by Jack Dann
It will all be wrecked soon, Joan thought as she stared through the oval window of the flyer. Pfeiffer was leaning against her, was a little too close, craning his neck for a view.
“It's beautiful, isn't it?” Pfeiffer asked. The flyer was banking, making its descending curve toward the old Paris heliport on the Seine.
“No, I don't think so,” Joan said, impatient with him and annoyed by his insipid remark.
“Aha,” Pfeiffer said, “so now we're seeing politically.”
“It reminds me of Christmas lights,” she said, gently pushing him away, thinking of him as a cumbersome child. “One great string of pretty lights, that's the great grid.”
“But pull the plug and all the lights go out, right?” Pfeiffer asked in a mocking voice.
“Yes, actually. Something like that.” Asshole!
“And you're waiting for that, aren't you?” Now Pfeiffer drew away from her, as if one had to keep a distance to converse. “Isn't the Great Purging one of the tenets of your religion?”
“We don't have strict dogma,” she said. “Some ideas they all seem to agree on, others not.”
“They?”
“I meant ‘we,’” Joan said, flustered. She checked her computer implant: still no word from Mantle. Well, it was much too early yet….
“What do you believe?” Pfeiffer asked.
“There are members of the church who want the purging. They see every manifestation of psychosis as a step closer to the world inside, what you would call right-brain authority.”
“I want to know what you think,” Pfeiffer said.
There was that condescension, she thought. It was in his tone of voice. The empty sonofabitch. “I think they're fools, but there are fools everywhere,” she said pointedly. “The cities are being torn apart because social reality is a sham. We've blocked over the internal world with a social one, the purpose of which is to keep us from ourselves.”
“Surely you don't really—”
But Joan was carried on by her thoughts and insecurity. “It was built by and for those who haven't experienced anything but this world. The only relics of the old experience are the traditional religions, which have long been empty.”
“Aha,” Pfeiffer said. “So the Dreadful has already happened.”
“What?” she asked, annoyed that he was trying to score points rather than trying to gain understanding.
“Something Heidegger said—”
But Joan had already subvocalized the question, and the computer was explaining: “…and Laing, R. D., a twentieth-century theologue, wrote that the Dreadful has happened to us all—that being the collective estrangement of modern man from the unconscious parts of his being.”
“The Dreadful is a result of the old order,” Joan said, and the collective psychosis is merely a symptom of disease—”
“As are the Screamers, and your church.”
“No,” Joan said, feeling flushed and cornered. She had already said too much. “The psychotics can't adjust to a dysfunctional society. But the Criers have cut free, adapted themselves to an inner establishment.”
“And the church is the authorized connection to the divine establishment,” Pfeiffer said, smiling. “Spoken like a true fanatic.”
He's right, Joan thought, turning to the window. But the Criers are real. As are the dark spaces. “You seem to place all your faith in science and its methods,” she said, still looking out the window. “Consider what I've said as an untested hypothesis.”
“And how do I test it?”
“By hooking-into a Crier.” She turned toward him, and she was right: she had caught him.
“We're in this mess because of politics,” Pfeiffer said quickly. “What the hell do you think the famines in China and the flooding in Eastern America are all about? Or don't you believe in weather warfare, either?”
Joan knew just what Pfeiffer was getting at: viral warfare. But she didn't answer him. That, she thought, was probably the only way to stop him. Again, she checked to hear if there was a message from Ray; there wasn't.
“Your Screamers were most likely created in a lab somewhere, either by intent or mishap. You can explain it as vitalistic evolution or whatever else is fashionable right now, but it's probably some sort of virus that facilitates or blocks some neurohumoral action in the brain.”
Jesus, not that old saw again. Joan thought.
“…but you're caught in your own passivity,” Pfeiffer said. “That's the collective experience.” Joan felt herself stiffen, caught like a small animal. She had fought being passive all her life, and always seemed to lose. Could Pfeiffer have seen that? she asked herself. The sonofabitch was right-brained, she thought, but was so afraid of it that he proclaimed it nonexistent. “Your church is a manifestation of despair,” he continued. “But none of this is new. All this cosmic-consciousness bullshit was prevalent in Germany once, before the Nazis came to power. That's your new consciousness—”
“I think we should continue this later,” Joan said, nodding in the direction of a woman of about forty in the aisle before them. She was quite pretty, although overweight and dough-faced, as if she had glandular problems. She was staring, obviously eavesdropping.
The woman grinned and winked at Pfeiffer, who quickly turned away. But perhaps she had winked at Joan….
“You don't seem to be the shy type,” Joan said nastily.
“Cut it out,” Pfeiffer said, looking unreasonably nervous. “We'll be landing in a few minutes.”
“I'm not so sure. We're still circling at the same altitude. Perhaps something's happened below. Anyway,” she said cheerfully, “there is still time for you to diagnose her illness.”
“And what's that supposed to mean?”
“I'm also sure she's a Crier,” Joan whispered.
“How do you make that surmise?”
“Just a feeling…the way she's looking at us. You see, if you'd use that right brain of yours a bit—”
“Ah, yes,” interrupted the woman. “I have your right brain. Stare right at my forehead and you can imagine it right rightly.” She was talking to Pfeiffer, or so it seemed. Joan leaned back in her seat, ready to enjoy what was to come.
“Dammit,” Pfeiffer mumbled, “you're provoking her.”
“But you're sitting beside her. Give her a chance.”
“Jesus God….”
“Ah, Jesus God,” said the woman. “A religious man are you, but how can you be so without the right side of your brain?”
Pfeiffer ignored her.
“Come on, talky, talky. Alas, I forgot, you don't have your right side, but hear you may with the left. But I'll bet you can't sing. Sing ‘Melancholy Baby.’ Come on, sing, Mr. Pfeiffer.”
Pfeiffer groaned at having been recognized.
“Be a sport,” Joan said. “Play along, you might learn something.”
“I've spoken to enough schizos—” he whispered angrily.
“But you don't listen to anyone.”
“She's right about that,” the woman beside them said. “But he can't really hear without his right side, now, can he?”
“Come on,” Joan said, “play along.”
“Why?” Pfeiffer asked, staring at his hands and blushing like a little boy. He really can't handle this, Joan thought, curious.
“You might learn a few subtle gambits. Try a different point of view—remember old Kraepelin's servant girl?”
Pfeiffer paused, as he was listening to his computer implant explain the case of the early twentieth-century psychiatrist who had stuck pins into a schizophrenic girl during a clinical demonstration. A later school of psychology rightly claimed that it was only a matter of viewpoint whether one thought the servant girl or the psychiatrist crazy.
“Aha,” said the woman. “Then you do have a double brain, quite correct.” And she looked at Joan as a conspiratress.
“Quite right,” Joan said. “He's got two left sides.”
“Aha,” repeated the woman. “One
side for law, the other for order.”
“What does she mean?” Pfeiffer asked Joan.
“Your computer implant, silly. Don't be so thick, talk to her.”
“You do think I'm mean?” the woman asked, preening herself.
“I don't think anything about you.”
“You're right to think me bad.”
“But I really don't care—”
“Because he has no right,” Joan said.
“Two lefts don't make a wrong,” the woman said.
“You see, she does like you….”
As the flyer made its descent, Pfeiffer sat stiffly, looking nothing but impatient to leave the plane. The woman across the aisle went back to reading with a tiny viewer, as if the conversation had never occurred.
When they debarked and were swept into the clamoring crowd of the airport, Pfeiffer said, “Don't ever do that to me again!”
“I just wanted to prove my point,” Joan said, holding close to him in the crowd, “as you were so determined to prove yours.”
“All that proved is you're both wigged-out.”
As there were no transpods to be had, they took a beltway. The public means were uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous, but Joan had an access permit to one of the complexes at Grenelle which housed a private transpod station.
“It simply proves that you can handle only one modality of thought,” Joan said. She felt hot and trapped and claustrophobic in the press of people, as she always did. Above, like moving ceilings, were more beltways, speedier ones that were express. On either side of this slower beltway were others, all congested with people and their baggage. Since the Screamer attacks, everyone on the streets except the boutades were nervous and afraid. The crowds exuded fear like perspiration; and like the noise and stink and filth of undercity streets and ways, one never became used to it.
“That conversation was idiotic,” Pfeiffer said.
“But you were positively alarmed, and quite unable to handle it. Don't you think that a bit odd—you, of all people, to get so upset over such an ‘idiotic’ thing?”
“I am not in the habit of talking crazy to crazy people. You were baiting me at the expense of that unfortunate.”
“That ‘unfortunate,’ as you call her, wasn't any more schizophrenic than you,” Joan said. “She was having it on you.”
“Not on me, she wasn't. And I thought you were so convinced that she was a schizo?”
“I was having it on you, too. I wanted to see if it were true.”
“If what were true?”
“That you can't handle anything that smacks of the right except, of course, your politics.”
“That sounds like something you got from Raymond. Am I correct?”
“Correct.” A group of boutades wearing identical one-piece suits jostled Joan as they were trying to jump off the belt onto the service catwalk below. They were all young and neatly dressed, and each one openly carried a weapon. All of them had shaven heads, which was the current unisex fashion.
“The skinheads will kill themselves,” Pfeiffer said.
“Maybe break a leg, that's all. Didn't you ever jump the walks?”
Pfeiffer shook his head, and Joan said, “I thought not.”
“You're a nasty bitch.”
Joan reached for Pfeiffer's hand. It amused her that she really did like him. There was a sudden press of people on the beltway, for the six-hour shift was changing. As usual, the Rapid Transit System seemed to be working at minimum. “Come on,” Joan said, fighting her claustrophobia, which was worsening. “Let's get off the belt.”
“And walk in the undercity?” Pfeiffer asked, surprised.
“It's not that bad, and I know the area.”
“The crowd will thin soon,” Pfeiffer said, holding on to Joan's arm.
“But I have to get off now,” Joan said, pulling away from him. Pfeiffer followed, and they pushed their way onto the slowest-moving debouchment belt. Joan felt somewhat relieved. But Pfeiffer was buzzing. “It's crazy to walk around down here. Christ, we'll get ourselves mugged, at the very least. Couldn't you have stood the crowd for such a short time?”
“No,” Joan said. “Leave it alone. I don't wish to discuss it right now.” The street was crowded, but there was at least enough room to breathe. To their left were the ever-present beltways, a river of rollways and slidewalks. Like boats on water, vendor platforms and restaurants and pleasure hutches drifted slowly past as if they were isolated from the crowds and rollways.
Joan felt a need for a narcodrine: she wanted to open up, sail through the white spaces of her mind, be private and at the same time have Pfeiffer quietly make love to her.
“You said you know this area,” Pfeiffer said. “How so?”
“It was here that the Criers first congregated—Surely you remember? It wasn't a large or a very destructive scream, but it was the first heard in Europe.” She laughed. “They even rebuilt the area, which is a damn sight better than bombing them out as they did in Baltimore.”
“The bombing was a mistake,” Pfeiffer conceded, “but it was thought to be the only way to stop the Screamers. Christ, they burned almost—”
“Bombing them only made it worse….”
“Well, this looks like any down-under slum to me,” Pfeiffer said, changing the subject, looking about as he walked. He walked very erect, as if to make himself taller. Joan held his hand, which was a bit clammy, so they would not be separated. Pfeiffer tightened his free hand around the small heat weapon concealed in his pocket. Tiers and tiers of plasteel could be seen above; dark bones studded with lights, each hard, bright speck a modular living unit. The great grid was larger than any Western arcology.
To their left as they walked was the oily, glassy water of the Seine. To the north, but not yet visible, was the destruction once known as the Quai d'Orsay: only the compounds remained. To the east were the floating cities, the cankers of Paris, as some called them. But this area, south of the Boulevard de Grenelle and the still-standing Palais de L'Unesco (now used by the military), had a fair share of police platforms and the imposing blue robots nicknamed bluebottles, blueblunders, or bevve bule. Everywhere could be seen the modular clusters, pastel-faded and filthy, beehive upon beehive of living space for the poor on the dole.
Paris had upwards of nine million people living on its levels.
“This area has become de rigueur for any self-respecting boutade,” Joan said, nodding in the direction of a group of young people, all naked to the waist and obviously proud of the male and female genitals implanted on their arms and chests. Pfeiffer scowled at a boy of about nineteen who wore his long, blond greased hair in braids; his face was rouged and lined, and he sported one large breast. Joan walked along just behind Pfeiffer, a distant look on her face.
“Any news about Raymond?” Pfeiffer asked when she was beside him once again.
“I just checked. Nothing at all, which is to the good, I suppose.”
“If there was any problem, you would be notified?”
“Yes, I would hope so, by either Pretre or Roberta. And my computer would pick up anything newsworthy on the Net. But I'm worried.”
“I'm sure everything's fine,” Pfeiffer said.
“You were right about waiting. If I'm wanted, I'll get a message.” But something is wrong, Joan thought.
“Who's this Roberta?”
“Roberta Algaard. Pretre uses her in some capacity at most of his ceremonies. She'll probably hook-in with Ray to help guide him out of the dark spaces.” It should be me, she told herself, not her.
“Then she's probably hooked in with him right now,” Pfeiffer said.
Joan shuddered and said, “No, not yet.” Pfeiffer was quite adept at finding the soft parts. But she would be calm about Ray and hold off her anxieties, for if she thought about Ray and Roberta, she would certainly scam down. For all its disguises, her love for Ray was selfish. Just now, jealousy, rather than concern, was in the ascendant. As long as he wanted her, sh
e didn't care about his other ménages. But he didn't want her tonight, when it was vital to her that they share his memory.
It just wasn't important enough to him, she thought. No, he's simply angry.
“Does that bother you?” Pfeiffer asked.
“What?”
“Roberta being with Raymond.” Pfeiffer had queried his computer about Roberta and found only that the name was a nom de plume of a minor scandlefax writer. He was disgusted with the foolish secrecy that attended all the cults.
“You know,” Joan said, upset, “I used to see a man who had been in love with a friend of mine. We would go out and then go to bed, but all he ever talked about was my friend. It used to upset me every time. I finally stopped seeing that man, although I thought quite a bit of him. So why don't we leave Ray out of our conversation until we have word of what's happened?”
Pfeiffer began to say something, stopped himself, and said, “Yes, of course. I'm sorry.”
They walked. The streets had become quite crowded, but Joan could bear it until they reached the station. If only the undercity stink were not so strong here! Not even the huge air purifiers could combat the reek of food, perspiration, defecation, and death. “Christ,” Pfeiffer said, “do they have to shit in the goddamm street?”
“Even with the dole, you'll always have those who prefer to live in the streets.”
“For God's sake, why?”
“To escape the census, among other things.”
“Doesn't make sense,” Pfeiffer said, and Joan wondered if his pun was consciously made. “And why isn't the curfew being enforced here?” he asked.
“It is being enforced, for the most part.”
“One certainly wouldn't think so.”
“One would if one knew that these streets are not nearly as crowded as they used to be,” Joan said. “Most people don't need a curfew to keep them at home.”
“Then why isn't something done about…this?” And he nodded toward a group of boutades who were shouting at each other.
“The police leave them alone, perhaps as a sop to those who have to live in the undercity. They're the modern-day folk heroes, like the cowboys and truckers of the nineteen hundreds. There's a certain attraction to that life, gruesome as it might seem. You're out of touch with what's happening, I think. That's what comes from spending too much time in diplomatic salons and corporate conferences.” She smiled. “The real action's down here.”