Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  * * * *

  All the way home, Helen and I said nothing to each other. Nothing about Toby, nothing about Xavier’s, nothing about miracles—nothing.

  Weirdly, cruelly, my thoughts centered on rabbits. How I would no longer be able to abide their presence in my life. How I would tremble with rage whenever my career required me to criticize a copy of Peter Rabbit or an Easter card bearing some grinning bunny. I might even start seeking the animals out, leaving a trail of mysterious, mutilated corpses in my wake, whiskers plucked, ears torn off, tails severed from their rumps and stuffed down their throats.

  Total silence. Not one word.

  We entered the elevator, pushed 30. The car made a sudden, rapid ascent, like a pearl diver clambering toward the air: second floor, seventh, twelfth…

  “How are you feeling?” I said at last.

  “Not good,” Helen replied.

  “‘Not good’—is that all? ‘Not good’? I feel horrible.”

  “In my case, ‘horrible’ would not be a truthful word.”

  “I feel all knotted and twisted. Like I’m a glove, and somebody’s pulled me inside out”—a bell rang, the numeral 30 flashed above our heads—“and my vital parts, my heart and lungs, they’re naked and—”

  “You’ve been reading too many of the poems you deconstruct.”

  “I hate your coldness, Helen.”

  “You hate my candor.”

  I left the car, started down the hall. Imagined exchanges haunted me—spectral words, ghostly vocables, scenes from an intolerable future.

  Dad, what are these lumps under my arms?

  Swollen lymph nodes, Toby.

  Am I sick, Dad?

  Sicker than you can imagine. You have Xavier’s Plague.

  Will I get better?

  No.

  Will I get warm?

  No.

  Will I die?

  Yes.

  What happens when you die, Dad? Do you wake up somewhere else?

  There’s no objective evidence for an afterlife, and anecdotal reports of heaven cannot be distinguished from wishful thinking, self-delusion, and the effects of oxygen loss on the brain.

  The apartment had turned against me. Echoes of Toby were everywhere, infecting the living room like the virus now replicating in his cells—a child-sized boot, a dozen stray checkers, the miniature Crusaders’ castle he’d built out of balsa wood the day before he went to camp. “How do you like it, Dad?” he’d asked as he set the last turret in place. “It’s somewhat ugly,” I’d replied, flinching at the truth. “It’s pretty lopsided,” I’d added, sadly noting the tears welling up in my son’s eyes.

  On the far wall, the picture window beckoned. I crossed our rugless floor, pressed my palms against the glass. A mile away, a neon sign blazed atop the cathedral in Galileo Square. assuming god exists, jesus may have been his son.

  Helen went to the bar and made herself a dry martini, flavoring it with four olives skewered on a toothpick like kabobs. “I wish our son weren’t dying,” she said. “I truly wish it.”

  An odd, impossible sentence formed on my tongue. “Whatever happens, Toby won’t learn the truth.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard Prendergorst—in the Nightmare Era, terminal patients sometimes tapped their bodies’ natural powers of regeneration. It’s all a matter of attitude. If Toby believes there’s hope, he might have a remission.”

  “But there isn’t any hope.”

  “Maybe.”

  “There isn’t.”

  “I’ll go to him, and I’ll say, ‘Buddy, soon the doctors will…the doctors, any day now, they’ll…they’ll c-c…’”

  Cure you—but instead my conditioning kicked in, a hammerblow in my skull, a hot spasm in my chest.

  “I know the word, Jack. Stop kidding yourself. It’s uncivilized to carry on like this.” Helen sipped her martini. “Want one?”

  “No.”

  I fixed on the metropolis, its bright towers and spangled skyscrapers rising into a misty, starless night. Within my disordered brain, a plan was taking shape, as palpable as any sculpture I’d ever deconstructed at the Wittgenstein.

  “They’re out there,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “They can lie. And maybe they can teach me to lie.”

  “You’re talking irrationally, Jack. I wish you wouldn’t talk irrationally.”

  It was all clear now. “Helen, I’m going to become one of them—I’m going to become a dissembler.” I pulled my hand away, leaving my palm imprinted on the glass like a fortune-teller’s logo. “And then I’m going to convince Toby he has a chance.”

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  “Somehow they’ve gotten around the burn. And if they can, I can.”

  Helen lifted the toothpick from her martini glass and sucked the olives into her mouth. “Toby’s hair will start shedding in two weeks. He’s certain to ask what that means.”

  Two weeks. Was that all I had? “I’ll say it means n-n-nothing.” A common illness, I’d tell him. A disease easily licked.

  “Jack—don’t.”

  A mere two weeks. A feeble fourteen days.

  I ran to the kitchen, snatched up the phone. I need to see you, I’d tell her. This isn’t about sex, Martina.

  610-400.

  It rang three times, then came a distant click, ominous and hollow. “The number you have reached,” ran the recorded operator in a harsh, gravelly voice, “is out of service.” My bowels became as hard and cold as a glacier. “Probably an unpaid bill,” the taped message continued. “We’re pretty quick to disconnect in such cases.”

  “Out of service,” I told Helen.

  “Good,” she said.

  7 Lackluster Lane, Descartes Borough.

  Helen polished off her martini. “Now let’s forget this ridiculous notion,” she said. “Let’s face the future with honesty, clearheadedness, and…”

  But I was already out the door.

  * * * *

  Girding the gray and oily Pathogen River, Lackluster Lane was alive with smells: scum, guano, sulphur, methane, decaying eels—a cacophony of stench blaring through the shell of my Adequate. “And, of course, at the center of my opposition to abortion,” said the somber priest on my car radio, “is my belief that sexual intercourse is a fundamentally disgusting practice to begin with.” This was the city’s frankest district, a mass of defunct fishmarkets and abandoned warehouses piled together like dead cells waiting to be sloughed off. “You might even say that, like many of my ilk, I have an instinctive horror of the human body.”

  And suddenly there it was, Number 7, a corrugated tin shanty sitting on a cluster of pylons rising from the Pathogen like mortally ill trees. Gulls swung through the summer air, dropping their guileless excrement on the dock; water lapped against the moored hull of a houseboat, the Average Josephine—a harsh, sucking sound, as if a pride of invisible lions were drinking there. I pulled over.

  A series of narrow, jackknifing gangplanks rose from the nearest pier like a sliding board out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari—one of my most memorable forays into film criticism—eventually reaching the landing outside Martina’s door. I climbed. I knocked. Nothing. I knocked again, harder. The door drifted open. I called, “Martina?”

  The place had been stripped, emptied out like the Hob’s hare whose photo I’d seen that morning in Prendergorst’s office. The front parlor contained a crumpled beer can, a mousetrap baited with calcified cheddar, some cigarette butts—and nothing else. I went to the kitchen. The sink held a malodorous broth of water, soap, grease, and cornflakes. The shelves were empty. “Martina?

  Martina?”

  In the back room, a naked set of rusting bedsprings sat on a pinewood frame so crooked it might have come from Toby’s workshop.

  I returned to the hot, sour daylight, paused on Martina’s landing. A wave of nausea rolled through me, straight to my putative soul.

  Out on the river, a Brutality
Squad cutter bore down on an outboard motorboat carrying two men in green ponchos. Evidently they were attempting to escape—every paradise will have its dissidents, every Utopia its defectors—an ambition abruptly thwarted as a round of machine-gun fire burst from the cutter, killing both fugitives instantly. Their corpses fell into the Pathogen, reddening it like dye markers. I felt a quick rush of qualified sympathy. Such fools. Didn’t they know that for most intents and a majority of purposes Veritas was as good as it gets?

  “Some people…”

  I looked toward the dock. A tall, fortyish, excruciatingly thin man in hip boots and a tattered white sweatshirt stood on the foredeck of Average Josephine.

  “…are so naive,” he continued. “Imagine, trying to run the channel in broad daylight.” He reached through a hole in his shirt and scratched his hairy chest. “Your girlfriend’s gone.”

  “Are you referring to Martina Coventry?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “The little synecdochic cunt owes me two hundred dollars in rent.”

  I descended through the maze of gangplanks. “You’re her landlord?”

  “Mister, in my wretched life I’ve acquired three things of value—this houseboat, that shanty, and my good name.” Martina’s landlord stomped his boot on the deck. He had an extraordinarily chaotic and unseemly beard, like a bird’s nest constructed under a bid system. “You know how much a corporation vice president typically pulls down in a month? Twelve thousand. I’m lucky to see that in a year. Clamming’s a pathetic career.”

  “Clamming?”

  “Well, you can’t make a living renting out a damn shanty, that’s for sure,” said Martina’s landlord. “Of course, you can’t make one clamming either. You from the Squad? Is Coventry wanted by the law?”

  “I’m not from the Squad.”

  “Good.”

  “But I have to find her. It’s vital.” I approached within five feet of the landlord. He smelled like turtle food. “Can you give me any leads?”

  “Not really. Want some clam chowder? I raked ’em up myself.”

  “You seem like a highly unsanitary person. How do I know your chowder won’t make me ill?”

  He smiled, revealing a severe shortage of teeth. “You’ll have to take your chances.”

  And that’s how I ended up in the snug galley of Average Josephine, savoring the best clam chowder I’d ever eaten.

  His name was Boris—Boris the Clamdigger—and he knew almost as little about Martina as I did. They’d had sex once, in lieu of the rent. Afterwards, he’d read some of her doggerel, and thought it barely suitable for equipping an outhouse. Evidently she’d been promised a job writing greeting-card verses for Cloying and Coy: they’d reneged; she’d run out of cash; she’d panicked and fled.

  “‘Vital,’” Boris muttered. “You said ‘vital,’ and I can tell from your sad eyes, which are a trifle beady, a minor flaw in your moderately handsome face—I can tell ‘vital’ was exactly what you meant. It’s a heavy burden you’re carrying around, something you’d rather not discuss. Don’t worry, Jack, I won’t pry. You see, I rather like you, even though you probably make a lot of money. How much do you make?”

  I stared at my chowder, lumpy with robust clams and bulbous potatoes. “Two thousand a month.”

  “I knew it,” said Boris. “Of course, that’s nothing next to what a real estate agent or a borough rep pulls down. What field?”

  “Art criticism.”

  “I’ve got to get out of clams. I’ve got to get out of Veritas, actually—a dream I don’t mind sharing with somebody who’s not a Squad officer. It’s a big planet, Jack. One day I’ll just pull up anchor and whoosh—I’m gone.”

  The shock and indignation I should have felt at such perverse musings would not come. “Boris, do you believe in miracles?” I asked.

  “There are times when I don’t believe in anything else. How’s the chowder?”

  “Terrific.”

  “I know.”

  “May I have some more?”

  “No—I want to save the rest for myself.”

  “I don’t see how you’d ever escape,” I said. “The Squad would shoot you down.”

  “Probably.” My host swallowed a large spoonful of his exquisite chowder. “At least I’d be getting out of clams.”

  Four

  Monday: back to work, my flesh like lead, my blood like liquid mercury. I’d spent the previous week locked in the Wittgenstein’s tiny screening room, scrutinizing the fruit of Hollywood’s halcyon days and confirming the archaeologists’ suspicions that these narratives contained not one frame of truth, and now it was time to deconstruct them, Singin’ in the Rain, Doctor Zhivago, Rocky, the whole deceiving lot. Hour followed hour, day melded into day, but my routine never varied: filling the bathtubs, dumping in the 35mm negatives, watching the triumph of Clorox over illusion. Like souls leaving bodies, the Technicolor emulsions floated free of their bases, disintegrating in the potent, purifying bleach.

  My heart wasn’t in it. Cohn, Warner, Mayer, Thalberg, Selznick—these men were not my enemies. Au contraire, I wanted to be like them; I wanted to be them. Whatever one might say against Hollywood’s moguls, they could all have blessed their ailing children with curative encouragement and therapeutic falsehoods.

  Stanley Marcus stayed away until Thursday, when he suddenly appeared in my coffee cubicle as I was dispiritedly consuming a tuna-fish sandwich and attempting, without success, to drown my sorrows in caffeine. Saying nothing, he took up his broom and swept the floor with slow, morose strokes.

  “That recommendation letter was pretty nasty,” he said at last, sweating in the July heat. “I wish you hadn’t called me a toady.”

  “I had a choice?”

  “I didn’t get the promotion.”

  “It’s not easy for me to pity you,” I said through a mouthful of tuna, mayo, and Respectable Rye. “I have a sick son. Only lies can cure him.”

  Stanley rammed his broom into the floor. “Look, I’m a ridiculous person, we all know that. Women want nothing to do with me. I’m a loner. Don’t talk to me about your home life, Mr. Sperry. Don’t talk about your lousy son.”

  I blanched and trembled. “Fuck you figuratively, Stanley Marcus!”

  “Fuck you figuratively, Jack Sperry!” He clutched the broom against his bosom, pivoted on his heel, and fled.

  I finished my coffee and decided to make some more, using a double helping of crystals from my Donaldson’s Drinkable jar.

  Back in the shop, yet another stack of 35mm reels awaited my review, a celluloid tower stretching clear to the ceiling. As Donaldson’s Drinkable cavorted, so to speak, through my neurons, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. I dissolved The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, stripped Citizen Kane and King Kong down to the acetate, rid the world of Top Hat, A Night at the Opera, and—how blatant can a prevaricator get?—It’s a Wonderful Life.

  The end-of-day whistle blew, a half-dozen steamy squeals echoing throughout the Wittgenstein. As the sixth cry faded away, a seventh arose, human, female—familiar.

  “Way to go, critic!”

  I glanced up from my tub of Clorox, where Casablanca, was currently burbling toward oblivion. The doorway framed her.

  “Martina? Martina?”

  “Hello, Jack.” Her silver lamé dress hugged her every contour like some elaborate skin graft. A matching handbag swung from her shoulder. I’d never seen a Veritasian outfitted so dishonestly before—but then, of course, Martina was evidently much more than a Veritasian.

  ‘The guard let you through?” I asked, astonished.

  “After I agreed to copulate with him tomorrow, yes.”

  The truth? A half-truth? There was no way, I realized with a sudden pang of anxiety, to gauge this woman’s sincerity. “I’m extraordinarily happy to see you,” I said. “I went to that address you gave me, but—”

  “Just once I’d like to meet a man whose g
enitalia didn’t rule his life.”

  “I wanted to talk with you, that’s all. A talk. I ran into Boris the Clamdigger.”

  Opening her silver handbag, Martina retrieved a one-liter bottle of Charlie’s Cheapdrunk and a pair of Styrofoam cups. “Did he mention anything about two hundred bucks?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s not going to get it.” She set the cups on my workbench and filled them with mud-colored wine. “I suppose he told you we had sex?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hell, Jack, you know more about my private life than I do.” She seized her cup of Charlie’s and sashayed around the shop, breasts rolling like channel buoys on Becket Bay, hips swaying like mounds of dough being hefted by a pizza chef.

  It was all lost on me, every bounce and bob. My urges had died when Prendergorst said fatal; I’d been gelded by an adjective.

  Grabbing my wine, I swilled it down in one gulp.

  “So this is where it all happens.” Martina stopped before my tool rack, massaging my axes, fondling my tin snips, running her fingers over my saws, pliers, and drills. “Impressive…”

  “Where are you living now?” I asked, refilling my cup.

  “With my girlfriend. I can’t afford anything better— Cloying and Coy turned down my Mother’s Day series.” She finished off her Charlie’s. “Which reminds me—you know that page of doggerel I gave you?”

  Like a chipmunk loading up on acorns, I inflated my cheeks with wine. I swallowed. “Those verses have never left my mind. As it were.”

  Martina frowned severely, apparently puzzled by the notion that her doggerel was in any way memorable. “I want them back. You never liked them in the first place.”

  The wine was everywhere now, warming my hands and feet, massaging my brain. “They’re somewhat appealing, in their own vapid way.”

  Hips in high gear, she moved past the seething remains of Casablanca, reached the door, and snapped the deadbolt into place. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I let them go. I always save my original manuscripts. I’ll gladly give you a copy.”