Symbiography

by William Hjortsberg

  There’s no business like show business …

  IRVING BERLIN

  PAR SONDAK’S HOUSE was set on automatic. Beyond the garden, concealed sensory-indicators probed the waiting night. All rooms but one were disconnected until morning, windows and doors sealed, air-conditioners silent; deep in the sub-basement, the accumulator and power-distributor idled. Only Sondak’s soundproof studio remained active. There, in the padded, ovoid chamber, Par Sondak slept; his swollen, pink body curled, knees drawn almost to his chest, his thumb in his mouth.

  Adjoining the egg-shaped studio hummed a unit housing the encephalograph probes, high-density recorders, mode storage banks, duplication and mix-machinery; the tools of the trade. While the Dreamer slept, folded like an embryo, a circuited crown of receptors and transmitters banded his smooth, unwrinkled brow. This equipment captured and preserved the subtle essence of his art.

  The dream was standard Sondak escape adventure: swordplay, a cut rose, distant hoofbeats on a moonlit road, the awesome stillness of the scaffold. Attention to detail made all of Sondak’s dreams memorable; his feeling for place and period was unlike any other Dreamer’s. Sondak’s career was in its eighty-fifth year and over three-hundred of his dreams remained in public circulation.

  Far at the bottom of the hill, among the disorder and rot hidden from the Dreamer’s machine-tooled house by the opulence of his gardens, a starved mongrel prowled, sniffing the debris left by encamping Nomads. There wasn’t much, for the Nomads were themselves avid scavengers, and the dog found nothing of interest among the charred garbage and broken glass; even discarded bones had been gnawed to splinters by the eager rats.

  The dog continued up the hill, favoring an injured forepaw, ignorant of the warning implied by the orderly cultivation and the watching infra-red eyes ahead. A hidden sensor relayed the intruder’s presence back to the house; the computer plotted the exact location; twin antennae revolved on the turreted roof, focusing a disc-mounted sound-intensifier. The dog lifted his head to catch a final scent as the high-frequency beam found its target. In an instant, the animal’s blood temperature rose to the boiling-point and, before he could fall, he erupted from within, consumed by a burst of incandescent flame which left his canine imprint briefly hanging in the evening air, a chalky drift of ashes and smoke like shreds of fog dissolving.

  In the morning it was raining. The kitchen switched on at six. Within the hour, the rest of the house came alive and by the time Par Sondak was eased awake electronically, the place was purring like a spaceship.

  Smoothly, the sides of the studio slid open and Sondak stepped down, padding across the thermal-turf mat which covered his bedroom floor like a carpet of insulated moss. The mirrored walls reflected the lurching sag of his fatman’s amble; sounds of breaking waves issued from a dozen surrounding speakers. Although his house was located a thousand miles from any sea, Sondak found the rushing murmur of surf soothing in the early morning.

  The bath was contoured to the folds of his massive body and while churning, scented water swirled and sensitive vibrators kneaded his mottled flesh, the extended nozzle of an air-compression inoculator blasted painlessly through the tallow of his suet-soft buttock, giving him the minimum-daily-requirement; the complete prescription of vitamins, enzymes, hormones and energizers which kept him plodding through another day.

  Par Sondak was one-hundred-and-five years old and in the best of health. Indeed, he had never been sick a day of his life. His outward appearance was that of a chubby, middle-aged infant, due mainly to his total baldness, a condition resulting from nearly a century of wearing the probes to bed each night. “Bald as a Dreamer,” was the standard cliché. Par Sondak punched the code-numbers for breakfast and waited.

  “Good morning, sir,” his computer said. “Did you sleep well?”

  “I hope so.” Sondak yawned. “What’s the weather been like?”

  “There was thunderstorm-level precipitation for two hours earlier this morning, and another light shower is scheduled for sixteen.”

  “How long?”

  “The gardeners have requested forty-five minutes.”

  “No, I want rain all afternoon, clearing at sunset.”

  “Very good.” The computer paused. “Sunset will be at 19:49.”

  “It doesn’t matter, I’ll be around. Anything special for today?”

  “You have a conference with the City at ten. Otherwise, the agenda is open.”

  A tray appeared on the conveyor from the kitchen and Sondak carried his breakfast onto the patio, where he sat in the shade of a flowering dogwood. The eggs on his plate were real; Sondak despised synthetics and maintained a poultry yard in his garden. From below came the sounds of the mechanical cultivators at work, weeding and fertilizing. A row of fruit trees screened their synchronized labor. Beyond the gardens stretched the open desert, barren and scorched; hills like slag-heaps, shining, metallic, sparsely fringed with a feeble growth of scrub. The Dreamer gazed out over his breakfast at this wasteland, to a point in the distant, hard-blue sky, where three fly-speck vultures turned in a drifting spiral.

  Beneath the circling carrion-eaters, on a bleak basalt outcrop jutting over a dry riverbed, a Nomad burial platform rested in the gnarled and naked limbs of a long-dead jack pine. Most of the clan departed before sunup, but several Nomads, blood-kin to the child lashed in the branches above them, stood silently waiting for the vultures to feed.

  The ritual was complete; offerings had been made and the proper spells cast. But the behavior of the birds was important and the old ones watched for sign, measuring their vatic powers against those of the augur, an ancient crone who hunched and mumbled, fingering an amulet from long ago. The vultures settled in the branches around the body, making a show of folding their wings and shifting from foot to foot while they sized up the gathering below. No one moved. Only the wind, rustling the tinder-dry thornbushes, disturbed the quiet. The largest of the lizard-necked birds hopped forward onto the platform, rasping with a satisfied croak, and thrust his beak into an eye-socket. A good omen: a mutter of approval ran through the grouped Nomads.

  One member of the clan wasn’t watching: a young man with only a faint mustache and the first downy patches of beard on his cheeks. He stood apart from the others, gripping the long wire-bound barrel of his smooth-bore muzzle-loader, and stared back across the desolate blast-furnace expanse of cinder-pile nothingness to the glowing green oasis, a brief flowering of life in a dead land. It was the first time the young man had ever seen the fabled, forbidden dwelling-place of a Lord Citizen, the Select and All-Powerful Ones.

  Of all the rooms in his efficient house, the projection-booth was one Sondak almost never used. He disliked the cramped, windowless chamber; the dull uniformity of its metallic walls, ceiling and floor. Seated in the padded control seat in the center of this tiny room, Sondak felt uncomfortably claustrophobic and he avoided coming here except when called in by conferences.

  Sondak wasn’t alone for long. A door appeared to open in the blank, gray wall and the hologram image of a Dream Syndicate hostess stepped into the room. The girl was young and not unattractively dressed in a plum-colored tunic, her nipples tinted pale green to match her lips and hair.

  “Prompt as always,” Sondak said.

  “That’s how things happen in the City.” The girl smiled. “Promptly. What setting would you like for the conference, sir?”

  “Makes no difference to me. Anything but this iron maiden.”

  The girl turned for a moment and nodded to the wall behind her. “Well, if it’s all right with you, sir,” she said, “Mr. Tarquille is already adjusted to setting number ZT-90065-N7.”

  Sondak slowly repeated the number under his breath, tapping it out on the keypad set into the arm of the control seat. The walls shimmered, an instant silver rainfall as the strict confines of the projection-booth gave way to distant, snow-bright mountains and Sondak found himself and his padded chair on the bank of a crystalline lake, facing Omar Tarqui
lle under the scented boughs of a wind-stirred spruce.

  “Morning, Par,” the Executive said, intent on the legs of the hostess as she wandered off among the pines. “You’re looking fit.”

  “How can you tell?” Sondak laughed to see Tarquille’s momentary, throat-clearing discomfort. “Still fond of alpine scenery, I see, Omar.”

  “A placid setting is best for conferences, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure. Perhaps more would be accomplished in crisis; on the deck of a sinking ship, let’s say.”

  The Executive chuckled pleasantly. “Been dreaming lately, Par?”

  “Every night for a month.”

  “Glad to hear it. Must feel good to be back in action. How long will this one run, do you think?”

  “Final mix is still a long way off, but I’d estimate at least ten hours.”

  “Perfect, Par, absolutely perfect. You’ve got a lot of fans here in the City waiting for a new one, you know.”

  “That’s reassuring to hear.”

  “The name Sondak still draws an audience, never mind statistics telling you Direct-Experience-Modes outsell Dreams four-to-one in the preference-ballots.”

  “Figures are meaningless to me, Omar.” The Dreamer yawned behind the back of his hand.

  “How old are you now, Par, anyway? Over two-hundred?”

  “No, just a hundred-and-five.”

  “Ah, still a young man.” The Executive fingered his chin and raised an eyebrow, in imitation of the sage he thought himself to be. “Much too young to be off hiding in the wilderness like a hermit. You belong here in the City, where decisions are made. Do you good to be among men, keeping up with the times. When you get to be a four-century-old fart like me, why then you can hole up in a crypt out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “I like it here out in the middle of nowhere.” The Dreamer stared across at the image of a lake where rising trout disrupted the reflected mountains.

  “It would be different if you had some company, Par. Someone young and athletic, like that little hostess in here a minute ago; or a boy, depending on … preferences. But to be alone is unnatural, and if you don’t mind an old-timer like me butting in, I’ll say that too much solitude is bad for your work.”

  Sondak did mind an old-timer butting in. He liked being alone, and said so.

  “Surrounded by Nomad savages, how can you stand it?”

  “I was watching a group of Nomads this morning at breakfast. First I’ve seen in over a year.”

  The Executive nodded politely and changed the subject, saying he was anxious to spend a night soon with Sondak’s new dream.

  “I’ll put a mode on the waves as soon as final mix is in.”

  “Very good. Can I get you anything from the City? Landermann has a new Dream, a regular nightmare, I’m told.”

  “No thanks. I’ve too much work.”

  “All right. If something comes up I’ll arrange a conference.” Omar Tarquille smiled, gave a slight wave, and vanished from the lakefront. In the distance, a quail called sharply.

  The Dreamer punched the off button. The mountains melted and shrank like a reflection on water seeping into sand. Par Sondak was back in his projection-booth. He pushed his bulk out of the chair and started for the door, eager for fresh air. Although the booth was a favored play-thing with City-dwellers, where space was at a premium and the only open country was on mode, Sondak preferred sitting on his patio or roaming in the garden to any of his vast file of electronic voyages. The computer still scheduled theatrical events in the booth each week, but Sondak seldom went. Conferences were all he used his booth for these days.

  The Dreamer was smiling as he stepped onto the patio. “Imagine Omar offering up Landermann’s new dream.” Sondak never played the dreams of others. He had no interest in them. His dream-table was a piece of equipment he used even less often than the projection-booth. Dreams were not his kind of diversion.

  Buick of the Cincinnati clan crouched in the shade of the dead tree, watching. A warrior since the age of twelve, when his father was killed in a skirmish with the Lafayette County people and care of the family gun passed to him as eldest male, Buick wore the name-brands of six slain enemies sewn on leather thongs to his belt. No spoils were taken from his father’s body; his own people had the victory that day, and the grief-stricken boy hammered the ancient brass emblem into the carved stock of the family gun, continuing his mourning fast well beyond the ceremonial three days after the dead man’s charm-bag was secretly buried. Buick believed this token brought him luck; more luck than any of the talismans in the snakeskin pouch hanging from his belt; he fingered his father’s name-brand: JEEP, worn smooth and shiny from constant rubbing.

  The young Nomad was in need of luck today. All his childhood long, he listened to cooking-fire tales of the magic places where men lived like Gods. At the clan chants, he thrilled to the epic songs of Texaco, the Firechief, mounted on his flying horse, how he stole the light-that-never-dies from the citadel of the Lord Citizens. Until this morning, only a handful of the Elders had ever seen the enchanted gardens, their recollections, hoarded like treasure from the past. And yet, these same boastful old men squawked now of the All-Powerful One’s wrath and demanded a girl-child be sacrificed to protect their long, white beards. Let them all scamper bowlegged into the brush, Buick of Cincinnati was a warrior and carried the family gun; he was battle-tested and would admit to fearing no man, not even the favorites of the Gods. From the moment he first saw the serene silver towers rising out of the unbelievable green of the surrounding oasis, he knew that he could not rest until he walked in the shade of those magic trees and plucked the fruit from their forbidden limbs.

  One room in Par Sondak’s mechanical house was unlike the others. The walls here were panelled in walnut, with carved Ionic pilasters and egg-and-dart molding. There was a real fireplace framing brass andirons and birch logs. In place of extruded plastic furniture were wingchairs upholstered in dark green leather and on the floor, the swirling blue lotus buds of a hand-knotted Kirman. Above the mantel hung the Velazquez portrait of Pope Innocent X. It was a stately, secluded room; silent as a meditation garden; a sanctuary. With the exception of the unused Public Reading Room at the City-Center, it was the largest library left on Earth.

  Par Sondak sat in an armchair by one of the tall leaded-glass windows, a calf-bound volume of Gibbon’s superb history open on his knees. Around him, in alcoves along the walls, were shelves ranked with books, rising to the ceiling in rich strata of red, green and maroon morocco. The Dreamer gazed out the window at the sculpted hedges delineating his gardens, unable to read. An irritation remained from this morning’s conference: the tone in Omar Tarquille’s voice when he mentioned the popularity of Direct-Experience-Modes. Sondak wondered how much of a threat was intended by the crafty Executive.

  Ten years before, the complexities of the encephalograph probes and neural receptors were miniaturized to a near-microscopic wafer, and Sondak had known there would be no shortage of rogues and daredevils volunteering for surgical implantation; but what he never guessed at the time was the size of the audience that would be attracted to participating in hand-to-hand gladiatorial combat or one-man rocket races to the moon and back. D.E.M.s of assassination and torture were even available. Every space drifter and mercenary killer in the City wore a mini-probe under his scalp, ready to double the take from a hazardous assignment by selling the modes to the highest bidder.

  Suicide and murder remained the two highest contributors to the deathrate in the City, with accidents a paltry third and disease only a memory. A near-eternal life-span froze the eminent in a static hierarchy, like prehistoric mammoths preserved in a glacier’s epochal crawl. Par Sondak was a very rich man. In the City he would be an easy target for the ambitious. The Dreamer’s gentle, retiring nature was a distinct liability in a society which encouraged ruthlessness and cunning. Sondak knew whenever his dreams failed to score appreciably on the preference-ballot (and t
he inevitable day was coming when large-cast D.E.M.s would be as extravagantly staged as any hologram spectacular), his credit-rating would no longer support his isolated and independent life and he would be forced to give up the peace of his library for the sophisticated power-struggle within the stately corridors of the City.

  The young Nomad paused at the bottom of the hill to check the primer in the frizzen-pan of his musket and wind the wheel lock back until the action was cocked. He concealed his bed-roll and saddlebags between two large stones and took only what he would carry into battle: shot and powder, a goat-skin waterbag, his bone-hilted cutlass and the protective magic of his charm-bag. His hair was tied back in a warrior’s top-knot. His name-brand hung around his neck on a braided cord, flashing in the sun; a challenge to anything he might encounter.

  Buick stepped forward into the rain, stooping as if he were entering a tent. Outside, the empty desert burned under a raging sun, but beyond the gentle enclosing waterfall stands of elm and oak and maple billowed like deciduous cumuli. Buick removed the homespun shirt, his sacred number, 66, patched on front and back, and wrapped it around the lock of his musket, held muzzle downward against the fine, mistlike rain. He felt drunk and giddy with so much unfamiliar greenness.

  At the edge of the woods were fruit orchards and a snarl of blackberry brambles in the open clearing. The Nomad crouched behind a tree trunk, smelling the sweetness of windfalls fermenting in the wet grass. With the musket cradled in his arms, Buick rolled onto his stomach, head low as he began to crawl. Through the even rows of trees, beyond the surrounding gardens, he saw the turreted rooftop where a disk-mounted sound-intensifier began to pivot.

  In the library, a tall Hepplewhite pendulum clock with hanging brass weights and the phases of the moon in a hand-painted procession around the age-stained pasteboard face chimed the hour. Par Sondak closed the volume of Gibbon; at the sideboard, he filled a tulip-shaped glass with blackberry brandy distilled from fruit he had picked himself. He remembered the thorn scratches on his soft white hands with considerable pride. What would they say in the City about such hands, berry-stained and bleeding, hands that had done work?