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Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 50

"What can they do? Sue? Vote you out?" One more critical inspection in the mirror. No, Coyul decided: definitely the wrong look for Topside. The rich maroon tie became tasteful white on white. The off-white shirt went pastel blue in complement. As his costume modified, so did the Prince himself - taller, less corpulent, shoulders broader and straighter. The emotional mouth with its hint of petulance firmed to strength. "That will do it."

The figure who turned to Jake bore a resemblance to Lincoln or perhaps Gregory Peck. There were nuances of Clarence Darrow's bulldog tenacity and Truman's down-home integrity. The gravity of a wise king, the wry wit of a prairie philosopher quite at home in a barn or a summit meeting. The world-class wisdom and quiet authority in that image could sell oil to Arabs, Amex cards in the Kremlin.

"Yes, that will do it. Jake, you're an absolute power because over the ages you've learned absolute compassion and restraint and the knowledge that none of it is new and most of it is violence, treacle or pure hogwash. But . . . you're scared. So am I, Reb Judas. Talk about opening nights. As of now, I'm overdue Topside to meet a very confused delegation including Luther and Augustine - that eminently reasonable duo - Paul of Tarsus, Thomas Aquinas, a gaggle of the better popes, Joseph Smith, Jesuits, Taoists, Buddhists, disputing rabbis, Irish saints and God knows how many Fundamentalists still waiting like Oliver Twist with his bowl for their own kind of rhinestone salvation - and try to make them understand that all of them are the result of an experiment neither well conceived nor even finished. Hah!" Coyul snorted. "And you're scared?"

Coyul gave his tie a final tug. "Well, I asked for it, I guess. We ultimately do what we want, though I don't have the foggiest how to go about it. The therapists will have a field day and we'll probably lose hordes to schizophrenia. But cry all they want, stomp around, kick furniture, the human race will get rid of their fairy-tale notions of good, evil and the cosmos, and by God - by Me, I guess - they will grow the hell up."

Coyul subsided with a rueful chuckle. "You've got problems? Forget it, I'll call you." With no further farewell, he vanished, heading for a tight schedule - to reappear immediately with a last afterthought.

"By the way: see that Wilksey gets a couple of good reviews for the new Hamlet. Means so much to him. God bless, Jake."

God II went to work.

Alone, Judas Iscariot didn't move at first; when he did, his actions were cautious, even timorous. He sat down tentatively at Coyul's desk, lifted the phone, then put it down. He didn't want to deal with anyone yet. His hypercritical eye gauged Coyul's taste in decor, ending with the white piano. At a mental suggestion, the instrument blushed to dark mahogany and began a pianissimo passage from the Goldberg Variations. Jake listened for some moments, then materialized his chess set on the desk before him.

Start small, he decided. Leave the glitz to Veigle. Do the big stuff when you're ready.

He was definitely not ready for the young man who simply appeared across the desk from him. They could have said a great many things to each other, and no doubt would have two thousand years earlier, but both were much wiser now. Judas no longer needed a messiah at any price. Yeshua no longer expected the world to buy spiritual common sense even in parables. Both would do what they could with the cosmos as it was. Perhaps this tacit understanding passed between them before Judas moved a white piece on the board.

Pawn to king four.

Yeshua responded: pawn to queen three. "There you go," Judas growled, "being devious again." "Shut up and move," Yeshua muttered, absorbed in the myriad possibilities of the opening.

39 - Back to the drawing board . . .

The planet had no name. As it was so far out on the edge of the known universe, Barion's meticulous kind had noted it with a number on survey charts. Development of such worlds was not usual, their use rare and only for penal purposes. With very little water, the highest form of life was protozoan.

This was Barion's Rock. In a few million of its solar years, he might make parole, but the arch-instigator Coyul would never see home again.

Moving as restless energy over the near-barren face of the small planet, Barton couldn't deny a feeling of personal contentment and admiration for Coyul's wisdom, a quality heretofore not fully appreciated. Coyul remained where he wanted to be and was most suited: concierge to a maddening, murderous, occasionally gifted mutant. Barion had theories to restructure, new concepts to distill - only slightly chagrined that Coyul had shown up his errors, more that his own thinking, which he considered in youth to be chic and radical, was ultimately rooted in conformity.

Rethink. Start again.

The surface slid under him as he searched for moisture. Mere sight was not enough. The flashing animus of Barion melted into the equatorial soil, flowing like a subterranean river, divining, shaping new ideas. What if? Suppose.

All carbon life begins with a need for sustenance, therefore a challenge which must be met. The organism must develop a means to propel itself toward nourishment or draw it inward. Suppose . . .

He found the small patch that smelled encouragingly of water. No more than a trace, no thriving colony of protozoa rummaging through its elements for food.

But there was one.

The single organism Barion found had very little talent even for an amoeba, having just coalesced with the sluggish chemical agreement of proteins. The rank beginner had to nourish itself before it could divide, with no idea how to go about it.

But just suppose . . .

Lake a human infant, the amoeba lay there knowing only hunger. The fact that bacteria existed close by was, in amoebic terms, of prime interest but little help. Vacuoles to envelop and ingest nourishment were barely functional.

Suppose we accelerate the whole protein process. Since specialization begins at this level anyway, suppose the learning/retention aspect is speeded up, so that selected unicellular life can specialize and evolve exponentially faster than before; faster than anyone thought possible.

"Come on," Barton urged as the tiniest part of him flowed into and endowed the single cell with relative genius. "We call this a pseudopod. You use it to reach for that snack over there. Tha-at's right."

The amoeba extruded a peninsula containing a vacuole. New at the business, the pseudopod merely pushed at the bacterium.

"No, now you open up. I'll show you. There you go, you're in business."

Refreshed, with an atom of learned behavior snugly tucked away, the amoeba thrust out another pseudopod, faster this time.

Barton felt the old thrill of creation, but the monkey had schooled him. "Don't get smug. That was my mistake. Lesson two is fission. No hurry. We'll be out here until you get it right."

You walk before you run before you fly. Concentrate the aminos more rapidly, accelerate specialization. The pseudopod gradually phases from temporary to permanent. Undifferentiated plasma divides to functions, learns. Get the food, reinforce the outer cell wall, which, in turn, senses food more quickly. More specialized functions: digestion, faster locomotion, eventually a central complex to coordinate the whole organism, evolving at a supercharged rate, already tougher and smarter than previously thought possible.

Always possible; just that no one ever did it.

There would never be a warm primordial sea for this creature, but maybe - just maybe - the speeded conditioning would produce a relative intelligence to adapt and cope on its way upward.

"Worlds within worlds," Barion murmured with a vast fascination. "Unconquerable."

His creation was already fighting outside its weight, as it were, laboring but game. Barion hovered, following each step. "Come on, turkey. I know I'm right."

And then something remarkable happened . . .

About the Author.

PARKE Godwin graduated third in his class from the Yerkes Institute. Enjoined by concerned friends and family to take writing seriously, he made an honest effort, producing the work of his Serious Period - Beloved Exile, The Last Rainbow, and A Truce with Time. This stage ended abruptly when, inexplicably, the Author began to giggle.

Godwin's brief career ended in tragedy at a fantasy convention banquet when he accidentally consumed the entree. He is remembered mainly through the scattered recollections of other writers. The Curse of Testosterone, the autobiography of the radical feminist Roberta Drear, recalls Godwin with no affection at all, making rather much of his relationship with a Bulgarian succubus, an episode now considered apocryphal.