Stories From The Old Attic - Robert Harris (ebook reader 8 inch .TXT) 📗

carried the cure. He went gladly and confidently to the chief of the tribe and announced his ability to remedy the ills of the people, expecting to be praised and welcomed for his offer of help. To his surprise, however, the chief rebuffed him with contempt and asserted boldly that there was nothing at all wrong with his people, that they had always acted that way since he could remember, that it was the human condition, and that they were all perfectly happy. Then, after ordering the doctor to leave immediately, the chief jumped out of a tree into the tribal latrine and was unavailable for any further discussion.

Substantially taken aback but firm in his resolution, the doctor decided to take his offer directly to the natives. Most received him with laughter, contempt, or violence; many ignored him; a few beat him up; some said he just wanted to get at their firewood; most said they, like the chief, felt fine. But a dozen or so natives came to him privately where he had been tossed into the bushes after his most recent beating, and asked him for the medicine.

“We are somehow not really happy living like this,” they said, “even though it is the way of the world.” The doctor gladly gave them the medicine, and in a few days they began to show remarkable signs of recovery. No longer desiring to eat dirt or jump out of trees, these natives corrected their diet, improved in health, and began to apply themselves to such activities as making baskets, repairing their huts, caring for their children, and gathering food. Some even began to question the wisdom of collecting stacks of wood more than twenty feet high.

Such wild, unusual, and anti-social behavior did not go unnoticed by the other natives, who quickly ostracized the cured natives from the tribal camp, calling them enemies of the current system. And even though many of the delirious natives began to suspect that the cured natives were somehow better off than they, and that there might be more to living than sleeping on dunghills and finding new trees to jump out of, resistance to the cure was strong. First, almost all the educated and respectable people—the chief and his council—spoke against it, and the example of their sophistication and wealth (the chief’s woodpile was ninety feet high) was very strong. Many others, from the gossips to the wise man, said that the old way was right, and that the tribe had always behaved that way. There were few real individuals in the tribe, so that even though scores would have been glad to try the cure, they were afraid to stand against the rest and did what everyone else was doing, which was nothing.

The witch doctor had a stronger argument against the new regimen. He pointed out that the cure was harder to take than the cures he dispensed. The Eastern doctor’s cure was painful, and though many of the witch doctor’s cures caused vomiting, hives, convulsions, and hallucinations, the natives were all familiar with these effects and attributed them to swallowing the medicine wrong, rather than to the medicine itself. But who knew what the fate of the cured natives would eventually be?

The cured natives said they felt fine, but they might have been lying. And who was fool enough to trust an outsider, a stranger, rather than the familiar witch doctor, who cursed those who took the cure because they rejected his medicines as false and pernicious? The cured natives said that a commitment must be made to trust the Eastern doctor; this was too difficult or uncertain a step for many, especially in the face of the social pressure around them. A decision accompanied by fear, decried by the important, and rejected by society could not be made by everyone.

After the time of his stay was over, the Eastern doctor showed the cured natives how to compound the medicine and then left. As generations passed, most of the natives remained loyal to the dunghill, but a few took the cure.

 

Love

Otto and his girlfriend Brissa were driving merrily down the middle of the road one rainy night on their way to a party when they approached a little old lady trying vainly to change a flat tire.

“Gee, that’s too bad,” said Brissa.

“Yeah,” agreed Otto.

“Maybe we should help her,” added Brissa.

“We? You mean me. I’m not going to get wet. Besides, what good would it do me to help her? I don’t even know who she is, and she probably doesn’t have any money, or at least not enough to make getting wet worthwhile.”

“But it would make you feel good to do a good deed,” Brissa offered.

“Well, it makes me feel good to stay in here and keep dry,” snapped Otto.

“It would make me happy, Otto,” said Brissa, in her softest, most feminine voice.

“You? Boy, you’re awfully selfish. Always thinking about yourself. You know, I wasn’t put here just to cater to your stupid, idle whims.” As his anger rose, Otto sped up a little, just in time to hit a large puddle near the little old lady, drenching her in a sheet of muddy water.

“Stop, Otto!” Brissa cried, exasperated. “I’ll help her.”

“Aw shut up,” Otto snarled. “Do you think I’m going to walk into the party with a girl who’s all wet and disheveled, looking like a drowned rat? You want people to laugh at me? Think of somebody besides yourself for a change. Now fix your makeup and keep your mouth shut.”

 

Indecision

Once upon a time a dozen or so curious travelers rented a boat for a cruise out to an enchanted island, where, it was said, Athena sat on her throne dispensing rich gifts to all. The trip was smooth enough for awhile, with only a few rough seas to endure and an occasional shoal to avoid. But then one morning one of the passengers discovered that the boat was taking on water.

“We’re sinking, we’re sinking!” some of the people cried.

“No,” said the captain, “the flow is not yet so fast. If we will get some buckets and bail the water out, everything will be all right.” This solution seemed simple enough.

However, a dissension soon arose among the travelers about who would do the bailing, and what buckets would be used. “Allow me,” said one. “It is my duty in this circumstance to bail, and I have here a very solid bucket suitable to the task.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said another, “but I must be the bailer. It is written in the laws of the sea that a person of my parts must do this labor. Besides, I have a superior bucket.”

“Wait,” said a third. “This gentleman’s bucket is all right, but I think I should be allowed to help bail, since I am a fellow passenger.”

Everyone adduced many weighty, true, and worthy philosophical arguments for his position, and cited laws, ethics, and political and procedural rules, but no person succeeded in convincing any other. Soon, therefore, the discussion ceased to remain at this level, but grew rather heated, and shouts and aspersions began to fill the air, with perhaps even a trace of ill will.

“I refuse to allow anyone to bail this boat unless he uses this bucket, which, as any fool can see, is the only true bucket, clearly superior to all others,” screamed one.

“And I absolutely refuse to see this boat bailed unless I can take part in the work,” yelled another.

Now these passengers all had some interest in seeing the boat bailed, and most hoped that this impasse could be overcome to the satisfaction of everyone. But since no one knew exactly what to do, nothing was done.

“Perhaps we will get to the enchanted island without bailing the boat,” hoped one.

It was not to be so. While the travelers continued to debate, some suggesting unworkable alternatives and the others remaining unyielding, the boat continued to fill, until at one sudden and horrifying moment, the water rushed in over the gunwales and across the deck. The hold filled rapidly, and in spite of every man’s frenzied efforts, the boat sank, carrying the stubborn but now too-late-repentant travelers, together with their screaming wives and virgin daughters, to the very bottom of the sea.

 

The Limit

One day a man was walking through a forest and got lost. “Nothing could be worse than this,” he said. Then it got dark. “Lost in the dark. What could be worse?” he asked. Then it got cold. “Now nothing could possibly be worse,” he said as he shivered and stumbled around. But then it began to rain. “How could anything be worse than this?” he asked himself. But then the rain turned to snow and the wind came up. “This is absolutely the worst possible thing that could ever happen,” he said. “There’s nothing left.” But then he fell and broke his arm. “Well, that’s it,” he thought. “This is the worst of all.” But as he lay in the snow, a tree branch broke off and fell on him, breaking both his legs. “This is worse than the worst,” he thought. “But at least nothing else can happen.” But then he heard the sound of wolves coming his way. The noise was so startling that the man awoke and discovered that he had been dreaming. “What a dream I had,” he said, shaking himself. “Nothing could be worse.”

 

How Sir Reginald Helped the King

Once upon a time in the kingdom of Plebnia, the king was having a real problem with his letters to the outlying regions. His messages always seemed to arrive too late. No matter how early he mailed them, his Christmas cards arrived in July and his Valentines arrived on December 24, creating confusion and uncertainty among the people and giving the Problem Element an excuse to arouse the Rabble against him.

After some thought, the king had an idea: he would give ten million greedos (their monetary unit) and the hand of his totally gorgeous daughter to the person who could make his mail arrive the fastest. His loyal subjects immediately rushed to solve the problem, setting themselves to this task with an enthusiasm that an objective observer might well have described as manic. People ran back and forth, up and down, muttering, “Move the mail, shove the mail, fling it, sling it. Run. Hurry. Shoot the mail, toss it, heave it,” and such like.

Included in the many and varied offered solutions were proposals to build a rocket sled, crisscross the countryside with pneumatic tubes, use fast horses stimulated by strong coffee, borrow a dragster from the sports arena, set up a reliable airline, make a jet-powered conveyor belt, or just use ordinary mailmen under the threat of immediate, violent death if they delayed the mail.

However, Sir Reginald, the young, handsome hero of this tale, out of the goodness of his heart, his love for the king, and the excitement of the challenge (and scarcely considering the money or the girl more than four or five hours a day), decided to take a few minutes to examine the problem before he tried to solve it.

“Just what is it the king wants to do?” he asked himself. “He wants to send his mail quickly. And just what is mail? It’s a message, information. Information, hmm. Information can be sent electronically, by wire or transmission. Yes. Hmm. Yes—A transmitter on one end and a printer on the other end would permit the king’s mail to be sent at the speed of light. That should pretty much squash Sir Rodney’s proposal to use battery-powered frisbees.”

Well, what can we say? The brilliance of this proposal was so obvious that Sir Reginald was declared the winner and the plan was immediately instituted. The