“After the two giant bone-spurs are removed, the pain of the unusual arthritis will often disappear. There is no way that the length of hand and finger bones can be reduced, but the hands can regain a slight bit of their agility. They can never be fully human hands after such a deformity, but they can be used a little bit.
“When the two pinion-spurs have come to their full length, and just before they must be removed, it is possible for the victims, by the use of a few slight strut-like and wing-like attachments, to fly.”
“We might expect even a sudden mutation, if so far-reaching as this (a flightless species acquiring flight) to take from three million to twelve million years. Now that we are actually observing it, we find that the period is much shorter than that. The whole cycle is about sixty days in the individual; possibly it will be sixty years in the species (this to include second-stage and third-stage development also). It has come too swiftly for the individual or group personality to adjust to it fully as yet. There are cases of unhappiness and death. And the physical retreat from its implications (the retreat should disappear in the second or third stage of the mutation) is incomplete and unpleasant and very often fatal. “Why do the ‘lightest and brightest’ of these mutated flyers accept the cropping of their wings and their frequent deaths? They accept it because it is necessary for the mutation. The complete flyers will not descend physically from these ‘brightest’. These will not have any descent. And yet the mutation could not be completed without their trailblazing and destruction. There is a biological imperative here, but its mechanism is still not clear.
“Ah, it is a great privilege to live in the time of an actual, major, rapid mutation.” So wrote Dr. Rudolph Redstern in Tomorrow's Flight.
“With cloud-grown mosses for my bed,
And wax-bug candles at my head.”
That was part of the instructions that Angela Firmholder wrote for her parents, in case of her death. And she added an explanation in prose:
“The cloud-moss may be had in thirty kilo bales (one bale of it will make up into a nice death-bed) at Cloudy Joe's Drug Store, for fifty dollars a kilo. It is the real moss that grows on the shady side of clouds, and it is the softest moss there is.
“The wax candles are made from the waxen insects that we catch and eat in flight. Some of the more enterprising people catch them against their own deaths, and to sell. I have been a lazy flyer and I did not provide for myself, so you must buy them. I want three of these wax candles, from fat-bugs, from wax-bugs, and from rush-bugs. They are for sale at Cloudy Joe's Drug Store for six hundred dollars a candle. I know that you will not begrudge me these for my last rites.
“I expect to die from the clipping. I don't much want to live on as a ‘stubby’ or a ‘nubby’, but I will if that is ordained for me. The clipping is the case and the law now. Soon there will be other cases and other laws. The big thing is almost here, and the destruction of a few of us early flyers prepares the way for it. In half a century all the people will fly, without device and without shame, and without pain or tortuous effort.
“Rod Murdock, who is my first sky-companion, will clip my pinion bones with the ritual bolt cutters. Then all the members of my flight will lay me over and remove these newest of bones, the pinions. And then a new member will take my place in the ‘flight’. Then I will be brought here, for the death of a flyer, or for the life of a ‘nubby’. But I will not be ashamed in any case.
“People will not need hands when they are grown to full flight and to full flight custom. We will not need anything manufactured, not even wind-harps. When the days of fullness arrive, our distal feathers will sound like wind-harps.”
“What I think,” said Ace Whizz-Bang, “is that before the end of this century there will be two kinds of people. The ‘lightest and the brightest’ will have become bird-people complete. I say, let them go. Let them become birds. To me, there was always something a little bit too-much about those lightest and brightest anyhow. “And the other kind of people will be ourselves, the old people. We will be somewhat improved by getting rid of the flighty element in ourselves, and we will be ready to tackle another million years of it. Say, 'Mealy, there's six of those flying kids coming down over your house right now, and it looks like they're carrying your daughter between them. Was this the day she was supposed to be cropped?”
“This was the day, Whizz-Bang. Oh, my poor skinny Angela!” Firmholder cried, and he hurried the half block to his home.
“Potter Famealyous Firmholder,” said loving wife Peggy. “They're bringing her in now. Is she not beautiful?”
“Beautiful,” breathed Potter. “Oh, the poor creature!”
The young ‘flight’ people brought Angela down and laid her on the cloud-moss bed. She was white with fright and pain, and red with blood. But she smiled.
Somebody brought a display of pinnacle roses from Cloudy Joe's Drug Store. Somebody lit the wax-bug candles.
“Oh, my poor skinny angel,” Peggy Firmholder mourned her daughter.
There was a musical tone of distal feathers ruffling in the wind of a long swoop downwards. They sounded ever so much like wind-harps.
“Oh, how cult!” cried Peggy.
Bright Flightways
The “Snow Geese,” the Canadians, had been going through for ten days, and indeed it had been pretty cold there in Detroit. The Flightway Commerce was thriving. The fleece stores and the bolster stores were selling out everything they had, against the early chill. The autumn carnivals were swinging and the markets were full of persimmons and pawpaws and even pumpkins. The cranberry merchants were busy, as were all the provisioners. The bookies were betting on the applejack freeze for that very night. Ramsworth Armstrong, the amorous and cheerful iron-hammerer, was courting Angela Frostchaser. There was always a lot of courtship on both the autumn and spring flightways and during the ready-days for such migrations. The iron-hammerers' guild to which Ramsworth belonged was one of the most forthcoming ever: There were more than ten thousand iron-hammerers in the wagon factories and automobile plants of Detroit alone. A man could easily marry from such a trade as hammering. Angela Frostchaser was a sheep-stomach chemist, and that was an honored trade also. Starting with the simple pepsin of the ordinary sheep's stomach, these marvelous chemists made enzymes for the preparation and emulsifying of meat and bread and, well, everything.
Rufus Carrottop, a butcher and meat-reducer, was courting Agnes Solidstate, a corncake-fermenter. The courtings consisted mostly of dancing together at the ready fairs and drinking applejack together, and making lively music together and drinking applejack on the flightway migrations themselves. The Carrottops had a blot on their escutcheon and they had had to change their family name several generations back; but Rufus of the current Carrottop generation was personally blotless.
Argus Brownscum, an herbalist, was courting Hesper Grotowski, a heat-exchange technician. There were those who said that the young people indulged in courtship mostly to keep warm, but the two courtship periods of the year (eight weeks each) contained many warm and mild days.
The Armstrongs, the Frostchasers, the Carrottops, the Solidstates, the Brownscums, and the Grotowskis were six nuclear families of about one hundred persons each who traveled together on the flightways. Such groups of families would travel together twice a year for twenty years or so. Then there would be a jubilee year, a breaking up of the group and a recombining of other combinations of families.
The dance-halls and sing-halls of the going-south ready-fairs were built tight and warm. Horse manure was always deep and active beneath the duck-boards of their floors and this contributed a great amount of heat. The people themselves, crowded in tightly, added to the heat, and the applejack gave a sense of coziness and warmth. The vehicles were now loaded for the trip south, the joy wagons and the cargo carts. Even the backpacks were all ready, and at midnight the people shouldered them and poured out of a hundred dance-halls and sing-halls to a great central area where Rabbi Kaltbrot (this was a thi
rd year; and the third, sixth, and ninth years were Jew Years) would give the judgment on the applejack and the blessing on the journey. He was a short man, but he spoke forcefully.
“Bless the circuit of the seasons and our own road-journey through them. Bless all pigs and sheep and calves, and the magic of their own stomachs that make them edible. Bless the corn and the sweet corn, and the oats of the field. Bless the soy beans. Bless all the enzyme-producing plants, and especially the spicebush and the cranberry. Deliver us from the hell-fire peoples and powers who threaten to burn up the world; and, as to these thirteen of them hanging here, forgive them, in some other world, but not in this one.”
There were thirteen dead men hanging by ropes from thirteen trees. These men had been hanged by their necks until they were dead because it was charged that they belonged to the “Firebrands,” which was either a subversive religion or a subversive political party.
“Bless all windmills and watermills,” Rabbi Kaltbrot was continuing. “Bless the sun-cells and the water-cells and the wind-cells. Bless the iron-hammerers and the meat-reducers and the herbalists. Bless the wagon factories and the automobile plants. Bless all corn fields and cucumber plantations and cider works. Bless the pine wood that gives us wood for our houses and crates for our berries, and the box elder wood that gives us spokes for our wheels and frames for our carriages. Bless all fiddles and horns and drums; but the meaner instruments, do you not bless them! Bless the fur-beasts that give us fur and the sheep that give us wool and fleece. Bless the flax and the cotton that clothes us. Bless the birds that show us the direction on the flightway, and the sun that waits for us wherever we go. Bless the—just a minute, people, we had better check first, sometimes it's tricky—” Rabbi Kaltbrot went to a large and shallow basin or bowl full of diluted applejack that had been twinkling and moving itself in the midnight air. Even the most diluted applejack did not freeze when water froze, but it always froze a night or two later, when it was about twenty-nine degrees. And it had begun to freeze now, with a thin ice on it that tinkled when the Rabbi stirred it with his finger. And he continued.
“Bless this holy applejack that tells us the night of our travel. Bless the roads that wait for our feet and our wheels, and bless the warm land of the south. Bless all courting people in this courting season.”
Then, with a sound of fiddles and horns and drums, all the many clusters of nuclear families, under the Sheep Flag of the City of Detroit, started south, most of them walking briskly with their backpacks, certain outriders and guards on horses, the small children and the very old and infirm riding in the joy wagons and the cargo carts. The automobiles, of course, with their power cells and their painted wood frames, were not roadworthy enough for such a long trip.
Such few people as remained behind in the Detroit area, for the overseeing of the necessary functions of one sort or another, were all hearty people in their prime years; they would be double-fleeced and double-furred and they would stay out of the wind as much as possible. They would winter in the north only once in a lifetime. Once was plenty.
But the travelers from that area, they would spend six weeks on the flightway, on the road, going twenty miles a day, and would then arrive at the Panama City Florida area. Panama City was also known as Winter Detroit. People from thousands of places would, at the same time, be going south to thousands of other places. They would eat corn and beans out of the fields as they traveled, and also cornbread and bean-bread that had been enzymed and matured. They would eat driven beef slaughtered the same day, and also beef that stood at the way-stations, enzymed and aged. They played music as they walked, and many of the people shaped and whittled and manufactured things with their hands as they went along.
At night they camped in campgrounds, and gathered in the sociable darkness around traditional camp-stones or stages where they talked and courted, and sometimes they enacted night-show dramas. Whether they traveled or camped, they always had outriders or guards to protect against fire.
Some of the strong young people used to talk at night about the one thing that threatened them and the world forever. There was a very small number of the young people who indulged in contrary and dangerous and heated talk on this subject, but they did it so slyly that one could not tell whether they were really depraved and evil, or whether they were merely making forays into sick humor. Among this small number of young people who discussed so dangerously and heatedly were Leo Carrottop, the brother of Rufus, Jasper Frostchaser, who was a cousin of Angela, and Very Softstep, who was somehow related to the Brownscum family.
“There may possibly be a way to make iron stronger and more varied and able to take a sharper edge or point than any iron that the best iron-hammerers are now able to produce,” Leo Carrottop said. “That would mean sharper blades for spoke-shaves and draw-knives and axes and saws.”
“That's angry talk you are talking,” Ramsworth Armstrong the iron-hammerer said. “And it's dishonest talk. It hints of things, and then it runs and hides when it is challenged.”
“I know it,” said Leo, “and such hinting may, for the present, seem dishonest. But there might come a time when a thing is able to do more than hint.”
“Has it ever really happened?” Ramsworth challenged. “Was there ever a case where iron was made by a way other than cold-hammering and it turned out to be stronger and more varied and able to take a sharper edge than hammered iron?”
“No, there have never been any such results,” Leo admitted. “Something has always gone wrong. People always seem to get killed, from heat or from some sort of concussion, when trying these things. But there is a sort of theory that such things may come about.”
“There may possibly be a way to make meat and bread and many other things more tasty and more ready than by fermentation or the enzyme-preparation method or by the no-method-at-all that we sometimes use,” Jasper Frostchaser said, but he didn't meet any eyes when he said it.
“There may possibly be a green moon on the other side of tomorrow, but I'll bet there isn't,” Rufus Carrottop countered him. “And I will bet there is not a better method of preparing food, either. Not a magic or trick method, anyhow. We constantly improve the old methods a little. But do you, Jasper, know of any mysterious method ever being used, and do you know of real results coming from it?”
“I have heard fairly strong rumors of new methods being attempted, Rufus,” Jasper said. “No, there haven't been any claims to successful results. The meat is always completely destroyed before they can find a way to get it out of the thing. So is the bread and the other foods. But because a thing doesn't work the first few times is no reason to believe that it will never work.”
“There may possibly be a way to keep warm in the winter without dressing in double and triple fleece and furs, and without coming south,” Very Softstep said, but she was in a nervous flutter at herself for saying it. “People might not have to travel so far twice a year just to keep ahead of the seasons and keep warm and stay alive and be always fed.”
“But people love the travel,” Argus Brownscum argued. “Something will have gone out of them if they ever give it up. Can you, Very, think of any worse punishment than not being allowed to travel on the bright flightways in the autumn and the springtime?”
“No, I guess I can't,” Very said uncertainly. “But people could still travel on the flightways whenever they wanted to. It would just be that they wouldn't have to. Their lives would no longer depend on their traveling with the seasons.”
“And how many people would travel the flightways then?” Argus asked. “People are so constructed that they must be compelled to indulge in some of the greatest pleasures of life.”
“I will tell you all a number of things,” Leo Carrottop said one evening a few weeks later. This was in the middle of the warm southland winter. All the courting couples had been married on mid-winter eve and were now settled. They drank orange-bang in the evenings instead of applejack; and their music, though using the same inst
ruments and the same voices, had a more languid and a more southern tone. “I say that there might be a way, or a complex of closely related ways, for doing dozens of things better, for doing half the things in the world better. Yes, I know the account that my great-grandfather was hanged for hinting almost these same hints. I know the story that our original family name was Firetop rather than Carrottop, though our hair is still the same orange color as it was then. Listen, with one thing added to the techniques of the world, the automobiles made in our mother city Detroit could be powered by something stronger than those little storage cells. They really would be roadworthy, even to traveling from one end of a flightway to another. Listen, we could have better tools to make other better tools. We could have better minds.”
“Better minds? How? There's no way.”
“Oh, absolutely there is. We could make a great mental leap now. The new technique, if it is attempted, and even if it fails again and again, can open the mind itself to a new sense of curiosity and achievement. We have never yet entered the real houses of our own minds; we have been shuffling our feet in the anterooms, only. It may be that if we come to eat more fulfilled food, if we come to manufacture and live with more fulfilled equipment, if we arrange to control our surroundings, then our own persons and minds will be more fulfilled by it all. Then there will be room for more intelligence, for more thought, for more life, aye, for more people in the world.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 241
