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by Robert Sheckley

  After a while Orchidius came to accept this view. He advertised for a chambermaid. He complained that the quality of rabbits had fallen off. He suspected everyone of being an inspector from the Guide Michelin. He planned to expand his inn, to buy a soft ice-cream maker, to get a franchise from Howard Johnson's, to plant palm trees and illuminate them with hidden lights. He began to worry about fuel bills and taxes. He raised his prices for high season and offered specials for low season.

  "But how did you get into all of that?" Mishkin asked.

  "It seemed plausible at the time," Orchidius answered. "It still seems plausible."

  "I want a single room with a bath," Mishkin said. "And a tank of gas for my robot."

  "Regular or special?" Orchidius asked. Then he burst into tears. He wrote a note that read, "This inn is closed while its owner continues his Trip." He nailed the note to the door and left at once for parts unknown, taking nothing with him but a battery-operated television set and a pair of gold clubs.

  34

  Mishkin and the robot also resumed their journey. They passed a tree upon which were carved the words, "Orchidius was here in person on his Trip".

  Carved on another tree: "This Trip is the property of Orchidius".

  And on another: "Everybody is a bit player in the movie of Orchidius's life".

  "We seem to meet quite often," Mishkin said. "Do you suppose that we are the same person?"

  "Definitely not," said Orchidius. "You are logical and realistic and goal-oriented, and you have a personality and a history and even a few character traits, whereas I am an abstraction who just slips in and out of things for no reason and no purpose."

  "My trip is overdetermined," Mishkin said. "It's also freaky. Too much is happening to me. I can't stand the changes."

  "I can't stand them, either. Maybe we're going about things in the wrong way."

  The robot said, "You are both going about things in the right way and you're both simultaneously the same person and different people and you're both on the same trip even though your trips aren't the same."

  "Can you explain what all of that means?" Mishkin asked.

  "No, I can't," the robot said. "Robots are allowed only a small supply of wisdom, and I have used up all of mine for at least a week."

  All that week the robot could barely put one foot after another. He was incapable of oiling himself, couldn't finish the simplest task, and his answers to even the simplest questions were ridiculous in the extreme.

  At the end of the week he was recovered and ready to explain what all of that had meant. But Mishkin didn't ask him. Mishkin liked to have his meals cooked properly and his clothes washed promptly. He thought it was no bargain to exchange a good servant for a sage of dubious qualifications. The robot himself offered no protest.

  35. The Doctor of Juxtapositions

  "Great Scott, MacGregor, I believe that in some unaccountable fashion we have passed through an obverse transverse of the space-time continuum and have actually returned to Earth and that we are now viewing everything through altered topological ratios, thus causing subtle changes in our perception of received reality!!!"

  36. Festival of the Mind

  Special techniques, reawaken!

  Hypnotize yourself into becoming yourself. Energize your Receptive Centre. Shut off signals from the uptight old Censor. Give yourself suggestions. Give yourself autosuggestions. Give yourself automatic autosuggestions. New technique of «flagging» the subconscious allows you to give yourself automatic subconscious autosuggestions without your even knowing about it!

  Go beyond drugs into experiences that simulate the drug simulations of experiences that can be achieved only by Higher Consciousness.

  Enjoy sexual intercourse in your sleep without a partner.

  Process the computer power in your mind: you can do it/it can do you.

  READOUT IS INSIGHT. READOUT IS INSIGHT. READOUT IS INSIGHT.

  Magi for sale or rent: plump Hindu Master, speaking incomprehensible prehensile English, has turban, will travel. Chinese Master with inscrutable smile and acupuncture kit never believed in communism, must travel. British Master specializing in discipline — "mental restraint is the road to freedom" — doesn't believe in socialism, listens to acid rock. American Master, AC-DC, doesn't believe in anything for very long — teaches the communal road to rugged individualism — has large supply of mandalas, mantras, yantras — uses rational mysticism to achieve mind-blowing pragmatic effects — disarming, boyish smile — wears fringed leather pants — doesn't believe in law of cause and effect but pays taxes anyhow — rates 35.2 on the schizophrenia machine — sexually liberated, except when anxious…

  Orchidius was at the Festival of the Mind. He wore a headband, robe, and sandals, and employed hieratic gestures of great power and economy. He had his own booth and for two days gave prophecies with fair success but on the third day reverted to a previous imprinting and turned his booth into a hot dog stand.

  Mishkin wandered through the Festival and ate cotton candy and thought bittersweet thoughts of his youth, just like everyone else. He smiled politely and disdainfully, just like everybody else. But this was no real indication of his true attitude. Mishkin was a secret pilgrim. He wanted out of his bag, out of repetition-compulsion, out of confusion, out of tedious novelty. Just like everybody else.

  When does the ecstasy begin?

  37. Magus Reveals Secrets

  Q. The approach to enlightenment involves an apparent contradiction, which is exemplified in the dual personality of the con-man sage. The problem is always the same: Why did the leader betray us? Did he find us unworthy? Or was the betrayal a secret act of love done in order to let us work out the final stage of our destinies on our own? Or did the leader's powers fail? Or could it be that he never had any power at all?

  Which story are we stuck in?

  A. Perhaps it's a case of divine ambiguities: the complications pile up, everything modifies everything else, vagueness is king. Would you like that story? Or how about ambiguity for fun and profit — the magus. He is putting you on. You're doing numbers over the divine spirituality of it all, and he's laughing up his embroidered sleeve, not very nice. Is that the story you'd prefer?

  Q. What's going on around here? Why isn't anything working out?

  A. Should I take you by the hand? Very well, but where will I lead you? Of course, I could put it all in order, and we could dance a minuet. I do want to amuse you, but really, there's a limit. Do you really want a guided tour through the formal gardens promised in the prospectus? Maybe that would be OK for you, but how about me? I'm supposed to have some fun, too. But now I'm starting to sound like a reform rabbi, and I notice that Mishkin has just gotten himself into a sort of interesting situation, so let's look into the house on Willow Road and see what is happening.

  38

  "But Professor Mackintosh, how do you know it is Earth that we have finally returned to?"

  The professor smiled softly and pointed with his cane. Do you see that flower over there? It is Hemerocallis fulva, known as the day lily, and common throughout much of the United States. Those orange-coloured blossoms open but for a single day, you know — not proof positive, but rather good circumstantial evidence — like a trout in the milk, as Thoreau said."

  39

  Mishkin clung to the outer edges of the face, which began to melt, the nose flattening and segueing into the cheek, the eyes bleeding into the hair, the mouth softening and blurring, the handholds pulling out of the silly putty, and Mishkin slid away through obligatory swallow song, and long, still Ohio nights with the crickets raucous in the box-berry hedges, and the telephone lines black against the sky like a diagram of your whole life.

  It was like that, but it wasn't exactly like that. It was more like those hushed summer nights in the old frame house in Rushmore, Mississippi, when an intolerable sweetness clung to the moist denim stretched over a young girl's sleeping buttocks, and you realized, young though you were, that things
were going to happen to you, and you would live by them and lose by them, but always, somewhere, the river would wind, dark and sinuous, sweet mother of the past, companion of the present, mourner of the irretrievable future.

  40. The Mishkin Museum

  A slingshot. With this weapon Mishkin shot his way through innumerable fantasies.

  Later, he exchanged his slingshot for an M-1 and shot his way through the same fantasies.

  An empty butter wrapper. Mishkin once ate an entire pound of butter at a single sitting, washing it down with a quart of ice-cold milk. Now he lives away from home and picks at his food like a bird.

  An Indian war club. Mishkin made this at camp. He also made Mary Lou Watkins at the same camp but not all the way. Later on Mishkin made a lot of people all the way. Now he travels.

  A page of sheet music entitled "Old Black Joe". Mishkin didn't think about Negroes when he was a boy. Now, a man, he doesn't think about blacks. But he talks about them and dreams about them.

  A snapshot of Mishkin's mother at the age of twenty-three. Mishkin thinks he doesn't care very much about his mother. Mishkin also thinks he doesn't con himself very much.

  A Sanskrit grammar. Mishkin once planned to learn Sanskrit in order to read The Upanishads in the original. Now he doesn't even read them in English.

  41

  Mishkin ascended to heaven on a fiery chariot and there he met the Lord God of Hosts, and Mishkin prostrated himself before the Deity and said, "Lord, Lord, I have sinned," which seemed a pretty good thing to say under the circumstances.

  But God smiled and raised Mishkin up and said, "Rather, Mishkin, say that I have sinned; for what are your sins but the deficiencies that I caused to be put into you in order to test you and give you grievous trials and a dark night of the soul, the point being that you should overcome them. This may seem a kind of weird way of operating, but it is unreservedly recommended on page 102 of the best seller, This Business of Being God, written by a symposium of Parisian intellectuals and American hippies, and published by the Godhead Institution with offices in New York, London, Paris, Ibiza, and Katmandu, and with a foreword by Yours Truly."

  "I have failed the crucial tests," Mishkin said. "I am mean, nasty, greedy, selfish, and uncaring."

  "Don't get into a masochism number," said God. "Just as there is love which surpasseth understanding, so there is understanding which surpasseth love. For have I not written, the last shall be the first?"

  "You are kind," Mishkin said. "But I don't really understand."

  "Understanding is a down," God said. "Be comforted, Mishkin, for your vibrations are OK, and I think right now I need a vacation."

  42

  "I think," Mishkin said, "that it is time for a bit of static description. And then a bit of action." The space fleet came thundering in on fiery jets. Somewhere, a tree was crying.

  Mishkin's father said, "Maybe I don't know what I like, but I sure as shooting know what I don't like." The people next door were a mystery, according to Angela. "Take nothing into account."

  "But what do you mean, a mystery?" Claire couldn't explain, but she felt it was time for a bit of static description, and then a bit of action. "It doesn't really work that way." Mishkin knew that it was true and untrue, and he loved her and hated her for it. It was a complicated world, but so what?

  Mishkin liked a bit of complication: "Excuse me, Captain, the pusher beam trigger mechanism seems to have broken down." But not too much. He liked story lines that you could follow while thinking of other things. "Spare me that avant-garde stuff," Alice said, "besides, it's not your thing." Not my thing? Then why bother building palaces out of frying pans, why look for a jewel on the forehead of a toad? Subjects and verbs must agree, everyone agreed, but not on anything else.

  Mishkin wondered what a spaceship looked like. What could you compare a spaceship to? Itself? "The spaceship looked utterly like itself." Jane shook her head. Mishkin's father shook his head. Mishkin tried to play the flute. His skin itched. He wished he could think of something a spaceship looked like. Not itself. He decided to buy a toy spaceship and describe that.

  43. Specialist Lists Eye Osmosis as Primary Cause of Possession

  Mishkin's eye fastened itself upon the sight and became what it saw. The eye is a powerful organ of adaptation. Mishkin is also a powerful organ of adaptation. Mishkin's eye had been cursed, and now, seeing crabgrass and hard boiled eggs, it became what it beheld.

  44. Doctor Mishkin Operates

  Mishkin touched the young girl's head with an exploratory gesture. Then, swiftly, he turned up the two tabs and separated the halves of the skull. From within he drew out a printed circuit board. Soon he saw the damage and repaired it with professional competence, noting the work on the inventory list pasted to the inside of the left hemisphere of the skull. Then he put the two halves of the skull back together, taking care to bend the tabs carefully into place. The girl blinked her eyes and awakened, cured of her nervous tic and nocturnal enuresis.

  45. Premature Conclusions

  Poor Ramsey Davis was impaled upon an ornamental iron railing at Thirteenth and Fifth. Of sweet, shy Marguerite Onger, less is known; she was last seen spiralling into the Arctic behind a howling dog pack, herself howling, the dogs saying to each other, "Wow, freaky scene, man, like get me out of here." Young David Broomsley died fever-twitched with clumsy face appalled. Mishkin himself was turned into a turnip by a malignant magician and inadvertently eaten by Richard Southey of Charing Cross Road. Ormsley never died and is still living in San Miguel de Allende, but his nose is in traction due to a rather unusual car accident. Orchidius is serving a ten-year sentence for mail fraud at Fulsome Prison. He swears he is innocent, and money to help his appeal should be sent to the author, care of the publisher, and I'll do what I can to assist this unfortunate man.

  Various creatures in this work died in various ways. The author of this work would like to go out snarling but will probably be reduced to snuffling. Peace be to all, and to all a good night.

  46

  Mishkin loped gracefully along the contours of his life, stopping now and again to change into levis, suede pants, black bandit hats, and pausing to eat an unscheduled pizza here and there. Mishkin, slit-eyed against the wind of time, faintly smiling Mishkin, nerves twitching in the long, cold jaw, hard hands set on dream steering wheels. Prince of jesters, Mishkin, with his clown's grin and his errand boy mendacity. Was he not disastrous, unscheduled? Mishkin, of the bright, fey smile and winsome ways, dappling his way through all his completions. Mishkin in there for the big fifty-cent ride of all the amusements, holding on to his identity for dear life as the merry-go-round swirled his images about like dead leaves. Mishkin pretended to be who he was.

  47

  Mishkin sat in the Memory Theatre and scratched his crotch. On the stage, brilliantly lighted, a tableau appeared: a woman holding a baby. Mishkin recognized them as his own. A great voice called out, "What do you feel, Mishkin?" And Mishkin replied, "I feel an itch in my crotch. Also, I have a feeling that I forgot to file this year's income tax."

  Acid is an intensifier. Soap is an emulsifier. Take your choice.

  If you don't dig chromosome damage buy better chromosomes.

  I used to be afraid that I was going out of my mind. Now I am afraid that I am not going out of my mind.

  48

  Dear Tom,

  Thought I'd write you a letter, old buddy, learn how you are and fill you in on how it goes with yours truly and friends and company. Remember Martha? Well, she's gone and done it again but this time with a giant topaz on display at the Islamic Museum in Trebizond, of all places. Agnes has had another lamination, and more power to her, I say. Your little nephew Felix has been elected to a full term as Master of the neo-Eleusinian Mysteries. They say he's clairvoyant plus, but I say it's absurd to expose a little boy to those obscenities. Alleged obscenities, since I'm not supposed to know anything about it.

  Local news: synchronicity has staged anothe
r comeback, and people are wandering all over in search of "serendipitous events and adventitious objects". Schenley's Square Face Acid is still the workingman's potion. It renders them inefficient, which is all to the good.

  And so on and so on and so on.

  As for me, I'm doing as well as can be expected. I entered the Game late, and I still have a lot of malimprinting to overcome. I have been able to master primary life systems, however, despite the dire predictions of Mr Chang. So now I can take over my own involuntary musculature. Total nerve control is still tough, however, and sometimes I think I'll simply junk the whole thing and go sit under a tree.

  There are a lot of saints around, as always, and most of them smell bad, as always.

  There's no accounting for fads.

  Well, that's all the local news that I can think of just now, and I want to get this out to you in a hurry. I still don't know why you've picked an exterior adventure rather than an interior one. Soft spot in the old psyche? Or are you pulling a reverse on us, you sly dog?

  It would be just like you to manifest a simple little ext. adv. Spaceflight and then fool us by plunging into the pit of unmitigated self! (But if that's the case, how did you find the interface? Or are you pulling a double reverse? The «mind» boggles.)