“You are saying that some of the huge stones were a sort of poured concrete and not stones at all?” Ranwick asked.
“Nigel Graystone was writing that and much more, Ranwick. He was writing that a significant part of the world as we know it was so poured artificially. His ‘Rock-Gardens of the Mesozoic’ were our world, very much of it being a late and artificial construction.”
“That's about enough of that idea for one session, Cliveden,” Ranwick said. “Whether I accept any of it or not, it needs more thinking over.”
“Your own interests come into it, Ranwick. If a large part of the world is artificial, water-springs are surely among the most artificial parts of it.”
“Yes. Artificial yes. That's what has been haunting me.”
“Then loving a beautiful spring, as you do, would be a little bit like loving a beautiful woman, who turns out to be a robot.”
“Yes,” Ranwick Sorgente said. “It is the same thing. A spring and its pegeid are the same thing. This is enough of it for a while.”
Were the springs and their pegeids really artificial, as certain evidence would seem to indicate? Was Crescentia really a robot? There was something robotic about her mysterious threat at least. Ranwick read other things that were in the lodge, and he thought other thoughts. He had had hints before of the artificiality of a large part of the natural world, and now those hints were substantiating themselves. Well, he could accept it a little, that much of the world had been reinforced and patterned to preserve it from its own rampant naturalness. But the water? How would water be restructured, how would it be unspoiled? Whatever thing was this chaotic water in the beginning, and how had its chaos been throttled? He was concerned a little bit about water: watersprings were the things that he had loved ten thousand times, and he had loved them (as he supposed) for the naturalness that he found in them. Cliveden Houseghost left off from his metallurgical work and his regents and microscope.
“It isn't a thing to take too deeply to heart,” he told Ranwick, “and besides, you must have suspected it for many years. Whoever had bitted and bridled the world is to be praised. The natural things are real nightmares whenever we get an accidental look at them. But I do want to find out what was really done, and when, and by whom. There is the quite recent iron and steel and chromed metals. There are the earlier bronzes. There are the still earlier iron-stones which are queer alloys of metals and stones that cannot be natural. There are still older tubes and channels of chalcedony and agate rock. There are the very hills skewered together with giant skewers. Well, goodnight, Ranwick Sorgente. Oh, my wife, as you may have noticed, is insane. But she is harmless. That is to say, in all minor matters she is harmless.”
Ranwick still sat up a while. So the world was an artificial rock-garden that was contrived, perhaps, to conceal a wilder garden behind it. So even the springs were—ah, no, let us not put that trammel on the springs tonight. Ranwick turned again to the notes of this Nigel Graystone who had died by drowning a year ago:
“Cure is a sewn-together world,” the notes read, “and the word for “sewn-together’ is ‘rhapsody.’ A rhapsody is a sewing-together of songs. The vivifying elements of our world structure is the Hymn of the Rocks. And the Hymn became Flesh and dwelt amongst us. This is the body that is our world. And is it an artificial body? Certainly.
“All bodies are artificial, of course; and all bodies are resurrected bodies. The time of the latest resurrection of our present world body was the middle Mesozoic. What we have are stones and mountains and continents and oceans, all sewn together with needles that are partly of metal and partly of rock. We do find steel and iron and bronze and iron-stone all through the artificial and intrusive concretions.
“We ask who did all this; we ask who was here before us, and who may be here yet. We say ‘Somebody's been sitting in my chair’ and we wonder who it was. Then we notice for the first time that ours is a giants' chair.”
Ranwick set the folder of notes with other folders on a table there. Then he opened the folder that Cliveden Houseghost had assigned to him, and he made a notation:
“A feral ferrite deposit of re-formed ore in an interiorly tabulate shape is almost universal with water-springs.” He closed the folder again. He would write no more in it that night. He put his head down on the table and cried. He had written the shameful and sordid secret connected with all the beloved springs.
After a while he went to bed.
After another while, a succubus in the form of a multiple-footed nightmare came to him. The succubus was a nightmare, yes, but it was also Crescentia Houseghost. No, Crescentia was not a night-crawler. She was still asleep in her bed somewhere there in the lodge. This was a dream sequence. It was the mountain full of water that is the unconscious, pouring up out of an unthroated and morasmal seep into an unshaped pool or sea. It was all chaotic water, and that was the trouble.
Crescentia was an unbridled nightmare of naturalness. She was horrifyingly chaotic; she did not have a countable number of legs, for instance, nor of eyes, nor of mouth or other things. So Ranwick bitted her and bridled her. That was all that was needed. It was, of course, a sorrowful thing to have to do. But, after it was done, she was in a rational form; she was a controlled nightmare.
Ranwick didn't like the chaotic and uncontrolled Crescentia. He didn't like the bitted and bridled Crescentia either. But somewhere, neither in this formlessness nor in this form, there was a Crescentia that he loved.
The next morning, after a structured and ordered breakfast with Cliveden, Ranwick Sorgente and Crescentia Houseghost were going up green-roc hills on the trail of wild water-springs. Crescentia, as always, was barefooted and boisterous under her yellow-flame hair. She soaked herself in the dew-bushes and in the clattering streams, and she soaked Ranwick with sopping embraces and smooches. “Drown in me, drown in me,” she said once. She was as spunky as stump-water, as they used to say in the country.
But Ranwick was thoughtful about a world held together by stone-and-steel skewers and poured-concrete belaying-pins. He studied the strata of the rock outcroppings and he could see that, to a very great degree, they were artificial rock-garden stuff. He had this carry-over feeling that the opposite of artificial was chaotic rather than natural, and that the non-artificial could only be apprised by a chaotic mind.
“You hurt my mouth when you bitted me last night,” Crescentia said with an impish and wet grin. “I would have carried you wherever you wanted to go. You didn't need to put a bit in my mouth to ride me.”
“You crooked-grinning, hard-mouthed jade, no one could hurt you anyway,” Ranwick said.
“Oh I know. I am only bantering you. That wasn't even me in that dream. I was only watching it. Ride me with rowel-spurs if you want to. It will bleed me, but it won't hurt me.”
“But I do want to see into your mouth, Crescentia,” Ranwick said suddenly. “Whether it is bitted or not, whether it is hurt or not, I want to see.”
“All right. Put your whole head in my mouth if you want to. I will be the animal and you be the animal-trainer.” She knelt down before him there; and even with her kneeling, her head was just at the level with his when she opened her mouth wide.
There wasn't anything in Crescentia's mouth but teeth that were too big and too perfect and a tongue that was too long. But there was something in her throat that shouldn't have been there, and her throat was really what Ranwick had wanted to see. It was a small control there. It was apparently electronic. It had wires. It ticked. It had Crescentia under its control. Well, was Crescentia robotic, to some extent at least? And was the opposite of robotic human, or was it chaotic? Ranwick loved Crescentia for her creatureness, but whose creature was a robot?
They came to a new spring at mid-morning. This spring was robust enough, it was strong enough, but it was also serene. There was a healing corona about it, a reminiscent and reassuring mistiness. Even the boisterous Crescentia was subdued.
“It is very deep,” she said. “Do you wan
t to go very deep down in the pool with me and stay there a very long time?”
“No, I will wait for the spring to declare herself, Crescentia.”
“I could take you down with me whether you wanted to go or not.”
“But you won't, Crescentia.”
“I will go get the children then,” she said. “Maybe the spring will want them.”
“Have you children, Crescentia?” he asked, but he was paying attention to the spring and not to her.
“I don't know whose they will be,” she said. “I will get some children somewhere and give them to the spring.” She went away, up over the hill in an unexpected direction.
Ranwick waited in pleasant anticipation. He had never ceased to love any spring or pegeid that he had ever loved, and certainly he still loved Crescentia. But a new love does take precedence.
“Where are you, pegeid?” he asked. There was a stirring deep in the water to show that she heard. So he talked to her.
“You are reassuring, pegeid,” he said, “and it won't matter if you do have a contrived throat. Of course things have to be kept in repair. There is strategic mountain repair within the last five thousand years. There is strategic water repair within the last five days. I remember what a street preacher said once about water that had got out of repair. Do you want to hear it?”
The stirring in the deep water of the spring's pool indicated that of course the pegeid wanted to hear anything that Ranwick might tell her. “The preacher said that the Biblical Flood was a returning of water to its chaotic state. The man said that during the flood there was not more water than always (which would be impossible, for where would it come from?), but it was a case of the ordered water breaking its bonds when the fountains of the deep burst forth and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. There was a horrible unstructuring of the water then. Should such an unstructuring happen again today, then such a flood would also happen again today. That's what the street preacher said. Do you agree?”
There was a deep stirring in the pool. It was the pegeid saying that she partly agreed.
“Yesterday I found two new springs,” Ranwick said. “They were ‘Mad Giantess Spring’ and ‘Usurpation Spring’. The pegeid at Usurpation Spring would not come up for fear of the mad giantess, but I love her as well as if I had known her. Are you also afraid of the mad giantess?”
The deep stirring in the pool indicated that the pegeid was somewhat cautious of the mad giantess, and that she would hide down there a while yet.
Cliveden Houseghost, the husband of the mad giantess, came up the slope to Ranwick.
“You wrote a note last night that most of the springs have iron pipes in their throats,” Cliveden said, “so, of course, such springs are artificial. The normal way would be for the water to come out of the ground in seeps that produce dangerous quagmires. So there is cementing and channeling of the springs to give an ordered and restricted flow. And contrived throats are provided, of iron, of bronze, of glazed stone. It shouldn't be a shock that most of the beauty of a spring is artificially produced; by whom, I don't know.”
“What is in Crescentia's own throat?” Ranwick asked.
“It's a psycho-monitor, a sort of electronic conscience. Crescentia has no other sort of conscience. It is put in her throat because her emotions curiously center there.”
“You said last night that you supposed that loving a beautiful spring that had been tampered with was like loving a beautiful woman who turned out to be a robot. Is she?”
“Not literally. But her personality and her derangement do make her into a sort of robot. Where is she? I thought she was with you.”
“She said something about going to get some children, and she went.”
“Oh, that's trouble,” Cliveden said. “She is supposed to leave children completely alone. There's a court order to that effect. I will have to find her at once.”
“Here she is,” Ranwick said. Crescentia came to them from over the hill. She seemed somewhat disturbed, somewhat angry.
“They watch them too closely,” she said. “I couldn't get hold of any children at all. They made a rotten big fuss about me going into that little town to try to get some children. I think there's going to be some trouble.”
“I know that there is,” Cliveden Houseghost said. “Let us go back to the lodge, great child yourself, and deal as well as we can with them when they come.”
“All right,” Crescentia said. She caressed Ranwick juicily. “I might not see you again,” she said. She went towards the distant lodge with Cliveden.
“Will you come up now?” Ranwick asked the pegeid.
The deep water stirred to say ‘Not yet. We are not through with visitors yet.’ “Is there really anything to this business of the whole world being a contrived sort of rock-garden?” Ranwick asked the spring-spirit.
There was a double stirring in the deep water. These said ‘Yes, there is quite a bit to that business’; and they said ‘It's the thing about the world and about us that you've been loving all the time: don't stop loving it now.’
Ranwick went and put his two arms deep into the gushing throat of the spring. He worked around there a while. He brought out a short and corroded length of four inch iron pipe that was grown over with moss and verdigris.
“It isn't old, it isn't old at all,” he said. “It's modern commercial pipe. It isn't thirty years old. Oh, you are an artificial vixen! Are you not ashamed?”
The amused stirring of the deep water said that the pegeid was in no way ashamed.
In the distance, there were official looking cars at the lodge. People got out of them, and later people got into them again. After a while they drove away. After a longer while, Cliveden Houseghost returned to the spring. He was sad and shook.
“What is it, Cliveden?” Ranwick asked.
“Oh, they've taken Crescentia away again, to the mental house, to the funny house. It becomes harder and harder to get her out each time, and I can keep her for a shorter and shorter while. I have had her home only a week this time.”
“What's there about her madness that they should come and take her?”
“Oh, she drowns children. She doesn't really mean anything by it, I don't believe. She believes that the springs want them. But the people in the little towns become very skittish whenever she goes on a children hunt.”
“But children are not all that she drowns, Cliveden?”
“No. Sometimes she drowns men too. She is so strong that she handles men like children. Once it was the case that many springs, being unchanneled and like quagmires, would drown men in the same strong-handed way. I figure that you, knowing springs and spring-pegeids so well, would be able to avoid such a death. But I wouldn't have prevented it, and I didn't prevent others. You didn't think you could love ten thousand springs and their pegeids and not find one that somebody else loved very passionately, did you? I am very jealous, Ranwick. I wish she'd done it. They find out about the children, but they don't find out about the men she drowns.”
Well yes, it was true that Cliveden Houseghost was insane, even as his wife Crescentia was. But it might be that (like her again) Cliveden was harmless in all minor matters.
Cliveden Houseghost went away, down to his lodge, and defeat was in every line of him.
“We'll have no more visitors this day,” Ranwick said. “Will you come up now?”
There was a greater stirring in the deep water. The pegeid came up out of the spring-pool. She was like none other even, and the spring was like no other. The latest love, the ten thousandth love, is always the strongest one.
Selenium Ghosts Of The Eighteen Seventies
Even today, the “invention” of television is usually ascribed to Paul Nipkow of Germany, and the year is given as 1884. Nipkow used the principle of the variation in the electrical conductivity of selenium when exposed to light, and he used scanning discs as mechanical effectors. What else was there for him to use before the development of the phototube and the curren
t-amplifying electron tube? The resolution of Nipkow's television was very poor due to the “slow light” characteristics of selenium response and the lack of amplification. There were, however, several men in the United States who transmitted a sort of television before Nipkow did so in Germany. Resolution of the images of these even earlier experimenters in the field (Aurelian Bentley, Jessy Polk, Samuel J. Perry, Gifford Hudgeons) was even poorer than was the case with Nipkow. Indeed, none of these pre-Nipkow inventors in the television field is worthy of much attention, except Bentley. And the interest in Bentley is in the content of his transmissions and not in his technical ineptitude.
It is not our object to enter into the argument of who really did first “invent” television (it was not Paul Nipkow, and it probably was not Aurelian Bentley or Jessy Polk either); our object is to examine some of the earliest true television dramas in their own queer “slow light” context. And the first of those “slow light” or selenium (“moonshine”) dramas were put together by Aurelian Bentley in the year 1873.
The earliest art in a new field is always the freshest and is often the best. Homer composed the first and freshest, and probably the best, epic poetry. Whatever cave man did the first painting, it remains among the freshest as well as the best paintings ever done. Aeschylus composed the first and best tragic dramas, Euclid invented the first and best of the artful mathematics (we speak here of mathematics as an art without being concerned with its accuracy or practicality). And it may be that Aurelian Bentley produced the best of all television dramas in spite of their primitive aspect.
Bentley's television enterprise was not very successful despite his fee of one thousand dollars per day for each subscriber. In his heyday (or his hey-month, November of 1873), Bentley had fifty-nine subscribers in New York City, seventeen in Boston, fourteen in Philadelphia, and one in Hoboken. This gave him an income of ninety-one thousand dollars a day (which would be the equivalent of about a million dollars a day in today's terms), but Bentley was extravagant and prodigal, and he always insisted that he had expenses that the world wotted not of. In any case, Bentley was broke and out of business by the beginning of the year 1874. He was also dead by that time.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 244
