The Millennium Blues

by James Gunn

  Landis looked at the inscription, and wondered how many other guests would read, and recognize, Dante's Latin. On the other side of the arch, a naked young woman wearing a black mask ran squealing from a fat and sweaty satyr. Landis felt a brief chill as he stepped through the archway. Hell had frozen over.

  On the other side of the arch a young man in the quietly elegant blue-and-white corporation uniform accepted the engraved invitation Landis extended to him. A woman who was passing the entry stopped and stared at Landis. She was in her early forties, perhaps, and behind her gauzy mask and pale make-up, and a simple crimson, calf-length cocktail gown, was a face and figure that promised remarkable beauty.

  “You're William Landis,” she said. “The writer. I heard your talk this afternoon."

  He was of medium height and slender, with blue eyes and brown hair, and he was dressed in formal black. “Guilty,” he said.

  “I'm Elois Hays,” she said.

  “The actress? I saw your play night before last."

  “Guilty,” she said. “You're not in costume."

  “This was a costume ball?"

  “You know it was. The end-of-the-world ball.” She put a hand on his black-silk sleeve.

  “Then I am,” he said. He looked down at her hand and covered it with his.

  “You were supposed to dress up as your favorite catastrophe,” she said accusingly. “What catastrophe do you represent?"

  “Ladies first,” he said.

  “I'm radiation sickness,” she said.

  “No sores?” he asked. “Leave it to the good-looking women to choose a catastrophe that does not diminish their beauty."

  “Leave it to the men to be grotesque,” she replied. “Or refuse to participate."

  “Well, as for that,” he said, “I am in costume. I decided to come as Satan."

  “Where are your horns,” she said, “and forked tail?"

  “I'm a modern Satan. No external stigmata."

  “No mask either."

  “The devil doesn't need a mask. But then, I'm more of a devil's advocate."

  “For what?"

  “For hope. I'm not sure this is the end of the world."

  “What makes you think that's hopeful?"

  A masked and costumed couple brushed past them, entering the ballroom. The man was dressed like a Visigoth, the woman like a captive Roman, her robes artfully ripped to display tempting expanses of rosy flesh.

  “Is the thought of the world's survival that wearisome?” Landis asked.

  “Not to me,” she said. Her pale hands were an art form. “Though I wouldn't care very much, I think. But what better time to end the world than the conclusion of the second millennium?"

  “Is there a good time for catastrophe?"

  “If you've spent as many year as I have on the stage, you would know that timing is everything. No one should linger after her exit line."

  The naked young woman raced past them again. She was giggling. The satyr was farther behind and panting heavily.

  “They're at it already,” Hays said.

  Landis looked at his watch. “If the world is going to end in three hours, even the minutes are precious."

  She tucked her hand under his arm. “Is that your philosophy? Eat, drink, and be merry?"

  “It's one of them,” he said. “I think we all have a bit of that feeling. Particularly on an evening like this. Besides, who are we to criticize these others? I don't know about you, but I'm not without sin—or at least a hope for sin."

  She made a ruefully attractive face. “For one thing, that fat satyr is my former husband. For another—well, I've always been fascinated by intellectual men."

  He patted her hand. “And I by actresses. But you're a real actress, and I'm only a popularizer of other people's ideas."

  “Perhaps we should both have faith,” she said.

  “In this place where Dante said we should abandon all hope? But if you will be my companion for the rest of the evening, perhaps we will find faith or hope before it is over."

  9:15 p.m. Persistent reports of Russian troops assembling on the border of Georgia have just been confirmed by United Nations surveillance satellites. Earlier announcements by the United States met with skepticism by a number of nations and denials by the new Russian right-wing leaders. An emergency meeting of the Security Council has been called, although any action voted by the Council is certain to be vetoed by the Soviets. This comes at a time of continuing revolution or guerrilla warfare in half a dozen Latin American nations, the never-ending religious wars of the Middle East, undeclared wars in Southeast Asia, and the reports of Chinese Army maneuvers near the Russian border. Out of any one of these could come a provocation that might lead to an exchange of nuclear missiles.

  9:30 p.m. The open floor was almost as big as a football field. It might have dwarfed some groups, but there were many dancers, most in costume. Strangely, no orchestra played, and each couple was doing a different step to a different rhythm. It was like a medieval drawing of the dance of St. Vitus.

  Paul Gentry studied them from his position with his back to one of the broad windows framing the night. He was a tall, dark-complexioned man with gloomy features and eyebrows like black caterpillars. He wore a dark business suit and a rope shaped into a noose dangling like a tie from his neck. “I beg your pardon,” he said to a slender, blonde woman standing nearby, “but could you tell me why those people are behaving like idiots?"

  She turned and held out a small, sealed, plastic bag. Gentry took the bag and looked at it. Inside were a pair of earplugs with dials. His eyebrows moved up.

  “You put in the earplugs and dial whatever channel you want,” the woman said. “There are fifty channels, half for music, half for voice. You can listen to your favorite music or news or discussion, or the commentary to what you see on the screens."

  She waved a hand at the glowing theater-sized screens spaced around the room above the temporary bars and in the spaces between windows. One showed places and streets that seemed Parisian; they were filled with people and revelry. A second presented motionless groups gathered on high places; many of the people were staring at the sky. A third displayed throngs in oriental apparel and appearance, while others framed mob violence or church services or quick cuts of missiles and tanks and people dying in battle. One seemed to be portraying various kinds of threats to the continuation of human existence, from the icy majesty of advancing glaciers to the waterless sands of deserts, from the abandoned children of crowded slums to the slime of polluted rivers and seas. Here and there, scattered among the others, lines of letters scrolled up screens with news about impending catastrophes like the words written on the wall at Belshazzar's feast.

  It must have seemed to the dancers on the ballroom floor as if they were located at the center of the world, as if from the top of this artificial mountain they could see around the entire globe. But none of them seemed to be paying any attention.

  “Of course,” the woman said, “the views from other parts of the world are tapes sent back earlier. What with the record number of sunspots and solar flares, electronic communication with the rest of the world has been cut off."

  Gentry handed the unopened bag back to the young woman. “No, thanks,” he said. “I'll spend my last hours in this millennium doing my own talking and seeing.” He looked back toward the dancers. “But isn't it typical of our times that they are all individuals, together but separate, each dancing to his or her own music?"

  “You're Paul Gentry, aren't you?” the young woman asked. “The—"

  He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Ecologist. Environmentalist. Give me whatever name you think fits."

  She smiled. It was an expression that transformed an otherwise businesslike face. “How about propheteer? That's what Time called you."

  “If you like,” he said. “And what is your name and occupation?"

  “I'm Sally Krebs, and I'm in charge of a camera crew for CNN.” She was wearing a yellow jumpsu
it that could have been either evening wear or a uniform.

  “Where's your crew?” he asked in his sardonic baritone.

  “They're around. You just don't see them. What's wrong with individualism? Aren't people better off?"

  “Materially, perhaps, but actually not in any meaningful sense. In most periods of the past, people have had enough to eat, and they have enjoyed a much greater sense of security."

  “We can destroy ourselves,” Krebs said, “but we can choose not to do so. Surely our ancestors faced perils like flood, plague, and barbarians over which they had no control at all. That must have given them the terrible fear that they existed at the whim of supernatural forces."

  “They accepted these calamities as part of the natural order,” Gentry said. “The security I am talking about is being part of a sturdy social matrix that is capable of surviving the blows of nature or of fate."

  “But not,” Krebs added, with a sly smile, “of technology."

  “True. Science and technology could be created only by individuals, and once created could not be stopped until they brought us to this point. To this.” He waved a hand at the ballroom. “The idle rich consuming their idle riches. Is this the finest accomplishment of Western civilization?"

  “Maybe it isn't very serious,” Krebs said. “But it's not contemptible, either. Today people have what no one ever had before: choice."

  “When people can do anything, they find that nothing is worth doing. People are social animals. Like wolves and monkeys, we belong in groups, and when the groups are gone, and the reason for the groups is gone, we find that the reason for humanity is gone."

  “What you see here is just a small part of life,” Krebs said. “The ceremonial part."

  “Ceremony is a group function we have lost. We get together as individuals making gestures at group feeling but discover that we cannot really surrender our individualism."

  “The group should determine what we think and feel?"

  “The group thinks. The group feels. The group survives."

  “Why exalt the group above the individual?"

  “What leads to the destruction of the species—indeed, if our best scientists are right, to the destruction of all life on earth—is automatically wrong and evil."

  “So that is your favorite catastrophe!"

  “Self-destruction every time,” Gentry said. “That's why I wear this noose.” He fingered the rope around his neck.

  “I thought that was to make it handy for the lynching party."

  “Me?” he said in mock surprise.

  “No one is going to be happy when your jeremiads come true."

  “We stand on different sides of most fences, my dear,” Gentry said, “but on this one we stand together. You know what they do to bearers of ill tidings."

  “That's my profession."

  “And pointing out the consequences of human folly is mine."

  “You've done very well out of preaching catastrophe."

  “And you've clearly done well out of reporting it."

  She laughed. “It's no wonder people find you fascinating. Your ideas are so unrelievedly pessimistic that anything that happens comes as a relief."

  A slow smile broke the dour lines of his face. “My dear, I'm glad you find me fascinating, but why are we standing here talking when we could be making love?"

  Krebs laughed. “I said ‘people,’ not me. Besides, I'm working."

  “You won't always be working."

  “We've been filming and recording this conversation,” Krebs said. “May we have your authorization to telecast it?"

  Gentry smiled. “Everything I say is on the record. Including my final suggestion."

  “End of interview,” she said into the air.

  “But not, I hope, the end of our relationship."

  She offered him the possibilities of an enigmatic smile.

  “The only time we have a certain grasp on reality,” Gentry said, “is when we hold each other, pressed together flesh to naked flesh."

  9:45 p.m. The reputation of environmentalists is not what it used to be. Like the boy who cried “wolf,” they have shouted “catastrophe” once too often. From Silent Spring to The Population Bomb and The Poverty of Power, their texts have raised specters that, though frightening, turned out to be only skeletons in the closet. Undeterred, Paul Gentry, the most prominent of the breed today, recently called attention to a substantial die-off of plankton in the Gulf of Mexico, a sharp decline in krill production off Antarctica, an increase in radiation to which the average citizen is exposed in his lifetime, and an increase in acid rain after the small reduction that followed governmental restrictions on coal-fired generating plants in the early years of this decade. He has lots of other data, but it all adds up, he says, to death by pollution in the next century. In the next decade, he says, we should expect such problems as decreasing agricultural yields in a period when water has become scarce and fertilizer has become almost prohibitively expensive, a decrease in an already limited harvest of seafood, and an increase in the wholesale destruction of wild life. That is, he says, if we don't destroy ourselves first.

  10 p.m. Murray Smith-Ng stood at the seafood buffet loading his plate with shrimp and salmon. He was short and round, and his gray eyes glittered. He was dressed in the dark cloak and conical hat of a medieval astronomer, but his face had been darkened as if by a severe burn. Nearby but at a respectful distance, like a well trained dog awaiting his master's signal to be fed, was a young man dressed in the scorched rags of a nuclear survivor. They displayed to good advantage his slender legs and muscular chest. His name was Lyle, and he had been a student in Smith-Ng's seminar on catastrophism.

  “Dr. Smith-Ng, may I help you to some of this lobster?” Lyle asked.

  Another young man, dressed in imitation furs to look like an ice-age savage, paused in the process of picking up a plate. “The Dr. Smith-Ng?” he asked.

  “I'm sure there aren't any others,” Smith-Ng said.

  “The catastrophist?"

  “The only one of those, too."

  “Maybe you could answer a question that's always bothered me,” the young man said.

  “If I can,” Smith-Ng said.

  “I thought catastrophe theory was a mathematical discipline."

  “Oh, it is,” Smith-Ng said, setting down his plate to wipe mayonnaise from his chin. He picked up the plate again. “At least, that's how it started. Gradually people began to see practical applications for the mathematics, and that's where I did my work."

  “What kind of applications?” the young man asked.

  Smith-Ng popped a shrimp into his mouth. “Read my book, young man."

  “Like volcanoes and meteor strikes,” Lyle said impatiently. “Plagues and wars. Tornadoes and earthquakes."

  “Some processes are continuous,” Smith-Ng said around a mouthful of poached salmon. “They can be charted as familiar curves: straight lines, sines, hyperbolas.... Some are discontinuous. They start suddenly and break off just as abruptly."

  “Like chain reactions and critical mass,” Lyle said. “And the dinosaurs."

  Smith-Ng gave Lyle the look of respect reserved for the good student. “And other life forms,” he said. “The dinosaurs are simply the most dramatic. For a century after Darwin published his theory of evolution, scientists believed that evolution proceeded at the same even pace: as conditions changed, certain secondary genetic characteristics were selected to cope with them. Scientists of that kind were called ‘uniformitarians’ or ‘gradualists.’ Then, with the discovery that certain species, and at some periods most species, disappeared simultaneously and, in evolutionary terms, almost overnight, evolutionists all became catastrophists."

  “If you had read Catastrophe: Theory and Practice, you'd know that,” Lyle said.

  “The discontinuous process is more prevalent than we ever suspected,” Smith-Ng said, “although there was evidence enough around. Learning, for instance. Everyone had noticed that
no matter how much you learned, you were still in a state of ignorance until something magical happened and all you had learned suddenly fell into place. Everyone had observed the plateau theory of learning but pretended that learning proceeded smoothly."

  “It was the same way with catastrophe theory,” Lyle said. “Suddenly everybody was a catastrophist."

  “Some earlier than others,” Smith-Ng said.

  “But don't the times have something to do with it?” the other young man said.

  Smith-Ng lifted his face from his plate.

  “I think I read that somewhere,” the young man said.

  “Some ideas seem to have a better chance in certain periods than in others,” Smith-Ng admitted cautiously.

  “Now I remember,” the second young man said. “In a series of articles William S. Landis has been writing about catastrophe, he quotes a theory about ‘steam-engine time’ that he attributes to a fellow named Charles Fort."

  “'In steam-engine time people invent steam engines,'” Smith-Ng said. “And he applies that to catastrophism. ‘In catastrophic times, people invent theories to explain catastrophes.’ But what you've got to understand is that Landis's book is catastrophism masquerading as uniformitarianism. It merely pushes the origin of the catastrophe back to the mystical. The questions remain: What changes the times? What brings about the sudden acceptance of this theory or that? I prefer to put my faith in something I can measure."

  Landis and Hays had stopped nearby, unnoticed, to listen to the conversation when they heard his name. “The question is, Smith-Ng,” he asked now, “what catastrophes do your theories predict for the end of this evening?"

  “You must be William Landis. I recognize you from your photographs,” Smith-Ng said genially. “Of course you would be here. This will make a great concluding chapter for your book."

  “If it all doesn't conclude here,” Landis said. “But what's your prediction? Surely you have run everything through your equations."