Inside Outside

by Philip José Farmer

  ” ‘But I am a good man!’ said the old man. ‘You want me to do an evil to prove I am good!’

  ” ‘Surely,’ said the stranger, ‘you must have read and heard that no man is good? Only God is good. Those are the words of Christ, who denied that even He was good.’

  “Saying which, the stranger walked away. The old man watched him, expecting him to sprout wings and fly away. Or, perhaps, to grow horns, hooves, tails, and plunge into a gap in the earth suddenly appearing below him. For the thought had come to him that the stranger could be an angel but a fallen angel.

  “However, surely Heaven would not allow him to be confronted by a demon. Not after he had successfully resisted the Devil all his life and clung to the ways of God. It would not be fair to expose him to evil after he had died. It would be unfair. Unheard of. Never had the priests mentioned such a possibility nor had he read of such an event.

  “Nevertheless, unfair, unjust as it seemed, he was holding a sharp sword in his hand, and he had been told what to do. Slowly, he walked over the path and soon came to the little girl playing by the brook. And he recognized her as his own greatgrandchild, daughter of his favorite grandson. She was a happy, a beautiful, and an exceptionally intelligent child. How could she ever become what the stranger had predicted?

  “Predicted? If the future could be foretold, if it were already determined, then this little girl had no choice of action, no free will. She was a puppet jerking on the strings of God. Why kill her for evil she was doomed to commit?

  “But, then, he remembered what a priest had once told him and what he had also read. That, though the future may be hidden to men, it has long ago been unrolled before the eyes of God. He has seen it all from the beginning to end; time, in the human sense, does not exist for Him; Alpha and Omega can be scanned in one sweep of the divine eye. Men do have free will, but they do not know what they are going to do.

  “But that cannot be, thought the old man. If I kill this child, then she will not commit those great evils in the future. So, she will die an innocent, and the future that God sees now is without her. Therefore, how can He see her and her actions in the future? He cannot. The future is not unveiled to Him, but He has ordained the path it must take. He has ordained that this sweet child must die now or else grow up to be a monster. We are predestined.

  “If that is so, thought the old man, why did God create us in the first place? At the moment he molded Adam’s clay, He knew that billions would go to Hell and some few to Heaven. Did He create because the little good outweighs the vast evil? Or because He is the Creator and cannot help creating, no matter what the consequences to His helpless creations?

  “The old man did not know. To think only confused matters. For every thought there was a counterthought, and, for each counterthought, another. The fact was that, to do good, he must do evil. That was that. The only way a man could act was to abandon thought and have faith.

  “So the old man walked softly up to the little girl, whose back was to him. He raised the sword.

  “Then, another thought came to him…”

  Here X always ended his speech. Fyodor, who had been standing at Cull’s side, began sobbing loudly. Tears ran down his cheeks and soaked his beard.

  “I’ve heard him tell that story at least twelve times,” he said. “And I am sure now that if I could correctly finish the story, I’d be free, out of this place!”

  “It’s just another trick to keep us guessing, hoping,” Cull said, looking at X and hating him.

  “What do you mean?” said Fyodor, grasping Cull’s arm with both his hands and staring at him with wet eyes.

  “He’s another of the false prophets,” Cull said. And then he began to wonder if X was not the agent for an organization similar to the Exchange but unknown to it. If that were so, what profit did X and his organization derive? And why had He been given the power to raise the dead if He were only a man?

  Fyodor continued to ask what Cull meant. But he could not explain to Fyodor that the Exchange developed rumors into new religions and profited by the power it wielded over the converts and their contributions to the Exchange. Even now, men and women all over the City were preparing sermons based on the first of the surmises Fyodor had told him over the phone. They would bring the Good News. And people, who craved hope more than food, would listen and believe. Then, when faith began to flag because of lack of fulfillment of promises, a new hope would be presented to them. And they would be converted again.

  Of course, there was always a knot of diehards who clung to the old. These, too, were manipulated by the Exchange. Fingers in every theological pie…

  “This must be He!” said Fyodor. “There is hope! All is not lost! Cull, you know that time here seems to have little relation to Earth-time. We know that He came to Hell for three days. Three terrestrial days, yes! But how many infernal days? Or purgatorial days, which I prefer. Perhaps, He may be here until the last man on Earth has died. Yet, on Earth, He long long ago rose from the tomb and ascended to Heaven. Why not? Can you prove I’m wrong? Wouldn’t it be more humane, the fairest thing to do? To give us another chance?”

  “You’re insane,” Cull said while he wondered how soon he could get to the phone and tell Stengarius of this new concept. “I can’t prove you’re wrong, but you can’t prove you’re right. It was that way on Earth, and it’s that way here.”

  “Faith! Faith is the only way! Love for Him!” cried Fyodor, and he rushed forward until he reached X, knelt down, and grabbed the hem of X’s robe and began kissing it.

  “Master!” he shouted. “Tell me I am here only to be purged of my sins and my doubts! You know that I have always loved You! I would love You even if You were wrong! If you were condemned to eternal exile here or chose to stay forever because of Your love for man, then I would gladly forego Heaven and stay by Your side throughout eternity!”

  X looked kindly at Fyodor and touched him lightly on the head. But he passed him without a word.

  Cull could not explain why Fyodor enraged him. But he picked up a fist-sized piece of basalt, chipped off a fallen gargoyle, and threw it. The stone hit Fyodor in the back of the head, and he fell forward on his face. Blood trickled from the cut.

  At sight of the blood, the crowd gave a roar. Sullen but silent in the presence of X, it now came to life and loudness. It surged forward, seized the two aides and X, and also began rocking the ambulance. Within three minutes, the ambulance was lying on its side. There was nothing left of the two aides and X but scattered pieces of flesh and clothing and three mutilated heads.

  Abruptly, the mob fell silent. Men and women stared at each other. Their hands, dripping blood, dropping fragments of flesh from the fingernails, were held away from their bodies. Some had blood on their mouths. Suddenly, panic swept them away down the street as if they were dried leaves blown by a wind. Fyodor and Cull were the only ones left.

  By then, Fyodor was sitting up, feeling the back of his head and groaning.

  “You really started something,” Cull said. “You shouldn’t have hailed him as the true Christ. That made everybody mad, you know. Nobody likes blasphemy.”

  Accusing him was not unjust, for he really had instigated the whole affair. If he had not done what he did, he would not have enraged Cull. Anyway, what was the difference? If X was a man or a demon, he would be resurrected again. No lasting harm done. If X was the One Fyodor thought He was, He would not be harmed.

  “Stay here,” Cull said to Fyodor. He went to the building where the Exchange had its local phone. Nobody was in the office. The lynching must have scared the Exchange agents, too. What did they think they were running away from? Lightning? An avenging God? Nothing would happen. Even as he lifted the phone, he could hear sirens wailing in the distance.

  Cull began to tell Stengarius what had happened. But Stengarius said, “Where’s Phyllis? Is she all right? Put her on the line.”

  Cull was taken aback. “I… I don’t know. She’s on a palanquin, you know.
So, she’s not traveling as fast as I. Although,” he added, maliciously, “much more comfortably.”

  “O.K.” said Stengarius irritably. “I’ll ring up some posts on the way, find out if they’ve seen her. And don’t get smart with us, Cull.”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Cull. “I didn’t mean to give that impression. I was just commenting, that’s all.”

  “Don’t let it happen again. The moment Phyllis gets in, tell her to call me.”

  “Yes, sir. Did you get any reports of X appearing elsewhere?”

  “We just finished checking out the last twenty reports,” said Stengarius. “According to our hourglass, about ten minutes has elapsed between each appearance of X. This includes your area.”

  “Hold the phone a minute,” Cull said. “Here comes another ambulance. I’ll see if X is with it.” He stepped over to the huge glassless window and leaned out. The ambulance whipped around the corner so fast that it scraped against a building and skidded to a stop just short of Fyodor. He was sitting in the street and holding the head of X against his chest.

  Two men jumped out of the ambulance. Neither was X. Cull was going to return to the phone to report when he noticed that the men were very sloppily dressed. One wore no headcovering, and his coat was unbuttoned. The other was barefooted and was clenching a half-smoked cigar between his teeth. This unheard-of slovenliness was strange enough. But when they began eating the gobbets of flesh — raw — he knew something was wrong. And when he saw them drag the body of the woman out of the first ambulance and begin to cut her up with a knife one of them took from his pocket, he became alarmed.

  Stengarius, hearing his report, also became excited. “I just had reports of two other ambulance personnel behaving extrordinarily,” he said. “Moreover, there are many corpses that haven’t been taken away for some time. What is going on?”

  “No sign of X?” Cull said.

  “You’re the last to see him. I don’t know. Something funny happening, only it’s not so funny. Also, according to the Statistics Department, the influx of newcomers has dropped to almost zero. This happened a few hours ago. It’s as if the door to Earth had been slammed shut.”

  “No explanation?”

  “Only thing we can figure out is that the last of those killed in the nuclear war on Earth have come in.”

  Cull was chilled.

  “You mean that all of humanity is dead?”

  “It’s too early to say.”

  “Listen, Stengarius.”

  “Quit breathing so hard.”

  “You’re panting yourself. What I was going to say… the last time immigration was cut off so drastically was when the fires went out. Before that, when this place was changed from a Copernican to an Einsteinian universe. Before that, when the Ptolemaic structure was reorganized into a Copernican. The two former changes were catastrophic.”

  “What’re you trying to say?” shouted Stengarius. “That we’re about to go through another cataclysm? You must be crazy! You’re saying that Einstein was wrong and that… listen, you’d better quit talking so crazy. You trying to undermine the Exchange? You…”

  “I was just speculating,” Cull said. “That’s what I get paid for. Here’s what I’m going to do, if you permit me to, of course. I’m getting this Fyodor ape on his feet, and we’re going to get to the bottom of this world. Maybe literally. He said something about looking in the sewers, and I think he may have something hot. You got any orders for me before I leave?”

  “Just keep in touch. God knows what’s going on. Oh, yeah, don’t forget about Phyllis.”

  Cull returned to the street and found Fyodor standing with the head of X in his arms. The two ambulance personnel — demons, not men, he supposed — were leaning against the hood of the vehicle and munching away. They paid no attention to the two men.

  It took some time for Cull to get Fyodor to leave the head of X. He kept babbling of the blessed blood, and it was then that Cull saw that his face and beard were smeared with wet red.

  “Do you believe in magic?” Cull said. “Do you think you’ll become holy now because you’re covered with his blood? Next, you’ll be drinking it like wine.”

  “I did, I did!” Fyodor cried, looking rapturous.

  “And I suppose you ate some of his flesh?”

  “Yes! And I could feel the divinity flowing in my veins. It was like lightning streaking down my throat, searing through the flesh. I felt like a god. No, that’s blasphemy. I felt part of Him.”

  “So, now you’re X,” Cull said. “Do you plan on taking His place?”

  And he stopped walking, stood there while Fyodor walked on several steps before he turned to see what was delaying Cull.

  Cull wondered why he had not thought of this before? Why had no one else? Or had they, and was X living (though now dead) proof of this? But, if he were, he belonged to an organization with resources unavailable to the Exchange.

  Of course, this would not keep the Exchange from dealing in false X’s. They could then pick up the dead and dispose of them through the various black markets. And when the genuine X showed up, he would be accused by Exchange agents of being a fake. Organized mob violence would tear the real article apart just as he had been torn apart here. Before you could say XYZ, the Exchange would have eliminated the opposition.

  Only… if X was one of the never-seen Authorities, or one of Their agents, then The Authorities would come down on the Exchange. So far, They had never interfered with its operations. But, the Exchange had never interfered with Theirs.

  Oh, yes, it had. X had been mobbed and killed before. But that had been spontaneous violence. Yet the killers, as far as was known, had never been punished.

  Maybe there were no Authorities.

  There had to be. No human agency was capable of resurrecting the dead or getting to the scene of death so quickly. Or could it be that The Authorities had given certain human beings certain powers — or scientific devices — which enabled them to perform resurrection? And then the Authorities had gone back to wherever they had come from?

  There was one way to find out. He was a fool for not having thought of it before.

  Fyodor, alarmed at Cull’s sudden departure, called, “Where are you going?”

  “To get X’s head,” Cull shouted.

  It was still in the middle of the street where Fyodor had tenderly placed it. It lay on its back with the face turned upward. The dark glasses, despite the violence, had not come loose. At the time, Cull’s excitement had made him overlook this fact. Now, he thought, I’ll remove the glasses. See the eyes of X, if I have to lift the eyelids myself.

  Why should X wear dark glasses? Was he a demon? Demons, no matter what their form, human or monster, had eyes like cats or wolves. They shone in the dark when a light was turned on them. “

  Angels, so he had been told by a man who claimed to have seen one, had the same type of eyes. This was logical. Angels were unfallen demons. If Cull took X’s head into a dark room and shone a light into the eyes, and the eyes reflected the light, he still would not know if X was a celestial or an infernal. But he would know that he had not been human.

  He thought, do not tell me that angels cannot be hurt or killed. I know better. Ask the man who is in Hell. Angels are flesh and blood like us. Or are when they walk among us. Remember that Adam was created in Our (God’s and the angels’) image. The sons of God (fallen angels) found the daughters of men fair and took them to wife. Fallen angel and human female had children. So, even the angels had sex and spermatozoa and genes and all that goes with the biological paraphernalia. And where angels are mentioned in the Scriptures they look, by implication, just like men.

  Who had ever heard of a female angel? Yet they must exist, for what use a male without a female? And if male angels can cohabit with the daughters of men and beget, then a male angel must be able to cohabit with a female angel and beget, and a man cohabit with a female angel and beget.

  And if the fallen sons of God had childr
en, then we human beings must have angelic genes. But the genes for light-reflecting eyes must be recessive, maybe lost, for no human beings with photo-reflective eyes have ever been discovered.

  One of the ambulance attendants quit leaning against the hood. He stared at Cull. Then, divining Cull’s intention, he ran to the head, scooped it up, spun like a halfback, reversing the field, and sped away. But not before Cull saw him grin and saw the long canines — unhumanly long — in his mouth.

  “Stop!” Cull shouted. “I’ll have you skinned alive for this, you bastard, if you don’t stop!”

  He turned his head to laugh at Cull and kept on running. Cull was determined to catch him, not only to get the head but to find out why he was so disobedient. Many strange things had come about, and he wanted to get at least a clue as to why.

  By then, the streets were beginning to fill up again. The demon cut through the crowd. They scattered when they saw the thing he was carrying, like a football, in the crook of his arm.

  Cull began to fall back behind the demon. His muscles were stiff, and he was exhausted from the long piggyback trip. If the demon had kept running, he would soon have put him out of eye-range. But the demon stopped to lift up a very heavy stone manhole-cover in the middle of the street with one hand. Down the sewer entrance he went. By the time Cull got above the hole, he could see nothing but the darkness that began about twelve feet down.

  About thirty seconds later, Fyodor, panting, arrived. Gasping, he asked why Cull wanted the head. Cull told him some of his reasons.

  “But,” Cull said, “we might as well give up. We can’t follow him down there.”

  “Oh, yes, we can,” said Fyodor, smiling strangely. “And now is as good a time as any. We had to go down, anyway.”

  He lowered himself into the hole and began climbing down the stone ladder leading into the depths.

  “Are you crazy?” Cull said.

  Fyodor stopped just as his head was below the street level, and he looked up at Cull with his small blue-grey eyes, his wide rubbery mouth twisted in a smile.