Jake Arnott: The House of Rumour

She frowned and I struggled on, speaking of wave and particle duality, geodesics and the Uncertainty Principle.

‘It hardly makes any sense to me,’ she complained.

‘Well, that’s okay, Mary-Lou. They say that anyone who isn’t confused by quantum mechanics doesn’t understand it.’

‘Oh, Zagorski, I just knew you’d come out with something like that!’

‘Why?’

She smiled and poured me another slug of liquor.

‘Because it’s just the sort of dumb thing you would say.’

‘Gee, Mary-Lou, I really don’t understand it. Most of what I learnt about it I got from Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Time . That was the first time I’d heard that time and space can be warped. You remember the story? Astounding ran it a couple of years ago. There are two possible futures: one like an ideal society, the other a horrific dictatorship. The hero is contacted by each of them because his actions will determine which one comes to pass.’

‘Oh yeah, I read it. He’s visited by a winsome girl from utopia, and an evil vamp from dystopia.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Hmm, that figures. Don’t they choose him because his actions will determine whether some kid becomes a scientist or not?’

‘John Barr, yes; his ideas will go to create the perfect city of Jonbar. But only if he picks up the right object one day when he’s a child. If he chooses a magnet, he becomes interested in science and goes on to discover new theories that make this bright future possible. If he picks up the stone next to it for his slingshot, we’re headed for this totalitarian nightmare.’

‘What’s this got to do with quantum mechanics?’

‘Well, it’s as much to do with the Uncertainty Principle. By observing something you can change it, so the measurement of the position of a particle alters its trajectory.’

‘But it’s a political conundrum too, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’

‘Of course it is. Like you said, a warning from the future. That’s what we should be writing, don’t you think?’

‘Er, yeah.’

Along with everything else, I was politically naive at that point in my life. I had worked out that Mary-Lou was left wing and that somehow this did not necessarily mean she was pro-Soviet Russia, but beyond that I was liable to get confused. I wanted to show willing because of the way I felt about her but I was never sure I was doing the right thing. Lords of the Black Sun was meant to be anti-fascist but the illustrator had made the Nazi spaceship look so impressive that the cover issue became a favourite with the German–American Bund.

‘We’ve got to fight for the future, Mary-Lou!’ I declared, emboldened by the second glass of slivovitz.

‘That’s right, Larry. And it’s finely balanced. Just like in The Legion of Time , it could go either way. In Europe, in Africa, in Asia. In the whole world!’

We were staring into each other’s eyes and it seemed to me like a portentous moment of epiphany, as though we shared the destiny of planet earth and the vast dominions of space beyond. I made a silent promise that I would learn more about politics and philosophy, that I would try to understand science properly so that I could share this precious wisdom with Mary-Lou Gunderson. Her eyes appeared to blaze with all the hope of some great utopian future. Then she yawned.

‘Sorry, Zagorski,’ she sighed. ‘I’m beat. And I need to sleep. Got to work tomorrow.’

She had a part-time job reading scripts for one of the studios. She saw me to the door.

‘Thanks for trying to explain all that long-hair stuff,’ she murmured.

‘I’ll see if I can’t find out some more,’ I offered.

‘Thing is, Larry, I’m just too impatient. I want to know it all. And right now.’

‘Yeah, well—’

‘I do,’ she cut in, as if the idea had come to her at that moment. ‘I want to know everything! Goodnight, Larry.’

She quickly kissed me on the cheek and hustled me out of the door. I staggered into the clear cold LA night. I was light-headed but, for once, steady on my feet. My mind fuzzed with ideologies, theoretical physics and plum brandy. My soul reeled in speculative fantasy. I was in love.

I was also a virgin. Perhaps my attraction to writing about the future was that it was only there that I had any worldly experience. I was as keen to rid myself of my childlike imagination and wonder as I was to use them to generate stories. Dr Furedi had encouraged my writing as a cathartic process, though he was concerned that my obsession with fantasy and science fiction reflected my neurotic condition. He pointed out that many of the problems I’d had with it were symptomatic of an unconscious resistance within myself. Now I’d had a small breakthrough with my fiction and, I felt, had made real progress towards the possibility of a relationship.

I was finding it hard to get on with my next story, though. ‘Lightship 7 from Andromeda’ now seemed a banal space adventure. I obsessed about my feelings for Mary-Lou and easily lost concentration when I sat down at my typewriter or would wander about in an unco-ordinated daze. At bookstores or news-stands it had long been my habit to scan the racks of the pulp magazines, for inspiration as well as just to see what was out there. The gaudy covers would often carry a female form: amazon warrior in sleek and curvaceous armour, or bound and barely clothed captives. But what had once been cheap titillation had now become a nagging reminder of an infatuation I had no idea what to do with.

We went to the cinema together: Dr Cyclops was playing in a double feature with The Monster and the Girl . Afterwards, over a soda, we agreed that both films were absolute trash and the sort of thing that gave science fiction a bad name, but it was hardly a romantic evening. We did meet to talk about work, though. Mary-Lou had none of the problems I was encountering with output. She seemed unsatisfied with ‘Zodiac Empire’ but she could produce copy at a phenomenal rate. She dismissed it as her ‘space-opera’ (some fanzine had just come up with the term) but she did have a strong idea that she wanted to pursue: that the different planets of the solar system had specific characteristics and influences — an astrology for the future, she called it.

Meanwhile I was trying to give myself a political education. Fascism was evil: that seemed clear enough. Capitalism was wrong, not just because it was unfair but also because it was unscientific. But Soviet communism wasn’t the answer. What was needed was some kind of socialism that wasn’t totalitarian. The pact the Russians had made with the Nazis had done a lot to discredit the USSR, but America wasn’t in the war either. Haunted by distant cataclysm, we all felt a peculiar sense of detached speculation. The world seemed as awkwardly balanced as I was.

One afternoon on passing a news-stand Mary-Lou pointed to all the catastrophic headlines — LONDON BLITZED, THE ATLANTIC WAR CONTINUES, TANK BATTLES IN NORTH AFRICA — then to a little man who had picked up a magazine.

‘After all that,’ she remarked darkly, ‘he still wants Action Stories . What are we doing , writing for the pulps?’

‘Maybe we’re finding a solution. You see the news? What’s real now? Submarines, flying machines: that was the science fiction of a hundred years ago. What we are imagining now: that might be next century’s news.’

‘Jesus, Zagorski, think of the horrors we might come up with then.’

‘That’s why it’s important how we use our imaginations,’ I said, instinctively reaching for the latest issue of Astounding .

‘In dreams begins responsibility,’ said Mary-Lou.

‘Huh?’ I grunted, already absorbed by the glossy binding.