On the way to the planet Odapwerta to practice long-range surveillance techniques, they caught Lavovin reading a copy of Aesop’s Fables.

"So, you’ve finally decided to catch up on your literature?" fellow security specialist Harper Howe asked him.

"Elda, this girl I know, told me I should read it. It’s only a way of getting into her pants," he explained.

"Oh good, Sir, I was worried!" laughed Howe.

"No need to sweat it out, Howe," security specialist Spires told him. "This isn’t Joyce. It’s only a picture book about talking animals."

"You underestimate me," Lavovin warned. "I know almost as much as Dr. Sego."

"So does everybody – now!" laughed Howe. What a sad commentary on the decline of a most brilliant mind – a walking encyclopedia whose pages had begun to fall out.

"I don’t know if Elda’s worth it, though," said Lavovin, recapturing their attention. "This book is beginning to irritate me, it seems to me to be an act of mental terrorism. Take, for instance, this story about the ant and the grasshopper."

"A monstrous story, really," Lavovin insisted. "A bunch of ants spend their lives working their asses off, if, indeed, ants have asses in the first place. Then along comes this happy-go-lucky, joyous grasshopper dancing in the summertime, playing all sorts of musical instruments, singing, preferring merriment to sacrifice, and play to labor, as if there were anything wrong with that! Yet, somehow, in spite of all his charm and irrepressible life force, he becomes an object of utter contempt. The stern ants hold fast to their grueling regimen of work, disdaining his allegiance to pleasure; and then, of course, grim author that we have, the autumn comes, killing off the summer grasses with frost, and blowing the world bare, and we are left with a shuddering, freezing grasshopper paying the ultimate price for his days of joy, while the hard-working ants, whose labor has gathered up the fruits of the summer for storage, now thrive in warm, underground security. Hard work pays, hurrah for the puritans!; death to the singers and dancers of the universe! This Aesop was a malicious man, I tell you, no wonder they threw him off a cliff! Poor children, whose minds are invaded by such a dark fairy tale, and beaten into servitude, sacrificed to the Moloch of productivity! I have to keep reminding myself it is only a fable."

Cultural Specialist Dazome Hara, happening to wander in at that very moment and to overhear Lavovin’s lament, told him, "Very soon we will be arriving at the planet Odapwerta, which has a most remarkable fable of its own."

"I will prepare my blaster gun at once," said Lavovin.

**********

"Pretend we don’t know anything at all about this planet," Regulus told them all. "Let’s begin to see what we can find out."

Beyond the solar system, with low-level masking systems on computer stasis, Taragus left the great mindship behind and took a one-hundred-person exploration team closer to the target world in an intermediate mother ship. Stealthily, he positioned it behind Odapwerta’s uncolonized moon, then advanced towards Odapwerta with one giant boomerang and two flying disks. The disks were piloted by the little grays, Eyes and Brim, each in charge of one little gray flight crew; he, himself, piloted the enormous boomerang, whose crew complement included Ariel and Regulus, the Cerebosians; Boone and Lavovin, and a contingent of security troopers - earthlings and other class 3 humanoids; and CS Dazome Hara, and Dr. Sego.

The mission had actually begun on the approach, as electromagnetic communications signals being used on the planet for the planet, yet nonetheless radiating into space, were picked up on ship sensors, and fed into culture analyzers for tentative evaluation. Visual images were captured and replayed on screens for assessment by the crew. From these tiny snips of culture alone, a great deal could be deduced. "Say, this is fun!" gasped Lavovin in surprise, "it’s like being a Sherlock Holmes of planets!"

Dazome, who already knew a lot about Odapwerta from her studies, enjoyed playing the game of pretending not to know, and trying to figure out, on her own, what books had already needlessly informed her of. It was a bit like reading a novel whose ending you know, just to experience the joy of the author’s craft. "Multiple product advertisements," she said; "competitive marketplace economics." Watching a rough sporting event, she said, "Aggressive tendencies – coupled with the existing level of technology, and standard corresponding levels of social development, we are likely to have a multinational system here, with very great self-destructive potential." While Ariel, smiling broadly, delighted by the challenge, said: "No deliberate deep space signals of the kind intended to contact extraterrestrial civilizations. The technology to create such a program, similar to the primitive earth’s SETI, exists, but it has not been done. Psychological evaluation= prudent pessimist. This species is somewhat more rooted in its own carnal experience of violence, which breeds distrust and suspicion, than it is in the ethos of religions and mythologies, which tend to strengthen the archetype of the powerful rescuer, and to lead to trust of the unknown rather than wariness."

All this time, Lavovin was merely watching the visual image screen, transfixed by the appearance of the Odapwertans, class 7 erectopods who fell into what earthlings, rather colloquially, called the "sweet troll" type. They were compact, covered with soft gray fur, had white tufts of hair falling from their chins, and bushy protuberances of white hair, like plumes, flaring out from the sides of their heads, slightly paunchy bellies and black shiny eyes that somehow made them enjoyable to look at in spite of their otherwise unappealing physique.

"That’s a woman?" asked Lavovin, incredulously.

"Yes," said Ariel. "And judging by the great crowd gathered around her, she seems to be quite a beauty."

"Well, after the Drosians, she is a veritable femme fatale," agreed Lavovin. "However, at this point, I think I will remain loyal to my magazines."

As they moved in closer, instruments refined preliminary atmospheric readings to assess levels of industrial output and activity, while telescopic view collages, as well as signals sent back from unmanned probes, thoroughly mapped out the world for all of them to see. "A lot of CO2 and SO2. They’re in the low-environmental awareness/high production phase," guessed Ariel.

"There are the factories," suggested Boone, examining the map photos, finding expansive but prolific blemishes on the face of nature.

"Dazome, I’m having a wonderful time!" Anne told her. "I could never decide, when I was a kid, whether I would rather be an anthropologist or a fashion designer! Now I get to do both!" She was manufacturing facsimiles of Odapwertan clothing – the long gray robes of ordinary citizens, and the multi-colored fabulous garments of the rich – on board one of the ship’s many infiltration-artifact factories. Of course it was only an exercise, since no one in the present crew could pass as an Odapwertan, except through hypnosis. However, on some planets where the humanoid resemblance was at least vaguely similar, Confederation explorers could disguise themselves in realistic alien clothing put together in these factories, in order to lessen the risk of detection during close-quarters studies.

"How is it going, everybody?" asked Regulus, as delighted as Santa Claus wandering among the worktables of his busy elves making toys. "Are you having a good time? Are you learning a lot?"

"Computers have just put together species-specific immune packages from the biological sample sweep carried out by Brim," said Ariel. Regulus nodded, pleased by the velocity of their learning and preparation, then turned to see what Dr. Sego was making such a fuss about.

"These time probes are such lovely things!" he was saying, nearly weeping as ancient cities sprang to life before his eyes, replacing empty landscapes on the viewing screen. " ‘Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; and happy melodist, unwearied, for ever piping songs for ever new!’" And crumbled ruins emerged powerfully, renewed from their decay, unphased by the things that had replaced them. Toppled statues rose, and the mystery of the present explained itself. "Oh!" wept Dr. Sego, burying his face in a handkerchief. " ‘Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; the voice I hear this passing night was heard in ancient days by emperor and clown; perhaps the selfsame song that found a path through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, she stood in tears amid the alien corn…’."

"I’m glad you’re having fun," Regulus told Dr. Sego.

"And we haven’t even saved a single soul!" boasted Lavovin. "And don’t you worry, Regulus, we won’t: women who look like that must save themselves!"

"One thing I don’t get," queried Lavovin, who missed the brunt of this emotional drama, "is who is that guy who keeps appearing over and over again in the visual signals? Is he some kind of emperor or king, or public enemy number one, or the father of his country; Odapwerta’s Jesus or its version of Fu Man Chu? Is he good, bad, smart, dumb? Who the hell is he, and why is he taking up so much bandwidth?"

Now that Professor Sego was feeling well again, Dazome was free to respond. "Security specialist Lavovin," she told him, "he is the object of the fable I told you about as we were first approaching this planet."

"The fable of this world? So then, tell me. Is he the ant or the grasshopper? Or merely, perhaps, a donkey or a lion, or a crow or a hawk? The fox who couldn’t reach the grapes, or the frog who wanted a king? The stork who couldn’t drink out of a pan, or the fox who couldn’t drink out of a pitcher? The honest woodsman who got the axe of gold, or the trumpeter taken prisoner?"

"None of the above," replied Dazome. "He is none other than Bad Luck Binko." And calling on the help of Abelina Dow, the Confederation Cultural Studies Supervisor assigned to Odapwerta, she proceeded to elaborate. As the women began to talk, the crew clustered around little story screens to witness images from the tale. Lavovin adjusted his so that he might see the Odapwerans as human beings, to enhance his enjoyment. This is the story that emerged:

**********

There was once a humble Odapwertan by the name of Binko who worked hard and impressed all who knew him with his basic decency and sense of responsibility.

["Oh no," protested Lavovin, "I think I am beginning to hate him already."]

The recovery was long and slow, it took over a year of pain and therapy, walking like a cripple down hospital corridors that seemed like continents, with deserts and mountain ranges to cross underneath the clocks that laughed at him, that waited for him, with a smirk, to reach the end of the hall and come back; but it was all he had in his arsenal of mobility for many months, this humiliating form of crawling on two legs while the vibrant banter of nurses trying to preserve an oasis of life in a place of death reminded him of his pitiful condition. Like birds in trees, they belonged to another world, their chattering and singing only told him, "You cannot fly", while their kindness only depressed him, like beautiful women depress an impotent man.

But at long last the agonizing recovery was complete; Binko’s wife who had grown distant ever since the accident, upset by the unfairness of her husband’s decision to take a plane ride which would change their lives, and also burned out from the struggle of supporting herself while he lay useless in a hospital bed, attempted to warm back up to him. As if upon embers of a dying fire, she blew memories of what had been upon her cooling heart, approached his healthy but changed body with gentle efforts to try again. Binko welcomed her return, and meanwhile, let friends convince him that in spite of the tragedy which had almost taken his life he was a very lucky man, for among all the passengers who took off with him from the cheerful airport that day into blue skies and infinite plans, he and one other were the only ones who had survived, somehow cast beyond the ruthless fireball that consumed the others, catapulted out of harm’ s way in seats torn out of the very aisles, which held them strapped close to their bosoms on miraculous trajectories to life.

For a time, the attempt to restore life seemed as though it might succeed. There were moments of happiness and normalcy, in between the recurrence of severe bouts of bodily pain and the sudden disturbing flashbacks when Binko’s comfortable bed, adorned with a caring wife, turned into a flaming airplane plunging towards the ground, and he woke up screaming with all the tender afterglow of love-making gone from his wife’s angry, frustrated eyes. But they were not yet defeated. They were soldiers in a still undecided battle, a battle to be intimate and happy.

That is when another devastating blow struck, this one more improbable than the last. They had just left their apartment in a towering building in their home city to enjoy each other’s company at a local restaurant, when a small aircraft, piloted, as it turns out, by an inexperienced amateur, wandered off of its approved flight path and attempting to turn in too narrow a space, ended up plunging knife-like into the side of the building, crashing through the giant picture window they had looked out of so many times and erupting in flames inside of their living room. The apartment was totally destroyed, and the whole side of the building charred and left blackened with a gaping hole, and made wretched by the smell of burned things. But there were no casualties except for the incompetent pilot, and a pet fish named Bubbles.

For no good reason at all, only seconds after discovering that their apartment had been destroyed in an utterly freakish accident, Mrs. Binko scratched her husband’s face, nearly putting out his eyes, and cursed him as though he, himself, had flown the airplane directly into their apartment. "I hate you!" she cried. "I hate you! What is it about you and airplanes!?" But soon she recovered her common sense, and then, she was only distraught. Though they had lost nearly everything they owned in the catastrophe, it was the incinerated photo albums that tormented her most, as she wept, "I will never have those pictures of me as a child again! And the pictures of the old house!"

Binko gratefully received the metal security box from the hands of the firemen, checking over insurance forms, leases, and other valuable specimens of paperwork; from the ruins of their apartment, he also retrieved the antique statue, the one of gold and turquoise representing Pordo, the ancient Odan god of Justice, which had once been the centerpiece of their art collection. Thanks to the money due them from their prudent investment in a comprehensive insurance policy, they were able to recoup their economic losses and to move into a neighboring apartment, still holding on as a couple, though no closer for the effects of trauma.

Already, Mrs. Binko was beginning to feel contaminated, endangered by her association with her husband, as though she might catch the plague from him or be struck by a lightning bolt meant for him. However, she knew this was not reasonable and when her sister asked to leave her small child, Biply, in their care for one month while she took a vacation, Mrs. Binko complied. The liveliness of the child excited her with her own dormant dreams of motherhood, she decided that she and Binko really must try to live in peace, to reconsolidate their economic position, and start a family of their own. Grateful to Biply for inspiring her in this way, Mrs. Binko suggested that they take her on an outing to the circus before her sister came back to remove the unexpected light of their home, and Binko, who also appreciated the irresistible charm of the little girl, agreed. They would take her to the Big Thrill Circus, the very best one in the entire world, to see the jugglers, the clowns on stilts, the acrobats and the beautiful ladies, and the exotic wild animals leaping through hoops, dancing on hind legs, and in all ways obeying the charismatic directions of their masters.

"Auntie, the tiger’s got Binko!" the little girl exclaimed.

"Oh, so dear of you to care!" Mrs. Binko exclaimed, kissing her on the top of the head. "One day, perhaps you’ll understand," she added, "that it’s no surprise."

Well, Mrs. Binko resigned herself to the near certainty that her difficult, beloved husband had finally perished, as the sounds of gunshots and charging police and animal neutralization specialists invaded the hellish arena and finally, one by one, put an end to the great cats’ rebellion. Nonetheless, dutifully, as a wife must, she placed a call to the local hospital after first informing her sister that the child was well, to see if there was any news about her husband. She was stunned, and not quite sure if she was disappointed or overjoyed, to discover that he was still alive, thoroughly mauled and grievously injured, but not yet on, and most likely not going over to, the other side.

"Oh darling," she said, sitting once more by his bedside, "this is so much like old times! How long do you think you will be a cripple this time?"

"It’s only my shoulder, my right arm, my muscles, my tendons and my nerves," he replied. "I should be back to normal before the sun burns out."

Mrs. Binko had, once upon a time, had a wonderful sense of humor, but by now, she would rather stare at shit in a latrine than laugh.

"It’s a shame," mused Binko, "but at least the child and you came out of it unscratched. And in spite of being taken along for a rather long ride in the jaws of an enraged tiger, I am still alive. Does that make me lucky?"

For Mrs. Binko, metaphysics was scarcely more appealing that humor. Adversity had begun to cast its shadow over her, to turn her dark and priest-like; all things that diminished the outrage of life were affronts to her new sense of righteousness, like pornography. She could not stand to see beautiful sentiments she no longer felt lying in inviting poses.

After another grueling period of physical therapy and a serious program of marriage counseling, which exhausted more than one therapist and even convinced one to leave the profession, the hard-luck couple finally decided to persevere, and to stick it out. They had already been through so much together… Around this time, some journalist was fed scraps of Binko’s alluring string of catastrophes, perhaps by an informant from his job, and putting it all together on the front page of the local newspaper he turned Binko into an instant celebrity. "Bad Luck Binko" became an compelling center of cultural attention, a pop hero of sorts, a household word, and a nearly universal object of sympathy. At first, Binko was horribly embarrassed and wished he could spend the rest of his life hiding in his closet. "I cannot stand to be so famous for the things that have gone wrong in my life," he said. But, in the end, the attention and the apparently earnest concern of millions was flattering, and withdrawal from society was not a viable option. Thus, Binko decided to make the best of his new notoriety, and accepted a consolation reward for all his hardships from the Newspaper Angels of his city, a large-scale organization of newspaper readers who every month established a collection to go to the most needy and unfortunate souls exposed by the prying eyes of their beloved paper. More often than not, the prize went to orphans and widows, or to survivors of horrible wars and famines in other countries, but this month it went to Binko and his wife in the form of tickets for a cruise aboard a luxury ocean liner, to help "heal the wounds of the past and rekindle the romance of this wonderful hard-luck couple struggling to make it in the aftermath of trauma and misfortune…"

Binko wondered aloud, "Do you think it is right for us to accept this reward given the fact that millions of people are starving in Bot, and hundreds are being killed every day in the war in Taba? Are we truly more deserving of sympathy than them?"

"Shut up," his wife warned him. "It’s time to break your links with the miserable. Guilt attracts disaster. Brotherhood, carried to its logical conclusion, is death. Just take a deep breath of this beautiful, clear air by the sea, let the waves wash away all your attachment to failure. Enjoy yourself and be one of the lucky ones, for a change!" On the shore, thousands of supporters were on hand to wave good-bye to the disappearing couple and to cheer the beginning of a new, untroubled chapter in their lives.

The voyage began well, with magnificent expanses of crystal blue water, glorious successions of white clouds rolling across the sea’s reflection in the sky, constant greetings from soaring flocks of birds who flew along with them like heralds of the ship, and acrobatic families of leaping fish, appearing like flowers blossoming, for seasons that were only moments, from the depths of the sea. "What amazing mysteries lie below the surface!" Binko exclaimed. "What unseen jungles teeming with life, what undetected worlds! What magical realities, to put the mermaids to shame!"

His wife, sunbathing by the swimming pool, said, "Don’t think too much about what’s under the water, Binko, we want to stay on top of it."

He might have resented the insinuation that he was the creator of his own disasters if the sun had not been so generous with itself, rubbing light all over his body and smiling at the happiness his skin was receiving, like an open mouth beneath a faucet. For seven days and seven nights, the cruise ship glided through tranquil waters amidst idyllic islands, rising up like green jewels with borders of sparkling sand rushing out to embrace the ocean. Like old friends, water and land met, none objecting to the price of their encounter: the pushing away of the water, the wearing out of the land; it was passionate like a kiss that did not care, and would never end, for when this land was eroded into nothing, the lips of other rocks would rise up from the sea to keep on loving waves. Binko was euphoric, returning to life, happy once more, when on the eighth day of this lovely redeeming voyage, without warning, the skies suddenly darkened and the clouds, yesterday like dancing schools of fish, became sinister like vengeful predators.

"What’s going on?" Binko asked the captain with alarm.

The captain only smiled, and said, "A little storm, that’s all. Now don’t you worry yourself Mr. Binko, your days of suffering are over."

Binko, looking over the rail down into the sea saw huge gray waves snarling at the captain’s answer, something a long time coming, like the rebellion of the circus tigers, beginning to flex in its huge watery muscles. "And those waves?" he asked the captain. "Aren’t they rather high?"

"Is your head still above water?" laughed the captain. "Well, then, not to worry, this here ship’s never had a worse catastrophe than an outbreak of the flu!" Then, still smiling, he gestured to Binko and his wife and told them, "Please leave the deck right now and go back inside your cabin." They saw something in his eyes, like a little man running around screaming, but his lips were still smiling. "Just a little squall, that’s all. This is a big ship, no need to worry."

Back in their cabin, as they watched the captain and the crew running around with obvious signs of fear, Mrs. Binko told her husband, "You’d better stop whatever it is that you’re doing."

"What do you mean?" he asked her.

"This is too much to be a coincidence," she said. "It’s you, isn’t it? You hate yourself, you feel you do not deserve anything less than total disaster. Stop thinking that! Stop drawing this to you! Stop creating catastrophe wherever you go!"

"Dear, I don’t know what you mean!" he protested. "I want to be happy as much as anyone else. I’m not doing anything, believe me, I’m hoping the storm will go away right now!"

"Maybe that’s the problem," she said. "Maybe you get the opposite of what you wish for."

"It’s too much to think about!" he exclaimed. "Do I wish to be saved, or do I wish to perish!? Or do I just assume, as I did before you started tormenting me, that I have nothing to do with any of this, and that I’m having a bad day at the slot machines?" At that very moment, they heard a frightening explosion, the entire ship tipped wildly to one side, they became aware of massive torrents of rain lashing at the window, playing on the ship like a drum.

"What was that?" cried out Mrs. Binko, terror in her eyes.

"I don’t know!" gasped Binko. He put in a call to the captain who, since he was the ship’s honored guest, was obliged to respond.

"Mr. Binko!" the captain cried out with an attempt of calmness that was rather like a giant trying to hide behind a pencil, "the boiler has just exploded. Some kind of freak accident! The strain of fighting against the storm! We’re listing badly. I’ll send someone for you and your wife at once! We’re going to have to take to the lifeboats!"

"In this weather?" gasped Binko.

"No choice!" replied the captain. "Bundle up. With the wind and water, conditions will be severe! I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to break your string of bad luck!"

Ten minutes later they were on the deck as desperate crew members, secured with robes, slipped and fell and rose again, screaming orders and replies to one another against the wind, their eyes blinded by the rain.

"Be careful, honey, don’t stray from the rope," Binko warned, the last words she remembered hearing before she found herself in the lifeboat wondering who had been hitting her with a hammer and throwing buckets of water into her face.

"Where’s Binko?" she asked a sailor as their boat rose high and crashed into a cascade of water, covering them like statues of mermen and fish in a fountain; she spit out a mouthful of seawater, and asked again, "Where is my husband?"

"Washed overboard," said one of the sailors, while another one told him, "Hush, break it to her gently."

"It figures," she said. "Well, may he rest in peace. May he have better luck dead than he did alive." And then she asked the handsome sailor next to her, throwing her arms around him, "Are we going to make it out of here?!"

"The storm’s due to last another few hours," he cried out, like a drowning man rising up for a gasp of air. "Provided the boat doesn’t shatter!"

At that moment, peering out into the wild tempest, they caught a glimpse of Binko’s head, bobbing up and down in the sea. "Help! Help!" he cried.

"Good lord, it’s Mr. Binko!" cried one of the sailors. "Lower the oars, he’s over there, at nine o’clock. Work the oars, lads, we can still save him! Get a line out there! He must be freezing to death!"

"No!" screamed Mrs. Binko, hysterically. "No! Don’t you dare let him onto this boat! It will sink! We’ll all drown! Either that, or sea predators will dismember us, we’ll turn the sea red! Stop!" she screamed, scratching one of the sailors in the face. "Don’t you understand!? He’s bad luck! BAD LUCK!!!!"

"The newspaper angels won’t save you now!" she cursed, tearing her blouse half off to reveal her bosom to the sailor nearest her, digging her nails into his chest, trying through every possible means of violence and seduction to deter the rescue mission.

Of course, the maritime catastrophe shocked the world; but even more than for the loss of property and life, it was for the stunning continuation of Binko’s cataclysmic saga. How could so much misfortune befall one man? Was he merely the recipient of the most incredible series of misfortunes, merely the worst dice-roller of recorded history, or was he in some way jinxed, perhaps the focal point of some vast scheme of cosmic retribution which they could not fathom? Sitting together in the recovery room of an ocean-side hospital, Mrs. Binko demanded of her husband, "Who did you murder?"

"What?" he asked, weakly, exhausted from the ordeal.

"Or was it rape? Robbery alone could not have produced consequences of this severity. You must have killed somebody. Probably more than one. Did you torture them first?"

"I am a good man," Binko protested. "A businessman, to be sure, but good and kind, scrupulous and law-abiding. I have no dark stain on my soul, no secret skeleton in my closet. Stop blaming me, darling!"

"Don’t call me ‘darling’!"

"Stop blaming me for my catastrophes!"

The marriage was sure to have ended it then were it not for the pressure of the world watching, forcing them to play the role of the gallant partners, forcing her to be the loyal, loving wife, standing by her kindly, hard-pressed husband to the end. The only alternative was to be the heartless self-centered witch. Such were the rigid roles the world offered. But the steam inside of the tragic, romantic relationship that the world could not take its eyes off of was building to the point of explosion.

"Maybe it’s the statue," Binko thought at last, seeking to inject some sense into the midst of all the undecipherable choices that fate was making on his behalf. "The Odan statue – the God of Justice – I got it from an antiques store, without any thought as to its significance or history. Maybe it is jinxed, cursed by some ancient spiritual force we do not believe in, but which stalks us, nonetheless, and will continue to do so until we finally respect its meaning, and clear a space for it in the middle of our reason." The idea of a curse was not logical, but then, what was happening in his life wasn’t either. Reading in a book on primitive mythology that the God of Justice looked out with unforgiving eyes upon those who sinned – and that whereas the vile man sinned by cutting down a forest, the moral man sinned by merely stepping on a twig - Binko decided that it was time to rid himself of the possibility. The statue must go. And so, one day, he took it to a local pawnshop and sold it to a merchant for five hundred dinks, the same price as he had bought it for. Mrs. Binko, who preferred more modern decorations, did not miss the departure of the god, who was an "aesthetic sore thumb" in their abode, until she heard the news that it had just been resold for twenty million dinks, and turned out to be one of the greatest archaeological treasures of all times.

"You superstitious, utterly stupid moron!" she screamed, not more than one inch from her husband’s face. "You could have finally ended our misery once and for all, but no, you had to be the mystic, you had to go back two thousand years in time, throw away all the discoveries of science and believe that the little jewel-eyes in a statue could put a curse on you! Why didn’t you just cover the god’s head with a bag??? And now we’ll just have to keep on working at these grueling jobs, and with all this stress!"

Two months later, Binko was in divorce court with scratch marks on his face, begging his wife to reconsider. But she had had enough. "This man," she told the court, "is bad luck. To live beside him is to descend into hell, itself. He brings misfortune not only to himself, but to all who love him, to all who surround him, to all who come in contact with him. Truly, he should be quarantined in the same way as if he had an awful contagious disease, he should be put in a prison, and a moat should be built around that prison, and an electrified fence around that moat, and that prison should be built in the middle of a desert. I know that you all want me to be his loyal wife, but I’ve had enough. On our wedding day, I came to him as a bride, not a martyr. I came wearing white, not black. I have a right to live. I have a right to be happy. He is obviously in love with his pain, so he won’t be alone when I leave him. If you think I am ungrateful, take my place!"

"I don’t love my pain!" Binko wept from a courtroom bench. "I don’t love it!" But Mrs. Binko merely sneered, she had made up her mind what it was all about, and wanted out.

Two days later, as she came with a court official to extract the last of her belongings from the apartment, she found Binko lying on the floor, unconscious, a rope with a noose tied about his neck, a fragile shattered light fixture littering the floor. While the court official cried out in alarm, she studied the situation for a moment, then burst out laughing.

Stunned, the official regarded her.

"Once again, he failed!" she laughed. "Anyone would have known that fixture couldn’t support his weight – anyone but him! Don’t worry, this is far down on his list of catastrophes. A rope burn on the neck, a few bruises and cuts. Why it’s like taking a stroll in the rose garden. Come, help me lift these bags."

"Who am I? What am I?" he demanded of himself. "Why is the world treating me this way? Am I really creating this? Is there something in me that is a magnet for calamity, for failure, for disappointment? Is there some unknown law in the universe which I have broken, some unknown court in which I have been tried and found guilty, for me is the whole world a prison? How long is the sentence? Is the world a place of light and am I simply lame, unable to walk on paths of joy? Or is the world, in the end, a place of darkness, sinister and morose, are my steps of light being swallowed up by the hunger of the darkness? Am I tripping over my own feet, or is the whole world made of mud, and am I merely sinking into the nature of existence? Is this destiny or chance, captivity or illusion? Flip the coin: fifty tails in a row! Fifty nightmares! It seems like it is unavoidable fate that the next flip should be another nightmare, also, but according to statisticians, the chances are still 50/50 that the coin will turn up heads when it is thrown next. I am as free as the person next to me, no more blessed, and no more cursed! An airplane crash – another airplane – the circus – the cruise – blowing twenty million dinks – maybe the next coin flip will be a beautiful wife, and a happy home!" Binko struggled, he went up, he went down, he buckled under the weight of the world’s overwhelming concern, which masked its trepidation. The compassion was now riddled with traces of horror, only madwomen in total revolt against safety remained. He maneuvered through the armies of crazy, young girls who were willing to throw themselves like flowers into the fire of something they didn’t know, for the glamour of possibly discovering that they had great souls. They simultaneously irritated and intrigued him. He tried to remain focused on the job, while colleagues seemed to him to be at the same time overly sympathetic and increasingly distant.

Finally, some worried friends decided to take their troubled friend out for a night on the town: a night of playing cards, and spinning the gaming wheels. "You must be kidding!" Binko laughed. "With my luck, I’ll be homeless before the night is through!" But they struggled to convince him, used every psychological angle and remaining vestige of friendship they could muster, to at last bring him into Lucky Hands City, where they had set up an elaborate evening of ruses to convince him that he was not unlucky, after all, or that if he was, his luck was about to change. Astonishingly, in a little over four hours, Binko won at cards, won at the wheels, won on the machines, won everywhere it was possible to win, gathering up a hefty hundred thousand dinks: the contributions of many friends and the newspaper angels’ covert-aid fund coming in to back up the games rigged in his favor. It was a deception of mercy meant to change Binko’s perception of himself as a loser, and to open the mental gates to success and joy which seemed to be presently locked shut in his head. Fully duped, the exuberant Odapwertan danced merrily around the gaming tables, kissed pretty girls wherever he could find them, hugged his friends, insisting that they share in his winnings, and fell to his knees, thanking the invisible forces of the cosmos for coming to his rescue. He felt as though a beautiful flower, turned inside out and hidden from the sun within its own dark thoughts, had somehow righted itself, and once more hurled itself wide-open towards the light. Life had returned, and it was looking for him in every room, shining through windows, calling his name. "I guess my luck is balancing out," Binko laughed. The world seemed on the mend.

But, wouldn’t you know?, two days later, leaving a friend’s house after a night of partying, a fast-moving pair of hoodlums emerged suddenly out of the shadows, seizing him by the neck and holding a knife up to his throat. "So, lucky guy, where’s the loot?" they demanded. Before he could answer, they had slashed a huge gash in his coat pocket, and removed a wallet filled with cash and checks. Then they beat him to the ground.

"Big take!" shouted one of the hoodlums, in triumph. "Let’s get out of here!"

The other said, "Wait a minute. He’s seen our faces."

"Yeah, so?"

"He could identify us."

"What are you saying?"

"Maybe we better finish what we began."

Before the conversation could proceed any further, Binko who had seemed to be utterly inert on the ground was up and running, running like a wild man for all he was worth. The hoodlums had taken one of his phones, but he had another one tucked inside an inner pocket, and he pulled it out as he ran, pushing the emergency call button. "Hello, yes, I am running south down Beed Street, just passing by #11. Sorry, I’m panting! Two men are trying to kill me! They’ve got knives! No, not wine! Knives! Help! Oh please, God, help, they’re catching up! They’re running faster than I am!"

On pure hormonal strength – the hormone that for humans would correspond to adrenalin – Binko pushed on, staggering around a corner, charging down a side street, then looping back towards Beed in case the police were looking for him there. "Got to make it! Got to make it!" he gasped. "Can’t let go, not after all this!" The comforting sounds of sirens began to search for him in the darkness, but still he heard the pounding footsteps of the thieves not far behind. Suddenly, hurtling around the corner, trying to race across Beed, a speeding police car that had come to save him appeared from nowhere, he heard the screeching sound of the brakes screaming at the road, saw the angelic, out-of-control shape suddenly huge and upon him, felt a heavy thud and saw himself flying over the top above the pulsing heart-like siren and through the air. For a moment, it seemed like he was a helium-filled balloon, and that his flight would be endless, until all at once he felt the impact of the inhospitable pavement, felt the blow smashing through his entire body like a cannonball, and sensed himself lying crumpled on the ground and unable to breathe. "Oh, this is bad," he thought, lying there like an inanimate object that could still think; "this is more than a sprained ankle." Meanwhile, someway far away, perhaps a mile away it seemed, or at the bottom of a lake, he could hear the faint sounds of gunshots and hear other sirens, wailing now in hushed voices like people whispering when they don’t want to wake a baby who is asleep. "My own private world," he thought. "My own private island."

Not for the first time, Binko opened his eyes to find himself staring at the ceiling in a hospital. This time, however, there was no Mrs. Binko, no dream to return to, no warm hearth waiting, only him alone with needles and tubes in his arm, and the intrusive faces of medical personnel all around, with compassion that seemed cold, a hundred hands like reptiles trying to reassure him as they caused him pain. "Oh," he thought, "I might as well die right here and now." But something wouldn’t let him. The same something that had left him bloody and smashed outside of an exploding plane, and alive and soaked to the bone in the middle of the raging sea. Binko would not breathe his last. Not yet.

After recovery, this time, life in his city became pretty much impossible. The news attention was overwhelming, the frenzy of the disaster groupies unbearable. Though he took some to bed, they frightened him with their desperation, and with his loosening moral grip. Meanwhile, the people in his building were petitioning to have him evicted, and his boss had suddenly discovered that his skills were obsolete, and that he was not the motivated employee he had first hired. He was given two months’ severance pay, and a glowing recommendation. "So, society you will now become the plunging airplane. Perhaps it is by your fireball that I will be consumed – by the jobs I will no longer be hired for, by the apartments I will no longer be allowed to live in, by the friends I will cease to have. The engine on the wing is on fire, we are going down! In a different way, but the flames are just as hot!"

As his city began to shrivel up, to retract from him, as he felt more and more the weight of the newspapers which seemed to want to keep him as the poster boy of misfortune, to harness him to eternally low expectations which he dare not disappoint by succeeding, to elevate him as the paragon of sorrow, an honor which he could not betray by ever being happy, he finally decided that he must leave, find some place new to start over, to erase himself, become a nobody, become a new foundation for himself. Here, he was too filled with the junk of things that had not worked, he must go somewhere else to become an uncluttered room. Still, he was lonely, and becoming cynical from his defeats, he could not resist seizing up one of the broken girls, one who painted horrifying black lines across her face and disfigured her nose with a spike, before moving on to another city. Checking into a city halfway across the continent, local police allowed him to assume an alias; that was consistent with the new-start laws, applicable to non-fugitives. And Binko tried to live from a new beginning.

However, he had hardly been in his new location for seven months, and barely settled into a new and lucrative long-distance job which enabled him to work primarily through phones and computer systems from home, when predictably, disaster struck yet again. This time, the dimensions were stupendous. He was at home with Spike Girl, who spent one half of her time painting portraits of her inner demons in the kitchen, and one half of her time throwing plates and glasses at his head, when all of a sudden the apartment began to rumble. "Oh shit," Spike Girl said, "cheap wine and rainbow pops are messing me." Then, suddenly, as objects began to rain down all around her, Binko was seizing her in his scarred but still capable arms, and dragging her after him down the waving stairway of the building, past walls that were undulating like shape-shifters turning into water. Bolting out into the street at the very last moment, a horrible cracking sound lunged at their heels and delivered the entire building to the ground, they stumbled through clouds of dust and the sound of other crashes, beating off showers of glass and running past swarms of stones rushing to the earth. Bloody and senseless, they staggered into the green arms of the park, which was invaded by dust, but retained its trees and its lake. "What’s that, somebody started the war?" Spike Girl asked.

"It’s a war, all right," said Binko. "The tectonic plates against us."

"Can you just talk simple when I’m drunk?!"

"Earthquake, honey."

"What?"

"EARTHQUAKE!!!! The city we lived in just fell down. It might as well have been a bomb, but this one came from the inside! No airplane! Nobody dropped it, unless it was the designers the day they decided to build a city like this on top of a giant fault. From the airplane of bad planning. And once the city was here, who could say no? It was follow the leader all the way to hell."

"Could you just talk simple when I’m drunk?"

"EARTHQUAKE!!!!" repeated Binko.

It was a major catastrophe which stunned the entire country and forced massive compensations and adjustments: a whole huge thriving city plugged into crucial roles in the business network of the nation. It wasn’t an easy fall. As always happened at such times, the disaster spun a thousand stories from its epicenter: tragic victims, valiant heroes, despicable opportunists, rays of hope in the form of living beings, shattered families and heartwarming reunions. In the midst of all these stories, somehow, Binko’s was unearthed and without mercy pumped onto the lit tubes of the world’s fascination with disaster. "Among the survivors of the earthquake was Bad Luck Binko, who arrived in the city to try to start over a mere seven months before the catastrophe. Once more, the world’s unluckiest man finds himself at the center of mayhem and chaos." This time, however, there was no more sympathy. The world’s compassion had dried up, and Binko had ceased to be an object of pity, or even a model of perseverance, but had become, instead, something like a noxious contagion, a bringer of evil, the root of all plagues, the unclean one who brought ruin upon cities. Like Oedipus who brought disaster to Thebes, he must be driven from the city. It was only by the barest of margins that he survived a furious attack by earthquake refugees at a local shelter, and managed to escape with his life, wandering down the twisted highways left behind by the earthquake, onto empty roads leading towards other places that might not know him. Spike Girl did not follow him, it was at this very moment in life that she decided to go straight, to take the spike out of her nose and study accounting.

Most likely, Binko would have perished in the very near future if a mob that attacked him on the way to the city of Blu had not, with the sheer force of its weight and the fury of its agitation, unsettled a mountain along the highway as it clamored towards him with violent intentions. Underneath its force the mountain unfolded, like a hideous magic trick, into an avalanche, and carried hundreds with it, rolling to their deaths by Binko’s feet. He, himself, had one foot broken by a giant boulder bounding past him like a prisoner on a jailbreak, fleeing from centuries of motionlessness. Though growing more cynical and angry by the minute, Binko was unable to relish this terrible defeat of his enemies by nature. He felt more guilty than ever, and spent an hour praying by their crushed bodies, before continuing his walk towards Blu. "Look, I need to live somewhere," he told the police cordon ahead of him, as he approached it, looking only for a glass of water and some place with walls that would keep out the wind.

Some ask why the police did not shoot him then and there, but the simple answer is that the avalanche on the mountain had by now convinced the world that Binko was such bad luck that it was not even safe to try to kill him. And besides that, the world did not wish to discredit its laws, perhaps irreparably, by murdering him in cold blood. Therefore, the city of Blu tried to reason with him, which was not easy to do, given the utterly unreasonable nature of the situation. "Please, don’t come here," the mayor begged him over the radio. "I know it doesn’t make sense, but even so, it’s happened over and over again. Horrible things keep happening everywhere you go. No one wants to live around you. If there wasn’t so much evidence, it would be discrimination, but how can we argue with the facts? Your own wife - "

"Former wife," said Binko.

"- said, and I quote: ‘To live beside him is to descend into hell, itself. He brings misfortune not only to himself, but to all who love him, to all who surround him, to all who come in contact with him. Truly, he should be quarantined in the same way as if he had an awful contagious disease, he should be put in a prison, and a moat should be built around that prison, and an electrified fence around that moat, and that prison should be built in the middle of a desert.’ Binko, I am the mayor of this populous, prosperous city, I am responsible to its people. I must ask you to turn away, do not come here."

"I am sorry," said Binko, "but I am as tired of you as you are tired of me. I am tired of your sympathy, which is now shown to be false. The tank of your love is empty, and it did not get us very far. I am tired of you pretending to care. I am tired of my bad luck, and I would not be surprised if a part of me wants to share my misfortune with you. If, indeed, one of my ex-wife’s conjectures is true, and I have brought this bad luck upon myself as a gesture of equality with the damned and the wretched of the earth, then why should I not demand the same level of solidarity from you? In truth, I am just a confused and worn-out being seeking a warm meal and a place to rest my weary body."

"So, you’re turning back?" the mayor asked.

Binko laughed at that, the first time he ever threw his head back to roar with malicious delight, his very entrails rocking with pleasure. On the other side of the radio the mayor shuddered. "You politicians are so helpless once people stop being puppets!" Binko laughed. "No, I’m headed your way. I’m tired of you, tired of everything; I think being shot will be a stroke of good luck – the first I’ve had in years!"

Reluctantly, the mayor ordered a police squadron to advance, in order to protect the public peace. When Binko refused to respond to a barrage of loudspeakers ordering him to halt on pain of being shot, the police captain finally ordered his unit to open fire. But at that moment, one of the recruits accidentally shot himself in the leg, and the rest of the policemen, some carrying him off the field bleeding from his own foolishness, others standing bewildered in the shadow of so many other things, lost their will to fight. "Captain," one of the policemen said. "This guy is jinxed, cursed, and hexed all at the same time." And then it began to rain, and they saw lightning in the distance, coming down in frightening straight streaks into the hills beyond the city, gripping unknown fields and suburban yards in its ruthless electric embrace. "This is over the top. Cut some kind of deal, god damn it! It’s not right to kill him, anyhow!"

"All right!" the mayor pleaded, at last over the radio. "Look, there’s a gas station a half mile down the road. Stay there overnight, Binko, don’t approach any closer. We’ll work out a deal tonight. We’ll give you satisfaction. We’ll give you justice. We’ll make life outside of Blu very sweet for you! – Maybe the gas station will blow up and we’ll be done with him," the mayor whispered to the police chief, as the cordon withdrew to let Binko advance to shelter.

But, although five people were hit by lightning that night, and the word "GAS" in "GAS STATION" was shattered and charred by a lightning hit, Binko survived the night, and next day the mayor of Blu proffered him a spectacular deal. One million dinks and a nomad vehicle of his own, to stay out of town. Binko accepted the terms and walked up to the vehicle, which contained a suitcase stuffed with cash, as if he were a kidnapper being paid off for the return of a hostage. "Hmm," he thought. "My bad luck has finally become so extreme as to be of use."

What followed next might well be described as Binko’s nefarious phase. Hardened by years of bad luck, by futile charity and then by cruel rejection, he momentarily delighted in the terror his presence instilled in others. He began a series of pilgrimages to the major cities of his land, threatening to live in them, and thereby prompting lucrative buy-offs, as he had obtained from the mayor of Blu. He was paid millions to stay away. Entire towns were deserted as he approached, filled with homes and stores which then belonged to him, and to him alone. In many cases, these towns began to lay caches of offerings and supplies on his path, in desperate efforts to placate him and to forestall the need for him to come in in search of provisions. At last, the cities and towns began to complain that the burden imposed upon them was too great; they demanded aid from the national government, which finally negotiated an enormous project of reconciliation with Binko. A huge palace, for his use and his use alone, was to be built in the middle of the desert, far away from any other city or population center. All of the expected services and amenities would be provided, he would be made lord and master of all lands within a five hundred mile radius. ‘Lord and master’: very archaic in a day of presidents and councilmen, yet pleasing to the ears of those who cherished history and regretted the passing of its absurdly inflated yet somehow realistic perspectives. To service the palace, of course, there must be a staff, either recruited by means of grossly exaggerated salaries or driven there by the whip. By escalating the punishment for tax evasion to death, but offering service on Binko’s grand estate as an alternative, the government was able to secure a large, coerced work force that was satisfactory to Binko, who was not willing to whittle away his immense fortune by paying workers, nor to be served by dangerous criminals. Tax evaders, he was sure, would make most wonderful servants!

And so things might have ended, with Binko reaping the benefits of his bad luck to become a formidable but ultimately marginal despot, if one of the beautiful women he demanded the world send to him as part of his rapidly growing harem, his collection of carnal compensators, as he called them, had not proved to be far more than he had bargained for.

One night, as he ordered her to strip for him, leering on the edge of his chair in anticipation of her distress, no longer the man he used to be, she told him, "Binko, my body is your toy, but it is not where I am, I am in my heart which is behind high walls you will never reach; I am in my mind, which is a mountain above your valley."

"Oh come , spare me the absurdity of it. Do not disfigure your physical form with things you do not possess. Do not pollute the tangible with inventions."

"Poor, poor Binko," she told him, standing naked before him. "We used to love you, because there was innocence in the midst of your catastrophes. A beautiful white flower blossomed on the bush of the universe’s unfairness, all the weight that fell upon you was unjust. You were for us a reminder that misfortune is not a punishment, but something that is never stronger than who we are inside; it may reveal the light we have, or narrow its reach, as though the sun were buried in a hole, but it cannot extinguish it; and it makes vanquished things beautiful. Binko, your amazing bad luck helped us to endure our own sorrows, you sheltered us with your disasters that caught our own, like a roof catches rain, and carries it off, back to the ground. You stood exposed on the promontory of everything that can go wrong in life, you were the point man of our collective disappointment, the leader of the army of the sad. By persisting, you helped us to make it through our own pain and to survive our own discontent. You were our vision of holiness. But now, look at you. Look at the corruption! You are no longer the victim of bad luck, you have become the bad luck of the world! You have been broken, like glass, into pride and selfishness, you have chosen revenge over transcendence, you have betrayed the place you made for us at the bottom of the giant night. Then, Binko, you were a king; now, in your palace, you are a pauper!"

"Do not bore me with your clichés," Binko raged, wiping tears from his eyes, "you are just a young body I will use to please myself. Anyway, stop glorifying me, I was never who you thought I was, I was just a tormented, miserable being all along. It is easy to build a statue and to lay flowers at its feet, a far different thing to love the man who you turned into a statue. Why, that is the very reason you turned him into a statue, because the man himself was not worth loving! You had to imagine him as something else and make it in stone, so that you could forget him! People are such inconvenient things to worship! Now come here, and give me a kiss. No, not so coldly!" he protested. "You kiss me as though you were a lizard!"

"I kiss you with what you have become."

"Less of your ideas, more of your anatomy! Who are you, anyway? Another tax evader? You cheated so you could have a second car? A vacation? How can I take your recriminations seriously, we’re all in the same boat of corruption, just spread yourself out like a rug, and we can avoid unnecessary brushes with guilt."

"I didn’t pay my taxes because I disagree with how the government is using our money," the girl explained.

"Oh, one of those types! No missiles, give all the money to some endangered species!"

"Mock me as you wish, I think we must defend the moral terrain of our economy."

Binko sighed, this wasn’t going to be a quick and easy release. And, in fact, it took the whole night. Of course, Binko was resistant. He had come to this new harsh place in his heart because where he had been was too torturous to remain; however, that was without a woman who loved him by his side. Now, here, in the desert of his cynicism, in his last defense of not caring, something he had never expected to see or taste again had returned to his life: a beautiful woman who seemed capable of understanding him, and willing to risk everything for love. Before dawn had come to the sky, Binko was crying in her arms, his armor swept aside by tears; he wanted to be himself again, even if it meant being more vulnerable in the jungles of misfortune. He did not want to be broken by becoming hard, he did not want to escape from pain by laughing at suffering, the world’s suffering in his own. He wanted to come back, and if a comet came down right now from the sky, as, indeed it might, to be tragic, not pitiful; grand, not negligible. He wanted, once more, those subtle enormous proportions that turn the squashed bug into a hero.

For her part, Binko’s new girl, who would come to be known as Lady Binko, did not wish to tip the scales of who Binko was away from Binko, even as she repaired him with her kisses. She wanted to rebuild him towards something that was in him, and neither bind him to his past, nor force him towards a future that was not his own. But her idealism could not help but rub off on him. She linked the pain of the world to the pain he knew inside himself, built bridges between his private inexplicable disasters and the unnecessary disasters unscrupulous and indifferent men had forced upon the world. Sometimes, he ate out of her hand; other times he seemed to flee back towards the safety of not feeling. What finally cemented their relationship forever was the day a huge bright light appeared in the sky, a meteor, it seemed, leaping towards the earth in flames, headed their way. "Oh no, here we go again," groaned Binko. "See what letting myself become soft has done? Good, good Binko, charging straight into the disasters of the world! Not to be left out! This meteor is going to hit us Lady, and burn us to a crisp even before it smashes us into desert dust. You should have just paid your taxes, and kept your kisses to yourself!" But Lady stood there, unflinching, as the rest of his servants screamed and ran away; holding his hand, she looked up at the ball of flame separating itself from the stars and flying towards them, and told him, "Let’s enjoy it till it’s over. You’re a good man, Binko, and though I don’t want to die, if I must die, I’d like it to be by your side."

"Don’t you understand?" he protested. "If you weren’t by my side, you wouldn’t be in danger of dying!"

"But I want to be by your side," she said. "If death goes along with that wish, it’s fine. Here, with you, is where life is for me. Should I kill myself by leaving, or let the meteor do it for me? I don’t believe in dying by my own hand," she answered.

The huge meteor, glaring like a sun in the middle of the night now approached even closer, they saw it sweeping forward, the end was near! They turned towards each other and shared a kiss that was both passionate and philosophical. "It’s been worth it," she told Binko, without the faintest trace of regret.

He replied by continuing to kiss her. And suddenly, above them, there was a gigantic explosion, the light was unbearable, and then began to fade quickly; looking up, they saw gigantic falling trails of light, pieces of fire spreading out like fireworks reaching downwards towards the earth in brilliant collapsing plumes and spirals; multitudinous flashes opening up like an umbrella of flame to cover them over with the disintegration of the giant meteor which was breaking up in the atmosphere, valiantly dismantling itself in the night because something indestructible had been found beneath it. For a long while they stood there, watching the embers of a catastrophe that surrendered to their love, occasionally listening to the crash of fragments in the distance, erupting into tiny, momentary fires that seemed to be lit in praise of their bond; and once, to the hissing of something unearthly hot landing nearby. A column of steam that was only a test, rose up from the ground, and then there was only the silence of the night again, and the resurgence of crickets, serenading them in the dark.

Won over by this great proof of change, Binko honored his Lady by turning his power into hope – hope for the world. He began to demand reforms of the world from the refuge of his palace; and its various governments, fearing the approach of his giant nomad vehicle, as in the days of old, or the advance of his private jet, negotiated, struggled, bargained, and finally gave in to much of what he called for, not yielding their vices completely, but enough to make the world a much better place. Binko, from being known first as the man of bad luck, and then as the gangster of misfortune, and finally as the sultan of catastrophe, was now, ultimately, to become the bringer of justice, the champion of the people. Bad Luck Binko had become the uncrowned king of Odapwerta, its moral guardian and defender of the heart.

**********

"And that," concluded Dazome Hara and Abelina Dow, "is the story of Bad Luck Binko, the modern fable we were talking about."

Amazed, the crew looked up from their story screens and searched the two cultural specialists for something more.

"So," Lavovin asked at last, "does this fable have a moral, like Aesop’s? Like, work hard; don’t lie; do unto others as you would have them do unto you; don’t bite the hand that feeds you?"

Dazome and Abelina looked at each other, then laughed. Lavovin’s worldly and sophisticated face looked so surprisingly child-like for a moment. Then Dazome said, "I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned here, Security Specialist."

"Don’t give up, just because you’re in a slump," said Taragus.

"If you’ve got a problem, milk it for all its worth," suggested Lavovin.

"Love is the greatest power in all the universe, it is stronger than good luck or bad luck," said Dazome.

"An interesting little tangent," said Regulus. "It’s been a successful training mission. Zan Taragus, perhaps you will be so good as to return us to the mother ship, and thence, to the great mind ship? Odapwerta is, after all, quite a small world in quite a large universe."

"But with quite a long reach," said Dazome.

"I’ll prepare the return," Taragus agreed. As he left, Dazome could hear him singing to himself: "Bad Luck Binko hung on through the night! Bad Luck Binko hung on till the light!"

As always, they would move on, but they would leave nothing behind that mattered. Every star had a treasure to whisper in their ear. And their ship, in spite of its astonishing speed, would pause to listen.

The Adventures of Zan Taragus

Short Fiction Contents

Creative Safehouse Contents