"Abts, Matthew - Parnassus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Abts Matthew)

Finding Parnassus

by Matthew Abts

Green, blue, orange, yellow, purple, and highlights of magenta against a background of mottled gray and asphalt: a parade marched up the street below my window like a writhing snake, watched by throngs of eager, gawking, lawn chair carrying pedestrians. I had no doubt that they'd follow it up the hill to the open amphitheater for tonight's performance. They'd cheer Perseus, they'd shudder when they saw the Medusa. I sneered at the largest balloon float as it was pulled by me: an image of Adonis topped by, ironically I sometimes thought, the head of a dog.
I snapped shut my window and turned away, seeking my favorite recliner chair in which to sink. My apartment was a mess, strewn with crinkled newspaper, rotting food stuffs, and crawling with insects. I didn't have the heart to the clean it up, as I'd probably be losing it soon anyway. As things stood now I couldn't afford to pay rent, but as money was due to be abolished sometime next week it might not matter; that's what the news said, had been saying for about a month.
A copy of People Magazine leered at me ludely from its position atop the junk in front of my television. Shown from the neck down the naked body of a woman, aesthetically very pleasing but revolting for other reasons that had nothing to due with her physical appearance and everything to do with her makers, filled the cover; superimposed over her was the headline Medusa, in neo-gothic lettering.
The article was all about the play, of course, and the fact that it was free, and the fact that it would be a wonderful, gala event; the brightest, largest, best production since the Landing. Hence the parade and the gawking pedestrians and the expansion of the amphitheater. Merely thinking about it made me feel ill, as did everything about Them. I stumbled forward and grabbed the magazine, flicking off a stray cockroach with my forefinger, and tossed it behind the recliner; it landed next to some rotten, stinking eggs.
Outside I could hear the marching band warming up, braying conflicting scales of notes from all sorts of brass. Cacophony was one of Their favorite songs. I should have had the apartment soundproofed when I could've afforded it. I flicked on the television, turning the volume to maximum to drown out all other sounds. My upper lip curled spasmodically into a sneer. Predictably, every channel was covering the parade, or the play. Save for channel eight, which ran nonstop sales commercials. They were selling neck-down Medusa body molds.
If I couldn't escape, I'd have to seek another solution. For the first time in a week I combed my hair, yanked on my jacket, and left the apartment.
Like most middle-class apartment complexes mine had a bar next door, or right indoors even, considering there's a passageway directly between the complex and the blocky building of the bar that allows you to walk between the two without stepping a foot outside, or even having to undergo a change in air pressure. It was that passage I used now, having not the slightest inclination to brave the festive crowds outdoors.
There were burnished tables and oak walls decorated with renaissance period art by famous artists: Massacio's Explusion from Eden, Adrea Mantegna's Parnassus, Leonardo da Vinci's Annunciation, and others I failed to recognize. The owner fancied himself something of a revolutionary.
Thankfully, the bartender didn't. In fact, the bartender couldn't care less. It was a robot, a living torso attached to steel girder runners, with arms and hands and a head containing glowing yellow eyes that could reputedly scan your blood to alcohol ratio in point-two seconds flat. Its name was Mack, and it didn't care about anything except serving you drinks. Its vocal communication was limited to phrases such as 'How are you today, what do you want?', or 'That's too bad, want me to top off your drink for you?'. I found its conversation oddly comforting.
John Gilsmund's familiar fat form was slouched at the bar counter sucking beer through a straw, and a red haired woman with vacant green eyes sat by herself at a corner table, smoking something that puffed blue. I grabbed a stool next to John. He was one of a dying breed, a genuine, honest-to-alcohol, barfly. The owner was a friend of his, and he had a pallet in a storeroom upstairs in case he didn't feel up to going home at night.
He gave me the slightly intoxicated fish eye. "Haven't seen you around in while."
"Haven't been out much." I shrugged. The television mounted above the bar showed the parade. I shuddered and looked away, glad it was on mute.
Mack rolled over on its tracks, wiping down the chrome bar with a towel in one hand. "How are you today, sir, and what can I get for you?"
I raised an eyebrow at John. "New gender recognition program?" He nodded. "Whiskey, make it a double, and some foam on top." Mack skidded away. I heard gurgling and spraying noises from beneath the bar.
"How's the bio research business? Found a new placing yet?" John's voice was bland, leaving the impression that he wanted to make conversation for the sounds, and not that he actually gave a damn.
Mack glided back over and dropped off my drink. I flipped it a coin which it deftly plucked from the air and ate. I heard it plink somewhere inside. "Thank you for your patronage, sir." It went back to its bar wiping.
I sipped milk foam off the top of my drink while shaking my head. "No places. No openings. Nobody needs researchers anymore, they get everything they want from the Dog-Heads."
Bastards. They'd cost me my job, my life. After they'd teleported into the middle of New York City's Times Square with their messages of peace and prosperity and their weird sounding nouveau band, they'd set up their giant, question answering computer and granted the world public access. Ever since then, nobody had needed a scientist. Once they had something from the computer, which was globally referred to as the Library, they knew what it did, everything it did, and the Library became the place to look for new things and ideas, and ways to use what we had. Librarians they needed, sure, as experts in the computer system, but that sort of dry research wasn't what I enjoyed, and there were plenty better at it than I. My life was my work, hence I'd lost that, too. I spat on the bar. Mack wiped it up without comment.
John shrugged. "That's life." I drank. "How's the meat business?" I asked, because he kept looking at me like he wanted me to say something.
"Oh, we still put the same stuff in the hot dogs." He grinned viciously. He swiveled his head to the television mounted above the bar. Split-screen, a reporter and a Dog-Head. "Turn it up, Mack," he commanded, checking me for a reaction out of the corner of his eye. Probably wanted to gall me; John could be nasty sometimes, depending on what he was drinking. Screw him. I sat where I was, cradling my own drink as Mack turned on the volume.
". . . body engineering," the reporter was saying. His hair was slicked back into a pony tail, and his tie was one of those blatant, elastic affairs that counterculture types wore when they wanted to be obvious. "Just from the live video we've seen," he continued, addressing those of us in off-stage land, "We already know that the Medusa is the most alluring creation yet to be made by the Sirians. We have with us today one of the chief engineers in charge of the design. He prefers to be called Ted. So Ted, why don't you tell us all about it?"
The camera zoomed in on the Dog-Head. His teeth were polished to a brilliant alabaster shine, and his muzzle dutifully painted in the latest fashion. The little black box on his throat spoke for him as he subvocalized to it; the Dog-Heads still hadn't revealed to us how that translation gimmick worked, so communication was strictly one-sided, and under their control.
"Maybe not everything, Steve, but I will say that we're very pleased with our Medusa." The occasional whine or half-bark escaped from his real mouth as he spoke. "In your mythology the original Medusa was considered a woman of such beauty that she dared to compare herself to the Goddess Athena, and we've tried to keep that tradition here by creating an archetypal beauty as defined by current social standards. We've also given her powerfully provocative pheromones and seductive, hypnotic skin patterns undetectable, on a conscious plane, by Humans. Of course," his tongue lolled out of his mouth in a canine grin, "You've yet to see her head. As the center of her curse, we tried to make it have a striking contrast with her body. Beauty to sheer ugliness and terror, but retaining a certain dignity, a nobility, if you will."
"And how about her programming?"
"Oh, she's nowhere near so complex as some of our other creations. Her programming is limited strictly to the play. After all, as that Human poet said, the play's the thing. Giving her too much freedom would destroy the opportunity for you Humans to examine your own inner psyches in relation to the performance and the mythology. So we've tried to make her a true Medusa in some senses. Your theater departments were quite thrilled when we notified them."
"Yes, I'm sure they were. But where will you go from here? From Medusa, what next?"
"Oh, we're not sure. But I will say that it will certainly be on to something grander. No use going backwards in these things. Perhaps on to the even more challenging Psyche, or maybe a complete switch of mythos. Only the future will tell." Woof.
"A future we'll all look forward to. Thank you, Ted." The camera returned to the reporter. "As you all know, the Medusa makes her grand debut tonight at the Palace Amphitheater. Entrance is free, but seating selective. Some of our world's highest dignitaries will be attending, so security is tight. Additionally, for those of us too lazy to have been standing in line all this week, the play will be broadcast via holographic imaging and radioform to the entire world. That's right, not just the city, but the entire world. This will be the first attempted use of the new night-sky projection uplinks. So get outside to the streets and rooftops and look up, because tonight and tonight only you'll see them, giants straddling the sky, the seductive Medusa Sirian bodyform and Perseus, a human performer. Tune back in at six a.m. for a morning after follow-up broadcast. Now, back to the parade."
The camera showed a flooded street not far from the bar. The parade exhibited no signs of slowing down. The Sirian's psychologically evocative plays were always popular affairs; this was the third, I hadn't seen the other two.
John gave me the once over. I ignored him; I was warm inside. The whiskey had fortified me during the Dog-Head's speech. Barely had grated on my nerves at all, so John didn't stand a chance.
He grunted. "Going to watch the play tonight?"
I shook my head. "No. You?" He shrugged.
"Maybe. If it rains beer."
He swirled the straw in the cup and sucked the dregs from the bottom. Mack glided over and filled it back up. I heard the door swing softly shut behind us. Glancing that way I saw that the woman had gone, leaving behind a cloud of blue smoke hovering over her table. Tubes descended from the ceiling to suck it up and dispose of it properly. John tossed some shiny gray stones onto the surface of the bar.
"Know what those are?" I shook my head and motioned for Mack to top off my drink, which it did with its usual amicable silence.
"Galena. Lead sulfide, lead ore. You know how the Dog-Heads are. They don't like telling us how to do things. They like trying to make us figure it out ourselves through that damn library of theirs. First they like to show off, and then watch us scramble. I think," he leaned forward to me, his voice descending to a whisper, his breath stinking of alcohol, "They're just going to do it. Poof," he snapped his fingers, "Turn lead into gold. Why lead?" He winked. "Basic chemistry is very Greek. Think of all the centuries alchemy was studied. It'll be irresistible to them. They've been bragging that they'd abolish money for awhile now, and that's how they're going to do it. And I'll be ready. These," he leaned back and pointed to the nuggets, "Are going to make me a rich man."
I frowned at him. "Think about it, John. If most of the lead in the world is changed to gold, gold won't be worth much. Our economy will collapse. Money won't be worth the paper it's printed on. And," my foggy brain worked slowly, "Lead will have a much higher value. You should want to keep your lead, not turn it into gold."
He glared at me. "You're no fun." He swept the nuggets from the counter into the palm of his other hand and pocketed them. We drank then for a few minutes in silence; me in sips, he in an endless stream of beer flowing up his straw.
"Here." John took one of the nuggets back out of his pocket and held it out to me. "Take it."
I looked back and forth slowly between the stone and his face. Was there some sort of trick here? John wasn't usually known for his generosity.
His eyes caught and held mine. He grinned tight-lipped, his face telling me he knew my thoughts. "Take it."
Hesitantly I reached over and picked it out of his palm, depositing it into my jacket pocket. "Thanks."
"Sure."
We sat then in silence, each involved in our drinks, our petty problems, our personal demons. The door opened and closed a few times, and Mack slid by occasionally to top off my drink, without instruction, but I ignored it all. After an hour or so I began again to hear the ticking of life's clock, so I paid up my tab and bought a bottle of whiskey, nodded to John, and staggered my way back to my apartment, where I draped my jacket over the window to make sure I wouldn't have to see the performance, and then found my solution to the night's problem in a sweat-soaked mattress, the bottle of liquor, and a helpful, black oblivion.

I dropped onto a stool. Mack glided over, gave me his usual speech. I decided against whiskey and asked for coffee, black. As I sat sipping it and contemplating the events of the morning, particularly working through my own feelings on the matter, John came out of a little side door next to the counter. He was dripping wet, and had a damp towel draped around his neck.
"Just showered," he said as he plopped down beside me. He ordered an Irish Coffee from Mack. "It's all in your head," he replied to my raised eyebrow.
I coughed into one hand. "Been outside yet?"
His glance slid to me and away. "An hour ago."
I waited for him to say something more. He didn't. "Well, what the hell do we do?"
He shrugged. "Wait for the six a.m. news report."
"There's an entire stoned city out there and you want to wait for the news!"
"Not a whole frozen city. I saw some people moving. Besides, this broadcast was to the world, remember? Much bigger than the city. Everybody who didn't watch the play should be fine." He paused. "I'm glad I passed out after Perseus visited the Gray Women." He shrugged again. "Besides, what can we do?" He looked at me intently.
He was right. What could we do? Mack slid back to me along the bar. It made a strange, electronic humming sound and extended one robotic hand, palm upward.
"What?" I blinked at it. John barked a laugh. "You forgot to pay it for your coffee. It'll only start running a tab after its been paid a few times."
"Oh."
I dug stuff out of my jacket pockets and dumped it on the counter, looking for a spare coin. I found one wrapped in a wad of paper, but couldn't remember how it got there. I gave it to Mack, who thanked me for my patronage and asked me if I'd like more coffee. I did, and it refilled.
I didn't like the quiet. It was too strange, too unnerving. I swiveled on my stool to face John, ready to make small talk until my lips fell off, or, I thought without humor, until my tongue turned to stone. He was staring wide-eyed at my junk on the counter.
"What?"
He fished something out from a pile of lint. A gold something. "Isn't this," he said slowly, "The galena I gave you last night?"
I set down my coffee and stared. It certainly looked like the same stone, with the notable exception of being gold. "It couldn't be." I stared a little more, my eyes going wide. "Could it?"
John pulled out a pocket knife and one of his own nuggets from his pocket and shaved off a piece of his lead sulfide stone. It fell away, revealing a gold surface beneath. He pressed harder with his knife, still shaving. The gold flaked away, again showing the metallic gray surface. He set that stone down on the counter and took up mine.
"Now wait a minute," I began to protest, not wanting him to ruin my good fortune, but I stopped under his glare. I backed down. "Fine," I gave and airy wave of my hand, "Go ahead."
"Thanks." I winced as his knife bit down into the gold surface, shaving it away, revealing the metallic gray, same as his. He nodded, smiling.
"It did work. You see," he pointed to the nuggets and their scraps on the counter with his knife, "What we had were compressed balls of galena ore, gold electroplating, and more lead ore underneath. Mine still looked like that, but yours is gold on the surface all the way to the electroplating, and then lead underneath. Yours changed." He frowned at me, and the stones. "Yours changed, and mine didn't. Why?"
I shifted nervously on my stool. "I don't know. You can have it back if you want."
He shook his head. "That's not the point. This has to have something to do with," he waved at the door to the bar, "All that. What did you do with the nugget last night?"
"Nothing. I just left it in my jacket."
"Where was your jacket?"
"Hanging . . ." I stopped, having a revelation. "In front of my window," I continued excitedly, "And the pockets were open, facing the outside. They would have been exposed to the play. My window has a great view of the sky."
John nodded. "And I passed out in my room upstairs, which has no windows and no view of the play."
I sipped my coffee, deliberately forcing calm. "You know, John, I'm curious how you thought up this idea with the nuggets."
"I didn't. Mack did."
"Mack!" I cried loudly, staring at the robot with an open mouth.
"Quiet," snapped John. He rubbed his head. "Not that Mack. The Mack who owns the bar," he finished irritably.
"Oh." I hadn't known that the robot had been named after the proprietor. "How?"
John shrugged. "How what? He just did. He figured the Dog-Heads would get around to turning the lead to gold sometime, but that maybe the way they did it could be fooled by surrounding the lead with gold. So he did it by making these false nuggets, and a whole lot more of them that he still has, and it worked. If his nuggets were exposed to the play last night, he'll be a rich man in lead this morning. We didn't think it would be this soon though, or in this way, though the fact that the Dog-Heads picked a Greek story did seem suggestive." A worried crease passed over John's forehead. "I hope he wasn't watching."
I thought about that, what John had said. He just did. He just thought it up. John's words ricocheted off the walls of my mind. One smart man with an idea had found a loophole in the alien logic. Found something to do that wasn't predicted, that wasn't known. Something that produced an unexpected result. Something new, something strange, something wonderful. Something useful, worthwhile. That's why I'd become a scientist in the first place, to find those sorts of things. Ever since I lost my job, I hadn't even tried. I looked disgustedly at my hands, dirty and unwashed, and felt for the first time the gradual decay my condition had been undergoing, both physically and mentally.
I could see that John knew the direction of my thoughts. He pulled out a hand-mirror and gave it to me. I studied my reflection in the mirror: the stubble on my chin, my sad face.
"I was like you once," said John softly, "But then I learned something. I learned that there's always a place for thinking people in this world. Always a place for people ready to seek new knowledge, or find new ways of using what we already have."
I nodded. I knew he was right. Why hadn't I seen it before? It was never my job that mattered, never that temporary thing, it was my own dedication to the pursuit of knowledge and my own identity that I should have cared about. Nothing could ever take that away from me. Not aliens, and not their labyrinth of a library. I slashed at the rags of my self-pity until they fell away, and the reflection in the mirror smiled back at me. I handed it back to John. He pocketed it.
"You know, you might just make a good addition to our team of crack researchers. There isn't any pay yet, but you'll reap what we sow together."
"Team?" John gestured about the room, to the paintings, the decor. "We're setting up the heart of a new renaissance right here in this bar. Marking a new age of human ideas and ideals, apart from any alien culture. Rather than learning from them, we'll learn about them, and keep learning new things in traditional human fashion all on our own, and of new, revolutionary ways of doing things with the opportunities they give us. It's about time our species developed a new perspective. Right now, the members of the team are me, and Mack, and . . .?"
"And me." I smiled, nodded, shook his hand.
He clapped me on the back. "This calls for a celebration! Champagne!" He roared, and winced.
We drank then in that early morning, and talked of the future, pausing to listen to the six a.m. broadcast of the news. The Sirians apologized profusely for the misunderstanding over the Medusa play and over the sudden shift of lead to gold that had together in a single night thrown the world into chaos. They made it clear that it was possible both to change the gold back to lead, if we so desired, or even to do the same with water, so long as it had no salt, and that the metamorphic stoning could be reversed, leaving those who had experienced it with the brilliant new self-discoveries that were the results of any of their plays. When pressed as to the details they recommended the use of their Library, which had all the answers, and then turned off their subvocalizers in a mute refusal to give any more information on the matter.
Afterwards, John and I sipped coffee in salute to a quiet afternoon; a perfect noise level for thinking, and coming up with ideas. We found that once we'd had our heads together for awhile we'd come up with quite a few goods ones, not the least remarkable of which was a strategy for cleaning my apartment.
Copyright © 1999 Matthew Abts

Matthew Abts: "I'm an industry certified computer engineer with a predilection for science fiction and a penchant for writing. After a decade more of practice, I hope I'll be able to support an early retirement by weaving worthwhile plots, and banish any demon-worries about social security to boot! In the meanwhile, I'll be found waiting in front of a computer with a granola bar in one hand (carefully suspended away from the keyboad) and a good book or thesaurus in the other as the utility programs do their stuff."
Finding Parnassus

Finding Parnassus

by Matthew Abts

The silence woke me up. It was the sort of silence that could do that; a preternatural quiet that produced a feeling of absence in your mind, because for some time prior to it you had sound and then, suddenly, you didn't. In any event, it took me a few moments to recognize it through the pulsing of my head, and another few to realize that tonight, or by my clock more precisely this morning, there would be no more sleep, thanks to the headache. I managed to make it to the bathroom toilet before heaving up the contents of my stomach. Cold water helped. I wandered my way over to the window.
Wherever the sun was, it wasn't here. A friendly fluorescent bulb glowed pale light from the ceiling, which didn't do much to help my headache. I yanked down my jacket and looked out. The sun was sending pink fingers into the sky, a fairly sure sign of dawn. Below me, I could see people sitting or standing still in the street; some rested on blankets, others sat in chairs, and a few just stood, staring at the sky. From my position overhead they were figures without detail, forms without life. Save for one or two people wending there way about in a dazed fashion they seemed unusually inanimate. Most likely the play had but recently ended and they were busy contemplating its affect on their souls. Dog-Head plays were supposed to do that. Disgusted I turned away, and deciding that today would likely be no better than yesterday, I headed for the door, intent on returning to the bar for a couple more bottles of liquid companionship.
It was in the lobby, a place that always has one or two denizens, that I saw what had happened. I blinked my eyes in shock, hesitantly standing in the doorframe at the bottom of the stairwell that led back up to my apartment. Stone effigies cluttered the area before me on couches and chairs facing the windows, more clustering near the door and on the street outside; all frozen, they were peering upward to sky with twisted expressions of horror. I thought then of the giants in the sky, and how the Medusa's face had never been seen. I recalled the Dog-Head commenting on making her as real as possible, and only now did I understand the full horrorific import of those words. Cautiously, I entered the room and gently reached out to touched the doorman's arm. It was cool, cold, hard. It was stone. I shuddered, and felt a part of my brain go numb as it tried to normalize the circumstances I found myself in. I recalled that I was on my way to the bar, and that standing in this lobby of horrors and frozen flesh accomplished nothing. The compulsion seized me to leave, so I did, with great expeditiousness.
Ever present Mack was still behind the bar, yellow eyes ablaze, waiting to be called upon. Thankfully, the place was empty, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that there wasn't a single statue in sight.
I dropped onto a stool. Mack glided over, gave me his usual speech. I decided against whiskey and asked for coffee, black. As I sat sipping it and contemplating the events of the morning, particularly working through my own feelings on the matter, John came out of a little side door next to the counter. He was dripping wet, and had a damp towel draped around his neck.
"Just showered," he said as he plopped down beside me. He ordered an Irish Coffee from Mack. "It's all in your head," he replied to my raised eyebrow.
I coughed into one hand. "Been outside yet?"
His glance slid to me and away. "An hour ago."
I waited for him to say something more. He didn't. "Well, what the hell do we do?"
He shrugged. "Wait for the six a.m. news report."
"There's an entire stoned city out there and you want to wait for the news!"
"Not a whole frozen city. I saw some people moving. Besides, this broadcast was to the world, remember? Much bigger than the city. Everybody who didn't watch the play should be fine." He paused. "I'm glad I passed out after Perseus visited the Gray Women." He shrugged again. "Besides, what can we do?" He looked at me intently.
He was right. What could we do? Mack slid back to me along the bar. It made a strange, electronic humming sound and extended one robotic hand, palm upward.
"What?" I blinked at it. John barked a laugh. "You forgot to pay it for your coffee. It'll only start running a tab after its been paid a few times."
"Oh."
I dug stuff out of my jacket pockets and dumped it on the counter, looking for a spare coin. I found one wrapped in a wad of paper, but couldn't remember how it got there. I gave it to Mack, who thanked me for my patronage and asked me if I'd like more coffee. I did, and it refilled.
I didn't like the quiet. It was too strange, too unnerving. I swiveled on my stool to face John, ready to make small talk until my lips fell off, or, I thought without humor, until my tongue turned to stone. He was staring wide-eyed at my junk on the counter.
"What?"
He fished something out from a pile of lint. A gold something. "Isn't this," he said slowly, "The galena I gave you last night?"
I set down my coffee and stared. It certainly looked like the same stone, with the notable exception of being gold. "It couldn't be." I stared a little more, my eyes going wide. "Could it?"
John pulled out a pocket knife and one of his own nuggets from his pocket and shaved off a piece of his lead sulfide stone. It fell away, revealing a gold surface beneath. He pressed harder with his knife, still shaving. The gold flaked away, again showing the metallic gray surface. He set that stone down on the counter and took up mine.
"Now wait a minute," I began to protest, not wanting him to ruin my good fortune, but I stopped under his glare. I backed down. "Fine," I gave and airy wave of my hand, "Go ahead."
"Thanks." I winced as his knife bit down into the gold surface, shaving it away, revealing the metallic gray, same as his. He nodded, smiling.
"It did work. You see," he pointed to the nuggets and their scraps on the counter with his knife, "What we had were compressed balls of galena ore, gold electroplating, and more lead ore underneath. Mine still looked like that, but yours is gold on the surface all the way to the electroplating, and then lead underneath. Yours changed." He frowned at me, and the stones. "Yours changed, and mine didn't. Why?"
I shifted nervously on my stool. "I don't know. You can have it back if you want."
He shook his head. "That's not the point. This has to have something to do with," he waved at the door to the bar, "All that. What did you do with the nugget last night?"
"Nothing. I just left it in my jacket."
"Where was your jacket?"
"Hanging . . ." I stopped, having a revelation. "In front of my window," I continued excitedly, "And the pockets were open, facing the outside. They would have been exposed to the play. My window has a great view of the sky."
John nodded. "And I passed out in my room upstairs, which has no windows and no view of the play."
I sipped my coffee, deliberately forcing calm. "You know, John, I'm curious how you thought up this idea with the nuggets."
"I didn't. Mack did."
"Mack!" I cried loudly, staring at the robot with an open mouth.
"Quiet," snapped John. He rubbed his head. "Not that Mack. The Mack who owns the bar," he finished irritably.
"Oh." I hadn't known that the robot had been named after the proprietor. "How?"
John shrugged. "How what? He just did. He figured the Dog-Heads would get around to turning the lead to gold sometime, but that maybe the way they did it could be fooled by surrounding the lead with gold. So he did it by making these false nuggets, and a whole lot more of them that he still has, and it worked. If his nuggets were exposed to the play last night, he'll be a rich man in lead this morning. We didn't think it would be this soon though, or in this way, though the fact that the Dog-Heads picked a Greek story did seem suggestive." A worried crease passed over John's forehead. "I hope he wasn't watching."
I thought about that, what John had said. He just did. He just thought it up. John's words ricocheted off the walls of my mind. One smart man with an idea had found a loophole in the alien logic. Found something to do that wasn't predicted, that wasn't known. Something that produced an unexpected result. Something new, something strange, something wonderful. Something useful, worthwhile. That's why I'd become a scientist in the first place, to find those sorts of things. Ever since I lost my job, I hadn't even tried. I looked disgustedly at my hands, dirty and unwashed, and felt for the first time the gradual decay my condition had been undergoing, both physically and mentally.
I could see that John knew the direction of my thoughts. He pulled out a hand-mirror and gave it to me. I studied my reflection in the mirror: the stubble on my chin, my sad face.
"I was like you once," said John softly, "But then I learned something. I learned that there's always a place for thinking people in this world. Always a place for people ready to seek new knowledge, or find new ways of using what we already have."
I nodded. I knew he was right. Why hadn't I seen it before? It was never my job that mattered, never that temporary thing, it was my own dedication to the pursuit of knowledge and my own identity that I should have cared about. Nothing could ever take that away from me. Not aliens, and not their labyrinth of a library. I slashed at the rags of my self-pity until they fell away, and the reflection in the mirror smiled back at me. I handed it back to John. He pocketed it.
"You know, you might just make a good addition to our team of crack researchers. There isn't any pay yet, but you'll reap what we sow together."
"Team?" John gestured about the room, to the paintings, the decor. "We're setting up the heart of a new renaissance right here in this bar. Marking a new age of human ideas and ideals, apart from any alien culture. Rather than learning from them, we'll learn about them, and keep learning new things in traditional human fashion all on our own, and of new, revolutionary ways of doing things with the opportunities they give us. It's about time our species developed a new perspective. Right now, the members of the team are me, and Mack, and . . .?"
"And me." I smiled, nodded, shook his hand.
He clapped me on the back. "This calls for a celebration! Champagne!" He roared, and winced.
We drank then in that early morning, and talked of the future, pausing to listen to the six a.m. broadcast of the news. The Sirians apologized profusely for the misunderstanding over the Medusa play and over the sudden shift of lead to gold that had together in a single night thrown the world into chaos. They made it clear that it was possible both to change the gold back to lead, if we so desired, or even to do the same with water, so long as it had no salt, and that the metamorphic stoning could be reversed, leaving those who had experienced it with the brilliant new self-discoveries that were the results of any of their plays. When pressed as to the details they recommended the use of their Library, which had all the answers, and then turned off their subvocalizers in a mute refusal to give any more information on the matter.
Afterwards, John and I sipped coffee in salute to a quiet afternoon; a perfect noise level for thinking, and coming up with ideas. We found that once we'd had our heads together for awhile we'd come up with quite a few goods ones, not the least remarkable of which was a strategy for cleaning my apartment.
Copyright © 1999 Matthew Abts