“Decrepit at forty-five?!”
“I really mean set in your ways. Unable to absorb new concepts. New ideas. Unable to venture into the unknown. Older men seldom do it.”
“But not never.”
“I’m sure you will remain young forever, my love.”
“Very funny. I feel old already.”
“Ha, ha.”
“I love you, too, Sandra. I love you very much.” He just had to say it.
“I know.”
Alec wondered how he could say such a thing to a girl. To a Princess. But she was more than that. She was neither young nor old. She had enormous knowledge, but she was not really a teacher. He could joke with her as with an equal, but she demonstrated concern for him akin to his own mother. She was neither a giggling teenager nor a wise old woman. She was none of these things, none of these people, yet, in a way, she was all of them at the same time.
They both gazed through the arched window.
The sun continued to stay still.
25
The Whirlwind
There is no other way to describe the first term in school. The Latin teacher, Mr. Thomas, had made it quite clear that anyone failing this year could say good-bye to the good life. They had to do well on the exams to enter the halls of higher learning. And the only way to finish well was to do well throughout the year. And that meant now.
Alec wasn’t too concerned. A lot had changed since he was interested in geography to the exclusion of practically all other subjects. He was now fascinated by whatever he learned. And every year there was more to learn. It was as if the Universe were enlarging in parallel with his own body. And his body was definitely enlarging. The most recent mark on the doorframe was a good ten inches higher than the one at the beginning of the last school year.
By the end of the first term, Alec was well-positioned to be at the top of his class. And amazingly, in spite of his sudden academic achievement, the other pupils had not begun calling him ‘square-head’ or ‘egg-head’ or whatever else they could think of. It could have had something to do with his successes in tennis, though to most of them tennis didn’t rate as high as baseball or football. The main reason, he thought, was Suzy. She was now officially his girlfriend, and she turned boys’ heads whenever she came to see him.
And she came at every opportunity she had, parading on Alec’s arm, holding on to him like a prized possession. The school play, the indoor tennis matches, the swimming championship, and even the concert that turned out to be a complete flop. The first violin broke a string, the pianist couldn’t raise her stool high enough, and the drum player put his stick right through the tightly stretched skin. To be fair to the drummer, his instrument had been bought by the school some years ago, and the skin was probably a few centuries old.
***
The vernissage was tomorrow at 5 p.m. Not black tie, but on Sherbrook people seldom dressed as paupers. Alicia and both Alecs, more accurately Alex and Alec, were there at four, just in case some final adjustments were needed.
All seven of the artists were in attendance. So was the owner, who bowed and wiggled and kissed ladies’ hands or whatever had been offered him. Monsieur Cellini was something between a libertine and a weasel. Middle height, made up by considerable shoe lifts. Tight fitting trousers, exaggerated shoulder padding, and a permanent smile that belied badly concealed concern for success.
The smile was the worst. It was cloy beyond need.
But, it seems he did his job with reasonable efficiency. Perhaps in a fluid fashion would be a better word. The only thing that Alicia found a little offensive was not the Eau de Cologne he was wearing, only the sheer potency of it. He must have bathed in it, in his underwear, and then forgot to dry himself. No matter, she usually managed to position herself with at least one other person between the Paragon of Perfume and herself.
Alex Senior was impressed. No, not with the host, the ladies were the true hostesses, but with the arrangement of artworks. Whatever Monsieur Cellini lacked in personal flavor, he certainly displayed nothing but good taste in the way the exhibition was arranged. Excellent lighting, spacious disposition, impeccable attention to detail.
Alec Junior stared at the seven nudes. Actually more then seven. On three out of seven oils and acrylics presented by Zaza, there was more then one. Zaza was a good painter if nothing else.
“She makes Les Demoiselles d’Avignon look like caricatures,” Alex Senior remarked, not forgetting that originally the Picasso’s masterpiece was titled “The Brothel of Avignon”.
“Shhhhh,” was Alicia’s response. “She looks even better than she paints.”
And there she was, hanging possessively on the arm of a tall young man with broad shoulders, a rich head of hair and a smile to melt an iceberg. Suddenly Alicia understood why Zaza was holding onto his arm for dear life. He was a rare find, if a bit young for her taste. She preferred, much preferred, maturity to boyish charm. Still… to each her own, she mused, taking another look just to make sure that she was right.
Alex took a bit longer to dismiss Zaza from his crosshairs, but only to be able to compare her to the nudes which, in spite of the various models Alicia claimed they employed, were apparently based on her own contours. After an in depth examination he’d decided that the young man in Zaza’s harness wasn’t doing too badly. There may have been a considerable difference in age, but here were compensations, which seemed evident even from a distance. He wished them both luck.
Alec Junior didn’t know the intent of Zaza’s masterpieces, but that in no way diminished his pleasure from examining her creations. She’d almost convinced him that he ought to chuck school and take up paintings as some people in Europe had done. After all, Picasso was only 14 when he’d painted the portrait of Aunt Pepa, which was admired by many.
“Do you think, Mom, that I might have a talent?” he asked when he got his mother alone for a moment.
“Of course you do, darling. You probably take after you mother,” she assured him.
Actually, Alec Junior, a little like his father, was thinking more of taking after Zaza.
When the wine was drunk, and photos taken by the worthy representatives of the press, the artists were left alone. Alone except for their families. The exhibition would last for two weeks, but it was time to for the first, preliminary count of little red dots, which signified sales.
There were a few scattered around. Alex suspected that members of each family were obliged to purchase at least one. Alicia sold three without his involvement, the most she’d ever sold in her life.
And then there was Zaza. No. She had no sales. But each of her eight nudes had a little green dot. They were all reserved. Only the next day Alicia discovered what happened.
There was a man who was an interior designer for a brand new hotel just nearing finishing touches in the East part of Montreal. That was known as the French part. The West used to be predominantly English, though now it was almost equally divided between the English, French and the Others—the emigrants from virtually the whole world.
The young designer was not authorized to make actual purchases. He did the next best thing. He reserved every single one of Zaza’s oils. The next day, early in the morning, he brought the checks. Zaza was in seventh heaven. She called each one of her colleagues to share the good news.
Alicia was glad for her. Zaza and herself were the only sales on the opening night.
“Poor Zaza,” Alicia told Alex. “Her husband will never see the sixty-nine at home.”
As usually Alex was lost behind his newspaper.
“What was that, dear,” he asked.
“I was just saying that great artists never live to see old age. They don’t live that long.”
And she left it at that.
***
Sandra, dear Princess Sandra, must have been holding court elsewhere. She returned only when the first term had come to an end, and Mr. Norman took Suzy and her mother for a few weeks to their condo in Florida
. Luckily, Sandra was not one to hold a grudge. He was studying French when she joined him. Not to speak French while living in Eastern Canada was almost like not speaking English in the rest of the country, or Spanish in Miami, and it was one thing Alec just couldn’t seem to get right. He needed to catch up over the holidays.
“Comment va tu?” she asked innocently.
“You speak French, too?” Alec couldn’t help smiling. Sandra was always a source of surprises.
“Mais naturellement. Je parle presque toutes les langues. Couramment,” she added.
“All of them?”
“I did say presque,” she repeated, and they both laughed. He’d missed that laughter. It was different from other forms of laugh. It was the type that makes you feel good all over.
“I missed you,” he said at last.
“No, you didn’t,” she countered.
“What do you mean?” He tried hard to sound hurt.
“I’m always with you, remember?”
Despite his affection for her, he wished she hadn’t said that. There were moments, when he was with Suzy, when such a memory did get in the way. He would have done, or tried to do, things, just things, which he could hardly do with Sandra around. Those other things were better left to such stories as Catcher in the Rye. Growing up was not easy when hormones started to interfere with a young man’s brain.
“Perhaps you would like to review your regressions?” she asked.
Sandra never volunteered to discuss anything, and here she was offering help.
“You understood the principles, but not the intent,” she added, reading his thoughts.
He’d almost forgotten how easily she did that. That’s what happens when you go through a whirlwind.
The first trip down the abyss had obviously had to do with the beginning of the evolutionary process. It was meant to show him that nature worked on a trial-and-error method, rather than conforming to a preordained plan. Some people still think that there is a Big Juju, a Mighty God, somewhere, who does all the designing, and all nature has to do is to carry out His orders. This obviously was total nonsense. On the other hand...
“You mean there is no overall plan at all?”
“Depends what you mean by plan. There are laws that must be obeyed in every reality. As for a plan for the future, there is no such thing. There is a powerful plan for the Present, though.”
“Just to live...” he interjected.
“That’s practically all there is. But how you live in the Present, with what intensity—in fact, how much time you squeeze out of every minute—is entirely up to you. You know that already,” she added, after reading his mind again.
Alec had never thought of squeezing time. But he was well aware how time dragged on when he did something that did not interest him, and how it flew when he was engrossed in whatever he was doing. He was also well aware how flexible time was on the Home Planet. Or in his dreams, for that matter.
“In fact,” she picked up on the theme, “time is a characteristic of a manufactured reality, not the ground of one’s being.”
“Manufactured reality?”
“All reality is created by someone. Without people there is just a state of being,” she said slowly.
“And with people...?”
“... and with people there is also becoming.”
It was always strange talking to Sandra. Whatever she said always sounded familiar. Not really new, not a revelation, but an unfolding of his own knowledge. As if all she said were buried somewhere deep inside him, not quite able to come to the surface on its own. It was as if she were a catalyst, forcing him to face certain facts that, on occasion, were a little uncomfortable.
“How do you account for the mad scientist on my first ah... descent?” he asked.
“Regression,” she corrected. “There is no up and down in time, just a sequence of events. As for the mad scientist, suppose you tell me...”
She stopped when Alec caught his breath. An idea struck him that was neither pleasant nor quite acceptable.
“You’re right, of course,” she said, a gentle smile accompanying her words.
“Was it simply my total lack of knowledge of biology and physiology?”
“What do you think? Things don’t just happen. Someone had to do a lot of studying, a lot of work before reality reached the state of order you’re enjoying today. And not just someone, but whole races, thousands of them. Past and present, and even, in a way you don’t yet understand, the future.”
“There must be an incredible number of dead ends in the course of evolution...” he mused.
“There would be fewer if people thought, read and studied more, and talked less,” Sandra admitted.
Alec recalled vividly the two-ended grazing animals, the enormous behemoth stumping its way across the primitive, unpredictable and volatile earth. Vacuum cleaners indeed. His version of the food-chain. He went down there as a boy not quite fourteen, filled with desire for knowledge to the exclusion of any sense of responsibility.
“Noblesse oblige...” he whispered.
“Or even creative freedom must go hand in hand with responsibility,” she added. “I’m glad you are getting the point. It is one of the most important lessons in the reality of becoming. It is on a par with free will, which is really another word for creative freedom.”
“And the consequence of irresponsibility is mad science...”
He knew she was right, of course. What else is new? Yet he wondered how many people realized the full impact of introducing novelty into physical reality before others were ready to accept it with a sense of responsibility. He recalled what dad had told him about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Was that responsible? Is there ever a justification for mass murder? Each one of those people who died might have had something to contribute to the totality of the human race... Something entirely unique…
It wasn’t long before Alec realized Sandra was no longer present. Sandra had done what she came to do. Alec had done a lot of growing up in the last few minutes. “I will never be a mad scientist again,” he promised himself. Not even in the murky past. Or distant future, whatever it might bring. With a sigh and a crooked smile he leaned over his French textbook.
“Maybe at least in French I’ll make fewer mistakes.”
“Bonne chance...” he heard a smile coming to him seemingly from a great distance. But in his heart of hearts, he knew that she was right here with him. Always.
26
The Middle Ground
Alec called it the middle ground, knowing full well that it was the wrong name for it. He was thinking of the green stew in the global witches’ cauldron. ‘Middle time’ would probably be a better word for it. But now knowing that he was, in some mysterious way, the creator of the realities he visited, he was at a loss as to what he had to learn from his second descent.
Sorry, regression.
He wished Sandra would come back and explain the mystery. But Princess Sandra was not a messenger girl, and she did not answer a cell phone. The time had to be right, evidently, before he could learn his lesson for the second time.
After three days of fruitless waiting, he tried to dissect his own reasons for having created a reality, to teach himself a lesson. Put like that, it did not make any sense at all.
Unless there was a time loop.
Unless he, in some form or another, in some distant future, turned time on its head and decided to accelerate his own growth by offering his own earlier self the knowledge that would advance him on the ladder of evolution. If he could only translate this sentence into some sort of English, he was sure it would make some sort of sense. But even then, the only reality he could create at any particular moment of his own evolution would be one contiguous to the knowledge he possessed at the time.
Or something like that.
“Let’s assume I’m right,” he murmured under his breath. “Let’s assume that I live, simultaneously, in different, ah... time zones. Like flying from Montreal t
o Vancouver in the same day. Or New York to Los Angeles. Only much faster, so that the slowing down of time would have an effect on...”
He suddenly realized that he had no idea what he was talking about. He knew that time is affected by the velocity at which any mass is moving, but had only the vaguest idea what this supposition meant. He had to try another tack.
“You are not so far out.” Alec detected a familiar voice at the extreme range of his hearing. He smiled and said nothing. He even tried not to think. It didn’t work. He knew that Sandra was listening; but, evidently, that’s all she felt like saying.
“OK.” He had no choice but to dip the ladle into the soup all by himself. At least he now knew that Sandra would not let him get too far off course.
So I have my being outside time, he continued.
“What?” Again he questioned aloud his own idea. Silence meant that Sandra didn’t say ‘no’. At least that’s what he hoped.
So I have my being outside time, do I? And what else is outside time, I wonder. That reality, I suppose. Any reality.
No. That sounds wrong. Reality is exactly what finds its expression through time. And space, of course. The two prerequisites for reality: time and space. Or as Einstein put it, spacetime.
Now—how did I know that?
Curious, he looked up Einstein online. There were hundreds of pages dedicated to him.
By one in the morning, and after quite a few false starts, he’d learned that, according to Einstein, if you were to accelerate mass to the velocity of light, the mass would become infinite. In one direction, that is. At right angles to the direction of travel. And an infinite mass would require infinite energy to move it along. Ergo? No go. One would cancel out the other. And what on earth does this have to do with the Middle Ground? With the green slime? It had something to do with time. With the flexibility of time. Didn’t something happen to time at the velocity of light?
ALEC: An Action & Adventure Fantasy Novel (Alexander Trilogy) Page 20