The Magazine of fantasy and science fiction : a 30-year retrospective

by Edward L Ferman

  "Yeah, I knew that, but. . ."

  "But what, stupid?"

  "I just thought—"

  "You didn't think. That's your problem. You never think. I have to do the thinking for both of us. It's a good thing I've got more brains than I need."

  "Uh-huh," he said mockingly, smiling his special movie-star smile. She could never resist that smile. She shrugged her shoulders and, laughing, kissed him. She couldn't stay angry with Birdie ten minutes at a time. He'd make her laugh and forget everything but how much she loved him. In that way Milly was like his mother. In that way Birdie was like her son.

  11:35. The Art History test was at two o'clock. He'd already missed a ten o'clock class in Consumer Skills. Tough.

  He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and shave. The Muzak started when he opened the door. It played WHAM-O, WHAM-O,

  WHY AM I SO HAPPY? Birdie could have asked himself the same question.

  Back in the dorm he tried to telephone Milly at work, but there was only one phone on each Pan-Am second-class jet, and it was busy all through the flight. He left a message for her to call him, knowing perfectly well she wouldn't.

  He decided to wear his white sweater with white Levis and white sneakers. He brushed whitening agent into his hair. He looked at himself in front of the bathroom mirror. He smiled. The Muzak started to play his favorite Ford commercial. Alone in the empty space before the urinals he danced with himself, singing the words of the commercial.

  It was only a fifteen minute subway ride to Battery Park. He bought a bag of peanuts to feed to the pigeons in the aviary. When they were all gone, he walked along the rows of benches where the old people came to sit every day to look out at the sea and wait to die. But Birdie didn't feel the same hatred for old people this morning that he had felt last night. Lined up in rows, in the full glare of the afternoon sun, they seemed remote. They did not pose any threat.

  The breeze coming in off the harbor smelled of salt, oil, and decay, but it wasn't a bad smell at all. It was sort of invigorating. Maybe if Birdie had lived centuries ago, he might have been a sailor. He ate two large bars of Synthamon and drank a container of Fun.

  The sky was full of jets. Milly could have been on any one of them. A week ago, only a week ago, she'd told him, "I'll love you forever and a day. There'll never be anyone but you for me."

  Birdie felt just great. Absolutely.

  An old man in an old-fashioned suit with lapels shuffled along the walk, holding on to the sea-railing. His face was covered with a funny white beard, thick and curly, although his head was as bare as a police helmet. He asked Birdie for a quarter. He spoke with a strange accent, neither Spanish nor French. He reminded Birdie of something.

  Birdie wrinkled his nose. "Sorry. I'm on the dole myself." Which was not, strictly speaking, true.

  The bearded man gave him the finger, and then Birdie remembered who the old man looked like. Socrates!

  He glanced down at his wrist, but he'd forgotten to wear his watch. He spun around. The gigantic advertising clock on the facade of the First National Citibank said it was fifteen after two. That wasn't possible. Birdie asked two of the old people on the benches if that was the right time. Their watches agreed.

  There wasn't any use trying to get to the test. Without quite knowing why, Birdie Ludd smiled to himself. He breathed a sigh of relief and sat down to watch the ocean.

  "The basic point I'm trying to make, Birdie, if you'll let me finish, is that there are people more qualified than I to advise you. It's been three years since I've seen your file. I've no idea of the progress you've made, the goals you're striving for. Certainly there's a psychologist at the college "

  Birdie squirmed in the plastic shell of his seat, and the look of accusation in his guileless blue eyes communicated so successfully to the counsellor that he began to squirm slightly himself. Birdie had always had the power to make Mr. Mack feel in the wrong.

  ". . . . and there are other students waiting to see me, Birdie. You managed to pick my busiest time of day." He gestured pathetically at the tiny foyer outside his office where a fourth student had just taken a seat to wait his three o'clock appointment.

  "Well, if you don't want to help me, I guess I can go."

  "Whether I want to or not, what can / possibly do? I still fail to see the reason you missed those tests. You were holding down a good C-average. If you'd just kept plugging away . . ." Mr. Mack smiled weakly. He was about to launch into a set-piece on the value of a positive attitude, but decided on second thought that Birdie would require a tougher approach. "If reclassification means as much to you as you say, then you should be willing to work for it, to make sacrifices."

  "I said it was a mistake, didn't I? Is it my fault they won't let me take make-ups?"

  "Two weeks, Birdie! Two weeks without going to a single class, without even calling in to the dorm. Where were you? And all those midterms! Really, it does look as though you were trying to be expelled."

  "I said I'm sorry!"

  "You prove nothing by becoming angry with me, Birdie Ludd. There's nothing I can do about it any more—nothing." Mr. Mack pushed his chair back from the desk, preparing to rise.

  "But . . . before, when I failed my reclassification test, you talked about other ways to get reclassified besides college. What were they?"

  "Exceptional sendee. You might want to try that."

  "What's it mean?"

  "In practical terms, for you, it would mean joining the Army and

  performing an action in combat of extraordinary heroism. And living to tell about it."

  "A guerrilla?" Birdie laughed nervously. "Not this boy, not Birdie Ludd. Who ever heard of a guerrilla getting reclassified?"

  "Admittedly, it's unusual. That's why I recommended college initially."

  "The third way, what was that?"

  "A demonstration of markedly superior abilities." Mr. Mack smiled, not without a certain irony. "Abilities that wouldn't be shown on the tests."

  "How would I do that?"

  "You must file intention with the Health, Education, and Welfare Agency three months in advance of the date of demonstration."

  "But what is the demonstration? What do I do?"

  "It's entirely up to you. Some people submit paintings, others might play a piece of music. The majority, I suppose, give a sample of their writing. As a matter of fact, I think there's a book published of stories and essays and such that have all achieved their purpose. Gotten their authors reclassified, that is. The great majority don't, of course. Those who make it are usually nonconformist types to begin with, the kind that are always bucking the system. I wouldn't advise—"

  "Where can I get that book?"

  "At the library, I suppose. But—"

  "Will they let anyone try?"

  "Yes. Once."

  Birdie jumped out of his seat so quickly that for an unconsidered moment Mr. Mack feared the boy was going to strike him. But he was only holding his hand out to be shaken. "Thanks, Mr. Mack, thanks a lot. I knew you'd still find a way to help me. Thanks."

  The Health, Education, and Welfare people were more helpful than he could have hoped. They arranged for him to receive a federal stipend of $500 to help him through the three month "developmental period." They gave him a metal ID tab for his own desk at the Nassau branch of the National Library. They recommended several bona fide literary advisors, at various hourly consultation rates. They even gave him a free copy of the book Mr. Mack had told him about. By Their Bootstraps had an introduction by Lucille Mortimer Randolphe-Clapp, the architect of the REGENTS system, which Birdie found very encouraging, though he didn't understand all of it too clearly.

  Birdie didn't think much of the first essay in the book, "The Bottom of the Heap, an Account of a Lousy Modicum Childhood." It was written by 19-year-old Jack Ch . Birdie could have written the same thing himself; there wasn't a single thing in it that he didn't know without being told. And even Birdie could see that the language was vulgar a
nd ungrammatical. Next was a story that didn't have any point, and then a poem that didn't make any sense. Birdie read through the whole book in one day, something he had never done before, and he did find a few things he liked: there was a crazy 3tory about a boy who'd dropped out of high school to work in an alligator preserve, and an eminently sensible essay on the difficulties of budgeting a MODICUM income. The best piece of the lot was called "The Consolations of Philosophy," which was written by a girl who was both blind and crippled! Aside from the textbook for his ethics course, Birdie had never read philosophy, and he thought it might be a good idea, during the three month developmental period, to try some. Maybe it would give him an idea for something to write about of his own.

  For the next three or four days, however, Birdie spent all his time just trying to find a room. He'd have to keep his expenses to a bare minimum if he was going to get along those three months on only $500. Eventually he found a room in a privately-owned building in Brooklyn that must have been built a century ago or longer. The room cost $30 a week, which was a real bargain spacewise, since it measured fully ten feet square. It contained a bed, an armchair, two floor lamps, a wooden table and chair, a rickety cardboard chest-of-drawers, and a rug made of genuine wool. He had his own private bathroom. His first night there he just walked around barefoot on the woolen rug with the radio turned up full volume. Twice he went down to the phone booth in the lobby in order to call up Milly and maybe invite her over for a little house-warming party, but then he would have had to explain why he wasn't living at the dorm, and (for she certainly must be wondering) why he hadn't called her since the day of the Art History test. The second time he came down to the lobby he got into a conversation with a girl who was waiting for a phone call. She said her name was Fran. She wore a tight dress of peekaboo plastic, but on her body it wasn't especially provocative since she was too scrawny. It was fun to talk to her though, because she wasn't stuck up like most girls. She lived right across the hall from Birdie, so it was the most natural thing in the world that he should go into her room for a carton of beer. Before they'd killed it, he'd told her his entire situation. Even about Milly. Fran started crying.

  It turned out that she'd failed the REGENTS herself—all three parts. Birdie was just starting to make out with her when her phone call came and she had to leave.

  Next morning Birdie made his first visit (ever) to the National Library. The Nassau branch was housed in an old glass building a little to the west of the central Wall Street area. Each floor was a honeycomb of auditing and microviewing booths, except for 28, the topmost floor, which was given over to the electronic equipment that connected this branch with the midtown Morgan Library and, by relays, with the Library of Congress, the British Museum Library, and the Osterreichische National-bibliothek in Vienna. A page, who couldn't have been much older than Birdie, showed him how to use the dial-and-punch system in his booth. A researcher could call up almost any book in the world or listen to any tape without needing to employ more than a twelve-figure call-code. When the page was gone, Birdie stared down glumly at the blank viewing screen. The only thing he could think of was the satisfaction it would give him to smash in the screen with his fist.

  After a good hot-lunch Birdie felt better. He recalled Socrates and the blind girl's essay on "The Consolations of Philosophy." So he put out a call for all the books on Socrates at senior high school level and began reading them at random.

  At eleven o'clock that night Birdie finished reading the chapter in Plato's Republic that contains the famous Parable of the Cave. He left the library in a daze and wandered hours-long in the brilliandy illuminated Wall Street area. Even after midnight it was teeming with workers. Birdie watched them with amazement. Were any of them aware of the great truths that had transfigured Birdie's being that night? Or were they, like the poor prisoners of the cave, turned to the rock-face, watching shadows and never suspecting the existence of the sun?

  There was so much beauty in the world that Birdie had not so much as dreamt of! Beauty was more than a patch of blue sky or the curve of Milly's breasts. It penetrated everywhere. The city itself, hitherto that cruel machine whose special function it had been to thwart Birdie's natural desires, seemed now to glow from within, like a diamond struck by the light. Every passer-by's face was rife with ineffable significances.

  Birdie remembered the vote of the Athenian Senate to put Socrates to death. For corrupting the youth! He hated the Athenian Senate, but it was a different sort of hate from the kind he was used to. He hated Athens for a reason. Justice!

  Beauty, truth, justice. Love, too. Somewhere, Birdie realized, there was an explanation for everything! A meaning. It all made sense.

  Emotions passed over him faster than he could take account of them. One moment, looking at his face reflected in a dark shopwindow, he wanted to laugh aloud. The next, remembering Fran sprawled out on her shabby bed in a cheap plastic dress, he wanted to cry. For he realized now, as he had not on the night before, that Fran was a prostitute, and that she could never hope to be anything else. While Birdie might hope for anything, anything at all in the (now suddenly so much wider) world.

  He found himself alone in Battery Park. It was darker there, less busy. He stood alone beside the sea-railing and looked down at the dark waves lapping at the concrete shore. Red signal lights blinked on and off as they proceeded across the night sky to and from the Central Park airport. And even this scene, though it chilled him in ways that he could not explain, he found exhilarating, in ways that he could not explain.

  There was a principle involved in all this. It was important for Birdie to communicate this principle to the other people who didn't know of it, but he could not, quite, put his finger on just what principle it was. In his newly-awakened soul he fought a battle to try to bring it to words, but each time, just as he thought he had it, it eluded him. Finally, towards dawn, he went home, temporarily defeated.

  Just as he went in the door of his own room, a guerrilla, wearing the opaque and featureless mask of his calling (with the ID number stenciled on the brow), came out of Fran's room. Birdie felt a brief impulse of hatred for him, followed by a wave of compassion and tenderness for the unfortunate girl. But he did not have the time, that night, to try and help her; he had his own problems.

  He slept unsoundly and woke at eleven o'clock from a dream that stopped just short of being a nightmare. He had been in a room in which two ropes hung down from a raftered ceiling. He had stood between the ropes, trying to grasp them, but just as he thought he had one in his grasp, it would swing away wildly, like a berserk pendulum.

  He knew what the dream meant. The ropes were a test of his crea-tiveness. That was the principle he had sought so desperately the night before. Creativeness was the key to everything. If he could only learn about it, analyze it, he would be able to solve his problems.

  The idea was still hazy in his mind, but he knew he was on the right track. He had some cultured eggs and a cup of coffee for breakfast and went straight to his booth at the library to study. Though he had a slight fever, he seemed to feel better than he had ever felt in his whole life. He was free. Or was it something else? One thing he was sure of: nothing in the past was worth shit. But the future was radiant with promise.

  He didn't begin work on his essay until the very last week of the developmental period. There was so much that he had had to learn first. Literature, painting, philosophy, everything he had never understood before. There were still many things, he realized, that he couldn't understand, but now he firmly believed that eventually he would. Because he wanted to.

  When he did begin working on his essay, he found it a more difficult task than he had anticipated. He paid ten dollars for an hour's consultation with a licensed literary advisor, who advised him to cut it. He was trying to cram in too many things. Lucille Mortimer Randolphe-Clapp had given more or less the same advice in By Their Bootstraps. She said that the best essays were often no more than 200 words long. Birdie wonder
ed if future editions of By Their Bootstraps would contain his essay.

  He went through four complete drafts before he was satisfied. Then he read it aloud to Fran. She said it made her want to cry. He did one more draft of it on June 8th, which was his 21st birthday, just for good luck, and then he sent it off to the Health, Education, and Welfare Agency.

  This is the essay Birdie Ludd submitted:

  PROBLEMS OF CREATIVENESS

  By Berthold Anthony Ludd

  "The conditions of beauty are three: wholeness, harmony, and radiance."

  Aristotle.

  From ancient times to today we have learned that there is more than one criteria by which the critic analyzes the products of Creativeness. Can we know which of these measures to use. Shall we deal directly with the subject? Or "by indirection find direction out."

  We are all familiar with the great drama of Wolfgang Amadeus Goethe — "The Faust" It is not possible to deny it the undisputed liter-ary pinnacle, a "Masterpiece." Yet what motivation can have drawn him to describe "heaven" and "hell" in this strange way? Who is Faust if not ourselves. Does this not show a genuine need to achieve communication? Our only answer can be "Yes!"

  Thus once more we are led to the problem of Creativeness. All beauty has three conditions 1, The subject shall be of literary format. 2, All parts are contained within the whole. And 3, the meaning is radiantly clear. True creativeness is only present when it can be observed in the work of art. This too is the philosophy of Aristotle.

  The criteria of Creativeness is not alone sought in the domain of "literature." Does not the scientist, the prophet, the painter offer his own criteria of judgement toward the same general purpose? Which road shall we choose, in this event?

  Another criteria of Creativeness was made by Socrates, so cruelly put to death by his own people, and I quote: "To know nothing is the first condition of all knowledge" From the wisdom of Socrates may we not draw our own conclusions concerning these problems? Creativeness is the ability to see relationships where none exist.