Elizabeth Hand - 12 Monkeys

“Dr. Railly,” a voice at the back of the room began chidingly, but the woman at the podium continued without a beat.

“Deranged and hysterical,” she pronounced, “the man raped a young woman of the village, was taken into custody, but then mysteriously escaped and was not heard of again. Now—”

She looked into the darkened lecture hall, the pool of light on her face making her look like a somber angel. “Obviously, this plague / doomsday scenario is considerably more compelling when reality supports if with a virulent disease, whether it’s the bubonic plague, smallpox, or AIDS. And now we have technological horrors as well, such as chemical warfare, which first reared its ugly head in the deadly mustard gas attacks of World War One.”

On the screen behind her, a series of slides showed images of doughboys in gas masks, an unexploded bomb, the skeletal rictus of a boy’s face in the last agonies of death by gas. “ Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori ,” Railly remarked dryly. “During one such attack in the French trenches in October 1917, we have an account of this soldier—”

Her pointer touched the screen. A sepia-toned photograph showed a dark-haired young man, his features all but obscured by blood, being borne on a stretcher by exhausted soldiers. The man’s wounded hand was outstretched, his expression almost unbearably poignant, the face of someone who has found his heart’s desire only to have it snatched away from his grasp.

“During an assault, he was wounded by shrapnel and hospitalized, apparently in a state of hysteria. Doctors found he had lost all comprehension of French. But he spoke English fluently, albeit in a regional dialect they didn’t recognize. The man, although physically unaffected by the gas, was hysterical. He claimed he had come from the future, that he was looking for a pure germ that would ultimately wipe mankind from the face of the earth, starting in the year — 1996!”

Nervous chuckles from the audience. Railly tapped the screen impatiently as another photograph came into focus. This one revealed the gaunt, haunted image of the same young man, staring with ravaged eyes from the narrow cot of a military hospital.

“Though injured, the young soldier disappeared from the hospital, no doubt trying to carry on his mission to warn others, substituting for the universally acknowledged agony of a war a self-inflicted agony we call ‘the Cassandra Complex.’”

In the hall, two listeners nodded raptly, then glanced smiling at each other — Marilou Martin and Wayne Chang, friends of Railly’s from her university days. A few seats away from them, someone else was having a harder time buying Railly’s theory.

“Doodling while Rome burns,” a man muttered darkly, Marilou turned, frowning, and saw a black-clad man with shoulder-length red hair tapping ferociously at a laptop computer n between glares at Dr. Railly.

“As you recall,” Railly went on somewhat breathlessly, “in Greek legend Cassandra was condemned to know the future, but to be disbelieved when she told it. Hence the agony of foreknowledge combined with impotence to do anything about it.”

The lecture continued in this vein for another hour. At last, a final image filled the screen: the face of the raving madman from the woodcut, superimposed with that of the haunted soldier and the rabid face of the lead singer of an alternative band popular for its doomy lyrics.

“Thank you,” Railly said, suddenly shy. She ducked her head and turned from the podium, then hurried from the lecture hall.

In a reception room on the second floor of Breitrose, members of the university’s psych department had set up a table with dip and raw vegetables and a few tired-looking cold cuts. Railly grabbed a carrot and a glass of seltzer and settled at a library table at the front of the room. Stacks of books bore identical dust jackets in ominous shades of orange and crimson, overlaid with the same black-and-white medieval engraving of a wild-faced man.

Moments later, the first enthusiastic members of the audience began drifting through the door. A few

wan souls congregated around the crudités, but most made a beeline for Railly, lofting copies of the book and thrusting them in her face.

“What a wonderful meditation on such a complex topic,” a tweedy woman began, when she was pushed aside by a lanky red-haired man in black.

“Dr. Railly,” he proclaimed loudly. DR. PETERS was scrawled on his name tag in black Magic Marker. His voice scraped rawly through the others as he announced, “I think you have given your ‘alarmists’ a bad name. Surely there is very real and very convincing data that the planet cannot survive the excesses of the human race: proliferation of atomic devices, uncontrolled breeding habits, the rape of the environment, the pollution of land, sea, and air.”

He paused for breath, and people began to edge back toward the cold cuts. A few hardy grad students remained to listen, nodding or shaking their heads as the man went on.

“In this context, isn’t it obvious that ‘Chicken Little’ represents the sane vision, and Homo sapiens’ motto, ‘ Let’s go shopping! ’ is the cry of the true lunatic?

Having delivered his little bombshell, Dr. Peters gave Kathryn Railly a tight, self-important smile. Before she could respond, an elderly disheveled professor elbowed past him.

“Dr. Railly! Please! The old man thumped a tattered manuscript on the table in front of her. “I wonder if you’re aware of my own studies, which indicate that certain cycles of the moon actually impact on the incidence of apocalyptic predictions as observed in urban emergency rooms—”

Kathryn shook her head helplessly. “Uh, no.” Actually—”

“In fact,” the professor babbled on, “birthing centers in Scandinavia have charted an alarming increase in the number of …”

Kathryn Railly’s eyes glazed over, even as she continued to nod and murmur politely.

“…not to mention the link between drug abuse and solar flares, which has been pointedly ignored by—”

“Kathryn—”

A hand touched her shoulder. Kathryn turned, sighing in relief when she saw Marilou and Wayne standing behind her.

“You were great ,” said Marilou. She cast a baleful glance at the reception table, where Dr. Peters was scarfing down raw cauliflower. “Really, really great.”

Kathryn squeezed her hand. “You’re leaving?” she asked, trying to keep disappointment from edging into her voice.”

Marilou looked apologetic. “Our reservation’s at nine thirty. It’s getting late.”

Another hand grabbed Kathryn’s other shoulder. “Dr. Railly!” the elderly man cried. “Please — this is very important!”

Wayne Chang made a face. “You sure you’re gonna be all right?” He cocked a thumb at the apoplectic professor.

Kathryn laughed and glanced at her watch. “You go ahead. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Okay.” Wayne nodded, taking Marilou’s arm. “We’ll make sure the champagne’s good and cold.”

Kathryn watched her friends walk off as the professor rambled on. “Dr. Railly, I simply cannot understand your exclusion of the moon in relation to apocalyptic dementia…”

With a sigh, Kathryn turned back to him. “I left out wolfbane and garlic too,” she said, then tried to cover her exasperation by adding, “But I’d be happy to take a look at your paper.”

The professor beamed. “Well, thank you,” he said. Straightening, he stretched out a gnarly hand and picked up a copy of her book. “Perhaps then you could sign this for me? As one colleague to another?”