Orbit 10 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

“Gretchen? We once had a daughter named Gretchen, but last spring we lost her.”

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Did she ever regain consciousness?”

  “Oh, no. You misunderstand. We have no idea if she is still alive. You see, as time passed we saw less and less of her. She did not produce in us such a great amount of interest. We dusted her features often, and changed the flowers in the vase monthly, but otherwise we rarely thought of her. Then, one day, she was gone.”

  “But after so long a confinement to her bed, and in her starved condition, surely she couldn’t have gone off by herself?”

  “We think so, too. Perhaps we merely mislaid her. I remember one time, when we had taken her outside for the fresher air, we couldn’t for the life of us recall where we had put her. We have recently written to the Gastwirt at the inn at St. Blasien, to see if we inadvertently left her in our rooms. But, personally, I don’t think we even took her along.”

  * * * *

  “I can’t remember who I am.

  “Sometimes, like last night, I think I’m still Gretchen Kämmer. Sometimes I’m Gretchen Weinraub. Right now, I don’t have any name at all.

  “I can’t remember where I’m from, or where I am now.

  “I remember getting here, or there, in a brown Volkswagen. It was the car we rented in Hamburg. I don’t remember who the others who make up the ‘we’ are.

  “For some reason I feel absolutely no desire to know, I feel no horror at being totally lost. It’s rather warm and soft, like anesthesia. The only reasonable thing now, I guess, is to start again somewhere. I don’t know which way to head, and I suppose I’ll make mistakes I’ve made before. I forget. . .

  “And I cannot yet forgive, but I forget.”

  <>

  * * * *

  R. A. Lafferty

  DORG

  The Problem: Straited Ecology (not enough to eat).

  Projected Answer: Turnip and Tetrapod.

  Projected Method: Find them, find them.

  Methodologist: A Crash-Oriented Chief of Remedial Ecol­ogy.

  Spin-Offs: An Amalgamated Youth, a Trilobal Psychol­ogist, a Mad Cartoonist.

  Recycled Method: “On your feet, Dordogne, do it one more time.”

  “IT BEATS me how you will find the answer to world hunger in a mad cartoonist and a half-mad psychologist,” the pleasantly ponderous Annalouise Krug railed angrily. (Annalouise was a member of Amalgamated Youth.) “This is the sort of unimagina­tive drivel we have always had from the aged,” she ran on. (When­ever three or more persons were gathered together anywhere in the world to discuss actions, a member of Amalgamated Youth must be present; this was the law.) “What we need is fresh in­sights, youthful impetus: not the woeful stutterings of aged minds,” she stated.

  “You are the oldest person present, Annalouise,” Adrian Durchbruch the crash-oriented Chief of Remedial Ecology bounded back at her.

  “The oldest only in years, and then only if you unjuggle the rec­ord,” Annalouise maintained. “I have had my age officially set back eleven years. In Amalgamated Youth we have that privilege. Besides, you have no idea how difficult it is to recruit chronological youths into Amalgamated Youth. Further besides, Adrian, you are a crook-tailed boor to mention my age, considering all the years I have given to Youth.”

  “And you are a slashing female shrew, Annalouise, to refer to Dordogne and Riddle as respectively mad and half-mad while they are present,” Adrian D. volleyed the words back off Annalouise.

  James Riddle had fixed Annalouise with a pleasant scowl when she called him half-mad. J. P. Dordogne had sketched on a square of paper, then balled it up and thrown it to her. She smoothed it out and looked at it.

  “They are no less mad for being present,” she said with some reason. “Let’s start it again, old men. How are you going to solve the problem of world hunger with a mad cartoonist and a half- mad psychologist? Neither one of them knows anything about ecology. Neither one knows anything about anything. And as to food, why I could eat them both up within a week myself and be hungry again.”

  Annalouise Krug, though she was both the largest and oldest person present, was also the prettiest. And she was not really so old: she was not yet thirty. None of the four persons present was of really advanced years or stiffened mind. This Annalouise was of the swift and powerful loveliness and full figure that is some­times called Junoesque, but we will not call her so. She was sud­denly in the fashion, though. There is something interesting about full-bodied women in times when the edge is on the hunger just a bit. Besides which she held her age better than did most members of Amalgamated Youth.

  The mad cartoonist was J. P. (Jasper Pendragon) Dordogne. He used to sign his strips “Dorg,” and some of his friends called him Mad Dorg. He was a small, sandy young fellow, all bland and grinning except for his mad black eyes which he said he had inked in himself. While Annalouise was tongue-lashing them, Dordogne had sat silently drawing lampoons of her, balling them up, and throwing them to her, and she caught them and smoothed them out with beautiful anger.

  “The dorg has actually been seen, Annalouise,” Adrian Durch­bruch lobbed the words in as he bounced around. “It has been seen by at least a dozen persons.” Adrian was not referring to the cartoonist “Dorg” Dordogne, but to the fabled animal named dorg that sometimes appeared in Dordogne’s comic strip. And now there had been a whole spate of clownish reports that the bur­lesque animal had actually been seen out in the boondocks, alive and ill.

  Adrian bounced around constantly as though he had springs in the balls of his feet. He expedited, he organized, he said things like “Let’s have a brain-crash” when he meant “Let’s discuss this for a moment.” He was the crash-oriented Chief of Remedial Ecol­ogy. He had held the job for only a week, and he wouldn’t last another week if he didn’t come up with something good. There was a rapid turnover of chiefs in the Department of Remedial Ecology. That showed constant effort and reassessment, even if there were no results in the department.

  “I don’t believe it,” Annalouise chimed and resonated. A skinny girl simply will not have that full resonance. “If ever I see it I’ll go get my eyes fixed. I will not believe it, not when the witless Dordogne invented it in his comic strip; not when the half-witless Jimmy Riddle declared that it was a creative act and that the ani­mal was bound to appear soon afterward. There cannot be such an animal.”

  “It’s that or the turnips,” the psychologist said, “and they’ve already got whole shoals of psychologists studying the creative act in neo-turnips.” James Riddle was the trilobal psychologist. He really had a third lobe or cerebral hemisphere to his brain, this on the actual testimony of proper doctors, but it didn’t seem to do much for him. He was boyish and dreamy and horn-rimmed. His theories were astonishing, but he wasn’t.

  “Since this is our study and our problem, we may as well go and see if we can catch a glimpse of the dorg,” Riddle chattered.

  “What worries me,” Adrian Durchbruch said, “is that there seems to be only one dorg, a male.”

  “But that part is almost too good to be true,” Riddle exulted. “It’s in total concord with my theory. You knew it would be that way, didn’t you, Dordogne?”

  “Yes, but I’ve been afraid to finish drawing it that way,” the mad cartoonist mumbled.

  “Where has the dorg been sighted, Adrian?” Riddle asked him.

  “Down in the Winding Stair Mountains of—ah—Oklahoma,” Durchbruch chirped, and bounced around in eagerness to be at it.

  “Then let’s fly down there right now,” Riddle offered. “I used to own an airplane. I wonder if I still have it.”

  “Yes, you still have it,” Annalouise told him.

  “Good, let’s go.” All of them, Dordogne the mad cartoonist, James Riddle the trilobal psychologist, Adrian Durchbruch the crash-oriented Chief of Remedial Ecology, and Annalouise Krug the Amalgamated Youth went out to Riddle’s place and got in the plane.

  “Which way is
Oklahoma?” Riddle asked when they were air­borne. “Listen to the sound of that engine, people, to the sound of any engine anywhere. Do you know that functionally the engine sounds have no purpose? The various engines produce their monotonous noises solely to hypnotize human persons. Then the engines are able to—” But Riddle’s warning words were suddenly blocked out by the engine’s suddenly increased noise volume. En­gines will do that every time the subject is about to be discussed.

  * * * *

  The world was in pretty short supply as to food. The miracle of the barley loaves and the fishes had fed the multitudes for a long time. Barley had been developed that would yield five hun­dred bushels an acre, and billions and billions of fishes had been noodled out of the oceans. The oceans, however, are mostly desert, so have they always been; and the oases and streams and continental shelves of them had been harvested to their limits of both fish and plankton. And on land all the worthy areas were producing to their utmost, and still it was not enough.

  The solution: Turnip or Tetrapod. A plant was needed that would grow more lush than barley, more lush than grass, that would be fully edible for humans in both top and bottom of it, that would grow on even the worst land. And such a plant was being searched for carefully. More than that, it was being invented every day, everywhere, everyhow. But the new plants were not really good enough.

  And a four-footed animal (they are the best kind) was being searched out. It would have to be a fine fleshed and multiple- bearing animal, with as many litters as possible a year; one that would grow quickly to great size and succulence; one that could eat and thrive on anything, anything, even— One that could eat.

  About that time, the mad cartoonist J. P. Dordogne invented just such an animal in his comic strip. It was a big, comical, rock-eating animal. It struck the popular fancy and humor at once, though it did not at once put anything into the popular stomach. It was a shambling hulk of an animal, good-natured and weird. It ate earth and rocks and anything at all. It didn’t even need vegetation, or water. It grew peculiarly fat on such feeding.

  And the dorg had a fine slow wit as shown in the comic strip dialogue balloons. The people liked the dorg and especially liked the idea that the animal could grow so large and toothsome on nothing but rocks and earth. The animal was not loved the less because there was something unreal and mad about it, even be­yond the unreality of all things in that medium. Something else: the dorg in the comic strip was always feeling bad: there was an air of something momentous about to happen to him.

  The dorg filled an inner need, of emotion if not of stomach yet. It became the hopeful totem of the people on the biting edge of hunger. And the dorg was unmistakable; that was what gave the news reports their sharp interest. There was recognition and recol­lection of the dorg as matching a buried interior image. It could not be mistaken for something else.

  The sighters had sighted the dorg, or they had suffered hal­lucination. But they had not mistaken some other object or crea­ture for the dorg. And Dordogne the cartoonist, a bland little man except for the mad black eyes, was scared stupid by reports that the cartoon animal had actually been seen, alive and ill.

  * * * *

  It was then that there appeared, inPrimitive Arts Quarterly, an odd piece by the trilobal psychologist James Riddle. The piece was titled “Lascaux, Dordogne, and the Naming of the Animals.” The essay contained this strange thesis:

  “What happened in the cave art days of Lascaux was the ‘Naming’ of the Animals. The paintings were the namings, or at least they were an aspect of the namings. It must be understood that this was concurrent with the creative act. The depicted ani­mals were absolutely new then. If the paleozoologists say other­wise, then the paleozoologists are wrong. The men also were absolutely new then.

  “Some, perhaps all, of these cave paintings were anticipatory: the paintings appeared a slight time before the animals themselves appeared. My evidence for this is subjective, and yet I am as sure of this as I am of anything in the world. In several cases, the animals, when they appeared, did not quite conform to their depictment. In several other cases, owing I suppose to a geodetic accident, the corresponding animals failed to appear at all.

  “It is certain that this art was anticipatory and prophetic, heralding the appearance of new species over the life horizon. It was precursor art, harbinger art. It is certain also that this art contained elements of effective magic; it is most certain that the species were of sudden appearance. The only thing not certain is just to what extent the paintings were creative of the animals. There is still much mystery about the mechanism of the sudden appearance of species. The paleontologists cannot throw any light on this mystery at all, and the biologists cannot. But the artist can throw light on it, and the psychologist can. It is clear that a new species appears, suddenly and completely developed, exactly when it is needed.

  “And a new species is needed exactly now.

  “It is for this reason that there is peculiar interest in a recent creation of the cartoonist Jasper Pendragon Dordogne. He has depicted a new species of animal. I do not believe that Dordogne realizes what he is doing. He isn’t an intelligent man. I do not believe that the Lascaux cave painters realized what they were doing. But the art of J. P. Dordogne, like that of the old cave painters, is anticipatory, it is prophetic, it is precursor art, har­binger art. The new species of animal will appear almost imme­diately, if it has not already appeared. The exact effect that the cartoonist will have on the appearing species we do not know. The effect that we may be able to have on the cartoonist will not be exact, but it can be decisive.

  “Above all, let us see it happen, if this is at all possible. Let us witness the appearance of a new species for once. It should answer very many questions. It should give the final answer to that dreary and tedious remnant of evolutionists that still lingers in benighted areas. Let our hope and our effort be toward this being a permanent appearance. Very many of them have not been permanent.”

  * * * *

  Adrian Durchbruch, the newly appointed Chief of Remedial Ecology, had read the James Riddle article inPrimitive Arts Quarterly on his first day on the job. He immediately requisitioned the mad-eyed cartoonist J. P. Dordogne and the trilobal psychol­ogist for his program. They were both referring to the animal that the world and the project were looking for. However the two men might have their information confused, they did seem to have information of a sort.

  When Durchbruch incorporated himself and these other two men into his project, he also had to include a member of Amalga­mated Youth to keep it legal. He accepted Annalouise Krug gladly. You should see what most members of Amalgamated Youth are like.

  The reports of the actual sightings of the animal had come in immediately. And the four persons flew down to the area immediately.

  * * * *

  Riddle landed the plane in tall grass near Talihina, Oklahoma, and the four dorg-seekers got out.

  “We will immediately contact the local authorities,” Adrian Durchbruch began as he bounded around on his feet on the springy ground, “and we will find whether-”

  “Oh, shut up, Adrian,” Riddle said pleasantly. “This lady here knows where it can be found. If that were not so, I would have landed in some other place where a lady would know all about it. Time spent checking with authorities is always time lost. Where is the dorg, lady?”

  “It went up in the high pasture this morning,” said the lady that was there. “It has been feeling so bad that we were worried about it. And you are the only one that knows what’s the matter with it. You, mad-eyes, I’m talking to you. You know what is bothering it, don’t you?”

  “Gah, I’m afraid I do,” the cartoonist Dordogne grumbled sadly. “I’ve been afraid to say it or draw it, though. If it is true, then it will push me clear over the ledge, and everyone says I haven’t far to go. Don’t let it happen! I don’t want to be that crazy.”

  “My husband followed him up there a while ago,” the lady said, “and
he took his big Jim Bowie knife with him, in case we guessed right about it. They can’t hardly do it by themselves, you know. They’re not built for it. Oh, here they come now, and the little one is with them.”

  The man, and the big dorg (moving painfully), and the little dorg were coming down the slope.

  “But the big dorg is male!” Annalouise Krug cried out in unbelief.

  “Yes, they have such a hard time of it,” the lady said. “There isn’t any other way to get anything started, though.”

  The man and the big male dorg and the little female dorg came down to them.

  “It wasn’t much trouble,” the man said. “He went to sleep.”

  “The Tardemah, the deep sleep,” Riddle said reverently. “I should have guessed it.”

  “Then I cut him open and took her out of his side,” the man said. “They will both be all right now.”

  “By Caesarean section,” Annalouise mumbled. “Why didn’t we all guess it?” There was a loud snapping noise. “What was that?” Adrian demanded, bouncing around.