A Rage for Revenge

69 Hawaii

"But it's such a touristy thing to do-" I protested.

"Foreman invited us," Lizard insisted. "It's a privilege."

I shrugged. "All right," and followed.

We rented bicycles from a stand opposite the beach and pedaled down the busy avenue toward Diamond Head. It loomed like a big ocean wall.

I was amazed at Foreman's energy. I had trouble keeping up with him. I began to be grateful for stop lights. "Over there," he pointed, "that's the Honolulu Zoo. You should go some time. They still have three rhinocerouses. Probably the last three in the world. It'll be something to tell your grandchildren about, won't it! There might not be any more."

The light turned green and he pushed off again. I looked at Lizard, "I thought you said he wanted to talk to me."

"He does." She pushed off after him.

I muttered something unprintable and followed them both. Why bicycles? Why couldn't we have driven? I still hadn't gotten used to the weather here in Hawaii. It was either too hot or too wet, or both at the same time. The locals were saying all the rain was unseasonable. I didn't care. It felt like more excuses.

We rode past some houses, then up a hill and halfway around the crater, up another hill, through a tunnel and out into the wide open center.

I came to a stop just outside the tunnel. And stared. "I've never seen anything like this before."

And then I knew I had. A long long time ago. The memory came floating back. I'd forgotten

When I was nine years old, my mother had taken me to visit a friend of hers, a Chinese lady. The lady had shown me a bowl. She had made me sit down, then she placed it in my lap and put her hands around mine so we both held it at the same time and she told me to look into the bowl. Inside the bowl was a world, little houses of ivory, little trees of jade, little streams of ebony, little people made of gold.

"It's a window into paradise," she said. "It took over a hundred years to make. Four generations of a single family worked on this bowl. It's very valuable, but that's not why I keep it. I keep it because it's also very very beautiful. It's my own private little world."

I looked into that bowl and I felt awe. I couldn't pull my eyes away. I wanted to climb down into that bowl and explore every little copse and gazebo. I wanted to meet the tiny golden ladies under their delicate golden parasols. I wanted to see the ebony animals and birds in the tiny green garden. I wanted to live in that beautiful little world.

That was the feeling I had now, looking down at the center of Diamond Head crater.

It was a private world, a bowl both huge and tiny at the same moment. There was no sense of scale here, no sense of time. We were looking down across a lush green landscape, but not a tame one like the inside of that Chinese grandmother's jade bowl. No, this was a wilderness. It curved away from us into the distance, but the opposite wall of the crater was still too close. The bowl felt small, but the more you looked into it, the bigger it became. You could fall into this world. You could be lost in it and never be heard from again. You would not want to come back. You could hide a secret world here.

In fact, God already had.

The meadow was spread like a green blanket from here to forever. There were some small buildings on one edge of it. There were deep forests all around it, sprawling and lush and bright with blossoms. There were magic things living beyond those trees, I knew. And they came out on moonlit nights and danced on this broad green field, hidden away from the eyes of human beings.

The walls of the crater were a ring of sharp hills; they surrounded us like a hug, tall and sheltering.

The sky was brilliant.

I was frozen in the act of looking. I couldn't tear my eyes away.

I could feel the enchantment here, taste it, smell it. The air smelled of flowers, but there weren't any flowers near us.

"I've never seen anything like this-" I repeated.

Foreman said, "That's why I brought you here. Ready? Come along."

We pedaled down to the center of the crater. There was the inevitable comfort station there. "Do you have to go?" Foreman asked.

"No. Why?"

"Better go now. It'll be a while before you get another chance." I looked at Lizard. She shrugged back. We did as he said. When I came out, he was locking the bicycles into a rack, I said, "I thought that locks were a thing of the past. Wasn't it you who said there's enough for everybody now?"

He nodded. "But not all of it is in Hawaii. And part of the job of being enlightened is to not tempt others to be less than they are."

I said, "We could have driven."

He shook his head. "No, we couldn't. Ah, here's Lizard. Follow me."

He led us off on a trail into the brush. I couldn't stop marveling at the lushness of the growth here. My only previous experience with craters had been the meteor crater at Winslow, Arizona, and that had been mostly barren on the inside. I hadn't known what I had expected to find here inside Diamond Head, certainly not this little piece of paradise.

The trail suddenly turned sideways and upward. It jogged back auud forth across a rocky, tree-covered wall. Everything was dark and shady here. I realized we were hiking up to the top of the crater. I hadn't known that was possible. I followed Lizard and Foreman without much comment. I didn't wonder why they had Inwaght me here, I already knew. This was all supposed to be part of my therapy.

Occasionally we passed people heading downward. They grinned and waved knowingly. They knew what was ahead. They'd been there. We hadn't. At least, I hadn't.

I felt that way with Lizard and Foreman. They always knew what was ahead for me. I never seemed to.

We broke from the brush high on a cliff wall. We could see over thc top of the crater now. The suburbs of Honolulu were scattered high on the green slopes of Oahu. The houses glimmered bright in the crystal air.

The trail wound around, zigged and zagged, and stopped before a hole.

"Well, come on," said Foreman. "First, the tunnel. Then the stairs." He plunged in.

"Where does he get his energy?" I asked Lizard.

"He creates it." She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the darkness. There was a handrail for part of the way.

For a moment, I was absolutely blind.

Lizard stopped me in the tunnel. She came into my arms and found my mouth with hers. The kiss was quick and passionate. "What was that for?" I gasped.

"So you don't forget."

"Forget what'?"

"How much I love you."

"How much do you love me?"

"You'll find out."

Foreman was waiting for us when we came out of the tunnel. "Look," he pointed.

We were at the bottom of a concrete staircase. There were at least a thousand steps to the top. At least, it looked like that many. "Want to catch your breath before we go?"

"Uh . . . "

"How's your heart?"

"I'm young."

"You won't be when we reach the top. Let's go." He started cheerfully up.

He was right. I was a thousand years older at the top.

"This used to be a naval lookout station," he said. "It's over a hundred years old. They used to watch for Japanese planes from here. Now, it's mostly a weather station. And a place for tourists to picnic."

He led us up through four levels of concrete bunker, up a set of stairs, and out onto a catwalk

"Urk-" I said.

"You are now two hundred and thirty-three meters above sea level," said Foreman. "Don't look if it bothers you."

The catwalk led around a bulge of rock on the outermost edge of the highest point of the crater, to a set of stairs and a handrail. At the very top was a tiny concrete gazebo. It looked too high, too precarious, and much too easy to fall off of.

"I, uh . . . think, I'll go back inside . . . and look from there."

"Okay," said Foreman. He started up the last flight of stairs. Lizard followed him.

Neither looked back at me. Goddammit.

I hadn't even known I was this afraid of heights.

I closed my eyes and climbed the stairs, not opening them until I reached the top.

They were waiting for me there.

They had spread out a blanket. Lizard was laying out a small buffet. Foreman was opening a bottle of champagne. The cork popped and shot straight out toward Waikiki. It arced high, then tumbled down into the greenery, two hundred and forty meters below.

"Nice shot," I commented.

Foreman handed me a glass. "Thank you." He poured for himself and Lizard. "Have you ever been here before?"

"Uh, no."

"That's why we brought you. When I was your age, there weren't as many stairs or handrails. That last bit of stairs, for example-that used to be a rocky slope. A bit more challenging then."

I looked back and shuddered.

"Spend a moment taking in the view," he said.

"I feel like I can see almost all of Oahu from here."

"Well, this side of it anyway. Look," he pointed. "There goes the state bird of Hawaii."

I looked. "All I see is a lumbering old 747."

"That's it. We've got everything that flies going back and forth between here and the mainland. They're on the ground only long enough to take on fuel and supplies. We've got planes landing every thirty seconds. We're connecting to Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LAX, and San Diego. We're moving as much of the vital organs of the United States as possible out of the cancerous part of the body. We're duplicating the memory tanks in New York, Denver, and Washington, D.C. as well.

"If you look out there," he pointed, "you can see where we've started three new artificial islands. By next year, we'll have a chain of them ten miles long. As long as the current flows, we have electricity. As long as we have electricity, we can grow all the sea domes and islands we can use. We're also putting in a floating runway exclusively for shuttle operations, but that'll be at Maui."

"How are the locals taking it?" I asked.

"Some of them hate it. Some of them love it." He shrugged. "Nobody likes living in a refugee camp, and there's a very good chance that's what this state will become. We're trying to get more people to move on to Australia and New Zealand, but most Americans don't want to go that far. Would you?"

"I wouldn't want to abandon the United States to the Chtorrans, no. Here, we're still fighting back."

"Uh-huh." Foreman smeared some chopped liver on a cracker and popped it into his mouth. "What about you?"

"What do you mean, what about me?"

"What do you want to do?"

"Haven't we had this conversation once before?"

"Uh-huh, and we'll probably have it again. The answer may have changed. What do you want to do, Jim?"

"You know where my commitment is. I hate the worms. I want to kill them."

"So? What?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I didn't say 'So what?' I said, 'So? What?' Two different sentences. So? What next?"

"I don't understand."

"Wanting to kill Chtorrans isn't all, Jim. There's something else there. If all you really wanted was to kill Chtorrans, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You'd just be a killing machine. We'd point you at Chtorrans and you'd kill them. But the truth is, you don't want to kill any more, do you? You've got some very real questions about what's going on, don't you? And you want to find the answers more than you want to keep on killing. Right?"

What he was saying was true. "Right," I agreed.

Foreman refilled my champagne glass. He refilled Lizard's as well. She was listening to both of us, saying nothing.

Foreman said to me, "Who are you?"

"I'm James Edward McCarthy."

"No, you're not. That's a name you use to identify that body."

"Well, I'm this body then."

"No, you're not. That's just a body that you use."

"Well, then, I'm the person who uses this body."

"So? Who's that? Who are you?"

"I'm a human being!"

"So? What's a human being?"

I stopped. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"I want to know who you are, Jim."

"Well, none of my answers has been good enough for you."

"None of your answers is who you really are. You keep saying things that show that you think you're your name, or your body, or your species. Are you really?"

I thought about it. I didn't know what he was driving at. I said, "I don't know."

He said, "That's right. You don't. You don't know who you really are. And you don't even know that you don't know."

"I know now," I said. "This conversation is . . . sort of silly. I mean, I don't know what we're talking about at all. It's like a head game."

"Yes, it is a head game, Jim. That's why God gave you a head. You can't play football without a ball, you can't play head games without a head. That's all it's good for. Now, let me ask you the next question. Now that you know that you don't know who you really are, what are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't."

"Saying you don't know is what keeps you unconscious. It keeps you stuck. It lets you avoid being responsible."

"All right. I guess I'm supposed to say that the next step is that I should find out who I really am. Except, I don't know how to do that."

"I didn't ask you if you knew how. That wasn't the question. Have you ever noticed that most people never answer the question that's asked them. They give you the reason why they won't answer it instead."

"What is all this about?"

"Lizard asked me to put you into the next Mode Training. I need to know if you really want to do it. Do you?"

I said, "I don't know."

Foreman smiled. "Thanks for being so honest. The purpose of the training is to reveal your operating modes, so that you can be aware of them and transcend them."

"Could you translate that into English?"

"It's really very simple, Jim." He scratched his ear. "Let me give it to you this way. Do you know how to surprise a fish?"

"Huh? No, how do you surprise a fish?"

"You reach very carefully into the tank, grab it by the tail and lift it up out of the water, just high enough for it to get a very clear view of the top of the water. You'll have to watch very quickly, but if you do, you'll see that fish get a very surprised expression on its face."

"Uh-huh." How far into his cheek was his tongue?

"Now-whatever you do, do not put that fish back into the same tank with other fish who have not also had the same experience."

"Why?"

"Why? Because that poor fish is now crazy by their standards. He'll be swimming around poking all the other fish, saying, 'Hey! This is water! We're swimming in water!' They're going to look at him sideways and swim off into the corner to say, 'Poor old fellow, he used to be so sensible, till he started talking about this water stuff.' That's how the Training works.

"We grab you by the tail, we lift you up out of the water you're swimming in, then we put you back in the water. You know why? You can't keep a fish out of water. It dies. The Training doesn't mean you won't be swimming in water. It just lets you see the water you're swimming in. That's called an operating conditionor a mode. The Training is the opportunity to discover your modes. Right now, you're unconscious to most of your operating states. So they run you. If you were conscious of them, you could transcend them. And you could be more responsible for the results you produce in the world.

"The Training is about your relationship with your own life. It's about being able to get out of the water long enough to see the water you're in. You can't see it while you're in it. This is about your natural ability to make great leaps. Most people are stuck underwater, Jim. This is the opportunity to learn how to fly."

"That doesn't tell me a lot."

"I know. The answer is unsatisfactory. If you knew what it was, you wouldn't need to do it to find out. I could explain it to you all day, but you still wouldn't know what it is." He grinned. "Would you rather spread whipped cream all over Lizard's body or would you rather have someone explain to you how to spread whipped cream all over Lizard's body?"

"I see the point," I said. "There's a difference between explanation and experience. We had that one in high school."

"Uh-huh. "

"I, uh, don't think I'm ready for it," I said.

"Of course, you're not. Nobody ever is. Do you want to do it anyway?"

I thought about it. I didn't know what I was saying yes to.

I felt as if there were another gun in my mouth. Live or die?

But . . . I loved Lizard. I would do anything for her. I looked at Lizard. She smiled at me, reassuringly.

I said, "Yes."

"No, that's not good enough." Foreman looked at Lizard. "Not yet, my dear. He's not ready."

She nodded. "I see it too."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're willing to do it for Lizard. But I don't know yet if you're willing to do it for yourself."

For a moment, there was a cool breeze across the top of Diamond Head. It smelled of the sea. I shivered. I said, "You're right. I don't really want to do it."

Foreman nodded. "So, don't. There's no pressure on you."

"Yes, there is-"

He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

I looked at Lizard. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. But, I'm not completely human any more. There's things that you don't know. Neither of you. I don't feel that I should be trusted."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm deranged. Crazy. Damaged. I don't know where it started. Maybe with the renegades, maybe at Family. Did you know that I pulled the trigger on them?"

Foreman nodded. So did Lizard. He said, "It must have been a tremendously difficult thing to do."

"It was . . . exhilarating. I liked it. And . . ." I started to choke, ". . . I'm horrified at myself."

"Uh-huh."

"I liked them. They were good people. They were. They poured their love over everything and everybody. It was real. They'd even worked out how to live with the Chtorrans. They had an answer. I'm terrified that Delandro might have been right-that they were the future. Their way may be the only way that people can survive on the same planet with the Chtorrans.

"But, see, it's also the wrong answer. It's not acceptable. I'm so confused. I've been confused since the beginning. And it only gets more confusing. The only thing I've been able to hang on to is my rage."

I looked at Lizard. "I love you, but it isn't fair for me to let you love me; you deserve better than me. There are times when I think I know how crazy I really am. And I think I can handle myself. But I can't. I can't handle it any more. It's like that old Solomon Short quote: 'This neurotic pursuit of sanity is driving us all crazy.' "

Foreman started laughing. So did Lizard.

"Huh? What did I say?" I looked from one to the other.

"No, it's all right." Foreman held up a hand. "There's something you don't know. Who do you think Solomon Short is?"

"I never thought about it. Just some cynical old bastard who posts a quote on the network every day."

Lizard giggled. Foreman said, "Cynical, eh? Well, I won't argue with that one; but as far as I know, my parents were married."

"Huh-?" And then it hit me. "You're Solomon Short?"

Foreman grinned. "You don't know the half of it, Jim."

"Well, gosh," I said, because I couldn't think of anything else to say. "Everybody quotes you."

"That's the idea," said Foreman. "I never said I wasn't vain. But we were talking about you, not me. We were talking about The Mode Training."

I looked away from them both. I looked out over the sharp green hills of Hawaii. The colors were so bright here they were almost unreal. I looked back to Foreman. The breeze ruffled through his white hair, making it stand up like a crown. The top of his skull was pink and shiny. Once again, it was a question of trust.

It was always a question of trust.

Finally, I said, "I know what the Training is. I looked it up. It's about self-actualization. It's about being the best that you can be. It's about being truly human. It's the next step. But I can't even manage being me. How can I manage anything more?"

Foreman considered the question. "I don't know either."

"Well . . . what kind of an answer is that?"

"An unsatisfactory one. Do you know that all the answers are unsatisfactory? They always will be. If you're looking for satisfaction, you're looking in the wrong place. The answers are the answers. Period. Whether you like them or not is irrelevant. Satisfaction lives somewhere else."

"So . . . okay, then I can't do it," I said.

"That's right," he agreed. "You're arguing for your limitations. That guarantees your failure." He added, "Too bad."

I stood up. "Maybe we'd better go back then."

"Okay."

"Dammit! Aren't you going to try to convince me?"

"No." His expression was impassive. "Why should I? You're responsible for yourself. You already know that. If you want to keep on thinking you're a failure, that's your choice too."

"That's what Jason said," I snapped.

Foreman nodded. "Maybe Jason was right."

"No, he wasn't! He was wrong! I know it! I don't know how I know it, but I know it."

"So prove it," Foreman said calmly.

I froze. "You're manipulating me," I said softly. He shook his head.

I glowered at him. I wanted to punch his fatuous grinning face. Lizard's too. I felt trapped in a corner.

Foreman was impassive. "Relax, Jim. This is just a picnic. And a talk. We don't have an agreement for anything more. Lizard asked me if you could do the Training; but since you don't want to, you can't. Besides, you've already done it."

"Huh?"

"Delandro was one of my students ten years ago. One of the best. I'm certain that he discovered things about the Chtorrans that are true. I'm certain that everything he told you was the truth as he had experienced it. I'm certain that his Tribe was definitely a context of lovingness, despite whatever judgments any of us might care to add. I may not like the facts, but I'm certain that there is a truth behind what you say, else you-and I and Lizard-would not be so disturbed by it."

"He tried to brainwash me."

"And he must have succeeded. You're still crazy. Sit down." I sat.

He moved closer, so he could reach over and put his hand on mine. "You need to abandon some old concepts, Jim. They're keeping you stuck. Delandro used the technology of The Mode Training to create a specific mode, a context of operation. It worked for his Tribe. They survived. It worked until it stopped working. Somewhere, there was a fatal error. You were merely the expression of that error. Think of it as an experiment that failed. The program crashed. It wasn't viable. But it was one more attempt on the planet to create an operating mode for human beings that guarantees survival in a Chtorran future.

"You've already had the first part of the Training, the experience of transferring from one mode to another. But that's only the smallest part of it. The real training is the creation of operating modes. Call it programming the human machinery."

"I want to do the Training to be deprogrammed," I said.

"There is no deprogramming. All there is, is shifting from the operation of one program to another. A computer that isn't running a program is a dead-and useless-machine.

"I'm going to give you the good news now. If you know this fact, then you can create programs of joy and satisfaction."

"I don't like it."

"I didn't ask you to like it. Just know it." He sighed. "Let me give you one more piece of bad news that may put some of this in perspective. Do you know what the natural state of humanity really is?"

I shook my head.

"The cult. That's the impolite term for it, but it's accurate. People need tribal identities. Veteran. Hacker. American. Fan. Employee. Parent. Grandparent. Writer. Executive. The problem with America is that it's a country that invented itself. So there aren't a lot of tribal identities. People keep borrowing identities from other sources. Religious ones are great, especially some of the Eastern disciplines. Martial arts. Creative Anachrony. Transformational Communities. Political movements. Genre fanatics. Sexual communities. We use the word cult to identify the ones that are alien to us, and we ignore the real truth that people need to belong to tribes in order to provide a context for their identities. Without your family, tribe, nation, or context, you don't know who you are. That's why you have to belong to something.

"Break away from one something and become part of another and you're reprogramming your operating context and the identity that operates inside that context. We call that being seduced by a cult, because it threatens us. It suggests that there's something wrong or weak or inappropriate about our identities. It suggests that we're not right. So we call it a cult and make it as wrong as we can so that the people close to us won't want to do it, won't desert us, won't insult or damage our contexts. We do it to preserve our identities, right or wrong. But this is the bad news, Jim. It's always wrong. Because you are not your context."

I chewed that thought over. Foreman was right. I didn't like it. "So, all you're doing is replacing one cult with another?" I asked.

He nodded wryly. "You can look at it that way. It wouldn't be inaccurate. But The Mode Training is an attempt to go beyond the limitations of living inside a cult to the possibilities that are available when you can create any context or cult you need."

"So, it's all brainwashing?"

"Jim, forget that word. All education is reprogramming. All transformation is reprogramming. First we find out what you know; then we identify what's inaccurate or inappropriate. Then we devalue your investment in it so that we can replace it with the correct information. A lot of times, it also means devaluing the context around the information and replacing that with a more appropriate one. This is what you do whether you're learning trigonometry or French or Catholicism. Yes, it's reprogramming. The same way you reprogram a computer. You're a machine, Jim. It's all bad news. So, what are you going to do about it?"

I looked him straight in the eye. "I don't know," I said. I said it with finality.

"Fair enough," said Foreman. "When you get bored with not knowing and start getting curious about what's on the other side-and I know you will-then come see me. The next Training starts in ten days. I'll hold a chair for you."

He stood up and stretched and ran a hand through his hair. He pointed along the rim of the crater. "See that little building over there? That's a comfort station. I'm going to take a walk."

He left Lizard and me alone.

I looked at her. "I don't like being told that what I feel for you is just a program. It makes me feel like I'm not in control."

Her eyes were deep. She asked, "So, who wrote the program?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do."

I looked at my love for Lizard. Oh. "I-I guess, I did."

"You guess?"

"I did."

"Uh-huh. And so did I. So what?" She said, "We've been looking at the worms as biological machines and trying to figure them out. What would we discover if we turned the same mirror on ourselves? What kind of machines are we?"

"I'm a jerk," I said. "I'm a jerk machine."

"And I'm a nasty bitch machine," she said. "So what?"

"I don't want to be a machine," I said.

"I got it. That's what kind of a machine you are. The kind who doesn't want to be."

"Uh . . ." And then I started to giggle. "I got it. I'm the kind of machine who goes around telling myself I'm not a machine. Like a little tape recorder playing my little tape, 'I'm not a machine, I'm not a machine."'

She laughed too. And leaned over and kissed me. "You're ready to take the next step, sweetheart. You've already taken it."

"I have?"

"Yes, you have. You're willing to deal with bad news."

I sighed. I looked into her eyes. "All I want is to find the way-not just the way to survive, but the way to win as well. I want to know. Is this it?"

She understood what I was saying. "You'll let us know, afterward," she said.