Evil Water and Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  And somewhere out there my soulmate is longing for me. And I for her, or him.

  It could be you. Couldn’t it?

  Just let me try you out. Please.

  “Chartreuse and truffles?

  “Bardot and guillotines?

  “Bonbons and tricolors?”

  I’m waiting.

  WINDOWS

  “Where do Windows come from, Danny?”

  ‘That’s easy. They come from Mars.”

  “Mars is where the Venturer expedition found them. Where do you suppose they originally came from?”

  “Can I have a Window for my birthday, Dad?”

  “If you can tell me—”

  “Unfair! Nobody knows.”

  “Take a guess.”

  “Maybe Martians made them.”

  “What Martians, Danny?”

  “Maybe Windows are Martians!”

  “So how did they make baby Martians?”

  “You break off one Window and stick it in the ground on its own. A second Window grows from one of the edges; at, er, forty-five degrees. Then a third Window grows from the second—which makes a triad. A triad of Windows is like a big prism that’s hollow.”

  “What then?”

  “Nothing—till you pull a Window loose and start again.”

  “So for Windows to multiply, you need some busybody to interfere.”

  “Like bees pollinating flowers.”

  “Not exactly. You need a creature that’s curious and greedy and has hands.”

  “Or has tentacles. Or claws. Maybe the ancient Martians were—”

  “—octopus-crabs?”

  “That’s silly!”

  “Windows don’t make much sense either, Danny—unless they were specially planted on Mars for us to find.”

  “Maybe they just grew naturally out of the Martian soil, like big crystals?”

  “And till a few years ago there were just six triads. Now there are millions standing around on Earth, and we’re multiplying them all the time.”

  “Gardeners split plants and spread them everywhere.”

  “These things aren’t plants. We don’t know what they are.”

  “If you think they’re invaders, Dad, that’s paranoid. Windows can’t do a thing without us. My science teacher says that’s why they can’t be von Neumann machines.”

  “Can’t be what?”

  “Machines that reproduce themselves. Named after John von Neumann, the computer wizard. Suppose a race of aliens wants to spread through the universe. The easiest way to do it is to send von Neumann machines to the nearest star systems. These machines mine the asteroids and build more of themselves. Some stay put; most travel on to the next nearest stars. The machines which stay either explore the solar system they’re in and send messages back to their makers; or else they have DNA blueprints of their makers with them—so they build a crèche and recreate their makers and teach them. But Windows just stand around. Can we have one, Dad?”

  “No, we can’t have one. It would turn into three.”

  This is a capsule of a hundred such conversations which Danny and I had before my resistance finally weakened. Our government in its wisdom had decided that any private individuals could own Windows just so long as they bought a Window licence—and so long as they were older than eighteen, as if owning a Window was equivalent to driving a car or buying alcohol. It’s true that the licence system let the government monitor how many Windows there were in the country, and whereabouts—rogue ones excluded! Adding an age limit, as if to protect impressionable youngsters, provided an additional excuse; which was a load of nonsense, since kids had ample opportunity to goggle at Windows—Windows were all over the place. I’m sure the main idea was to raise revenue. Back in the eighteenth century or so the British government had taxed ordinary glass windows. Witness bricked-up frames in various old buildings. Here was window-tax revived in a new guise.

  Mark you, I didn’t mind. I was able to hold out against Danny’s pleas for years.

  Of course, in the beginning Windows were very expensive: rare marvels from Mars. After six or seven years you could hardly go anywhere without passing a Window; so much had they been multiplied—and their cost reduced—by people’s eager hands. I don’t suppose you would have seen too many Windows in Outer Mongolia or New Guinea. But most other places on Earth boasted a crop of Windows; privately, publicly, corporately, whichever.

  ‘When I grow up, Daddy, I want to be a Window cleaner!” That was Danny, at age eight. That was the year that his mother Ruth died in a road accident. At that stage Danny had only seen one actual Window, though other examples had been on television. And Danny intuited that if ordinary windows in people’s homes needed to be cleaned, why so too would Windows from Mars.

  In a sense he was right. During the early years some smart businessmen made a killing by pretending that you needed special skills and chemicals to clean Martian Windows. Nowadays owners just sluiced them down with a garden hose. Windows didn’t scratch or grow dull. Nor were they notably fragile, though a brick thrown with enough vigour would put paid to one, obliterating the view.

  The view …

  I remember, as if it was yesterday, that first real view Danny and I had through a Martian Window when he was eight.

  The Window in question—which was still as costly as a Rolls Royce—was on display in Harrods near the Food Hall. We had to queue for quarter of an hour to get near.

  The thing was like a sheet of plate glass the size of a house door, with a bottom that broadened to support it. The base was set in a bed of soil, and already a second, half-formed Window—blank as yet—was growing from one of the edges, taking its substance from the soil, presumably by osmosis, and perhaps even from the air, which was rich with aromas of roast coffee-beans and venison pies and cheeses.

  The view through the Window wasn’t of the Food Hall beyond but of a moonscape—of craters and boulders, jet-black shadows and a glaring white dusty plain with a bright spatter of stars above. The view was entirely real. You could have stepped through into that lunar landscape—except that nobody could walk through Windows.

  The moon was definitely not our own moon. For there were two suns in the sky. One was small, a blinding blue. The other, a fat red orb.

  Small hand in large hand, Danny and I gradually worked our way through the crowd round to the other side of the Window. From there, the view was different. The backside showed a meadow of viridian mosses fringed by groves of tree-like ferns whose fronds wafted in a breeze. Lemon daylight; fleecy clouds overhead. Fat furry insects resembling enormous bees flew by.

  A window upon an alien world—with alien life on it.

  As Windows multiplied over the next few years we found out the range—and limitation—of views on offer.

  A good many Windows showed lifeless worlds or moons. Others showed worlds with vegetation and living creatures. Never did any of the creatures appear to be of advanced intelligence. Never did we spy any sort of civilization; nor even the ruins of one.

  (Did some Windows show civilized alien beings? And had those particular Windows quickly been sequestered by governments? This hardly seemed likely. New views appeared all the time at random in newly grown Windows. No such secret could have been kept.)

  A proportion of Windows showed us views of Earth, and of human beings. Empty landscapes could be pinned down to somewhere in Canada or China, Argentina or Australia. Scenes with people were more immediately locatable: an Italian vineyard, a Japanese railway station.

  Conceivably we hadn’t yet arrived at a view of an alien civilization. Maybe the first view of such would turn up after fifty million Windows, or a hundred million or more. Was this the inducement? The bait, to persuade us to make more and more Windows?

  People continued to pull triads apart and set up each part separately to multiply in turn.

  “All right, Danny, we’ll buy one.”

  By now the second manned expedition had been to Mars and returned ho
me. Venturer Two had found no new clusters of Windows, nor anything else to set the Earth on fire. True, they hadn’t been over the whole of Mars with a fine-tooth comb, yet maybe there was nothing more to discover on our brother planet beyond rocks and grit and wasteland. Perhaps there would one day be a permanent human base on Mars. And perhaps not.

  “Where shall we put it, Dad?”

  “By the patio. We’ll kick those woody roses out of their bed. But let’s stick with the resulting triad, eh? Let’s not divide it.”

  “Then you can’t see the views from inside.”

  ‘Oh yes you can. Try climbing a ladder.”

  Scientific studies of Windows had been unrevealing, to say the least. We knew nothing about their internal structure while they were whole and showing a view. On the other hand they could be crushed or melted—which destroyed that structure—and their chemistry analysed. Windows were mostly silicon, plus other common elements. Evidently they were able to transmute raw material into the compounds they needed, in the right proportions. Which made them extremely remarkable objects; so remarkable that science was baffled.

  Up to the time that Ruth died, I’d been a designer for a home furnishings manufacturer. (Ruth was killed by a truck which jack-knifed across the pavement she was walking along.)

  I started out in kitchens then moved into bathrooms. It was me who designed the Whale-of-a-Bath, in the shape of a sperm whale (though smaller!). And the crocodile bath, and the hippo bath. Not to mention the nymph’s grotto shower-cubicle. After Ruth’s death, with Danny to bring up, I free-lanced from home. I designed totem-taps with animal heads—or with human heads, such as Hitler’s or Yoko Ono’s. I designed toilets in the form of animals with gaping mouths; you sat on the lips, and afterwards shut the tongue. I designed wash-basins with holographic nudes capering in the bowl. These all proved rather fashionable with people who had too much money. Why had no one thought of these styles before? Because no one had needed them—until I designed them. I could always be relied on to come up with a fresh capricious oddity.

  Some day a book might be devoted to my weird designs. If I were writing the preface I’d suggest that as a designer I was anticipating something which hadn’t yet occurred: namely the exploitation of genetically-engineered animal flesh and fur to serve human comfort—beds which massaged and warmed you, chairs that adjusted to your shape, toilets that ate your waste.

  Perhaps I felt so ambiguous about Windows because I suspected that somehow they must be exploiting us. Plus the fact that they designed themselves.

  One side of our new Window showed—by day—a street market which was bustling and obviously Arab; and by night a mostly deserted street. The backside view was of a changeless golden desert. The sun moved ever so slowly across the sky; the day might last a year.

  We held a “Window warming” party.

  Amidst our other guests Danny invited his first ever girlfriend, Thea—short for Dorothea—who was a plump, abrasive sixteen-year-old with red hair. I invited my own more sophisticated lady-friend of the moment, Denise. Denise was thirty, an ash-blonde divorcee with a snub nose, neat figure, and ironic teasing eyes. She and I had been to bed a total of three times in as many months. Twice, she had been sweet. Once, she had been savage. Denise radiated several frequencies of empathy and friendliness, along with another wavelength which I didn’t trust at all: a sort of slyly destructive, ego-puncturing, selfish cruelty. During a deeper prolonged relationship I guessed that this latter might well tune out the nicer frequencies. Right now, though, it still added a sparkle of danger which I found stimulating. She kept me on my toes. (If I married her, she might dance me to death in red-hot shoes.)

  The centrepiece of the party wasn’t really the new Window. People had seen plenty of Windows in the past ten years. The centrepiece was one of the Mars astronauts from the second expedition, Donna-Jean Scott, geology specialist.

  D-J was a petite black woman from New Orleans, who was fast becoming rich on account of TV fees, book serial rights, consultancies and product endorsements. On board Venturer Two there had been a crew of seven men and four women. One of D-J’s media coups had been when she revealed how this ratio was arrived at—by a Californian psychologist-astrologer who ran a Center for Emotional Numerology.

  I had inveigled her to the party through Sam Jakobs, London boss of a multinational for whom I’d designed a personalized bestial bathroom. D-J was currently promoting a new Antarctic tourist resort which Sam’s outfit had just opened as a sideline. Antarctica and Mars were much alike in a couple of respects. Both were barren, and bloody cold. Need I say that black skin showed up excellently against white ice; or that if filmed through red filters snow-fields looked just like Martian dunes ought to look?

  My motives in luring Donna-Jean Scott to the party were several. One: to please Danny, and enhance him in the eyes of Thea. Two: to control Thea’s adolescent brashness—someone of D-J’s stature (or rather, fame) ought to abash and stem any uncouth rudeness. Three: to signal to Denise that I could swing celebrities. Last but not least: having eventually succumbed to Window ownership I wanted a warranty, a reassurance.

  It was a sunny evening. A barbecue sizzled, busy broiling kebabs and bratwurst. A lute player in medieval costume—nice touch, this—sang ballads. A couple of hired waiters circulated bearing glasses of chilled Hock and warmer Burgundy. D-J obligingly admired the busy Arab market, then the alien desert.

  “Is that Mars?” Thea asked her, jerking a thumb at the sands.

  “No, Honey, it’s the wrong colour.”

  “Maybe it’s a bit of Mars you missed,” said Denise. “It was just over the next dune, but your boots were full of sand so you hiked back to the ship.”

  “We rode buggies,” D-J corrected her. “And if you have sand in your boots you’re already dead.”

  “How nice, if there were pyramids and camels,” Denise continued idly. “How boring Mars must be. Apart from the Windows.”

  Thus rubbing home the point that the Windows had been discovered by the first expedition?

  “Boredom, Honey, is in a person’s soul. And on a place like Mars, boredom kills.”

  “Is it as bad as that?” Denise sounded innocent.

  “What I mean is: if you don’t pay attention all of the time—”

  I intervened. “Donna-Jean, you visited the site of the first Windows; right?”

  “We paid a call. There were still six triads, same as ever. You’ll recall how the first team shipped two triads home intact. But first they dismantled one, which grew two replacements. Look, this Window of yours is budding already.”

  So it was.

  “Could the Earth ever fill up chock-full of Windows?” asked Thea.

  D-J laughed. “Not while human consumers are involved. No way. There had to be a natural saturation level, same as for any other product. You ought to regard this kind of craze ecologically. A niche fills up after a while, same as in nature. Demand tails off.”

  Danny spoke up. “Do you suppose aliens could be watching us through the Windows? And that’s their real purpose?”

  ‘I’d doubt that, Daniel. How would the information get to these aliens?”

  “By faster-than-light particles—which we can’t detect.”

  “And which no one has ever proved to exist.” D-J shook her head and raised her glass of Burgundy. “Here’s to your new Window and its twin offspring. May those show something really neat.”

  “Windows are just like fruit machines,” remarked Denise. “Don’t you think? We keep on playing and playing in the hope we’ll hit a jackpot.”

  An image popped into my mind of toilets designed like fruit machines, with a flush handle to operate them. What had old Freud said about money? That money was like faeces? That hoarding cash—amassing wealth—was a harking back to infantile anal retention?

  If I designed fruit-machine toilets these might have a deep subconscious appeal to wealthy purchasers …

  Or would my patrons feel haunted
by an inexplicable fear of bankruptcy and develop constipation?

  The idea needed thinking through.

  It took a week for Window number two to grow. As soon as it reached full size the views appeared. One was of a glacier which might have been on Earth or on a planet half-way across the galaxy. No way to tell; sun and moon looked much the same. The other was of a savannah which certainly wasn’t on Earth. Its grass was grazed by stilt-like creatures resembling grey flamingos with the heads of gazelles. Occasionally the creatures all raced away, perhaps to escape some slinking predator; or maybe they just raced for exercise.

  Danny spent a good while staring at these views as though he personally owned that savannah and the glacier.

  “Two cherries,” was what Denise said to me when she called round.

  “Hmm?”

  “Two cherries on the fruit machine. Lowest pay-off.” She put an arm around my waist and hugged me lovingly. Perhaps for exercise.

  By now I’d decided in one part of me that most of my creative life had been spent uselessly and farcically—even though another part of me was still busy churning out fresh ideas, such as fruit-machine toilets.

  Windows seemed to offer a perverse reflection of my own activities. Endlessly they generated fresh perspectives upon far-out places … which weren’t really worth visiting. Even if we could reach them; which we couldn’t.

  The only really attractive views were those of Earth.

  Was this the true purpose of Windows? To disenchant us? To serve up a superfluity of empty alien scenes—plus a percentage of earthly sights, where at least something worthwhile was happening?

  Could Windows be a compassionate, if enigmatic legacy from some superior alien culture which had been on the point of tossing in the towel, or perhaps emigrating to the next galaxy, or achieving nirvana? Aimed to tip us the wink so that we shouldn’t waste our time in futile pursuits?

  I believed myself to be somewhat of a trend-setter in styles. Was this mood of mine one which would presently infect the whole Earth, as Windows multiplied and always showed us meaningless places?