–I won’t get out. Not through that door. I must pace out this radius, and square it, and divide it by the height, and multiply it by the number of slices, and then you see I’ll know exactly how it works, quick, help me, keep busy, count the slices, yes, I accept them all.
–You must get out, Lazarus, you must.
–Don’t panic, Something. A girl-spy doesn’t panic.
–I know, I know, I have no future, but I must tell you, yes, I must. The house, Lazarus, the steel house. Someone designed it so that the door would close up automatically at maximum entropy and everyone left inside would die of absolute immobility from sheer heat.
–Entropy? What entropy? Who designed it, for heaven’s sake?
–You did, Lazarus. You have a complicated brain. Oh, I know you can’t help it, but it does make things difficult for a girl-spy with all those innumerable slices of you. Sometimes I wish I had married a poorer man –
–Oh cut that out, Something, you’ve never stopped saying I see nothing, understand nothing.
–But you do, Lazarus, you will. If you don’t forget me.
–I’ll never forget you, Something, because I won’t leave this place. I don’t believe in maximum entropy.
–Pa – pa, like a bent doll. Dippermouth’s needles oscillate more and more weakly and very slowly the door closes. Quick, get out. The heat becomes immeasurable. Gut Bucket starts melting into a pool of red hot metal. Potato Head crumbles like a giant decaying horse-fly. Something bends over Dippermouth as the atoms of total waste whirl around his dial and his impulses tick slower and slower. Only Tin Roof still roars round, drowning the vibrant hum, consisting now entirely of exhaust into which he picks me up, propels me with a jet into my belly, backwards into the closing door. I don’t want to go back, I don’t, I don’t, pushes me, squeezes me through it as Something bends over Dippermouth and I fall, fall, fall to the loud ticking inside the district of my time.
Inside the mirror on the landing towards the lawyer’s office the shape stares back the map-like contours of some unknown region, continent, galaxy perhaps with two craters or starless coalsacks radiating nothing. Something however creates the wavering outlines and if not the eyes then some faint memory, surely, behind the eyes, filaments of gas in violent motion or two extragalactic nebulae in collision, four or five hundred million years away. But the eyes close to avoid the issue of their death and amazing recovery. The closing resolves the optical image like a change of lenses, so that inside the mirror the tall thin man stares back, as before death, before recovery, as when life took its normal course through blood vessels, nerve fibres, muscle spindles, bones, flesh and such.
These ache, and comfort in the aching. Their returned presence mocks the wavering outlines that grow suddenly monstrous before vanishing as if they had not wavered there at all, round undulations doubling, trebling each other’s trebles on a map of ocean depths, filling the entire mirror, or, with some others, the whole room, bursting its walls, the house, the street, the square and the whole sky. The blood-vessels, nerve fibres, muscle spindles form some sort of presence, something to hold on to at least, such as a banister gripped by the hand towards the next landing and the door marked W. E. Mellek, Solicitor, which opens to the touch or to the words come in of the well-living swarthy, my dear friend, how good to see you.
–Too.
The well-living and the redying easily merge their atoms since both hasten towards death regardless, the one from genial ignorance the other from some nebulous memory of something, surely, behind the eyes that ache and then what will you do?
–I beg your pardon?
–When we’ve got you through this – er – unfortunate business.
–Oh, that. Yes. If I relive that long.
–Come, my dear friend. We mustn’t make a habit of talking in that way. Emotional blackmail, your wife, if I remember, called it. She said she couldn’t stand it, in a statement, at least, to her solicitors, Winnie & Winnie, an excellent firm, not a cause at law of course, but it has gone down as a contributing factor. And of course, as we all know, emotional blackmail only works where emotion remains.
–Did she?
–Did she what?
–Say that?
–Indeed she did. She said, now where did I put the book of rules? Now where did I put that file? Ah, here. From that day on, she says, I think she means your recovery, ah yes, up here, we must place it in context, mustn’t we, from that day on we ceased to communicate in any way whatsoever.
–I thought we communicated a great deal.
–Oh well, my dear Larry, women always say these things. Afterwards. They never loved from the start, it never worked, they always knew it wouldn’t, though they tried, by every means, and so forth, to play it our way. They forget the good moments. If any. Sometimes of course, these don’t occur, but on the whole… And then, during the good moments, or else much later, years later, they see only those, how good, after all and so forth.
–We all do that.
–Yes, yes, indeed. However, this won’t suffice in a court of law, as perhaps you know. We must exclude collusion of course, but had you agreed at all, on a cause, desertion, or something else, a little quicker, very quick in fact. The Post Office ought to deal with undefended divorce cases, they clutter the courts. But you must, of course, provide a cause, and the waves begin again, first round the horn-rimmed glasses that glaze the soft Levantine eyes of Wilfred Edwin Mellek, Solicitor, then out in trembling undulations on a map of ocean depths. Or perhaps they only pretend to emit, like actors, filling the space immediately around him as he sits at his mahogany desk, no more, held still in tremulous space by the well-living flesh in loose black jacket, pin-stripe and wide white collar, for we mustn’t make a habit of dying, must we, I mean once, I admit, impresses people, with such an amazing recovery thrown in for good measure but twice, well, nobody would take you seriously, a yogi trick, they’d say, some medical hoax or error, as you of all people should know. And why, they might not bury you.
–My wife told me she would have had me cremated. We communicated that much, I believe. She cried when she said that.
–And besides, it might not happen.
–Which? Death or recovery?
–Ha! My dear Larry, you always had a sense of humour, even at Cambridge, thank God you didn’t lose it somewhere or should I say some time in that bit of eternity. Though your wife says – ah well, it doesn’t matter. Of course, death happens to us all, indeed it does. I totally accept the fact, though seldom think of it, if at all. Tell me, I suppose everyone asks you that, don’t you remember anything?
–I remember … something. A little.
The waves expand into a spiralling query from a small unstable nucleus of fear hidden like the square root of minus one deep inside the charm, the well-living swarthy flesh, the soft Levantine eyes and labyrinthine knowledge of law that makes up what you as a psychiatrist should know, I mean what happens to that thing you chaps call the unconscious when the body lies in the lowest state of life, if at all, well, they may put people on ice for years, I mean, what ought to happen, you must know the theory at least, does it tick on at a low imaginative level or what, did you dream, for instance?
–No. I never dream. At least –
–So you really remember nothing?
–I remember … a sort of enmeshment.
The waves retract a little to form an island round the word like a stone thrown that widens them again to lasso some concept at an infinite distance where we can expect, I mean, something.
–My dear Edwin, I don’t know. I have no way of verifying that, don’t let it worry you. To every man his own afterlife if any.
–You mean according to his expectations? If any.
–Or deserts. Which comes to the same thing.
The pain behind the eyes resolves the optical image of the widening rings back to the gentle undulations as before, around the horn-rimmed glasses to the space immediately around him at his red-leath
er topped mahogany desk, no more, held still in tremulous space again by the well-living flesh and easy tolerance of labyrinthine ways, which of course as a scientist you would need to verify, before they could have any validity as experience.
–Oh, experience.
–You speak like a true sceptic, my dear Larry, not I rejoice to see, like an empiricist. As if every proof had its alternative. And so it has, and so it has, in your line of country I expect, and certainly in mine. Which brings us back, I fear, to the business in hand. Yes, yes indeed.
He emanates the same sense of irrelevance that fills the room as to the business in hand of his strange profession built on the failures of men to live together in love and amity, despite the labyrinthine knowledge and interest still clinging to the gold-rimmed books and pushed back against the walls. He has a small free electron of fear that can suddenly accelerate in the field of the calm proton in parabolic orbit that emits thermally on a short wave-length filling half the room, no more, bursting no walls no city boundaries no frontiers no galactic fields but held in tremulous space by a certain mellow strength somewhere in that well-living softness and that kindly flesh the presence of which comforts, reassures as to the existence of neural cells, muscle spindles, blood vessels and such, behaving not, if I may say so, like a gentleman, she wants the alimony and full costs despite your possible agreement to give her cause –
–It doesn’t matter.
–Hence, you see, my first question about your future plans. Your letter alarmed me somewhat.
–My letter?
–Yes, your letter. Don’t look as if you had forgotten writing it, or wrote it in a trance or something. Though it wouldn’t surprise me. I can catch a glimpse of what your wife means when she says – but never mind, where did I put that letter, ah, here.
–No, no. I remember it. I wrote it. I meant it.
The small and nervous handwriting fills the page at wide impersonal intervals like an equation worked down to the very end and frozen there in resolution as if x could really equal the square root of minus one in the unfamiliar context of the lawyer’s file. All this about retiring, all right, withdrawing, to the simple life, close to the soil, the sun, the stars, why, my dear Larry, I know the state of your affairs, besides, what will your patients do, go mad or something?
–I lost most of them when I died. They can’t do without someone for so long, they went elsewhere.
–But they’ll come back.
–No. I’d. lost them before. I couldn’t help them.
–Others will come. You’ll build up a new practice, you’ve fully recovered now.
–For a long time I’ve had no future as a spy. The great failure of our century. We give names to sicknesses, but we don’t heal, merely create new dependencies.
–All right, do something else. Research or something. What happens to the unconscious when the body lies in a low state of life, for instance. Do they know? Doesn’t that require looking into, with qualifications like yours?
–No.
–But you can’t retire at your age, what, pushing fifty, I guess, like me, forty-eight? Besides, what will you live on, in Bermuda of all places, all right, inland, in the mountain wilderness, but even so, have you any idea of the prices, Mexico, you say now? Why even the poorest village wouldn’t do it, with your commitments.
The sense of irrelevance grows into the outlines of his radiation, pushing them back towards the gold-rimmed books that line the wall behind the criss-cross metal over the shelves, penetrating the labyrinthine knowledge of alternate proofs and truths within his strange profession built on the failures of men. It makes a noise in a non-natural impulse like a distracted sea, lapping, withdrawing and advancing at a jerky rhythm governed by some mad moon or other somewhere in parabolic orbit around the business in hand, bouncing its signals of distress on a short wave-length back to it, pulsating, gasping so that you must decide one way or another what you will do. I mean to say, you know very well she hasn’t a legal leg to stand on. If you really want to fight her on her own ground just say the word and I can settle it quite differently.
–My dear Edwin.
The pain behind the eyes resolves the unrhythmic signal in the dark as with a change of lenses, and the well-living swarthy face looks back with gentle eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses, but as I have said before, it doesn’t matter.
–Well, nothing matters, if it comes to that, I quite agree. But we must run some sort of show to keep going at all, mustn’t we. I gather she may ask for the discretion of the court in respect of. Does she intend to marry this chap, er – Stanley –
–Of course not.
–Surely you see that I can’t act for you if you don’t instruct me. And, in this case, give cause.
–I only want to find some simple place where I can live out my second life in complete solitude.
–Desertion. Well, all right. It takes three years.
–I can’t stand seeing, hearing, inside myself, seeing the whole of – oh, something, I don’t know what, but it frightens me, I feel as if I lived backwards in time, consisting of anti-atoms, or had lost something vital and positive which I must go away and find. Silence perhaps, merely.
–You have seen what you have seen.
–I didn’t say that.
–No, I did.
–Edwin –
–You don’t need to explain. Have it your way. Physician heal thyself. I never go anywhere, I just sit here and work people out of trouble in their best interests if any.
–Please do what you think best, Edwin. But don’t take it out on … anyone, least of all –
–The children. I know. They all say that.
–Sometimes I feel I have none. Never had.
–Well, you haven’t that many. Still, schooling and –
–Five, four.
–Larry! Come back. Come back.
–Two.
–Good boy.
Inside the mirror on the landing the shape stares back its map-like contours of some unknown region, continent, galaxy perhaps, with two starless coalsacks radiating nothing. And yet something creates the wavering undulations and if not the eyes then some nebulous memory, surely, behind the eyes, some electron of love or fear spiralling at high velocity in some magnetic field, so that the forces of acceleration in its orbits cause it to emanate on a long wave-length in a metre band. The pain behind the eyes that close to avoid the issue of their death resolves the optical image in the dark like a change of lenses, and the thin man stares back, as before death, before recovery, as when life took its normal course through blood vessels, nerve fibres, muscle spindles, bones, flesh and such that comfort. Their returned presence mocks the wavering outlines that grow suddenly monstrous before vanishing as if they had not wavered there at all, pulsating, breathing in and out in long undulations doubling, trebling each other’s trebles on a map of ocean depths, filling the entire mirror or, with some others, the whole room, bursting its walls, the house, the street, the square, and the whole sky.
My dear Larry,
Forgive me for not answering your letter at once. I had to go to Virginia on an assignment, oddly enough connected with the work up at your place: a programme about the radio-telescope at Green Bank where, as you may know, they have started again on Project Ozma, begun some years ago but abandoned as having yielded no results. It seems that according to new calculations, a new wavelength might prove more fruitful in sending out non-natural impulses to Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani in the Whale and River constellations, and perhaps getting a reply if any intelligent life exists or has existed many light years ago at the same stage as ours on any of their planets, if they have planets. They would apparently recognise the impulses as non-natural. I apologise for telling you what you probably know already from your wife, patients and friends in your unusual surroundings as psychiatrist to the university science faculty, but I got all excited about it in a layman-like way, so that it all seems as new to me as it must seem old-hat to you.
>
Anyway, nobody forwarded your letter, and I found it here when I got back. Of course I remember our Cambridge days. I would have reminded you at the time of that unfortunate interview, but I realised then that you had no idea, and very little grip on reality as yet. Besides, I have changed considerably as middle age creeps on, I realise that.
I should indeed very much like to see you again, and soon. But the metropolis ties me down just at the moment, at any rate for the next six weeks. Might anything in the way of business or pleasure bring you down? Do please let me know, I can even put you up on my sofa if you come alone. Otherwise it will have to wait until some other assignment takes me up your way, which indeed could occur as we may do a follow-up programme on your own chaps. Not for some time however. So I hope you can manage something sooner than that for I would greatly enjoy seeing you, your real self I mean, now that you’ve fully recovered. I don’t mind telling you that you really frightened me, and not many of the people I interview succeed in doing that. Besides, I have an idea I’d like to discuss with you.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Yours ever,
Telford.
A secretary has typed the letter, behind a door perhaps with a round window in it many light-years or months ago, and no handwriting bleeps across the dial in peaks and plains except the name, but then why should it in busy days thus approached by a region that has receded at half the speed of life its light only now reaching us? Tell-Star persists in his verbal pedantry, and worms in the head squirm as he sharpens his beak in non-natural impulses that draw the line as a rule between one solar system and another though looking forward to a reply. The higher the temperature, however, the faster the vibrations, and consequently the higher the frequency of the radiation emitted, so that devices like the brain become unsuitable on account of the inertia associated with matter of relatively large mass.
–But father, no one could call you large, or even massive. Tall, yes, but not large. And certainly not old.
The Brooke-Rose Omnibus Page 29
