The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  “The Waves” (1959), published here in English for the first time, might be Ocampo’s only outright science fiction story, a dreamlike future fable that also comments on the present. It is particularly interesting for portraying in a few short pages a dystopia of progress, along with ideas verging on the surreal, like the abolition of countries and wars played out using atmospheric disturbances like storms or droughts.

  THE WAVES

  Silvina Ocampo

  Translated by Marian Womack

  Will you only believe the lies? And for how long? How happy the time when it was enough for two people to love one another or even feel sympathy for one another, for them to be allowed to live together or spend time together. The moon was a mysterious satellite a long way away, like America before Columbus. I curse Miss Lina Zfanseld, who in the winter of 1975 lent her overcoat to Mrs. Rosa Tilda. I happened to read her biography yesterday in the little medical dictionary I carry around with me. Because of that damn overcoat, because of Lina Zfanseld’s liveliness, we have to suffer this separation, this misunderstanding. If apathetic old Mrs. Rosa Tilda hadn’t been so apathetic, if Miss Lina Zfanseld hadn’t been so lively, if the old camel-hair overcoat hadn’t so perfectly transmitted the waves from one organism to another, if that horrid electron microscope hadn’t existed to reveal the order of our molecules, that tool that doctors today use like children used to use kaleidoscopes, then we wouldn’t be in this situation.

  You see what kind of intricate intrigues, what tiny details are the drivers of discovery; the coincidences that drive the misfortunes and customs that human beings end up taking on. We’re like a flock of sheep, obeying the most subtle or most evident orders for the good of society. Blindly, so as to avoid being punished, we fulfill our civic duties and when we think about them and decide to evade them, we end up in trouble. Sometimes it makes me laugh to think that if Mrs. Rosa Tilda had not been undergoing medical treatment for her depression, because her depression stopped her from going to work every day, no one would have noticed that it was the coat that transformed her, and the price of camel hair, at the time out of fashion, would not have shot through the roof. But there was one doctor, they say, with the soul of a researcher, who studied the case and won, undeservedly in my opinion, fame and riches.

  I should have been born in a different era, as long as you could have been there with me too. Until 1975, the world was bearable. We are the victims of what some call progress. Wars are now waged via floods and drought, via earthquakes, via sudden plague, via rapid changes in temperature; it is rare for a drop of blood to be spilled, but that doesn’t mean we suffer less than our predecessors. How many young men now dream of dying on the field of battle, after gunplay with the enemy across the front line? It’s only natural that they want some individual gratification.

  But I can communicate with you via this small metal contraption (like an old television set): I see your mirrored face and hear your voice; you receive my daily messages and the reflection of my image. Savages from back in 1930 (and there are still some of them around) would think that we were living in a magical world, but if I could talk to them I would say: “Don’t fool yourselves, I’m much more unhappy than you were, you who had no television.” Just like those rodents who bury food for their offspring, I am leaving these messages for our descendants. So you’re off on the moon, working in the mines with all the comforts and respect due to your position, and I’m down on Earth keeping an eye on you, hidden so that the authorities don’t find me and give me drugs to forget you…all of this will seem unhappy enough for the people in the future who decipher our messages.

  I find it obscene that countries have fallen apart and people are now organized on the basis of the order of their molecules and the waves they emit. I suppose I must just be old-fashioned. When I think of how I was when I was seven years old, I shudder. The prohibitions began after the massacre of the children in that school in Massachusetts, the fire in the Nippon Circus in Tokyo, and the armed robberies in the public gardens of England and Germany. It was not lone individuals who committed these crimes, but some combination of their molecules, and other weird things like that which I barely understand. Full-color photographs of Lina Zfanseld and Rosa Tilda appeared in all the newspapers, got stuck up on walls, proclaiming them the saviors of humanity. Severe measures were taken: the first had to do with travel. People from group A couldn’t travel with those from group B, people from group B couldn’t travel with those from group C, and so on. (How horrid it was for me to see the photograph of my molecules next to my face in the passport!) Families were divided. Homes were destroyed. I’m not making all this up, am I? They founded villages filled with people who were in no way connected to one another. There were several suicides: most of them were people in love, or else pupils and teachers who didn’t want their groups broken up. I heard of a case of some children I knew, eleven years old, and another of two engineering students, because friendships are as passionate as romantic love. But you and I could never agree on that point.

  When we decided to falsify our documents, we were happy, why shouldn’t we still be happy if it weren’t that they’ve separated us? Nothing was going to stop us from being happy. You think that it’s all over between us, but you’re wrong. Did you spend all your money on bribes? I’ve heard about it, there’s no need to rub it in.

  Do you remember that beautiful summer morning when we went up the stairs in Truth Square? We had our documents in our hands. In the certificate we received from the Ministry of Health, your waves were a perfect match for mine. After going to the prescribed hospitals for our tests, we stopped at the foot of the monument, the statue of large-eyed Truth, sparkling like spun sugar. We sat by the marble plinth, we kissed and ate raspberry ice cream. For a few days, we believed that we weren’t hurting each other, and made plans for the future. The certificate seemed so powerful that we didn’t argue once in five days. My touch didn’t repel you as it usually did, my voice didn’t reverberate in your dreams, didn’t fill you with that strange dread. Your eyes, when you stared at me, didn’t confuse me or make me lose my thoughts, as if I were an automaton. My self didn’t disappear in your arms as it usually did. We lived some kind of miracle. As if we had never tried to lie to the state, as if we were obeying its rules and laws. Who cares that the document was a fraud, and that our waves didn’t match? We were already changing to match the official documents that we so much despised. We were made for each other, we were legally in love, and nothing could come between us.

  But there is always someone who tells the truth, and if the truth sets some people free, then it condemns others. It was an enemy of mine who gave us away. They separated us and exiled you. Before you left, they told you that it had been me who had confessed the truth, because I was repentant: I had recognized my mistake and my shame. You believed them. That I have taken myself away from the world to live in this cave doesn’t move you; that I flee mankind to be able to communicate with you: none of this is sufficient proof of my love to you. Our misunderstandings continue. I think that our love was born of a misunderstanding, and I fear that this was what ruined us.

  “Love that which helps you. Abandon that which harms you,” is inscribed above the doors of all the hospitals. “Check your wavelength.” I don’t want to hear anything more about waves or organisms.

  I remember with horror the tales of crimes of passion told to me by doctors when they were trying to set my mind straight.

  I’ve met a scientist (he might be a fraud) who claims that via a simple operation he can insert me into your group. My messages will stop for a few days and maybe my dog will look into the metal mirror while I’m away. Say “Go to your basket” or “Drink some water” or “Poor little pooch” to console him. The operation is all I can think of. I dream of it day and night. It’s not clear how much I will have to suffer, which anaesthetic they will give me, or where the incisions will be made. I am committed to belonging to your wavegroup, and being able to live wi
th you normally. Obviously there is a risk that my personality will change, and it remains to be seen if you will like my new self. I could become a mouse or a paving stone. I shouldn’t think about all the dangers: that would drive me crazy. If this last attempt is a failure, I will pay for it with my life, and that would be the best way to go if it turns out that I have been cheated.

  After the operation my plan is to get onto an interplanetary flight and discreetly head to your world. I will learn to walk on air, so people will think that I am an angel or a goddess from Greek mythology, one of the ones you compared me with when you believed in my honesty, my beauty, in my love.

  Plenitude

  WILL WORTHINGTON

  Will Mohler was or is a US writer who wrote under the pseudonym of Will Worthington, leaving a legacy of only about a dozen short stories published in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Not much has been written about Worthington; indeed, not much is known about him other than he burst into the field in the late 1950s after working for the government for many years; his first three stories were published in 1959, including “Plenitude.” His last published short story was in 1963 and nothing more has been heard from him since. Both Mohler’s birth date and possible date of death are unknown.

  A few author notes from his appearances in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction provide rather contradictory information: “Mr. Will Mohler, who knows his adventurous bachelor hero quite well, describes himself as a ‘hermit without a cave.’ ‘Confirmation of the existence of the author,’ he continues, ’is still pending.’ ” In another note, the author “warns that he ‘has met the protagonist of this story on many docks, in railroad stations and at airfields, but just as often on ships at sea, on overseas flights, exploring the precincts of Buddhist temples, climbing mountains with snow on them.’ ”

  Yet another note indicates the author “lives in Washington, DC, and is a gargoyle.” But perhaps it is best to move on from investigating Worthington’s life with the following note: “As of this writing, Will Worthington is living on a wild island off the coast of Maine, where he is leading a Thoreau-like existence which will inspire him, it is to be hoped, to more stories like the following.”

  “Plenitude” is a rather unique postapocalyptic tale that splits humanity into two groups with different views of the world. In its peculiar imagery, trippy feel, and unique structure it presages the feel of 1970s classics like Logan’s Run. “Plenitude” was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and reprinted in several best-of anthologies. Judith Merril included the story in her fifth annual The Year’s Best S-F (1960) and praised Worthington’s “freshness of language and vigor of thought.”

  PLENITUDE

  Will Worthington

  “Why can’t we go home now, Daddy?” asked Mike, the youngest, and the small tanned face I saw there in the skimpy shade of the olive tree was mostly a matter of eyes—all else, hair, cheeks, thumb-sized mouth, jelly-bean body, and usually flailing arms and legs, were mere accessories to the round, blue, endlessly wondering eyes. (“The Wells of ‘Why’ ”…It would make a poem, I thought, if a poem were needed, and if I wasn’t so damned tired. And I also thought, “Oh, God! It begins. Five years old. No, not quite. Four.”)

  “Because Daddy has to finish weeding this row of beans,” I said. “We’ll go back to the house in a little while.”

  I would go back to the house and then I would follow the path around the rocks to the hot springs, and there I would peel off what was left of my clothes and I would soak myself in the clear but pungent water that came bubbling—perfect—from a cleft in the rocks to form a pool in the hollow of a pothole—also perfect. And while I steeped in the mineral water I could think about the fish which was soon to be broiling on the fire, and I could think of Sue turning it, poking at it, and sprinkling herbs over it as though it was the first or perhaps the last fish that would ever be broiled and eaten by human creatures. She would perform that office with the same total and unreserved dedication with which, since sunup, she had scraped deerskin, picked worms from new cabbage-leaves, gathered firewood, caulked the walls of the cabin where the old chinking had fallen away or been chewed or knocked away by other hungry or merely curious creatures, and otherwise filled in the numberless gaps in the world—trivial things mostly which would not be noticed and could not become great things in a man’s eyes unless she were to go away or cease to be. I don’t think of this because, for all immediate purposes—there are no others—she is the first Woman in the world and quite possibly—the last.

  “Why don’t we live in the Old House in the valley, Daddy?”

  It is All-Eyes again. Make no mistake about it; there is a kind of connectedness between the seemingly random questions of very small kids. These are the problems posed by an ur-logic which is much closer to the pulse of reality than are any of the pretentious, involuted systems and the mincing nihilations and category-juggling of adults. It is we who are confused and half-blinded with the varieties of special knowledge. But how to explain? What good is my experience to him?

  “There are too many old things in the Old House which don’t work,” I say, even as I know that I merely open the floodgates of further questions.

  “Don’t the funny men work, Daddy? I want to see the funny men! Daddy, I want…”

  The boy means the robots. I took him down to see the Old House in the valley once before. He rode on top of my haversack and hung on to my hair with his small fingers. It was all a lark for him. I had gone to fetch some books—gambling that there might be a bagful of worthwhile ones that had not been completely eaten by bugs and mice; and if the jaunt turned out depressing for me, it was my fault, which is to say the fault of memory and the habit of comparing what has been with what is—natural, inevitable, unavoidable, but oh, God, just the same…The robots which still stood on their size-thirty metal feet looked like grinning Mexican mummies. They gave me a bad turn even though I knew what they were, and should have known what changes to expect after a long, long absence from that house, but to the kid they were a delight. Never mind transphenomenality of rusted surfaces and uselessly dangling wires; never mind the history of a senile generation. They were the funny men. I wish I could leave it at that, but of course I can’t. I hide my hoe in the twigs of the olive tree and pick up Mike. This stops the questions for a while.

  “Let’s go home to Mummy,” I say; and also, hoping to hold back the questions about the Old House long enough to think of some real answers, “Now aren’t you glad we live up here where we can see the ocean and eagles and hot springs?”

  “Yeth,” says Mike firmly by way of making a querulous and ineffectual old man feel better about his decision. What a comfort to me the little one is!

  I see smoke coming from the chimney, and when we round the last turn in the path we see the cabin. Sue waves from the door. She has worked like a squaw since dawn, and she smiles and waves. I can remember when women would exhaust themselves talking over the phone and eating bonbons all day and then fear to smile when their beat husbands came home from their respective nothing-foundries lest they crack the layers of phony “youthful glow” on their faces. Not like Sue. Here is Sue with smudges of charcoal on her face and fish scales on her leather pants. Her scent is of wood smoke and of sweat. There is no artificial scent like this—none more endearing nor more completely “correct.” There was a time when the odor of perspiration would have been more of a social disaster for a woman than the gummata of tertiary pox. Even men were touched by this strange phobia.

  Sue sees the question on my face and she knows why my smile is a little perfunctory and strained.

  “Chris…?” I start to ask finally.

  “No. He took his bow and his sleeping bag. Muttered something about an eight-point buck.”

  We do not need the venison. If anything has been made exhaustively and exhaustingly clear to the boy it is that our blessings consist in large part of what we do not need. But this is not the poin
t, and I know it is not the point.

  “Do you think he’ll ever talk to me again, Sue?”

  “Of course he will.” She pulls off my sweaty shirt and hands me a towel. “You know how twelve is. Everything in Technicolor and with the throbbiest possible background music. Everything drags or jumps or swings or everything is Endsville or something else which it actually isn’t. If it can’t be turned into a drama it doesn’t exist. He’ll get over it.”

  I can think of no apt comment. Sue starts to busy herself with the fire, then turns back to me.

  “You did the best thing. You did what you had to do, that’s all. Go take your bath. I’m getting hungry.”

  I make my way up the path to the hot springs and I am wearing only the towel and the soles of an ancient pair of sneakers held on with thongs. I am thinking that the hot water will somehow dissolve the layers of sickly thought that obscure all the colors of the world from my mind, just as it will rid me of the day’s accretion of grime, but at once I know that I am yielding to a vain and superstitious hope. I can take no real pleasure in the anticipation of my bath.

  When I emerge from the underbrush and come in sight of the outcroppings of rock where the springs are, I can see Sato, our nearest neighbor and my oldest friend, making his way along the path from his valley on the other side of the mountain. I wave at him, but he does not wave back. I tell myself that he is concentrating on his feet and simply does not see me, but myself answers back in much harsher terms. Sato knows what happened when I took my older son to the City, and he knows why my son has not spoken more than a dozen coherent words since returning. He knows what I have done, and while it is not in the man’s nature to rebuke another or set himself above another or mouth moral platitudes, there are limits.