The Medusa Frequency

by Russell Hoban

  Dr Carnevale looked into the room and called my name and I followed him into his office. ‘Pains in your chest and left arm?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘At first it was like an iron fist but now it’s as if I’ve swallowed an iron box. And my left arm feels leaden.’

  ‘Let’s have your shirt off.’ He unlimbered his stethoscope. ‘I guess by now you’ve finished the novel you were working on when I saw you last year. Breathe in.’

  ‘No, actually I haven’t.’

  ‘Breathe in again. Very stressful occupation, novel-writing, so I’m told. Do you happen to know Rupert Gripwell? Lean forward.’

  ‘No. Is he a novelist?’

  ‘Undertaker. He says they don’t last as long as journalists.’

  ‘Undertakers?’

  ‘Novelists.’

  ‘Why is that?’ I said, as he took my blood pressure.

  ‘Says they drink alone too much. People drink faster when they drink alone. You drink alone much?’

  ‘Well, I can’t be bothered to go looking for people every time I want a drink, can I.’

  ‘I suppose not. I spend a lot of time in the garden. You’ve got to have some way of unwinding or everything gets to be too much. How’s the pain?’

  ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s anything more than angina but I’ll book you into St Stephen’s so they can have a look at you.’

  18 Louisa, not Luise

  Watchful in her space of light the night sister sits at the edge of the dark ward. At three o’clock in the morning the moments patter like rain on the roof of night; the silence is a road to anywhere.

  At the far end of the ward someone cries out, ‘Luise!’ There is a rush of nurses, a trundling of apparatus; the fluorescent lights flicker on; the curtains around the bed are drawn; the curtains are opened, a man is wheeled away.

  The name he cried out must have been Louisa, not Luise. Yes, it must have been Louisa. The bed remains empty, the man hasn’t come back. What did he look like? I hadn’t noticed the occupant of that bed earlier, he must have been in the day room or asleep or hidden behind a newspaper.

  He never did come back. Later they cleared away his things, stripped the bed, and put on fresh sheets and pillowcases. I asked the night sister whether he’d had a snake-and-dagger tattoo and the name Louisa on his left arm.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘We chatted sometimes but I never knew his name. Who was he?’

  ‘Gombert Yawncher.’

  ‘Do you know what he did for a living?’

  ‘He was an actor but I don’t think he’d been in work for quite a long time. He told me he used to do the voice for the old Pluto Drain Magic ads on TV, the cartoon ones where Pluto hurled himself down the drain like Superman.’

  I remembered those ads, they were done before the account came to Slithe & Tovey. Back then their slogan was ‘PLUTO GETS THE DIRT UNDER THE DIRT’.

  ‘His heart gave out, didn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, it was a coronary thrombosis. He said to me this morning, “It’ll be tonight,” and I said, “What’ll be tonight?” and he just looked at me and said, “I can’t remember my lines any more.’”

  ‘It could happen to anybody,’ I said.

  I went to the day room and stood there in the dark at the sliding glass door that opened on to the balcony. From where I was on the fourth floor I could see, beyond the roofs and dormers of the old part of the hospital, the upper parts of houses on the far side of the Fulham Road. The road itself was not to be seen.

  Looking towards the unseen road in that three o’clock in the morning of the November night I imagined Orpheus running, running, saying to the night, ‘I have no name but the one you give me, no face but the one you see.’ Orpheus as athlete, his limbs and motion graceful in the darkness; Orpheus seen from a distance on the dim Fulham Road under cold November lamps, on the dim Thracian road wending into darkness, the dim white of the road that runs behind the eyes to otherwhere. Orpheus running, running night into day, day into the long road, night into the long world’s music. I’d never thought of his body before, only the head.

  19 Still Three O’Clock in the Morning

  It’s still three o’clock in the morning, the night sister still in her space of light at the edge of the dark ward, at the edge of underworld. Her face is in shadow, her white cap flickers, becomes a writhing and a hissing silence. She looks up, her shadowy gaze is on me. The silence crackles with its brilliance, her mouth is moving as it moved above the pinky dawn water between the beach and the Island Tamaraca.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘We haven’t had a ten o’clock urine specimen from you,’ she said.

  20 The Visit

  Melanie came to visit me with a bunch of grapes. ‘What brought on the angina?’ she said.

  ‘The head of Orpheus turned up as half a grapefruit and in an absent-minded moment I ate it.’

  ‘Perhaps that was your way of recognizing that you don’t need it any more.’

  ‘It’s the other way round: it doesn’t need me any more now that we’ve finished the story.’

  ‘Well, there you are then; you took it on yourself to finish the story and now you’ve done it and it’s off you. That’s more of a reason for not getting angina.’

  ‘Yes, but it’ll take some getting used to.’

  ‘Do you remember in The Tempest,’ she said, ‘Prospero says, “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine”?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘That’s what I think you’ve been doing; and now that you’ve acknowledged it you can move on to something else.’

  ‘This thing of darkness is where my writing comes from.’

  ‘You mean your comics?’

  ‘No, I don’t mean my comics. Slope of Hell and World of Shadows weren’t comics, were they.’

  ‘No, but they were quite a few years back, weren’t they. What’s this thing of darkness done for you lately?’

  ‘Today is William Blake’s birthday,’ I said.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Nothing. He just came into my mind, that’s all. He said that what men and women require of each other are the lineaments of Gratified Desire.’

  ‘There’s more than one kind of desire that wants gratification,’ she said.

  ‘What kind were you thinking of?’

  ‘The desire to stop mucking about and get on with it. Have you started work on the film?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you going to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Right. I can see what’s coming: after a while you’ll leave the phone off the hook and stop answering the door and keep the blinds pulled down and newspapers and letters and bills will pile up in the hall and finally one day they’ll break down the door and there won’t be anybody there but the thing of darkness.’

  ‘Maybe that’s who’s been there all along. Gom Yawncher’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was here in this ward and now he’s gone, handed in his dinner pail, picked up his cards, hopped the twig, slung his hook, pissed off out of this world.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and began to cry.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to burden you with it.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  After a while the grapes were still there but she was gone. Pale wintry Sunday-afternoon sunlight on the grapes.

  21 The Seeker from Nexo Vollma

  The hospital, having brought me a cup of tea at six o’clock every morning, electrocardiogrammed me, X-rayed me, tested my blood and urine, confirmed Dr Carnevale’s diagnosis of angina, advised me to avoid fats and cholesterol and take moderate exercise and lose weight, gave me a little bottle of glyceryl trinitrate tablets, and put me out on the street again. And there I was as before with Hilary Forthryte waiting for my call and the current account dead on the floor.

  Quic
kly I went to the word machine, booted the system master and the word-processing programme, and typed:

  Hello, hello. Is anybody there?

  WHOM DID YOU WANT?

  Well, I thought maybe Medusa.

  THIS IS MEDUSA SPEAKING.

  Do you remember what you said to me?

  WE HAVEN’T HAD A TEN O’CLOCK URINE SPECIMEN FROM YOU.

  No, before that, when you spoke above the pinky dawn water between the beach and the Island Tamaraca.

  THAT WAS A MYSTERY.

  I know, but couldn’t we talk about it a little?

  NOT NOW.

  OK, I said. Sorry I bothered you. I blew some of the dustballs off my desk, emptied the wastebasket, put on a Greek tape, shook some dandruff over the keyboard, stared at the screen, and began to fall asleep. ‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s not the way to do it.’ I got a videotape from the shelf, it was a BBC documentary about a wedding in Calabria and I was remembering the father of the bride. I ran it fast forward to the part I wanted: there it was just before the end, there was the father, a thin man in shirtsleeves. Setting up his daughter in married life had cost twenty thousand pounds, each of the two families bearing half the cost. This man had used up his savings and borrowed from the bank and he had two more unmarried daughters.

  There is music and suddenly he is dancing. His feet move him in a circle and with his arms and his head he abandons himself; his arms make rhythmic motions of swimming or scattering, his face is rapt, urgent with the marriage of his daughter as his dance carries him around his circle.

  I rang up Hilary Forthryte and told her I couldn’t do the film, I had too many other things to wind up and I really wasn’t going to be free for a new project for a long time. Then I sat down at the keyboard again and looked intently at the screen.

  ARE YOU THERE? said the Kraken.

  Here I am. What now?

  PAY ATTENTION,

  I am paying attention.

  FAR, FAR DOWN IN THE DEEPEST DEPTHS OF THE HURGO MURMUS LIVES NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH.

  Yes, that sounds good. Tell me about Nnvsnu the Tsrungh.

  NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH, ALONE IN THE BLACKNESS, THINKING, THINKING IN THE BLACKNESS OF THE ULTIMATE DEEP.

  Carry on, I’m with you.

  THAT’S AS FAR AS I’VE GOT.

  You’re making up a story.

  I THOUGHT I’D GIVE IT A TRY.

  This Nnvsnu the Tsrungh - there’s a lot of you in him, isn’t there?

  WELL, YOU KNOW HOW IT IS - THIS IS MY FIRST TIME.

  That’s all right, you’re doing very well. There’s nothing wrong with using yourself but you have to dress it up a bit, put in a little sex and violence, a little excitement. Not too much thinking in the ultimate deep.

  NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH IS THINKING VIOLENTLY.

  Of what?

  OF GOING AFTER WHOEVER PULLED THE GREAT SNYUKH.

  What was the Great Snyukh?

  IT WAS THE BLUG OF NEXO VOLLMA.

  The Blug of Nexo Vollma. I like that. I should think it was about forty feet high with a thousand tentacles and it left a slimy track.

  NEXO VOLLMA IS THE BLUGHOLE OF THE UNIVERSE.

  You mean plughole. Nexo Vollma is the plughole of the universe and the Great Snyukh was the plug. In that case the Great Snyukh must have been a good deal bigger than I thought.

  IT WAS A WHOLE LOT BIGGER THAN ANY PLUG YOU CAN THINK OF, AND IT GOT PULLED. BUT IN THAT UNIMAGINABLE MOMENT BEFORE THE BIG WHOOSH, SNYUKH! INTO THE BLUGHOLE WENT NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH.

  He saved us all.

  HE DID WHAT HAD TO BE DONE BUT NOW HE THINKS VIOLENT THOUGHTS. FROM THE BLUGHOLE IN THE BLACKNESS OF THE HURGO MURMUS, FROM THE UTTERMOST DEPTHS OF THE ULTIMATE DEEP HE SENDS HIS MIND AFTER THOSE WHO PULLED THE GREAT SNYUKH, THE BLUG OF NEXO VOLLMA.

  Who did it? Who pulled the Great Snyukh?

  THE DEEPLY BAD ONES DID IT.

  Why did they do it?

  THEY WANTED TO HEAR THE BIG WHOOSH.

  The bastards.

  DEEPLY BAD.

  But Nnvsnu the Tsrungh is sending his mind after them. How does he send his mind?

  HE SENDS HIS MIND AS MEGAHERTZ, AS QUESTING SIGNAL FROM THE DISTANT DEEPS. AS THE SEEKER FROM NEXO VOLLMA IT SWEEPS ALL FREQUENCIES BUT HE CAN’T FIND THE DEEPLY BAD ONES.

  He puts out a call on the emergency band, I said: DEEP MIND IN PURSUIT OF DEEPLY BAD ONES, REQUIRES ASSISTANCE.

  BACK COMES THE MESSAGE, said the Kraken: ROGER,DEEP MIND, WILL ASSIST.

  IDENTIFY YOURSELF, says Nnvsnu, I said.

  I AM NABILCA, THING OF DARKNESS, IS THE RESPONSE, said the Kraken.

  Nabilca, Thing of Darkness, I said, is really Wendy Nelson, a marine biologist. She was scuba diving when she lost consciousness and woke up in the secret undersea headquarters of the Nexo Foundation.

  SWORN ENEMIES OF THE DEEPLY BAD ONES. THE NEXO FOUNDATION FIGHTS THE FORCES OF EVIL AND HAS DEDICATED ITSELF TO AVENGING THE EMBLUGMENT OF NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH. THEY IMPLANTED A RADIO IN WENDY NELSON’S HEAD SO SHE CAN COMMUNICATE WITH NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH.

  Why don’t they get Nnvsnu out of the blughole?

  BECAUSE THE BLUGHOLE IS WHERE THE MOTHERCODE IS TRANSMITTED FROM AND THE TRANSMISSION MUSTN’T STOP. THE GREAT SNYUKH USED TO DO IT BUT SINCE THE DEEPLY BAD ONES PULLED THE GREAT SNYUKH NNVSNU’S BEEN DOING IT.

  The mothercode is what holds the universe together and of course the Deeply Bad Ones are after it.

  IN THE BLACKNESS NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH TRANSMITS THE MOTHERCODE; SPINNING HIS MIND LIKE A PRAYER WHEEL HE REVOLVES CONTINUALLY THE NUMINOSITIES AND NEXIALITIES THAT COMMUNICATE THE UNIVERSE TO ITSELF.

  What does Nnvsnu the Tsrungh actually look like?

  ACTUALLY HE’S NOT PROPERLY A HE AND HE’S NOTHING YOU COULD PICTURE IN YOUR MIND. WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT HERE IS A SPACE-TIME SINGULARITY WHICH IS IN FACT A NEURON OF THE COSMIC MIND TO WHICH THIS UNIVERSE HAS OCCURRED. SIMILARLY THE GREAT SNYUKH IS A SIMPLIFICATION OF A CUSP OF NEGATIVE PROBABILITY. ONCE INVERTED IT REVERSES ITS POLARITY AND BECOMES AN ACCELERATOR OF EVENT.

  It might even be a TV series with a lot of special effects and some really top-class hardware. The Nexo Foundation has all kinds of displays and flashing lights and digital controls to monitor the shifting of probabilities as Nnvsnu the Tsrungh and Nabilca, Thing of Darkness who is really Wendy Nelson, fight the Deeply Bad Ones and various other forces of evil. Wendy Nelson’s cover is marine biology but she’s also a black belt in three or four martial arts, a top mathematician and physicist and an ace mechanic and driver. Sometimes in a violent action scene the bad guys will say, ‘Get the girl!’ and they’ll grab her and take her to a hideout and tie her up but they never tear her clothes off or take advantage of her.

  WHY DON’T THEY TEAR HER CLOTHES OFF AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF HER?

  For the same reason they can never shoot straight: they’ve got no self-confidence. That’s why they’re the bad guys – repeated failures have made them bitter and antisocial.

  WELL, WHAT DO YOU THINK? CAN YOU DO ANYTHING WITH IT?

  I’ll have a go. First I’ll try it as a comic, I’ll work up a couplé of episodes and show them to Bill Novad at Novad Ventures, they do Captain Pituitary.

  GOOD LUCK.

  Thank you, and thanks for your help.

  22 Questions

  The morning after my talk with the Kraken I was ready to begin work on The Seeker from Nexo Vollma. As one will at such times, I found myself taking stock of the present situation and reviewing recent events. What about the head of Orpheus, was I ever going to see it again? I supposed not, probably the angina had signalled my being dropped from its thoughts back into ordinary life. Where was it now? Had it gone back for another go with Fallok? Had it found someone new?

  23 I Mention This

  Often in my researches I’ve come across old books of a specialist nature in which the author, usually a retired wing-commander, expresses in a modest foreword the hope that the little volume may be a vade mecum for the model steam engineer, coarse angler, sado
-masochist or whatever. I feel that way about these pages: I hope that this little volume may be a vade mecum not so much for the specialist as for others like me - the general struggler and straggler, the person for whom the whole sweep of consciousness is often too much. Here I am reminded of the words of H. P. Lovecraft:

  The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

  Persons for whom the whole sweep of consciousness is often too much are prone, when in a weakened condition, to wear themselves out by looking feverishly for things they cannot find. I’ve described my desk and I might as well say right here that my whole workroom is in pretty much the same state of terminal clutter. Oh yes, I have filing cabinets and folders to put things in but life isn’t that simple and there are always papers that hide themselves in odd places or in wrong folders.

  I mention this because no sooner had I typed the title The Seeker from Nexo Vollma on to the screen than I found myself trying to remember where I’d put a loose folder containing a several years’ old article from Newsweek on mud-brick architecture. I had no need of that information at the time but my mind in its irregular and desultory patrolling of its boundaries had happened to note that it didn’t know at that moment where the mud-brick architecture article was. So I went looking for it, at first casually and then seriously and with hot waves of aggravation flooding over me like colour changes on a cuttlefish.

  I found the folder after about five hours, it was stuck between two books on Çatal Hüyük. By then it was time for lunch. After lunch I had a kip then read over what I’d typed out during my conversation with the Kraken the day before. Good God, what rubbish it seemed. By then it was drink time which made the burden of my critical faculty easier to bear.