In the Enclosure Read online

  IN THE ENCLOSURE

  Barry N. Malzberg

  www.sfgateway.com

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Epigraph

  In the Enclosure

  Epilogue

  Website

  Also by Barry N. Malzberg

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The day we saw

  “Being high and solitary and most stern”

  It

  Someone was writing

  HI ALMA

  In the air.

  We didn’t know

  From Alma

  So

  We drove south

  To find it

  With nothing

  Apparently

  Under it

  Not even itself

  It had lifted

  Unparented

  Itself

  Up

  And up from us

  The farther we drove

  It just moved away from us

  Like a mountain

  It was a mountain.

  Maybe not

  Alma

  Hi.

  Trim Bissell: When the Air Cleared 1968

  Here we all are: in the enclosure. It has been some two years and four months since we were placed here (I have fully assimilated a sense of their chronology) and now, past the initial riots and educative tortures, things are comfortable. There has been no excitement for a long time. Now we are fed at leisure, participate in planned activities, are allowed to gather in small groups for discussion and continue to meet with our therapists six times a week, during which time we are as thorough as ever. Life is, perhaps, more self-contained than I would like it to be; on the other hand, we are a tribe (how much I have learned of us!), which has always been highly dependent upon an institutional framework and, for that reason, things are not as unpleasant here as we thought they would be. In fact, and despite the rigorously ordered existence, things go quite well; although there are occasional murmurs of restlessness and I suspect the few unadjusted among us still talk of the necessity for violent overthrow and escape. Or conquest. These unadjusted, I suspect, would have become psychotic under almost any circumstances; it is only coincidental that the enclosure has become the focus of their rage, and they are not taken, for the most part, very seriously.

  The enclosure. It is difficult to tell its dimensions; not one of us has walked its full distance or ascended the entire height. We live within denned limits; we are shuffled or escorted through familiar hallways. I suspect that the enclosure is the size of a small village although with none of the villagers’ amenities; in height it may be several hundred yards although eyesight is undependable and the roof, visible at any point, seems to waver and shake with cranings of the head. The climate is controlled; the atmosphere is adjusted for our peculiarities; the personnel who administer it for us are replaced regularly and do not seem to have continuing shifts. Perhaps they do not like it, then, but we are told that it was originally constructed as an “alien environment,” so there is no reason why they should. This is our home. I regard it as such.

  Now and then our therapists (who also change frequently) grant us reports from the Outside; indicate that certain outcomes have emerged from our suggestions, that various breakthroughs have been achieved by our aid. At one time I thought that these words were of much significance and that it was only a matter of time until we were given a full release with apologies and gratitude. Each progress report brought us closer. Now I know differently: our therapists are being patronizing. Nevertheless, I accept the news with thanks; it is good to hear that they are aware of us Outside and that the irretrievable alteration of their lives continues.

  I am not happy in the enclosure. How could I be? Nevertheless, I am content. I walk, meditate, engage in metaphysical discussions with my therapists (after I have given them the desired facts for the day), avoid meetings of the tribe, fornicate joyously with females who accept me, sleep eight to twelve hours otherwise, and in all ways try to live an ordered existence without rage. I am not aggrieved. I blame no one for what has happened to us, for I volunteered into the mission. There is no culpability, only circumstance. Circumstance is all.

  Now and then, less frequently than in the past, I will emerge from strangled dreams: dreams of many colors, in which I have shouted through corridors; and after these dreams it is several hours or days until I can reconstitute myself around this familiar, acquired persona. These dreams are some indication that I have not totally accepted my condition. Still, I can deal with them with far more composure than in the past and in the last extremity I reveal them to my therapist who prescribes effective if temporary drugs.

  I will not let these dreams disturb me. They mean nothing. The past is of no significance, it has no relation: it is only the enclosure and the rooms, the therapist and these notes, the slow, kindly gestures of even the coldest of the females as they envelop me. Sex is warmth, always.

  Great technological and social advances have been the outcome of our stay on this planet. This is what my therapists assure me and since we have been in the enclosure for all but the first seventeen minutes of our time on Earth, we have no reason to dispute or even question this. As a result of our advice, diagrams, plans, and equations (we were familiarized with all their languages through hypno-suggestion on the voyage here) most diseases have been abolished, the war economies of the major nations have been dismantled, the incidence of neurosis among intellectual segments of the populace has decreased, and a series of manned, exploratory flights has already commenced, to Neptune, Uranus, and the other outer planets of their system. With the technological acceleration we have provided, they will soon be ready for the stars. Population pressures, which were becoming deadly before our landing, are being handled adroitly through the most advanced techniques provided by our sociotechnicians, and their mass media have become a means of distributing enlightened perception to the population. Bonuses are being paid for sterility, national consciousness and the level of perception have been heightened, divorces are down (althou
gh extremely easy to obtain when necessary) and seven hitherto unknown elements, predicted on our charts, have been put to work in foundation materials, proctoscopy, and automotive engineering. A pill has been synthesized which will control the patterns of will and patience and a cheap steroid has been found the answer for common depression. The treatment of criminals is no longer merely retentive or punitive but has shifted into a casework orientation. Prostitution has been legalized and is efficiently administered by the central government and its exclusive licensees. All is going well then, with our work.

  “You should be aware,” my therapist says, “that, due to what you have brought us, we have turned around the situation in less than three years. Not long ago I thought that I would live to see the end of our world, but, since you came, it is the inception instead which I see. I believe that you have saved us. All professional aspects to one side, I am incredibly grateful to you as is every human being on this planet.” A rather mad gleam comes into his eyes when he says things like this (he is the youngest of the succession of therapists I have had and by far the least formal) and his hands gesture abruptly, describing hexagons in the air. Nevertheless, there is no dismissing the passionate sincerity of his tone, the attempt that the man is making to encourage me.

  “I know that you must think quite badly of us,” he says, “to treat you in this way when you have obviously come for the most benign motives. Your imprisonment must seem cruel, maddening, although you have adjusted to it well. Already, the enlightened ones among us have formed committees in favor of your immediate release, just as soon as you have given us all the information. But we are a race—and you must understand this—that has survived only because of our suspicion and perversity, and our leaders have moved to power because they are the most feral of all. It will take only a generation or three, with your eugenic help, to breed that out of us as vestigial. I know that you must understand what I am saying as you understand everything else and that you share my faith in the temporary nature of this. You will leave the enclosure; all of you will leave the enclosure and walk among us as free beings. You will return to your star in dignity and pride. All of us here at the enclosure are devoting our lives to get you out of here. You have more than proven that your motives are altruistic and that you want for us only progress and development.

  “Still, you must be patient. You must hold against time, just as I am holding. Creatures as wise and selfless as you can understand this. We will bring the politicians over to our side of the question but this cannot be done at once for they are hundreds of years behind you in compassion. In the meantime, we have tried to make things as comfortable for you as possible. We want you to be happy.

  “Are you happy? What is disturbing you today? What can I do to ease you? Are there any memories or resentments you would care to discuss? Do you remember yet from where you came?”

  I ask for some of their newspapers, which would give us an indication of the effects we have had. I am very interested in objective referral as opposed to the therapist’s assurances. He denies me again, for administrative reasons. I ask for some minor variations in diet and the exercise schedule to avoid boredom, and these are granted. I ask that one of the females whom I knew months ago but was abruptly taken to another section be brought back to me so that I might see her. (I am extremely frank with my therapist about my sexual predilections; he makes no comment one way or the other.) He asks me a stream of questions which, since they do not deal with technological data, I am able to ignore. They bypass the program. After a time, these questions cease and his pad comes out.

  Now his face shifts, his eyes become alight with desire. He pursues my particular specialty; geological formations. As always, I want to stand mute but I cannot. The program is too effective, even this long after its installation. Something within sighs and opens like the pits of the females, and I begin an enormous amount of intricate documentation on one abstruse point of my held. The therapist is not satisfied. He requestions me on many details, and then asks that certain points be repeated verbatim for clarity. Doubtless this is a check upon my veracity and thoroughness.

  It is strange that after two years and five months they still do not trust us. But then, as the therapist has said, they are a suspicious race and our presence in the enclosure itself indicates how painful it is to incur a serious relationship with them.

  So I answer the therapist fully and completely, holding back nothing. There is no way that I can retain information when it is requested. When the session finally ends, six hours later, I am exhausted, too tired even to seek a female, and my. sleep continues through most of the next morning. Since we have been confined to the enclosure, most of us sleep excessively and I suspect that our lives are arranged in this way to capitalize on what they can only regard as a weakness.

  Aside from the liaisons with the females, which are very fragmentary at best, I have little to do with the two hundred and forty-seven others who were my crewmates and who now live with me in the enclosure. Meetings and socialization on some level are frequent but I remain aloof. I desire as little contact with them as possible.

  This was not always the case. When we left our system we were bound into a tight society built upon hierarchical levels which would keep us closely knit for the duration of the mission. Within that hierarchy I had contact with many of my companions, always through assigned roles. That society broke down completely, however, when we were brought to the enclosure and it has never reconstituted itself. I do not think that it was meant to remain under such conditions.

  The fact is that we have—all of us now—become sullen with one another and somehow withdrawn. Fornication with the females, while necessary to my limited sense of well-being, can hardly be thought of as a true system of relationships and I have abandoned all contact with those who were my immediate superiors or inferiors in the society of the voyage. As that hierarchy was conceived, of course, one’s closest connections extended only a few levels above and below and all two hundred and forty-eight of us were strictly ranked for many reasons, the least of them compatibility.

  (I was, for what this matters, one hundred and fifty-eighth. This does not mean that there were one hundred and fifty-seven aboard more worthy or intelligent than I, but on the other hand there were ninety who were definitely less so. Those who established the hierarchy certainly had their reasons.)

  Life in the enclosure has brought an end to this culture without the establishment of a substitute, a common manifestation of culture lag.

  Initially it was strange to see many of those ranked far above me reacting to these demeaning circumstances with even less dignity than I, as well as to observe the pitiful attempts they made to hold onto the prerogatives of their ranking in a circumstance which eliminated differentiation among us. Those at the bottom of the hierarchy, on the other hand, seemed to do much better. This might have been expected. The feeling of strangeness passed when I came to understand that the society of the ship was as arbitrary and imposed as what had been done to us in the enclosure; and the enclosure, in a way, was a fairer circumstance because it was not our fault. What we had done to ourselves on our own devices was almost as unspeakable as the worst which the aliens had done to us.

  Soon after I had this insight, I began to separate myself from my shipmates and wrap myself in layers of isolation.

  Because of this I quickly achieved a reputation for insolence among my peers but, oddly, the reputation brought with it a measure of respect and I found that I was able to take my pleasure easily with females at all levels of the old hierarchy. We were back in the natural state, all of the restraints were gone and, above or below, I could make them come to me simply by stating demands in my new way and refusing to be denied. The surpassing ease with which I was able to copulate with females of all types and levels only taught me something which I should have known a long time ago anyway: the females, even more than we, need an interlocking series of power relationships, need to have their roles defined, and
are made easily submissive by a male who will enable them to sense his power. My therapist hints that this characteristic of females exists in his culture as well but I have had no chance to verify this.

  I am not trying to say that I am truly happy here, or that this variety of sexual entanglements has given me real pleasure. It has not. I am not happy here. I am merely passing the time. Like all of us I want desperately to be free of the enclosure, free of this accursed world and back on the ship again, heading toward our system and liberty. My therapist assures me that the ship has been perfectly preserved, in working condition, on a large plain not four hundred miles from here and that in accordance with our technological instruction and revelation it has been maintained perfectly. I want to be on it. It is fully operative and could leave at any time. I want to be on it. Their politicians have not yet decided, however, whether we will be released from the enclosure or, if released, whether we may take the ship. I want to be on the ship, no matter how superficially adjusted I may seem. I can only hope that the ship has not long since been destroyed or, worse yet, tenanted by some two hundred and forty-eight natives of this planet, who will return to our system with malevolent intent and the technological means to destroy our civilization. I do not think that this is so; my therapist tells me that out psychological and sociological revelations have for the first time brought his race to their senses. But who knows? How can one be sure? What certainties exist?

  It might be quite sensible, from their point of view, to try to locate our system and destroy us. We have taught them so much. We have given them the means. And they know now how vulnerable we are.

  All memory of our star of origin was blocked from us as the last step before we embarked. Personal memories as well were eviscerated through the clever implementation of hypno-techniques which I do not understand. Although seemingly cruel—we were, after all, deprived of a past—this process was done in our interest so that we would not, willingly or unwillingly, divulge our point of origin to aliens who might be advanced enough to destroy us or brutal enough to commandeer a crew and return with explosives to our own base.