"Did somebody mention Pope Stephen?" the theologian asked.
"Strumpfbander, Strumpfbander, Strumpfbander," the psychiatrist chortled.
"They stay up nights thinking of new ways to cheat their writers," the novelist rambled on, now evidently addressing his wineglass, since nobody else was listening to him.
"I'd like to know who started all those rumors about Pope Stephen," the theologian fumed.
"I have written a poem commemorating your great discovery," Francois Loup-Garou told Dr. Carter, hacking his way into a pause in the conversation.
"A poem about me? In French?" Carter was enthused. "Ah love French poetry, especially RAM-BOW."
"No," Loup-Garou said, "in your honor, I have written it in English." Actually, he had written it in English to get even with T. S. Eliot, who had written a few rondels in French.
"Ah wonder if you could recite it," Carter prompted.
"Certainly," said Loup-Garou. And he began to declaim:
Schrodinger's cat and Wigner's friend
Cause us problems without end
The cat is both alive and dead
In the math that's in our head
And the regression of Von Neumann
Never ceases to annoy Man
The uncertainty just has no end
Until Wigner goes to tell his friend
For, until the friend receives the news
That the cat still purrs and mews
The cat remains (suspended Fate!)
In some formal Eigenstate
"Some MORE WINE heah!" Carter's brother bellowed at the butler.
Loup-Garou frowned and went on:
But if Wigner makes a beeline
To report the now-dead feline
All the friend can really know
Is just one branch of time's swift flow
For in Carter's multispace
Every time-branch has its place
So the cat remains alive
In the half cases (That's.5)
Lead us not to Copenhagen,
Nor to Shylock, nor to Fagin:
"The result's not parsimonious!"
Yet I find it quite harmonious
Nobody understood this except Dr. Carter himself, but he was so moved that his eyes watered a bit. "Ahm honored," he kept saying, shaking his head. "To have a poem written about me by a French artist in English. …"
But at this point the chef exploded into the room, haggard and wild-eyed. "The goats!" he cried. "They march!"
And indeed it was true; the goats had gotten out of the pantry. It took ten minutes, and a great deal of exertion for both the house staff and the guests, before the animals were rounded up and herded back to captivity.
Everybody was breathing a bit heavily by then, and the Austrian psychiatrist muttered something about "artistic temperament," which Loup-Garou unfortunately overheard.
"There is nothing esoteric about the artistic temperament," he replied, flatly and dogmatically. "The real mystery-and the tragedy of humanity-is that so many lack esthetic sensibility. I sometimes believe the legend that there are robots among us, passing themselves off as human beings."
"That's absurd," Dr. Axon said. "If I were to claim that everybody should be a neurologist, you would all quite properly regard that as an eccentricity. Yet when an artist says we should all be artists, we are apt to agree, a bit sheepishly. And if a religious person says we should all be religious, we not only agree, but feel a bit guilty about our shortcomings in that department. Well, I've never had an artistic or religious impulse in my life, and I'm not ashamed of the fact."
"Research is your art and your religion," said the Japanese monk, speaking for the first time. "What a person truly is, in any universe, is the Buddha Nature," he added blandly. He knew that he existed in this continuum only to make that one Dharma revelation, so he immediately resumed his impassive silence.
The others decided that the monk's remarks made no sense.
"What do you think, Dr. Axon," Loup-Garou asked rhetorically, "if only a few people had sex in their lives, and the majority were, not merely ascetics, but simply unaware of sex-deaf, dumb, and blind to the erotic side of life? Would you not think that was at least a little bit odd, a symptom, perhaps, of some pathology? ArrrrrrrrrghH!"
He had discovered the Rehnquist in his Lobster Newburg.
And the chef arrived from the kitchen, exasperated as only a French chef can be exasperated. "The goats!" he cried. "Once again it is that they march!"
But Loup-Garou was still going "arrrgh," like a man with the death rattle.
"What is it?" Ms. Gebloomenkraft asked him, her eyes full of motherly concern.
"It's nothing-nothing," Loup-Garou gasped. "Just a touch of heartburn." He was still in shock, thinking the Rehnquist might be a hallucination. But if you were naive enough to talk about hallucinations, the results might be rubber sheets, electroshock, windows with bars on them.
"The goats," the chef repeated, with emphasis. "They will not be governed. They march again, I tell you!"
Loup-Garou took another peek. The Rehnquist was still there. It was a great big one-ithyphallique, as the anthropologists would say. This was Madness, or else something unspeakable was afoot.
Billy began to sing, off key:
Four goats and ME,
They came to TEA,
They came to STAY,
They stayed all DAY,
Oh, my! Oh, me!
Four goats and ME!
At this point he fell face down in his Lobster Newburg.
"Bill-uh isn't accustomed to fine French wines," Dr. Carter said, his genial smile beginning to look just a bit forced.
WHALEBURGER
While Loup-Garou was struggling with the enigma of the Rehnquist in the Lobster Newburg, in Paris, Justin Case was speaking to a man from the Saudi Arabian delegation to the U.N., in New York.
"This is actually ah rather trivial," Case said awkwardly into the phone. "You see, many years ago an Arab resigned from this job and left behind a note in Arabic, and well um after staring at it for twenty-six years, I'm a bit bored with the mystery and I'd like to have the answer…"
"Certainly, certainly," said the voice in the receiver. "I'd be glad to help. Can you sound it out?"
"Well, he wrote it in the European alphabet," Case said. "So I guess it's more or less phonetic. I'll read it to you. Um:
Qoclass="underline" Hua Allahu achad: Allahu Assamad; lam yalid walam yulad; walam yakun lahu kufwan achad
Did you get that?"
"Most certainly," said the electronic voice. "It's one of the most famous verses in Al Koran. In English it would be-of course, it loses most of its beauty in translation- but, roughly, it means God is He who has no beginning and no end, no size and no shape, no definition, and no wife, no horse, no mustache."
"Ah, yes," Case said. "Well, thank you very much, and I'm sorry for having taken your time with such a trivial matter."
He hung up, staring into space in a bemused manner.
"No wife, no horse, no mustache," he repeated aloud.
Something certainly had gotten lost in the translation.
When Dr. Dashwood returned from lunch he was accosted in the ORGRE parking lot by another sailor, who said his name was Lemuel Gulliver.
"In the course of my Travels in Diverse Lands," Gulliver said, "I came once upon a Race of perfectly Enlightened Beings who looked like Horses and talked like G. I. Gurdjieff. When they inquired of me regarding the Laws and Customs and Manners of my people, concerning which I was at some pains to Inform them correctly and fully, they expressed great Astonishment and keen Horror, saying that they never heard of such a Tribe of Conscienceless Rascals and Filthy Scoundrels in all of creation. This estimate of the Human Race, as you can well imagine, dismayed me no little bit, and I endeavour'd to defend our species-"
"Yes, yes," Dashwood said, "but I'm in a hurry, you understand…"