The Big Book of Science Fiction

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

  The probe indicates the expected thickness of the Subject in the second phase, as well as the nodal points, invisible to the naked eye, where the prisms are joined. As this information is displayed holographically above the stage, a few exclamations in the audience reveal the interest of those watching the show. The matter is dense. The prisms are composed of several concentric layers of varying nature, which blend together in several places; their macro-crystals are themselves juxtaposed in complex combinations. They will have to be disassembled one by one unless there are certain nodal points governing the simultaneous unlocking of several elements. This is almost certainly the case, but the information provided by the probe gives no hint of it.

  On one of the levels, halfway up the amphitheatre, almost all the hostesses have been called. There is only one left. She is a rather tall woman with very white skin wearing a crimson lamé dress that glints stroboscopically with her every movement. Her short hair, cut in a helmet shape and smoothed down over her head, does not shine, quite the contrary. It is so dark that when the woman goes into shadow, that whole part of her head disappears and her face, enigmatically made up in mauve and gold, looks like a floating mask. An attentive observer would notice that this hostess flinches whenever a hand is raised (which activates the communication disk grafted on the forehead of each member of the staff), then relaxes when the hand is lowered (since the client has indicated subvocally who he is speaking to, thus automatically cutting off the hostess or the waiter from the general network).

  One such attentive observer is sitting in one of the alcoves at the edge of the third level. He has wide shoulders, or else his evening jumpsuit hides shoulder pads, but this is not likely, since his torso is long and muscular. The wide low neck of his suit reveals a very distinct scar that appears to run all the way down his chest. His hands (the only parts other than his torso that are clearly lit by the globelamp on the table) are strong and square; his fingertips are strangely discoloured. Of his head, which is in shadow, the only thing visible is the round shape crowned with a mane of abundant and apparently rebellious hair. The man at last raises his hand. The hostess stops, turns towards the alcove, then, her slightly lowered head floating in the alternations of shadow and light, obeys and steps forward.

  Meanwhile, more and more of the audience has turned its attention to the performance taking place on the central stage. A wave of applause mixed with exclamations of appreciative surprise has distracted them from their dinners, their bargaining, or their companions. The prisms that surround the Subject have lost their translucence and their rainbows. The laser light has begun to trigger complex molecular reactions on their surfaces. Lines form, shapes and colours merge slowly with one another to reappear in different combinations. There is an implied rhythm, the suggestion of a pattern in the permutations, a hint of an intention in the sequences.

  The Operator, who has detached a few instruments from his tool-armour, stops to study this new development. After a while, he places all but two of the instruments in the box, which prohibits him from picking them up again. He has kept a small rubber-headed hammer and a series of suction-cup rings, which he places separately on the fingertips of his right hand, including the thumb. He steps up to the prismatic block and stops again, as though waiting for a signal. All of a sudden, carefully, he positions the hand with the suction-cup rings one finger at a time, on the protruding part of one of the prisms, and with the other hand gives a light tap with the hammer on a point that he seems to have chosen very precisely. Nothing happens. The coloured lines and shapes continue rippling across the surface of the prisms. The Operator waits. Suddenly, without the audience being able to see what has triggered his action, he taps the same spot as before, twice, in quick succession.

  A piece of the prism as big as a fist breaks off, held by the fingers of the Operator, who then removes the suction cups from it with his other hand, sets the crystal fragment on the floor, picks up his small hammer, and again turns to face the prisms, attentive (the spectators are beginning to understand it) to the enigmatic progression of clues moving just under their surface. The randomness of all the coloured movements of the lines and shapes, their nature, their frequency, their combinations, is only apparent. They actually constitute a code marking the location of nodal points where the prisms are joined. A code, or more accurately changing codes—the rhythms have rhythms, the combinations have combinations, and the law (or the laws) governing it all hides, elusively, in those converging metamorphoses.

  Some members of the audience, who have understood the rules of the game, turn to making quick electronic speculations on the small terminals built into their tables. Bets are exchanged back and forth. A hum of interest swells, ebbs, and swells again with each crystal segment dislodged from the Subject. Even the few clients old enough to have immediately recognized the nature of the proposed entertainment—”reading,” a very ancient art form which always experiences sporadic revivals—even they begin taking interest in the show. This will be a memorable performance.

  In the alcove she has been called to, the hostess in the crimson lamé dress turns her back to the stage; she is sitting very straight in the low armchair, although it is softly contoured to encourage relaxation. With one hand, she holds in her fingertips the stem of a glass filled with a drink with which she has hardly wet her lips; her other hand, fist closed, is on the arm of the chair. The man seated on her right leans over, takes her closed hand, and gently unfolds the fingers one by one on the table. With this movement, the man’s head enters the sphere of light that surrounds the globelamp. Beneath the unruly hair, his features are strong but without fineness, like a sketch that someone did not bother finishing. The only features that stand out in detail are the mouth, the thick, sinuous lips strangely bordered with a white line—makeup or apigmentation—and the eyes, oblique but wide, possibly blue, softened by the light into a very pale grey in which the black iris, extremely dilated, seems to almost fill the eye. It is difficult to attribute an expression to this monolithic whole. Alertness, certainly, but is it inquisitive, cunning, friendly? The man’s hand releases the fingers of the hostess, which fold up again between palm and thumb. The woman is surely not even aware of this, for when the index finger of the man taps lightly on her closed fist, she starts, makes a move to hide that hand under the table, and then, with visible effort, places it close to the one holding—too tightly now—the long-stemmed glass. The man lies back in his chair, returning his face to the shadow, and the hostess must assume that he is watching the show, because she also pivots her chair towards the stage below.

  The Operator has finished dismantling the first layer of crystals. The general shape of the Subject is easier now to make out: a tapering vertical parallelepiped, much higher than it is wide and of irregular thickness; it narrows towards the bottom, widens, then narrows again at the top. Identical bulges are visible about one-third up its front face and two-thirds up its back face. The same play of lines and shapes moves across the surface of this second crystalline layer. Or at least the same principle is no doubt at work because, although it is hard to say why, one senses that the content of these animated patterns is not quite the same—nor completely different, however—as the one from the previous phase. More speed, perhaps, in the transformations? Or rather they flicker with concomitant metamorphoses; the rhythms they follow are subtly out of sync with each other, but when the effort is made to perceive them simultaneously, they constitute a whole whose organic cohesion leaves no doubt.

  The Operator seems to hesitate. The rubber-headed hammer hangs above the changing patterns. Then, very gently, it strikes one of the crystals. The block turns dark. The Operator jumps away, dropping the hammer, his hands clamped over his ears, his face twisted in a silent grimace.

  There is a burst of applause from the audience (the frequency of the ultrasound was modulated for the Operator alone, which makes their satisfaction all the greater) as the block clears, and the lines and colours resume their briefly in
terrupted progression. The Operator nods several times as he removes the suction-cup rings from his fingers. Then he picks up the small rubber-headed hammer and puts it and the rings into the box.

  A murmur of astonishment and excitement greets his next gesture—he detaches several sets of tools from his tool-armour and also deposits them in the box. He now presents an impressive silhouette, dotted irregularly with disparate metal objects between which patches of bare skin can be seen. He detaches another set of rings with smaller suction cups and slips them onto his fingertips, right hand and left. He then moves close to the block and attentively observes the shiftings and groupings of the lines. One finger at a time, he places his right hand, then his left, on two widely separated points; the fingers are positioned irregularly, some close together, some half bent, others stretched out and spread wide, no doubt to correspond to strategically placed points that must be touched simultaneously to produce the desired effect.

  For an instant, the Operator is motionless. He must have been waiting for a precise combination of colours, lines, and shapes, for all of a sudden he can be seen leaning a little against the block, giving a sudden push, and then he steps back holding the section of crystals that he has just detached.

  The audience leans forward, the better to see what is revealed of the Subject by the breach that has been created. They are disappointed, or surprised, or delighted. It is intensely black, featureless, a simple cutout that reveals neither shape nor volume—it could just as well be a glimpse of the intergalactic void. Only the Operator is close enough to possibly make anything out, but nothing in his behaviour indicates what he sees. With his hands held out a few millimetres above the crystalline sheath, he waits for the moment when a new configuration, indiscernible by the audience, will indicate to him that another section of the Subject is offering itself to be broken off.

  A conversation has begun between the hostess in the crimson lamé dress and her client. It is not a very animated one. The woman seems as reticent to answer the questions of her interlocutor as he is slow to ask them. And they are perhaps not questions. They may be rambling comments on the performance being staged below. The man and the hostess both seem to be watching it.

  The Subject has been almost entirely extracted from its crystalline shell. Totally black—that strangely matte, depthless black that flattens volumes—its shape to come is very clear now: from the front, an elongated diamond standing on its narrowest point; but from the side (it can be seen as the central stage slowly rotates), although it retains the shape of a parallelogram, it will be an asymmetrical one.

  Using combined pressure and shearing, the Operator detaches the last crystalline section. Around the Subject, the stage is littered with blocks of all sizes. Slow ripples of transformations still flow over their surfaces. Their inner rhythm is subtly or considerably altered now that their organic link with the Subject has been cut, but their beauty, their fascinating appeal, remains intact—as indicated by the requests that have been flooding the communication network for some time now: What will become of those fragments? Is it possible to obtain them, and at what price? To all these questions, the Manager’s answer is the same: all the materials from the performance are the exclusive property of the Artists, who dispose of them as they see fit.

  The Operator once more circles the Subject. He takes a device from his tool-armour (almost completely dismantled now) to scan the black block from a distance. The spectators peer at the area above the stage where the holographically retransmitted data will appear. Nothing. The Operator punches hidden keys on the small device and moves to another spot to resume his examinations. Still nothing. He almost shakes the device, stops, and places it in the box, allowing himself a slight shrug. He detaches another device, a sort of stylus connected by several wires thick enough to be fine conduits to an oblong box of which all one side is covered with variously coloured keys of different sizes. With perceptible hesitation, he walks up to the block, and touches it with the tip of the stylus.

  An inarticulate exclamation rises unanimously from the audience. The Operator has been thrown to the floor, where he goes into visibly painful convulsions, no doubt caused by an electrical discharge of quite high intensity.

  After several minutes, though, he gets up again with some difficulty. He deposits the useless device in the box. After closing the lid, he stands motionless for a moment, one hand on each side of the box, leaning lightly, his head lowered a bit. Those spectators who have been brought opposite him by the rotation of the stage can see that he has his eyes closed, and that a film of sweat glistens on the skin of his face and body (where the tools have been detached). A murmur of satisfaction—not without a certain joyous cruelty—runs through the audience: the Subject is a formidable opponent.

  The chair of the hostess in the crimson lamé dress has pivoted; she is no longer watching the show, nor is she looking at her client. He speaks to her from time to time, leaning a little towards her, his face half lit by the globelamp. One of his hands is wrapped around the arm of his chair. A distinct depression in the soft material shows the force with which he is gripping it. His other hand, however, resting on the table, is slowly, delicately turning the long-stemmed glass, occasionally raising it to his face like a flower to drink. The young woman’s face, because she is nearer the table, is fully lighted. She is looking straight ahead without any discernible emotion (except, perhaps, by inference, the desire to be inexpressive). Her eyelids do not blink, her eyes are fixed, enlarged, shining brightly, with a tremulous sparkle that suddenly comes loose and rolls down her right cheek to fall on her collarbone, which is exposed by the low neckline of the lamé dress. The man puts his glass down on the table, very gently. He leans a little closer to the woman and follows the wet trail with the tip of a finger. The woman turns her head away and lowers it towards her other shoulder. The man takes hold of her face—which half disappears in his big hand—to turn it, without brutality but firmly, back towards him.

  The Operator begins moving again. Facing the black block—as though it could see him—he removes what remain of his tools from his skin with slow, deliberate movements, and lays them down on the floor. He brings his hands to his head and unhooks the fastenings of his hood, which are joined at the top. He is naked now, except for the shell that protects his sexual organs from any unpleasant contact with the tools nearby. He is a tall young man, broad shouldered and long bodied. His skin, uniformly smooth and completely lacking in pilosity, is very white. His smooth hair is cut in a helmet shape around the sturdy face, and appears, perhaps in contrast, excessively dark. When he moves close to the block again, it can be seen that he is almost the same height, just barely shorter. (Perhaps only the flat blackness of the block makes it look taller than the Operator.)

  The Operator seems to collect himself (or meditate, or simply take the time to breathe deeply); then he holds out his arms and—to the extent that the shape of the block permits him to do so—he embraces it.

  A silent explosion of blackness momentarily blinds the spectators. When they regain their sight, the Operator and the Subject are face-to-face at last, with nothing to separate them.

  In the alcove, the chairs of the man and woman are closer together. Resting on the table between the two long-stemmed glasses, the man’s hand envelops the woman’s. The woman’s head is leaning against the man’s shoulder. They are both watching the circular stage below.

  The Subject now appears in the shape of a naked woman, with golden skin, copper-coloured in the light of the lasers, and, like the Operator, completely lacking in pilosity, except for a mid-length, unruly mane, also copper-coloured; slanted eyebrows above very black eyes (but this may only be an effect of the lights); and very thick eyelashes. She is the same height as the Operator—though there is no point of reference to estimate their actual heights, now that the black parallelepiped has sublimated. Besides, there is no more time to indulge in such speculations, for the stage changes suddenly, and a surprised exclamation rises f
rom the audience (where almost all the clients now have become spectators).

  The Operator and the Subject, both still naked, float above the circular stage, and, although no visible barrier indicates the limits of their weightlessness chamber, it is suddenly apparent that what the audience has been seeing since the beginning is not a live performance but a holographic retransmission, perhaps long after the fact. Various movements disturb the spectators after the initial surprise—protests, approval, arguments from one table to the next between advocates of actuality and advocates of virtuality. But all this agitation dissipates quite quickly, for down below, in the weightlessness chamber, the show continues.

  A number of tools had remained stuck to the skin of the Operator during the third exploratory phase. He takes them off his skin without using them. He has not been forced to put them in the box and can still use them. There will therefore be a fourth phase for the Subject, now at the discretion of the Operator.

  With the Operator’s first moves, the coming procedure is made obvious, and the spectators who have not yet understood, by realizing that the performance is recorded, understand now with a shiver of anxious or delighted anticipation: this will be the Great Game.

  The Operator first proceeds with removing the nails, regal paths to the skin. Delicate remote-controlled cybernetic pincers alight on either side of each nail on the hands and feet. Small suction cups coated with monomolecular glue are placed on the surface of the nails. An instant of immobility, then the impetus spreads, activating precise movements throughout the system. With a quiet tearing noise, the nails are pulled from the phalangettes, which are invisible under the layer of flesh. Another small suction cup attaches itself to each of the fingers like a mouth, aspirating the blood seeping from the periphery of the nail, in the same movement injecting a local delayed-action analgesic, and then cauterizing the blood vessels. The Subject’s scream is cut short.