"Vast implications."

Masha Simjian got up and answered the phone, which was part of a mounted array of devices set into the wall. She listened for a moment and then turned toward Billy.

"Contingency personnel," she said. "There's a loud party going on in your canister."

"Who, mine?"

"A very wild party, contingency says. He hasn't made a security check yet. Wanted to contact you first. I'm repeating what he says semi-verbatim. It sounds excessive. Drinking, shouting, raucous laughter. Someone singing in a very loud voice. Obviously intoxicated, he says. Your canister. A wild, wild party. I'm paraphrasing."

"That's not a wild party," he said. "That's just the tape of a wild party. I was listening to it when they told me to come up here and sit in. There's no wild party. Tell contingency it's just a recording."

"This is a one-way priority phone. I can't tell him anything. You'd better go down there and straighten it out. Unfortunately we can't delay Bhang's clarification of invisible mass. But that doesn't mean you don't have to come back. You have to come back immediately. Melcher-Speidell wants to see you."

"Who's that?" he said.

"Be serious."

"I never heard the name in my life."

"Security man's waiting," she said.

He took the elevator to his sector. Since he hadn't heard the entire tape, he intended to run it over from the beginning. The tape had surprised him to the degree that he now tended to believe what Harry Braniff had crudely implied after making the delivery, that the woman with the eyepatch had absolutely no part in this. First, there was no sign of her voice on that portion of the tape he'd already played. Second, no one on the tape had referred to her in any way-not in dialogue, moan, bellow or song. It was a party tape, all right, and a wild party at that. The focus of the recording was Cyril Kyriakos, the one-armed transitional logician and somewhat cynical father-to-be who had talked a while with Billy and others on the day of the shadow-flow.

On the tape, scattered among shouts, odd remarks, volleys of laughter, sounds of stunning insults and objects flung at walls, weaved freely into all this scat and roar, was an extended song delivered by Cyril in a dissonant tenor voice, altering the metrical flow as he went, talking the lines, then chanting ecclesiastically, sometimes wailing at the high-pitched edge of panic. Billy saw the contingency man waiting in the corridor. He stood there flexing his knees and slowly swinging his arms in front of him, right fist popping into the palm of his left hand, this contact made in synchronization with the bending knees-a characteristic stance of security personnel everywhere. The corridor was quiet, however. No hint of a party or the tape of a party.

"I'm contingency for this sector," the man said. "Kyzyl by name."

"There's no party in there. That's just a tape recording."

"I wondered why it stopped so suddenly."

"Tape."

"I wondered what kind of party would stop so suddenly," Kyzyl said. "Orgy parties sometimes do that out of sheer exhaustion."

"I'll put the volume way down this time."

"While I was here a personage came by and said he wants to receive you in his apartments at the top of the armillary sphere."

"Apartments plural?"

"This is acoustically what I heard."

"It must be Melcher-Speidell."

"He gave no name but said I should be sure to escort you to his quarters."

"Why do I need an escort all of a sudden?"

"An aborigine was seen in the building early this morning."

"What was he seen doing?"

"Lurking," Kyzyl said.

 

O the Swiss and the Swedes Are at it all right A bore of a war And no end in sight

They're killing each other With unlikely skill Who'd have believed it Neutral and Nil

 

It's a bore What a bore It's a bore of a war Logically sound But soft at the core

 

When Vienna surrenders To Cambridge symbolic The null class is Z The peace terms a frolic

 

O bore

What a bore

It's a bore of a war

Deft but bereft

Of a Renaissance roar

 

VOICE 1: What's black and white, left or right, growing little and has no middle?

 

O bring on a genuine algebra war Del Ferro, Fontana, Cardano, Fior None of these formalist postulate sets Less of this Either and Or

 

VOICE 2: This is horrible or words to that effect. Why must they break the furniture?

VOICE 3: End of the world. It's behavior suitable for the end of the world. This is an end-of-the-world party. First in a series. Alcoholic stupors befitting the end of the world. Oblivion as conscious art.

That's all it is, reaction to the rumor that most of the universe is missing.

Fourth dimension Yorkshireman and versifying Jew Pedagogic modern logic came too late for you One is one, two is one, three is two anew

 

Theory of invariants Turbulence serene Higher space contains a trace Of double umbral sheen

 

VOICE 4: Just realized. Cyril and lyric. Cyril's lyric. Just came to me.

Lyric and Cyril.

VOICE 5: So what?

VOICE 4: Bit of insight, that's all.

VOICE 5: Insight into what?

VOICE 6: What's not composite. Can't be divided by insight. No divisors whatsoever except itself and one. What into what is one.

What times one equals what. What times two equals two what. The square root of what is irrational.

 

Nature intrinsic reveals itself Consistent as one, two, three pence Point by point an event unravels Invariant in its sequence

 

But physical significance

And theories vague and sure

And modern relativity and empirical proclivity

All yield the abstract field

To mathematics pure

To mathematics pure

All yield the abstract field

To mathematics pure

 

Shadow of a figure Projected on a plane Two is one, the one that was Different and the same

 

VOICE 3: But it's not just what's missing. Not just the conference.

Not just the name of the conference or the people at the conference.

It's the rumor about the mohole.

VOICE 2: Sounds familiar, that name.

VOICE 3: It's the whole idea of a mohole that's got everyone so anxious and depressed.

VOICE 2: Where have I heard that word?

VOICE 6: Where plus when times the square root of minus-one equals point-event.

 

Matrix theory Covariant junctions Hyperelliptic íheta junctions Umbral notations Dimensional swarms Wine-red canonical binary forms

 

A Igebraic granite

 

Before the set of all sets Not members of themselves Before the class of all classes Similar to a given class

 

O chant and pant a hymn ironic

To deductive demons fierce and chthonic

 

Axiom of reducibility Rule of inverse probability Fallacy of affirming the consequent Fallacy of denying Incremental confirmation Who is dying

 

Play away the sense

Of the logical consequence

Of living

A is disconfirmed to some extent

 

B is bent

Beware, boy, the formal argument

 

Geometry shimmering on rose-stone columns

 

Before the set of all sets Not members of themselves Before the class of all classes Similar to a given class

 

O recite a litany in extremis

To the peaceful end of logical premise

 

Our Lady of Inferred Entities Prey on us

 

Wielder of Occam's Razor Spare our multiplicities

 

Expounder of the Unthinkable Have mercy on our system of signs

 

Elucidator of Logical Form Guide our superstitions

 

Annihilator of Tautologies Bless our refrains

 

Language Inviolate Forgive us our stammer

 

VOICE 1: Two answers really. A book that's being read. The universe itself.

 

Toiled both on their compound discriminant scheme Dividing the light on the half-shadowed shore Induction, experiment,, rapturous dream That night we slept no more That night we slept no more

 

Shadow of a figure Projected on a plane Two is one, the one that was Different and the same

 

Kyzyl escorted the boy to the top of the armillary sphere. To get there they had to take two elevators, enter a fire exit and climb a flight of stairs.

"If you ever have to go to jail," Kyzyl said, "a designated autonomous area is one of the few good places left for that. UN trust territories I rate no better than fair. When we speak of torture, I recommend avoidance of canal zones. This is when we speak of physical torture. Stomping, flaying, bastinado, electric shock. The psychological variety, when we speak of that, you can do a lot worse than enclave republics or gulf protectorates. In protectorates, speaking from personal experience, they use only moderate hooding, they go easy on the monotonous noise, they deprive the body of sleep only in rare instances. Upon release from incarceration you find that you experience only the minimum symptoms. Startle-responses, yes, affirmative. Insomnia, to be expected, but not chronic. Sphincter-spasms, poco poco. Not much heightened anxiety. And very little dread. When we speak of the hooding experience, with or without monotonous noise, and when you've gone through this experience and you're able to function with very little dread, this is when you're entitled to regard yourself as fortune's favorite."

Kyzyl waited outside as the boy entered the large suite of rooms and sat in a laminated chair that smelled faintly of chemicals. The place looked like a mysterious bi-level motel. Colors were neutral and every surface was designed to be heat-resistant and scratchproof. Materials were clearly cheap and unembellished, stressing utility. At the same time there was something grand about the setting, a self-importance not associated with motel decor, and this is what accounted for the composite nature of the suite's appearance. The furniture was immense and the ceiling extremely high. Arched passageways connected the rooms. Enormous mirrors were everywhere, surprising him with his own image, which, as sometimes happens when a person faces a particular mirror for the first time, was not quite what he was accustomed to seeing. He heard heavy steps behind him.

"Yours is a name synonymous with genius."

Orang Mohole was a man of ambiguous pigmentation. He introduced himself and sat in one of the oversized synthetic chairs. He wore a gold mohair smoking jacket with padded shoulders, platinum lapels and a bit of drizzly silver saddle-stitching on each pocket.

"This used to be the maternity ward," he said. "Once the last baby was born, I had it converted. All very unofficial. Not hush-hush really. Just unofficial. No one knows who shouldn't know. I've longed for a setup like this ever since I saw the royal apartments in the summer palace on Guam."

"I thought you were Melcher-Speidell. That's who I was expecting to walk in. When I heard you walk in, I thought that's who it was."

"Melcher-Speidell is a mediocrity and a bore."

"How do you rate yourself?"

"Twice winner of the Cheops Feeley Medal."

"What else?"

"Acknowledged kingpin of alternate physics."

"How come you're not at the conference?"

"Small potatoes," Mohole said. "I sent Bhang in my place. Bhang will present my view of things."

"I thought it was pretty interesting, hearing about what's missing and why they can't find it."

"Who's chairing?"

"They'll all chairing," Billy said. "But there's a lady there who's more or less taken it over."

"We did research together years ago," Mohole said. "Heavy forms of hydrogen."

"What's the story on her?"

"Mediocre breasts."

"What about the leg department?"

"Fair to average."

"I'm supposed to go back there."

"First I want you to tell me the status of your calculations."

"I'm getting close to something."

"Too bad," Mohole said.

"Why bad?"

"First let me tell you what we've got out there. Ratner's star is not about to enter the red giant phase as previously believed. It's a white dwarf. It'll remain so unless it degenerates further to the pulsar stage. This is Space Brain's most painstaking analysis to date. There's one planet, not two. A planet so large it seems to be radiating in the visible end of the spectrum. Enough heat at its core to make it glow. So it's really not a planet at all but a dim star. A dwarf to be sure but a star nonetheless. A red dwarf star. So what we've got out there is a binary dwarf. One red star, one white star."

"That means there are no beings. It must be too hot for beings to exist on that kind of surface if it glows. So no message. Nobody to send."

"You're half right," Mohole said. "Two hot gaseous spheres, completely uninhabitable. No message-senders, true. But there is a message. It didn't come from Ratner's star, however. It only seems to have originated in that part of the galaxy. This is because Ratner's star probably lies within the value-dark dimension, or mohole totality, as I sometimes call it. So the emphasis has shifted from the message itself to the primary source of the message and the secondary nature of the message. We don't really mind if you keep working on decipherment. But the emphasis has shifted."

"Let me see if I have this straight."

"Of course you have it straight."

"But I'm getting near a solution."

"Whether you are or not is less important frankly than where the message came from and why it was reflected, if that's the word I want, toward our part of the galaxy. There's even a feeling among some of my colleagues that you should be prohibited from doing further work on the code. This is to avoid ambiguity. The feeling is that an answer at this point would only beg the question. This is an extreme position, however, and I don't expect it to prevail. Would you like a greenie?"

"What's that?"

"Sometimes my neurons misfire."

"Is it a pill?"

"You swallow it," Mohole said. "You don't stick pins in it or call it up on the telephone. It doesn't have children of its own and a two-car garage. Yes, it's a pill."

"What would it do for me?"

"Depends on what type brain you have."

"They come in types?"

Mohole got up and took a meditative stroll around the large room. His hands were plunged into the deep pockets of his smoking jacket. He wore two-toned shoes, silver and black, with tasseled laces. His trouser cuffs had been unstitched and extended full length, leaving shriveled indentations where the turned-up folds had been. He took a large green pill out of his pocket and put it on his tongue. His face seemed a hasty contrivance, making Billy think of a police sketch of a suspect as described by several witnesses. There was too much space between the eyes. His lips were very thin, seemingly at odds with the general heft of his body. He had a flat nose and high cheekbones and his electrified hair curled almost straight up. He closed his eyes now and threw back his head in a sudden convulsive motion, simultaneously gasping as he swallowed the pill.

"Except for the first one thousandth of a second, we can trace the evolution of the universe from the big bang to the present moment," he said. "In my early work on background radiation, which is detectable evidence of the fireball of the big bang, if there was a big bang, I developed a theory, listen to this, about a strange kind of mechanism at work in the universe. This is the value-dark dimension, or mohole totality, and it's the core idea of a unique system of relativity. This is Moholean relativity, just beginning to attract attention, very controversial, named by me after myself. What I theorize happens in a mohole is that X-rays, gamma rays, ultraviolet light, radio waves, gas, dust clouds and so forth are trapped and held by relativistic forces we don't fully understand as yet-forces created in the first one thousandth of a second after the universe began. Incidentally it's no good trying to visualize a mohole. I've already tried and it can't be done. Nobody knows what it looks like because it doesn't look like anything. And we can't pinpoint its location because it seems to have many locations- another way of saying there are moholes numbering n-and they all seem to shift, affecting different parts of the computer universe for varying amounts of time. The sum total of all moholes is what I call the value-dark dimension. All the key words in this explanation, by the way, are totally misleading due to the everyday quirks of language."

He returned to the chair and sat.

"A mohole traps electromagnetic information, among other things, and then either releases it or doesn't. It's as though the mohole were a surface that absorbs light and sound and then reflects either or both to another part of the universe. But it's not a surface and it doesn't absorb. It's a mohole. It's part of a theoretical dimension lacking spatial extent and devoid of time value. Value-dark in other words."

He rubbed his crotch briefly and then crossed his legs without remembering to unwedge his hand.

"The answer to what happened in the first one thousandth of a second after the universe began probably hinges on an investigation of exo-ionic sylphing compounds. This substance seems to be present, as far as I can tell, wherever there are moholes, although what I've just said indicates, more than anything else, the inadequacies of human language in the face of the mohole phenomenon, since 'wherever there are- moholes' implies that a mohole occupies space, which it doesn't. I suppose it could be said that a mohole is space-time raised to a higher electrovalent power, or sylphed."

He leaned to one side, resting his head in his free hand and appearing to be on the verge of sleep.

"My model of the universe is open at the bottom, closed at the top. Imagine two triangles sharing the same base. With one abnormality: the base is invisible. This gives us two apexes, representing the closed top, while the lack of a base signifies the invisible mass. Can you visualize such a figure?"

"A stellated twilligon."

"I postulate eventual collapse in a sort of "-bottomed hole or terminal mohole. First let me describe the two paths of expansion in my model- paths represented by the two left or ascending sides of the twilligon as you call it, both lines generated by the same point. One path is taken up by detectable matter, growing outward since the big bang. The other line is gravity, getting stronger as the universe becomes more dense with both detectable and missing matter. We are currently at the apex of matter, the halfway point of gravity. As expansion ceases we turn our attention to the right or descending sides of the figure. What was open begins to close. Matter begins its inward fall at the apex of the twilligon. Gravity becomes dominant at the sub-apex. The two right sides converge at the same terminal point. Gravity clutches matter in a terrific frenzy."

His hand had sunk even deeper into the pouch between his thighs and he spoke very slowly now, talking almost by rote.

"Nothing escapes the final collapse into an entity that nearly contradicts the word 'entity.' On second thought, let's not say 'nothing.' Let's say 'almost nothing.' I leave an opening, you see. I make an allowance for an indefinite number of bottoms. The average hole is either bottomless or uni-bottomed. An ^-bottomed hole allows my model to qualify as an open universe. This is the privilege of a self-confessed maverick. A minor maneuver just short of cheating. All this gorgeous matter-crush shouldn't have to end in a totally hopeless situation. I give things a chance to drip through. The final mohole is not leakproof. I leave a little opening. We can't actually see this on paper or even in our minds because the two descending sides of the twilligon conclude in a single point and you can't have an opening in a point. But we can pretend a little, can't we? We're not so scientific that we can't have a little make-believe, right? Then, if something drips through, there's a continuation, another chance, the universe refreshed."

Seconds after he spoke the last word he closed his eyes and fell asleep. Billy thought of leaving but remembered that Kyzyl was waiting outside to escort him. He assumed Kyzyl wouldn't leave, or let him leave, without some word from Orang Mohole, who had put the escort rule into effect. After half an hour Mohole opened his eyes.

"If Moholean relativity is valid," he said, "we'll one day witness events that do not conform to the predispositions of science. We may be confronted, pay attention, with a totally unforeseen set of circumstances. This is implicit in Moholean relativity and explains why my theorizing hasn't won greater support."

"You said you got the Cheops Feeley Medal."

"Twice," he said. "But neither time for moholes. Just mention the value-dark dimension and people go glassy-eyed. All these fears about invisible mass. These morbid parties full of whimpering people. Missing matter is explained by Moholean relativity. The mass holding the galaxies together is trapped in moholes. This is why we can't find it. Some people accept this but many more don't. Thus the end-of-the-world parties. Oddly the people showing the greatest fear are often the same ones who support every step in my formulation, from the big bang to the n-bottomed hole. The explanation for the missing mass frightens them more than the fact that so much mass is missing. These are scientists so-called. What's your reaction?"

"If you deserve it, you should get it."

"It would be unprecedented, a third Cheops Feeley. The award secretly coveted by everyone in the sciences. The one they'd lie and cheat to get. It's the underground prize, given for work that has an element of madness to it. Of course, no one says this openly. But we all know that madness content is a determining factor."

"How much in cash?"

"When you talk about cash, stick to the Nobel Prize. I'll never get one of those, not for something with the high madness content of moholes."

"If it's so crazy, why blame the people afraid of it?"

"Theory, in theory, that's in theory. Everything we've discussed is pure theory. In theory it's soothing, it's lovely, it explains a great deal. If the theory is ever tested, however, and if they find evidence of real-life moholes, then it's every man for himself. The laws are different there, you see. Although some of my lesser colleagues would argue against this, I am convinced that alternate physics is not designed to cope with physical reality; that is, with the real world. As kingpin, I would probably react more drastically than anyone. This has always been part of my psychological value pattern. I have never been far from snapping. This is in confidence I'm telling you this."

"What do you think would happen if you snapped?"

"We won't talk about that," Mohole said.

"Anyway, about the Nobel Prize, aren't they holding up some of the awards this year?"

"You got yours."

"I think they're trying to decide some of the tricky ones."

"I'm completely self-taught," Mohole said. "I took correspondence courses. I went to the library. I practically lived in the library. A lot of people become deeply involved in their work but only self-taught people experience total murderous obsession. It took years but I finally beat them at their own game."

"What game?"

"Science."

"What's wrong with two medals with your kind of background?"

"I'm a snapper, that's what wrong. When things start getting unbearable I see myself getting a high-powered rifle out of the closet."

"Then what?"

"We won't discuss it further."

"They'll want me getting back there to sit in."

"I was fanatically determined to make my mark among the great figures of modern science and I've done it, I've succeeded, a two-time Cheops Feeley medalist, all the work and struggle rewarded with an entire theoretical system of relativity named in my honor. But plenty could still happen if it moves out of the realm of theory."

"Named in your honor by you yourself."

"Are you criticizing?"

"Not that I'm criticizing."

"Einstein wasn't all wrong, you know. I certainly don't think my efforts lead inescapably to that conclusion. He did some promising work in pure mathematics before regrettably abandoning that field at the age of sixteen, I believe it was."

"You mean Einstein wasn't all right. He made a little mistake here and there. That's what you mean."

"If I seem to be raising my voice," Mohole said in a calm tone, "it's only because I recognize your right to correct me. I wouldn't be yelling if I didn't respect you. Yelling is a bond between people who respect each other despite invalid corrections. We yell and scold as a way of paying homage to each other's views. This is the burden of friendship between extremely high-strung individuals. If we didn't accept the burden, we'd be sworn enemies. Friendship is exasperating at best. But think of the alternative."

"I am."

"The essence of my brand of relativity-that in a mohole the laws of physics vary from one observer to another-is at odds with every notion of the universe that displays a faith in nature. In the value-dark dimension the laws are not equally binding in all frames of reference, whether accelerated or nonaccelerated, and if I get up and leave suddenly it's because I have to use the vomitorium."

He put another green pill in his mouth. Billy was certain that if he threw his head back as abruptly as he had the last time he swallowed, the head would smash against the back of the chair, perhaps causing a whiplash injury to Mohole's neck or spine. But this time he used an abbreviated head-jerk, beginning his gasp sooner and sustaining it until a scant trace of bilious secretion appeared on his lips. Billy théught this would be followed by stomach matter, the gush itself, but before it could happen Mohole rose from the chair, uttering hoarse dry sounds, and disappeared into one of the rear chambers. When he returned he was wearing a turquoise cravat.

"So the radio signals have the characteristics of an echo," he said. "Although a mohole has no surface and radiates no heat, the message gives every indication of having been reflected from a high-temperature object of very dense surface composition."

"But you don't want to know what it says."

"Now that Ratner's star has been ruled out as the source of the transmission, we don't want to' presuppose a new conclusion. We want to pursue certain lines of argument without outside equivocation. In other words you needn't overexert yourself on cracking the code."

"You want to find out who sent it and from where but not what it says."

"It would only beg the question."

"An answer."

"Exactly," Mohole said.

"It's probably not a good idea to say who's going to stop me if 1 decide to keep working."

"Can you blow bubbles with spit?"

"Only little."

"I do big," Mohole said.

"Can you sneeze out of just one nostril?"

"Have a greenie."

"They're so big. I've never seen pills that big."

"Have one for your head."

"Look how big."

"Have a greenie."

"Even if I knew what they did to my type brain, I couldn't swallow it because of the size."

"Some people are swallowers, some aren't. I concede that. But have one anyway."

"Can you belch at will?"

"A greenie," Mohole said.

"Everybody knows about drugs and jumping off roofs."

"Do it to please me."

"How can it please you to give me something I don't want?"

"That's the way high-strung people are. We expect others to make small sacrifices for the sake of our emotional calm. Now that I've explained things, will you take the greenie?"

"No."

"I feel hurt when people refuse to accept what I offer. 1 can't tell you how hurt I feel. Hurt enough to snap. Granted, some people aren't known as swallowers. Still, I hurt all over. In fact I see myself with a high-powered rifle and a whole lot of ammunition. I'm standing in a window high above the street."

"What else?"

"That's all I'm saying."

"Make a deal."

"My psychological value pattern is what it is and there's nothing 1 can do about it."

"A deal," the boy said. "I'll take the greenie if I can keep it for later."

"Done," Mohole said. "Once it's out of my hands and in yours, I know you've accepted it and I feel less inclined to raise my voice, much less fill the streets with random gunfire."

"The lady told me to get back at once."

"That reminds me. I'm having some female companionship drop up later today. Maybe you'd like to stay around and meet it."

"What's it consist of?"

"There's only one but she might have a sister."

"They told me to get back at once and I didn't. If you could find out for sure about the sister thing, I could try to leave the meeting early again."

"Do you like it here?"

"What, here?"

"The whole big place."

"I don't see myself making a career out of it."

"Are you entering into things?"

"No."

"Enter into things," Mohole said.

"I don't see it."

"Make an effort. Are you making an effort?"

"No."

"Make an effort," he said. "That's what I failed to do at your stage of the game and even much later. I didn't enter into things, with the result that I felt left out, consistently on the verge of snapping. I didn't make the effort. So what would happen? I would see myself with a high-powered rifle and big boxes of ammo. I'm standing in a window high above the street. I'm firing wildly. I'm shooting anything that moves. Then I'm yelling at anyone left out there who'll listen. 'I'm a snapper! I snapped! It's not my fault!' Yelling and firing simultaneously."

"What then?"

"Maybe you'd better tell me your partner preference," Mohole said.

"Whatever's normal in my situation."

"Maybe you don't want someone's sister. There are different varieties of companionship dropping up to a place like this."

"Let's stay with the sister thing for now."

"Tell you what let's do," Mohole said. "You go on back to the conference and I'll contact you when I've made arrangements. It might turn into a very unique soiree. It just happens that I'm a paid consultant to a sex engineering outfit. Devices galore."

"I like the name."

"That's not their name. That's what they make. Remember not to tell anyone I've had this place converted. No one knows who shouldn't know. And don't worry if I seem to raise my voice. When I stop shouting at you, that's the time to worry."

He showed the boy around the rest of the suite. The furniture in every room had the same surly gleam, a waxless finish that seemed an indestructible trait rather than something adhering to the objects themselves. There were towel racks everywhere. Refrigerated air seeped from large vents in the wall. The sofas, drapes and lampshades had plastic covers labeled OMCO RESEARCH. There was no sign of the translucent inner surface of the sphere itself; partitions had been erected as part of the renovation. An ornamental footbath graced the vom-itorium. Mohole opened a cabinet and displayed his collection of "specialty scents"-artificial fragrances packaged in aerosol cans. Billy noted a few of the labels. "CHEESE, CRACKERS AND DRINKS." "DINNER FOR TWO-SEAFOOD SERIES." "WOOD-BURNING FIRE." "COFFEE TABLE AURA -FRESH   FLOWERS,   CIGARETTES,   AFTER-DINNER   CORDIALS."   "HEAPED GARMENTS."   "BEDSHEETS   AND   HAND   LOTION."   "NUDE   FEMALE   BODY (MOIST)-SENSE OF URGENCY SERIES." One can was simply marked "YVONNE, YVONNE." The suite's seeming contradiction, that of functional objects contained in a space of baronial proportions, made the boy feel slightly dislocated. But the sight of so many TV sets, all with swivel mechanisms, revived him. It was like a nineteenth-century motel, magnificent and bland, the traveler desolate in this unnatural immensity, a painless estrangement for all.

"Poverty is exhausting," Kyzyl said. "I've seen it etched on many a face. We used to make early dawn sweeps across the urban centers, tagging indigents for further study. We'd proceed forth in unmarked half-tracks and commence tagging with coded markers. These were tired people. When we speak of poverty, this is co-synonymous with extreme fatigue. Migration patterns can't be studied without tagging. But the average migrant indigent, even when we talk of his fatigue and his flagged-out spirits, he sometimes posed a bodily threat to the funded personnel. He with his people resisted being tagged, resisted wearing the tag, resisted the idea of tagging, the whole concept enforcement. It was a study. There was funding. But the poverty mentality resists this. Migrant workers, as opposed to indigents, were too lethargic one way or the other. People who follow the sun are easy to tag and we had checkpoint activity throughout the warmer zones. But the indigents resisted. We utilized no force or prereaction sweeps except as they applied. Applied force is sanctioned by most confederations of the destitute. This is first-hand from personal experience that we utilized only optional weaponry and never inflicted as we say incommensurate pain. Pain inflicted had to be equal to the threat to our persons. There's a difference between exhaustion and lethargy. Exhausted people are known to be dangerous. They don't display the torpor and stupor of people who follow the sun by the truckload, making them easy to tag. So the question of fatigue is double-edged, commingled with the language problem, and many experts on dialect proceeded forth into the urban enclaves to explain to the indigents that this was all a study to learn more about their migratory patterns. A funded study. But they resisted the coded markers. They fought with their teeth and feet. In our lightly armored vehicles we conversed among ourselves. 'How tired they seem,' we said."

Billy realized that Kyzyl was escorting him back to his canister rather than to the large room with the bare octagonal table. This made sense, come to think of it, because Kyzyl didn't know he was supposed to return to the Conference on Invisible Mass. Once inside, with Kyzyl waiting beyond the door, he decided in a moment of minor defiance to do some further work on the star code. He turned off the light and began to calculate, his silky pencil forming giant numbers on the plain white sheet. The videophone chimed five times. He pushed a button on the panel and the screen filled with light. There was no one there, however. The only thing he could see was a tricycle in the background, dimly.

"Big B., can you hear me?"

"Where are you?"

"It's Endor."

"Talking from where?"

"On the floor," the voice said. "Don't want you to see me. But I want you to hear. Can you do that?"

"You're coming in weak."

"How about now?"

"Better."

"I'm down on the floor shouting up into the talk gadget. Don't try to see me. Do you know where I am?"

"Down on the floor."

"I mean where in what locale."

"The hobby room."

"Good guess."

"I recognized the tricycle."

"That's where I am, all right. Walked in early this morning. Came in from the hole. Came limping through the mud and grass. I've been digging, lad. Clawing my way down. But I wanted to take a break and come weaving in all mud-laden and scrawny for the express purpose of talking to you. You can't see me, can you?"

"No."

"They padlocked my room. You know that?"

"Yes."

"What are we going to do about that?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I," Endor said. "With no room of my own, I had to come up here to the so-called hobby room. At least they haven't touched my things. My things are intact. Important to have things of your own. Untouched and intact. But there's still the other room to think about, the real room, padlocked. We'll have to figure something out, Big Bill, because eventually you're going to want to sit in my room a spell. Things are scheduled to get worse around here. That much I know. You can count on it, although you'll wish you hadn't."

"So what do I do?"

"Sit tight and listen. I want to tell you all I know. Admittedly it's not much but we have to assume it's better than nothing. Might help you forestall the mongers. I'm all skin and bone. You can't see me, can you?"

"You're coming in weak again."

"My hands are cupped to my mouth. I'm on my back with cupped hands to mouth to get my voice up to the talk mechanism."

"Hardly hear you."

"Skin, bone and whisper," Endor said. "Tell you what, Big Bill. Close your eyes and I'll get myself up on my feet and talk right into the thing. Tell me when you're ready."

"Now."

"Eyes closed?"

"Shut tight."

"I don't trust you," Endor said. "I'm going back down to the floor. On the count of three, you can open your eyes. I'll cup my hands tighter this time. That should funnel my words up to you in the loudest death-wheeze I can manage. One two three."

"All open."

"I love to count," the voice said. "Counting has given me special pleasure down through the years. I can think of innumerable occasions when I stopped what I was doing and did a little counting for the sheer intellectual pleasure of it. I admire the work of the Prussians in this regard. Kronecker, Jacobi et al. Those Prussians could count. Since getting settled in the hole I've gone back to finger counting. Usually I start with the thumb of the left hand. Sometimes the pinky finger just to vary the routine. I'm taking some pebbles back with me this trip. One thing the hole lacks is pebbles. That's what I'll do on the way back. Gather some pebbles. It'll break up the trip. Also give me something to count besides fingers. What's eighteen times eleven times twenty-three minus five hundred and one plus forty-three multiplied by two minus eight thousand one hundred and ninety-two?"

"Zero."

"Just testing your wits," Endor said.

"I don't like that kind of calculating. I do it automatically but it's dumb."

"I worked it out beforehand in the hole. I know you can do much tougher but my mental apparatus isn't what it used to be. I wanted to throw in some logarithms and cube roots but couldn't remember how they work. Settled for a lot of odd numbers. Thought that might throw you."

"It makes no difference odd or even."

"Your wits have to be sharp for what's ahead so I thought I'd give you a flash quiz just to help you hone up. It won't be long, lad. Seventeen times forty-one."

"Six ninety-seven."

"I know you can do tougher."

"Do you know a person or persons named Harry Braniff?" Billy said.

"Person or persons?"

"This Braniff person delivered an object to my room through the exit grating and I'm wondering if you know him or know who the person is who told him to do it."

"I have no standing around here."

"I listened to the object and it sounded like it might be important but I don't know in what way important."

"I have no standing, lad. I have no resources to call on. I live alone in a hole. I claw through dirt with a wire hanger and my bare nails, uttering nonverbal sounds as I dig deeper. There's nothing important I'm capable of doing except tell you what little I know and offer you the psychological security of my padlocked room if you can figure out how to negate the padlock. I have no current status."

"Person or persons unknown, I guess."

"I lit out for the hole because I couldn't break the code. What's doing on the code, Big Bill? The code about finished me. I grew to hate the thing and the people who devised it. Lost faith in myself. Cursed science and the natural limits of man. Finger counting is one of the few pleasures left to me now. Number systems are beautiful structures and none is more beautiful than the set of natural numbers and there's no better way to appreciate this beauty than to count your way upward, starting with the number one. You can count and count and count and count. No matter how long you count, how many unnamable numbers you utter beyond googolplex and glossolalia for how many years and decades, there's still one more number, it's still an open-ended sequence, it still outflies the imagination. I tried to break the code but the code broke me."

"I have a feeling the answer's very simple."

"The universe is so big, lad. What are we going to do about it?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I," Endor said.

"A lot of it is missing, so it's not nearly as big as it could be. The value-dark dimension. A lot of the universe is trapped in there. We can't find it. That's why the galaxies aren't flying apart the way they should be."

"I thought they were flying apart in orderly fashion," Endor said. "Things flee. Everything hurtles to the edge and over the edge."

"Moholean relativity."

"This is new to me. Word of this hasn't reached me. They keep changing things on me. If it's not an addition it's a subtraction and if not a subtraction then a correction. Extremely depressing at times."

"Mohole told me all about it," Billy said. "He has a whole room just for vomiting."

"The history of science is crosshatched with lines of additive and corrective thought. This is how we try to arrive at truth. Truth accumulates. It can be borrowed and paid back. We correct our predecessors, an effete form of assassination, and then we wait either in this life or the next for the corrective dagger to be slipped twixt our own meatless ribs. Here it comes, zip, the end of an entire cosmology."

"A lot of people are worried."

"It's the size of things that worries people. No reason for the universe to be so large. It contains more space than I deem absolutely necessary. More time as well. Know who I envy?"

"No."

"Take a guess."

"Don't know."

"Low-gravity creatures," Endor said. "On a low-gravity planet the inhabitants are long, slender and delicate. This is how I think of the Ratnerians. I see them drifting across the terrain, almost ectoplasmi-cally, a race of emanations merely flecked with solid matter. Yes. Beings nearly free of their planet's gravity."

"There is no planet. There's nothing up there but a couple of dwarf stars. The message came from somewhere else. This is what they're trying to find out more than what it says."

"This is new to me."

"Me too."

"What happens next?"

"Practically nothing," the boy said. "I keep my distance. I play around with the message but nothing more. That's what happens next."

"You go along with this?"

"I never asked to come here. I didn't care about the star code or even know if it was real. So now I'm just starting to get somewhere and they tell me to hold off. If that's what they want, maybe that's what I'll do. Out of spite. I believe in spite. Spite makes me feel good."

"Never misuse the freedom to invent," Endor said.

"What's that mean?"

The elderly former scientist cleared his throat for a full ten seconds, obviously building up to some kind of oration.

"Work till it hurts, lad. This is demanded of you. We all demand it. It's what you owe your chosen field. We insist on the highest striving of your intellect. There's only one way to create, as if your life depended on it, which it does. The message will tell us our place in this largest of all possible universes. No less than a total effort of your imagination must be brought to bear on this task. Every part is interconnected and all the numbers flow in proper sequence. If you don't give us every scrap of what you are, we die in strongly scented heaps. Whatever order can be conceived by the left-handed mind is yours to impose elsewhere. Whatever sense of form can be induced to rise out of the horizontal mist is yours to reapportion. Where perfect measurement beckons, no one but you is fit to sand the final beam. Mathematics is an expression of the will to live. Merely to play with it is to see your own basic nature crushed. Only the fiercest risks make existence possible. Throw yourself forward, lad. Devise forms that will explain the things around you. Wriggle out of your mortal silk. Avoid the body's wane in events of spectral perfection. Know the names of things and write them like a child in elemental lists. Who was it said names and numbers give us power over the world? Spengler no less. Never dismiss the intuition of the ancients, who believed that number is the essence of all things. The mathematical vision is not manifest in what is written and taught alone. Number is a metaphysic, the secret source of entire cultures, and men have been killed for their heresies and seductive credos. The whole history of mathematics is subterranean, taking place beneath history itself, misunderstood, ignored, ridiculed, unread, a shadow-world scarcely perceived even by the learned. Of adventure, greatness, insanity and suicide, it is nevertheless a history of nothing happening. Of nothing happening. Magnitudes correspond in terms of proportion. Variables in terms of function. But nothing ever happens. Statements are proved to be neither provable nor disprovable. Nothing has happened, yet everything is changed. Existence would be sheer dread without the verifiable fictions of mathematics. So sacrifice all, Big Bill. Fill every delicate invention with all your pain and every raging extract of your talent. Nothing less than sanity itself must be tipped into the scheme. Compulsions, tumults, fevers, epileptic storms. What is unlearned, along with your craftiest fabrications. Remember the savage and what he accomplished in his instinct for pure space and the mathematics of motion. Inventor of the boomerang. Yes, he pulled the string on space itself. The right side of his brain outprocessed the left. Intuition and motion and the conquest of time. It's the object of your labor, lad, to join the hemispheres. Bring logical sequence to delirium, reason to the forager squatting, language and meaning to the wild child's dream."

"All that?"

Endor began to cough and spit. The last of his strength had apparently been exhausted by the requirements of the formal speech he'd chosen to make and Billy imagined him on his back, arms and legs extended, chest pumping, warm spittle mingling in his beard with slime mold and the living mucus of his last meal. As time passed his cough assumed a tone of total desolation, the sound of a near bark, sufficient to define the residue of an existence.

"Three plus three times two."

"Twelve."

"See you at the hole," Endor said. "And, remember, there's a point after which it is possible to stop digging and take the free fall. Use your imagination. That'll tell you when to make the switch."

A long silence followed. He looked at the white tricycle on the screen. There was an electronic tremor and the picture went blank. He tried to get some work done. Endor's visitation left him feeling puzzled, maybe in part because it was nonvisual in nature. He decided to return to the meeting. Kyzyl escorted him to the door of the conference room. Puzzled, yes, but not unhappy. He liked being called lad, particularly by a bearded person. There was something pleasantly old-fashioned about it.

"But now a new theory has been put forth, one of vast implications."

He couldn't understand why anyone would wear a toupee that looked like a bowl haircut. As Bhang Pao spoke he made hand-washing gestures, each hand curling in and out of the other. Masha Simjian sucked on hard candy. The other two scientists listened in a bland daze. Billy took his seat in the corner and worked to perfect a look of peripheral interest. Bhang Pao, in a concisely passionate narration, discussed space-time sylphed and went on to summarize the rest of Orang Mo-hole's relativity theory.

"The laws are not equally valid there," he concluded. "Unpredictable events may flow from a given mohole or moholes. We don't know precisely what sort of events. Catastrophe, natural or unnatural, can't be ruled out. There is one hopeful note. The message of the star gods is still in effect. All we know is that the message-senders do not live on a planet in orbit around Ratner's star. Nevertheless they do live, they do exist, and this is cause for optimism if not unalleviated joy."

The door opened and Melcher-Speidell entered. In the midst of introductions Maidengut explained to Billy that the contributions of these two men in the field of alternate physics were so interdependent that the men themselves had come to be spoken of as a single individual, their names latched by an undying hyphen. Maidengut then carried two extra chairs to the table and everyone was seated. Billy was still in the corner. Lepro sat between Melcher-Speidell.

"There's nothing to get excited about," Melcher said. "When you talk and talk and talk about alternate modes of physical reality, as we've had to talk in our chosen endeavor, when you theorize and theorize, then it just seems to happen, whatever it is you're talking about, coming as no big shock, and this too shall pass is the way you tend to react is my reaction. We're just in the first stage. Nothing significant will happen until we're fully ready for it. This is the way it usually works. The idea begins to develop and spread. The thing or event becomes increasingly conceivable in hundreds of thousands of minds. The next stage is usually frightening imminence. The thing or event becomes frighteningly imminent. This is nothing special to get excited about and I want to say at this juncture how happy we are to have this opportunity of a faces-to-face encounter with the radical accelerate in our midst in order to reassure him that his work on the mathematical content of the transmission is no longer of vital priority status. The last stage is what really matters."

"Alternate physics, if it teaches us anything," Speidell said, "it teaches us that once you go across the line, once you're over the line and left without your classical sources, your rational explanations, the whole of your scientific ethos, once this happens you have to pause. You have to pause as we may have to pause someday in the future. You're over the line, sure, but that doesn't mean you have to keep going or hurl yourself into the uncharted void. This is nonsense. You pause. You reflect. You get your bearings. Alternate physics, if it's to move out of the theoretical realm, as it may have to one day, I guarantee you, with a vengeance, and into areas of direct application, must give us the bearings we need, or, lacking bearings to give, must soothe and support. We've come to an exciting time. Let's take the positive view and emphasize the challenge. I'm excited about this. I want to communicate my excitement but don't know how. I have my individual peculiarities. Things I cherish about myself. Private parts of me. I'm introspective. Fond of adults. Collect fruit and pennies. Like to take long walks on the beach. No better place to walk, incidentally. Sand toughens the calf muscles. You need this in the hypothetical sciences."

"Why or because is it," Lepro said, "that the number one speaker here to my right hand says in his own words nothing to get excited about and this is followed upon by my left hand here, who, why or because of the positive challenge, says excitement, excitement. Is this difference why or because of basic disagreement on essentials or why or because of semantics? Who accepts semantics, those of us at the table, omitting the corner person? I say no. You ask why or because not. I answer why or because it's too good to be true, that's why or because not. The beach is a diversion. On my left brings in his beach why or because he wants to keep us from thinking of the issue itself, which is that the sky above may be getting funny."

The one-way priority phone buzzed loudly. Simjian went to the panel, picked up the telephone, listened for a few seconds, sourly, and then turned toward Billy.

"It's for you again. A man who says he doesn't want to give his name but says you'll know who he is by the message. I'll try to repeat the message word for word as he relays it, although for the life of me I don't know why we should have to keep interrupting this conference in order to take messages for someone who's merely sitting in. 'Double companionship not feasible. But can be simulated repeat simulated. Finger-feelies, sensitizers, inflatable vulvettes. Workmanship tops, stop, atmosphere conducive to you-know-what, stop, soft lights and special scents, stop, promise memorable moments to all who dare yield to their burgeoning teenage sensuality, stop, all happening in my apartments atop the you-know-where. Discuss with no one repeat no one.' "

"I don't accept the call."

"That voice sounded familiar," Simjian said. "Was that who I think it was?"

"Yes."

"Because if it was, he's famous for his personal sleaziness."

"He's completely self-taught."

"Not to mention the tasteless events he likes to host," she said. "Degenerate ceremonies featuring objects and gadgets that mock our bodies."

"Speaking of ceremonies," Maidengut said, "I have some depressing news for almost everyone here. A torch-lighting ceremony is scheduled for the Great Hall. Tomorrow at dusk. All thirty-two of the resident Nobel laureates are supposed to be in attendance."

"What's depressing about that?" Simjian said.

"Nobel laureates only. Nobody else allowed. Pretty inconsiderate if you ask me. They might have included some of the rest of us."

"I've never seen a torch-lighting ceremony," Bhang Pao said. "I assume they light torches and hand them out. The torches are doubtless prelighted as a safety precaution and then everyone participating surely advances in a slow-moving line as the torches are handed out. After that I suspect everyone stands solemnly in place, holding his or her lighted torch as the ceremony unfolds."

"What's the ceremony all about?" Billy said. "I bet it has something to do with the aborigine."

"What aborigine?" Maidengut said.

"The white-haired aborigine. The nameless one. Somebody saw him this morning lurking around. I thought maybe they found him and wanted to do something nice, to show what they thought of him, the way he whirled."

"It's for Ratner," Maidengut said. "They're honoring Ratner."

"I didn't know there was a Ratner."

"He's being flown in from the States. His first visit here. Got the Nobel Prize for physics when he was a fairly young man and that was a long, long time ago. Wonderful occasion, really, even if they insist on restricting it. A great man. The Great Hall. Ratner himself."

Melcher-Speidell got up and left. The others soon followed-all but Maidengut and the boy. The former sat heavily entrenched, solidifying his relationship with the chair. He seemed to be waiting for a conclusive remark to be made or final question to be asked before he either left the room or fell through the chair and the floor beneath it. Billy paused at the door.

"The Ratner of Ratner's star?"

"The very same," Maidengut said.

This brief exchange completed, Kyzyl escorted the boy back to his canister.

 

10 OPPOSITES

 

He passed through twillig-shaped openings in the air, an infinite series of discrete convenient gateways.

Nobody seemed to know where the Great Hall was. He went to a nearby dining unit and checked the bulletin board ("advisory dispatch chart") for word of a torch-lighting ceremony. No word. No sign of Ratner's name. No directions to Great Hall. He read the lone note pinned there,

 

Vintage art films-8 millimeter Sale or rent

1  - "Two in a Tub"

2 - "Aunt Polly's Banana Surprise"

3 - "What the Butler Did"

4 - "Volleyball Follies"

5 - "Frenchy and the House Dick"

Contact O. Mohole Maternity Suite

By appointment only

 

He walked along a semicircular corridor, asking directions in vain, met in fact with squinted eyes and little sniffles, everyone reacting to this entity the Great Hall in similar fashion, civilized pygmies asked to climb sequoia trees, something ancestral in their replies, a captive skepticism shading every face. Eventually he came to a moving walkway ("linear glide") and stepped on. He'd never ridden on one of the linear glides, although he'd seen them once or twice in different parts of the building. It was a pleasant experience. You simply stood there, holding on to the moving strap above your head. The strap, similar to the kind found in subways, was suspended from a flexible-strength wire that enabled you to pull it down to suit your particular stature.

Only moments earlier he'd imagined he was moving through air-gaps cut to his shape, an infinite number of distinct apertures. Now, on the linear glide, he felt he was passing through one continuous hole. Precisely his height and width. A custom perforation. Even a special opening to accommodate his raised right arm. He moved in a straight line through a dim midevening monochrome, a kind of interior dusk, abstract murals on either side. At one point a large figure, adumbral and shapeless, was superimposed on the geometry of walls and ceiling. Unerringly rendered shapes and amorphous overshadow. What was there about these surfaces that made the journey seem descendent and led him to believe he was breathing sheerest calculus? Strict precision strict. Down the line to dream the subliminal blend of number and function. Analysis rethought in arithmetical terms. Opposed positions.

Whole numbers providing the substance for the continuous torsional spring of analysis. Atomism and flow. Down the line past history's black on white. Ideal of proof ideal.

Every semirecluse has his amaranthine woman. Imaginary love-lies-bleeding. "But in this case," Softly had written, "the woman was not only real but a mathematician as well. This is Sonja Kowalewski and we can only guess at the levels of intensity during those afternoons when she arrives at his home for lessons. Twenty years old to his fifty-five. Aristocratic and social, while he is accustomed to life in remote villages. To someone fixed in solitude she must have seemed a brighter presence than he could bear. She is brilliant, attractive, Moscow-born, an Eastern jade (it is suspected) determined to have her pick of the schoolmaster's gifts. So we speculate on .the density of their meetings. The quality of the sunlight in his parlor. The tone of their discussions on power series and irrational numbers. The very clothes she wears. His face, while she listens. Her eyes, adventuring. Is it within the student's vested right to consume the preceptor's soul? He is a bachelor, remember, while she is married (in name at least). Another level worth exploring. To empty each other of possessions. To negate each other's artificial names. In his regard for logic, proof, exactitude and caution, he tries not to dwell on his own belief that death is payment for risks not taken, and pours himself a beer. And for her part-what? Does she have fantasies about mathematics? Does she imagine that in his attacks of vertigo he spins from room to room, a scientist trying to cope with holiness, or perhaps himself immune, a germ-carrier of ecstasy? She titles a mathematical memoir: On the Rotation of a Solid Body About a Fixed Point. They pass their afternoons and when she dies (surprise) he burns her letters." Of, pertaining to, or resembling the amaranth. An imaginary flower that never fades.

In the wall ahead was an archlike opening through which the linear glide continued to move. The hole was about as tall and wide as he was. He stepped off the glide just as it whispered through the darkened arch. Adjacent to this opening was a door with a black arrow painted on it. The arrow pointed down. He opened the door and went down a flight of old stone steps, cracked in many places. The lighting consisted of a makeshift network of low-watt bulbs strung along the ceiling, He came to the bottom of the vertical shaft around which the staircase had been constructed. There was a large jagged hole in one wall and next to the hole stood a man with a plastic torch in his hand, flames two feet high.

"I'm Evinrude," he said. "You're very, very late."

"Is this the ceremony?"

"They're working out size places and they want the smallest last. That's the only thing that saved you."

"But this is the ceremony for Ratner, right?"

"Just to make it official, I have to ask if you're a laureate."

"Yes."

"In what field?"

"Mathematics."

"Because only laureates are allowed beyond this point," Evinrude said.

"Zorgs. I won for zorgs."

"What's that?"

"A class of numbers."

"Out of curiosity, would I know what you were talking about if you described them further?"

"No."

"Can people do things with these numbers of yours?"

"The average person, forget about, but in his book-to-be, right where I'm up to now, Softly says zorgs in their own way hark back to the nineteenth-century redefinition of the ancient and semimystical idea of whole numbers forming the basis of all mathematics. They hark back, he says. Softly can be funny that way."

"Who or what is Softly?"

"Head of the School of Mathematics at the Center for the Refinement of Ideational Structures."

"Correct," Evinrude said.

The torch he held was very large and Billy hoped they wouldn't give him one to carry, particularly if the ceremony was scheduled to be a long one.

"What happens next?" he said.

"I ask you why you're late."

"Nobody could tell me how to get here. I asked everybody I saw and none of them ever even heard of the Great Hall. It's not that I didn't ask. They just never heard."

"No wonder they never heard of it," Evinrude said. "You gave them the wrong name. It's not the Great Hall. It's the Great Hole. Whoever told you Great Hall was guilty of a misnomer. This is the old part of Field Experiment Number One. The building was partly built on an existing structure. Not many people know that. The old structure was buried, and so instead of destroying it or bypassing it they incorporated the old part into what they were putting up, a buttress for the foundation, because of the archaeology involved. This is where we're standing now. The old part. The temple cave. They still haven't figured out how to make it disasterproof. A sudden noise or loud report could bring it all down."

"What's this about size places?"

"It's to get a dramatic effect with the torches."

"We all hold torches?"

"The laureates," Evinrude said. "All the laureates get a torch and go to their size places and then light the torch and hold it."

"Why are they having the ceremony down here?"

"Ratner's people."

"What kind of people?"

"The doctor, the nurse, the organist, the fella from the bearded sect. They insisted on having the ceremony in the Great Hole because of first of all there's the old gentleman's health to be considered and the air down here is the right kind of air and because of second of all there's a sense of the past in the Great Hole because of its being part of a venerable structure and there's that to be considered, awareness of past, respect for heritage. The laureates agreed. Those that were consulted."

"I wasn't consulted."

"You were very, very late. Maybe that's why you weren't consulted. Ratner's people weren't late. They came thousands of miles but they got here on time."

"They weren't told Great Hall instead of Great Hole."

"Time to go in," Evinrude said. "Step lively, keep it moving, spread it out."

He dipped the torch and Billy stepped through the hole and walked down a flight of crooked stairs into a small dusty room with nothing in it but a bronze door and a stone bench. He sat on the bench and looked at the door. The particles in the air reminded him of chalk dust and he assumed all this powdery matter had simply floated off the walls and ceiling, further indications of the structure's fragility and age. The door opened, admitting a man wearing a mink fedora and a long black coat. His beard was white and untrimmed, reaching to his chest, and although its wispy attenuated ends made the boy think of surgical cotton sticking out of a box after a handful has been removed, he was sure on second glance that the beard was anything but soft, that its strands were coarse, firm and wiry, toughened by decades of misery and grit. The man's coat extended almost to his shoes. He approached the bench and Billy moved over to give him room to sit but the man stopped short of the bench, put his hands behind his back and leaned forward slightly, head inclined, lips beginning to move a few seconds before he actually said anything.

"The old gentleman wants you to present the roses."

"I thought you were the old gentleman."

"I'm Pitkin, who advises on the writings. I'm looking at the person he picked by hand to present him the roses face to face. He's one sweetheart of a human being. I advise him on the mystical writings. But if they forced it out of me with hot tongs, I'd tell them I learn more from Shazar Ratner than I could ever teach if I live to be-go ahead, name me a figure."

"A hundred."

"Name me higher."

"A hundred and fifty."

"Stop there," Pitkin said. "Many years ago he came back to his roots. Eastern Parkway. Strictness like you wouldn't believe. But the old gentleman he was tickled to get back."

"What kind of strictness?"

"The codes, the rules, the laws, the customs, the tablecloth, the silverware, the dishes."

"So then you're from Brooklyn, if your roots are Eastern Parkway.

I'm surprised I never heard of the old gentleman, being from the metropolitan area myself."

"He's a living doll," Pitkin said. "After you present the roses he has a word or two he wants to whisper up to you. You're the youngest. He figures you'll be worth telling. The others he wouldn't give you two cents for the whole bunch. Science? He turned his back on science. Science made him a household word, a name in the sky, but he grew world-weary of it. He returned to the wellspring to drink. They assigned me then and there. I know the writings. Many years ago, long before a kid like you was even formed out of smelly mush in his mother's tubes, I committed the writings to memory. They don't know this, the other elders, because we're not supposed to memorize. It's considered cheating when you memorize. When you memorize you lose the inner meaning. But how else could a dumbbell like me become an elder? Name me a way and I'll do it. Just between us chickens I did a little cheating. So what's the damage? Show me who I harmed. Once in a while I sneak another look or two to refresh myself. But only once in a while and just to refresh. This I vow and you're my sworn witness who I'm looking at. If I'm lying, may both your eyes drip vengeful pus."

"Why my eyes?"

"Because that's the oath," Pitkin said. "I didn't word the oath. Go ask who worded it why your eyes."

"It must go way back, an oath like that, to when they believed in exact cruelty to each other's parts of the body. Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth."

"You know the writings?"

"Just something I heard."

"To where did the old gentleman return to drink?"

"He returned to the wellspring to drink."

"We all memorize. The memory is there, so where's the harm in using it? Here I depart from the other elders. The elders say interpret the writings. Find the inner meanings. Seek the sacred rays from the world of emanations. The writings say the same thing. But not everybody can interpret. It's hard for some people to interpret. You should pardon me but it's true. Pitkin memorizes. If you can name me one thing wrong with this that I haven't already figured out for myself, I'll take off all my clothes and walk naked through Crown Heights."

"I've heard of it."

"So show a little mercy to someone whose whole life has been awe, fear and kilt."

"Kilt?"

"Innocence and kilt."

"You mean guilt. Awe, fear and guilt. There, that makes sense. You said 'kilt.' But it's definitely pronounced guilt."

"A corrector I got in front of me. I need this from a peewee quiz kid? This kind of talk I need from someone that I don't even know if his little shvontzie got trimmed by the knife?"

"One second please."

"Inches away from a filthy urinator and I have to listen to my spelling corrected by some smart aleck in arithmetic?"

"I was brought up to wash everywhere."

"Filthy-impure, not filthy-dirty. Ritual filth, the worst kind. One thing I want to tell you even if it breaks my heart giving advice to a speller. A little advice free of charge straight from the mystical writings. You ready for this? Quiz kid, corrector, you want to be instructed from the writings or you want to go through life waving your shvontzie like a monkey?"

"I'm listening."

"Learn some awe and fear."

"Is that it?"

"White monkey, speller, keep your business out of other people's noses."

Billy began to imagine that under the beard and heavy dark clothes was a young fellow arrayed in the latest resort finery, a slick casual warm-up act who would end his comic routine by dressing up in shabby clothes, sticking on a beard and stepping out in Pitkin's skin to do some involuted patter about ghetto life in stone-age Brooklyn.

"What did I say you should learn?"

"Some awe and fear."

The bronze door opened and a doctor and nurse entered. The doctor held a huge syringe and the nurse was wheeling a device that consisted of a gallon bottle of colorless fluid and a thin black hose that extended from the bottle through a Pyrex vessel (filled with a semisolid material) and into a small clear cylindrical container. Paying no attention to the old man and boy, the doctor began to fill the syringe with fluid processed through the hose, vessel and tube. It was a complicated procedure and the doctor and nurse slapped at each other's hands, although with no animosity, whenever a faulty move was made.

"Some doctor," Pitkin whispered. "Only the worst cases he takes. If he sees you in the street having a heart attack, he walks right by. Tell him it's a tsetse fly in your lungs, if you're lucky he'll stop. He makes so much money you couldn't count that high. A house with grounds. Two big doors, front and back. A toaster that does four slices. His yacht he named it Transurethral Prostatectomy. Uses a colored nurse. See her? With the tube in her hand? Colored. Walk in any hospital right off the street and that's what you see. Uniforms, shoes, folded hats. Like anybody. Only colored. A total specialist, Dr. Bonwit. The old gentleman swears by him. Only because of Bonwit he came for the torches all this way. With Bonwit along he's willing to travel. Round trip we're paying. Ratner, Bonwit, Pitkin, the organ player, the colored nurse. We took up collections in the neighborhood. This is the respect people have for the name Ratner both before and after he turned his back."

"It's a back problem?"

"Turned his back on science."

"What's wrong with him then to make him have to travel with a doctor?"

"Not just a doctor please. A specialist. Never please say doctor to his face. You don't know this? What am I looking at here? How many kinds of genius did they tell me to watch out for? Pisher, where should you keep your business out of?"

"Other people's noses."

"A little awe and fear never hurt anybody."

"But what's the old gentleman suffering from?"

"Look it up," Pitkin said. "Turn to any page in the medical book and there he is. Swollen tooth sockets. Brown eye. Urinary leakage.

Hardening of the ducts. Hormone discolor. Blocked extremities. Seepage from the gums. The wind is bad. The lungs are on the verge. Bonwit gives the lungs two weeks. There's no breathing except shallow labored. The lungs, the lungs."

"What kind of wind?"

"Intestinal and digestive. Mixed wind. A little of each."

"What else?"

"The skin, the bones," Pitkin said.

"They must love him at Blue Cross."

"How are you behaving that I said you shouldn't behave like?"

"A white monkey."

"What am I looking at here?"

"A pisher."

"Moistness," Pitkin said. "His whole body is moist. The doctor, you should see him, night and day he works to keep it dry. Dedication at that price is worthless. You need heavy machines to keep a man alive. The face, the mouth."

Pitkin's lips continued to move and Billy wondered exactly how old this man Ratner must be if his advisor on the writings thought it suitable to refer to him as the old gentleman-an advisor with white hair growing out of his face at beard level and even above, crowding the eyes, and with lips that started moving before he spoke and did not stop until well after he was finished talking. Dr. Bonwit walked out now, syringe properly filled, and the nurse followed, wheeling the elaborate device.

"Is that for the old gentleman?"

"Nonclotting silicone," Pitkin said. "He doesn't like to see them fill up the needle, so they sneak around the nearest corner and do it there. Needles, who can look?"

"Didn't I hear something once about silicone that has to do with bigger breasts?"

"Watch with the language in front of an elder."

"Yes or no, are they injecting his breasts?"

"Get out from here."

"What for?"

"With language like that you address an elder?"

"I'm only asking."

"Get out from here."

"I do no wrong."

"They're injecting his face," Pitkin said. "His face collapsed coming over the ocean last night. A storm like nobody's business. Eagles on their hats they had to fly right into it. So now Bonwit builds up the face with a little shot. Poof, it fills right out. This is instant silicone, according to Bonwit, that fills you out, that coats the lining, that heats up the tissue and makes the moisture run off that's making trouble up and down the body. Good stuff. No clotting. He recommends."

"Not just for anybody."

"What can I say? He recommends. This is from his own words, Bonwit, that I memorized. With strictness like we got, who wouldn't memorize? This I ask. You're looking at an asker. If they put hot tongs on my body I might admit I could use another chance. Maybe with a second chance I could learn to interpret. Maybe it's less impossible than I think, dumbbell or not. But I'm asking who did I hurt but myself? An old man asks. True, I did a little cheating. I memorized here and there. I didn't look for the inner meanings. For years I'm sweating bullets over this thing. If they said I could have another chance I'd walk naked in the rush hour through a colored subway car. This I vow on a holy oath. If I'm lying, may you inherit a hotel with ten thousand rooms and be found dead in every room."

"These oaths are pretty dangerous to people just standing around listening."

"I didn't word them. They were worded five thousand years ago. You want to change the wording, go complain. Tell them Pitkin sent you. I'm in enough trouble with the cheating like a hot coal on my heart so I can't sleep at night, I might as well have that too, my name on a complaint by some pipsqueak speller from off the street. This is what happens with strictness. It has awe built in. The more you cheat, the greater the fear. Where's the impunity in this world?"

"Just don't start in with the vengeful pus."

"An oath is an oath."

"You don't have to use the worst ones."

"It's time to present the roses," Pitkin said.

They went through the bronze door, past the instant silicone apparatus and down several flights of stairs that seemed even older and more damaged than the stairs he'd descended earlier. He heard organ music below, a reverberating cavern-sized snore, and he followed Pitkin through a slit in the wall and out into the Great Hole, a vast underground chamber largely in a natural state (cool stone surfaces) but including remnants of ancient architecture (columns, half-walls, part of a platform) as well as elements of recent installation (fluorescent lighting and structural reinforcement). The lights were suspended from large portable appliances that resembled clothing racks. The organ, which was Endor's, the same neon pipe organ Billy had seen in the hobby room, was set on an outcropping of rock in a far corner. Aside from Pitkin, the only people he saw at the moment were the organist, now playing the kind of intermission music featured at hockey games, and the old gentleman's doctor, heading directly toward Pitkin. The two men exchanged a few words and then the bearded advisor disappeared into a dim hollow about thirty yards away. Listening to the organ, Billy recalled Evinrude's remark about a loud noise bringing down the entire Great Hole, if a hole could be thought of as something readily subject to being brought down.

"The old gent may or may not make it," Bonwit said. "One advantage is the air down here, crystal clear, a beautiful purifying agent for the biomembrane. Now here's how we'll work it. The laureates are in the antecave off the Great Hole and they're being instructed in torch manipulation. You don't join them until they file in and Sandow gives you a hand signal. Sandow's the man at the organ. After he gives the hand signal, the biomembrane is wheeled in by Pitkin and Georgette from that shadowy area with me leading the way. Then Sandow makes the opening remarks and the pigeons are released."

"When do I present the roses?"

"After the pigeons," Bonwit said.

"What's this biomembrane that's being wheeled in?"

"It's what keeps old Ratner alive. Ultrasterile biomedical membrane environment. This is the prototype model, fully operational but with still a few kinks. It's a total life-support system that grew out of the tracer element isolator used to keep lab animals germ-free. The old gentleman never leaves. This is the only nonhostile environment we could work out for him considering his state of deterioration. The bacterial count is zero. There are double airlocks for air current control. Pressure is regulated and there's automatic oxygen therapy when his system needs a jolt. It's even got a vapor duct to cut down the chance of self-infection. If he begins to fail, Georgette raises the shield and I crawl in and operate. The biomembrane is a self-sterilizing operating theater in miniature and it adapts to a postoperative therapy center, he should live so long, as the saying goes."

"Is Sandow a laureate?"

"Sandow is an organist," the doctor said.

"I was told laureates only. I can understand an MD and a nurse and even a person who reads from the writings. But if it's all laureates, why move that organ all the way down from where it was and include someone that didn't win? Except maybe he did win and only plays the organ on the side."

"Unless they give a Nobel Prize for pedaling, he didn't win. But it adds to the mood, an organ. I for one don't mind him around. It makes for more pomp, having an organ. 'LaMar T. Sandow at the keyboard.' Besides he's the old gent's lifelong friend. You want a friend to see you honored. I'm all for an organ at a function like this. It supplies a heady tone."

"What do you specialize in?"

"Everything," the doctor said.

Pitkin returned, bent and shuffling, a bouquet of white roses in his arms.

"The colored nurse told me to tell you the face filled out."

"Good," Bonwit said.

"I made believe I did a little reading. I gave a good show. It made him teary around the nose. Thick green nose-blow runs out of his eyes. From his nose you get nothing but water."

"What do you think of having an organ?" Bonwit said.

"We already got one. What, you want two?"

"Just want to know what you think. Fielding a few ideas."

"Why, somebody's against it?"

"That's right."

"Wait, let me guess."

"You want to give me the flowers?" Billy said.

"Against the organ, who could it be? Which person for his size makes the biggest corrections? Tell me if I'm warm if I move toward the speller."

"It belongs to Endor. They should have left it where it was."

Sandow broke off the intermission music and began playing a triumphal march. Pitkin handed Billy the flowers and went back to the dark corner, this time accompanied by Dr. Bonwit. The laureates started filing in, thirty-one of them, in size places. Multicolored neon, flashing intermittently, pulsed through the clear tubing that extended well above the organ. The torches carried by the laureates were as large as the one Evinrude had used to light the way into the original jagged hole. Although still unlit, the torches were being held as if each one were about to cough forth an assortment of fresh lava; that is, the laureates kept the plastic devices well away from their bodies, every head averted. They seemed to march accompanied by a terrible belief in their own potential for self-immolation. It passed methodically down the line, a bland handshake, freezing them to their processional drag-step.

The small parade came to a halt as Sandow lifted his hands from the keyboard and spun himself to the end of the bench, looking directly at Billy. Echoes of the organ music collided high above the floor of the Great Hole. Sandow tapped his right hand twice on the inside of his left thigh. This, it turned out, was only the first of two signals and he followed it with a little wiggle of the thumb. Billy, with the flowers, took his place at the front of the line. He realized now that the first hand signal had been meant for him (get in line) and the second for the doctor, the nurse and Pitkin (wheel in the biomembrane), for at this moment a massive transparent tank came into view. Its basic shape was simple: a cylinder on wheels, a blunt-nosed torpedo set lengthwise on a metal undercasing to which were fixed four scooter-sized tires. Dr. Bonwit walked ahead of the biomembrane, kicking small stones out of the way, and behind it were Pitkin and the nurse, pushing. Everywhere on the ten-foot-long tank were complex monitoring devices and all sorts of gauges, tubes and switches. It was by far the most elaborate health mechanism Billy had ever seen and he stood on his toes to get a look at Ratner himself but the angle wasn't favorable just then. What he could see, clearly, were a half-dozen large bright sponsor decals and stickers on both sides of the biomembrane and even on the blunt front end. Corporate names, brand names, slogans and symbols:

 

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