The Combinations, page 38
All, all, all — to end here, among the martyrs & heretics, the real &
metaphysic monuments to the Eternal Momentary, excommunicating the hours:
* Here the text breaks off. What might follow is a matter of pure speculation, all logical inferences
not withstanding — a view which has been strenuously contested, but the details of this dispute
have already been sufficiently recorded elsewhere (the reader is referred to Smutná & Hovno,
Heterochora Paradoxicum (). [:]
230
the procession of Father Death & his Apostates, the moon months, the pre-
Copernican universe on a dial — Rome a thousand years deceased & last Dark-
Age antipopes futurshocked as Šindel’s mechanical astrolabe (scaled replica of
the Real Thing, the Proxy’s proxy, Time in the abstract if not the abstract in
Time) becomes a proto-causality machine — dark, iridescent cogs, wheels, mills
producing timespace, quantum relativity weirdness disturbing the God-sleep,
celestial entropy, anachronic glitches in the very stuff of Creation: catastrophe if
the Clock failed, though not for lack of trying.*
* The Nazis shot it to pieces during the ’ uprising — it took three years to get it turning again.
Too late — by then, figured by the history book, the shadows had lengthened irreversibly & the
Time really had stopped. [:]
231
18
___________
ENCULER LES MOUCHES
According to these principles we may advance without temerity —
st. That angels & demons have often appeared unto men, that souls
separated from the body have often returned, & that both the one & the
other may do the same thing again.
nd. That the manner of these apparitions, & of these returns to earth,
is perfectly unknown, & given up by God to the discussions & researches
of mankind.
rd. That there is some likelihood that these kinds of apparitions are
not absolutely miraculous on the part of the good & evil angels, but that
God allows them sometimes to take place, for reasons the knowledge of
which is reserved to himself alone.
th. That no certain rule on this point can be given, nor any
demonstrative argument formed, for want of knowing perfectly the nature
& extent of the power of the spiritual beings in question.
th. That we should reason upon those apparitions which appear in
dreams otherwise than upon those which appear when we are awake;
differently also upon apparitions wearing solid bodies, speaking, walking,
eating & drinking, & those which seem like a shade, or a nebulous &
aërial body.
th. Thus it would be rash to lay down principles, & raise uniform
arguments, & all these things in common, every species of apparition
demanding its own particular explanation…
Augustine Calmet, Dissertations sur les apparitions
des Anges, des Demons et des Esprits, etc., etc. ()
In the half-light Němec almost failed to recognise him.
The Prof’s ghost was sitting on the edge of the windowsill, fidgeting with
the curtains. Flashback to a figure in the snow, somewhere that didn’t exist — a
zone on the other side of Reality, the cancellation of Time, the Gleichschaltung
of Space. What was an optical illusion anyway? A flaccid premonition of the life-
to-come? (Call it a breakdown in the integrated G.O.D.-circuit: the
inframundo, the mega-cortex, the synapse nebula. A window in the meshwork
opens & you stick your head through to see how the weather looks on the other
232
side. Maybe when you pulled your head back in, everything will’ve changed, the
world might’ve stopped. It’s a risky business, messing with the control grids.)
Who knew if the whole of Creation wasn’t just papered-over with pictures to
make things look the way they did & not some other way, blocking-out the
image-flux like a Japanese waterfall on digital replay. The Cosmo-Synchronicity
Machine. Possibly one day a circuit glitch, a code erased from the programme,
would cause the whole System to reboot — & suddenly there you’d be, on the
other side of the waterfall, in a stateless limbo, an anteroom, a threshold of
thresholds…
Like now.
Staring at the shape of equivocation itself taking bodily form: the Old
Man of the Mountain, windswept forehead as if he’d been out in the celestial
elements contemplating the insignificance & misery of man, or simply the ends
of his fingernails, supplicant of the Goddess of the Crossroads, banishing the
image of the lost world from his mind, by degrees, by facets, spiralling in limbo
till disburdened & sent off upon some transgallactic wormhole vector like a
quasar in full flight. Outside, an airraid siren wailed in an indeterminate
distance, like hundreds of others all across the City. The drone reached its
crescendo & continued for a full minute, then began winding down, like a
dynamo going flat. A relic of Cold War civic defence drills, death-from-the-sky
paranoias. The street groaned, settling down for the slide into entropy, the
abortive hours that followed midday like a shadow falling in a heap & slowly
dragging itself back up again.
‘Are you real?’ Němec asked, unable to think of anything better, knowing
it was a dumb question even before the words were out of his mouth.
Well, you’d have to be delusional to see a ghost in the first place, right kiddo? Or
fire-up just enough fuse and ozone to produce a passable impression? To fool the eye?
‘What does it matter,’ the Prof said, ‘as long as you think I’m real?’
Well, he had a valid point there. But could a man who was dead appear in
his own body?* Or if not his actual body, a more approximate one? What did it
matter, if it was there to be seen, or if it was just seen to be there? What was
more real, the thing or the seeing of the thing?
Mmm, Němec took some time out to ponder that one. Conclusions?
* “Nequam hominis cadaver post mortem dæmone agente discurrere.” [:]
233
Mo
±
of everything / in any case / = just H
LES: no
st
substance, if substance
= e.g. a ft concrete wall (then) you could bang yr head against (it). Just a
question of ⚖.* A blackhle could be ≤ the in the middle of your eye & fit
stars & planets & whole galaxies inside, squashed down to the size of an A* — a
micro-mini∥universe (on the spooky “other side”) — & it’d be like that submarine in
Fantastic Voyage & just pass right through you, skin & bones & brain (& don’t forget the kidneys, too), the intestinal tract, the in the anus, shot out into the great toiletbowl of timespace
& not even a blip on the x-ray monitor to show for it…
R
The Prof gave Němec one of those abstracted looks you get when people are
unable to decide if you’re pulling a con or are just plain stupid — a variation on
the “hairless Mexican” — like two images superimposed on glass & slightly out
of sync, the way they’d be if you were trying, for example, to reconcile a man’s
head with a Klein bottle… Well how d’you think they fit all them con-cepts in there?
Doctor Who stuff. But a concept wasn’t the same class of bureaucratic
phenomenon as a neutron star, there were civic ordinances against bending
someone’s head around a kink in timespace. Never know what might come out.
Watching the Prof’s face change shape against the window turned Němec
crosseyed like some revenant Duchamp, to be looked at from the other side of the
glass (with one eye, close to, for almost an hour). What did the ghost want? What
did any ghost want? Appearing out of nowhere, a message from the Great
Primeval, perturbed spirits haunting the night & all that — but suddenly
everything’s wrong because you’re part of the future & whatever the ghost puts in
an appearance everything around you looks different: reality gets
desynchronised, time-out-of-joint, like you’ve just been zapped to Planet X
where all the inhabitants have been turned into robots obeying the commands of
an artificial intelligence called G.O.D.2 & only ghosts are free to come & go as
they please, being of the spirit &, mutatis mutandis, of the flesh also but
contrariwise…
R
* “Scale[s].” [:]
* “Atom,” you ignoramuses. [:]
234
Yep. Light’s on, kiddo, but you sure anyone’s home?
Němec fidgeted with his bottom lip. The Prof’s ghost, meanwhile,
perched there looking at him, as patient as a man with all the time in the world.
The idea of conducting a conversation with something that, strictly speaking,
wasn’t really there, wasn’t even a thing, & in the full awareness of what he was
doing, struck Němec as… Well, he’d done stupider things. Better just to play
dumb, he decided, & see how the situation pans out. Keep his cards close to his
chest & pull out the aces when the time’s right. Stay cool. Let the ghost make
the first move…
The ghost grinned —
‘All around,’ he said, reading Němec’s thoughts apparently (a most subtle
vapour), ‘are things the naked eye can’t see yet they exist. Can’t see yer own
mind, now, can you? Time? Bacteria? Once upon, people’d think you were nuts
just to suggest such a thing. Gravity? Electrons? Hell, electrons? Hoowee! X-ray
visions of naked bodies, you might as well say. Call it what you like, Invisible
Man stuff, but the universe is full of ghosts.’
Němec pictured a man in a room conversing with his own thoughts, given
shape, corporeality, naming them (Thought , Thought , Thought …) like
the Earth’s first administrator, Adam in his copse, This little worm of an idea I
baptiseth… Becoming quite philosophical about it all as he gets down to the
minutiae, not a grain of sand unturned, not a louse, crab or ringworm, all no
sooner Christened than emphatically more “real,” a word with some meat on it,
living & breathing so to speak. And now, if from the fact alone that I can draw from
my thought the idea of a thing…
Němec ogled the shape in the window. His mind, meanwhile (invisible as
it was) had gone blank. He felt suddenly exhausted. World’s full of ghosts? Mmm,
just wait till news gets out about that one! Spectres from other worlds weaving the
wind like draughts of air, or light printed onto celluloid, or birds in flight over endless
tundra. For by mine eye I do not know what I see!
And how about androids? Did they turn to ghosts when they “died” (or were
retired, or expired, or whatever)? And if they did, did the other androids believe in
them, those ghosts? And if they didn’t believe, if they refused, egged on by their
God of Reason, did the poor ghosts wither & die? Was that what was wrong with
the world — they’d all been duped into conniving in the murder of their own
ghosts? Still, Němec couldn’t see the crime in that. Why get all sentimental about
the old smoke? No shortage of doom on the horizon. Ghosts aplenty…
‘Did you find out the answer to your book?’ Němec said, trying to
235
manoeuvre things in the right direction.
‘What book?’
‘That Voynich book…’
‘ Ach, you can’t expect me to be worried about that anymore. It’s your
problem now. Can’t take it with you, you know.’
‘…’
‘…’
‘By the way, d’you happen to remember someone called Faktor?’
‘Never heard of him,’ the ghost said.
‘He’s heard of you.’
‘Don’t believe it. Who ever heard of me?’
‘…’
‘…’
‘My fingernails stopped growing. D’you think it means something?’
‘It’s just because you chew them in your sleep,’ the ghost frowned. ‘My
wife used to do the same thing. Couldn’t stop. Psychotherapists, hypnosis, you
name it. She was ashamed for anyone to look at her hands, what she did to
them, ja, but still couldn’t make herself give it up. Like cigarettes. Hardest thing
to kick, they say. You could explain a lot from that, nicht wahr? Look at
Veenston Churchill — you think History’d be the same without those cigars of
his? My mother, God rest, used to smoke while she was in bed, just like that
Mae West in the movies — it was very unusual for a woman to smoke in those
days, even in bed. More than once she set herself on fire, but refused to change
her ways. They said it was diphtheria that took her in the end…’
R
As long as Němec had known him, the Prof had always had the look of one of
those Social Credit types who keep a soapbox under their beds in case of
emergency, ever-ready to split hairs or crank-out a lecture at a moment’s notice.
The ills of the world & all that. Man’s betterment. Brotherhood of the Carpet
Slipper, the Bowtie & Eightply Knitted Cardigan. But death had worked a
wondrous transformation, like an alter ego suddenly given free rein. Besides, it
was hardly fair to begrudge a deadman his favourite cardigan. All that said, did
the Prof think he was doing anyone any favours turning up like this & nothing
useful to say for himself? Or was it somehow incumbent on Němec to do the
Old Man’s talking for him? Bring the ghost up-to-date with his “investigations”?
236
Let him in on the score?
‘Ghost, it’s not going as well as we’d hoped.’
‘Hoped? Speak for yourself, mein kleiner Freund. It was a lost cause
before it even started. Believe me, I’ve seen it all with my own eyes…’
But the ghost had stopped talking & began to whistle quietly to himself,
something from Mahler. Why Mahler? He seemed to be waiting for Němec to
say something. Němec took a stab in the dark —
‘Does God exist?’
‘Beats the hell out of me. You think they give you all the answers just
because you ran out of time down here without figuring it out for yourself? Not
a chance. D’you remember what Karl Rahner used to say?’
Němec shook his head. Who was Karl Rahner? Evidently the Old Man
still had some wisdom to impart.
‘He said the world, & humanity with it, is the possibility of becoming the
material history of God. ’
The Prof’s ghost waved his hand at the world outside the window —
‘Which is a fancy way of saying there aren’t any real mysteries, just
unknowables. Like the missing part of a paradox,’ he grinned widely. ‘But let’s
not complicate matters more than they already are.’
Well you could have all the explanations of reality you liked — & after
reality expired? In this life, what was easier than being an alien in the midst of
conformity? You begin to doubt the explanations & they send people to check up
on you, teleported right through your TV set — schedule you for a bit of the old
rehab — Not having politically suspect thoughts are we, sunshine? They find out
you’re conversing with random ghosts — oh, boy. Zap, crackle, pop! Cure you
fast. You learn to choose the available options, just tick the box beside the
number — there’s plenty to pick from — an apple for every eye.*
R
* Been the same story since Eve, or Lilith, or Pandora, or whatever you wanted to call her — “Hope,”
maybe — the well-greased pipedream that keeps you queuing up for more — an avatar for every pain
— tuned-in to the TV-evangelised Confessions of a Love Doll. Be careful what you wish for. A woman spurned, kiddo, it ain’t a pretty sight. Could androids have souls? Some hidden biotic component that could evolve into the ether & do without them, fly the microelectric coop & become alpha waves on
the cosmic neural bandwidth, the way a mudman dreams of becoming extraterrestrial dust? The
visible & the invisible? But how could you tell you weren’t already one of them…? [:]
237
‘D’you know the story of Odysseus & the Horse?’
The gloom was making his head hurt. Němec edged up from his armchair
& regarded the ghost doubtfully —
‘What horse?’
‘Mister Ed, what d’you think?’
‘Oh, right, the wooden one. Trojans & all that…’
‘Not a wooden horse, a machine, giving birth to men.’
‘…?’
‘Things aren’t always what they seem.’
The Prof’s eyes appeared unbalanced. They glowed. The gloom grew
more oppressive. Němec could taste metal, the muscles in his jaw were knotting
