Meet Me at Infinity

by James Tiptree Jr.

  Ah, the creepies. Well now. Washington, you see, is a small town. Everybody knows everybody’s business. Everybody knows, for instance, that when types like Howard Hunt are “made available” to the White House it is 99 to 1 that nobody could figure out how else to fire them. (Firing kooks is the single greatest headache of everybody in the Feds from branch chief up—you can’t.) Everybody also knows that the CIA is a den of effete Eastern liberalism that can’t be relied on to back up the Pentagon’s perfectly natural urge to bomb the Reds; I mean, people in the CIA actually speak foreign languages, so you can’t trust ‘em. Funny anecdote about that: A local moviehouse ran an ad in Russian offering free tickets for a correct translation. On opening night, there was a three-block line down McArthur Boulevard featuring the entire linguistic staffs of the CIA, NSA, USIA, State, and a few others. All the opposition had to do was walk down the street looking under snap brims.

  But they didn’t need to. You see, in D.C. there really is one good intelligence agency. I refer, of course, to the Commercial Credit Corporation. They know—man, do they know. In the old days when the CIA insisted on its employees saying they worked “for the U.S. government” there was a true tale of the wife of a newly arrived CIA bigwig who toddled down to Woodies’ to set up a charge. “And where does your husband work?” “Oh, for the U.S. government.” The lady was not out of the door before Woodies’ credit office had verified by phoning the CIA on her husband’s new correct unlisted extension.

  If you don’t happen to have credit sources, all you have to do is ask the nearest cabby—or for that matter, the nearest PTA member, plumber, VW garage, cop, or garbageman. Everybody knows. But there is one little complication.

  You see, children, there was once a time when people thought it was glamorous to say they worked for the CIA. (Among other things, you could get laid.) So what you had was about 100,000 people who said they worked for the CIA and didn’t. And then there was another ten thousand who said they worked for the U.S. government. That was simple. But then—after countless ridiculous incidents like the above—Big Brother decided it was okay to say where you worked, as long as you didn’t say what you did (like clipping The New York Times). So now you still have about fifty thousand hopefully horny losers claiming they work for the CIA while hustling real estate, plus the ten thousand liberated who say diffidently that they work for CIA and do. How do you tell ‘em apart?

  Well, as a fast rule of thumb, if they have five kids, a PhD, and a wife who worked for McGovern, you’ve probably got your spy.

  Because I meant it about that “effete Eastern liberal” crack. One of the things I learned living next to the creeps was a healthy relish for the political prejudices of most of them—they coincide with mine. There were more Stevenson stickers in the CIA parking lot than flag decals in Dallas. Now this is not absolute. Why? Because in the time of the Dulleses, the CIA acquired an unwanted posse of cowboy-type activists who would do the dirty things John Foster shoved off on brother Allen. These people—and this outlook—were about as desired by the old-line pure-information-philosophy boys as a skunk in a baby buggy. Intelligence, if you look at it right, should be just that: simple disinterested information. NOT DIRTY TRICKS. (If you want paramilitary, give it to the Pentagon—and then abolish it.) Most of this element went down in the Bay of Pigs, I hear. Good. But what about the old cloak-and-cyanide bag, you ask, what about agent nets and blackmailing peoples’ relatives into spying for you, etc., etc., et-James-Bond-cetera?

  Well, it may come as a shock to the romantic, but all that is largely out. And good riddance too. I had a taste of it in World War II to last me. What is in is relatively clean: plain, ordinary long-range photos. Sensing. Science stuff. No beating people up in safe houses, no paying off flocks of dirty-necked triple pros. Just looking and listening. In my opinion, this is a great improvement. I mean, we look, they look, everybody sees what’s there.

  I don’t think you can call that dirty—unless you’re prepared to jail the next housewife looking over her neighbor’s fence.

  And since no agent can tell you what’s on Brezhnev’s mind, and you can’t mount a major attack without moving stuff all across the landscape—it’s a hell of a lot safer for us. Also very irritating to some people. Because, as most people in D.C. know, in the old bad Cold War days the Pentagon’s spies used to peddle hot-eyed rumors weekly—BIG SOVIET BUILD-UP, ATTACK LOOMS! And then the early U-2 boys would tak^ a look and say, Sorry, those big new atomic installations your agents arfe selling you are three thousand acres of winter wheat. End flap—uni il next week. Irritating… .

  Well, now I must pack my duffle to return to the land of vodka and pumpernickel and The New York Times. And what do you think I’ll tell my cabby at National Airport? “Drive out past CIA, I’ll tell you from there.” Because he knows, see? And in case he’s just come to town, here’s one last tidbit. When Big Brother moved the Campus out to McLean they hid it real good—in among some woods behind the Bureau of Public Roads. Which used to be their road sign until this year, when they finally admitted they’re there. But they forgot one thing: Towering over the whole shebang is a gigantic screaming red-and-white water tower visible for ten miles in any direction. It used to be known as Dulles’s Bladder.

  —October 20, 1973

  Harvesting the Sea

  There were two final “20-Mile Zone” travel columns published, all without titles. The one now called “Harvesting the Sea” appeared in Kyben 9 (September 1974).The last one was in Khatru 6, April 1977, and consisted of “More Travels, or, Heaven Is Northwest of You” (Tip’s title, which I omitted at the time), Tip’s response to my comment that the piece “is almost straight reporting, facts, no opinions or impressions,” and part of a letter explaining why he wasn’t writing his annual Maya column (here titled “Quintana Roo: No Travelog This Trip”).

  The annual rite of sending you a cockroach-laden message from the mangrove swamps is now under way, with the added attraction that this year my type seems to be Mexican duplicator tape that runs when I spray it. If you can read this it probably means I didn’t spray hard, so for God’s sake be warned. The cucarachas have developed a new generation of weapons systems down here. If you step on one, it carries you two yards before you can jump off.

  I’m sitting and sweating and swatting in a broiling, roaring hot south wind the Mayas call But Kann, the Stuffer. It blows for days and nights, “stuffing” the north, which then spews it back as a norther. But this time of year the north hasn’t got much blow in it. This is not, by the way, an “idyllic” beach like the Acapulco side, this is a raving brilliant blowing beach, storms of glittering coral dust, torn skies tumbling by, the surf creaming and blowing spume, the bay inside the reef has a million white lemmings running and plunging over it, everything glinting and gleaming and shrieking turquoise and jade shrieks, palms sweeping, grackles going ass over endwise, only the noble frigate birds demonstrating calm. And then every so often the winds die for a day and the Mayas—and touristas—rush into every available bay and lagoon after fish and go about beaming Que bonital And next day the whole works blows back from the other way.

  Yesterday we had a bit of excitement on the shore. A family of fishing tourists took one of the owners’ skiffs out on the reef in a twenty-to-thirty mile souther, six people including a kid, and broached it. Everybody out! So they all piled into the chop a mile offshore, no flippers or masks or nothing, and L’mus—remember him?—who was running the swamping skiff promptly headed for shore, abandoning the bobbing heads. After he had found some ranch hands to help him turn the skiff over and empty it and replace the motor, he went back and handed them their flippers, but they were by then almost ashore. I mentioned that this seemed a bit cavalier to the rancher, my friend, and he shook his head gravely. “Oh no,” he said, “I would have done just the same. That motor is valuable. You should understand how he takes care of that motor; he chains it up at night. He did just right. After all, they could float.”

&nbs
p; So now I know what to expect if I go lobster-diving with L’mus.

  I see his point. Motors are the lifeblood here. We figure there are about two hundred on the east coast of Yucatan. About 25 horsepower is what they find best, small enough to skim over the shallow lagoons and sturdy enough for the reef. They’re switching to Yamahas now; chalk one up for Nippon.

  Any friends or followers of L’mus, otherwise known as Audomaro Tzul the Maya puro, will be interested to know that he is converting from land-based electrician to marine. He has been taken on as general engineer and mechanic, and the motors are indeed his treasures. The guides here drive them through anything, and L’mus keeps them running with rusty nails and—literally—string. (In the accelerator heads.) The nails go as cotter pins. He is also taking to the water himself since the departure of another brilliant little guy, Esteban Burgos, who was seemingly born under water and provided the ranch with lobsters single-handed. (No boat, nothing but four fantastically strong Maya limbs and the sea.) But the big news about L’mus is romance.

  You may recall that when last heard of L’mus was busy courting the beautiful and at least quasi-virginal Rosalie Pech Balan. But when I came by this year, no more Rosa. Instead, we find the glistening slicked-down snake head of Umus where? Gleaming before a filled side table in the camp kitchen, that’s where. And the camp stove is presided over by Gregoria, a small globular, brown, flashing-eyed, and earringed and beruffled matronly widow of at least forty exciting years. It seems that after whatever happened with Rosa, Umus took a good look around and headed straight for the well-filled hammock of Gregoria. So Gregoria’s hammock is even better filled, and so, not coincidentally, is Umus. If he is mourning the charms of Rosa he is doing it in front of an endless supply of damn good cooking. Gregoria hums and flashes and puts new garnishes on the burnt pargo, thoughtfully saving the best for the side table. Last time I was down there Umus clocked in over an hour solid eating time. Presumably he can use the weight, that hammock must be bouncy. But Umus is really in his glory out on the water; he and Esteban were a sight to behold, fiercely upright in their skiffs in the flaming sea, right out of three thousand years ago if you overlook the madras briefs. Mayas have a habit of standing up in boats, practicable due to their low center of gravity. They also don’t give a damn how many are aboard or how much water comes in. When a party of ranch hands passes going up to Tulum you see four or five stocky dark figures apparently proceeding through the waves without visible support, standing in a bunch on nothing. It takes several looks before the horizontal line of the staggering skiff can be made out under them. They go into the surf in whatever they’re wearing, too. One dawn a huge cable drum washed up, and the foreman simply waded out fully dressed to wrestle it in. “The people on the next ranch steal everything out of my sea,” he complained to me, lowering his voice to a hiss and squinting his eyes, forgetting he was supposed to be Spanish. “Everything!”’ he repeated. “Poles, planks, lumber, nets.” His voice went into a strange rhythmic singsong, and he twisted his neck with a most evil look, chanting imprecations in a way utterly unlike anything you’ve heard except Maya. He waded out to get it (I had discovered it) and I tried to “help” him horse it in. Christ, it was like trying to help a volcano; I barely got out of the way before he had that three-hundred-pound sodden monster heaved out of the sandbar and rolling in. His little daughter, tagging along, laughed at me. I suggested the drum would make a good table, and he agreed, suddenly becoming again totally different; in an instant this barrel-shaped old man was a beautiful girl strutting in a hat df noe on the “table.”

  A satisfying haul. The sea is a great supplier; everything but metal. Complete small boats come in over the reef from nowhere, Cuba, or Jamaica four hundred miles away. One night a shrimp boat broke up on the reef, and my rancher was mad at himself when he saw the lights of a crew from a ranch miles down the line out in the breakers all night stripping her. A forty- or forty-five-foot boat, quite possibly abandoned for the insurance.

  Development, unfortunately, is coming here fast; there have been enormous changes in the five years since I first started coming by. The government has pushed the road through (it was a machete-cut trail) and is starting a bridge over the mouth of the lagoon, that used to be bridged only by an oil drum ferry. (It was a day’s work for the ranchers on the next key to get their cocos across. A pleasant day.) And a big tourist center is going up seventy miles north. The newly discovered big ruined city (Coba) has been vandalized—true of everything here and in Guatemala and Honduras. The vandals even use chain saws to slice the great stone steles. And it is now so accessible with the new coast road that it is as deep in Polaroid backing as in jungle. Hoards of campers, cycles, and trailers are on the way; a few filter down here each week or so. People actually camp—even clear roads and dig wells—in somebody’s ranchland. Last year an incredible phenomenon was in Yucatan: a trailer tour, very monied. Cadillac after Caddy, nose-to-exhaust, towing deluxe aluminum wombs, Airstreams or what, hundreds. I was told they only stopped by big city supermarkets, where they loaded up, and never again got out of their air-conditioning. Don’t roll that window down, Marvin! You put it right back up before Mexico gets in! Great. A huge trailer-bearing cruise ship from Miami also docked just north (after running ignominiously aground the first try), discharging what I am told was the entire contents of about five nursing homes. The Bolero. A young girl who was on it told me she had never seen people eat so. “They were all—oh, excuse me—so old.” I reassured her that I could bear the thought and was surprised to find that she had felt sympathy for these living hulks. “They were having fun.” I fear I struck her as unsympathetic to my own; it rather humbled me hearing this dear little creature be so humane.

  Live and learn.

  Jeff, since I have not only had no news of you for months but not

  even much news of the U.S., I can’t say anything very connected to reality. I wonder what you are doing and how you both are. Of the U.S. I hear only that the Great Polluter is still in the White House, the remaining wilderness is about to be strip-mined, and people are taking off their clothes for reasons which elude the Mexican press services. I trust that this is not an activity obligatory for all right-minded pinko communist radic-libs. But if the sight of Tiptree in the buff puffing down the GW Memorial Parkway is really deemed vital to world peace, so be it. We shall see. In a few weeks now. Meanwhile, Jeff, all good things to you and be sure good vibes are wavering toward you from the mangroves. If I get time and coolth to add a more SF-type note I will, if it isn’t in, here’s good wishes from yrs as ever. Fondly Fahrenheit. Whew!

  Much later; it’s past midnight and a few refreshing beverages. Still blowing like a furnace, sea raving and crashing in the stage moonlight, so bright you can see the indigo waters and cobalt sky, palm fronds thrashing with a perpetual sizzling strum like static from space, the lavender shadows chasing themselves around over the shining sand like flat animals pouring by. The sea has taken most of the beach up to Puerto Morales, leaving an enormous opalescent shingle on which lone coconuts incoming from, maybe, Africa, play ghostly billiards. The strange parcel service of ocean. Dead men occasionally, plastic unending. A fluorescent tube came in waving like a submerged conductor’s baton. The plague of dolls I mentioned a couple years ago seems to have ceased; whatever rites caused them must have stopped. They were replaced by a sending of glass hypodermic vials—empty. Quick shoot-ups by the rail. Every year there is a harvest of the wooden planking used to stack freight, gratefully received by the Mayas. Lots of very big bamboo, occasional immense mahogany logs from a Honduran barge. I mean immense; four-foot diameters. Several such trees are buried in the beach, which uncovers them to gloat over and then covers them again. There is also a very old sailing vessel deep down, just the ribs showing. The bolts for the shrouds are visible at times; a sailor told me they were hand poured in place, you can see where the hot metal ran. About two hundred years ago… Crash, crash; the sea is busy bringing a new beac
h up from Belize.

  Guilty recall that this was supposed to be about SF. Well, I did read some; newest was a collection of Aldiss’s he sent me, Moment of Eclipse. Take a look at one killer in there, “Heresies of the Huge God.” It tells nearly everything you need to know about religion—and should be afraid to ask. I like Aldiss; when he gets into high gear he’s hot. He seems to have seen some of the places I met early, his piece on the living and the dying is the blow that makes you reel in India. And he’s the only writer I know who has done something with a loa worm infestation; my uncle got one. What happens is that a fly lays an egg which hatches into a solitary hairlike worm, which for the next seven or so years roams your body under the skin, looking, as I was told it, for its mate. If you have gone back to Illinois of course the mate is missing, so the loa roams on, causing no pain but incredible swellings. One day you can’t buckle your watch strap, a week later you have a melon on your elbow. The idea is to wait until it crosses your eyeball and hook it out. The waiting is made interesting by the knowledge that if it wanders into your brain you die.

  Listen, Tiptree: SF. Okay. Oh hell—the main thing I’ve been into is a serious study of Tolkien’s Ring and reading H. G. Wells for the first time. I will spare you my conclusions beyond saying I take both very seriously indeed. One of the aspects which they share is that they are both strategies for handling almost unbearable grief. In Wells’s Days of the Comet, the fantastic, gut-tearing paean of hope reveals the wound beneath; it is the blinded crying for light. In Tolkien the held-back cry of bitter loss becomes lacerating; it is interesting to read that his first memories were of the ravaging of his childhood lands by the devastations of the railroad, and that in his youth, by 1918, all but one of his close friends had been killed in the war. His prescription is go on, go on; it stinks, it hurts, but go on. Somehow go on. Wells goes on, too; both men are, well, sturdy. Brave, one might have said in a simpler age. Both tremble toward sentimentality, are saved at each last moment by their brilliantly observing eyes, their regard for what is, no matter how dismaying. And of course with Tolkien, the rich airy landscape of words, his almost magical grasp.