15: The Barber

“Why do you flinch?” the barber said. “Stop moving!”

Swan, in a supreme act of courage, had made his way to the above-ground floors of the Cumulus where a few tradesmen still operated. He found himself in a small room reclined on a padded chair while the barber examined him.

“I can’t help it,” said Swan.

“You act like you’ve never been touched.”

“I never have.”

“Not even by your mother?”

Swan hesitated. “Mommy touched me but she died.”

“Nothing contagious I hope,” the barber muttered as he sorted through tufts of Swan’s frayed and tangled hair.

The barber was a middle aged man with a long face and prominent chin. His own graying hair was combed straight back to accentuate his brainy forehead. He wore a rather elegant dark gray cloak that extended to the floor.

To reach the barbershop from the Pos 4 lobby, Swan had to weave his way down a cluttered hallway. Among other objects, he saw transparent globes of ferrofluid, waxy-looking cubes, a helmet thing that sprouted hundreds of bent pipes, and a sparkle-coated cylinder with a web of wires draped across it. More interesting though, were more than a dozen FeelgoodSuits hanging in display cases along the walls. Rather than the usual blue-gray rubbery stuff, their external skins were made from materials as unlikely as metallic fur (whether real or fake Swan had no way of knowing). There was one that was coated with tiny segmented beetle shells, another was covered with tetraplastic gemstones. All of the FeelgoodSuits were different sizes. One looked as if it were made for an eight-foot-tall giant while most were quite small, a couple of them too puny for even Sen to get into. This hallway apparently served as a waiting room. There was a dust-coated bench with a long meandering streak-mark drawn by someone’s finger. The door to the barber’s workspace featured a glowing medieval-style painting that depicted old testament prophets milling about with ever-changing haircuts. Above this, in stylized almost unreadable lettering, a sign glittered: Salon Delafan Delar.

The chair on which Swan had been instructed to recline was the centerpiece of an imposing appliance that filled the entire room and was complex in the way things almost never were any more. It had all sorts of levers and chromed fittings, while above him, fastened to the ceiling, a web of glassy rods formed a grid-like scaffolding.

The barber had been sitting silently for quite some time off to the side in the shadows. The only light came from the glowing images of hair designs that materialized one by one along the darkened walls. These stylings, which were shown slowly rotating along with featureless heads, were elaborate and sculptural, featuring bacterial looking shapes, brightly dyed permaform braids, hair pressed into cubes and pyramids, hair molded into tall colorful spikes—

“You have wonderful hair,” the barber suddenly muttered in Swan’s ear.

“I washed it before I came.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll repair the ends.”

“I figured you’d just cut them off.”

“I propose a clockwise swirl with an estopian incline—”

“I want it short,” said Swan.

The barber was silent for several seconds as he mashed handfuls of Swan’s tangled locks between his fingers. “I ask you to please stay still,” he said.

“Sorry. I’m in a bit of a hurry. Can you just cut it so it looks neat?”

The barber withdrew his fingers and sat upright on his stool. “My friend,” he said. “I’m not merely a cutter. I am an artist.”

“Oh,” said Swan. “I thought you were a barber.”

“I’m known as a fiber architect actually, though that title doesn’t convey the full range of my abilities or interests.”

“I just want a regular haircut. Should I go somewhere else?”

“Please, Mr— What did you tell me your name was?”

“Swan,” said Swan.

“Delafan.” He reached out to shake Swan’s hand. “I beg you to let me handle this, Swan. Your hair is wonderful. It’s thick. It’s alive…. It’s raw!” He stood and leaned across Swan’s body to better make eye contact. “It’s like watching a dance of flames!”

“I don’t want anything fancy.”

“It looks like it’s never been combed! It’s extraordinary!”

“I’m sorry,” Swan said. “I’ve neglected it.”

“No!” said Delafan. “This is exactly why you’re so great!”

“I’m not great,” Swan said. “I can see the way people look at me.”

The barber inhaled. “Society is filled with ignorant people who will never understand atypical variations in the outward projections of the human epidermis,” he said. “For a great work of hair—by that I mean a serious work of hair—a quality head of hair must first be found. Mr Swan, you have the best hair I have ever seen!”

“I just want a regular haircut,” Swan said again.

“That’s fine,” said Delafan. “And you will have it. But to begin, we need a concept… or at least an approach we can agree on.”

Swan watched as the idiosyncratic hairstyles cycled across the walls in the off chance that a somewhat normal one would come up that he could point to.

The barber, in the meantime, sat squeezing one of Swan’s cowlicks as he meditated. Swan was forced to break the silence.

“You said you’re interested in stuff besides hair...”

Delafan opened his eyes. “I have artistic interests and scientific ones,” he said. “Making FeelgoodSuits for impossible people is my current project, as well as idealized chess endgames.”

“Do they work?”

“I play against algorithms mainly, but—”

“I mean your FeelgoodSuits.”

“The ones in the gallery…? Of course! They’re completely functional. That’s the idea. By making a transdimensional interface that’s fully operational, I subvert its intended purpose. I create beautiful and desirable FeelgoodSuits that can never be used by a normal human being.”

“They can’t be used?”

“Because the sizes are nonhuman. It’s a form of high art irony.”

“I don’t know anything about art,” Swan said. “but—”

“Do you know about animatatts?” Delafan asked.

Before Swan had the chance to answer, he continued. “This happened a few years ago, but it really changed my thinking. In a certain room, erroneously called an art gallery, a bony naked geriatric woman stood on a lighted stage. She was emaciated and skeletal and appeared near death, yet somehow she managed to slowly perform a lewd dance before the seated audience.” He paused to let this image sink into Swan’s mind. “Liquid sapphire had been painted over her body and a vid of her younger vibrant self was playing on it. Her youthful self was performing the exact same highly sexualized dance on the dying lady’s skin!”

Swan didn’t say anything.

“That was the day when I realized the human skin had become just another screen…! It was devastating.”

“I’m not sure what—” Swan started to say.

“Never the hair!” Delafan cried.

“Oh,” said Swan.

“Human hair is where I make my stand,” the barber said. “It’s the only thing that can’t be subverted. It has no single surface. It’s one of the few things that will never be co-opted by the spectacle that’s destroying us!”

“I just want a haircut,” Swan said again as he started to get up from the chair. “If you can’t do it, I understand, but—”

“I’ll give you what you want!” the barber blurted. “Please don’t go. I can make your hair quite short!”

Swan searched the barber’s face. This sudden change felt like a ploy. “Thank you,” he said hesitantly.

“But still I want it to be wonderful.”

“You said—”

“Stop!” The barber formed a frame with his fingers and looked through it at Swan. “The transavantgarde mode would be the best I think.”

“I don’t want it colored—”

“Not colored, carved!”

“Honestly—”

“Visualize, my friend, a naked image of youthful Carman Mann, straddling a rocket, perfectly carved into your hair! Imagine, with the skin level assigned the value zero, and the longest strand—only half an inch!—assigned the value ten, with slight shifts in the angle of every cut done in such a way that light falling upon it will create a realistic image!”

The barber took a moment to inhale.

“I suppose...” said Swan, feeling somewhat gratified that this man trusted him to visualize something, “that when the hair grows out a little the picture will disappear, so—”

“Yes! You understand! Ephemeral things are the most beautiful!”

“You mean like human life?”

“Well, that, and sexual things,” he said with a laugh. “Like the way a lover’s tongue touches that perfect spot in that perfect way.” He flicked his tongue at Swan. “Will you do it?”

Swan pushed himself the rest of the way up and swung his legs over the side of the elevated chair.

“Wait! Don’t go!” the barber cried. He jumped from his stool, sprinted to the door and made as if to block it. Once he was sure that Swan had not moved any further, he rushed into the hall. The animated door swung inward and flooded the room with light. Almost immediately he came back with the sparkly barrel contraption Swan had seen before. In his other hand he was holding the electric cables.

“It’s the Delar Fader,” he said. “I invented it myself!”

“I just remembered something I have to do,” Swan said.

“Please! You’ll be happy! I guarantee it. If you don’t like it, I can restore it—partially.”

“I’d rather go to another barber if you don’t mind.”

“There are no other barbers! I’m the only one left!”

Swan sat looking at the silhouette of the world’s last barber framed by the glowing door. He’d come here to make himself more attractive to Ebony O’Brien. Now he found himself wondering, which would she find more ridiculous? A picture of Carmen Mann on his head, or the mess he was likely to make if he tried to cut it himself? He supposed that if the barber’s creation looked too idiotic he could simply shave everything off.

“Can you make the zero-value a little higher than skin level?” Swan asked.

“Of course!” the barber said. “The highlights will not be quite as strong is the only thing.”

“Then I guess I’ll try it.”

The barber slammed the door and began plugging the wires into tiny ports distributed along the glassy rods above the chair. Swan had not noticed them before. “This upper part is called the harrow,” the Barber said as he connected the wire harness to the top of the cylinder.

The Delar Fader’s sparkly outer surface was held together with yellowed tape. There was a cut-out in the barrel to accommodate the wearer’s nose and mouth. As the barber hoisted it up, Swan could see the hundreds of dangerous-looking metal parts which filled its interior. Everything was finally in position.

“Please remove your shirt,” the barber said.

Swan pulled off shirt and jettisoned it to the floor. The barber had spoken of an “ephemeral” moment between lovers. Swan had only experienced lovemaking in the Cloudscape where anything could be instantly extended or repeated. This made him wonder why anyone would consider temporary things as being more beautiful.

“Lordy, you’re skinny,” Delafan Delar said as he adjusted the chair back into an upright position and prepared to lower the barrel over Swan’s head.

“What’s to keep it from cutting me?”

“The shape of your head will be mapped,” the barber said. “Stop worrying. It’s perfectly safe.”

Swan glanced at the barber’s face. There was something a little insane about this man. And he thought: supposedly I’m insane, so how can I even know?

“Coming down!” the barber said. The machine blocked his vision but nothing touched his skin except where his nose and lips pressed into the opening. “Be sure to hold still!” Delafan called out.

At first, Swan felt little puffs of warm air against his scalp. Then, vibrations came and went in different locations all around his head. It felt relaxing really. The hairs on his head were being called to attention one by one and this caused little tickling waves to travel down his spine. There was the droning sound of a hundred thousand snips over which he could hear the barber’s excited ejaculations.

“C’est fantastique!” the barber, who must have been looking at his monitor, cried out. “C’est parfait! Your head is shaped wonderfully!”

At last the buzzing and clicking came to an end. The Delar Fader was pulled up. Something, a soft brush, was being whisked about the back of his head.

“Hang on,” the barber said. I want to get rid of the stray hairs... et voila!”

Swan could see the back of his head from various angles as it appeared, much enlarged, on the walls of the shop. 

“I thought you said it was going to be Carman Mann,” he said. “And you said you wouldn't cut it to the skin!”

“Sorry. The analytics didn’t match,” said Delafan. “And anyway, always, it’s the artist who decides!”

It was an odd picture that Swan saw layered into his hair. A naked man, a very ugly man, with a muscled body could be seen in profile. His one visible eye had no lid on it. His ears, which looked more like bat wings than ears, partly obscured a long braid that fell along his spine. The barber was reading a description off his control panel. “Ghost of a Flea by William Blake,” he announced. “This ghost, this ghastly little man with his tongue extended, has just finished lapping up his meal of blood from an acorn shell bowl.”

The figure was standing between two tree trunks, or possibly curtains, that merged into the hair around Swan’s ears. In the sky there were stars, one of which was a shooting one.

“What do you think?” asked the barber.

“It looks weird,” said Swan.

“It’s an anthropomorphized flea. It suits you perfectly!”

“I’m not sure —”

“It’s by Blake.”

“I don’t know—”

“William Blake!”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“He was a visionary. He could see ghosts with his naked eye.”

“A flea? You mean like a bug?”

“An insect. A parasite.”

“A parasite?”

“An animal that feeds on its host without providing any benefit.”

“Oh...”

“Like human beings are parasites on the earth, fleas were once parasites on the human body. See?”

Swan shook his head.

“Inside every being there’s a ghost, okay? Now that living fleas have been eliminated, only their ghosts can roam our bodies. After people disappear, only our ghosts will wander the earth.”

“I see,” Swan said. He had no idea what the barber meant.

“So it’s clear to you then?”

“I guess,” said Swan. “I never actually thought about it.”

“Do you want your eyebrows done?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can completely realign them. I can do very nice things with eyebrows.”

“I don’t think I need to.”

“You don’t want to look at the samples?”

“No,” said Swan.

At least from the front it looked as if he had a nice haircut, and his scraggly beard had completely disappeared. He got up from the chair and began to look around for his shirt.

“Even if you don’t like it at this moment,” the barber said. “Even if you don’t understand, you should know you’re part of something extraordinary. You’re the conveyor of an immortal work, recast in an ephemeral medium. You are bringing William Blake’s vision to the larger world.”

Swan shook the hairs from his shirt and simultaneously waved his hand as he passed through the door. He wondered if Ebony was interested in art. He had no way of knowing. He only knew she was very fashionable—

“Mr Swan! Your head is wonderful!” he heard the barber shout.

It was odd that the barber was so excited while Swan felt so glum. He felt off balance and unsure about what he’d done. He wasn’t disappointed exactly. He was glad to have the big mass of tangled hair removed and he appreciated the barber’s artistry. He really didn’t know what his feelings were. Had he done something stupid? Had he let himself be taken advantage of? He felt even more heavyhearted than usual as he stepped into the elevator. He announced his floor and quickly covered his ears with his hands. The elevator would surely have an opinion about his new haircut. Right now, he wasn’t in the mood to hear it.