Soulavier sat across from them. Madame Yardley’s gaze fell on him for less time than on one of the empty seats. She turned back to Mary and in French and Creole, speaking through Hilaire, asked her whether she thought Hispaniola was a good place to live compared to Los Angeles or California.
Soulavier glanced at Mary, nose angled just slightly up, eyes narrowed in warning. Mary tried to ignore him but her caution prevailed. If Madame Yardley was as delicate as she seemed, perhaps on the edge of very poor health, burning her own protein to stay alive, then Mary could risk unpleasantness by not humoring her. She felt in her pocket automatically for the pistol, missed it, saw Soulavier noting her gesture and turned quickly to Madame Yardley.
“Hispaniola is a lovely island, close to nature. Los Angeles is a very large city and nature has little place there.”
Madame Yardley absorbed this thoughtfully for a moment. She has never been to Los Angeles, nor to California; as a young girl, she visited Miami, and did not find it much to her liking. So confusing. She prefers, if she is to visit the continent, perhaps Acapulco or Mazatlan, where she spent three years being educated.
“I’ve never been to Miami, or to the others,” Mary said.
That was a pity; she should get out of the country more often to see what the rest of the world had to offer.
Mary agreed that was wise. She wanted nothing more than to be back in LA again and never step outside the city limits. This remained unspoken, however.
“I have been to Los Angeles,” Soulavier said. He had not revealed this to Mary; perhaps now she knew why Soulavier had been chosen to attend her. “My father helped set up the diplomatic mission in California in 2036.”
Madame asked him in her direct French what he thought of the city.
“Very large,” he said first in French then in English. “Very crowded. Not then as much separated I think as it is now, into two distinct classes.”
Is this true, two classes?
Mary inclined.
Soulavier said, “Those who accept the practice of mental therapy and those who do not. Generally speaking, there is discrimination against the latter.”
All must be therapied?
“No,” Soulavier said. “But to receive fulfilling employment you must have an acceptable mental and physical health profile. Refusal to be treated for mental or physical disorders…makes it difficult to be accepted by employment agencies. In most of the USA employment agencies screen applicants for the higher paying job opportunities.”
Madame Yardley laughed a glassy trilling musical laugh, both pretty and disturbing. She expressed an opinion that if everyone on Hispaniola had to prove their mental health the island would blow away like a dead tree in a hurricane. All of Hispaniola’s vitality, she claimed, comes from the refusal to give in to practicalities, to admit reality too deeply into one’s head. Eyes half closed, hand clutching the damask and table edge, she regarded Mary as if she might deny this and provoke Madame Yardley to strike her right off her chair. The fixed smile had vanished.
Mary inclined again. The smile returned like a flickering candle flame and Madame Yardley glanced up yearningly at Hilaire. The servant immediately pulled an electronic noise-maker from his pocket and pushed three sharp chirrups. Within ten seconds, more servants—mulattoes and one oriental all quite small in stature like children but fully mature—came in bearing soup bowls and a large tureen.
Nothing was said as they ate the soup, a mildly spiced chicken broth. Mary wondered whether they would all partake of Madame Yardley’s postfast diet.
She did not ask if Colonel Sir was going to join them later, perhaps when more substantial food was brought in. Soulavier ignored her look and slurped soup from his spoon placidly, content that for the moment there was less danger of awkwardness.
When the soup course was finished Madame Yardley allowed Hilaire to dab at her mouth delicately. It tastes wonderful, she said, like a breath of life itself. Is Mary curious why she is fasting?
“Yes,” Mary said.
Madame Yardley explained that her poor husband is receiving opposition from all sides, even from his wife. She is fasting to convince him to comply with international laws, and not play the rogue; to permanently stop the shipment of Hispaniolan troops to foreign countries to fight foreign wars. He has finally agreed, and so: she breaks her fast. It is important, she concluded, for Hispaniola to assume an even higher moral posture than the countries around her. The island has the potential to be a great paradise, heaven on Earth. But such a dream will not be fulfilled so long as its peoples sin against the other peoples of the Earth or encourage their sins against each other. Is that an idealistic, perhaps a hopeless dream?
“I hope not,” Mary said.
Servants brought in wine. Mary accepted a small amount; Soulavier with some eagerness took a full glass of the dark red liquid. Madame Yardley had none. A dull foggy amber juice was poured for her.
She began to speak again but this time she held up her hand to Hilaire’s mouth. “I think I remember such words now,” she said directly. “I make my husband, you treat this woman well. She has not treated well. No fault her she is among us. Give her what she desires. He says we have not what you desire.”
“So I’ve been told,” Mary said.
“You believe this?” Madame Yardley asked.
Mary shook her head dubiously. “It seems I’ve been sent here for no good reason.”
Madame Yardley’s candle of concern burned brighter in her eyes. Her expression became motherly and joyful. She leaned forward, strengthened by the soup, and said, “What you want is here. We have the man Goldsmith. I think you can see him, perhaps so soon as tomorrow.”
Mary put down her glass of wine carefully, fingers trembling with mixed anger and shock. Soulavier seemed just as surprised.
52
For a healthy mentality, what is aware in each of us at any given moment is the primary personality and whatever subpersonalities, agents or talents it has deemed necessary to consult and utilize; that which is not “conscious” is merely for the moment (be that moment a split second or a decade or even a lifetime) either inactive or not consulted. Most mental organons—for such is the word I use to refer to the separate elements of mentality—are capable of emergence into awareness at some time or another. The major exceptions to this rule are undeveloped or suppressed subpersonalities, and those organons that are concerned solely with bodily functions or maintenance of the brain’s physical structure. Occasionally, these basic organons will appear as symbols within a higher-level brain activity, but the flow of information to these basic organons is almost completely one sided. They do not comment on their activities; they are automatons as old as the brain itself
This does not mean that the “subconscious” has been completely charted. Much remains a mystery, particularly those structures that Jung referred to as “archetypes.” I have seen their effects, their results, but I have never seen an archetype itself and I cannot say to which category of organon I would consign it if I could find it.
LitVid 21/1 A Net (AXIS Direct Report with Visuals, David Shine): “We are receiving these remarkable visuals from AXIS at nineteen hundred hours PST. The resolution is poor because these are real-time images, relayed with AXIS’s usual data flow across four light years. Doubtless AXIS will provide higher resolution squeeze burst images later…
“This is the ocean AXIS has dubbed Meso, for middle. It is a large body of fresh water—there are no salt oceans on B-2—very nearly girdling the planet. As you recall, B-2 has a single great polar ocean, the only blue sea, and this other beltlike sea and a few scattered lakes. All the tower formations are within a few hundred kilometers of these seas which are filled with an amorphous organic soup. So far no large life forms have been discovered on B-2 and therein lies the mystery—earthbound scientists have been given no clues to explain how the towers might have been formed. But as you can see…These pictures, assembled from dozens of mobile explorers scattered around the Meso ocean, show a virtual tide of organic material rising from the water, moving across the littoral that is coastal region, and then breaking up into these remarkable, one can only call them rollers or sideways tentacles, moving at a rapid pace much as a sidewinder does on Earth across the sand and gravel.