“Very well.” Joe’s voice was no longer songful. It rasped hideously. “Very well. I shall decide for you—now.”
He seized Cramer roughly, ignoring his gasps of pain, and rushed him away up the forest trail.
Professor Zukoquol, Chairman of Gwarz University’s Department of Exotic Zoology, watched in fascination as a foot-long statue of a sheep rode the conveyor through the Life Rehabilitator. A full-sized sheep staggered forth at the other end, baaing lustily. A twenty-inch cow followed, to emerge as a slobbering, foul-smelling horned monster.
Professor Zukoquol’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “An amazing collection!” he exclaimed. “Friend Joruloq, you have done a splendid piece of work. And you brought a full load?”
“Full to capacity,” Joruloq said modestly.
“Splendid. You are to be heartily complimented. Except for your encounter with the human, of course. That disturbs me.”
“It disturbs me, also,” Joruloq said.
“Did he truly ask you to decide his destiny for him?”
“He truly did,” Joruloq said.
“Horrifying, is it not, that a supposedly civilized creature should have no developed sense of ethics. I should not have blamed you if you had smashed him on the spot.”
“But that would have been deciding for him!” Joruloq protested.
“Or gone off and left him.”
“That likewise would have been deciding for him!”
“True. This is why we sternly advise our field workers to avoid contacts with intelligent beings. Their moralities are so unpredictable. All kinds of filthy dilemmas can result.”
“I agree,” Joruloq said. “But I had no choice, because I was indebted to him.”
“I’m almost inclined to believe it would have been best if he had not saved your life. But never mind. Once you allowed yourself to become involved, I must concede that you acted with commendable wisdom. Have you made inquiries at the medical school?”
“I did so at once.”
“What did they say?”
“They promise to solve the mystery of the human’s arthritis at the earliest opportunity. They do not anticipate any difficulties. Unfortunately, they have many important projects that must be completed first. It will be a thousand or two of his years before they can consider his problem.”
“Generous of them to place him so far up on their schedule, considering that the project would be of no importance whatsoever to anyone but him. What will you do with him in the meantime?”
“Nothing.”
“You do not intend to rehabilitate him?”
“Certainly not,” Joruloq said. From a fold in his cloak he took George Cramer—an eighteen-inch figure that stood in a half crouch with swollen hands upraised, a look of intense surprise on his face. “No, I would not force him to live in pain for a thousand or two of his years while waiting for the medical school to find time for his case. I won’t rehabilitate him until they are ready for him.”
“You might loan him to the museum.”
“I think not,” Joruloq said. “I’d much prefer to keep him near me. He did save my life, you know, and I feel both gratitude and fondness for him. Also, he makes an excellent paperweight.”
Mr. Ettinger’s article on immortality was completely serious opinion based on available facts; and “Limbo” was at least perfectly rational within its own premises.
The next story is totally improbable...but it deals with a kind of immortality that I understand—personally, subjectively.
Just about here, the words all start to turn inside out: this next story deals with alienation from reality—or deals with realistic alienation between son and father—or really deals out an alien—or perhaps it is just that the son really resolves things with a deal involving alienation. . . .
237 TALKING STATUES, ETC.
Fritz Leiber
During the last five years of his life, when his theatrical career was largely over, the famous actor Francis Legrande spent considerable time making portraits of himself: plaster heads and busts, some larger statues, oil paintings, sketches in various media, and photographic self-studies. Most of them showed him in roles in which he had starred on the stage and screen. Legrande had always been a versatile craftsman and the results were artistically adequate.
After his death, his wife devoted herself to caring for the self-portraits along with other tangible and intangible memories of the great man. Keeping them alive, as it were, or at least dusted and cleaned and even pampered with an occasional change of air and prospect. There were 237 of them on view, distributed throughout Legrande’s studio, the living room and halls and bedrooms of the house, and in the garden.
Legrande had a son, Francis Legrande II, who had no more self-content or success in life than most sons of prominent and widely admired men. After the collapse of his third marriage and his eleventh job, young Francis—who was well over forty—retreated for a time to his father’s house.
His relations with his mother were amicable but limited: they said loud cheery things to each other when they met, but after a bit they began to keep their daily orbits separate —by accident, as it were.
Young Francis was drinking rather too heavily and trying hard to control it, yet without any definite program for the future—a poor formula for quiet nerves.
After six weeks his father’s self-portraits began to talk to him. It came as no great surprise, since they had been following him with their eyes for at least a week, and for the past two days they had been frowning and smiling at him—critically, he was certain—glaring and smirking—and this morning the air was full of ominous hangoverish noises on the verge of intelligibility.
He was alone in the studio. In fact he was alone in the whole house, since his mother was calling on a neighbor. There came a tiny but nerve-rasping dry grating sound, exactly as if chalk were coughing or plaster had cleared its throat. He quickly glanced at a white bust of his father as Julius Caesar and he distinctly saw the plaster lips part a little and the tip of a plaster tongue come out and quickly run around them. Then—
FATHER: I irritate you, don’t I? Or perhaps I should say we irritate you?
SON (startled but quickly accepting the situation and deciding to speak frankly): Well, yes, you do. Most sons are bugged by their fathers—any psychologist who knows his stuff will tell you that. By the actual father or by his memory. If the father happens to be a famous man, the son is that much more intimidated and inhibited and overawed. And if, in addition, the father leaves behind dozens of faces of himself, created by himself, if he insists on going on living after death . . . (He shrugs.)
FATHER (smiling compassionately from a painting of himself as Jesus of Nazareth): In short, you hate me.
SON: Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as that. It’s more that you weary me. Seeing you around everywhere, all the time, I get bored.
FATHER (in dark colors, as Strindberg’s Captain): You get bored? You’ve only been here six weeks. Think of me having nothing to look at for ten whole years but your mother.
SON (with a certain satisfaction): I always thought your affection and devotion to Mother were overdone.
FATHER (as Romeo, a pastel sketch): No, son, they weren’t, but . . .
FATHER (a head of Don Juan, interrupting): But it has been a dull time. There have been exactly three beautiful girls inside this house during the last decade, and one of those was collecting for Community Chest and only stayed five minutes. And none of them got undressed.