Tài liệu Inside John Barth pptx

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I.
TAKE a fellow, reasonably young, personable enough, health perfect.
Suppose he has all the money he can reasonably, or even unreasonably,
use. He is successful in a number of different fields of work in which he
is interested. Certainly he has security. Women? Well, maybe not any
woman in the world he might want. But still, a very nice, choice selection
of a number of the very finest physical specimens. The finest—and no
acute case of puritanism to inhibit his enjoyment.
Take all that. Then add to it the positive assurance of continuing youth
and vigor, with a solid life expectancy of from 175 to 200 more years. Im-
possible? Well—just suppose it were all true of someone. A man like
that, a man with all those things going for him, you'd figure he would be
the happiest man in the world.
Wouldn't you?
Sure. A man with all that would have to be the happiest—unless he
was crazy. Right? But me, Johnny Barth, I had it.
I had all of it, just like that. I sure wasn't the happiest man in the world
though. And I know I wasn't crazy either. The thing about me was, I
wasn't a man. Not exactly.
I was a colony.
Really. A colony. A settlement. A new but flourishing culture, you
might say. Oh, I had the look of a man, and the mind and the nerves and
the feel of a man too. All the normal parts and equipment. But all of it ex-
isted—and was beautifully kept up, I'll say that—primarily as a locale,
not a man.
I was, as I said before, a colony.
Sometimes I used to wonder how New England really felt about the
Pilgrims. If you think that sounds silly—perhaps one of these days you
won't.
THE beginning was some ten years back, on a hunting trip the autumn
after I got out of college. That was just before I started working, as far off
the bottom as I could talk myself, which was the personnel office in my
Uncle John's dry cleaning chain in the city.
That wasn't too bad. But I was number four man in the office, so it
could have been better, too. Uncle John was a bachelor, which meant he
had no daughter I could marry. Anyway, she would have been my cous-
in. But next best, I figured, was to be on good personal terms with the
old bull.
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This wasn't too hard. Apart from expecting rising young executives to
rise and start work no later than 8:30 a.m., Uncle John was more or less
all right. Humor him? Well, every fall he liked to go hunting. So when he
asked me to go hunting with him up in the Great Sentries, I knew I was
getting along pretty well. I went hunting.
The trip was nothing very much. We camped up in the hills. We drank
a reasonably good bourbon. We hunted—if that's the word for it. Me, I'd
done my hitch in the Army. I know what a gun is—and respect it. Uncle
John provided our hunting excitement by turning out to be one of the
trigger-happy types. His score was two cows, a goat, a couple of other
hunters, one possible deer—and unnumbered shrubs and bushes shot at.
Luckily he was such a lousy shot that the safest things in the mountains
were his targets.
Well, no matter. I tried to stay in the second safest place, which was
directly behind him. So it was a nice enough trip with no casualties, right
up to the last night.
We were all set to pack out in the morning when it happened. Maybe
you read about the thing at the time. It got a light-hearted play in the pa-
pers, the way those things do. "A one in a billion accident," they called it.
We were lounging by the campfire after supper and a few good snorts.
Uncle John was entertaining himself with a review of some of his nearer,
more thrilling misses. I, to tell the truth, was sort of dozing off.
Then, all of a sudden, there was a bright flash of blue-green light and a
loud sort of a "zoop-zing" sound. And a sharp, stinging sensation in my
thighs.
I hollered. I jumped to my feet. I looked down, and my pants were
peppered with about a dozen little holes like buckshot. I didn't have to
drop my pants to know my legs were too. I could feel it. And blood star-
ted to ooze.
I figured, of course, that Uncle John had finally shot me and I at once
looked on the bright side. I would be a cinch for a fast promotion to vice
president. But Uncle John swore he hadn't been near a gun. So we
guessed some other hunter must have done it, seen what he had done
and then prudently ducked. At least no one stepped forward.
IT was a moonlight night. With Uncle John helping me we made it the
two and a half miles back down the trail to Poxville, where we'd left our
car and stuff. We routed out the only doctor in the area, old Doc Grandy.
He grumbled, "Hell, boy, a few little hunks o' buckshot like that and
you make such a holler. I see a dozen twice's bad as this ever' season.
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Ought to make you wait till office hours. Well—hike yourself up on the
table there. I'll flip 'em out for you."
Which he proceeded to do. If it was a joke to him, it sure wasn't to me,
even if they weren't in very deep. Finally he was done. He stood there
clucking like an old hen with no family but a brass doorknob. Something
didn't seem quite right to him.
Uncle John gave me a good belt of the bourbon he'd been thoughtful
enough to pack along.
"What was it you say hit you, boy?" Doc Grandy wanted to know,
reaching absently for the bottle.
"Buckshot, I suppose. What was it you just hacked out of me?"
"Hah!" He passed the bottle back to Uncle John. "Not like any buckshot
I ever saw. Little balls, or shells of metallic stuff all right. But not lead.
Peculiar. M-mph. You know what, boy?"
"You're mighty liberal with the iodine, I know that. What else?"
"You say you saw a big flash of light. Come to think on it, I saw a
streak of light up the mountainside about that same time. I was out on
the porch. You know, boy, I believe you got something to feel right set
up about. I believe you been hit by a meteor. If it weren't—ha-ha—pieces
of one of them flying saucers you read about."
Well, I didn't feel so set up about it, then or ever. But it did turn out he
was right.
Doc Grandy got a science professor from Eastern State Teachers Col-
lege there in Poxville to come look. He agreed that they were meteor
fragments. The two of them phoned it in to the city papers during a slow
week and, all in all, it was a big thing. To them. To me it was nothing
much but a pain in the rear.
The meteor, interviewed scientists were quoted as saying, must have
almost burned up coming through the atmosphere, and disintegrated
just before it hit me. Otherwise I'd have been killed. The Poxville profess-
or got very long-winded about the peculiar shape and composition of the
pieces, and finally carried off all but one for the college museum. Most
likely they're still there. One I kept as a souvenir, which was silly. It
wasn't a thing I wanted to remember—or, as I found later, would ever be
able to forget. Anyway, I lost it.
All right. That was that and, except for a lingering need to sit on very
soft cushions, the end of it. I thought. We went back to town.
Uncle John felt almost as guilty about the whole thing as if he had shot
me himself and, in November, when he found about old Bert
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Winginheimer interviewing girl applicants for checker jobs at home in
his apartment, I got a nice promotion.
WORKING my way up, I was a happy, successful businessman.
And then, not all at once but gradually, a lot of little things developed
into problems. They weren't really problems either, exactly. They were
puzzles. Nothing big but—well, it was like I was sort of being made to
do, or not do, certain things. Like being pushed in one direction or an-
other. And not necessarily the direction I personally would have picked.
Like——
Well, one thing was shaving.
I always had used an ordinary safety razor—nicked myself not more
than average. It seemed OK to me. Never cared too much for electric
razors; it didn't seem to me they shaved as close. But—I took to using an
electric razor now, because I had to.
One workday morning I dragged myself to the bathroom of my bach-
elor apartment to wash and shave. Getting started in the morning was
never a pleasure to me. But this time seemed somehow tougher than
usual. I lathered my face and put a fresh blade in my old razor.
For some reason, I could barely force myself to start. "Come on,
Johnny boy!" I told myself. "Let's go!" I made myself take a first stroke
with the razor. Man! It burned like fire. I started another stroke and the
burning came before the razor even touched my face. I had to give up. I
went down to the office without a shave.
That was no good, of course, so at the coffee break I forced myself
around the corner to the barber shop. Same thing! I got all lathered up all
right, holding myself by force in the chair. But, before the barber could
touch the razor to my face, the burning started again.
I stopped him. I couldn't take it.
And then suddenly the idea came to me that an electric razor would be
the solution. It wasn't, actually, just an idea; it was positive knowledge.
Somehow I knew an electric razor would do it. I picked one up at the
drug store around the corner and took it to the office. Plugged the thing
in and went to work. It was fine, as I had known it would be. As close a
shave? Well, no. But at least it was a shave.
Another thing was my approach to—or retreat from—drinking. Not
that I ever was a real rummy, but I hadn't been one to drag my feet at a
party. Now I got so moderate it hardly seemed worth bothering with at
all. I could only take three or four drinks, and that only about once a
week. The first time I had that feeling I should quit after four, I tried just
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one—or two—more. At the first sip of number five, I thought the top of
my head would blast off. Four was the limit. Rigidly enforced.
All that winter, things like that kept coming up. I couldn't drink more
than so much coffee. Had to take it easy on smoking. Gave up ice skat-
ing—all of a sudden the cold bothered me. Stay up late nights and chase
around? No more; I could hardly hold my eyes open after ten.
That's the way it went.
I had these feelings, compulsions actually. I couldn't control them. I
couldn't go against them. If I did, I would suffer for it.
True, I had to admit that probably all these things were really good for
me. But it got to where everything I did was something that was good
for me—and that was bad. Hell, it isn't natural for a young fellow just
out of college to live like a fussy old man of seventy with a grudge
against the undertaker. Life became very dull!
About the only thing I could say for it was, I was sure healthy.
It was the first winter since I could remember that I never caught a
cold. A cold? I never once sniffled. My health was perfect; never even so
much as a pimple. My dandruff and athlete's foot disappeared. I had a
wonderful appetite—which was lucky, since I didn't have much other re-
creation left. And I didn't even gain weight!
Well, those things were nice enough, true. But were they compensa-
tion for the life I was being forced to live? Answer: Uh-uh. I couldn't
imagine what was wrong with me.
Of course, as it turned out the following spring, I didn't have to ima-
gine it. I was told.
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II.
IT was a Friday. After work I stopped by Perry's Place with Fred
Schingle and Burk Walters from the main accounting office. I was hoping
it would turn out to be one of my nights to have a couple—but no. I got
the message and sat there, more or less sulking, in my half of the booth.
Fred and Burk got to arguing about flying saucers. Fred said yes; Burk,
no. I stirred my coffee and sat in a neutral corner.
"Now look here," said Burk, "you say people have seen things. All
right. Maybe some of them have seen things—weather balloons, shad-
ows, meteors maybe. But space ships? Nonsense."
"No nonsense at all. I've seen pictures. And some of the reports are
from airline pilots and people like that, who are not fooled by balloons or
meteors. They have seen ships, I tell you, ships from outer space. And
they are observing us."
"Drivel!"
"It is not!"
"It's drivel. Now look, Fred. You too, Johnny, if you're awake over
there. How long have they been reporting these things? For years. Ever
since World War II.
"All right. Ever since the war, at least. So. Suppose they were space
ships? Whoever was in them must be way ahead of us technically. So
why don't they land? Why don't they approach us?"
Fred shrugged. "How would I know? They probably have their reas-
ons. Maybe they figure we aren't worth any closer contact."
"Hah! Nonsense. The reason we don't see these space people, Fred my
boy, admit it, is because there aren't any. And you know it!"
"I don't know anything of the damned sort. For all any of us know,
they might even be all around us right now."
Burk laughed. I smiled, a little sourly, and drained my coffee.
I felt a little warning twinge.
Too much coffee; should have taken milk. I excused myself as the oth-
er two ordered up another round.
I left. The conversation was too stupid to listen to. Space creatures all
around me, of all things. How wrong can a man get? There weren't any
invaders from space all around me.
I was all around them.
ALL at once, standing there on the sidewalk outside Perry's Bar, I
knew that it was true. Space invaders. The Earth was invaded—the
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Earth, hell! I was invaded. I didn't know how I knew, but I knew all
right. I should have. I was in possession of all the information.
I took a cab home to my apartment.
I was upset. I had a right to be upset and I wanted to be alone. Alone?
That was a joke!
Well, my cab pulled up in front of my very modest place. I paid the
driver, overtipped him—I was really upset—and ran up the stairs. In the
apartment, I hustled to the two by four kitchen and, with unshakable de-
termination, I poured myself a four-finger snort of scotch.
Then I groaned and poured it down the sink. Unshakable determina-
tion is all very well—but when the top of your head seems to rip loose
like a piece of stubborn adhesive coming off a hairy chest and bounces,
hard, against the ceiling, then all you can do is give up. I stumbled out to
the front room and slumped down in my easy chair to think.
I'd left the door open and I was sitting in a draft.
So I had to—that compulsion—go close the door. Then I sat down to
think.
Anyway I thought I sat down to think. But, suddenly, my thoughts
were not my own.
I wasn't producing them; I was receiving them.
"Barth! Oh, Land of Barth. Do you read us, oh Barthland? Do you read
us?"
I didn't hear that, you understand. It wasn't a voice. It was all thoughts
inside my head. But to me they came in terms of words.
I took it calmly. Surprisingly, I was no longer upset—which, as I think
it over, was probably more an achievement of internal engineering than
personal stability.
"Yeah," I said, "I read you. So who in hell—" a poor choice of expres-
sion—"are you? What are you doing here? Answer me that." I didn't
have to say it, the thought would have been enough. I knew that. But it
made me feel better to speak out.
"We are Barthians, of course. We are your people. We live here."
"Well, you're trespassing on private property! Get out, you hear me?
Get out!"
"Now, now, noble Fatherland. Please, do not become upset and un-
reasonable. We honor you greatly as our home and country. Surely we
who were born and raised here have our rights. True, our forefathers
who made the great voyage through space settled first here in a frightful
wilderness some four generations back. But we are neither pioneers nor
immigrants. We are citizens born."
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"Invaders! Squatters!"
"Citizens of Barthland."
"Invaded! Good Lord, of all the people in the world, why me? Nothing
like this ever happened to anyone. Why did I have to be picked to be a
territory—the first man to have queer things living in me?"
"Oh, please, gracious Fatherland! Permit us to correct you. In the day
of our fathers, conditions were, we can assure you, chaotic. Many hor-
rible things lived here. Wild beasts and plant growths of the most vicious
types were everywhere."
"There were——?"
"What you would call microbes. Bacteria. Fungi. Viruses. Terrible de-
vouring wild creatures everywhere. You were a howling wilderness. Of
course, we have cleaned those things up now. Today you are civil-
ized—a fine, healthy individual of your species—and our revered Fath-
erland. Surely you have noted the vast improvement in your condition!"
"Yes, but——"
"And we pledge our lives to you, oh Barthland. As patriotic citizens
we will defend you to the death. We promise you will never be success-
fully invaded."
Yeah. Well, that was nice. But already I felt as crowded as a subway
train with the power cut out at rush hour.
But there was no room for doubt either. I'd had it. I still did have it;
had no chance at all of getting rid of it.
THEY went on then and told me their story.
I won't try to repeat it all verbatim. I couldn't now, since my
memory—but that's something else. Anyway, I finally got the picture.
But I didn't get it all the same evening. Oh, no. At ten I had to knock it
off to go to bed, get my sleep, keep up my health. They were insistent.
As they put it, even if I didn't care for myself I had to think about an
entire population and generations yet unborn. Or unbudded, which was
the way they did it.
Well, as they said, we had the whole weekend to work out an under-
standing. Which we did. When we were through, I didn't like it a whole
lot better, but at least I could understand it.
It was all a perfectly logical proposition from their point of
view—which differed in quite a number of respects from my own. To
them it was simply a matter of survival for their race and their culture.
To me it was a matter of who or what I was going to be. But then, I had
no choice.
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According to the Official History I was given, they came from a tiny
planet of a small sun. Actually, their sun was itself a planet, still incan-
descent, distant perhaps like Jupiter from the true sun. Their planet or
moon was tiny, wet and warm. And the temperature was constant.
These conditions, naturally, governed their development—and, even-
tually, mine.
Of course they were very small, about the size of a dysentery amoeba.
The individual life span was short as compared to ours but the acceler-
ated pace of their lives balanced it out. In the beginning, something like
four of our days was a lifetime. So they lived, grew, developed, evolved.
They learned to communicate. They became civilized—far more so than
we have, according to them. And I guess that was true. They were even
able to extend their life span to something like two months.
"And to what," I inquired—but without much fire, I'm afraid; I was
losing fight—"to what am I indebted for this intrusion?"
"Necessity."
It was, to them. Their sun had begun to cool. It was their eviction
notice.
They had to move or adapt themselves to immeasurably harsher con-
ditions; and they had become so highly developed, so specialized, that
change of that sort would have been difficult if not impossible. And they
didn't want to change, anyway. They liked themselves as they were.
The only other thing was to escape. They had to work for flight
through space. And they succeeded.
There were planets nearer to them than Earth. But these were enorm-
ous worlds to them, and the conditions were intolerably harsh. They
found one planet with conditions much like those on Earth a few million
years back. It was a jungle world, dominated by giant reptiles—which
were of no use to the folk. But there were a few, small, struggling, warm-
blooded animals. Small to us, that is—they were county size to the folk.
Some genius had a great inspiration. While the environment of the
planet itself was impossibly harsh and hostile, the conditions inside these
warm little animals were highly suitable!
It seemed to be the solution to their problem of survival. Small, trial
colonies were established. Communication with the space ships from
home was achieved.
The experiment was a success.
THE trouble was that each colony's existence depended on the life of
the host. When the animal died, the colony died.
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Life on the planet was savage. New colonies would, of course, be
passed from individual to individual and generation to generation of the
host species. But the inevitable toll of attrition from the violent deaths of
the animals appalled this gentle race. And there was nothing they could
do about it. They could give protection against disease, but they could
not control the hosts. Their scientists figured that, if they could find a
form of life having conscious power of reason, they would be able to es-
tablish communication and a measure of control. But it was not possible
where only instinct existed.
They went ahead because they had no choice. Their only chance was
to establish their colonies, accepting the certainty of the slaughter of hun-
dreds upon hundreds of entire communities—and hoping that, with
their help, evolution on the planet would eventually produce a better
host organism. Even of this they were by no means sure. It was a hope.
For all they could know, the struggling mammalian life might well be
doomed to extermination by the giant reptiles.
They took the gamble. Hundreds of colonies were planted.
They did it but they weren't satisfied with it. So, back on the dying
home moon, survivors continued to work. Before the end came they
made one more desperate bid for race survival.
They built interstellar ships to be launched on possibly endless jour-
neys into space. A nucleus of select individuals in a spore-like form of
suspended animation was placed on each ship. Ships were launched in
pairs, with automatic controls to be activated when they entered into the
radius of attraction of a sun. Should the sun have planets such as their
own home world—or Earth type—the ships would be guided there. In
the case of an Earth type planet having intelligent life, they would——
They would do just what my damned "meteor" had done.
They would home in on an individual, "explode," penetrate—and set
up heavy housekeeping on a permanent basis. They did. Lovely. Oh, joy!
Well. We would all like to see the Garden of Eden; but being it is
something quite else again.
Me, a colony!
My—uh—population had no idea where they were in relation to their
original home, or how long they had traveled through space. They did
hope that someplace on Earth their companion ship had established an-
other settlement. But they didn't know. So far on our world, with its
masses of powerful electrical impulses, plus those of our own brains,
they had found distance communication impossible.
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