Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea (63 page)

7.

Golgotha Tenement Blues/Counting Zeroes

(11/15/1966)

Wait. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Shun a premature narrative, lacking necessary background exposition. Ergo, the future, which will shortly be spoken of as the past, the
future
of the past (as all futures are), 1973 and the intergovernmental hysteria rightly triggered by the indiscretions at the Watergate Hotel. The steps hastily taken to destroy records of
previous
indiscretions, and among them the efforts of CIA Director Richard Helms to annihilate all evidence of Project MKUltra. Between the early 1950’s and 1973, the CIA’s secret efforts at behavioral engineering in humans. This fell to the members of the Scientific Intelligence Division, who dutifully employed “chemical, biological and radiological” agents to accomplish their ends, along with a buffet of torture, sexual abuse, sensory deprivation, prolonged verbal assaults, and so forth.

LSD was popular.

Had Helms been successful, MKUltra would have managed to disappear. No mean feat, that would have been. But spooks are notoriously fine magicians. Only, Helms was the cut-rate sort of magician who makes a living at children’s birthday parties. That is, if we evaluate him solely on his failure to erase the two plus decades of
this
project.

Now. Then. Before.

Here is a woman named Madeline Noble. One day, she, unwed, will have a child who will be named Patricia Elenore. In time, Patricia Elenore at age twenty, also unwed, will give birth to a daughter to be christened Olivia Estrid “Sixty Six” Noble.

Link to link to link.

Dot to dot to dot.

LSD, amphetamines, barbiturates, ergine, temazepam, psilocybin, mescaline, heroin, 3,4-methylenedioxy-
N
-methylamphetamine, et alia. And the researchers were especially proud of their superhallucinogenic glycolate anticholinergic dubbed “BZ.” Words that roll off the tongue like pretty pharmacological poetry. In 1964, Madeline Noble enrolled at Bowling Green State University, undecided on her course of study, though, ironically, leaning towards psychology. Madeline was one of five students unknowingly administered multiple doses of BZ
via
cafeteria food. Seven doses, over fourteen weeks, culminating in a psychotic breakdown. Solid data for the studious number crunchers and keepers of albino lab rats to mull over. Control the mind, control the will. Control the soul. Render malleable strategic individuals, armies, the populous of an entire city malleable, or insensible. Useful.

That upon the wings of a super-bat, he broods over this earth and over other worlds, perhaps deriving something from them: hovers on wings, or wing-like appendages, or planes that are hundreds of miles from tip to tip – a super-evil thing that is exploiting us.

By Evil I mean that which makes us useful
.

Madeline. Here she is, in a white, white padded cell, kept safe from herself, in the sense that she may not now do herself bodily harm, may not end the nightmare of her life. The hurricane within her amygdala, its inability to imagine an end to the storm and send an all-clear to the medial prefrontal cortex. This cyclone puts the [anti]cyclonic Great Red Spot of Jupiter to shame. She is divorced from this place and this time, thrown forward, backwards, and she watches the sky fall whenever she shuts her eyes.

In every way, Madeline Noble is a success story for the geeks and bureaucrats of MKUltra. She is a shining star, falling or not. Hard work pays off and has been rewarded with manna from Heaven, as it were.

As she is.

In her head, the sky falls. There, it bleeds over the waters of Penobscot Bay, above and upon Deer Isle, where her parents have a summer home. Where she spent her summer vacations, before college. When she is visited by psychiatrists from McGill University, happily serving their CIA manipulators, when they question her for voice recordings and meticulous notes, she recites blasphemies written down and published more than four decades earlier, though none of them will ever make the connection with
his
damned book. How the brilliant are often blind.

They press the record button, pencils held at the ready, ears perked like alert hounds, and sometimes she will sing for them: “When You Wish Upon a Star,” “Stars Fell on Alabama,” “Catch a Falling Star,” “I Only Have Eyes For You.” They scribble, and
she
says:

“A thing the size of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s alive in outer space.”

“Something that big? Wouldn’t we have seen it?”

“
Shhhh
, Logan. Don’t interrupt her.”

Madeline is silent for a moment, glaring at the three men in her cell. And then, again, she says, “A thing the size of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s alive in outer space.

“Something the size of Central Park kills it.

“It drips.”

“Jesus,” Logan whistles to himself.

“Showers of blood,” she says. “Might as well
be
blood. One especial thing, a thing the size of the Brooklyn Bridge, as there are vast living things in the oceans, there are vast living things in the sky. Leviathans. Fleets of Leviathans. Our whole solar system is a living organism, and showers of blood are its internal hemorrhages.” There are no italics here because every word she says is emphatic.

“Rivers of blood that vein albuminous seas.”

“Dreiser, how do you spell ‘albuminous’?”

“The phosphorescent gleam seemed to glide along flat on the surface of the sea, no light being visible in the air above the water. Though…disruption may intensify into incandescence, apart from disruption and its probable fieriness, these things that enter this earth’s atmosphere have about them a cold light which would not, like light from molten matter, be instantly quenched by water. They still burn. They can’t stop burning.”

She names asteroids that have not yet been discovered.

She describes, in great detail, Saturn’s north polar hexagon, which will not be observed until the year 2005.

She also describes Io’s volcano Tvashtar, the frozen seas of Europa, the September 18th, 2006 discovery of a supernova 240 million light years away.

She asks them, “Who are the twins?”

She asks, “Who is the Egyptian? Have you any idea how long she’s been alive?”

She asks, “What is the Ivory Beast?”

“What is the meaning of ‘Black Queen white, White Queen black’?”

And after a prolonged silence, followed by a fit of laughter that not a man among her watchers does not find disconcerting, she turns her head towards the ceiling. And taking great care to enunciate each syllable so that they will not mistake these words for any others, she says, “Gentlemen, we have arrived at the oneness of allness. A single cosmic flow you would label disorder, unreality, inequilibrium, ugliness, discord, inconsistency.”

“Jesus
Christ
,” Logan mutters. “Haven’t we heard enough of this shit for one day?”

“Don’t make me tell you to shut up again.”

“Checkmate,” says Madeline. “Because this is the meaning: Black Queen white, White Queen black. A game of chess played in the temples of Eris, the halls of Discordia. There will be murders on
La manzana de la discordia
. You know, or may learn of Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, not his real name, but let that slide. The gods were not pleased, and so, of course, all were turned into birds. Even the birds will rain down upon the bay and upon the island. Eris tosses the Golden Apple, and the sea heaves up her judgment upon us all. Watch for the Egyptian and the arrival of the twins and my daughter’s daughter. Watch for Strife, who, warns Homer, is relentless. She is the sister and companion of murderous Ares, she who is only a little thing at the first, but thereafter grows until she strides on the earth with her head striking heaven. She then hurls down bitterness equally between both sides as she walks through the onslaught, making men’s pain heavier.

“The calla lilies are in bloom again. Such a strange flower – suitable to any occasion.”

“Be still,” she says. “The chaos rains around you now.”

She tells them very many things, and these things Richard Helms
will
succeed in expunging from the knowledge of man. In that, at least, he will be successful. There are those
outside
the CIA who will see to that.

Later, on the flight back to Montreal, Dr. Allan Logan examines their notes. “Thank fuck we know that woman will never have a daughter, much fucking less a granddaughter. Whatever Washington is aiming for, I believe they overshot the mark with that one.”

“Ours is but to do or die,” replies Dr. Dreiser.

“That’s not how it goes.”

“Not how
what
goes?”

“That poem. ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’ Tennyson. It goes, ‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do
and
die.’”

“Fuck you, Logan.” With that, Dr. Dreiser shuts his eyes and concentrates on the rumble of the Boeing 707’s turbocompressors. He dislikes air travel almost as much as he dislikes Logan.

But a daughter will be born to Madeline Noble.

And a daughter to her daughter.

Eris plays a mean game of chess.

8.

Bury Magnets. Swallow the Rapture.

(17 Vrishika, 2152)

She sits on a bench in the main observation tier of the
Nautilus-IV
, her eyes on the wide bay window set into the belly of the station, the icy spiral of the Martian northern pole filling her view. She being the White Woman.
La femme albinos. Ca-ng bái de. Blancanieves
. More appellations hung on her than all the words for God, some say. But if she has a true name – and doesn’t everyone? – it is her secret and hers alone. A scrap of knowledge forever lost to humanity. So, her blue
eyes
are fixed on the Planum Boreum four-hundred kilometers below, yes, but her
mind
is on the Egyptian – Ancient of Days, El Judío Errante, Kundry, Ptolema – she has many “names,” as well. The Sino LDTC ferrying her is now less than eight sols out. The Egyptian racing towards her. An unforeseen inconvenience. In no way at all a calamity, no, but still an unfortunate occurrence to force the White Woman’s hand. It tries her patience, and patience has been the key for so long that she cannot even recall a time before she learned that lesson.

In less than eight sols, the transfer vessel will dock, and they will speak for the first time in…

Ça fait combien de temps déjà?

She answers the question aloud, “Cent trente-neuf ans.”

“Vraiment?” asks Babbit. “Autant que ça?”

When she arrived on the station two months ago, Babbit was assigned the task of seeing to her every need. As has been her wish, he hardly ever leaves her side. The company of anyone is a balm for her sometimes crippling monophobia. A medicine better than any she has ever been prescribed. It doesn’t matter that this tall, thin, towheaded man is only mostly human. Many times, she’s resorted to and relied upon the companionship of splices. Besides, Babbit’s fast borrow capabilities saved her the trouble of telling him all the tales he needs to know to carry on useful conversations. And there will be much less fuss when she orders his death, before her flight back to Earth. Easy come, easy go.

“Vous n’êtes jamais allé à Manhattan,” she says.

“Madame, c’était perdu avant que je sois né.”

“Bien sûr,” she replies, and the White Woman holds up her right hand, absentmindedly running fingertips along the window, tracing the serpentine furrow on the Chasma Boreale. It seems almost as long as her long life, and almost as aimless.
Possédé de direction
, she thinks,
n’est pas être possédé d’intention
.

“En tout cas,” she says to Babbit, “nous étions à Manhattan. Je venais juste de rentrer de la Suède. Il y a si longtemps. Presque au tout début.”

“Autant que ça,” he says again.

“Je ne pourrais pas commencer à comprendre ce qu’elle espère accomplir en venant ici me poursuivre comme elle le fait.”

“Moi non plus, Madame.”

“Il se peut que le vaisseau soit armé. Ça serait bien son style: une attaque préventive, sacrifier le poste entier et tout le monde à bord afin d’accomplir ses objectifs.”

“Ces fanatiques sont extrêmement dangereux,” says Babbit.

“Ce n’est pas possible qu’elle espère
argumenter
avec moi. Elle ne peut pas imaginer l’idée que nous partageons un concept commun de Raison.”

“Des vrais croyants, je veux dire,” Babbit says.

“Je sais ce que vous voulais dire.”

“Bien sûr, Madame.”

“Peut-être elle ne souhaite que d’être témoin,” the White Woman says. “Être présente quand le cavalier de mon roi prend son dernier fou.”

Babbit clear his throat. “Je m’attends à ce que le capitaine aura prévu la possibilité d’une attaque,” he says, then clears his throat once more.

She laughs. “Il n’a rien fait de la sorte. Il n’y a pas eu d’alerte, pas de préparation pour intercepter ou protéger. Il reste assis et attend, lui, comme un petit animal peureux qui se recroqueville aux sous-bois.”

“Je ne faisais que de supposer,” admits Babbit.

The White Woman pulls her hand back from the window, and she seems to stare at it for a few seconds. As if in wonder, maybe. Or as if, perhaps, it’s been soiled somehow. Then she turns her head and watches Babbit. He lowers his head; he never meets her gaze.

“J’ai considéré retenir le lancement jusqu’à ce qu’elle embarque,” she says to him. “Jusqu’à ce qu’elle soit assez proche.”

“Alors vous avez pris votre décision? Le lancement, je veux dire.”

“J’ai pris cette décision avant de quitter Xichang. Ce n’était qu’une question de quand.”

“Et maintenant avez-vous décidé du quand?”

No one on the
Nautilus-IV
, no one back on Earth, no one in the scattered, hardscrabble colonies below, none of them know why she is here. Few enough know that she
is
here. She was listed on no passenger manifest. They do not know she’s ready to call the Egyptian’s gambit and move her king’s knight. To cast a stone on the still waters. Not one of them knows the nature of her cargo. No one but Babbit, and he won’t talk.

“Maintenant, j’ai décidé quand,” she tells him, and the White Woman shuts her blue eyes and pictures the vial in its plasma-lock cradle, hidden inside a shipment of hardware and foodstuffs bound for Sharonov. The kinetic gravity bomb will detonate at five hundred feet, and the contents of the vial will be aerosolized. The sky will rain corruption, and the corruption will take root in the dome’s cisterns and reservoirs.

Wormwood.

Apsinthion
.

…and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch…

“Madame,” says Babbit, not daring to raise his head. “Êtes-vous sûre d’obtenir les résultats desirés? Il y a de règles d’évacuation, des procédures de confinement environnemental – ”

…the waters became wormwood…

“Babbit, toute ma vie je n’ai jamais été sûre de rien. Ce qui en est en cause.”

She turns back to the window and can almost feel the wild katabatic winds scouring the glaciers and canyons. The White Woman pulls her robes more tightly about herself. She’s glad that Babbit is with her. She wants to ask him if he might take for granted that she has never loved, if no one has ever been dear to her. But she doesn’t.

Instead, she says again, “Ce qui en est en cause.”

“Oui, Madame,” he says. “Bien sûr.”