"A tape recorder."

"That's exactly what it is."

"I mean, what's it for?"

"It's for recording for posterity the curious folktales of a doomed culture, which you are going to tell me."

I laughed and sat down. "I'm afraid I haven't as yet found any curious folktales to tell you."

"My suggestion that you look for a creation myth bore no fruit?"

"We have no creation myth," I said again. "Unless you're talking about the one in Genesis."

"Don't be absurd. If an eighthgrade teacher invited you to explain how all this began, would you read the class the first chapter of Genesis?"

"Certainly not."

"Then what account would would you give them?" you give them?"

"I could give them an account, but it certainly wouldn't be a myth myth."

"Naturally you wouldn't consider it a myth. No creation story is a myth to the people who tell it. It's just the story the story."

"Okay, but the story I'm talking about is definitely not a myth. Parts of it are still in question, I suppose, and I suppose later research might make some revisions in it, but it's certainly not a myth."

"Turn on the tape recorder and begin. Then we'll know."

I gave him a reproachful look. "You mean you actually want me to . . . uh . . ."

"To tell the story, that's right."

"I can't just reel it off. I need some time to get it together."

"There's plenty of time. It's a ninetyminute tape."

I sighed, turned on the recorder, and closed my eyes.

2.

"It all started a long time ago, ten or fifteen billion years ago," I began a few minutes later. "I'm not current on which theory is in the lead, the steadystate or the bigbang, but in either case the universe began a long time ago."

At that point I opened my eyes and gave Ishmael a speculative look.

He gave me one back and said, "Is that it? Is that the story?"

"No, I was just checking." I closed my eyes and began again. "And then, I don't know-I guess about six or seven billion years ago-our own solar system was born. . . . I have a picture in my mind from some childhood encyclopedia of blobs being thrown out or blobs coalescing . . . and these were the planets. Which, over the next couple billion years, cooled and solidified. . . . Well, let's see. Life appeared in the chemical broth of our ancient oceans about what-five billion years ago?"

"Three and a half or four."

"Okay. Bacteria, microorganisms evolved into higher forms, more complex forms, which evolved into still more complex forms. Life gradually spread to the land. I don't know . . . slimes at the edge of the oceans . . . amphibians. The amphibians moved inland, evolved into reptiles. The reptiles evolved into mammals. This was what? A billion years ago?"

"Only about a quarter of a billion years ago."

"Okay. Anyway, the mammals . . . I don't know. Small critters in small niches-under bushes, in the trees. . . . From the critters in the trees came the primates. Then, I don't know-maybe ten or fifteen million years ago-one branch of the primates left the trees and . . ." I ran out of steam.

"This isn't a test," Ishmael said. "The broad outlines will do-just the story as it's generally known, as it's known by bus drivers and ranch hands and senators."

"Okay," I said, and closed my eyes again. "Okay. Well, one thing led to another. Species followed species, and finally man appeared. That was what? Three million years ago?"

"Three seems pretty safe."

"Okay."

"Is that it?"

"That's it in outline."

"The story of creation as it's told in your culture."

"That's right. To the best of our present knowledge."

Ishmael nodded and told me to turn off the tape recorder. Then he sat back with a sigh that rumbled through the glass like a distant volcano, folded his hands over his central paunch, and gave me a long, inscrutable look. "And you, an intelligent and moderately welleducated person, would have me believe that this isn't a myth."

"What's mythical about it?"

"I didn't say there was anything mythical about about it. I said it was a myth." it. I said it was a myth."

I think I laughed nervously. "Maybe I don't know what you mean by a myth."

"I don't mean anything you don't mean. I'm using the word in the ordinary sense."

"Then it's not a myth."

"Certainly it's a myth. Listen to it." Ishmael told me to rewind the tape and play it back.

After listening to it, I sat there looking thoughtful for a minute or two, for the sake of appearances. Then I said, "It's not a myth. You could put that in an eighthgrade science text, and I don't think there's a school board anywhere that would quibble with it-leaving aside the Creationists."

"I agree wholeheartedly. Haven't I said that the story is ambient in your culture? Children assemble it from many media, including science textbooks."

"Then what are you saying? Are you trying to tell me that this isn't a factual account?"

"It's full of facts, of course, but their arrangement is purely mythical."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You've obviously turned off your mind. Mother Culture has crooned you to sleep."

I gave him a hard look. "Are you saying that evolution is a myth?"

"No."

"Are you saying that man did not evolve?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

Ishmael looked at me with a smile. Then he shrugged his shoulders. Then he raised his eyebrows.

I stared at him and thought: I'm being teased by a gorilla I'm being teased by a gorilla. It didn't help.

"Play it again," he told me.

When it was over, I said, "Okay, I heard one thing, the word appeared appeared. I said that finally man appeared appeared. Is that it?"

"No, it's nothing like that. I'm not quibbling over a word. It was clear from the context that the word appeared appeared was just a synonym for was just a synonym for evolved evolved."

"Then what the hell is it?"

"You're really not thinking, I'm afraid. You've recited a story you've heard a thousand times, and now you're listening to Mother Culture as she murmurs in your ear: 'There, there, my child, there's nothing to think about, nothing to worry about, don't get excited, don't listen to the nasty animal, this is no myth, nothing I tell you is a myth, so there's nothing to think about, nothing to worry about, just listen to my voice and go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep. . . .' "

I chewed on a lip for a while, then I said, "That doesn't help."

"All right," he said. "I'll tell you a story of my own, and maybe that'll help." He nibbled for a moment on a leafy wand, closed his eyes, and began.

3.

This story (Ishmael said) takes place half a billion years ago-an inconceivably long time ago, when this planet would be all but unrecognizable to you. Nothing at all stirred on the land, except the wind and the dust. Not a single blade of grass waved in the wind, not a single cricket chirped, not a single bird soared in the sky. All these things were tens of millions of years in the future. Even the seas were eerily still and silent, for the vertebrates too were tens of millions of years away in the future.

But of course there was an anthropologist on hand. What sort of world would it be without an anthropologist? He was, however, a very depressed and disillusioned anthropologist, for he'd been everywhere on the planet looking for someone to interview, and every tape in his knapsack was as blank as the sky. But one day as he was moping along beside the ocean he saw what seemed to be a living creature in the shallows off shore. It was nothing to brag about, just a sort of squishy blob, but it was the only prospect he'd seen in all his journeys, so he waded out to where it was bobbing in the waves.

He greeted the creature politely and was greeted in kind, and soon the two of them were good friends. The anthropologist explained as well as he could that he was a student of lifestyles and customs, and begged his new friend for information of this sort, which was readily forthcoming. "And now," he said at last, "I'd like to get on tape in your own words some of the stories you tell among yourselves."

"Stories?" the other asked.

"You know, like your creation myth, if you have one."

"What is a creation myth?" the creature asked.

"Oh, you know," the anthropologist replied, "the fanciful tale you tell your children about the origins of the world."

Well, at this, the creature drew itself up indignantly-at least as well as a squishy blob can do-and replied that his people had no such fanciful tale.

"You have no account of creation then?"

"Certainly we have an account of creation," the other snapped. "But it is definitely not a myth myth."

"Oh, certainly not," the anthropologist said, remembering his training at last. "I'll be terribly grateful if you share it with me."

"Very well," the creature said. "But I want you to understand that, like you, we are a strictly rational people, who accept nothing that is not based on observation, logic, and the scientific method."

"Of course, of course," the anthropologist agreed.

So at last the creature began its story. "The universe," it said, "was born a long, long time ago, perhaps ten or fifteen billion years ago. Our own solar system-this star, this planet and all the others-seem to have come into being some two or three billion years ago. For a long time, nothing whatever lived here. But then, after a billion years or so, life appeared."

"Excuse me," the anthropologist said. "You say that life appeared. Where did that happen, according to your myth-I mean, according to your scientific account."

The creature seemed baffled by the question and turned a pale lavender. "Do you mean in what precise spot?"

"No. I mean, did this happen on the land or in the sea?"

"Land?" the other asked. "What is land?"

"Oh, you know," he said, waving toward the shore, "the expanse of dirt and rocks that begins over there."

The creature turned a deeper shade of lavender and said, "I can't imagine what you're gibbering about. The dirt and rocks over there are simply the lip of the vast bowl that holds the sea."

"Oh yes," the anthropologist said, "I see what you mean. Quite. Go on."

"Very well," the other said. "For many millions of centuries the life of the world was merely microorganisms floating helplessly in a chemical broth. But little by little, more complex forms appeared: singlecelled creatures, slimes, algae, polyps, and so on.

"But finally," the creature said, turning quite pink with pride as he came to the climax of his story, "but finally jellyfish appeared jellyfish appeared!"

4.

Nothing much came out of me for ninety seconds or so, except maybe waves of baffled fury. Then I said, "That's not fair."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't exactly know what I mean. You've made some sort of point, but I don't know what it is."