Текст книги "Options"

Автор книги: Robert Sheckley

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37. Magus Reveals Secrets

Q. The approach to enlightenment involves an apparent contradiction, which is exemplified in the dual personality of the con-man sage. The problem is always the same: Why did the leader betray us? Did he find us unworthy? Or was the betrayal a secret act of love done in order to let us work out the final stage of our destinies on our own? Or did the leader's powers fail? Or could it be that he never had any power at all?

Which story are we stuck in?

A. Perhaps it's a case of divine ambiguities: the complications pile up, everything modifies everything else, vagueness is king. Would you like that story? Or how about ambiguity for fun and profit – the magus. He is putting you on. You're doing numbers over the divine spirituality of it all, and he's laughing up his embroidered sleeve, not very nice. Is thatthe story you'd prefer?

Q. What's going on around here? Why isn't anything working out?

A. Should I take you by the hand? Very well, but where will I lead you? Of course, I could put it all in order, and we could dance a minuet. I do want to amuse you, but really, there's a limit. Do you really want a guided tour through the formal gardens promised in the prospectus? Maybe that would be OK for you, but how about me? I'm supposed to have some fun, too. But now I'm starting to sound like a reform rabbi, and I notice that Mishkin has just gotten himself into a sort of interesting situation, so let's look into the house on Willow Road and see what is happening.

38

"But Professor Mackintosh, how do you know it is Earth that we have finally returned to?"

The professor smiled softly and pointed with his cane. Do you see that flower over there? It is Hemerocallis fulva,known as the day lily, and common throughout much of the United States. Those orange-coloured blossoms open but for a single day, you know – not proof positive, but rather good circumstantial evidence – like a trout in the milk, as Thoreau said."

39

Mishkin clung to the outer edges of the face, which began to melt, the nose flattening and segueing into the cheek, the eyes bleeding into the hair, the mouth softening and blurring, the handholds pulling out of the silly putty, and Mishkin slid away through obligatory swallow song, and long, still Ohio nights with the crickets raucous in the box-berry hedges, and the telephone lines black against the sky like a diagram of your whole life.

It was like that, but it wasn't exactly like that. It was more like those hushed summer nights in the old frame house in Rushmore, Mississippi, when an intolerable sweetness clung to the moist denim stretched over a young girl's sleeping buttocks, and you realized, young though you were, that things were going to happen to you, and you would live by them and lose by them, but always, somewhere, the river would wind, dark and sinuous, sweet mother of the past, companion of the present, mourner of the irretrievable future.

40. The Mishkin Museum

A slingshot. With this weapon Mishkin shot his way through innumerable fantasies.

Later, he exchanged his slingshot for an M-1 and shot his way through the same fantasies.

An empty butter wrapper. Mishkin once ate an entire pound of butter at a single sitting, washing it down with a quart of ice-cold milk. Now he lives away from home and picks at his food like a bird.

An Indian war club. Mishkin made this at camp. He also made Mary Lou Watkins at the same camp but not all the way. Later on Mishkin made a lot of people all the way. Now he travels.

A page of sheet music entitled "Old Black Joe". Mishkin didn't think about Negroes when he was a boy. Now, a man, he doesn't think about blacks. But he talks about them and dreams about them.

A snapshot of Mishkin's mother at the age of twenty-three. Mishkin thinks he doesn't care very much about his mother. Mishkin also thinks he doesn't con himself very much.

A Sanskrit grammar. Mishkin once planned to learn Sanskrit in order to read The Upanishadsin the original. Now he doesn't even read them in English.

41

Mishkin ascended to heaven on a fiery chariot and there he met the Lord God of Hosts, and Mishkin prostrated himself before the Deity and said, "Lord, Lord, I have sinned," which seemed a pretty good thing to say under the circumstances.

But God smiled and raised Mishkin up and said, "Rather, Mishkin, say that I have sinned; for what are your sins but the deficiencies that I caused to be put into you in order to test you and give you grievous trials and a dark night of the soul, the point being that you should overcome them. This may seem a kind of weird way of operating, but it is unreservedly recommended on page 102 of the best seller, This Business of Being God,written by a symposium of Parisian intellectuals and American hippies, and published by the Godhead Institution with offices in New York, London, Paris, Ibiza, and Katmandu, and with a foreword by Yours Truly."

"I have failed the crucial tests," Mishkin said. "I am mean, nasty, greedy, selfish, and uncaring."

"Don't get into a masochism number," said God. "Just as there is love which surpasseth understanding, so there is understanding which surpasseth love. For have I not written, the last shall be the first?"

"You are kind," Mishkin said. "But I don't really understand."

"Understanding is a down," God said. "Be comforted, Mishkin, for your vibrations are OK, and I think right now I need a vacation."

42

"I think," Mishkin said, "that it is time for a bit of static description. And then a bit of action." The space fleet came thundering in on fiery jets. Somewhere, a tree was crying.

Mishkin's father said, "Maybe I don't know what I like, but I sure as shooting know what I don't like." The people next door were a mystery, according to Angela. "Take nothing into account."

"But what do you mean, a mystery?" Claire couldn't explain, but she felt it was time for a bit of static description, and then a bit of action. "It doesn't really workthat way." Mishkin knew that it was true and untrue, and he loved her and hated her for it. It was a complicated world, but so what?

Mishkin liked a bit of complication: "Excuse me, Captain, the pusher beam trigger mechanism seems to have broken down." But not too much. He liked story lines that you could follow while thinking of other things. "Spare me that avant-garde stuff," Alice said, "besides, it's not your thing." Not my thing? Then why bother building palaces out of frying pans, why look for a jewel on the forehead of a toad? Subjects and verbs must agree, everyone agreed, but not on anything else.

Mishkin wondered what a spaceship looked like. What could you compare a spaceship to? Itself? "The spaceship looked utterly like itself." Jane shook her head. Mishkin's father shook his head. Mishkin tried to play the flute. His skin itched. He wished he could think of something a spaceship looked like. Not itself. He decided to buy a toy spaceship and describe that.

43. Specialist Lists Eye Osmosis as Primary Cause of Possession

Mishkin's eye fastened itself upon the sight and became what it saw. The eye is a powerful organ of adaptation. Mishkin is also a powerful organ of adaptation. Mishkin's eye had been cursed, and now, seeing crabgrass and hard boiled eggs, it became what it beheld.

44. Doctor Mishkin Operates

Mishkin touched the young girl's head with an exploratory gesture. Then, swiftly, he turned up the two tabs and separated the halves of the skull. From within he drew out a printed circuit board. Soon he saw the damage and repaired it with professional competence, noting the work on the inventory list pasted to the inside of the left hemisphere of the skull. Then he put the two halves of the skull back together, taking care to bend the tabs carefully into place. The girl blinked her eyes and awakened, cured of her nervous tic and nocturnal enuresis.

45. Premature Conclusions

Poor Ramsey Davis was impaled upon an ornamental iron railing at Thirteenth and Fifth. Of sweet, shy Marguerite Onger, less is known; she was last seen spiralling into the Arctic behind a howling dog pack, herself howling, the dogs saying to each other, "Wow, freaky scene, man, like get me out of here." Young David Broomsley died fever-twitched with clumsy face appalled. Mishkin himself was turned into a turnip by a malignant magician and inadvertently eaten by Richard Southey of Charing Cross Road. Ormsley never died and is still living in San Miguel de Allende, but his nose is in traction due to a rather unusual car accident. Orchidius is serving a ten-year sentence for mail fraud at Fulsome Prison. He swears he is innocent, and money to help his appeal should be sent to the author, care of the publisher, and I'll do what I can to assist this unfortunate man.

Various creatures in this work died in various ways. The author of this work would like to go out snarling but will probably be reduced to snuffling. Peace be to all, and to all a good night.

46

Mishkin loped gracefully along the contours of his life, stopping now and again to change into levis, suede pants, black bandit hats, and pausing to eat an unscheduled pizza here and there. Mishkin, slit-eyed against the wind of time, faintly smiling Mishkin, nerves twitching in the long, cold jaw, hard hands set on dream steering wheels. Prince of jesters, Mishkin, with his clown's grin and his errand boy mendacity. Was he not disastrous, unscheduled? Mishkin, of the bright, fey smile and winsome ways, dappling his way through all his completions. Mishkin in there for the big fifty-cent ride of all the amusements, holding on to his identity for dear life as the merry-go-round swirled his images about like dead leaves. Mishkin pretended to be who he was.

47

Mishkin sat in the Memory Theatre and scratched his crotch. On the stage, brilliantly lighted, a tableau appeared: a woman holding a baby. Mishkin recognized them as his own. A great voice called out, "What do you feel, Mishkin?" And Mishkin replied, "I feel an itch in my crotch. Also, I have a feeling that I forgot to file this year's income tax."

Acid is an intensifier. Soap is an emulsifier. Take your choice.

If you don't dig chromosome damage buy better chromosomes.

I used to be afraid that I was going out of my mind. Now I am afraid that I am not going out of my mind.

48

Dear Tom,

Thought I'd write you a letter, old buddy, learn how you are and fill you in on how it goes with yours truly and friends and company. Remember Martha? Well, she's gone and done it again but this time with a giant topaz on display at the Islamic Museum in Trebizond, of all places. Agnes has had another lamination, and more power to her, I say. Your little nephew Felix has been elected to a full term as Master of the neo-Eleusinian Mysteries. They say he's clairvoyant plus, but I say it's absurd to expose a little boy to those obscenities. Allegedobscenities, since I'm not supposed to know anything about it.

Local news: synchronicity has staged another comeback, and people are wandering all over in search of "serendipitous events and adventitious objects". Schenley's Square Face Acid is still the workingman's potion. It renders them inefficient, which is all to the good.

And so on and so on and so on.

As for me, I'm doing as well as can be expected. I entered the Game late, and I still have a lot of malimprinting to overcome. I have been able to master primary life systems, however, despite the dire predictions of Mr Chang. So now I can take over my own involuntary musculature. Total nerve control is still tough, however, and sometimes I think I'll simply junk the whole thing and go sit under a tree.

There are a lot of saints around, as always, and most of them smell bad, as always.

There's no accounting for fads.

Well, that's all the local news that I can think of just now, and I want to get this out to you in a hurry. I still don't know why you've picked an exterior adventure rather than an interior one. Soft spot in the old psyche? Or are you pulling a reverse on us, you sly dog?

It would be just like you to manifest a simple little ext. adv. Spaceflight and then fool us by plunging into the pit of unmitigated self! (But if that's the case, how did you find the interface? Or are you pulling a double reverse? The «mind» boggles.)

I'll just assume that you've chosen a complex way of getting into (or out of) Maya and that there's no need for me to remind you of the pitfalls and perils involved, since you know more than I do about mirror-deformations in the theatre of self. Of course, I just now havereminded you; but I don't mean to be insulting, I know that even the greatest adepts can profit from the words of a fool.

Your wives have remarried, as you must have foreseen. Some of your children have changed their names, which maybe you didn't expect. But then, maybe you expected everything.

Yours,

Otto

49. Do Not Fill in Separations

These apparent discontinuities have been devised and implanted for your own safety and welfare. Please do not connect them with «logical» links. This sort of premature closure would spoil their facticity, and would result in a dangerous – perhaps fatal – state of accidie for you. Extreme perceptual looseness is recommended. Remember that low-level scanning is the key to total field perception.

Thank you,

John Macpherson,

Commissioner, Dept of Public

Mental Hygiene

50. Whispering Voices

"Repetition is inevitable."

"Proceed by separations."

"Is someone trying to tell you something?"

"Read reversals."

"Distortions must be expected."

51. Reminder

Mishkin saw a tape recorder on stilts. He went over and turned it on. The recorder said: "This is a recorded message to remind you not to forget to record a message to remind you not to forget."

52

"Yep, sonny, it's quite a sight – the biggest cause and effect factory in the whole danged galaxy. Works simple enough. We put the causes into this hopper and the effects into this hopper. Then the machinery takes over, and there's a lot of clanging and banging, and the product comes out over here – a nicely bonded cause-and-effect without a single seam visible to the naked eye. Our cause-and-effect bonds will stand up in any court of law anywhere.

"We don't have no truck with them newfangled ideas about discontinuity and synchronicity and all that crap. Around here, if a horse kicks you, you get a broken leg, and if you've got a bellyache it's because you ate Italian sausage last night. That way everybody knows where they stand."

"Well, damnation, I don't know why a thing like that had to go and happen. Still, sometimes it does happen. Sometimes a cause and effect absolutely refuse to bond.

When that happens, and we ain't got no explanation for something, we call it God's Will.

So I guess it was God's Will that this happened now with you, and I think we should kneel down for a moment of silent prayer."

53

Mishkin came to a long line of men. The man on the extreme left was listening to a transistor radio tuned very low. He heard something, turned to the man on his right, whispered, "You only live once. Pass it on."

54

Tom Mishkin and James Bradley Sooner sat down to the meal. The mouse jumped on to the table and began lugging plates around, serving mashed potatoes, cutting the roast beef. Mishkin asked, "Does he always do that?"

The mouse said, "I will admit that it is a curious situation. Allow me to explain. For one thing, I am Jewish. For another…"

"Serve the goddamned food!" Sooner roared.

"Don't get so excited," the mouse said and went back to work.

"Now, about this strange thing that happened to me," Sooner said.

55

The player drew three cards and threw down his hand in disgust. "I came into this game with no stake and lousy cards," he said, "but this draw is simply the end." He pulled a revolver from his pocket and shot himself in the head.

Another man moved into his place, picked up his hand, grinned, and bet his life.

Speckled landscape. The whitebird of bitterness. White eyes. White legs. Whiteout.

Like the man who set fire to his friend's overcoat upon hearing the command, "Light up a Chesterfield".

SILVER SWANS SWAP SOPHISTRIES

56

"How long do the hallucinations go on?" Mishkin asked.

"Not long enough."

57

"What is this?" Mishkin asked.

"This," Orchidius said, "is a device for altering reality."

The object was the size and shape of an ostrich's egg. It had a single toggle switch.

One side was marked, «On». The other side was marked, «Off». The switch was turned to "Off".

"Where did you get it?"

"I bought it at the Whole Earth Store," Orchidius said. "It cost $9.95."

"Does it really alter reality?"

"It's supposed to. I haven't tried it yet."

"How could it?" Mishkin asked. "How could anything alter reality for $9.95?"

"At that price it sounded too good to pass up," Orchidius said. "But I guess it can't work."

"You can't be sure," Mishkin said. "You haven't tried it yet."

"I don't suppose it's really necessary to try it," Orchidius said.

"Of course it is! Push the switch!"

"You push it."

"All right, I'll push it." Mishkin took the egg and pushed the switch «On». They both waited for several seconds.

"Nothing happened," Orchidius said.

"I guess not. But how would we know it if something did happen? I mean, whatever happened would still seem like reality to us."

"That's true."

"Maybe you'd better turn it off."

"Turn what off?" Sooner asked.

58

The heroic figure of a man, holding a flute in one hand, a serpent in the other. This man says, "Enter."

A horned woman mounted on a werewolf, holding a sickle in one hand, a pomegranate in the other. This woman takes your overcoat.

A man with a jackal's head, naked except for winged sandals. In one hand he holds a fragment of papyrus, in the other a bronze disc. This man says, "Immediate seating in the first three rows."

How many more reminders could anyone want?

59

Puzzle picture: Concealed in this rustic landscape is God. The first viewer who correctly identifies himself will receive, at absolutely no cost to himself, satori. Second prize is a weekend at Grossingers.

60

"How long will the hallucinations continue?" Mishkin asked.

"What hallucinations?"

61

Mishkin, at the age of twelve, loved God so greatly that he broke his marriage vows to himself.

Mishkin was unfaithful to himself again today, preferring the affections of a stylish sports car and a suede jacket to the ardent constancy and unstinting love of Mishkin.

"Your problem," the analyst said, "is an inability to love yourself."

"But I do love myself!" Mishkin declared. "I do! I really do!"

"Do you expect me to believe that?" the analyst asked. "I saw you looking at Sartre, Camus, Montaigne, Plato, Thoreau – to mention only a few of your lights o'love. When will you stop having these absurd, incessant, and unrewarding affairs?"

"I love myself," Mishkin wept. "I really do."

"Still smoking," the analyst noted. "Still lethargic, passive, uncontrolled. Is this the way you treat one whom you claim to love?"

62

Deep in the woods, Mishkin found an apostrophe. It was lost and crying softly to itself.

Mishkin took it in his arms and stroked its soft fur. The apostrophe sank its curved claws into Mishkin's shoulder. Mishkin ignored the pain and continued to smoke his cigarette.

They took his card and punched it. At once he felt relief, and then boredom, and then anxiety. He felt fine as soon as they put a new card into his hand.

The footprints continued into the woods. Mishkin followed them. He was well armed, prepared to face the fabulous beast. At last he saw it ahead of him and hastily fired. Too late he realized that he had shot one of his avatars. The avatar expired. Mishkin felt a sense of loss that became, inevitably, a sense of relief.

63. The Sorrows of the Man of a Thousand Disguises

The Man of a Thousand Disguises sat in his temporary office and considered the problem of Mishkin and the engine part. Somehow, the two would not come together, the desired juxtaposition would not come off. There was no flow towards the desired objective.

Because of the difficulties inherent in this problem, The Man had been forced to invent himself – a deus ex machina —now standing tongue-tied in front of the audience and endeavouring to explain what was to himself still inexplicable.

Having constructed himself, The Man of a Thousand Disguises was now stuck with himself. Did he also have to explain himself? Quickly, he abolished the necessity for doing so. He only had to explain about how Mishkin and the engine part came together.

But how in fact didthey come together? Did they really have to?

"And so they came to their untimely ends, Mishkin, the cosmic jester, and the engine part, which was the cruel and paradoxical point of his joke. Yes, they perished, and at the same time the Earth fell into the sun, the sun blew up, and the entire galaxy fell through a black hole in the fabric of space-time, thus obliterating the tragi-comedy of human existence, and indeed, all dramas, all existences."

No, delicious though it was, it simply wouldn't do. Mishkin and his engine part had to get together, the original problem had to be solved, all promises and premises had to be kept. After that was done, everything could be blown up but not before.

So there it was again: The Man of a Thousand Disguises still had the unhappy duty of accomplishing the job for which he had created himself.

He thought. Nothing intruded upon his disastrous solitude. Stray conceptions clouded his mind: "Any drug that fucks you up is good". "Depression is inevitable". "Concomitants".

"Paris".

With an effort The Man forced his attention towards the engine part. Where was the damned thing now? In some dusty warehouse on Earth, presumably, awaiting extrication for the delectation of the patient reader.

"But who needs a reader who's a patient?" The Man snarled. Nevertheless, there it was: He was under contractual obligation to himself to construct a ballet for catatonics.

The Man tried to pull himself together. "I am losing my mind."

"Nonexistent problems have the maximum reality."

"Not exactly what we had in mind."

How true it was! People who live in glass psyches shouldn't cast words.

To work: The Man of a Thousand Disguises picked up his analogic slide rule and inferential stylus. Now then: engine part become eagle heart, standing start, running water, ice. So much for the J series. Again now: treasure in the earth, crystal goblet, lathe, laughter, bat, slink, reduction gear.

More like it!

Moving with more confidence now, The Man put all the available data into the recycler and let it stand for three revolutions. Then he pressed the Outcome button. Up came an antelope mounted on a polar bear. Worthless! But wait a minute now– polar bear —yes, it's coming: polarity bears ante lope!A yin function breach delivery, definitely productive.

Now to put it all through the constructs simulator.