I should have known better.

When, in the first appearance of "Pyotr's Story" (a.n.a.log Oct. 12, 1981), I left six riddles unsolved, and published my address at the end of the story, offering a chit good for a free drink at Callahan's to any reader who correctly deduced the answer and the category-.well, let's face it, I did antic.i.p.ate that I might notice a slight bulge in my mail for a while. I mean, I was asking for it, there's no argument there.

Be careful what you ask for; you might receive it.

I used to publish my mailing address regularly in bookreview columns for Galaxy magazine, and each appearance was good for from five to twenty letters a week over the ensuing month. I knew that a.n.a.log had a significantly larger readership than Galaxy, and adjusted my expectations accordingly-I thought. I projected perhaps a hundred responses, a hundred and fifty tops.

I did not keep a fully accurate accounting, but I would estimate that as of February 9, 1982 I had received somewhere between 800 and 1,000 pieces of mail as a result of that fool riddle contest.

As soon as the first sack arrived (that's not hyperbole: I mean a full sack of mail, the first of several), I took in the situation, grasped the full extent of my folly (don't let on; grasping your folly in public is illegal in Nova Scotia), and, with the cool aplomb and courage-under-fire which has made my name a sellword on Wall Street, instantly formed a dynamic plan: I kicked the sack into a corner and fled the country. My wife Jeanne (founder and Artistic Director of Nova Dance Theatre, the finest Modern dance company in Canada) had received a providential invitation to perform with Beverly Brown Dancensemble: Theatre for Bodies And Voices, at the Riverside Dance Festival in what David Letterman refers to as "one of the more interesting cities in the tn-state area," New York-so I threw my suitcase, my typewriter, my child and my Ray Charles tapes into the trunk of the car and went with her. And sacks of mail grew in her dance studio behind us in Halifax (for it was that address I put in a.n.a.log, in a feeble attempt to divert process-servers) ...

And then some helpful soul at DancExchange forwarded all those sacks to us in New York.

Since I had expected to be answering those letters from Canada, where U.S. stamps are worthless, I had carefully requested that respondents enclose an International Reply Coupon (supposed, by law, to be obtainable at any post office in the U.S. or Canada). Some 25 percent of respondents failed to follow this injunction, enclosed U.S. stamps or nothing at all, but forget that a moment: here I am on Manhattan Island in August with about 400 to 500 IRCs in my hands, and I wait in line for an hour and a quarter in the post office (a structure to which the Black Hole of Calcutta is frequently favorably compared for summertime cotiulort), and when finally I stagger up to the window, a surly homunculus with a genuinely incredible goiter informs me, with immense satisfaction, that regulations forbid him to accept more than 10 IRCs at a time. I whip out my calculator: 500 IRCs at 10 per transaction at 1.25 hours per transaction = 62.5 hours on line, or roughly eight days ...

So I burned petrol and wasted cargo s.p.a.ce to haul those sacks back home to Halifax. Where I united them with their less-traveled cousins, which had arrived in our absence, and settled down to answering the G.o.ddammed things ...

Tabulations: Oddly, the ratio of right to wrong answers remained rock constant: every time I stopped and ran subtotals, it ran almost precisely two right answers for every wrong. Call it a 67 percent success rate for the a.n.a.log audience as a group. (Some of the wrong answers were absolutely brilliant!) The only correlation I noted of any significance was that responses which came on university departmental letterhead were usually wrong-and several of the exceptions turned out to be grad students or TAs using their professor's stationery. In other words, holders of tenure at inst.i.tutes of higher education averaged dumber than the general populace or any other discernible group in the sample.

Mother thing I found instructive about all this was the performance of a.n.a.log readers (certainly not an undereducated group) in following the simplest of explicit ~written instructions. I had asked that each respondent enclose a self-addressed envelope or SAE along with the above-mentioned IRC. Now, some few readers claimed ignorance of IRCs, on said that their local postmaster claimed ignorance, and the expedients they-tried instead were many and various.

Three or four sent cash, and of those only one was bright enough to send Canadian cash. (In those balmy days of yesteryear, the Canadian/American exchange rate hovered around par, which meant I took a conversion-fee bath on the money.) But at least 10 percent of the responses I received contained no return postage-and the rate-to-States doubled the month I got home to Halifax. (The royalty I will eventually receive for this particular book you hold in your hands comes to less than the present cost of a Canadian stamp-considerably less if you live in the States. And they're talking about raising the rates again.) Postageless letters that were not particularly amusing or endearing were used to insulate the attic. And 25 percent of respondents enclosed no return-address envelope: same doctrine applied.

It wasn't a total loss, even when you figure in the cost of Xeroxing form letters (one for right answers, one for wrong) and the postage and envelopes I got burned for, and the hours of work-time lost, and the wear and tear on my tongue (did you ever lick a thousand envelopes and several hundred stamps?). For one thing, I took the opportunity to make up a third form letter-a press release listing all the books I had in print and where to get them and such-and folded one into every envelope. For another, I was able to insulate my entire attic and make a start on the root cellar.

For another, the vast majority of the letters I got were delightful!

Some were hilarious. Some were heart-warming. Some were ingenious. Some were touching. Some were enlightening. Remarkably few "faded into the woodwork," became just one-more-G.o.ddam-letter-to-be-processed-in any event, I didn't get any complaints from Mike Callahan regarding the people who came to cash- in their chits. (Of course, I just provided the chit-finding the Place was their problem.) Taken all together, the response pleased me, cheered and encouraged me in my w9rk.

On the other hand~ a substantial number of respondents enclosed riddles of their own-enough to make a life-size fully detailed papier mache replica of the s.p.a.ce Shuttle.

I'm sure they were all disappointed that I didn't try to answer their no-doubt ingenious riddles, but honest to G.o.d, there are thousands!

And that's not the worst. The worst is that the d.a.m.ned responses are still coming in to this day!

a.n.a.log is published all around the planet, with a translation lag that apparently ranges up to a couple of years.

Furthermore, people keep coming across back issues in libraries and second-hand bookstores, stumbling over the riddle-contest, and uttering small cries of delight.

I arbitrarily established a cut-off date, and stopped sending chits some time in mid-1982. (For one thing~ my tab at Callahan's started reaching the proportions of the American National Debt.) I have kept to that-indeed, as you will shortly learn, it is no longer possible for me to supply any chits-but I still feel a faint twinge of guilt every time I get another letter that begins, "Dear Mr. Robinson, I think I've solved Doc Webster's riddles-"

And the last thing I want is to compound the problem here.

So no, I'm not going to publish my mailing address here, and no, I will not issue any more drink-chits, and yes, lam going to put the answers to the unsolved riddles below. If you want to solve them for yourself first, skip them. If you solve them successfully, don't tell me about it. And no, frankly, I'm not overwhelmingly interested in trying to decipher your riddles, however clever and funny they may be. In the immortal words of disc jockey Don Imus, "Keep those cards and letters!"

No, that's not true. I love getting mail, and I need. audience feedback to continue growing in my work. By all means drop me a line in care of Berkley Books-especially if you can find it in your head to enclose SAE and IRC.

Just don't mention riddles.

Or use the word "trilogy."

The Answers to Doc Webster's Riddles: The category is "Male American Politicians," or any variant thereof. The individual answers are: a) irrigated; laser pistol = runneled; ray gun = Ronald Reagan b) n.a.z.i; cook lightly = Jerry; brown = Jerry Brown c) British punk; knowledge, current = Teddy; ken, eddy = Teddy Kennedy d) chicken coop; foreplay = hennery; kissing her = Henry Kissinger e) wealthier; nuts to = richer; nix on = Richard Nixon.

An embarra.s.sing thing happened. Astute readers will have noted that I also left riddle IIe) unsolved. When. the responses started coming in, I discovered that this riddle had proved the hardest: everybody wanted to know who "coffin; baby boy" was. The problem was that I had, by this point, mislaid my first draft of "Pyotr's Story"-and I had forgotten the solution. To my horror, I found that I could not figure it out myself!

After months of shame, I sat bolt upright in bed one morning and realized I had the solution again-so I incorporated it into the story you are about to read, "Involuntary Man's Laughter."

One last word about "Pyotr's Story," though. If by any chance you missed its several respectful salutes to William Goldman, I hope you will seize the next opportunity to run out and purchase his immortal cla.s.sic, The Princess Bride.

CHAPTER 3 Involuntary Man's Laughter.

Some people who hang out at Callahan's Place aren't all there-this is widely known. But a few of them aren't there at all.

Well, obviously they are there, at least ma sense. Otherwise I'd be offering you a paradox, and Sam Webster is the only Doc we have here at Callahan's bar. But if a customer cannot be seen, heard, felt, smelt, or dealt a hand of cards, if he casts no shadow, empties no gla.s.s, and never visits the men's room-can he really be said to be there? Even if you're having a conversation with him at the time?

We have two or three regulars at Callahan's who fit that nondescription: old and dear friends of ours who have -never set foot in the place. One of them, for instance, is a ghost, and I'll tell you about him another time, when we've both had a couple more drinks. But the one I'd like to tell you about right now is a human being-and while I have seen him once, I don't think I ever will again.

It was a Punday Night last year when the Cheerful Charlies showed up looking glum. This was quite unusual, enough so to engage my attention when I caught sight of them both-for the Cheerful Charlies have, quite literally, earned their name.

Doc Webster had already won the Punday compet.i.tion- something he does with about the same consistency with which Mr. T wins arguments. The only way the Doc can possibly lose is if all possible puns on a given topic have been exhausted before it's his turn-and far more often, when everyone else has come up empty, the Doc still has four or five up his sleeve. You might say that our chronic asteismus is iatrogenic ... but of course you probably wouldn't.

Like now, for instance: the evening's topic had been one of those so broad as to seem inexhaustible-"animals"- and owl give ewe the gnus: most of us cats and chicks were falcon hoa.r.s.e as we toad the lion and shrew our gla.s.ses into the fire in sheepish cab.i.t.c.hulation. But Dog Websteer was still game, cheerfoal as venison the springtime, a weaselly grin on his puss that got my goat.

"-always puzzled me," he was saying, "that females of all species except the human seem, at best, utterly disinterested in mating. Most will actively resist it until compelled by glandular pressure, and even then seem to derive little enjoyment from the business. Why, I wondered, should human females alone be blessed with the capacity to enjoy the inevitable?"

A good question. I'd always wondered that myself.

"The answer turns out to be simple. Man is a bald ape."

"Oh, G.o.d," Shorty Steinitz groaned. "Even for you, Doc, that's an awful pun."

The Doc blinked and then grinned. "You misunderstand me, sir-for once the pun was unintentional. No, I mean that man is relatively hairless-whereas, through some s.a.d.i.s.tic quirk of nature, most other male animals are endowed with hairy p.e.n.i.ses. A cat's p.e.n.i.s, for instance, is covered with short, spiky hairs-which face in the wrong direction."

Murmurs of surprise and sympathy ran around the tavern; a few ladies winced.

"Small wonder, then," the Doc went on, folding his hands across his expansive belly, "that a female cat doesn't much feel like putting out-for any tom d.i.c.kin' hairy." The horrified silence stretched out for nearly five seconds and then we awarded him the Supreme Accolade: as one we left our drinks where they stood, held our noses, and fled screaming into the night.

It was a nice night out there (not that that matters to any friend of Mickey Finn these days); I found that I was in no hurry to follow the rest of the gang back inside. My drink was perfectly safe where it was, and I wanted a few minutes alone with myself. I was feeling ... well, "troubled" would be too strong a word, but I don't know a word for the shading between there and "content." Just one of those mild itches of the soul that a man doesn't particularly feel like sharing with all his Mends, a pa.s.sing impulse to toot for a few bars on the old self-pity horn.

It was, perhaps inevitably, just as I was finishing a contemplative cigarette and saying "Sometime again," to the full moon that the Cheerful Charlies drove up in their '54 Thunderbird and wedged it into the confusion. (By honored custom, the parking lot at Callahan's always looks as though a platoon of psychopaths had turned a game of b.u.mper Cars into an unresolvable snarl and wandered off. A half-dozen times a night we all have to pile outside to let somebody out, and it doesn't inconvenience us in the least.) Just the sight of their splendid old heap cheered me up some.

Neither of them is named Charlie; that's their professional designation and job description. They cheer people up for a living. You may have seen their ad in the paper: DEPRESSED? Gamble a little time on The Cheerful Charlies. $25 if we cheer you up, nothing at all if we don't: you decide! 24-hr. emergency service available (rates double from 10 P.M. to 8 A.M.) Call CHE-ERUP for an appointment: What have you got to lose?

And, of course, their business card sums it up even more succinctly: HAVE FUN, WILL TRAVEL.

They did not found the business. That was done by Tom Flannery a few years back. Tom was one of the most infectiously cheerful men I ever met, and he had a certain natural advantage in cheering people up: at the time he founded his enterprise, Tom had about eight months to go on the nine-month sentence his doctors had given him (and did in fact eventually die on schedule almost to the day).

He didn't talk about it much, but it made a terrific holecard for dealing with cases of intractable self-pity. How many people have the gall to be depressed around a smiling fellow who says he'll be dead before your tax-return comes back? Tom hadn't expected to make money at his job-but to his surprise he left a sizable estate.

The present Cheerful Charlies began as clients of Tom's. Each was depressed by the same two things: both were chronically unemployed, and both bore names of the sort that parents ought to be prevented by law or by vigilante violence from giving to their children. The Moore family p.r.o.nounced their name "More," and saw fit to name their son Les; while the Gluehams, with a malignant case of the cutes, named their daughter Merry.

The coincidence of names was just too much for Tom Flannery to resist, I guess. He convinced them both that one of the best ways to cheer yourself up is to try and cheer other people up (it worked for him, after all), and took them both on as apprentices, thus solving their unemployment problem. As he must have hoped., they fell in love-and when they married, they solved the question of does-she-take-his-last-name by swapping even-steven. With irresistible appropriateness, she became Merry Moore and he became Les Glueham. They carried on Tom's business after he died, and the story of their names itself is sometimes sufficient to get a client smiling.

Les and Merry have no set routine, but rather a whole spectrum of techniques which they tailor to fit the individual case. They are wise and warm people, with professionally tuned empathic faculties, and they seem to have made a remarkably comfortable marriage. One of their early cases, for instance, was a lonely old widower who had lost all his joy in living: after all their best efforts had failed, Merry and Les talked it over, decided that it might help and that in this specific case it probably couldn't hurt-and then Merry took the old gentleman to bed. It did the trick, and since then they have (very infrequently) had occasions to use lovemaking as cheer-up therapy, singly or together. It has always worked so far, and they always refuse their fee in such cases. This is both to avoid breaking laws, and to motivate themselves to exhaust all other possibilities before resorting to Old Reliable-But-Risky; it inhibits the human tendency to rationalize oneself into the sack. But some cases of depression will yield to no other medicine.

And if even that doesn't work, Merry and Les bring 'em to Callahan's Place.

But they didn't appear to have a client with them tonight. They got out of the T-Bird, a little slowly I thought, and came my way. Merry was carrying something that looked like a big piece of stereo gear, and Les seemed to have a hardcover book with him. "Hey, Jake-what's the matter?" Merry called to me.

"G.o.d's teeth," I said under my breath. Then aloud: "From twenty feet across a parking lot by moonlight you can tell I've got something on my mind. From what? The echo of an expression I was wearing before you pulled up? You people are incorrigibly good at what you do, you know that?"

"Ouch," Les said softly.

They had almost reached me by now, and the third thing I saw was that Les's hardcover was a boxed videotape, and the second thing I saw was that Merry's stereo was a VCR, and the first thing I saw was that Les and Merry were astonishingly, most uncharacteristically-miserably depressed. Their expressions, their stride, their body language, all said that they were so far down that up was for astronomers; they had, to quote a song, of mine, the Industrial Strength Blues.

"Jesus Christ on a Moped, what's the matter with you two?" An unpleasant thought began to form. "Oh h.e.l.l, you didn't lose one, did you?" That happened a year ago, a sleeping-pill job, and it took us all about a week to put the Cheerful Charlies back together again. It is the occupational risk, and a failure rate as low as one a year means that the Cheerfuls are supernaturally good at what they do.

(They have to be; there is no malpractice insurance for their racket.) "No," Merry answered, "not yet anyway."

"Well, tell me about it."

"You tell us yours first."

"Mine? Hey, on a scale of ten I'm a point two five and you guys are up in the eights-and-I think it's a log scale, like the Richter."

"Come on, give. If it's a simple one, great: we could use the confidence right now."

I shrugged. "Okay. I was just going a few rounds with envy."

"Of whom?" Merry asked, setting the VCR down on the Datsun I was using for a bench.

"The Doc."

"I like to make people laugh. So I troll for the best jokes I can find, make up the best ones I can devise, work on my timing, try to work the audience into it and use their feedback-and it works pretty well, most times they laugh, or groan, or whatever I was looking for. The Doc could recite his Social Security Number, deadpan, and lay 'em on the floor. d.a.m.nit, I tell better jokes than he does, I even think I tell 'em better-and he gets more laughs. With his incredibly tortuous set-ups and his corny voice and his Paleozoic punchlines, we all fall down laughing. Even me! He's just an intrinsically funny man-and I'm just a guy who tries to be funny."

"And the worst of it," Les said, "is that he's such a totally nice guy, you can't even dislike him for it."

"Bullseye."

Merry grinned, a ghost of her usual grin. "This is ironic." She and Lea shared a glance.

I shook my head ruefully. "For you guys, no doubt. So okay: in the words of Mr. Ribadhee to the Hip Ghand, 'Straighten me, 'cause I'm ready."

"Jake," Les said, "a few years ago you lent us a novel called Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny.. Remember it?"

"Sure. An SF novel about a world patterned after Hindu mythology."

"Right-and then along came Buddha to kick over the applecart. Now, remember how the people who had become 'G.o.ds' were each able, at will, to take on an Aspect and raise up an Attribute?"

"Yama could become Death, and drink your life with his eyes, Mara's Aspect was illusion, and his Attribute was to cloud your mind with a gesture. And so forth."

"You've got it. Well, it's like that with the Doc. His Aspect is Humor. In a figurative, but very real sense, Doc Webster is Humor-at least when he chooses to take on his Aspect. And his Attribute is the ability to make you p.i.s.s yourself laughing. Envying him is like envying a flower because it never needs deodorant."

"Huh," I said. "I think I get you. It's silly to envy the G.o.ds."

"Especially when you are one."

"Jake," Merry said, "when was the last. time someone interrupted you while you were singing?"

"Well ... " I couldn't bring such an instance to mind. People do tend to quiet down when I take my guitar out of her case.

Les did his uncanny Martin Mull imitation. "Remember the Great Folk Music Scare of the Fifties?" he quoted. "That s.h.i.t almost caught on.' Jake, haven't you noticed that you're about the only folksinger left on Long Island who can still find regular work? Don't you know why you don't need electronics and a thousand watts and a rhythm section to get gigs? Man, when you pick up Lady Macbeth and put her across your lap and open your mouth, you take on your Aspect-and when you wring her neck and coax sound out of her sounding-box and sing along with her, you're raising up your Attribute. You take people out of themselves, for as long as you choose to go on singing. Doc Webster is Humor, Jake, and you are Music. Don't you know that?"

I thought it over-and suddenly grinned. "How did you guys ever get the name Cheerful Charlies?"

"Maybe because we own the complete works of Walt Kelly," Les hazarded. "Come on, let's go inside."

"Wait-what about your problem? Cheering-up ought to be like breastfeeding, you know, mutually satisfactory"

"t.i.t for tot?" Merry asked innocently.

Les mock-glared at her. "I think our problem should be taken inside," he said. "We need a group head on this one." So we went in and took chairs at the bar.

Mike Callahan came ambling over, wiping his big hands on his ap.r.o.n, smiling broadly when he saw the Cheerfuls. He took out one of the non-safety stick matches he imports from Canada, struck it on his stubbly chin, and put a fresh light on one of the stunted malodorous cigars he imports from h.e.l.l. "Well, if it ain't the Beerful Barleys! What'll it be, folks?"

I finished the beer I had left on the counter and answered for all three of us. "Bless us father, for we have thirst." Callahan nodded and made up three portions of G.o.d's Blessing. It is called Irish Coffee by the vulgar, and I'm told there are actually places where they don't sugar the rim of the gla.s.s before making it-but we who drink at Callahan's Place have a proper respect for the finer things in life. "Here you go, folks." I could tell from his expression that Mike had picked up on the Cheerfuls' state of mind, and wanted to know what they were down about. But ... look, I've been hanging out at Callahan's for a good many years now. But if I walked in tomorrow night with a toilet bowl tattooed on my forehead, Mike Callahan would fail to notice it unless and until I brought the matter up. Mike likes that people should open up and talk about their troubles in his bar-and so he has given standing orders to Fast Eddie the piano player that anyone caught asking snoopy questions is to be discouraged with a blackjack.

Occasionally, though, he will allow himself to lead a witness. "So how's life been treating you?" he asked as he Blessed us.

Merry answered obliquely. "Mike, is that babble box in the back room still operational?"

The big Irishman blinked. "Well, yeah. I use it for a monitor on my microprocessor."

Callahan's Place has been fully wired for cable television-but the only times in my memory that the tube has ever been hooked up for viewing and- switched on were coronations, a.s.sa.s.sinations, s.p.a.ce shots, and the final episode of "M*A*S*H." Its operation requires either the unanimous vote of all customers present, or-even more rarely- whim of Mike Callahan.

Merry lifted the VCR from her lap and set it on the bar.

"Would you whip it out, Mike? We want to call a meeting." The red-headed barkeep was as mystified and curious as I was-I could tell-but he just nodded.