The Journey of Joenes

by Robert Sheckley

  Laka drew back from him with an involuntary shudder of revulsion.

  “What’s wrong?” Joenes asked. “Shouldn’t I touch your hair?”

  “It isn’t that,” Laka said. “The trouble is, I generally dislike being touched at all. Believe me, it has nothing to do with you. It’s simply a part of my disposition.”

  “How extraordinary!” Joenes said. “And yet you came to this community willingly, and you remain here of your own free will?”

  “That’s true,” Laka said. “It is a curious thing, but many civilized people who are attracted to a primitive existence have an aversion to the so-called pleasures of the body which the professors study with such great interest. In my own case, which is not atypical, I dearly love the mountains and the fields, and I rejoice in all practical work such as farming, fishing, or hunting. In order to have these things, I am willing to restrain my personal distaste for sexual experiences.”

  Joenes found this amazing, and he reflected upon the difficulties one encountered in populating a utopian community with people. His thoughts were interrupted by Laka, who had composed herself. With her feelings under careful restraint, she put her arms around Joenes’s neck and drew him to her.

  But now Joenes felt no more desire for her than he would for a tree or a cloud. Gently he pulled her hands away, saying, “No, Laka, I will not do violence to your natural tastes.”

  “But you must!” she cried. “It is the custom!”

  “Since I am not a member of the community, I do not have to follow the custom.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” she said. “But all the other professors follow the custom, and then they argue the rights or wrongs of it later, in day light.”

  “What they do is their own business,” Joenes said, unmoved.

  “It’s my fault,” Laka said. “I should have had better control over my feelings. But if you could only know how I have prayed for self-mastery!”

  “I’ve no doubt of that,” Joenes said. “But the offer of hospitality has been made, and thus the spirit of the custom has been kept. Remember that, Laka, and return now to your husband.”

  “I would be ashamed,” Laka said. “The other women would know that something was wrong if I returned before daylight, and they would laugh at me. Also, my husband would be displeased.”

  “But doesn’t he grow jealous and revengeful when you do this?”

  “Of course he does,” Laka said. “What kind of man would he be if he didn’t? But he also has a great respect for learning, and a deep belief in the customs of Chorowait. Because of that, he insists that I take part in customs like this, even though it tears his heart apart to see me do so.”

  “He must be a very unhappy man,” Joenes said.

  “You’re wrong, my husband is one of the happiest men in the community. My husband believes that true happiness is spiritual, and that true spirituality can be acquired only through pain. So his pain makes him happy, or so he tells me. Also he follows Dr. Broign’s prescription nearly every day, and has become the best runner and swimmer in the community.”

  Joenes hated to cause Laka’s husband pain, even if that pain brought him happiness. But he also hated to cause Laka pain by sending her home. And he didn’t want to cause himself pain by doing something that had become repugnant to him. There seemed no good way out of these difficulties, so Joenes told Laka to sleep in a corner of the cabin. That at least would spare her from being shamed in front of the other women.

  Laka kissed him on the forehead with cold lips. Then she curled up on some pine boughs in the corner and went to sleep. Joenes found that sleep eluded him for a long time; but at last he dozed.

  The events of that night were not finished, however. Joenes came suddenly awake in the small hours, alert and fearful, but with no idea of what had awakened him. The moon was down, and the darkness was at its most profound. Crickets, night birds, and small beasts of the forest has ceased all movement and all sound.

  Joenes felt the skin along his spine prickle. He turned towards the door, certain that Laka’s husband had come to kill him. Joenes had considered this possibility all night, since he had his doubts about Dr. Broign’s prescription.

  Then he realized that it was not an indignant husband who had shocked the night into silence. For now he heard a terrifying roar, of a fury and passion that could never have issued from a human throat. It stopped suddenly, and Joenes heard the movement of some huge creature in the underbrush outside.

  “What is it?” Joenes asked.

  Laka had risen to her feet, and she clung to Joenes as though all the strength had gone from her limbs. She whispered, “It is the Beast!”

  “But I thought that was a myth,” Joenes said.

  “There are no myths on Chorowait Mountain,” Laka said. “We worship the Sun and Moon, which are real. And we fear the Beast, which is just as real as a chipmunk. Sometimes we can placate the Beast, and sometimes we can drive it away. But tonight it comes to kill.”

  Joenes did not doubt any longer, especially when he heard the crash of an enormous body against the wall of the cabin. Although the wall was made of seasoned logs fastened with thongs and pegs, the logs were shattered by the impact of the Beast’s body. And looking up, Joenes found himself staring full into the face of the Beast.

  This creature was like nothing that Joenes had ever seen. In front it resembled a tiger, except that its massive head was black rather than tawny-striped. In the middle it was reminiscent of a bird, for rudimentary wings grew just below its shoulders. In back it was like a snake, possessing a tail that was twice as long as the Beast itself, as thick in its thickest part as a man’s thigh, and scaled and barbed all over.

  All of this Joenes saw in an instant, so strongly did the Beast impress itself upon his senses. When the Beast crouched to spring, Joenes scooped the fainting Laka in his arms and fled from the cabin. The Beast did not follow at once, but amused itself with a few minutes of wanton destruction before giving chase.

  Joenes was able to join a group of village hunters. These men, with Lunu at their head, stood with spears and arrows poised, ready to engage in battle against the Beast.

  Standing nearby was the village witch doctor and his two assistants. The witch doctor’s wrinkled old face was painted ochre and blue. In his right hand he held a skull, and with his left hand he poked frantically through a pile of magical ingredients. At the same time he was cursing his assistants.

  “Idiots!” he was saying. “Criminally incompetent fools! Where is the moss from the dead man’s head?”

  “It is under your left foot, sir,” one of the assistants said.

  “What a place for it!” the witch doctor responded. “Give it here. Now where is the red shroud string?”

  “In your pouch, sir,” the other assistant answered.

  The witch doctor drew it out and threaded it through the eye sockets of the skull. He bound the moss in the nose opening, then turned to his assistants.

  “You, Huang, I sent to read the stars; and you, Pollito, I sent to learn the message of the sacred golden deer. Tell me quickly and without delay what these messages were and what the gods request in order for us to stop the Beast tonight.”

  Huang said, “The stars told us to bind rosemary widdershins tonight.”

  The witch doctor seized a sprig of rosemary from his pile of ingredients and bound it to the skull with a shroud string, turning the string three times as the sun turns.

  Pollito said, “The message of the sacred golden deer was to give the skull a pinch of snuff; that he said would be enough.”

  “Spare me your moronic rhyming,” the witch doctor said, “and give me the snuff.”

  “I don’t have it, sir.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “Earlier you said that you had put the snuff in a safe place.”

  “Naturally. But in which safe place did I put it?” the witch doctor asked, rummaging wildly through his ingredients.

  “Perhaps it’s at t
he Underworld Altar,” Huang said.

  “Maybe it’s at the Divining Place,” Pollito said.

  “No, none of those places seem right,” the witch doctor said. “Let me think. …”

  The Beast, however, gave him no further time for thought. It trotted out of Joenes’s cabin and sprang at the line of hunters. A dozen arrows and spears darted forward to meet it, humming in the air like angry hornets. But these missiles had no effect. Unharmed, the Beast burst through the hunters’ line. Already the witch doctor and his assistants had gathered up their ingredients and sprinted into the forest. The hunters also ran, but Lunu and two others were killed.

  Joenes followed the hunters, and fear lent speed to his feet. At last he came to a clearing in the forest with a weathered stone altar in its center. Here he found the witch doctor and his assistants, and behind them shuddered the hunters. In the forest, the howls of the Beast were growing louder.

  The witch doctor was fumbling on the ground near the altar, saying, “I’m almost positive I put the snuff around here somewhere. I came here to ask the. Sun’s special blessing on it this afternoon. Pollito, do you remember what I did then?”

  “I wasn’t here,” Pollito said. “You told us you were going to perform a secret rite, and that our presence was forbidden.”

  “Of course it was forbidden,” the witch doctor said, digging vigorously around the altar with a stick. “But didn’t you spy on me?”

  “We would never do that,” Huang said.

  “Damned conformistic young morons!” the witch doctor said. “How do you expect to become witch doctors if you don’t spy on me at every opportunity?”

  The Beast appeared at the edge of the clearing, not fifty yards from the group. At the same moment the witch doctor bent down, then straightened up with a small deerskin bag in his hand.

  “Here it is, of course!” the witch doctor cried. “Right under the sacred ear of corn where I buried it this afternoon. Will one of you thumbfingered imbeciles hand me another shroud string?”

  Already Pollito was holding it out. With great dexterity the witch doctor bound the bag to the skull’s lower jaw, winding three times widdershins. Then he hefted the skull in his hand and said, “Is there anything I’ve forgotten? I don’t think so. Now watch, you dull-witted bucolics, and see how the deed is done.”

  The witch doctor advanced on the Beast, holding the skull in both hands. Joenes, the hunters, and the two assistants, stood open-mouthed as the Beast pawed the earth, into a trench three feet deep, stepped across it, and moved ominously towards the witch doctor.

  The old man stepped close without a sign of fear. At the last moment he threw the skull, striking the Beast on the chest. It seemed a puny blow to Joenes; but the Beast let out an immense roar of pain, turned, and loped away into the forest.

  The hunters were too weary to celebrate the Beast’s defeat. They went silently to their cabins.

  The witch doctor said to his assistants, “I hope you’ve had the sense to learn something from this. When skull exorcism is called for, the prepared skull, or aharbitus, must strike the center of the Beast’s chest. No other blow will do, but will simply augment the fury of the creature. Tomorrow we will study three-bodies exorcism, for which there is a very pretty ritual.” Then he left.

  Joenes lifted the still unconscious Laka and brought her back to his own cabin. As soon as the door was closed, Laka came to her senses and showered Joenes with kisses. Joenes pushed her away, telling her not to do violence to her feelings, nor to arouse his. But Laka declared that she was a changed woman, even if the change were only temporary. The sight of the Beast, she said, and of Joenes’s bravery in rescuing her, had moved her to the depths of her being. Also, poor Lunu’s death had shown her the value of passion in an ephemeral existence.

  Joenes had his suspicions about these reasons, but there was no denying the fact that Laka had changed. Her eyes gleamed, and with a sudden leap reminiscent of the Beast’s spring, she fell upon Joenes and toppled him on to the bed of pine boughs.

  Joenes decided that, little as he knew of men, he knew, even less of women. Also, the pine boughs hurt his back abominably. But soon he forgot his pain and his lack of knowledge. Both became exceedingly unimportant, and he did not think about them again until dawn flooded the cabin with light, and Laka slipped away to return to her own cabin.

  THE NECESSITY FOR

  THE BEAST OF UTOPIA

  In the morning, Joenes met with his colleagues from the University. He told them his adventures of the previous night and expressed indignation at not having been warned about the Beast.

  “But my dear Joenes!” said Professor Hanley. “We wanted you to witness this vital facet of Chorowait for yourself, and to judge it without preconceptions.”

  “Even if that witnessing had cost me my life?” Joenes asked angrily.

  “You were never in the slightest danger,” Professor Chandler told him. “The Beast never attacks anyone connected with the University.”

  “It certainly seemed as though it was trying to kill me,” Joenes said.

  “I’m sure it seemed that way,” Manisfree said. “But actually it was merely trying to get at Laka who, being a Chorowaitian, is a suitable victim for the Beast. You might have been jostled a bit when the Beast tore the girl from your arms; but that is the worst that could have happened to you.”

  Joenes felt chagrined at finding that his danger, which had seemed so dire the night before, was now revealed as no danger at all. To conceal his annoyance, he asked, “What sort of creature was it and to what species does it belong?”

  Geoffrard of Classics cleared his throat importantly and said, “The Beast you saw last night is unique, and should not be confused with the Questing Beast whom Sir Pellinore pursued, nor with the Beasts of Revelation. The Chorowaitian Beast is more closely akin to the Opinicus, which the ancients tell us was part camel, part dragon, and part lion, though we do not know in what proportions. But even this kinship is superficial. As I said, our Beast is unique.”

  Joenes asked, “Where did this Beast come from?”

  The professors looked at each other and giggled like embarrassed schoolboys. Then Blake of Physics controlled his mirth and said to Joenes, “The fact of the matter is, we ourselves gave birth to the Beast. We constructed it part by part and member by member, using the Chemistry Lab on weekends and evenings. All departments of the University co-operated in the design and fabrication of the Beast, but I should especially single out the contributions made by Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Cybernetics, Medicine, and Psychology. And I must also mention the contributions of Anthropology and Classics, whose inspiration this was. Special thanks are due to Professor Elling of Practical Arts who upholstered the entire Beast with the most durable of plastic skins. Nor should I forget Miss Hua, our student assistant, without whose careful collation of our notes the whole venture might have foundered.”

  The professors beamed happily at Blake’s speech. Joenes, who had unwrapped a mystery only to find an enigma, still understood nothing.

  Joenes said, “Let me see if I follow you. You made the Beast, constructing it out of ideas and inert matter in the Chemistry Lab?”

  “That’s very nicely put,” Manisfree said. “Yes, that’s exactly what we did.”

  “Was the Beast made with the knowledge of the University administration?”

  Dalton winked and said, “You know how it is _with those fellows, Joenes. They have an innate distaste for anything new, unless it’s a gymnasium. So of course we didn’t tell them.”

  “But they knew all the same,” Manisfree said. “Administration always knows what’s going on. But unless something is forced on their attention, they prefer to look the other way. They reason that a project like this might turn out well, in which case they and the University would get credit for farsighted wisdom. And if it turns out badly, they’re safe because they knew nothing about it.”

  Several of the professors leaned forward with jokes about
administrators on their lips. But Joenes spoke first, saying, “The construction of the Beast must have been very difficult.”

  “Indeed it was,” said Ptolemy of Mathematics. “Excluding our own time, and the wear and tear on the Chem Lab, we had to spend twelve million four hundred thousand and twelve dollars and sixty-three cents on the fabrication of special parts. Hoggshead of Accounting kept a careful record of all expenses in case we should ever be asked.”

  “Where did the money come from?” Joenes asked.

  “The government, of course,” said Harris of Political Science. “I, and my colleague Finfitter of Economics, took over the problem of funds appropriation. We had enough left over, to throw a victory banquet when Project Beast was, completed. Too bad you weren’t here for that, Joenes.”

  Harris forestalled Joenes’s next question by adding, “Of course, we did not tell the government that we were building the Beast. Although they might still have granted funds, the inevitable bureaucratic delay would have been maddening. Instead, we said that we were working on a crash program to determine the feasibility of building an eight-lane coast-to-coast underground highway in the interests of national defense. Perhaps I do not need to add that Congress, which has always favored highway construction, voted immediately and enthusiastically to give us funds.”

  Blake said, “Many of us felt that such a highway would be eminently practical, and perhaps extremely necessary. The more we thought about it, the more the idea grew on us. But the Beast came first. And even with government funds at our disposal, the task was tremendously difficult.”

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

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