"It wasn't any accident," Gviirl said. "At least, not from our point of view."

"You mean you knew I was going to crash?" Simon said, goggling.

"Oh, yes."

"Then why didn't you do something to prevent it?"

"Well," Gviirl said, "we didn't know just when your drive would quit. Bingo did, but he wouldn't tell us. He said it'd take all the fun out of it. So you had a lot of money on you. I got odds of four to one that you'd crash from about twenty feet. I really cashed in."

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Simon said. "Oh, I don't mean you!" he said. "That's just an Earth exclamation. But how come you, the most advanced race in the universe, indulge in such a primitive entertainment as gambling?"

"It helps pa.s.s the time," Gviirl said.

Simon was silent for a while. Gviirl handed him a gla.s.s of foaming golden liquid. Simon drank it and said, "That's the best beer I've ever tasted."

"Of course," Gviirl said.

Simon became aware then that Anubis and Athena were hiding under the bed. He didn't blame them, though they should have been used to monstrous-looking creatures by then. Gviirl was as big as an Af-rican elephant. She had four legs as thick as an ele-phant's to support her enormous weight. The arms, ending in six-fingered hands, must once have been legs in an earlier stage of evolution.

Her head was big and high-domed, containing, she said, a brain twice as large as Simon's. She was too heavy to fly, of course, but she had vestigial wings. These were a pretty laven-der color edged with scarlet. Her body was contained in an exoskeleton, a hard chitinous sh.e.l.l striped like a zebra's. This had an opening underneath to give her lungs room to expand. Simon asked her why she was able to speak such excellent English. She didn't have the oral cavity of a human, so her p.r.o.nunciation should have been weird, to say the least.

"Old Bingo fitted me with a device which converts my p.r.o.nunciation into English sounds," she said. "Any more questions?"

"Yes, why did my drive fail?"

"That scream you heard?" she said. "That was the last of the stars expiring in a death agony."

"You mean?" Simon said, stunned.

"Yes. You barely made it in time. The suns in the transdimensional universes have been sucked dry of their energies. There isn't any more power for the 69X drive."

"I'm stuck here!"

"Afraid so. There will be no more interstellar travel for you or anyone else, for that matter."

'I won't mind if I can get the answer to my ques-tion," Simon said.

"No sweat," Gviirl replied. "Speaking of which, I suggest you take about three showers a day. You hu-mans don't smell very good, you know."

Gviirl wasn't being nasty. She was just stating a fact. She was condescending but in a kindly way. Af-ter all, she was a million years old and couldn't be ex-pected to treat Simon as any other than a somewhat r.e.t.a.r.ded child. Simon didn't resent this att.i.tude, but he was glad that he had Anubis and Athena around. They not only kept him from feeling utterly alone, they gave him someone to look down on, too.

Gviirl took Simon on a tour. He visited the muse-ums, the library, and the waterworks and had lunch with some minor dignitaries.

"How'd you like it?" Gviirl said afterward.

"Very impressive," he said.

"Tomorrow," she said, "you'll meet Bingo. He's dying, but he's granted you an audience."

"Do you think he'll have the answer to my ques-tion?" Simon said breathlessly.

"If anyone can answer you, he can," she said. "He's the only survivor of the first creatures created by It, you know."

The Clerun-Gowph called the Creator It because the Creator had no s.e.x, of course.

"He walked and he talked with It?" Simon said. "Then surely he's the one I've been looking for!"

The next morning, after breakfast and a shower, Si-mon followed Gviirl through the streets to the Great House. Anubis and Athena had refused to come out from under the bed despite all his coaxing. He sup-posed that they, being psychic, felt the presence of the numinous. It was to be presumed some of it must have rubbed off onto Bingo during his long a.s.socia-tion with the Creator. Simon didn't blame them for being frightened. He was scared too.

The Great House was on top of a hill. It was the oldest building in the universe and looked it.

"It lived there while It was getting the Clerun-Gowph started," Gviirl said.

"And where is It now?" Simon said.

"It went out to lunch one day and never came back," she said. "You'll have to ask old Bingo why."

She led him up the steps and onto a vast porch and into halls that stretched for miles and had ceilings half a mile high. Bingo, however, was in a cozy little room with thick rugs and a blazing fireplace. He was crouching on a ma.s.s of rugs around which giant pil-lows were piled. By him was a pitcher of beer and a big framed photograph.

Bingo was a h.o.a.ry old c.o.c.kroachoid who seemed to be asleep at the moment. Simon took advantage of this to look at the photograph. It was a picture of a blue cloud.

"What does that writing under it say?" he asked Gviirl.

"To Bingo With Best Wishes From It."

Gviirl coughed loudly several times, and after a while Bingo's eyelids fluttered open.

"The Earthling, Your Ancientship," Gviirl said.

"Ah, yes, the little creature from far off with some questions," Bingo said.

"Well, son, sit down. Make yourself at home. Have a beer."

"Thank you, Your Ancientship," Simon said. "I'll have a beer, but I prefer to stand."

Bingo gave a laugh which degenerated into a coughing fit. After he'd recovered, he drank some beer. Then he said, "It took you three thousand years to get here so you could transact a few minutes of business. I admire that, little one-eyeling. As a matter of fact, that's what's been keeping me alive. I've been banging on just for this interview."

"That's very gratifying, Your Ancientship," Simon said. "First, though, before I ask the primal question, I'd like to clear up a few of the secondary. Gviirl tells me that It created the Clerun-Gowph. But all life elsewhere in the universe was created by you people."

"Gviirl's a young thing and so tends to use impre-cise language," Bingo said.

"She shouldn't have said we created life. She should have said we were respon-sible for life existing elsewhere."

"And how's that?" Simon said.

"Well, many billions of years ago we started to make a scientific survey of every planet in the world. We sent out scouting expeditions first. These didn't find any sign of life anywhere. But we were interested in geochemistry and all that kind of stuff, you know. So we sent out scientific expeditions. These built bases, the towers that you no doubt have run into. The teams stayed on these planets a long time-from your ephemeral viewpoint, anyway. They dumped their garbage and their excrement in the soupy prime-val seas near the towers. These contained microbes and viruses which flourished in the seas. They started to evolve into higher creatures, and so the scientists hung around to observe their development."

He paused to drink another beer.

"Life on these planets was an accident."

Simon was shaken. He was the end of a process that had started with c.o.c.kroach c.r.a.p.

"That's as good a way to originate as any," Bingo said, as if he had read Simon's thoughts.

After a long silence, Simon said, "Why aren't there any towers on the planets in my galaxy?"

"The life there didn't look very promising," Bingo said.

Simon blushed. Gviirl snickered. Bingo broke into huge laughter and slapped his front thighs. The laugh-ter became a wheezing and a choking, and Gviirl had to slap him on his back and pour some beer down his throat.

Bingo wiped away the tears and said, "I was only kidding, son. The truth was, we were called back be-fore I could build any bases there. The reason for that is this. We built the giant computer and had been feeding all the data needed into it. It took a couple of billion years to do this and for the computer to digest the data. Then it began feeding out the answers. There wasn't any reason for us to continue surveying after that. All we had to do was to ask the computer and it would tell us what we'd find before we studied a place. So all the Clerun-Gowph packed up and went home."

"I don't understand," Simon said.

"Well, it's this way, son. I've known for three bil-lion years that a repulsive-looking but pathetic banjo-playing biped named Simon Wagstaff would appear before me exactly at 10:32 A.M., April 1, 8,120,006,000 A.C., Earth chronology. A.C. means After Crea-tion. The biped would ask me some questions, and I'd give him the answers."

"How could you know that?" Simon said.

"It's no big deal," Bingo said. "Once the universe is set up in a particular structure, everything from then on proceeds predictably. It's like rolling a bowling ball down the return trough."

"I think I will sit down," Simon said. "I'll need a pillow, too, though. Thank you, Gviirl. But, Your Ancientship, what about Chance?"

"No such thing. What seems Chance is merely ig-norance on the part of the beholder. If he knew enough, he'd see that things could not have happened otherwise."

"But I still don't understand," Simon said.

"You're a little slow on the mental trigger, son," Bingo said. "Here, have another beer. You look pale. I told you that, until the computer started working, we proceeded like everybody else. Blind with ignorance. But once the predictions started coming in, we knew not only all that had happened but what would hap-pen. I could tell you the exact moment I'm going to die. But I won't because I don't know it myself. I pre-fer to remain ignorant. It's no fun knowing every-thing. Old It found that out Itself."

"Could I have another beer?" Simon said.

"Sure. That's the ticket. Drink."

"What about It?" Simon said. "Where did It come from?"

"That's data that's not in the computer," Bingo said. He was silent for a long time and presently his eyelids drooped and he was snoring. Gviirl coughed loudly for a minute, -and the eyelids opened. Simon stared up at huge red-veined eyes.

"Where was I? Oh, yes. It may have told me where It came from, what It was doing before It created the universe. But that was a long time ago, and I don't remember now. That is, if It did indeed say a word about it.

"Anyway, what's the difference? Knowing that won't affect what's going to happen to me, and that's the only thing I really care about."

"d.a.m.n it then," Simon said, shaking with despair and indignation, "what will happen to you?"

"Oh, I'll die, and my embalmed body will be put on display for a few million years. And then it'll crum-ble. That will be that. Finis for yours truly. There is no such thing as an afterlife. That I know. That is one thing I remember It telling me."

He paused and said, "I think."

"But why, then, did It create us!" Simon cried.

"Look at the universe. Obviously, it was made by a scientist, otherwise it wouldn't be subject to scientific a.n.a.lysis. Our universe, and all the others It has created, are scientific experiments. It is omniscient. But just to make things interesting, It, being omnipo-tent, blanked out parts of Its mind. Thus, It won't know what's going to happen.

"That's why, I think, It did not come back after lunch. It erased even the memory of Its creation, and so It didn't even know It was due back for an impor-tant meeting with me. I heard reports that It was seen rolling around town acting somewhat confused. It alone knows where It is now, and perhaps not even It knows. Maybe. Anyway, in whatever universe It is, when this universe collapses into a big ball of fiery en-ergy, It'll probably drop around and see how things worked out."

Simon rose from the chair and cried, "But why? Why? Why? Didn't It know what agony and sorrow It would cause s.e.xtillions upon s.e.xtillions of living beings to suffer? All for nothing?"

"Yes," Bingo said.

"But why?" Simon Wagstaff shouted. "Why? Why? Why?"

Old Bingo drank a gla.s.s of beer, belched, and spoke.

"Why not?"

The Son of Jimmy Valentine, his only nonscience-fiction novel. Negotiations are being conducted to make this available for the first time in general bookstores.

*The boojum of Trout has a remarkable resemblance to the "black hole" of s.p.a.ce conjectured by contemporary astronomy. Trout intuitively antic.i.p.ated this concept five years before it was first proposed in scientific journals. Editor.