Damon Knight - Orbit 15

“That’s nice,” Valery said.

“The oldest ones of the children are already walking and talking,” another of the young women said.

“That seems very early,” Valery mumbled. “Even after a full day it would seem a little early.” Valery didn’t know much about children.

She left the dancing people. She left the bloody hunk of flesh, though she was still puzzled by it. She continued on her way toward the Institute for Impure Science. She was a member of the Institute, and there was an early morning meeting called by the director, Gregory Smirnov.

Valery’s unoutstanding husband Charles Cogsworth was likewise approaching the Institute, but on a street parallel to that taken by Valery. Charles would not walk with his wife Valery in the mornings. There were always early morning kids abroad, and kids are often kidders.

“Hey, mister, walk your dog for you!” they’d offer. Well, Valery was just unkempt enough in the mornings to be referred to as a dog. Such offers amused Valery, but they embarrassed Charles, so they always walked separately. This morning there was a variant, however.

“Hey, mister, walk your cow?” one of the morning kids offered.

“Holy cow!” another kid whistled with amazement.

“Clank, clank,” went a sound somewhere behind Charles.

“Now that is unfair,” Charles protested. “My wife has not put on that much weight. Besides, she isn’t even walking on this street.”

“I wasn’t talking about your wife,” the kid said. “I was talking about the cow.”

“Clank, clank,” went the cowbell. “Can you tell me the way to the Cow Palace?” the cow asked, or else she didn’t: this point remains in dispute. She was a big black-and-white cow, a Holstein or Dutch Belted or some such, and she had been following Charles.

“Veer off to the left,” Charles said in common politeness, “till you come to a street called Drovers’ Road. Follow Drovers’ Road to the right till you come to the Cow Palace. It’s about a mile and a half.”

“Clank, clank,” went the cowbell as the cow took the side street to the left. Cogsworth was not absolutely certain that the cow had spoken to him in words, but he had understood her meaning, and she had understood his. She must have been a simple-minded creature, in any case. The Cow Palace was a slaughterhouse, and no good could come to her there.

Glasser also was going to the Institute. He had to go several blocks out of his way. There was a steamship in the middle of Fourteenth Street; it had the whole thoroughfare blocked. And there was not near enough water to float it, though it had rained a bit during the night.

And Aloysius Shiplap was going to the Institute for Impure Science. He was probably the most impure of all the scientists who belonged to the Institute. Aloysius looked back over his shoulder as he walked. “I wonder what’s keeping that fellow?” he asked. He went another two blocks. “He’s late,” Aloysius declared, “but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Aloysius was almost to the front door of the ramshackle Institute when a flaming duck plunged out of the smoking sky and smashed itself dead on the stones at his feet.

“He was more than a minute late,” Aloysius said.

And then they were met in formal meeting and were in the middle of words. Gregory Smirnov, the director of the Institute, was outlining a study, or a notion, or a subject to be investigated. It really didn’t seem important enough for the calling of an early morning meeting, but most of their studies at the Institute had had such very small and notional beginnings.

“Clock-keeping is a murderous business,” Director Smirnov was saying. “However it is arranged and corrected, the annalist will find that he has burned some of his years behind him.”

“And the annalist’s analyst may find that his ears are burning, as well as his years,” Valery gibed as she shuffled her cards. “Really, do you believe there is as much insanity among any tradesmen as historians?” Valery and Aloysius Shiplap and two of Epikt’s extensions were playing Pape Jaune, the old French card game (the game was named Scrat in fourteenth-century Scotland).

Those extensions of Epikt: one of them looked like Johnny Greeneyes the cosmic gambler to a pip; the other was got up as the Ancient Scribe with black skullcap, flowing white beard, and goose-quill pen behind one ear.

“Have you been losing some years, Gregory?” Aloysius asked the director. “I believe that I have lost one or two myself along the way.”

“Someone has been careless with the years,” Gregory said. “We know that either four or six years have been lost out of the count since the beginning of what common people call the Common Era. Thus, the birth of Our Lord was probably in 4 b.c., possibly in 6 b.c. Yet it was not just a mistake in the calculations. These missing years were not missing at all. Astronomical backtracking tells us that they really happened, even if they were somehow left out of the numbering, even if the annalists have left them blank of any happenings, even if we are not sure just which years they were, not sure just where their location was in time or space.”

“Can’t Epikt discover these things?” Charles Cogsworth asked. “Why do we keep the scatterbrained machine if he can’t find out things like that?”

“Or play cards either,” Valery said. The Johnny Greeneyes extension of Epikt looked pained at this gibe. After all, he had created himself to look like a gambler and a card shark, and he was plugged into the most brainy and most rational calculator in the universe. But he wasn’t doing very good at the Pape Jaune game: there are unbrainy and unrational elements to Pape Jaune; it is one of the few games at which humans can beat intelligent machines.

“Yes, I trust that Epikt will be able to find the answers,” Gregory said, “with the help of all of us. Our project, though, will be research on one year that is included in the numbering, and yet we must record it rationally as the Year That Did Not Happen. We will call it the Year of the Double Bogie or the Year of the Double Fool; or the Year of the Double Joker. I also find the name the Year of the Yellow Joker pushing itself into my mind; likewise, the Year of the Yellow Dwarf. There is superstition involved in contemporary attempts to leave it out of the counting, and I believe that it was left out for several decades. For a parallel, you will recall that this great Institute Building does not have a thirteenth floor.”

“No. It has a cellar, then two stories, then an attic,” Valery said. “It doesn’t have any thirteenth floor, and I am sure that superstition is the cause of its not having one.”

“Let’s consider a taller building then,” Director Gregory said, “one that possibly has twenty floors, but with the thirteenth floor left out of the numbering. Now then, a curious thing happens, hypothetically of course, since this is a hypothetical building. It is discovered one day that it does have a thirteenth story after all, one not built by the builders, one that is only entered by accident, one that is a crazy jumble of insane things and happenings, one that isn’t measurable in normal space. And yet this thirteenth level is discovered again and again. It is occupied by odd tenants who pay rent irregularly and in most odd specie. It is used. And finally this story is restored to the numbering by the building owners, even though it cannot always be found. Such is the year which we will now make the subject of our study.”

Valery drew the Queen of Wands card. It winked at her. The face of that queen looked somehow familiar.

“Who does she look like?” Valery asked, showing the card to Aloysius Shiplap.