I’m still alive. But you’re still a youngster; I’m betting I can outsit you.”
“I accept the bet. This girl—if I must be away some day—would you object if I sent one of my daughters? She’s very pretty.”
“Hunh? You sound like an Iskandrian slave factor auctioning his mother. Why your daughter? I don’t want to marry her, nor even to bed her; I simply want to be amused and flattered. Who told you she was pretty? If she really is your daughter, she probably looks like you.”
“Come off it, Lazarus; you can’t annoy me that easily. I admit to a father’s prejudice but I’ve seen the effect she has on others. She is quite young, less than eighty, and has been contractually married only once. But you specified a pretty girl who speaks your milk language. Scarce. But this one of my daughters shares my talent for languages and is much excited by your presence here— wants to meet you. I can stall off emergencies long enough for her to become letter-perfect in your language.”
Lazarus grinned and shrugged. “Suit yourself. Tell her not to bother with a chastity girdle; I don’t have the energy. But I’ll still win the bet. Probably without laying eyes on her; it won’t take you long to decide that I am an unbearable old bore. Which I am and have been almost as long as the Wandering Jew—a crashing bore if I ever met one—did I tell you I had met him?”
“No. And I don’t believe you have. He’s a myth.”
“A fat lot you know about it, Son. I have met him, he is authentic. Fought the Romans in 70 A.D. when Jerusalem was sacked. Fought in every Crusade—incited one of them. Redheaded of course; all of the natural long-lifers bear the mark of Gilgamesh. When I met him he was using the name Sandy Macdougal, that being a better handle for the time and place for his current trade, which was the long con, with a variant on the badger game. 6 The latter involved—Look, Ira, if you don’t believe my stories, why are you going to so much trouble to get them on record?”
“Lazarus, if you think you can bore me to death—correction: to your death—why are you bothering to invent fictions to entertain me? Whatever your reasons, I’ll listen as carefully—and as long—as King Shahryar. As may be, my master computer is recording whatever you choose to say—without editing; I guaranteed that—but it has incorporated into it a most subtle truth analyzer quite capable of earmarking any fictions you include. Not that I care about historicity as long as you will talk… as it is clear to me that you automatically include your evaluations—those ‘gems of wisdom’—no matter what you say.”
“‘Gems of wisdom.’ Youngster, use that expression once more and you’ll stay after school and clean the blackboards. That computer of yours—Better instruct it that my most outlandish tales are the ones most likely to be true—as that is the literal truth. No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.”
“It knows that. But I will caution it again. You were telling me about Sandy Macdougal, the Wandering Jew.”
“Was I? If so and if he was using that name, that must have been late in the twentieth century and in Vancouver, as I recall. Vancouver was a part of the United States where the people were so clever that they never paid taxes to Washington—Sandy should have operated in New York, which was outstanding in stupidity even then. I won’t give details of his swindles; it might corrupt your machine. Let it suffice that Sandy used the oldest principle for separating a fool from his money: Pick a sucker who likes the best of it.
“That’s all it takes, Ira. If a man is greedy, you can cheat him every time. Trouble was, Sandy Macdougal was even greedier than his marks, and it led him into the folly of excess, and often forced him to leave town while it was dark, sometimes leaving the boodle behind. Ira,
“I accept the bet. This girl—if I must be away some day—would you object if I sent one of my daughters? She’s very pretty.”
“Hunh? You sound like an Iskandrian slave factor auctioning his mother. Why your daughter? I don’t want to marry her, nor even to bed her; I simply want to be amused and flattered. Who told you she was pretty? If she really is your daughter, she probably looks like you.”
“Come off it, Lazarus; you can’t annoy me that easily. I admit to a father’s prejudice but I’ve seen the effect she has on others. She is quite young, less than eighty, and has been contractually married only once. But you specified a pretty girl who speaks your milk language. Scarce. But this one of my daughters shares my talent for languages and is much excited by your presence here— wants to meet you. I can stall off emergencies long enough for her to become letter-perfect in your language.”
Lazarus grinned and shrugged. “Suit yourself. Tell her not to bother with a chastity girdle; I don’t have the energy. But I’ll still win the bet. Probably without laying eyes on her; it won’t take you long to decide that I am an unbearable old bore. Which I am and have been almost as long as the Wandering Jew—a crashing bore if I ever met one—did I tell you I had met him?”
“No. And I don’t believe you have. He’s a myth.”
“A fat lot you know about it, Son. I have met him, he is authentic. Fought the Romans in 70 A.D. when Jerusalem was sacked. Fought in every Crusade—incited one of them. Redheaded of course; all of the natural long-lifers bear the mark of Gilgamesh. When I met him he was using the name Sandy Macdougal, that being a better handle for the time and place for his current trade, which was the long con, with a variant on the badger game. 6 The latter involved—Look, Ira, if you don’t believe my stories, why are you going to so much trouble to get them on record?”
“Lazarus, if you think you can bore me to death—correction: to your death—why are you bothering to invent fictions to entertain me? Whatever your reasons, I’ll listen as carefully—and as long—as King Shahryar. As may be, my master computer is recording whatever you choose to say—without editing; I guaranteed that—but it has incorporated into it a most subtle truth analyzer quite capable of earmarking any fictions you include. Not that I care about historicity as long as you will talk… as it is clear to me that you automatically include your evaluations—those ‘gems of wisdom’—no matter what you say.”
“‘Gems of wisdom.’ Youngster, use that expression once more and you’ll stay after school and clean the blackboards. That computer of yours—Better instruct it that my most outlandish tales are the ones most likely to be true—as that is the literal truth. No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.”
“It knows that. But I will caution it again. You were telling me about Sandy Macdougal, the Wandering Jew.”
“Was I? If so and if he was using that name, that must have been late in the twentieth century and in Vancouver, as I recall. Vancouver was a part of the United States where the people were so clever that they never paid taxes to Washington—Sandy should have operated in New York, which was outstanding in stupidity even then. I won’t give details of his swindles; it might corrupt your machine. Let it suffice that Sandy used the oldest principle for separating a fool from his money: Pick a sucker who likes the best of it.
“That’s all it takes, Ira. If a man is greedy, you can cheat him every time. Trouble was, Sandy Macdougal was even greedier than his marks, and it led him into the folly of excess, and often forced him to leave town while it was dark, sometimes leaving the boodle behind. Ira,
Similar Books
