The Great and Secret Show

  Some impulse, not entirely his own, made him throw back his head as he walked, so that the sun piercing the foliage struck his upturned face like a blow. He didn't flinch from its glare, but rather opened his eyes wider to it. The brightness, and the rhythmic way it struck his retina, seemed to mesmerize him. In most circumstances he hated to relinquish control of his mental processes. He drank only when browbeaten by his peers, stopping the moment he felt his hold over the machine slipping; drugs were unthinkable. But here he was welcoming this intoxication; inviting the sun to burn out the real.

  It worked. When he looked back at the scene around him he was half-blinded with colors no blade of grass could have laid claim to. His mind's eye was quick to seize the space vacated by the palpable. Suddenly his sight was filling up, brimming and spilling over with images he must have dredged up from some uncharted place in his cortex, because he had no memory of having lived them.

  He saw a window in front of him, as solid—no, more solid—than the trees he was wandering between. It was open, this window, and it let on to a view of sea and sky.

  That vision gave way to another; this less peaceful. Fires sprang up around him, in which pages of books seemed to be burning. He walked through the fires fearlessly, knowing these visions could do him no harm; only wanting them more.

  He was granted a third far stranger than its predecessors.

  Even as the fires dimmed fishes appeared out of the colors in his eyes, darting ahead of him in rainbow shoals.

  He laughed out loud at the sheer incongruity of the sight, and his laughter inspired another wonder, as the three hallucinations synthesized, drawing into their pattern the very woods he was walking, until fires, fishes, sky, sea and trees became one brilliant mosaic.

  The fishes swam with fire for fins. The sky grew green and threw down starfish blossom. The grass rippled like a tide beneath his feet; or rather beneath the mind that saw the feet, because feet were suddenly nothing to him; nor legs, not any part of the machine. In the mosaic he was mind: a pebble skipped from its place, and roving.

  In this joy, a question came to trouble him. If he was only mind, what was the machine? Nothing at all? Something to be cast off? To be drowned with the fishes, burned with the words?

  Somewhere in him, a tick of panic began.

  I'm out of control, he told himself, I've lost my body and I'm out of control. My God. My God. My God!

  Hush, somebody murmured in his head. There's nothing wrong.

  He stopped walking; or hoped he had.

  "Who's there?" he said; or hoped he'd said.

  The mosaic was still in place all around him, inventing new paradoxes by the moment. He tried to shatter it with a shout; to be out of this place into somewhere simpler.

  "I want to see!" he yelled.

  "I'm here!" came the answer. "Howard, I'm here. "

  "Make it stop," he begged.

  "Make what stop?"

  "The pictures. Make the pictures stop!"

  "Don't be afraid. It's the real world. "

  "No!" he yelled back. "It isn't! It isn't!"

  He put his hands up to his face in the hope of blotting the confusion out, but they—his own hands—were conspiring with the enemy.

  There, in the middle of his palms, were his eyes, looking back at him. It was too much. He unleashed a howl of horror, and started to fall forward. The fish brightened; the fires flared; he felt them ready to consume him.

  As he struck the ground they disappeared, as though somebody had flipped a switch.

  He lay still a moment to be certain this wasn't another trick, then, turning his hands palm upwards to confirm they were sightless, hauled himself to his feet. Even then he clung on to a low-hanging branch, to keep himself in touch with the world.

  "You disappoint me, Howard," said his summoner.

  For the first time since he'd heard the voice it had a clear point of origin: a spot some ten yards from him, where the trees made a glade within a glade, at its center a pool of light. Bathing there, a man with a pony-tail and one dead eye. Its living twin studied Howie with great intensity.

  "Can you see me clearly enough?" he asked.

  "Yes," said Howie. "I see you fine. Who are you?"

  "My name is Fletcher," came the reply. "And you 're my son."

  Howie took even firmer hold of the branch.

  "I'm what?" he said.

  There was no smile on Fletcher's wasted face. Clearly what he'd said, however preposterous, was not intended as a joke. He stepped out of the ring of trees.

  "I hate to hide," he said. "Especially from you. But there's been so many people back and forth—" He gestured wildly with his arms. "Back and forth! All to watch an exhumation. Can you imagine? What a waste of a day!"

  "Did you say son?" said Howie.

  "I did," said Fletcher. "My favorite word! As above, so below, isn't that right? One ball in the sky. Two between the legs."

  "It is a joke," Howie said.

  "You know better than that," Fletcher replied, deadly serious. "I've been calling you for a long time: father to son. "

  "How did you get in my head?" Howie wanted to know.

  Fletcher didn't bother to reply to the question.

  "I needed you down here, to help me," he said. "But you kept resisting me. I suppose I would have done the same in your situation. Turned my back on the burning bush. We 're the same in that. Family resemblance. "

  "I don't believe you."

  "You should have let the visions run awhile. We were tripping there, weren't we? Haven't done that in a long while. I always favored mescaline, though that's out of fashion by now I suppose."

  "I wouldn't know," Howie replied.

  "You don't approve. "

  "No."

  "Well, that's a bad start, but I suppose it can only get better from here on in. Your father, you see, was addicted to mescaline. I wanted the visions so badly. You like them too. Or at least you did for a while. "

  "They made me sick."

  "Too much too soon, that's all. You'll get used to it. "

  "No way."

  "But you'll have to learn, Howard. That wasn't an indulgence; it was a lesson."

  "In what?"

  "In the science of being and becoming. Alchemy, biology and metaphysics in one discipline. It took me a long time to grasp it, but it made me the man I am "—Fletcher tapped at his lips with his forefinger—"which is, I realize, a somewhat pathetic sight. There are better ways to meet your progenitor, but I did my best to give you a taste of the miracle before you saw its maker in the flesh. "

  "This is just a dream," Howie said. "I stared too much at the sun and it's cooked my brains."

  "I like to look at the sun too, "said Fletcher. "And no— this isn't a dream. We 're both here in the same moment, sharing our thoughts like civilized beings. This is as real as life gets. " He opened his arms. "Come closer, Howard. Embrace me."

  "No way."

  "What are you afraid of?"

  "You're not my father."

  "All right," said Fletcher. "I'm just one of them. There was another. But believe me, Howard, I'm the important one."

  "You talk shit, you know that?"

  "Why are you so angry?" Fletcher wanted to know. "Is it your desperate affair with the Jaff's child? Forget her, Howard."

  Howie pulled his spectacles from his face and narrowed his eyes at Fletcher. "How do you know about Jo-Beth?" he said.

  "Whatever's in your mind, son, is in mine. At least since you fell in love. Let me tell you, I don't like it any better than you do."

  "Who said I don't like it?"

  "I never fell in love in my life, but I'm getting a taste of it through you, and it's not too sweet. "

  "If you've got some hold on Jo-Beth—"

  "She's not my daughter, she's the Jaff's. He's in her head the way I'm in yours."

  "This is a dream," Howie said again. "It's got to be. It's all a fucking dream."

  "So try waking," said Fletcher.
r />   "Huh?"

  "If it's a dream, boy, try waking. Then we can get the skepticism over with and get down to some work. "

  Howie put his spectacles on again, bringing Fletcher's face back into focus. There was no smile on it.

  "Go on," Fletcher said. "Get your doubts sorted through, because we haven't much time. This isn't a game. This isn't a dream. This is the world. And if you don't help me then there's more than your dime-store romance in jeopardy."

  "Fuck you!" said Howie, making a fist. "I can wake up. Watch!"

  Mustering all his strength he delivered a punch to the tree beside him that shook the foliage overhead.

  A few leaves dropped around him. Again he punched the coarse bark. The second blow hurt, as had the first. So did the third and the fourth. There was no wavering in Fletcher's image, however: he remained solid in the sunlight. Howie punched the tree again, feeling the skin on his knuckles break, and begin to bleed. Though the pain he felt mounted with each successive blow the scene around him offered no sign of capitulation. Determined to defy its hold he beat at the trunk again and again, as though this were some new exercise, designed not to strengthen the machine but to wound it. No pain, no gain.

  "Just a dream," he said to himself.

  "You 're not going to wake," Fletcher warned him. "Stop it now before you break something. Fingers aren't easy to come by. Took a few eons to get fingers—"

  "It's just a dream," Howie said. "Just a dream."

  "Stop, will you?"

  There was more than an urge to break the dream fuelling Howie, however. Half a dozen other furies had risen to give momentum to these blows. Rage against Jo-Beth, and her mother, and his mother too come to that; against himself for his ignorance, for being a holy fool when the rest of the world was so damn wise, running rings around him. If he could shatter this illusion's hold on him he'd never be a fool again.

  "You're going to break your hand, Howard—"

  "I'm going to wake."

  "Then what will you do?"

  "I'm going to wake."

  "But with a broken hand, what will you do when she wants you to touch her?"

  He stopped, and looked round at Fletcher. The pain was suddenly excruciating. From the corner of his eye he could see that the bark of the tree was bright scarlet. He felt nauseous.

  "She doesn't . . . want . . . me to touch her," he murmured. "She . . . locked me out . . ."

  He let his wounded hand fall to his side. Blood was dripping from it, he knew, but he couldn't bear to look. The sweat on his face had suddenly turned to prickles of icy water. His joints had gone to water too. Giddily, he swung his throbbing hand away from Fletcher's eyes (dark, like his own; even the dead one) and up towards the sun.

  A beam found him, shot between the leaves on to his face.

  "It's . . . not . . . a dream," he murmured.

  "There are easier proofs," he heard Fletcher remark through the whine that was filling his head.

  "I'm . . . going to throw up . . ." he said. "I hate the sight . . ."

  "Can't hear you, son. "

  "I hate the sight . . . of my . . . own . . ."

  "Blood?" said Fletcher.

  Howie nodded. It was an error. His brain spun in his skull, the connections confounded. His tongue gained sight, his ears tasted wax, his eyes felt the wet touch of his lids as they closed.

  "I'm out of here," he thought, and collapsed.

  Such a long time, son, waiting in the rock for a glimpse of the light. And now I'm here, I won't have a chance to enjoy it. Or you. No time to have fun with you, the way fathers should enjoy the company of their sons.

  Howie moaned. The world was just out of sight. If he wanted to open his eyes it would be there, waiting for him. But Fletcher told him not to try too hard.

  I've got you, he said.

  It was true. Howie felt his father's arms surrounding him in the dark, wrapping him up. They felt huge. Or perhaps he'd shrunk; become a babe again.

  I never had plans to be a father, Fletcher was saying. It was pretty much forced upon me by circumstance. The Jaff decided to make some children, you see, to have his agents in flesh. I was obliged to do the same.

  "Jo-Beth?" Howie muttered.

  Yes?

  "Is she his or yours?"

  His, of course. His.

  "So we're not . . . brother and sister?"

  No, of course not. She and her brother are of his making, you're of mine. That's why you have to help me, Howie. I'm weaker than he is. A dreamer. I always was. A drugged dreamer. He's already out there, raising his damn terata—

  "His what?"

  His creatures. His army. That's what he got from the comedian: something to carry him away. Me? I got nothing. Dying people don't have many fantasies. It's all fear. He loves fear.

  "Who is he?"

  The Jaff? My enemy.

  "And who are you?"

  His enemy.

  "That's not an answer. I want a better answer than that."

  It'd take too much time. We don't have time, Howie.

  "Just the bones."

  Howie felt Fletcher smile inside his head.

  Oh .. . bones I can give you, his father said. Bones of birds and fishes. Things buried in the ground. Like memories. Back to the first cause.

  "Am I stupid, or are you talking nonsense?"

  I've so much to tell you, and so little time. Best I show you, maybe.

  His voice had taken on a strained quality; Howie felt anxiety in it.

  "What are you going to do?" he said.

  I'm going to open up my mind, son.

  "You're afraid . . ."

  It'll be quite a ride. But I don't know any other way.

  "I don't think I want to."

  Too late, said Fletcher.

  Howie felt the arms encircling him loosen their grip; felt himself falling from his parent's hold. This was the first of all nightmares surely; to be dropped. But gravity was askew in this thought-world. Instead of his father's face receding from him as he was released it appeared—vast, and growing vaster—as he toppled into it.

  There were no words now, to reduce thought: only thoughts themselves, and those in abundance. Too much to understand. It was all Howie could do not to drown.

  Don't fight, he heard his father instruct. Don't even try to swim. Let go. Sink into me. Be in me.

  I won't be myself any longer, he returned. If I drown I won't be me. I'll be you. I don't want to be you.

  Take the risk. There's no other way.

  I won't! I can't! I have to . . . control.

  He started to struggle against the element that surrounded him. Ideas and images kept breaking through his mind however. Thoughts fixed in his mind by another mind, that were beyond his present comprehension.

  —Between this world, called the Cosm—also called the Clay, also called the Helter Incendo—between this world and the Metacosm, also called the Alibi, also called the Exordium and the Lonely Place, is a sea called Quiddity—

  An image of that sea appeared in Howie's head, and amid the confusion was a sight he knew. He'd floated here, during the brief dream he'd shared with Jo-Beth. They'd been carried on a gentle tide, their hair tangled, their bodies brushing against each other. Recognition calmed his fears. He listened to Fletcher's instruction more closely now.

  —and on that sea, there's an island—

  He glimpsed it, albeit distantly.

  It's called Ephemeris—

  A beautiful word, and a beautiful place. Its head was couched in cloud, but there was light on its lower slopes. Not sunlight; the light of spirit.

  I want to be there, Howie thought, I want to be there with Jo-Beth.

  Forget her.

  Tell me what's there. What's on Ephemeris?

  The Great and Secret Show, his father's thoughts returned, which we see three times. At birth, at death and for one night when we sleep beside the love of our lives.

  Jo-Beth.

  I told you, forget her.


  I went with Jo-Beth! We were floating there, together.

  No.

  Yes. That means she's the love of my life. You just said so.

  I told you to forget her.

  It does! My God! It does!

  Something that the Jaff fathered is too tainted to be loved. Too corrupt.

  She's the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

  She rejected you, Fletcher reminded him.

  Then I'll win her back.

  His image of her was clear in his head; clearer than the island now, or the dream-sea it floated upon. He reached for her memory and by it hauled himself out of the grip of his father's mind. Back came the nausea, and then the light, splashing through the foliage above his head.

  He opened his eyes. Fletcher was not holding him, if indeed he ever had. Howie was lying on his back on the grass. His arm was numb from elbow to wrist, but the hand beyond felt twice its proper size. The pain in it was the first proof that he wasn't dreaming. The second, that he had just woken from a dream. The man with the pony-tail was real; no doubt of it. Which meant that the news he brought could be true. This was his father, for better or worse. He raised his head from the grass as Fletcher spoke:

  "You don't understand how desperate our situation is, " he said. "Quiddity will be invaded by the Jaff if I don't stop him."

  "I don't want to know," Howie said.

  "You have a responsibility," Fletcher stated. "I wouldn't have fathered you if I didn't think you could help me. "

  "Oh that's very touching," said Howie. "That really makes me feel wanted."

  He started to get to his feet, avoiding the sight of his injured hand. "You shouldn't have shown me the island, Fletcher—" he said. "Now I know what's between Jo-Beth and me's the real thing. She's not tainted. And she's not my sister. That means I can get her back."

  "Obey me!" Fletcher said. "You're my child. You're supposed to obey!"

  "You want a slave, go find one," Howie said. "I've got better things to do."

  He turned his back on Fletcher, or at least believed he had, until the man appeared in front of him.

  "How the hell did you do that?"

  "There's a lot I can do. Little stuff. I'll teach you. Only don't leave me alone, Howard. "

  "Nobody calls me Howard," Howie said, raising his hand to push Fletcher away. He'd momentarily forgotten his injury: now it came into sight. His knuckles were puffed up, the back of his hand and his fingers gummy with blood. Blades of grass had stuck to it, bright green on bright red. Fletcher took a step back, repulsed.