The Very Best of Barry N Malzberg

by Barry N. Malzberg

  There is much more to say, there seems to be much more to say, but clutching my absent beloved in the congealed spaces of that blanket, trying to avoid that gaze which freezes like that of John Procter, it is impossible to find the proper response. Perhaps there is no response. “Your problem,” Robert Lowell says, adjusting his tie and coat for the walk to the flight to the taxi in which he will die, “is that you took modem poetry all too seriously. You confused anguish with answers. But then again, perhaps they are synonymous.” And so on and so forth, he has a lot more to say and had I the patience I would record all of his magnificent if somewhat patronizing speech but Frances, insistent now in the absolute fury of dead zero, is drawing me in, drawing me in, taking me like a fragile candle flame into the center of her own necessity and nothing to do but follow. The snow rises and falls atop us. We become enormous, timeless, rigid in history, the snows of the century coming around us then to shelter us from the millenial fires. “Oh, Delmore,” she seems to whisper in my ear, “oh Robert, oh Randall, oh John and Ted, oh rack and roc.” But this must be illusory. I am, as the poet says, beyond words.

  The Men Inside

  In memory of Herbert Finney

  I

  COMPREHENDING HULM: In the night after his first Experiment, Hulm has a dream. In that dream, at last, the process has been perfected. Institutes bearing his name have opened all over the world, staffed by trained workers to speed relief to the millions, and now, as he hovers cloudlike over this agglomeration, all of the workers turn to him: to Hulm. Reduced by the process to seven six-hundredths of an inch, they mass, an army of elves speaking in chorus, their little lances poised deftly in tiny hands, and what they are saying is: You are a vain man, hulm, a vain and stricken man because none of it turned out quite the way you thought it would. none of it, none of it: corrupt, corrupt, and turn from him then to assault a phalanx of patients; patients are all around them now: they are lumps of flesh which heave under their little feet. The landscape of patients trembles under the thrusts of the lances and Hulm recoils.

  “No,” he says, rising, raising his fists, “no, it isn’t that way; it wasn’t my fault; it had to be a corporate entity to survive. I didn’t want it but they made mel” Somehow it seems that he has gotten the whole gist of the argument from his tiny messengers, none of whom pay any attention to him as they dive toward pockets of metastasis. “Oh yes, you did,” one of them calls back, the lone muted voice fluting in the dark, “yes, you did, indeed you loved it; you saw it all even then, the potential and the reward, and it was profit-making and it was the money more than anything else which drove you through your mad researches. Not to cure but to prosper, you old bastard. But the joke is on you, Hulm; it’s on you, kid, because it’s all been taken away, every single part of it, and only your name remains. You were a cripple; you had the greed of the entrepreneur, but none of the devices,” and the Messengers march giggling away. Hulm screams, screams from his cloud, bellows himself to frenzy, but none of them are listening, no one, it seems, wants any part of him, and he says, “I wanted to do good, that’s all I wanted; how did I know that it would have this effect on you?” and comes, awakening, to realize that he should have given it some thought, a lot more thought to the Messengers, because these were people who were going to make it work; better give some consideration to the psychic mechanisms of this thing but no time for that, no time … stretched in ice, freezing in his bowels, Hulm has awakened dying to the dawn and before anything can be done for him it is late, far too late.

  Only the Experiments and their notations can be saved. He had carried them to his bed, to sleep over them. Poor old bastard.

  II

  telling it all to the priest: So I killed him, which is true, but that was later on and an anticlimax. It means nothing, the killing. Soon you will come to see that. This is no apolOgia. The act is its own reward. I enjoyed it. I did it well.

  The night I graduated from the Institute, I went to the Arena. Perhaps it was disillusionment; perhaps sheer perversity, but I got drunk then and destroyed a Priest while only trying to make my position clear. Later on, when all the factors coalesced, I discovered that things were almost that simple; I had not had to destroy in proof. By then, however, the Priest was done. So, for all I know, was my sensibility. The peace which passeth understanding, etc., comes after the fact.

  Which is not to say that the job is good. The job is a disaster in every conceivable way. But it is bad in a fashion which I did not understand; good in ways which I could not have suspected. One learns. One cultivates perspective. One turns twenty-one and begins to see implications. By then, however, damage has been done. The night I ripped the Priest, I thought I was dying. Conventionally dying.

  “Let’s face it,” I said to Smith, who had come with me that night, not because he was my friend (no Messenger has friends, ever) but because he was one of those off whom I could bounce the rhetoric without back talk, “and let us understand. We’re menial laborers. Hod carriers. We swing our pick in the gut; all colors and flashes around. The lowest of the low in the post-technological age. In truth, we spent four years in the most dreadful training imaginable simply so that we could jive in mud. Disgusting. The whole thing is for a fast buck and it was dreamed that way. It’s profitable and they’ve got fear working.”

  “Oh,” he said, “oh, Leslie,” and finished his drink one-handed, his dull eyes turning wide and large in the aftertaste, looking around helplessly for a servant, “Leslie, I can’t argue with you, you’re so much smarter than the rest of us, but do you think that this is so? The work is so important. And it’s dedicated. Scientific.”

  (I should point this out: I am changing Smith’s name for the purpose of making these notes publishable. Like most of the people from his Downside, he had a long unpronounceable ethnic name which sounded like a curse. Your correspondent, however, has given his true name and you will find him useful and creditable throughout, not a trace effeminate despite the misfortune of his name.)

  “Pick and shovel,” I said. “Move that caboose. That’s all. They’ve trained us four years their way to make the optimum profit; now we’re to breathe religion. On a five-year up.”

  The Arena, of course, is dedicated to the most practical pleasures but there is a small anteroom of a bar where serious drinking may be done and it was there that Smith and I had gone. I knew that it was only a matter of time until I left him for activities more situational … but we were stupefied with drink and I had still to say what was on my mind. Whatever was left there. No Messenger can really handle liquor; we are not trained that way. The kind of mind which can be manipulated into a Messenger’s would adapt poorly to drink.

  “You’re an orderly,” I said. “Be realistic.”

  “Cancer. Cancer, Leslie! Just think of that instead. We’re going to cure! Fifty years ago no one knew the answer and now people like you and me can make it. We are the answer. And think of the free education.”

  “They’ll get it back tenfold. It’s all calculated. Don’t you understand the factor of turnover?”

  “Education! It’s all education and free; we’ve made something of ourselves. We’re going to be people. They can’t keep me down. The gut isn’t afraid,” Smith said and lurched, fell toward his feet. Alas, drinking Messengers! Alas, incoherency! He fell tablewards to land in a sighing heap.

  “Stupid,” I said. “They didn’t have to hook you in; you were a sale when you were born.”

  Those fine Smithian hands that would soon cleave out colons twitched and he muttered, “Leslie,” in a high guttural. I decided to leave him where he lay. In due time — there is always due time except in our business — he would come back to himself and deal with the situation and that would be enough. There were five years ahead of him. In the meantime he was entitled (or this was the way I really thought at the time) — to all the oblivion he could find. I could only envy his low threshold.

  I left him.

  I left the drinks too, went into the
corridor and toward the fluorescence of the Arena. The attendant caught me at the rope and decided that I looked safe. She asked me what I wanted. She did not ask this graciously but then Smith and I were not in Clubhouse. Grandstand is the habitat for Messengers.

  “I want a Priest,” I said.

  “A confession machine?”

  “A Priest they call them, don’t they? That’s what I want.”

  She looked at me with some puzzlement on her fine, middle-aged face. (I could see a wart that would flower into metastasis in five or six years; one could see the intimation of filaments casting: burn it out fast and horrid with the deep knife.) “We don’t get many requests for those now.”

  “People don’t want to confess?”

  “Not that way. Others.”

  “I want it that way.”

  “It’s not working too well. It’s an old model.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Do I have that right?”

  Something must have caught her or only, perhaps, the frenzied caper of my hands moving as if in bowels. She looked, shrugged, pressed a bell. ‘’I’ll have an attendant,” she said. “You aren’t just from the Institute, are you?”

  “That’s right. Graduation.”

  “I know about the graduation. I just wasn’t sure for a minute, that’s all. Most of them you tell right off.”

  “I’d get that wart looked at. I see desiccation.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Desiccation, death, intimations of waste. It could go rampant any time, break the seals. Get it checked,” I said helpfully and went off with the attendant, a girl of twenty-four or -five who looked at me strangely and held me off as we eased down a corridor. From closed doors I could hear moaning. The attendant dragged me into an alcove halfway toward a door and, putting her hands on me, asked if I wanted some flesh.

  “No,” I said and laughed. “I’m neutered.”

  “Neutered? I don’t understand that.” She squeezed. I laughed some more, under this guise could feel the horrid pressure of her rising breasts under a layer of silk, whicker of lips deadly against the ear. “Come on,” she said. “I can tell. Most of you can do it. We’ll take it right on a table. Private rates.”

  “Don’t touch me,” I said, pushing, feeling her resilience cave to waste under pressure, all yielding, devastation, loss. “Don’t touch me, I’m contaminated.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  ‘’I’m a Messenger.”

  “I know that. Oh well,” she said with a shrug and took my hand wearily, “I can’t give you confidence.” “Nothing.”

  “Oh, it isn’t all that bad,” she said, her features congealing toward an asexual slant, perfect for celibates and lunatics. “It can be a great thing, Messengers. Besides, you should be proud. The contribution — ”

  “No contribution,” I said, leading her down the corridor. “Give me to the Priest.”

  “It’s in there,” she said. “Don’t talk any more. I can’t stand this all of a sudden.” She gave me a slight push into the room, closed the door.

  I looked at the Priest for a while and then took a seat down front. It was an older model all right, no reclining chair, just stiff wood, no color. I put the machine on receive, waited until the green cleared, and said, “I have come to you, Father, for I have sinned.”

  “You have come unto me, for you have sinned,” the machine said in a pleasant tenor, the voice only creaking a little.

  “I wish for you to hear me; my sins are dark and grievous.”

  “Confess and be blessed,” it said, rasped, came to an effeminate yowl on the blessed. Gears ground in the background. I inspected the small plate on the front which said 1993. A very old one. “Be blessed,” it said again and clicked. “Confess and be known.”

  “I have just graduated from the Huhm Institute where I completed Messenger training.”

  “A fine undertaking. Messengers —”

  “The Institute is a profit-making organization run under medical sanction as a monopoly. It exploits its one stroke of genius and the terror of its dependents for crude gain. It is destructive.”

  “Messengers feel this way in the beginning. Go on, relieve yourself.”

  “It is in the hands of greedy men who, having acquired the rights to the Huhn Projector, use fear as a means of maintaining power.”

  “How long have you felt this way?”

  “Listen,” I said, “listen to me. I have not come to this lightly; I have learned. I know the three causeways of metastasis, I know its lesser and greater pathways, its colors and symbiosis. I learned the seventeen manual and forty-five automatic means of incision, I learned of filaments, mitosis, and the scattering of cells. I saw demonstrations, I performed my own tasks. I learned of the history and implications, I —”

  I went into the cadaver, the surfaces collapsing around me, and walked through the arches of death, toward the spot which had killed him; confronted it there, a dome a thousand feet high, and looked upon it in awe, then, bringing the fire from my lance, ground it to bits. They took me from the cadaver screaming, bits of cancer still dribbling from the lance. “Dont worry,” they said. “It is always the worst the first time. That is why we give you poor dead ones to enter. They were doomed anyway.”

  “That all sounds very interesting. However, you have not yet detailed your problem. Speak loudly and clearly as you detail your problem.”

  “You’re not even giving me a chance to finish.”

  “Confess and be blessed.”

  “I could have come here for anything, you know. Who needs confessors in a whorehouse? Show some consideration.”

  “Why personify?” the machine asked rather petulantly. “Why this compulsive need for iteration? The important thing is to come to terms — ”

  The new confessors have special circuitry. Even though demand for the machines is nil (who needs guilt any more if there is a cure for cancer?) connections are available which block the Priest at certain points so that you can finish a statement. (I have read much on Priests; I still believe in guilt.) There seemed no possibility of dialogue here. Also, the machine was hooked into a vintage Freudianism which is completely outmoded.

  “Impossible,” I said. “It’s impossible.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Let me finish,” I said. Rather desperately. One last time. There was no point in getting exercised about machinery: this is the basic understanding. “Let me conclude. I learned all the means of Reduction, to say nothing of the splendid history of the Hulm Projector, a beautiful piece of equipment whose commercial application began only after the sudden death of its inventor and the full details of whose functioning remain suppressed. I learned of Hulm himself, the poor old bastard: I learned about the vision which drove him in darkness toward a sense so enormous—”

  “You are sweating. Your pulse is extremely rapid. Why do you react to this cold data with such excitement?”

  “I don’t want to be calm. Calm reasonable men got us into this.”

  “You cannot confess unless you are calm. You must suppress —”

  “How do you know my mental state?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Why not?” I said. “I took the oath. I came from the Institute. I have been educated to all the greater and lesser evils into which the corrupted Messenger may stray and I have learned the ways of their avoidance. I received a drill and beam, I received a lance. An engraved diploma and memory book will be mailed me, the cost of which will be deducted from my first salary check. I will make thirty-nine thousand dollars a year before taxation and this is only the beginning; soon I will go to fifty if I keep my lance straight. I have all the advantages of which I would have otherwise been deprived in Downside.”

  “What do you think of this?”

  “I think nothing of Downside. I had no future: the Institute nourished me. I had no possibilities, the Institute made them manifest. I had no hope, the Institute gave me a profession.”

 
“So you must have gratitude.”

  “But this is not my question. You must listen to me now. All of this has been done for me, just as I have established it for you. If this is so, and it is indeed, why do I hate them?”

  The Priest blinked. “Pardon me,” it said, light wavering. “I am now on automatic. There is an overload in the circuitry. This is only a slight problem which can be swiftly corrected. An attendant will come.”

  I felt the walls were going to come in around me; I felt that I would perish in slick, dark flesh, an invisible mote struggling against entrapment, enveloped by decay, and I must have screamed then; rung my little alarm for assistance; they dragged me out on the attached string which is part of early training and falling through, past unconsciousness, I woke into a dream where I stood on a table top, expanding, now three feet high, and said, “I cannot stand this. I cannot possibly take this any more.” “You will,” they said. ‘’You will.”

  “My circuitry is now overloaded,” the machine said. “Please be patient. There is a small problem. An attendant will come; all will be corrected. Very little time will elapse until I am again functional.”

  “Listen to me,” I said, pounding metal. “You dull son of a bitch — ”

  “Do not personify. Circuitry overloaded is. If you will — ”

  “I paid my money and this is my confession: I want to kill. Not to cure but to strike. All my life I have been maimed, burned, blasted, sullied, and turned off by deprivation, now they have taken me from those streets and told me of a future … but I do not want a future, I do not want the Hulm Projector or to clamber inside people like an itch to burn out cancer. I hate it. I will not —”

  “I am not functional. My circuitry overloaded is. Patience and mendacity, lying quietly signals quietly and looking for an attendant soon will pass and then well again all must speak for now but it be coming now attendant overload is sing the circuit panel open dark —”