Across the Spectrum (65 page)

And so I try to keep him from hearing the stories about me.
In Camelot, they say I am a heartless wench, a slattern who seduced the mighty
Merlin. They say that I plotted to lock Merlin away, used his magic against
him, betrayed a weak and foolish old man with my wicked passions and my ready
thighs.

I think about the stories, and I watch my sleeping son. I
think about the different meanings of love—between a mother and her child,
between a teacher and a student, between a man and a woman. I think about
betrayal, and I think about the truth.

“Art & Science” is my favorite story because I want to
live in this world I’ve created. It’s dark and weird and makes no sense. I love
all my absurd stories, but this is the one I want to make a movie out of. I’d
like to see what a cinematographer and set designer would do with it. Beyond
that, I want this one to have happened to me. To me it is beautiful—like
entering Alice’s Wonderland. We smart apes have created a dualistic culture and
some people say that’s where our problems lie. But I think the construct is
ripe for entertainment and I like playing with it. Laughing at it. Having a
joke at its expense. Will this story change the world? Of course not. The world
goes around with or without us. But it’s fun watching it spin. This story is
the spin of the world in my mind.

∞ ∞ ∞

This story takes place back at UT, University Tech, just
before I left the physics sector in the student ghetto. The tech heads there
had cordoned off a section of the courtyard, declaring it theirs so the divas
over by the stage area wouldn’t misunderstand. Make sense?

I suppose not. Let me clarify: the theater arts group and
the quantum mechanics shared room and board. Sounds weird, but they worked it
out with the cordon and never the twain met. You could tell the physics majors
by the long hair and the fact that they were as old as the hills. Seems like
they took forever to graduate. They sat around at little round café tables set
up in the courtyard and drank coffee while discussing things they didn’t
understand: chaos theory, string theory, time travel. That sort of thing.

The thespians had no time for theories. They were all
practice because they were young and beautiful and going places. Hollywood most
likely. I’ve seen several of their faces since that time in ads for toothpaste
and rectal ointment so I guess they knew what they were doing.

Being a physics major with a vocal arts minor, I fit right
into the place. Had a room on the fifth floor of a walkup on the techie half of
the courtyard. There were always gangs of four and five down there hanging
about in the corners and cheap seats.

The neighborhood resembled a dungeon in that practically no
light filtered down to the courtyard. The walls were straight and high, and a
permanent layer of dudgy grunge lay on the cracked doorways, broken-out
windows, crumbling architecture, and decaying fecal matter in the corners. Just
below that layer, there was another one of grease. It was like the whole area
had been cluster-bombed with a cockroach treatment years before and nobody had
bothered to clean it off before the dust settled in. Gray was the predominant
color. Thank God the theater people were into red and chartreuse, otherwise
anybody who happened into the alley would dim to a dusty mindset forever. As
annoyingly perky as they were, those soon-to-be-famous actors were sort of
needed. But you get the picture: the place was dirty, smelly, overcrowded,
cheap. It certainly wasn’t the type of territory to get territorial over.

Across this courtyard that hadn’t seen daylight or scrub
brush since the day the wealthy moved out and the students moved in, the
theater majors had constructed a stage. It took up one whole wall of the
quadrangle and the footlights provided the only illumination around. Perfect
for a group of people that are intent on being watched. With no curtain to close
themselves off from the rest of our prying eyes, they practiced their struts
and frets out in the open. I’d done scales myself there on occasion but always
self-consciously as some of the younger, good-looking guys from the
time-sequencing lab always seemed to be around just at that time. I hated for
them to think I was off in any way.

Not sure why I was so worried about that. Physics majors are
inherent stoners. The biggest ones on campus, in fact, followed closely by the
philosophy majors. You have to get high to see God. And seeing God is how
physicists learn all that theory. You certainly can’t learn it by using the
tools mortal man has been given: a human brain. Nope, gotta go see the Big Guy.
So physicists are for the most part pot heads and acid takers. All post
twentieth-century relative theories are developed while under the influence.
Why would I be concerned about being taken for a fuzzy-thinker in that milieu?
Low self-esteem? You wouldn’t think so. I’d just finished my master’s thesis,
and I’d done it, I must say, with aplomb.

My project entailed attaining enlightenment through the use
of good vibration as opposed to chemical libation. The good vibration in this
case being a powerful rendition of ‘My Funny Valentine.’ Certain musical notes
and combinations of notes and series of notes, specifically the “Are you smart”
line in the aforementioned song, are guaranteed to put the listener on a higher
plane. I’d worked my voice into a timbre rich in near-inaudible overtones that
tingled not only the ear, but also the inner workings of every human heart and
bowels. You just can’t stay straight or stand still or not be changed in some
way when I sing ‘My Funny Valentine.’ I’d worked for years on this and had just
received the approval of my instructors that morning. They hadn’t exactly given
me a glowing pass, but having left them in a puddle of tears, incapable of
speech, and helpless on the floor, I’d figured I’d done the job.

The thing about that line, that question—are you
smart?—isn’t just the tingling vibration of notes juxtaposed in such a way as
to reverberate the belly emotionally. The thing is the question itself is so
loaded with meaning. Are you smart? We’re all smart aren’t we? We can prove to
the world we are—we have the pieces of paper to prove it—but we never fool
ourselves. We always question ourselves. Are we smart? Sure, but are we smart
enough? Smarter than the rest of the pack? Are we better? More sexually
attractive? Will we get laid? All of that implosive meaning is in that line, and
when you package it up in such a strong interval between the “you” and the
“smart,” you’ve got more than a loaded question. You’ve got psychological
dynamite. No wonder the thesis board was helpless on the floor.

On my last day of scholarship, my last day in the ghetto, my
graduation day, just as I was about to hit the road, Jack (and I mean Jack
Kerouac because I didn’t have a job and felt the only alternative was to go off
and discover America), an event of stellar proportion occurred in the physics sector.
A fight started between the two groups hunkered down there.

Keep in mind that an altercation between these two
peoples—the physics majors and the dramatic arts people—is not likely to rival
a WWE event in action. Not like if some business major had sparked one of the
hockey team’s girls. Now that would be a fight. This was more like if someone
on the tennis team looked cock-eyed at one of the elementary ed majors: insults
would be lobbed and tongues stuck out, but no blood. Still, kind of painful to
watch.

I’m not sure how it started, but as I was dragging my
steamer trunk down the stairs, my progress became blocked by a group on the
stoop. Seems a crowd had formed there to watch the big do and kibitz as
watchers of fights are wont. I propped the door open with my cargo and pushed
through the crowd to determine the cause of the stoppage.

Somewhere in the middle, a guy with long, long hair but only
on the sides of his head, not on top, stood gripping a smoldering smoking pipe.
He was locked eye-to-eye with a young blond gripping a smudged and tattered
paper in his hand. A big circle had formed around these two who were backlit by
the footlights so you could hardly see their faces. But you could see the spit
fly between them as they sputtered their nasty arguments. It was an
artistically pleasing fight, I must say.

“A light year is a measure of space, not time . . .
” the old guy was saying.

The young guy said, “It’s a metaphor, sir, dialogue taken
from the street. It has validity, regardless if in error.”

Old guy: “You have a chance here, a duty, in fact, to
enlighten the people.”

Young guy: “I am enlightening the people to the hipness of
the world.”

The crowd was getting in on the act. The physics majors
shouted encouraging things like “theoretical,” “at the atomic level,” and “if a
train is traveling at the speed of light in one direction . . .
”

The theatre people egged the blond on by all stating the
same thing at slightly different cadences: “Julius Caesar, you seize her and
we’ll squeeze her.” Each one just a little bit off from unison so the effect
resembled a crowd scene in a DeMille flick.

The action increased in intensity and any minute you just
knew somebody was going to say something about right-brained faggots or
somebody else was going to mention left-brained stiffs with their heads up
their asses. It was definitely heading to worse before it got better.

Outsiders began entering the courtyard from the only
entrance, plugging up any chance for my egress. Graduates like me still wearing
the square cap, parents of said graduates, and even a professor or two were
filing into the tiny squeezed courtyard. Everyone wanted to witness the
square-off.

Tensions between the two disparate groups had been building
for eight years, ever since the drama department had been assigned to share the
digs of the physical theorists. Years had slipped by and no one had spoken
aloud about the uneasy tension growing. We all felt it and knew it, but tried
to ignore the heavy feeling brewing in the belly of the beast. Nevertheless,
sooner or later somebody had to say something to somebody. They’d all been
watching each other, waiting for a slip, waiting for a moment to prove that one
was better than the other. Today was the day. A faux pas had occurred. One
group was to be deflated. The other declared triumphant.

But I wasn’t having it. I had light years of travel ahead of
me and wasn’t going to wait another attosecond to get to it. But the swarm of
rubbernecking humanity, none of whose members could give a hoot for one small wannabe
beatnik and her desire to leave the stifling premises, blocked the exit. So I
did the only thing I could do, I broke out into my master’s thesis.

Sounds surreal, but it worked. I knew it would, I’d worked
out that mind-bending phraseology that could effect peace amongst the most
savage of combatants. (It probably wouldn’t work in the WWE, however.)

Keep in mind we’re talking about Physicists and Actors. Are
they smart? Better than any cheap belly shot, that line. Think about it. What
if you were a self-respecting physics major? You’ve done the homework (i.e.
dropped the acid, smoked the pot), you actually understand the theory of
relativity. You are smart. But here come the pretty boys. They have trouble
memorizing the Gettysburg Address, they stumble over Bible verses, yet they
claim Shakespeare. And they always get the girl. How about having that thrown
up in your face? And if you were said pretty boy how would you feel knowing
that the subtlest of subtext eludes you because when it comes to the world you
haven’t a clue? You haven’t worked out the proper motivation, you don’t know
the back story. You are not smart, you are merely pretty.

Oh how those words must sting: that question that deep down
you know the answer to but will never cop to before an audience. And as great
an actor as you are, you’ll never pull it off. And sure you’ll get the girl,
and the cocaine habit, the divorce, the thoughts of suicide, and when you’re
forty, the paunch, the ulcer, the runaround from your agent.

The two quarrelers looked at each other, sort of stuck in a
loop, each one’s brains short-circuiting to a certain conclusion. Are you
smart? They were both stung, both stupid, both wrong, and both defeated.

The crowd loosened up and the obstruction slowly dissipated.
The physics gang headed back to a ten-year project they’d been working on to
reduce everyone’s heating bills by sharing the steam to each flat in short
bursts and collecting the dissipating energy via insulated copper plate and
disseminating it later during the coldest parts of the nights. The thespians
returned to the play they had been rehearsing, the blond’s, a musical about an
ugly lover. He was having trouble coming up with a title and theme song. It was
scheduled to open on February 14th and still he wasn’t getting it.

I picked up my trunk, pushed through the loosening crowd in
the ghetto, hailed a cab, and hit the road, Jack Kerouac.

The Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust comments,
“While this is about culture shock, as most of MZB’s works are, it looks at the
lighter side of it. It’s not just about what can go wrong when beings from two
vastly different cultures misunderstand each other; it’s about what can go
wrong, be hilariously funny, and end up with neither side being harmed.”

∞ ∞ ∞

“You may call me Roald Ruill,” said the man from the
future.

“And I’m usually called Amarga,” added the (supposedly)
female creature beside him.

Dan Casey nodded. He was too dazed and dumbfounded to do
anything much, except nod. After all, when a pair of unbelievably tall,
spidery, green-skinned, and, let’s face it, gruesome characters wake you up out
of a sound sleep, walk back and forth casually through your wall without
bruising so much as a single rose on your landlady’s wallpaper, all the time calling
you “O, famous master of the Past,” and “O, great Casey,”—all this is, to say
the least, disturbing.