The Rape of The Sun Page 9

  “No!” I cut him off. We were eye-to-eye now; his gaze was sympathetically querying, my eyes were blazing. I repeated: “Hell no! Great God, Wel, don’t feel sympathy for him, Southeastern pays for his quarters! Look, love, our house is our home, no Sven, no Sven—”

  He lit another cigarette, he pulled on it rather hard, the end-spark glowed; I found that I was adoring the scent of his smoke, new-mown alfalfa or not. Then he told me: “He’s my friend, he’s our friend. I still want him for co-host at our housewarming. He’s agreed to that; and if he changes his mind now, I’ll blow him over.”

  Hideously uneasy, I told my husband: “I suppose that would be all right—”

  He said, “Come here.” He was on the sofa; I joined him readily; he hugged me. He told the ceiling: “Once upon a time, before I knew you, I had a steady girl friend whom I loved, and then I met a stunner who totally blew me over. So while I was seeing the new* girl friend, I simply could not get romantic with the steady girl friend whom I loved. And I think this is entirely human, sex immaterial.”

  I was cold with unhappiness. “Meaning?”

  “For a while, Hel-r-in terms of you—what say we both stay in our own beds?”

  I hugged him, hurting. I managed: “Just don’t start sleeping on the sofa.”

  9

  Our solar housewarming was a reeling, staggering success. It was, indeed, a multidimensional success; and almost every dimension complicated, directly or indirectly, the salient concerns of its principals.

  Wel had arranged a high-grade 5:16 sunset through a meteorologist friend—too early for our guests, but it inspired us. We spread an eight o’clock buffet supper on the front lawn (the sod had been laid two weeks earlier), facilitated after dark by strings of Japanese lanterns solar-electrically illuminated. The sky was clear, the evening temp a lovely 21 °C. Some guests arrived as early as six for drinks, which were plentiful; most were there soon after seven. Liquor in hand, they swarmed the house and the hill.

  In the course of the soiree, which kept rising until a prescheduled one a.m. cut-off, people ate and drank and smoked all over the house and grounds. Upper middle class though most of them were, inevitably some of them dropped and dripped on expensive carpets—but, being expensive, those carpets were bum-proof and spongeable.

  One guest was there by five: co-host Sven, partly to share the sunset with us, mostly to help. Wel pumped Sven’s hand with both his hands, and I kissed Sven languidly on the lips. “Special Guest?” Sven queried. “Coming,” I promised with a small smile. Then we went to work, Wel and Sven on the bar in the rumpus room and I on a diversity. Each of us prepared one long drink, nursed it until seven, and then cut loose.

  The crowd of nearly sixty people was split quite differently from the way Wel and I had puckishly envisioned it: one quarter were Southeastern colleagues and subordinates (but neither J.C. nor Mullett nor Graben could make it), one quarter were Wel’s journalist buddies, there were maybe three good-pal national competitors, and the remainder were scientists and other teachers, along with their spouses or other-sex friends. They included a psychology prof, a French teacher with a restless moustache and a liking for Baudelaire, an astronomer (Bill Haley), a poet, a model, and a high-school biology teacher who fumed because his board of education would not let him start a course entitled “The Evolution of Morals Among Sub-Rational and Pseudo-Rational Animals Up To and Including Man.”

  As for our Curve-Ball Special Guest, he hadn’t arrived by seven-thirty but I was confident that he would come. The way Wel and I regularly handled it at our parties, our Special Guest—he was always a he—was likely to be a mildly distinguished Sylvanopolis-visiting lecturer or musician. Along about ten o’clock, there would come a demand from the company for a performance; I was always the one to plant the spontaneous development. If the Guest was a lecturer, everybody would cry “speech!”; if a musician, “music!” while I would open the piano. The Guest would act embarrassed, and the cry would crescendo. Just as the Guest would be about to bring off his reluctant yielding, Wel would arise and remark that the Guest was probably weary and would be gratified to learn that he did not have to work free at his trade tonight. The Guest would always protest that nothing of the sort, he would be glad to do his modest bit. Wel very firmly would say no, he would not permit this imposition; and if it was a musician, I would quietly close the piano. Here the Guest would look baffled, and Wel would bring him a drink, and he would sit there holding it while the party would drift away from him.

  About an hour later, a circle of people would begin to accumulate around the reopened piano where the musician Guest was absently toying with the keyboard, or in the dining room where the lecturer Guest was talking to another guest rather more loudly and ornately than a tête-à-tête would require; and the Guest-performance would happen after all. We had learned that the full sequence was mathematically predictable.

  Tonight we would be following the same pattern. Just this afternoon I had slipped Wel a hint what sort of Guest it would be; as yet, Sven knew nothing. The three of us had

  worked out a complicated scoring system for the bets we laid as to how it would all come out.

  Apart from the intriguing point-interest of the Guest, piquant for me because I had picked him and for Wel and Sven because of the mystery, we three and Bill had gone into the evening for fun and also as a private crew-celebration. Our sun-satellite project was progressing so nicely. We thought of the party also as a celebration for Wel whose illustrated Sunday feature about our close-in solar venture was winning his acclaim.

  For Wel there was something else. He was trying to crack a mystery to whose solution Bill Haley might be privy: the ballooning stars. And therefore Wel stayed temperate with his own drinking while encouraging alcoholic lubricity in everybody else, particularly Bill; who knew what might come of that?

  Tonight, as always when hosting, Wel was in vest and striped shirt-sleeves, to advertise that he was on immediate call with any bottle of anything. His ageless face would crinkle up into a Satanic grin or crinkle down into meditation. Sven and I thought we would be forever mind-seeing Wel standing at the kitchen door, holding a bottle and a glass, his face crinkled one way or another as he inspected a cluster for a dull spot that needed an injection.

  Arriving guests were welcomed by Sven or by Wel, or by me when I had been relieved of my supper-fussing by the arrival of the caterers. Guests were conducted in parties of two or three or four or five on the Grand Tour-—which started at the rumpus-room bar, climaxed at the interior solar heating unit and then at the hilltop receptor panels, penultimated in a second bar visit, and ultimated at the head of the outdoor chow line. After that, each guest was on his own.

  One who somehow escaped the Grand Tour was the Special Guest. Sven, who was about ready to hit chow, found the Guest alone in the parlor, a late-thirtyish small thin fellow with glazed brown eyes and a shock of unruly chestnut hair; the Guest seemed ill-at-ease; his drink was looking back at him.

  “Care to eat?” Sven cordially invited.

  “Thank you, no,” a slow reedy voice responded. “I prefer to watch my drink while I and it grow smaller together.”

  Sven was going to pursue that oddball response, but Wel called to him from the rumpus room.

  At nine-thirty or thereabouts, Sven was in our kitchen, which was roomy as modem kitchens went: the kind which compressed automation equal to thirty skilled slaves into sixteen hundred cubic feet. Oops, I slipped; forty-five cubic meters. Along one side ran a sink and Formica counters; Sven sat high on one counter, hunched under overhanging cupboards; the other counter was thinly bebottled with specimens thieved from the rumpus-room bar. Leaning against one or another sanitary modernity were Wel and astronomer Bill Haley; Bill was tall enough to touch stars and lean as a wavicle, crisp in his speech as though at pains he were translating logic into English. He was talking about space, or maybe about time; there was some confusion for the two listeners, but it was not owing to alcohol. Wel
wore thought crinkles all over his face, he had a thumb hooked in a suspender, his lips were slightly pursed, he stared through his drink-glass at a ceiling light; perhaps Bill might let something slip about star-growth. Sven, whenever he could get in a sentence, was translating astrophysics into psychology; surprisingly, it was one of his favorite games; it didn’t seem to bore Wel, and the hackles it was raising on Bill’s neck were gratifying.

  I entered, leading the Guest by the hand. Turning on my favorite smile of sleepy deviltry, I told the Guest that if he should find anybody else talking, it would be Dr. Carr. The Guest nodded vaguely and blinked at his host. Then he turned and blinked at Sven. Then at Bill. When this Guest was blinking at a person, the person knew that the Guest was not thinking about anything else at the moment. It made Sven uncomfortable and Bill quiescent; Wel accepted it and blinked back.

  The name of the Special Guest was Collins. “Willkie?” inquired Bill, meaning it as an erudite joke; but Collins absently nodded affirmation. Sven surmised that Collins must be a musician, he could not imagine this character lecturing. Collins blinked at the bottle which Wel had selected for him after Collins had shown cloudy indecision, and he blinked at the glass in which Scotch and soda were forming an unstable relationship.

  Wel tried velvetly to start Collins talking; but when this became evidently futile, Wel eased back into the theme which the entry of Collins had interrupted. Wel’s preferred technique was short questions followed by long listenings; and now he asked Bill whether the sun and other stars were alive.

  “Hylozoism!” blurted the astronomer—just as he might have blurted “Solecism!” if someone had pointed to Arcturus and called it the North Star.

  “Who said they were alive?*’ Sven wanted to know.

  Asserted Wel, “I thought you did.”

  ‘They are,” said a voice like a whispering oboe; and they looked up, startled, to see Collins going out of the kitchen. Sven suggested, “Maybe he said it.”

  “No,” Wel insisted, “it was something you said, Sven.”

  “All I said was that stars may be centers of experiencing. That doesn’t mean they are alive. I don’t think they are alive.”

  “Either stars are centers of experiencing,” asserted logician Bill, “or they are not. If they are, then they are alive. If not, not.”

  “Probably,” Wel commented, “it will be forever a moot question. How in the world could anybody find out?”

  “Perhaps we may,” Bill told him, “while we and our satellites are orbiting Sun.”

  Sven wondered: “What does Collins do?” If a motif of our parties was to lubricate topic changes, tonight we were doing just fine.

  Wel reported, “Hel says he lectures—on yoga.”

  Up went Bill’s eyebrows. “And yet he drinks!"

  “It isn’t pure yoga, Hel tells me,” Wel explained. “It’s his own westernized variety. Hel discovered him at a lecture. She thinks he’s cute. It’s the first sign of mother instinct she has ever shown. It scares me a little.”

  “His views permit drinking, then?” Bill urged. At the appearance of new evidence which conflicts with accepted theory, a scientist should critique the theory, but first, he must appraise the evidence.

  Wel asked Bill: “You think his drinking is an important issue?”

  “My views permit drinking,” Bill responded, proffering his glass.

  Sven inquired, “What are the views of Collins?”

  Wel glanced at his wristwatch. “Ten o’clock. Time for The

  Act. As soon as I fix us some drinks. . . . We may know his views before the evening is over.” Carefully tilting 1.5 ounces into the glasses of Sven and Bill and 0.5 into his own, Wei added soda or branch, reflecting that also before the evening was over he might—by well-oiling Bill—know a good deal that was more pertinent for Wel than the views of Collins.

  As the three kitcheneers entered the parlor, I was whispering to one of the women. I don’t think that most of the women who attended Wel-Hel parties, and there were a number here, knew that it was an act: year after year it escaped them. The full-time homemaker type is like that; it is her deficiency among excellencies, just as homemaking is one my major deficiencies. My whisperee got a hungry gleam in her eye and whispered to another woman; and a buzz began, with many glances directed at Collins who sat, vacuous, in a corner. Wel stood at an elbow of the luscious model who was flirting with somebody and did not appear to notice Wei. Sven came over to join me; having planted seed, I was passively watching its germination.

  One of the wives took a deep breath and cooed: “We’d just love to have a few words from Mister Collins!” “Oh, yes! yes!” female voices urged; and a twitter began; and I squeezed Sven’s hand; and Wel got ready to step forward and stop the movement just when Collins would cease writhing and protesting and would be on the verge of acquiescence. ...

  But Wel moved not; and over his face passed a most rare system of expressions. If he usually displayed one of two crinkle-systems, a Satanic up or a meditative down, this was a third system which might be called an aghast chaos.

  For Collins was already talking.

  We could see his lips moving, although he remained seated and did not look up. A people-hush descended, and above it subtly drifted the reedy Collins murmur:

  “—caught by clouds on a mountaintop. At your feet is the cloud-sea rolling, and the islands that are other peaks rise out of the sea all around you. Or like Jean Cocteau’s people in the cinema house, who find all reality in the cut of light which the screen slices; but Jean, in this updating of Plato, is not watching the screen, he is reading action lengthwise in the shifting pattern of the light beam as it leaves the projector and passes overhead—”

  Wel had resolved his crinkles into a wry grin at himself. (I loved that grin!) The lush model had so far forgotten her erotic comedy that she came and stood beside Wel, staring at Collins.

  The speaker was altogether disconnected, he seemed to be improvising, he never looked up. “So we drink lightly, like Lao Tse, who walked a tightrope of wine stretched above heaven and Earth, the only trick being to get just tipsy enough—not too tipsy, or one topples.”

  Looking for our astronomer, Sven found him composed. Bill had perhaps reached comprehension that certain facts about Collins had confounded him only because they had come up in the wrong context; there was no real inconsistency.

  Unexpectedly Collins looked up—and gazed directly at his host. “One of those rare few who stay balanced on the tightrope and look at the source instead of the screen is Doctor Welland Carr. No, no, Doctor Carr, do not look startled, I know all about you, I am not out of touch with things as they are. I would be honored, sir, if you would question me.”

  No longer was Sven inclined to laugh at Collins. Nor was Wei; but his change was not an ego-overflow in response to the recognition; rather, Wel was jolted into seeing that Collins was no clown but a serious mystic, and rather a deep one at that. Collins continued to stare at Wei: a question was wanted, and it must not be an empty one.

  Wel challenged: “Sir, I respect your mysticism because it is an intuitive search for truth. And already, in a minute or two of speaking, you have touched upon no fewer than five great mysteries. But all these mysteries are already known to be mysteries. Mister Collins, can you confront me with some mystery—one equally well worth contemplating—which is not in the literature?”

  Collins came slowly to his feet, and he blazed at Wei: “I can confront you with a shriveling mystery! Right now, Doctor Carr, Doctor Cavell, Captain Jensen—while we are playing games here—the entire world is shrinking. I mean that literally: all of us and our world are steadily becoming smaller, and the distances are shrinking—and even our measuring instruments are shrinking; yes, even our clocks are shrinking. A mile per hour is still a mile per hour, only they are shorter miles and a shorter hour traveled by smaller people. I tell you that it is so. As a man whom I respect, how will you respond?”

  To say that Wel Carr was a
ttentive understates it. Wel was bouleversed.

  Brushing off temptation to demand how Collins could know this, Sven rescued Wel, who obviously could not speak. “If this is true, Mr. Collins—what is the cause of our shrinkage?”

  Collins shot back: “The Perfume of Diminution! Haven’t all of you smelled it?”

  There was a silence, and then a furious mutterbuzz; listening to it, sifting it, I gathered that all present remembered smelling the queer cigarette-spoiling alfalfa perfume during late January and February and into March, but did not seem to be smelling it now.

  Collins was waiting; so was Wel, who seemed pallid. Said Sven, above the noise: “Sir, I will carry this one more pass, and then I really must withdraw. In the recent past, some of us did notice a peculiar atmospheric odor which may or may not be what you mean by the Perfume of Diminution. Doctor Cavell has a chemist trying to analyze it; but until now, he has struck out. And it seems lately to have died away.”

  Collins, more calmly, even with a trace of a sneer: “Doctor Cavell’s chemist has not been able to do a differential analysis, because the perfume permeates all things; and even if her chemist tries comparing present samples with old samples which may be on hand, the perfume will have permeated the old containers. And has it died away, sir, in truth? Or is it still here, only your sense of smell has become bored with it and ceases to notice it?”

  Sven bowed slightly and stepped back; he had thought of that. It was up to Wel and me to pull our party-situation back to bright out of dismal. But Wel couldn’t act; aspects of Collins transcending the Perfume of Diminution had him furrow-brow paralyzed. Whereas I couldn’t leave off watching Wei.

  Astonomer Haley chose to drive it to the wall. “Excuse me, Mister Collins. If all of us and our distances and measuring instruments are shrinking, why haven’t we noticed this?”