Bathing the Lion

by Jonathan Carroll

  New information kept coming in. He took his head in his hands at one point and muttered, “Wait! Just stop a second and let me process some of this.” But it did not stop and for a time he was overcome. Crebold saw moments of joy and satisfaction, fear and failure, deaths and births … the countless experiences of countless human lives all roiled together inside his mind. It felt like being swept up in a mountainous tidal wave that engulfed him in its frenzy, power, and roar.

  There was no way to judge how long this went on. It might have been a minute or millennia. But it passed and finally like the person who miraculously survives the monstrous might of a tsunami and is tossed up on shore naked, exhausted, and dazed, Crebold slowly opened his eyes and once again saw the empty room. Amazed and agog at what he’d just experienced, he understood what was happening now. He slapped both shaking hands flat down on the table, as if to steady himself from the aftershocks of what he’d just experienced.

  Although he grasped so much, there were still questions. He knew he did not need the telephone but picked it up anyway to continue the conversation with … himself.

  When he did, the phone voice, which he recognized now as his own, said, “There are more than a hundred trillion cells in a human being. Combine those hundred trillion together and they make a single person.”

  Crebold said, “They’re taking retired mechanics, combining all of our experiences, all the years of life, all the worlds we’ve known, all the problems we’ve faced, and mashing them all together to create one—what—golem? God or whatever is necessary to fight Chaos?”

  The other voice said serenely, “I don’t know what they will do. I don’t think it’s possible for the likes of us to know.”

  Crebold took the telephone away from his ear and tapped it against his chest while thinking things over. He wondered if Chaos had done the same thing—split itself into an infinite number of “cells” and sent them out across the universe. But being Chaos, its cells would disrupt life in endlessly different and wicked ways everywhere. And at some point—maybe even now—it would gather those cells with all their new knowledge and experience to form a newer, better, smarter … being? Power? God of Chaos?

  The voice said something but Crebold missed it. Putting the pink phone back against his ear he asked, “What?”

  “You can’t understand how they work so don’t try; it’s a waste of time. Just do your job, Crebold. All the people who were in this room are inside you now. Even Rubin has useful information despite his mistakes.

  “All their knowledge combined is the only reason why you understand as much as you do about what’s been going on here; you never would have figured any of this out alone. So forget what the big boys are doing or why—it’s beyond our understanding.”

  Crebold knew this same thing was happening in many places now and he hated the idea: scores of ex-mechanics being gathered together like iron filings pulled to a magnet. Then somewhere someplace unimaginable they’d be mixed together into one entity. He couldn’t abide it. He knew it was true but could not accept how demeaning it was.

  “After all we’ve experienced, each of us will only end up a single cell in this big final body? Every retired mechanic, all our different lives, personalities, and experiences … all these completely singular, unique existences kneaded together like bread dough and fed to some superwarrior who’ll use it to fight Chaos. Is this right? That idea disgusts me. It makes me hate the system and what I spent my whole life doing.”

  The voice on the phone waited a few beats before saying gently, “Remember your analogy of the ant colony—everything is sacrificed for the community; like ants, the individual doesn’t matter for us.”

  “Screw the community—we matter. I matter. The individual does matter.” Crebold jabbed himself again and again in the chest with his thumb. The tiny sound was the only one in the cavernous empty room.

  Kaspar Benn sat contentedly on the top step of his front porch, flanked on either side by D Train and Kos. There was nowhere else he wanted to be and with no better company. He’d had a lovely visit with Vanessa where the two ate themselves silly while talking and laughing their way through a splendid late fall afternoon until it was time for her to go sing at the bar. The fact they hadn’t slept together didn’t matter. They hadn’t for a very long time. There seemed to be an unspoken tacit agreement between them now that the physical part of their relationship was finished, which was just as well. Vanessa was a lazy unimaginative lover, despite her boasting and big talk about being crazy for sex. But even without it he really did enjoy her company as long as it came in small doses. Especially when it came to food, because Vanessa was a superb cook who enjoyed eating as much as he did. Kaspar willingly sat through her monologues and self-absorbed rants if they were at a table covered with delicious food and drink and a limited amount of time to spend together.

  While savoring the memory of the different cheeses and wines they’d consumed with such gusto earlier, he noticed someone walking down the sidewalk toward his house. It was dark out so Kaspar couldn’t see the man’s face clearly until he stopped and stood at the front gate. When he did recognize the guy, Kaspar was amazed.

  “Crebold! Good lord, what are you doing here?”

  His old nemesis shuffled up the stone path to the house, eyes moving apprehensively back and forth between the two dogs, arms stretched and tensed at his sides, ready for anything.

  Although they watched the stranger approach with keen interest, neither dog budged from their places next to Kaspar.

  “Don’t worry about these boys—they’re friendly. Both of them are big pussy cats.” Kaspar hadn’t seen Crebold since before retiring. He was genuinely surprised to see him here both because mechanics never revealed themselves to “civilians,” plus the two had such bad blood between them going back, well, a very long time.

  Kaspar climbed down the stairs to greet his visitor. He extended a hand and the two men shook. After several seconds Crebold tried to take his hand away but Kaspar held on longer, the whole time smiling and nodding. His smile grew bigger and bigger until it was almost disconcerting.

  “I never thought it would be you, Crebold. Will wonders never cease? Can I get you a drink, or how about something to eat?”

  “A glass of wine would be nice if you have it, thank you.” Crebold stopped at the bottom step, leaned against the banister, and slid both hands into his pockets. It was getting chilly out there. He looked exhausted and sad.

  Kaspar went into the house and returned shortly with an expensive bottle of Prager Grüner Veltliner he’d brought back from a business trip to Austria. It took him a while to open the bottle, pour without spilling a drop, and hand a glass over to his longtime exasperating colleague whom he’d once hoped never to see again—until now. The men clinked glasses in a toast that silently said, “Well, here we are together again; let’s try and make the best of it.”

  “Don’t you want to sit down? You look very tired.”

  Crebold eyed the dogs and shook his head. “I’ll stand. I need your help, Kaspar. I know you never expected to hear me say that, but it’s true now. I’ll probably get hammered for having come back here, but I don’t care—it’s the only thing I could think of to do. You were always the best at this. I never wanted to admit it, but it’s true.”

  For the next half hour Crebold told Kaspar Benn everything, including the news Kaspar was dying. Crebold had flipped himself back to the night months before when both Jane and Dean visited Kaspar. But when both people left, Kaspar’s memory of meeting them was erased because he would not regain any of his mechanic’s powers for months.

  So when Crebold arrived to ask for help, Kaspar was just sitting on his front porch with the two dogs enjoying the sights and smells of an autumn evening in Vermont while remembering the fine gluttonous afternoon with Vanessa.

  When Crebold finished talking, the two men shared a companionable silence drinking the good wine. Kaspar topped off Crebold’s glass twice when he noticed it
was almost empty. At one point D Train got up and walked slowly down the steep porch steps to investigate something intriguing-looking in the yard. Crebold stiffened when D passed. Kos watched but did not move. Kaspar began scratching Kos’s ear. The dog tipped his head slightly toward the man to offer more area to scratch.

  “Are they anything?” Crebold pointed his glass at Kos.

  “You mean are they anything more than plain old animals? Nope: just two good furry fellows. This guy lives a few doors down but spends a lot of time with us. He and D Train are best buddies. I’ve grown very fond of dogs since I’ve been here; they’re wonderful friends.”

  Crebold made a sour face and sloppily slurped his wine.

  Kaspar smiled, remembering the other’s great dislike of all animals. “You never asked why they let me keep my memory, Crebold.”

  The tired man put his glass down on a step and wiped a corner of his mouth with the back of a hand. “I wasn’t there when they made the decision. I assumed you wouldn’t tell me. We were never good friends or anything.”

  Kaspar wiggled his eyebrows a few times. “That’s true. But I’m going to tell you now because you need to know: They let me keep my memory because of this moment, old comrade; because of this very meeting we’re having right here on my porch. They knew it would happen sometime or other.”

  Just north of drunk now, Crebold put up a hand to stop Kaspar. “Wait a minute! Hold it! How did you recognize me before?” He gestured toward the sidewalk. “I just realized it—how could you possibly recognize me when I first walked up the path a few minutes ago, Kaspar? You knew me in an instant but you’re a civilian now.”

  It was true—to the world Crebold looked like any Bob you’d pass on the street and forget a moment later. He had absolutely no distinguishing features, including the clothes he wore, which were all dreary shades of beige and gray.

  Kaspar said, “It’s one of the reasons why they let me keep my memory—so I’d recognize any working mechanics who appeared in my retirement life.

  “You’re wrong about what they want from us, Crebold, completely wrong.

  “We’re seeds. When mechanics are retired they’re planted like seeds across the universe into different civilizations.” Kaspar slowly moved an arm in a 180-degree arc in front of his body as if to indicate how widespread the practice went. “These seeds grow like plants—hybrid plants—that combine a mechanic’s knowledge and experience with whatever culture they’ve been planted in.

  “These singular plants bear whole new species of fruit. Periodically it’s harvested, but never the whole plant. That would be like pulling up all the trees in an orchard only to get the apples. They want us hybrids to keep growing, developing, and bearing new fruit.”

  Crebold’s eyes were burning from fatigue. Wiping his mouth again, he tried to grasp all this and add it to everything else he’d recently learned, but the alcohol he’d had to drink fogged his brain. “You lost me between the seeds and the apple orchard. Talk about us; just tell me about right now.” Making a fist he brought it down hard for emphasis on the porch banister.

  Kaspar nodded. “Okay, I’ll talk about Earth. When retirees come here and mix with human society, new hybrids that have never existed before are created. Just like cross-pollinating plants. It’s not even necessary for us to physically mate with humans—we only need to live among them. After a while together a kind of organic synapse takes place. This same kind of synapse happens wherever retired mechanics are mixed with sentient beings anywhere in the universe.

  “When the fruit from these hybrids is ripe, it’s gathered from everywhere and distilled into the food that’s needed to feed the ones who battle Chaos.”

  Crebold choked out, “We’re fruit?” He looked at Kaspar in disbelief.

  “Part of what we are is, yes; part of what we create while living here is, yes.”

  Crebold’s mouth was dry and his tongue felt heavy as lead. “How do you know these things, Kaspar?”

  “Before I was retired they told me to be on the lookout here for working mechanics. Whenever they appeared in my life I would be able to recognize them even though I was human. And I did, Crebold—it happened once before last summer and when I saw you just now.

  “Their instructions were, whenever it happened the first thing I was to do was shake hands with any mechanic I recognized because eventually one would have that fruit with them. When it was given to me everything I needed to know would be made clear. And it has; what you gave me just now explained everything.” Kaspar smiled and nodded reassuringly.

  “It did?” Staring at the ground now because he felt he could concentrate better by looking at nothing, Crebold shook his head. “What did I give you? How could I—I don’t know shit!”

  Kaspar said, “That’s true—you don’t, but you held the lives and knowledge of others inside you and many of them know a lot, believe me—a lot.”

  Crebold was flummoxed. “Well, what about the crazy dream you shared with your friends? I thought it caused all this trouble in the first place. They told me that’s why they were sending me here. Did they lie? What was that all about?” Crebold remembered this Kaspar hadn’t had the dream yet; it would happen to him several months from tonight. “Wait—were they inside me too just now—your three friends? Do you know?”

  “Yes, they were.” Kaspar spoke with the confident air of a man who knows the answers. “When the dream happens in the future it will be part of what’s called the joining. Before the fruit is harvested anywhere, there’s a joining together of all retirees’ minds for a short time so their information can be gathered in one … place, like putting all the apples from a harvest in one basket.

  “But that joining has to take place gradually and with the greatest care because every retiree is different—some understand what’s happening immediately while others fight it. A shared dream is one way of bringing a bunch of minds up to a basically equal level.”

  Crebold didn’t want to ask the next question because he was afraid of the answer, but knew he must. “What will happen to us after this fruit is harvested?”

  Kaspar drank some wine and softly said, “Nothing. What happens to a tree after its apples have been picked? Nothing—when spring comes it starts growing more apples. Every retiree will return to their second existence without a single memory of what’s happened and their days will putter along as normally as they have in the past.

  “Nothing is taken from us anyway—they just make a copy of it. Eventually we’ll die as mortals after having had, with any luck, very happy retirements.”

  “What do you mean nothing happens to us?” Crebold was so thrown by Kaspar’s answer that he literally lost his balance for a moment and had to grab hold of something to steady himself. Luckily the porch banister was near. Seconds before Kaspar had spoken, Crebold had a horrible vision of being thrown into a cannibal’s big pot and boiled alive to extract his “fruit.”

  Kaspar scratched Kos’s head. “How do you feel now, right this minute?”

  Crebold did not like the sound of the question; it reeked of uh-oh. “I feel fine, why?” He swallowed hard—was the other man going to pounce or set the dogs on him?

  “Because it’s already happened.” Kaspar clapped his hands together twice, the sound very loud in the otherwise silent night. He joined them together as if in prayer and held them out toward Crebold. “Everything is inside me now; I took it from you when we shook hands before. Do you feel any different?”

  “N-n-no.”

  “See? Your job is done; you can go and enjoy your retirement now. The minute you leave here tonight, both of us will forget this meeting and we’ll just be plain old human beings living out the rest of our lives in peace.” Kaspar looked for a reaction on the other’s face. “You don’t believe me, do you, Crebold?”

  “No.”

  “Take my hands and I’ll show you. Come on—nothing bad will happen, I promise.”

  Crebold looked as deep as he could into Kaspar Benn’s
eyes for a lie or a trick but saw none. In a whispery voice he said, “What the hell,” and took them.

  The contact lasted three seconds and then it was Kaspar who pulled his hands away.

  Crebold’s heart took forever to slow and beat normally again, even longer for his eyes to become focused. For a few sublime seconds both men grew almost exactly the same secret smile when looking at each other, silently sharing the awe and wonder of what was now contained within Kaspar.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “You said it pal, son of a bitch.”

  Crebold patted his chest over his heart as if it were a child, trying to calm its irregular beat. “But what are you going to do with it? What do you do with all that stuff inside you?”

  Kaspar shrugged. “Nothing. I live my happy life here until I die. Then they’ll take it from me. Luckily I won’t know that because after you leave here tonight, I go back to being jolly old Kaspar Benn, pants salesman without a single memory of this or anything else to do with mechanics or Chaos or the cosmos … I’ll be wiped completely clean. So will you and all the others.

  “It’s great because I like this life very much; no, I love it. And you know what? That’s more than enough for me; I am a happy man. I hope you find something to love too in this life, Crebold.”

  D Train returned from his walkabout in the yard and stopped next to the visitor. Looking up at the stranger, D asked with gentle golden eyes for a little love.

  Cautiously Crebold reached down and touched the dog’s thick warm neck. D Train immediately raised his head up into the hand. Crebold patted it gently with a flat stiff palm. “Kaspar, can I stay here for a little while? Just drink some more wine with you for a few more minutes before I have to go?”

  “Absolutely.” Kaspar went into the house to get another bottle. Crebold kept petting the dog, his hand relaxing the more he did it. D Train leaned with full trust against the man’s leg. The two of them waited together in the beautiful fall night for Kaspar to return.