Does Anyone Else Have Something Further to Add?, page 14
ONE day a simple announcement was made through the universes: from then on, nobody had to die. Mortality was found to be a simple disease, and it had yielded to simple specifics.
Nobody paid much attention to the announcement. “I never could see much sense in dying,” some of them said. “I never much intended to die anyhow.” “It was just one of those things that everybody did. Now they don’t.” “It doesn’t make any difference to me. I’d as soon keep on living as not.”
A number of bureaus were set up to look into the implications. There were a thousand of them for the countless thousands of good people who would want to follow the right way when it was shown to them, and to do something good with their endless future.
And there was a small bureau set up for that small group of folks who may perhaps have slight flaws in their characters—the golden flaw, as Maybe Jones once called it. This small bureau was to plan the future for the good-time crowd who could not be reformed into the sanctioned mold.
It had a small staff at first: High-Life Higgins, Good-Time Charley Wu, Hilda the Hoop, Margaret the Houri, people like that. They had only a vague idea of what they wanted. They sifted the legends of the pleasure places: Fiddlers’ Green, Maybe Jones’ City, Barbary, Valhalla on the Rocks.
“If we could only resurrect the men who first had these visions, we’d have a starting place,” said High-Life. “We’ve a dozen projects going, but none of them has the touch of a master. Could we find any of these great dreamers—”
“But Maybe Jones is still alive,” said Hilda. “They say he still travels trying to find his place again.”
“Great green gophers! Send for him!” howled Good-Time Charley Wu. “It’s originals like him that we want.”
Word came to Maybe Jones on a distant planet that a group of people had some knowledge of the Perfect Place, and that they wanted to pool their knowledge with his.
Maybe burned up very light itself getting to them. This was it!
The Planning City had grown into a vast complex of buildings. Maybe Jones passed the very large building that housed the Bureau of Wonderful Islands. Over its doorway was the motto “Adagios of Islands, O my Prodigal” from Crane.
“Not quite what I had in mind,” said Maybe Jones.
He passed the large building that housed the Bureau of Wonderful Fields. Over its doorway was the motto—
“If I was thirsty, I have heard a spring,
If I was dusty, I have found a field,”
—from Belloc.
“The fields are always too far from town,” said Maybe.
Then, right across the street, he saw it, the small building that housed the Bureau of Wonderful Cities. And over its doorway was a verse from the immortal Hiram Glotz:
“Let sheep lie down in grass! I’ll toe the rail!
I’ve got a thirst that ain’t for Adam’s ale!
I’ll trade your fields of green for bistros brown
Where ‘Dusty’ is a red-haired girl in town.”
“Now that is a little bit more like it,” said Maybe Jones. He went in and boldly announced himself, and they fell all over his neck.
“Margaret!” Maybe cried to the Houri. “You were there! You know where the Perfect Place is!”
“Maybe, I’ve been everywhere,” she said. “I like them all. I think they’re all perfect once you get things to going. I’ve been told that I lack discernment. Boys, you can’t have everything, so that discernment has got to go when it gets in the way of exuberance. No, Maybe, I’ve run into you lots of times, but I just can’t place your place. We’ll build it though. Just don’t leave me out of it.”
“The pitch is this,” said High-Life Higgins, after they had eaten and drunk and made cheer to excess. “We have now arrived at the three ultimates: Immortality, Heaven, Hell. We have just achieved the first of them. We are now setting up projects to construct the other two, on the premise that one man’s Heaven is another man’s Hell. We must build final enclaves for people of every choice. We cannot sit idly by and ask what we would do with the after-life. This is the after-life. It became so as soon as immortality was achieved.”
“Will you build my Perfect Place?” asked Maybe with hope.
“Sure. And ideas like yours are what this bureau needs. You wouldn’t believe what some of the other bureaus have to work with. They get the arty ducks and the philosophy buffs and the peace-and-benevolence beats. Why, you get on jags like that and you’ll be tired of them in a thousand years or less. How are they going to stand up through eternity? The Green Fields might do, for the green among us. The Islands might do, for those of insular mind and soul. But our own small bureau caters to the high-old-time, rather than the peace-eternal, crowd. We believe here (we know we are not the majority, but there has to be something for everyone) that the rooting old good-time town and the crowd that goes with it can stand up to the long-time gaff as well as anything. Would you like to see some of the work we have been doing?”
“I certainly would,” said Maybe. “It might strike me as a little amateurish, but I’m sure it’s in the right line.”
“By our total recall methods we are able to reconstruct the Seven Sin Cities of History, Jones. They are the folk dreams that have also been raucous facts. The selection is one-sided, being out of the context of the old Western Civilization from which most of us descend. But they were such a hopping bunch of towns that (under the old recension) they had to be destroyed: by blast-from-Heaven, lava-flow, earthquake, sinking-in-the-sea, cow-fire, earthquake again and fire, hurricane and tidal wave. They were too hot to last.
“Here is Sodom. Now take a close-up of its old Siddim Square District where they had such a noisy go of it before it was wiped out. Go down and sample it.”
Maybe Jones sampled old Sodom. He was back in about an hour.
“It’s about as good as you could expect from that time,” he said. “The drinks were too sweet and sticky. So were the girls. The music was only fair. How do you tune a ram’s horn anyhow? But, man, it won’t stack up with the Perfect Place at all.”
“Try Pompeii,” said Good-Time Charley Wu. “We’ll set you down on the corner of Cardo and Decumanus streets. That was the first red light district to be so lighted and so named. Don’t cut it too close. Watch out for the hot lava when you leave.”
Maybe Jones was back from Pompeii in half an hour.
“It’s strictly Little Italy and Little Egypt stuff,” he told them, but he was smiling. “It’s all right for a gag. It’s fun. But it isn’t on the same side of the street with the Perfect Place.”
“Try Lisbon,” said Hilda. “It’s sort of a test. In its own century Lisbon was spiritually of the West Coast of Africa though geographically in Europe. Don’t fall in the harbor going in, and watch the earthquake coming out.”
Maybe Jones was in old Lisbon for two hours. He liked it.
“Man, man!” he said. “It’s on a tangent, and not the true line, of course. But, were I not committed to the Perfect Place—man!”
“Here’s Port Royal before it was sunk in the sea,” said High-Life. “Some like it. Some don’t.”
Maybe was out of Port Royal in half an hour.
“It’s all there,” he said, “but they forgot to cook it. They even forgot to take the hide off it. People, a place has to have the illusion of smoothness—that’s part of the game. No, Port Royal is strictly a short-haul place.”
“Have a go at Chicago before the fire,” said Good-Time Charley Wu. “It had its followers.”
Maybe was back from Chicago in fifteen minutes.
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “We were speaking of cities, and you give me a country town. Size isn’t the test. Oh, it’s all right for boys, but who’s going to be a boy for eternity?”
“Two to go,” said Hilda. “Try San Francisco before the quake and the fire.”
So Maybe tried it. He was smiling when he came back.
“It dates, it dates,” he told them. “For amateur theatricals, yes. For eternity, no.”
“One more,” said High-Life. “Here is Galveston just before the hurricane and tidal wave of 1900. Try Old Tremont Street downtown where it crosses Post Office Street.”
Maybe Jones went down in old Galveston and didn’t come back. They sent for him and couldn’t find him. He was gone all night. He came back the middle of next morning, looped to the ports and walking with a seaman’s roll.
“It’s put me in the mood,” he cried. “I’m ready to go to work. Hey, that place has a touch of the eternal! I found a way to tune it and visited Galveston in earlier and later years. I picked up an interesting piece of history too. You know, they never did bury any of the dead people after the hurricanes and tidal waves. They just ground them up and sold them for crab-meat sandwiches. Well, let’s go to work. It’s brought the Perfect Place back clear to my mind, and I’m ready to get with it.”
“JONES, this is the Empyrean, the eternal fire-stuff, that we hold in our hands,” High-Life said. “I know that these reconstructed legend cities leave a lot out, but men like you will help us put it in.”
“Before I start, can we fix it so a man can get higher and higher and never have to come down?” Maybe wanted to know.
“Yes we can,” Good-Time Charley told him. “The hangover, whether physical or spiritual, was a death in miniature. We have whipped it, as we have whipped death itself. We have a free hand here.”
“There’s got to be a catch to it,” said Maybe. “Heavens, or Hells, depending on the viewpoint, will be expensive.”
“Long-term funding is the answer,” said Good-Time Charley. “The longest terms ever—forever. Put it all in. Set it all down, and we will make it that way.”
“Man, man!” said Maybe Jones. He sat down at a table and took a large square of paper. He titled it modestly:
“The Empyrean According to Maybe Jones”
He began to write the specifications, and building was begun on the Perfect Place for people of a certain choice.
“That all the girls be built like clepsydras,” he wrote, “you know, the ancient water-clock. It’s a much more sophisticated shape than the hour-glass figure.”
“Put me in,” Margaret cried. “I’m shaped like a pendulum clock. Notice the way I swing sometime.”
(Listen, this isn’t a private place for Maybe Jones. It’s for all high-flyers everywhere. There will be plenty of room and variety in it.)
“That all the bars be a mile, hell, make it two miles, long,” Maybe wrote. “That there be high liars there who’ll make Live-Man Lutz sound like a parson. That they take the sky off early in the morning so you can get as high as you want all day long. That they have girls who’ll make Little Midnight Mullins and Giggles McGuire and Belle Hellios and Susie-Q look like sheep dogs. That—”
HEY, get in on this if you’re going to. They’re building it now! If you are an arty duck or a philosophy buff or a peace-and-benevolence beat, then you can go to hell—to your own appropriate bureau—and be heard. But if you go for the high-old-time stuff, then make your wants known here.
If you are of the raffish elite and want to go where you can get higher and higher and never have to come down from it, if you want the good-time town and the crowd that goes with it for a long haul (and it’s going to be a very long haul), then howl it out so they’ll know that you’re interested.
If you want anything at all added, tell them now, and they’ll put it in.
Contact them by regular mail, or phone or voxo. Or tear out a sheet of this screed, scribble your wants in the margin, and drop it in any mail box. It will get there. The address is:
“Bureau of Wonderful Cities. Old Earth.”
That’s all you need, but get with it. They’re building our place now.
Mean Men
Seven Story Dream
GILFORD GADBERRY had a contempt for dawns badly done. He knew how blatant and stylized the outdoor world can be in its pristine moments: the contrived shagginess of grass, the stupidity of trees, the falsity of flowers, the oafishness of the birds and their inept melody. These scratched the smooth surface of his soul. “Bad work, very bad work,” Gadberry would opine, for he was an artist.
Yet there were times when these sorry units arranged themselves with striking effect. On this very early dawn they made an almost perfect harmony, and Gadberry gracefully acknowledged it. There it was: the old oaks, and the new firs and hedges, the ragged Bermuda on the vacant lot in the new sun, the thin rye grass that held to the shade of the building, the corpse on the lawn, the row of hollyhocks and the lone aster in the middle of them, the drooping mimosa full of driveling birds, the even rank of garbage cans standing chalky in the aluminum dawn, and that damned dew over everything.
In spite of the elements that went into the composition the effect was near perfect—and yet there was one clashing entity in that aubade scene. Gadberry reviewed it in his mind, for the artist is satisfied with nothing but perfection.
The firs, the hedges, the corpse, the mimosa, the garbage cans, the lawn, the hollyhocks with their lone aster—something was in that peaceful morning scene that simply did not belong there.
Gadberry strode over and savagely struck down the aster with its white flower. The harmony of the scene was now perfect. He walked away, his artist’s soul satisfied.
On his way to find an early eating place, he met a policeman named Embree and told him that Minnie Jo Merry was lying dead on that little lawn behind the apartment where she lived, and perhaps it should be looked into.
CAPTAINS Keil and Gold were there quickly and in charge. Minnie Jo was bruised about the throat and dried blood framed her mouth, but her death may have been caused by a violent concussion. Keil and Gold left her to Dr. Sanderson and their men. There was no crowd. This was very early on a Saturday morning, the apartment was on a quiet street, and the small rear lawn was secluded.
Orders were given for all the residents of the apartment building to remain in the building, and Captain Keil sent for Gilford Gadberry, the only one who had left. Gadberry told the patrolman who came for him that he would come as soon as he had finished his breakfast, and not a moment before. He finished it leisurely, drinking coffee and sketching while the policeman fumed. He was sketching a fuming policeman.
“MRS. RAFFEL,” Captain Keil said, “you are the owner and operator of this apartment. I assume that you know something of your renters. Who lives here?”
“Minnie Jo lived here, and how will I get her rent now? She used to say, ‘You worry too much about my rent. I’m not much further back than some of the others. You should know that I’m good for it. As long as I live I will always be good for what I owe.’ But now who will be good for what she owes?”
“Your problem, Mrs. Raffel. Who else lived—lives here?”
“Dillahunty, Gadberry, Handle, Izzard, Lamprey, Nazworthy, all in a permanent or temporary state of singleness.”
“Six living and one dead tenant. Is that all?”
“It’s a small place, but I do have two other empty units—three it will be now. I doubt if this will help me rent them.”
“It may not make a difference. The girl was murdered in her own room, we believe, and she seems to have made no outcry. She was either taken very suddenly, or she knew the intruder well.”
“Not necessarily, Captain. Minnie Jo was a very open person. If Jack the Ripper himself had come in, red from his trade, she’d have said, ‘Hi, honey, sit down and talk to me.’ But it was probably someone she knew.”
“What are your feelings on hearing of the death of Miss Merry?”
“Satisfaction—though I’ll miss her—and relief and thankfulness that it has finally turned out all right.”
“Turned out all right? Do you call it turning out all right that she was murdered?” he asked her.
“Oh yes. There were many worse things that could have happened to her. How lucky that Minnie Jo was killed before they happened!”
“You will have to explain that. Did you hate her?”
“No, I loved her—and I will explain. Minnie Jo was quite a good girl, but she was on the edge of becoming quite a bad girl. I have seen it happen to so many of the young ones who are loose in the world. Every time I know one, and notice her nearing the change, I pray that something will intervene and prevent it. This is the first time my prayers have been answered, and I’m thankful.”
“Could you yourself have done anything to bring about this, ah, intervention, this preventative death?”
“I have just told you: I prayed. I didn’t know it would be death, but that’s as good a solution as any.”
Then they questioned her a little about other things.
Gadberry, now back from his breakfast, was questioned by Captain Gold.
“Gadberry, do you often get up so early?”
“Never. But I often stay up this late. I work at night and sleep in the daytime.”
“Why?” Captain Gold inquired.
“It was originally a pose. Then I became used to it.”
“You seemed extraordinarily cool on discovering Miss Merry dead. You did not make an outcry, or hurry to report it.”
“I reported it to the first person I met, a policeman. This seemed the logical person, and the logical thing to do.”
“Almost too logical. What was your opinion of Miss Merry?”
“Alive, or dead? The girl was somehow completed in death. It improves many people. So often we see only the outside of people, but to look at her smeared with her own blood gives an added dimension, a more total view.”
“Ah, what was your opinion of her alive?”
“Her hands and ankles were rather good; between, she was conventional. She hadn’t eyes, no eyes at all. It isn’t usual for a girl her age to have eyes. A child will sometimes have eyes, a woman after thirty may have them again, or a man after forty. I never saw her hair, which is to say that it was doctored. I sketched her ears sometimes, and her throat. I was not satisfied with either of them, but then it isn’t twice a year that I come on either that is really good. Are you interested in these things?”
