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by Robert Sheckley


  "Raise."

  "And another dollar."

  They played with concentration but with evident fatigue Their faces were stubbly and pale, and their rolled-up sleeves were grimy. They were drinking beer from no-neck bottles and eating thick sandwiches.

  Mishkin walked up and said, "Excuse me."

  The men looked up. One of them said, "What's up, bub?"

  "I'd like to get by," Mishkin said.

  They stared at him as if he were crazy. "So walk around," one of the men said.

  "I can't," Mishkin said.

  "Why not? You lame or something?"

  "Not at all," Mishkin said. "But the fact is, if I tried to walk around I would fall into the ravine. You see, there's no room between the chairs and the edge; or rather, there's an inch or two, but my balance isn't good enough for me to risk it."

  The men stared at him. "Phil, did you ever hear anything like that?"

  Phil shook his head. "I've heard some weird ones, Jack, but this takes the fur-lined pisspot for sure. Eddie, what do you think?"

  "He's gotta be drunk. Huh, George?"

  "Hard to say. What do you think, Burt?"

  "I was just going to ask Jack what he thought," Burt looked at Mishkin. In a not unkindly manner, he said, "Look, fella, me and the boys are having this private poker game here in room 2212 of the Sheraton-Hilton, and you come in and say that you'll fall over the edge of a ravine if you walk around us, when the fact of the matter is that you shouldn't be in our room in the first place, but being here, you could walk around us all day without anything happening to you since this happens to be a hotel not a ravine."

  "I think you are labouring under a delusion," Mishkin said. "It happens that you are not in a hotel room in the Sheraton-Hilton."

  George, or possibly Phil, said, "Then where are we?"

  "You are seated at a table situated on a plank over a ravine on a planet called Harmonia."

  "You," said Phil, or possibly George, "are out of your ever-loving mind. Maybe we had a few drinks, but we do know what hotel we signed into."

  "I don't know how it happened," Mishkin said, "but you are not where you think you are."

  "We're on a plank over a ravine, huh?" Phil said.

  "Exactly."

  "So how come we think we're in room 2212 of the Sheraton-Hilton?"

  "I don't know," Mishkin said. "Something very strange seems to have happened."

  "Sure, it has," Burt said. "It's happened to your head. You're crazy."

  "If anyone is crazy," Mishkin said, "you people are crazy."

  The poker players laughed. George said, "Sanity is a matter of consensus. We say it's a hotel room and we outvote you four to one. That makes you crazy."

  Phil said, "This damned city is full of nuts. Now they come up to your hotel room and tell you it's balanced on a plank over a ravine."

  "Will you let me get by?" Mishkin asked.

  "Suppose I do; where will you go?"

  "To the other side of the ravine."

  "If you go around us," Phil said, "you'll only come to the other side of the room."

  "I don't think so," Mishkin said. "And, although I wish to be tolerant of your opinions, in this case I can see that they are based upon a false assumption. Let me get by and you can see for yourself."

  Phil yawned and stood up. "I was going to the crapper, anyhow, so you can get by me. But when you reach the end of the room, will you turn around again like a good boy and get the hell out of here?"

  "If it's a room, I promise to leave at once."

  Phil stood up, took two steps back from the table, and fell into the ravine. His scream echoed and re-echoed as he fell into the depths.

  George said, "Those goddamned police sirens are getting on my nerves."

  Mishkin edged past the table, holding on to its edge, and made it to the other side of the ravine. The robot followed. Once they were both safe, Mishkin called out, "Did you see? It was a ravine."

  George said, "While he's at it, I hope Phil gets Tom out of the crapper. He's been there about half an hour."

  "Hey," Burt said, "where did the nut go?"

  The card players looked around. "He's gone," George said. "Maybe he went into a closet."

  "Nope," Burt said, "I've been watching the closet."

  "Did he jump out a window?"

  "You can't open the windows."

  "Too much," George said. "That's really one for the books… Hey, Phil, hurry up!"

  "You can never get him out of the crapper," Burt said. "How about a little gin rummy?"

  "You're on," Burt said, and shuffled the cards.

  Mishkin watched them for a few minutes then continued into the forest.

  15

  Mishkin asked the robot, "What was that all about?"

  "I am reviewing the information now," the robot said. He was silent for a few minutes.

  Then he said, "They did it with mirrors."

  "That seems unlikely."

  "All hypotheses concerning the present sequence of events are unlikely," the robot said. "Would you prefer me to say that we and the card players met at a discontinuity point in the space-time continuum in which two planes of reality intersected?"

  "I think I would prefer that," Mishkin said.

  "Simpleminded sod. Shall we go on?"

  "Let's. I just hope the car works."

  "It had better work," the robot said. "I spent three hours rewiring the generator."

  Their car — a white Citroen with mushroom-shaped tyres and a hydraulic tail-light system — was parked just ahead of them in a little clearing. Mishkin got in and started up.

  The robot stretched out on the back seat.

  "What are you doing?" Mishkin asked.

  "I thought I'd take a little nap."

  "Robots never sleep."

  "Sorry. I meant that I was going to take a little pseudo-nap."

  "That's OK," Mishkin said, putting the car into gear and taking off.

  16

  Mishkin drove across a green and pleasant meadow for several hours. He came at last into a narrow dirt road that led between giant willow trees and then into a driveway. In front of him was a castle. He awakened the robot from his pseudo-snooze.

  "Interesting," said the robot. "Did you notice the sign?"

  In front of the castle, tacked up on a young spruce tree, was a sign reading: IMAGINARY CASTLE.

  "What does it mean?" Mishkin asked.

  "It means that some people have the decency to state a simple truth, and thus to avoid confusing passersby. An imaginary castle is one that has no counterpart in objective reality."

  "Let's go in and take a look at it," Mishkin said.

  "But I have just explained to you. The castle is not real. There is literally nothing to see."

  "I want to see it, anyhow," Mishkin said.

  "You have already read the sign."

  "But maybe that's a lie or a joke."

  "If you can't believe what is written plain as day," the robot said, "then how can you believe anything? You have observed, I hope, that the sign is exceptionally well made, and that the lettering is plain, forthright, and not at all flamboyant. In the right-hand corner is the seal of the Department of Public Works, an unimpeachable and businesslike organization whose motto is Noli me tangere. It is evident that they have classified this castle as a public service so that no one will walk into it thinking that he is in a real castle. Or isn't the Department of Public Works a reliable service to you?"

  "It is a very acceptable reference," Mishkin said. "But maybe the seal is a forgery."

  "That is typically paranoid thinking," the robot said. "First, despite its solid and commonplace air of reality, you consider the sign a lie or a joke (the two are essentially the same thing). Then, when you learn the source of this so-called «joke», you think that perhaps it is a forgery. Suppose I succeed in proving to you the authenticity and sincerity of the sign makers? I suppose that you would insist, despite the accepted principle of Ockham'
s razor, that the sign makers are imaginary, or deluded, and that the castle is real."

  "It is simply a rather unusual thing," Mishkin said, "to come across a castle and to be told that it is imaginary."

  "I see nothing unusual about it," the robot said. "Since the latest revision of the truth-in-advertising statutes, ten gods, four major religions, and eighteen hundred and twelve cults to date have been labelled imaginary in accordance with the law."

  17

  Guided by the sacristan — a short cheerful old man with a white beard and a wooden leg — Mishkin and the robot toured the Imaginary Castle. They went down long stuffy passageways and through short draughty cross passageways, past factory-tarnished suits of armour and pre-faded, pre-shrunk tapestries depicting virgins and unicorns in ambiguous poses. They inspected the punishment cells where make-believe prisoners pretended to suffer from the vile incursions of fraudulent racks, ersatz pincers, and fake thumbscrews wielded by stoop-shouldered torturers whose commonplace horn-rimmed glasses robbed them of any pretence to credibility. (Only the pasteurized blood was real, and not even that was convincing.) They passed the armoury where snub-nosed demoiselles typed triplicate requests for the latest model Holy Grail swords and Big Barbarian spears.

  They went to the battlements and saw the vats of Smith & Wesson polyunsaturated oil suitable for low-temperature anointing or high-temperature boiling. They looked into the chapel, where a boyish, red-haired priest made jokes in Sanskrit to a congregation of Peruvian tin miners, while Judas, crucified by a contrived clerical error, looked down, bewildered, from a Symbolist cross of rare woods that had been especially selected for the spiritual sensibility of their textures.

  Finally, they came to the great banquet hall, within which was a table loaded with Broasted chickens, mugs of Orange Julius, chili dogs, clams on the half shell, and two-inch slices of roast beef done crisp on the outside and rare on the inside. And there were platters of soft ice cream, and trays of pizza, both Neapolitan and Sicilian, all of them with extra cheese and sausage, anchovies, mushrooms, and capers. There were foil-wrapped heroes and poorboys, and combination, multiple-decker sandwiches of pastrami, tongue, corned beef, chopped liver, lox, cream cheese, onions, coleslaw, potato salad, and dill and half-sour pickles. And there were great tureens of kreplach soup, and chicken soup with noodles. And there were cauldrons filled with lobster Cantonese, and platters piled high with sweet and sour spareribs, and waxed-paper containers of pressed duck with walnuts. And there were roast stuffed turkeys with cranberry sauce, cheeseburgers, shrimps in black bean sauce, and much more besides.

  "What happens to me if I eat some of this?" Mishkin asked.

  "Nothing," the sacristan said. "Imaginary food cannot nourish you; but it also cannot make you sick."

  "Does it have a mental effect?" Mishkin asked, sampling a chili dog.

  "It must have a mental effect," the sacristan pointed out, "since imaginary food is, literally, food for the mind. The precise effect varies with the intelligence and sophistication of the partaker. Among the ignorant and gullible, for example, imaginary food tends to be quite nourishing. Pseudo-nourishing, of course, but the nervous system cannot differentiate between real and imaginary events. Some idiots have managed to live for years and years on this insubstantial stuff, thus demonstrating once again the effects of belief upon the human body."

  "It tastes good," Mishkin said, gnawing on a turkey drumstick and helping himself to a portion of cranberry sauce.

  "Of course," the sacristan said. "Imaginary food always has the best taste."

  Mishkin ate and ate, and enjoyed himself hugely. Then, heavy-laden, he went over to a couch and lay down. The gentle insubstantiality of the couch lulled him to sleep.

  The sacristan turned to the robot and said, "Now the shit is really going to hit the fan."

  "Why?" the robot asked.

  "Because, having partaken of imaginary nourishment, that young man is about to have imaginary dreams."

  "Is that bad?" the robot asked.

  "It tends to get confusing."

  "Perhaps I should wake him up," the robot said.

  "Of course you should; but first, why don't we turn on the tube and tune in on his dream?"

  "Can we do that?"

  "You'd better believe it," the sacristan said. He crossed the room and turned on the television set.

  "That wasn't there before," the robot said.

  "One nice thing about an imaginary castle," the sacristan pointed out, "is that you can have pretty much what you want when and where you want it, with no necessity for tedious explanations that are always something of a bringdown."

  "Why don't you focus that screen?"

  "It is in focus," the sacristan said. "Here come the titles."

  On the screen the following credits appeared:

  Robert Sheckley Enterprises Presents

  MISHKIN'S IMAGINARY DREAM

  A Neo-Menippean Rodomontade

  Produced in Can Pep des Correu Studios, Ibiza

  "What was that all about?" the robot asked.

  "Just the usual crap," said the sacristan. "Here comes the dream."

  18

  Mishkin was strolling along contemplating the nature of reality when a voice said to him, "Hi."

  Mishkin started uncontrollably and looked all around. He saw no one. He was on a flat, level plain, and there was no object more than one foot high for at least five miles in any direction for anyone to hide behind.

  Mishkin did not lose his cool. He answered, "How do you do?"

  "Fine, thank you. And yourself?"

  "Quite well, all things considered. Have we met before?"

  "I don't think so," the voice said. "Still, you can never tell, can you?"

  "No, you can't," Mishkin said. "What are you doing around here?"

  "I live around here."

  "It seems like a nice place."

  "It's all right," the voice said. "But the winters are impossibly cold and damp."

  "Really?"

  "Yes. I suppose you're a tourist?"

  "More or less," Mishkin said. "It's the first time I've been here."

  "How do you like it?"

  "It's very nice. I haven't seen much yet, but what I've seen seems very nice."

  "I'm used to it all," the voice said. "But I suppose that's because I live here."

  "Probably," Mishkin said. "That's how I usually feel at home."

  "Where is your home, by the way?"

  "Earth," Mishkin said.

  "Big red planet."

  "Small green planet."

  "I think I've heard of it. Yellowstone National Park?"

  "That's the place."

  "You're a long, long way from home."

  "I suppose I am," Mishkin said, "But, of course, I enjoy travelling."

  "Did you come by spaceship?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "I'll bet that was interesting."

  "Yes, it was."

  There was a silence. Mishkin didn't know how to bring up the fact that he couldn't see whom he was talking to. He realized that he should have mentioned it earlier. Now he would appear foolish if he brought it up.

  "Well," the voice said, "I suppose I'd better be getting along."

  "It's been nice talking to you," Mishkin said.

  "I've enjoyed it, too. I wonder if you've noticed that I'm invisible?"

  "As a matter of fact, I have. I suppose that you can see me?"

  "Yes, I can. We invisibles can see visible things such as yourself very well. Except for the unfortunate few among us who are blind, of course."

  "Can you see each other?"

  "No, of course not. We wouldn't be really invisible if we could."

  "I hadn't thought of that," Mishkin said. "I suppose it's a bother?"

  "Definitely," the invisible said. "We pass each other in the streets without noticing each other. That hurts people's feelings, even though they know it can't be helped. And invisibility makes falling in love difficult, too.
For example, if I meet a nice young lady at the Saturday night YMCA dance I don't know if she's cute or a complete dog. And one hates to ask. I know that that sort of thing shouldn't matter, but it always seems to, doesn't it?"

  "It does on Earth," Mishkin said. "But I suppose there are advantages to being invisible."

  "Oh, yes. We used to get a lot of pleasure out of springing out at people and saying boo. But now, everyone around here knows about us and no one is frightened anymore, they just tell us to go fuck off."

  "I suppose that being invisible is an advantage when you go hunting?"

  "Not really. We invisibles tend to be pretty heavy-footed, so we make a lot of noise when we hunt, unless we stand perfectly still. Because of this we tend to hunt only a single species of animal. We call them the Unhearables, since they are all totally deaf.

  Against them our invisibility is a great advantage. But the Unhearables make rather mediocre eating, even potted and served with bechamel sauce."

  "I always thought that an invisible creature would have an edge over everything else," Mishkin said.

  "That's what everybody thinks," the invisible said. "But really, invisibility is just a kind of handicap."

  "That's too bad," Mishkin said politely.

  There was a short, uncomfortable silence.

  "What do you look like?" Mishkin asked.

  "Can't say, old man. Invisible, you know. Makes shaving difficult. Watch out!"

  Mishkin had blundered into an invisible object and had given himself a severe rap on the forehead. He walked more slowly now, with one hand stretched out in front of him.

  "How did you see that invisible object?" he asked.

  "Didn't see it, old man," the invisible told him. "Saw the identification marker."

  Looking around him, Mishkin could see various metal plaques set into the ground.

  These were engraved with self-translating characters (required by interstellar law), which made them as easy to read as English is to the average literate Englishman.

  Ahead of him were plaques marked, "Rock", "Clump of Cactus", "Abandoned Volkswagen Microbus", "Unconscious Person", "Withered Fig Tree", "Lost Dutchman Mine", and the like.

 

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