Aurelia

by R. A. Lafferty

  Then, when it had arrived at noontime, within the ‘freedom of wide limits’ schedule, the Cavalcade stopped for Prandium. The carnival hangers-on set up all their lighter booths and shows and rides. But they did not set up the big Ferris wheel, not for just a noontime stop.

  Aurelia went to one fortune teller’s booth and was told that she would die in the dark hours after cena of the third night of the journey. But this fortune teller told her many things that could not possibly be true at all. She went to a second fortune teller. It was the same here, the prediction of Aurelia’s death, and the plainly false information about almost everything else.

  She went to the third fortune teller, one who used a large crystal ball that clouded and cleared and showed very changing scenes. But this sibyl told Aurelia a number of things that were true. She told her the names of the other six members of her seven-flight from ‘Shining World.’ She told her the names of her mother and her father and of the living horse that she had made, the one that couldn’t be guided. She told her of the horrible blunders she had made in her classes at school, some of them so bad that no one would be unkind enough to remember them; but now the recollection of them came to Aurelia like tinkling sunshine. And the sibyl told her, and also showed her in the crystal ball, the landscape of Aurelia’s own fantasy land into which no one else had ever entered.

  “Can you tell me the name of this world?” Aurelia asked. “Surely many persons here could tell it to me without using second sight or trickery. But they won’t.”

  “I can’t, but the crystal ball can,” the sibyl said. “Put your ear to the ball and it will whisper it. Real names are not supposed to be spoken out loud.”

  Aurelia put her ear to the crystal ball and it whispered the name of the world they were on.

  “Really?” Aurelia breathed in some amazement.

  “Really,” the crystal ball whispered.

  “Now can you tell me another name, or the common name of the world that I come from?” Aurelia asked. She put her ear to the crystal ball and it whispered the name to her.

  “Oh but there is confusion then,” Aurelia protested. “As ‘Shining World’ we have a good name, where we do not have the name of being legendary. But as to this name—ah—we have a compromised name then, inasmuch as people do not hope that we are legendary. How about it, Globe?” And she put her ear to the crystal glove again.

  “Yes, there’s confusion and duplicity about your world’s name,” the globe whispered.

  “Now can you tell me when I will die?” Aurelia asked the sibyl. “Several others have told me that it will be after the third night cena.”

  “No, we have no information on that at all,” the sibyl said. “I don’t believe that the others had any information either.” So Aurelia left that wise woman.

  For Prandium, the meal at approximately noon, the cavalcade formed into a circle of five thousand persons on the grass by the lake-shore. They had bread, fish, fowl, meat, hot wine-and-water. And they had mulsum.

  “What is it anyhow?” Aurelia asked. “I’ve never read of anything quite like it anywhere in the ‘Catalog and Customs of the Most Likely Worlds.’ ”

  “We drank it anciently,” said the Prince of Nysa, “and we will drink it now. Only the Cavalcades of the really royal will have it, or even know about it. It’s honey wine, but of a special honey, the same as we used in ambrosia. The Olympians used it.”

  “The Olympians? You are saying that there were Olympians on this world too?”

  “Yes. Sort of a Road-Show version of them, Aurelia.”

  “Will Cousin Clootie have this honey-wine in his encampment?”

  “No, he will not,” the Prince said. “His isn’t a royal encampment.”

  “Send him a jug,” Aurelia said.

  “That isn’t fitting,” the Prince protested. “Unless it is a command of yours.”

  “It is,” Aurelia said. So Cousin Clootie had a gift of the rare honey-wine. Then someone came to Aurelia and said that the last one of the sibyls wanted her to come to her booth immediately, that it was very important. Aurelia went.

  The sibyl, the one who had given all the correct information, was crying very unprofessionally. “A scene has appeared in the globe,” she said. “It is a horrible scene but I am afraid that it is true. Oh that you who are so bright and good should die from the double dart!”

  Aurelia looked into the crystal ball and saw herself dead. She could look at herself in large or in small, in her landscape setting, or in minute details. She saw that she had been killed by an ugly sort of double dart. She saw the watch on her wrist. The north wind was blowing violently inside the crystal ball, and the Hyperborean watch on her wrist showed that it was after cena-hour of the third night.

  But people must be about and doing. Noontime does not last forever.

  “Everybody up!” Aurelia cried loudly. “Make ready to resume the journey while I continue with the noontime portion of the Insight-of-the-day:

  First, to put it all into context, it is unnatural or supernatural that we should exist at all. In all reason, we should not be. The odds against it are terrifying. Nothing should be. All the evidence for us being here contradicts elementary reason. And everything that exists is such evidence. Let us never forget that existence itself is the longest shot that was ever booted home.

  On the talk of the will and the intellect then. The will of itself is blind but it has aptitudes and powers. The intellect is powerless. The two of them together are able to give orderly movement, which is human movement. To the extent that we ever indulge in disorderly movement, we are not human. But ‘orderly’ does not mean what some of you think it means, and it surely is not the same thing as ‘serious.’ We should not be always, or ever, serious. What a wobbly word ‘serious’ is anyhow! But we must be ordered, whether seriously or unseriously, in whatever we do.

  There are half-lies which deny either intellect or will to men. There are total lies which deny them both. On many worlds, today is the day of the total lie. There are many very smart people who deny both will and intellect to themselves and who swear that they get along better without them. But they are not ordered people, and so they leave off being human. To be human is to have both will and intellect. And to have them is to be a component of the Reign of Law.

  Most declared revolts against authority are really revolts against authenticity. It is an error to believe that we can revolt against morality by revolting against authority. Morality is no more based on authority than it is based on the colour green. Morality is the directing of an act towards a natural object. Immorality is misdirecting an act. Authority is merely a device under which human affairs are more workable, and it has no necessary connection with morality. Dispute my authority at your peril though!

  There is a double standard to morality, yes. Rational acts correspond to a good standard. Irrational acts correspond to a bad standard. It’s that simple.

  But if it is all that simple, then why is there weeping in the night? I may tell you why there is. Perhaps this evening I will tell you, or perhaps tomorrow. Or I may leave it to Cousin Clootie to tell you.

  FIRST MERENDA

  There were prodigies all that afternoon. Not only were the constellations to be seen in the very bright afternoon sky; not only did the birds bark and hoot; but the fish talked to Rex Golightly the tycoon.

  It was only by private device that the fish talked to Rex and he to them. Actually he was talking to the fluvial and oceanic components of himself rather than to fish, but some of his components exteriorized themselves rather starkly. Then how did other people hear the fish talking to Rex if it was done by private device? Oh, other people possess private devices also.

  It was not only that there was horn music without visible horns that afternoon. There was a primary musical invention made there that afternoon; it had to do with horn music from both visible and invisible horns, a new sort of syncopation; it was something that had never been done before. But besides all these
prodigies there was the prodigy of the monkey.

  This was the monkey that ran up and down the dangling ladder from Aurelia’s space ship to herself, bringing her data and assurances. But the hanging ladder used by the monkey was invisible, though it was very rope-like as it blew in the wind and buffeted the monkey. And there was something very wrong with the monkey.

  “You made him yourself, didn’t you?” a handsome and neatly-bearded young man asked Aurelia shyly. This young man was riding on a speckled mule of unusual liveliness. “I’m Marco Rixthaler,” the young man said. “I am the son of the eminent Melchior Rixthaler.”

  “Yes, I made the monkey myself,” Aurelia said. “And your speckled mule, you didn’t make him yourself. You wanted to, but you couldn’t. But he thinks that you did.”

  “Yes, he’s a brain-washed mule and he believes that I made him. And he almost outdoes himself in obeying unusual commands to prove that he is a high mechanism and not a low organism. He made himself spotted on command, you see. I don’t know how he did it, but he sweats a lot of mule sweat over the problem. I would give almost anything if I had an insight into the high science of ‘Shining World.’ I long to make living animals as you do, to make them to my own designs.”

  “Oh, I’ll show you how,” Aurelia said, “if only there is time. If there is a fourth day to the journey, then I’ll show you how, and then you can make all sorts of things. And you can make them better than I do. Do you know that I made a horse once, or at least a steed, and I forgot to make a way to steer it?”

  “Yes, that’s one of the anecdotes in the ‘New Aurelia Joke Book,’ ” Marco said. ‘Oh yes, I see. The monkey, yes. One could make these things much better than you make them, if only he knew how to make them at all. There’s a lot wrong with this monkey you made.”

  Well yes, Aurelia had made this monkey badly, but it would serve well. It was really an instrument, a tool to shuttle things down from the hovering space ship to Aurelia; and to carry messages back to the ship. It was a mechano-organo. It was very monkey-like in its appearance and movements. But, as Marco said, there was a lot wrong with it.

  Aurelia noticed of the assured young Marco that his hands were trembling. He was bashful with her. She would know the symptoms on any world.

  “I’d give a kingdom to kiss you,” said young Marco with that nervousness often seen in young boys on the boondocks-type worlds.

  “Do you have a kingdom?” Aurelia asked him reasonably.

  “I’m heir to a kingdom” Marco said. “But you are from ‘Shining World’ so you are too far above me.”

  “Aw haystacks!” Aurelia said. “No such thing. See that little side-show wagon there that’s rolling along with the entourage? See one of its many signs ‘Buy a ticket for a dollar and kiss the girl of your choice.’ It means kiss the carnival girl of your choice, but it doesn’t say so. Now canter over there on your speckled mule and buy a ticket. Then come back and kiss me. I never kissed a boy on a speckled mule before.”

  Marco Rixthaler cantered over and bought a hundred tickets from the carnival wagon, for he was a rich boy. He was also a very nice boy, not forward like so many on this world. What was this world anyhow? Well, the crystal ball had whispered a name for it to Aurelia, but she wasn’t convinced. Marco Rixthaler used up half of the tickets. Then Aurelia told him to wait till evening with the rest of them.

  Several intelligent men spoke about the Aurelia phenomenon that afternoon. They treated it in a very spacious manner. One of them was Melchior Rixthaler the father of young Marco. One of them was Rex Golightly the tycoon and nomad king. One of them was Gaspar Grootgrondbezitter. Rex Golightly had been the magus of hospitality last night and for several nights. Rixthaler would be the magus tonight. Grootgrondbezitter would be the hospitality magus tomorrow night. These things will explain themselves soon.

  “It is hard to take that little girl from Skokumchuck seriously,” Gaspar said. “There is a purity of concept about her and her soul, but pure concepts are presently on the wane. She’s real enough, I suppose, and she seems to be just what she represents herself to be: a school girl on assignment for ‘World Government Class.’ ”

  “Are you sure she’s from Skokumchuck?” Rex Golightly asked. “I tried to find out and I couldn’t.”

  “She’s from a Skokumchuck-type world, at least,” Gaspar said.

  “Well, so are we, for that matter,” Melchior Rixthaler put in. “This is a Skokumchuck-type world, though we tend to forget it. Yes, the girl believes that she is a school girl on a school assignment, but what if she is something other? Suppose that she is a programmed and mind-stuffed arrow or bomb shot into the midst of us.”

  “What for?” Golightly asked. “There are easier ways to blow us up, and there are easier ways to spy on us. But what if she is an infection? There wouldn’t even have to be any malice about sending her. It’s an always-present danger.”

  “What kind of an infection?” Gaspar asked.

  “Oh, some sort of moral infection, I suppose. We are never immune to a new strain of moral infection. A new slant on an old idea could throw us clear out of balance. It could sweep our whole world in sudden epidemic. We have, at best, a most tenuous balance with the principalities and invisible empires. If one of the ‘moral untimates’ becomes epidemic here, then we go completely unpredictable. All our care and making-sure would be for nothing. Aurelia herself speaks of ‘control,’ but we have our own sort of control and we don’t want it pre-empted by some random moral epidemic. And then there’s the other end of the dart. There could be a violent reaction to Aurelia’s ‘final happiness’ thesis. It could be a horned-animal reaction that would not recognize any control at all.

  “There is such an air of assurance about the whole business as to suggest that ‘Shining World’ may be distinctly superior to our world in some ways. There has been a balance. Of the dozens of ‘Worlds of Possibilities’ in our class, we are one and the poorly-identified ‘Shining World’ is another. We do not even have the bearings of some of the worlds. We know them only by implications, and yet we do know minute things about them. But one of them must not get too far ahead of the others. One must not really send out real governors to the others. If it is all in fun, all right then. But there is the feel of power somewhere behind it all. If so, then we must find a way to circumvent that power before it becomes unwieldy.”

  “Golightly, it’s the best kept secret that some of us here are distinctly superior in some other ways,” Melchior said. “On our own acres, we will not soon be bested. There had been a levelling on ‘Shining World,’ that everyone on that world should be capable of doing every job on that world. But we will not be levelled, so the best of us will remain above the level of them. We also send out the feel of power, and they may have sent this scanning sunbeam of a girl to examine it. We will watch what we can lift from them. We will watch how we can profit from every effort that they put out. But we will not worry about it, for worry unbalances the judgments.”

  “She’s so small a thing,” said Gaspar, “that we must not worry about her effect. She’s a long quantum below the threat-threshold. So we will love her (that is automatic for us of the inner group who have our distinct superiority), and we will give her gifts. Gift-giving is what we do best of all.”

  Aurelia herself came to those pleasant kings then.

  “There will have to be a magus-pavilion raised for the use of Cousin Clootie also,” she said. “Not for himself, but because he is a governor. One of you must provide it tonight, and the several nights following.”

  “Do you insist on that, Aurelia?” Gaspar asked with a twinkle.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll have to provide it then. But Magus-pavilions aren’t that easily erected.”

  “Yes, they are,” Aurelia contradicted. “We erected one when we were only in the third grade, and we were just little kids then.”

  Aurelia said that she would like for Marco to meet her mother, but she didn’t k
now how soon that could be done.

  Then it was late-middle-afternoon, a little too late (for the first day of scheduling is subject to errors,) and they camped for the Merenda meal which would be brief. There was hot and cold duck, amber-coloured wine, Macedonian pickles, fallow-deer baked, apples and crab-apples, five heavy steers spitted whole, cider, millet bread, hazel nuts, imperial whiskey. And there was carrying-on for half an hour (Station KEY said that they must have at least a half hour of carrying-on for their broadcast.)

  And then—“Everybody up!” Aurelia cried loudly. “Make ready to resume the journey while I give you the third-corner-of-the-day portion of the daily insight:

  Passion is the opposite of action. Yes, of course it is. Why do you all look at me as if I didn’t know what I was talking about? The passive is the opposite of the active. When a thing becomes passionate enough it will die of sensual as well as intellectual inaction. However, because there is on this world a tendency to use “passion” to mean the opposite of itself, to mean “motion” or even “emotion,” I will play along with that silliness. So when I say “passion” I will mean “emotion” or even “unbridled emotion.” It is for the hardness of your hearts that I do this.

  But the unbridled is always the unhuman, and it always denotes less rather than more virility. And yet, in most cases that I have seen around here, the bridling makes no difference at all. Things never get that far. The whole emphasis has to be in whipping some sort of life, any sort of life, into things. It isn’t the question of the “Risen Beast” in you. It’s the beast that can hardly be roused even to wakefulness. Yes, I am talking about this poor world and its poor people, a world where the people become a little bit hysterical with the fear that they will not be found “passionate.” And yet you make idols of the “passions” that you possess so thinly. Whatever for? I heard a while ago that there might be a “horned-animal reaction” to my insights-of-the-day. I don’t believe it is possible.