“What now?” Ivan Relevant stood panting in the door- way.
“Just a minute.” The copilot exited to the front compartment. When he returned his arms were filled with clothing.
“What’s that?”
“The pilot and navigator’s uniforms.” He handed them to Ivan Relevant and indicated that he should throw them over the side. “Every ounce counts,” he said—and he started to strip.
Whoa! I don’t remember this in the movie!
“You too, comrades.” The copilot indicated that Ludmilla, Ivan Relevant, and the strong-arm man who had kidnapped him should all remove their clothes.
“Every ounce?” Ludmilla, down to bra and panties, hesitated.
“Every ounce!”
Ludmilla removed her undergarments and passed them to Ivan Relevant to throw out. She stood nude except for her life jacket and parachute.
Movies are better than ever!
The others, save for the emergency items, were also nude. The copilot went up front, consulted with the pilot, and returned. “It’s touch and go, but I think we’re going to make it,” he informed them. “We’re over the Bering Sea right now.” He strode over to Ivan Relevant, who was still braced in front of the open hatchway. “Well done, comrade.” The copilot slapped him heartily on the shoulder.
“Thank—” Ivan Relevant started to stay. But the slap caught him off balance. He tottered for an instant, then fell backward and vanished from sight. “—you-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oooooo. . . .”
“Mr. President! Mr. President!” Oswald pounded on the door of the White House privy.
“What is it, Oswald?” the President groaned. He was feeling just awful. His hemorrhoids had never been worse.
“Jonathan Relevant has been lost at sea!” Oswald informed him through the door.
“Jonathan who?” The President was having difficulty concentrating.
“Jonathan Relevant! We’ve been monitoring that Russian plane he was on and they just notified Moscow that he fell out of the plane somewhere over the Bering Sea. At least we think that’s what they said.”
“What do you mean you ‘think,’ Oswald?” The President knew his discomfort was muddying up his own mind, but even so it seemed to him that Oswald was coming over fuzzy.
“Well, the Russian transmission was in code, Mr. President. We’ve broken the code, but the trouble is we’ve come up with two decoding possibilities. One unscrambles as Jonathan Relevant falling out of the plane over the Bering Sea.”
“And the other?”
“Literally, Mr. President?”
“Oswald, please! I'm not feeling well. Just tell me what the other translation is.”
“Literally—‘God must have loved the common roach; He made so many of them.’ That’s it, Mr. President.”
“But which is the right one, Oswald?”
“You pays your money and you takes your choice, Mr. President.”
“The hell with it!” The President dismissed Jonathan Relevant from his mind and concentrated on the matter at hand. “My aching ass!” he moaned. . . .
“My aching ass!” Jonathan Relevant moaned. The harness of the parchute had cut into his fundament badly when the ’chute had opened. Also the strap had scraped off some skin when he’d splashed down in the Bering Strait. Wriggling out of the harness, he’d irritated the inflamed flesh.
The icy waters first cooled and then numbed the pain. Feeling the numbness starting to spread, Jonathan Relevant—naked except for his inflated life jacket—started swimming to keep his circulation going. After a while he spotted an iceberg and headed for it. When he reached the iceberg he had to struggle to pull himself up on it. The life jacket was ripped during his exertions. As he finally scrambled to the surface of the berg, the life jacket fell away from him and floated away.
Jonathan Relevant huddled naked on the iceberg and hugged himself against the cold. The numbness went out of his bottom and the cold of the ice on which it was resting penetrated. “My tookus is cold,” Jonathan Relevant said to himself. Somehow the words had a familiar ring. “I’m right back where I started from,” he decided.
And what have you learned?
When one sits on an iceberg, one’s tookus becomes cold.
Very funny. But what else? What have you learned about the world? The Universe?
Natural law.
Huh?
Natural law. An iceberg applied to the human fundament chills same. That’s natural law: Relevant’s First Principle.
Aha! Then you see order in the Universe!
Compared to what?
Well then, do you see chaos in the Universe?
Compared to what?
Don’t be evasive! Just how do you conceive of the Universe?
I don’t!
Why not?
There’s no basis of comparison. There’s no yardstick. So how can there be conceptualization?
But some men have come up with concepts. How do you explain that?
Guesswork. . . . There’s only one question about the Universe that has validity.
What question is that?
Is it bigger than a breadbox?
Whose breadbox?
Oh, no! I’m not going to get into that bag!
Why not? God. Nature. Life-force. Those are only the tags for what’s constant in the Universe.
What’s constant?
Two plus two equals four.
Does it?
A trillon-trillon times out of a trillion-trillion times it does.
And the trillion-trillion-and-first time? Maybe the trillion-trillion-and-first time two plus two equals five.
What does that mean?
It means that’s where it’s at, baby. Right now. That’s the great big universal truth. Two plus two equals five!
And all the patterns are man-made? Is that it? Hoo-hah! So much for metaphysics! Because it doesn’t matter if they are man-made! It only raises another question.
Which is?
What have you learned about mankind during your brief sojourn in the “civilized” world?
Mankind is a paradox.
Cop-out!
Maybe. But what can I say about Man except that the opposite is always true?
My ass!
-—is cold. I know. But there’s no escaping it. At the core of Man is life. And the end of life is death. He lives until he dies. But he starts to die from the moment he’s born. All of Man’s other problems stem from that basic dilemma. And it’s an unsolvable dilemma.
Isn’t that a truth of sorts?
It’s a condition. Where Man is concerned, nothing is really true.
And - if - that - statement’s – true – then – that -statement’s – false - and – where – Man – is – concerned – everything – is – really - true.
Touché! . . . And more paradox. Man is a cosmic joke, a Camus absurdity caught between the Gautama Buddha and Adolf Hitler. Right is always perverted; it’s the human condition.
But there’s another side.
Sure. Evil is always thwarted too. Mostly because it’s bungled.
Still, on balance—-
Not knowable. The final score isn’t in yet—although it may be closer than Man thinks. A cancer cure, or germ warfare? Birth control and abortion reform, or overpopulation? Farm subsidies, or starvation? Communication, or Alienation? Peace and Love, or Violence and War? Sweet Reason, or The Bomb? These are the choices and the time is now.