The course intensified over the
next couple of days. The intellectual challenge, combined with the presence of
Pjerl in class, made this desk-and-blackboard existence the most exciting he
had ever known.
But it was continually marred by the
Great Complication or (to use a term he invented himself), the paradox
disease.
Time after time, crazy or
illogical behaviour made him his own worst enemy. Open-eyed but helplessly,
knowing quite well that he was being stupid, he also knew, every time, that he
would soon – thanks to the GC – be stupid again.
For example he had the habit,
when Pjerl approached, of not seeking eye contact, of definitely not
making any discernible move of his own towards communication; all this
being part of the strict urge not to spoil things, not to risk contaminating
the hundred-per-cent-voluntary value of any move she might possibly make
towards him.
He was perfectly aware of the
logical flaw in this – just imagine how things would be if his attitude were
shared by everyone! Nobody would speak! And why should it be up to Pjerl to
make all the moves? Logic reproved him, told him that he was unjustifiably
arrogating to himself a privilege, that he was saying to Fate, “You, please,
make her speak, else communication between us must dry up completely.” He was
trying to blackmail Fate, though he didn’t want to be a blackmailer.
The logic was sound. Using it, he
beat himself in argument.
But then why did this not make a
difference? Why wasn’t he moved to change?
Because the argument ignored the
main point, namely the lack of equality between him and her.
She, the infinitely attractive
one, had no need to tread carefully, for her tread was welcome on every
occasion. He, on the other hand, was in no such fortunate position.
In days gone by, he used to be a
self-confident man… vaguely he remembered being such a person… but compared to
Pjerl, her splendour and glory, he was nothing.
That was his excuse. At the same
time, the excuse was no defence against feeling like a fool.
Next question: why had destiny
picked on him, Midax Rale, for this role of fool?
The whole business was
unfathomable. How did other men get by? They
all seemed able to converse with her quite casually and naturally, and yet,
she being the woman with the power-to-make-men-into-fools, Midax should have
expected other men within range to succumb as thoroughly as he; instead of
which, to them she apparently seemed not fundamentally different from any of
the other attractive young women in the area.
He clutched his head and cogitated
in vain.
Perhaps he was up against the
human equivalent of kolv – the
non-atomic, irreducible stuff. Perhaps, in other words, the GC was as
impervious to analysis as kolv.
Courage would have come in handy.
But courage was gone, for infinite value implies infinite risk, and that is too
much risk for anyone. The only way out of the situation would be to diminish
one’s awareness, to become such a clod as to cease to perceive the value…
And that he would not consent to
do, even if it were possible.
A gleam of hope came when Davlr
Braze (of all people) remarked, in his crude fashion, during an interval
between classes:
“That Pjerl female, I think she
fancies you, for some reason.”
The words (“fancies you” being vulgar GC
jargon for “she’s drawn to you”) gave Midax an indescribable glow.
But how to believe it? How to use
it?
The only sign he could have
accepted as proof of such good news, would have been a sign from her that he
meant as much to her as she did to him. And of course such a thing did not
happen. Could never happen – if she was anything like him in her reticence of
emotion! But the real reason, the sadder reason it did not happen, he felt in
his bones, was that it was not true – and he saw no way to make it true.
He might have talked it over with
Davlr, theoretically, except that in practice he would not even dream of doing
so. Typically, a contradictory pair of impulses urged Midax to want –
simultaneously – both to talk about, and to keep quiet about, his mysterious
plight; but always the wish to keep quiet was stronger. The fewer people who
might learn that he had turned into an idiot, the better for his pride.
Nevertheless, what a relief it would be to discuss the phenomenon with someone! Perhaps if he ever met a
fellow-sufferer… but how to identify someone who’d been caught by the GC?
Meanwhile,
Davlr’s words, That Pjerl female, I think
she fancies you, for some reason, he picked to bits repeatedly. Analyses as
exhaustive as those with which he had worn out his brain after encounters with
Pjerl herself, carried Midax round and round, getting nowhere except to the
inevitable “if only…”
If
only I had prolonged Davlr’s words into a proper discussion. Without giving
anything away, of course.
Not that he particularly trusted
Davlr. But possibly the man knew something. Should the opportunity recur…
It recurred after a walk in the
hills. A group of trainees, Midax included, went on a fairly strenuous hike, to
relax after a stiff session in the Light-Tank. On the way back they chose a
path which brought them close to the immense landscaped enclosure which waited
to receive them in a few days’ time.
From ground level the Luminarium
beetled greyly, billows of thick cloud inside it hovering low and close to their end of
wall.
In the shadow of those weird
masses of vapour, the enclosed landscape seemed far more obscure and murky, far less
comprehensible than the clear panorama they had examined from the observation
tower on the first day of their training.
Getting so close, and seeing so
tantalizingly little of the picture, the men (no women were within earshot)
became surly.
“Time the lid was off that box.”
“Or your own lid’ll blow off,
eh?”
“I know we’ve got to go in, I
know that’s the point. But it’s getting tiresome, not knowing when we’ll be
able to get out again. I really don’t like that.”
Davlr interposed, “Friends, do I
hear an apprehensive note? When our education isn’t even finished yet?”
“What education?” mused Waretik,
and hearing this, Midax knew that Davlr had set this one up – had known how
Waretik would respond.
“How’s that?” Davlr asked, as if
amazed to hear such a cynical comment from the ultra-dignified ex-Surveyor.
Waretik replied, “The more they
tell us, the less we really understand.”
“So you’ve noticed at last,” said
Davlr dryly. “Listen, by the time we go in, I tell you, we’ll be the world’s
greatest experts – experts, that is, in being lost and confused.”
“So what?” remarked Stid Orpen. “It’s
doubtless intentional.”
“You mean,” suggested a hesitant
youngster named Bzarn, “they’re deliberately getting us to un-learn, aiming us
at a fresh viewpoint. Clean start. That kind of stuff. All very well, but, I
wonder – ”
“You jittery as well?” asked
Davlr, turning to face Bzarn.
“Not so much on my own behalf.”
“What are you getting at then?”
“I was wondering… about the
women…”
“What about them?”
Bzarn explained, “Sending them in
there with no warning of what conditions they may have to face… Don’t you
think, the way they are – physically weaker, and perhaps less stable – ”
Davlr let off a burst of
derision. “Special treatment for the curvoids! Perhaps, in the box, they’ll get
it! Who knows, the gut-churners may get churned themselves for a change! Eh,
Midax? Should Pjerl be sent home, out of harm’s way, do you think?”
Midax, in a cold sweat, tried to
think. He was in a spot. He did want Pjerl safe; he also felt obliged to defend
her publicly from any imputation that she was incompetent or lacking in
resource. Equally urgently, he had to avoid praising her out loud, lest this
lot guess his feelings. How could he cope with all these demands? Inanely, he
ended up by saying: “Not likely.”
Laughter all round.
Some loud, some soft. Faces
trying too obviously to smooth away their grins. He heard Davlr say the
terrible words, “Just because she’s your gut-churner!”
Appalling – while simultaneously, in some inexplicable sense, it was what Midax
longed to hear.
In such a situation he could only
hope that somewhere inside himself he must possess a store of wit, which could
spring up, in deft Splasher style, to rescue the moment just in time. And it
came, indeed, as it always did – just in time.
“I’m simply saying,” Midax
reproved, “that it would be a good thing if the women could pull their weight,
tackling the unknown instead of manufacturing more of it.”
“Well put,” conceded Davlr.
It seemed to Midax that he had
turned a corner, and he continued, immeasurably encouraged:
“Not that I am passing judgement
upon the gut-churners, you understand; doubtless they’re up to something
awesome of their own.”
“Like what?”
The others crowded in close. Nobody
talked about why women existed; the subject had been exhausted over aeons of
debate. But there was still room for some discussion about their aims.
“Haven’t the foggiest idea,” said
Midax, cleverly using a figure of speech to match the low vapours billowing a
few yards away on the other side of the Luminarium’s great glass wall. “Certainly
the women I used to know before I came here were completely uninterested in
cosmography or cosmology or anything else except their own inexplicable
selves.”
Bzarn put in, “Then maybe this
Institute is not the right place for them.”
Midax shook his head, “Ah, but it
helps me to have them here.”
“How?” “How?” the questions came
poking. He smiled.
“This is how I can be sure that
I’m wide awake – the presence of women who are actually interested in history
being made – ”
“Far too original for any dream!”
agreed Davlr, getting the point, and the entire group applauded.
Midax, now
that his tongue had stopped wagging, felt bad at what he had said. He had (he
suspected) committed a discourtesy, quite a come-down from former days when the
flow of wit, the maintenance of smooth appearances, used to be carried out in
such a way as to satisfy his own strict standards of what a man should be. Whereas
now it was as though their opinion of
him mattered more than his own. Now he was merely concerned to look good in
others’ eyes. And not making much of a job of it, either – as far as the one
person who mattered was concerned. He fervently hoped that this conversation
would never reach her ears. (And
simultaneously, inexplicably, he hoped that it would.) Vital it was, that he
get good at the looking-good business, no matter how despicable it might be. He
had no choice. He must get so good at seeming, that in the end he could not only seem but be
sufficiently wonderful to be matched with Pjerl. It was a desperate necessity
for him and a race against time in more ways than one: a race against
Sparseworld, a race against his own limits and a race against the impatience of
his fellows, who sooner or later would surely get tired of, and impatient with, his stupefied condition.
The next day, he was reading in
the common room amidst a welcome quiet, when a girl called Tarlpa entered. He
knew nothing about her except her name; her nature was the usual closed book to
him; and since the GC had snagged him and fixated him on Pjerl, his nerves and
innards were undisturbed by any other female – so Tarlpa meant nothing to him.
“Midax, would it disturb you if I
turned the music on?”
If she had been Pjerl, how little
problem there would have been! But because she was Tarlpa, attractive only in a
common way, and not at all interesting, nor apt to notice his existence except
when her convenience required her to do so, he merely replied, “It would,
rather.”
Looking disgusted, Tarlpa went
out.
Midax then realized what he had
done; realized that he had given absolutely the wrong answer; that “yes, of
course, go ahead” would have been the socially correct response. Instead of
which, he had committed a blunder by telling the truth when the truth was the
wrong thing to tell. The enormity of it – he, the once-smooth Midax Rale, had
been so rude as to answer the girl’s question literally instead of giving the
standard required reply. The awareness that he was slipping like this, that he
must be getting obnoxious, horrified his imagination, but brought only apathy
to his will. What could he do? He now clearly – but uselessly – understood how
extreme sensitivity in one area must lead to insensitivity in others. And that
the excessive vulnerability of one person is a pest to all. All clear as
crystal, and no help. He suddenly sympathised with his burdened companions;
what a soggy quilt he must have been during these past few days! – naturally no
one likes to be continually drenched in somebody’s emotion-waves…
Furthermore he was becoming more
devious; his character had acquired a crooked and desperate cunning. Day by day
he watched his scruples dissolve as he ceased to care about dishonesty of aim
and means. Credit-stealing was no longer beneath him: if the chance came,
gratefully would he snatch at any cloaking aura, if it would help him to match
Pjerl’s brilliance. ‘Finders keepers’, if he could find the pretence he wanted;
for he was prepared to take the credit for any luck; to claim fortune’s charity
as an attribute of his own – since all was fair in the Great Complication.
All he needed was the
opportunity, to carry out such a theft of prestige. He had no notion of how it
might happen. Then, lo and behold, came a happy accident.
It happened when his class were
doing some laboratory work, though the apparatus was mostly idle while they
read and scribbled for a project on optical theory, trying to assess what the
sensual consequences might be if light at all wavelengths had the same speed,
instead of speed varying with wavelength.
Pjerl approached him as he sat
hunched beside his lab bench. “I’m stuck,” she said, pointing at a text.
Afterwards he reflected that he
must have been so exhausted by his own emotions by this time that he did not
have the energy to mess everything up. Sheer lack of energy constrained him
from blundering.
As they both bent their heads to
look at the book she was holding, their shoulders brushed together. His eye
caught her profile.
That was when the marvel
occurred. He suddenly found himself liking
her. It was one of those rare, exquisite, normal, mundane moments in which
it seemed as if the entire blazing glory of her could just peacefully shine as
an everyday joy. Stabilizing instead of churning; sustaining, not rending.
Quite business-like, he gave her
the answer to her question, which was not a hard one. She thanked him for his
help. Then he managed to say a sensible thing: that he, similarly, might need her opinion on some things; if so, could
he approach her?
“Sure, come up,” she said simply.
As a result he knew he had real,
genuine permission to communicate; he had been given a ticket, as it were,
entitling the bearer to a conversation.
That was a high point. Unfortunately
the strength which had enabled him to obtain this “ticket” did not last long enough
for him to make use of it. As the remaining days flew by, he made no use of the
permission he’d been given. Why? Why oh why did he not approach and converse as
he had been specifically encouraged to do? Merely, he supposed, because he was
terrified that it might not work as perfectly as he wanted; so then, what did he want – a bigger ticket? A
certificate guaranteeing perfection of outcome? He fumed at his own cowardice.
Clearly, he was stuck with the
cowardice as long as he was stuck with the logic of perfection, which argued
irrefutably that no risk must be taken with infinite value.
“No failing” meant “no trying”.
Rock-solid was this command:
closeness to Pjerl, if it could be achieved at all, must be gained by no taint
of effort, for he must draw her to himself because of what he was, because that was how she drew him
to her: she did it just by being what she was. She was a miracle of wonder and
he must match her. How, then, does one go about being a miracle of wonder? All he knew
was, it must be done effortlessly, if at all. To need to try was to admit one had no right to succeed – for this was a
matter of what one is. Is one good
enough, or not?
If the problem exists, the answer
must be “not”.
Amid this desperate outlook, it
occurred to him to ask himself what still remained of the old delights of life,
and the glory of new purpose and of intellectual companionship which had seemed
so important when he joined the Institute. What had become of all that? As a
force, could it not help him rise above his present state? Perhaps by building
bridges of shared learning and discovery between him and Pjerl?
No, it was not strong enough to
supply the necessary courage, or to perform any trick that might make the
courage unnecessary.
So much, then, for the
coruscating life of the mind.
In rare moments of perception, he
valued the endless patience and kindness of Pjerl. It was a wonder how she put
up with him sufficiently to present him with the occasional jewel of a smile,
for how was she to know that he was unable to accept her friendship precisely because it was so natural and relaxed, because of that sad proof that he could
not be shaking her cosmos as she was shaking his? How was she to know that he
was not indifferent or ungrateful but merely insane? And finally, how was she
to know that this Great Complication was a logical
insanity which made powerful sense in its own terms? Those terms could not
be explained to her or to anyone because they could never be uttered out loud. Not,
at any rate, unless the impossible miracle occurred which would make him as
perfect as she. Meanwhile all the time he was also aware that this was all
wrong, that despite the effulgence of her glory she was only human, and that
the supply of her good nature could not be inexhaustible. The point must come
when she would lose patience. But he did not know what to do about it.
Finally he dared.
In desperation pretending
courage, he approached Pjerl in the common room during a break period and said,
“Could I have some conversations with you sometime?”
Pjerl said exasperatedly, loud
enough for all to hear, “Midax, you’re driving me mad! You’re putting all the
responsibility of your life on me!”
“Sorry,” said Midax. DIE! FOOL! DIE!
He had seen at least one head
turn. He closed his eyes. That’s right, eyelids down. Draw the curtain, fool. You
couldn’t call existence “life” after such shame as this. Must pretend to do
something. Stare at the wall. Stare at the board. Anything.
There was something on the notice-board;
he could focus on that.
A leaflet, it was. Pinned to
remind people of some forthcoming event. Peer closer; see the words “Blerdon
Picnic”. Scan the lines below… the little event seems to be a tradition, a
regular procedure, for those soon to go through the Portal.
He remembered that tomorrow, Day
Minus Two, the D-2 candidates were scheduled a half-holiday. And most
interestingly there was a list of names. Both he and Pjerl were down on that
list for the outing.
Absurd as ever, he found that he
was counting the hours. As if a dead man could look forward to picnics.
>>>next chapter>>>