The Cosmic Perspective and Other Black Comedies

by Brian Stableford

  But Murphy only said all that to show what a sensible and level-headed kind of a guy he was, because he sure as hell didn’t believe that he’d been zapped by any mega-feelie-machine or any other kind of soul-wrenching glamour. He believed he’d really been to that fabulous world, and spent a long time there...maybe a hundred or a thousand years. But he didn’t age, of course; all the time he was as high as a kite he was bathing in the elixir of life, drinking his fill from the authentic Holy Grail.

  And then, on a day like any other, while he was just as full of the joy of being as he had ever been, he suddenly found himself stepping into a big grey puddle, which just opened up before him like a crack in space, and he found himself right back on Daydrum, fully dressed, with a needle-gun in his belt and a feelie-machine clutched in his arms.

  He didn’t have a hangover, but he was down. He was all the way down, just like that.

  * * * * * * *

  Murphy found that the shelter which he had built for himself was still in place, with a little fire burning outside it, where the local witch-doctor was carefully frying half a dozen big pink maggots. Murphy was just in time for tea; they were done to a turn. They really smelled good, and they tasted delicious, but they weren’t at all intoxicating.

  “Well,” said the witch-doctor, when they’d both eaten their fill. “How does it feel to be a searcher now?”

  Murphy said that he regretted not knowing the local word for smartarse, but that he did his best to improvise an untranslatable aphorism that carried the approximate sense of what he wanted to say. It ran along the lines of: People who’ve never been away from home shouldn’t ask those who have what it feels like to come back, because they couldn’t possibly understand the answer.

  One of his ancestors, Murphy said, had tried to make an honest living coining proverbs, but had always lived below the poverty line because there wasn’t enough demand for his products, and no one really appreciated their true worth.

  Murphy was not unduly surprised when the witch-doctor told him that he had been away less than a day, and maybe no more than half an hour. He was quite glad that he hadn’t come back after a hundred or a thousand years, although that would certainly have been more spectacular, because if he had to resume normal life at all, it was best to do so with the minimum of temporal inconvenience.

  The next day, the governor’s heavy mob arrived, shooting up the jungle as they came just to show that they were around. Mercifully, the witch-doctor had warned his tribe to decamp and hide out for a bit, so nobody got hurt except a few scaly apes with cunning crocodile faces.

  “Hi, Murphy,” said the squad-commander, who was obviously fresh from a compulsory soul-searching stint in the confession-chamber. “We got the message. Show us the goods.” Hegemony squad-commanders aren’t the type to mess about with small-talk, or to share a little fried maggot in the interests of being sociable, even when the haven’t spent the last week being bored out of their skulls in the cause of wholesome self-deprivation.

  Murphy sighed, and dutifully reset the numbers on his feelie-machine to the magical sequence that had made the d-gate appear. “You’d better get ready for a surprise, my friend,” he said, “because this is like nothing you ever dreamed of.”

  Nothing happened.

  That didn’t particularly surprise Murphy, who was already beginning to remember how the people on the world that was on the other side of the d-gate had never called themselves by the same name twice running. Maybe, he thought, it was really their d-gate, and would never respond to the same glamour-debuggery twice running. He tried to explain this to the squad commander, but the squad commander—after the usual fashion of Hegemony squad commanders—was not a very patient or understanding man. The squad-commander looked down at Murphy as if he were some kind of subhum, and then looked pointedly at his timertattoo, to emphasize that he was a man with better things to do than hang around in the jungle, and had an urgent desire to get on with them.

  “All that we need to do,” said Murphy, “is set up the feelie-machine again, and let it run through its entire repertoire of Open sesames. One of them will surely work, now that we know for certain that there really is a d-gate here.”

  Even a guy who thinks with his prick can follow an argument as simple as that one, so the squad-commander agreed to wait a while, although he made some very doleful and resentful comments about the indignities of hanging about in a rainy jungle with nothing but grubs to eat. In the meantime, he sent his boys out on an initiative test to see who could fell the most trees, using only a laser-gun, a batch of plasmatic grenades and a serrated knife.

  Unfortunately, Occam’s razor cuts both ways, and when Murphy’s feelie-machine had run through the entire gamut of its glamour-debuggery signals—which took the best part of a week—the squad-commander quickly leapt to the conclusion that there could not possibly be a d-gate nearby, and that Murphy was talking through his asshole.

  When Murphy tried to explain precisely what had happened to him on the far side of the gate, the squad-commander’s confidence in his low estimation of Murphy’s worth as a human being grew by leaps and bounds. Everyone knows, after all, that the universe is a thoroughly rotten place from one galactic pole to the next, that two-sexed races are the only kind that evolution has ever fully endorsed, and that anyone who claims to have had a thousand-year holiday when he’s only been away a few hours has to be utterly, thoroughly and absolutely gaga.

  The tough guys took Murphy back to the civilized enclave, and let him make his explanations to the governor. The governor was pleased to have the opportunity to have his own opinions about the non-existence of a d-gate conclusively proven. Murphy reluctantly admitted that he must, after all, have dreamed the whole thing, and that the governor had been very wise to disregard the silly rumors.

  Because Murphy proved so very reasonable in this matter, certain idle talk that went around the governor’s mansion regarding the possibility of levying a fine for bringing out the heavy mob on a false alarm was allowed to fade away. Even so, Murphy left Daydrum with some alacrity, just as soon as his ship was ready to lift.

  * * * * * * *

  By the time Murphy told the story to me, years had passed. I was flattered, in a way, that he chose to tell it to me, because it was obviously an item of personal history that still pained him more than a little. He’d bottled it up inside himself for long enough, though, and he trusts me better than he trusts anyone else in the Nine Empires. Traders don’t have many friends, you see, and that makes them appreciate the value of a sympathetically-educated ear like mine.

  “It sounds to me,” I told him, when he’d spilled it all out, “that you found your Holy Grail, at least for a while. Maybe you lost it again, but that still leaves you one up on the rest of us—and that’s not what I’d call an unlucky man.”

  “Well,” he said, “I’ve tried thinking about it that way myself. I’ve also considered going back to Daydrum, to let my feelie-machine run through its repertoire again and again and again, until the day comes when the d-gate decides once again to give itself a name which is in that particular vocabulary. But somehow, I can’t get rid of the nasty suspicion that if I went through it a second time I might end up somewhere very different, and much nastier.

  “That old witch-doctor was wrong, you see—the kind of man who searches for things, restlessly and relentlessly, never betrays himself simply by finding what it is he’s looking for. It’s just that the universe can always find a way to poke him in the eye with a very sharp stick, and can’t resist doing it. I’m looking for something else, now. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t suppose I’ll know when I find it—and if I ever do find it, I expect it’ll be taken away from me by some cruel twist of fate, but I’m looking for it anyway, because that’s the kind of guy I am.”

  “Aren’t we all?” I said—but I didn’t mean it.

  I haven’t seen Murphy for a while, but I expect him back any day now, with another tale to tell. He’ll be its hero
, of course, and I’ll lay odds that he’ll have done something more peculiar and more wonderful than anyone else in the known universe ever has—because that’s kind of guy he is: a twenty-two carat misfit.

  Will I believe him?

  Damn right I’ll believe him. A guy who only serves the drinks has no right even to speculate about whether the hero he’s talking to might be a liar.

  Now go serve the guy in the fancy armor—and if he takes it into his head to tell you how he got the better of fifty dragrunts when the rest of his platoon had been wiped out to a man, just smile at him very politely and nod your head. Treat him with respect, and give him all the sympathy he needs—but whatever else you do, don’t give the sucker a drink on the house. Save that kind of thing for somebody who deserves it.

  BRIEF ENCOUNTER

  IN THE SMOKING AREA

  The train from London was eleven minutes late reaching Reading because of signaling problems at Slough. It lost a further twelve minutes between Didcot and Oxford because of emergency work on the track and a further seven thereafter for no discernible reason.

  By the time he had to change, Martin’s connection—which had run exactly to time—had gone. He had forty minutes to wait, in the December cold and early evening darkness. The buffet on the northbound platform was still open, but the inexorable progress of health fascism had reduced the smoking area to a single corner booth. All the other tables were empty, but the smoking area was occupied by a middle-aged woman whose tremulous right hand was trying to steady a Silk Cut while her left idly agitated her coffee with a plastic stirrer.

  Martin had no alternative but to take his own coffee and sit down opposite her. It was not until he had taken the first avid drag from his Marlborough that he was able to speak. “Filthy habit,” he said, apologetically. “Trying to give it up.”

  “Me too,” she said, colorlessly. She wasn’t looking at him. She probably wished that he wasn’t there. He didn’t mind her being there. Fate had thrust them together, and that was that. He figured that he might as well make the best of it. If she’d been younger, or slimmer...but she was probably thinking the same about him. He was probably no older than she was, although common wisdom held that the fifties were always slightly kinder to men than to women. In his case, alas, slightly was the operative word.

  “Absurd, isn’t it?” Martin said, figuring that speech was slightly less embarrassing than silence. “The only two people in the place and we have to sit together, because we’re smokers.” As he pronounced the last word he brought his forefingers together, as if to form a vampire-deterrent cross, but he made a mess of it and the lighted tip of the Marlborough touched the knuckle of the middle finger of his left hand. It wasn’t very painful—no worse than the sting of a dispirited Autumn wasp—but it was one more item to add to the list of the day’s indignities.

  “Gets worse all the time,” she said, wearily. “We’ll have to carry bells soon, and shout unclean whenever we come into a room.” She still wasn’t looking at him.

  “Funny how things change,” he said. “It’s not as if I’ve never been a pariah before, but it was never this bad. I was in the navy once—long time ago—and picked up a bit of a reputation as a Jonah. Not that any of my ships ever sank, you understand. It was just trivial stuff—breakages, bad bets, always getting found out. The lads could give a man hell about stuff like that, though—all jokes on the surface, but underneath they really did shy away, as if there were some invisible cordon sanitaire...but smoking worked the other way in those days. You offered a man a fag, and the barrier dissolved. Everybody did it. It brought people together. Know what I mean?” He lit up again as he said it.

  The woman shook her head slightly. Slightly was the operative word, because she was concentrating on bringing her trembling hand to her lips so that she could take the first drag from her newly-lit Silk Cut. She didn’t need a moving target to add to the difficulty.

  “No—well, you’ve never been in the navy. Never been divorced either, I suppose. I have. Twice—but not recently. Same thing, in a way. Couples begin to avoid you. It’s not because they’re afraid you might start making passes at the wives. It’s because they have this superstitious fear that it might somehow be infectious: the foul contagion of marital discord. Smoking could break that down too, sometimes. You offered a man a fag and it created a bond between you, even if you were out and he was in—reminded you both that there were things in the world besides women. Wouldn’t work nowadays, though. Offer a husband a conspiratorial coffin-nail and he’d probably look at you as if you were the serpent in Eden. Know what I mean?”

  She shook her head again, a little more vigorously. She was expelling smoke from a mouth puckered like a parodic kiss, and the smoke formed a surprisingly graceful arc.

  Martin lit up again. “No—well, you’re not a man. Probably different for women. Different rituals, different sanctions.”

  Martin paused to wonder what a female equivalent might be, but after he’d considered obesity and self-mutilation he decided that even if he could find a better parallel it would be less than diplomatic to bring the matter up. Men weren’t supposed to notice the ways in which women stigmatized one another—which was okay by him. If he’d had a better understanding of the reasons women had for deciding to dislike and shun one another, he might not be on his third marriage. A third example taken from his own long and bitter experience might do the trick, but the only one that came to mind immediately was that business with the genital herpes, and he certainly couldn’t mention that to a stranger. He finished the Marlborough while he was still wondering, then reached for the pack again.

  “Well,” he said, “it’s bad, that’s all I’m saying. People shouldn’t treat us that way just because we’re addicted. It’s our lungs, after all. They should be a little more sympathetic.”

  He had got through three more Marlboroughs before the next northbound train pulled in, and the woman had smoked three more Silk Cuts, but they both left their coffee cups half-full.

  The woman would probably have gone to the other end of the train if she’d been able to, but there was only one smoking compartment and even that was only half a compartment, partitioned off from the rest. They didn’t have to sit opposite one another, but because there was only an aisle between them they could hardly avoid the consciousness of one another’s presence. There were no other passengers in the smoking area, and only a handful in the larger part of the carriage.

  “I knew a woman once who had a nervous breakdown,” Martin said, thinking that it would probably be better not to mention that the woman had been his sister, given what some people thought about madness running in families. “She was hospitalized for a while. Everybody smoked on the ward. All the visitors were nervous of the other patients, because we all knew that there were schizophrenics on the ward and people with paranoid delusions—you’d think they’d keep them separate, but they don’t. Nowadays, even with all the stabbings, most people would probably be more disgusted because they were smokers than because they were schizos. She gave it up after she got out, though—the woman I knew, I mean.”

  “I’m trying to give it up myself,” the woman said. “It’s a filthy habit.”

  “I know what you mean,” Martin said. “Me too. It’s just that sometimes, it’s the only thing that gets me through the day. I could kick the habit, but days like today...sometimes, you just need it, no matter what it costs. Know what I mean?”

  The woman shook her head, but her face was turned towards the window and it was as if the gesture were aimed at her own reflection.

  The woman seemed grateful when her stop arrived—and even more grateful when she realized that Martin had to travel on into the darkness. She was only thinking of herself—she had no sympathy to spare for him. Martin watched her from the window as she paused on the platform to light up another Silk Cut. Her hand was shivering more than it had before, because of the biting wind, but she managed to shield the lighter flame with her cupped han
d and her avid lips grabbed the cancer-stick from her unsteady fingers.

  Martin lit another Marlborough.

  “You have to have something in life that you can depend on,” he murmured. “You have to have something that gets you through, no matter what it costs. You can shake your head as much as you like, but you know exactly what I mean. We’re two of a kind, you and I. Twin souls.”

  The last phrase was still echoing in his mind as he put his key into the lock on his front door, and he couldn’t help but wonder whether it might be echoing in hers.

  They were, after all, two of a kind.

  Twin souls.

  FANS FROM HELL

  Carlsen hated doing signing sessions. He didn’t know whether it was worse doing it along with a bunch of other writers, who always seemed to be more famous and always seemed to get more attention from fans, booksellers and publicists alike, or doing a solo spot, isolated in the middle of a library or a bookshop, while punters who’d wandered in off the street looking for Harry Potter or Delia Smith looked at him sideways, wondering what the hell he was doing there.

  The only thing he hated more than signing sessions was readings. It wasn’t because he was embarrassed by the stuff he wrote, no matter how gory and perverted it might be, and it wasn’t because he didn’t like the sound of his own voice. It was because he was firmly convinced that horror fiction only worked to maximum effect if it were read in the right circumstances—preferably alone, at dead of night, stretched out on a high-backed settee in a dimly-lit room, and certainly not in a crowd, sipping complimentary glasses of red plonk on stackable wooden chairs, under glaring strip-lights.

  He knew that his stuff was slightly esoteric, too stylish for the vampire-werewolf-and-serial-killer brigade in spite of the frank kinkiness of its mannered violence, but he was proud of its reputation as connoisseur material. Even when a few fellow connoisseurs turned up to his readings, however, they had to sit in the same lousy seats as the hoi polloi, who were only there to gawp at the freaky writer, and the leftover Mrs. Grundies, who came to tut and purse their lips and ask him when he was going to give up polluting the minds of the young and get an honest job, and the others...the fans from hell.