded in. And there are weekends and holidays. In Block C, the men have made the total trade. They retain not a single instant of their own time. They have, instead, an eternity of prison time. If factory time is derelict, what can one say of prison time? An icy waste of time? A time-vacuum? A quicksand of time?
Man in a Cage Page 20