Taggert patted his knees. “We would have given him a problem that he could not solve with the methodology at hand. It would be as though we had proved to an ancient Greek philosopher that the cube could be doubled, and then allowed him to waste his life trying to do it with a straight-edge and compass.”
“We know Ch’ien’s psychological pattern,” Candron continued. “He’s not capable of admitting that there is any other thought pattern than the logical. He would try to solve the problems of psionics by logical methods, and would waste the rest of his life trying to do the impossible.”
The senator stroked his chin. “That’s clear,” he said at last. “Well, it was worth a cracked jaw to save him. We’ve given him a perfectly logical explanation of his rescue and, simultaneously, we’ve put the Chinese government into absolute confusion. They have no idea of how you got out of there, Candron.”
“That’s not as important as saving Ch’ien,” Candron said.
“No,” the senator said quickly, “of course not. After all, the Secretary of Research needs Dr. Ch’ien—the man’s important.”
Spencer Candron smiled. “I agree. He’s practically indispensable—as much as a man can be.”
“He’s the Secretary’s right hand man,” said Taggert firmly.
THE SOUND SWEEP
by J. G. Ballard
from Science Fantasy
It was Fletcher Pratt who first brought to my attention the use of fantasy, or more specifically of the fantastic or science-fictional environment, to spotlight or enlarge human reactions: “The intensification of emotion,” he called it. Very often, this is the main function of a fantastic backdrop: to set the stage for a close-up view of an emotional interchange which, under “normal,” “realistic” circumstances occurs at such low intensity as to be almost imperceptible; or to magnify a “normal” experience of the “real” world to, for example, Faustian proportion.
J. G. Ballard, one of the young British writers whose work has been much too little seen in this country, here provides an example of this sort of emotional intensification performed on a (literal) future stage-set of the past.
1
By midnight Madame Gioconda’s headache had become intense. All day the derelict walls and ceiling of the sound stage had reverberated with the endless din of traffic accelerating across the mid-town flyover which arched fifty feet above the studio’s roof, a frenzied hypomaniac babel of jostling horns, shrilling tires, plunging brakes and engines that hammered down the empty corridors and stairways to the sound stage on the second floor, making the faded air feel leaden and angry.
Exhausting but at least impersonal, these sounds Madame Gioconda could bear. At dusk, however, when the flyover quietened, they were overlaid by the mysterious clapping of her phantoms, the sourceless applause that rustled down onto the stage from the darkness around her, at first a few scattered ripples from the front rows that soon spread to the entire auditorium, mounting to a tumultuous ovation in which she suddenly detected a note of sarcasm, a single shout of derision that drove a spear of pain through her forehead, followed by an uproar of boos and catcalls that filled the tortured air, driving her away toward her couch where she lay gasping helplessly until Mangon arrived at midnight, hurrying onto the stage with his sonovac.
Understanding her, he first concentrated on sweeping the walls and ceiling clean, draining away the heavy depressing underlayer of traffic noises. Carefully he ran the long snout of the sonovac over the ancient scenic flats (relics of her previous roles at the Metropolitan Opera House) which screened-in Madame Gioconda’s makeshift home—the great collapsing Byzantine bed (Othello) mounted against the microphone turret; the huge framed mirrors with their peeling silverscreen (Orpheus) stacked in one corner by the bandstand; the stove (Trovatore) set up on the program director’s podium; the gilt-trimmed dressing table and wardrobe (Figaro) stuffed with newspaper and magazine cuttings. He swept them methodically, moving the sonovac’s nozzle in long strokes, drawing out the dead residues of sound that had accumulated during the day.
By the time he finished the air was clear again, the atmosphere lightened, its overtones of fatigue and irritation dissipated. Gradually Madame Gioconda recovered. Sitting up weakly, she smiled wanly at Mangon. Mangon grinned back encouragingly, slipped the kettle onto the stove for Russian tea, sweetened by the usual phenobarbitone chaser, switched off the sonovac and indicated to her that he was going outside to empty it.
Down in the alley behind the studio he clipped the sonovac onto the intake manifold of the sound truck. The vacuum drained in a few seconds, but he waited a discretionary two or three minutes before returning, keeping up the pretense that Madame Gioconda’s phantom audience was real. Of course the cylinder was always empty, containing only the usual daily detritus—the sounds of a door slam, a partition collapsing somewhere or the kettle whistling, a grunt or two, and later, when the headaches began, Madame Gioconda’s pitiful moanings. The riotous applause, that would have lifted the roof off the Met, let alone a small radio station, the jeers and hoots of derision were, he knew, quite imaginary, figments of Madame Gioconda’s world of fantasy, phantoms from the past of a once great prima donna who had been dropped by her public and had retreated in her imagination, each evening conjuring up a blissful dream of being once again applauded by a full house at the Metropolitan, a dream that guilt and resentment turned sour by midnight, inverting it into a nightmare of fiasco and failure.
Why she should torment herself was difficult to understand, but at least the nightmare kept Madame Gioconda just this side of sanity and Mangon, who revered and loved Madame Gioconda, would have been the last person in the world to disillusion her. Each evening, when he finished his calls for the day, he would drive his sound truck all the way over from the West Side to the abandoned radio station under the flyover at the deserted end of F Street, go through the pretense of sweeping Madame Gioconda’s apartment on the stage of studio 2, charging no fee, make tea and listen to her reminiscences and plans for revenge, then see her asleep and tiptoe out, a wry but pleased smile on his youthful face.
He had been calling on Madame Gioconda for nearly a year, but what his precise role was in relation to her he had not yet decided. Oddly enough, although he was more or less indispensable now to the effective operation of her fantasy world, she showed little personal interest or affection for Mangon; but he assumed that this indifference was merely part of the autocratic personality of a world-famous prima donna, particularly one very conscious of the tradition, now alas meaningless, Melba—Callas—Gioconda. To serve at all was the privilege. In time, perhaps, Madame Gioconda might accord him some sign of favor.
Without him, certainly, her prognosis would have been poor. Lately the headaches had become more menacing, as she insisted that the applause was growing stormier, the boos and catcalls more vicious. Whatever the psychic mechanism generating the fantasy system, Mangon realized that ultimately she would need him at the studio all day, holding back the enveloping tides of nightmare and insanity with dummy passes of the sonovac. Then, perhaps, when the dream crumbled, he would regret having helped her to delude herself. With luck though she might achieve her ambition of making a comeback. She had told him something of her scheme—a serpentine mixture of blackmail and bribery—and privately Mangon hoped to launch a plot of his own to return her to popularity. By now she had unfortunately reached the point where success alone could save her from disaster.