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by Robert Sheckley


  “You’re wrong, my husband is one of the happiest men in the community. My husband believes that true happiness is spiritual, and that true spirituality can be acquired only through pain. So his pain makes him happy, or so he tells me. Also he follows Dr. Broign’s prescription nearly every day, and has become the best runner and swimmer in the community.”

  Joenes hated to cause Laka’s husband pain, even if that pain brought him happiness. But he also hated to cause Laka pain by sending her home. And he didn’t want to cause himself pain by doing something which had become repugnant to him. There seemed no good way out of these difficulties, so Joenes told Laka to sleep in a corner of the cabin. That at least would spare her from being shamed in front of the other women.

  Laka kissed him on the forehead with cold lips. Then she curled up on some pine boughs in the corner and went to sleep. Joenes found that sleep eluded him for a long time; but at last he dozed.

  The events of that night were not finished, however. Joenes came suddenly awake in the small hours, alert and fearful, but with no idea of what had awakened him. The moon was down, and the darkness was at its most profound. Crickets, night birds, and small beasts of the forest had ceased all movement and all sound.

  Joenes felt the skin along his spine prickle. He turned toward the door, certain that Laka’s husband had come to kill him. Joenes had considered this possibility all night, since he had his doubts about Dr. Broign’s prescription.

  Then he realized that it was not an indignant husband who had shocked the night into silence. For now he heard a terrifying roar, of a fury and passion that could never have issued from a human throat. It stopped suddenly, and Joenes heard the movement of some huge creature in the brush outside.

  “What is it?” Joenes asked.

  Laka had risen to her feet, and she clung to Joenes as though all the strength had gone from her limbs. She whispered, “It is the Beast!”

  “But I thought that was a myth,” Joenes said.

  “There are no myths on Chorowait Mountain,” Laka said. “We worship the Sun and Moon, which are real. And we fear the Beast, which is just as real as a chipmunk. Sometimes we can placate the Beast, and sometimes we can drive it away. But tonight it comes to kill.”

  Joenes did not doubt any longer, especially when he heard the crash of an enormous body against the wall of the cabin. Although the wall was made of seasoned logs fastened with thongs and pegs, the logs were shattered by the impact of the Beast’s body. And looking up, Joenes found himself staring full into the face of the Beast.

  (to be concluded next, month)

  A somewhat expanded version of this novel will be published later this year by Signet under the title Journey Beyond Tomorrow.

  THE JOURNEY OF JOENES

  The second, and final, part of Robert Sheckley’s new novel. The author’s synopsis will smoothly carry the uninitiated into the Swing of Things.

  (Conclusion)

  SYNOPSIS: Five storytellers have related the tales of the far-travelling Joenes, a culture-hero of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Nearly a thousand years ago, Joenes left his island of Manituatua in the South Pacific and journeyed to the strange land of America. There he met Lum, an extremely hip young man, who introduced him to the pleasures of peyote; and he also met the beautiful Deirdre Feinstein.

  The San Francisco police arrested Deirdre for public intoxication, and when Joenes intervened, they arrested him, too. Swiftly Joenes was taken before a congressional committee, which found his activities subversive and suspicious, and bound him over to the Attorney-General for punitive measures.

  The Attorney-General wished to have Joenes tried by the dreaded Star Chamber. But he compromised, sending Joenes to the Oracle at Sperry for judgment.

  The Sperry Oracle, speaking his own mathematical tongue, gave Joenes a ten-year suspended sentence. Joenes left at once for New York. Here he met a man named Watts, as in Watts the matter? Watts explained that the crowds hurrying by on the streets were composed mainly of the walking dead. He began to define this concept, hut was forced to depart hastily when a policeman came up.

  The policeman told Joenes that Watts was a notorious jewel thief, and therefore not to be trusted. In speaking of his distaste for Watts, the policeman became inflamed with the compulsive need to draw his revolver and enforce the law. Joenes escaped the wrath of this man and hitchhiked to the north.

  He was given a ride by three truckdrivers, who listened to his story and hold him theirs. Each of the truckdrivers had lost the thing most precious to him. One had lost his faith in science, another his faith in justice, and the third his faith in religion. Each man’s story told the circumstances under which he had lost his faith, and each man revealed how he was slowly acquiring a new faith.

  Joenes had no time to ponder these stories. When he left the truck, he saw a man waving to him. He approached, and found that it was his old friend Lum, welcoming him to the Hollis Home for the Criminally Insane.

  Entering this place, Joenes learned that it was actually an artists and writers colony; a few madmen were kept chained in the cellar in order for the Home to maintain its tax-free status. A Doctor Broign explained some of the therapeutic techniques used. Joenes wanted to see one patient who believed himself to be God; but the deluded madman had vanished from a locked cell before Joenes had a chance for an interview.

  The beautiful Deirdre Feinstein was also at the Hollis Home. She greeted Joenes with great warmth, and with plans for marriage in two days’ time. For various reasons, Joenes found the projected alliance unpromising; therefore he prevailed upon Lum to help him leave the Hollis Home.

  Lum did this, finding Joenes an instructors position at the University of Stephens Wood in Newark, New Jersey. Joenes went there gladly, but found an immediate difficulty in not knowing what subject he was supposed to teach. After he found this out, he enjoyed his work. His fullest acceptance came when several professors invited him to see the utopia they had created at Chorowait Mountain in the Adirondacks.

  At first, Joenes found Chorowait a pleasantly pastoral retreat. He was somewhat surprised when a young woman came to share his bed, but he was told that this was customary. Joenes accepted this with good grace; but before he was settled down for the night, he heard a great roar. This, the young woman told him, was the cry of the Beast of Chorowait.

  Joenes had heard of this creature, but had believed it to be a myth. The young woman told him that there were no myths on Chorowait; the Beast was as real as a chipmunk, and tonight it had come to kill.

  Joenes could not doubt her word, for in the next moment, an enormous body crashed against the wall of his cabin. And a moment later, he found himself staring into the face of the Beast.

  9b. THE BEAST OF THE UTOPIA

  THIS CREATURE WAS LIKE nothing that Joenes had ever seen. In front it resembled a tiger, except that its massive head was black rather than tawny-striped. In the middle it was reminiscent of a bird, for rudimentary wings grew just below its shoulders. In back it was like a snake, possessing a tail which was twice as long as the Beast itself, as thick in its thickest part as a man’s thigh, and scaled and barbed all over.

  All of this Joenes saw in an instant, so strongly did the Beast impress itself upon his senses. When the Beast crouched to spring, Joenes scooped the fainting Laka in his arms and fled from the cabin. The Beast did not follow at once, but amused itself with a few minutes of wanton destruction before giving chase.

  Joenes was able to join a group of village hunters. These men, with Lunu at their head, stood with spears and arrows poised, ready to engage in battle against the Beast.

  Standing nearby was the village witch doctor and his two assistants. The witch doctor’s wrinkled old face was painted ochre and blue. In his right hand he held a skull, and with his left hand he poked frantically through a pile of magical ingredients. At the same time he was cursing his assistants.

  “Idiots!” he was saying. “Criminally incompetent fools! Where is the mos
s from the dead man’s head?”

  “It is under your left foot, sir,” one of the assistants said.

  “What a place for it!” the witch doctor said. “Give it here. Now where is the red shroud string?”

  “In your pouch, sir,” the other assistant said.

  The witch doctor drew it out and threaded it through the eye sockets of the skull. He bound the moss in the nose-opening, then turned to his assistants.

  “You, Huang, I sent to read the stars; and you, Pollito, I sent to learn the message of the sacred golden deer. Tell me quickly and without delay what these messages were and what the gods request in order for us to stop the Beast tonight.”

  Huang said, “The stars told us to bind rosemary widdershins tonight.”

  The witch doctor seized a sprig of rosemary from his pile of ingredients and bound it to the skull with a shroud string, turning the string three times with the sun.

  Pollito said, “The message of the sacred golden deer was to give the skull a pinch of snuff; that he said would be enough.”

  “Spare me your moronic rhyming,” the witch doctor said, “and give me the snuff.”

  “I don’t have it, sir.”

  ‘Then where is it?”

  “Earlier you said that you had obtained the snuff and put it in a safe place.”

  “Naturally. But in which safe place did I put it?” the witch doctor asked, rummaging wildly through his ingredients.

  “Perhaps it’s at the Underworld Altar,” Huang said.

  “Maybe it’s buried at the Divining Place,” Pollito said.

  “No, none of those places seem right,” the witch doctor said. “Let me think. . .”

  The Beast, however, gave him no further time for thought. It trotted out of Joenes’s cabin and sprang at the line of hunters. A dozen arrows and spears darted forward to meet its charge, humming in the air like angry hornets. But these weapons had no effect. Unharmed, the Beast burst through the hunters’ line. Already the witch doctor and his assistants had gathered up their ingredients and sprinted into the forest. The hunters also ran, but Lunu and two others were killed.

  Joenes followed the hunters, and fear lent speed to his feet. At last he came to a clearing in the forest with a weathered stone altar in its center. Here was the witch doctor and his assistants, and behind them shuddered the hunters. In the forest, the howls of the Beast were growing louder.

  The witch doctor was fumbling on the ground near the altar, saying, “I’m almost positive I put the snuff around here somewhere. I came here to ask the Sun’s special blessing on it this afternoon. Pollito, do you remember what I did then?”

  “I wasn’t here,” Pollito said. “You told us you were going to perform a secret rite, and that our presence was forbidden.”

  “Of course it was forbidden,” the witch doctor said, digging vigorously around the altar with a stick. “But didn’t you spy on me?”

  “We would never do that,” Huang said.

  “Damned conformistic young morons!” the witch doctor said. “How do you expect to become witch doctors if you don’t spy on me at every opportunity?”

  The Beast appeared at the edge of the clearing, not fifty yards from the group. At the same moment the witch doctor bent down, then straightened with a small deerskin bag in his hand.

  “Here it is, of course!” the witch doctor cried. “Right under the sacred ear of corn where I buried it this afternoon. Will one of you thumb-fingered imbeciles hand me another shroud string?”

  Already Pollito was holding it out. With great dexterity, the witch doctor bound the bag to the skull’s lower jaw, winding three times widdershins. Then he hefted the skull in his hand and said, “Is there anything I’ve forgotten? I don’t think so. Now watch, you dull-witted bucolics, and see how the deed is done.”

  The witch doctor advanced on the Beast, holding the skull in both hands. Joenes, the hunters, and the two assistants, watched open-mouthed as the Beast pawed the earth into a trench three feet deep, stepped across it and moved ominously toward the witch doctor.

  The old man stepped close without a sign of fear. At the last moment he threw the skull, striking the Beast on the chest. It seemed a puny blow to Joenes; but the Beast let out an immense roar of pain, turned and loped away into the forest.

  The hunters were too weary to celebrate the Beast’s defeat. They went silently to their cabins.

  The witch doctor left, saying to his assistants, “I hope you’ve had the sense to learn something from this. When skull exorcism is called for, the prepared skull, or aharbitus, must strike the center of the Beast’s chest. No other blow will do, but will simply augment the fury of the creature. Tomorrow we will study three-bodies exorcism, for which there is a very pretty ritual.”

  Joenes lifted the still-unconscious Laka and brought her back to his own cabin. As soon as the door was closed, Laka came to her senses and showered Joenes with kisses. Joenes pushed her away, telling her not to do violence to her feelings, nor to arouse his. But Laka declared that she was a changed woman, even if the change were only temporary. The sight of the Beast, she said, and of Joenes’s bravery in rescuing her from it, had moved her to the depths of her being. Also, poor Lunu’s death had shown her the value of passion in an ephemeral existence.

  Joenes had his suspicions about these reasons, but there was no denying the fact that Laka had changed. Her eyes gleamed, and with a sudden leap reminiscent of the Beast’s spring, she fell upon Joenes and toppled him onto the bed of pine boughs.

  Joenes decided that as little as he knew of men, he knew even less of women. Also, the pine boughs hurt his back abominably. But soon he forgot his pain and his lack of knowledge. Both became exceedingly unimportant, and he did not think about them again until dawn had flooded the cabin with light, and Laka had slipped away and returned to her own cabin.

  9c. THE NECESSITY FOR THE BEAST OF THE UTOPIA

  In the morning, Joenes met with his colleagues from the University. He told them his adventures of the previous night and expressed indignation at not being warned about the Beast.

  “But my dear Joenes!” said Professor Hanley. “We wanted you to witness this vital facet of Chorowait for yourself, and to judge it without preconceptions.”

  “Even if that witnessing had cost me my life?” Joenes asked angrily.

  “You were never in the slightest danger,” Professor Chandler told him. “The Beast never attacks anyone connected with the University.”

  “It certainly seemed as though it was trying to kill me,” Joenes said.

  ‘Tm sure it seemed that way,” Manisfree said. “But actually, it was merely trying to get at Laka, who, being a Chorowaitian, is a suitable victim for the Beast. You might have been jostled a bit when the Beast tore the girl from your arms; but that is the worst that could have happened to you.”

  Joenes now felt chagrined at finding that his danger, which had seemed so dire last night, was now revealed as no danger at all. To conceal his annoyance, he asked, “What sort of creature was it and to what species does it belong?”

  Geoffrard of Classics cleared his throat importantly and said, “The Beast you saw last night is unique, and should not be confused with the Questing Beast whom Sir Pellinore pursued, nor with the Beasts of Revelation. The Chorowaitian Beast is more closely akin to the Opinicus, which the ancients tell us was part camel, part dragon, and part lion, though we do not know in what proportions. But even this kinship is superficial. As I said, our Beast is unique.”

  Joenes asked, “Where did this Beast come from?”

  The professors looked at each other and giggled like embarrassed schoolboys. Then Blake of Physics controlled his mirth and said to Joenes, “The fact of the matter is, we ourselves gave birth to the Beast. We constructed it part by part and member by member, using the Chemistry Lab on weekends and evenings. All departments of the University cooperated in the design and fabrication of the Beast, but I should especially single out the contributions made by Chemistry,
Physics, Mathematics, Cybernetics, Medicine, and Psychology. And I must also mention the signal contributions of Anthropology and Classics, whose inspiration this was. Special thanks is due Professor Elling of Practical Arts who upholstered the entire Beast with the most durable of plastic skins. Nor should I forget Miss Hua, our student assistant, without whose careful collation of our notes the whole venture might have foundered.”

  The professors beamed happily at Blake’s speech. Joenes, who had unwrapped a mystery only to find an enigma, still understood nothing. He said, “The construction of the Beast must have been very difficult.”

  “Indeed it was,” said Ptolemy of Mathematics. “Excluding our own time, and the wear and tear on the Chem Lab, we had to spend twelve million four hundred thousand twelve dollars and sixty three cents on the fabrication of special parts. Hoggshead of Accounting kept a careful record of all expenses in case we should ever be asked.”

  “Where did the money come from?” Joenes asked.

  “The government, of course,” said Harris of Political Science. “I, and my colleague Finfitter of Economics took over the problem of funds appropriation. We had enough left over to throw a victory banquet when Project Beast was completed. Too bad you weren’t here for that, Joenes.”

  Harris forestalled Joenes’s next question by adding, “Of course, we did not tell the government that we were building the Beast. Although they might still have granted funds, the inevitable bureaucratic delay would have been maddening. Instead, we said that we were working on a crash project to determine the feasibility of building an eight-lane coast to coast underground highway in the interests of national defense. Perhaps I do not need to add that Congress, which has always favored highway construction, voted immediately and enthusiastically to give us funds.”

  Blake said, “Many of us felt that such a highway would be eminently practical, and perhaps extremely necessary. The more we thought about it, the more the idea grew on us. But the Beast came first. And even with government funds at our disposal, the task was tremendously difficult.”

 

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