Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Should I have lectured them on all men being equal?”

  Those people knew that all men were not equal, and that justice was the exclusive prerogative of the ruling class. They viewed all egalitarian ideas as devilish perversions, to be resisted to the death.

  “Democracy is not natural law. Men must be educated to it. Democracy is a difficult and advanced concept for men whose instinct is to band together in wolf-packs under a single leader. Effective democracy requires the exercise of responsibility and fairness to others. For the people of the future Earth, this was an outlandish concept: others were there only to be used.

  “Given this state of affairs, what would any of you have done? Would you have witnessed the misery and squalor of the world and turned away from it, returning to your own happier times? Or would you have stayed and put together a token democracy, to be overwhelmed as soon as you were no longer in physical control? Or would you have done as I did—formed the only political organization that the people could understand, and then tried to educate them in the difficult practices of freedom and responsibility?

  “I did what I thought was best for the people, not for myself. I took over. But then you Gleisters—my alter egos, my brothers—kept coming up from the past, bent upon assassinating me; I tried to kidnap some of you and reeducate you. But there were too many Gleisters, the dynamics of the situation were against me.

  “I learned about your organization. I came back here and infiltrated it. I have taken it over now.

  “I have explained the situation as fairly as I can. I most sincerely beg you to cooperate with me, assist me, help me to change a regressed and savage Earth into the sort of place we have all dreamed of.”

  There was a long silence. At last Chairman Egon Gleister said, “I believe there may be considerable merit in what you have explained to us.”

  Hieronymous asked, “Have you forgotten already what you saw in his future? All of the suspicion and misery, and all those police!” He turned to Mingus. “Why don’t you just leave them alone? I really don’t care what your motives are. Hasn’t Earth had enough Emperors, dictators, generalissimos, warlords, Great Khans, Shahinshahs, Caesars, whatever you want to call them? Some of them had admirable motives—but the only people they really helped were themselves.”

  “I suppose you feel that a state of anarchy is preferable?” Mingus asked.

  “I think it probably is,” Hieronymous said. “The main defect of anarchy is its vulnerability to people like you.”

  There was no sound at all from the audience. Hieronymous went on: “In any event, it’s not your age you’re tampering with, it’s someone else’s. You come here from the happy and enlightened twentieth century and impose your obsolete political solutions on them. Really, Mingus, you’re acting just like any other colonizer.”

  Mingus appeared shaken. “I must think about this. I honestly believed . . .” He shook his head irritably. “It is strange,” he said, “that all of us are one person, yet we represent widely differing viewpoints.”

  “It’s not so strange,” Egon said. “One person is many people even under normal circumstances.”

  Hieronymous said, “Perhaps we should call for a vote on what the Gleisters are to do—if you think we are civilized enough to vote.”

  “Taking power is a responsibility,” Mingus said. “But giving power up is equally a responsibility. This will require careful thought on my part.”

  “Perhaps not,” Egon said. “Perhaps you won’t have to think about it at all.”

  “Why do you say that?” Mingus said.

  The chairman smiled and said, “I think you have made a fatal misreading of the sequence of events. By coming back here, you have ceased to be the Emperor. So there is nothing for you to think about.”

  “Explain yourself,” Mingus said. “Who is the real Emperor then?”

  “There is no ‘real’ Emperor,” Egon told him. “There is only a Gleister who went to the future, seized power and became Emperor. He found himself opposed by an organization, returned to the past in an attempt to take over the organization. He was killed in the attempt.”

  “Be careful,” Mingus said.

  “There’s nothing to be careful about,” Egon said. “We know that time travel necessarily involves duplication. One law we are sure of governing time travel and its events is: nothing happens for the first time. You, my dear Mordecai, have the honor of having been the first Emperor. But it can’t remain that way. Since time travel is involved, there must be a second Emperor for the Emperor-line of probability to take place at all.”

  “And you think that the first Emperor dies?” Mingus asked.

  “Or goes into retirement, perhaps,” Egon said. “Give me the gun.”

  “You crown yourself Emperor?”

  “Why not? I’m a Gleister, and therefore a legitimate heir to the royal line. Give me the gun and I’ll let you go in peace.”

  Hieronymous said urgently to Mordecai-Mingus, “Do it. Give him the gun, He’s right—time travel necessitates the overdetermination of events. There must be a second Emperor.”

  “Very well,” Mordecai-Mingus said. “I’ll give you the gun. And since you are the future Emperor, you won’t mind which end you get first.”

  He aimed the gun at Egon and pulled the trigger. A look of shock came over Mordecai’s face. He went rigid, then fell. The gun dropped from his hand and clattered across the floor, coming to rest at Hieronymous’s feet.

  Hieronymous picked up the weapon. He bent over Mordecai for a moment, then looked at Egon. “He’s dead.” Egon said, “We seem to have a new Emperor.”

  “We do indeed,” Hieronymous said, and handed the gun to him butt-first.

  Gleister Emperor Line #2:

  “That’s good of you, cousin,” Egon said, hefting the weapon. “You have no imperial ambitions, then?”

  “Ambitions, but not imperial ones. Besides, Egon, I’ve had a premonition.”

  “I’m not Egon any more,” the Chairman said. “For the sake of symmetry, I’m renaming myself Mingus . . . What was your premonition?”

  “I thought I heard a voice say: ‘The Emperor is the slave of time.’ ”

  “Just that and no more?”

  “That’s all I heard,” Hieronymous said.

  “How strange, dark and ominous,” the new Mingus said, grinning. “How do you interpret it?”

  “It hints at something unpleasant, but I don’t know what. Take it for what it’s worth.”

  “Well,” Mingus said, “You have given me an oracle and an empire, and I thank you most kindly for both, but especially the Empire. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “You grant me an imperial boon?”

  “Yes, anything.”

  “Then go rule your Empire, and let me and the rest of us do what we have to do.”

  “It’s doubtless unwise,” Mingus said, “but I’ll do it. God knows what complications would ensue if I started killing Gleisters. Just remember—”

  Mingus stopped. A man had just materialized onto the stage beside him.

  Main Lines Junction #3:

  The man was old, he had a gray beard and a ravaged face. His eyes were shadowy and lined.

  “Who are you?” Mingus demanded.

  “I am you, Egon. I am Mordecai, I am Hieronymous, I am the others. I am the Emperor you will become. I have come here to beg you to abdicate now and change what still can be changed.”

  “Why should I do that?” Mingus asked.

  “Because the Emperor is the slave of time.”

  “That makes no sense whatsoever, old man. Who are you really? Hieronymous, this looks like the sort of theatrical stunt you might come up with someday.”

  “I can give no promise for the behavior of my old age, if that’s what this is.”

  “Abdicate,” the old man said.

  “Nobody likes a nag,” Mingus said, aimed his gun and fired.

  There was no apparent effect. The old man shook his head irritably
. “I can’t be killed—not here, not now, not by you! Reality is positional, as you will learn when you grow up. Now I must return to my work.”

  “What work is that?” Hieronymous asked.

  “All slaves perform identical meaningless work,” the old man said, and disappeared.

  Mingus rubbed his chin irritably. “Nothing like a ghost to keep the comedy moving! Hieronymous, are you going somewhere?”

  Hieronymous had been adjusting his time machine. He looked up and said, “I’m going on a trip.”

  “Where?”

  “To visit an old friend.”

  “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll see, in good time.”

  Mingus said, “Wait, Hieronymous! Stay with me and help me build a true civilization. We’ll do it your way.”

  “No,” Hieronymous said, and pushed the button.

  Main Lines Junction #4:

  This time Gleister came out near Krul in the late years of the Mingus Imperium. He bartered clothing for money and took the day coach to Washington. From the station he walked to the White House, seat of Imperial power and now a Byzantine city within a city. He told the sergeant of the Exterior Guard to announce him to the Emperor.

  “What kind of a joke is this?” the sergeant said. “Put your petition through proper channels.”

  “Announce me for the sake of your own continued welfare,” Gleister said. “Tell him that Hieronymous is here.”

  The sergeant was skeptical, but unwilling to take a risk. He rang up the captain of the guard, who contacted the commandant of the guard. Nothing happened for ten minutes, then things began to happen very quickly.

  “I beg your pardon,” the sergeant said. “I’m new at this post. I hadn’t received the standing order concerning you. Please come this way, sir.”

  Hieronymous was led through winding gray corridors, into an elevator, through more corridors, to a steel-plate door painted crimson. The sergeant let him in and closed the door behind him.

  Hieronymous was in a small white audience room. There was a man present, seated at a small table. The man stood up when he entered.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Egon-Mingus said.

  “Good to see you too,” Hieronymous replied. “How fares the empire?”

  “Well . . . it’s not too successful, as you perhaps foresaw. In fact, it’s disastrous.” Mingus smiled painfully. He was old now, a tall man with a gray beard and ravaged eyes.

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Hieronymous shook his head. “I had a premonition, not a vision. Are Gleisters still trying to overthrow you?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Mingus said. “I don’t even bother trying to stop them. Our family possesses a deep-seated ineptitude where politics are concerned. The Gleisters have no head for intrigue! They come into my empire in their twentieth-century clothing, brandishing strange weapons and talking in concepts the populace can’t understand. People think they represent some mad foreign overlord, or are just plain crazy. At the first opportunity they turn them over to the police.”

  “And what do you do with them?”

  “I educate them.”

  “Ah!”

  Mingus made a face. “I hope you don’t think I’m using a euphemism for violence. I assure you that I educate them most conventionally, with lectures, guided tours, films and books. Then I find some place in the Empire for them to stay.”

  “Do they all choose to live here?”

  “Most of them. One must live somewhere, after all, and their original places in their own time are occupied by other Gleisters.”

  “Well . . . That sounds all right. What’s the trouble.”

  “Hieronymous, you need some education yourself! maybe you should go on the guided tour.”

  “Just tell me about it.”

  “Very well. It’s actually quite simple. The first or original or Ur-Gleister built a time machine and went into the future. Nature, which tolerates a paradox but abhors a vacuum, was left with a hole in the space-time fabric. A Gleister was missing from his normal position. Nature, therefore, supplied an identical or near-identical Gleister from wherever she keeps the spare parts.”

  “I know all of this,” Hieronymous said.

  “You haven’t thought it through to the end. Each time a Gleister uses a time machine there is a displacement, another hole in the space-time fabric, which Nature fills by producing yet another Gleister.”

  “I’m beginning to understand,” Hieronymous said.

  “Now we have numerous Gleisters,” Mingus went on, “all whizzing around on their various missions. We have a Gleister-sequence that becomes the Emperor, another sequence that forms an organization against the Emperor. And there are other sequences. Each sequence involving time travel results in the duplication of a Gleister. Each new Gleister time travels and is instrumental in the creation of more new Gleisters.”

  Mingus paused to let that sink in, then said: “Gleisters are being produced at a geometric rate.”

  “Well,” Hieronymous said, “that’s a hell of a lot of Gleisters.”

  “You still don’t grasp the scale,” Mingus said. “Geometric progressions tend to get out of hand very early. Hundreds become thousands, thousands become millions, which become trillions and quadrillions. Do you get it now?”

  “I get it,” Hieronymous said. “Where do they all go?”

  “They come here,” Mingus said. “There’s really no other place for them to go.”

  “And where do you put them?”

  “I’ve managed to house about twelve million to date. But the Empire is running out of resources, and they’re coming thicker than ever!”

  “Is there no way of stopping them?”

  Mingus shook his head. “Even if the army shot them on sight, we couldn’t control the mounting progression. Soon there will be nothing but Gleisters; the Earth will be carpeted in Gleisters, and new ones will continue to pour in. The Emperor is truly the slave of time.”

  “What have you done about a solution?”

  “Everything possible. I’m open to suggestions.”

  “The only thing that occurs to me,” Hieronymous said, “is that the original Gleister must be killed before he can invent the time machine.”

  “It can’t be done. Many of us have tried, but we can’t get back far enough in time. We can only encounter Gleister after the invention. And each Gleister who goes back and fails further expands the progression.”

  “Yes. I see.”

  “Do you have any ideas?”

  “Only one, and I don’t much like it.”

  Mingus waited. Hieronymous said, “As it stands now, the Gleisters-series is an infinite expansion. Therefore a limit must be introduced in order to make the series capable of termination.”

  “What limit?”

  “Death is the only natural limit,” Hieronymous said. “Termination must be introduced as early as possible in the series, so that it will expand simultaneously with the series, render it self-limiting and finally self-cancelling.”

  “Many of us have died,” Mingus said. “It hasn’t effected the expansion.”

  “Of course not. All the Gleister-deaths so far have been normal terminations of individual time tracks. What is needed is an early death out of continuity—a suicide.”

  “In order to introduce a short-term recycling death factor,” Mingus said. “Suicide . . . Yes. It will be my final imperial act.”

  “Not yours, mine,” Hieronymous said.

  “I am still the Emperor,” Mingus said. “It is my responsibility.”

  “You’re too old, for one thing,” Hieronymous said. “A young Gleister must die as early in his time track as possible.”

  “Then we’ll draw lots among the younger Gleisters.”

  Hieronymous shook his head. “I’m afraid it must be me.”

  “Would you mind explaining why?”

  “At the risk of seeming ego
tistical,” Hieronymous said, “I must tell you that I believe that I am the original Gleister, and only my suicide can end what I began.”

  “Why do you think you are the original Gleister?”

  “It’s an intuition.”

  “That’s not much to go on.”

  “No, but it’s something. Do you have an intuition like . . .”

  “No, I don’t,” Mingus said. “But I don’t believe that I’m—unreal!”

  “You’re not,” Hieronymous said. “We’re all equally real. I’m just the first, that’s all.”

  “Well . . . It doesn’t matter, I suppose. I hope that you’re right.”

  “Thanks,” Hieronymous said, setting his time machine. “Do you still have that laser gun?” Mingus handed it to him and Hieronymous put it in his pocket. “Thanks. I’ll be seeing you.”

  “That seems unlikely.”

  “If my assumptions are correct,” Hieronymous said, “then you will have to see me again.”

  “Explain that!” Mingus said. “That makes no sense . . .”

  But Hieronymous had pushed the button and was gone.

  Gleister Main Line Sequence Termination #7:

  It was a beautiful September afternoon in Harvest Falls, Indiana. Charlie Gleister walked past Apple Street and looked wistfully at the white frame house that he had had for his laboratory. He thought about going in and having a word with himself, but decided against it. He’d had his fill of Gleisters.

  He continued walking, out of town on Route 347. Cars passed him, but he didn’t try to hitch a ride. He didn’t have far to go.

  He turned off the route and crossed a stubbled field. He went through woods and came to a little brook. He had fished here as a boy, catching an occasional sunfish. The big oak tree was still where he remembered it, and Charlie sat down and leaned his back against it.

  He took out the gun and looked at it. He felt numb, self-conscious. He rubbed his nose and looked at the sunlight on the water for several minutes.

  Then, irritably, he said, “All right, let’s get it over with.” He put the muzzle of the gun in his mouth, gagging slightly over the taste of oily metal. He shut his eyes and pulled the trigger and died.