Ratner's Star (63 page)

“Don't talk like that,” Softly said.

“When does it happen?” Bolin said.

“He said later today,” Lown said.

“Whose time?” Softly said.

“Later today must mean later today his time, the radio's, wherever that was,” Lown said.

Mainwaring made a face.

“Obviously it won't be long. Whoever's time and wherever the broadcast originated, the eclipse will happen. That's all that matters, I would think and feel and suspect.”

Softly turned his head into the fattest of the silk pillows. The others left his quarters, filing out slowly, Terwilliger, Lown, Mainwaring, Bolin. Although his face was pressed into the pillow, Softly's eyes were open. Words in isolation or combination are meaningful; connect; reflect. Think clearly, he urged himself, turning his head and looking up into the dark vast space that composed most of the antrum. Some small rocks tumbled into the barrier. He heard his colleagues in dialogue. We must re-term, confirm, he thought. It will help us think clearly, help us prepare for the conditions that may accompany this noncognate celestial
anomaly. To know for certain when, what, where and how; this is necessary, looking straight up, hearing the generator shift to a more sonorous drone, reaching for his robe. Shit, piss and corruption. This was a phrase that went back several decades (in the special context of his own life) and when it entered his mind, Softly reacted as he did to every unbidden recollection of childhood and adolescence, with a sense of abomination so pronounced it caused clear physical discomfort, caused him to sweat, to tremble, this state of aversion intensified by the fact that in putting on his robe he had uncovered the bronze mirror Wu had left on his desk. Quickly he reached for a towel.

Softly walked over to Wu's cubicle now, seeing Lester leave the kitchen and head down the path to his own living unit, where he sat at the plastic desk and immediately began making simple lists of things, using paper and pencil. Bolin's customary satisfaction in crossing out each item on a given list as that particular errand or mental task was attended to did not begin to match the pleasure he now derived from listing things and crossing them out with no attempt at an intervening activity, mental or otherwise. He concentrated on the simplest of lists, writing down the days of the week and then crossing them out, one by one; the names of the objects in his immediate field of vision; the names of the probable objects behind him; the articles of clothing he wore; the months of the year; brands of cigarettes; makes of cars; his favorite flavors; world religions; state capitals; countries and their chief exports. Finally he began to list the integers. He wrote down the integers not by name but symbol, listing roughly a dozen, sometimes more, before going back to do the crossing out. The integers were immensely pleasing to list, much more so than any of the other categories, the sequences arrayed like numerical paternosters. Why hadn't he realized earlier that to list something and cross it out is far more satisfying than to list something, act upon that listing and only
then
to cross it out?

a. I'm tempted to say: give me a cookie.

Maurice Wu was packed and ready to leave. It seemed Maurice was always coming in or going out, always rolling up sleeping bags or latching backpacks. This time he was going out, of course, and not just to do some miscellaneous caving on the slopes. There were no chairs and so he didn't invite Softly to have a seat.

“Hear what's happening?”

“Yes,” Wu said.

“We have to confirm. I want to confirm. Frankly I can't stand not knowing for sure. Will there be an ‘eclipse' or not? Do we just stand around ‘talking' and wait for it to happen?”

“I was leaving.”

“Stay,” Softly said.

“There's my fieldwork. I want to get back to the field. I'm really eager to leave.”

“A while longer.”

“How do we confirm something like this? Something like this isn't subject to confirmation, is it?”

“Think.”

“Anyway, they said it's going to happen, didn't they?”

“Just a rumor at this point.”

“It was on the radio, wasn't it?”

“They said ‘probably happen,' ‘will probably take place.' ”

“What we need is something completely out of the ordinary.”

“Think, ‘Maury.' ”

“Didn't I hear something recently about some woman they brought in who's supposed to be able to perceive things beyond the range of the immediate present?”

“No good,” Softly said.

“She's just some woman from the slums somewhere who's supposedly got this unexplained insight into the future. Didn't I hear she's in one of the complexes? Being pored over by experts in this and that discipline. Being wired, prodded and so forth. Something completely out of left field. That's what we need.”

“Nammu zendo baba.”

“Granted, it's a desperate measure.”

“I want to keep it scientific. No seers, diviners, soothsayers or clairvoyants. This is a scientific project.”

“I'm trying to think of her name. I've been hearing about this woman. An interesting case apparently. She has fits apparently or goes into trances or spells. Then she does her stuff. I remember thinking her name sounds like a Greek-American soccer team. Do the field telephones still work? I can call upstairs and find out what's what.”

“It contradicts everything I've always believed.”

“Bend a little,” Wu said.

“I'm not enthused about this.”

“Better than nothing.”

“In fact I hate the idea.”

“Skia Mantikos.”

“What's that?”

“Her name,” Wu said. “It means ‘the shadow prophet.' ”

Lester Bolin stood in a room without furniture and looked directly into the “head” of his metallic Logicon. Edna Lown in kimono and desert boots was slumped over her desk. In his hand, Lester's, was a device containing an automatic switch that operated on photoelectric command. Wu coming out of his own cubicle and heading toward the field telephones next to the first-aid unit saw Billy come out of the first-aid unit, his left thumb encircled by a fresh bandage. Softly back in bed, Mainwaring making sure his documents were packed, his file cabinet emptied out, his umbrella at the ready. The density of time enveloped everything.

“So what's with the finger?”

“Cut it when I opened my latest piece of junk mail.”

“Called a paper cut,” Wu said.

“Except I noticed at the last second the mail wasn't supposed to be for me. Addressed to R. H. Softly. So I dropped it in there before I fixed my cut.”

“Did you see the gift I brought him from the bat cave?”

“No.”

“An ancient Chinese mirror.”

“What's it worth?”

“Priceless.”

“That much?”

“At the very least.”

“You made a big mistake,” the boy said.

“Why?”

“Better not let him see it, that's all I'm saying.”

“Why not?”

“He hates mirrors. He never goes anywhere near them. You better go get it before he gets back.”

“He's back,” Wu said.

“It's probably covered up. That's why I didn't see it. He covers them up. That's what he always does.”

“Why?”

“You want to ask him?”

“I guess not.”

“Where you going anyway?”

“Make a phone call.”

“What, Chinese food?”

“Funny,” Wu said.

“Ordering out?”

“It's this person I want to get in touch with. A desperate measure, I grant you. But she may be able to tell us what's going to happen.”

Edna Lown in kimono and desert boots was slumped over her desk, thinking. Bolin stood in a nearly bare room in a storage and maintenance area next to the upper part of the elevator shaft, looking at the squat object that itself stood among scrap metal, sawdust, lengths of wire. Wu cranking a field telephone, Mainwaring testing the effectiveness of his black umbrella. In his hand, Lester's, was a device that emitted an immediate click whenever he pressed his thumb on a button. He took a coin out of his breast pocket. He didn't know what to expect. In the unlikely event that he had assembled the control system with absolute precision (unlikely because this was the first such venture he'd attempted and because it was all so homemade), the machine would be capable of producing combinations of sounds that coincided with the ideographic units he and Edna had devised as written language. Mainwaring changing clothes, Softly in his bed scanning the latest mail.

Softly stopped reading here, thinking I am old, I will die, no one cares, her upper body slumped forward on the desk and what an implausible object it is, she thought, this material structure of mine, each of its lower extremities encased in a sodden boot, the rest of it bleakly scaled in this woebegone kimono, the photoelectric command at the end of Bolin's hand, thinking I am old, a thick-lipped gray-haired plodding woman, head resting on her arms, eyes closed, pack of cigarettes at one elbow, glasses with dark frames and round lenses at the other, Wu's middle ear conveying vibrations inward, sounds, auditory signals, the implausibility of my parts, she thought, never before so wretchedly apparent, everything pointing in a different direction and Softly thumb-sucking in bed, her momentary depression, if that's what it was, based, she believed, on the fact that she had come to the end of her “nonspecific notes,” the jottings she'd been adding to for many years, the closed door of her professional life, realizing (a) that the notes indeed were finished (although she could not have said how she knew this so conclusively) and (b) that these fairly random observations were in fact the ever-circulating substance of her life's work. These investigations, these exercises in connective thought, these secret odds and ends comprised the essence of her scientific intent more than Logicon ever would. A witness to my own adventure. It was as though she had mistaken another's life for her own. Why, suddenly, did the major undertaking of her career, this neo-logistic song of the universe, seem less important than her notes, which, she well knew, were never meant to be more than probes, a series of little scribbles that might fill the off-hours. It was crazy, wasn't it? In her depression and fatigue
(thinking I will die) she knew only that the notes explained her life,
were
that life, devices of the punchy brain inside her. It was a mistake really, what she'd always taken her life to be. That was someone else's life.
This
was her, Edna, belated rectifier of mistakes. To barely know the person not known to those who know me. To be in this sense a witness to my own adventure. Whose body have I been wearing all these years? Is it one body for many people or exactly the reverse? What gross colonic events, may I ask, are taking place in the area of my sigmoid flexure, Softly thought, stressing to himself the importance of such inquiries, Mainwaring pausing here to breathe the aged and tannic fragrance of his suitcase, Edna's eyes opening on pages of notation, thinking I am old, I will die, no one cares. Bolin inserted the coin in Logicon's “navel.” In his pocket, Lester's, was a piece of paper that contained: arrays of symbols; the meaning (in English, more or less) of each array; the corresponding phonetic speech units (Logicon) that the squat object would emit—that is, if Lester had assembled the machine correctly. For example, the array “/:n
K
” corresponded to the statement “the function letter
f
contains
n
number of
f
-less transforms” and both of these corresponded to the sound “fu ling ho,” as Lester had worded it on paper. He stood in a storage and maintenance area looking directly into the partially exposed upper portion of his primitive android control system, which itself stood among coiled wires, sawdust, fragments of scrap metal. Lester depressed a button on the device in his hand. There was an immediate click. This wasn't as interesting, he realized with surprise, as making lists of things and then crossing the things out, one by one. As he waited to learn whether or not Logicon had an innate resistance to being spoken, something else occurred to him. If we are mohole-intense, it doesn't really matter, does it?

“Are we all here?” Softly said from his bed. “Where's Walter that son of a bitch Mainwaring with his ever-popular sylphing compounds?”

In time they assembled along the walls of Softly's quarters. Edna with a cigarette drooping from the corner of her mouth. Billy trying not to look so eager to be entertained. Lester cradling his short-wave radio. Mainwaring clean-shaven and subdued. Softly himself.

In walked Maurice Wu, halting just a yard inside the cubicle and then stepping aside, with faintly absurd politeness, as the woman appeared in the entranceway. On Maury's face was a sense of that draining tension that ghosts over the eyes and stretches the bravest smile to idiotic limits. For a moment he seemed to pose formally, as though for picture-taking. Then nodded and began.

“She's been apprised of the situation. She knows what we want to know. They have her on what they call a maximum output cycle. She's been up and at it for exactly twenty-three hours. Productive stress, they call it. Okay. What happens next is anybody's guess. She's apparently got this routine she goes into. I saw some of the preparations myself. Let's hope that's the worst of it. I guess I stop talking now and join the rest of you.”