—Enforcer Doctor Dolphus
Brother Gus went to Brother Mus in his box. “Little mouse, there are those who seek your life,” he said. “Should I get a donkey and hie with you to Egypt to thwart your killers? I know where I can get a donkey.”
But the utterly exhausted mouse was asleep. It would sleep for thirty hours more. Now and then, however, it giggled in its sleep.
“While strut the proud in peacock-power craze,
The humblest shall be raised, and eke shall raise.”
—Lowly Rimes, Refrocked, Sister Mary Anne Humility
The Meadow Lark Mountebanks failed to raise Turkey Mountain the next day, and they failed before the eyes and ears of all the world media. This was bitter to the Mountebanks. And persons even implied that the mountain-raising of the day before had been faked; but it had been well-witnessed and attested.
Brother Augustine had been taken into custody by a mysterious Medical Authority, and his little room at the Encounterful Covenant Building had been ransacked again and again. Before those medical authorities had arrived, however, Brother Gus had slipped one small object, a sleeping mouse, to John Salt.
“Keep that kale in safe escrow,” John Salt advised Outreacher Preacher Jerome Healing-Hands and Father Raphael Healing-Of-God and Super-Sister Susanna-Of-The-Spirit and all their buddies. “Turkey Mountain will be raised tomorrow noon, by more or less natural means, and I'll have my money back then, along with ten thousand dollars of yours. Tomorrow noon, yes. He should have his sleep out by then.”
“Who? Who should have his sleep out by then?” they asked him.
“Ah, only a mouse, only a mouse,” John Salt said. And they laughed him to scorn again.
John Salt had to make it look as though it was by natural means. He borrowed a slide-rule, a calculator, and a no-nonsense-looking Command Telephone. And John was a talker. He could fake anything, even the scientific patter. Surely he would be able to cover so small a thing as mouse-tracks, if it were necessary for him to do so.
And at eleven fifty-five the next day, Turkey Mountain began to bounce and dance. Some very powerful entity was having fun with the mountain. There was no media coverage of this. It was a private show-down. The Mountebanks were there, a bank person was there with notaries, a lawyer was there. John Salt was there. That's about all.
The lawyer made a declaration. John Salt made a fulgent declaration in his oratorical style, and he fiddled with his slide-rule and his calculator and barked cryptic commands into his no-nonsense Command Telephone.
Turkey Mountain rose one hundred feet into the air. There were groans of anguish and the gnashing of teeth from the Meadow Lark Mountebanks. The bank person counted out twenty thousand dollars to John Salt, and the notaries attested it.
It was done. And then something busted. There rang out, like feeble silver or quicksilver, one of the most seldom noises ever heard on Earth, that of a mouse breaking up into total laughter, but only John Salt heard it. Turkey Mountain swayed for a while in the air, and then settled back roughly to Earth.
A bit later, John Salt overtook the downcast Mountebanks as they arrived back at their Encounterful Covenant Building.
“I know it is a little unusual—” he stammered to them with all his fulgence gone, “but I've run through everything else in a short time without result, and you are healers of a sort, and I don't know how to bring him out of it.”
“What is it, man?” Super-Sister Susanna-Of-The-Spirit demanded roughly. “You have your money! You have your smirking victory! What else do you want?”
“A cure, a cure from anybody. It could be serious, even fatal if it goes on long enough. A very small cure, but the thing goes on and on—”
“Oh, what is it, John Salt-That's-Lost-Its-Savor?” Outreacher Preacher Jerome Healing-Hands asked dully. “A cure for what?”
“For giggles in a mouse. They go on and on. I don't know how to stop them at all.”
In The Turpentine Trees
I will unfold my enigma to the sound of a harp.
— Psalm 48
Methinks it is better I should have pined away seven of my goldenest years… than that so passionate a love adventure should be lost.
— Charles Lamb
“Now the Lord appeared by the Terebinths of Mamre as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of day—” so Genesis begins its eighteenth chapter: and then the Lord held a conversation with Abraham. But is the entire conversation reported to us, or is some of it left out?
At other times, the Lord appeared in a Burning Bush, in a Pillar of Cloud, in a Pillar of Fire, and in a Cloud that was crammed-full of Thunder and Lightning on Sinai Mountain. But are all the words that the Lord spoke at those times reported to us, or do only a very few people know the words in their entirety?
Shamus Eagnach (his name meant either ‘James Wisdom’ or ‘Jim Grumbling’ depending on who translated it from the Irish) was an amateur philosopher, an amateur tycoon in the field of Rapid Transit, an amateur wag, an amateur one-of-the-ten-richest-persons-in-the-world, and an amateur lover of his fellow people. Like all true amateurs, he performed in each of these fields for the sheer love of it; and he'd have performed as meaningfully at each occupation (even that of becoming one of the ten richest persons in the world) even if he didn't make a dime out of it. But he devoted most of his life to seeking the answers to a handful of questions which all very young boys ask themselves, and which all but a few of the boys-who-never-grew-up like Shamus leave off asking themselves after they grow up.
To devote most of one's life to a subject such as this takes some very canny arranging. Shamus could have lived in a tub or a packing-box and begged for his livelihood, but he discovered that begging for a livelihood devours more of the hours of a life than working for a livelihood does. He finally settled on the not-quite-satisfactory solution of becoming very wealthy quite rapidly, and then hiring persons to work and worry about the details of his business while he devoted the most of his life to seeking the answers to ‘The Paramount Questions’.
The business trick by which he became very wealthy very rapidly, by which he became one of the ten richest persons in the world, was the ‘Happy Hot Dog World-Wide Rapid Transit Tramway System’. He had his trams running in a hundred and fifty countries and soon his system would indeed be world-wide. Oh, they were only the ancient street-cars, but he had modernized them into becoming the ‘Street-Cars of the Future’. They were almost completely safe, almost completely efficient, and very rapid. They were transcontinental and transworld. They ran through the air like rockets, through the earth like speeding moles, and through the water like rapid fish. Shamus even had two hundred kilometers of scheduled lines on the Moon. The tram-cars were programmed for maximum speed and efficiency and safety and pleasure, and nothing could go wrong with them in any of these departments unless something went wrong with the programming. “It makes me feel almost God-like to have devised such a system,” he told his first wife Cinderella Scholtz, “and that brings me closer to my main interest in life.”
The main-interest-in-life of Shamus Eagnach, the questions to which he sought the answers with happy and relentless passion, were such as these:
“Remembering that the old Egyptian priest Manetho wrote that our Earth had had seven suns before its present sun, I question whether it may not have had seven gods before our present God. I question whether our present God would know about it if it had been the case. If there had been seven separate and discrete eternities before or beyond our present eternity, how would anyone of our present eternity know about them? If there had been seven separate and discrete, infinite and endless and all-encompassing universes outside of our universe of record, how would anyone in our own all-encompassing universe-of-record know about those seven? I ask whether there is any limit to the number of one-and-only universes that may exist? And if there is no limit to the number of them, why cannot I have one of my own in which to be God?
“But my cardinal question
is ‘How did God get to be God?’ Everything depends on the answer to this. Could I have been God if I had thought of it before God did? If even now, after it has been thought of and done at least once, if I could find out how it was done, could I not go somewhere behind God's back and do it all over again? If I find how the trick is pulled, maybe I could pull it myself, aye, and with refinements! To do it myself would be the highest pleasure imaginable. To find out how it was done, even if I could not do it myself, would be the second highest pleasure imaginable.
“And an ancillary question is ‘Why does God overdo it? Why does he do more than is required of him?’ My grandfather told me that when he was in high school there were only two subatomic particles, the proton and the electron. And when his grandfather was in high school, there were no subatomic particles at all; the atom was then, as its name indicates, the indivisible smallest of particles. My question is ‘Does God overdo it? Does he do more than is required of him?’ Maybe he only fills in the more minute items of his creation when mankind is on the verge of being able to discover them. That being so, could I not become at least an apprentice god somewhere, doing only what is necessary to stay one step ahead of my own not-very-well-informed creatures? I'd be like the new teacher who studies enough every night to be able to stay ahead of his students in the assignments for the next day. Ah yes, and then there are these three hundred and thirty-three only slightly less cardinal questions.”
Cinderella Scholtz, the first wife of Shamus Eagnach, had her own set of almost archetypical questions, such as: “May it not be that we are only token people or under-people or even manufactured mechanical people whom the real people have set here in their places for either seven or seventy or seven hundred years while they the real people withdraw somewhere and meditate and renew their souls? May it not be that the universe which we see about us is only a token or under-universe because our token or benighted eyes will not allow us to see or understand the real universe? May it not be that even our thoughts and reflections and speculations, even those of mine, are only dim reflections of reflections (hey, ‘reflections of reflections’ is funny) and are not real? May it not be that when the seven or seventy or seven hundred years are over with we will be jammed into tram-cars and sped away to a big prop warehouse until the real people want to go on another meditation and will bring us out and set us in their places again?” But Cinderella was a pleasant ambivalent person who could entertain her husband's main-interest-in-life questions as well as her own; and now she commented on Shamus's last speculation.
“One thing that I bet God doesn't do is do work that has already been done, devise things that have already been devised through not knowing just what has already been done. Oh, I read all your notebooks, Shamus, so I know what you're thinking about. I read all your correspondence, even your correspondence with Pandora Riviera (‘You have no right to read my correspondence with Pandora,’ you say, and I answer you ‘You have no right to have a correspondence with Pandora.’) I run brain-scans on you at night (you were wondering this morning what made the sore spots on your head; it's the brain-prods that I use that make the sore spots, honey); and moreover you talk in your sleep. I am becoming quite interested in these questions myself, but when you waste time in areas that have already been covered, then you waste my time too. I suggest that you set up an Institute to see just what other people have discovered in these fields. There is a caution here, of course. Institutes are the human equivalents of computers, and all computers are atheists or at least agnostics, which is to say that they are narrow-minded. It can't be helped. You are the only one of the ten-richest-persons-in-the-world who doesn't have an Institute of his own. How will you ever have your own Universe if you don't first have your own Institute to keep you informed on the state of your quest?”
So Shamus Eagnach set up an Institute to correlate all known information on a certain group of questions. And by definition, Cinderella's definition, his Institute would be somewhat narrow-minded.
Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense… Modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush.
—G.K. Chesterton
Nothing is gained by picturing God as jealously hiding from his creatures the innermost structure of his creation, indeed, a worthier conception of a Supreme Being should imply that no ultimate boundary should be set to the knowledge of beings to whom an infinite desire for knowledge has been given. The existence of an absolute ignorabimus would form an exceedingly vexing problem to the philosophical mind. It would be a great step forward in philosophy if the burden of this bewildering problem could be thrown off.
—Unanswerable Questions, Moreitz Schlick
“Oh, the reports from your new Institute are most interesting,” said Pandora Riviera the second wife of Shamus Eagnach. “Oh certainly I read all the reports from your Institute before you read them, Shamus, and I read all your notebooks and correspondence, even your correspondence with Anima Rubicunda Mannerly. (‘You have no right to read my correspondence with Anima Rubicunda,’ you say, and I answer you ‘You have no right to have a correspondence with Anima Rubicunda.’) The straight stuff that the Institute has dug up for you is pretty bland, but I love the things that the Institute despises, the material that it classifies as ‘Dogs’, as ‘Shaggy Dogs’, and as ‘The Ultimate in Shaggy Dogs’.”
Yes, Shamus Eagnach was married to Pandora Riviera now. The death of his first wife Cinderella Scholtz had had a sad touch to it as well as a comic touch; and Shamus was sure that Cinderella sometimes laughed at the irony of it now that she was dwelling with the blessed.
“What must I do to convince you that you should put ‘Bremmer Safety-Close Doors’ on all your Hot Dog Tram-Cars?” Cinderella had asked once and she had asked him a thousand times. Ah well, ultimately she did what she had to do to convince him, but it was an accident and she hadn't intended it to happen. And after Cinderella's mangling death from one of the Non-Bremmer Non-Safety-Close Doors of one of the Hot Dog Tram-Cars, Shamus did put genuine Bremmer Safety-Close Doors on all the cars. He had liked Cinderella a lot, but he didn't especially miss her now two days later. Pandora was so much like Cinderella that the transition was almost automatic.
Shamus took an item from the pile of material classified ‘The Ultimate in Shaggy Dogs’ that Pandora indicated to him. It quacked when he picked it up, for some wag at the Institute had attached the quacker from a toy duck to it. “Ah, it is not a shaggy dog at all,” Shamus mused to himself. “It is a shaggy duck. So much the better.”
“It is not too late for you to be God!” the items shouted in loud print. And then the text of the quackery went on: “Anybody can be God, yes, anybody. And I can show you how. ‘But will God play King of the Mountain?’ you ask. ‘Will he cut off our hands and our heads when we reach for it?’ Probably not. I did not react that way when I was God, and I do not believe that the present (the solving of the real meaning of the word ‘present’ leads to other solutions) that the present monarch will react in such a manner either.
“It only evades the issue to say ‘God is already God. He had the job sewed up’. The God who is already God, who already has the job sewed up, can well be you. ‘Time’ is nothing so narrow as a straight line, and ‘happening’ is not so shallow as to offer no alternatives to itself. Every point in time can be both the beginning and the end of time, can both precede and succeed all things else whatsoever. Every point in space can contain both all space and all time. The answer to the Mystery of Matter (why should there even be so cumbersome a thing as matter? Why did the Word have to be made Flesh? Was not the Making of Matter rather a cheap, and also difficult, trick for a Spirit to indulge in?) the answer to this contains the answer to the question ‘How Did God Get to be God?’. Every thought can contain omnipotence and omniscience and omnipresence and omnicaritas. Be that thought, be that word, be that God! ‘H
ow does one get to be God?’ you may have asked yourself. And the answer is that one gets to be God by sending for my lessons ‘How to be God’. I myself was God for nine aeons, and now I wish to aid my fellow men in sharing this wonderful experience. Order today. Make checks out to ‘The Man Who Used to be God, Box 10,000 (the Number of the Larger Millennium), Los Angeles’.” Shamus sent for the lessons without informing his Institute that he was doing so. The lessons didn't teach him how to be God, but they did put him on the track of other literature that ultimately answered the question for him.
The Institute did come up with the information that there were about a hundred thousand groups in the world (the groups averaged about a hundred persons each) devoted to finding answers to the same group of questions that Shamus Eagnach himself had been trying to answer. One hundred thousand times one hundred persons is only a drop in the bucket of the world, but it did make Shamus feel a little less alone.
“Oh, when will somebody drop that first shoe?” the wife of Shamus was asking. “There is an old joke about somebody waiting for the second shoe to drop. Oh, that's nothing like waiting for the first one. If somebody doesn't drop it today I may have to do it myself. Oh, by the way, Shamus, there are complaints of obviously dead people racing along our lines and even crossing our lines in defiance of light-speed laws. Some of our regular customers don't like it. ‘Why should the dead get to ride?’ they ask. ‘Let them walk like they always did.’ The destination of these wild tram-cars is ‘To the Turpentine Groves, or Else’, but we have no such destination listed.” Shamus and his wife lived in a simple five-level penthouse atop the ‘Happy Hot Dog World-Wide Rapid Transit Tramway System Tower’, and theirs was a happy home. Their penthouse was, from a recent notion of Shamus, always filled with the sound of harp music now. This pleased him so much that today he had the same harping sounds built into all the tram-cars for the joy of the riders. The Hot Dog Trams had always been happy trams, and now they would be even happier.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 304
