Doppelgangers (12 page)

This feeling was redoubled when at his last lessons, lessons when he had learned his part and needed only to have it repeated till it was second nature, he was shown shots in which, ingeniously, from photos taken during his rehearsals, he saw his own figure—for so he was assured by his trainer, and he needed the assurance—actually dominating the adoring masses that stretched away to the horizon. The figure was—as Alpha's presentations to the people on the mass days now always were—magnified immensely, for magnavox had been added to and equaled by magnavision. He stood with these invisible electric “field-screens” round him which acted as lenses. He stood on the apex of the altar pyramid and his Brocken-like figure—but not a dark looming gigantic shadow, instead a great shining shape—thundered out, in tones like the roar of Niagara, the charter of liberation, of the right to happiness and enjoyment, of the individual to live his own life, to enjoy the light of the sun, the delight of love, the freedom of beauty, the creative spaces of leisure, the deliverance from sacrifice. And that voice that shook the crowds to exultation, that went roaring round the world, as the tides that brim round the earth's girdle of oceans go rushing after the moon, that tide of sound was his voice, that great moon of worship was his own figure, himself. True, for the moment it was only a build-up, but today he had seen what he was to become, today he had the promise, like a Moses who was let see the promised land with the promise that he should be let enter. Today perhaps he was no more than a moon that shone by reflected light—though like savages the people did not know that the moon was lit by a concealed sun. But tomorrow—which of them would be the real thing, what was the real thing?

He remembered when the revolution was making use of every means—of science and philosophy to win the educated, as it made use of pleasure and fine shows to win the masses—he remembered the use made of that queer old bishop's speculations as to reality. Bishop Berkeley's philosophy had been dug up just as in the last reaction from the dying Economic-Marxian Revolutionary phase, the German Nazis had dug up that other great master of philosophy, Eckhart. In the general classes given in philosophy to the boys who showed danger of preferring thinking to enjoying, it was a commonplace to quote the famous Berkeleian slogan, “
Percipi
est
esse.
” Very well, if that were true, then, and if to be perceived is to be, when he was perceived he
was; he
was then the master of the world. Whoever played the part was the part, for there was nothing apart from the part. The people, of course, could never distinguish, but now at last neither could even the close-ups. Could he? Should he? Did he need to? Did he want to?

He felt a curious vertigo in his mind. Was this, he wondered, the feeling which the imago-insect feels as it realizes that not only has it long ceased to be its chrysaloid body, but that it is now quite another body, far more complete and powerful, that its old body is now only a withered and constricting husk and that it must break out, leave that behind forever and emerge a new and shining creature, with a completely different appearance and completely different make-up, organs, and powers? Perhaps, after all, the mind was the precipitation of the body, and, if so, a complete metamorphosis had taken place. Of course, if that were so, there would be no need to push things or to hurry.

On the other hand, if he were suffering from a kind of post-surgical shock, a sort of concussion through the habit patterns of a lifetime being recast, well, then, too, rest was wise; no need to hurry. He must get his bearings again, think out his position, and decide after sufficient deliberation what to do. Either the Mole was still the master mind and had foreseen all this—and in that case it was clear he had seen that he, the remodeled man, must be given time and allowed to choose his own time as to when best to take the final step or steps. Or the Mole had not foreseen, had not calculated for such massive displacement. One could become certain as to which of these interesting conclusions was true only by waiting and seeing. The Mole would have to wait. If he, were still seeing a move ahead he would be willing to wait. If even he were at last in the dark and had done something, spoken a spell, which he could neither foresee nor unsay, well, then he must wait. Everything must wait, everyone must wait, the Alpha and the man who no doubt thought he was Omega, the Bull and the Mole, the powers above and those below, as he, small but wholly significant rider on the vast balance beam on which the three worlds hung, stood making up his mind, finding his balance, and deciding where to throw that minute but decisive weight.

How much bigger the whole scheme and plot, play and stage, was than he had ever imagined when he had the simple picture of “them” and “us,” of right and wrong, of oppression and freedom, of courageous revolt and cruel tyranny, of self-sacrificing nobility and mean, selfish exploitation of mankind! Could it be that they were all not merely pawns of a far vaster Mole, but that they all made up, in some sanely insane way, a pattern, that hurt the mind to think of and yet delighted it in a vague agonizing way, a pattern that was always, when your vitality and imagination failed, becoming chaos and, as your vitality rose, becoming a stupendously satisfying design of inexhaustible richness? Could it be that Alpha and Omega, himself and mankind, the man who thought he was the inside realist and the mankind who didn't know that they were dupes, were all part of an immense being, as above so below, all aspects of an immense mind that was reflecting on itself, all valves and vessels of a fabulous heart that pulsed and beat, systole and diastole, in an unending cycle of experience and expression? These wild thoughts ran through his mind first when he was resting one night but unable to sleep after a peculiarly brilliant demonstration by the private cinema in the robing room, showing him, as his trainer said, “only needing now to realize how convincing it looks to the outside, for the last of your own idiosyncracies, peculiarities, and personal traits to be lost for good!”

But though they first attacked him only at night, soon he could recognize them lying in wait for him at the back of his mind whenever he rested from the work. And of course the work fed this subsoil water-table with constantly fresh suggestion. For the first few days the theme was mainly in the mind's background and his reverie still went back to his old life, to the life in the hospital, to the life in the kitchen. But then he noted that not only was all that fading but that the theme, which had haunted him first as a drowse-reverie, was now present in a way in all his thought, flavoring it, but also that the theme, as it had first appeared, was now becoming clearer and more definite in all detail and in constant emphasis. He tried to explain it to himself. No doubt it was due to the fact that he had lived so long with no future, with his natural sense, the natural sense of what he would do and how he would live entirely subordinate to commands which could not be foreseen or understood. That absolute obedience had coiled up the spring of desire and wishful thinking, until now in the space given it it had uncoiled with a snap. He who had really had no future for years, living always in a kind of blankly potential present, now had in front of him a future which, just because he had lived such an unnatural life of abnormal, unconsidering readiness, showed up with its vast orderly formality stretching undeviatingly ahead, with a sudden, quite unexpected, relief. He tried to banish such thoughts, but he finally decided that it was better to let them have their way and run their course, just being content to prevent their going too far into the future, or from leading him to draw any conclusions, or making him to consider any actions in which he might have to take the initiative and change the stately course of this vast current by a violent intervention.

He had reached that state of agreement with himself, this provisional treaty or armistice with his old, central, if shrunken, self and this new accumulation of experience that already had built itself up as another encompassing body of conciousness, contemporary, self-consistent, holding the immediate future in its hands, and yet, quite inconsistent with what he had ever been or thought of being. He had reached an agreement not yet to force an agreement. That, he felt sure, was the right thing to do. Then, in a little while, when growth had gone on, he would be able to judge which of these two persons was the stronger, the more actual, and he would throw his weight on that side, for he realized that to try to defy the stronger must now mean madness. But there was no need yet—not the slightest—to say that his old self would not recover and assimilate this vast secondary personality which for the moment, because it was so great, showed a tendency to go on its own—the satellite to consume its own sun. He must give himself time, that was all. It was literally madness to go too fast at this point, and only he could judge the pace. The world must wait. The so-called masters of his fate, fighting for the mastery of the world with him as weapon, they must wait till the weapon decided, until the familiar made up his mind in what direction he was pointed and along what line, from what direction and to what goal, he would make the decisive thrust and stroke.

As he reached that conclusion, his spirits rose, and, as his second trainer took leave of him a couple of mornings after—when he told him that now the rehearsals of life could alone take him further—he felt positively buoyant.

He was, therefore, not in the slightest surprised or taken aback when, that very evening, as he was sitting back after supper smoking with the slow pageant of his presentations passing like huge hypnogogic imagery before his mind, while he rested as a quiet, contented spectator, the inner door, which had not opened since that first night, swung open and Alpha entered. The world-master stood looking at the remodeled man who did not rise from his chair. There was no need of caution, still less of courtesy. He was being inspected as a purchaser inspects a picture he had bought when it was needing cleaning and which has repaid his insight. For perhaps ten minutes the inspection lasted. It was quite impersonal on the part of both.

At last Alpha let a small sigh escape him—which showed the, studied attention he had been giving—and, turning round, sat down in a chair some six feet off, took a cigarette, and, looking at the ceiling, remarked, “The insect is now hatched: it only remains to let it hop like the performing flea which is controlled by a hair unseen by the spectators and so seems to be a triumph of human affection in teaching a creature of instinct to respond to intelligent direction.”

The remodeled man made no answer and none seemed expected. Each followed his own thought, if thought it was. In the remodeled man it went back to that vast lit procession, that shining stream of pageantal event in which, whenever he rested, his mind seemed to be drawn away, to be melted in its flow.

His day-and-night dream was broken by hearing his companion say, “Tomorrow you will dine with me. I dine early. This evening we shall have a little work to do, some small points to clear up. You are shaped for that now. When I have made a few points clear to you the matter will be settled. You will have nothing more to do than to hop when the invisible hair signals that your particular, if rather restricted, reflex is required of you. That is all for tonight. I expect you sleep well and soundly now, so you'll like to be sleeping now.”

The remodeled man's double got up and went through the door.

“How does he know I sleep well now?” the synthetic twin reflected when left alone. “Like bodies, do they have like reactions? But we have only a surface resemblance. But how far do surface resemblances and habits finally eat like a Nessus shirt right into bone and brain, shaping them like the outer appearance?” But it was true, he was drowsy and he now did sleep well. “I'll ask him tomorrow what he meant. It's hard to be shy with one's own image, and anyhow I'm now far too valuable for him to risk hurting in any way such an expensive and irreplaceable work of art!”

Smiling he went to bed and woke again from those long, uneventful, vividly lit dreams of slow and beautiful processions, full of light and color and vast choruses, in which performances he always had the position from which the best view and the best hearing could be obtained. It was pleasant and soothing to be the central onlooker, and even when the central actor was, in a way, you, even then you were really only in the royal box, the more-than-royal-box, from which at last it was true that the onlooker, if he could be as central as this, saw at last most of the game. And, like an interior creator, he might well conclude, might he not, that it was very good, at least as a play, maya? Yes, he was more rested every day and he was quite content to lounge through the whole of that day. He owed it to himself. No doubt his nature had been more strained than he could realize, and now it was recuperating. Sufficient unto the day, sufficient unto this evening.

IV

ALPHA'S APOLOGY

The door opened punctually at six
P.M
. and Alpha beckoned him to come through it. He entered a dining room not much larger than the sitting room in which he had been confined so long.

As he looked round, his host remarked, “Yes, you're thinking these quarters are on the cramped side. But you'll find, when you have to be for much of your time in vast spaces, that one naturally best relaxes by contracting. The attitude of foetal humility, as it's called, I believe; my nerve doctor tells me it is the most economical of space but also the most restful muscularly.

“Time and again when I was thinking out this, the Last Revolution, the Psychological Revolution which ends the whole cycle of uprushes, I noticed one thing that the big settlers, the men who concluded each revolutionary phase, always did: they got themselves into small resting quarters after all the expansiveness and expansion. People thought it was simplicity or sham simplicity. No, the anthropological reason is that when you have to relax from too much expansion and imposition of your self, you must contract. Well, perhaps I'll like a bigger apartment when I get more used to having more time off and by myself—that's where you will come in. Now let us eat, and you can ask questions after.”