It can be said of Man that wherever he goes, he brings trouble with him. And after he leaves, his place of visitation is never the same again.
Is Man capable of influencing a specific environment for the better, or is he doomed to ruining whatever he touches, as has been true from Eden onward? Will he continue to do the same as he journeys outward to the stars?
The three stories in this triad explore the theme of Man and what he leaves in his wake. Each is entirely different from the others. Walter Moudy’s The Search for Man can be called a traditional kind of science fiction short novel, traditional but engrossing. His anti-hero conducts a search for the Anti-Man in a compassionate parable.
R. A. Lafferty’s From the Thunder Colt’s Mouth is a delightful tale, once again not in the least bit stylistically related to the others, but grafted to them by their common theme. People and animals are mostly papier-mache’ or Styrofoam. History is remembered through a valuable tome entitled The History of Cook County in the Early Days/ plus a memo to the effect that the Black Sea has disappeared because it never was.
Gene Wolfe’s Tracking Song is the most - sentimental of the three short novels in the book. Wolfe depicts a grim yet beautiful silent world of snow, where life is lived on enormous sleighs. Warm and evocative, it is a dazzling work by one of the most important authors in science fiction.
Moudy, Lafferty, and Wolfe—three guides who have been there and back— have envisioned what remains IN THE WAKE OF MAN, and they are ready to take you with them on a return voyage. Perhaps you will never look at the human species in the same way again.
IN THE WAKE OF MAN
Also by R. A. Lafferty
ARRIVE AT EASTERWINE
THE DEVIL IS DEAD
THE FALL OF ROME
THE FLAME IS GREEN
FOURTH MANSIONS
NINE HUNDRED GRANDMOTHERS
OKLA HANNALI
PAST MASTER
THE REEFS OF EARTH
SPACE CHANTEY
STRANGE DOINGS
DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE SOMETHING FURTHER TO ADD?
Also by Gene Wolfe THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS OPERATION ARES PEACE
Also by Walter Moudy
NO MAN ON EARTH
IN THE WAKE
OF MAN
A Science Fiction Triad
R. A. LAFFERTY
GENE WOLFE
WALTER MOUDY
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY, INC.
Indianapolis I New York
Copyright © 1975 by Roger Elwood
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form Published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Indianapolis New York
ISBN 0-672-52090-7
Library of Congress catalog card number 74-21146
Designed by Winston Potter Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing
Contents
From the Thunder Colt’s Mouth by R. A. Lafferty
Tracking Song by Gene Wolfe
The Search for Man by Walter Moudy
Landmarks
Cover
From the Thunder
Colt’s Mouth
R. A. Lafferty
In our own philosophical language we may put the question thus: How did the real become phenomenal, and how can the phenomenal become real again?…Or, to put it in more familiar language, how was this world created, and how can it be uncreated again?
Tertium Organum. P. D. Ouspensky.
So Clio scribes, in manner blurred,
To sound of crackish gong:
She writes it down in every word,
And every word is wrong.
Road Songs, Finnegan.
This city had been, for some time now, different from any other place in the world. It was different for its hanging onto a certain stubborn and malodorous remnant. And the most stubborn and most malodorous part of that remnant was Zabotski.
Zabotski had once been a chemist, a smelly man in a smelly trade. He had retired from being a regular chemist, as he had retired from a dozen trades, but he remained a smelly man. And there was something peculiar about even this: He wasn’t smelly to the nose; he was smelly to the eye.
He was probably rich. He owned a lot of property around town. He wasn’t an unreasonable landlord. He carried more people than did those who badmouthed him. But he had an abrasive tongue; he could outshout even Duffey in a shouting match; and he was in no way elegant.
On this particular early morning he was mumbling to himself, but when Zabotski mumbled he could be heard for half a block:
“There’s a peculiar little episode hanging over our town. It’s like a misshapen cloud, and it’s been raining unproper stuff on us for the last several hours of the night. It’s hovering like a big buzzard, like a fancy dan buzzard with three peacock tailfeathers fastened on. I think this dirty-bird episode will be a puzzler, and I may add to the puzzle. I’m going to claim that I have a main hand in it, just out of orneriness.”
Zabotski sometimes waited around and offered his arm and protection to Margaret Stone when she had finished her nightly giving-of-testimony in the Quarter. He liked to walk her back to the Pelican building with a flourish.
Protection for Margaret Stone! Aw, come down from that perch! It was rather the town and the world that needed protection from Margaret.
“He’s about the last of them,” people would sometimes say about Zabotski, and they’d shake their heads. The last of what? Ah, to answer that we must go on a spree of destruction that changed the face of the town and the country and disturbed some of the underpinning of the world itself.
So this morning, Margaret Stone came in from her night in the Quarter wearing a gaudy button that read: “Royal Pop History. Are You Splendid Enough?”
“Wherever did you get that, you splendid person, you?” Mary Virginia Schaeffer asked.
“I made it,” Margaret said. “A man was wearing the big button part for his convention name-button. I took his name out and put the message in. A bunch called The Society for Creative History’ or else The Royal Pop Historians’ is going to hold a meeting in town. It starts today. They say their job is to get rid of a lot of unhistorical remnants in this town, just as they got rid of them in the rest of the world. I maybe better go to their thing. They may try to get rid of something I want to keep. I suspect they’ll need me.”
“I used to create quite a bit of history myself,” Mary
Virginia bragged, “but I don’t do nearly so much of it nowadays.”
“I don’t think that’s quite what ’The Society for Creative History’ means,” Margaret rattled on in her dubious voice, “but maybe it is. They have topics listed like ‘Get Rid of That Stuff,’
‘History Made While You Wait,’ ‘It Doesn’t Matter; They’re Only Human,’ ‘Louts, Liars, and the Use of Historical Evidence,’ ’The Holy Barnacle and the Pearl Beyond Price,’ ‘Waxwork History and the Ironic Flame,’ ’The Evidential World,’ ‘Mountain Building for Fun and Profit,’ ‘History, Hypnotism, and Group Amnesia,’ ‘Whoever Were Those People Who Lived Next Door to You Yesterday?,’ ‘We Said to Get Rid of That Stuff!’ They’re interesting topics. Oh, by the way, the Black Sea has disappeared, and millions of people are destroyed. It’s all obliterated, and forever. The Royal Pop people say it puts an end to the old geography.”
“How could a sea be obliterated?” Mary Virginia asked. “Where did you read the announcement of such an historical meeting, Margaret? They sound like things you made up.”
“Read them? Whenever did I read anything? I’m not even sure I know how to read. I don’t remember ever doing it. No, this is just something I know. Or it’s something I heard.”
“Please don�
�t go through all the recital again, Margaret. Can’t you just tell me in two words what you’re talking about?” Mary Virginia requested. “Absalom says that everything in the world can be described in two words.”
“I know his two words. But what I’m talking about is Pop History. Old kind of people don’t understand it very well. The meeting starts today. I don’t know where it is, but somebody said Duffey might know.”
“I didn’t know you were interested in history, Margaret. It sure was noisy in town last night. What was happening?”
“Sure, I’m interested in history, Mary V. Papa used to have a book, History of Cook County in the Early Days. I’m from Chicago, you know.”
“I know, Margaret. Did you read the book about the history of Cook County?”
“No, I never read it, but we had it. Papa bought things like that because he was trying to get used to being an American. Anyhow, I’m real noetic, so I’ll be a natural at history. What was so noisy last night was that funny wind blowing down the facades and breaking up the old people and the old animals. It left a lot of trash in the streets. Not only that, but there’s so many parks and courtyards and places this morning that weren’t there yesterday that it causes one to wonder. They sure are gracious places.”
“What old people and old animals are you talking about, Margaret? What funny wind? What facades? How did they break up?”
“Gee, Mary V., I think some of them were from old Mardi Gras floats, or they were planned for the new floats next season. They were breaking up everything that wasn’t splendid enough. There’s one dragon big enough to load three floats pretty heavy. It’s still alive a little bit.”
“Are you talking about live people and animals, Margaret? And what are these new parks and courtyards and places you’re jabbering about?”
“Oh, the people and animals are mostly papier-mache or rubber or styrofoam or plastic; after they break up and die, that’s what’s left of them. But some of them were pretty lively before the end. There was one fire drake (or he was half man and half fire drake) that bit a lady on the leg and got blood all over the street. Some people took her to Dr. Doyle with it. ’That’s a terrible bite,’ he said. ‘I think it gave you infectious draconitis. You have to show me what bit you.’ He went out with the people to look at it. When he found out that it was just a fire drake made out of rubber, and that it was fabulous besides, he didn’t know what to think. But a laboratory has checked what the lady has and it’s infectious draconitis all right. They think she’ll die.”
“Margaret, what sort of convention was going on in town last night?”
“Oh, just three or four very ordinary ones. No, this is straight dope, Mary V.: I wasn’t cordial on the stuff last night. And the courtyards and parks and nooks aren’t new except for not being there before. They’re quit% old and weathered, and they’re full of almost the biggest trees in town. They’re very bright. New things aren’t usually that bright and pleasant. And the thing that chokes you is that nobody remembers what was in those places yesterday. ‘I live there,’ one man said—you know him, he’s that Russian, Sarkis Popotov—‘and now there’s a place next door to me named Artaguette Park. It looks unfamiliar to me, but some of these horsy tourists in town say that it’ll look familiar by tomorrow. There’s room for about three buildings to be there, where the park is this morning. I’ve lived there for forty years, and I know there were some kind of buildings next to me, but I sure can’t remember what they were!’ That’s what old Sarkis said. And there are other places like that. The town’s full of them this morning.”
“What were the people in the Quarter drinking last night, Margaret?”
“Green Ladies, mostly,” Margaret Stone said. “You know, like peppermint schnapps except with absinthe instead of schnapps. That’s what everyone has been drinking all week. Why don’t you go with me to the Pop History meetings today, Mary Virginia?”
Margaret was small and intense, with a large voice that was saved from stridency only by a certain music in it. She was Italian and Jewish, with possibly a little bit of the Greek and preadamite in her. She would have been beautiful in repose, but no one had ever seen her so. So, at least, an old describer has described her. But he didn’t mention the terrible tragedy and passion that were sometimes in her face: It was because too few people listened to what her musical voice said. The passion and tragedy in her face had increased lately. So had a certain threat that refused to give its name.
And Mary Virginia, her associate at the Pelican, had everything. Her kindness was extreme, but lately it had acquired a vacant quality, as though she could no longer remember just whom to be kind to. Her beauty alone would knock you off your stool forever. That had happened to a number of fellows. It wasn’t true that her beauty had begun to fail in the last several decades. It had become deeper and fuller.
“As you know, I seldom get out of this place, Margaret,” she said. “And the Pops don’t sound as attractive as all that. There are very many things going on this week, if I should get out. Horny Henderson is on the trumpet at the Imperial John. They have a new singer at Red Neck’s. Justin says that the Jazz Museum has so much new stuff over there that it’d take a week to see and hear it all. The Presentation at the Decatur Street Opera House this week will transcend everything. We have to go there tonight. There’s a big bunch of new painters in the galleries and around Pirates’ Alley, and Duffey says that one of the new ones could almost be the ghost of Finnegan, the way he uses his oranges. There’s a couple of Dominicans giving a mission at St. Katherine’s; it’s full of hellfire just like when we were kids. They say that our world will end right here this week. The Nostalgia Club should get hold of them. ’As American as hellfire and apple pie,’ as Mencken used to write. You want me to go to a Pop History banger, and you don’t even know where they’re having it?”
The scene changes to just around the corner, over on Bienville or Conti or whatever street it is that Duffey has his establishments on. Yes, there had been a new breeze blowing through the night. It was blowing down the facades with a rattling and crashing. And what kind of impression is that to be received by a man who is still asleep?
The scenery, the facades, the false fronts were toppling and breaking up in the streets outside; there was the sound of tearing canvas and scorching rubber and stuttering styrofoam. It wasn’t a joke. It was all straight impression. There really was something noisy and airish going on outside in the streets. It was like a strong experience of anthropomorphic colts, a great clatter of them.
“A Strong Experience of Anthropomorphic Colts!” Duffey howled, and he came out of that bed on his misshapen feet. “I’ve woke up with a mouth full of some pretty crocky phrases before, but these anthropomorphic colts outrace them all.”
Duffey had been wakened by the strong breeziness that morning. He usually slept unencumbered, and there was never much of a chill at any season in that town. Most times, even in the early morning hours, it is hotter outside than inside, away from the radiating heat of the sidewalks and streets and people. And there is seldom much of a breeze in these narrow streets. It’s even said that any breeze must go through them sideways. Well, this breeze was going through with a great bumping at every door and wall. Duffey knew without looking that his front door was standing open and that there was a new breeze blowing.
Duffey never locked his doors, but sometimes (late at night) he did close them. He had inventories worth many thousands of dollars. These formed the heart of Melchisedech Duffey’s Walk-in Art Bijou. And the bijou, the pawnshop, the various other enterprises, his living quarters, his very body were all members of this one establishment. He would not lock up any of them.
Yes, the door was wide open. It opened inward, as did Duffey himself. And there was a notice nailed to it. It was on some sort of yellowed old poster cardboard, and it was nailed to the door with a long and ancient nail.
Duffey read the notice or message. It was in the new style of writing, so it was a nonverbatim m
essage. The words “Pop History” leaped at him. Then other and more fearsome words came and ate up those first words and established themselves with an easy arrogance. Slogans like “We Said To Get Rid Of That Stuff” and “It Doesn’t Matter; They’re Only Human” took their places on the scroll; and then other phrases came forward, and these withdrew to less emphatic levels. The whole thing was a proclamation, but a very tricky one.
Then Duffey read what he could of it again, with disbelief and near alarm. There was a difficulty about the words (Duffey still had some trouble with the new style of writing, even though words were one of his trades), but there didn’t seem to be much doubt about the first meaning. Duffey was sociable; he was hospitable; but the message mentioned numbers that were overwhelming. It stated that he was favored to lodge two hundred or more royal persons at his establishment. It stated that these were serious persons of a scientific sort, persons of blazing beauty and towering mentality and perfumed perversion and breath-catching art; all this in the intensity and scope of the thunder dimension. It stated that such splendid persons were used to the best in accommodations. And it implied that Duffey was selected (the verb isn’t clear here; the verb is never clear in the new style of expression) for this honor because of his great age and erudition. And it gave the name of the convening society. But something was missing from the name and the message, something that can only be called verbatimness. There were very tricky things about the words of a message refusing to stand fast and be accounted for.
In the Wake of Man Page 1
