The Outpost (16 page)

And, need I add, their numbers were diminishing with each generation? I mean, who wants to walk around with an unborn child hanging from each armpit? Among other things, it really hinders your spear-throwing, and it almost guarantees that you’ll never invent basketball. Reproduction was a pain in the ass—or, to be more specific, in the armpit—and hardly anyone felt inclined to practice it.

It was when Iggloth, a Beldorian who had just come of age, accidentally rubbed up against his companion, Marlieth, while they were sleeping in a cave, that he suddenly discovered she was nice to touch. So he touched her again. She was a heavy sleeper, but eventually all the touching woke her up and she decided that she enjoyed it, and began reciprocating. In fact, they spent the next month doing nothing except eating an occasional sandwich and touching each other here and there.

Touching each other here was very pleasant, to be sure, but it was when they touched each other
there
that the results were electrifying. Later that day, when they ran out of sandwiches and had nothing else to do with their mouths, they invented kissing. It took them another seven years of trial and error to make it to the next step, but sure enough, they finally invented sex on a rainy autumn afternoon.

Of course, if it had stopped right there with the two of them, galactic history would have taken a different and considerably less interesting course. But the fact of the matter is that Barlotuth, Iggloth’s closest friend, stopped by one day to see if he’d like to go fishing.

“Go away,” muttered Iggloth. “I’m busy.”

“For how long?” asked Barlotuth, an accommodating fellow.

“Til a year from next Tuesday!” snapped Marlieth.

Up to that point Barlotuth hadn’t even known Marlieth was there, since the cave was quite dark, but now he squinted all five of his eyes and peered forward.

“What are you doing?” he asked curiously.

“We don’t have a word for it,” said Iggloth. “But it’s really nifty! You should try it.”

“It can’t be more fun than fishing!” said Barlotuth.

“Fine,” said Iggloth. “Go fishing and leave us alone.”

Barlotuth was about to answer when Marlieth suddenly started giggling louder and louder, ending in a happy (if ear-splitting) shriek.

“All right,” he said, turning and wandering away from the mouth of the cave. “If it’s
that
much fun, maybe I’ll give it a shot.”

And he did, and soon the word spread, and before long all the Beldorians were doing it. Now, nothing much came of the invention at first—after all, they were carrying these unborn babies under their arms—but mutation is a wonderful thing, and before long there weren’t any more budding babies, and sex became so popular that it immediately spread all across the galaxy to every sentient and non-sentient species, though I intuit that it never crossed the intergalactic void and that they still reproduce by budding in Andromeda.

Anyway, that’s how it happened, and if Iggloth and Marlieth were here now, I’m sure we’d all give them a standing ovation. And if they could stop touching each other long enough to pay attention—and doubtless Bet-a-World O’Grady can compute the odds on that—I’m equally certain they’d be justly proud of how enthusiastically everyone has taken to their invention.

In fact, now that I think of it, they not only invented sex, but they also invented mutation.

“I never knew that,” admitted Catastrophe Baker.

“The universe is filled with infinite mysteries,” chimed in Achmed of Alphard. “Strangely enough,” he added thoughtfully, “most of them can be discovered in bed with a member of the opposite sex.”

“And they don’t get much more opposite than women,” added Nicodemus Mayflower, staring admiringly at Sinderella.

“Just imagine,” continued Baker. “If it hadn’t been for them two Beldorians all those billions of years ago, I could look at Silicon Carny here and not feel a thing.”

“You’re not about to feel anything
now
,” she shot back. “Just keep your hands to yourself.”

Everyone laughed at that, none louder than Catastrophe Baker himself.

I checked the clock behind the bar. Ordinarily Reggie and I would start closing the place down in another half hour or so, but heroes need less sleep than most, and they all seemed to be in a talkative mood this particular night. Besides we had to keep an eye out for enemy ships, so I told Reggie to just keep serving them as long as they wanted.

Baker finished another drink, then walked over to Big Red. “Ask Einstein who invented God,” he said.

Big Red put the question to him, and got the answer back almost instantly.

“He says it’s still a point of some debate as to whether we invented God or He invented us.”

“Maybe a third party invented us
and
God,” offered Max, who could never leave well enough alone.

“Maybe Einstein ought to turn all of his brainpower to figuring it out,” suggested Baker.

Another brief pause, while Big Red waited for Einstein’s answer.

“He says he’d rather figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg.”

“Beats me,” admitted Baker. “But whichever it was, I take my hat off to the man who invented the frying pan.”

“You guys just don’t understand at all,” said the Reverend Billy Karma. “God invented everything. He just uses Men and aliens as His tools.”

“Yeah?” Max shot back. “Suppose you tell me why God would want to invent pimples or jock itch?”

“Just as you can’t appreciate good without having known evil, you can’t appreciate good health without having experienced illness.”

“Why do you have to appreciate it?” persisted Max. “Why can’t you just experience it? Or is God such a self-centered prima donna that He’s got to make everyone sing His praises night and day?”

“You know, I just hate it when you ask questions like that,” said Billy Karma. He turned to Argyle. “Let’s go back to talking about the god of sexual potency. Maybe it’s blasphemous, but it beats the hell out of pondering all these deep philosophic questions.”

“I find deep philosophic questions fascinating,” said the multi-colored alien.

“I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” muttered Billy Karma.

“In fact,” continued Argyle, “when I was younger I spent my entire fortune seeking the answers to the mysteries of the universe.”

“You ever come up with any?” asked Baker.

“A few.”

“Care to share ’em with us?”

Argyle shrugged, which made him look like an animated kaleidoscope.

“Why not?” he said.

The Ultimate Question

When I was growing up (said Argyle) I was always curious about things. I pestered all three of my parents with endless questions, and finally, in exasperation, they bought me a computer, which I promptly christened TAM (for The Answer Machine).

In the beginning, it was capable of answering almost all of my simplistic queries. Of course, it couldn’t tell me why all the elevators arrive at once, or why no adult can open a child-proof bottle, but it was pretty good on some of the more common questions.

For example, like any kid, I’d ask why the sky was green.

And TAM would spew out an answer in a nanosecond or two, to the effect that
my
world’s sky was green because all the continents were blanketed by green grass and the oceans were covered by an exceptionally fast-growing and disgusting form of algae, but that skies actually came in all colors, including blue, purple, violet, indigo, yellow, red, orange, mauve, puce, magenta, and licorice black.

Or I might ask “How high is up?” Always a favorite among obnoxious youngsters.

And TAM would explain that everything was relative, that Up wasn’t quite as high if you were standing atop a mountain as if you were in a valley, which made me clarify my thinking and express myself more precisely.

Whenever I had a few extra credits to spend, I bought TAM more memory and brainpower, and began asking it increasingly difficult questions.

“For instance?” asked Max, who just couldn’t stop himself from interrupting almost every story at least once.

For instance (answered Argyle), I’m not even a mammal, and my race has three sexes—so why am I attracted to big-breasted women?

“Damned good question,” said Max. “What did TAM answer?”

That it was a universal constant (said Argyle) and I shouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

As I became more sophisticated I’d ask if a tree made a noise when it fell in an empty forest, and TAM would kind of sigh and explain that a forest couldn’t very well be empty of trees, and that I had to learn to think more clearly.

Or I’d pose the question: if God made me, who made God? And he’d reply that it was an invalid supposition until I could prove God had made me, and that personally he doubted it like all hell. (You’ll notice that by now I was referring to TAM as
him
rather than
it
; I found it helped personalize him—and he was also able to answer some embarrassingly naive and insecure questions about the nature of sex, which is something that none of my parents seemed able to do.)

Anyway, I kept buying TAM more brainpower, and kept pushing him to the limits of his abilities.

For example, since I worship 37 gods and Men worship only one, I decided to prove they were wrong. So I did some studying, and I found out that Men put a lot of stock in the First Cause Argument. You know the one: for every effect there is a cause, and when you finally backtrack to a first cause beyond which you can’t go, you call that God. So I asked TAM if he could disprove the First Cause Argument.