Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 2 Part 24

"There's a shadow, like a thin cloud on several of the pictures,"

Leo Nation said. "You any idea what it is, Charley?"

"Leo, I got out of bed late last night and ran two miles up and down that rocky back road of yours to shake myself up. I was afraid I was getting an idea of what those thin clouds were. Lord, Leo, who was here?"

Charles Longbank took the data into town and fed it to his computers.

He was back in several days with the answers.

"Leo, this spooks me more than ever," he said, and he looked as if the spooks had chewed him from end to end. "Let's drop the whole thing. I'll even give you back your retainer fee."

"No, man, no. You took the retainer fee and you are retained. Have you the order they go in, Charley, south to north?"

"Yes, here it is. But don't do it, Leo, don't do it."

"Charley, I only shuffle them around with my lift fork and put them in order. I'll have it done in an hour."

And in an hour he had it done.

"Now, let's look at the south one first, and then the north one, Charley."

"No, Leo, no, no! Don't do it."

"Why not?"

"Because it scares me. They really do fall into an order. They really could have been done all at the same hour of the same day. Who was here, Leo? Who is the giant looking over my shoulder?"

"Yeah, he's a big one, isn't he, Charley? But he was a good artist and artists have the right to be a little peculiar. He looks over my shoulder a lot too."

Leo Nation ran the southernmost segment of the Long Picture. It was mixed land and water, islands, bayou and swamp, estuary and ocean mixed with muddy river.

"It's pretty, but it isn't the Mississippi," said Leo as it ran.

"It's that other river down there. I'd know it after all these years too."

"Yes," Charles Longbank gulped. "It's the Atchafalaya River. By the comparative sun angle of the pieces that had been closely identified, the computer was able to give close bearings on all the segments. This is the mouth of the Atchafalaya River which has several times in the geological past been the main mouth of the Mississippi. But how did he know if hewasn't here? Gah, the ogre is looking over my shoulder again. It scares me, Leo."

"Yeah, Charley, I say a man ought to be really scared at least once a day so he can sleep that night. Me, I'm scared for at least a week now, and I like the big guy. Well, that's one end of it, or mighty close to it.

Now we take the north end.

"Yes, Charley, yes. The only thing that scares you is that they're real. I don't know why he has to look over our shoulders when we run them, though. If he's who I think he is he's already seen it all."

Leo Nation began to run the northernmost segnient of the river that he had.

"How far north are we in this, Charley?" he asked.

"Along about where the Cedar River and the Iowa River later came in."

"That all the farther north? Then I don't have any segment of the north third of the river?"

"Yes, this is the furthest north it went, Leo. Oh G.o.d, this is the last one."

"A cloud on this segment too, Charley? What are they anyhow? Say, this is a pretty crisp scene for springtime on the Mississippi."

"You look sick, Long-Charley-Bank," Ginger Nation said. "You think a little whiskey with possum's blood would help you?"

"Could I have the one without the other? Oh, yes, both together, that may be what I need. Hurry, Ginger."

"It bedevils me still how any painting could be so wonderful," Leo wondered.

"Haven't you caught on yet, Leo?" Charles s.h.i.+vered. "It isn't a painting."

"I tell you that at the beginning if you only listen to me," Ginger Nation said. "I tell you it isn't either one, canvas or paint, it is only picture. And Leo said the same thing once, but then he forgets. Drink this, old Charley."

Charles Longbank drank the healing mixture of good whiskey and possum's blood, and the northernmost section of the river rolled on.

"Another cloud on the picture, Charley," Leo said. "It's like a big smudge in the air between us and the sh.o.r.e."

"Yes, and there will be another," Charles moaned. "It means we're getting near the end. Who were they, Leo? How long ago was it? Ah -- I'm afraid I know that part pretty close -- but they couldn't have been human then, could they? Leo, if this was just an inferior throwaway, why are they still hanging in the air?"

"Easy, old Charley, easy. Man, that river gets chalky and foamy!

Charley, couldn't you transfer all this to microfilm and feed it into your computers for all sorts of answers?"

"Oh, G.o.d, Leo, it already is!"

"Already is what? Hey what's the fog, what's the mist? What is it that bulks up behind the mist? Man, what kind of blue fog-mountain --?"

"The glacier, you dummy, the glacier," Charles Longbank groaned. And the northernmost segment of the river came to all end. "Mix up a little more of that good whiskey and possum's blood, Ginger," Leo Nation said. "I think we're all going to need it."

"That old, is it?" Leo asked a little later as they were all strangling on the very strong stuff.

"Yes, that old, " Charles Longbank jittered. "Oh, who was here, Leo?"

"And, Charley, it already is what?"

"It already is microfilm, Leo, to them. A rejected strip, I believe."

"Ah, I can understand why whiskey and possum's blood never caught onas a drink," Leon said. "Was old possum here then?"

"Old possum was, we weren't." Charles Longbank s.h.i.+vered. "But it seems to me that something older than possum is snuffing around again, and with a bigger snufter."

Charles Longbank was shaking badly. One more thing and he would crack. "The clouds on the -- ah -- film, Charley, what are they?" Leo Nation asked.

And Charles Longbank cracked.

"G.o.d over my head," he moaned out of a s.h.i.+vering face, "I wish they were clouds on the film. Ah, Leo, Leo, who were they, who were they?"

"I'm cold, Charley," said Leo Nation. "There's bonechill draft from somewhere."

The marks... too exactly like something, and too big to be: the loops and whorls that were eighteen feet long....

FROG ON THE MOUNTAIN.

He woke to mountains, as the poet says. Really, there is nothing like it. The oceans and the lowlands were made long ago, according to legend. But the mountains are made new every morning.

It took some doing. His name was Garamask, and he had done it.

"I hate s.p.a.ce," Garamask had said when he decided on it, and the crewmen had been surprised.

"Why do you, Mr. Garamask?" the Captain had asked him. "You've logged more time in s.p.a.ce than I have. You've been to many more regions. And you've made more money in the s.p.a.ce business than anyone I know. I never saw a man so eager for voyages or for new worlds as you. You're so expansive a person that I thought you were in love with the expanse of s.p.a.ce.

"I love movement and travel," Garamask said. "I love worlds! But in s.p.a.ce, the feel of movement and the sense of travel is quickly lost And s.p.a.ce is not expansive. It is shriveling.

"I have, let us say, a pa.s.sion for a certain unkempt and mountainous world, but s.p.a.ce comes near to destroying that pa.s.sion in me; for I have seen that world appear on the scope like a microbe, and I will watch it disappear like a microbe again. I have studied epic and towering things under the microscope. And when I put away the microscope, I know that the towering things are really too small to see. From the aspect of s.p.a.ce, all the towering and wild worlds that I love are things too small to see or to believe in. I love a big world, and I hate s.p.a.ce for spoiling that bigness."

"Paravata isn't so big a world, Mr. Garamask," the Captain told him.

"It is! It's big! It's huge!" Garamask insisted. "And I'll not have it spoiled. It is the largest possible world on the man-scale, and I will not let that scale suffer by comparison. It's a world as large as a man can get around on with ease, without becoming less than a man. It's half again Earth's gravity, so it calls out our strength. It has an atmosphere that keeps one on an oxygen binge, so it gives the strength something to draw on.

It has mountains that rise ten thousand meters, the highest mountains anywhere that a man can climb in his proper body and without apparatus.

"And I won't have it spoiled for me! I'm rich enough that you can't regard me as a nuisance. I've given my instructions. So, follow them as regards me."

"Mr. Garamask, weren't you ever young?" the Captain asked him.

"I am young yet, Captain. I am physically the fittest man on this s.h.i.+p. And this is a very young and aspiring idea that I am effecting now."

"Ah, were you never something else, Mr Garamask, not quite so young, and much more awkward?"

"I don't know what you mean, Captain, but I suspect that I never was. Follow my instructions."

The instructions of Garamask were that he be sent into a sustaining sleep, and that he be landed and lodged on Paravata of the Mountains while he slept. He did not know when Paravata was picked up microbe-sized nor whenit grew a hundred million times to the size of a pea. He did not see the planet grow to twice the size of Earth. He missed the landing.

He was taken from the s.h.i.+p at Paravata Landing and transported a hundred kilometers to the mountain lodge. He was installed there as befitted a man of means. He slept a determined number of hours, as he had planned it, and he woke in the very early morning. He woke to mountains.

He went out into the keen air of Paravata or Paravath, finding himself in the middle of the small town of Mountain-Foot. He had a warrant for arrest and death in his wallet; and he had a singing curiosity about this world whose vital civilization had suddenly been frozen in motion, whose people, the Rogha (the elites, the excellent ones), had disappeared or very nearly disappeared and whose place had been taken by the oafish Oganta, and this almost within living memory. He was on a hunting trip in depth: he would hunt: on the three stage mountain to kill Sinek the cat-lion; Riksino the bear, Shasos the eagle-condor, and Bater-Jeno the crag-ape or the frog-man (depending on the translation). This was said to be the most challenging hunt in the galaxy. And most likely he would die on the triple mountain, for no human hunter had ever bagged all four of the creatures and survived the thing; though Oganta hunters were said to have done the trick.

On the second level, Gararnask was hunting for the answer to the riddle: what had happened to the Rogha elites? Could those few who were left not be strengthened in their hold? Could their civilization not be unfrozen?

Might it not be discovered what queer hold the oafish Oganta had over this Hogha remnant? How had the excellent ones fallen (willingly, it was said) to their inferiors?

On the third level, Garamask was hunting for a murderer, the Oganta, Rogha, Animal, or Man who had killed Allyn. Allyn had been a close friend, but Garamask had not realized how close until after the event. It had been given out that Allyn, on the same hunt, had been killed by the Bater-Jeno, the crag-ape or the frog-man. Allyn, however, had newly appeared to Garamask in a rhapsody-dream and said that this was not so. He had been killed, said Allyn, by his guide and hunting companion, who had been an Oganta named Ocras, but who might not now be in Oganta form.

"I believe that we have been close," Allyn had said, "though we never spoke of our closeness. Avenge me, Garamask, and take the lid off the mystery of Paravath. I was so very close to uncovering the mystery myself."

"What had you found, Allyn?" Garamask had asked; but appearances in dreams often seem hard of hearing; they speak but they do not listen.

"Uncover it, Garamask," Allyn had repeated, "and avenge me. I was so close to it. He ate into the base of my skull and so killed me. He ate my very brains as I died." "But what did you find when you came so close, Allyn?" Garamask had asked once more. "Tell me what you had going, so I will know what to look for." "I was so close to it when I died," Allyn said.

Apparitions are as stone-deaf. They speak their message but they do not hear. You may have noticed this yourself.

Garamask was not a great believer in dreams, but he had desired this hunt for a long time; he had, in fact, intended to accompany Allyn on his hunt, but had been prevented by affairs. And he had known at the time of the dream, had not known till he had gone carefully over the report, that Allyn bad indeed been killed by having his skull eaten into. Now Garamask tested it a little.

"My guide, will he be Ocras?" he asked the gangling Oganta who was manager of the hunting lodge.

"Ocras? No, he is no longer a guide. He has been translated out of this life."

"But there was a guide named Ocras?"

"There was one time a guide named Ocras, who is no more. Your guide will be Chavo."

But there had been a guide named Ocras, and Garamask hadn't known the name except in the rhapsody-dream. Then Garaniask saw one of the Roghasurvivors walking proudly in the early keen air. He went to him at once meeting him on a rocky slope.

"I have an intense interest in you and all your kind,"

Garamask began. "You yourself are the face of the mystery. You are imposing in a way that I could never be; I can see why you are called the elite, the excellent ones. You are so startlingly in contrast to the Oganta here that everyone for worlds around is puzzled over it. You are kings. They are oafs. Why do they take you over?"

"I suppose it is the day of the oafs, pilgrim-man," the Hogha said easily. "I am Treorai, and you are the man Garamask who made preparations to wake to mountains. You have taken up the challenge of the three-stage mountain. It's a high aspiration to kill the four creatures there. One who has done it will experience a deep change.

"As Allyn did?"

"I knew him when he was here. He did not kill the four creatures. He was killed by the fourth."

"He has told me, outside the lines as it were, that he ki1led by something other."

"Allyn would not lie, even outside the lines. You have misunderstood him. Did he say that he completed the hunt and killed the fourth creature?"

"He said that he had killed Sinek the lion, Riksino the bear, Shasos the eagle; but, no, he did not say that he had killed the Bater-Jeno. He said, however, that he was murdered by something else."

"No, Garamask, he was killed by the fourth prey. A creature is often fuzzy in his mind about his own manner of dying. He was a wonderful fellow, though, for a man."

"Treorai, why has your civilization come to a grotesque halt? Why have you Rogha, in your manifest superiority all but died out? Why have the rough rampant Oganta taken over? A dozen of them couldn't take one of you.

You have the presence that would dumbfound any attack. I can feel it like magnetism. Is it a genetic thing that has happened?"

"A genetic thing, a ghostly thing, a sundering thing really, Garamask. But it isn't finished, and there is no apathy here. What we Rogha have lost, we will regain, by any means whatsoever. This eclipse will pa.s.s from us."

"Why don't you simply annihilate the Oganta, Treorai?"

"You are an educated man, Garamask, but your speaking of the Paravath language is imperfect. I simply do not understand your question. I have some World-English, if that would help."