by Mike Resnick
“Just call me Bullseye Max!”!” shouted Max with a laugh. “I never miss what I aim for!”
I had an urge to order the men’s room servo-mech to tell everyone whether Max always hit what he aimed for, but I was more interested in hearing the rest of the Gravedigger’s story, so I kept quiet.
Anyway (continued Gaines), I couldn’t find any sign of life … but I knew Mad Jesse’s skills, and I figured he was a little harder to kill than most men, so I decided to do a systematic search of the planet.
That’s when I found out that most of the men were still alive, and that they’d made their peace with the Pelopennes even if their officers hadn’t. At first I thought they were unwittingly laying the groundwork for another war, one that would be fought over all the Pelopenne women they’d accumulated, but then I learned that each Pelopenne female laid about ten thousand eggs a year, and that the larvae reached maturity in about five years, so no one was apt to mind a few hundred of them choosing to live with the former enemy.
As a matter of fact, the men had all pretty much decided to go back to human worlds, since it was a lot easier for their womenfolk to pass as humans than for them to pass as insects. Now that the war was now officially over, the Monarchy was preparing to rebuild the planet and throw all kinds of money at the Pelopennes. They were also willing to do just about any favors that were requested, which included transporting all the men and their lady friends to other worlds.
I checked each man as he left, and Jesse wasn’t among them. (It’s pretty hard to disguise yourself when you’re 400 pounds and have steel teeth and wear a patch over one eye.)
I found him a few days later, holed up in a cave halfway up a mountain, still wearing his sergeant’s uniform. I waited until he went out to gather some firewood and got the drop on him when he returned.
“Hi, Jesse,” I said, pointing my screecher right at him.
“Either shoot or get the hell out of my way,” he said without slowing his pace. “I got things to do.”
“Shut up and listen to me,” I said. “There’s a million-credit price on your head. I’ll make you the same proposition I make everyone I hunt down: pay me the million credits yourself and you can walk away a free man.”
“Some lawman!” he snorted contemptuously.
“I’m not a lawman,” I said. “I’m what you might call an independent contractor. My only loyalty is to whoever pays me. That could be you.”
“I ain’t got a million credits,” said Mad Jesse. “And if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you anyway.”
“You spent all the money you got for killing all those men and women?”
“Nobody paid me nothing,” he said. “I like killing people.”
“Well, that makes it kind of awkward,” I said. I looked around. “You got any partners here?”
“You mean those sniveling little turncoats?”
“Does that cover all the deserters, or just the ones you don’t like?”
“Both. I don’t like none of ’em.”
“What about a woman?”
“Don’t have much use for ’em,” said Jesse. “Besides, they shipped ’em all home months ago.”
“I mean a Pelopenne.”
“I hate bugs!” he exploded. “And I especially hate bugs that look like women!”
Well, I spent about half an hour with him, and at the end of that time I still didn’t know what he liked. He hated his fellow man, he hated women, he hated children, he hated the army, he hated the government, he hated aliens. He wasn’t real fond of dogs or cats or birds either.
I offered him a drink while I was trying to decide whether to kill him on the spot or take him back to stand trial. He took one sip, spit it out, and hurled my flask down the side of the mountain.
“I hate bad booze!” he bellowed.
“That was real Cygnian cognac!” I said.
“What do you know about taste, asshole?” he said.
It was a real dilemma. If I shot him where he was, I’d have to take him a third of the way across the galaxy to claim the reward, and he didn’t smell all that good now. On the other hand, if I took him back alive, I’d have to listen to him all the way, and I figured I couldn’t take much more than an hour before I killed him anyway.
And then the perfect solution occurred to me.
I got up, motioned him to enter the cave, and kept my screecher trained on him.
“Good-bye, Jesse,” I said.
He just stared at me uncomprehendingly.
“I’ve been a bounty hunter for most of my life. I deal with nothing but the scum of the galaxy—and I have to say that you are the most unpleasant man it’s ever been my displeasure to meet.”
“You ain’t gonna kill me?” he said.
“No.”
“Or take me back?”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I’ve come to the conclusion that the worst punishment you can undergo is to be stranded on a world populated by nothing but giant bugs who don’t like you any better than you like them. Before I leave I’ll tell them that you’re here, and I’ll make sure they know how dangerous you can be, so that they never wander anywhere near you alone or unarmed.”
“You can’t do this to me!” he bellowed. “What about your reward?”
“I’ve decided that the thought of you spending the rest of your life here is all the reward I want or need,” I said.
And it was.
“I just love stories of death and carnage!” enthused the Reverend Billy Karma. “They’re so religious, if you know what I mean.”
“Did you ever go back to see what had become of Mad Jesse?” asked Max.
The Gravedigger shook his head. “For all I know he’s still there, living off fruits and berries and eating an occasional grubworm for protein.” He smiled, which he didn’t do more than once a month or so. “At least, I like to think so.”
“I find it amazing that the three of you fought in the same war on the same side and never once met each other,” said the Bard.
“I didn’t fight in the war,” Gaines corrected him. “It was over by the time I got there.”
“How long did it last, start to finish?” asked the Bard.
“Too damned long,” said Max. “I’d like to get my hands on whoever thought up that particular war.” He paused thoughtfully. “It couldn’t have been General Bigelow. He wanted to leave worse than anyone.”
“Who knows?” said Little Mike Picasso with a shrug. “People have been thinking up wars for thousands of years now—and then getting other people to go off and fight them.”
“Which brings up an interesting question,” said Nicodemus Mayflower.
“Yeah?” said Little Mike. “And what question is that?”
“Who thought up the very first war?”
“Hell, who invents anything?” chimed in Catastrophe Baker. “There’s no way to know. Probably it was some caveman with a club.”
“That’s not really true,” said the Bard. “Most inventions are carefully recorded and documented.”
“Yeah?”
“Absolutely. Don’t take my word for it. Ask Einstein.”
“Ask him?” repeated Baker. “I don’t even know how to let him know I’m here, short of sticking a pin into him.”
“Just ask your question,” said Big Red, pulling out a pocket computer. “I’ll transmit it to him.”
“I don’t know what the hell to ask,” said Baker. He paused for a moment, then came up with a solution. “Have him tell us about some of the most important inventions.”
Big Red alternately whispered into his computer and tapped on its screen. A moment later Einstein’s computer started buzzing and whirring, and he quickly tapped in his answer.
“Well?” asked Baker as Big Red stared at his screen.
“A Domarian named Kabbis Koba invented eating three billion and twenty-seven years ago, at 9:15 on a Sunday morning,” replied Big Red. “It became wildly popular,
since people hadn’t really been able to figure out what to do with their mouths when they weren’t talking, and it quickly spread to other planets.” He paused, staring at the tiny screen. “Here’s another. Not only did Moses lead his people out of bondage to the Promised Land, but he also invented the very first dessert. Einstein’s a little vague on the recipe, but it seems to have involved figs, honey, and whipped cream.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard in a long lifetime of listening to stupid things in barrooms!” snorted Baker.
“Don’t be so sure of that,” said Argyle. “Just because your race doesn’t codify its history doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t.”
“What particular history have you got in mind?” demanded Baker pugnaciously.
“My own ancestor, Quillot Tariot III, invented the sneeze,” said Argyle proudly.
“You don’t invent something like a sneeze,” said Baker. “You just do it.”
“Well, someone had to do it first.”
“I don’t believe any of this.”
“Okay,” said Argyle. “Who do you think invented the sneeze?”
“How the hell should I know?” said Baker.
“Hah!” said Argyle triumphantly. “And I repeat: Hah!”
“That’s quite an accomplishment,” said Crazy Bull.
“Thank you,” said Argyle.
“Of course, our race invented both the pun and the double entendre, as well as the crude off-color remark.”
“And colors,” added Sitting Horse. “Don’t forget—we invented colors, too.”
“And a damned good thing we did,” said Crazy Bull. “You can’t imagine how dull the universe was before that. It looked exactly like a black-and-white holoscreen, only bigger.”
“It was still dull,” interjected Sahara del Rio. “Until my race invented singing.”
“Your race did that?” asked Crazy Bull, surprised.
“You want a demonstration?” she asked.
“Sure, why not?”
She promptly hit Q over high C, and shattered six of my crystal glasses.
“Well, maybe we didn’t invent singing,” said Hellfire Van Winkle, “but I’ll lay plenty of eight-to-five that we invented yodeling.”
“I wonder who invented gambling?” mused O’Grady. “That’s what makes life worth living.”
“Wait a minute,” said Big Red. “I’m getting another message from Einstein.”
We all waited until it finished scrolling across his screen.
“He says you’re all wrong, that singing and colors and gambling and even yodeling are all well and good, but there was only one invention that can truly be credited with making life worthwhile.”
Everyone fell silent, for Einstein was almost never wrong.
“Is he gonna tell us what it is?” asked Max.
“Yeah,” said Big Red, staring at the tiny screen. “It’s coming up now.”
The Greatest Invention
You know (began Einstein), God did lousy first drafts.
Consider the universe, for example—and we might as well consider it, since there isn’t anything else. It’s close to seventeen billion years old, give or take a couple of months, and yet it took almost fourteen billion years for life to develop anywhere.
And the first life forms weren’t exactly the type that would make you want to write home and brag about them. They were single-celled little creatures, invisible to the naked eye, which was probably all for the best since they were ugly as sin when you looked at them through a microscope.
Eventually they developed arms and legs and nostrils and things like that, and crawled out of the primeval ooze and onto dry land.
“Is he talking about Earth?” asked Sinderella. “I didn’t think Man was that old.”
“I’ll ask him,” said Big Red, tapping away.
You think Earth had a monopoly on primeval ooze (answered Einstein)?
As a matter of fact, the very first race to climb out of the muck and mire were the Beldorians of Danix VI. They were a humanoid race, and not without their admirable traits, although it was another billion years before any of them got around to inventing personal hygiene.
“He thinks personal hygiene is the greatest invention of all time?” said Three-Gun Max with a sardonic laugh.
If I’m interrupted once more, I’ll stop enlightening you and go back to my drink (said Einstein, who was frowning and staring right at Max with his sightless eyes).
As I was saying, the Beldorians were a humanoid race. To the uninitiated, they all seemed to have goiters in their armpits, but the trained observer would soon have deduced that the growths in question were actually Beldorian fetuses. That’s right: the Beldorians reproduced by budding.
And, need I add, their numbers were diminishing with each generation? I mean, who wants to walk around with an unborn child hanging from each armpit? Among other things, it really hinders your spear-throwing, and it almost guarantees that you’ll never invent basketball. Reproduction was a pain in the ass—or, to be more specific, in the armpit—and hardly anyone felt inclined to practice it.
It was when Iggloth, a Beldorian who had just come of age, accidentally rubbed up against his companion, Marlieth, while they were sleeping in a cave, that he suddenly discovered she was nice to touch. So he touched her again. She was a heavy sleeper, but eventually all the touching woke her up and she decided that she enjoyed it, and began reciprocating. In fact, they spent the next month doing nothing except eating an occasional sandwich and touching each other here and there.
Touching each other here was very pleasant, to be sure, but it was when they touched each other there that the results were electrifying. Later that day, when they ran out of sandwiches and had nothing else to do with their mouths, they invented kissing. It took them another seven years of trial and error to make it to the next step, but sure enough, they finally invented sex on a rainy autumn afternoon.
Of course, if it had stopped right there with the two of them, galactic history would have taken a different and considerably less interesting course. But the fact of the matter is that Barlotuth, Iggloth’s closest friend, stopped by one day to see if he’d like to go fishing.
“Go away,” muttered Iggloth. “I’m busy.”
“For how long?” asked Barlotuth, an accommodating fellow.
“Til a year from next Tuesday!” snapped Marlieth.
Up to that point Barlotuth hadn’t even known Marlieth was there, since the cave was quite dark, but now he squinted all five of his eyes and peered forward.
“What are you doing?” he asked curiously.
“We don’t have a word for it,” said Iggloth. “But it’s really nifty! You should try it.”
“It can’t be more fun than fishing!” said Barlotuth.
“Fine,” said Iggloth. “Go fishing and leave us alone.”
Barlotuth was about to answer when Marlieth suddenly started giggling louder and louder, ending in a happy (if ear-splitting) shriek.
“All right,” he said, turning and wandering away from the mouth of the cave. “If it’s that much fun, maybe I’ll give it a shot.”
And he did, and soon the word spread, and before long all the Beldorians were doing it. Now, nothing much came of the invention at first—after all, they were carrying these unborn babies under their arms—but mutation is a wonderful thing, and before long there weren’t any more budding babies, and sex became so popular that it immediately spread all across the galaxy to every sentient and non-sentient species, though I intuit that it never crossed the intergalactic void and that they still reproduce by budding in Andromeda.
Anyway, that’s how it happened, and if Iggloth and Marlieth were here now, I’m sure we’d all give them a standing ovation. And if they could stop touching each other long enough to pay attention—and doubtless Bet-a-World O’Grady can compute the odds on that—I’m equally certain they’d be justly proud of how enthusiastically everyone has taken to their invention.
In fact, now that I think of it, they not only invented sex, but they also invented mutation.
“I never knew that,” admitted Catastrophe Baker.
“The universe is filled with infinite mysteries,” chimed in Achmed of Alphard. “Strangely enough,” he added thoughtfully, “most of them can be discovered in bed with a member of the opposite sex.”
“And they don’t get much more opposite than women,” added Nicodemus Mayflower, staring admiringly at Sinderella.
“Just imagine,” continued Baker. “If it hadn’t been for them two Beldorians all those billions of years ago, I could look at Silicon Carny here and not feel a thing.”
“You’re not about to feel anything now,” she shot back. “Just keep your hands to yourself.”
Everyone laughed at that, none louder than Catastrophe Baker himself.
I checked the clock behind the bar. Ordinarily Reggie and I would start closing the place down in another half hour or so, but heroes need less sleep than most, and they all seemed to be in a talkative mood this particular night. Besides we had to keep an eye out for enemy ships, so I told Reggie to just keep serving them as long as they wanted.
Baker finished another drink, then walked over to Big Red. “Ask Einstein who invented God,” he said.
Big Red put the question to him, and got the answer back almost instantly.
“He says it’s still a point of some debate as to whether we invented God or He invented us.”
“Maybe a third party invented us and God,” offered Max, who could never leave well enough alone.
“Maybe Einstein ought to turn all of his brainpower to figuring it out,” suggested Baker.
Another brief pause, while Big Red waited for Einstein’s answer.
“He says he’d rather figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg.”
“Beats me,” admitted Baker. “But whichever it was, I take my hat off to the man who invented the frying pan.”
“You guys just don’t understand at all,” said the Reverend Billy Karma. “God invented everything. He just uses Men and aliens as His tools.”