“Paddy,” a voice called out. “I need a pair of brawny lads to unload a lorry. Got any to spare?”
“They’re a puny lot and you can have them all. Take what you will for I despair of ever making good union hod carriers out of any of them.”
The newcomer stood behind them and pointed to the nearest man. “You then, Tony, come-o with me-o. Got that? And you too, Tony.” He jabbed a finger at Giulio and waved him over. Giulio went through a pantomime with him, of pointing to his chest and nodding and so forth, then followed meekly.
Excited.
Through a small gate and then another. Towards a great, window-less building that dominated all the others around it. From high on the wall, standing forth on hulking white insulators, great electric cables reached out to a tall pylon and beyond. This was it!
“Grand sight, isn’t it, Tony? Nothing like that back in the land of pasta, is there? But work first then.
Boxes off lorry-o, on to handcart. And bloody smart if you don’t mind. Like this. Got it?”
It did not take long. The lorry pulled away and two men pushed off the handcart. “More lorry, got that?” their guide shouted, waving and pointing at the ground at the same time. “Take a kip and we’ll be back.”
The drizzle had stopped and the sun was out. Giulio’s companion curled against the wall and was instantly asleep. Giulio pulled a blade of grass that was growing from a crack in the paving, chewed on it, and looked around. No one in sight, very lax, but the Irish were always this way. Their weakness, and he had been instructed how to take advantage of it. Look around. He strolled towards the high wall nearby and to the small door bearing the legend KEEP OUT—POWER PLANT PERSONNEL ONLY.
Did he dare? Why not, that was what he was here for, sooner or later he would have to make the attempt. The door was locked but he recognized the brand of lock; he had been well instructed on it. The lockpick was concealed behind his belt buckle and dropped into his fingers at a touch. Still no one in sight. Insert, lift, press . . . turn.
The door swung open. He was through in a second and it closed behind. A brightly lit passage stretched away before him,- his heart beat like a hammer in his chest. Carry on, he could do nothing else.
Down the corridor. Doors. All closed. Numbered. They could be anything. Then, another one. He stopped still, quavering at the sign on it.
TECHNICAL MANUALS STORE.
He Jiad done it! The same kind of lock, twist and open, darkness beyond, a glimpse of shelves before he closed the door behind him. Grope for a light switch, there, flick it on . . .
“Do come in, Giulio,” the man said. “Sit down, here across the desk from me. Cigarette? No, I forgot, you don’t smoke, do you.”
Numb, unbelieving, Giulio slid into the chair and tried not to gape at the smiling man on the other side of the desk. He wore a uniform of some kind, three pips on his shoulder straps, and nodded in a most friendly manner across his tented fingers. “There, that’s better,” he said. “I suppose you’re CIA, but not career I hope. Could I have your correct name?”
Giulio finally found his voice. “Scusi, signore, no cap . . .”
“Please, Giulio, don’t waste our time. You see we found this in your pocket. We do make searches, you know.” He held up a blue matchbook with white lettering that read United States Navy.
Giulio gasped and his spine softened and he slumped even more.
“No cooperation? Oh dear, oh dear, but you are being difficult. My name is Power, Captain Power. And yours? Oh well, if I must.”
The captain came around the desk and in a sudden lightning motion secured Giulio in an unbreakable grip. He even managed to have a hand free with which he pressed Giulio’s fingers onto a white card on the desk; fingerprints appeared on it an instant later. Power released Giulio, took the card by the edge and looked at the prints critically, nodded, then dropped it through a slot in the desk’s top.
“That should do. While we’re waiting for results we’ll go look at the power plant. Well don’t gape like that—that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Ireland’s pride and joy, and the envy of the world at large.” He opened the door for Giulio and showed him out, and continued to talk as they strolled down the corridor.
“In a world of declining resources and failed power supplies we here find ourselves quite happy on this fruitful island of ours. The crops and the herds are the best, sure we’ve always grown more than enough for our own needs, and a bit over. And peat, all we could ever need, we’ve been generating electricity with it for years, now we use it in our ships. But power, that’s our secret, isn’t it? The reason why you’re here. And steel too, for we’ve enough of that. We prosper in an unhappy world and help others where we can, but we are a small nation after all. In here if you please.” He eased open a massive door. “Now, I ask you— isn’t that a glorious sight?”
It was indeed something. They stood on a balcony high up on the wall of an immense chamber. The sound and heat and motion at first made it hard to understand what was happening. Steam hissed and curled up from the floor where great turbines spun. A conveyor belt carried an endless stream of stone bricks from an opening in one wall, to vanish through an opening in the other. Giulio blinked, trying to make sense of it all. Captain Power explained.
“When the granite bricks drop into the steam chamber they are practically still molten, temperature in the thousands of degrees, I understand. We had lots of trouble in the beginning with them fracturing, blowing up like bombs and that sort of thing. All licked now of course. After they leave the steam, and are a bit cooler, they fall into the water and generate more steam and on and on. And the steam drives the generators and that’s really about all there is to it.”
“But . . . no, that cannot be.” Giulio was stammering, confused. “Where do the bricks come from?”
“I thought you would never ask. If you will walk this way you will meet one of the men responsible.”
The walk was shorter, and the room they entered larger than the first, and filled with odd equipment.
A tall man with a shining bald head, fringed with remnants of red hair, sat on a couch reading a computer printout.
“Giulio,” Power said. “I want you to meet Sean Raftery.”
“A pleasure.” Sean said, standing and taking Giulio’s hand and giving it a hearty shake. “You’re a brave man to come this far, and with a good education too, as I have been reading. Giulio,” he glanced at the printout, “Giulio Balietti. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey—what an unusual name for a city—college . . . university . . . ahh, a doctorate in physics, atomic physics. And quite young too.”
“Atomics,” Captain Power said. “They’re still looking in that direction. Well, more strength to them.”
“Then . . . you know . . .” Giulio said.
“Of course. We pride ourselves on our records. You’re not the first, you know. We used to try to keep them out, then we discovered it was much easier to let them in and take care of them then.”
“You’re going to kill me!”
“Nonsense—we’re not the CIA, after all. This is a civilized country. We are going to show you Ireland’s great secret, then remove— with no pain—your memory of today. You have worked so hard to get this far we thought it only fair to let you find what you are seeking after. Also, we have discovered that after the memory-removal process the agent is much more relaxed having once actually known what he wanted to know. Somewhere in the subconscious there is a feeling of success and this is most important. Sean, if you please.”
“Of course. Our secret, Giulio, is the tapping of an immense strength in the Irish personality and character that has always existed, has always been seen, but never channeled in the right direction. The poets and the authors have taken from this mighty stream and profited thereby. Someone once said about an Irish author, with cruel intent .but nevertheless it holds a germ of truth, that anyone could write that way if they abandoned their mind to it. Perhaps. But only the Irish can do it without sca
rcely trying.”
Giulio watched, eyes widening, as Captain Power wheeled a black suit, like a parody of a medieval suit of armor, before Sean Raftery. It was ugly as an Iron Maiden but seemed to raise no fears in Sean who voluntarily pushed his arms into the extensions of the thing. He even smiled as it was locked around his body.
“The flow of wit and Irish humor is famous, our actors known worldwide, their abilities to express themselves famous.” But his powers of expression seemed to be lagging. He stumbled over words and began to repeat himself. “Please excuse . . . excuse if you will. You see this is a sensory deprivation suit. I cannot feel anything with my body or hands, I cannot use them . . . But, praise be to God, I can still talk . . .”
Sean’s eyes widened and his words were muffled into silence as Captain Power slipped a soft but strong gag over his mouth. The captain continued.
“And there you have it. Complete sensory deprivation so the subject cannot gesticulate or point his fingers or walk about. Communication is damaged by that. Communication and the flow of language damned up completely by the gag. So what do we have, you ask? We have, I answer, a mighty torrent of expression seeking a way out. We have a genius for communication without an outlet. But— wait, an outlet is still left. The brain! With no other way of expressing the pressure of thoughts churning in the mighty Irish brain, the mighty Irish brain expresses itself by direct contact with the outside world. That glass on the table—would you please, Sean?”
The glass lifted suddenly into the air, swooped about like a bird and landed again on the table with ease.
“Direct manipulation of matter by the mind. But much graver than conjurer’s tricks like this one. Sean, and the others on his team, reach deep into the molten heart of the earth with their minds, miles deep, and open a hole to the surface. The magma, liquid rock, is forced through this hole, a solid rod of lava being ejected into the tank out there. Or rather it would be a solid rod if the opening was not opened and closed regularly to cut the rod into the bricks you have already seen. At other times, delving deeper, they tap the molten iron core of our planet and bring the purest iron into our rolling mills. It is a wonder indeed.”
He smiled at Giulio and signaled to Sean. “Now, lightly, touch his memories and excise this day.”
Giulio jumped to his feet, tried to run, to flee, but blackness fell.
“Chi è lei!” Giulio said to the officer behind the desk, who was industriously studying a computer printout.
“No games, please, this is a busy office,” Captain Power told him. “We have your complete record here. You are Dr. Giulio Balietti, an atomic physicist. You were sent here by the CIA to unearth our technical secrets. This is espionage and you could be shot for it . . . Here, sit down, you’re so pale. A glass of water? No? That’s better. But we are a kindly people and we are giving you a choice. You may return home now and tell the CIA to leave us alone. Or you may remain here as long as you refrain from further espionage. There is an opening for a lecturer in atomic physics at Trinity College. Just part-time I’m afraid, a few hours a week. Until there is a better position you will have to do other work as well. We have found that academics enjoy peat cutting. Healthy, outdoor occupation, very relaxing when you are used to it. A lot of our older people like to have peat fires of handcut turf and it is not too much of an effort to indulge them. So what do you say?”
What did he say? A memory of Hoboken, the endless gray poverty, the plankton and soy food, the drab existence. Stay, why not, he wasn’t being asked to give his word. He could still keep his eyes open, look for the Irish secret, bring it back to the U.S. if he could. His duty was to stay.
“Trinity and the peat bog,” he said, firmly.
“Good man. Here, this way, I want you to meet Herr Professor Doktor Schmidt. A physicist also . . .”
“Nein, you forget, my captain. It is Ivan who is the Physikei. I am simple chemist. Come—Giulio is your name?—we have a good chat and I show you how to use the peat shovel. A most satisfactory tool.”
They left, arm in arm, out into the falling rain.
THOMAS M. DISCH
Mutability
[“Mutability,” which is excerpted from a novel-in-progress, is set in the year 2097. The human race has become immortal as a result of genetic alterations caused by a plague that swept the world late in the twentieth century. However, a small but genetically dominant minority of mortals has survived and perpetuates itself in this world. Most of the mortals live apart in island enclaves, but a few, such as the protagonist of this story, lead a makeshift existence on the fringes of the larger immortal society.
Other excerpts from the novel have appeared in the ORBIT series (“The Pressure of Time”), AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS (“Things Lost”) and IMMORTAL (“Chanson Perpetuelle”).]
Tübingen, 2 July 2097.
The free university city of Tübingen (alt. 315m; population 2090:140,406) is situated on the banks of the Neckar thirty-five kilometres south of Stuttgart. It is chiefly renowned in modern times for its university, founded in 1477 by Count Eberhard im Bart of Wurtemberg. Melancthon lectured at the Bursa from 1514 to 1318. In 1336 Duke Ulrich founded the Protestant seminary, where Kepler later studied under the astronomer Mastlin. Kepler’s first work, the Mysterium cosmographicum, was published in Tübingen by the Gruppenbach Press. During the 19th Century the university regained the high reputation it had lost during the devastations of the Thirty Years War. Hegel, Schelling, Holderlin, Uhland, and Morike (all identified with the Swabian ‘renaissance’) studied and taught at the seminary, which was also, a few decades later, the centre of the critical movement in Protestant theology, exemplified by Baur and Strauss. Inevitably the long decline of Protestantism during the unification and expansion of the German Reich under Bismarck and Hitler affected the stature of the university, but it once again came into prominence in the first decades of this century when its faculty and students spearheaded the Pan-Germanic Anarchist movement. In 2024 it became the capital of the independent state of Baden-Schwaben, and in 2039 the United Nations granted its petition for free-city status. In 2096 the university enrolled 21,300 students in its graduate faculties (approximately half of this number receiving stipends) and 243 undergraduates. In recent years the faculty of history (enrolling more than 8,000 students) has won world-wide recognition for its achievements, and the “bifurcating bibliographies” of the Tübingen school have revolutionized modern historical methodology. This faculty was the first at the university to abolish voluntarily, in 2019, the increasingly meaningless distinction between the teaching staff and the body of graduate students. Despite the controversy that still attaches to its uniquely democratic government, Tübingen attracts eminent scholars from all fields and from all countries. No university in Europe and only California in America can boast an alumni of equal distinction.
from Baedecker’s The German States,
2097 edition
1 p.m.
Antennae adither, the ant seeks its fellows on the hinderside of her hand. She turns her hand palm up. With angst the ant considers the index fingers, then veers off along the lifeline. The middle finger, gilded with nicotine, bends forward and crushes the ant, or pismire (from the Danish myre, though long, long before the Danes there had been Myrmidons, and before Myrmidons a plague.):
HCOOH.
Meanwhile they poured up out of the floorboards in their multitudes. Avoiding the suitcases, the column followed the crack to the west wall, ascending the wall as far as to the wainscoting that concealed the power cable, and followed this traverse northwards and then, at the corner, to the east. Where a doorway interrupted the wainscoting the ants once again ascended. Against the age-dark wood of the beam they became invisible. Reaching the south wall they descended, slanting left, to the counter where that morning Veronica had left the unwashed spoon, their fleece of Golden Syrup.
A journey, she estimated, of fifty feet: an ideal itinerary would not have exceeded seven. It was allegorical.
“Fools,” Veronica said, not without affection.
Michael Divine, who’d lost interest in the ants half an hour ago, seemed uncertain how to interpret this remark. He smiled faintly, faint wrinkles forming about his eyes and mouth.
Aligning himself (she thought) on the side of wisdom.
She rubbed the smear of formic acid off on her tee-shirt and returned to her worktable, where a random compost of notes and artifacts, quanta of history, confronted her: Doctor Emeritus Veronica Quin.
She inserted the tape of 12 August 1998, 1.30 p.m. E.S.T., N.B.C., “Beware, Babylon!” and speeded through the first minutes, making a monkey gibber of the opening hymn. She slowed at the first close-up of the blurred ghostly chiliast, who crackled portents of the Days to Come. His Leonardesque finger pointed to the handwriting on the wall. The audience was made to consider whether they were sheep or goats, grain or chaff. Then came the show-stopper, as he clawed away the numeral days from a giant calendar.
The estimates for that first show had been twenty-two million, and the ratings increased steadily until February of 2000, a month after the terminal date of the universe. In the interim months Reverend Delmont had been elected Governor of the state of Nevada (where the Elect had been asked to assemble) and Mayor of Los Angeles, (where they’d been assembling already for eighty years). “Beware, Babylon!” was an essential datum in any consideration of millennialism.
She observed:
1) The frisson of the Apocalypse; hell’s sex-appeal.
2) The seduction of numerology. We are all Pythagoreans.
3) The secret suicidal wish (Freud, the Cold War, et al.). Beyond these partial causes there had been the memory of the Plague, of decimations, of landscapes more vivid than Bosch, providing both a portent and a model of the universal wrack. How much more satisfying to the moral sense than the nescient speculations of Ph.D.s if this should be the meaning of the Plague—that all those million deaths had been accomplished as a word to the wise.
Anticipations Page 12
