Amis, Martin - Einstein's Monsters (v1.0)

by Einstein's Monsters(Lit)

  Dan's Notebook

  Only the mosquitoes love me. Only the mosquitoes love my blood.

  I look up from writing those words and on the other side of the wire screen eight or nine of them are clustered, two feet away, forming the shape of my face as surely as the stars delineate Draco, the firebreather, up in the circumpolar heavens. They are waiting. Soon I will go to them, my pretty ones. With the help of my size inconstancy they will change, in far less than a second, from flecks of foulness to horn-nosed hummingbirds as they settle and sip (heat-seeking, blood-seeking) on my open face.

  The pile of the lake grows critical. And the baby is asking me why I am waiting.

  "Tyramine," she will typically begin (after calling my name for hour after hour). "Bufotenine. Sorotonin. Malvaria. Reserpine. Spermadine. Tyramine."

  Later I looked up and the "baby" was standing over my bed. With tears stinging the bites on my cheeks I begged her to return quietly to her room and cease this miserable experiment, but her eyes were lit by all the glitter-sizzle of schizophrenia as she told me how—together—we might end our trial by fire. She wants me to take her out into the sleeping warhead of Flame Lake, and so foreclose the great suspense. Even now, in the dead of night, as we both knew, the water would be black and boiling like vulcan pitch while, above, the leptons of the stars warily encircled the waiting Earth and its strong force. Toward dawn she left me, with a warning. But I know tonight I must decide.

  I think it's cruel and senseless that in the daytime, when we might discuss things rather more sensibly, the baby just lies there smiling and pretends to be a baby.

  Ned's Diary

  August 6. I ought to describe this morning's events in as much detail as I can muster. I rose at eight and fixed a pot of coffee, Fran being something of a late starter, since the baby. Apparently Dan was not yet up, which surprised me —he is usually there in the kitchen, patiently waiting. I drank a cup and looked out into Flame Lake. And into broken weather. The water was heavily cured in mist, its colorlessness touched with dabs of silver, dabs of gold. I remember thinking: So the lake was a dud, a fizzle—it never quite went off. I opened the door to Dan's room and the coffee cup dropped from my hand and broke, silently, so it seemed. The bedclothes and curtains had been torn to pieces, torn to rags. As I stood there and stared I had the sense of great violence, violence compressed and controlled —everything was scrunched up, squeezed, strangled, impacted, imploded. Yes, and there were bites on the wooden surfaces, deep bites, and long scratch marks on the walls. I went outside and at once I saw his thin body, face-down in the shallows. ... I woke Fran. I called Sheriff Groves. I called Dr. Slizard, who showed shock but no surprise. Then we straightened the whole thing out. Fortunately it would seem that the baby slept through it all. She's fine, and the commotion hasn't appeared to unsettle her. She just looks around every now and then, wonderingly—for him, for Dan. Sweet Jesus, the poor, poor kid. He would have been thirteen in January.

  * * *

  I don't know what is wrong. I have just read Dan's notebook, before sending it off to Slizard at the Section, as requested. I feel a fool, and an old one. To a culpable extent I lacked—I lacked insight. And what else? I have just read Dan's notebook and all I have in my head is a thought straight out of left field. Yesterday, at breakfast, Dan was there. As he drank his juice he gazed at the backs of the cereal boxes. What could be more—what could be more natural? I used to do that myself as a kid: toy-aircraft designs, send-in competitions, funnies, waffle and cookie recipes. But now? On the back of the high-fiber bran package there are dietary tips for avoiding cancer. On the back of the half-gallon carton of homogenized, pasteurized, vitamin D-fortified milk there are two mugshots of smiling children, gone, missing. (Have You Seen Them?). Date of birth, 7/ 7/79. Height, 3'6". Hair, brown. Eyes, blue. Missing, and missed, too, I'll bet—oh, most certainly. Done away with, probably, fucked and thrown over a wall somewhere, fucked and murdered, yeah, that's the most likely thing. I don't know what is wrong.

  THE TIME DISEASE

  Twenty-twenty, and the time disease is epidemic. In my credit group, anyway. And yours too, friend, unless I miss my guess. Nobody thinks about anything else anymore. Nobody even pretends to think about anything else anymore. Oh yeah, except the sky, of course. The poor sky. . . . It's a thing. It's a situation. We all think about time, catching time, coming down with time. I'm still okay, I think, for the time being.

  I took out my hand mirror. Everybody carries at least one hand mirror now. On the zip trains you see whole carloads jackknifed over in taut scrutiny of their hairlines and eye sockets. The anxiety is as electric as the twanging cable above our heads. They say more people are laid low by time-anxiety than by time itself. But only time is fatal. It's a problem, we agree, a definite feature. How can you change the subject when there's only one subject? People don't want to talk about the sky. They don't want to talk about the sky, and I don't blame them.

  I took out my hand mirror and gave myself a ten-second scan: lower gumline, left eyelash count. I felt so heartened that I moved carefully into the kitchen and cracked out a beer. I ate a hero, and a ham salad. I lit another cigarette. I activated the TV and keyed myself in to the Therapy Channel. I watched a seventy-year-old documentary about a road-widening scheme in a place called Orpington, over in England there. . . . Boredom is meant to be highly prophylactic when it comes to time. We are all advised to experience as much boredom as we possibly can. To bore somebody is said to be even more sanative than to be bored oneself. That's why we're always raising'our voices in company and going on and on about anything that enters our heads. Me I go on about time the whole time: a reckless habit. Listen to me. I'm at it again.

  The outercom sounded. I switched from Therapy to Intake, No visual. "Who is it?" I asked the TV. The TV told me. I sighed and put the call on a half-minute hold. Soothing music. Boring music. . . . Okay—you want to hear my theory? Now, some say that time was caused by congestion, air plague, city life (and city life is the only kind of life there is these days). Others say that time was a result of the first nuclear conflicts (limited theater, Persia v. Pakistan, Zaire v. Nigeria, and so on, no really big deal or anything: they took the heat and the light, and we took the cold and the dark; it helped fuck the sky, that factor) and more particularly of the saturation TV coverage that followed: all day the screen writhed with flesh, flesh dying or living in a queer state of age. Still others say that time was an evolutionary consequence of humankind's ventures into space (they shouldn't have gone out there, what with things so rocky back home). Food, pornography, the cancer cure. . . . Me I think it was the twentieth century that did it. The twentieth century was all it took.

  "Hi there, Happy," I said. "What's new?"

  "... Lou?" her voice said warily. "Lou, I don't feel so good."

  "That's not new. That's old."

  "I don't feel so good. I think it's really happening this time."

  "Oh, sure."

  Now this was Happy Farraday. That's right: the TV star. The Happy Farraday. Oh, we go way back, Happy and me.

  "Let's take a look at you," I said. "Come on, Happy, give me a visual on this."

  The screen remained blank, its dead cells seeming to squirm or hover. On impulse I switched from Intake to Daydrama. There was Happy, full face to camera, vividly doing her thing. I switched back. Still no visual. I said, "I just checked you out on the other channel. You're in superb shape. What's your factor?"

  "It's here," said her voice. "It's time."

  TV stars are especially prone to time-anxiety—to time too, it has to be said. Why? Well, I think we're looking at an occupational hazard here. It's a thing. True, the work could hardly be more boring. Not many people know this, but all the characters in the Armchair, Daydrama, and Proscenium channels now write their own lines. It's a new gimmick, intended to promote formlessness, to combat sequentiality, and so on: the target-research gurus have established that this goes down a lot better with the homebound. Besides,
all the writing talent is in game-conception or mass-therapy, doing soothe stuff for the nonemployed and other sections of the populace that are winding down from being functional. There are fortunes to be made in the leisure and assuagement industries. The standout writers are like those teenage billionaires in the early days of the chip revolution. On the other hand, making money—like reading and writing, come to that—dangerously increases your time-anxiety levels. Obviously. The more money you have, the more time you have to worry about time. It's a thing. Happy Farraday is top credit, and she also bears the weight of TV fame (where millions know you or think they do), that collective sympathy, identification, and concern that, I suspect, seriously depletes your time-resistance. I've started to keep a kind of file on this. I'm beginning to think of it as reciprocity syndrome, one of the new—

  Where was I? Yeah. On the line with Happy here. My mind has a tendency to wander. Indulge me. It helps, time-wise.

  "Okay. You want to tell me what symptoms you got?" She told me. "Call a doctor," I joked. "Look, give me a break. This is—what? The second time this year? The third?"

  "It's different this time."

  "It's the new role, Happy. That's all it is." In her new series on Daydrama, Happy was playing the stock part of a glamorous forty-year-old with a bad case of time-anxiety. And it was getting to her—of course it was. "You know where I place the blame? On your talent! As an actress you're just too damn good. Greg Buzhardt and I were—"

  "Save it, Lou," she said. "Don't bore me out. It's real. It's time."

  "I know what you're going to do. I know what you're going to do. You're going to ask me to drive over."

  "I'll pay."

  "It's not the money, Happy, it's the time."

  "Take the dollar lane."

  "Wow," I said. "You're, you must be kind of serious this time."

  So I stood on the shoulder, waiting for Roy to bring up my Horsefly from the stacks. Well, Happy is an old friend and one of my biggest clients, also an ex-wife of mine, and I had to do the right thing. For a while out there I wasn't sure what time it was supposed to be or whether I had a day or night situation on my hands—but then I saw the faint tremors and pulsings of the sun, up in the east. The heavy green light sieved down through the ripped and tattered troposphere, its fissures as many-eyed as silk or pantyhose, with a liquid quality too, churning, changing. Green light: let's go. . . . I had a bad scare myself the other week, a very bad scare. I was in bed with Danuta and we were going to have a crack at making love. Okay, a dumb move—but it was her birthday, and we'd been doing a lot of tranquilizers that night. I don't happen to believe that lovemaking is quite as risky as some people say. To hear some people talk, you'd think that sex was a suicide pact. To hold hands is to put your life on the line. "Look at the time-fatality figures among the under classes," I tell them. They screw like there's no tomorrow, and do they come down with time? No, it's us high-credit characters who are really at risk. Like me and Danuta. Like Happy. Like you. . . . Anyway, we were lying on the bed together, as I say, seminude, and talking about the possibility of maybe getting into the right frame of mind for a little of the old pre-foreplay—when all of a sudden I felt a rosy glow break out on me like sweat. There was this clogged inner heat, a heavy heat, with something limitless in it, right in the crux of my being. Well, I panicked. You always tell yourself you're going to be brave, dignified, stoical. I ran wailing into the bathroom. I yanked open the triple mirror; the automatic scanlight came on with a crackle. I opened my eyes and stared. There I stood, waiting. Yes, I was clear, I was safe. I broke down and wept with relief. After a while Danuta helped me back into bed. We didn't try to make love or anything. No way. I felt too damn good. I lay there dabbing my eyes, so happy, so grateful—my old self again.

  "You screw much, Roy?"

  "—Sir?"

  "You screw much, Roy?"

  "Some. I guess."

  Roy was an earnest young earner of the stooped, mustachioed variety. He seemed to have burdensome responsibilities; he even wore his cartridge belt like some kind of hernia strap or spinal support. This was the B-credit look, the buffer-class look. Pretty soon, they project, society will be equally divided into three sections. Section B will devote itself entirely to defending section A from section C. I'm section A. I'm glad I have Roy and his boys on my side.

  "Where you driving to today, sir?" he asked as he handed me my car card.

  "Over the hills and far away, Roy. I'm going to see Happy Farraday. Any message?"

  Roy looked troubled. "Sir," he said, "you got to tell her about Duncan. The new guy at the condo. He has an alcohol thing. Happy Farraday doesn't know about it yet. Duncan, he sets fire to stuff, with his problem there."

  "His problem, Roy? That's harsh, Roy."

  "Well, okay. I don't want to do any kind of value thing here. Maybe it was, like when he was a kid or something. But Duncan has an alcohol situation there. That's the truth of it, Mr. Goldfader. And Happy Farraday doesn't know about it yet. You got to warn her. You got to warn her, sir —right now, before it's too late."

  I gazed into Roy's handsome, imploring, deeply stupid face. The hot eyes, the tremulous cheeks, the mustache. Jesus Christ, what difference do these guys think a mustache is going to make to anything? For the hundredth time I said to him, "Roy, it's all made up. It's just TV, Roy. She writes that stuff herself. It isn't real."

  "Now I don't know about none of that," he said, his hand splayed in quiet propitiation. "But I'd feel better in my mind if you'd warn her about Duncan's factor there."

  Roy paused. With some difficulty he bent to dab at an oil stain on his superwashable blue pants. He straightened up with a long wheeze. Being young, Roy was, of course, incredibly fat—for reasons of time. We both stood there and gazed at the sky, at the spillages, the running colors, at the great chemical betrayals. ...

  "It's bad today," said Roy. "Sir? Mr. Goldfader? Is it true what they say, that Happy Farraday's coming down with time?"

  Traffic was light and I was over at Happy's before I knew it. Traffic is a problem, as everybody keeps on saying. It's okay, though, if you use the more expensive lanes. We have a five-lane system here in our county: free, nickel, dime, quarter, and dollar (that's nothing, five, ten, twenty-five, or a hundred dollars a mile)—but of course the free lane is non-operational right now, a gridlock, a caravan, a linear breakers' yard of slumped and frazzled heaps, dead rolling stock that never rolls. They're going to have a situation there with the nickel lane too, pretty soon. The thing about driving anywhere is, it's so unbelievably boring. Here's another plus: since the ban on rearview mirrors, there's not much scope for any time-anxiety. They had to take the mirrors away, yes sir. They got my support on that. The concentration-loss was a real feature, you know, driving along and checking out your crow's feet and hair-line, all at the same time. There used to be a party atmosphere out on the throughway, in the cheap lanes where mobility is low or minimal. People would get out of their cars and horse around. Maybe it still goes on, for all I know. The dividing barriers are higher now, with the new Boredom Drive, and you can't really tell what gives. I did see something interesting though. I couldn't help it. During the long wait at the security intersect, where even the dollar lane gets loused up by all the towtrucks and ambulances—and by the great fleets of copbikes and squadcars—I saw three runners, three time punks, loping steadily across the disused freightlane, up on the East Viaduct. There they were, as plain as day: shorts, sweatshirts, running-shoes. The stacked cars all sounded their horns, a low furious bellow from the old beasts in their stalls. A few dozen cops appeared with bullhorns and tried to talk them down—but they just gestured and ran defiantly on. They're sick in the head, these punks, though I guess there's a kind of logic in it somewhere. They do vitamins, you know. Yeah. They work out and screw around; they have their nihilistic marathons. I saw one up close down at the studios last week. A security guard found her running along the old outer track. They asked her some questions an
d then let her go. She was about thirty, I guess. She looked in terrible shape.

  And so I drove on, without incident. But even through the treated glass of the windshield I could see and sense the atrocious lancings and poppings in the ruined sky. It gets to you. Stare at the blazing noon of a high-watt bulb for ten or fifteen minutes then shut your eyes, real tight and sudden. That's what the sky looks like. You know, we pity it, or at least I do. I look at the sky and I just think . . . ow. Whew. Oh, the sky, the poor sky.

  * * *

  Happy Farraday had left a priority clearance for me at Realty HQ, so I didn't have to hang around that long. To tell you the truth, I was scandalized by how lax and perfunctory the security people were becoming. It's always like this, after a quiet few weeks. Then there's another shitstorm from Section C, and all the writs start flying around again. In the cubicle I put my clothes back on and dried my hair. While they okayed my urinalysis and x-ray congruence tests, I watched TV in the commissary. I sat down, delicately, gingerly (you know how it is, after a strip search), and took three clippings out of my wallet. These are for the file. What do you think?

  Item 1, from the news page of Screen Week:

  In a series of repeated experiments at the Valley Chemistry Workshop, Science Student Edwin Navasky has "proven" that hot water freezes faster than cold. Said Edwin, "We did the test four times." Added Student Adviser Joy Broadener: "It's a feature. We're real baffled."

  Item 2, from the facts section of Armchair Guide:

  Candidate Day McGwire took out a spot on Channel 29 last Monday. Her purpose: to deny persistent but unfounded rumors that she suffered from heart trouble. Sadly, she was unable to appear. The reason: her sudden hospitalization with a cardiac problem.

  Item 3, from the update column of Television:

  Meteorological Pilot Lars Christer reported another sighting of "The Thing Up There" during a routine low-level flight. The location: 10,000 feet above Lake Baltimore. His description: "It was kind of oval, with kind of a black circle in the center." The phenomenon is believed to be a cumulus or spore formation. Christer's reaction: "I don't know what to make of it. It's a thing."