1982 Janine

by Alasdair Gray

  251 THE HOLOGRAMS

  “Stupid conjuring tricks!” shouted the writer, “Good theatre gives us men and women acting as if they are loving and governing and tricking each other and dying, yes dying! Aristophanes, Shakespeare and Ibsen didnae need these daft pyrotechnics and neither do we.”

  The success of his play had not changed the writer. He was as gloomy and critical as he had always been, so we ignored him as usual, though I thought Binkie gave him a sympathetic nod. I said to the English director, “These devices would be especially helpful to you. Think of the freedom you would have. You could enter any big hall which had a platform and in two or three hours, with the help of a single skilled electrician and his projectors, you could make it look like the inside of La Scala Milano. You wouldn’t need the London West End then to put on a play in an expensive-looking setting.”

  The English director stared hard at the tip of his cigarette. The Scottish director suddenly guffawed. Binkie said, almost loudly, “Your device would certainly enable us to dispense with a lot of scene-shifters. But you have forgotten the seats. The audience like a lot of comfortable seats. Experimental theatre people always forget the audience.”

  I nodded at him approvingly. I said, “Correct. I forgot the seats, and my team, which does not yet exist, will take at least sixty years to project an image people can sit upon. Your profits are safe till the end of the century.”

  It is queer to think that I was perfectly sober when I said all this, or else said something very like it. I was only partly joking. I laughed at Binkie in a knowing way, daring him to take me seriously. He was old enough to have been wooed by several people using this gambit, but he looked slightly pained, I thought. He said vaguely, “It all sounds enchanting.”

  252 SCIENCE DREAMS

  Judy stood up and spoke out decisively.

  “Jock, I had better dance with you, because you are clearly a man with an important future. May I have the pleasure?” As we edged between the tables toward the dancing floor I told her, “You Oxbridge lot are great wee managers.”

  She said, “Well, the conversation was becoming rather fraught.”

  “Did I annoy your friend?”

  “O Binkie is too grand to be my friend. I suspect he’s too grand to be anybody’s friend. And he’s far too grand ever to be annoyed, he knows it’s a waste of time. Still, it would be a mistake to get on the wrong side of him.”

  The dance was the spasmodic jive sort so I tried to lift her off the floor and nearly succeeded. She said, “Better not. I believe Binkie has gone now so we can go back to the table and get deliciously sloshed.”

  At the table everyone was now chattering as excitedly as a class let out of school. The English director cried, “Jock, these solid mirage projectors and solid shadow projectors, are they possible or were you just imagining them?”

  I said icily, “Since I imagined them of course they are possible.”

  He said, “That makes no sense to me. Can anyone here tell me what Jock means? Geoffrey, you keep in touch with science and dreary things like that, can you tell me what Jock means?”

  He was looking at a friend who studied architecture. The friend said, “He means that science can solve any purely technical problem it recognizes. By the end of the century, for example, we may have men on the moon. Any adequately qualified, sufficiently funded research team which tackles the problem of projecting big holograms with portable equipment will eventually do so. But not in two years. Ten or twenty years, perhaps. Confess that when you said two years you were romancing.”

  I said stolidly, “I will not confess that. My team could do it in two years. My team will contain a genius.”

  253 POWER DREAMS

  They started laughing. I shouted, “Not me! Not me! I have a friend who is going to astonish you all!”

  “Yes, genius can speed a team up,” admitted the architect,

  “but genius is terribly lacking in team spirit. That’s why we discourage it.”

  “You two are saying things which I have no wish to know. They terrify me,” said the director, who seemed not terrified but very cheerful. He poured me a glass of wine. It occurred to me that I would not get very drunk if I drank only wine so I began drinking a lot of it quickly. We were all cheerful in an overstrained way which was soothed by alcohol. Binkie had been among us so we felt ourselves on the edge of a dangerously exciting future.

  From the edge of a dangerously exciting future I looked forward to myself standing on a gantry over a space as vast as London, though it was also a stage and a television studio. My skills had enabled my friend Binkie to regain the whole of the West End, so we had gone on to take the North, South and East Ends, then the Centre, then the Provinces. (Were you drunk again?)

  And happy, because my projectors were equally effective outside the theatre. Our hologram navy was the most visually terrifying in the world, being based on a film of the British Spithead review in 1910. At the speed of light I could make it appear anywhere at any altitude, but we preferred moving it slowly at ground level. The steady advance of these huge dreadnaughts through the streets of Prague, or was it Budapest, had driven the Russian tanks out of Hungary, of was it Czechoslovakia, or both. In the same year they had mysteriously appeared in the South Pacific, sailed north through Chile, crossed the Andes and driven the hirelings of the American fruit company out of South America. Bombs and guns had no effect upon these ships, nor could they themselves do damage, but armed forces which tried to ignore them were isolated in vast negative light fields which blinded them long enough for the local patriots to win bloodless but practical victories.

  (What happened next evening when Binkie saw the show?) You ought to be more interested in world peace because I finally established it. Populations basked, undressed and danced in the warm floods of light and music I poured upon them, Hollywood actresses parked their rocketplanes on the Thames embankment having crossed the Atlantic through a tunnel of rainbows cast by my projectors, Jane Russell, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe yearned to meet me. Whoever was touched by my spotlight became famous, but I did not light only lucky people. My searchlights and cameras showed the bad schooling and housing of folk whose work was essential and the arrogance of public servants who behaved as if they were overlords. Social reform always followed these revelations, but like Binkie I preferred to stay out of the limelight. Even so I was a legendary figure. When the sun shone brightly the Londoners told their children, “The Scotch electrician is smiling again.”

  254 POWER DREAMS

  (What happened on the next night when Helen came to you?)

  That is unimportant because actresses were not the only women who loved me. In order not to seem inhumanly grand I let myself be seduced by all of them just once, while never failing to fly up north for weekends and holidays, for that was where my wife and children lived. Yes, Denny and I had married at last. Our home was a six-room-and-kitchen Hillhead flat with oriel windows; also coalburning fires and quaint art-nouveau mantelpieces and beaten copper fenders, even in the lobby; also a wally-tiled close with carved bannisters on the stairs and the landings inlaid with four colours of geometrical mosaic. The whole world was astonished by my devotion to a plain wee woman in a Glasgow tenement, but the Scots understood me. They knew I was still one of them, even though my spotlight on corporal punishment had abolished the use of the belt in schools (chew on that, Hislop) even though I had refused to make Glasgow the capital of the British Commonwealth. “The centre of a properly lit land is everywhere,” I had declared. “The exact spot in which our public servants confabulate is unimportant.”

  The truth was I did not want to be involved in politics. While working hard in every field of energy and communications I was helping my friend Alan establish the proper place and destination of man in the universe.

  (What did you do when Brian was arrested by the police?)

  255 POWER DREAMS

  Bear with me a while longer, God. It is true that
I felt above and beyond myself when I imagined such things and here I am imagining them again. Yes, I feel almost your equal again as I survey the universe from my imaginary future, and of course this will lead to a fall again, but in this exalted state I glimpse an insight which, properly worded, will clear you for ever of those Stalinist crimes imputed to you by your most ardent admirers and which the intelligently decent have NEVER been able to thole. Allow me a few more overweening minutes then let me fall gently. With a parachute, please.

  Alan was principal of the Glasgow Royal Technical College, originally founded by Professor John Anderson, author of The Institutes of Physics, in 1796. In his early days Alan had given the world the Caledonian sunmill, a delicate toylike structure of shaving-mirrors, coloured steel cubes, guitar-strings and a simple beam balance which, mounted on a chimney head, could supply a room below with all the domestic heat and light it needed at no cost. He now perfected the negative light probe, a delicate toylike structure of shaving-mirrors, coloured glass balls and copper wire which, attached to a common television aerial, allowed the owner of the set below to view any part of the universe above his house at any degree of magnification whatsoever. Mankind could now make an up-to-date map showing the position and features of every galaxy, star and planet which existed.

  (What did the company think of you when Brian was released?)

  Why have you no interest in physics? Negative light costs nothing to produce and has no rate of travel because its single infinite wavelength is identical with the span of the universal continuum, thus enabling it to operate simultaneously everywhere. Professional astronomers were too few for the survey we had planned. We needed amateurs, all the amateurs the world contained, so in every language we broadcast an appeal for helpers which was also a course of instruction in astronomy and in how to build the probe, use it, and record the findings. The only payment we offered was the satisfaction of discovering stars and planets never before seen by the human eye and helping to complete the greatest work of scientific art conceived by the human mind: THE MAP OF EVERYWHERE. “Remember, the universe is boundless but continuous,” said Alan at the end of the broadcast, “so don’t stop discovering and recording until you see your own bum on the screen.”

  256 THE GRAND MAP OF EVERYWHERE

  The people of the earth, most of whom had television sets by this date, responded a million-billionfold, especially children, housewives, invalids and the elderly. A crippled ten-year-old girl in a Cambodian brothel discovered the first completely negative constellation in which the void between the various bodies is the source of its light, heat and gravity. A team of Derry charwomen mapped a galaxy where energy operates in parallelograms, making cubical suns whose cubical planets skip from corner to corner of rectangular orbits. An anonymous member of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Praesidium sent word of The Cuckoo Cluster, a collection of dully smouldering orbs which revolve in the same path until one overtakes and absorbs the others, getting hotter and faster as it grows bigger until it explodes and breaks down into the same number of spheres trundling round the same dull track. As the blank spaces in THE MAP OF EVERYWHERE steadily filled up the worldwide enthusiasm for astronomy grew until it seemed that all humanity was stretching its neck and straining its eyes outward in search of something it longed for but was unable to find. At last each viewer, having pierced the continuum, saw upon the screen the bluewhite cloudmarbled globe of their own home and knew:

  The world is the lonely living centre of the universe. The universe is a rich whirlpool of energy which coheres again and again into every conceivable body of gas and mineral, but only one of these bodies grows living fruit. The rest are not only devoid of thought, they collectively lack the resources to nourish one primrose, one blade of grass. The only life we will find on other worlds is the life we take there. And this is good news because,

  MODERN SCIENCE CAN SOLVE ANY TECHNICAL PROBLEM IT RECOGNISES

  therefore

  257 THE GREAT FUTURE OF MANKIND

  WE CAN DOME THE CRATERS OF THE MOON AND GROW FORESTS IN THEM

  and then

  STRIP FROM VENUS HALF THE CLOUDS WHICH MAKE HER SURFACE A FACSIMILE OF ANCIENT HELL AND GIVE HER MOIST AIR RAINING AN OCEAN WHICH, STOCKED WITH PLANKTON AND WHALES, WILL COMPOSE A WARM PACIFIC PLANET WITH VOLCANIC ISLANDS WHERE SLOWLY NEW LIFE WILL TAKE ROOT

  and then

  HOLLOW THE LARGEST ASTEROIDS, LIGHT ARTIFICIAL SUNS IN THEM, ACCELERATE THEIR AXIAL ROTATION TO PRODUCE CENTRIFUGAL INTERIOR GRAVITY, BUILD HORIZONLESS GARDEN CITIES ROUND THE WALLS AND LET ADVENTUROUS GENERATIONS SAIL TO THE STARS IN THEM

  because

  WITHOUT FIGHTING OTHERWORLDLY HUNS, PLUNDERING OTHERWORLDLY AZTECS, KOWTOWING TO OTHERWORLDLY SUPERMEN, WE CAN CREATE ALL THE GOOD WORLDS WE EVER IMAGINED

  and thus

  LOVE, SEX, BIRTH, CHILDREN NEED NO LONGER LEAD TO POVERTY, FAMINE, WAR, DEBT, SLAVERY, REVOLUTION, THEY WILL BECOME OUR GREATEST GIFT TO THE UNIVERSE WHICH ENGENDERED US!

  However

  THE COST OF FERTILISING THE WASTE OF THE UNIVERSE, STARTING WITH THE MOON, IS SO GREAT THAT ONLY A RICH PLANET CAN AFFORD IT

  so we must

  EMPLOY EVERY LIVING SOUL TO FERTILISE OUR OWN DESERTS, RESTOCK OUR OWN SEAS, USE UP OUR OWN WASTE, IMPROVE ALL GROUND, NOURISH EDUCATE DELIGHT ALL CHILDREN UNTIL ALL ARE STRONG, UNAFRAID, CREATIVE, PRACTICAL ADULTS WHO LOVE AND UNDER-STAND THE WORLD THEY LIVE IN AND THE MANY WORLDS THEY COULD LIVE IN

  258 GLORY RAGE RADIANCE

  for it is technically possible to

  CREATE A WORLD WHERE EVERYONE IS A PARTNER IN THE HUMAN ENTERPRISE AND NOBODY A MERE TOOL OF IT

  yes God we can

  BECOME GARDENERS AND LOVERS OF THE UNIVERSE BY FIRST TREATING OTHERS AS WE WISH THEY WOULD TREAT US AND LOVING OUR NEIGHBOURS AS OURSELVES

  (What happened three nights later when you went home to Denny?)

  FUCK OFF YA FUCKIN BASTARDING BAMPOT YE! LEA ME ALANE YE BLEEDN CUNTYE! YE ROTTN PRICKYE! Yes I’ll tell you about that but not right now. Give me a bit more time. Please.

  God.

  I.

  Think.

  I.

  Am.

  Going.

  To.

  Weep.

  Of course I will not weep. To our tale. Kings may be blessed but Jock was glorious, o’er all the ills of life victorious.

  All were glorious round that table. We were leading lights who would soon dazzle the world. We were not jealous of each other. In a crowd as happy as ours those who shine brightest do so because the rest want them to, have fuelled them to. Radiance belongs to everybody. This struck me as an important discovery but when I tried to explain it everybody started laughing. The English director cried, “Admit it, Jock. You want the theatre to belong to the electricians.”

  I said, “Naturally. How can I give my best to an organisation which is not mine? The writer thinks the theatre his because he writes the plays, the actors think it theirs because they perform them, Binkie thinks it his because he owns it, the audience think it theirs because they pay for it, and since your job is to join all the other people together you probably think the directors are the bosses of the show. Why can’t the electricians be raving egoists too? Everyone who is essential to an organisation should be bosses of it. That is democracy.”

  259 RAVING EGOS AND THE U-BEND

  “You technical people are far too bossy already,” said the architect. “You’ve made my profession almost impossible. Architecture is the most essential of the arts and used to be the most splendid. The world’s greatest buildings were once magnificent hollow sculptures which whole communities were proud to enter. Not now. Nowadays our designs are so restricted by plumbing regulations, lighting regulations, heating, ventilation and fire regulations that not even our geniuses, not even Lloyd Wright, Gropius or Corbusier have been able to make modern buildings look as good as they are useful.”

  “The fault is yours,” I said, “you refuse to recognise that plumbing and wiring are as much architec
ture as walls and windows. It is ignorant snobbery for arty architects to think that technicians are not their equals and partners. The greatest social achievement of the last eighty years is in sanitary engineering. The U-bend, which seals our houses from the germs in the sewers, was invented eighty years ago and has saved more lives than penicillin, but who knows the inventor of the U-bend? Every city and town in Britain has a man-made river-delta under it which sends streams of pure water right to the top of every building, high and low, while shorterballs, I’m shorry, waterfalls, handy wee waterfalls gush out on every floor at the turn of a tap or pull of a plug. And instead of displaying these great clean systems proudly, like the roof-supports of the old Greek temples, you bury them like dirty secrets in walls and obscure closets. No wonder your art has become a matter of phoney façades.”

  “A lovely notion!” said the English director. “Imagine a wedding reception with the buffet spread between the crystal pillars of a plumbing system. We watch the turds of guests upstairs descending these shining columns in a welter of brown bubbles and amber pee, while we sip champagne and nibble small triangles of toast spread with gleaming globes of caviare.”