What Entropy Means to Me

by George Alec Effinger

  He was not able to say how much time passed, but in a while he saw the giant's torch approaching again. This time he was able to guess that the monster was escorting the goats. He said nothing as the giant led the animals past the cowpen. When the light of the torch had faded somewhat, Dore felt a reassuring tug at his sleeve.

  "Be ready," said Glorian.

  "Ready for what?"

  "To escape, of course. Well follow noiselessly behind the giant, ever keeping the light of his burning brand as our guide to liberty and reminder of the constant shining flame of hope."

  "Have you taken care of the giant's boulder yet?"

  "No," said Glorian, "but be still. He returns."

  "Loo," came the call. "That's it for tonight, don't you see. Have a good rest, now. Don't sit up all night reading. Those cows will wake you early."

  "Thank you," said Dore as the giant was swallowed up by the darkness of the tunnel.

  "By the way," shouted Glorian, "where are the guest towels?"

  "Quiet," said Dore, thrashing about in the dark for his mysterious ally.

  "No worry," said Glorian, "he's quite out of earshot by now. Come; let's follow before we lose his light altogether."

  "He's not out of earshot," said Dore anxiously.

  "Sure he is."

  "We'll see," said Dore, vaulting the fence and landing lightly on the stone floor. He trusted that Glorian had followed; again there was no reply. Dore shrugged and set off in pursuit of his captor.

  If you're reading the original manuscript (which in a few hundred years will no doubt be precious and a thing of wonder), you will see that I have crossed out a large section of dialogue. Dore and Glorian continued their discussion at some length, giving, as I intended, further insight into their deepening friendship. Shesarine grew impatient, and Lalichë (who joined me at "Where are the guest towels?") agreed that I should just get on with it. No one seems to appreciate what I am doing. This is a major task, this document that I have been urged to write. There is much more to it than just the hacking and hewing of the hero. Am I the only one who sees the significance of Glorian? Shesarine says he's effeminate, "if you know what I mean." Sure, I know what she means. But it's obvious that she doesn't know what I mean. "Why bother?" I ask myself. Lalichë has the answer to that: Tere, Ateichál, and their holy sideshow. Glorian's a symbol, all right? A symbol. For the R - - - r. I must admit that I just realized that last night. It came to me in a vision. After Joilliena came to me in a sour mood. The other girls won't talk to her at lunch.

  All right. Shesarine's gone back to her desk in the office of the Ploutos Corporation. I'll get back to the adventure. Maybe I'll condense it a bit, now; I think I have the next one all worked out, and I'm anxious to get to it. Lalichë doesn't like the giant, anyway. She's nice, but she's only five. She'll really be something in another seven years or so.

  Good. We have Dore and possibly Glorian following the weakening glow of the giant's torch. The tunnels seemed strange and threatening in the gloom, more so because Dore was trying desperately and unsuccessfully to recognize a feature or landmark. His current fear was that the giant was not, in fact, returning to the surface and the exit, but rather taking some side tunnel to whatever goal excited his gianty mind. Dore pictured himself trapped deep within the bowels of the mountain, lost forever and at the unsavory and unimaginative mercy of Loo. He felt an urge to stop and go over the situation with Glorian, to point out this and other possibilities which should not go unconsidered; fortunately or unfortunately (it is for you to decide), Glorian was unavailable for comment. A tingly, lightheaded feeling in his abdomen reminded Dore that in the childhood-monster darkness he would not be able to find his way back to the cattle pen. He wished that he could calmly shrug his shoulders.

  Ahead, the seductive light of the torch shone steadily, as though the giant and Dore had entered a long and uncurving corridor. Dore took a deep breath and increased his pace, thinking that for a time he was safe from dashing out his life against the walls of a sudden turn. He thought of Our Mother, whom he believed to be still doing her usual things, safely and grotesquely seated on her backyard throne. He thought of Our Father, Dore's own founding Father, whose strange and unanswerable desertion had made our brother's journey necessary. What motives had sent (or driven?) Our Father from his wife and son, from the grand new home he had carved from the alien wilderness of an unknown world? Speculation was error (and is now heresy, from which you just don't recover), and only facts could satisfy our questing young minds. Dore thought of us, his brothers and beloved sisters; he thought of our stations and persuasions and occupations, of all the discriminating and otherwise useless distinctions we had invented to tell each other apart. He considered our feelings, how we must blame ourselves for his sacrifice, how we must lose sleep at night worrying about his well-being, how the days and months go by without even a card from him. He chuckled to himself there in the sunless pit, filled with nostalgia and homesickness and other pointless emotions. He entertained himself with thoughts of home and remembrances of us until the giant grabbed Dore's shoulder from behind.

  "Loo, you laugh," said the giant. "What amuses you?"

  Well now, of course Dore recalled that being caught like this had turned each of his predecessors from a novice to a corpse. Dore had to think quickly. He couldn't.

  "You haven't seen Glorian, have you?" he asked.

  "Eh?"

  "It's not that I was trying to escape, you know. I just thought that a short walk might do me good. I couldn't get to sleep. The cows."

  The giant had Dore once again tightly within his grasp, but even in our brother's state of extreme panic Dore realized that the giant was leading him toward the mouth of the cave, rather than back to the cattle pens. A simple error on the part of the giant? Dore thought it best to keep the monster occupied until Dore might make a break for freedom. But through the giant's boulder of a gateway? Dore wasn't thinking that far in advance.

  "I understand," said the giant. "And well that you couldn't, don't you see. The others, loo, those deaders up ahead, now, they did. They spent the whole three nights, loo," here the giant spat in disgust, "their whole sentence they spent with those filthy beasts. But not you, don't you see. How holy could they be sleeping with animals? Loo, but you couldn't bear it. I'd have eaten you if you could." The giant sounded proud, and congratulated Dore with a bruising tap on the back.

  Dore was silent for a long moment. "You mean I'm free?" he said at last.

  "Well, loo, you've passed your first test, don't you see."

  Dore wasn't as alarmed as he should have been, because he heard "first" as "First."

  When at last they returned to the giant's parlor, Dore was worried to see that Glorian had failed to remove the great stone from the cave's mouth. The giant lifted Dore and placed him on a smooth flat slab of stone, cold and damp and ten feet above the floor.

  "Hard comfort, eh loo, but better than you found with the kine," said the giant. "Now sleep you well, for we have much to talk about in the morning."

  "Don't you see," added Dore in a whisper. He watched the giant prepare his own simple bed, and waited soundlessly while the torch was put out. Dore was again left frightened in total darkness, but this time he was soon asleep.

  A knock! a knock upon my humble chamber's portal. A pleasant change, I will grant, from the unadorned bargings of my casual siblings. I will leave my desk for the unusual pleasure of welcoming a visitor rather than tolerating an intruder. Excuse me.

  It is Dyweyne. Or rather, it was her, and I reproduce for you now our puzzling conversation. I welcome her in, my eldest sister, with great pleasure, for it is rare that she leaves her barren cell to visit with the other members of our family. She is tall and slender, with dark-brown hair piled on her head in intricate mounds and knots. Light strikes red sparks from the countless fascinating planes. She wears an unofficial crown, a barely visible golden band about her brow. The crown, not one quarter of an inch wide, signifies mor
e that she was Dore's consort than her rank as eldest female. She dresses simply in a yellow robe, the color of the garden flowers with which she passed her days until Dore's departure. Since that day she has worn a white cloak of celebration and mourning over the robe, gathered on her breast with a golden pin in the form of a small doglike animal. She carries with her tonight the yellow flower she picked to give to Dore on his return. The flower is, of course, dead and dried.

  "Welcome to my poor apartment," I say to her.

  "Thank you, Seyt," says Dyweyne. Her voice is very low, and she drops her eyes shyly often as she speaks.

  "Is there something I can do for you?"

  Dyweyne stands from the chair she accepted upon her arrival. Before she turns away I see that there are tears upon her pale, friendly cheeks. I am shocked and afraid. What have I done?

  For a few seconds there is a nervous silence. I smell the rich, earthy smell of Dyweyne, as though she had been once again working in her abandoned gardens. Dyweyne can control her flowers, but, too, she can control the basic animal urges of all of us. Our emotions are never hidden from her, one reason that she has chosen to secrete herself far from our riotous nonsense. And, deftly, lovingly, graciously, she can mold our emotions and change them: change envy to love, change pity to love, change anger to love. But she doesn't. She is humiliated by her ability.

  "Why are you doing it?" she asks, her voice cloudy with feeling. "Why are you picturing Dore so unfairly? Why do you show him acting so stupidly, so grossly? Don't you remember?"

  I can say nothing. This is the first sign of dissension that I have had to recognize. Dyweyne cares about Dore and, I know, she cares about me. What a discovery, that I may be negligent. I thought that I was above that.

  "I'm sorry, my sister," I say to her, embarrassed. "I thought that for my purposes I was treating him fairly."

  She nods sadly. "For your purposes. I, too, am doing the history of his travels, although you probably do not know of that. It is not as publicized as your official account and, truthfully, it is not as nicely wrought. But it is sincere." Dyweyne begins to weep copiously. I am helpless.

  "I'd . . . I'd be honored to see it sometime. I could help you with it," I say lamely. My sister, chaste, loving, sorrowing, does not answer and departs. I am profoundly affected.

  In the morning Dore was awakened by the noises of the cattle which the giant was leading out to pasture. He could not see them because his neck was fastened to the slab by a large iron staple. His hands and feet were bound to the damp stone with heavy chains.

  "You should not have trusted the giant's strange hospitality," said Glorian.

  "What else could I do?" said Dore, staring at the sedimentary ceiling. "You proved of remarkably little help."

  "My ways are my own. Everything in its season. In the fullness of time. There is yet more to this episode."

  "Free me, or there won't be much."

  "No chance now," said Glorian, hiding deeper within the cave, "the giant returns!"

  "Loo, there. You are awake. Good," said the giant.

  "Why have you done this to me?" asked Dore.

  "Ah, don't you see, you brought it on yourself by not fitting the bed," said the giant.

  "But it's made for someone of gigantic proportions," said Dore in frustration. "I didn't have a chance."

  "For you are not virtuous," said the giant. "If you were good, don't you see, you'd fit my bed. There is little enough good in the world."

  "Not so!" cried Glorian, springing from his place of concealment.

  "Who is this?" asked the giant. "Are you here for pain, or to effect an escape?"

  "I am Glorian."

  "What?" said the giant.

  "Glorian," said Dore helpfully.

  "And I am Despair," said the giant.

  "Is that your name?" asked Dore.

  "Bunyan or Spenser?" asked Glorian.

  "Neither," said the giant impatiently, "loo, I'm a different one entirely."

  "What's happening?" asked Dore.

  "You were beginning your argument?" said Despair, the giant.

  "Yes, thank you," said Glorian. "Why do you hold Dore, my companion, captive upon this noisome rock?"

  "Well, loo, so he won't wriggle in the Scotch Boot."

  "No," said my symbol, "why hold him at all?"

  "He's evil, don't you see," said the giant, playing nervously with the cord of the great cudgel that hung by his side. Evidently, Despair was not used to such close questioning.

  "And if I could prove the nonexistence of evil?"

  "Eh?" said Despair.

  "If I could show that your fears are groundless?"

  "What fears?" asked Despair.

  "If I demonstrate the universality of goodness?"

  "I would set him and you free," said Despair with his disconcerting grin.

  "Then, do you believe in the goodness of God?" asked Glorian.

  "He is God," said Dore.

  "Well," said Glorian, "that will simplify things. You are good, eh?"

  "Loo, certainly."

  "And by 'God' we understand omnipotence and benevolence of infinite extent?"

  "Yes, I do my best," said Despair.

  "Then follow this," said Glorian confidently. "Positing the existence of evil, either you—God—cannot rid the world of it and are impotent, or you can but won't, and are malevolent. And also, we learn early through experience that a good and moral life is of no practical value in achieving happiness for ourselves or our loved ones."

  "I move in mysterious ways," said Despair.

  "Don't we all," muttered Dore.

  "For often we have seen the wicked rewarded," said Glorian, continuing his sophistry, "while we ourselves seemingly go from punishment to undeserved punishment. So some of us fall from the ways of grace, attempting to avoid or at least nullify the apparently random distribution of reward. Thus we fall into sin. But of course the wages of sin is death. But it is through sin that we recall the sovereignty of God; by transgressing God's laws we acknowledge their existence. And the acknowledgment of God's lordship works to His greater glory. Every act of man, whether the most holy sanctioned rite or the most heinous crime, works to the eventual Good, the universal and willing acceptance of God's yoke of love."

  "Your friend is free," said Despair.

  There is no evil. We may all breathe a sigh of relief. I admit that for a moment I was unsure about our brother's fate, but faith worked its advertised miracle. In the background now the giant Despair loosens Dore's bonds, shaking his head and pondering Glorian's high sentiments. The giant is subdued. He grasps Dore's hand and begs his forgiveness. Dore smiles in his beautiful way and says nothing. The three friends walk slowly to the mouth of the cave, where the giant rolls back the huge stone. They converse in low tones, curiously reluctant to say their goodbys.

  "Come with me," says Sabt, who has returned as promised. It is time for a break, anyway. I bid farewell to my giant.

  I take my notebook, in an attempt to crystallize some thoughts concerning Dore's next adventure. I have, as I said, a general idea, but now I need to incorporate it, to swath such flimsy feelings in firm, stabbable flesh. New horizons, new vistas of action and meaning, new people to kill and love. Perhaps now, walking about our charming house, nodding hello to brothers and sisters going by with papers in their hands, standing on ladders with brushes, kneeling in courtyards with trowels, I will get characters, plot, dramatic impetus. I know where Sabt is taking me.

  Outside, on the far side of the house from Our Mother's vacated and already crumbling seat, there is a pen, an enclosure very much like the one in which Dore passed his recent restless hours. If you still have a mental image of that compound merely translate its location. Place it in the middle of a lawn of prickly high weeds, perhaps one hundred yards from the house. There is already a well-worn path from a rear entrance of the house, although the pen was not built until after Our Mother's Desumption.

  "Where were these, uh, tenants hous
ed prior to the construction of these, uh, quarters?" I ask.

  Sabt marches briskly, not even turning his head to answer. He does not want to waste energy, and is trying to urge me to greater speed with his example. We must not be late.

  "In the basement, of course," he says. "There are many more of them now, so we thought it best to move them out here. Fresh air. Exercise."

  I shudder. "Who are 'we'?" I ask.

  Sabt grants me an unpleasant look. "Tere and Ateichál."

  I know why there are many more of them.

  At one end of the rectangular corral a high platform has been built, with a balcony, overlooking the enclosure and its inmates, my brothers and sisters. The stage looks like a beardless diving tower, a small open box for the Pope or visiting royalty to wave from, slowly. I think of the play by Genet. I think about prostitution, about bartering for power, about identities and images changing as fluidly as motivations. I think about lies. I think about the ugliness inherent in all relationships. I think about some people standing on platforms looking down on other people. I wonder how I might feel to be on that balcony.

  "Let's go up," says Sabt. "The lesson'll start soon."

  We take our seats. I have time to look down into the pen, against my better judgment I see horrors; balls and cylinders and pools of animal flesh that used to be human. Several of these unfortunates (oh, Father, what a damned euphemism!) were born that way. 5396 was the next male to be born after me. 9704535 and 40313642 were twins, females originally destined for marriage with princes of high-ranking foreign families. 2940, 7188, and 9305 were all normal males in their youth, until puberty began some strange endocrine-linked transformations in their somatic selves. They were all good friends. Haven't spoken to them in years, though.