AMBIENCE

Dave Skal

Death, the great obscenity--how odd that we spell it with five letters!

The anti-technologists are taken far too lightly. They want only to clean up the smog, the sewage, you say? Think again. These politicians, "intellectuals," all the sundry voices, who, like asthma, choke the lines of discourse, reason, and progress--these are our real enemies! A return to natural beauty, they cry, a return to wildness, irrationality, savagery! The basic inhumanity of their goals is so obscene that any doubt about their moral character is in itself an obscenity.

--Ona Ransome, The Doctrine

of Dionysus, a polemic

She had turned her apartment into a greenhouse, just as the world itself was turning into a greenhouse, lush and tropical, environmental affectation justified by ecological necessity. African violets, miniature cacti, Aloe Vera and hindu ropes. Rugged plants. Delicate plants. The withered dendriform phantoms of bonsai. You breathed out, and they breathed back. At least that's what she read often enough--usually twice, first in the morning faxsheet, and later at dinner, when the sans-serif pronouncements were shredded into elaborate salads. Unlike many of her contemporaries, who shredded the equally edible but noncommittal advertisements, she believed in Involvement. Nutrition of the mind as well as the body.

So. The icecaps were going. Santa Claus would have to learn to swim, and her cacti and rubbery fronds would give way to seaweed. One couldn't stop progress.

Cynic, she chided herself. She would make up for it that night, with a more relevant salad than usual, CANCER CURE HOPEFUL, with Roquefort dressing.

Her name was Gudrun Maxa. Maxa: the name suggested an abundance, the upper limits of a scale, the tops. She had a wide, inviting mouth, brown liquid eyes. The large frame that had embarrassed her as a child had melted into a woman's generous sensuality. Gudrun Maxa.

As usual, it was raining; black sooty water streaked her apartment windows. She paid attention to the elements, as a rule; this was only natural, since she worked as a weathermaid on a local television station. The job had built up a certain resiliency in her character, a toughness if you will, but a toughness tempered by a pervading optimism. Her twice-daily spot, "Weather Break" (the subtle psychological suggestion!), was a testament to these qualities; no matter how caustic or deadly the atmosphere might become, no matter how many fatalities there might be (which weren't broadcast anyway, but Gudrun got the figures), Gudrun Maxa had a sunny smile for everybody. And if after watching her program, people came away feeling, why, yes, the weather has lifted a bit, then wasn't it all worthwhile?

"The persistence and ubiquity of denial! Its survival value has been long overlooked ... consider yourself an angel of mercy in a world starved for miracles."

That was the way Andrew had explained it to her--Andrew, the program director, when she had been picked for the job. Hand-picked, as it turned out--although now she and Andrew hadn't slept together in months.

She wasn't quite sure what had happened. There were no hostilities, just no sex. They still had lunch together, smiles, studio gossip ... but something else had fizzled out. Andrew didn't talk about it, and Gudrun didn't think about it. It was easier that way.

She wasn't thinking about it that day as she stood before the bright-blue matte screen, modeling a photosynthetic shift for the cameras. Her natural complexion was pale, but not so pale as the while-white makeup she wore, enabling the technicians to tan her an unhealthy but attractive Scandinavian bronze (her contract, like most nowadays, had a cancer clause).

She often wondered what backdrop was being electronically keyed in, what canned three-dimensional footage of open, windswept fields. A spring thaw, perhaps...clumps of straw-colored grass like the bowed heads of flaxen-haired women...virginal...fresh ...

Without warning, someone started coughing--violently. Gudrun felt herself blush. The cameramen cursed.

"Get her the hell out of here!" It was Andrew, but Gudrun couldn't discern who had caused the disturbance. The technicians muttered angrily to themselves, they had already run overtime. Gudrun stepped out from under the hot holographic illumination, which had already begun turning her costume to hot spinach, and saw Andrew collaring one of the office girls.

"Who do you think you are, bringing your filth in here, costing us time and money? Answer me, you bitch!"

The girl trembled in his grasp. She had high, sallow cheekbones, and the little makeup she wore was inexpertly applied. "I'm sorry, sir--they asked me to deliver these papers--they said it was important--" Although she could have been no more than twenty, from a distance she appeared much older; she had the crabbed aspect of one of Gudrun's bonsai trees, an unhealthy, foreign complexion. She skittered around the floor like a crustacean in her worker's smock, picking up lost scraps of paper, handing them up to Andrew, an offering.

Andrew looked at the papers, then burst into laughter. "Do you know what these are?" He addressed the room. "Plumbers' invoices! For fixing the toilets! Crap!" He shoved the papers under the girl's nose. "Somebody in my department gave you these? Yes? And can you think of any earthly reason why a man in my position would want or need the deeds to a shitcan?"

Tears welled up in the girl's red eyes. She started to answer, but was suddenly seized by a coughing fit, worse than the last-- obscene ripping sounds, a cord being pulled through a bellows. Was she spitting up blood? Gudrun couldn't tell.

The men gathered around her, taking up a low chant, almost inaudible: Scum, scum, filthy scum ... Gudrun had a mental image of a ritual exorcism. The girl's mouth was pressed against the floor, her eyes glued shut with pain. Scum! Scum!

"Andrew--"

"Don't look!"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Andrew, I'm not a child." But she was blushing all the same. Did it show, even through her thick layer of paint?

Andrew ignored her. The girl was being hauled out. "I just don't get it," he muttered. "You see stuff like that all the time now."

Gudrun tried to be helpful. "But don't they have ... places?" Tubercular, cancerous ghettos.

" 'Equal opportunity employment,' they call it ... Christ, they're nothing but animals."

Gudrun couldn't help feeling some measure of pity for the girl; she had obviously been set up by those goons in Andrew's department. The malicious pigs had been on the girl's back from the moment she started on the job. Gudrun had seen it all. But still--

"Get cleaned up and we'll go eat," said Andrew. He pressed her hand and went into his office. Gudrun started for the dressing room, then remembered a script she had left with Andrew. She went back and knocked on the door. Inside, there was loud music.

"Andrew--?"

She pushed the door open silently. And froze.

Andrew was bent over his desk, coughing explosively into a tissue. The sound was masked by the music. He did not see her at the door, his eyes were tightly closed. The desk blotter was spattered with blood and sputum.

Gudrun saw nothing.

She quickly shut the door and went to remove her makeup. The face in the mirror was puffy and worn. She felt oddly dissociated, vaguely sick. She waited for Andrew. He came.

"All ready?" he asked, patting his stomach. The events of the morning had apparently been an appetizer.

* * * *

They talk of natural beauty. They talk of a world uglified, desecrated by technology. They see one side only, discarding the whole of man's national achievement like the very garbage they rail against. Who among us has not witnessed the unearthly beauty of a latter-day sunset, the roiling clouds of orange, magenta, puce--nature itself acknowledging submission, testament to man's triumph? No preindustrial civilization could witness such a spectacle.

--Ona Ransome,

The Doctrine of Dionysus

They lunched alfresco at the art museum, on a garden patio with a view of Rodin's vandalized "Thinker"; dynamited years before, the sculpture had been reinstated as a symbol of Sickness in Our Society. The anti-intellectual element. The Dionysians. Most of the sculpture's base had been shredded away, and now its hollow remains rested in a wooden cradle, reminding Gudrun of Quasimodo riding a huge bronze bell.

Hidden oxyjets moaned softly.

"I know we don't usually talk about ... serious things," Andrew began, folding his napkin. He had a lopsided but expressive face, lacking the regular good looks required of an on-camera performer. He laughed nervously, as if to weaken his delivery. "I'm sorry. Let's drop the whole thing, okay?"

"No," said Gudrun quickly, leaning toward him. But her gaze drifted to a nearby table where an airbrain sat with a watery-eyed little man.

Airbrains ... They grew them that way, on special aerobic farms. Big, boyish, musclebound ... superoxygenated specimens of health and vitality. Trained to deal with any crisis of identity or faith, they were sought out particularly by the infirm or chronically doubtful. The voice was soothing and unctuous: "... nothing really ends ... only rebirth ... a continuous cycle ..." The little man doubled up, wheezing, and the airbrain took him gently in his arms. Gudrun looked away.

"No, Andrew ... I mean, if there's something you really want to talk about--"

"I wanted you to know that I didn't like what happened this morning any more than you did. The girl, I mean. Yeah, I know, I'm one to talk. But I had my orders, and--well, to be brutally frank about it, I'm in no position to argue." He paused, pressing his lips tightly together. "Ever since that girl--Carla, her name was--came in three weeks ago, things just haven't been the same. Like a morgue." Gudrun blushed. "You know how the tech crew has been. The secretaries have been the same way--cranky, irritable--just having her around is what did it. And today, that ... coughing. It's depressing."

Gudrun shifted her weight uncomfortably.

"I've been doing a lot of thinking lately," he continued. The usual things--money, status. Sex." The nervous laugh. "It's funny, the way things are. The way the world just kind of belches us all up out of nowhere, lets us run around on a leash for a while, then sucks us all back. Sophomoric, I know. Existentialism 101, right? Not worth talking about. I flunked philosophy in college, you know. Had to take it three times ... there was this damn genius chink for a prof--I swear that man believed with his entire soul that the 'relativism/absolutism controversy' was the single driving force in the universe. Sometimes I feel so stupid--it's silly, I know--for having never taken an interest in the big questions. What it all means. Christ, I must sound like an ass, a kid. Deep down, I know it's all a lot of semantic drivel, philosophy and the rest ... but sometimes I wonder, especially lately, whether or not it would make things any ... easier." He stared at the ice it the bottom of his glass. "Am I making any sense? Any at all?"

Gudrun didn't listen to his words as much as the tone of his voice, the controlled rigidity broken by bursts of nervous, self-depreciating laughter. She looked at him, sitting there in that ridiculous coat with the padded chest and shoulders that she really didn't want to think about. It embarrassed her. She felt a need to escape before he revealed too much, before they were bound together, inextricably, by some secret and terrible knowledge.

"I'm dying, Gudrun." He looked her straight in the eye. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed."

His tone was becoming belligerent. Gudrun felt anger rising, defensively. I'm not one of your office girls! Leave me alone!

"Look at me!" he snapped. "That's the very least you can do. I'm dying, for godsake. They don't know what it is, exactly, but they do know it's fatal."

She tried not to hear him.

"... the body stops using oxygen efficiently, for one thing-- there's a theory that it's all part of a new evolutionary step, the organism trying to adjust to a poisonous biosphere. In the meantime, we're nature's bloody guinea pigs."

"Andrew," she blurted, "I've been meaning to say this for a long time and I don't care what it sounds like but I don't think we should see one anoth--"

He was incredulous. "You haven't heard a word I've said, have you? I'm dying, Gudrun, the way this planet is dying, and you can't seem to appreciate either of those two facts."

"Andrew, please--"

"Are you blind? Can't you see that I've lost thirty-five pounds in the last six months, that I wear prosthetic clothing to hide the fact, and that I'm probably going to lose my job because I stink of death, Gudrun, death and graveworms and a hundred other terribly realistic things our society doesn't even pay lip service to anymore!" He slammed his fist on the table. Heads were turned. Gudrun shut her eyes.

You are twelve years old and your father is a man named Gerhard Maxa who gets up every morning and coughs out his guts into a toilet bowl. The sound wakes you daily, raking, horrible, and you lie in bed and want to scream, it's dirty, it's filthy, these perverts your family--but who is there to tell ? And you carry your shame to school with you, while your father goes off to work in factories decent people don't even think about.

"We have to survive, Andrew!" It was out in the open. "You people make it so difficult--"

"I know." Andrew was no longer looking at her. "The persistence and ubiquity of denial," he said, clucking his tongue. "That used to be my line, didn't it?" His voice was cool and ironic. "You've learned your lessons well, Gudrun."

She spoke clumsily. "I ... I won't forget you, Andrew. Really, I won't ..."

"No hard feelings. We live in an age of transience, right?"

She bit her lip. "Thank you, Andrew. Thank you."

* * * *

After they parted, Gudrun's head began to throb. Something in the air. A tension at the base of her skull. She didn't have her mask with her, and her eyes began to water. She tried vainly to remember the pollution-level figures she had recited that morning. Above her, blue-grey clouds of vapor writhed like ectoplasm.

Vision blurred and eyes burning, she got in line at an oxygen booth. Nearby, a Ransomite rally was underway. Ona Ransome herself was speaking, a tough, intransigent knot of a woman, locked behind a gold-plated gas mask engraved with the sign of the dollar. She harangued the crowd in husky, accented tones: the threat of the neomystics ... the threat of an unconquered nature ... the threat, always the threat. Gudrun's head pounded agonizedly. She felt as if someone were driving an icepick into her brain.

"They do not stop at cleaning up the air and water, they demand a stop to shopping centers, expressways, transportation! In short, these Dionysian brutes are screaming for an end to America, a stop to civilization!"

Her audience was an undulating mass, responsive to her every cue. And why not? Wasn't she right, after all? Why carry an onerous burden of guilt when Ona Ransome clearly placed the blame?

A commotion was starting at the oxygen booth; a man refused to relinquish his place after the allotted thirty seconds. Gudrun took a handkerchief from her purse and covered her face.

Who are these people? she asked herself. Gaunt faces; brown-yellow skin stretched hot and tight across the bone. Hollow-chested women with cracked lips, the skin showing through their hair in leprous patches, their flesh seared and burnished by the air itself! Bandanas and scraps of cloth pulled across their mouths like gags. A few Ransomites shouted insults; the man in the oxygen booth stubbornly held his ground.

"The Dionysian motivation is clear--a return to nature in all its ugliness, a mode of life best described by three adjectives: harsh, brutal, and short!"

Men from the oxygen line itself--businessmen, public servants --joined the Ransomites in removing the protester; he twitched and shuddered like a weasel being extruded from the womb. He was stomped to the ground. There was blood. His attackers were met by a dozen ascetic-looking men and women brandishing signs and placards as well as their bony fists: AIR NOW! POLLUTION IS GENOCIDE!

Ona Ransome could not be heard. The sirens of riot police sounded monotonously in the distance. Gudrun felt herself crowded in from all sides, so tightly she could barely move, could only sag and sway with the movement of the mob. Screams. Rushes. Beggarly men falling of their own exertion, trampled.

All at once the crowd parted and Gudrun stared directly into the ratlike face of the man in the air chamber. His face was torn, his eyes maddened with blood and pain. Gudrun's head spun. She was about to faint. She extended one hand toward him in a meaningless gesture.

The man took something from a package at his side and hurled it with all his strength. Like a tough pink fish encrusted with tar, stinking of some foul preservative, it fell at Gudrun's feet.

A human lung.

* * * *

She entered the bar quickly amid sounds of natural ambience; fluttering birds, tumbling water. She saw him almost immediately --the barrel chest heaving beneath a mesh shirt of photosynthetic weave. The stale emblem on the sleeve.

She took a place at a corner table and cleared her throat once, self-consciously. The airbrain yawned.

Her pulse quickened. Again the signal, as delicate and tempting as the crumpling of sheets ...

He set his milk down on the bar and rose to face her, deltoids flexing, his chest a muscle playground. "You have doubts?" he asked. A standard question, to which she nodded sheepishly. The airbrain had no doubts.

"It is important to have faith... ."

The oxygen made her dizzy. She inhaled deeply, relaxed. In and out. The world melted away. The airbrain smiled.

She did not breathe as he laid his hands upon her in a lingering benediction.