"Paradox," grunted Captain Trevor-Beede. "Let's have the rest of it and get on with the business."
"It's no paradox, sir. Why, where would I be if I'd got any ideas of my own about the trajectory, instead of taking Plot Room's word for it? I'd be nowhere, that's where I'd be, sir!"
"You needn't be modest with us, you know," said the nervous little Head-shrinker. "After all, Lieutenant, over the dinner-table we do like to keep ourselves within bounds—" Here he shot a quick look at the Man, who went red. "—but we're out to assess your qualifications for membership."
"Yes, Leff-tenant," said Captain Trevor-Beede. "Now if you'd be so good as to give us some idea of the perils of your explorations—" He took out a pigskin notebook and pencil. That paralyzed the youth.
"Well, captain, they aren't really explorations, I guess. I just follow the plot on the table, keep her turned, you know, and then I set her down in the cradle; I generally sleep and play some handball until she's loaded up and ready to rip again. You should see that handball court they have up there at Luna Three! It's three times the right size, but you can really cover ground up there. Boy, can you hit some fancy shots!"
He was aware that the membership-committee was dismayed by something or other he had said, and hastened to make amends: "Oh, you shouldn't get the idea that handball's all I do, of course."
"Tennis?" asked the Headshrinker wryly.
"Now you're joking, sir. But the handball's necessary to keep in trim; sometimes you have to tune that table awfully fast!" He whistled and wiped his dry and healthy brow. "On the new involute approach it's all partial differentials, all the way in from Luna gravity—sometirnes four sets of four every minute for fifteen minutes; you really have to whip out your approximations. And man, they'd better be right! It isn't like the old grazing-spiral days, I'll tell you that, sir!"
The Man Who Had Known Dr. Cook said: "You do—mathematics—up there? In the ship?"
"I should say so!" the young man told him enthusiastically. "Why, mathematics is all you've got up there—you can't see because the ports are closed; you can't hear anything because of the jets; and there isn't anything to hear. The instruments can't be sensitive and last out a takeoff at the same time. All you have is what you know about the weight and the motion of the ship, and the weight and the motion of the Earth and Moon and Sun, so you have to take it from there. What have you got except mathematics? But the Plot Room does all the really tough stuff before the takeoff. All a pilot has to do is keep one jump ahead of the pointers under the table and keep his control-pointers lined up with them. That's what we call 'tuning the table,' maybe I should have said; and the way I told you, the first approximation's good enough for that."
"What if it isn't?" asked the Man.
The space pilot shrugged his grey-clad shoulders. "That's all," he said.
"You take a trip." He thought of three classmates.
"If you were admitted," asked the Captain, "you would, of course, take a Club Flag to the moon on one of your—runs?"
The young man looked troubled. "I'm afraid I couldn't do that, sir," he said. "You know, it takes an awful lot of money to get there and back. I'd never be able to justify it to the supercargo. I ferry heavy elements, after all—it's the job." He thought a moment. "But tell you what, Captain! I could take a microfilm of the flag—wouldn't that be just as good?"
"Um," said the captain, who had planted his flag on Everest.
"Well, you know …" said the Headshrinker, who had planted his flag on a ridgepole deeper in Jivaro country than any other white man had ever gone.
"Urg!" strangled the Man Who Had Known Dr. Cook. He had planted his flag at the North Pole, long before that hypothetical point was the Times Square of global air traffic.
The Captain asked bluntly, "What adventures have you had?"
"Adventures?" asked the young man. "Well, sir, the way I look at it, it's like this. People don't have adventures any more; if they do, they don't live to tell about it. You see, we're all so tied up and meshed together in a thing like the Moon-run—if one man makes a mistake, then he can make up for it himself. That's what you call an Adventure—doing something wrong and having it come out all right anyway because you used your head. But up there—well, if I do something wrong, then it's out of my hands right away. And I can't expect Plot Room, by dumb luck, to compensate for just that mistake of mine, can I? No; sir—the way it looks to me, Adventure is just about washed up, if you'll pardon me saying so."
The Headshrinker said flatly. "Mr. Chairman, I move that the examination be closed and the candidate's qualifications be voted on."
He turned apologetically to the young man. "You'll have to leave now, you know—while we make up our minds."
"Oh, sure," said the space pilot. "And thank you, gentlemen, for a very interesting discussion." He walked out and carefully closed the door behind him.
"If he joins," said Captain Trevor-Beede immediately and explosively,
"we'll all have to resign at once. 'Doing something wrong and having it come right any-way!
"Move to reject the candidate," said the Headshrinker.
"Question."
"Aye."
"Aye."
"Carried," sighed the Man. They sat in silence while he rang for a waiter. He told the man: "Please inform Space Service Lieutenant Allen that the committee had regretfully been compelled to ask him to withdraw his application for membership."
"Yes, sir," said the waiter.
Outside, he said to the young man in grey, "No dice, Lieutenant, they turned you down."
"Well, thanks," said the lieutenant regretfully. He walked slowly from the club, looking his last on the mounted heads and the case of curios and the unlit fire.
The members were awfully old-fashioned, he thought, but it would have been such a handy place to have lunch on Earth, when he happened to find a breathing-spell from the dull routine of his occupation!
Kazam Collects
[as by S. D. Gottesman; Stirring Science Stories, June 1941 ]
"Hail, jewel in the lotus," half whispered the stringy, brown person. His eyes were shut in holy ecstasy, his mouth pursed as though he were tasting the sweetest fruit that ever grew.
"Hail, jewel in the lotus," mumbled back a hundred voices in a confused backwash of sound. The stringy, brown person turned and faced his congregation. He folded his hands.
"Children of Hagar," he intoned. His voice was smooth as old ivory and had a mellow sheen about it
"Children of Hagar, you who have found delight and peace in the bosom of the Elemental, the Eternal, the Un-know-ingness that is without bounds, make Peace with me." You could tell by his very voice that the words were capitalized.
"Let our Word," intoned the stringy, brown person, "be spread. Let our Will be brought about Let us destroy, let us mould, let us build. Speak low and make your spirits white as Hagar's beard." With a reverent gesture he held before them two handfuls of an unattached beard that hung from the altar.
"Children of Hagar, unite your Wills into One." The congregation kneeled as he gestured at them, gestured as one would at a puppy one was training to play dead.
The meeting hall—or rather, temple—of the Cult of Hagar was on the third floor of a little building on East 59th Street, otherwise almost wholly unused. The hall had been fitted out to suit the sometimes peculiar requirements of the unguess-able Will-Mind-Urge of Hagar Inscrutable; that meant that there was gilded wood everywhere there could be, and strips of scarlet cloth hanging from the ceiling in circles of five. There was, you see, a Sanctified Ineffability about the unequal lengths of the cloth strips.
The faces of the congregation were varying studies in rapture. As the stringy, brown person tinkled a bell they rose and blinked absently at him as he waved a benediction and vanished behind a door covered with chunks of gilded wood.
The congregation began to buzz quietly.
"Well?" demanded one of another. "What did you think of it?”
"I dunno. Who's he, anyway?" A respectful gesture at the door covered with gilded wood.
"Kazam's his name. They say he hasn't touched food since he saw the Ineluctable Modality."
"What's that?"
Pitying smile. "You couldn't understand it just yet. Wait till you've come around a few more times. Then maybe you'll be able to read his book—
The Unravelling.' After that you can tackle the 'Isba Kazhlunk' that he found in the Siberian ice. It opened the way to the Ineluctable Modality, but it's pretty deep stuff—even for me."
They filed from the hall buzzing quietly, dropping coins into a bowl that stood casually by the exit. Above the bowl hung from the ceiling strips of red cloth in a circle of five. The bowl, of course, was covered with chunks of gilded wood.
Beyond the door the stringy, brown man was having a little trouble.
Detective Fitzgerald would not be convinced.
"In the first place," said the detective, "you aren't licensed to collect charities. In the second place this whole thing looks like fraud and escheatment. In the third place this building isn't a dwelling and you'll have to move that cot out of here." He gestured disdainfully at an army collapsible that stood by the battered roUtop desk. Detective Fitzgerald was a big, florid man who dressed with exquisite neatness. "I am sorry,"
said the stringy, brown man. "What must Idor
"Let's begin at the beginning. The Constitution guarantees freedom of worship, but I don't know if they meant something like this. Are you a citizen?"
"No. Here are my registration papers." The stringy, brown man took them from a cheap, new wallet
"Born in Persia. Name's Joseph Kazam. Occupation, scholar. How do you make that out?"
"It's a good word," said Joseph Kazam with a hopeless little gesture.
"Are you going to send me away—deport me?"
"I don't know," said the detective thoughtfully. "If you register your religion at City Hall before we get any more complaints, it'll be all right"
"Ah," breathed Kazam. "Complaints?"
Fitzgerald looked at him quizzically. "We got one from a man named Rooney," he said. "Do you know him?"
"Yes. Runi Sarif is his real name. He has hounded me out of Norway, Ireland and Canada—wherever I try to reestablish the Cult of Hagar."
Fitzgerald looked away. "I suppose," he said matter-of-factly, "you have lots of secret enemies plotting against you."
Kazam surprised him with a burst of rich laughter. "I have been investigated too often," grinned the Persian, "not to recognize that one.
You think I'm mad."
"No," mumbled the detective, crestfallen. "I just wanted to find out Anybody running a nut cult's automatically reserved a place in Bellevue."
"Forget it, sir. I spit on the Cult of Hagar. It is my livelihood, but I know better than any man that it is a mockery. Do you know what our highest mystery is? The Ineluctable Modality." Kazam sneered.
"That's Joyce," said Fitzgerald with, a grin. "You have a sense of humor, Mr. Kazam. That's a rare thing in the religious."
"Please," said Joseph Kazam. "Don't call me that. I am not worthy—the noble, sincere men who work for their various faiths are my envy. I have seen too much to be one of them."
"Go on," said Fitzgerald, leaning forward. He read books, this detective, and dearly loved an abstract discussion.
The Persian hesitated. "I," he said at length, "am an occult engineer. I am a man who can make the hidden forces work."
"Like staring a leprechaun in the eye till he finds you a pot of gold?"
suggested the detective with a chuckle.
"One manifestation," said Kazam calmly. "Only one."
"Look," said Fitzgerald. "They still have that room in Bellevue. Don't say that in publip—stick to the Ineluctable Modality if you know what's good for you."
"Tut," said the Persian regretfully. "He's working on you."
The detective looked around the room. "Meaning who?" he demanded.
"Runi Sarif. He's trying to reach your mind and turn you against me."
"Balony," said Fitzgerald coarsely. "You get yourself registered as a religion hi twenty-four hours; then find yourself a place to live. I'll hold off any charges of fraud for a while. Just watch your step." He jammed a natty Homburg down over his sandy hair and strode pugnaciously from the office.
Joseph Kazman sighed. Obviously the detective had been disappointed.
That night, hi his bachelor's flat, Fitzgerald tossed and turned uneasily on his modern bed. Being blessed with a sound digestion able to cope even with a steady diet of chain-restaurant food and the soundest of consciences, the detective was agitated profoundly by his wakefulness.
Being, like all bachelors, a cautious man, he hesitated to dose himself with the veronal he kept for occasions like this, few and far between though they were. Finally, as he heard the locals pass one by one on the El a few blocks away and then heard the first express of the morning, with its higher-pitched bickering of wheels and quicker vibration against the track, he stumbled from bed and walked dazedly into his bathroom, fumbled open the medicine chest.
Only when he had the bottle and had shaken two pills into his hand did he think to turn on the light. He pulled the cord and dropped the pills hi horror. They weren't the veronal at all but an old prescription which he had thriftily kept till they might be of use again.
Two would have been a fatal overdose. Shakily Fitzgerald filled a glass of water and drank it down, spilling about a third on his pajamas. He replaced the pills and threw away the entire bottle. You never know when a thing like that might happen again, he thought—too late to mend.
Now thoroughly sure that he needed the sedative, he swallowed a dose.
By the time he had replaced the bottle he could scarcely find his way back to the bed, so sleepy was he.
He dreamed then. Detective Fitzgerald was standing on a plain, a white plain, that was very hot. His feet were bare. In the middle distance was a stone tower above which circled winged skulls—bat-winged skulls, whose rattling and flapping he could plainly hear.
From the plain—he realized then that it was a desert of fine, white sand—spouted up little funnels or vortices of fog in a circle around bun. He began to run very slowly, much slower than he wanted to. He thought he was running away from the tower and the vortices, but somehow they continued to stay in his field of vision. No matter where he swerved the tower was always hi front and the little twisters around him. The circle was growing smaller around him, and he redoubled his efforts to escape.
Finally he tried flying, leaping into the air. Though he drifted for yards at a tune, slowly and easily, he could not land where he wanted to. From the air the vortices looked like petals of a flower, and when he came drifting down to the desert he would land hi the very center of the strange blossom.
Again he ran, the circle of foggy ccnes following still, the tower still before him. He felt with his bare feet something tinglingly clammy. The circle had contracted to the point of coalescence, had gripped his two feet like a trap.
He shot into the air and headed straight for the tower. The creaking, napping noise of the bat-winged skulls was very much louder now. He cast his eyes to the side and was just able to see the tips of his own black, flapping membranes. As though regular nightmares—always the same, yet increasingly repulsive to the detective—were not- enough woe for one man to bear, he was troubled with a sudden, appalling sharpness of hearing. This was strange, for Fitzgerald had always been a little deaf in one ear.
The noises he heard were distressing things, things like the ticking of a wristwatch two floors beneath his flat, the gurgle of water in sewers as he walked tile streets, humming of underground telephone wires.
Headquarters was a bedlam with its stentorian breathing, the machine-gun fire of a telephone being dialed, the howitzer crash of a cigarette case snapping shut.
He had his bedroom soundproofed and tried to bear it The inches of fibreboard helped a little; he
found that he could focus his attention on a book and practically exclude from his mind the regular swish of air in his bronchial tubes, the thudding at his wrists and temples, the slushing noise of food passing through his transverse colon.
Fitzgerald did not go mad for he was a man with ideals. He believed in clean government and total extirpation of what he fondly believed was a criminal class which could be detected by the ear lobes and other distinguishing physical characteristics.
He did not go to a doctor because he knew that the word would get back to headquarters that Fitzgerald heard things and would probably begin to see things pretty soon and that it wasn't good policy to have a man like mat on the force.
The detective read up on the later Freudians, trying to interpret the recurrent dream. The book said that it meant he had been secretly in love with a third cousin on his mother's side and that he was ashamed of it now and wanted to die, but that he was afraid of heavenly judgment. He knew that wasn't so; his mother had had no relations and detective Fitzgerald wasn't afraid of anything under the sun.
After two weeks of increasing horror he was walking around like a corpse, moving by instinct and wearily doing his best to dodge the accidents that seemed to trail him. It was then that he was assigned to check on the Cult of Hagar. The records showed that they had registered at City Hall, but records don't show everything.
He walked in on the cult during a service and dully noted that its members were more prosperous in appearance than they had been, and that there were more women present Joseph Kazam was going through precisely the same ritual that, the detective had last seen.
When the last bill had fallen into the pot covered with gilded wood and the last dowager had left Kazam emerged and greeted the detective.
"Fitzgerald," he said, "you damned fool, why didn't you come to me in the first place?"
His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction Page 56
