Quichotte

by Salman Rushdie

  “After the debate, we had lunch and in one of his no-small-talk outpourings of words he made a sort of declaration of love. A crucial aspect of NEXT technology, he said, was accepting that the body and whatever you wanted to call it, the self, the spirit, das Ich, the ghost in the machine, were yoked together but not the same, inseparable but not identical, and so if a way had to be found of transporting the body across a very complex existential divide, it could not be automatically assumed that the Thing within the body (the Hawking inside the movie star, I thought) would be transported too. NEXT technology, in other words, had to be cognizant of the needs of the soul.

  “Then he said, ‘It is the intangible thing that attracts me, not the outward thing. The thing that sees, not the eye that does the seeing. The unseen pilot in the driving seat, not the housing assembly or the engine. It is the intangible thing that draws me so close to you.’

  “I said, ‘So what you’re saying is that my body repels you but you like my soul? Because I’m pretty sure I don’t believe in the soul.’ And he replied, ‘You are receiving an insult when only a compliment was sent. And as regards the Thing, you will come to see that I am right, and it certainly exists.’ Then he took my hand, but not in the way in which, on that first night, he had grabbed my wrist. Now, in his emotionally strangled way, he was telling me what I had thought I’d never hear again.”

  Quichotte appeared to lose interest in the Trampoline’s story, moved away from them toward the large TV set in the wall at the far end of the living room, and picked up the remote. “Salma will be on soon,” he said, vaguely, as if talking to himself.

  The Trampoline moved swiftly toward him and took the zapper out of his hands. “We’re just coming to the good part,” she said. “The part you’re in.”

  Sancho heard the note of fury under her calm voice. There was a volcano down there, he thought. Maybe it would explode before the night was done.

  “After that we were together, Evel and I,” the Trampoline went on, still addressing her remarks to Sancho. “He was arrogant and full of himself and he worked around the clock, sometimes for many days running, and when I saw him all he could do was sleep, but there he was, and I liked it, or I liked it more than I didn’t like it, and if I’m going to be completely honest, I was, just a little bit, grateful.”

  “Then he did something,” Sancho guessed, jerking his head in his father’s direction.

  “They finally met,” the Trampoline said. “My brother the intelligence guy and my lover the genius. I even cooked dinner.”

  “He’s on Salma,” Quichotte said suddenly.

  “Who is?” the Trampoline wanted to know.

  “Your guy,” Quichotte replied. “Mr. Evel Cent. In fifteen minutes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I pay attention to programming,” said Quichotte. “Especially for the show of the wonderful woman I love.”

  “Then fifteen minutes will have to do,” the Trampoline said.

  * * *

  —

  “DINNER WAS FILET MIGNON and roasted brussels sprouts and he, my half brother of the wrong half, drank too much red wine too fast and really, really wanted to know all about what my genius boyfriend was up to. He was out of his depth but that didn’t stop him; he became belligerent and even condescending.

  “ ‘You think there are other dimensions and we can slip into them like going through a crack in an open door? Is that a real thing?’

  “So of course my genius boyfriend became pompous.

  “ ‘The science can’t be argued with, we already have third-generation detector probes that have begun to find echoes of the neighbor Earths, the way our radio sensors are beginning to hear the echoes of the Big Bang. We have fourth-generation probes in development that will sharpen our data and provide a clearer path through the Instability and into the folds of the Multiplicity.’ Blah blah blah.

  “Naturally this was too technical for your father, so he changed tack.

  “ ‘And you believe in the end of the world?’ Said with an open, undisguised scorn. ‘Even though crackpots have been giving us the end-of-the-world news at regular intervals since forever, and it hasn’t ended yet, has it?’

  “If there’s one thing that’s a red rag to a physicist billionaire it’s a journalist doubting the science, so…

  “ ‘Crackpot is a harsh word, sir, particularly coming from a man who wouldn’t recognize a tear in the deteriorating fabric of space-time if it was pointed out to him with a stick.’

  “That was a declaration of war. I needed to calm things down. ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘why not tell Evel what you’re working on right now?’

  “ ‘Hackers,’ he said. ‘Computer hackers. They’re going to be a big problem. They already are.’

  “This was when the trouble really began. You could argue that Evel started it by boasting.

  “ ‘We have the most advanced encryption systems in the world,’ he said. ‘Our defenses are so high that these pygmies you’re talking about would burst into tears at the sight.’

  “Now, any brother of mine, even a half brother who got the wrong half of brother-ness, should at this point have thought, this is my half sister’s boyfriend, back off, don’t goad him, don’t get into a who-has-the-bigger-dick contest, but that’s exactly what happened.

  “ ‘I know people who could hack into your systems in fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, and then all those secrets of yours, your what-do-you-call-’em NEXT systems that will save the world by taking us to live in Narnia or Middle-earth or some other fairy tale, will be sold on every street corner for anyone crazy enough to compete with you to buy.’

  “He shouldn’t have said ‘crazy.’ He shouldn’t have said ‘fairy tale.’ He shouldn’t have made it sound like a threat. He shouldn’t have said one damn thing. He should have kept his big mouth shut and let me have my relationship with my genius. There were one hundred things he shouldn’t have done but he did them all. And the genius took the bait.

  “ ‘Threatening me is never a good idea,’ Evel said. Voice like ice. ‘It doesn’t work out well for the people who do it. Let me just say that.’

  “And to me he said. ‘This is your brother. This is how he is with me. It’s a problem.’

  “ ‘Half brother,’ I said, laughing it off, but he was on his feet and heading for the door. “ ‘Don’t be childish,’ I said. ‘Sit down and let’s get past this.’

  Maybe I shouldn’t have said ‘childish.’ Definitely I shouldn’t have. But he was walking out the door and I panicked. It wasn’t my best moment. I admit that. And Mr. Cent, he never called again.

  “ ‘Let him go,’ he said, your dad. ‘He’s a bully and a narcissist and he lives in crazytown. You don’t want to spend your life with that. You don’t want to spend another five minutes with that.’

  “He thought he was doing me a favor. He thought he was the good guy. But I was the one left with the broken heart. Evel disappeared from my life, and that, my dear boy, was that for me as far as romance was concerned. And now we are back to where I started: betrayal blindness. Your father betrayed me and was blind to what he did. Until I told him. And I did tell him, in pretty colorful language. That was where we left it.”

  “It is hard for me,” Quichotte quietly said, “to ask forgiveness for actions I don’t fully recall.”

  “And yet, curiously, forgiveness is what you’re here to ask for,” said the Trampoline.

  “So that was the second unforgivable thing?” Sancho asked. The Trampoline did not reply, but drank her wine, quickly, and refilled her glass. Sancho tried a different tack. “What was the Interior Event?” he asked. “I need to know about that.”

  “It’s showtime,” said Quichotte. “We need to turn on the TV.”

  * * *

  —

  AFTERWARDS, WHEN THE GREAT scandal b
roke, there were people who said that the way Miss Salma R looked during the Evel Cent interview was the first indication that something was seriously wrong with her. She had the air of a woman who has spent half the night throwing buckets on a fire at her home and has had to leave to go to work before the flames were fully doused: tired, distracted, and not her usual lovable self. The techno-billionaire, however, was full of vim, like a child riding a bouncy ball. There were things he was bursting to say.

  After introducing her guest, Salma was uncharacteristically sharp. “This business about the end of the world, Dr. Evel,” she said, and he interrupted.

  “I’d appreciate it if you dropped the ‘Dr. Evel’ shtick,” he said. “It kind of sends out the wrong message?”

  “Dr. Cent,” she corrected herself smoothly, without an apology. “Don’t you think it would be better, and a relief to your shareholders, I’m sure, if you stopped pushing this pretty unbelievable idea?”

  “I understand that many people are in a state of denial,” Evel began.

  “Most people,” Salma interrupted him. “Like, ninety-nine percent of people.”

  “When ninety-nine percent of people thought the world was flat,” Evel said, “it didn’t make the world flat. The world didn’t need people to believe it was round to be round. Right now, ninety-nine percent of people are happily having a picnic on a railway track. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t a train coming down the line, traveling pretty fast. The railway train doesn’t need people to believe it’s coming, because it’s coming.”

  “Evel, is this just something you’re putting out there, like a theory, something for discussion, or is there actually any proof?”

  “I’m here today,” Evel Cent said, “to make two announcements. The first is that CentCorp will be releasing a report tomorrow which will contain all the proof you, or anyone, could possibly need. This is happening. The universe is fraying at the edges. It’s coming apart. We need to recognize that and take action.”

  “But even if you’re right, this is something that’s going to happen, what, thousands, millions of years from now? So there are more important things to worry about at present, aren’t there? Better uses for our resources?”

  “I’m not so sure it is so far in the future,” Evel said. “Some of my models show disturbing scenarios that predict the possibility of a highly accelerated progression.”

  “How accelerated are you talking about, Evel? Within our lifetimes?”

  “I can’t answer that. It’s one of the possibilities. We don’t know which model has the highest probable degree of accuracy.”

  “So you’re here on national television, telling the prime-time audience that the world may end in their lifetime. Evel, don’t you feel that for a man with your visibility and prominence to put out such notions is, frankly, alarmist? You’re scaring people, in all likelihood for nothing. Isn’t that pretty irresponsible?”

  “In the first place,” Evel replied, “the truth is the truth, and must be heard, however problematic it seems. I’m confident that when our science is judged everyone will accept our conclusions. And in the second place, as I said at the beginning, I have a second announcement to make. I said some time ago that I would come forward at the proper time. That time has come.”

  “I’m afraid to ask,” Salma said.

  Evel Cent actually leapt to his feet. “This is the good news, Salma. This is the astonishing news. I’m here to tell you that the first neighbor Earth has been positively identified and the NEXT systems are up and running. Listen up, world: the path has been opened!”

  “And we’ll be right back with much more from Evel Cent,” a stunned Miss Salma R told her viewers, “after these messages.”

  * * *

  —

  “THE PATH HAS BEEN OPENED,” Quichotte repeated in beatific wonderment during the commercial break. “He said it, right there on TV, for everyone to hear.”

  “I get it that you believe everything you hear on TV,” Sancho told him, “but really, this guy is off the wall. And I don’t think he’s talking about the same path as you.”

  “She’s right there next to him,” Quichotte replied, “and you heard what he said. The Path has been opened. Those are words of great power. Once such words have been spoken, events have no choice but to fall in line.”

  “I forgot for a moment,” Sancho said, “that you’re as crazy as that guy on the show.”

  When the commercial break ended, Salma pressed Evel Cent to back up his extraordinary claims. “You understand, don’t you, that to most people watching, this business about portals will sound like a Star Trek script? Beam me up, Scotty, you know? How do you know these gadgets work, and are safe, and how do you know this other Earth exists? Are you going to let cameras in to film them? I can’t believe I’m taking this seriously, that’s the truth. Are you sure this isn’t some sort of a prank? Because a CEO who is also the chairman of a multibillion-dollar tech corporation probably shouldn’t be doing things like this. It scares the shareholders.”

  “She is not herself,” Quichotte said gravely, watching Miss Salma through narrowed eyes. “She looks shaken. You can see the panic in her eyes. The idea of a crumbling cosmos has disturbed her. This is because the end of everything is impossible to face in the absence of love. In the presence of love it becomes a form of exaltation. It becomes rapturous.”

  “Shh,” Sancho said. “I want to hear about the dog.”

  “…a chocolate Labrador called Schrödinger,” Evel Cent was saying on the show. “Named after the famous physicist Erwin Schrödinger and his quantum paradox about the cat.”

  “What happened to the cat?” Salma asked, out of her depth on this.

  “The paradox is that the cat can be simultaneously alive and dead.”

  “Poor cat,” Salma said.

  “However, being simultaneously dead and alive won’t work for people going through the portal, who will expect to be non-paradoxically alive and that’s all,” said Evel Cent. “So we sent Schrödinger through and brought him back to make sure he was less paradoxical than the cat. We used a dog, because dogs are more reliable. Cats don’t always do as you ask. Also, we put him on a long leash, so that if there was some emergency and we needed to get him out of there we could yank him back. Then we sent him through the NEXT portal, making him the first entity in the known history of the cosmos to travel through inter-dimensional space. He went through, he came back. A successful experiment. One hundred percent. We have a string of such experiments planned. And we have a name for this first portal. We call it the Mayflower.”

  “How is Schrödinger now?”

  “He’s fine. Healthy, normal, alive, eating, in terrific shape. He’s a great dog.”

  “And you recorded this, you filmed it, and you’ll make the film available to us, so that we can all see for ourselves?”

  “In due course,” Evel Cent said. “We are in touch with the White House. This is a breakthrough discovery of national importance. More than that: of global importance. We have to be very careful. There are countries already thinking they could use NEXT to exile people they don’t like. The neighbor Earth is not a prison colony. It’s not Australia. Also there are strong indications that the Russians are trying to hack into CentCorp’s systems. Imagine what a neighbor Earth would think of us if their first impressions of us were provided by Russians? If that sounds bad I’m sorry. I’m a patriot. I want to make sure America is in the leadership role of this movement into tomorrow, which alters the future of the whole human race. Here in America we have one clear edge. We have all these South Asian tech geniuses in the talent pool and I’m putting plenty of those heads together to keep us in the driving seat, to keep both our creativity and our defenses high. We’ll be fine. Russian brains don’t work like brown brains. Does that sound wrong too? I’m sorry. I guess I can be too passionate.”

 
“Come back soon,” Salma said, wrapping things up, “and next time, bring along Schrödinger the dog. That dog has things to tell us, I’m sure of that.”

  “She doesn’t look good,” Quichotte opined. “But the Path will become clear very soon, and then we will be together.”

  “He’s just like this,” Sancho said to the Trampoline. “He talks this way.”

  “It’s time to talk about the Interior Event,” the Trampoline replied.

  * * *

  —

  KIPS BAY WAS NO longer a bay, land reclamation had taken care of that, and nobody there any longer remembered old Jacobus Hendrickson Kip, whose farmhouse once stood at what was now the intersection of Thirty-Fifth and Second. If you had talked to the moviegoers frequenting the multiplex a few blocks south, you would have found their heads full of fictional battles between human beings and their guardian superheroes on the one hand and various space monsters and supervillains, Balrogs and orcs, on the other, but very few of them could have told you anything about the real-life Landing at Kip’s Bay in 1776, one of the first skirmishes of the War of Independence, when the American militia fled from the British and Washington in disgust cried, “Are these the men with whom I am to defend America?” The story of how Mary Lindley Murray, at the Grange on the Inclenberg property that is now Murray Hill, delayed the advancing British by inviting their general, Howe, to stop for cake and wine, allowing Putnam’s ragged rebel forces to make their escape…that will have to wait for another day. We walk unknowing amid the shadows of our past and, forgetting our history, are ignorant of ourselves.

  As also now Quichotte. Quester for love, supplicant for forgiveness, seated in the nightgloom of his half sister’s home, while his ghosts, exhumed by her sorcery, walked all about him, including the phantom of himself as he once was. Chinese food was delivered and set upon a table, but Quichotte could not eat, feeling himself lost in darkness, encircled by the sadness of days gone by. Why had he been as he was, consumed by envy, ungenerous, competitive, harsh? He could not say. He had no access to that self. The reason for that was what happened that night in the Kips Bay of the past.