The Second Trip Page 9

  Up the stairs, through another hall full of Chinese porcelains and Assyrian palace reliefs, past a room of Persian miniatures, one of Iranian pottery, gallery after gallery of archaic treasures, and emerging ultimately in an opulent cube of clear plastic cantilevered out of the rear of the building to overhang the wilted greenery of Central Park. The modern-art wing.

  Crowded, too; Macy looked nervously at Lissa, fearing she would tumble into another telepathic abyss, but she appeared to be in control of herself. Guiding him coolly down yards of gaudy paintings and sculpture and tick-tock artifacts and dancing posters and metabolic mirrors and liquespheres and all the rest.

  Left turn. Deep breath. A small room, no door, just a circular entrance. Over the entrance, in raised gilded letters: ANTIGONE 21 BY NATHANIEL HAMLIN. Jesus. A private exhibition hall for it. What he had taken to be the absence of a door was in fact the presence of an invisible airseal, providing secret shelter for the masterwork within, ensuring it its own environment and psychological habitat. They stepped through. No sensation while breaching the seal: cooler on the other side, the air tingling, full of wandering ions. A faint chemical odor. A low hum.

  “That’s it,” Lissa said.

  Ten, twelve people clustered in front of it; he couldn’t see. She hung tensely against him, arm jammed through his, ribs raking his side. Her tautness leaked through to him, a mental emanation of something just short of fear. He felt the same way. The knot of onlookers parted and as though through a rift in the clouds he beheld Nathaniel Hamlin’s Antigone 21.

  Nude female figure, larger than life. Unmistakably Lissa, yet no danger that anyone in the room would turn from that radiant statue to the drab drained girl and connect the two of them. Firm, full body. The breasts higher and heavier: had the sculptor idealized them or had Lissa lost weight there too? The pose an aggressive, dynamic one, head flung back, one arm outstretched, legs apart. O Pioneers, that sort of thing. Emphasizing the strength of the woman, the resilience of her. Eyes bright and fierce. Mouth not quite smiling but almost. The entire solid figure crying out, I can take it, I can handle anything, stress and turmoil and flood and famine and revolution and assassination, I have endured, I will endure, I am the essence of endurance. The eternal feminine. And so forth.

  But of course the sculpture was not merely just a sexy academic nude in a high-powered nineteenth-century mode, nor was it only a sentimentally-conceived monument to stereotyped concepts of womanhood. It was those things, yes, but it was also a psychosculpture, meaning that it approached the condition of being alive, it was a whole cosmos in itself. It did tricks. The room was rigged to heighten the effects. Imperceptible changes of lighting. That odd humming sound, coming from a battery of hidden sonic generators, controlled the mood through its pattern of modulations, hitting the onlookers at some subterranean level of their psyches.

  The degree of ionization in the room was constantly changing, too. And the statue itself. Going through a cycle of transformations. Look, the nipples are erect now, the breasts are heaving (but are they, or does it just seem that they move?), the eyes are those of a woman in heat. What has become of the defiant, all-enduring woman of three minutes ago? Now we behold the essence of cuntliness. One could rush forward gladly and prong her.

  And yet she changes again. Her juices going sour, her nipples softening: a woman thwarted, a woman denied. How bitter that fractional smile! She holds grudges. In the darkness of the night she would gladly castrate the unsuspecting male. But the strength of hatred ebbs from her. She is afraid; she knows that there are questions for which she has no answers; she feels the phantoms of the night fluttering against the windows, wings beating harder and harder. Terror closes its hand on her. She is alone, naked and vulnerable, not half so strong as she would have the world believe.

  If they came to attack her now—but what comes is dawn. A brightening. Finding her place in the universe under a friendly sky. She seems taller. Older, though no less beautiful; voluptuous, though cooler than before; in command of herself, beyond doubt Venus ascendant. A totally different self each few minutes.

  What machinery is at work beneath that figure’s supple skin? How is this cycle of transformations propelled? Watching it, the constantly shifting play of emotions and impressions, the subtle mutations of posture and attitude, Macy feels awed and overpowered but also vaguely cheated. He had not known what to expect of the art of his former self, other than that it would be dramatic and impressive. But is this really art, this clever robot? Will all this mechanical trickery be able to stand alongside the true artistic achievements of the ages? He is no critic, in truth he knows nothing at all, yet the intense realism of the sculpture that is its outstanding characteristic makes it seem aesthetically primitive to him, a toy, a stunt, a triumph of craft, not art.

  But even so. But even so. Impossible not to respond to the power of the thing. How thoroughly Lissa has been captured in those gears and cogs; not his Lissa, not the broken dazed girl he knows, but Nat Hamlin’s glorious Lissa, whose caved-in shell has fallen to Hamlin’s successor. What Hamlin has created here may be simpleminded next to Leonardo and Cellini and Henry Moore, but behind the superficial superficiality may lie a carefully masked profundity, Macy suspects. He could stand here studying the figure for hours. Days. As others seem to be doing. Those students muttering notes into hand recorders, and that one, holographing the work from every conceivable angle—they are trapped by it too, plainly. A masterpiece. Undoubtedly a masterpiece.

  With an effort he turned away from it, feeling an almost audible snap as the sightlines of his contact with the sculpture broke, and glanced at Lissa. She was drawn back, hunched against the wall, lips parted, eyes fixed and glassy, caught by the mesmerism of her overpowering simulacrum up there. A gasp frozen on her face. What currents of identity, he wondered, were flowing from her to the sculpture, from the sculpture to her? What draining of self was going on, and what recharging? What must it be like to behold yourself made into such a work of art?

  And where was Hamlin? Why wasn’t he jumping and cavorting in pride before his wondrous achievement, as he had that first day in Harold Griswold’s office? Hamlin was quiescent. Not absent, though. Macy became gradually aware of him glowing far below the surface, embedded deep in his brain. A thorn in his paw. A pebble in his hoof. Macy hadn’t expected Hamlin to remain bolted inside his dungeon for long.

  Nor did he. Rising slowly now, bubbling toward the top. Evoked into consciousness by the Antigone 21. That’s all right, Macy thought. Let him come up. I can handle him. Bracing himself, battening down, Macy waited for his other self to finish drifting toward the surface. Not hostile, this time. Not even aggressive. A prevailing air of calmness about him. No resentment apparent over his defeat in their last battle. Perhaps a strategy of deception, though. Get me off guard, then make another quick leap for the speech centers. I’m ready, whatever he tries. But when Hamlin opened their inner conversation, his tone was easy, civil:

  —What do you think of it?

  Impressive. I didn’t know you had it in you.

  —Why? Do I seem second-rate to you, Macy?

  The only aspect of you that I know is the violence, the criminality. It turns me off. I don’t associate great art with that kind of personality.

  —What a load of bourgeois crap that is, friend.

  Is it?

  —Item one, a man can be a thief, a killer, a babybuggerer, anything, and still be a great artist. The quality of his morals has nothing to do with the quality of his perceptions, hip? You’d be surprised how much of the stuff in this museum was produced by absolute bastards. Item two, I happened to have been a pretty fair artist fifteen years before I became what they call an enemy of society. This piece you see here was entirely finished before I had my breakdown. Item three, since you never knew me, you don’t have any goddam right to judge what kind of person I was.

  I concede item two and maybe item one. But why should I yield on number three? I know you plenty well,
Hamlin. You’ve knocked me down, you’ve played games with my heart, you’ve attempted to seize sections of my brain, you’ve threatened outright to kill me. Should I love you for that? This is the first time since you surfaced that you’ve seemed even halfway civilized. You come on like a thug; do you blame me for being surprised you could produce a sculpture like this?

  —You really think I’m a villain?

  You’re a convicted criminal.

  —Forget that shit I mean my relationship to you. You think I’m acting out of evil impulses?

  What else can I think?

  —But I’m not, Macy. I don’t dislike you, I don’t want to harm you, I have no negative feelings toward you at all. It just happens that you’re in the way of a man who’s fighting for his life.

  Meaning you.

  —Exactly. I want to be myself again. I don’t want to stay submerged inside you.

  The court decreed—

  —Fuck the court. The whole Rehab system is hysterical nonsense. Why wipe me out? Why not rehabilitate me in the real sense of the word? I wasn’t hopelessly insane, Macy. Shit, yes, I did a lot of awful things, I admit that freely, I was off my head. But in the year 2007 they could have some better way of coping with insanity than the death sentence.

  But—

  —Let me finish. It was a death sentence, wasn’t it? To rip me out of my own body and throw me away, and pour someone else into my head? What happened to my whole accumulation of experiences? What happened to my skills and talents? What happened to me, damn it, what happened to me? Killed. Killed. Nothing but a zombie body left. It’s only by the merest fluke that I’m still here, even in this condition, hanging on inside you. What kind of humanitarianism is that? What are they saving, when they keep the body and throw away the soul?

  I didn’t make the laws.

  —Agreed, Macy. But you’re no fool. You can see how flagrantly unjust Rehab is. They want to separate me from society because I’m dangerous, okay, I agree, I agree, put me away, try to fix me, drain all the poison out of me. Right. But instead this. The super resources of modern science are employed to murder a great but somewhat deranged sculptor and invent a dumb holovision commentator to replace him.

  Thank you.

  —What else can I say? Look up there, at my Antigone. Could you do that? Could anybody else do that? I did it. My unique gift to mankind. And fifty others almost as good. I’m not bragging, Macy, I’m being as objective as hell. I was somebody valuable, I had a special gift, I had intensity, I had humanity. Maybe my gift drove me crazy after a while, but at least I had something to offer. And you? What are you? Who are you? You’re nothing. You have no depth. You have no texture. You have no past. You have no reality. I’ve been sitting here inside you, taking an inventory. I know what you’re made of, Macy, and it’s all ersatz. You have no purpose in existing. You can’t do anything that a robot couldn’t do better. A holovision commentator? They can program a machine with pear-shaped tones, and it’ll broadcast you off the map.

  I admit all this, Macy replied. He stood stiffly, pretending to study the sculpture. He wondered how much time had elapsed during his colloquy with Hamlin. Five seconds? Five minutes? He had lost track of external things. Granted that you were a genius and I’m a nobody, what am I supposed to do about it?

  —Vacate the premises.

  Just like that.

  —Yes. It wouldn’t be hard. I could show you how. You relax, you lower your defenses, you let me administer the coup de grace. Then you disappear back into the limbo they whistled you out of, and I can function as Nat Hamlin wearing the mask of Paul Macy. I can begin to sculpt again. Quietly. As long as I don’t harm anybody, I’d get away with it.

  You’d harm me.

  —But you have no right to exist! You’re fiction, Macy. You’re not real.

  I exist now. I’m here. I have feelings and ambitions and fears. When I eat a steak I taste it. When I fuck a girl I enjoy it. You know how it goes. Cut me and I bleed. I’m real, as real as anybody who ever lived.

  —How can I persuade you that you aren’t?

  You can’t. I’m as real to me as anybody else is to himself. Look, Hamlin, look, this isn’t a thing for logic. I can’t just say to you, Okay, you’re a genius, I bow to the demands of culture, lop off my head and take my place. A far, far better thing, et cetera, et cetera. No. I’m here. I want to go on being here.

  —Where does that leave me?

  Up shit creek, I guess. Right now you’re the one who’s unreal, you know that? Officially you’re dead. You’re just a spook wandering around my skull. Why don’t you do the noble thing? Stop fucking up a decent and inoffensive human being’s life, and clear out. Vacate the premises, as you say. Lower the defenses and let me clobber you.

  —Some chance.

  You’ve given the world enough masterpieces.

  —I’m still young. I’m better than you. I deserve to live.

  The court said otherwise. The court sent you out of the world for God knows what kind of crimes, and—

  —For rape. That’s all it was, rape.

  I don’t care if it was for reusing old postage stamps. A verdict’s a verdict. I’m not giving up my life to remedy what you consider to have been a miscarriage of justice.

  —You don’t have a life, Macy!

  Sorry. I do.

  A long silence. Macy peered at the sculpture, at the onlookers, at the walls. His head was spinning. Hamlin’s presence remained manifest within him as a steady pressure, wordless, heavy. And then, finally:

  All right. We’re getting nowhere like this. Go stroll around the museum. We’ll continue the discussion some other time.

  Sensation of Hamlin letting go. Dropping once more into the depths. Plop. Splash. The illusion of solitude. Solemn trombone music marking the alter ego’s exit. Macy was drenched in sweat. Unsteady on his feet.

  Lissa: “Have you seen enough yet?”

  “I think so. We can go. Wait, let me hold your hand.”

  “Is something wrong, Paul?”

  “A little wobbly.” He wasn’t able to look at her. Clutching her cool fingers between his. Step. Step. Through the invisible door. In the gallery outside he found a bench and sank down on it. Lissa fluttering over him, bewildered. He said, “While I was looking at it, I had a sort of conversation with Hamlin. Very quietly. He was almost charming.”

  “What was he telling you?”

  “A lot of insidious bullshit. He invited me to get out of our body so he could have it. On the grounds that he’s a great artist and deserves to live more than I do.”

  “That’s just the sort of thing he’d say!”

  “It’s just the sort of thing he did say. I told him no, and he went back to his cave. And now I realize I must have put more energy into that chat than I thought.”

  “Sit. Rest.”

  “I’m going to.”

  “How about the Antigone?” she asked.

  “Incredible. Demolishing. I almost feel a kind of secondhand paternal pride in it. I mean, these hands here made it. This brain conceived it. Even if I wasn’t there at the time. And—”

  “No,” Lissa said. “These hands made it, yes, but not this brain.” She tapped his skull lightly, affectionately, with three fingertips. “A brain’s just a globe of gray cheese. Brains don’t conceive sculptures. Minds do. And this wasn’t the mind that conceived the Antigone.”

  “I realize that,” he told her stiffly. Somehow her quibbling upset him. A show of loyalty for Hamlin, perhaps. Arousing jealousy in him. Hard to accept the truth that she had been there while that piece was being fashioned, she posed, she was in on the white-hot hours of creation, she and Hamlin, in the days before Paul Macy was born. To think about that made him feel like an intruder in his own body. What ecstasies had Lissa and Hamlin shared, what joys and griefs, what moments of exaltation? He was shut out of all those events. Cut off by the impenetrable wall of the past. Other times, another self. But she could remember. Scowling, he watched
the museum-goers filing by threes and fours into the Hamlin room. Hamlin is right, he thought gloomily. I’m nothing. I have no texture. I have no past. I have no reality. Abruptly standing, he said, “Is there anything else you’d like to see, as long as we’re in the museum?”

  “This trip was your idea.”

  “As long as we’re here.”

  “No, nothing,” she said. “Not really.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  “Did you learn whatever you wanted to learn from the Antigone?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said; “All that I wanted to learn. And more. Maybe too much more.” They hurried from the building by a side door in the Egyptian wing.

  EIGHT

  EMERGING into the sunlight revived his vigor a bit. It was still only about four in the afternoon. At Lissa’s suggestion they went uptown, to her place; there were some things she needed to get, she said. Unspoken in that was the assumption that she would be moving in with him. He didn’t object. He couldn’t say that he loved her, as Hamlin evidently had, or that he was even on the verge of falling in love with her; but their individually precarious circumstances demanded a mutual defense treaty, and living together was the obvious logistical arrangement. For the time being, at least.

  In the tube heading north she was cheerful, even a little manic: definitely up, despite the throngs of fellow travelers pressing close. Her ESP didn’t seem to operate all the time. It was something like Hamlin was for him, he imagined: coming and going, ebbing and flowing, now virtually in full possession, now weak and indetectable. When the demon was on her, she came close to disruption and collapse. At other times, such as now, she was lively, alert, buoyant. Yet there was a hard fretful edge to her gaiety. As if she were contemplating at all times the possibility that her telepathic sensitivity would switch itself on, here in the tube, and plunge her once more into frenzy.

  Her apartment was grim: one shabby room in an antique building on a forgotten limb of the city. Something out of Dickens. The lame, the halt, and the blind infesting the place, dirty children everywhere, fat old women, sinister cutthroaty young men, dogs, cats, screams, shrieks, wild laughter from behind concave doors. A prevailing odor of urine and exotic spices. Not just the twentieth century surviving here; more like the nineteenth. The booming of holovision sets in the halls seemed like a grotesque anachronism.