Limbo

by Bernard Wolfe

  “Efficiency!” the lecturer said. “That’s the point. With real limbs, the maximum amount of work the human organism can put out over a sustained period of time, say for an hour or so, isn’t much more than one-sixth of a horsepower. But with these self-powered jobs you can sustain indefinitely a level of work amounting to dozens or even hundreds of horsepower. Because the power doesn’t come from your body, it comes from the energy capsules. All your body does is direct that power. Man, in other words, finally K.O.’s the machine by incorporating the machine into himself! At last we’ve got the answer to EMSIAC—the machine that incorporated man into it. Isn’t that something, kids. . .?”

  An announcer came on.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “there’s great news for all Inlanders tonight. Brother Theo is back! Yes, he returned to his office in the presidential mansion just a half-hour ago, after weeks of cruising with the Olympic team and taking a much-needed rest from affairs of state. We have the privilege now of bringing you some film sequences of this training cruise which Brother Theo just turned over to us. Don’t go ’way now—our boys are in great shape, you’re about to witness some amazing action shots. . . .”

  The film began on board the training yacht, a glossy miniature of the S.S. Wiener. The boys were indeed in fine shape. They played leapfrog over thirty-foot ventilation stacks. Hurling javelins, they hit the bulls-eye on targets being towed two hundred feet behind the ship. They catapulted into the air from a standing position and did twelve or fifteen flips before landing. They balanced themselves on tight ropes with one finger, each gymnast juggling balls and rings with his free hand and both legs. Using only one hand, a man lifted a dozen others on a rope. . . . They were spry, they were bulletlike, they cavorted three-dimensionally, almost as though they had broken out of the sphere of gravitation and inertia and were roving free-orbit and weightless through outer space. It was a neuro-loco vision of space drained of determinism—space no longer a menacing outerness which trapped and isolated a man, an abyss, but suddenly an infinitude of freedom and promise on all sides, waiting for the cybernetic rape.

  Next came the d-and-d’s, the dexterities and discernments. A group of trainees were sitting on deck, some of them operating typewriters at high speed with their toes, some doing knot tricks with lengths of string. Theo, stop watch in hand, came up to one of the boys doing discernments and handed him a deck of cards.

  “There are seventy-three cards here,” Theo said. He took the cards back, held them behind him for a moment, then returned them. “Now tell me how many cards there are.” The boy weighed the cards, he looked puzzled. “The pack’s heavier now,” he said, “but not by a full number of cards. By something more than six cards, less than seven. I’d say there were, let’s see, seventy-nine and about one-fifteenth cards here.”

  “Not bad,” Theo said. “I added six cards to the deck but on one of them I pasted a postage stamp, a three-cent one. You ought to practice with stamps of different sizes, they’ll get your perceptions real sharp.”

  Another boy performed a dexterity with a pack of cards: he shuffled the deck with one hand while Theo clocked him.

  “Time’s good, Hank, two-point-nine,” he said. “And you shuffled them right, the original order’s exactly reversed. But you’ve got to watch the action of that index finger, you bent one card just a bit in the corner.”

  Theo held the damaged card up, the camera moved in for a close-up. The picture on the card’s face seemed to be a stylized drawing of a steamroller.

  The scene now shifted from the ship to land: a large group of people sitting around straw mats feasting. Martine stared. It was the communal mess hall of the Mandunji village, Ubu and the elders were sitting cross-legged with Theo and his friends, the rest of the villagers were in the background.

  “This is an interesting shot,” the announcer’s voice said. “I’ve got a note here from Brother Theo about it—these are the natives of an island off Madagascar, they’re throwing a big tapioca feed for our boys, yes, folks, I said tapioca. . . .”

  Theo was talking. Ubu listened, shoveled gobs of cereal into his mouth, listened, gobbled, a warm and trusting smile on his face. Then Theo stopped and Ubu began to speak volubly, filled his mouth, swallowed, babbled. No voices, they hadn’t been recorded on the sound track.

  Martine studied the familiar faces all around. Off to one side, Notoa: he yawned, scratched his head, a look of puzzled concentration came over his face. Further on, Moaga, a large bandana wrapped around her head, the hair hadn’t grown back yet; animated as a cabbage.

  In the far corner—Ooda. Hunched up, not eating, face frozen. Crumpled in her hand, something white—a piece of paper? Next to her Rambo, holding her hand, patting it. . . .

  Theo was the center of attraction in the scene. His presence was electric, for his own associates and for most of the villagers. He breathed galvanic authority as others emanate hesitation.

  This was the last thought in Martine’s mind as he closed his eyes and began to doze off. The man, he reflected sleepily, was a magical-mystical figure to the Inlanders, a mass-dream walking—on electronic legs. Wherever he showed up people automatically began to salaam, kowtow, genuflect, woo and curry flavor, favor, what they were compulsively after was a curry-flavored favor. He was a spellbinder by the sheer numbing weight of his presence, a hypnotic catalyst before whom people became will-less and malleable: an “It” to crush the mass “I”. . . . Man to be watched. Why, why did he tell such nonsensical lies?

  At this point Martine was asleep. Very soon he found himself out in blue space, now he was watching, not the training yacht as it rollicked around the Indian Ocean, but—a giraffe.

  Far up in the tropospheric blue, on top of a needle of a skyscraper whose base was lost in mist, was a brilliant neon sign which spelled out the words, DODGE THE STEAMROLLER! The giraffe, Martine noted uneasily, was stretching its snout up to the sign and nibbling delicately on the last word. It had already chewed off most of the exclamation point, it was about ready to begin on the final “R” and Martine was in a sweat.

  “Don’t eat those words,” he called out, aware as he spoke that what he was going to say was a bad non sequitur. “They’re not your words, why eat them? They’ll do terrible things to your stomach.” When the giraffe went right on he spoke more loudly, almost shouting: “That’s the code word, you’ll get a code in the node, don’t you understand?”

  The giraffe whinnied, maybe it was heehawing, and turned its head to look at Martine. “You’ve always got to eat your code words,” it said, voice gruff, phlegmy, touch of some East European accent. “Accents of panic? Wounded babies? There are some code words for you. But you simply won’t see what unites us, tragically, and separates us. Be stubborn.”

  “I know that poem too,” Martine called. “This is no time to be giving me poetry readings.”

  “Phuh, it’s as good a time as any.” And the giraffe assumed a mock-solemn platform manner and began to recite:

  “My giraffe-violin has by nature a low and significant sighing sound, tunnel-fashion,

  an air of being downtrodden and stuffed with itself, like that of the gluttonous big fish of the deep,

  but with, at bottom, an air of sense and of hope all the same,

  of having flown, of an arrow, which will never yield.

  Raging, engulfing me in its lamentations, in a heap of nasal thunders,

  I suddenly snatch from it almost by surprise

  such piercing, searing accents of panic or of wounded babies,

  that I myself, then, turn upon it, uneasy, seized by remorse, by despair,

  and by I know not what, which unites us, tragically, and separates us.

  “Henri Michaud, very good poet,” the giraffe said. “But be stubborn, if you want to. Deny the remorse, turn on me. Who do you think is the wounded baby, gangster? All garbage.”

  The giraffe licked its chops daintily, arched its neck still higher, and went on munching, scrunching.


  The mist began to clear away below. Looking down, Martine could make out little figures bustling around the giraffe’s feet—men with flame-throwers and whirring saws extending from their arms. At their head was Theo, authoritative as ever. Most of the men were swarming up stepladders to reach the giraffe’s bony knees. Now Theo began to climb a ladder, his uptilted balloon, respiration bladder of a babyface getting larger with each step. His hands grew out until they were twenty feet and more from his body, they were scalpels, they were scissors, they were hypodermic needles, they were snapping lobster claws. Martine’s stomach contracted as the face swelled and the claw-hands clacked.

  “Dr. Smuts, I presume?” Theo said with an ingratiating smile. “Understand, it’s not only because of the steamroller. It’s not just that. The beast has too much verticality, that’s all there is to it. Down with all verticals, as the good doctor says! We’ve got to cut him down to sighs, that’s the thing. Reconcile him to the horizon. Give him lots of more latitude, right?”

  In a moment the saws and claws began to cut into the animal’s skinny forelegs, just above the knees. It was sheer agony to Martine, he felt the searing pain in his arms, just above the elbows, white flames licking into his biceps, it was his arms they were hacking off, he was the giraffe.

  “Lay off!” he bellowed. “Listen! My work’s too important, please believe me, I must keep my hands. Haven’t you seen my cytoarchitectonic map, gentlemen? I’ve got the sure cure for tension. Besides, listen, there’s Ooda. . . .”

  He was entirely ready now to stop chewing up the neon sign (if only he could!), the slivers of glass were making mincement of his gums and tongue, but the saws kept tearing at his flesh. Numbed by the pain, his neck drooping listlessly over the top of the skyscraper, petrified, he felt the thin bones of his upper legs cracking and crumbling as the metallic teeth bore in. Any moment now his legs, paws, arms would give like peanut brittle and he would fall muzzle first into the abyss not the promise, finished for all time with knives and forceps and the things men hold in their hands when they work not play. Hypodermic needles too. A strangled, sobbing, agonized trumpet began to bleat off in the distance, Satchmo, sure enough, blowing his guts out on a chorus of “Four Or Five Times” while something, a steeple clock, a metronome, hammered out deafening tocks that made the atmosphere quake.

  “Down the length and up the breadth!” Theo shouted happily as he clipped and sawed. “That’s the long and the short of it! Down with skyscraper, up with horizon! Down mountain, up sea! Down the ups and up the downs! Off with his damned arrogant verticality! Unhand the bastard, the Smuts, he’ll find it very disarming! This’s sure to stump him!”

  Louis was singing now, blues-crooning, “Poppa, how hahd Ah is wuhkin’ to cut dese knots, oh babe. . . .” Then the matchstick legs were breaking off, the metronome was smashing in his ears, he felt his front supports going and he saw the blood spurting from the absurd little toothpick stumps that were left, his body was teetering, he was just about to drop downward, just then Louis’ throaty voice changed into another voice, harsher, stiffer, more gravelly, it wasn’t singing any more, it was lecturing, the accent had something in it of the Balkan and something of the Slavic. . . .

  “To all good Immobs I say this,” Vishinu began. “Brother Theo is a bad Immob. He lies. What good did it do this man to cut off his arms? He still keeps his tongue and with this tongue he tells imperialist lies and makes trouble. When he says he is skiing on Kilimanjaro it is garbage. When he says he is only coaching the athletes it is garbage. His athletes are also very good, trained metallurgists. He is snooping all over for columbium, not butterflies, he wants for his imperialist masters a monopoly of all the columbium in the world. This is a very dirty way for a vol-amp to act. . . .”

  Cataclasm; he crawled out of the debris of sleep. Then two things happened simultaneously.

  First, a thought that was like a blow. All this amputeeism of Immob, it was voluntary. Vol-amp: that meant, voluntary amputee. Somehow Martine knew that, knew it with finality. All these amps were vol-amps, he knew that too. It was voluntary! What good did it do Theo to cut off his arms, Vishinu asked. In that question was the answer to another question: What had happened to Theo’s arms? He had cut them off, voluntarily. All this amputeeism was voluntary, and voluntary amputeeism was somehow the essence of Immob. And he must have realized it over a month ago, when he lay hidden under the roof of his hut and, sick with anxious anticipation, listened to Theo speaking with Ubu; Theo’s words had made it clear enough then that these men willingly, eagerly, cut their own arms and legs off. But he hadn’t wanted to face the fact that it was voluntary—all the while anticipating it—from that moment on he had slammed a mental door shut on it and refused to let it out. Maybe that was why he hadn’t allowed himself to recognize Babyface: if he had, he would have had to consider why his arms were gone. He had been curious about everything else, had asked all sorts of questions, but none about how, exactly, these amps got that way—secretly he’d known, he didn’t want to be told. When he’d sent Rambo to the strangers’ camp that night, he’d instructed the kid on all sorts of questions he might pop but not a single one about the amputeeism. When Rambo had mentioned Immob, he’d changed the subject. Whenever Jerry the steward had showed signs of bringing it up, he’d changed the subject fast. Until this moment he had refused to think about it, even to acknowledge that there was anything to think about. He had avoided the word “Immob” even in his thoughts, because somehow or other it seemed to imply a voluntary side to this amputeeism. It was voluntary. That was the horror. But some even more shriveling and obscure horror lay in the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to face it, his memory bank had tried to go into a deep freeze from the moment Theo showed up, every meager recollection he’d dug up since he’d had to fight for tooth and nail. . . .

  And in the split second when he realized all this, he also realized something else. He hadn’t dreamed Vishinu’s voice. It was in the room, it had filtered into his dream from this room, it was there with him now.

  He sat up in bed. There was Vishinu on the television screen, big as life, poker-faced, massive, being interviewed by an announcer who was on the thin edge of hysteria.

  “Brother Vishinu, why, surely you don’t mean to imply—”

  “I imply nothing,” Vishinu said bluntly. “I say it plain. This cruise was not for purposes of athletics, the athletics were only for cover-up, it was a clever imperialist maneuver.”

  “But Brother Vishinu, how could you possibly know?—I mean, such information, if it is information—”

  “You want to say, such information could only come from spies and spies are outlawed by us Immobs. Phuh, spying is not needed. We have friends in various places, they communicate with us. No doubt your own officials have their correspondents equally.”

  The announcer made an effort to regain his bland public personality. “Thank you, Brother Vishinu!” he said with false, faltering heartiness. “Ladies and gentlemen, you have just heard Brother Vishinu in a surprise interview and quite a surprise it was, ha, ha. . . . This interview was arranged at Brother Vishinu’s own request, he said he had something of importance to say to all Inland Strippers, no doubt you all found his remarks as, uh, provoking as we did here in the studio. And now—”

  A uni-amp page boy came into the studio and held out a slip of paper. The announcer read the note, then raised startled eyes to the camera.

  “Here’s an exciting development, ladies and gentlemen!” he said tensely. “Word has just come from the capital that Brother Theo heard Brother Vishinu’s remarks and wishes to reply to them. Hold tight, now—take it away, L.A.!”

  The screen was in darkness for a second, then Theo flashed on. He was sitting at a desk, on the wall behind him there hung a large silken scroll with the words, DODGE THE STEAMROLLER!

  “I’ve just been back in the capital a couple of hours,” he said. “Naturally, I was just as shocked as all of you by Brother Vishinu’s words. I
cannot and will not question his sincerity, of course, but I most definitely want to question his facts. Brother Vishinu is badly misinformed, and that can make trouble. It was mostly misinformation that led the East and the West to go to war with each other in the old days. Even today, under Immob, it can do lots of mischief between Immob peoples and nations. So lets get the facts straight by all means.

  “What are the facts? Well, the facts about columbium aren’t too good, we all know that. We need this awfully rare metal for practically all the vital parts of our pros and there just isn’t very much of the stuff around. So we can understand Brother Vishinu’s concern about this precious material—we’re concerned too. But why should this concern lead to mutual suspicion? After all, it’s a problem facing the whole Immob world, and we ought to approach it as one world. Through international conferences the Himalayas and the North Pole have been designated as East Union territory, and the Andes and the South Pole as Inland Strip territory. Fair enough, isn’t it? Then where the heck is all this imperialism and monopoly? What’s imperialistic about divvying things up fifty-fifty?”