Anti-Dream League were a band of swine. What if Bradley had been
lying to her all along?
The suspicion had now been plaguing her for several weeks. All
those speeches in the squares, the manifestos on the walks, the
propagandistic pamphlets, the public proposition to experiment in
natural relations with the League’s activists . . . Was it possible that the whole thing was a lie? Perhaps there was some truth in what the
orators and lecturers maintained, maybe the world was rotten to the
core, and only a few enlightened men had eyes to see the horror and
assess such decadence.
Man as an island: they had all been reduced to this. On one side the
producing class, a class that kept power and to which she herself
belonged in her capacity of actress; on the other, the prostrate, blind
army of consumers, men and women avid for solitude and darkness,
silkworms coiled up in the silken filaments of their own dreams, pale
bloodless larvae poisoned by inaction.
Sophie had been born in the glass. So had everybody else, for that
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matter. She did not know her mother. Millions of women, once a
month, went to the Bank of Life; millions of men achieved orgasm by
means of the Dream and donated semen to the Bank, which sorted it
carefully and used it according to rigorous criteria. Marriage was an
archaic institution. Sophie had been the child of a dream, of an
unknown, anonymous man who in a dream had possessed an actress.
Every man over forty could be her father, every woman between the
age of forty and eighty her mother.
When she was younger, this thought had disturbed her greatly,
then bit by bit she had got used to it. But lately all the doubts and
anxieties of her adolescence had reared up again, vultures that
patiently circled above, waiting for one of her moments of weakness.
Who was that young man who had stopped her on the street? A
champion of superior humanity, or a fool?
Certainly, if he had said to her, ‘I recognize you, Sophie Barlow. I
recognize you in spite of your standard suit and your dark glasses.’ Or
if he had said, ‘You’re my favourite star, you’re the obsession of all my days . . .’ Or even if he’d said, ‘I want to get to know you, whoever
you are, just as you really are . . .’
Instead, that lout had talked about duty. He had asked her to spend
the night with him, but only to pay obeisance to the presumptuous
new morality: Virtue is a habit. A habit, a routine of natural relations.
Love one another, ladies and gentlemen, come together in self-denial!
Each of your acts of love will contribute to the defeat and destruction
of an unjust system. Unite yourselves, come together in reality, the
sublime joy of the senses will not delay in manifesting itself! An
exultation of sounds and lights will fill your souls, will glorify your
bodies! And our children will once again be formed in the warmth of
the womb, not in the cold glass of a test tube.—Wasn’t this what the
fat man on the platform had been preaching?
She went into a crowded store and made her way over to the sales
counter, where hundreds and hundreds of Oneirofilms were neatly
displayed, packed in elegant plastic boxes. She loved to read the
descriptions printed on the covers, to listen to the conversations that
the shoppers sometimes had with each other, or the zealous advice
that the salesman whispered in the ears of undecided customers.
She read a few titles.
Singapore: Eurasian singer (Milena Chung Lin) flees with the
Spectator. Adventure in the underworld of this eastern port.
Period, mid-twentieth century. Night of love on a sampan.
Good Night, Sophie
187
The Battle: In the role of a heroic officer, the Spectator
infiltrates an enemy encampment and sabotages its munitions
dump. A last battle, bloody, victorious.
Ecstasy: The private jet of a Persian princess (masterful perfor-
mance by Sophie Barlow) crashes in the Grand Canyon.
Princess and Pilot (the Spectator) spend the night in a cave.
Descriptions in greater detail were to be found inside the boxes.
There was no danger that an exact knowledge of the contents on the
part of the consumer would lower its desirability index. Mental
projection inside the Amplex was accompanied by catatonic stupor
in which the memory of each independent episode never connected
with the next to form a whole. One could not know, experiencing the
first episodes, what would happen in the second and following
episodes. Even if plot descriptions were learned by heart, even if
one saw the same film twenty times, the conscious ego, the everyday
ego was sacrificed to the urges provoked by the reel: one ceased to be
oneself in order to assume the personality, the mannerisms, the voice,
the impulses suggested by the film.
A salesman sidled up to her solicitously.
‘May I help you to choose a gift?’
Sophie suddenly noticed that among the mob of buyers there were
no other women. This was the men’s department. She moved off
toward the opposite counter, mingling with women of all ages,
lingering before the enormous photographs of the most popular
actors.
Outer Space Belongs to Us: Commander of a spaceship (Alex
Morrison) falls in love with the lady doctor on board (the
Spectator), the rocket changes course to discharge the crew on
one of Jupiter’s moons, and the Commander heads off with
his lover. Trans-galactic crossing.
Tortuga: Period, mid-seventeenth century. Gallant pirate
(Manuel Alvarez) abducts noblewoman (the Spectator). Jea-
lousy and duels. Love and sea voyages under a fiery sky.
‘What’s it like?’, asked a tall girl, her buxom body suffocating in a
pair of overalls too small for her.
‘Fascinating’, her companion asserted. ‘I bought four more copies of
it right away.’
The other girl looked sceptical. She stretched her neck over the
counter, stood on the tips of her toes to read the descriptions on the
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furthermost boxes. She said something in a low voice, and her
companion answered in a whisper. Sophie moved off. She spent a
few minutes in the ‘classics’ section, giving a fleeting glance to the
back of the shop where men and women crowded together to buy the
so-called ‘convenience’ Oneirofilms.
When she had been younger, at school, they had told her that in
former times men considered taboo anything that had to do with sex.
It was highly improper to write or talk about the many aspects of love
life. No woman would ever have described her desires and her sexual
fantasies to a stranger. There were pornographic publications and
photographs, many of which were illegal. People who bought them
did it on the sly and always with a feeling of guilt or embarrassment,
even when they had been passed by the Censor. But with the advent
of the ‘system’ the primitive custom of sexual modesty had become
obsolete. Modesty existed
, if at all, in some kinds of dreams, in
‘convenience’ films made for the over-fifty set, where the consumer
seduced or raped a teary, red-faced, trembling young girl. But in real
life it had disappeared, or at least verbal modesty had. Without a
shadow of embarrassment or discomfort, anybody could ask for an
erotic film, the same as any other film about war or adventure.
But what about real and proper modesty? Among the many who
crowded round the counters to buy the luxury in a box, who would
have had the courage to disrobe in the middle of the mob? Only those
activists of the Anti-Dream League, who were completely unselfcon-
scious when they propositioned people, but perhaps not quite so
unselfconscious when faced with performing what they themselves
considered a weighty duty. The truth was, for nearly a century men
and women had lived in a state of almost complete chastity. Solitude,
the measured penumbra inside the narrow walls of their habitations,
the armchairs with built-in Amplex: humanity had no desire for
anything else. Faced with the greater attractions of dreams, the
ambition to own a comfortable house, elegant clothes, a helicar,
and other amenities had simply gone by the board. Why beat one’s
brains out collecting real objects when, with an Oneirofilm that cost
but a few pennies, one could live like a nabob for an hour, near
stupendous women, admired, respected, served hand and foot?
Eight billion human beings vegetated inside squalid beehives,
isolated in mean little holes, nourished by vitamin concentrates and
soybean meal. And they felt no desire to consume anything real. After
the bottom fell out of the market, the industries producing consumer
goods had been abandoned all at once by financiers, who transferred
Good Night, Sophie
189
their funds to companies producing Oneirofilms, the only merchan-
dise for which there was any real demand.
She looked up toward the shining chart, and was disgusted at
herself. The numbers spoke clearly. The sales chart was most elo-
quent. Her own Oneirofilms were the ones must in demand, more
than everybody else’s put together.
Sophie left the store. She walked homeward, her head bent, her
step slow and listless. She didn’t know how to judge that crowd of
men who moved all around her, without recognizing her. Were they
her slaves, or was she theirs?
*
*
*
*
*
The videophone rang: a streak of light in an abyss of black velvet, a
peal from lofty cathedral spires in a sleepy, grey dawn.
Sophie stretched out a hand toward the pulsator-button.
A red snake zig-zagged onto the screen, lingered, seemed to
explode; finally it resolved itself into Bradley’s image.
‘What do you want?’, Sophie whined, her voice slurred with sleep.
‘For God’s sake, what time is it?’
‘It’s noon. Wake up, my girl. You have to go to San Francisco.’
‘To San Francisco? What for? Are you out of your mind?’
‘We have a co-production contract with Norfolk, Sophie. It was set
for next Monday, but time presses. They need you now.’
‘But I’m still in bed, I’m deathly tired. I’ll leave tomorrow, Bradley.’
‘Get dressed’, the supervisor barked. ‘A Norfolk jet will be waiting
for you at the West airport. Don’t waste time.’
Sophie was fuming. This extra work wasn’t scheduled. What she
wanted to do was spend the rest of the day in bed, resting. She
struggled out from under the covers, her eyes still shut, and slug-
gishly, halfheartedly undressed in the bathroom. The metallic jet of
the cold shower made her shiver. She dried herself, dressed hurriedly,
and left the house on the run.
She knew the methods of those types at Norfolk. They were worse
than Bradley, real nitpickers. Always ready to find fault even with the
scenes that had come off well.
In eight minutes, the helitaxi deposited her at the entrance to the
airport. She entered by the door that led to the runway for private
aircraft, and looked round for the Norfolk jet.
The pilot emerged from an outbuilding and walked over to meet
her with a bouncy step.
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Lino Aldani
‘Sophie Barlow?’
He was tall, with light blond hair and a bronze complexion, a face
that looked as if it had been baked in an oven.
‘I’m Mirko Glikorich, from the Norfolk Company.’
Sophie said nothing. The pilot did not think her worth a glance, and
spoke staring at an indefinite point somewhere out in the airfield, two
cold, aggressive eyes of a fine grey colour like anthracite. He took
Sophie’s suitcase and marched off toward the main runway, where
the Norfolk jet was being prepared for take-off. Sophie had a hard
time keeping up with him.
‘Hey!’, she exclaimed, balking like a thoroughbred. ‘I’m not a
runner. Couldn’t you walk a little slower?’
The pilot kept moving, without so much as turning around.
‘We’re late’, he said curtly. ‘We have to be in San Francisco in three
hours.’
She was breathless by the time they reached the aircraft.
‘Do you mind it I sit in front with you?’, asked Sophie.
The pilot shrugged his shoulders. He helped her up, settled himself
into the cockpit, and waited for the signal from the control tower.
Sophie looked around, full of curiosity, a bit intimidated by all the
dials and switches on the instrument panel. The pilot whistled softly,
impatient. Sophie groped around in the pocked of her seat and pulled
out a dozen magazines. They were all at least several weeks old, some
from the year before, dog-eared. Her face was on the cover of each of
them. There was also an Oneirofilm catalogue folded open to the page
that listed the films starring Sophie.
‘Are these your things?’
The pilot didn’t answer, but looked stiffly ahead. The take-off had
been gentle as a feather, and Sophie hadn’t felt it at all. She glanced
out the window and barely stifled an ‘Oh!’ of surprise. A sea of houses
extended itself beneath them; like a downy eyelid, the grey shell of
the countryside opened up before them.
‘Are these yours?’, Sophie insisted.
The pilot turned his head slightly, an imperceptible movement, a
lightning glance. Then he stiffened again.
‘Yes’, he said through his teeth.
She tried to hide the intimate gratification that always pervaded her
when she met one of her ardent fans.
‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Glikorich’, the pilot growled. ‘Mirko Glikorich.’
‘That’s a Russian name, isn’t it?’
Good Night, Sophie
191
‘Yugoslav.’
She watched him for a while. His lips were narrow and taut, his
profile straight and sharp . . . Mirko looked as if he had been chiselled in rock, mute, motionless. Sophie grew impatient.
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Speak.’
‘Before—at the
airport. You came to meet me and asked me if I was
Sophie Barlow. Why? You know me, don’t you? These magazines and
the catalogue. I’ll bet you’re a fan of mine. Why did you pretend not
to recognize me?’
‘I didn’t pretend. It’s different, seeing you in person. In the end I
recognized you because I knew you were supposed to turn up at that
entrance at the airport. But in the middle of the crowd, no; you could
have passed me without my noticing.’
Sophie lit a cigarette. Maybe the pilot was right: in the crowd
nobody would notice her, even without her dark glasses. She felt a
kind of dull anger toward the man beside her. But she kept making an
effort to talk to him. Mirko proved to be dense as a jungle, impene-
trable, diffident.
‘Why don’t you turn on the automatic pilot?’, Sophie asked. ‘I’m
bored, Mirko. Say something to me.’
The pilot remained impassive. He blinked once or twice, and stuck
out his chin.
Sophie caught his arm. ‘Mirko! Pay attention to me! Turn on the
automatic pilot and have a cigarette with me.’
‘I prefer to leave it on manual.’
Sophie lit another cigarette, then another, using the butt of the
second. She leafed through a magazine, worrying the pages in a fit of
uncontrollable nervousness. She started to sing to herself, tapping her
foot against the rubber lining of the cockpit. She snorted, fidgeting,
and finally pretended to feel nauseated.
Mirko felt around inside the pocket of his flying suit and handed
her a tablet.
Sophie was furious.
‘Idiot!’, she cried. ‘I won’t stay here a moment longer. I’m going
back in the cabin.’
The little living room behind the cockpit was attractive. There was a
couch, a stowable berth, a little table and a bar.
She poured herself a drink, a tall glass of brandy, which she gulped
down at once. She poured herself another immediately, and the edges
of objects began to vibrate in a bluish, inviting fog. She lowered
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herself to the couch, thinking of Mirko, a consumer like all the rest,
an imbecile. She couldn’t wait to get to San Francisco, make the film,
and fly back to New York.
Now she sipped the brandy with less gusto. As she set the glass on
the table, she began to feel groggy.
Suddenly, the arm of the couch was shoved against her, and an
View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction Page 31
