“Son of a bitch!” Simon said. “Oh, I don’t mean you!” he said. “That’s just an Earth exclamation. But how come you, the most advanced race in the universe, indulge in such a primitive entertainment as gambling?”
“It helps pass the time,” Gviirl said.
Simon was silent for a while. Gviirl handed him a glass of foaming golden liquid. Simon drank it and said, “That’s the best beer I’ve ever tasted.”
“Of course,” Gviirl said.
Simon became aware then that Anubis and Athena were hiding under the bed. He didn’t blame them, though they should have been used to monstrous-looking creatures by then. Gviirl was as big as an African elephant. She had four legs as thick as an elephant’s to support her enormous weight. The arms, ending in six-fingered hands, must once have been legs in an earlier stage of evolution. Her head was big and high-domed, containing, she said, a brain twice as large as Simon’s. She was too heavy to fly, of course, but she had vestigial wings. These were a pretty lavender color edged with scarlet. Her body was contained in an exoskeleton, a hard chitinous shell striped like a zebra’s. This had an opening underneath to give her lungs room to expand. Simon asked her why she was able to speak such excellent English. She didn’t have the oral cavity of a human, so her pronunciation should have been weird, to say the least.
“Old Bingo fitted me with a device which converts my pronunciation into English sounds,” she said. “Any more questions?”
“Yes, why did my drive fail?”
“That scream you heard?” she said. “That was the last of the stars expiring in a death agony.”
“You mean?” Simon said, stunned.
“Yes. You barely made it in time. The suns in the transdimensional universes have been sucked dry of their energies. There isn’t any more power for the 69X drive.”
“I’m stuck here!”
“Afraid so. There will be no more interstellar travel for you or anyone else, for that matter.”
“I won’t mind if I can get the answer to my question,” Simon said.
“No sweat,” Gviirl replied. “Speaking of which, I suggest you take about three showers a day. You humans don’t smell very good, you know.”
Gviirl wasn’t being nasty. She was just stating a fact. She was condescending but in a kindly way. After all, she was a million years old and couldn’t be expected to treat Simon as any other than a somewhat retarded child. Simon didn’t resent this attitude, but he was glad that he had Anubis and Athena around. They not only kept him from feeling utterly alone, they gave him someone to look down on, too.
Gviirl took Simon on a tour. He visited the museums, the library, and the waterworks and had lunch with some minor dignitaries.
“How’d you like it?” Gviirl said afterward.
“Very impressive,” he said.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “you’ll meet Bingo. He’s dying, but he’s granted you an audience.”
“Do you think he’ll have the answer to my question?” Simon said breathlessly.
“If anyone can answer you, he can,” she said. “He’s the only survivor of the first creatures created by It, you know.”
The Clerun-Gowph called the Creator It because the Creator had no sex, of course.
“He walked and he talked with It?” Simon said. “Then surely he’s the one I’ve been looking for!”
The next morning, after breakfast and a shower, Simon followed Gviirl through the streets to the Great House. Anubis and Athena had refused to come out from under the bed despite all his coaxing. He supposed that they, being psychic, felt the presence of the numinous. It was to be presumed some of it must have rubbed off onto Bingo during his long association with the Creator. Simon didn’t blame them for being frightened. He was scared too.
The Great House was on top of a hill. It was the oldest building in the universe and looked it.
“It lived there while It was getting the Clerun-Gowph started,” Gviirl said.
“And where is It now?” Simon said.
“It went out to lunch one day and never came back,” she said. “You’ll have to ask old Bingo why.”
She led him up the steps and onto a vast porch and into halls that stretched for miles and had ceilings half a mile high. Bingo, however, was in a cozy little room with thick rugs and a blazing fireplace. He was crouching on a mass of rugs around which giant pillows were piled. By him was a pitcher of beer and a big framed photograph.
Bingo was a hoary old cockroachoid who seemed to be asleep at the moment. Simon took advantage of this to look at the photograph. It was a picture of a blue cloud.
“What does that writing under it say?” he asked Gviirl.
“To Bingo With Best Wishes From It.”
Gviirl coughed loudly several times, and after a while Bingo’s eyelids fluttered open.
“The Earthling, Your Ancientship,” Gviirl said.
“Ah, yes, the little creature from far off with some questions,” Bingo said. “Well, son, sit down. Make yourself at home. Have a beer.”
“Thank you, Your Ancientship,” Simon said. “I’ll have a beer, but I prefer to stand.”
Bingo gave a laugh which degenerated into a coughing fit. After he’d recovered, he drank some beer. Then he said, “It took you three thousand years to get here so you could transact a few minutes of business. I admire that, little one-eyeling. As a matter of fact, that’s what’s been keeping me alive. I’ve been hanging on just for this interview.”
“That’s very gratifying, Your Ancientship,” Simon said. “First, though, before I ask the primal question, I’d like to clear up a few of the secondary. Gviirl tells me that It created the Clerun-Gowph. But all life elsewhere in the universe was created by you people.”
“Gviirl’s a young thing and so tends to use imprecise language,” Bingo said. “She shouldn’t have said we created life. She should have said we were responsible for life existing elsewhere.”
“And how’s that?” Simon said.
“Well, many billions of years ago we started to make a scientific survey of every planet in the world. We sent out scouting expeditions first. These didn’t find any sign of life anywhere. But we were interested in geochemistry and all that kind of stuff, you know. So we sent out scientific expeditions. These built bases, the towers that you no doubt have run into. The teams stayed on these planets a long time—from your ephemeral viewpoint, anyway. They dumped their garbage and their excrement in the soupy primeval seas near the towers. These contained microbes and viruses which flourished in the seas. They started to evolve into higher creatures, and so the scientists hung around to observe their development.”
He paused to drink another beer.
“Life on these planets was an accident.”
Simon was shaken. He was the end of a process that had started with cockroach crap.
“That’s as good a way to originate as any,” Bingo said, as if he had read Simon’s thoughts.
After a long silence, Simon said, “Why aren’t there any towers on the planets in my galaxy?”
“The life there didn’t look very promising,” Bingo said.
Simon blushed. Gviirl snickered. Bingo broke into huge laughter and slapped his front thighs. The laughter became a wheezing and a choking, and Gviirl had to slap him on his back and pour some beer down his throat.
Bingo wiped away the tears and said, “I was only kidding, son. The truth was, we were called back before I could build any bases there. The reason for that is this. We built the giant computer and had been feeding all the data needed into it. It took a couple of billion years to do this and for the computer to digest the data. Then it began feeding out the answers. There wasn’t any reason for us to continue surveying after that. All we had to do was to ask the computer and it would tell us what we’d find before we studied a place. So all the Clerun-Gowph packed up and went home.”
“I don’t understand,” Simon said.
“Well, it’s this way, son. I’ve known for three
billion years that a repulsive-looking but pathetic banjo-playing biped named Simon Wagstaff would appear before me exactly at 10:32 A.M., April 1, 8,120,006,000 A.C., Earth chronology. A.C. means After Creation. The biped would ask me some questions, and I’d give him the answers.”
“How could you know that?” Simon said.
“It’s no big deal,” Bingo said. “Once the universe is set up in a particular structure, everything from then on proceeds predictably. It’s like rolling a bowling ball down the return trough.”
“I think I will sit down,” Simon said. “I’ll need a pillow, too, though. Thank you, Gviirl. But, Your Ancientship, what about Chance?”
“No such thing. What seems Chance is merely ignorance on the part of the beholder. If he knew enough, he’d see that things could not have happened otherwise.”
“But I still don’t understand,” Simon said.
“You’re a little slow on the mental trigger, son,” Bingo said. “Here, have another beer. You look pale. I told you that, until the computer started working, we proceeded like everybody else. Blind with ignorance. But once the predictions started coming in, we knew not only all that had happened but what would happen. I could tell you the exact moment I’m going to die. But I won’t because I don’t know it myself. I prefer to remain ignorant. It’s no fun knowing everything. Old It found that out Itself.”
“Could I have another beer?” Simon said.
“Sure. That’s the ticket. Drink.”
“What about It?” Simon said. “Where did It come from?”
“That’s data that’s not in the computer,” Bingo said. He was silent for a long time and presently his eyelids drooped and he was snoring. Gviirl coughed loudly for a minute, and the eyelids opened. Simon stared up at huge red-veined eyes.
“Where was I? Oh, yes. It may have told me where It came from, what It was doing before It created the universe. But that was a long time ago, and I don’t remember now. That is, if It did indeed say a word about it.
“Anyway, what’s the difference? Knowing that won’t affect what’s going to happen to me, and that’s the only thing I really care about.”
“Damn it then,” Simon said, shaking with despair and indignation, “what will happen to you?”
“Oh, I’ll die, and my embalmed body will be put on display for a few million years. And then it’ll crumble. That will be that. Finis for yours truly. There is no such thing as an afterlife. That I know. That is one thing I remember It telling me.”
He paused and said, “I think.”
“But why, then, did It create us!” Simon cried.
“Look at the universe. Obviously, it was made by a scientist, otherwise it wouldn’t be subject to scientific analysis. Our universe, and all the others It has created, are scientific experiments: It is omniscient. But just to make things interesting, It, being omnipotent, blanked out parts of Its mind. Thus, It won’t know what’s going to happen.
“That’s why, I think, It did not come back after lunch. It erased even the memory of Its creation, and so It didn’t even know It was due back for an important meeting with me. I heard reports that It was seen rolling around town acting somewhat confused. It alone knows where It is now, and perhaps not even It knows. Maybe. Anyway, in whatever universe It is, when this universe collapses into a big ball of fiery energy, It’ll probably drop around and see how things worked out.”
Simon rose from the chair and cried, “But why? Why? Why? Didn’t It know what agony and sorrow It would cause sextillions upon sextillions of living beings to suffer? All for nothing?”
“Yes,” Bingo said.
“But why?” Simon Wagstaff shouted. “Why? Why? Why?”
Old Bingo drank a glass of beer, belched, and spoke.
“Why not?”
AFTERWORD
JONATHAN SWIFT SOMERS III:
COSMIC TRAVELLER IN A WHEELCHAIR
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY BY PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER (HONORARY CHIEF KENNEL KEEPER)
Editor’s note: In the November 1976 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, it was announced that a group in Portland, Oregon, called The Bellener Street Irregulars were going to publish something called The Bellener Street Journal. The journal was to be dedicated to the study of the canine detective, Ralph von Wau Wau. The Bellener Street Journal never even saw a first issue, however, due to inexplicable complications within the group.
The following biographical sketch of Jonathan Swift Somers III was written for the journal, and was to be published along with a lost story by Dr. Johann H. Weisstein and a story by Jonathan Swift Somers III entitled, “Jinx.”
Petersburg is a small town in the mid-Illinois county of Menard. It lies in hilly country near the Sangamon River on state route 97. Not far away is New Salem, the reconstructed pioneer village where Abraham Lincoln worked for a while as a postmaster, surveyor and storekeeper. The state capital of Springfield is southeast, a half-hour’s drive or less if traffic is light.
A hilltop cemetery holds two famous people, Anne Rutledge and Edgar Lee Masters. The former (1816-1835) is known only because of the legend, now proven false, that she was Lincoln’s first love, tragically dying before she could marry him. “Bloom forever, O Republic, From the dust of my bosom!”
These words are from the epitaph which Masters wrote for her and are inscribed on her gravestone. Unfortunately, the man who chiseled the epitaph made a typo, driving Masters into a rage. We authors, who have suffered from so many typos, can sympathize with him. However, we have the advantage that we can make sure that reissues contain corrections. There will be no later editions in stone of Anne Rutledge’s epitaph.
Masters (1869-1950) was a poet, novelist and literary critic, known chiefly for his Spoon River Anthology. There is a Spoon River area but no town of that name. Masters chose that name to represent an amalgamation of the actual towns of Lewistown and Petersburg, where he spent most of his childhood and early adulthood. Lewistown, also on route 97, is about forty miles from Petersburg but separated by the Illinois River.
The free verse epitaphs of Masters’ best-known work were modeled after The Greek Anthology but based on people he’d known. These told the truth behind the flattering or laconic statements on the tombs and gravestones. The departed spoke of their lives as they had really been. Some were happy, productive, even creative and heroic. But most recite chronicles of hypocrisy, misery, misunderstanding, failed dreams, greed, narrow-mindedness, egotism, persecution, madness, connivance, cowardice, stupidity, injustice, sorrow, folly and murder.
In other words, the Spoon River citizens were just like big-city residents.
Among the graves in the cemetery of Petersburg are those of Judge Somers and his son, Jonathan Swift Somers II. Neither has any marker, though the grandson has made arrangements to erect stones above both. Masters has the judge complain that he was a famous Illinois jurist, yet he lies unhonored in his grave while the town drunkard, who is buried by his side, has a large monument. Masters does not explain how this came about.
According to Somers III, his grandson, the judge and his wife were not on the best of terms during the ten years preceding the old man’s death. Somers’ grandmother would give no details, but others provided the information that it was because of an indiscretion committed by the judge in a cathouse in Peoria. (This city is mentioned now and then in the Spoon River Anthology.)
The judge’s son, Somers II, sided with his father. This caused the mother to forbid her son to enter her house. In 1910 the judge died, and the following year the son and his wife were drowned in the Sangamon during a picnic outing. The widow refused to pay for monuments for either, insisting that she did not have the funds. Her son’s wife was buried in a family plot near New Goshen, Indiana. That Samantha Tincrowdor Somers preferred not to lie with her husband indicates that she also had strong differences with him.
Jonathan Swift Somers III was born in this unhappy atmosphere on January 6, 1910. This is also Sherlock Holmes’ birthdate, which Somers celebrate
s annually by sending a telegram of congratulations to a certain residence on Baker Street, London.
The forty-three-year-old grandmother took the year-old infant into her house. Though the gravestone incident seems to characterize her as vindictive, she was a very kind and probably too indulgent grandmother to the young Jonathan. Until the age of ten, he had a happy childhood. Even though the Somers’ house was a large gloomy mid-Victorian structure, it was brightened for him by his grandmother and the books he found in the library. A precocious reader, he went through all the lighter volumes before he was eleven. The judge’s philosophical books, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, et al, would be mastered by the time he was eighteen.
Despite his intense interest in books, Jonathan played as hard as any youngster. With his schoolmates he roamed the woody hills and swam and fished in the Sangamon. He gave promises of being a notable athlete, beating all his peers in the dashes and the broad jump. Among his many pets were a raven, a raccoon, a fox and a bullsnake.
Then infantile paralysis felled him. Treatment was primitive in those days, but a young physician, son of the Doctor Hill whose epitaph is in the Anthology, got him through. Jonathan came back out of the valley of the shadow, only to find that he would be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. This knowledge resulted in another paralysis, a mental freezing. His grandmother despaired of his mind for a while, fearing that he had retreated so far into himself he would never come back out. Jonathan himself now recalls little of this period. Apparently, it was so traumatic that even today his conscious mind refuses to touch it.
“It was as if I were embedded in a crystal ball. I could see others around me, but I could not hear or touch them. And the crystal magnified and distorted their faces and figures. I was a human fly in amber, stuck in time, preserved from decay but isolated forever from the main flow of life.”
Amanda Knapp Somers, his grandmother, would not admit that he would never walk again. She told him that he only needed faith in God to overcome his “disability.” That was the one word she used when referring to his paralysis. Disability. She avoided mentioning his legs; they, too, were disabilities.