Norman Invasions (22 page)

“I don't get it,” said Bill, who clearly didn't. Nor did I,
at the time
.

“My thesis,” said Algernon, “obviously implicit in my remarks this wintry morning, and one I have incidentally developed over several years in several book-length studies unlikely to be published, is, metaphorically, that we need not be where we are now, say, in a warm hotel, in a comfortable, well-lit room, sheltered from a storm outside, engaged in intellectual discourse. We might not have evolved as successfully as we have. Indeed, we might have become extinct. And another species might be rather in our current situation, and conversing on similar matters.”

“Such as furry vermin?” asked Bill.

“Precisely,” said Algernon, “as our lovely colleague has brought to our attention, with her timely allusion to speculative art.”

Algernon was not really a science fiction person, or he would have used the approved acronym, SA. It is by such things that one can tell the true fan from the outsider, or pretender. The older term, of course, was Science Art, sometimes spoken of as SA, but SA now, of course, stands for Speculative Art, except when it doesn't, and stands for Science Art.

So it turned out that Susan's remark was not only not irrelevant, but was brilliantly relevant, and was merely several hops, skips and jumps ahead of the game. I was somewhat disappointed, but I took this in stride. One must put up with such things in women who are both brilliant and beautiful As spontaneous-order theorists and conservatives never tire of reminding us, trade-offs are always involved.

Incidentally, when Algernon, in his ignorant innocence, had naively used the deplorable term ‘lovely colleague' to describe Susan, four female members of the audience had appeared offended, and two outraged. None of them, however, as least as far as I could tell, was in danger of being insulted personally in so wanton and grievous a fashion. Susan, on the other hand, seemed quite pleased. I report this without comment, as it is politically sensitive.

“Stupid business,” said Bill, “dogs and cats in space suits!”

“Certainly permissible in SA,” said Herman, who was an artistic pluralist.

“Why not frogs and toads?” snorted Bill.

Bill had a much-envied reputation for being a master of hard-core science fiction, of which there are today regrettably so few, not the soft, easy, implausible stuff, but the serious, respectable, tough stuff, relished even by strange radio astronomers and unusual astrophysicists, of which there were several in the audience, the sober, down-to-earth, nuts-and-bolts stuff, bam rays, zurk machines, nik cylinders, kam tubes, zibit devices, and such.

“There were some of those, too,” said Susan.

“Next,” said Bill, “they will have those little, furry bipedalian things in space suits!”

A course of merriment at this outlandish suggestion coursed through the audience. I myself struggled to restrain an involuntary snigger.

He was referring, of course, to mooks.

“I stepped on one the other day,” said Bill.

“They're nuisances, to be sure,” said Herman. ‘In my neighborhood they keep getting into garbage pails.”

Susan shuddered. I was pleased to see this attestation of femininity. They are different from us, you know. And that may not be all bad.

If I remember I will strike that last line out before submitting this piece to an editor, as such lapses often prelude publication.

“Horrid little creatures,” said one of the ladies in the audience, one with a badge.

“I do not know why Og made them,” said another lady, one without a badge.

“He must have had a reason,” said another.

“Who can fathom the wisdom of Og?” said another.

“Perhaps they are a punishment for our sins,” suggested another.

“That makes sense,” agreed another.

“No,” said another, “Og is good. He would never do such a thing. It would be morally disproportionate to our iniquity, simply incommensurate with our faults, as deserving of severe chastisement as they may be, just too unthinkably cruel.”

That lady, I took it, was a liberal.

“They are awfully smelly,” said a woman.

“Some people keep them as pets,” said another.

“Disgusting,” said another.

“But note,” said Algernon, excitedly, “the tiny, despicable mooks, for I assume you refer to them, so universally and justifiably abhorred, have an upright carriage, prehensile appendages, binocular vision, and clustering habits.”

“So?” asked Bill.

“At one time,” said Algernon, “our own remote ancestors had not come so far.”

“Do not forget they are mammals,” said Herman. This was a good point. There was not much to be expected of mammals. It would be a strange evolution indeed which might consider making use of such an improbable material.

“But what,” asked Algernon, “if the mooks, or, technically, Verminius Olfactoriensis, were not handicapped by tiny brains?”

“They are, of course,” said Bill.

“At one time,” said Algernon, “the brains of our ancestors were not more than thrice the size of those of the present-day mook.”

“Incredible!” breathed an astrophysicist in the audience.

This information had lain outside his domain of expertise.

“They still smell,” said a lady.

“They can't talk,” said Herman.

“Not as we can talk, of course,” said Algernon, “but suppose they could modulate those strange sequences of sounds which they utter, particularly when shot or poisoned.”

“I see,” said Susan.

“I knew you would,” said Algernon.

Susan blushed charmingly, from her cute little upturned snout to the tip of her fetching tail.

I saw that Algernon had soared, were it possible, even higher in her coveted but in my view too easily bestowed regard than hitherto.

I did not begrudge him his victory, particularly since she had twitched earlier not at me, but at the fellow behind me. I did hear a grunt of dissatisfaction from somewhere behind me, but could not locate its source of origin with precision.

“This is testable, in its way, in theory,” said Algernon, “if one could devolve ourselves and the mooks to our universally acknowledged common ancestry, and begin again. One would need to restore a pristine environmental lattice, of course, mobile continental arrangements with attendant, shifting climates, competitive species, evolutionary arms races, and so on, and see which species managed to punctuate which equilibrium first.”

“You are suggesting,” said Bill, “that mooks might have eventually evolved intelligence?”

“It is almost a certainty,” said Algernon. “And then it might have been them, and not us, who would be sitting here, warm and comfortable, and discussing these matters.”

“Radio, movies, TV?” said Herman.

“Probably,” said Algernon. “One thing leads to another.”

“That's stupid,” said Bill.

“I don't think so,” said Algernon.

“But why haven't they then?” asked Herman.

“I'm not sure,” said Algernon. “It might be that we got here first, and that the mooks had it too easy, and did not have to face enough challenges, and so on. For example, many people, as you know, do not fasten down the lids on their garbage pails.”

“It seems that our time is up,” said Bill. “I am sorry but there won't be time for questions or contributions from the audience.”

This announcement was met with a groan of dismay, for it seemed that several members of the audience, both with badges and without badges, would have appreciated an opportunity to participate in the discussion.

But Bill was right, for six minutes ago a convention volunteer had stood in the back of the room undetected by most of the rapt audience and desperately, discretely, waved the five-minutes-to-go sign.

Bill then thanked the panelists and the audience, and turned to Susan, but she had already taken her leave with Algernon.

Susans dress up a panel, and she had one of the sexiest tails I had ever seen, outside of the movies.

The discussion was continued vigorously by many, outside, in the hall.

I looked out the large window in the hall, out onto the street outside. I almost felt sorry for anything that might be outside in such weather, even mooks.

It is odd, how Henry disappeared from the basement. He had not been chained there, or anything, of course, and so, one supposes, except for the one anomaly, that he might have climbed the stairs, pulling himself up, stair by stair, by the hands, and, unnoticed, somehow, between lunch and supper, it is supposed, made his way outdoors. Yet it was hard to think of him outdoors, at that time of day, he so pale and infantile, and legless, born that way, so simple, too, or so we thought. It was hard to think of him up there, beyond the kitchen, out in the yard, and it not even night, when father took him out sometimes, carrying him in his arms, putting him down, letting him play there, in the garden, on his rope, not so much to hold him, really, as to help father know where he was, in the darkness, from the tugs on the rope. We kept the porch light off when Henry played outdoors at night. Very few people knew that he still lived with us. They had supposed he had died, or maybe was still in the institution. But Henry had not died. In his way he was quite tenacious of life, clinging to the little of it he had been given. There was no blood on the stairs, incidentally. He hadn't been there long, really. Only a few days. That was something the neighbors did not know. He had yowled, and yowled, it seems, day in and day out, in that eruptive, squealing, hissing way of his, when he was young, before he became quiet, later, and this must have made it difficult for many of the guests there, except for those who joined him, seeming to understand him, in a way we couldn't, those in the other guest rooms. We were notified by the institution that Henry could not remain there unless special arrangements were made for him, of a surgical nature. We did not care for that, what they wanted permission to do. Too, we were afraid, even in the brief time that Henry was there, that they had not been kind to him, from the needle marks on his arms, the swellings, the bruises. They swore they had not touched him. Father did not believe them, and they knew that, but they didn't really care, as long as the reports were filled out properly, and were signed in the right way, in the right places, by the right doctors, and such. So it was all right to hurt Henry, as they had to do it, and, anyway, he had not been hurt. They would not let us have Henry back, until father signed a paper.

We still tried to be kind to Henry in those days, when we thought it mattered, or it was what we were supposed to do, being kind, and such, but later there did not seem much point to going on in that way, not that we were ever cruel, really, especially not father. But what is the point of being kind to someone if they do not know you are being kind to them, it not making any difference to them, and no one else knows about it, so they don't know how nice you are? I think we stopped caring about Henry, worrying about Henry, that is, all except father, as the years went by, and especially after he had begun to think, not that he could really think, you understand, but he would sit in the basement, on the floor, and seem to go back into himself like walking back into a tunnel, so we thought maybe he was thinking, maybe even wondering who he was, and about us, and the world, and the basement, and how it all came to be, that there was a basement and such. But this is guessing on my part, of course.

I have wondered if the surgery might have made a difference. Henry was very young at that time, maybe seven or eight. Many years have gone by now. Henry, before he left, would have been forty, or still seven or eight, depending on how you look at it. Certainly the rest of us are all older now. But he didn't yowl in the basement. He seemed happy there. And so the surgery, we supposed, would not have had much point to it.

Henry was very young then, only seven or eight, and he wanted back to the basement. So we brought him back, late at night, when the neighbors would be in bed, and father carried him below. Henry made his little noises, his contented-child noises, and we knew that we had done the right thing. Too, it was expensive to keep him in the institution, and no one knew, or very few knew, he was still in the house, so there wasn't much wrong with keeping him there. You don't think so, do you? Sometimes people would look at us in a way we did not like, but they never spoke of Henry. Clearly they were afraid of him. We grew more afraid, too, as he grew older. We did not let anyone except the family into the basement.

We kept Henry there, in the basement. Only the family, and a doctor, knew he was there.

He seemed content with that habitat, the darkness, in particular, for he seemed to have some sense of light, or some sense of simple radiation, through the skin perhaps, which he did not care for, and the damp, and the small things that might move in the darkness. We think he may have eaten some of them. He was born without eyes, and retarded. His skin was pulpy, and rather slick, moist, in fact. He liked the basement, and would insist on remaining there. It was not that we minded. Henry was not pleasant to look at, with the large head, hairless, the smoothness where one thought his eyes should be. There were small holes on the side of his head, and he certainly seemed to be able to hear, or feel vibrations, or sense, in some respects. You must understand that it wasn't cruelty on the family's part that he was kept in the basement. It was Henry's choice, as much as ours, maybe more so, though it was convenient that he was kept out of sight. You can't blame us, can you? What would you have done? Pretty much the same, I would suppose. A neighbor had once seen him on the sofa, a friend of my mother's, when she was still alive, in the parlor, lying there, not easy to make out at first, and had screamed, and run away. So Henry stayed in the basement. Perhaps we had hoped he might die sooner there, except father, but that is not the sort of hope that one talks much about, not the sort of hope that one confesses before the candles, when one puts the coin in the slot, lights the candle, and kneels there, praying there, before the statue, that someone else's will be done, when you really want your will to be done, and hope that someone else will notice, someone important, and do that, because you only asked that the other's will be done. Surely that should count for something, one's selflessness, and such. Else what would be the point of it?

So why did Henry continue to live, for so many years? To be sure, we never saw him die. It was only that one day he was not there in the basement any longer. He was gone. No one saw him leave. I think he may be somewhere, not really dead. Or maybe dead, but somewhere else.

There is the anomaly, you see.

And there was no blood on the stairs.

Father tried to teach Henry, and Henry would listen carefully, or seem to, but nothing much came of it. Henry could hear, we were sure, but he could not make human noises, and, of course, he could not see. Father would put a little water into his hand, and say “Water,” or touch his arm in a certain way, or tap the palm of his hand in a certain way, and the same with other objects, bread, straw, the rope and such. But Henry would not repeat any of this, nor, as far as we could tell, understand any of it. Father would leave him then, and go to his room and sometimes cry, and Henry would remain sitting there, on the floor of the basement.

We know, or suppose, that rocks cannot think. They don't have a central nervous system, for example. On the other hand, if a rock could think, I am not sure we would understand its thinking. Surely it would have to be very different from ours. What sense would it make of the universe? Would it have a sense of its place in the meaning of things, or would it be a self-contained universe, like that of one's own sensations, one's own room, one's own basement, so to speak, a fixed, heavy, stable, contented universe. Plants have obviously some irritability, but, too, one supposes they cannot think, or, if they could, it seems unlikely we could understand it. It would be very different from our thinking, discursive, divisional, naming, numbering, dividing and conquering with semantic weapons. What are the thoughts of a blade of grass, of a tree? There is nothing there we would recognize as thought, I would suppose, but, doubtless, there is something there. And we would not understand it, or I would suppose not. Maybe it would be like hearing a color or seeing a sound. Things get more complicated, as one inches up the phylogenetic scale. That's the scale where we put ourselves at the top, which, one supposes, is each species' privilege, ours as well as any other's. An amoeba, for example, will not ingest its own pseudopodium though the pseudopodium is organic, but will draw back from contact with it. Is this thought, or some sense of self, or physical or chemical disaffinities, like the repulsion of like poles? Can coelenterates think? One suspects they can feel. Perhaps the grasshopper is aware that the small boy has twisted its legs from its body. Does it object? Rats can think. They have the rudiments of a tradition, warning young rats away from remembered poisons. Mice can learn. That has been shown. We have respect for primates, or some of them, chimpanzees, for example, and dolphins puzzle us, and make us uneasy. Certainly we can think, and we can know this from the inside, from within the walls of the basement, so to speak. Are there other basements? Are there other ways to think? Are we actually at the top of the phylogenetic scale, on the summit of which we have complacently enthroned ourselves? Does the ladder tower above us, with rungs we cannot see? Are there other scales, other ladders? I ask these questions because, of late, I have thought more and more about Henry, and the anomaly.

The basement is not a pleasant place, at least for us, though some life forms might find it congenial. Henry did, as far as we can tell. The basement is a damp place. It is dark. It has a dirt floor, and dirt walls. The house is old. We never finished the basement. One supposes it has its own life forms, tiny things, trivial, not important.

When Henry grew older, he used to sit for long hours, not moving, maybe like the rock, the tree, things like that. He was retarded. He was not simply ignorant; he was stupid.

I am not even sure Henry was human. Maybe he was more like those bodies, kept alive on machines.

I think he liked father. Sometimes he would reach out with his pudgy fingers, to touch him, it seemed tenderly.

We know the universe exists for us, and that something has made it for us, and that we are the best thing, and the highest thing, in the universe, except maybe for the maker of it, who is like us, very much like us, and things it made, too, like us, very much like us. That is comforting, to know that all of this, these galaxies and universes, and mysteries, are all for us. Otherwise they would be very scary.

The world, you see, is like a watch, and the parts fit together. And if it is like a watch, then there must be a watchmaker. It is very simple. And very clear. How the parts go together, or mostly. But I have wondered sometime if the world is really so much like a watch. Maybe it is like something else, like a plant, or a spore, or a fungus, or an egg.

Father died five years ago.

In the last year, when father was very ill, he would come into the basement to sit with Henry. He did not try to teach Henry any longer. Henry could not learn. Or we supposed not. Once, in the last days, a few days before the end, Henry put out again his pudgy fingers and touched father, so tenderly, or seemingly so. Oddly, now, it seemed that it was he who was pitying father, and not the other way around. It seemed, oddly, as though he were sad, and were trying to comfort father. I do not think that he could have known father was ill, or I suppose not. How could he have known? Perhaps, instead, after all these long years, he sensed how much pain he had caused father, and the rest of us, how much torment, how much grief, and inconvenience, but I do not think Henry could have understood any of that. He felt for my father's hand, and pressed one finger into it, and described in my father's palm a small, turning, crawling line. My father told us about this, but, at the time, he did not make anything out of it. It made no sense. Still, it was almost, my father told us, at that time, as if Henry were trying to tell him something, or teach him something. Much as my father, years earlier, had tried to teach him, and by such similar, primitive methods. But father, of course, at that time, could no more understand what Henry meant, if he meant anything, than Henry could fathom the simple signals and devices of his own earlier, futile tutelage.

In the last night, before he died, my father was delirious, his consciousness perhaps disordered by some of the very drugs given to him to alleviate his pain. Then he seemed to have a moment of clarity, and half rose from bed. But the clarity was illusory, for he cried out, laughing, “We are the cattle of the worm god! That is our meaning! That is why we have been placed on earth, to feed his children!”

We tried to quiet him, and he lay back.

“Are you all right?” we begged.

“I am content,” he said. “It is good to have lived. Love life. It is beautiful.”

He died shortly thereafter.

Henry is gone now. I think we would have seen him if he had crawled through the kitchen. He must have done so, but I do not believe it. It is not simply because there was no blood on the steps.

It is rather because of the anomaly.

In the wall of the basement there was an opening, a round hole, about eighteen inches in diameter, leading into a long, dark, damp tunnel. The walls of the tunnel were slick, as though coated with a whitish mucous. The whole had not been there a few hours earlier, when I had taken his pans to the basement. I touched Henry to tell him the food and water were there, but he only looked up, lifting his placid, eyeless face to me. It seemed radiant. He smiled. That was an hour or so before his absence was noted.

I do not think anything human made that hole.

I wonder, sometime, if Henry did not have some sort of understanding, perhaps one very different from ours. And that something understood him, as well. Perhaps something very different from us cared for him, and loved him, in ways we could not understand. Perhaps it gathered Henry onto itself, perhaps the only one of our kind so elevated, or blessed.