"The creatures are ugly, hairy and ferocious. I am beautiful and intelligent. They are free. I am enslaved to civilization.
"The contact that we make will be an epiphany of the history of the world. Angel and beast shall be one.
"Already the creatures are losing their freedom. The Desert des Agnates has become a zoo; the reporters, and cranks, and intellectuals, and tourists are flocking to see the show. In a few weeks' time, my creatures will be clothed for decency's sake, examined by physicians, psychiatrists, linguists, X-rayed, inoculated, measurements made of their teeth and occipital protuberances. They'll die of boredom and confusion. They are doomed already. Like Cuvier prodding the buttocks of the Hottentot Venus and measuring her labia minora, we'll annihilate the Neanderthaloids with our insatiable curiosity. Like the Yamana tribesmen, decimated by English diseases in the wake of puritan missionary zeal, my creatures will be slaves to the imperialism of modern progress, hygiene, enlightenment, civilization and repression.
"To propitiate for the sins of mankind, and to make symbolic contact with the life we have rejected, I intend to let the ugly monster I met yesterday fuck me in full view of the eyes of the world. May the gods of darkness be with me."
"What the hell's she talking about?" Major Sauvage shouted to Morrisot. "Can't we stop her? She's mad."
"No, leave her." Morrisot's mouth felt bitter and dehydrated. He had been here before in some nightmare.
Denise stopped walking and switched off the radio. There was a darker shape against the darkness of the cave. The shadow leapt out and stood facing her in the sunlight. It was the Neanderthaloid who had touched her the previous day. He stood still, grinding his bared teeth.
Denise carefully placed the radio on the ground, took off her clothes with deliberation, wrapped them in her jeans and placed them on a rock.
Morrisot could hardly look at her white skin exposed to the full morning sunlight. He was sweating profusely. He accepted a cigarette off Marmoutier. The cameras whirred impassively.
The Neanderthaloid flicked into life. He was upon her in three gigantic cat-leaps. He picked her up, hoisted her over his shoulder fireman-style, and started running up to the summit of Monte Robbia by the easy slope.
He smelled of urine and his body felt like coconut matting, but Denise made no resistance. She was in a trance, anesthetized—a passive sacrifice.
"We must go and rescue her," Major Sauvage burst out at last, half-embarrassed.
"No, he might kill her," said Morrisot, unsure of his motives. Major Sauvage swore and told his men to be ready to fire. Morrisot and Marmoutier begged the Major not to shoot. The Major refused to listen.
The grunting savage, salivating slightly, placed Denise on the topmost rock, an altarlike slab, and mounted her quickly and brutally. Denise, her back pressed into the sharp rock shouted out in pain and ecstasy.
The cry echoed over the valley. Morrisot dropped the glasses to his chest and felt a warm, involuntary spurt of diarrhea trickle down his leg.
Major Sauvage told the troops to take aim. Marmoutier murmured a feeble protest, his eyes fixed on the mountain. The cameras continued whirring.
Within seconds it was over, but Denise's legs still clung to the Neanderthaloid. He raised the rest of her body up by the hair, freed himself of her legs, and lifted her high above his shaggy head, where she lolled, naked and unconscious. He held her there for about half a minute, then let out a deep-throated scream and hurled her over the cliff to the rocks two hundred feet below.
Morrisot whispered, Thank God!" The Major ordered his troops to fire. Marmoutier protested incoherently. The shots rang out like a triple thunderclap.
The Neanderthaloid spun round on the mountain top and fell over the cliff spectacularly.
The cameramen fingered their zoom-lenses, while Morrisot retched quietly.
The troops found the two bodies dead at the foot of the cliff, and carried them back to the escarpment. The Major, vindictive over the insult to French womanhood, ordered the troops to fire light mortars into the caves.
When the smoke had cleared they entered the caves and found all the Neanderthaloids dead (three male adults, four females, and one female child) except for one male three-year-old, wounded in the belly, clinging to his mother.
They carried him by stretcher to the road, and from there by car to Ajac-cio Hospital.
The unedited film was shown on television from the Nice studios, that evening, and carried by satellite all over the world. There was a long program featuring interviews with politicians, military experts, psychologists, friends of Denise, and scientists from many disciplines.
Major Sauvage was forbidden by his Field Marshal to take part in the discussion. Professor Marmoutier stressed the ritual nature of the coitus, and compared the fourteen or fifteen pelvic thrusts of the Neanderthaloid to those of a baboon. Chief-Constable Piron testified to the mental instability of Mme. Blondel. Psychologists speculated obscurely about her motives. Morrisot could only say: Greedy bitch—just wanted them for herself," before bursting into tears and dashing out of the studio.
Later in the evening it was announced that the surviving male child had died in hospital and that the carcasses of the Neanderthaloids, or what remained of them, had been frozen, and sent by plane to the Musee de 1'Homme for examination, dissection and analysis.
Afterword
Epiphany for Aliens" fits into the general category of stories about nice but destructive monsters. The genre has a pedigree at least as old as Frankenstein, though the main influence on me has been 1950's, Hollywood, B-feature, monster films (you know, frozen prehistoric monster awakened by A-bomb test in the North Pole, wreaks vengeance on the hubris of scientists before capitulating to human technology in the final holocaust in the last reel).
I've always had a sneaking feeling that in the Darwinian battle between Neanderthal man and Homo Sapiens the best man lost. The idea of a group of Neanderthaloids surviving satisfies a personal fantasy for me—like the teenagers who believed in the immortality of James Dean after his crash. For me, Neanderthal man provides a useful symbol of the ecological disruption of this planet caused by man's technology (plenty of animal species really have been wiped out).
The story is set near a Mediterranean holiday locale because I like the irony of the prehistoric Neanderthaloids being discovered close to the ersatz, back-to-the-sea primitivism of holiday makers.
I have set the story in present-day France because a concern with man's position in his whole environment is very much part of the French political and philosophical mentality. Rousseau was perhaps as influential as Marx for a source of ideas in the May 1968 rising in France. Denise Blondel was, of course, active in May 1968, but the discovery of the Neanderthaloids enables her to crystalize far more completely all her feelings about the underdog. She overcompensates grotesquely, (hitherto, she had to make do with Negroes and red Indians). Needless to say her identification with the Neanderthaloids is partly sexual—the murky id at last incarnate.
I'm attracted to Speculative Fiction because it is possible to write about moral or philosophical problems without sounding too pompous. But I think Speculative Fiction is the most difficult form to write; it is hard to conjure up a fantastic situation without giving the reader a long, boring descriptive introduction to explain the situation. Speculative Fiction is personally satisfying to me because it is therapeutic; I can explore my own fantasies. In Epiphany for Aliens" I was able to explore the fascist, the priggish radical, the soggy liberal and the Neanderthaloid in myself. I suspect the Neanderthaloid predominates.
Introduction to
EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
Though I've spent at least two weeks in Burt Filer's company, he is one of the most enigmatic men I have ever met. I know he was married to Ann, I know they are now separated and perhaps divorced, and the last I heard of him he was in Philadelphia. Beyond that I know only that he grew up in upstate New York, received a degree in 1961 in Mechanical Engineering at Co
rnell, he is an inventor—having devised among other items a new type of motor, transmission and coupling—and has published speculative fiction in such magazines as If, Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. His short story Backtracked" is one of the finest short pieces I have ever read, and it should have won the Nebula in 1968. (For those curious enough to seek it out, it appeared in F&SF for June of that year.) (Ann's excellent story Settle" appeared in the same issue.)
"Eye of the Beholder" raises some pointed questions about the nature of art and the nature of the human condition, and does it in terms fresh to speculative fiction.
In many ways it is as enigmatic a piece of work as its author.
If you are out there, Burt, get in touch.
EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
Burt K. Filer
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Section 2, Sunday, June 3, by Audrey Keyes—Peter Lukas' long-awaited show opened at the Guggenheim today, and may have shaken confidence in the oldest tenet of art itself: that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Reactions to his work were uncannily uniform, as if the subjective element had been removed. Mr. Lukas tends to purify and distill his art, and there is no arguing with him. The uniform reaction for every piece in the show was one of spellbound appreciation.
Of the six pieces shown, his Nereid" is the most striking. Basically an abstract woman carrying within her a star (see inset), she seems to be swimming among the galaxies. The effect is eerily successful, not only in the direct hologram as shown on the main floor, but in the Bolger-formed miniatures which make up the stabile of the second mezzanine. Usually the Bolger process—electroplating directly into a hologram—leaves an aura of heaviness about a piece, but not so Nereid."
In the stabile, the effect of lightness is further heightened by the almost total lack of supporting framework or wires among its parts. It is as if the massive nickel abstracts do indeed weigh nothing. When asked about this eerie lightness, Mr. Lukas' reaction was a shrug and a statement to the effect that he just let himself go—and what came out was as much a surprise to him as to anyone.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, June, Book Review: Gravity Null, Discovery and Early Work," by Catherine D. Osborn, Ph.D.—When Dr.Osborn reported the existence of a partial gravity null in solid objects last year, the scientific community was widely split in its reaction. Recommendations for the Nobel Prize were balanced by charges of outright fraud. Supporters and skeptics alike have been waiting a more complete report of her work.
This book is that report. There is no longer room for skepticism. She has produced laboratory objects with masses of up to twenty kilograms, whose recorded weight is under eighteen kilos.
While Dr. Osborn indicates that a causal relation between weightlessness and Steininger's Shape Factor exists, no rigorous proof is given. Whether this is due to censorship by NASA—who support the project—or whether a mathematical expression simply doesn't exist, is a matter of conjecture.
Included in the early chapters are photographs of several test objects," Bolger-plated holograms. Subjectively, all have remarkable beauty. Dr. Osborn herself points out their similarity to contemporary sculpture, but makes no further comment. While there are innumerable applications for gravity-insensitive masses, Dr. Osborn has directed her efforts exclusively toward the making of an interstellar drive . . .
Cidi (from her initials) Osborn didn't like the shape developing in the tank, and her thin face showed it. She could swear the lasers weren't going where she aimed them, and without thinking she called over her shoulder, Z-axis is out again, Max. Check it?"
But Max wasn't there, nor would he be. Paul Stoner had decreed she'd work alone now. Typical CIA attitude. Hamstring efficiency for security's sake. She shut down the tank and got up to fix the beam herself.
Crawling under the tank, she found nothing wrong with the lasers themselves, and slid back out. Cidi had a temper and was getting madder by the minute. She lifted off the back of the console. After half an hour's fuming, she found the bug: a burnt-out diode. What disturbed her even more was that they were all getting a little brown-looking. She was wearing out the equipment.
She replaced the panel, went around to the front, sat down. Wearing out the Bolger gear, and maybe herself too. The last six months had been murder. She'd lost weight. Cidi hated to look scraggly. Everyone thought women scientists should look scraggly.
With a sigh, she typed in the equation for a sphere. The tank across the room lit up, and in thirty seconds a transparent blue ball assembled itself in the mist. Three-dimensional, coherent light interferometry.
Cidi checked her notes. It needed to be bigger. She typed in a different constant, and the ball grew.
Next, a rambling series of careful pecks bent the sphere into a saddle-shaped curve, with a sort of orange-peel bottom. Getting there. She bent closer to the keyboard, poking her glasses back up the bridge of her thin straight nose. Getting there . . .
She heard Paul Stoner come in behind her, knowing it was he even without turning around. Two reasons: one, he was the only one allowed in the lab—his own rule. And two, he had asthma and his nose whistled.
"Cidi, look."
Now she turned. The rumpled middle-aged man held out a rumpled middle-sized package. Good," she said. How'd you get him to part with it?"
Paul came across the room, put the bundle on the steel-topped lab table, took out a Kleenex and blew his nose. Well, first I told him I was with International Review, a photographer. He said no soap, that he has a show in Brussels next month, and doesn't want any advance releases to spoil his impact.
"So then I said, actually, I was an amateur sculptor myself, and wanted to study him. Bad move, he got furious. Apparently every time he lends things out, they either get copied or stolen. He said so many people had broken into his apartment that he had to move out to the country, and almost live in hiding.
"So I leveled with him, showed him my CIA card and some other stuff. He was skeptical. I told him a little about your work. He said okay then, but wasn't above socking me for a hundred dollars rental." Paul was untying the string. "Which is a waste, Cidi. You'd have to see this guy. An animal. Believe me, any resemblance between his work and yours is superficial."
Cidi nodded. "Probably. Still, I'm glad we can check it out."
As she spoke the final wrappings fell away. Amid the wrinkled paper, a miniature of Nereid lay exposed.
Cidi took a long breath, then let it out. She went to the thing, touched it. "I've seen the pictures. They're right, you know. Inarguably beautiful. The most—"
"Until Lukas carves something better," Paul said, hefting it speculatively. "Hollow, I think. At least that internal figure."
Cidi guessed he was right, put it on the X-ray table anyway. It was not hollow. It was solid. She felt the sort of bright shock that comes with just missing a truck. "He's so far ahead of me it's unbelievable. This thing is inches from totally ignoring gravity!"
Nereid had been made from thirty pounds of electrolytic nickel. Nereid weighed eight pounds.
"Paul, we've got to get hold of the equations he used. Every curve, every I plane on this thing."
"Equations? Lukas never finished high school. He wouldn't know a polynomial from a dirty word."
Cidi's face got blotchy. She was not pretty when angry. It's so unfair. I sit here turning into a hag for six years, and then this idiot comes along. Damn!"
Paul, who didn't understand women who got mad instead of crying, wisely shut up. She calmed down quickly.
"Okay. What sort of equipment does he use?"
"Bolger tank, like yours."
"Input too? He can't use a console if he doesn't know math."
Paul blew his nose, apologizing with his eyes. He talks to it."
"He talks to it. Beautiful. No permanent records." She actually groaned. That leaves just one approach: the hologram projector itself. If you could get hold of the thing, I could analyze it."
Paul began wrapping up Nereid. Okay, I'll
get it." The pudgy CIA man left, and Cidi Osborn returned to her work. Not that she expected to get much done.
Paul Stoner's devious mind was not too devious to try the direct approach. First, anyway. When he returned the statue to Peter Lukas, he asked if he might have a look at the holoprojector that had been used to make it.
They were at the Guggenheim, where the shaggy sculptor had just opened his show. The museum is a big echoing funnel of a place. Peter Lukas' single-worded answer filled it. Paul smiled wanly and left.
He could understand, of course, why he'd been refused. Anyone having the projector could duplicate the sculpture. And there's no such thing as copyrights for Bolger-projections. There was also, he thought, the fear of an artist being analyzed by a scientist.
Again, Dangerous Visions Page 74