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InterText Vol. 8, No. 3 / May-June 1998
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  Contents

    Bite Me, Deadly................................Stan Houston

    Widow.......................................Armand Gloriosa
 
    A Stray Dog in Spain.........................Peter Meyerson

    The Central Mechanism.............................Jim Cowan

....................................................................
    Editor                                     Assistant Editor
    Jason Snell                                    Geoff Duncan
    jsnell@intertext.com                    geoff@intertext.com
....................................................................
    Submissions Panelists:
    Bob Bush, Joe Dudley, Peter Jones, Morten Lauritsen, Rachel 
    Mathis, Jason Snell
....................................................................
    Send correspondence to editors@intertext.com or 
    intertext@intertext.com
....................................................................
  InterText Vol. 8, No. 3. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published 
  electronically every two months. Reproduction of this magazine 
  is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold (either by 
  itself or as part of a collection) and the entire text of the 
  issue remains unchanged. Copyright 1998 Jason Snell. All stories 
  Copyright 1998 by their respective authors. For more information 
  about InterText, send a message to info@intertext.com. For 
  submission guidelines, send a message to guidelines@intertext.com.
....................................................................



  Bite Me, Deadly   by Stan Houston
===================================
....................................................................
  It takes a special kind of man to be a Private Dick. Smart. 
  Tough. An eye for broads. And a complete set of nonstick 
  cookware.
....................................................................

  It all started on a typical day in Houston. Morning fog, 
  noontime tornado, afternoon hurricane. Forecast: partly cloudy 
  sunset. Relative humidity: a hundred and fifty percent. 
  Predicted overnight low: 25 degrees.

  Two o'clock. I was camped out in my office watching the 
  neighborhood fly by the window when I heard her ooze through the 
  door. Hey, I'm a private eye. I'm trained to recognize sounds 
  like that.

  "I hope I'm not interrupting anything important." She sounded 
  like a standing invitation to break every Commandment. And obey 
  the Golden Rule. Her breathy voice reminded me of Marilyn Monroe 
  the night she orgasmed the birthday song to John Kennedy. I 
  always got sweaty thinking about it.

  "No, no. Not at all." I swiveled my chair so I could see what 
  was attached to the voice. She had a body built for the fast 
  lane, and I wanted to drive her. In all five gears. Plus Park. I 
  guessed five-foot six with thirty-six C-cup by twenty-four-inch 
  waist by thirty-six-inch seat cushion. But who was keeping 
  score?

  I pulled a handkerchief from my Levi's and mopped my face. "Have 
  a seat. Miss?"

  "Mrs." She sat. "Mrs. Lola Raymond."

  "Mark Mallet. Private eye."

  "Yes, I know. I saw it on the door."

  I saw right away she was no typical dumb redhead. I also noticed 
  she collected jewelry. Especially the kind with large diamonds.

  Lola tilted her head to the right about ten degrees. Maybe 
  twelve. Geometry was one of my worst subjects.

  She smiled. "Do you always dress so informally?"

  I shrugged. "I was in a quirky mood this morning. Decided to 
  wear my dark blue Levi's to set off this pale pink dress shirt, 
  then accent it with a pink-and-blue-striped tie. Notice the 
  matching socks." I swung my right foot onto the desk.

  "Very nice." She punctuated her smile with a graceful nod. "I 
  admire a man with taste who's not afraid to show it. Did someone 
  recommend you wear the Reeboks with that ensemble?"

  "No." I jerked my foot down, reminded myself to pay more 
  attention when I dressed.

  Time for a different approach. I offered her a cigarette. In 
  Houston, it's against the law to smoke. Except in my office.

  "No, thanks." She shook her head. Her long, blazing-sunset red 
  hair went along for the ride. "I quit."

  "Smart," I said. "How long?"

  She pursed blood-red lips, stared with emerald eyes. "Who knows? 
  Time is a spatial concept governed by the assumption reality 
  exists and the universe evolves in an orderly manner."

  I took that to mean she'd forgotten. "Coffee?"

  Her red mane swayed again. "No. I quit."

  I decided not to ask how long ago. "What brings you here?"

  "My husband."

  I straightened my tie. "What about your husband?"

  "He's dead."

  I flipped on my shocked-but-sympathetic face. "I'm terribly 
  sorry. It must have been quite a blow for you."

  "Yes. But not as much as it was for him."

  I cleared my throat. "What happened?"

  "He was murdered."

  "How did he die?"

  "A gunshot."

  "Where?"

  "In our bedroom."

  "No. What part of the body?"

  "His head."

  "I don't mean to seem insensitive, Mrs. Raymond, but the head is 
  a primary target for many suicide seekers."

  She slid a mauve handkerchief from her purse, dabbed her eyes. 
  "I know. But do they tie themselves to the bed?"

  "Your husband was tied down?"

  She nodded.

  "Who found him?"

  "I did. He had gone upstairs to prepare for bed. I stayed 
  downstairs."

  "What made you go up?"

  "A gunshot. I ran to the bedroom. But it was too late."

  "How did you find him?"

  "I opened the door and there he was."

  "No. I meant, where did you find the body?"

  "On the bed. His hands were tied to the posts."

  "And the gun?"

  She shook her head. "No. It wasn't tied down. It was just laying 
  on the bed."

  "Did you call police?"

  She nodded. "They believe I killed him."

  "Why?"

  She shrugged. "His money, I suppose."

  "Your husband was rich?"

  A fingertip caressed the edge of my desk. "Filthy."

  "What business was he in?"

  "Condoms."

  "Condoms?"

  She crossed her legs, one silk-covered thigh sliding over the 
  other. It looked like fun. I wanted to help. "Yes. The AIDS 
  epidemic gave his company the thrust it needed. He made 
  millions. Maybe billions. I'm not quite sure."

  "Have you seen a lawyer?"

  "I'm sure I have. It's so hard to tell sometimes. They look like 
  everyone else."

  "No, I meant, have you hired a lawyer?"

  She cocked her head. "Why should I? I didn't do anything."

  "When did all this happen?"

  "Two nights ago. On Wednesday."

  "Mrs. Raymond, did you see anything unusual in the bedroom that 
  night, other than your husband's body?"

  "An item from Randolph's collection was missing."

  "Collection?"

  She nodded. "Randolph kept it in our room. After me, it was his 
  second love. He was the world's foremost authority on rare bird 
  figurines. His collection included every rare bird known to 
  man."

  "And you say one was missing?"

  "Yes. A figurine. Not a man."

  "Which one?"

  She paused, as only a beautiful, mysterious woman who's about to 
  deliver an important message to a private eye can.

  "The Peruvian Parrot," she said.



  After Lola Raymond left, I decided to call it a day. It was 
  Friday, so that's what I called it.

  I locked the office, walked to my Mustang convertible, and 
  headed home. I drove east on Westheimer, the only Houston street 
  that runs in a straight line for more than a mile. While the 
  afternoon gale winds blasted my wavy blond hair, I played back 
  my favorite part of the meeting with Lola. She paid my fee up 
  front. Opened her large sand-colored tote bag and dumped out my 
  retainer. Fifty C-notes. My job? Track down her husband's killer 
  and find the missing bird.

  Fifteen minutes later, I hit my driveway in the Montrose, 
  Houston's largest gay neighborhood.

  I owned a beach house set twelve feet above ground on stilts. 
  I'd had a lifelong phobia about floods. This really pissed off 
  my neighbors, since the nearest water was sixty miles south in 
  Galveston. They slapped me with a deed-restriction lawsuit about 
  once a month.

  I glanced at my imitation Swatch watch. Damn. Almost dinner 
  time.

  I hurried to the kitchen. Grabbing a large skillet from the 
  cabinet, I poured in an ounce of cooking oil and set the burner 
  at medium low.

  While the oil heated, I tossed in salt, pepper, onions, garlic, 
  paprika, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Then I raided the 
  refrigerator and the pantry. In a large bowl, I mixed cream 
  cheese, mayonnaise, mustard, liver pate, diced tomato, six eggs, 
  a pound of chopped sirloin and two ground-up dog biscuits. The 
  whole mess went into the skillet to simmer for ten minutes.

  The phone rang.

  "Mallet here."

  "You won't be for long if you don't solve the Raymond case." It 
  was a man. His voice sounded like it had kissed too many Jack 
  Daniels bottles and sucked too many unfiltered cigarettes. Or 
  maybe he just had a cold. I couldn't tell.

  "Who is this?"

  "You don't want to know. Just remember one thing, Mallet."

  "What's that?"

  "Louie the Limp."

  The line went dead.

  I checked the skillet. Still simmering.

  A nicotine urge hit. I didn't allow smoking in my house, so I 
  stepped out onto the deck for a cigarette. What the hell, one 
  more wasn't going make any difference in this burg.

  From my deck, I had a view of Houston's skyline. I stood there, 
  twelve feet off the ground, sucking on my cigarette, 
  contemplating the steel and glass corporate towers that shot up 
  into the sky like giant phalluses.

  Damn. How about that. Scored a double. Metaphor and simile. And 
  I managed to work in sex. I was on a roll.

  The phone rang again. I dashed through the door and grabbed the 
  receiver.

  Same voice. "Mallet. I forgot something."

  Just what I needed. A crank caller with a short-term memory 
  problem.

  "What?"

  "Diamonds."

  He hung up.

  I was staring at the phone wondering about the connection 
  between diamonds, Louie the Limp and a Peruvian parrot when the 
  oven timer chimed. I retreated into the kitchen, grabbed the 
  skillet containing my gourmet concoction and headed out the back 
  door. At the bottom of the stairs, I located my St. Bernard, 
  Marlowe. He sat by his food dish, nose in the air.

  "Sorry I'm late."

  I dumped his hot dinner into the dish, then dashed back up to 
  the kitchen, whipped together a peanut butter and banana 
  sandwich for myself, and washed it down with an ice-cold Pepsi.

  So sue me, Spenser.



  "Mallet here." I aimed one eye at the bedside clock. Glowing 
  numbers flashed 5:15 a.m.

  "Mallet! What the hell are you doing sticking your honky nose 
  into the Raymond case?" It was Detective Sergeant Milford 
  Ulysses Washington. One of Houston's finest; I saved his life 
  years ago during a bank robbery.

  I sat up, tried to shake numbness from my head. Milford calling 
  this early meant he was upset.

  "I gotta eat. Raymond's widow threw a lot of cash at me to find 
  her husband's killer."

  "Stay away from the Randolph case, Mallet," he growled. "I don't 
  want you screwing this one up."

  He hung up.

  Just what I needed. An angry cop who didn't want me to eat.



  Saturday morning. Hurricane Billy Bob was rampaging across the 
  Gulf of Mexico toward Houston. But I had a case to solve. A 
  little rain never hurt anybody.

  I picked out a pale-blue dress shirt, matching blue-and-red wool 
  tie, gray-blue wool slacks, and a navy blazer. As a final touch, 
  I stepped into brown Hush Puppies.

  I drove to the Galleria mall on Houston's west side. Fancy 
  stores sold expensive merchandise there. Somebody might know 
  about rare bird figurines.

  Two hours later, I stood near the lower-level ice rink, more 
  depressed than Ross Perot reading his IQ test results. My idea 
  about the mall had bombed.

  I watched the skaters, hoping one of the more well-developed 
  ones would fall on her ass and cause that cute little skirt they 
  all wear to flip up. No one fell, so I left. As I drifted toward 
  the parking garage, my eyes zoomed in on a window sign I'd 
  missed:

     Horowitz Collectibles
       ON SALE TODAY!
   Peruvian Parrot Figurines


  Maybe I could learn something after all.

  I entered. A gray-haired old man with a humpback guarded the 
  cash register. He looked like a small camel.

  I jerked out my ID. "Mallet. P.I. I need to talk to you."

  He squinted through wire-framed glasses. "What unusual 
  initials." He had wrinkled skin and smelled like a dead fish.

  "What?"

  "Your initials are P.I.?"

  "No. That's what I do."

  "Oh." His brow furrowed. "What's P.I.? I mean, what do you do?

  I sighed. "I'm a Private Investigator."

  His beady black eyes widened. "You mean like on TV?"

  "Right. I used to wear a button that said `As seen on TV!' 
  People kept asking me if I sold Thighmasters. So I stopped 
  wearing it."

  The old man pulled a rag from beneath the counter and started 
  cleaning. "This is an honor. I've never had a private eye in my 
  shop. Let me clean this. You don't want to get your sleeves 
  dirty when you smash my face down on it."

  "What?"

  He stopped wiping. "That's what you guys do, isn't it? Someone 
  refuses to help, so you grind their face into something hard so 
  they'll talk."

  I closed my eyes. Counted to ten. "No," I said. "I don't do 
  that."

  The old fart actually looked disappointed. I swear on a stack of 
  Raymond Chandler novels.

  "That sign." I pointed toward the window. "It says you have 
  Peruvian parrot figurines. Right?"

  His little head bobbed.

  "How much?"

  His eyes lit up. He wrote a price on a note pad, held it up so I 
  could see.

  "Is that all?"

  "I'm afraid so." His voice quivered. "There's not much demand 
  for them."

  "Has anybody bought one recently?"

  He nodded. "A fat man, very short. He coughed all the time. Came 
  in last week. Looked at the birds, then bought two."

  The description fit Louie the Limp, probably Houston's most 
  incompetent criminal. Maybe my anonymous caller really knew 
  something. It would be a first. I usually got the heavy 
  breathers.

  "Did he say why he wanted two?" I asked.

  "No. He gave me a delivery address and left."

  "You delivered them?"

  The old man nodded. "He told me he didn't want to carry them 
  around all day because they might get damaged."

  "Still have the address?"

  He reached under the counter and brought out a battered shoebox. 
  "Certainly. Right here." He handed me a piece of paper. It 
  listed a River Oaks address. I recognized it as the Randolphs'.

  Now my brain cells really started clicking. Or maybe it was the 
  grandfather clock in the corner. I couldn't tell. But I knew I 
  had stumbled onto something big.

  "When were the birds delivered?" I asked.

  "Two days ago. On Wednesday."

  How convenient. The day Lola's husband bit the big bird.

  "Your birds?" I asked. "Where are they?"

  He pointed to the opposite side of the store.

  "Show me."

  The old man shuffled toward the display. He never made it.

  Gunshots ripped my eardrums. Glass exploded, rained down on us. 
  The old guy clutched his chest, slumped to the floor.

  I drew my snub-nosed thirty-eight and knelt, ready to fire out 
  into the mall and kill or maim thirty innocent people in order 
  to hit the assassin. I looked down. Blood gushed from a wound 
  near the old man's heart.

  Damn. This Peruvian Parrot business was dangerous.



  The cops entertained me all night. We had a ball. Finally, at 
  seven a.m., they decided I hadn't zapped old Horowitz.

  I stepped out of police headquarters just as Hurricane Billy Bob 
  tore through the south side. As I set out to find my car, a 
  long, silver Cadillac drove up. A tinted rear window slid open.

  From the Caddy's bowels, a voice boomed. "Get in, Mallet. I want 
  to talk."

  I climbed in. "Big Daddy," I said. "I thought you never came 
  within two miles of this place unless you had your shyster on a 
  leash."

  "Cut the crap," he snarled. "We got business." He jerked a bony 
  hand up and rapped the plexiglass separating us from the driver. 
  The Caddy leaped forward.

  I glanced across the seat. Big Daddy hadn't changed much since 
  I'd last seen him. Tall, with a hawk-like face and a body as 
  thin as an eighty-year-old's tits. He looked like he always did 
  -- a crime kingpin. His diamond earrings, nose rings, finger 
  rings, tie pins and solid gold watch accented with diamonds made 
  me sick. Sick that I couldn't afford them. Everyone called him 
  Big Daddy because he had fathered at least twenty illegitimate 
  kids. In his spare time, he controlled Houston's entire vice 
  business. He also was inclined to blow your brains out if you 
  ever mentioned his real name. I guessed I'd be touchy if someone 
  called me Theodore.

  I popped open the mini-fridge. "What? No Diet Pepsi? Did you 
  miss a night at etiquette class?"

  A scrawny hand shot across the seat and wrapped itself around my 
  throat. Tight. Very tight. "You want to live, Mallet?" He pushed 
  up, lifting me off the seat. Funny, I would've never guessed 
  such a skinny guy could have so much arm strength. Then again, I 
  believed Oliver North and Bill Clinton.

  "Right." I hit a note most sopranos would die for.

  "Then can it."

  "Right." Damn. Two high ones in a row.

  Big Daddy's eyelids formed tiny peepholes. "I hear you're 
  looking for a bird."

  "Right." I squawked. What the hell. Might as well go for a 
  record.

  "I want it." With his free hand, he stuffed a wad of bills into 
  my coat pocket. "Here's five grand. You work for me now."

  "I already have a client." Pavarotti would have been proud of 
  me. An entire sentence only dogs could hear.

  "That Raymond dame. Forget her. I'll deal with her later. Find 
  that Peruvian Parrot. Bring it to me. Do it or I'll find a live 
  bird and stuff you up its ass."

  I couldn't imagine how I'd fit inside a bird's ass, but I 
  figured Big Daddy knew a way.

  "Right," I squeaked.

  "And stay away from Louie the Limp." Suddenly, Louie was the 
  most talked about guy in town. I had a hunch he was up to his 
  fat little bumbling elbows in this case.

  Big Daddy released my hostage throat and hit the Plexiglass 
  again. The car stopped on a dime and left twenty cents change. I 
  pitched forward onto the floor.

  "Get up," Big Daddy demanded. "You'll ruin the carpet." The door 
  opened. As I tried to right myself, Big Daddy delivered a field 
  goal kick to my ass, sending me tumbling onto the street in the 
  middle of a hurricane.

  "I'll give you a week, Mallet. Bring me that bird or you'll 
  never see a sunset again." His Caddy roared away.

  I stood alone in the rain, watching my all-wool sports coat and 
  slacks shrink before my eyes.

  Jerk. What kind of threat was that?

  You'll never see a sunset again.

  Didn't he realize I lived in Houston?



  Driving home, I punched in Lola's number on my car phone.

  "Mr. Mallet. What a pleasant surprise. I didn't expect you'd 
  come through. So soon."

  I ignored her choice of phrasing. "I think I know who killed 
  your husband. But I don't have the bird yet."

  Silence. "Find it," she said, then hung up.



  When I arrived home, I felt like I had been the only condom at a 
  porno movie wrap party. I strolled into my bedroom, hit the 
  light switch and froze. Lola Raymond lay stretched across my 
  bed. Naked.

  "From the moment I saw you," she said, "I knew I had to have 
  you."

  Damn. Who was I to argue with logic like that?

  I ripped off my clothes and executed a swan dive onto the bed. 
  For two hours, we devoured each other -- grabbing, rolling, 
  pounding, slapping, sucking and moving in ways I never knew.

  Then we had sex.

  Later, I lay on my back, spent, my eyes closed. My clock had 
  been cleaned, but I didn't know what time it was.

  I observed the rules of etiquette. "Did you come?"

  Silence.

  I opened my eyes. Lola stood over me, still naked. Except now 
  she held a large knife high over her head.

  I rolled to my left as he blade whizzed passed my shoulder and 
  ripped into the mattress. I executed an expert martial arts kick 
  to Lola's seductive hipbone, throwing her off balance. Leaping 
  off the bed, I locked her smooth, creamy arms against her 
  incredibly firm body, expertly arranging my hands on her 
  breasts. We tumbled to the floor. She hurled curses. I threw 
  them back. I fought to knock the knife from her hand. Somehow, I 
  was able to sneak in several gropes of her well-rounded ass.

  Lola's hand groped between us. She grabbed and yanked.

  I screamed. Enough was enough. I slammed a fist into her jaw.

  She collapsed.

  I struggled to my feet, gasping as I flopped onto the bed. 
  During the fight, Lola's tote bag had fallen to the floor. It 
  lay on its side, open, contents scattered. There, half exposed, 
  poking its head out, was a figurine.

  It looked like a bird.



  Hurricane Jimmy Jack was snorting its way through the Gulf of 
  Mexico toward Houston. But I had a job to do. A little high wind 
  never hurt anyone.

  I left Lola at the beach house, naked, standing in the bathtub, 
  hands tied to the shower nozzle. I thought I knew why Lola had 
  the bird. It made sense now. But I needed one more answer before 
  I tossed this case to the cops.

  A few minutes later, I entered River Oaks, Houston's answer to 
  Beverly Hills. Except no one had ever bought a map to the 
  mayor's house. No one cared.

  I found the address listed on Lola's drivers' license. Same 
  address the old guy at the Galleria had given me. That meant two 
  figurines purchased by Louie the Limp had been delivered here. 
  On the day Randolph Raymond was killed.

  The house was a modest mansion, maybe twenty or thirty rooms, 
  with a four-car garage. But who's counting?

  I parked the car and walked to the back yard. No wonder this guy 
  got whacked so easily. No security that I could see. Any psycho 
  could wander in.

  "Hold it, Mallet."

  I was right. A wacko had wandered in. I recognized the wheezy 
  voice. "Louie the Limp. What brings you to the classy side of 
  town?"

  Cold steel jabbed my kidney. Actually, I couldn't tell it was 
  cold. I was wearing my sports jacket. But in private eye novels, 
  the bad guys' guns were always cold steel.

  "Insults will get you nowhere. You've got something I want. 
  Where is it?"

  " `It?' What have I got that you want, Louie? Charm? Women? Good 
  looks? A cheap office? A foot-long love machine?"

  He rammed the gun harder. "Shut up, wise ass. Take me to the 
  Raymond dame or your kidney's gonna eat hot lead. I want to talk 
  to her."

  I sized up my problem. Did this overstuffed whale really think 
  he could ace me, Mark Mallet? Hell, no. I'd pulled myself out of 
  more tight places than Warren Beatty. Besides, my kidney wasn't 
  hungry.

  "Only if you give me your gun," I said.

  "What? You really think I'm that stupid?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, okay," he said as he handed me the pistol.

  Like I said, he was Houston's most incompetent criminal.



  "Luuucy, I'm home." I shoved Louie through the door of my beach 
  house.

  "Get me outta here!" Lola's scream made Louie flinch.

  "Is that her?" he asked.

  "Right, Louie. The woman of your dreams." I pushed him toward a 
  chair. "Sit. Make yourself comfortable. I'll bring her out."

  I hurried to the bathroom.

  Lola greeted me with dagger-filled eyes. "You bastard. I'll have 
  you arrested for this."

  I slapped her ass. Hard. "Listen, sister. I brought back an old 
  friend of yours who wants to see you about a bird. Cooperate or 
  I'll leave you like this and send him in."

  She considered my proposal. "All right. Untie me."

  I loosened the rope. "I love it when you talk dirty."

  Lola rubbed her wrists, then walked to the bedroom and slipped 
  into her clothes.

  As we entered the living room, the doorbell rang.

  "I'll get it," I announced. "Probably the Publisher's Clearing 
  House Prize Patrol." When I opened the door, Detective Milford 
  Ulysses Washington and Big Daddy stood on my deck. "Well, talk 
  about the odd couple. Come in, gentlemen. Glad you could join 
  us."

  Both scowled as they trudged in.

  I moved to the center of the room. "I invited everyone here so 
  we can clear up this mess. What say we proceed?"

  "Proceed with what?" Big Daddy growled. He and Milford parked 
  their butts on my worn green and yellow sofa. Milford wore the 
  same brown suit I'd seen him wear for five years. Big Daddy 
  still looked like a walking jewelry store.

  Time for my song and dance. "Everyone seems to have the hots for 
  a bird figurine. At first, I couldn't figure out why. Then I 
  remembered Lola telling me about her husband's business. 
  Randolph Raymond -- condom king of Texas. But that was a front. 
  His real business involved jewels. Stolen diamonds. He used 
  condom shipping orders to sneak them into the country."

  "That's absurd." Lola sneered at me from the sofa. "Randolph 
  would never do anything illegal."

  "Don't be so sure." I forged ahead. "He found an easier way to 
  transport his goodies. Figurines. They held more diamonds."

  Milford piped in. "Where did you get this crap, Mallet?"

  I stuck out a hand. "Hold on. Give me a minute." I whirled 
  toward Lola. "You discovered Randolph's plans. But you wanted 
  the jewels for yourself. So you hired Louie to knock off hubby. 
  Louie probably stabbed him, then blew off half his head to hide 
  the wound."

  Lola's eyes breathed fire. "You bastard. You don't know what 
  you're talking about."

  "I don't? Why'd you hire me and then try to carve out my 
  organs?"

  She made a face. It looked like she had just sucked on a lemon. 
  Or a spoiled prune. I couldn't tell.

  "You wanted to throw the cops off the trail. But when I got too 
  close, you decided I would look better in a coffin."

  Lola turned away and pouted. I strolled toward Louie. "Fat Boy 
  here owed Big Daddy a favor. So Louie clued him in on Randolph's 
  diamond scheme. Big Daddy came down with a case of greed. He 
  loves diamonds. Big Daddy hired Louie to snuff Randolph. Louie 
  had it made. Two fees for one hit."

  "You're crazy, Mallet," Louie grumbled from the corner. "I've 
  never seen this dame before."

  "Is that right? Then why did you have two figurines delivered to 
  her house the day Randolph was murdered? My hunch is you both 
  wanted to make a switch. But Lola double-crossed you, didn't 
  she?"

  Big Daddy waved a pale, bony hand. "Mallet, you've gone too far 
  this time. Do you have evidence?"

  "You just said the magic word." I strutted over to the liquor 
  cabinet, reached around, and brought out the Peruvian Parrot.

  Lola jumped to her feet. "Where did you get that? she screamed. 
  "It's mine!"

  "Be careful with that, Mallet!" Milford yelled.

  I held the bird out like a battle trophy. "Randolph used this 
  bird to test his smuggling operation. When Lola found out, she 
  lifted it from the murder scene." I threw Lola a smug look. "But 
  Louie thought you had cut someone else in on the deal. The old 
  man from the Galleria. He had connections to sell the diamonds. 
  Louie wanted everything for himself, so he shot Horowitz."

  Milford stood, shaking. "Mallet, shut up and give me that."

  "Not until I prove I'm right." I hoisted the bird high above my 
  head then smashed it against the coffee table.

  "No!" All four screamed. In unison. Almost in harmony.

  The bird shattered. Glass flew everywhere.

  It was empty.

  "What the hell?" I stared down at the jagged base I held.

  Milford grabbed my arm. "Mallet, you moron. You just destroyed 
  the murder weapon."

  "What?"

  Milford's forehead was a mass of sweat drops. "Mrs. Raymond 
  bashed in her husband's head with that. Then she used his gun to 
  try and make it look like suicide."

  My insides turned to water. "How do you know that?"

  His lips twitched. "Ever heard of pathology, bird brain?"

  "But what about the diamonds?" I pleaded.

  "There were no diamonds, you idiot." Big Daddy looked as if he 
  wanted to feed me to his pet wolf, Peter. "That figurine had a 
  flaw," he said. "A factory mistake. It was worth a fortune. 
  Since I'm also a collector, Mr. Raymond was prepared to sell it 
  to me."

  "Oh." I retreated a couple of paces. Glass crunched under my 
  shoes. "I guess that settles that. Glad you folks could drop by. 
  We'll have to do this again sometime. Real soon."

  Milford wrapped a beefy hand around Lola's arm. "Come on. You're 
  under arrest for murder." As he handcuffed her, he grunted at 
  me. "By the way, jerk-off, Horowitz wasn't killed for the bird. 
  Some kid wanted to marry his daughter. The old man objected."

  I stood alone in the middle of my living room, fragments of a 
  priceless Peruvian bird scattered around me. Maybe my career, 
  too. I felt lower than snail shit. I needed company.

  I dashed for the back door. Outside, I rushed down the stairs 
  searching for my Saint Bernard, Marlowe. I found him, under the 
  house, humping the next door neighbor's collie.

  Just what I needed. A closing metaphor.



  Stan Houston (srhouston@aol.com)
----------------------------------
  Stan Houston is a 55-year-old retired advertising/financial 
  writer who has produced four satirical novels and numerous short 
  stories during the past five years. One of his stories won first 
  place at the 1997 Houston Writers Conference. His unpublished 
  satirical mystery A Murder Made in Heaven is a finalist in the 
  Authorlink 1998 International New Author Awards Competition.



  Widow    by Armand Gloriosa
=============================
....................................................................
  Love manifests in many forms.
  Even ones that hurt.
....................................................................

  1.
----

  He was waiting for her in the bustle of the Mactan Airport's 
  domestic terminal, trying to keep his dignity as he mopped up 
  the sweat from his forehead and neck with a designer 
  handkerchief while his big, heavy Rolex wiggled loosely on his 
  wrist. The sticky air swirled with the fumes of taxis and vans 
  and the odor of uniformed porters. He was about fifty years old, 
  with a high forehead and thinning, gray hair, wearing rimless 
  glasses with thick lenses. He was dressed in a blue safari 
  jacket and slacks, an outfit that brought Arthur C. Clarke in 
  steaming Sri Lanka to mind.

  The girl he had apparently been waiting for arrived. She was 
  tall, wearing a thin dress that showed off her legs. Though her 
  clothes were clean, they were obviously old; the dress was short 
  only because it was too small for her. Her black leather shoes 
  were too heavy-looking and save for the revealing dress, she 
  looked like a poor country girl in her Sunday best. Still, she 
  had a freshness to her that turned heads. Since she had just 
  gotten off the plane, her make-up had not yet begun to streak in 
  the heat. Her already-pretty face lit up some more when she saw 
  the Engineer, who smiled back uncertainly.

  People looked on at the scene of the meeting, trying to figure 
  them out. Men and women idly watched them with strangely mixed 
  feelings.

  Despite the evidence before their eyes, the men knew instantly 
  that the poorly-dressed girl was the old man's mistress. She had 
  clearly been bought by his money. It was a classic story that 
  everyone should know, but the actors never learned its lessons. 
  The men all imagined themselves as the leading man in the story, 
  learning the lesson ever so slowly as the rest of the world 
  watched on with pretended superiority.

  The women responded to the young woman's attractiveness, 
  recalling the days when they had almost as much to trade on, and 
  they cocked their heads and looked down their noses at the girl 
  for trading on it. The young hussy, traveling on an airplane 
  looking like an _Ermita habitue!_ But her sugar daddy -- isn't 
  that Engineer Whatshisname? For shame!

  "Engineer Lamberto?" the girl said, her eyes twinkling.

  "Mrs. -- ah, Lamberto?"

  "Please sir, you can call me Becky. Glad to meet you, sir," she 
  said, and impishly stuck out a delicate hand. Her accent was 
  thick, her speech innocent of the irritating up-and-down of 
  _colegiala_ singsong, so that if he hadn't known better, he 
  would have doubted his ears as to whether she had said "Vicky" 
  or "Becky." He shook her hand gingerly, aware that everybody was 
  watching them.

  "I knew it was you, sir," she said. "Paul look just like you."

  "Let me take your bag for you. Aren't you going to get your 
  luggage, as well?"

  "I brought only my bag."

  They left the terminal in a white, chauffer-driven 1970s S-Class 
  Mercedes with bright, untinted windows that put everyone and 
  everything inside the car on display, like an aquarium.

  They didn't speak until they were crossing Mactan Bridge on the 
  way to Cebu.

  "I never travel in an airplane before," she said.

  "But you've been to other provinces before," he said.

  "I come from Quezon Province. I didn't grow up in Manila. Paul, 
  he tell me so much about Cebu, although he say he didn't want to 
  live here anymore." She realized she had said something 
  inappropriate, and fell quiet. She looked out the window past 
  the railings of the bridge at the sea below.



  Engineer Lamberto's house was of 1920s vintage, with a big lawn 
  and a white fountain in front. The house itself was a big 
  wood-and-stone affair with high ceilings. A long flight of steps 
  led up from the driveway into the second-story living room, 
  while ground floor level itself was meant only for the garage 
  and servants' quarters. Since it was so old, it was not located 
  in one of the plush Cebu subdivisions that Becky had heard so 
  much about. In fact, it was located on a street that had become 
  busier and busier in modern times, but with the front lawn so 
  big and the house so far back away from the traffic and its dust 
  and noise, it was still a nice house. The house reminded her of 
  Casa Manila; Paul had taken her there once, on a tour of 
  Manila's museums.

  After she had been shown to her room and had freshened up, Becky 
  and the Engineer had coffee in the living room. The German-made 
  grandfather clock said ten past three. She expected the 
  floorboards to creak as the maid came and went with their coffee 
  and Danish butter cookies, but they didn't.

  "I'm sorry my Tagalog is bad," the Engineer was saying.

  "That's all right; you don't have to be sorry. I'm already used 
  to talk English with Paul."

  She had brought her little red handbag with her to the dining 
  table. From it she pulled out a pack of Philip Morrises. She 
  didn't ask for permission to smoke. She offered him a stick, 
  which he graciously declined. She lit her cigarette from a box 
  of matches she had. She seemed ill at ease, and only 
  half-finished her cigarette.

  The sight of her bright red lipstick on the no-longer 
  pristine-white filter of the cigarette made the Engineer's 
  stomach queasy. She stubbed the cigarette out on an ashtray of 
  Austrian crystal which only guests ever used. The Engineer 
  remembered some tobacco-related prejudices that he had been told 
  about some years before. In Cebu, he was told, Philip Morris 
  Menthols had a reputation for being "_pang_-hostess"; while Hope 
  Menthols were "_pang-banyo._" He knew that Philip Morris 
  suffered no such stigma in Manila. He kept this piece of 
  frivolity to himself.

  "So how did you meet, Becky?" he said, in a tone that he hoped 
  was gentle but casual.

  "In a bar."

  The Engineer fell quiet. He looked at the discarded cigarette in 
  the ashtray, and watched stinking fumes rise from a surviving 
  glow in the tobacco.

  "Was it a church wedding or a civil wedding?" he finally managed 
  to ask.

  "Church," she said. "Paul insisted. Actually it was a chapel. 
  Paul didn't like to marry before a judge. He said he like to do 
  right by me, and marry me in a church."

  This last she said quietly, as if she didn't want the 
  volunteered part of her answer to be heard. Since they had met 
  for the first time a few hours before they had exchanged a 
  little more than a dozen sentences between them. They had gotten 
  down to the basics rather too quickly.

  "So you stopped, ah, working, after the wedding?"

  "Yes. He also insisted on that. Heaven knows how we get by, but 
  we get by."

  She couldn't bear the turn the conversation had taken. She got 
  up and wandered in the direction of the shelves. He tried not to 
  watch her swaying backside.

  "Oh," she said. "You have so many records."

  "Those aren't records," he said, breathing in with some relief. 
  "My records have all been boxed up and shut away. I've gotten 
  used to CDs by now. But those are laserdiscs."

  She pulled one out from the shelf, puzzled. "This is a movie?"

  "Movies, yes." He got up and joined her at the shelf. "What kind 
  of movies do you like? I suppose you go for the Sylvester 
  Stallone/Arnold Schwarzenegger type of movie," he said in an 
  attempt at light conversation.

  She didn't answer. She was engrossed in looking over the movie 
  titles.

  The Engineer realized something strange: she recognized the 
  movie titles not by their stars, but by their directors -- Hanif 
  Kureishi, Stephen Frears, David Lean, Richard Attenborough, and 
  so on. The other directors rang no bells -- Kurosawa, Truffaut, 
  Fellini. Only Spielberg and George Lucas she recognized from the 
  non-British directors.

  I'm surprised you like British film, the Engineer was about to 
  say. And then he closed his mouth as he realized that it wasn't 
  such a big puzzle after all. It's Paul's influence, he realized. 
  But why the narrow range?

  For a moment he saw a wistful look pass over her features, 
  beautiful despite the garish make-up. It was a strange look to 
  see on the face of someone so young. And then it was gone. She 
  laughed as if in recollection of fond memory.

  "Paul and me, we go to the Wednesday British Cinema at the CCP 
  religiously. It was not far from the school where he was 
  teaching."



  The Engineer was on playback again.

  "But you're so good with math. You've always topped your math 
  classes. Why waste your natural talent?" the Engineer asked his 
  son. "Look, son, give this a chance. You're still young. There's 
  time for you to get a degree and take over the office."

  "Pa, I've spent four years earning my AB in Philosophy. I 
  haven't changed my mind in all this time. I like Philosophy. I 
  love Philosophy. There's nothing wrong with Philosophy. If you 
  knew half of what you were talking about, you'd know that there 
  is no philosophy without mathematics. Besides, I'd also like to 
  spread my wings a bit, get into the arts. As a matter of fact, 
  I'm talking to people about publishing my novel, and I've even 
  been very active in the theater -- "

  "The arts!" the Engineer exclaimed in disgust. "Architecture. 
  Architecture, then. You'd be both engineer and artist. Why not 
  combine the two?"

  "Listen to yourself, Pa. When you say `the arts' you sneer. For 
  all your talk about admiring Kafka and Van Gogh and Schubert you 
  probably wouldn't give them the time of day if you bumped into 
  them in the street."

  "How dare you talk to me that way."

  The son was silent, ashamed, but he still held fast to his 
  convictions.

  "Don't expect me to subsidize your Bohemian lifestyle," the 
  Engineer said, "because I'm not going to stand for it. The 
  moment you come to your senses about your vocation, I'll promise 
  you my whole practice, the sun, the moon and the stars, the 
  shirt off my back. Until then, you're on your own."

  The son said nothing. "And how are you going to support, that, 
  that, your girlfriend?"

  "She has a name, Pa. Her name is Stephanie. We can both work," 
  he said uncertainly.

  "You can both work," the Engineer echoed mockingly. "You give 
  your philosophy lectures in your two-bit downtown university, 
  while that woman dances in the bars?"

  "Stephanie's not a dancer, she's a waitress, Pa."

  "There's a difference?" the Engineer said, but the fiery flash 
  in his son's eyes made him regret it immediately. "And if she 
  gets pregnant?"

  "We'll manage. I have so much to teach Stephanie, Pa. She's 
  willing to learn everything I have to teach her."

  Again the Engineer forgot his counsel of prudence to himself. 
  "Oh, so she's your very own Galatea, to mold and to do with as 
  you please, heh? This is going too far!"

  "Pa, this conversation isn't getting anywhere. I'll come back to 
  talk to you when you're feeling reasonable. Goodbye, Pa."

  They didn't get that other chance to talk about it. The next 
  time Paul came home, he brought Stephanie with him. And that was 
  the beginning of the end.



  The girl told the Engineer that they never had any money, but 
  made it a point to go to the CCP for the free film showings of 
  the Wednesday British Cinema. Once in a while they could go see 
  a play or a piano recital with complimentary tickets cadged from 
  his acquaintances in the theater. Once, she said, they had even 
  seen an opera for free. All she could remember about it was that 
  it had a hunchback in it, it was very long, and that throughout 
  she was feeling very sleepy, like much of the audience, until 
  that familiar tune came out, the one that people sing with the 
  words "Hopiang di mabili." Anyway, after the Wednesday movie 
  showings that they'd go downstairs to the CCP canteen for some 
  Coke and the sometimes stale empanada, and then sit on the 
  seawall and talk about what they'd just seen.

  The girl smiled fondly, and the Engineer saw a bit of what his 
  son saw in her. "How he could talk and talk," she said in her 
  fractured English. "He know so many things about movies, and 
  many other things also! I think, is he like that also in his 
  class?"

  "Tell me, Becky," he said.

  "Sir," the girl said. He didn't correct her. He felt that it 
  gave them a bit of distance between them, and he felt more 
  comfortable about it.

  "Did you ever get to meet a girl named Stephanie?"

  "Oh," she said. "Stephanie is before me. But Paul, he didn't 
  like talking about her. She was, he called, a `non-topic.'"

  "Oh," it was the Engineer's turn to say. Of course it would be a 
  "non-topic." "So you and Paul have been together for -- ?"

  "One year and one half. But then we get married, so we are 
  married for one year. I tell him, I know you don't like me to be 
  a hostess still, but we need to have the money. And Paul, he is 
  so hard-headed, he always said no. So we are always hungry. But 
  we are also happy. I did not become pregnant, so maybe that is 
  for the good thing." She seemed embarrassed for a moment, and 
  then recovered herself.

  "How old are you, Becky?"

  "Nineteen."

  After a pause, she said, "You have so many books on the shelf. 
  Have you read all of them?"

  They were still standing in front of the shelves. The Engineer 
  scanned them. "Yes, I have. Over the years. All of them."

  Becky was impressed. "It is no wonder your eyeglasses are very 
  thick."

  "I'd be wearing eyeglasses anyway. Years ago, when I was still 
  in high school, my optometrist -- my eye doctor -- told me that 
  my eyesight would have deteriorated in any event, and it'd stop 
  when it reached a certain point."

  "Do you really remember everything you have already read?"

  "For the most part. Actually, all I've been doing for the past 
  two years is re-reading my library. And reviewing my movie and 
  record collection. I've turned in on myself. I'm turning into an 
  old fart." He smiled at her.

  Becky didn't understand the word, so he straightened up the 
  expression on his face.

  "Why do you go back to read again your old books when you have 
  read them already and you remember them? It is boring to read 
  something you already know, no?"

  The Engineer smiled. This was not a person who would be 
  interested in shades of meaning, evolution of outlook and of 
  attitudes, and maturity over the years. So he only said, without 
  condescension, "No, not at all. Not at all."


  2.
----
  
  Over the next few days, the Engineer stopped by the office less 
  than he used to. Sometimes he would stay for a few hours before 
  or after business lunches; on some days he dropped by for only 
  fifteen minutes. Most of his spare time he was accompanying 
  Becky on her shopping. Encouraging her to shop was something 
  that he felt driven to do, because Becky was obviously being 
  crushed by boredom in the house.

  At the start, the girl bought little trinkets like costume 
  jewelry, but improved her mind by paying close attention to 
  fashion magazines, the type with heavy, glossy paper. She was a 
  fast learner, though, and pretty soon it showed in her shopping 
  patterns.

  In the matter of sunglasses -- "shades" -- she shunned Versace, 
  dismissing the designs with a laugh as "matronic." Her skin 
  received the loving attention of concoctions whose brands she 
  mispronounced horribly: Estee Lauder, L'Oreal, Almay. In the 
  space of three weeks she promoted herself from Johnson's Baby 
  Shampoo through Ivory Shampoo up to Clairol Herbal Essences. And 
  soap-wise, eventually only Neutrogena was good enough for her.

  Becky grew in confidence, and stopped asking the Engineer for 
  permission for each and every purchase. The salesladies gave 
  knowing funny-looks at the Engineer -- again, it was that 
  mixture of contempt and pity.

  He endured it all. He felt that his conscience was clear on this 
  point, and that the girl, although undeniably attractive, was 
  not an object of his desire -- he had bedded several women of at 
  least equal beauty, but of impeccable family, breeding and 
  education. Two of them had been other men's wives; one of them 
  had even been happily married.

  No, his guilt lay elsewhere entirely. But it still had to do, 
  indirectly, with the girl.

  One night, as he passed her door on the way back from the 
  kitchen to get a glass of water, he noticed her door partly 
  open.

  He was touched. It was an old-fashioned way for a guest to 
  behave -- not closing the door on one's host before one is 
  actually about to sleep.

  She was applying astringent to remove her make-up. For a 
  suspended moment, he did not breathe, and he saw how different 
  she looked. She was very beautiful. He almost didn't recognize 
  her.

  She saw him looking through the door. She stopped swabbing the 
  cotton on her face, and nodded politely. He wished her a good 
  night. He heard the door closed and locked as he walked into his 
  own room.



  Then, that dream again, for the nth time. The Engineer was in 
  playback again, but with less control than when awake.

  His son and Stephanie insisted on spending the night together in 
  the house. They picked a bad time to arrive -- he was 
  entertaining important guests.

  The Mayor was in attendance; there was a sprinkling of Cebu's 
  "beautiful people," and of executives from Europe and the Middle 
  East.

  The Engineer had wanted a string quartet playing on the lawn, 
  but he hadn't been able to make the arrangements in time. So he 
  had to make do with his dual mono tube amps playing canned 
  Horowitz and Ashkenazy.

  Fortunately, the absence of live chamber music aside, everything 
  else was just as he wanted it. The caterer was given 
  instructions that the party was open bar; the guests were 
  sophisticated enough be trusted with the Moet et Chandon. 
  Indeed, so sophisticated were they that even the Arabs 
  graciously partook of the champagne, while no eyebrows were 
  raised at this breach of the strictures of the Qur'an.

  From the lawn the Engineer saw Paul and Stephanie arrive in a 
  clunker of a taxi, tugging at their luggage up the front stairs 
  before the maids, horrified, hurriedly bustled them and their 
  battered baggage up the stairs, out of sight into Paul's old 
  room.

  The Engineer forebore, for the moment.

  But later in the evening, Stephanie came down to the kitchen 
  dressed in slippers, sando and the briefest of shorts to get a 
  glass of water. The Arab guests practically licked their lips at 
  the sight.

  In his dream, the Engineer left his guests for the moment, and 
  marched up to the room where his son and his girlfriend were 
  spending the night. Even before he was a teenager Paul had 
  always been partial to making bold statements and drastic 
  gestures, and finally this drop had overflowed the bucket. The 
  Engineer's tolerance caved in.

  He knocked, and the door was opened. Icily, he told them that 
  they were to leave immediately.

  They did so, packing their clothes back into their single 
  suitcase. As the Engineer led his guests out onto the lawn, with 
  the fountain all lit up, his son and his son's girlfriend were 
  ushered out through the back door by the maids and the driver. 
  The driver took the couple away in the Toyota Crown, and the 
  guests barely noticed the car drive away.

  In his dream, the Engineer watched this. There was a sense of 
  relief, that he had done the right thing. Thank God, he thought, 
  I kept my temper. Thank God I didn't humiliate him in front of 
  the guests. But I had to show him that I was angry, that I would 
  not suffer his insulting behavior. But at the back of his mind, 
  the relief was hollow, for some reason. He could not put his 
  finger on it. Then he woke up, the dream began to fade from his 
  befogged brain, and with it, the sense of relief.



  It didn't happen that way. He wished it had. Because it would 
  still be possible to have a reconciliation; it was even entirely 
  possible that the son would have come back to him, of his own 
  accord, to ask for forgiveness. For forgiveness! It could have 
  been that way. Or, the Engineer would have eventually swallowed 
  his pride and come to his son, asking him to come home. It would 
  have taken a little longer, but he would have done it. No matter 
  how grave the insult, a father has no business standing on his 
  pride if his own son needs him -- even if the son doesn't 
  realize it.

  But no, what had happened was that he had lost his temper, and 
  after being sassed by his son's girlfriend after he had 
  reprimanded her for coming down so unsuitably dressed -- or 
  undressed -- he lost his temper, and went up to the room after 
  the girl. Before she could close the door behind her, he had 
  held the door open and with gritted teeth, told them to get the 
  hell out, now. Although he hadn't exactly yelled, he hadn't 
  exactly whispered, either. The guests who were in the house 
  became very quiet downstairs. And when he personally heaved 
  their still-unpacked luggage out of the window onto the 
  manicured lawn, even then he knew he had more than paid back the 
  insult in the same coin.

  The maids picked up the luggage from the grass, and the driver 
  drove them out of the house in the ghostly-quiet Toyota Crown. 
  The guests were gracious about their host's profound 
  embarrassment, but the party broke up within twenty minutes.

  When the driver got back, the Engineer was too proud to ask him 
  where they had gone.



  It took a long while for the Engineer to build up his courage to 
  ask Becky the things that he had really wanted to know.

  When, a year after the Stephanie incident, he inquired by letter 
  after Paul at his University, he was referred to Paul's address 
  in downtown Manila. Becky ended up answering the last of the 
  Engineer's persistent, inquiring missives, in a letter of her 
  own written in barely decipherable hen scratches. Her name was 
  Becky, she explained, she was Paul's wife, and she was writing 
  to him, Engineer Lamberto, without having opened the letters he 
  had written addressed to Paul. Paul was gone, she wrote. Beyond 
  that she would say little else. Or rather, if she had written 
  anything of significance beyond that, the Engineer didn't 
  understand it.

  Several more letters from the Engineer, this time addressed to 
  "Mrs. Rebecca Lamberto" herself, eventually persuaded Becky to 
  quit her job and come to Cebu, to stay with the Engineer 
  indefinitely.

  One evening, after dinner at a fancy restaurant at the Cebu 
  Plaza, they sat in the living room drinking coffee. The traffic 
  noise in the distance had died away to inaudibility, and the 
  faint sound of crickets and cicadas in full riot elsewhere in 
  the distance filled the silences between their words. The 
  Engineer could sense that the girl was vulnerable tonight; his 
  experience with women had taught him that much. He decided to 
  press his advantage. So, after aimless small talk involving 
  their common hostility against grade school teachers, the 
  Engineer steered the topic to Paul.

  "When Paul told me wanted to teach, I was dead set against it. 
  Maybe I shouldn't have been so harsh on him, if it was what 
  would have made him happy. Even you, he considered you his 
  student. I know he was happy teaching you the things that he 
  knew."

  "Yes," said Becky. "Maybe though I am not a very good student. 
  Because he leave me, he have a new student maybe brighter than 
  me." The Engineer let her go on without interrupting her. "One 
  of his students, she was even ugly, with pimples and a crooked 
  teeth, one day he started talking about her about how 
  intelligent she is. Since I already see the girl I did not 
  worry. She have literary interests, Paul said. He called her a 
  blue socks -- a blue -- "

  "A blue stocking. Yes."

  "He said, `She understands my poetry.' Of course, Mr. Lamberto, 
  Paul always recited his poetry to me, sitting on the seawall 
  after the Wednesday movies especially, but I did not understand 
  it. I tell him I like his voice reciting his poetry. He told me, 
  `Never mind what the words means, just feel them.' "

  The Engineer looked at Becky, in her fashionably cut dress, her 
  long black-stockinged legs stretched out and crossed at the 
  ankles, with her expensively done hair. With a haughty demeanor, 
  chin in the air, she would have been perfect for a fashion 
  shoot; instead, she was leaning back in her couch across from 
  the Engineer's chair, a hand under her nose to hide the fact 
  that she was biting back her tears. Her blinking gave her away. 
  This girl is little more than a child, the Engineer realized not 
  for the first time, but he had to be merciless.

  "Where did they go?" he asked finally, when the words would not 
  come to her and the tears rolled freely. "Where did they go?"

  "Davao," she said. "I think the girl flunk many of her other 
  subjects. `Not good at math, not good at math,' Paul said. I 
  remember. Later, Paul was always angry at me for anything that I 
  did. I did not understand him. One day he left our apartment, he 
  left me a letter saying that his student was going back to Davao 
  to continue her college there, and that he was going with her. 
  He call me a slut because I always want to go back to work at 
  the bar. Mr. Lamberto," she said, facing him full now, "I miss 
  him so much."

  She was crying now, and the Engineer was afraid the househelp 
  would hear. They had seen much in their day, with the comings 
  and goings of the various women in his life over the years, but 
  they didn't have to see and hear everything if he could help it.

  He moved towards her and knelt at her feet. She moved her face 
  closer to him, tears streaking her make-up, her face in great 
  pain. She was shaking with silent sobs. "Mr. Lamberto, please, I 
  miss him."

  Gently he shushed her, and brushed back her hair from her eyes. 
  "Did he leave an address?" He repeated the question even as he 
  wiped her tears. "Do you remember his student's name?"

  She tried to kiss him, smearing the lenses of his glasses.

  "Becky," he said quietly, "do you remember the student's name?"

  "No!" she said loudly through her crying. "I burn his stupid 
  letter. His stupid goddamn letter. I don't remember her name. I 
  go back to my old job because I have to. I am not like what he 
  says." She raised a hand to his face. "Mr. Lamberto," she said, 
  and tried to kiss him again.

  He slowly pulled his face away from her. He held her face in his 
  hands, looking steadily into her eyes as she made a long, uneven 
  moaning sound that was lower than her speaking voice. He shushed 
  her again, patiently, and when the low of pain had subsided, he 
  gathered her up in his arms and carried her to her room.

  Though she was thin, she was tall, and he was not prepared for 
  her heft. It had been a long time since he had carried a woman 
  in his arms; the unbidden memories gave him no pleasure. He was 
  aware that a pair of eyes -- it was one the maids, certainly -- 
  was watching them from the little glass window of the swinging 
  kitchen door.

  In her room he did not turn on the light, and navigated by the 
  yellow light from the hallway which flooded in through the open 
  door. He laid her down on the bed, and with tender hands 
  stripped her down to her underwear, while she did not resist. 
  Then he pulled a thin blanket over her, turned on the electric 
  fan, and left, closing the door gently behind him.

  In his own room, fully clothed, with his shoes still on, he lay 
  down on the counterpane of the bed. All he took off were his 
  glasses and his watch. He knew he was not going to get any sleep 
  tonight. He waited, eyes wide open and staring at the high 
  ceiling, for the sun to rise.



  It was a summer afternoon when Becky left the house. On that day 
  the weather was of the type that always occurs during power 
  blackouts: the air was hot, sticky and windless. But the lights 
  didn't go out that afternoon, the Engineer remembered. The 
  decorative, wooden ceiling fans only swirled the humid air 
  around. The exotic, powerful vacuum-tube sound system that took 
  pride of place in the living room was silent; the Engineer never 
  played music while reading.

  He sat in his favorite leather chair, a genuine La-Z-Boy he had 
  had shipped in from the States after attending a convention. 
  Where his body touched the chair it was damp, even through the 
  clothes. On his lap lay, open face down, his favorite paperback 
  of English Romantic Poetry, cracked along its spine from age and 
  use.

  They were sitting together stewing in the living room, with the 
  folding doors the length of one entire wall open to the garden, 
  because the only room with a working air conditioner was the 
  Engineer's. To invite her into the bedroom, which was big enough 
  and had enough furnishings to have been an apartment in itself, 
  would have been inappropriate; and he felt that to stay inside 
  by himself enjoying the chill would have been rude to his guest. 
  His old fashioned sense of gallantry was coming to the fore, 
  although it was mixed with confusion about what would be the 
  right thing to do.

  The girl sat on the sofa opposite him, fashion and interior 
  design magazines scattered all around her. She kept sighing, but 
  the Engineer didn't notice. His mind was a haze, and thoughts 
  had difficulty forming. He was trying to prolong this state, to 
  control it so that he could stretch it out. He was trying to 
  prevent thought from taking form, and with it, memories and 
  guilt. He didn't move. It was a state of mind precious for its 
  illusory peace; it didn't happen too often.

  Boorishly she broke into his tenuous peace. It was like a 
  boulder being dropped into a still pond. "I can't stay here 
  anymore."

  He started, not immediately understanding the words she was 
  saying. He echoed them mechanically. "You can't stay here 
  anymore?" he said, not grasping what he himself was asking.

  "I'm sorry, Engineer Lamberto, you are very generous to me since 
  before. But I think it is like we are waiting both of us for 
  your son to come home. Sir, he's gone. He will not come back to 
  you or to me."

  The Engineer didn't reply right away. "You are still his wife, 
  and I am still his father."

  "It doesn't mean anything," she said. "He is not here anymore." 
  She didn't go on and say, 'It's like he is already dead, and 
  there is nothing that binds us anymore.' The Engineer felt that 
  that was what she wanted to say, but she kept herself back. He 
  was grateful for such mercies.

  "So where do you want to go?"

  She looked at him, biting her lip, eyes unsuccessfully trying to 
  hide guilt. For the briefest moment, the Engineer saw again how 
  his son had seen Becky. Right now she was a bit like a 
  beautiful, naughty favorite child trying to fool a parent. 
  "Somewhere."

  "Home?"

  "Somewhere."

  The Engineer's heart sank. It wasn't the thought that she was 
  leaving. It was the thought that he had failed to reach out to 
  his son, to make up for things, no matter how indirectly. 
  Whenever he began talking to Becky freely and honestly about his 
  feelings about what had happened between him and Paul, she would 
  tune out. Perhaps it was because she had had enough pain of her 
  own. Or maybe it was because she thought that he should be a man 
  about the whole thing, and bear it in silence and with dignity. 
  Or, the Engineer thought uncharitably, this girl is exactly what 
  she appears to be: uncouth and callous, badly educated, a vain 
  and silly creature whose only saving grace, aside from her youth 
  and her salacious beauty, was that she had fallen in love with 
  Paul; that she could at least begin to appreciate him for what 
  he was, and more difficult, for what he tried to be. It took a 
  lot to love Paul, he knew. Anybody who loved Paul, in all his 
  obstinate, impractical and heedless romanticism could not 
  honestly be accused of being shallow in feeling. And he felt 
  ashamed of his contempt for the girl.


  3.
----
  
  A week after she had left, the Engineer was practically useless 
  around the office. Everybody in the office knew that his 
  mistress had left him, and there were giggles that a man of his 
  age could still be driven to distraction by the baser part of 
  his manhood. At one point the Engineer thought he heard as he 
  left the room one of his engineers murmur, "Thinking with his 
  nuts."

  Another week passed, then another. Finally he had no choice. He 
  could not keep his mind on anything, not his work at the office, 
  not his movie collection, not the cable TV, not his music 
  collection. He had to do something, anything. It didn't 
  necessarily have to make sense what he was going to do -- as 
  long as he did something.

  He flew to Manila, and rented a tired early-model Sentra from 
  there. He bought a road map from a National Bookstore branch in 
  Makati, and after studying it, gave up trying to fold it back 
  the way it was when it was new. The huge map stayed partly open 
  on the passenger's seat beside him, and at 6:30 in the morning, 
  so as not to be caught in the humongous Manila traffic, he set 
  off for Quezon Province.

  Quezon was a drive three and a half hours south. He took the 
  rented car through the tollway and beyond, down narrower 
  provincial roads. In addition to being in bad shape, with a very 
  heavy clutch and a tendency to lurch even at cruising speeds, 
  the car was badly designed, with impossibly heavy steering for 
  such a small car.

  But the drive itself kept the Engineer wide awake. It had been a 
  long time since he had been on such a long drive.

  He persuaded the car to follow along a winding road that looked 
  down precipitously from the hill through which it wound -- the 
  road was nicknamed _bitukang manok_ because its wild twists 
  reminded motorists of a gutted chicken's intestines. When at 
  last he got back to level ground at the end of the road, he saw 
  a garishly painted statue of a mermaid in the water some yards 
  from the shoreline. He knew he had arrived in Becky's town.

  Eventually the countryside scenery gave way to a busy town full 
  of one-way streets. He asked for directions, naming the local 
  elementary school and the courts as the landmarks, and 
  eventually found himself pointing the car up a steep hill with a 
  dirt track. He eased the car upward, and went past a public 
  school where children were arriving in droves, dressed in their 
  uniforms of printed white T-shirts with dark blue skirts or 
  shorts. The children made way for the car, but the dirt track 
  was so narrow, and his traction so unsure, that the Engineer 
  prayed he would not accidentally hit any of them. Nightmare 
  visions of the car slipping on a backward tack crushing a 
  bag-toting child chilled his fingers.

  Further up on the opposite side of the road was the courthouse, 
  beside which a big, yellow grader was parked. The workmen who 
  were working on paving the dirt road came up to help. Their 
  gentle manner as they worked to get the Engineer's car out of 
  the rut struck the Engineer pleasantly; he reminded himself that 
  he was in the provinces again. Gratefully he pressed some money 
  on the men, which they took, shyly and reluctantly.

  At the top of the hill, he stopped. He didn't know where to go. 
  There was nowhere to park the car, because on either side of the 
  dirt track the terrain rose up like a grassy, muddy embankment. 
  The Engineer left the car where it was and slogged to the 
  nearest house to ask again for directions.

  The house was an amalgam of old and new. The older part was made 
  of now-dark unpainted wood, and had windows of seashells ground 
  to translucent thinness with thin curtains hanging limply in the 
  windless, overcast mid-afternoon. Clumsily grafted on to the 
  older part was an extension made of concrete, with a roof of 
  corrugated iron and windows with jalousies of frosted glass.

  There was movement from within. Voices issued in agitation. 
  Becky stepped out of the house. She wasn't surprised to see him. 
  She had seen him coming, with the noise that his car was making.

  "Mr. Lamberto," she said, with what seemed to be displeasure on 
  her face.

  The Engineer stopped. Now he was here. He realized he hadn't 
  thought of why he had come. "Hello Becky," he said, looking up 
  at her. He had to make his voice carry between the twenty feet 
  of distance between them. After a while he said, "I came to 
  visit you." Better than "May I come in," thought the Engineer. 
  It sounded less suppliant.

  "Come inside," she said, making room for him in the doorway even 
  as he trudged up the hill, unsure of his footing. Perhaps he had 
  been imagining her coldness.

  He had barely sat down on the wooden bench in the living room 
  when he stood up again, to greet Becky's mother. The Engineer 
  was introduced to her as "Paul's father." Becky's mother then 
  bustled about in the newer part of the house, in what was 
  evidently the kitchen, complete with sky-blue tiles and a new 
  Korean-brand refrigerator. She emerged with glasses of weak iced 
  tea.

  "I'm surprised you are able to find my house," she said with a 
  smile. He had been imagining things.

  The Engineer's mind worked double time, thinking of the right 
  thing to say. "It's a small town" was all wrong. And to tell her 
  "I remember you talking about your house near the court and the 
  public school" seemed to be an admission that he had been paying 
  attention to their small talk, unconsciously filing away for 
  future reference little nuggets of information she had given 
  him. "I asked around," he said.

  Voices came from the kitchen. First there was Becky's mother, 
  slowly talking in single-word sentences. "Visitor," she was 
  saying. "Becky. Visitor." Then a man's voice wordlessly 
  vocalized sounds signifying comprehension.

  Becky fidgeted. A tall man wearing a T-shirt, shorts and 
  slippers ducked under the low doorway and entered the living 
  room. The Engineer looked at him. A foreigner, light-skinned, 
  slit-eyed, probably in his late thirties. Judging from the style 
  of the glasses the man was wearing, the Engineer guessed he was 
  Japanese. He was not handsome, but his smile seemed to point to 
  a mild nature.

  "Mr. Lamberto, this is Kazue."

  They shook hands and sat down.

  "I just came to pay a small visit to my daughter-in-law," he 
  said uncertainly to Kazue. Kazue looked at him attentively. The 
  Engineer wasn't sure he had understood. "I'm sorry, do you -- ?"

  Becky hesitated, then started speaking in Japanese to Kazue. 
  Kazue listened and nodded, smiling. The Engineer listened in 
  surprise, and wondered just what she had told him; a diplomatic 
  lie, perhaps. Her Japanese sounded smooth, but then the Engineer 
  would have been the last person to judge fluency in foreign 
  languages.

  For the next few minutes there was an attempt at conversation 
  among the three of them, during which Becky tried to keep the 
  flow of meaningful information to a minimum. Kazue was an 
  ordinary _sarariman_. Becky had learned her Japanese from a 
  Japanese-language school on Avenida. Kazue had been in the 
  Philippines twice before on business, but now he was in the 
  country for only two weeks, on vacation leave. There was not 
  much else besides that. The Engineer felt more and more 
  uncomfortable. The feeling grew in him that whatever it was that 
  he had come to do, it wasn't going to happen. Finally, he got 
  up, making sure that Kazue understood he was going to leave.

  "Well, Becky, Kazue, it's been nice chatting with you," smiling 
  a smile he did not feel. He shook hands with the Japanese.

  As he was stepping through the doorway to get back to his car, 
  Becky spoke suddenly, in a low voice that didn't seem to be 
  meant to be heard. "I'm going with him."

  The Engineer stopped. He didn't seem surprised. "To Japan?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you getting married?"

  Becky looked at Kazue. "If he wants."

  The Engineer felt a chilly sadness descend on his shoulders. 
  Gently he kissed a surprised Becky on the cheek. "Goodbye, 
  then," he said. He took leave of Becky's mother, who saw him off 
  with customary effusiveness. To the Japanese he nodded politely, 
  receiving in return a slight bow. He found himself hoping that, 
  even if just this once, people appeared to be what they were, 
  and that a kindly face meant a kindly soul.

  There was nowhere to turn the car around. The Engineer had no 
  choice but to go down the road backwards, past the court, past 
  the grader, past the public school, all the way to the main 
  road, the transmission whirring with a hydraulic sound that one 
  hears only in reverse gear. He got to the bottom safely.

  He realized he hadn't even looked back at the house as he was 
  backing up. He couldn't see it anymore from the bottom of the 
  hill.

  The Engineer pointed the car north.



  Armand Gloriosa (dogberry1@yahoo.com)
---------------------------------------
  Armand Gloriosa was born in 1968 in Cebu, Philippines. He worked 
  hard for years to become a lawyer, and when he did become one, 
  regretted it. He married his first girlfriend, didn't regret it, 
  and now has two children to show for it.



  A Stray Dog in Spain   by Peter Meyerson
==========================================
....................................................................
  History happens to other people. Memories happen to us. The 
  difference can drive us mad.
....................................................................

  1.
----

  I can't really say that what follows has haunted me all these 
  years. I wish I could; it would be more dramatic.

  But the truth is that every so often, when I recall what 
  happened, I remember the experience without any feeling one way 
  or the other. It may be that because I was young and determined 
  to live the good life, I couldn't -- and perhaps still can't -- 
  deal with the odd and ultimately sorrowful event that climaxed 
  our stay in Spain.

  We arrived in Le Havre on the old, supremely elegant Ile de 
  France in early September, the most jubilant couple in the 
  history of marriage. By design, we had no particular itinerary, 
  although an older Spanish couple we knew from our summers on 
  Fire Island -- a painter and his pediatrician wife -- gave us 
  several letters of introduction to friends of theirs in Europe: 
  Robert Graves on Majorca (The White Goddess had been my 
  bible in college); Pablo Casals, who had a house in the 
  Pyrenees; and an exiled Spanish painter, Juan Peinado, who lived 
  with his family in Paris.

  As it turned out, the Peinados, their children, and 
  grandchildren became our surrogate family during our months in 
  Paris, and I still on occasion think of that dear, impoverished, 
  generous family with a wistfulness that borders on longing. I 
  have kept and treasure a photograph of the Peinados' 
  twelve-year-old granddaughter, Jeanne Marie. I shot it in the 
  garden behind the artist's modest suburban studio. (The old man 
  used to bicycle the six miles to and from their apartment on the 
  Left Bank to the atelier every day.) The picture is a close-up, 
  snapped on the morning after we had taken Jeanne Marie to see 
  her first ballet. She is staring straight into the camera, 
  sedate, innocently ravishing, framed by a halo of flowering 
  vines and, to my eyes, dancing wildly in her mind.

  Peinado was in his mid-seventies, a kindly, consistently 
  affectionate family man, but extremely difficult, to say the 
  least, when it came to the business of art. Like several other 
  painters I've known, he was vehemently distrustful of gallery 
  owners. I'm not qualified to judge his talent as an artist, but 
  when it comes to sabotaging his own interests, he was a raving 
  genius.

  We left Paris in early December and headed south, hoping at some 
  point during the year to connect with Casals and/or Robert 
  Graves. But we didn't get to meet either of them -- Graves 
  because we never got to Majorca and Casals because our entire 
  stay in Europe, where we went, how long we stayed and when we 
  left, was to a large extent determined by a clinically insane MG 
  Magnette acquired in Paris for fourteen hundred dollars from an 
  old high school buddy. The car threw its first serious fit in 
  Avignon, and we had no choice but to spend a month exploring the 
  Midi and the Basse Alps (hardly a tragedy) in a rented car while 
  waiting for a new set of cylinders to arrive from Paris.

  Like I said, while we didn't have any particular timetable or 
  destination, we were determined to find a warm place to spend 
  the winter. Reaching Nimes, we flipped a coin: heads, we'd turn 
  left and go to Sicily, tails, we'd turn right and drive down to 
  the Costa del Sol, a very different place in those days. It was 
  tails.

  Now understand: I am not, nor have I ever been, the 
  hey-man-it's-cosmic type. Admittedly, in the late sixties and 
  seventies did my share of psychedelics (along with every other 
  drug known to man). I waved hello to walls that waved back, 
  watched my friends transform into angels and devils, and had 
  chats with God that seemed important but probably weren't since 
  I've never heard from Him again -- not yet, anyway. Once, with a 
  cooperative Penthouse model and my all-time favorite, MDA, the 
  so-called "love drug," I had an orgasm that lasted two months. 
  Still, I was never suckered into buying all the woo woo bullshit 
  of the period -- astral projection, astrology, communal living, 
  talking to vegetables to improve their health, Eastern 
  religions, guru glorification, arcane massages, beatific grins, 
  and all the rest of it. I began and ended the epoch as a 
  pathetically rational human being.

  Thus, I was thoroughly unprepared for what happened when Anita 
  and I crossed the border into Spain at Port Bou, almost a decade 
  before I'd even heard of acid: I knew -- knew -- that I'd lived 
  there in another life! Everything -- the landscape, the smells, 
  people's faces, even a mangy cat I saw hanging around a gas 
  station -- was intimately familiar to me. This was my country; I 
  was home. And it really shook me up. I was having an experience 
  I didn't believe in!

  Anita was thrilled, which sort of disappointed me. I wanted her 
  to worry about me, to be concerned for my mind. But Anita had 
  always been more open to this sort of thing, even before it 
  became fashionable. In fact, later on she went all the way with 
  it and spent her fortieth birthday in Nepal searching for 
  something which, she wrote back, "most people aren't remotely 
  interested in." The "most people," of course, included me, by 
  then her ex-husband and the father of her two children who were 
  living with me full-time while their mother was out looking for 
  herself in the Himalayas. For years I'd been telling Anita that 
  she'd have better luck finding herself on a psychoanalyst's 
  couch, advice which, as you can imagine, made a solid 
  contribution to our eventual breakup.

  Although the revelation that Spain was my former homeland stayed 
  with me throughout our stay there, the initial awe and euphoria 
  I felt was replaced by rage just North of Valencia. Despite its 
  rebuilt engine, the goddamn MG began cleverly mimicking the 
  symptoms of a catatonic stupor, forcing us to put up at a 
  government parador after a brace of incompetent mechanics poked 
  around a post-war engine they'd never even seen before, 
  pronounced its condition muy serimente, and probably replaced a 
  few spark plugs while pretending to make repairs for the next 
  several weeks. Save for another young American couple with the 
  revolting habit of treating their mutt as though it was an 
  adorable only child, the hotel was empty. Anita realized that my 
  usually sunny disposition had abandoned me when, at our first 
  dinner with these people, I asked them whether it was difficult 
  finding the right size diaper for a daschund in a destitute, 
  outcast country.

  To her credit, Anita immediately went to work on me and, as she 
  had from the day I met her, returned me to my rightful 
  character. She pointed out that we were in a warm place in a 
  cold month and not hurting for money, that we had a large, 
  bright room and a tiled terrace overlooking the Mediterranean, 
  that we ate our breakfast in the sun and strolled down to the 
  tiny harbor to watch the small fishing boats return in late 
  afternoon and hawk their catch right there on the stone wharf. 
  She reminded me that each morning we swam in ancient Roman pools 
  just down the beach, pools carved out of the rocks two thousand 
  years ago, neatly squared and refreshed with every incoming 
  tide, and that I'd discovered many new things, like sargo, a 
  delicious local fish that often became trapped in these shallow 
  pools and were caught by the hotel staff using long, 
  jerry-rigged bamboo poles at the end of which were a few feet of 
  line, a hook and a bit of octopus -- which I'd also never eaten 
  before, but now loved even more than sargo.

  "And what about finding your cosmic homeland the day before 
  yesterday?" she added. (For the record, I never said it was my 
  "cosmic" anything.) "You could have sold shmatas to the Romans 
  who built these pools." (She was right about that, though. Once 
  a Jew, always a Jew, no matter what your incarnation.) "Given 
  all of this," Anita concluded. "I don't see how you can be in 
  such a shitty mood just because our car broke down again."

  But by then I no longer was, and you can see why I loved Anita 
  so much. It always surprises me when I think how, some years 
  down the line, we almost came to hate each other, got divorced, 
  and didn't become friends again -- well, distant friends -- for 
  many years.

  There's an event that occurred during our stay at the parador 
  which I feel obliged to mention because of the significance it 
  took on later: I didn't catch a fish. Not one. And I tried 
  almost every single day. My compulsive dedication was a joke 
  among the hotel staff, albeit a discrete and respectful joke 
  since this was a fascist country and Franco was looking over 
  everybody's shoulder. I suppose they also felt sorry for me 
  because they offered lots of encouragement and all manner of 
  tips for nailing this wily prey. (Okay. The truth is there's 
  nothing wily about sargo. They'll devour any tidbit you dangle 
  in front of them.)

  The whole mortifying business started after I'd watched the 
  hotel guys fishing both the Roman pools and from the rocky 
  breakwaters that enclosed the tiny harbor. (One guy actually 
  grabbed a fish out of the pool with his bare hands.) Now I 
  considered myself a pretty fair fisherman from my summers on 
  Fire Island. I used to surf cast for Atlantic blues in season 
  and the occasional bottom fish that always hung around a sunken 
  wreck a hundred yards off shore. Obviously, I didn't bring my 
  rig to Europe, so I was forced to suck up to the dog people -- 
  good sports, really -- and wrangle a lift to Valencia. There I 
  got all duded out with the best fishing gear a sporting goods 
  store had in stock, returned to the parador, and, as you can 
  see, made a complete schmuck out of myself for the next two 
  weeks.


  2.
----

  Carvajal wasn't on the map. Barely a village, it was a cluster 
  of white-washed hovels on the beach between Torremolinas, the 
  major haven for tourists with an artsy attitude (they called 
  themselves "exiles") and Gibraltar, a place we came to know well 
  thanks to the loathsome, Stephen King-esque MG. The car 
  apparently found Carvajal to its liking and went into another of 
  its fraudulent, money-eating death throes as we were passing 
  through on our way to Marbella. Fortunately, there were half a 
  dozen rental cottages adjacent to the village, and for 
  seventy-five bucks a month (housekeeper/cook included) we 
  settled into the only vacancy still available for the winter.

  I'm reluctant to concede that reverberations from some past life 
  had anything to do with the speed with which I picked up the 
  local dialect -- or at least a workable version of it. But I did 
  feel instantly at ease with our Andalusian neighbors and we got 
  on enormously well. If it's because, as Anita suggested, I may 
  have sold shmatas to their ancestors too, so be it. There was 
  certainly patience and good intentions on both sides and that 
  always helps.

  A housekeeper, Maria, came with the place. She was twelve years 
  old and one of the countless offspring of Tomaso, a fisherman 
  who became my friend -- except during those times when he beat 
  his wife and/or children. Their deplorable wailing and pleas for 
  mercy were too much for me and I always kept my distance for a 
  few days after these incidents, causing Tomaso considerable 
  consternation and confusion. Nevertheless, I chose not to 
  discuss these outbursts with him. There's no point telling a 
  Spanish peasant it's tacky to bounce your family off the walls 
  when whacking the shit out of relatives has been a revered 
  tradition since the Vandals began raiding Roman towns along the 
  Iberian coast in the fifth century.

  Our other neighbors -- mostly English vacationers -- disliked us 
  from the moment they learned we were paying our wretchedly 
  undernourished housekeeper four dollars a week. They seemed to 
  think that we, like all "rich Americans," were "spoiling the 
  natives rotten," creating expectations which would cost them, 
  the true tourists, dearly. Tough shit! We're talking about 
  victims of a repressive regime, pauperized peasants with little 
  more than a roof over their heads and the shredded rags on their 
  backs. So desperate were these people that, to avoid the 
  dreaded, rapacious, omnipresent Guardia Civil, they would row 
  out to sea in the middle of the night, risking prison to salvage 
  some water-logged tree trunk out of which they fashioned planks 
  to repair their boats and make oars and furniture and statues of 
  the Madonna and God knows what else. Fuck those English 
  tourists!

  Anyway, I was still sargo-possessed; it had gotten to be a 
  me-or-them sort of thing, and, even before unpacking, I grabbed 
  my gear and made a dash for the sea. Little kids, both foreign 
  and domestic, began to gather on the beach -- no doubt impressed 
  by my fancy rig. As I stood waist-deep in the water getting 
  ready to cast for the fat, elusive (for me at least) silvery 
  fish, I jokingly asked a six-year old English kid watching from 
  shore, "Can you count to ten?"

  "Of course I can," he replied, insulted.

  "Good. You count to ten and I'll pull in the biggest fish you 
  ever saw."

  "Will you really?" he asked, eyes widening, jaw dropping, a 
  pearly stream of spittle beginning to meander down his chin. In 
  those days, little children, even bright, English public school 
  kids, still believed that certain adults were blessed with 
  magic.

  Well, I had magic that day.

  While a good-sized sargo averages a mere six or seven pounds, I, 
  on my very first cast, landed a twenty-five pound behemoth, 
  probably the biggest sargo in the entire Mediterranean! I have 
  no doubt that had I waited another day, it would have washed up 
  on shore dead of old age. I became an instant hero, not only to 
  the kids, but to the fishermen as well, many of whom came 
  running over to see this amazing catch and the amazing man who 
  caught it. They themselves tossed drop nets over the sides of 
  small rowboats and, in theory, had a better chance to trap a 
  fish this size. Apparently, they never did. To pull one out of 
  the sea with a cheesy lure on the very first cast was quite a 
  feat.

  I must say adulation beats disgrace any day of the week, but 
  redeeming myself from the humiliations suffered at the parador 
  meant more to me. For one euphoric moment, I considered sending 
  a snapshot of me and Gigantor to the waiters up the coast, but 
  that would have been a bit too gauche.

  After a while, I noticed a man taking in the scene from the 
  periphery of the small crowd. I guessed he was in his late 
  thirties, tall, blue-eyed, greying at the temples and 
  extraordinarily handsome. His face seemed to have been molded in 
  white clay and left unbaked -- powerful, angular, yet muted, 
  almost soft. What really made me take notice was the perplexing 
  contradiction of his bearing: He stood absolutely erect, yet the 
  longer I looked at him the more I saw (imagined?) him crouching, 
  maybe even cowering, within himself. It was very strange the way 
  pride and sorrow somehow came together in the man's demeanor. I 
  was hooked. I had to find out who this guy was.

  It wasn't easy. For three weeks, we didn't exchange a word. We 
  simply nodded to each other as he passed by on his twice-daily, 
  unhurried walks along the beach. I found myself too shy to 
  initiate a conversation, which wasn't like me at all. I was 
  usually surrounded by an audience of impatient kids hungry to 
  witness my next triumph over nature. But my magic never did 
  return, and with every puny flounder I dragged from the sandy 
  bottom, I'd lose a few more disciples. Eventually, all my 
  admirers lost interest or, more accurately, faith, in my powers, 
  and abandoned me to my vigils. I wasn't their very own magician, 
  after all; I was just another ordinary human, kind of like their 
  fathers. I was sorry to disappoint them.

  I soon learned that his name was Gerd and that he and his wife, 
  Helga, lived in a cottage at the other end of the tourist 
  enclave some fifty yards up the beach. She occasionally went 
  with him on his daily promenades which always took place at 
  exactly eight a.m. and four p.m. You could set your watch by his 
  strolls. He walked as he stood, upright and downcast, the most 
  august and angst-ridden man I'd even seen. Helga, a skittish, 
  chatty, blond woman whom I judged to be in her early thirties, 
  flapped around him like a raven harassing an eagle. Gerd never 
  engaged her directly on these walks; he looked passed her or 
  through her when she happened to flit in front of him, always 
  gazing straight ahead, his eyes on the fisherman who, at these 
  times of day, were hauling in their nets or sorting their 
  pitiful catch on the sand. The couple kept to themselves and I 
  never saw them speak to their neighbors. I wasn't sure they even 
  knew English until I met them and discovered they spoke the 
  language flawlessly, with only a shade of an accent.

  Because animals must live in non-Catholic countries to possess 
  souls and feel pain, those unfortunate enough to inhabit Latin 
  countries lead lives of unrelenting misery. Useful beasts, like 
  donkeys or cows, are only a little better off than pets, so if 
  you wake up tomorrow and discover that you're a stray dog in 
  Spain, head for the nearest border or swim out to sea and drown.

  In 1959, though, you'd have found a haven in Gerd's cottage.

  That's how I finally met him, on the morning a bunch of local 
  kids were hurling stones at a trembling mongrel and harassing it 
  with sticks. Gerd must have heard the ruckus too (it woke me 
  up), because he came running down the beach shouting (in 
  Spanish) and chased the kids away from the near-dead dog. I 
  watched from my terrace as he cradled the poor creature in his 
  arms and took it back to his cottage, murmuring soothing words 
  in German.

  I had to meet this guy.

  Later, when I knew he'd be taking his afternoon walk, I 
  intercepted him.

  "Good morning," I said.

  "Good morning," he replied, neither pleasantly nor unpleasantly.

  "Ah. You speak English," I said, grinning inanely. He didn't 
  reply, so I continued. "That was a nice thing you did this 
  morning, saving that dog."

  He shrugged. His shrugs were difficult, slow to start and 
  lengthy, as though there was a hundred pound weight on his 
  shoulders. A long silence followed, so long I began thinking, 
  well, that's it for today, when he said:

  "That was quite a fish you caught the day you arrived."

  "Just luck," I said, with what I imagined to be disarming 
  modesty. Then, strangely, I felt compelled to diminish my own 
  stature with a confession. "You know, I fished for two straight 
  weeks near Valencia and didn't catch -- " I was about to say 
  "shit," but thought better of it. " -- a single fish." Something 
  about the guy demanded a measure of formality. Or maybe I was 
  self-conscious, knowing how Europeans hated the way Americans 
  presumed a jolly friendship from the first hello.

  "Good luck counts," he said. Huh? Wow, was that ever elusive! 
  Counts for what? In what context? Fishing? Life? Everything? So 
  far the guy's said a dozen words (including "good morning") and 
  already I'm mulling over what he means. (Although, there was a 
  voice inside saying, hey, you want a mystery, you'll find a 
  mystery.)

  Well, I had plenty of time to gnaw on this bone because Gerd 
  nodded without smiling and resumed his walk. Watching him vanish 
  down the beach, I began wondering about what he did during the 
  war. True, he had the air of a soldier, an officer, but I 
  couldn't imagine him fighting for the Nazis. I trusted my 
  feelings about him and, his aloofness notwithstanding, Gerd had 
  heart; there was no way he could have been on the wrong side. 
  Working with the underground was more like it -- dangerous, 
  secret meetings in Berlin safehouses, sending morse code 
  messages to London, blowing up bridges across the Rhine, night 
  attacks on barracks in the Black Forest -- all the stuff I'd 
  seen in movies.

  Or maybe I'd known him in one of my previous lives. Yeah: I'm a 
  wandering gem merchant pursuing my trade in one of the old Roman 
  coastal towns, Saguntum or Tarraco. Gerd's a Carthaginian Vandal 
  from North Africa. (Come to think of it, in this scenario, he 
  could very well be one of Tomaso's ancestors.) On one of their 
  raids, I'm taken prisoner. I'm about to be executed when Gerd 
  intervenes: "Let this one be!" he thunders to his men -- don't 
  ask me why. I thank him in a language he doesn't understand and 
  go on my way. A few months later, one of Justinian's armies 
  arrives to sweep these dreaded barbarians out of Africa and put 
  an end to their brutal forays along the Spanish coast. Now Gerd 
  is captured. He's about to be executed. I recognize him at once 
  among the thousands waiting to be nailed to the cross. I check 
  my gem bag and approach a centurion. The guy's got a hammer in 
  his hand and sneers ominously through a mouthful of nails. The 
  bastard can't wait to start hammering. "Excuse me," I say. "That 
  man over there, the one who's straight and bent at the same 
  time....I'd like to buy his freedom." I bribe the boob with two 
  opals and an emerald -- second-rate stones actually, but what 
  does he know? Gerd jumps down off the cross. He thanks me in a 
  language I don't understand and goes on his way.

  Sounds about right to me.

  "What do you think of the kraut?" I asked Anita when I returned 
  to the cottage.

  "Which one's the kraut?" she replied, which tells you where her 
  focus was. Anita had started knitting a muffler in Avignon that 
  was now seven feet long.

  "You expecting Siamese twins?"

  "Up your ass," she replied matter-of-factly.

  I guess being together twenty-four hours a day for five months 
  was beginning to take a toll on our marriage. It wasn't serious 
  (yet), but it wasn't fun anymore either. We didn't fight; we 
  were just there, keeping more and more to ourselves, leading 
  separate lives in the same space. As the winter went on, we 
  became increasingly listless, kind of numbed out, at least with 
  each other. Sex, on those rare occasions when we had it, was 
  still pretty good -- for me. But I'm a skilled pervert who can 
  (or could in those days) get off behind anything. Assent, 
  resistance, indifference, even a woman's passion -- all were 
  aphrodisiacs to me.

  We couldn't see it then, but this was more than a bump in the 
  road on the way to a happier marriage. Our alienation was 
  growing at about the same rate as Anita's muffler. No surprise 
  that it took a while to notice the most important sign of all, 
  the one that reads: "Couples Who Stop Discussing A Future 
  Together Don't Have One."

  
  3.
----

  Now here's a shocker: That same night, Gerd, with Helga in tow, 
  showed up at the cottage with a chess set under his arm, just as 
  though we'd made plans for the evening! We were digesting yet 
  another feast of boiled leather (squid), half-baked potatoes and 
  raw carrots -- What do you want? The kid was twelve years old! 
  -- when I noticed the two of them standing on the flagstone 
  terrace: Gerd, as always, outwardly erect and inwardly stooped, 
  Helga, doing her overwrought raven routine, dipping and weaving 
  and hopping around her stationary husband as though waiting to 
  pounce on his discarded tidbits.

  "May we come in?" she asked, smiling politely.

  "Hey, our door's always open," said Mr. Cheery, prompting a 
  God-you-can-be-putzy-sometimes sigh from Anita. "Come, in, come 
  in," I continued, ignoring the put-down. I'd done it! Casals is 
  in the Caribbean, we may never meet Robert Graves or Picasso. 
  But who cares? I've landed another giant sargo!

  "I thought you might like a game of chess," Gerd said.

  Jesus! How does he know I love chess?

  "Well, sure! You guys want a drink, coffee or something?"

  "Guys?" asked Helga, rattled by the colloquialism.

  "Oh, sorry. It's....you know, a way to say....it just means the 
  two of you."

  "Ah, I see." But I could tell she didn't see anything. I suppose 
  she thought I was calling her a dyke.

  I noticed that Gerd, who didn't pay any more attention to his 
  wife indoors than he did outdoors, was scrutinizing the room. 
  (What was he looking for? The tourist bungalows are all 
  identically furnished.) What I was totally oblivious to, until 
  later when she busted me for it, was that I was ignoring Anita! 
  For the next two hours, it's like she wasn't there. Weird. I was 
  imitating this guy!

  Loving a game doesn't guarantee that you'll be any good at it, 
  and I'll never be more than an average player. However, my ego 
  isn't invested in chess and I didn't mind losing three games in 
  quick succession. Truthfully, I would have lost even if I hadn't 
  been distracted by an avalanche of thoughts regarding my 
  enigmatic opponent. (Why had he suddenly appeared at the 
  cottage? What did he want? Who was he? Why did I care who he 
  was?) What did bother me was that he hardly said a word that 
  night. He came to play chess and that's what we did. Helga, to 
  Anita's dismay, took up the chit-chat slack, giving new meaning 
  to the phrase witless prattle. (Examples: Spain is a lovely 
  country. The sea is beautiful. I wish the beach weren't so 
  rocky. The sand is grainy. It hurts to walk barefoot. How nice 
  to be warm in winter. Have you been to the bullfights in Malaga? 
  Et cetera.)

  Anita, kind, generous, big-hearted Anita, was wilting under the 
  barrage. My wife, an M.A. in Comparative Lit. who read four 
  books a week -- despite her knitting obsession -- had no flair 
  whatsoever for small talk. Nonetheless, there were a few nuggets 
  of substance in Helga's painfully mindless soliloquy. The 
  Rautenbergs, I learned, weren't merely tourists. They had taken 
  a long lease on their bungalow years ago when they came to live 
  in Spain permanently. Helga worshipped her husband and told us 
  that Gerd was a commercial artist who made a living painting 
  "the most exquisite labels" for Rhine wine bottles for a company 
  in West Germany which kept him supplied with materials. I 
  noticed Gerd winced slightly every time his wife touched on 
  anything relating to their personal lives.

  The Rautenbergs left as suddenly they had come. Cutting his wife 
  off in mid-rant, Gerd swept the chess pieces off the coffee 
  table into their sweet-smelling cedar box, snapped the board 
  shut, rose to his feet and said, affably but unsmiling, 
  "Goodnight." I thought the guy was pissed by my shabby 
  performance. Later I came to understand that sudden appearances 
  and abrupt departures were his style.

  He disappeared through the open, glass-panelled door with poor 
  Helga fluttering in his wake firing salvo after salvo of 
  exaggerated tics over her shoulder. Before I realized that these 
  twitches were intended to be apologies for her husband's 
  unceremonious exit, I suspected she might be a loon who'd been 
  downing anti-psychotic medication for too long.

  But that was it. No "Thanks for the coffee," no "What a pleasant 
  evening," not even some 1959 equivalent to "Your chess sucks, 
  I'm outta here." Just a curt goodnight, and he was gone.

  "So...?" I said to Anita. I really wanted her angle on the guy.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Ah, c'mon, Anita," I whined. "What do you think about Gerd?"

  "I like him," she said.

  "All right. I can buy that. So do I. But, seeing as he didn't 
  open his mouth, what do you like about him?"

  "Must I have a reason?" she asked.

  "Hey, this isn't a grilling. I'm only asking for your opinion."

  "Why're you so interested in him?" she said, unspooling the 
  half-mile-long muffler.

  "Must I have a reason?" I shot back, mimicking her tone exactly.

  Okay, it was a snide, self-defeating remark and I knew it would 
  curb any further discussion. I wasn't surprised that Anita got 
  up without a word and went into the bedroom, but, what the fuck, 
  I was angry, justifiably angry, at her airy intransigence. I was 
  also frustrated. Anita had a unique fix on people; I valued her 
  observations and I had a genuine yearning to discuss the evening 
  with her; I didn't want to keep this guy to myself. I'd hoped he 
  was a mystery we could unravel together.

  Alone on the terrace, staring into a black, starless sky, 
  listening to the crashing waves of an exceptionally high tide, I 
  started thinking that maybe we'd turned some corner and were in 
  the early stages of a doomed marriage. Not having experienced it 
  before, I had no idea how a downhill slide started. But, geez, 
  we'd been together for less than four years, only two of them as 
  man and wife! The notion was too outrageous, too painful to hold 
  onto. Exhausted, I wrapped the thought in a sigh and let it go, 
  trusting it would float out into the darkness and sink to the 
  bottom of the sea. Then I went into the house, opened Claudius 
  the God and instantly fell asleep on the sofa, quite unaware 
  that this was the very first time Anita and I wouldn't be 
  spending the night in the same bed.

  All in all, January wasn't a good month; February was worse.

  I'd given up surf casting and started going out to sea with 
  Tomaso, helping him gather his nets and fishing from his boat. I 
  was hoping I'd have better luck in deeper water. I didn't. Late 
  one morning I returned from one of these expeditions and found a 
  letter from Olga, Peindado's wife. She said that Peinado had 
  died suddenly in his sleep. (I've always wondered what that's 
  like, to die in your sleep. Are you dreaming you're dying and 
  then -- I don't know -- stop? Or do you just keep on dreaming 
  forever? Or are you trapped in a nightmare and reach that 
  terrifying moment where, ordinarily, you wake up in a sweat, 
  panting, relieved that it was just a dream, only this time you 
  don't wake up and the nightmare goes on through all eternity? Or 
  do you never really die in your sleep? Is the proverbial 
  obituary entry, "died in his sleep," a euphemism for waking up 
  and dropping dead? Which would mean Peinado was present for his 
  own death. And what about Olga? She had to be there next to him, 
  because you don't make it through forty years of marriage 
  sleeping on the sofa in the living room. However it happened, it 
  was probably fast, and I consoled myself by thinking there's 
  this to be said for death: it puts the fear of dying behind 
  you.)

  Although we'd only known Peinado a short time, I felt like I'd 
  lost my grandfather all over again -- the one on my mother's 
  side for whom I had a special love all through my childhood.

  I'm certain Anita was just as upset by the news as I was, but by 
  then we'd reached a point in our relationship where we couldn't 
  even share our grief.

  It was after Peinado's death that I began, unconsciously, to 
  assume Gerd's carriage: head up, heart down. He must have 
  detected the change in me because he soon became friendly in a 
  more conventional way. He'd show up at the cottage to play chess 
  two, sometimes three nights a week -- often without Helga, which 
  probably added six months onto our marriage. Frequently, we took 
  long walks along the beach to Fuengirola, a more prosperous 
  village where fisherman plied the waters in spacious, 
  broad-beamed boats, some equipped with single masts and huge, 
  billowing sails, others powered by motors. From these vessels, 
  tipped with majestic, ornately carved mastheads, they swept the 
  sea clean of larger fish for miles around, leaving Tomaso and 
  our other Carvajal friends -- in their ancient, rotting dinghies 
  -- little more than minnow-sized scraps.

  And Gerd began talking more. Nothing intimate, nothing about his 
  past, just the kind of stuff you'd expect from him -- how he 
  hated the way the Spanish treated animals, and he thought the 
  English were snobby, but their kids were charming. It wasn't 
  much, but it was a step in the right direction.

  Then, suddenly, surprisingly, I learned everything I wanted to 
  know about Gerd all at once. It happened on one of our chess 
  nights, which always took place at our cottage since they never 
  invited us to theirs. Helga was with him. Gerd and I had settled 
  down to play. (I'd begun to give him some competition, losing a 
  mere three out of four games.) As usual, Helga was spouting and 
  Anita was fuming when, an hour into the evening, I asked a 
  question about Thomas Mann, a question that can only be 
  characterized as bland, inconsequential. Gerd's response to it 
  led to -- what? -- a dramatic explosion? a shocking confession? 
  a major breakthrough? Well, yes and no. The content of what he 
  said was certainly dramatic, and it was a major breakthrough 
  given my ardent interest in him. Yet, it all came out so 
  offhandedly, it couldn't in any way be considered either 
  shocking or confessional. For a moment, I was convinced that the 
  only reason Gerd hadn't said anything about himself until that 
  night was because we hadn't asked!

  "When I was seventeen," I said, "and a freshman in college, I 
  was a Thomas Mann nut." Followed by: "It must be great to read 
  him in German, huh, Gerd?" Gerd snorted and for the first time 
  in my presence spat out a smile, a piercingly cynical smile, and 
  grunted: "Thomas Mann? When I was seventeen I wasn't reading 
  Thomas Mann."

  "Oh? How's that?" Don't ask me why, but I'd assumed Gerd was 
  well-educated, a guy who loved books.

  "Because members of the Hitler Youth weren't encouraged to read 
  the books they burned," he said with that long, weary shrug of 
  his.

  Shock? Stunned silence? A deafening lull in the conversation? 
  Take your pick. They all describe our response to this blunt, 
  prosaic, utterly stunning revelation -- and that includes Helga. 
  I glanced over at her. She looked as though she'd just been told 
  she was going to have open heart surgery without an anesthetic.

  "Ah... interesting," I said after what seemed like ten minutes. 
  "So you were in the Hitler Youth." Like, no big deal; Germany 
  had the Hitler Youth, America has the Boy Scouts. Anita didn't 
  even bother reacting to this prize absurdity.

  "He had no choice," Helga said. For a second, she was no longer 
  a raucous, chatty raven; she became a hawk spreading it wings 
  protectively over her newborn chick. Gerd glared at her. The 
  message was: I didn't ask you to defend me, so stop it. Helga 
  obligingly returned to her babbling mode -- though it was a 
  pretty heavy babble this time.

  "It was terrible for us... the firebombings... in Hamburg.... 
  They say it was worse than the atomic bombs in Japan. We lost 
  everything... everyone.... We had to live in the streets. We had 
  no food. We... we ate rats! Everybody was sick, and the dying... 
  the bodies on the street.... Mein Gott, mein Gott, I can't tell 
  you how horrible it was." She covered her face with her hands 
  and began rocking back and forth in her chair.

  "Oh. So you guys knew each other during the war." I said. It was 
  the most idiotic, irrelevant, inappropriate statement I'd ever 
  made, but I was desperate to lighten things up. Ridiculous. I'd 
  spent two months looking for a cat to let out of the bag and now 
  that it had appeared, I had this urgent need to shove it back 
  in. There was good, old fashioned Jewish guilt at work here, as 
  in: How dare you invite these lovely Nazis into your home and 
  allow them to feel uncomfortable.

  "No, no," Helga went on. "We met after the war, at a camp."

  "I thought `camp' was reserved for Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals 
  and other undesirables," Anita said. I cringed. Anita was born a 
  High Episcopalian related to such heavyweights as Benjamin 
  Franklin and Alexander Hamilton on her father's side and the 
  pre-colonial divine, Jonathan Edwards, on her mother's side. 
  With bloodlines like hers, you don't worry much whether your 
  Nazi friends are ill-at-ease under your roof. Besides, Anita had 
  tolerated Helga's monologues long enough; she wasn't about to 
  defuse the situation now that she had something to dig her teeth 
  into.

  "A refugee camp," Helga replied, staring at her shoes. "We were 
  displaced persons when the war ended, so that's where they put 
  us. We tried to emigrate to America, but -- " She stopped.

  I was thinking, why not? We took in lots of Nazis after the war. 
  Too bad Gerd wasn't a rocket scientist, he'd have gotten in for 
  sure.

  "--But I had tuberculosis," Gerd said. "And that disqualified 
  us."

  "Being a Nazi wasn't enough?" Anita asked. The woman wouldn't 
  let up and now I started shooting her dirty looks. I mean, 
  c'mon, let me handle this; I'm the Jew in the crowd.

  "Apparently that didn't matter...." Gerd said. There was nothing 
  apologetic in his voice, just profound sadness -- but, if not 
  for having been a Nazi, for what then?

  I decided, fuck it, I'll take the direct route. Sure I like the 
  guy, he moves me, but pretty soon we'd be leaving Spain and I'll 
  probably never see him again. I had nothing to lose. And, of 
  course, my greedy curiosity had only been partially satisfied.

  "Gerd, tell us what happened," I said, softly, sincerely. He 
  studied me for a long moment, then told us the following:

  "I was born in the Sudetenland, an area given to Czechoslovakia 
  after World War I. We Sudeten Germans were a hated minority and 
  the Czechs treated us...well...like what you would expect. When 
  Hitler annexed the region, we all greeted him as a great 
  liberator. Of course, I joined the Hitler Youth. I was a 
  patriot. By the time the war started, I was a lieutenant in the 
  Wermacht. For anyone who cares to make the distinction, we were 
  the elite fighting arm of the German Army; we were soldiers, not 
  those hideous thugs. I fought the whole war on the Russian 
  front. A Panzer unit. Twice I was among a half dozen men to come 
  back from an engagement. At Stalingrad, the beginning of the end 
  for us, I was the only survivor in my section. Even our general 
  had been killed. Later, like so many soldiers, when we saw that 
  we were finished, we raced to the West. None of us wanted be 
  captured by the Russians. When I learned about what we had done, 
  I cursed God that I hadn't been killed in battle. In 1949, Helga 
  and I left Germany for good."

  Then he got up and left.

  I'm sure Helga knew about the atrocities, but was saved by her 
  talent for rationalizing the ugly parts of life. Gerd really 
  didn't know what happened, but assumed responsibility 
  nonetheless and paid the price: He was broken, irreversibly and 
  everlastingly, a man who would never mend. And I will always 
  believe that other than Helga and some U.S. Army interrogators, 
  he had never told anyone the story he told us that night in 
  Carvajal.

  Two days later, Anita and I were startled out of our sleep (she 
  in the bedroom, I on the sofa) by a harrowing scream. Along with 
  our neighbors, we rushed to its source, Gerd and Helga's 
  cottage. Helga had staggered onto the beach, howling, arms 
  outstretched, spinning in ever-tightening circles until she 
  collapsed to the sand sobbing. We found Gerd in the cottage, a 
  rope around his neck, dangling from a beam. We cut him down and 
  laid him out on the floor. For the first time, Gerd was neither 
  stooped, hunched nor hiding within himself. In fact, he seemed 
  quite peaceful.
  


  Peter Meyerson (peteram@ix.netcom.com)
----------------------------------------
  Peter Meyerson spent a decade or so in magazine and book 
  publishing in New York, putting in four years as a writer and 
  editor at Time-Life Books. After freelancing in Europe for a 
  couple of years, he moved to Los Angeles and worked in 
  television and films, developing and producing Welcome Back 
  Kotter. He is currently working on a novel.InterText stories 
  written by Peter Meyerson: "Small Miracles are Better Than None" 
  (v7n2), "Closed Circuit" (v7n4), "A Stray Dog in Spain" (v8n3).



  The Central Mechanism   by Jim Cowan
======================================
....................................................................
  Who's to say that if a challenging truth were revealed to us, 
  we'd deal with it any better than those who came before?
....................................................................

  1.
----

  This is not a science fiction story.

  It's not any kind of story. It's a proof, and when you get to 
  the end you'll see what I mean.

  But let's get started. I'm simply going to write down some 
  things that really happened to me. What's more, I'll tell you 
  what I found on a hard drive at the computer recycling center, 
  some science that makes the Copernican revolution look like a 
  PTA meeting. There's love, hate and death in all this too. When 
  I've finished, you'll see there's no other way for me to get 
  these ideas into your head except to pass the whole thing off as 
  a story. But it's not.

  Anyway, here goes.

  Last Sunday morning I'd slept late after a heavy Saturday night 
  at Trino's. Someone I'd really respected had died last week, 
  pointlessly; I was angry at everything, and I'd drunk even more 
  than usual. Around noon on Sunday I was on my way to the 
  computer recycling center, driving on the four-lane, farting 
  from last night's beer all the way up the hill to where there's 
  the big church at the top, First Church of Something, with one 
  of those signs where the pastor changes the message every week.

  So I'm coming up to the top of the hill and there in the middle 
  of the road is this old geezer -- thin, frail, bent over with 
  his back to me -- placing traffic cones to close off one lane so 
  all the fundamentalists can get out of the church parking lot 
  and home to their Sunday lunch without having to wait for us 
  atheists to pass by.

  I shift down a gear and gun the engine, because these cones make 
  me think about the separation of church and state. The road is 
  state property, right? And I'm a veteran, a guy who was willing 
  to put his life on the line to defend the Constitution, right?

  4500 rpm.

  Now you've gotta understand that a CJ-5 like mine's a real Jeep, 
  not one of these Wranglers that Chrysler passes off as Jeeps 
  today. The old CJ-5's are heavier, more powerful, and mine's got 
  a bikini top to keep the sun off my head because there's nothing 
  worse than a bad sunburn on a bald head. The top's all I need 
  because it's warm year-round down here and you really don't need 
  doors or anything, especially when you're driving an '82 like 
  mine with its torn seats and more mud than carpet on the floor 
  and only a bunch of wires where the radio used to be. The radio 
  got stolen when I was in Atlanta once. There's not much crime 
  around here, unless you count the fight that broke out when a 
  handful of gays and lesbians tried to march in the July 4th 
  parade after the Gulf War and the local patriots in the crowd 
  waded in, threw some punches and stole their flag.

  Anyway, as I get closer to the church and the old geezer I see 
  that this week the church sign says: "Read the Bible: Prevent 
  Truth Decay," and that made me even madder because revelation's 
  not the way to truth and no one had said that better than the 
  man who'd just died.

  I guess I should make things clear right now. I don't like the 
  fundamentalists. The fundamentalist crap that passes for 
  Christianity round here -- faith's the only way to get to 
  heaven, that sort of thing -- is what I don't like. Good works 
  don't count in the Bible Belt. Only faith matters, and I don't 
  like that because faith's the enemy of reason.

  I shifted down another gear. The needle on the tach jerked up 
  toward the red line.

  5500 rpm.

  Faith means you have to believe stuff no normal person would 
  ever believe. Believing two and two make four isn't faith 
  because two and two do make four. Faith's believing two and two 
  make five, which is impossible to believe unless you put your 
  brain in a vat of liquid nitrogen and leave it at the 
  U-Store-U-Lock-U-Keep-the-Key out by the Interstate. Of course, 
  that's why faith's such a big thing. If religious stuff was 
  based on reason there'd be no room for faith, and a lot of 
  people would have to get real jobs.

  The old geezer puts down the last cone and straightens up. I hit 
  the gas.

  6200 rpm.

  The reason I don't like the fundamentalists is that when I was a 
  kid and Mom and me had nothing to eat in the house, all the 
  faith in all the churches in town wasn't much use to us, but a 
  little charity, say a few good works in the shape of some canned 
  goods, sure would have been nice. That's what I mean about faith 
  and good works, and I learned that from my mom when she stood 
  looking at our empty pantry. That was before she got her 
  bookkeeping job at the Chevy dealership. She's been there more 
  than twenty years -- now ain't that something?

  But back to Sunday morning. You've got the picture? The old 
  geezer's closed off one lane with his traffic cones. I'm doing 
  thirty-five, forty, and the tach's red-lined for sure. Then I 
  hit the horn, swerve a little, and take out all the cones, 
  ker-chunk, thwack, ker-chunk, thwack, every last one of 'em, and 
  I almost take out the old geezer too. I hear his yell above the 
  roar of the motor. Nice Doppler shift as I pass real close to 
  him. Very satisfying.

  And when I looked back in the rearview mirror he'd made it to 
  the sidewalk and was standing there clutching at his chest with 
  one hand and shaking his fist at me. I knew he couldn't get my 
  tag number because I do a little off-road driving in the 
  mountains and the mud, and I never, ever, wash the Jeep.

  A white-haired guy ran out of the church parking lot to help 
  him. I only caught a glimpse but right away I recognized Mr. 
  White Hair because I'd taken a seminar from him -- Humanities 
  for Scientists -- compulsory for all us nerds. Mr. White-Hair 
  was Professor William Allan, Dean of Arts and Science at South 
  Tennessee State which is where I go to school.

  I wasn't surprised to see him. Allan's a deacon or something at 
  that church.

  At school he's a rigid tyrant, humiliating students and so on. 
  He's so mean that someone started a malicious rumor that he's 
  gay. That was probably a student he'd flunked, but it could've 
  been someone on the faculty because Allan's made enemies there 
  too, not least because he's chair of the school's Publications 
  Committee. Or maybe it was just some guy he'd slept with. 
  (Snicker.)

  Sorry about the "snicker." I usually write e-mail, not 
  literature. Which reminds me that before we get started with the 
  real stuff I should tell you a little about me, in case you get 
  the idea that I'm some kind of a nut. My name is Carl Edwards 
  and I'm twenty-five years old, a graduate of our own Davy 
  Crockett High School and the U.S. Army. Don't ask about the Army 
  -- that was only so I'd have the money to go to school, which I 
  got, and now I'm a computer science major right here at STSU.

  Let me tell you a little more about my good side, so you 
  understand I'm not just a guy whose idea of a good time is to 
  flatten traffic cones on a Sunday morning. You know about SETI? 
  The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence? Radio telescopes 
  scanning the sky, looking for signals from alien civilizations? 
  Frank Drake started it years ago, using the big radio telescope 
  at Green Bank, West Virginia, and now lots of people have tried. 
  No one's found a signal yet -- nothing but noise from the sky.

  One problem is there's a lot of sky. Another is no one knows 
  what frequency aliens might choose to transmit to us. So there's 
  a lot of sky and a lot of bandwidth to cover, but the biggest 
  problem is that there's no funding.

  SETI's expensive. A state-of-the-art search would cost about as 
  much as, say, one attack helicopter. In other words, it's not 
  _that_ expensive. The problem's that most people, especially 
  people in control, don't want to hear about nonhuman 
  intelligence. It might be more intelligent than them and that's 
  threatening, and then there's quite a few fundamentalists in 
  Congress who say there's no point in looking because the Bible 
  doesn't mention life anywhere else except on Earth and the Bible 
  can't be wrong. At least that's what Dean Professor William 
  Allan told us in his seminar right after the big debate last 
  year on creation science and evolution.

  Anyway, the point is there's a lot of data to analyze, billions 
  and billions, so to speak, (except Carl Sagan never said that 
  until after Saturday Night Live made fun of him for saying it) 
  and there's no money to do the job.

  This is where I fit in. I'm part of this project on the Internet 
  where you download free software that runs on your PC as a 
  screen saver and analyzes SETI data while your computer's doing 
  nothing else. When you've finished your chunk of data you upload 
  your results and download another few megabytes of signals from 
  the skies and off you go again for a week or two. With thousands 
  of people doing this all over the planet, you get the processing 
  power of a supercomputer for free. Clever, huh? Anyway, I'm 
  running this software, and I'm telling you this so you can see 
  that I'm not some kind of a nerd. I'm a truly social being, 
  doing my bit for the community just like everyone else.

  Sure, maybe I won't be the one to find the first signal buried 
  in the hiss of the galactic background noise. But I know, I 
  absolutely know for sure, that sooner or later someone will.

  How do I know? Well, not because little gray men landed their 
  flying saucer outside my mom's house and came into my bedroom 
  and performed sexual experiments on me while I was asleep. It's 
  what I found on the hard drive. What was on that drive changes 
  absolutely everything.

  For example, it settles the church and state thing once and for 
  all, but not in the way you'd think. I know, I absolutely know 
  for sure that there's no separation between church and state.

  If any fundamentalists have read this far, which I doubt: Don't 
  you get all worked up and say, "I told you so!" I've got to warn 
  you, you're not going to like what I'm going to tell you one 
  tiny bit. Not only does my stuff remove you wackos from the 
  center of the universe once and for all, it's so much more 
  elegant, more beautiful, more complete, that there's no 
  absolutely no doubt at all that I'm right.

  Here's another fact about me, sort of a personal note so you'll 
  see I'm a real person. I like to roll up a paper towel or some 
  other scratchy tissue at one corner, making something like a 
  very thin cone, and stick it in my ear to clean out the wax. I 
  love the way the tissue scrapes against the hairs inside my ear 
  canal. You should try it; it feels real good so long as you 
  don't jam the paper in too far and hit your eardrum.

  So now you know everything about me and you can tell this is not 
  a story made up by some writer, because no writer would ever 
  think of mentioning earwax in a story about physics.

  Bet you thought you'd caught me there, but that last line was 
  just a trick. Like I said, this is not a story. But it _is_ 
  about physics. So let's get on back to Sunday.

  The computer recycling center's in our dying downtown, between a 
  pawn shop and the water-heater factory. Across the street 
  there's a topless bar, but I don't like that sort of thing. The 
  building's an old machine shop, a high ceiling, and ten thousand 
  square feet of space with windows all down one side that look 
  out over the parking lot where the men who make the water 
  heaters park their pickup trucks.

  It's a charity founded by Rose, the wife of the 
  local-area-network supervisor at STSU. She's short, with mousy 
  hair and a bad perm, and lips that remind me of a chimp -- not 
  that I'd tell her that to her face. She and her husband Thaddeus 
  are members of the ACLU, Amnesty International, the Sierra Club 
  and so on, not that they make a big thing of it. I met Thad at 
  school and he introduced me to Rose. Like Thad, Rose's an 
  atheist and so for Rose good works are everything. Thad's a 
  mountain man, respectful and sharp, with a big beard, and the 
  ability to tell truth from fiction that comes from spending a 
  childhood in the high hills, away from civilization, and always 
  knowing that, if civilization doesn't suit him, he can go right 
  back to his little farm in the mountains any time he likes.

  I go to the center one or two evenings a week and late on Sunday 
  mornings. People bring in their old computers and we give them a 
  receipt so they can take a tax deduction for a thousand dollars, 
  which no one in their right mind would ever really pay them for 
  their junk. We test each component -- motherboard, memory chips, 
  video card, drive controller and drives, sound card if there is 
  one, keyboard and monitor if the machine came in with them. We 
  strip out whatever's broken, cannibalize other machines and 
  stick in what we need to assemble a working computer. I learned 
  how to do all this in the Army.

  OK, so you've only got a 486-33 with 8 MB of RAM, and not a 
  Pentium 200 with 128 MB, but to some kid who lives in the 
  hollers out past County Line Road, or down by the brick works, a 
  486-33 looks pretty good when the alternative is nothing. We 
  give a few away to organizations too, not-for-profits. All they 
  do is word-processing and maybe run Quicken, and what we've got 
  is fine for that and you can't beat the price.

  I gave the animal shelter a real nice old laser printer last 
  week. People don't spay and neuter here in the sticks; they 
  think it's cruel, or against God's will or something, so the 
  shelter puts down eight thousand strays a year by injecting the 
  blue death into their veins. The shelter's out on Reservoir 
  Road, on the way to the dump, and they need all the help they 
  can get. My mom volunteers at the shelter, that's how I know 
  this stuff. Sometimes I help her and take the dogs for a walk. 
  They love it. They're such social animals.

  Now that I think about it, so am I. What with SETI and computer 
  recycling and scooping poop at the animal shelter, I do a lot 
  for our society.

  Anyway, that Sunday morning, feeling a little better after 
  trashing the cones, I arrive at the center and Rose says to me, 
  "Hi Carl. STSU sent us a machine at the end of the week. Check 
  it out. They said it's a Pentium."

  As I mentioned, we got old machines, even 286s.

  "Why'd anyone give us a Pentium?" I said. "Particularly the 
  state." We almost never get anything from the state. They have 
  strict rules about getting rid of unwanted state property.

  "I dunno, honey," Rose said. "But I'd really appreciate you just 
  checking it out for me."

  I started right away because I had my own reasons for wanting to 
  examine this surprising Pentium very, very, carefully. There 
  wasn't any monitor or keyboard, just this case that didn't have 
  a scratch on it. I took off the cover and yes, there was a 
  Pentium processor on the motherboard. After plugging in a power 
  cable, spare keyboard and the best monitor we had in the center 
  at the time, I switched on the machine.

  Turning on the computer told me that the power supply, video 
  card, motherboard and memory were all intact. Then the machine 
  sat there, doing nothing -- I didn't even get a C:> prompt. 
  Someone had deleted everything on the hard drive. Not that 
  that's unusual on the machines we get. In fact, that's what you 
  should do, and more, otherwise you might as well leave your 
  filing cabinet in the street for anyone to poke around in.

  That's because computers only delete a drive's File Allocation 
  Table, or FAT, so that they can't find any deleted files -- but 
  all those files are still on the disk until you write something 
  else on top of them. It's like ripping the table of contents 
  from a book and thinking you've destroyed the whole book. Lots 
  of utilities will recreate the FAT for you, (actually there's a 
  second copy of the FAT, so usually it's real easy) and then you 
  can recover them all.

  I booted DOS from a floppy and inspected the hard drive to see 
  what was on it. Nothing. Then I stuck in another disk and ran an 
  Undelete utility. Sure enough, there were thousands of deleted 
  files on the hard drive, waiting to be undeleted.

  "Everything OK?" Rose asked.

  "I'm not sure about the hard drive," I said, stalling. "Give me 
  a few more minutes." She had to go out to Radio Shack to get 
  some connectors or something, and while she was out I ripped out 
  the hard drive and stuck it in the Jeep. I installed the biggest 
  drive I could find from our stock of drives we'd taken from 
  otherwise useless machines, installed Windows 95 and finished 
  the rest of the tests. The machine was in perfect condition, 
  ready to be shipped out to some lucky person. I left a note for 
  Rose that said the machine was OK now, that I was taking the 
  drive home to run some more tests on it, and went home. I needed 
  more time, and some privacy, for what I had in mind.

  My room at home's real neat, just like in the army. There's a 
  single bed and a big desk with my computer, a really fast 
  Pentium with a huge hard drive and lots of memory. I keep 
  everything else either in the desk drawers, or my filing 
  cabinet, or the shelves. My clothes are in the closet at the end 
  of the hall, next to Mom's room.

  You can tell a real geek right away because the case is always 
  off his computer. Too many screws to fiddle with when you know 
  you'll be opening the thing up again in an hour or two to tweak 
  something else. In five minutes I had the new drive hooked up. 
  Then I copied the contents of the STSU drive to my own giant 
  hard drive. Inside my computer was the soul, or at least the 
  mind, of the other computer.

  I reformatted the STSU drive to _really_ destroy everything on 
  it, and dropped it off at the center the next day and told Rose 
  it was working fine.

  Did I steal anything? If so, what? You worry about that if you 
  want to, but while you're worrying I'm going to fill you in on a 
  few things that happened a year ago.

  Last fall the Philosophy Department sponsored a big public 
  debate on Evolution. One of the young faculty wanted to chew up 
  and spit out a creation scientist. Over a thousand people 
  showed. A stage was set up at one end of the gym. There were 
  tables and water pitchers for the speakers, that sort of thing. 
  The rest of the gym floor was covered with chairs and there were 
  microphones in the two aisles for the audience.

  I got a seat on an aisle, close to one of the mikes. The crowd 
  filled the bleachers too, and everything was very bright under 
  the arc lights they use for basketball games. Actually, the 
  whole thing was a lot like a basketball game because the 
  audience came strictly to root for one side or the other. I 
  doubt all the arguing changed anyone's opinion, but that's how 
  people are. The debate was the usual stuff. The creationist's 
  main argument, coupled with some bad science, was that 
  evolution's not proven, it's only a theory. The philosopher 
  moved slowly and methodically, destroying the creationist's 
  arguments, but the whole thing was a little tedious.

  There's more people from up north moving into this city, what 
  with the high-tech corridor out by the airport and the big malls 
  that've killed the downtown, so the crowd was pretty evenly 
  split. We heard all about radiocarbon dating, the fossil record, 
  and the inerrancy of the Bible, but it wasn't really a debate, 
  just two people talking different languages: reason and faith.

  Toward the end of the evening a man came up to one of the public 
  mikes. He was in his early thirties, blond and with a very neat 
  mustache. He had the slightly exaggerated features of a movie 
  star, but everything was just a little crooked, so while he was 
  no use to Hollywood, he did have a peculiar charm that was good 
  enough for the real world.

  "I'm a scientist," the man said. "In science, all knowledge is 
  tentative. Everything is a theory until a better idea comes 
  along. Then we use the better idea. So by definition we're 
  skeptics and we agree with the creationists when they say the 
  theory of evolution will be history when someone comes up with 
  something better. But I have a question for those who believe in 
  creation. If something better came along, would you agree that 
  creationism is wrong? In other words, are you willing, at least 
  in theory, to change your beliefs?"

  Of course, that was the end of their masquerade as scientists. 
  He had them, and the audience knew it. The fundamentalists were 
  real quiet while the rest of us laughed and then cheered. Some 
  other people from the audience had to have their say on one side 
  or the other, but really the evening was over after this man 
  asked his rhetorical question. I asked the coed sitting next to 
  me who he was. "Tom Thomas, from the Department of Physics. 
  Isn't he cute?" He was, and I decided on the spot to sign up for 
  one of his classes after Christmas.

  On the way out I passed Dean Allan talking to the comptroller, 
  Stott, a thin man, a fundamentalist, who did a lot of Allan's 
  dirty work for him around the campus. That's how Allan exercised 
  a lot of his power, through the budget process. Allan was 
  saying, "Before I believe in evolution, Our Lord Jesus Christ 
  will have to come down from Heaven Himself and tell me the Bible 
  is wrong."

  Stott nodded sympathetically. Allan knew a lot of the state 
  Regents who make all the senior administrative appointments in 
  the state schools and Stott knew that Allan knew the Regents and 
  that's why Stott... well, you and I know that's how things work.

  As for Jesus telling Allan the Bible was wrong, well, it could 
  happen, I thought to myself, and hoped I would be there to see 
  Allan's face when it did. I said nothing of course, just smirked 
  in the darkness on my way to the Jeep. If I was testifying in 
  court and you asked me to describe Allan's mood that night, I 
  would say he was very, very angry. Why? Because the night's rout 
  of the creationists had been allowed to happen on his turf.

  But then, he was an angry man. Anyone who's the deacon of a 
  church that sponsors a hell-house on Halloween and shows kids a 
  coffin with a body inside it that's supposed to be a gay man who 
  died of AIDS ain't filled with charity. Someone told me Allan 
  said that Christianity wasn't about tolerance, it was about sin, 
  and the Bible said homosexuality was perverse, wrong.

  Did you know that the first Halloween hell-house was in Roswell, 
  New Mexico? Right where that UFO was supposed to have crashed in 
  1947. Does that mean anything? I don't think so, but I'm always 
  on the lookout for coincidences.

  No matter. I registered for Tom Thomas's most popular class: 
  Overview of Twentieth-Century Physics for Non-Physicists. It was 
  held in a sterile room with painted gray cinder block walls and 
  a wall-to-wall blackboard at the front. Tom strode back and 
  forth, tossing a piece of chalk in his hand. He wore chinos and 
  a gray turtleneck and he moved his trim body in way that 
  suggested he was fit and well-muscled.

  "There's physics," he said, "and then there's the rest of 
  science."

  Physics was all about matter and energy, space and time, the 
  stuff from which the universe is made. Chemistry, biology and so 
  on were all derived from the principles of physics. Understand 
  physics and you could compute the rest of science, at least in 
  theory, and if you believed that mind was nothing more than a 
  manifestation of certain complex arrangements of matter such as 
  the human brain then you could explain everything, if only you 
  knew your physics. Of course, it might take a few billion years 
  to derive, say, the total subjective experience of a Rolling 
  Stones concert from first principles of quantum mechanics and 
  general relativity, but the class got the idea.

  The problem, as Tom explained in that first class, was that 
  physics was obviously incomplete, which is a nice way to say 
  that current knowledge is not quite right. The two great 
  theories of the twentieth century -- quantum mechanics and 
  general relativity -- were contradictory and, especially in the 
  case of quantum mechanics, incomprehensible. Quantum mechanics 
  works, but what does it mean? Energy is a wave that spreads to 
  fill the whole universe -- or it's a particle confined to a tiny 
  region of space. Which one it is depends on the experiment you 
  choose to do. An electron may or may not be in a particular 
  place. It's not anywhere until you do an experiment and find it. 
  And when you find it, you might instantaneously affect another 
  electron at the other end of the galaxy.

  The most tested theory in the history of science, correct to ten 
  decimal places, reduces the world to a series of random events 
  that require a conscious observer to know what really happened 
  and seem to be linked instantaneously to other events somewhere 
  else.

  Tom ended the class with a quotation from the physicist Wigner: 
  "It is not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics 
  without reference to the consciousness.... The very study of the 
  external world led to the conclusion that the content of the 
  consciousness is the ultimate reality." At the time, I didn't 
  pick up on Tom's burning interest in this last phrase.


  2.
----

  Later, Tom talked about the other great enigma of twentieth 
  century physics, the appearance of order in the universe. Chaos 
  gives rise to simple systems and simple systems engender more 
  complex systems. "While you're walking down to your local bar on 
  a starry night, look up at the sky and wonder. You're looking 
  back in time, to when the universe was nothing but clouds of hot 
  gas, and when you get to the bar, go inside and look around." He 
  laughed. "You might think you've moved from order to chaos, but 
  you've just seen how the universe has evolved from the random 
  movements of atoms in ancient clouds of gas into wonderful, 
  intricate life. It's moved from blind chaos to beautiful 
  complexity." He taught physics as if he was a poet, which he 
  was. He was a poet of science, and I loved him for it.

  Trino's. That's where I really got to know Tom Thomas. In a bar. 
  I'm not talking about the topless bar across from the recycling 
  center, I'm talking about _our_ bar. Straights ignore Trino's. 
  Trino's is where the gay community struggled with what to do 
  about AIDS in the early eighties, where they planned the Great 
  July 4th Parade-In of 1991, where they went to drink after the 
  big fight over the flag. Trino's is the one place in town where 
  we can be ourselves. Not that it's a leather bar or anything 
  like the bars they have in Atlanta; it's just an ordinary 
  neighborhood bar except the people in there are gay and lesbian.

  Anyway, that's where I really got to know Tom, and now he's 
  dead, hit-and-run in the early morning while he was out running 
  on a country road. A random event, atoms banging together in a 
  primeval cloud of gas.

  I didn't have class on Monday afternoons that semester, so I 
  spent the afternoon in my room, examining the contents of the 
  hard drive. There were twenty thousand files on the drive, a lot 
  of stuff, but most of it was routine -- word-processor files, 
  calculations and graphs, letters, papers, quizzes and tests, the 
  sort of thing any professor has on their drive, archives of 
  articles from the online versions of Physical Reviews, and 
  several folders crammed with shareware utilities that claim to 
  make work easier but in most cases aren't really necessary. And 
  there were two folders that turned out to be very important. One 
  was named PGP and the other QC.

  PGP first. I knew what was in there, of course. Pretty Good 
  Privacy is an encryption program written by a guy called Phil 
  Zimmerman who arranged to have it made available for free on the 
  Internet and the Feds threatened to prosecute him for exporting 
  munitions. So you get the idea -- it's a dynamite piece of 
  software. That's all you need to know about how well this 
  program works, but if you're a geek like me, then you'll want to 
  know exactly how it does work.

  The basic idea's simple. Get a very large prime number, multiply 
  it by another very large prime number and you get a very, very 
  large number that has only two factors. You can use these three 
  numbers to create two related keys for encrypting messages. You 
  make one key public and tell everyone to use it when they send 
  you e-mail, and you keep the other key very, very secret because 
  that is the only way anyone can decrypt messages encrypted with 
  the public key. This is important -- you can't decrypt messages 
  with the public key, only the private key. If you make the keys 
  large enough, there isn't enough computing power on the whole 
  planet to break the code because the only way to find the 
  factors of a very, very large number, I mean one with thousands 
  of digits, is to do billions and billions of divisions, which 
  would take years, decades, or even centuries. So PGP isn't 
  unbreakable; it's actually easy to see how to break it, but 
  breaking it takes an impossibly long time.

  Now imagine this in the hands of terrorists. That's why PGP 
  looked like a munition to the government. Of course, the 
  mathematics was available to anyone. Anyone, anywhere, could 
  have cobbled together some code and do what Phil Zimmerman did. 
  Once an idea's out there, it's out there. But more later of the 
  idea that ideas that are out there have a life of their own. Now 
  back to Tom.

  In class Tom mentioned the importance of consciousness in 
  physics, but it was in Trino's that he explained to me just why, 
  in Wigner's words, "The content of consciousness is the ultimate 
  reality."

  As usual, he began with a story.

  "Once, when I was a graduate student in New York," he said, "I 
  was invited to a party to celebrate a christening in an Italian 
  family. It was a wet Sunday in November and the party was a big 
  one in a big house on Long Island. In addition to the baby, who 
  played a very small role in the party, there was a pianist, a 
  student from Juliard, who played the piano in a room at one end 
  of the house with lots of windows that looked over the garden. 
  He played all through the party, effortlessly. After an hour or 
  so, and few glasses of wine, the men in the family gathered 
  round the piano and started to sing. They sang to celebrate the 
  baby and their family, and as an affirmation that they were 
  alive. They sang alone and they sang together, they sang Italian 
  folk songs and operatic arias in Italian and Spanish about 
  pretty girls and love and longing and sadness and joy. It was a 
  celebration of their past and a recognition of the uncertainty 
  and the promise of the future. I sat by one of the tall windows 
  and the men's voices filled the seamless space around me and 
  inside me and I thought about quantum mechanics."

  I must have laughed because he said, "That's not as ridiculous 
  as it sounds. At moments like that, which are the most wonderful 
  moments of life, there is an overwhelming sense of belonging, of 
  oneness, of wholeness, and these are glimpses of the ultimate 
  underlying reality. There are tantalizing hints of that unity in 
  quantum mechanics. For instance, Bells' Theorem describes a 
  fundamentally new kind of togetherness, undiminished by spatial 
  or temporal separation, a mingling of distant things, a mingling 
  that reaches instantly across the galaxy as forcefully as it 
  reaches across a sodden garden or across a room. The mathematics 
  is such that, even when we replace quantum mechanics with a 
  deeper understanding of reality, Bells' supraluminal non-local 
  reality will survive because this is truly the way things are." 
  This was the first time I realized that Tom was working on 
  something to replace quantum mechanics, the theory that was 
  almost right.

  "In quantum mechanics, there is no reality until reality is 
  measured by someone. The idea that there's nothing there until 
  an intelligent ape from a small planet at the edge of one of ten 
  trillion galaxies makes a measurement is a foolish idea. Someone 
  or something else is watching, observing, making measurements 
  all the time. That's why there's a reality in the first place."

  Abruptly, he changed focus. "In San Francisco, the cable cars 
  are pulled up and down the hills by cables that run in a slot 
  under the street. The machinery to drive all the cables is in a 
  single building called the Cable Car Barn. You can go there and 
  look down on the machinery from the tourist balcony. You see 
  motors and huge pulleys, cables are sliding through the air, the 
  place smells of oil and ozone, and the loud hum of the mechanism 
  tells you that everything's working perfectly, that miles away 
  the cars are climbing California Street or rattling down to 
  Ghirardelli Square.

  "But the universe is not like the Cable Car Barn. John Wheeler, 
  who was a physicist with a remarkable imagination, said that 
  there is no such thing as the glittering central mechanism of 
  the universe to be seen behind a glass wall. `Not machinery, but 
  magic, may be the treasure that is waiting.' Well, Carl, I 
  intend to find that central magical mechanism."

  That's when he told me he'd already written a paper, a 
  speculative essay, on the role of consciousness in science. This 
  paper was the real start of the conflict with Dean Allan, chair 
  of the university's Publications Committee.

  Tom's basic idea was simple. Quantum mechanics has no meaning 
  without a conscious observer; in general relativity each 
  conscious observer interprets time and space differently. The 
  universe is moving from chaos to complexity, from matter to 
  mind, and mind is an essential part of the two great theories of 
  physics. That was his first point.

  He pointed out next that truth and beauty seem to have a life of 
  their own in the two worlds of science and of art. Both truth 
  and beauty are intrinsic, and essential, to the human 
  experience, but science has nothing formal to say about beauty 
  and art has nothing formal to say about truth, although science 
  is beautiful and the best art is truthful.

  Finally, he said, scientists -- biologists, physicists, 
  philosophers -- were all skirting around the issue of 
  consciousness. They wanted to deal with its central role but 
  couldn't address it because they had no clear hypothesis to 
  test, no research agenda to pursue. Tom wanted to propose a 
  hypothesis that would link physics and biology and philosophy 
  and everything else. Here's his argument:

  The universe is made of quanta of matter/energy and space/time. 
  That's all there is. Tiny bits of inanimate stuff. And a couple 
  of force fields -- gravity and another field that may be a 
  combination of electromagnetism and some other forces that work 
  within the nucleus. "Here we are, squishy molecular machinery 
  made of atoms that are themselves merely twists in the fabric of 
  space-time; we're assembled and fuelled by the energy of 
  sunlight, which is rain of massless photons; and from the ground 
  we stand on comes a tide of neutrinos that has swept through the 
  earth as if it didn't exist. Out of this flux of nothingness 
  comes the realization that, say, E=mc^2, and this knowledge is 
  beautiful. Where does this thought come from? There has to be 
  more to this than random torrents of energy surging pointlessly 
  through space and time.

  "Our theories are wrong," said Tom. "Incomplete because our 
  assumptions are incomplete. There is more to the basic stuff of 
  the universe that matter/energy and space/time and a couple of 
  forces. Each quantum of stuff has more than mass/energy and 
  location/momentum, it also has a quantum of consciousness." This 
  simple idea, which Tom called his Theory of Quantum 
  Consciousness, cast a lot of problems in a new light.

  Right away, you're probably thinking this is a load of bull, but 
  bear with me. You're going to see that this idea is not as dumb 
  as it sounds.

  First of all, quanta of consciousness, like quanta of matter, 
  energy, electrical charge and magnetism, are so small that you 
  don't notice them on a daily basis. You're totally unaware of 
  the single charge on an electron, but when you're hit by 
  lightning, the charge on a few trillion electrons gets your 
  attention.

  So the quantum of consciousness associated with every elementary 
  particle is way too small to notice. But these quanta combine in 
  subtle ways and Tom proposed some properties that characterized 
  the combination of quanta of consciousness. Here's the whole 
  proposition as he might have scribbled it on the back of an 
  envelope at Trino's:

* There is a quantum of consciousness associated with every 
  quantum particle in the universe.

* The existence of the action of quantum consciousness between 
  two elementary particles is independent of the distance between 
  the particles.

* The strength of the action of quantum consciousness in a 
  system is proportional to the number of connections between the 
  quantum elements of that system (actually, it's proportional to 
  the factorial of this number, which when you're talking about 
  neurons in a mammalian brain quickly gets to be a really big 
  number), and inversely proportional to the geometric mean of the 
  distance between the particles.

* The sum of consciousness in the universe increases with time.

  The first axiom sets the stage, and later Tom showed how this 
  assumption solved the observer problem in quantum mechanics. 
  Simply put, there's no need for an experimental observer because 
  the universe is observing itself all the time. The second 
  addresses the non-local nature of reality required by Bell's 
  Theorem. The third explains why a rock about the size of your 
  fist, which has about the same number of atoms as say the brain 
  of a dog, appears to be dead while the dog is obviously alive, 
  intelligent, and conscious. The atoms in the rock are arranged 
  in a regular, repetitive crystalline structure, while the atoms 
  in a dog's brain are arranged into intricate cells called 
  neurons which are themselves arranged in an extremely complex 
  interconnected array. The rock is conscious, but not noticeably 
  so, and certainly much less so than the dog.

  For the same reason the Earth and its biosphere, which are 
  certainly intricate mechanisms, are conscious, but not as 
  obviously conscious as a dog. Quantum consciousness falls off 
  with distance (third axiom) and the Earth is not connected 
  enough, yet, for an object that big to demonstrate consciousness 
  to the only detector we have at the moment, which is the human 
  brain.

  The fourth axiom, which parallels the Second Law of 
  Thermodynamics but in a less depressing way, explains why the 
  universe is evolving from the chaotic motion of hot gas after 
  the Big Bang into galaxies, stars, planets, and ever more 
  complex forms of life. Consciousness is not conserved, like 
  matter or energy. No, consciousness increases over time, like 
  entropy. In other words, quantum consciousness is the life-force 
  in the universe.

  Now if you have any understanding of the minds of people who are 
  heavily invested in organized religion, you will see that these 
  ideas are very threatening.

  The first axiom is a statement of pantheism. Every thing in the 
  universe is more than a dead piece of matter; every atom, every 
  quantum particle, has some small element of mind. Aquinas' 
  separation of body and soul, of the world and spirit, and 
  science's parallel separation of matter and mind, are all 
  eliminated. There is no division between Earth and Heaven. There 
  is no meaningful separation of church and state.

  The third axiom places all objects on a continuum of being. Some 
  are more complex, more intricate, more conscious than others, 
  but they are not different kinds of things, they are different 
  only in degree. We are all part of the same seamless stuff. So 
  much for prejudice based on species, race, gender, sexual 
  orientation, so much for the exploitation of animals and the 
  non-animal natural world, and so on. The special place 
  Judeo-Christianity claims for humans is eliminated by this third 
  axiom.

  The last axiom brings purpose to the universe and it also 
  subsumes morality and aesthetics into physics. This purpose and 
  morality is not laid on the universe from Heaven or somewhere, 
  the purpose of the universe is embedded in the material of the 
  universe. All you need to know is right here, right now. You 
  just need to pay close attention to the universe and work hard 
  to figure out exactly what you should do.

  For example, killing is wrong because it reduces the total 
  consciousness in the universe, and killing an intelligent being 
  is more wrong than killing a cabbage, which is probably 
  necessary in the big scheme of things, but in practice there is 
  no absolute good, just this tension between different choices. 
  That's why life's not easy.

  Diversity is good because it promotes complexity, which in turn 
  increases the total consciousness, but some organization is 
  needed to get anything done. That's why nature's organized life 
  into species instead of billions of unrelated creatures. In the 
  same vein, morality's no longer a matter of debate. At least in 
  principle, morality can be derived from the four axioms of 
  quantum consciousness. (Don't get excited -- this is about as 
  difficult as deriving the total experience of a Rolling Stones 
  concert from quantum mechanics.)

  Quantum Consciousness links physics to the biological sciences, 
  the humanities, and all human activity. Suddenly, we find 
  ourselves living in a universe governed by a set of rules that 
  work to arrange and rearrange mind and matter into ever-more 
  complex, intricate mental and physical structures.


  3.
----

  Now this is not the kind of stuff Dean William Allan wanted to 
  hear and he used his position as Chair of the Publications 
  Committee to make sure that Tom's heretical ideas would never 
  see the light of day.

  Perhaps I should explain why STSU has a Publications Committee 
  that can prevent faculty from publishing. STSU's a small school 
  and some of the faculty are, well, marginal. Some are really 
  good, like Tom, some are bright enough but perhaps a little 
  crazy, and others are plain dumb. The school had been 
  embarrassed on several occasions by articles that caused 
  merriment and even ridicule in regional or national academic 
  circles, and after this had happened three or four times the 
  president decided enough was enough, to hell with academic 
  freedom, and set up the Publications Committee with Dean Allan 
  in the chair and instructed the committee to make sure that 
  nothing went out of the university unless it was of academic 
  merit according to this internal process of peer review.

  Allan was a powerful man, well-connected in Nashville and a 
  close friend of our Neanderthal Congressman, a friendship that 
  effectively neutered the president of the university.

  Big bucks flowed to the school as a result of Allan's 
  relationships and Allan, working through Stott, controlled the 
  flow of those dollars inside the school. The younger, untenured 
  faculty feared Allan because he could destroy their careers, and 
  the most of the tenured profs kept out of his way because, as 
  someone said, "Does Allan work for the university, or does the 
  university work for Allan?"

  To be fair, Allan did a good job for the school, bringing in the 
  money for buildings, new programs, and that most valuable 
  commodity for politicians: jobs. Anyway, you get the picture. 
  Dean Allan loved his role as the Torquemada of STSU's academic 
  inquisition and, like Torquemada, Allan thought his work was for 
  a greater good, so I suppose he isn't evil, just horribly wrong.

  Before the committee met, Tom told Allan he was trying to reveal 
  the spirit in the world. "I thought he would like that, but he 
  wasn't impressed."

  The committee was not impressed either when Tom explained, "I'm 
  trying to bridge the gap between mind and spirit."

  We heard later the discussion was perfunctory after Tom left the 
  room. They nixed the paper on the superficially reasonable 
  grounds that it was pure speculation and contained absolutely no 
  data at all.

  Tom was stopped in his tracks at this point, but still 
  optimistic. "I'm already working on the mathematics of the 
  theory. In a few months I should have a rigorous formulation of 
  the four principles and then I'll be able to propose some 
  experimental verifications. With a little luck, I'll even have 
  some experimental evidence myself. I may be able to test the 
  basic ideas with the equipment we have here."

  So, like Galileo, Tom was accused of heresy and told to cease 
  and desist and placed under the modern academic equivalent of 
  house arrest.

  Allan was no fool. He knew that Tom's paper was dynamite. I 
  heard on the grapevine that he described Tom's theory as "a 
  heresy worthy of the Anti-Christ" and what with the millennium 
  coming up, he probably really believed that Tom was in the grip 
  of supernatural forces. So Allan's job as a state employee, and 
  as a self-appointed employee of God, was to stop Tom.

  Despite the Publications Committee's embargo, Tom did get some 
  feedback from the physics community. Physicists have been wired 
  for longer than almost anyone else and they share their work 
  online as what they call "preprints," draft papers posted on 
  bulletin boards coordinated out of the Los Alamos National 
  Laboratory and mirrored at several other academic sites. Other 
  scientists comment on the preprint and help the authors refine 
  their work. If you're interested, you can find preprints at 
  places like <http://npl.kyy.nitech.ac.jp/prepserv.html>.

  Tom discussed the preprint idea with me. "It's not real 
  publication," he said.

  I agreed. "Sort of a discussion with colleagues, refining your 
  work. The Publications Committee didn't say you couldn't discuss 
  your work with a few other professional physicists."

  "Exactly." So he posted a preprint. The response was 
  overwhelming, and very similar to Dean Allan's comment. 
  "Speculation unsupported by even a quantum of data," was one of 
  the nicer comments Tom got in his e-mail.

  "I was too material for Dean Allan and now I'm too spiritual for 
  the physicists. This means I must be right," he joked. He knew 
  he was bridging the void between heaven and earth, crossing the 
  line between mind and matter, and that no one really understood 
  what he was trying to do.

  It was the e-mail that tipped Allan off that Tom had posted his 
  paper in an obscure corner of the Internet. The Dean said he'd 
  found the preprint on the Net himself, but we didn't believe 
  him. I suppose he could have searched the Net for Tom's name but 
  when I asked Thad, "Has the Dean been reading faculty e-mail?" 
  Thad told me, "E-mail on the state's network belongs to the 
  state. Whoever owns the system owns the mail. There's no 
  privacy. That's the law. Not that the ACLU agrees with it." 
  Thad's a very honest person, and he answered my question without 
  betraying his employer's confidence. I like Thad.

  Tom was called in and given a written warning that any future 
  breaches of the university's policies on publication would 
  result in dismissal.

  So his work was rejected at both ends of the spectrum, by the 
  religious right and by the supposedly dispassionate scientific 
  community. "I'm certainly scaring people," was his laconic 
  comment after the break-in at his office. "Who said that science 
  advances funeral by funeral?"

  I didn't know, but whoever it was, was right. "You'll just have 
  to wait until all the crusty old men with gravy on their ties 
  die off." But Tom wouldn't wait.

  The break-in was the reason that Tom was using PGP, that and the 
  discovery that the Dean was reading Tom's e-mail. Nothing was 
  stolen from the office, but Tom knew someone had turned on his 
  computer at three in the morning because he had a shareware 
  program running in the background that logged his activity on 
  the machine, and in the log were thirty minutes of use when Tom 
  knew, and I knew, he wasn't at work because we were in bed 
  together in his apartment. So he downloaded the shareware 
  version of PGP and encrypted his work on Quantum Consciousness. 
  His public key was stored on a server on the Internet. Most 
  people store their private keys on their own computer because 
  PGP's really meant to encrypt messages on a network so people 
  who intercept a message on the network can't read it. Tom told 
  me he wasn't going to keep his private key on his machine 
  because his problem was not interception on a network, it was 
  illicit access to his machine. Anyone who turned on the machine 
  would be able to get his private key. "I'm going to keep it on 
  floppy and take it home with me at night."

  His work was in the QC folder of course, and this was what I was 
  looking for as soon as the Pentium came into the center.

  I couldn't follow the mathematics of what he was doing. In fact, 
  he never even showed me the math because I wouldn't have 
  understood it, and he had invented some of it himself anyway, 
  but I can give you an outline.

  Einstein asked himself the question, "What would things look 
  like if I was riding on a beam of light?" and from this question 
  developed his special relativity description of gravitation. 
  Special relativity completely subsumed Newton's three-hundred 
  year-old explanation of the motion of the moon even though 
  Einstein started from a totally different premise from Newton 
  and his apple.

  In the same way, Tom was starting from an idea of such 
  breathtaking novelty that it's hard to talk about it clearly. 
  Nevertheless, he developed a mathematical model of his ideas.

  Last Wednesday, less than a week ago, he came into Trino's and 
  sat down across the table and said, "It works!" What he meant 
  was that he had been able to formulate Quantum Consciousness in 
  mathematics and from the mathematics he could derive the 
  equations of Quantum Mechanics and of General Relativity. "If 
  the math holds up to scrutiny then this is Wheeler's glittering 
  central mechanism, and he was right -- it's not machinery, it's 
  magic. It breathes life into the universe, this is the fire 
  hidden in the equations, this is spirit moving on the waters."

  Along the way, he told me, he'd had to invent what he called 
  "some novel mathematics." Then he started talking about how the 
  universe was evolving. "With every particle tingling with its 
  tiny charge of consciousness, destined to play a role in the 
  evolution of the universe, no matter what we do, no matter how 
  evil we are, in the end we cannot oppose the relentless, 
  universal force that is transforming mere matter into mind. Yes, 
  we have free will and we can to choose to work with the universe 
  or against it, and evil actions will slow down the 
  transformation of matter into mind, but we cannot stop the 
  process nor prevent the final outcome. In the end, when the 
  universe is complete, it will understand itself perfectly."

  "Mmm," I said, struggling with ideas about perfect understanding 
  and God, and about some heresy I'd heard in which God himself is 
  evolving, and so is his understanding of creation. That's if you 
  believe in God, which I don't. But Tom was rattling on.

  "Now here's a fascinating thing that's fallen out of the math. 
  The speed of time is inversely proportional to the total 
  consciousness in the universe. That's why the Big Bang was a big 
  bang -- there was no matter and therefore no consciousness in 
  the beginning. At the instant of creation, time ran infinitely 
  quickly. As soon as energy and matter and their associated 
  quanta of consciousness appeared, time began to slow but it was 
  still running very quickly, which is why the universe expanded 
  remarkably in the first few milliseconds, seconds, minutes and 
  years of its existence. Now things are much more stable, as if 
  consciousness is a stabilizing force, adding an inertia to the 
  unfolding of the universe. If my math is right, this temporal 
  inertia created by consciousness means that the universe will 
  never end, but will get closer and closer to a state in which 
  every quantum particle in the universe is linked in an 
  essentially infinite number of quantum conscious ways to every 
  other particle. The closer the universe is to this state, the 
  slower time will run, so we'll never get there."

  "Like the speed of light," I said. "You can never reach it 
  because your mass increases the closer you get."

  "Exactly so, but not surprising because you can derive 
  relativity from quantum consciousness so it's not surprising 
  that relativity contains elements of quantum consciousness. I 
  like that, but what's important is that now I have a theory that 
  makes predictions that can be tested. For instance, Hubble's 
  constant, which is a measure of the rate of expansion of the 
  universe, can be derived from TQC. Not by me -- my astrophysics 
  is nowhere near good enough -- but someone should be able to do 
  it. The important thing is that this theory can be tested 
  against observations."

  "Unlike creationism," I said.

  "Sure. What's more, I may be able to derive the value of some 
  basic physical constants, like the speed of light and the charge 
  on an electron, from first principles. That's never been done. 
  It's sort of a Holy Grail of physics."

  Even I knew that any success along these lines was a Nobel Prize 
  for sure.

  "There's something else coming out of the math," he said. 
  "There's a quantity which represents the relationship between 
  the total consciousness of a system and the material state of 
  the system. This quantity corresponds to truth, or beauty, or 
  perhaps to other concepts we haven't even thought of yet."

  Now this is what any thinking person knows intuitively. Beauty 
  and truth are two sides of the same thing and both speak about 
  the relationship between the world of ideas and the world of 
  matter. His work was starting to expose the workings of that 
  relationship. In a weird way, the theory referred to itself; the 
  more beautiful its equations, the more likely they were to be 
  true.

  Now all this doesn't mean that you can write a Shakespeare play 
  starting from the math of quantum consciousness any more than 
  you can predict a World Series starting from Newton's Laws of 
  Motion. It's possible in theory, but doing the math would take 
  to the end of time, so it's a lot easier to just play the games 
  and see who wins. The easiest way to write a Shakespeare play is 
  to let Shakespeare do it.

  Of course, he wanted more than mathematical proofs and he was 
  sketching the principles of what he called a transducer. "In the 
  Middle Ages you could hope to work wonders if you had a splinter 
  from the True Cross," he said. "If you'd told the average 
  medieval peasant that you could work wonders with a computer 
  chip, which is piece of silicon about the size of your 
  thumbnail, something made from sand, you'd have been burnt at 
  the stake as a witch. So the transducer, which is a device that 
  transforms quantum consciousness effects into the fundamental 
  forces of physics, makes QC effects measurable in the lab. It 
  will be as surprising, and at first as incomprehensible, to us 
  as the idea of spinning sand into wonderful things would be to a 
  serf."

  I didn't even get a hint of how this surprising transducer might 
  work because he was too excited and rattled on, saying, "Anyway, 
  the paper's finished. The math's correct. It's publishable by 
  any standard. I'd take it to Allan today but he's off campus at 
  some religious meeting out of town, back at work on Monday. I 
  can wait. There's no way he can stop me now. The math is 
  consistent. Once the experimentalists get their hands on it 
  there'll be verification within days, maybe hours after I post 
  the preprint. But I want him either to say no and be known 
  forever as the man who tried to stop publication of the most 
  important scientific paper ever, or to watch him say yes, 
  knowing that he's saying yes to the end of his world."

  That was the last time I saw Tom, but not the last time I talked 
  with him. He left for Atlanta that night. He was going to talk 
  to a national convention of high school physics teachers, 
  something about teaching physics to make it interesting. He 
  called me the next evening from Atlanta, very excited.

  "Guess who I met here," he said.

  "Who?"

  "Allan. I saw him at the Backstreet."

  Now the Backstreet, on the corner of Peachtree and Juniper, is 
  Atlanta's oldest and most famous gay bar, three floors, pool, 
  skyline bar on the roof-deck, and the best lights and sound on 
  the biggest dance floor in gaydom. They have an annual White 
  Party that attracts every circuit queen south of the Mason-Dixon 
  Line. I was a little pissed off that Tom had gone there without 
  me, but the news that he'd seen Allan there overwhelmed my 
  anger.

  "I was at a table close by the stairs, sitting by myself, my 
  friend." The friend bit was to massage my ego and it was nice of 
  him. "I sip my beer, lift my eyes from the glass, look up, and 
  there's Allan prancing down the stairs from the Triple X Charlie 
  Brown cabaret and what's more, he's holding the hand of a 
  remarkably pretty young man. He saw me all right, but pretended 
  he didn't, and then he headed out right away, looking very 
  shaken."

  "Wow! So the rumor's true."

  "Yup. I don't need to say anything at all. He knows I know and 
  that's enough. With this and the paper I've got him by the 
  balls."

  I was recovering my cool. "In a way," I said, "I'm surprised he 
  was at the Backstreet. I would've pegged him for the Model T." 
  The Model T's in the old Ford factory on Ponce DeLeon. We'd gone 
  there once together, but the only thing more bitchy than a bunch 
  of fags is a bunch of old fags.

  But then the surprise was over and I was thinking more 
  carefully. "Suppose we confront him. Perhaps he'll claim he was 
  doing research for the Southern Baptists. They don't care about 
  war, murder, rape and child abuse, but they're really worried 
  about gay rights."

  "Southern Baptists don't wear their shirts open to the navel. 
  The clown was wearing a big gold chain too. But who cares?"

  So Allan joined the ranks of the fallen zealots, the Jimmy 
  Swaggerts, the Jim Bakkers, the Elmer Gantrys, the J. Edgar 
  Hoovers, and that guy that was queer that worked for McCarthy.

  Tom was right -- it didn't matter. We'd already decided that Tom 
  would post another preprint no matter what the Committee said, 
  but the chance of forcing Allan to approve Tom's work or face 
  the threat of outing made the triumph, well, sort of complete.

  Tom came back from Atlanta late Friday night and they found him 
  on Saturday morning in his running gear on a country road three 
  miles form his home. He had a closed head injury, tension 
  pneumothorax, ruptured liver and spleen. Blunt trauma, hit and 
  run, said the police report.

  Coincidence? You can think about it and make up your own mind, 
  but that's why I wasted those fundamentalist traffic cones. As 
  Tom would have said, there is a certain symmetry in the universe 
  and it pops up in surprising places.

  I'm getting choked up and I'll have to quit for a moment.



  OK.

  Let me get on to the real point of all this. I had the soul of 
  Tom's computer on my hard drive and there in this QC folder was 
  the text of the complete formulation of the Theory of Quantum 
  Consciousness. The problem was that the document looked like 
  this:

    ----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----

    Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 

    MessageID: HDo8lgYFv9gn1Uj+TWmMUZW/iXSvb3yK 

    qANQR1DBwE4D48jp4wOYMGQQBADrKk9rMEA/t/Xu7fXkJ9zhdOajL26Nq/
    5LrBq+oo/Z6YGfvVyj86bTei5DhiTm+nYLPcPDsX46G7TfEL0QO+eTjm6

  ...and so on. You get the picture.

  Now Tom's public key was on the Net, and I already had that key 
  on my machine. I'd been using it to encrypt my e-mail to him. 
  But his private key was... well, remember he'd told me he'd 
  taken it off his machine in case of any more break-ins so they 
  couldn't read his stuff when they broke into his computer. But 
  where was the private key? By examining his public key on the 
  MIT keyserver I could tell his private key was 4096 bits and 
  that's longer than anyone can remember or wants to punch in by 
  hand. So the key had to be on the disk he took home from work 
  every night. There wasn't any other way to handle a key this 
  big.

  I had a key to his apartment and I went over but there was 
  nothing there. At least no floppy. I'd spent a lot of time in 
  his apartment and I knew where he kept stuff in his desk and so 
  on, I even knew where he kept the disk from work. But it wasn't 
  there. And I knew why. Once the math was finished, there was no 
  point in keeping anything from the Dean. Even if Tom was fired, 
  he could still publish and then the world would beat a path to 
  his door. So he'd left the floppy at work.

  On Monday, I went over to the Physics Department and told the 
  secretary I was a friend of Tom's and asked if there was 
  anything I could do to help them clean out his office. "It's 
  already done," said the secretary. "The Dean had Dr. Thomas' 
  personal items sent to his family -- a couple of photographs and 
  a leather jacket hanging on the hook on his door, that was all." 
  I went down the hall and she was right. There was nothing except 
  a desk and a chair. The desk drawers were empty except for those 
  wisps of gray fluff that you always find at the back of drawers.

  I went back to the secretary and asked, "Where's his stuff, 
  papers, floppy disks, that sort of thing?"

  "If it wasn't personal, it belonged to the state, and the Dean 
  said we should send everything to the dump. Everything. The Dean 
  made it very clear." Good jobs with the state are hard to get 
  and her attitude made it clear that she wasn't about to lose 
  hers.

  Later I learned that Thad, shocked at the waste of a Pentium, 
  had quietly diverted -- yes, that was the word he used, diverted 
  -- the computer to the recycling center. But in front of the 
  secretary I kept myself focused on Tom's private key.

  "Even the floppies?" I asked.

  She looked at me strangely, as if I was trying to steal 
  something. "The Dean said we should send it all to the 
  landfill." That was the end of it. I was only a student and she 
  knew it, so I left.

  Tom's family hadn't spoken to him for years, ever since they 
  found out he was gay. I called later and got his father on the 
  phone. He was already crying. I suppose he had realized that 
  he'd lost some things forever, things he could have had for the 
  asking but it was too late now. He told me there were no floppy 
  discs sent by the school, just the jacket and the photographs.

  "Nothing in the pockets?" I asked. There wasn't.

  It was raining when I headed out to the dump, which is a few 
  acres of trash at the end of Reservoir Road, past the animal 
  shelter. Seagulls wheeled around in the sky behind a bulldozer 
  that was slowly leveling piles of trash, papers, old mattresses, 
  cardboard boxes, plastic bottles, all the throwaway crap of 
  civilization. There was a smell too, putrid.

  I asked the guy at the gate if STSU had brought anything to the 
  dump since Saturday and where it might be. "Dunno. This ain't a 
  coat check, we don't give out numbers," he said.

  "Thanks. I'll think I'll take a look around."

  Two cops were sitting inside a pickup truck. They had their guns 
  out. I went over to them and said lightly, "What's up? Someone 
  steal something?"

  "Target practice, wiseguy. Firearms re-cert next week."

  "So what'ya shooting at?"

  "Mainly rats, but just about anything that moves."

  I didn't like their attitude, not that it mattered. I could see 
  that finding a floppy in this mountain of paper and plastic, 
  grease, oil and rotting food was impossible and anyway the 
  floppy was probably useless what with the rain and the dirt and 
  all the grease, even if the bulldozer hadn't crushed it. So I 
  stood there watching the mewling gulls, staring at where the 
  secret of the universe had been thrown away. But of course, as 
  Rose and Thad and the Sierra Club would say, there is no away.

  On the way back from the dump I stopped in at the animal 
  shelter. Mom was there, cleaning out the cat cages. On the wall 
  there were some plaques given by donors in memory of their pets. 
  There was one that always nearly made me cry. "In memory of all 
  those for whom no one came." It was for the ones who didn't get 
  adopted, who spent their allotted five days at the shelter and 
  then met the blue death. My mom caught me looking at it when she 
  was finished scooping poop.

  "Stop being sentimental," she told me.

  Now you're thinking maybe Tom had hidden another copy of his 
  personal key on his hard drive, camouflaged to look like a Word 
  file or some data from his checking program. Well, believe me, 
  I've looked, and there's nothing there.

  So what was left for me to do? I had the text of the paper but 
  it was encrypted. OK, I knew how to break the code, but it was a 
  4096-bit key. Before the SETI project got going on the Internet, 
  several hundred people had worked together in the same way, 
  trying to win a bet by breaking a 40-bit key with code-breaking 
  software on machines all over the world. It took them about nine 
  months, let's say a year to keep things simple. Now every bit 
  you add to a key means that it will take twice as long to break 
  it. So going from 40 to 4096 bits means that I can try to find 
  Tom's private key on my machine but it will take me about 
  2^(4096-40) years and, well, I can't be bothered to calculate 
  exactly what that is but if I wrote out the number it would be 
  longer than this whole thing I've written. And on top of that, 
  with the quantum consciousness time retardation phenomenon and 
  time slowing down as the universe gets more complex, the code's 
  not going to get broken, ever.

  I thought about posting the problem on the Internet, a project 
  that people could run on their computers like the SETI project 
  or the original code-breaking effort, but anyone who's 
  interested enough to take part will know that there is 
  essentially no chance of breaking this code. Ever. So I didn't 
  even try. And the idea of reworking the math myself is out of 
  the question because the math was Tom's invention and I'm not 
  that smart. "Most of physics can be described with partial 
  differential equations," he'd said, "but I needed something 
  quite different." I didn't ask him what that something was, and 
  now it's too late.

  By the way, now that you know the four principles of Quantum 
  consciousness show that the universe is relentlessly evolving, 
  unfolding into higher and higher levels of complexity and of 
  consciousness then you know why I'm so sure that SETI will pan 
  out. It's only a matter of time. So, despite everything that's 
  happened, I'm still running the SETI software. It's an 
  affirmation that Tom was right.

  Yesterday, when Mom came home from work at the dealership, she 
  told me Stott had traded in his car for a new four-wheel drive 
  sport utility. He didn't get as much as he might for his 
  trade-in because it his old car needed some work on the body. 
  She said there was a dent in the fender on the passenger side.

  Does it mean anything? I don't know, but like I said, I'm always 
  on the lookout for coincidences.

  Am I going to the police? Maybe, but in long run there's a 
  better way. Even though the secret of the universe is lost in 
  the landfill, jumbled up with a lot of trash, and at the same 
  time it's jumbled up forever on my hard drive, there's one more 
  way to find it.

  Ideas have a life of their own. Someone called them memes, sort 
  of like genes, but mental instead of made of DNA. They're out 
  there, replicating inside people's heads and it's impossible to 
  eliminate them. True memes are indestructible, they're the most 
  durable things in the universe because they will be discovered 
  again and again.

  That's why I've written this account of Tom's ideas. Remember, 
  it's an account, not a made-up story, but I don't care if you 
  think it's true or not. If you've read this far then I've 
  already got what I wanted. I've planted the meme of Quantum 
  Consciousness inside your head.

  Think about it. It's there and you can't get rid of it, can you?

  Someone will read this and wonder if just maybe Quantum 
  Consciousness is the way out of the intellectual maze we've 
  built for ourselves. Maybe that someone will be a high-school 
  kid or a college freshman, someone who's good at math but still 
  young enough to think impossible things.

  Perhaps you're that reader.

  Or perhaps you're not, and maybe you'll forget this story but 
  years from now, when your four year-old granddaughter asks you, 
  "Why did Granny have to die?" you'll tell her in your grief that 
  everything is alive and nothing really dies, that the universe 
  is good and the stuff it's made from combines and recombines 
  endlessly as it journeys to perfection. The little girl won't 
  understand what you say but she will feel what you feel and the 
  meme will jump from your mind to hers and when she's older and 
  majoring in math she'll sit down one rainy afternoon with a 
  pencil and some paper and work into the night and rediscover 
  Quantum Consciousness.

  How it happens doesn't matter.

  Tom's dead, but I'm not as angry about this now as I was on 
  Sunday morning. He played his role, did his bit to move the 
  universe in the direction it's meant to go, and his bit was much 
  more than most of us can hope to do. He won't be here any more, 
  I can't enjoy his company, but that's the way things are, and 
  I'll live on, trying to do my bit. Actually, I've probably done 
  what's the most important thing for me to do in my whole life: 
  I've written down what happened and made sure it's read by 
  thoughtful people like you.

  So now you know that reality is good, reality is conscious. Of 
  course, I can't prove that to you but I do know, I absolutely 
  know for sure, that sometime, somewhere, someone will rediscover 
  Tom's Theory of Quantum Consciousness.

  I know this will happen because, if you think carefully about 
  what I've told you, you'll realize that the Theory of Quantum 
  Consciousness is the only scientific theory that predicts its 
  own discovery.

  Now remember that the test of any scientific theory is that it 
  makes accurate predictions. Right?

  Quantum Consciousness predicts its own discovery and it's been 
  discovered. Sure it's been discovered. It's in your head right 
  now, isn't it?

  OK. I rest my case.

  Now remember right at the beginning I told you this isn't a 
  story. I said it was more like a proof. That's why I'm going to 
  finish with the Latin phrase _Quod erat demonstrandum._ 
  Mathematicians put this at the end of their proofs when they 
  have demonstrated that which was to be demonstrated, except they 
  usually just use the initials.

  But the last line of a _story_ is very important, and no writer 
  of fiction would ever end with something as limp as the initials 
  of an obscure phrase in Latin.

  Q.E.D.



  Jim Cowan (jcowan@fast.net)
-----------------------------
  Jim Cowan is trained as both an electrical engineer and a 
  doctor, and is a graduate of the 1993 Clarion SF workshop. He is 
  amazed and delighted that many wonderful things in the world can 
  be completely described by mathematics and he is equally amazed 
  and delighted that many wonderful things, including mathematics, 
  cannot. In addition to his stories in InterText, he has written 
  two stories for the print magazine Century, and his story "The 
  True Story of Professor Trabuc and his Voyages Aboard the 
  Sonde-Ballon de la Mentalitie" will appear later this year in 
  Asimov's Science Fiction. His story "The Spade of Reason" 
  appeared in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual 
  Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois. InterText stories written 
  by Jim Cowan: "The Gardener" (v4n5), "Genetic Moonshine" (v5n3), 
  "The Central Mechanism" (v8n3).



  FYI
=====
...................................................................

  InterText's next issue will be released in August of 1998. 
...................................................................


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  Do I have a butterfly or some other small animal up my nose?

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