Annals of Klepsis
Page 22
“Wait, wait, catch her! Don’t let her go!” Aloysius Shiplap from Gaea-Earth cried out, and three quick and powerful persons did pinion (literally) the Asteroid Pythagoras. “You are running out on it!” Aloysius cried at the big bird-creature. “You are about to be unmasked, so you are running out. The Doomsday Equation is a fraud, and now I begin to remember where that fraud began—in an obscure paper by an obscure bird on one of the bird asteroids. The Doomsday Equation is a fraud, and the Doomsday Equation was worked out by—”
“By myself, of course,” the Asteroid Pythagoras bird growled. “I, the greatest mathematician in the universe, worked out the Doomsday Equation, a masterpiece of advocacy mathematics. It fixes the end of the humans, but not of the bird-men. And not, as one person has pointed out recently, of the dragons either. It will really be a great cleansing. I worked it out, and in order that everything might be done according to correct procedure, I presented it to a small but utterly competent symposium on my own Asteroid Doomsday. It was approved.”
“And did nobody challenge it then and there, while it could still be challenged, before it got up trendy momentum?” Aloysius asked, mildly aghast.
“Three persons challenged it immediately,” the Pythagoras cawed, “and the next moment there were three eyeballs dangling down three cheeks. The mathematical implications of the dangling eyeballs sank in quickly. The equation was approved without further arguments. I always liked that eyeball response. It goes like this—”
Like crackling lightning, the terrible beak of the Pythagoras struck three times, and her three captors had each a dangling eyeball and a sudden tempest of pain. The Pythagoras was loose from them easily then, and ascended twenty meters into the air on her powerful wings.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know whether my theory will stand up or not,” the Pythagoras shrieked, “but it’s going to be tested in a very few seconds, and I intend to watch that test from a few kilometers up in the air. Quasimodo is in the article of death right now, and the En-Arche Bell will be rung without hands in a very few seconds. I hear it. Why do you others not hear it? Can you not hear critical sounds a little before they happen? What do you do without such a cushion? A slave-mathematician is running up the buckling mountain now, buffeted by the winds and frightened by the lightning. He has a revision of the Equation in his hand, and I will be able to read it from seven kilometers up in the air. I have good eyes, even for a bird of prey. And I love to look at new and chancy versions of an equation.”
The Asteroid Pythagoras immediately rose so high in the air that she was gone out of sight. She would zigzag with the lightning and explode with the explosions. And she would be able to read the emendation on the paper in the hand of the slave-mathematician with her infrared and highly magnifying eyes.
“I have correction, I have emendation,” the slave-mathematician was calling in a loud voice as he ran up the mountain ahead of the fury of the churning water. “I have the equation in its correct form. The ‘Doomsday’ is herewith taken out of the ‘Doomsday Equation,’ and the doom need not happen.”
The slave had almost reached the top of the mountain where all the scientists and many other persons were gathered.
Then, in that moment, in that first moment, the En-Arche Bell boomed, clanged, rang out a merry sort of toll from its bell tower.
“I could always stop time,” Brannagan’s Ghost said, “and I have stopped it now, for a very short while. It took a lot out of me, and I’ll never be able to do it again. I’ve stopped it for a short moment only. If anybody is going to do anything about this, he’d better do it right now.”
“The bell did boom half a tune before it was frozen,” Titus the Historian cried out. “That means that Quasimodo is dead. That means that this is the end of the world.”
And there was a lightning flash a dozen times as bright as any that had flashed before.
“No, Quasimodo isn’t quite dead,” Brannagan’s Ghost insisted. “He doesn’t die when the bell tune begins. He dies on cue, three notes from now. Maybe I can hold time for a while yet.”
“No, no, it doesn’t mean the end of the world, anyhow,” my Princess Thorn contradicted all of them. “It means the beginning of the world. It was Old Brannagan here who built the En-Arche Bell Tower and hung the big bell in it. And he designed it to ring whenever the world should begin! Have you forgotten how you designed it, many-times grandfather? He named it En-Arche, ‘In the Beginning,’ from the first two words of the Septuagint Bible, the only Bible he ever read, one which he acquired on one of his very early piracies. Brannagan built the tower and hung the bell (it was from another of his early piracies) in a sort of intuitive transport, so his ghost once told me. Is that not so, Brannagan’s Ghost? What do you say?”
“I say that somebody had better do something before I let time slip out of my control and the bell rings three more notes. It isn’t easy to hold time.”
“With that lightning, it looks more like an end of a world than a beginning of a world to me,” Bancroft Romal spoke in a rather fearful voice. “Oh, I do have a nervous finger on the trigger. I thought I’d be cooler.”
It was noteworthy that many of the people had now taken on ‘the green face of fear,’ people whom you’d never have suspected of such a failing.
“Tharrala Thorn, my perverse niece, tell me what the unspeakable sin was,” the Empress Angela demanded. “I must have my curiosity satisfied before the world ends and I die.”
“No, but I tell you what I’ll do, Angela,” Thorn said. “I’ll tell it to you the first time I meet you after we’re both safely dead.”
“Nobody need die!” the slave-mathematician cried as he reached the top of the mountain and arrived in the midst of us. “The ‘Doomsday’ is herewith taken out of the Doomsday Equation. And the doom need not happen. Your writ is false, Principality. Go back to your dungeon!”
As to the lesser of the catastrophes, it had already begun to subside. Oliver Roundhead had arrived at the Tarshish side of the planet and had convinced Malabu Worldwinger that he must not move the Tarshish-Klepsis World out of its orbit further. So the tidal-world-wave had begun to ebb, and the wind and the waves quieted. The water level fell almost to the bottom of O’Grogan’s Mountain.
But the Doomsday Principality had its lightning—unsheathed and erratic lightning. The slave-mathematician raised the revised equation high in the air in triumph. And a blinding bolt of angry lightning struck down and set the emendated equation on fire and at the same time burned the hand of the slave-mathematician to an ember.
And the En-Arche Bell sounded one more beautiful but horrifying note.
“Oop, I almost slipped. I nearly let the time get away from me,” Brannagan’s Ghost apologized. “Two notes to go. They must not sound!”
Aloysius Shiplap of Gaea stamped the fire out of the equation paper and gathered up the fragments of it. “I don’t know whether there’s enough of it left to reconstruct—” he began, but the Doomsday Principality had not yet surrendered. Furious lightning struck at Aloysius and barely missed.
“Can you tell us the amended equation, slave?” Empress Angela asked.
The slave made a motion that the lightning had made a mute of him.
“Can you write out the amended equation, slave?” she asked.
The slave showed his right hand that was a hand no more.
“I believe that I have just enough pieces here to reconstruct the equation,” Aloysius mumbled. “I’ll have it in a minute. Oh, it’s beautiful how it all goes together and each part illuminates every other part. Then the Doomsday Event can run and hide.”
But a Doomsday Lightning hit Aloysius head-on. Oh, head-on! ’Twas life or death for him for a minute there. And then it was life. “I have it just about completed,” the dazed Aloysius mumbled.
“Aloysius!” Terpsichore Callagy bubbled up, “that last lightning set your hair on fire. Oh, joy! Oh, glee! This is art like no art ever! Aloysius, you’re not listening to me. I sai
d that your hair is on fire. Aloysius, you become a piece of undying (even if you personally die from it) eschatologic art. Oh, the aeons are fulfilled when we can have a flash of art like that.”
The En-Arche Bell tolled one more note before Brannagan’s Ghost was able to bring slippery time to another precarious halt. And if it sounded its third after-note, that would mean that Quasimodo was dead.
“I’ve just about got it,” Aloysius said. “Doomsday, run and hide! I’ve just about got it!”
“Has there ever been such a piece of outré art as Aloysius and his burning hair!” Terpsichore admired in ecstasy.
“It is all right, Terpsichore,” Aloysius said. “I work best when my hair is on fire. I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” he gloated. “We’re saved! Stand back, people; stand back, Terpsichore!”
“I’ll not stand back. I’ll be in the middle of it. Oh, what art! Look up into the middle of the convoluted lightning cloud, Aloysius. You can see the egg that the lightning comes in. Watch, watch, watch as the egg shatters! Oh, oh, it’s coming right at us, scarlet murder as a form of high art! Would it be artier if it misses us or if it hits us? There’s no way we can lose. It’s consummate art whether we personally live or die.”
And the Doomsday Lightning, frustrated and angry, its prey about to slip away from it, gathered itself for what would have to be its final strike at Aloysius Shiplap.
“It’s now or never,” the Lightning mumbled, and struck in a jagged and erratic bolt—
If you’ve enjoyed this book and would like to read more great SF, you’ll find literally thousands of classic Science Fiction & Fantasy titles through the SF Gateway.
For the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy …
For the most comprehensive collection of classic SF on the internet …
Visit the SF Gateway.
www.sfgateway.com
Also by R.A. Lafferty
The Devil is Dead
Archipelago (1979)
The Devil is Dead (1971)
More than Melchisedech (1992)
Other Novels
Past Master (1968)
The Reefs of Earth (1968)
Space Chantey (1968)
Fourth Mansions (1969)
Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of Ktistec Machine (1971)
Not to Mention Camels (1976)
Aurelia (1982)
Annals of Klepsis (1983)
Serpent’s Egg (1987)
East of Laughter (1988)
How Many Miles to Babylon? (1989)
The Elliptical Grave (1989)
Dotty (1990)
The Flame is Green (1971)
OklaHannali (1972)
Half a Sky (1984)
Collections
Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970)
Strange Doings (1972)
Does Anyone Else Have Something Further to Add? (1974)
Funnyfingers&Cabrito (1976)
Apocalypses (1977)
Golden Gate and Other Stories (1982)
Through Elegant Eyes (1983)
Ringing Changes (1984)
The Early Lafferty (1988)
The Back Door of History (1988)
Strange Skies (1988)
The Early Lafferty II (1990)
Episodes of the Argo (1990)
Lafferty in Orbit (1991)
Mischief Malicious (And Murder Most Strange) (1991)
Iron Tears (1992)
The Man Who Made Models – The Collected Short Fiction Volume 1 (2014)
The Man With the Aura – The Collected Short Fiction Volume 2 (2015)
R. A. Lafferty (1914-2002)
Raphael Aloysius Lafferty was an American science fiction and fantasy writer born in Neola, Iowa. His first publication of genre interest was “Day of the Glacier” with The Science Fiction Stories in January 1960, although he continued to work in the electrical business until retiring to write full-time in 1970. Over the course of his writing career, Lafferty wrote thirty-two novels and more than two hundred short stories and he was known for his original use of language, metaphor and narrative structure.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © R. A. Lafferty 1983
All rights reserved.
The right of R. A. Lafferty to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2016 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 473 21359 3
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk