Russell Hoban - Fremder

I’ve given a lot of thought to Rilke’s angels and I’ve come to the conclusion that for him an angel was the ultimate degree of perception, in the same way that terror is the ultimate degree of beauty, living at the farther end of a spectrum on which we find, closer to us, the never-to-be answered question in the eyes of the girl with the pearl earring.

A3 73 and Badr al-Budur are two of the quiet places in my head. I like sometimes to think of Pearl speaking in my mother’s voice under the red Isis moon and I like to think of the robot sweepers humming through the silence of the spaceport under the noctolux lamps of Badru.

Corporation flickered me home with a couple of ViTech 8s minding me. One of them was very tall and the other was very short. The tall one’s working name was Mojo; the short one’s was High John and he didn’t smile when he said it. When we reassembled at Nova Central they cleared me through Quarantine with Red 1 Priority, got us into a waiting hopper, and took me to the Ziggurat in London Central for the Pythia session. It was a grey and rainy end-of-November day, I was glad for that; I hate those hard sunny days that break your teeth. This one was gentle, there was a little mercy coming down with the rain; the colours of everything were heightened by the rainlight; except for the holes of bright emptiness it was a day you could work with. I was glad for that because I knew that I was coming to the end of my forgetting; whatever you might try to hide, Pythia would get it out of you one way or another.

We lifted out of Nova Central and flew over the ruins of Themepark West where the rides had rusted into tottering skeletons and the scenic river was silted solid with sewage; over the huddle of London Outer Squats where the roads were choked with the gridlocked shells of cars and lorries that hadn’t moved for forty years, many of them extended by canvas or packing crates into a better class of hovel than their neighbours. The rain intensified the stench of garbage, excrement, and decomposition as we flew over a pack of dogs dining on a human corpse. The next gathering we saw was a pack of Shorties roasting what looked like a dog on a spit. One of them had a blaster and there was dancing but I couldn’t hear the music.

The air looked no soupier than usual and all the hopper vents were closed but our breather filters were greenish-yellow by the time we got to the Ziggurat. The transparent anti-rad canopy was up and the yellow HAZRAD blimps that supported it swayed glistening in the rain. Through the canopy I saw bodies, some naked and some clothed, heaped on a plaza below the upper levels. The maintenance crews were out on strike so the building was in its purple standby mode; the naked bodies seen through the yellow canopy were greenish-grey and ghastly. As we flew lower I saw that there were Shorties among the adults. Placards were visible but I couldn’t make out what they said.

‘Are the big ones Clowns?’ I said.

‘Probably,’ said High John. ‘With Shorties giving the orders. This lot must have had a neutraliser for getting through the barrier screen; Shorties are getting smarter all the time.’

‘If they’d been smart they wouldn’t have got themselves terminated like that,’ said Mojo.

‘What were they protesting against?’ I said.

‘What’ve you got?’ said High John.

‘Fun Creds are what they mostly protest for,’ said Mojo: ‘toadsy and arcade time.’

‘You ever done toadsy?’ High John asked me.

‘Flicker drive is all I do in the consciousness-altering line.’

‘toadsy makes life a lot more exciting,’ said High John.

‘Death too,’ said Mojo.

Even with the corpses the purple Ziggurat looked wonderful in the rain sporting its yellow canopy and flashers, the various red and green beacons winking on relay towers and dish antennas, and the newsflash girdling it with green lights: SUNNYBANK MELTDOWN: 237 MORE DEAD. ‘DANGER PAST’ — SNG SHAKEUP, NO. I IN SECRET TALKS WITH TOP EXEC — CLEVER DAUGHTER FAMILIES: ‘TELL US THE TRUTH’ — ZIGGURAT MAINTENANCE CREWS REJECT CORPORATION OFFER: ‘WE’LL ZIG BUT WE WON’T ZAG’ — SURVEY SHOWS 43 % INCREASE IN NO-GO AREAS: STREET BOSS SACKED, said the headlines. It was good to be home.

Because of the canopy (still up because Maintenance were still out) we landed in the hopper park on top of the old MI Archive Tower and took the lift down to the underground shuttle to get to the Ziggurat. The shuttle is Red Clearance only and passes had to be shown but the platform stank of urine just the same and the graffiti on the walls were the usual thing: SNG HOARS OUT WOGS JEW UROTRASH OUT INGLAN 4 THE INGLASH. SHORTIS ROOL. The crossed arrows of the Patriots were prominent as were many illegible calligraphies which may have been personal signatures.

At the Ziggurat we took the lift to Pythia Reception where Mojo signed me over to the Tech 7 on duty who turned out to be Nina Marlowe, the wife of Ernie Marlowe who’d been Auxiliary Engineer on Clever Daughter . ‘You’re looking well, Fremder,’ was all she said. She punched up my entry on the console and fed my capsule into Pythia intro.

Standing by the reception desk was a sweet-faced grandmotherly-looking woman in a business suit and a power haircut. ‘A sad welcome, Mr Gorn,’ she said. ‘I’m Irene Heale, Head of Research and Development. Nothing can bring back the seven who were lost but we’re hoping for data from you that will prevent such disasters in future.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ I said.

Nina pushed a buzzer, a young woman with fair hair in a long plait came towards me, and I felt a sudden rush of loss and longing and desire all at once. It was too early for dusk but the little tribunal was sitting and the verdict was the usual one. ‘Hello,’ she said, and stuck out her hand. ‘I’m Katya Mazur. I’ll prep you for Pythia.’

‘You’re new, yes? You weren’t here the last time I had a Pythia session.’

‘I’ve been here three months or so.’ Her handshake was firm, her hand warm and dry.

I leaned closer to see how her name was spelled on her badge. ‘Katya Mazur,’ I said. ‘Turn it around and it’s Mazurka-tya.’

‘You like mazurkas? The Chopin ones?’

‘Yes.’ I watched her walk as she moved ahead of me to push the lift button.

‘I’ve got the Ilse Bak recording of the complete mazurkas,’ she said. ‘Opus 67 in A Minor, Number 4 is my favourite.’ She hummed the beginning of it.

‘Mine too.’

She looked at me to see if I was lying, saw that I wasn’t, and smiled. Standing beside her in the lift I closed my eyes and smelled her hair and felt guilty.

The ready room was a cosy place with a dim red primordial light that made it easier to be naked there. I stripped so that I could be prepped by T/7 Mazur whose face and figure had already brought me to a good state of pupil-dilation. Deep-spacers are still mostly male, and the Sheela-Na-Gig and Top Exec (solidly female) clearly wanted us wide awake and tingling for Pythia sessions.

‘What was that look you gave me when I came to reception?’ she said. ‘Have we met somewhere before?’

‘You reminded me of someone.’

‘Someone nice?’

‘Very nice,’ I said, and abandoned myself to her ministrations.

‘You’re shaking,’ she said as she smeared me all over with electrolytic cream.

‘Don’t take any notice of it — it’s just something I do between flicker jumps.’ She was very thorough and although I was feeling more and more nervous about the Pythia session it was evident that my body was getting interested.