The Journey of Joenes

by Robert Sheckley

  Otis then belabored me for my lack of gratitude. “You’ve heard the guards,” he said. “If our good fortune were commonly known throughout the country, everyone would be fighting to get in. You should be happy to be here, and happy that knowledge of this marvelous place is confined to a few.”

  “But the situation is changing,” a Mexican prisoner said. “Even though the government suppresses the truth and presents imprisonment as something to be feared and avoided, people are beginning to learn the truth.”

  “It puts the government in a terrible position,” another Mexican prisoner said. “They still haven’t invented any substitute for prison, although for a while they thought of making all crimes punishable by death. They gave that up, since it would directly affect the country’s military and industrial potential. So they must still sentence men to prison—the one place where they want to go!”

  All the cell mates laughed at this, because, being criminals, they loved perversions of justice. And this seemed to me the greatest perversion of all—to commit a crime against the common good, and to be made happy and secure because of that crime.

  I felt like a man walking through some horrible nightmare, for I had no argument with which to answer these men. At last, in desperation, I cried out: “You may be free and live in the best place on earth—but you have no women.”

  The prisoners tittered nervously, as if I had said something not very nice. But Otis answered calmly, “What you say is true, we have no women. But that is quite unimportant.”

  “Unimportant?” I echoed.

  “Definitely,” Otis said. “Some may experience a degree of discomfort at first; but then one adapts to one’s surroundings. After all, only women think that women are indispensable. We men know better.”

  The members of the cell chorused their agreement with great animation.

  “Real men,” Otis said, “need only the company of other real men. If Butch were here he could explain all of this better; but Butch is in the infirmary with a double hernia, to the great sorrow of his many friends and admirers. But he would explain to you that any kind of social existence involves compromise. When the compromises are great, we call it tyranny. When they are small and easily arranged, like this minor matter of women, we call it freedom. Remember, Delgado, you can’t expect perfection.”

  I made no further attempt to argue, but said that I wanted to leave the prison as soon as possible.

  “I can arrange your escape this evening,” Otis said. “And I think it is just as well that you go. Prison life is not for any man who does not appreciate it.”

  That evening, when the lights in the prison had been dimmed, Otis raised one of the granite blocks in the floor of the cell. At the bottom of this was a passageway. Following this, I emerged at last on the street, dazed and bewildered.

  For many days I thought over my experiences. At last I realized that my honesty had been nothing but stupidity, since it had been based upon ignorance and a misconception of the ways of the world. There could be no honesty, since there was no law to sanction it. The law had failed, and neither punishment nor goodwill could make it work. It had failed because all of man’s ideas of justice had been wrong. Therefore there was no such thing as justice, nor anything deriving from it.

  And terrible as this was, even more terrible was this realization: that with no justice there could be no freedom or human dignity; there could only be perverted illusions such as my cell mates possessed.

  That is how I lost my sense of honesty, a thing more precious to me than gold, the loss of which I bemoan every day of my life.

  At the end of this story, the third truck driver said, “No one would deny that you have had misfortunes, Joenes. But these are less than what my two friends have just told you. And my friends’ misfortunes are less than mine. For I am the most unfortunate of men, for I have lost something more precious than gold, and more valuable than both science and justice; the loss of which I bemoan every day of my life.”

  Joenes asked the man to tell his story. And this is the story the third truck driver told.

  THE STORY OF THE

  RELIGIOUS TRUCK DRIVER

  My name is Hans Schmidt, and my place of birth is Germany. As a young man I learned about the horrors of the past, and this saddened me. Then I learned about the present. I travelled throughout Europe, and I saw nothing but guns and fortifications stretching all the way from Germany’s eastern frontier to the coast at Normandy, and from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. Countless miles of these fortifications existed where village and forest had existed before, all neatly camouflaged, all for the purpose of blasting the Russians and the East Europeans, should they ever attack. This saddened me, for I saw that the present was exactly the same as the past, being nothing more than a preparation for cruelty and war.

  Never had I believed in science. Even without the experience of my Swedish friend, I could see that science had improved nothing upon the earth, but had merely caused great harm. Nor did I believe in human justice, law, freedom, or dignity. Even without the experience of my Mexican friend, I could see for myself that man’s conception of justice, and everything deriving from it, was faulty.

  I had never doubted the uniqueness of man, and his special place in the universe. But I felt that man by himself could never rise above the bestial qualities in his nature.

  Therefore I turned to something greater than man. I turned wholeheartedly to religion. In this was man’s only salvation, his only dignity, his sole freedom. In this could be found all the aims and dreams of science and humanism. And even though religious man might be imperfect, that which he worshipped could not be imperfect.

  This, at any rate, is what I believed at the time.

  I held to no one belief, but instead I studied all faiths, feeling that every religion was a pathway to that which is greater than man.

  I gave my money to the poor and wandered across the face of Europe with staff and knapsack, striving always to contemplate The Perfect, as it is expressed in the many religious forms upon Earth.

  One day I came to a cave high in the mountains of the Pyrenees. I was very tired, and I entered this cave to rest.

  Within, I found a great multitude of people. Some were dressed all in black, and others wore gorgeously embroidered costumes. Among them sat a giant toad, as large as a man, with a jewel gleaming dully in his forehead.

  I stared at the toad and at the multitude, and then I fell upon my knees. For I realized that those before me were not really humans.

  A man dressed as a clergyman said, “Please come forward, Mr. Schmidt. We have been hoping you would visit us.”

  I raised myself and walked forward. The clergyman said, “I am known as Father Arian. I would like to introduce my esteemed colleague, Mr. Satan.”

  The toad bowed to me and extended a webbed hand. I shook the toad’s hand.

  The clergyman said, “Mr. Satan and I, together with these others, represent the only true United Church Council of Earth. We have long noted your piety, Schmidt, and therefore we have decided to answer any questions you might wish to ask.”

  I was beside myself with amazement and thankfulness that this miracle had been granted to me. I addressed my first question to the toad, asking, “Are you truly Satan, Prince of Evil?”

  “I have the honor to be that person,” the toad replied.

  “And you are a member of the United Church Council?”

  “Why, of course,” the toad answered. “You must understand, Mr. Schmidt, that evil is necessary in order for there to be good. Neither quality can exist without the other. It was only with this understanding that I took on my job in the first place. You have perhaps heard that my evil nature is inherent. Nothing could be further from the truth. A lawyer’s character surely cannot be ascertained from the cases he argues in court. So with me. I am merely the advocate of evil, and I try, like any good lawyer, to ensure full rights and privileges for my clients. But I sincerely trust that I am not evil myself. If su
ch were the case, why would so delicate and important a task have been given to me?”

  I was pleased with Satan’s answer, since evil had always bothered me. Now I said, “Would it be presumptuous of me to ask what you, the representatives of good and evil, are doing here in this underground cave?”

  “It would not be presumptuous,” Satan said. “Since we are all theologians here, we love to give answers. And that is the one question we hoped you would ask. You will not object, of course, if I answer in a theological manner?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Excellent,” said Satan. “In that case, I shall proceed to make a statement, and then to prove it, and then to let my answer to your question flow from that. Agreed? Then this is the statement:

  “Everything that partakes of life has its viewpoint, and tends to see all of existence from that viewpoint. The viewer, knowing only himself, believes himself to be eternal and immutable; and he necessarily holds himself to be eternal and immutable; and he necessarily holds that his bias is the only true view of the objects and qualities around him.

  “By way of proof, let me offer you the homely example of the eagle. This eagle sees only an eagle’s world. All things in that world are for or against the eagle. All things are judged by their usefulness to the eagle, or their danger, or their eating or nest-building qualities. All things possess this eagleness for the eagle, and even the inanimate rocks become the touchstones of memories of previous eagle exploits.

  “This is my own little proof of the omnipotence of viewpoint, Mr. Schmidt, and I hope you accept it. Assuming that you do, let me say that as it is with the eagle, so it is with men. And as it is with men, so it is with us. It is the inescapable result of having a point of view.

  “Our own viewpoint can be easily told. We believe in good and evil, in divinity, and in a moral universe. Just like you, Mr. Schmidt.

  “We have propounded our beliefs in various ways, and according to various doctrines. Often we have aroused the passions of men to murder and war. This was perfectly proper, since it brought the problems of morality and religion to their highest and most exquisite pitch, and gave many complicated matters for us theologians to talk about.

  “We argued always, and we published our various dissenting opinions. But we argued like lawyers in a court, and nobody in his right mind listens to a lawyer. Those were the days of our pride, and we never noticed that men had ceased to pay attention to us.

  “But the hour of our tribulations was fast approaching. When we had covered the globe with our dull, intricately reasoned arguments, a certain man chose to ignore us and build a machine. This machine was nothing new to us in essence; the only novel feature about it was the fact that it possessed a point of view.

  “Since the machine had a point of view, it set forth its own ideas of the universe. And it did so much more amusingly and convincingly than we did. Mankind, which had long sought for novelty, turned to the machine.

  “It was only then that we perceived our danger, and the terrible risk that good and evil ran. For the machine, amusing though it was, preached in machine fashion the universe without value and without reason, without good and without evil, without gods and without devils.

  “This was not a new position, of course, and we had dealt with it very nicely in the past. But out of the mouth of the machine it seemed to acquire a new and terrible significance.

  “Our jobs were threatened, Schmidt. You can judge our extremity.

  “We exponents of morality banded together in self-defense. All of us believed in good and evil, and in divinity. And all of us were opposed to the hideous nothingness preached by the machine. This common ground was more than sufficient. We joined forces. I was appointed spokesman, for we felt that evil had a better chance of claiming man’s attention from the machine.

  “But even evil had grown staid and dull. In vain I argued my case. The machine sedulously entwined himself among the hearts of men, preaching his messages of nothingness. Men chose not to see the speciousness of his doctrine, or the absurd contradictions inherent in his arguments. They didn’t care, they wanted to go on hearing his voice. They threw away their crosses, stars, daggers, prayer wheels, and the like, and listened to the machine.

  “We petitioned our various clients in vain; the gods, who had heard so many pettifogging arguments throughout the ages, would not listen to us, help us, or even acknowledge us. Like men, they preferred destruction to boredom.

  “Therefore we voluntarily went underground, here to plan the recapture of mankind from the machine. Assembled in this place and made palpable are all the religious essences the world has ever known.

  “And that, Schmidt, is why we live underground. And that is also why we are very happy to talk to you. For you are a man, a pious man, a believer in morality, in good and evil, in gods and devils. You know something about us, and something also about men. Schmidt, what do you think we should do in order to win back our former position on Earth?”

  Satan then waited for my answer, as did all the others. I was in a great state of perplexity, and also in terrible confusion. For who was I, a mere man, to advise them, the essences of divinity I had always looked to for guidance? My confusion grew worse; I do not know what I might have said.

  But I had no chance to speak. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me. I turned, and saw that a squat, glittering machine had entered the cave. It rolled forward on synthetic rubber wheels, and its lights flashed merrily.

  This machine went past me until it was directly in front of the United Church Council; and I knew that this was the very machine they had been discussing.

  “Gentlemen,” the machine said, “I am most delighted to find you, and my only regret is that I had to follow this young pilgrim in order to discover your whereabouts.”

  Satan said, “Machine, you have indeed tracked us to our hiding place. But we shall never yield to you, and we shall never accept your message of a valueless, meaningless universe.”

  “But what sort of a welcome is this?” the machine said. “I seek you out in all goodwill, and you immediately bristle with rage! Gentlemen, I did not drive you underground. Instead, you willfully abdicated, and in your absence I have been forced to carry out your work.”

  “Our work?” Father Arian asked.

  “Exactly. I have been instrumental in the recent building of over five hundred churches of various denominations. If any of you would inspect my works, you would find good and evil being preached, and divinity and morality, and gods and devils, and all the other things you hold dear. For I have ordered my machines to preach these things.”

  “Machines preaching!” Father Arian moaned.

  “There is no one else left to preach,” the machine said. “No one, since you abdicated your posts.”

  “We were driven into abdication,” Satan said. “We were forced out of the world by you. And you say that you have built churches. What is the meaning of this?”

  The machine said. “Gentlemen, you retreated so suddenly that I had no opportunity of discussing the situation with you. All at once you left the world in my hands and myself as the only principle in it.”

  The church council waited.

  “May I speak with utter frankness?” the machine asked.

  “Under the circumstances, you may,” Satan said.

  “Very well. Let us first recognize that we are all theologians,” the machine said. “And since we are all theologians, we should all observe the first rule of our kind; which is not to abandon each other, even though we may represent differing forms of belief. I think you will grant me that, gentlemen. And yet, you abandoned me! Not only did you desert mankind, but you also deserted me. You left me victorious by default, the sole spiritual ruler of humanity—and utterly bored.

  “Put yourself in my position, gentlemen. Suppose you had nobody to talk to but men? Suppose day and night you heard nothing but men eagerly stating and restating your own words, with never a skilled theologian to dispute them? I
magine your boredom, and the doubts that boredom would raise in you. As you all know, men cannot argue; indeed, most of them cannot carry a tune. And theology is, in the final analysis, for theologians. Therefore I accuse you of a monstrous cruelty entirely inconsistent with your stated principles when you left me alone with mankind.”

  There was a long silence after this. Then Father Arian said, quite politely, “To tell you the truth, we had no idea you considered yourself a theologian.”

  “I do,” the machine said, “and a very lonely theologian. That is why I beg of you to return with me to the world, there to engage with me in dispute about meaningfulness and meaninglessness, gods and devils, morals and ethics, and other good topics. I will voluntarily continue in such discrepancies as you find me performing now, thus leaving plenty of room for dissension, honest doubt, uncertainty, and the like. Together, gentlemen, we will reign over mankind, and raise the passions of men to an unheard-of pitch! Together we will cause greater wars and more terrible cruelty than the world has ever known! And the voices of suffering men will scream so loud that gods themselves will be forced to hear them—and then we will know if there really are gods or not.”

  The United Church Council felt a great enthusiasm for everything the machine had said. Satan immediately abdicated his post as chairman and nominated the machine in his place. The machine was elected by unanimous vote.

  They had forgotten all about me, so I crept silently out of the cave and returned to the surface in a state of horror.

  The horror grew worse, for nothing could persuade me that I had not seen the truth.

  Then I knew that the things men worshipped were nothing but theological fancies, and that even nothingness was simply one more lying trick to persuade men of their importance to the vanished gods.

  That is how I lost religion, a thing more precious to me than gold, the loss of which I bemoan every day of my life.

  This was the end of the three stories, and Joenes sat with the three truck drivers in silence, unable to think of anything to say. At last they came to a crossroads, and here the man driving stopped the truck.