Keep The Giraffe Burning

by Sladek, John

  Then I realize that this is the news – ordinary, palling life goes right on, up to the last moment. As I realize it, I hear thousands of footsteps coming downstairs into the cafeteria. The new crowds are arriving. It is everyone’s jelly day.

  6. …

  Reviewed by …

  … until finally:

  until finally the endless criticism does end. The ship sets out to discover this land, these people, the traces of this event. It is left to the reader (Garber) to determine whether or not they succeed.

  HEAVENS BELOW

  FIFTEEN UTOPIAS

  Getting There Is th the Fun

  Professor Lodeworm made one last adjustment ‘If my Utopia-ray works according to plan,’ he said, ‘it should make life for everyone a continual round of delightful anticipation, ever closer and closer to satisfaction. Now I’ll switch it on.’

  Professor Lodeworm made one last adjustment ‘If my Utopia-ray works according to plan,’ he said, ‘it should make life for everyone a continual round of delightful anticipation, ever closer and closer to satisfaction. Now I’ll switch it on.’

  The Bright Side

  On Dr Freeman’s desk at the Astronomy Institute we found a list headed ‘UTOPIAS’. The first items were:

  Arrange the planets in order of size, of colour, of mass, and in alphabetical order.

  The world population, laid end to end, ought to reach about eleven or twelve times to the moon. Test this.

  Make friends with a black hole.

  Adjust the earth’s rotation so that my watch always keeps perfect time.

  Land a man on the sun.

  Carve Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars with the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

  Paint the moon’s bright side black.

  The remainder of this list was obscured by blood from Dr Freeman’s throat. He lay with his head on the desk, having apparently killed himself with a piece of broken glass. We think the glass came from the objective lens of the Institute telescope, which he’d smashed earlier in the day.

  A talk with his physician cast more light on the matter. He had diagnosed in Dr Freeman a deterioration of the optic nerve.

  ‘I can understand an astronomer’s being unhappy at going blind,’ he explained. ‘Wish I hadn’t told him to look on the …’

  Mr and Ms America

  ‘I know they always say it’s hard to be a judge in these contests,’ George said. ‘But you know, it really is hard. Hell, we’ve got at least fifteen possibles here, and they all look good to me.’

  Lotte yawned. ‘Not to me. Vanity surgery isn’t much, nowadays. Look, each of these characters has sunk half a million in his own body, and what have they really got? Look at this one, now.’

  Mr Florida was parading above them. George saw little enough wrong with him. With Mr Florida’s three-foot coxcomb, rib fins, and real eyes set into his female breasts, he was at least the Number Three contender.

  Ms South Dakota looked even better. She had restricted herself to a hundred pounds of implanted fat, extra fingers and toes, and a small, shapely pair of antlers.

  Next came Ms Iowa, an atavism of the 1950s: ninety-inch bust, ten-inch waist, thirty feet of trailing blonde hair, and feet equipped with tall spike heels. A decided washout, along with Mr Alaska and his fifty-pound penis that looked like a case of elephantiasis, nothing more.

  By lunchtime, they’d narrowed it down to five men and four women. George and Lotte agreed the contest was tawdry, grotesque, and decadent. Over lunch, they tried to puzzle out what was wrong.

  ‘The trouble is,’ George said, ‘most of the young surgeons have no ideas. Laszlo Goodwin’s okay, but the rest – amateur copyists.’

  ‘Not like our day,’ Lotte said. ‘Your outfit still looks good, you know?’

  ‘Thanks. Yes, old Morton knew his stuff. A simple concept like this never looks out-of-date: seal fur all over, eyes on stalks, and a toroidal torso. My tailor says it’s a real pleasure and a challenge, making clothes for a man with a big hole through his middle. But you still look great, too.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Lotte. She cut a bite of steak and delicately stuffed it up her armpit.

  Empty Promise

  ‘Just sign here,’ said the Devil, ‘and name your wish.’

  Jonathan Palmer sighed. ‘I wish for Utopia,’ he said. ‘A perfect world without blemish or unpleasantness.’

  ‘But –’ said the Devil, looking surprised as he vanished forever.

  ‘Things seem better already,’ said Jonathan Palmer as he vanished forever.

  ‘Better and better,’ said his wife, turning from the keyhole to embrace her lover, Raoul. As she vanished forever, Raoul recalled that he was the sole beneficiary of her sizable insurance policy. He immediately vanished, followed by the cunning insurance salesman, his grasping boss, and the rest of imperfect humanity.

  I alone am left. Ha-ha –

  The Paradise Problem

  Blenheim won his island by correctly guessing the number of coffee beans in a boxcar. He named his utopian republic Boxcar, its capital, Bean.

  The island population consisted of two tribes, the Ye (who always told the truth) and the Ne (who always lied). A man from one tribe or the other was always posted at a fork in the main road, where one branch led to the city, the other into cannibal country.

  By the river, Blenheim found a party of missionaries and cannibals, waiting to row across. The rowboat could carry only two men. If the cannibals on either shore outnumbered the missionaries, they would eat them.

  Farther down the river was a pair of men with the curious names of A and B. A could evidently row upstream half as fast as B could swim downstream, while A and B together could row upstream twice as fast as B alone.

  The two men explained that they were always engaging in contests, such as chopping wood, pumping water, racing a bicycle against a car, and so on. B was as many years older than A as A’s age had been when B was as old as A was when B gave him half his apples plus half an apple.

  In the city of Bean, the baker, draper, tailor, and smith were named (not respectively) Baker, Draper, Tailor, and Smith. Baker was the tailor’s uncle, and Draper was the smith’s son. Tailor had no living relatives. If Draper was the tailor, then the smith was named after the occupation of the man named after the occupation of Draper. Otherwise, the city was very beautiful.

  Blenheim spent many happy years in Boxcar, drawing various coloured socks out of a drawer in order to get a matching pair. Exactly bow many happy years did he spend?

  What Changed Doyster’s Mind

  Doyster stepped out of his time machine and strolled up the shady avenue of the Academy grove to Plato’s house. The philosopher was just now supervising workmen who were placing a lintel over the door. On the lintel was inscribed: ‘Let no one enter here who is unacquainted with geometry.’

  ‘It won’t work, boss,’ called one of the men. ‘The posts are too far apart. It won’t reach across.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Plato. ‘Let go your end.’

  As one end of the lintel crashed to the ground, Doyster was already walking back down the shady avenue.

  Handout

  The League of Nations rules put it like this: Everyone in the world was entitled to go along to his nearest Dispensary and collect, free, a large box of God.

  The first problem was a big riot in South America, owing to a rumour that supplies were running out. The League made a reassuring broadcast: No shortage was imminent. Indeed, the supply was expected to last indefinitely.

  The riots in the Indian subcontinent were harder to combat. Local officials began to gripe: ‘Oh, sure, there’s enough to go around, but it’s not in the right places. Rich Americans have enough to burn, while poor Indians are shelling out a hundred rupees a box on the black market. Is that justice? Why can’t we straighten out the distribution?’

  The League looked into it, and sent a memo: God was already present everywhere in great quantities.
Containers, alas, were not. Applicants should be urged to bring their own boxes, baskets, pails, envelopes, etc.

  Next came the staff shortages in Africa. People might walk fifty miles to the nearest Dispensary, only to find it closed. Perhaps the overworked official had collapsed with fever, perhaps he had gone AWOL, or deserted, or been murdered by black-marketeers. No one knew. Angry crowds began burning Dispensaries, not only in Africa but across the world. Officials now began to desert in greater numbers, or call for military protection.

  At the end of a year, the League reviewed its campaign: The costs (of troops, compensation for riot-torn cities, etc.) ran to billions. The results were disappointing. Fewer than a tenth of those in need had actually been reached.

  Reluctantly, the League voted to dispense no more boxes of God.

  Assessment

  Our machine slaves have now taken over all tedious or disagreeable occupations. They paint, write and perform music, make scientific discoveries, and handle pretty well everything from fashion to philosophy. This leaves us plenty of time and freedom to do whatever we like – extract square roots, say, or calculate payrolls.

  Art News

  Sisyphus jammed a block of wood under the stone to keep it from rolling back, took a swig from his canteen, and squatted down to explain his work to the tour group.

  ‘Of course, it’s a very healthy life – outdoor work, and so on. Then, too, I’ve always liked working with natural materials like stone. Not that the stone itself is important. No, what’s important here is not gross physical change. I think I can safely say that ever since Oldenburg dug a hole in Central Park, filled it in, and called it a buried sculpture – ever since then, physical-change stuff has been dying a slow death. Nowadays, the artist is not concerned with torturing Nature to “make” something. He’s concerned with “doing” something within Nature …’

  After stopping for ice-cold orangeade, the group moved on to Tantalus.

  Pax Gurney

  As a young man, Gurney said, ‘If I were world emperor, the first thing I’d do would be to introduce a compulsory world language.’ For the next twenty years, he actually worked on such a language, Unilingo, on the off chance he might become emperor. Unilingo was designed to guarantee world peace forever. In this language, no one could lie or express hatred or discontent. No one could hold an opinion contrary to fact, or hold any opinion at all about non-facts. No two speakers of Unilingo could ever really disagree. Gurney described it in his memoirs as ‘a calculus of good sense and good taste’.

  Of course he did become world emperor, and the world prospered for many years under his ‘rule of grammar’. People stopped talking about matters that did not concern them, and spoke wisely of those that did. The world was at peace. Gurney abdicated, and the institutions of government withered as people learned self-control.

  A century after Gurney’s death, an American compiling a new dictionary of Unilingo made a curious discovery. While in America the word orth had kept its original meaning (‘to fray the edge of an old blanket, from left to right’), in Eurasiafrica it had taken on a new one (‘to fray the edge of an old blanket, left-handedly’). He wrote a letter about it to a Eurasiafrican colleague. The trouble was traced to photocopies of Gurney’s original manuscript, on file in the two continents. One copy showed the word riin (‘from left to right’), the other showed riin without a dot over the second i (‘left-handedly’). An interesting dispute arose between the Universities of Tübingen and Nebraska.

  What had been on the original manuscript (long since lost)? Was a dot added, correcting a mistake? Or erased? Was the addition or erasure itself a mistake? Physical chemists were called in, and photography experts. The debate became more heated, and opinions were split along continental lines. An American professor was booed at Tübingen; Nebraska fired a foreign archaeologist.

  Over the next century, the two continents grew apart. The dot-less Eurasiafricans developed a philosophy aimed at defining the final meaning of life. The dotted Americans preferred a harsh form of skepticism, summed up in their mono: ‘That which does not exist is nonexistent.’ Two centuries later, these philosophies had become articles of faith for two bitterly opposed religions.

  Knowing this background to the present war, we can more easily understand …

  A Fable

  The snails, discontented with their free and easy life, held a noisy meeting to petition Jupiter for a king.

  ‘We’re not complaining,’ they insisted. ‘We know we already have portable homes and other luxuries. But we’d like a strong leader. After all, you gave the frogs a stork to follow. And even the men have their presidents. How about us?’

  Jupiter threw an old log down into their pool and said, ‘There is a king for you!’

  The old log has proved a wise and compassionate leader. Under his guidance, the snails have prospered, until now they are seen in all the best restaurants.

  Utopia: A Financial Report

  Utopia is laid out in four planned nations: Fascesia, Commund, Capitalia, and Anarche.

  Fascesia is a half-tamed land. The cities are sophisticated, filled with monumental architecture, opera houses, and elegant night clubs. The countryside, on the other hand, is a wilderness teeming (in theory) with savages and wild game. Alas, Fascesians tend to hunt both to extinction, and the cost of replenishing these is considerable. Therefore we recommend closing Fascesia.

  Commund cities are bleak and industrial, while its rural areas undergo intensive agriculture. Communders are excellent organizers and produce surpluses yearly. Unfortunately, these surpluses seem to lower the morale of Communders, who rather enjoy mild discomforts and privations – proof that they are continuing their ‘struggle’. Accordingly, we remove their surpluses from time to time, as well as causing them to have minor shortages. The costs of removal and destruction of their surpluses have become excessive. Moreover, the materials destroyed are our loss, in the last analysis. We recommend closing Commund.

  Capitalia is a uniformly settled nation with a monotony of maple-lined streets and white frame houses. Capitalians have no incentive to work (though of course they refer to their play activities as ‘work’; e.g. signing their names to pieces of paper). They also require huge outlays of energy, materials, machines, foods, and medicines. We recommend closing Capitalia.

  Anarche seemed at first a viable nation, with few requirements. Now it is entirely deserted. Anarchers are evidently unstable, and frequently migrate to the other three nations.

  Summary: We feel the experiment has served its purpose. We now know more than enough about the social institutions of Homo sapiens. We feel, therefore, that Utopia should be closed and its inhabitants destroyed. The ground can then be used for a study of the social behaviour of another interesting species, the armadillos.

  Utopiary

  Utopia has turned out to be like a well-planned garden: Each change of season brings its fresh cycle of pleasing colour, heavenly scent, and backbreaking work.

  Luck

  General Holme threw the dice. ‘Tough luck, General Vladiful,’ he said, chuckling. ‘I’ve just captured your fourth army. Do you want to surrender?’

  The other sighed. ‘No, no. After all, we are playing for real armies. Let us play on awhile. I may yet turn the turtles on you, eh?’

  ‘Tables. We say turn the tables. Ha-ha, I must say, this beats the old system of waging w–’

  The door burst open and a soldier strode in, pointing a sub-machine gun at them. ‘You’ll have to surrender. This sector has just been captured by the forces of General Heinz.’

  ‘Heinz? Heinz?’ Holme scratched his head. ‘Never heard of him. He’s not in the game.’

  ‘He plays a bigger game,’ said the soldier. ‘Come with me, please.’

  Vladiful nodded. ‘So, there is a bigger war than we know of, even. I wonder who Heinz opposes?’

  From the darkness outside came a burst of automatic fire. The soldier flopped to the floor, bleeding from a dozen
wounds. In a moment, a man in a Germanic uniform was prodded into the room at bayonet point.

  ‘I am Heinz,’ he said. ‘Are you my captors?’

  ‘Not us.’ Holme offered him some brandy. ‘Ask the man with the gun.’

  The man with the gun cleared his throat. ‘This sector – namely, Earth – has just been captured by Planet Marshal Gordon. You are all under house arrest.’

  As if echoing him, an amplified voice rolled over the dark parade ground outside. ‘You are all under house arrest This sector has just been captured by the 119th Galactic Army under Commander Noll.’

  ‘Noll?’ said Holme. ‘Lucky bastard. I wonder what he threw.’

  A Picnic

  Bill Nolan was thinking out loud. ‘In a way, I guess this is Utopia. I mean, people in the past would have been horrified at the idea of having a picnic in a junkyard. They weren’t like us.’ Jimmy stopped kicking at an old tire. ‘Why, Dad?’

  Nolan rescued the baby, who was crawling around elbow-deep in sump oil. ‘That’s enough, hon. Mommy’ll bring your bottle in just a minute.’ He waved to his wife, who was climbing over a crumpled Buick.

  ‘You see, Jimmy, our stomachs are different. Everybody has a lot of little helpers in his stomach, to help him digest his dinner. But the way it used to be, the helpers couldn’t handle much of anything. So people had to eat things like – oh, cows, pigs, and so on.’

  Jimmy looked up at him. ‘Cows! No kidding?’

  ‘I used to eat pieces of cow myself. (Hey, did you strip that insulation like your mother said? Good boy.) No, what happened was, some scientists changed the little helpers. See, we were running out of cows and stuff, so we needed helpers that would help us eat new things. Now just about everything is edible.’