Antigrav : Cosmic Comedies by SF Masters

by Philip Strick

  ‘Be my guest,’ said Trurl. ‘But it has to start with «.’

  ‘TV?’ said Klapaucius. ‘All right, let it make Nature.’

  The machine whined, and in a trice Trurl’s front yard was packed with naturalists. They argued, each publishing heavy volumes, which the others tore to pieces; in the distance one could see flaming pyres, on which martyrs to Nature were sizzling; there was thunder, and strange mushroom-shaped columns of smoke rose up; everyone talked at once, no one listened, and there were all sorts of memoranda, appeals, subpoenas and other documents, while off to the side sat a few old men, feverishly scribbling on scraps of paper.

  ‘Not bad, eh?’ said Trurl with pride. ‘Nature to a T, admit it!’

  But Klapaucius wasn’t satisfied.

  ‘What, that mob? Surely you’re not going to tell me that’s Nature?’

  ‘Then give the machine something else,’ snapped Trurl. ‘Whatever you like.’ For a moment Klapaucius was at a loss for what to ask. But after a little thought he declared that he would put two more tasks to the machine; if it could fulfill them, he would admit that it was all Trurl said it was. Trurl agreed to this, whereupon Klapaucius requested Negative.

  ‘Negative?!’ cried Trurl. ‘What on earth is Negative?’

  ‘The opposite of Positive, of course,’ Klapaucius coolly replied. ‘Negative attitudes, the negative of a picture, for example. Now don’t try to pretend you never heard of Negative. All right, machine, get to work!’

  The machine, however, had already begun. First it manufactured antiprotons, then antielectrons, antineutrons, anti-neutrinos, and laboured on, until from out of all this antimatter an antiworld took shape, glowing like a ghostly cloud above their heads.

  ‘H’m,’ muttered Klapaucius, displeased. ‘That’s supposed to be Negative? Well. . . let’s say it is, for the sake of peace . . . But now here’s the third command: Machine, do Nothing!’

  The machine sat still. Klapaucius rubbed his hands in triumph, but Trurl said:

  ‘Well, what did you expect? You asked it to do nothing, and it’s doing nothing.’

  ‘Correction: I asked it to do Nothing, but it’s doing nothing.’

  ‘Nothing is nothing!’

  ‘Come, come. It was supposed to do Nothing, but it hasn’t done anything, and therefore I’ve won. For Nothing, my dear and clever colleague, is not your run-of-the-mill nothing, the result of idleness and inactivity, but dynamic, aggressive Nothingness, that is to say, perfect, unique, ubiquitous, in other words Nonexistence, ultimate and supreme, in its very own nonperson!’

  ‘You’re confusing the machine!’ cried Trurl. But suddenly its metallic voice rang out:

  ‘Really, how can you two bicker at a time like this? Oh yes, I know what Nothing is, and Nothingness, Nonexistence, Nonentity, Negation, Nullity and Nihility, since all these come under the heading of n, n as in Nil. Look then upon your world for the last time, gentlemen! Soon it shall no longer be .. .’

  The constructors froze, forgetting their quarrel, for the machine was in actual fact doing Nothing, and it did it in this fashion: one by one, various things were removed from the world, and the things, thus removed, ceased to exist, as if they had never been. The machine had already disposed of nolars, nightzebs, nocs, necs, nallyrakers, neotremes and nonmal-rigers. At moments, though, it seemed that instead of reducing, diminishing and subtracting, the machine was increasing, enhancing and adding, since it liquidated, in turn: nonconformists, nonentities, nonsense, nonsupport, nearsightedness, narrowmindedness, naughtiness, neglect, nausea, necrophilia and nepotism. But after a while the world very definitely began to thin out around Trurl and Klapaucius.

  ‘Omigosh!’ said Trurl. ‘If only nothing bad comes out of all this .. .’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Klapaucius. ‘You can see it’s not producing Universal Nothingness, but only causing the absence of whatever starts with n. Which is really nothing in the way of nothing, and nothing is what your machine, dear Trurl, is worth!’

  ‘Do not be deceived,’ replied the machine. ‘I’ve begun, it’s true, with everything in n, but only out of familiarity. To create however is one thing, to destroy, another thing entirely. I can blot out the world for the simple reason that I’m able to do anything and everything—and everything means everything—in n, and consequently Nothingness is child’s play for me. In less than a minute now you will cease to have existence, along with everything else, so tell me now, Klapaucius, and quickly, that I am really and truly everything I was programmed to be, before it is too late.’

  ‘But—’ Klapaucius was about to protest, but noticed, just then, that a number of things were indeed disappearing, and not merely those that started with n. The constructors were no longer surrounded by the gruncheons, the targalisks, the shupops, the calinatifacts, the thists, worches and pritons.

  ‘Stop! I take it all back! Desist! Whoa! Don’t do Nothing!!’ screamed Klapaucius. But before the machine could come to a full stop, all the brashations, plusters, laries and zits had vanished away. Now the machine stood motionless. The world was a dreadful sight. The sky had particularly suffered: there were only a few, isolated points of light in the heavens—no trace of the glorious worches and zits that had till now, graced the horizon!

  ‘Great Gauss!’ cried Klapaucius. ‘And where are the gruncheons? Where my dear, favourite pritons? Where now the gentle zits?!’

  ‘They no longer are, nor ever will exist again,’ the machine said calmly. ‘I executed, or rather only began to execute, your order . .

  ‘I tell you to do Nothing, and you .. . you ..

  ‘Klapaucius, don’t pretend to be a greater idiot than you are,’ said the machine. ‘Had I made Nothing outright, in one fell swoop, everything would have ceased to exist, and that includes Trurl, the sky, the Universe, and you—and even myself. In which case who could say and to whom could it be said that the order was carried out and I am an efficient and capable machine? And if no one could say it to no one, in what way then could I, who also would not be, be vindicated?’

  ‘Yes, fine, let’s drop the subject,’ said Klapaucius. ‘I have nothing more to ask of you, only please, dear machine, please return the zits, for without them life loses all its charm . . .’

  ‘But I can’t, they’re in z,’ said the machine. ‘Of course, I can restore nonsense, narrowmindedness, nausea, necrophilia, neuralgia, nefariousness and noxiousness. As for the other letters, however, I can’t help you.’

  ‘I want my zits!’ bellowed Klapaucius.

  ‘Sorry, no zits,’ said the machine. ‘Take a good look at this world, how riddled it is with huge, gaping holes, how full of Nothingness, the Nothingness that fills the bottomless void between the stars, how everything about us has become lined with it, how it darkly lurks behind each shred of matter. This is your work, envious one! And I hardly think the future generations will bless you for it. . .’

  ‘Perhaps. . . they won’t find out, perhaps they won’t notice,’ groaned the pale Klapaucius, gazing up incredulously at the black emptiness of space and not daring to look his colleague, Trurl, in the eye. Leaving him beside the machine that could do everything in n, Klapaucius skulked home—and to this day the world has remained honeycombed with nothingness, exactly as it was when halted in the course of its liquidation. And as all subsequent attempts to build a machine on any other letter met with failure, it is to be feared that never again will we have such marvellous phenomena as the worches and the zits—no, never again.

  It Was Nothing-Really!

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Having reached that stage in his career when he could have a personal private washroom in his office, Henry Mellow came out of it and said into the little black box on his desk, ‘Bring your book, please.’ Miss Prince acknowledged and entered and said, ‘Eeek.’

  ‘ “Ever since the dawn of history,” ’ Henry Mellow dictated, ‘ “mankind has found himself face to face with basic truths that—” ’

  ‘I am fac
e to face,’ said Miss Mellow, ‘with your pants which are down, Mr Mellow, and you are waving a long piece of toilet paper.’

  ‘Ah yes, I’m coming to that. “. . . with basic truths that he cannot see, or does not recognize, or does not understand.” Are you getting this, Miss Prince?’

  ‘I am getting very upset, Mr Mellow. Please pull up your pants.’

  Mr Mellow looked at her for a long moment while he put his thoughts on ‘hold’ and tuned them out, and tuned her in, and at last looked down. ‘Archimedes,’ he said, and put his piece of toilet paper down on the desk. Pulling up his pants, he said, ‘At least I think it was Archimedes. He was taking a bath and when he lay back in it, displacing the water and watching it slop over the sides of the tub, the solution to a problem came to him, about how to determine how much base metal was mixed in with the king’s gold ornaments. He jumped out of the bath and ran naked through the streets shouting Eureka, which means in Greek, “I have found it.” You, Miss Prince, are witnessing such a moment. Or was it Aristotle?’

  ‘It was disgraceful is what it was,’ said Miss Prince, ‘and no matter how long I work here you make me wonder. Toilet paper.’

  ‘Some of the most profound thinking in human history has come about in toilets,’ said Henry Mellow. ‘The Protestant reformation was begun in a toilet, when Luther was sitting there working on his—am I offending you, Miss Prince?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess it depends on what comes next,’ said Miss Prince, lowering her hands from her ears, but not much. Warily she watched as he arranged his pennant of toilet paper on the desk and began tearing it, placing his hands palm down on the desk and drawing them apart. ‘You will observe—Miss Prince, are you getting this?’

  She picked up her notebook from where she had flung it to cover her ears. ‘No, sir, not really.’

  ‘Then I shall begin again,’ said Henry Mellow, and began to dictate the memo which was to strike terror into the hearts and souls of the military-industrial complex. Oh yes, they have hearts and souls. It’s just that they never used them until Henry Mellow. Notice the structure there. Henry Mellow was more than a man, he was a historical event. You don’t have to say ‘Wilbur and Orville Wright and their first successful experiment at,’ you just have to say ‘Kitty Hawk.’ You can say ‘Since Hiroshima’ or ‘Dallas’ or ‘Pasteur’ or ‘Darwin’ and people know what you are talking about. So it is that things haven’t been the same with the military-industrial complex since Henry Mellow.

  The Mellow memo reached the Pentagon by the usual channels, which is to say that a Bureau man, routinely going through the segregated trash from the Mellow offices, found three pages done by a new typist and discarded because of forty-three typographical errors, and was assigned, after they had gone through all the layers of the Bureau to the desk of the Chief himself, to burglarize the Mellow offices and secure photographs of a file copy. He was arrested twice and injured once in the accomplishment of this mission, which was not reported in for some time due to an unavoidable accident: he left the papers in a taxicab after stealing them and it took him three weeks to locate the taxi driver and burglarize him. Meanwhile the memo had been submitted to the Times in the form of a letter, which in turn formed the basis for an editorial; but as usual, the appearance of such material in the public media escaped the notice of public and Pentagon alike.

  The impact of the memo on the Pentagon, and most especially on its target point, the offices of Major General Fortney Superpate, was that of an earthquake seasoned with a Dear John letter. His reactions were immediate and in the best military tradition, putting his whole section on Condition Red and invoking Top Secret, so that the emergency would be heard by no one outside his department. What then followed was total stasis for two hours and forty minutes, because of his instant decision to check out Mellow’s results. This required toilet paper, and though General Superpate, like Henry Mellow, had a washroom at the corner of his office, he had enough respect for tradition to stifle his impulse to get up and get some, but instead summoned his adjutant, who snapped a smart salute and received the order. From the outer office the adjutant required the immediate attendance in person of the supply sergeant (remember, this was now a classified matter) who was on leave; the qualifications of his corporal had then to be gone into before he could substitute. Requisition papers were made out, with an error in the fourth copy (of six) which had to be adjusted before the roll of toilet paper, double-locked in a black locked equipment case, was delivered to the general. At this point he was interrupted by a Jamestown gentleman named (he said) Mr Brown: black suit, black tie, black shoes, and a black leather thing in his breast pocket which, when unfolded, displayed a heavy bright badge with eagles and things on it. ‘Oh damn,’ said the general, ‘how did you people find out about this?’, Which got him a smile—it was the only thing these Mr Brown types ever really smiled at—while Mr Brown scooped up the photocopy of the Mellow memo and the locked equipment case containing the roll of toilet paper. He left, whereupon the general, realizing with a soldier’s practicality that the matter was now out of his hands, restored Condition Green and lifted Secrecy, and then felt free to step into his own washroom and do his own toilet-paper procurement. He returned with a yard or so of it, spread it out on his immaculate desk, placed his hands palms down on it and began to pull it apart. He turned pale.

  The injection of the Mellow Memo into the industrial area is more of a mystery. Certainly it was the cause of Inland Corp’s across-the-board six percent reduction of raw material orders, and when a corporation as big, and as diversified, as Inland cuts back six per cent, the whole market shakes like a load of jello in a truck with square wheels. This is the real reason for Outland Industries starting merger talks with Inland, because one of their spies had gotten the word to Outland, but not the memo, and the big wheels at Outland figured if they bought Inland, the memo would come along with the deal. Imagine their surprise, then, when the Chairman of the Board at Inland not only agreed enthusiastically to the merger, but sent along a copy of the memo for free. There is no record of the midnight meetings of the top brass of the two industrial giants, but when they broke up they were, it is reported, a badly frightened bunch. The dawn came up on many a wealthy suburb, estate, club and hotel suite to the soft worried sound of tearing toilet paper.

  And paper towels.

  And cheques from chequebooks.

  As for the merger, it was left in its current state of negotiation, neither withdrawn nor pursued, but waiting; meanwhile, Inland’s order to reduce raw materials purchases was lowered to a compromised three percent while the world—the little, real world, not the mass, sleeping world—waited to see what would happen.

  The Mellow Memo’s most frightening impact, however, was on the secret headquarters in Jamestown. (It’s probably the most secret headquarters in the world or anywhere else. No signs out front, unmarked cars, and lunches are delivered to the front office for ‘Mr Brown’. Nobody knows how they get sorted out. Everybody in town keeps the secret.)

  They had done everything they could; Henry Mellow’s home, office, person and immediate associates were staked out, tailed, and bugged, his probable movements computed and suitable responses by the Agency programmed, and there was nothing to do but sit around and wait for something to happen. On total assignment to the Mellow affair were three top agents, Red Brown and Joe Brown and a black-power infiltrator called Brown X. Due to the extremely sensitive nature of the Memo, Red Brown had sent Brown X off on an extremely wild goose chase, tracking down and interviewing Henry Mellow’s ex-schoolteachers, kindergarten through fourth grade, in places like Enumclaw, Washington and Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania.

  Red Brown rose from his push-buttoned, signal-light-studded desk and crossed the room and closed the door against the permeating susurrus of computers and tapes and rubber footfalls and hand-shrouded phone calls: ‘Brown here. . . Ready. Scramble Two. Brown out.’ Joe Brown watched him alertly, knowing that this meant they were going to
discuss their assignment. He knew too that they would refer to Henry Mellow only as ‘Suspect’. Not The suspect or Mr Suspect: just Suspect.

  Red Brown regained his saddle, or control tower—nobody would call it a chair—and said: ‘Review. Brainstorm.’

  Joe Brown started the tape recorder concealed in his black jacket and repeated, ‘Review. Brainstorm,’ and the date and time.

  ‘Just who is Suspect?’ Red Brown demanded.

  Comprehending perfectly that this would be a fast retake of everything pertinent that they knew about Henry Mellow, with an aim of getting new perspectives and insights, no matter how far out; and that he, Joe Brown, was on trial and on the record in a ‘have you done your homework’ kind of way, Joe Brown responded swiftly, clearly, and in official stacatto: ‘WMA, five ten, unmarried, thirty-six years old, eyes hazel, weight one seventy—’

  ‘All right, all right. Occupation.’

  ‘Writer, technical, also science fact articles and book reviews. Self-employed. Also inventor, holding patents number—’

  ‘Never mind those or you’ll be reeling off numbers all day, and besides you’re bragging, Brown: I know that thing you have with numbers.’

  Joe Brown was crushed but knew better than to show it. Memorizing numbers was the one thing he did really well and patent numbers were where he could really shine. ‘Holds patents on kitchen appliances, chemical processes, hand tools, optical systems . . .’

  ‘Genius type, very dangerous. The Bureau’s been segregating his garbage for eighteen months.’

  ‘What put them onto him?’

  ‘Internal Revenue. Gets royalties from all over the world.

  Never fails to report any of it.’

  Joe Brown pursed his lips. ‘Has to be hiding something.’ ‘Yes, not usual, not normal. Politics?’