Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  The lovely Tondelayo gave careful attention to these words, and pondered them long. And then the island girl spoke to Joenes these words of simple philosophy which had been passed down from mother to daughter from time immemorial:

  “Hey, you fella white men all alike, I think. You chumbi-chumbi allatime little wahine okay, then you want walkabout look for chumbi-chumbi alongside popaa white woman American, I think. My word! And yet, the palm grows, the coral spreads, but man must die.”

  Joenes could only bow his head to the ancestral wisdom of the island girl. But his decision was not shaken. Joenes knew that it was his destiny to see the land of America from which his parents had come; there to accept whatever danger offered or danger proffered, and to come to terms with the unknowable fate which lies in ambush for all men. He kissed Tondelayo, who began crying when she saw that her words did not move him.

  The neighboring chiefs gave a farewell feast for Joenes, in which they served island delicacies such as canned beef and canned pineapple. When the trading schooner touched at their island with the weekly supply of rum, they sadly bade their beloved Joenes farewell.

  So it was that Joenes, with the melody of the islands ringing in his ears, made his way past Huahine and Bora Bora, past Tahiti and Hawaii, finally to arrive in the city of San Francisco upon the western coast of America.

  2. LUM’S MEETING WITH JOENES

  (Lum’s own words, as recorded in the Book of Fiji, Orthodox edition.)

  Well I mean, you know how it is. It’s like Hemingway said; the booze goes bad and the chick goes bad and where are you? So I was down at the docks waiting on the weekly shipment of peyote and I wasn’t really doing anything, I was just standing around and digging it all—the people, the big ships, the Golden Gate, you know. I had just finished a sandwich made of Italian salami on real black pumpernickel bread, and what with the peyote coming, I wasn’t feeling so bad. I mean sometimes you just don’t feel so bad, you’re out there digging it, even if the chick has gone bad.

  This boat came in from one of those places and this guy got off. He was a tall, lean sort of guy with a real-looking tan, a big set of shoulders on him, and he was wearing a shirt made of canvas and a pair of beat-up pants and no shoes at all. So naturally I thought he was OK. I mean he looked OK. So I came up to him and asked him if this was the boat the stuff had come in on.

  This character looked at me, and said, “My name’s Joenes, I’m a stranger here.”

  So I knew at once he wasn’t with it, and I sort of stared away.

  He said, “Do you know where I could find a job? I’m new in America, and I want to find out about it, and learn what America has for me, and what I have for America.”

  I started looking at him again because now I didn’t know; I mean it didn’t look like he was with it, but not everyone is a hipster these days and sometimes the simple approach if you can make it work will take you all the way to that big Tea House in the Sky run by the Biggest Pusher of Them AH. I mean maybe he was playing it zen with this what looked like cornball. Jesus was cornball, but he was with it, and all of us would be for him if only the squares would leave him alone. So I said to this Joenes, “You want a job? There anything you can do?”

  Joenes said to me, “I can operate an electrical transformer.”

  “Goody for you,” I told him.

  “And I can play the guitar,” he said.

  “Well man,” I said, “why didn’t you say so in the first place instead of coming on heavy with all the electricity bit? I know a cappucino place you can play, maybe get some tips from the squares. You got any bread, man?”

  This Joenes barely spoke English, so I had to explain it all to him like I was drawing a blueprint. But he caught on pretty fast, about the guitar scene and the squares, and I offered him he could bunk for awhile in my pad. I mean with my chick gone bad, why not? And this Joenes, he flashed me a smile and said sure, he’d go for that. And he asked me what the situation was locally, and aside from that, what we did for kicks? He sounded OK even if he was a foreigner, so I told him that chicks could be found, and that for kicks he’d better stick with me and look-see. He dug this so we went to the pad, where I gave him a sandwich of that real rye bread with the little seeds and a slab of Swiss cheese from Switzerland, not Wisconsin. Joenes was so far down I had to loan him my axe, on account he had left his own guitar in the islands, wherever the islands were. And that night we made the coffeehouse scene.

  Well Joenes came on big that night with the guitar and songs, because he sang in a language no one understood, which was just as well because the tunes were a little square. The tourists lapped it up like it was AT&T, and Joenes collected $8.30, which was enough for a nice big loaf of Russian Rye and don’t give me that unpatriotic bit, and some other stuff besides. And this little chick no more than 5’ 11" latched onto him, because Joenes was that sort. I mean he was big and tall and he had shoulders like grandaddy’s old ox yoke, and a big sweep of blonde hair which was sunstreaked. A guy like me has more trouble, because even though I got a beard I’m built short and thick and sometimes it takes a while. But Joenes he was like magnetic. He even attracted the sunglasses, who asked him if he’d ever joypopped, but I pulled him off that, because the peyote had come and why trade a headache for an upset stomach?

  So Joenes and this chick, who was named Deirdre Feinstein, and another chick she got for me, we all went back to the pad. I showed Joenes how you take the peyote buds and mash them down and so forth, and we all took it and we came on. I mean we came on, but Joenes lit up like a 1000 watt Mazda bulb and even though I warned him about the fuzz who are patrolling the streets and alleys of San Francisco these days looking for anybody who’s on anything so they can use those beautiful new California jails of theirs.

  Joenes insisted on standing on the bed and making a speech. It was a pretty nice speech, because this big shouldered laughing boy from the faraway hills was really turned on for the first time, and he put down The Word as follows: “My friends, I have come to you from a faraway land of sand and palm upon a voyage of discovery, and I count myself fortunate above all men, for upon this my first night in your land I have been taken to your leader, King Peyote, and have been raised up instead of put down, and have been shown the wonders of the world which are presently turning red before me and falling like a waterfall. To my dear comrade, Lum, I can only praise without sufficiency this act of beatitude. To my new sweetheart, the luscious Deirdre Feinstein, let me tell you that I see a great flame growing within, and a high wind blowing without. To Lum’s girl, whose name I unfortunately didn’t catch, I say that I love you like a brother, incestuously, and yet with an innocence born of self-born innocence. And further—”

  Well, this Joenes didn’t have exactly a small voice. As a matter of fact, he sounded like a sea lion in rutting season, which is a sound none of you out there should miss. But it was too much for the pad, because the neighbors upstairs, who are square types that get up at 8:00 in the morning to do the bit, pounded on the ceiling and informed us this was one party too much and that they had informed the cops, by which they meant the fuzz.

  Joenes and the girls were conked, but I pride myself on keeping a clear head for the danger no matter what is drifting in my lungs or dancing in my veins. I wanted to flush the rest of the peyote, but Deirdre, who is so with it. she sometimes scares you, insisted upon secreting the remaining buds in her maiden-form, where, she insisted, they Would be safe from any harm. I got them all out of the pad, Joenes with my guitar clenched in his sunburnt fist, and we got down none too soon, for a patrol car full of fuzz had just arrived. I cautioned the group to walk straight ahead like little soldiers because you can’t play any games when you got stuff on you. But I hadn’t counted on how far gone that Deirdre was.

  We started walking and the cops came by and gave us cop-like looks, and we kept on walking and the fuzz started passing remarks about beatniks and immorality and such. I tried to keep the group moving, but that Deirdre wouldn’
t be called down. She turned on the fuzz and told them what she thought of them, which was a very unwise thing to do if you’ve got a vocabulary and a creative imagination like Deirdre has.

  The top cop, a sergeant, said, “OK, sister, come with us. We’re booking you, dig?”

  And struggling and kicking, they pulled poor Deirdre toward the cop car. I could see Joenes’s face setting itself in thoughtful, cop-hating lines, and I was afraid of trouble since filled with peyote as he was he loved Deirdre and indeed everybody except the fuzz.

  I said to him, “Man, don’t do a thing, this scene’s gotta split and if Deirdre won’t, she won’t. I mean she’s always lighting cops ever since she came out here from New York to study zen, and she gets pulled in all the time so it’s no big deal, especially since her father is Sean Feinstein who owns like anything you can name in five seconds. So the cops just sober her up and let her go. So don’t make the move, man, don’t even look back, because your father is not Sean Feinstein, or indeed anybody I ever heard of.”

  In this way I tried to soothe and reason with Joenes, but Joenes stopped, a heroic figure under the lamplights, his fist clenched white around my guitar, his eyes allknowing and all-forgiving except for cops. And he turned.

  The lead cop said, “You want something, kid?”

  Joenes said, “Take your hands from off that young lady.”

  The cop said, “This drug addict, whom you call a young lady, is in violation of section 431.3 of the Code of the City of San Francisco.

  I suggest that you mind your own buster, and don’t play that ukelele on the streets after 12:00.”

  I mean, he was being nice in his way.

  But Joenes then made a speech which was a beauty, and I cannot recall it word for word, but the idea was that laws are made by man and thus must partake of the evil nature of man, and that true morality lies in following the true dictates of the illuminated soul.

  “A Commie, huh?” said the lead cop. And in a trice, or perhaps even sooner, they dragged Joenes into the cop car.

  Well naturally Deirdre was sprung the following morning, on account of her father, and maybe also because of her winsome ways which are the talk of San Francisco. But though we searched high and low, and even as far afield as Berkeley, we saw no sign of Joenes.

  No sign, I tell you! What had happened to this blonde troubador with the sunstreaked hair and a heart as big as all outdoors when properly illuminated? Where had he gone, with my guitar (A genuine Tatay) and my second-best pair of sandals? I suppose that only the cops know, and they will not tell. But still I remember him, Joenes the sweet singer, who, at the gates of hell, turned back to look for his Eurydice, and suffered thus the doom of Orpheus the golden-voiced. I mean it was a little different but still it was all there, and who knows in what distant lands Joenes and my guitar are wandering?

  3. THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE

  (As told by Maaoa of Samoa.’)

  Joenes could not know that a committee of the American Senate was presently in San Francisco, carrying out investigations. But the police knew. They sensed intuitively that Joenes was a likely witness for these investigations, and they took him from the jail to the room where the Committee was meeting in executive session.

  The Committee Chairman, whose name was Senator George W. Pelops, immediately asked Joenes what he had to say for himself.

  “I haven’t done a thing,” Joenes said.

  “Ah,” replied Pelops, “has anyone accused you of doing anything? Have I accused you? Have any of my illustrious colleagues? If so, I would like to hear of it at once.”

  “No sir,” Joenes said. “I just thought—”

  “Thoughts are not admissible as evidence,” Pelops said.

  Pelops then scratched his bald head, adjusted his spectacles, and glared full into a television camera.

  He said, “This man, by his own admission, has been accused of no crime whether of commission or omission. We have asked him here merely to talk, as is our congressional privilege and duty. And yet, his very words betray a consciousness of guilt. Gentlemen, I think we must pursue this a little further.”

  Joenes said, “I want a lawyer.”

  Pelops said, “You cannot have a lawyer, since this is only a congressional fact-finding committee and not an arraignment. But we will take careful note of your request for one.

  “Tell me, Mr. Joenes, do you believe in the speech you made last night in the streets of San Francisco?”

  “I don’t remember any speech,” said Joenes.

  “You refuse to answer the question?”

  “I can’t answer it. I don’t remember. I believe I was intoxicated.”

  “Do you remember who you were with last night?”

  “I think I was with a man named Lum, and a girl named Deirdre—”

  “We do not require their names,” Pelops said hastily. “We simply asked you if you remembered who you were with, and you said you do so remember. I put it to you, Mr. Joenes, that it is a convenient memory which remembers one set of facts and forgets another, both occurring in the same period of 24 hours!”

  “They weren’t facts,” Joenes said, “they were people.”

  “The committee does not require you to be facetious,” Pelops said sternly, “I will warn you here and now that facetious, unresponsive, or misleading answers, as well as no answers at all, can be interpreted as contempt of congress, which is a federal offense punishable by up to a year in prison.”

  “I didn’t mean anything,” Joenes said quickly.

  “Very well, Mr. Joenes, we will continue. Do you deny that the content of your speech last night concerned the so-called right which you insisted every man had to overthrow the legally constituted law of this land? Or, to put it in another way, do you deny that you incited to rebellion those dissidents who might be swayed by your foreign-inspired words? Or, to make the matter perfectly plain to you, that you advocated violent overthrow of the government which necessarily rests upon the laws of that government? Can you argue that the sum and content of your speech was a violation of those liberties which our Founding Fathers gave us, and which allow such as you to speak at all, as you surely would not be allowed to do in Soviet Russia? Will you presume to tell us that this speech, masked under the garb of harmless bohemianism, was not part of a detailed plot directed toward inner dissension and for the purpose of paving the way for outer aggression, and that in this attempt you had the silent approval, if not the explicit direction, of certain persons in our own State Department? And that, finally, this speech, which you disguised under an apparent intoxication, and which you gave under your presumed right to act subversively in a democracy where the power to retaliate, or so you thought, is hamstrung by a Constitution and a Bill of Rights which however is not, as you might think, designed to aid the lawless, but rather to preserve the liberties of tire people against godless mercenaries such as yourself? Did you or did you not, Mr. Joenes? I ask only a simple yes or no.”

  “Well,” Joenes said, “I’d like to clarify—”

  “The question, Mr. Joenes,” said Pelops in an icy voice. “Kindly answer the question yes or no.”

  Joenes said, “I stand upon my Constitutional rights, namely the first and fifth amendments, and respectfully decline to answer.”

  Pelops smiled thinly. “You may not do so, Mr. Joenes, since the Constitution to which you now so fervently cling has been re-interpreted, or rather brought up to date, by those of us who wish to preserve it from change and desecration. The amendments you mention, Mr. Joenes—or should I say Comrade Joenes-—will not permit you to be silent for reasons which any judge of the Supreme Court would have been glad to tell you—had you chosen to ask him!”

  There was no answer to this crushing rejoinder. Joenes turned beet red and then lily white. But he was momentarily saved by the intervention of one of the members of the committee, Senator Trellid.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Senator Trellid said to Pelops, “and excuse me all of you who are wai
ting for this man’s answer. I just want to say one thing, and I want it to go on the record, because sometimes a man must speak out no matter how painful it is to him, and in spite of that it might harm him politically and economically. And yet, it is the duty of a man such as myself to speak out when he must, and to speak in spite of consequences, and in full conscience, even if what he has to say goes against the great power of public opinion. Therefore I want to say this. I am an old man, and I have seen many things in my time, and I have witnessed even more. Perhaps I am not wise to so speak, but I must tell you that I am deadset against injustice. Unlike some, I cannot condone the slaughter of the Hungarians, the unlawful seizure of China, and the communization of Cuba. I am old, I have been called conservative, but I cannot condone these things. And, no matter who calls me what, I hope I will never live to see the day when a Russian army occupies the city of Washington, D.C. Thus I speak against this man, this Comrade Jonski, not as a senator, but rather as one who was once a child in the hill country south of Sour Mountain, who fished and hunted in the deep woods, who grew slowly to an awareness of what America meant to him, whose neighbors sent him to Congress to represent them and their dear ones, and who now feels called upon to make this declaration of faith. It is for this reason and this reason only that I say to you in the words of the Bible, “Evil is Bad!” Some of the sophisticates among us may laugh at this, but there it is and I believe it.”

  The committee burst into spontaneous applause at the old senator’s speech. Although they had heard it many times, it never failed to elicit in them emotions of the deepest and most exquisite sort. Now, white-lipped, Chairman Pelops turned to Joenes.

  “Comrade,” he asked, with simple irony, “are you at this present time a card-carrying member of the Communist Party?”

  “I am not!” cried Joenes.

  Pelops said, “In that case, who were your associates during your card-carrying days?”

  “I didn’t have any associates. I mean—”