His voice climbs up and down the scale in unpredictable little chromatic runs, and he slurs his words.
“The High Rationals celebrate too.”
“Is this a place where I can find High Rationals?”
“Naturally.”
“They think rational thoughts?”
“That’s what they do, the High Rationals. You have to understand. They get together and rationalize.”
“So they convene meetings? Like one big committee?” I ask, a little disoriented by his tone, by which he seems to impute some greater importance to meetings than I can make out. He smiles at me.
“Just the opposite of a meeting,” he says. “A meeting is where thought becomes completely socialized and conformist. What they do is something altogether different. It’s analogous to what happens when you read a book by a great thinker and begin having smarter thoughts yourself. You’re communing not only with that writer, but, indirectly, with all the other thinkers who shaped that writer by much the same influence as that one exerts on you.”
His eyes are getting glassy, a salacious, almost beastial leer spreads across his face and his voice is getting husky and low. Grabbing my lapel, he pulls me in close.
“Only they do it all simultaneously, all together! Each one thinking those isolated, original thoughts, but at the same time... with the others... All simultaneous!”
“OK! OK!” I say, shrugging him off. “Simmer down! I get it!”
Slowly, and very awkwardly, he shifts himself onto his side. Slowly, he reaches out his hand for the bedtable. There’s a roll of gauze standing there, like a little sentry, and he picks it up as carefully and reverently as if it were made of soap bubbles. There’s intense expectation and longing in his eyes as he does this. Eventually, he peels off a length of bandage and, lifting his head with irregular ratcheting motions, pulls the strip around his neck and settles it there. Then he reclines again, in sections.
“Such wonderful... silky bandages,” he murmurs lovingly, and right away bursts out “Bandages!” in a kind of gleeful, hissing explosion of syllables.
“Don’t you think you’re overdoing it a little?” I ask.
“Mind your own beeswax, buster,” he creaks, sounding terribly ill all of a sudden. “Being dead doesn’t feel good.”
Raising his arm, he lovingly bandages an exposed bit of bony wrist, and sighs softly with relief.
“It hurts?”
“No, no,” he croons. “It’s just my nerves are all wrong. I sit here asking them...” His voice rises to a thin, plaintive wail of consternation, “What do you think you’re doing? What are you doing?”
“If I took these off,” he says, lifting his eyes past me, “this leg,” he doesn’t point, “would be soaking in cold water almost up to halfway up the calf. Above that is a strip of normal sensation that expands to a width of about two inches and contracts to a width of about one inch minimum. Irregularly. Above that, vertical stripes the same way, all around, up almost to the crotch. They alternate. One kind tingles like it’s gone to sleep and the other has this...” he vocalizes a moment, “...minty-mentholated heat. The other leg...”
The light from the doorway suddenly disappears, and he goes instantly silent. The woman who’d stood in the dark, behind the man in the wheelchair yesterday, or whenever it was, marches into the infirmary. There’s a white wooden chair in the aisle between the beds and she all but obliviously walks against it, battering it aside with her knee so that it ends up tilted against a bedside like someone at prayer. If it hurt her, she doesn’t show it.
She’s tall and rangy. Her hair is so pale it’s almost white, a white crescent behind each ear; her face is white and her mouth is red—naturally red. She looks like Flannery O’Connor crossed with the Bride of the Monster. Sweeping by she doesn’t so much as glance in my direction, but bears down on Jerky like a vulture, and he stares at her in a spasm of wild, naked fear. Stopping a little above the foot of his bed, she looms over him.
“If I were you, I’d stop wasting bandages,” she says hoarsely, speaking directly into his upturned face.
Eyes rivetted to hers, he deforms, shrugs against the pillows, and makes a liquid sound in his mouth.
She dips forward, reaching out her long rubbery hands. He has time to whimper and squirm before she grabs his chest by pyjamas and bandages, lifting him up a little off the mattress.
I notice that her exposed wrists are marred by insect bites.
“That’s—my advice,” she hisses.
The words seem to bore into him. His toes flick the sheets from underneath.
The woman releases him disdainfully and turns to go, turning toward me rather than away from me. She has glass eyes. Both of them. Both of them are glass. They aren’t fakes; they’re unpainted globes of clear glass. I can see through them into her skull, a smokey greyness, almost indiscernibly outlined in red. Screwing up her face in a squint, she lumbers back out through the door, which hangs ajar. She doesn’t raise her arm to push the door open, she just walks through it face-first so it swings back and claps violently against the outer wall of the bungalow.
My room mate is lying as he fell when she released him, arms up above his head and his legs twisted, head in a crater, staring slackjawed at the air below the ceiling.
“Who was that?” I ask, just to make conversation.
“My sister,” he croaks.
The door sheepishly swings back into view and stops.
“You poor shit.”
*
I’m aware of having made the effort to get up, but by magic I am still, or back, where I was. The unlucky brother is on his feet, ineptly dressing himself. His body is like a wobbly stack of dishes, and when he turns his pale, dripping face toward the door, he has the wide-open look of a happy child who’s prepared to do whatever anyone asks of him. He makes his way to the door, much recovered already.
“Don’t try to get up again,” he says as he goes by, carefully keeping his eyes on his feet, “you passed out.”
“You don’t look so strong yourself, pal,” I say.
A smile grabs him by the mouth.
“I have to officiate at the ball toss,” he says proudly. “It’s mine.”
“If they’re going to do that again, shut the door behind you.”
He doesn’t.
My bag is gone. I know that. The thought of going in search of it awakens a fatigue in all my muscles, and a steady tide draws me some of the way back toward sleep. Through the window I see floodlights shining on the artifact, illuminating it from below, and, in the dusk, the pennants are still vivid, if not bright. There’s something about it that makes me think of a grisly weapon or something, an execution machine, incongruously decked out in jolly decorations.
It’s as if I knew it were going to explode, flooding the land for miles around with radiation, and that, one day, the pitiful image of this doom machine, all gaily festooned and celebrated by the people it is destined to cause to suffer a living nightmare, would be shown in somber documentaries.
I have no idea what it does. It may be nearly complete, or only in its initial stage of construction, even if that would mean the final result would have to be unthinkably huge. Not necessarily. They might build up first, and then build down. It could be that the thing would only grow for so long, then further work on it would cause it to shrink. Perhaps I see only the scaffolding or the shell, and the artifact itself is inside, or will be—they might not have started working on it yet. On the other hand, it might not be there anymore. In that case, they would be waiting for it to come back.
The artifact towers over everything else around, gazing ominously down at us, including me, a face on a pillow, in a window. It’s a mammoth ramp, or rampart, lying across the countryside for miles in either direction, although much of its extent is buried, and it only very gradually emerges from the ground.
My mind wanders away from the artifact without my noticing, and now, for some time, I’ve been looking down the leng
th of my bed into the gloom. There’s an odd patch of something light on the other side of the aisle that I can only dimly see. Very gradually, I become aware that there is a man, sitting up in bed, daintily spooning yogurt into his injuries, across the aisle and one over closer to the door. He’s nearly done, scraping the bottom of his paper cup with the flat wooden tool that must have come enclosed with it.
He crumples the cup now and tosses it into a bag that hangs from his bedpost. Sliding himself down in bed, he momentarily meets my eyes and says,
“It opened up again.”
It’s later the same night. I have gotten up, and I’ve staggered over to the water cooler, barely able to hold myself upright. There’s no accounting for this weakness. I glance over at him, where he lies asleep, and a trembling, white-orange glow peeps out from his midsection. Drawing nearer, I can see flames inside his injuries, burning steadily, with a soft hum. I can’t tell if they are part of his injuries, or if he’s only storing the flames in them for now. Are his bandages flames? Combs of flame, like that?
Looking up again at the artifact, we seem lower. It might be taller, but I think the bungalow has lowered. From my bed it’s difficult to tell whether what I’m seeing is a horizontal shadow, maybe of the bungalow roof, or the surface of the ground risen up past the sill several inches. The man lying opposite me is very still and obscure, and now I’m convinced there’s no one there. I’m alone; he has left, or been moved, so that I will sink into the ground alone.
The door opens, quietly. It exposes a patch of bare ground outside. The ground outside is livid blue, like a movie screen. The weary-looking woman I took the bag from is there, holding the door open, and partially hidden behind it. She looks at me for a long time. I’m too surprised to do anything. I wonder if she can see that my eyes are open, and I blink them several times, hoping she will notice the movement.
Now she turns her attention to someone else, someone outside, and gestures with her hand for whoever it is to enter. One of the old men in the tight outfits comes in obediently. His long wand rests on his right shoulder like a fishing rod. He carries my bag in his left hand. He brings it over to me, holds it out. I take it, and its weight drags my hand so that it drops straight to the floor with a crash. The woman hasn’t moved. The old messenger is looking down at me with a benevolent expression on his face that’s almost threatening, it’s so simpleminded, and so knowing at the same time. He nods once, slightly, then heads for the door, casting glances back at me over his shoulder. Slipping outside, he sidesteps out of sight.
The woman continues to hold the door with her right hand, looking in at me, without smiling. The arm I can see is bare, lightly browned by the sun even in this blue light. She may only be wearing a slip, otherwise it’s a rather light and sheer dress, considering that the air that stirs over me is cool. Now she turns slightly, evidently looking at something outside. Her face and one of her breasts are profiled again. The same outer-space majesty surrounds her.
I try to see her clinically. For a moment, I’m tempted to spoil her gambit by tossing the bag back out through the door. I’m too relieved to have it back, though. I don’t know why she’s done this, but I can do all sorts of things with this bag, for my own reasons.
Now, by miming, she is urging me to bandage myself. There’s a solemn look in her eyes. And why doesn’t she come in? I wave to her.
“Come in,” I say.
Again she looks around, homing in on something.
“I can’t,” she murmurs.
“What is it?”
She repeats the miming. Without her hand to hold it there, the door swings back and I can see more of her. Then she takes it in both hands and shuts it, like the lid of a chest. The infirmary goes dark.
The next few moments are nothing but confusion. There is a sound of footsteps outside, and some hasty movement, but no voices. Then another sound, like the whirr of tires on pavement, but no engine. Groping in the dark, it takes me some time to get into the bag. For some reason, I don’t remember that the flaps are strapped down, and I fumble for some minutes with the top of the bag, looking for an opening that isn’t there. Finally, with a terse exclamation, I see my mistake and open the flaps, fumble inside. A new tube of toothpaste, all black and covered in tiny green writing, like typing. I put it back and find the roll of bandages, which gives off a faint odor of cheese and film developer.
I start with the spot on my left leg that had previously been bandaged, hitching up my pants. Totally engrossed in wrapping up my leg, I am only dimly aware of the intermittent commotion outside. I think the building shimmies once, but that seemed more like a nervous twitch on its part. Shots erupt outside—one, two, three, four, five, in quick succession. One of them, from the sound of it, has definitely struck the bungalow, and I flatten myself against the mattress. Is this she? Is she lying out there, bleeding? Is she shooting people? The relief that flows from the bandages hits me along with the surprise and fright at the shots, mixing to form a bizarre combination of shock and relaxation.
At some point I seem to find myself by the window. The ground is more or less where I suppose it ought to be. Over there, across the way, and partially hidden in the crisp moonshadows of the ranked Operational barracks, there’s a heap of some rough planks that looks like a grave. This impression is further intensified by the upturned wheelbarrow at one end, which resembles a headstone. The splintery texture of the planks makes me think of dry earth, matted with parched weeds.
On top of the grave there is a ghostly egg or elastic pod. A human figure sprawls on top of that; even though it is a corpse and it belongs inside the grave, somehow it is resting on top of it. If I didn’t see it right away, it may be because my eyes simply weren’t yet fully accustomed to the weird light of it. I may have taken a step forward, closer to the windowsill, and, if I had, this might have admitted me to a sightline through the air that isn’t available from all angles. The concealment of the object and the body on top of it was an optical illusion, or I may have developed the right vision for it. Certainly, as I glance around me, there is a blind spot now in the center of my vision, like a shadow. Fat, conical, frosted-glass petals of an opening sea anemone are infused with long golden filaments. They open, and the body lying among them stirs and gathers itself up jerkily; a man I recognize, wearing a bejewelled, cloth-of-gold jumpsuit. His face, hands, and bare feet twinkle with gold dust, and it has also been kneaded up into his hair. A human clownfish.
Now he sees me, sees that I’m trapped in this house, and his eyes light up with glee. He smiles spasmodically. The grin spreads. It spreads beyond his face. It forms a corona of black light, to which my eyes are now attuned. He leaves the anemone grave. Little fans of gold flame to sprout from the soil around his toes, and fringe his moonshadow, which isn’t dispersed by their weird black light.
I know I have to get up. My body is like lead. This night will never end. I lie under a sheet, with only my head and my right hand sticking out.
“Directly beneath you, below the stone surface of the world, there is an ocean of liquid rock. Further down, the rock cools and congeals into crust again. Beneath that, the ocean, where the fish swim upside down. Below this, a blue sky, and drifting clouds. A void gapes under that; directly beneath your feet, there always is a lightless, infinite emptiness. That void extends not only beneath you, but before you, behind you, to the right of you, to the left of you, and above you, falling away in all directions, forever.”
There are others in the infirmary, surrounding the foot of my bed.
“The greater part of this will be explained again. Assemble in the mind’s eye the full extent of the workings of the universal machine over all time. Concentrate the attention on the functioning of Chorncendantra within the discovered order. Find the self within Chorncendantra. The self is now growing toward ever greater participation in Chorncendantra.”
They huddle. They discuss; sitting with their hands on their knees, in two ranks of straight-backed wooden chairs,
they look like an old-fashioned formal group portrait. A voice is calling out in the room.
“I have to get out!”
The voice is frantic with emotion, and it’s my own.
“He’s with her! I have to get out! Right now!”
I have to shout to make myself heard over the noise, trying to say, “Don’t be fooled. It’s a trick. That’s my voice, but it’s not me talking.”
The source of the other voice is so close to me that it clamors right in my ears, repeating in agony that it has to get out and that she is with him.
“This is not me speaking,” I say, louder, but still calmly, bearing down on the words and refusing to listen. “I am not saying those things. It’s not even a good imitation of my voice. No one who knows me would be taken in by it and, as I keep on talking—” by now I’m bellowing hard enough to hurt my throat, “—you will get more familiar with my real—my real manner—my real manner of speech...”
It’s no use. No matter how I struggle to make myself heard, this other voice relentlessly substitutes itself for mine. It won’t let me get a single word out. It rises as my voice rises, matching me force for force, pitch for pitch. And the persons assembled here insist on answering the counterfeit voice and ignoring me. I have a lot of questions I want answered; I want to tell them I don’t want any more of their evasions, that they’d better answer me if they know what’s good for them. But that voice only repeats, in as deliberately humiliating and abject a tone as it can muster, “I want to go home.” What shit! I haven’t got a home.
The others are watching me silently. I’ve been moved to the bed in the corner, where Jerky-Lurky lay before. Someone else is lying in the bed I’d occupied. One of the visitors rises from his chair, which creaks, and leans over me to open the window, which swings up and in. The open breasts of his jacket swab my face with wool and pipe tobacco. As he sits down again, I see that the men and women here are all showing signs of age and fatigue. The one who opened the window was an older man in a cloth cap, with a very pale face. He points; Guerrero is looking down at me imperiously through the window. He must have rolled the right side of his wheelchair up flush with the outer wall. Now that he sees me, his eyelids tilt up and he bares his teeth in a smile that is almost a sneer.
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