Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (Callahan's Place Trilogy, #1)

by Spider Robinson

The kid had been bottled up tight too long; he exploded. "From what?" he yelled. "Jesus, where do I start? There was this war they wanted me to go and fight, see? And there's this place called college, I mean they want you to care, dig it, care about this education trip, and they don't care enough themselves to make it as attractive as the crap game across the street. There's this air I hear is unfit to breathe, and water that ain't fit to drink, and food that wouldn't nourish a vulture and a grand outlook for the future. You can't get to a job without the car you couldn't afford to run even if you were working, and if you found a job it'd pay five dollars less than the rent. The TV advertises karate classes for four-year-olds and up, the President's New Clothes didn't wear very well, the next Depression's around the corner and you ask me what in the name of God I'm running from?

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Punday Night is a weekly attraction at Callahan's— if that's the word. Folks who come into the place for the first time on a Tuesday evening have been known to flee screaming into the night, leaving full pitchers of beer behind in their haste to be elsewhere. There's Sunday, see, and then there's Monday, and then there's Punday. And on that day, the boys begin assembling around seven-thirty, and after a time people stop piddling around with drafts and start lining up pitchers, and Fast Eddie gets up from his beat-up upright piano and starts pulling tables together. Everyone begins ever-so-casually jockeying for position, so important on Punday Night. Here and there the newer men can be heard warming up with one another, and the first groans are heard.

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Callahan's arm came down fast, and the sphere exploded in the center of the fireplace. And in that moment we realized, all of us in Callahan's Place, that the Meddlers guess had been part right. Just as there are laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other.

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"... and it's all thanks to you, Mr. Callahan," Tony finished. "Shucks, Tony," Callahan rumbled, "we didn't do anything for you that you couldn't have done yourself." "You accepted me," Telasco said simply. "You made me understand that I was just a normal human being who'd been caught up in a nightmare, a nightmare that made him realize he had the makings of a killer ape in him. One night I told you and your customers this whole story and you didn't stare at me like a mad dog. You told me that I needed a bigger audience. "You showed me that it wasn't my killer nature that was shameful, but the refusal to think things out that landed me in 'Nam in the first place. You showed me that just because it took me a while to make the sort of decision Steve made didn't mean that I didn't have Steve's kind of guts in me somewhere. I was sure I didn't have that kind of guts, and so I never looked for them. When I did... I found them. Because you had faith in me. "Jail is no picnic," he told the rest of us, "but I want to do what I can to see that no one else gets caught in the meat grinder like I did. But I don't do it from guilt. I do it for its own sake." He looked at Callahan. "I already got my absolution here."

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"No, my friend. Charles Fort was quite correct: you are property, and on the whole not very bright property. You follow your political and philosophical leaders blindly to the slaughter, grateful to be led, and one in a hundred of you is a Telasco or a McConnell, with the sense to pull out of the mad death-race. You must see it, man," he said to Telasco, "you rejected the world we Krundai made for you." "Jerry," I said, "one of my most precious possessions is a lapel button, white with black letters. It says 'Go Lemmings Go.' Raksha is telling the truth." The fireman shook his head like an enraged bull. "This is crazy," he insisted. "How can you be telling us all this? I mean, if you're right, what makes you think we won't tear you to pieces?" "This is Callahan's Place," the alien said simply. "I am here for absolution."

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"I still don't see how you could have done it," Jerry said, baffled but obviously believing now, convinced by the pain in the furry alien's voice and the aura of shame around him. "In the same way that a statesman can be induced to do what he knows is insane," Raksha explained, "by appealing subtly to his own self-interest. We ran a continuous and subtle propaganda campaign, took away any valid reason for living other than personal enrichment and comfort, and then saw to it that the immediate personal interest of millions of people served our ends. One of the simplest methods was to install in an enormous number of people the compulsion to amass more money than they could possibly use: enough were successful to leech national economies into anemia. Another was to whip up an intense interest in sex, far beyond the demands of nature, to keep population-growth beyond your capacity to adapt. Much work was required to squelch interest in space-programs before they could provide an escape valve. You humans are so short-sighted, your lives themselves so short. It is easy to manipulate you."

Meanwhile, in the White House...

And so we've got a world in which physical miracles are commonplace—and nobody's happy. We got what it takes to feed the whole three billion of us—and half of us are starving. You can show a dozen guys murderin' each other on TV but you can't ever show two people making love. A naked blade is reckoned to be less obscene than a naked woman. Ain't it about time we started trying to get a handle on love, from any and all directions?

A wise man, that Spider Robinson.

"Can it, I said. That 'mysterious force' stuff you were talkin' about, Jake—did you mean that literally?" I thought about it. "You mean like a gang of sixth-column missionaries, Doc? A bunch of guys working undercover like Raksha an' his friends, only in reverse? No, I don't really think that's the way of it... wup's!" Reaching for my glass without looking, I knocked it skittering across the bar, and leaped to grab it before it could fall into Callahan's lap. I froze for a moment, leaning half-over the bar—but I've always rather prided myself in being quick on the uptake. "... on the other hand," I continued calmly, "maybe that's exactly right. Who knows?" And Callahan—who was still sitting as I had seen him, his legs folded under him in the full lotus, suspended a good three feet off the floor—winked, poured my glass brimful of Bushmill's, and grinned. "Not me," he lied, and puffed on his cigar. "Hey youse guys," cried Eddie, eyes on the clock above us, "Happy New Year!"