Читать книгу Commune 2000 AD - Mack Reynolds - Страница 5

When Theodore Swain awoke he didn’t, customarily, open his eyes immediately. He was a vivid dreamer and invariably took a few moments to orient himself. He was, he decided, obviously in his own bed and in his own home. The day before he had spent largely at his studies, to the extent that he had eaten his evening meal in the community restaurant rather than take the time to prepare his own food, which was his wont. He was sleeping nude, which brought back to him the balance of the previous evening, after having finished dinner.

Nora, or was her name Norma?

He opened his eyes and looked at the pillow next to him.

Her short-cut hair was blond, most likely not naturally, and her eyes were very blue and at the moment were trained on him, an element of mocking there. Her nose was too small but she had perfect ears and a pouting, provocative mouth. The single sheet that covered them both hid her figure, but it came back to him now in a rush. She was a plump, much-curved girl, with possibly the most lush breasts he had ever enjoyed, the nipples so delicately pink that he had at first suspected cosmetics.

Ted said, “Good morning.”

She ignored that, brought forth bare arms and stretched languidly. She looked at him, grinned a cat grin and said, accusingly, “Where did you learn that last position you talked me into? It was wizard, once you got onto the hang, but where’d you learn it?”

He said, “You’ll never believe this, but actually it’s depicted on the wall of a Mayan temple in Bonampak, in southern Mexico.”

She said, remembering lasciviously, “It’s the first time I ever did it standing up. Jim used to tell me I was going to get calluses on my ass from lying on my back so much.”

Ted laughed. In actuality, he had always rather dreaded the morning after the lay before. What was the old wheeze? Before, you’d drink your coffee out of it, and afterwards you wouldn’t spit in it. However, he had always forced himself to rise to the occasion.

He said, “That same Mayan position, by the way, is also depicted in stone carvings on the Hindu temple at Khajuraho and the Sun Temple at Konarak, so man in his infinite research into the subject evidently came up with the same results, half a world apart.”

He thought about it, staring up at the ceiling, his hands behind his head. “I’ve always wondered where the so-called normal position ever got the name. The most-often utilized position of the Romans was with the woman sitting astride the man, the same as the Japanese do today. It gives the woman more control of the situation and a better chance at orgasm, particularly if the man is considerably larger or heavier than she is.”

She yawned languidly. “I like it any way. Well, except for anal entry.”

“Then you’re lucky you didn’t use to live in Peru back in Mochica-Chimu days. Sodomy and fellatio were so universal that it’s a mystery how the culture ever propagated itself.”

“You mean they were all queeries?”

“According to what you mean by ‘queerie,’ I suppose. They used to show their sex scenes on their pottery. Hundreds, even thousands, of these came down to us, in spite of the fact that they were a culture that preceded the Incas. There are some, but few, of these pots that show a man and woman in ordinary intercourse. More often he is either sodomizing her, or she is practicing fellatio on him. The thing is, the women invariably are illustrated as enjoying what they are doing, and, in those days, the women were the tribal potters, so they were portraying themselves.”

“When you said sodomy, I thought you meant boys.”

“No, surprisingly enough, not a single pot comes down to us indicating that there was any homosexual connotation. The partners were invariably men and women.”

She looked at him in deprecation. “Some professor you turned out to be. What a subject to be an authority on.”

“I’m not a professor.”

“Oh, I thought you were. Over at the university city.”

He said, an edge of bitterness in his voice, “No. Actually, I’m a student. I’ve got my doctor’s degree in ethnology and am working toward my academician’s, if I can ever come up with a dissertation that’s acceptable. Then, possibly, at the next job muster I’ll be selected to teach—at long last.”

“What’s ethnology?” she said, obviously not really caring.

He recited, “Ethnology, the branch of anthropology which utilizes the data furnished by ethnography, the recording of living cultures, and archaeology, to analyze and compare the various cultures of mankind. In short, social anthropology which evolves broader generalizations based partly on the findings of the other social sciences.”

“Wizard. A real jazzer. Now I know. What’s anthropology?”

“The science of man and his works,” he said briefly. “I specialize in pre-Columbian Mexican cultures, sub-specialization, the Aztecs, sub-subspecialization, the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish conquest.”

She squirmed, allowing the sheet to drop to the point where one well-rounded breast peeked out. “Well, why do you bother? From what you say, they turned you down on your first job-muster time. They must have, if you’re your age. You must be over thirty. Your chances of being picked up for a job at a later muster are on the slim side, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice low. He thought about it and when he spoke again his voice was lemonish. “I suppose it’s the educational system we have now. From practically kindergarten they begin seeking out your interests and abilities, testing, testing, testing. With me, it came out early, a special tendency toward history and the other social sciences. By the time I was in high school, I began concentrating on archaeology and anthropology. It became the dominating interest in my life. And the further I went, the more of a driving force it was. So, why did I continue to study, even after taking my doctorate, and failing to be selected in the yearly job muster? I wanted to teach, or work in field expeditions. I wanted to utilize all that I had developed to such an extent. I ate, breathed and slept anthropology.”

“But they turned you down,” she said reasonably, letting the sheet slip down to the point where both of her greatest claims to transcendent beauty were exposed. “So what spins?”

He shrugged in irritation. “The academician degree is all but a guarantee of a teaching job. They’re so difficult to take now, the requirements are so stiff that you’re almost automatically selected for teaching by the data-banks computers, if you have one.”

“What’s holding it up?” she said, displeased because he was ignoring her obviously available charms.

“I haven’t been able to find an acceptable subject for a dissertation. I’m still a candidate, but my director keeps turning down every subject of research I dream up.” He looked over at her. “What do you do, Nora?”

She said, “I don’t do anything. When I got out of school and the computers came up with my Ability Quotient, I was evidently best suited to be a secretary. So were about five million other girls who were placed on the job-muster list. I must have wound up pretty near the bottom. And they only selected about fifty thousand that year. It’s a job category rapidly going out, what with these new autosecretaries. So I just collect my Universal Guaranteed Income and work at having a good time.”

“I see. Along with nine-tenths of the rest of the country.”

“So they say.”

In actuality, the subject irritated him, though he couldn’t exactly put his finger on the reason. He switched the line of conversation. “What happened to you and Jim? I thought you were tied up together rather firmly.”

Pretending to be bothered by the heat, she pushed the bedsheet completely from her, revealing belly, hips, the pubic area and her very good legs. Ted Swain had been right. She wasn’t a true blond.

She said, offhandedly, “Oh, Jim is the great-sportsman type. Hunting, fishing and all. He was always hauling me along. I’m more a guzzle, bed, fun-and-games type. So finally I told him to shirk off.” She looked at him from the side of her eyes. “Talking about fun and games, do you know any more of those fancy Indian positions?”

He laughed and swung his long, scrawny legs out of the bed and to the floor. “Ever so many, but you’ll have to take a rain check. I’ve been in bed too late as it is. You can have the bathroom first. I’ll start getting some breakfast organized.”

She pouted slightly but accepted the rejection. There would undoubtedly be other occasions to enjoy the far-out innovations of the accomplished professor, or whatever he was.

She said, “You mean you cook your own breakfast? What’s the matter with the automated kitchens, or the autochef over at the restaurant?”

“Too automated,” he said, reaching for his robe.

She got up too. On her bare feet, he realized how truly small she was. In bed, she had seemed taller, and the day before, when he had picked her up, she had been wearing rather high-heeled Cretan Revival slippers.

She said, “The thing about an autochef is, you get perfect food every time.”

“That’s the thing, all right,” he told her, defending his hobby as an amateur chef. “Exactly the same thing, every time. Perfection, in every recipe on the tapes. For me, I like a little variety. I like my scrambled eggs slightly softer or slightly harder, from day to day. I even don’t mind them burned, occasionally, just to prove that all isn’t automated and perfect in present-day society. Now shirk off to the bathroom.”

She laughed and hurried in that direction, her pink bottom jiggling so girlishly that he momentarily considered reversing his decision to start early at his studies. But no. When you are your own disciplinarian, with nobody else to see that you keep your nose to the old grindstone, you can’t afford to make exceptions. After a time, they cease being exceptions.

Ted headed for his kitchen. He was going to whomp her up a breakfast she’d never forget. How about eggs in Malaga wine and black butter? It was his own recipe.

In actuality, Nora wasn’t his usual cup of tea. She was completely amoral and, in her time, had probably been in bed with every man in the community. Ted, who was possibly ten years her senior, had been born in an averagely traditional family, and some of the old mores had worn off on him during childhood. The new permissiveness had already begun and by the time he had reached maturity he’d accepted the rapidly changing standards, but in his background there was still that which made him a wee bit straitlaced as compared to Nora’s generation, which had never known the old concepts.

By the time they finished breakfast, he had grown weary of her vapid chatter and made no protest, nor no future date, when she prepared to leave. He was slightly chagrined at the fact that she hadn’t commended him upon the Eggs Malaga—they had turned out perfectly.

She wore Bermuda shorts and the Cretan Revival slippers but had evidently decided that it was sunny enough, even at this early hour, to go topless back to her own place, and had thrown her blouse in the disposal chute in the bath. She went up on her tiptoes, kissed him briefly, said, “It was fun, Tom.” She added mischievously, “Don’t forget the raincheck. Maybe you’ll convert me into becoming a student of the Indians.”

The door opened for her when she approached.

He said, as she bustled through it, “The name’s Ted.”

She looked at him over her shoulder and grinned. “And I’m Marsha, not Nora.”

He grunted at that and went on back into the bedroom and through it to the bath for his shower. Shaving wasn’t necessary since he’d had his facial hair removed several years past. He had always hated to shave, even with a depilatory. Some of his friends had given him the argument that if beards ever came back in, he’d be sunk, but Ted Swain was no follower of the fads and he wouldn’t have grown a beard no matter what the style.

His was a craggy face, certainly less than handsome in the accepted taste, both his ears and mouth being much too large. And there was an intense something about his eyes that had an inclination to throw off his acquaintances and colleagues. It took time to become friends with Ted Swain; he didn’t have many. Those he did have were close. He had qualities down beneath.

Marsha had been right about going topless, he decided. It was going to be a warmish day even though autumn was already upon them. He selected a kilt from his closet and wrapped it around his waist. He didn’t bother to don footwear.

He went on back into his living room and through it into the small study. It was small, since there was no reason for it to be otherwise. Save for a few reference books, the room was devoid of the atmosphere formerly considered required by a scholar. The furniture consisted solely of one bookshelf, and one chair behind a desk, the top of which was an autoteacher; its screen connected with the National Data Banks. There was an additional library-booster screen to one side, so that he could consult more than one source at a time, a TV phone, and a voco-typer. The reason he had any reference books at all was that he found it quicker, sometimes, to manually look up, say, a word in a dictionary, rather than dialing a book from the data banks.

He went over to a shelf and brought down his bottle of stimmy and took one of the pills. It wasn’t Ted Swain’s field, and he had no real idea of the make-up of the ganglioside, other than that it contained magnesium pemoline. That it worked, he did know. He would be mentally stimulated for at least two hours; his I.Q. more than doubled, his ability to retain tripled. What was it someone had said? I.Q. isn’t enough. You have to have push as well. A lazy genius isn’t one. Well, stimmy gave you the push.

He went back to the desk, sat down before his screen and activated it. He looked at it and sighed. Stimmy pill or not, he was already past his peak of mental aptitude. The human brain begins to lose its ability to absorb at approximately the age of twenty-five. The new kids coming up in the field of ethnology had more on the ball than he did. He had more experience, more accumulated knowledge, than they, but their Ability Quotients were higher.

On the subject dial he dialed Ethnology, Mexico, the Aztecs, and then from the Peabody Museum Reports of Adolph F. Bandelier, and to the second report, On the Social Organization and Mode of Government of the Ancient Mexicans. It had been written in 1878 and for his money was still the definitive work on the Aztec Confederation, a sleeper forgotten by many modern ethnologists.

Usually Ted Swain studied in Interlingua, every work in the National Data Banks, Library Division, having been translated into the international language, but this time he stuck to the originals since he sometimes distrusted any translation. The computer translaters, in particular, sometimes missed up on such matters as idiom.

He flicked the pages until he arrived at the point where he had left off the day before, a quotation from Fray Toribio de Motolinia’s Historia de los Indios de Nueva Espana. Motolinia had come a bit late on the scene but he had done a fantastic amount of research into the nature of Montezuma’s Government.

His desk TV phone buzzed and he looked up in irritation. Damn it doubly, he wished that he had a proper escape room in which to study. He had the phone on a number-two priority, ruling out all but important calls, or governmental announcements, but that wasn’t enough to guarantee his absolute privacy.

He flicked off his autoteacher and activated the phone.

To his surprise, it was Academician Franz Englebrecht, head of the department of ethnology at the university city in which Ted Swain was enrolled, and his director of dissertation.

Ted hadn’t even talked with him for almost six months when Englebrecht had turned down his suggestion of a dissertation based on the true population of Tenochtitlan, the old Aztec Mexico City.

Englebrecht beamed at him; the insipid smile irritated Ted Swain more than anything else about the man. Pompous, yes, an asshole, yes, but did the son-of-a-bitch have to beam at you in that condescending manner?

Ted said, “Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, Swain. Well, I’ll not mince about. I think we have the theme for your dissertation, my boy. Can you come to my apartments immediately?”

“Why, yes sir, of course. But … but what is it?”

The other beamed again at him. “Not over the phone, Swain. We must run no chance of it leaking out. Some other candidate might see what a natural it is and publish before you could. We’ll talk it over in the seclusion of my escape sanctuary.”