A SPACE FOR REFLECTION

BRIAN W. ALDISS

Very much in the superior English tradition, Brian Aldiss presents us with a Stapledonian story of a philosophical quest that embraces the universe of the macrocosm and the universe of the microcosm within us all. Perhaps any young lad blessed with three successive letter f's in his name would tend to a philosophic bent. It might also be that any energy-hungry society that dismissed a device for mass-producing suns would inevitably suffer from economic decline; but then, this apparent suicidal waywardness but in reality vision beyond materialism, is just what is reflected from that certain small dark corner of the universe...

* * * *

THERE once lived a man called Gordan Ivon Jefffris who achieved galaxy-wide fame at the age of five. This is his story.

Gordan Ivon Jefffris was born in a period when the major cultures of the galaxy were suffering from a combination of economic depression and spiritual uncertainty. The achievements of man, as he diversified on a million planets, were many and various. And yet, and yet... among the thinking people everywhere - even among ordinary thoughtless people - grew the suspicion that achievement was somehow hollow, as if success were an apple that, once bitten, yielded no juice.

In an attempt to combat the disillusion, a consortium of leading planets which dubbed itself The Re-Renaissance Worlds arranged a curious competition. The terms of this competition were deliberately left vague. The winner was to be the man or woman who presented something that would contribute most to a fresh direction for mankind. The nature of the submission was left to the ingenuity of the entrants. The prizes were enormous.

This competition met with almost universal criticism. It was said that it would deflect useful endeavour into what was a dead end, that the idea of competition itself was one of the main concepts which required combating, that things philosophical were best left to philosophers, and so on.

Those who launched the competition were not deterred. They set no particular store by the idea of one outright winner; their hope was that the whole body of entries might together contribute the sort of vital injection of innovation for which they sought; and they believed that the kinds of entries they got would provide some consensus of opinion as to which way galactic culture was moving, as diagnosed by the best brains.

Unhappily, the best brains considered themselves above such a competition, and forebore to enter. Submissions were nevertheless almost countless, pouring in from every civilized planet. Some were works of art conceived to inspire; some were technical ingenuities designed to improve the daily lot of ordinary citizens; some were vast works of analysis; some were computerized plans for changing whole societies; some were projects for novel transmutations, for instance for transmuting light into food directly; some were syntheses of different disciplines, expressing gravity as music, or whatever; new languages, new media, new symbolic systems, were put forward; und so weiter.

In short, the organizers of the competition, and their committees and computers, were provided with much material over which to scratch their heads, much muddle from which they never, ultimately, achieved any significant order.

They bestowed first prize on a child of five, Gordan Ivon Jefffris, who presented the briefest entry of all. That entry was a sheet of plakin on which the boy had written in a childish hand, 'The universe has a dark corner, the human soul, which is its reflection.'

A fresh storm of almost universal criticism greeted the award. It was said that the thought was banal, that the concept of human souls was obsolete by about a million years, that the idea expressed was so pessimistic that it had no place in a competition designed to generate fresh directions, that there was no practical application, that in any case Ching Pin Jones's prospectus for mass-producing suns was a thousand times more brilliant, und so weiter.

The organizers stuck to their guns. (They were old and stubborn, and in any case had nothing else to stick to.) They held that one of the things which had brought near-stagnation on a galactic scale was an insane optimism which lent a cloak to exploitation and tyranny in all their forms; that they were on the side of youth, even extreme youth; and that they admired the way in which the boy Jefffris had linked macrocosm and microcosm. Und so weiter.

Both competition and controversy ensured that livgrams of the five-year-old, his fair hair tousled and becoming, his round face smiling, were flashed to every planet in the galaxy. Fame had never been so universal.

Gordan Ivon Jefffris was brought from his backwoods planet and his parents' cloned-clatbuck farm and installed in the Institute for Creative Research on Dynderkranz, in the Minervan Empire at the heart of the galaxy. There, for twelve years, he specialized in non-specialization, learning randomly from computers, superputers, and parent-figures.

The teaching was liberal (it was generally agreed that liberalism contributed to the decay of the Minervan Empire), and Jefffris was allowed to some extent to follow his natural bent. He was a perfectly normal child - a fact greeted with delight by half his teachers and dismay by the other half - while manifesting a tendency, evidenced in his prize-winning dictum, to regard man as a vital manifestation of the universe. He divided his study time between the phenomena of the external world and the phenomena of man and his culture.

The long training was only the preliminary part of Jefffris' prize. As his days at the Institute drew to a close, the superputer Birth Star, which now administered all his affairs, revealed that unlimited funds were at his disposal for the rest of his days, as long as he maintained an inquiring mind, moved about the galaxy, and reported reflections and findings back to the superputer.

There was no conflict between superputer's intentions and boy's ambitions. Jefffris' intellectual curiosity had been whetted. He longed to set out into the universe and experience its conditions for himself; the odyssey could last ten lifetimes for all he cared. With a male friend and two girls, competition-winners all, he set out in a superbly equipped flittership to travel whatever distances could be travelled.

* * * *

'The universe has a dark corner, the human soul, which is its reflection'. The words had travelled round the known galaxy, together with the livgrams of the five-year-old face. The face had been forgotten for almost as long as Jefffris had outlived it; yet the words had not been forgotten. It could not be said that they changed anything, for a general decline continued. But it could be said that people discovered some mystery in them (if only the mystery in what is familiar) and were perhaps reminded that, for all the vastness of the humanized galaxy, it still rested upon the power of words to transmute formlessness into design. So it might be argued that the decline would have been faster had it not been for Jefffris' dictum.

However that might be, Jefffris and his companions travelled the civilized worlds without being recognized -fortified by the knowledge that he had lit a light, however tiny, in the skulls of almost everyone he ever met.

Everywhere, he talked and listened, building up a picture of the spectre that had laid its spell over the galaxy.

'What is wrong with humanity is an ancient wrong,' said an ancient lady living on a core of a burnt-out sun. She had been an organizer in her day, and understood so much that most people became bemused just by gazing on her face. Consequently, she wore a mask; but she removed it to speak with Jefffris.

'What is wrong with humanity is not what philosophers of this world commonly suppose,' she said. 'I mean, that man's involvement with technology, with its consequent divorce from what is called Nature, impoverishes him. True, that may be the case, but if so it is merely a reflection of a deeper division between intellect and the passions. The Babylonian invention of a written language, back on Earth so long ago, institutionalized a division that was already latent in the psyche of humanity. Writing departmentalizes, detaches. It bestows upon the ratiocinative faculties a dominance they should not have over the play of human emotions. The passions become feared, mistrusted.'

'Whole planets full of people have reverted to Nature, have abandoned literacy,' said Jefffris. 'The results have never been anything that responsible people would wish to copy. I visited one such planet, Bol-Rayoeo. Everyone's every breath was ruled by a maniacal belief in astrology, the human instruments of which were an iron priesthood. That priesthood had control over a series of holy factories in which machines were made - elaborate but non-functional machines. The machines were sacrificed in specific dates at specific hours. A paranoid mathematics was their language, yet such was their fear of a written alphabet that a mere glimpse of the letter A scrawled on a rock could kill them at once.'

'The first effect of a written literature,' said the ancient dame, 'is that it undermines the power of Continuers. In the Old World, Continuers were as vital to society as kings or slaves. They moved among all ranks and ages of society, conveying in their persons - in their gestures, their faces, their very breath - history, myth, story. Those elements which were alive, and lived through countless generations, became dead when impaled on a page, and the Continuers ceased. Records have been substituted for legend, the letter for life.

'You yourself, Gordan Ivon, may through fortune regard yourself as a free agent. Yet you are a slave of history. You are gathering facts, a profession which superseded hunting, a dusty parody of it, sans blood. The search for knowledge is too highly lauded.'

'You are yourself consulted as a repository of knowledge, madam.'

'The search for knowledge is an artificial goal - and, even worse, an achievable one. Eventually, all knowledge in the universe will be garnered, reduced to recorded impulses. Which will mean the absorption of all that is real. Even our breathing will be codified. Classification will have supplanted diversification, all processes will terminate.'

He laughed. 'You speak as if it were a mystical process.'

'It is a mystical process. The further we go, the closer we come to our origins.'

'Nevertheless, I am sorry to find you so pessimistic.'

'Operative in each of us is the blind optimism of biological process; but you will appreciate from what I have already said that words themselves, in my view, tend towards the pessimistic, since they represent an energy-sink from life to abstraction.'

Jefffris was silent a while, picking his way among her statements. 'Is it mere coincidence that you speak more than once of breathing, as if it holds a special symbolism for you?'

'There is no "coincidence",' the ancient lady said, resuming her mask. 'Consciousness is the breath of the universe.'

* * * *

Jefffris visited the system of Trilobundora, where the three central planets had been welded into one unit by means of transuranic metals. These enormous struts formed FTL roads for UMV traffic. Trilobundora was famed as one of the great industrial centres of the galaxy; in proof of this, all about it for many light years were impoverished planets, populated only by old and broken people. Trilobundora was a Mecca to which all went hoping to be turned into gold.

He visited a great school on Primdora, where children were trained to be administrators from the age of two onwards. The children poured out after class, flocking at every level of the enormous tower to meet every sort of flying, leaping, and wheeled vehicle which came to bear them away.

Plunging to the lowest level, Jefffris found a stooped man of middle age waiting at an entrance with his hands in his pockets. A gale blew, carrying rain with it, although the air was still and dry at higher levels.

'It's always like this here,' said the man. 'Something to do with the structure of the building, I guess. Creates its own storms.' His voice was neutral, passive. He never looked directly at Jefffris.

A small boy came running out of the entrance and stopped before he got to the stooped man. The man put out his hand, took the boy's, and, with a word of encouragement, started to walk away with him. Jefffris fell in beside him.

'Are you the only parent here who meets his child on foot?'

'I have to watch every cent. Besides, public transport doesn't run where we live. It's a slum district. I'm not ashamed; it's not my fault. You may have noticed I'm the oldest person to collect a child. I'm not this lad's father. I'm his grandfather. His parents were killed on their holiday, so now I look after him.'

The boy glanced up at Jefffris to see how he took this information but said nothing. Then he turned his pale face down again to his shoes.

'Is he a consolation?' Jefffris asked.

'He's a good enough lad.' The man had a listless way about him which seemed to have communicated itself to the boy. After a pause in which he appeared to weigh whether it was worth saying more, he went on, 'You see the trouble is that the accident which killed my daughter and her man occurred on the V-lane of the FTLR between Primdora and Secdora. Their vehicle collided with a Secdora vehicle right at mid-point between planetary demarcations. Legislation could not decide which planetary government should pay compensation, Primdora or Secdora. The issue is still being heard in the courts. That's been the situation for five years now.

'Meanwhile, I couldn't work because I had to look after the boy. So I've forfeited my state pension. Now he has started school, I have a small morning job, which helps. I could have got someone in to look after him and worked myself, but that would have brought legal complications, since I am still not officially his guardian, and they might have taken him away into care. I want to be his official guardian, but I'm separated from my woman and she is litigating to become his guardian. I think she's only after the money which may accrue, so I fight back.'

'I don't want to go to grandma,' said the boy. It was the first time he had spoken since leaving school. 'I don't know grandma, she don't know me.'

'The uncertainty makes his life difficult,' said the man, ignoring the boy's remark. 'He can have no proper career without an official guardian or parent to sign forms - you have to sign forms every day on Primdora - and so he is getting sidetracked and will probably be Z-graded. I do my best but I get sick of it all. Everywhere there's regulations. They keep bringing in more regulations. I just found today that they're re-structuring the educational system, so he may be sent to another school further away. Then we'll have to move rooms. More expense. All these regulations, you can't escape them ... They're supposed to rationalize community life, aren't they? Instead, they're like a wall round you.'

'I hope the lad's a comfort to you,' Jefffris suggested.

'Who makes all these regulations? I can't understand how they get so complex. It didn't used to be like this. Where did they start, where do they stop? Do you know, I get a small supplementary family allowance for the boy which is taxed with my wage so that I in reality keep less cash than I would if I didn't get the allowance?'

'Can't you forgo the allowance?'

'I went to see the computer about it. If I forgo the allowance now, I can never reclaim, and the tax structure might change next year in my favour. Then again, the rating scale comes into it - the amount of living-space we can claim ... it's a headache.'

'Your grandfather has a lot of problems,' Jefffris said to the boy.

The boy nodded. 'He has a lot of problems.' He kept looking down at his shoes.

* * * *

In the Beta arm of the galaxy, Jefffris rested with his companions on a delightful satellite called Rampam. It was a pastoral world, where a simple philosophy ruled and crime was almost unknown.

Wandering down a country lane by the sea, one moonlit night, Jefffris encountered a slender man who appeared to be of no more than late middle age, yet claimed he was a million years old.

'Longevity and immortality are among the oldest dreams,' said Jefffris, 'and are likely to remain dreams. No biological structure is stable enough to remain intact over long periods of time.'

'A biological structure is only a highly organized state of inorganic material. All material carries the potential of life. The secret of continuous organization was discovered right there on Argustal,' said the ancient youth.

He pointed up at the gibbous moon sailing over the tree-tops.

'If you've got time, stranger, I'll tell you a story about it.'

'I'd be glad to listen.'

'That's a rare talent, stranger,' said the slender man. His expression cheered slightly, and he launched into his story.

Argustal is the parent world of Rampam. Long ago, there lived on Argustal a regal young man called Tantanner. He possessed an equable temperament, and was content to let the years drift by in sport and laughter. Happiness came easily to him because he was married to a beautiful lady called Pamipamlar, whose nature was fully as sunny as his.

I have to pass over all their years of content together, for contentment has no history - it leaves its traces, indeed, but they cannot be described. Suffice it to say that one day Tantanner saw strange marks upon his beloved's face. He said nothing to her, so as not to alarm her, and imagined that the marks would fade away. Dawn followed dawn, and the marks did not fade. They deepened. He watched more anxiously. The times of snows came and went. The marks remained. They formed little lines upon Pamipamlar's forehead, below and beside her eyes, and about her pretty mouth.

Still he said nothing to her, but one dark night he rode out silently. Crossing a bleak moor, he went to where the last of a degenerate race of sub-humans eked out their existence in underground caves. These sub-humans - who, I've heard, are to be found on every planet in the early millennia of its development - were savage but cowardly; they fell back before Tantanner's royal insignia and, when he showed himself unafraid, they fawned upon him, as rabbits will try to charm a fox. He knew these untrustworthy creatures held old legends which the human race of Argustal had discarded, and so he demanded of them the meaning of the increasing marks upon the countenance of his beloved.

The sub-humans disputed among themselves, sometimes almost scratching each other's eyes out as they asserted and denied. Some maintained that the marks belonged to an ancient force called Illness, but eventually another point of view prevailed. A gnarled man with a face studded with hideous warts and hairs stood forth and addressed Tantanner where he stood beside his mount.

'Lord sire of the Upright Ones, when Knowledge recedes like an ocean, it leaves Names like shells upon the great beaches of History. We can only pick up these shells and offer them to your inspection, without ourselves understanding their contents.'

'Speak and tell me what ails my fair one.'

'Lord sire, her cheek of vellum is being inscribed by Age.'

'Age? What is Age?'

'A shell we pick up, Lord sire, knowing not its contents -except that one or two of us supposed that upon that spotless vellum you have discerned the faintest handwriting of Death.'

'Death? What is Death?'

'It is another shell, O Lord sire, lying half-buried in the vast sands of the Past.'

With that, Tantanner had to be content. He rode back to the castle and settled by his fragrant Pamipamlar; but those two dark shells, Age and Death, returned continually to his mind.

Eventually, they drove him from the castle, despite his love's protests. He kissed her lined face and went forth. This time he ranged far away, scouring the planet's distant places. He inquired in the towns and hedgerows, in farms and on highways, seeking someone or something to enlighten him.

No one knew much. A few people knew a little. Contentment had stuffed their heads with obliviousness, you see. Once he met a solitary woman with a face like a bone who farmed forty llamas in a desert region; she turned on him savagely and said, 'Go home, let remain buried what has remained buried! Lies at home are to be preferred to any truth abroad. You will let loose a great evil on the world if you meddle. Go home!'

But he went on. He went on, although he felt increasingly the truth of what the woman with a face of bone had said. For he was gradually piecing together the shreds of ignorance he collected, and making a garment of revelation for himself.

He wandered into the periphery of a volcano which had been an active sore on the face of Argustal since the world was formed. By the coast, he halted at a spot called the Green Grotto, where the sea steamed and vegetation grew thick. Turtles slithered on the beach and birds scuttled underfoot. A lizard-man and a blind youth came to visit him as he sat eating wild artichokes; he told them of his problems.

For a long while, neither lizard nor blind man spoke. Then the lizard-man said: 'This region is named End Quest, and I never understood why until now. It marks the end of your quest. Like you, I have some shreds of knowledge. They made no garment until joined with your shreds.

'For more years than can be told, I have wondered why leaves remained on trees whether the sun shone or snow fell for, according to legend from Olden Pretimes, trees went bare half the year. I wondered also why birds hop naked under our feet, when legends from Old Pretimes say they flew with feathers far above the heads of men. Now I know the answer.'

At these words, 'I know the answer', a great fear descended on Tantanner. He recalled the old lady with the face of bone and he turned to run. There was no escape. Curiosity got the better of him. He turned back and said, 'Speak, lizard.'

The lizard-man said, 'Long, long ago, further than our minds can stretch, a process was invented on this planet. It was called continuous organization. I cannot tell you what it was - that's a secret for ever lost, I suspect. It worked upon this planet, when set in motion by its masters, worked as tirelessly as the weather machine which keeps air circulating about us all. Under continuous organization, all biological processes remained intact as hitherto, no longer subject to the previous ageing which led to a state of energy-transference called Death. Death was feared, pale Death. Continuous organization guaranteed life. All biological creatures have been immortal on this planet since that day.'

'We have not to fear Death?'

'Listen. Death had a second, rosier face called Birth. When Death was banished, so went Birth. There was no need of her. Everything alive lived. For replacements there was no room. But those things which lived were subject to the attrition of external factors. No trees shed their leaves - and that original set of leaves is now made skeletal by the action of winds and frost. Birds cannot die, but the elements have eroded their feathers, so that they must go naked on the ground, being no longer able to fly. The carapaces of our turtles have worn thin as silk against the eternal sand. Many more delicate creatures - insects - have simply been fined away by the atmosphere.'

'And my Pamipamlar, what of her?'

The lizard-man looked down at the sand by his webbed feet.

'Death is returning to its throne, my lord. Generation is again needed; continuous organization must itself die, its machineries run down.'

'Answer my question. What of Pamipamlar?'

'If you looked in a mirror at your own face, your question would be answered. The handwriting is set upon your cheek too. Death will call on you as surely as upon her.'

Tantanner swung into the saddle and turned for home. His bitterness towered to the heavens; perhaps he recalled the words of the sage who says that the human soul is a dark corner which reflects the whole universe. His questions were answered. Fear and regret rode with him, regret that he had neglected his beloved so long. And it was a long way home.

Alas, stranger, it was such a long way home that that foolish man arrived too late. Death had already claimed the one he loved. The world was in action again, the cycles of regeneration beginning again. But Tantanner's world had run down to a dead stop.

* * * *

Jefffris sat silent, reflecting on the regenerative processes of the universe and looking up at the world of Argustal gleaming in Rampam's night sky.

'What brought you here?' he asked the solemn storyteller.

'I couldn't bear that world any more, with my beloved dead. Now I linger here in exile, waiting for Death to escort me home.'

* * * *

After many years of travel, Jefffris came to the planet Earth. He had listened to countless profound comments, abstruse theories, and moving tales. All this he had reported back to the superputer.

At this stage in its history, Earth was a second league world in the Procyon Bloc. It called itself a republic and was ruled over by the Committee of Twenty-One, the President of which was Kuo Waung-Tang.

In a bar in a large city in Antarctica, Jefffris met a genial man who had served under Kuo Waung-Tang. He now called himself Dumb Dragon.

'Yes, I have served under the great Kuo Waung-Tang and much admire him,' admitted Dumb Dragon, as he bought Jefffris a drink. 'I read his thoughts every night.'

'Yet he sent you into exile for ten years when you refused to serve on the Committee.'

'What else could Kuo do? I am grateful for that ten years. Now I have nothing to do with politics. I merely tell animal stories to anyone who cares to listen.'

'Thanks, not today. But I'd like hear why you left politics.'

Dumb Dragon laughed engagingly. 'I simply discovered that mankind is not rulable although he perennially wishes to be ruled. Why? For a simple reason: because your perspectives change so radically when you make the transition from governed to governor. It's like a high tower - you can't see the top from the bottom, so you climb to the top, and then you can't see the bottom. It's hopeless. Ruler and ruled are almost different species.'

'The lust for power has a history as long as mankind.'

'Certainly. But I refer to something more complex. I really must tell you one of my latest animal stories. Do you mind very much?'

Jefffris enjoyed the man's company. 'Make me like it.'

'That's good. Story-tellers are brave men - they always battle with the listener's wish to dislike what they hear, for the listener wishes to be ruler of the story, although inwardly he longs to be dominated by it. Okay, this story is called "The Lion Who Had Ecology", bearing in mind that on Earth this year ecology and conservation are fashionable subjects. It probably means we are due for another big destructive war.'

He beamed at the wall, as if turning a smiling face towards the future no matter what happened, and commenced his story.

The last African lion was sitting comfortably under a deodar, reading the current issue of 'Digest of World Lion Problems', when a zebra of his acquaintance called Leopold galloped up and coughed expectantly (said Dumb Dragon, making lion and zebra faces as he went along).

'Begging your pardon, sir,' said the zebra.

'What is it now?' asked the lion. He had a grudge against Leopold, just could not stand the zebra's airs and graces, and promised himself that he would eat him one day soon when it was not quite as hot.

'The animals would like to have a word with you, sir,' said Leopold. 'Looks like there's another ecological crisis brewing.'

The lion gave in with a bad grace and padded north across the game preserve with the zebra. Crowds of animals and birds of every variety - every remaining variety - were heading in the same direction. The leaders of this multitude had halted by a dried river-bed and were staring across it, meanwhile uttering many cries of disgust, if not actual oaths. They stood back respectfully to let the lion through.

'Well, what seems to be the trouble this time?' he asked.

Nobody liked to thrust forward and answer, although a couple of jackals sidled up and said, 'We tried to get the mob to disperse but they wouldn't. Do you want us to try the skunk-gas on them?'

Ignoring them, the lion peered across the river-bed. On the far side, a short distance away, some black men were working, unloading bricks from trucks and marshalling heavy machines. Nearer at hand, other men were watching elephants push down large trees and drag them away.

'Scabs! Blacklegs!' hissed the crowd, but the elephants ignored them and continued working.

'Oh, isn't it terribly awful!' exclaimed an ostrich called the Rev. Dean William Pennyfever, wringing his hands. 'Bang goes a slice more of the veldt. They're putting up their simply nauseating little dwellings on the very spot where I emerged from the egg.'

'Dwellings, indeed,' exclaimed a giraffe, contemptuously. 'Putting up a whole bloody town, more like it, right where I enjoy a spot of necking. Perishing blacks! Dirty beasts!'

'Now then, remember they're victims of colonialism,' said the lion sharply. 'Besides, we don't know it's a whole town. We must get our facts right before we issue a complaint. Has anyone - you parrots - actually asked those men what's going on there?' Silence fell, the animals shuffled about uneasily, not looking up at their leader.

'There you are then,' said the lion. 'Typical silly emotionalism. You moan and complain and you haven't a clue as to what is actually happening in the world. You're too parochial. Naturally, I share your anxiety about anything - anything at all - which encroaches on the amenities of the jungle, but statistically, let me assure you, those black chaps are having absolutely no effect on this continent's magnificent natural resources.'

Many animals, including hyenas, monkeys and snakes, clapped this fiery speech and shouted 'Here, here.' But a bespectacled hippo, recently divorced, came up to the lion and spoke in a grumpy way. (Dumb Dragon put on a hippo face.)

'That's all very well as far as it goes, Mr. Lion, but I represent the Amalgamated Mammal and Reptile Union, and the workers have vested in me the authority to ask you to do something positive about this latest infringement of our territory. We don't want words, we want action, right, lads?'

A great cry went up from the beasts, especially the rhinos, many of whom acted as shop-stewards.

'We all want action,' the lion said impressively. 'I am much more anti any attempt to curtail living space than you are, because I am more aware of all the ecological factors involved. Nevertheless, it would be extremely unwise to let the sight of a few bricks precipitate us into a hasty move - a stampede or something silly, in which our weaker brethren might get trampled underfoot, or eaten, or even left destitute and incapacitated.'

'We'll go into the vexed question of sick benefits later, if you don't mind,' said the hippo, adjusting his spectacles. 'Meanwhile the workers have empowered me to demand immediate action in the shape of crossing yon river-bed and eating up all the blacks on the building site. I am further empowered to demand that you take the tigers along, so that no feeble excuses like failing appetite can deflect you from our allotted task. As for your liberal-lacky remark about that being just a few bricks over there, it looks to me more like a whole frigging new suburb of Nairobi!'

The animals muttered and mewed in approval.

'This is entirely unconstitutional,' said the lion. 'If our nuclear commitment were up to strength, the situation might be different, but you opted for detente, remember. We must not offend the black men, or they will do us real harm, and then you workers will be the first to regret it. Don't they depend entirely on us for hides, horns, souvenirs of the chase, feathers, ivory, handbags, and leopard-skin rugs? Supposing they refuse to trade? As it is, we've got an adverse balance of payments because they're turning to plastic while we play hard to get. No, my friends, I know your business better than you do yourselves! Forget about that mangey scrap of ground, and let's get back to the veldt.'

The animals all started milling about, undecided what to do. The hippos and rhinos conferred together, and Leopold said to the lion, 'I'm afraid we'll have to face the fact that this may mean the workers will try to depose you as king of the beasts.'

'Well, it's a democratic age,' said the lion weakly. 'I have political common sense on my side. Look, if we did as the hippos say, it would only encourage the young tigers; they cause enough disturbance as it is. All that's needed is a token gesture. Why don't you nip over on your own and kick a few black arses, just to show willing?'

Before Leopold could reply, a shot rang out across the dried river-bed. The animals who were looking in that direction could clearly see a man in a bush-hat standing on a truck, firing a rifle with telescopic sights. In the silence which followed, the lion collapsed, as leonine blood gouted from a hole in his forehead.

'A judgment from above!' said the Rev. Dean William Pennyfever. 'Let's get back to the veldt before similar punishment strikes the entire congregation.'

'Buzz off, you old fool!' shouted a hot-headed young rhino. 'Naked aggression! That just proves we were right. We've got to get those men before they get us. Let's have a show of hooves in favour of an immediate stampede.'

'Not so fast, not so fast!' said the bespectacled hippo. 'I'm in charge now. Let's not be rash.'

'But you were the one who suggested the charge in the first place,' said the young rhino in amazement.

'Circumstances alter cases. Pipe down - you're too free with your comments. Now the lion's dead, I'm managing things to see that we don't get another boss over us, and what I say goes.'

'But those men are building on our land.'

'They've got rights, same as us. Look, I know how you feel, but this needs a constitutional approach. Let's get back to the veldt and talk things over in the light of this new development. Perhaps we can barney the men into a compromise.'

Everyone started trotting back towards the deodars. Leopold called out angrily, 'Are we going to forget our wise old leader just like that? Let's at least give him a decent burial with a copy of "Digest of World Lion Problems" beside him.'

But nobody paid any heed. They left the lion where he had fallen. It was too hot to bother, and only the jackals and vultures stayed with the body for the last obsequies.

* * * *

Continuing on his travels, Gordon Ivon Jefffris visited representative planets all over the universe. A myriad viewpoints were presented to him for his consideration, all of which he sedulously reported back to Birth Star, the superputer. He found every sort of philosophy, every sort of government, anarchies, hive-worlds, individualisms, Utopias, some of which worked extremely well for a while but not for ever. He spoke to men of action and men of contemplation, women who laughed and women who cried, old people and young people. He was confronted by an astounding diversity.

Gradually, this diversity swallowed him up. He no longer sought for answers. His companions left him, yet he went blindly on, almost unaware of what he was or why he did what he did. He was open to the whole universe, and in consequence less and less able to reach any conclusion about it. There was always something new; that something was age-old, yet at the same time it was new.

Jefffris himself grew old, despite constant rejuvenation shots.

Finally, the Institution recalled him and he sat in a comfortable geriatric chair before Birth Star itself.

'It is many years since you won the great competition. Have you reached any conclusions after your unique experiences?' asked the superputer.

'Experience ... how does anyone evaluate experience? I was born believing that humanity was a vital, not a freak, manifestation of the greater universe, and nothing I have experienced has altered that view.'

'Have you reached any conclusions, then?'

'No. I began to consider that the universe itself was all-important. Its mere size ... Then, after a long while, I came to consider that human beings were all-important. Perhaps nothing is all-important...

He sank into a long silence from which the superputer finally roused him.

'Is that your conclusion?'

'What? No, certainly not. It is an error in logic to believe that nothing is all-important. That would only be possible in a universe of nothingness. At last I have come to believe that ideas, like the universe, like man, have their own validity, that they have a genetic structure of their own, that they are the link - no, not the link, the very medium, in which both universe and man's consciousness exist. I'm tired..

'Go on, Gordan Ivon,' said the superputer. It played him reviving colours.

'Yes, ideas have a seminal fluid. They co-exist from the beginning of everything to the end of everything. They contain everything; that is why they appear to us, whatever we think of, to be at once fresh yet, on examination, very ancient. Such concepts carry us far beyond notions of pessimism or optimism; they carry us right to the heart of existence. And of course we have always been at the very heart of existence without knowing it. Whatever we are, whoever we are, whether young or old...'

The superputer let him ramble on, and said finally, 'So you have reached a conclusion.'

'No. Or Yes.' He drew himself up. 'The human soul has a dark corner, the universe, which is its reflection. But I don't think I want to talk about it, thanks.'