The Creatures of Man

by Howard L. Myers

  "No."

  "You do not know the now-moment," the butterfly persisted, "but isn't that for a reason similar to my not remembering in the manner of the spider? The thought comes to me that perhaps you combine remembering and knowing in a way I cannot comprehend, to know all moments that have been or will be."

  The man made a sound signifying amusement. "That is a flattering thought. It attributes to us the supreme knowledge we sometimes imagine in our own gods—the hypothetical beings who created all life. No, we don't have that kind of knowing. And the fact that you have part of it is a reason why men must avoid you. They would tend to consider you half-gods."

  This, to the butterfly, was monstrous. "But surely you must have some form of knowing . . ." he began.

  The Man was shaking his head. "Men have seen much and learned much. And we know much. But not as you know."

  Suddenly the butterfly understood and gazed at the Man with awe. To know the now-moment, he realized dimly, was a complete thing, and what was complete was limited to its totality. Man's knowing had no completeness—no limits—because Man did not even know himself.

  Breathing hard in the thin mountain air, the butterfly marveled at the boundless wonder of Man.

  All Around the Universe

  As soon as I left Gildalyn and returned to my own ship, I checked my financial status. Uneasily. I knew that fun and games with a choice morsel like Gildalyn was costly—it always was for me—but the question of the nanosecond was precisely how costly.

  I admit it: I'm not the Sandman's gift to women. Not mutated or dismal or anything, but nothing special. I'm just average. The big trouble with that is that I'm not interested in dawdling with just-average girls. I'm always getting out of my class, going for the Gildalyn types.

  A weakness like that can make life in this cold, cruel universe pretty frantic.

  "Tell me the damage, ship," I groaned.

  "I beg pardon, Mr. Rylsten?"

  "My financial balance!" I snapped.

  "Yes, sir. Your balance is 217 Admiration Units, sir, indicating an expenditure of 1,644 Admiration Units during the past 36 standard hours, sir."

  Over sixteen hundred Admires! My mouth hung open. Why, a cost like that meant (my soul squirmed) that Gildalyn couldn't have returned as much as 10 Units! Amused contempt! That was all she could have felt!

  "Somebody ought to kick me," I muttered.

  "Shall I mock up your father, sir?" the ship suggested.

  "No!"

  "Then perhaps your mother, sir. A comforting word may prove more useful than a kick in amending your present mood, Mr. Rylsten."

  "No! None of your damned mock-ups, ship! Look. Could the sensors in that twirl's boat be rigged to overcharge?"

  "Absolutely not, sir," replied the ship, almost sounding offended. "The Admiration Accounting System cannot be compromised. And any exchange of more than 500 Admiration Units is automatically depth-probed and verified."

  "Okay, okay," I grumbled. "Vanish."

  My surroundings flickered, the way they do sometimes in an older ship—and my crate was a secondhand job—then went transparent for a dozen seconds before achieving total invisibility. I gazed about dully.

  I was moseying off, arbitrary west from Abercrombie Galactic Cluster, where I'd been with Gildalyn. I tried to relax and feel at one with the beauties of nature. That's thickly clustered space west of Abercrombie, and I don't know anywhere in the universe where the spirals are more gracefully formed. Nothing to knock your eyes out, but just attractively restful countryside.

  It put me at ease, after an hour or so, and I went to sleep. When I woke ten hours later, Johncrust Cluster lay dead ahead. I felt sleep-groggy, which was an improvement.

  I told the ship, "Veer south twenty degrees, and give me some breakfast. Standard menu." I had no Admiration to waste on food. And actually I was hungry enough to enjoy subsistence fare—orange pulp, ham and eggs, jelly toast and coffee—which being standard would cost me nothing.

  When I finished, and had been evacuated and sanitized by the ship, I got a determined grip on myself. I had to do something about my finances.

  "Tread control, ship."

  "Yes, Mr. Rylsten."

  I stood up and began walking. The invisible surface beneath my feet felt smooth and grassy. "One-point-five gravitation," I said.

  I felt my body compress downward under the weight, and squared my shoulders against it. I hiked ahead vigorously, the ship responding to my changes of speed and direction as I strolled among the clusters, picking my path subconsciously as my mind worked on the problem at hand.

  But it was no good.

  The trouble was, my old sources of income were shot. I'd gotten too damned old to go running home for a handout. My old man had made that clear. As for the kids I used to planetcrawl with, back in my old home system . . . well, that had gone sour on me, too.

  Time was I could breeze in to visit with the old gang, regale them with tales of the famous twirls I'd made the big scene with, and soon have them gaping (with Admiration, of course) at me. Why, once, after I met Jallie Klevillia whom everybody's heard about, I got two thousand Units out of the home system kids . . . and all Jallie got out of me was nine hundred. She wasn't as hot as her reputation.

  But the last time I went home to hit my old chums, it didn't work. Maybe they're getting old and hard to impress. I recall Marge Grossit gave me a cold stare and then said, "Boje Rylsten, isn't it time you settled down?"

  And Harmo Jones said, "I guess anybody can mingle with the big beauties, if he's willing to drop a thousand Units doing it."

  Would you believe I came away from that bunch of low-lifers with fewer Units than I had to start?

  So, where the sand was my Admiration going to come from?

  I was at a dead end. I might have no choice but what Marge Grossit suggested—settle down with some average twirl; and spend my life eating standard nine days out of ten, raising kids who might Admire their old man; and building interest Units with their mother.

  I cringed at the thought. I'd had a taste of something better.

  But my thinking was getting me no place.

  "Tread control off. Gravity down," I commanded tiredly, flopping in the direction of my chair.

  "Very well, Mr. Rylsten."

  "Standard beer."

  "Yes, sir."

  I sat there, sipping the beer like a nobody. That was what I was, a nobody from a long line of nobodies. But unlike all the other Rylstens, I couldn't help knowing I was a nobody.

  Old Uncle Buxton, for instance. All pose that guy was. I chuckled at the memory of old Uncle Buxton. When he talked, his tongue wagged his brain! By which I think I mean his brain was foolish enough to believe what his tongue said.

  But in his way, he wasn't a bad old joker.

  "Ship," I said, "my Uncle Buxton gave me his mock-up three years ago. I don't know if I threw it away. Check and see if you have it."

  "Yes, sir, a Buxton Rylsten tape is on file."

  "Okay, mock him up. And brief him. I don't want to spend an hour explaining my troubles to him."

  "Yes, sir."

  I had time to finish my beer before the mock-up came into the living cabin. "Hi, Uncle Buck," I greeted him.

  "Hello, Boje," he responded with extended hand. "So it's been three years since you saw me, has it?"

  "Sorry about that, Uncle. I've just been busy."

  "I understand, Boje," he smiled. "The thing is that you called for me now, when you have a problem that requires mature wisdom and experience. I didn't give you that tape expecting to be your constant companion—you naturally prefer friends your own age."

  I accepted that with a straight face. "Mature wisdom"—hah! If self-admiration was spelled with a capital A, old Uncle Buxton would be the richest man in the universe! The truth was that I just wanted somebody to talk to me, without getting mushy like mom's mock-up would, or hitting me with an angry sermon like dad.

  "I'll give it to you straight, pa
l," he said in his solemn, querulous way. "We have to face reality, and reality is harsh." He settled himself comfortably on a lounge. "Who a man is, or what a man is, don't amount to a circumcised Unit! I learned that long ago, Boje. What I'm saying, Boje, is don't expect respect. You understand?"

  "I sure do," I replied. "Won't you have a beer, Uncle?"

  "I'd be delighted. Now, Boje, your problem is financial. That puts you in the same boat with every honest man who ever lived. No monetary system in history has been fair to the honest man. That's what's held me back all my life. Tell me, Boje. Why do you think our system of exchange uses Admiration for currency?"

  "Well," I said, "that's because Admiration is the basic desired quality. Everybody tries to get it, and that's good. It keeps the society moving. So, when science found a way to quantitize and measure Admiration, it was adopted."

  Uncle Buxton was grinning knowingly. "That's what they taught you in school, isn't it, Boje?"

  "Yeah."

  "The trouble is, pal, there are lessons the schools don't teach," he said. "They don't breathe a hint of the real truth, which is that our system debases Admiration by making it the object of crass materialism. In the same way the ancients debased the beauty of their handsomest metal, gold, by making it the medium of exchange.

  "But the abuse goes deeper than that, Boje," he went on ponderously. "Whether money is based on gold, on labor, or on Admiration, it always requires a man to do things he wouldn't otherwise do. It forces him to act against his higher instinct.

  "It makes him chop up the ornaments the ancients loved and make coin out of the pieces. It makes him work when he would prefer to rest. It makes him force his personality into an Admirable mold. Isn't that true?"

  "Yeah, and I can't find the right mold for myself," I said glumly.

  "Right!" he said emphatically. "And I'll tell you why, Boje. It's because you're too much like me!" I started slightly. If that was true, it was the worst bad news I'd ever heard.

  "There's too much honesty in you," he explained. "You want to be what you honestly are, without abusing your better nature by acting the way the monetary system tries to force you to act. You see?"

  I didn't quite see, but I nodded anyway. "Then it's what a man does that counts," I hazarded.

  "On the button!" he applauded. "Not what he is, but what he does!" He chugged his beer and added sadly, "It wasn't always this bad. Back in the Dollar Era, there was a saying that went, 'It's not what you do, but who you are.' And another they had was, 'It's not what you know, but who you know.' That must have been a golden age, indeed. Society has degenerated."

  "I guess so," I agreed moodily. "But our system wouldn't be so bad if they would just change it a little. You take me. I like to Admire. Particularly I like to Admire certain twirls. Things ought to work so that I can concentrate on Admiring them, since that's what I do best, without having to try to be Admired myself. There ought to be an allowance for a guy like me . . . say one or two hundred Units per day . . ."

  "Right, but the powers-that-be wouldn't listen to that for a nanosecond," he snorted. "It would compromise the Admirable Society. The aim of our whole system is to force everybody to be as Admirable as possible. It's slavery of the most blatant type! That's the harsh reality, Boje."

  We chatted on and had some standard lunch. Then I saw that I had an embarrassing chore on my hands. How was I going to turn Uncle Buxton's mock-up off?

  That had never been a problem with mom or dad . . . They were always glad enough to go back on the tape after a short visit. But Uncle Buxton had the look of a man settling in for a two-week visit. If I had the ship unmock him against his will, he wouldn't come off the tape next time in a friendly mood at all.

  At last a solution occurred to me.

  "Uncle Buck," I said, "I want you to enjoy the hospitality of my ship. The previous owner equipped it with twirl tapes. I guess they were best sellers in their day. Sorry I can't offer you anything current."

  There was a lustful glitter in Uncle Buxton's eyes. "Well, now, Boje, that's nice of you, but your aunt, may the Sandman bless her, has old-fashioned ideas. She would have my hide if I fooled around with a twirlmock."

  "I don't see how she could, Uncle. You're separate from your original self that's married to Aunt Bauvila. How will she know what you do?"

  Uncle Buxton snorted. "I keep forgetting I'm a mock-up. Um, well, I just might take you up, Boje. Who do you have?"

  "There's Sondri Cavalo," I began, "and Dince Har—"

  "Hey! I've heard of Sondri Cavalo all my life!" He broke in eagerly. "She'll do fine!"

  "All right. Ship. Mock up the Cavalo twirl."

  "Yes, sir," the ship responded. When Sondri came into the cabin, I introduced her and Uncle Buxton. They hit it off right away, the way mock-ups usually do. Sometimes I think our society was made for mock-ups, instead of the other way around. They don't have to worry about Admiration since they don't participate . . . except as pieces of property . . . in the monetary system. So they can take life as they find it. Sondri wasn't hungry, and it wasn't long before she and Uncle Buxton went off, in a cuddly embrace, to the back cabin.

  "Ship?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Unmock Uncle Buxton after he's had his fling and five hours of sleep."

  "Very well, sir."

  * * *

  It's what you do that counts. That's what I had decided during my talk with Uncle Buxton. It was something I'd known all along, in the back of my mind. After all, a lot of guys do do things.

  And I know my way around; so I knew where to go to find something to do.

  "Head for Greenstable, ship," I ordered. "That's in Milky Way Galaxy, over in the old sector." A funny name for a galaxy, I'd always thought. Probably after the type of candy that originated there.

  "On our way, sir."

  I deep-napped most of the way, and didn't come back to full alert until we hit the Greenstable atmosphere.

  That planet is somebody's good idea gone sour. Time and progress have passed it by. Its only attraction is the Greenstable Racetrack, which was quite a scene several centuries ago. It was called the "horse-racing hub of the universe" . . . and it is still called that, but only a handful of nuts waste Admiration on a horse nowadays.

  The racetrack is still in operation, though, and is energized for mock horses and riders. Other than the track complex, the planet is just a lot of marlboro, with herds of wild horses wandering around, I guess to give an appropriate setting.

  I put down on the nearly empty parking area and shuttled to the Jockey Club building. With mock jocks, the club doesn't serve its original purpose (whatever that was) any more. It's a place where guys looking for something to do contact other guys who need something done. All informal, but legal enough to stay out of trouble with Admiration Accounting.

  But to look at the guys lounging inside, you'd think doing something, or wanting something done, was the most distant subject from their minds. There was always a bunch hanging around, though.

  I got a beer and took a lounge near five guys talking about new-model ships. I put in a remark now and then, and finally asked, "Anything doing today?"

  "Not much," one of them yawned. "It's a dull day. Jonmak's got a research thing. That's him over there. Watch out for him, though."

  I knew what the warning meant, but I walked over to Jonmak anyway. I wasn't worried. He looked like somebody's idea of the ultimate twirlrave—tall, clean-cut, hawknosed, with a haughty expression—but I don't waste Admiration on such guys. I guess I'm not the jealous type.

  "Jonmak? I'm Rylsten. Boje Rylsten," I said.

  He gave me an old-pal grin. "Good to meet you, Rylsten."

  "Same here," I replied, shaking his firm hand. "The guys tell me you're pushing a chore."

  He saw that I wasn't impressed by what a great guy he was, and looked a bit sour. "Yeah. It's a bit out of the average doer's line. Ever hear of Profanis?"

  "No," I replied. "If that's a galaxy, it must be a s
mall one. I know all the spirals."

  "It's not a galaxy. It's a system."

  I shrugged, as much as to say what the sand did he expect. "Where is this Profanis system?" I asked.

  He grinned. "That's the chore, Rylsten. Find Profanis."

  I stared at him. "That's all?"

  "That's all."

  "Okay," I said, "I get aboard my ship, and tell it to take me to Profanis. I let it search the tapes for the right sector and galaxy and so on. Then it takes me there. What's the chore about that?"