Fred Hoyle - Element 79

Heedless, the Voice ranted on. “Come then, gather unto my supper that ye may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses, the flesh of all men both great and small.”

Hermes glanced again at the data sheets from the printer. “Raving lunatic. Worst case of paranoia on record,” he shouted.

At swelling volume, the creature continued to give tongue. “Come, look here,” it thundered, “look and ye shall see. I have a name written on my thigh—king of kings, lord of lords.”

“This one’s got the lot,” bellowed Hermes in Aphrodite’s ear.

“Then give him the lot,” she bellowed in reply.

Hermes extended a deliberate finger to the oblivion button. Instantly, Whitebeard was gone, the ranting stopped. But not without all trace. Like the Devil, this creature vanished in a pall of smoke, this time a sickly smoke—incense, apparently—worse, if anything, than the Devil smoke. Hermes was too taken aback by the intensity of it to reach for the air-conditioner. Yet the pall gradually cleared, and with its clearing Hermes found Aphrodite clinging to him.

“I suspected something like that might happen,” she whispered, “I got to the controls just in time.”

Aphrodite resumed her judgment seat with as much dignity as she could muster. It wasn’t easy to be dignified, for the tumbler of spilled juice had made her abominably sticky. Never again, never again, she decided, was she getting herself into a situation like this. Even the blood-spitting Tamerlenk was fast losing his attractions. Aphrodite was just on the point of making a reluctant judgment in favor of Tamerlenk when a discreet cough reminded her of the fourth contender. The thing was standing there, a big rectangular box with a shining gilt face. It had legs, after all, extremely short, stumpy legs. The face really was nothing but gilt lettering. The thing began in a flat, featureless voice. “In a very real sense. I have been gravely perturbed at the manner in which business has been conducted today. I am referring now, not to the summary dispatch of the two immediately preceding gentlemen, but to an omission on the part of the Chair to state our terms of reference. An observer, persona curiae, might well be pardoned for failure to comprehend what this affair is about. I will commence, therefore, by stating terms of reference from the floor.

“Power is the subject of our debate. The contenders, each one of us, has appeared here freely, without constraint or duress. It is the opinion, the belief, the conviction of each one of us that power over the destiny of man resides chiefly in our person. It is my belief that power resides in me. Each of the gentlemen who preceded me held a similar belief. We are here to provide evidence to substantiate our belief. It is the task of the Chair to weigh our several arguments and then to deliver a balanced and final judgment (I might add, parenthetically, that the Chair has graciously condescended to spend a night of extreme frolicsomeness with the winner). These are our terms of reference.”

Hermes saw the dark look on Aphrodite’s face. No objection, he knew, would be made to an immediate punching of the windbag button. Yet in all fairness, a thumbs-down could hardly be given on anything the gilt creature had said so far. Besides, Hermes had no wish to leave the field open to the blood-spitting merchant. The flat voice continued. “The contention which I am here to prove is that I , a book of rules, a mere rule-book, if you prefer to call me so, exercise complete sway over the destiny of man. From front to back, top to bottom, I am a vast aggregation of laws and statutes. With these I bind my subjects far more effectively than the fetters employed by the remaining gentleman on my right. The gentleman imagines himself to be a conqueror. Yet where are his conquests? Are they not all gone now, like thistledown blown away in the wind? My conquests become more firmly established as time goes on. My rules become hallowed by time. My laws become established by precedent. Learned men search me from cover to cover, lavishing their energies and talents to insure that I am obeyed in all things, down to the last comma. Strong men quail before me quite as abjectly as they ever quailed before the gentleman whose spittoon is now very definitely spilling over onto the floor of this otherwise clean and pleasant hall.

“As the centuries pass, I hold dominion over an ever-increasing proportion of humanity. Throughout the so-called advanced countries, I control the lives of the people down to the finest details. In one of the oldest of these countries, I have reduced the people to an ultimate paralysis, a paralysis in which no decisions can be taken, a paralysis in which nothing happens except endless and futile argument, utterly without point or urgency. In this last stage, I reduce all humankind to an intellectual senility in which they even become incapable of responding to the most elementary facts.

“A remarkable aspect of my power is that my victims never regard themselves as victims. The more I reduce them to a state of complete inanition, the happier they become. Astonishingly, I do not even write my own laws or my own statutes. I allow humans to pack into my massive chest anything that should take their fancy. This explains why I am quite largely stuffed with rubbish. I contain outrageous logical contradictions. Far from hindering me, this even helps my purposes, for humans torture themselves over the contradictions, not by a genuine removal of logical difficulties, mark you, but by setting up elaborate pretenses that no such contradictions exist. These pretenses greatly assist me in inducing mental collapse in otherwise quite rational and healthy people. I cause mental agony on a vast scale, far more effectively and acutely than the whips, chains, and branding irons employed by the remaining gentleman on my right.

“Absurd talk, you might be disposed to think. Absurd, indeed, but true, utterly true. Why, you may wonder, do they not destroy me, these foolish humans, why not burn me, disintegrate me—eh? Here’s the rub, they cannot do so. I cannot be eliminated, because no human organization can succeed without me. Particularly, no army can fight without me. An army without regulations is but a rabble. Now suppose some section of humankind sought to manage without me. It would have no army, save a mere rabble. It would be overwhelmed by the armies of those humankind who pay allegiance to us. It would be wiped from the face of the earth.”

Hermes shifted uneasily. A dread of this gilt-faced creature was beginning to grow within him. There was a curious conviction in the flat, unemotional voice, so sharply in contrast to the other contenders. Aphrodite was feeling it, too. Her face was a chalky-white, for no doubt the thought of a night’s frolic with this appalling thing was beginning to prey on her mind. The creature went relentlessly on. “Let me pass next to an exposure of the weaknesses in the arguments put forward by others who spoke before me. Throughout his former career, the gentleman of the many faces—whom you so rightly converted to a puff of sulfurous smoke—failed in everything he attempted. He failed precisely because he could never bring himself to accept the need for rules and regulations. Had the gentleman ever been able to organize himself, to draw up a rigid and extensive code of sinning, there is no telling to what heights he might have climbed. By nature, if I may be permitted the term, the gentleman was anti-everything, anti-rule, anti-law, which, by the way, is why he smelled so very badly in his final moments.

“The gentleman of the large beard and overpowering voice presents us with a more complex problem. You must understand, my dear young lady, that this gentleman in his time enjoyed a considerable vogue in the world. Many indeed will be distressed to discover him converted so adroitly to a whiff of incense. His passing will leave regrets.”