by Nancy Kress
The boy threw himself down on the damp earth in front of the mice cages and buried his face in his left arm, too spent for tears. The right arm stuck out awkwardly at his side, the cast lying stiff and sodden in the mud.
Gone.
Abruptly, the sky shrieked and cleaved into two blinding halves as a bolt of lightning tore from cloud to cloud. Jorry was hurled back down on his face, the mud tingling below him, while overhead the line flamed red-purple and leaped wildly against its moorings. The crackling mounted to a wailing crescendo, for a confused moment sounding acrid and smelling deafening, and then both sound and smell whirled into a jaundice-colored mist swirling with mice and rain and
—the belt falling and he threw up his arm to shield—across the field stay low don’t—more coffee Jorry there’s plenty and put some sugar in your Olympian offering—his face from the buckle coming down and the smell of ozone you watch the line during a storm Jorry it—body currents and brain organelles and the center of perception of his screaming just before the crack of bone in Jeanine Sanderson’s head tingling with the smell of—
The mist faded into black. The blackness pulsed and then steadied, and out of it slowly emerged the slipperiness of the mud. Jorry raised his head and shook it from side to side, first cautiously and then, when nothing hurt too much, more vigorously. Thunder rumbled somewhere over the horizon, and the eastern sky paled weakly. The boy sat up and swiped at the mud on his face, smearing it into long dark smudges.
The air smelled scorched, like wet laundry under a too hot iron, and mingled over and under and through was another smell, both familiar and unfamiliar, like a dream half-forgotten.
The smell of fear.
Whose?
Jorry wrinkled up his muddy nose and sniffed. It was fear and it was his nose, not in his mind or muscles or stomach. As he sniffed he became aware that the elusive smell—how did he know what it was? but he did—had slid down to the back of his throat and become a taste, chalky and metallic.
Wide-eyed, Jorry looked around. A gray mouse was huddled next to the plastic mesh, its whiskers still quivering. Around the matted fur on its wedge-shaped head was a faint red halo.
Instantly Jorry glanced up, but the reddish glow around the line had gone: the cable lay black and inert against the sky. By the time Jorry’s eyes swung back to the mouse, the red halo was fading and so was the chalky taste-smell of fear. The mouse uncurled itself, stretched, and wandered along the mesh. From under the sodden newspapers at the back of the cage crept another mouse, smaller and white, with pink ears. The head of the gray mouse began to glow again, this time a flickering marigold yellow, and Jorry breathed in a musky, damp odor that brought no word to his mind but did bring a sudden tightening in his belly muscles and a heaviness in his groin and a confused image of Jeanine Sanderson in her gym shorts.
He hunted up a sharp stick and prodded the gray mouse through the mesh. The marigold yellow flashed into red and again the chalky-metallic smell filled Jorry’s nostrils. Slowly he withdrew the stick and gazed at the glass cage, dazed.
Bits and pieces of things Tom had told him vibrated in his head like struck tuning forks. Brain organelles. Body currents. ‘Perception’s a likely candidate for change.’ Trigger phenomenon. And, incongruously, the smell of coffee.
Was it the mice who were different, giving off their haloes and their emotional smells, or was it something different in his brain that made him aware of these things? Jorry put his good hand to his nose and pinched it thoughtfully.
A second later he was scrambling to his feet, his sneakers nearly sliding out from under him in his haste to get to the second cage. It was more difficult to get the stick poked into this one, through the double-wire screening of the Faraday cage and then through the plastic mesh; but he kept at it, his tongue stuck out at the corner of his mouth, until the stick hit something more yielding than glass, less than newspaper. Jorry prodded hard. There was a sudden squeal, and a black mouse head poked out of a pile of shredded editorials. Around the black was a thin halo of red.
Inside the Faraday shield.
Rocking back on his heels and wrinkling his muddy nose against the sudden chalky-metallic smell, the boy stared at his stick, then at the black line stretching overhead, and again at the stick. So it was a change inside his own head; if the change had been in the mice, the ones within the Faraday shield wouldn’t have been affected. What was happening to him?
The fear only lasted a moment, a sickening moment when he wondered crazily if he would see a red halo if he looked in a mirror. A mirror—what had he been told about a mirror? Who had told him? Oh, yes—Tom.
Jorry’s grip tightened around his stick. Another feeling swelled within him, swelled like the breaking of river ice after the winter, splintering the momentary fear and spinning it away in the rush of excitement. Whatever this thing was, this thing he could do now, he had found it. He, Jorry Whitfield. It was his discovery, his first step, his vulcanized rubber spilling onto the stove, his. Like a real scientist, like Charles Goodyear, like somebody.
Like Tom.
And it was important, this thing. Jorry wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did. Important enough, different enough—what had Tom said? ‘dramatic’—so those men on the Power Commission would have to listen about the line. Was it good dramatic or bad dramatic? What would those men think about what had happened to him? Jorry didn’t know, but he guessed they wouldn’t like it when he told them what colors their halos were.
But even when the line was gone—and here he glanced up at it with something almost like affectionate regret—this thing, this Sense, would still be his. His to keep, his to use, his to give to Tom for that scientific report that now was not going to be dull. And if he ‘gave’ this Sense to Tom, offering him the use of it the way he would have with a new bicycle if he had ever had one, then for the first time Jorry could, in turn, let himself think about the dizzying possibility Tom had talked about, the possibility of leaving, of not having to lie rigid in his bed listening to Pa downstairs with his bottle and wonder if this time . . . he could leave, now. Now that he had earned the right, now that he had this important thing to trade, to swap—
But what had he traded to earn the Sense?
Slowly Jorry sat down in the mud. He had traded nothing; he was even going to help get the line tom down, if that was possible. So the Sense was free, an unexpected gift, an offering, a benediction. But that wasn’t possible: nothing was free, things didn’t go right by themselves, nobody gave you anything without trying to get something greater back, it just didn’t work like that. It never worked like that.
Did it ever work like that?
Sitting on the wet ground, his stick still in his hand, Jorry felt dizzy. An errant drop of water trickled off the back of his collar and down his neck, and he sneezed.
It was difficult fishing the gray mouse out of the cage, using only one hand. When Jorry finally had the damp body clasped around its middle, he squeezed it firmly and started walking over the ridge. At the top he halted abruptly. Far down the line was a dark figure, made tiny by distance, standing motionless in the middle of a wet field of rotting hay. By screwing up his eyes and squinting through the mist, Jorry could just make out the figure of his father, head tilted back to stare upward at the soaring black girders of the line tower. He could make out, too, around the thrown-back head, a thin red halo. On a vagrant puff of wind came the faint smell of chalk.
Jorry blinked and tightened his grip on the mouse until it squealed. His father’s arms dangled at his sides, the big hands limp and empty. He was standing well back from the line, well outside the right of way, and the red fear-halo glowed like a blurred mist through the soft rain.
His father? Afraid? His father afraid; small and wet and powerless by the line, and afraid. Clayte Whitfield. Only a man afraid. Of the line, of his mirror, of the scary confusion in things not always turning out badly, in sometimes ending well, or neither, or both.
Jorry gazed for a lon
g time, his face streaked with mud and concentration. Then he blinked again, turned away, and carried his mouse on his cast, riding in front of him like an unexpected gift, an offering, a benediction, over the ridge toward the Sandersons’. His muddy figure loomed tall as a giant against the rainy sky.
1981
SHADOWS ON THE CAVE WALL
The advance of technology affects everything in our culture . . . yes, even art. For decades, science fiction writers have warned us that fallible human authors may one day be replaced by robots or computers programmed to produce stories that will be without flaws (and usually without surprises). But Nancy Kress suggests, in this very human story, that perfection in writing may be developed sooner using human authors aided by precise physiological monitoring. This would certainly be an improvement; still, “perfection” always raises questions, some very basic.
“Shadows on the Cave Wall” is the fifth short story Nancy Kress has sold; her earlier ones were published in Omni, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and Galaxy. Her first novel, Prince of Morning Bells, appeared recently from Pocket Books. A teacher of English at the college level, she lives in Brockport, New York, with her husband and two sons.
“Our music, our poetry, our language itself, are not satisfactions, but suggestions.”
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
On Tuesday it was preadolescent girls for Matthew McGratty, a free-lancer we’d just put under contract. McGratty always chooses the obvious, so naturally it was a horse story. Garber said he wasn’t crazy about having his studio used for a horse story, the same studio where two months ago Garber’s great undiscovered protégé Johannsen had final-auded Greta. But McGratty had a decent if uninspired composing record, we had him under contract, and Garber had no real choice except to grumble a little about the perversion of art and the debasement of public taste and so forth, and then give the go-ahead. Garber has fits like that, delusions that G-M Press is more than just a third-rate c-aud shop for free-lancers; we on the staff humor him. And every so often we do come up with a Greta, although we’re no Harper and Simon, and for us it’s a windfall, a lucky lightning, a comet’s tail we don’t even try to grab but just sparkle in the light of before it whizzes past. Last week Johannsen signed a contract with Harper and Simon.
Still, Greta is supposed to be really good. We only had it for the last, twenty-fifth taping; Johannsen must have been running out of money, to come to us at all. Garber burst into my office, all excited, because he heard that someone on the Times might review it.
“What do you think, Mary? Jameson? Maybe Jameson might review it? Jameson would do it a lot of good. I have a feeling about this one, Mary!”
“Jameson isn’t going to review it.”
He glared at me from under lowered eyebrows. They’re nearly white now, and in his rumpled jumpsuit, Garber looks like a seedy Santa Claus reduced to dealing in hot toys. God, I love him. If I ever forgive that bitch Mummy-sweet at all, it will be because she somehow tangled Garber in her long string of husbands.
“He might review it!”
“He won’t. You know that. Think. It’s a book for children.”
“Young adults!”
“All right, young adults. But he’s not going to review it in the Times. We’ll probably do all right on it financially—although that was a pretty selective c-aud index Johannsen showed me. At least we shouldn’t lose money on it. Settle for that.”
“You haven’t even read it!”
I hadn’t, although I’d had the manuscript for nearly a month. Press of work, busy time of year, I just hadn’t had the time. Oh, hell, yes I’d had. That wasn’t the reason.
“I know I haven’t read it. Maybe it’s terrific. Maybe it’s an instant classic. Maybe it’s Hamlet for the acne set. But Jameson won’t review it. Let it go, Garber.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
I sighed. Garber was a walking lesson on how to achieve business failure: enthusiasm without judgment. That we had gotten even this far was due only to the hefty alimony Garber had pried out of Mummy-sweet, and that he had gotten so much alimony in a retroactive settlement was due only to the lawyer I’d hired for him. She isn’t ever going to forgive me, either.
“You’re wrong, Mary. This time I know it.”
“Garber, if you were a critic, and in the exact same week publishers brought out the original appearances of Hamlet, Don Quixote, Anna Karenina, Song of Myself, and The Little Engine that Could, what would you not review?”
“Greta isn’t . . .”
“I have to go. McGratty’s waiting for me in the studio.”
“To compare it to The Little . . .”
“Garber, he’s waiting with forty-seven kids. I have to go.” I put my arms around him and kissed him on the top of his head. It was going bald; in another year he would have a tonsure. I found that I liked the idea. When I was eleven years old, Garber found out from the upstairs maid that I vomited uncontrollably after each visit from Mummy-sweet, and he took me himself to boarding school, holding my hand on the train and talking in a low, confidential voice about baseball, and caterpillars, and the marvelous way really high-quality peppermints melted first around the edges of one’s mouth.
“Mary,” he said, his arms still around me, “do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Promise?”
“Of course, Garber. Anything. You know that. Just ask.”
“When you’re home tonight, read Greta “Oh, Garber, I’m really sorry but tonight I have to . . .”
“No. You don’t.”
I didn’t. He tilted back his head and looked at me steadily out of blue eyes that look a little more sunken every month. Five years more, the doctors say. Even virotherapy doesn’t arrest it forever, any of it . . . not the cancer, and not the pain. It had been Garber who’d brought me my first copy of Alice in Wonderland.”
“Read it, Mary.”
My daughter, Susan, calls Garber “Grandpa.” I’ve never let her meet a single other one of her relations. Or even told her about them. When that fool of a teacher Susan is so stuck on gave them the assignment to trace their family trees, I lied and gave her Garber’s.
“I’ll read it, Garber.”
“Promise?”
“Promise. But, look, McGratty’s waiting.”
He unwrapped his arms and winked. “Have fun!” His point won, Jameson and the nonexistent review forgotten, equanimity restored. Garber is a big child. I hurried out of the office; he stayed to study the cover painting for a preschool picture book on space, smiling at the teddy bear in the cockpit and whistling to himself. Both hands rubbed his plump belly: a right jolly old elf. And now I was committed to reading Greta.
Hell.
McGratty had lined the kids up against the studio wall, three deep, well away from the computer and the aud-units. He was talking to them in that charming drawl that convinced each and every little heart that she was an utterly fascinating almost-woman, and the whole gaggle of ten-and eleven-year olds was giggling and twitching and popping moonies. The popping punctuated languishing sidelong glances at McGratty that ended in even louder explosions of moonies. He gestured with one hand, and forty-seven pairs of eyes followed the hand’s arc through the air. Under all this attention, McGratty expanded, the girls expanded. The studio threatened to explode outward from all the hot air.
“All right, kids, line up over here. Tallest first. Let’s go!”
They stared at me like poison. A few scowled.
“Come on, let’s get started here. You, with the red pigtails . . . come here, honey, and we’ll get you strapped into a unit.”
She came forward slowly, standing in front of me with scrawny feet planted apart, arms akimbo.
“Not pigtails.”
“What?”
“They’re not pigtails. They’re called ‘fashion braids.’ That’s what they’re called
I couldn’t suppress my smile in time. “Sorry. ‘Fashion braids.’ ”
She looked me up and down. “And I’m not ‘honey.’ ”
My smile vanished. There’s always one. Behind the pigtailed redhead, someone tittered.
“My name is Nellie Kay Armbruster, not ‘honey’ !” I caught the quaver in her voice under the skinny bravado, but it only increased my irritation. Ms. Nellie Kay Armbruster didn’t know what it meant to have something for her voice to quaver over. Looking at her bleakly, I saw another eleven-year-old, howling and thrashing in a room with walls padded in a fashionable pale yellow. Mummy-sweet had excellent taste, don’t you know.
“All right, then, Ms. Armbruster, if you’ll just consent to step this way . . .” The child flushed, and I knew I’d missed it again, the tone of companionable bantering that was supposed to make it all right. Girls this age . . . McGratty was looking at me with narrowed eyes. He didn’t want me upsetting his c-aud, and I didn’t blame him. Well, if he were good enough, it wouldn’t matter.
I strapped Nellie Kay Armbruster into her unit. She winced a little when I fitted on the scalp wires and then clamped her head immobile, but she didn’t even deign to notice when I pricked the needle into her arm or adjusted the screen the right distance from her pupils. Our units are about five years old, and we’ve missed out on some of the new, subtle indices, but those are more useful for adult c-auds anyway. We only do children and young adults, so only the frontal lobe cortex and amino acid indices really count, although we monitor the rest of the basic stuff, too: pupil dilation, thoracic respiration, blood flow, galvanic skin response.