The Cosmic Causes Council had by no means come to a dead end. It had come to so many live ends as to be even more bewildering.
“The point,” said Hegnar, in one of his yearly summaries, “is not whether sterility could have been caused by cosmic forces. Of course it could have been. It could have been caused in twenty ways. The miracle is that fertility had ever been possible. There must have been a shield built in for every danger. We know but scantily what some of them are. We do not know which has failed or why.”
“And could the failure have been caused by an enemy?” asked an interlocutor.
“It could have been, certainly. Almost by definition we must call an enemy anything that can harm us. But that it was a conscious enemy is something else again. Who can say what cosmic forces are conscious? Or even what it means to be conscious?”
* * * *
However, the Possibility Searcher Institute had some spotted success. It had worked out a test, a valid test, of determining whether an individual yet remaining had the spark of possible fertility. And in only a few million tests it had found one male shrew, one male gannet, no less than three males of the yellow perch, one female alligator, and one female mud puppy, all of whom still possessed the potential. This was encouraging, but it did not solve the problem. No issue could be obtained from any possible pairing of these; not that it wasn’t tried.
And when the possibility test was run on all the humans of the Earth, then it was that incredible and unsuspected success crowned the efforts of the institute. For, of a bare three billion persons tested, there were two who tested positive; and (good fortune beyond all hoping), one was male and the other was female.
So then the problem was solved. A few years had been lost, it is true, and several generations would be required to get the thing on a sound footing again. But life had been saved. Civilization could yet be transmitted. All was not lost.
Musha ibn Scmuel was an Arabian black, an unthrifty man of tenuous income. His occupation on the cardex was given as thief, but this may have been a euphemism. He was middle-aged and full of vigor, a plain man innocent of shoes or subtlety. He was guilty neither of the wine hatred of the Musselman nor the garrulousness of the Greek. He possessed his soul in quietude and Port Said whiskey and seldom stole more than he needed. And he had a special competence shared by no man in the world.
Cecilia Clutt was an attractive and snooty spinster of thirty five. She was a person of inherited as well as acquired wealth, and was an astute business woman and amateur of the arts. She did have a streak of stubbornness in her, but seldom revealed it unless she was crossed.
So, the first time she said no, it was hardly noticed. And the second time she said it, it was felt that she didn’t quite understand the situation. So it was Carmody Overlark, the silky diplomat, who came to reason with her.
“You are the sole hope of the human race,” he said to her. “In a way, you are the new Eve.”
“I have heard the first one spoken badly of,” said Cecilia.
“Yet her only fault was that she could be talked into something. I cannot.”
“But this is important.”
“Not really. If it is our time to disappear, then let us disappear with dignity. What you suggest is without it. It would leave us a little less than human.”
“Miss Clutt, this is a world problem. You are only an individual.”
“I am not only an individual. There is no such thing as only an individual. If ever a person can be spoken of as only an individual, then humanity has already failed.”
“We have tried reason. Now by special emergency legislation, we are empowered to employ compulsion.”
“We will see. I always did enjoy a good fight.”
Those who read the State Histories of the period will know that it did not come off. But the reasons given there are garbled. “Unforeseen circumstances” cover a multitude of failures. But what really happened was this.
Musha ibn S. had been tractable enough. Though refusing to fly, he had come on shipboard readily. And it was not till they were out of the Inland Sea and on the Atlantic that he showed a certain unease. Finally he asked, reasonably enough, to be shown a picture of his bride. But his reaction on seeing it was not reasonable.
He screamed like a dying camel. And he jumped overboard. He was a determined swimmer and he was heading for home. A boat was put out and it gained on him. But, as it came up to him, he sounded. How deep he dived is not known, but he was never seen again.
On hearing of this, Cecilia Clutt was a little uncertain for the first time in her life. Just to be sure, she asked for a copy of the picture.
“Oh, that one,” said Cecilia. “It is quite a nice picture, really. It flatters me a little. But what an odd reaction. What a truly odd reaction.”
* * * *
There were repercussions on the economy. The primary schools were now all closed, except for a few turned over to retarded children. In a year or two the high schools would close also. The colleges would perhaps always be maintained, for adult education, and for their expanding graduate schools. Yet the zest for the future had diminished, even though the personal future of nobody had been abridged. New construction had almost ceased and multi-bedroom homes became a drag on the market. In a very few years there would be no additions at all to the workforce. Soon there would be no more young soldiers for the armies. And soon the last eyes ever would see the world with the poetic clearness that often comes with adolescence.
There had been a definite letdown in morals. Morals have declined in every generation since the first one, which itself left something to be desired. But this new generation was different. It was a tree that could not bear fruit, a hard-barked, selfish tree. Yet what good to look at it and shudder for the future? The future had already been disposed of.
Now there was a new hobby, a mania that swept the world, the Last Man Clubs, millions of them. Who would be the last person alive on Earth?
But still the institutes labored. The Capsule Institute in particular labored for the codification and preservation of all knowledge. For whom? For those who might come after. Who? Of what species? But still they worked at it.
And the oddest of the institutes was the Bare Chance Transmission Society. In spite of all derision and mockery, it persevered in its peculiar aim: to find some viable creature that could be educated or adapted or mutated to absorb human knowledge and carry on once more the human tradition.
What creature? What possible strain could it be from? What creature on Earth was unaffected?
Well, the largest of them was the giant squid. But it was not promising. It had shown no development in many millions of years; it did not seem capable of development or education. And, moreover, there are difficulties of rapport with a creature that only can live in the deep sea.
There were the insects. Bees and ants were capable of organization, though intelligence has been denied them. Spiders showed certain rugged abilities, and fruit flies. Special committees were appointed to study each. And then there were the fleas. Old flea-circus grifters were brought out of retirement and given positions of responsibility and power. If fleas could really be taught, then these men could teach them. But though fleas can be taught to wear microscopic spectacles they cannot be taught to read. It all seemed pretty futile.
And there were the crayfish, the snails, the starfish, the sea cucumber. There were the fresh water flat worm and the liver fluke. There were the polyp, the sponge, the cephalopod. But, after all, none of them was of the main line. They were of the ancestry that had failed. And what of the noble genealogy that had succeeded, that which had risen above all and had given civilization, the chordata? Of that noble line, was there nothing left? What was the highest form still producing?
McGonigal’s Worm.
It was discouraging.
But for the careful study of M. W., as it was now known, a great new institute was now created. And to the M. W. Institute was channeled all the talent that seemed expedient.
And one of the first to go to work for the institute in a common capacity was a young lady of thirty-odd named Georgina Hickle. Young lady? Yes. Georgina was within months of being the youngest woman in the world. She was a scatter-brained wife and disliked worms. But one must work and there were at that time no other jobs open.
But she was not impressed by the indoctrination given in this new laboratory.
“You must change your whole way of thinking,” said the doctor who briefed them. “We are seeking new departures. We are looking for any possible breakthrough. You must learn to think of M. W. as the hope of the world.”
“Oog,” said Georgina.
“You must think of M. W. as your very kindred, as your cousin.”
“Oog,” said Georgina.
“You must think of him as your little brother that you have to teach, as your very child, as your cherished son.”
“Oog, oog,” said Georgina, for she disliked worms.
Nor was she happy on the job. She was not good at teaching worms. She believed them both stupid and stubborn. They did not have her sympathy, and after a few weeks they seemed to make her sick.
* * * *
But her ailment was a mysterious one. None of the young doctors had ever seen anything like it. And it was contagious. Other women in the bright new laboratory began to show similar symptoms. Yet contagion there was impossible, such extreme precautions had been taken for the protection of the worms.
But Georgina did not respond to treatment. And Hinkle’s Disease was definitely spreading. Sharper young doctors fresh from the greatest medical schools were calling in. They knew all that was to be known about all the new diseases. But they did not know this.
Georgina felt queer now and odd things began to happen to her. Like that very morning on her way to work, that old lady had stared at her.
“Glory be,” said the old lady, “a miracle.” And she crossed herself.
And Georgina heard other comments.
“I don’t believe it. It isn’t possible,” a man said.
“Well, it sure does look like it,” said a woman.
So Georgina took off at noon to visit a psychiatrist and tell him that she imagined that people were staring at her and talking about her, and what should she do. It made her uneasy, she said.
“That’s not what is making you uneasy,” said the psychiatrist. Then he went with her to the laboratory to have a look at some of the other women suffering from this Hickle’s Disease that he had been hearing about. After that, he called the young doctors at the laboratory aside for a consultation.
“I don’t know by what authority you mean to instruct us,” said one. “You haven’t been upgraded in thirty years.”
“I know it.”
“You are completely out of touch with the latest techniques.”
“I know it.”
“You have been described—accurately, I believe—as an old fogy.”
“I know that too.”
“Then what could you tell us about a new appearance like Hickle’s Disease?”
“Only that it is not really new. And not, properly speaking, a disease.”
* * * *
That is why, even today, there are superstitious persons who keep McGonigal’s Worms in small mesh cages in the belief that they insure fertility. It is rank nonsense and rose only because it was in the M. W. laboratory that the return of pregnancy was first noticed and was named for one of the women working there. It is a belief which dates back to that ancient generation, which very nearly became the last generation.
The official explanation is that the Earth and its solar system, for a period of thirty-five years, was in an area of mysterious cosmic radiation. And afterwards it drifted out of that area.
But there are many who still believe in the influence of the McGonigal’s Worm.
THE POLITE PEOPLE OF PUDIBUNDIA
Originally published in If, January 1961.
“Well, you will soon see for yourself, Marlow. Yes, I know there are peculiar stories about the place. There are about all places. The young pilots who have been there tell some amusing tales about it.”
“Yes. They say the people there are very polite.”
“That is the honorable ancestor of all understatements. One of the pilots, Conrad, told us that the inhabitants must always carry seven types of sunglasses with them. None of the Puds, you see, may ever gaze directly on another. That would be the height of impoliteness. They wear amber goggles when they go about their world at large, and these they wear when they meet a stranger. But, once they are introduced to him, then they must thereafter look on him through blue glasses. But at a blood relative they gaze through red, and at an in-law through yellow. There are equally interesting colours for other situations.”
“I would like to talk to Conrad. Not that I doubt his reports. It is the things he did not report that interest me.”
“I thought you knew he had died. Thrombosis, though he was sound enough when first certified.”
“But if they are really people, then it should be possible to understand them.”
“But they are not really people. They are metamorphics. They become people only out of politeness.”
“Detail that a little.”
“Oh, they’re biped and of a size of us. They have a chameleon-like skin that can take on any texture they please, and they possess extreme plasticity of features.”
“You mean they can take on the appearance of people at will?”
“So Bently reported.”
“I hadn’t heard of him.”
“Another of the young pilots. According to Bently, not only do the Puds take on a human appearance, they take on the appearance of the human they encounter. Out of politeness, of course.”
“Quite a tribute, though it seems extreme. Could I talk to Bently?”
“Also dead. A promising young man. But he reported some of the most amusing aspects of all: the circumlocutions that the Puds use in speaking our language. Not only is the Second Person eschewed out of politeness, but in a way all the other Persons also. One of them could not call you by your name, Marlow. He would have to say: ‘One hears of one who hears of one of the noble name of Marlow. One hears of one even now in his presence.’
“Yes, that is quite a polite way of saying it. But it would seem that with all their circumlocutions they would be inefficient.”
“Yet they are quite efficient. They do things so well that it is almost imperative that we learn from them. Yet for all our contacts, for all their extreme politeness coupled with their seeming openness, we have been able to learn almost nothing. We cannot learn the secret of the amazing productivity of their fields. According to Sharper, another of the young pilots, they suggest (though so circumspectly that it seems hardly a suggestion, certainly not a criticism) that if we were more polite to our own plants, the plants would be more productive for us; and if we gave the plants the ultimate of politeness, they would give us the ultimate of production.”
“Could I talk to Sharper, or is he also—”
“No, he is not dead. He was quite well until the last several days. Now, however, he is ailing, but I believe it will be possible for you to talk to him before you leave, if he does not worsen.”
“It would still seem difficult for the Puds to get anything done. Wouldn’t a superior be too polite to give a reprimand to an inferior?”
“Probably. But Masters, who visited them, had a theory about it, which is that the inferior would be so polite and deferential that he would do his best to anticipate a wish or a desire, or would go to any lengths to learn the import of
an unvoiced preference.”
“Is Masters one of the young pilots?”
“No, an old-timer.”
“Now you do interest me.”
“Dead quite a few years. But it is you who interest me, Marlow. I have been told to give you all the information that you need about the Polite People of Pudibundia. And on the subject of the Polite People, I must also be polite. But—saving your presence, and one hears of one who hears and all that—what in gehenna is a captain in homicide on the Solar Police Force going to Pudibundia about?”
“About murder. That is all I ever go anywhere about. We once had a private motto that we would go to the end of the Earth to solve a case.”
“And now you have amended your motto to ‘to the end of the Earth and beyond’?”
“We have.”
“But what have the Polite People to do with murder? Crime is unknown on Pudibundia.”
“We believe, saving their feelings, that it may not be unknown there. And what I am going to find out is this. There have been pilots for many years who have brought back stories of the Puds, and there are still a few—a very few—young pilots alive to tell those stories. What I am going to find out is why there are no old pilots around telling those stories.”
* * * *
It wasn’t much of a trip for a tripper, six weeks. And Marlow was well received. His host also assumed the name of Marlow out of politeness. It would have been impossible to render his own name in human speech, and it would have been impossible for him to conceive of using any name except that of his guest, with its modifiers. Yet there was no confusion. Marlow was Marlow, and his host was the One-Million-Times-Lesser-Marlow.
“We could progress much faster,” said Marlow, “if we dispense with these formalities.”
“Or assumed them as already spoken,” said the One-Million-TimesLesser-Marlow. “For this, in private, and only in the strictest privacy, we use the deferential ball. Within it are all the formulae written minutely. You have but to pass the ball from hand to hand every time you speak, and it is as if the amenities were spoken. I will give you this for the time of your stay. I beg you never to forget to pass it from hand to hand every time you speak. Should you forget, I would not, of course, be allowed to notice it. But when you were gone, I should be forced to kill myself for the shame of it. For private reasons I wish to avoid this and therefore beseech you to be careful.”
The R a Lafferty Fantastic Megapack Page 14