The Fan-Shaped Destiny of William Seabrook (2 page)

Still, I did get slightly hot. I regarded myself as a most unlikely candidate for outright self-annihilation. I told him that
I was too fearful of death and too little at peace with myself. “I’d just like to be sure I’m going to get laid again before
I die!”

Overall, I’d found the Con an at least acceptable expenditure of time and money. While it had held no particularly great revelations
for me, it beat the alternative. Gritting my teeth and coughing up the substantial late registration fee, I’d reminded myself
how miserable long weekends always were. Couldn’t get any business done, everything being closed, and most people I knew would
be involved with family. My only human contacts would be the odd page from workers ticked off that they’d been tapped out
to work the Labor Day holiday.

Candidly, another consideration in my decision to attend the WorldCon was the presence of John Norman, author of an infamous
male-dominant fantasy series. Linda and I had found light escape in the
Gor
books for years. Were she still living, she would have given me no peace had John Norman been in town and we’d failed to
attend. The success of his novels in the seventies had resulted in his later suffering years of blacklisting. You see, the
Gor
stories feature female sex slavery. Now, you have to understand the way this worked in late-century America, forever pining
for the comforts of rigid dogma, which it is too pluralistic to be capable of enforcing.

The recent catechism held that male submission for sexual pleasure fell, along with homosexuality, within the parameters of
politically correct orthodoxy. Whereas female submission, like adolescent sexuality, was tantamount to rape, anathema to the
thought police who monitor social discourse as well as behavior. Even portions of the generally libertarian science fiction
community had conspired to silence Norman.

He had turned out to be a pleasant, distinguished gentleman with silver hair, who looked every inch the philosophy professor
that he was in actual fact. I remarked to Joe, who had known Linda well, how sorry I was that she wasn’t here to meet him.
When we were introduced to Norman’s wife, I mused whether she trusted her husband around the coterie of chain-bedecked young
women who flocked to his appearances. There were always at least a few whose affects ran toward tight black clothing and body
jewelry.

Joe had laughed, “Probably, but she knows very well not to trust the Lindas of the world.”

On Sunday, Norman was doing a panel entitled, “Are There Any Taboos Left?” Just one or two, surely… It was a bit late convening,
and I was standing outside the meeting room, well, brooding—actually—upon the assembling crowd, roughly divided between “geeks”
and “mundanes,” with a few unattached women.

————————

I
N THE STRANGE LIGHT
of what was about to fall on me during the coming days, it would be easy enough to look back and decide that I sensed something
untoward at that very moment. But such was not the case.

She was standing by the door, looking at the program posted for the John Norman panel with a severe expression, insofar as
could be discerned through the exaggerated makeup that turned her eye sockets into black pits. My quick glance about seemed
to verify that the other lone males did not yet have the scent. They were probably intimidated by her social mask and armor.

Goth. An entire subgenre of the literature aimed at this rather nihilistic ethos. While they were not really that rowdy, Con
dynamics had them and the other gamers more or less quarantined in a computer arcade. Frequent sadomasochistic drag notwithstanding,
it was unusual to meet one at any function apart from their specific fascinations.

Her appearance did challenge all comers. The jeans nicely displaying the curves of her bottom looked actually worn through,
as opposed to strategically ripped. Boots, tightly laced leather vest exposing her pierced navel, small silver Visigoth ax
dangling from an ear, and the silver band molded about the lobe of a pierced nostril—I supposed she must have something stuck
through her tongue as well. Any who were tempted to confront all this likely expected a surly rejection.

Her only visible colors were her elaborately done nails with what appeared to be star bursts worked on electric blue, and
brilliant, though remarkably naturallooking red hair, drawn back into a tail. Long red hair always exerts a gravitational
tug on me, even after half the women in America had rediscovered henna.

I would otherwise have been no more likely than the next middle-aged guy to get it up for initial moves in the face of all
that. Yet, I felt an unaccustomed arousal as I fantasized what other piercings or scarifications might be among the mysteries
of the strong, sturdy young body.

I had stepped on past her into the doorway when I thought,
What the hell?
I stopped and looked back into her raised eyes, green enough to confirm her natural hair tone, though its highlights were
likely cosmetic. She did not react to my nodded greeting for long moments. She had a wide face, JJ’s type of face, but with
prominent cheekbones and lips that would be full and sensual even without the contemporary outlining. The burning pale green
eyes within the black mask had a disturbing intensity. They were the kind that could demand answers, while yielding nothing
of what lay behind them.

“Hey,” she finally responded in a low monotone, her full lips barely parted. Her name tag, only grudgingly worn for admission,
I estimated, labeled her with the conceit of a single name, Leiris. It brought to mind Michel Leiris, who had written an essay
accompanying a photograph of William Seabrook’s redleather discipline hood for one of the Trocadero museums.

If she displayed the slightest interest in the sexual proclivity inherent in Norman’s work, this remote association might
make a useful gambit. The panel was starting up, obliging us to move inside. I was still standing between her and the room
with my back to the doorjamb. On impulse, I offered my hand to her. What I might accompany the sideways handshake with, I’d
no idea, something lame I would imagine. She looked at my hand, then up at me, and her lower lip seemed to quiver.
Whatever does she think she’s seeing,
I wondered.
Do we have drugs involved here?
Abruptly, she clasped my hand, but with her left palm downward onto my right, and didn’t release it.

Without a clue of what passed for social protocol among such creatures, I drew her beside me into the meeting room, still
holding her hand. Enjoying cheap gratification at various curious looks, I stopped beside an empty row near the front. She
stepped past me and seated herself with another puzzling gesture, hands sweeping upward just before her butt connected with
the seat. It was slight, but noticeable, like the quick shake of her head, as if clearing a fog.

Slouching insolently down, she spread her elbows on the backs of the chairs and rested a booted ankle on her other knee.
Is this baby stoned out of her mind?
I wondered again.
Am I trying to connect with a flake?
She evidenced no uneasiness sitting beside me, elbow against my shoulder. Couldn’t possibly be an older man buff, could she?
I couldn’t get that lucky!

Norman quickly dominated, as it were, the discussion, though the chair, a writer heavily into egames named Sonia Lyris, made
very good points. The women of science fiction are generally not slaves to political fashion. Sensing that Sonia didn’t want
to tie it on with Norman, I mused as to whether she might catch hell from some self-appointed sisterhood if perceived soft
on pigs.

I seemed to surprise my companion by remarking on the chair sharing her name, rendered with an alternate spelling. She’d been
looking at me when I turned to her, giving up a startled, flustered smile. Her posture had morphed again. She’d gradually
drawn herself up from her slouch and was sitting with her knees together and hands clasped demurely in her lap.

The panel concluding, she approached the chairwoman. I heard her say that she had read Sonia’s Web page. Maybe she hadn’t
been attracted to the panel by Norman at all. I chatted with Norman and Lyris about the contradiction posed by Anne Rice.
Female authors were allowed to explore erotic slavery, of both genders in every conceivable combination, without being subjected
to ideological commentary. The girl just stood and listened—listened to
me
with seemingly rapt attention. She was certainly looking intrigued by
something,
so before she could escape, I quickly invited her for a drink.

“Aw-hunh,” she leisurely drawled, “Marriott bar in an hour.” The punker persona was back in full bloom, and the decisiveness
was startling. There are dangerous pitfalls in being my age and alone again. If a woman even so much as smiles at you, you
may immediately conclude that you have something going!

“You’re sure?”

“You can be way sure when I say aw-hunh,” she threw over her shoulder, as she left me checking out a threadbare spot on the
butt of her jeans. I’ll admit it, I was thrilled, try as I might to harness my imagination. I puttered around, understandably
antsy. Checking the message board in the arcade, I found that my carefully printed notice, soliciting information regarding
the life and work of William Seabrook, with my 800 number attached, had gone missing.

As I’d not been unduly optimistic about obtaining fresh leads on the Seabrook source, I thought little about it. Even the
older participants would be unlikely to recall a Lost Generation journalist whose writings had been of adventure and social
concerns, with just a bit of the occult. Finally I’d killed enough time to walk the two blocks to the Marriott through the
blazing Texas afternoon, calculating that a preliminary drink to loosen my tongue might be in order.

In the bar, I sipped my Scotch and surveyed the bottom of the huge atrium, which the next two floors overlooked from tiers.
I’d been noticing how the curved ramps and stairs, even the two flights of escalators, worked into a general spiral motif.
It all reminded me of one of the dreamscapes I’d often visited while keeping a dream journal. The bar was semiopen, only partially
partitioned from the lobby, where she was chatting with a clique who looked presentable for the hospitality suite of
Forever Knight
or something else in the vampire venue.

She’d seen me enter, and a girl with spiked hair beside her had scowled at me as I had passed them. Well, the peer group was
a dream come true. I had begun to toy with the notion that the social conditions of our New Rome, limited job market, end
of conscription and wars of attrition, et cetera, were even further extending adolescence.

Should I infer bisexuality from the way the girls crawled on each other; “oh my God, I’ve not, like, seen you for an entire
hour”? Who knew? I was playing farther out of my yard than usual here.

Eventually she detached herself and came in to surprise me with her choice of a martini, which hardly seemed to fit with the
display I’d just been watching. We commenced the awkward ritual of initial encounters. Though she presently lived near Atlanta,
she’d grown up in San Antonio.

As it was for myself, attendance at the Con had been a matter of convenience for her, since she would not be out for accommodations
with family and friends in town. She’d been seeking escape in science fiction since she was a kid; a time that I’d been reminded
was not far behind her.

Maybe not so bad. She could talk about new work of which I was ignorant, and I could turn her on to the classics. I bounced
a few of the older writers off her, being sure to mention Phil Dick. Likely he’d been spacey enough to appeal to the younger
set. She retaliated with a barrage of names I’d only heard of, if at all—William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Pat Cadigan. I parried
with Dr. Gregory Benford’s coffee klatch where I’d been able to squeeze a few questions concerning the shadowy history of
Hugh Everett in among the demands on his attention. She’d read more of his work than I, but was unfamiliar with his early
triumph
Timescape.

“A fascinating read, though Benford’s paradoxes are exactly that.”

————————

“A
LLOW FOR ANY FORM OF TIME TRAVEL
to the past and it requires an alternate world for self-consistency, a world in which the proposed transit, message, or mere
observation from a possible future did occur,” I offered, shamelessly showing off. “This would be the case from the tiny time
loops of Feynman’s backward particles, all the way to fishing a wormhole up from the quantum foam and expanding it to transfer
macrocosmic bodies. Which seems to be the notion behind that television show…”

“
Sliders!
Pathetic, much? Every week, they’re cramming their morality up the portal of another universe. Wouldn’t even watch it if
Kari Wurher weren’t so totally hot.”

Well,
that
sounded interesting. I omitted mentioning that Linda and I had been deep into the early
Sliders,
watching it weekly. In that connection, I was still able to work in a reference to my late wife—to tap any mileage emergent
from widower status, though I’d no personal evidence of any properties that are so damned much fun. Against all my efforts
to heighten interest, she was absently bobbing her shoulders to the bar’s background music and giving the distinct impression
that time was at a premium. I was feeling hopelessly awkward and despairing of pulling this thing out, fundamentally clueless
as to what sort of creature I was trying to connect
with!

Yet, all I could think to do was to reference back to
Sliders,
bringing up Fred Alan Wolf. In numerous books, he’d searched for alternate-world observations in everything from high-energy
physics to artificial intelligence to dreams to shamanism. Without surrendering physical discipline, he seemed to understand
that science is not the totality of the life of the mind, or of life in general.

“These tunes are so very tubular, they really are. So, that dude Wolf, what he said?” The vernacular, in addition to her distracted
effort at continuing conversation, tended to bring the expression “space cadet” to mind. Nevertheless, I expressed my fondness
for Wolf.