Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 2 Part 17

"I wish that guy would get his truffle-grubbing hands off my girl,"

Rock-Head grumbled. "But how do I know it would be fun? Is not fun an innate idea? And there are none such."

A thief rode up one cloudy afternoon, opened Rock-Head's head,stuffed a large bag of gold inside, closed the head again, and rode off furiously once more. How did the thief know that Rock-Head's head would open? Why, the gentlemen of the trade can sense a good hiding place every time.

The thief was caught by pursuing hors.e.m.e.n. He was beaten, crying his innocence all the time; but he was not hanged. You cannot hand a thief without boodle.

But the bag full of gold weighed heavily on Rock-Head's brain.

Moreover, it crowded the wrens in his head. He had great affection for the wrens, though they did sometimes pick his brains. This gold did have effect.

"This gold, at least, is not an innate idea," Rock-Head mused "In its particular, it is a thing intruded directly into my head. It is a heavy thing, and I cannot ignore it. There is a new idea and a new att.i.tude in me.

I am a man of means now, and my thinking can never be quite what it was before."

Rock-Head began thinking in a new way.

"Jouhandeau," he said when that doctor came to visit him again, "tell Condillac that I want to talk to him. There is something wrong with that man, I believe."

"Condillac is dead now, Rock-Head," Jouhandeau told him. "That is the most recent thing wrong with him."

"How did he accept it? I've been afraid there would be some trouble there."

"He didn't accept it. He believes that life and death are both innate concepts, and that there are no innate concepts. Naturally, he will not believe that he is dead."

"How are you coming along with the revolutionaries, Jouhandeau?"

"Quite well. There are a hundred of them now, and I will leave them to themselves. They will propagate their own kind, and in two hundred years they will take over the world. I will not hurry it. I am two hundred years before my time in so many ways already."

There was blood on the bread. There was blood on the land, and on every thing. It would bubble and speckle. Then it would flow.

Rock-Head had become an orator. He had the fire, he had the sparkle, he had the quick deep thunder of a true rouser. He had the freshness of morning rain and the resonance of the groaning earth.

So naturally he became something of a leader among the old-fas.h.i.+oned revolutionaries of the neighborhood, and they came for him one night.

"Time for talking is over with, Rock-Head," they told him. "Now is the time for action." They ripped his brains out of the rock case, they ripped out all the sensory appendages that went with them. They loaded these in two hampers on a mule.

"Lead us, Rock-Head," they said. "We begin to burn the world down tonight. We start with the estate house Flux and the town of Beaugency. We burn and we slay."

"What will become of my wrens when I am not in my head with them?"

Rock-Head asked.

"We care nothing for wrens, we care nothing for people," they cried.

"We only care that the burning may begin."

"What will become of my sack of gold when I am not in my own head to guard it?" Rock-Head worried.

"We care nothing for gold," they cried, "we care less for bread. The burning is the thing." And they had come to the estae house of Flux. They began to butcher the gentlepeople and servants fluttering around and set fire to the place.

"Wait, wait," Rock-Head cried. "Have some respect for property.

Wait.""How can we have respect for property?" they asked as they killed and burned. "A revolutionary cares nothing for property."

"This one does," said Rock-Head. "We must have a revolution with full respect for property. I am a man of property now. I own a bag of gold.

Up the revolution! Up respect for property!"

"This cannot be," the revolutionaries held council. "A person who owns one bag of gold cannot be a true revolutionary; though a person who owns one thousand bags may sometimes be."

They began to kill Rock-Head there, in brain and sensories.

"Tell Jouhandeau to call off his thing," Rock-Head gasped out of his dying cerebrum; but these old-fas.h.i.+oned revolutionaries didn't understand him. They knew nothing of the creatures of Jouhandeue which would so soon obsolete them.

They killed Rock-Head in all his parts. They sold his remains for cat meat to a basketwoman there, and they went on with their burning.

Oh, the statue is still there, and there are still wrens in his head. There have now been more than one hundred generations of wrens there.

These are the rich wrens and they have a good thing. They pay tribute to the shrikes in small gold coins, so they will now kill them. And the wrens are left alone.

The old-fas.h.i.+oned revolutionaries failed, but the new revolutionaries made by Jouhandeau could not fail. Failure is an innate concept, and there are no innate concepts. A hundred of them, with the few young boys they had pupped in the meanwhile, would overturn that land nineteen years later, tha tland with blood on the bread.

And later, a thousand of them would --, and ten thousand of them would --, and ten million of them would --, for they propagated their own kind. They were people so narrow and singular that you would hardly believe it.

Doctor Jouhandeau was two hundred years before his time in so many ways, but he estimated the time of it nicely.

ENTIRE AND PERFECT CHRYSOLITE.

Having achieved perfection, we feel a slight unease. From our height we feel impelled to look down. We make our own place and tehre is nothing below us; but in our imagination there are depths and enimals below us. To look down breeds cultishness.

There are the cults of the further lands and the further peoples.

The Irish and Americans and Africans are respectable, philosophical and industrial parties, but the cultishness is something beyond. Any addition to the world would mar the perfect world which is the perfect thought of the Maker. Were there an Africa indeed, were there the Indies, then we would be other than we are. The tripart.i.te unity that is the ec.u.mene would be broken: the habitable world-island, the single eye in the head that is the world-globe would be voided.

There are those who say that our rational and perfct world whould steep itself in this great unconcsious grography of the under-mind, in the outre fauna and the incredible continents of the tortured imagination and of black legends. They pretend that this world would give us depth.

We do not want depth. We want Height! Let us seal off the under-things of the under-mind, and exalt ourselves! And our unease will pa.s.s.

-- Exaltation Philosophy Audifax O'Hanlon The True Believer was sailing offsh.o.r.e in an easterly direction in the lat.i.tude of fifteen degrees north and the longitude of twenty-fourdegrees east. To the north of the coasting s.h.i.+p was the beautiful Cinnamon Coast of Libya with its wonderful beaches and its remarkable hotels tawny in the distance. To the east and south and west were the white-topped waves that went on for ever and ever. The True Believer sailed along the southernmost edge of the ec.u.mene, the habitable and inhabited world.

August Shackleton wis drinking Roman Bomb out of a potbellied bottle and yelping happily as he handled the wheel of the True Believer: "It's a kids' thing to do," he yipped, "but there were never such beautiful waters to do it in. We try to call in outer spirits. We try to call up inner spirits and lands. It's a children's antic. Why do we do it, Boyle, other than for the fun of it?"

"Should there by another reason, Shackleton? Well, there is; but we go about it awkwardly and without knowing what we're doing. The thing about humans which n.o.body apparently wishes to notice, is that we're a species which has never had an adult culture. We feel that lack more and more as we become truly adult in other ways. It grows tedious to stretch out a childhood forever. The easy enjoyments, the easy rationality, the easy governments and sciences, are really childish things. We master them while we are yet children, and we look beyond. But there isn't anything beyond the childishness, Shackleton. We must find a deeper view somehow. We are looking for that something deeper here."

"What? By going on a lark that is childish even to children, Boyle?

I was ashamed in front of my sons when I confessed on what sort of diversion I was going. First there were the seances that we indulged in. If we raised any spirits there, they were certainly childish ones. And now we're on this voyage on the True Believer. We're looking for the geographical home of certain collective unconscious images! Why shouldn't the children hoot at us? Ah well, let us not be too ashamed. It's colorful and stimulating fun, but it isn't adult."

The other four members of the party, Sebastian Linter and the three wives, Just.i.tia Shackleton, Luna Boyle, and Mintgreen Linter, were swimming in the blue ocean. The True Beleiver was coasting very slowly and the four swimmers were clipped to outrigger towlines.

"There's something wrong with the water!" Justina Shackleton suddenly called up to her husband. "There's weeds in it, and there shouldn't be. There's reeds in it, and swamp gra.s.ses. There's mud. And there's green slime!"

"You're out of your lovely head, lovely," Shackleton called back.

"It's all clear blue water off a sand coast. I can see fish twenty meters down. It's clear."

"I tell you it's full of green slime!" Justina called back. "It's so thick and heavy that it almost tears me away from the line. And the insects are so fierce that I have to stay submerged."

But they were off the Cinnamon Coast of Libya. They could smell the warm sand, and the watered gardens ash.o.r.e. There was no mud, there was no slime, there were no insects off the Cinnamon Coast ever. It was all clear and bright as living, moving gla.s.s.

Sebastian Linter had been swimming on the seaward side of the s.h.i.+p.

Now he came up ropes to the open deck of the s.h.i.+p, and he was bleeding.

"It is thick, Shackleton," he panted. "It's full of snags and it's dangerous. And that fanged hog could have killed me. Get the rest of them out of the water! "

"Linter, you can see for yourself that it is clear everywhere.

Clear, and of sufficient depth, and serene."

"Sure, I see that it is, Shackleton. Only it isn't. What we are looking for has already begun. The illusion has already happened to all senses except sight. Stuff it, Shackleton! Get them out of the water! The snakes and the crocs will get them. The animals thres.h.i.+ng around in the mud will get them. And if they try to climb up into the short, the beasts there will break them up and tear them to pieces." "Linter, we're two thousand meters off sh.o.r.e and everything is clear. But you are disturbed. Oof, so am I! The s.h.i.+p has grounded, and it's fifty meters deep here. All right, everyone! I order everybody except my wife to come out of the water! I request that she come out. I am unable to order her to do anything."

The other two women, Luna Boyle and Mintgreen Linter, came out of the water. And Justina Shackleton did not.

"In a while, August, in a while I come," Justina called up to the s.h.i.+p. "I'm in the middle of a puzzle here and I want to study it some more.

August, can a hallucination snap you in two? He sure is making the motions."

"I don't know, lovely," August Shackleton called back to her doubtfully.

Luna Boyle and Mintgreen Linter had come out of the ocean up the ropes. Luna was covered with green slime and was bleeding variously.

Mintgreen was covered with weeds and mud, and her hands were town. And she hobbled with pain.

"Is your foot broken, darling?" Sebastian Linter asked her with almost concern. "But of course, it is all illusion."

"I have the illusoin that my foot is broken," Mintgreen sniffled, "and I have the illusion that I am in very great pain. Bleeding blubberfish, I wish it were real! It wouldn't really hurt this much."

"Oh, elephant hokey!" Boyle stormed. "These illusions are nonsense.

There can't be such an ambient creeping around us. We're not experiencing anything."

"Yes we are, Boyle," Shackleton said nervously. "And your expression is an odd one at this moment. For the elephant was historical in the India that is, was fantastic in the further India that is fantastic, and is still more fanciful in its African contingency. In a moment we will try to conjure up the African elephant which is twice the ma.s.s of the historical Indian elephant. The s.h.i.+p is dragging badly now and might even break up if this continues, but the faro shows no physical contact. All right, the five of us on deck will put our heads together for this. You lend us a head too, Justina!"

"Take it, take my head. I'm about to let that jawful snapper have my body anyhow. August, this stuff is real! Don't tell me I imagine that smell," Justina called.

"We will all try to imagine that smell, and other things," August Shackleton stated as he uncorked another bottle of Roman Bomb. In the visible world there was still the Cinnamon Coast of Libya, and the blue ocean going on forever. But in another visible world, completely unrelated to the firt and occupying absolutely a different s.p.a.ce (but both occupying total s.p.a.ce), were the green swamps of Africa, the sedgy sh.o.r.es going sometimes back into rain forests and sometimes into savannas, the moon mountains rising behind them, the air sometimes heavy mist and sometimes clear with scalding light, the fifth levels of noises, the hundred levels of colors.

"The ambient is forming nicely even before we start," Shackleton purred. Some of them drank Roman Bomb and some of them Green Canary as they readied themselves for the psychic adventure.

"We begin the conjure," Shackleton said, "and the conjure begins with words. Our little group has been involved in several sorts of investigations, foolish ones perhaps, to discover whether there are (or more importantly, to be sure that there are not) physical areas and creatures beyond those of th closed ec.u.mene. We have gone on k.n.o.b-knockers, we have held seances. The seances in particular were grotesque, and I believe we were all uneasy and guilty about them. Our Faith forbids us to evoke spirits. But where does it forbid us to evoke geographies?"

"Ease up a little on the evoking!" Justina shrilled up at them. "The snapper just took me off at the left ankle. I pray he doesn't like my taste." "It has been a mystery for centuries," said August (somewhat disturbed by his wife's vulgar outburst from the ocean), "that out of the folk unconscious there should well up ideas of continents that are not in the world, continents with highly imaginary flora and fauna, continents with highly imaginary people. It is a further mystery that these psychic continents and islands should be given bearings, and that apparently sane persons have claimed to visit them. The deepest mystery of all is Africa.

Africa, in Roman days, was a subdivision of Mauretania, which was a subdivision of Libya, one of the three parts of the world. And yet the entire coast of Libya has been mapped correctly for three thousand years, and there is no Africa beyond, either appended or separate. We prove the nonsense of it by sailing in clear ocean through the middle of that pretended continent."

"We prove the nonsense further by getting our s.h.i.+p mired in a swamp in the middle of the imaginary continent and seeing that continent begin to form about us," said Boyle. His Green Canary tasted funny to him. There was a squalling pungency in the air and something hair-raisingly foreign in the taste of the drink.

"This is all like something out of Carlo Forte," Linter laughed unsteadily.

"The continental ambient forms about its," said Shackleton. "Now we will evoke the creatures. First let its conjure the great animals: the rhinoceros, the lion, the leopard, the elephant, which all have Asian Counterparts; but these of the contingent Africa are to be half again to twice the size, and incomparably fierce.

"We conjure them, we conjure them," they all chanted, and the conjured creatures appeared mistily.

"We conjure the hippototamus, the water behemoth, with its great comical bulk, its muzzle like a scoop shovel, and its eyes standing up like big b.a.l.l.s --"

"Stop it, August!" Justina Shackleton shrieked from the water. "I don't know whether the hippo is playful or not, but he's going to cruch me in a minute."

"Come out of the water, Justina!" August ordered sternly.

"I will not. There isn't any s.h.i.+p left for me to come to. You're all sitting on a big, slippery, broken tree out over the water, and the snappers and boas are coming very near your legs and necks."

"Yes, I suppose so, one way of looking it it," August said. "Now everybody Conjure the animals that are compounded out of grisly humor, the giraffe with a neck alone that is longer than a horse, and the zebra which is a horse in a clown suit."

"We conjure them, we conjure," they all chanted.

"The zebra isn't as funny as I thought it would be." Boyle complained. "Nothing is as funny as a I thought it would be."

"Conjure the great snake that is a thousand times heavier than other snakes, that can swallow a wild a.s.s," Shackleton gave them the lead.

"We conjure it, we conjure it," they all chanted.

"August, it's over your head, reaching down out of the giant mimosa estuaries in which it lives," they all chanted.

"Easy on that one," Justina shrilled. "He's been taking me by little pieces. Now he's taking me by big pieces."

"Conjure the ostrich," Shackleton intoned, " the bird that is a thousand times as heavy as other birds, that stands a meter tailer than a man, that kicks like a mule, the bird that is too heavy to fly. I wonder what delirium first invented such wildlife as Africa's, anyhow?"

"We conjure it, we conjure it," they chanted.

"Conjure the great walking monkey that is three times as heavy as a man," August intoned. "Conjure a somewhat smaller one, two-thirds the size of man, that grins and gibbers and understands speech, that could speak if he wished." "We conjure them, we conjure them. "