The Best of R. A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  “John Salt is an odd creature and he comes from this place,” Crayola told them. “The Licorice Man is an odd creature, I suppose. So is Ape Woodman: he used to be a big-time football player. All three of them had regular-people blood in them; I suppose that’s what made them odd. They were almost as odd as you three creatures. And the Comet playing pool there is an odd one. I don’t know what kind of blood he has in him to make him odd.”

  “How long has he been around here?” Velikof asked.

  “He returns every eighty-seven years. He stays here about three years, and he’s already been here two of them. Then he goes off on another circuit. He goes out past the planets and among the stars.”

  “Oh? And how does he travel out there?” Velikof asked with cocked tongue and eye.

  “With horse and buggy, of course.”

  “Oh there, Comet,” Willy McGilly called. “Is it true that you travel out among the stars with horse and buggy?”

  “Aye, that I do,” the long gray-bearded man named Comet called back, “with a horse named Pee-gosh and a buggy named Harma. It’s a flop-eared horse and a broken buggy, but they take me there.”

  “Touch clay,” said Crayola Catfish, “for the lightning.”

  They touched clay. Everything was of baked clay anyhow, even the dominos. And there had been lightning, fantastic lightning dashing itself through every crack and cranny of the flimsy hotel. It was a lightning brighter than all the catfish-oil lamps in the world put together. And it continued. There was clattering sequence thunder, and there was a roaring booming sound that came from a few miles west of the thunder.

  The Giants came in and stood around the edges of the room. They were all very much alike, like brothers. They were tall and somber, shabby, black-bearded to the eyes, and with black hats on their heads. Unkempt. All were about nine feet tall.

  “Shall I sound like a simpleton if I ask if they are really giants?” Velikof questioned.

  “As your eyes tell you, they are the Giants,” Crayola said. “They stay here in the out-of-the-way places even more than the rest of us. Sometimes regular people see them and do not understand that they are regular people too. For that there is scandal. It was the scent of such a scandal, I believe, that brought the three of you here. But they are not apes or bears or monsters. They are people too.”

  “They are of your own same kindred?” Velikof asked.

  “Oh yes. They are the uncles, the old bachelors. That’s why they grow tall and silent. That’s why they stand around the edges of the room. And that is why they dig themselves caves into the banks and bluffs instead of living in huts. The roofs of huts are too low for them.”

  “It would be possible to build taller huts,” Willy McGilly suggested.

  “It would be possible for you, yes,” Crayola said. “It would not be possible for them. They are set in their ways. They develop a stoop and a gait because they feel themselves so tall. They let their hair grow and overflow, all over their faces and around their eyes, and all over their bodies also. They are the steers of the species. Having no children or furniture, what can they do but grow tall and ungainly like that? This happens also to the steers of cattle and bears and apes, that they grow tall and gangling. They become bashful, you see, so sometimes it is mistakenly believed that they are fierce.”

  The roaring and booming from west of the thunder was becoming louder and nearer. The river was coming dangerously alive. All of the people in the room knew that it was now dark outside, and it was not yet time to be night.

  The Comet gave his pool cue to one of the bashful giants and came and sat with the eminents.

  “You are Magi?” he asked.

  “I am a magus, yes,” Willy McGilly said. “We are called eminent scientists nowadays. Velikof here also remains a magus, but Arpad has lost it all this day.”

  “You are not the same three I first believed,” the old Comet said. “Those three passed me several of my cycles back. They had had word of an Event, and they had come from a great distance as soon as they heard it. But it took them near two thousand years to make the trip and they were worried that myth had them as already arriving long ago. They were worried that false Magi had anticipated them and set up a preventing myth. And I believe that is what did happen.”

  “And your own myths, old fellow, have they preceded you, or have you really been here before?” Willy McGilly asked. “I see that you have a twisty tongue that turns out some really winding myths.”

  “Thank you, for that is ever my intent. Myths are not merely things that were made in times past: myths are among the things that maintain the present in being. I wish most strongly that the present should be maintained: I often live in it.”

  “Tell us, old man, why Boomer Flats is a place that the comets come back to?” Willy said.

  “Oh, it’s just one of the post stations where we change horses when we make our orbits. A lot of the comets come to the Flats: Booger, Donati, Encke, 1914c, and Halley.”

  “But why to Boomer Flats on the little Cimarron River?” Willy inquired.

  “Things are often more than they seem. The Cimarron isn’t really so little a river as you would imagine. Actually it is the river named Ocean that runs around all the worlds.”

  “Old Comet, old man with the pieces falling off of you,” Dr. Velikof Vonk asked out of that big head of his, “can you tell us just who are the under-people that we have tracked all around the world and have probably found here no more than seventy miles from our own illustrious T-Town?”

  “A phyz like you have on you, and you have to ask!” the old Comet twinkled at Velikof (a man who twinkled like that had indeed been among the stars; he had their dust on him). “You’re one of them, you know.”

  “I’ve suspected that for a long time,” Velikof admitted. “But who are they? And who am I?”

  “Wise Willy here said it correctly to you last night; that they were the scrubs who bottom the breed. But do not demean the scrubs: they are the foundation. They are human as all of us are human. They are a race that underlies the other several races of man. When the bones and blood of the more manifest races grow too thin, then they sustain you with the mixture of their strong kingship: the mixing always goes on, but in special eras it is more widespread. They are the link that is never really missing, the link between the clay and the blood.”

  “Why are they, and me if I were not well-kempt and eminent, sometimes taken to be animals?” Velikof asked. “Why do they always live in such outlandish places?”

  “They don’t always. Sometimes they live in very inlandish places. Even wise Willy understands that. But it is their function to stand apart and grow in strength. Look at the strong bone structure of that girl there! It is their function to invent forms—look at the form her mother invented for her. They have a depth of mind, and they have it particularly in those ghostly areas where the other races lack it. And they share and mingle it in those sudden motley ages of great achievement and vigor. Consider the great ages of Athens, of Florence, of Los Angeles. And afterward, this people will withdraw again to gather new strength and bottom.”

  “And why are they centered here in a tumble-down hotel that is like a series of old daguerreotypes?” Willy McGilly asked. “Will you tell us that there is something cosmic about this little old hotel, as there is about this little old river?”

  “Aye, of course there is, Willy. This is the hotel named Xenodocheion. This is the special center of these Xenoi, these strangers, and of all strangers everywhere. It isn’t small; it is merely that you can see but a portion of it at one time. And then they center here to keep out of the way. Sometimes they live in areas and neighborhoods that regularized humanity has abandoned (whether in inner-city or boondock). Sometimes they live in eras and decades that regularized humanity has abandoned: for their profundity of mind in the more ghostly areas, they have come to have a cavalier way with time. What is wrong with that? If regular people are finished with those days and times, why may not oth
ers use them?”

  The roaring and booming to the west of the thunder had become very loud and very near now, and in the immediate outdoors there was heavy rain.

  “It is the time,” the girl Crayola Catfish cried out in her powerful and intricate voice. “The flash flood is upon us and it will smash everything. We will all go and lie down in the river.”

  They all began to follow her out, the Boomer Flats people, and the Giants among them; the eminents, everybody.

  “Will you also lie down in the river, Comet?” Willy McGilly asked. “Somehow I don’t believe it of you.”

  “No, I will not. That isn’t my way. I will take my horse and buggy and ascend above it.”

  “Ah, but Comet, will it look like a horse and buggy to us?”

  “No, it will look quite other, if you do chance to see it.”

  “And what are you really, Comet?” Velikof asked him as they left him. “What species do you belong to?”

  “To the human species, of course, Velikof. I belong to still another race of it; another race that mixes sometimes, and then withdraws again to gather more strength and depth. Some individuals of us withdraw for quite long times. There are a number of races of us in the wide cousinship, you see, and it is a necessity that we be strangers to each other for a good part of the time.”

  “Are you a saucerian?”

  “Oh saucerian be damned, Velikof! Harma means chariot or it means buggy; it does not mean saucer. We are the comets. And our own mingling with the commonalty of people has also had quite a bit to do with those sudden incandescent eras. Say, I’d like to talk with you fellows again some time. I’ll be by this way again in about eighty-seven years.”

  “Maybe so,” said Dr. Velikof Vonk.

  “Maybe so,” said Willy McGilly.

  * * *

  The eminents followed the Boomer Flats people to the river. And the Comet, we suppose, took his horse and buggy and ascended out of it. Odd old fellow he was; pieces falling off him; he’d hardly last another hundred years.

  The red and black river was in surging flood with a blood-colored crest bearing down. And the flats—they were just too flat. The flood would be a mile wide here in one minute and everywhere in that width it would be deep enough and swift enough to drown a man. It was near dark: it was near the limit of roaring sound. But there was a pile of large rocks there in the deepening shallows: plenty of rocks: at least one big heavy rock for every person.

  The Boomer Flats people understood what the rocks were for, and the Giants among them understood. Two of the eminents understood; and one of them, Arpad, apparently did not. Arpad was carrying on in great fear about the dangers of death by drowning.

  Quickly then, to cram mud into the eyes and ears and noses and mouths. There is plenty of mud and all of it is good. Spirits of Catfish protect us now!—it will be only for a few hours, for two or three days at the most.

  Arpad alone panicked. He broke and ran when Crayola Catfish tried to put mud in his mouth and nose to save him. He ran and stumbled in the rising waters to his death.

  But all the others understood. They lay down in the red roaring river, and one of the Giants set a heavy rock on the breast of every person of them to hold them down. The last of the Giants then rolled the biggest of the rocks onto his own breast.

  So all were safe on the bottom of the surging torrent, safe in the old mud-clay cradle. Nobody can stand against a surging flood like that: the only way is to lie down on the bottom and wait it out. And it was a refreshing, a deepening, a renewing experience. There are persons, both inside and outside the orders, who make religious retreats of three days every year for their renewal. This was very like such a retreat.

  When the flood had subsided (this was three days later), they all rose again, rolling the big rocks off their breasts; they cleared their eyes and ears and mouths of the preserving mud, and they resumed their ways and days.

  For Velikof Vonk and for Willy McGilly it had been an enriching experience. They had found the link that was not really lost, leaving the other ninety-nine meanwhile. They had grown in cousinship and wisdom. They said they would return to the flats every year at mud-duck season and turtle-egg season. They went back to T-Town enlarged and happy.

  * * *

  There is, however, a gap in the Magi set, due to the foolish dying of Arpad Arkabaranan. It is not of scripture that a set of Magi should consist of only three. There have been sets of seven and nine and eleven. It is almost of scripture, though, that a set should not consist of less than three. In the Masulla Apocalypse it seems to be said that a set must contain at the least a Comet, a Commoner, and a Catfish. The meaning of this is pretty muddy, and it may be a mistranslation.

  There is Dr. Velikof Vonk with his huge head, with his heavy orbital ridges, with the protruding near-muzzle on him that makes the chin unnecessary and impossible, with the great back-brain and the great good humor. He is (and you had already guessed it of him) an ABSM, a neo-Neanderthal, an unmissing link, one of that branch of the human race that lives closest to the clay and the catfish.

  There is Willy McGilly who belongs (and he himself has come to the realization of this quite lately) to that race of mankind called the Comets. He is quite bright, and he has his periods. He himself is a short-orbit comet, but for all that he has been among the stars. Pieces fall off of him; he leaves a wake; but he’ll last a while yet.

  One more is needed so that this set of Magi may be formed again. The other two aspects being already covered, the third member could well be a regularized person. It could be an older person of ability, an eminent. It could be a younger person of ability, a pre-eminent.

  This person may be you. Put your hand to it if you have the surety about you, if you are not afraid of green snakes in the cup (they’ll fang the face off you if you’re afraid of them), or of clay-mud, or of comet dust, or of the rollicking world between.

  Old Foot Forgot

  Introduction by John Scalzi

  So, here’s a quick story of mine, relevant to this particular story.

  My wife became pregnant when I was twenty-nine years old, and when she told me the news

  a)I was ecstatic;

  b)I suddenly begun waking up at three in the morning every night with the thought “dude, you’re totally gonna die one day” ricocheting through my brain.

  You don’t need to be a genius of psychology to figure this one out. With the advent of our child, I was no longer the final generation on the family chain; a new link would be forged and I would be inevitably pulled into eternity’s maw. I would survive by passing along my genes, not by living forever, which, up to age twenty-nine apparently, was my unspoken assumption.

  I got over it. My kid’s pretty great and I don’t mind shuffling off the mortal coil, because I helped make her, and also I wrote a few books people might still read after I’m gone. I’m doing OK.

  But that jolt of awareness I got at twenty-nine pops up again every now and then, in a slightly different way. I don’t mind so much that I will die. But I’m sad that I will no longer exist. I enjoy existing. Existing is pretty neat. And while I’m pretty sure that when I no longer exist I won’t mind (I didn’t mind not existing before I was born, after all), right now I’m put out about it. I mean, I put a lot of effort into developing a sense of self, here, people. I don’t get to take it with me? That’s some bullshit right there, I tell you.

  It’s selfish of me but I don’t mind that little bit of selfishness. It won’t help me in the end, but until then it gets me along.

  As I said, this story is relevant to “Old Foot Forgot,” which is a story that makes me both happy and sad. Happy because clearly Lafferty got where I was coming from. Sad because, well. Oblivion awaits, doesn’t it?

  Fine. Bring it on (eventually). Until then: hey, I’m here, man. And I like it.

  Old Foot Forgot

  “Dookh-Doctor, it is a sphairikos patient,” Lay Sister Moira P. T. de C. cried happily. “It is a genuine spherical a
lien patient. You’ve never had one before, not in good faith. I believe it is what you need to distract you from the—ah—happy news about yourself. It is good for a Dookh-Doctor to have a different patient sometimes.”

  “Thank you, lay sister. Let it, him, her, fourth case, fifth case, or whatever come in. No, I’ve never had a sphairikos in good faith. I doubt if this one is, but I will enjoy the encounter.”

  The sphairikos rolled or pushed itself in. It was a big one, either a blubbery kid or a full-grown one. It rolled itself along by extruding and withdrawing pseudopods. And it came to rest grinning, a large translucent rubbery ball of fleeting colors.

  “Hello, Dookh-Doctor,” it said pleasantly. “First I wish to extend my own sympathy and that of my friends who do not know how to speak to you for the happy news about yourself. And secondly I have an illness of which you may cure me.”

  “But the sphairikoi are never ill,” Dookh-Doctor Drague said dutifully.

  How did he know that the round creature was grinning at him? By the colors, of course; by the fleeting colors of it. They were grinning colors.

  “My illness is not of the body but of the head,” said the sphairikos.

  “But the sphairikoi have no heads, my friend.”

  “Then it is of another place and another name, Dookh-Doctor. There is a thing in me suffering. I come to you as a Dookh-Doctor. I have an illness in my Dookh.”

  “That is unlikely in a sphairikos. You are all perfectly balanced, each a cosmos unto yourself. And you have a central solution that solves everything. What is your name?”

  “Krug Sixteen, which is to say that I am the sixteenth son of Krug; the sixteen fifth case son, of course. Dookh-Doc, the pain is not in me entirely; it is in an old forgotten part of me.”

  “But you sphairikoi have no parts, Krug Sixteen. You are total and indiscriminate entities. How would you have parts?”

  “It is one of my pseudopods, extended and then withdrawn in much less than a second long ago when I was a little boy. It protests, it cries, it wants to come back. It has always bothered me, but now it bothers me intolerably. It screams and moans constantly now.”