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The pressure in the bottle suddenly increased and expelled my finger. The Brew in it burst over me despite my efforts to plug it up again, gushing out at such a rate that the bag would fill faster than its narrow mouth could let it out. I was facing two dangers—being discovered and being drowned.
As if my troubles weren’t enough, somebody’s heavy foot descended on me and went away. A voice succeeded it. I recognized it, even after all these years. It was that of Doctor Boswell Durham, the god now known as Mahrud. But it had a basso quality and richness it had not possessed in his predeity days.
“All right, Dan Temper, the masquerade is over!”
Frozen with terror, I kept silent and motionless.
“I’ve sloughed off the form of the Allegory and taken my own.” Durham went on. “That was really I talking all the time. I was the Allegory you refused to recognize. Myself—your old teacher. But then you always did refuse to see any of the allegories I pointed out to you.
“Well, Dan my boy, you’re right back where you started—in your mother’s womb where, I suspect you’ve always wanted to be. How do I know so much? Brace yourself for a real shock. I was Doctor Duerf, the psychologist who conditioned you. Run that name backward and remember how I love a pun or an anagram.”
I found all this hard to believe. The Professor had always been kindly, gentle, and humorous. I would have thought he was pulling my leg if it hadn’t been for one thing! that was the Brew, which was about to drown me. I really thought he was carrying his joke too far.
I told him so, as best I could in my muffled voice.
He yelled back, ‘“Life is real—life is earnest!’ You’ve always said so, Dan. Let’s see now if you meant it. All right, you’re a baby due to be born. Are you going to stay in this sac, and die, or are you going to burst out from the primal waters into life?
“Let’s put it another way, Dan. I’m the midwife, but my hands are tied. I can’t assist in the accouchment directly. I have to coach you via long distance, symbolically, so to speak. I can tell you what to do to some extent, but you, being an unborn infant, may have to guess at the meaning of some of my words.”
I wanted to cry out a demand that he quit clowning around and let me out. But I didn’t. 1 had my pride.
Huskily, weakly, I said, “What do you want me to do?”
“Answer the questions I, as Allegory and Ass, asked you. Then you’ll be able to free yourself. And rest assured, Dan, that I’m not opening the bag for you.”
What was it he had said? My mind groped frantically; the rising tide of the Brew made thinking difficult. I wanted to scream and tear at the leather with my naked hands. But if I did that, I’d go under and never come up again.
I clenched my fists, forced my mind to slow down, to go back over what Allegory and Polivinosel had said.
What was it? What was it?
The Allegory had said, “Where do you want to go now?”
And Polivinosel, while chasing me down Adams Street— Adam’s Street?—had called out, “Little man, what now?”
The answer to the Sphinx’s question was:
Man.
Allegory and Ass had proposed their questions in the true scientific ma
In the next second, with that realization acting like a powerful motor within me, I snapped the conditioned reflex as if it were a wishbone. I drank deeply of the Brew, both to quench my thirst and to strip myself of the rest of my predeity inhibitions. I commanded the bottle to stop fountaining. And with an explosion that sent Brew and leather fragments flying over the barge, I rose from the bag.
Mahrud was standing there, smiling. I recognized him as my old prof, even though he was now six and a half feet tall, had a thatch of long black hair, and had pushed his features a little here and there to make himself handsome. Peggy stood beside him. She looked like her sister, Alice, except that she was red-haired. She was beautiful, but I’ve always preferred brunettes—specifically, Alice.
“Understand everything now?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “including the fact that much of this symbolism was thought up on the spur of the moment to make it sound impressive. Also, that it wouldn’t have mattered if I had drowned, for you’d have brought me back to life.”
“Yes, but you’d never have become a god. Nor would you have succeeded me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked blankly.
“Peggy and I deliberately led you and Alice toward this denouement so we could have somebody to carry on our work here. We’re a little bored with what we’ve done, but we realize that we can’t just leave. So I’ve picked you as a good successor. You’re conscientious, you’re an idealist, and you’ve discovered your potentialities. You’ll probably do better than I have at this suspension of ‘natural’ laws. You’ll make a better world than I could. After all, Da
“Peggy and I want to go on a sort of Grand Tour to visit the former gods of Earth, who are scattered all over the Galaxy. They’re all young gods, you know, by comparison with the age of the Universe. You might say they’ve just got out of school—this Earth—and are visiting the centers of genuine culture to acquire polish.”
“What about me?”
“You’re a god now, Da
He smiled one of those long slow smiles he used to give us students when he was about to quote a favorite line of his.
“‘… listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door. Let’s go.’”
Peggy and he did go. Like thistles, swept away on the howling winds of space, they were gone.
And after they had vanished, I was left staring at the river and the hills and the sky and the city, where the assembled faithful watched, awestruck. It was mine, all mine.
Including one black-haired figure—and what a figure—that stood on the wharf and waved at me.
Do you think I stood poised in deep reverie and pondered on my duty to mankind or the shape of teleology now that I was personally turning it out on my metaphysical potters wheel? Not I. I leaped into the air and completed sixteen entrechats of pure joy before I landed. Then I walked across the water—on the water—to Alice.
I do think it was rather nice of me. After all, I wasn’t in too good a mood. That whole night and morning, my legs and my upper gums had been very sore. They were making me somewhat irritable, despite liberal potions of Brew.
But there was a good reason.
I had growing pains, and I was teething.
The Alley Man
I HE MAN FROM the puzzle factory was here this morning,“ X said Gummy. ”While you was out fishin.“ She dropped the piece of wiremesh she was trying to tie with string over a hole in the rusty window screen. Cursing, grunting like a hog in a wallow, she leaned over and picked it up. Straighten-ing, she slapped viciously at her bare shoulder.
“Figurin skeeters! Must be a million outside, all tryin to get away from the burnin garbage.”
“Puzzle factory?” said Deena. She turned away from the battered kerosene-burning stove over which she was frying sliced potatoes and perch and bullheads caught in the Illinois River, half a mile away.
“Yeah!” snarled Gummy. “You heard Old Man say it. Nuthouse. Booby hatch. So… this cat from the puzzle factory was named John Elkins. He gave Old Man all those tests when they had him locked up last year. He’s the ski