‘Do you like it?’ Marundi asked.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Carmody said. ‘What on earth is it?’
‘It is a museum,’ Marundi told him. ‘It is the first museum of human waste.’
‘I see,’ Carmody said. ‘How has it been received?’
‘With great enthusiasm, to my amazement. I mean, we artists and intellectuals knew it was good, but we didn’t think the public at large would catch on so fast. But they have. In this regard they have displayed innate good taste and have recognized this is the only true art of our times.’
‘Do they? I, personally, find all of this a little hard to take.’
Marundi looked at him with sorrow. ‘I had not thought that you of all people would be an aesthetic reactionary. What would you like? Greek statuary or Byzantine icons, perhaps?’
‘Certainly not. But why this?’
‘Because this, Carmody, is the real present, upon which true art must be constructed. We consume, therefore we are! But men have been unwilling to face this vital fact. They have turned away from Garbage, that irreducible residue of our pleasures. Yet consider – what is waste? Is it not a memorial to our needs? Waste not, want not: this was the ancient counsel of anal anxiety. But now the false axiom has been changed. Why talk about waste? Indeed! Why talk about sex, or virtue, or any other important thing?’
‘It sounds reasonable when you put it that way,’ Carmody said. ‘But still …’
‘Come with me, observe, learn,’ Marundi said. ‘The concept grows on you, very much like waste itself.’
They walked into the Extraneous Noises Room. Here Carmody listened to the sound of a continually flushing toilet, the musical pageant of traffic noises, the thrilling screech of an accident, the deep-throated roar of a mob. Mingled with this were Retrospective Sounds: the burr of a piston aircraft, the chatter of a riveting gun, the strong thud of a jackhammer. Past that was the Sonic Boom Room, which Carmody hastily backed out of.
‘Quite right,’ Marundi said. ‘It is dangerous. But a lot of people come here, and some stay in this room for five or six hours.’
‘Huh,’ said Carmody.
‘Perhaps,’ Marundi said. ‘Now, right over here is the keynote sound of our exhibition: the beloved bellow of a rubbish truck chewing up rubbish. Nice, eh? And right through here is an exhibition of empty pint wine bottles. Over there is a replica of a subway. It is built to convey every lurch, and its aerial environment is smoke-conditioned by Westinghouse.’
‘What’s that shouting?’ Carmody asked.
‘A tape of heroic voices,’ Marundi said. ‘That first one is Ed Brun, all-pro quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. The next, a high-pitched whine, is a sound-portrait of New York’s most recent mayor. And after that –’
‘Let’s go on,’ Carmody said.
‘Certainly. To the right is the Graffiti wing. To the left is an exact replica of an old-law tenement (a spurious bit of romanticism, to my way of thinking). Straight ahead you can see our collection of television antennas. This one is a British model, circa 1960. Note the severity, the restraint. Compare it to that 1959 Cambodian job. Do you see the luxuriant flowing of lines on the Oriental model? That is popular art expressing itself in a viable form.’
Marundi turned to Carmody and said earnestly, ‘See and believe, my friend. This is the wave of the future. Once upon a time men resisted the implications of actuality. That day is gone. We know now that art is the thing itself together with its extensions into superfluity. Not pop art, I hasten to say, which sneers and exaggerates. This is popular art, which simply exists. This is the age in which we unconditionally accept the unacceptable, and thus proclaim the naturalness of our artificiality.’
‘I don’t like it!’ Carmody said. ‘Seethwright!’
‘What are you shouting for?’ Marundi asked him.
‘Seethwright! Seethwright! Get me the hell out of here!’
‘He’s flipped,’ Marundi said. ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’
Immediately a short swarthy man in a one-piece jumpsuit appeared. The man was carrying a little black bag with a silver plaque on it, upon which was written, ‘Little Black Bag.’
‘I am a physician,’ the physician said. ‘Let me see him.’
‘Seethwright! Where in hell are you?’
‘Hmmmmmm, I see,’ the doctor said. ‘This man shows every sign of acute hallucinatory deprivation. Hmm. Yes, I palpate the head and find a hard massy growth. That much is normal. But going beyond that … hmm, amazing. The poor man is literally starved for illusion.’
‘Doc, can you help him?’ Marundi asked.
‘You called me just in time,’ the doctor said. ‘The condition is reversible. I have here the divine panacea.’
‘Seethwright!’
The doctor drew a case out of his Little Black Bag and fitted together a glittering hypodermic. ‘This is the standard booster,’ he said to Carmody. ‘Nothing to worry about, it wouldn’t hurt a child. It contains a highly pleasing mixture of LSD, barbiturates, amphetamines, tranquillizers, psychic lifts, mood stimulators, and various other good things. And just a touch of arsenic to make your hair glossy. Hold still now …’
‘Damn you, Seethwright! Get me out of this!’
‘It only hurts while the pain is present,’ the doctor assured him, poised the hypodermic and thrust home.
At the same moment, or nearly the same moment, Carmody disappeared.
There was consternation and confusion in the Castle, which was not resolved until everyone had fixed. Then it was passed over with Olympian calm. As for Carmody, a priest intoned the words: ‘Superfluous man, goest thou now to that great realm of the Extraneous in the sky, where there is place for all unnecessary things.’
But Carmody himself, propelled by the faithful Seeth-wright, plunged onward through the endless worlds. He moved in a direction best characterized as ‘down,’ through the myriad potentialities of Earth, and into the clustered improbabilities, and finally into the serried ranges of the constructed impossibilities.
The Prize chided him, saying, ‘That was your own world that you abandoned, Carmody! Are you aware of that?’
‘Yes, I am aware of it,’ Carmody said.
‘And now there can be no return.’
‘I am aware of that, too.’
‘I suppose you thought you’d find some gaudy utopia in the worlds ahead?’ the Prize said; with a marked sneer.
‘No, not exactly.’
‘What then?’
Carmody shook his head and refused to answer.
‘Whatever it was, you can forget about it,’ the Prize said bitterly. ‘Your predator is close behind you and will infallibly be your death.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Carmody said, in a moment of strange calm. ‘But in terms of long-range planning, I never did expect to get out of this Universe alive.’
‘That is meaningless,’ the Prize said. ‘The fact is, you have lost everything.’
‘I don’t agree,’ Carmody said. ‘Permit me to point out that I am presently still alive.’
‘Agreed. But only for the moment.’
‘I have always been alive only for the moment,’ Carmody said. ‘I could never count on more. It was my error to expect more. That holds true, I believe, for all of my possible and potential circumstances.’
‘Then what do you hope to achieve with your moment?’
‘Nothing,’ Carmody said. ‘Everything.’
‘I don’t understand you any longer,’ the Prize said.
‘Something about you has changed, Carmody. What is it?’
‘A minor thing,’ Carmody told him. ‘I have simply given up a longevity which I never possessed anyhow. I have turned away from the con game which the Gods run in their heavenly sideshow. I no longer care under which shell the pea of immortality might be found. I don’t need it. I have my moment, which is quite enough.’
‘Saint Carmody!’ the Prize said, in tones of deepest sarcasm. ‘No more than a sha
dow’s breadth separates you and death! What will you do now with your pitiable moment?’
‘I shall continue to live it,’ Carmody said. ‘That is what moments are for.’
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1968 by Robert Sheckley
ISBN 978-1-4804-9690-3
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Dimension of Miracles Page 16