But there had come another person and appearance into the dream sequence of this cruel Oganta now. This was the appearance of Helen Damalis herself. Oh, he dreamed of her! That was something. It was as if it made her real. What matter that she was only the secondary element in a shaggy form that was somewhat hermaphroditic and miscegenated? She was there. That was something.
George Oneiron projected his own split person onto his two subjects. It was all very brilliant in the tensions that it set up. George was making parades of his double self through the Oganta mediums. These were sculpted and directed dreams of himself and he loved them. Later viewers would love them also. They were good. They were excellent. But they weren't pure Oganta.
Margaret Mondo was wielding a small notion. To her own trio, two males and a female, she now added the boisterous, playful, trollish female of Christopher Bullock. And to herself she added Christopher: she'd always intended to do that. It might be that the development of the Oganta (och, they did need development; it was catastrophe if they remained as they were for always;) would come through these small but accreting nations of them. There were nuclei being created, some by the Earthlings, some independent of them. The Oganta seemed the starkest individuals of any species anywhere, but it was only seeming. They began to accrete into these small nations now; and the personality was in the nations, not in the individuals. Happily this is not the case with many species: necessarily it was so with the Oganta. The small nation might be their new adult form.
The Oganta of Helen Damalis had broken all her bones and mangled her body almost beyond recognition. This pleased her: but it must not go as far as her extinction or all would be lost. She must hide, but she must maintain the relationship: so she must hide in the most obvious place of all. She attracted an empty Marsala Plasma and crept inside it. Then she merged it with the standing plasma globe, her Oganta's crystal ball of record. He would see her there mingled with himself; but he'd not know that this was her alive, so he'd not extinguish her to her death. Bonta Chrysalis had just now (and most unfortunately) succeeded in her own experiment. She had disenchanted her frog. She had produced her prince. He stood now in his pride and royalty: he was an adult in the old line and form; he was a Rogha.
He was very proud. He was very old (the Oganta showed no aging, whatever their years, but all the considerable years of this one were apparent in his new Rogha form). He was a royal Rogha, one of the elites, of the excellent ones. He was imposing in a way that neither Oganta nor human could ever be. He was extraordinary, he was magnificent, he was proud with the pride of the older angels. He was isolated. He was finished.
He was ridiculous. He was silly.
“I'm sorry,” Bonta Chrysalis said lamely. She was still in bondage to her own state and youth. Chrysalis-dreams never accord with reality, but how could she have been so very wrong in this?
“Sorry?” the Rogha asked in regal voice. “You should be happy, small creature, in your limited way. You've been the instrument. You have restored me. Something has restored me. Now I have inherited to my rightful station, that of a natural and destined prince. I look around. I find that I am more than that. I see that it is very late in the day. All the kings are dead. Now I am the king.”
In poetic justice, the oafish and unsensing Oganta almost deserved such an adult form. But they had lost it. There is a Providence.
The times had come to their end. These seminars, these field trips, cannot last for ever. It was time for the five Earthlings to return to Earth. The Oganta, the new, small but accreting nation of them, threw a bash for the five young psychologs from Earth. It was rowdy, of course. It was loud almost beyond bearing. It was vulgar, it was boisterous, it was cacophonous with the whinging and whining of the stringed hitturs. It was at a mountain inn, one of those gape-wall places. It was just at frost-bite, and a light snow was sifting. The five youngish Earth-folk were dressed near as barely as the Oganta.
Crudity, gluttony, guzzling and gorging. Tromping on tables and on torsos. Slurping and toothing from the common caldrons. The ancient and mystic game of leapfrog, and the wrestling and rolling of bodies.
But it was not quite the same sort of bash as the Oganta had thrown for them at their coming. Niceties had appeared. A new element was there, an element that you could hardly pin down with your two feet, but there was a difference. Come back in a thousand years and you'd be able to see the difference clearly.
The bash bashed on. Margaret and Christopher went to gather up the various records, the crystal balls (now solid and stony, yet with clouds still drifting in them) that held the dream pageants and complexes of the curious small Oganta nation, and of their own curious human selves as seen through Oganta eyes. George and Philip and Bonta came to them late in the day, bebashed and besotted, and the five Earth psychologs were near packed for their return to Earth.
“There is one missing,” Margaret said. “I wonder if it is worth picking up? Oh, I'll do it. It'll be inferior, but it'll be different. Sometimes there are overlooked things to be found in artifacts that are inferior and different.”
“Which?” Bonta asked.
“The crystal ball of record of the singling Oganta,” Margaret said, “of the one unsociable Oganta who hated humans so much. But we persuaded him to let a recording ball accumulate on him. Oh, I bet it's full of hate! I'll get it.”
Margaret Mondo got the crystal ball of record of the Oganta who hated humans. It was small, but heavy and weird. It wasn't entirely full of hate, not yet. There was one other slight element in it, not quite extinguished, outraged and terrified and squalling for attention.
“Margaret, get me out of here,” the stone screeched. “I'm trapped in it, I tell you. I want to mend up my bones and go home to Earth.”
“My, aren't you an odd one.” Margaret exclaimed. “What a dirty little masterpiece! He made you out of scraps of Bonta and myself. So how could he have made you so ugly?”
“Margaret, it's I, Helen Damalis! Get me out of here!”
“Why, how psychological of him. All the Oganta have an easy way with the lingos. He really named you that, did he, little hell heifer? Ah, what a shrilling little bad dream you are. One ugly clot of stone like this will show up the other globes in in all their colorful beauty. Pack you away with the others, I will, and you'll be the comedy piece of the collection.”
“Margaret, I'm Helen. Can't you understand? Run your magic hands over my globe and get me out of here. I'm Helen, the sixth one of the party.”
“But we were always a party of five. Ah, the look on you, it changes, it lowers, it explodes. There are stinking flames reeking about you, not dream clouds. More, dirty dream, more. Hate, hate, hate! Then I'll freeze you forever in the stone in your dull hatred. Oh, what a perfect little deformity you are!”
“Margaret, I hate you,” the stone squalled, “I hate everybody. I'm alive, I tell you. I'm real. See me, hear me, smell me, get me out of here! I'm alive, I'm alive!”
“Yes, you're a lively little abomination, but never really alive. The worlds couldn't stand it if you were. More, un-creature, more, more if that's possible. Burn, scream, hate! That's it.”
Then Margaret Mondo packed the little misshapen nightmare stone away with all the intricate and interesting crystal balls.
Go see it in the Oganta Collection. Really, it's the liveliest item of them all. Look at it there, wobble-eyed with horror and hatred, shrilling silently, pungent as brimstone, squalling against extinction, hating, outraged, absolutely petrified.
Rang Dang Kaloof
The gnome had been around for a month or so. There had been, there still were, others of them. But there was something a little mean about this one. They weren't gnomes, of course. There are no such things as gnomes; and besides, gnomes are somewhat larger. These were small, smaller than squirrels. They had been harmless. It was rather pleasant to know that they were around, in the borderland. It was like having squirrels living in your walls, and these didn't damage or gnaw.
&nb
sp; Flaherty would sit in that big chair in the evenings with that little table in front of him. He would read, he would write, he would doze. When he nodded a bit, when he dozed, that was when he saw them. He never saw them when waking and he never saw them when honestly asleep. He met them on that narrow border between the states.
And Flaherty knew better than to quarrel with them. He didn't want even the imaginary bad luck that might come from crossing imaginary creatures. He was peaceful, they were peaceful, and there had been no reason for quarrel.
The quarrel, when it came, began over almost nothing, as do most quarrels in that borderland between sleep and wakefulness. The gnome was dragging off one of Flaherty's old slippers, the left one.
“I'd never take the right one,” the gnome said. “I have no province at all over things of the right hand or the right foot. And you do need new slippers. These are a disgrace.”
“Do not call my things a disgrace,” Flaherty grumped. “Why do you want an old slipper?”
“I need it,” the gnome said. “Certain details of my nest. It can be shored up in several places with pieces and fluff from the slipper. These are intimate things, though, and no business of yours. Do I ask what you want with such and such?”
“Go to hell,” Flaherty said, and that was where he made his mistake.
“Now you are being vulgar,” the gnome sulked, “and topographically ridiculous. I've nothing to do with hell. I'm of another country entirely. Last chance. Will you give me the slipper?”
“I'll give you nothing, you bug,” Flaherty growled. “Begone.”
“We'll see about it, then,” the gnome said with a mean turn in his voice. “I have a little trick I can use. Ah, I love myself when I do things like this.”
The gnome made a loop with a fine length of string or thread, or perhaps of spider silk. He spun it like a lasso. He threw it. Flaherty noticed that the loop entered his chest and made itself fast on something. And he felt a very weird little tug there in the middle of his heart.
“All right, all right, a trick's a trick and fun is fun,” Flaherty said, “but you've hooked that loop around something inside me. What, and why?”
“One of the little interventricular veins in your heart, between the atrium and the ventricle, actually. And for orneriness, that's why.”
“Now you are the one who's being topographically ridiculous,” Flaherty said. “There is no way that a loop may be thrown to encircle a line that is fast at both ends.”
“I did it, though. Feels funny, doesn't it? Almost hurts.”
“A queasy feeling,” Flaherty said. “Leave off now. You can have the slipper.”
“I intend to have it. And some fun with you, too. Feel when I pull it tighter.”
“Oh! No! No! Stop it! Uncle!”
“Uncle isn't the word,” the gnome said.
“For the love of Saint Polyander, what is the word, then?” Flaherty begged.
“Rang dang kaloof,” the gnome pronounced seriously.
“Rang dang kaloof, then,” Flaherty said, but he smiled a bit meanly when he said it, and he shouldn't have.
“Louder,” the gnome ordered, and he pulled the loop tighter to create an alarming twinge.
“Rang dang kaloof,” Flaherty cried.
“When I say louder, I mean louder,” the gnome said, and he pulled on the loop to give a true heart pang.
“RANG DANG KALOOF,” Flaherty screamed.
“That's good enough for now,” the gnome said. He eased off on the loop. The heart pang ceased, but Flaherty fainted into real sleep.
Only for a moment, though. The telephone woke him up. It was a sorehead neighbor.
“Flaherty, what's that damned screaming over there?” the s.h.n demanded.
“It was just a little misunderstanding,” Flaherty excused himself lamely. “It's funny how sound carries in the evening. It won't happen again. At least I hope it won't.”
“It better not,” the sorehead said, and they hung up on each other. Flaherty went to bed.
He woke up in the morning feeling rotten and with a grave uneasiness in the region of the heart. Though it was two hours before the office girl could be there, he dialed the doctor's office every fifteen minutes till he finally got a connection. And he got an early appointment by a combination of luck and bad-mannered shouting.
“Nothing much wrong with your heart,” the doctor said several hours later. “I won't have the tracings of your EKG till tomorrow, but I believe your heart's nearly the soundest thing about you.”
“Drop the other shoe,” Flaherty said nervously. He knew this doctor.
“As I say, your heart's in good shape. Of course, it's going to kill you if you don't get those teeth out, take off sixty pounds, quit boozing. Still, don't worry. Worry's one of the hardest things on a person. But you can't blame your heart for the condition you've let yourself get into.”
“Anything else?”
“This prescription. Oh, and smoking those cigars. Better cut them in half at least.”
“That makes both halves harder to light.”
“And bad jokes—take it easy on them.”
Flaherty had all his teeth out and got crockery teeth in place of them. He began to take off weight. He did everything that was prescribed to him. Sometimes in the evenings he heard snickering when he drifted into that narrow borderland between wakefulness and sleeping. His pills, which he took faithfully, seemed to call out merriment from the lurking gnome. “Valium,” he heard it sneer once. “How are you going to get rid of a noose with Valium pills?” It was a good question. And Flaherty still had the heart twinges and pangs.
The next evening, he was compelled to squall, shout, scream, the unmagical phrase rang dang kaloof, again and again. His reputation in the neighborhood deteriorated.
Flaherty had men in to soundproof his house. He continued to take off great globs of weight and he felt himself diminished in person and in spirit. He stayed off the juice and the smoke, and he felt his wit drying up from it.
“Ah, you're coming along fine, fine,” the doctor told him. “Looking much better. Pulse and blood pressure greatly improved. Bet you're feeling a lot better, aren't you?”
“No, I'm feeling terrible,” Flaherty said. “How about giving me the names of a few heart specialists?”
“All right, if you want to go further and do worse.”
Flaherty tried, in the evenings, to avoid that narrow borderland between wakefulness and sleeping. He rigged up devices to keep him out of the drowse till he was very tired, in the hope that he would go directly to sleep when he went to bed. He still had the twinges and the pangs. That loop was still around the little vein or whatever between atrium and ventricle in his heart. It was always there and sometimes it was there very tightly. And every now and then, in spite of all precautions, the gnome caught him wide-open in the borderland and compelled him into the roaring and screaming: RANG DANG KALOOF! “It doesn't sound just right,” the gnome said one evening. “It doesn't echo as it should. You soundproofed the place, you piker! Open all the doors and windows!”
“No. There's a limit to this nonsense.”
“There sure is!” the gnome swore. “I'll teach you to crawfish with me. Open all the doors and windows, I said. Better yet, go out into the street for it. We may as well put on a good show.”
Oh, it was quite a concert that time and the heart pangs felt very like death pangs. Again and again, at the cracking top of his voice, he had to give it:
RANG DANG KALOOF!
And the night echoed with it.
They came with the pokey wagon and took Flaherty to the pokey. And it was all a little hard to explain to the judge the next morning. Flaherty asked to be shown where there was any city ordinance forbidding a man to speak the words rang dang kaloof or, indeed, any words not obscene or seditious in the street in front of his own house. He knew he wasn't helping his case. There were ordinances sufficient against making very loud disturbances. There were also nutty houses,
he was told, for people who persisted in acting nutty. Flaherty paid his fine. It might be more than a fine if it happened again, so the man told him.
By and by, Flaherty had taken off sixty pounds. He no longer drank nor smoked nor got mad nor worried: All these things were forbidden to him, though the latter two abstentions had become difficult for him. All his heart readings checked as perfect.
“You must feel much better now, don't you?” the doctor, the fifth one he had been to, asked him.
“No. I still feel rotten,” Flaherty said. “I still have the heart pangs, even though you say I can't be having them. There is still a stricture about a nameless vein in my heart, even though you say there is no such vein as I describe. And when he jerks it tighter and makes the pain unbearable, he can still compel me to—ah, never mind. Who's another good heart doctor around here?”
“There aren't any. You've used us all up. There isn't anything wrong with your heart, Flaherty, and there aren't any heart doctors anywhere better than we are. None anywhere, except—well, he doesn't practice anymore, anyhow.”
“What's his name? Why doesn't he practice anymore?”
“Dr. Silbersporen. And he doesn't practice now because he's agreed not to.”
“He's disbarred?”
“Oh, no, absolutely not. So eminent a man would never be prohibited from practice except as a last resort. The great doctor has been quite reasonable and cooperative about it all. He's a gentleman and he stands by his gentleman's agreement to practice no more. A sad case, really.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 137
