Venus on the Half-Shell (7 page)

Simon thought a lot about predeterminism and free will.

Anubis thought mainly about food, unless it was mating season, and so he didn’t even wait for Simon to quit talking. He trotted into the ship, and Simon’s belly, which also could not digest philosophy, urged him to follow the dog. He explored the ship, finding it empty of life, as he’d expected. But it was well stocked with food and drink, and that was all he cared about for the moment. Since he didn’t want to throw up, he forced himself to eat lightly. Anubis resented being fed small portions, but there wasn’t much he could do about it except look reproachful.

“More later,” Simon said. “Much more. And it sure beats eating dried-up old Pharaoh, doesn’t it?”

His next step was to search through the lockers and find clothes that fitted him. Once more, he was clad in a baggy gray sweatshirt, black tight-fitting Levis, and sandals.

When he returned to the room by the still open port the owl was sitting on the back of a chair.

“Who?” it said.

“Not who? Why?” Simon replied.

The question of where the owl had come from was still unsettled, but Simon thought it likely that it had been riding on top of the spaceship. It must be hungry, too, so Simon prepared some egg foo young for it. When he came back to the room with the food, the owl was sitting on a pile of torn-up papers on the seat of the chair. Simon put the plate on the floor before it. It flew down to grab the food, enabling Simon to determine its sex. It—she—had just laid an egg.

Anubis leaped up onto the chair and swallowed the egg. The owl didn’t seem to mind, which made Simon think that the catastrophe had bent its mother instincts out of shape. That was just as well, otherwise the two animals might have gotten off on the wrong foot in their relationship.

Simon decided to name his new pet Athena. Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom, and her symbol was the owl. Owls were supposed to be highly intelligent, though actually they were as dumb as chickens. But Simon was mythology-prone, which was only to be expected from a man who’d named his banjo Orpheus.

He examined the instruments in the control room, since he had heard that even a moron could navigate a spaceship. However, in this case, it had to be a Chinese moron. But if there was a book aboard which could teach him Chinese, he’d figure out how to fly this computerized vessel. He had already made up his mind to leave Earth for good. There was nothing here to hold him.

In later years, during his wanderings, he would often be asked what had happened to his native planet.

“Earth is all washed up,” he would reply. “The game of life there was called off on account of rain.”

The big question at the moment was: who had done this to Earth? Somebody had caused this deluge. It would never have occurred in the normal course of Terrestrial events. Somebody had pushed a button which activated a machine or chemicals which had precipitated one hundred percent of the water in the atmospheric ocean.

Who and why?

Was it the gone-wrong experiment of some mad scientist? Or had some planet whose business was being ruined by Earth triggered off this flood? Or was it simply because Earthmen smelled so badly? Terrestrials had a reputation as the most odoriferous race in the universe. A million planets referred to them as The Stinkers. There was an old Arcturan saying that exemplified this attitude. “Never stand downwind of a
shrook
or an Earthman.” A
shrook
was a little beast on Arcturus VI that exuded the combined scents of a skunk, a bombardier beetle, and dog farts with a touch of garbage heap.

Some extraterrestrials claimed that it was the Earthman’s diet, which consisted mainly of hot dogs, potato chips, soft drinks, and beer, even among the Chinese, that caused this offensive odor. But the octopoids of Algol, perhaps the most philosophical of all races, contended that it wasn’t the food that caused the bad smell. Psychology affected physiology. Earthmen stank because their ethics stank.

This reaction had upset Terrestrials, but they’d gone about solving this problem with their usual vicious efficiency. A huge perfume industry, employing millions, had been created, and travelers from Earth had always perfumed themselves just before they disembarked on an alien planet. These were specialized, since the perfume that pleased the Spicans would offend the Vegans. The only planet where perfumes were taboo was Sirius VII. The caninoids there identified each other by sniffing assholes, and so they strictly forbade the use of perfumes. The Earthmen had to go along with this custom, otherwise they’d never get to first base in selling Terrestrial goods. They tried to get around this by sending agents who had no sense of smell, but this didn’t work out. All Sirians looked exactly alike, and they refused to carry nametags. Thus, an Earthman didn’t know whom he was dealing with unless he had a keen nose.

This demand opened a whole new field to specialists who were paid huge bonuses. These had to earn a new degree, Ph.D.A., before they could be hired. Despite the fabulous salaries, there was a big turnover in this field, suicide being the chief cause of resignation. Then a bright young executive in the PR department got the idea of running a search through a computer for a particular type of fetishist. This revealed that there were over five hundred thousand masochists on Earth who liked to torture themselves with offensive odors. Of these, there were fifty thousand who specialized in dog crap. The Sirian Trading Corporation only needed twelve thousand, so suddenly the field became a monopoly of this handful. The doctor of philosophy of anumology was no longer required. Furthermore, since these were eager to work on Sirius, they underbid each other, and the STC was hiring them for slave wages.

This same bright young executive later was inspired with the idea which rid Earth of all perverts. Somewhere in this universe was a planet where a particular Terrestrial perversion was regarded as not only normal but highly desirable. He ran another search through the computer, and soon the STC was advertising for fetishists, masochists, sadists, child-beaters, racists, professional soldiers, drug-addicts, alcoholics, gun-lovers, motorcyclists, pet-lovers, exhibitionists, religious fanatics, members of the WCTU, and science-fiction fans. The salaries and the prestige offered were so high that a number of non-perverts tried to sign up. These were carefully screened out, however, with a battery of psychological tests. Those who passed were trained in a business college run by STC. This became the most powerful business on Earth due to its expansion to other planets than Sirius.

Earth was cleared of perverts, and everybody left looked forward to a golden age. But in twenty years Earth had just as many perverts as ever. This caused an uproar, and the governments of every nation set up investigative agencies. Their reports were never published, since they indicated that the system of child-raising was responsible. The voters just would not stand for this item of information. And so Earth quietly returned to normal, that is, it was once again full of perverts.

STC hadn’t cared. It wasn’t going to run out of competent and dedicated employees.

Simon wondered if this export of non-desirables had offended some planet which had decided to clean up the origin of offense. Perhaps he would find out some day, but he could only do this if he learned how to operate the spaceship. This was possible, since he’d found a book which taught Chinese speakers how to read and write English. By reversing the order of instructions, he could learn to read Chinese.

Days passed. The ship drifted with the current. When storms came, he closed the port and rode them out. And then, one day, while he was studying at the control panel in the bridge, he felt a jar run through the ship. He turned on the exterior-view TV and saw what he had hoped for. The nose of the
Hwang Ho
was stuck in the mud of the shore of a big bay. In front of it was the slope of a mountain.

Simon went out with the dog and the owl next day and looked around. Contrary to what he had first thought, they were not on a mountain but on a saddle between two peaks.

Simon walked up the slope of the nearest mountain.

Halfway up, he came across a stone tablet lying on its face, half-buried in mud that had carried it down from a higher level. He heaved it upright and read the inscription on its face.

ON SEPT. 27, 1829, J. J. VON PARROT, A GERMAN CITIZEN, BECAME THE FIRST MAN TO CLIMB TO THE TOP OF MOUNT ARARAT, 16,945 FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL. HE DID NOT FIND THE ARK, BUT HE ENJOYED THE VIEW WHILE EATINC A SALAMI SANDWICH. THIS WAS 58 YEARS BEFORE “THE PAUSE THAT REFRESHES.”

Courtesy of Coca Cola Co.

Simon had arrived in his ark at the same place where Noah was supposed to have landed. This was a coincidence that could only happen in a bad novel, but Nature didn’t give a damn about literary esthetics. The grasshopper voices of thousands of critics had shrilled at Her and then died while She went right on ahead writing Her stories, none of which had a happy ending.

Simon didn’t now believe in the Biblical account of the flood. But as a child he’d taken it seriously. When he went to high school, however, he began to have his doubts. So he’d gone to a nice old rabbi named Isaac Apfelbaum and had asked him why the book of Genesis told such bare-faced lies as the stories of the Garden of Eden, angels knocking up the daughters of men, the flood, the tower of Babel, etc.

The rabbi had sighed and then had patiently explained that the holy scriptures of any people were not meant to be scientific textbooks. They were parables to teach people how to be good-hearted and how to stay within certain limits of behavior so life would go as smoothly as possible. They were, in effect, guidebooks to heaven on earth and, hopefully, to the afterworld. Wise old men had worked out the guidelines as the best way to stay out of trouble.

“None of them were written by wise old women?” Simon had said. “Why? Do men have a monopoly on truth?”

“You forget Mary Baker Eddy,” the rabbi had said.

“She was in ill health all her life,” Simon said. “Can a sick person truly be wise?”

The rabbi ignored that. He wasn’t keen on pumping the competition, anyway.

“And how come the guidebooks are all different?” Simon had said. He was thinking of that question now as he stared around at Mount Ararat. He was also thinking of the guidebooks he’d picked up just before the picnic. If men couldn’t agree on the measurements of the Sphinx, a finite physical object, how could they ever blueprint heaven? If heaven existed, that is. Simon hadn’t said so to the rabbi, but he thought there was as much justification in believing in the Yellow Brick Road as in the Pearly Gates.

“The guidebooks just send you down different paths,” the rabbi had said. “But the end result is the same. All roads lead to Rome.”

The rabbi had shut up then. If he kept on, he’d be converting the kid to Catholicism.

Simon looked at the writings that post-Parrot climbers had felt impelled to scratch on the tablet. Some wag had scratched below the bottom line of the inscription: I wuz here furst. noah.

Another wag had scratched below that:
NO, I WAS HERE FIRST, YOU ILLITERATE BASTARD. GOD
.

On the side, running vertically, was a later
INSCRIPTION: GRAFFITI WRITERS SUCK
.

Running alongside that was a later one:
O.K. I’LL MEET YOU IN THE MEN’S ROOM, UN BUILDING LOBBY
.

On the other side of the main text, also running vertically, was:
DOESN’T ANYBODY LOVE ANYBODY?

Under that Simon scratched with his screwdriver:
I DO, BUT THERE’S NOBODY LEFT TO LOVE.

After he’d done it, he felt ridiculous. He also felt like crying. He was the last of the fools whose names and faces oft appear in public places. What a last will and testament! Who, besides himself, the lone survivor, was around to read it?

A moment later, he found out.

4

The old man that staggered babbling toward him looked as if he was a hundred years old. His head was bald, and he had a long gray beard that fell to his knees. His clothes were of a style that had gone out of fashion over six hundred years ago. The old man wasn’t even born then. So why was he wearing yellow kid gloves, a white ruff, and a coat too tight in the waist?