Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  Hell, I give her strength and stability and loving and a good deal more. It’s a fair trade.

  * * * *

  Gray eyes, her eyes, laughing at me over her bright silver flute, making me grin and stumble over the chords—my fingers made schoolboy clumsy by the lightness of my heart…

  Gray eyes—cool ivory keys and a silvery flute…

  Duet…

  * * * *

  As I approach the table she looks up and smiles shyly. “Did you have a nice walk?”

  “Yeah, it was fine.”

  There are questions in her brown eyes. No denying I did act unusual, earlier. But now I realize that I don’t have to explain anything. Give it a rest and in a few days or weeks I’ll start giving in a little to her curiosity. Chuck will explain a little. Minor stuff. No hurry.

  Why not?

  We talk about little things and spend a lot of time not talking at all. I check IDs and make sure nobody’s molesting anyone in the men’s room.

  The Boys are back on stage playing quiet songs, as I return from one of my rounds and find Elise talking to Alan Fowler at our table.

  Damn.

  Alan’s a nice, friendly grad student who’s much too bright for his own good. He met Chuck at a dirt-bike race and sort of adopted him and Elise. Chuck insults him all the time, calling him a useless egghead, but he never seems to get the hint.

  I come up behind Elise. She is very animated.

  “… not sure I understand what they hope to accomplish, Alan. You mean you could actually mine asteroids efficiently enough to make a profit selling refined metals back to Earth?”

  “That’s what the figures show, Lise.” Alan winks at me but Elise doesn’t notice.

  “You mean even after transportation costs are taken into account? Can you amortize costs over a reasonable period?”

  Chuck frowns. What is this? He doesn’t like hearing words like these from Elise. Who does she think she’s fooling?

  Alan grins. “Easily, Lise. Less than a decade, I’d guess. Of course, in the beginning it’ll be water for propellants we’ll be after. But later? Well, imagine twenty years’ worldwide platinum production coming from just one small asteroid! Why, we could easily go back to the days of the sixties and seventies when there was so much of a surplus that liberal ideas could flower …”

  I can’t help snorting in disgust. Chuck votes redneck.

  * * * *

  The secret Ark Project was responsible for over half of the mysterious inflation that hit the nation in the late seventies…Big endeavors, pipelines, bombers, space shuttles, went through design change after design change, all attributed to poor planning.

  And yet the engineers involved were the very same who had brought the Apollo Program in ahead of schedule and under budget.

  How could such incompetence appear out of nowhere? Bungled, rebuilt nuclear power plants, reworked and retooled factories, new equipment wasted and tossed away.

  Nobody bothered to check what happened to the original parts…the “flawed” equipment that had to be replaced…no one knew but a few in the highest places that the leftovers were taken to a cavern in Tennessee. Pieces of experimental windmills and redesigned submarines, prototype bombers and cancelled shuttles, the bits all cleverly fitted together into…into great globes…into beauty and eventually…

  Sure, Alan, look to space for salvation from economic woes.

  The Project was responsible for most of the mysterious inflation that hit in the late seventies…A great nation’s wealth, thrown in secret down a rat hole.

  Dream on…

  * * * *

  Elise notices me and her words stumble to a stop. But she recovers quickly. She grabs my arm as I sit down beside her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Alan got accepted!” She tries to sound accusing but is too excited to make it stick.

  I shrug. The kid had only told me about his “good luck” this morning. Chuck had offered perfunctory congratulations but had better things to do than spend all day gushing over the young idiot’s long-range suicide plan.

  “Aw, come on, Lise.” Alan grins. “It’s only a preliminary acceptance. They’re going to put me through a wringer like boot camp and final exams put together. Probably the only result will be three months lost from my research, and a permanent empathy with my experimental rats!”

  “Don’t be silly!” Elise glances at me quickly and gives in to her natural instinct to touch his sleeve in encouragement. “You’ll make it all the way. Just think how proud we’ll all be to say we knew you when!”

  Alan laughs. “I’ll tell you what would help. What I really need is some coaching from the Zen master here.”

  He jerks his thumb in my direction.

  Elise takes a fraction of a second to check the expression on my face. To me it feels stony, numb. I’m irked by this need of hers to constantly worry about my reaction, even if she’s been doing it less lately.

  I’ve never abused her. So Chuck growls! So what! She can do or say anything she wants, for crissake!

  She laughs a bit nervously. “My bear, a Zen master? What do you mean, Alan?”

  Alan grins. “I mean that one of the reasons I hang around this big grump is because he’s the closest thing to a real guru I’ve ever met.” Alan looks at Elise. “Have you ever watched him while he’s fixing bike?”

  “Are you kidding? He has a Harley torn apart in the living room. I’ve tried and tried—“

  “No. I mean really watched him! Closely! He touches every piece and meditates on it before he does anything at all to it. No part is in its place out of tempo. I used to ask him to describe what he feels when he’s in that state, but he’d just get mad and tell me to go away. Finally, I realized that the yelling was a sermon! It’s suchness he’s concentrating on. Or Tao or Wu or whatever you want to name it, only naming isn’t where it’s at, either.”

  I shake my head, muttering, “Crock of shit.” And I mean it, too. Chuck and I are in total agreement.

  Alan just laughs. “I once read a book about a meditation system just like the one Chuck uses. It was pretty popular about a decade or so back. Only I never believed it until I met Chuck. I don’t suppose he ever read the book. He just does it.”

  Alan sighs. “And that’s what I have to learn, to pass those tests in Houston. If I could move with grace and concentration like he does when he’s fixing bikes, I’d be a shoo-in. I tell you, Chuck should be the one trying for astronaut!”

  * * * *

  And that will be quite enough! Elise’s smile fades as I growl.

  “What a load of bull, Alan. I’m no…Zan master, if that’s what you call it, and I sure have better things to do than get fried in one of those money-wasting, man-killing bombs they keep setting off down at Vandenberg! If you want to be popped up like a piece of toast you just go right ahead, but don’t “enthuse” all over me, okay?”

  The damned kid just keeps grinning.

  “There! There it is again! That expression on his face. It’s the same one he had this morning when I stopped by to tell him I might get a crew slot on the space station.”

  Alan’s expression turns inward a bit, puzzled and not afraid at all to show it.

  “It’s as if he knew something I didn’t,” he murmurs. “As if he though all that was somehow child’s play.”

  If Alan were sitting just a little closer, I know I’d strangle him. If a bright young idiot like Alan Fowler can see through Chuck…what about Them?

  My face is made of sleet-swept granite. I don’t move, but let the world turn beneath me.

  Child’s play. Indeed.

  * * * *

  Imagine a year of rumors…of strange lights in the sky…

  The supermarket magazines carry a spate of UFO headlines. Several famous psychics report getting severe headaches along with alternating feelings of claustrophobia and exaltation.

  An amateur astronomer reports another of those mysterious “ventings” on the moon…

&nbs
p; Imagine flashes in the sky…

  * * * *

  The mental processes are slow. I feel tired and cranky. It’s been a long night and only at intervals have I had relief from this ridiculous internal monologue…describing everything I think or feel to an unseen audience. It’s an audience I’d rather show my backside, but that’s physiologically impossible.

  It’s just past one. I help Joey close up while over by the door Elise flirts with Dan and Jase of the band. Thank heavens the role never required that Chuck be the jealous sort. It’s good to hear her laugh. She has a nice laugh.

  When I’ve finished, I say good night to Joey and meet her at the door. The fog has disappeared, leaving a starry night that’s cool and slightly damp. I sniff, picking up the faintest strange touch of musk from the street.

  We walk slowly to my car, around back past the garbage cans. I let her in and like clockwork she leans over to unlock my side. The cold upholstery squeaks as I slide across the bench seat to put my arm around her. She shivers slightly, slipping down a little and looking up at me as if all the world depends upon my kissing her here and now.

  Her lips are soft and they move with an infectious hunger, drawing passion out of me. My hands have a volition all their own, and she responds to every caress—matching the effect on me with the little things she does with her fingernails on my back.

  Our loving has been good in the past, but never quite like this. Even with Janie it was different, but…

  I jerk my head up and moan, squeezing her against me. I pray that she thinks it’s the loving.

  My eyes squeeze shut to block out memory. Yet they fail even to stop simple tears.

  * * * *

  Imagine flashes in the sky…

  Parmin suggests the group’s orchestra hold a farewell concert for the entire Cabal. He asks specifically for a Beethoven concerto.

  Then it is time.

  The Arks lift in battle formation, and take the picket ships completely by surprise, high above the jagged highlands of the moon’s limb. The jailers barely get out a distress call before they are annihilated.

  One Ark developed engine trouble, didn’t it? Its crew and supplies were transhipped and it was buried in a cave…Then, one by one, the Arks peeled off to seek their diverse destinations…

  * * * *

  Imagine a young pilot who locks his controls, then rises to face the woman standing behind his chair.

  “Marry me, pretty lady. Will you? I’ll put the stars in your ring. You shall have a galaxy for a tiara.” He takes her by the waist and raises her high, to the cheers of his crewmates.

  Laughing gray eyes…She strokes his hair and bends over to kiss him. “Silly boy. We’re already married. Besides, I don’t want galaxies. Just one planet. That’s all.”

  He lowers her and holds her close.

  “Then a planet you shall have …”

  * * * *

  Her breath against my neck is very warm. Her breast rolls silkily against my side.

  I chose Elise because she seemed the antithesis of my former life. No one would expect to find me—to find my former self—with her, just as They would not look for someone fixing motorcycles in his living room and watching pimply kids in a country bar.

  Yet she is life to me now, is she not? Where would I be without you, Elise, to anchor me to this world?

  By their own laws They are sworn not to harm the innocent, though they would kill me on sight. Perhaps, though, when the manhunt ends and I am found, they may find it expedient to bend their rules and eliminate her as well, in case I had talked.

  I shudder at the thought. That was one of the reasons for Chuck’s antiintellectualism in the first place, to keep from letting even a word slip. Perhaps the best thing to do, the most honorable thing, would be simply to leave.

  I seem to be oscillating between flashes of painful memory and numbing calmness. Right now the pendulum is swinging back again. Suddenly everything is stark and shimmering. My head feels light, like crystal.

  Over the night sounds of the suburbs I can hear horns of the boats on the distant river. I can feel Elise’s heartbeats as I hold her. The textures that I see, in the car, in the brick wall outside my window, are vivid and intricate…like a pattern of hieroglyphs whose meanings dance at the edges of understanding.

  Would reliving the past help Janie? Or Parmin or Walter, or any of the others? How would it help to remember a terrible, useless, one-sided battle that stretched over kiloparsecs and climaxed in smoke and stench and roiling flames under a lonely mountain?

  Calmness settles in for real. The unwelcome acuity drifts away, unlamented. Holding Elise in the dark, I hardly sense the passage of time.

  * * * *

  After a nameless interval I return, cursed still with this compulsion to narrate. It is getting a bit chilly in here, and I long for sleep.

  Gently I disengage Elise and fumble the keys into the ignition lock. She, with her eyes far away, straightens her clothes. “We ought to get some of the other bikers together and throw some kind of going-away party for Alan,” she suggests. I nod and grunt amiably as I turn the keys.

  Nothing. “What the …?”

  Check neutral, try again.

  Zilch.

  My gaze drops to the headlights switch. They were left on six hours ago, when I came in for work. Now, why did I do a fool thing like that?

  There’s Elise’s old Peugeot across the lot. Typically on Fridays we come to the Yankee separately and go home together. The Yankee’s lot is safe.

  “Come on, we’ll have to use your car tonight, Elise.” I open my door.

  She looks up with a sleepy smile, then her eyes widen. “But…but my car is a mess!”

  For as long as I’ve known her she’s always been reluctant to let me near her car. When we use it she always has to “straighten it up” first. She finds excuses to keep me from driving it.

  Can you beat that? She’d give me her entire bank account if I asked for it, but I don’t have a key to her frigging car. She stands up to me there, though while she’s making excuses her voice quavers. I can’t figure it, but I recognize guts when I see it. Maybe that’s why I went along with it until now. For standing up to Chuck on this one small point I think I love her a little.

  But tonight has been hell and I’m in no mood to walk six miles.

  “Come on, Elise. You can drive but we’ve got to use your car. I’m exhausted and I want to got to bed.”

  She hesitates. Her brown eyes dart from me to the Peugeot. Then she jumps out with a forced laugh. “I’ll race you there!”

  Hell, she knows I always let her win. Except when we’re playing “catch me and ravish me.” But this isn’t one of those times.

  When I arrive she’s already behind the wheel. “Beat you again!” She giggles.

  I shrug and get in, much too numb to try figuring her out. I’ll make this as painless as possible for her by slumping down and pretending to go to sleep.

  Unfortunately, the images await me. Nowhere can I find peace.

  * * * *

  Clouds part on greens and blues and browns…a lake-speckled forest that almost stings with beauty…creatures of a million shapes, all strange and new, fill the air and land and seas…

  Like a bubble blown across light-years, a ship settles down—gently, as if loath to disturb the loveliness.

  It is a good omen, to be arriving in peace…

  * * * *

  There is a feeling I used to get quite often when I was young, that I was being watched by omniscient beings.

  It wasn’t the same as the shadow I have lived under in recent times. Though powerful, my enemies are not all-seeing.

  No. Back then, when I was a boy, it seemed as if the universe possessed a Big Eye, and a distinct taste for drama. Always I felt as if I were the central character in a great play.

  To the Big Eye it wasn’t important that you actually did anything. Even standing still watching the seagulls could be dramatic. Noble thoughts and
grand unseen gestures were what it valued most of all—the secret unrewarded honesties—the anonymous charities and the unrequited loves.

  For a time, when I was a kid, it was very clear to me that the proverbial tree falling in the unpeopled forest was, indeed, heard.

  Maybe it was crap like that that got me into this mess. Hell, Freud took the whole thing apart long ago.

  But long after I’d dismissed the Big Eye as an ego-displacement dream—a pseudo-Jamesian experience—I found it still beside me, hovering nearby as I agonized over every major decision in my life.

  Where has it gone? I wonder. Did it leave me before the Breakout? Or did it follow me to Canaan, and experience with us our lovely doomed joy?

  The rumble of the car massages my back as we pull out of the lot and onto the damp streets. I’m feeling sad, but peaceful. Maybe I would go to sleep if only Elise would drive less erratically. She seems to be in a godawful hurry to get home. I sense a shift from green to amber through my closed lids, and the brakes suddenly come on.

  I have to put my hand to the dashboard as several items tumble out from beneath my seat.

  “Hey! Take it easy!”

  She laughs. But there seems to be a new level of panic in her eyes. “What’s the matter? Don’t you trust an expert driver?”

  “Ha ha. Just try not to kill us within a mile of home, okay?” I look down at the junk that came out from under the seat. There’s a little stereo playback and headphones, and a small bound notebook. I look up. The light is still red. Elise faces ahead, her face pale.

  “What are these?”

  She jerks her head, half looking at me. “What are what?”

  “This tape player. Is this your deep, dark secret?” I smile, trying to put her at ease.

  “N—no. It—it belongs to a friend. She left it in the car when we went to lunch. I’ve got to get them back to her on Monday.”

  “What has she got on the tape?”

  “Nothing. Just some classical music, I guess. She likes that sort of thing.”