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Beneath the moist film of Brew, the blisters had fallen off, and a new healthy pink shone through.
Alice was so overcome, she even forgot her feud with me long enough to put her head on my chest and weep, “Oh, Dan, Dan, isn’t it wonderful?”
I didn’t want to give this evil drug too much credit. After all, like any narcotic, it had its beneficial effects if used correctly, but it could be horribly vicious if mishandled.
I said, “Come on, we have to go back,” and I took her hand and led her to the new crater. I felt I must solve the puzzle of the Scrambled Men. And I thought of the credit I’d get for suggesting a new method of warfare—dropping bombcases filled with Brew and seeds from balloons. And what about ca
I rejected the whole idea. The brass at HQ would never believe me.
The Scrambled Men worked quickly and efficiently and with all the added vigor Brew-drinking gave. Inside of fifteen minutes, they had put out the fire and had then pulled the smoldering trunk out of the way. They at once began digging into the slopes and bottom of the excavation.
I watched them. They seemed to be obeying the orders of the man in the admiral’s hat, and were continually conferring with him and their fellow workers. But not a single one could understand what the other was saying. All effective communication was done by facial expressions and gestures. Yet none would admit that to any of the others.
Well, I thought, this was scarcely a novelty, though I had never seen it carried out on such a thorough scale. And what—or who— was responsible?
Again, wearily this time, I asked a spectator what was going on. These people seemed to be incapable of making a serious statement, but there was always the chance that I’d find somebody who was an exception.
“I’ll tell you, stranger. These men are living evidences of the fact that it doesn’t pay to corrupt religion for your own purposes.”
He drank from a flask he carried on a chain around his neck and then offered me a slug. He looked surprised at my refusal but took no offense.
“These were the leaders of the community just before Mahrud manifested himself as the Real Bull. You know—preachers, big and little businessmen, newspaper editors, gamblers, lawyers, bankers, union business agents, doctors, book reviewers, college professors. The men who are supposed to know how to cure your diseases social, economic, financial, administrative, psychological, spiritual, and so on, into the deep dark night. They knew the Right Word, comprehend? The Word that’d set Things straight, understand?
“So, after drinking enough Brew to give them courage, but not enough to change them into ordinary fun-loving but Mahrud-fearing citizens, they a
“Makes you laugh, doesn’t it? But that’s the way it goes. And that’s the way it went until Mahrud—bibulous be his people forever—got mad. He a
“So he said, in effect, ‘You’ve been telling the people that you, and only you, have possession of the Real Bull, the Right Word. Well, you’ll have it. Only it’ll be the Word that nobody but you can understand, and to every other man it’ll be a strange tongue. Now—scram!”
“But after he’d watched these poor characters stumbling around trying to talk to each other and the people and getting madder than the hops in the Brew or else sadder than the morning-after, Mahrud felt sorry. So he said, ‘Look, I’ll give you a chance. I’ve hidden the key to your troubles somewhere in this valley.
Search for it. If you find it, you’ll be cured. And everybody will understand you, understand?‘
“So he gave them a map—all of them, mind you—but this half-dressed Napoleon here grabbed the map, and he kept it by virtue of being the most un-understandable of the bunch. And, ever since, he’s been directing the search for the key that’ll unscramble them.”
“That’s why they’re doing all this blasting and digging?” I asked, dazed.
“Yes, they’re following the map,” he said, laughing.
I thanked him and walked up behind the man with the admiral’s hat and sword. I looked over his shoulder. The map was covered with long squiggly lines and many shorter branches. These, I supposed, were the lines he was following in his creekbed-making.
He looked around at me. “Symfrantic gangleboys?”
“You said it,” I choked, and then I had to turn and walk away. “That map is a chart of the human nervous system,” I gasped to Alice. “And he’s following one of the branches of the vagus nerve.”
“The wandering nerve,” murmured Alice. “Or is it the wondering nerve? But what could all this mean?”
As we began our climb from the pit, I said, “I think we’re seeing the birth-pangs of a new mythology. One of the demigods is based upon a famous comic strip character. Another is formed in the image of a pun on the translation of his name—though his new form does correspond to his lustful, asinine character. And we see that the chief deity bases his worship—and at least one of his epiphanies—on his mortal nickname. All this makes me wonder upon what foundations the old-time pantheons and myths were built. Were they also orginally based on such incongruous and unlikely features?”
“Before I came here, I’d have laughed at any such theory,” I said. “How do you explain what you’ve seen?”
We climbed up in silence. At the edge, I turned for one more glimpse of the Scrambled Men, the object lesson designed by Mahrud. They were digging just as busily as ever paying no attention to the ribald comments of the spectators. The fu
As plainly as the ears on the head of the Ass-God, the plight of these frantically digging sons of Babel said to everybody, “Look within yourselves to find the key.”
That advice was probably uttered by the first philosopher among the cavemen.
I caught the glint of something metallic almost buried in the dirt of the slope. I went back and picked it up. It was a long-handled silver screwdriver.
If I hadn’t known my old teacher so well, I don’t think I ever would have understood its presence. But I’d been bombarded in his classes with his bizarre methods of putting things over. So I knew that I held in my hand another of his serious jokes—a utensil designed to take its place in the roster of myths springing up within this Valley Olympus.
You had the legend of Pandoras Box, of Philemon and Baucis’ Pitcher, Medusa’s Face, Odin’s Pledged Eye. Why not the Silver Screwdriver?
I explained to Alice. “Remember the gag about the boy who was born with a golden screw in his navel? How all his life he wondered what it was for? How ashamed he was because he was different from anybody else and had to keep it hidden? Remember how he finally found a psychiatrist who told him to go home and dream of the fairy queen? And how Queen Titania slid down on a moonbeam and gave him a silver screwdriver? And how, when he’d unscrewed the golden screw from his navel, he felt so happy about being normal and being able to marry without making his bride laugh at him? Remember, he then forgot all his vain speculations upon the purpose of that golden screw? And how, very happy, he got up from his chair to reach for a cigarette? And his derriere, deprived of its former fastening, dropped off?”