Universe 14 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Terry Carr

  Peter returned.

  —So what’s new? See that major meteor?

  —No. We were talking about glaciers, I said.

  —How weird they are. If we’d had more time I would have taken you to Evolution Valley. There’s outstanding glacial stuff there. A great place. Mt. Huxley, Mt. Darwin, Lamarck Pass, Le Conte Divide . . . I ll show you slides sometime. A great place. Nature named after natural historians. You guys coming to bed?

  —Soon, I told him.

  —Okay. Don’t step on me when you come in, you bastards. I’m sleeping in the middle.

  He left. After a minute I said: —Murphy, I heard you on the radio the other night.

  He was silent.

  —Do you believe all that?

  —But you think it’s the result of chance, he said.

  —Not exactly. But if so, is that so horrifying? Isn’t it best to think that you’re all that cares? That the universe is indifferent?

  —Do you believe in sin?

  I was quite impressed. He had gone straight to the core of my argument and neutered it. But I played him out.

  —What if I don’t?

  —You do.

  —You . . . saw that, of course.

  —Yes.

  —You’re right. I do. Or else evil must be the result of simple misunderstanding. And I don’t believe that.

  —Then what is sin? he asked.

  —A violation of the natural order, I said.

  —So there is an order.

  —I don’t know. Despite all the fictions we impose, yes, I tend to think there is one. So there’s sin. You’re responsible for your actions, in some unfathomable way. I laughed. —Murphy, congratulations, you’ve discovered God. No, I’m sincere. You’re very sharp, to come to this on your own. But let me tell you about Occam’s razor.

  —Needless reduplication of entities.

  —Christ, undercut again.

  —You, you see, that’s where the God argument fails. He couldn’t have made ... all this.

  —But why replace him with a race of aliens? Oh, I was stoned. I could almost see them.

  —If they’re the result of chance . . . perfectly formed, but formed that way by chance . . . and we’re slave to their will, to the fall of chromosomes, the mutations, defects in material, and you can never transcend this flaw. But only aspire to, to find the controlling form. To know them. And I, I’m still afraid of what I might learn about them.

  —By drawing? Then give it up.

  —I have no choice!

  I was still. We had reached our crossing. His path was mine in reverse—but in topology there is no direction. He was not the ideal will-less spirit I had named, had usurped by naming. His cosmos was controlled, and he was its creature, expressly and increasingly denied choice, whereas all my effort was to complete the image of a world in which my choices could be clear and effective. In which I could act. I had thought myself a doomed believer in cooperation, unable to fight well; but he was showing me a face far more radiant in its doom than any I had worn, and he could not even fight himself. He could not see that the order he had invented for his world was now autonomous, and he its slave. I saw him as one of my angels at a crossroad, but this angel was not fearsome. No, this one had trapped himself and turned slowly with a stricken lost look, while all around an unthinkable chaos of beings boiled, warred, loved, died, endured.

  —Murphy, the stupid and the intelligent accept the imposed orders, because they don’t see them or because they know there’s no working alternative. But people like you, you wake up suddenly, and call it monstrous, and think this new. It’s not. And it does you no good, for in searching for a new order you only go deeper into the old. You come finally to the idea of inherent vice in creation, and even that is not final, and hardly new. You’re doomed. There’s no help for you.

  —Of whom are you speaking?

  I was glad. He was with me still. —Of myself. Of whatever it is we share. This ineradicable strain. I woke up too. Perhaps it’s the best thing for us ... if we choose it.

  —To be doomed?

  —Yes. To be doomed. To be excluded from the charnel house. In our own ways, freely chosen. All right?

  —Y-Yes. I, I need your help, though.

  —And I yours. Now let’s sleep. And seal this . . . compact with good dreams.

  —I’ll stay up a while, said Murphy. —Until Orion rises.

  * * * *

  Bright, swift morning reached us. Peter laid out gear for climbing. He had extra crampons and tried to entice us to tackle a rock face with him, tried against his declared politics to catch us by competition, by stressing how hard and dangerous it was. But that morning Murphy and I were almost like lovers, and cooperatively we demurred. Instead we two mapped out a hike through Granite Park. Peter almost gave in and came with us, but he was caught by his own ideas and we went our separate ways.

  Murphy and I climbed to the pass in silence. He stopped once to examine some lichen, that strange collaboration of the lowest animal with the lowest plant. —Design of darkness, he murmured.

  From there we descended, leaving the trail. Across a scarped bowl ringed by peaks we hiked. Around noon it clouded over. The clouds scudded in rapidly from the west. It grew cold. We were about four miles from camp when it started to snow.

  —Listen, Murphy, I don’t like this. It came up too fast. We’d better turn around.

  —Go back? But why ?

  —We may be in for a real storm. The snow’s starting to stick already, and it’s not that cold.

  —It may blow over, he said.

  —A friend of mine was caught in a summer snowstorm on Mt. Washington. It’s no joke.

  —I know that.

  —Jesus, Murphy, look at it fall. Another hour of this and we won’t be able to find our way out of this bowl. Have you got a compass?

  —No.

  —Neither do I. Terrific. Let’s get the hell out while we still can. He seemed reluctant. I had to lead him. Returning, we almost passed the trail. There was an inch of snow on the ground now. The surrounding mountains had vanished. Wind billowed the thick white curtain about us. I stopped.

  —Christ.

  —It’s that way, he said.

  —I don’t know. Damn, I don’t know. If there was any shelter I’d say stop here.

  —But there isn’t. We have to go on.

  —Murphy, just look! You can barely see a hundred feet. If it gets worse we’ll never even find the tent; it’s two miles across an unmarked cirque.

  —What else can we do?

  —Maybe we can hike out, I said. I was not so sure, but his diffidence frightened me.

  —It must be ten miles to the road, he said.

  —No it’s not. Say five or six. And it’s downhill. We can get below the snow. And what about Peter?

  —He’ll be fine. He’s probably back in the tent already. We should go on.

  —Murphy! We have to climb two thousand feet, over the pass, right into the storm, then find our way across two miles of nothing! We could die out here; it happens to people every year because they make the wrong choice. In a snowstorm you go downhill. That’s what Peter said. You get below the snow.

  —It’s ten miles.

  —It’s downhill, on a trail. We have a car waiting. We just follow the water down. With luck we can be out by dusk.

  But that was not our luck. When we crossed the stream out of Granite Park, Murphy lost his footing and soaked himself to the knees. The wind came up. The snow increased. Wet and heavy, its runoff was already swelling the stream we kept to our right. When we reached the next ford, Murphy balked. Rocks flumed the water, cast up pearls of foam.

  —Here’s something else you find when you go down, he said. —And do you remember the other ford, on the way in? Below the falls? What will that be like?

  —All right, damn it, we can’t cross here. Give me the map.

  Farther on, the trail recrossed the stream. I thought we could cut across the arms
of the trail’s U. The map became sodden in my hands as I studied it.

  We were not dressed for this. The morning had been mild. We each had a parka but no hat, and Murphy had no gloves. He would not take mine. He shivered as we stood there. Snow, caked around my boots, seeped down my socks; my toes had started to sting. My hair was soaked, and I could feel water trickle down my neck.

  —Here, look. We can stay this side of the stream most of the way down. We cross once at Upper Pine Lake, pick up the trail here, and follow it down.

  Hands pocketed, shivering, he turned to watch the tossing stream. —All right. It’s up to you, he said.

  I cursed at him, and we went on. I figured fifteen minutes until we regained the stream. We slipped and stumbled comically on snow-hidden rocks. Still, it was soothing to have a direction. A sudden panic jolted me. I could no longer hear the stream. I looked at my watch in disbelief. Forty minutes had passed since we left the trail. In hours it would be dark, and we were not yet a quarter of the way. Murphy sighed and said: —I have to sit down.

  He went to his knees, and I grabbed him.

  —Up! Stand up!

  I picked up the map. It came to pieces in my hand. A gust took the scraps and blinded me with hard, stinging snow. I turned to shield myself.

  Now I could not see thirty feet. The ground seemed level all around. I had no idea which way I faced. I strained for the sound of the stream and heard only the faint empty wail of wind, the accumulating silence of snow. The colder, pebbly snow rustled on our parkas as it fell.

  —Now? said Murphy.

  I chose a direction. After five minutes I felt sure that we were going down. We walked close, jogging against one another. We came to a ridge. I heard falls. We had found the stream, or, no, another, surely another, for before us was a moon-sharp cliff, impossible to descend. I turned us before Murphy saw. We went up. He stumbled against me, his voice a moth in my ear. —Hypothermia.

  I held him. I would have given my life for him then. The feeling rose as a dull wash of anger that kept me going for ten steps more. Then a memory of his voice reached me: You want to die. I went another step and stopped. In despair I looked up, as if to summon the sun. Murphy too looked up. Then he raised his arm and shouted: —Look! Look there!

  I squinted into the chaos of nothingness.

  —Oh God, it’s enormous!

  I saw nothing. There was nothing. I was enraged that he should debase our deaths with hallucinations. Then I grew weak and sat in the soft snow, thinking that this, being a voluntary act, might cure him. Dimly it came to me that I would not get up. This I wanted. He was right, I did want it: a clean death.

  He shouted again.

  —They’re here!

  He began to sing.

  From the white emerged two figures. They were backpackers. It was coincidence they had come, lost as us, just as Murphy’s insanity began. I made a murderous effort in every muscle to rise and realized stupidly that I had not moved at all. The two stumbled to within a foot of us.

  —Help us, I said.

  The taller man, rime-bearded, shook his head leisurely. He smiled. The two went on into the snow. Murphy gave a last cry and ran after them. Another gust blinded me.

  I began to dream. It was a dream without pictures or actions. It was a dream of words. At times they passed before me as if printed. At times I heard voices, familiar and alien. Most of the words were incoherent but clearly articulated. I knew they were the names of things, and I strained like an infant listening to its parents to ferret their meaning. I imagined that Murphy and I were seated cross-legged in the snow, naked, reciting the true secret names of every species of life. Each name caused the extinction of another species. The world became sparer, more orderly. We chanted outside of time, beyond death and strife; we sealed our secret compact in a clean new light, not fictive, not random.

  When I emerged from this into a pellucid state of waking, he was curled beside me. He had run in a circle. I put a hand on his forehead. I thought I could feel if he was still alive. I knew he was alive, but I thought I could tell if his body had still enough heat to keep him alive. It was dark. The snow was gentler, and the wind had fallen. Large flakes dropped straight down. Not many had collected on him. In the obscurity I watched his lips to see that fresh flakes melted as they touched. I felt warm and relaxed. Darkness fell from the air. A windless still settled. I burrowed deeper into the whisper of snow. All words were passing from me, words of power, curses, benedictions, words to shape and be shaped by, all passed. My life was a riot of vivid pictures, twists of emotion, inchoate cries of pain and exultation, and gladly I welcomed all this namelessness. If I were dying, as I surely was, no design of name was adequate to my consciousness. So words bowed and broke, vowels scattered ripples across the face of darkness, the material armature of my body weakened, and the support of all fictions fled from me, until the final fiction, the simplest word, the simplest name, I, also lost its meaning and its power. So I knew that either dawn or death was close, and I was glad that these were, at last, the only possibilities.

  Then the dark was riven by a mad roar and a gyre of light. Its bite was as clean as the cold and as real. So I would not leave the living so easily. The radiance seared me, the mouth of the whisper I was buried in opened in a stuttering shriek. My body screamed in pain, and I felt time snap clearly as a dry twig up its length, the two paths distinct—and my demons stood at the crossing. Live or die, they cried, Choose, choose. Their grins were great as stars. The roar heightened. Angels sang in chaotic chorus. I turned my head to hide, but the light went through. I saw Murphy, the red of his parka beneath drifted snow, the green of my sleeve flung over him, his face a vivid relief in the fierce wavering light. I turned again into the brilliance and roar. And then I knew. These were not my demons. They were his.

  —Spaceship, I whispered. It could not be. I had to banish it. But I was sick and weak and could only deny it with my voice, not with any force of my mind. Then I saw that my word had only confirmed it. In a gust the great ship rocked, its engines labored, its lights danced, as if biting deeper into reality. I had called it closer with my voice. For now Murphy’s reality had intersected mine. I had taken his insanity for my own, and I was afraid. I knew his dread of words. I had thought myself in some special grace of the doomed, the excluded, and now I would find that it had all counted, every word, every evasion, that a choice not made was still a choice, that time’s demons were ineluctable, whatever their form. I would be weighed in their balance and found wanting. Some acid of life they would use on us. In the autoclave, the sterile steel cirque of the vessel, they would parse me, reduce the irreducibles of my genes, and make me new. Death I no longer minded. The prospect of a changed life I did. And the singing in the air was: Choose! And from a small, uncertain reserve of new strength I whispered: —No.

  But I raised my arm to signal them. I owed him this.

  The glow came down. A hatch opened. I saw the suited figures emerge.

  * * * *

  I returned to Berkeley two days later. After twenty-four hours in the hospital, they had taken me to Reno, where I caught a flight to Oakland. Peter stayed behind with Murphy, who was still in poor condition.

  The house was still and empty. I sat alone in the living room until Kristin came home from work, and I told her what had happened, from the start of the storm until the helicopter picked us up eighteen hours later. When the wind had died, the rangers had swept over the Chalfant Lakes basin, into which we had wandered. It was a common mistake in storms.

  Toward the end of my story I broke down and could not finish. I lost control of my voice and began a compulsive, erratic biography. She listened to everything I had so carefully secreted since arriving in Berkeley and to things I had not myself remembered in years. I raved for thirty minutes. Then I ended: —Darwin at the age of sixty received from Marx an inscribed copy of Das Kapital. He never read it. He thought German was ugly. It’s all right now. I’m better. I can stop now. I’m
sorry. I can stop now.

  But I could not face the cottage. So she slept with me that night, holding me as I had held Murphy in the snow. She said that I woke once, about three, shivered for ten minutes, and then slept unmoving until morning. And once in that night lost to my memory she said I mourned: —My child. My lost child.

  In the morning, after Kristin had left for work, I went up to Murphy’s room. But on the floor below his aerie a low hum stopped me. The door to the silent couple’s room was ajar. I pushed it open. The room had been trashed in response to Peter’s decree. Black paint jagged in swaths across walls cracked by hammer blows. Flies made the hum. In the middle of the floor, with a strip of matting round its neck, Peter’s cat lay stretched out dead. Its eyes were alive with ants. I lifted the stiff body and carried it downstairs. I buried it by the cottage. When I was done I squatted and for a while watched a snail climb a shaft of sorrel.