After a pause Jimmy says calmly, “Do you sound Scottish to me because I haven’t a hope in hell?”
“Yes!” says the Head looking straight at him. “But it won’t stop you saying what you’re here to say so say on, Macduff.”
Jimmy holds out a sheaf of printed papers saying, “Read these emails you ignored.”
“No. Bin them. I know what they say because I know everything. Everything.”
“But you won’t attend to everything so attend to these!”
The Head says patiently, “They say the world’s richest governments have the power to kill everything bigger than a cockroach, and are still buying even more destructive weapons to fight wars in any land that resists letting them take its natural resources. These governments still sometimes say their warfare defends democracy. They used to say it defended Christianity and free trade. All lies of course. What did you want me to do, O Prince of Peace? Intervene personally?”
“I do.”
“That never works. I gave Moses a few good rules everybody should observe – Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t tell lies. Many mothers still teach that to their kids. But then came law makers with exceptions to my rules – You must kill when governments tell you to, and can steal from men, women and children when governments let you take their land, and must not tell truths when governments say truths are dangerous. Also adulteresses should be stoned to death. Had I said to Moses, This I command thee, do what the hell you like! human history would have been just as bloody.”
“Nobody thinks your law against killing applies to foreigners,” says Jimmy mournfully.
“You did your best to correct them about that, my …”
The Head hesitates. Jimmy looks hard at him until he goes on to say, “… my good man. Yes, you told them to love their neighbours as themselves and their enemies too. Don’t fight the people who oppress you, but refuse to kill, steal or lie for them.”
“Good words to spread,” says Jimmy sadly.
The Head starts to speak, hesitates again then says in an embarrassed way, “There is something I’ve wanted to ask. When you were … hanging there …”
“I was nailed,” says Jimmy flatly.
“Yes. And you told someone in the same state that he would go to heaven with you. Why?”
“He talked kindly to me,” says Jimmy shrugging and spreading his hands. “I wanted to be kind back. Should I have told him there is as little justice in heaven as on earth? My body was in such pain that I forgot it was temporary. I was delirious. Up to almost the very last minute I was mad enough to think you might save everyone who suffered unjustly, and save them … through me!”
He gives a desperate chuckle. The Head assumes the manner of a schoolteacher and says, “If I only existed to give eternal sweeties to good folk and eternal beltings to bad, goodness would be cheap. There would be no decency, no heroism in it. I love heroism and you were a hero. I am proud of what you told people and what you endured for telling them.”
“You didn’t need heroism to be crucified,” Jimmy tells him grimly, “the Romans did it to hundreds of thousands. From the start of history down to the present day millions of children, women and men have endured worse deaths for no reason at all – just because they were born in unlucky places.”
Says the Head consolingly, “Your words comforted many unlucky people, especially slaves and women.”
“O yes!” cries Jimmy. “And when my comforting words were made official by the Roman Empire and even policemen were christened, my Christians began murdering neighbours with different Gods and burning down their temples and synagogues. My Jesus was as big a flop as your Moses, which is why I want you to …”
“Suddenly!” the Head interrupts, snapping his fingers. “Suddenly, simultaneously appear on every television and computer screen on the planet announcing, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, and your neighbour as your self or You! Will! Be! Ex! Ter! Min! Ated! They would treat me as a rogue virus Jimmy.”
“You don’t understand,” says Jimmy shaking his head. “I want you to exterminate all the brutes.”
“Say that again,” says the Head, surprised.
“Exterminate all the brutes. Now.”
The Head sighs, stares at his crystalline forms as if looking for help there, then mutters, “Michty me. Crivens. Jings Jimmy don’t be so damned biblical. I am not the genocidal lunatic described in Genesis. I never made a deluge that drowned everyone except a single family of each species. I did not burn Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone out of heaven.”
“But you wiped out most of the dinosaurs and the saltwater plankton. You smothered Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash.”
The Head says patiently, “A wholly stable planet is physically impossible. Even with Jupiter and the moon to shield it, an asteroid the size of Dundee is bound to hit the earth every thirteen million years or so. The dinosaurs lasted a lot longer than that. They had a fair innings. Six and a half million years will pass before the next meteoric disaster – plenty of time for folk to learn how to stop it. And it is not my fault when men build cities beside a volcano. Your job was to stop folk blaming me for things priests and insurance companies once called Acts of God – floods, earthquakes, plagues and epidemics caused by ignorance of safe cultivation and hygiene. And you cured that ignorance!”
“O yes!” says Jimmy bitterly, covering his face with his hands. “I encouraged Bacon and Galileo when ignorance seemed to be the main problem and good scientists were thought black magicians or heretics. And now natural science is triumphant.”
“Exactly,” says the Head, nodding. “Educated folk no longer blame you and me for everything bad. That is a definite step in the right direction. I refuse to wipe out life on earth because my agent there who should encourage it is tired of it.”
“But I love life on earth! I want you to save it by quickly destroying only one kind of brute – the most selfishly greedy kind. Get rid of men, please, before they destroy every other living thing.”
The Head smiles, says, “If mankind heard you now they really would think you …” (he holds out both hands with his fingers curved like claws) “… Bee! El! Zi! Bub!”
“You know what I’m talking about,” says Jimmy, again shaking the sheaf of printouts at him.
“Atmosphere overheating from diesel fumes,” says the Head, obviously bored. “Glaciers, icecaps melting, sea level rising. Forests felled, land impoverished. Pure water tables shrinking or polluted. Drought increasing where forty per cent of folk suffer malnutrition and billions will die of famine and thirst.”
“Primitive Christians were right,” says Jimmy passionately. “Scientists are black magicians. Nearly all of them work for corporations tearing up the fabric of earthly life with the help of governments they have bribed. Half the animals alive fifty years ago are now extinct. Frogs and sparrows are nearly extinct. The bumble bees are dying. Some conscience-stricken biologists are freezing the sperm of threatened creatures so that they can be brought back to life when the earth is governed sanely. Mankind will never govern it sanely.”
With a tolerant chuckle the Head says, “Aye, men have always been great wee extinguishers. Remember North America at the end of the last big ice age? A vast forest of deciduous trees with nothing dividing them but lakes and rivers and rocky mountains. It was the home of the biggest most peaceful vegetarians we ever achieved – titanic browsers, tree-sloths as big as elephants. The first men who entered that continent across the Bering Strait had never dreamed of so much each meat. Killing bears and woolly elephants in Eurasia was dangerous work, but men easily took over America. The tree-sloths couldn’t run away, couldn’t run at all, didn’t need to be trapped. Set fire to the trees and you had several roasted tree-sloths burned out of their pelts in a gravy of their own melted fat. The number of North American men expanded hugely – for two generations they were too busy eating to kill each other – they gorged themselve
s all the way down to Mexico!”
Seeing that Jimmy is staring at him in disgust he says, “Cheer up. That’s how the prairies came about, with room for herds and herds and herds of buffalo.”
“Which the white men slaughtered because the red men lived off them. But you know things are a lot worse now. Farmers are sowing genetically modified crops that die as soon as harvested, so they must buy new seed from companies that patented them, while plants folk used to feed on vanish for ever. Soon the only live creatures left on earth will be humans and the mutants they eat.”
In a sing-song voice, grinning, the Head says, “Remember the viruses, Jimmy! They too are busy wee mutaters. People are great breeding grounds for viruses, especially people eating battery-farmed meat and mutant vegetables.” With genuine regret he murmurs, “Croak croak. A pity about the frogs.”
“Are you fond of the Barrier Reef?” asks Jimmy, desperately.
“My greatest work of art, one thousand, two hundred and fifty miles long,” says the Head reminiscently. “A masterpiece of intricately intertwined fishes, plants, insects with the beautiful vivid colour variety of all the great pictures painted by Matisse and Dufy, and a refinement of detail greater than even Paul Klee achieved.” He shakes his head in wonder at the thought of his own genius.
“It’s dying,” says Jimmy. “It’ll all be gone in thirty years unless men die first.”
The Head shrugs his shoulders, says, “Nothing lasts for ever,” and turning, contemplates his crystals as if nothing else mattered.
“What use are you?” demands Jimmy suddenly. The Head, amused, smiles at him kindly but does not reply until the question is enlarged: “What do you do while failing to develop annelid worms in submarine volcanic vents?”
“I’m preparing a better universe.”
“Where?”
“Outside this one.”
“How can you make a universe outside this one?”
This brings out the Head’s schoolteacher side. Wagging a forefinger, with increasing enthusiasm he says, “If you subscribed to Scientific American you would know how other universes happen. Every universe is like a carpet with a gigantic draught blowing underneath, so in places it gets rippled up into peaks where energy and mass are so concentrated that BANG, a hole is blown in the fabric through which mass-energy pours, making another universe where physical laws can bend differently.”
“What makes that draught?” says Jimmy keenly.
“Would you think me a megalomaniac if I told you it was my breath?” asks the Head, slyly watching him sideways.
“Yes.”
“I have to use metaphors when describing universal processes,” says the Head impatiently. “If you don’t like breath-blown ripples call them … call them labour pains if you like, but the result could be a universe where planets are this shape.”
From a bench he lifts a variously coloured prism and hands it over. Jimmy looks at it then says unbelievingly, “A pyramidal planet?”
“You are wrong. A pyramid has five sides, with four isosceles triangles on a square base. This planetary model is a tetrahedron with only four triangular sides, four equal continents. Get the idea?”
“No.”
“Look at it closely. Four glacial polar regions at the apex of each continent. Water trickles down from these to form an ocean in the middle of each surface – four Mediterranean seas of roughly equal size where life will evolve, and when it takes to land around the shores it will find none large enough for an empire to grow. All the nations that occur will be small and coastal, like Scandinavia.”
Jimmy examines the prism closely then says, “I see some off-shore islands. The British Empire spread from an island.” “An island with a lot of coal and iron where James Watt devised the first commercial steam engine. In my new world fossil fuel deposits will be equally dispersed. No gold rushes! The machines people invent will have to be powered by wind and water and oil from plants that can be grown, harvested and replanted.”
Jimmy says, “The shape of this thing makes it gravitationally impossible.”
“Only in this universe!” cries the Head. “I am preparing a liquid universe where heavenly bodies will be gravitationally formed by crystallization! Imagine galaxies of tetrahedral planets revolving round octahedral suns! A universe – ” he ends by murmuring dreamily, “ – with no big bangs and collisions.”
“But how can a planet have seas in a universe full of liquid?”
“My universal fluid will be as light as air! In fact it will be air! I will make it air!”
Inspired by the idea he hurries to a blackboard with chemical formulae chalked on it, seizes a chalk and writes N-78. 1%, then heavily underlines it saying, “When my heavenly bodies have crystallized, these chemical constituents must remain.”
He starts chalking down a new column of figures, muttering, “This universal … solution … will make flight between worlds easy. No need for people … to blast themselves … across light years of dreary sub-zero vacuum.”
He flings the chalk down and contemplates the formulae with something like smugness. Jimmy says, “But …”
“You are going to tell me, Mr Prometheus O’ Lucifer, that air is largely oxygen exhaled by vegetation, and how can I grow enough plants to fill a universe with it? But my next universe will start with a big splash instead of a big bang, and the initial chemistry will be wholly different.” He sits down, folds his arms and looks triumphant. Jimmy, not impressed, turns the tetrahedral model in his hands saying, “Okay Mister Sly-boots Clever-clogs, I was also going to ask about this planet’s angle of rotation.” He hands the model back, says, “It will have to perform intricate somersaults if one of your triangular continents is not to be in perpetual twilight.”
“That is certainly a problem,” says the Head agreeably, putting the model back on the bench. “I am working on it.”
“So how long will it take you to get this ... airy new universe up and running?”
“I have eternity,” says the chief, smiling to himself.
“You will spend eternity dreaming up a Utopian universe while mankind destroys life on earth in a couple of generations?”
“That’s nonsense Jimmy!” says the Head consolingly. “Men cannot destroy all life on earth, only themselves and equally complex creatures. In which case insects will inherit the earth while vegetation recovers and then ...” (he becomes enthusiastic) “... from the segmented worms you and I will evolve a wealth of new creatures with different organs and sensations and minds. I never repeat my mistakes. It was maybe a mistake to give big brains to mammals.”
“Why deny intelligence to creatures who suckle their young?”
“Freud thinks it makes them unhealthily dependent and unhealthily greedy. Why not try hatching big intelligences from eggs? Birds, in general, seem happier than people. Tropical birds are as colourful as the organisms in my Great Barrier Reef, and the world will become a very tropical planet when men have made it too hot to hold them.”
“But!” says Jimmy explosively. The Head swiftly interrupts him.
“You are about to say bird brains are too small for development because their necks are too thin, but owls have short thick necks and are notoriously brainy. One day you may fly up to me in the form of a dove with an eagle’s wingspan and find me a gigantic owl ...” (he spreads his arms) “... with feathers as colourful as a parrot’s. Pretty polly!”
“And is that the most comforting message I can take back to the few on earth who listen to me? The few who care for the future of life there?”
The Head says mildly, “You recently asked me to exterminate the human race and now you want me to send it comforting messages.”
“Not comforting messages but useful messages. When I asked you to exterminate humanity I was trying to goad you into suggesting a new way of saving them.” (He sighs.) “But of course you knew that.”
“I did,” says the Head, nodding. “But the only ways humanity can save itself is by old thing
s that come in threes.”
“Faith, hope and love,” says Jimmy glumly.
“Yes, but these can only work beside liberty, equality, fraternity.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” raves Jimmy. “What are you on about? I’ve been so mixed up with ... post-modern people that I’ve forgotten.”
“Liberty is not having to obey other people because they are richer than you.”
“Equality?”
“Is what everybody enjoys with friends, or in nations where everyone knows they need each other.”
“Fraternity?”
“Brotherhood. The brotherhood of man.”
“Exclusively masculine?”
“A good point Jimmy. Call fraternity love also, the love that still makes your earth the centre of the present universe.”
“Don’t talk shite!” yells Jimmy. “My wee world is near the edge of an average galaxy among a million million galaxies! I helped Galileo destroy the Jewish notion that the whole shebang was made for them. How can my wee world be a universal centre?”
The Head says patiently, “Wherever somebody opens their eyes is the centre of the universe and your earth is still the place where a lot of that happens. I hoped mankind would take life to my other worlds. They have the technology.” (He shrugs.) “If they use it to destroy themselves we’ll start again with another species. To-wit-to-woo. Pretty Pol.”
Jimmy slumps down, looking defeated. Our Head rubs his hands together, goes to him briskly and claps him on the shoulders saying brightly, “Since we now see eye to eye I must waste no more of your valuable time. Tell folk the competitive exploitation of natural resources is a dead end. Nuclear power, used wisely, will give access to all the space, raw material and energy they need without fighting aliens for it. Less than five miles beneath the earth’s surface is heat that, rightly channelled, will drive their machines without poisonous emissions.”
Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012 Page 72