The Classic Philip Jose Farmer 1952-1964 Page 9

  Alice screamed and grabbed me around the neck. “Save me!”

  I’d have liked to, but who was going to save me?

  Abruptly, the rocks quit falling, and the yells stopped. Silence, except for the drawing of thankful breaths. Then, giggles and yelps of pure delight and calls back and forth and white bodies were shining in the moonlight as they rose like ghosts from the grass. Fear among these uninhibited people could not last long. They were already joshing each other about the way they’d run and then were walking back to the cause of their flight.

  I stopped a woman, a beautiful buxom wench of twenty-five— all the adult female Brew addicts, I later found, were pretty and well-shaped and looked youthful—and I said, “What happened?”

  “Ah, the fool Scrambler put too much Brew in the hole,” she replied, smiling. “Anybody could see what’d happen. But he wouldn’t listen to us, and his own buddies are as scrambled as he is, thanks to Mahrud.”

  When she uttered that name, she made that sign. These people, no matter how lightly and irreverently they behaved in other matters, were always respectful toward their god Mahrud.

  I was confused. “He? Who?” I said, inelegantly.

  “He haw?” she brayed and my body turned cold as I thought she was referring to Polivinosel. But she was merely mocking the form of my question. “The Scrambled Men, of course, Baldy.” Looking keenly at me in a single sweep that began at my feet and ended at the top of my head, she added, “If it weren’t for that, I’d think you hadn’t tasted the Brew yet.”

  I didn’t know what she meant by that. I looked upward, because she had pointed in that direction. But I couldn’t see anything except the clear sky and the huge distorted moon.

  I didn’t want to continue my questioning and expose myself as such a newcomer. I left the woman and, with Alice, followed the crowd back. Their destination was the end of the creek, a newly blasted hole which showed me in a glance how the dry bed had so suddenly come into existence. Somebody has carved it out with a series of the tremendous blasts we’d heard. A man brushed by me. His legs pumped energetically, his body was bent forward, and one arm was crooked behind his back. His right hand clutched the matted hair on his chest. Jammed sideways on his head was one of those plumed cocked hats you see the big brass of men’s lodges wear during parades. A belt around his otherwise naked waist supported a sheathed sword. High-heeled cowboy boots completed his garb. He frowned deeply and carried, in the hand behind his back, a large map.

  He paid no attention but plowed ahead.

  “General!”

  Still he wouldn’t turn his head.

  “Boss. Chief. Hey, you!”

  He looked up. “Winkled tupponies?” he queried.

  “Huh?”

  Alice said, “Close your mouth before your plate falls out, and come along.”

  We got to the excavations edge before the crowd became too thick to penetrate. It was about thirty feet across and sloped steeply down to the center, which was about twenty feet deep. Exactly in the middle reared an enormous, blackened, and burning plant. Talk about Jack and your beanstalk. This was a cornstalk, ears, leaves, and all, and it was at least fifty feet high. It leaned perilously and would, if touched with a finger, fall flaming to the ground. Right on top of us, too, if it happened to be toppling our way. Its roots were as exposed as the plumbing of a half-demolished tenement.

  The dirt had been flung away from the roots and piled up around the hole to complete the craterlike appearance of the excavation. It looked as if a meteor had plowed into the ground.

  That’s what I thought at first glance. Then I saw from the way the dirt scattered that the meteor must have come up from below.

  There was no time to think through the full implication of what I saw, for the huge cornstalk began its long-delayed fall. I was busy, along with everybody else, in running away. After it had fallen with a great crash, and after a number of the oddly dressed men had hitched it up to a ten-horse team and dragged it away to one side, I returned with Alice. This time I went down into the crater. The soil was hard and dry under my feet. Something had sucked all the water out and had done it fast, too, for the dirt in the adjoining meadow was moist from a recent shower.

  Despite the heat contained in the hole, the Scrambled Men swarmed in and began working with shovels and picks upon the western wall. Their leader, the man with the admirals hat, stood in their middle and held the map before him with both hands, while he frowned blackly at it. Every once in a while he’d summon a subordinate with a lordly gesture, point out something on the map, and then designate a spot for him to use his shovel.

  “Olderen croakish richbags” he commanded.

  “Eniatipac nom, iuo, iuo,” chanted the subordinate.

  But the digging turned up nothing they were looking for. And the people standing on the lip of the crater—like the big city crowds that watch steam-shovel excavating—hooted and howled and shouted unheeded advice at the Scrambled Men. They passed bottles of Brew back and forth and had a good time, though I thought some of their helpful hints to the workers were definitely in bad taste.

  “Shimsham the rodtammed shipshuts!” he howled.

  “Rerheuf niem, lohwaj!” his men shouted.

  “Frammistab the wormbattened frigatebarns!”

  The result of all this was that everybody quit digging except for one man. He was dressed in a plug hat and two dozen slave bracelets. He dropped a seed of some sort within a six-foot-deep hole cut almost horizontally into the bank. He filled this with dirt, tamped it, then drove a thin wire down through the soil. Another man, wearing harlequin spectacles in which the glass had been knocked out, and a spiked Prussian officer’s helmet from the First World War, withdrew the wire and poured a cascade of Brew from a huge vase. The thirsty soil gulped it eagerly.

  There was silence as the Scrambled Men and the spectators intently watched the ceremony. Suddenly a woman on the excavations edge shouted, “He’s putting in too much again! Stop the fool!”

  The Napoleon looked up fiercely and reprimanded, “Fornicoot the onus squeered.”

  Immediately, the ground rumbled, the earth shook, the crust quivered. Something was about to pop, and it was going to pop loud!

  “Run for the hills! This time he’s really done it!”

  I didn’t know what he’d done, but it didn’t seem a time to be standing around asking questions.

  We ran up the slope and out onto the meadow and across it. When we were halfway to the road, I overcame the contagious panic long enough to risk a glance over my shoulder. And I saw it.

  You’ve heard of explosions flowering? Well, this was the first time I had ever seen the reverse—a colossal sunflower exploding, energized and accelerated fantastically in its growth by an overdose of that incredible stimulant, the Brew. It attained the size of a Sequoia within a split-second, its stalk and head blasting the earth in a hurry to get out. It was reaching high into the sky and burning, because of the tremendous energy poured out in its growth.

  And then, its lower parts having been denied a grip because its foundations had been thrust aside, it was toppling, toppling, a flaming tower of destruction.

  Alice and I got out of the way. But we barely made it and, for a second, I was sure that that titanic blazing hulk would smash us like beetles beneath a hard leather heel.

  It went whoosh! And then karoomp! And we fell forward, stunned, unable to move. Or so we thought. The next instant we both leaped from our paralysis, bare rumps blistered.

  Alice screamed. “Oh, God, Dan! It hurts!”

  I knew that, for I had been burned too in that region. I think our expedition would have come to a bad end right then and there, for we needed immediate medical attention and would have had to go back to HQ to get it. These primitives had evidently forgotten all knowledge of up-to-date healing. True enough—but they had forgotten because they no longer needed the knowledge. Attracted by our pitiful plight, two men, before I could object, had thrown the contents o
f two buckets over our backs.

  Nevertheless, I was going to protest angrily at this horse-play while we were in such agony. But before I could say anything, I no longer felt pain.

  I couldn’t see what was happening to me, but I could see Alices reaction. Her back was toward me, and she had quit whimpering.

  Beneath the moist film of Brew, the blisters had fallen off, and a new healthy pink shone through.

  Alice was so overcome, she even forgot her feud with me long enough to put her head on my chest and weep, “Oh, Dan, Dan, isn’t it wonderful?”

  I didn’t want to give this evil drug too much credit. After all, like any narcotic, it had its beneficial effects if used correctly, but it could be horribly vicious if mishandled.

  I said, “Come on, we have to go back,” and I took her hand and led her to the new crater. I felt I must solve the puzzle of the Scrambled Men. And I thought of the credit I’d get for suggesting a new method of warfare—dropping bombcases filled with Brew and seeds from balloons. And what about cannon shooting shells whose propulsive power would also be seed and Brew? Only—how would you clean the cannon out afterward? You’d have to have a tree surgeon attached to every artillery team. Of course, you could use the rocket principle for your missiles. Only—wouldn’t a Brob-dingnagian pansy or cornstalk trailing out behind create an awful drag and a suddenly added weight? Wouldn’t you have to train botanists to be aerodynamicists, or vice versa, and… ?

  I rejected the whole idea. The brass at HQ would never believe me.

  The Scrambled Men worked quickly and efficiently and with all the added vigor Brew-drinking gave. Inside of fifteen minutes, they had put out the fire and had then pulled the smoldering trunk out of the way. They at once began digging into the slopes and bottom of the excavation.

  I watched them. They seemed to be obeying the orders of the man in the admiral’s hat, and were continually conferring with him and their fellow workers. But not a single one could understand what the other was saying. All effective communication was done by facial expressions and gestures. Yet none would admit that to any of the others.

  Well, I thought, this was scarcely a novelty, though I had never seen it carried out on such a thorough scale. And what—or who— was responsible?

  Again, wearily this time, I asked a spectator what was going on. These people seemed to be incapable of making a serious statement, but there was always the chance that I’d find somebody who was an exception.

  “I’ll tell you, stranger. These men are living evidences of the fact that it doesn’t pay to corrupt religion for your own purposes.”

  He drank from a flask he carried on a chain around his neck and then offered me a slug. He looked surprised at my refusal but took no offense.

  “These were the leaders of the community just before Mahrud manifested himself as the Real Bull. You know—preachers, big and little businessmen, newspaper editors, gamblers, lawyers, bankers, union business agents, doctors, book reviewers, college professors. The men who are supposed to know how to cure your diseases social, economic, financial, administrative, psychological, spiritual, and so on, into the deep dark night. They knew the Right Word, comprehend? The Word that’d set Things straight, understand?

  “So, after drinking enough Brew to give them courage, but not enough to change them into ordinary fun-loving but Mahrud-fearing citizens, they announced they were the prophets of a new religion. And from then on, according to their advertisements, none but them was fit to run the worship of the Big Bull. Of course, Sheed the Weather Prophet and Polivinosel and the Allegory ignored them, and so were denounced as false gods.

  “Makes you laugh, doesn’t it? But that’s the way it goes. And that’s the way it went until Mahrud—bibulous be his people forever—got mad. He announced, through Sheed, that these pillars of the community were just dummy-prophets, fakes. As punishment, he was going to give them a gift, as he had earlier done to the Dozen Diapered Darlings.

  “So he said, in effect, ‘You’ve been telling the people that you, and only you, have possession of the Real Bull, the Right Word. Well, you’ll have it. Only it’ll be the Word that nobody but you can understand, and to every other man it’ll be a strange tongue. Now—scram!”

  “But after he’d watched these poor characters stumbling around trying to talk to each other and the people and getting madder than the hops in the Brew or else sadder than the morning-after, Mahrud felt sorry. So he said, ‘Look, I’ll give you a chance. I’ve hidden the key to your troubles somewhere in this valley.

  Search for it. If you find it, you’ll be cured. And everybody will understand you, understand?‘

  “So he gave them a map—all of them, mind you—but this half-dressed Napoleon here grabbed the map, and he kept it by virtue of being the most un-understandable of the bunch. And, ever since, he’s been directing the search for the key that’ll unscramble them.”

  “That’s why they’re doing all this blasting and digging?” I asked, dazed.

  “Yes, they’re following the map,” he said, laughing.

  I thanked him and walked up behind the man with the admiral’s hat and sword. I looked over his shoulder. The map was covered with long squiggly lines and many shorter branches. These, I supposed, were the lines he was following in his creekbed-making.

  He looked around at me. “Symfrantic gangleboys?”

  “You said it,” I choked, and then I had to turn and walk away. “That map is a chart of the human nervous system,” I gasped to Alice. “And he’s following one of the branches of the vagus nerve.”

  “The wandering nerve,” murmured Alice. “Or is it the wondering nerve? But what could all this mean?”

  As we began our climb from the pit, I said, “I think we’re seeing the birth-pangs of a new mythology. One of the demigods is based upon a famous comic strip character. Another is formed in the image of a pun on the translation of his name—though his new form does correspond to his lustful, asinine character. And we see that the chief deity bases his worship—and at least one of his epiphanies—on his mortal nickname. All this makes me wonder upon what foundations the old-time pantheons and myths were built. Were they also orginally based on such incongruous and unlikely features?”

  “Before I came here, I’d have laughed at any such theory,” I said. “How do you explain what you’ve seen?”

  We climbed up in silence. At the edge, I turned for one more glimpse of the Scrambled Men, the object lesson designed by Mahrud. They were digging just as busily as ever paying no attention to the ribald comments of the spectators. The funny thing about this, I thought, was that these unscrambled men had not yet caught on to the fact that the Scrambled Men were more than a wacky sect, that they were symbols of what the spectators must themselves do if they wished to travel beyond their own present carefree and happy but unprogressive state.

  As plainly as the ears on the head of the Ass-God, the plight of these frantically digging sons of Babel said to everybody, “Look within yourselves to find the key.”

  That advice was probably uttered by the first philosopher among the cavemen.

  I caught the glint of something metallic almost buried in the dirt of the slope. I went back and picked it up. It was a long-handled silver screwdriver.

  If I hadn’t known my old teacher so well, I don’t think I ever would have understood its presence. But I’d been bombarded in his classes with his bizarre methods of putting things over. So I knew that I held in my hand another of his serious jokes—a utensil designed to take its place in the roster of myths springing up within this Valley Olympus.

  You had the legend of Pandoras Box, of Philemon and Baucis’ Pitcher, Medusa’s Face, Odin’s Pledged Eye. Why not the Silver Screwdriver?

  I explained to Alice. “Remember the gag about the boy who was born with a golden screw in his navel? How all his life he wondered what it was for? How ashamed he was because he was different from anybody else and had to keep it hidden? Remember how he finally found a psyc
hiatrist who told him to go home and dream of the fairy queen? And how Queen Titania slid down on a moonbeam and gave him a silver screwdriver? And how, when he’d unscrewed the golden screw from his navel, he felt so happy about being normal and being able to marry without making his bride laugh at him? Remember, he then forgot all his vain speculations upon the purpose of that golden screw? And how, very happy, he got up from his chair to reach for a cigarette? And his derriere, deprived of its former fastening, dropped off?”

  “You don’t mean it?” she breathed.

  “But I do! How do we know the tale of the Golden Apples or the Golden Fleece didn’t have their origin in jokes and that they later acquired a symbolic significance?”

  She had no answer to that, any more than anybody did.

  “Aren’t you going to give it to the Scrambled Men?” she asked. “It’d save them all this blasting and digging. And they could settle down and quit talking gibberish.”

  “I imagine they’ve stumbled over it a hundred times before and kicked it to one side, refusing to recognize its meaning.”

  Exasperatedly, I said, “It’s another clue to the fact that they ought to look within themselves, that they ought to consider the nature of their punishment and the lesson to be derived from it.”

  We walked away. The whole incident had left me plunged in gloom. I seemed to be getting deeper and deeper into a murk furnished by a being who, in the far dim background, mocked me. Was it mere coincidence that we’d been met by the Allegory, that he’d given us his vaguely ominous advice?

  I didn’t have much time to think, for we came to the side road which led to the State Hospital. I could look down it and see the white stones of the cemetery outside the high wire fence. I must have stood there longer than I thought, because Alice said, “What’s the matter?”