The Pains 2 The Pains The sheet became heavier still. It was pointless for Mr. Lux to try to throw it off: he could no more get free of it than he would have been able to shake himself free of the rubble of an earthquake-collapsed cathedral. And now the toothache was back, and the L-shaped line of fire from his neck to his groin, and the toenail intent on mayhem. His entire body felt crushed, yet each pain was distinct—as if it were an illustration in an anatomy chart, or a highlighted neural pathway in a clear plastic doll. Mr. Lux knew he should pray, but somehow the pains made prayer impossible. He thought, I am twenty-four years old. I am going to die with my body crushed to liquid and my head neatly garroted off by a thin layer of woven fabric that weighs less than eight ounces. He sensed his mouth moving as if to laugh at the thought, but the laugh was frozen in his im- mobile torso. Can’t laugh. Can’t breathe. I guess I can’t call for help either. But he could still move his head, which he now did, deliberately, casting his eyes around the sparse cell, nine feet wide by twelve feet long, that had been his home for the last three years. The ancient whitewashed fieldstone walls did not lend themselves to decoration. Centered on one wall, above him and to his left, there was a simple noosifix precariously hanging from an irregularity in a rock. On the opposite wall, to his right, hanging from a nail driven into a chink in the cement, there was a kitschy airbrushed painting of a thatched cottage sur- rounded by flowers and with a pair of bluebirds sitting at the apex of the roof. In the short wall beyond his feet there was a narrow casement window with diamond-shaped leaded-glass panes through which he could see blur- ry hints of trees green with tiny leaves of early spring. Below the window were a desk and chair. On the desk: a Holy Tibble; a Fredian missal; copies of Byte, Datamation, and Electrical Engineering Times; a textbook on nonlin- ear circuits; and one Alfred the Drinking Duck perpetual motion toy. A monastery cell was an odd place for a young man to live in 1985, Mr. Lux thought as he was dying. Not many people nowadays chose incar- ceration and self-denial over freedom and pleasure. Simply having religious faith made Mr. Lux something of a weirdo—never mind his living in a 3 The Pains nearly abandoned thousand-year-old monastery where the average age of his companions was over seventy. Mr. Lux had known before this morning, of course, that his way of life was odd. But now, suddenly, he really knew it, as if he had just stumbled upon his life from some other, normal, universe, and saw exactly how bizarre it was. Let’s see. In Boston, last night, people his age, dressed in blue jeans and sweatshirts, had had pizza for dinner and then gone to smelly punk bars like The Rat and The Channel. There they had consumed beer while having their ear- drums assaulted by Mission of Burma or Human Sexual Response. They had danced, shouted short conversations about war and killing over the deafening guitars, laughed, had fun, gone home with friends old or new to messy apartments full of houseplants, record albums, and Penthouse maga- zines. They had had sex and gone to sleep, without any thoughts in their heads, under the watchful eye of the telescreen, which would have been tuned to The Wee Hours Irony Show. In New York, last night, people his age, dressed in four-hundred-dollar shirts and six-hundred-dollar slacks, had spent a few hundred dollars each for half-plates of exalted snacks at nouvelle cuisine places on Wall Street. Then they had gone to parties in lofts in SoHo, where they had consumed champagne while discussing how war was a good time for making money. They had gone home with friends old or new to four-thousand-square-foot Tribeca apartments impeccably decorated in the retro-modernist style. They had had sex and gone to sleep, without any thoughts in their heads, under the watchful eye of the telescreen, which would have been tuned to The Wee Hours Irony Show. In McKinley DC, last night, people his age, wearing conventional clothes, had eaten conventional food and consumed alcohol. They had talked about the Party and its latest strategy for marketing the war to the proles outside the Beltway. They had had sex and gone to sleep, without any thoughts in their heads, under the watchful eye of the telescreen, which would have been tuned to The Wee Hours Irony Show. 4 The Pains Mr. Lux, on the other hand, last night had had a meal of cold porridge with bony fish and turnips, which he had eaten in silence, in the company of other men dressed in long black cassocks like the one that he himself wore. After dinner he had gone to the chapel for prayers. After prayers he had gone to the common room for half an hour of social time, during which he had discussed Aristotelian metaphysics with an earnest newly minted priest from Hong Kong. Then he had gone back to his room, studied his textbook on nonlinear circuits for two hours, daydreamed about getting his hands on an Atari motherboard and overclocking it, kneeled at his bed and prayed for an hour meditating on the mystery of the noose, gone to sleep for three hours with his head full of thoughts about electrical circuits and redemption, and, right about the moment when other young men all over Freemerica— from Texas to New Kent to Massachusetts, were having the first of their orgasms for the night, Mr. Lux, a celibate novice in the Society of Fred, was sleepily padding down a candlelit corridor, passing one after another empty dormitory room, heading back to the chapel for the Dark Hours prayers. Studying for the priesthood in this day and age was odd enough. But even among religious people his monastic way of life was considered per- versely archaic. Other orders had accommodated themselves to changing times, found ways to train Fredian priests without making them live in some mediaeval theme park. Most priests nowadays lived among the proles. Like everybody else, priests had apartments with telescreens on which they watched Diff’rent Strokes, Happy Facts with Oliver North, and Fantasy Is- land; they lived in the material world, as Madonna put it. Unlike members of the Society of Fred, whose training period before ordination lasted seven years—seven years of prayerful contemplation of the Holy Tibble and the life and teachings of Fred, the Savior—most modern priests were ordained after only one year of “theological” study—and at least two-thirds of their curriculum was not based on the study of ancient texts, but on a mod- ern spirituality of massage therapy, pyramid power, and the godhead of aroma. Moreover, mainstream priests like Peterists and Delmonicans had long ago stopped regarding the idea of sexual restraint as anything but a 5 The Pains quaint throwback to a superstitious time. It wasn’t entirely unlikely that a young Peterist or Delmonican had cruised The Rat last night and gone home lucky. Mr. Lux, on the other hand, had joined the retrograde and severe Soci- ety of Fred, the “Freduits,” and spent much of his time in sexually deprived silence at the Monastery of Saint Reinhold, where time more or less stood still. But he wasn’t a prisoner there: Three days per week Mr. Lux left the monastery for a few hours to attend classes in electrical engineering at the University of New Kent, and two days each week he ministered to guests at Changes!, the Ministry of Love’s maximum-security correctional home. But even when out of the monastery, “in the World,” Mr. Lux wore the modi- fied cassock that announced his Freduit vocation for all to see (and ridicule). And as for chastity: Well, he had lost his virginity when he was nineteen, at the insistence of his then-girlfriend Nancy, and had spent the several weeks following the loss of virginity in essentially nonstop fucking, which he greatly enjoyed. So chastity for Mr. Lux was more than a theoretical sac- rifice. A few months after initiating Norman into the pleasures of the flesh, however, Nancy had been drafted into the Peace Force, and almost im- mediately thereafter she had been reported missing and presumed drowned when her troopship went down in the Sea of Kentucky. The very day after learning of the death of his love Nancy, Mr. Lux had received a mystical vocation, joined the Society, and taken the vow of Seven Years Waiting. Now he was in the fourth year of his seven-year program of study, and the next social orgasm he could look forward to was three years away. To be precise, that anticipated social orgasm that would sanctify his ordi- nation was three years, two months, and three days away. Of course, unless something changed soon he wasn’t going to live to experience it. He didn’t expect to live more than another minute, actually. Three years sure is a long time to go without breathing, Mr. Lux thought. His field of vision was nar- rowing; darkness was coming from all sides. It wasn’t the dying that both- ered him so much, he realized, it was dying before ordination, having never 6 The Pains felt the Vestal Tug. All that horniness wasted, with no spiritual benefit to anyone, least of all himself. Sweat was pouring from every pore in his body, burning his eyes, soak- ing his mattress. What was causing all this agony? He had experienced painful fevers before, but nothing so sudden, nothing that mixed a tooth- ache with an ingrown toenail with nuts in a vise. At last a prayer escaped his lips: Oh my Fred, I am dying, have mercy! And then, in a sudden crisp moment he thought, Might this be The Pains? “Arrrgh!” he bellowed, screaming like an air raid siren. His bed collapsed underneath him, crashing to the floor, the ancient wood in splinters. From this new, lower angle he looked out through the window at blue sky. All pain was gone. For a full minute he lay without moving on his cold, sweat-soaked mattress, overjoyed at the palpable lightness of the sheet, the absence of toothache, the toe that had nothing to say, the breath that went in and out as if breathing were the most natural thing in the world. How long had his ordeal lasted? One minute? Two at the most? It had seemed endless, each second a century, and yet the painless seconds raced by. He smiled at this insight into the elasticity of perceived time. And then he heard voices, and running in the hallway. Cries of Norman! Norman! His door swung open and his four classmates tumbled into the room— Messrs. Chen, Agnolli, LaFont, and Powers—these four who were, besides Norman, the entire future of the Society of Fred, which used to ordain a hundred Freduits each year from Saint Reinhold’s alone, centuries ago when Reinhold’s was only one among dozens of such monasteries. They stood breathless in an arc around his bed, cassocks half-fastened, noosifixes still swinging around their necks, looking down in silent awe. Another fast min- ute sped by. “Fred Christ,” somebody said finally, and they all giggled. Then Mr. Lux heard another set of footsteps approaching down the cor- ridor. The Old Man, he thought. The Old Man must be coming. 7 The Pains “What’s this?” came a deep voice. “Stand back please.” The Korloonian accent was thick. Mr. Lux still had not moved since the complex of pains had miraculously disappeared. He was aware that he was lying on his broken bed and that the abbot had just entered the room, but he was strangely content to do nothing. He thought that maybe he should rise as a sign of respect, but before he could decide whether to do that the abbot Fr. Hessberg was looming over him—six feet four inches of ex-boxer topped by another four inches of Einstein-wild hair. “Are you all right?” “Yes, Abbot, I think so,” said Mr. Lux. “Yes, I’m fine.” “What happened here? How did the bed break?” “I don’t know.” Father Hessberg thought about that for a moment. “Were you alone?” he asked, with his accent sounding more pronounced than ever. His blue eyes seemed to Mr. Lux as if they would bore through him. “Yes, Father. I was alone.” The abbot and the novice stared at each other for another few moments, until Fr. Hessberg stepped back, looked to his left and right at the other novices, and said, “It looks like Mr. Lux has been dreaming about the Vestal Virgins again. Don’t worry, Norman, your tug will come.” Mr. Lux smiled and the four others laughed nervously. “Gentlemen, thank you for your concern. You may go back to your busi- ness,” the abbot said, “quietly.” Mr. Chen, Mr. Agnolli, Mr. LaFont, and Mr. Powers meekly left the room, presumably to return to their cells for private prayer and reflection until it was time for ablutions and breakfast. Norman Lux still had not moved other than to speak. Now Fr. Hessberg knelt on the cold flagstone floor. He felt the sheet, which was quite drenched where it rested on Mr. Lux’s body. He smelled his finger, and then turned his attention to the penny-sized bloodstain over Mr. Lux’s right pinky toe. “Mr. Lux, please go to the infirmary, and I will have Father Doyle meet 8 The Pains you there. I am hoping that he will determine that you are well. If he does so, please join me in my study after matins.” “Yes, Father Abbot,” Mr. Lux said. The abbot was already halfway out the room. Father Doyle’s examination was perfunctory and the results unremark- able. Perhaps Fr. Doyle would have taken a little more time if Mr. Lux had volunteered a little more information about what he had experienced. But Fr. Doyle asked little, Mr. Lux told less, and ten minutes after the examination had begun, the patient was declared hale. “Nothing a cold bath won’t cure,” Fr. Doyle said. Cold bath? The bath was beyond cold; it was freezing. Nevertheless it was barely having the beneficial effect to which he presumed Fr. Doyle had alluded. For although Norman Lux had gone through most of last week without giving more than a passing thought to his future ordination and the Rite of the Vestals that would consecrate it, now that Fr. Abbot and Fr. Doyle had put the thought into his head he was having a difficult time putting it out of his mind. And out of his . . . well . . . But eventually, when he was sure he was on the edge of hypothermia, the hot blood quieted and his thoughts turned from the Virgins to his odd experience of just an hour ago. He returned from the baths to his room, where he found that his broken bed had been replaced by a structurally sound one and made up with fresh linens. He quickly dressed in loose black pants and handwoven white shirt, over which he put his spare black cassock. He went to the window and pushed it open. Smells of breakfast wafted up from the kitchen one floor down. Birds chirped. It was good to be alive, Mr. Lux thought, even if he was about to go have a chat with the Old Man, something most residents of Saint Reinhold’s relished as much as they did a visit to the tooth doctor. He made a quick sign of the noose and strode purposefully out of his room. The route to the abbot’s study took him down long dark corridors. From his room in the Old Dormitory made of stone he walked up the tower stairs to a newer wing made of brick. Newer, but still old, and just as vacant. But 9 The Pains though most of the rooms in every wing of the monastery were empty— more than one thousand empty rooms—and although all of its hundreds of hallways were only dimly illuminated, yet Saint Reinhold’s was anything but decrepit. The monastery was immaculately clean; the floors even shone. The Freduits gave no indication that they had noticed their order was dying out. If a hundred recruits were to show up tomorrow the monastery could handle the influx with no problem. The Society of Fred, an obscure dying order in a dying church, simply refused to acknowledge that the world no longer needed or wanted it—if it ever had. Once again Mr. Lux experienced the clear realization that he had had when his sheet was crushing him to death just a little while ago, the pro- found awareness of how odd was his monastic lifestyle. And yet he felt perfectly at home here, could imagine living nowhere else. He realized that he was actually looking forward to going to see the Old Man. “Come in,” Fr. Hessberg said. “Take a seat.” The abbot sat in a giant wooden chair behind an enormous wooden desk. He indicated a small wooden stool on the opposite side of the desk. Mr. Lux sat. “Well?” the abbot said. “Yes, Father Abbot?” “What happened to you this morning? I want to know everything.” And so Mr. Lux told him, as accurately as he could, about how he had awakened. He told him about the tooth pain, the toenail pain, the migrating pains—even about his imagining himself an anatomy doll. Father Hessberg said nothing, merely regarded Norman Lux with those intense blue eyes. “Is that all?” the abbot finally said. “Father?” “Yes, son?” Mr. Lux hesitated. He knew that there might be severe consequences for what he was about to say. Consequences, perhaps, such as being asked to leave the Society of Fred. But it was the truth, and the truth would set him free. 10 The Pains “I had the strong sense that the pain in my body might have been a soul gone bad,” he said, and drew in his breath like a child expecting a spanking. But the reaction of the abbot was not severe or chagrined. In fact, Mr. Lux had the impression that this confession was the single thing that Fr. Hessberg had been waiting to hear, that everything that had happened since the Old Man had knelt by Mr. Lux’s bed until now had merely been a pa- tient exercise to get Mr. Lux to volunteer this fact. “Ah, so.” Father Hessberg said. “Just so. You think it might have been The Pains.” “Yes, Father.” The abbot looked distracted, as if he were thinking of something far off. Without seeming to pay much attention to what he was doing, he opened a drawer in his desk from which he withdrew what appeared to be a thick dowel of dark wood and a small knife with an ivory handle. He began to whittle, without looking at his hands. “You are in your fourth year here, is that correct?” The abbot obviously knew it was correct. It wasn’t as if the abbot of Saint Reinhold’s were the registrar at the University of New Kent, where there were thousands of students in each class. The abbot of Saint Reinhold’s had only had five recruits in the last four years. “Yes, Father.” “Father Murray is your instructor in metaphysics?” The abbot knew that too. “Yes.” “The Pains is a fairly abstruse subject. I’ve been a Freduit for fifty-four years, and I’ve never heard of a confirmed case of The Pains. So you can see why it’s not a subject that is covered in introductory courses. The Pains is a very rare condition. You understand that don’t you?” “Of course, sir.” “When did you first encounter the theology of The Pains? Was it re- cently?” Now that he mentioned it . . . Mr. Lux’s confidence seemed to diminish 11 The Pains a few notches. “Why, yes Father. It was last week,” Mr. Lux said. “Tell me, son, what is your understanding? What are The Pains?” “One person experiences physical torment in proportion to the danger to another person’s soul.” “And?” “And the fate of the world is tied to the fate of the person whose soul is in danger,” Mr. Lux added, somewhat sheepishly. “And commutatively to the Painee.” “So the person who experiences The Pains can only save himself if he saves the endangered soul and thereby saves the world. Is that right? He is a kind of savior?” “Yes, Father.” He could see where this was going, and felt himself blush- ing. “And what is the correlation between this endangered soul and the per- son with The Pains? How does one relate to the other? What is the cause and effect? In other words, why do The Pains descend upon one particular person, for example, upon you instead of me?” “Nobody knows,” Mr. Lux said. And then Mr. Lux really put his foot in it, responded without thinking. He blurted out an idea that he had been carrying around for a week without even realizing how much he had been brooding about it. “I don’t think it is a matter of cause and effect, Father Abbot. I think it has to do with chaos theory.” “Chaos theory!” the abbot laughed. He placed the knife and stick of wood, which appeared to be taking the shape of—what? A boat?—on the desk. Whereas all morning, until this instant, Fr. Hessberg had been playing to the hilt the role of stereotypic Korloonian—intense, no nonsense—now he laughed as if he had never seen such a funny thing in his life: A fourth-year Freduit novice, hornier than a herd of rhinoceri, learns about The Pains in his metaphysics class and one week later becomes convinced that he’s the One to save the world, thinking it has to do with some new kind of funny math. 12 The Pains “Chaos theory!” and the priest gagged on his laughter and slapped the desk. Tears were streaming down his face. Eventually he got his composure back, at least partially. “Well that’s the one thing I love about Father Murray,” the abbot con- tinued. The strain of not laughing was nearly too much for him. “When he teaches metaphysics, by Fred he makes it real. He makes a believer out of you!” “Yes, Father,” Mr. Lux said. Why had he ever thought that coming to the Old Man’s office would be an OK thing to do? What had he been think- ing? Whatever little bits of self-confidence he had had when entering the abbot’s study had vanished. A moment ago he had been willing to bet his vocation, and now he felt like an idiot. “Mr. Lux, tell me about your job.” “My job, Father?” “Yes. Your job. You have started working in the chaplaincy at the prison, have you not? The prison the, the, the . . . what do they call it now?” “Compassionate care facility,” Mr. Lux said. “It’s been privatized. They call it Changes, with an explanation point,” he said, then added with empha- sis, “Changes!” The abbot didn’t appear to be listening to him. “Do you know, Mr. Lux, what is the chief medical complaint of medical students?” “Sir?” “Medical students. What diseases they get while in medical school? You don’t know? I will tell you. Whatever one they are studying that they have never heard of before. They read about the symptoms, and the next thing you know they experience them. Do you like working at the prison?” “Well, Father, I—” “We had another seminarian here not too long ago. An extraordinary student, actually. Ferocious faith. Horatio Norton, his name. He too once thought he had The Pains. He’s now a prisoner there, a—what do they call them now?” 13 The Pains “Guests?” “Yes, a ‘guest,’ ” the abbot sneered. “He was convicted of selling Freemer- ican secrets, military secrets, to my home country, Korloon, in Eastasia, with whom Freemerica now plans to go to war. Did you know I was Kor- loonian?” Mr. Lux had heard that the abbot could sometimes work himself into a frenzy, but in four years had never heard him raise his voice. In fact, Mr. Lux had never seen him more agitated than he appeared to be right now. Father Hessberg got up from his chair and paced his candlelit study. “Yes, Father, I had heard—” Mr. Lux started to say. “This seminarian, this prisoner, Norton, what do they call him?” Should Mr. Lux admit that he knew of this ex-Freduit? It seemed a hot topic, perhaps one best avoided for now. “What they call him, Father?” Mr. Lux said, feigning ignorance. “Do not play games with me, child!” Father Hessberg shouted. “You know very well what I mean. What is the appellation they have given him?” It was no good playing dumb. “Father Abbot, sir, they call him the Eagle.” “Yes, yes!” said Fr. Hessberg, lowering his voice. “The Eagle. Let me ask you, did he ask to speak to a chaplain last week? To meet with you?” “Yes, Father.” “Well. So. That is the first time he has asked to see a chaplain in six years. Did you speak with him?” How did Fr. Hessberg know that the Eagle had not spoken to a chaplain in six years? How did he know that Mr. Lux had spoken with him last week? “Yes,” Mr. Lux said. “For how long?” “About ten minutes.” “About what did you speak?” “Small talk. The weather. Caring-facility food.” “Not about The Pains?” 14 The Pains “Oh no sir, never. We didn’t talk about anything remotely metaphysi- cal.” “He will want to, you know,” Fr. Hessberg said. “He will certainly want to discuss metaphysics with you. He is a very gifted debater too. Very subtle. Mr. Lux, what do you think of the Party?” “The Party, Father?” Father Hessberg jumped from one topic to another as if there were a logic he could see that was completely invisible to Mr. Lux. “Come, come, son. I am your abbot. Big Brother does not come within the walls of Saint Reinhold’s. There are no telescreens here. You can speak freely to me. You do not need to fear the Party here.” “Well then, sir, I think the Party is an abomination.” “And so it is. But not everyone that the Party convicts of a crime and sends to prison is innocent. Remember that. This ‘Eagle’ will soon want to discuss theology with you, and as chaplain it will be your duty to minister to him. Do you understand what that means?” “Yes, I hope so.” “You must bear witness to Fred who was hanged in the noose!” the ab- bot exclaimed. “This is a responsibility you cannot avoid, although I wish I could go in your place. This man, this ‘Eagle,’ is a danger to your soul, Mr. Lux. Be very careful.” “Yes, sir.” Mr. Lux felt a sudden coldness all through him, as if he were back in Fr. Doyle’s ice bath. “Mr. Lux, look at me.” The abbot’s eyes blazed blue fire. “Mr. Lux, you do not have The Pains. The Pains is a rare condition un- seen on Earth for more than five hundred years. It is natural for you to have thought that you did. It happens to many seminarians. It happened to me. But I did not have The Pains, nor did the Horatio Norton have The Pains. And you do not have The Pains. Now, repeat after me: ‘I do not have The Pains.’ ” “I do not have The Pains,” Mr. Lux said, without conviction. 15 The Pains “But perhaps by the time your study here has concluded, you will wish that you did have them. Come, stand up. We must go to the chapel. It is time for prayers.” 16 chapter 2 he beat-up brown Volvo station wagon with a hairline crack in the right side of the windshield and a Black Flag sticker on the left rear bumper flew down Lyman Street doing sixty in a thirty-five zone, straightening curves and drifting over the double-yellow lines, on a chilly April morning. Despite the cold the car’s windows were rolled down and the punk strains of “Mommy’s Little Monster” from the Repo Man soundtrack poured out of them at 115 decibels, shaking the season’s first leaves out of their buds in the woods and pastures along either side of the road. Mommy’s little monster dropped out of school Mommy’s little monster broke all the rules He loves to go out drinking with the boys He loves to go out and make some noise The winter of 1984–85 had been longer, colder, and wetter than any winter New Kent had seen in thirty years. Yesterday, well into April, there had been frost on the windshield. This morning offered the first hint of re- ally nice weather since sometime last October. It was twenty-five degrees warmer than it had been this time yesterday. Suddenly there was a yellow blur of daffodils—daffodils, for Fred’s sake—along the road. Xristi Friedman, at the wheel, was trying to dig the spring, the fresh air; she was really trying. Her left arm—the one with the double helix tattooed 17 The Pains 18 The Pains up its length—was exposed to the wind, pounding time to the music against the outside of the car door. Her blue-streaked hair blew in the wind and the eight earrings in her left ear rattled. It was a good day to dig the fresh air. It was a good place to dig the fresh air, out here where Lyman Street passed through what remained of Shaker Woods, the last undeveloped place in Eastboro. Xristi inhaled the cold spring air deeply. In all truth, however, her hand was freezing. And the fresh air, tinged with the odor of cow shit, really wasn’t all that pleasant. But it wasn’t all bad: The inrushing air would flush out some of the smells of dead French fries, tobacco, pot, and spilled coffee that had soaked into the Volvo’s upholstery since autumn, the last time these windows had been opened. Her hands were cold, her ears were cold. Besides which, the Party was giving her the chills. The Party, which she had heretofore tended to think of as a mere an- noyance, was starting to become a serious pain in her ass. The Party, embod- ied in the form of a letter from the chancellor, was threatening to ruin her day. And it did not help matters that the Party, in the form of Uncle Ronald the Great Communicator, was staring her in the face right now. From a prodvert board atop a hillock dead ahead—which had until re- cently been the site of Upman’s Forge, a minor historic building that had been leveled as part of the Party’s Great Arrival of Progress—the giant smiling likeness of Ronald Reagan, Minister of Awareness, looked down on her. Xristi Friedman glanced up at him. As she reached the place where the road turned left around Upman’s Rise, about twenty-five yards from the base of the prodvert board, the vol- ume of the music coming from her car’s seven jury-rigged speakers rapidly diminished to a quiet background, and the gentle, confident voice of Uncle Ronald came over them. “Hey, friend, slow down!” he said with a hint of a laugh. “That’s a dan- gerous kink in the road. Take it too fast and you’ll wind up on the wrong side. And remember, thinking wrong thoughts can be just as dangerous as driving on the wrong side of the road! This is just a friendly reminder from 19 The Pains your Minister of Awareness that, paradoxical as it might sound—whoa! Where did that ten-cent word come from?—sometimes not knowing is bet- ter than knowing. Curiosity killed the cat, my grandmother used to say. Remember, ignorance is strength!” “And this is just a friendly reminder from Xristi Friedman: Fuck you,” said Xristi as she reached over to switch off the stereo. “And remember, fuck you. Or, as my grandmother used to say, fuck you.” Accelerating out of the curve where the road swerved around the rise, the Volvo harvested the energy of that turn like Apollo 13 rounding the moon and rocketed onto a straightaway that bifurcated the Party’s dem- onstration Farm of the Future. As it did so, an unsecured tank of liquid nitrogen rolled across the back of the car and slammed into the left side wall. Xristi switched the stereo back on. He doesn’t wanna be a doctor or a lawyer get fat rich. He’s twenty years old he quit his job, Unemployment pays his rent! In pastures on the left and the right of the road, cows that had been standing dropped to the ground and cows on the ground appeared to be trying to place their hooves over their ears. “Mommy’s Little Monster” was playing so loud that it nearly masked the detonations emanating from the Volvo’s shattered muffler. As the automobile righted itself, Xristi looked over to make sure that the chancellor’s letter had not blown out the window. No; it was still there, smirking up at her like the schoolyard bully who has all the teachers bam- boozled into thinking he is the nicest boy in the world. The Party was trying to bring her down; the chancellor was trying to bring her down. But she wasn’t going to let them bring her down. It was spring, damn it! The return of life from the frozen underworld! Nature’s own cryonics laboratory! She again inhaled deeply the smell of pure green resurrection as she pressed the accelerator harder. Okay, so there was a hint 20 The Pains of cow shit in the air, so what? Mostly the smell was a smell of pure green resurrection. And the riot of sound was invigorating. Her automobile was a mobile sonic bomb, a single-minded assault on whatever bucolic vestiges remained in the township of Eastboro, New Kent, since the Great Arrival of Progress. The GAP was the name given by the Party to its expropriation of the farms and woods from local owners for development into country estates and golf courses for Party Pioneers. They came here for a taste of ersatz “heartland,” the quiet life among the proles. Well, fuck that. Xristi’s car was a giant middle finger to the Party. She wasn’t afraid of the Party. If the Party was so damn powerful, if the Party had transformed Freemerica into such a thoughtcrime police state, why wasn’t there even a cop on the road to give her a loudspeed ticket? The Party was bullshit, a figment, a Wizard of Oz that was only scary if you were afraid of it. And the chancellor was nothing more than a Party hack. The chancellor could go pound sand. Despite these heroic goodthink efforts, however, Xristi Friedman was in fact not digging the fresh air. She was not digging the new leaves, the promise of warmth, the flowers in the meadows, the return of the birds. She was in a bad mood. A bad fucking mood, thank you very much. Because the Party might be a figment, but the letter from the chancellor poking out from under the box of cassettes on her passenger seat was very real. The chancellor was the pure embodiment of the Party, and this letter was the pure embodiment of the chancellor. Fred, she loathed them. And besides, she was sick to death of this soundtrack. “You suck,” she said as she pressed the cassette player’s eject button. She was talking as much to spring as she was to Social Distortion, her favorite band. “Where’s that damn Mission of Burma?” she muttered. As soon as the cassette popped out of the player, the radio instantly switched on. It was the Happy Celebrity Gossip with Regis and Mindy show. “Evidently his cat got stuck in the chimney,” Mindy was saying with a gratingly fake laugh. “So he put on a Santa Claus suit and put some kat 21 The Pains kibble in his mouth and climbed in after her . . .” “Awwww . . .” Regis answered. A laugh track echoed with sighs and laughter. Cuteness at 115 decibels. But before Xristi could even reach the volume switch, Regis and Mindy dimmed down. And then there was some brass band playing a marshal theme. “Greetings, Freemericans!” A nasal voice assaulted her. “This is Minister of National Well-Being Oliver North with an important message. These are dangerous times, when freedom-hating terrorists beset our nation from within and without. But we are a strong, proud people, and we will not give in to fear—” It must be coming from a prodvert board, Xristi thought, but she had never heard this message before, and she drove down this road every day. She looked to her left and saw that indeed a board was there that had not been there yesterday. It showed a man in uniform with a very sober look on his face. She tried to remember what had been at this spot on Lyman Street before this morning, but she drew a blank. “Every day I hear from hundreds of patriotic Freemericans asking me what they can do to help our country, and every day I give the same simple answer: Support our troops. As someone who has taken a bullet for this proud land—with no regrets—I can tell you how much it means to soldiers in harm’s way to have the unwavering support of the citizenry. Nothing hurts our men and women in uniform more than seeing their efforts undercut by so-called loyal opposition. Be Freemerican! Support our troops!” “Fred fuck,” Xristi said. “Not another one.” With enormous relief she found the Mission of Burma cassette and vio- lently inserted it into the slot, and like a blessing the first notes of “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” poured forth. And not a moment too soon: She was entering the worst part of her drive, where she had to run a gaunt- let of institutional care facilities. Three hundred yards away to her left was an enormous grey building with gun towers at dozens of vertices. Even from here she could see the caregivers with their rifles standing by machine guns mounted on tripods. 22 The Pains Where Lyman Street met the driveway to the rehabilitation center there was a welcome house surrounded by walls of sandbags from which dozens of gun barrels protruded. Atop the welcome house there was a bright new sign: Changes! Where oldthink becomes newthink, and dreams become reality! Then she passed in quick succession the Women’s Benevolent Associa- tion maintained by the Ministry of Special Love and the Home for Little Wanderers maintained by Kindness and Kid Kare, inKorporated. Here she rolled up her windows. She knew that it was physiologically impossible for her to actually hear screams over the muffler and the Mis- sion. But her ears had been known to play tricks on her in the past, and she wasn’t taking any chances. The institutional care park gave way again to forest, and Xristi, suddenly sick of the noise, turned off the stereo. She couldn’t turn off her broken muf- fler, but by slowing down to thirty miles an hour she could diminish it to a reasonable roar. About a mile beyond the Little Wanderer’s Home, opposite the little ramshackle house on the right side of the road, Xristi turned left. At fifteen miles an hour she steered her car between two decrepit stone pillars that each sported large DO NOT ENTER signs. The Party evidently hadn’t re- christened this place yet, had not yet found a bland euphemism to hide its real purpose. Or if they had, they hadn’t noticed the concrete EASTBORO STATE MENTAL HOSPITAL built into the stonework. She drove past a succession of buildings on either side of the road, all disused and ill-maintained, set back on giant lawns. She went slowly here: The first time she had driven here she had nearly killed someone who was walking down the middle of the road, oblivious, talking to somebody who was evidently invisible. This shortcut through the old mental hospital was 23 The Pains 24 The Pains always the favorite part of her drive to her laboratory. It was her favorite place to gather her thoughts, such as they were. About a hundred yards up the road, still well downhill of the hospital’s Main Hall, she slowed nearly to stopping and turned left down an unmarked dirt path. She drove alongside a ramshackle greenhouse whose windows were mostly broken, then past a row of garages filled with rusted trucks, and eventually to the side of a lake. There, in a small patch of sunlight near some maple trees, she turned off the motor. Her ears were still ringing. She was tempted to grab a joint from the stash under her front seat, or at least a roach from the ashtray. But she had the feeling that getting a buzz on would not be a good idea. Today, she had the feeling, she would need all her wits about her. “Well, let’s have another look at you,” she said, and reached over to re- trieve the letter from the chancellor that she had received yesterday. April 19, 1985 Office of the Chancellor University of New Kent Eastboro, New Kent Dr. Xristi Friedman, PhD Professor of Cryoneurology University of New Kent Eastboro, New Kent Dear Dr. Friedman, On behalf of the Party, it gives me great pleasure to in- form you that in honor of your nearly two decades of bril- liant and revolutionary contributions to the science of cryobiology, you have been selected by the Trustees of the University to assume custody of the Chronos Collection. I am certain that you appreciate that this is a signal honor, among the highest that the University can bestow. Congratulations! 25 The Pains You are hereby relieved of your onerous teaching and re- search obligations having to do with all non-human life forms. As of today, you are at liberty to pursue research on the reanimation of human heads. Sincerely, Montgomery Meekman Chancellor Party Member in Good Standing She resisted the urge to rip the paper to shreds. “Oh yeah, Monty?” she said. “You think it will be that easy to get rid of me? Is that what you think? Well, we’ll just see about that.” 26 chapter 3 r. Norman Lux, nSF, as he shuttled down empty and seem- ingly endless corridors of the Monastery of Saint Reinhold, sometimes thought of himself as an electron following convo- luted paths on a CMOS chip. In Saint Reinhold’s vast silent complexes of hallways, stairways, dormitories, infirmaries, courtyards, libraries, chapels, kitchens, classrooms, pantries, carpentry shops, lavatories, colonnades, iconic grottos, prayerful stations of the noose, and disused rooms of all description; in innumerable echoing vertices where he could choose to go upstairs or downstairs, left or right or straight ahead to get from point A to point B; at anonymous junctures where he chose which way to go based on whimsy and a general sense of his position and vector, without a map (for there was no map of the Monastery of Saint Reinhold: Who would have produced it? For whom to consult?)—in places he had never been before but which were somehow familiar to him—in his mind he compared his bounded explora- tions of the monastery to that of an electron scooting down a doped silicon pathway of a microprocessor, through AND and OR gates; through NANDs and NORs, doing its thing, performing its part in a computation infinitely beyond its subatomic comprehension. To the extent that any electron imple- mented a computer’s thinking, and to the extent that this very Monastery of Saint Reinhold was a consecrated place (Norman the Freduit novice mused), to that extent he himself was an aspect of Fred’s thought: Norman Lux’s trajectory itself, perhaps, even an infinitesimal computation of Fred’s divine mercy. 27 The Pains He wondered, were his own movements through the maze really a sto- chastically dithered isomorph of subatomic pieces moving through some theoretical computer chip that was part of the same essential entity as Saint Reinhold’s: a self-similar tracing of a fractal pattern, an irresistible pull of Fred-only-knew what importance? But there he stopped himself. Such Tronish musings were mere mental masturbation of a short-pants theolo- gian who also happened to be a part-time student of electrical engineering at the University of New Kent, a waste of precious time and an invitation to thoughts even more problematic. In particular, it was not good for Mr. Lux to think of the words “irresistible pull” and “masturbation.” His ordination, with its Vestal Tugs and the release of seven years of pent-up essence was still so far in the future as to be fantastical and hence an occasion of sin. He resolved to think of more wholesome things. It had been three weeks since that painful morning when he had thought that he was going to die, when his bed had broken under a neutron star of a bedsheet. Three weeks since his odd interrogation by the abbot, which had culminated in a prophecy of a cosmic duel with Horatio Norton, the Eagle. During those three weeks Mr. Lux had concentrated on his studies—on the physics, not the metaphysics. He had tried to put out of his mind the notion that those inexplicable pains, that horrible suffering throughout his body that had made seconds seem like minutes and minutes seem like centuries, had been caused by a soul, somewhere, gone bad, or about to go bad. He prayed in the chapel, prayed while contemplating the body of Fred sway- ing gently in the breeze, while contemplating the mysteries of the noose, the stations of the rope—prayed that he would be able to put the idea of The Pains out of his mind. Largely he had succeeded. But not entirely. And now, today, he was going back to Changes!, back as chaplain. And he would minister to Horatio Norton, the former novice, the Eagle. Cold bright sun assaulted Mr. Lux as he left the main arched doorway of Reinhold’s Gate, one of the seventeen major entrances to the monastery. He stepped into the sunlight, breathed deeply, and gazed upon the vast demesne of New Kent, seemingly at his feet. The monastery, which had once been 28 The Pains 29 The Pains a magnificence, a men-only city unto itself on a high solitary mount in a wilderness, was now embarrassed by its history and pretension. No longer a city unto itself, it was a gigantic building, empty, empty, empty, sustained on centuries-old canned goods and the kindness of strangers, perched like a pus-filled whitehead on the rude inflamed uprising that was Mount Rein- hold, an archaic anomaly in a countryside long since domesticated, like a little vertical Sherwood Forest hemmed in on all sides by a relentless mo- dernity. But still the view was breathtaking: fields, farms, roads, a university, a city . . . His black linen cassock quickly collected every joule offered by the sun, warming him against the chill as he began his long, steep stroll down to the roadway, down to the World. It was springtime, but closer to winter than summer. Another cold morning lay on New Kent, for 1985 was slow in warming. Mr. Lux’s thighs complained at the strain of the sharp descent from Mount Reinhold, but Mr. Lux himself liked that the monastery was so archly perched. He liked the view of New Kent City and the surrounding countryside that the position afforded, but more importantly he liked that the place was hard to ascend to and no less hard to descend from. As a spiri- tual metaphor it was right. And Mr. Lux needed that rightness today more than ever. He did his best to absorb the metaphorical solidity of Fred’s man- sion on a hill as he gathered himself to attempt a mission for which he felt totally unqualified and unprepared. Like a shy child in the wings about to go on stage for the first time in her life, stomach in knots, heart racing, dread in every cell, Norman would have given anything to delay this assignment. But already Mr. Lux could see Carson’s pickup truck—high on lifters, body polished cherry red, with chrome roll bars and oversized wheels—idling in wait for him. Carson Myers, Change Facilitator, was at the wheel a quarter of a mile away, waiting to give Mr. Lux a ride to the facility. Mr. Lux in- creased his pace. He had left the sanctuary; there was no point in dawdling. His legs began to ache in earnest. Minutes later, having clambered up to its ridiculous height—tripping over his flowing black clerical garb like a lady in a Western movie caught in 30 The Pains her petticoats mounting a stagecoach—Mr. Lux was buckled into the pas- senger seat of the four-by-four. Carson, a babyfaced and somewhat flabby big lummox of a man-child nearly twice the size of Norman Lux, sat in the driver’s seat, his creased Changes! uniform seemingly radiating the con- fident mission of the Ministry of Love. But Carson himself was morose today. Whereas on the few other occasions when the two had been together, Carson had been voluble, a happy boy in a man’s body, today he had only grunted a hello as he put the vehicle into gear. Mr. Lux hated this kind of situation: knowing he was expected to speak but having nothing to say. More precisely, he did have something to say, but what he had to say was silence. Here in the World, however, silence was in- correctly parsed as null and would not do. He was called upon to minister the word of Fred to a world sorely in need of it. After all, that was why he had left the cloistered maze of Saint Reinhold’s and gone out into the World today. The abbot’s injunction still rang in his ears: You must bear witness to Fred who was hanged in the noose! This is a responsibility you cannot avoid . . . “You seem down today, Carson,” Mr. Lux ventured. “Is something both- ering you?” He spoke meekly and blushed, aware of his outfit. As natural as the cassock seemed in the monastery halls, that was how unnatural it seemed in the World. He sensed blood rushing to his cheeks. “It ain’t nothing,” Carson said. “Tiffany’s bitching about The Judge again and if there is one thing I cannot stand it is a woman bitching about a man’s pickup truck. Fred, that woman can be a bitch.” “The Judge?” “You’re sitting in him,” Carson said, patting the dashboard with his right hand and finally showing a small smile. “And Tiffany being . . . ?” Mr. Lux asked hesitantly. “My wife, Padre. My damn wife. I already told you that I’m sure.” The smile was gone. Defeated on his opening gambit, he wished more fervently that he could say nothing. But Mr. Lux had started the conversation and now felt trapped in it. 31 The Pains “So you’re having troubles then? Many young couples need help learn- ing . . .” “We’re not having troubles, Father,” Carson interrupted. “She’s just bitchy. I still love her to death; she knows that. She’s cute as a pea in a pod. Her being a bitch comes from being knocked up; that’s the way they are. Those hormones get wrong and then watch out, squaw on the warpath.” “Tiffany . . . she’s bound to be apprehensive with all the changes going on inside her and, um, all the new responsibilities looming ahead. Um . . . Be patient with her.” “I’m plenty patient with her. Until she goes ragging on my truck right when I’m fixing to go to work dealing with some of the roughest change- needers in the whole theme park. She bitches about that too.” “. . . about . . . ?” “Tiffany thinks I should get another job.” Carson was a simple man, nice enough, who loved his wife and his pick- up truck; a prison guard who did not even know he was a prison guard but thought he was a change facilitator; a man who, like the Party itself, made no distinction between murderers, rapists, and people who had de- fied the Party by wearing a T-shirt that mocked Ronald Reagan—they were all merely people who needed to change. In Carson’s and the Party’s eyes, a maximum-security prison was a theme park where frowns could, with enough time and care, be turned upside down. Carson could not even comprehend the basic notion that Mr. Lux had not been ordained and thus should not be addressed as “Father.” What advice could Mr. Lux offer to such a man in such a circumstance? None. And yet he had been instructed by the abbot to go out into the World and minister the word of Fred. But in truth there was something else troubling Mr. Lux, and he was only giving Carson’s problems half of his attention. The other half went to the leather- covered tome that rested on his lap—the book he had been surreptitiously reading in his monastic cell for the last week when he was supposed to be studying circuit design. An ancient volume he had hunted down in one of Saint Reinhold’s obscure unused libraries, it was not exactly a forbidden 32
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