Land of Unreason (8 page)

            The huge flower returned his
stare, immobile and impassive. Experimental proof was wanting; and though he
turned down the right-hand curve (since there was nothing better to do) the
dismaying thought occurred to him that it might always be wanting from the set
of circumstances or form of life in which he inexplicably found himself. What
was it Oberon had said about shapings? "The very rules of life change—"
But if they changed, then there were no rules; life was chaotic. No, wait, life
here didn't abandon rules, it shifted unreasonably from one set to another ...

            His shoulder blades itched
in unscratchable places. He stopped and reached around with the crook of the
walking stick-wand, and could plainly feel the bumps that Angus had informed
him were incipient wings. Fred Barber with wings. He tried to picture to
himself the commotion at the Embassy if he walked in on them with a pair of
great feathered appendages springing from his shoulders. He could imagine old
Layton babbling at the sight, with his smug face of a satisfied sheep. And
would an authentic winged man have precedence at dinner over a Yugoslav
military attache? If he knew his embassies, the question ought to be good for
at least eight hours of argument.

            Well, he was out of that
now, perhaps permanently, and just ahead of him the hedges were falling away to
side and side from another crotch in the road. Between the two forks were
flowers, mingled with a perfect forest of the potted trees, and in front of
them a man, or at least an individual, was standing on his head. The head was a
large one, and the individual seemed perfectly comfortable, with arms and legs
folded. At the sound of Barber's footfall he opened a large green eye.

            "Beg pardon," said
Barber, "but could you direct me to the Kobold Hills?"

            The individual said:
"What do you want to go there for?"

            "Public business,"
said Barber, trying to make it sound important.

            The individual yawned—it
looked extremely odd in his position—and opened a second eye. "Not an
original remark, my friend. You're the—let's see— forty-ninth mortal to go
through here. They're always on public business. Forty-nine is seven times
nine. I wouldn't go any farther."

            "Your arithmetic's
wrong and whether I go or not is my business. How do I get there?"

            The individual opened a
third eye in the middle of his forehead. "No it isn't. It's only mortal
affection for exact systems that makes you say that. I know all about Oberon's
monkey business with the kobolds. It's a waste of time. And you're mistaken
about those colors. They call them greengrocers because they feel blue."

            Barber had a sensation of
trying to wade through mud, but clung manfully to the main issue. "Why is
it a waste of time to do anything about the kobolds? They'll make trouble if
they're not stopped, won't they?"

            The individual closed two of
his eyes. "Lots of trouble," he said cheerfully. "They'll lay
the country waste. Your development is incomplete. You can't follow more than
one line of reasoning at a time. That makes for errors."

            "Then what's the
objection to thwarting them?"

            "It's an inevitable
transition stage before we can have anything better. If your development were complete
you'd see that the kobolds were destined to sweep away the old corrupt
order."

            "What's corrupt about
it?"

            "So that's your line,
is it? Very well, do you admit that perfection exists?"

            "We—ell," said
Barber doubtfully, "there's a word for it, so I suppose that in a
sense—"

            "Either a thing exists
or it doesn't. If it exists in a sense it exists in all senses. Just as you're
made not less a man by being an outsize, humpbacked mortal man."

            "Go on," said
Barber.

            "Now, if it exists it
is patently worth striving for, isn't it?"

            "I'll concede that for
the moment."

            "Fine. Now I'm sure
you'll admit that Oberon is not perfect. He quarrels with his wife and keeps
winged fairies in the bedroom while she's away."

            "I suppose you could
hardly call that perfection."

            "Aha! Then since
perfection is worth striving for, Oberon, being imperfect, is not worth
striving for. He is corrupt and should be swept away. Q.E.D."

            "But will the kobolds
produce perfection?"

            "Far more of it than
Oberon. They outnumber him, a thousand to one, d'you see? Even if the unit
quantity of perfection per individual were far lower, the total mass would work
out higher."

            "Listen," said
Barber, in some exasperation. "I'd like to stand here and split hairs with
you all night, but I've got a job to do. Which way to the Kobold Hills?"

            "Then you admit I'm
right?"

            "I'll admit anything if
I can be on my way."

            "Then," said the
inverted person calmly, "by admitting I'm right you admit implicitly that
you are wrong. Therefore you don't want to go to the Kobold Hills."

            "All the same I'm
going. Which way?"

            The remaining eye closed
wearily, and the voice sank to a mumble. "Either one you like—or—perhaps
both—yes, I think—you'd better take—both."

            Barber turned away and trudged
resolutely down the left-hand fork, reflecting that he had taken the right at
the last choice. Since there seemed no rules of sequence in this experience, he
would probably come out nearest correct by doing exactly the opposite of what
had been successful before. The way seemed clear enough in this direction,
though a little beyond Three-eyes and his fork hedges closed in from both sides
again and it wound round in the familiar involutions. Barber followed it around
a sweeping curve, up a slope—and found himself approaching a fork whose center
was occupied by a flower bed with trees behind. In front of the flowers an
individual was standing on his head.

            "I told you it was no
use," he remarked as Barber came up to him. "You don't really want to
go to the Kobold Hills."

            "Oh, yes, I do. I took
the wrong fork last time, no thanks to you, but I'm going to take the other one
this time." Barber stepped resolutely to the right.

            Two of the green eyes came
open. "Just a minute. It's only fair to warn you, my friend, that if you
turn to the right, you'll come back here just the same. The way's longer and
more fatiguing though. Better go to the left again; you'll get here
quicker."

            Barber ignored him and
strode resolutely down the right-hand path. After a little distance, however,
he was obliged to admit that Three-eyes had been right about one thing, at
least. The path here was certainly more fatiguing. It climbed sharply; his foot
struck an outcrop of rock. He looked down; instead of the lawnlike carpet on
which he had been walking, the path underfoot was now nearly bare, except for
rank tufts of yellowish vegetation, and ahead the rocks were more frequent. The
hedges had changed character here, too. They were much taller, at least twenty
feet, and had come in close to pinch the path to a mere passage. The turns,
too, were no longer rounded curves but angles; and as Barber negotiated one of
them, something caught and scraped across the back of his hand, leaving a
scratch that showed little drops of blood. The hedges here had thorns.

            He climbed. At a little
summit the hedge on one side broke back to reveal a sandy depression. In the
middle of it, a few yards from the path, was another native, with a long, horsy
face, elaborately rigged out in some sort of tweedy material with a red silk
sash sweeping diagonally down across his chest. He had a crooked stick in both
hands and was violently banging it into the sand, throwing up little spurts
with each stroke.

            "Hello," said
Barber.

            The native glanced up,
revealing a monocle on his face, swung the stick over his shoulder and brought
it down again—swish-thump! "Thirty-four, sixty-two," said the native
as a grain of sand landed in Barber's eye.

            "Sorry," said the
native curtly, shifted his feet, and drove the stick down again, so the next
explosion of sand went off in another direction. "Thirty-five,
sixty-seven," he remarked to himself.

            Barber extracted the grain
of sand, and asked: "Beg pardon, but can you tell me the way to the Kobold
Hills?"

            Swish-thump!
"Thirty-three, sixty-one."

            Barber raised his voice:
"Hey, can you tell me—"

             The monocled face swung
round like a gun turret. "My good mortal, I'm not deaf."

            "Then why don't you
answer?"

            "Can't."

            "Oh, you mean you don't
know."

            "Certainly I know. But
I can't tell you."

            "Why not?"

            "Because I don't know
you. We haven't been introduced. You might be some blighter."

            Barber hovered between
laughter and annoyance and compromised on a snort. "Look here," he
said, "I'm on state business." He shook the wand. "Here's my
credentials. Now suppose you—"

            "No use, old thing.
Awfully sorry and all that. Nothing personal."

            "But it's
important!"

            "Oh, undoubtedly; I
quite understand. Safety of the realm and all that." He elevated one hand
and pointed the index finger at his forehead. "Ah, I have it! You find old
Jib; lives down the road a bit. Literary chap, so it doesn't matter whom he
meets. He can make the introductions." He showed Barber a tweedy shoulder and
swung again. "Forty-one, fifty-eight."

            The hedge-lined track
plunged down sharply, angled, angled again, changed character to the original
type of hedge-and-grass within a couple of hundred yards, and Barber found
himself back at the fork in the roads, with the inverted sophist regarding him
out of one green eye.

            "You're beginning to
develop. Now that you perceive the compelling logic of the situation, why not
take the next step?" he said. "Give up this trip and align yourself
with the forces of progress. A little temporary violence is necessary to
achieve any great improvement."

            Barber gripped the ivory
wand and advanced grimly on Three-eyes. "Look here," he said,
"I'm going to the Kobold Hills and if you don't tell me how to get there,
there's going to be a little temporary violence right now."

            The individual raised all
three eyebrows—or, rather, lowered them, being upside down. "Are you
threatening me, mortal?"

            "You're damn'd right,
I'm threatening you!"

            "Evidently you will
accomplish nothing against the kobolds."

            "Why not?"

            "The complaint is the
manufacture and use of instruments of force, is it not? It's the one that
hidebound old nympholept Oberon usually makes."

            "Yes," admitted
Barber, drawn back into the argument in spite of himself.

            "To prevent them,"
said Three-eyes triumphantly, "it is necessary for you to use an
instrument of force on me. You thus adopt the methods of the kobolds. In the
higher sense, which looks beyond externals, you
are
a kobold. Therefore,
you cannot thwart them, because you would be thwarting yourself in the process.
Q.E.D. OUCH!"