But, in addition, each lover had its masked lover or Hermes. This additional masked lover placed each lover in three love planes instead of one. This worked to construct the love pyramid, or love in depth. It was a nesting, close-fitting form, and it multiplied endlessly. It was the most simple crystal possible, and it propagated itself forever. It filled, or would fill, or might fill all the worlds and all the universes. (“And, for your love of love, lead apes in hell,” so Will the Bard said, or almost said.) (“I love the jupe, I love the jape, I love the Tartarusian ape,” so Joan of Amor said.)
This was the inward-turning construct that had no limits, and it had very few needs beyond itself. There was food in the Fleshpots of Egypt district of the town; there was other food in the Rivers of Babylon district; and there was very strong food in the Ovens of Moloch purlieu.
There were all the turn-on and plug-in devices in the Ships of Tarshish neighborhood. There were all attractive falsities in that barrio named the Groves of Arcady. There was music, and when the music failed, there was noise that failed not forever. Municipal arrangements were excellent. Law had been dissolved in love. (“Love, and let the law go hang,” as Austen said, or very nearly said.) The garbage collectors had been dismissed as being unneeded (if you love it, it isn't garbage). The police had been disbanded. The firemen had been dismissed (if it burns, it is love, and should not be quenched). There were no magistrates; there were no officials at all; there was no thought for the morrow. There was the year that could not end, for it was self-contained and inward-turned. There was love and love alone, and it went on and on and on.
(“It's the longest year I ever did see!” Valery Mok, observing from another place and time, swore. “There has to be an end to it.” Valery drew the Shining Man card. She was not doing badly, but she was disgusted.)
The thing wrong with perfection is not that it repeats itself, but that it stands still in its first instance and freezes time. The thing wrong with love is that the false will so often supersede the true. The thing wrong with that town was that it was introverted and backwards: there are those who will live in it forever, but there are also those who will break out of it. The thing wrong with that year was that it began to come apart before the first week of June.
(“What, what, why are they climbing over the walls to get out of that town?” Charles Cogsworth asked in amazement. “Malcontents,” Director Gregory Smirnov said. “There are always some. Continue with it, Epikt.” “Might I not go on automatic?” Epikt asked from the great department of him that was under their feet. “And I could leave a couple of my extensions to monitor the thing.” Not those two extensions, though: the Johnny Greeneyes extension was quickly over the hill and far away. The Ancient Scribe extension became so inconspicuous that he was invisible.)
3
That was the year that lost its luck.
That was the year of the flaming duck.
And then there was a sort of explanation that Epikt dredged up from the depths of his data banks: “Satan, in his person of Lucifer, was the first of the Flaming Ducks, and he is the father of them to this day.”
The author of that is unknown except to Epikt. But the flaming ducks continued to rain down on the Institute Building and on the ridge above and beyond. You got tired of those ducks, but these were poverty days with the Institute and its members. The members were eating a hard-times lunch of bloody giant bread and flamed duck.
“I hear there will be a new giant moving into the neighborhood,” Gregory said.
“Oh, that's good,” Valery beamed. “It made me feel pretty uneasy to be all out of giants.”
“I just don't know what causes a lustrum year,” Glasser said crankily.
“I believe they happen because people are ordinarily so good that provision must be made in some place apart for even the shadow of evil that is in them,” Valery said happily. “So that toy evil must be vented in a toy year. That's all there is to it.”
“I wonder when there will be another lustrum year?” Aloysius Shiplap asked, somewhat worried.
“Not right away, I don't believe,” Director Gregory Smirnov assured them all. “None of the signs of it are present. And the people, while very good in these last few decades, are not quite good enough that it spills over, not so overpoweringly good as to require being counteracted by a toy evil in another time and place.
“Aw, feather dusters!” Gregory swore suddenly. “I'm getting mighty tired of eating flaming duck. And it doesn't help as much as it did to call it quail or swan.”
“We must all be careful not to be too good, lest we precipitate the thing,” Valery warned. “If only we could have salt with the damned duck! But the doctors all say that we should forego salt in favor of sulfur. Here, Greg, I'll make you a good hard-times sandwich, break-bone bread, holy cow, flamed—ah—grackle, blood pudding, offal—no, really, they say it's good for you—yellow sulfur, and that good new Moloch mustard. Here, eat it hot, Greg, eat it hot.”
“Oh, all right,” Director Gregory Smirnov said glumly.
The stranded riverboat was hooting mournfully over on Fourteenth Street. It would have to wait many hours yet before being able to float on the morning dew. And the dew was never near as drenching as it should have been. In one week, the steamboat had been able to move only two and one-half blocks on the morning dews: no more than eighty yards a day. There were many people dancing the chorea in the streets. One of them was dressed as St. Vitus, and several of them were holy. And always there was the towering noise behind it all, a noise that had once been music.
There were a few discouraged-looking holy cows, inquiring of people (somehow or other) the way to the Cow Palace. There was a person who said that he was the son of the Pied Piper. He was piping the children into following him, and they were being drowned in the reservoir.
There was a newly appeared, sad-looking person in motley or clown suit. He had mean-looking mustaches; he had a little spike beard; he had red-rimmed eyes. He was unkempt. He looked like the Devil.
The children of the large birthing of the week before (they who had walked and talked on the day of their birth) had now taken over most of the city offices. And there was one of them in particular—ah, well, never mind, there is one like that in every large birthing.
There had been further huge, bloody globs falling from the low sky. It was believed, however, that they were the last remnants of some old giant, that they were not from the new giant who had not indeed arrived yet.
“Scrat!” cried Valery as she played the Strange Lover card.
And still there were the flaming ducks, all of them capons, stenchy and outrageous, thudding, thudding, thudding to earth day and night. One does get tired of burnt duck.
Rivers Of Damascus
The caravan clowns came to the town about four times a year, usually in the service of a caravan, sometimes not. They came now to the town, the oldest town in the world, out of service and with no clear purpose. They were strictly on a bold-bashful skylark. There were a few less than a hundred of them. They were slight, smiling, shy desert Arabs. The guards of the city, though they usually treated the clowns with a lowering sort of theatrical harshness, really liked them—but especially they liked to devil them. The desert gamins, first leaving long and rickety constructs of some sort at a little distance on the sand, came into the city by the east gate, whence the street named Straight (the Latins called it Via Recta and the Arabs Souk-el-Taouil) runs west to the heart of the city. They came in one by one, sideways, as though it were a narrow way, though the gate was high, wide, and completely open. This was in the month of March of the Year of Restored Salvation 635.
“Thieves, coney-eaters, camel-suckers, trench-straddlers, good-for-nothings—what do you want in our town?” several of the tall town guards demanded, and they clapped the slight desert youths roughly on the shoulders. The shortest of the guards was a head and a hand taller than the tallest of the Arabs.
“Bread, we want bread,” one of the Arab
s, less bashful than the others, announced. The desert Arabs did not have bread of their own. They ate camel cheese and small animals that they killed in the sand and rocks. They ate wild figs or cultivated apricots and pomegranates and almonds when they could steal them. But bread they ate only when kind persons gave it to them. And now several of the kind (though thunderously threatening) guards bought hot bread from the bread booths and gave it to the Arabs. They ate it rapidly, almost furtively, but with real pleasure. All of them except one.
“I will not eat your bread,” said Khalid ibn-al-Walid. “It isn't right that I should eat your bread and then come back and cut the throats of all of you who do not kneel and beg for mercy.”
“Ah, squalid Khalid Walid, will you cut our throats?” one of the big town guards asked.
“Aye,” Khalid said nervously and looked around to be sure that his own jinni or angel did not hear him say such a thing. “I must cut the throats of all of you who will not submit. I will not like it any more than you will, but it is one of the things I must do.”
“With that little sword you will cut our throats?” the guard asked. “Let me see that wonderful little throat-cutter you have there.”
Khalid handed his sword up to the high hand of the tall guard. The guard snapped it in two with his fingers and gave the pieces back to the slight Arab. Khalid's face broke and he began to cry.
The other Arabs ate the wonderful bread that was given to them. They ate apricots and roasted meat. They talked with the town people and the town guards, for the chattering Arabs (after they had passed the moments of their shyness) were always full of news. The Arabs were called desert scrolls. They drank the bright wine that the people gave them. All the Arabs did these things except Khalid, who refused to eat or drink, though he had always loved the wine of this place. Then it was time for the Arabs to go, and they knotted about the east gate. Khalid still snuffled over the loss of his sword.
Several of the guards held quiet conference. Then one of the guards, the one who had broken the sword in his fingers, went and brought back a real Damascus sword out of his generosity: for this was in Damascus, the oldest town in the world, and the Arabs called it Dimisk es-Sham. The man gave the wonderful sword to Khalid (it was not ornate, but it was of good steel and manufacturing) and that Arab brightened up like the sun coming out from behind the mountain clouds of the Anti-Lebanon. Then all the Arabs went out by the east gate.
“That can not really be Khalid ibn-al-Walid the Great?” was the unbelieving protest of John Dragon who was dean of soft sciences at Southwestern Polytech. “It just isn't possible.” “It does strain credulity,” Joseph Waterwitch told him, “but that's the way it comes through and that's the way it's projected. I must suppose it's all valid. It couldn't be otherwise.”
John Dragon, Joseph Waterwitch, Cris Benedetti, and Abel Landgood were on expedition to observe certain events by para-archeological probe.
The Arabs shuffled along outside, beneath the basket wall. Khalid was grinning into his scanty beard. He usually pulled this little sword act and trick several times a year and he now had quite a collection of good Damascus swords. The Arab party, a little fewer than a hundred young men, shuffled carelessly back toward their desert. For about a furlong.
Then they gave a great whoop. A dozen small horses seemed to spring out of the sand and were quickly mounted by the dozen or so of the Arabs so fortunate as to own riding animals. These dozen had also drawn bows from somewhere. And the others had swords suddenly. None of them except Khalid had had a sword earlier. Some of them picked up two rough ladders they had left on the sand before their first entrance to the city. They ran with these ladders toward the basket wall of Damascus.
“See if you can get better detail on the swords,” John Dragon asked Joe Waterwitch. “Hitti, who is never wrong, has written that the Arabs carried long, straight swords in scabbards flung over the right shoulder. And Belloc, who is also never wrong, has written that they carried short scimitars on their thighs.” Joe Waterwitch emphasized the swords, and the observers all watched as the steel showed a little more clearly.
“There is every sort of sword and knife,” Waterwitch said then, and they all saw that it was so, “and they are carried every which way. There is no standardizing them and there is no seeing them any more clearly than this.”
The Arabs placed their two ladders against the basket wall (this section of the wall was so called because it was there that St. Paul had been let down out of the city in a basket). The ladders reached only about a third of the way to the top of the wall. Nevertheless, the Arabs crowded the ladders from top to bottom, resolutely climbing up and up, and those on the top waved their arms as if to try to fly upward. “What are you trying to do, little sandmice?” the guards asked from the top of the walls. “You'll hurt yourselves. Those little ladders are about to break.”
“We are going to scale the walls,” Khalid the leader of the Arab sandmice called up boldly. “We are going to storm the town and slaughter the inhabitants and establish ourselves in this stronghold. And from here, we will conquer the whole world.”
“If you want to come in by the gates, they are always open,” the guards called down. “We think you are the same bunch that was in just a little while ago. Then you went out again. Those little ladders will not reach. Shall we put down longer ladders for you? Shall we let down ropes? Are you under some vow to scale walls?”
“Yes, we are under vow to scale walls or to batter them down,” Khalid cried. “We will not come in by the gate until we have received your total surrender. Defend yourselves! It is not to our glory if we conquer only cowards who fear to fight.”
Khalid and some of the others began to shoot arrows up at the guards. They hadn't true arrows, only crooked and badly fletched shafts. They hadn't strong bows, the arrows did not even shoot to the top of the walls in their flight. The only damage done by the arrows was to one of the Arabs. This man had shot his bolt straight up into the air. He stood and gazed at his arrow as it spent itself, then tumbled over and fell back toward him. The arrow pierced his eye. Some of the guards gasped with shock, but several of them laughed.
“If you laugh at him, if you laugh at us, then you laugh at God,” Khalid called up angrily.
“We do not mean to laugh at God,” others of the guards spoke down. “We are honestly grieved that the man injured himself.”
Both of the ladders broke with weak cracking noises and tumbled the Arabs onto the sand and rocks below. One man was killed and several were lamed. The Arabs shuffled off toward the desert, and those few who had horses turned them toward the barren and sunburnt hills.
“We do not retreat,” Khalid called from the back of his own horse. “It only seems that we retreat. We have breached your walls, and several of us, including myself, have entered. This night I will sit on the highest seat in your council room and will hold command of the city.”
“You may come to the council room if you want to,” one of the guards called, “and you may talk to the commandant of the city. He may be able to understand what it is you want. He is a man of great understanding. But you may not sit on the highest seat.”
“Yes, I will sit on the highest seat tonight,” Khalid insisted. “I am already inside the town and the room, though you know it not. I will command. I will order. I will rule. And I will slaughter. And after I have slaughtered sufficiently I also will become a man of great understanding.”
Khalid followed his men back into the hilly desert. They left a plume of dust behind them and when the plume dispersed, they were gone. There had been somewhat less than a hundred of these slight Arabs. And there were something more than ten thousand of the burly empire soldiers and guards garrisoned in the city.
“That cannot be the Moslem conquest of Damascus of the year 635,” John Dragon, the dean of soft sciences, was protesting in near panic. “Yes, that was it,” Joe Waterwitch insisted sadly. “We have tuned it in pretty clearly—we have watched it to its end. That is
what happened and that is all that happened.”
“There was supposed to be a six-month siege,” Abel Landgood commented. “And when that six months was over, Damascus was under Moslem control.”
“We will look for the siege, but we will not find it,” Waterwitch said. “There wasn't any siege of that sort. What we have just seen is all that happened. And as for Damascus turning from Christian to Moslem; well, I don't understand it either. A plum will be green and then it will be red (if it's a Damask plum it will be). There are no reasons at all for many of the changes in history. Let's leave it at that. I do not know why history, feeling guilty perhaps, is sometimes impelled to supply false reasons. Better no reasons than false, and there are no reasons for the results from Damascus.”
“I believe that there is one more event, Joseph,” Cris Benedetti said softly. “Our focus seemed to be on three hours before sunset. Let's allow two more hours for ablutions and the supper meal. So, let's see what we can pick up in the council room five hours after our last focus.”
Cris Benedetti was the revered professor of humanities and histories and literatures and esoterica at Southwestern Polytech. He possibly had more prestige even than John Dragon had. He certainly had more than Joe Waterwitch; Joe had a peculiar lack of prestige. But Joe believed in himself and his methods and he didn't like to be told that he might have missed something. He looked at Benedetti for a long minute.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 178
