Russell Hoban - Medusa Frequency

HE SENDS HIS MIND AS MEGAHERTZ, AS QUESTING SIGNAL FROM THE DISTANT DEEPS. AS THE SEEKER FROM NEXO VOLLMA IT SWEEPS ALL FREQUENCIES BUT HE CAN’T FIND THE DEEPLY BAD ONES.

He puts out a call on the emergency band, I said: DEEP MIND IN PURSUIT OF DEEPLY BAD ONES, REQUIRES ASSISTANCE.

BACK COMES THE MESSAGE, said the Kraken: ROGER,DEEP MIND, WILL ASSIST.

IDENTIFY YOURSELF, says Nnvsnu, I said.

I AM NABILCA, THING OF DARKNESS, IS THE RESPONSE, said the Kraken.

Nabilca, Thing of Darkness, I said, is really Wendy Nelson, a marine biologist. She was scuba diving when she lost consciousness and woke up in the secret undersea headquarters of the Nexo Foundation.

SWORN ENEMIES OF THE DEEPLY BAD ONES. THE NEXO FOUNDATION FIGHTS THE FORCES OF EVIL AND HAS DEDICATED ITSELF TO AVENGING THE EMBLUGMENT OF NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH. THEY IMPLANTED A RADIO IN WENDY NELSON’S HEAD SO SHE CAN COMMUNICATE WITH NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH.

Why don’t they get Nnvsnu out of the blughole?

BECAUSE THE BLUGHOLE IS WHERE THE MOTHERCODE IS TRANSMITTED FROM AND THE TRANSMISSION MUSTN’T STOP. THE GREAT SNYUKH USED TO DO IT BUT SINCE THE DEEPLY BAD ONES PULLED THE GREAT SNYUKH NNVSNU’S BEEN DOING IT.

The mothercode is what holds the universe together and of course the Deeply Bad Ones are after it.

IN THE BLACKNESS NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH TRANSMITS THE MOTHERCODE; SPINNING HIS MIND LIKE A PRAYER WHEEL HE REVOLVES CONTINUALLY THE NUMINOSITIES AND NEXIALITIES THAT COMMUNICATE THE UNIVERSE TO ITSELF.

What does Nnvsnu the Tsrungh actually look like?

ACTUALLY HE’S NOT PROPERLY A HE AND HE’S NOTHING YOU COULD PICTURE IN YOUR MIND. WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT HERE IS A SPACE-TIME SINGULARITY WHICH IS IN FACT A NEURON OF THE COSMIC MIND TO WHICH THIS UNIVERSE HAS OCCURRED. SIMILARLY THE GREAT SNYUKH IS A SIMPLIFICATION OF A CUSP OF NEGATIVE PROBABILITY. ONCE INVERTED IT REVERSES ITS POLARITY AND BECOMES AN ACCELERATOR OF EVENT.

It might even be a TV series with a lot of special effects and some really top-class hardware. The Nexo Foundation has all kinds of displays and flashing lights and digital controls to monitor the shifting of probabilities as Nnvsnu the Tsrungh and Nabilca, Thing of Darkness who is really Wendy Nelson, fight the Deeply Bad Ones and various other forces of evil. Wendy Nelson’s cover is marine biology but she’s also a black belt in three or four martial arts, a top mathematician and physicist and an ace mechanic and driver. Sometimes in a violent action scene the bad guys will say, ‘Get the girl!’ and they’ll grab her and take her to a hideout and tie her up but they never tear her clothes off or take advantage of her.

WHY DON’T THEY TEAR HER CLOTHES OFF AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF HER?

For the same reason they can never shoot straight: they’ve got no self-confidence. That’s why they’re the bad guys — repeated failures have made them bitter and antisocial.

WELL, WHAT DO YOU THINK? CAN YOU DO ANYTHING WITH IT?

I’ll have a go. First I’ll try it as a comic, I’ll work up a couplé of episodes and show them to Bill Novad at Novad Ventures, they do Captain Pituitary.

GOOD LUCK.

Thank you, and thanks for your help.

The morning after my talk with the Kraken I was ready to begin work on The Seeker from Nexo Vollma. As one will at such times, I found myself taking stock of the present situation and reviewing recent events. What about the head of Orpheus, was I ever going to see it again? I supposed not, probably the angina had signalled my being dropped from its thoughts back into ordinary life. Where was it now? Had it gone back for another go with Fallok? Had it found someone new?

Often in my researches I’ve come across old books of a specialist nature in which the author, usually a retired wing-commander, expresses in a modest foreword the hope that the little volume may be a vade mecum for the model steam engineer, coarse angler, sado-masochist or whatever. I feel that way about these pages: I hope that this little volume may be a vade mecum not so much for the specialist as for others like me — the general struggler and straggler, the person for whom the whole sweep of consciousness is often too much. Here I am reminded of the words of H. P. Lovecraft:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

Persons for whom the whole sweep of consciousness is often too much are prone, when in a weakened condition, to wear themselves out by looking feverishly for things they cannot find. I’ve described my desk and I might as well say right here that my whole workroom is in pretty much the same state of terminal clutter. Oh yes, I have filing cabinets and folders to put things in but life isn’t that simple and there are always papers that hide themselves in odd places or in wrong folders.

I mention this because no sooner had I typed the title The Seeker from Nexo Vollma on to the screen than I found myself trying to remember where I’d put a loose folder containing a several years’ old article from Newsweek on mud-brick architecture. I had no need of that information at the time but my mind in its irregular and desultory patrolling of its boundaries had happened to note that it didn’t know at that moment where the mud-brick architecture article was. So I went looking for it, at first casually and then seriously and with hot waves of aggravation flooding over me like colour changes on a cuttlefish.

I found the folder after about five hours, it was stuck between two books on Çatal Hüyük. By then it was time for lunch. After lunch I had a kip then read over what I’d typed out during my conversation with the Kraken the day before. Good God, what rubbish it seemed. By then it was drink time which made the burden of my critical faculty easier to bear.

The main thing to keep in mind in the situation I have just described is that nothing is gained by pretending not to care about the mud-brick article; on the contrary, any lapse in concentration may well result in falling off a ladder or stepping into a month-old mug of coffee. The search for the mud-brick article must simply be accepted as that part of the work that precedes reading what one has written yesterday and recognizing it as rubbish.

Nnvsnu the Tsrungh stayed with me, however. Poor bastard, I thought, stuck down there in the blughole of the universe, ceaselessly spinning his mind like a prayer wheel as he transmitted the mothercode. Late that night as I thought about it I realized that he himself was ignorant of that mothercode; he span his mind because the pressures of the ultimate deep forced him to do so, and through the centrifuge of his consciousness flung out, unknown to him, the numinosities and nexialities that were the frail but constant web of the universe.

Nabilca, his thing of darkness, his sender and receiver of messages to and from the deep, would he ever see her, would he ever touch her?

Not likely.

So The Seeker from Nexo Vollma wasn’t rubbish and I was going to have a go with it. The next morning I was at my desk early and keen to begin.

It’s funny, though, how the odd detail will stick in the mind and give you no peace. I found myself remembering the morning when Melanie and I had first met at Hermes Soundways; she’d left a tape cassette with Istvan Fallok. I’d always wondered what was on that cassette. It was certainly none of my business but it was just one of those little things that I wanted to know about.

So I rang her up at home. No answer. Just then the post arrived and I went to get it. Among the bills and letters was a little padded brown envelope with a cassette inside. On the cassette was written: