Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories (32 page)

So much for the moment. But the lights burned late in the offices of the City Planners as they sat. over their drawing boards and blueprints, working out a system for all sewers to empty into the hoop. It was a high moment indeed, not blighted one iota by the pleas of the mayors of Yonkers, Jersey City, and Hackensack to get into the act.

The Mayor stood firm. There was not one hour in the twenty-four hours of any given day, not one minute in the sixty minutes that comprise an hour, when a garbage truck was not backing up to the hoop and discharging its cargo. Tony Andamano, appointed to the position of inspector, had a permanent position at the hoop, with a staff of assistants to see that the garbage was properly discharged into infinity.

Of course, it was only to be expected that there would be a mounting pressure, first local, then nationwide, then worldwide, for the hoop to be taken apart and minutely reproduced. The Japanese, so long expert at reproducing and improving anything the West put together, were the first to introduce that motion into the United Nations, and they were followed by half a hundred other nations. But the Mayor had already had his quiet talk with Hepplemeyer, more or less as follows, if Hepplemeyer's memoirs are to be trusted:

“I want it straight and simple, Professor. If they take it apart, can they reproduce it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they don't know the mathematics. It's not an automobile transmission, not at all.”

“Naturally. Is there any chance that they can reproduce it?”

“Who knows?”

“I presume that you do,” the Mayor said. “Could you reproduce it?”

“I made it.”

“Will you?”

“Perhaps. I have been thinking about it.”

“It's a month now.”

“I think slowly,” the professor said.

Whereupon the Mayor issued his historic statement, namely: “Any attempt to interfere with the operation of the hoop will be considered as a basic attack upon the constitutional property rights of the City of New York and will be resisted with every device, legal and otherwise, that the city has at its disposal.”

The commentators immediately launched into a discussion of what the Mayor meant by otherwise, while the Governor, never beloved of the Mayor, filed suit in the Federal Court in behalf of all the municipalities of New York State. NASA, meanwhile, scoffing at the suggestion that there were scientific secrets unsolvable, turned its vast battery of electronic brains onto the problem; and the Russians predicted that they would have their own hoop within sixty days. Only the Chinese appeared to chuckle with amusement, since most of their garbage was recycled into an organic mulch and they were too poor and too thrifty to be overconcerned with the problem. But the Chinese were too far away for their chuckles to mollify Americans, and the tide of anger rose day by day. From hero and eccentric, Professor Hepplemeyer was fast becoming scientific public enemy number one. He was now publicly accused of being a Communist, a madman, an egomaniac, and a murderer to boot.

“It is uncomfortable,” Hepplemeyer admitted to his wife; since he eschewed press conferences and television appearances, his admissions and anxieties usually took place over the breakfast table.

“I have known for thirty years how stubborn you are. Now, at least, the whole world knows.”

“No, it's not stubborness. As I said, it's a matter of duality.”

“Everyone else thinks it's a matter of garbage. You still haven't paid the dentist bill. It's four months overdue now. Dr. Steinman is suing us.”

“Come, now. Dentists don't sue.”

“He says that potentially you are the richest man on earth, and that justifies his suit.”

The professor was scribbling on his napkin. “Remarkable,” he said. “Do you know how much garbage they've poured into the hoop already?”

“Do you know that you could have a royalty on every pound? A lawyer called today who wants to represent—”

“Over a million tons,” he interrupted. “Imagine, over a million tons of garbage. What wonderful creatures we are! For centuries philosophers sought a teleological explanation for mankind, and it never occurred to any of them that we are garbage makers, no more, no less.”

“He mentioned a royalty of five cents a ton.”

“Over a million tons,” the professor said thoughtfully. “I wonder where it is.”

It was three weeks later to the day, at five-twenty in the morning, that the first crack appeared in the asphalt paving of Wall Street. It was the sort of ragged fissure that is not uncommon in the miles of city streets, nothing to arouse notice, much less alarm, except that in this case it was not static. Between five-twenty and eighty-twenty, it doubled in length, and the asphalt lips of the street had parted a full inch. The escaping smell caught the notice of the crowds hurrying to work, and word went around that there was a gas leak.

By ten o'clock, the Con Edison trucks were on the scene, checking the major valves, and by eleven, the police had roped off the street, and the lips of the crack, which now extended across the entire street, were at least eight inches apart. There was talk of an earthquake, yet when contacted, Fordham University reported that the seismograph showed nothing unusual—oh, perhaps, some very slight tremors, but nothing unusual enough to be called an earthquake.

When the streets filled for the noon lunch break, a very distinct and rancid smell filled the narrow cavern, so heavy and unpleasant that half a dozen more sensitive stomachs upchucked; and by one o'clock, the lips of the crack were over a foot wide, water mains had broken, and Con Edison had to cut its high-voltage lines. At two-ten, the first garbage appeared.

The first garbage just oozed out of the cut, but within the hour the break was three feet wide, buildings had begun to slip and show cracks and shower bricks, and the garbage was pouring into Wall Street like lava from an erupting volcano. The offices closed, the office workers fled, brokers, bankers, and secretaries alike wading through the garbage. In spite of all the efforts of the police and the fire department, in spite of the heroic rescues of the police helicopter teams, eight people were lost in the garbage or trapped in one of the buildings; and by five o'clock the garbage was ten stories high in Wall Street and pouring into Broadway at one end and onto the East River Drive at the other. Now, like a primal volcano, the dams burst, and for an hour the garbage fell on lower Manhattan as once the ashes had fallen on Pompeii.

And then it was over, very quickly, very suddenly—all of it so sudden that the Mayor never left his office at all, but sat staring through the window at the carpet of garbage that surrounded City Hall.

He picked up the telephone and found that it still worked. He dialed his personal line, and across the mountain of garbage the electrical impulses flickered and the telephone rang in Professor Hepplemeyer's study.

“Hepplemeyer here,” the professor said.

“The Mayor.”

“Oh, yes. I heard. I'm terribly sorry. Has it stopped?”

“It appears to have stopped,” the Mayor said.

“Ernest Silverman?”

“No sign of him,” the Mayor said.

“Well, it was thoughtful of you to call me.”

“There's all that garbage.”

“About two million tons?” the professor asked gently.

“Give or take some. Do you suppose you could move the hoop—”

The professor replaced the phone and went into the kitchen, where his wife was putting together a beef stew.

She asked who had called.

“The Mayor.”

“Oh?”

“He wants the hoop moved.”

“I think it's thoughtful of him to consult you.”

“Oh, yes—yes, indeed,” Professor Hepplemeyer said. But I'll have to think about it.”

“I suppose you will,” she said with resignation.

12
The Cold, Cold Box

A
s always, the annual meeting of the Board of Directors convened at nine o'clock in the morning, on the 10th of December. Nine o'clock in the morning was a sensible and reasonable hour to begin a day's work, and long ago, the 10th of December had been chosen as a guarantee against the seduction of words. Every one of the directors would have to be home for the Christmas holiday—or its equivalent—and therefore the agenda was timed for precisely two weeks and not an hour more.

In the beginning, this had caused many late sessions, sometimes two or three days when the directors met the clock round, with no break for sleep or rest. But in time, as things fell into the proper place and orderly management replaced improvisation, each day's meeting was able to adjourn by four o'clock in the afternoon—and there were even years when the general meeting finished its work a day or two early.

By now, the meeting of the Board of Directors was very matter-of-fact and routine. The big clock on the wall of the charming and spacious meeting room was just sounding nine, its voice low and musical, as the last of the directors found their seats. They nodded pleasantly to each other, and if they were seated close to old friends, they exchanged greetings. They were completely relaxed, neither tense nor uneasy at the thought of the long meeting that lay ahead of them.

There were exactly three hundred of these directors, and they sat in a comfortable circle of many tiers of seats—in a room not unlike a small amphitheatre. Two aisles cut through to a center circle or stage about twenty feet in diameter, and there a podium was placed which allowed the speaker to turn in any direction as he spoke. Since the number of three hundred was an arbitrary one, agreed upon after a good deal of trial and error, and maintained as an excellent working size, half the seats in the meeting room were always empty. There was some talk now and then of redesigning the meeting room, but nobody ever got down to doing it and by now the empty seats were a normal part of the decor.

The membership of the Board was about equally divided between men and women. No one could serve under the age of thirty, but retirement was a matter of personal decision, and a reasonable number of members were over seventy. Two thirds of them were in their fifties. Since the Board was responsible for an international management, it was only natural that all nations and races should be represented—black men and white men and brown men and yellow men, and all the shadings and gradations in between. Like the United Nations—they were too modest to make such a comparison themselves—they had a number of official languages (and a system of simultaneous translation), though English was most frequently used.

As a matter of fact, the Chairman of the Board, who had been born in Indo-China, opened this meeting in English, which he spoke very well and with ease, and after he had welcomed them and announced the total attendance—all members present—he said:

“At the beginning of our annual meeting—and this is an established procedure, I may say—we deal with a moral and legal point, the question of Mr. Steve Kovac. We undertake this before the reading of the agenda, for we have felt that this question of Mr. Kovac is not a matter of agenda or business, but of conscience. Of our conscience, I must add, and not without humility; for Mr. Kovac is the only secret of this meeting. All else that the Board discusses, votes upon and decides or rejects, will be made public, as you know. But of Mr. Steve Kovac the world knows nothing; and each year in the past, our decision has been that the world should continue to know nothing about Mr. Kovac. Each year in the past, Mr. Kovac has been the object of a cruel and criminal action by the members of this Board. Each year in the past, it has been our decision to repeat this crime.”

To these words, most of the members of the Board did not react at all—but here and there young men and women showed their surprise, bewilderment and unease, either by expressions on their faces or by low protestations of disbelief. The members of the Board were not insensitive people.

“This year, as in the past, we make this question of Mr. Kovac our first piece of business—because we cannot go onto our other business until it is decided. As in the past, we will decide whether to engage in a criminal conspiracy or not.”

A young woman, a new member of the Board, her face flushed and angry, rose and asked the Chairman if he would yield for a question. He replied that he would.

“Am I to understand that you are serious, Mr. Chairman, or is this some sophomoric prank for the edification of new members?”

“This board is not used to such descriptive terms as sophomoric, as you should know, Mrs. Ramu,” he answered mildly. “I am quite serious.”

The young woman sat down. She bit her lower lip and stared at her lap. A young man arose.

“Yes, Mr. Steffanson?” the Chairman said pleasantly.

The young man sat down again. The older members were gravely attentive, thoughtful without impatience.

“I do not intend to choke off any discussion, and I will gladly yield to any questions,” said the Chairman, “but perhaps a little more about this troublesome matter first. There are two reasons why we consider this problem each year. Firstly, because the kind of crime we have committed in the past is hardly anything to grow indifferent to; we need to be reminded; premeditated crime is a deadly threat to basic decency, and God help us if we should ever become complacent! Secondly, each year, there are new members on this Board, and it is necessary that they should hear all of the facts in the case of Mr. Kovac. This year, we have seven new members. I address myself to them, but not only to them. I include all of my fellow members of this Board.”

Steve Kovac (the Chairman of the Board began) was born in Pittsburgh in the year 1913. He was one of eleven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. This was not too unusual in those days of poverty, ignorance and primitive medicine.

John Kovac, Steve Kovac's father, was a steelworker. When Steve Kovac was six years old, there was a long strike—an attempt on the part of the steelworkers to increase their wages. I am sure you are all familiar with the method of the strike, and therefore I will not elaborate.