“O yes!” says Jimmy bitterly, covering his face with his hands. “I encouraged Bacon and Galileo when ignorance seemed to be the main problem and good scientists were thought black magicians or heretics. And now natural science is triumphant.”
“Exactly,” says the Head, nodding. “Educated folk no longer blame you and me for everything bad. That is a definite step in the right direction. I refuse to wipe out life on earth because my agent there who should encourage it is tired of it.”
“But I love life on earth! I want you to save it by quickly destroying only one kind of brute — the most selfishly greedy kind. Get rid of men, please, before they destroy every other living thing.”
The Head smiles, says, “If mankind heard you now they really would think you …” (he holds out both hands with his fingers curved like claws) “… Bee! El! Zi! Bub!”
“You know what I’m talking about,” says Jimmy, again shaking the sheaf of printouts at him.
“Atmosphere overheating from diesel fumes,” says the Head, obviously bored. “Glaciers, icecaps melting, sea level rising. Forests felled, land impoverished. Pure water tables shrinking or polluted. Drought increasing where forty per cent of folk suffer malnutrition and billions will die of famine and thirst.”
“Primitive Christians were right,” says Jimmy passionately. “Scientists are black magicians. Nearly all of them work for corporations tearing up the fabric of earthly life with the help of governments they have bribed. Half the animals alive fifty years ago are now extinct. Frogs and sparrows are nearly extinct. The bumble bees are dying. Some conscience-stricken biologists are freezing the sperm of threatened creatures so that they can be brought back to life when the earth is governed sanely. Mankind will never govern it sanely.”
With a tolerant chuckle the Head says, “Aye, men have always been great wee extinguishers. Remember North America at the end of the last big ice age? A vast forest of deciduous trees with nothing dividing them but lakes and rivers and rocky mountains. It was the home of the biggest most peaceful vegetarians we ever achieved — titanic browsers, tree-sloths as big as elephants. The first men who entered that continent across the Bering Strait had never dreamed of so much each meat. Killing bears and woolly elephants in Eurasia was dangerous work, but men easily took over America. The tree-sloths couldn’t run away, couldn’t run at all, didn’t need to be trapped. Set fire to the trees and you had several roasted tree-sloths burned out of their pelts in a gravy of their own melted fat. The number of North American men expanded hugely — for two generations they were too busy eating to kill each other — they gorged themselves all the way down to Mexico!”
Seeing that Jimmy is staring at him in disgust he says, “Cheer up. That’s how the prairies came about, with room for herds and herds and herds of buffalo.”
“Which the white men slaughtered because the red men lived off them. But you know things are a lot worse now. Farmers are sowing genetically modified crops that die as soon as harvested, so they must buy new seed from companies that patented them, while plants folk used to feed on vanish for ever. Soon the only live creatures left on earth will be humans and the mutants they eat.”
In a sing-song voice, grinning, the Head says, “Remember the viruses, Jimmy! They too are busy wee mutaters. People are great breeding grounds for viruses, especially people eating battery-farmed meat and mutant vegetables.” With genuine regret he murmurs, “Croak croak. A pity about the frogs.”
“Are you fond of the Barrier Reef?” asks Jimmy, desperately.
“My greatest work of art, one thousand, two hundred and fifty miles long,” says the Head reminiscently. “A masterpiece of intricately intertwined fishes, plants, insects with the beautiful vivid colour variety of all the great pictures painted by Matisse and Dufy, and a refinement of detail greater than even Paul Klee achieved.” He shakes his head in wonder at the thought of his own genius.
“It’s dying,” says Jimmy. “It’ll all be gone in thirty years unless men die first.”
The Head shrugs his shoulders, says, “Nothing lasts for ever,” and turning, contemplates his crystals as if nothing else mattered.
“What use are you?” demands Jimmy suddenly. The Head, amused, smiles at him kindly but does not reply until the question is enlarged: “What do you do while failing to develop annelid worms in submarine volcanic vents?”
“I’m preparing a better universe.”
“Where?”
“Outside this one.”
“How can you make a universe outside this one?”
This brings out the Head’s schoolteacher side. Wagging a forefinger, with increasing enthusiasm he says, “If you subscribed to Scientific American you would know how other universes happen. Every universe is like a carpet with a gigantic draught blowing underneath, so in places it gets rippled up into peaks where energy and mass are so concentrated that BANG, a hole is blown in the fabric through which mass-energy pours, making another universe where physical laws can bend differently.”
“What makes that draught?” says Jimmy keenly.
“Would you think me a megalomaniac if I told you it was my breath?” asks the Head, slyly watching him sideways.
“Yes.”
“I have to use metaphors when describing universal processes,” says the Head impatiently. “If you don’t like breath-blown ripples call them … call them labour pains if you like, but the result could be a universe where planets are this shape.”
From a bench he lifts a variously coloured prism and hands it over. Jimmy looks at it then says unbelievingly, “A pyramidal planet?”
“You are wrong. A pyramid has five sides, with four isosceles triangles on a square base. This planetary model is a tetrahedron with only four triangular sides, four equal continents. Get the idea?”
“No.”
“Look at it closely. Four glacial polar regions at the apex of each continent. Water trickles down from these to form an ocean in the middle of each surface — four Mediterranean seas of roughly equal size where life will evolve, and when it takes to land around the shores it will find none large enough for an empire to grow. All the nations that occur will be small and coastal, like Scandinavia.”
Jimmy examines the prism closely then says, “I see some off-shore islands. The British Empire spread from an island.” “An island with a lot of coal and iron where James Watt devised the first commercial steam engine. In my new world fossil fuel deposits will be equally dispersed. No gold rushes! The machines people invent will have to be powered by wind and water and oil from plants that can be grown, harvested and replanted.”
Jimmy says, “The shape of this thing makes it gravitationally impossible.”
“Only in this universe!” cries the Head. “I am preparing a liquid universe where heavenly bodies will be gravitationally formed by crystallization! Imagine galaxies of tetrahedral planets revolving round octahedral suns! A universe — ” he ends by murmuring dreamily, “ — with no big bangs and collisions.”
“But how can a planet have seas in a universe full of liquid?”
“My universal fluid will be as light as air! In fact it will be air! I will make it air!”
Inspired by the idea he hurries to a blackboard with chemical formulae chalked on it, seizes a chalk and writes N-78. 1 %, then heavily underlines it saying, “When my heavenly bodies have crystallized, these chemical constituents must remain.”