Queen of Angels (10 page)

last fifteen years. And earning myself a scapegoats bell, Martin said. You discovered psychological dynamite, Dr. Burke, Albigoni said. My company has published over six hundred books and seventy five LitVids on the subject in the past six years. It had not dawned on Martin until now what connection he had with Albigoni. You published a couple of books about the IPR and me... Didnt you? We did. Martin hummed and put a finger to his lips. Not very flattering books. They werent meant to please you. Martin narrowed his eyes. Did you agree with their conclusions? Mr. Albigoni is not required to agree with the books or LitVids he publishes, Lascal said, somehow managing to hover without moving from his position standing catercorner between them. I agreed with them at the time, Albigoni said. Your work seemed dangerously close to removing the last shred of our private humanity. Martins face reddened. An old accusation that had never lost its pain. I explored new territory and described it. I did not create it. Dont blame the conduit for the lightning. When a man reaches up to touch the clouds, can you blame him for the stray bolt? But were babbling, Dr. Burke. I have no argument with you now. I need your talents to. . . help a friend. To purge myself of a soul eating hatred. To help us all understand. Martin averted, pushing aside the ever fresh anger. All of these subroutines and personalities are laid on a foundation that is older than spoken language and culture and society. Some parts of the foundation are older than man. The iceberg is long frozen before the snow falls on the tip. So we may have to investigate further, below personalities and agents and talents, to find the source of a deviance. Not often, Martin said. Most human mental illness is based on surface trauma. Even in people with neurotransmitter and other maladjustments, the deep structures of the brain function properly. Defects are more likely to occur in regions of the mind/brain structure that are newer, in evolutionary terms. Less perfected, less weeded out. However, some inherited deep defects are so subtle that they havent affected breeding potential, at least in our species. . . Standard evolutionary processes wont remove those. If Emanuels deviance is below the surface, can you find it, study it, and correct it? No, I dont think so, Martin said. But as I said, such fundamental deviance is rare. So is mass murder. Have you ever diagnosed and corrected a mass murderer? It was never my job to do therapy, actually, Martin said. Im a researcher more than a clinician. Ive talked with thera pists who used my theories and some of my techniques on people who have killed . . . But never mass murderers. To my knowledge, no court judgment in the last ten years has allowed a mass murderer to be therapied and released. Raphkind law and order. No rest for the truly wicked; neither death or health shall be offered them. Albigoni returned to the slate. Your second book, The Borderlands of the Mind, uses a lot of quotes from various sources to describe what you call the Country of the Mind. Yet you say the Country is different for each of us. If its so different, how can we recognize it as a place? By tapping the mind at a level where the contents and structures are similar in all of us. The truly personal upper layers of the mind are not directly accessible, not right now, at any rate. The lower layers have different qualities, but they can be understood if we pass them through our own deep interpreters. Thats what the triplex probe does, under controlled conditions. Our conditions will be less controlled without the interfacing computer. I still do not understand what is meant by Country of the Mind. It is a region, an unceasing and coherent dreamstate, built up from genetic engrams. preverbal impressions and all the contents of our lives. It is the alphabet and foundation on which we base all of our thinking and language, all our symbologies. Every thought, every personal action, is reflected in this region. All of our myths and religious symbols are based upon its common contents. All routines and subroutines, all personalities and talents and agents, all mental structures, are reflected in its features and occupants, or are reflections of them. It is truly a countryside? Something like a countryside or city or some other environment. With buildings and trees, and people, and animals? Of sorts. Yes. Albigoni frowned. Like memories of buildings, and so on? Not exactly. There may be analogies between the Country and the external world, but the external objects we see are put through several filters, selected by the mind for usefulness as symbols, as part of an overall mental language. Most of that language is fixed before we are three years old. Albigoni nodded, apparently satisfied. Lascal listened without expression. And by inspecting Emanuels Country, you can tell us what might have motivated him to murder my daughter and the others. I hope to, Martin said. Nothing is certain. Nothing is certain but grief, Albigoni said. Paul, show Dr. Burke our materials on Emanuel. Yes, sir. Martin followed Lascal out of the study and into a small media studio next door. Please sit down, Lascal said, pointing to a smoothly upholstered reclining chair. The chair was surrounded by black sound rods like the bottom half of a bird cage. Two small projectors on a black plate directly before the chair swiveled soundlessly as he sat, searching for the proper position of his eyes. Mr. Albigoni knew most of what you explained already, Lascal told him quietly as the equipment adjusted itself for the presentation. He just wanted to hear it in your own words. Helps him to digest what hes read and seen. Of course, Martin said, taking a sudden disliking to Lascal. Smoothly professional, devotedly selfless; Albigoni could ask for no more subservient a lackey. The Emanuel Goldsmith multi-media show began with an interview conducted in 2025 on an early LitVid net. Caption floating in simulated gold letters before him (the hallmark of Albigonis reference library): First LitVid Appearance/Folio Wing Publication of Second Book of Poems/Never Knowing Snow October 10 2025 LVD6 5656A. Lascal explained the chairs custom controls and left Martin alone in the room. A young and handsome Goldsmith appeared before him, clear smooth mahogany skin, thick black hair sitting perfectly on a high forehead, broad nose and thin upper lip thinly mustached lower lip protuberant between pout and sensual, large liquid black eyes with cream colored sclera, long thin neck and prominent chin; twenty five years old almost a child of the century; dressed in black wool highneck sweater left sleeve rolled to show strong arm period fashion the roil containing an ID corn box satellite linked, replacing the cigarette peck of seventy years earlier; youthful pleasant smile easy mannerisms at ease before the interviewer. Discussing his work ambitions goals. Voice thin but pleasant words accented Newh Yhawk with intrusions of midwest. Well informed, Goldsmith impressed the female interviewer with his suave equanimity, considering the fiery opinions expressed in his book, opinions on Africa: Can never be my home. It is only a home where my ghost will go when I die. A few blacks still think of a homeland there; they hate me because I know that is impossible. No African wants us; were too white. and America: 1 tell my brothers and sisters the financial struggle is won but not the political and cultural, certainly not the spiritual. We still have coffee skin in a power structure of cream no coffee. Our war is interior in America. We will never be at ease, not until the day comes when no one asks us how it is to be black, and no one comments on the black experience. and poetry: Poetry is dead and buried in a world of growing LitVid and illiteracy, vidiocy Ive heard it called. Being dead, poetry has enormous freedom; being ignored, it can blossom like a rose in a manure heap. Poetry is risen. Poetry is the messiah of literature but the angel has not yet told anybody it is risen. and on selling over a quarter of a million copies in hardcover of his second book of poems: Charming and destructive. I have to watch this closely. Cant let it go to my head. I am just the one black man per generation given a chance to speak aloud. As for being a poet. we are so many now, around the world, so closely linked, that any small enthusiasm of the masses looms large and can support the poet, the artist, if his needs are modest, as mine are. Martin moved on to lit details, words spilling in and around, names dates teachers all largely irrelevant, even material he would have thought private and buried, an early agency psych evaluation 2021too early to be reliabledone as a lark apparently showing Goldsmith a rock steady headstrong youth with well controlled but detectable delusions of grandeur even messiahhood. Jung: Messiah is always connected with inferiority complex. But no evidence of that here. He took special note of the lack of records of childhood none before age fifteen. Goldsmith as adolescent does not resemble father or mother in family videos, father portly middie class jovial, mother thin and serious determined to give this child a good literary upbringing, books no vids: Kazantzakis Cavafi in original Greek Joyce Burroughs both Edgar Rice and William and Shakespeare Goldstein Remick Randall Burgess, the new century poets and novelists from the American Midwest where Goldsmith spent his teens and early twenties before his first book acquiring that mixed accent. No evident difficulties with racism in his youth; well liked by his classmates, fitting in to a middle class existence. List upon list. Favorite foods at fifteen as recorded by Goldsmith: panfried farmfish and synthetic spiced steak and tomatoes and apples moving on skimming high school third ranked student sciences math first lit second and third in drama production second history social sciences; his first love affair senior year (ref.: autobiography 2044 Bright Star House, Albigonis company) normal normal all normal but for the brilliance of his work, which did not manifest itself until he was twenty writing plays early drafts of the Moses plays (fax texts available) First book of poems and then the second book and success and a stable career for ten years marriage no children early divorce mutual no contesting; ten books of poetry during this period and seven plays all mature and produced three off-Broadway successes and also successes in London and Paris and Beijing, Beijing inviting him for cultural exchange then Japan then United Korea and finally the Commonwealth Southeast Asia Economic Community where he is published in four editions (three pirated) in 203132 and where his plays are produced riding a wave of Western and especially North American popularity in the period of economic revitalization; returning in triumph after this tour to several destructive love affairs detailed in numerous LitVid society bits; one affair ending in the suicide of a woman 2034. Goldsmith in hiding two years. In reality staying in Idaho with friends undergoing a year-long rite of purification. Martin stopped, frowning. Recognizing a possible entry point he asked for details of this rite. Followed an interview with Reginald and Francine Killian founders of the Pure Land Spirit Purification Center twenty miles north of Boise on the Oregon border. Reginald tall and lanky, dressed in overalls, hair string straggled black, eyes wicked wise, long face accustomed to smiling: Weve had a number of intellectuals and celebrities come through our center. They come to purge themselves with balanced natural vegetarian diet, mineral water. They come to listen to music, all preclassical, all played on period instruments. They come for the big sky and the stars at night. And we counsel them. We help them fit into the twenty first century, not an easy thing to do, everything is so antihuman, unnatural, technological. Emanuel Goldsmith came here and stayed for a year. We became very good friends. He made love to Francine. Francine on screen, thin and deerlike, long straight red hair, smiling wistfully: He was a very fine considerate lover, although violent. He had a lot of anger and sadness in him. He had something to work out, and I helped him work it out. He had a bitter hard core of hatred because he didnt know who he was. When he left here he was calm and he was writing poetry again. Indeed four books published in the next five years, including a rewrite of the early African poems. In 2042 Goldsmith made his first contact with yet another admirer, Colonel Sir John Yardley, self proclaimed benevolent tyrant (in the Greek sense ) of Hispaniola. Yardley invited him to visit Port-au-Prince which he did in 2043. Details on the visit were not available but they apparently got along famously and Goldsmith expressed admiration for Yardleys forthrightness and cleverness in the face of the complexity and confusion of the twenty first century. A news commentator on a cable vid said of this, Goldsmiths praise of Colonel Sir John Yardley is fulsome and shows all the political awareness usually reserved for poets alone: that is, zip, niI, none. Yardley has made his nation prosper on the unwillingness of the great modern nations to do their own dirty work. He has turned his crack army of mercenaries into a worldwide scourge, hired by the Big Boys, their targets caretully chosen, their means subtle and precise. Furthermore, Yardley has been accused of manufacturing and exporting insidious torture devices, mind invading pain machines used by, among others, the Selectors that haunt us all. Never mind that our own President Raphkind has established open links with Hispaniola and Yardley; never mind that ours is an age of correction and maturation, and that many admire the actions of both the Selectors and Colonel Sir John Yardley... Goldsmiths admiration proves him to be a traitor among humane intellectuals, a turncoat, a poetaster friend of fiends. Elegantly phrased; but more extreme connections than this had been sought out by poets without their last resort to multiple murders of acolytes and students. No straight arrow pointed the way. Goldsmith like Ezra Pound in an earlier age had established by being a Yardley apologist a reputation for inept and perhaps dangerous political dabbling that had made secure his literary standing. Perhaps that was why he had done it. Martin looked at this act as a cold scheme or posture; that at least made some sense. Yet limited press publication of phone calls shared vids letters Yardley/Goldsmith revealed no obvious posture; the poet was indeed truly an admirer. Would that you could have united Africa three hundred years ago against Portuguese and English: I might be there now, a whole man in the warm uncreamed coffee heart of Blackness. That came close to jingle. Martin shook his