The gun began to waver in his hand. “Goddamn you!” he said. “Start walking. Get away.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” I said. “What your parents will say when I tell them—”
I never saw him aim and fire this time. But I do remember the impact of the stones as, most heavily, I went down.
* * *
They must have been furious this time. It was hours later before I found myself restored, and then they had left both bruises I had taken on the knees when I went down so rapidly. The examiner stared at me with loathing. “You’ll never learn,” he said. “You just never learn!”
“I’m trying,” I said. “He got me angry. The business of turning my back to him and walking, it was humiliating—”
“Don’t tell me about humiliation!” the examiner yelled. He stood, only five and a half feet but intimidating on the podium, his mustaches flaring, his face diffused. “You people infuriate me. You don’t understand, you’ll never learn. But I’m going to make you learn because that’s our responsibility here.”
“All right,” I said, “I’ll say nothing. Whatever he says, I’ll accept. Whatever he orders, I’ll do.” I felt a sudden twist of pain coming from my legs. “I’m sick of being killed and killed, pistol-whipped and beaten up, you know.”
“Not sick enough,” the examiner said firmly. “We’re running out of chances, you know. One more failure and you’re going to fail altogether, we’ll have to send you back.”
“No,” I said. “No, I don’t want that.”
“Think of what your parents will say.”
“All right,” I said. I meant it, I could feel my own features flushing. “I’ll shut up. I won’t say anything.”
“It’s in your hands,” the examiner said. He was breathing hard, almost as hard as Cecil when he fired the gun. “Ultimately you have to accept the responsibility, don’t you see that?”
* * *
Stumbling down the street, I thought I did. I thought that I saw his point. His point was well taken, urban existence is impossible, one must learn at all costs how to survive. The sound of the observing helicopter, tracking me, made me ill; the fumes started me gagging. I was sick of it. The examiner was right: there was a time for student folly, but there was also a time to grow up. I had to grow up. He came from the hedges, extending the gun. “Give me all the money,” he said. He was nervous and uncertain, but the gun was convincing. Enormously convincing. I knew what it could do now. I handed him the wallet, the money protruding from it. He snatched it from me, backed away, clawed through it in both hands. “All right,” he said, “it’s all there. Now lie down and close your eyes and count to 250. Slow. Don’t move.”
I pointed to the sidewalk. “Right here?”
“No dummy. In the goddamned mud. Over there.”
I looked to the right, at the slimy substance, still drenched from the recent rain. “There?” I said. “It’s dirty—”
He waved the gun at me, his control breaking. “Down!” he said. “Down, down, down in the mud!”
The helicopter’s sound seemed to overwhelm us as it approached. We were completely in its shadow. Of course he never acknowledged its presence; he is programmed not to. “Down!” he screamed.
I looked at the filth, at the gun, toward the invisible, implacable observing eyes in the copter. “Oh, the hell with it,” I said. “Screw you, Cecil,” I said. “I won’t do it! I won’t cooperate.” I spat in his face. Even at distance, it landed solidly. He stared at me with fury, wiped at it, then raised the gun. You fool, I thought to myself. “Your parents will cry at your execution, Cecil!” I hurled at him.
He fired the gun. Flame from the muzzle, et cetera. Quite accustomed to the consequences by this time, I died quite neatly.
I wondered if they’d even bother to revive me this time. It seemed unlikely; I was hardly worth it to them. I’d never be able to live in their cities.
I just couldn’t be a victim.
What We Do on Io
SO I HOBBLE DISCOURAGEDLY TO THE AGENCY and ask that the mode be removed. “Invisibility is not what I thought it would be,” I say. “In fact it is a terrible disappointment. I was misled.” This is, not strictly speaking, true, but characteristically we kinglies affix blame outside; this is one of the necessary effects of office. “Skulking, voyeurism, immoderate observation but no participation: this is not for me. I am a social person, an administrator; the limits of invisibility offend. Something else. I want something else!”
They sigh and shake their heads. Confer. I have not made it easy for them at the agency, none of us do; but considering the exorbitant fees we pay, there is no reason we should. “Teleportation, telekinesis, telepathy,” they say, “what do you want?”
“Pyrokinesis?”
“That is a bad idea,” they point out and remind me of the uncontrollable flames on Callisto not three cycles ago; an entire Jovian detachment was called in to quell, and the kingly himself died. “Pyrokinesis is temporarily withdrawn,” they say. “We are working on some kind of automatic limitation. You people do tend to become overexcited.”
I shrug and nod; they are right, we kinglies do. It is our megalomania, of course. Only kinglies can afford the agency services, and we can lose control: inordinate wealth, boredom, and resentment at the isolation imposed by these can make one extremely restless. “I will try teleportation again,” I say. “It didn’t work out too well before, but several cycles have passed; perhaps there are satisfactions I was too immature to recognize the first time. I am always willing to replicate. What alternative do we kinglies have?”
“Indeed,” they say, “indeed,” and pass through my folder, discreetly prepare a voucher which I sign. In the treatment center, the invisibility modes are deftly removed under local anesthetic, the teleportative modes implanted. “Give it a little time,” the technicians warn. “Do not try too much at once.” Standard agency talk. At every level they are self-protective, as would stand to reason; they are on the bare margins of legality. But one of the prerogatives of the kinglies is to transcend caution. The worst that can happen, after all, is permanent, irreversible brain damage. That would give me a new kind of pain. I am terribly jaded, as you have already observed.
The instant I leave the center, accordingly, I inhale deeply, transport myself to Titan. Titan is dull, the same old place; parties and corruption have not changed since I was last there. Anomie and perversity are rife. The sea beasts continue to die under the terraforming; they are washed up on all the shores of Titan, decomposing. Enough of this. On Ganymede there are hints of joviality under the cruel administration of the robot kinglies, but decadence and destruction are still the mode; I essay an affair but we come to nothing under the giant dome. Nada, nada, there is no control. Jupiter roams hugely above us as once more I confess my inner freezing, my emotional death. Pardonne? she says. I laugh.
Venus is somewhat livelier for just a while, and under the heavy influence of spican I think that I have perceived some manner by which I can control my uncontrollable life, but this passes through the blood almost as rapidly as the terrible drug itself, and I am on to further incitements. New York and Salama City are inert, as usual, and the castles of my parents are filled with their friends who, quite unlike me, have already given up. Accordingly, I return to the agency. “Telekinesis,” I say loudly, pounding on the glistening surfaces of a desk to accentuate the point, “I want telekinesis at once!”
They shrug, mumble, lead me self-indulgently to chambers, perform the usual ablutions and enchantments, send me to an anteroom where I practice with pots and knives, circle them for their observation. Released to try more complex game, I whimsically bring the mad King of Io to my chambers.
The mad King, dressed only in his ceremonials, shakes and murmurs imprecations, terrible threats of Ionian vengeance until I hurl him at a wall, then dispatch him stunned to the palace. I hate the mad King. Doesn’t everyone? He is so terribly jaded; he obtains pleasure from nothing b
ut aspects of self-hatred. When I come to the agency to report proudly on what I have done, they look at me with horror. “You cannot do this,” they say. “There are limitations imposed; now consider what can happen. We’ll hear from Io on this.”
I point out that Io is a minor colony filled with lunatics. The agency and its clientele can do anything they wish, but they do not, somehow, accept my argument; instead they hustle me into chambers to remove the telekinetic power, and even though I bring dangerous, gleaming weapons from Phobos to fight them off, they overcome me, stun me with spican and remove the mode. When I awaken it is in a somewhat chastened state.
“All right,” I say then in a humbler fashion, “telepathy, that’s something you can control, right? Give me that; I’m bored with stones and travel, anyhow.”
“Telepathy it will be,” they say but cautiously keep me under restraints while the new mode is implanted: when I emerge from the wraps, their thoughts, of course, are as open to me as wounds, and I know their fear and contempt. They perceive me as uncontrollable: some monstrously indulgent force, when the fact is—how can I make them see this?—that I am undone by aspects of omnipotence and look only for a means to assess my humanity. With fear and contempt they release me and I mingle with the crowds and purpose of Philadelphia. In the Philadelphia streets the stupor and resentment appalls: waves of impotence and clangorous hatred overcome; inside the palaces I find them somewhat calmer but no less pained.
Understanding he no understanding the woman with whom I lie thinks, he no understanding these kinglies no no as I take her; in the small abyss of our coupling the certainty of her little thoughts push open no mystery, and I feel the despair of the telepath: all that is given back to us are large or smaller versions of ourselves. I could be the mad King of Io. Are we any different?
The mad King of Io would, like me, use telepathy and spican to dream away the time. I return, preoccupied, to the agency. They seem bewildered. “Again?” they say. Again, they think.
“Again,” I say, “I want something entirely different.”
“Pyrokinesis is unavailable. We have explained that.”
“Something different,” I say, “not any of your feeble enchantments.” He is crazy, all those kinglies are, they think. I claw at the modes. “Get these out,” I say. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“What can’t you take?” they say; he’s crazy, they think as they lead me to chambers and remove the modes. “We will give you something special,” they finally say, “something unlike anything you have had before.”
“Please,” I say, “do that; nothing works for me: teleportation, telepathy, telekinesis, it’s all the same.”
“This is different,” they assure, “all different,” and overload me with spican, and when I awaken I am in a truly glacial place, the plume of my breath surrounding and unable to move, although I struggle. Oh my, I struggle! The autonomic nervous system has, however, broken; it must be the drug . . . and then the mad King of Io himself seems to be standing over me. “You again,” he says, “come here,” and reaches towards me.
Of what happens then I have little recollection, but one thing is sure: when I emerge from that expected collision, I am convinced that I will find invisibility just fine. “Make me invisible,” I say to the technicians, “make them unable to see me!” I scream and they hasten to comply. Oh, invisibility for we kinglies (here is the moral and not a moment too soon) is what we must have to remain alive in this world that gives us everything, allows us nothing, nothing, nothing, and forces that mad King of self to such awful and necessitous contest.
O Thou Last and Greatest!
IN THE CORNER A STRANGE AND PREOCCUPIED MAN with acromegaly, over by the swinging doors a nervous and pontificating Thomas Wolfe; within easy reach of the crucifix that hangs (for easy observance) over the bar is Mary Flannery O’Connor herself—but my attention for the moment does not devolve upon these oft-regarded and revered figures, being focused instead somewhat closer in. Upon my own astonished reflection, that is to say, which is cast back through all the shadows of the strange and interior light. You’re doing all right, I encourage myself, giving a speculative wink, doing fine, holding your own; no one will ever know the truth.
Which is flummery, of course, just a means of cajoling myself, encouraging myself, trying to force courage; I am still the only science fiction writer at this steaming and clamorously eternal reception, and I fear that at any moment large hands will grasp my elbow, mild and efficient custody will be taken of lapels, and I will be taken in disgrace from this grand establishment and without possibility of return. I shudder at the thought of this humiliation, thinking how much at this moment I must look like an imposter at this reception . . . but the fear may very well be self-imposed. Certainly very little attention is being paid to me in these chaotic premises, and my secret may well be safe. Besides, I have published mysteries, a mainstream story or three, some mainstream novels, once had a story reprinted in Short Story International and the Italian Playboy, have been the modest, tentative beneficiary of some modern academic perspective of science fiction. Perhaps it will be all right. If matters threaten, I could define myself as a conceptualist, a fabulist—a magical realist, if you will.
“Oh wandering,” Thomas Wolfe says, catching my eye and raising a twinkling glass, “oh wandering and the earth again, the flowers, the scents, the tropes, the buzz of dying insects in the humid air, the sounds and smells of America itself, the vastness of this continent spread out under us like a decayed and bracing dream, not under the tent of the heavens this America, but instead tented cities, exiled to the bare and bone spaces of the deserts of the soul—” And so on and so forth; it would be possible to quote Tom at distinguished and sprawling length; well launched as he seems now, he is a fit candidate for stenography—but my attention has already shifted, has moved down the line of the bar, past my companions and compatriots to that small, half-concealed door through which in due course the Great Redeemer will emerge with judgments and blessings, confidences and assessments for all of us: it is important for me, I think, to maintain a position of poised and committed alertness at all times, because I, more than anyone else in this place at the present time, am aware of the consequences of judgment, and it would behoove me to exist in a state of preparation. Or so, in any event, my stream of consciousness threads, like a Wolfe monologue, as I grip the panels of the bar, looking at the empty glass before me, and try to assess my position in relation to this difficult situation.
“Is this seat taken, son?” my cadaverous fellow of acromegalic tint says to me, nodding at the suddenly vacant stool on my left. Here a space; on the wall now, a prating Wolfe slowly, slowly subsiding under the insistent and rigorous gaze of Mary Flannery O’Connor; over in the corner, a belligerent Hemingway is being tamed again. Spaces open and spaces close; perspective changes most rapidly and dangerously in these last of days—let your attention shift for a moment, and you are apt to be on the street, as James T. Farrell has found to his dismay more than a few times. My purchase on this situation is not assured. “Sure looks unoccupied, fella,” the acromegalic gent says, and sidles next to me. A glass of wine appears before him in peremptory fashion; it is one of the characteristics of this place to skimp on service. Prestidigitation and the infusion of magic certainly solves the labor problem, and parakinetics will take the place of bouncers. “You look familiar,” my new companion says. “But then, everyone in this place looks familiar, sort of, even the strangers. Name is Howard, by the way. Used to live in Providence before the change.”
Providence, I think, and then the identity of the acromegalic wine drinker becomes clear to me. “Nice town, that; I think I stopped by there once.” This is a lie, but lies are our most serviceable version of truth in these places. “Admire your work,” I say untruthfully. “Read most of it,” I say, expanding the lie. There is no harm in this; one must live ungratefully, sponsor untruth in order to survive. A chastened Tom Wolfe is saying something like t
his in a desperate whisper to Mary Flannery, the intense details of which I can pick up, along with Hemingway’s bellowing and the rattling of the greater constituency in the kitchen—because all of our senses are preternaturally alert here, nothing (as in life) escapes us, everything may be inferred. “Colour Out of Space,” I say wisely. “Good one. Real good one. Swear by it, reread it at least three times a year.” A jigger of gin, as if in compensation for this intelligence, materializes before me, and I lift it, drink it at one swoop, allow the gasp to overtake me. When I have recovered—that is to say, when the blade of Mary Flannery’s contempt has once again cut through Tom’s rhetoric and my own consciousness—my companion is asking me my name. “I know I’ve read you,” he says, “read you a lot. I read everyone, here and now. Before and after. But the name, the name doesn’t quite come through; if you could just give me a clue—”
I shrug. We all lie to one another—I to him, he to me, all of us to everyone—it is our only means of accommodation. Raised in lies, exhausted by their necessity, we could really know nothing else—or so our keepers point out to us during our occasional reorientation sessions. “Name’s so-and-so,” I say, and give it to him; for one flat instant, there is a desperate bewilderment, even panic, in his eyes, but then the mask of his own self-involvement clanks shut, and he says, “Of course, of course. And so many times. This and that and all the times of our perpetuation, knowing then that the unspeakable that lingers, that quakes and wails at the coffin of our lives can be revealed in an instant, an instant of light behind which the ravening jaws of that beast, circumstance—”
And so on and so forth. It must be pointed out that we all do this, every one of us; even Emily Dickinson under the stroke of midnight or judgment will occasionally bellow effusive quatrains. It is the sound not of our companions but of our own voices that we seek, the thread of our voices carrying us ever back farther and farther to the origin of our own circumstance. . . . If we did not have our own voices (and really, what else was there for us, ever?), we would be locked into individual cubicles, and all of this, the colors out of space, the noise and light surrounding us—would be gone. It is not community but id that we bring to this place—or so I have heard Emily and Tom theorize at those exhausted points of our timelessness where the service has, temporarily, given out and sleep has not yet taken hold.
Shiva and Other Stories Page 11