Conrad Starguard - Conrad's Time Machine Part 18

The word gymnasium means something like "the naked place," and that's the way they did it down there. I thought it was an improvement, on the girls anyway, being prejudiced.

There were bluegra.s.s bands and rock groups, folk singers of a dozen descriptions, and every type of ethnic music imaginable. There was even a Grand Opera Company, although we let that one pa.s.s. It was all first quality stuff, and we were surprised to discover that there were no professional entertainers on the island.

All sports, theater, and music of of any description was done by amateurs. It seems that every Smoothie could play a musical instrument, paint a beautiful picture, and dance like Nureyev. Incredible.

Barb turned out to be a cla.s.sical ballet dancer. We went to see her perform, one night, and she was great, absolutely perfect. She was pleased with her performance, herself. She told me so, sitting there beside me, watching it.

"I did this a year ago, subjectively. If that bothers you, just think of it as a movie. I could watch a movie of myself, couldn't I?"

But what Ian noticed first was that while they were all outstanding at the performing arts, not one of them could do anything creative! There wasn't a composer or a novelist or a ch.o.r.eographer in the whole bunch. Apparently, when you started out knowing everything that you were going to do in your whole life, it just wasn't possible to think up anything new.

The Killers weren't nearly as talented. A few played musical instruments, but mostdidn't. Most of them could fix almost anything that was broken, but few were real engineers. If they used a paint brush, it was likely to be four inches wide.

In fact, most of the Killers had distinctly low-brow tastes. There were a few waterfront dives set aside for them, traditional smoke-filled dens that the Smoothies ran, but weren't too happy about. There was even a go-go bar where the dancing girls were always new. This happened because the Smoothie women drew lots to see who had to do it next, and they figured that one night of it was enough for any girl. Apparently, it was part of their contract with the Killers.

The Bucket of Blood was my favorite low-life dive, since it took something about as far as it could go, and I've always been an extremist, on just about any subject. Ian wouldn't go there a second time, but I got to be a regular.

The place was part bar and part shooting gallery. They didn't throw darts, they threw knives. There was a pistol range in the hallway to the john, and it was unwise to walk out of the bathroom too quickly. There was a pit where you could take on another sportsman with bare knuckles, with quarterstaves, or with sword and shield in full medieval armor, if that was your pleasure. Or you could use anything else in the way of instruments of mayhem that might be mutually agreed on. The stock of strange weapons and armor filled a bas.e.m.e.nt that was bigger than the drinking areas were above. They even practiced with javelins, out in back, and sometimes played a game involving teams that each consisted of a spear chucker and a spear catcher!

And yes, people did get hurt there, but they had a direct subway to the hospital so hardly anybody ever died. The only thing phony about the place were the Smoothie waitresses, who were trying hard to act sleazy when their hearts really weren't in it.

The first night I was there, some of the guys talked me into giving them a demonstration of my temporal sword, and they all acted very impressed. But since they all used other aspects of time travel on a regular basis, I had a feeling that their interest was faked. I think.

Or maybe it was necessary for them to learn about the swords from me, even though they already knew about them, just so causality wasn't violated. It's as confusing as h.e.l.l.

Anyway, a few of the Killers were genuinely creative artists. Leftenant Fitzsimmon wrote some remarkably good poetry, and Captain Stepanski did something that might have been called carpentry, or wood carving, or sculpting, or cabinetry, or maybe none of the above, but he filled whole rooms with oddly shaped, joined, and polished pieces of wood that I found to be strangely disturbing at first. Yet somehow, after a few hours, it sort of grew on me, and I got to liking it. Whatever he was doing, it was certainly original.

The Smoothies were bothered by his stuff, too, but I found one of them carving, cutting, and sanding away, making an accurate copy of one of his pieces.

The Red Gate Inn was Ian's favorite home away from home. It was run by some sort of social club, "The Guardians of the Red Gate," and most of the members were Killers.

Yet fully half of the clientele were Smoothies. A big place, it had some two dozen fair- sized rooms, and each of them featured a different sort of entertainment, from chess through movies past bagpipers and on to a full dance band.I liked the place second best.

The island had a large, beautiful Gothic cathedral, in the French style, that was pretty much unused. The islanders didn't seem to have much, if any, religion, and I personally never noticed any of the Killers being of that persuasion, either.

Ian occasionally went there on Sunday mornings, and he said that a Killer lay preacher spoke to perhaps two dozen people, most of them other Killers, in the huge building. He said that the few Smoothies who came had the look of sociologists. They took notes, photos, and recordings of the proceedings, but they didn't look very prayerful.

Even more odd was the fact that the island boasted a full-sized university, with housing and facilities for ten thousand students. Completely equipped, it stood there empty, totally devoid of both faculty and students. The only people around were a small maintenance crew, who had no idea why the place had been built. Central Maintenance had a.s.signed the area to them to keep in shape, and that's all they knew. Its existence was a mystery, and either n.o.body knew why it was there, or everybody was somehow forbidden to talk about it.

My best guess was that it had been built by mistake, that the City Planning Committee had changed its mind about the desirability of a university, and had so informed the Committee for Personnel Allocation, but neither organization had gotten around to telling the Architectural Council or the Builders' Guild about the change in plans.

Ian wouldn't buy my explanation. His thoughts were that with complete foreknowledge, where those in the future could always tell those in the past about what went wrong, such mistakes were impossible.

My idea was that you couldn't know about a mistake until it had already been made, at which time you were presented with a fait accompli. At that point, you could tear the place down, but you couldn't make it "didn't happen." Once one of my three-dimensional strings was laid down on that sheet of four-dimensional paper, that was it. You shouldn't be able to modify it.

"Or maybe," I said, "The Committee for Telling the Past Where It Screwed Up forgot to tell the Committee for Listening To the Future about the screw up. Or maybe the Committee of the Second Part just forgot to listen in the first place."

Ian didn't like that one, either. He remained convinced that there was a purpose for everything.

For three weeks, Ian and I played in the sunshine. We were well entertained in the evenings, and our nights, well, our nights were generally spent simply wallowing in the ladies of our households, like a pair of contented pigs in their sties.

But wallow though I certainly did, still I found myself sleeping most comfortably when Barb was at my side. The best of the lot was at the beginning, and I began to think that my thoughts of that first morning were right after all. I really was going to have to marry that girl. But later, I told myself, once all the rest of these women ceased fighting their way into my bed.

More and more often, Ian and I found ourselves finding that it was more fun to tourthrough the factories and farms of the island, than to play with all of our expensive adult toys that were laid out for our pleasure.

Not that we were about to let Hasenpfeffer know that, since taking a formal tour of the place was the first thing he wanted us to do.

He was still coming by every morning, singing the same old song about how the two of us really ought to quit goofing off, and knuckle down to business, as he claimed he was doing.

Ian and I had already said everything we wanted to say about the matter, the first morning we'd been here, but Hasenpfeffer kept on harping on the same old strings.

I quit discussing the matter with him, by simply never paying the slightest attention to him when he was ranting and raving. The easiest way to do this was to pay more attention to the breakfast waitress. When he wouldn't stop, I wouldn't either. Flirting would give way to a kiss or two and some light-hearted petting, which would eventually escalate up to concentrated foreplay. On one occasion when we were breakfasting at Ian's, it went as far as actual copulation right there at the breakfast table before Hasenpfeffer gave up and left, muttering to himself.

That day, I'd just finished up, and sent the smiling, if a bit tousled, girl out for more coffee, when Ian said, "That was quite a show."

"Thank you, sir. Not to mention that it finally got rid of Hasenpfeffer."

"Not to mention that you did it with one of my girls."

"Oooh! Territoriality raises its ugly little head! What's it to be next, Ian? Putting your private brand on each chick in your household? Tell me, do you plan on burning a big 'I- bar-M' unto all their trim little left b.u.t.tocks? Or do you figure on getting creative about it? Like maybe hitting a belly b.u.t.ton here and a right t.i.t there?"

"Knock it off! You know d.a.m.n well that I'd never do any such thing! But we never agreed to go communal with our lady friends, and to just take one without permission is d.a.m.ned arrogant behavior."

"I had the girl's permission, or at least her tacit consent, since she was as enthusiastic about the whole thing as I was. What? Are you her father? Her brother? Her husband?

Her owner, maybe? Whatever you are, you just sat there while the two of us got carried away a little. If you had a complaint, you should have aired it before the act took place!"

"Maybe so, but I still think that you owe me one."

"No, you owe me one. I transferred Ming Po over to you, and you never returned the favor."

"Would you take that maid in trade? She hasn't come up on my schedule yet, and now I don't think that I'd feel right about taking her."

"Fine. She's a good woman. But you're sure getting uppity in your old age. Remember those forty women you took home after the party? A third of them were from my staff, and an equal number came from Hasenpfeffer's. Did either of us complain about that? A few hundred of the girls went home with other guys after that party, and certainly no one objected to that! In fact, I have yet to meet a woman on this island who was either underaged, half-witted, or a virgin. These are all mature, experienced women who are in full command of their own lives. For some strange, yet to be explained reason, they allseem to want to enjoy our succulent bodies, in just exactly the same way that the all women back home didn't. It always has been the women who do the choosing, not us men. You're enough of a historian to know that! We couldn't do any getting when they weren't doing any giving, and now that they are, I say that we should take all we can get.

Personally, I intend to continue doing just what I have been doing all along, and if that bothers you, tough!"

"Oh, just forget it."

"The h.e.l.l I will." The waitress came back precisely on cue, the way everything happened around the island. "Mona, my fine girl, I think that you are not sufficiently appreciated around here, so if you're willing, how about coming to work for me? You could report to Barb as soon as you got through here. Does that sound good to you?"

"Why, yes, Tom! That's wonderful!"

"Good." Turning back to Ian, I said, "Now we can forget it."

I slapped Mona on the b.u.t.t as she left, and said to Ian, "So. Do you want to talk about what's really bugging you?"

"No, Tom. Not just yet."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Amoebas and Our Factory

I said, "Did you ever think about an amoeba?"

"Rarely. In fact, I've been known to go whole weeks at a time without doing such a thing, even after breakfast."

"Then consider that when times are good, an amoeba duplicates itself, reproduces by fission, about once every half an hour."

"And two little amoebas wiggle off. So?"

"Well, would you consider that act of fission to be the death of the animal?"

"Certainly not," Ian said.

"Then one can reasonably say that every amoeba now on earth has been around since the very first single-celled animal came into existence, perhaps a billion or more years ago. They are immortal."

"I suppose that that would follow, yes. Interesting."

"Now consider the fact that the total number of amoebas on earth doesn't change much. That there were about as many of them a half an hour ago as there are now.

Therefore, on the average, one amoeba must die for each one that is created by fission.

Think about what it must be like to be such an animal. There you are, billions of years old, knowing for the entire time that there is a fifty-fifty chance that you will be dead in the next half an hour," I said.

"Well, fortunately, as far as we know, they don't know, think, or remember anything, which together makes worrying pretty much impossible."

"True. But if they could, each and every one of the zillions of amoebas in the world would be perfectly justified in thinking of himself as being a fantastically lucky individual, having won that fifty-fifty bet with death almost every single half hour for billions of years."

"I see what you mean, Tom. Each one has seen-what?-maybe ten to the fifteenth of its clones die, while it has kept on living! Every one of them is so improbable that it couldn't possibly happen, yet there they all are in uncountable numbers, immortals waiting to die at any instant. Remarkable. Does this little parable of yours have any point?""No, but it sure makes you think, doesn't it? So what do you want to do today?"

"I don't know, except let's not try to be amoebas," Ian said. "I think that we have just about exhausted all of the possibilities before us. Nothing comes to mind. Can you think of anything interesting?"

"Well, okay, look. Neither one of us has ever tried anything really kinky. Now, I'll bet that if we looked for it, this palace of yours will turn out to have a dungeon, complete with cages full of nearly naked slave girls in leather, eager to taste our whips and nipple clamps, or perhaps your personal branding iron."

"You know, Tom, I think that you are probably right. I mean, I truly believe that our ladies really would volunteer for that sort of thing, if we asked them to do it. But the question is, would you actually ask them to do such a thing?"

"Well, no, I couldn't. Look, I wasn't being serious. The truth is, I feel very protective toward these girls. I don't think that I could hurt one of them if my life depended on it.

But I at least I came up with something original. Now it's your turn to think up something for us to do today."

"Yeah. Well, we could always go flying again. We're still a long way from earning our pilots' licenses."

"True, but somehow, I don't feel like flying today. How about if we get some horses and ride down to the factory area? We could nose around there for a while, and maybe find something interesting."

"I think that's a dull, stupid idea, Tom, but it's the best one I've heard today, so let's act on it."

We walked out of Ian's Taj Mahal, to find two dozen of our ladies mounted and waiting for us, along with the two oversized horses we would ride, Diablo and Trigger.

All the girls were in jodhpurs, riding boots, and nothing from the waist up except for some oversized sombreros.

As we mounted up, I said, "Ian, have you noticed that our staffs have been wearing less and less lately? I haven't asked them to do that. Is it your doing?"

"Not guilty. Ming Po, why are all of you wearing just jodhpurs?"

"It is vera painful to ride horse with no long pants on, Ian," she said in her best try at a Chinese accent.

"You know what I mean. Why are all of you women topless?"

"It is what we wished to not wear."

"Okay, then why did you wish to not wear shirts, or tops, or whatever you call what you're not wearing?"

"It is not me, of course, for I have receive far more than I deserve, but many other have notice that the less clothes a woman wear, the more likely she is to be noticed by two of you men."

"There you go, Tom. It's all just part of our infinite local s.e.x appeal." Ian turned back to Ming Po, and said, "If you don't feel the need for attracting me any further, why are your b.r.e.a.s.t.s as bare as every one else's?"

"Because when everyone does something, then it is the fashion. A woman must be in fashion, yes?"Ian looked confused, trying to absorb that one.

I could see that he didn't want to say anything, so I said, "It's pa.s.sing strange, ladies, but I for one will happily suspend my disbelief in the apparent universe, in return for the ample services rendered."

There was no point in having Ian be the only one who was confused.

It was an hour's ride to the industrial area. The distance was only about six miles as the crow flies, but except for maybe the subways, nothing went straight on our island.

There weren't any real roads at all. But the ride was enjoyable, and the scenery was good, which was why we rode the horses in the first place.

By scenery, I mostly mean that the ladies on the whole island were wearing a lot less than they had been three weeks ago. Back in the states, that wouldn't have been a good thing, since most people (of both s.e.xes) didn't have bodies that you really wanted to see stripped down. Down here, where everybody looked like they were between eighteen and thirty-five, and physical fitness freaks besides, well, it wasn't bad.

But why were they doing what they were doing? Was it just this business of it being the new fashion? Or were they all offering themselves to us? That was a scary thought.

There were more than thirty thousand women on the island.

It is possible to have entirely too much of a good thing.