trapped animal.
172
Adrian Rogoz
‘Lean on that railing near you’, came a kindly invitation from the
middle parallelepiped; his pedestal bore a plaque: ‘The God of
Nothingness’.
Tell us what happened to you’, said the parallelepiped on the right,
‘The God of Concentration’.
Some hoarse sounds, like sobs or strangled cries, were all that
Homer could produce.
‘Enough!’, said the god. ‘From your memory traces and from
information we gathered before you arrived, I have put together
almost your entire history. Nod if you understand me.’
The man nodded, but his eyes were unfocused.
‘It’s an unusual case’, the left-hand parallelepiped said with a
joyous piping sound; he was ‘The God of Speed’. ‘I suggest that the
remnants in his mind be amplified, translated and emitted by a
human voice.’
A red microphone above Homer switched on and from it came
words spoken with obvious effort: ‘What’s happening to me? What do
you want?’
‘Fine!’, said the God of Concentration with a chuckle. ‘All your
questions will be answered, even the ones you don’t know how to
ask.’
‘But we won’t ask you any questions or, more exactly, any more
questions’, chimed the God of Nothingness in a sweet tone of voice.
‘Your very coming has provided us with the most precious thing in
the world: an absurd improbability come true! Here are the facts.’
‘Amid all the thousands of cubic parsecs, Earth is a rare occur-
rence.’ It was the right-hand brain that was speaking now. ‘The need
of very special solar characteristics means a probability of 10-5 that
any galaxy will have an Earth. But a planet inhabited by rational
beings imposes new conditions: the proper distance from the sun, a
magnetic field to block harmful radiation, an extensive liquid broth
to allow life to germinate, a favourable atmosphere. These and
numerous other conditions reduce the probability of such an Earth
to 10-10.’
‘Maaad-ness, maaad-ness, maaad-ness’, came Homer’s amplified
inner voice, like a bell wildly tolling to rouse a burning village.
‘You’re right, of course’, said the middle God, serious and scratchy.
‘This exceptional concurrence of circumstances is required if you
Earth-worms are to make your appearance. First had to come the
great reptiles, preparing the way for the small mammals. A few
thousands of these at the dawn of time made it possible for you
The Altar of the Random Gods
173
men to cover the earth with your millions of bodies and their upper
ends like barely rational pinheads.’
‘What am I doing here? What do you want with me?’, Homer
wailed. It sounded as though his spirit were floating free of his body.
‘You came to us because an almost zero-degree probability was
verified’, hummed the middle God again, calmly and with a touch of
admiration in his voice. ‘You’re quite an exceptional case!’
‘A collision of two cars on the present traffic lanes can occur only
once in ten years’, the God of Speed explained in a friendly way. ‘A
collision of one car with two others can occur only once in a century.
The probability that the same car should in the next moment strike
another flying machine is once in a thousand years, and the addi-
tional splitting of your capsule by a helicopter rotor only once in ten
thousand years. Your escaping alive at this point increases the index
to one hundred thousand years. The chance of your half-cabin
breaking through the rescue net—a million years. Your not being
killed—ten million. Your being roused from a faint by your fall—one
hundred million. The possibility of your managing to pull closed your
protective membrane—a billion. The likelihood of falling in water and
not on land—ten billion.’
‘That makes you as old as a solar system’, commented the God of
Concentration.
‘The good luck to be carried from the river bottom by the factory
outflow—one hundred billion.’
‘As old as a galaxy!’
‘And the probability of reaching us alive—a thousand billion years.’
‘As old as the universe!’, murmured the God of Nothingness by way
of conclusion.
At the beginning Homer had held on, as best he could, to the railing
in front of the altar. But now he was hanging there like a rag doll,
arms limp and legs awkwardly spread, held up under the arms by a
metallic bar.
‘Aren’t you Barbara Hamilton?’
‘Yes’, said a surprised female voice, ‘but how did you know that?’
The amplifier was reproducing the sound track of Homer’s memory.
‘Adrian Gord spoke of you once and I imagined you just as you are.’
‘Incredible!’
‘You’re exactly like my image of you.’
‘How nice!’
‘Doesn’t that prove we’re made for each other?’
‘Really?’, said the woman’s deep and now somewhat startled voice.
174
Adrian Rogoz
Before Homer’s clouded and inflamed eyes the windows became
the lights of the distant city and the altars a happy, moving merry-go-
round.
‘Analyse the delta waves!’, requested the God of Concentration.
Two metallic arms, deft and impersonal, came down from some
recess or other and grasped the human lump under the arms; Homer
was gone in spirit into the green fields of his youth.
‘Can’t this fleeting moment stay forever? How angelic those violins
are! What sweet sensations sweep through me!’
‘You have only five minutes to live’, said the God of Speed in the
impersonal command tone of a space-flight dispatcher, as multi-
coloured waves, along with other invisible ones, eagerly crisscrossed
over Homer’s body.
The ‘voice’ that was reproducing the inner words of the man
crucified upon the metallic arms was no longer human at all. It
sounded like a magnetic tape running at dizzying speed. But it was
expressing a whole existence; run slowly it would probably have
taken as long as Homer’s life had.
‘Homer Hidden’, intoned the husky voice of the God of Nothing-
ness, ‘you’re a being that comes but once in a universe. Be glad that
you occurred!’
‘Integral amplifiers on!’, ordered the God of Speed.
Homer’s field of vision suddenly had no boundaries and Barbara’s
smile filled the firmament.
Then the man trembled in the sensitive metallic arms and these, as
though surprised, opened their grip. Homer collapsed at the foot of
the altar, and a ribbon of blood leaped from his mouth.
‘Strange, the fixations that even the rarest of mortals entertain!’,
exclaimed the God of Concentration. ‘But what a splendid occurrence
this was, just the same!’
The bundles of light that had continued to touch Homer’s body
withdrew hesitatingly.
’I told you once before that you’ve been infected with that useless
translated by MATTHEW J. O’CONNELL
ITALY
Good Night, Sophie
LINO ALDANI
Grey and blue overalls were running along the street. Grey and blue,
no other colours. There were no stores, no agencies, there wasn’t a
single soda-fountain, or a window full of toys, or even a perfume
store. Once in a while, on the fronts covered with soot, encrusted
with rubbish and moss, the revolving door of a shop opened. Inside
was dreamland: Oneirofilm, happiness within everybody’s reach, to
fit everybody’s pocketbook; inside was Sophie Barlow, nude, for
anyone who wanted to buy her.
*
*
*
*
*
There were seven of them and they were closing in from all sides. He
swung violently, hitting one of them in the jaw, which sent him
tumbling down the green marble staircase. Another, tall and brawny,
appeared below, brandishing a bludgeon. He dodged the blow by
hunching quickly, then grabbed the slave by the waist, hurling him
against a column of the temple. Then, while he was trying to corner a
third one, a vice of iron seized his neck. He tried to free himself, but
another slave tackled his legs, and still another immobilized his left
arm.
He was dragged away bodily. From the depths of the enormous
cavern came the rhythmical notes of the sitars and tablas, an
enervating, obsessive music, full of long quavers.
They tied him naked in front of the altar. Then the slaves fled into
the galleries that opened like eye-sockets of skulls in the walls of the
cavern. The air was filled with the smell of resin, a strong odour of
musk and nard, an aphrodisiac atmosphere emitted by the burning
torches, tripods and braziers.
When the dancing virgins appeared, the music stopped for a
moment, then took up again, more intensely, accompanied by a
distant choir of feminine voices.
It was an orgiastic, inebriating dance. The virgins passed by him one
by one, they grazed his stomach, face and chest with their light veils
176
Lino Aldani
and the long, soft feathers of their headdresses. Diadems and neck-
laces flashed in the half-light.
At the end the veils fell, slowly, one at a time. He saw the swelling
of their breasts, almost felt the softness of all those limbs that were
moving in front of him in a tangle of unsated desire.
Then, the long, freezing sound of a gong interrupted the dance. The
music ceased. The dancers, like guilt-ridden phantoms, disappeared in
the depths of the cave, and in the profound silence the priestess
appeared, exceedingly beautiful, wrapped in a leopard cape. She had
small bare pink feet, and between her hands clasped a long bluish
knife. Her eyes, black, deep, constantly shifting, seemed to search his
soul.
How long did the intolerable wait last? The knife cut his bonds with
devastating slowness, her great black eyes, moist and desirous,
continued to stare at him, while a jumble of words, whispering,
murmuring, came to his ears in a persuasive, enticing rhythm.
She dragged him to the foot of the altar. The leopard cape slid to
earth, she stretched out languidly and drew him to herself with a
gesture at once sweet and imperious.
In the cavern, a conch shell of sounds and shadows, the world came
and went in an ebb and flow of sighs.
*
*
*
*
*
Bradley turned off the machine and removed the plastic helmet. He
came out of the booth, his hands and forehead damp with sweat, his
breathing heavy, his pulse accelerated.
Twenty technicians, the director and the principal actress rushed to
the supervisor, impatiently surrounding him. Bradley’s eyes moved
around, looking for an armchair.
‘I want a glass of water’, he said.
He stretched out gingerly on an air cushion with a long, sloping
back, drying the beads of perspiration, and breathing deeply. A
technician made his way through the group and handed Bradley a
glass, which he emptied in one gulp.
‘Well? What do you think of it?’, the director asked anxiously.
Bradley waved impatiently, then shook his head.
‘We’re not there yet, Gustafson.’
Sophie Barlow lowered her eyes. Bradley touched her hand.
‘It has nothing to do with you, Sophie. You were terrific. I . . . only a
Good Night, Sophie
177
great actress could have created that last embrace. But the Oneirofilm
itself is artificial, unharmonious, unbalanced . . .’
‘What’s wrong with it?’, the director asked.
‘Gustafson! I said the film is unharmonious, don’t you understand?’
‘I heard you. You say it’s ‘‘unharmonious’’, unbalanced. Okay, the
music is Indian, four hundred years old, and the costumes are from
central Africa. But the consumer isn’t going to notice such subtleties,
what interests him is—’
‘Gustafson! The customer is always right, never forget that.
Anyway, this has nothing to do with music or costumes. The problem
is something else: this Oneirofilm would rattle even a bull’s nerves!’
Gustafson frowned.
‘Give me the script’, said Bradley, ‘and call the aesthetic technician.’
He rifled back and forth through the pages, muttering unintelligi-
bly, as if to reconnect the ideas.
‘All right’, he said at last, closing the bundle of pages suddenly. ‘The
film starts with a long canoe trip, the protagonist is alone in a hostile, strange world, there’s a struggle with the river’s crocodiles, and the
canoe capsizes. Then we have a trek through the jungle, rather tiring,
a hand-to-hand fight with the natives. The protagonist is shut up in a
hut, but during the night the chieftain’s daughter Aloa comes in, and
provides him with directions to the temple. Then there’s the embrace
with Aloa in the moonlight. Speaking of which, where’s Moa
Mohagry?’
The technician and the director moved apart, and Moa Mohagry, a
very tall Somalian woman with sculpturesque curves, stepped for-
ward.
‘You were great, Moa, but we’re going to have to do the scene over
again.’
‘Again?’, Moa exclaimed. ‘I could do the scene over a hundred
times, but I doubt it would get any better. I really gave it all I had,
Bradley . . .’
‘That’s exactly what Gustafson’s mistake was. In this Oneirofilm the
major scene is the last one, when the priestess seduces the protago-
nist. All the other scenes are going to have to be toned down—they
should serve as atmosphere and preparation. You can’t make an
Oneirofilm composed of nothing but major scenes.’
He turned to the aesthetic technician.
‘What’s the sensitivity index in the median sampling?’
‘In Aloa’s scene?’
‘Yes, in Aloa’s scene.’
178
Lino Aldani
‘84.5
.’
‘And in the scene of the last embrace?’
‘Just under 97.’
Bradley shook his head.
‘Theoretically it would be okay, but in practice it’s all wrong. This
morning I screened the scenes in the first part, one at a time. They’re
perfect. But the film doesn’t end on the riverbank when Aloa gives
herself to the protagonist. There are other, rather tiring episodes: the
ones I just screened, then another trek through the jungle, and the
fight with the slaves in the temple. By the time the consumer gets to
this point in the film, he’s exhausted, his sensory receptivity is down
to a minimum. The virgins’ erotic dance only partly solves the
problem. I saw the film in two takes, and so I was able to appreciate
the last embrace with Sophie in all its stylistic perfection. But, please, let’s not mix up absolute index with relative index. The crucial thing
is relative index. I’m positive that if we distributed the film the way
it’s put together now, the total receptivity index would fall by at least forty points, in spite of Sophie’s performance.
‘Bradley!’, the director implored. ‘Now you’re exaggerating.’
‘I’m not exaggerating’, the supervisor insisted in a polemical tone. ‘I
repeat, the last scene is a masterpiece, but the consumer gets there
tired and already satisfied, in such a condition that even the most
luscious fruit would taste insipid to him. Gustafson, you can’t expect
Sophie to accomplish miracles. The human nervous system has limits
and laws.’
‘Then what should we do?’
‘Listen to me, Gustafson. I was a director for twenty-five years, and
for six years I’ve been a supervisor. I think I’ve had enough
experience to give you some advice. If you leave this Oneirofilm
the way it is, I won’t pass it. I can’t. Beyond not pleasing the public, I would risk undermining the career of an actress like Sophie Barlow.
Pay attention to me, dilute all the scenes except the last, cut the
embrace with Aloa, reduce it to a mere scuffle.’
Moa Mohagry started angrily. Bradley took her wrist and forced her
to sit on the arm of his chair.
‘Listen to me, Moa. Don’t think that I want to take away the right
moment for you to make a big hit. You have talent, I know it. The
riverbank episode shows true zeal and temperament, there’s an
innocent primitive passion there that would not fail to fascinate the
consumer. You were fantastic, Moa. But I can’t ruin a film that’s cost
View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction Page 29