Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany Read Free Book Online

his own heartbeat, at least since the man in a circular desk had told him to say, ‘Yes’.
    But the reason he heard it at all, now, was because another voice, which felt and sounded and settled in his mind as if it were his own (but
had
to have come from somewhere else), suddenly took that small voice up and declared: ‘… stupid’, on the beat, and then went on, off the beat and overwhelming it: ‘stupidity: a process, not a state. A human being takes in far more information than he or she can put out. “Stupidity” is a process or strategy by which a human, in response to social denigration of the information she or he puts out, commits him or herself to taking in no more information than she or he
can
put out. (Not to be confused with ignorance, or lack of data.) Since such a situation is impossible to achieve because of the nature of mind/perception itself in its relation to the functioning body, a continuing downward spiral of functionality and/or informative dissemination results,’ and he understood why! ‘The process, however, can be reversed,’ the voice continued, ‘at any time …’
    The plate circled his other buttock. He felt her slidethe edge between them. She paused a moment and said, ‘Jeeze … ! I never … well, I guess they just didn’t think about toilet cloths for you guys out in the cage!’ But what he was much more aware of was that they stood in some tiny, shielded space of coolness on a scorching desert, over which, if you went long enough in one direction, you’d encounter a magnificent canyon, while if you went in another, you’d find a huge city with filthy alleys and deep underground passages and the RAT Institute in it, while a journey in still another would take you back to the polar station; and that there were tunnel tracks between them - he knew all this because someone he didn’t remember had once mentioned in his presence that his world was round; and knew also that he could go to any of them, because he knew how to drive this particular transport: its controls were identical to one of the ones whose workings he’d been patiently and repeatedly taught, along with its care and maintenance, by the man in charge back at the Muct.
    Another voice, begun even further back in childhood, had, in the interstices of ‘… stupid … stupid …’ been muttering, ‘I know … I know …’ And though the man at the Muct had reinforced this second voice by telling him, ‘You know this, now. Remember, you know this,’ he had never really heard it before. But it too became audible because the strange voice that sounded so much like his own took it up: ‘… I know, knowledge: another process, finally no different, in its overall form, from the one called stupidity. Information is not taken into the human organism so much as it is created from the strong association of external and internal perceptions. These associations are called knowledge, insight, belief, understanding, belligerence, pig-headedness, stupidity. (Only social use determines which associations are knowledgeand which are not.) Only their relation to a larger, ill-understood social order decides which categories others or yourself will assign them to …’ And he understood that too! Like a genius, he thought; and amidst this new, responsive excitement, the disgusted comment of someone to whose care he’d been briefly entrusted when he was ten came back:
Well, he’s sure no genius!
‘Genius,’ the new voice took it up, ‘is something else again …’
    She said: ‘I guess it doesn’t make too much difference, does it?’
    Her cleansing strokes against his thigh, his shin, were firmer.
    ‘No … yeah … I don’t know …’ He looked down at her bushy hair, on which was a powdering of his scurf. ‘I don’t know how to say.’
    Frowning, she sat back and looked up.
    ‘Not “no.”’ He said: ‘I know …’ It took an astonishing effort to put words to that internal voice while the other drummed