Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories by Howard Fast Page A

killer. We may stop spray cans and supersonic flights in time to save the ozone layer, but as far as the sea is concerned, we’ve passed the point of no return.”
    â€œNow hold on,” said Grundy. “Don’t go into that lecture of yours on the oil companies.”
    â€œThis man,” Martin responded, directing a finger at Grundy, “is paid four times what any of us earn because he sits in a chair established by the so-called Energy Council, a front for the international oil trusts—”
    â€œYou can’t prove that,” Grundy said cheerfully.
    â€œYou will go with the rest of us,” Martin said comfortably. “You, me, the oil executives, old, young—there are no lifeboats on spaceship earth.”
    â€œI wonder,” Melrick said, looking up from his scrambled eggs, which were very tasty indeed, “whether you ever thought about the cactus?”
    â€œThat is a non sequitur, if I ever heard one,” Grundy snorted.
    â€œOh, no. No, indeed. Very much to the point. You know, the seas dried up. The rain stopped, and the plants had to adapt. They became cacti.”
    â€œThey were plants.”
    â€œPeople are very adaptable, you know,” Melrick said.
    â€œSheer nonsense.”
    â€œPerhaps,” Melrick said. “But this doom that is facing us—it’s the result of greed, isn’t it? A lust for money, for power, riches, things, baubles, man’s discontent with himself as he is, envy of one’s neighbor, desire—”
    â€œThat’s putting it rather harshly.”
    â€œAre you going to change man?” Martin demanded.
    â€œMan is always changing, you know. Otherwise, he could not conceivably endure this thing we call civilization. Now just suppose—just suppose we were to find some miracle drug that would rid man of greed, aquisitiveness, envy, the desire for power, for things?”
    â€œAmbition?” Grundy demanded.
    â€œWhat we call ambition—yes, indeed.”
    â€œGod save us from that.”
    â€œWhy?” Melrick wondered.
    â€œDiscontent is the only thing that makes it work.”
    â€œYour way.”
    â€œWhat other way is there, Melrick?”
    â€œI like to think that there’s another way.”
    â€œAs much as it pains me, I must agree with Grundy,” Martin said.
    â€œYes—but suppose one did come up with such a drug. What would happen?”
    â€œThey would destroy the drug and kill its inventor.”
    â€œThey?” asked Melrick. “Who are they?”
    â€œMyself, to begin with,” Grundy stated emphatically. “Any community leader with an ounce of responsibility. Any executive of a large corporation. Any political leader. Any man who values civilization.”
    â€œDo you agree with him?” Melrick asked Martin.
    â€œI’m afraid I do. You’re talking about something a hundred times worse than heroin. Just think of what it would do to our tenure.”
    Melrick sighed. It was time for his first class, and as he walked across the campus, he wondered what Chuang Tzu would have made of his predicament. He mused over it through the day, and he was relived, when he returned home, to be greeted with an enveloping embrace from his wife.
    â€œDinner in a half hour,” she said to him. “I cooked Mexican. I know how you love it.”
    â€œIt’s fattening.”
    â€œDevil take the calories tonight!”
    â€œI’ll be in the garden,” he said.
    In the garden, he observed with delight the appearance of a second flower. The everting breeze was beginning to blow the pollen, and his first impulse was to reach down and pick the flower. Then he stopped, and for quite a while he just stood there and observed the two lovely blooms.
    The cat approached. He saw it from the corner of his eye coming toward him, slowly, tentatively. He bent and reached out his hand toward the cat. It arched, hissed, and struck, and there