There was no sound or vapor trail overhead. There was no high building near enough to be the source of the big bloody glob, not if it had fallen normally. And there was no near person who was powerful enough to have hurled such a thing. There were people of a sort there, that's true. These people were calling “Happy New Year!” to each other, but they weren't people capable of heaving thousand-pound hunks of flesh about.
It was early morning of the first day of April. And the year was one that was coincident in several numerations.
“It's been many a time since the year began in April,” Valery told the town. “April, the opening, the beginning. But the beginning was tampered with long ago. How could these people know that this was really New Year's? Most of them weren't even born in those old centuries.
“Do any of you know of any giant who has disappeared or been slaughtered?” she asked in a louder voice.
“Not us,” the people said. “We'd slaughter no giants ever. We like them.”
The people formed a mad-eyed crowd of mixed types. They seemed under the influence of something, probably the chorea, for they danced along instead of walking. They were good people. One of them was dressed as St. Vitus, and several of them were holy.
“If no giants, then what is new, kids?” Valery asked them.
“There's a lady at the lying-in shop who has just given birth to thirteen children,” one of the mad-eyed young women said, “and she's not near finished with it. They say that it looks as though she could go on all day without stopping. They're not very big children yet.”
“That's nice,” Valery said.
“The oldest ones of the children are already walking and talking,” another of the young women said.
“That seems very early,” Valery mumbled. “Even after a full day it would seem a little early.” Valery didn't know much about children.
She left the dancing people. She left the bloody hunk of flesh, though she was still puzzled by it. She continued on her way toward the Institute for Impure Science. She was a member of the Institute, and there was an early morning meeting called by the director, Gregory Smirnov.
Valery's unoutstanding husband Charles Cogsworth was likewise approaching the Institute, but on a street parallel to that taken by Valery. Charles would not walk with his wife Valery in the mornings. There were always early morning kids abroad, and kids are often kidders.
“Hey, mister, walk your dog for you!” they'd offer. Well, Valery was just unkempt enough in the mornings to be referred to as a dog. Such offers amused Valery, but they embarrassed Charles, so they always walked separately. This morning there was a variant, however.
“Hey, mister, walk your cow?” one of the morning kids offered.
“Holy cow!” another kid whistled with amazement.
“Clank, clank,” went a sound somewhere behind Charles.
“Now that is unfair,” Charles protested. “My wife has not put on that much weight. Besides, she isn't even walking on this street.”
“I wasn't talking about your wife,” the kid said. “I was talking about the cow.”
“Clank, clank,” went the cowbell. “Can you tell me the way to the Cow Palace?” the cow asked, or else she didn't: this point remains in dispute. She was a big black-and-white cow, a Holstein or Dutch Belted or some such, and she had been following Charles.
“Veer off to the left,” Charles said in common politeness, “till you come to a street called Drovers' Road. Follow Drovers' Road to the right till you come to the Cow Palace. It's about a mile and a half.”
“Clank, clank,” went the cowbell as the cow took the side street to the left. Cogsworth was not absolutely certain that the cow had spoken to him in words, but he had understood her meaning, and she had understood his. She must have been a simple-minded creature, in any case. The Cow Palace was a slaughterhouse, and no good could come to her there.
Glasser also was going to the Institute. He had to go several blocks out of his way. There was a steamship in the middle of Fourteenth Street; it had the whole thoroughfare blocked. And there was not near enough water to float it, though it had rained a bit during the night.
And Aloysius Shiplap was going to the Institute for Impure Science. He was probably the most impure of all the scientists who belonged to the Institute. Aloysius looked back over his shoulder as he walked. “I wonder what's keeping that fellow?” he asked. He went another two blocks. “He's late,” Aloysius declared, “but there's nothing I can do about it.” Aloysius was almost to the front door of the ramshackle Institute when a flaming duck plunged out of the smoking sky and smashed itself dead on the stones at his feet.
“He was more than a minute late,” Aloysius said.
And then they were met in formal meeting and were in the middle of words. Gregory Smirnov, the director of the Institute, was outlining a study, or a notion, or a subject to be investigated. It really didn't seem important enough for the calling of an early morning meeting, but most of their studies at the Institute had had such very small and notional beginnings. “Clock-keeping is a murderous business,” Director Smirnov was saying. “However it is arranged and corrected, the annalist will find that he has burned some of his years behind him.”
“And the annalist's analyst may find that his ears are burning, as well as his years,” Valery gibed as she shuffled her cards. “Really, do you believe there is as much insanity among any tradesmen as historians?” Valery and Aloysius Shiplap and two of Epikt's extensions were playing Pape Jaune, the old French card game (the game was named Scrat in fourteenth-century Scotland).
Those extensions of Epikt: one of them looked like Johnny Greeneyes the cosmic gambler to a pip; the other was got up as the Ancient Scribe with black skullcap, flowing white beard, and goose-quill pen behind one ear.
“Have you been losing some years, Gregory?” Aloysius asked the director. “I believe that I have lost one or two myself along the way.”
“Someone has been careless with the years,” Gregory said. “We know that either four or six years have been lost out of the count since the beginning of what common people call the Common Era. Thus, the birth of Our Lord was probably in 4 BC, possibly in 6 BC. Yet it was not just a mistake in the calculations. These missing years were not missing at all. Astronomical backtracking tells us that they really happened, even if they were somehow left out of the numbering, even if the annalists have left them blank of any happenings, even if we are not sure just which years they were, not sure just where their location was in time or space.”
“Can't Epikt discover these things?” Charles Cogsworth asked. “Why do we keep the scatterbrained machine if he can't find out things like that?”
“Or play cards either,” Valery said. The Johnny Greeneyes extension of Epikt looked pained at this gibe. After all, he had created himself to look like a gambler and a card shark, and he was plugged into the most brainy and most rational calculator in the universe. But he wasn't doing very good at the Pape Jaune game: there are unbrainy and unrational elements to Pape Jaune; it is one of the few games at which humans can beat intelligent machines.
“Yes, I trust that Epikt will be able to find the answers,” Gregory said, “with the help of all of us. Our project, though, will be research on one year that is included in the numbering, and yet we must record it rationally as the Year That Did Not Happen. We will call it the Year of the Double Bogie or the Year of the Double Fool; or the Year of the Double Joker. I also find the name the Year of the Yellow Joker pushing itself into my mind; likewise, the Year of the Yellow Dwarf. There is superstition involved in contemporary attempts to leave it out of the counting, and I believe that it was left out for several decades. For a parallel, you will recall that this great Institute Building does not have a thirteenth floor.”
“No. It has a cellar, then two stories, then an attic,” Valery said. “It doesn't have any thirteenth floor, and I am sure that superstition is the cause of its not having one.”
“Let's consider a tal
ler building then,” Director Gregory said, “one that possibly has twenty floors, but with the thirteenth floor left out of the numbering. Now then, a curious thing happens, hypothetically of course, since this is a hypothetical building. It is discovered one day that it does have a thirteenth story after all, one not built by the builders, one that is only entered by accident, one that is a crazy jumble of insane things and happenings, one that isn't measurable in normal space. And yet this thirteenth level is discovered again and again. It is occupied by odd tenants who pay rent irregularly and in most odd specie. It is used. And finally this story is restored to the numbering by the building owners, even though it cannot always be found. Such is the year which we will now make the subject of our study.”
Valery drew the Queen of Wands card. It winked at her. The face of that queen looked somehow familiar.
“Who does she look like?” Valery asked, showing the card to Aloysius Shiplap.
“She looks like you,” Aloysius said. “I hadn't noticed that before.” Knowing that Valery held the Queen of Wands, Aloysius played the Judgment card. This, of course, is not the same as the Final Judgment card (many persons do not play much Pape Jaune and so may not be clear on this subject). “Scrat,” Aloysius called. He had won that merlon and so was ahead in the game.
“What is the number of the doubtful year, Gregory?” Glasser asked, “and what are some of the insane things and happenings that clutter the rooms of it?”
“It's hard to give a direct answer to any thing about it,” Gregory said. “It has to be slipped up on. Epikt has been receiving a few hints accidentally. There is great subliminal folk interest in this doubtful year and considerable folk memory of it. There are many references to it now that are appearing in selected copies of old books, references that were not to be found in them when the old books were first printed. Thus, there is preternatural tampering. Well, we can do preternatural tampering ourselves. Here is a communication from a certain Polydore Smith:
“ ‘Epikt, are you aware that in the year 1313 something happened to the Devil? He was compelled, by St. Michael and St. George and for a joke, to wear motley or clown suit for one entire year. This was frustration and humiliation to him. He found the propagation of all conventional evil impossible to him when he was dressed in that thing. He did, however, effect one year full of the most outrageous pseudo-evil ever. That whole year is absolutely incredible and is best forgotten: that is why I thought you might want to remember it and reconstruct it. The year was a lustrum year, not a calendar year. Well, down the hatch, kid! Oh, I forgot; you haven't any hatch.’ ”
“Odd letter,” said Charles Cogsworth. “And just what is a lustrum year ?”
“The year from one Tom Fool's Day to the next,” Gregory said.
Aloysius had just drawn the Tom Fool card. This is not the same as the Fool card (many persons do not play enough Pape Jaune to know this). The Tom Fool was in motley, but he sure wasn't in it willingly. There was something world-deforming, world-splitting in the sulfurous fury of the Tom Fool in the year of his shame. He was a card almost too hot to handle. Yes, he was the Devil in bonds worse than chains, and he would force the incongruity of his position onto the world and rub the world's face in it. Aloysius had never noticed the intensity of the Tom Fool card before, had never noticed that Tom Fool was the Devil in an awkward predicament. (There is a regular Devil card in the Pape Jaune pack, but that shows a Devil who is rather pleased with himself.)
“Here's another one that Epikt received from an uncertified person,” Gregory said. “It's signed Damn or Dumb, an odd name in either case. It was mailed from the West or Improbable Coast of Florida. (The best of belief today is that Florida never had a West Coast.)
“ ‘Epikt, this is from Guttmacher's Pregnancy and Birth: “In 1313 Lady Margaret, Countess of Hagenau, was laid in with three hundred and sixty-five children, one hundred and eighty-two females, all baptized Elizabeth by the bishop of Utrecht, one hundred eighty-two males, all baptized John, and one ‘scrat’ (hermaphrodite), who remained unnamed and unbaptized.” I thought you might be able to do something with the above.’ ”
“What in blue hell would I do with three hundred and sixty-five children and me a bachelor?” the Johnny Greeneyes Epikt extension growled. This extension had just put down the Scrat card itself and he recognized it. “Unbaptized maybe,” the extension said, “but it took a name to itself. It walked and talked the day it was born, and it reigned in Rome for one year.”
“The use of the word ‘scrat’ points out loud to eighteenth-century Oxford,” Glasser informed them. “It was something of a century of jokers in that place then, and many of their spoofs were intruded into serious books.”
“Here's another one,” Gregory said. “It also is from an uncertified person, a Gargo Repsky (why do all these names sound so Biercean?), and it reads:
“ ‘Epikt, if you have ever heard of me, you have heard of me as the Mad Professor. But to the point of information. In certain fourteenth-century paintings there is an intermediate layer that is unaccountable; it is a sort of reverse burlesque of the painting itself. But the fundamental layer of the painting and the surface layer are valid and rational, and they are identical. This tricky intermediate layer can only be picked up by middle infrared light of about one hundred and thirty thousand angstroms, the so-called fools' frequency. It really seems as if the old paint of the picture had been split and another picture accomplished between. These ghost or joker pictures are very salty burlesques, but they can be seen but once. After being brought out by the fools'-frequency light, they fade away forever, and the painting becomes a single-layer thing. Fortunately I have been able to get good photographs of a number of these out-of-place paintings.
“ ‘And in certain statuary of the same fourteenth century, there may be seen smaller contrary forms within the solid true forms. The marble sometimes becomes transparent to reveal these inner carvings or moldings. The objects move, they writhe, they seem alive, and they are horribly funny (I choose my words carefully here). Then the marble will opaque itself again and the writhing inner images will vanish.
“ ‘I have dated these inner images. They were not carved or cut. They were molded by hand in a somehow softened marble. They were molded by the hands of lepers, and the flaked-off flesh of the molders allows me to get a carbon date on them. All were done in the year 1313, the lustrum year, not the calendar year.’ ”
“Epikt has guys write to him who are nearly as far off as some of the guys who write to me,” Valery said.
There had been for some time now a heavy thumping on the roof of the Institute Building and in the roads outside. It was a rainfall of flaming ducks. They were dangerous: the roof of the Institute building wasn't in very good shape anyhow.
“Here's another one,” Director Gregory Smirnov was saying. “It's to Epikt and it's from a certain Father Gassalasca Jape. It goes:
“ ‘Epikt, do you know that in the year 1313 there was a complete turnaround in the empire city of the world, Roma in Italia? This turnaround was for one year. Even the name of the city was turned around and was spelled Amor, or love, for that year. It was a fishy kind of love, though, and with a Babylonian sort of fishiness. The falsified view of the city was true for that one year, and it was the Whore of Babylon who sat on the seven hills. This was the mystery woman whose roots go down to Hell, and part of the mystery about her was that she was not really a woman. But she did rule in Roma; she did set up a court of love, of false love, in that city that was the city of the world. Epikt, I wonder if you could bring your great mechanical and animal and ghostly talents to bear on this, to draw back the veil from the mystery? The effect of it still lingers in the world as a miasma. It must be dispelled.’ ”
“We do get some odd correspondence,” said the Epikt extension that was got up as the Ancient Scribe. “Are you running them through our main brain, Gregory?” This Epikt extension had just drawn the Whore of Babylon card and was studying it with some won
der. No, she was not quite a woman, not as she on the Queen of Cups card was, not as she on La Grande Mère card was.
“Oh yes, we're running them through your main brain, Epikt,” Director Gregory said.
(For those who came in late, Epikt, or Epiktistes, was a Ktistec machine, the most marvelous one in the world, the only one in the world so far. The Institute for Impure Science was mainly built around the stupendous mechanical brain of Epikt, the many thousands of cubic meters of it. For convenience's sake, Epikt usually maintained a few mobile extensions of himself, being sessile in the main part of his apparatus. These mobiles might be in any form from the clownish human to the hangdog canine.
They could talk and get about; they could carry on their functions; they were droll, and sometimes they seemed a little stupid. Well, which of us does not?)
“There is a warning that should be given here,” Director Gregory Smirnov was saying. “We must recognize that this year which we are going to study is a recompensing year, a left-handed year (a sinister year in the real sense of the word), a contorted year. It is my own belief that one cannot enter a contorted year, even vicariously and experimentally, without himself becoming contorted.”
“With us, who can tell?” Valery asked. That was true. They all had that look about them as if their faces and bodies had, just for a moment, melted like wax and then set again. They of the Institute had always had a little or a lot of that look; this day they had it a lot.
“I win!” Valery cried triumphantly, and she played the Wheel of Fortune card resoundingly. The wheel on the picture card was actually turning, and this was more than optical illusion. When it came to rest, the pointer of the fortune wheel pointed to the name Valery (nobody had noticed before that the names of all of them were printed fine on that card), so Valery had won.
“I will have to discover the old rules and find out how this game was really played,” Aloysius Shiplap said with a touch of sourness. “The game seems to make up its own rules as it goes along.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 176
