'Smoke some dope before the game.'
'They'd kill me.'
'Tell what'shisthing not to give you the ball. The big jerk. The one who calls the plays.'
'Hobbs.'
'Tell him not to give you the ball. You could just stand off to the side and observe what it all looks like. I bet it would look wild, Gary. All that running and the colors. Would it be speeded up or slowed down? Would your sensory parts function in terms of football or dope? You wouldn't have to carry the ball.'
'Ball or no ball, I'd get killed. I'd have no coordination. I'd just stand there and get hit. They'd kill me. They'd tear me to pieces.'
'I guess you're right. It's better not to take chances.
But it would have been tremendous to observe all that action from close up and being high.'
'There's no tension in our relationship,' I said.
'Where did that come from? What do you mean? Now don't talk that way, Gary. You know the way I am when it comes to us. I'm too emotional to just sit here and talk about our relationship. That's a horrible word anyway.'
'I was just fooling around. Probing for a sense of definition. How's your book coming along?'
'This book is an unbelievable book. I don't know what else to say. Do you want to hear what it's all about?'
'I don't think so.'
'It's the last part of a trilogy by Tudev Nemkhu, that Mongolian I mentioned once before. It's a whole total experience, Gary. I'll just tell you one or two little things about it.'
'How little?'
'These halfmollusk creatures called nautiloids inhabit a tiny planet in a galaxy not too far from here. The planet has just one ocean. It's a big round circle of liquid and gases. That's where the nautiloids live. The rest of the planet is barren except for one small mountain. There's no surface life whatsoever. There's just the nautiloids in the ocean. The nautiloids, who are about twice humansize, communicate with each other through some intricate ESP number system that the author spends almost two chapters on but that's way over my head but still tremendous to read if only because it kills me to think how anybody could think of this thing. I forgot to tell you, Gary. There's a thick hard foam that encases the planet about fifty miles above the surface. So anyway one day without warning there's a disturbance in the nautiloids' system of communication. Their numerical language gets all garbled. They can't communicate properly and they get very disoriented and panicstricken. Some of them start coming up out of the ocean. Then more of them come up. They crawl over the land. They're all in a state of panic. Then one of them goes into a fantastic spasm and breaks out of its shell. At the very second this happens, the thick foam around the planet also breaks. Then there's silence everywhere. Oh, I forgot to tell you. The mountain is completely uneroded. It's triangular in shape. And because of its strange configuration, if you were to walk completely around it you would always see the same flat plane in the shape of a triangle. So the nautiloids go back to the ocean. All but the one that broke out of its shell. It stays there on the ground until finally something comes pouring through the break in the planet's outer crust. It's powdery black light. It's a form of electromagnetic radiation that's semiblack and has weird texture. The author spends dozens of pages on this part So then the light becomes sort of infused into the complex brain apparatus of the nautiloid. The creature's form begins to change. The black light continues to wash over the creature for what we would call many centuries but what in cosmic terms is just an eyelash blinking. The creature's body becomes incredible. Tudev Nemkhu almost doesn't even want to describe it. Finally he does it but only in terms of chemical formulas, mathematical equations and statements from formal logic which I think are all supposed to be really true and documented and not just made up. So there's this creature that's been formed of the landscape itself through the power of this black light. It's almost an abstract being. It's barren of features or really of any kind of distinguishing elements. I guess it's hard for people with arms and legs to conceive of this thing. The thing is visible but not really describable except in scientific terms. But it's not just a blob or a bunch of protons. It's a mass of equations and formulas rendered into some kind of tangible form. The thing's shape changes a million times every millionth of a second. That gives you some idea. And its brain is slowly evolving into phases of light and nonlight.' 'What does that mean?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'But then everything begins to double. Within the thing's brain mechanism there are now two landscapes perceived by two mechanisms. The thing sees itself seeing what is outside it being seen by itself. As Tudev Nemkhu explains it, this duplication results in the making of words. Each likeness is a word rather than a thing. When the word is imprinted on the thing's original mechanism, the likeness that was the word's picture instantaneously disappears. The thing's brain keeps on producing likenesses and then delivering words into its own circuitry. The thing perceives everything into itself. It duplicates perceptions and then reduplicates the results. The author finally gives the thing a name. The thing becomes monadanom-the thing that's everything. It keeps making likenesses to make words. The words have no meaning. They're just fragments of cosmic language. So everything is existing inside this complex brain apparatus that was formerly based on a numerical system and that now is guided by phases of light and nonlight, or something pretty much like that. And this duplication goes on and on for what we would call millenniums until suddenly without warning one of the words erases itself. The brain didn't order this and doesn't comprehend it. The word just erased itself. It no longer exists. There is no record of it.'
'What about the triangular mountain?' I said.
'That's as far as I've gotten. I guess the mountain turns up again in the ending. I forgot to tell you one other thing. The thick foam around the planet is an organic selfhealing thing. The crack is slowly closing up again.'
'Monadanom,' I said.
'That right.'
'And this guy's a Mongolian.'
'That's right, Gary. But he writes in German instead of Mongol. The translation leaves a lot to be desired. Which reminds me. Vera wants a sample of your handwriting.'
'What for?'
'Vera's into psychographology and character analysis.
It's all related to early Mayan forms of astrology. Esther's into bottled water.'
'I just thought of something,' I said.
'What, Gary?'
'That word I kept seeing all over town. It represented some kind of apotheosis. I'm pretty sure that's what it was. An apotheosis of some kind. The air was thick with it.'
24
I stuck my head under the black windbreaker that hung inside my dressing cubicle in the locker room. Then I took two more drags on the joint, whistling in reverse, swallowing deeply, all vigilance and greed. Two more drags then. My throat was very dry; it burned a bit. I stepped back away from the cubicle, hoping all stray smoke would cling to the garments hanging there. I wondered if my teammates or the coaches could smell anything or detect visually a trace of modest smog. The place was getting quieter. We were almost ready to take the field. I was all suited up except for headgear. I palmed the joint and went quickly into the bathroom. In one of the stalls somebody was trying to vomit. It was a poignant sound, monumentally hoarse, soulful, oddly lacking in urgency. A herd of seals. I entered the far stall and tried another drag. The pinpoint glow was gone already but I had a book of matches tucked into one of my shoes. I lit up again and inhaled deeply, getting paper and loose grains along with the smoke. I took in everything, hurrying, feeling the smoke pinch my sensitive palpitating throat, watching the remaining paper sputter slightly and go brown, then dragging again and lipbreathing like a malevolent jungle plant to gather in the escaping smoke and finally sucking everything into the deepest parts of my lungs and brain. The sick player emerged. I peered out at him from a narrow opening as he washed up and gargled with cold water. It was 47, Bobby Hopper. I took a final drag, then flushed buttend and matches down the toilet; there would be no safe way to use them later on. Bobby and I left the bathroom together. Mitchell Gorse passed us on his way to throw up.
I drank some water from the fountain, swallowed, then took another mouthful and spat it on the concrete floor.
