Waiting for the Galactic Bus (36 page)

The new, the terrible and the
maybes

The intense young man with the James Mason looks lounged in one of Coyul’s salon chairs, listening as his abdicating Prince cleaned up last business. Jake admired Coyul’s ability to communicate on any level, even the gaseous hype of Eddie Veigle. Coyul reclined in a contour chair, loafer-shod feet crossed on the Danish Modern desk, phone propped against one ear.

“Eddie, sweetheart: listen. The
putz
is back and you’ve got him. Yeah, he picked up his option. But let’s not make things too easy for him. Did you save the tape? Dynamite. Tear your heart out until Char blew it with the yuks, right?”

Coyul listened to Veigle’s woes, the dramatic possibilities gone down the tube with that uncontrollable explosion. The phone emitted a rancorous drone of disgust which Coyul gleefully turned out for Jake’s benefit.

“I know, Eddie. Tears are prime time, laughs are late night. So anyway, Stride’s all yours. Keep him happy, give him what he wants. All the extras and day players you need. Just don’t frighten the horses or pedestrians in the better neighborhoods...

Okay, so
build
permanent sets. When did you ever go broke on overstatement?

Listening to the super-agent, Coyul winced at the smallest possibility of misunderstanding. “Eddie, are you trying to hurt my feelings?
Moi
who gave you exclusives on Bormann and Oswald? Of
course
you’ve got all rights: TV novelization, film, the whole enchilada... no problem, bubby. I always like doing business with people I love. Think big on this one; think Riefenstahl.
Triumph of the Will.
I’m bringing in a load of Topside talent. You can have C. B. Of
course
I mean De Mille. You’re expecting Charlie Brown? What?” Coyul rolled his eyes at Jake in strained tolerance. “Eddie, what can I tell you? You want Griffith, you got him. What the hell, he needs a hit. Right. Terrific. Keep in touch. We’ll have lunch.
Ciao,
kid.”

The Prince of Darkness (or Light, depending on your translation) dropped the phone on its cradle. “Mr. Veigle is not an intellectual, Jake, but he is a predator. I made it worth his time to keep Roy Stride happy and off your back. That’s how it goes; you’ll have to talk to people in their own language, hold a few hands now and then, listen to problems. Develop outside interests, Jake; that helps on the bad days. Get out more, see people. You’re getting a bit gloomy — but I think you’ll manage smashingly.”

Jake wasn’t all that sure. “In your place? I’m just afraid...”

“Of what? You said it yourself, one of the two best minds in Judea, far from the worst Below Stairs.”

“I certainly know Roy Stride, at any rate,” Jake observed dryly. “I was once the kind of person who needed miracle workers. Messiahs. Now I wouldn’t have one in the house.”

“I understand Yeshua feels the same way now.” Coyul swung his feet off the desk, checking his watch. He moved to a gilt-framed mirror. “Stroke them, Jake. Tell them what they want to hear, that’s all they want.”

“I’m not a leader, Prince.”

“And I am?” Coyul countered out of the mirror. “I’m just a piano player, and precious little time I’ll have for that now. Besides, you won’t have to do it alone. I relied a great deal on your common sense for two thousand years, so I’m sending you real talent for Number Two. The other best mind in Judea.”

“Yeshua?” Jake looked even more uncertain. “No, please. Not him.”

“Bears no grudges. And he is the best.”

“It’s not that, Prince. You never had to live with that... He’s impossible! He’s always right.”

Coyul smiled reminiscently, recalling Barion in his first few million years. “He’s mellowed, Jake. And he misses you. Hasn’t had a decent game of chess in ages. Well, it’s your office now. Redecorate if you want, but avoid your habitual RKO Gothic; tends to depress visitors.”

“Don’t you understand?” Jake implored, desperate. “I’m
scared.”

“What can they do? Sue? Vote you out?” One more critical inspection in the mirror. No, Coyul decided: definitely the wrong look for Topside. The rich maroon tie became tasteful white on white. The off-white shirt went pastel blue in complement. As his costume modified, so did the Prince himself — taller, less corpulent, shoulders broader and straighter. The emotional mouth with its hint of petulance firmed to strength. “That will do it.”

The figure who turned to Jake bore a resemblance to Lincoln or perhaps Gregory Peck. There were nuances of Clarence Darrow’s bulldog tenacity and Truman’s down-home integrity. The gravity of a wise king, the wry wit of a prairie philosopher quite at home in a barn or a summit meeting. The world-class wisdom and quiet authority in that image could sell oil to Arabs, Amex cards in the Kremlin.

“Yes, that will do it. Jake, you’re an absolute power because over the ages you’ve learned absolute compassion and restraint and the knowledge that none of it is new and most of it is violence, treacle or pure hogwash. But... you’re scared. So am I, Reb Judas. Talk about opening nights. As of now, I’m overdue Topside to meet a very confused delegation including Luther and Augustine — that eminently reasonable duo — Paul of Tarsus, Thomas Aquinas, a gaggle of the better popes, Joseph Smith, Jesuits, Taoists, Buddhists, disputing rabbis, Irish saints and God knows
how
many Fundamentalists still waiting like Oliver Twist with his bowl for their own kind of rhinestone salvation — and try to make them understand that all of them are the result of an experiment neither well conceived nor even finished. Hah!” Coyul snorted. “And
you’re
scared?”

Coyul gave his tie a final tug. “Well, I asked for it, I guess. We ultimately do what we want, though I don’t have the foggiest how to go about it. The therapists will have a field day and we’ll probably lose hordes to schizophrenia. But cry all they want, stomp around, kick furniture, the human race will get rid of their fairy-tale notions of good, evil and the cosmos, and by God — by Me, I guess — they will grow the hell up.”

Coyul subsided with a rueful chuckle. “You’ve got problems? Forget it, I’ll call you.” With no further farewell, he vanished, heading for a tight schedule — to reappear immediately with a last afterthought.

“By the way: see that Wilksey gets a couple of good reviews for the new
Hamlet.
Means so much to him. God bless, Jake.”

God II went to work.

Alone, Judas Iscariot didn’t move at first; when he did, his actions were cautious, even timorous. He sat down tentatively at Coyul’s desk, lifted the phone, then put it down. He didn’t want to deal with anyone yet. His hypercritical eye gauged Coyul’s taste in decor, ending with the white piano. At a mental suggestion, the instrument blushed to dark mahogany and began a pianissimo passage from the
Goldberg Variations.
Jake listened for some moments, then materialized his chess set on the desk before him.

Start small, he decided. Leave the glitz to Veigle. Do the big stuff when you’re ready.

He was definitely not ready for the young man who simply appeared across the desk from him. They could have said a great many things to each other, and no doubt would have two thousand years earlier, but both were much wiser now. Judas no longer needed a messiah at any price. Yeshua no longer expected the world to buy spiritual common sense even in parables. Both would do what they could with the cosmos as it was. Perhaps this tacit understanding passed between them before Judas moved a white piece on the board.

Pawn to king four.

Yeshua responded: pawn to queen three. “There you go,” Judas growled, “being devious again.”

“Shut up and move,” Yeshua muttered, absorbed in the myriad possibilities of the opening.

    39   

Back to the drawing board...

The planet had no name. As it was so far out on the edge of the known universe, Barion’s meticulous kind had noted it with a number on survey charts. Development of such worlds was not usual, their use rare and only for penal purposes. With very little water, the highest form of life was protozoan.

This was Barion’s Rock. In a few million of its solar years, he might make parole, but the arch-instigator Coyul would never see home again.

Moving as restless energy over the near-barren face of the small planet, Barton couldn’t deny a feeling of personal contentment and admiration for Coyul’s wisdom, a quality heretofore not fully appreciated. Coyul remained where he wanted to be and was most suited: concierge to a maddening, murderous, occasionally gifted mutant. Barion had theories to restructure, new concepts to distill — only slightly chagrined that Coyul had shown up his errors, more that his own thinking, which he considered in youth to be chic and radical, was ultimately rooted in conformity.

Rethink. Start again.

The surface slid under him as he searched for moisture. Mere sight was not enough. The flashing animus of Barion melted into the equatorial soil, flowing like a subterranean river, divining, shaping new ideas.
What if? Suppose.

All carbon life begins with a need for sustenance, therefore a challenge which must be met. The organism must develop a means to propel itself toward nourishment or draw it inward. Suppose...

He found the small patch that smelled encouragingly of water. No more than a trace, no thriving colony of protozoa rummaging through its elements for food.

But there was one.

The single organism Barion found had very little talent even for an amoeba, having just coalesced with the sluggish chemical agreement of proteins. The rank beginner had to nourish itself before it could divide, with no idea how to go about it.

But just suppose...

Lake a human infant, the amoeba lay there knowing only hunger. The fact that bacteria existed close by was, in amoebic terms, of prime interest but little help. Vacuoles to envelop and ingest nourishment were barely functional.

Suppose we accelerate the whole protein process. Since specialization begins at this level anyway, suppose the learning/retention aspect is speeded up, so that selected unicellular life can specialize and evolve exponentially faster than before; faster than anyone thought possible.

“Come on,” Barton urged as the tiniest part of him flowed into and endowed the single cell with relative genius. “We call this a pseudopod. You use it to reach for that snack over there. Tha-at’s right.”

The amoeba extruded a peninsula containing a vacuole. New at the business, the pseudopod merely pushed at the bacterium.

“No, now you open up. I’ll show you. There you go, you’re in business.”

Refreshed, with an atom of learned behavior snugly tucked away, the amoeba thrust out another pseudopod, faster this time.

Barton felt the old thrill of creation, but the monkey had schooled him. “Don’t get smug. That was my mistake. Lesson two is fission. No hurry. We’ll be out here until you get it right.”

You walk before you run before you fly. Concentrate the aminos more rapidly, accelerate specialization. The pseudopod gradually phases from temporary to permanent. Undifferentiated plasma divides to functions, learns. Get the food, reinforce the outer cell wall, which, in turn, senses food more quickly. More specialized functions: digestion, faster locomotion, eventually a central complex to coordinate the whole organism, evolving at a supercharged rate, already tougher and smarter than previously thought possible.

Always possible; just that no one ever did it.

There would never be a warm primordial sea for this creature, but maybe — just maybe — the speeded conditioning would produce a relative intelligence to adapt and cope on its way upward.

“Worlds within worlds,” Barion murmured with a vast fascination. “Unconquerable.”

His creation was already fighting outside its weight, as it were, laboring but game. Barion hovered, following each step. “Come on, turkey. I know I’m right.”

And then something remarkable happened...

About the Author

PARKE Godwin graduated third in his class from the Yerkes Institute. Enjoined by concerned friends and family to take writing seriously, he made an honest effort, producing the work of his Serious Period —
Beloved Exile, The Last Rainbow,
and
A Truce with Time.
This stage ended abruptly when, inexplicably, the Author began to giggle.