Norman Invasions (15 page)

In this world, you see, there is only one existent, that entity, that entity and its self-generated, inclusive consciousness. Indeed, these are the world, the entity and its experiences, its consciousness, and there is no other. To conceive of this is torment for this tiny, trapped god, and to believe it is to be plunged into madness, and truth. Yet, interestingly, there is no experience which this entity will ever have which could possibly confute this hypothesis. Every experience, every experiment, every thought, every suspicion entertained by the entity will be perfectly compatible with this being the case. To be sure, the entity may never have even conceived of this possibility, or even entertained this suspicion, until now.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Harrelson,” said the psychiatrist, “but the fact of the matter is that you simply
are a frog
.”

“Nonsense,” said Harrelson, easing himself back in the shallow pan of water on the couch.

“There is no getting around it,” said the psychiatrist.

“You are mistaken,” said Harrelson.

“It's time,” said the psychiatrist, “to break the transfer. We must sever the umbilical cord of dependence.”

“I don't get it,” said Harrelson.

“I intend to terminate your treatment,” said the psychiatrist.

“My money's good, isn't it?” snapped Harrelson.

“That has nothing to do with it,” said the psychiatrist.

“I have a helluva guilt complex,” wailed Harrelson, “and now you're going to throw me to the storks?”

“Your major problem,” said the psychiatrist, “is not guilt.”

“You think I'm nuts?” asked Harrelson.

“That is a lay term,” said the psychiatrist, “but, in a vague, generic sense, it would appear apt.”

There was a splash from the small pan of water on the psychiatrist's couch, something perhaps in the nature of a reaction formation.

“Mr. Harrelson?” inquired the psychiatrist.

Several minutes later Harrelson looked up, his head appearing above the surface of the water.

“I am not a frog,” said Harrelson. “I am a human being.”

“You are a frog,” said the psychiatrist. “Why do you resist this?”

“Have you ever known a frog that can talk?” asked Harrelson.

“You're the first,” admitted the psychiatrist, recording this in his notebook.

“I am not a frog,” insisted Harrelson.

The preponderance of evidence is overwhelming,” said the psychiatrist, “your diminutive stature, the webbed feet, your muscular thighs, your bulging eyes, the three-chambered heart, the moist skin—”

“You'd have a moist skin, too, if you were sitting in a pan of water,” said Harrelson.

“I suspect your difficulty goes back to some obscure childhood trauma, which caused you to think that you were a human being.”

“I am a human being,” said Harrelson.

“Human beings are higher life forms,” said the psychiatrist.

“So am I,” said Harrelson.

“It's pretty hard to be a higher life form,” said the psychiatrist, “when you are only three inches tall, perhaps eight if you stood on your hind legs.”

It's not the quantity of height that matters,” said Harrelson. “It's the quality.”

“Perhaps you're right ,” mused the psychiatrist, making a note of this.

“Maybe I should level with you,” said Harrelson.

“Now we're getting somewhere,” thought the psychiatrist.

“Hey,” said Harrelson, “where are you? Are you still there?”

“Yes,” said the psychiatrist. He had remained, perhaps as a somewhat unfair test, quiet, absolutely still, deliberately so. A frog can starve to death in a box filled with dead flies, but will instantly strike out at one which moves.

“Ouch!” cried the psychiatrist, as Harrelson's tongue, wet and sticky, darting out, punched him neatly, decisively, in the nose.

“Sorry,” said Harrelson. “It's like a reflex.”

“You were going to level with me,” said the psychiatrist, wiping his nose with a tissue. He had a box handy, for this sort of thing had happened before.

“They did this to me,” said Harrelson.

“‘They,'” inquired the psychiatrist.

“Right,” said Harrelson, soberly. “Them.”

“Go on,” urged the psychiatrist.

“I'm not really what I seem to be,” said Harrelson. “I'm not really a frog. I'm a human being. No, it's not what you think. It's you that aren't human. Humans are persons, important, big deals, and such. Your species hasn't made it yet. You think I'm a frog, but I'm not. I belong to a race of purple, gigantic, from your point of view, godlike beings, human beings, not aliens, like you.”

“Aren't you a bit small to be a gigantic being?” asked the psychiatrist.

“You've never heard of miniaturization?” asked Harrelson.

“But your appearance,” protested the psychiatrist.

“Plastic surgery,” said Harrelson. “You can do wonders with it. And my name isn't really ‘Harrelson'. That's more of a code name. But you should call me ‘Harrelson'. I'm used to it now. It makes things easier. There are millions of us, not frogs, but us, from the next universe, the one next door, where the 27th dimension starts.”

“That's the one just outside of superstring theory?” asked the psychiatrist.

“I wouldn't know,” said Harrelson. “I never studied paleophysics. Incidentally, I prefer rubber-band theory. It's more flexible.”

“I see,” said the psychiatrist.

“I'm not as old as you might think,” said Harrelson. “I'm really a kid, only about 100,000 of your years or so, some seven rotations, roughly, of my megaworld. I'm on a field trip, from my junior high school, extra-credit assignment, came here to study earth fauna, thought I'd blend in better in this disguise.”

“100,000 years?” asked the psychiatrist.

“Yes, already,” said Harrelson, regretfully. “What is life but a puff of smoke on the wind, a drop of dew on the petal of a flower, evanescent, vanishing with the first rays of the morning sun?”

“I see,” said the psychiatrist.

“Here today, gone tomorrow,” said Harrelson, moodily. “One of our greatest poets began to lament the passing of youth when he was only 250,000 years old. But that seems extreme.”

“You're in more trouble than I thought,” said the psychiatrist.

“You're telling me,” said Harrelson.

“Do you have any evidence to back up your story?” asked the psychiatrist.

“We travel light,” said Harrelson. “We're not supposed to bring any evidence with us.”

“I see,” said the psychiatrist.

“Photon transportation,” said Harrelson.

“Oh?” said the psychiatrist.

“Plus interdimensional spacefolding, naturally,” said Harrelson, absently.

“Of course,” said the psychiatrist.

“You've got to help me, doctor,” said Harrelson.

“I'll try,” said the psychiatrist.

“It's this guilt complex, it's hell.”

“What has a frog to feel guilty about?” asked the psychiatrist.

“I'm sure I wouldn't know,” said Harrelson, “as I am not a frog.”

Harrelson, you see, had not fallen into the psychiatrist's cleverly laid trap.

“Tell me a bit about your world,” suggested the psychiatrist.

“Well,” said Harrelson, “It's not far from here, interdimensionally speaking. It's a pretty ordinary world, I suppose. It has a geocentric solar system, and crystalline spheres, the whole works.”

“I find that surprising,” said the psychiatrist.

“Not at all,” said Harrelson. “It's a matter of engineering. Where I come from, science and theology is a joint venture. The scientists check out the texts, and then arrange the world in accordance with them. This eliminates hard feelings. It took a long time, I'm told, in the beginning, to get enough material together to get the sun orbiting around us. We dug it out of a few neighboring solar systems.”

“The gravitational pressure on your world must be enormous,” said the psychiatrist.

“It used to be, mostly in the late summer,” said Harrelson. “But it's not really so bad now, at all. Even in the beginning the sun wasn't a big fellow, and we put it pretty close, though with a stable orbit. No point in destroying the planet. It helps, too, to start off with the 27th dimension. Makes things a lot easier. Different laws of nature, and such.”

“And the crystalline spheres?” asked the psychiatrist.

“You hit it,” said Harrelson, admiringly. “You're good. That was the real trick. We only thought of it later. Better than using gravity, and such, less risky.”

“I don't understand,” said the psychiatrist.

“It's a neat way to keep the sun and planets where you want them. You just fix them on the spheres, fasten them there, but good.”

“Crystalline spheres?” asked the psychiatrist.

“Sure,” said Harrelson, “otherwise you can't see through them.”

“What are they made of?” asked the psychiatrist.

“Celestial substance,” said Harrelson.

“You look skeptical,” observed Harrelson. “Aristotle was actually right, you see. The stuff exists, only he had it in the wrong universe.”

“Crystalline spheres would tear each other apart, grind each other to pieces, destroy one another, from friction,” said the psychiatrist.

“There are tolerances, and we lubricate them,” said Harrelson.

“I find that hard to believe,” said the psychiatrist.

“Ask Hal Clement,” suggested Harrelson.

The psychiatrist made a note to do so.

“If you have crystalline spheres,” asked the psychiatrist, “how do you pass through them, to travel in space?”

“We put doors in them,” said Harrelson. “What do you think? We're not stupid.”

“You are familiar with the Kardashev Index, I suppose,” said the psychiatrist.

“Who isn't?” said Harrelson. “The Type I Civilization has control of its own planet's energy resources, the Type II Civilization has control of its solar system's energy resources, in particular, that of its sun. And the Type III Civilization has control of its galaxy's energy resources.”

“Where would you put your own civilization?” asked the psychiatrist.

“Well,” said Harrelson, “we could have had a type MDCCCCXVI Civilization but we settled for a III.V Civilization.”

“I see,” said the psychiatrist.

“We're not pushy,” said Harrelson. “And besides, who needs all that energy? What are you going to do with it, mow the lawn?”

“You can't be too rich or too thin,” said the psychiatrist.

“If you get too rich, the IRS comes after you,” said Harrelson. “They get suspicious, and they can be mean. If you get too thin, you disappear.”

“I never thought of it just that way before,” admitted the psychiatrist.

“Do so, now,” urged Harrelson.

“All right,” said the psychiatrist, and did so, briefly, largely to pacify Harrelson.

“I'm miserable,” said Harrelson.

“It doesn't help to keep living in a fairy tale,” said the psychiatrist.

“Don't knock it, until you've tried it,.” advised Harrelson. “Besides, at the bottom of every fact, there's a kernel of fiction.”

“I find that hard to believe,” said the psychiatrist.

“Take the story of the “Frog Prince,”” said Harrelson.

“What about it?” asked the psychiatrist, warily.

“You've heard of various dynastic anomalies, genetically transmissible, afflicting certain royal lines, such as the Hapsburg Jaw, hemophilia and such?”

“Yes,” said the psychiatrist.

“There was this princess,” said Harrelson, “not a bad looker, but a little strange. I was minding my own business, taking it easy on a lily pad in the palace pool. I always used palace pools when practical, cleaner, no serf urchins, nasty little nuisances, rushing about, trying to catch frogs, and so on. I saw she was struggling to control herself. She approached me, half timid, half crazed. I watched her. After all, I was on my field trip, and here was a neat little bit of Earth fauna, implicated in some sort of intriguing behavioral regimen. ‘I don't want to kiss you!' she cried. ‘Well,' I said, ‘don't do it then.' I was just a little guy then. I could take it or leave it.”

“She was not surprised that you could talk?”

“No,” said Harrelson. “This was the Middle Ages. They were more open-minded then. They took such things in their stride. ‘But I must!' she cried. I could see the kid had a problem. ‘Well, then,' I said, ‘that's that.' Well, to make a long story short, she came over and kissed me, and I gave her a good one back. She screamed with horror then, as though there might be something improper about smooching with a frog, and fainted. A handsome prince passing by, he had come to sue for her hand, and the rest of her, actually, hearing her scream, leaped over the wall to rescue her. She awakened in his arms, and inferred, naturally enough under the circumstances, I suppose, at least for the time and place, that he had been the frog, that he had been enchanted, and that her kiss had broken the spell. She explained it all to him in suitable detail. Now this prince was no dope. He played along with it, and got the kingdom. They lived happily ever after, until they died, and their union was blessed with abundant issue, this accounting for the persistence of the frog-kissing gene, transmitted through the female line in several European dynasties.”

“I had not heard of this,” said the psychiatrist.

“It's not the sort of thing they publicize,” said Harrelson. “But it's real. It's even used as a test for legitimacy in certain disputed cases. Pretenders to the throne have been known to practice frog kissing, and such.”

“But this doesn't solve your identity crisis,” said the psychiatrist, returning to business.

“My problem,” said Harrelson, “is not an identity crisis. It s a guilt complex.”

“What have you to feel guilty about?” asked the psychiatrist.

Harrelson's body, with its bulging eyes, turned squarely, meaningfully, toward the psychiatrist. “The downfall of your species,” said Harrelson. He trembled, visibly. A bit of water went over the edge of his pan, onto the shiny, brown leather of the couch.

“Sorry,” said Harrelson.

“That's all right,” said the psychiatrist, discretely repairing the matter with a tissue.

“It was on January 11th, in 49 B.C.,” said Harrelson, moodily. “This guy, Caesar, was on the north bank of a little stream, the Rubicon, or Rubipond, I think. He wasn't sure whether he should bring his army across that stream or not. If he left his army behind he would have to go to Rome and face his enemies alone, which was not a pleasant prospect. His future, and maybe his life, would be in jeopardy. If he took it across he would be marching on Rome itself, taking it over, ending the Republic and founding a dictatorship. Well, he was a bit chicken, and was about ready to turn around and go back to Gaul, or someplace, when I, as luck would have it, popped into the dimension, landing right on his shoulder. We were both startled, I tell you. I took a super leap off his shoulder and landed on the south bank of the stream. He looked at me, and his eyes lit up. He took this as some sort of omen. Omens were big then. He drew his sword, cried out “The die is cast!” and marched across, the army following. It was all I could do to avoid being trampled by all the horses, soldiers, and wagons. Well, you know what happened. Rome became a dictatorship, and eventually went out and conquered the world, setting an example of power and imperialism which dazzled the planet, and exerted its influence for centuries, and even today.”