by Fritz Leiber
CHAPTER 16
"Familiar with infinite universe sheafs and open-ended postulate systems?--the notion that everything is possible--and I mean everything--and everything has happened. _Everything._"
--Heinlein
THE POSSIBILITY-BINDERS
An hour later, I was nursing a weak highball and a black eye in thesleepy-time darkness on the couch farthest from the piano, half watchingthe highlighted party going on around it and the bar, while the Placewaited for rendezvous with Egypt and the Battle of Alexandria.
Sid had swept all our outstanding problems into one big bundle and,since his hand held the joker of the Minor Maintainer, he had settledthem all as high-handedly as if they'd been those of a bunch ofschoolkids.
It amounted to this:
We'd been Introverted when most of the damning things had happened, sopresumably only we knew about them, and we were all in so deep one wayor another that we'd all have to keep quiet to protect our delicatecomplexions.
Well, Erich's triggering the bomb did balance rather neatly Bruce'sincitement to mutiny, and there was Doc's drinking, while everybody whohad declared for the peace message had something to hide. Mark and KabyI felt inclined to trust anywhere, Maud for sure, and Erich in thisparticular matter, damn him. Illy I didn't feel at all easy about, but Itold myself there always has to be a fly in the ointment--a darn bigone this time, and furry.
Sid didn't mention his own dirty linen, but he knew we knew he'd floppedbadly as boss of the Place and only recouped himself by that last-minuteflimflam.
Remembering Sid's trick made me think for a moment about the realSpiders. Just before I snuck out of Surgery, I'd had a vivid picture ofwhat they must look like, but now I couldn't get it again. It depressedme, not being able to remember--oh, I probably just imagined I'd had apicture, like a hophead on a secret-of-the-universe kick. Me ever findout anything about the Spiders?--except for nervous notions like I'd hadduring the recent fracas?--what a laugh!
The funniest thing (ha-ha!) was that I had ended up the least-trustedperson. Sid wouldn't give me time to explain how I'd deduced what hadhappened to the Maintainer, and even when Lili spoke up and admittedhiding it, she acted so bored I don't think everybody believedher--although she did spill the realistic detail that she hadn't usedpartial Inversion on the glove; she'd just turned it inside out to makeit a right and then done a full Inversion to get the lining back inside.
* * * * *
I tried to get Doc to confirm that he'd reasoned the thing out the sameway I had, but he said he had been blacked out the whole time, exceptduring the first part of the hunt, and he didn't remember having anybright ideas at all. Right now, he was having Maud explain to him twice,in detail, everything that had happened. I decided that it was going totake a little more work before my reputation as a great detective wasestablished.
I looked over the edge of the couch and just made out in the gloom oneof Bruce's black gloves. It must have been kicked there. I fished it up.It was the right-hand one. My big clue, and was I sick of it! Gotmittens, God forbid! I slung it away and, like a lurking octopus, Illyshot up a tentacle from the next couch, where I hadn't known he wasresting, and snatched the glove like it was a morsel of underwatergarbage. These ETs can seem pretty shuddery non-human at times.
I thought of what a cold-blooded, skin-saving louse Illy had been, andabout Sid and his easy suspicions, and Erich and my black eye, and how,as usual, I'd got left alone in the end. My men!
Bruce had explained about being an A-tech. Like a lot of us, he'd hadseveral widely different jobs during his first weeks in the Change Worldand one of them had been as secretary to a group of the minor atomicsboys from the Manhattan-Project-Earth-Satellite days. I gathered he'dalso absorbed some of his bothersome ideas from them. I hadn't quitedecided yet what species of heroic heel he belonged to, but he was thickwith Mark and Erich again. Everybody's men!
Sid didn't have to argue with anybody; all the wild compulsions andmighty resolves were dead now, anyway until they'd had a good long rest.I sure could use one myself, I knew.
The party at the piano was getting wilder. Lili had been dancing theblack bottom on top of it and now she jumped down into Sid's andSevensee's arms, taking a long time about it. She'd been drinking a lotand her little gray dress looked about as innocent on her as diaperswould on Nell Gwyn. She continued her dance, distributing her marks offavor equally between Sid, Erich and the satyr. Beau didn't mind a bit,but serenely pounded out "Tonight's the Night"--which she'd practicallyshouted to him not two minutes ago.
I was glad to be out of the party. Who can compete with a highlyexperienced, utterly disillusioned seventeen-year-old really throwingherself away for the first time?
* * * * *
Something touched my hand. Illy had stretched a tentacle into a furrywire to return me the black glove, although he ought to have known Ididn't want it. I pushed it away, privately calling Illy a washed-outmoronic tarantula, and right away I felt a little guilty. What right hadI to be critical of Illy? Would my own character have shown to advantageif I'd been locked in with eleven octopoids a billion years away? Forthat matter, where did I get off being critical of anyone?
Still, I was glad to be out of the party, though I kept on watching it.Bruce was drinking alone at the bar. Once Sid had gone over to him andthey'd had one together and I'd heard Bruce reciting from Rupert Brookethose deliberately corny lines, "For England's the one land, I know,Where men with Splendid Hearts may go; and Cambridgeshire, of allEngland, The Shire for Men who Understand;" and I'd remembered thatBrooke too had died young in World War One and my ideas had got fuzzy.But mostly Bruce was just calmly drinking by himself. Every once in awhile Lili would look at him and stop dead in her dancing and laugh.
I'd figured out this Bruce-Lili-Erich business as well as I cared to.Lili had wanted the nest with all her heart and nothing else would eversatisfy her, and now she'd go to hell her own way and probably die ofBright's disease for a third time in the Change World. Bruce hadn'twanted the nest or Lili as much as he wanted the Change World and thechances it gave for Soldierly cavorting and poetic drunks; Lili's seedwasn't his idea of healing the cosmos; maybe he'd make a real mutinysome day, but more likely he'd stick to bar-room epics.
His and Lili's infatuation wouldn't die completely, no matter how rancidit looked right now. The real-love angle might go, but Change wouldmagnify the romance angle and it might seem to them like a big thing ofa sort if they met again.
Erich had his _Kamerad_, shaped to suit him, who'd had the guts andcleverness to disarm the bomb he'd had the guts to trigger. You have tohand it to Erich for having the nerve to put us all in a situation wherewe'd have to find the Maintainer or fry, but I don't know anythingdisgusting enough to hand to him.
I had tried a while back. I had gone up behind him and said, "Hey, how'smy wicked little commandant? Forgotten your _und so weiter_?" and as heturned, I clawed my nails and slammed him across the cheek. That's how Igot the black eye. Maud wanted to put an electronic leech on it, but Itook the old handkerchief in ice water. Well, at any rate Erich had hisscratches to match Bruce's, not as deep, but four of them, and I toldmyself maybe they'd get infected--I hadn't washed my hands since thehunt. Not that Erich doesn't love scars.
* * * * *
Mark was the one who helped me up after Erich knocked me down.
"You got any omnias for that?" I snapped at him.
"For what?" Mark asked.
"Oh, for everything that's been happening to us," I told himdisgustedly.
He seemed to actually think for a moment and then he said, "_Omniamutantur, nihil interit._"
"Meaning?" I asked him.
He said, "All things change, but nothing is really lost."
It would be a wonderful philosophy to stand with against the ChangeWinds. Also damn silly. I wondered if Mark real
ly believed it. I wishedI could. Sometimes I come close to thinking it's a lot of baloney tryingto be any decent kind of Demon, even a good Entertainer. Then I tellmyself, "That's life, Greta. You've got to love through it somehow." Butthere are times when some of these cookies are not too easy to love.
Something brushed the palm of my hand again. It was Illy's tentacle,with the tendrils of the tip spread out like a little bush. I started topull my hand away, but then I realized the Loon was simply lonely. Isurrendered my hand to the patterned gossamer pressures offeather-talk.
Right away I got the words, "Feeling lonely, Greta girl?"
It almost floored me, I tell you. Here I was understanding feather-talk,which I just didn't, and I was understanding it in English, which didn'tmake sense at all.
For a second, I thought Illy must have spoken, but I knew he hadn't, andfor a couple more seconds I thought he was working telepathy on me,using the feather-talk as cues. Then I tumbled to what was happening: hewas playing English on my palm like on the keyboard of his squeakbox,and since I could play English on a squeakbox myself, my mind translatedautomatically.
Realizing this almost gave my mind stage fright, but I was too fagged tobe hocused by self-consciousness. I just lay back and let the thoughtscome through. It's good to have someone talk to you, even an underweightoctopus, and without the squeaks Illy didn't sound so silly; hisphrasing was soberer.
* * * * *
"Feeling sad, Greta girl, because you'll never understand what'shappening to us all," Illy asked me, "because you'll never be anythingbut a shadow fighting shadows--and trying to love shadows in between thebattles? It's time you understood we're not really fighting a war atall, although it looks that way, but going through a kind of evolution,though not exactly the kind Erich had in mind.
"Your Terran thought has a word for it and a theory for it--a theorythat recurs on many worlds. It's about the four orders of life: Plants,Animals, Men and Demons. Plants are energy-binders--they can't movethrough space or time, but they can clutch energy and transform it.Animals are space-binders--they can move through space. Man (Terran orET, Lunan or non-Lunan) is a time-binder--he has memory.
"Demons are the fourth order of evolution, possibility-binders--they canmake all of what might be part of what is, and that is theirevolutionary function. Resurrection is like the metamorphosis of acaterpillar into a butterfly: a third-order being breaks out of thechrysalis of its lifeline into fourth-order life. The leap from theripped cocoon of an unchanging reality is like the first animal's leapwhen he ceases to be a plant, and the Change World is the core ofmeaning behind the many myths of immortality.
"All evolution looks like a war at first--octopoids against monopoids,mammals against reptiles. And it has a necessary dialectic: there mustbe the thesis--we call it Snake--and the antithesis--Spider--beforethere can be the ultimate synthesis, when all possibilities are fullyrealized in one ultimate universe. The Change War isn't the blinddestruction it seems.
"Remember that the Serpent is your symbol of wisdom and the Spider yoursign for patience. The two names are rightly frightening to you, for allhigh existence is a mixture of horror and delight. And don't besurprised, Greta girl, at the range of my words and thoughts; in a way,I've had a billion years to study Terra and learn her languages andmyths.
"Who are the real Spiders and Snakes, meaning who were the firstpossibility-binders? Who was Adam, Greta girl? Who was Cain? Who wereEve and Lilith?
"In binding all possibility, the Demons also bind the mental with thematerial. All fourth-order beings live inside and outside all minds,throughout the whole cosmos. Even this Place is, after its fashion, agiant brain: its floor is the brainpan, the boundary of the Void is thecortex of gray matter--yes, even the Major and Minor Maintainers areanalogues of the pineal and pituitary glands, which in some form sustainall nervous systems.
"There's the real picture, Greta girl."
The feather-talk faded out and Illy's tendril tips merged into a softpad on which I fingered, "Thanks, Daddy Longlegs."
* * * * *
Chewing over in my mind what Illy had just told me, I looked back at thegang around the piano. The party seemed to be breaking up; at least someof them were chopping away at it. Sid had gone to the control divan andwas getting set to tune in Egypt. Mark and Kaby were there with him, allbursting with eagerness and the vision of tanks on ranks of mountedZombie bowmen going up in a mushroom cloud; I thought of what Illy hadtold me and I managed a smile--seems we've got to win and lose all thebattles, every which way.
Mark had just put on his Parthian costume, groaning cheerfully,"Trousers again!" and was striding around under a hat like a fur-linedice-cream cone and with the sleeves of his metal-stuffed candys flappingover his hands. He waved a short sword with a heart-shaped guard atBruce and Erich and told them to get a move on.
Kaby was going along on the operation wearing the old-woman disguiseintended for Benson-Carter. I got a half-hearted kick out of knowing shewas going to have to cover that chest and hobble.
Bruce and Erich weren't taking orders from Mark just yet. Erich wentover and said something to Bruce at the bar, and Bruce got down andwent over with Erich to the piano, and Erich tapped Beau on the shoulderand leaned over and said something to him, and Beau nodded and yanked"Limehouse Blues" to a fast close and started another piece, somethingslow and nostalgic.
Erich and Bruce waved to Mark and smiled, as if to show him that whetherhe came over and stood with them or not, the legate and the lieutenantand the commandant were very much together. And while Sevensee huggedLili with a simple enthusiasm that made me wonder why I've wasted somuch imagination on genetic treatments for him, Erich and Bruce sang:
"_To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned, To our brothers in the tunnels outside time, Sing three Change-resistant Zombies, raised from death and robot-crammed, And Commandos of the Spiders-- Here's to crime! We're three blind mice on the wrong time-track, Hush--hush--hush! We've lost our now and will never get back, Hush--hush--hush! Change Commandos out on the spree, Damned through all possibility, Ghostgirls, think kindly on such as we, Hush--hush--hush!_"
While they were singing, I looked down at my charcoal skirt and over atMaud and Lili and I thought, "Three gray hustlers for three blackhussars, that's our speed." Well, I'd never thought of myself as ahigh-speed job, winning all the races--I wouldn't feel comfortable thatway. Come to think of it, we've got to lose and win all the races in thelong run, the way the course is laid out.
I fingered to Illy, "That's the picture, all right, Spider boy."
--FRITZ LEIBER
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ March and April 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
