Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane by William Peter Blatty Page A

“It’s a matter of time before it happens, before we reach that final heat death. And when we reach that final heat death, life can never reappear. If that seems clear, Hud, paw the ground twice.”
    “Yes, that’s clear.”
    “Your lightning insights purely astound me. Now, let’s take a simple disjunction. Either matter—matter or energy—is eternal and always existed, or it didn’t always exist and had a definite beginning in time. So let’s eliminate one or the other. Let’s say that matter always existed. And bear in mind that the coming heat death, Hud, is purely a matter of time. Did I say three billion years? Let’s say a billion billion years. I don’t care what the time required is, Hud. Whatever it is, it’s limited. But if matter always existed, dunce, you and I aren’t here.”
    “What?”
    “Hud, we don’t exist! Heat death has already come and gone!”
    “I don’t follow.”
    “You’d rather confess. Give me the frock and I’ll let you confess. Let no one write ‘Obdurate’ on my tombstone. Call me flexible, Hud, and confess.”
    “Captain—”
    “Warren, then. Call me Warren.”
    “I’ve missed a connection,” said Kane, “in the argument.”
    “You’ve been missing connections the whole of your life! Foot! You are dumber than a prize Dauphin. Look—if matter has always existed and if heat death is a matter of time like, let’s say, a billion billion years, then, Hud, it’s got to have already happened! A billion billion years have come and gone a trillion times, mon cher, an infinite number of times! Ahead of us and behind us, is an infinite number of years in the case of matter always existing! So heat death has come and gone! And once it comes, there can never be life! Never again! Not for eternity! So how come we’re talking, eh, how come? Though notice that I am talking sensibly while you just sit there drooling. Nevertheless, we are here. Why is that?”
    Interest quickened in Kane’s eyes. “Either matter is not eternal, I’d say, or the entropy theory is wrong.”
    “ What? You reject my basic foos, Hud? My basic foos of physics? ”
    “No,” said Kane. “No, I do not.”
    “Then there can be only one alternative, Greg: matter hasn’t always existed. And that means once there was purely nothing, Hud, nothing at all in existence. So how come there’s something now? The answer is obvious to even the lowliest, the meanest of intelligences, and that, of course, means you. The answer is something other than matter had to make matter begin to be. That something other I call Foot. How does that grab you?”
    “It’s rather compelling.”
    “There’s only one thing wrong,” said Cutshaw.
    “What?”
    “I don’t believe it for a minute. What do you take me for, a lunatic?” The astronaut sprang from the sofa, charging the desk with head-bent belligerence. “I copied that proof from a privy wall at a Maryknoll Mission in Beverly Hills!”
    “It doesn’t convince you?”
    “Intellectually, yes. But emotionally, no! ”
    Kane said, “I thought you’d made it up.”
    “Hud, I am sick of your snotty insults! Sick of your whole performance, in fact! Enough of this shabby charade! Burn your frock! Buy a gown! You are Mary Baker Eddy!”
    Kane said, “I thought I was Gregory Peck.”
    “Why, you incredible megalomaniac! How come you’re loose while your betters are chained!”
    “Please sit down,” motioned Kane.
    “No, I won’t.”
    “Cutshaw, why not?”
    “There is quicksand all around me. Think I’m a child? Think I’m a Kane? Think that I’d fall for that dumb trick? Next you’ll say, ‘Look at the submarine!’ and then you’ll squirt me with a water gun!” The astronaut leaped onto the desk, sitting with folded arms and legs, confronting Kane like a Delphic leprechaun. “Lieutenant Zook thinks you’re P. T. Barnum,” he said. “I thought him to be in error at first and declared him excommunicate, but perhaps I overextended. I see