Crompton Divided (23 page)

‘That’s beautifully put,’ the priest said. ‘And you will be honored as an immediate precursor of the superman. Your own personality has served its cosmic purpose now, which should come as a great relief to you. Now you may rest, Crompton, you and Loomis and Stack, for your karmic obligations are discharged and you have won freedom from the cycle of suffering and rebirth, pleasure and pain, hot and cold. You are released from the Wheel of Life! Isn’t that great?’

‘What do you mean?’ Crompton asked suspiciously.

‘I mean that you have achieved Nirvana.’

‘And what is Nirvana?’ Crompton demanded.

There was a stirring in the ranks of priests and disciples when he said this, for rarely does anyone get a chance to demonstrate his esoteric understanding by being given a direct question like this, unlike in the old Zen days when there were plenty of straight men around.

‘Nirvana,’ one of the priests remarked, ‘is the bunion on my little toe.’

‘No,’ another said, ‘actually, Nirvana is everything except the bunion on your little toe.’

‘Why do you make it so complicated?’ another priest said. ‘Nirvana is simply what’s left over when you drain away the water.’

Others were ready with their own suggestions, but a short and rather venerable priest held up his hand for silence, then broke wind loudly. Four disciples went into instant samhadi. It seemed conclusive until another short but respectfully venerable priest grumbled, ‘There’s less here than meets the nose.’

‘It is not easy to explain Nirvana,’ the original interlocutor-priest said to Crompton. ‘It can’t be dealt with in words at all, you know, which makes precision difficult. Let’s just say that you won’t feel a thing and you won’t even be aware that you won’t be feeling a thing.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Crompton said immediately.

‘Now lookee here,’ the judge said to Crompton, ‘it appears to me that you’re not taking a very positive attitude toward all this. Here is this religious gentleman who has very kindly offered you Nirvana in return for hatching his god or devil or ju-ju or whatever this Finch is, and you start carrying on like he’s doing something terrible to you.’

‘This Nirvana,’ Crompton said, ‘sounds just like being stone-cold dead.’

‘Well, give it a try,’ the judge said, ‘maybe it won’t be so bad.’

‘If it sounds so good, why don’t you try it?’

‘Because I’m not worthy,’ the judge said. ‘Where is this Finch, anyhow? I’d like to get his autograph for my son. It’s hard to find a nice present for a twenty-two-year-old boy who has taken a vow of poverty and is now living in a cave in Bhutan.’

‘By the way,’ the venerable priest said, ‘I forgot to mention that with Nirvana you also get complete and unexcelled Enlightenment.’

‘Hey now,’ the judge said, ‘that’s really something!’

‘I don’t want Englightenment!’ Crompton shouted.

‘That,’ one of the priests remarked to another, ‘is Enlightenment indeed.’

The priest said, ‘Let’s quit horsing around. Let the ceremony begin!’

There was a flourish of hautboys. Radiance filled the air. Swarms of ethereal beings came from the four corners of the universe to greet the newly emerging bodhisattva. The tattva gods were there, of course, and there came Thor, Odin, Loki, and Figg, disguised as Swedish tourists having unhappy love affairs. And there was Orpheus in chicano silk shirt and levis, playing his electric charango via an AC source in his thumos. Quetzalcoatl showed up with his feather boa, Damballa came in his necklace of skulls, and there were many others.

They crowded the room, a spiritual convocation of such enormous power that even the furniture and fittings took on quasi-human characteristics, and a turkey-red curtain could be heard remarking to the portrait of Washington, ‘I only wish my Uncle Otto could be here to see all this.’

‘And now,’ said the priest to Crompton, ‘if you would be good enough to withdraw your pseudopersonality and allow Finch to come through –’

‘Not a chance,’ Crompton snarled. ‘If Finch is so great let him find his own body. I’m keeping this one.’

‘You’re ruining the whole production,’ the priest told him. ‘Can’t you think of anyone but yourself? Don’t you realize that everything is of a suchness?’

Crompton shook his head. There was a moment of silence broken only by the wheezing of the air conditioner.

Then a gigantic presence formed in the middle of the courtroom.

Black it was and many-headed, and its shoes were number nine, and it had a midshape somewhat resembling a snake who has swallowed a goat whole. A silvery radiance gleamed from its ebony limbs, at the terminations of which depended tentacles gripping a great variety of edged and toothed weapons.

‘I am Thagranak,’ the baleful presence proclaimed. ‘Know ye that now the three moons of Kvuuth are aligned with the great constellation of the Greptzer, and the double-nosed worshippers of the Polka Dot Abomination demand blood as a Faigh-gift of our ancient Arrangement. Thus it is that I come via contingencies too fleeting to be imagined to perform the Death upon the Selected One.’

‘Who is this being?’ the venerable priest remarked to a shorter priest.

The shorter priest quickly glanced through a microfilm printout of Smith’s Shorter List of Galactic Presences which had been astrally projected to him from the ever vigilant Deity Analyzer and Tabulator (DAT) in Lhassa. ‘I don’t find any mention of him.’

‘Could he be an imposter?’ the venerable priest mused. ‘No, I suppose not. So he must be from some other universe. That’s the usual explanation for the inexplicable.’

‘But should we admit him to this assembly?’ the shorter priest asked. ‘He seems rather crude and anthropomorphic and not our sort of being at all.’

‘What’s there to do? Out-of-universe deities always have visiting privileges at our get-togethers. Anyway, he solves a problem for us.’

‘Ah so?’

‘Even so. Crompton refuses to merge his fictitious ego with the quintessential extinction that the attainment of Nirvana implies, and so make way for the bodhisattva Finch. We ourselves are men of dispassion and so cannot force Crompton to snuff out, no matter how badly we would like to. But here, synchronistically, this archetypically male deity comes to do the job for us. It’s neat, isn’t it? Thagranak, do it!’

45

At this point there took place a transition of great color, speed, and efficacy. Gone were the solemn priests, the quizzical judge, the awesome extra-universal deity, the courtroom and all its homely accoutrements. For a moment there was nothing at all except vistas of the small glimmering gunmetal cubes that are the fundamental building blocks of reality. Then these too were gone, leaving behind only a thin dusty dream-substance. This coalesced, grew horns and headlights, and turned into a place that looked just like Ming the Merciless’s secret control room deep in the bowels of the invisible planet Xingo.

Crompton stood within the room, struggling for comprehension.

Presently a man entered. Even though the man was dressed in orange leotards and a fright wig. Crompton would have known him anywhere.

‘John Blount!’

‘Surprised to see me, are you, Crompton? I have watched with amusement your futile twistings and turnings across the galaxy. So near and yet so far, eh, Crompton? Hee hee hee!’

‘How did you manage to kidnap me like this?’ Crompton demanded. ‘The Center is sure to make inquiries.’

‘I doubt it,’ Blount said. ‘You see, I have leased the Aion Project for twenty-four hours, and everybody must do as I say.’

‘The directors of the Center won’t let you kill me! They are philosophers, humanitarians. This is against everything they stand for!’

‘But they have to stand for it,’ Blount said. ‘You see, I took the precaution of also leasing their professional ethics and personal morality for twenty-four hours.’

‘Gawwwkr,’ Crompton said.

‘I set my trap a long time ago, Alistair. My agents, disguised as grooks, colonels, confidence men and waitresses, have kept in constant contact with you, and have even given you a helping hand now and then. Why not? I was glad to help you to Aion – and me!’

‘You really do hold a grudge for a hell of a long time,’ Crompton remarked.

‘My grudge feeds and nourishes me,’ Blount said. ‘It has given me a new interest in life, even offered a fresh field for my talents. I am much beholden to you, Crompton. Without you, I would never have discovered the true meaning and purpose of my life.’

‘That purpose, it seems, is simply to have revenge on me.’

‘There is that, of course. But that is only the beginning. Crompton, there’s so much more!’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Are you a religious man, Crompton? No, I suppose not. I can hardly expect you to understand the terrible beauty of what happened to me one fateful day, when I was reminding myself, as usual, “Don’t forget to have your revenge on Crompton.” ’

‘Well, what did happen?’

‘Suddenly I heard a great voice in my head, and it seemed to come from nowhere and from everywhere, and I fell to my knees because I knew at once that this was the Real Thing. And the Voice said to me, ‘Johnikins!’ (calling me by a name only my deceased grandmother had used!) ‘Johnikins, what will you do
after
you have revenged yourself on Crompton?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll probably need a vacation after that, so maybe I’ll buy Portugal for a few weeks.’ And the Voice said to me, ‘That’s pretty small potatoes, Johnikins.’ And I said, ‘I know, Lord, it’s really pretty banal, isn’t it? Here I am, the richest, smartest, and most powerful man in the universe, and all I have to do with my life is get revenge on Crompton, and after that I’ve got nothing at all. Tell me, Voice, what should I do?’ And the Voice said, ‘It’s so obvious, Johnikins: after you’re done with Crompton, why not take your revenge on
the rest of them?
’

‘It was as if a great light had turned on in the middle of my brain, and I fell on my face and laughed and cried and praised the Lord. It was the only spiritual revelation I have ever had.’

Here Blount paused to take a sip of water.

‘The more I thought about it, the more I saw how right the Voice had been. Yes, why not take my revenge on all the people who had ever contributed to my discomfort! It was an exhilarating idea and I sat down at once to make up a list. But there were just too many people. I saw that it would be easier to think in categories. And so I determined to do away with all headwaiters and taxi drivers, pop singers and policemen, car-park attendants and roller derby entrepreneurs, farmers and mixing dubbers, folk singers, dopers, lawyers, Albanians, baseball players … I could go on and on.’

‘I’m sure you could, and will,’ Crompton said.

‘I saw that it would save a lot of time if I just decided what categories I did
not
want to kill. I thought about it and realized that there weren’t any. For a while I thought of saving the spotted Dalmatians because I was raised by one. But even they can be a pain in the ass. In a flash of insight I saw that I hated everybody and everything. That simplified my problem. I saw at once what I had to do. I’m sure you know what I mean.’

‘Do you mean what I think you mean?’ Crompton asked.

Blount considered the question. ‘What do you think I mean?’

‘I think that you are seriously planning to destroy all of mankind.’

‘That’s it! That’s precisely it! And womenkind too,of course. And animalkind. I’m going to destroy all of the kinds – because none of them is worth diddly shit.’

‘You’re crazy!’ Crompton gasped.

‘Get me out of here!’ Loomis wailed.

Dan Stack suddenly entered the discussion. ‘Let’s keep our cool,’ he said, extruding a strong air of confidence. ‘This looks like the sort of situation for yours truly. I’ll take over now.’

Crompton did not resist. Dan Stack took control of the body.

46

‘Well,’ Stack said, ‘it’s an ambitious scheme, all right, and a damned good one if I’m any judge.’

Blount was surprised. ‘Why – thank you very much! I had thought, in your situation –’

‘Look,’ Stack said, ‘no matter what my situation, I can still appreciate artistry. And you’ve got it, baby.’

‘Do you really feel that?’ Blount asked. ‘You don’t think I’m crazy?’

‘Crazy like a fox,’ Stack said, winking. ‘It’s exactly what I’d do in your spot, and I’m not crazy, am I?’

‘Certainly not!’ Blount said. ‘So you really like my plan?’

‘I love it!’ Stack said. ‘How are you planning to begin?’

‘I’ve got an initial sequence drawn up,’ Blount said proudly.

Crompton managed to regain control long enough to shout, ‘No, I refuse to be a party to this. I won’t let you do this!’

‘Is anything the matter?’ Blount asked.

‘No,’ Stack said. ‘That wasn’t me, that was Crompton.’

‘Aren’t
you
Crompton?’

‘Certainly not. I’m one of the other personalities. I’m Dan Stack.’