He Who Shapes (5 page)

feat of disconnecting the broadcast control unit after one had

entered onto a monitored highway. This resulted in the car's

vanishing from the ken of the monitor and passing back into the

control of its occupants. Jealous as a deity, a monitor will not

tolerate that which denies its programmed omniscience; it will

thunder and lightning in the Highway Control Station nearest

the point of last contact, sending winged seraphs in search of

that which has slipped from sight.

Often, however, this was too late in happening, for the roads

are many and well-paved. Escape from detection was, at first,

relatively easy to achieve.

Other vehicles, though, necessarily behave as if a rebel has

no actual existence. Its presence cannot be allowed for.

Boxed-in, on a heavily-traveled section of roadway, the

offender is subject to immediate annihilation in the event of any

overall speedup or shift in traffic pattern which involves

movement through his theoretically vacant position. This, in

the early days of monitor-controls, caused a rapid series of

collisions. Monitoring devices later became far more 'sophisti-

cated, and mechanized 'cutoffs reduced the collision incidence

subsequent to such an action. The quality of the pulpefactions

and contusions which did occur, however, remained unaltered.

The next reaction was based on a thing which had been

overlooked because it was obvious. The monitors took people

where they wanted to go only because people told them they

wanted to go there. A person pressing a random series of co-

ordinates, without reference to any map, would either be left

with a stalled automobile and a "RECHECK YOUR CO-

ORDINATES" light, or would suddenly be whisked away

in any direction. The latter possesses a certain romantic appeal

in that it offers speed, unexpected sights, and free hands. Also,

it is perfectly legal; and it is possible to navigate all over two

continents in this manner, if one is possessed of sufficient

wherewithal and gluteal stamina.

As is the case in all such matters, the practice diffused

upwards through the age brackets. Schoolteachers who only

drove on Sundays fell into disrepute as selling points for used

autos. Such is the way a world ends, said the entertainer.

End or no, the car designed to move on monitored highways

is a mobile efficiency unit, complete with latrine, cupboard,

refrigerator compartment, and gaming table. It also sleeps two

with ease and four with some crowding. On occasion, three can

be a real crowd.

Render drove out of the dome and into the marginal aisle. He

halted the car.

"Want to jab some coordinates?" he asked.

"You do it. My fingers know too many."

Render punched random buttons. The Spinner moved onto

the highway. Render asked speed of the vehicle then, and it

moved into the high-acceleration lane.

The Spinner's lights burnt holes in the darkness. The city

backed away fast; it was a smouldering bonfire on both sides of

the road, stirred by sudden gusts of wind, hidden by white

swirlings, obscured by the steady fall of gray ash. Render knew

his speed was only about sixty percent of what it would have

been on a clear, dry night.

He did not blank the windows, but leaned back and stared

out through them. Eileen "looked" ahead into what light there

was. Neither of them said anything for ten or fifteen minutes.

The city shrank to sub-city as they sped on. After a time,

short sections of open road began to appear.

"Tell me what it looks like outside," she said.

"Why didn't you ask me to describe your dinner, or the suit

of armor beside our table?"

"Because I tasted one and felt the other. This is different."

"There is snow falling outside. Take it away and what you

have left is black."

"What else?"

"There is slush on the road. When it starts to freeze, traffic

will drop to a crawl unless we outrun this storm.The slush looks

like an old, dark syrup, just starting to get sugary on top."

"Anything else?"

"That's it, lady."

"Is it snowing harder or less hard than when we left the

club?"

"Harder, I should say."

"Would you pour me a drink?" she asked him.

"Certainly."

They turned their seats inward and Render raised the table.

He fetched two glasses from the cupboard.

"Your health," said Render, after he had poured.

"Here's looking at you."

Render downed his drink. She sipped hers. He waited for

her next comment. He knew that two cannot play at the

Socratic game, and he expected more questions before she

said what she wanted to say.

She said: "What is the most beautiful thing you have ever

seen?"

Yes, he decided, he had guessed correctly.

He replied without hesitation: "The sinking of Atlantis."

"I was serious."

"So was 1."

"Would you care to elaborate?"

"I sank Atlantis," he said, "personally.

"It was about three years ago. And God! it was lovely! It

was all ivory towers and golden minarets and silver balconies.

There were bridges of opal, and crimson pennants and a

milk-white river flowing between lemon-colored banks. There

were jade steeples, and trees as old as the world tickling the

bellies of clouds, and ships in the great sea-harbor of Xanadu,

as delicately constructed as musical instruments, all swaying

with the tides. The twelve princes of the realm held court in the

dozen-pillared Coliseum of the Zodiac, to listen to a Greek

tenor sax play at sunset.

"The Greek, of course, was a patient of mineparanoiac.

The etiology of the thing is rather complicated, but that's what

I wandered into inside his mind. I gave him free rein for awhile,

and in the end I had to split Atlantis in half and sink it full

fathom five. He's playing again and you've doubtless heard his

sounds, if you like such sounds at all. He's good. I still see him

periodically, but he is no longer the last descendant of the

greatest minstrel of Atlantis. He's just a fine, late twentieth-

century saxman.

"Sometimes though, as I look back on the apocalypse I

worked within his vision of grandeur, I experience a fleeting

sense
 
of lost beautybecause, for
 
a single moment, his

abnormally intense feelings were my feelings, and he felt that

his dream was the most beautiful thing in the world."

He refilled their glasses.

"That wasn't exactly what I meant," she said.

"I know."

"I meant something real."

"It was more real than real, I assure you."

"I don't doubt it, but . . ."

"But I destroyed the foundation you were laying for your

argument. Okay, I apologize. I'll hand it back to you. Here's

something that could be real:

"We are moving along the edge of a great bowl of sand," he

said. "Into it, the snow is gently drifting. In the spring the snow

will melt, the waters will run down into the earth,
 
or be

evaporated away by the heat of the sun. Then only the sand

will remain.
 
Nothing grows in the sand,
 
except
 
for
 
an

occasional cactus. Nothing lives here but snakes, a few birds,

insects, burrowing things, and a wandering coyote or two. In

the afternoon these things will look for shade. Any place where

there's an old fence post or a rock or a skull or a cactus to block

out the sun, there you will witness life cowering before the

elements. But the colors are beyond belief, and the elements

are more lovely, almost, than the things they destroy."

"There is no such place near here," she said.

"If I say it, then there is. Isn't there? I've seen it."

"Yes . . . You're right."

"And it doesn't matter if it's a painting by a woman named

O'Keefe, or something right outside our window, does it? If

I've seen it?"

"I acknowledge the truth of the diagnosis," she said. "Do

you want to speak it for me?"

"No, go ahead."

He refilled the small glasses once more.

"The damage is in my eyes," she told him, "not my brain."

He lit her cigarette.

"I can see with other eyes if I can enter other brains."

He lit his own cigarette.

"Neuroparticipation is based upon the fact that two nervous

systems can share the same impulses, the same fantasies . . ."

"Controlled fantasies."

"I could perform therapy and at the same time experience

genuine visual impressions."

"No," said Render.

"You don't know what it's like to be cut off from a whole area

of stimuli! To know that a Mongoloid idiot can experience

something you can never knowand that he cannot appreciate

it because, like you, he was condemned before birth in a court

of biological happenstance, in a place where there is no justice

only fortuity, pure and simple."

"The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately,

man must reside in the universe."

"I'm not asking the universe to help meI'm asking you."

"I'm sorry," said Render.

"Why won't you help me?"

"At this moment you are demonstrating my main reason."