"And if he was one of your creatures from outer s.p.a.ce, why didn"t he just wipe us out," Anna said, "or just teleport us to the city? It would be so easy for him."
"I don"t know," Dana Webster said. "Maybe they"re giving us some sort of test so they can decide where to a.s.sign us for some sort of job. Those who survive the terrible journey to the city get some sort of b.o.o.by prize. Or become the studs and mares of a new breed of superslaves. I don"t know."
The effect of her words was stronger then Kelvin liked. Too many looked as if they were seriously considering her speculations.
It rained heavily that night, as it had for almost every night for three years.
Everybody was soaked, but no one came down with colds or pneumonia or any respiratory disease. Yet, many had been subject to colds and allergic to pollen or suffering from various degrees of emphysema before the cataclysms had begun.
Something had rid them of all diseases, in fact, and Kelvin pointed this out that morning. He indicated it as evidence that they would all be free of body infirmities and ailments, and would not age for a thousand years. Yet microorganisms continued to do their work on dead bodies. Meat got spoiled; dead animals, and humans, rotted.
Surely, this discrimination was G.o.d-given. Why should the Enemy, or Extraterrestrials, give human beings immunity from disease?
"I don"t know," Dana Webster said. "We"ll find out. Also, have the heathens been given this same immunity? If they have, then surely G.o.d is not responsible for the immunity, that is, He is not responsible for the dispensation of immunity. He, of course, is primarily responsible for anything that happens, in that it can"t happen unless He permits it."
Kelvin expected her to bring up the question of why a good G.o.d would permit evil in the first place, but she did not push that time-waster on them.
The days and nights, the burning under the sun and the cold soaking at night, went on and on. A thousand miles of desert along the sea behind them and another thousand to go.
Dana Webster had more than done her share. She was a genius at catching lizards and finding large quant.i.ties of locusts and stunning birds and the little desert foxes with her slings. The items she brought to the community pot were not attractive, but they were nutritious and filled the belly. Even Anna had to admit that the party had eaten better since Webster joined them. But Anna also pointed out that Webster"s very gift at hunting could be due to a strange power she had over animals. And who knew but that this was because she was herself one of the slaves of the Beast. Ex- slaves rather, since the Beast was now in the lake of burning brimstone. But the ex- slaves were still dedicated to evil, of course.
Kelvin had become irritated at Dana Webster"s att.i.tude, since he was now very attracted to her. In fact, he told himself during a fit of honesty, he was in love with her. He did not tell Dana, of course, because he could never marry her if she were a heathen. There had been a time when Christians had married heathens, but that must never be again. There was no doubt anymore about the line between good and evil.
That is, as far as marriage went, there was no doubt about the lines. But there was still doubt about the honesty and the motives of people. And he was not sure what Dana Webster was. Sometimes, she talked so close to blasphemy that he felt repelled. Or uneasy. And he was uneasy because she seemed to be making some sense. At other times, he thought that she was truly a Christian but one who did not trust appearances and so was perhaps oversuspicious. But, in this world of untrustworthy appearances, could a person be overly suspicious?
Whatever the truth, he now yearned for this woman as he had yearned for none, not even Anna, since his wife had betrayed him. Was there something still evil in him, something that attracted him to women who had enlisted for Satan? But he had been attracted to Anna, and surely she was not on the Enemy"s side? Nor did he have any proof that Dana was with the Enemy.
It did not seem likely that some residue of evil still lay deep within him. He had refused to go along with the Beast, and he had survived the cataclysms and the overthrow of the Beast, and so the second death had no power over him. He had been judged once and for all.
But could it be that he still needed refining, that there were elements of evil in him, and that the thousand years were to be used to purge him? Was that why the millennium must be? So that the surviving Christians could be purged of all evil?
What, then, would purge those who had died and who would arise at the second judgment and be given new bodies? Why did they not have to go through the fire of a thousand years?
One night, Dana, who had been silent about her theories of the reality of the situation for a long time, proposed a new theory. "Those prophets who came closest to predicting the future as it really develops are those whose minds have an inborn computer. They don"t truly prophesy, in the sense that they can actually look into the future. No, their minds, unconsciously, of course, compute the highest probabilities, and it is the most likely course of events that they predict. Or choose, rather. Your true prophet has a gift which is not a clairvoyance but is the selection of what is most probable. He sees the in potentio as actualized, though vaguely and in large general terms. His vision must necessarily be cast into symbolic images because he can"t understand what he sees. He can"t because he is a creature of the present, and the future contains many unfamiliar things."
"But John saw what was revealed by G.o.d," Anna said. "G.o.d would not reveal a probability; He would show only a certainty."
Dana shrugged and said, "Sometimes, a prophet will get two probable futures mixed up. He"ll not be able to differentiate between the most likely and the next most likely. He sees the future as one, but in reality he is witnessing a part of one probable future inserted in the continuum of another probable future. That is why, perhaps, John saw two resurrections, the millennium, and so forth. He saw two or more futures all mixed up. Only true events will straighten out what future is really the most probable. Do you follow me?"
"And I suppose he may have seen Extraterrestrials and thought they were angels?" Anna said.
"It"s possible."
Anna stood up and cried, "She is saying all these confusing things to lead us astray!"
"But you can"t be led astray," Dana Webster said. "Only the heathen can now be led astray."
"Not if your theory is right," Anna said, and then she stared at Webster in an obvious confusion.
The entire party was upset. The next night, seeing that the situation had not improved, even though Dana had refused to talk about her theories anymore, Kelvin held a conference. After he had Dana taken to one side, he said to the others, "We may be saints, but we"re certainly not behaving as such. Now, I"ve heard some of you, especially Anna, say that Dana should be killed. You don"t even want just to kick her out of our party, because she might then find some heathens and lead them to attack us. Or because she may be the mother of heathens, and such should not be allowed to breed.
"Anna, would you be the one to shoot her in cold blood if we decided that she should die?"
"It wouldn"t be in cold blood!" Anna said.
"Would it be in hate then? With an unchristian desire to shed blood?"
"At one time," Anna said, "it would have been a sin to hate. But the first death has come, and the old order has pa.s.sed away, and the new one has come. There is no more returning of lost sheep to the field. Once a heathen, always a heathen. That is the way it is now."
"The old order will not pa.s.s away until the second death," Kelvin said. "I quote you Revelation 21:4: "Now G.o.d"s home is with men! He will live with them and they shall be His people. G.o.d Himself will be with them -- He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief, crying, or pain. The old things have disappeared." And don"t forget what John says in 20:13, ". . .and all were judged according to what they had done." If we kill Dana Webster, we will be judged by what we have done, which will be, in my opinion, murder."
"But you said we won"t be judged again!" Anna said. "And remember what that angel said. Whatever we do, it will be the right thing!"
Kelvin was silent for a while. Everything was so tangled and shadowy, not bright and straight as it was supposed to be after the Beast had been put away. Or had they misunderstood the real meaning of the Revelation. What was it supposed to be?
John had not said so or even implied it. Kelvin, like so many, had just a.s.sumed it.
It was then that Anna said that they would all starve if Dana Webster had to be fed, and that she should be killed before she could say another word of her blasphemous speculations.
"We have eaten better since Dana joined us," Kelvin said. "You know that to be true, Anna, so why do you lie? Listen, all of you, whatever else is not clear in this hot and dusty world, two things are. It is by these two that we must live, and by these two that we must die. One is, love G.o.d. The other is, love your fellow man. As long as Dana claims to be a Christian, then we must treat her as one until we get proof to the contrary."
"Many of us were delivered into the hands of the torturer and the butcher because of that," Anna said.
"So be it," Kelvin said. "But that is the way it must be. We take her along to the beloved city, and when we"re there, then we"ll find out."
Anna walked away. Others were not happy about his decision but, in these hard and dangerous times, there was no room for committee action. Like it or not, survival depended upon the quick rule of one good man.
Dana, smiling, though still pale, came up to him and kissed him on the lips.
Kelvin felt a spasm of desire for her, but he pushed her away, though gently. He could not marry her now, or perhaps, ever. Not until they got to the city would he find out what was or was not permitted. And if he allowed his desire to overrule his good sense and he married her now, the group would believe, perhaps rightly, that he had put his self above the good of the whole.
Nevertheless, he did not get to sleep that night, and he found himself straining through the darkness toward Dana, as if his soul itself were trying to lift his body up and propel it through the air to her. The rains fell, and he huddled under the shelf of rock and wished he had her warm body inside the blanket with him. After a while, he prayed himself to sleep.
He awoke to shouting, screams, curses, the sound of the edge of steel striking flesh, and then shots from those of his party who had awakened in time.
Kelvin got off one shot, saw the dark figure before him fall, and something struck his head. He awoke shortly after dawn with a headache like a hot stone in his brain. His hands were tied behind him, and his feet were hobbled. Six of the attackers, all in ragged black and gold uniforms of the soldiers of the Beast, were standing over the survivors of his party. Little Jessica Crenwell lay on her back, unconscious and groaning, and apparently not long for life. Dana Webster rose from beside Crenwell and walked toward him. She seemed unhurt. And she carried a rifle.
He suppressed a groan and said, "So Anna was right."
But she was not, as he had expected, pleased.
"I had nothing to do with these," she said, gesturing at the sullen-faced heathen. "At least, I did not tell them to attack. They have ruined my plans to enter your beloved city with your party. Now I"ll have to find another party of fools or somehow manage to convince the city"s guardians that I am what I claim to be. And that won"t be easy."
"I don"t understand," he said, wincing from the pain involved in talking. "If you meant to palm yourself off as a Christian, why did you argue so vehemently that this was a false apocalypse? Why your theory of the Extraterrestrials?"
She smiled then, and she said, "Long before we reached the city, I would have pretended to have converted wholly to your way of thinking. I would have repented my errors. You would then accept me far more easily, because I would have seemed to have been confused and hurt by my traumatic experiences but would have been cured, shown the right way. And then you wouldn"t have had much hesitation about marrying me, would you?"
"To be honest, no. I would have rejoiced at your change and leaped at the chance to marry you. But I would have done so only if you had made it plain that you really wanted me."
"And I would have arranged it so that you would not have been able to hold out," she said. "And then, as your wife, as one of the faithful band, I would have started planting my little seeds of doubt here and there, watering them on the sly, and all the time determining the weaknesses and the strengths of the city for the day when we attack."
"We?"
"We have been chosen by the new rulers of Earth as the favored executives, the herders of the swine. We were approached before all this began, told what would happen, and given our duties. And it was all as they said it would be. They are your true prophets, my friend, not some old half-crazy man on an island. They knew that the stresses inside the Earth would bring on the greatest quakes the Earth has ever known, and they knew that a group of large asteroids was heading for the Earth. Why shouldn"t they, since they launched the asteroids ages ago, and since they have devices to store up energy in the Earth and to trigger it off whenever they care to do so."
"They?" Kelvin said, and he felt the stone in his brain become bigger and hotter.
"They are from a planet which orbits a star in Andromeda. They are the true rulers of this universe, or destined to be such. They can travel through interstellar s.p.a.ce at speeds far exceeding those of light. But there is another race which has the same powers, and an evil race which has been the eon-long enemy of the Andromedans."
Kelvin groaned, partly from the agony in his head and partly from the agony in his soul.
"Your story sounds vaguely familiar," he said. "And I"m not referring to the science fiction stories we used to read before the Beast suppressed them."
"It"s in the Bible," she said, "but in a rather distorted form. I wasn"t lying when I said that some men could compute the most probable future. To some extent, that is, on a broad and unspecific scale, of course. However, the Arcturans were going to seize Earth and take over when the Andromedans struck. The Arcturans are those you think of as angels. They are the ones preparing to build the beloved city, which will be a fortress to hold Earth -- they think."
Kelvin said, "Satan may be locked up, but surely his aides are loose. But they won"t be able to do anything really drastic for a long, long time. Not for a thousand years."
She laughed and said, "You still insist on believing your old cast-off myth?"
"It is you who believe in the myth, though it is new," he said. "You have to rationalize. You have to believe that the evil spirits are not spirits but beings from another star. And they, of course, must be the good ones, because no one really allies himself with what he admits is an evil cause. No, somehow, the cause must be a good one, no matter what evil it does. And we Christians, of course, are the evil ones. The Enemy has to think of himself as good."
The other heathens were walking toward him. They held knives and cigarette lighters.
Dana Webster said, "I must go now. I have work to do. I leave you to these.
They"d be angry if I frustrated them by killing you. I need them, so they"ll get their way now. I"m sorry, in a way, since I don"t like torture. But there are times when it must be used."
"That"s the difference between me and you, between us and your kind," Kelvin said. "I pity you, Dana Webster, I pity you from the deepest part of my being. I wish even now that you could see the light, that you could love G.o.d, know G.o.d as I know Him. But it is too late. The thousand years have started, and your end is foretold.
"And if I scream, when I scream, I should say, and if I beg for mercy from these things that have no mercy, and if I scream at them to get it over with -- well, no matter how long it seems, it will be over. And then I will arise in a new body, and the old order will have pa.s.sed away, and there will be no death any longer or any grief or pain."
"You nauseating egotistic fool!" she said.
"Time will tell which of us is a fool," he said. "But time has already told which of us is for man and G.o.d."
As death came, a smile pa.s.sed, fleetingly, over his face -- a smile Dana Webster would not, indeed, could not understand.
Polytropical Paramyths
"Many-turning beyond-myths" is the literal translation from the ancient Greek. Perhaps the noun should have been "mythoparas." From "mythos," which I don"t have to explain, and -para, from Latin parere, to give birth to. They"re a form of fun-therapy for me and perhaps for the reader. They"re symptoms of something in my unconscious that makes me itch and then scratch. A sort of cerebral athlete"s foot. Or, to preserve the birth a.n.a.logy from parere, a monster delivered with much mirth and some puzzlement. Or a square egg laid by a goose who"s laughing because it hurts.
"Don"t Wash the Carats" was the first one born of term. It came like a hot flash while reading a pa.s.sage in Henry Miller"s Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. This was, if I remember correctly, "Diamonds are sometimes born during violent storms." Damon Knight, who bought it for Orbit 3, wasn"t sure what it meant, and neither did, or do, I. But it, and other paramyths, make the same kind of sense that the French "theater of the absurd," which is dominated by Rumanians and Irishmen, does. However, my myths have the quality of being much more intelligible.
The idea for "Only Who Can Make a Tree?" I owe to Ted Sturgeon. At a party at Harlan Ellison"s, he told me he"d long thought of writing a story which would reverse the time-(w)ho(a)red Gernsbackian tale of the mad scientist and his beautiful young daughter. What about, Ted said, a story about the beautiful young scientist and her mad daughter? He would, he added, probably never write it.
So I asked him if I could use it, since the idea appealed so strongly to me. Graciously, he consented.
Some time later, just after reading an article on ecology, and while watching on TV a Three Stooges short with my granddaughter, the PP (polytropical paramyth) started itching. Hence, the obvious derivation of the names of the three lab a.s.sistants, Lorenzo, Mough, and Kerls.
"The Sumerian Oath" certainly came up from the deeps, like an afterbirth from Moby d.i.c.k"s mother, while I was contemplating, not so quietly, a bill from a Beverly Hills doctor. I have, however, long had a suspicion that the premise of this story is true.
Many of these PP either take place in scientists" laboratories or in hospital operating rooms.
I"ve often asked my unconscious why this is so, but the operator seems to be asleep at the switchboard.
Don"t Wash the Carats
A Polytropical Paramyth
The knife slices the skin. The saw rips into bone. Gray dust flies. The plumber"s helper (the surgeon is economical) clamps its vacuum onto the plug of bone. Ploop! Out comes the section of skull. The masked doctor, Van Mesgeluk, directs a beam of light into the cavern of cranium.
He swears a large oath by Hippocrates, Aesculapius, and the Mayo Brothers.
The patient doesn"t have a brain tumor. He"s got a diamond.
The a.s.sistant surgeon, Beinschneider, peers into the well and, after him, the nurses.
"Amazing!" Van Mesgeluk says. "The diamond"s not in the rough. It"s cut!"
"Looks like a 58-facet brilliant, 127.1 carats," says Beinschneider, who has a brother-in-law in the jewelry trade. He sways the light at the end of the drop cord back and forth. Stars shine; shadows run.
"Of course, it"s half buried. Maybe the lower part isn"t diamond. Even so. . ."
"Is he married?" a nurse says.
Van Mesgeluk rolls his eyes. "Miss l.u.s.tig, don"t you ever think of anything but marriage?"
"Everything reminds me of wedding bells," she replies, thrusting out her hips.
"Shall we remove the growth?" Beinschneider says.
"It"s malignant, Van Mesgeluk says. "Of course, we remove it."
He thrusts and parries with a fire and skill that bring cries of admiration and a clapping of hands from the nurses and even cause Beinschneider to groan a bravo, not unmingled with jealousy. Van Mesgeluk then starts to insert the tongs but pulls them back when the first lightning bolt flashes beneath and across the opening in the skull.
There is a small but sharp crack and, very faint, the roll of thunder.