I Sing the Body Electric (38 page)

And now the Spirit shook itself with an immense agony not unlike
his own, like a mirror image of his own concussion, gaped wide its mouth, shut up its own eyes, and mourned:

“Oh, please, let me go.”

At this the young Priest opened his eyes wider and gasped. He thought: But you're free. No one keeps you here!

And in that instant: “Yes!” cried the Vision. “
You
keep me! Please! Avert your gaze! The more you look the more I become
this!
I am
not
what I seem!”

But, thought the Priest, I did not speak! My lips did not move! How does this Ghost know my mind?

“I know all you think,” said the Vision, trembling, pale, pulling back in baptistery gloom. “Every sentence, every word. I did not mean to come. I ventured into town. Suddenly I was many things to many people. I ran. They followed. I escaped here. The door was open. I entered. And then and then—oh, and then was trapped.”

No, thought the Priest.

“Yes,” mourned the Ghost. “By you.”

Slowly now, groaning under an even more terrible weight of revelation, the Priest grasped the edge of the font and pulled himself, swaying, to his feet. At last he dared force the question out:

“You are not … what you seem?”

“I am not,” said the other. “Forgive me.”

I, thought the Priest, shall go mad.

“Do not,” said the Ghost, “or I shall go down to madness with you.”

“I can't give you up, oh, dear God, now that you're here, after all these years, all my dreams, don't you see, it's asking too
much
. Two thousand years, a whole race of people have waited for your return! And I, I am the one who meets you, sees you—”

“You meet only your own dream. You see only your own need. Behind all this—” the figure touched its own robes and breast, “I am another thing.”

“What must I
do!
” the Priest burst out, looking now at the heavens, now at the Ghost which shuddered at his cry. “
What?
”

“Avert your gaze. In that moment I will be out the door and gone.”

“Just—just like that?”

“Please,” said the Man.

The Priest drew a series of breaths, shivering.

“Oh, if this moment could last for just an hour.”

“Would you kill me?”

“No!”

“If you keep me, force me into this shape some little while longer, my death will be on your hands.”

The Priest bit his knuckles, and felt a convulsion of sorrow rack his bones.

“You—you are a Martian, then?”

“No more. No less.”

“And I have done this to you with my thoughts?”

“You did not mean. When you came downstairs, your old dream seized and made me over. My palms still bleed from the wounds you gave out of your secret mind.”

The Priest shook his head, dazed.

“Just a moment more … wait…”

He gazed steadily, hungrily, at the darkness where the Ghost stood out of the light. That face was beautiful. And, oh, those hands were loving and beyond all description.

The Priest nodded, a sadness in him now as if he had within the hour come back from the true Calvary. And the hour was gone. And the coals strewn dying on the sand near Galilee.

“If—if I let you go—”

“You must, oh you must!”

“If I let you go, will you promise—”

“What?”

“Will you promise to come back?”

“Come back?” cried the figure in the darkness.

“Once a year, that's all I ask, come back once a year, here to this place, this font, at the same time of night—”

“Come back…?”

“Promise! Oh, I must know this moment again. You don't know how important it is! Promise, or I won't let you go!”

“I—”

“Say it! Swear it!”

“I promise,” said the pale Ghost in the dark. “I swear.”

“Thank you, oh thanks.”

“On what day a year from now must I return?”

The tears had begun to roll down the young Priest's face now. He could hardly remember what he wanted to say and when he said it he could hardly hear:

“Easter, oh, God, yes, Easter, a year from now!”

“Please, don't weep,” said the figure. “I will come. Easter, you say? I know your calendar. Yes. Now—” The pale wounded hand moved in the air, softly pleading. “May I go?”

The Priest ground his teeth to keep the cries of woe from exploding forth. “Bless me, and go.”

“Like this?” said the voice.

And the hand came out to touch him ever so quietly.

“Quick!” cried the Priest, eyes shut, clenching his fists hard against his ribs to prevent his reaching out to seize. “Go before I keep you forever. Run. Run!”

The pale hand touched him a last time upon his brow. There was a soft run of naked feet.

A door opened upon stars; the door slammed.

There was a long moment when the echo of the slam made its way through the church, to every altar, into every alcove and up like a blind flight of some single bird seeking and finding release in the apse. The church stopped trembling at last, and the Priest laid his hands on himself as if to tell himself how to behave, how to breathe again; be still, be calm, stand tall....

Finally, he stumbled to the door and held to it, wanting to throw it wide, look out at the road which must be empty now, with perhaps a figure in white, far fleeing. He did not open the door.

He went about the church, glad for things to do, finishing out the ritual of locking up. It was a long way around to all the doors. It was a long way to next Easter.

He paused at the font and saw the clear water with no trace of red. He dipped his hand and cooled his brow and temples and cheeks and eyelids.

Then he went slowly up the aisle and laid himself out before the altar and let himself burst forth and really weep. He heard the sound of his sadness go up and come back in agonies from the tower where the bell hung silent.

And he wept for many reasons.

For himself.

For the Man who had been here a moment ago.

For the long time until the rock was rolled back and the tomb found empty again.

Until Simon-Called-Peter once more saw the Ghost upon the Martian shore, and himself Simon-Peter.

And most of all he wept because, oh, because, because … never in his life could he speak of this night to anyone....

“C
harlie! Where you going?”

Members of the rocket crew, passing, called.

Charles Willis did not answer.

He took the vacuum tube down through the friendly humming bowels of the spaceship. He fell, thinking: This is the grand hour.

“Chuck! Where traveling?” someone called.

To meet someone dead but alive, cold but warm, forever untouchable but reaching out somehow to touch.

“Idiot! Fool!”

The voice echoed. He smiled.

Then he saw Clive, his best friend, drifting up in the opposite chute. He averted his gaze, but Clive sang out through his seashell ear-pack radio:

“I want to see you!”

“Later!” Willis said.

“I
know
where you're going. Stupid!”

And Clive was gone up away while Willis fell softly down, his hands trembling.

His boots touched surface. On the instant he suffered renewed delight.

He walked down through the hidden machineries of the rocket. Lord, he thought, crazy. Here we are one hundred days gone away from the Earth in Space, and, this very hour, most of the crew, in fever, dialing their aphrodisiac animatronic devices that touched and hummed to them in their shut clamshell beds. While, what do
I
do? he thought.
This
.

He moved to peer into a small storage pit.

There, in an eternal dusk, sat the old man.

“Sir,” he said, and waited.

“Shaw,” he whispered. “Oh. Mr. George Bernard Shaw.”

The old man's eyes sprang wide as if he had swallowed an Idea.

He seized his bony knees and gave a sharp cry of laughter.

“By God, I
do
accept it
all!
”

“Accept
what
, Mr. Shaw?”

Mr. Shaw flashed his bright blue gaze upon Charles Willis.

“The Universe!
It
thinks, therefore I
am!
So I had
best
accept, eh? Sit.”

Willis sat in the shadowed areaway, clasping his knees and his own warm delight with being here again.

“Shall I read your mind, young Willis, and tell you what you've been up to since last we conversed?”

“
Can
you read minds, Mr. Shaw?”

“No, thank God. Wouldn't it be awful if I were not only the cuneiform-tablet robot of George Bernard Shaw, but could also scan your head-bumps and spell your dreams? Unbearable.”

“You already
are
, Mr. Shaw.”

“
Touché!
Well, now.” The old man raked his reddish beard with his thin fingers, then poked Willis gently in the ribs. “How is it you are the only one aboard this starship who ever visits me?”

“Well, sir, you see—”

The young man's cheeks burnt themselves to full blossom.

“Ah, yes, I do see,” said Shaw. “Up through the honeycomb of the ship, all the happy male bees in their hives with their syrupy wind-up soft-singing nimble-nibbling toys, their bright female puppets.”

“Mostly
dumb
.”

“Ah, well. It was not always thus. On my last trip the Captain wished to play Scrabble using only names of characters, concepts and ideas from my plays. Now, strange boy, why do
you
squat here with this hideous old ego? Have you no need for that soft and gentle company abovestairs?”

“It's a long journey, Mr. Shaw, two years out beyond Pluto and back. Plenty of time for abovestairs company. Never enough for this. I have the dreams of a goat but the genetics of a saint.”

“Well said!” The old man sprang lightly to his feet and paced about, pointing his beard now toward Alpha Centauri, now toward the nebula in Orion.

“How runs our menu today, Willis? Shall I preface Saint Joan for your? Or…?”

“Chuck…?”

Willis's head jerked. His seashell radio whispered in his ear. “Willis! Clive calling. You're late for dinner. I know where you are. I'm coming down. Chuck—”

Willis thumped his ear. The voice cut off.

“Quick, Mr. Shaw! Can you—well—
run?
”

“Can Icarus fall from the sun? Jump! I shall pace you with these spindly cricket legs!”

They ran.

Taking the corkscrew staircase instead of the air-tube, they looked back from the top platform in time to see Clive's shadow dart into that tomb where Shaw had died but to wake again.

“Willis!” cried his voice.

“To hell with him,” said Willis.

Shaw beamed. “Hell? I know it well. Come. I'll show you around!”

Laughing, they jumped into the feather-tube and fell
up
.

This was the place of stars.

Which is to say the one place in all the ship where, if one wished, one could come and truly look at the Universe and the billion billion stars which poured across it and never stopped pouring, cream from the mad dairies of the gods. Delicious frights or outcrops, on the other hand, if you thought it so, from the sickness of Lord God Jehovah turned in his sleep, upset with Creation, and birthing dinosaur worlds spun about satanic suns.

“It's all in the thinking,” observed Mr. Shaw, sidling his eyes at his young consort.

“Mr. Shaw! You
can
read minds?”

“Poppycock. I merely read faces. Yours is clear glass. I glanced just now and saw Job afflicted, Moses and the Burning Bush. Come. Let us look at the Deeps and see what God has been up to in the ten billion years since He collided with Himself and procreated Vastness.”

They stood now, surveying the Universe, counting the stars to a billion and beyond.

“Oh,” moaned the young man, suddenly, and tears fell from his eyes. “How I wish I had been alive when you were alive, sir. How I wish I had
truly
known you.”

“
This
Shaw is best,” retorted the old man, “all of the mince-meat and none of the tin. The coattails are better than the man. Hang to them and survive.”

Space lay all about, as vast as God's first thought, as deep as His primal breathing.

They stood, one of them tall, one short, by the scanning window, with a fine view of the great Andromeda Nebula whenever they wished to focus it near with a touch of the button which made the Eye magnify and suck things close.

After a long monument of drinking stars, the young man let out his breath.

“Mr. Shaw…?
Say
it. You know what I like to hear.”

“Do I, my boy?” Mr. Shaw's eyes twinkled.

All of Space was around them, all of the Universe, all of the night of the celestial Being, all the stars and all the places between the stars, and the ship moving on its silent course, and the crew of the ship busy at work or games or touching their amorous toys, so these two were alone with their talk, these two stood viewing the Mystery and saying what must be said.

“Say it, Mr. Shaw.”

“Well, now…”

Mr. Shaw fixed his eyes on a star some twenty light-years away.

“What
are
we?” he asked. “Why, we are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts. Creation turns in its abyss. We have bothered it, dreaming ourselves to shapes. The void is filled with slumbers; ten billion on a billion on a billion bombardments of light and material that know not themselves, that sleep moving and move but finally to make an eye and waken on themselves. Among so much that is flight and ignorance, we are the blind force that gropes like Lazarus from a billion-light-year tomb. We summon ourselves. We say, O Lazarus Life Force, truly come ye forth. So the Universe, a motion of deaths, fumbles to reach across Time to feel its own flesh and know it to be ours. We touch both ways and find each other miraculous because we are One.”

Mr. Shaw turned to glance at his young friend.

“There you have it. Satisfied?”

“Oh, yes! I—”

The young man stopped.

Behind them, in the viewing-cabin door, stood Clive. Beyond him, they could hear music pulsing from the far cubicles where crewmen and their huge toys played at amorous games.

“Well,” said Clive, “what goes on—?”

“Here?” interjected Shaw, lightly. “Why, only the confounding of two energies making do with puzzlements. This contraption—” he touched his own breast, “speaks from computerized elations. That genetic conglomeration—” he nodded at his young friend, “responds with raw, beloved, and true emotions. The sum of us? Pandemonium spread on biscuits and devoured at high tea.”

Clive swiveled his gaze to Willis.

“Damn, you're nuts. At dinner you should have
heard
the laughter! You and this old man, and just talk! they said. Just talk, talk! Look, idiot, it's your stand-watch in ten minutes. Be there! God!”

And the door was empty. Clive was gone.

Silently, Willis and Mr. Shaw floated down the drop-tube to the storage pit beneath the vast machineries.

The old man sat once again on the floor.

“Mr. Shaw.” Willis shook his head, snorting softly. “Hell. Why is it you seem more alive to me than anyone I have ever known?”

“Why, my dear young friend,” replied the old man, gently, “what you warm your hands at are Ideas, eh? I am a walking monument of concepts, scrimshaws of thought, electric deliriums of philosophy and wonder. You love concepts. I am their receptacle. You love dreams in motion. I move. You love palaver and jabber. I am the consummate palaverer and jabberer. You and I, together, masticate Alpha Centauri and spit forth universal myths. We chew upon the tail of Halley's Comet and worry the Horsehead Nebula until it cries a monstrous Uncle and gives over to our creation. You love libraries. I am a library. Tickle my ribs and I vomit forth Melville's Whale, Spirit Spout and all. Tic my ear and I'll build Plato's Republic with my tongue for you to run and live in. You love Toys. I am a Toy, a fabulous plaything, a computerized—”

“—friend,” said Willis, quietly.

Mr. Shaw gave him a look less of fire than of hearth.

“Friend,” he said.

Willis turned to leave, then stopped to gaze back at that strange old figure propped against the dark storage wall.

“I—I'm afraid to go. I have this fear something may
happen
to you.”

“I shall survive,” replied Shaw tartly, “but only if you warn your Captain that a vast meteor shower approaches. He must shift course a few hundred thousand miles. Done?”

“Done.” But still Willis did not leave.

“Mr. Shaw,” he said, at last. “What … what do you
do
while the rest of us sleep?”

“Do? Why, bless you. I listen to my tuning fork. Then, I write symphonies between my ears.”

Willis was gone.

In the dark, alone, the old man bent his head. A soft hive of dark bees began to hum under his honey-sweet breath.

Four hours later, Willis, off watch, crept into his sleep-cubicle.

In half-light, the mouth was waiting for him.

Clive's mouth. It licked its lips and whispered:

“Everyone's talking. About you making an ass out of yourself visiting a two-hundred-year-old intellectual relic, you, you, you. Jesus, the psycho-med'll be out tomorrow to X-ray your stupid skull!”

“Better that than what you men do all night every night,” said Willis.

“What we do is us.”

“Then why not let me be
me?
”

“Because it's unnatural.” The tongue licked and darted. “We all
miss
you. Tonight we piled all the grand toys in the midst of the wild room and—”

“I don't want to hear it!”

“Well, then,” said the mouth, “I might just trot down and tell all this to your old gentleman friend—”

“Don't go
near
him!”

“I might.” The lips moved in the shadows. “You can't stand guard on him forever. Some night soon, when you're asleep, someone might—tamper with him, eh? Scramble his electronic eggs so he'll talk vaudeville instead of
Saint Joan?
Ha, yes. Think. Long journey. Crew's bored. Practical joke like that, worth a million to see you froth. Beware, Charlie. Best come play with us.”

Willis, eyes shut, let the blaze out of him.

“Whoever dares to touch Mr. Shaw, so help me God, I'll kill!”

He turned violently on his side, gnawing the back of his fist.

In the half-dark, he could sense Clive's mouth still moving.

“Kill? Well, well. Pity. Sweet dreams.”

An hour later, Willis gulped two pills and fell stunned into sleep.

In the middle of the night he dreamed that they were burning good Saint Joan at the stake and, in the midst of burning, the plain-potato maiden turned to an old man stoically wrapped around with ropes and vines. The old man's beard was fiery red even before the names reached it, and his bright blue eyes were fixed fiercely upon Eternity, ignoring the fire.

“Recant!” cried a voice. “Confess and recant! Recant!”

“There is nothing to confess, therefore no need for recantation,” said the old man quietly.

The flames leaped up his body like a mob of insane and burning mice.

“Mr. Shaw!” screamed Willis.

He sprang awake.

Mr. Shaw
.

The cabin was silent. Clive lay asleep.

On his face was a smile.

The smile made Willis pull back, with a cry. He dressed. He ran.

Like a leaf in autumn he fell down the air-tube, growing older and heavier with each long instant.

The storage pit where the old man “slept” was much more quiet than it had a right to be.

Willis bent. His hand trembled. At last, he touched the old man.

“Sir—?”

There was no motion. The beard did not bristle. Nor the eyes fire themselves to blue flames. Nor the mouth tremble with gentle blasphemies…