The Bones of Bertrand Russell by Brian W. Aldiss

Anyone of a mind sufficiently enquiring to wish to determine the value of C Backwards must of necessity be courageous and dedicated - that a car mechanic should cherish this dream appears symptomatic of our civilization and of tomorrow's society. That he should also be bald adds a further illuminating comment. One should note that the Russell herein remarked in passing should not be confused with the third earl of that name.

* * * *

A TRYPTICH OF ABSURD

ENIGMATIC PLAYS

* * * *

FUTURITY TAKES A HAND

The scene is the upper left hand geranium garden in the grounds of the Escorial Palace, 39A Blenkinsop Road, Madrid, Brussels. FAN FAN CHANG is talking to his android Wife, HI FAT GONZALES.

FAN FAN CHANG: I see in the papers that philosphers are back in favour. They are aparently very palatable and even people in modest income brackets are enjoying them.

HI FAT GONZALES: When you say modest income brackets, are you thinking of writing one of your enjoyable and memorable lyric poems round them, honourable husband?

FAN FAN CHANG: Certainly, unless anyone interrupts me.

On a modest income bracket

A lark sat down to sing

Every time you walk on a thistle

Heaven weeps at the injustice

HI FAT GONZALES: Lovely! I'll incribe it on my fan.

FAN FAN CHANG: It needs polishing.

HI FAT GONZALES: I polished it only yesterday.

FAN FAN CHANG: You're always complaining about how much work you have to do. I'm beginning to think you've ceased loving me.

A time machine materializes. A Time Traveller steps out.

TIME TRAVELLER: You won't believe this, but I am a time traveller from fifty years in your future.

FAN FAN CHANG: I believe you. How high does my reputation stand in your day?

TIME TRAVELLER (aside): Little does he know that I am his grandson. I am determined to shoot him.

HI FAT GONZALES (overhearing): But if you kill Fan Fan and you really are his grandson from the future, then you will cease to exist.

FAN FAN CHANG: 'Course you will, you fool. It's one of the best known paradoxes about time travel.

TIME TRAVELLER: My point precisely. My life is miserable, wretched. I am a complete failure. All my plans have gone wrong. I haven't a penny to my name, my hernia is playing me up, my friends have betrayed me, my wife has left me, I can't afford the new entropy kits. My hair's falling out too, incidentally, and I've got a shocking memory. My brother's trying to cross the galaxy backwards, if you please. Well, I mustn't bore you with my troubles--

FAN FAN CHANG and HI FAT GONZALES (together): But you have!

TIME TRAVELLER: Anyhow, my point is that I've come back here to kill you as the most painless method ever of committing suicide. When you die, I shall just - not have existed! Blissikins! I shoot you, and - bang! - or rather Pop!, I suppose one should say, to be onomatopoeically correct, I shall simply wink out of existence.

FAN FAN CHANG: Wait, wait, cue for a lyric!

The world's a funny place

For those with eyes to see

Only the other day I got

A wink out of existence

HI FAT GONZALES: It needs polishing.

TIME TRAVELLER (draws gun from invalid chair secreted in his lap pocket): Sorry to mess up your afternoon, but...

FAN FAN CHANG: Look out, there's an anteater behind you!

TIME TRAVELLER (turning): Where? Where? (FAN FAN CHANG rushes at him and overpowers him, removing the gun)

FAN FAN CHANG: Caught by one of the oldest tricks in the business. (He points the gun at the Time Traveller)

HI FAT GONZALES: Don't shoot, please, Fan Fan! I know he's our grandson, but I find I've suddenly fallen in love with him. It was that pitiful tale of woe, I suppose. Oh, grand-sonny, I know I'm a mad impetuous fool, but I want to love you, to take care of you, I want you to sweep me up in your arms, to marry me - I want to have children by you, poets, little poets, lovely little wild poets and painters with cherry lips just like yours and legs like mine, endless children ...

FAN FAN CHANG: Then I am deserted! Betrayed! I cannot face life without my darling Hi Fat. (Shoots himself)

TIME TRAVELLER: I can see this is going to be tricky...

CURTAIN

* * * *

THROUGH A GALAXY BACKWARDS

The scene is a little chartreuse coathanger somewhere north of Tijuana Naval Base. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are eating tacos. Two anteaters are dining on the remains of Bertrand Russell.

NELLIE (reading the tablecloth): It says here that fifty-one per cent of car mechanics are bald. Isn't that amazing?

ANGUS: It says here that the greatest Russian composer of the twentieth century--

NELLIE: It's no good talking to me about music. You know I hate it. Marquetry I like, but not music. It's always breaking into the bloody key of G.

ANGUS: Not always - is not Tchaikowsky but Irving Berlin. 899 songs, made millions.

NELLIE: I thought he was German. Did he ever break into the key of G?

ANGUS: My aunt Kit had an old telephone that used to break into the key of G in wet weather. Let's not argue, dear, it's such a lovely afternoon. Have this other leg, will you?

NELLIE: Isn't Russell delicious? Shows what philosphy can do for you. Frankly, I'm delighted we dug him up. Now philosophy I do like - almost as much as marquetry.

(Enter MARQUETRY)

MARQUETRY: YOU called?

NELLIE: HOW is it that whenever you come on stage I start thinking of that Chinese lyric by Fan Fan Chang?

MARQUETRY: Does it have anything to do with the fact that I'm wearing this stupid cheongsam? Is it because Angus is eating fried rice with his Russell chop suey? Could it be because Betty is playing chopsticks? Does the fact that you have The Collected Lyrics of Fan Fan Chang open before you have anything to do with it? I ask these questions with a tolerably open mind, being always reluctant to come to definitive conclusions about anything. Without wishing to strike too sapient a posture - which would probably ruin this bleeding cheongsam - I would define my position as pragmatic unpositivist, with the accent on the 'ist'; if more people were of a like opinion, then the world would be a happier place. (Exits)

ANGUS: You were going to recite a lyric poem, my dear.

NELLIE: How is it that whenever that stupid little pragmatic unpositivist leaves the stage I forget a Chinese lyric by Fan Fan Chang?

ANGUS: How many lyrics by Fan Fan Chang do you know?

NELLIE: I forget. On the other hand, I do remember reading the other day that a man in a spaceship had gone through the galaxy backwards.

ANGUS: How very unpleasant for him. How did they know?

NELLIE: They watched him through telescopes, I presume. He was only an ordinary car mechanic, too.

ANGUS: Ah, then he was probably bald.

CURTAIN

* * * *

WHERE WALLS ARE HUNG WITH MULTI-MEDIA PORTRAITS

The scene is a palatially furnished bathroom in the gardening pages of a certain notorious newspaper (not the one you are thinking of, but a similar one which recently went up in price). Hitherto unknown varieties of plant decorate the room. The walls are hung with multi-media portraits of bald car mechanics. A crowd is gathered.

CROWD: MOO!

(Enter STEPHANIE YEOBOUGHT)

STEPHANIE: Ladies and Gentlemen, it is given to few in their time to have the privilege of standing before you as I do today, nobly and impartially, and in all due modesty, yet with a proper sense of occasion - it is given to few, I say, to be able to announce before thousands and many of them themselves distinguished in their own way, too - women of charm, men of accomplishment, children of distinction, yes, yes, even lapdogs of outstanding merit and not unknown at Cruft's (laughter) - to be able to announce, I say, that on this very day, this happy day, the event for which we have all been waiting - waiting for moreover, with an almost unbearable sense of impending fate and futurity within the cherished privacy of our own homes - nothing less than the rediscovery, at the bottom of a humble anteater's hole in Piccadilly, just where the south end of Glasshouse Street comes out under the big Coca Cola sign, now scheduled for preservation as part of our great national heritage - the rediscovery, I say, of the sacred bones of Bertrand Russell, last of the playboy philosophers. (Wild cheering, lascivious laughter, the skirl of the pipes, ties thrown in air, stamping, the ejection of a male for reprehensibly taking advantage of the uproar in that he did goose a lady standing in front of him. The lady follows.) Oh, and I forgot to mention it, but Ronnie Hicks has just been round the galaxy backwards. (Cheers and mutters of 'Piss off Ronnie Hicks').

(Enter RONNIE HICKS, BACKWARDS. Clutches his joysticks)

RONNIE HICKS: It was nothing really.

VOICE FROM BACK OF CROWD: Speak up!

RONNIE HICKS: Sorry, it was nothing really.

VOICE FROM BACK OF CROWD: Then why did you say it, you scientific bastard?

REPORTER: Mr. Hicks, in the light of your great achievement, may I just ask you about your family genealogy. It's a little complicated isn't it?

RONNIE HICKS: (defensively) Not necessarily. People go on about my brother being his own grandfather but I don't see anything funny in it.

REPORTER: I was thinking in particular of a lyric by the poet Fan Fan Chang, who died this century--

VOICE FROM BACK OF CROWD: Last century, you nit!

REPORTER: I meant last century. But after all, if Fan Fan Chang had shot himself only twelve hours later, it would have been this century, since he did it on the afternoon of December 31st in the last year of--

SEVERAL VOICES FROM BACK OF CROWD: Get on with the bleeding interview!

STEPHANIE: The lyric of which he is thinking, Mr. Hicks, if I may interpolate a word at this juncture, is the one that goes

As I was going to Andromeda.

I met a man with seven children.

Everyone of them was each other's grandmother.

And my brother is also my uncle's stepson.

I mean, legend has it that the reference is, in a word, to you yourself. Can you confirm or deny that?

RONNIE HICKS: You're a lot of muck-rakers, the lot of you. I came here to speak about my recent amazing scientific achievement, and instead you want to pry into my private family life. Typical, bloody typical. Nothing's sacred. Where's the light of scientific wonder shining in your eyes, burning there like a precious flame or sapphire? My brother, if it interests you, married a wonderful woman, my sister-in-law and grandmother, who bore him dozens of little poets, lovely little wild poets and car mechanics, with lips like cherries and a tendency to baldness - one of whom was me. I'm proud of my background. Without it, I doubt whether I'd ever have been able to travel round the galaxy backwards.

REPORTER: I meant to ask you, what was it like?

RONNIE HICKS: You've offended me. I'm not going to tell you. (They fight. The REPORTER jumps on HICKS and pummels him till he gives in) Okay, okay, I'll tell. Just let me get up. (Rises) Well, first let me say that it is given to few in their time to have the privilege of standing before you as I do today, nobly and impartially--

VOICE FROM BACK OF CROWD: Cut it short!

RONNIE HICKS: It was terrifying. I seemed to see all the events of my life crowd before my eyes in quick succession. Outside, there was almost total darkness. My craft was bucketting wildly. The instruments were not responding. You must realize that at this time only the speed of light forwards was known; nobody knew the speed of light backwards. I saw the great galaxy itself, yea, all which it doth inherit, fading into something no bigger than a pinball machine and vanishing into a comer that looked for all the world like your back passage. It was pretty scary. My two fellow cosmonauts - also car mechanics and bald like me - were either dead or dead drunk. It was a moment for quick action. I climbed into my suit and made my way outside on to the hull, intending to release the oxygen tanks, when I realized I had already done so. Time was going backwards as well as space. All I could do was hang on, not lose my nerve, and wait.

REPORTER: And when did you actually get back?

RONNIE HICKS: I think it's tomorrow. Not an experience I'd care to repeat, let me tell

you. But, after all, research must go on, there must always be a few intrepid men willing to risk anything for their fellows. (The crowd begins to drift silently away) The spin-off in terms of technological advancement from all this will be immeasurable, not least in the region of anteater-breeding. (Now everyone has gone except RONNIE HICKS and STEPHANIE YEOBOUGHT) New perspectives have opened up to us. We pause in awe on the threshold of a new age.

STEPHANIE: I'm afraid I also have to go now. I have a speaking engagement. (She begins to put out the lights).

RONNIE HICKS: It's been wonderful ... (He tries to look into her eyes)

STEPHANIE (breathlessly): For me too. I hardly know what to say.

RONNIE HICKS: Life's too short, my darling. Did that thought ever occur to you?

STEPHANIE: No. How do you mean, too short? Do you mean you're longer than it is?

RONNIE HICKS: NO, I just mean that - well, that life's too short ...

STEPHANIE: Were you born at the age of ten or something?

RONNIE HICKS: NO, no, not that exactly. I just mean - well, we don't get enough years.

Let me put it that way. We don't get enough years.

STEPHANIE: Sorry, perhaps I'm being dim. You mean if you counted them some would be missing? By the way, how long were you away, travelling round the galaxy backwards?

RONNIE HICKS: Let's go and have a bite to eat and I'll tell you all about it.

STEPHANIE: I know an adorable little place at the south end of Glasshouse Street, darling.

RONNIE HICKS (shyly): Darling! (They embrace. Enter large Space Vehicle, backwards, RONNIE HICKS emerges)

CURTAIN