“You may believe,” said Marshall, pacing and gesturing, “that you have stumbled across one improbable individual. In fact, you have discovered a path to youthfulness. For surely you will have nothing to fear from boredom after you join me in rescuing hundreds of civilizations.”
It was the morning of the third day of the Party That Never Ended, and therefore the time when the Blurggit school’s research committee presented its findings. Being a finding, Marshall had been placed on a low platform at one end of the thanatosphere’s spacious meeting room, where he could be observed and assessed.
But unfortunately he was making a less than positive impression, both on the three Blurggit behind him on the dais and on the thirty-seven in front of him on the meeting room floor.
On the plus side, he looked better than previously. After having stood, along with the others, under a cleansing waterfall, he had donned, as had they, a lustrous purple robe. However, he was not keeping to the spot on the platform where the research committee had placed him. Or obeying its instructions to “remain quiet except when called upon to answer.” On the contrary, gripped by enthusiasm, he was rudely hectoring the assembled piscines.
“You must admit, the opportunity I present to you is unlikely to come again,” he all but shouted.
But did they admit it? Reclining on thick cushions, most of the forty seemed barely awake.
Though one finally summoned the energy to respond.
“How tiresome,” he said, and the gurgles which met this pronouncement showed how thoroughly the others agreed with it. Addressing the chair of the research committee, he continued, “Igglbligg, how could you bring this . . . this . . . oh, I don’t know, whatever he is, into our midst?”
“Yes, Igglbligg, how could you?” said someone else.
“Were you not on your guard?” said someone else again. “Did you somehow forget how predictably such mistakes occur during the sixth emergence?”
These questions, and the comments that followed, revealed a concern of grave importance to the assemblage known as School 357359. For after six centuries in the vats and therefore six emergences, many such schools began to suspect that the Great Tedium was pursuing them even into the thanatosphere.
That sea fungus at the awakening banquet, for example—was it still as delicious as formerly? The sex, freed of all inhibition—was it still as all-consumingly orgasmic? Indeed, had it not become more necessary than ever to bar the living from the frolic, lest with their exuberance they demonstrated the truth of the saying that “those who want it can’t have it, while those who have it never really want it very much.”
Wasn’t half the splashing just to convince themselves they wanted it as before?
How unsurprising, then, that research committees began to grow desperate and would convince themselves they had found a novelty when, in fact, they had found nothing of the kind.
And wasn’t that exactly the bog of mud this research committee had floundered into?
But Igglbligg would not allow the possibility. “Of course I know the hazard of the sixth emergence,” he insisted. “But I was assured”—and here he regarded Ugglub with an emotion almost strong enough to be called resentment—“that this discovery was unique.”
“And so he is!” exclaimed Ugglub, seated on the floor with the others, as the disapproval began to transfer from Igglbligg to him. “He is, I’m telling you, he s’creeting is!” He rose, wheeling on his critics. “A Centi journalist proved it, too. Big-time thoughticler. He proved—listen to me—he proved that no semi has ever done as much as this one. Not ever. In history. This one is unique, and, I might add, a hero to all of us who want to see colonization, even if right now he seems to be saying the opposite, which, I suspect, is just a matter of his brain not being able to properly comprehend—”
“I saw him in the pool—nothing unique there,” interrupted someone in the back, producing genuine if mild amusement.
“Why, you’re more unusual than he is,” said someone else to Ugglub. “Conniving your way into a Party with a pretext like that.”
“But . . . ,” said Ugglub. But then he sat down and gave up arguing. Because, after all, he was unusual. A lowly tour pilot who had fulfilled every one of his sexual fantasies without even being dead yet? That was pretty s’creeting unusual.
So why did he care what these corpses thought of him now?
While the corpses, for their part, refocused on Marshall.
“Look at him,” said someone in the front. “The unbalanced body. The head on its stalk—”
“Whose words are even more absurd than his appearance,” said someone in the back.
“—so that,” continued the one in front, “we must conclude that if anything is unique about him, it is purely accidental.”
“Yes, purely,” said a voice from the second row.
“A fluke,” said one from the third.
“But why care about that?” said Marshall, trying to make them see the bigger picture. “Why pay the slightest attention to one individual? Consider, rather, the injustice I have brought to your attention, and the opportunity, by fighting it, to give your existences meaning like never before.”
“Oh, my estuary,” groaned another Blurggit, rocking back and forth, her hands over her gills. “Justice? Did he say justice? As if we’re back in our instructional institutes again, mired in those endless discussions? What is justice? What is not justice? So tedious. So painful to think about. Why must we be subjected to this?”
“And besides,” said front-row, addressing Marshall directly, “even if your argument had merit, you must realize that opposing those colonizers means opposing their militaries. Now of course that is nothing for you to worry about. Your lifespan is so short, what difference does it make if you’re vaporized today instead of wearing out tomorrow? But think about us, with eternity to lose.”
“Eternity?” cried Marshall, staggered by the obtuseness of these so-called advanced beings. “Didn’t I just hear that you can’t go six centuries without the Great Tedium creeping up on you? What will happen, then, after a hundred centuries, never mind eternity? Don’t you realize that sooner or later what you fear will be delayed no longer?”
The gurgles that followed this statement spoke of the ennui it had generated in his listeners.
“Which is precisely why we need to colonize those planets,” tutored one of them. “The more planets, the larger our galactic alliance. The larger our alliance, the more geniuses it will produce. The more geniuses, the sooner one of them will uncover the fundamental purpose of life, thus staving off the Great Tedium forever.”
Marshall had no reply, and could hardly imagine that one existed. And yet, he had to find one. For who, if not these beings, was going to help him?
“Get him out of here, Igglbligg, please.”
Blurggit advanced from all sides. Hands grabbed him. “No!” he screamed, and his vehemence made them back off, at least for a moment. But still, he did not know what to tell them.
All he knew was that he had to say something, and quickly.
Something.
So he thought of something, and he said it.
“Back me up,” he said, “and I will stop the colonization of those 277 planets—all by myself.”
A collective moan filled the room.
“But we just told you, we don’t want it stopped.”
“Because of some genius?” he retorted. “Who might never exist? What I’m offering is immediate. Strap cameras to me, microphones. Watch me defeat the odds and you will not believe how young it will make you.”
“Nonsense. You’re desperate.”
“You’re saying whatever comes into your head.”
“You don’t even believe it yourself.”
Desperately, he hunted for a reason why he did, in fact, believe it himself.
And hunted . . .
And . . .
“Well why wouldn’t I believe it?” he declared, buoyed by a whisper in his memory. “And why wouldn’t anyone, knowing my background? Or haven't you heard I come from a planet so primitive that—?”
“Of course we've heard,” came a tired voice. “It’s what that pilot told us. It's why you're here.”
“But do you know the whole of it? That in just eight days I’ve become famous across the Galaxy, received star billing on the Roo Rootum program, escaped from two Tradaxan spike gangs without paying tribute?”
“Impossible.” “No chance.” “How could you?” Comments like these issued from around the room. Though not from everyone. Heartened, he pressed on.
“And yet,” he said, “even that is not all. For consider where I am now.”
Heads tilted, mouths slack, several of his hearers seemed genuinely to be considering it.
“Then excellencies,” he continued, “are you prepared, given all that, to dismiss a new ambition I have promised to fulfill?”
“Well, you know,” said someone, “finding your way into a Party is one thing—”
“Is it? For the living? So tell me: how many of us do you invite?”
“But suppose you fail,” said someone else. “Or suppose you succeed, but in a dull and lackluster way. And meanwhile we have dallied in this century observing you. Imagine the hours endured, the effort exhausted. How can it but hasten the Great Tedium?”
“Just give me a chance,” Marshall pleaded.
But he could feel the wavelet of interest that had so briefly lifted him, ebbing fast.
And it might have ebbed entirely, leaving him aground and flopping, had not a new voice entered the discussion.
New and yet familiar.
“What I hope we realize, before we finalize our decision,” said this calm and confident voice, “is that had we been observing this being’s recent activities, we would not now regret having done so.”
Bodies turned and attention converged on an individual who had not stood up, as had so many others, to aid in subduing the semi. She was still on her cushion at the center of the room.
“Oobla!” cried Marshall, delighted. “Oobla, thank you!”
“He knows you? By name?” said several Blurggit, astonished.
“He does,” said Oobla. “We spent a number of interludes together, yesterday by the spawning pool. I explained to him a few basics—life, death, parties, the First Rule, that sort of thing—and he set out for me the adventures that brought him here. And let me tell you, friends, anyone who would not find those adventures involving and, yes, even somewhat rejuvenating, must already have been swallowed by the Great Tedium.”
“And you are convinced he would go on to more such escapades?” said someone.
“I am,” said Oobla. “With a little assistance from us.”
“Yes! Yes! Thank you, Oobla. Thank you!” exulted Marshall.
“Be silent, nonentity!” commanded someone. “Now, Oobla, please. Avoid vagueness. What do we do? Record him making piteous speeches outside the Galactic Council?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.”
“Send him to the instructional institutes, then, and somehow find novelty at the sight of him winning over the idealistic freshbeings.”
“Blugglugg, what do you take me for? I would never consider it.”
“Well, what then?”
“I will gladly explain. But first . . .”
She flicked her head at Marshall.
Who quickly found himself expelled from the school.