The Memory of Whiteness

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  johannes on mercury

  Johannes follows a party of city officials up the stairways that pass for streets under the Great Gates of Terminator, onto the narrow highest terrace of the city. The officials turn left, his body turns left, he follows. The concert is to take place later that day. The officials explain that this is Solday, a holiday in Terminator when the Great Gates are for a time opened. “I see,” Johannes hears himself say. They lead him into a long chamber below the Great Gates; Margaret and Karna and Marie-Jeanne and Delia accompany him. The chamber is walled on the sunward side with a black glass, a filter. Off across the planet’s black surface the sun is eternally rising. Only the corona is visible, thin pared crescent extending more than half the horizon from north to south. It hurts Johannes to look at it; the room feels hot. Even through the black glass the glare is too intense, it is a rainbow of white fire, and he turns and leaves. Outside on the terrace there are flowerbeds and hanging vines spilling over the wall to the terrace below. Margaret and Karna approach and Margaret says something to him. He hears himself reply but does not understand what he says. Margaret appears satisfied. The concert is to begin soon and he hears the music of it, sounding clear as a fresh memory. Some changes to be made. He walks to the terrace’s edge and looks out over the city. Rooftops of dull brown, blue trees everywhere. Birds flitting from tree to tree. Out beyond the city’s glassy dome with its faint curved reflection of the town, the long silvery tracks extend off across the black waste, faintly lit by the city itself. Destiny’s track made visible at last. There the Orchestra stands, on a promontory of the highest terrace, out over the city, visible everywhere. The sight of it fills his head with the music to be played and he follows himself to it. Exchanges with the crew mean nothing to him now, and helplessly he must nod at Margaret and climb into his home. How many times he has climbed up these glass steps, taken the turn to the right around the godzilla, back left and up to the control booth. Home again, home again. Here one might almost feel as if … as if.… He cannot complete the thought. Electronics board shows the speakers are on and he pulls out some keyboards, makes some preliminary tests for volume and the like. Pianissimo oboe tones, sustained as if to tune the Orchestra, filling the city. The curved oval dome creates a strong resonance without a particular echo; it’s an ambient sound with tremendous possibilities. Johannes pulls out the French horn keyboards and plays chords. Dominant, tonic, dominant, minor, seventh, ninth, huge spreads, simple thirds and fifths, dense horn choir chords, fifteen horns droning through the harmonics of history, filling the dome of this egg city … but this is just the speaker test. Who knows how long he has been playing. Below him at the sound control board Delia is pointing up at the Great Gates. They open, and two tall, narrow shafts of brilliant light appear, like panels of gold leaf extending through the air just under the dome, hitting the curved surface at the front end of the city and disappearing into the vacuum. The air is filled with a yellow talc that gives the sunbeams a blinding solidity. The crowd below cheers. Johannes peers between instruments at them; streets and parks are filled with faces, each one a little thumbprint of sensibility, of human frailty and misperception. Except that almost half of them appear clothed in grey tunics and pants, and their faces, luminous in the new light, have a serenity that Johannes cannot understand. A sharp shaft of emotion pierces his breast—some great gate has opened—and even from behind himself he can feel it stabbing. Suddenly he knows the time has come to play. He turns down one switch and the Orchestra begins the Ten Forms of Change. The glass arms bow away at the violins and cellos, glass fingers depress the valves and fill the stops of the wind instruments, glass feet kick the drums, a whole forest of puppets jerk into action, and below a whole forest of puppets take it all in. Without his “improvisation” the Ten Forms is a stately passacaglia, the original theme rendered ever more complex with each repetition; in this weave, under the twin bars of tangible light, the audience appears completely entranced; a model city filled with tiny still figurines. Dead little figurines who for the moment have forgotten their illusions of free will, having given themselves up to the inexorable music. Johannes feels the stabbing again. “Can’t I stop this?” he hears himself say, and watches his hands in a sudden flurry pulling out the keyboards, dragging the volume stops out to their maximum (Delia’s shocked face turning up from her console), playing them—one, then the next, then the next, carelessly and without thought. What does thought matter when it will all be as it has ever been? But then he makes some mistakes and becomes angry. He laughs anger now. “Why should we have to try at all? Could it be that music is all that remains to us, the only true expression of our free will? And is it this that accounts for music’s power, the felt knowledge that speech in this language is the only thing we create freely? So it feels to me now, so it feels to me—” playing as hard as he can, ignoring the context of the Ten Forms, ripping through it with great shrieks of the godzilla, the artist as anarchist, and yet, and yet … it reminds him of something, some music he played a long time ago, in a fever, in a dream … he cannot remember. But the feeling tells him he cannot escape, that the illusion of free will exists not just in music but in all human action that works in ignorance. And he is doomed to know. And that itself is a sort of music; there is a music that says that, too. Johannes sees the arc of his life, Pluto to Mercury, planet by planet, and vacillating between despair and fierce rebellion he finishes the concert, playing that arc out helplessly.

  * * *

  Stepping out of the Orchestra Johannes enters a world of marionettes. Something seems to have slowed the passage of time for them and they stand like blocks, barely moving their eyes to stare at him. Some effect of the music, apparently. He passes among them and Margaret stirs herself, says, “Johannes!” in a strangled voice, follows him. “What was that, Johannes?” He walks on. She stands in front of him; he walks around her. She lets him pass and hurries to Karna, shakes Karna awake, shakes Dent awake. Dent cries, “Johannes! Explain to me! Explain!”

  But across the terrace, there at the door to the window room, stands a Grey of considerable importance. These days Johannes can tell entirely by their demeanor. The man wears the greys and the red cap, his hair is brown and clipped short. Johannes follows him into the room and walks to the black glass window so that he can stand with his back to the fine arc of the sunrise. The Grey’s eyes in the strong light are a light liquid brown, incredibly vivid and full of life. A world of color in a single iris. Karna and Margaret appear hastily in the doorway, carrying weapons. Johannes waves them back with a sweep of the hand. Tendons there are tired; there must have been some unusual efforts in the concert somewhere. Karna remains in the doorway, watchful as he leans against one wall.

  Johannes says, “I know what I will say. I will say, Even if the universe is ruled by necessity, why should I know the future?”

  And the Grey says, “In the vast reach of infinity, every possible combination of being must have been realized not only once, but an infinite number of times. This is the principle of eternal recurrence, which is proven by Holywelkin’s work and by all the work we have done since then. Thus the past will be returned to and the future has already been, not only once but infinitely, and in every possible combination of cause and effect. To know this is to know the reality of the universe. Thus this universe in which your art reaches its full potential is played out, over and over. You have always known what you know.”

  “And the way that we feel?”

  “Part of the illusion of time.”

  Johannes thinks about this for a while. “So you are not sun worshippers.”

  “The sun is powerful.”

  “And Holywelkin never went to Icarus.”

  “Did you think that he had?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  The Grey shook his head. “Are you omniscient?”

  “No,” Johannes said. “But there are things I know that I shouldn’t.”

  “I’m not sure that’s possible,” the
Grey said.

  “So … Ekern deceived me.”

  The Grey nods.

  “But why?”

  “Perhaps Ekern suspects what the Greys know. To learn it directly would change the consciousness he values; thus he sends another on the quest for knowledge, and learns indirectly, so that he is still—”

  “So that he knows discursively, and not by acquaintance.”

  The Grey nods.

  Johannes laughs bitterly. “He may be mad, but he is no fool.”

  No answer from the Grey. Johannes watches the sunlight flicker on his face: mark of coronal flare, or Mercurial hill. “Come outside,” Johannes says, unable to control his despair. Out on the terrace the city is visible, all its citizens now in motion. It looks like chaos, but its ant-people weave a pattern determined eternally: look, that ant has only two streets to choose from, and all its history makes certain it will choose just the one and not the other (it does); it is like its city, rolling over its tracks forever, again and again and again.

  “And music?” Johannes asks, curious about this art that has consumed his life.

  “Music,” the Grey says, “is an expression of the universe, related to ideas as ideas are related to things. And at the same time that it speaks this universality, it is also most distinct and precise in form. In this it resembles the geometry that Holywelkin made such use of. All possible manifestations of human experience may be expressed in music, but always in their form only. You might say that music expresses the soul of experience, not the body. This deep relation that music has to the true nature of things makes it a language capable of the most distinct and accurate description of the universe; and this is why your audiences have reacted to your music as to the truth that they have always known. Though they cannot explain the music, they know that it has revealed to them all the possible events of life in the world, and knowing that, they glimpse the truth of Holywelkin’s work, the work upon which all this world rests. This work is the truth that the Greys have always known, and so your music has for us a special interest. We have kept our knowledge from humanity at large, but we have always known that it would come to this knowledge eventually; some of us on Icarus have known that it would come to this knowledge through the ninth Master of Holywelkin’s Orchestra.”

  Johannes sniffs, swallows, sighs. “I did not know what I was doing.”

  The Grey smiles brightly, quickly. “No. But now you do, and it is fitting that you finish the tour by coming to Prometheus Station and playing for the Greys there.”

  Johannes shrugs. “That is what will happen?”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  So when Johannes returns to the Orchestra and his busy crew, he tells them of the added concert.

  Margaret shouts, “We can’t go down there!” She is clearly shaken still by the concert just passed. “We can’t afford the energy to get back up from those stations!”

  “The Greys will transport us, both down and up,” Johannes says.

  “It’s crazy to put ourselves in their power!” Margaret is furious. “I won’t do it!”

  “We fly to Prometheus!” Johannes says loudly, and looks around at the crew. In the white heat of his anger they quail; none can stand and deny him. Only Margaret, shifting and nervous, dares oppose him at this moment when his power is suddenly unleashed:

  “It’s crazy. We don’t know what they want of you.” She flares up: “I’m damned if I’ll do it! You can go if you like and I can’t stop you, but if you do, I’m finished! I quit!”

  “Quit, then,” Johannes says, and with a searing glance recaptures the rest of the crew. In this wild surge of his will they cannot disobey him:

  “We fly to Prometheus! From Pluto to Prometheus, outermost to innermost, and the tour will be complete.” He climbs into the Orchestra unopposed. From the control booth he hears the crew begging Margaret to stay with them. For a long time she will not reply. Then:

  “One more,” she says grimly. “Then we’re done.”

  The chill runs all through him. Eternal recurrence: but each time she says those words, he will feel that chill.

  the irregulars’ last hope

  Dent had a plan.

  “Listen,” he said to Karna and Margaret. “We’ve got to do this. If we don’t we’ll never know for sure what Ekern is up to, and Johannes will never listen to us.”

  “I don’t think Ekern matters anymore,” Karna said gloomily.

  “Ekern matters,” Margaret said. “He got us started on this road, and he and a small retinue are already on their way to Prometheus.”

  “And he left his ship in orbit here,” Dent said.

  “So the Greys took him down?” Karna asked.

  “Yes,” Dent said. “Apparently they take everyone down; you need special ships to rendezvous with the stations.”

  “I believe it,” Yananda said.

  “I don’t like them.…” Margaret said, voice strained.

  “I tell you, it’s the Greys,” Karna said. “They’re behind even what Ekern’s done.”

  “I don’t agree,” Dent said. “Ekern could have staged every encounter with the Greys that we’ve had! We don’t know anything about the Greys. But Ekern…”

  “Ekern is part of it,” Margaret said. “The Greys may be something else entirely, obscured by what Ekern has done.”

  “So we do this,” Dent said.

  “Yes,” said Margaret.

  So when the tour shuttled back up to Orion, and made the transfer to the Greys’ little spaceship (it was just big enough to hold the Orchestra in its hold), Karna and Yananda and Dent stayed behind. Dent approached the little man: “Johannes,” he said, and looking at the musician’s unseeing eyes he cringed. Would Wright understand him at all? “Johannes, we’re going to stay on Orion while you go to Prometheus Station.”

  Johannes cocked his head. “You are?”

  “Yes.” Impulsively Dent leaned over and gave the man a fierce hug. “We can help you best up here.”

  “I see,” Johannes said, voice empty and clear. “Goodbye then.” And Dent had to watch speechlessly while he pulled himself away, into the lock and out of sight.

  falling

  All during the descent to Prometheus Margaret fretted. She interrogated the Grey assigned to take care of them on the small ship. “Where is Ernst Ekern?”

  “I am told he is in Prometheus Station already.”

  “Who allowed him to go there? Who is in control down there?”

  “The Lion of Prometheus decides who comes and goes.” This said with an ironical twist on the word decides.

  “Now why should that be?” Margaret demanded. “How did some damned religious cult get control of the system’s biggest energy station?”

  “All the four energy stations have the same capabilities,” the Grey said.

  “Don’t get clever with me. I asked you: how did your cult get control down there?”

  “We operate the generator,” the man said. “No one else knows how.”

  Margaret scowled. “I wonder what happened to the normal people who knew how, don’t you?”

  “They became Grey.”

  And down they plummetted, until the time came when Margaret and the rest of the tour crew had to be led to couches of a peculiar substance, where they lay and gasped under their own weight—under the force of the acceleration of the Greys’ ship. Struggling for each breath, faces twisted, they lay pinned to their couches and watched the abstract patterns on the viewscreen overhead. “How fast?” Delia cried.

  “I don’t know,” Margaret said. “Ask the guide. He’ll say, as fast as we need to go.”

  Sean said, “The power stations orbit just above the solar flare zone. They have to really fly to keep from falling in. I’ve heard it’s rare. For a ship to dock with them.”

  “But we’re special,” Delia said.

  Margaret, already scowling under the acceleration, hissed. Their viewscreen was half filled with green light, half with black, i
n a gridwork of faint blue lines. The sun and the vacuum, two halves of the world. Near the edge of the green half a bright red dot blinked. Their destination, no doubt, swimming on the sea of thermonuclear fire. Margaret pulled herself off her couch, crawled toward their quarters. Passing the midships storeroom she heard the sound of the Orchestra; Johannes was still at work on his music, following the creaks and bings created by the twisting of their acceleration gravity. Margaret shoved the door open and stuck her head in the room. “Don’t you see that you and you only make that music!” she shouted. “It was clear as can be during the concert on Terminator!” Now the music had fallen away to the light rustlings of the mercury drum. Encouraged, Margaret shouted on: “You set up the music for the Orchestra and maybe you wrote it inevitably, maybe it was the music of the spheres, but then you improvised across that taped music, damn it, you ripped and tore right across it to affirm just exactly the free will I’ve told you about! You’re an idiot if you don’t see that!”

  Faint maunderings of the balloon flute, oscillation of mercury. Gravity’s music. No other response. Disgusted, Margaret pulled the door shut and continued crawling on her way. Let him sleepwalk through his dream if he wanted to.

  last crossing

  Days passed and the acceleration of the ship only increased, until there was no question of leaving the gel couches. Breathing was difficult, faces were contorted like rubber masks. In this ship without windows they could do nothing but squirm and gasp and watch, through squashed corneas, the blurred image of the viewscreen. According to it the universe was a simple duality; half of it was fire, half empty space. They were so close to the sun that no curvature in its representation was evident; they existed between two planes. So far as they could tell by the screen, they were not moving at all—only the steady intense pressure told them of their increasing speed.

  “Out there,” Margaret said. “The red dot. Getting closer.”

  And finally the pressure let up. Sean went to the viewscreen’s console and learned how to shift the screen to the optical view. Obviously very heavy filters were in use; the roiled dull brown surface of the sun thrust a million twisting arms of flame at them. The line separating the brown sun from black space was a jagged saw of brown flame. And in the center of this muted composition rolled the bright cone of Prometheus Station.