Dangerous Visions (69 page)

"Gird up thy loins now like a man. I will demand of thee and declare thou unto me." (You see I aim to reproduce his colorful dead language right down to its woolen jerkin. I should have taken notes. What a thesis.) "By whom were all things created, that are in heaven? All the stars of light, the heavens of heavens, and the waters that be above the heavens—who commanded, and they were created? Who set the stars in the firmament of heaven, to give light over the earth? He that darkeneth counsel, let him answer it."

These words were inspiringly composed and declaimed (the old cornball lacked nothing in those departments, especially with that beard), but they were incidentally his last, for it was soon after this that the herbivore cuts his mustard.

Now relax, Gendarme, Polizei, Beefeater, do not fret, I am hiding not one jot and/or tittle, I truly do not know what precise thing bugged him, all I can do is relate what was the last thing I did before his spectacular and regrettable collapse.

"A very good and cogent question, Doc baby, which I am glad you raised," I say, and I turn away from the decrepit politician/priest/ surgeon/subsistence-farmer and I begin to rummage in Patsy's little old bottomless purse which is lying on the bar.

"What are you seeking, you bustard?" whoops Patsy, successfully attempting to contuse my ankle with her left shoe.

Now I think I was already recounting how her daddy has money like other folk have troubles, namely in considerable amounts. My own dad is rich, he is in the subdivision business, he owns more than two hundred galaxies, he is chairman of the local Kiwanis, he is solid, but Patsy's dad, he is bigger than all of us, he operates this Continuous Creation process, which is his very own patented and money-spinning property, oh, a genuine something-for-nothing proposition. And now I am in a position to tell you word for word what all I said before the old wowser puts on his supreme performance, when he drums his heels, he topples from the bar stool, he immolates himself upon the floor in an armageddon of cocktail sticks.

I turn to Patsy, my hot cross bun, and I say: "Peace, eskimo pie. Let me look in your purse. Did you not hear our new friend ask to see a picture of your dad?"

Afterword:

I believe in Jesus, Thoreau, and Mao Tse-tung—and not in God. However, I try to give as much serious thought to the last as to the first three. My story deals with the obvious fallacy in the argument from first cause, which assumes a connection between the creator of the universe and the source of ethics and salvation. To think that the creator of the universe is necessarily the moral superior of man is as naïve as to think that the builder of skyscrapers is greater than the carpenter just because his product is larger.

Back to earth: I must thank the Milford Science Fiction Writers Conference of 1966, but for which this story would not be where it is or quite what it is.

No one who has encountered them will soon forget Kris Neville's marvelous stories, "Bettyann" or "Special Delivery." They were written over fifteen years ago, and even today continue to turn up in anthologies of the best-in-genre. Kris Neville is a hearty man with an unplaceable Southern accent. He says it's a Missouri accent, but damned if it don't sound Texas. Kris Neville is what the writers of book-jacket copy call a "hard-living man." That means he milks every minute. He talks endlessly on topics without number, can drink under the table any three science fiction writers going (with the possible exception of George O. Smith), and manages to come up with fresh angles on themes generally considered well plowed. One such is the story that follows, submitted upon this editor's comment that DANGEROUS VISIONS was lacking a good story on the theme of education.

Kris Neville (has there ever been a more perfect name for a writer? I mean, if you had your choice of being known as Bernard Malamud or Louis Auchincloss, wouldn't
you
pick Kris Neville?) was born in Carthage, Missouri, in 1925, served in the U. S. Army during World War II, and received his degree in English from UCLA in 1950. His first science fiction story was published in 1949 ("The Hand from the Stars" in
Super Science Stories
), and since then he has sold some fifty-odd others. Some were
very
odd indeed.

For eleven years Kris was involved with research and development of epoxy resins. This is what is known in the trade as stick-to-it-iveness. Sorry.

In collaboration with Henry Lee, he has published two books on the subject from McGraw-Hill, one of which (selling for $32.50 in case you are in need) is a massive volume intended to be the definitive treatment of the subject. Additionally, with Drs. Lee and Stauffey, he has written a volume on new thermoplastic high polymers, to be published this year. He has been contributor to a number of symposiums and encyclopedias, and holds "a patent which has covered business into seven figures." His last industrial job was as program manager on research and development contracts, one of the more interesting involving work for the National Institutes of Health in the use of plastic materials for dental applications.

Kris is the author of one science fiction novel,
The Unearth People
, and since early in 1966 he has been a full-time writer. He lives in Los Angeles with wife and children.

At three and a half, it's logical for adults to wear eyeglasses to keep their eyeballs warm. Cold eyeballs is an adult affliction no different from many other adult afflictions equally as incomprehensible.

Adults talk always too loudly. A sonic boom for a whisper. Little ears hear the movement of air molecules in the quiet night, when listening for something else to happen.

Adults live too fast. What passes for thinking is habit. Press a button. Listen. Press a button. Listen. Open a drawer. One of the big bastards does it without thinking, doesn't really care what's in there, is looking for a special thing, and he closes the drawer and hasn't really seen anything in it. Tiny hands, eyes peering over the rim, sees a strange little world in the drawer. There isn't enough time made to know the contents. Stop the press. Here is a thing that looks like a key. See how big it is. Wow! What sort of wild surface bug goes with it? Enormous! Nobody has ever seen one that big. Where do they keep it?

Now here's something: a thing for which there is no conceivable use at all. It has moving parts but it doesn't do anything. There's no place to plug it in. I'll bet rabbits made it. Chickens make eggs.

"Get out of that drawer! Let that alone!"

There she is
. I knew it. Too good to last. What was I hurting? Ask what that is, they just kiss the problem off. Push the button. Listen. Tell you nonsense. Maybe she'll go away. Now what's this thing? Looks interesting. What do you suppose—

"Get
out
of there!"

Aw, hell! I'll try to reason with her. Maybe get a conversation going.

"Candy in here."

"There's no candy in there."

How can she possibly know that? No candy in there, indeed! My God, look at all the things there are in there. How can she possibly tell there's no candy: she hasn't even looked. It's not even her drawer. It's Poppa's. "What's this for?"

"It's not candy. Put it down."

No luck. Sometimes, though, you can get to them by talking about candy. Most Ktimes, like now, they don't think at all. I'll cry. Start quiet: it may take a long time. First a little blob, blob, waa. Makes you feel bad, but don't get carried away, you burn out too soon. May have to keep it up for a long time, start slow and easy. She'll wait to see how serious I am. It's easy if you don't rush into it. Get going good, the body takes over: close your eyes and listen. Lovely sounds. Like singing. Good voice. Lots of variety, up and down. I could go on like this all day.

At three and a half, you've been here forever, and it all hasn't been good, not by a damn sight.

Everything has always been too big. Heavy, awkward to handle. How tired you get! All the wrong size. They get big and dumb and you can't talk to them about anything important. Who cares how they make babies? But you want to watch, and they won't let you. You lay awake and wait and wait and wait while they whisper, loud as sonic booms, "Is he asleep?" Close your eyes and wait some more. Maybe they're afraid I'll laugh at them: they must look silly.

Listen, though, you get smart. You just try not to. They have this special book. Sometimes, though, it's not the book: it's like at the drawer, just now. They're not malicious, just dumb, some of the time.

The damned awful things they do in this book conspiracy, though. The time I had with toilet training; they were going to flush me down the toilet. I thought they would. I really believe they would have. I was scared shitless. But something went wrong, lucky for me, and they didn't, after all. I ought to be grateful to them, I guess, I'm still here. I still don't know why they didn't. They were going to.

There were worse things. The tricks they play on me at night. You wouldn't believe them. I once got so I couldn't sleep at all, just waiting in the night. I had to sleep in the daytime. It's better now. I get more sleep. I asked the other kids at playground; we talk. We make just a few words mean a lot. We know more words than we can use right, so what words we have have to work hard for us. Their parents have special books too.

I'm always afraid they'll do something to my penis. I break out in a sweat when I think about that. That's why I'm so damned afraid at night. One of the reasons.

I used to try to make friends with them, before I got so old. I tried to go get in bed with them, once. They'd fixed up this alarm system; or it came with the book or was part of this course the mailman brings, I think. Oh, it went off with all sorts of sounds and lights flashing, and weird feelings. There I was, trapped, exposed alone on the floor, halfway to their bed, and I just peed all over the carpet.

"Oh, Christ! It's two o'clock in the morning!" That's what he said. Here I was, as scared as anything, standing there, blinking my eyes, and he makes a stupid statement like that.

"Make him feel guilty," she said. "That's what the book says."

"You're a filthy shit!" he screamed at me.

I guess I am. There must be some reason they want to cut my penis off. I heard them say, once, that all your real education takes place before you're four years old: by then your character is established. I think maybe I'll make it. It's still such a long ways off, so long, so long. But maybe I really will make it, even if I'm a nervous wreck.

So I don't feel so good about myself. It could be worse.

There is a place called India. You see it on the newscasts. I was afraid they'd send me there. I don't know why I thought that, but I did. It kept me awake too. I went hungry one day, wouldn't eat at all, just to see if I could take it. I couldn't. They can't either. They die. Several million are starving to death right now. I don't know exactly how many that is. It's more than ten.

But apparently they never intended to send me to India.

Or China.

Or a place called South America.

And people don't starve to death where I live. Except in the slums, and that's different. Whatever the slums are. So at least I'm spared that. It could be worse.

On the newscasts, you see big machines making big piles of people and pee-peeing on them and burning them up. "Why they burn those people, Momma?"

"Hush! It's too awful. They just breed like flies and they can't
feed
themselves."

How do flies breed? What she mean by that? But I think they should let me watch: just to be sure they don't breed like flies do, however that is, so they can continue to feed themselves. I would feed them, though, if it really came to that. I wonder about the Indian children, sometimes. Nobody ever mentions them. Maybe there aren't any.

Flies all fits in, somehow, but it's not too clear to me. Last summer there was really this fly thing. Momma said it was because they couldn't burn people fast enough, and there was a world-wide plague, and I remember how scared they were that we couldn't keep it out. The time everybody had killing flies! It was all over the newscasts.

It went on until it got monotonous. In fact, most newscasts aren't very interesting after a while. They keep changing the places, but there's still this big machine pushing up piles of people and setting them on fire. I like the ones on our space program better. We have a colony on Mars.

We have to have.

For some reason.

Most people go out everyday, all the Poppas, and cheer for this program. I've never seen them do it, but I guess it's like a football game. It's called work. They pay him money for it that Momma writes checks on to pay for credit cards with. They must know what they're doing.

I'm coming along in figuring them out. Every once in a while I think I have it.

I think they have a machine somewhere that makes time, or maybe a press that prints it like a book. They never mention this. Maybe I have to learn how they make electricity, first. They say I'm going to start learning about things like that pretty soon.

And you really have to try to figure the big bastards out. Don't ask me why. You do. You can't do anything about them. They're still going to batter you around. Shaping the personality, it's called. But you have to keep trying, keep hoping. Every once in a great while you can get a conversation going with them. Usually about candy, unfortunately. You learn to like candy, though, and I guess that's something. Sometimes I think it's the most important thing in the whole world.

But if they'd just stop and think every once in a while. If they'd just slow down and talk to you, it might be better. But they don't stop to think. They're always rushing. I give an example. I start up some of the electronic equipment in the basement. We got this electronic dirt remover. I put my bedclothes in it. Sheets, blanket, pillow. Don't you think that wasn't a job! Down two windy flights of stairs with them. Dropping them, picking them up, trying not to make any noise. House quiet. Real early. Everybody asleep.