The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories tcsopkd-5 Page 23

  Masters sighed, dully gazed out the window as Saperstein droned on. Beside him, his copy editor made brief cryptic notes, a dark expression on his youthful, energetic face.

  “What we supplied you,” Saperstein said, “when you came to us—and remember: you came to us; we didn’t seek you out—consisted of the most select, perfect hides in our giant inventory. These living hides shine with a unique luster all their own; nothing else either on Mars or back home on Terra resembles them. If torn or scratched, the hide repairs itself. It grows, over the months, a more and more lush pile, so that the covers of your volumes become progressively luxurious, and hence highly sought-after. Ten years from now the deep-pile quality of these wub-fur bound books—”

  Interrupting, Snead said, “So the hide is still alive. Interesting. And the wub, as you say, is so deft as to be virtually impossible to kill.” He shot a swift glance at Masters. “Every single one of the thirty-odd alterations made in the texts in our books deals with immortality. The Lucretius revision is typical; the original text teaches that man is temporary, that even if he survives after death it doesn’t matter because he won’t have any memory of his existence here. In place of that, the spurious new passage comes out and flatly talks about a future of life predicated on this one; as you say, at complete variance with Lucretius’s entire philosophy. You realize what we’re seeing, don’t you? The damn wub’s philosophy superimposed on that of the various authors. That’s it; beginning and end.” He broke off, resumed his note-scratching, silently.

  “How can a hide,” Masters demanded, “even a perpetually living one, exert influence on the contents of a book? A text already printed—pages cut, folios glued and sewed—it’s against reason. Even if the binding, the damn hide, is really alive, and I can hardly believe that.” He glared at Saperstein. “If it’s alive, what does it live on?”

  “Minute particles of food-stuffs in suspension in the atmosphere,” Saperstein said, blandly.

  Rising to his feet, Masters said, “Let’s go. This is ridiculous.”

  “It inhales the particles,” Saperstein said, “through its pores.” His tone was dignified, even reproving.

  Studying his notes, not rising along with his employer, Jack Snead said thoughtfully, “Some of the amended texts are fascinating. They vary from a complete reversal of the original passage—and the author’s meaning—as in the case of Lucretius, to very subtle, almost invisible corrections—if that’s the word—to texts more in accord with the doctrine of eternal life. The real question is this. Are we faced merely with the opinion of one particular life form, or does the wub know what it’s talking about? Lucretius’s poem, for instance; it’s very great, very beautiful, very interesting—as poetry. But as philosophy, maybe it’s wrong. I don’t know. It’s not my job; I simply edit books; I don’t write them. The last thing a good copy editor does is editorialize, on his own, in the author’s text. But that is what the wub, or anyhow the post-wub pelt, is doing.” He was silent, then.

  Saperstein said, “I’d be interested to know if it added anything of value.”

  “Poetically? Or do you mean philosophically? From a poetic or literary, stylistic point of view its interpolations are no better and no worse than the originals; it manages to blend in with the author well enough so that if you didn’t know the text already you’d never notice.” He added broodingly, “You’d never know it was a pelt talking.”

  “I meant from a philosophical point of view.”

  “Well, it’s always the same message, monotonously ground out. There is no death. We go to sleep; we wake up—to a better life. What it did to De Rerum Natura; that’s typical. If you’ve read that you’ve read them all.”

  “It would be an interesting experiment,” Masters said thoughtfully, “to bind a copy of the Bible in wub-fur.”

  “I had that done,” Snead said.

  “And?”

  “Of course I couldn’t take time to read it all. But I did glance over Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. It made only one change. The passage that begins, ‘Behold, I tell you a mystery—’ it set all of that in caps. And it repeated the lines, ‘Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?’ ten times straight; ten whole times, all in caps. Obviously the wub agreed; that’s its own philosophy, or rather theology.” He said, then, weighing each word, “This basically is a theological dispute… between the reading public and the hide of a Martian animal that looks like a fusion between a hog and a cow. Strange.” Again he returned to his notes.

  After a solemn pause, Masters said, “You think the wub has inside information or don’t you? As you said, this may not be just the opinion of one particular animal that’s been successful in avoiding death; it may be the truth.”

  “What occurs to me,” Snead said, “is this. The wub hasn’t merely learned to avoid death; it’s actually done what it preaches. By getting killed, skinned, and its hide—still alive—made into book covers—it has conquered death. It lives on. In what it appears to regard as a better life. We’re not just dealing with an opinionated local life form; we’re dealing with an organism that has already done what we’re still in doubt about. Sure it knows. It’s a living confirmation of its own doctrine. The facts speak for themselves. I tend to believe it.”

  “Maybe continual life for it,” Masters disagreed, “but that doesn’t mean necessarily for the rest of us. The wub, as Mr. Saperstein points out, is unique. The hide of no other life form either on Mars or on Luna or Terra lives on, imbibing life from microscopic particles in suspension in the atmosphere. Just because it can do it—”

  “Too bad we can’t communicate with a wub hide,” Saperstein said. “We’ve tried, here at Flawless, ever since we first noticed the fact of its post-mortem survival. But we never found a way.”

  “But we at Obelisk,” Snead pointed out, “have. As a matter of fact I’ve already tried an experiment. I had a one-sentence text printed up, a single line reading: ‘The wub, unlike every other living creature, is immortal.’

  “I then had it bound in wub-fur; then I read it again. It had been changed. Here.” He passed a slim book, handsomely appointed, to Masters. “Read it as it is now.”

  Masters read aloud: “The wub, like every other living creature, is immortal.”

  Returning the copy to Snead he said, “Well, all it did was drop out the un; that’s not much of a change, two letters.”

  “But from the standpoint of meaning,” Snead said, “it constitutes a bombshell. We’re getting feedback from beyond the grave—so to speak. I mean, let’s face it; wub-fur is technically dead because the wub that grew it is dead. This is awfully damn close to providing an indisputable verification of the survival of sentient life after death.”

  “Of course there is one thing,” Saperstein said hesitantly. “I hate to bring it up; I don’t know what bearing it has on all this. But the Martian wub, for all its uncanny—even miraculous—ability to preserve itself, is from a mentational standpoint a stupid creature. A Terran opossum, for example, has a brain one-third that of a cat. The wub has a brain one-fifth that of an opossum.” He looked gloomy.

  “Well,” Snead said, “the Bible says. ‘The last shall be the first.’ Possibly the lowly wub is included under this rubric; let’s hope so.”

  Glancing at him, Masters said, “You want eternal life?”

  “Certainly,” Snead said. “Everybody does.”

  “Not I,” Masters said, with decisiveness. “I have enough troubles now. The last thing I want is to live on as the binding of a book—or in any fashion whatsoever.” But inside, he had begun silently to muse. Differently. Very differently, in fact.

  “It sounds like something a wub would like,” Saperstein agreed. “Being the binding of a book; just lying there supine, on a shelf, year after year, inhaling minute particles from the air. And presumably meditating. Or whatever wubs do after they’re dead.”

  “They think theology,” Snead said. “They preach.” To his boss he said, “I assume
we won’t be binding any more books in wub-fur.”

  “Not for trade purposes,” Masters agreed. “Not to sell. But—” He could not rid himself of the conviction that some use lay, here. “I wonder,” he said, “if it would impart the same high level of survival factor to anything it was made into. Such as window drapes. Or upholstery in a float-car; maybe it would eliminate death on the commuter paths. Or helmet-liners for combat troops. And for baseball players.” The possibilities, to him, seemed enormous… but vague. He would have to think this out, give it a good deal of time.

  “Anyhow,” Saperstein said, “my firm declines to give you a refund; the characteristics of wub-fur were known publicly in a brochure which we published earlier this year. We categorically stated—”

  “Okay, it’s our loss,” Masters said irritably, with a wave of his hand. “Let it go.” To Snead he said, “And it definitely says, in the thirty-odd passages it’s interpolated, that life after death is pleasant?”

  “Absolutely. ‘Our stint on earth doth herald an unstopping bliss.’ That sums it up, that line it stuck into De Rerum Natura; it’s all right there.”

  “ ‘Bliss,’ ” Masters echoed, nodding. “Of course, we’re actually not on Earth; we’re on Mars. But I suppose it’s the same thing; it just means life, wherever it’s lived.” Again, even more gravely, he pondered. “What occurs to me,” he said thoughtfully, “is it’s one thing to talk abstractly about ‘life after death.’ People have been doing that for fifty thousand years; Lucretius was, two thousand years ago. What interests me more is not the big overall philosophical picture but the concrete fact of the wub-pelt; the immortality which it carried around with it.” To Snead he said, “What other books did you bind in it?”

  “Tom Paine’s Age of Reason,” Snead said, consulting his list.

  “What were the results?”

  “Two-hundred-sixty-seven blank pages. Except right in the middle the one word bleh.”

  “Continue.”

  “The Britannica. It didn’t precisely change anything, but it added whole articles. On the soul, on transmigration, on hell, damnation, sin, or immortality; the whole twenty-four volume set became religiously oriented.” He glanced up. “Should I go on?”

  “Sure,” Masters said, listening and meditating simultaneously.

  “The Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. It left the text intact, but it periodically inserted the biblical line, ‘The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.’ Over and over again.

  “James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. Shangri-La turns out to be a vision of the after life which—”

  “Okay,” Masters said. “We get the idea. The question is, what can we do with this? Obviously we can’t bind books with it—at least books which it disagrees with.” But he was beginning to see another use; a much more personal one. And it far outweighed anything which the wub-fur might do for or to books—in fact for any inanimate object.

  As soon as he got to a phone—

  “Of special interest,” Snead was saying, “is its reaction to a volume of collected papers on psychoanalysis by some of the greatest living Freudian analysts of our time. It allowed each article to remain intact, but at the end of each it added the same phrase.” He chuckled.” ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ Bit of a sense of humor, there.”

  “Yeah,” Masters said. Thinking, unceasingly, of the phone and the one vital call which he would make.

  Back in his own office at Obelisk Books, Masters tried out a preliminary experiment—to see if this idea would work. Carefully, he wrapped a Royal Albert yellow bone-china cup and saucer in wub-fur, a favorite from his own collection. Then, after much soul-searching and trepidation, he placed the bundle on the floor of his office and, with all his declining might, stepped on it.

  The cup did not break. At least it did not seem to.

  He unwrapped the package, then and inspected the cup. He had been right; wrapped in living wub-fur it could not be destroyed.

  Satisfied, he seated himself at his desk, pondered one last time.

  The wrapper of wub-fur had made a temporary, fragile object imperishable. So the wub’s doctrine of external survival had worked itself out in practice—exactly as he had expected.

  He picked up the phone, dialed his lawyer’s number.

  “This is about my will,” he said to his lawyer, when he had him on the other end of the line. “You know, the latest one I made out a few months ago. I have an additional clause to insert.”

  “Yes, Mr. Masters,” his lawyer said briskly. “Shoot.”

  “A small item,” Masters purred. “Has to do with my coffin. I want it mandatory on my heirs—my coffin is to be lined throughout, top, bottom and sides, with wub-fur. From Flawless, Incorporated. I want to go to my Maker clothed, so to speak, in wub-fur. Makes a better impression that way.” He laughed nonchalantly, but his tone was deadly serious—and his attorney caught it.

  “If that’s what you want,” the attorney said.

  “And I suggest you do the same,” Masters said.

  “Why?”

  Masters said, “Consult the complete home medical reference library we’re going to issue next month. And make certain you get a copy that’s bound in wub-fur; it’ll be different from the others.” He thought, then, about his wub-fur-lined coffin once again. Far underground, with him inside it, with the living wub-fur growing, growing.

  It would be interesting to see the version of himself which a choice wub-fur binding produced.

  Especially after several centuries.

  Return Match

  It was not an ordinary gambling casino. And this, for the police of S.L.A., posed a special problem. The outspacers who had set up the casino had placed their massive ship directly above the tables, so that in the event of a raid the jets would destroy the tables. Efficient, officer Joseph Tinbane thought to himself morosely. With one blast the outspacers left Terra and simultaneously destroyed all evidence of their illegal activity.

  And, what was more, killed each and every human gameplayer who might otherwise have lived to give testimony.

  He sat now in his parked aircar, taking pinch after pinch of fine imported Dean Swift Inch-kenneth snuff, then switched to the yellow tin which contained Wren’s Relish. The snuff cheered him, but not very much. To his left, in the evening darkness, he could make out the shape of the outspacers’ upended ship, black and silent, with the enlarged walled space beneath it, equally dark and silent—but deceptively so.

  “We can go in there,” he said to his less experienced companion, “but it’ll just mean getting killed.” We’ll have to trust the robots, he realized. Even if they are clumsy, prone to error. Anyhow they’re not alive. And not being alive, in a project as this, constituted an advantage.

  “The third has gone in,” officer Falkes beside him said quietly.

  The slim shape, in human clothing, stopped before the door of the casino, rapped, waited. Presently the door opened. The robot gave the proper codeword and was admitted.

  “You think they’ll survive the take-off blast?” Tinbane asked. Falkes was an expert in robotics.

  “Possibly one might. Not all, though. But one will be enough.” Hot for the kill, officer Falkes leaned to peer past Tinbane; his youthful face was fixed in concentration. “Use the bull-horn now. Tell them they’re under arrest. I see no point in waiting.”

  “The point I see,” Tinbane said, “is that it’s more comforting to see the ship inert and the action going on underneath. We’ll wait.”

  “But no more robots are coming.”

  “Wait for them to send back their vid transmissions,” Tinbane said. After all, that comprised evidence—of a sort. And at police HQ.it was now being recorded in permanent form. Still, his companion officer assigned to this project did have a point. Since the last of the three humanoid plants had gone in, nothing more would take place, now. Until the outspacers realized they had been infiltrated and put their typical planned pattern of withdrawal into action. “All right,�
�� he said, and pushed down on the button which activated the bull-horn.

  Leaning, Falkes spoke into the bull-horn. At once the bull-horn said,

  “As order-representatives of superior Los Angeles I and the men with me instruct everyone inside to come out onto the street collectively; I further instruct—”

  His voice, from the bull-horn, disappeared as the initial takeoff surge roared through the primary jets of the outspacers’ ship. Falkes shrugged, grinned starkly at Tinbane. It didn’t take them long, his mouth formed silently.

  As expected no one came out. No one in the casino escaped. Even when the structure which composed the building melted. The ship detached itself, leaving a soggy, puddled mass of wax-like matter behind it. And still no one emerged.

  All dead, Tinbane realized with mute shock.

  “Time to go in,” Falkes said stoically. He began to crawl into his neo-asbestos suit, and, after a pause, so did Tinbane.

  Together, the two officers entered the hot, dripping puddle which had been the casino. In the center, forming a mound, lay two of the three humanoid robots; they had managed at the last moment to cover something with their bodies. Of the third Tinbane saw no sign; evidently it had been demolished along with everything else. Everything organic.

  I wonder what they thought—in their own dim way—to be worth preserving, Tinbane thought as he surveyed the distorted remnants of the two robots. Something alive? One of the snail-like outspacers? Probably not. A gaming table, then.

  “They acted fast,” Falkes said, impressed. “For robots.”

  “But we got something,” Tinbane pointed out. Gingerly, he poked at the hot fused metal which had been the two robots. A section, mostly likely a torso, slid aside, revealed what the robots had preserved.

  A pinball machine.

  Tinbane wondered why. What was this worth? Anything? Personally, he doubted it.