Shikasta (30 page)

After discussion with Agent 20, we arranged matters so that one of his progeny was inspired to turn to him for help. He has taken her in and become responsible for her. Others of his offspring, hearing of it, appealed to him for refuge. At this time when children often flee their parents as if to remain in contact with them is to perpetuate in themselves all the vices of Shikasta, it is common for adolescents to leave home and seek surrogate parents: in this case, he is the surrogate parent, for he had not seen any of them for years. This man found that his home was crammed full of children and adolescents and young adults in various difficulties, and moved to a large house in the country. His attitude towards ‘ties', ‘duties', ‘conventions', ‘false allegiances', ‘hypocrisies' being well known, he has become quite an exemplar. Much more than an ordinary conventional man, whose children will have left home by the time he is in his fifth decade, he is burdened with postdated responsibilities. A former mistress,
becoming ill, has been taken in. Another, in breakdown, followed. A husband of a former wife, falling into financial difficulties, is being assisted by him. This man is now responsible in one way or another for some twenty people, and has been cured of his stagnant and unwholesome condition. For one thing, his critical sense is now usefully at work in the diagnosis of his charges' ills and needs. As he carries such a heavy burden, I have arranged that Agent 20 keep a check on him, with powers to intervene if necessary.

1 (13). This man, after a hard struggle in childhood and youth against poverty and lack of education, became a journalist. For many years he was a dubious figure in the eyes of the authorities, for he was one of those – sharing a critical and analytical capacity not dissimilar from that of 1 (5) – who were continually attempting to present a factual picture of events and processes to the public very different from that of the majority view. This from a nonpolitical viewpoint, though he was branded as a socialist at a time when it was unfashionable and ill regarded. As happens often on Shikasta, the viewpoints he had represented for three decades, side by side with a minority of similar men and women who had a hard time of it, suddenly became a majority view, and almost overnight he was something of a hero, particularly among the young. There are areas of Shikasta where critics of society may be hunted and persecuted all their lives. In others, they are absorbed. Over and over again, people who have been kept on the move mentally, always having to defend and sharpen and refine their perceptions of events, will suddenly find themselves in a spotlight focused on them by the many publicity machines, will be made national figures, will be frozen, in fact, in public attitudes. Again and again valuable people become neutralized, made into – often – figures of fun, at the least lose their impetus, their force. The man listed here fell into this trap, and had not understood that he was repeating and repeating old attitudes. I have arranged for him to meet a woman from Southern Continent I, who has had to fight so hard all her life even to survive that
she has energy for two: he will marry her, and become revivified, and forced out of his pattern. Their children may be expected to be remarkable, and I have arranged for them to be watched by Agent 20.

1 (9). This woman has always been oversensitive to influences of any kind, and lacking in robustness and self-definition. She was sheltered by a strong family and then by a strong husband. He died and she was quickly a victim of depressions and states of sorrow that became addictive. This condition attracted vampires in Zone Six of a particular virulent and persistent sort. It was clear that she could not live long and that in Zone Six she would be awaited by no helpful entities. I wondered whether to attempt another marriage for her, but it happened that a woman with strength of character and decisiveness capable of repelling any amount of debilitating and miasmic influences was in a condition of indecision about her life. They are now living together and the resulting energies are successfully rebuffing the malignant entities from Zone Six.

DOCUMENT, LYNDA COLDRIDGE.
(No. 17. this Report.)

I am writing this for Doctor Hebert. I keep telling him I can't write, I never write, I never have. He says I must. So I am. He says if other people read it they will be helped. But the reason he wants me to write things is that I will be helped. That is what he thinks. Well he will read this first so he will find out what I think. Although I do keep telling him. Doctor Hebert is a nice man. (You are a nice man!) But you don't listen. Doctors are always like this. (Not only doctors.) I often talk to Doctor Hebert for hours at a time. But he wants me to write my thoughts down. That seems to me funny.
Crazy. 
But it is
me
who is crazy, not Doctor Hebert. Doctor Hebert knows everything that ever happened to me. He knows more about me than any other doctor. More than Mark does. Well that goes without saying. Or Martha. Or even Sandra or
Dorothy did. Doctor Hebert says it is important that he knows about me. He says I have had every form of treatment ever used in mental hospitals. He says I have survived them. This is wrong. I have
not
survived them. I tell him how I was when I was a girl. I was mad
then.
According to their ideas. Then I tell him how I was mad when I was mad in the way I was mad when they started giving me treatments and putting me into hospitals. Because the two kinds of madness are different, not the same. Do you understand this Doctor Hebert? (You say I should call you John but I don't see why. Calling you John doesn't make you mad or me sane.) When I was a girl all kinds of things went on in my head, and now I know that was mad. Because so many people have said so. But it was lovely. I often think about that. I have not known that niceness since. (But sometimes I do get little flashes but I'll write that later. If I ever get to it.) And when
they
began the machines and the injections and the
dreadfulness
what was in my head was different from before. But they wouldn't see that. Do you, Doctor Hebert? Do you? I am
telling
you. In words. Words, but on paper. I shall begin again here. I get muddled. I meant to say something else first of all.

Doctor Hebert has ideas of all kinds. Some of them are good. I applaud them. I applaud you Doctor Hebert. Clap Clap. This is one of my childish days. Doctor Hebert says that I feel myself to be useless. (But I am. Anyone would see that at once.) He says that I can be of use to people who have just gone mad and who don't understand what is happening to them. He says I should go to such a person and say, This is what is happening to you. He says that then they will feel better. And make me feel better because they feel better. But what he doesn't understand is, what will make them feel better is that they feel better. I.e., it all stops, it goes away, they aren't crazy any longer. He says I must say to some poor loon, all shaking and crying and hearing voices, sometimes coming out of walls, or seeing horrible things that aren't there (but perhaps they are!) I must say … new sentence. Look, I must say. Do not be afraid. You see, it is like this. (I am
talking to this poor loon now.) We have senses adjusted to a very small range of sight or hearing. All the time sounds are coming in from everywhere, like a waterfall. But we are machines set to accept only let us say five per cent. If the machine goes wrong then we hear more than we need. We see more than we need. Your machine has gone wrong. Instead of seeing just daylight and night and your cousin Fanny and the cat and your ever-loving husband, which is all you need to get along, you are seeing a lot more i.e. all these horrors and peculiar colours and visions and things. The reason they are horrors and not nice is that your machine is distorting what is there, which is really nice. (So says Doctor Hebert, but he is a nice man. You are a nice man Doctor Hebert, and how do you know?) And instead of hearing your husband saying he loves you or your wife or a bus going past you are hearing what your husband is really thinking. Like, you are an ugly old bag. Or what your children think. Or the dog. (I can hear what the dog belonging to the caretaker thinks. I like him better than most people. Does he like me better than most dogs? I shall ask him. If people knew what dogs are thinking they would be surprised. Just as well, really.) Well, if I say all this to the poor loons, they will cheer up and feel better. Says Doctor Hebert. To understand all is to forgive all. But I say to Doctor Hebert, that is not so. If you have voices sometimes it seems a hundred of them hammering away in your head, then you don't care why. You can do without original thoughts about percentages believe me. You want them to stop. And if you keep seeing monsters and terrible things you want them to go away. Is it going to cheer them up? I mean, knowing that we (people and for all I know dogs too) are geared to see only Aunt Fanny and the cat and the street because outside this everything is horrors? (Doctor Hebert
why
are you so positive the horrors aren't there? I mean,
why?
I really want to know. I mean, what world are you living in, Doctor Hebert, because I don't think it is the same as mine. Well I suppose that goes without saying, because you aren't mad and I am.) I shall start again. What you are wrong about is this, that people will feel better
if I or you say things like this. Because nearly everyone has been brought to believe that the five per cent is all there is. Five per cent is the whole universe. And if they think anything else, they are peculiar. And if the machine then goes wrong and in comes let us say ten per cent then as well as being frightened about voices coming out of someone's elbow or the door handle, and what these voices say which is nearly always silly, then they will know they are
bad. Wicked.
Because you can't change people's ideas. Not just like that. Not suddenly. As it is, the poor loons are coping with
silly
voices that they
know
are silly, which is bad enough, but the voices are saying they are wicked and disgusting. Nearly always. And then on top of that, they have to cope with knowing that they are open to more than five per cent,
which is bad by definition.
When they were children, it is more than likely they saw and heard all kinds of things more than the five per cent, like having friends they could see others couldn't, and their parents when they told them said they were lying and wicked. I am getting upset. I shall stop now.

Last night a poor loon was brought in. She was frightened. Doctor Hebert asked me to sit with her. So I did. She is schizophrenic. Well that goes without saying I suppose. She loved a friend and they were going to marry this week. He broke it off. She was upset. She didn't eat. She didn't sleep. She cried a lot. Yesterday she was walking across Waterloo Bridge and then suddenly she was about twenty feet up looking down at herself walking across the bridge. It happens to me quite often. What it means is this. We are several people fitted inside each other. Chinese boxes. Our bodies are the outside box. Or the inside one if you like. If you get a shock, like your best friend saying no I won't marry you, I am going to marry your friend Arabella instead, then anything can happen. I like watching myself from outside. It makes this living on and on and on and on seem not important. I look at me, poor old bag, which is what I am (Doctor Hebert says I must put on my nice dresses and make my face up). But little does he realize, little do you realize Doctor Hebert that the
Chinese box that stands outside and looks at poor bag Lynda doesn't care. What I really am is not poor bag Lynda all bones and the shakes and the shivers. I stand outside her and look at her and think, Well cry if you like, why not? I don't care. But this poor loon yesterday night. Her name is Anne. I suppose Doctor Hebert you think she would feel better if I said to her, You are a set of Chinese boxes, and when you walked across Waterloo Bridge all miserable and ill, they got separated for a bit, and so one of them looked down at the others, or other. Because Doctor Hebert it takes a lot of getting used to. You can't just say it, announcing good news. If she is religious yes perhaps. The soul. But this Anne is not religious. I asked her. She might be frightened if religious but it would be an idea she had heard of. I'd say soul and not Chinese box. But most religious people anyway think about the most unimportant Chinese box and about burying it or laying it out and how it will be in the grave or cremating it or something. So if they are like this then even soul would not be much good, let alone Chinese box. Words. Chinese box
bad.
Soul
good.
If Christian. Sometimes some poor loon comes in and I can talk to him. Her. A child is best. I mean, they are often not frightened when they see themselves walking away in front or something like that. It's second nature to some. It is a game. But they must keep quiet. I did it when I was a child. My parents quarrelled. When they started I used to take myself off outside the room. Of course they thought I was there with them but I wasn't. I sat there with a silly grin on my face but I was away outside, thinking other thoughts. I shall stop now.

Anne is very bad. I have been sitting with her. She is frightened more than anything. She hears the usual voices saying she is bad and wicked and all that. Also she keeps seeing her friend who is marrying Arabella. She sees them talking. Also making love. She told me this. She is frightened to tell Doctor Hebert. I told her not to tell Doctor Hebert. I am telling Doctor Hebert now. Doctor Hebert is one thing but there are other doctors here. This way Doctor Hebert will know but the other doctors won't. I told her that all she was
doing was using ‘second sight' and she must have heard of that. I said a lot of people have it. I asked her if she saw things when she was a child. She said she did. I said it is like playing the piano or riding a bicycle. Practice makes perfect. I said all that kind of thing. Sensible. Second sight that's all it is! Looking down at yourself from twenty feet up, think nothing of it! Well it didn't make her feel better at all. Because when these things happen strongly enough to make people ill it is because the six per cent of whatever is a
wavelength.
It is a voltage. It is a thousand volts instead of one. It is not just that you are the same as normal and then suddenly looking at yourself from outside or hearing voices, which can happen like a sort of glide sideways or up from where you were, and
not
an increase in voltage, but then at other times or with other people the voltage goes up suddenly and you feel you will shake to pieces. The five per cent of sight hearing etc. is
energies.
That is the whole point. So much voltage of sight, hearing. And if it is a bit more the machine shakes to pieces. That is the point. This is the point Doctor Hebert. Anne wants it to stop. She can't bear it.