Universe 11 - [Anthology] Read online

  “That’s all right,” Secombe said. “I haven’t got it all down yet myself, quite. A Bhutanese fellow near where I live made the pieces, you see, and just recently taught me how to play.”

  With difficulty, Lawson managed to frame a question: “What work have you been doing?”

  “I’m in demolition. As we all will be soon. It’s the only really constructive occupation going.” The Welshman chuckled mildly, finished his own wine, and rose. Lifting his umbrella, he bid Lawson farewell with a word that, when Lawson later tried to repeat and intellectually encompass it, had no meaning at all.

  Every afternoon of that dismal, rainy winter, Lawson came back to the same table, but Secombe never showed up there again. Nor did Lawson miss him terribly. He had grown accustomed to the strange richness of his own company. Besides, if he wanted people to talk to, all he needed to do was remain behind the counter at the bakery.

  IX

  Spring came again. All of his room’s interior walls were down, and it amused him to be able to see the porcelain chalice of the commode as he came up the stairs from the contraceptive shop.

  The plaster that he had sledge hammered down would never be of use to anybody again, of course, but he had saved from the debris whatever was worth the salvage. With the return of good weather, men driving oxcarts were coming through the city’s back streets and alleys to collect these items. You never saw anyone trying to drive a motorized vehicle nowadays, probably because, over the winter, most of them had been hauled away. The scarcity of gasoline and replacement parts might well have been a factor too-but, in truth, people seemed no longer to want to mess with internal combustion engines. Ending pollution and noise had nothing to do with it, either. A person with dung on his shoes or front stoop was not very likely to be convinced of a vast improvement in the environment, and the clattering of wooden carts the ringing of metal-rimmed wheels on cobblestone-could be as ear-wrenching as the hum and blare of motorized traffic. Still, Lawson liked to hear the oxcarts turn into his alley. More than once, called out by the noise, he had helped their drivers load them with masonry, doors, window sashes, even ornate carven mantels.

  At the bakery, the Mongolian woman with whom Lawson worked, and had worked for almost a year, caught the handle of his broom one day and told him her name. Speaking the odd, quicksilver monosyllables of the dialect that nearly everyone in Seville had by now mastered, she asked him to call her Tij. Lawson did not know whether this was her name from before The Change or one she had recently invented for herself. Pleased in either case, he responded by telling her his own Christian name. He stumbled saying it, and when Tij also had trouble pronouncing the name, they laughed together about its uncommon awkwardness on their tongues.

  A week later he had moved into the tenement building where Tij lived. They slept in the same “room” three flights up from a courtyard filled with clambering wisteria. Because all but the supporting walls on this floor had been knocked out, Lawson often felt that he was living in an open-bay barracks. People stepped over his pallet to get to the stairwell; and dressed in front of him as if he were not even there. Always a quick study, he emulated their casual behavior.

  And when the ice in his loins finally began to thaw, he turned in the darkness to Tij-without in the least worrying about propriety. Their coupling was invariably silent, and the release Lawson experienced was always a serene rather than a shuddering one. Afterward, in the wisteria fragrance pervading their building, Tij and he lay beside each other like a pair of larval bumblebees as the moon rolled shadows over their naked, sweat-gleaming bodies.

  Each day after they had finished making and trading away their bread, Tij and Lawson closed the bakery and took long walks. Often they strolled among the hedge-enclosed pathways and the small wrought-iron fences at the base of the city’s cathedral. From these paths, so overwhelmed were they by buttresses of stones and arcaded balconies, they could not even see the bronze weathervane of Faith atop the Giralda. But, evening after evening, Lawson insisted on returning to that place, and at last his persistence and his sense of expectation were rewarded by the sound of jackhammers biting into marble in each one of the cathedral’s five tremendous naves. He and Tij, holding hands, entered.

  Inside, men and women were at work removing the altar screens, the metalwork grilles, the oil paintings, sections of stained-glass windows, religious relics. Twelve or more oxcarts were parked beneath the vault of the cathedral, and the noise of the jackhammers echoed shatteringly from nave to nave, from floor to cavernous ceiling. The oxen stood so complacently in their traces that Lawson wondered if the drivers of the carts had somehow contrived to deafen the animals. Tij released Lawson’s hand to cover her ears. He covered his own ears. It did no good. You could remain in the cathedral only if you accepted the noise and resolved to be a participant in the building’s destruction. Many people had already made that decision. They were swarming through its chambered stone belly like a spectacularly efficient variety of stone-eating termite.

  An albino man of indeterminate race-a man as pale as a termite-thrust his pickax at Lawson.. Lawson uncovered his ears and took the pickax by its handle. Tij, a moment later, found a crowbar hanging precariously from the side of one of the oxcarts. With these tools the pair of them crossed the nave they had entered and halted in front of an imposing mausoleum. Straining against the cathedral’s poor light and the strange linguistic static in his head, Lawson painstakingly deciphered the plaque near the tomb.

  “Christopher Columbus is buried here,” he said.

  Tij did not hear him. He made a motion indicating that this was the place where they should start. Tij nodded her understanding. Together, Lawson thought, they would dismantle the mausoleum of the discoverer of the New World and bring his corrupt remains out into the street. After all these centuries they would free the man.

  Then the bronze statue of Faith atop the belltower would come down, followed by the lovely belltower itself. After that, the flying buttresses, the balconies, the walls; every beautiful, tainted stone.

  It would hurt like hell to destroy the cathedral, and it would take a long, long time-but, considering everything, it was the only meaningful option they had. Lawson raised his pickax.

  <>

  * * * *

  Here is a very odd, sedately lunatic story about a project to experiment in manipulation of animal behavior . . . and, inevitably, human behavior too. Set in a future society whose social hierarchy is so rigidly stratified that it has an almost Victorian aura, “The Snake Who Had Read Chomsky’’ makes its satirical points in a series of decidedly peculiar developments. Are they the result of changes in behavior? You may decide for yourself .

  Josephine Saxton is an English author who writes much too seldom for her many fans. Her novels include Vector for Seven and The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith.

  ~ * ~

  THE SNAKE WHO HAD READ CHOMSKY

  Josephine Saxton

  They spent almost all their nonofficial working time, and their spare time, in that part of the lab which had been requisitioned for them. Although it was not large, it sufficed; to unravel nucleic acid chains does not require a dance hall plus arcades. They were very satisfied with the robot assistance that Selly had allowed them, plus computer time, subelectron microscope, chemical analyzer, and all the animals they needed.

  “Yes, certainly, Marvene and Janos, if you wish to research into some aspects of the genetic part of animal behavior then I shall be pleased to encourage you, just so long as your work here for me does not suffer, of course.” Their work had not suffered, they saw to that. Their private work was not exactly what they stated, but it was near enough to deceive an observer who would be scrupulous and not snoop extensively. There was a little more to it than the behavior of the cat, but even to themselves they maintained a neutral attitude to their information, knowing only what they hoped.

  There were mice being used, and a boa constrictor called

  Lupus the Loop
who had a sole right to mice as food, and who possibly resented the fact that Marvene used a large proportion of them for her work instead of feeding them to him.

  “Getting the information to link itself to all the cell types is the final key,” said Janos, taking a look at some mice who were hibernating in a lowered temperature even though they were a nonhibernating variety. “These mice are hibernating, but they will never shed their skin.” Janos very much wanted to have a coup with this research. He stood to be what he wanted for the rest of his life if all went well.

  Marvene glanced at him with concealed contempt. “The skin-shedding isn’t important at this stage, surely? If we stick to the line we are on, we shall have the final tests ready in weeks,” she told him evenly and not without effort. Working in such close confines with one person for so long was not good for personal regard, but worse, it almost inclined one to show that bad feeling. She was taking extra pains with her good manners. She too wanted to be rewarded by the world for this work, and she had no intention of allowing Janos to take the whole accolade, as she rightly suspected he would like to do. They had not discussed this aspect of the project, it would have been quite rude to do so, but instead maintained an implicit agreement that like all scientists they would share honors. It was certain that they had both been equally dedicated and both worked hard and with concentration. Not a moment was wasted in idle chatter. They had sufficient incentive not to waste their opportunity, for they could also be revenged upon Selly, whom they hated. That greasy, plump, celibate person was not to be allowed to share any reflected glory from their work. He had irritated and disgusted them for so long with his unaesthetic presence, and they meant to be revenged upon him. It was worth the risk of discovery, they had decided; the plan was irresistible. When they thought of this they would laugh together, but when they thought of their separate plans, they laughed apart, and silently.

  Selly rarely visited them in their area; he went home at night to who knew what, alone in his bachelor apartment. Sour as old socks, Selly, white as suet but softer, secretive, and full of bile. But very clever, and this they respected. It was one of the reasons they were at this lab, Selly’s notorious cleverness. They had hoped to learn from him and in many ways they had. He was already near the top of the social list, even though he socialized so little. He was known for being something of a recluse, and for his genius and originality in demonstrating his ideas.

  Selly had wished to demonstrate that light-obedient hormones were involved in flight patterns in birds, and he had caused a skylark to dive into the depths of illuminated water, singing. The audience had considered this very amusing. What had made it unpleasant was the way Selly laughed at the sight of the little creature trying to warble until it was drowned in watery light.

  He had done some useful things, also, in the business of providing food for the world’s surplus people. He had produced a runner bean which was 50 percent first-class animal protein. These could be fed on petroleum by-products, having the ability to make the chemical changes within their own metabolism and, also, the useful ability to cleanse the soil by exuding a solvent which was biodegradable. It was true, Selly was no slouch in his work.

  As for Marvene and Janos’ part in Selly’s work, they were assisting him in breeding a two-kilo mouse which would at first be used in factory soupmeat and later, after sufficient publicity, as a roast. So far the creatures had died before slaughtering could take place, so there was still work to do on strengthening the heart muscles of these little giants. These animals were fed on processed petroleum by-products. There was a vast store of fossil fuels since the melting of the polar ice caps had made it available. The lab in which they worked was part of a redundant atomic power station, ideal because of its isolation coupled with easy access by underground train to the living complexes: it took them only five minutes to return to the other world. In one of the larger central areas of the building they had constructed a reproduction of a typical deserted domestic settlement of the lower classes. The actual work of course had been done by a workgang from the lower classes. If such settlements could be shown to be suitable for breeding mice, then some of them could be used, for there were many such ghost towns since the suicide epidemics. There was no question of experimenting with a real one; they were all too far away from civilization. Their main problem had been getting the right light and darkness periods, because even though there was so little difference between them since the canopy came over the ancient skies, the animals all had residual circadian rhythms. All the upper-class human beings had artificial moonlight and sunlight in regulated phases because it had been shown to have an important psychological effect on brain chemistry, but the lower classes, for whom such things did not matter, lived in a dim limbo, monotonous and drear.

  As a companion work on food they were breeding a potato containing every known nutritional element in correct proportion for maintaining human life. This was proving harder than anticipated, because some vitamins destroyed others when existing in the same plant. But they would succeed, with Selly’s guidance. It was going to make the lower-class menu very dull, but that did not matter. Selly could have existed on such fodder, for he was a very poor aesthete in the matter of food as in other things. This disgusted them. Selly did not enjoy life; he enjoyed ideas about life. He once confided in a rare moment of intimacy: “There is a life of the mind which I have hardly touched upon yet.” They could have expanded on that comment but chose not.

  In some ways, Selly was downright immature, a state not at all to be admired. She did not think him fit to live in the wonderful architectural fantasy of their upper-class settlement; he was an eyesore. They all had very small apartments, but it was one of the best specialist settlements in existence. The upper classes needed the stimulus of interesting surroundings, and interest had been taken well toward the limits both visually and kinetically. Their settlement was famous for its dissolving architecture; at any moment a balcony might disappear and drop people to their deaths. This did not happen so often that it was monotonous, but often enough to make living there exciting. In historical times, those people living on fault lines must have been exhilarated in much the same way, Marvene reflected. How ghastly it must be to live in the utilitarian warrens of the lower classes! Would society never find a humane way of ridding itself of all those surplus people left over since human labor had become almost redundant? Marvene profoundly hoped so: they were an anchor to a civilization that needed to sail ahead.

  If Selly were successful even with the potatoes, he would become a very high-ranking upper-class person. They considered him a totally unsuitable candidate for this because of his vulgarity. But whatever they thought, it was necessary to apply the art of flattery. He was always susceptible.

  “Selly, I feel constrained to voice my admiration for your working method today. You are so stylish in your approach to what must feel like mundane tasks to one so advanced as yourself. I wish very much to cultivate your self-control.” Marvene smiled sweetly at him through her diamante-effect contact lenses. The twinkling was a stunning effect, and hid real feeling. Selly was not susceptible to female charm, but in his genetic makeup somewhere there must surely have been a response to beauty, for once, just once, he had reached out to touch Marvene’s hair, which had been trained to move constantly in shining coils, always changing its shape like a mass of slowly dancing snakes. Strictly speaking she was reaching above her present level of society with such styles, but sometimes beauty was forgiven social errors. Because she made such a beautiful model she had managed to get it done free, but she had been obliged to have all the actichips inserted in her skull with only local anaesthetic.

  “Thank you, Marvene. I’m glad you appreciate the difference between mere routine work well done and a truly aesthetic approach to the mundane. I may be able to give you some instruction on that.”

  “Selly, I would be so grateful if you could. If I could only emulate you . . . .”

  “Marvene, it is
all inner work. One has to control the entire self in order to properly control things like grace and care.” He didn’t really have grace, she thought, he was just lethargic.

  “If you talk to yourself, Marvene, daily, and draw all your energies in toward your working self every morning, you will be able to bring more presence to your work.” This wholly patronizing speech was typical and it made her angry. She already did this rather commonplace exercise every morning. She had presence and style, and knew it, and she practiced attitudes toward the day when she meant to grace the highest levels of society. When Marvene had completed her research she would not only have put horrible Selly down, but have a weapon which could forever quell invaders, preventing war, and could possibly be used to keep the lower classes permanently occupied, if not eliminated. She would be remembered.