The Lovers * Dark Is the Sun * Riders of the Purple Wage

by Philip José Farmer

  Primalux Ruskinson, loudly, “The Great Onion Peeler of Painting!”

  Luscus, calmly after the laughter has died: “In one sense, that is well put. Great art, like an onion, brings tears to the eyes. However, the light on Winnegan’s paintings is not just a reflection; it is sucked in, digested, and then fractured forth. Each of the broken beams makes visible, not various aspects of the figures beneath, but whole figures. Worlds, I might say.

  “I call this The Pellucidar Breakthrough. Pellucidar is the hollow interior of our planet, as depicted in a now forgotten fantasy-romance of the twentieth-century writer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of the immortal Tarzan.”

  Ruskinson moans and feels faint again. “Pellucid! Pellucidar! Luscus, you punning exhumist bastard!”

  “Burroughs’ hero penetrated the crust of Earth to discover another world inside. This was, in some ways, the reverse of the exterior, continents where the surface seas are, and vice versa. Just so, Winnegan has discovered an inner world, the obverse of the public image Everyman projects. And, like Burroughs’ hero, he has returned with a stunning narrative of psychic dangers and exploration.

  “And just as the fictional hero found his Pellucidar to be populated with stone-age men and dinosaurs, so Winnegan’s world is, though absolutely modern in one sense, archaic in another. Abysmally pristine. Yet, in the illumination of Winnegan’s world, there is an evil and inscrutable patch of blackness, and that is paralleled in Pellucidar by the tiny fixed moon which casts a chilling and unmoving shadow.

  “Now, I did intend that the ordinary ‘pellucid’ should be part of Pellucidar. Yet ‘pellucid’ means ‘reflecting light evenly from all surfaces’ or ‘admitting maximum passage of light without diffusion or distortion.’ Winnegan’s paintings do just the opposite. But—under the broken and twisted light, the acute observer can see a primeval luminosity, even and straight. This is the light that links all the fractures and multilevels, the light I was thinking of in my earlier discussion of the ‘Age of the Plugged-In Man’ and the polar bear.

  “By intent scrutiny, a viewer may detect this, feel, as it were, the photonic fremitus of the heartbeat of Winnegan’s world.”

  Ruskinson almost faints. Luscus’ smile and black monocle make him look like a pirate who has just taken a Spanish galleon loaded with gold.

  Grandpa, still at the scope, says, “And there’s Maryam bint Yusuf, the Egyptian backwoodswoman you were telling me about. Your Saturn, aloof, regal, cold, and wearing one of those suspended whirling manycolored hats that’re all the rage. Saturn’s rings? Or a halo?”

  “She’s beautiful, and she’d make a wonderful mother for my children,” Chib says.

  “The shock of Araby. Your Saturn has two moons, mother and aunt. Chaperones! You say she’d make a good mother! How good a wife! Is she intelligent?”

  “She’s as smart as Benedictine.”

  “A dumbshit then. You sure can pick them. How do you know you’re in love with her? You’ve been in love with twenty women in the last six months.”

  “I love her. This is it.”

  “Until the next one. Can you really love anything but your painting? Benedictine’s going to have an abortion, right?”

  “Not if I can talk her out of it,” Chib says. “To tell the truth, I don’t even like her any more. But she’s carrying my child.”

  “Let me look at your pelvis. No, you’re male. For a moment, I wasn’t sure, you’re so crazy to have a baby.”

  “A baby is a miracle to stagger sextillions of infidels.”

  “It beats a mouse. But don’t you know that Uncle Sam has been propagandizing his heart out to cut down on propagation? Where’ve you been all your life?”

  “I got to go, Grandpa.”

  Chib kisses the old man and returns to his room to finish his latest painting. The door still refuses to recognize him, and he calls the gummint repair shop, only to be told that all technicians are at the Folk Festival. He leaves the house in a red rage. The bunting and balloons are waving and bobbing in the artificial wind, increased for this occasion, and an orchestra is playing by the lake.

  Through the scope, Grandpa watches him walk away.

  “Poor devil! I ache for his ache. He wants a baby, and he is ripped up inside because that poor devil Benedictine is aborting their child. Part of his agony, though he doesn’t know it, is identification with the doomed infant. His own mother has had innumerable—well, quite a few—abortions. But for the grace of God, he would have been one of them, another nothingness. He wants this baby to have a chance, too. But there is nothing he can do about it, nothing.

  “And there is another feeling, one which he shares with most of humankind. He knows he’s screwed up his life, or something has twisted it. Every thinking man and woman knows this. Even the smug and dimwitted realize this unconsciously. But a baby, that beautiful being, that unsmirched blank tablet, unformed angel, represents a new hope. Perhaps it won’t screw up. Perhaps it’ll grow up to be a healthy confident reasonable good-humored unselfish loving man or woman. ‘It won’t be like me or my next-door neighbor,’ the proud, but apprehensive, parent swears.

  “Chib thinks this and swears that his baby will be different. But, like everybody else, he’s fooling himself. A child has one father and mother, but it has trillions of aunts and uncles. Not only those that are its contemporaries; the dead, too. Even if Chib fled into the wilderness and raised the infant himself, he’d be giving it his own unconscious assumptions. The baby would grow up with beliefs and attitudes that the father was not even aware of. Moreover, being raised in isolation, the baby would be a very peculiar human being indeed.

  “And if Chib raises the child in this society, it’s inevitable that it will accept at least part of the attitudes of its playmates, teachers, and so on ad nauseam.

  “So, forget about making a new Adam out of your wonderful potential-teeming child, Chib. If it grows up to become at least half-sane, it’s because you gave it love and discipline and it was lucky in its social contacts and it was also blessed at birth with the right combination of genes. That is, your son or daughter is now both a fighter and a lover.”

  ONE MAN’S NIGHTMARE IS ANOTHER MAN’S WET DREAM

  Grandpa says.

  “I was talking to Dante Alighieri just the other day, and he was telling me what an inferno of stupidity, cruelty, perversity, atheism, and outright peril the sixteenth century was. The nineteenth left him gibbering, hopelessly searching for adequate enough invectives.

  “As for this age, it gave him such high-blood pressure, I had to slip him a tranquilizer and ship him out via time machine with an attendant nurse. She looked much like Beatrice and so should have been just the medicine he needed—maybe.”

  Grandpa chuckles, remembering that Chib, as a child, took him seriously, when he described his time-machine visitors, such notables as Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Grass-Eaters; Samson, Bronze Age Riddler and Scourge of the Philistines; Moses, who stole a god from his Kenite father-in-law and who fought against circumcision all his life; Buddha, the Original Beatnik; No-Moss Sisyphus, taking a vacation from his stone-rolling; Androcles and his buddy, the Cowardly Lion of Oz; Baron von Richthofen, the Red Knight of Germany; Beowulf; Al Capone; Hiawatha; Ivan the Terrible; and hundreds of others.

  The time came when Grandpa became alarmed and decided that Chib was confusing fantasy with reality. He hated to tell the little boy that he had been making up all those wonderful stories, mostly to teach him history. It was like telling a kid there wasn’t any Santa Claus.

  And then, while he was reluctantly breaking the news to his grandson he became aware of Chib’s barely suppressed grin and knew that it was his turn to have his leg pulled. Chib had never been fooled or else had caught on without any shock. So, both had a big laugh and Grandpa continued to tell of his visitors.

  “There are no time machines,” Grandpa says. “Like it or not, Miniver Cheevy, you have to live in this your time.

  “The machines w
ork in the utility-factory levels in a silence broken only by the chatter of a few mahouts. The great pipes at the bottom of the seas suck up water and bottom sludge. The stuff is automatically carried through pipes to the ten production levels of LA. There the inorganic chemicals are converted into energy and then into the matter of food, drink, medicines, and artifacts. There is very little agriculture or animal husbandry outside the city walls, but there is super-abundance for all. Artificial but exact duplication of organic stuff, so who knows the difference?

  “There is no more starvation or want anywhere, except among the self-exiles wandering in the woods. And the food and goods are shipped to the pandoras and dispensed to the receivers of the purple wage. The purple wage. A Madison-Avenue euphemism with connotations of royalty and divine right. Earned by just being born.

  “Other ages would regard ours as a delirium, yet ours has benefits others lacked. To combat transiency and rootlessness, the megalopolis is compartmented into small communities. A man can live all his life in one place without having to go elsewhere to get anything he needs. With this has come a provincialism, a small-town patriotism and hostility towards outsiders. Hence, the bloody juvenile gang-fights between towns. The intense and vicious gossip. The insistence on conformity to local mores.

  “At the same time, the small-town citizen has fido, which enables him to see events anywhere in the world. Intermingled with the trash and the propaganda, which the government thinks is good for the people, is any amount of superb programs. A man may get the equivalent of a Ph.D. without stirring out of his house.

  “Another Renaissance has come, a fruition of the arts comparable to that of Pericles’ Athens and the city-states of Michelangelo’s Italy or Shakespeare’s England. Paradox. More illiterates than ever before in the world’s history. But also more literates. Speakers of classical Latin outnumber those of Caesar’s day. The world of aesthetics bears a fabulous fruit. And, of course, fruits.

  “To dilute the provincialism and also to make international war even more unlikely, we have the world policy of homogenization. The voluntary exchange of a part of one nation’s population with another’s. Hostages to peace and brotherly love. Those citizens who can’t get along on just the purple wage or who think they’ll be happier elsewhere are inducted to emigrate with bribes.

  “A Golden World in some respects; a nightmare in others. So what’s new with the world? It was always thus in every age. Ours has had to deal with overpopulation and automation. How else could the problem be solved? It’s Buridan’s ass (actually, the ass was a dog) all over again, as in every time. Buridan’s ass, dying of hunger because it can’t make up its mind which of two equal amounts of food to eat.

  “History: a pons asinorum with men the asses on the bridge of time.

  “No, those two comparisons are not fair or right. It’s Hobson’s horse, the only choice being the beast in the nearest stall. Zeitgeist rides tonight, and the devil take the hindmost!

  “The mid-twentieth-century writers of the Triple Revolution document forecast accurately in some respects. But they de-emphasized what lack of work would do to Mr. Everyman. They believed that all men have equal potentialities in developing artistic tendencies, that all could busy themselves with arts, crafts, and hobbies or education for education’s sake. They wouldn’t face the ‘undemocratic’ reality that only about ten per cent of the population—if that—are inherently capable of producing anything worth while, or even mildly interesting, in the arts. Crafts, hobbies, and a lifelong academic education pale after a while, so back to the booze, fido, and adultery.

  “Lacking self-respect, the fathers become free-floaters, nomads on the steppes of sex. Mother, with a capital M, becomes the dominant figure in the family. She may be playing around, too, but she’s taking care of the kids; she’s around most of the time. Thus, with father a lower-case figure, absent, weak, or indifferent, the children often become homosexual or ambisexual. The wonderland is also a fairyland.

  “Some features of this time could have been predicted. Sexual permissiveness was one, although no one could have seen how far it would go. But then no one could have foreknown of the Panamorite sect, even if America has spawned lunatic-fringe cults as a frog spawns tadpoles. Yesterday’s monomaniac is tomorrow’s messiah, and so Sheltey and his disciples survived through years of persecution and today their precepts are embedded in our culture.”

  Grandpa again fixes the cross-reticules of the scope on Chib.

  “There he goes, my beautiful grandson, bearing gifts to the Greeks. So far, that Hercules has failed to clean up his psychic Augean stable. Yet, he may succeed, that stumblebum Apollo, that Edipus Wrecked. He’s luckier than most of his contemporaries. He’s had a permanent father, even if a secret one, a zany old man hiding from so-called justice. He has gotten love, discipline, and a superb education in this starred chamber. He’s also fortunate in having a profession.

  “But Mama spends far too much and also is addicted to gambling, a vice which deprives her of her full guaranteed income. I’m supposed to be dead, so I don’t get the purple wage. Chib has to make up for all this by selling or trading his paintings. Luscus has helped him by publicizing him, but at any moment Luscus may turn against him. The money from the paintings is still not enough. After all, money is not the basis of our economy; it’s a scarce auxiliary. Chib needs the grant but won’t get it unless he lets Luscus make love to him.

  “It’s not that Chib rejects homosexual relations. Like most of his contemporaries, he’s sexually ambivalent. I think that he and Omar Runic still blow each other occasionally. And why not? They love each other. But Chib rejects Luscus as a matter of principle. He won’t be a whore to advance his career. Moreover, Chib makes a distinction which is deeply embedded in this society. He thinks that uncompulsive homosexuality is natural (whatever that means?) but that compulsive homosexuality is, to use an old term, queer. Valid or not, the distinction is made.

  “So, Chib may go to Egypt. But what happens to me then?

  “Never mind me or your mother, Chib. No matter what. Don’t give in to Luscus. Remember the dying words of Singleton, Bureau of Relocation and Rehabilitation Director, who shot himself because he couldn’t adjust to the new times.

  “‘What if a man gain the world and lose his ass?’”

  At this moment, Grandpa sees his grandson, who has been walking along with somewhat drooping shoulders, suddenly straighten them. And he sees Chib break into a dance, a little improvised shuffle followed by a series of whirls. It is evident that Chib is whooping. The pedestrians around him are grinning.

  Grandpa groans and then laughs. “Oh, God, the goatish energy of youth, the unpredictable shift of spectrum from black sorrow to bright orange joy! Dance, Chib, dance your crazy head off! Be happy, if only for a moment! You’re young yet, you’ve got the bubbling of unconquerable hope deep in your springs! Dance, Chib, dance!”

  He laughs and wipes a tear away.

  SEXUAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

  is so fascinating a book that Doctor Jespersen Joyce Bathymens, psycholinguist for the federal Bureau of Group Reconfiguration and Intercommunicability, hates to stop reading. But duty beckons.

  “A radish is not necessarily reddish,” he says into the recorder. “The Young Radishes so named their group because a radish is a radicle, hence, radical. Also, there’s a play on roots and on red-ass, a slang term for anger, and possibly on ruttish and rattish. And undoubtedly on rude-ickle, Beverly Hills dialectical term for a repulsive, unruly, and socially ungraceful person.

  “Yet the Young Radishes are not what I would call Left Wing; they represent the current resentment against Life-In-General and advocate no radical policy of reconstruction. They howl against Things As They Are, like monkeys in a tree, but never give constructive criticism. They want to destroy without any thought of what to do after the destruction.

  “In short, they represent the average citizen’s grousing and bitching, being different
in that they are more articulate. There are thousands of groups like them in LA and possibly millions all over the world. They had a normal life as children. In fact, they were born and raised in the same clutch, which is one reason why they were chosen for this study. What phenomenon produced ten such creative persons, all mothered in the seven houses of Area 69-14, all about the same time, all practically raised together, since they were put together in the playpen on top of the pedestal while one mother took her turn baby-sitting and the others did whatever they had to do, which … where was I?

  “Oh, yes, they had a normal life, went to the same school, palled around, enjoyed the usual sexual play among themselves, joined the juvenile gangs and engaged in some rather bloody warfare with the Westwood and other gangs. All were distinguished, however, by an intense intellectual curiosity and all became active in the creative arts.

  “It has been suggested—and might be true—that the mysterious stranger, Raleigh Renaissance, was the father of all ten. This is possible but can’t be proved. Raleigh Renaissance was living in the house of Mrs. Winnegan at the time, but he seems to have been unusually active in the clutch, and, indeed, all over Beverly Hills. Where this man came from, who he was, and where he went are still unknown despite intensive search by various agencies. He had no ID or other cards of any kind yet he went unchallenged for a long time. He seems to have had something on the Chief of Police of Beverly Hills and possibly on some of the federal agents stationed in Beverly Hills.

  “He lived for two years with Mrs. Winnegan, then dropped out of sight. It is rumored that he left LA to join a tribe of white neo-Amerinds, sometimes called the Seminal Indians.

  “Anyway, back to the Young (pun on Jung?) Radishes. They are revolting against the Father Image of Uncle Sam, whom they both love and hate. Uncle is, of course, linked by their subconsciouses with unco, a Scottish word meaning strange, uncanny, weird, this indicating that their own fathers were strangers to them. All come from homes where the father was missing or weak, a phenomenon regrettably common in our culture.