"My father, who had little money to spare for sending a son to college (he was operating a food business or a restaurant by this time, I"m not quite sure when the change was made), obtained the promise of a senatorial appointment to West Point for me. Unfortunately by the time I graduated from High School in 1949 there had been a readjustment of the power structure, and the new man, a short-sighted fellow named L. B. Johnson, refused to honor his predecessor"s commitment.
"A few years later I found myself a private in the 7th Infantry Division, attempting to excavate a foxhole with the b.u.t.tons of my shirt. I had dropped out of Texas A&M, which is a land grant college and something of cross between V.M.I. and Tom Disch"s CAMP CONCENTRATION but very cheap if you live in the state, and learned to my sorrow the meaning of "student deferment." That was the Korean Police Action-remember that?
"The G.I. bill let me return to school at the University of Houston, and I got a B.S.M.E. there in 1956, following which I flew Texas, something I sometimes regret. I still hold the job I took when I graduated-that is to say, I"m working for the same employer, but since the job is Research and Development things change almost from month to month.
"I have a wife and four children. They seem like more."
MATHOMS FROM THE TIME CLOSET.
Gene Wolfe
1: Robot"s Story It"s a cold night, and the wind comes in so there"s no inside inside, only two outsides: outsides: the one there where it howls up from the river, and the one in here-a little more sheltered, a little warmed by our breath. Che"s poster flutters on the wall as though he"s trying to talk; the kids would say "rap." the one there where it howls up from the river, and the one in here-a little more sheltered, a little warmed by our breath. Che"s poster flutters on the wall as though he"s trying to talk; the kids would say "rap."
The kids are the older ones, three sitting crosslegged on Candy"s mattress. (That"s the Chillicothe Candy: there are fifty others up and down Calhoun Street.) The kids are the younger ones, runaways: two virgin (or nearly) girl groupies, and a thin, sad boy who never talks. The kids are Robot, who has been down the hall where the plumbing works (it is stopped up here) and comes in, step, step, step step, step, step, thinking about each move his legs make.
I"ve talked to Robot more than to any of the others because he is (perhaps) the least hostile and the most interesting. Robot is about nineteen, very tall, with a round, small head and a shock of black hair. Robot was custom-built, he tells me, in the thirty-third century to be the servant of an ugly woman who lived in a house floating on nothingness. Whenever Robot feels depressed he says: "I don"t know how good I was made. Maybe I"m going to work for a thousand years; maybe I"m more than half used up already."
Robot says he is five. He escaped, or so he once told me, by spinning the dials of the ugly woman"s time closet and stepping in while they were still in motion. This, as he explains, was to prevent his whenabouts (emphasized by his voice so that I"ll notice the word) becoming known; but he had hoped to arrive in the thirteenth century B.C., a period which exercises a fascination for him.
Candy and the two boys with her ignore him, and after watching them for a moment he sits on the floor with the groupies (self-proclaimed) and the sad-faced boy and me. The boy is almost asleep, but to get Robot talking I ask, "Don"t you wish you were back now, Robot?"
He shakes his head. "This is better. That was a drag all the time." He thinks for a moment, then asks, "Do you mind if I tell a story?" I tell him to go ahead, and so do the groupies, but he still hesitates. "You don"t mind? I"m programmed for them, and there wasn"t anyone who would listen there, so I never got to get them out. When I get them out they"re checked off, you know? It"s kind of like being constipated."
The sad boy says, "Go on." This, I think, is what Robot has been waiting for.
"This is a fairy story," Robot begins. "It goes way back to the days when the little one-man scout ships went out from here in every direction looking for habitable spheres, scattering like sperm from s.e.m.e.n dropped in the sea."
I had not known Robot possessed such a strain of eloquence, and I look closely at him. His eyes are staring straight ahead and his mouth is a round O, the way he holds it when he is pretending there is a speaker in his throat.
"Those days continued for many, many years, you must understand. And every year the ships left in tens or hundreds-up toward the pole star; out like spokes around the sun; down past the Southern Cross. This is about one of the ships that went down.
"It dropped for years, but it didn"t count years. The pilot was asleep, and in a hundred days he would breathe three times. In a year, maybe, he would turn over and then plastic hands would come out of the wall and turn him right again. The ship woke him up when they had gotten somewhere.
"He woke up, and it knew he had forgotten almost everything except what he"d been dreaming of, so it explained it all to him while it rubbed him and gave him something to eat. When it was finished he thought, "What a tourist I was to let them talk me into this." Then he got up to see what this world he found was.
"It wasn"t anything special; as near as he could see mostly high gra.s.s-higher than your head. He landed and the air was all right and he got out and did all the things he was supposed to do, but there was really nothing there but all this gra.s.s."
(I wondered if the "gra.s.s" in the story was an unconscious reflection of the kids" obsession with marijuana; or if for Robot as for Whitman it represented the obliterations of time.) "Then just when he was getting ready to go, this really lovely chick came out of the gra.s.s. No noise, you dig? No drums, no trumpets. She just pushed it back like a chick will push back her hair and came out. He was crazy about her as soon as he saw her, and they made a deal.
"He couldn"t take her back in the ship with him and she wouldn"t have gone anyway. But she told him she"d live with him there if he"d do three things, and she made him write them out in his own blood. He had to swear first of all that he"d do all the work, and never ask her to do anything. Then that he wouldn"t tell people back here what he"d found, and that he wouldn"t ask her any questions.
"He wrote it all and he signed it, and she had him build them a house, like out of sod and the gra.s.s and pieces of his ship. He dug a cistern and planted some seeds he"d had in the ship to get things started for the colony people who were supposed to come after him. And that was it, except that sometimes she would catch the soft little animals that lived in the gra.s.s and eat them. She never gave him any and he never asked for any, and they were too quick for him to catch himself.
"He got older but she didn"t, and he thought that was groovy. He was getting to be an old guy but he still had a young wife as pretty as a girl. He had to do everything like he had agreed, but otherwise she was always nice. She sang a lot without words and played a thing like a flute, and she told him all the time what a great guy he was.
"Then one day just after sundown when he"d been out hoeing the crops and was just about to go in he saw a new spark up among the stars. He watched it for a long time, trying to straighten up his back and rubbing the white hair around his face. After that he saw it every night for three nights, moving across the sky. Then on the fourth day, when he was carrying water from the cistern there was a kind of whizz in the air and something big hit the ground a long way off. He was starting to think about that when his wife came down the path. She wasn"t carrying anything, or doing anything to make her look different from the way she usually did, and she didn"t wear clothes, but there was a kind of glow to her like she"d brushed her hair a little more than usual and maybe toweled herself harder when she washed. She went walking right past him and never said a thing.
"He watched her walk through all the place he"d cleared to grow food and when she got to the gra.s.s she just kept going, opening it with her hands and stepping in. Then he yelled, "Where are you going?"
"She didn"t even turn her head, but she yelled back, "I"m going to get myself a new fool." "
Robot pauses.
One of the groupies asks, "Is that all there is to it?"
Robot doesn"t answer. Candy has come over, and she"s saying, "Robot, we want you to go out and cop a nickel for us." Which means: "Buy us five dollars worth of marijuana."
Robot stands and holds out his hand, and one of the boys squatting on Candy"s mattress laughs and says, "If we had it we"d cop ourselves." For a moment I think of lending Robot my coat (his own orange one belonged to a hotel doorman, and is so worn in spots that the lining shows through the napless fabric) but the way people usually do, I think too long before saying anything. He goes out, Candy and her two friends settle down on the mattress to wait for him, and now I think we are all going to sleep.
2: Against the Lafayette Escadrille I have built a perfect replica of a Fokker triplane, except for the flammable dope. It is five meters, seventy-seven centimeters long and has a wing span of seven meters, nineteen centimeters, just like the original. The engine is an authentic copy of an Oberursel UR II. I have a lathe and a milling machine and I made most of the parts for the engine myself, but some had to be farmed out to a company in Cleveland, and most of the electrical parts were done in Louisville, Kentucky.
In the beginning I had hoped to get an original engine, and I wrote my first letters to Germany with that in mind, but it just wasn"t possible; there are only a very few left, and as nearly as I could find out none in private hands. The Oberursel Worke is no longer in existence. I was able to secure plans though, through the cooperation of some German hobbyests. I redrew them myself translating the German when they had to be sent to Cleveland. A man from the newspaper came to take pictures when the Fokker was nearly ready to fly, and I estimated then that I had put more than three thousand hours into building it. I did all the airframe and the fabric work myself, and carved the propeller.
Throughout the project I have tried to keep everything as realistic as possible, and I even have two 7.92 mm Maxim "Spandau" machineguns mounted just ahead of the c.o.c.kpit. They are not loaded of course, but they are coupled to the engine with the Fokker Zentralsteuerung interrupter gear.
The question of dope came up because of a man in Oregon I used to correspond with who flies a Nieuport Scout. The authentic dope, as you"re probably aware, was extremely flammable. He wanted to know if I"d used it, and when I told him I had not he became critical. As I said then, I love the Fokker too much to want to see it burn authentically, and if Antony Fokker and Reinhold Platz had had fireproof dope they would have used it. This didn"t satisfy the Oregon man and he finally became so abusive I stopped replying to his letters. I still believe what I did was correct, and if I had it to do over my decision would be the same.
I have had a trailer specially built to move the Fokker, and I traded my car in on a truck to tow it and carry parts and extra gear, but mostly I leave it at a small field near here where I have rented hangar s.p.a.ce, and move it as little as possible on the roads. When I do because of the wide load I have to drive very slowly and only use certain roads. People always stop to look when we pa.s.s, and sometimes I can hear them on their front porches calling to others inside to come and see. I think the three wings of the Fokker interest them particularly, and once in a rare while a veteran of the war will see it-almost always a man who smokes a pipe and has a cane. If I can hear what they say it is often pretty foolish, but a light comes into their eyes that I enjoy.
Mostly the Fokker is just in its hangar out at the field and you wouldn"t know me from anyone else as I drive out to fly. There is a black cross painted on the door of my truck, but it wouldn"t mean anything to you. I suppose it wouldn"t have meant anything even if you had seen me on my way out the day I saw the balloon.
It was one of the earliest days of spring, with a very fresh, really indescribable feeling in the air. Three days before I had gone up for the first time that year, coming after work and flying in weather that was a little too bad with not quite enough light left; winter flying, really. Now it was Sat.u.r.day and everything was changed. I remember how my scarf streamed out while I was just standing on the field talking to the mechanic.
The wind was good, coming right down the length of the field to me, getting under the Fokker"s wings and lifting it like a kite before we had gone a hundred feet. I did a slow turn then, getting a good look at the field with all the new, green gra.s.s starting to show, and adjusting my goggles.
Have you ever looked from an open c.o.c.kpit to see the wing struts trembling and the ground swinging far below? There is nothing like it. I pulled back on the stick and gave it more throttle and rose and rose until I was looking down on the backs of all the birds and I could not be certain which of the tiny roofs I saw was the house where I live or the factory where I work. Then I forgot looking down, and looked up and out, always remembering to look over my shoulder especially, and to watch the sun where the S.E. 5a"s of the Royal Flying Corps love to hang like dragonflies, invisible against the glare.
Then I looked away and I saw it, almost on the horizon, an orange dot. I did not, of course, know then what it was; but I waved to the other members of the Jagstaffel I command and turned toward it, the Fokker thrilling to the challenge. It was moving with the wind, which meant almost directly away from me, but that only gave the Fokker a tailwind, and we came at it-rising all the time.
It was not really orange-red as I had first thought. Rather it was a thousand colors and shades, with reds and yellows and white predominating. I climbed toward it steeply with the stick drawn far back, almost at a stall. Because of that I failed, at first, to see the basket hanging from it. Then I leveled out and circled it at a distance. That was when I realized it was a balloon. After a moment I saw, too, that it was of very old-fashioned design with a wicker basket for the pa.s.sengers and that someone was in it. At the moment the profusion of colors interested me more, and I went slowly spiraling in until I could see them better, the Easter egg blues and the blacks as well as the reds and whites and yellows.
It wasn"t until I looked at the girl that I understood. She was the pa.s.senger, a very beautiful girl, and she wore crinolines and had her hair in long chestnut curls that hung down over her bare shoulders. She waved to me, and then I understood.
The ladies of Richmond had sewn it for the Confederate army, making it from their silk dresses. I remembered reading about it. The girl in the basket blew me a kiss and I waved to her, trying to convey with my wave that none of the men of my command would ever be allowed to harm her; that we had at first thought that her craft might be a French or Italian observation balloon, but that for the future she need fear no gun in the service of the Kaiser"s Flugzeugmeisterei.
I circled her for some time then, she turning slowly in the basket to follow the motion of my plane, and we talked as well as we could with gestures and smiles. At last when my fuel was running low I signaled her that I must leave. She took, from a container hidden by the rim of the basket, a badly shaped, corked brown bottle. I circled even closer, in a tight bank, until I could see the yellow, crumbling label. It was one of the very early soft drinks, an original bottle. While I watched she drew the cork, drank some, and held it out symbolically to me.
Then I had to go. I made it back to the field, but I landed dead stick with my last drop of fuel exhausted when I was half a kilometer away. Naturally I had the Fokker refueled at once and went up again, but I could not find her balloon.
I have never been able to find it again, although I go up almost every day when the weather makes it possible. There is nothing but an empty sky and a few jets. Sometimes, to tell the truth, I have wondered if things would not have been different if, in finishing the Fokker, I had used the original, flammable dope. She was so authentic. Sometimes toward evening I think I see her in the distance, above the clouds, and I follow as fast as I can across the silent vault with the Fokker trembling around me and the throttle all the way out; but it is only the sun.
3: Loco Parentis DAD: He"s beautiful, isn"t he?
MOM: So new and unscratched! Like a car in the showroom, or a turbine that"s never turned! Like a new watch!
DAD: You"re just enthusing, aren"t you? Are you trying to tell me something?
MOM: I mean he"s beautiful, just as you said. Stop scratching yourself.
NURSE: Isn"t he lovely? But he"s only ten months old. He"ll need all sorts of care. Cleaning and feeding.
DAD: Oh, I know all about that. I"ve watched.
MOM: You mean we know.
NURSE: You"ll both learn, I"m sure. (Leaves baby and exits.) DAD: What did you mean, about the turbine? I"ve heard that because there are so many couples like us, who want children but can"t have them, they build robots, half-living simulacra, like children, to satisfy the instinct. Once a month they come at night and change them for larger so that you think the child"s growing. It"s like eating wax fruit.
MOM: That"s absurd. But they mutate the germ plasm of chimpanzees (Pan satyrus) to resemble the human, producing half-people simians to be cared for. It"s as if the organ played its music when there was no one to hear except the organ grinder"s monkey.
DAD: (Drawing away the baby blanket) He"s not a mutated chimp. See how straight his legs are.
MOM: (Touching) He"s not a machine. Feel how warm he is with the real warmth, even when none of his parts are moving.
SON: May I play outside?
MOM: With whom?
SON: With Jock and Ford. We"re going to fly kites and climb trees.
MOM: I"d rather you didn"t play with Ford. I saw him when he fell and cut his knee. The blood didn"t come in proper spurts, but just flowed out, like something draining.
DAD: I"d just as soon you avoided Jock. He eats too much fruit, and I don"t approve of his taste in clothing.
SON: He doesn"t wear any.
MOM: That"s what your father means.
SON: I love his sister. (Goes out) DAD: Don"t cry. They grow up so fast. Hasn"t everyone always told you?
MOM: (Still sobbing) It isn"t that. Jock"s sister!
DAD: She"s a lovely girl. Hauntingly beautiful, in fact.
MOM: Jock"s sister!
SON: (Re-entering, followed by a middle-aged couple) Mom, Dad, these people tell me that they"re my real parents; and now that I"ve grown enough to be very little trouble, except for tuition, they"ve come to claim me.
MR. DUMBROUSKI: We"ve explained to the boy how useful foster parent-things are, allowing real people necessary leisure.
MRS. DUMBROUSKI: I"ve always said it"s an honorable calling; and by filling desk s.p.a.ce in offices when they"re supposed to be at work, the father-things usefully increase the prestige of their nominal supervisors. Don"t they, dear?
MR. DUMBROUSKI: Yes indeed. I"ve got several working for me, although I"d never admit it at the office.
SON: Goodbye, Mom and Dad. I know one or both of you may be a machine or an ape or both, but I"ll never forget you. I won"t come to see you, because someone might see me coming in, but I"ll never forget you. (To Mr. Dumbrouski:) Will I know which is which when I"ve had time to think about it?
NURSE: Isn"t he lovely? But he"s only ten months old. He"ll need all sorts of care. Cleaning and feeding.
DAD: Like a new bamboo shoot!
MOM: Like a new headlight socket just coming out of the plating tank!
NURSE: You"ll learn, I"m sure. (Leaves baby and exits) JUNIOR: May I just sit here by the clock to eat my banana?
MOM & DAD: My son! My son!
Afterword.
Three stories: If you liked them you have three people to thank, of whom you yourself are one. If Harlan and I have messed with your mind in the pages just past it was because you have a mind to mess with. Many of the things you thought I said, you said.
Three ways of playing with time: If you"re authentic enough, and so deep up the blue hole nothing contrasts with your authenticity, you"ve gone back-haven"t you? Or, you"re mature in an instant (we all were) and Mother is only a tall woman with copper hair, Father a short man with hairy arms. Or, you recite (having arrived from there last night) the enigmatic myths of the future.
Three guesses: Do you need them? I am Robot; I fly the soaring Fokker, though only in my mind (and yours, I hope); my parents were and are as described, and these are some of my Dangerous Visions, my hang-ups. You and I have walked among three wraiths. There are others.
Head up! You may be a prince (or princess) of Mars.
Introduction to TIME TRAVEL FOR PEDESTRIANS.
Recently, here in Los Angeles, and I presume all around our vital, healthy country, drive-ins and local neighborhood movie theaters played a charming double-bill. The upper, or A feature, was something called I Suck Your Blood I Suck Your Blood; the lower half of the bill, the B feature, was I Eat Your Skin I Eat Your Skin. After the hysterical convulsions pa.s.s, kindly note these two b.u.m flicks were coded GP, which means kids can see them, but only with the consent and accompaniment of an adult. At the same time, a s.e.x film t.i.tled 101 Acts of Love 101 Acts of Love was being shown in the area, with an X rating, meaning if you"re a Catholic and go to see it, you"ll burn in eternal h.e.l.lfire. Kids strictly forbidden. was being shown in the area, with an X rating, meaning if you"re a Catholic and go to see it, you"ll burn in eternal h.e.l.lfire. Kids strictly forbidden.
This is hardly an original thought I"m about to lay on you, but doesn"t it seem strange to anyone else out there that it"s okay for kids to see people having their necks bitten, their flesh eaten and their bodies used for fertilizer, but it is considered corrupting for them to watch two people having s.e.x?
Where I"m going with this is toward Ray Nelson, but I"d like to make a couple of conversational stops on the way.
You see, DV (and surely A,DV will see a repet.i.tion of the problem) had some acceptability problems with certain libraries, with some bookstores, and when it was reprinted in the Science Fiction Book Club a number of scoutmasters and outraged mommies and common garden-variety guardians of public morality (like Keating, the head wimp of the Citizens for Decent Literature, on whose squamous skull a curse of succotash!) fired the book back with bleats of horror that their delicate children were being sent such mind-rotting filth that would obviously pollute their precious bodily fluids. In the general introduction I quoted one lady who wrote me directly. She was not alone in her vehemence.
It is to Doubleday"s and Larry Ashmead"s eternal glory that never once did they warn me away from "controversial" material, either in subject matter or treatment or language. The same has held true with this volume. They said, in fact, get it on, and do what has to be done. As a result, this book contains stories like Ray Nelson"s that I"m sure will bleach white the hair of librarians and others invested with the fraudulent ch.o.r.e of protecting delicate young minds.