Images of the Fall

pp297-305

previously unpublished

Operation Ares, published in 1970, was Gene Wolfe’s first novel. It came at the beginning of a period which was to establish his reputation – ‘The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories’ came out the same year, ‘The Fifth Head of Cerberus’ a couple of years later – yet it shows none of the complexity of plotting, the carefully controlled use of language evident in these contemporary works. As an apprentice work it takes a stock situation, heroic pro-science rebels rising up against a hidebound, repressive authority, and advances the plot by sudden unheralded shifts and convenient coincidences. Often a plot line will be raised and discarded within a couple of pages, while preposterous situations are presented with little thought for how they might logically arise or be sustained. Yet within this awkward adventure story, in many ways so untypical of what we would come to recognise as Wolfe’s work, there are glimpses of themes that will weave their way through so much of his later fiction. Most notably, there is the messiah figure – here robustly named Castle – who makes his way innocently through a landscape of the Fall. As with Latro in Greece or Severian on Urth, Castle in near-future America is often ignorant of his role as healer, and indeed finds that the role is chosen for him by others rather than embraced by himself.

Right at the start of the novel there is a moment which directly echoes The Shadow of the Torturer. Castle, immediately cast in a semi-heroic light, is a tall figure making his way through an elaborate barricade in a dust-blown wilderness, in defiance of a curfew which is due to start shortly. He is, it transpires, part of a ramshackle conspiracy – in contrast to Castle’s tall, straight, heroism, the others are dismissively described by fellow-conspirator Japhet Tree as ‘A girl and a kid and a wakey like me,’ as a result of a medical experiment Japhet endures life without sleep, his body wracked by waking dreams until he is hunchbacked – who gather in a remote farmhouse to listen to illicit radio messages from the colony on Mars.

In the parlor of the old house, set at the focus of the room like an altar, hung the smiling photograph of a man in a bubble-helmet and a bulging, ungainly suit which trailed wires.

Though the language is considerably less allusive, this clearly prefigures the moment in The Shadow of the Torturer when Severian, on an errand to an unfamiliar part of the Citadel, comes upon a picture cleaner.

The picture he was cleaning showed an armored figure standing in a desolate landscape. It had no weapon, but held a staff bearing a strange, stiff banner. The visor of this figure’s helmet was entirely of gold, without eye slits or ventilation; in its polished surface the deathly desert could be seen in reflection, and nothing more.

The photograph of the astronaut that hangs in a long-defunct spaceship is an iconic figure serving as a representative of a spiritual fall, a forgetting of the past that stands in stark contrast to the flawless memory of the saviour Severian. The photograph of the astronaut that hangs in a rundown farmhouse serves a similarly iconic function, but the fall is more real – economic, political, physical – than spiritual. We turn from this image of our aspirations for the future to a landscape of decay. In Operation Ares space is literally the future hope of mankind.

Earth – all of Earth apparently, though only North America seems to have suffered real economic decline – has lost contact with its Martian colonies. The colonies represent science, advancement, but America has deliberately turned its back upon Mars, science and the future. On the pretext that the colonies were an unnecessary drain on their resources with no recompense, a reactionary movement has displaced the legitimate government and established a Government Pro-Tem which has ruled undemocratically for some twenty years and virtually outlawed science. That Castle is a science teacher therefore gives him an intellectual legitimacy as the hero of a science fiction novel. Meanwhile, in a move which emphasises the low-tech character of this fallen America, the Martians are calling on Earth to contact them by blinking ‘the lights of your city in three short flashes.’

Throughout Operation Ares there is a curious and often uncomfortable global blindness, as if America stands for the whole world. Later in the novel Maoist China and Soviet Russia will both have significant parts to play in the action, and neither seem to be suffering from the anti-science decline brought on by the Government Pro-Tem. Yet it is assumed that nowhere will have the wherewithal to contact Mars by anything other than a city-wide signal light; or that Mars could have no interest in contacting anyone other than America. Again, at the end of the novel there is a similar colonial arrogance in the assumption that Mars will simply provide additional senators and representatives for a revivified American Congress. But, of course, this Mars is not a real place but a mirror which allows Wolfe to reflect the landscape of the fall that is his near-future America.

If Castle is the messiah figure, his alter-ego is the Captain, the unnamed functionary whose rise within the hierarchy of the Government Pro-Tem exactly balances Castle’s rise to lead the opponents of the regime. Whereas at the beginning of the book Castle is a humble schoolteacher with mildly rebellious inclinations – though it is obvious that the isolated dissident group that consists of Castle, the boy Nonny, and Japhet and Anna Tree would be incapable of mounting a rebellion that presented any real threat to so much as a Parish Council – the Captain is the leader of the local peaceguards. The peaceguards are another component in the curious political morality behind the novel: they are an unarmed body that seems to have taken the place of police, national guard, militia and army. The fact that they do not carry weapons (beyond a sort of refined cattle prod) fits in with the political philosophy of the Government Pro-Tem which, as it is revealed later, is almost impeccably if ineffectually liberal – President Pro-Tem Boyde is an ex-social worker whose principal concern is for the welfare of the poor. Castle’s first demand is the restoration of the right to carry arms, and the lack of weapons is seen as another symbol of the fall. Midway through the novel, when Castle leads the mission to rescue the constitutional president, Huggins, ‘it had been decided not to press firearms upon the Hunters, who like almost all Americans had lost all traditions of their use.’ As if, after no more than twenty years, they would be incapable of learning their use.

The relationship between Castle and the Captain is a strange one. It is, in fact, the Captain who is largely responsible for boosting Castle to the role he eventually fills. This is a process which begins with their first encounter, when the Captain clearly warns Castle of an impending raid upon the Trees. Although it is too late to do anything about it without breaking curfew, the Captain obviously expects some act of heroism on the part of Castle. Why the Captain should warn Castle at all is never explained; though it is not spelt out in the text it is as if the Captain is inflating Castle into a hero in order to provide the adversary he believes his own stature demands.

There is always a difference between descriptions of Castle and his actions. Though he does set out to warn the Trees, he succeeds through resourcefulness rather than heroism. When he is attacked by the wild animals that have taken over the American countryside he flees until he is able to distract his attackers by sacrificing the entire livestock of poor dirt farmers (that the ‘bony workhorse’ subsequently escapes is hardly down to Castle) – not what might be expected of a hero. His resourcefulness is more in the manner of a typically competent hero when he is picked up by the peaceguard and tips them off about a minor legal infringement by Japhet Tree, so they will get to him before the raid. Nevertheless, he is at best an unheroic hero.

We see the Captain propelling Castle into his messianic role again when ARES is first mentioned. Martian-inspired propaganda is starting to appear, government broadcasts are being interupted, all of which is put down to a shadowy organisation called ARES. As we eventually learn, ARES is no more than propaganda at this stage, an invention of the Martians, a banner to which they hope the discontented will eventually flock. That so few do actually flock to the banner suggests that the government isn’t really as unpopular as all that. But the invention clearly means more to those it opposes than to those it is meant to aid, and it is obvious that the Captain believes Castle is somehow involved. Within a short space, this belief is transformed into a conviction that Castle is actually the leader of ARES – the belief eventually creates the reality.

A government-sponsored ‘Education Team’ is in town on a thinly-disguised propaganda exercise, using an old truck from the 1980s to demonstrate how well people are living. It is not a very convincing exercise, as Castle says:

People today live worse than they did twenty years ago. Do they actually think they can hide that by parading a repainted truck?

Nevertheless, the Captain fears sabotage by ARES and blackmails Castle into inspecting the truck for a bomb. Castle finds no more than a pile of stones, but when the truck blows up next day Castle is arrested and convicted of sabotage.

After the trial there is a significant meeting between Castle and the Captain in which we learn that Castle has been knowingly convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Castle claims the moral high ground – ‘I have done nothing morally criminal’ – as he will do several times during the book; though it is interesting that when the Captain accuses him of being ‘an avowed enemy of the state? Of the people? Of the poor?’ Castle does not protest his innocence despite the fact that most guerrilla leaders would normally automatically claim to be defending at least the last two. Now we learn that the Captain thinks he is ‘a leader – perhaps the leader – of ARES’ and again Castle does nothing to protest. He is being imagined into the role of hero, but he seems to welcome it. And the Captain is certainly conniving: he offers Castle privileged treatment through the Penal Reformatory Establishment for Social Tasks (PREST) which gives educated convicts better treatment in exchange for educational and social work. That education is so rare is another sign of the fall, and that PREST exists is a symbol of the social conscience of the Government Pro-Tem.

The Captain’s assumption of Castle’s role within ARES follows Castle as he is marched cross-country to New York. When a minor functionary seeks him out in an effort to save his own skin by allying himself with ARES, Castle even demands: ‘And just what talents do you offer us?’ Though he does then demur – ‘I am not a member of ARES; like you I would join if I could, but I like to think my motives would be better’ – he has implicitly accepted membership of ARES, and again claimed the moral high ground in doing so.

It is worth noting that Castle is employed to teach his fellow prisoners to read. It is strange to think of this as any sort of priority among a group of prisoners in transit, yet we are presented with a situation no more than twenty years after the fall – in other words, in the first decade of the next century – in which illiteracy is apparently rife. Lieutenant Harper who is in charge of the prison detail doesn’t even expect Castle to know the name of West Point. In Wolfe’s first excursion into the landscape of the fall, realism is quietly dropped in order to stress the sorry state into which Castle has come as Messiah.

Castle has his first taste of the Messianic role when a Martian craft buzzes the column of prisoners. He shows himself to be quick-thinking and brave when he dodges bullets to escape. More than that, the ineffectualness of the Martians is revealed; the Martian thinks he can exhort the prisoners to revolt by proclaiming:

It is mathematically demonstrable that over short distances the more numerous group of combatants will have a low casualty rate in assaulting where the proportions in opposition are as one to five or greater.

This ridiculous speech makes them out to be like H.G. Wells’ Martians – a cold, inhuman intelligence – while we already know Castle is a more accessible, domestic type of intellectual, a teacher, and hence practical. Castle automatically takes command, deferred to by Martian and prisoners alike, acting decisively and making a snappy, extempore address to the militia.

Yet for a saviour, Castle’s morality seems dubious. When Castle proposes an attack on the militia the Martian protests:

‘But someone could be killed.'

‘I sincerely hope so!’

Time and again as we will see, Castle’s statements make him out to seem callous, uncaring, unheroic. Yet his actions never chime with his statements. In this instance he leads the assault and when it is beaten off he rescues the wounded prisoner, Stennis, and ensures that he escapes in the one place available in the Martian plane.

Up to this point we have been given little reason to be concerned about the militia; they have been presented as virtually untrained, equipped with long-outdated weapons, unsure how to look after them properly and inclined to panic. Yet in this brief conflict they acquit themselves well, seem disciplined throughout and somehow emerge the victors. Immediately afterwards, however, Castle is able to slip back unseen into the group of prisoners. He is not recognised despite his involvement in the firefight, and though he broadcast twice to the militia his voice is not recognised. So the incident slips by without adding anything to the development of the novel.

In New York we discover that the United Nations has abandoned America – an image not just of declining political fortunes and geopolitical status, but also of a moral fall, New York being now more physically dangerous than the new UN headquarters in Cairo – and the old UN Building has been taken over by PREST. Here, Castle learns that being a PREST man will give him the freedom to roam through New York aiding a clutch of social welfare cases while institutionalised graft will give him the chance to make a relative fortune. It is hard to remember that this is supposed to be some sort of punishment. Of course, Castle takes a moral stand on this:

He could no more remain a model prisoner, busily defrauding poor people while the Martians wrestled the Pro Tem Government, than he could have stayed comfortably in his room knowing the Captain was going to raid the Trees’ farm in the morning.

Though Castle hardly lives up to this claimed moral superiority when, tending a drug addict, he is asked:

‘Don’t you care if he gets pneumonia?'

‘No, not much.’

In other circumstances, such a philosophy of robust self-reliance might seem like a return to American pioneer values, which would be in line with Castle’s espousal of the right to bear arms. But Castle is being shaped as a Messiah figure and despite his pronouncements his actions are always those of the caring hero, so that within moments of this exchange he is asking how to look after the addict. Again he quickly reaffirms his moral opposition to PREST:

I think it is better for me to go to prison than to pretend to help my clients with one hand while I help pull them down with the other. In the long run, for the sake of my soul or character or whatever you want to call it, I think that’s shrewd.

Here, for the first time, Castle’s moral position is given a religious gloss – he has not previously given any indication of caring for his soul, but the saviour must, of course, be seen to be pure. This important development in the moral underpinning of the book is, however, instantly overshadowed by one of the most jagged and awkward plot-shifts in the whole book. Here, if any were needed, is clear evidence that this is an apprentice work, for the plot undergoes an abrupt volte-face that is not foreshadowed and which seems to catch even the author unaware. Castle meets Japhet and arranges another meeting which he gives every indication of expecting to attend, yet later that same afternoon, though nothing further has happened in the interim, Castle resigns from PREST knowing this will send him back to prison (the exchange quoted above). This is instantly topped by the revelation that he has anyway been remanded back to prison, but then he is summoned to help one of his clients who is threatening suicide and so is presented with a convenient opportunity for escape – all of which happens in just three pages.

This suicide includes a back-handed compliment to Castle’s goodness: the drug addict is threatening to throw himself from the roof of a building and wants to take his woman and Castle with him because ‘both of you [are] only ninety-nine percent rotten’ and everyone else is one hundred per cent rotten. Castle sacrifices himself to save the woman; the addict falls, taking Castle with him; the addict is killed but Castle, though badly injured, survives and somehow manages to escape his guards.

Castle now begins a string of picaresque but disconnected adventures. He spends time with an urban tribe known as the Hunters, led by a woman called Tia Marie. The powerless constitutional president, Charles Huggins, visits the Hunters for no readily explicable reason and Castle is deputed to welcome him – an abrupt honour thrust inexplicably upon him. This reunites him with Anna Tree who is part of the president’s bodyguard and, through her colleague Sarah, a member of ARES. Castle, of course, wants to join and Anna is not only sure ‘the Martians will take you unless they’re crazy,’ she is also so certain he would want to join that she has fixed up a rendezvous.

Castle goes to the rendezvous, hears helicopters, backs into a darkened doorway, and finds himself in a nightclub so decadent and exclusive that it has no bouncer, no doorkeeper, no ticket booth, no one to say that he doesn’t belong there. We are, of course, meant to see Castle as a hero figure who fits in easily wherever he goes. A performance by two scantily clad girls and a deadly electric snake is meant to be exotic and erotic, though it is neither. Wolfe can’t really seem to capture decadence, and this episode, which is presumably meant to demonstrate that the economic and political decline of the United States is reflected in a moral fall, is fumbled badly.

The entire episode is overloaded with symbolism. The nightclub is primarily used by the Russian ‘advisers’ who are helping the Government Pro-Tem. During the performance Castle can hear gunfire and explosions outside but no one else in the club appears to be aware of them, just as they are unaware of what is happening in the world around them. Then the whole building is destroyed, with Castle emerging miraculously unharmed from the rubble though all the degenerates in the club are killed.

Now, at last, Castle is taken to the Martian HQ and after a scant three hours of psychological testing is given the role which other people’s expectations have claimed for him all along, chief of ARES. The Martian leader, Lothrop, reveals that the once fictional ARES now has 150 agents in the field, and given what it would take to be an undercover agent in these circumstance it seems that any one of these would be at least as qualified as Castle for the role – he doesn’t even have the advantage of a recogniseable name to which others might rally. Nevertheless, a paper hero now finds himself in charge of a paper organisation.

At this point there is another example of the curiously narrow world view that guides the novel. Lothrop reveals that the Martian force is small, less than a hundred, and that they are aided by 500 Chinese troops, and despite being outnumbered by the Government Pro-Tem and their Russian allies they are resisting increasing the number of Chinese. As Lothrop explains:

I could have a hundred divisions of semi-literate Orientals armed with burp guns and hand grenades if I wanted them and could find some way to get them here. You are an Earthman, and you’re from this part of the country. Would you like to see a force like that turned loose here?

This is a revival of the ‘yellow peril’ that is out of place in a novel written as recently as the late 1960s, and it is significant that ‘Earthman’ is once more unconsciously equated with American though the use of Chinese troops does allow for the war between the Government Pro-Tem and the Martian invaders to acquire a strange echo of the American Civil War: the leader of the Government troops is General Grant, the Chinese leader of the the pro-Martian forces is General Lee. The similarity extends beyond the names: at first the Martian forces are successful, but eventually the superior numbers under General Grant will count.

Before that happens, however, Castle in his new guise as head of ARES must embark on another picaresque adventure, the rescue of Huggins from a Russian-controlled prison camp. Castle develops an elaborate plan which depends on severing the power lines to the camp, and which therefore nearly comes unstuck when he makes the elementary mistake of ignoring the possibility of there being a generator in the camp. Nevertheless, despite events rapidly running out of control, the raid is a success and before too long Castle is being lauded as a hero and appointed Secretary of Defence in Huggins’ government in exile. The appointment may be excusable given the paucity of people to call upon – the entire high command of the Martian/Government forces seems to consist of Lothrop, Huggins, Castle and General Lee – but though Castle has displayed personal bravery on a number of occasions this hardly amounts to a display of even so much as competence as a leader of men. Castle is on the fast track to being a saviour and once again what he is made out to be is far more than he is. As Castle says of Huggins, though he could be unconsciously speaking of himself: ‘It’s simply that it’s insane for us to give any real importance to somebody of no special ability, selected by chance.’

The big test of Castle’s ability comes with an ARES raid on the Government Pro-Tem’s capital, Arlington. One of the strange things about the fall is that it seems, at times, to be very superficial. The Government Pro-Tem is portrayed as turning its back on all science and technology, so determinedly backward that in the light of the Martian invasion it ‘has had to de-mothball apparatus it had been happily forgetting for twenty years’ – twenty years in which, we have already been told, Americans had lost all tradition of the use of firearms. Yet with out of date and ill-maintained equipment, with poorly trained forces, and in the face of considerable technological superiority, the Government Pro-Tem is winning. America, in its fallen state, still seems to have a lot going for it. And in the light of reverses on all fronts, Castle sends his forces into what is supposedly a poorly defended capital, only to see them roundly beaten.

The all-too-brief one-page description of this battle gives little on which we can base a judgement of Castle’s abilities, beyond the result, yet he is again made into a paper giant when Lothrop praises him as ‘the finest tactical and strategic mind this war has yet produced.’ Thereafter, however, Castle is given little opportunity to display any of these qualities. He is taken along as part of the Martian delegation to Peking but, despite his supposed importance, is allowed to play no part in the negotiations. The resultant treaty forces the allies into a gamble ‘as great as any in history,’ but it is not Castle who sees the significance of this, nor is it he who conceives the desperate plan they then have to follow. Lothrop, it seems, is the one who is really doing the strategic thinking, though it is Castle who receives the praise. Consciously or not, realistically or not, Castle is being shaped into the hero of the war.

The gamble that builds into the climax of the novel is an elaborate confidence trick that will fool Russia and China into believing that each is about to be invaded by the other. By removing these ‘allies’ from the scene, the situation in America will suddenly be skewed in favour of the Martian invaders. Predictably, as with every ARES scheme throughout the novel, the plan goes wrong and Castle with a large quantity of gold is captured by his old adversary, the Captain – now elevated to General. In what follows Castle does, for the first time, display all the qualities of a hero: personal bravery, coolness under stress, quick thinking. But at no time does he initiate action; the events that turn things in favour of ARES come from outside, Castle can only react. The General’s convoy is held up by lack of fuel then cut off by local bushwhackers after the gold, and finally a small ARES force that happens to be in the area intervenes on its own initiative and Castle is able to take the General hostage.

During all this the Martians have withdrawn to Mars, but the scam has worked and Russia and China are now at each other’s throats. Suddenly, with one illogical bound, Castle is able to negotiate with President Pro-Tem Boyde and everything comes right in the end. The novel ends with Castle having to communicate with Mars by flashing the lights of Arlington – things have turned full circle and we are back with the fall.