Strange Attractors (1985)

by Damien Broderick

  hell wants C Group brains? What are they good for? We can’t understand them and they can’t be bothered with us. They’re useless. What’s the good of a nuclear power plant to people who have just discovered

  fire? T hat’s about the right comparison.’

  Quite so. Super-intelligence has no place in our world. We need intellects only slightly advanced over our best, brains that can still exchange ideas with us rather than reduce both sides to ill-tempered bafflement. Groups A and B are about the best we can accommodate,

  and about the best that can tolerate us as a hum an ambience

  ‘So what do you w^ant M r Armstrong?’

  Since a deal has Finally to be founded on at least partial truth, he

  was willing to allow me a small curiosity. ‘The same as your Mob

  wants. Power. I may live another hundred years, longer if the techniques continue to improve. I want to make use of life. Given the knowledge that can produce exactly calculated intelligence of a

  specific type — not brains past comprehension but mathematicians,

  psychologists, pure logicians, even some kinds of artists — given that,

  On the nursery floor

  191

  what is impossible to the man who controls them?’

  Controls. There it is, naked and unashamed and stupid. He aspires

  to control a gaggle of assorted geniuses! The great problem of power

  has always been that the wielders of it learn to think themselves infallible. Hitler, Napoleon, the M ah’dis and Ayatollahs . . . make your own list. This intelligent idiot thought to control genius. He could only

  misuse and destroy it.

  ‘Your Mob wants power,’ he said, ‘and I want power. There will be

  enough to share.’ Until the shootout, I thought; there’s always a

  shootout to really finalise the deal. ‘The country?’ he asked, musing.

  ‘Why not the world, in good time?’

  Good time was now; I let the little electrodes slide forward through

  my fingertips. I was only three metres from him now, but he was alert

  and watchful.

  ‘The Mob,’ I said, ‘doesn’t want power. It wants knowledge. T hat’s

  all it wants.’ His expression asked: W hat’s this, some new angle?

  He said, laying down the philosophy, ‘Nobody wants knowledge for

  its own sake. He wants the rewards of knowledge.’

  ‘Not the dedicated genius. Not the created brains you still think you

  understand. The Mob is A Group.’

  He sat quite silent and still, revolving the information, deciding if

  and how it altered the situation. I offered a distracting crumb: ‘Like

  Mayflower, the A Group boys have done some sexual slumming. One

  of them is my father and you can believe that he has never forgiven

  you for a childhood on the Project site.’

  Armstrong said, like a man keeping his tongue busy while he

  thinks, ‘He passed no genius on to you.’

  ‘Indeed, no. He bred for relief, not for brains.’

  Before the last word I was moving and his action showed that his experience did not include physical attack. Instead of pressing the button he obeyed the protective insinct, raising his hands to ward me off.

  With my fingertips on his wrist I discharged the power pack in a single

  bolt. He died with the faintest of grunts.

  From the door of the protected room I gave a servile, ‘Thank you

  for your kindness, M r Armstrong,’ for the benefit of any who lurked

  or listened, and closed it behind me — and walked out of the house.

  I had to take the lifts out of my shoes, deflate the artificial waistline,

  remove the coloured contact lenses, wash the colour out of hair and

  skin and correct the little hop-skip limp of six months misdirection,

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  George lurner

  or Dad would not have known me. More importantly, the door flunkey would not know me either.

  Dad’s questions were searching rather than sympathetic; his

  urgency was only to get back to the other three to study the huge 3D

  blowup of Mayflower’s painting which — monitored and reproduced

  while I examined it — already occupied the end walls of the store

  room.

  Now they needed a physicist-mathematician better than themselves

  to solve the problems that held them up, but not so much better as to

  be unwilling to communicate . . . and a gene surgeon to implement

  the answer . . . then, aside from waiting for their bright child to grow

  up, there was the possibility that the brat would show no interest in

  that particular problem . . .

  Genius has a hard life.

  But — has my Mob some unspoken goal which is not simply the pursuit of knowledge? It isn’t the sort of thing they would tell their messenger boy. I would not deal with them as easily as the brash Armstrong . . . aside from the emotional problem (yes, there is one)

  of having to kill my father.

  From first fascination I have declined steadily to distrust of the

  Frankenstein game. Call me conservative, but I think we should be

  very careful about the contents of the nursery. Despite what I did to

  Armstrong, I become queasy at blood sports.

  Cave Am antem

  ©

  CARMEL BIRD

  The girl is burying the body in the hollow. She has wrapped it in a

  scarlet cloak. In the hollow beneath the sweet pines, she is burying

  the body which she has wrapped in the cloak. She scatters sweet

  herbs across the dead one who is folded and parcelled in scarlet.

  The girl scatters herbs and wild (lowers, pine needles, pebbles.

  There is a patter of pebbles; there is a rustle of leaves.

  Tears. There are tears in her eyes, on her fingers, lightly falling

  sometimes, upon the brush of greenery veiling the body in its cloth.

  H er pale eyes are filled with tears. Tears glisten on the leaves. In the

  hollow, the girl is burying the body, as her tears slide down the

  leaves, beading the green. Tears, rolling across rocks, shiver and

  settle between pebbles. They make no stain on the scarlet cloth, for

  the cloth is grimy, tattered at the edges, toggled with mud. It shows

  through the leaves and flowers, now dull red, now brown, and

  sometimes, on the edge of a wrinkle, vivid blood. Somewhere, the

  girl has gathered twigs of rosemary. She sprinkles the leaves of her

  rosemary across the body in the hollow.

  In the hollow between the rocks, beneath the sweet pines, in the

  heart of the silence of the forest, the girl is burying the body. Her

  fingernails, like claws, damaged, stained, scratch at the earth which

  she drops, crumbles, on top of the garlands of greenery. Stones,

  small rocks, and crumbs of earth, Moist and rotting leaves.

  It has taken her all day. In the castle, whole save for the roof, she

  wrapped the body in her cloak and carried it and dragged it to the

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  Carmel Bird

  hollow. She placed it on the rotting floor of the sweet pine forest,

  and covered it with leaves and earth. H er arms were strong; she

  carried rocks; she marked the place with rocks. She wept when she

  buried the body of the wolf.

  Isabella had a terrible reputation. She used to go up to the old

  castle — there is no roof — with just about anyone. Soldiers, musicians, cripples, foreigners, old men and boys. She was reasonably pretty, in a sly sort of way. Oh, but there was the devil in her eyes.
<
br />   Light eyes, too light for hereabouts. Black hair, light eyes —

  Isabella was always a strange one. Pretty enough, you know, but

  strange.

  Well, none of the decent young men of the village would have

  very much to do with her. Everybody thought she would never find

  a husband. But she didn’t care very much about that. She lived

  with her grandmother, and she knew she would inherit the house

  when the old lady died. Inherit the house and the pigs and the hens

  and the few poor olive trees and the little herb garden. The old lady

  sold herbs. And she was so good and respectable and proud. There

  she was at Mass every day of her life; on feast days she wore a m antilla given to her long ago by the old Count. That is, the father of the present Count. She kept her house as clean as a convent with

  white walls and bright blue doors — even on the cupboards. I used

  to go there often — the chairs were made from bent withies; the

  table was blue. I would collect the eggs and stop for a gossip. Lace,

  there was lace, pure white. The grandmother-made lace. Oh, she

  was an industrious old woman. And pious. There she was at Mass,

  as I said, every morning, with her beads and her proud eyes and

  her prayers.

  She prayed, that old woman, for a husband for Isabella. W hat a

  joke! But she did. And she prayed as she swept the flagstones of her

  parlour, as she scrubbed the wooden staircase. She was making a

  wedding dress for Isabella, you know. Linen and lace and the sheets

  and all the household linens. She made the dress for my daughter

  Caterina when she married the Count’s nephew. She was known for

  miles around for her beautiful wedding gowns. But she couldn’t do

  a thing with Isabella.

  Nobody could do anything with Isabella. She always went her

  own way. The nuns did their best to tame her, and then they just

  gave up and prayed for her. The candles that have been lit for that

  Cave Amantem

  195

  girl! The old grandmother was far too weak. What Isabella needed,

  I say, was a father and half a dozen brothers to straighten her out.

  And that red cloak — she always wore that cloak. You could see

  her coming for miles. O f course, her grandm other made it for her.

  It would have been fine for a princess on a white horse. But there it

  was on Isabella as she ran from one end of the village to the other,

  often barefoot, meeting soldiers and travelling musicians and so on

  in the forest.

  So the grandmother swept the floor and she prayed and she

  made lace pillow covers and she prayed and she prayed for a husband for her beautiful Isabella. Everyone felt very sorry for her, the poor old woman. While Isabella roamed round like a gipsy, just like

  a gipsy in her red velvet cloak. H er skin was white, you know, just

  touched with apricot. The grandmother was like an old walnut,

  and she seemed to be made from the roots of trees. Yes, she looked

  like the roots of trees, the grandmother, the walnut. The granddaughter was the ripe fruit. Oh, she was a juicy apricot.

  My son was half in love with her — half the time. He knew it was

  madness. He knew not to go near her. But he liked the idea of

  inheriting the poor little farm, and he did like the idea of going with

  Isabella. I warned him that if he did, I would beat him within an

  inch of his life. He laughed and said he would put me down the well

  — ah, but he knew that I meant what I said. And he knew that I

  was right, in the end.

  He has since m arried the niece of a distant relative of the bishop,

  and stands to inherit a flock of sheep and a wide pasture-land. But I

  don’t mind telling you that he did plan to marry Isabella.

  My son was the answer to the grandm other’s prayers. Heaven

  saw the candles she lit; the M other of Sorrows heard the litanies she

  mumbled; and my son was to be, he thought, the answer to it all.

  He is very pleased now, naturally, that I stepped in. I knew what I

  was doing, as far as both families were concerned. They would have

  been no good for each other, Isabella and Luis. And our family has

  always been very respectable, with scarcely a breath of scandal,

  ever. My nephew is an idiot — but that is a different story. And for

  all that Isabella was a whore, she was really rather simple.

  I went to her, that afternoon, and I said I had an errand for her.

  Well, she trusted me. I think now that perhaps she trusted everybody, and that was the funny thing about her. She wanted to please me, because I was the mother of Luis. I asked her to take a basket of

  cakes to my sister. Little sugared cakes — to my sister who lives on

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  Carmel Bird

  the other side of the forest. The great pine forest you see out there.

  She, that is, my sister, was giving a party for the nuns. So I packed a

  basket with the cakes — I am well known around here for my little

  sugared cakes — and the tiny glasses — so delicately cut — the ones

  that my sister always likes to use — I sometimes wish that she

  would get some of her own — and I called Isabella over, and I asked

  her to take the basket of things to my sister. I said she could be back

  by sundown — and indeed so she could, if she hurried. But Isabella

  was one to dawdle, you know. I knew that she had an arrangement

  to meet Luis at the old castle at sundown. He was there; she wasn’t.

  I know that he must have heard the wolves, but he has never spoken

  of it.

  They found my basket and the tiny glasses, so delicately cut, all

  of them broken, and some of the little sugared cakes, strewn across

  the forest floor. I have replaced the glasses. It was not so difficult.

  I told them I had asked her to do the errand. O f course I told

  them. I will never be able to forgive myself. Everyone knew that I

  was only trying to be friendly, and to include her in some useful

  way in a family celebration. With Luis so besotted with her. The

  big fool. Yes, I admitted it was my basket — my best — my glasses,

  my cakes. My errand. My errand sent her to her doom in the

  forest. How can I ever forgive myself? Luis has forgiven me now.

  He is married, as I said, to one of the relatives of the bishop. They

  will have a son in the spring.

  No, they never found a trace of Isabella. Not even a piece of her

  grandm other’s lace. H er grandm other waited. She waited for a

  year for that girl to come back. The old lady spoke to nobody but

  the priest. And then, one night, she died. O f grief. She died with

  quiet dignity, of grief. Oh, and old age, of course. She was a twisted

  tree root, and she died — of old age. And of grief.

  She loved Isabella. She really loved Isabella. The wedding dress

  was on the bed, I believe. It was the finest lacework the nuns have

  ever seen. I have not seen it myself — but the nuns said it was the

  finest spiderweb of lace — and white — so white. Shiny. With

  teardrops of crystal. A dress for the M adonna. So they put it on the

  statue in the convent. It seemed the only thing to do.

  They never found Isabella’s body. If they had found it, they

  would have buried her in the dress. Naturally.
But Isabella was

  never found. The men went out searching through the forest, every

  night, every day for months. It became an obsession with them.

  Whenever a stranger appeared in the village, they would tell him

  Cave Amantem

  197

  the story of Isabella, and get up a hunting party to go out after the

  wolves. But in all the two years since it happened, they never got

  one. Until two nights ago.

  Two nights ago, some soldiers from the north said they injured a

  wolf, the leader. The Devil with the fires of Hell in his eyes, they

  said. Well, maybe they got the animal. But Isabella, they never

  found.

  I had a long talk to the priest about my part in the tragedy. He

  said that I was not to know, and that I must never dwell on the idea

  that I sent the girl into the forest to her doom. She went, after all, of

  her own free will. I was not to know. But what a fate, what a punishment! To be eaten by wolves. It’s the grandmother I feel most sorry for. Because, you know, she never really knew who that girl was.

  Her son brought the baby home from France. Said she was his

  daughter, and that the mother had died. Then he — a soldier he

  was — died of a fever, and the grandmother brought the girl up.

  She did her best, but I knew it would never work out. Everybody

  knew that it would never work out. And it didn’t. Not a trace they

  found of her. Not a trace. Nothing.

  The girl in the tattered lace dress is burying the body. Toggled with

  mud, the cloak parcels the dead. In the sweet pine forest, the girl

  has wrapped the wolf in her scarlet cloak. With tears and ceremony,

  herbs and stones, she is burying him in the hollow. She is silent.

  There is a bitter smell; there is a sweet smell; he is dead.

  She is burying him in the forest.

  Jagging

  ©

  A N T H O N Y PEACEY

  I needed to get to Otzapoc; I was on Greenball, a hundred and

  sixty iightyears of dark silent lovely nothing lay between, dreaming

  its ancient inscrutable dreams. I lacked the cred for a ticket but this

  bothered me no particle.