Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 2 Part 18

"Conjure the third of the large monkeys that is dog-faced and purple of a.r.s.e."

"We conjure it, we conjure it, but it belongs in a comic strip."

"Conjure the gentle monster, the okapi that is made out of pieces of the antelope and camel and contingent giraffe, and which likewise wears a clown suit."

"We conjure it, we conjure it."

"Conjure the mult.i.tudinous antelopes, koodoo, nyala, hartebeest, oryx, bongo, klipspringer, gemsbok, all so out of keeping with a warm country, all such grotesque takcoffs of the little alpine antelope."

"We conjure them, we conjure them."

"Conjure the buffalo that is greater thin all other buffalo or cattle, that has horns as wide as a s.h.i.+eld. Conjure the quagga. I forget its pretended appearance, but it cannot be ordinary."

"We conjure it, we conjure it."

"We come to the top of it all! Conjure the most anthropomorphic group in the entire unconsciousness: men who are men indeed, but who are as black as midnight in a hazel grove, who are long of angie and metatarsals and lower limb so they call run and leap uncommonly, who have crumpled hair and are ma.s.sive of feature. Conjure another variety that are only half as tall as them. Conjure a third sort that are short of stature and prodigious of hips."

"We conjure them, we conjure them," they all chanted. "They are the caricatures from the beginning."

"But can all these animals appear at one time?" Boyle protested.

"Even on a contingent continent dredged out of the folk unconsciousness there would be varieties of climates and land-form. All would not be together."

"This is rhapsody, this is panorama, this is Africa," said Lima Boyle.

And they were all totally in the middle of Africa, on a slippery bole of a broken tree that teetered over a green swamp. And the animals were them in the rain forests and the savannas, on the sh.o.r.e, and in the green swamp. And a man black as midnight was there, his face broken with emotion.

Justina Shackleton screamed horribly as the crocodile sliced her in two. She still screamed from inside the gulping beast as one might scream under water.

2.

The Ec.u.mene, the world island, has the shape of an egg 110 degrees from East to West and 45 degrees from North to South. It is scored into three parts, Eurpoa, Asia, and Libya. It is scored by the incurring seas, Eurpoa from Asia by the Pontus and the Hurcanum Seas, Asia from Libya by the Persian Sea, and Libya from Eurpoa by the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas (the Mediterranean Complex). The most westerly part of the world is Curuna in Iberia or Spain, the most northerly is Kharkovsk in Scythia or Russia, the most easterly is Sining in Han or China, the most southerly is the Cinnamon Coast of Libya.

The first chart of the world, that of Eratothenes, was thus, and it was perfect. Whether he had it from primitive revelation or from early exploration, it was correct in minor detail. Though Britain seems to have been charted as an Island rather than a Peninisula, this may be an error or an early copyist. A Britain unjoined to the Main would shrivel, as a branch hewed from a tree will shrivel and die. There are no viable islands.

All islands fade and drift and disappear. Sometimes they reappear briefly, but there is no life in them. The juice of life flows through the continent only. It is the ONE LAND, THE LIVING AND HOLY LAND, THE ENTIRE ANDPERFECT JEWEL.

Thus, Ireland is seen sometimes, or Hy-Brasil, or the American rock-lands: but they are not always seen in the same places, and they do not always have the same appearance. They have neither life nor reality.

The secret geographies and histories of the American Society and the Atlantis Society and such are esoteric lodge-group things, symbolic and murky, forms for the initiated; they contain a.n.a.logs and not realities.

The ec.u.mene must grow, of coruse, but it grows inwardly in intensity and meaning; its form cannot change. The form is determined from the beginning, just as the form of a man is determined before he is born. A man does not grow by adding more limbs or heads. That the ec.u.men should grow appendages would be as grotesque as a man growing a tail.

-- World As Perfection Diogenes Pontifex August Shackleton guffawed nervously when his wife was sliced in two and the half of her swallowed by the crocodile; and his hand that held the Roman Bomb trembled. Indeed, there was something unnerving about the whole thing. That cutoff screaming of Justina Shackleton had something shocking and unpleasant about it.

Justina had once gone hysterical at a seance when the ghosts and appearances had been more or less conventional, but August was never sure just how sincere her hysteria was. Another time she had disappeared for several days from a seance, from a locked room, and had come back with a roguish story about being in spirit land. She was a high-strung clown with a sense of the outrageous, and this present business of being chopped in two was typical of her creations.

And suddenly they were all explosively creative, each one's subjective patterns intermingling with those of the other to produce howling chaos. What had been the s.h.i.+p the True Believer, what had been the slippery overhanging bole, had now come dangerously down into the swamp. They all wanted a closer look.

There was screaming and trumpeting, there was color and surge and thres.h.i.+ng ma.s.s. The crocodile bellowed as a bull might, not at all as Shackleton believed that a croc should sound. But someone there had the idea that a crocodile should bellow like that, and that someone had imposed his ideate on the others. Unhorselike creatures whinnied, and vivid animals sobbed and gurgled.

"Go back up, go back up!" the black man was bleating. "You will all be killed here."

His face was a true Mummers-Night blackman mask. One of the party was imagining strongly in that stereotyped form. But the incongruous thing about the black man was that lie was gibbering at them in French, in bad French as though it were his weak second language. Which one of them was linguist enough to invent such a black French on the edge of the moment?

Luna Boyle, of course. But why had she put grotesque French into the month of a black man in contingent Africa?

"Go back up, go back up," the black man cried, He had an old rifle from the last century and he was shooting the crocodile with it.

"Hey, he's shooting Justina too," Mintgreen giggled too gaily. "Half of her is in the dragon thing. Oh, she will have some stories to tell about this! She has the best imagination of all of us."

"Let's get her out and together again," Linter suggested. They were all shouting too loudly and too nervously. "She's missing the best part of it."

"Here, here, black man," Shackleton called. "Carl you get the half of my wife out of that thing and put her together again?"

"Oh, white people, white people, this is real and this is death,"the black man moaned in agony. "this is a closed wild area. You should not be here at all. However you have come here, whatever is the real form of that balk or tree on which you stand so dangerously, be gone from here if you can do it. You do not know how to live in this. White people, be gone!

It is your lives.!"

"One can command a fantasy," said August Shackleton. "Black man fantasy, I command that you get the half of my wife out of that dying creature and put her together again."

"Oh, white people on dope, I cannot do this," the black man moaned.

"She is dead. And you joke and drink Green Bird and Bomib, and hoot like demented children in a dream."

"We are in a dream, and you are of the dream," Shackleton said easily. "And we may experiment with our dream creatures. That is our purpose here. Here, catch a bottle of Roman Bomb!" and he threw it to the black man, who caught it.

"Drink it," said Shackleton. "I am interested in seeing whether a dream figure can make incursion on physical substance."

"Oh, white people on dope," the black man moaned. "The watering place is no place for you to be. You excite the animals, and then they kill.

When they are excited it is danger to me also who usually move among them easily. I have to kill the crocodile who is my friend. I do not want to kill others. I do not want more of you to be killed."

The black man was booted and jacketed quite in the manner of a hunting store outing, this possibly by the care at imagining of Boyle who loved hunting rig. The black Mummers-Night mask was contorted in agony and apprehension, but the black man did drink the Roman Bomb nervously the while he begged them to be gone from that place.

"You will notice that the skull form is quite human and the bearing completely erect," Linter said. "You will notice also that he is less hairy than we are and is thick of lip, while the great ape is more hairy and thin of lip. I had imagined them to be the same creature differently interpreted."

"No, you imagine them to be as they appear," Shackleton said. "It is Your imagining of these two creatures that we are watching."

"But notice the configuration of the tempora and the mandible shape," Linter protested, "-- not what I expected. "

"You are the only one of us who knows about tempora and mandible shape," said Shackleton. "I tell you that it is your own imagery. He is structured by you, given the conventional Mummers-Night black-mask by all of us, clothed by Boyle, and speeches by Luna Boyle. His production is our joint effort. Watch it, everyone! It becomes dangerous now, even explosive!

Man, I'm getting as hysterical as my wife! The dream is so vivid that it has its hooks in me. Ah, it's a great investigative experience, but I doubt if I'll want to return to this particular experience again. Green perdition!

But it does become dangerous! Watch out, everyone!"

Ah, it had become wild: a hooting and screaming and bawling wild Africa bedlam, a green and tawny dazzle of fast-moving color, pungent annual stench of fear and murder, and smell of human fear.

A lion defiled the watering place, striking down a horned buck in the muddy shallows and going muzzle-deep into the hot-colored gore. A hippo erupted out of the water, a behemoth from the depths. Giraffes erected like crazily articulated derricks and galloped ungainly through the boscage.

"Enough of this!" cried Mintgreen Linter. Frightened, she took the lead, incanting: "That the noontime nightmare pa.s.s! The crocodile-dragon and the behemoth."

"We abjure them, we abjure them," they all chanted in various voices.

"That the black man and the black ape pa.s.s, and all black things of the black-green land." "We abjure them, we abjure them," they chanted. But the black man was already down under the feet and horns of a buffalo creature, dead, and his last rifle shot still echoing. He had tried to prevent the buffalo from upsetting the teetering bole and dumping all the white people into the murder swamp. The great ape was also gone, terrified, back to his high-gra.s.s savannas. Many of the other creatures had disappeared or become faint, and there was again the tang of salt water and of distant hot-sand beaches.

"That the lion be gone who roars by day," Luna Boyle took up the incantation, "and the leopard who is Pan-Ther, the all-animal of grisly mythology. That the crus.h.i.+ng snakes be gone, and the giant ostrich, and the horse in the clown suit."

"We abjure them all, we abjure them all," everybody chanted.

"That the True Believer form again beneath our feet in the structure we call see and know," August Shackleton incanted.

"We conjure it up, we conjure it up," they chanted, and the True Believer rose again barely above the threshhold of the senses.

"That the illicit continents fade, and all the baleful islands of our writhing under-minds!" Boyle blurted in some trepidation.

"We abjure them, we abjure them," they all chanted contritely. And the illicit Africa had now become quite fragile, while the Cinnamon Coast of South Libya started to form as if behind green gla.s.s.

"Let us finish it! It lingers unhealthily!" Shackleton spoke louldy with resolve. "Let us drop our reservations! That we dabble no more in this partictilar illicitness! That we go no more hungering after strange geographies that are not of proper world! That we seal off the unsettling things inside us!"

"We seal them off, we seal them off," they chanted.

And it was finished.

They were on the True Belieiver, sailing in all easterly direction off the Cinnamon Coast of Libya. To the north was that lovely coast with its wonderful beaches and remarkable hotels. To the south and east were the white-topped waves that went on for ever and ever. It was over with, but the incantation had shaken them all with the sheer psychic power of it.

"Justina isn't with us," Luna Boyle said nervously. "She isn't on the True Believer anywhere. Do you think something has happened to her? Will she come back?"

"Of course she'll come back," August Shackleton purred. "She was truant from a seance for two days once. 0h, she'll have some good ones to tell when she does come back, and I'll rather enjoy the vacation from her. I love her, but a man married to an outre wife needs a rest from it sometimes."

"Bill look, look!" Luna Boyle cried. "Oh, she's impossible! She always did carry an antic too fir. That's in bad taste."

The severed lower half of Justina Shackleton floated in the clear blue water beside the True Believer. It was bloodied and gruesome and was being attacked by slas.h.i.+ng fishes.

"Oh, stop it, Justina!" August Shackleton called angrily. "What a woman! Ah, I see it now. We turn to land."

It was the opening to the Yacht Basin, the channel through the beach shallows to the fine harbor behind. They tacked, they turned, they nosed in towards the Cinnamon Coast of Libya.

The world was itact again, one whole and perfect jewel, lying wonderful to the north of them. And south was only great ocean and great equator and empty places of the under-mind. The True Believer came to port pa.s.sage with the perfect bright noontime on all things. tree," Justina screamed warning front the swamp. "There's ten meters of it reaching down for you."

"Conjure the crocodile," Shackleton intoned. "Not the little crocodile of the River of Egypt, but the big crocodile of deeper Africa thatcan swallow a cow. "

"We conjure it, we imagine it, we evoke it, and the swamps and

CONTINUED ON NEXT ROCK.

Up in the Big Little country there is an up-thrust, a chimney rock that is half fallen against a newer hill. It is formed of what is sometimes called Dawson Sandstone and is interlaced with tough sh.e.l.l. It was formed during the glacial and recent ages in the bottom lands of Crow Creek and Green River when these streams (at least five times) were iniglity rivers.

The chimney rock is only a little older than mankind, only a little younger than gra.s.s. Its formation had been up-thrust and then eroded away again, all but such harder parts as itself and other chimneys and blocks.

A party of five persons came to this place where the chimney rock had fallen against a still newer hill. The people of the party did not care about the deep limestone below: they were not geologists. they did care about the newer hill (it was man-made) and they did care a little about the rock chimney; they were archaeologists.

Here was time heaped up, bulging out in casing and acc.u.mulation, and not in line sequence. And here also was striated and banded time, grown tall, and then shattered and broken.

The five party members came to the site early in the afternoon, bringing the working trailer down a dry creek bed. They unloaded many things and made a camp there. It wasn't really necessary to make a camp on the ground. There was a good motel two miles away on the highway; there was a road along the ridge above. They could have lived in comfort and made the trip to the site in five minutes every morning. Terrence Burdock, however, believed that one could not get the feel of a digging unless he lived on the ground with it day and night.

The five persons were Terrence Burdock, his wife Ethyl, Robert Derby, and Howard Steinleser: four beautiful and balanced people. And Magdalen Mobley who was neither beautiful nor balanced. But she was electric; she was special. They rouched around in the formations a little after they had made camp and while there was still light. All of them had seen the formations before and had guessed that there was promise in them.

"That peculiar fluting in the broken chimney is almost like a core sample," Terrence said, "and it differs from the rest of it. It's like a lightning bolt through the whole length. It's already exposed for us. I believe we will remove the chimney entirely. It covers the perfect access for the slash in the mound, and it is the mound in which we are really interested. But we'll study the chimney first. It is so available for study."

"Oh, I can tell you everything that's in the chimney," Magdalen said crossly. "I can tell you everything that's in the mound too."

"I wonder why we take the trouble to dig if you already know what we will find," Ethyl sounded archly.

"I wonder too," Magdalen grumbled. "But we will need the evidence and the artifacts to show. You can't get appropriations without evidence and artifacts. Robert, go kill that deer in the brush about forty yards north-east of the chimney. We may as well have deer meat if we're living primitive."

"This isn't deer season," Robert Derby objected. "And there isn't any deer there. Or, if there is, it's down in the draw where you couldn't see it. And if there's one there, it's probably a doe."

"No, Robert, it is a two-year-old buck and a very big one. Of course it's in the draw where I can't see it. Forty yards northeast of the chimney would have to be in the draw. If I could see it, the rest of you could see it too. Now go kill it! Are you a man or a mus microtuss? Howard, cut poles and set up a tripod to string and dress the deer on. "

"You had better try the thing, Robert," Ethyl Burdock said, "or we'll have no peace this evening." Robert Derby took a carbine and went north-eastward of the chimney, descending into the draw near it forty yards. There was the high ping of the carbine shot. And, after some moments, Robert returned with a curious grin.

"You didn't miss him, Robert, you killed him," Magdalen called loudly. "You got him with a good shot through the threat and up into the brain when he tossed his head high like they do. Why didn't you bring him?

Go back and get him! "

"Get him? I couldn't even lift the thing. Terrence and Howard, come with me and we'll lash it to a pole and get it here somehow. "

"Oh, Robert, you're out of your beautiful mind," Magdalen chided.

"It only weighs a hundred and ninety pounds. Oh, I'll get it."

Magdalen Mobley went and got the big buck. She brought it back, carrying it listless across her shoulders and getting herself bloodied, stopping sometimes to examine rocks and kick them with her foot, coming on easily with her load. It looked as if it might weigh two hundred and fifty pounds; but if Magdalen said it weighed a hundred and ninety, that is what it weighed.

Howard Steinleser had cut poles and made a tripod. He knew better than not to. They strung the buck up, skinned it off, ripped up its belly, drew it, and worked it over in an almost professional manner.