The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [103]
“My name? It’s a joke, of course.” In keeping with his incredibly elaborate meld his voice was preadolescent high-pitched, but there was nothing childlike about his diction. Nor the gaze that he used to pin her in place.
“I wanted something appropriately absurd and incongruous to fit my chosen Meld, which self-evidently is also a joke. How more amusing to live life than to make your own physicality into a permanent gag? How better to fit in with the rest of the Cosmos, which is also a joke? Read your Melville.” Boyish, hairless arms spread wide to encompass everything as he tilted back his head and looked upward. “All of this, all of existence, is a gag, a trick, a hoax that our genes devised to keep us from going crazy from thinking about it too much.” Lowering his eyes and dropping his arms, he favored her with a lopsided grin.
It was then and there that she came to the conclusion that their host was at least half mad.
“God doesn’t play dice with the universe,” he continued, reiterating an old and usually misunderstood quote. “He plays practical jokes with it. Didn’t you know? That’s what the universe is: a witticism, a one-liner with a many-googooplexed set of variations, designed to amuse its inhabitants and alleviate their boredom. Anyone who makes even a casual study of the cosmic neighborhood sees that it’s nothing but sham, pretense, and fraud pressed into the service of untrammeled hilarity. The cosmic con.” He leaned back in the soft cooling bulk of the chair. “Given that consensus I consider Wizwang, as a name, to be positively conservative.”
To Whispr their host’s declamation was nothing more than incomprehensible rant, but Ingrid found herself intrigued despite herself. “If all of it, if the entire cosmos, is nothing more than a deception and a joke, then what are we?”
Wizwang was clearly pleased by her interest. “Us? Isn’t it obvious? We’re the punch line. Through our activities and by our actions we reassert the truth of it every day.”
Interesting as the ravings of the partially mad man (mad boy?) were, she and Whispr had not come all this way and expended so much effort just to wile away the day in barmy philosophical explication.
“Did Ginnyy tell you why we need your help?”
Sequestered deep within his womblike chair, he shook his head. Boyish locks fluttered. “She said you seemed candid and sincere, that your request would interest me, and that you could pay. You have five minutes to confirm all of those things or I release the bees.”
Finally, Whispr thought. Something he could relate to. “You keep talking about bees. Is beekeeping a hobby or something?”
Their host’s laserlike gaze shifted to the other Meld in the room. “Yes, but it’s not mine: it’s theirs. The bees keep me, I don’t keep them.”
Whispr eyed the boy-Meld blankly. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s because you don’t understand bees. Few people do. I much prefer their company to that of my fellow delusional primates.” He jerked a thumb toward the bow. “They tend to stay forward. Unlike humans, they fully understand and are in complete harmony with their place in the ongoing cosmic joke. That’s why unlike us they’re only a minor anecdote and not a punch line.”
Flowers, Ingrid realized with a start. The drifting houseboat was covered in flowers. It was not all camouflage, then. At the risk of pushing their host farther from brilliance and deeper into madness, she voiced another query.
“Your bees, do you talk to them?”
“All the time,” Wizwang assured her cheerfully.
“And—do they answer back?”
“Depends on what the day’s buzz is.”
She hesitated, smiled, lost the smile, ended up uncertain. “You’re joking with me again.”
“That would mean there are jokes within jokes, doctor. Like bacteria inside cells within bodies. The bees and mes, it’s a symbiotic relationship.” He grinned at her, a childish grin that was anything but. “You really want to sit there and spend the limited time I’ve carved out for you talking about honey production?”
More unsettled than she cared to admit, she fumbled with