Once a Greech Part 2

"You mean the diplomatic mission will have to waste valuable cargo s.p.a.ce on an _elephant_!" Iversen sputtered. "And you should know, if anyone does, just how s.p.a.cesick an elephant can get. By Pherkad, Lieutenant Harkaway, you had no authority to make any promises to the Flimflim!"

"I discovered the Flimbotzik," Harkaway said sullenly. "_I_ learned the language. _I_ established rapport. Just because you happen to be the commander of this expedition doesn't mean you're G.o.d, Captain Iversen!"

"Harkaway," the captain barked, "this smacks of downright mutiny! Go to your cabin forthwith and memorize six verses of the s.p.a.ceman's Credo!"

The greech lifted its head and barked back at Iversen, again. "That's my brave little watch-greech," Harkaway said fondly. "As a matter of fact, sir," he told the captain, "that was just what I was proposing to do myself. Go to my cabin, I mean; I have no time to waste on inferior prose. I plan to spend the rest of the voyage, or such part as I can spare from my duties--"

"You're relieved of them," Iversen said grimly.

"--working on my book. It's all about the doctrine of _mpoola_--reincarnation, or, if you prefer, metempsychosis. The Flimbotzi religion is so similar to many of the earlier terrestrial theologies--Hindu, Greek, Egyptian, Southern Californian--that sometimes one is almost tempted to stop and wonder if simplicity is not the essence of truth."

Iversen knew that, for the sake of discipline, he should not, once he had ordered Harkaway to his cabin, stop to bandy words, but he was a chronic word-bandier, having inherited the trait from his stalwart Viking ancestors. "How can you have learned all about their religion, their doctrine of reincarnation, in just four ridiculously short weeks?"

"It's a gift," Harkaway said modestly.

"Go to your cabin, sir! No, wait a moment!" For, suddenly overcome by a strange, warm, utterly repulsive emotion, Iversen pointed a quivering finger at the caterpillar. "Did you bring along the proper food for that--that thing? Can't have him starving, you know," he added gruffly.

After all, he was a humane man, he told himself; it wasn't that he found the creature tugging at his heart-strings, or anything like that.

"Oh, he'll eat anything we eat, sir. As long as it's not meat. All the species on Flimbot are herbivores. I can't figure out whether the Flimbotzik themselves are vegetarians because they practice _mpoola_, or practice _mpoola_ because they're--"

"I don't want to hear another word about _mpoola_ or about Flimbot!"

Iversen yelled. "Get out of here! And stay away from the library!"

"I have already exhausted its painfully limited resources, sir."

Harkaway saluted with grace and withdrew to his cabin, wearing the greech like an affectionate lei about his neck.

Iverson heard no more about _mpoola_ from Harkaway--who, though he did not remain confined to his cabin when he had pursuits to pursue in other parts of the s.h.i.+p, at least had the tact to keep out of the captain's way as much as possible--but the rest of his men seemed able to talk of nothing else. The voyage back from a star system was always longer in relative terms than the voyage out, because the thrill of new worlds to explore was gone; already antic.i.p.ating boredom, the men were ripe for almost any distraction.

On one return voyage, the whole crew had set itself to the study of Hitt.i.te with very creditable results. On another, they had all devoted themselves to the ancient art of alchemy, and, after nearly blowing up the s.h.i.+p, had come up with an elixir which, although not the quintessence--as they had, in their initial enthusiasm, alleged--proved to be an effective cure for hiccups. Patented under the name of Herringbone Hiccup Shoo, it brought each one of them an income which would have been enough to support them in more than modest comfort for the rest of their lives.

However, the adventurous life seemed to exert an irresistible lure upon them and they all s.h.i.+pped upon the _Herringbone_ again--much to the captain's dismay, for he had hoped for a fresh start with a new crew and there seemed to be no way of getting rid of them short of reaching retirement age.

The men weren't quite ready to accept _mpoola_ as a practical religion--Harkaway hadn't finished his book yet--but as something very close to it. The concept of reincarnation had always been very appealing to the human mind, which would rather have envisaged itself perpetuated in the body of a c.o.c.kroach than vanis.h.i.+ng completely into nothingness.

"It's all so logical, sir," the first officer told Iversen. "The individuality or the soul or the psyche--however you want to look at it--starts the essentially simple cycle of life as a greech--"

"Why as a greech?" Iversen asked, humoring him for the moment. "There are lower life-forms on Flimbot."

"I don't know." The first officer sounded almost testy. "That's where Harkaway starts the progression."

"Harkaway! Is there no escaping that cretin's name?"

"Sir," said the first officer, "may I speak frankly?"

"No," Iversen said, "you may not."

"Your skepticism arises less from disbelief than from the fact that you are jealous of Harkaway because it was he who made the great discovery, not you."

"Which great discovery?" Iversen asked, sneering to conceal his hurt at being so overwhelmingly misunderstood. "Flimbot or _mpoola_?"

"Both," the first officer said. "You refuse to accept the fact that this. .h.i.therto incompetent youth has at last blossomed forth in the lambent colors of genius, just as the worthy greech becomes a zkoort, and the clean-living zkoort in his turn pa.s.ses on to the next higher plane of existence, which is, in the Flimbotzik scale--"

"Spare me the theology, please," Iversen begged. "Once a greech, always a greech, I say. And I can't help thinking that somehow, somewhere, Harkaway has committed some horrible error."

"Humanity is frail, fumbling, futile," Dr. Smullyan declared, coming upon them so suddenly that both officers jumped. "To err is human, to forgive divine, and I am an atheist, thank G.o.d!"

"That _mk'oog_ is powerful stuff," the first officer said. "Or so they tell me," he added.

"This is more than mere _mk'oog_," Iversen said sourly. "Smullyan has been too long in s.p.a.ce. It hits everyone in the long run--some sooner than others."

"Captain," the doctor said, ignoring these remarks as he ignored everything not on a cosmic level, which included the crew's ailments, "I am in full agreement with you. Young Harkaway has doomed that pretty little planet--"

"Moon," the first officer corrected. "It's a satellite, not a--"

"We ourselves were doomed _ab origine_, but the tragic flaw inherent in each one of our pitiful species is contagious, dooming all with whom we come in contact. And Harkaway is the most infectious carrier on the s.h.i.+p. Woe, I tell you. Woe!" And, with a hollow moan, the doctor left them to meditate upon the state of their souls, while he went off to his secret stores of oblivion.

"Wonder where he's hidden that _mk'oog_," Iversen brooded. "I've turned the s.h.i.+p inside out and I haven't been able to locate it."

The first officer s.h.i.+vered. "Somehow, although I know Smullyan's part drunk, part mad, he makes me a little nervous. He's been right so often on all the other voyages."

"Ruchbah!" Iversen said, not particularly grateful for support from such a dithyrambic source as the s.h.i.+p's medical officer. "Anyone who prophesies doom has a hundred per cent chance of ultimately being right, if only because of entropy."

He was still brooding over the first officer's thrust, even though he had been well aware that most of his officers and men considered him a sorehead for doubting Harkaway in the young man's moment of triumph.

However, Iversen could not believe that Harkaway had undergone such a radical transformation. Even on the basis of _mpoola_, one obviously had to die before pa.s.sing on to the next existence and Harkaway had been continuously alive--from the neck down, at least.

Furthermore, all that aside, Iversen just couldn't see Harkaway going on to a higher plane. Although he supposed the young man was well-meaning enough--he'd grant him that negligible virtue--wouldn't it be terrible to have a system of existence in which one was advanced on the basis of intent rather than result? The higher life-forms would degenerate into primitivism.

But weren't the Flimbotzik virtually primitive? Or so Harkaway had said, for Iversen himself had not had enough contact with them to determine their degree of sophistication, and only the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps gave Harkaway's claim the lie.

Iversen condescended to take a look at the opening chapter of Harkaway's book, just to see what the whole thing was about. The book began:

"What is the difference between life and death? Can we say definitely and definitively that life is life and death is death? Are we sure that death is not life and life is not death?

"No, we are not sure!

"Must the individuality have a corporeal essence in which to enshroud itself before it can proceed in its rapt, inexorable progress toward the Ultimate Non-actuality? And even if such be needful, why must the personal essence be trammeled by the same old worn-out habiliments of error?

"Think upon this!

"What is the extremest intensification of individuality? It is the All-encompa.s.sing Nothingness. Of what value are the fur, the feathers, the skin, the temporal trappings of imperfection in our perpetual struggle toward the final undefinable resolution into the Infinite Interplay of Cosmic Forces?

"Less than nothing!"

At this point, Iversen stopped reading and returned the ma.n.u.script to its creator, without a word. This last was less out of self-restraint than through sheer semantic inadequacy.