Job: A Comedy of Justice

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “You ask, why this animal, and why me? This one I picked up beside a road, a stray—and, putting aside its own troubles—much too big for it!—it devoted itself to a valiant (and fruitless) attempt to save my ‘soul’ by the rules it had been taught. That its attempt was misguided and useless does not matter; it tried hard on my behalf when it believed me to be in extreme danger. Now that it is in trouble I owe it an equal effort.”

  Mr. Koshchei pushed his spectacles down His nose and looked over them. “You offer no reason why I should interfere with local authority.”

  “Sir, is there not a guild rule requiring artists to be kind in their treatment of their volitionals?”

  “No.”

  Jerry looked daunted. “Sir, I must have misunderstood my training.”

  “Yes, I think you have. There is an artistic principle—not a rule—that volitionals should be treated consistently. But to insist on kindness would be to eliminate that degree of freedom for which volition in creatures was invented. Without the possibility of tragedy the volitionals might as well be golems.”

  “Sir, I think I understand that. But would the Chairman please amplify the artistic principle of consistent treatment?”

  “Nothing complex about it, Lucifer. For a creature to act out its own minor art, the rules under which it acts must be either known to it or be such that the rules can become known through trial and error—with error not always fatal. In short the creature must be able to learn and to benefit by its experience.”

  “Sir, that is exactly my complaint about my brother. See that record before You. Yahweh baited a trap and thereby lured this creature into a contest that it could not win—then declared the game over and took the prize from it. And, although this is an extreme case, a destruction test, this nevertheless is typical of his treatment of all his volitionals. Games so rigged that his creatures cannot win. For six millennia I got his losers…and many of them arrived in Hell catatonic with fear—fear of me, fear of an eternity of torture. They can’t believe they’ve been lied to. My therapists have to work hard to reorient the poor slobs. It’s not funny.”

  Mr. Koshchei did not appear to listen. He leaned back in His old wooden swivel chair, making it creak—and, yes, I do know that the creak came out of my memories—and looked again at my memoir. He scratched the gray fringe around His bald pate and made an irritating noise, half whistle, half hum—also out of my buried memories of Doc Simmons, but utterly real.

  “This female creature, the bait. A volitional?”

  “In my opinion, yes, Mr. Chairman.”

  (Good heavens, Jerry! Don’t you know?)

  “Then I think we may assume that this one would not be satisfied with a simulacrum.” He hummed and whistled through His teeth. “So let us look deeper.”

  Mr. Koshchei’s office seemed small when we were admitted; now there were several others present: another angel who looked a lot like Jerry but older and with a pinched expression unlike Jerry’s expansive joviality, another older character who wore a long coat, a big broad-brimmed hat, a patch over one eye, and had a crow sitting on his shoulder, and—why, confound his arrogance!—Sam Crumpacker, that Dallas shyster.

  Back of Crumpacker three men were lined up, well-fed types, and all vaguely familiar. I knew I had seen them before.

  Then I got it. I had won a hundred (or was it a thousand?) from each of them on a most foolhardy bet.

  I looked back at Crumpacker, and was angrier than ever—the scoundrel was now wearing my face!

  I turned to Jerry and started to whisper urgently. “See that man over there? The one—”

  “Shut up.”

  “But—”

  “Be quiet and listen.”

  Jerry’s brother was speaking. “So who’s complaining? You want I should put on my Jesus hat and prove it? The fact that some of them make it proves it ain’t too hard—seven point one percent in this last batch, not counting golems. Not good enough? Who says?”

  The old boy in the black hat said, “I count anything less than fifty percent a failure.”

  “So who’s talking? Who lost ground to me every year for a millennium? How you handle your creatures; that’s your business. What I do with mine; that’s my business.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” the big hat replied. “You grossly interfered with one of mine.”

  “Not me!” Yahweh hooked a thumb at the man who managed to look like both me and Sam Crumpacker. “That one! My Shabbes goy. A little rough? So whose boy is he? Answer that!”

  Mr. Koshchei tapped my memoir, spoke to the man with my face. “Loki, how many places do you figure in this story?”

  “Depends on how You figure it, Chief. Eight or nine places, if You count the walk-ons. All through it, when You consider that I spent four solid weeks softening up this foxy schoolteacher so that she would roll over and pant when Joe Nebbish came along.”

  Jerry had a big fist around my upper left arm. “Keep quiet!”

  Loki went on: “And Yahweh didn’t pay up.”

  “So why should I? Who won?”

  “You cheated. I had your champion, your prize bigot, ready to crack when you pulled Judgment Day early. There he sits. Ask him. Ask him if he still swears by you. Or at you? Ask him. Then pay up. I have munition bills to meet.”

  Mr. Koshchei stated, “I declare this discussion out of order. This office is not a collection agency. Yahweh, the principal complaint against you seems to be that you are not consistent in your rules for your creatures.”

  “Should I kiss them? For omelets you break eggs.”

  “Speak to the case in point. You ran a destruction test. Whether it was artistically necessary is moot. But, at the end of the test, you took one to Heaven, left the other behind—and thereby punished both of them. Why?”

  “One rule for all. She didn’t make it.”

  “Aren’t you the god that announced the rule concerning binding the mouths of the kine that tread the grain?”

  The next thing I knew I was standing on Mr. Koshchei’s desk, staring right into His enormous face. I suppose Jerry put me there. He was saying, “This is yours?”

  I looked in the direction He indicated—and had to keep from fainting. Marga!

  Margrethe cold and dead and encased in a coffin-shaped cake of ice. It occupied much of the desk top and was beginning to melt onto it.

  I tried to throw myself onto it, found I could not move.

  “I think that answers Me,” Mr. Koshchei went on. “Odin, what is its destiny?”

  “She died fighting, at Ragnarok. She has earned a cycle in Valhalla.”

  “Listen to him!” Loki sneered. “Ragnarok is not over. And this time I’m winning. This pige is mine! All Danish broads are willing…but this one is explosive!” He smirked and winked at me. “Isn’t she?”

  The Chairman said quietly, “Loki, you weary Me”—and suddenly Loki was missing. Even his chair was gone. “Odin, will you spare her for part of that cycle?”

  “For how long? She has earned the right to Valhalla.”

  “An indeterminate time. This creature had stated its willingness to wash dishes ‘forever’ in order to take care of her. One may doubt that it realizes just how long a period ‘forever’ is…yet its story does show earnestness of purpose.”

  “Mr. Chairman, my warriors, male and female, dead in honorable combat, are my equals, not my slaves—I am proud to be first among such equals. I raise no objections…if she consents.”

  My heart soared. Then Jerry, from clear across the room, whispered into my ear, “Don’t get your hopes up. To her it may be as long as a thousand years. Women do forget.”

  The Chairman was saying, “The web patterns are still intact, are they not?”

  Yahweh answered, “So who destroys file copies?”

  “Regenerate as necessary.”

  “And who is paying for this?”

  “You are. A fine to teach you to pay attention to consistency.”

  “Oy! Every prophecy
I fulfilled! And now He tells me consistent I am not! This is justice?”

  “No. It is Art. Alexander. Look at Me.”

  I looked at that great face; Its eyes held me. They got bigger, and bigger, and bigger. I slumped forward and fell into them.

  XXIX

  There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall

  there be any remembrance of things that are to come

  with those that shall come after.

  Ecclesiastes 1:11

  This week Margrethe and I, with help from our daughter Gerda, are giving our house and our shop a real Scandahoovian cleaning, because the Farnsworths, our friends from Texas—our best friends anywhere—are coming to see us. To Marga and me, a visit from Jerry and Katie is Christmas and the Fourth of July rolled into one. And for our kids, too; Sybil Farnsworth is Inga’s age; the girls are chums.

  This time will be extra special; they are bringing Patricia Marymount with them. Pat is almost as old a friend as the Farnsworths and the sweetest person in the world—an old-maid schoolmarm but not a bit prissy.

  The Farnsworths changed our luck. Marga and I were down in Mexico on our honeymoon when the earthquake that destroyed Mazatlán hit. We weren’t hurt but we had a bad time getting out—passports, money, and travelers checks gone. Halfway home we met the Farnsworths and that changed everything—no more trouble. Oh, I got back to Kansas with no baggage but a razor (sentimental value, Marga gave it to me on our honeymoon; I’ve used it ever since).

  When we reached my home state, we found just the mom-and-pop shop we wanted—a lunchroom in this little college town, Eden, Kansas, southeast of Wichita. The shop was owned by Mr. and Mrs. A. S. Modeus; they wanted to retire. We started as their employees; in less than a month we were their tenants. Then I went into hock to the bank up to my armpits and that made us owners-of-record of MARGA’S HOT FUDGE SUNDAE—soda fountain, hot dogs, hamburgers, and Marga’s heavenly Danish open-face sandwiches.

  Margrethe wanted to name it Marga-and-Alex’s Hot Fudge Sundae—I vetoed that; it doesn’t scan. Besides, she is the one who meets the public; she’s our best advertising. I work back where I’m not seen—dishwasher, janitor, porter, you name it. Margrethe handles the front, with help from Astrid. And from me; all of us can cook or concoct anything on our menu, even the open-face sandwiches. However, with the latter we follow Marga’s color photographs and lists of ingredients; in fairness to our customers only Margrethe is allowed to be creative.

  Our namesake item, the hot fudge sundae, is ready at all times and I have kept the price at ten cents, although that allows only a one-and-a-half-cent gross profit. Any customer having a birthday gets one free, along with our singing Happy Birthday! with loud banging on a drum, and a kiss. College boys appreciate kissing Margrethe more than they do the free sundae. Understandable. But Pop Graham doesn’t do too badly with the co-eds, either. (I don’t force kisses on a “birthday girl.”)

  Our shop was a success from day one. The location is good—facing Elm Street gate and Old Main. Plentiful trade was guaranteed by low prices and Margrethe’s magic touch with food…and her beauty and her sweet personality; we aren’t selling calories, we’re selling happiness. She piles a lavish serving of happiness on each plate; she has it to spare.

  With me to watch the pennies, our team could not lose. And I do watch pennies; if the cost of ingredients ever kills that narrow margin on a hot fudge sundae, the price goes up. Mr. Belial, president of our bank, says that the country is in a long, steady period of gentle prosperity. I hope he is right; meanwhile I watch the gross profit.

  The town is enjoying a real estate boom, caused by the Farnsworths plus the change in climate. It used to be that the typical wealthy Texan had a summer home in Colorado Springs, but now that we no longer fry eggs on our sidewalks, Texans are beginning to see the charms of Kansas. They say it’s a change in the Jet Stream. (Or is it the Gulf Stream? I never was strong in science.) Whatever, our summers now are balmy and our winters are mild; many of Jerry’s friends or associates are buying land in Eden and building summer homes. Mr. Ashmedai, manager of some of Jerry’s interests, now lives here year round—and Dr. Adramelech, chancellor of Eden College, caused him to be elected to the board of trustees, along with an honorary doctorate—as a former money-raiser I can see why.

  We welcome them all and not just for their money…but I would not want Eden to grow as crowded as Dallas.

  Not that it could. This is a bucolic place; the college is our only “industry.” One community church serves all sects, The Church of the Divine Orgasm—Sabbath school at 9:30 a.m., church services at 11, picnic and orgy immediately following.

  We don’t believe in shoving religion down a kid’s throat but the truth is that young people like our community church—thanks to our pastor, the Reverend Dr. M. O. Loch. Malcolm is a Presbyterian, I think; he still has a Scottish burr in his speech. But there is nothing of the dour Scot about him and kids love him. He leads the revels and directs the rituals—our daughter Elise is a Novice Ecdysiast under him and she talks of having a vocation. (Piffle. She’ll marry right out of high school; I could name the young man—though I can’t see what she sees in him.)

  Margrethe serves in the Altar Guild; I pass the plate on the Sabbath and serve on the finance board. I’ve never given up my membership in the Apocalypse Brethren but I must admit that we Brethren read it wrong; the end of the millennium came and went and the Shout was never heard.

  A man who is happy at home doesn’t lie awake nights worrying about the hereafter.

  What is success? My classmates at Rolla Tech, back when, may think that I’ve settled for too little, owner-with-the-bank of a tiny restaurant in a nowhere town. But I have what I want. I would not want to be a saint in Heaven if Margrethe was not with me; I wouldn’t fear going to Hell if she was there—not that I believe in Hell or ever stood a chance of being a saint in Heaven.

  Samuel Clemens put it: “Where she was, there was Eden.” Omar phrased it: “—thou beside me in the wilderness, ah wilderness were paradise enow.” Browning termed it: “Summum Bonum.” All were asserting the same great truth, which is for me:

  Heaven is where Margrethe is.

  About the Author

  Robert Anson Heinlein was born in Butler. Missouri, in 1907. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he was retired, disabled, in 1934. He studied mathematics and physics at the graduate school of the University of California and owned a silver mine before beginning to write science fiction in ]939. In 1947 his first book of fiction, Rocket Ship Galileo, was published. His novels include Double Star (1956), Starship Troopers (1959), Stranger In a Strange Land (1961), and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), all winners of the Hugo Award. Heinlein was guest commentator for the Apollo 11 first lunar landing. In 1975 he received the Grand Master Nebula Award for lifetime achievement. Mr. Heinlein died in 1988.