Fourth Mansions

by R. A. Lafferty

  The Bug was the institution of old buildings to which the buckoos of Carmody Overlark had taken Fred Foley for his incarceration and burial. Here were kindred souls, likewise buried: Bophry, Moyer, Framble, Bryant, Sloan, others, very nice fellows, and each one with a great jagged crack the whole length of him.

  The first afternoon of burial is always a time of loose ends. Foley walked the lush lawns of the Bug and talked to himself. There was nothing wrong with talking to oneself in the Bug, even with talking out loud to oneself.

  “Now here is the problem,” said Freddy. “Nobody has examined me, and yet a complete report is filed on me showing that I was minutely examined. The report was already prepared before I was brought here. This is known as efficiency. To how many of my companions has the same thing been done?

  “Many of my companions are disoriented. They have a fine jargon but they've lost touch with reality. They can seize on an isolated point and treat it interestingly from many angles, but they can't relate that point to the world. They can take a joke as the point of departure of a thesis, but they can't understand that joke as a joke. But I'm here as one of these, and the world can't tell the difference between us.

  “There are people here for the same reason I'm here: because they believe there's a group possessed of either very long life or returning life, and because they believe that this group conspires against the world. How do I differ from them?

  “Is the only difference that I can recognize a joke and they can't? But what if it's all a joke about the returnees and I can't recognize it? Then am I also insane?”

  And Fred Foley walked straight into a tree.

  “I'm at least getting careless with my wits,” Freddy said. “Normal men don't get so preoccupied with their thoughts that they walk into trees. But there's one consoling thought: it may be that those of my type weren't insane when they were committed here, that they've become a little odd from the atmosphere of the place, or from those constant shots they give us. But that thought isn't as consoling as it might be. How am I to avoid the atmosphere of the place? How am I to avoid the constant shots? And how am I to avoid being here a long time?”

  And one other detail made Fred Foley doubt his sanity a little. Leo Joe Larker might be there in the Bug. And he repeated an earlier warning:

  “Whatever they tell you to do, Foley, don't do it. Whatever they tell you not to do, do it. Be dumb, blind, blundering, and silly, but stay on it. You may be dumb enough to get to the core of it. You're on your own with it all the way. I'm just telling you not to lay off. If they can kill you, Foley, I can kill you worse. If they can scare you, I can scare you double. Now, go to your appointments. Oh, I forgot! You've already been to your appointments. You're in here with us now. A lot of good it did you to be dumb and blind and silly. You didn't come any closer to whipping the thing than us smart ones did.”

  “Are you all right, Leo Joe?” Foley asked him. There was a puzzle about this Leo Joe Larker. He was a Negro now. There was no doubt about that. But he hadn't been one as a boy. Mexican, Gypsy, Indian maybe, or dirty-necked Irishman, but Negro, no. He didn't grow up to look anything like himself as a boy, his voice was not anything like that. He was, however, the same man who had spoken to Freddy from the darkened doorway one night. Yes, and he was Leo Joe Larker who had raised a man from the dead when he was a little boy. You're sure of some things, even after you're crazy.

  “Why do you call me by that name?” Leo Joe asked. “That isn't the name I'm committed under.”

  “Foley isn't the name I'm committed under,” said Fred, “but you called me by it immediately.”

  “I know it. But that Leo Joe stuff wasn't the name I had been going by either. I'm not even sure that I remember it. Are you sure that's my name? I'm probably not who you think I am. Say, why's that fellow so afraid of heights all of a sudden? He didn't used to be like that, did he?”

  “What fellow, Leo Joe? Oh!” The fellow was James Bauer. He wasn't there, of course. He was back at home sitting on his own sometimes chilly patio. But a weaver, a Harvester wouldn't mind a little thing like it being chilly. In the lake down below, Wing Manion had been swimming every evening, and very often Hondo and Salzy Silverio swam with her. It doesn't get too chill for Harvesters, not even in mid-winter.

  Rather odd that Leo Joe Larker should follow Fred Foley into the weave, though. Well, who can say what was odd about Leo Joe Larker?

  James Bauer, thirteen hundred miles away, was trembling. He was the master of the weave and he was trembling. He went to the edge of the patio, to the concrete and iron stairway that led down to the lake. He put his hand on the iron rail and he shook.

  “It isn't as high as all that, Foley,” Leo Joe said. “It's only twelve easy steps down to the water, and the water there isn't four foot deep. I never did see a fellow so scared of heights as he is, though. You know it, he just got that way. He wasn't scared of them before.”

  This wasn't a projection like a viewing screen. It was being there with a piece of each of the senses. Every person brushed by the weave could read back into it, and sharp persons who brushed those brushed-ones could also read back into the whole apparatus.

  “Arouet, Arouet Manion!” James Bauer was thundering from his far-away patio, and Arouet entered there from the house, frightened also, but not of heights:

  “You compelled me so I'm here,” he said. “You're in a passion. What are you going to do?”

  (“The heavy one is going to kill the other one, Foley,” Leo Joe Larker said in the Bug enclosure. “You know that, don't you? Is there any way to stop it? Is it real?” “It won't happen for hours, or days,” Fred Foley told him. “No, I don't know any way to stop it. No, it isn't completely real, Leo Joe, but it almost is. Pieces of it are real.”)

  “It's intolerable, Arouet,” said big Jim Bauer. “The heights! How can anyone abide such heights? The highest mountains of earth aren't even anthills before these heights. One who falls here will fall through black space for eons. Is there no protection?”

  “Your fear is of depths, not of heights, James; and like my fear of death it strengthens the weave,” Arouet said. “You mock me for mine, I mock you for yours. And our anger feeds the weave.”

  “There's one thing I must do while on this pinnacle,” Bauer rumbled. “I kill you this time. Crawl on your belly, Arouet. You'll grovel for many hours, and then you'll die. Grovel, man! I compel you!”

  And Arouet Manion was on the stone floor of the patio. He was black with fear.

  Foley caught something of a plappergeist just around the corner of his several senses. So, there was a patrick in the Bug! The creature-familiar was there.

  “Can you change it to some other scene, Foley-Smith?” Bryant asked as he joined them. (But Bryant was not the patrick.) “That sure is a funny set you have. It doesn't have any chassis, and you can see it with your eyes closed. Why don't you let the fellow that's putting the speech together come in? I like to put speeches together myself.”

  “All right, Bryant,” said Fred Foley, “if you're interested.” These inmates of the Bug were some of them very psychic people. One has to be very psychic to hook in so easily on a brain-weave twice or thrice removed.

  This was Michael Fountain, a sixty-year-old lean and lined man, craggy featured, with only a fringe of pinkish hair around his pate, with a hook in his nose like a Plains Indian or an Armenian, and too pale to be either

  Michael Fountain was lecturing into the dictaphone. Such first-draft lectures were then transcribed for him, and from them he prepared his fine final renditions. He was dictating sequences for a superb lecture which he would name The Golden Glass Bowl.

  “I will posit a student questioner of the intelligent but naïve sort,” Michael was dictating, “and I will answer his questions. It is no matter that the questioner is at the moment imaginary.” (That was in error, but Michael did not understand it. A real questioner would send a question into Michael's mind now by means that Michael still did not accept. The f
irst questioner was a man named Greyhorse, who was intelligent but not in in all ways naïve.) “Any lecturer worth his salt and salary,” Michael Fountain was continuing, “can call up whatever questions he wishes from the students sitting before him. He can pick out the most unlikely student for it, and he can elicit from that one just the question he wishes. This is done by gesture, by expression of expectation, and by the dropping of key phrases. It has always been known that an intelligent lecturer or teacher could do this. I explain the tactic to you since you here present are all destined to enter the intellectual elite. One sign of that is simply that you are attending my lectures. Were you not of the potential elite, you would not be here. But the students, even the students of the elite, who speak and think entirely in the prescribed catchwords (especially those who believe themselves the most independent), will sometimes grow angry at themselves for this, will sometimes feel themselves frustrated and insufficient. And yet they cannot deny that the trends and the questions come out of their own mouths and minds; out of the shallowness of their minds, however, while leaving the depths troubled but uncontributing.

  “Ah, the questioner asks why there are still pockets of poverty and misery in the Golden Glass Bowl that is the world. There are these remaining pockets, my young friend, because there are still pockets of stubbornness and pride. ‘Is not a poor man still entitled to his own measure of stubbornness?’ I hear my young friend ask. No, he is not, I answer. Nobody is entitled to even a small measure of stubbornness any longer. Beasts may be stubborn; men may not be. ‘And are not the poor entitled to even the crumbs of pride?’ my phrase-mouthed questioner asks again. No, my friend, they are not! Not even the crumbs of pride can be allowed, not to the lowest of men, not to the highest. This would be apparent to you if you considered words in their real meaning. Birds and baboons have pride, perhaps; men may not have. It has never been a part of true men. The rich have had to give up all vestiges of pride long ago. They stuttered and protested, but they gave it up. It was a good bargain for them. Wealth and ease are better than the old vestige. And the stubborn poor can also enter into wealth and ease if they give up that old cumbersome burden. It were easier for a camel (camelus camelops) to pass through the eye of a needle than for a man burdened with pride to enter into the golden heritage, as an old prophet said. Ah, do we have another questioner?”

  (“Let me have at him once, Foley,” said Loras who claimed to be an alien. “Have at him, Loras,” said Fred Foley.)

  “Ah, this questioner asks why we have given up the stars and the outer space,” said Michael Fountain easily. “I always smile when I receive this question. We have given them up, and all plans of further studying them, of ever visiting them, because we must set a limit to ourselves. It is very curious the persons who ask this question. So often it is those who might be called moral. Is it not ironic that those who believe that one wife is enough do not believe that one world is enough? How is it possible to reverse things so? We become free by a restriction. We restrict ourselves to one world so that we may enjoy one world fully. Our total freedom here is our compensation. Blot out the skies! There is nothing beyond our one sun. There is no world beyond our one world. The Golden Glass Bowl which we hold in our hands is singular and unique. Do not go whoring after strange worlds!”

  (“Let me have him, Foley,” said the man who was possibly Leo Joe Larker, or who was possibly not the person they thought he was.)

  “Ah, the questioner asks why we made it so small and why we are throwing it away,” Michael Fountain lectured into the dictaphone back there in the south midlands of the country. “And I understand what he means. And the answer to the second part is that we are not throwing it away; at least I believe we are not, not at this time.

  “What we are talking about are the world and the lives which we are given to fashion as our tasks. These are in the form, as I see it, of a large, fine, precious, crystal bowl, the Golden Glass Bowl, which we hold in our hands. True, it is not nearly so large a bowl as we once wished to fashion, but now we have come to understand that it is as large and as heavy a bowl as we are able to lift and hold.

  “And here I have no patience with those fossilized and unregenerate persons who accuse us of being ‘anti-life,’ no patience at all. They point their grubby fingers to the figures of older scientists showing that the world could be brought to support one hundred billion persons (or, in extreme cases, double that), but they do not point to the plain fact that special effort and ingenuity might be required to bring the world to such developments; and to the further plain fact that special effort and ingenuity are no longer possible to mankind as presently constituted.

  “That these things were possible to mankind in the past we acknowledge, but we have refined them out of ourselves in our advancement. The world we have built and which we hold in our hands is a world of proper size and adjustment and enjoyment. The ‘troubling of giant effort’ has happily been left behind us. We are not dinosaurs to aspire to great size, nor yet swarming insects to aspire to great numbers. We are people. We have now had fifteen consecutive years of decrease in world population and we have ordained decreases for another fifty years. We will not be crowded or pushed, we will not be stirred to unusual effort for anything. We are the lords and we require lordly room. Ah, and here is a thing that only we of the elite know. We did not bring this about at all, though we take the credit for it. We need credit standing to our account. Perhaps we triggered it a little early, but that also I doubt. There are these biological swings and it swung. What we do now is set up safeguards so that it may never swing back again in the other direction.

  “Nor have I any patience with those who speak of the ‘loss of nerve’ of our world. ‘Nerve,’ in this sense, is a property of animals or of animals in the process of becoming men. It is not a property of finalized man. Yes, we have lost our nerve, at least I hope we have. Let it be buried with other prehistoric monsters. Let it never trouble our world again. Does that answer your question, young sir? Ah — he is a little confused, he is a little resentful. These were not quite the questions he meant to ask, and yet they are the questions that came out of his mouth. There are questions that we of the elite cannot allow to be asked, and they will not be asked. The young have not the words for these questions yet. They have no words except the catchwords we give them. And when they come to an age to have the words they will have forgotten the questions.”

  (“Let me go at the old gaffer, Foley,” said one named Croll. “Who are the monsters who still trouble the world, now that you fine-haired dudes have it all fixed up so fine?”)

  “Here is a question,” said Michael Fountain. “It's as though it came from a live and not an imaginary listener. This is odd, that it is a real questioner but not a real question. The thing to grasp about the monsters of my questioner is that they are not exterior but interior. They neither guard nor assault the world for the reason that they are not there. They are but unconscious remnants in some persons. It was once believed that we had need of these symbols. If we had once, we have not now. These were the four menaces that stood on the four forbidden roads that pre-man has already traversed. The Toad symbol is the loathsome origin, and death, and rebirth. And the alternate and sublimate of the Toad symbol is the Ox symbol (which is also the Worricow), possibly because both the toad and the ox have such bare staring faces (and possibly there is a trope with the horned toad). The jewel in the head of the Toad is the life-spark itself, which was first generated in cold flesh.

  “The Python symbol is illicit wisdom; the python is a man-image as seen by pre-man (hairless, unnaturally mobile-appearing man was somewhat snake-like to the more hairy and less supple and less articulated pre-men, even when pre-men and man were combined in one person). Alternates to the Python symbol are the Octopus and the Hydra symbols (free-walking and tool- or weapon-handling man seemed, to pre-man, possessed of extra members or arms); and also, unaccountably, the Lion symbol is alternate to the Python.

  “The F
alcon symbol is the air-hunter, the bird-murderer, the taller authority, the tyranny, the force-rule of the first mounted men (man-on-horseback was, to some extent, man given the power of flight, Falcon-Man.)

  “The Badger symbol is the cave or burrow symbol, the stubborn holing into the earth, the rear-guard defense of all rear-guard things. The alternates to the Badger symbol are the Bear symbol, the Man-in-the-Animal-Mask symbol, and finally the Man symbol. There seemed no confusion, to primitives, between the Man symbol and man himself.

  “These four symbols are not proper symbols for modern men. They were symbols used by animals in the process of becoming men. Some, however, believe that these are valid symbols in our unconscious, and that by them our unconscious is trying to tell us something: as though we had cut some needed element out of ourselves and these symbols were warning us to bring it back in. I do not accept this view. Nor do I accept the easy explanations: tentacled liberalism (the python-hydra) opposing snap-jawed conservatism (the stubborn badger); and each abetted by its preternatural underform, Communism, from underground (the toad with the tantalizing jewel in its head) opposed by resurgent Fascism (the hunter-falcon, full-feathered, preying). There is polarity in the world, but it isn't so storied and allegorical as that. No, my young questioner, there can be no answer to no question. There are no exterior monsters who trouble the world either in attacking it or in defending it. They are not real.”

  (“Old Gaffer, we are real,” Croll said, giving the hissing growl of a very badger. “We are the abiding men, we are the abiding monsters, and we are real.”)