Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel (28 page)

“Charles,” said Björnson. “
You
… thought it was …
me.
Or
some
mathematician. Spilker here, a generous man, thought it was some
other
anthropologist. Everybody plumped for—”

“Or somebody Jamie studied and then recorded,” said Spilker. “Thinking it over. He was in the South Seas you know—you have no idea how marvelous some of those younger islanders—Western-trained, even doctors. But who keep the links with the old culture, the old stories. Or Australia. Some of it sounds—not cribbed of course—but very like Firth.”

“Yes, yes. And Herr Winckler thought of—well, Freud. I myself thought of psychology for a bit … but then there was old Crampton. Don’t you see it? Everybody plumped for
another
field—than his own. Now who would do this kind of
echo
job, except one kind of person? Who else could put together this extraordinarily—this hodgepodge that could make a biologist think of Riemann or Alice in Wonderland, and make somebody who knew the mathematical references—think of Darwin? Who else could catch all this from the surrounding air, and put such a brew to steep—”

Opening an eye, Linhouse watched Björnson push back a blond forelock enthusiastically. Swedes were so romantic in a necrophile way; maybe he’d fallen in love with her posthumously. Janice’s attractions had been so powerful.

Nodding up, nodding down, as if half snoozing at a movie, Linhouse watched the Swede push past seatmates, step over empty seats with his seven-league legs, walk down the aisle toward the stage, and—jump up on it. And here he was.

“Mr. Linhouse—” Björnson walked upstage of him. “You brought the book here, arranged for her memorial. Won’t you tell us? Who else but one kind of person,
one
person, could have cooked up such a fine stew? Such a naughty one!”

Linhouse saw him—but dimly.
No,
he heard himself say from afar, or thought he did.
Since you ask—no. She couldn’t cook.

Then he saw Björnson’s hand extended to him. Then he stood up. Then he awoke.

“Who—” said Björnson, “but a literary man!”

So. This was not happening to him, to
me.
Right-here was no longer the average fantastic of beingness; it was active. Linhouse had once been swept off the deck of a friend’s schooner he was helping to crew—no lifejacket, and twenty miles offshore. He remembered, from the trough of that wave. The logic of reality is split, frazzled, left-handed; sometimes a man can deal with it, since so is he. But the logic of unreality is merciless. And gives him time to meditate.

Weakly, he let his hand be shaken, thinking that the Swede, who was still working their joined hands in brother-style, the way emcees introduced guest comics, wanted speech from him. But Björnson, still holding on, was addressing the machine. “A book,” he said. “A book. A
book.
” He said it once more, tenderly. Biji, biji,
biji.
Was he going on until the word lost all value except incantation, or perhaps acquired one, as in those schoolyard games where one was told to shout East Pole, East Pole—and found oneself calling for the Police?

“A recording machine in the shape of one;
that
was the clue,” said Björnson. “Pushed at us so modestly; one can see why. Mr. Linhouse is lucky that his hoax was such an entertaining one. And to be congratulated on his bravery. Palomar! Elliptoids! Gyroscopes—a nice bit of Bishop Berkeley there, eh?” He cuffed Linhouse lightly. “Ah, a mishmash, some of you may say, but I for one applaud the attempt. To remind us. We must not forget the Greeks, must we. To remind us to see the
whole hog
—even in Hobby Hall.”

And now Björnson put one long arm around Linhouse. “And that’s why we have him here, don’t we?”

In a moment, maybe somebody would say: Rah! Linhouse even waited for it, deep in his own logic. Scapegoats sometimes got out of it, didn’t they, by turning into mascots?

“And you needn’t be ashamed of the job, old boy,” said Björnson. “Martians and supermen—notwithstanding. Why … some of us even thought of the … the old
classics
… didn’t we!”

The brown man stood up for the first time. Collar up, he seemed not to mind the heat but rather to need it; slung around his shoulders was a muffler the size of a shawl. He was small. Or smaller than Linhouse. Humped under Björnson’s easy arm, Linhouse, a once respectable five-nine, regarded the Indian. Was he an ally? For a hog, his eyes were certainly beautiful.

The Indian’s row was empty. He started to sidle toward the aisle, then thought better of it, and stayed where he was. “From internal evidence alone,” he said. “And perhaps the second part, which we must hear, sirs, we really must—will entirely disperse the ambig … but certainly one point is already clear. Certainly the author of this—whoever it may be—has studied the Rig-Veda.”

Björnson ignored him utterly, smiling only at Linhouse. “Food for thought, eh, Provost? For maybe, some day, the real-and-total job
will
be done—by one of us.” Under the friendly musculature of his arm, he must at last have felt a certain limpness in his protégé. He removed it, leaving Linhouse with his head still pushed forward from that fraternal arch, hands hanging loosely. Posture was indeed—

Then Björnson poked him. “Second part, eh,” he said under his breath, “juicy, eh; sure like to see it sometime.” Louder he said: “Come now, Mr. Linhouse, release us—we’ve got
you
cornered, er hmmm. Fess up. Who else hired the hall, made use of the lady’s name, all the rest of it. Who else could it be? Perhaps you’ll explain it otherwise. Can you? And if so, how?” He raised his chin, walking to one side just a flick later; once he must have been in amateur theater.

Oh sloth, thought Linhouse. Oh the three-toed sloth, does it never let go one toe, two, and then—For he felt himself to be such a sloth as only meant to fall—or rise?
Awake, arise, or be forever fallen.
He stared at the machine, where. resided somewhere, though automated, his own passion for Milton. He might ask
it.
What may
I
plump for, in my field, in
my
profession? Reel back movie-style, O great tumble of literature, as these fresh boys speak of doing with the universe? Not that easy. The mixture—so … mixed. Once, one would have spoken up, and automatically—for the human. Couldn’t be done, could it be done, any more. No, he wouldn’t be the one to do it; but he wouldn’t apologize, either.

He stared at the machine, runt to runt. That’s my guess, who wrote it, he could say to them. I was right in the beginning. He nodded to it. A person from out of town. At last he opened his mouth—such a squeak!—and spoke to it. “I think, what we heard—” But he must speak to—
them.
Turning up his palms, he did so. “I think—That it’s
true.
”

And now fall upon me, he thought—on me, Molly Martyr. But first, you bloody fools—count the women.

There was a clatter then, and a roar, but not from the multitude. What was jostling over its neighbors in the loge, pushing past them over stepped-on ankles, banged knees, and coming down the aisle, past the hidden Charles, past Herr Winckler’s resolute eyeglass and the visiting Indian—into the pit? A strange ally, the last one Linhouse would have thought to find in his corner—who’d have thought it of the egg, and was it cause for elation?

For as Tippy Anders came on, abang and agawk, perhaps yelling was a better word than roar. His young-old voice strained with its first-or-last attempt at vehemence. The head however, that huge infant, cradled itself like a crown jewel, balanced serene above the bumble beneath it, in a separate cottonwool of air. He reached the pit without Linhouse having been able to make out his message, and stood there touching his chest—gathering his forces
down,
as—it were?—until he could speak plain.

“True?” he said then. “True?” and the word as he said it scared Linhouse as it never quite had, before. It went up as wandering as anybody might say it—as a child or a granddad, or a mute painting it to send up on a balloon. “Of course it may be, in true’s way,” said Anders. “I haven’t got time for—that kind of thinking. It isn’t that I don’t honor it of course; I just haven’t got time.” He shrugged. The head balanced above it. One could see why, when still over its milk and cereal, but already setting out on implosions which might someday limit the time of others, a confused family circle might have nicked it with the name Tippy. “Martians?” he said, and shrugged again. “Some kind of life there, I suppose. Not my part of the—not what I—” Hand in pocket, he considered. “Not my beckyar-r-d,” he said, in his crimped upstate New Yorkese, and one saw
it,
dark and not his, on a field of stars scattered wide. “But if Mr. Björnson is disputing that there’s life of a kind—maybe even this kind—somewhere, I’d like to ask him one question.” He turned bodily, head following. “What makes Björnson think—he’s
one of us?
”

He didn’t wait for an answer. One slender, Humpty-Dumpty arm and hand extended toward the apparatus. From where he was in the pit, he of course couldn’t touch it. And the Object, or whatever one must call it, remained—inanimate. But an exploratory—field? or feeling?—hung for a moment in the air between them; perhaps it was only one’s own idea, very elementary, of antennae retracting, of a gap—between anode and cathode—not jumped. “I wonder,” he murmured, so low that only pit and stage could be frightened by the wonder of
his
wonder. “Sure like to take that thing upstairs and have a look at it—when I’ve time.” Then he too addressed the audience, the head tilting meanwhile quite comfortably; if it never counted persons, why should it count women? “From the evidence. If Mr. Linhouse did write that business, he’s had some very sophisticated coaching. And I—” His face, set in the head as if just emerging from it, struggled. Yes, it could do; it had an expression, a small and beleaguered one, too. Something was missing from that face—the glasses! Yet it seemed able to see, quite well. Were those great goggles only that very special defense crystal—clear glass? If true—only in true’s way of course—one could see why; the whole world knew that Anders was only twenty-three. “And I’m kind of—sure, from what quarter he got it.” He was staring down into the pit. “I’m not interested in
what
kind of life,” he said sullenly, like a boy not taking a dare. “Who? What? … That’s for later … and it’s not my—” If he was going to say
backyard
again, then perhaps the world should scream at him and hurry, the one scream it would likely be allowed. “My job is
where,
send them and get them! My job is the signals themselves.” For a moment, the head, with its face, rode on the current of this, comforted. Then Anders put his glasses back on.

Maybe this is the real, the best candidate, thought Linhouse. For mutation. This
nihil,
floating blind but intelligent behind its clear non-glasses, its fontanelle winking and ready for: anything.

Anders was still staring down in the pit. He spoke to it. “Water in a liquid state,” he said, in deep disgust. “Universal biochem—and so forth. We know all that. We know what you others—and more power to you. But why one of
us
should take a position that might be contrary to you, to every—” He leaned over, until it was seen that he was really addressing another head, sunk on its neck and so low in the shadows that everyone here had forgotten it. “Collaborate if you want to, on that kind of—of fancywork! Maybe
you’ve
got time for it.” He sounded like an angry merchant-father, whose son wanted to go into art. “That’s your business. What you’ve been doing with my facilities I don’t know, but you might have asked for the loan of them. But there’s one thing we don’t have to listen to
here,
not from you, nor Harwell nor the Sternberg, not from anywhere.” He pointed at the machine. “—and not from there.” He drew himself up. “Not here at Hobbs we don’t, not in America. We have
not
been excelled. Not on evidence as yet, and I say not likely to be. And you ought not to—” He faltered, gulped. “And you ought to remember it.”

Then the ass grew ears indeed, the great head became no more than a Thanksgiving pumpkin giving thanks for itself. Not just “one of Us,” thought Linhouse. Also, just—and very lowercase, too, billy-boy. Just one of us.

Below, in the pit, that other head didn’t move.

Then poor Anders leaned over the edge of the stage. “Sir Harry? Sir Harry! Good God, hope I haven’t done anything to—Sir Harry, sir!”

Three things happened then, according to Linhouse—he having much taken to this style of separating events from each other.

The machine ruffled itself, with a premonitory trembling of all its discs.

The head in the pit raised itself also. It was an elderly gentleman, who had been asleep. It was a former staff member, emeritus and retired to the neighborhood, who attended anything and everything public. It was not Sir Harry.

From above the crowd, beyond the seats, from apparently that corridor of gently encircling doors—a voice answered.

Linhouse closed his eyes again. High in the back wall of the auditorium, there was the usual projection window—or so it looked to be. Would it open now to display Sir Harry’s naked, well-set old bones as Father Time, or on a cushion, lotus-crossed? But there was really no time for brooding. When he opened his eyes, Sir Harry was merely at the top of the center aisle, still dressed in nothing more unconventional than the costume he must have considered suited to California—yachting jacket, and those white flannel bags.

All faces turned back and up, of course. No. All the male ones. And now surely, one must believe. For the other faces remained forward, like dolls in a shop at night perhaps, who could move but wouldn’t bother, knowing their morning destiny—or else awaited the tink-a-tink of a magic churn. Yes, there was one of them peeping, but perhaps she was doing it professionally—Miss Publicity Pie. What clever
fascisti
could have trained up the women this way? Answer: us.

“Yes, Anders,” said Harry, “what is it I mustn’t say?” He came a step or so forward. “Fear I had nothing to do with this, except—perhaps as we all have—to have stood aside. And whoever tampered with your facilities, Mr. Anders—you’ve only my word of course—it wasn’t me. As for Mr. Linhouse’s role in all this; I shouldn’t be surprised, Jack, if—you’ve been had. Or—what’s it your gangsters always say—in your newspapers?”