Through the Eye of Time (17 page)

He let the thought fade away and die a natural death. Why bother to convince her? The evidence was here for all to see. He didn't need to explain or interpret the facts; the facts spoke eloquently for themselves. But he had tried. He had patiently explained about ‘projective myths' and the ‘principles of acausality' and ‘areas of uncertainty' (it was difficult to discuss Myth Technology without resorting to jargon) and she had closed her eyes and shaken her head as if to say that he might just as well save his breath.

Pouline deGrenier was an intelligent woman with a bright and inquiring mind but she was unable to grasp the infuriating paradox that mythic events could be influenced before and after they had taken place. ‘Because,' Queghan had said, ‘a mythic event exists in a region of probability. It is at the vortex of human consciousness and experience – a key to the past and the future.'

‘If it exists it exists,' she had replied, not budging an inch. ‘And if it doesn't it doesn't.'

‘Then why does the brain in the RECONPAN laboratory insist that in the Second World War Germany and Great Britain were allies? Why does it talk of the Blackshirt Brigade when there is no historical documentation to show that such a unit ever existed?'

Her candid brown eyes didn't waver from his. ‘Malfunction,' she said crisply.

‘That's your explanation?'

‘The system is in prototype. I didn't expect one hundred per cent success and I wasn't surprised when the system didn't function properly on experimental trials.' She hoped that God, whoever and wherever He was, would forgive her this whopping white lie.

‘So now you're going to grow some fresh tissue cultures,' Queghan said with a cynical smile.

‘Léon is preparing a cyberthetic program to investigate each of the major neurochemical circuits. Within two weeks we should know the results.'

Queghan tried another tack. ‘Doesn't it strike you as odd that all these historical inconsistencies should be so consistent?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘For all its apparent haphazard selection of data the brain is constructing a valid and plausible mythic experience – it is consistent within its own terms.'

‘We would expect it to be. If one of the circuits is malfunctioning it will presumably give the same spurious information each time it is triggered. The same with paranoia in human terms: a wave of electrical energy in the brain which habitually follows a particular neuron pathway. Speaking psycho-medically this is what one would expect.'

She blocked every tackle, caught every spinning ball he threw at her and deftly tossed it back. And the annoying thing was that in terms of earthbound logic her beliefs were irrefutable. If you chose to deny – as Pouline deGrenier chose to do – the validity of mythic events, of the principle of acausality, of the paradox of probability, then the argument came to an abrupt dead stop. There was no more to be said. In the end they had each stared silently into space and listened to the pressing silence, until eventually Queghan had asked:

‘You have no objection to my using the RECONPAN facility?'

‘No objection as such.'

‘What does “as such” mean?'

‘Providing it doesn't interfere with our investigation program.'

‘You're most generous.'

‘Not at all.'

Now he was determined to prove to this intractable female that the inconsistencies were not the result of malfunction in the system but the accurate projection of mythic events. Yet deep in the labyrinthine entrails of Archives, dust in his eyes and at the back of his throat, Queghan realized the futility of trying to prove anything at all by an endless rote of historical cross-references. To Pouline deGrenier they would have no relevance whatsoever to the main objective of getting RECONPAN to regurgitate slabs of ‘authentic' history which tallied with official records. She wouldn't be content until Hitler's simulated brain told her precisely and in detail what she already knew.

Queghan replaced the sheets in their vinyl slip-cases and went up to Level 17. With people like Pouline deGrenier there was one way and one way only to prove that the world was round.

*

When he got home it was 1951 Pre-Colonization. The sleazy woman in the soiled slip said, ‘Siddown, Polack, and take the weight off.'

The groan he uttered was so realistic that she responded instantly by telling him to ‘Shaddap, punk. I've had enough of your slobbering to last me a lifetime. If you don't like my company, take off.'

He said tentatively, ‘Blanche?'

She halted by the open window just as the harsh green glare of a neon sign gilded her profile, making a fluorescent halo of her blond hair before flickering off and leaving her in silhouette.

‘Don't come whining to me, you drunken slob. Where've ya bin till now? I'm working my guts out trying to keep this place together and what do you do? What does he do?' she asked the cracked and flaking plaster ceiling. ‘I'll tell you what he does: spends every last goddam dime in the bar along the street. I ain't even got a decent pair of shoes to my name.'

‘Take it easy, Blanche,' said Queghan. ‘No need to get excited.'

‘Excited! D'ya hear that?' she said to the blistered window-frame. ‘Me? Excited? Me get excited? What else is there to do around this lousy hole with nothing but a big dumb Polack for company? D'ya want I should thank you or somethin'? D'ya want my gratitude? Am I in your debt?'

‘I'm sorry I was late.'

‘He's sorry,' Blanche said, nodding her head and folding her arms. ‘D'ya hear that?' she inquired of the washbasin in the corner. ‘How do you like this guy? He walks all over my life and then, calm as you please, tells me he's sorry. How do you like that?'

Queghan took in the period detail and reckoned it was better than the acting. There was traffic in the street below (the sound of traffic) and the wail of a baby from the next tenement. Somebody in the apartment upstairs was brawling with his wife and there was the spasmodic splintering crash of breaking crockery followed by a thickly articulated oath or two.

The room itself was cheap and nasty. The furniture consisted of a ramshackle table and four broken-down chairs, a sagging armchair with the straw stuffing hanging out, a yellow lacquered wardrobe with fiery red roses painted in the corners, and a long mirror inset in the door with a jagged crack across the middle, an iron-framed bed with dented brass knobs at the corners, and the washbasin came complete with dripping tap and exposed plumbing. Beyond it, behind a partly drawn curtain on a drooping wire, the murky recesses of what he took to be the kitchen. It was a professional reconstruction; no detail had been omitted, not even the sour mingled smell of sweat, urine and boiled cabbage.

And it was hot. Queghan hadn't realized till now but the temperature must have been in the nineties. He took his jacket off and draped it over the bedpost. Already his shirt was damp under the arms.

Blanche yelled, ‘That's right, go ahead, mess the place up! Whad'ya think I bin doin' all day, sitting on my butt? No respect, no consideration, I might as well be dead.' She trudged across the room, scooped up the jacket, wadded it into a bundle and flung it in the corner behind the wardrobe.

‘That jacket cost me—'

‘Aw shaddap!' Blanche said. ‘You big dumb ox.' She turned and faced him, hands on hips. ‘I ain't bin out of this dump in three days. Three days! Stuck here while you bin whorin' all over town with some cute little trick you picked up out of the gutter. Whad'ya expect me to do? Plant a big fat welcoming kiss on your ugly mug? No chance, buddy boy. You can sit there till hell freezes over, see if I care.'

She turned away with a contemptuous twitch of her hips and went back to her favourite position by the window. The flickering neon sign lit her effectively, a good atmospheric prop. From the street rose the monotonous moan of a police siren.

Blanche had picked up a small ragged teddy-bear from amongst the clutter on the dresser and she cradled it to her bosom. Her voice became wistful. ‘We went wrong somewhere, I guess. I don't know how or why, we just did.'

Queghan didn't say anything.

‘No, don't say anything,' Blanche said, raising her hand. ‘I guess it was my fault as much as yours. I wanted too much. I wanted the world and you couldn't give it to me. I guess we all gotta learn sooner or later that we can't have what we want out of life.' She clutched the teddy-bear tighter. ‘There's a whole big world out there, you know?' she crooned softly, looking beyond the neon sign into the night sky. ‘When I was a kid I wanted it all, I had a right to it. Nothin' and nobody was ever gonna stop me. But now …'

She glanced down at the teddy-bear nestling close to her breast. ‘This little fellow's only got one eye. What do you see with your one good eye, little friend? Is it still a big world out there? Can you see it all with your one good glass eye?'

‘Blanche—' Queghan said.

‘Don't say it. Don't make it any worse than it has to be. We both of us tried to make it work, we did our best. But sometimes I guess the odds are just a little too high.' There was a choking sob in her voice.

From above came a sudden crash of breaking crockery followed by a scream, a thud, and silence.

‘Whad'ya make of this crazy world, my little one-eyed friend?' asked Blanche, rocking to and fro, her voice barely
audible. ‘With your one glass eye do you see the wickedness, the hopelessness, the broken promises, the shattered dreams? Maybe you only see the half of it. That's right, you see one side, the better side. No sense a little fellow like you taking in the whole big bad world, is there now? You see the bright side of things, the glittery success and the parties and the swell folk doin' just as it pleases them to do. Well let me tell you that your good friend Blanche here ain't never had a taste – not so much as a
sniff
 – of that golden side. No sir. Blanche has bin down here all the time with the nigras and the goddam Polacks. That, I swear, is the ab-so-lute truth.

‘But I have dreamed dreams. Oh dreams so high and fancy I couldn't tell you about without blushing. I do still blush, you know, though nobody in this here household would ever credit the fact. But I do. Blushin' comes easy to my fair skin. I do have a fair skin, don't I? You can see that, can't you, even with your one good glass eye?' She held the bear up in front of her, stretching out both arms. ‘Now isn't that just like me? How rude of me. I never did ask how come you only got just the one eye. And for that I do apologize. Might I ask? Would it embarrass you? I'm askin' as a friend, not as some pryin' intruder. If you don't wanna tell, just say so, come right out with it, I won't be offended. Goodness me, it'll take more than that to offend lil' old Blanche here—

‘What's that? You were
born
with only one eye? You never had a pair of eyes in your entire life? Well as they say, and I guess it's the truth, what you ain't had you're never gonna miss. Two eyes ain't such a good thing anyway, you can take my word.' She said in a harsh whisper, ‘With two eyes you see
everything
. Every goddam thing. And some of it ain't too pretty. I've seen a few things in my short young life that I wouldn't wish anybody to see, not anybody, not even my own worst enemy. So you're better off, little bear, take my word. With your one good glass eye you can see more than enough. And more than enough is plenty.'

Right on cue the baby's cry sounded again, less strident this time, faint with tiredness. The neon sign made a fizzing noise, came on, went off, came on again uncertainly, bathing the room in an eerie green glow. Blanche leant against the
window-frame, her hair a fluorescent halo, the curve of her neck and shoulders in black silhouette.

Queghan felt to be adrift in this green room. It was a fake (wasn't it?), an elaborate charade, an authentic historical reconstruction. The whole thing was a put-up job. He tried to sit up in the chair.

‘Blanche …'

The neon light came on, went off, came on.

His senses were beginning to slide. Something about the light. His eyelids fluttered and the focal point of his consciousness began to recede, to become smaller.

He said more urgently, ‘Blanche,' but she mustn't have heard him, still lost in dreams, the green neon light washing over her.

His consciousness had shrunk to a point of black: the contracting pupil in a glassy golden eye. The eye grew large, filled the world and he was falling inwards into the empty black centre, surrounded by green light that flickered and fizzed … coming on, going off, coming on.

Someone cried out. It was a voice repeating over and over again the name
Blanche
and Queghan became aware that his throat was hurting and there was wetness on his lips. He then thought in a moment of absolute calm and rational clarity:

The frequency of the light.

It was too late. He had realized too late. The light had affected the temporal lobe in the roof of the brain and this was the onset of an epileptic fit.

*

Léon Steele had stars in his eyes. He stood with his forehead pressed against the angled window, cracking his knuckles and wondering if this, at last, was love.

For the past two weeks he had been eating very little, just pecking at his food and then pushing the plate aside – not because he wasn't hungry but because he had been led to believe that love killed the appetite. The only flaw in this hypothesis was that he was ravenous at every mealtime and starving afterwards. But he pretended that he really couldn't face it, his emotions were too caught up, his sensibilities in a whirl of frustrated passion and poignant longing. Just a fleeting glance
from her dark-brown eyes was enough to make the fluid in his bowels gurgle; though the cause might have been as much gastrological as neurochemical.