Weissenbaum's Eye - Stetten - Chapter 15
  • Table of Contents
  • Next Chapter
  • Previous Chapter

    CHAPTER FIFTEEN

    The clouds wandered about, trailing wisps of rain as Sand climbed down over the city. The walk seemed shorter this time, and he reached the campus refreshed and calm. I was alerted to his presence, and found him standing at the gate.
    "I've come to see Mara," he said through the bars. He sounded very sure of himself. I told him to go home, and began to walk away.
    "I'm her son," he blurted out behind me. "Tell her I'm here."
    Slowly I walked back to the gate, and spoke to him.
    "I know who you are, Sand. Mara wouldn't see your father, and she will not see you."
    I turned to leave him again.
    "I am her son!" he yelled. The words bounced off the campus walls. I kept on walking, but his angry voice was with me still. I wished he hadn't come back. I wanted to ignore him, but I knew that Mara felt much guilt about her son, and it was not my place to decide whether or not they should see each other.
    And I had another reason for opening the gate for Sand. Don Andrews had said he would need an artist, and against my better judgment I realized now that Sand was the perfect solution. He would have the best training, and potentially could owe us his allegiance, being Mara's son. If only we could trust him. Mara would have to decide.
    As I considered this, I fine-tuned the thumpers and stood watching them shake. The iron gate of the campus had opened for almost no one in many years. We had managed to keep them out.
    Finally, perhaps half an hour later, I returned to the gate, and without speaking, let him in. As Sand walked behind me, I could sense the memories within him stir. I had been there too.
    We climbed the stone steps to a building he had known as a child, where Mara once had kept her laboratory. Green plaster chipped off the walls onto the unswept hallways. I plodded ahead kicking the dusty garbage into swirling stripes of sunlight. To either side were classrooms, all unused, still crowded with dark scarred desks and wooden chairs. Sand knew this place, but only from an age when words sounded without meaning. A child in the corner, playing with his toys. The shapes and colors of a newborn world, his mother, always busy, always nearby.
    The rooms were crowded then, when Weissenbaum had taught. Bold theories flung from hard backed chairs, insights held mid-air by minds alone.
    I saw it happen. I watched the population thin, and stayed on without pay during the school's decline, gardening the grounds and waiting. Over the years some students did return to where they learned their skills, and others came because Synapse was there. We built the thumpers to protect this last enclave from what the world had grown to be. And sooner or later all the others left. Only Mara and I remained.
    Behind me now a young man walked who never, in his waking memories, had known the days of a more human culture. Just as we came to Mara's office, the past seemed to become a part of him. A sparkle surfaced in his dull, distrustful eyes, and I turned to hold the door for him to enter.
    Mara sat behind her desk. Sand had not seen his mother in so many years, and he stood there, seeming to realize for the first time that Mara was a person, small, tough, and old. She was surprised when her son leaned over to hug her. She hugged him back. Then, for an awkward moment, they could not face each other.
    "I've brought you some of Peter's music," said Sand. The disk remained in his outstretched hand. From the doorway, I watched the disappointment fall across her face.
    "Your father was once a real musician, Sand," she said. "His hands were beautiful dancers on the keyboard. At his house in the woods we used to take a walk at night and hear only the breeze. And when it was cold and clear, we'd see every star there was.
    "The piano was in a room with wooden walls, and a big picture window where shadows moved in the moonlight. Peter would walk over to that piano in his socks," she smiled suddenly, "and warm the room with that old thing. The keys were made of real ivory..." Mara paused.
    Sand looked up and asked, "Was he good?"
    Mara smiled. "Yes, he was quite good. Nobody paid much attention to him though, at first," she said. "But when I started making the first simultrons, he grew jealous of my colleagues, and my success. He set up a studio in the same building where I worked. It was a place he hated, full of experts and equipment, but he took each new invention and turned it into music. He was one of our most active users, even then.
    "And all the time he spent lying on the couch was stolen from his hands. The magic faded. He said the piano was boring. We always had appreciated his playing. But he didn't trust us. He thought we were laughing at him.
    "With an arsenal of new equipment no one else yet had, Peter soon was popular. He always used the latest, and everyone knew his name. He was that guy who actually took you there, with that new gadget, the simultron. His concerts were full, and fans were always around him. And, for some years, he had the edge.
    "But other artists came along who actually loved the medium. Peter never loved it. He rather hated it actually. For it was everything wrong with his life. My success, and his addiction. He never understood the things he really loved.
    "Now he is remembered by some as the original couch musician, if anyone really remembers anything anymore. Peter used to talk about the excitement of creation. His works were proof of his emotions. That's the kind of person he was. Whenever anything happened, he couldn't just sit back. No, he had to play a sonata about it. And when somebody felt something from one of his pieces, it was proof. There, you see? I am alive. Most people are happy just to feel that clarity occasionally. They know when it's there. But Peter never really knew anything. He had to keep on proving it to everyone. He was a little boy."
    Mara was quiet. Sand traced the grain in the old table.
    "When was the last time you saw him?" he asked, not looking up at his mother.
    "A year ago he sent me a message that he wanted to see me," said Mara. "He had done that, often, but this time was different. He really sounded on the verge of some inner strength, as if all he needed was a slight push, and he'd be out. Just a little support, that was all he was looking for. I went up to the house."
    Mara paused.
    Why was she thinking about this now? She had worries enough, and she knew better than to scratch at this old wound. But the images of that moment pushed their way back in, the corpse-like immobility of the man on the couch, the feeder attached to Peter's white arm. The sounds. The piano.
    Mara had left Peter's bedroom without waking him, to wander through the quiet house where every turn stirred up a thousand memories. She paused for a moment at the room with the piano, and then, without turning on the lights, walked over to sit down at the ancient instrument. She placed her fingers on the keyboard.
    Peter had shown her some chords once. What were they? He had been so excited about them, and made her listen to them over and over again, until she laughed. Vaguely remembering one, and translating it into the invisible shapes of her hands, she turned and lowered her head to the instrument. She pressed her fingers down.
    The sound of the piano was like a jungle overgrown. There was a time when Peter had trimmed and pruned each pitch in perfect harmony with all the others. But, unattended, the frequencies had wandered and grown wild, leaving a tangled mass of sound hanging in the air that seemed to coax the blackness in through the windows.
    Mara had been immobilized for a long moment, gripping the chord, feeling the chord grip her. It had woven into her breathing as if, had the notes not died away, she might have stayed forever. But at some point it was quiet and she was alone again. It was then that she had closed her mind to Peter and all that was associated with him.
    Except that now, across this desk stood a young man she had not seen for many years. There was some of Peter in him, and some of herself, and he was a different person too, a new person, who deserved an explanation of what had passed.
    "How was he?" asked Sand.
    Her eyes filled with tears, but her voice was clear. "He never even knew I was there."
    Mara's voice became exacting. "I'm going to tell you something, Sand, not because you are trustworthy, but because it is no secret. We can communicate with the whales by means of a simultron, a portable system Barney developed for use at sea. The whales have much to teach us, Sand. They have ways of knowing what is true about a person. It must be Barney's simultron that you have been sent here to investigate."
    Uncomfortably, Sand remembered Holly's interest in the whales. "Holly said the whales wouldn't come to see him anymore, because of you, because of Synapse."
    "Is that the story you were told?" Mara smiled. "Well I suppose it's true, in part. The whales have explored the medium through Barney's new device. They met your Benjamin Holly once, and once was all they needed. The whales can see beyond appearances." Picking up the disk, she spoke with blunt assurance. "Peter had very little to do with the making of this music. The medium created it, and it contains poisons neither you nor I can understand. The medium is very clever, sending you to me."
    She stopped for a moment.
    "For a long time we supposed that people you would meet within the medium were not real, but just created to cut off the addicts from each other, to keep them isolated and controlled. Synapse does not prevent the whales from coming to your couch. The whales stay away themselves because they know that Benjamin Holly himself is a simulation."
    From the doorway I watched Sand. He was stunned.
    "They can't do that!" he protested.
    "Have you ever seen him in person?" asked Mara.
    Sand was quiet for a long time. "But everyone knows he lives so far up north..."
    "Like you, most addicts are given Benjamin Holly in one form or another," Mara almost whispered. "And like you most believe the laws still hold, that people may not be created from nothing."
    Sand still could not grasp it. "Benjamin knew I would find out," he said. "How could he risk sending me here?"
    "What threat are you to Holly?" Mara responded with scornful resignation. "What will you do? Run through the halls telling everyone he doesn't exist? Synapse itself is no threat to him now. Benjamin Holly has already won. What is Synapse?" she wondered bitterly. "We sold the couches, and once we owned the world. Now you can count us on the fingers of one hand, powerful only in that we make our own decisions, with no one but ourselves to witness and to wonder. In any real matter of importance we have no power. We cannot expect to win. If you join us, it will be only to exist for yourself."
    Sand said nothing. The idea of joining Synapse had never even occurred to him. Mara glanced at me, and then looked back at her son.
    "We have a mission for you, Sand, one where you are needed. But first you must learn to control the simultron," she said. "For an entire month you must not use the couch. Then you may return. But beware. We will know if you have succeeded. Go back now." She paused, and in a kinder voice added, "I'm glad you came, Sand."
    They did not say another word, but mother and son embraced, before I took Sand back out to the gate. Still somewhat amazed, his eyes met mine in parting, and I stood long to watch him disappear over the city.
  • Next Chapter