Annals of Klepsis

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I second that suggestion,” another of the evoked ghosts spoke. “Let’s get rid of him right now. Don’t let him answer. He’d talk the ears off a mockingbird or the warts off a hog. Kill him now!”

  “You and Joshua Thorn try it, man!” Brannagan’s Ghost barked back, “and add two more to your side to even it out if you wish. I can take any four of you. Well, rule out one man here, and then I can take any other four of you. There is nothing wrong or forbidden about my speculations, and they are most likely true. Nonexistence does not have to prove its nonexistence. It is existence that does have to prove its existence. And it’s never done that.

  “People are simply too sketchy to be real. And they are too sketchy to be imagined directly by the Almighty. If they were imagined directly by the Almighty, then they would be real. But rather they are imagined by a lesser being, by a demiurge, or by an ultimate human. You people cringe when I imply that all persons might be imagined by myself, but I believe myself to be the most likely person for it that I’ve ever met. I have traveled everywhere. I have seen and known a hundred thousand superior men, each of whom has risen from and been the best of a hundred thousand. But I have a spaciousness and a scope that none of the others has. I am the only one who has true consciousness, the only one who can substantially look at myself. My own mind is solid and not merely sketched out. And I reach peaks where I have physical and mental and psychic speed unmatched.”

  “You have a haunt that has the speed, yes, and the intelligence, a very much twisted intelligence,” ranted one of the accusers. “But a haunt is a devil, and we’ll no longer be ruled by a devil on Klepsis. You yourself are not swift and you are not solid and you are not intelligent. You are a super-active moron, that’s what you are, and they are the worst kind. There is no such person who contains all others in his imagination. If there were such, he would be nothing like you. Your insanity has gone out of bounds. If there is no halting you this side of the grave, then it must be to the grave with you!”

  “It is because people are so sketchy that they cannot be anything except imaginary,” Brannagan’s Ghost went on again as if he had not heard the railers. “You have seen comic artists and caricaturists who can suggest a face and a person with no more than several broken lines on a paper. Human persons are like that, mere suggestions made out of long and short broken lines. Most humans cannot hold one millionth of their brain content in their conscious mind at one time. So then, that brain content is largely imaginary, or it is a group-shared thing to be dipped into. It is the ink pot from which the lines are drawn. You, Joshua Thorn, are done with only seven comic lines, and you have no solidity at all. You’re one of the easiest things I ever did. I made you so sketchy because my imagination was tired when I made you.

  “And time is too sketchy to be real time. If we do not live in real time, then we do not live at all. We know only the narrowest of strips, the present. By a little arrangement that I have devised here for the pleasure of my soul, we are in two presents at once, and they are a little less than two hundred years apart. But even in the purported histories that are assembled on other planets (but not yet on Klepsis) there is only a set of dots to indicate the flow of time. Most of the extent of time is not touched at all. And the extent and flow of time are only two of the ten thousand aspects of time. I am the only one who understands this, for which reason all of you are imaginings of my mind, and I am not an imagining of the mind of any of you.”

  Brannagan’s Ghost was curiously at his ease now, for he had faced the opposition and found it to be lightweight and sketchy. And Brannagan the un-ghost, the preserved dead man in the transparent glass coffin, was heard to chuckle and seen to move in diaphragm and throat and mouth. Oh, they were right: Brannagan was twinned. But they were wrong to think that they could outlaw the what-is-it one of the twins. That was Brannagan’s Ghost, he who could climb through third-story windows when he was three weeks old, and could read his father’s engineering books when he was four months old.

  Joshua Thorn and several other blaze-heads railed at him and gave witness and false witness against him. Then Brannagan’s Ghost took a short leave from them and came to Princess Tharrala and myself. The railers seemed to believe that he was still in confrontation with them, however, and they railed at the spot where he had stood a moment before. This Brannagan person really did have the power of bi-location. He really did have the power of going vague. He did have the power of projecting illusions. He really was twinned, and then sometimes he was twinned again.

  “What they are really arguing about is what is in my mind,” Brannagan’s Ghost said to Thorn and myself. “They are arguing about the proposition that to kill me might be to extinguish themselves also. They are arguing about whether I am running a big bluff. Well, I really don’t know what is in my mind any more than you two do, for I haven’t literally looked into it for a long time. But I can go and look into my mind, and they can’t go and look into theirs. I think I’ll do it. Ah, and I think I’ll go on a sea voyage, on my last sea voyage ever. Princess Tharrala and Duke Tyrone, I intend to take a sea voyage on the ship The Dina O’Grogan before morning light. I want you two to come with me on it. I want the last crew of the ship to come with me, the crew of the little voyage of yesterday afternoon, such of them as are still alive. I want Prince Franco the Outcast to come. I want the Princess Angela Ravel-Brannagan to come, but not her husband Prince Henry. I want Flobert Traxley, the Man Who Talks to Dragons, to come. Where we are going there may be dragons. I want the other historian, buried in the potter’s field just west of O’Grogan’s Mountain an hour ago, to be dug up and reanimated and brought along on the voyage. (I suspect, Duke Tyrone, that he is really the distinguished historian whom I requisitioned, and that you are not; but I accepted you immediately, on sight, and I’ll not own myself wrong.) I want Doctor Luke Gilmartin to come. And I will tell the Seneschal Fidelis to come. And the Green Robe. That is about enough of you to give witness to what is in my mind. What is in my mind and what was in my mind are all the same, for I regard this last two hundred years as an illusion, as an imagining of my own, just as I sometimes regard all the people in the worlds as imaginings of my own. Hey, they really are belaboring their points! Joshua Thorn and his gang, I mean. They don’t believe that my mind is big enough to hold the superior fauna of even a very few worlds. They don’t believe that I will probably be the first one awake. They don’t even believe in the awakening.”

  One of Brannagan’s attackers had turned to withering scorn in an attack on a thesis which Brannagan had never actually proposed but had only hinted that he might propose. And meanwhile, Brannagan’s Ghost had rejoined himself. Are ghosts more easily split than are live people?

  “All the rolling spheres are in your noggin, are they, bland-brained Brannagan?” one of the jackals was snapping at Lion-Ghost Brannagan. “And they are nowhere else except in your head? The billions of people on Gaea-Earth and on Astrobe, and the millions of people on each of the other planets, they are all in your mind, and only in your mind, are they? What? Is your mind bigger on the inside than on the outside then? From the outside it isn’t very impressive.”

  “Aye, it is much bigger on the inside,” Brannagan’s Ghost spoke with a sort of vocal grin. “Several persons here have been in my brain, and they have some idea of the scope of it. And a few others will visit it this night, and they will declare that it is the wonder of the worlds.”

  “We had better be on our way, my love,” the Princess Thorn said to me. “You yourself have never resurrected a dead man, and I’ve had only doubtful experience at it myself. It may take a few minutes to do it. And we don’t want to miss the mysterious night voyage on The Dina O’Grogan.”

  We went out from the walk-in tomb by the ground-level slotted doorway of weathered limestone.

  “Oh!” the Princess Tharrala Thorn cried as if she had suffered a sudden hurt. “There is one star too many in the sky! Who is it? Has it already happened? And what does it mean?”
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  “I have no idea what it means, good Thorn,” I said.

  “You an historian! And you do not even know what it means when there is one star too many in the sky! You see, my love, ‘historian’ carries a different connotation here on Klepsis that has never had an historian of its own. Oh, my poor loud-mouth ancestor, done to death again! People rate you too highly here, Long John, my love. They rate you as a seer and a prophet and a sage. But even a journeyman historian should know what it means when there is one star too many in the sky.”

  NINTH CANTO

  The Introspections of Brannagan

  or

  One Star Too Many in the Sky

  “Tell me, extraordinary Princess, what does it mean when there is one star too many in the sky?” I asked my droll wife.

  “It means that somebody has just been murdered. The ‘Star Too Many’ is the murder crying to the sky for vengeance. It does not matter, for the first moment, whether the murder is justified or not. The murdered blood cries out first, and the questions are asked later. And if that murder is not justified, the crying-out blood will continue to manifest itself on high. The One Star Too Many will remain in the sky, even shining alone and bright in the daytime sky, for three days and three nights, or until the murder is avenged, whichever is first.

  “But if the murder is justified, the One Star Too Many will fade from the sky within a quarter of an hour. I am afraid that the present case is the murder of my collateral ancestor by Brannagan (which we must have just missed), and that it is justified. It was justified the first time it happened. And this is still the first time, for Brannagan makes it so.”

  “You are faking it, droll Princess,” I said. “You cannot notice one extra star in the sky, or one hundred.”

  “Oh, but I can. We all can on Klepsis. You could too, if you’d only study our Klepsis sky. Your Gaea-Earth has spoiled you with its over-plus of stars. On a good night you can see about six thousand different stars with your bare eyes on Gaea-Earth. But on Klepsis, because of our much brighter night skies, we can see only between thirty-five and sixty-five different stars in the sky, depending on the hour and the season. No more than that with the bare eyes. And we know each star by name just as well as we know the names of the different members of our own family. We do notice when there is one star too many in the sky. But with the crowded arrangements that you have in the sky of Gaea-Earth, how are unjustified murders ever punished?”

  We went around O’Grogan’s Mountain, through the little thicketed hills that surrounded it, and we came to the small potter’s field at the west end of the mountain.

  “What is the name of the historian?” I asked suddenly. “What name will I look for on the tombstone? There have surely been several burials here tonight, with the executions and all, and with the gunfire at the gala. Which grave, which grave?”

  “We will try the latest one, my love. The Brannagan said that it was about an hour since he’d had the fellow killed, and all of the executions and most of the riot victims were two or three hours ago. It will be the grave of the most recent burial, my love.”

  “And how will I know which one is the most recent?”

  “You really don’t know? By the sight of it, of course, and by the smell of it. How do historians nose out history anyhow if they have such weak noses? Oh, you shock me, an historian who can’t even tell by the sight and the smell of it which heap of dirt was shoveled last! It is this one, my love. And here is the ‘municipal shovel’ that you can use. It is dull and it is bent, but it will be better than nothing. We forgot to bring a good shovel. Dig him out, Duke Tyrone my love.”

  With the battered ‘municipal shovel’ I began to dig for the distinguished historian. There is always a ‘municipal shovel’ in a potter’s field.

  “Is this not just another imagining of Brannagan’s Ghost, that we will be able to bring the historian back to life?” I asked.

  “Why, of course not. Trust me. We are always able to bring a victim back to life if he’s not been dead more than an hour or two, and if he’s been properly executed. Of course, we cannot do it if he’s been barbarously executed. But with Brannagan’s Ghost that is not the case. Almost all of his executions are proper and seemly. All that it takes to bring such a person back to life is strong faith and Dog Latin and the pulling out of the five nails—the death-nail in the heart and the other four nails from the four corners of the coffin lid.”

  To you people across the parsecs and the decades, if this Annals of Klepsis should deservedly have taken its place among the great “Histories of Worlds” and if it should come to your hands, pay particular attention to this part. There may come a time when you yourself may wish to raise a person from the dead, perhaps a loved member of your family, or a person of stranger attachment.

  This is the way it is done:

  The excellent Princess Tharrala Thorn recited the first part of the ritual with total faith:

  “Strive with death in manner urgent.

  Omni mortui resurgent.

  “There, that verse took the nail out of his heart, the most cruel of the death-nails.”

  At the same moment, the municipal shovel in my hands banged into the cheap plastic coffin in which the eminent historian was buried. And also at the same time there was an answering bang from inside the coffin, and a muffled shout.

  “Saints preserve us! He’s alive in there!” I cried with a touch of terror.

  “He becomes alive now, good husband. That canticle that I recited took the death-nail out of his heart. Then these four more that I shall recite will take the four nails out of the lid of his coffin and permit him to arise.”

  “There are no nails. It’s a plastic coffin,” I said.

  “They are symbolic nails, my love,” Thorn told me. And then she recited another verse of the ritual:

  “Lave in fountain and in spa too.

  Surge, nunc, et ambula tu!

  “There, that took one nail out of the lid of his coffin,” Thorn said.

  “Ah, he’s stirring, he’s cursing, and the life is careening through all of his vessels again! I wouldn’t have believed it!” I cried as I tried to clear the dirt from the coffin; and, due to my ineptitude, it tumbled back into the hole almost as fast as I shoveled it out. And the Thorn of my Heart was again intoning in her wonderful voice:

  “Pray thee pleading, pray thee urgy!

  Home, dico tibi, surge!

  “There, that’s two nails out of the lid of his coffin.”

  I was making slow progress at clearing the dirt, and the man in the coffin was impatient. The eminent historian was raising a ruckus in his box. And the incomparable Princess Thorn continued to draw the symbolic nails out of the lid of the coffin with her enchanting voice:

  “From the grave an easy exit.

  Ecce! Homo resurrexit.

  “There, that’s three nails out of his coffin lid.”

  I began to get the lid off the coffin then, which was difficult because I was standing on it. And Thorn gave me the final power to do it.

  “Grant us this, and grant yet more us!

  Lazare, O veni foras!

  “That’s all four of the nails out of the lid of his coffin. Oh, help him to stand up, my love, and let’s get him out of this horrible hole.”

  “It’s the most barbarous mismanagement I have ever heard of!” the furious and eminent historian was sputtering and railing as he came out of his grave. “What can one expect on a barbarous planet like Klepsis? I say ‘Kill a man, or let him live, but do not bury him alive!’ That is the ultimate barbarity. There is nothing more horrifying than waking up alive in a coffin in a grave.”

  “How did they do it?” I asked. “I’m a stranger on Klepsis myself. I just arrived here last evening.”

  “They did it with elaionheliotropionmekon,” the historian spat furiously, “with the oil of the dread sunflower poppy. I’ll never forget that taste. They had to force it down my gullet this time. They use it as knock-out drops in the Barrio
district of Astrobe City on Astrobe, and I was a victim of it a few times when I was doing historical research in the bars and taverns of that district. It throws one into a cataleptic trance. In the Barrio they stack up the cataleptic persons, laying four of them out one way, then four of them crossways on them, then four of them the first way again, till it is as high as a person can reach. They pile up their most troublesome customers so and leave them there until their trance wears off. But they don’t bury them alive when they’re in a cataleptic trance. That’s reserved for this barbarous planet. That crusty old man intended to do it too, to have me buried alive. He knew exactly what he was doing. I wonder whether any of the other persons buried here are recent enough to dig up?”

  “No, they were all done in by more barbarous executions, or by bloody gunning fights at the gala. They weren’t done in by the dread poppy juice.”

  “Oh, then they’re dead forever.”

  “No, no, no, Eminent Historian,” Thorn declared. “I believe in the Resurrection and the Life. I believe that all the dead shall arise on the first day.”

  “You mean on the last day,” the historian commented.

  “No, I mean on the first day,” Thorn insisted.

  “I am Titus Livius Morrison-Bryce the Historian,” the man said. “You two have saved my life on this strange planet, so I thank you.”

  “I am Duke Tyrone, also an historian,” I said, “and this is my wife of several hours, the Princess Tharrala Thorn-Ravel-Brannagan.”

  “You are the false and incompetent historian who preempted me,” Titus Livius spoke at me in near hostility. “Well, there is no time for enmity now. Let’s go, let’s go—well, somewhere, anywhere out of this cursed place.”