The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction - August 1980

by Various

  Once the various rebels have spoken, each arguing a different point of view, Satan makes a decision. He is not for outright war, nor for surrendering to defeat either. Suppose, though, that someone were to make his way to the human celestial sphere. There that someone might try to corrupt the freshly-created human beings and thus spoil at least part of God's plan.

  It would not be an easy task. In the first place, whoever essayed it would have to break through Hell's firmament, which "immures us round ninefold, and gates of burning Adamant barred over us prohibit all egress."

  Then, even if someone managed to break out, "the void profound of unessential Night receives him next."

  This is an amazing line. Consider—

  There had been stories of trips from Earth to the Moon even in ancient times. In 1638, an English clergyman, Francis Godwin, had written "Man in the Moone" about such a trip, and it had been a great success. Milton may well have known about the book so that the notion of travel between worlds was not absolutely new.

  Yet all previous tales of trips of the Moon had assumed that air existed everywhere within the celestial sphere. Godwin's heroes had gotten to the Moon by hitching wild swans to a chariot and having the birds fly him there.

  Milton, however, was talking not about interplanetary travel nor even about interstellar travel. He was speaking of travel from one universe to another, and he was the first writer on the subject to realize he would not be travelling through air.

  The Italian physicist, Evangelista Torricelli, by weighing air in 1643, had shown that the atmosphere had to be limited in height and that the space between worlds was a vacuum, but this stunning new concept was for the most part ignored by otherwise imaginative writers for a long time (just as so many of them ignore the speed-of-light limit today).

  Milton reached out for the concept, however, when he speaks of a "void profound" and of "unessential Night."

  Night is the synonym for Chaos ("darkness brooded over the face of the deep") and "unessential" means "without essence," without the fundamental elements. And yet, as we shall see, Milton reached out, but only partly grasped the notion.

  Satan, scorning to propose a dangerous task for someone else to fulfill, undertakes the journey himself. He makes his way to the bounds of Hell, where he encounters a hag ("Sin") and her monstrous son ("Death"). There he persuades the hag, who holds the key, to open the barrier. Satan then looks out upon the "void profound."

  What Satan now sees is a "hoary deep, a dark illimitable ocean without bound, without dimension, where length, breadth, and height, and time and place are lost; where eldest Night and Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold eternal anarchy, amidst the noise of endless wars, and by confusion stand. For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce strive here for mastery, and to battle bring their embryon atoms."

  This is not a vacuum that Satan describes, but it is a concept equally daring, for Milton's imaginative description of Chaos comes quite close to the modern view of the state of maximum entropy.

  If everything is a random mixture and if there are no substantial differences in properties from point to point in space, then there is no way of making any measurement, for there is nothing to seize upon as a reference point. Length, breadth and height, the three spatial dimensions, no longer have meaning. Furthermore, since the flow of time is measured in the direction of increasing entropy, when that entropy has reached its maximum, there is no longer any way of measuring time. Time has no meaning any more than position does: "time and place are lost."

  The Greeks divided matter into four elements, each with its characteristic properties. Earth was dry and cold, fire was dry and hot, water was wet and cold, air was wet and hot. In Chaos, these properties are thrown into total confusion, and, indeed, maximum entropy is equivalent to total disorder.

  Suppose the Universe is in a state of maximum entropy, so that (in Greek terms) Chaos exists. Once total randomness exists, continuing random shiftings of properties may, after an incredibly long interval (but then, since time doesn't exist at maximum entropy, an incredibly long interval might as well be a split-second for all anyone can say) chance may just happen to produce order and the Universe may begin again. (If a well-shuffled deck of cards is shuffled further, then eventually, all the spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds may just happen to come back into order.) The role of God would then be to hasten this random event and make it certain.

  In describing Chaos in Greek terms, Milton, however, does not entirely let go of the notion of a vacuum. If Chaos has all matter mixed, there must be fragments of non-matter mixed into it as well, or it would not be true Chaos. Every once in a while, then, Satan might encounter a bit of vacuum, as an airplane may strike a downdraft.

  Thus, Satan meets "a vast vacuity: all unawares fluttering his pennons vain plumb-down he drops ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour down had been falling, had not by ill chance the strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud instinct with fire and nitre hurried him as many miles aloft."

  I believe this is the first mention of vacuum between worlds in literature. (To be sure, Milton did not have the notion of gravity straight. He wrote twenty years before Newton's great book on the subject was published.)

  Satan makes it. By the end of Book II of "Paradise Lost," he has reached Earth, having performed as daring and imaginative a journey as any in modern science fiction.

  There's just one other touch I want to mention. In Book VII, Adam asks the archangel Raphael, how the angels make love—

  "To whom the Angel with a smile that glowed celestial rosy red, Love's proper hue, answered, 'Let it suffice thee that thou knowest us happy, and without Love no happiness. Whatever pure thou in the body enjoyest (and pure thou were created) we enjoy in eminence, and obstacle find none of membrane, joint, or limb exclusive bars: Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace, total they mix, union of Pure with Pure desiring..."

  When I wanted to write about another Universe and about a group of living organisms totally different from ourselves, I needed one thing that was really strange about which to build all else.

  I had my organisms make love totally and "obstacle find none." I arranged three sexes as a further difference and "total they mix." Out of that came the second section of my novel "The Gods Themselves," which won a Hugo and a Nebula in 1973.

  So if you want to know where I get my crazy ideas—well sometimes I borrow them from the best science fiction writers—like John Milton.

  And if by some chance you suddenly feel interested in reading "Paradise Lost," I suggest you find a copy of "Asimov's Annotated 'Paradise Lost'". Some people think it's pretty good; I think it's extremely good.

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  "Alright, then — now what are you going to do?"

  This first-rate tale is Lori Allen's first published work. She writes: "I am a Connecticut housewife, nee New York City slum kid, graduate of Syracuse University, wife of poet and sf fan Dick Allen, mother of the science fiction fan Richard, and of the fantasy fan Tanya. I won the 1977 Writer's Digest Creative Writing Contest, but was beginning to think o
f myself as One Story Lori until now."

  And Mercy Mild

  BY

  LORI ALLEN

  Lisa's Story

  Great-grandma was softly laughing in front of the stove, speaking words I couldn't quite understand. At first I thought it was because she was mumbling, but then I realized she was speaking in Ukrainian.

  "Give her no mind," Grandma told me as she rolled out her baking powder bisquits, "this is going to be one of her better days."

  "But then why....?"

  She raised a floured hand to shush me. "When you get to her age, the better days are the ones to look out for."

  Her age. She was ninety-six, give or take a year. They didn't keep good records on the farm.

  "What's she saying?" I asked.

  Grandma stopped her rolling and looked up in the air to concentrate. '"Good old-fashioned Christmas, my word, good old-fashioned Christmas, funniest thing I ever heard,'" she translated. "I told you we have to look out for the good days."

  Great-grandma was tied in her rocker with strips of old sheet. I don't suppose there was anything inhumane about it — her sense of balance was gone, and if she hadn't been tied she would have fallen into the fire — but it made me uncomfortable to see her that way. Her hands were busy knitting a swatch of red wool. I knew that even if she didn't have the wool and the needles, her hands would still be knitting away; her daughter had filled them only because tomorrow was Christmas. Even now I could see the ladders Grams' dropped stitches had made.

  "What was it like, Grams?" I asked her. "What was it like when you were a girl?"

  "Hard," she said in English, "not good at all."

  "If she's going to go into those old stories, will you push her into another room? I've got supper to make and I can't be bothered with her miseries. Where's your mother? She promised me she'd help."

  "She said she'd be down in a minute. This is hard for her, you know, the first Christmas without Dad. Is there anything I can do?"

  "I'll wait for your mother," Grandma said. She was used to widowhood, had been used to it for twenty years, and when my mother came home all broken up with my father's death and her own menopause, Grandma had little sympathy to spare. Grandma let her stay though. She could use her help with Grams, and maybe in the back of her head she realized that one day she herself might have to be tied to Grams' rocking chair.

  I pushed Grams into the parlor where she could see my kids making a mess of the antimacassars. "Did you used to go to your grandmother's house for Christmas?" I asked her.

  "My grandmother? My grandmother died when she was thirty one. There was the other one, my father's mother, she lived to be almost sixty but she stayed in the old country, I never saw her."

  Her arthritic hands had dropped another stitch. "Here, let me help you," I said, meaning to straighten out the loops and set her swatch right, but she held onto the needles tightly. I don't think she knew I was there, or that she was talking. Her lips kept moving and sometimes words came out and sometimes they didn't; sometimes the words were in English and sometimes they weren't. At first I could barely understand her, but when I concentrated and let myself relax, the feelings came through and I think I knew what she was talking about.

  She said what they did Christmas Eve was they killed what they were going to eat the next day. She said they made the kids do it, and she never liked to kill the rabbits because you had to skin them so carefully, but she didn't mind killing the capons — nobody liked the capons, especially not the hens. She said sometimes it was fun to let the capon run around without any head but the trouble with that was the feathers got bloody and then you couldn't use them. She said nothing went to waste on the farm; they used the feathers not only in pillows but in quilts and mattresses. Her mother used to fret over Grams' continual runny nose — people died of influenza in those days — it wasn't until Grams was a grown woman that she found out it was not eternal colds she was plagued with, but a feather allergy. She remembered the night her father had one too many and knocked over the candle-covered Christmas tree and ... She stopped talking in midsentence, stopped rocking, stopped knitting. I was scared, I mean she was very old, but Mom and Grandma took her to her room like it happened every day, as I guess it did.

  It was almost eleven o'clock before we finally wrestled my daughter Jennifer and my twins (who had automatically canceled my membership in ZPG) to sleep. They wanted to stay up for Santa Claus, they wanted to see where Mommy and Daddy were going to sleep, they wanted to flush the chain toilet just one more time. I never sleep well on Christmas Eve. I always think I should be somewhere else, in church maybe, and if I've gone to midnight services, it's even worse. Besides, it was freezing in that old uninsulated bedroom, and when the heat went on sometime in the middle of the night, it was suffocating.

  Sleepless as I thought I was, the kids were up before me, and Grandma and Mom must have been up before them, up early enough to start the sweet dough to rise. The air was rich with the smell of yeast and sugar.

  Cake for breakfast was a new thing for my kids, and when Grandma gave them mugs of warm milk laced with coffee and sugar, my toddlers turned themselves into instant little adults for as long as the milk toddies lasted.

  Someone had fluffed out Grams' thinning hair and tied a bow in it, like you do to a little baby. I think it was for our benefit, not hers; I wasn't sure she knew it was there.

  We watched the kids unwrap their toys — dolls, trucks, blocks, colorforms, more dolls, magnets, picture books, music boxes, more dolls, trains, games, battery-powered clowns, more dolls — unwrapped our own more conservative gifts and settled into the rut of what was left of Christmas. I knew Mom and Grandma wouldn't let me help cook; I also knew that by the end of the day they'd be so exhausted they wouldn't put up more than token objections when I offered to do the dishes — all the dishes, all the pots and pans, all ... but I didn't have to think about it yet.

  The kids were busy with their toys and my husband was busy "helping" them. That's one of the things I like best about Frank, he's always willing to shuck off his adulthood and crawl around the floor with a truck, mowing down all the doll people.

  It began to snow. First, big sloopy flakes that melted as soon as they touched ground, then the real stuff, soft feathers that stuck. I pushed Grams over to the window, at the last minute remembering to grab an afghan to tuck around her legs. We watched the snow build against the picket fence.

  "Needs shoveling," she said, so softly it almost blended in with the wind, this woman who seemed to see the dark side of everything, this woman to whom Christmas meant the killing of rabbits and capons. But was it the dark side? Or was it some secret joke she was playing. Would I understand the joke when I was ninety-six, give or take a year? When she looked up at me she was smiling.

  "Merry Christmas, Lisa," she said.

  "Merry Christmas, Grams." I took the absurd bow out of her hair.

  Treena's Story

  Thank God, Joe moved out or I'd never have had room in the Air Stream for Grams. I mean our marriage contract said two years and, as things are now, that's a long time; where did he get off wanting to stick around? As it was, I had to put the clones in the same bed and all the books say you shouldn't do it but, what the hell, it's just for one night.

  The home delivered Grams — I don't know how else to put it — they wheeled her down the ramp like an oversized package. I half expected to have to tear off the paper to find out what she was. What she was was my Grams, my mother's mother's mother, and, boy, you should have heard her yell when they made her move south from New England. I mean why bother wasting power on heating when we need it so much for other things — for making clones for instance, now that nearly everybody's sterile, thanks to that God-awful stuff they put in our mothers' drinking water.

  Grams didn't want to come south and she didn't want to sit in the sun and she couldn't see why my mother and grandmother couldn't be here and she didn't want me to call her Grams. Her name was Lisa. Grams was he
r mother's mother's mother, an old woman, long since dead. Lisa-Grams sat there strapped to her wheel chair, almost bald, hands with so many knots you couldn't see the knuckles, and she thought she wasn't old. Well, I humored her, it was Christmas and all that, and this is what I had her brought here for, wasn't it, for me to learn about the old times? Anyway I kind of liked the old broad. She didn't look the least bit like me. When you're living with your own clones, that's quite an advantage.

  "We used to go Christmas shopping," she said in that scratchy voice of hers, "the stores used to be mobbed. Once they ran out of the little-people parking garage the twins wanted and I had to get them a fire station instead but it didn't much matter, by the time Christmas came they forgot which they'd put on their lists."

  Lists. That's a laugh. I know what my kids want — I should know, they're me aren't they? — they want dolls — only the toy factories were turned over to munitions long ago and what with holding down two jobs I don't have the time to make them any. I did manage to scrounge up some old clothespins. Maybe they can paint faces on them or something.

  "Do you remember the trees? No of course not, how could you, we haven't had Christmas trees since your mother was a child. We used to decorate evergreens with colored electric lights, every color in the world. Some people even strung lights in their elms, and when the winds blew, they looked like friendly ghost trees come alive. And one year when I went to Florida I remember twinkling lights in the palm trees all up and down the boulevards of Miami Beach."

  Electric lights in the palm trees, outasight. Mostly we make do with candles but all year I had been saving a flashlight battery for tomorrow. Somehow I didn't think Grams was going to appreciate it.