‌Goodbye Jimmy

‌Alasdair Gray

In what is more a study than a laboratory, our Headmaster contemplates an array of crystalline forms when one of his deputies arrives from a distant province. This visit has been long expected, yet the Head nearly groans before turning his head enough to give the visitor a mildly welcoming smile and say, ‘Hullo, Jimmy. What brings you here?’

He has the mandarin voice of a Lowland Scot unlocalized by a university education, but not Englished. His employee answers in a slightly plebeian Dublin accent, ‘You know well why I’m here. You’ve stopped answering me emails.’

The Head says gently, ‘I know what they say.’

‘What use is that if you’ve no advice to give?’

The Head sighs with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

‘Is that meant to be some kind of answer?’ demands Jimmy, ‘are you giving that wee place up as a bad job?’

The Head contemplates his crystalline forms again but cannot shut his ears to the cry, ‘Then I’m giving it up too! Abandoning that nest of graceless, ignorant, self-destructive animals! Leaving it! Done with it!’

The outcry becomes wild sobs which slowly quieten and end.

After a pause the Head murmurs, ‘You can’t leave that job. You’ve nothing else to do.’ Then he adds loudly, ‘Unlike me!’ grinning so impishly at his guest that the younger, careworn man seems faced by a mischievous child. A moment later the Head’s old serene look returns, and to change the subject he says in a comradely way, ‘I have my own worries, you see.’

‘Life on other planets?’

‘Yep!’

‘Any luck with it?’

‘Nope. I’ve produced a lot of the usual microbes in submarine volcanic vents, but changes in the chemical environment keep wiping them out before they can even evolve into annelid worms. A planet supporting much life needs a lot of water and some chemical stability. You can’t get that without a near neighbour as big as Jupiter to hoover up the huge meteors, a satellite like your moon to grab most of the others. In this universe the chance of getting a planet like that are over a zillion squared to one against.’

‘But you’ve got one!’ says the visitor intensely. ‘Why turn your back on it – the only world rich with all kinds of life? Some of it with the brain to grasp your intention, and I’m not taking about whales.’

‘Calm down, Jimmy,’ says the Head kindly.

‘I am perfectly calm, and stop calling me Jimmy!’

‘Do you prefer your earlier titles, O Lucifer, Son of the Morning? Prometheus, bringer of fire?’

The Head is joking. Jimmy says wistfully, ‘King of the Jews. Prince of Peace.’

The Head wags a forefinger, says ‘Prince of Darkness! Loki! Kali! Mephistopheles!’ – his Scots accent broadens for a moment – ‘Auld Nick! Well, in my time I’ve been called a lot of funny names too.’

‘So why call me Jimmy?’

‘It suits my accent.’

‘Why sound like a Scot?’

The Head sighs, looks gloomy, at last says, ‘I still get messages from that world of yours, messages from desperate people who want help. They demand help! These impossible demands …’

‘They’re called prayers,’ Jimmy tells him.

‘You should stop them reaching me! These impossible demands … are mostly from mothers.’

‘Mothers worry you,’ says Jimmy accusingly. The Head strongly defends himself.

‘I cannot break physical laws that keep this universe running! I cannot stop fire or fiery chemicals hurting babies and wee kids because their skin is burned off by homicidal idiots obeying orders! When I answer …’ he hesitates, ‘prayers in a Scots accent they know I am not a loving father who will work miracles. They know they havnae a hope in hell.’

‘Then why not sound American? Like Dubya?’

There is a globe of the world within reach. The Head touches a northern continent upon it, saying sadly, ‘Don’t depress me. I once had hopes of America.’

‘Why not sound,’ asks Jimmy brightly, ‘like a former Scottish prime minister? He goes around claiming to be one of your greatest fans.’

The Head covers his face with his hands, muttering, ‘Please don’t sicken me. Supernatural beings are only heard when we use other folk’s voices. You sound Irish because you like to be liked and (IRA apart) the southern Irish voice usually does sound friendly to people outside Ireland. But God the Father must sook up to naebody! Naebody!’

After a pause Jimmy says calmly, ‘Do you sound Scottish to me because I haven’t a hope in hell?’

‘Yes!’ says the Head looking straight at him, ‘But it won’t stop you saying what you’re here to say, so say on, Macduff.’

Jimmy holds out a sheaf of printed papers, saying, ‘Read these emails you ignored.’

‘No. Bin them. I know what they say because I know everything. Everything.’

‘But you won’t attend to everything, so attend to these!’

The Head says patiently, ‘They say the world’s richest governments have enough nuclear weapons to kill everything bigger than a cockroach, and are inventing ways to improve them, while fighting wars in any land that will not otherwise let them exploit natural resources there. These governments still sometimes say their warfare defends democracy. They used to say it defended Christianity and free trade. All lies, of course. What did you want me to do, O Prince of Peace? Intervene personally?’

‘I do.’

‘That never works. I gave Moses a few good rules everybody should observe – Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t tell lies. Many mothers still teach that to their kids. But then came law makers with exceptions to my rules – You must kill when governments tell you to, and can steal from men, women, and children when governments let you take their land, and must not tell truths when governments say truths are dangerous. Also witches must not be allowed to live, adulteresses should be stoned to death. Had I said to Moses, This I command thee, do what the hell you like! human history would have been just as bloody.’

‘Nobody thinks your law against killing applies to foreigners,’ says Jimmy mournfully.

‘You did your best to correct them about that, my …’

The Head hesitates. Jimmy looks hard at him until he goes on to say, ‘… my good man. Yes, you told them to love their neighbours as themselves and their enemies too. Don’t fight the people who oppress you, but refuse to kill, steal or lie for them.’

‘Good words to spread,’ says Jimmy sadly.

The Head starts to speak, hesitates again, then says in an embarrassed way, ‘There is something I’ve wanted to ask. When you were … hanging there …’

‘I was nailed,’ says Jimmy flatly.

‘Yes. And you told someone in the same state that he would go to heaven with you. Why?’

‘He talked kindly to me,’ says Jimmy, shrugging and spreading his hands, ‘I wanted to be kind back. Should I have told him there is as little justice in heaven as on earth? My body was in such pain that I forgot it was temporary. I was delirious. Up to almost the very last minute I was mad enough to think you might save everyone who suffered unjustly, and save them … through me!’

He gives a desperate chuckle. The Head assumes the manner of a schoolteacher and says, ‘If I only existed to give eternal sweeties to good folk and eternal beltings to bad, goodness would be cheap. There would be no decency, no heroism in it. I love heroism and you were a hero. I am proud of what you told people and what you endured for telling them.’

‘You didn’t need heroism to be crucified. The Romans did it to hundreds of thousands. From the start of history down to the present day millions of children, women, and men have endured worse deaths for no reason at all – just because they were born in unlucky places.’

Says the Head consolingly, ‘Your words comforted many unlucky people, especially slaves and women.’

‘O yes!’ cries Jimmy, ‘and when my comforting words were made official by the Roman Empire and even policemen were christened, my Christians began murdering neighbours with different Gods and burning down their temples and synagogues. My Jesus was as big a flop as your Moses, which is why I want you to—’

‘Suddenly!’ the Head interrupts, snapping his fingers. ‘Suddenly, simultaneously appear on every television and computer screen on the planet announcing, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, and your neighbour as your self, or You! Will! Be! Ex! Ter! Min! Ated! They would treat me as a rogue virus.’

‘You don’t understand,’ says Jimmy shaking his head, ‘I want you to exterminate all the brutes.’

‘Say that again,’ says the Head, surprised.

‘Exterminate all the brutes. Now.’

The Head sighs, stares at his crystalline forms as if looking for help there, then mutters, ‘Michty me. Crivens. Jings, Jimmy, don’t be so damned biblical. I am not the genocidal lunatic described in Genesis. I never made a deluge that drowned everyone except a single family of each species. I did not burn Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone out of heaven.’

‘But you wiped out most of the dinosaurs and the salt-water plankton. You smothered Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash.’

The Head says patiently, ‘A wholly stable planet is physically impossible. Even with Jupiter and the moon to shield it, an asteroid the size of Dundee is bound to hit the earth every thirteen million years or so. The dinosaurs lasted a lot longer than that. They had a fair innings. Six and a half million years will pass before the next meteoric disaster – plenty of time for folk to learn how to stop it. And it is not my fault when men build cities beside a volcano. Your job was to stop folk blaming me for things priests and insurance companies once called Acts of God – floods, earthquakes, plagues, and epidemics caused by ignorance of safe cultivation and hygiene. And you cured that ignorance!’

‘O yes!’ says Jimmy bitterly, covering his face with his hands, ‘I encouraged Bacon and Galileo when ignorance seemed to be the main problem and good scientists were thought black magicians or heretics. And now natural science is triumphant.’

‘Exactly,’ says the Head. ‘Educated folk no longer blame you and me for everything bad. That is a definite step in the right direction. I refuse to wipe out life on earth because my agent there who should encourage it is tired of it.’

‘But I love life on earth! I want you to save it by quickly destroying only one kind of brute – the most selfishly greedy kind. Get rid of men, please, before they destroy every other living thing.’

The Head smiles, says, ‘If mankind heard you now they really would think you …’ (he holds out both hands with his fingers curved like claws) ‘… Bee! El! Zi! Bub!’

‘You know what I’m talking about,’ says Jimmy, again shaking the sheaf of print-outs at him.

‘Atmosphere overheating from diesel fumes,’ says the Head, obviously bored. ‘Glaciers and icecaps melting, sea levels rising. Forests felled, land impoverished. Pure water tables shrinking or polluted. Drought increasing where forty per cent of folk suffer malnutrition and soon billions will die of thirst.’

‘Primitive Christians were right,’ says Jimmy passionately. ‘Scientists are black magicians. Nearly all of them work for corporations tearing up the fabric of earthly life with the help of governments they have bribed. Half the animals alive fifty years ago are now extinct. Frogs and sparrows are nearly extinct. The bumblebees are dying. Some conscience-stricken biologists are freezing the sperm of threatened creatures so that they can be brought back to life when the earth is governed sanely. Mankind will never govern it sanely.’

With a tolerant chuckle the Head says, ‘Aye, men have always been great wee extinguishers. Remember North America at the end of the last big ice age? A vast forest of deciduous trees with nothing dividing them but lakes and rivers and rocky mountains. It was the home of the biggest, most peaceful vegetarians we ever achieved – titanic browsers, ground-sloths as big as elephants. The first men who entered that continent across the Bering Strait had never dreamed of so much meat. Killing bears and woolly elephants in Eurasia was dangerous work, but men easily took over America. The ground-sloths couldn’t run away, couldn’t run at all, didn’t need to be trapped. Set fire to the trees and you had several roasted ground-sloths burned out of their pelts in a gravy of their own melted fat. The number of North American men expanded hugely – for two generations they were too busy eating to kill each other – they gorged themselves all the way down to Mexico!’

Seeing that Jimmy is staring at him in disgust he says, ‘Cheer up. That’s how the prairies came about, with room for herds and herds and herds of buffalo.’

‘Which the white men slaughtered because the red men lived off them. But you know things are a lot worse now. Farmers are sowing genetically modified crops that die as soon as harvested, so they must buy new seed from companies that patented them, while plants folk used to feed on vanish forever. Soon the only live creatures left on earth will be humans and the mutants they eat.’

In a sing-song voice, grinning, the Head says, ‘Remember the viruses, Jimmy! They too are busy wee mutaters. People are great breeding grounds for viruses, especially people eating battery-farmed meat and mutant vegetables.’ With genuine regret he murmurs, ‘Croak, croak. A pity about the frogs.’

‘Are you fond of the Barrier Reef?’ asks Jimmy, desperately.

‘My greatest work of art – one thousand, two hundred and fifty miles long,’ says the Head, reminiscently. ‘A masterpiece of intricately intertwined fishes, plants, insects with the beautiful vivid colour variety of all the great pictures painted by Matisse and Dufy, and a refinement of detail greater than even Paul Klee achieved.’ He shakes his head in wonder at the thought of his own genius.

‘It’s dying,’ says Jimmy. ‘It’ll all be gone in thirty years unless men die first.’

The Head shrugs his shoulders, says ‘Nothing lasts forever,’ and turning, contemplates his crystals as if nothing else mattered.

‘What use are you?’ Jimmy suddenly demands.

The Head, amused, smiles at him kindly but does not reply until the question is enlarged: ‘What do you do with yourself while failing to develop annelid worms in submarine volcanic vents?’

‘I’m preparing to generate a better universe.’

‘Where?’

‘Outside this one.’

‘How can you make a universe outside this one?’

This brings out the Head’s schoolteacher side. Wagging a forefinger, with increasing enthusiasm he says, ‘If you subscribed to Scientific American you would know how other universes would happen. Every universe is like a carpet with a gigantic draught blowing underneath, so in places it gets rippled up into peaks where energy and mass are so concentrated that BANG, a hole is blown in the fabric through which mass energy pours, making another universe where physical laws can bend differently.’

‘What makes that draught?’ says Jimmy keenly.

‘Would you think me a megalomaniac if I told you it was my breath?’ asks the Head, slyly watching him sideways.

‘Yes.’

‘I have to use metaphors when describing universal processes,’ says the Head, impatiently. ‘If you don’t like wind-blown ripples call them … call them labour pains if you like, but the result will be a universe where the planets are this shape.’

From a bench he lifts a variously coloured prism and hands it over. Jimmy looks at it, then says, unbelievingly, ‘A pyramidal planet?’

‘You are wrong. A pyramid has five sides, with four isosceles triangles on a square base. This planetary model has only four triangular sides, four equal continents. Get the idea?’

‘No.’

‘Look at it closely. Four glacial polar regions at the apex of each continent. Water trickles down from these to form an ocean in the middle of each surface – four Mediterranean seas of roughly equal size where life will evolve, and when it takes to land around the shores it will find none large enough for an empire to grow. All the nations that occur will be small and coastal, like Scandinavia.’

Jimmy examines the prism closely then says, ‘I see some off-shore islands. The British Empire spread from an island.’

‘An island with a lot of coal and iron where James Watt devised the first commercial steam engine. In my new world, fossil fuel deposits will be equally dispersed. No gold rushes! The machines people invent will have to be powered by wind and water and oil from plants that can be grown, harvested and replanted.’

Jimmy says, ‘The shape of this thing makes it gravitationally impossible.’

‘Only in this universe!’ cries the Head. ‘I am preparing a liquid universe where heavenly bodies will be gravitationally formed by crystallization! Imagine galaxies of tetrahedral planets revolving round octahedral suns! A universe’ – he ends by murmuring dreamily – ‘with no big bangs and collisions.’

‘But how can a planet have seas in a universe full of liquid?’

‘My universal fluid will be as light as air! In fact it will be air! I will make it air!’

Inspired by the idea he hurries to a blackboard with chemical formulae chalked on it, seizes a chalk and writes N-78. 1%, then heavily underlines it, saying, ‘When my heavenly bodies have crystallized, these chemical constituents must remain.’ He starts chalking down a new column of figures, muttering. ‘This universal … solution … will make flight between worlds easy. No need for people … to blast themselves … across light years of dreary sub-zero vacuum.’

He flings the chalk down and contemplates the formulae with something like smugness. Jimmy says, ‘But …’

‘You are going to tell me, Mr Prometheus O’ Lucifer, that air is largely oxygen exhaled by vegetation, and how can I grow enough plants to fill a universe with it? But my next universe will start with a big splash instead of a big bang, and the initial chemistry will be wholly different.’

He sits down, folds his arms and looks triumphant. Jimmy, not impressed, turns the tetrahedral model in his hands, saying, ‘OK Mister Sly-boots Clever-clogs, I was also going to ask about this planet’s angle of rotation.’ He hands the model back, says, ‘It will have to perform intricate somersaults if one of your triangular continents is not to be in perpetual twilight.’

‘That is certainly a problem,’ says the Head agreeably, putting the model back on the bench. ‘I am working on it.’

‘So how long will it take you to get this … airy new universe up and running?’

‘I have eternity,’ says the chief, smiling to himself.

‘You will spend eternity dreaming up a Utopian universe while mankind destroys life on earth in a couple of generations?’

‘That’s nonsense, Jimmy!’ says the Head consolingly. ‘Men cannot destroy all life on earth, only themselves and equally complex creatures. In which case insects will inherit the earth while vegetation recovers and then …’ (he becomes enthusiastic) ‘… from the segmented worms you and I will evolve a wealth of new creatures with different organs and sensations and minds. I never repeat my mistakes. It was maybe a mistake to give big brains to mammals.’

‘Why deny intelligence to creatures who suckle their young?’

‘Freud thinks it makes them unhealthily dependent and unhealthily greedy. Why not try hatching big intelligences from eggs? Birds, in general, seem happier than people. Tropical birds are as colourful as the organisms in my Great Barrier Reef, and the world will become a very tropical planet when men have made it too hot to hold them.’

‘But!—’ says Jimmy explosively. The Head cuts him off. ‘You are about to say bird brains are too small for development because their necks are too thin, but owls have short, thick necks and are notoriously brainy. One day you may fly up to me in the form of a dove with an eagle’s wingspan and find me a gigantic owl …’ (he spreads his arms) ‘… with feathers as colourful as a parrot’s. Pretty polly!’

‘And is that the most comforting message I can take back to the few on earth who listen to me? The few who care for the future of life there?’

The Head says mildly, ‘You recently asked me to exterminate the human race and now you want me to send it comforting messages.’

‘Not comforting messages but useful messages. When I asked you to exterminate humanity I was trying to goad you into suggesting a new way of saving them.’ He sighs. ‘But of course you knew that.’

‘I did,’ says the Head. ‘But the only ways humanity can save itself is by old things that come in threes.’

‘Faith, hope, and love,’ says Jimmy glumly.

‘Yes, but these can only work beside liberty, equality, fraternity.’

‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!’ raves Jimmy, ‘What are you on about? I’ve been so mixed up with … postmodern people that I’ve forgotten.’

‘Liberty is not having to obey other people because they are richer than you.’

‘Equality?’

‘Is what everybody enjoys with friends, or in nations where everyone knows they need each other.’

‘Fraternity?’

‘Brotherhood. The brotherhood of man.’

‘Exclusively masculine?’

‘A good point, Jimmy. Call fraternity love also, the love that still makes your earth the centre of the present universe.’

‘Don’t talk shite! My wee world is near the edge of an average galaxy among a million million galaxies! I helped Galileo destroy the Jewish notion that the whole shebang was made for them. How can my wee world be a universal centre?’

The Head says patiently, ‘Wherever somebody opens their eyes is the centre of the universe and your earth is still the place where a lot of that happens. I hoped mankind would take life to my other worlds. They have the technology.’ He shrugs. ‘If they use it to destroy themselves we’ll start again with another species,’ and he murmurs, ‘To-wit-to-woo. Pretty Pol.’

Jimmy slumps down looking totally defeated. Our Head claps his hands, rubs them together, goes to him briskly, pats him on the shoulders and says cheerfully, ‘And since we now see eye to eye I must waste no more of your valuable time. Tell folk the competitive exploitation of natural resources is a dead end. Nuclear power, used wisely, will give access to all the space, raw material, and energy they need without fighting aliens for it. Less than five miles beneath the earth’s surface is heat that, rightly channelled, will drive their machines without poisonous emissions.’

Without appearing to use force he raises Jimmy and accompanies him to the exit, saying, ‘Fossil fuels should be exclusively used as fertilizer, and housewives when shopping should use net bags instead of the plastic sort which add to the price of what they buy. Goodbye, Jimmy.’

‘Nobody with wealth and power will believe me if I say that! They know the damage they are doing to the planet but they’re still extending motorways! Making and selling cars! Nobody owning one will change to a bicycle! Nobody who can fly will go by boat! Owners of companies wrecking the ecosphere are buying self-sustaining bunkers where they and their like can survive when everyone else is poisoned!’

‘They won’t survive,’ says the Head, chuckling. ‘Only folk who want to save everyone else have a chance. Perhaps.’

Now he firmly propels Jimmy to the exit, adding, with what sounds like mischievous encouragement, ‘Workers of the world, unite! Remind them of co-operative socialism! Owens, William Morris, James Connelly!’

‘I’ll be laughed at,’ moans Jimmy.

‘Then all laughter will become screams of hysterical despair. Send me all the emails you like but don’t come here again for a millennium or two. Goodbye, son.’

‘Son!’ says Jimmy on the threshold, ‘I’m glad you … sometimes … admit I’m in the family.’

‘Goodbye, son,’ says the Head, quietly for once, ‘and good luck.’

‘Which is not something you need, Dad,’ says Jimmy, and leaves.

The Head returns to contemplate the crystalline models and formulae on his blackboard, seeming almost despondent. He is sorry that it is so hard to show his love for those who love him most. The rest are not so demanding. And why does Jimmy think he needs no luck? Is it because, as Headmaster of all, there is supposed to be no greater power? He hums a little song to himself, ‘I’ll give me one-o. What is my one-o? One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so.’

After a pause he sadly says, ‘One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so.’

In the place where he sits another presence becomes apparent, one that stands so much higher than he that its voice seems from above, a gentle, female, slightly amused voice saying, ‘You silly wee man.’

‘Mother?’ he asks wistfully.