The argument between Joe and Maggie had been raging for hours. Neither of them realized that time was passing. Neither of them was quite willing to look at why the other's views mattered so much to them; and neither was willing to give up. And it had long since gone beyond the matter of their relationship.
"As an artist, you should be dissatisfied with the meanness and compromise of what they call real life."
"As an artist, I don't think real life as you describe it exists. You might look at a girl and see the town trash, and not bother to see anything more. I have looked at one and seen a creature out of fairyland hidden in cheap jeans and t-shirts. You aren't looking deep and far enough."
"And that just brings out what I say. You look at these things, and see what they could be, and should be, and are not. You are replacing reality with possibilities in your mind – possibilities that will never become reality."
"No. I look at these things as they are. As they really are, the sum of it, good and bad, right and wrong. You act as though only the unpleasant parts were true. As if everything good and kind and brave and far-sighted and self-sacrificing and disciplined and helpful were a delusion. You miss half of what is there. The better half. And then, because you can't find it in your present, you imagine it in the future you want to build. But you are unable to find these things because you refuse to look at them."
"The things you imagine… even if any of them were, they would not be relevant, because what works, what is effective, what affects reality, is the failures. And I still say that you are working on your own fantasies. Suppose you asked that girl, or any of these people you see as demi-gods, they would agree with you? Or would they agree with me?"
"I would not want to ask. And I would not trust the answer. If there is one thing that I feel sure of… and that our contact has confirmed to me… it is that you cannot trust what a person says of herself. Himself. Itself. Self-delusion is really too easy and too frequent. And sometimes self-delusion is negative as well as positive. People imagine themselves to be worse than they are."
"Oh. And you learned this from going to bed with me, did you?"
"Not from going to bed. From what you did afterwards. You said you would treat sex as something like drinking a glass of water… and then you would not let go of me. And mind you, I had had to force myself a bit, to let go of you. But then I thought I saw sex differently from you. I felt it made a difference between people. But now, you sound as if you don't want to let go of me either. I think our sex made a difference to you."
"It's physical. Nothing more than physical. In case nobody had told you, Joe, you are a specimen so splendid that women could get an orgasm just looking at you. I am still a human animal, I still have the sexual reactions of one – less than other women, perhaps, but they aren't dead. It doesn't mean that your or anyone's views should prevail over mine. Sex is one thing, reason is another. And science. And sense."
"Oh, wow. That's the least flattering piece of flattery I ever received."
"It wasn't meant as flattery. If I'd wanted to flatter you, I'd have talked up your brains."
"Because brains are the only thing that matters," said Joe in a sarcastic tone.
"Yes!"
There was an angry silence. Joe was not only instinctively against her views, he was somehow revolted. He tried to understand what it was that he found wrong, and 111111why.
"You are saying that sex doesn't matter, because it does not involve the mind."
"Didn't I say that from the beginning?"
"And you were wrong from the beginning. You were lying to yourself – your behaviour contradicts your statements."
"So I'm incoherent. So I'm not following my own beliefs. So what! It only proves that I am falling short of my beliefs, not that my beliefs are not true."
"You cannot separate yourself from your beliefs, Maggie. If you do, it's as if to say that your own beliefs don't apply to you."
"You have to! If you don't, all you will have is a series of ad hominem arguments. Haven't you heard them? You only say that because you're a man. Because you're a woman. Because you're white. Because you're black. Because you're working class. Because you're an academic – left-handed – American. Can't you see that that sort of thing just murders argument? It's the easiest and most popular way to refuse to argue."
"And it's absolutely not what I meant. I mean the exact opposite. I mean that if your life can be used as an argument against your views, then your argument is not real to you. It's a game your mind is playing. You say that love is a superstructure – a justification – an excuse – for sexual needs. But I'm here to tell you that you have pursued me as if it mattered to you."
"Suppose it was. It would only mean that my lust impulse is s stronger than I thought. It may even mean that I am weaker than I thought. It does NOT mean that it is about anything more than lust."
"In that case, why are you arguing with me instead of just trying to take me to bed? Why are you acting as if my views, my views mind you, mattered to you?"
"Because you're DAMNED WRONG, Joe, and you insist on staying in the wrong, and I find that annoying. But the reason I hang around you at all is that you are the most handsome man I've ever seen, and one of the best lovers I've ever had. OK? I would certainly want to have some more sex. But I don't want to pay for it by having to consent to views I find absurd.
"The mind is the only thing that matters," Maggie was saying with a sort of concentrated fury that was somehow more powerful than a shout, "or rather, it matters so long as it can grasp logic and science. "
There was a silence. For a few seconds, Joe was stunned by the sincerity and anger of Maggie's statement. And she looked like she was astonished at herself for having given herself away to that extent.
"But you still… all right, all right. I mean, if it was only about the sex, it would not matter to you what my views were, or even if we could speak the same language." He was actually thinking of all the soldiers he had met, but he was not willing to speak of that.
"All right. Suppose we discuss your beliefs as if they were independent of you. I don't believe they are, but let's."
"Well, I think your view of mankind is hopelessly sentimental and confused. And I think your sentimentality affects your understanding."
"Speaking," said Joe laughing, "in the mildest and politest way possible!"
"Well, what do you expect? What do you want? To seriously discuss serious matters, or to be treated nicely? I'll put my kid gloves on if you want."
In fact, Joe wondered what he had meant with that passing remark. Maggie had taken it much more in earnest than he had meant it, but all the same…
Really, what had struck him was Maggie's manner. There was more than belief in what she said, and above all, in how she said it. There was a desire to overcome, to force her will, her views… and maybe her whole personality… on others. To conquer. And behind it, he seemed to feel something ragged, injured, raw. Did she even have kid gloves, in that sense? He thought not.
"So you say I'm incoherent. Suppose I am. You still should be showing that my ideas are wrong, not that my behaviour is inconsistent."
"But that matters! It makes a difference whether you are coherent or not. To me, it shows that you are hiding. And frankly, at this point, I don't want to let you get away with it. Not because of me, but because you might hurt other people in future."
"And hurting people is bad in itself," answered Maggie, in a mocking imitation of Joe's own sarcasm. Joe gasped.
"You think it's not?"
"There are millions of times when hurting people is necessary, and not hurting them is bad. Jailing crooks – surgery – even war, maybe. I don't think I would hurt anyone without a very good reason."
"Maggie, that's a scary thought. You're frightening me. Let me insist on one thing: you are not clear about yourself. I have already pointed it out in one important matter! A matter that has to do with your relationship with other people! And if you're not clear about your own motives, or about your relationship with people, how can you be so sure of that? You say you wouldn't hurt people without good reason – how can you trust your judgment enough to decide that your reasons are good? How can you be sure you aren't lying to yourself again?"
At this undiplomatic sally, Maggie's rage reached white heat. She stuttered, because she could not find an expression ferocious enough and hurtful enough to convey her feelings. "HOW DARE YOU!" she yelled "Who the Hell are you, to judge me like that, what do you think you are, who died and made you God?"
There was a silence. Then -
"Sorry, but that only shows that I hit you where you live."
"YOU - !"
"Sorry. I am not God, but I'm a guy who has come close enough to you to have a few ideas. And the angrier you get, the more you make me feel I'm on the right track. It's the truth that hurts – hurts enough to scream."
"Oh, for the love of - - All right, let's assume that I'm drawn to you. Let's even assume that I've been lying to myself about the nature of my feelings, and about my behaviour. Well, you still are insolent and presumptuous! And what about your own behaviour?"
"What about it?"
"Look, Joe, one thing is clear. You are not happy with me. You feel pestered and hounded. You had hoped to have a one-night stand with a pretty woman – I flatter myself – and no consequences. And perhaps so did I. But do you realize that it's your disappointment that led you to call me something like a potential torturer and murderess?"
"Wait a minute. When did I say that?"
"When you said that you would doubt my reasons for hurting someone. Because if I have no good reason to hurt a person, if I am not being a doctor or a soldier, then I am torturing them, maybe murdering them. I am inflicting pain for the sake of it."
"I did not say that... exactly."
"I said, a potential murderess. You certainly said that."
"I guess I did. I also said that what you said had frightened me."
"So I'm a potential murderess. So why are you wasting time on me?"
"I don't think I'm wasting time. I never said that."
"So you think you can change a potential murderess?"
"So many assumptions... I might have other reasons than to try to change you. I might not even believe that I can change people. I might still be interested in what you are. And perhaps you might understand what I say, even if you disagree with it.
"But one thing is right... one thing is true, and I don't know whether you will ever accept it. I do feel some sort of special responsibility for you. I have been to bed with you, and in my mind that means that I can't just look at you in the same light again. I am interested in you. I am concerned with you."
All this time, Joe had had a drawing pad in his hand, and a pencil.
"You're wrong, you know. There is no separation between body and brain – you can't pretend that the one can be separated from the other. You perceive, you react, you act, with your flesh and your limbs and your blood. Your heart rate just now could tell a story about your involvement in this discussion, and about your reaction to me.
"And I am not anything special. Everything I know is the little I have learned in my life, but that does include getting to know you. And I will defend my views if you attack them. But I certainly am no anything special. I am not God, and nobody died and made me one."
Maggie took a few seconds to think of a reply. Really, she was asking herself if she dared….
Yes, she did. She would say it.
"That comes oddly from you. From you of all people."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that it comes oddly from you. Precisely from the person you really are. "
There was a fractional silence. The man was used to crises and his reactions were fast, but this he had not expected. Maggie saw that she had scored.
"And what do you mean by that?"
"Everything you think I mean. You do understand me, don't you, captain?"
Another silence. Then -
"How could you possibly have known?"
MK Walsh snorted. "You have to remember, Joe... Steve... that this is part of my field. Superhuman and trans-human studies. I studied everything that could be gathered about you in college, and actually wrote a couple of papers about you. I examined every piece of film I could find. Then, when we met, I started having this unbelievable thought at the back of my mind... And this visual impression… So I've been looking at you. How you move, how you act. And it was getting weird. And I came on to you, which I very rarely do. And the closer I got to you, the more you looked like Captain America. However impossible that was."
"WAIT A MINUTE!" the big man exploded. "Did you just say that you only took me to bed because you wanted to test a hypothesis?" He stood up in fury. Paper and pencil flew in different directions.
Margaret Kathleen Walsh had rarely felt afraid in her life, but this unfamiliar emotion was suddenly present and in charge now. She had never seen human eyes shine and rage like the eyes of Captain America shone now. And she suddenly remembered that those hands were man-killing hands, hands that had cut a swathe through German and Japanese lines, that had brought down many Axis superheroes. Later, thinking rationally, she would realize that he would never have hurt a normal human, a woman to boot, who was not his enemy or trying to do him harm. But at this moment, here and now, she only knew that she was in the way of his wrath.
Her mind was working at its usual frantic pace. She should never have been surprised, she told herself. Of course, no man of his kind would put up with being used sexually, whatever the reason and whatever the procedure. One thing was a passing one-night stand, and another, quite another, would be to be used. He would hate the very idea of intimacy being the tool for something else, something analytical, something cold-blooded. If you can't love me for what I am, at least lust after me for what I am. There was only one thing she could answer – apart that it happened to be the truth, or part of the truth:
"No, Steve, honestly. I was drawn to you from day one. I meant it when I said that any female human could get an orgasm just looking at you."
"Hunh! I guess I'll have to be content with that," and the boiling rage in the blue eyes gave way to irony. "Even supposing you were capable of being in love, I don't suppose you'd admit it."
"Not admit it? Why should I not admit it?"
"Because you aren't admitting it now, remember? How did this whole argument start? It started with you refusing to admit that you are drawn to me." As he spoke, he bent over to retrieve his drawing materials. For a moment, Maggie Walsh could only see his muscular back and his sun-streaked blonde hair.
"All right, call it love. You can call it Fred for all I care...
"You say that the way I live and feel... especially about you... is in contradiction with my beliefs and my work. Well, the very thing that you are is in contradiction with your beliefs. Weren't you going to be the vanguard of thousands, maybe millions, of superhuman people? Wasn't your serum intended to create super-soldiers?"
Steve Rogers' face turned from his sketching paper to look straight at her. "Oh my God. You don't mean you... Is that stuff still around?"
"What stuff?"
"That stuff about the super-soldier serum and millions of super-soldiers. I thought they'd stopped it after the first week, except for the comics. Where did that idea come from?"
"It's pretty universal. You mean you weren't…?"
"Oh, God, that idiot. That idiot! There was a guy in Public Relations… I forget his name… who thought it was a good idea to claim that Captain America was, quote, the next step in human evolution. Unquote. We soon shut him up. Apart from anything else, I wonder he didn't realize that this was repeating what the Nazis were claiming about themselves. And I wanted to fight the Nazis, not to be a poster boy for their ideas."
At this point, Maggie felt herself explode with anger in her turn; and, in her anger, she used an expression so blasphemous that "Joe" winced. But her anger was not for him. "You mean that people spent sixty years in pursuit of... a mirage? Of something that just wasn't there?"
"And you mean they took it seriously?"
"Why shouldn't we have?"
"Oh dear God. It was war propaganda. Some REMF who probably didn't understand the science any better than I do, and who probably thought that there was something inspiring about being "the man of tomorrow" or other such rubbish. Did they even realize that they were tapping into the same racial fantasies as the Nazis?"
"Oh Joe… Steve. No, we didn't. I guess every scientist still does, except for me now… and I have to say, I did have some doubts… not about the whole concept, but about some significant parts. And I have the BA Thesis to prove it. But even so, I don't think it was a racial fantasy as such. I mean, I am still having trouble accepting that it was all a sell. But if it was, it wasn't about race. The idea was that the super-soldier serum would have worked for human beings as such – white, black, Jewish, Asian, you name it. And you say that there never was a super-soldier serum?"
"Not as such. That wasn't what Erskine was doing at all. He had simply come up with a reliable method of locating potential super-beings, and of stimulating their latent powers. The serum, the radiation treatment, and a few other things, were designed to stimulate super-power potential across a wide range of possible causes... don't ask me more than that, I'm an artist, not a biologist. He reckoned he could contribute several hundred superheroes, maybe even a few thousand, to the war effort – which, as you can imagine, would itself have been a big contribution.
"But as for finding the way to make any random human being into a super-being, that was no more in his sights than flight to the next galaxy. Pure science fiction. In Erskine's time, nobody had managed to discover the reason for super-powers. They seemed to happen at random and with no family cause... what you would call a genetic marker today, I guess."
"Come to think of it, nobody has, yet."
"No? Not in seventy years?"
"No. In fact, superhero studies have gone out of fashion. The only thing that worked was the gamma ray treatment, and that makes insane monsters, not super-soldiers. And that should have been a danger sign already. I mean, if a field of study yields so few results... "
"I'll tell you what Erskine told me before we started. Superheroes are simply a random variant of any human population. We are things that happen... like red hair, a talent for music, or weird things like having three or four nipples. All right, in terms of frequency it's more like that last one... But superheroes are simply part of humanity. We are homo sapiens, like everyone else."
"So the Captain America project was nothing to do with genetic improvement? It figures… I never could work out how it was supposed to work. And anyway mutation and speciation tend to take place in small isolated communities, and to have coherent results… not to take place all over the place and to result in a variety of different outcomes. I should have realized it earlier."
"Actually, it was about genetics. Only not about evolution or… what did you call it? Speciation?"
"Speciation."
"OK. Well, Erskine had found a way to discover the potential superheroes in the population, and to stimulate any latent powers. His theory was that there were only a small percentage of potentials in any population, and that the chance of powers being inherited was extremely remote…"
"That's well known, Captain. Since you vanished, people have been trying to create superheroes, and one of the things that has been repeatedly tried has been to try and get superheroes to breed and have populations. It never worked. Their fertility tends to be low, and when they reproduce at all, they have ordinary children with no powers. I wrote my second Master's thesis on this, and I tried to show that there was an inescapable reason for the failures. But some particularly stupid governments are still trying."
"Erskine was not looking to change things. He didn't have a formula to change ordinary people into supermen – at least, not most ordinary people. He felt he could find those few people in the crowd who, from time to time, suddenly find they have super-powers. He kept his results to himself, except for what he was ready to publish, and the result was that when he died..."
"I get it. Erskine died, and obviously nobody else knew what he was up to."
"His notes were destroyed when his flat was burned, before they shot him. When we went to see what we could recover, we found it burning."
Another outraged expression from Maggie.
"So you…."
"I was always a potential, yes. I wasn't just some kid taken from the crowd. In fact, I was passed through weeks of tests before Erskine chose me.
"His estimate was that he would find at most a few thousand members of the population, men and women, who were potential superheroes. Even so, such a program would have made a huge difference to the war. Imagine a few battalions of people like me sweeping across the front line..."
"But then why... Oh. Erskine died… And he hadn't kept anybody else informed of the results of his research. But that's absurd, Joe... Steve! He'd have had assistants, he'd have kept notes… Scientists don't work alone these days. Even I don't."
"I guess Erskine must have been the last of the rugged individualists, then. I was there, you know. Everyone looked for records. Everything that was left… his notes, his equipment, his orders, everything was gone through with a tooth comb. Nobody could find anything decisive.
"Myself, I am certain that he deliberately kept the secret to himself. And if you think about it, that makes sense. He knew that what he had could win the war. He didn't trust assistants and fellow scientists… He thought there was Nazi penetration… and damn it, he was right, since they got at him anyway."
There was anger in Steve Rogers' voice, and Maggie Walsh awoke again to the fact that these facts, which she had read out of textbooks, were yesterday to him. He was still excited at the idea of being boosted to superhero level; he was still angry and frustrated at the death of Erskine. Perhaps he may have been still mourning for the man's death. Somehow, she felt a need to move the discussion away from that painful subject; refusing to recognize that she did not want the man to hurt, at least any more than she had to.
"So there is no superhero mutation, no possible genetic progress. Sorry, I keep repeating myself. I'm just trying to get used to the idea… everyone in my field had pretty much placed their hopes on that.
"All right, I guess I have to accept it. We had misunderstood what Erskine did. We weren't looking for superhero markers or potential, as we should have been. We were looking for mutants... turning points towards the next, evolved human race, beyond homo sapiens
"There was a part of me that suspected that already. I even wrote a thesis against some of the theories of genetic mutation that were doing the rounds. Well, if there is no spider down that hole, we have to look for another. I had already been looking into transhumanism... and unlike superheroes, that is a growth field."
"What is transhumanism?"
"It's something that is really new since your day. It means improving man by technological means, with prostheses, chips and other things. I could be technical, but then you would not be able to follow."
Steve Rogers was silent for a little while, trying to clarify how he felt about this new idea.
"So you still want to change mankind?"
"Who doesn't?"
"Lots of people do, I'll grant you that. It's just that I've come to be suspicious of that kind of people."
"Damn it, Joe, are you telling me that mankind as it is satisfactory?"
"Satisfactory as compared to what? The Nazis find it… found it… unsatisfactory. They wanted a mankind of big, handsome blonde people. I'm a big handsome blonde person, and I'm here to tell you that there is nothing special about it. It doesn't solve your life. It definitely doesn't mean that you turn into a demi-god who smashes over obstacles and tramples over weaklings. There is nothing special about it.
"And as for other ideals… I imagine you know that I saw some action on the Russian front. What you don't know is that I wasn't sent there to help the Russians. I was sent there to help some Americans whom the Russians, allies or not, had abducted. My part in the fighting was a cover."
"Are you trying to startle me? Because it won't work. I'd already heard about Russians abducting allied servicemen."
"And you didn't find it troubling?"
"Why should I have? I am not and never have been a Communist. My ideals are quite different."
"But you have that in common with them, that you are an idealist. You think that the world you imagine will be better than the world as it is, and you want to help bring it about. My point is that what I saw in Russia was as bad as what I was fighting.
"I had hoped for different. Many people in my generation… including me… were hoping that the 'Russian experiment' would open new and better paths for the oppressed of the world. I came back from Russia with some fifty Americans and other allied citizens, all totally disillusioned. I had seen enough myself, and their stories were even worse.
"What I saw was that Communist idealism was creating a society even worse than what I had known as a kid in the slums of New York City and in the Depression. And it wasn't an accident. It was that they had convinced themselves that the world as it was was a hellhole, and so they were justified in doing anything that could help change it. And that if the world was a hellhole, then you had to be an even bigger devil to be able to change it. And that part of what you did was to kill anyone who helped or accepted or defended the hellhole
"The world needed cleansing. The hellhole needed cleansing. And they didn't see that all they were managing to do was to make the hellhole ten times worse.
"Everything they did made things ten times worse. I saw of world of lies, of cringing, of hiding in the dark. A world where everyone feared the knock at the door at midnight. And everyone had to tell everyone else how wonderful this new world they were creating was."
"And what does that have to do with me?"
"Oh, Maggie… If you gotta ask the question, you will never know the answer."
"Look, Communism is crap. You don't have to teach me that, I knew it since I was fifteen. I don't want to make life perfect for man is it is now, which is what Communism claimed they would do. I want to change man.
"And speaking of The Common Man, Joe… I mean, Steve. So far nobody even has an idea about successfully creating superheroes, and everyone thinks that a guy who vanished six decades ago could have achieved something that no scientist has yet managed to replicate. But there was nothing there to replicate. They were all barking up the wrong tree. Correct?"
"Correct."
"So you are not just the image of The Common Man that propaganda made you, are you? You were special from the beginning."
"You don't understand. Sorry, Maggie, I think you don't want to understand. I, even as I am, I am not special. Sure, some people are more gifted than others, in some fields. So what? Most people will never reach my speed or strength. So what? There are people to whom I am greatly inferior in other ways. I will never sing as well as Robert Merrill, or dance as well as Fred Astaire. And I may draw well, but I will never draw as well as Maxfield Parrish… and believe me, I wish I could.
"All men are created equal, just because each of them is different. There is no special group, no race, no mutant species set apart from the rest. I am as much a human being as the President and the wino down in the alley... the same rights, the same duties. And a superhero who puts on a costume and becomes a vigilante is just the same – just another concerned citizen, at best."
"Well, well, well – handsome enough to melt any woman, and you can talk. Ever thought of becoming a politician?"
"What about you?"
"Me?"
"You. You clearly know what you want to happen to mankind... wrong though it seems to me. You want to do things with people, I don't."
"Me? Take part in the government of a mindless horde of uncooperative idiots? When the government is itself no better than another uncooperative horde? You couldn't pay me enough. I like research. Hard science... testable hypotheses... creative studies... No, people are so... unreliable and uncooperative and intractable..."
"Wow, sounds like I'm not the first who made the suggestion."
"You're not. And I still can't imagine why anyone would think..."
"Because you have it written all over you: I know better than you, I know what's good for you. If you had any brothers or sisters, you must have been a holy terror of an older sister."
"As a matter of fact, I was the youngest. And as a matter of fact I did not boss my siblings."
"As a matter of fact, you say you didn't. And as a matter of fact, you might be wrong about yourself. People often are."
"Oh, for... Here we go again. Why do you talk as though you knew me? A couple of nights in bed don't actually make you an expert in Margaret Kathleen Studies, you know."
"Because you remind me of someone else. The more we talk, the more I am reminded of Dr. Erskine."
"Oh."
"He was a lot like you. Except he did not want to change mankind altogether – he said he had lost hope. But he certainly didn't think much of people.
"Yes. Pretty much my feelings."
"Now, Maggie, I don't know anything about your science, but the more I talk with you, the more I am aware that your knowledge of your own science…. Your understanding , I mean, not just your knowledge… is fantastic. You are obviously very gifted in your own field. But that does not make you God. That does not place you outside the human race, that you can judge and condemn… them. Them! It's not them, Maggie. It's you. It's us. We are created equal because we are created all different. There is none of us who is like another, and at the same time we are all like each other, Maggie, because we are human."
"Man is a thing that is to be overcome."
"Ah, Nietzsche. Not my favourite philosopher."
"Not mine either, but even a broken clock can be right twice a day. And that sentence is right.
"Man as it is now, man in the mass, Joe Blow and all his friends – they are a mass suicide waiting to happen. And destroying innumerable amounts of things. We stand on a dozen different edges of destruction, and science is the only thing that can save us and our planet. Have you ever heard of passenger pigeons, Joe? Look them up some time. They are one species that was destroyed by Joe Blow's stupidity and greed, in broad daylight, with everyone conscious of what was going on. This is an age of mass extinction. Species are going missing by the thousands, the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands – and if you think the environment can resist so many different losses for ever, you are dreaming. And then we have enough atom bombs to doom the planet fifty times over. And in spite of the most cynical manipulation and use of political power, nuclear weapon technology will spread to more and more governments, less and less responsible, and sooner or later one of them will use it. And that is only the best known factors.
"For decades now, mankind has taken several steps towards self-destruction. And it didn't do so by chance; it did so because it is in their nature to do so. People keep increasing their numbers, because it is their nature to do so. Overpopulation will lead to mass hunger and violence. Plastic and waste products will devastate nature. And demographic growth is outstripping the planet's resources. Although that might be stopped... by the rise of medicine-resistant bacteria and viruses, which irresponsible medical practices have made practically inevitable. That is one thing that particularly scares me. Medical treatment for many conditions is getting harder and harder, because viruses are becoming immune to the medicines we had been using to defeat them. Soon we'll be back to 1941, when a person could be killed by a small infection. Perhaps a new Black Death will relieve pressure on the planet.
"In the end, Joe, human progress tends to be false progress. At the start of the twentieth century people thought that replacing coal with petroleum would lead to a cleaner environment. Hah! So politicians have been pushing nuclear power as a cleaner alternative - Double hah."
"I know. One of the things I had to adapt to was to see remains of plastic bags and other waste all over the place. Mind you, I'm a New Yorker, and I never remember New York being clean. But the beaches these days all look like dumping grounds. I remember Buck and I double dating on a Long Island beach, and it looked like paradise. I've been there again, a few months back, and it looked like the city dump."
"Very much so. And it's not going to stop. It can't stop. Needs and demands just will pile up and pile up, and so will crises and dangers. One day soon, a plague will break through all the obstacles put in its way by centuries of medical science, and it will slaughter men. And then the mobs will get angry and uncontrollable. That is man in the mass, Joe. That is what we have to face. That is why only the mind is valuable; all the other appetites that dominate homo sapiens have done nothing but lead us to where we are.
"I want to be clear that what I am doing here is using vernacular language. I don't think the planet, as such, will be destroyed. I think the ecosphere will be devastated and changed, in a way that will be lethal for homo sapiens as well as for many other species. But man cannot stay where it is. Man must overcome itself, must reach a new level of evolution. Or else the very opportunities given by science and technology will destroy man and the planet."
"There's no such thing as "man in the mass", Maggie. Even if I accepted what you say – and I'm no scientist, so I cannot give a specialist answer – the only thing we know is people. Individuals. If you speak of an abstract 'man', you speak of something that doesn't exist. You can only relate to, you can only know, something that exists. You can only love individuals. If you say you love mankind, you only mean, that you love people, or else that you have imagined an abstraction that is somehow different from the sum of individual people, and that can be loved while you hate and despise its members."
"Who said anything about loving mankind?"
"If you didn't love something about it, why would you be so upset at the prospect of it becoming extinct?"
"Look, if Joe Blow could be got to vanish without devastating the rest of the planet, I would be all for race suicide. Or at least for reducing our numbers until we are less of a burden on the environment we depend on."
"In other words, your answer is mass murder? Mass murder to prevent mass extinction?"
"That's not my answer, that's the answer of nature. Mass death is pretty much inevitable in this future that homo sapiens is making for itself. It's not my decision. What I want is to be able to chart a path for intelligence – science – for mind to exist. To continue.
"And – what d'you call it – transhumanism is your answer?"
"Yes! And in fact, all that you've been saying has just strengthened my view. At least where transhumanism is concerned."
"Improving man by technology."
"Yes."
"Inserting chips, mechanisms, prosthetics."
"And whole computerized elements, and batteries, and power distribution…"
"I don't like it. I don't know, there is something about what you are saying that I just don't like."
"You don 't say! Well, if you'd said you'd agree with me on anything, I'd probably faint. Or at least wonder if I'm getting something wrong."
"I'm not trying to be hostile for its own sake. I think. I really do have a sense that something sounds wrong… Look, you are talking about inserting all this machinery in human bodies?"
"I guess. It's not a matter of principle, just that it's more efficient that way."
"And you have no concern about the integrity of human beings?"
"I was wondering whether you would say that. You of all people."
"If you mean what I think, then I have to tell you… to remind you… that Erskine didn't put anything alien in me. He just brought out something that was already there."
"But it's still relying on something you were not born with. And at any rate, people have been using artificial aids ever since the invention of the walking stick. Hell, ever since the invention of clothes."
"Those are not a part of you. What I understand you to mean is that your future people would have engines and prostheses built into their bodies. That would change them permanently. It would mess with who they are."
"I don't think that will matter once the next generation gets used to it. We're already a long way there. From Iron Man to people wearing glasses, prostheses have become natural."
"Aids have become natural, you mean. But you don't change a man by putting a walking stick in his hands or a pair of roller skaters on his feet. And that is what you want to do, you said… change mankind."
"Yes, it is."
"Well, in that case…"
"You don't understand," said Maggie, and suddenly her eyes were blazing. "We are on the edge of multiple waves of destruction – planet destruction, if you will. And the things that make us human are the things that are driving us towards that. If I can change mankind so that it will be less acquisitive and less insecure, more able to live without plunder, more self-sufficient, I will. And transhumanism is the way to do it."
"I see. And I can never agree. Have you ever seen a war, Maggie?"
"What's that got to do with it?"
"I have. You learn a lot in war. You learn what a man is made of… not just mentally, but physically. You say that a human being is modular. I say that what we call human being is the unity of all the parts, all the faculties. I saw what losing a limb or a faculty means to a man, and I can tell you that for a man to lose a limb – or to become deaf or blind – is not the same as to remove a part from a machine. A machine does not ache. It does not miss its parts. It may break, but it does not live in the terror of breaking. There is a basic unity to the human being, something which means that each part is a part of the whole, necessary to it. You can't change it. You can only twist and ruin the individuality at the heart of each person. You can twist it, but it's not in your power to make it something else than what it is. That's why we are artists. That's why we draw things. We are trying to render this core, this unifying principle. At least, I am."
"I'm sorry, I can't see that. Your art has spent a century getting away from figurative work. I realize that you missed everything after 1940, but you certainly know enough to know about Picasso, about Klee and Matisse, about Cubism?"
"That is a point. Yes, that's a point. But… all those people you mention, they all studied drawing in the first place. They are good draftsmen… And mind you, they are not my favourites. But I studied modern art, as much as I could. I think I understand it. And what I think is, what they do, what I think they do at least, is about drawing. It is about drawing and about perception. It doesn't begin where art begins… it presupposes (is that the word?) thousands of years of experience. It's for people who've already seen a lot of art."
"I'll have to take your word for it. All I know is that this idea of art being knowledge has enough exceptions to be anything but a rule."
"Wait!"
"…not just modern art, but most tribal art, and so far as I can see most non-Western art – I mean, you're never telling me that Aztec and Maya sculptures have any claim to realism?"
"They are thoughts, ideas, turned to images. In that sense they represent something that is real, real to them. Actually, I find the ideas they represent rather nasty."
"No doubt. They are all about death and the power of death. To them it was something positive, dominant… it shaped the world. It was god-like."
"Yes. And I can't help hating it."
"Hating it is not an answer to an objection."
"It is in art. At least the way I see it. A negative reaction… I mean, other things being equal… ruling out the chance of bad taste or faulty perceptions… A negative reaction to a work of art means that you perceive, immediately, an aesthetic failure. And aesthetics is not an end in itself. Aesthetics has to do with ideas, with internal and external balance, with the perception of the outside world. It is about understanding, in its own way."
Maggie did not reply. This was a thought that she had never had, but that appealed to her side as a student of psychology. She needed to think about it, to research it, to investigate the psychology of aesthetic reactions, before she accepted it and elaborated it – or thought of a refutation, partial or total. She could not reply now. When she started again, she went back to a previous point.
"We've got off the point. You haven't answered my point about man being modular. I still think this human core you are talking about is purely imaginary. It does not exist except as the sum of all the parts that go into the making of the machine that is man. I think when you watch people develop, you see their pieces come together. I think that, with the proper precautions, you can bring in new and different pieces, to improve and alter the performance of the human machine, like people already do with transplants. When people started to try to implant hearts and other organs in the body of people whose own heart was failing, they met with rejection. But they didn't give up because of that. They found drugs and treatments that overcame the rejection syndrome, and now people live happily for years with implanted organs."
Steve was silent for a little, and when he spoke, he spoke slowly and earnestly. "So this is the difference between you and me. You think that man is an accumulation of features and organs and abilities, without a central essence, that what makes people individuals is just the random coming together of things each of which could be changed or replaced. I think that human beings are each an essence to which each part is subject, to which each part contributes. I think each human being is not only unique, but of unique value. I think people are themselves goals, and I think that individuals should not be sacrificed to ideals or history or whatever. I think that if I can fight to defend them and help them, as individuals, I will do so. But to you, human beings, including you, including me, have no special compelling value."
"Yes. I would be a hypocrite if I didn't rule myself in along with other people."
"All right. Let's put it to the test, then."
The man who was Captain America took a few steps forwards. Suddenly he towered over Maggie Walsh – and she was not a small woman. But there was more than just size to it. She suddenly felt, as she had never felt before – no, not even in bed – the sheer male presence of him. She thought of struggling, but almost immediately realized that there would be no point. His grip was like iron, inescapable. And… actually… she did not want to escape. She was more than aroused; there was something in her answering to him, something almost like fate and doom.
When he drew her to himself, she did not resist. Her arms reached up, and her hands gripped his shoulders.
They stood there for a minute or two, gripping each other, feeling each other's blood and muscles and breath and bones, and he whispered:
"Tell me that this isn't reaching you to your core, Maggie. Tell me you don't have a core. You know you have. You know it's being shaken… and if it's being shaken, it must exist."
And he let her go. A sudden feeling of disappointment… and more than disappointment…. of emptiness, of lack and absence, just overwhelmed her.
Something in her had changed, had been turned over. She felt something she had never felt before. It was like anger, sure. She did know anger. But it was something else, something like need – and she had never needed anyone in her life. Not like that, not as if – as if – as if the whole of her, the whole of her, were involved in the need. As he had said...
"That was cruel, Steve."
"It was. But you were not going to accept even what was very obvious to anyone else. And I give you my word, if you had really fought back, I would have given up. But now, Maggie, I beg you to rethink your ideas. They are dangerous. You could convince yourself of anything… to mutilate people… to abuse corpses."
Maggie felt a wave of anger rising in her. She resisted it, fought it down, buried it… she carefully concealed it. The few times in her life when she had allowed someone to make her overtly angry had never worked out for her. And she did not think she could win with Steve – certainly not physically, but, even worse, not morally or mentally.
And then she stopped. Steve was looking at the TV screen with an expression of horror. She rushed over and looked. Soon she was as stunned, if not as horrified, as he was.
After a few minutes he turned to her.
"That's New York City. That's my home, where I was born. I've got to go, Maggie."
"You can't! I mean, listen..."
"I've ot to. I don't have to go fight villains and save the world, you know. There is need there for all the trained first responders… as you call them now, that's a good term… all the trained first responders they can get, and I'm trained in battlefield medicine and in rescue."
"What I was trying to say is, listen to the TV. You can't get there. The city is sealed."
Steve looked at the screen again, and heard: "… and all flights to Washington DC and New York City and surrounding areas have been halted. The area is interdicted to all civilian flights. We now hand you to Mick Kozlow, at La Guardia Airport…"
The screen showed a chaotic, oppressive scene: an airport hall crowded with tired and angry people. For a moment, the man who was Captain America looked just bewildered. "So what do I do now?"
"Just at present, Steve… you do nothing. I'm not trying to be hostile or negative for its own sake. I dare say that if there's anything to be done in the next days or weeks, you'll be on it like a bloodhound on a trail. But think about it. We are in Boise. Flight to New York is interdicted, and no other transportation – including that nice bike of yours – could get you there today or tomorrow. An Air Force plane would do the trick, but how could you get one? You would have to tell them who you are, and who would believe you? It took me two weeks, and two nights in bed, to become convinced, and I'm more open than most to ideas like that."
He knew that she was right. But he didn't have to like it. He was stuck there while his people suffered and died, thousands of miles away. Steve Rogers expressed his frustration with a punch against the wall, and Maggie felt as if the whole house was shaken. He turned to her.
"Sorry about that. I've never been in a situation where there is war against my country and I can't do anything against it. I feel trapped."
"I can imagine... Damn it, is that the time?"
"It's late?"
"Late enough that I hardly need to bother ringing in sick. We must have spent all night and all morning arguing. But then, if I don't call them, they'll probably think I'm dead or something. I'm pretty regular as a rule…"
She made the phone call. Steve only half-listened, but he got the distinct impression that Maggie was not quite understanding how worried and upset her colleagues had been. She put the phone down and turned to him.
"Angleton did sound worried. All right, Steve, we've got the rest of the day to ourselves – to go on arguing till sundown, if you like."
"I don't… Not particularly. I guess we'll probably start again, though, if we don't find something else to do. Well…."
"Maybe we would. I certainly need to do something. I'm not a woman to spend an extra free day just lying in the sun. Or indoors, for that matter."
Steve glanced at her, and started saying something, hesitatingly.
"Steve? Are you thinking of something?"
"I am. But it's pretty cheeky. I don't think you'd like it." He stopped and then started again. "Besides, it would be pretty much doing nothing for hours… You just said you aren't the kind of woman to spend hours doing nothing."
"Oh!" Maggie burst out, and for the first time ever there was an honestly startled and wondering expression on her face. "Oh! I think I understand you now. Do you want me to pose for you?"
"I don't want you. I would like you – but it's OK if you don't. It's even OK if you don't want to be painted at all. But I have to admit, I've had it at the back of my mind for along time now."
"Actually, I'd be curious. A lot of your argument seemed to imply that your art is a form of knowledge, that you are showing things that you see, that are real. I would like to see it in action. I'd like to know how you see me."
"Well, actually, portrait painters usually ask how the sitter would like to look. But if you leave me the choice…"
Suddenly he blushed, and that blush told Maggie all she needed to know. She had never before noticed how light his natural complexion was, beneath the tan.
"So you want me to pose in the altogether?" she said, and a grin slowly spread across her face. She had never thought of herself as a sexual being before. And if she had met with the thought before she had met Steve, with all that had happened after, she would not have considered it. Now… it was new, and strange, and rather scary, but also somehow magnetic. She did want to see how the man who attracted her so much saw her.
She said none of that. She had already given herself away to Steve as it was. It was Steve who spoke first.
"That's how I've known you, Maggie. I can't just forget it when I'm working. It would come out on the canvas, however I drew you – in your lab, or among your colleagues, or in your office with books behind you."
"I'd never thought of that… D'you think my colleagues see me like that? I mean, apart from those who see any woman like that."
"I doubt it. To be honest, I think we've peeled lots of layers off each other these last few days. I don't think a lot of people who knew you or me would expect to see us as we are now… as we see each other."
"I think so too. So, shall I pose naked in my lab?" And she was almost laughing at the idea.
Steve sounded shocked. "No way! Naked lady in workplace… That's pin-up stuff, not portraiture. It would turn you into a sex dummy. I want something that would make sense, even in real life. Not a sexual fantasy. I want to see you as you could be seen on a normal day. I think I would see you on your bed… you've been sleeping, or maybe you were with a man, and you're waking up. Your attention is sharpening. Emphasis on your eyes, looking around you, taking everything in. You know, you have remarkable eyes. They say a lot about you. Yes, bookcases behind you, with lots of book and folders and files… some manuscripts, perhaps, on your bedside table, like you actually had the last time… a bedside lamp on, and some natural light from the window on the other side. That would set up a nice double light source and allow for a lot of shadow interplay."
"You do seem to be giving some serious thought to this."
"It IS serious. Both because I don't like to produce rubbish, and because this is about you. Now, if you don't mind, I'll do a quick sketch to show how I would like you to pose."
And it was quick. She was quite impressed how swiftly he made an outline of what he wanted, herself beginning to rise from her bed, using nothing but a pencil stub and the back of a piece of graph paper. It was a pose she could take; in fact, the pencilled, eyeless, hairless outline, still somehow managed to look like her; although she asked herself whether she could actually spend hours in that pose without moving.
They had spent the night in her flat. He went to the motel where he had stowed his belonging and picked up the necessary materials.
She was interested to see things she had never seen done before except in illustrations or on movies. Steve set up his easel, and she could see that it was sturdier than it had looked in such sources: but then, she reflected, she should have guessed that he would use the strongest and most harm-proof tool available. He placed on it a fairly large canvas, placed horizontally, landscape fashion; it must have been, she estimated, some four foot in length and between two and three in height. He placed little colour tubes on the easel's long thin tray; he was so practised that he did it almost without looking. She frowned – if an assistant had been so quick and careless in arranging materials, they'd soon have heard from her. But then, she thought, he wasn't dealing with potentially dangerous items; or with experiments where every detail had to be perfect and measured; and, she suddenly realized, he would always be working with the same stuff, not, like her, with a new array of items and instruments for each job.
By this time, she was herself so concentrated on observing, on understanding what she saw, that keeping the pose still and unmoving was not a problem. She barely noticed she was. She watched him pick up his palette – in shape exactly like the ones she had seen in illustrations and caricatures, curved and asymmetrical. It looked funny; but as soon as Steve placed his left thumb through the hole,she could see that its design was practical, to bring patches of all colours within immediate reach of the brush in his right hand. He put it down again, donned a stained and patched set of overalls – obviously, she thought, he had to protect himself from paint – picked up a pencil, and went to work. She arranged herself more according to his sketch, and he came and took it. All this time, he was barely speaking, and what few sounds he made were incomprehensible.
She was behind the canvas, and so could not see what he was doing. But she could tell that he was reproducing his original sketch across the canvas, taking occasional looks at her. Then, without a break, he just suddenly had a brush in his hand, and was working.
It was his concentration that struck her. He was focussed in an almost terrible way, as if the canvas and brush were something he had to fight and master. She suddenly felt that that burst of anger that had so unnerved her earlier was nothing. This, she felt, was what the man would really be like in battle. She was as close to seeing Captain America in a fight as anyone who had not actually fought him; and how many of those had survived? But it was an incredibly interesting experience, nevertheless. It was adding something she had never thought of to her wide and carefully analysed experience as a psychologist, as an observer and investigator of human beings. She had rarely seen a man work like that. And the question came to her: is that how I look to people who work with me?
She spent a lot of the day naked. This inevitably made her think of sex, but at that point Joe was unresponsive. She put up with it, which surprised her. But her focus on his behaviour was keeping her awake and interested.
Nonetheless, even his extraordinary physique and her remarkable ability to concentrate could not altogether stop the effects of a night and more spent awake and arguing. Towards noon, they both felt sleep steal over them. When Steve awoke, cramped and uncomfortable on the wooden floor, his moving about awoke Maggie; and they realized they were both ravenous. They sent out for pizza for four and ploughed through it companionably; and then Steve set to work again.
By the evening, the work was mostly done, but she had a certain shrinking from looking at it. Besides, they were both exhausted and sleepy. A couple of burgers later, they were both as fast asleep as two stones, and did not wake until eight the next day. They had no sex either; their last night in the same bed, and it was utterly uneventful. Steve went back to work, and she took her pose again, although Steve told her there was no need to, he knew what he was doing by now. But she felt a strange reluctance to seeing the finished work; now that the moment was approaching, it was making her strangely nervous. Her resumption of the pose was in effect an excuse to be in one place where she could not see it.
And then Steve put down his brush and palette, and walked backwards from the canvas, keeping his eyes fixed. There was no putting it off any more. He just said "That's it," and went back to pick up his paint tubes and tools, which he carefully squeezed into shape, closed, and put back into his bag, each in its place. His closing ritual had all the neatness and attention she had missed in his start. And she stood up, put her dressing gown on, and walked over to stand by his side.
Well! She didn't know what she had expected, but whatever it was, that wasn't it. It was a neat, figurative approach, and a very strong, almost photographic, likeness. But it was that "almost" that made all the difference. That could indeed have been a sensuous figure, shapely and strong, with smooth ivory skin – and, she thought with some surprise, it was no more than due to her. Even though she had never given a damn about cosmetics and make-up. She looked at her partner's skin, weathered by outdoors living and activity, and she guessed that perhaps her detestation for beaches and suntan had helped keep it young. But that was not what came out. There was something about the central figure, rising from her bed. She dominated her surroundings somehow. She looked at the bookcases and work tables that Steve had wanted as background, and then she looked at the painting, at how he had rendered them; and she realized that he had managed to subtly underline the lines that proceeded from her body. It was as if everything about her led back to her, as though her surroundings depended on her.
And that, she guessed, was the core of the problem, in more than one sense. For her own image was deeply unsettling to her. Was she really like that? It was not, in any obvious way, ugly. In fact, a superficial spectator might even have called it beautiful: young, agile, fair-haired and fair-skinned, and clearly a natural beauty, even with her hair in disorder and not even her usual minimum of make-up. But there was something about the way he had rendered her. The shadows that outlined her body had a touch of menace, as if something were hidden, unseen behind the drapes and the spots where the light did not go. And the eyes, the eyes. Steve had said that she had remarkable eyes. He may not have meant that they were beautiful. She could not define what she found in them. They were cold, yet emotional; visibly intelligent, with a pointed, keen look, yet unsympathetic. And yet there was something in it like challenge, something she felt could attract men… even women, perhaps.
For a few minutes she just stood there, as if unable to look away. Then she turned to him and said: "A striking bit of work, Steve."
"And you wish you had been doing the striking, instead?" answered the artist ironically.
"NO! Not because of that, at least. I don't know what I feel. I'll have to think. I do know it's superior work. And it's also given me a lot to think about, especially on the cognitive psychology side of my work."
"So, you want to keep it?"
"I don't know. Honestly, it has a strange effect on me. But maybe, just because of that, I ought to keep it, so I can analyze my own reactions."
"I think you need to make up your mind. I will be leaving soon, and once I do, we are not likely to meet again."
"Right. And I don't think we should, either."
"Neither do I. Don't get me wrong, I got a lot from these last few weeks. But I suspect that if we met again, we might end up killing each other. Or at least hurting each other a lot."
Maggie looked at him to see if he was joking, but his face was perfectly serious.
"Keep it yourself, then. So you can remember me."
"Oh, believe me, I'm not likely to forget you. And what about you? Don't you want to remember me?"
"That's not going to be hard. My guess is that pretty soon you'll be on the news, and then you are apt to stay there, unless you get yourself killed fighting something. Or even if you do."
"Oh, come on! I'm not going to…"
"Look, whether or not you ever put on the Captain America costume again, you will be news sooner or later. And once you get there, you'll stay there. That's the way you are. So I will have no trouble being reminded of you."
"Maybe so. I hope not. Goodbye, Maggie."
"Goodbye, Joe… I mean, Steve,"
…
Joe, as everyone else still called him, left town on a camper van, loaded with a few requirements and all his art supplies. It still amused him, after so many months, to be able to spend money he had taken from Hydra, after he had awoken and found he was in their hands. He had left their lair with a fortune in presumably ill-gotten gains, even in the inflated and nearly worthless dollars of this time. And he had been horrified to find that the base he had destroyed was on American soil. Looking back, however, he was not happy about how he had won his freedom. 38 dead Hydra people, not one allowed to escape.
No wonder Maggie had been so scared – and he was certain that she was not easy to frighten. She understood that his hands, like those of Achilles, were "man-killing hands". And if nothing else, it would have been better to leave some Hydra men alive to question. He knew nothing about why they were there and who had managed to set up that monstrosity under the noses of FBI, state troopers and sheriffs. He wasn't sure he wanted to go back to war, but if Hydra showed their ugly faces again, he'd have no choice.
That long discussion with Maggie had clarified his ideas for him. All men are born equal, because they are all born different. All people, all individuals, are themselves goals, not instruments to be used. He had never formulated this before; now he was clearer. And he knew why he did not like even the idea of killing Hydra people, or Nazis. They, even they, were individuals and part of the things he had said. But above all, he knew that he could have beaten them and made them powerless without killing them all. And he knew that the better he got at fighting, the easier this would be. He had to improve, to grow even stronger and faster.
…..
Maggie was not a woman to linger on the past. But her mind often went to the blonde giant who had shared her bed on three memorable occasions. She still was troubled by the discussion and, above all, by the painting. Something had changed in since those nights. But she also knew that she felt, if anything, strengthened in her resolution. Discussion with him had only helped to make it clearer. Mankind had to change. Transhumanism was the way. And she was going to study and cultivate it till she could make it available to anyone who deserved to be a future leader.
