Raymond F. Nelson - Then Beggar's Could Ride

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Then Beggars Could Ride by

Raymond F. Nelson

INTRODUCTION

Can we have Heaven on Earth without fossil fuels? And without nuclear

energy? I think so, and this book is intended to show how, in a low-energy

technology, we can fashion a world that is not only as good as our present

world, but much better. It is in this sense I call it a Utopia; it is not for

mere mortals to fashion a world that is completely perfect. We are

imperfect, therefore our imperfection will inevitably flaw anything we

create.

Nevertheless, as I look around me at the society of the Sinister

Seventies, I cannot help but feel restless and dissatisfied. Have we nothing

to look forward to but more of the same, or something worse than this?

Have we, indeed, passed the point of no return in some sort of plunge into

universal oblivion? So we have been told, on appallingly good authority.

But I refuse to believe it!

I rebel against the doomsayers!

I seek to answer them, to show another way, and I draw my answer

from a memory of my own life experience. There was a time when I,

personally, had no car, no heaters, no electricity even; when I was so poor I

found food by lurking in cafeterias—when patrons left their tables, I

finished their leftovers. My clothing was hand-me-downs from friends, my

shelter a condemned building where I lived rent-free, pending the coming

of the wrecking crew. Was I unhappy?

No! I was perhaps happier than I have ever been, before or since. I had

one natural resource that few people ever tap more than superficially; a

resource that, unlike our supply of oil, coal and various metals, seems

inexhaustible; a resource that grows greater rather than less as I use it.

I had my imagination.

My imagination made up for all I lacked.

As I sallied forth from my doomed dwelling place to perform my

morning ablutions in the men's room of the corner gas station, as I

wandered down to Telegraph Avenue to select a sumptuous repast from

the groaning smorgasbord of leftovers habitually discarded by the

American restaurant goer, as I sunned myself on the campus of the

University of California and discussed philosophy with students and an

occasional professor, was I a beggar? No. I never asked for money. Indeed,

that summer (for this life lasted only a few months) I neither accepted nor

spent one single penny. Was I a bum? Was I a hobo, a beatnik, a hippie?

(This was before Herb Caen coined the word "beatnik," back when a

"hippie" was a sharp-dressing Black.)

I was none of these things.

Thanks to my omnipotent imagination, I was on Monday a monk, on

Tuesday a troubadour, on Wednesday (having found the stump of a pencil

and some discarded leaflets) a great artist, on Thursday a secret agent, on

Friday a Zen Master, on Saturday a peripatetic philosopher, and on

Sunday the Emperor of the World traveling incognito. Or I could be an

explorer… I did indeed explore the East Bay on foot, from East Oakland to

the wilds of darkest Richmond. A composer, a dancer, a poet, a

psychoanalyst, a naturalist, a swimmer, a runner, a clown; all these things

I could be. I had but to imagine it, and it was so. And, as the occasion

demanded, I was also a free babysitter, a free furniture mover, interior

decorator, dishwasher, house-husband (briefly), cook.

I knew a girl at that time, a student at Cal. She was

(A) in love with me,

(B) trying to reform me,

(D) or none of the above.

One day she asked me, "What if everyone acted like you?"

That is the seed of this book!

What if we lived in a world of make-believe, designed to the

specifications of our fantasy, planned in our daydreams, molded to our

heart's desire? What if we designed this world so you could live in any

historical era, in any known place, or in times and places that never were,

but only were imagined?

Could such a world be made possible? Could it be practical, stable,

functional? Of course… in the imagination.

But let's make the question harder.

Could it be possible on a budget? In reality'?

Could it be possible with no technological breakthroughs, with no

scientific knowledge beyond what we possess today? Could it be possible

with no fossil fuels? (The day when we will be without fossil fuels

approaches swiftly and relentlessly.) Could it be possible with no nuclear

energy? (The problem of radioactive wastes has yet to be solved, and

perhaps may be incapable of solution.) Could it be possible, not with

impossibly good people, but with ordinary, flawed people like you and me?

I say yes!

Uptime from here, on one of the branches of possible futures, there is a

world of make-believe made real. It's not far away. Come, let us join my

protagonist as he seeks a home there. Perhaps we'll find your true homes

there too.

I know mine is.

R. F. Nelson

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

"Suicide, eh?"

"That's right."

The doctor, a short, thin, balding man in light blue business coveralls,

stood with his back to me as he spoke, leafing through my dossier with an

air of mild boredom. He raised his eyes to gaze out the circular window,

his unimpressive body silhouetted against a bright cloudless afternoon

sky, then turned to look at me for the first time.

"Light bothering you?" he asked.

"A little," I answered.

He grasped a handle at the window's rim and moved it, rotating the

inner of the two panes of polaroid glass. The window went opaque and the

illumination from the sun was replaced by a dim green shadowless glow

from phosphorescent walls and ceiling.

"Better?" he asked.

"I guess so." I didn't really care, and my voice showed it.

"Won't you have a chair?" He gestured toward a simple but elegant

piece of lightly stained flexible-wood furniture.

I sat down, remarking listlessly, "I was expecting you to ask me to lie

down on a couch."

"No, no, that won't be necessary. I see that, like so many people who

come to a therapist for the first time, you have a lot of false notions about

us. This is the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth. I don't believe

there's a single couch in this whole building."

"If you haven't got a couch, where am I going to lie down while you ask

me about my childhood?"

"I'm not going to ask you about your childhood."

"What about my dreams?"

"I'm not going to ask you about your dreams, either."

A faint smile played about his lips as he seated himself behind his light

elegant flexible-wood desk. "All those things have to do with your past. It's

all here." He tapped my dossier with his finger. "But since your past has

led you to attempt to kill yourself, you couldn't say it's been exactly good

for you. No, we won't talk much about your past. It's your future that

interests me, Jack."

"My name isn't Jack," I objected.

"I call all my male clients Jack, and all my female clients Jill. Later on

you'll—"

"Just a minute there! I'm an individual! I demand—"

His sparse eyebrows shot up. "You demand your identity? It seems to

me your identity was the very thing you wanted to be rid of when you took

the pills."

"Touché," I said morosely. I didn't care all that much. "So my name is

Jack. What's yours?"

"You can call me Doc." He stood up, leaned over the desk, and shook

hands with me. As he sat down again, he went on, "As I was about to say,

you won't be Jack forever. Someday, when you're ready, I'll hand you a list

of names and say 'Pick one.'"

"What if I don't like any of them?"

"Then you can make up one. You can have any name you like with one

exception."

"The name I was born with?"

"Exactly."

"Show me the list, Doc."

He shook his head, smiling wistfully. "Not yet."

"When?"

"In a year, two years. As long as it takes."

"That could be a long time. You could get as tired of me as… as I am of

myself."

He rocked back in his chair and gazed up at the glowing ceiling. "Don't

worry about that. There's something I think you ought to understand from

the outset. We're not giving you all this free treatment out of charity, so

you needn't feel guilty about it. We don't feel sorry for you. We feel…

threatened by you."

I was astonished. "Why would anyone feel threatened by me?"

"The planet Earth has reached a certain kind of perfection, Jack.

There's no war, no poverty, no starvation, almost no crime. The problems

that terrified our grandfathers—air and water pollution, overpopulation,

the energy shortage, racial and religious hatred, sexual inequality—they're

all licked. People live a long time, and they're not sick very much. We have

a Utopia here, or as close as man has ever come to a Utopia. So you can

see that when you're so unhappy you'd rather have no life at all than a life

among us, it causes, if not a threat to us, at least acute embarrassment."

He looked at me expectantly, hopefully, almost pleadingly.

"You know," I said after a pause, "I never really thought about that."

I thought about it on the way home, as I pedaled my bicycle along the

elevated bikeway, filling my lungs with clean, fresh, flower-scented air. I

looked toward the San Francisco Bay, where the sun was setting behind

the triple-decked Golden Gate Bridge; saw all the vertical windmills rising

from rooftops and backyards and rotating slowly in the breeze like huge

barrels with two broad slits in their sides; saw the seven and eight story

business buildings, one wall covered with a vast curving parabolic

reflector that focused a powerful stream of sunlight into a facing "target

building"; saw the other bowl-shaped solar collectors dotting the skyline;

saw the homes all built at a certain angle to the sun and painted in a

certain combination of black and white paint that regulated winter and

summer temperatures without the use of heaters or air conditioners; saw

the small farm-parks that separated the blocks of homes and business

structures at regular intervals; saw the almost noiseless electric trucks

entering and leaving the auto level of the freeway beneath me; saw the

duroplastic rain canopy above me.

It was all perfect, except for me.

* * *

"It's a good mim," I told her.

It was indeed a good mimicry of a knee-length white satin flapper dress

from the late nineteen-twenties. Marge pirouetted coquettishly, showing

off the dress (and her silk stockings), then struck a pose, one slender hand

touching her short peroxide-blond hair, the other raising skyward a

cigarette in a long ivory cigarette holder. I had to admit my wife was very

much "in period," very authentic. The flapper style was perfect for her,

with her small boyish figure. (I did not look nearly so convincing in a

coonskin coat.) The final touch: she was vigorously chewing gum. Through

the gum she said, in a pleased voice, "Aren't I the bee's knees?"

"Yes."

"Say it, Newton!" she commanded me.

"You're the bee's knees, dear."

She stopped posing, fairly well satisfied, though I knew she would

rather I'd call her "Sweetie" or at least "Baby."

"Dear" wasn't the best possible mim for her period, though I'm sure

there were people in the twenties that called each other "dear."

"In fact," I added, hoping to please her."

"I might go so far as to say you're the cat's pajamas."

"Now you're talkin'!" She gave me a light kiss on the chin, then took me

by the hand and led me into the front room. The front room, of course,

was decorated in a rigorous Art Deco style, all metal, glass and simple

geometrical forms. The whole apartment was Art Deco. Indeed the whole

neighborhood was Art Deco. I had occasionally pointed out that no real

neighborhood in the twenties was completely Art Deco. To be a genuine

mim, our street would have had to have had at least one or two buildings

from some previous era. Whenever I pointed this out to Marge she would

reply, "Who would live in them?"

Which was logical. If someone wanted to live in a house from some

non-deco period, they would not set up housekeeping here in the Chaplin

District.

"What'll ya have? The usual?" she demanded, stepping behind the

rectangular bright red bar.

"Nothing, thanks."

She raised a painted eyebrow. "Nothing? Say, are you turning

prohibitionist on me?" The Chaplin district played at prohibition, but was

not really dry, as were some more ruralist twenties neighborhoods.

"You can have something if you like," I said.

"I don't like to drink alone. You know that. Now how about it?" She

opened an unmarked bottle and poured two shot glasses of bathtub gin. I

caught a glimpse of myself in the wall-to-wall mirror behind her. I was too

thin, too pale, too sick-looking, almost a walking skeleton.

"No, thanks," I said.

"But you always have a drink when you come home."

"A man can change."

Now she was getting angry. "I like you the way you were."

"The way I was was suicidal. Did you like that?"

"Hey, buster! What are you up to now? Are you trying to put the blame

on me? It was you, not me, that tossed those sleeping pills down your

throat. I was the one that held your head while you vomited them up. I

was the one that called the doctor. Damn you, Newton…" Here she calmed

herself, with visible effort, before continuing, in a coaxing, seductive voice,

"Let's forget about that, honey. We both need a drink."

I turned away from her and went over to the picture window. It was

dark outside, except for the illumination in some of the neighbors'

windows. I saw my own gaunt reflection again, this time double, on the

inside and outside panes of the double window, and for some reason I

thought, This window's not a perfect mim. There weren't any

vacuum-gap insulating windows in the twenties.

Marge came out from behind the bar. I could see her reflection in the

window, but dared not look at her directly. Did I think I'd turn to stone?

Her next remark caught me off guard.

"Why don't you go to the bathroom, Newton?"

"What?"

"Why don't you go to the bathroom? Did you go to the bathroom at

that doctor's office?"

"Well… I suppose I did. What difference does that—"

"I knew it! Don't blame me if you have to eat your supper cold!"

I sighed and shrugged noncommittally. Our gas stove burned methane

produced in the basement septic tank. But I was sure there was no

shortage of sewage.

"Can't a man call his soul his own?" I demanded, somewhat inanely.

"You can have your lousy soul! But your excrement—" She pronounced

this word with an appalling French accent, in a tone of infinite disgust.

"Your excrement belongs to your family!"

I stared dumbfounded at her retreating image in the reflection as she

made her theatrical exit into the dining room. She did not want me to

change. Therefore she did not want me to go to the doctor. Not ever again.

She loved me for my own sweet self-destructive self.

Would I go to the doctor again?

A panic voice somewhere in the back of my mind cried out, You must!

I went over to the bar.

Both shot glasses of gin still sat there on the counter top, untouched.

She had left them there for me.

I perched on one of the two high bar stools, gazing at the shot glasses

for several minutes, before at last selecting the one on the right and

raising it in a mocking toast to my cadaverous reflection in the mirror.

"To us," I whispered, then tossed off the gin in a single swallow.

It tasted awful. I coughed, shook my head, wiped my watering eyes with

my sleeve, then, after a deep sigh, reached a bony hand for the other shot

glass.

* * *

Supper was late.

It was, of course, my fault. If I hadn't gone to that silly doctor, we would

have eaten before nightfall as usual. We would not have had to burn all the

electric lights in the dining room and kitchen. We would not have had to

waste precious electricity stored in the apartment batteries by

ever-so-many rotations of the windmill on the apartment house roof. I

thought of suggesting that we dine by candlelight, but I dared not speak.

The family would have noticed the tell-tale slur in my speech. Did they

already smell the gin on my breath? There was no telling. They were all too

polite to mention it; besides, there was nothing worthy of comment about

my being, as Marge put it, "a wee bit squiffy." It was normal, even

expected.

But I had been to the doctor.

I had said, "A man can change."

That was worse, even, then the fact I'd tried to kill myself. Suicide was

some sort of obscure venereal disease, unmentionable perhaps, but

curable. But to change oneself… that was treason!

"Pass the meatballs to your father, Ruth," commanded Marge.

Ruth, a redheaded teenager, but otherwise a carbon copy of her flapper

mother, obeyed.

It was not Sunday, but we were having meat, though meat is

ever-so-much more expensive than other, more vegetable, sources of

protein, ever-so-much more wasteful of energy, of Mother Earth's

not-unlimited bounty.

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ScannedbyaProofpackscanner.PreproofedandformattedbyHighroller.ProofedbyaProofpackProofer.MadeprettierbyuseofEBookDesignGroupStylesheet.ThenBeggarsCouldRidebyRaymondF.NelsonINTRODUCTIONCanwehaveHeavenonEarthwithoutfossilfuels?Andwithoutnuclearenergy?Ithinkso,andthisbookisintendedtoshowhow,inalow-ener...

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Raymond F. Nelson - Then Beggar's Could Ride

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