New Writings in SF 28 - [Anthology]
Page 8
marquetry: You called?
nellie: How is it that whenever you come on stage I start thinking of that Chinese
lyric by Fan Fan Chang?
marquetry: Does it have anything to do with the fact that I’m wearing this stupid
cheongsam? Is it because Angus is eating fried rice with his Russell chop suey? Could it be because Betty is playing chopsticks? Does the fact that you have The Collected Lyrics of Fan Fan Chang open before you have anything to do with it? I ask these questions with a tolerably open mind, being always reluctant to come to definitive conclusions about anything. Without wishing to strike too sapient a posture - which would probably ruin this bleeding cheongsam - I would define my position as pragmatic unpositivist, with the accent on the ‘ist’; if more people were of a like opinion, then the world would be a happier place. (Exits)
angus: You were going to recite a lyric poem, my dear.
nellie: How is it that whenever that stupid little pragmatic unpositivist leaves the
stage I forget a Chinese lyric by Fan Fan Chang?
angus: How many lyrics by Fan Fan Chang do you know?
nellie: I forget. On the other hand, I do remember reading the other day that a man
in a spaceship had gone through the galaxy backwards.
angus: How very unpleasant for him. How did they know?
nellie: They watched him through telescopes, I presume. He was only an ordinary
car mechanic, too.
angus: Ah, then he was probably bald.
curtain
* * * *
WHERE WALLS ARE HUNG WITH MULTI-MEDIA PORTRAITS
The scene is a palatially furnished bathroom in the gardening pages of a certain notorious newspaper (not the one you are thinking of, but a similar one which recently went up in price). Hitherto unknown varieties of plant decorate the room. The walls are hung with multi-media portraits of bald car mechanics. A crowd is gathered.
crowd: Moo!
(Enter Stephanie yeobought)
Stephanie: Ladies and Gentlemen, it is given to few in their time to have the privilege
of standing before you as I do today, nobly and impartially, and in all due modesty, yet with a proper sense of occasion - it is given to few, I say, to be able to announce before thousands and many of them themselves distinguished in their own way, too - women of charm, men of accomplishment, children of distinction, yes, yes, even lapdogs of outstanding merit and not unknown at Cruft’s (laughter) - to be able to announce, I say, that on this very day, this happy day, the event for which we have all been waiting - waiting for moreover, with an almost unbearable sense of impending fate and futurity within the cherished privacy of our own homes - nothing less than the rediscovery, at the bottom of a humble anteater’s hole in Piccadilly, just where the south end of Glasshouse Street comes out under the big Coca Cola sign, now scheduled for preservation as part of our great national heritage - the rediscovery, I say, of the sacred bones of Bertrand Russell, last of the playboy philosophers. (Wild cheering, lascivious laughter, the skirl of the pipes, ties thrown in air, stamping, the ejection of a male for reprehensibly taking advantage of the uproar in that he did goose a lady standing in front of him. The lady follows.) Oh, and I forgot to mention it, but Ronnie Hicks has just been round the galaxy backwards. (Cheers and mutters of ‘Piss off Ronnie Hicks’).
(Enter ronnie hicks, backwards. Clutches his joysticks)
ronnie hicks: It was nothing really.
voice from back of crowd: Speak up!
ronnie hicks: Sorry, it was nothing really.
voice from back of crowd: Then why did you say it, you scientific bastard?
reporter: Mr. Hicks, in the light of your great achievement, may I just ask you about
your family genealogy. It’s a little complicated isn’t it?
ronnie hicks: (defensively) Not necessarily. People go on about my brother being his
own grandfather but I don’t see anything funny in it.
reporter: I was thinking in particular of a lyric by the poet Fan Fan Chang, who died
this century—
voice from back of crowd: Last century, you nit!
reporter: I meant last century. But after all, if Fan Fan Chang had shot himself only
twelve hours later, it would have been this century, since he did it on the afternoon of December 31st in the last year of—
several voices from back of crowd: Get on with the bleeding interview!
Stephanie: The lyric of which he is thinking, Mr. Hicks, if I may interpolate a word at this juncture, is the one that goes
As I was going to Andromeda
I met a man with seven children
Everyone of them was each other’s grandmother
And my brother is also my uncle’s stepson.
I mean, legend has it that the reference is, in a word, to you yourself. Can you confirm or deny that?
ronnie hicks: You’re a lot of muck-rakers, the lot of you. I came here to speak about
my recent amazing scientific achievement, and instead you want to pry into my private family life. Typical, bloody typical. Nothing’s sacred. Where’s the light of scientific wonder shining in your eyes, burning there like a precious flame or sapphire? My brother, if it interests you, married a wonderful woman, my sister-in-law and grandmother, who bore him dozens of little poets, lovely little wild poets and car mechanics, with lips like cherries and a tendency to baldness - one of whom was me. I’m proud of my background. Without it, I doubt whether I’d ever have been able to travel round the galaxy backwards.
reporter: I meant to ask you, what was it like?
ronnie hicks: You’ve offended me. I’m not going to tell you. (They fight. The reporter
jumps on hicks and pummels him till he gives in) Okay, okay, I’ll tell. Just let me get up. (Rises) Well, first let me say that it is given to few in their time to have the privilege of standing before you as I do today, nobly and impartially—
voice from back of crowd: Cut it short!
ronnie hicks: It was terrifying. I seemed to see all the events of my life crowd before
my eyes in quick succession. Outside, there was almost total darkness. My craft was bucketting wildly. The instruments were not responding. You must realize that at this time only the speed of light forwards was known; nobody knew the speed of light backwards. I saw the great galaxy itself, yea, all which it doth inherit, fading into something no bigger than a pinball machine and vanishing into a comer that looked for all the world like your back passage. It was pretty scary. My two fellow cosmonauts - also car mechanics and bald like me - were either dead or dead drunk. It was a moment for quick action. I climbed into my suit and made my way outside on to the hull, intending to release the oxygen tanks, when I realized I had already done so. Time was going backwards as well as space. All I could do was hang on, not lose my nerve, and wait.
reporter: And when did you actually get back?
ronnie hicks: I think it’s tomorrow. Not an experience I’d care to repeat, let me tell
you. But, after all, research must go on, there must always be a few intrepid men willing to risk anything for their fellows. (The crowd begins to drift silently away) The spin-off in terms of technological advancement from all this will be immeasurable, not least in the region of anteater-breeding. (Now everyone has gone except ronnie hicks and Stephanie yeobought) New perspectives have opened up to us. We pause in awe on the threshold of a new age.
Stephanie: I’m afraid I also have to go now. I have a speaking engagement. (She
begins to put out the lights).
ronnie hicks: It’s been wonderful ... (He tries to look into her eyes)
Stephanie (breathlessly): For me too. I hardly know what to say.
ronnie hicks: Life’s too short, my darling. Did that thought ever occur to you?
Stephanie: No. How do you mean, too short? Do you mean you’re longer than it is?
ronnie hicks: No, I just mean that - well
, that life’s too short ...
stephanie: Were you born at the age of ten or something?
ronnie hicks: No, no, not that exactly. I just mean - well, we don’t get enough years.
Let me put it that way. We don’t get enough years.
stephanie: Sorry, perhaps I’m being dim. You mean if you counted them some would
be missing? By the way, how long were you away, travelling round the galaxy backwards?
ronnie hicks: Let’s go and have a bite to eat and I’ll tell you all about it.
Stephanie: I know an adorable little place at the south end of Glasshouse Street,
darling.
ronnie hicks (shyly): Darling! (They embrace. Enter large Space Vehicle, backwards,
ronnie hicks emerges)
curtain
<
* * * *
ON THE INSIDE
Robert P. Holdstock
Robert Holdstock last appeared in New Writings in SF volume 20 with microcosm, and is represented here by a story which evidences his interest in the incomprehensibility and duality of life. If you are not the man you think you are, must you necessarily be any other? Must periods of blankness necessarily have a greater meaning than blank pits of fear? Andrew Quinn, who kept his wife in the closet, had no reason to doubt the yin and yang of his rediscovered life - until - and then - but real life cannot be wrapped up in neat square-sided packages tied with pink ribbon, as the eminently satisfying snapper to this story shows.
* * * *
One
A day like any other day.
Andrew Quinn sprang from his foam rubber cradle and crossed the room to the shutters. The shutters opened before he could touch them and daylight illuminated the untidyness of the small apartment, made him blink as he reached to drop the polarizing filters.
It was going to be a good day, he had that feeling.
Naked and wide awake he crossed to the wall closet, opened the door. Unzipped one of the plastic coffins that lay within and kissed his wife good morning through her polythene shroud.
He felt a momentary sadness - their life together had been so short and they had accomplished so little - and then he zipped her up and closed the closet. He should have said a prayer or two, but it was too nice outside and if he hurried he would get some sun before he had to plunge into the cool of his office.
He dressed and shaved, performing both operations with speed since both necessitated a certain amount of mirror work and his gaunt features and wasting frame were something he would rather not face when he was feeling in a good mood.
Easing himself into the kitchenette he ran his usual spaceship fantasy, and began to operate heater and cooler controls as if they were drive controls. Sinful thinking, he knew, but there was only a one in a thousand chance that he was being listened to at that precise moment.
He prepared coffee, sweetened with fermented honey and a twist of butter; he consumed three rounds of toast, made a drink of vitamin and trace mineral supplements, and then closed down the kitchen unit.
Easing himself out of the kitchenette he read his mail, which today was three happy-leaflets (which of course he didn’t read) and a modest advert for underwear. He was expecting news from his brother in Manchester but since mail from the north could languish in the censors office for anything up to a month, he was hardly surprised when the letter failed to materialize.
He might try and use the work holophone today, his own being a local phone only, but there was a stiff penalty if he was found out and he was already in trouble with the authorities for using insulting language concerning the Church.
He was always in trouble for insulting the Church, but it was usually the monitors which reprimanded him; this time a faith-patrol policing the area near his apartment had heard him and decided to get nasty. One never argued with a Churchwoman. They were less tolerant than the police. Quinn had argued vehemently and been booked, but he had later confessed and now would not appear before the criminal courts for several months.
And in the meantime he was unbothered about the situation. The wavelengths made sure of that.
Checking his time on radio City he left his apartment at precisely nine thirty and caught the in-town magnit at nine forty. It was packed with commuters, of course, and a raucous good humour pervaded the compartment. Quinn joined in the early morning banter, hanging on for dear life as the train twisted its way along its razor thin rail.
By the time he arrived at work he was in such a good frame of mind that his office, a small dark room at the back of the building, was a welcome sight. He worked hard all morning, eliminating his in-tray in two hours. By twelve fifteen he was on his way to Hammersmith open-park and he joined the queue for his allotted spell in the giant preserve at twelve thirty. It took just a few minutes to gain access to the park which meant he had a little over twenty minutes to roam before he had to leave. Because of what had happened the previous week he faced the gates with just a tinge of apprehension, but he flashed his identity card at the monitor and walked rapidly past it and
Shock.
His knees went out from under him and he struggled to keep his balance. Someone grabbed his arm and murmured, ‘All right? Need any help?’
‘No ... no, thank you,’ he shook his head and tried to merge with the crowd, to escape the eyes of the man who had seen him stumble. He stared across the grass, at the milling crowds, at the rustling trees. His head was filled with noise, with confusion, with fear. He had one thought - the diary!
After a moment he grew calmer, and his thoughts became clear. The diary. He had to get to the diary.
He began to walk swiftly along the lakeside. Without really knowing where he was going, remembering places as he reached them, he came inland to where tree covered slopes gave a measure of shade to the grass, and to the hundreds of people who lay sprawled upon it, overlooking the narrow, winding stretch of water below.
He hesitated, getting his bearings. He listened to the buzz of conversation, to the sounds of trees and laughter. There was a strange murmuring above all these sounds and something in his head said: Monitors.
He didn’t know what Monitors were, but he felt afraid of them.
He paced up the gentle slope and into the trees and after a moment he noticed his tree, his special tree, a large preserved oak, very very old and quite obviously dead. There was only one man sprawled beneath it and he was half asleep.
In a hole in the base of the trunk was his diary, pushed as far in and up inside the trunk as his reach would allow, to where there was a small ledge. Making sure that no one was looking, he reached in, felt around and located the small book. With growing excitement and a noticeable activity of his heart he pulled it out and stared at it for a long moment.
Hiding the diary with his hunched body, he pretended to be dozing as he read the contents.
The first entry was a hastily scrawled opening testament:
I can’t remember my name or who I am, or where I am, or what I am, I’m just here suddenly in a park, and I know I’ll have to leave the park though I can’t figure out my motivations or why I’m so afraid of the television monitors that are scattered about. This diary belongs to Andrew Quinn which is me, but I have no memory of anything earlier than a few minutes ago. I’m just here, suddenly and with incredible feelings of familiarity with the whole place, but with nothing in my head except vague fears, vague uneasiness and a language. Feelings: frightened and alone.
The final words were scrawled so badly that he had difficulty making them out. He felt less frightened today but still very lonely and with incredible feelings of loss. He thought very carefully and then wrote:
When I left the park I lost myself in blackness and I was not fully aware again until a few minutes ago. I became vaguely aware of fear several times, and I remember these times clearly. I seemed to be dreaming and there was a small room filled with furniture and very untidy, and the dream was happening all around the room. Otherwise I seemed to be looki
ng out through a haze - nothing was real, nothing had solidity. I am accumulating information slowly but I still have no notion of what or who I am, or even if I belong; there is a starkness about this park and I notice uniformed and armed attendants, a lot of them women. I wonder if in someway I am suffering from an illusion in my every day life that dissolves suddenly when I come into this park. It’s my only explanation. Everyone is happy but I’m terrified and probably very conspicuous. I am obviously the only person who is seeing this sort of reality. I am afraid to leave the park because it means I will be made unconscious; the time lapse seems very small but the shock of becoming so suddenly aware is very great.
That was as much as he wrote before he noticed everyone around him was moving off towards the park exit. He hid the diary back inside the tree and walked along with the crowds. Again he felt uneasiness as swivelling monitors perpetually turned to look at him. Again he felt familiarity and yet nothing concrete came to mind.