Translated by L. K. Conrad
Lino Aldani (1926- ) is an Italian writer who is principally known for his science fiction. He is the author of a pioneering study on science fiction, La fantascienza (1962), the first of its kind to appear in Italy.
He began publishing SF stories in the magazine Oltre il Cielo in 1960, under the pseudonym of N. L. Janda. In 1963 he founded and edited, with Massimo Lo Jacono and Giulio Raiola, the magazine Futuro, featuring exclusively science fiction written by Italian authors. In 1964 he published his first collection, Quarta dimensione, and continued to sell stories to various magazines and anthologies, developing an individual style mixing traditional SF tropes and striking extrapolations with literate prose and a distinctive feel for realism. For this reason, his fiction can often be compared to that of better known Italian literary fantasists writing outside the SF genre. His situation, writing in the land of italo Calvino and Dino Buzzati, has been analogous to the situation of, say, John Wyndham or Brian W. Aldiss publishing science fiction in the land of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. Literary fashion seems to dictate that it matters more how and where you publish it, what class signals it gives off, than what it actually is.
Lino Aldani lived in Rome until 1968, when he decided to return to his native town. He had a variety of occupations, ranging from office worker to bartender, and later taught philosophy and mathematics in high school. He also served as mayor of his native town.
Aldani has never been a prolific writer, and only in 1977 published his first novel, Quando le radici. Two years later it was followed by the novella Eclissi 2000 (included in a collection with the same title). In 1985 he published Nel segno delta luna bianca. written in collaboration with Daniela Piegai, a skilled and enjoyable fantasy novel where his distinctive voice displays new overtones. A new collection of his short fiction appeared in 1987, Parabole per domani. His story “Quo Vadis Francisco?” was included in The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction (1986), edited by Brian W. Aldiss and Sam J. Lundwall. He later developed it into his most recent novel, La croce di ghiaccio, published in 1989. His works have been translated worldwide and are well known in France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Spain, The Netherlands, and nearly all of Eastern Europe. He is surely the Italian SF genre writer who is best known abroad.
* * * *
GOOD NIGHT, SOPHIE
|
G |
rey and blue overalls were running along the street. Grey and blue, no other colors. There were no stores, no agencies, there wasn’t a single soda-fountain, or a window full of toys, or even a perfume store. Once in a while, on the fronts covered with soot, incrusted with rubbish and moss, the revolving door of a shop opened. Inside was dreamland: Oneirofilm, happiness within everybody’s reach, to fit everybody’s pocketbook; inside was Sophie Barlow, nude, for anyone who wanted to buy her.
* * * *
There were seven of them and they were closing in from all sides. He swung violently, hitting one of them in the jaw, which sent him tumbling down the green marble staircase. Another, tall and brawny, appeared below, brandishing a bludgeon. He dodged the blow by hunching quickly, then grabbed the slave by the waist, hurling him against a column of the temple. Then, while he was trying to corner a third one, a vise of iron seized his neck. He tried to free himself, but another slave tackled his legs, and still another immobilized his left arm.
He was dragged away bodily. From the depths of the enormous cavern came the rhythmical notes of the sitars and tablas, an enervating, obsessive music, full of long quavers.
They tied him naked in front of the altar. Then the slaves fled into the galleries that opened like eye-sockets of skulls in the walls of the cavern. The air was filled with the smell of resin, a strong odor of musk and nard, and aphrodisiac atmosphere emitted by the burning torches, tripods and braziers.
When the dancing virgins appeared, the music stopped for a moment, then took up again, more intensely, accompanied by a distant choir of feminine voices.
It was an orgiastic, inebriating dance. The virgins passed by him one by one, they grazed his stomach, face and chest with their light veils and the long, soft feathers of their headdresses. Diadems and necklaces flashed in the half-light.
At the end the veils fell, slowly, one at a time. He saw the swelling of their breasts, almost felt the softness of all those limbs that were moving in front of him in a tangle of unsated desire.
Then, the long, freezing sound of a gong interrupted the dance. The music ceased. The dancers, like guilt-ridden phantoms, disappeared in the depths of the cave, and in the profound silence the priestess appeared, exceedingly beautiful, wrapped in a leopard cape. She had small bare pink feet, and between her hands clasped a long bluish knife. Her eyes, black, deep, constantly shifting, seemed to search his soul.
How long did the intolerable wait last? The knife cut his bonds with devastating slowness, her great black eyes, moist and desirous, continued to stare at him, while a jumble of words, whispering, murmuring, came to his ears in a persuasive, enticing rhythm.
She dragged him to the foot of the altar. The leopard cape slid to earth, she stretched out languidly and drew him to herself with a gesture at once sweet and imperious.
In the cavern, a conch shell of sounds and shadows, the world came and went in an ebb and flow of sighs.
* * * *
Bradley turned off the machine and removed the plastic helmet. He came out of the booth, his hands and forehead damp with sweat, his breathing heavy, his pulse accelerated.
Twenty technicians, the director and the principal actress rushed to the supervisor, impatiently surrounding him. Bradley’s eyes moved around, looking for an armchair.
“I want a glass of water,” he said.
He stretched out gingerly on an air cushion with a long, sloping back, drying the beads of perspiration, and breathing deeply. A technician made his way through the group and handed Bradley a glass, which he emptied in one gulp.
“Well? What do you think of it?” the director asked anxiously.
Bradley waved impatiently, then shook his head.
“We’re not there yet, Gustafson.”
Sophie Barlow lowered her eves. Bradley touched her hand.
“It has nothing to do with you, Sophie. You were terrific. I… only a great actress could have created that last embrace. But the Oneirofilm itself is artificial, unharmonious, unbalanced…”
“What’s wrong with it?” the director asked.
“Gustafson! I said the film is unharmonious, don’t you understand?”
“I heard you. You say it’s ‘unharmonious,’ unbalanced. Okay, the music is Indian, four hundred years old, and the costumes are from central Africa. But the consumer isn’t going to notice such subtleties, what interests him is - ”
“Gustafson! The customer is always right, never forget that. Anyway, this has nothing to do with music or costumes. The problem is something else: this Oneirofilm would rattle even a bull’s nerves!”
Gustafson frowned.
“Give me the script,” said Bradley, “and call the aesthetic technician.”
He rifled back and forth through the pages, muttering unintelligibly, as if to reconnect the ideas.
“All right,” he said at last, closing the bundle of pages suddenly. “The film starts with a long canoe trip, the protagonist is alone in a hostile, strange world, there’s a struggle with the river’s crocodiles, and the canoe capsizes. Then we have a trek through the jungle, rather tiring, a hand-to-hand fight with the natives. The protagonist is shut up in a hut, but during the night the chieftain’s daughter Aloa comes in, and provides him with directions to the temple. Then there’s the embrace with Aloa in the moonlight. Speaking of which, where’s Moa Mohagry?”
The technician and the director moved apart, and Moa Mohagry, a very tall Somalian woman with sculpturesque curves, stepped forward.
“You were great, Moa, but we’re going to have to do the scene over again.”
“Again?” Moa exclaimed. “I could do the scene over a hundred times, but I doubt it would get any better. I really gave it all I had, Bradley…”
“That’s exactly what Gustafson’s mistake was. In this Oneirofilm the major scene is the last one, when the priestess seduces the protagonist. All the other scenes are going to have to be toned down - they should serve as atmosphere and preparation. You can’t make an Oneirofilm composed of nothing but major scenes.”
He turned to the aesthetic technician.
“What’s the sensitivity index in the median sampling?”
“In Aloa’s scene?”
“Yes, in Aloa’s scene.”
“84.5.”
“And in the scene of the last embrace?”
“Just under 97.”
Bradley shook his head.
“Theoretically it would be okay, but in practice it’s all wrong. This morning I screened the scenes in the first part, one at a time. They’re perfect. But the film doesn’t end on the riverbank when Aloa gives herself to the protagonist. There are other, rather tiring episodes: the ones I just screened, then another trek through the jungle, and the fight with the slaves in the temple. by the time the consumer gets to this point in the film, he’s exhausted, his sensory receptivity is down to a minimum. The virgins’ erotic dance only partly solves the problem. I saw the film in two takes, and so I was able to appreciate the last embrace with Sophie in all its stylistic perfection. But, please, let’s not mix up absolute index with relative index. The crucial thing is relative index. I’m positive that if we distributed the film the way it’s put together now, the total receptivity index would fall by at least forty points, in spite of Sophie’s performance.”
“Bradley!” the director implored. “Now you’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not exaggerating,” the supervisor insisted in a polemical tone. “I repeat, the last scene is a masterpiece, but the consumer gets there tired and already satisfied, in such a condition that even the most luscious fruit would taste insipid to him. Gustafson, you can’t expect Sophie to accomplish miracles. The human nervous system has limits and laws.”
“Then what should we do?”
“Listen to me, Gustafson. I was a director for twenty-five years, and for six years I’ve been a supervisor. I think I’ve had enough experience to give you some advice. If you leave this Oneirofilm the way it is, I won’t pass it. I can’t. Beyond not pleasing the public, I would risk undermining the career of an actress like Sophie Barlow. Pay attention to me, dilute all the scenes except the last, cut the embrace with Aloa, reduce it to a mere scuffle.”
Moa Mohagry started angrily. Bradley took her wrist and forced her to sit on the arm of his chair.
“Listen to me, Moa. Don’t think that I want to take away the right moment for you to make a big hit. You have talent, I know it. The riverbank episode shows true zeal and temperament, there’s an innocent primitive passion there that would not fail to fascinate the consumer. You were fantastic, Moa. But I can’t ruin a film that’s cost millions, you understand, don’t you? I’m going to suggest to the production committee a couple of films that will star you, Moa. There are millions and millions of consumers who go mad for Oneirofilms in a primitive setting. You’ll make a big hit, too, I promise vou. But not right now, it’s not the right moment…”
Bradley got up. He felt faint, his legs weak and tired.
“Please, Gustafson. Also tone down the slaves’ fight episode. Too much movement, too much violence. The waste of energy is enormous…”
He went tottering off, surrounded by technicians.
“Where’s Sophie?” he asked as he got to the back of the room.
Sophie Barlow smiled at him.
“Come in my office,” he said. “I have to talk to you.”
* * * *
“All right, I’m not saying anything new, they’re old words, stale, you must have heard them a hundred times at school and during your training course. But it would benefit you to give them some thought.”
Bradley was walking back and fourth in the room, slowly, his fingers laced together behind his back. Sophie Barlow was slouched in an armchair. From time to time she stretched out a leg and stared at the toe of her shoe.
Bradley stopped for a moment in front of her.
“What’s the matter with you, Sophie? Are you having a crisis?”
The woman made a nervous, awkward gesture. “Having a crisis? Me?”
“Yes. That’s why I called you into the office. You know, I don’t want to read you the riot act. I simply want to remind you of the fundamental precepts of our system. I’m not young any more, Sophie. There are things I can spot right off, at the first sign. Sophie! you’re running after a chimera!”
Sophie Barlow squinted and then opened her eyes wide as a cat’s.
“A chimera? What’s a chimera, Bradley?”
“I told you, I can spot some things right off. You’re having a crisis, Sophie. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with the propaganda that those pigs at the Anti-Dream League put out by the truckload to undermine our social order.”
Sophie seemed not to pick up the insinuation. She said:
“Was Moa’s performance really that good?”
Bradley passed a hand behind his neck. “Absolutely. Mohagry will make it big, I’m convinced of it…”
“Better than mine?”
Bradley snorted. “That’s a meaningless question.”
“I made myself clear. I want to know which of us you liked better, me or Moa.”
“And I repeat, your question is idiotic, lacks common sense, and just goes to confirm my suspicion - in fact, my conviction - that you’re going through a crisis. You’ll get over it, Sophie. All actresses go through this phase sooner or later. It seems to be a necessary stage…”
“I would like to know just one thing, Bradley. Something that’s never said in the schools, something nobody ever talks about. Before. What was there before? Was everybody really unhappy?”
Bradley took up pacing around the armchair.
“Before, there was chaos.”
“Bradley! I want to know if they were really unhappy.”
The man stretched out his arms disconsolately.
“I don’t know, Sophie. I didn’t exist at the time, I wasn’t born yet. One thing is sure: if the system has asserted itself, it means that objective conditions have allowed it to do so. I would like you to be aware of one very simple fact: technology has permitted the realization of all our desires, even the most secret ones. Technology, progress, the perfection of instruments and the exact knowledge of our own minds, of our own egos… all of that is real, tangible. Hence even our dreams are real. Sophie, don’t forget that only in very rare cases is the Oneirofilm an instrument of comfort or compensation. Almost always it is an end in itself, and when just now I had you, I enjoyed your body, your words, and your odors amid a play of exotic emotions.”
“Yes, but it’s always artificial…”
“Okay, but I wasn’t aware of it. And then, even the meaning of words evolves. You use the word artificial in the pejorative sense it had two centuries ago. But not today, today an artificial product is no longer a surrogate, Sophie. A fluorescent lamp, correctly adjusted, gives better light than the sun. This is true of the Oneirofilm as well.”
Sophie Barlow looked at her fingernails.
“When did it begin, Bradley?”
“What?”
“The system.”
“Eighty-five years it’s been now, as you should know.”
“I do, but I mean the dreams. When did men begin to prefer them to reality
Bradley squeezed his nose, as if to collect his thoughts.
“Cinematography began to develop at the beginning of the twentieth century. At first it was a question of two-dimensional images moving on a white screen. Then, sound, the panoramic screen, color photography were introduced. The consumers gathered by the hundreds in special projection halls to watch and listen, but they never felt the film, at most they experienced a latent participation through an effort of fantasy. Obviously the film was a surrogate, a real and proper artifice for titillating the erotic and adventurous taste of the public. However, movie-making then represented a very powerful instrument of psycho-social transformation. Women of that period felt the need of imitating actresses in their gestures, vocal inflections, dress. This was no less true of men. Life was lived according to the movies. First the economy was conditioned by it: the enormous demand for consumer goods - clothes, cars, comfortable housing - was of course due to real exigencies of nature, but also and above all to the ruthless, indefatigable advertising that harassed and seduced the consumer every minute of the day. Even then, men longed for the dream, were obsessed by it, day and night, but they were far from achieving it.”
“They were unhappy, right?”
“I repeat, I don’t know. I’m only trying to illustrate for you the stages of the process. Toward the middle of the twentieth century the standard woman, the standard situation was already in existence. It’s true that there were directors and producers in those days that tried to produce cultural films, ideological movies, to communicate ideas and elevate the masses. But the phenomenon lasted only a short time. In 1956 scientists discovered the pleasure centers in the brain, and through experimentation revealed that electric stimulation of a certain part of the cortex produces an intense, voluptuous reaction in the subject. It was twenty years before the benefits of this discovery were made available to the public. The projection of the first three-dimensional movie with partial spectator participation signalled the death of the intellectual film. Now the public could experience odors and emotions; they could already partly identify with what was happening on the screen. The entire economy underwent an unprecedented transformation. The human race was starved for pleasure, luxury and power, and only asked to be satisfied at the cost of a few pennies.”
“And the Oneirofilm?”
“The Oneirofilm came out, fully perfected, only a few years later. There’s no reality that surpasses dreams, and the public became convinced of this very quickly. When participation is total, any competition from nature is ridiculous, any rebellion useless. If the product is perfect, the consumer is happy and the society is stable. That’s the system, Sophie. And certainly your temporary crises are not likely to change it, not even the melodramatic chatter of the Naturists, unscrupulous people who go around collecting funds for the triumph of an idea that is unbalanced to start with, but for their own personal profit. If you want a good laugh - last week Herman Wolfried, one of the leaders of the Anti-Dream League, appeared in the offices of the Norfolk Company. And do you want to know why? He wanted a private Oneirofilm, five famous actresses in a mind-blowing orgy. Norfolk has accepted the commission and Wolfried is paying for it through the nose, so much the worse for him.”
Sophie Barlow jumped up.
“You’re lying, Bradley! You’re lying on purpose, shamelessly.”
“I have proof, Sophie. The Anti-Dream League is an organization out to dupe simpletons, incurable hypochondriacs and passéists. Perhaps there is some remnant of religious sentiment behind it, but at the center of it is only greed.”
Sophie was on the verge of tears. Bradley moved toward her solicitously and put his hands on her shoulders in a tender, protective gesture.
“Don’t think about it any more, Sophie.”
He guided her over to the desk, opened the safe, and got out a small, flat, rectangular box.
“Here,” said Bradley.
“What is it?”
“A present.”
“For me?”
“Yes, actually it was to give you this that I called you into the office. You’ve made twenty Oneirofilms for our production company, an inspiring goal, as it were. The firm is honoring you with a small recognition of your worth…”
Sophie started to unwrap the present.
“Leave it,” Bradley said. “You can open it at home. Run along now, I have a lot to do.”
* * * *
There was a line of helitaxis just outside the building. Sophie got into the first one, took a magazine from the side pocket of the vehicle, lit a cigarette and, flattered, contemplated her own face on the front cover. The helitaxi rose softly, steering for the center of the city.
Her lips were half-open in an attitude of offering, the color, the contrast between light and shadow, the expression ambiguous… Each detail seemed knowingly graded.
Sophie looked at herself as if in a mirror. At one time the job of acting had presented various negative aspects. When she made a love scene, there was a flesh and blood “partner,” and she had to embrace him, tolerate the physical contact, kisses, words breathed straight into her face. The camera photographed the scene which the spectators then later saw on the screen. Now it was different. There was “Adam,” the mannequin packed with electronic devices having two minute cameras conveniently placed in his eyes. “Adam” was a wonder of receptivity: if the actress caressed him, the receptivity valve registered the sensation of the caress and fixed it, together with the visual image, on the reel of Oneirofilm. Thus the consumer who would later use that reel would perceive the caress in all its sensory fidelity. The spectator was no longer passive but the protagonist.
Naturally, there were Oneirofilms for men and Oneirofilms for women. And they were not interchangeable: if a male consumer, plagued by morbid curiosity, inserted in his reception helmet a reel meant for female consumption, he would get an atrocious headache, and also risk short-circuiting the delicate wiring of the apparatus.
Sophie told the pilot to stop. The helitaxi had gone barely a dozen blocks, but Sophie decided to proceed on foot.
Grey and blue overalls were running along the street. Grey and blue, no other colors. There were no stores, no agencies, there wasn’t a single soda-fountain, or a window full of toys, or even a perfume store. Once in a while, on the fronts covered with soot, incrusted with rubbish and moss, the revolving door of a shop opened. Inside, on the smooth glass counters, there was the dream, happiness for everybody, for all pocketbooks, and it was Sophie herself, nude, for anybody who wanted to have her.
They marched on. And Sophie Barlow marched along with them, an army of hallucinated people, people who worked three hours a day, prey to the spasms that the silence of their own shells yearned for a room, an Amplex and a helmet. And reel after reel of Oneirofilms, millions of dreams of love, power and fame.
In the middle of the square, on a large platform draped in green, the fat man was gesticulating emphatically.
“Citizens!”
His voice raised itself as loud and clear as a dream speech, when the dreamer has the whole world singing hosannas at his feet.
“Citizens! An ancient philosopher once said that virtue is a habit. I am not here to ask the impossible of you. I would be a fool if I expected to renounce it immediately and completely. For years we have been slaves and succubuses, prisoners in the labyrinth of dreams, for years we have been groping in the dense darkness of uncommunicativeness and isolation. Citizens, I invite you to be free. Freedom is virtue, and virtue is a habit. We have cheated nature too long, we must rush to make amends, before we arrive at a total and definite death of the soul…”
How many times had she listened to speeches like that? The propaganda of the Anti-Dream League was sickening, it had always produced in her a profound sense of irritation. Lately, however, she had surprised and bewildered herself. Perhaps because she was an actress, when the orators in the squares spoke of sin, perdition, when they incited the crowds of consumers to abandon the “dream,” she took the accusation as if it had been personally aimed at her; she felt a responsibility for the whole system. Perhaps behind the orators’ emphatic tone there actually was some truth. Perhaps they hadn’t told her everything at school. Maybe Bradley was wrong.
On the platform the fat man ranted and raved, pounding his fist on the wood of the lectern, red in the face, congested. Not a soul was listening to him.
When the veiled girl came out of a small side door, there were some in the crowd who stopped for a second. From the loudspeakers issued the sound of ancient oriental music. The girl began to take off her veils, dancing. She was pretty, very young, and made syncopated, light, eurhythmic gestures.
“An amateur,” Sophie said to herself. “A would-be actress…”
When she was standing naked in the center of the platform, even the few men who had stopped to wait moved on. One or two of them laughed, and shook their heads, disappointed.
The Anti-Dream League girls stopped the passers-by, they approached the men, thrusting out their breasts in an absurd, pathetic offer.
Sophie lengthened her stride. But someone stopped her, grabbing her arm. It was a tall, dark young man, who stared at her with steady black eyes.
“What do you want?”
“To make you a proposition.”
“Speak up.”
“Come with me, tonight.”
Sophie burst out laughing.
“With you! What for? What would I get out of it?”
The young man smiled faintly, patiently, a smile tinged with security and superiority. Clearly he was accustomed to this sort of refusal.
“Nothing,” he admitted unperturbed. “But our duty is to - ”
“Cut it out. We’d spend the night insulting each other, in a pitiful attempt to achieve ‘natural harmony’… Dear boy, your friend up there on the platform is spewing forth a pile of nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense,” the young man retorted. “Virtue is a habit. I could - ”
“No, you couldn’t. You couldn’t because you don’t want me, and you don’t want me because I’m real, true, living, human, because I would be a surrogate, a substitute for a reel of Oneirofilm which you could buy for a few pennies. And you? What could you offer me? Silly presumptuous young ass!”
“Wait! Listen to me, I beg of you - ”
“Goodbye,” Sophie cut him short. And continued her walk.
The words she aimed at the young man had been too harsh. It had been a uselessly hostile reaction; she might have rejected his proposition neither more nor less vehemently than the other passers-by did, with some grace, or better, with a self-sufficient smile. In the last analysis, what right did she have to insult him, perhaps to hurt his feelings? He was acting in good faith. But what about the leaders? Bradley had assured her a number of times that the directors of the Anti-Dream League were a band of swine. What if Bradley had been lying to her all along?
The suspicion had now been plaguing her for several weeks. All those speeches in the squares, the manifestos on the walks, the propagandistic pamphlets, the public proposition to experiment in natural relations with the League’s activists… Was it possible that the whole thing was a lie? Perhaps there was some truth in what the orators and lecturers maintained, maybe the world was rotten to the core, and only a few enlightened men had eyes to see the horror and to assess such decadence.
Man as an island: they had all been reduced to this. On one side the producing class, a class that kept power and to which she herself belonged in her capacity of actress; on the other, the prostrate, blind army of consumers, men and women avid for solitude and darkness, silkworms coiled up in the silken filaments of their own dreams, pale bloodless larvae poisoned by inaction.
Sophie had been born in the glass. So had everybody else, for that matter. She did not know her mother. Millions of women, once a month, went to the Bank of Life; millions of men achieved orgasm by means of the Dream and donated semen to the Bank, which sorted it carefully and used it according to rigorous criteria. Marriage was an archaic institution. Sophie had been the child of a dream, of an unknown, anonymous man who in a dream had possessed an actress. Every man over forty could be her father, every woman between the age of forty and eighty her mother.
When she was younger, this thought had disturbed her greatly, then bit by bit she had got used to it. But lately all the doubts and anxieties of her adolescence had reared up again, vultures that patiently circled above, waiting for one of her moments of weakness. Who was that young man who had stopped her on the street? A champion of superior humanity, or a fool?
Certainly, if he had said to her, “I recognize you, Sophie Barlow. I recognize you in spite of your standard suit and your dark glasses.” Or if he had said, “You’re my favorite star, you’re the obsession of all my days…” Or even if he’d said, “I want to get to know you, whoever you are, just as you really are…”
Instead, that lout had talked about duty. He had asked her to spend the night with him, but only to pay obeisance to the presumptuous new morality: Virtue is a habit. A habit, a routine of natural relations. Love one another, ladies and gentlemen, come together in self-denial! Each of your acts of love will contribute to the defeat and destruction of an unjust system. Unite yourselves, come together in reality, the sublime joy of the senses will not delay in manifesting itself! An exultation of sounds and lights will fill your souls, will glorify your bodies! And our children will once again be formed in the warmth of the womb, not in the cold glass of a test tube. Wasn’t this what the fat man on the platform had been preaching?
She went into a crowded store and made her wav over to the sales counter, where hundreds and hundreds of Oneirofilms were neatly displayed, packed in elegant plastic boxes. She loved to read the descriptions printed on the covers, to listen to the conversations that the shoppers sometimes had with each other, or the zealous advice that the salesmen whispered in the ears of undecided customers.
She read a few titles.
* * * *
Singapore: Eurasian singer (Milena Chung Lin) flees with the Spectator. Adventure in the underworld of this eastern port. Period, mid twentieth century. Night of love on a sampan.
The Battle: In the role of a heroic officer, the Spectator infiltrates an enemy encampment and sabotages its munitions dump. A last battle, blood}?, victorious.
Ecstasr: The private jet of a Persian princess (masterful performance by Sophie Barlow) crashes in the Grand Canyon. Princess and Pilot (the Spectator) spend the night in a cave.
* * * *
Descriptions in greater detail were to be found inside the boxes. There was no danger that an exact knowledge of the contents on the part of the consumer would lower its desirability index. Mental projection inside the Amplex was accompanied by catatonic stupor in which the memory of each independent episode never connected with the next to form a whole. One could not know, experiencing the first episode, what would happen in the second and following episodes. Even if plot descriptions were learned by heart, even if one saw the same film twenty times, the conscious ego, the everyday ego was sacrificed to the urges provoked by the reel: one ceased to be oneself in order to assume the personality, the mannerisms, the voice, the impulses suggested by the film.
A salesman sidled up to her solicitously.
“May I help you to choose a gift?”
Sophie suddenly noticed that among the mob of buyers there were no other women. This was the men’s department. She moved off toward the opposite counter, mingling with women of all ages, lingering before the enormous photographs of the most popular actors.
* * * *
Outer Space Belongs to Us: Commander of a spaceship (Alex Morrison) falls in love with the lady doctor on board (the Spectator), the rocket changes course to discharge the crew on one of Jupiter’s moons, and the Commander heads off with his lover. Trans-galactic crossing.
Tortuga: Period, mid seventeenth century. Gallant pirate (Manuel Alvarez) abducts noblewoman (the Spectator). Jealousy and duels. Love and sea voyages under a fiery sky.
* * * *
“What’s it like?” asked a tall girl, her buxom body suffocating in a pair of overalls too small for her.
“Fascinating,” her companion asserted. “I bought four more copies of it right away.”
The other girl looked skeptical. She stretched her neck over the counter, stood on the tips of her toes to read the descriptions on the farthestmost boxes. She said something in a low voice, and her companion answered in a whisper. Sophie moved off. She spent a few minutes in the “classics” section, giving a fleeting glance to the back of the shop where men and women crowded together to buy the so-called “convenience” Oneirofilms.
When she had been younger, at school, they had told her that in former times men considered taboo anything that had to do with sex. It was highly improper to write or talk about the many aspects of love life. No woman would ever have described her desires and her sexual fantasies to a stranger. There were pornographic publications and photographs, many of which were illegal. People who bought them did it on the sly and always with a feeling of guilt or embarrassment, even when they had been passed by the Censor. But with the advent of the “system” the primitive custom of sexual modesty had become obsolete. Modesty existed, if at all, in some kinds of dreams, in “convenience” films made for the over-fifty set, where the consumer seduced or raped a teary, red-faced, trembling young girl. But in real life it had disappeared, or at least verbal modesty had. Without a shadow of embarrassment or discomfort, anybody could ask for an erotic film, the same as any other film about war or adventure.
But what about real and proper modesty? Among the many who crowded round the counters to buy the luxury in a box, who would have had the courage to disrobe in the middle of the mob? Only those activists of the Anti-Dream League, who were completely unselfconscious when they propositioned people, but perhaps not quite so unselfconscious when faced with performing what they themselves considered a weighty duty. The truth was, for nearly a century men and women had lived in a state of almost complete chastity. Solitude, the measured penumbra inside the narrow walls of their habitations, the armchairs with built-in Amplex: humanity had no desire for anything else. Faced with the greater attractions of dreams, the ambition to own a comfortable house, elegant clothes, a helicar, and other amenities had simply gone by the boards. Why beat one’s brains out collecting real objects when, with an Oneirofilm that cost but a few pennies, one could live like a nabob for an hour, near stupendous women, admired, respected, served hand and foot?
Eight billion human beings vegetated inside squalid beehives, isolated in mean little holes, nourished by vitamin concentrates and soybean meal. And they felt no desire to consume anything real. After the bottom fell out of the market, the industries producing consumer goods had been abandoned all at once by financiers, who transferred their funds to companies producing Oneirofilms, the only merchandise for which there was any real demand.
She looked up toward the shining chart, and was disgusted at herself. The numbers spoke clearly. The sales chart was most eloquent. Her own Oneirofilms were the ones most in demand, more than everybody else’s put together.
Sophie left the store. She walked homeward, her head bent, her step slow and listless. She didn’t know how to judge that crowd of men who moved all around her, without recognizing her. Were they her slaves, or was she theirs?
* * * *
The videophone rang: a streak of light in an abyss of black velvet, a peal from lofty cathedral spires in a sleepy, gray dawn.
Sophie stretched out a hand toward the pulsator-button.
A red snake zig-zagged onto the screen, lingered, seemed to explode; finally it resolved itself into Bradley’s image.
“What do you want?” Sophie whined, her voice slurred with sleep. “For God’s sake, what time is it?”
“It’s noon. Wake up, my girl. You have to go to San Francisco.”
“To San Francisco? What for? Are you out of your mind?”
“We have a co-production contract with Norfolk, Sophie. It was set for next Monday, but time presses. They need you now.”
“But I’m still in bed, I’m deathly tired. I’ll leave tomorrow, Bradley.”
“Get dressed,” the supervisor barked. “A Norfolk jet will be waiting for you at the West airport. Don’t waste time.”
Sophie was fuming. This extra work wasn’t scheduled. What she wanted to do was spend the rest of the day in bed, resting.
She struggled out from under the covers, her eves still shut, and sluggishly, halfheartedly undressed in the bathroom. The metallic jet of the cold shower made her shiver. She dried herself, dressed hurriedly, and left the house on the run.
She knew the methods of those types at Norfolk. They were worse than Bradley, real nitpickers. Always ready to find fault even with the scenes that had come off well.
In eight minutes, the helitaxi deposited her at the entrance to the airport. She entered by the door that led to the runway for private aircraft, and looked round for the Norfolk jet.
The pilot emerged from an outbuilding and walked over to meet her with a bouncy step.
“Sophie Barlow?”
He was tall, with light blond hair and a bronze complexion, a face that looked as if it had been baked in an oven.
“I’m Mirko Glikorich, from the Norfolk Company.”
Sophie said nothing. The pilot did not think her worth a glance, and spoke staring at an indefinite point somewhere out in the airfield, two cold, aggressive eyes of a fine gray color like anthracite. He took Sophie’s suitcase and marched off toward the main runway, where the Norfolk jet was being prepared for takeoff. Sophie had a hard time keeping up with him.
“Hey!” she exclaimed, balking like a thoroughbred. “I’m not a runner. Couldn’t you walk a little slower?”
The pilot kept moving, without so much as turning around.
“We’re late,” he said curtly. “We have to be in San Francisco in three hours.”
She was breathless by the time they reached the aircraft.
“Do you mind if I sit in front with you?” asked Sophie.
The pilot shrugged his shoulders. He helped her up, settled himself into the cockpit, and waited for the signal from the control tower.
Sophie looked around, full of curiosity, a bit intimidated by all the dials and switches on the instrument panel. The pilot whistled softly, impatient. Sophie groped around in the pocket of her seat and pulled out a dozen magazines. They were all at least several weeks old, some from the year before, dog-eared. Her face was on the cover of each of them. There was also an Oneirofilm catalogue folded open to the page that listed the films starring Sophie.
“Are these your things?”
The pilot didn’t answer, but looked stiffly ahead. The takeoff had been gentle as a feather, and Sophie hadn’t felt it at all. She glanced out the window and barely stifled an “Oh!” of surprise. A sea of houses extended itself beneath them; like a downy eyelid, the gray shell of the countryside opened up before them.
“Are these yours?” Sophie insisted.
The pilot turned his head slightly, an imperceptible movement, a lightning glance. Then he stiffened again.
“Yes,” he said through his teeth.
She tried to hide the intimate gratification that always pervaded her when she met one of her ardent fans.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Glikorich,” the pilot growled. “Mirko Glikorich.”
“That’s a Russian name, isn’t it?”
“Yugoslav.”
She watched him for a while. His lips were narrow and taut, his profile straight and sharp… Mirko looked as if he had been chiseled in rock, mute, motionless. Sophie grew impatient.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Speak.”
“Before - at the airport. You came to meet me and asked me if I was Sophie Barlow. Why? You know? me, don’t you? These magazines and the catalogue. I’ll bet you’re a fan of mine. Why did you pretend not to recognize me?”
“I didn’t pretend. It’s different, seeing you in person. In the end I recognized you because I knew you were supposed to turn up at that entrance at the airport. But in the middle of the crowd, no; you could have passed me without my noticing.”
Sophie lit a cigarette. Maybe the pilot was right: in the crowd nobody would notice her, even without her dark glasses. She felt a kind of dull anger toward the man beside her. But she kept making an effort to talk to him. Mirko proved to be dense as a jungle, impenetrable, diffident.
“Why don’t you turn on the automatic pilot?” Sophie asked. “I’m bored, Mirko. Say something to me.”
The pilot remained impassive. He blinked once or twice, and stuck out his chin.
Sophie caught his arm. “Mirko! Pay attention to me! Turn on the automatic pilot and have a cigarette with me.”
“I prefer to leave it on manual.”
Sophie lit another cigarette, then another, using the butt of the second. She leafed through a magazine, worrying the pages in a fit of uncontrollable nervousness. She started to sing to herself, tapping her foot against the rubber lining of the cockpit. She snorted, fidgeting, and finally pretended to feel nauseated.
Mirko felt around inside the pocket of his flying suit and handed her a tablet.
Sophie was furious.
“Idiot!” she cried. “I won’t stay here a moment longer. I’m going back in the cabin.”
The little living room behind the cockpit was attractive. There was a couch, a stowable berth, a little table and a bar.
She poured herself a drink, a tall glass of brandy, which she gulped down at once. She poured herself another immediately, and the edges of objects began to vibrate in a bluish, inviting fog. She lowered herself to the couch, thinking of Mirko, a consumer like all the rest, an imbecile. She couldn’t wait to get to San Francisco, make the film, and fly back to New York.
Now she sipped the brandy with less gusto. As she set the glass on the table, she began to feel groggy.
Suddenly, the arm of the couch was shoved against her, and an abyss seemed to open beneath, as when an elevator begins to move. She watched the glass start to slide along the tabletop, spill on the rug… Then, a pain in her shoulder, her forehead knocked against something… Fog. Red and blue globes. Roaring of motors gone wild.
“Mirko!” she cried, raising herself. The door to the cockpit seemed bolted shut. She squeezed the hostile handle and, lurching, tried to pull the door open. An emptiness inside her chest, a moment of balance, then the absurd feeling of weightlessness. She saw Mirko’s back, his hands tense on the throttle, the clouds racing towards them like dream vapors.
Now Mirko was talking. In fact, he was shouting, but she wasn’t aware of it. She pressed herself against the back of her seat, clenched her teeth and braced herself for the crash.
The aircraft plummeted like a corkscrew.
When she opened her eyes next, she saw a white cloud in the middle of the sky. A vulture circled far up. She was lying stretched out on her back, and something moist and fresh was pressed against her brow. She raised an arm, touched her face, temples, and removed the handkerchief soaked with water. Then she rolled over on her side.
Mirko was on his feet, over by the wrecked fuselage. Behind him, a cyclopean wall of red rock rose over the landscape.
“What happened?” she asked weakly.
The pilot stretched out his arms. “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t understand it. All of a sudden the controls weren’t responding, the craft lost altitude, and then we were in a tailspin. I managed to regain control by a miracle, but it was too late. Look at the skid we took before we banged up against this rock!”
Sophie pulled herself up, rubbing her bruised shoulder.
“Do you have any idea where we are?”
Mirko lowered his eves.
“This is the Grand Canyon,” he said. “We’re in one of the side chasms. This is one of the most inaccessible areas, but the Bright Angel Trail shouldn’t be too far away…”
Sophie’s eyes widened. “The Grand Canyon?”
For a moment she was speechless. Then she burst out laughing.
“The Grand Canyon!” she repeated. “That’s very funny! In fact it’s unbelievable.”
“What’s unbelievable?”
“Don’t play dumb, Mirko. The engine failure, the forced landing, here, right in the middle of the Grand Canyon… Just like the film I made last year, Ecstasy. You do remember it, don’t you?”
Suddenly a suspicion crossed her mind.
“Tell me something,” she said, frowning. “You didn’t by any chance do it on purpose, did you? I mean, there are an awful lot of coincidences here. You’re a real pilot, and I may not be a Persian princess but on the other hand I am Sophie Barlow. You wanted to get marooned out here with me, didn’t you? You planned it to happen just like the film.”
Mirko puffed up indignantly. He turned his back on her and went over to the aircraft. Shifting aside the twisted pieces of fuselage, he managed to crawl into the cabin. He tossed out a pile of equipment, two blankets, two back-packs, a plastic canteen, a tin of synthetic food, a flashlight. He emerged from the wreck with the bottle of brandy in one hand and a heavy piece of equipment in the other.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Carry as much of this as you can.”
“Go where?”
“Surely you don’t want to rot out here among the rocks. We have to get to the main canyon. Phantom Ranch must be more than fifty miles east of here, but there’s always some stupid sentimental tourist who will come west to take a picture of the pretty view.”
“Did you try radioing?”
“The radio’s broken. Get a move on. Take what you need and let’s get out of here.”
He moved fast, his stride long and springy. He had tucked the brandy bottle into his hip pocket, and he marched along stooping slightly under the burden of his pack, in which he had placed a battery and the heavy electronic device.
Sophie stumbled along behind him, earning the food and water containers.
Half an hour later, they came to a halt. Sophie was out of breath, her eyes were pleading. Mirko stared straight ahead. It was clear that the woman was a hindrance to him, the classical ball and chain which he could not get rid of.
“Walk slower, Mirko.”
The man looked at the sky, which was filling up with menacing clouds.
“Let’s go,” he said. “In a couple of hours it’s going to be pitch black.”
When they reached the main canyon, they could hardly see anything. Mirko pointed up at a place in the rocky wall, red and brown as a piece of burning paper.
“The cave,” he said reverently.
“The cave,” Sophie repeated. “Just like in the film. Everything is just like in the film, Mirko.”
He helped her up the cliff, and lowered his pack to the floor of the black hole that opened into the rock.
She watched him as he clambered down the sandstone and granite crags, rooting out the dried-up shrubs, making big bundles of them and dragging them up to the cave entrance. “It’ll be cold in a while,” he said. “We’ll have to start a fire.”
He lit the flashlight and inspected the cave. It was about fifteen yards deep, and bent at right angles in the middle. He set the bundle of kindling right in the elbow of the cave, and lit the fire with savage delight.
They ate in silence, in the dark and glowing cave, under an enormous fluttering bat’s wing.
“I opened your pack,” Sophie said. “While you were down gathering kindling. I saw what you have inside there. An Amplex! What did you need to bring that along for?”
“It’s worth 120 coupons,” Mirko said. “For an actress like you, that’s a pittance. But it takes me three months to earn that much, you see?”
He picked up the metal box and the reel case.
“Well?” Sophie asked, curious. “What are you up to now?”
“I’m going to the rear of the cave. I have a right to my privacy, don’t I?”
“Yes, but what do you need the Amplex for? What are you up to, Mirko?”
The man snorted. When Sophie grabbed the reel case, he didn’t put up a fight. Passive, he let the woman go through his reels at her leisure, let her read the descriptions printed on the plastic boxes.
“But these are all my films, Mirko! My heavens, you have every single one of them! Blue Skies, Seduction, Adventure in Ceylon. There’s even a matrix, the matrix for Ecstasy. Is that your favorite Oneirofilm, Mirko?”
Mirko lowered his eyes without answering. Sophie closed the reel box. A matrix was a luxury relatively few people could permit themselves. The ordinary Oneirofilm, once viewed, was useless, because the Amplex demagnetized the tape as it ran through. But a matrix lasted forever, it was practically indestructible. For that reason, it cost a small fortune.
“When did you buy it?” Sophie asked.
The man shrugged, annoyed. “Oh, quit it,” he snapped. “You’re too curious. What do you want me to say? Your films sell millions of copies to millions and millions of consumers. I’m just one of them. I bought a matrix of Ecstasy. So what? What’s so strange about that? There was something about it that I liked. I -”
“Go on,” Sophie urged, squeezing his arm.
“A day doesn’t pass that I don’t watch it,” the pilot said tartly. “So now why don’t you leave me alone, go to sleep, because in a little while it will be daylight and we have to cover quite a few miles. I’m going to the back of the cave.”
“With the Amplex?”
“Yes, for God’s sake. What’s it to you? I want to enjoy my film in peace.”
Sophie gulped. A sudden feeling of frustration passed through her, as if all desire to live had left her. This is impossible, she thought. This can’t be happening to me. What do I want, anyway, from this man who has a thousand reasons not to care a hoot about me?
She felt a desire to hurt him, to heap abuse on his head, to slap his face. But the image of Mirko embracing her broke through her inhibitions and spread through her mind.
“I’m here,” she was surprised to hear herself say in a seductive tone.
Mirko wheeled round.
“What did you say?”
“I said, I’m here, Mirko. Tonight you don’t need that reel.”
“I don’t need it?”
“No. You can have me, just like in the dream. Even better than in the dream…”
Mirko started to snicker. “It’s not the same thing,” he said. “And don’t be ridiculous with this Anti-Dream League propaganda of yours. Who are you trying to kid, anyway?”
“I’ll say it again: Mirko, you can have me.”
“And I still say it’s not the same thing.”
“Mirko!” the woman pleaded, beside herself. “You need me, every day you run through that matrix, and you dream, dream, you keep on dreaming of this cave, the firelight, my kisses, this body of mine which I’ve just offered you. This is exactly like the film, you stupid fool. What are you waiting for? I can do everything that’s in that film, even more, and it will be for real…”
For a moment Mirko wavered, then he shook his head. He turned and moved off toward the back of the cave.
“Mirko!” she cried, exasperated. “I am Sophie Barlow! Sophie Barlow, don’t you understand?”
She pulled down the zipper of her overalls. Her shoulders shrugged out of the cloth shell, and she quickly pulled off the suit and threw it on the ground.
“Look at me!” she shouted. And as he turned around, she uncovered her breasts.
The fire burned brightly, red and green tongues lapping upward, emitting a penetrating odor of the primeval jungle. She watched the man’s hands clench into fists, his lips trembling, as if in a long, wearisome struggle.
Mirko hesitated a moment longer, then threw the matrix in the fire and ran toward her.
* * * *
First the blue light came and then the red. Then blue again. When the reel came to an end, the set turned off automatically.
Sophie lifted off the Amplex helmet. Her temples were perspiring, her heart pounding in spasms. All her extremities were trembling, particularly her hands. She couldn’t keep them still. Never in her life had she lived a “dream” with such intensity, an Oneirofilm that forced her to be herself. She must thank Bradley right way.
She rang him up on the videophone. But faced with the image of the supervisor, the words stuck in her throat; she stammered, truly moved. Finally she started to cry.
Bradley waited patiently.
“A little present, Sophie. Just a trinket. When an actress reaches the peak of her career she deserves far greater rewards. And you will have them, Sophie. You will have all the recognition that’s due you. Because the system is perfect. There’s no going back.”
“Yes, Bradley. I - ”
“It will go away, Sophie. It happens to all actresses sooner or later. The last obstacle to overcome is always vanity. Even you felt that a man ought to prefer you to a dream. You fell into the most dangerous of all heresies, but we caught it in time and rushed to correct it. With a little gift. That matrix will help you to get over this crisis.”
“Yes, Bradley. Please thank everybody for me, the machinist, the technicians, the director, everybody who was involved in making this Oneirofilm. Above all, thank the actor who played the pilot.”
“He’s a new fellow. A real live wire, no?”
“Well, thank him for me. I had some beautiful moments. And thank you too, Bradley. I can imagine how much time and money this film cost you. It’s perfect. I’ll keep it in the slot of honor in my Oneirofilm collection.”
“Nonsense, Sophie. You belong to the ruling class. You can allow yourself a personal Oneirofilm from time to time. We have always helped each other out, haven’t we? - But there’s one thing I want you to bear in mind.”
“What’s that, Bradley?”
“That matrix. That’s more than a gift. It’s meant to be a warning.”
“Okay, Bradley. I get your point.”
“Don’t forget it. Nothing is better than dreaming. And only in dreams can you deceive yourself to the contrary. I’m sure that after five or six viewings you will get the point and toss that matrix in the wastebasket.”
She nodded, in tears.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at nine in the screening room.”
“Yes, Bradley, tomorrow at nine in the screening room. Good night, Bradley.’
“Good night, Sophie.”