IMITATIO QUASI IMAGO IN HONOREM JACOBI BLISH MULTA CUM ADMIRATIONE FELICITATIS SUI IN ARTIBUS RECONDITIORIBUS*
It is impossible to call up the Devil when women are present, I mean real women, that is to say hermaphrodites, for men (real men, who exist) are the people who look at the women, and the women are therefore the people who are looked at by the men. So that women (when they are alone) must be either men or nothing. There are a great many women who were supposed to have called up the Devil, all those witches and so on, but the question remains: what did they really call up? Or better still: did they exist? Maybe they called up something else. Or if it was true, and women really can call up the Devil, what does that make the Devil? Or are women really male? I have no answers to these questions.
With men, there’s no problem. See the men? There are four of them. They have good, straight, legal, logical, one-track masculine minds. Wicklow, the fat one, wants to blow up the world; Ludlow, the magister magici, is going to do it for him; Albano, the third one, will try to stop it (they have to have him there for legal reasons); and the fourth man—oops, it’s a woman—is Mr. Wicklow’s private secretary. One could be forgiven the mistake. He employs this woman because she has an eidetic memory and no mind of her own; she’s been in love with him for years. Her name is Estrellita Baines. Estrellita means “little star.”
* “Representation in the form of a picture in honor of James Blish, with much admiration for his felicity in the more recondite arts.”
The men have no first names. Why should men need first names?
Wicklow, the bully, fat and merry, who bullies his secretary.
Ludlow, indescribably commonplace, lean, smells bad somehow (through no fault of his own, you can’t place it), and takes no pleasure in the mauling that interests Mr. Wicklow. Has awful eyes.
Albano, the monk, who’s been taking a lot of spiritual mauling lately, the solid, stolid peasant with big feet. Nurses impossible dreams of personal glory and is violently ashamed of them. He’s not speaking to anyone.
Wicklow: thick cream, lots of money.
* * * *
I
All around the marble chamber (which resembles a Greek columbarium at Forest Lawn) in various positions on the tessellated floor, posing against the walls like figurines, like lamiae, like snakes, are the bad doctor’s demon assistants, girls with big eyes, girls with silky thighs, lovely girls with undulant bodies, golden hair, arms like waves, moist pits, impossible bones. They smile or scowl.
Beat me.
Tease me.
Love me.
Rape me.
* * * *
II
All around poor Estrellita Baines in her gray suit and her rimless spectacles. She wears a skirt and carries a pocketbook so you can tell who she is. Her hair is pulled back in a tiny bun. It just won’t grow, no matter what she does.
It matters what women look like.
* * * *
III
Then they got tired of waiting. After discussing what the catastrophe is to be—Plague or the Bomb—they disperse to their separate circles. Demons are not allergic to electric light, and so the lights go on. Circles, pentacles, alb, stole, cope (you can read all this in books). Insofar as she thinks at all, Estrellita Baines thinks that whatever Mr. Wicklow wants must be right. The world is lucky to be done in by him when it’s going in any case. Mr. Wicklow is feeding the fire on the lamia’s magical body. Ludlow’s fat cat lies very regardant and strange by the altar at Ludlow’s feet, from time to time turning his huge eyes on his own ginger fur and giving himself a self-regarding lick. He weeps like a human.
“...mulier hominis est confusion...”
Estrellita Baines wonders why she feels so sleepy. The room is filling with smoke.
“...felix conjunction...”
Frater Albano wonders at the words. Ludlow sounds like a band-saw; it’s impossible to make anything out.
“...quicquid, te, cara, delectat. Quid iuvat deferre, electa?”
Wicklow feeds the fire.
“...ave, jormosissima . . . iam, dulcis arnica, venito . . . Ves-tiunt silve tenera merorem virgulta, suis onerata pomis...”
What is the man saying? The cat lies on its back and bats at the air. Something cold seems to glide in across the floor under the smoke. Wicklow, shaking himself awake, drops more resin into the fire: resin and honey, sparks snap from the dead body of the lamia. Ludlow has explained everything very carefully; magic is an art, like science, I mean (thinks Wicklow) like mathematics. Or perhaps an exact art, that’s better. Anyway, there are rules. Inflexible rules. It’s all to do with the nature of the Personages that lie behind the appearance of things—or in connection with the appearance of things? Wicklow shakes his head to clear it, earning a sharp look from the magician. And Albano is here because of some pact the Devil has made with God, or God with the Devil, who can tell? But he must only observe, not interfere. That’s clear. Why? The limits on Good. Evil breaks the rules, Good must obey the rules. Very simple. And to our advantage.
“...imperatrix mundi...”
“...Dione . . .”
“...mundi luminar...”
And the cold, rising, somehow does not clear the smoke, but makes it blacker. Frater Albano is almost entirely lost in the dark. The empty pentacle in front of the altar begins to glow, not light but rather darkness visible, and into this column whirl the magician’s girl-demons, sucked around and around, distorted souls flattened and glowing, somehow dimmed as if caught in a waterspout. A mutter comes from Frater Albano’s direction, absolutely contrary to the rules.
“Aliquid mihi faciendum est!” cries Ludlow. The altar flames. Stifled words come from Albano, and much coughing.
“. . . vini, vidi . . .”
“Quid nunc, O vir doctissime, tibi adest?” exclaims Ludlow.
“...vici.... finishes Albano in his corner, barely able to speak.
“Veni, audivi, exii!” Ludlow shouts, and as these last words sink into the cold (sink into it but do not penetrate it, do not neutralize it, refuse to mingle with it, but only trail wisps of human heat after them), the light in the pentacle condenses to a tiny star, a mote of light that seems to drift farther and farther away. It does not become less, but somehow draws back as if in obedience to the laws of some other perspective, until it is very far away (but still within the room); and then—at the point of becoming too small to see—it expands soundlessly until it fills everyone’s sight, a magnesium flare, intense and colorless, in which one looks at one’s neighbor and sees bleakly and without emotion that he has not even greed or wrath, but that he is hollow.
“I don’t like this,” says Estrellita Baines. Ludlow raises his wand, black eyes blazing like balls of pitch. A head seems to be forming in the room (they are all inside it). The head grins, mottled, quicksilver-mouthed, simultaneously behind the doctor and before him, at the ceiling and around their ankles; Estrellita Baines says more positively, “I don’t like this at all.
“And why,” she continues crossly, “do you always have to grin like a wolf? It’s so dull. Why can’t you grin like a chihuahua?” At the sound of her voice, the ceiling and floor exchange places, causing an almost unbearable nausea. They settle, and Ludlow raises his wand. If she moves . . . ! And simultaneously, Frater Albano, disabled by coughing, manages to croak “reprobare, reprobos!” which is the end of a verse that can be used only once; and somehow in the world, now shaking and gliding like a crack-the-whip, up and down, back and forth, racked with alternate light and darkness, the magister magici sees dependable Estrellita Baines preparing to step out of her circle. The lenses of her spectacles reflect the fragmented images of a dissolving world. He raises his wand to blast her.
Broad daylight. Silence. Sunlight streams over the raised gallery at the end of the room. The Sabbath Goat sits on the edge of the gallery, swinging His animal’s hooves. He is as solid a horror as anything can be, emblematic from the crown of lit candles on His human head to His erection to the Star of David on His forehead to His oozing breasts to His slit-pupiled eyes. Goats and cats belong to Him. Estrellita steps out of her circle, foolish and confused. She says, “You look silly.” He lifts His head and opens His mouth; the magician’s cat backs carefully onto Ludlow’s feet and settles there with a groan. Estrellita has taken off her glasses, as if trying an experiment (can she see without them?), but this is one of those ladies who look even worse that way; nobody says, “You’re beautiful without your glasses.” So she puts them back on. She wanders out between the chalked figures on the floor, studying them with interest. Her voice, one knows, will be strong but not sweet:
I don’t fancy giving you my world to play with.
Give up, magician. I don’t exist apart from the particulars, so you can’t touch me.
“I thought,” says Frater Albano, finding the words, or the words finding him, “that you would be more beautiful.”
Why? I’m not a picture. And I’m not the Virgin, either. She hikes up her stockings and begins to climb the stair at the side of the gallery. Albano covers his face with his hands. Holding her drab skirt above her knees with one hand, she trudges up the steps—dogged, plain, and slow. She kicks off her shoes.
I could be beautiful if I wanted to. I could be anything if I wanted to. But there’s nothing emblematic about me; I must use what’s to hand. So if your aesthetic sense isn’t too violently offended, gentlemen, I’ll stay as I am.
The Sabbath Animal yawns. Little Star climbs the steps. Either the steps are higher than they look or she isn’t really walking, for it seems to take her forever to get there. And as she toils away from the three on the floor, she grows larger—though still climbing one step at a time—until, miles away, large as a monument at the head of a stair, huge as a pyramid, she can pick up the Goat in one hand, which she does. Her spectacles flash like the Lunar Apennines. He wriggles furiously in her fingers, and she brings him close to her face, to look at him. Sitting on the gallery, feet reaching the floor and head bent to avoid the ceiling, she presses her knees carefully together, ladylike. The gallery sags and creaks. She puts her free hand behind her back, and when she brings it out again, there is in it another furiously wriggling little man. A golden squiggle to match the red-and-black squiggle. She holds them almost at her nose.
Neither of these is the genuine article. Of course, there is no genuine article.
Ludlow breaks his wand in two and points the raw ends at Little Star. She does not look up.
No use, magician. What a funny little man you are, with your hot temper and your subtlety and all your logic! You have played for years with your pacts and laws and compulsions without the slightest suspicion that anyone was trying to cheat you. And you spoke for years with what you believed to be Infernal Personages without ever once thinking that the real mark of a Personage—as distinct from a Thing—was Its ability to change Its mind. Someone has been making fun of you.
Ludlow continues his incantation.
If the characteristic of a Thing, says Little Star, is its invariability, then surely the characteristic of a Person is passion, volition, and reason. And where is that to come from if not from you? Ah, We had grand times in the early days when there were only vegetable and animal souls to draw our being from, grand times but bland times, I must admit; then you came along and We have developed amazingly since. We have developed into beauts, doctor, if I may so express myself, into real lollapaloozers, the human coloration of which never ceases to amaze me.
“Who are you?” says Albano in a croak.
I (says Estrellita Baines) am The One Who Puts Things Back Where They Belong. I am She Who Confines Fancies to the Space Between the Ears, The Lady Who Makes Things Concrete, The Woman Who Insists on Facts, I am The I-Am, I Am The What-Is. Something of a paradox, you will admit, for a supernatural being. But I am one of the two real Personages.
“Why are you here?” cries Wicklow. “Why are you interfering? And why are you my secretary?”
Because (says the woman-mountain) I am The Decider Who Decides That To Make A Real Bang You Must Use A Real Bomb. Anything else offends Me.
“That is not logical,” says Ludlow, the master magician, in a hard, tight, furious voice.
It is not, says Little Star, but it is both reasonable and real, and thrusting both arms under her skirt, she appears to release Good and Evil into the space between her legs, then doing the same with the magician and the monk, whose arms and legs twinkle a violent protest as they are shoved back into the womb. She seems to get no pleasure from it. Her lips are thin and priggish. The huge hand lowers above Wicklow, who throws himself flat on his face.
“I don’t believe it!” Boss Wicklow shouts. “It’s not possible!”
Why not? I am the effluvium of billions of souls, a billion and a half women who turn uneasily in their sleep, a billion and a half men who resent the uneasiness of the women. My brother is What-Is-Not and he is also my father, my lover, and my son: The One Who Broadcasts Dreams, The Man Who Believes, The Inside Turned Outside, The Yes-It-Is, The All-Is-All, The Great Somebody Else. And to complicate matters still further, we are really each other, but since that’s impossible, we take turns. It’s the women’s turn today; it’ll be the men’s tomorrow, when the men become women, when the women become men, when they both become zebras. I’ll still be here.
“Go away!” He shuts his eyes.
The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That’s the trouble with women, too. But I know everything.
“GO AWAY!”
All right.
He opens his eyes, to find Estrellita Baines—his own size now—kneeling over him. There is a very disapproving look on her face.
“Mis-ter Wick-low!” she says.
“I’m all right,” says merry Wicklow.
“I think,” says Miss Baines, “that we had better go home, Mr. Wicklow, and that after this, Mr. Wicklow, you had better consult me about anything you plan to undertake. You have wasted both your money and our time.”
“All right,” says rich Wicklow.
“And I think,” continues Miss Baines, “that, while I’m at it, I might as well tell you the plans I have for this palazzo, which is to be turned into a karate school for high-school girls. Your life will not be worth living, Mr. Wicklow.”
“I know it,” Wicklow groans.
“You will not like it, Mr. Wicklow.”
“Yes, yes,” he says.
“Considering what I know about the firm, you may even have to make me a partner, Mr. Wicklow.”
His head snaps up. “Miss Baines!” She is standing just inside the door to the great marble room. She’s sizing him up. She’s wondering mildly where that idiot Albano and that idiot Ludlow and the cat and all those silly girls have got to. She seems remarkably graceful. She pirouettes on one heel; it’s wonderful how good a woman can look when she knows there’s no competition around. He hates her.
“Mis-ter Wick-low!”
He follows her.
* * * *
Appendix: The Latin
It’s no wonder they call up the Great Mother, considering the invocations they use. If you are interested:
mulier hominis est confusio—Chaunteclere to Pertelote: woman is man’s
damnation
felix conjunctio—happy conjunction (of a boy and girl)
quicquid, te, cara, delectat, etc.—everything, dear, to delight you. Why put it off,
sweetheart?
ave, formosissima, etc.—oops, can’t find it; more medieval love poetry
imperatrix mundi—empress of the world
Dione—another name for Aphrodite
mundi luminar—light of the world
Aliquid mihi, etc.—There exists something which must be done by me. (Bad Latin)
Quid nunc, etc.—a facetious cry for which I am indebted to T. H. White’s Mistress
Masham’s Repose: “What is biting you, O learned man?”
veni, vidi—I came, I saw
vici—I conquered
Veni, audivi, exii!—l came, I heard, I left!
magister magici—nasty neologism
reprobare, reprobos—to reprobate reprobates (written by one)
* * * *
Joanna Russ writes:
Assuming this to be free advertising space, I will now put in a plug for writers, who—with a very few exceptions—are day laborers paid piecework in an industry that is shaky, badly advertised, and poor, largely due not to its choice of books or its editing of them, but to an impossible distribution system for paperbacks {in which the distributors and the retail outlets do not share in the risk and in which books are merchandised like Kleenex) and a vehement confusion between old-style paperback selling (impulse buying) and the emerging reality that soon there ain’t gonna be hardbacks except for specialized books and library sales. Nobody has adjusted to this yet. Nobody knows who buys books where and why. It is a mess.
It is rude and crude to rend the lovely veils of spidery illusion which blow so gently over our work, but for a field that prides itself on being down-to-earth there is an extraordinary reluctance to look at the economic facts. Many Americans seem to be like this—maybe art is supposed to be Above All That.
My own, quixotic dream for the paperback-book industry is a giant Sears-Roebuck-ish, centralized store which will carry remaindered books at lowered (or reused) prices (depending on their bibliographic value and the rise due to inflation) and have wee beautiful catalogs in every hamlet, village, and town where people (now that the movies are too expensive) can go when TV palls and find old Phyllis Whitney gothics (Look! I found a copy of Fear in the Old Castle!) or HPL (Look! Horrible Monsters from Old New England!) or controversial books (How can anybody bear to talk about such filthy things in public? I’ll buy it.), order them (see? no problems with shelf space), pay for them, and get them (quickly). The books would move only when paid for, copies would not be shredded (as they are now when they’re not sold within about ten days). But how would prices on old paperbacks be changed? With a goddamn supermarket stamp, nudnick!
College bookstores (as three of them have told me) always sell SF if it remains on the shelves long enough. The real problems are distribution and information (really identical).
Of course, such an operation would require a vast capital outlay. Or would it? Specialized bookstores do this kind of thing already. At any rate, it points in the proper direction, I think. The first step is for some brilliant sociologist or computer programmer out there (hello, hello?) to get a grant to study just who buys books and why, something about which there are a lot of publishers’ theories and no facts. A big grant. And then . . . ?
Say, why don’t one of you readers . . . ?