Part 20 (1/2)

During all this the bus must have been driving on good Permoplastic pavement, because the ride was very smooth. Sometimes for stretches of several miles the road gives out. It happened several times yesterday; the pale green Permoplastic abruptly ends either in a stretch of rutted black road or no road at all-in just a field. The bus slows down to a crawl and goes carefully around obstacles and tries to find the smoothest possible path, although it sometimes lurches violently. This is uncomfortable; but I don't worry that the bus will be damaged. Despite the apparent brittleness of the brain beneath the heavy cover plate, the bus is a rugged, well-constructed machine.

Before I left Maugre I stopped the bus at Annabel's grave and got out and placed some roses from the garden on it, up against the little wooden cross I had made with her name-probably the first truly marked human grave in centuries. I stood there for several minutes, thinking of Annabel and of how much she had meant to me. But I did not cry for her-did not want to.

Then I got into the bus and told it to take me to New York. The bus seemed to know exactly what to do. It drove slowly and carefully down the center lane of the huge graveyard, past the thousands of little, nameless Permoplastic grave markers sitting quietly there in the early-morning light, until it came to the broad green highway that I had seen before on walks around Maugre but had never walked on. When it got on the smooth surface, kept clear of debris by robot maintenance crews, it began picking up speed, heading down the broad and empty road.

My relief to be getting away was exquisite. I had no regrets. I felt fine, and I am feeing fine now, in the dark of the night, with my helpful and patient bus and my food supply and my books and records and my cat.

The sky has begun to lighten outside the windows now, and when the road sometimes comes close to the ocean I look out across the beach and the water, toward the pale and lonely gray of the sky where the sun will come up, and sometimes it almost makes me stop breathing because of the beauty of it. It is not exactly the same as what I felt when stopping at the end of my rows of Protein 4 at the prison; its beauty now seems even deeper, and mystical-like Mary Lou's eyes when she looks at me in that strange, puzzled way.

The ocean must be very vast; it means freedom to me, and possibility. It makes something mysterious open in my mind, the way some of the things I read in books do at times, making me feel more alive than I had ever thought I could feel, and more human.

One of my books says that at times men have wors.h.i.+pped the ocean as a G.o.d. I can understand that easily. Yes.

But the Baleens would never have understood such a thing; they would have called the idea ”blasphemy.” The G.o.d they wors.h.i.+p is an abstract and ferociously moral thing, like a computer. And the compelling, mystical rabbi, Jesus, they have turned into some kind of moral Detector. I want none of that, and none of the Jehovah of the Book of Job, either.

I think I may already be a wors.h.i.+pper of the ocean. In reading the New Testament aloud to the Baleens, I developed a strong admiration for Jesus, as a sad and terribly knowing prophet-a man who had grasped something about life of the greatest importance and had attempted, and largely failed, to tell what it was. I can feel, in myself, a kind of love for him and for his attempt, in saying things like ”The Kingdom of Heaven is within you,” for I think I glimpse his meaning, here, looking out of the thought-bus window toward the still and gray expanse of the Atlantic Ocean with the sun about to rise on it.

Yet I cannot myself say what that meaning is. But I trust it far more than all of the nonsense I was taught as a child in the dormitories.

The sky at the top of the gray ocean has become much lighter now. The sun is about to rise. I will end this recording for now and stop the bus and walk outside and watch the sun rise over the ocean.

My G.o.d, the world can be beautiful.

OCTOBER FOURTH.

The sunrise was strengthening. Afterward I walked to the edge of the water, took off my clothes, and waded out and bathed in the surf. It was cold, but I didn't mind it. And there is beginning to be the feeling of whiter in the air.

After my swim I had the bus play music in my head for me for a while. But I stopped it before long. It was stupid music, bouncy and empty. So I managed to rig up my phonograph and the generator, but when I tried to play records the needle, as I had feared, would not stay in the groove while the bus was moving. I stopped the bus on the road for long enough to play the Mozart Jupiter Symphony and a part of ”Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.” That was much better. Then I poured myself a small gla.s.s of whiskey, shut off the generator, and continued down the road.

I have seen no other vehicles and no sign of human habitation since I left Maugre.

My G.o.d, the things I have read and learned since I left Ohio! And they have changed me so much I hardly recognize myself. Just knowing that there has been a past to human life and getting a slight sense of what that past was like have altered my mind and my behavior beyond recognition.

I had seen talking films as a graduate student, along with the handful of others who were interested in such things. But the films -Magnificent Obsession, Dracula Strikes, The Sound of Music- had only seemed to be ”mind-blowing.” They were merely another, more esoteric way of manipulating one's mental states for the sake of pleasure and inwardness. It would never have occurred to me then, in my illiterate and brainwashed state, to observe such films as a means of learning something valuable about the past.

But most of all, it seems to me now, has been the courage to know and to sense my feelings that has come, slowly, from the emotionally charged silent films at the old library at first and then later from the poems and novels and histories and biographies and how-to-do-it books that I have read. All of those books-even the dull and nearly incomprehensible ones-have made me understand more clearly what it means to be a human being. And I have learned from the sense of awe I at times develop when I feel in touch with the mind of another, long-dead person and know that I am not alone on this earth. There have been others who have felt as I feel and who have, at times, been able to say the unsayable. ”Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods.” ”I am the way and the truth and the life. He that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” ”My life is light, waiting for the death wind. Like a feather on the back of my hand.”

And without the ability to read I would never have found a way to get this thought bus moving, taking me to New York and to Mary Lou, whom I must try to see again before I die.

OCTOBER FIFTH.

It was a warm and sunny morning today and I decided to have myself a roadside picnic, something like the one in The Lost Chord, with Zasu Pitts. I stopped the bus around noon by a little grove of trees, fixed myself a plate of bacon and beans and a gla.s.s of whiskey and water, found myself a comfortable spot under the trees, and ate my meal slowly and thoughtfully while But chased b.u.t.terflies on the gra.s.s.

For most of the morning the bus had been out of sight of the ocean; I hadn't seen the water for several hours. After eating and then dozing for a few minutes I decided to climb a little rise of ground to see if I could tell where we were. And when I got up there I could see the ocean and, way over to my left, the buildings of New York! Suddenly I became excited and stood there transfixed, trembling slightly and clutching my half-empty gla.s.s.

I could see the Statue of Privacy in Central Park, the great, solemn, leaden figure with closed eyes and a serenely inward smile; it is still one of the Wonders of the Modern World. I could see its huge gray bulk from where I stood, miles away. I tried to find the buildings of NYU, where I had told the bus to take me, and where I had some hope of finding Mary Lou, or at least some trace of her, but I could not.

And then, looking at New York there in the distance, with the Empire State Building at one end and the Statue of Privacy, so dark and leaden, at the other, something sank in my heart.

I knew I wanted Mary Lou, but I did not want to go into New York again, into that dead city.

And I felt it then, a heavy weight of oppression at the thought of those New York streets, on their way to becoming as overgrown as those of Maugre. And all that stupid life moving dazedly about those dying streets-stoned faces of Inwardness, lives with minds that barely flickered, lives that were like mine once had been: not worth the trouble of living. A society haunted by death and not alive enough to know it. And those group immolations! Immolations at the Burger Chef, and a zoo filled with robots.

The city lay there under the early-autumn sunlight like a tomb. I did not want to go back.

And then I heard a quiet voice in my mind saying, ”There is nothing in New York that can hurt you.” It was the voice of my bus.

I thought about that a moment and then I said aloud, ”It is not being hurt that I fear.” I looked down at my wrist, still a bit twisted from so long before.

”I know,” the bus said. ”You are not afraid. You are only displeased with New York, and with what it means for you now.”

”I was happy there once,” I said. ”Sometimes with Mary Lou. And my films, sometimes . . .”

”Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods,” the bus said.

It was startling to hear that ”You took those words from my mind?” I said.

”Yes. They are often in your mind.”

”What do they mean?”

”I don't know,” the bus said. ”But they make you feel something strongly.”

”Something sad?”

”Yes. Sad. But it is a sadness that is good for you to feel.”

”Yes,” I said. ”I know that.”

”And you have to go to New York if you want to see her.”

”Yes,” I said.

”Get in,” the bus said.

I climbed down the little hill, called Biff to me, and got into the bus. ”Let's get rolling,” I said aloud.

”By all means,” the bus said. It shut its door smartly, and began to roll.

OCTOBER SIXTH.

It was close to evening as we drove over the huge, empty, rusty old bridge onto Manhattan Island; lights were already on in some of the little Permoplastic houses along Riverside Drive. The sidewalks were empty except for an occasional robot pus.h.i.+ng a cart of raw materials toward one of the vending shops on Fifth Avenue, or a sanitation crew collecting garbage. I saw one old woman out on the sidewalk, on Park Avenue; she was fat and wore a shapeless gray dress and was carrying a bunch of flowers in her hand.

We pa.s.sed a few thought buses on the street, most of them empty. An empty Detection car went cruising past us. New York was very peaceful but I was becoming apprehensive. I had eaten nothing since my small picnic lunch; I had been nervous all afternoon. I was not afraid, as I might once have been, but just tense. I didn't like it. But there was nothing to do about it except bear it. A few times I thought about having more whiskey to drink, or stopping the bus at a drug machine and trying to vandalize it for sopors-since I no longer had a credit card-but I had decided long before to keep chemicals like those out of my body. So I drove such ideas from my mind and just put up with feeling uncomfortable and jittery. At least I knew what was going on around me.

The steel buildings of NYU were dazzling in the setting sun. On the drive through Was.h.i.+ngton Square we pa.s.sed four or five students in their denim robes, each of them going his separate way. The square was overgrown with weeds. None of the fountains were working, I had the bus park in front of the library.

And there it was, the old half-rusted building where I had worked in the archives and had lived with Mary Lou. My heart began beating very hard when I saw it sitting there, surrounded by weeds and with no one in sight.

I had enough presence of mind to realize that I might lose my bus to someone who merely wanted to take it somewhere. So I took my tool kit and removed the front panel, disconnected what Audel's Guide called the ”Door Activating a.s.sembly Servo,” and then told the door to open. And it would not. I set the tool kit inside the brain opening. No one would bother it.