“I remembered my name this morning,” Susie said with quiet triumph. She looked around the room. Doris was staring down at her hands, twisting them in her lap. Maggie looked half asleep, and the other two wives—Susie didn’t remember their names; she had simply gathered them up when she found them on the street—looked both bored and nervous.
“Don’t you see?” Susie persisted. “If I could remember that, I’m sure I can remember other things, in time. All of us can.”
Maggie opened her eyes all the way. “And what good would that do,” she asked, “except make us discontented and restless, as you are?”
“What good…why, if we all began to remember, we could live our lives again—our own lives. We wouldn’t have to be wives, we could be…ourselves.”
“Could we?” said Maggie sourly. “And do you think the men would watch us go? Do you think they’d let us walk out of their houses and out of their lives without stopping us? Don’t you—you who talk about remembering—don’t you remember how it was when the men came? Don’t you remember the slaughter? Don’t you remember just who became wives, and why? We, the survivors, became wives because the men wouldn’t kill us then, not if we kept them happy and believing we weren’t the enemy. If we try to leave or change, they’ll kill us like they’ve killed almost everything else in the world.”
The others were silent, but Susie suspected they were letting Maggie speak for them.
“But we’ll die,” she said. “We’ll die like this, as wives. We’ve lost our identities, but we can have them back. We can have the world back, and our lives, only if we take them. We’re dying as a race and as a world, now. Being a wife is a living death, just a postponement of the end, that’s all.”
“Yes,” said Maggie, irony hanging heavily from the word. “So?”
“So why do we have to let them do this to us? We can hide—we can run far away from the settlement and hide. Or, if we have to, we can fight back.”
“That’s not our way,” said Maggie.
“Then what is our way?” Susie demanded. “Is it our way to let ourselves be destroyed? They’ve already killed our culture and our past—we have no ‘way’ anymore—we can’t claim we do. All we are now is imitations, creatures moulded by the men. And when the men leave—if the men leave—it will be the end for us. We’ll have nothing left, and it will be too late to try to remember who we were.”
“It’s already too late,” Maggie said. Susie was suddenly impressed by the way she spoke and held herself, and wondered if Maggie, this elderly and unloved wife she had once pitied, had once been a leader of her people.
“Can you remember why we did not fight or hide before?” Maggie asked. “Can you remember why we decided that the best thing for us was to change our ways, to do what you are now asking us to undo?”
Susie shook her head.
“Then go and try to remember. Remember that we made a choice when the men came, and now we must live with that choice. Remember that there was a good reason for what we did, a reason of survival. It is too late to change again. The old way is not waiting for our return, it is dead. Our world had been changed, and we could not stop it. The past is dead, but that is as it should be. We have new lives now. Forget your restlessness and go home. Be a good wife to Jack—he loves you in his way. Go home, and be thankful for that.”
“I can’t,” she said. She looked around the room, noticing how the eyes of the others fell before hers; so few of them had wanted to listen to her, so few had dared venture out of their homes. Susie looked at Maggie as she spoke, meaning her words for all the wives. “They’re killing us slowly,” she said. “But we’ll be just as dead in the end. I would rather die fighting, and take some of them with us.”
“You may be ready to die now, but the rest of us are not,” Maggie said. “But if you fought them, you would get not only your own death, but the death of us all. If they see you snarling and violent, they will wake up and turn new eyes on the rest of us and see us not as their loving wives but as beasts, strangers, dangerous wild animals to be destroyed. They forget that we are different from them; they are willing to forget and let us live as long as we keep them comfortable and act as wives should act.”
“I can’t fight them alone, I know that,” Susie said. “But if you’ll all join with me, we have a chance. We could take them by surprise, we could use their weapons against them. Why not? They don’t expect a fight from us—we could win. Some of us would die, of course, but many of us would survive. More than that—we’d have our own lives, our own world, back again.”
“You think your arguments are new,” said Maggie. There was a trace of impatience in her usually calm voice. “But I can remember the old days, even if you can’t. I remember what happened when the men first came, and I know what would happen if we angered them. Even if we managed somehow to kill all the men here, more men would come in their ships from the sky. And they would come to kill us for daring to fight them. Perhaps they would simply drop fire on us, this time being sure to burn out all of us and all life on our world. Do you seriously ask us to bring about this certain destruction?”
Susie stared at her, feeling dim memories stir in response to her words. Fire from the sky, the burning, the killing…But she couldn’t be certain she remembered, and she would rather risk destruction than go back to playing wife again.
“We could hide,” she said, pleading. “We could run away and hide in the wilderness. The men might think we had died—they’d forget about us soon, I’m certain. Even if they looked for us at first, we could hide. It’s our world, and we know it as they don’t. Soon we could live again as we used to, and forget the men.”
“Stop this dreaming,” Maggie said. “We can never live the way we used to—the old ways are gone, the old world is gone, and even your memories are gone, that’s obvious. The only way we know how to live now is with the men, as their wives. Everything else is gone. We’d die of hunger and exposure if the men didn’t track us down and kill us first.”
“I may have forgotten the old ways, but you haven’t. You could teach us.”
“I remember enough to know that what is gone, is gone. To know that we can’t go back. Believe me. Think about it, Susie. Try—”
“Don’t call me that!”
Her shout echoed in the silence. No one spoke. Susie felt the last of her hope drain out of her as she looked at them. They did not feel what she felt, and she would not be able to convince them. In silence, still, she left them, and went back to her own house.
She waited for them there, for them to come and kill her.
She knew that they would come; she knew she had to die. It was as Maggie had said: one renegade endangered them all. If one wife turned on one man, all the wives would be made to suffer. The look of love on their faces would change to a look of hatred, and the slaughter would begin again.
Susie felt no desire to try to escape, to hide from the other wives as she had suggested they all hide from the men. She had no wish to live alone; for good or ill she was a part of her people, and she did not wish to endanger them nor to break away from them.
When they came, they came together, all the wives of the settlement, coming to act in concert so none should bear the guilt alone. They did not hate Susie, nor did she hate them, but the deadly work had to be done.
Susie walked outside, to make it easier for them. By offering not the slightest resistance, she felt herself to be acting with them. She presented the weakest parts of her body to their hands and teeth, that her death should come more quickly. And as she died, feeling her body pressed, pounded, and torn by the other wives, Susie did not mind the pain. She felt herself a part of them all, and she died content.
—
After her death, one of the extra wives took on Susie’s name and moved into her house. She got rid of the spider’s gigantic egg-case first thing—Jack might have liked his football-sized pet, but he wouldn’t be pleased by the hundreds of pebble-sized babies that would come spilling out of the egg-
case in a few months. Then she began to clean in earnest: a man deserved a clean house to come home to.
When, a few days later, the men returned from their fighting, Susie’s man, Jack, found a spotless house, filled with the smells of his favourite foods cooking, and a smiling, sexily dressed wife.
“Would you like some dinner, dear?” she asked.
“Put it on hold,” he said, grinning wolfishly. “Right now I’ll take a cup of coffee—in bed—with you on the side.”
She fluttered her false eyelashes and moved a little closer, so he could put his arm around her if he liked.
“Three tits and the best coffee in the universe,” he said with satisfaction, squeezing one of the bound lumps of flesh on her chest. “With this to come home to, it kind of makes the whole war-thing worthwhile.”
The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky
JOSEPHINE SAXTON
Josephine Saxton (1935– ) is an English writer most notably associated with both the New Wave movement and the rise of feminist science fiction. Her novel Queen of the States (1986) was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, losing to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. She began publishing science fiction with “The Wall” for Science Fantasy 78 in 1965, and her first three novels—The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith (1969), Vector for Seven: The Weltanschaung of Mrs. Amelia Mortimer and Friends (1970), and Group Feast (1971)—established her very rapidly as a unique and surreal writer invested in allegory and the interior life of her characters. Often, these early works feature an attempted quest that is badly botched or terminated without success.
In the 1980s, Saxon published The Travails of Jane Saint (1980), The Consciousness Machine (1980), and Jane Saint and the Backlash: The Further Travails of Jane Saint (1989). Both Travails and Further Travails were later released in expanded editions with additional related stories. Queen of the States—“States” can be interpreted as referring to the United States or to various sorts of mental breakdown—comes very close to a savage reductionism: the SF/fantasy escapades of the female protagonist default constantly to delusion, for she is imprisoned in a mental institution. Most of Saxon’s short stories, from 1966 to 1985, have been collected in The Power of Time (1985). Little Tours of Hell: Tall Tales of Food and Holidays (1986) includes no science fiction but does include some horror fiction. Her most recent book, Gardening Down a Rabbit Hole (1996), is a memoir of her gardening experiences.
Throughout Saxton’s work from the 1980s, there is a deep understanding, in a feminist sense, of the constraints binding women to a male-oriented reality. Equally, there is a sense of the author’s trust in her own subconscious and the images arising from that subconscious in the creation of her fiction. Her novels and stories are unruly in the best way, much less stylized and formal than Angela Carter’s, but containing that same sense of wildness and unpredictability. Saxton clearly had no interest in following safe or established approaches to structure, plot, or characterization—and in experimenting she often hit upon sui generis ways to tell stories. At the same time Saxton un-domesticated domestic themes, writing about ordinary women and their lives in a way similar to Judith Merril and Kate Wilhelm, but from a less realistic stance and in a more phantasmagorical style.
Roz Kaveney, editor of Saxton’s The Power of Time, described Saxton’s work as “a combination of surrealism, occultism, feminism and a sort of bloody-minded Midlands Englishness, and quite wonderful.” John Crowley was inspired by Saxton’s work to write a love story (“Exogamy”) with speculative elements—influenced in particular by The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith.
“The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky” (1981) is classic Saxton: a take-no-prisoners examination of biotech experimentation and the follies of capitalist societies in the grips of decadent extremes. It is sharp, incisive, darkly inventive, and an excellent example of the capabilities of this brilliant but underrated writer.
THE SNAKE WHO HAD READ CHOMSKY
Josephine Saxton
They spent almost all their nonofficial working time, and their spare time, in that part of the lab which had been requisitioned for them. Although it was not large, it sufficed; to unravel nucleic acid chains does not require a dance hall plus arcades. They were very satisfied with the robot assistance that Selly had allowed them, plus computer time, subelectron microscope, chemical analyzer, and all the animals they needed.
“Yes, certainly, Marvene and Janos, if you wish to research into some aspects of the genetic part of animal behavior then I shall be pleased to encourage you, just so long as your work here for me does not suffer, of course.” Their work had not suffered, they saw to that. Their private work was not exactly what they stated, but it was near enough to deceive an observer who would be scrupulous and not snoop extensively. There was a little more to it than the behavior of the cat, but even to themselves they maintained a neutral attitude to their information, knowing only what they hoped.
There were mice being used, and a boa constrictor called Lupus the Loop who had a sole right to mice as food, and who possibly resented the fact that Marvene used a large proportion of them for her work instead of feeding them to him.
“Getting the information to link itself to all the cell types is the final key,” said Janos, taking a look at some mice who were hibernating in a lowered temperature even though they were a non-hibernating variety. “These mice are hibernating, but they will never shed their skin.” Janos very much wanted to have a coup with this research. He stood to be what he wanted for the rest of his life if all went well.
Marvene glanced at him with concealed contempt. “The skin-shedding isn’t important at this stage, surely? If we stick to the line we are on, we shall have the final tests ready in weeks,” she told him evenly and not without effort. Working in such close confines with one person for so long was not good for personal regard, but worse, it almost inclined one to show that bad feeling. She was taking extra pains with her good manners. She too wanted to be rewarded by the world for this work, and she had no intention of allowing Janos to take the whole accolade, as she rightly suspected he would like to do. They had not discussed this aspect of the project, it would have been quite rude to do so, but instead maintained an implicit agreement that like all scientists they would share honors. It was certain that they had both been equally dedicated and both worked hard and with concentration. Not a moment was wasted in idle chatter. They had sufficient incentive not to waste their opportunity, for they could also be revenged upon Selly, whom they hated. That greasy, plump, celibate person was not to be allowed to share any reflected glory from their work. He had irritated and disgusted them for so long with his unaesthetic presence, and they meant to be revenged upon him. It was worth the risk of discovery, they had decided; the plan was irresistible. When they thought of this they would laugh together, but when they thought of their separate plans, they laughed apart, and silently.
Selly rarely visited them in their area; he went home at night to who knew what, alone in his bachelor apartment. Sour as old socks, Selly, white as suet but softer, secretive, and full of bile. But very clever, and this they respected. It was one of the reasons they were at this lab, Selly’s notorious cleverness. They had hoped to learn from him and in many ways they had. He was already near the top of the social list, even though he socialized so little. He was known for being something of a recluse, and for his genius and originality in demonstrating his ideas.
Selly had wished to demonstrate that light-obedient hormones were involved in flight patterns in birds, and he had caused a skylark to dive into the depths of illuminated water, singing. The audience had considered this very amusing. What had made it unpleasant was the way Selly laughed at the sight of the little creature trying to warble until it was drowned in watery light.
He had done some useful things, also, in the business of providing food for the world’s surplus people. He had produced a runner bean which was 50 percent first-class animal protein. These could be fed on petroleum by-products, having
the ability to make the chemical changes within their own metabolism and, also, the useful ability to cleanse the soil by exuding a solvent which was biodegradable. It was true, Selly was no slouch in his work.
As for Marvene and Janos’s part in Selly’s work, they were assisting him in breeding a two-kilo mouse which would at first be used in factory soupmeat and later, after sufficient publicity, as a roast. So far the creatures had died before slaughtering could take place, so there was still work to do on strengthening the heart muscles of these little giants. These animals were fed on processed petroleum by-products. There was a vast store of fossil fuels since the melting of the polar ice caps had made it available. The lab in which they worked was part of a redundant atomic power station, ideal because of its isolation coupled with easy access by underground train to the living complexes: it took them only five minutes to return to the other world. In one of the larger central areas of the building they had constructed a reproduction of a typical deserted domestic settlement of the lower classes. The actual work of course had been done by a workgang from the lower classes. If such settlements could be shown to be suitable for breeding mice, then some of them could be used, for there were many such ghost towns since the suicide epidemics. There was no question of experimenting with a real one; they were all too far away from civilization. Their main problem had been getting the right light and darkness periods, because even though there was so little difference between them since the canopy came over the ancient skies, the animals all had residual circadian rhythms. All the upper-class human beings had artificial moonlight and sunlight in regulated phases because it had been shown to have an important psychological effect on brain chemistry, but the lower classes, for whom such things did not matter, lived in a dim limbo, monotonous and drear.
As a companion work on food they were breeding a potato containing every known nutritional element in correct proportion for maintaining human life. This was proving harder than anticipated, because some vitamins destroyed others when existing in the same plant. But they would succeed, with Selly’s guidance. It was going to make the lower-class menu very dull, but that did not matter. Selly could have existed on such fodder, for he was a very poor aesthete in the matter of food as in other things. This disgusted them. Selly did not enjoy life; he enjoyed ideas about life. He once confided in a rare moment of intimacy: “There is a life of the mind which I have hardly touched upon yet.” They could have expanded on that comment but chose not.
The Big Book of Science Fiction Page 134
