Muddle earth, p.17
MUDDLE EARTH, page 17
“But Carnacki disagreed,” Rinpoche stressed, wishing with all his heart to comfort her. “Besides—”
“Besides, I’m being an idiot,” she interrupted, and forced a laugh. “How incredibly stupid of me! I mean, after meeting Kardek I ought to be more on the qui-vive, oughtn’t I?”
“Uh… What?”
She tore the capsule from her ear.
“That damned pedlar sold us an out-of-date commentary. No wonder it doesn’t match what we’re looking at! And there I was assuming it was another of the disasters that are following me around… You see, these parades work like the Holyrood deal: according to what you can afford, you get to take part either in the march, or waving from a good conspicuous window, or riding in a carriage, or if you’re seriously rich playing the role of one of the kings and presidents and maharajahs who used to turn up from all over the planet for this sort of show. You must have had them in your day, surely?”
All trace of tears evaporated, she turned her former merry face to him. He pondered a moment; then offered feebly, “Ticker-tape parades?”
“What?”—with a brief frown. And listened to her Hypermem, as usual. Her brow cleared.
“Oh! In New York. Yes, they’ve tried to bring those back. But the autho version is on hold. They’ll have to plant another billion trees first. Meantime they do it with atmoplanar optostims.”
That term was covered by his knowledge pills, but another word she had just used was not. He repeated, “Ortho?”
“Autho. It gets to be a drag saying ‘authentic’ all the time.”
Amen to that.
“Still,” Nixy resumed, pressing his hand more warmly than ever, “it could be quite amusing, hm? Seeing one thing, hearing it described as something different—the incongruity could make it rather funny. And there isn’t much left to laugh at, you know.”
Rinpoche stared at her. He countered, “Now people have gone out to all those other stars, there isn’t much to laugh at? I’d have thought there were millions of new jokes waiting to be invented.”
“I’m afraid not.” She looked suddenly downcast. “You see, apparently our sense of humor is unique to us, like religion, and there’s a school of thought among the Galactic Conglomerate that claims we ought to be cured of that as well, only they can’t prove it’s harmful enough. They—”
“Ssh!” hissed a pasty-faced man a step or two away. “For pity’s sake! You’ll bring them down on us!”
Nixy’s face fell. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. This is just the kind of place they come to, isn’t it?”
The pasty man gave a glum nod.
“Who come to?” Rinpoche asked in bewilderment.
“Humanologists!” snapped the pale-faced man. “I was a clown once, myself. Ah, more than just a clown, a true auguste, in the tradition of Coco and Grimaldi! I was”—he drew himself up to his full stature and clapped himself on the chest, at which he instantly began wheezing and choking but achieved a miraculous recovery by rabbit-punching the back of his neck—“Loony Lee, the Child of Three! You should have seen the merriment I could wring out of a wet diaper, hah-hah! And now I am as you see me, in despair.”
“I’m sorry,” Rinpoche said feebly. “But why?”
“Have you ever had your finest jokes microscoped by a humanologist who keeps on saying, ‘Yes, I understand that, but you haven’t told me what makes it funny’? Oh, they can keep it up for weeks, you know. A single day is nothing. In the end they get you so worried you realize: you don’t know. You don’t know whether it was actually funny—whether anything is funny—whether anything could ever have been regarded as funny by anyone. You doubt the evidence of memory. You pester your friends, and they stop being friends. You search the past obsessively and try to reconstruct the gags and pranks of your forerunners, but of course they’re no longer novel, so you lose heart, so you think—you just said something to this effect—you think of going to search for new ideas on other worlds, but because you can’t make people laugh anymore you can’t raise enough money for the trip, and in the end… Oh, if it weren’t so tragic it would be a screaming farce! Hah-ha-hah!”
In an instant, somehow, he was genuinely laughing. Whereupon, within the blink of an eye, something gaunt and severe swooped out of the sky, barely more than a perceptible wisp of existence, and in a reedy but authoritative voice declared:
“You are cachinnating. As a certified humanologist, I am empowered to demand of any human found in that condition answers to the following questions. Number one: what was the proximate stimulus or trigger that initiated the process? I am prepared to wait while you recover from your derangement, but kindly do not impose on my goodwill.”
It sat back, sort of, apparently on the air, and composed itself in what Rinpoche supposed must be a patient attitude.
Nixy nudged his elbow.
“Before we’re arrested as material witnesses—run!”
Panting, they halted on the far side of a block of seating erected to overlook the bridge and river, which Rinpoche found himself eying warily in case it went the way of the grandstand at Holyrood. He said between gasps, “You mean that thing could have arrested us just for watching someone laugh? By what right?”
Nixy’s lovely face became a mask of intensity. “Don’t think that just because humans are the richest species in the galaxy Earth enjoys special privileges. On the contrary: it’s fair game for every imposition the aliens want to inflict. They don’t like us, you know. They have to put up with us, but all intelligent beings are alike in one way at least. They’re jealous. Petty jealous. Though how can you blame them, when a fool like Gramps can decide to flaunt his wealth on such an offensive scale? I’m sure there must have been twenty races that would have liked to take over such a habitable planet, for twenty far better reasons!”
“Habitable?” Rinpoche echoed. “I thought it was due to get sterilized by the supernova.”
“Oh, sure, and so it would but for the timeslow—which wasn’t one of our inventions. But you have to call it habitable because it used to be inhabited.”
“By an intelligent species?”
She bit her lip, continuing to stare down as the parade trudged or rolled or hobbled or bounced or crawled across Tower Bridge. There seemed to be a high incidence of nonhumans today, over fifty percent. “Well, that depends what you mean by intelligent. The general estimate is: not very. I was told that they must have got bored and gone away without realizing the value of what they had. In either sense.”
“So who did your gramps buy it from?” Rinpoche asked slowly. He could feel more of the information he had ingested itching inside his brain. The sensation was mildly unpleasant, like the feeling one gets in a toe after having to rearrange its position manually. Although part of what he had acquired from the knowledge pill had slotted into place, a lot more was still seeking other data to hook on to. “Didn’t Kardek mention the name Klosh?”
Nixy made an impatient gesture, still staring toward the bridge. “A bunch of golden coaches are supposed to wind up the parade about now, after which we can go and do something else… Oh, it’s no good asking me for details! Gramps has always been secretive about his affairs, and me being so far down the family totem pole… Rin, you’ve asked me lots about me and my family, but you haven’t told me anything about yourself except that you’re a wreck.” She glanced sideways with a grin. “In pretty good shape, I must admit.”
For an instant Rinpoche was tempted to disclose the private history that had followed him—exactly as he had not hoped—beyond the grave, or at any rate the cryovault. Indeed, given another half minute he might have done so despite the barely guessable consequences. It so happened, though, that before he could frame the words a shout arose from the crowds that lined the riverbank. Magnetically drawn, they turned along with everybody else, to see…
To see what? At first everything appeared normal. Here came the golden coaches, six in all; the first two had passed the midpoint of the bridge, the third was about to, the rest were following, all pulled by better simulated horses than at Holyrood, and—
Nixy gasped, her fingers cramping on his wrist.
“Rin, the bridge! It’s opening! It’s going up! This must be the awful thing I’ve been expecting! Yes! Yes, it is!”
In exactly the same moment a banner unfurled from the upper span of the bridge. In enormous letters it read:
DENOUNCE THE PURCHASE OF NAJQ-30122-3!
“What does that mean?” Rinpoche demanded.
“It’s my address,” Nixy whimpered. “Gramps’s, that is. It’s the code for the system he bought. So Carnacki was right after all! It’s the anti-me demonstrators that are responsible… for that!”
She flung up her arm and pointed, just as the rest of the crowd began to realize what was happening. Rinpoche kept his arm around her to offer what reassurance he could, but if the protestors could achieve this, might they not trace her in the midst of the throng, identify, and attack her? A mob, no doubt, must still be a mob. Sometimes he had seen what well-led mobs could be inspired to do—
But I absolutely do not want to think of that.
The bascules parted with majestic slowness. Those riding in the coaches at first failed to notice, being too preoccupied with their roles—waving to the onlookers, bowing graciously this way and that, ensuring that they presented their best profiles (or if they were circumferentially indistinguishable, as was the case with some of the aliens representing foreign royalty, their preferred epidermal texture) and complaining about how their travel agencies had cheated them into wasting good credit on this second-rate apology for a spectacle.
Then, of a sudden, they realized that their horses were either trying to climb an impossible hill, or skidding and sliding down an ever-increasing slope.
The roadway tilted further yet. Hooves and wheels lost their grip altogether. On the northern side twelve horses and three coaches rushed together in as it were a Wellsian analogy for stellar collision; on the southern, three coaches and twelve horses slithered into a churning heap much resembling a Vernian description of cometary impact. The really efficient tour operators conjured up instant dumpers and whisked their patrons out of harm’s way, little the worse and perhaps even a trifle better inasmuch as they had a unique extra tale to tell. Unfortunately few tour operators were that efficient, and none of those based on Earth. Their customers had the option of staying put and sustaining fractured arms and legs (or injuries to limbs for which there were no terrestrial names), and then waiting to be mended, which would mean at the least un mauvais quart d’heure; or jumping into the Thames—which in spite of the best efforts of the Yelignese was still sluggish, dirty, and extremely cold—and waiting to be fished out and dried.
Those who had decided to jump found those who had decided not to getting in their way. Tempers were lost. Altercations broke out. Within minutes, on either side of the bridge—both of whose bascules were now at maximum elevation—there ensued a free fight mingled with sheer panic. It began to spread.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Rinpoche cried, and dragged Nixy in search of a cab. At this juncture whether it was a growler or a hansom or even a sedan chair seemed not to matter very much.
“The computers suggest that we do WHAT?”
TWELVE
A MATTER OF JUST OR POSSIBLY UNJUST DESERTS
“Madam, welcome to Earth! You commissioned us to select the ideal location for your authentic-in-all-respects nineteenth-century-style hydrotherapy center designed to cajole a fortune out of the galaxy’s wealthy hypochondriacs. We believe we’ve done so. Not only does it accord with your specifications; it offers a bonus, inasmuch as the air of the birthworld has been permeated ever since the evolution of our primordial ancestors with psychical vibrations conducive to—”
“Are you crazy? Who’d want to come here? This dump is freezing!”
“But you told us to choose a site with naturally hard water!…”
“Life’s too short. Just return your fee. If not, I’ll sue.”
“This is indeed a three-pipe problem,” Holmes muttered when he had heard Nixy and Rinpoche’s account of events. “Certainly my original theory of a haunting seems to have been well and truly dashed—”
“I say, old chap, hang on!” Watson objected.
“Yes, hang on indeed,” grunted Carnacki.
“But why? You were right. The culprits have finally shown their hand. Flying that banner from Tower Bridge, whose bascules incidentally I understood to be jammed shut from neglect of maintenance—”
“No, no! That strikes me as a mere diversion. Had it been due to protesters aware that their target was in the vicinity, they would surely have converged on her.”
“The throng might have been too dense,” Watson countered, playing devil’s advocate. Carnacki rebuffed him with a snort.
“Dense? In London? Since when have there been enough of us for a decent crowd? And even on a Jubilee Day there aren’t that many tourists. If it is a haunting, as I now concur, it wouldn’t be the first time that an entity from beyond our spacetime achieved control over physical objects and even quite a sophisticated comprehension of human language and behavior, without being able to recognize a given individual. Is it not significant that each incident so far has taken place near, but never at, the spot where the young lady was?”
“Except the earthquake,” Watson pointed out.
“Granted. But earthquakes are notoriously undiscriminating.”
There followed a glum silence. Rinpoche broke it in annoyance.
“Can’t we stop this playacting? You have access to computers far superior to what we had in my day. What do they say?”
The three other men looked at him in astonishment.
“Precisely what we’re telling you,” was Holmes’s answer. “Why do you think the CB ticked us off for tying up so much capacity?”
Rinpoche shook his head in bafflement. “Are you trying to tell me that the best modern computers can’t cope with Nixy’s problem?”
“Well, it would be rather expensive to consult the best modern—”
“You know what I mean!”
Holmes shrugged. “I suppose I do… Frankly, Mr. Gibbs, neither my colleagues nor I nor the Yelignese machines, which far surpass any that we humans have ever developed, possess sufficient evidence to decide between the competing possibilities. Bear in mind, please, that the computers are analyzing the potential of billions of future scenarios on each of several thousand planets—”
A whole block of information had been waiting inside Rinpoche’s head for something to latch on to. That was the hook. Abruptly he was exposed to the full implications of instantaneous interstellar travel. One could never arrive in the same universe that one had left… and it didn’t matter in the least, for there were a transfinite number of universes indistinguishable by the coarse perception of humans.
He groaned a little. Holmes looked a question at him. Weakly he waved an invitation to continue.
“Priority has to be granted to the distant unforeseeable rather than the actual, because the latter—in principle at any rate—ought to be susceptible to common or garden rationality. Miss Jones’s case, inasmuch as it’s currently happening, must be classed as actual.”
“Are you implying that even machines take this notion of being haunted seriously? I can’t believe it!” Rinpoche clenched his fists. Unfortunately one of Nixy’s hands was within his grasp. She pulled free with a yelp of pain. The rest of what he had intended to say got lost in a flurry of apologies to which the others paid no attention.
In a placatory tone Watson explained, “Mr. Gibbs, we aren’t talking about ghosts such as people imagined in your day. No being returns from the dead.”
“It’s just,” Carnacki added dryly, “that some species have peculiar ways of being alive. Eh, Holmes?”
Unbending a little, the great detective nodded. “One thinks at once of the Giant Algolian Sphudge… but kindly do not press me for details. Watson contends, and I agree: that is a case the galaxy is not ready to be told about.”
Nixy glanced up. “Algolian sphudges? When I was a kid they gave me a sphudge for a pet. It was about as long as my forearm. Giant?”
There was a tense pause. Eventually Holmes shrugged. “I will go this far. Your ‘pet’ was only a four-dimensional aspect of the whole.”
Nixy’s eyes widened tremendously. “Out of how much?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe it.” Briskening, Holmes addressed his colleagues again. “Still, there’s one point we and the computers do agree on, isn’t there?”
The others nodded. Rinpoche inquired what the point might be.
“There is no chance of settling the matter unless Miss Jones continues to expose herself”—
She does look gorgeous wearing nothing but her hair! I hope we can return to places where she can shed this all-concealing gear! Can—can…? Oh, this is worse than parentheses! And it is one!
—“to the possibility of attack. She will, of course, be under strict surveillance at all times, although if this is indeed a case of haunting, forestalment is obviously out of the question, and we shall have to rely on prompt response. If what we’re dealing with is merely a group of ingenious protesters trying to attract attention to their point of view, we stand an excellent chance of flushing them into the open, at which stage they can be arrested, deported, reconditioned, or returned to the protein pool, and the lady will have no further trouble.”
Who was saying this? Holmes? Carnacki? Watson? It didn’t sound like any of their voices, yet it must be one of them, the one who—
But there wasn’t one not paying rapt attention.
The moment passed and everything felt normal again—insofar as anything in this day and age could be so termed. Nixy was demanding:
“So I’m to waft around imitating bait, am I? What about my gramps? What’s he going to say when he finds out I simply quit trying to collect any of the memories he wanted? It’s his credit I’m spending!”
