'What's this?'
Perny held out a piece of cardboard wound with white
stuff.
'Knicker elastic,' answered Wizard Prang.
'I thought so,' said Perny. Her tone of voice seemed not
to know whether it was making some kind of unnamed accusation or
claiming some kind of unjustified credit. 'What
about it?' the wizard asked benignly. ‘Well…’ Perny
hesitated between 'Where did you get it?' and 'What's it for?', and said
neither. ‘You know the cottage at the end of the
village where Ms. Brick does her art? Well, it's infested with mice.'
'Hard cheese,' said Perny. 'Ms.
Brick has read a book on Buddhism and now she cannot take a life. This
is a proper sentiment, Perny, whether you like her or not. She asked for
my help.' 'You rushed to her aid,' said Perny.
'I undertook to invent her a mousetrap,' the wizard went
imperturbably on, 'that would entrap but not harm a mouse.’
'Hence the knicker elastic. Ping,' said Perny.
Ting! 'Precisely.' ‘Ping,' said
Perny again, reflectively. She was looking out of the window.
'Oh, no,' she said. 'Is something
up?' Wizard Prang asked absently, as he poured a potion of esoteric
nature into a retort of the glass variety. There was a small puff.
'It's Blethering Fog,' retorted Perny, in a cut glass
voice. 'You're in a sour mood today, all right,'
said the Wizard. 'Mr. Blessington Fogg is our Parliamentary
Representative, and deserves more respect.’ 'He
drinks too much,' Perny judged. 'Too much for him, or
too much for you?' asked Wizard Prang. Perny said:
'You're horrid!' The wizard said: 'That's my job with
you. Bet you're not horrid with Silica?’ 'She has
mice.'
Puffing and blowing, the Honourable Blessington Fogg
announced his arrival.
'Come in my dear Sir,' said Wizard Prang, and pushed
forward the visitor's armchair. 'Silica Brick has
mice. It's a crisis.'
The visitor shoehorned himself into the visitor's
armchair.
'Something must be done! Would you
like a drink?' asked Wizard Prang. He was looking
pointedly at Perny. 'I am building a mousetrap for Ms. Brick,' he added.
'Oh, good,' said the Parliamentary Representative.
'Crisis averted.' 'Potentially,' said the wizard.
'Not all my inventions invariably work.’
Perny slopped the wine she was pouring onto the tray.
'Clumsy,' the Honourable Gentleman did not say.
Perny handed him the glass, smiling sweetly. What was not
said was not heard. What was not heard had no meaning. What had no meaning
didn't happen. The visitor sipped his wine with
appreciation. There descended a considerable peace.
Wizard Prang leaped out of his skin.
'What happened?' asked Blessington Fogg, startled.
'Nothing,' the wizard replied.
Perny blushed.
'A better mousetrap would beat a path to the higher
technology it adumbrates,' the future Minister of the Environment
declared as he accepted another glass of wine.
'Closely followed by the mice's lawyer bearing an injunction’, the
wizard added.
The future minister was not listening. He could hardly
believe what he had just heard himself say. His note taking for the
remainder of a crowded day constituted a surreptitious attempt to
reconstruct this sentence on paper.
'Let's just say the calamity has been forestalled, that
my constituent, Ms. Brick, may pursue her art undiscommoded': this in
answer to a certain silence. 'I thought you said it
was a crisis, not a calamity,' Pemy said outright.
'So I did. So I did, my dear girl,' said the former President of the
Women's Equal Rights Committee. He had often described it as his life's
work.
The former President of the Women's Equal Rights Committee
expatiated on the distinction between crisis and calamity, and tripped
over his future capacity as Minister of the Environment in which no less
than a catastrophe unfolded. Perny was not listening
very closely. She was thinking that Ms. Silica Brick might well be eaten
by mice, as edible as she presented herself to be.
Wizard Prang was not listening at all. Eventually,
everything subsided.
'Cataclysmic,' suddenly declaimed Blessington Fogg:
'cataclysmic, that's what it is.’ He was rehearsing a
speech for the House. 'A cataclysmic calamity will be the catastrophic
outcome of this crisis.' 'I fear you are right,' said
Wizard Prang in measured tones. 'Excuse me,' Perny
responded pertly, 'that can't really have to do with Silica's mice?'
'Oh no no no, my dear girl,' fathered Blessington Fogg,
'the scope of my concern with the environment is inexhaustible. My
thinking ranges to and fro from perils of mice on the human scale to
planetary destruction on the cosmic scale. We do not have much time.'
'Time is elastic,' Wizard Prang remarked.
The visitor eyed him oddly.
Perny said 'Ping.'
A few pleasantries later, the future Minister of the
Environment was getting ready to go.
'Many thanks for your input,' he said, since British
MP’s had to learn American if they wished to get on internationally.
'I'm going to call a Royal Commission. I have got my parameters right,
thanks to you.' 'Will it be about the mouse end or
the planet end of your wonderful spectrum?' asked Perny in innocent
tones. Blessington Fogg looked puzzled. Then his face
cleared. 'Ah, my dear young lady,' he explained, 'first things first. We
must get our priorities right. Yes, yes.' 'And so?'
the Wizard prodded him. 'You, sir, obviously
understand,' said the future Minister of the Environment with approval.
'The Commission's task should be first, to adopt consensual definitions
of crisis, calamity, catastrophe and cataclysm; second, it will
determine exactly which of these conditions obtains.’
'Recommendations?' asked Perny.
'Quite so, my dear girl. All in good time, all in good time.'
'Goodbye, Blethering Fog,' Wizard Prang said after the
door had closed behind him. Perny was pleased he had
said that. 'Is good time also elastic?' she inquired.
'Certainly,' said the wizard. 'Have you not noticed that
good times are shorter than bad times, for the same amount of clock?'
'Like going to a film as opposed to going to the
dentist’, Perny nodded sagely. 'In what way are those
two activities opposed?' asked the puzzled wizard. 'A dentist could show
a film on the ceiling above his chair to preoccupy the patient, and
certainly a dentist is entitled to visit the cinema.'
There were times when Perny felt like hitting Wizard Prang
over the head with one of his own retorts. This was such a retort and such
a time.
'The same unit of time seems longer sometimes than
others. Is that what you mean by elastic? If so, I think that I
understand.' Perny had reason to understand. Just now time was dragging
quite painfully. 'That's simply an effect of time's
elasticity a subjective effect. But yes, it embodies a clue.' Wizard
Prang was not concentrating very hard.
Perny freshened his wine and water, and sat on the floor
on her haunches. The wizard perked up.
'Look,' said Perny, 'there's something more going on
about this time business than subjective responses to clocks in cinemas
and in dentist's waiting rooms.' 'I'll say,' answered
Wizard Prang. 'You had me study Einstein. The
relativity of simultaneity: I suppose that implies elasticity in
time...' '"Entails" would be a better word.'
Perny Ignored this. 'That's hard enough to understand.
And then you had a letter from Charles Musa, and told me to remember
something he’d said. You were chortling all morning.'
'So what did he say?' 'He said: 'the
future is our memory of desire.' 'Spot on.’ The
wizard was pleased with her. 'Elasticity is one
thing' Perny grumbled, 'clocks speeding up and slowing down, distances
getting longer and shorter, and all to please Einstein. But the future
as a memory? That's crazy. The future can't affect the present and it
would if we “remembered” it.' 'That's just the
point,' said Wizard Prang. 'You must get out of the habit of blaming the
messengers who bring you news you don't like. First Einstein now Muses.
Distinguished mathematicians both.' 'Make me like the
news then,' Perny asked. 'Please. It doesn't make any sense to say that
the future affects the present.' 'You're stuck with a
paradigm in which it actually can't happen. But since it does happen,
what you must do is change the paradigm.' 'You often
say that,' sulked Perny. 'Tell you what,' the wizard
said: 'you saunter off to one of your special places and practice the
meditation with breathing spell that I taught you last week.’
'I can't get it right,' grumbled Perny.
'That's why I suggested you practice it,' the wizard
said with infuriating condescension. 'It will take you three hours. When
you come back, I shall be ready to demonstrate a new paradigm of elastic
time for you.' 'Oh, will you?' Perny said, giving a
little clap of her hands.
She got off the floor, and made for the door.
'Hold it!
She turned around.
'Don't you think you'd better return my elastic?' the
wizard asked.
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