Octavia Butler 1947-2006

[sigismundus]

umrla je Octavia Butler
Ne znam, da li je več ko to spomeno, ali ja saznao juče
Pročitao sam maltene svaku rečenicu, što je ona napisala. Ima jako malo kratkih priča, ni za jednu dobru kolekciju nije toga dovoljno. Poznata je priča Bloodchild, a ja imam da prevedem Speech Sounds.  Njezini romani su O.K. lošiji je jedino Survivor, te da dodam još Clays Ark. Al to procenjujem po najvišim kriterijima. Koji mnogi pisci nikad ni ne dostignu. Pet romana je postavljeno u jedan te isti univerzum, sa iznimkom Xenogenesis trilogije(Lilith's Brood) koju apsolutno preporučujem. Iznimno kvalitetan je Wild Seed(1980), te natprosječni Patternmaster(1976)
Te jedan najboljih SF romana svih vremena, a to jeste Kindred(1979). Ellison ga usporedjuje sa Roots Arthura Haileya i ocenjuje, da je Kindred daleko bolji. Ako vam to bilo šta znači.
Jednom ču to prevesti, siguran sam. To je time travel story o robovlasništvu. O mladoj, civiliziranoj crnki, koja se snadje u prošlosti, kao robinja i kako to doživljava. Ubedljivo, potresno. Pravi umjetnički rad.
ma, ima da to pročitate

[PTY]

Neverovatno. Par dana već surfujem u potrazi za njenim stvarima a to da mi promakne.
Enivej, baš danas mi jedan čovek poveri kako ni u jednom ženskom autoru nije uspeo da nađe ni grama utehe. Trebalo je da ga pitam da li je čitao Oktaviju.

Well, za njega i sve ostale, jedan adekvatan in memoriam:

[PTY]

The Book of Martha
                 by Octavia E. Butler


                 "It's difficult, isn't it?" God said with a weary smile.
                 "You're truly free for the first time. What could be more
                 difficult than that?"
                 Martha Bes looked around at the endless grayness that was,
                 along with God, all that she could see. In fear and confusion,
                 she covered her broad black face with her hands. "If only I
                 could wake up," she whispered.
                 God kept silent but was so palpably, disturbingly present that
                 even in the silence Martha felt rebuked. "Where is this?" she
                 asked, not really wanting to know, not wanting to be dead when
                 she was only forty-three. "Where am I?"
                 "Here with me," God said.
                 "Really here?" she asked. "Not at home in bed dreaming? Not
                 locked up in a mental institution? Not ... not lying dead in a
                 morgue?"
                 "Here," God said softly. "With me."
                 After a moment, Martha was able to take her hands from her
                 face and look again at the grayness around her and at God.
                 "This can't be heaven," she said. "There's nothing here, no
                 one here but you."
                 "Is that all you see?" God asked.
                 This confused her even more. "Don't you know what I see?" she
                 demanded and then quickly softened her voice. "Don't you know
                 everything?"
                 God smiled. "No, I outgrew that trick long ago. You can't
                 imagine how boring it was."
                 This struck Martha as such a human thing to say that her fear
                 diminished a little—although she was still impossibly
                 confused. She had, she remembered, been sitting at her
                 computer, wrapping up one more day's work on her fifth novel.
                 The writing had been going well for a change, and she'd been
                 enjoying it. For hours, she'd been spilling her new story onto
                 paper in that sweet frenzy of creation that she lived for.
                 Finally, she had stopped, turned the computer off, and
                 realized that she felt stiff. Her back hurt. She was hungry
                 and thirsty, and it was almost five A.M. She had worked
                 through the night. Amused in spite of her various aches and
                 pains, she got up and went to the kitchen to find something to
                 eat.
                 And then she was here, confused and scared. The comfort of her
                 small, disorderly house was gone, and she was standing before
                 this amazing figure who had convinced her at once that he was
                 God—or someone so powerful that he might as well be God. He
                 had work for her to do, he said—work that would mean a great
                 deal to her and to the rest of humankind.
                 If she had been a little less frightened, she might have
                 laughed. Beyond comic books and bad movies, who said things
                 like that?
                 "Why," she dared to ask, "do you look like a twice-live-sized,
                 bearded white man?" In fact, seated as he was on his huge
                 thronelike chair, he looked, she thought, like a living
                 version of Michelangelo's Moses, a sculpture that she
                 remembered seeing pictured in her college art-history textbook
                 about twenty years before. Except that God was more fully
                 dressed than Michelangelo's Moses, wearing, from neck to
                 ankles, the kind of long, white robe that she had so often
                 seen in paintings of Christ.
                 "You see what your life has prepared you to see," God said.
                 "I want to see what's really here!"
                 "Do you? What you see is up to you, Martha. Everything is up
                 to you."
                 She sighed. "Do you mind if I sit down?"
                 And she was sitting. She did not sit down, but simply found
                 herself sitting in a comfortable armchair that had surely not
                 been there a moment before. Another trick, she thought
                 resentfully—like the grayness, like the giant on his throne,
                 like her own sudden appearance here. Everything was just one
                 more effort to amaze and frighten her. And, of course, it was
                 working. She was amazed and badly frightened. Worse, she
                 disliked the giant for manipulating her, and this frightened
                 her even more. Surely he could read her mind. Surely he would
                 punish ...
                 She made herself speak through her fear. "You said you had
                 work for me." She paused, licked her lips, tried to steady her
                 voice. "What do you want me to do?"
                 He didn't answer at once. He looked at her with what she read
                 as amusement—looked at her long enough to make her even more
                 uncomfortable.
                 "What do you want me to do?" she repeated, her voice stronger
                 this time.
                 "I have a great deal of work for you," he said at last. "As I
                 tell you about it, I want you to keep three people in mind:
                 Jonah, Job, and Noah. Remember them. Be guided by their
                 stories."
                 "All right," she said because he had stopped speaking, and it
                 seemed that she should say something. "All right."
                 When she was a girl, she had gone to church and to Sunday
                 School, to Bible class and to vacation Bible school. Her
                 mother, only a girl herself, hadn't known much about being a
                 mother, but she had wanted her child to be "good," and to her,
                 "good" meant "religious." As a result, Martha knew very well
                 what the Bible said about Jonah, Job, and Noah. She had come
                 to regard their stories as parables rather than literal
                 truths, but she remembered them. God had ordered Jonah to go
                 to the city of Nineveh and to tell the people there to mend
                 their ways. Frightened, Jonah had tried to run away from the
                 work and from God, but God had caused him to be shipwrecked,
                 swallowed by a great fish, and given to know that he could not
                 escape.
                 Job had been the tormented pawn who lost his property, his
                 children, and his health, in a bet between God and Satan. And
                 when Job proved faithful in spite of all that God had
                 permitted Satan to do to him, God rewarded Job with even
                 greater wealth, new children, and restored health.
                 As for Noah, of course, God ordered him to build an ark and
                 save his family and a lot of animals because God had decided
                 to flood the world and kill everyone and everything else.
                 Why was she to remember these three Biblical figures in
                 particular? What had they do with her—especially Job and all
                 his agony?
                 "This is what you're to do," God said. "You will help
                 humankind to survive its greedy, murderous, wasteful
                 adolescence. Help it to find less destructive, more peaceful,
                 sustainable ways to live."
                 Martha stared at him. After a while, she said feebly, "...
                 what?"
                 "If you don't help them, they will be destroyed."
                 "You're going to destroy them ... again?" she whispered.
                 "Of course not," God said, sounding annoyed. "They're well on
                 the way to destroying billions of themselves by greatly
                 changing the ability of the earth to sustain them. That's why
                 they need help. That's why you will help them."
                 "How?" she asked. She shook her head. "What can I do?"
                 "Don't worry," God said. "I won't be sending you back home
                 with another message that people can ignore or twist to suit
                 themselves. It's too late for that kind of thing anyway." God
                 shifted on his throne and looked at her with his head cocked
                 to one side. "You'll borrow some of my power," he said.
                 "You'll arrange it so that people treat one another better and
                 treat their environment more sensibly. You'll give them a
                 better chance to survive than they've given themselves. I'll
                 lend you the power, and you'll do this." He paused, but this
                 time she could think of nothing to say. After a while, he went
                 on.
                 "When you've finished your work, you'll go back and live among
                 them again as one of their lowliest. You're the one who will
                 decide what that will mean, but whatever you decide is to be
                 the bottom level of society, the lowest class or caste or
                 race, that's what you'll be."
                 This time when he stopped talking, Martha laughed. She felt
                 overwhelmed with questions, fears, and bitter laughter, but it
                 was the laughter that broke free. She needed to laugh. It gave
                 her strength somehow.
                 "I was born on the bottom level of society," she said. "You
                 must have known that."
                 God did not answer.
                 "Sure you did." Martha stopped laughing and managed, somehow,
                 not to cry. She stood up, stepped toward God. "How could you
                 not know? I was born poor, black, and female to a
                 fourteen-year-old mother who could barely read. We were
                 homeless half the time while I was growing up. Is that
                 bottom-level enough for you? I was born on the bottom, but I
                 didn't stay there. I didn't leave my mother there, either. And
                 I'm not going back there!"
                 Still God said nothing. He smiled.
                 Martha sat down again, frightened by the smile, aware that she
                 had been shouting—shouting at God! After a while, she
                 whispered, "Is that why you chose me to do this ... this work?
                 Because of where I came from?"
                 "I chose you for all that you are and all that you are not,"
                 God said. "I could have chosen someone much poorer and more
                 downtrodden. I chose you because you were the one I wanted for
                 this."
                 Martha couldn't decide whether he sounded annoyed. She
                 couldn't decide whether it was an honor to be chosen to do a
                 job so huge, so poorly defined, so impossible.
                 "Please let me go home," she whispered. She was instantly
                 ashamed of herself. She was begging, sounding pitiful,
                 humiliating herself. Yet these were the most honest words
                 she'd spoken so far.
                 "You're free to ask me questions," God said as though he
                 hadn't heard her plea at all. "You're free to argue and think
                 and investigate all of human history for ideas and warnings.
                 You're free to take all the time you need to do these things.
                 As I said earlier, you're truly free. You're even free to be
                 terrified. But I assure you, you will do this work."

[PTY]

Martha thought of Job, Jonah, and Noah. After a while, she
                 nodded.
                 "Good," God said. He stood up and stepped toward her. He was
                 at least twelve feet high and inhumanly beautiful. He
                 literally glowed. "Walk with me," he said.
                 And abruptly, he was not twelve feet high. Martha never saw
                 him change, but now he was her size—just under six feet—and he
                 no longer glowed. Now when he looked at her, they were eye to
                 eye. He did look at her. He saw that something was disturbing
                 her, and he asked, "What is it now? Has your image of me grown
                 feathered wings or a blinding halo?"
                 "Your halo's gone," she answered. "And you're smaller. More
                 normal."
                 "Good," he said. "What else do you see?"
                 "Nothing. Grayness."
                 "That will change."
                 It seemed that they walked over a smooth, hard, level surface,
                 although when she looked down, she couldn't see her feet. It
                 was as though she walked through ankle-high, ground-hugging
                 fog.
                 "What are we walking on?" she asked.
                 "What would you like?" God asked. "A sidewalk? Beach sand? A
                 dirt road?"
                 "A healthy, green lawn," she said, and was somehow not
                 surprised to find herself walking on short, green grass. "And
                 there should be trees," she said, getting the idea and
                 discovering she liked it. "There should be sunshine—blue sky
                 with a few clouds. It should be May or early June."
                 And it was so. It was as though it had always been so. They
                 were walking through what could have been a vast city park.
                 Martha looked at God, her eyes wide. "Is that it?" she
                 whispered. "I'm supposed to change people by deciding what
                 they'll be like, and then just ... just saying it?"
                 "Yes," God said.
                 And she went from being elated to—once again—being terrified.
                 "What if I say something wrong, make a mistake?"
                 "You will."
                 "But ... people could get hurt. People could die."
                 God went to a huge deep red Norway Maple tree and sat down
                 beneath it on a long wooden bench. Martha realized that he had
                 created both the ancient tree and the comfortable-looking
                 bench only a moment before. She knew this, but again, it had
                 happened so smoothly that she was not jarred by it.
                 "It's so easy," she said. "Is it always this easy for you?"
                 God sighed. "Always," he said.
                 She thought about that—his sigh, the fact that he looked away
                 into the trees instead of at her. Was an eternity of absolute
                 ease just another name for hell? Or was that just the most
                 sacrilegious thought she'd had so far? She said, "I don't want
                 to hurt people. Not even by accident."
                 God turned away from the trees, looked at her for several
                 seconds, then said, "It would be better for you if you had
                 raised a child or two."
                 Then, she thought with irritation, he should have chosen
                 someone who'd raised a child or two. But she didn't have the
                 courage to say that. Instead, she said, "Won't you fix it so I
                 don't hurt or kill anyone? I mean, I'm new at this. I could do
                 something stupid and wipe people out and not even know I'd
                 done it until afterward."
                 "I won't fix things for you," God said. "You have a free
                 hand."
                 She sat down next to him because sitting and staring out into
                 the endless park was easier than standing and facing him and
                 asking him questions that she thought might make him angry.
                 She said, "Why should it be my work? Why don't you do it? You
                 know how. You could do it without making mistakes. Why make me
                 do it? I don't know anything."
                 "Quite right," God said. And he smiled. "That's why."
                 She thought about this with growing horror. "Is it just a game
                 to you, then?" she asked. "Are you playing with us because
                 you're bored?"
                 God seemed to consider the question. "I'm not bored," he said.
                 He seemed pleased somehow. "You should be thinking about the
                 changes you'll make. We can talk about them. You don't have to
                 just suddenly proclaim."
                 She looked at him, then stared down at the grass, trying to
                 get her thoughts in order. "Okay. How do I start?"
                 "Think about this: What change would you want to make if you
                 could make only one? Think of one important change."
                 She looked at the grass again and thought about the novels she
                 had written. What if she were going to write a novel in which
                 human beings had to be changed in only one positive way?
                 "Well," she said after a while, "the growing population is
                 making a lot of the other problems worse. What if people could
                 only have two children? I mean, what if people who wanted
                 children could only have two, no matter how many more they
                 wanted or how many medical techniques they used to try to get
                 more?"
                 "You believe the population problem is the worst one, then?"
                 God asked.
                 "I think so," she said. "Too many people. If we solve that
                 one, we'll have more time to solve other problems. And we
                 can't solve it on our own. We all know about it, but some of
                 us won't admit it. And nobody wants some big government
                 authority telling them how many kids to have." She glanced at
                 God and saw that he seemed to be listening politely. She
                 wondered how far he would let her go. What might offend him.
                 What might he do to her if he were offended? "So everyone's
                 reproductive system shuts down after two kids," she said. "I
                 mean, they get to live as long as before, and they aren't
                 sick. They just can't have kids any more."
                 "They'll try," God said. "The effort they put into building
                 pyramids, cathedrals, and moon rockets will be as nothing to
                 the effort they'll put into trying to end what will seem to
                 them a plague of barrenness. What about people whose children
                 die or are seriously disabled? What about a woman who's first
                 child is a result of rape? What about surrogate motherhood?
                 What about men who become fathers without realizing it? What
                 about cloning?"
                 Martha stared at him, chagrined. "That's why you should do
                 this. It's too complicated."
                 Silence.
                 "All right," Martha sighed and gave up. "All right. What if
                 even with accidents and modern medicine, even something like
                 cloning, the two-kid limit holds. I don't know how that could
                 be made to work, but you do."
                 "It could be made to work," God said, "but keep in mind that
                 you won't be coming here again to repair any changes you make.
                 What you do is what people will live with. Or in this case,
                 die with."
                 "Oh," Martha said. She thought for a moment, then said, "Oh,
                 no."
                 "They would last for a good many generations," God said. "But
                 they would be dwindling all the time. In the end, they would
                 be extinguished. With the usual diseases, disabilities,
                 disasters, wars, deliberate childlessness, and murder, they
                 wouldn't be able to replace themselves. Think of the needs of
                 the future, Martha, as well as the needs of the present."
                 "I thought I was," she said. "What if I made four kids the
                 maximum number instead of two?"
                 God shook his head. "Free will coupled with morality has been
                 an interesting experiment. Free will is, among other things,
                 the freedom to make mistakes. One group of mistakes will
                 sometimes cancel another. That's saved any number of human
                 groups, although it isn't dependable. Sometimes mistakes cause
                 people to be wiped out, enslaved, or driven from their homes
                 because they've so damaged or altered their land or their
                 water or their climate. Free will isn't a guarantee of
                 anything, but it's a potentially useful tool—too useful to
                 erase casually."
                 "I thought you wanted me to put a stop to war and slavery and
                 environmental destruction!" Martha snapped, remembering the
                 history of her own people. How could God be so casual about
                 such things?
                 God laughed. It was a startling sound—deep, full, and, Martha
                 thought, inappropriately happy. Why would this particular
                 subject make him laugh? Was he God? Was he Satan? Martha, in
                 spite of her mother's efforts, had not been able to believe in
                 the literal existence of either. Now, she did not know what to
                 think—or what to do.
                 God recovered himself, shook his head, and looked at Martha.
                 "Well, there's no hurry," he said. "Do you know what a nova is
                 Martha?"
                 Martha frowned. "It's ... a star that explodes," she said,
                 willing, even eager, to be distracted from her doubts.
                 "It's a pair of stars," God said. "A large one—a giant—and a
                 small, very dense dwarf. The dwarf pulls material from the
                 giant. After a while, the dwarf has taken more material than
                 it can control, and it explodes. It doesn't necessarily
                 destroy itself, but it does throw off a great deal of excess
                 material. It makes a very bright, violent display. But once
                 the dwarf has quieted down, it begins to siphon material from
                 the giant again. It can do this over and over. That's what a
                 nova is. If you change it—move the two stars farther apart or
                 equalize their density, then it's no longer a nova."
                 Martha listened, catching his meaning even though she didn't
                 want to. "Are you saying that if ... if humanity is changed, it
                 won't be humanity any more?"
                 "I'm saying more than that," God told her. "I'm saying that
                 even though this is true, I will permit you to do it. What you
                 decide should be done with humankind will be done. But
                 whatever you do, your decisions will have consequences. If you
                 limit their fertility, you will probably destroy them. If you
                 limit their competitiveness or their inventiveness, you might
                 destroy their ability to survive the many disasters and
                 challenges that they must face."
                 Worse and worse, Martha thought, and she actually felt
                 nauseous with fear. She turned away from God, hugging herself,
                 suddenly crying, tears streaming down her face. After a while,
                 she sniffed and wiped her face on her hands, since she had
                 nothing else. "What will you do to me if I refuse?" she asked,
                 thinking of Job and Jonah in particular.
                 "Nothing." God didn't even sound annoyed. "You won't refuse."
                 "But what if I do? What if I really can't think of anything
                 worth doing?"
                 "That won't happen. But if it did somehow, and if you asked, I
                 would send you home. After all, there are millions of human
                 beings who would give anything to do this work."
                 And, instantly, she thought of some of these—people who would
                 be happy to wipe out whole segments of the population whom
                 they hated and feared, or people who would set up vast
                 tyrannies that forced everyone into a single mold, no matter
                 how much suffering that created. And what about those who
                 would treat the work as fun—as nothing more than a
                 good-guys-versus-bad-guys computer game, and damn the
                 consequences. There were people like that. Martha knew people
                 like that.
                 But God wouldn't choose that kind of person. If he was God.
                 Why had he chosen her, after all? For all of her adult life,
                 she hadn't even believed in God as a literal being. If this
                 terrifyingly powerful entity, God or not, could choose her, he
                 could make even worse choices.
                 After a while, she asked, "Was there really a Noah?"
                 "Not one man dealing with a worldwide flood," God said. "But
                 there have been a number of people who've had to deal with
                 smaller disasters."
                 "People you ordered to save a few and let the rest die?"
                 "Yes," God said.
                 She shuddered and turned to face him again. "And what then?
                 Did they go mad?" Even she could hear the disapproval and
                 disgust in her voice.
                 God chose to hear the question as only a question. "Some took
                 refuge in madness, some in drunkenness, some in sexual
                 license. Some killed themselves. Some survived and lived long,
                 fruitful lives."
                 Martha shook her head and managed to keep quiet.
                 "I don't do that any longer," God said.
                 No, Martha thought. Now he had found a different amusement.
                 "How big a change do I have to make?" she asked. "What will
                 please you and cause you to let me go and not bring in someone
                 else to replace me?"
                 "I don't know," God said, and he smiled. He rested his head
                 back against the tree. "Because I don't know what you will do.
                 That's a lovely sensation—anticipating, not knowing."
                 "Not from my point of view," Martha said bitterly. After a
                 while, she said in a different tone, "Definitely not from my
                 point of view. Because I don't know what to do. I really
                 don't."
                 "You write stories for a living," God said. "You create
                 characters and situations, problems and solutions. That's less
                 than I've given you to do."
                 "But you want me to tamper with real people. I don't want do
                 that. I'm afraid I'll make some horrible mistake."
                 "I'll answer your questions," God said. "Ask."
                 She didn't want to ask. After a while, though, she gave in.
                 "What, exactly, do you want? A utopia? Because I don't believe
                 in them. I don't believe it's possible to arrange a society so
                 that everyone is content, everyone has what he or she wants."
                 "Not for more than a few moments," God said. "That's how long
                 it would take for someone to decide that he wanted what his
                 neighbor had—or that he wanted his neighbor as a slave of one
                 kind or another, or that he wanted his neighbor dead. But
                 never mind. I'm not asking you to create a utopia, Martha,
                 although it would be interesting to see what you could come up
                 with."
                 "So what are you asking me to do?"
                 "To help them, of course. Haven't you wanted to do that?"
                 "Always," she said. "And I never could in any meaningful way.
                 Famines, epidemics, floods, fires, greed, slavery, revenge,
                 stupid, stupid wars ..."
                 "Now you can. Of course, you can't put an end to all of those
                 things without putting an end to humanity, but you can
                 diminish some of the problems. Fewer wars, less covetousness,
                 more forethought and care with the environment ... What might
                 cause that?"
                 She looked at her hands, then at him. Something had occurred
                 to her as he spoke, but it seemed both too simple and too
                 fantastic, and to her personally, perhaps, too painful. Could
                 it be done? Should it be done? Would it really help if it were
                 done? She asked, "Was there really anything like the Tower of
                 Babel? Did you make people suddenly unable to understand each
                 other?"
                 God nodded. "Again, it happened several times in one way or
                 another."
                 "So what did you do? Change their thinking somehow, alter
                 their memories?"
                 "Yes, I've done both. Although before literacy, all I had to
                 do was divide them physically, send one group to a new land or
                 give one group a custom that altered their mouths—knocking out
                 the front teeth during puberty rites, for instance. Or give
                 them a strong aversion to something others of their kind
                 consider precious or sacred or—"
                 To her amazement, Martha interrupted him. "What about changing
                 people's ... I don't know, their brain activity. Can I do that?"

[PTY]

"Interesting," God said. "And probably dangerous. But you can
                 do that if you decide to. What do you have in mind?"
                 "Dreams," she said. "Powerful, unavoidable, realistic dreams
                 that come every time people sleep."
                 "Do you mean," God asked, "that they should be taught some
                 lesson through their dreams?"
                 "Maybe. But I really mean that somehow people should spend a
                 lot of their energy in their dreams. They would have their own
                 personal best of all possible worlds during their dreams. The
                 dreams should be much more realistic and intense than most
                 dreams are now. Whatever people love to do most, they should
                 dream about doing it, and the dreams should change to keep up
                 with their individual interests. Whatever grabs their
                 attention, whatever they desire, they can have it in their
                 sleep. In fact, they can't avoid having it. Nothing should be
                 able to keep the dreams away—not drugs, not surgery, not
                 anything. And the dreams should satisfy much more deeply, more
                 thoroughly, than reality can. I mean, the satisfaction should
                 be in the dreaming, not in trying to make the dream real."
                 God smiled. "Why?"
                 "I want them to have the only possible utopia." Martha thought
                 for a moment. "Each person will have a private, perfect utopia
                 every night—or an imperfect one. If they crave conflict and
                 struggle, they get that. If they want peace and love, they get
                 that. Whatever they want or need comes to them. I think if
                 people go to a ... well, a private heaven every night, it might
                 take the edge off their willingness to spend their waking
                 hours trying to dominate or destroy one another." She
                 hesitated. "Won't it?"
                 God was still smiling. "It might. Some people will be taken
                 over by it as though it were an addictive drug. Some will try
                 to fight it in themselves or others. Some will give up on
                 their lives and decide to die because nothing they do matters
                 as much as their dreams. Some will enjoy it and try to go on
                 with their familiar lives, but even they will find that the
                 dreams interfere with their relations with other people. What
                 will humankind in general do? I don't know." He seemed
                 interested, almost excited. "I think it might dull them too
                 much at first—until they're used to it. I wonder whether they
                 can get used to it."
                 Martha nodded. "I think you're right about it dulling them. I
                 think at first most people will lose interest in a lot of
                 other things—including real, wide-awake sex. Real sex is risky
                 to both the health and the ego. Dream sex will be fantastic
                 and not risky at all. Fewer children will be born for a
                 while."
                 "And fewer of those will survive," God said.
                 "What?"
                 "Some parents will certainly be too involved in dreams to take
                 care of their children. Loving and raising children is risky,
                 too, and it's hard work.
                 "That shouldn't happen. Taking care of their kids should be
                 the one thing that parents want to do for real in spite of the
                 dreams. I don't want to be responsible for a lot of neglected
                 kids."
                 "So you want people—adults and children—to have nights filled
                 with vivid, wish-fulfilling dreams, but parents should somehow
                 see child care as more important than the dreams, and the
                 children should not be seduced away from their parents by the
                 dreams, but should want and need a relationship with them as
                 though there were no dreams?"
                 "As much as possible." Martha frowned, imagining what it might
                 be like to live in such a world. Would people still read
                 books? Perhaps they would to feed their dreams. Would she
                 still be able to write books? Would she want to? What would
                 happen to her if the only work she had ever cared for was
                 lost? "People should still care about their families and their
                 work," she said. "The dreams shouldn't take away their
                 self-respect. They shouldn't be content to dream on a park
                 bench or in an alley. I just want the dreams to slow things
                 down a little. A little less aggression, as you said, less
                 covetousness. Nothing slows people down like satisfaction, and
                 this satisfaction will come every night."
                 God nodded. "Is that it, then? Do you want this to happen."
                 "Yes. I mean, I think so."
                 "Are you sure?"
                 She stood up and looked down at him. "Is it what I should do?
                 Will it work? Please tell me."
                 "I truly don't know. I don't want to know. I want to watch it
                 all unfold. I've used dreams before, you know, but not like
                 this."
                 His pleasure was so obvious that she almost took the whole
                 idea back. He seemed able to be amused by terrible things.
                 "Let me think about this," she said. "Can I be by myself for a
                 while?"
                 God nodded. "Speak aloud to me when you want to talk. I'll
                 come to you."
                 And she was alone. She was alone inside what looked and felt
                 like her home—her little house in Seattle, Washington. She was
                 in her living room.
                 Without thinking, she turned on a lamp and stood looking at
                 her books. Three of the walls of the room were covered with
                 bookshelves. Her books were there in their familiar order. She
                 picked up several, one after another—history, medicine,
                 religion, art, crime. She opened them to see that they were,
                 indeed her books, highlighted and written in by her own hand
                 as she researched this novel or that short story.
                 She began to believe she really was at home. She had had some
                 sort of strange waking dream about meeting with a God who
                 looked like Michelangelo's Moses and who ordered her to come
                 up with a way to make humanity a less self-destructive
                 species. The experience felt completely, unnervingly real, but
                 it couldn't have been. It was too ridiculous.
                 She went to her front window and opened the drapes. Her house
                 was on a hill and faced east. Its great luxury was that it
                 offered a beautiful view of Lake Washington just a few blocks
                 down the hill.
                 But now, there was no lake. Outside was the park that she had
                 wished into existence earlier. Perhaps twenty yards from her
                 front window was the big red Norway maple tree and the bench
                 where she had sat and talked with God.
                 The bench was empty now and in deep shadow. It was getting
                 dark outside.
                 She closed the drapes and looked at the lamp that lit the
                 room. For a moment, it bothered her that it was on and using
                 electricity in this Twilight Zone of a place. Had her house
                 been transported here, or had it been duplicated? Or was it
                 all a complex hallucination?
                 She sighed. The lamp worked. Best to just accept it. There was
                 light in the room. There was a room, a house. How it all
                 worked was the least of her problems.
                 She went to the kitchen and there found all the food she had
                 had at home. Like the lamp, the refrigerator, the electric
                 stovetop, and the ovens worked. She could prepare a meal. It
                 would be at least as real as anything else she'd run across
                 recently. And she was hungry.
                 She took a small can of solid white albacore tuna and
                 containers of dill weed and curry power from the cupboard and
                 got bread, lettuce, dill pickles, green onions, mayonnaise,
                 and chunky salsa from the refrigerator. She would have a
                 tuna-salad sandwich or two. Thinking about it made her even
                 hungrier.
                 Then she had another thought, and she said aloud, "May I ask
                 you a question?"
                 And they were walking together on a broad, level dirt pathway
                 bordered by dark, ghostly silhouettes of trees. Night had
                 fallen, and the darkness beneath the trees was impenetrable.
                 Only the pathway was a ribbon of pale light—starlight and
                 moonlight. There was a full moon, brilliant, yellow-white, and
                 huge. And there was a vast canopy of stars. She had seen the
                 night sky this way only a few times in her life. She had
                 always lived in cities where the lights and the smog obscured
                 all but the brightest few stars.
                 She looked upward for several seconds, then looked at God and
                 saw, somehow, without surprise, that he was black now, and
                 clean-shaven. He was a tall, stocky black man wearing
                 ordinary, modern clothing—a dark sweater over a white shirt
                 and dark pants. He didn't tower over her, but he was taller
                 than the human-sized version of the white God had been. He
                 didn't look anything like the white Moses-God, and yet he was
                 the same person. She never doubted that.
                 "You're seeing something different," God said. "What is it?"
                 Even his voice was changed, deepened.
                 She told him what she was seeing, and he nodded. "At some
                 point, you'll probably decide to see me as a woman," he said.
                 "I didn't decide to do this," she said. "None of it is real,
                 anyway."
                 "I've told you," he said. "Everything is real. It's just not
                 as you see it."
                 She shrugged. It didn't matter—not compared to what she wanted
                 to ask. "I had a thought," she said, "and it scared me. That's
                 why I called you. I sort of asked about it before, but you
                 didn't give me a direct answer, and I guess I need one."
                 He waited.
                 "Am I dead?"
                 "Of course not," he said, smiling. "You're here."
                 "With you," she said bitterly.
                 Silence.
                 "Does it matter how long I take to decide what to do?"
                 "I've told you, no. Take as long as you like."
                 That was odd, Martha thought. Well, everything was odd. On
                 impulse, she said, "Would you like a tuna-salad sandwich?"
                 "Yes," God said. "Thank you."
                 They walked back to the house together instead of simply
                 appearing there. Martha was grateful for that. Once inside,
                 she left him sitting in her living room, paging through a
                 fantasy novel and smiling. She went through the motions of
                 making the best tuna-salad sandwiches she could. Maybe effort
                 counted. She didn't believe for a moment that she was
                 preparing real food or that she and God were going to eat it.
                 And yet, the sandwiches were delicious. As they ate, Martha
                 remembered the sparkling apple cider that she kept in the
                 refrigerator for company. She went to get it, and when she got
                 back to the living room, she saw that God had, in fact, become
                 a woman.
                 Martha stopped, startled, then sighed. "I see you as female
                 now," she said. "Actually, I think you look a little like me.
                 We look like sisters." She smiled wearily and handed over a
                 glass of cider.
                 God said, "You really are doing this yourself, you know. But
                 as long as it isn't upsetting you, I suppose it doesn't
                 matter."
                 "It does bother me. If I'm doing it, why did it take so long
                 for me to see you as a black woman—since that's no more true
                 than seeing you as a white or a black man?"
                 "As I've told you, you see what your life has prepared you to
                 see." God looked at her, and for a moment, Martha felt that
                 she was looking into a mirror.
                 Martha looked away. "I believe you. I just thought I had
                 already broken out of the mental cage I was born and raised
                 in—a human God, a white God, a male God ..."
                 "If it were truly a cage," God said, "you would still be in
                 it, and I would still look the way I did when you first saw
                 me."
                 "There is that," Martha said. "What would you call it then?"
                 "An old habit," God said. "That's the trouble with habits.
                 They tend to outlive their usefulness."
                 Martha was quiet for a while. Finally she said, "What do you
                 think about my dream idea? I'm not asking you to foresee the
                 future. Just find fault. Punch holes. Warn me."
                 God rested her head against the back of the chair. "Well, the
                 evolving environmental problems will be less likely to cause
                 wars, so there will probably be less starvation, less disease.
                 Real power will be less satisfying than the vast, absolute
                 power they can possess in their dreams, so fewer people will
                 be driven to try to conquer their neighbors or exterminate
                 their minorities. All in all, the dreams will probably give
                 humanity more time than it would have without them.
                 Martha was alarmed in spite of herself. "Time to do what?"
                 "Time to grow up a little. Or at least, time to find some way
                 of surviving what remains of its adolescence." God smiled.
                 "How many times have you wondered how some especially
                 self-destructive individual managed to survive adolescence?
                 It's a valid concern for humanity as well as for individual
                 human beings."
                 "Why can't the dreams do more than that?" she asked. "Why
                 can't the dreams be used not just to give them their heart's
                 desire when they sleep, but to push them toward some kind of
                 waking maturity. Although I'm not sure what species maturity
                 might be like."
                 "Exhaust them with pleasure," God mused, "while teaching them
                 that pleasure isn't everything."
                 "They already know that."
                 "Individuals usually know that by the time they reach
                 adulthood. But all too often, they don't care. It's too easy
                 to follow bad but attractive leaders, embrace pleasurable but
                 destructive habits, ignore looming disaster because maybe it
                 won't happen after all—or maybe it will only happen to other
                 people. That kind of thinking is part of what it means to be
                 adolescent."
                 "Can the dreams teach—or at least promote—more thoughtfulness
                 when people are awake, promote more concern for real
                 consequences?
                 "It can be that way if you like."
                 "I do. I want them to enjoy themselves as much as they can
                 while they're asleep, but to be a lot more awake and aware
                 when they are awake, a lot less susceptible to lies, peer
                 pressure, and self-delusion."
                 "None of this will make them perfect, Martha."
                 Martha stood looking down at God, fearing that she had missed
                 something important, and that God knew it and was amused. "But
                 this will help?" she said. "It will help more than it will
                 hurt."
                 "Yes, it will probably do that. And it will no doubt do other
                 things. I don't know what they are, but they are inevitable.
                 Nothing ever works smoothly with humankind."
                 "You like that, don't you?"
                 "I didn't at first. They were mine, and I didn't know them.
                 You cannot begin to understand how strange that was." God
                 shook her head. "They were as familiar as my own substance,
                 and yet they weren't."
                 "Make the dreams happen." Martha said.
                 "Are you sure?"
                 "Make them happen."
                 "You're ready to go home, then."
                 "Yes."
                 God stood and faced her. "You want to go. Why?"
                 "Because I don't find them interesting in the same way you do.
                 Because your ways scare me."
                 God laughed—a less disturbing laugh now. "No, they don't," she
                 said. "You're beginning to like my ways."
                 After a time, Martha nodded. "You're right. It did scare me at
                 first, and now it doesn't. I've gotten used to it. In just the
                 short time that I've been here, I've gotten used to it, and
                 I'm starting to like it. That's what scares me."
                 In mirror image, God nodded, too. "You really could have
                 stayed here, you know. No time would pass for you. No time has
                 passed."
                 "I wondered why you didn't care about time."
                 "You'll go back to the life you remember, at first. But soon,
                 I think you'll have to find another way of earning a living.
                 Beginning again at your age won't be easy."
                 Martha stared at the neat shelves of books on her walls.
                 "Reading will suffer, won't it—pleasure reading, anyway?"
                 "It will—for a while, anyway. People will read for information
                 and for ideas, but they'll create their own fantasies. Did you
                 think of that before you made your decision?"
                 Martha sighed. "Yes," she said. "I did." Sometime later, she
                 added, "I want to go home."
                 "Do you want to remember being here?" God asked.
                 "No." On impulse, she stepped to God and hugged her—hugged her
                 hard, feeling the familiar woman's body beneath the blue jeans
                 and black T-shirt that looked as though it had come from
                 Martha's own closet. Martha realized that somehow, in spite of
                 everything, she had come to like this seductive, childlike,
                 very dangerous being. "No," she repeated. "I'm afraid of the
                 unintended damage that the dreams might do."
                 "Even though in the long run they'll almost certainly do more
                 good than harm?" God asked.
                 "Even so," Martha said. "I'm afraid the time might come when I
                 won't be able to stand knowing that I'm the one who caused not
                 only the harm, but the end of the only career I've ever cared
                 about. I'm afraid knowing all that might drive me out of my
                 mind someday. She stepped away from God, and already God
                 seemed to be fading, becoming translucent, transparent, gone.
                 "I want to forget," Martha said, and she stood alone in her
                 living room, looking blankly past the open drapes of her front
                 window at the surface of Lake Washington and the mist that
                 hung above it. She wondered at the words she had just spoken,
                 wondered what it was she wanted so badly to forget.
                 The End