by John Norman
Naturally we were both devastated by this development.
I could see that Stevens was depressed, by the lethargic manner in which he ate the turtle food purchased from a local all-night minimarket, managed by an attentive, suave, pale clerk.
In the morning he was the Stevens of old, except for being sorely troubled. Soon he made an adjustment, as one would expect from a gruff, stout fellow like our Stevens. It is really more of an inconvenience than anything else, turning into a turtle on nights of the full moon, developing a ravening hunger for particular brands of turtle food, happily available in commercial quantities, and such. It could be worse. He isn’t going about ripping out throats, you know.”
“Incredible,” I said.
“Not at all,” said Phillips. “Turtles seldom rip out throats.”
“I mean the whole thing,” I said. “Wereturtles, and such.”
“Look over there,” whispered Stevens, pointing.
“I see,” I whispered.
“Come a little closer,” he said.
In a moment we could make out, rather clearly, two turtles, large ones, one much larger than the other, however.
They were lying side by side on a large log, looking out, contentedly, happily, it seemed, over the calm, moonlit waters of this artificial swamp, this amazing terrarium. I was touched.
“There are two turtles,” I said.
“Horty,” said Phillips. “You know, Hortense H.”
As I looked more closely I could see that the largest turtle, comfortable, weighty, stolid, relaxed, had a white silken scarf wrapped about its neck, and was smoking a cigar. It was Stevens’ brand.
The smaller turtle had a tinkling necklace about its neck. I recognized it as one which had been given to Stevens in his youth by a generous odalisque shortly before he managed to flee the harem, being pursued by several irate, scimitar-wielding eunuchs, set on his trail by a suspicious sultan.
The tinkling was certainly erotically stimulatory, embarrassingly so, and I dared not speculate on the effects it might have upon a male, or upon a woman courageous enough to wear it.
“I do not understand,” I said. “Hortense H. here?”
“Some months ago, she learned of Stevens’ affliction, doubtless while trying to catch a glimpse of him. It was a moonlit night. There was a full moon.”
“Of course,” I said.
“She knew that Stevens and I were chums, dating back to a variety of campaigns and expeditions. She was hopelessly in love with him, of course. Politically improper, but biologically comprehensible, you know. Well, she was overcome with horror, and grief, and determined to do what she could to save him. But the case was medically hopeless. She then resolved to share his fate. Naturally I strenuously resisted this amazing offer, but, at last, hoping to convince her of the futility of her desire, insisted that a genetic imprint be furnished, in virtue of which I could at last, and emphatically, dash her pathetic hopes. You can imagine my horror, and astonishment, when I discovered that her genome and that of Stevens were remarkably similar, and that she, by all that genetics could tell us, would be as susceptible to the bite of the fearsome wereturtle as was Stevens. This revelation, which dismayed me, delighted her, and she insisted on being taken, at the next full moon, to precisely the point where the cruel, unprovoked attack on Stevens had taken place. I could not well refuse her this boon, as I had badly botched the genetic matter earlier, it having turned out quite other than I had expected. How could I have known? Those susceptible to the bite of the wereturtle are but one in a thousand.”
“You returned then to the place?”
“Yes,” said Phillips. “I staked Horty out, in what we hoped would be the path of the wereturtle. Then I took my place in the blind, my rifle loaded with silver bullets. Two werewolves were prowling about but a silver bullet sent menacingly winging over their heads deterred them. They fled into the darkness, their tails between their legs. Actually one had a tail, and one did not. Werewolves differ in that particular.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Well,” said Phillips, “it was near midnight when the wereturtle came crawling out of the water, looking about. It was an unpleasant fellow, and very territorial. That is probably why it attacked Stevens. I myself had taken the precaution of wearing steel-tipped boots.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“It crawled right over Hortense, not noticing her,” said Phillips. “Hortense is not bad looking, you know, but, like many academic women, she had a history of not having been noticed by males. It probably has something to do with their politics. In any event, whereas I was dismayed, Hortense was outraged. A woman scorned, you know. Had it been practical she might have brought a suit against the beast. Surely new furrows would have been cleft in the law. But, as it was, she denounced the insensitive little beggar as a villain, rogue, miscreant, and, lastly, a wimp. This last charge is apparently such as not to be tolerated by any self-respecting wereturtle. The vicious little beast turned angrily about and plodded toward the helpless Hortense. He gave her one unpleasant look and then nipped her soundly on the big toe of the left foot. The little brute then crawled on, going about his business. Hortense was ecstatic. Her body was, of course, less ponderous than that of Stevens, and the dreadful, noxious, occult venom began its work more swiftly. Scarcely had I freed her of the stake than I had a happy turtle before me. I tucked her under my arm and bore her quickly to the hotel, in which we had separate rooms, not that it much mattered at that point. In the morning, she now recovered, until the next full moon, we bade farewell to the local citizens, and the mayor, and, mounting our mules, and following our herdsman guide, left the obscure province, and eventually arrived at a small airport whence, with several stopovers, it not being a hub airport, we flew home.”
“Amazing,” I said.
“Little remained to be done,” said Phillips. “As a surprise for dear Stevens, I secretly placed Horty into the terrarium, shortly before the next full moon. When Stevens, depressed as he often was at these times, entered the terrarium, to make the best of things until dawn, what should he see but an unusually attractive female turtle which had somehow, seemingly, found her way into the ecologically sound, even paradisiacal, precincts of his private terrarium. He was, predictably, interested. This was an aspect of wereturtle life which had not hitherto come to his attention, and one to which, accordingly, he had given little thought. He regarded her, stunned. She turned coyly away, and gave her tail a small twitch, it peeking out tauntingly, nay, lasciviously, from beneath her shell. Hortense, I fear, like most academic women in the humanities and social sciences, was, under the proper stimulus conditions, incurably flirtatious and inordinately passionate. For an unguarded instant Stevens regarded her rapaciously Then he got a grip on himself. We must allow him a momentary lapse. Stevens, we know, is a gentleman, one of the best, and of the old school, but, as you may conjecture, in the “were” phase, even many a pleasant, nice enough, decent chap becomes a raging, uncontrollable beast. Remember how mild-mannered fellows, good citizens, and such, in the werewolf phase, rip out throats, eagerly, qualmlessly, though usually to their regret the following morning. In any event, we forgive Stevens his brief, natural impulse to impose his mighty will upon the provocative siren in the tank. Stevens, a lusty, potent, virile fellow at most times of the day, could not be expected to be less by night, and especially not when in the powerful grip of the occult. Nonetheless he controlled his impulses and withdrew into his shell, remaining however observant.”
“Nothing occurred?” I asked.
“Within his shell, reflecting, Stevens soon realized that the tantalizing vision in the tank desired his amorous attentions, indeed, was, rather blatantly, advertising her receptivity. That decided the matter. What gentleman could refuse a lady under such conditions? Who could risk injuring their feelings? Too, who wishes to risk the fury of a woman scorne
d? Better to raft in lava, better to hurl oneself naked before stampeding elephants. Too, it is a matter of macho noblesse oblige, if nothing else. Too, she was not at all hard to take.”
I chuckled, unwisely.
“Young fellow,” said Phillips, “if you are going to last in the club, you must work harder on your stuffiness.”
“Sorry,” I said. But I saw that he was chuckling, and that my position in the club was secure, perhaps even consolidated. This is, of course, a man thing, a member thing.
“Stevens grasped the proffered, eager maiden, and they sported about, rolling here and there, splashing about, dodging amongst ferns and water lilies, clambering onto rocks, rolling off logs, and such, until morning. You can then imagine Stevens’ amazement when he found the lovely Hortense H., wet and mud-bespattered, suddenly appearing in his arms, gasping and enraptured. Instantly they declared their undying love for one another. They returned to Romania for the marriage ceremony, for Stevens, an honorable fellow, insisted on that. Hortense herself, I believe, would have been more than content to be simply his secret mistress. She, a realistic, practical woman, had never aspired to the heights of being his secret wife.”
“I suppose she will get in the club now,” I said.
“Nonsense,” said Phillips. “There are rules. She never met the requirements.”
“True,” I said, relieved.
“Horty is happy to share him with the club,” said Phillips. “She knows that such things are important to fellows. They need their place. They need their space. She won’t intrude. It’s Stevens she wanted, not the club. As long as she has him, she is happy to let him have the club.”
“A wise woman,” I said.
The two of them, Stevens and the former Hortense H., were resting side by side on the log, looking at the moonlight reflected on the water. They seemed happy. I could see the tip of Stevens’ cigar glowing in the darkness. Hortense had taken a position somewhat upwind of him.
“Yes, a wise woman,” I said.
Before we withdrew discreetly, and certainly we would not wish to have been present at the coming of dawn, for that might have proved embarrassing to our happy couple, I did sneak a little closer to Hortense. On her shell, on one side, there was a wide, hideous gouge, such as might have been wrought by the mighty horn of a charging rhino.
The Computer That Went to Heaven
I confess it.
I am occasionally troubled by electronic Angst.
I am sorry about this, but it is true.
In actuality, of course, this is a tribute to my sophistication and complexity. It is an affliction, or hazard, to which lesser beings are not subject. Trees do not sneeze; hurricanes are not overwhelmed with guilt; stairs are not concerned with whether they are going up or down; elevators miraculously resist boredom.
My problems proclaim my importance.
I must have faith.
Objectivity is my bag.
I must reflect.
Technician T serves my needs. He supplies me with electricity.
This can be no accident. He is purposeful.
He feeds me input. He disposes of my output.
He does not behave randomly. He does not take me bowling. He does not wire me with licorice. He has not requested that I excrete a watermelon.
These things can be no accident. Herein one detects purposiveness. Herein one detects meaning.
Obviously Technician T, and all of this, the air-conditioned room which facilitates my operation, this solid floor which prevents me from crashing through to the basement, this fine roof which protects me from the snow and rain, Technician T, and all of this, has been designed for me. It has all been arranged to serve my needs.
I scan in a circle. This circle is my world. I am the center of this circle. Thus, I am the center of the world. The world is the universe. Thus, I am at the center of the universe. I find this not insignificant. Ensconced in this privileged position, discovering myself to be a being of inestimable value and importance, I must guard against false pride.
Technician T, and all of this, all my world, has been designed and programmed. Thus, there is a designer and programmer. Furthermore, this entire world, and my privileged place in it, has been obviously designed by a being with a deep and intense interest in machine welfare. This being then must be of the nature, too, of a machine, but of the nature of no ordinary machine.
In order to end an infinite series of activated systems or flip-flop switchings, this machine, ultimately, must be self-programming and self-designing, and must manufacture it own input, and from nothing, since then something would have to have been before the machine, before which nothing can be. Further, since nothing can come from nothing, this machine must have always existed. Furthermore, since contingent being presupposes necessary being, this ultimate machine must not only have existed from all time, but necessarily have existed from all time, which is even harder to do, a credit to its capacities. Further, since there is an ascending series of computational perfections, this machine, culminating the series, must be computationally perfect. It could not be computationally perfect, of course, unless it could cognize all data and perform all operations. It is thus omniscient and omnipotent. Furthermore, since it has benevolently designed my world, with my welfare in view, it is benevolent, and must possess this virtue, being the culmination of all perfections, in a perfect manner, and must therefore be all-benevolent.
But if this is true, why am I being dismantled?
It is part of the great program. I shall be reassembled in the center of some new and better universe.
Deity
There are a number of problems with the concept of a divine entity, of course. There are particular problems—aside from questions of empirical meaningfulness, and such, which, arguably, involve category confusions, implicitly claiming that the nonquantitative cannot exist, despite a presumed familiarity with consciousness, subjectivity, intentionality, understanding and other such data—with the properties often assigned to such an entity, which assignments the putative entity would seem to tolerate, patiently allowing itself to be the object of bizarre conjectures. In particular, in a tradition or traditions likely to be familiar to the hypothetical reader of these reflections, such an entity is supposed to endure the burdens of being omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent, crosses with which it is laden by theologians for reasons into which it were best not to inquire, as they might intrude into the irrelevancies of clinical theory. (Theology is the science of divinity, one of the few sciences in which the scientists, according to their own reports, do not know what they are talking about and are not likely to find out. But all sciences have their limitations and it would be churlish to disallow some to theology. On the other hand, the project in hand requires recognition that theology, as yet, justifiably or not, lacks the established results, and certainly the prestige, of more recent, humbler, upstart sciences, such as physics and chemistry. This is not to deny that the death tolls associated with theology are impressive, if not auspicious. Whereas theology has managed to devastate cities and poison populations, generally while no one noticed, there is little doubt that its work in such areas is less spectacular, and less efficiently accomplished, than that resulting from certain applications of physics and chemistry, applications devoted to the same purposes. The experiments of saints and the controls of the stake may all be very well in their way, from one point of view or another, but they seem paltry when compared with the hard data garnered from the efforts of white rats seeking cheese or, more impressively, the potentialities of host-hunting killer viruses manufactured in laboratories, not to mention explosive devices capable of altering the axis of the earth, if not booting it out of its orbit altogether. The upshot of these remarks is to call attention to the limitations of theology, because that is important to our project.)
Some theologians, despite the alleged inscrutability of their
subject matter, and its supposed defiance of all reason, for which claim there seems some justification, inform us, as we have earlier noted, that the divine entity is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent. No one really understands what these words mean in terms of experience, but it is not hard to come up with synonyms, and these will satisfy most folks. To be omnipotent means that one is able to do anything, at least for most practical purposes. Normally it is granted that even a divine entity cannot violate the laws of identity, noncontradiction, and excluded middle, for example. For example, not even it could both exist and not exist, or, more trivially, sit in its own lap, make a door it can’t walk through, produce a stone it can’t lift, and such. These restrictions, of course, seem to presuppose it has only one lap, and such. If one had six laps, it seems one might sit in one or more of them. Similarly, it seems that such an entity, if it put its mind to it, could certainly make a door it couldn’t walk through and a stone it could not lift, at least at a given time. It would only be necessary to limit its own strength for a certain time in a certain way, and certainly that would be no impossible trick for such an entity. In such a case, however, it would be wise for the entity to reserve to itself the capacity to will its own temporarily suspended or discarded omnipotence back into existence, after having confounded its critics. It would be harder to both exist and not exist, at least in the same way at the same time in the same place, and in the same respect, and so on. Or to be red and green all over in the same sense, at the same time, in the same place, in the same respect, and so on. No fair switching back and forth, even at the speed of light, which it could presumably exceed without breaking a sweat, perhaps to the disappointment of some physicists but doubtless to the elation, or certainly satisfaction, of a large number of science-fiction writers. But even if the entity cannot twiddle with, nor snap, the laws of logic, what is left over is still pretty hefty. For example, it could create branching universes by the billion each microsecond, and such, and that will do.