“Oh! Cruel fate!” cried the Sirian with indignation, “Who could conceive of this excess of maniacal rage! It makes me want to take three steps and crush this whole anthill of ridiculous assassins.”
“Do not waste your time,” someone responded, “they are working towards ruin quickly enough. Know that after ten years only one hundredth of these scoundrels will be here. Know that even if they have not drawn swords, hunger, fatigue, or intemperance will overtake them. Furthermore, it is not they that should be punished, it is those sedentary barbarians who from the depths of their offices order, while they are digesting their last meal, the massacre of a million men, and who subsequently give solemn thanks to God.”
The voyager was moved with pity for the small human race, where he was discovering such surprising contrasts.
“Since you are amongst the small number of wise men,” he told these sirs, “and since apparently you do not kill anyone for money, tell me, I beg of you, what occupies your time.”
“We dissect flies,” said the philosopher, “we measure lines, we gather figures; we agree with each other on two or three points that we do not understand.”
It suddenly took the Sirian and the Saturnian’s fancy to question these thinking atoms, to learn what it was they agreed on.
“What do you measure,” said the Saturnian, “from the Dog Star to the great star of the Gemini?”
They responded all at once, “thirty-two and a half degrees.”
“What do you measure from here to the moon?”
“60 radii of the Earth even.”
“How much does your air weigh?”
He thought he had caught them, but they all told him that air weighed around 900 times less than an identical volume of the purest water, and 19,000 times less than a gold ducat. The little dwarf from Saturn, surprised at their responses, was tempted to accuse of witchcraft the same people he had refused a soul fifteen minutes earlier.
Finally Micromégas said to them, “Since you know what is exterior to you so well, you must know what is interior even better. Tell me what your soul is, and how you form ideas.” The philosophers spoke all at once as before, but they were of different views. The oldest cited Aristotle, another pronounced the name of Descartes; this one here, Malebranche; another Leibnitz; another Locke. An old peripatetic spoke up with confidence: “The soul is an entelechy, and a reason gives it the power to be what it is.” This is what Aristotle expressly declares, page 633 of the Louvre edition. He cited the passage.
Entele’xeia’ tis esi kai’ lo’gos toû dy’namin e’xontos toude’ ei’nai. B.
“I do not understand Greek very well,” said the giant.
“Neither do I,” said the philosophical mite.
“Why then,” the Sirian retorted, “are you citing some man named Aristotle in the Greek?”
“Because,” replied the savant, “one should always cite what one does not understand at all in the language one understands the least.”
The Cartesian took the floor and said: “The soul is a pure spirit that has received in the belly of its mother all metaphysical ideas, and which, leaving that place, is obliged to go to school, and to learn all over again what it already knew, and will not know again.”
“It is not worth the trouble,” responded the animal with the height of eight leagues, “for your soul to be so knowledgeable in its mother’s stomach, only to be so ignorant when you have hair on your chin. But what do you understand by the mind?”
“You are asking me?” said the reasoner. “I have no idea. We say that it is not matter –”
“But do you at least know what matter is?”
“Certainly,” replied the man. “For example this stone is grey, has such and such a form, has three dimensions, is heavy and divisible.”
“Well!” said the Sirian, “this thing that appears to you to be divisible, heavy, and grey, will you tell me what it is? You see some attributes, but behind those, are you familiar with that?
“No,” said the other.
“– So you do not know what matter is.”
So Micromégas, addressing another sage that he held on a thumb, asked what his soul was, and what it did.
“Nothing at all,” said the Malebranchist philosopher. “God does everything for me. I see everything in him, I do everything in him; it is he who does everything that I get mixed up in.”
“It would be just as well not to exist,” retorted the sage of Sirius. “And you, my friend,” he said to a Leibnitzian who was there, “what is your soul?”
“It is,” answered the Leibnitzian, “the hand of a clock that tells the time while my body rings out. Or, if you like, it is my soul that rings out while my body tells the time, or my soul is the mirror of the universe, and my body is the border of the mirror. All that is clear.”
A small partisan of Locke was nearby, and when he was finally given the floor: “I do not know,” said he, “how I think, but I know that I have only ever thought through my senses. That there are immaterial and intelligent substances I do not doubt, but that it is impossible for God to communicate thought to matter I doubt very much. I revere the eternal power. It is not my place to limit it. I affirm nothing, and content myself with believing that many more things are possible than one would think.”
The animal from Sirius smiled. He did not find this the least bit sage, while the dwarf from Saturn would have kissed the sectarian of Locke were it not for the extreme disproportion. But there was, unfortunately, a little animalcule in a square hat who interrupted all the other animalcule philosophers. He said that he knew the secret: that everything would be found in the Summa of Saint Thomas. He looked the two celestial inhabitants up and down. He argued that their people, their worlds, their suns, their stars, had all been made uniquely for mankind. At this speech, our two voyagers nearly fell over with that inextinguishable laughter which, according to Homer, is shared with the gods. Their shoulders and their stomachs heaved up and down, and in these convulsions the vessel that the Sirian had on his nail fell into one of the Saturnian’s trouser pockets. These two good men searched for it a long time, found it finally, and tidied it up neatly. The Sirian resumed his discussion with the little mites. He spoke to them with great kindness, although in the depths of his heart he was a little angry that the infinitely small had an almost infinitely great pride. He promised to make them a beautiful philosophical book, written very small for their usage, and said that in this book they would see the point of everything. Indeed, he gave them this book before leaving. It was taken to the academy of science in Paris, but when the ancient secretary opened it, he saw nothing but blank pages. “Ah!” he said, “I suspected as much.”
Dark Mirrors
John Walters
Her face and arms bore the yellow marks of old bruises and the purple marks of new ones; her left forefinger and middle finger were in rough splints of cardboard and tape; the half-a-centimeter-thick bright red scar of a recently-healed cut ran from her right temple to the top of her nose near the corner of her left eye. Add to all this her hard, determined expression that suggested she wouldn’t take shit from anyone, and she looked like a fighter, a brawler, a troublemaker.
But Margaret Keller knew she was anything but that.
The loose gray prison coveralls made her appear diminutive, like a little girl. She was very thin, abnormally so. Her scalp could be seen through her light brown hair; obviously much of the hair had fallen out. The hard work, scanty food, derision and beatings were obviously telling on her. But she held her head defiantly high; she had obviously kept herself together through it all.
Margaret, despite herself, was impressed. However, she assumed a calm, cold, professional air as she said, “Bethany Williamson?” and when the woman nodded, “Sit down.”
They were in the mess hall, a small table with obscenities carved into its gray Formica surface between t
hem. Prisoners shuffled to and fro, with wide frightened eyes glancing around as if already in the line of fire. The guards watching them were whispering intently together in a corner. They too would be called up, as soon as the last prisoner had left.
“Do you want my decision now?” asked Bethany. “I thought I had another day.”
“Your decision?”
Bethany smiled ironically. “Service or dismemberment: aren’t those the options?”
Momentarily taken aback, Margaret quickly recovered her poise. “Those are your choices, yes. Do you need another day to decide?”
Bethany slowly shook her head.
“How long have you been here?” Margaret asked.
Bethany smiled again, though her eyes narrowed and her jaw tightened. “I’m sure you in your fancy uniform, all clean and polished and obviously more than well-fed, have access to my file. You don’t need to be asking me any questions like that.”
“Don’t you dare get insubordinate with me…”
“Or else what? I have been here for a year, three months, and seventeen days, and I have been beaten and abused on almost every one of those days. I was ripped away from my parents, my school, and everything else from my former life. I am about to be cut up and used as spare parts for wounded soldiers. There’s nothing you can threaten me with that can make any difference to me.” The hard look remained, but a teardrop formed in the corner of her right eye, though it did not trickle down.
Margaret forced the twinge of sympathy out of her conscious mind as if it were an enemy, but then adopted a more solicitous tone. “All right, all right. It seems we got off on the wrong foot.”
“Is there a right foot? I don’t think so. I’m a condemned woman.” Bethany stood up.
“Please sit down.”
“No.”
They stared at each other for a long time, as if in mental combat. Finally Margaret nodded at a guard, who led Bethany away.
* * *
For her next interview with Bethany Margaret went down to her cell.
The section guard was a short stocky woman with a clean-shaven head, thick lower lip, and a pasty complexion. “That’s murderer’s row. It’s been almost cleaned out,” the guard said. “There’re just a few prisoners left. Some are unaccounted for, though. They’re trying to hide to avoid service. It could be dangerous if they find you. I can come with you if you want.”
“I’ll be all right.” To emphasize the point Margaret pulled out her pistol, checked that it was loaded, and put it away again. “By the way, what is she doing down there with murderers?”
The guard shrugged. “They don’t like her kind much. Maybe the warden thought it would break her. Anyway, there are maps on the guard post walls in case you get lost. There’re a lot of corridors.”
Margaret descended a flight of stairs and turned left into a wide but low-ceilinged hallway. The cells on either side were vacant; her footsteps echoed loudly in the empty spaces. Since the facility was being shut down regular cleaning had stopped. Humidity beaded on the graffiti-covered walls and then trickled down in rivulets to form puddles on the muddy floor. Black specks of mold had begun to grow in the corners of the ceiling. Cockroaches were everywhere; Margaret saw an occasional rat as well. The air smelled musty from the damp, rotting mattresses.
After having navigated the maze of corridors for a quarter of an hour Margaret became convinced she was lost, and was just about to try to find her way back when she spotted Bethany alone in her cell, sitting on the edge of the lower bunk reading a book.
Once again a burst of sympathy erupted from somewhere within; once again Margaret stifled it and sent it back where it came from. She reminded herself that she despised Bethany and everything she stood for, and she resented the circumstance that forced her into this hellhole to deal with her. She had turned her back on her people; she deserved the dismemberment. At least then she could be of some use.
But even as she thought these things, Margaret wondered whether these were her own thoughts or others had implanted them in her. Things had taken such a crazy turn that she didn’t know what to believe anymore. But whenever she became confused she thought of her husband and son, both early casualties of the war. Her husband she remembered as he had looked the day he left for the last time: balding with gray hair at the temples, but sharp and strong and determined in his uniform. Her son, however, she could never picture as an adult. She saw him as a toddler, running into her arms with a big smile to be scooped up and hugged, or grade school age either in bed with one of his myriad childhood illnesses, or pale and thin playing basketball at a nearby park with his friends. Though he had never been very healthy, when the conflict began he had wanted to enlist right away; he was rejected at first though, and was only allowed to join up after several defeats had been suffered and the medical checkup consisted of feeling you to see if you were still warm. He had been thrilled to be a part of it all, but he hadn’t lasted a week once he was out on the field.
A part of her desperately wanted to consider it Bethany’s fault that they were dead, but another part of her knew that it was not true, that what she had done had made no difference one way or the other.
Margaret remembered Bethany’s photograph from her file: long thick straight shining hair, round almost chubby face, big smile, large light brown eyes full of trust and confidence. She had looked like a completely different person. She had been a seventeen-year-old university student majoring in pharmacology when the draft law had been amended to make the minimum age fifteen instead of eighteen and to include women as well as men. She had right away filed for conscientious objector status, on secular moral grounds rather than theological. In her statement she had quoted Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Thoreau, and others, but by then it hadn’t mattered what personal convictions she’d held: conscientious objection had been officially abolished. The choices had been military service or prison.
Bethany heard Margaret’s footsteps and looked up. Without enthusiasm she said, “Well, look who’s here. What brings you to my humble home?”
Margaret stood on the other side of the bars. “We’re alone. We can talk.”
Bethany threw the book on the bed. “Twenty-year-old almanac. Not much in the prison library. I have nothing to say to you.”
Margaret wanted to shout, to order her, to force her somehow to listen, but she knew it wouldn’t work. “Just give me a few minutes, please.”
“I suppose I can spare a few minutes. Don’t threaten me.”
“I won’t.” Margaret slipped the key-card into the slot and went inside; when she swung the door behind her she left it open a few centimeters.
“Aren’t you afraid I’m going to try to run?”
“No.” Margaret sat down on the lone stool. The strong smell of the mattress combined with the stench of the filthy open toilet in the corner almost made her gag, but she managed to control the impulse. “Have you heard much recent news, Bethany?”
She chuckled humorlessly. “Just rumors. I’m denied newspapers, magazines, and TV. Does the war go on?”
Margaret nodded.
“And how goes it for our side?”
“Please don’t be sarcastic with me. If you know nothing else you know it goes poorly. Otherwise why would we be conscripting prisoners into military service?”
“Or butchering them if they refuse.”
“That’s just supposed to be a threat to scare you into fighting.”
“It’s real enough to me, isn’t it? And I’m still not fighting.”
“Why are you so stubborn?”
“Why should I explain myself again? What’s the point?”
“Sorry. Sorry.” This was not how Margaret wanted things to go. “Let me give you a brief summary of what’s been happening out there.”
Bethany cautiously nodded. “All right.”
“Around the time of your
incarceration, after the fiasco with the tactical nukes, more ships landed and we planned another major offensive.”
“Now that the depleted ranks were swelled with female cannon fodder.”
Margaret ignored the comment and continued. “We had been developing a new type of weapon, a hand-held laser. We thought it would turn the tide. But as soon as we attacked, they retaliated with lasers that were more powerful than ours. It was another route. We lost a lot of troops. A lot.”
“I’m sorry for them.”
“Are you? You’re certainly safer inside than out there.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
Margaret sighed. “All right. Well, we had still never actually seen them, they still used those robotic dolls that were obviously imitations of us, but the assumption was that somewhere in those ships there must be something of flesh and blood – or some kind of biological life, anyway, and so somebody proposed that we try to hit them with bacteriological warfare – try to burn them out from the inside. We tried it. We threw everything we could think of at them. Only it didn’t work. And when we were done, they unleashed a plague that destroyed about half the world’s remaining population.”
“So everything you hit them with, they send back at you, only more so.”
“That’s the way it’s been so far. As a matter of fact, a group of mathematicians put all the data into a computer, and as close as they can figure it whatever we do to them, they do exactly double back to us.”
“Did they ever initiate an attack?”
“At first we were convinced that they had started it all, back when they were just circling the Earth and the missiles began to fly. But upon further analysis we think maybe our automatic orbiting defense system may have fired the first shot.”
Alien Invasion Page 67
