Fred Hoyle - Element 79

The plane gave a little shake, a kind of shrug, like an animal settling itself more comfortably. A notice flashed up in front of the god’s nose: FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT.

One of the stewardesses paraded up and down the aisle, checking the instant obedience of the passengers. By now the plane had resumed its smooth ride.

“I want to go to the john,” a woman complained.

“Not while the seat-belt sign is on, please,” was the firm command. The stewardess came abreast of the god. She was a pretty little thing, trim and wiry, hardworking, but reduced by the system to a prissy schoolmarm. She pointed imperiously at the god’s midriff. “Fasten your belt. Your belt, please.”

Dionysus rose from his seat. He took hold of the girl and marched her back along the aisle to a little cubicle, a place where coats were normally kept. The girl protested loudly, but nobody heard. Individual T.V. had the whole planeload in thrall. The stewardess was astonished to find the cubicle no longer small. It had suddenly become amply large enough for the god’s purpose. The stewardess shrieked and fought, but the fuss was of no avail. Off came the uniform, off came the standardized starched shirt. The shrieks changed to laughter as wave after wave of tingling and wingling swept over the girl. She emerged from the cubicle ten minutes later, her face flushed and her eyes shining. Nobody noticed the change except the second stewardess. A frenzied whispered conversation between the girls made it clear to Dionysus that more of the same was needed. The second girl also proved quite defenseless against the jingling and wingling. She too soon emerged wide-eyed from the cubicle.

Thereafter both girls giggled and laughed as they walked the plane. Time came for lunch. Now, if there is one thing your airline stewardess comes to hate with a furious intensity, it is the serving of appalling trays of appalling food. The operation has a certain similarity to the stuffing of turkeys, except turkeys demand more or less decent food, not the precooked, overcooked slush that passes for the usual airline meal. Your stewardess comes to hate all those little packages, packages for salt, pepper, butter, packages for package people on a package flight.

The girls were having none of it this time. The whole lot was thrown in together. No cocktails were served. Instead, all the alcohol went in, along with the meat, the potatoes, the dessert, and the cheese. They served the mixture in big pudding bowls.

Nobody noticed the difference, except a man traveling in solitary splendor in the first-class section. He angrily demanded to know what the white stuff was on top. The stewardess gave a deep, bell-like laugh. “Crabmeat garnish, sir.” The man became still more furiously angry. He revealed his exalted identity—president, he was, of the airline itself. Instantly, the wrath of Dionysus descended without pity. Struck dumb in midsentence, the fellow collapsed into his seat, his eyes riveted forever on individual T.V. Never again would this particular monster be permitted to manipulate people.

Dionysus started to sing again. This time he was joined by the two girls and by five of the passengers. Such was the measure of his success, seven from a total of one hundred or more. These seven were now rescued from a kind of living death. The rest were too far gone, too far below the surface, they had become bond-slaves to the god of Inanition. They sat there congealed, ears stuffed up, eyes stuffed up, brains stuffed up, all semblance of intellect completely dissolved away.

The plane landed. The stewardesses busied themselves. There were none of the usual glassy smiles, just genuine laughter. One of them chuckled as she announced, “On behalf of the crew, I’d like to say how very much we’ve enjoyed having you with us today, and with what pleasure we look forward to having you with us again, in the nearest future.”

The girls smiled with intense warmth as the man with the golden beard strode away into the airline building. Once the passengers were all gone, both girls raced down the plane, back to the cubicle. It really was very small, really too small, they both thought rather sadly.

Dionysus reached the main concourse. He heard a voice saying, “Will Mrs. Finkelstein and Mr. Fink please report…” Then the terrible music started again. It was the same abomination as before. It made him sick in the same way, churning his stomach over. With a tremendous concentration of will, he conquered the nausea. The music stopped. Everybody in the concourse braced themselves for a further announcement concerning Mrs. Finkelstein and Mr. Fink. But no further sound seemed to come from the speakers.

It wasn’t that Dionysus had interfered with the electrical feeder lines to the speakers. He was absorbing all the sound. The music was still really coming through, but Dionysus was taking it all for himself, leaving nothing to be heard by the milling throng of people in the concourse. He took the music, every note of it, for a long time, all deep into his belly. As one glutinous note after another went inside him, it seemed to Dionysus as if he were being pumped up and up to the size of an enormous gasbag. There was a limit to what even he could do, to what any god could do. At last the limit was reached, not another single note could he manage to pack inside himself. Dionysus let the whole lot go, in a colossal burp that shook the concourse like a thunderclap. Windows were shattered, cracks appearing everywhere in walls and ceiling. People raced for the exits, convinced that planes were exploding to the left and to the right on the runways outside.

Dionysus surveyed the wreckage and smiled to himself as he stepped through a gap in the outer wall. The evening air was warm and clear, just right for a return to Olympus. He knew what he was going to do when he got home—sleep. He also knew something else. Very definitely, he was flying the rest of his journey on foot.

It’s amazing how many people have a good idea and then foul it up. Take the theologians. When they thought up the Devil they were dead-set on the right track, but then they go off with a ridiculous notion. Imagine the Devil bothering with souls one by one, dealing with you or me on an individual basis, like a common tinker. The critical thing to remember is that the Devil thinks big, reaping his harvests by the million, like he did in the case of Slippage City.

Suppose you wanted to start up a hell of a city. You’d probably put it in a lousy climate. Well, the Devil didn’t make that mistake. He put his City in a beautiful place, a place with a wonderful climate. There was a plain about fifty miles wide between a chain of mountains and the sea. It was a place of nearly perpetual sunshine. Yet it was no desert, quite the reverse. What happened was that every day the air moved in and out over the sea. It came in saturated with moisture during the early morning. There was always a heavy dew with a light mist. The water soaked into the fertile ground before the sun climbed high in the sky. Then, in the heat of the day, the air began to move seaward. It was now so warmed by the sun that it took a big charge of water vapor from the sea, ready to be delivered again to the land on the morrow. Because the air was always dry in the evening, the land cooled off rapidly during the night. The nights were never hot or clammy—in fact, it was mostly necessary to sleep under a couple of blankets.

The City itself became established near the sea, toward the northern end of the plain. Here was a multitude of little hills and valleys, verdant and bird-filled. The houses of the first settlers fitted tastefully into the landscape. Ample water for the first modest needs could be piped from the mountains, or even pumped from simple wells. Crops grew abundantly in the plain, aided by the beginnings of irrigation. Because the people had no thought of profit, the food they grew was real food. The vegetables tasted like real vegetables, the fruit like real fruit, not the flashy, spray-soaked rubbish that would come a hundred years later with the ultimate transmogrification of the City. The children grew up brown and strong. There seemed an infinity of hills and valleys to be explored on horseback. At that early time, the simplest folk possessed horses, just as naturally as they possessed clothing and shelter. Later, with the march of “progress,” only the children of the very rich would be able to afford horses. Later, not even the children of the very rich would have space to play in, the apparent infinity would turn out to be no infinity at all.