Strange Attractors (1985)
Page 2
is all. Science fiction is an ideal medium for such a preoccupation . . . for the specifics of fiction versus the generalities of
Introduction
13
science. This beautiful tender place has been so betrayed by the
practitioners of pulp science fiction (who use it for thick-arm
adventure and jackboot philosophy) that those who prefer wit to
power-fantasy generally move elsewhere.
Sadly, the multi-megabuck trium ph of Luke Skywalker and the
Force, and all their pitiful paperback progeny, has done nothing in
the interim but strengthen the thick arm of the artist’s foe. One is
indeed tempted to move elsewhere — almost anywhere else. But, as
Aldiss warned,
those reckless or fastidious writers who throw out science fiction’s old banal contents — from last generation’s cliches of faster-than-light travel and telepathy to this generation’s overpopulation and mechanized eroticism — have to take care of form as well, for form-and-content is always a unity.
The stories for Strange Attractors were chosen (and many of them
were specially written) with this dictum in mind. For, yes, the
usages, the tropes, of sf — vulgar and absurd as some of them are
— remain part of its artistic vocabulary. Its idiosyncratic images
and their combinations in the murky depths of each writer’s heart
comprise a grammar devised to speak in a way uniquely valid to
this century.
Like the mathematical point forming random order ineluctably
within the envelope of the Strange Attractor, like a ghost of the
unborn, from Chaos, sf blows its warm breath on the pane which
divides us from tomorrow and our own deep awareness, and in its
dews and condensations shows us patterns we scribble there,
absent-minded children, all unknowing.
The Lipton Village Society
©
LUCY SUSSEX
For rent: flatlet in Gothic Horror folly. Suit tenant with taste for
weird architecture and/or sense of humour. Must be quiet. Apply V. Hirst, Times Gone Books, Hirst Building.
‘I’m sorry about it, but there it is,’ said V. (call me Vini) Hirst. ‘Great
Uncle William went a bit funny in his old age. He’d been a builder all
his life, and he just got sick of ordinary architecture.’
‘Yes. It’s the first time I’ve seen minarets and battlements combined.’
‘W hat was your name again?’ he asked.
‘Susan Gifford. I’m a Research Officer for the D epartm ent of
Education.’
‘Shouldn’t be too noisy,’ he muttered. Vini was interviewing me in
his antiquarian bookshop, which occupied the ground floor of Uncle
William’s aberration.
‘The interior doesn’t seem too bad,’ I hazarded.
‘It’s not. I live on the top floor, with Rover — that’s the cat. Being
inside Hirst building means you don’t have to look at it. I pity the
neighbours — no I don’t. They ostracised poor Uncle William.’
He gestured out of the front window at the tidy Parkville terrace opposite, painted and renovated in tedious good taste. Then he shrugged, and turned back to me.
‘I suppose you want to see the wee flat.’
‘Yes, if I’m going to live there.’
14
The L ipton Village Society
15
He smiled, and I smiled back. Vini Hirst was an agreeable enough
man, in his late forties I supposed, with freckles and shaggy grey hair.
He was agile too, as he demonstrated with a quick scuttle up the steep
stairs behind the shop.
A peculiarity of the flatlet was that it opened off a large room, which
was unfurnished except for a cedar chest in one corner. Otherwise, the
rooms-for-rent were conventional, if having one surprising omission.
‘W here’s the bathroom?’ I asked.
‘Downstairs, behind the bookshop. It comes in handy with dirty
books, I mean dirt of ages, not pornography. You can’t serve a customer when you’ve dirty paws.’
‘I imagine you can’t. Nonetheless, an outside bathroom is
inconvenient.’
‘I’ll take ten bucks off the rent.’
‘Done.’
Even without this deduction, the cost of inhabiting Hirst Building
was very moderate.
‘Great. You look a suitable tenant . . . are you well paid?’
‘Reasonably.’
‘Then why live here?’
‘It’s unusual lodging for a public servant.’
He laughed. ‘I know what you mean. I used to be in the Ed line myself, before I inherited Hirst Building.’
We stepped into the empty room again, and I glanced around admiringly. Vini remarked:
‘I let this room to a dancing class, but the noise — Madame taught
tap — upset the customers.’
‘Nice chest.’
‘The Lipton Village Society found it at a rubbish dump. They use
this room for meetings, but they’re a quiet bunch, won’t disturb you.’
I shaped my lips for a question, but the bell jangled in the shop below, and Vini hurried downstairs.
I moved my worldly goods into Hirst Building, and found myself
oddly happy, although with a nagging curiosity about the Lipton Village Society. Vini was evasive about the subject, and after a while I abandoned queries, preferring to experience the phenomenon firsthand. In bed early one night, nursing a nervous headache, I heard muffled laughter from the great room, and the sound of footsteps
coming and going on the uncarpeted wooden floor. A few nights later,
they arrived at sunset, just as I was preparing to take a bath. I
16
L ucy Sussex
hesitated, and then made a sortie outside my door, clad in a quilted
dressing gown and fluffy slippers. A group of nondescript young
people were huddled around the chest in its lonely comer; they turned
and stared at me.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Hello,’ said one small voice. They had not turned on the electric
light, and were illuminated only by the dusk outside the lancet windows. It was impossible to tell who had spoken. I went downstairs and took a particularly long bath. On my return, they had gone.
My attempts at image-busting continued. I sent off a mail order to
Altered States Incorporated (Eltham branch), and eventually received
a flat box in a plain wrapper. It was filled with moist earth, from which
a fine crop of magic mushrooms was guaranteed. I decided to use the
bathroom as a fungarium; it was suitably warm and damp. W ithin a
week, little white pustules broke through the brown mulch in the box.
They were quite numerous, and I considered stocking the fridge and
getting wrecked on hallucinogenic shores at my leisure. Then, before
the first anticipated harvest, I was nearly sacked from the Department
of Education. When I got home to Hirst folly, I went straight to the
bathroom, to the shower recess which Vini never entered, and
gathered the entire crop.
Coming upstairs, with a briefcase in one hand and the other holding up a skirt filled with fungi, I received a visual shock. A huge sheet of coarse paper was spread on the floor of the empty room, and beside
it were half a dozen pots of paint, placed neatly on a newspaper. They
had been opened, and dripped livid colour. I dumped briefcase and
mushrooms in my flat, and returned to investigate further. Someone
had begun t
o paint a map, obviously a bad copy of the more garish
Middle Earth posters.
I went calling for Vini and found him in his heaven. He was sitting
behind the Times Gone counter, reading a rare old book, with Rover
asleep in his lap.
‘You let the room upstairs to a playschool or something?’
‘Huh?’ he said, with a little start. Rover opened her eyes and glared
at him.
‘There’s a half-painted kiddy map in the big room.’
‘Ah yes’ he said, ‘the Lipton Village Society.’ He added, half to himself, ‘I saw the pots of paint go up there, didn’t think to ask what they were for.’
‘T hat’s an adult’s work?’ I asked, with exaggerated incredulity.
Vini suddenly lost his temper.
The L ipton Village Society
17
‘W hat’s wi'ong with artistic expression, Miss, and particularly on
the part of unemployed youth? I suppose you’d rather they vandalised
trains!’
It was so unexpected, pacific Vini snapping at me, that I turned and
went back to my flat, doubly depressed. I ate one raw mushroom then
and there, but the taste was repulsive. So I consulted a recipe book and
cooked French mushroom stew, with capsicums and white wine. I
guzzled the lot, then lay down on my bed to await the coloured lights
and music.
And that was all I could recollect when I awoke in discomfort, to
find myself lying on wooden floorboards. M y head was against a
carved lump of wood; I recognised the cedar chest. My sensory input
was disorganised and it was several moments before I became aware
of three factors: it was early morning, there was a smell of vomit and
a pair of heavy boots loomed large in my vision.
‘Vini?’
‘No,’ said a male voice. I rolled over, clutching my head, to see better
the wearer of the boots. He was something of a surprise, for he wore
jeans, a rusty black frock over the jeans, and a mackintosh over the
dress. Was he queer? Although I could not be sure, I reacted instinctively to the presence of a strange man, and glanced down to check that my neat office skirt decently covered my legs. It was then I discovered that sometime in the night I had been sick down my blouse.
‘D’you want a hand up?’ he asked in a broad accent, northern
suburbs I guessed.
I fingered the sticky frill on my collar, but let him take my free hand
and pull me to my feet. My head whirled, and I closed my eyes. He
walked me blind across the room, to the flat. In my hallucinogenic
stupor I had fortunately left the door open.
‘Thank you. Let me go now.’
I shut out the stranger and stripped, throwing my clothes into the
washbasket. I noticed that my hands were smeared with paint — how
very odd.
Mister Mysterioso (could it be that he had attended a fancy dress
ball?) called through the door.
‘It’s pretty messy out here. You got clean-up things?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and got dressed in an old sweater and pants I normally
used for dirty housework. The floorboards creaked; he appeared to be
pacing up and down outside. I opened the door and handed him a
bucket of hot water. He looked at me.
‘You all right?’
18
Lucy Sussex
‘It’s no worse than a hangover,’ I said, turning to pick up the rest of
the cleaning agents. ‘Ohmygod.’
W ith my eyes closed, I had not seen that the great room had what
used to be called a psychedelic decor. There were rivulets of garish pigment on the floor, spreading outwards from the map, which had a m ountain of emptied paint-tins dead centre. Streaks of colour leapt
up the walls, apparently applied with the fingers, for there was a bright
green palm print on one window. It looked like a kindergarten suddenly exposed to Jackson Pollock. I glanced at my fingers and was caught red (plus green and blue and yellow) handed.
‘I did that?’
‘You did.’
The map was obliterated now, the soggy paper even torn in places.
For the first time, I looked properly at my companion and saw that he
was very young, poverty-thin. Unemployed youth, Vini had said.
‘Was this your painting? I’m so sorry.’
The apology sounded banal, and he grimaced.
‘No use crying over spilt paint. Let’s clean this place up before Vini
sees it and has a heart attack.’
It took us an hour. At the end I made breakfast in my flat: coffee,
cornflakes, toast and eggs. It was the sort of meal I might have served
to an exceptionally good one-night stand. I was too queasy myself to
eat more than cornflakes with skim milk.
Just what I needed,’ said the visitor. ‘I got a job interview in half an
hour.’
‘Dressed like that?’
‘I don’t want it.’
He was obviously enjoying the breakfast, and 1 felt a little of my
guilt subside.
‘W hat’s your name?’
‘Thursday October.’
I was nonplussed but tried not to show it.
‘I’m Susan Gifford.’
‘Yeah, Vini said he had a new tenant.’
‘You’re a member of the Lipton Village Society.’
He nodded, mouth crammed.
‘I’m sorry I defaced the map.’
He swallowed. ‘You said that before. What were you on?’
‘Mushies.’
‘Drugs ain’t good for people. Are there any left?’
I nodded, puzzled, and led him out of the flat, down the stairs and
The L ipton Village Society
19
into the bathroom. Altered States, Incorporated, certainly gave value
for money — there was a fresh crop of baby hallucinogens. He tram pled them under his big boots. Then he picked up the box and went upstairs again, this time trailing me like a string-pulled toy. However,
he didn’t stop at the empty room, with its damp floorboards, but continued ascending, to the second floor where Vini lived. I was still a little uncertain of my surroundings and lagged behind him, reaching
the landing just as he knocked at the bookseller’s door. It opened
grudgingly, after a moment, to reveal V. Hirst unshaven, in deckchair
pyjamas.
‘Hi Thurs,’ Vini said weakly, and the Lipton Villager stepped
inside, closing the door behind them. I sat on the top step and waited.
A few minutes later Thursday October emerged, empty-handed.
‘W hat did you do with it?’ I asked, as we clattered down the stairs.
‘Told Vini it was a cat-dunny for Rover. She’s getting too old to
climb out the window every time she wants a piss.’
‘Oh. There might still be germinating spores in that mulch.’
‘T h at’s Rover’s lookout.’
We returned to the flat, where I made two more cups of coffee in a
stunned fashion. He drank his down quickly and stood up.
‘Well, I’ll be off now. T hat was grouse.’
I suddenly remembered 1 had to face work that morning and felt
bitter.
‘You getting rid of my mushrooms wasn’t. What are you — some
sort of baby Don Mackay?’
‘I just think there’s better things than drugs.’
‘Like what?’
He hesitated. ‘The Society.’
‘Very well, I’ll join and see what it does for me.’
&
nbsp; He shook his head.
‘Why not?’
He shrugged.
‘We need artificial aids to stand up to reality,’ I said in what I hoped
was a reasonable tone. ‘You might give me some inkling what yours is.’
He glanced at his watch, at the door. ‘I’ll be late.’
‘You could not arrive at all,’ I said, anxious to talk further with him,
‘which would have the desired effect.’
‘They cut off the dole if you don’t interview,’ he said, very seriously.
Then he appeared to make a decision.
‘Look, give me the money for new paint and you can sit in at the
meeting tonight. Here, 9 pm. Then you’ll understand.’
20
Lucy Sussex
‘All right,’ I said, fumbling with my purse.
‘See ya.’
‘See you.’
The quorum of the Lipton Village Society was fairly low, for only five
members were present that night. They were all as thin as Thursday
October, who arrived minus the dress and quickly set about
introductions.
‘This is Strongarm.’ A puny boy.
‘Jeri.’ He wore glasses and had a pale, intelligent face. I guessed he
had some form of employment, for he was (literally) better heeled than
the others.
‘Linear.’ A girl, sporting the punk rocker’s bleached blonde scalp.
‘Goosegirl.’ He had a sullen expression.
‘I’m Susan Gifford. That’s not much of a name in comparison with
yours.’
They laughed uneasily. Thursday fished a key out of his jeans
pocket and opened the padlock on the chest. I pointedly glanced away,
lest I give the impression of being inquisitive. When I looked back he
had dosed the heavy wooden lid and sat with a square of paper in his
lap. It was a sketch in crayon, a miniature template for the great map
I had vandalised.
‘Where’s the painting?’ asked Jeri.
I stared at the floor and noticed, with a feeling of mild horror, a
lump of congealed blue paint in the crack between two floorboards.
Thursday answered, to my relief, with a lie: ‘Me dole’s late, and paint’s
bloody expensive.’
‘Did you complain?’ asked Jeri.
‘Burn down the dole office!’ said Linear, in an unexpectedly little-