Wandering Stars

by Jack Dann (ed)

  He seemed flattered. “You noticed that, did you?”

  “How could I help? Such a class move.”

  “You know, you’re the first one who’s ever noticed that. There have been lots of studies made, by all kinds of foreigners, from other worlds, other galaxies, even, but never once did one of them notice that move. What did you say your name was?”

  The bug ooze was dripping down my stomach. “My name is Evsise, and I’m looking for a person who used to be a person named Kadak. I was given to understand that he’d become a Rock a few years ago. I have a great need to find this Kadak rock, he should drop dead already such a rotten time he’s been making for me.”

  “Listen,” said the chief Slave (as the remains of the znigh oozed down through the spongy surface), “I like you. Have you ever thought of converting?”

  “Forget it.”

  “No, really, I’m serious. To Worship the Rock is such an enriching experience, it really isn’t smart to dismiss it without giving it a try. What do you say?”

  I figured I had to be a little smartsy then, just a little. “Say, I wish I could. You got no idea what a nice proposition that is you’re making to me. And in a quick second I’d take you up on it, but I got this one bissel tot of a problem.”

  “Would you like to talk about it?”

  A psychiatrist rock, yet. I really needed this.

  “I’m afraid from bugs,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “I see your point. Bugs are a very big part of our religion.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Ah, well. I’m sorry for you. But let’s see if I can help you. What did you say his name was?”

  “Kadak.”

  “Oh yeah, I remember now. What a creep.”

  “That’s him.”

  “Let me see now,” said the Rock. “If I recall correctly, we threw him out of the order for being a disruptive influence, oh, it must have been fifteen years ago. He used to make the ugliest noises I’ve ever heard out of a Rock.”

  “Snuffling.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Snuffling is what he did. A terrible snort noise, all wet and cloggy, it could make you sick to be near it.”

  “Yes, that was it.”

  “So what happened to him, I’m afraid to ask.”

  “He reconstituted his atoms and became just like you again.”

  “Not like me, please.”

  “Well, I mean the same species.”

  “And he went off?”

  “Yes. He said he was going to try the Fleshists.”

  “I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I sat down. Settled my tuchis right down between my rims, drew up my legs, and dropped my head into a half dozen of my hands. I was very glum.

  “Would you like to sit on me?” the Rock asked.

  It was a nice offer. “Thanks,” I said politely, looking at the last slimy ooze of the znigh on the Rock, “but I’m too miserable to be comfortable.”

  “What do you need him for?” he asked.

  So I explained the best I could—this was, after all, to a rock, a piece of stone, even if it could talk—about the minyan of ten. The chief Slave asked me why ten.

  So I said, “On the Earth, a long time ago … you know about the Earth, right? Right. Well, on the Earth, a long time ago, God was going to give a terrific zetz to a place called Sodom. What it was, this Sodom, was a whole city full of Fleshists. Not a nice place.”

  “I can’t conceive of an entire city of Fleshists,” the rock Rock said. “That’s rather an ugly thought.”

  “That’s the way God looked at it.”

  We were both quiet for a while, thinking about that.

  “So, anyhow,” I said, “Abraham, blessed be his name, who was this very holy Jew even if he wasn’t blue, you shouldn’t hold that against him—”

  “—I won't.”

  “—uh. Yes. Right. Well, Abraham pleaded with God to save Sodom.”

  “Why did he do that … a city full of Fleshists. Yechh.”

  “How do I know? He was holy, that’s all. So God must have thought that was a little meshugge … a little crazy … also, you know God is no dummy… and he told Abraham he’d spare Sodom if Abraham could find fifty righteous men living there—”

  “Just men? What about women?”

  “There isn’t scripture on that one.”

  “Sounds like your God is a sexist.”

  “At least, you’ll pardon my frankness now, but at least he isn’t a thing that lies in a valley for birds to make ka-ka on.”

  “That’s rather rude of you.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, but it isn’t nice to call the one true God a rotten name.”

  “I was only asking.”

  “Well, it isn’t too classy for a rock to ask them kinds questions. Now do you want to hear this or don’t you?”

  “Yes, sure. But—”

  “But what!?”

  “Why did this God haggle with this Abraham? Why didn’t he just tell him he was going to do it, and then do it?”

  I was getting pretty upset, you know what I mean? “It was because Abraham was a mensch, a real terrific person, that’s why, okay?”

  The rock didn’t answer. I guess he was sulking. So okay, let him sulk. “Then Abraham said, okay, what if I can only find forty righteous men? And God said, okay, let be forty. So Abraham said what if only thirty, and God said, nu, let be thirty already, and then Abraham said what if only twenty, and God started yelling all right stop nuhdzhing me, let be twenty …”

  “Let me guess,” the rock said, “Abraham said ten, and your God got really mad and said ten was it, and no further, and that’s how you came up with ten men for the congregation.”

  “You’ve heard it,” I said.

  The rock was silent again.

  Finally, he said, “Listen, I like your idea of religion. I’m not altogether happy being a Slave of the Rock, even if I am the chief Rock. How about if I converted and came back with you, and made the tenth for the minyan?”

  I thought about that for a while. “Well,” I said slowly, “the Talmud does say, ‘Nine free men and a slave may be reckoned together for a quorum,’ but against that is quoted that Rabbi Eliezer went into a Synagogue and didn’t find ten there, so he freed his slave and with him completed the number, but if there had only been seven and he had freed two slaves, it wouldn’t have been kosher. But with one freed slave and the Rabbi it made ten. So, clearly, as all agree, eight freemen and two slaves would not answer the purpose. But, if you just put yourself in my place for a moment, you’re not, even remotely speaking, my slave. You’re the Slave of the Rock. And besides, it takes a long time to convert. Can you speak Hebrew? Even a little?”

  “What’s Hebrew?”

  “Forget it. How about keeping kosher?”

  “What are they? I’ll keep them if it’s part of the program. After all, when you’ve been a Rock, eating bugs all your life, keeping some kind of pet doesn’t sound too difficult.”

  It was hopeless. For a minute there I gave it a maybe, you know what I mean. But the more I thought about it, even if I could summon up the chutzpah to go back to Reb Jeshaia with a rock, not with a Kadak, it wouldn’t work. This Rock was a nice enough fellow, you know what I mean, but even as I sat there pondering, he shot out that ick tongue of his, and snared a buck-fly and whipped it in that move he thought was such a sensational thing, and splatted it all over the place, and started eating it. And clearly, very clearly, Genesis 9:4 forbade animal blood to all the seed of Noah, so how could I bring a Rock back and say, here, I freed this Slave of the Rock, and he’ll be the tenth man, and then right in the middle of Adonai, out would come that crummy tongue and eat a bug off the wall. Forget it.

  “Listen,” I said, as gentle as I could, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, “it’s a strictly great offer you’ve made, and under other circumstances I’d take you up on that,
you know what I’m saying? But right now I’m really pressed for time and it would take too long for you to learn Hebrew, so let’s let it sit for a while. I’ll get back to you.”

  He wasn’t happy about that, I could tell. But he was a real mensch. He told me he understood, and he wished me good luck with the Fleshists, and he let me run away fast. I could see his point, though, and I was very sorry about his not being a possible. I mean, how would you like it to sit all day baking in the sun, with birds making pish in your face, and the best you got to look forward to is a juicy bug.

  And if I’d known what I had coming, what tsuris, I’d have gladly only, happily yet, you can believe it, taken that Rock back with me, bug dreck and all. Believe me, there are worse things than a rock that eats bugs.

  I’ll make a long story short. I followed the trail of that putz Kadak from the pit of the Fleshists (where I lost the use of my pupik, all my coin, the sight of one eye in the back, the second arm on the left side, and my yarmulkah), to the embarkation dock at the spaceport where the sect called the Denigrators were getting on board ships for that Bromios (where I got beat up so bad I crawled away), to the lava beds where the True Believers of Suffering were doing their last rites before leaving (where I suffered first degree miserable and such a pain you wouldn’t accept over half my poor body), to the Tabernacle of the Mouth (where some big deal prophet that was all teeth bit off the tip of one antenna, God knows why, maybe out of pique at being left behind), to the Caucus Race of the Malforms (where I fit right in, as crapped up and bloody as I was), to the Lair of the Blessed Profundity of the Unspeakable Trihll (which I could not, even if I had several mouths, pronounce … but they punched and kicked me anyhow, really sensational people), to the Archdruid of Nothingness, always following that miserable creep Kadak from religion to religion—and let me tell you, no one had a good word for that schmuck, not even the worst of those heathens—and it was there, kayn-ahora, that the Archdruid told me the last he’d seen of Kadak was ten years earlier, when he had changed him into a butterfly, and sent him out into the desert to hopefully drop dead in the heat.

  Which is why, finally, I’m standing here talking to you, dumb creep butterfly. So now I’ve told it all, and you see what a puke condition I’m in, don’t for a minute think that Avram or those others will respect me for what I did, they’ll only nuhdz me about how long it took, and that’s why you got to come back with me.

  Not a word. Not a sound through all this. Not a flap or a flitter or a how are you Evsise. Nothing.

  Look. I’m not going to tummel with you, Mr. I-Can’t-Make-Up-My-Mind-What-Kind-of-Religion-I-Want-To-Be butterfly.

  You think I stood here all this time, sinking in up to my rims in sand, just to tell you a cute story? I know you’re Kadak! And how do I know?

  Go ahead, snuffle like that again and ask me how I know!

  Come on. You’ll come either by yourself or I’ll drag you by your wings, you know for a butterfly you’re not even a nice-looking butterfly? You’re an ugly, is what you are. And as for being a Jew, only that by birth, such a disgrace to the entire blue Jews on Zsouchmuhn.

  As you can see, I’m getting angry. You’ve gotten me raped, crapped on, burned, maimed, crippled, blinded, insulted, run around, exposed to heathens, robbed, sunburned, covered with bug shmootz, altogether miserable and unhappy, and I’ll tell you, very frankly, you’ll come with me, Mr. Kadak, or I’ll choke you dead right here in this farblondjet desert!

  Now what do you say?

  I thought that’s what you’d say.

  “Here he is.”

  Yankel didn’t believe it. Chaim laughed. Shmuel started to cry, his nose running green. Snodle coughed. And Reb Jeshaia hung his head. “I should have sent Avram,” he said.

  Avram looked away. Like a dead leaf it should fall off.

  “Here he is, is what I said, and here he is, is what it is,” I said. “This is your Kadak, may he rot in his cocoon.”

  Then I told them the whole story.

  At least they had the grace to be amazed.

  “This is what makes the minyan?” Moishe said. “This?”

  “Make him change back, and that’s him,” I said. “I wash my hands of it.” I went over in a corner of the shoul and settled down. It was their problem now.

  For hours they went at him. They tried everything. They threatened him, they begged him, they implored him, they intimidated him, they cajoled him, they shmacheled him, they insulted him, they slugged him, they chased his tuchis all over the shoul....

  Sure. Of course. Wouldn’t you know. That rotten Kadak wouldn’t change back. At last, he found a thing he wanted to be. A dumb creep butterfly.

  With a snuffle. Still with a rotten snuffle. Did you ever know how much worse a butterfly snuffles than a person?

  You could plotz from it.

  And finally, when they couldn’t get him to change back—and if you want to know the truth, I don’t think he could change back after that weirdnik buhbie Archdruid changed him—they held him down and Reb Jeshaia made the rabbinical decision that his presence was enough, in this great emergency. So Meyer Kahaha sat on him, and we started to sit shivah, finally, for Zsouchmuhn and for Snodle.

  And then Reb Jeshaia got a terrible look on his face and he said, “Oh my God!”

  “What!? What what!?” I yelled. “What now, what?”

  Very softly, Reb Jeshaia asked me, “Evsise, how long ago did the Archdruid say he changed Kadak into this thing?”

  “Ten years ago,” I said, “but what—”

  And I stopped. And I sat down again. And knew we had lost, and we would still be there when the gonifs came to rip the planet out of orbit, and we would die, along with the crazies in the Apostate Cathedral and the nafkeh, and the Rock and the Archdruid and everyone else who was too nuts to get safely away the way they were supposed to.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Meyer Kahaha, the oysvorf “What’s wrong? Why does it matter he’s been a butterfly for ten years?”

  “Only ten years,” said Shmuel.

  “Not thirteen, schmuck, only ten,” said Yankel, sticking his pointing arm in Meyer Kahaha’s ninth eye.

  We looked at Meyer Kahaha till the light dawned, even for him. “Oh my God,” he said, and rolled over on his side. The butterfly, that miserable Kadak, fluttered up and flew around the shoul. No one paid any attention to him. It had all been in vain.

  Scripture says, very clearly there should be no mistake, that all ten of the participants of a minyan have to be over thirteen years old. At thirteen, for a Jew, a boy becomes a man. “Today I am a man,” it’s an old gag. Ha ha. Very funny. It’s the reason for the bar mitzvah. Thirteen. Not ten.

  Kadak wasn’t old enough.

  Still dead, still lying on his face, Snodle began weeping.

  Reb Jeshaia and the other seven, the last blue Jews on Zsouchmuhn, now doomed to die without ever again gumming their lust-nest concubines, they all slumped into seats and waited for destruction.

  I felt worse than them. I hurt in more places.

  Then I looked up, and began to smile. I smiled so wide and so loud, everyone turned to look at me.

  “He’s gone crazy,” said Chaim.

  “It’s better that way,” said Shmuel. “He won’t feel the pain.”

  “Poor Evsise,” said Yitzchak.

  “Dummies!” I shouted, leaping up and rolling and hopping and unwinding like a tummeler. “Dummies! Dummies! Even you, Reb Jeshaia, you’re a dummy, we’re all dummies!”

  “Is that a way to talk to a Rabbi?” said Reb Jeshaia.

  “Sure it is,” I yowled, reeling and rocking, “sure it is, sure it is, sure it is, sure it is …”

  Meyer Kahaha came and sat on me.

  “Get off me, you schlemiel! I know how to save us, it’s been here all the time, we never needed that creep snuffle butterfly Kadak!”

  So he got off me, and I looked at them with great pleasure because I was about to demonstrate that I was a folks-me
nsch of the first water, and I said, “Under a ruling in Tractate Berakhot, nine Jews and the holy ark of the law containing the Torah may, together, hey nu, nu, do you get what I’m saying, may together be considered for congregational worship!”

  And Reb Jeshaia kissed me.

  “Evsise, Evsise, how did you remember such a thing? You’re not a Talmudic scholar, how did you remember such a wonderful thing?” Reb Jeshaia hugged and kissed and babbled in my face at me.

  “I didn’t,” I said, “Kadak did.”

  And they all looked up, as I’d looked up, and there was that not-such-an-altogether-worthless-after-all Kadak, sitting up on top of the Holy Ark, the Aronha-Kodesh, the sacred cabinet holding the sacred scrolls of the Lord. Sitting up there, a butterfly, always to remain a butterfly, sitting and beating his wings frantically, trying to let someone know what he knew, something even a Rabbi had forgotten.

  And when he came down to perch on Reb Jeshaia’s shoulder, we all sat down and rested for a minute, and then Reb Jeshaia said, “Now we will sit shivah. Nine men, the Holy Ark and one butterfly make a minyan.”

  And for the last time on Zsouchmuhn, which means look for me, we said the holy words, this last time for the home we had had, the home we would leave. And all through the prayers, there sat Kadak, flapping his dumb wings.

  And you want to know a thing? Even that was a mechaieh, which means a terrific pleasure.

  Ellison’s Grammatical Guide

  and Glossary for Goyim

  Adonai—The sacred title of God. Pronounced ah-doe-NOY.

  averah—Loosely, an unethical or undesirable act.

  bar mitzvah—The ceremony, as in many cultures, of the beginning of puberty; held in a temple, it is the ceremony in which a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy reaches the status and assumes the duties of a “man.”

  bialy(ies)—A flat breakfast roll, shaped like a round wading pool, sometimes sprinkled with onion.

  bissel—A little bit.

  brechh—A sound you make when varfing.

  bris(es)—The circumcision ceremony.

  buhbie—Usually an affectionate term of endearment, although occasionally it is used sardonically.

  bummerkeh—A female bum, a loose lady. A nafkeh.