Senses Three and Six, Page 4

  My hands fall on something cool and smooth. I look down and see the notebook that I had forgotten.

  There have been times in my life when the Big Eye has come down off my shoulder to actually meddle around. Strange things have happened which I could not explain, like finding a live black rabbit on my doorstep at midnight, the evening I finished reading Watership Down. Or when I was considering giving up flying, and found that a sparrow hawk was perched on my windowsill, looking at me, staring at me until I found my confidence again.

  I’ve been a scientist, too. But science doesn’t welcome the Big Surprises. Only little ones that can be comfortably chewed and swallowed. When the unknown comes in out of the borderline and grabs you by the jewels, that is when the Universe has chosen to gently remind you that a change of perspective is due. It is showing you who is boss.

  Science tells us not to expect personal messages from the Cosmos, either. But they happen, sometimes.

  The notebook is smooth and cool.

  Are you friend or foe? What shall I do with you, symbol in my lap?

  In a rush the panicky commands go out to my body. Get up! Throw the cursed book down. Open the door and jump out. Start running. Start another lie… life in another town.

  MOVE!

  My treasonous body does not obey. The mutiny is shocking.

  Okay… we’ll try something else. I command these hands to open this book so that I can look inside.

  With a sense of betrayal I watch as they obey. The scratchy paper riffles as my fingers pick a place at random.

  By the moonlight there is no mistake. She wrote this. There’s no mythical “friend” who left a notebook in her car. I never noticed before, but Elise has lovely penmanship, even if the lines do waver a bit, trembling across the page.

  It’s ridiculous, really. I moved out here to get some peace and quiet. To get a summer job that didn’t feel like a Summer Job—and to get away from that crazy rat race of briefs, moot courts, and exams. I thought it would be amusing to live in the hicks for a while.

  I realize now that I hated law school! Oh, not the learning. That was wonderful. But all the rest—the backbiting, the atmosphere of cynicism and suspicion. Ideals got you nothing but derisive laughter.

  All those using, abusing men, so glib about respecting modern women, then turning and cutting them first chance. As if we “modern women” were any more kind, of course.

  I’m never going back. Here it’s peaceful and quiet. I’ve landed a job I wanted more than that damned clerkship. Can you imagine? It’s tending and selling plants! I’m beginning to see why some Eastern peoples put gardening on a higher level than politics. I love it.

  These are real people, not money- and status-grubbing yuppies. I’m terrified they’ll reject me if they find out I’m a refugee from the world of polyester and gold chains.

  Especially my new man. He doesn’t talk much. I still haven’t been able to define what it is that draws me so to him. But I’m desperate not to drive him off.

  I think, maybe, he’s the most real thing I’ve ever had to hold on to.

  Two minutes ago I was surprised. Now it’s as if I’ve known this all along. I flip to a later entry…

  When am I going to learn? How many women have ruined their lives trying to change their men into something they’re not?

  He is gentle and kind and strong—such a lovable grouch. So what if he hates just about everything artistic or scientific. What has art and science ever done for me, anyway?

  Oh, I’m so confused! What is this indefinable feeling I have about him? Why do I keep risking it all by trying to change him?

  I think I’m actually starting to relax, sometimes. Whatever he’s doing for me, I can’t surrender it now. Better to give up this journal, the other hidden indulgences, rather than take any more chances…

  So. Another refugee, albeit from a more mundane sort of crisis. Oh, Elise, I’m sorry I never knew.

  I’m glad I never knew, for I would have run away.

  I understand now why she encouraged that bright young idiot Alan Fowler to hang around. Her patient probing worked better than she’ll ever know. Along with a series of incredible coincidences. And time.

  The car is slowing down, coming to a stop. I look up and see we’re on a side street a few blocks from home.

  She is looking at me, shaking her head slowly, hopelessly. Her lips tremble and there are thin pulsing rivulets on her cheeks.

  I let the book slip from my hands and close my eyes to breathe deeply of the night. I can smell her from a few feet away. She comes to me as musk and perfumes and sawdust from the Yankee.

  I can also smell the dampness of the streets, and the pine forest south of town.

  What else? Ah, yes. There is salt water. I swear. I can even smell the ocean from here.

  She is crying silently, head lowered.

  What am I going to do with you, Elise? How can I thank you, now that Chuck is gone, for taking care of him while I healed? How can I make you understand when I go away, as I must very soon.

  I reach over and pull her to me.

  It doesn’t matter, Lise. It doesn’t matter because I knew it all along. From the very first, I suppose, a part of me knew you’d be trying, without knowing exactly what you were doing, to summon me back. Don’t cry because you succeeded!

  I must spend a long time comforting her—holding her and gentling away the fear. I can see Andromeda faintly through the open window behind her, a stroke of light against the sparkling of the stars. I whisper to her and can feel the planet turn slowly beneath us.

  I think I’m finished subvocalizing, this evening. It’s not necessary anymore. Doors are opening and long and unused feelings and ideas are stepping out.

  The opening traces of a plan are forming. They must have been gestating for months… designs for a lockpick for a very large cage. Lessons to be taught to Old Joe Clark.

  There’s a lot of work ahead, some of it quite dangerous. I’m not sure exactly how to get started and it may wind up taking me a long, long way from here.

  But I promise you, Lise—if you want me to—I’ll take you with me when I go.

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  The senses referred to in the title are those of smell and the inner mind. There have been experiments showing vividly how closely connected odors are to our recollections. Sometimes a faint aroma will trigger the most vivid of memories. Once in a while, it goes the other way around.

  I wanted to write about a character who wasn’t sure what was real anymore, where his assumed identity began and where the horrifying past left off. This is the result.

  I believe the one greatest moral contribution of Western civilization has been the concept of a difference between subjective and objective reality… the perpetual warning that says, “Watch out! You may only think you know what you know.”

  Human beings have a tremendous capacity for fooling themselves, for imagining slights, crafting false memories, denying faults, believing ideologies. Science fights back with the Uncertainty Principle, which has proven that no human can ever have perfect knowledge. Unless you can demonstrate it in a repeatable experiment, it cannot be treated as a fact. Sure, you can play with an idea without proving it. Metaphors, allegories, and science fiction stories are all great fun, and useful, too.

  But until other people can regularly duplicate your experimental results, it’s best to smile and remember to say “maybe.”

  “To thine own self be true …” said Polonius. An honest person always double-checks, for it is all too easy to lie to the one who trusts you the most, yourself.

  “Senses” is one of five stories which debut in this volume. It is also the oldest story here, begun long before my first novel, Sundiver. Every year since, I would dig it out and poke away at it for a while, then put it away again. It’s one of the most difficult pieces I’ve ever done.

  The following story might very well be the hardest of all.

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