Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Do you remember,” asked Ptolemy, “the excruciating problems of programming the Beast’s computer brain?”

  “Lord yes!” Manisfree chuckled. “And what about the difficulties of giving it a parthenogenetic reproductive system?”

  “Almost had us stopped,” said Dalton. “But then, consider how we worked to coordinate and stabilize the Beast’s movements! The poor thing lurched around the lab for weeks before we got that right.”

  “It killed old Duglaston of Neurology,” Ptolemy said sadly.

  “Accidents will happen,” Dalton said. “I’m glad we were able to tell Administration that Duglaston had gone on his sabbatical.”

  The professors seemed to have a thousand anecdotes about the building of the Beast. But Joenes impatiently broke into their reminiscences.

  “What I wanted to know,” Joenes said, “is why you built the Beast?”

  Blake said, “The Beast was necessary, Joenes. It or something exactly like it was needed for the success of Utopian Chorowait, and by extension, for the fulfillment of the future which Chorowait represents. The Beast, you see, is the implicit necessity upon which Chorowait rests.

  “The Beast, my dear Joenes, is nothing less than Necessity personified. Today, with all mountains climbed and all oceans plumbed, with the planets within reach and the stars much too far away, with the gods gone and the state dissolving, what is there left? Man must pit his strength against something; we have provided the Beast for him. No longer must man dwell alone; the Beast is forever lurking nearby. No longer can man turn against himself in his idleness; he must be forever alert against the depredations of the Beast.”

  Manisfree said, “The Beast makes Chorowait society stable and cohesive. If the people did not work together, the Beast would kill them one by one. Only by the efforts of the entire populace of Chorowait is the Beast kept in reasonable check.”

  “It gives them a healthy respect for religion,” Dalton said. One needs religion when the Beast is on the prowl.”

  “It destroys complacency,” Blake said. “No one could be complacent in the face of the Beast.”

  “Because of the Beast,” Manisfree said, “the community of Chorowait is happy, family-oriented, religious, close to the soil, and continually aware of the necessity for virtue.”

  Joenes asked, “What stops the Beast from simply destroying the entire community?”

  “Programming,” Dalton said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Beast has been programmed, which is to say, certain information and responses have been built into its artificial brain. Needless to add, we took a great deal of care over that.”

  “You taught the Beast not to kill University professors,” Joenes said.

  “Well, yes,” Dalton answered. “We aren’t too proud of that, to tell you the truth. But we thought we might be necessary for a while.”

  “How else is the Beast programmed?” Joenes asked.

  “It is taught to seek out and destroy any ruler or ruling group of Chorowait people; next in priority to destroy the unvirtuous, and next to destroy any Chorowaitian. Because of that, any ruler must protect both himself and his people from the Beast. That in itself is quite enough to keep him out of mischief. But the ruler must also cooperate with the priesthood, without whose aid he is helpless. This serves as a decisive check on his powers.”

  “We took great care to preserve the separation between church and state,” Harris said. “There is no single combination, you see, which will serve for all times. Instead, there is a vast quantity of formulae which must be calculated each day, using lunar and stellar cycles, and variables such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, and the like.”

  “These calculations must keep the priests very busy,” Joenes said.

  “Indeed they do,” Hanley said. “So busy that they have very little time in which to interfere with the affairs of the state. As a final safeguard against the possibility of a rich, complacent, and overweening priesthood, we have programmed a recurring random factor into the Beast. Against this nothing suffices, and the Beast will kill the witch doctor and no other. In that way, the witch doctor runs the same danger as does the ruler.”

  “You can see the interlocking nature of all this,” Blake said. “Both the ruler and the witch doctor maintain their positions only through the support of the people. An unpopular ruler would have no men to help him against the Beast, and would quickly be killed. An unpopular witch doctor would not receive the vital substances which he needs in order to check the Beast, and which must be gathered by the efforts of the entire people. Thus, both the ruler and the witch doctor hold power by popular consent and approval, and the Beast thus institutes a genuine democracy.”

  “There are some interesting sidelights on all this,” Hanley of Anthropology said. “I believe this is the first time in recorded history that the full range of magical artifacts has been objectively necessary for existence. And it is probably the first time there has ever been a creature on Earth which partook so closely of the supernatural. It’s complicated, of course, but the pioneer stage of any society is often marked by unusual problems. Luckily, our pioneer stage is almost at an end.”

  “It ceases,” Manisfree said, “when the Beast spawns.”

  The professors paused for a moment of reverent silence.

  “You see,” Ptolemy said, “we went to considerable difficulty to make the Beast parthenogenetic. Thus, self-fertilizing, its unkillable spawn will quickly spread to neighboring communities. The children will not be programmed to stay within the confines of Chorowait Mountain, as the original Beast is. Instead, each will seek out and terrorize a community of its own.”

  “But other people will be helpless against them,” Joenes said.

  “Not for long. They will go to neighboring Chorowait for advice, and will learn the formulae for controlling their own particular Beast. In this way, the communities of the future will be born, and will spread over the face of the earth.”

  “Nor do we plan to leave it simply at that,” Dalton said excitedly. “The Beast is all very well, but neither it nor its children are completely safe against man’s destructive ingenuity. Therefore we have obtained more government grants, and we are building other creations.”

  “We will fill the skies with mechanical vampires!” Ptolemy said.

  “Cleverly articulated zombies will walk the earth!” said Dalton.

  “Fantastic monsters will swim in the seas!” said Manisfree.

  “Mankind shall live among the fabulous creations it has always craved,” Hanley said. “The griffin and the unicorn, the monoceros and the martikora, the hippogrif and the monster rate, all of these and many others will live. Superstition and fear will replace superficiality and boredom; and there will be courage, too, in facing the djin. There will be happiness when the unicorn lays his great head in a virgin s lap, and joy when the Little People reward a virtuous man with a bag of gold! The greedy man will be infallibly punished by the coreophagi, and the lustful must beware of meeting the incarnate Aphrodite Pandemos. Man will no longer be alone in the universe, but will live with creatures as marvelous as himself. And he will live in accordance with the only rules his nature will accept—the rules which come from a supernatural made manifest upon the earth!”

  Joenes looked at the professors, and their faces glowed with happiness. Seeing this, Joenes did not ask if the rest of the world outside of Chorowait wanted this reign of the fabulous, or if they should perhaps be consulted in it. Nor did Joenes state his own impression, that this reign of the fabulous would be nothing more than a quantity of man-made machines built to act like the products of men’s imaginations, and, instead of being divine and infallible, would be merely mortal and prone to error, absurdly destructive, extremely irritating, and bound to be destroyed as soon as men had contrived the machinery to do so.

  But it was not entirely a regard for his colleagues’ feelings that stopped Joenes from saying these and other things. He a
lso feared that such dedicated men might kill him if he showed a real spirit of dissent. Therefore he kept silent, and on the long ride back to the University he brooded on the difficulties of man’s existence.

  When they reached the University, Joenes decided that he would leave the cloistered life as soon as he possibly could.

  10. HOW JOENES ENTERED THE GOVERNMENT

  (As told by Maaoa of Samoa.)

  An opportunity to leave the University came the following week when a government recruiter visited the campus. This man’s name was Ollin, and his title was Under-Secretary in Charge of Government Placement. Joenes went to see him, and Under-Secretary Ollin greeted him heartily.

  “Take a seat,” Ollin said. “Smoke? Drink? Glad to see someone turn up. I thought all you eggheads here at Stephens Wood had your own plans for saving the world. Some sort of mechanical monster, isn’t it?”

  Joenes was amazed that Ollin knew about the Chorowait experiment.

  “We keep our eyes open,” Ollin said. “It had us fooled at first because we thought it was just some gimmick for a monster movie. But now we know, and we’ve got FBI men on the case. Working undercover, they presently make up one-third of the Chorowait group. We’re going to move as soon as we’ve collected sufficient evidence.”

  “The mechanical Beast may spawn soon,” Joenes said.

  “It’ll just give us more evidence,” Ollin said. “Anyhow, let’s direct our attention to you. I take it you’re interested in government service?”

  “I am. My name is Joenes, and I—”

  “I know all that,” Ollin said. He unlocked a large briefcase and removed a notebook.

  “Let me see,” he said, turning over the pages. “Joenes. Arrested in San Francisco for making an alleged subversive speech. Brought before a Congressional committee and judged an uncooperative and disrespectful witness, particularly in respect to your association with Arnold and Ronald Black, the twin Octagon spies. Tried by Oracle and given a ten-year suspended sentence. Spent a brief time in the Hollis Home for the Criminally Insane, then found employment at this University. During your time here you met daily with the founders of the Chorowait community.”

  Ollin closed the notebook and asked, “Is that more or less correct?”

  “More or less,” Joenes said, sensing the impossibility of argument or explanation. “I suppose my record renders me unfit for service in the government.”

  Ollin burst into hearty laughter at this. Wiping his eyes, he said, “Joenes, these surroundings must have made you a little soft in the head. There’s nothing so terrible in your record. Idealism can’t always be channeled in the ways the government would like to see it channeled. We in government aren’t hypocrites, Joenes. We know that none of us is absolutely pure, and that every man has some little thing which he isn’t exactly proud of. So you have really done nothing at all.”

  Joenes expressed his gratitude at the government’s attitude.

  “The man you can really thank,” Ollin said, “is Sean Feinstein. In his capacity as Special Assistant to the Presidential Assistant, he put forth these views about you. We made a careful study of your case, and decided that you were the sort of man we wanted in government.”

  “Am I really?” Joenes asked. “Past a doubt. We politicians are realists. We recognize the myriad problems which assail us today. To solve those problems we need the most daring, independent, fearless thinkers we can get. Nothing but the best will do, and no secondary considerations will stop us. We need men like you, Joenes. Will you enter the service of the Government?”

  “I will!” Joenes cried, aflame with enthusiasm. “And I will try to live up to the faith that you and Sean Feinstein have in me.”

  “I knew you’d say that, Joenes,” Ollin said huskily. “They all do. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Sign here and here.”

  Ollin presented Joenes with a standard government contract, which Joenes signed. The Undersecretary put the paper in his briefcase and shook Joenes warmly by the hand.

  “Your position in the government starts as of this moment. Thank you, God Bless you, and remember that we are all counting on you. Now you must excuse me since I have a speaking engagement at Radcliffe.”

  The following morning, Joenes received an official letter by special messenger. He was ordered to report to Room 432, East Wing, Portico Building, Washington, D.C., and to do so with the utmost dispatch. The letter was signed by no less a person than John Mudge, Special Assistant to the Services Coordination Chief.

  Joenes took immediate leave of his colleagues, gazed for the lasttime on the green lawns and concrete paths of the University, and boarded the first jet for Washington.

  It was a thrilling moment for Joenes when he arrived in the capital city. He walked down the rose marble streets toward the Portico Building, passing on his way the White House, seat of imperial American power. To his left was the great expanse of the Octagon, built to replace the smaller Pentagon. Beyond that were the Buildings of Congress!

  For Joenes, these buildings were the embodiment of the romance of history. The glory of Old Washington, capitol of the Hellenic Confederation before the disastrous Civil War, swam before his eyes. It was as though he could see the world-shaking debates between Pericles, representative of the marble cutter’s lobby, and Themistocles, the fiery submarine commander. He thought of Cleon coming here from his home in Arcadian New Hampshire, putting forth his terse ideas about the prosecution of the war. The philosopher Alcibiades had lived here for a time, representing his native city of Louisiana. Xenephon had stood on these steps, and had been given a standing ovation for leading his ten thousand men all the way from the banks of the Yalu to the sanctuary of Pusan.

  The memories crowded thick and fast! Here Thucydides had written his definitive, history of the tragic War Between the States. Hippocrates the Hellenic Surgeon-General had conquered yellow fever here; and true to the oath he had devised, had never spoken of it. And here Lycurgus and Solon, the first judges of the Supreme Court, had held their famous debates on the nature of justice.

  These famous men seemed to crowd around him as he crossed Washingtons wide boulevards. Thinking of them, Joenes resolved to do his utmost, and to prove worthy of his ancestors.

  In an ecstatic frame of mind, Joenes arrived at Room 432 of the East Room of the Portico Building. John Mudge, the Special Assistant, made him welcome without delay.

  “Well, Joenes,” Mudge said, “you’ve been assigned to us, and were very glad to have you. I think I should explain immediately what this office does. We operate as an inter-Service agency designed to avoid duplication of effort between the semi-autonomous forces of the military. Aside from that, we also serve as an intelligence and information agency for all Service programs, and as a governmental policy planner in the fields of military, psychological and economic warfare.”

  “That sounds like quite a lot,” Joenes said.

  “It is far too much,” Mudge answered. “And yet, our work is absolutely necessary. Take our primary task of coordination between the Services. Only last year, before this office was formed, elements of our Army fought a three-day pitched battle in the deepest jungles of northern Thailand. Imagine their chagrin when the smoke cleared and they found that they had been attacking a strongly entrenched battalion of U.S. Marines! Imagine the effect upon Service Morale! With our military obligations stretched so thinly across the globe, and so intricately disposed, we must be forever vigilant against incidents of this kind.” Joenes nodded in agreement. Mudge went on to explain the necessity for their other duties.

  “Take intelligence, for example,” Mudge said. “At one time that had been the special province of the Central Intelligence Agency. But today, CIA refuses to release its information, requesting instead that it be given more troops to deal with the problems it uncovers.”

  “Deplorable,” Joenes said.

  “And of course the same situation holds true in greater degree for Army Intelligence, Navy Intelligence, Ai
r Force Intelligence, Marine Corps Intelligence, Space Corps Intelligence, and all the others. The patriotism of the men of these Services cannot be doubted; but each, having been given the means of waging independent warfare, considers his Service the only one in a position to judge the danger and prosecute the conflict to a conclusion. This state of affairs renders any information on the enemy contradictory and suspect. And this in turn paralyzes the government, which has no reliable information upon which to plan policy.”

  “I had no idea the problem was so severe,” Joenes said.

  “It is severe and insoluble,” Mudge replied. “To my way of thinking, the fault lies in the very size of the governmental organization, which has swollen past all precedent. A scientist friend of mine once told me that an organism which grows beyond its natural size tends to break up into its component parts, eventually to begin the growing process all over again. We have grown too huge, and fragmentation has set in. Yet our growth was a natural consequence of the times, and we cannot allow any breakup to occur as yet. The Cold War is still upon us, and we must patch and mend and hold our Services in some semblance of order and cooperation. We in Coordination must discover the truth about the enemy, present this truth to the government as policy, and induce the Services to act upon this policy. We must persevere, until the external danger is past, and then hope to reduce the size of our bureaucracy before the forces of chaos do the job for us.”

  “I think I understand,” Joenes said. “And I am in full accord.”

  “I knew you would be,” Mudge replied. “I knew it from the time I read your dossier and requested your appointment here. I told myself that this man would be a natural coordinator, and in spite of many difficulties I had you cleared for government service.”

  “But I thought that was the work of Sean Feinstein,” Joenes said.