Dimension of Miracles

by Robert Sheckley

  ‘You talk well,’ Karmod said grudgingly. ‘Yet I will have my Prize.’

  ‘You will not,’ Carmody said.

  Karmod’s eyes flashed ominously. The Clerk and the Messenger moved quickly out of the way, and the Sweep stakes Computer muttered, ‘Virtuous error is not to be punished,’ and quickly scuttled out of the room. Carmody held his ground, since he had no place to go. The Prize whispered, ‘’Ware shoals!’ and shrank to a cube an inch to a side.

  A humming sound came from Karmod’s ears, and a violet nimbus played around his head. He raised his arms and drops of molten lead ran down his fingertips. He stepped terribly forward, and Carmody couldn’t help closing his eyes.

  Nothing happened. Carmody opened his eyes again.

  In that brief time Karmod had apparently reconsidered, disarmed, and was now turning away with an affable grin.

  ‘Upon more mature consideration,’ Karmod said slyly, ‘I have decided to forgo my right. A little prescience goes a long way, especially in a galaxy as disorganized as this one. We may or may not meet again, Carmody; I do not know which eventuality would be most to your advantage. Farewell, Carmody, and happy travelling.’

  With that sinister emphasis, Karmod departed in a manner which Carmody found strange but effective.

  PART TWO

  Where is Earth?

  CHAPTER 5

  ‘Well,’ the Prize said, ‘that’s that. I trust we have seen the last of that ugly creature. Carmody, let us go to your home.’

  ‘An excellent idea,’ Carmody said. ‘Messenger! I want to go home now!’

  ‘The feeling is quite normal,’ the Messenger said, ‘and also quite reality-oriented. I would say that you should go home, as rapidly as possible.’

  ‘So take me home,’ Carmody said.

  The Messenger shook his head. ‘That’s not my job. I am only supposed to bring you here.’

  ‘Whose job is it?’

  ‘It is your job, Carmody,’ the Clerk said.

  Carmody experienced a sinking feeling. He was beginning to understand why Karmod had given up so easily. He said, ‘Look, fellows, I hate to impose on you, but really, I need some help.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ the Messenger said. ‘Give me the co-ordinates and I’ll take you there myself.’

  ‘Co-ordinates? I don’t know anything about that. It’s a planet called Earth.’

  ‘I don’t care if it is called Green Cheese,’ the Messenger said. ‘I need to know the co-ordinates if I’m to be of any assistance.’

  ‘But you were just there,’ Carmody said. ‘You went to Earth and brought me here!’

  ‘So it may have appeared to you,’ the Messenger explained patiently. ‘But it is not the case at all, I simply went to the co-ordinates which were given me by the Clerk, who got them from the Sweepstakes Computer; and there you were, and I brought you here.’

  ‘Can’t you bring me back to the same co-ordinates?’

  ‘I can, with the greatest of ease. But you would find nothing there. The galaxy is not static, you know. Everything in the galaxy moves, each thing at its own rate and in its own manner.’

  ‘Can’t you figure out from the co-ordinates where Earth will be now?’ Carmody asked.

  ‘I can’t even add up a column of figures,’ the Messenger said proudly. ‘My talents lie in other directions.’

  Carmody turned to the Clerk. ‘Then can you figure it out? Or can the Sweepstakes Computer?’

  ‘I can’t add very well, either,’ the Clerk said.

  The Computer scuttled back into the room. ‘I can add magnificently,’ it said. ‘But my function is limited to selecting and locating the winners of the Sweepstakes within my margin of permissible error. I have you located (you are here) and therefore I am forbidden the interesting theoretical job of learning your planet’s present coordinates.’

  ‘Can’t you do it just as a favour?’ Carmody pleaded.

  ‘I have no quotient for favours,’ the Computer replied. ‘I can no more find your planet than I can fry an egg or trisect a nova.’

  ‘Can’t anyone help me?’ Carmody asked.

  ‘Don’t despair,’ the Clerk said. ‘Travellers’ Aid can fix you up in a jiffy, and I’ll take you there myself. Just give them your Home Co-ordinates.’

  ‘But I don’t know them!’ Carmody said.

  There was a short, shocked silence. Then the Messenger said, ‘If you don’t know your own address, how do you expect anyone else to know it? This galaxy may not be infinite, but it’s a pretty big place all the same. Any creature that doesn’t know its own Location should never leave home.’

  ‘I didn’t know that at the time,’ Carmody said.

  ‘You might have asked.’

  ‘I didn’t think of it … Look, you have to help me. It can’t be too difficult to find out where my planet is.’

  ‘It’s incredibly difficult,’ the Clerk told him. ‘“Where” is only one of the three co-ordinates that are needed.’

  ‘What are the other two?’

  ‘We also need to know “When” and “Which.” We call them the three W’s of Location.’

  ‘I don’t care if you call them Green Cheese,’ Carmody said in a sudden burst of anger. ‘How do other life-forms find their way home?’

  ‘They utilize their inherent homing instinct,’ the Messenger said. ‘Are you sure you don’t have one, by the way?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Carmody said.

  ‘Of course he doesn’t have a homing instinct!’ the Prize burst out indignantly. ‘The fellow’s never been off his home planet! How would he develop a homing instinct?’

  ‘True enough,’ the Clerk said, and rubbed his face wearily. ‘This is what comes of dealing with lower life-forms. Damn that computer and his pious errors!’

  ‘Only one in five billion,’ the Computer said. ‘Surely that’s not asking very much.’

  ‘No one’s blaming you,’ the Clerk said. ‘No one’s blaming anyone, as a matter of fact. But we still have to figure out what to do with him.’

  ‘It’s a heavy responsibility,’ the Messenger said.

  ‘It certainly is,’ the Clerk agreed. ‘What do you say we kill him and forget the whole thing.’

  ‘Hey!’ Carmody cried.

  ‘It’s OK with me,’ the Messenger said.

  ‘If it’s OK with you fellows,’ the Computer said, ‘then it’s OK with me.’

  ‘Count me out,’ the Prize said. ‘I can’t put my finger on it at the moment, but there’s something wrong with the whole idea.’

  Carmody made several vehement statements to the effect that he did not want to die and ought not to be killed. He appealed to their better instincts and their sense of fair play. These remarks were judged tendentious and were struck from the record.

  ‘Wait, I have it!’ the Messenger said suddenly. ‘As an alternative solution, what about this? Let’s not kill him; let’s help him, in utter sincerity and to the best of our abilities, to return to his home alive and in good health both mental and physical.’

  ‘It’s a thought,’ the Clerk admitted.

  ‘In that way,’ the Messenger said, ‘we can perform an exemplary action of the greatest merit, all the more noteworthy because it will be utterly futile. For obviously, he will probably be killed in the course of the trip anyhow.’

  ‘We’d better get on with it,’ the Clerk said. ‘Unless we want him to get killed while we’re talking.’

  ‘What is this all about?’ Carmody asked.

  ‘I’ll explain everything later,’ the Prize whispered to him. ‘Assuming that there is a later. And, if we have time, I’ll also tell you a rather fascinating story about myself.’

  ‘Get ready, Carmody!’ the Messenger called out.

  ‘I’m ready,’ Carmody said. ‘I hope.’

  ‘Ready or not, here you go!’

  And he went.

  CHAPTER 6

  Perhaps for the first time in the history of the human race, a man actually and liter
ally split a scene. From Carmody’s point of view, he didn’t move at all; it was everything else that moved. The Messenger and the Clerk melted into the background. The Galactic Centre went flat and took on an unmistakable resemblance to a large, poorly executed mural.

  Then a crack appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the mural, widened and lengthened, and raced down to the lower right-hand corner. The edges curled back, revealing utter blackness. The mural, or Galactic Centre, rolled itself up like two windowshades and left not a wrack behind.

  ‘Don’t worry, they do it with mirrors,’ the Prize whispered to him.

  The explanation worried Carmody more than the occurrence. But he kept a tight control on himself and a somewhat tighter control on the Prize. The blackness became complete and utter, soundless and sightless, a paradigm of deep space. Carmody endured it for as long as it lasted, which was incomprehensible.

  Then, abruptly, the scene resolved. He was standing on ground breathing air. He could see barren mountains the colour of white bone and a river of frozen lava. A faint, stagnant breeze blew in his face. Overhead there were three tiny red suns.

  This place seemed more immediately alien than the Galactic Centre; still, it was a relief to Carmody. He had encountered places like this in dreams; but the Galactic Centre was the stuff of nightmares.

  With a sudden start he realized that the Prize was no longer in his hand. How could he have mislaid it? He looked around frantically, and found a small green garter snake curled around his neck.

  ‘It’s me,’ it said. ‘I’m your Prize. I am merely in a different shape. Form, you see, is a function of total environment, and we Prizes are peculiarly sensitive to environmental influences. You mustn’t let it alarm you. I’m still with you, keed, and together we will free Mexico from the sullen foreigner’s hand of the dandy Maximilian.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Analogize!’ the Prize demanded. ‘You see, Doctor, despite our high intelligence, we Prizes have no language of our own. Nor do we have any need of an individual tongue, since we are always being awarded to various aliens. Solving the talk-problem is quite simple, but sometimes disconcerting; I merely run a tapline into your association bank and draw out what words I need to make my meaning clear. Have my words made my meaning clear?’

  ‘Nothing is very clear,’ Carmody confessed. ‘But I think I understand.’

  ‘Good bhoy,’ the Prize said. ‘The concepts may get a little jangled from time to time, but you will inevitably decipher them. After all, they are yours. I have a rather amusing story to tell in that regard, but I fear it must wait. Something is about to happen too quickly.’

  ‘Wait? What is it?’

  ‘Carmody, mon vieux, there is not time to explain all. There may not even be time to explain what you absolutely must know in order to maintain the operation of your life. The Clerk and the Messenger have very kindly sent you –’

  ‘Those murderous bastards!’ Carmody said.

  ‘You must not condemn murder so lightly,’ the Prize said reprovingly. ‘It bespeaks a careless nature. I remember a pertinent dithyramb to that effect, which I will recite later. Where was I? Oh yes, the Clerk and the Messenger. At considerable personal expense, those two worthies have sent you to the one place in Galaxy where you may – just possibly – be helped. They didn’t have to do it, you know. They could have killed you on the spot for future crimes; or they could have shipped you to your planet’s last known location, where it most assuredly is not now. Or they could have extrapolated its most likely present location and sent you there. But since they are poor extrapolators, the results of that would have been very bad indeed, in all likelihood. So you see –’

  ‘Where am I?’ Carmody asked, ‘and what is supposed to happen here?’

  ‘I was coming to that,’ the Prize said. ‘The planet is called Lursis, as is probably evident. It has only a single inhabitant – the autochthonous Melichrone, who has been here as long as anyone can remember, and will be here as long as anyone can project. Melichrone is sui generis in spades and with a vengeance. As an autochthone he is inimitable; as a race he is ubiquitous; as an individual he is different. Of him it has been written: “Lo, the lonely eponymous hero, mating himself with himself while furiously himself resists the angry onslaught of himself!”’

  ‘Damn you,’ Carmody shouted, ‘you’re talking away like a Senate subcommittee but you’re not saying anything!’

  ‘That’s because I’m flustered,’ the Prize said, with a noticeable whine. ‘Great Scott, man, d’ye think I bargained for anything like this? I’m shook, man, I’m real shook, believe you me, and I’m only trying to explicate because, if I don’t put my hand to the helm, this whole damned ball of wax will come crashing down like a house of kurds.’

  ‘Cards,’ Carmody corrected absentmindedly.

  ‘Kurds!’ the Prize screamed at him. ‘Man, have you ever seen a house of kurds come tumbling down? Well, I have, and it’s not a pretty sight.’

  ‘It sounds like a whey-out spectacle,’ Carmody said, and giggled immoderately.

  ‘Get hold of yourself!’ the Prize whispered with sudden urgency. ‘Integrate! Perform the pause that refreshes! Hitch your thalamus to a star! For now it comes, even Melichrone!’

  Carmody found himself strangely calm. He looked out over the twisted landscape and saw nothing that he had not seen before.

  ‘Where is he?’ he asked the Prize.

  ‘Melichrone is evolving in order to be able to speak to you. Answer him boldly but with tact. Do not make any reference to his disability; that will only get him angry. Be sure –’

  ‘What disability?’

  ‘Be sure that you remember his one limitation. And above all, when he asks his Question, answer it with extreme care.’

  ‘Wait!’ Carmody said. ‘All you’ve done is to confuse me! What disability? What limitation? And what will his Question be?’

  ‘Stop nagging at me!’ the Prize said. ‘I cannot abide it! And now I can retain consciousness no longer. I have delayed my hibernation unbearably, and all for your sake. So long, keed, and don’t let them sell you any wooden centrifuges.’

  And with that, the garter snake adjusted his coils, put his tail in his mouth and went to sleep.

  ‘You damned cop-out artist,’ Carmody fumed. ‘Call yourself a Prize? Like pennies on a dead man’s eyes, that’s the kind of Prize you are.’

  But the Prize was asleep and unable or unwilling to hear Carmody’s invective. And there really was no time for that sort of thing, because in the next moment the barren mountain to Carmody’s left turned into a raging volcano.

  CHAPTER 7

  The volcano raged and fumed, spat gouts of flame and hurled dazzling fireballs into the black sky. It exploded into a million incandescent fragments, and then each fragment split again, and again, until the skies were lighted with glory and the three little suns had gone pale.

  ‘Boy!’ Carmody said. It was like a Mexican fireworks display in Chapultepec Park on Easter, and Carmody was sincerely impressed.

  Even as he watched, the glowing fragments fell to earth and were extinguished in an ocean that formed to receive them. Multicoloured streamers of smoke twisted and writhed around each other, and the deep waters hissed and turned into steam, which rose in strangely sculptured clouds and then dissolved into rain.

  ‘Hooee!’ Carmody cried.

  The rain fell slantingly, and there arose a wind which collected the descending waters and wove them together until wind and rain had intermingled and formed a vast tornado. Thick-trunked, black with silvery reflections, the tornado advanced upon Carmody to the rhythmic accompaniment of deafening thunderclaps.

  ‘Enough already!’ Carmody shrieked.

  When it had marched almost to his feet, the tornado dissolved, the wind and rain rushed skywards, the thunder diminished to an ominous rumble. A sound of bugles and psalteries could then be heard, and also the wail of bagpipes and the sweet moan of harps. Higher and higher the instrument
s pealed, a song of celebration and welcome not unlike the musical accompaniment to a really high-budget MGM historical movie in Cinemascope and Todd-AO, but better. And then there was a last burst of sound, light, colour, movement, and various other things, and then there was silence.

  Carmody had closed his eyes at the very end. He opened them now, just in time to see the sound, light, colour, movement, and various other things, turn into the heroic naked form of a man.

  ‘Hello,’ the man said. ‘I’m Melichrone. How did you like my entrance?’

  ‘I was overwhelmed,’ Carmody said in all sincerity.

  ‘Were you really?’ Melichrone asked. ‘I mean, really overwhelmed? I mean, more than just impressed? The truth now, and don’t spare my feelings.’

  ‘Really,’ Carmody said, ‘I was really overwhelmed.’

  ‘Well, that’s awfully nice,’ Melichrone said. ‘What you saw was a little Introduction to Myself that I worked out quite recently. I think – I really do think – that it says something about me, don’t you?’

  ‘It sure does!’ Carmody said. He was trying to see what Melichrone looked like; but the heroic figure in front of him was jet black, perfectly proportioned, and featureless. The only distinguishing characteristic was the voice, which was refined, anxious, and a little whiney.

  ‘It’s all absurd, of course,’ Melichrone said. ‘I mean, having a big introduction for oneself and all. But yet, it is – my planet. And if one can’t show off a bit on one’s own planet, where can one show off? Eh?’