Well, of course, by the time the b.o.o.b tube was hot and the VCR connected, the Cheerfuls had the undivided attention of everyone in the room. Callahan pa.s.sed around fresh drinks for those who needed them, and we sat back to see what the Cheerfuls had for us.

"Folks," Merry said, popping the tape into the deck and laying her finger on the PLAY b.u.t.ton, "we've got a client we don't know what to do with, and we'd like to ask your help."

There was a ragged chorus of reply. "Sure,"

"Of course,"

"You got it," and-, from Long-Drink McGonnigle in the corner, "Whyn't you just bring him or her around?'

Merry looked pained. "Ordinarily we would. But this case is a little unique, and we thought it might be advisable if we prepared you first. You may not be able to help us, and if you can't it'll hurt worse than not trying."

"I am offended," the Drink said, only half-kidding. "This here is Callahan's Place. Did you need to prepare us before you brought around that guy with no jaw?"

"No," Merry conceded, "and you were all splendid. But this is different."

"We just have to be sure," Las said. "This guy is right on the edge. So here's the deal: the tape Merry is about to run lasts about two minutes. If you can all watch it all the way through in dead silence-without a -single sound- we'll bring him around tomorrow night. Deal?"

"This tape is of your client?' Callahan asked.

"That's right."

"Piece of cake," Long-Drink stated. "Fire it up."

Merry nodded, and pushed down the play b.u.t.ton- and we all fell down laughing.

She stopped the tape, and the laughter chopped off raggedly, leaving a stunned silence.

She reached to start it again, and we redoubled our determination not to laugh ... and within five seconds the last of us had collapsed again in helpless, horrified laughter.

She stopped and started it once more, and this time I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood, and again I could not prevent myself from whooping with laughter. Nor could any of us-Callahan included.

"You see why your problem outside seemed so ironic to us, Jake," Merry murmured, stopping the tape for the last time and popping it up out of the machine. I nodded, thunderstruck.

Did you ever find yourself in a situation where it is hideously inappropriate to laugh-and you just can't help yourself? It is a horrid sensation, much like s.h.i.tting your pants. Now I began to understand why the Cheerfuls weren't. Imagine if Doc Webster literally couldn't help being funny ...

"What de f.u.c.k was dat?" Fast Eddie breathed.

"That," Doc Webster said grimly, "was the worst case of Tourette's Syndrome I ever saw in my life."

"Doc," Long-Drink said indignantly, "are you trying to tell me that that was some kind of disease? What kind of guy do you think G.o.d is, anyway?'

So the Doc told us all about Turette's Syndrome. n.o.body knows what causes it. You may have seen d.i.c.k Cavett doing a public-service commercial about it, late at night when the network has run out of paying customers. I had-and recognized the symptoms almost as quickly as the Doc had-but it was hard to imagine that there could be an unhappier victim anywhere in the world than the Cheerfuls' client; he was afflicted with an extremely exaggerated version of the syndrome.

The symptoms of Tourette's include involuntary twitching, grunting and barking. No sufferer is happy with it- but this young fellow just happened to have a recurring twitch that looked exactly like what might be produced by the greatest comedian in the world going flat out for a laugh, and his grunts sounded precisely like a gorilla making love, and his constant barking was not only uncannily canine, but issued from a face which looked more like a c.o.c.ker spaniel's than even early-period Ringo Starr did. The overall effect was devastatingly-diabolically-hilarious; the three symptoms, funny enough separately, heterodyned together.

"His name is Billy Walker, and he's eighteen years old," Las said. "The disease came on at age fifteen-it usually hits the young-and the usual palliatives, Haldol and so forth, don't help him in the slightest. Unlike most sufferers, he can't suppress or control his symptoms, even for a short time. This tape was made by a couple of specialists from Johns Hopkins, and they had to leave the room while the camera was rolling or they would have spoiled the audio track. For the last two years Billy has lived shut up in a little cottage in Rocky Point, supported by his parents. The only friend he's had since the onset was a blind and deaf guy he met at Hopkins. They lived together for a year. The guy died two weeks ago, and Billy saw our ad and got in touch with us."

"And now I don't know what we're going to do for him," Merry finished sadly.

"How'd he get in touch with you?" I asked.

Merry looked even sadder. "I hate to admit this. He called us three times on the phone, and each time we just a.s.sumed that it was a gag call. The third time, Les got mad and told him off-so he sent us a letter."

"How could he hold a pen steady enough with a twitch like that?"

"He couldn't. He typed the letter, timing the twitches."

"Jesus."

"As if things weren't bad enough, of course, he happens to be extremely intelligent and sensitive, with the remnants of what was once a terrific sense of humor."

"You've spent time with him?" Callahan asked.

"With great difficulty, about half an hour," Meny said. "The longest I could go without giggling was about ten or twenty seconds, and eventually I gave up, a.s.sured him that I had something terrific up my sleeve, and got out of there.

My ribs still hurt. There's something about that bark that you just can't get used to. Look, does anyone here have any idea what we could do for this poor son of a b.i.t.c.h? He's so d.a.m.ned lonely that the tears pour down your face while you're laughing, honest to G.o.d."

There was a general rumble of sad negation. "Beats the h.e.l.l out of me."

"Help the poor guy do himself in as painlessly as possible."

"Maybe it'll go away ... in time."

"Find a whole lot of blind and deaf guys ... nab, that's no good."

Las and Merry looked more and more downcast.

"I think I got it," Callahan said, and they both looked around sharply, hope beginning to form. "Hey, Drink! Lend me your copper-topper a minute, will you?"

The McGonnigle, puzzled but willing, tossed Mike the night-watchman's cap that he wears off-duty (because it looks so much like a policeman's hat that he is never ever pa.s.sed, cut off, or tailgated on the highway). Mike caught it, opened the cash register and took out a fistful of bills, dropped them into the hat.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he boomed, "I'm looking for about three hundred bucks." And he pa.s.sed the hat to me.

I looked around, saw there were about fifty or sixty of us present, and tossed in a fin. Then I remembered how many of the regulars had lost jobs lately, and added another five, and pa.s.sed the hat on.

When it got back to Callahan it was overflowing with cash. He totaled it up, and it came to four and a quarter. He beamed around at us all. "Thanks, folks. The cash register just closed for the night." And he began a bucket-brigade of fresh drinks for everyone present.

"Whaddya gonna do wit do cabbage, Boss?" Fast Eddie asked.

"You'll see tomorrow night, Eddie. Or-maybe the night after, it might take a while to set up."

"Set up what?" Las and Merry chorused.

"Meet me here tomorrow at noon and I'll show-you," Callahan promised.

The next evening was Fireside Fill-More Night, on which Fast Eddie and I traditionally jam together. There were four people missing that I had expected to see: the Cheerfuls, Eddie and Callahan himself. Tom Hauptinann, the secondstring bartender, could tell us nothing except that Mike had called him late in. the day and asked him to fill in. So I did a solo, and it went well enough ... but halfway through I got an idea, and invited Doc Webster up to do a bunch of comedy songs-and we brought the house down together.

I pulled in the next night at about a quarter to eight.

Callahan was there in his usual place behind the bar, and Tom Hauptmann was with him. That was a little odd: Mike usually only needs help on weekends, when the crowd is thickest, and there weren't enough customers tonight to justify two barkeeps. The TV (no, not Bill Gerrity; I mean the television) was hack on the bartop, but the station it was tuned to didn't seem to be on the air; horizontal stripes chased each other up its face. Callahan saw me come in, sized me up with a glance and had a shot of Bushmill's and a beer ready by the time I reached him. As usual, it was just what I'd have ordered if he'd given me a chance. "Evening, Jake."

"Hi, Mike. How'd you make out on that Billy Walker thing?"

He drew on his cheroot. "We'll find out together at nine o'clock."

"Okay, be mysterious." I sipped and chased a few times, enjoying the contrast of tastes and textures. "Hey, where's the blackboard? This is Riddle Night, isn't it?"

On Riddle Night, one of us makes up riddles and the rest of us try and unscramble them. Each solved riddle costs the Riddlermaster / Riddlemistress a drink; each unresolved riddle is a free drink for him/her. Most often we use the cla.s.sic "Invisible Idiot" or -mangled-translation format. You must have heard the old dodge about the translator who rendered "out of sight, out of mind" literally as "invisible idiot." Like that. For example, "festive, meathooks; finish second' would be correctly deciphered as "gala, hands; place" or "Callahan's Place." Semicolons mark the end of a word, commas separate parts of a single word. They can get quite tricky- it once took me months to translate "coffin; baby boy" as Paul Newman. Ordinarily the Riddlemaster (last week's champ) would have had at least half a dozen riddles already chalked up on a big blackboard by the door for study-but last week's champ was Callahan himself, and he hadn't even trotted out the board yet. "We'll get to them later, too," he said, and wandered off to replenish the free lunch.

So I washed down my curiosity with the world's oldest whiskey (they got their charter to distill in 1608) and listened to Fast Eddie st.i.tch his way through a medley of Eubie B jake, Willie the Lion, Pinetop Smith, and Memphis Slim. Eddie had to get special hammers for his piano; the thumbtacks used to keep falling out. I was mildly sorry I'd left my guitar at home; I'd missed my weekly jam with him.

The joint filled up while he played, and our spirits danced to his merry tune. When Eddie's on a roll like that, people tend to shut up and dig it. Once a loud newcomer distracted the runty little piano man in the middle of "Tricky Fingers." Eddie got the sap from his boot and pegged it across the room, laid the fellow out, and d.a.m.ned if the sap didn't bounce back right to his hand-and not a note did he fluff during the procedure. They raise 'em tough in Red Hook. About the time my hands were getting sore from clapping time with him, Eddie went into a cla.s.sic bar-room walkout and nailed it shut behind him, to thunderous applause. A storm of empty gla.s.ses converged on the fireplace and shattered together in tribute, and the two bartenders were busy for a time. And then Callahan called for order. I glanced at my watch; it was nearly nine.

"Ladies and gentlemen and regular customers," he announced, "tonight is Riddle Night. By our customs, I am Riddlemaster, on account of I wiped the floor with you mugs last week. But I'm yielding the floor-or at least part of the counter-to a guest Riddlemaster." He reached under the bar, and took out a flat object patch corded to the back of the television. His microprocessor keyboard. He did something to it, and the stripes stopped chasing each other up the screen.

Okay, I'm slow. "The computer is going to make riddles?" I asked.

"Not exactly."

"What's that thing wired to the back of the terminal?" Long-Drink asked.

"A modem," Callahan said, and just then there were two sounds. My digital watch chirped, and the phone rang.

The big red-headed barkeep picked up the handset and put it down on the modem cradle. At once letters began to appear on the screen.

HI, FOLKS. I'M YOUR RIDDLEMASTER FOR THE NIGHT. MY NAME IS BILLY WALKER.

I could feel a big grin growing on the front of my face.

"Mike, you Hibernian ham, you're a genius. Lemme at that keyboard."

He showed me how to use it, and I typed in HI BILLY. MY NAME'S JAKE.

IT'S JAKE WITH ME IF IT'S JAKE WITH YOU, came the reply.

I noticed that there was a pause about every tenth character, and realized that each pause represented a twitch.

OKAY, LET'S HAVE SOME RIDDLES. The whole gang was cl.u.s.tered around the monitor now, chattering and laughing; those who hadn't been around the night before last were being filled in.

YOU FOLKS READ SCIENCE FICTION, I UNDERSTAND?.

Noah Gonzalez and I always did; as for the rest of the crowd, well, somewhere between the second time-traveler and the third alien we got in Callahan's, most of them picked up on it too. YEAH.

HERE YOU GO, THEN, he replied, and the next lines appeared so rapidly he must have had them stored and ready.

SCOTTISH MT.; FIDDLESTICK, a.s.sERT.

HYDROPHOBIC; Y'KNOW? (CAN.); DRUNK AND MENDACIOUs...o...b.., FEH!; S. AMER. PALM, (COLOR OF ITS FRUIT).

MARVEL COMICS; (QUIET!), GLOVE.

WASHROOM; CLONE YOURSELF; ECCENTRIC WHEEL, NONSENSE.

WHAT'S THE TOPIC? I asked him.

YOU TELL ME.

NOW I KNOW WHY THEY CALL IT A CURSOR.

Well, we all took turns chatting with Billy while we worked on his riddles, and it took us several hours to work out that the topic was "SF Writers" and that the answers were, in order, "Ben; bow, aver" = Ben Bova "Rabid; eh?; high 'n' lyin" = Robert A. Heinlein "Eyes, ech!; a.s.s (mauve)" = Isaac Asimov "Stan Lee; (shh!), mitt" = Stanley Schmidt "John; double you; cam, bull" = John W. Campbell, and by that time Doc Webster had come up with the idea of Billy applying for a grant to start up a computer network for shut-ins, and we were all on the way to becoming good friends. Oh, once in a while I'd get a mental picture of the man on the other end of the hookup and giggle in spite of myself. But he never knew it. I've always hated that hairy old nonsense about high technology being inherently dehumanizing.

And as Doc Webster said, Billy's barks were much worse than his bytes.

CHAPTER 4 The Mick of Time.

NEW Year's Eve at Callahan's Place, and I was feeling about as much contentment as an unmarried man can know, thinking of how many New Year's Eves I'd spent in this warm, well-lit, cozy room with the best friends I'd ever known, thinking happily of how many more there would be to come. You'd think that would have warned me.

Somehow or other the conversation had turned to Conundra-the kind of questions that are good for keeping you entertained on an insomniac night, and not a whole lot else. They're sort of like test programs for the mind, and I guess New Year's Eve is a natural time for such things.

It was early on, not gone eight o'clock and only a handful of the regulars in attendance yet. Tommy Janssen had asked Long-Drink McGonnigle something, I forget what, and the Drink replied something along the lines of, -"Son, that's one of those great Questions That Will Never Be Answered."

Doc Webster snorted. "Flapdoodle. Any meaningful question can be answered-and will be, sooner or later.

Questions just never go away until they are."

Callahan finished reloading the coffeepot and came over to join us. "Doc," he mumbled, "if any question can be answered, maybe you can help me with one that's been occupyin' my mind-for a long time now. How many angels can dance on the head of a beer?" There was a general giggle.

"I said, 'meaningful questions,'" the Doc replied. "Your question has no meaning because one of its clinical terms is undefined. Tell me-specifically-what you mean by an 'angel,' and I'll answer your question. Or rather, you'll have answered it yourself."

"Aw h.e.l.l, Doc," Long-Drink said, "you know what an angel is."

"If I did, I wouldn't be paying alimony. My point is, it's easy to make up questions that don't have answers because they don't really ask anything. Can G.o.d make a rock so big he can't lift it? Where was Moses when the lights went out?"

"We're certainly into a theological vein here," said Torn Hauptmann, the former minister. "There's one that's always puzzled me, Doc, and I think it has meaning. Water is a clear, colorless fluid. So how come when you splash it on a towel, the towel gets darker?"

The Doc was silent for a moment, chewing on that, and Tommy and Long-Drink began to chuckle. "There's. an answer," the Doc insisted. "I never-said I knew all the answers-but if the question has meaning, the answer is knowable."

I thought of one that's kept my own mind harmlessly occupied for hours at a time. "Hey, Doc, I've got one. A thought-experiment, and a humdinger: It's one of those that causes a system-crash in the brain. The beauty of it is that one day soon it will be possible to try it out in the real world and see what the answer is-but right now, even though all the components of the question are meaningful and known, I'll bet a case of Anchor Steam Beer n.o.body here can come up with an answer and prove it."

"Hey," Susie Maser (Slippery Joe's senior wife) said, "for a case of all-barley beer, I'll take on Zeno's Paradox with -one hand tied halfway behind my back. Whip it out, Jake." Several others leaned forward attentively.

"I've put this question to about thirty scientists in ten different disciplines," I said, "and to educators, and science fiction writers and editors I met at conventions, and the funny thing is that they all reacted the exact same way. I'd lay out the question, and they'd all start to answer right away ... and then they'd catch themselves, and fall silent, and get a far look ... and a minute or so later, they'd change the subject."