The Best of R. A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I believe there have been a few cases of that sort,” said Philoxenus.

  “And is your government really as slipshod as your education?” Mr. Piper asked. “Are your high officials really chosen by lot and for short periods?”

  “Oh yes. Can you imagine a person so sick that he would actually desire to hold high office for any great period of time? Are there any further questions?”

  “There must be hundreds,” said Mr. Piper. “But we find difficulty putting them into words.”

  “If you cannot find words for them, we cannot find answers. PTA disbanded.”

  * * *

  CONCLUSION A: The Camiroi system of education is inferior to our own in organization, in buildings, in facilities, in playgrounds, in teacher conferences, in funding, in parental involvement, in supervision, in in-group out-group accommodation adjustment motifs. Some of the school buildings are grotesque. We asked about one particular building which seemed to us to be flamboyant and in bad taste. “What do you expect from second-grade children?” they said. “It is well built even if of peculiar appearance. Second-grade children are not yet complete artists of design.”

  “You mean that the children designed it themselves?” we asked.

  “Of course,” they said. “Designed and built it. It isn’t a bad job for children.”

  Such a thing wouldn’t be permitted on Earth.

  * * *

  CONCLUSION B: The Camiroi system of education somehow produces much better results than does the education system of Earth. We have been forced to admit this by the evidence at hand.

  * * *

  CONCLUSION C: There is an anomaly as yet unresolved between CONCLUSION A and CONCLUSION B.

  APPENDIX TO JOINT REPORT

  We give here, as perhaps of some interest, the curriculum of the Camiroi Primary Education.

  FIRST YEAR COURSE:

  Playing one wind instrument.

  Simple drawing of objects and numbers.

  Singing. (This is important. Many Earth people sing who cannot sing. This early instruction of the Camiroi prevents that occurrence.)

  Simple arithmetic, hand and machine.

  First acrobatics.

  First riddles and logic.

  Mnemonic religion.

  First dancing.

  Walking the low wire.

  Simple electric circuits.

  Raising ants. (Eoempts, not Earth ants.)

  SECOND YEAR COURSE:

  Playing one keyboard instrument.

  Drawing, faces, letters, motions.

  Singing comedies.

  Complex arithmetic, hand and machine.

  Second acrobatics.

  First jokes and logic.

  Quadratic religion.

  Second dancing.

  Simple defamation. (Spirited attacks on the character of one fellow student, with elementary falsification and simple hatchet-job programming.)

  Performing on the medium wire.

  Project electric wiring.

  Raising bees. (Galelea, not Earth bees.)

  THIRD YEAR COURSE:

  Playing one stringed instrument.

  Reading and voice. (It is here that the student who may have fallen into bad habits of rapid reading is compelled to read at voice speed only.)

  Soft stone sculpture.

  Situation comedy.

  Simple algebra, hand and machine.

  First gymnastics.

  Second jokes and logic.

  Transcendent religion.

  Complex acrobatic dancing.

  Complex defamation.

  Performing on the high wire and the sky pole.

  Simple radio construction.

  Raising, breeding, and dissecting frogs. (Karakoli, not Earth frogs.)

  FOURTH YEAR COURSE:

  History reading, Camiroi and galactic, basic and geological.

  Decadent comedy.

  Simple geometry and trigonometry, hand and machine.

  Track and field.

  Shaggy people jokes and hirsute logic.

  Simple obscenity.

  Simple mysticism.

  Patterns of falsification.

  Trapeze work.

  Intermediate electronics.

  Human dissection.

  FIFTH YEAR COURSE:

  History reading, Camiroi and galactic, technological.

  Introverted drama.

  Complex geometries and analytics, hand and machine.

  Track and field for fifth form record.

  First wit and logic.

  First alcoholic appreciation.

  Complex mysticism.

  Setting intellectual climates, defamation in three dimensions.

  Simple oratory.

  Complex trapeze work.

  Inorganic chemistry.

  Advanced electronics.

  Advanced human dissection.

  Fifth form thesis.

  The child is now ten years old and is half through his primary schooling. He is an unfinished animal, but he has learned to learn.

  SIXTH YEAR COURSE:

  Reemphasis on slow reading.

  Simple prodigious memory.

  History reading, Camiroi and galactic, economic.

  Horsemanship (of the Patrushkoe, not the Earth horse).

  Advanced lathe and machine work for art and utility.

  Literature, passive.

  Calculi, hand and machine pankration.

  Advanced wit and logic.

  Second alcoholic appreciation.

  Differential religion.

  First business ventures.

  Complex oratory.

  Building-scaling. (The buildings are higher and the gravity stronger than on Earth; this climbing of buildings like human flies calls out the ingenuity and daring of the Camiroi children.)

  Nuclear physics and post-organic chemistry.

  Simple pseudo-human assembly.

  SEVENTH YEAR COURSE:

  History reading, Camiroi and galactic, cultural.

  Advanced prodigious memory.

  Vehicle operation and manufacture of simple vehicle.

  Literature, active.

  Astrognosy, prediction and programming.

  Advanced pankration.

  Spherical logic, hand and machine.

  Advanced alcoholic appreciation.

  Integral religion.

  Bankruptcy and recovery in business.

  Conmanship and trend creation.

  Post-nuclear physics and universals.

  Transcendental athletics endeavor.

  Complex robotics and programming.

  EIGHTH YEAR COURSE:

  History reading, Camiroi and galactic, seminal theory.

  Consummate prodigious memory.

  Manufacture of complex land and water vehicles.

  Literature, compendious and terminative. (Creative book-burning following the Camiroi thesis that nothing ordinary be allowed to survive.)

  Cosmic theory, seminal.

  Philosophy construction.

  Complex hedonism.

  Laser religion.

  Conmanship, seminal.

  Consolidation of simple genius status.

  Post-robotic integration.

  NINTH YEAR COURSE:

  History reading, Camiroi and galactic, future and contingent.

  Category invention.

  Manufacture of complex light-barrier vehicles.

  Construction of simple asteroids and planets.

  Matrix religion and logic.

  Simple human immortality disciplines.

  Consolidation of complex genius status.

  First problems of post-consciousness humanity.

  First essays in marriage and reproduction.

  TENTH YEAR COURSE:

  History construction, active.

  Manufacture of ultra-light-barrier vehicles.

  Panphilosophical clarifications.

  Construction of viable planets.

  Consolidation of simple sanctity status.


  Charismatic humor and pentacosmic logic.

  Hypogyroscopic economy.

  Penentaglossia. (The perfection of the fifty languages that every educated Camiroi must know including six Earthian languages. Of course the child will already have colloquial mastery of most of these, but he will not yet have them in their full depth.)

  Construction of complex societies.

  World government. (A course of the same name is sometimes given in Earthian schools, but the course is not of the same content. In this course the Camiroi student will govern a world, though not one of the first aspect worlds, for a period of three or four months.)

  Tenth form thesis.

  COMMENT ON CURRICULUM:

  The child will now be fifteen years old and will have completed his primary education. In many ways he will be advanced beyond his Earth counterpart. Physically more sophisticated, the Camiroi child could kill with his hands an Earth-type tiger or a cape buffalo. An Earth child would perhaps be reluctant even to attempt such feats. The Camiroi boy (or girl) could replace any professional Earth athlete at any position of any game, and could surpass all existing Earth records. It is simply a question of finer poise, strength and speed, the result of adequate schooling.

  As to the arts (on which Earthlings sometimes place emphasis) the Camiroi child could produce easy and unequaled masterpieces in any medium. More important, he will have learned the relative unimportance of such pastimes.

  The Camiroi child will have failed in business once, at age ten, and have learned patience and perfection of objective by his failure. He will have acquired the techniques of falsification and conmanship. Thereafter he will not be easily deceived by any of the citizens of any of the worlds. The Camiroi child will have become a complex genius and a simple saint; the latter reduces the index of Camiroi crime to near zero. He will be married and settled in those early years of greatest enjoyment.

  The child will have built, from materials found around any Camiroi house, a faster-than-light vehicle. He will have piloted it on a significant journey of his own plotting and programming. He will have built quasi-human robots of great intricacy. He will be of perfect memory and judgment and will be well prepared to accept solid learning.

  He will have learned to use his whole mind, for the vast reservoirs which are the unconscious to us are not unconscious to him. Everything in him is ordered for use. And there seems to be no great secret about the accomplishments, only to do everything slowly enough and in the right order: thus they avoid repetition and drill which are the shriveling things which dull the quick apperception.

  The Camiroi schedule is challenging to the children, but it is nowhere impossible or discouraging. Everything builds to what follows. For instance, the child is eleven years old before he is given post-nuclear physics and universals. Such subjects might be too difficult for him at an earlier age. He is thirteen years old before he undertakes category invention, that intricate course with the simple name. He is fourteen years old when he enters the dangerous field of panphilosophical clarification. But he will have been constructing comprehensive philosophies for two years, and he will have the background for the final clarification.

  We should look more closely at this other way of education. In some respects it is better than our own. Few Earth children would be able to construct an organic and sentient robot within fifteen minutes if given the test suddenly; most of them could not manufacture a living dog in that time. Not one Earth child in five could build a faster-than-light vehicle and travel it beyond our galaxy between now and midnight. Not one Earth child in a hundred could build a planet and have it a going concern within a week. Not one in a thousand would be able to comprehend pentacosmic logic.

  RECOMMENDATIONS:

  A. Kidnapping five Camiroi at random and constituting them a pilot Earth PTA.

  B. A little constructive book-burning, particularly in the education field.

  C. Judicious hanging of certain malingering students.

  Continued on Next Rock

  Introduction by Nancy Kress

  Some stories you don’t forget.

  I first read R. A. Lafferty’s “Continued on Next Rock” over forty years ago, in the autumn of 1975. I remember it exactly. I was in graduate school, taking a Master’s degree, and I’d signed up for a course in science fiction. The text was Speculations: An Introduction To Literature Through Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Thomas E. Sanders. It included poetry, three essays, and forty-one stories. I know the exact number because I still have the book. The stories ranged widely, including genre precursors by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Rudyard Kipling; 1940s stories by writers such as Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Murray Leinster, and Judith Merril; and a lot of newer stories by then-current stars like Robert Silverberg, Theodore Sturgeon, and Robert Sheckley.

  I read the entire volume the first weekend after I purchased it.

  Among the stories was “Continued on Next Rock.” I read it, puzzled a while, and read it again. This was different. This was way different. It was clearly a love story, but not like any I’d ever read. Magdalen and Anteros seemed very strange, if not downright crazy. Actually, they are crazy. Sexually obsessed, he chases her through time, leaving amorous poems in strata of ancient rock. She spurns him, in what may or may not be a courtship ritual. Or murder.

  The writing was wonderful, the characters inventive, the tone perfectly balanced between wryness and passion, the kind of passion that annihilates. I could not get it out of my head.

  A few years later, a different one of my graduate-school professors, who’d become a friend, told me how much he admired R. A. Lafferty. He gave me a bound, uncorrected page-proof copy of Iron Tears, the 1992 Lafferty collection from Edgewood Press (I still have this volume, too). I thanked him, but my main reaction was indignation that the fifteen stories in the volume didn’t include “Continued on Next Rock.”

  My admiration for the story, which I just read yet again, has only grown. After all, Anteros’s love poems are, if nothing else, unique: “You are the freedom of wild pigs in the sour-grass, and the nobility of badgers. You are the brightness of serpents and the soaring of vultures. You are passion of mesquite bushes on fire with lightning. You are serenity of toads.”

  As I said—unique courtship poetry. And how come no man has ever told me that I am the nobility of badgers, let alone the serenity of toads? Why not, I ask you?

  Maybe if I could have done the things that Magdalen could …

  Continued on Next Rock

  Up in the Big Lime country there is an up-thrust, a chimney rock that is half fallen against a newer hill. It is formed of what is sometimes called Dawson sandstone and is interlaced with tough shale. It was formed during the glacial and recent ages in the bottom lands of Crow Creek and Green River when these streams (at least five times) were mighty rivers.

  The chimney rock is only a little older than mankind, only a little younger than grass. Its formation had been up-thrust and then eroded away again, all but such harder parts as itself and other chimneys and blocks.

  A party of five persons came to this place where the chimney rock had fallen against a still-newer hill. The people of the party did not care about the deep limestone below: they were not geologists. They did care about the newer hill (it was man-made) and they did care a little about the rock chimney; they were archeologists.

  Here was time heaped up, bulging out in casing and accumulation, and not in line sequence. And here also was striated and banded time, grown tall, and then shattered and broken.

  The five party members came to the site early in the afternoon, bringing the working trailer down a dry creek bed. They unloaded many things and made a camp there. It wasn’t really necessary to make a camp on the ground. There was a good motel two miles away on the highway; there was a road along the ridge above. They could have lived in comfort and made the trip to the site in five minutes every morning. Terrence Burdock, however, believed that one could not get the f
eel of a digging unless he lived on the ground with it day and night.

  The five persons were Terrence Burdock, his wife Ethyl, Robert Derby, and Howard Steinleser: four beautiful and balanced people. And Magdalen Mobley who was neither beautiful nor balanced. But she was electric; she was special. They rouched around in the formations a little after they had made camp and while there was still light. All of them had seen the formations before and had guessed that there was promise in them.

  “That peculiar fluting in the broken chimney is almost like a core sample,” Terrence said, “and it differs from the rest of it. It’s like a lightning bolt through the whole length. It’s already exposed for us. I believe we will remove the chimney entirely. It covers the perfect access for the slash in the mound, and it is the mound in which we are really interested. But we’ll study the chimney first. It is so available for study.”

  “Oh, I can tell you everything that’s in the chimney,” Magdalen said crossly. “I can tell you everything that’s in the mound too.”

  “I wonder why we take the trouble to dig if you already know what we will find,” Ethyl sounded archly.

  “I wonder too,” Magdalen grumbled. “But we will need the evidence and the artifacts to show. You can’t get appropriations without evidence and artifacts. Robert, go kill that deer in the brush about forty yards northeast of the chimney. We may as well have deer meat if we’re living primitive.”

  “This isn’t deer season,” Robert Derby objected. “And there isn’t any deer there. Or, if there is, it’s down in the draw where you couldn’t see it. And if there’s one there, it’s probably a doe.”

  “No, Robert, it is a two-year-old buck and a very big one. Of course it’s in the draw where I can’t see it. Forty yards northeast of the chimney would have to be in the draw. If I could see it, the rest of you could see it too. Now go kill it! Are you a man or a mus microtus? Howard, cut poles and set up a tripod to string and dress the deer on.”

  “You had better try the thing, Robert,” Ethyl Burdock said, “or we’ll have no peace this evening.”

  * * *

  Robert Derby took a carbine and went northeastward of the chimney, descending into the draw forty yards away. There was the high ping of the carbine shot. And, after some moments, Robert returned with a curious grin.