The Very Best of Barry N Malzberg

by Barry N. Malzberg

  Hit the starting switch. (It must begin somewhere, although it really started so terribly long ago.) The batteries hum, pulse with energy; Hulm’s madness seems to call upon the familiar of its inventor and issues his whine: a strange, characteristic clang. Lights flicker, the Projector is working. One hopes that it is working. One knows that there has never been an authenticated case of a machine breaking down in Process … but there are rumors, rumors which circulate through any population, and then too, there is always a first time. The thought of reduction continued or the thought of partial restoration within a capillary is enough to keep even the limited imagination of a Messenger hopping. Hop and hop; skip and connect. On schedule reduction begins. It is all automatic from the time of ignition.

  It begins slowly, then accelerates. The Geometrical Progression of Diminution, it is called in the Institute, and they concede that they do not themselves know why it seems to work in this fashion … but it has long been graphed that, while it takes five minutes to lose the first foot, it takes merely another five to lose all but the necessary percentage of the rest. It is during this time then as during none other that the mind blanks, the corpuscles run free and there comes the slow, wild onslaught of epiphany. One sees things, one senses the dark. Reduction is narcotic, this being a theory I have, but it is based less on physiology than on the involved sense of anticipation.

  Anticipation! One never knows, after all, what one might find inside there, what differences might be uncovered. am led to understand that less committed men obtain the same reaction from sex. (I know nothing of this.) One thinks of the Ultimate Metastases to be discovered in the blood, the biggest fish of all.

  And talks. Something must be done, after all, to make the moments and exhilaration go by; to seal off the fear and the wonder, and besides, the patient is so deeply narcotized that for once almost anything can be said without it sounding strange. We have so few pleasures. Most of us have no vices and must take satisfaction where we may. One perches on the edge of the chair and finally the center, exposing the body to the rays of the Projector, and raves onward, a tiny voice in the still night. “You do not understand what you put me through, you stupid, rich son of a bitch, and you ought to show some appreciation, which is why I’m going to kill you,” or one will lapse into neologism and rhyme such as “Hitch, twitch, litch, itch, rich to the body’s bitch and ride the rising blood” or “Faster metastases” or, more simply, “I’m going to kill you because I hate too much and they couldn’t burn that out of me the way I can burn out cancer.”

  And so on. And so forth. And in the meantime, reduction is working away; working away all the time so that the voice, even in the process of address, becomes gradually higher-pitched, moving from a fine, adult rumble to an adolescent whinny and then bottoms into a childish squeak, squeak from the Messenger, squeak for remorse, the voice finally taking up residence somewhere below the jaws and then at last —

  At last one is something less than an inch tall, dancing angelic but upon the head of no pin and then preparing for entrance. One makes haste. One slinks into the body.

  (How entrance is accomplished will be my only secret. I will not say, nor will any Messenger, no matter how great his disillusion. You will not find it either in any of the popularized essays, articles, or books on our splendid trade; you will see it in no procedural manual. It is expurgated, it is our one professional secret blocked by the oath. I cannot break the oath to reveal. Not even I, not even now.)

  Into the bloodstream we stalk, little divers carrying our lances, the lance also reducible for crises. Now in the body’s fever at last the noises have changed; sharpened, heightened, strange whines and sirens in the distance, a clanging and receding, Bicker and thud, as we stroll our way with surprising casualness up the alleys and toward the appointed spot.

  The spot: ah yes, the spot; it has been localized for us, brushed red by radiation in the morning, turned orange by nightfall, nevertheless it does not show up clearly in that darkness, a thick, atmospheric haze descending like the soot of Downside, and illumination, cleverly provided by the tip of the lance (make of that what you will!), is necessary. In this cave, then, one can feel not only the humors but the instances themselves, the very seat of personality is here. Twitches of culpability, seizures of continence, revelations and platitudes, even a fanatic shriek here and there, and the corridors seem to curl in spots as if impaled. The siren rings faster, a bell knocks, we move upon the designed spot.

  Oh, it is cold, cold! Temperatures are not adjusted through reduction and so one must shudder within one’s little outer garb until reaching that designated spot. Stalk then, skitter, run, jump, sway, stagger, perch to a corpuscle and finally, finally, to the heart of the orange, now gleaming in the proximity. Doff the garments swiftly, hang them on some tissue.

  Gloves, indicator, goggles: all gone. They flap on a filament in the chill, the strange intestinal wind moving them, and then the lance is carefully brought to fire through the old method, one droplet of heat applied. And burn, then, bum, burn I Mumble curses, eviscerate, quiver, until at last the burning, bright bulb of cancer emerges at the end of the lance.

  One looks at it then in the light: one can see the whole of the lovely, lovely tumor, reduced to centimeters. It seems to have features; some of them mimic the faces of animals or men. Slash of mouth, wink of eye deep in the pocket, holding it then at little arm’s length to avoid contamination, remove the tag from the lance and slap it in there. Don the goggles again, whisk the bag into the coat, and then off into the turbulence again. A boulevardier. A stroller out for his evening’s pastime, the wind a bit damp, but what to make of it?

  One shuffles much faster this time. Reduct exists only for a certain stated interval and after that one is known to enlarge, whether the patient can contain or not. Physics and Hulm cannot be embraced by simple willfulness. It would not necessarily kill the Messenger, enlargement within the patient, that is, but it would from the cosmetic and career standpoint do him little over-all good and, as far as the patient was concerned, it would be quite a pulpous mess, not to say a final one. Quicker and quicker on the boulevards, then, the metastases deep in the pocket of the coat, in the pocket, the metastases being carried like an awful little secret which the patient himself may never know; a high, penetrating hum over all of this which might only be one’s nervous reaction. Although I believe differently. I believe it to be the song of the metastases, overtaking itself and making a carol of release. To the exit point (which I similarly dare not reveal) and into the light.

  Perch on a table top.

  Sing with the metastases.

  One waits then. Sometimes one has exited too fast and there are terrible moments for this peculiar elf as he sits with legs dangling, wondering if this is the time that the Roof Falls In and then at last —

  Ah, at last! There is a feeling of unfolding, flowering, heightening, and elevation as the reconstitution at last begins. To come right to the point, it feels sexual, not an erection merely of that quivering, useless organ, but of the axillae, the papillae, the deltoids, the jugular and so on, blood filling all the cavities as they rise to terrible authority, snapping like a slide rule, and finally, full height restored (it all takes only seven or eight seconds but how long is an orgasm?), one stands glinting from angry, mature eyes, toward the form lying on the bed of life.

  For all that this form knows or cares it might as well be on the moon; it is beyond analysis, as insensate of what has been done to it as if it were roaming the blasted surfaces with power pack and nightmare, and one sighs, one packs up his equipment. It is all too much. Buttoning the little cancer securely into a flap, the figure trundles wearily through the hall to turn it in for analysis.

  In the hall they look at you. They know. They always know when it has happened and what you have done and there is a rim of terror underneath the inquiry and the smile. For the way they look at you, you might as well have been fornicating with a sheep or committing self-abuse in a s
terile washbasin, and yet I want to say to them, How can you look at me in this way? It is only a Messenger, a faithful Messenger, dedicated servant of man and enemy of cancer, moving wearily through these outer corridors; can you not understand that? Can you not understand that it is merely a process, a process more difficult than most but devoid of irony? Why do they look at us in this way?

  I think I know the answer.

  They see it, you understand, they see it and so do I, so say it and be damned, let it come then and no way around it. Knock down the door and kill me, take my notes and burn them, hang me before the Institute as warning to all who pass below, do that and more, and yet it must be said and in its purity and finality cannot be escaped.

  Say it once and for all time, gentlemen: this intimation buried like the ant at the heart of the blooded rose, forty years age, deep in the gnarled gardens of Hulm’s darkness. Say it, see it:

  I LOVED MY WORK.

  Standing Orders

  THIS is Luke Christmas, the President. The standing orders are in effect. President today, Secretary of Defense yesterday, Health and Welfare tomorrow. Then recycle and switch. Being President is the most fun of all, the day he looks forward to. With luck it happens twice a week unless they call off the Cabinet meetings on sudden notice and herd them all into the dayroom for extra Thorazine and career planning. Luke had been afraid that they would pull one of those switches today. They hadn’t done it in a while, but here it is Wednesday and the Cabinet meeting seems to be going off without a hitch. Luke is having a good time, here in simulation therapy. That is what they call it in their charts and summaries. Luke has a better name for it, though. He calls it playing President. (Or playing Secretary of Defense, whatever.) It is about as good as it is likely to get for him. Luke knows that the future is nothing he can count on. Sometimes the drugs take hold and sometimes they do not. Sometimes he thinks he has the situation licked and other times he feels like an old loony in a ward somewhere, playacting power fantasies. Up and down, in and out. But today is a good day. Luke feels solid, all the way through and the Cabinet is listening to him with unusual intensity. They are paying attention and well they should. He is, after all, the President.

  So here is Luke Christmas talking to the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the National Security Adviser, and so on and so forth. “We have to take a strong line,” he says. “We are coming into a new game plan, a new universe altogether. A new millennium coming up. Everything is going to change in the two thousands, you know? Different times, different rules.” He twirls the belt on his bathrobe, flaps it around, shows the three hundred and sixty degree angle which represents the Earth moving around the Sun. “Get it?” Luke says. “Everything is going into a different orbit. So what do you think down there? Is the Argentine situation under control?”

  Argentina has been a son of a gun recently. Rebels, revolutionaries, struggles among the loyalists, a Presidential assassination, the succession of the widow to the unfilled term, a panic when flood relief (flood relief in Argentina?) went astray and slipped into Bolivia instead. Bolivia, Argentina, Nicaragua, Brazil: all of these people and places were in tumult and it was hard to sort them out. Still, you had to keep them separate in your mind, the President thought. That was part of the job. Every third day, anyway. “So what do you hear?” he says.

  The National Security Adviser breaks the silence, looks over his shoulder, then stares at the President. “Borders,” he says, “they’re infiltrating borders. It has to do with the sheep.”

  “Sheep? Whose borders? What infiltration?”

  “Well,” the Adviser says, “we’re working on this. We’re trying to figure it out. It’s not easy. We get conflicting reports.”

  Luke Christmas stared at his counselor, then looked up and down the table. “Hard to sort out,” he said, “well, it’s a confusing business. Are there any other comments?”

  Carmen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff today says, “We’re having a little trouble with that situation in Montana. It looks like we’re going to have to have a full mobilization there, try to control the situation.” She shakes her head, looks toward the door. “I don’t want to be too specific,” she says. “You know what I mean.”

  Luke knows what she means. The reactor has been firing out of control for some weeks now. They cannot seem to control the chain reaction and the burn is moving inexorably through the earth, threatening to break free in Helena or some place like that. It is a situation with which he had to contend when he was Defense and he had no answers then; it certainly hasn’t improved. “Well,” Luke says, “if we have to call out the troops, we’ll just do it, I guess. Keep it under control any way you can. I don’t think there’s much we can do.”

  The chairman nods vigorously. “I know,” Carmen says, “Still, you have to try, right? We’re all trying.” There are little murmurs up and down the table. It is agreed that everyone is doing his or her best according to the parameters of the situation anyway, and no one should be unduly criticized. After a while the nods and mumbles subside and the Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officers look expectantly at Luke again. That is the problem with being President. It has its power and prerogatives, sure, but you have to run these things. But what If you don’t feel like running them? What if you’ve had enough of this already and you have other things on your mind? It isn’t all simulation therapy. Behind this masking, Luke knows that there are some real problems: the terrible family stuff and so on and the question of drug maintenance which is, when you think about it, delusory because how long can you use drugs to avoid a situation which just gets worse and worse if you didn’t believe that you could deal with it. Things could just get worse and worse, and that was for sure.

  Anyway. Luke felt the disinterest coming over him. Sometimes it happened just that way. You were at the center of things, simulating like a son of a bitch, and then you just wanted out. “Well,” he said, “I guess that’s all of it, if no one has anything to add. We’ll proceed with the agenda in the usual way. Things should be much calmer by tonight, don’t you think?”

  They seem to think so. They look at him with rounded, glaring Keane eyes, the big eyes of drug induced accommodation and Luke supposes that he is looking back on them in the same way. They must be some bunch in this dayroom, sitting among the checkerboards and ping pong tables, doing simulation therapy, acting out power politics when most of them are so drugged, so filled with grief, that without the support of the situation they would probably be stretched out on the floor, twitching. “I think we’ll adjourn now,” Luke says. “Is that all right? What does everyone think? We have this busy day ahead, dealing with our own stuff, isn’t that so?” Everyone seems to think that is so. Luke picks up the gavel which they gave him and pounds it once on the table. Sometimes it is fun to be formal even though he is sure that a gavel hasn’t been used by any President other than he in all the years that simulation therapy has been going on here. Shrugging, gossiping, his Cabinet shuffles away, turning to give respectful nods, then leaving Luke standing alone in the dayroom. Dr. Williams waits until all of them are out, then comes through the side door and comes right up to Luke, dealing with him in that engaging, Williamesque way which Luke has always found so heartening and yet at the same time so irritating. “You did very well,” Dr. Williams says. “We felt that you showed some real control, Luke.”

  “Well, thank you,” Luke says. Really, what can he say? He is not sure he knows any way to deal with the shrink, even after all these months. You always have to be on guard with your doctor, but then again Williams is as engaging as a puppy, seems to want to be on informal terms. A strange reversal. Isn’t it usually the shrink who is distant? “Well, sure,” Luke says, vaguely, “sure thing. I’m doing the best I can.”

  “And a very neat job of it, too,” Williams says. He is. a short, intense man with twinkling eyes — eyes very different from the dull-eyed, big-eyed bunch with whom he does most of his business — and a brisk manner, but Luke su
spects that there is something very wrong with Williams inside, something deep and tragic, maybe something as troubling as whatever is inside Luke himself. “Well,” Williams says, “what do you say we go back to the Oval Office now?”

  “Well, sure,” Luke says, humoring him. “Whatever you say, it’s all right with me.”

  “We can layout some more of the day’s events, you have a speech to the National Council of Churches at eleven, and then there’s the Medal of Freedom ceremony in the Rose Garden at three. In between, you can have a really nice lunch. We’re going to have sausages today, maybe some pastry, too. How does that sound?”

  “Oh, good,” Luke says. “It sounds good.” Williams’ hand is on his arm, guiding him. They move through the dayroom and into an empty anteroom, once an electroshock parlor Luke guesses, which serves as the Oval Office. “Now, Mr. President,” Williams says, “why don’t you just sit down and have a little rest while we get your schedule going. How will that be?”

  “Fine,” Luke says. “That will be fine.” He is tired from that Cabinet meeting and no kidding. It may not seem like much on the outside, but there is a lot of responsibility there and one slip, a single slip could bring down the target bombs on your head. There is tension all through him. Sometimes it is very hard to remember that this is just a dayroom and he is in simulation therapy, damned if sometimes it doesn’t feel real. “Right back,” Williams says. He moves away, leaving Luke alone in the Oval Office which is not, now that he looks around, really very big. They could do better than this even though if they took away that old electroshock machinery here, it probably would be a little bigger. Well, maybe a lot bigger.

  Anyway, the Cabinet meeting is over and now there will be only ceremonial stuff and sausages and maybe pastry for lunch and the Rose Garden. The worst part of the day is behind him, Luke thinks, and tomorrow he can go back to Health and Welfare again which involves a lot less strain. Still, it would be nice if Williams did not cut out on him like this all the time and if Carmen had more of a definite plan instead of just talking about heavy mobilization. Signs of panic there.