Galaxies Read online

  The reader, in any case, need not be concerned by this. The writer’s silence is not immediate but will have to do only with the longer range; if the writer is to become silent, he will not do it in the midst of this novel which deserves a smashing climax and which will receive it. There is time, there is time: there is the rest of the writer’s life, after all, in which to cultivate silence, and for the time being his obligations are clear: to follow smoothly if discursively through all of the issues raised here to an ending which will not deprive the reader of his expectation that there is some order and that the reeds of this narrative will not blow their way into silence, discord and white noise to conclude the wry and tentative harmonies suggested.

  XXXVII

  Interwoven as well will be the more human story of Lena’s containment and suffering. She will, thus, be a “warm” and “sympathetic” character most identifiable to the reader so that he will be able to participate more fully in the abstract sections of the story. She will lead him there.

  If Lena failed to come alive, if the reader could not feel sympathy for her plight and respond in a way which will enable him to find the outcome personally involving, this would be a cold, distant performance, brilliance in the way that the technically efficient can be, of course, but devoid of those qualities of pain which are worth more than technical briskness. “Pain” or “warmth” are by certain standards reserved to the catalog of merely commercial or sentimental literature, but if these qualities are not incorporated here, this novel will lose intrinsic value.

  So characteriological touches for Lena will not be skimped. Consider her as she comes struggling to individuation: the reader should see her as an admirable person for all her faults, really remarkably courageous in the face of all her disasters, her seventy thousand years, her one thousand lives. Her own character emerges from all of them; her determination to seek and remain herself is touching. Throughout all of it she has held on to her own character and her goal and this is not unremarkable.

  This accretion of sympathy can be managed through a bag of fictional techniques, some of them conventional, some more ambitious. Individuation through defining idiosyncrasy, for instance: tricks of speech, habits, mannerisms and so on. The kind of thing which could have been applied to the scene with the cyborgs if the writer had not had such an excess of integrity. Stammer or lisp, hitch in pace, a sudden characteristic stumble or aversion to odors as she limps across the cabin to check the portholes. Rhetorical devices peculiar to her, as in the instances of sex with John where her rhetoric becomes florid. Little physical signs, a large bosom or cast in the eye if nothing of greater originality occurs. Keep those devices modest and visible, however; science fiction is bizarre enough without increasing the distance of characters from the reader.

  Any competent writer knows how to do this. So do the incompetent ones, sometimes better, which blurs distinctions further. But competent or incompetent, we all pretty much know what to do: set off one character against all the others in a scene by something visible, or at any rate easily grasped, so that the reader will be able to make mental pictures, hear distinct sounds. Feel that the character is a recognizable human being just as himself. The reader, that only true participant, that only character in a novel the reader himself must invent with only the code of language to help him on his way, needs all of the suggestions he can get Individuation is not to be mocked nor is this to be scorned. Without it fiction is merely shadow play, disembodied ideas struggling through the haze, some glimpse of ruined forms gasping their way through the wasteland which is already of our time and which the reader has pursued fiction to avoid.

  (Even with the cunning use of these devices, it is a miracle that fiction exists at all. Consider the code, consider the network, the levels of abstraction. Even a bad writer, an uneasy reader, is a kind of miracle. In writing or reading alike, one must completely reconstruct that which does not exist at all without participation.)

  Still, science fiction, that glittering literature of ideas or at least pseudo ideas, poses particular problems for all of us. In common, everyday fiction, the kind which our academic or Redbook writers alike write so bravely, we could give Lena her affecting stutter, dimple on the left breast, tremor in the right cheekbone, love of old houses, hatred of old houses, hatred of dimples, love of stutter, fear of noise, acceptance of flight, twitch of finger under stress and go no further. From these encoded signals, all would be able to infer their own state of mind. But in this difficult and highly abstract novel, because of the abstract nature of the theme, the way that the theme floods the very characterization and, in fact, can be said to overtake it, it will be necessary to do more than slash clumsy ribbons of paint at the archetypes on the shelf. One will have to find originalities of idiosyncrasy which in their suggestivity will approximate the black hole itself. If the situation, that is to say, is really crazy, then Lena will have to be really crazy, too, in order to convey it. Otherwise all will come off as grotesquerie instead of as a sharpened, careful assault upon the conditions which squeeze life into their shape rather than submitting to it. This will not be easy. It will tax the modest powers of invention available to me.

  “I’m crazy,” Lena might say staring through her hands, observing that fine translucence through which she can see the network of the ship itself, fine streaks of wire running through the metal like cobwebs, “I’m crazy; I would have to be crazy to remain here, even to be alive through all of this.” The engines still maintaining the support systems give a confirmatory throb. “I’ve got to be mad,” she says; “how else could this be?” She stumbles away, feeling her body extended to infinite dimensions, feeling herself as an extension that can overtake any part of the ship. Bigger than the black galaxy itself, she sends her persona to invade all of Skipstone, plants a betraying, informative kiss upon the dead in the hold. “Take that,” she says, “take that if you think you’re out of it. You fall deeper and deeper as do I; life and death have no meaning here. Do you see where all your dreams have gotten you, where your mad wills and inheritances have taken? You wanted to live again, and so you are, and, therefore, if I were you, I would choose death, but it’s too late, too late for any of that now. You’ll just have to take it as it is and make the best of it. You’re crazy, too,” she might point out to the dead; “all of us are here, otherwise we could not possibly survive this.”

  A legitimate technique, this, turning the substance of the novel against what has seemed its first tension. Lena is not trying to remain sane but to be mad as efficaciously as possible, and the ironies here are workable. But enough, enough of that: the problems of the writer are not those of the reader. Even as the writer struggles to invent a novel, he must somehow entertain and induce that efficient briskness which is the key to diversion, particularly in so-called escape literature. The reader is not concerned with the author’s fatigue, his almost constant series of complaints, his persistent horror of the act of writing, his domestic problems, car problems, financial problems, gray obsessions, light obsessions, slashes and dashes and smashes of fatigue which in the midst of his best efforts suddenly make him feel trivial and old. No, none of these factors can interest the reader whose attention through these complaints has already started to break up like patches of ice under sun. Soon it will vanish into little clots of damp, drying to bone. Why this book? the reader asks himself, now well into the fourth hour of his continental flight, staring through little clouds, a child’s vision of heaven, toward a wing, wondering exactly when fire will burst from that wing and he will see his death sketched out against the sky, turning away from the window to look past sleeping businessmen and a fat woman knitting furious epitaphs between her hands, looking for a stewardess—more asepsis—with whom he can establish some contact. Why did I buy this one? the earnest and suffering reader wonders; why didn’t I pick something to the left and right? Staggers of the Slime Planet had a cover almost as attractive. Do I really want or need this? the reader thinks, shaking his head and mov
ing his agonized shoulder blades several inches to and fro in a rabbit’s gesture, trying to work out the stiffness and itching from the core of his back. Why did I take this flight? Couldn’t I have taken one at night? Do I really have to see this person, these people in Los Angeles? Couldn’t it have been let go for another six months? What is there to gain at this moment from reconciliation and why didn’t I order the second complimentary Gibson, when several days ago the stewardess asked me if I would like it?

  No, this will get me nowhere, the reader thinks; I am descending into futility; I must be positive-minded and forward-looking. Galaxies is confusing, but here are elements of tension, there are certain mind-broadening concepts, over here in the corner is the promise of a flaming and dramatic resolution; if I can hold on through all of this, I have enough faith in the author to know that I will not be cheated.

  Still, he thinks, turning petulant and self-pitying the way that most of us do and no harm in it, self-pity being virtually the only emotion with which a sane person can confront life, still it is not fair. Here is a novel which seems to lurch in and out of its textual material like a drunk trying to find a line on the sidewalk or a jockey looking for an opening along the rail; it cannot possibly transport me from the more ominous and terrifying perspectives to be gained from looking at the wing tip. Where are all those college girls and divorcees? Where are those women with whom one is supposed to be able to establish contact during long flights or bus trips? Surely this cannot be my destiny entire. There has got to be more to this than there seems to be.

  The writer has sympathy. Indeed, I can understand the problem here, can only assure in return that none of this is self-indulgent, that Galaxies tracks its purposes as relentlessly as the breathing of the reader’s seatmates tracks and holds the beat of the jets in the nostrils. Bear with me and find not only resolution, but also excitement and adventure to exceed even what has gone heretofore. Science fiction is an adventurous format. Science fiction is a medium of wonder.

  Lena will be individuated and thus become far more accessible. Her individuation will be accomplished in sections which will be interwoven with the more objective if surreal descriptions of the properties of the black galaxy. Although this meshing of personality and astrophysics will be dazzling and even verge upon tour de force, it will, in truth, be the easiest technical problem of the novel to solve. Two skills which fall well within my range—flat, deadpan, descriptive prose and highly charged sexual imagery—will effortlessly complement one another, giving an impression of more depth than may even be present. Technique can often supplant reason. Sometimes it may become meaning itself.

  XXXVIII

  But let it be made clear again; this is not a novel but merely a set of notes for one. The novel itself remains unutterably beyond our time and hence outside of the devices of fiction. It moves beyond any considerations of normal space, can be glimpsed only in those empty little flickers of light which reveal the galaxies much as Lena cannot see the neutron star but only sense its effects, much as Lena can only infer the gravity, not gauge it. These notes are surely as close to the narrative as anyone of this time can get, because the novel cannot be written for almost two thousand years … but let us not become megalomaniacal in the pursuit of theme. These are merely notes. They are not definitive. The very language of the techniques necessary to write it will not be ours for two millennia.

  Still, one does the best that one can under the situation presented. Little more can be asked of a writer. There will be long descriptive sections idiosyncratizing Lena and making her visible to the reader. She will talk to him by talking to herself; she will laugh, cry, mourn, express wonder at the dimensions of her situation, know moments of terror. She may (but then again she may not; we will see, it will be my decision) engage in streams of consciousness triggering flashbacks which will lend characterizational veracity. We will know more than what is necessary in order to accept her reality.

  As these sections end, they will draw upon the conclusion that Lena has made her decision to leave the black galaxy by the dangerous means which are her only option. She will try to convert to FTL drive without acceleration. This decision has squirmed through her preconscious (not the author’s; he has no opinion on the subject) and now is in the front of that part of her brain responsible for making rational evaluation. She does not know where she will emerge or when, just as the comforters have warned her, but she does know that this must be the way in which Skipstone’s tragedy and her own must end.

  She prepares to set the controls for the plunge, her breath shallow and moist within her but laid against the rasp and controlled rhythm of her purpose. She knows that what she is doing is best for all of them here.

  But before she can do it, she must tell them. She must tell those who will be most affected by this. She must make sure that they understand the situation and share her approach, that they accept the inevitability as she has.

  She locks the controls, musing, and sets off to make confrontation with the dead.

  XXXIX

  For in a sense the dead have controlled everything; they are not the mere cargo but the creation of the voyage. If it were not for their presence, their generosity, their estates, their greed and terror, the FTL experiments would not have been at all financially feasible; if it were not for the lives transmuted now by the effects of the black galaxy to impinge upon Lena’s consciousness, she might not be sentient at all. She might have died in the subjective time imposed by the gravity. It is only the cargo, then, that has kept her shielded against what would have otherwise been utter fragmentation; by using first one personality and then the next, the thousand, as interposition against the forces of the fall, she would have disintegrated. She knows this and knows that there has been a conscious element of use.

  But she knows something else as well which is even more significant: the FTL experiments, Lena has come to understand (and with her the writer himself), the FTL experiments have always been shaped by the dead; in truth they fed upon the quality of death, and the Bureau, consciously or not, has shaped itself utterly around that cargo. There must have been some irony in that position, an irony that was built deeply into the projects, and that irony would be this: what was supposedly life-enforcing and expanding was sustained only by the presence of death. From the very beginning the experiments, rather than using the dead, have been their celebration. They have exalted it That was what was really going on here from the start.

  In the black galaxy, life and death have intermingled. But this is merely an extension, a concrete physical manifestation of what has been true from the beginning. Without the dead there is no life. Life has embraced the dead. All together they fall, and the gravitation is their mortality, plunging them relentlessly toward the sun that will fold them through to another way of life.

  XL

  Leaning over the console, then, she permits one of the dead to come forth and address her, no expectation in her bearing, merely the willingness to allow, finally, the dead to overtake her. What she does is without thought or even conscious intention, merely the extension of necessity.

  She need make no formal gesture to summon the dead. They have been battering on her skull, screaming for seventy thousand years, and now, with a single, mental whisk, she has merely permitted all of those partitions to slide. Stricken and yet curiously unmoved, restless and yet strangely at peace (because she is doing she knows what she always should have done), Lena holds position while the-dead stalks through all the corridors of her being, first prodding, then poking, inspecting and massaging areas of consciousness, then, this preliminary done, having satisfied itself with the fact that she is a proper arena, the dead begins to speak with her. She lets this happen because, from having no time at all, she has turned to all the time necessary, and however long it takes to talk with the dead, she will control the chronology. When it is time to take Skipstone out, she will do so. She feels no urgency whatsoever. Doubt has been resolved. There is a kind of pitiless, bloo
dless joy to blending finally with what she has always known must happen.

  “Just listen here,” the dead says.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Let me explain everything to you.”

  “No one can explain everything”

  “With the dead all is known.”

  “All right,” she says then, “all right.”

  “You believe that I can tell you everything or you would not have summoned me.”

  “That is not true,” she says, “that is true.”

  Perhaps one should characterize this dead before moving further, individuate him in some way. It is not necessary to do this in order to make the full force of the dialogue apparent, but the dead, no less than the living, are entitled to characterization, and it is not intended here to slight him.

  He was born—this is a male—in 3361, died in 3401, five hundred and one years ago. Cancer of the bone killed him at the age of forty. For some twenty-five generations, now, this dead has been embalmed, and yet despite all that has happened since, he submitted himself to the stasis of the machinery; despite all that has happened in the time intervening, not very much has happened at all. This is not a fluid society. Very few social and cultural changes can be said to have occurred in a millennium.

  So certainly, brought to consciousness with the rest of the cargo when Skipstone hit the field, he has had ample time to pick up on any details which he might have missed through the period of stasis, and he has also been able to make certain linguistic adjustments, semantic reassessments which enable him to communicate with Lena spontaneously and in the vernacular of her day. His name, of course, does not matter; his name is dead, his characterization is formed by his condition. All, the memorial services remind us, all are the same in death: the wise man, the fool, the rich man in the palace and the poor man in his hovel, all of them, fallen asleep like a child over his toys, have let go of their earthly possessions and are now the same. But for all of that, for all the leveling of death, it is a hard and unique characterization which would make this dead significantly different from any of the others. The personality will always reach for itself. Under any conditions short of crisis, we will strive for difference; the brutalizing effects of tyranny are that these effects permit the differences to be shut off … a secret known to tyrants.