A BOWL BIGGER THAN EARTH

Philip José Farmer
(If, September, 1967)

Illustrated by Gaughan

He didn't remember how he had
come to this planet. He only
remembered that he was dead!

I

No squeeze. No pain. Death has a wide pelvis, he thought -- much later, when he had time to reflect.

Now he was screaming.

He had had an impression of awakening from his deathbed, of being shot outwards over the edge of a bowl bigger than Earth seen from a space capsule. Sprawling outwards, he landed on his hands and knees on a gentle slope. So gentle it was. He did not tear his hands and knees but slid smoothly onward and downward on the great curve. The material on which be accelerated looked much like brass and felt frictionless. Though he did not think of it then he was too panic-sticken to do anything but react -- he knew later that the brassy stuff had even less resistance than oil become a solid. And the brass, or whatever it was, formed a solid seamless sheet.

The only break was in the center, where the sheet ended. There, far ahead and far below, the bowl curved briefly upward.

Gathering speed, he slipped along the gigantic chute. He tried to stay on his hands and knees; but when he twisted his body to see behind him, he shifted his weight. Over he went onto his side. Squawling, he thrashed around, and he tried to dig his nails into the brass. No use. He met no resistance, and he began spinning around, around. He did see, during his whirlings, the rim from which he had been shoved. But he could see only the rim itself and, beyond, the blue cloudless sky.

Overhead was the sun, looking just like the Terrestrial sun.

He rolled over on his back and succeeded during the maneuver in stopping the rotations. He also mailaged to see his own body. He began screaming again, the first terror driven out and replaced by -- or added to as a higher harmonic -- the terror of finding himself in a sexless body.

Smooth. Projectionless. Hairless. His legs hairless, too. No navel. His skin a dark brown like an Apache's.

Morfiks screamed and screamed, and he gripped his face and the top of his head. Then he screamed higher and higher. The face was not the one he knew (the ridge of bone above the eyes and the broken nose were not there), and his head was smooth as an egg.

He fainted.

Later, although it could not have been much later, he came to his senses. Overhead was the bright sun and beneath him was the cool nonfriction.

He turned his face to one side, saw the same brass and had no sensation of sliding because he had no reference point. For a moment he thought he might be at the end of his descent. But on lifting his head he saw that the bottom of the bowl was closer, that it was rushing at him.

His heart was leaping in his chest as if trying to batter itself to a second death. But it did not fail. It just drove the blood through his ears until he could hear its roar even above the air rushing by.

He lowered his head until its back was supported by the brass, and he closed his eyes against the sun. Never in all his life (lives?) had he felt so helpless. More helpless than a newborn babe, who does not know he is helpless and who cannot think and who will be taken care of if he cries.

He had screamed, but no one was running to take care of him.

Downward he slipped, brass-yellow curving away on both sides of him, no sensation of heat against his back where the skin should have burned off a long time ago and his muscles should now be burning.

The incline began to be less downward, to straighten out. He shot across a flat space which he had no means of estimating because he was going too fast.

The flatness gave away to a curving upwards. He felt that he was slowing down; he hoped so. If he continued at the same rate of speed, he would shoot far out and over the center of the bowL

Here it came! The rim!

He went up with just enough velocity to rise perhaps seven feet above the edge. Then, falling, he glimpsed a city of brass beyond the people gathered on the shore of a river, but lost sight of these in the green waters rushing up towards him directly below.

He bellowed in anguish, tried to straighten out, and flailed his arms and legs. In vain. The water struck him on his left side. Half-stunned, he plunged into the cool and dark waters.

By the time he had broken the surface again, he had regained his senses. There was only one thing to do. Behind him, the brassy wall reared at least thirty feet straight up. He had to swim to the shore, which was about four hundred yards away.

What if he had not been able to swim? What if he chose to drown now rather than face the unknown on the beach?

A boat was his answer. A flat-bottomed boat of brass rowed with brass oars by a brown-skinned man (man?). In the bow stood a similar creature (similar? exactly alike) extending a long pole of brass.

The manlike thing in the bow called out, "Grab hold, and I'll pull you in."

Morfiks replied with an obscenity and began swimming toward the beach. The fellow with the pole howled, "A trouble-maker, heh? We'll have no antisocial actions here, citizen!"

He brought the butt of the pole down with all his strength.

It was then that Morfiks found that he was relatively invulnerable. The pole, even if made of material as light as aluminum and hollow, should have stunned him and cut his scalp open. But it had bounced off with much less effect than the fall into the river.

"Come into the boat," said the poleman. "Or nobody here will like you."

II

It was this threat that cowed Morfiks. After climbing into the boat, he sat down on the bench in front of the rower and examined the two. No doubt of it. They were twins. Same height (both were sitting now) as himself. Hairless, except for long curling black eyelashes. Same features. High foreheads. Smooth hairless brows. Straight noses. Full lips. Well developed chins. Regular, almost classical features, delicate, looking both feminine and masculine. Their eyes were the same shade of dark brown. Their skins were heavily tanned. Their bodies were slimly built and quite human except for the disconcerting lack of sex, navel and nipples on the masculine chests.

"Where am I?" said Morfiks. "In the fourth dimension?"

He had read about that in the Sunday supplements and some of the more easily digesteds.

"Or in Hell?" he added, which would have been his first question if he had been in his Terrestrial body. Nothing that had happened so far made him think he was in Heaven.

The pole rapped him in the mouth, and be thought that either the poleman was pulling his punches or else his new flesh was less sensitive than his Terrestrial. The last must be it. His lips felt almost as numb as when the dentist gave him novocaine before pulling a tooth. And his meager buttocks did not hurt from sitting on the hard brass.

Moreover, he had all his teeth. There were no fillings or bridges in his mouth.

"You will not use that word," said the poleman. "It's not nice, and it's not true. The protectors do not like that word and will take one hundred per cent effective measures to punish anybody responsible for offending the public taste with it."

"You mean the word beginning with H?" said Morfiks cautiously.

"You're catching on fast, citizen."

"What do you call this . . . place?"

"Home. Just plain home. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm one of the official greeters. I have no name; nobody here does. Citizen is good enough for me and for you. However, being a greeter doesn't make me one whit better than you, citizen. It's just my job, that's all. We all have jobs here, all equally. important. We're all on the same level, citizen. No cause for envy or strife."

"No name?" Morfiks said.

"Forget that nonsense. A name means you're trying to set yourself apart. Now, you wouldn't think it was nice if somebody thought he was better than you because he had a name that was big in We-know-where, would you? Of course not."

"I'm here for . . . how long?" Morfiks said.

"Who knows?"

"Forever?" Morfiks said dismally.

The end of the pole butted into his lips. His head rocked back, but he did not hurt much.

"Just think of the present, citizen. Because that is all that exists. The past doesn't exist; the future can't. Only the present exists."

"There's no future?"

Again, the butt of the pole.

"Forget that word. We use it on the river when we're breaking in immigrants. But once on the shore, we're through with it. Here, we're practical. We don't indulge in fantasy."

"I get your message," Morfiks said. He damped the impulse to leap at the poleman's throat. Better to wait until he found out what the setup was, what a man could or could not get away with.

The rower said, "Coming ashore, citizens."

Morfiks noticed that the two had voices exactly alike. and he supposed his own was the same as theirs. But be had a secret triumph. His voice would sound different to himself; he had that much edge on the bastards.

The boat nudged onto the beach, and Morfiks followed the other two onto the sand. He looked quickly behind him and now saw that there were many boats up and down the river. Here and there a body shot up over the rim of the brassy cliff and tumbled down into the waters as he had a few minutes ago.

Beyond the lip of the cliff rose the swell of the brass slide down which he had hurtled. The slide extended so far that he could not see the human figures that undoubtedly must be standing on the edge where he had stood and must just now be in the act of being pushed from behind. Five miles away, at least, five miles he had slid.

A colossal building project, he thought.

Beyond the city of brass rose another incline. He understood now that he had been mistaken in believing the city was in the middle of a bowl. As far as he could see, there was the river and the city and the cliffs and slides on both sides. And he supposed that there was another river on the other side of the city.

The city reminded him of the suburban tract in which he had lived on Earth. Rows on rows of square brass houses, exactly alike, facing each other across twenty-foot wide streets. Earth house was about twelve feet wide. Each had a flat roof and a door in front and back, a strip of windows which circled the house like a transparent belt. There were no yards. A space of two feet separated each house from its neighbor.

A person stepped out of the crowd standing on the beach. This one differed from the others only in having a band of some black metal around the biceps of its right arm.

"Officer of the Day," it said in voice exactly like the two in the boat. "Your turn will come to act in this capacity. No favorites here."

It was then that Morfiks recognized the possibilities of individualism in voice, of recognizing others. Even if everybody had identical dimensions in larynxes and the resonating chambers of palate and nasal passages, they must retain their habits of intonation and choice of pitch and words. Also, despite identical bodies and legs, they must keep some of their peculiar gestures and methods of walking.

"Any complaints about treatment so far?" said the O.D.

"Yes," said Morfiks. "This jerk hit me three times with its pole."

"Only because we love it," said the poleman. "We struck it -- oh, very lightly! -- to correct its ways. As a father -- pardon the word -- punishes a child he loves. Or an older brother his little brother. We are all brothers. . . ."

"We are guilty of antisocial behavior," said the O.D. sternly. "We're very very sorry, but we must report this incident to the Protectors. Believe us, it hurt us. . . ."

"Worse than it hurts us," said the poleman wearily. "We know."

"We'll have to add cynicism to the charge," said the O.D. "K.P. for several months if we know the Protectors. Should anybody be guilty again -- "

The O.D. told Morfiks to walk with it, and it briefed Morfiks as they went through the streets. These were made of a pale violet rubbery substance only slightly warm to the feet despite the sun beating down upon it. Morfiks would be given his own home. He was lord and master there and could do whatever he wished in it as long as he did not break any rules of public morality.

"You mean I can invite anybody I want to and can keep out anybody I want to?"

"Well, you can invite anybody you want. But don't throw anybody out who comes in uninvited. This is, unless the uninvited behaves antisocially. In which case, notify the O.D., and we'll notify a Protector."

"How can I be master of my house if I can't choose my guests?" Morfiks said.

"The citizen doesn't understand," said the O.D. "A citizen should not want to keep another citizen out of his house. Doing so is saying that a citizen doesn't love all citizens as brothers and sisters. It's not nice. We want to be nice, don't we?"

Morfiks replied that had always been known as a nice guy, and he continued to listen to the O.D. But, on passing an area where a large field coated with the violet rubber broke the monotonous rows of houses, he said, "Looks like a children's playground with all those swings, seesaws, games, trampolines. Where are the kids? And how --"

"Only the Protectors know what happens to the children who come from We-Know-Where," said the O.D. "It's better, much, much better, not to ask them about it. In fact, it's very good not to see or talk to a Protector.

"No, the playgrounds are for the amusement of us citizens. However, the Protectors have been thinking about taking them down. Too many citizens quarrel about who gets to use them, instead of amicably arranging predecedence and turns. They actually dare to fight each other even if fighting's forbidden. And they manage, somehow, to hurt each other. We don't want anybody to get hurt, do we?"

"I guess not. What do you do for entertainment, otherwise?"

"First things first, citizen. We don't like to use any of the personal pronouns except we, of course, and us and our and ours. I, me, they, you all differentiate. Better to forget personal differences here, heh? After all, we're just one big happy family, heh?"

"Sure," Morfiks said. "But there must be times when a citizen has to point out somebody. How do I -- we -- identify someone guilty of, say, antisocial behavior?"

"It doesn't matter," said the O.D. "Point out anyone. Yourself -- if you'll pardon the word -- for instance. We all share in the punishment, so it makes no difference."

"You mean I have to be punished for someone else's crime? That isn't fair!"

"It may not seem so to us at first," said the O.D. "But consider. We're brothers, not only under the skin, but on the skin. If a crime is committed, the guilt is shared by all because, actually, all are responsible. And if punishment is given to all, then all will try to prevent crime. Simple, isn't it? And fair, too."

"But you -- we -- said that the poleman would be given K.P. Does that mean we all go on K.P.?"

"We did not commit a felony, only a misdemeanor. If we do it again, we are a felon. And we suffer. It's the only nice thing to do, to share, right?"

Morfiks did not like it. He was the one hit in the teeth, so why should he, the victim, have to take the punishment of the aggressor?

But he said nothing. He had gotten far on We-Know-Where by keeping his mouth shut. lt paid off; everybody had thought he was a nice guy. And he was a nice guy.

There did seem to be one fallacy in the setup. If being a stool pgeon meant you, too, suffered, why turn anybody in? Wouldn't it be smarter to keep quiet and inflict the punishment yourself on the aggressor?

"Don't do it, citizen," said the O.D.

Morfiks gasped.

The O.D. smiled and said, "No, we can't read minds. But every immigrant thinks the same thing when told about the system. Keeping quiet only results in double punishment. The Protectors -- whom this citizen has never seen face to face and doesn't want to -- have some means of monitoring our behavior. They know when we've been antisocial. The offender is, of course, given a certain amount of time in which to confess the injury. After that . . ."

To keep himself from bursting into outraged denunciation of the system, Morfiks asked more questions.

Yes, he would be confined to this neighborhood. If he traveled outside it, he might find himself in an area where his language was not spoken. That would result in his feeling inferior and different because he was a foreigner. Or, worse, superior. Anyway, why travel? Any place looked like every place.

Yes, he was free to discuss any subject as long as it did not concern We-Know-Where. Talking of that place led to discussions of -- forgive the term -- one's former identity and prestige. Besides, controversial subjects migbt arise and so lead to antisocial behavior.

Yes, this place was not constructed, physically, like We-Know-Where. The sun might be a small body; some eggheads had estimated it to be only a mile wide. The sun orbited around the strip, which was composed of the slides, two rivers and the city between the rivers, all of wbioh hung in space. There was some speculation that his place was in a pocket universe, the dimensions of wbioh were probably not more than fifty miles wide and twenty high. It was shaped like an intestine, closed at one end and open at the other to infinity -- maybe.

At this point, the O.D. cautioned Morfilcs about the perils of intellectual speculation. "This cou1d be a misdemeanor or felony. In any event, eggheadedness was to be avoided. Pretending to be brainier than your neighbor, to question the unquestionable, was unegalitarian.

"There's no worry about that," Morfiks said. "If there's anything hateful and despicable, it's eggheadedness."

"Congratulations on skill in avoiding the personal," said the O.D. "We'll get along fine here."

III

They entered an immense building in which citizens were sitting on brass benches and eating off brass tables running the length of the bui1ding. The O.D. told Morfiks to sit down and eat. Afterwards, Morfiks could get to his new home, No. 12634, by asking directions. The O.D. left, and a citizen on K.P. served Morfiks soup in a big brass bowl, a small steak, bread and butter, salad with garLic dressing and a pitcher of water. The utensils and cup were of brass.

He wondered where the food came from, but before he could ask, he was informed by a citizen on his right that he was not holding the spoon properly. After a few minutes of instruction and observation, Morfiks found himself able to master etiquette as practiced here.

"Having the same table manners as everybody else makes a citizen a part of the group," said the instructor. "If a citizen eats differently, then a citizen is impolite. Impoliteness is antisocial. Get it?"

"Got it," said Morfiks.

After eating, he asked the citizen where he could locate No. 12634.

"We'll show us," said the citizen. "We live near that number."

Together, they walked out of the hall and down the street. The sun was near the horizon now. Time must go faster, be thought, for it did not seem to him that he had been here for more than a few hours. Maybe the Protectors sent the sun around faster so the days would be shorter.

They came to No. 12634, and Morlik's guide preceded him through swinging batwing doors into a large room with luminescent walls. There was a wide couchbed of the violet rubbery substance, several chairs cut out of solid blocks of the same stuff and a brass table in the center of the room. In one corner was a cubicle with a door. He investigated and found it to be the toilet. Besides the usual sanitary arrangements, tho cubicle contained a shower, soap and four cups. There were no towels.

"After a shower, step outside, dry off in the sun," the guide said.

It looked at Morfiks for such a long time that Morfiks began to get nervous. Finally, :the guide said, "I'll take a chance you're a pretty good Joe. What was your name on Earth?"

"John Smith," said Morfiks.

"Play it cool, then," the guide said. "But you were a man? A male?"

Morfiks nodded, and the guide said, "I was a girl. A woman, I mean. My name was Billie."

"Why tell me this?" he demanded suspiciously.

Billie came close to Morfiks and put her hands on his shoulders.

"Listen, Johnny boy," she whispered. "Those bastards think they got us behind the eight ball by putting us into these neuter bodies. But don't you believe it. There's more than one way of skinning a cat, if you know what I mean."

"I don't," Morfiks said.

Billie came even closer; her nose almost touched his. A face in a mirror.

"Inside, you're just the same," said Billie. "That's one thing They can't change without changing you so much you're no longer the same person. If They do that, They aren't punishing the same person, are They? So, you wouldn't exist any more, would you? And being here wouldn't be fair, would it?"

"I don't get it," Morfiks said. He took a step backwards; Billie took a step forwards.

"What I mean is, you and me, we're still male and female inside. When They, whoever They are, stripped off our old bodies, They had to leave us our brains and nervous systems, didn't They? Otherwise, we'd not be ourselves, right? They fitted our nervous systems into these bodies, made a few adjustments here and there, like shortening or increasing nerve paths to take care of a stature different than the one you had on Earth. Or pumping something inside our skulls to take care of brains being too small for the skulls They gave us."

"Yeah, yeah," Morfiks said. He knew what Billie was going to propose, or he thought he did. He was breathing hard; a tingle was running over his skin; a warmth was spreading out from the pit of his stomach.

"Well," said Billie, "I always heard that it was all in your head. And that's true. Of course, there's only so much you can do, and maybe it isn't as good as it was on You-Know-Where. But it's better than nothing. Besides, like they say, none of it's bad. It's all good, some is just better than others."

"You mean?"

"Just close your eyes," Billie crooned, "and imagine I'm a woman. I'll tell you how I looked, how I was stacked. And you think about it. Then you tell me how you looked; don't hold anything back, no need to be bashful here, describe everything down to the last detail. And I'll imagine how you were."

"Think it'll work?" Morfiks said.

Billie, her eyes closed, softly sang, "I know it will, baby. I've been around some since I came here."

"Yeah, but what about the punishment?"

Billie half-opened her eyes and said, scornfully, "Don't believe all that jazz, Johnny boy. Besides, even if They do catch you, it's worth it. Believe me, it's worth it."

"If only I thought I could put one over on Them," Morfiks said. "It'd be worth taking any risk."

Billie's answer was to kiss him. Morfiks, though he had to repress revulsion, responded. After all, it was only the bald head that made Billie look like a half-man.

They struggled fiercely and desperately; their kisses were as deep as possible.

Suddenly Morfiks pushed Billie away from him.

"It's worse than nothing," he panted. "I think something's going to happen, but it never quite does. It's no use. Now I feel awful."

Billie came towards hlm again, saying "Don't give up so easy, honey. Rome wasn't erected in a day. Believe me, you can do it. But you got to have faith."

"No, I'm licked," Morfiks said. "Maybe if you did look like a woman, instead of just a carbon copy of me. Then . . . no, that wouldn't be any good. I'm just not designed for the job; neither are you. They got us where it hurts."

Billie lost her half-smile; her face twisted.

"Where it hurts!" she shrilled. "Let me tell you, Buster, if you can't get your kicks being a man here, you can by hurting somebody! That's about all that's left!"

"What do you mean?" Morfiks said.

Billie laughed loudly and long. When she mastered herself, she said,

"I'll tell you one good thing about looking like everybody else. Nobody knows what you really are inside. Or what you were on Earth. Well, I'll tell you about myself.

"I was a man!"

Morfiks sputtered. His fists clenched. He walked towards Billy.

But he did not strike her . . . him . . . it.

Instead, he smiled, and he said, "Well, let me tell you something. My real name was Juanita."

Billy became pale, then red.

"You . . . you!"

The next few days, Morfiks spent four hours each morning on the building of new houses. It was easy work. The walls and sections of the roof were brought in on wagons of brass pulled by citizens. Supervised by foremen, the laborers raised the walls, secured the bottoms to the brass foundation of the city with a quick-drying glue and then fastened the walls together by gluing down strips of the violet stuff at the corners of the walls.

Morfiks took his turn being a foreman for one day after he had gotten enough experience. He asked a citizen where the material for the houses and the rubber and the glue came from.

"And where's the food grown?"

The citizen looked around to make sure no one could hear them.

"The original brass sheets and rubber are supposed to have originated from the blind end of this universe," he said. "It's spontaneously created, flows like lava from a volcano."

"How can that be?" Morfiks said.

The citizen shrugged. "How should I know? But if you remember one of the theories of creation back on You-Know-Where, matter was supposed to be continuously created out of nothing. So if hydrogen atoms can be formed from nothing, why not brass and rubber lava?"

"But brass and rubber are organized configurations of elements and compounds!"

"So what? The structure of this universe orders it."

"And the food?"

"It's brought up on dumbwaiters through shafts which lead down to the underside. The peasants live there, citizen, and grow food and raise some kind of cattle and poultry."

"Gee, I'd like that," Morfiks said. "Couldn't I get a transfer down there? I'd like to work with the soil. It'd be much more interesting than this."

"If you were supposed to be a peasant, you'd have been transformed down there to begin with," the citizen said. "No, you're a city-dweller, brother, and you'll stay one. You predetermined that, you know, in You-Know-Where."

"I had obligations," Morfiks said. What'd you expect me to do, shirk them?"

"I don't expect nothing except get out of here some day."

"You mean we can get out? How? How?"

"Not so loud with that you," the citizen growled. "Yeah, or so we heard, anyway. We never saw a corpse but we heard about some of us dying. It isn't easy, though."

"Tell me how I can do it," Morfiks said. He grabbed the citizen's arm but the citizen tore himself loose and walked away swiftly.

Morfiks started to follow him, then could not identify him because he had mingled with a dozen others.

In the afternoons, Morfiks spent his time playing shuffleboard, badminton, swimming, or sometimes playing bridge. The brass plastic cards consisted of two thicknesses glued together. The backs were blank, and the fronts were punched with codes indicating the suits and values. Then, after the evening meals in the communal halls, there were always neighborhood committee meetings. These were to settle any disputes among the local citizens. Morfiks could see no sense in them other than devices to keep the attendants busy and tire them out so that they would be ready to go to bed. After hours of wrangling and speech-making, the disputants were always told that the fault lay equally on both sides. They were to forgive each other, shake hands and make up. Nothing was really settled, and Morfiks was sure that the disputants still burned with resentments despite their protestations that all was now well with them.

What Morfiks found particularly interesting was the public prayer -- if it could be called that -- said by the an O.D. before each meeting. It contained hints about the origins and reasons for this place and this life, but was not specific enough to satisfy his curiosity.

"Glory be to the Protectors, who give us this life. Blessed be liberty, equality and fraternity. Praise be to security, conformity and certainty. None of these did we have on We-Know-Where, O Protectors, though we desired them mightily and strove always without success to attain them. Now we have them because we strove; inevitably we came here, glory be! For this cosmos was prepared for us and when we left that vale of sippery, slidery chaos, we squeezed through the walls and were formed in the template of passage, given these bodies, sexless, sinless, suitable. O Mighty Protectors, invisible but everywhere, we know that We-Know-Where is the pristine cosmos, the basic world, dirty, many-aspected, chaos under the form of seeming order, evil but necessary. The egg of creation, rotten but generative. Now, O Protectors, we are shaped forever in that which we cried for on that other unhappy universe . . ."

There was more, but most of it was a repetition in different words. Morfiks, sitting in the brass pews, his head bowed, looked up at the smooth hemisphere of the ceiling and walls and the platform on which the O.D. stood. If he understood the O.D., he was bound here forever, immortal, each day like the next, each month an almost unvarying image of the preceding, year after year, century after century, millenia after millenia.

"Stability, Unseen but Everfelt Protectors. Stability! A place for everyone and everyone in a place!"

The O.D. was saying that there were such things as souls, a configuration of energy which exactly duplicated the body of the person when he had existed on We-Know-Where. It was indetectible by instruments there and so had been denied by many. But when one died there, the configuration was released from the attraction of the body, was somehow pushed from one universe into the next.

There were billions of these, all existing within the same space as the original universe but polarized and at angles to it. A "soul" went to that universe for which it had the most attraction.

Indeed, the universe to which it traveled had actually been created by men and women. The total cumulative effect of desire for just such a place had generated this place.

If Morfiks interpreted the vague statements of the O.D. correctly, the structure of this universe was such that when a "soul" or cohesive energy configuration came through the "walls," it naturally took the shape in which all citizens found themselves. It was like hot plastic being poured into a mold.

Morfiks dared question a citizen who claimed to have been here for a hundred years. "The O.D. said all questions have been settled, everything is explained. What's explained? I don't understand any more about the origins or reasons for things here than I did on We-Know-Where."

"So what's new?" the citizen said. "How can you understand the ununderstandable? The main difference here is that you don't ask questions. There are many answers, all true, to one question, and this place is one answer. So quit bugging me. You trying to get me -- uh, us -- into trouble? Hey, O.D.!"

Morfiks hurried off and lost himself in a crowd before he could be identified. He burned with resentment at the implications of this world. Why should he be here? Sure, on We-Know-Where he had stayed with one company for 20 years, he had been a good family man, a pal to his kids, a faithful husband, a pillar of the best church in the neighborhood, had paid off his mortgages, joined the Lions, Elk, and Moose and the Masonic Lodge, the PTA, the Kiwanis, the Junior Chamber of Commerce and been a hard worker for the Democrats. His father before him had been a Democrat, and though he had had many misgivings about some of the policies, he had always followed the party line. Anyway, he was a right-wing Democrat, which made him practically the same thing as a left-wing Republican. He read the Reader's Digest, Look, Life, Time, Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, and had always tried to keep up with the bestsellers as recommended by the local newspaper reviewer. All this, not because he really wanted it but because he felt he owed it to his wife and kids and for the good of society. He had hoped that when he went "over yonder" he would be rewarded with a life with more freedom, with a number of unlimited avenues for the things he really wanted to do.

What were those things? He didn't remember now, but he was sure that they were not what was available here.

"There's been a mistake," he thought. "I don't belong here. Everything's all screwed up. I shouldn't be here. This is an error on somebody's part. I got to get out. But how can I get out of here any more than I could get out of We-Know-Where? There the only way out was suicide and I couldn't take that, my family would have been disgraced. Besides, I didn't feel like it.

"And here I can't kill myself. My body's too tough and there's nothing, no way for me to commit suicide. Drowning? That won't work. The river's too well guarded, and if you did slip by the guards long enough to drown, you'd be dragged out in no time at all and resuscitated. And then punished."

IV

On the fourth night, what he had been dreading happened. His punishment. He woke up in the middle of the night with a dull toothache. As the night went on, the ache became sharper. By dawn, he wanted to scream.

Suddenly, the batwings on his doorway flew open, and one of his neighbors (he presumed) stood in the room. He/she was breathing hard and holding his/her hand to his/her jaw.

"Did you do it?" said the neighbor in a shrill voice.

"Do what?" Morfiks said, rising from the couch-bed.

"Antisocial act," the intruder said. "If the culprit confesses, the pain will cease. After a while, that is."

"Did you do it?" Morfiks said. For all he knew, he might be talking to Billy again.

"Not me. listen, newcomers often -- always -- commit crimes because of a mistaken notion a crime can't be detected. But the crime is always found out."

"There are newcomers who aren't born criminals," Morfiks said. Despite his pain, he intended to keep control too.

"Then you, and I mean you, won't confess?"

"The pain must be breaking some people apart," said Morfiks. "Otherwise, some wouldn't be using the second person singular."

"Singular, hell!" the citizen said, breaking two tabus with two words. "Okay, so it doesn't make much difference if you or me or the poor devil down the street did it. But I got a way of beating the game."

"And so bringing down more punishment on us?"

"No! Listen, I was a dental assistant on We-Know-Where. I know for a fact that you can forget one pain if you have a greater."

Morfiks laughed as much as his tooth would permit him, and he said, "So, what's the advantage there?"

The citizen smiled .as much as his toothache would permit. "What I'm going to propose will hurt you. But it'll end up in a real kick. You'll enjoy your pain, get a big thrill out of it."

"How's that?" Morfiks said, thinking that the citizen talked too much like Billy.

"Our flesh is tough so we can't hurt each other too easily. But we can be hurt if we try hard enough. It takes perseverenoe, but then what doesn't that's worthwhile?"

The citizen shoved Morfiks onto the couch, and, before Morfiks could protest, he was chewing on his leg.

"You do the same to me," the citizen mumbled between bites. "I'm telling you, it's great! You've never had anything like it before."

Morfiks stared down at the bald head and the vigorously working jaws. He could feel a little pain, and his toothache did seem to have eased.

He said, "Never had anything like what?"

"Like blood," the citizen said. "After you've been doing this long enough, you'll get drunk on it,"

"I don't know. There, uh, seems something wrong about this."

The citizen stopped gnawing. "You're a greenhorn! Look at it this way. The protectors tell us to love one another. So you should love me. And you can show your love by helping me get rid of this toothache. And I can do the same for you. After a while, you'll be like all of us. You won't give a damn; you'll do anything to stop the pain."

Morfiks got into position and bit down hard. The flesh felt rubbery. Then he stopped and said, "Won't we get another toothache tomorrow because of what we're doing now?"

"We'll get an ache somewhere. But forget about tomorrow."

"Yeah," Morfiks said. He was beginning to feel more pain in his leg. "Yeah. Anyway, we can always plead we were just being social."

The citizen laughed and said, "How social can you get, huh?"

Morfiks moaned as his crushed nerves and muscles began to bleed. After a while, he was screaming between his teeth, but he kept biting. If he was being hurt, he was going to hurt the citizen even worse.

And what the hell, he was beginning to feel a reasonable facsimile to that which he had known up there on We-Know-Where.

Table of Contents

Start