I found it hard to like Peter. For one thing, he resembled John Lang. Like
Lang, Peter called himself a Marxist, which seemed to mean that he never made large profits on rent or dope deals. Now Peter repined over the evictions. He had been more than fair. But these people had acted in bad faith, and it was no favor to anyone to support the irresponsible. How the responsible differed from those who merely paid their bills I did not ask.
He sketched the consequences of his Marxist heresy in a capitalist, normative society: his parents gave him grief for dropping out, his job prospects were nil, he suffered angst. Only in the mountains did he feel free.
Doubtless I am being unjust to Peter. The point is that I liked unreflective Murphy better. I had perhaps heard too many people excusing themselves too often. Still, I shared with Peter some of my own heresies and failures, insofar as they reflected his, and he was a good listener. I was smoking his dope. We all felt fine.
After a while Peter stood. Gonna take a dump. Anyone else? Why, I wondered, are Marxists such scoutmasters?
When he had gone, Murphy spoke to me. I used to think that I was not human. That I was from a star somewhere. They had left me here to grow up as human, to observe and learn, and when I had observed and learned enough, they would take me back. I used this, this fantasy as a reason. I liked to study things and this gave me a reason.
Why did you need a reason?
Because I knew studying would never do me any good. It's okay if you have the money to go to college.
Stung, I said: I was on financial aid. I didn't have any money.
But your friends did.
That was true. I was the token poverty case, the one who would miss outings and parties because of work-study jobs, but still I was part of that world, a world that Murphy never had a chance in. I had willfully turned my back on it; that was a luxury he would not like me for.
Which star? I asked.
Omega Orionis, he said with no hesitation. They live in an artificial satellite orbiting the star. It's a winter star. It's dim. I could only see it sometimes, where I lived. I knew they had left me here, and would come back.
How long did this. fantasy last? I asked.
A few years. I never told anyone. After a while I just stopped thinking about it.
When I was a kid, I said, I thought I was some kind of mutant. A genetic sport, you know. I guess we all need some story to separate us from our parents.
I was here to study Earth things, you see, but then I began to believe in them. I was afraid they would see this, and not come back for me. I was supposed to be just an observer. Not a participant.
Despite myself I felt love for him. I wanted to stretch my arms to him and pull him across the gulf he had created between himself and humanity.
Murphy. My friend. What the hell is your first name?
Hugh.
Irish?
My mother denies it. She says it's Scottish. She wears orange on St.
Patrick's Day.
I laughed. And what's your father?
Dead.
Oh.
I. w-waited for it. He raped my older sister. He was, that is, it was his name too.
Is that why you don't use it?
Oh no. No. It's, well, I sign myself, my drawings, just "Murphy." It's kind of a personal secret. You know, the way some people won't tell their middle names, as if names gave power? It's silly.
No it's not. If you know someone's name, in a way you're responsible for them.
And you, you know the names of so many things, don't you.
Not their true names. You know more of that, I think.
Peter's flashlight beam bobbed closer as he returned.
Did you see that major meteor?
No. We were talking about glaciers, I said.
Oh, yeah. If we had more time, I'd take you to Evolution Valley. There's outstanding glacial stuff there. Mt. Huxley, Mt. Darwin, Lamarck Col.
I'll show you slides sometime. A great place. Nature named after natural historians. You guys coming to bed? I'm fried.
Soon, I told him.
Okay. Don't step on me when you come in.
He left. After a minute I said: Murphy, I heard you on the radio the other night.
He was silent.
Do you believe all that?
You think it's all the result of chance, he said.
Not quite. But if it is, is that so bad? Isn't it a relief to think so?
That the universe is indifferent?
Do you believe in sin?
I was impressed. He had gone straight to the core of my argument and neutered it. But I played him out.
What if I don't?
You do.
You. saw that, of course.
Yes.
Well, you're right. I do believe in sin. Otherwise evil is the result of misunderstanding, and I don't believe that.
Then what is sin? he asked.
A violation of the natural order.
So there is an order.
I don't know. Despite all the fictions we impose, yes, I tend to think there is one, under it all. So there's sin. You're responsible for your actions. I laughed. So congratulations, you've discovered God. But let me tell you about Occam's razor.
Needless reduplication of entities.
Undercut again, I laughed, benevolent from Peter's dope.
You, you see, that's where the God argument fails. He wouldn't have made.. all this.
Oh, I don't know. He did or he didn't, but anyway why replace him with a race of aliens?
Oh, was I stoned. I could almost see them.
If we're slave to their will, to the fall of ch-chromosomes, the mutations, the defects in material, well, then we can never transcend ourselves, can we, but only aspire to find the controlling form. T-to know them. And I'm still afraid of what I might learn about them. What if they're p-p-perfect, but formed that way by chance.?
Afraid to learn? Then stop, I said blithely.
I, I have no choice!
What reproach. His cosmos was controlled, and he its creature, denied choice, enslaved by a false idea of his own making, just as I was trapped by my idea, the image of an orderly world in which choice could be clear and unencumbered by poor consequence or pain. We were more alike than not.
I saw him as one of my angels at a crossroad, but this angel was not fearsome. No, this one had trapped himself and turned slowly with a stricken lost look, while around him an unthinkable chaos of beings boiled, warred, loved, lost, died, endured.
Murphy, listen to me, the stupid and the intelligent accept the imposed orders, because they don't see them or because they know there's no alternative. People like you, you wake up suddenly, you see the imperfections and the fraud, call it monstrous, and think it new. But it's not new. The knowledge does you no good; looking for a new order only takes you deeper into the old. And finally you come to the idea of inherent vice in creation, and even that isn't final, isn't new. You're doomed. There's no help for you.
Of whom are you speaking?
Of myself. Of whatever it is we share. This ineradicable strain. I woke up too. Perhaps it's best for us if we choose it.
Choose to be doomed?
Yes. To be excluded from the charnel house. Each in his own way.
Perhaps, said Murphy, and was then silent. The warmth of the dope left me, and I began to shiver. As I stood up and headed for the tent he said, I'll stay up awhile. Until Orion rises.
We were all up at dawn. I left the tent first and walked to the lakeside.
A fringe of ice extended an inch or two from some rocks. The air was cool and lucid with a slight steady breeze. Overhead pink mare's tails swept.