"Dummy legs," he explained. "Hollow, of course. On occasions like these, eminently practical. . ."
"So you"re all. . . professors?" I mumbled, unfortunately not completely sober.
"With the possible exception of our colleague the cremator. But then, his discipline is interdepartmental," said Dolt. "As director of our cadaveristics program and custodian -- custodia eius cremationi similis -- he holds a seat in the Faculty Senate."
"Then Mr. Sempriaq really is a cremator? I thought --"
"A cover? No. But you seem to be catching on. Yes," he said, nodding in the direction of the snoring, "it"s hard work to lull suspicions."
"You shouldn"t complain," said the heavy professor. "We didn"t do at all badly this time. Often one has to stay up all night spinning yarns of bygone spies, plots of yore, operatives of old when finks were bold, and so forth and so on, then all about ultraspies and infrareds, the latest gadgets and gags, caches and tags -- you talk yourself blue in the face before they"re properly stupefied. And in winter, there"s a log crackling on the fire and we sit around and sing coded carols, and there"s always a draft -- and I always catch a cold." He sighed.
"Ah, yes," said the cremator, and he sang with squirrel-like sarcasm: "Deck the halls with mikes and wiretaps, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!"
"No more, Gatekeeper. I can"t stand it!" cried Professor Deluge, shuddering.
"Gatekeeper?" I asked.
"You are surprised we call him Gatekeeper?" said Dolt. "Professors we may be, but we have our nicknames too, our collegiate monikers. . . Deluge here was christened "Proteus" by his fraternity. "Gatekeeper". . . well, in the sense that he guards the gate to the Building, the door with only one side, the side facing us. . ."
That was unclear, but I didn"t dare question him further. So to ask something, I asked: "And what is your field, Professor?"
"Nanosemy, and I teach a seminar on pseudosemeiology. Also, I dabble in decerebration and defecationtrepans and bedpans, you know -- just a hobby."
"Such modesty," said Professor Deluge. "I"ll have you know that our Professor Dolt is the world"s greatest authority on blackmail, and that his work, The Anatomy of Treason, is an absolute must for anyone planning to betray his country. But enough of this, talking makes the throat dry -- nunc est bibendum!"
And he uncorked a bottle.
"You mean," I said, thoroughly confused, "we"re going to drink again?"
"Good Lord man, why else are we here?"
"But. . . we"ve already had so much. . ."
"That drinking doesn"t count, it was only for appearances," the heavy professor patiently explained. "Anyhow, we"re not drinking cheap vodka and raw wine, but the best cognac, brandy, all vintage stuff."
"Well, I suppose. . ."
The bottle made its way around the table; its n.o.ble contents, ceremoniously sniffed and sipped, soon restored us, lifted our spirits, softened the memory of our recent trials. From the ensuing conversation I learned that Professor Dolt had more than a pa.s.sing interest in Ancient Greece.
"A change of pace?" I inquired.
"Whatever do you mean? Why, the Trojan Horse marked the birth of cryptoequestrianism! And think of the unmasking of Circe by Odysseus! Or the musical sabotage of the sirens! And the omens, the riddles, the oracles -- or take Zeus"s infiltration in the guise of a swan!"
"Apropos," Sempriaq interrupted, "do you know the opera Cadaveria Rusticana?"
"h.e.l.lenic studies, a veritable gold mine!" Dolt continued, ignoring the cremator.
"Undoubtedly," I agreed. "But. . . may I ask, Professor, exactly what the field you mentioned -- Nanosemy, was it? -- what it deals with?. . ."
"Of course you may. Nanosemy, yes. Consider first: what is our earthly existence but a neverending culling of intelligence? We seek to discover Nature"s secrets. In Rome they had but one name for the scholar -- explorer and the scout-agent: speculator. And indeed, the scientist is a spy par excellence and, for that matter, par force. He is Humanity"s Plant in the Great Lap of Existence!"
He filled my gla.s.s.
"Yes, spying is man"s qualitas occulta, and has been from earliest times. In the Middle Ages we have spyeries, espyals. . . To spy, spionieren, spitzeln, espionner, skopiao, szpiegowac spijunirati. . . Treason, tresun, treysoun, tradere, trahison. . . Mata Hari, Dreyfus, Delilah, Wallenstein. . . Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. -- Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders. -- A treason and a stratagem. -- I come no Spie with purpose to explore the secrets of your Realm. -- We come not single spies, in battalions. -- This blessed plot. . . But I digress. . . Where were we? My field, yes. What does it mean? Meaning. And so we enter the realm of semantics. One must tread carefully here! Consider: from earliest times man did little else but a.s.sign meanings -- to the stones, the skulls, the sun, other people, and the meanings required that he create theories -- life after death, totems, cults, all sorts of myths and legends, black bile and yellow bile, love of G.o.d and country, being and nothingness -- and so it went, the meanings shaped and regulated human life, became its substance, its frame and foundation -- but also a fatal limitation and a trap! The meanings, you see, grew obsolete in time, were eventually lost, yet how could the following generations discard their heritage, particularly when so many of their worthy ancestors had been crucified for those nonexistent G.o.ds, or had labored so long and mightily over the philosopher"s stone, phlogiston, ectoplasm, the ether? It was considered that this layering of new meanings upon old was a natural, organic process, a semantic evolution -- yet observe how a phrase like "great discovery" is bled of sense, devalued, made common coin, until now we give it freely to the latest model of bomb. . . But do have some more cognac."
And he filled my gla.s.s.
"And so," continued Dolt with a thoughtful smile, adjusting his nose. "Where does this lead us? Demisemiotics! It"s quite simple, really, the taking away of meaning. . ."
"Oh?" I said, then bit my lip, ashamed of my own ignorance. He took no notice.
"Yes, meaning must be disposed of!" he said heatedly. "History has crippled us long enough with its endless explanations, ratiocinations, mystifications! In my work, we do not simply falsify atoms and doctor the stars -- we proceed very slowly, methodically, with the utmost care, to deprive everything, absolutely everything, of its meaning."
"But isn"t that really -- a kind of destruction?"
He gave me a sharp look. The others whispered and fell silent. The old officer propped up against the wall continued to snore.
"An interesting observation. Destruction, you say? Consider: when you create something, anything, a rocket or a new fork, there are always so many problems, doubts, complications! But if you destroy (let"s use that inaccurate term for the sake of argument), whatever else one may say about it, it is unquestionably clean and simple."
"So you advocate destruction?" I asked, unable to suppress an idiotic grin.
"Must be the cognac," he said, refilling my gla.s.s with a smile. We drank.
"Besides, we aren"t even here," he added.
"How do you mean?"
"Have you any idea of the mathematical probabilities involved for any given chunk of matter in the universe to be eligible for partic.i.p.ation in the biosphere, whether as a leaf, a sausage, or even drinkable water? Or breathable air? The odds are about a quadrillion to one against it! Our universe is a prodigiously lifeless place. One particle in a quadrillion may enter into the life cycle, the procession of birth and death, growth and decay -- consider what a rare event that must be. And now I ask you to consider not the probability of a piece of food, or of a drop of water, or of a breath of air -- but the probability of an embryo! Take the ratio of the ma.s.s of the universe -- the burnt-out suns, the frozen planets, those cosmic garbage dumps we call nebulae, that enormous cloaca of dust and rubble and noxious gas we think of as the Milky Way, all that thermonuclear fermentation, that swirling of debris -- take the ratio of that total ma.s.s to the ma.s.s of a human body; there you have your probability for a chunk of matter, equal in weight to a man, to be a man -- and that probability is negligible!"
"Negligible?" I said.
"In other words, you and I, all of us in this room, statistically we can"t exist, we aren"t really here. . ."
"What?" I blinked, trying to clear my vision.
"We aren"t here," repeated Dolt, and burst out laughing with the others.
It was a joke, of course, one of those clever scientific jokes. It didn"t strike me as particularly funny, but I laughed to be polite.
The empty bottles disappeared and full ones took their place.
I was attentive as the scholars conversed, but understood less and less. I had had too much to drink. Someone, possibly the cremator, held forth on the death agony as a test of strength. Professor Deluge engaged Professor Dolt in a debate on dementogeny and psychophagia -- or something like that -- then they talked of recent breakthroughs, the Machina Mistificatrix, and my head kept nodding no matter how hard I tried to sit up straight, and the voices seemed to come from a great distance.
"Is he ready?" someone asked. I tried to see who it was, but everything kept revolving -- was I really that drunk? -- and then I found I couldn"t even think, someone was doing it for me. I floated in a cloud of tiny sparks, latched onto the table and laid my burning face on it, like a dog.
Before me was the slender stem of a winegla.s.s, the dainty leg of an elegant goblet, a delicate crystal thigh. . . I told her I would always be true, I wept in grat.i.tude, and overhead they drank and held forth -- truly, those caps and gowns did hold their liquor well!
Then there was nothing, and when I came to, my throbbing head still rested on the table. There were crumbs on my nose. I heard voices.
"The universe, I betrayed the universe. . . mea culpa, I confess it. . ."
"All right, that"s enough."
"Those were my orders, my orders. . ."
"Come on, have a gla.s.s of water."
"Is he asleep?" someone asked.
"Don"t worry, he"s out cold."
But there was dead silence when I stirred and opened my eyes. Nothing had changed. The old officer was still snoring away in a corner. Bottles and faces swam before my eyes.
"Silentium, gentlemen!"
"Gaudeamus Isidor!"
"Nunc est Gaudium atque Bibendum!" came a cry from far away.
"There"s no difference," I thought. "It"s the same as before, except in Latin."
"Gentlemen!" shouted Dolt. "Suaviter in re, fort.i.ter in modo. . . Spectator debet esse elegans, penetrans et bidexter. . . Vivant omnes virgines, gentlemen! Vive la Maison! Cheers!"
Everything whirled around, red things, sweaty things, white things, heavy things. . . Where before they had chortled, "The ladies! Oo-la-la!" now it was "Frivolitas in duo corpore, Venus Invigilatrix," and more of the same. I tried to ask them why, but no one would listen to me. They jumped on their chairs, delivered speeches, sat down again, sang, danced in a circle. "We did that before!" I protested, but they laughed and pulled me along. "Toom-ba-toom-ba-toom-ba-ba!" boomed the heavy one, and we all joined hands and pranced and stamped our way into an enormous hall. A cold draft from somewhere sobered me up a little, and I looked around.
A kind of Theatrum Anatomic.u.m, a lecture hall with rising tiers of chairs, and in the center a podium, lectern, blackboards, erasers, chalk, shelves of specimens preserved in alcohol, and on the table empty jars, waiting to be filled -- so this was where the Commander in Chief got his supply! A gentleman in black approached our dancing group. The cremator ground to a halt and blew out air like an old locomotive; I uncoupled my car from the train and waited to see what would happen next.
"Ah! If it isn"t Professor Schnuffel! Welcome, welcome, beloved colleague!" cried Deluge, and his greeting echoed and reechoed. The others also stopped their prancing to bow and shake his hand. The new professor looked quite venerable in his gray hair and tails.
"Professor Shuffle! Kindly enlighten us on this matter of bottom priority, to wit, what in the h.e.l.l is it?" bellowed Dolt and, to accentuate his lack of respect, hopped on one leg.
"The brain, membra dissecta," replied the old man in black. And indeed, there on the table were large, plaster sections of the human brain, all carefully mounted and labeled, resembling marble viscera, or perhaps a modern sculptor"s madness. The professor brushed one with a feather duster.
"The brain?!" Dolt shrieked with glee. "Gentlemen! I give you our pride and joy -- the brain!" He lifted his gla.s.s. "A toast that is bacchic, bucolic, and anacoluthic!"
He filled our gla.s.ses, then turned and read the labels like a litany: "O, gyrus fornicatus!" he intoned, and the others took up the chorus, howling with laughter.
"O, tuber cinerum! O, striatum! O, corpora quadrigemina, four rounded bodies!"
"Rounded bodies!" they roared with delight. The old man in the tuxedo continued his dusting as if nothing had happened.
"O, sella turcica! Chiasma optic.u.m! Mammillary body!" chanted Dolt.
"Mammillary body!" yelled the cremator.
"O, hippocampus! Pons Varolii! O, fissure of Rolando!"
"Dura mater, pia mater, alma mater! And gentlemen, let us not forget mater hari!"
"Careful, there"s formaldehyde," cautioned Professor Schnuffel or Schuffle.
"Formol -- formalin -- formaldehyde!"
They joined hands and dragged the venerable anatomy professor with them, making him their leader and waving his feather duster about like a banner. I sat in one of the chairs and watched, trying to bring things into focus. Drunken shouts and stamping feet boomed and echoed in the dark, and the domed ceiling looked down on us like a monstrous eye.
On a metal stand next to me was a skeleton, stooped and toothless, in an att.i.tude of somber resignation. The left hand was short one finger -- I gasped, I looked closer. Something glittered, dangling from a rib. . . gold spectacles. . .
Was this, then, his final destination? A display for medical students? And was this to be our third, our final meeting? And was it all to end like this?. . .
"Catch, Gatekeeper!" cried Dolt. "Haec locus, ubi Troia fuit! Professor Shrapnel! I bestow upon you the Order of the Garter Snake, Denuntiatio Constructiva, the Distinguished Noose of Honor!"
"Watch out!" hissed the gray anatomist as they recklessly pulled him along, his tails flapping wildly. The warning came too late -- they crashed into the shelves and brought everything down, the jars shattered on the floor, the alcohol spilled out and, with it, the matted freaks within. . .
The stench of corruption, bottled up for so many years, now billowed out and filled the auditorium. The revelers fled, leaving the old man to his despair, and I followed them back to our room and slammed the door.
More bottles, corks popping, and an endless pouring and roaring, so I hid in an armchair and gratefully went out with the tide, wondering only how one could put on gold spectacles if there were no ears left. Overcome with grief, I sank beneath the waves. . .
Suddenly an apparition got in my way, pale, dripping sweat, unusually long.
"What a long face you have, Professor," I said, enunciating each syllable with care.
The table made a good pillow. But Dolt smiled a wicked, left-handed smile and whispered: "Only a worm can play the worm. . ."
"What a long face," I whispered in alarm.
"Never mind the face. You know what I am?"
"Certainly. . . Professor Dolt, sabotage. . ."
"No, that"s Deluge. . . My mission is to -- neutralize -- Him."
I tried to sit up but couldn"t.
"What?"
"He must be put out of action."
"Deluge?"
"Not Deluge -- Him, you know, the One who -- rested on the seventh day." And the left side smiled again. The right remained sad.
"You"re joking."
"Not at all. We"ve checked. . . up there, in the heavens above. . . we have our sources of information, you know."
"Of course," I muttered. "Professor?"
"Yes?"