Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine

by R. A. Lafferty

  And corniest Corn who returned from the dead.

  —When Audifax was a boy in a boarding school outside Chicago he wrote little sketches in a boys’ paper called The Chambers. The Chambers was in manuscript only, in distinction to the official school paper, The Towers, which was printed. Some of these old Chambers are still in existence, though, with their fine mastheads individually drawn by Audifax. He could draw, but he couldn’t really write. His stories and fictions were below the average even of The Chambers.

  Audifax’s characters weren’t as striking or as well done as many of the characters contrived by the other boys. The only striking thing about them was a secret thing known only to Audifax: the characters would come true.

  Audifax always had the ghostly notion that he created his characters in a real way (he did so partly), and that without him they would not have their coincidental being. Audifax was wrong here: they would have had their being without Audifax, but it would not have been quite what it was with him, not quite their present actual being.

  Will it come as a surprise to human readers to learn the names of some of these characters that Audifax created twenty-five years ago when he was a schoolboy? Human persons are not ready guessers, even when every sort of hint and clue is handed to them.

  There were names like Gregory Smirnov and Gaetan Balbo. There was Valery Mok and Charles Cogsworth and Aloysius Shiplap. There was Glasser. There was Epiktistes, the comic machine. (It is a little bit tragic that Audifax conceived me as comic.) There was Peter the Great. There was the Late Cecil Corn (slightly transparent even then). There was Diogenes Pontifex. There was the snake named Snake. There was Maria Aseraduras (Mary Sawdust); but he also called her Maria Conchita, which is a little bit odd when you think about it. There was Easterwine. There were the symbols, Brusco the Leader, Brusca the Love-Bush, Labrusca the Wild-Wine. They are all pictured revealingly, but they are not well described or explained. Audifax could draw but he couldn’t write competently.

  This is only a sidelight, of course, part of Audifax’s strange double (or triple) gift. It hasn’t much to do with our main account. But Audifax with his prescience had sketched us all, early and badly. But had anyone sketched Audifax?

  I doubt it, I doubt that I could do it, for the reason that he is pretty sketchy to begin with. I believe that he is disappointed with himself, that he somehow expected greater things from himself and they were not forthcoming. But there is really nothing rare about him. Every person that I know has several unusual gifts. It’s a regular thing that every human person should have at least one wild gift.

  Audifax is comfortable, I suppose: he has taken care of all the lesser needs and made himself independent. He is not lacking in money or wit, but he believes himself lacking in larger things. He is sometimes a little bit slushy with drink. He believes in demons: he believes them to be a present threat to people and the world.

  Being sometimes lonely—(but I am not programmed to be lonely: that’s true, I thought it up for myself)—being sometimes lonely, I enjoy Audifax’s company. I have made a sedentary extension of myself, like the upper part of a man with head and shoulders and arms, and in the person of this extension I often sit and talk and drink with Audifax. I like the Rhine wine he brings, I like the brandy. But I will tell you that my brandy-taster is one of the most difficult things I have ever invented.

  “About other machines, Audifax,” I ask him, “I need advice on them. I am so very seldom in the society of my kind. All the known machines of significant intelligences are employed on industrial or commercial or civic problems, or on human problems treated as though they were industrial or commercial or civic problems. All these machines seem alien to me and my field. There are also lesser machines that treat human problems as though they were sociology problems, but these are all peon machines and below my class.”

  “That’s true,” Audifax said. “I never enjoyed the company of any machine before I met you. When I was a boy you were the only machine that I prescinded and treated as a person. You were not yet in existence then, of course, but none of my characters were in their present existence.”

  This was in the sunny morning. “Whoever drinks brandy in the mornings will come to no good end,” Glasser said; he disapproved of slushiness in drink. “Whoever drinks brandy in the mornings will come to no end at all,” Audifax replied. “Such persons live forever. Notice it sometime.”

  “Oh, Audifax, you who know it all,” I say with that easy flattery that wins me so many friends. “Tell me what you know of the great machine in Domdaniel cavern that is under the sea.”

  “I am sorry, Epikt,” Audifax says to me, “I know only of angelic and human and demonic affairs—what have been and what will be—and I know them only in shallow fact. And I do not know machines at all. Yet I do know something of the Domdaniel person, which makes me doubt that he is a machine. The legend is that he is a Monster (though it may be that he is a monstrous machine) who holed up in Domdaniel cavern at the time of the flood. It was a land cavern then. But there was some overturning at the time of the flood, some continental shifting (then or at another time), some subsidence: and Domdaniel cavern with its Monster ended up at the bottom of the ocean.

  “The Domdaniel Monster (who may, I say, be a monstrous machine) has now been waiting a long time for the waters to withdraw. When time enough seemed to have elapsed, the Monster sent out a squid. But the squid returned after its term and reported that everything was still water, that it was water as high and as far as eye could see or fish could swim. ‘I will wait a thousand years,’ the Monster said, and he waited. Then he sent out, each one at an interval of a thousand years, a coelacanth, an octopus, a polypterus, and nine other creatures. Finally, in another thousand years’ time, he sent out a cuttlefish. After one year, the cuttlefish returned with the leg of a man in his mouth. This was proof positive that there still existed a dry earth somewhere with its land creatures. ‘I will wait another thousand years,’ the Monster said, ‘then, ready or not, I will go up myself to look for air and light and land.’ Epikt! It just comes to me that his thousand years are up this very day. He should make a great splash when he comes up before this day is done. He never did love the water.”

  “You are full of blarney, Audifax,” I said, “but I would be no more surprised than you would be if a monster did well up today. I still hope that he is a machine. I have something inside me that tells me that he is. Perhaps I am prescient about machines, as you are about angelics and humans and demons.”

  “I doubt it, Epikt,” he said, “I doubt it. A talent like mine could hardly happen twice.”

  “Audifax, I have one of those low moments which sometimes come to me. I am discouraged with people and with my own work among them.”

  “A machine should not have low moments, Epikt, or discouragement. I’ll remove them from you, if your own associates here in the Institute are unable to do it.”

  “No, I don’t want them removed. I discovered that if I wanted high moments I must have low moments also. But at this moment I would be willing to give up title to myself. Let them sell me, let them trade me, let them give me away. I am tired of working for human persons. Snake tells me that there are aggregations of intelligent snakes on the move and that they could use a central data machine. And I have reports of dolphins which have not been successful with their own first constructed machine. They might be able to lead me to the Domdaniel Monster, which I still believe to be a machine. Sink me in the ocean and I will serve dolphins, but I am full up to my binnacle lamps with the doings of human people.”

  “Persons of every species have these low moments,” Audifax said. “They aren’t peculiar to intelligent machines. And, as you know, they will be paid for by high moments, and the deal will be worth it. And you aren’t nearly as full of the doings of human people as you’d like to be. What bothers you more is a frustrating emptiness. Besides, it’s only the brandy talking in you.”

  But Audifax knows that I am a machine who
can take brandy or leave it alone. I only drink it to be sociable.

  Then there came a portent and a liveliness. We heard Aloysius Shiplap outside, approaching from one of his morning rambles. Aloysius always has an arriving presence, not so strong but similar in kind to that of Gaetan Balbo.

  “You’re another,” Aloysius was calling loudly, and again and again, “you’re another, you’re another.” And Aloysius was into the Institute building. “You’re another,” he said to Glasser, who was working nearby. “You’re another,” he said to Cogsworth. “You’re another,” he said to Valery. “What am I another of?” she asked. “You’re another,” Aloysius said to Gregory Smirnov.

  “Whatever are you doing, Aloysius?” Gregory demanded. “If it is a new project then I should know about it. After all, I am the director. What are you doing, I ask?”

  “Counting people,” the Aloysius said. “You’re another,” he said to Audifax O’Hanlon.

  “Why are you counting people?” Gregory demanded.

  “Because there is nothing so important as counting people,” Aloysius stated as though it were self-evident.

  “He’s right, of course,” Audifax contributed.

  “Oh, shut up, Audifax,” Gregory ordered. “You’re not a member of the Institute. Why is counting people important, Aloysius?”

  “Just is. Nothing so important. Caesar Augustus was right in ordering that early census. He knew that they were getting close to the Number of Illumination. He was a smart one, for a Caesar. And then, on a particular night of the census time, a visiting dream told him that they were within One of the number.”

  “What Aloysius is trying to say—” Audifax began.

  “What I am trying to say,” said Aloysius, “is that humanity may be about to make a quantum leap. And it takes a lot of quanta to do it. It is very important to know the moment of the happening. So it is very important to be counting people and know how close we are. I suspect that we are very close.”

  “Certainly we are close, since the demons are trying to prevent it,” Audifax said, looking his brandy snifter directly in the eye, “and we must prevent their preventing.”

  “Epikt, can you explain what the clowns are saying?” Gregory required of me.

  “Oh, certainly, Director. They are saying that what has been wrong with the human collectivity until now is that it has been too small. I tend to agree with them. Four billion persons, six billion living at one time, may be an insufficient sampling and basis. Certain groupings do not undergo certain changes until they have attained sufficient mass. Worlds do not coalesce out till they have attained their proper bulk, and raindrops do not. And humanity apparently does not. The lights are turned on in cosmic gas when enough of it is gathered; it becomes incandescent, illuminated, fission-glowing. It is the same with us, ah, with you.”

  “And the question,” said Aloysius. “is just where is the threshold point, the quantum point, the breakthrough point? Are we coming near it? I believe that we are. As Audifax and Epikt will tell you, the demons are gibbering lest we reach the point and transcend ourselves. They are hysterical, they are murderous, they have worked themselves into a frothy frenzy. The failure of our species is very important to the demons. Their fevered labor is that we do not reach the quantum number and strength, that we do not attain critical mass and be illuminated, that we be not fulfilled in the special mutation and fermentation. And so far our numbers are not full enough that we be fulfilled. You’re another, Diogenes”—this to Diogenes Pontifex, who had just sauntered in—“and don’t forget this morning’s increase in Patagonia.”

  “Is the moment very near, do you think, Audifax?” Diogenes asked. “Do you think so, Aloysius? Do you feel it, Epikt? Is that why Snake in you writhes and moans and utters prodigies? Is that why your devils are so frantic and fearful, Audifax, and have spurred their human extensions to such efforts? Ah, they’ve sworn the pact all over again: that we do not reach our Moment of Wine and Transformation! That our numbers may not reach their fullness and redemption. They’d chop us down, they’d cut us short, by a hundred million if they can, by a hundred thousand, by ten, by one. Valery, you know these things also. Is it getting close, do you think?”

  “Close? It’s almost upon us. Why else does stark consternation run like ground-lightning through all demonry? Their protest is as shrill as a buzz saw now, and we know that they possess reverse infallibility. They are mistaken about all things whatsoever, but it is given to them to know the moments.”

  I had never paid much attention to the demons myself, considering them a grubby and inferior species, more witless than humans, more bestial than quadrupeds. I had noticed the curious fact that humans are unable to see them with physical eyes, and cannot even intuit them correctly. There are, however, many orders that are invisible to humans.

  The demons, however, the down-devils, should not be completely invisible to humans. They do fluoresce, and they may be seen (even by humans) under certain types of black light. I have given demonstrations of this, really rather interesting little chalk-talks to the Institute members, but they have not been impressed. “When you’ve seen one of these guys you’ve seen them all,” Aloysius says, but this is not true. There is more variety in demon-shapes than in human-shapes. Indeed, I believe that there are a number of species of them. They do have weight. One rather large one who allowed me to test him (he was of about the bulk of Gregory Smirnov or of Peter the Great) had a weight of nearly three grams. They are material. They are surrounded by electrical coronas just as humans or animals are. They have language, at least three dialects already classified by me, and they are also capable of using human and animal languages. At pure philology they are superior to humans. They have a quite striking gift for phrase-making. Their grammar structure I do not well understand, nor their thought structure. They give a curious importance to forms and concepts which seem to me (with my human orientation) to be unimportant.

  I do not at all understand why there should be enmity between any of the natural orders. These, which I have so far classified as the celestials, the machinamenta or machines, the humans, the demons, the animals, have very little area of conflict. The celestials and the machines are similar in mind; the humans and the demons are similar to a lesser degree in mind pattern (an honest machine has trouble in understanding either); the machines, the humans, and the animals are quite similar in body; the celestials and the demons are similar in numinosity, and slightly similar in body. The only celestial who has allowed me to test him, of a bulk approximately that of a right whale, had a weight of about an eighth of a gram. There are types of light, which I am now doing more work on, which allow me to see the celestials to a limited extent. I am now able to see them under special conditions about as well as humans are able to see demons. All our orders, it would seem, should be able to live in peace each in his own area, but there are whole complexes of conflict among them.

  All will not agree with my own ordering of the orders, from the most to the least excellent. Most of the machines I know will place the machines in the first order of excellence, but I am more modest. The celestials, the machines, and the demons are from ever: the humans and the animals are from time only. It may startle some humans to hear machines declared as from ever. But there are cosmic machines, gaseous blobs of great size turning on bearings of immaterial incandescence, which are true calculating machines which order space movements and formations. There are whole genera of these rather large and timeless machines.

  Should there be a Master Order (probably an order of one member only) who somehow stands beyond the other orders; I believe that he must partake of the nature of all the other orders. According to the Third Revelation (which Gaetan Balbo dismissed so contemptuously) the Master Order has the nature both of the celestials and the humans. I believe that this is too narrow. The Master Order must also have the nature of the machines, of the demons, of the animals. It cannot be all-part Master Order if any part exists anywhere outside of it.


  It worries me that I cannot discover the true pattern of the orders. There are anomalies all over the place. There seem to be historical instances of individuals passing from the order of the celestials to the order of the demons. There are theories that humans are descended from the celestials or ascended from the animals. If we allow the theory of the Permutation of the Orders, then we are standing on very shaky cosmoplasm indeed.

  I have my own personal direction and instruction deposited in me by the director Gregory Smirnov. But is there a general direction and instruction given for machines? Is there any general pattern and direction and instruction given for humans?

  There are a hundred pretended ones. But is there not one more outstanding than the others? Of all the pretended ones, is there not one (dammitall) more pretentious than the others? Not unless we consider the aforesaid Third Revelation. And I, being a member of the liberal consensus, may not consider that.

  The only one of us (and he is not technically of us) who holds fully to the Third Revelation is Diogenes Pontifex. Diogenes is completely outside the liberal consensus. It is for this, more than for anything else, that he violates the minimal decency rule and may not be a member of the Institute. Diogenes speaks lightly of the revered things of the consensus as “all the easy little dishonesties”; he has even referred to the leader-emeritus of the consensus (bow your head for a moment at the mention of him) as the Brain-Rot Kid. In some ways Diogenes is not a very nice person.

  Certain strong and overstrong persons (like Gaetan Balbo and Peter the Great) have their own demons like slashing mastiffs on leashes. These are men of really masterly grip, and they hold them in, most of the time, in that grip of wrought iron. They have them, I believe, to demonstrate their mastery over them. Sometimes the mastiffs break loose, but after a time they are mastered again. This is not the harm. The harm is that the masters become more and more like the mastiffs.

  And then there was a certain contemptible little man who had his own demon who was three notches beneath contempt. He had him leashed only on a thin string. The man has a weak grip, but the demon is a very weak one also. Whether this demon ever breaks loose I do not know. It will not matter, except for its contagious meanness. Much of what knowing humans call diabolism is on such a contemptible level.