Conversations

by Barry N. Malzberg

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact

Synopsis

This is the story of a strange and terrible world of the future. A world where children live without parents and family. There is no sense of the past in this world, no sense of history except in the mind of Lothar. Some say he is crazy; others only know that the Elders do not approve of his peculiar ways and that all conversations with him are forbidden. Dal is somehow attracted to Lothar, tolerating his impatience as he tells of past times that he has constructed in his mind from the scrapbooks he has hidden away in his cubicle.

Release date: August 29, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 87

Sample

WHAT THE ELDERS SAID: Here I live. Twenty up, twenty down, me in the middle with the Group. Twenty up, broken gray and movement to the distance, twenty down to the landing, farther out the arena. Gray up, landing down, me forever in the middle. The middle is the best. The sky is dirty and the landing hard.

In session with the Elders for the first time, the question of my future is raised. My future is a greedy secret locked into the brain, buzzing like a machine; it is a secret which I cannot yet share, not even with myself, but it buzzes to me in a language which I will someday understand.

“I am still considering,” I say to the Elders. “I may continue with my studies. On the other hand, I may go into the outer lands and search. It all depends. It depends on how I feel. Sometimes I feel one way and sometimes the other. When the day of choice comes I know that I will make a sound decision.”

The Elders nod. They like to hear this. They like to feel that you are maturing nicely and not taking your position lightly. I wish to impress them and to earn their goodwill, for if one thing is sure to me it is this: I do not want to displease them in any fashion. If I displeased them they might go probing for the secret which buzzes in the brain, that secret I am not ready, not just yet, to tell even myself. So I sit quietly in an approved posture, crossing my legs. This shows dignity and strength.

“I will see,” I say. “I will see what happens at the time of choice. Then I will know.”

“Good,” an Elder says. They all look very much like one another and take turns conducting the investigations, but for some reason all of them must be present, as if they were a board and I were being examined. Not consulted, as they claim. It occurs to me for the first time that the reason for this may be that the Elders do not trust one another to be alone with me. This is a new thought, and I know that it will be very much with me in the future. “That is a good attitude, Dal. Do you have anything to report about the Group?”

“No,” I say. I say it too quickly, and with a sting in my heart realize that the Elder has recognized this. “Nothing,” I repeat, more slowly, emphasizing the words. “Everything is as it was. Or will be.”

The Elders at the long table murmur, look at one another. “Is something troubling you, Dal?” the questioner says. “Consultation is to help you. It is to help you deal with the problems which may be in your own mind and heart, and is not for our good but for yours.”

“I know that.”

“So tell us. Is something troubling you?”

“No,” I say.

“Is someone in the Group troubling you?”

“No one.”

I keep my hands at my sides now, my expression perfectly calm. They cannot know the thoughts which go on in your head. No matter what they can do to you, what their power or knowledge, your thoughts are private and your own, and they have developed no way in which to discover them. Knowing this I feel strength, looking up and past the Elder, past his tired old face and toward the opening through which the lights from the outer complex wink.

“Everything is fine,” I say carefully.

“Well, then, is someone else troubled? Can you report the disturbance of another? Do not be selfish, Dal. It is the Group which we must protect. If you can help someone—”

“No one is disturbed,” I say very calmly. “Everything is well. Everything is fine. The Group is happy and all norms are adjusted.”

As I say this I slide from my seat and stand before them. These are the rules of the consultations: when you stand you have ended the interview, and they cannot make you stay. They make these rules expecting that you will not remember them or you will follow them only for their convenience, but all rules work in two directions, and only one of them is for the Elders.

“Do you have anything more for me?” I say. “Is there anything you wish to ask?”

Astounded, they look at me. Their faces open into little lines and cracks which I have never before seen, and to look at them is power.

“Then I must leave,” I say. “I must leave right now.”

The buzzing of the brain begins once more and I feel the power rising for the first time, a power I have never before known. “I leave now,” I say and turn from there. I go away from them. I leave the center rapidly, very gracefully, all of the wires humming in suspension over my head. Power of the wires. I duck through their nest into the porcelain of the hallway. My body feels light, half suspended as I cut through the ozone and then into the lift.

I understand then that the Elders too are weak; they are as weak as I.

But if that is so, if neither of us has strength … then who is in control?

LOTHAR: So I go later in that shift, as I knew I would, to see Lothar again. Transactions outside of one’s Group are strongly discouraged if not actually forbidden, but nevertheless I have been seeing Lothar for some months now, since we met on Intercept, and life has never been the same since this began. Now I can see increasing strangeness. For instance, I would never have done what I did with the Elders had it not been for Lothar. But for that very reason—because I know I did it on borrowed determination—I am now weakened and must see him again.

“Tonight,” Lothar says to me when I come into his cubicle, “tonight we will talk about the old days. We will talk about the past.” From a high shelf, panting a little, he drags a scrapbook wh. . .