4.
Earth Night was also called the Night of the Stranger, or the Night of the Strangers. But there shouldn't have been any strangers on Robinsonnade. There should have been only forty-seven persons on that world, ten of the Katz family, twelve of the Huckleby family, twelve of the Constantino family, and thirteen of the Phelan family. There was no way that any stranger could have come there. This was an axiom. Really there were several fairly regular ways that a stranger could have come. And there were irregular ways. A stranger is one who comes by strange ways.
The only thing that might be expected to keep strangers away from the island-planet of Robinsonnade was its being below Poverty Plateau. Minerals there were neither exceptional nor especially accessible, and they were developed only to a slight degree by only the forty-seven people on the planet. The mineral wealth did not leap out at one, and it had not been dug and stored. The land of the planet had not encountered the organic experience at all till just twenty years before, and organic life on it was still a very small and carefully nurtured flame. Maybe in a hundred years there might be small spots of local opulence, but there was not now any great garnering into barns.
The gemstones of Robinsonnade were undistinguished, and the fission and fusion stuff was surely not above average. And there was no unique and magic trade article or substance. “There is no planet so poor that it does not have its own ‘pearl beyond price’, its invaluable substance that will make it worth traffic and commerce,” John Chancel had written. But John Chancel had not been to Selkirk Sun. Robinsonnade Planet was medium rich in eventual prospects, but it did not now have anything worth trading for or stealing. The Selkirk system had been appraised by sky venturemen as “Nothing there yet,” and of all its planets Robinsonnade was set as the least tempting.
(The Selkirk System was not supposed to be a part of the general knowledge; but it is difficult to hide any part of the sky under a bushel.)
So, if strangers came from the Trader Planets, for instance, they would hardly have come for trade. If strangers came from anywhere they could only come for their own strange reasons. Nevertheless there was recurring rumor that strange people were sometimes on Robinsonnade, and also strange animals, and strange manifestations, and what could only be called strange things. Among the strange people supposed to be there was the trillionaire prisoner, the exiled dictator, the shadow-man, the monk. Among the strange animals fabled to be there was the white horse, the whistling elk, the flying pig, the Transylvania wolf, the Culebra Caleidoscopia snake.
Among the strange manifestations reported as being on Robinsonnade were the illusion of being able to see clear around the planet by means of the parabolic reflectors or ‘clear clouds’, the ‘scales of the dragon’; the experience of bi-location which was part physical and part mental, which sometimes provided a true binocular way of looking at things and a true bi-lobar way of thinking about things; and there were the ocular superstitions generally.
Robinsonnade was loaded with superstitions that did have local habitations and names. Mirages on Earth could give only pale ideas of these places. They did not always fade away when one came near them. Most of them could be entered and enjoyed. One might eat medlars off the medlar trees of such an hallucination, or talk with the only slightly vague people who lived in it. Superstition, yes. Well, such a substantial hallucination might not be there the next day. But two or three days after that it might be there again. There was a wide variety of such strange manifestations.
Among the strange things on Robinsonnade were—no, not now, not on Earth Night, and especially not on Hugo Katz Night. No wonder that Hugo was perturbed by the unseemly superstitions that went on. Some of those strange things were unclean and unpleasant. Some of them were a little bit frightening. Well, actually, there were several of them that would bring even the stoutest-hearted person to the brink of the screaming horrors.
Even on this Hugo Katz Night the ocular superstitions made their appearances. Graves Huckleby said that he had seen, down by Dugan's Swamp, the Exiled Dictator on his white stallion. That dictator wasn't finished yet. He had the lowering look of one who is plotting a comeback. Anthony Constantino said that he had seen the Trillionaire Prisoner paying bribes to two men who looked like guards from the way they cradled those short-barreled shotguns in the crooks of their arms. Antoinette Phelan said that she had seen (and could still see even till that minute) the Shadow-Man lurking in the entrance of Shadrack's Cave. So some of them went there (it was about three kilometers away), and the Shadow-Man was indeed there (—“or a shadow of the Shadow-Man at least,” Stephen Huckleby said).
The Shadow-Man put on Shadow Shows. He had used to do this, in whatever place he had come from, at the Great Houses of Plantations, where there was very little entertainment, and where the Masters would then have all the workers come into the Big Shed to see the show, thrown on the wall by candle and by the hands of the Shadow-Man. The Shadow-Man used to bring such pleasure to the workers at about two hundred different plantations every year.
And the Shadow-Man would put on Shadow Shows now. The young people who came to see them sat in the dark interior of Shadrack's Cave, and the Shadow-Man threw the performing shadows on the broad, white, limestone wall that was in front of the cave entrance. (Question: will there be limestone on a world that hadn't known the organic experience at all in its vast past ages? Answer: it sure did look like white limestone.)
Someone would always light a candle and hold it for the Shadow-Man. Tonight it was Antoinette Phelan who did this. And the Shadow-Man with his talented hands threw the strutting, puppet-like shadows onto the wall, and they began to be involved in fast-paced dramas. The shadow-actors were voiced, and the Shadow-Man was a mute; and there were several very leaky explanations of how this could be.
But tonight, with such a multiplicity of island-planets shining in the sky, there was an unusual variety of shadow-figures and shadow-dramas at the Theater of the White Rock. The candle that Antoinette held was really only the last of the forty-seven candles that were throwing shadows on the rock. Hers was the Robinsonnade candle, but there were forty-six other candles in the sky.
The Shadow-Man and his cavorting images presented ‘Napoleon's Retreat’ with horses and baggage wagons and red-belching cannons. This had been an old favorite on the plantation circuits. He did ‘The Black Crook’. He did ‘Hogan's Alley’. He did ‘Limehouse Nights’ and ‘The Jewel Thieves of Wallenda World’. All these shows were familiar to the young people who went to the irregular showings at the Rock.
Then Hugo Katz burst upon them in barely controlled fury.
“It is with sadness and disappointment that I see that you have fallen into bleak superstition again,” Hugo stated in a tight voice. “Such a dismal failing reflects unfavorably on every person on Robinsonnade. You all know that the Shadow-Man is a forbidden phenomenon, not to be indulged in under any circumstances. You all know that I shattered him to pieces with my cudgel only four days ago and forbade him to appear again. You must know that there is no such thing. I believe that you, Antoinette, are the primary of this manifestation known as the Shadow-Man.”
“Oh! I didn't know that I was,” Antoinette said honestly. “Maybe you're wrong. Could I be a primary and not know it?”
The Shadow-Man had shifted the drama to the ‘Israelites and the Golden’ Calf,’ and he gave Moses a voice that was a take-off of that of Hugo Katz. This made Hugo very angry; and the Moses on the rock also became very angry, almost in mirror image of Hugo's anger. Hugo would open his mouth to roar condemnations; and the Shadow-Moses would anticipate him and roar out the same words that Hugo had intended to roar and in the same voice that Hugo had intended to use.
But Hugo Katz had a heavy cudgel, and with it he shattered the Shadow-Man into pieces that proved to be paper-thin shards of slate. And Hugo drove the young people out of Shadrack's Cave and away from there.
But they looked back as they ran away, and they saw illuminated words dancing on th
e rock wall with the message “Come back again after that old kraut-head cools it.”
5.
The young people had been doing some pretty intricate and spirited stomp dances during the sky-lanterned night. Hugo Katz, the Commandant of the Planet, came to them half in anger and half in uncertainty. “Do you young people believe that those are appropriate dances?” he asked. “You are stomping on half-count and quarter-count and on no count at all. Wouldn't it be more rational to stomp on full-count?”
“But these are very special stomps for this night alone,” Barbara Phelan said. “We have just been doing the ‘Hugo Katz Imperial Stomp Dance’ in honor of you. The one we did before that was the ‘Hugo Katz Cake-Walk’.”
“I suppose that is all right then,” Hugo Katz said, and he walked away half pleased that the stomps were dedicated to him.
But those stomp dances weren't all right. There were strangers who came to the fringes of the dancing area and joined the dances, and the dances became more and more broken-count stomps.
Frederik Katz came to Antoinette Phelan and pulled her out of the gyrations.
“I do not want to bother you if you are displeased with me,” he said, “but this is bigger than ourselves and is a part of public policy. I am ordered to give you indoctrination, now, tonight, since I belong to your peer group and since I am very sound on these things. You have shown, so they tell me, a flightiness in your beliefs that is outside of the tolerances. I am ordered to reprove you and correct you and instruct you.”
“So then reprove me and correct me and instruct me, Frederik,” Antoinette said. “How will I know better if you do not tell me?”
“Ah, it is all in the tight and strong focus,” Frederik said. “Our lives must be informed with beamed sharpness. You have heard all these things many times, but you have not paid attention, and so you must hear them again. There is no room for ordinary persons on any of the new worlds. All common persons must remain on Earth, or be filtered out in such way-stations as the Selkirk System here. Only persons of intensity and excellence may go to the further worlds. These people must have given up the wide and shallow distractions or superstitions, and they must channel all their energies and talents into the tight and strong beam.
“We will have the rational things only. We will not have any of the superstitions or irrational phenomena, nor strangers, nor strange manifestations. Error has no right on the new worlds. We will hew to the true way only, to the strong and straight lines of secular liberalism as fabricated by our fathers. All ‘Things Beyond,’ the sour swamps and the illicit meadows, the aberrations and the vagrancies, must be chopped away and flung into the abyss. Rivers running in unauthorized courses make swamps. Imagination running on trackless roads can only run into morasses where everything will eventually sink into the illicit slime. We cannot have strangers or strange manifestations. We cannot have white horses or cascading colored snakes or shadow-men or monks. These things come from sick imaginations.”
“You talk just like your father, Frederik,” Antoinette said.
“That is higher praise than I deserve,” Frederik Katz spoke proudly. “Our parents came to the Selkirk System to have progeny in quarantine conditions where none of the distracting and superstitious infections could enter in. Then these families were to be certified and sent on to further worlds. For forty of the worlds of the Selkirk System this has worked fine, and they have sent wave after wave of colonists forward, every two or three years for some of them. For two or three of the worlds (Robinsonnade among them) it has not worked so fine. This world leaks. Distracting infections and illicit superstitions have crept in. Strange manifestations have appeared. Therefore, many of the people here are to be classified as ‘unclean’ and are to be forced to remain here forever. Only a few of us superior ones will be called to go on to ‘Further Worlds’.”
“More and more like your father,” Antoinette said.
“Thank you,” Frederik said. “It is wonderful of you to say that. But some of your reported activities here have been less than wonderful. In spite of that, I have been greatly taken by you, and I still am.”
“Oh, I'll marry you if that's what you want,” Antoinette said.
“The forty-seven island-planets of Selkirk Sun bear the august names of persons and concepts that have brought the Secular Liberal Covenant to its present wonderful position,” Frederik said. “The names, the names! Nietzsche Planet, Hegel, Mordecai, Darwin, Huxley, Freud, Luther, Calvin, Cromwell, Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, Hendeus, Joyce, Gide, Wilde, Mann, Russell, William B. Ziff, Malthus, Roosevelt, Free Choice, Stamp the Rooster, Relativity, Situation Ethics, Mao, Truman, Kent State, Yellow Dog, Dialectical Materialism, Whitehead, Nader, Pauling, Teilhard, Kennedy, Bella Abzug, Punk Rock, Horse Robber, Sam Erwin, Mailer, Take Care of Number One, Tip O'Neil, Carter, Controlled Despair, Rolling Stone, and Robinsonnade on which we stand. These are the great persons and the great ideas, the pinnacles of human achievement.”
“You looked at each of the Island-Planets when you said its name,” Antoinette remarked.
“Oh certainly. That's an effective trick in elocution,” Frederik answered.
“But some of them are already below the horizon, Frederik, and some of them haven't risen above the other horizon yet. But you looked at each of them when you said its name, and you saw it in every detail. I know you did.”
“Yes, I did,” Frederik admitted. “I fell victim to an ocular superstition, which shows that none of us is quite perfect. Antoinette, you said something a while ago when I wasn't quite listening. Did I hear you right?”
“Oh, I said that I'd marry you if you really wished it. What did you hear me say?”
“Oh, this might be either wonderful or horrible, Antoinette! My father has tentatively put you on the list of those to be left behind on Robinsonnade as being intractable. I will have to change his mind somehow.”
“No need to discommode your father, Frederik. I will stay here, and you will stay here with me.”
“Stay on Robinsonnade? No, never! I am one of the selected persons, and my destiny is to go onward to brighter worlds.”
“If you loved me you would stay here with me.”
“I do love you, Antoinette, in a way, and in spite of your superstitious leanings. But I love honor more.”
“Bully!” said Antoinette. “I see something now, Frederik, that only a superstitious person would see, since it is still below the horizon. But it's rising fast, and soon everyone will have to see it.”
“The Mother Ship!” Frederik Katz breathed in awe. “It's coming! It will roost in our own local sky this very night. I am sure that my father had word that it was coming. That's why he has been so busy working on his lists and his decisions, and why he has assigned people to check over the satellite ship and have it ready to go. Surely the Mother Ship has already been picked up on instruments, so it is not real superstition to see it now before it rises above the horizon. Should we tell the other people that we see it coming?”
“Certainly, Frederik. Everybody is telling everybody that it is coming, for everybody has seen it.”
6.
“I do now the hardest thing that I ever did in my life.” Hugo Katz was speaking to the people of Robinsonnade in a heavy voice. He was disheveled, and he had either bruise or blood on his face. “I must say and decide, in my person of Commandant of this Island-Planet, which of you must go on to more sublime skies, and which must remain here. The word has come to me: this tree must produce fruit this very night, however scanty it may be. I have agonized over this decision, but I will not compromise my judgment in any way. No person with blemish, either inner or outer, may go from this quarantined world.” “Come on, Antoinette,” Steven Huckleby said and nudged her. “The Shadow-Man is back at the wall in front of the cave, and the shadow-shows are about to start again. They're better than any show that Hugo Katz can put on.”
“Come along, forty-seventh place sister,” Barnabas Phelan said to her. “None of us
is selected to leave Robinsonnade anyhow. We're too infected with superstition and with the wide-beam disease. We can see the Mother Ship as well from the White Wall Theatre as we can from here, and the first comedy the Shadow-Man will do is named ‘Mother Carey's Scary Pickins: She Abandons Half Her Chickens.’ Mother Carey is the Mother Ship.”
“You go tell the Shadow-Man that there's going to be a better skit here,” Antoinette said. “And tell him I said so. He can come here and watch it from Durbin's Dingle, and none of the non-superstitions persons will be able to see him. Then, after the satellite ship lifts off with its part-load to the mother ship, we'll all go down to Shadrack's Cave again and watch his shows as long as he likes.”
“Who is going to put on a better skit here than the Shadow-Man puts on?” Steven Huckleby asked suspiciously.
“I am,” Antoinette said.
“Hugo Katz has blood on his brow,” Anthony Constantino remarked. “And Antoinette is grinning her most evil grin. Has there been an encounter, perverse girl? Is it part of the skit? What did you hit him with?”
“There has been an encounter, yes,” Antoinette said. “It is part of my skit. But I hit him with words alone. My words can draw blood.”
“Do you not know that he has the power to rescue us from this hulk, and the power to abandon us here?” Steven Huckleby asked.
“I love this hulk, my planet home, and I will love being abandoned here,” Antoinette said. “I believe I've made sure of being one of the abandoned people.”
“There are abandoned persons among you,” Hugo Katz was saying in his powerful, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger voice, and he seemed to have picked up an echo of Antoinette's phrase. “You may howl and cringe when you hear the judgments on yourselves: and yet you were the ones who gave those judgments on yourselves with your conduct. You have not measured up. You have fallen into idolatry and superstition. Your itching eyes have looked upon specters that cannot be allowed to be there. Your itching ears have heard illicit enticements.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 265
