by Damon Knight
And the Licorice Man, the medicine wagon, and the horse Peegosh had arrived suddenly in clattering silence (the clatter was on a different plane: these weren’t normal people, not the Licorice Man, not the wagon, not the horse Peegosh).
“Quickly, quickly, a large jug,” said Candidate Johnson. “That will be seventy-one cents, figuring the excise-tax exemption.”
“Careful, careful,” the speechwriter said. “You’ll put your foot in it some way.” The speechwriter rapidly wrote out something on a sheet of paper and handed it to Candidate Johnson to read.
“Quickly, quickly, a large jug,” Candidate Johnson read dutifully. “That will be seventy-one cents, figuring the excise-tax exemption.”
“My equine associate would like a dollar jug of the elixir this time,” the colt owner said. “I’m afraid that the effect of the fifty-cent jug has worn a little thin.”
“I’ll have to have a stock of it to last me through the season,” Pitcher Cy Slocum said. “And I’ll have to have a firm guarantee of sufficient supply every springtime. You let me run short, Licorice. They tagged me for seven hits yesterday, and that’s something that never happens.”
“I’m not sure that I want any more for myself’’ said Flambeau La Flesche. She was the golden-haired almost-young lady. “If I ever do want it and want it bad enough, I could probably make it myself. After all, I know the one thing that makes a mud-goose cry. I never did use that story, Licorice. Really, it was a little too raw to tell.
“But Dusie here needs a jug now. This poor car has been suffering all sorts of ailments for the last several days.”
“No, you’d not be able to make it yourself, Flambeau,” the Licorice Man said. “Licorice can mean so many different things. I alone use the genuine licorice, and I alone know which it is. Do you believe it is the lykyr-rhiza or wolf-root? Or that it is the glykyr-rhiza or sweet-root? Try them and see.”
“Enough of this,” said Cy Slocum the pitcher. “You have customers waiting while you jabber. A large dollar jug, please, and enough more to carry me through the season.”
“There’s only one jug of it left,” said the Licorice Man, “and I’m going to pour it into the car Dusie. There won’t be any more of it. I’m going on to other things.”
“Aw, horse hokey!” snorted the horse Red Licorice.
“There’s got to be more of it. Say, how come that horse can talk?” Cy Slocum asked in angry puzzlement.
“I sent him some smart pills,” the Licorice Man said. “That’s what I’m working on now. Anyone else want to try some smart pills?”
“No, I sure don’t. I’m plenty smart now,” Cy said emphatically. “I want the elixir!”
“Smart pills are the one thing I don’t need,” declared Candidate Johnson. “I’ve got more smart than anyone I’ve ever seen. I want some of the youth elixir. I want all of it!”
“Would smart pills make me smart enough to do that tough scene in The World Under Louisiana Haystack?” little golden-head asked.
“No, Flambeau. The World Under Louisiana Haystack should not be finished. Accolade Revisited shouldn’t have been finished either, you know, and it was. Too bad. Here, try these. One is a smart pill. The other is a dung-beetle rolling. Take one.”
“They look just alike.”
“Not to a really fine eye.”
Flambeau La Flesche took one of the offered pellets, plopped it in her mouth, chewed it and swallowed it. The Licorice Man dropped the other pellet into the tank of the Dusie and also poured the world’s last jug of Royal Licorice Youth Restorer and Clock Retarder in there.
“Thanks,” said the Dusie, setting its motor to going with the sweetest purr ever. “I needed that.”
“You gave Dusie the smart pill,” Flambeau said. “Then I ate the dung-beetle rolling.”
“I want a jug of that elixir!” Pitcher Cy Slocum swore, “or I’ll spill con-man brains and horse brains and wagon brains all over the road.” With his terrific speed he began to rifle fist-sized rocks at the contraption. They didn’t reach it. There seemed to be an airy but impermeable shield around horse and wagon and Licorice Man. They were a special case, and the rocks dropped back from them harmlessly.
“Fire on them, security men,” Candidate Johnson barked with his full golden voice. “Withholding the elixir is a warlike act against myself. Fire on them!”
Twenty-one security men raised service revolvers and fired all together in one grand volley. And twenty-one bits of long lead bounced back from the airy shield and rolled around in the roadway.
“Give me a jug or I’ll kick the three of you to pieces!” Red Licorice swore madly in horsy hate. And he began to let fly hoofs at the withholders.
“Watch it, horseface,” the Licorice Man said rather testily.
“Watch it, junior,” the paint-flaked medicine wagon said.
“Watch it, Buster,” the horse Peegosh neighed. “Two can play that kicking game, and I’ve never been bested.” Peegosh, it was now seen, had hoofs of flame, and they did not quite reach down to the roadway. Neither did the wheels of the wagon, or the feet of the Licorice Man.
Nobody ever heard such a display of shouting, bawling, snorting, neighing, and just plain bad manners as followed. It was enough to make one ashamed of being a man or horse. Slocum beat on the airy shield with now bloody fists and shouted vile obscenities. Pray that his youthful admirers never glimpse that side of the man! Johnson belched sulfur flame and gave that merchandising conglomerate very hell as he ordered volley after volley to be fired into it. And the ignoble Red Licorice was the worst of them all, cursing in man and horse talk, stomping, gnashing, making dirty noises. That horse should never have been given smart pills.
The only bright spot was the golden-haired Flambeau. “I kind of liked that rolled-up dung-beetle ball,” she laughed. “When I am next the socially prominent Mrs. Gladys Glenn Gaylord, I will obtain a quantity of them and serve them to my guests. So few of that set are country people, they won’t know what they’re getting. Now back to being the old character actress and doing the indomitable-dame bit. Toodle, all.”
She zoomed away in the Dusie. She was a pleasant golden blob in the far distance. She had class. Who else ever had the finesse to grow old gracefully twice?
Book Reviews
Recent irrigation projects in Rhodesia have increased the number of acres available for agriculture, and have also increased the aquatic snail population. The snails are an intermediate host for parasitic blood flukes which cause a debilitating disease, schistosomiasis. “In the early stages the patient experiences irritation of the skin which is later followed by a cough, headaches, loss of appetite, various aches and pains, and often difficulty in breathing. When the disease reaches a more advanced stage nausea is common, accompanied by dysentery, with bloody stools, in intestinal schistosomiasis; or by bloody urine (haematuria), in the urinary variety. The liver becomes enlarged, as does the spleen, and the abdomen often becomes bloated, while the body is emaciated. It is in the advanced stages that the patients often develop cancerous growths.” The disease is painful, and the treatment is more so.
Schistosomiasis is endemic in the Nile Delta, where perennial irrigation provides a favorable environment for the snails. The delta is described as “rotting with the disease”; life expectancy there is twenty-seven years for women and twenty-five for men.
The upper Nile valley has been relatively free of the disease throughout historic times because of its annual (“basin”) irrigation caused by the flooding of the river. Now, with the completion of the Aswan High Dam, the upper valley will have the benefits of perennial irrigation, and of massive infection with schistosomiasis.
Copper sulfate, widely used to keep down the snail population, also kills plants and fish, and contributes to the eutrophication of lakes. In Israel, near Tel Aviv, a small river was infested with snails which were hosts for schistosomiasis. “From the point of view of public health, it was hardly a problem because less than five cases a ye
ar occurred; people knew that it was forbidden to bathe in this river due to the danger of infection. Notwithstanding these facts, a large campaign was undertaken to eradicate Bulinus [the snail] which is a vector of Schistosoma haematobium in this river. Several applications of molluscicide were made. All aquatic life was effectively eradicated except Bulinus, because at least part of the population left the water to sit on the stems of reeds or dug into the soil along the banks only to return later after the molluscicide diminished. A year after this campaign the river contained almost nothing other than Bulinus”
These and the following quotations are taken from The Careless Technology, edited by M. Taghi Farvar and John P. Milton (The Natural History Press, 1972, $25). The book consists chiefly of the papers presented to the Conference on the Ecological Aspects of International Development, jointly sponsored by the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, and the Conservation Foundation, Washington, D.C. Some other horror stories:
The introduction of grazing animals into the upper Rio Grande valley in the late nineteenth century upset the balance of vegetation and caused erosion followed by rapid silting of rivers and man-made reservoirs. In order to counteract the erosion, salt cedars were introduced. They grew so explosively that in twelve years they took over 24,000 acres of irrigable land and used up about 45 percent of the area’s available water. Damming of streams to irrigate more land has increased salinization so much that the river can no longer handle it. In the San Joaquin valley, salinization has reached the point where a master drain is required to carry off the saline and insecticide-laden water. It has been calculated that such a drain could be directed from San Francisco Bay into the Pacific at a cost of $100 million a year for at least fifty years.
These are not new and unique problems. “We now have good reason to believe that the decline of the ancient irrigated civilizations of Mesopotamia and Central Asia was due not to climatic change or to Atilla the Hun, but to soil depletion, waterlogging and salinity.” In more recent times, the same mistakes have been made over and over, often by those who should know better.
Why do we do it? One reason is ignorance. In a discussion Gilbert F. White1 said, “I wonder whether anybody has any evidence of a systematic effort to canvass the total consequences of any one of these major interventions before it is undertaken. I don’t know of any really systematic venture in this direction.”
Another reason was suggested by Henry van der Schalie:2 “Now, why can’t I get money in a place like Michigan to study swimmer’s itch [animal schistosomes]? The answer is very simple. We have a thing called tourism. On our license plates, you will see that Michigan is the great water wonderland. Don’t you mention swimmer’s itch. It is a naughty word.”
There is no one discipline that covers all the possible effects of a new dam or irrigation system. Engineers and politicians build it; biologists and economists are called in later, if at all. Engineers are often aware that irrigation now will call for drainage later, but in order to get their projects approved they are willing to leave that for the next generation.
Another factor is cited by Michel Batisse:3 “There is a kind of convergence of interest in what I might call the ribbon-cutting complex where you want to have the president of the republic come with scissors and cut a red ribbon, issue a postal stamp and so on. It has to be a very big structure; otherwise, it is not interesting.”4
All over the world, massive projects undertaken with the best of intentions are backfiring lethally. New roads, built where it is easiest to build them, bring colonists to virgin land unsuitable for cultivation: the results within a few decades are “rural slums, ecological disaster areas.” Large mechanized agricultural projects, particularly monoculture, drive people off the land and into cities, where they add to the unemployed. “In Algeria, by government’s admission, unemployment rates are something on the order of 50 per cent.”
Here is an arresting statement from John Cairns, Jr.:5 “The agriculture industry has probably been responsible for more pollution than any other single industry. This is so primarily because regulatory agencies are mostly looking at point sources of pollution and not particularly at dispersed and intermittent pollution.” Here is another from E. Walter Russell: 6 “Sulfate of ammonia is, I suppose, the most dangerous fertilizer used in Africa, because it makes such large demands on the calcium supplies of the soil, and in most of Africa the calcium supplies are very low. . . . It is unfortunately now a by-product of nylon manufacture, and the manufacturers have to get rid of the stuff, so it is cheap.”
The Careless Technology is 1,030 pages long, and large parts of it are dry. It should be widely read, nevertheless, for its survey of what might be called second-stage technological failures—disasters brought about by our efforts to avert disaster.
If some of these papers are heavy going, the discussions that follow each section are compellingly readable. Here is an edited sample:
KASSAS7: The second point I would like to make concerns the impact of bilharziasis (schistosomiasis) on the human population. We can say that Egypt has a population that has lived with bilharziasis for thousands of years. Bilharziasis eggs were discovered in ancient Egyptian mummies dated to the second or third dynasties. We might say at the minimum, then, that the Egyptians as a population have failed in several thousand years to eradicate and rid themselves of bilharziasis. But I can look at this fact another way and say that the Egyptian has managed to live with bilharziasis and bilharziasis has failed to eradicate Egyptians for thousands of years. In Dr. van der Schalie’s paper, we are told that bilharziasis kills one out of every five people who die in Egypt. I wonder whether it is more painful to die of bilharziasis or die of hunger, I believe it is more demoralizing to die of hunger than to die of bilharziasis farvar8: Unfortunately for the peasants in the countryside they are the victims of schistosomiasis. These are also the people who produce the “food” which urban people consume. Thus, assuming that irrigation and technological development are indeed used to produce more food, we have the urban dwellers who make the decision to exchange food (for themselves) with disease (for the peasants). Naturally, from the point of view of the urbanite it is more demoralizing for him to die of hunger than for the peasant to die of schistosomiasis. The actual situation is even worse because the irrigation and the technology are not even used to produce food [so much] as they are to produce cash crops like cotton, and electricity (again for the enjoyment of the city people). How much should the peasants have to .suffer in order to fulfill the whims of those who are ruling them from the cities? Who asks the peasants what price they are willing to pay? And when the cost is finally pointed out, the answer is invariably: “The solution is being field-tested just around the comer!”
MYRDAL9: Do you agree with my fundamental assumption for all development thinking: that we have a moral imperative to do our best to cure illnesses and prevent premature death?
BOULDING10: No. I think death is absolutely essential to mankind. The greatest disaster that the human race could ever face is immortality. By the time our molecular biologists are finished, they may find out what it is that creates aging and tweak it out. This would be an unprecedented and unspeakable disaster.
I recommend this book particularly to science fiction writers, for the overview it gives of the world’s present and near-future problems, and also (a by-product) for the opportunity to eavesdrop on real scientists and observe how much more intelligent, more interesting, and more human they are than their fictional counterparts.
Billion Year Spree by Brian W. Aldiss (Doubleday, 1973, $7.95) Imaginary Worlds by Lin Carter (Ballantine, 1973, $1.25)
In these two books Brian Aldiss and Lin Carter have almost but not quite parceled out the history of imaginative fiction between them. Aldiss takes S.F. for his portion (from Mary Shelley onward). Carter claims the rest, i.e. fantasy, but in fact his subject is a subgenre, the dream-world story, stemming from Eddison and Howard. Between them f
alls the great bulk of fantasy writers, from Algernon Blackwood to Italo Calvino: even so, there are places where the two schemata interestingly overlap. Carter praises the invented place-names of Lovecraft; Aldiss mocks them as “anagrams of breakfast cereal names.” Carter calls A. Merritt “an absolute master of the adventure fantasy”; Aldiss writes: “Merritt’s overheated style exactly matched his plots, which were up to here in serpents, feathers, fur, great black stallions, freaks, naked women, evil priests, golden pigmies, talismen, monsters, lovely priestesses, sinister forces, and undefined longings.” Carter praises William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land; Aldiss finds it unreadable. Carter calls William Morris’s The Wood Beyond the World “the first great masterpiece of the imaginary-world tradition”; Aldiss reports that the novel “belongs to the tushery school (‘She said, in a peevish voice: “Tush, Squire, the day is too far spent . . .” ’).”
These examples sufficiently show the very different positions from which the two writers begin; nevertheless Aldiss and Carter are both aficionados, and these books are labors of love.
Aldiss postpones his discussion of Lucian, Cyrano & Co. (he calls them “the Pilgrim Fathers”) in order to begin his narrative with Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin’s grandfather, whose influence on S.F. he traces from Erasmus’ long poem The Temple of Nature, published posthumously in 1803, through Erasmus’ contemporary William Godwin, author of Caleb Williams, to Godwin’s daughter Mary, who wrote Frankenstein. Aldiss considers this work “the first real science fiction novel” (although he quotes Wells, who said the monster was animated by “jiggery-pokery magic”). Because it is a Gothic novel, and because there are undeniable traces of Gothic in later S.F., Aldiss has been tempted to propound a theory (which some may think perverse) that science fiction, along with the Western, is “no more than a lively sub-genre of Gothic.”