Cosmic Laughter by Joe Haldeman

Author:Joe Haldeman [Haldeman, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Humour, Anthologies
ISBN: 0030069319
Publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Published: 1973-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

But there’s always an internal logic. That’s the guiding principle of my success. Always—always look for the internal logic. All else follows.”

He steepled his fingers reminiscently. “I remember a client who thought he had a Venusian trapped in his washing machine. Very logical, if you stop to think about it. However”— Wickes pursed his lips sorrowfully—“it developed that he was quite mad. A pity, too. Such a lovely idea. Anyway, I meant the idea of using an H-bomb was ridiculous. The best that such a bomb could do would be to vaporize the city and possibly the nearer suburbs. Hardly worth worrying about.”

“He didn’t actually say it was an H-bomb,” Coleman said tiredly. “I just assumed that’s what it was. After all, he did say he wanted to destroy this universe.”

“Ah!” Wickes’s eyes gleamed. “Not the Universe? Just this universe?”

“He made a point of that. He said there are an infinite number of probable universes. He just wants to destroy the best of all possible universes—this one.”

“Undoubtedly paranoid,” Wickes commented.

“Of course. This is part of his therapy. He’s insane.”

“Then this isn’t his universe?”

“I should think not. The cure wouldn’t be of much use if he destroyed the universe in which he exists, would it?”

Wickes pursed his lips. “That doesn’t necessarily follow. Why, I remember—”

Coleman leaped to his feet and leaned forward, bracing his hands on the desk. “Don’t! Don’t keep on reminiscing! That thing says it’s going to detonate this Tuesday. You’ve got to figure a way to defuse it.”

“Patience, patience,” Wickes chided. “It never pays to lose one’s head about these things.”

He unfolded his cadaverous six-foot-seven frame from behind the desk, secured a trench coat, black wool scarf and stained snap-brim felt hat from the top of a battered filing cabinet.

“I really should smoke a pipe,” he mused as he donned the garments, “but I do think the coat and hat are enough of a concession to convention, don’t you?”

“I don’t give a damn if you wear pink tights and fly through the air,” Coleman snorted. “Just do something about that bomb in my bathtub.”

Wickes gestured limply toward the door.

“I can see,” he said, as they walked through the hall, their feet evoking protesting squeaks from the curling boards of the floor, “that you don’t appreciate the essential beauty of the situation.”

“Beauty? How would you like a bomb in your bathtub?”

“Not the point at all,” Wickes reproved. “Now this much reminds me of the client who had a scheme to psychoanalyze his great-great-great-grandfather. Had a theory that neuroses were transmitted genetically. Well, he wanted me to ascertain the old gentleman’s whereabouts on a certain day in the early 1830s and—”

Coleman was looking wildly to the right and left as they descended the stairs. Wickes decided to ignore his distress. Besides, the Adventure of the Retroactive Psychoanalysis, as he was fond of calling it, helped him develop the proper mood.

He was a little annoyed, as they shared a taxi crosstown, that Coleman displayed such a lamentable lack of interest in bearing his proper share of the conversation.

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