Страница 40 из 69
"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 space 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 God, know God 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 passed 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 God."
As death came, a smile passed, 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 analogy 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 passage 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 assistants, Lorenzo, Mough, and Kerls.
"The Sumerian Oath" certainly came up from the deeps, like an afterbirth from Moby Dick'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 assistant 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 Lustig, 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.
"Looks like rain," Beinschneider says. "One of my brothers-in-law is a meteorologist."
"No. It's heat lightning," Van Mesgeluk says.
"With thunder?" says Beinschneider. He eyes the diamond with a lust his wife would give diamonds for. His mouth waters; his scalp turns cold. Who owns the jewel? The patient? He has no rights under this roof. Finders keepers? Eminent domain? Internal Revenue Service?