The Best of R. A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Do not the same ones ever come back?”

  “No. Never. Never exactly the same ones. Will exactly the same water ever run past one point in a brook? No. We push them out and we draw them back. And we push them out again, millions of times. But the same one can never come back. There is no identity. But this one cries to come back, and now it becomes more urgent. Dookh-Doc, how can it be? There is not one same molecule in it as when I was a boy. There is nothing of that pseudopod that is left; but parts of it have come out as parts of other pseudopods, and now there can be no parts left. There is nothing remaining of that foot; it has all been absorbed a million times. But it cries out! And I have compassion on it.”

  “Krug Sixteen, it may possibly be a physical or mechanical difficulty, a pseudopod imperfectly withdrawn, a sort of rupture whose effects you interpret wrongly. In that case it would be better if you went to your own doctors, or doctor: I understand that there is one.”

  “That old fogey cannot help me, Dookh-Doc. And our pseudopods are always perfectly withdrawn. We are covered with the twinkling salve; it is one-third of our bulk. And if we need more of it we can make more of it ourselves; or we can beg some of it from a class four who makes it prodigiously. It is the solvent for everything. It eases every possible wound; it makes us round as balls; you should use it yourself, Dookh-Doc. But there is one small foot in me, dissolved long ago, that protests and protests. Oh, the shrieking! The horrible dreams!”

  “But the sphairikoi do not sleep and do not dream.”

  “Right enough, Dookh-Doc. But there’s an old dead foot of mine that sure does dream loud and wooly.”

  The sphairikos was not grinning now. He rolled about softly in apprehension. How did the Dookh-Doctor know that it was apprehension? By the fleeting colors. They were apprehension colors now.

  “Krug Sixteen, I will have to study your case,” said the Dookh-Doctor. “I will see if there are any references to it in the literature, though I don’t believe that there are. I will seek for analogy. I will probe every possibility. Can you come back at the same hour tomorrow?”

  “I will come back, Dookh-Doc,” Krug Sixteen sighed. “I hate to feel that small vanished thing crying and trembling.”

  It rolled or pushed itself out of the clinic by extruding and then withdrawing pseudopods. The little pushers came out of the goopy surface of the sphairikos and then were withdrawn into it completely. A raindrop falling in a pond makes a much more lasting mark than does the disappearing pseudopod of a sphairikos.

  But long ago, in his boyhood, one of the pseudopods of Krug Sixteen had not disappeared completely in every respect.

  * * *

  “There are several jokers waiting,” Lay Sister Moira P. T. de C. announced a little later, “and perhaps some valid patients among them. It’s hard to tell.”

  “Not another sphairikos?” the Dookh-Doctor asked in sudden anxiety.

  “Of course not. The one this morning is the only sphairikos who has ever come. How could there be anything wrong with him? There is never anything wrong with a sphairikos. No, these are all of the other species. Just a regular morning bunch.”

  So, except for the visitation of the sphairikos, it was a regular morning at the clinic. There were about a dozen waiting, of the several species; and at least half of them would be jokers. It was always so.

  * * *

  There was a lean and giddy subula. One cannot tell the age or sex of them. But there was a tittering. In all human or inhuman expression, whether of sound, color, radioray, or osmerhetor, the titter suggests itself. It is just around the corner, it is just outside, it is subliminal, but it is there somewhere.

  “It is that my teeth hurt so terrible,” the subula shrilled so high that the Dookh-Doctor had to go on instruments to hear it. “They are tromping pain. They are agony. I think I will cut my head off. Have you a head-off cutter, Dookh-Doctor?”

  “Let me see your teeth,” Dookh-Doctor Drague asked with the beginnings of irritation.

  “There is one tooth jump up and down with spike boot,” the subula shrilled. “There is one jag like poisoned needle. There is one cuts like coarse rough saw. There is one burns like little hot fires.”

  “Let me see your teeth,” the Dookh-Doctor growled evenly.

  “There is one drills holes and sets little blasting powder in them,” the subula shrilled still more highly. “Then he sets them off. Ow! Good night!”

  “Let me see your teeth!!”

  “Peeef!” the subula shrilled. The teeth cascaded out, half a bushel of them, ten thousand of them, all over the floor of the clinic.

  “Peeef,” the subula screeched again, and ran out of the clinic.

  Tittering? (But he should have remembered that the subula have no teeth.) Tittering? It was the laughing of demented horses. It was the jackhammer braying of the dolcus, it was the hysterical giggling of the ophis (they were a half a bushel of shells of the little stink conches and they were already beginning to rot), it was the clown laughter of the arktos (the clinic would never be habitable again; never mind, he would burn it down and build another one tonight).

  The jokers, the jokers, they did have their fun with him, and perhaps it did them some good.

  “I have this trouble with me,” said a young dolcus, “but it make me so nervous to tell it. Oh, it do make me nervous to tell it to the Dookh-Doc.”

  “Do not be nervous,” said the Dookh-Doctor, fearing the worst. “Tell me your trouble in whatever way you can. I am here to serve every creature that is in any trouble or pain whatsoever. Tell it.”

  “Oh but it make me so nervous. I perish. I shrivel. I will have accident I am so nervous.”

  “Tell me your trouble, my friend. I am here to help.”

  “Whoops, whoops, I already have accident! I tell you I am nervous.”

  The dolcus urinated largely on the clinic floor. Then it ran out laughing.

  The laughing, the shrilling, the braying, the shrill giggling that seemed to scrape the flesh from his bones. (He should have remembered that the dolcus do not urinate; everything comes from them hard and solid.) The hooting, the laughing! It was a bag of green water from the kolmula swamp. Even the aliens gagged at it, and their laughter was of a pungent green sort.

  Oh well, there were several of the patients with real, though small, ailments, and there were more jokers. There was the arktos who—(Wait, wait, that particular jokerie cannot be told with human persons present; even the subula and the ophis blushed lavender at the rawness of it. A thing like that can only be told to arktos themselves.) And there was another dolcus who—

  Jokers, jokers, it was a typical morning at the clinic.

  One does whatever one can for the oneness that is greater than self. In the case of Dookh-Doctor Drague it meant considerable sacrifice. One who works with the strange species here must give up all hope of material reward or material sophistication in his surroundings. But the Dookh-Doctor was a dedicated man.

  Oh, the Dookh-Doctor lived pleasantly and with a sort of artful simplicity and dynamic involvement in the small articles of life. He had an excited devotion and balanced intensity for corporate life.

  He lived in small houses of giolach-weed, woven with careful double-rappel. He lived in each one for seven days only, and then burned it and scattered the ashes, taking always one bitter glob of them on his tongue for reminder of the fleetingness of temporal things and the wonderfulness of the returning. To live in one house for more than seven days is to become dull and habitual; but the giolach-weed will not burn well till it has been cut and plaited for seven days, so the houses set their own terms. One half day to build, seven days to inhabit, one half day to burn ritually and scatter, one renewal night under the speir-sky.

  The Dookh-Doctor ate raibe, or he ate innuin or ull or piorra when they were in season. And for the nine days of each year when none of these were in season, he ate nothing at all.

  His clothing he made himself of colg. His paper was of the pailme plan
t. His printer used buaf ink and shaved slinn stone. Everything that he needed he made for himself from things found wild in the hedgerows. He took nothing from the cultivated land or from the alien peoples. He was a poor and dedicated servant.

  Now he stacked some of the needful things from the clinic, and Lay Sister Moira P. T. de C. took others of them to her own giolach house to keep till the next day. Then the Dookh-Doctor ritually set his clinic on fire, and a few moments later his house. This was all symbol of the great nostos, the returning. He recited the great rhapsodies, and other persons of the human kind came by and recited with him.

  “That no least fiber of giolach die,” he recited, “that all enter immediately the more glorious and undivided life. That the ashes are the doorway, and every ash is holy. That all become a part of the oneness that is greater than self.

  “That no splinter of the giuis floorboards die, that no glob of the chinking clay die, that no mite or louse in the plaiting die. That all become a part of the oneness that is greater than self.”

  He burned, he scattered, he recited, he took one glob of bitter ash on his tongue. He experienced vicariously the great synthesis. He ate holy innuin and holy ull. And when it was finished, both of the house and the clinic, when it had come on night and he was homeless, he slept that renewal night under the speir-sky.

  * * *

  And in the morning he began to build again, the clinic first, and then the house. “It is the last of either that I shall ever build,” he said. The happy news about himself was that he was a dying man and that he would be allowed to take the short way out. So he built most carefully with the Last Building Rites. He chinked both the buildings with special uir clay that would give a special bitterness to the ashes at the time of final burning.

  Krug Sixteen rolled along while the Dookh-Doctor still built his final clinic, and the sphairikos helped him in the building while they consulted on the case of the screaming foot. Krug Sixteen could weave and plait and rappel amazingly with his pseudopods; he could bring out a dozen of them, a hundred, thick or thin, whatever was needed, and all of a wonderful dexterity. That globe could weave.

  “Does the forgotten foot still suffer, Krug Sixteen?” Dookh-Doctor Drague asked it.

  “It suffers, it’s hysterical, it’s in absolute terror. I don’t know where it is; it does not know; and how I know about it at all is a mystery. Have you found any way to help me, to help it?”

  “No. I am sorry, but I have not.”

  “There is nothing in the literature on this subject?”

  “No. Nothing that I can identify as such.”

  “And you have not found analogy to it?”

  “Yes, Krug Sixteen, ah— In a way I have discovered analogy. But it does not help you. Or me.”

  “That is too bad, Dookh-Doc. Well, I will live with it; and the little foot will finally die with it. Do I guess that your case is somewhat the same as mine?”

  “No. My case is more similar to that of your lost foot than to you.”

  “Well, I will do what I can for myself, and for it. It’s back to the old remedy then. But I am already covered deep with the twinkling salve.”

  “So am I, Krug Sixteen, in a like way.”

  “I was ashamed of my affliction before and did not mention it. Now, however, since I have spoken of it to you, I have spoken of it to others also. There is some slight help, I find. I should have shot off my big bazoo before.”

  “The sphairikoi have no bazoos.”

  “Folk-joke, Dookh-Doc. There is a special form of the twinkling salve. My own is insufficient, so I will try the other.”

  “A special form of it, Krug Sixteen? I am interested in this. My own salve seems to have lost its effect.”

  “There is a girlfriend, Dookh-Doc, or a boyfriend person. How shall I say it? It is a case four person to my case five. This person, though promiscuous, is expert. And this person exudes the special stuff in abundance.”

  “Not quite my pot of ointment I’m afraid, Krug Sixteen; but it may be the answer for you. It is special? And it dissolves everything, including objections?”

  “It is the most special of all the twinkling salves, Dookh-Doc, and it solves and dissolves everything. I believe it will reach my forgotten foot, wherever it is, and send it into kind and everlasting slumber. It will know that it is itself that slumbers, and that will be bearable.”

  “If I were not—ah—going out of business, Krug Sixteen, I’d get a bit of it and try to analyze it. What is the name of this special case four person?”

  “Torchy Twelve is its name.”

  “Yes. I have heard of her.”

  * * *

  Everybody now knew that it was the last week in the life of the Dookh-Doctor, and everyone tried to make his happiness still more happy. The morning jokers outdid themselves, especially the arktos. After all, he was dying of an arktos disease, one never fatal to the arktos themselves. They did have some merry and outrageous times around the clinic, and the Dookh-Doctor got the sneaky feeling that he would rather live than die. He hadn’t, it was plain to see, the right attitude. So Lay Priest Migma P. T. de C. tried to inculcate the right attitude in him.

  “It is the great synthesis you go to, Dookh-Doctor,” he said. “It is the happy oneness that is greater than self.”

  “Oh I know that, but you put it on a little too thick. I’ve been taught it from my babyhood. I’m resigned to it.”

  “Resigned to it? You should be ecstatic over it! The self must perish, of course, but it will live on as an integral atom of the evolving oneness, just as a drop lives on in the ocean.”

  “Aye, Migma, but the drop may hang onto the memory of the time when it was cloud, of the time when it was falling drop, indeed, of the time when it was brook. It may say, ‘There’s too damned much salt in this ocean. I’m lost here.’”

  “Oh, but the drop will want to be lost, Dookh-Doctor. The only purpose of existence is to cease to exist. And there cannot be too much of salt in the evolving oneness. There cannot be too much of anything. All must be one in it. Salt and sulfur must be one, undifferentiated. Offal and soul must become one. Blessed be oblivion in the oneness that collapses on itself.”

  “Stuff it, lay priest. I’m weary of it.”

  “Stuff it, you say? I don’t understand your phrase, but I’m sure it’s apt. Yes, yes, Dookh-Doctor, stuff it all in: animals, people, rocks, grass, worlds, and wasps. Stuff it all in. That all may be obliterated into the great—may I not coin a word even as the master coined them?—into the great stuffiness!”

  “I’m afraid your word is all too apt.”

  “It is the great quintessence, it is the happy death of all individuality and memory, it is the synthesis of all living and dead things into the great amorphism. It is the—”

  “It is the old old salve, and it’s lost its twinkle,” the Dookh-Doctor said sadly. “How goes the old quotation? When the salve becomes sticky, how then will you come unstuck?”

  No, the Dookh-Doctor did not have the right attitude, so it was necessary that many persons should harass him into it. Time was short. His death was due. And there was the general fear that the Dookh-Doctor might not be properly lost.

  He surely came to his time of happiness in grumpy fashion.

  The week was gone by. The last evening for him was come. The Dookh-Doctor ritually set his clinic on fire, and a few minutes later his house.

  He burned, he scattered, he recited the special last-time recital. He ate holy innuin and holy ull. He took one glob of most bitter ash on his tongue: and he lay down to sleep his last night under the speir-sky.

  He wasn’t afraid to die.

  “I will cross that bridge gladly, but I want there to be another side to that bridge,” he talked to himself. “And if there is no other side of it, I want it to be me who knows that there is not. They say, ‘Pray that you be happily lost forever. Pray for blessed obliteration.’ I will not pray that I be happily lost forever. I would rather burn in a hell for
ever than suffer happy obliteration! I’ll burn if it be me that burns. I want me to be me. I will refuse forever to surrender myself.”

  It was a restless night for him. Well, perhaps he could die easier if he were wearied and sleepless at dawn.

  “Other men don’t make such a fuss about it,” he told himself (the self he refused to give up). “Other men are truly happy in obliteration. Why am I suddenly different? Other men desire to be lost, lost, lost. How have I lost the faith of my childhood and manhood? What is unique about me?”

  There was no answer to that.

  “Whatever is unique about me, I refuse to give it up. I will howl and moan against that extinction for billions of centuries. Ah, I will go sly! I will devise a sign so I will know me if I meet me again.”

  * * *

  About an hour before dawn the Lay Priest Migma P. T. de C. came to Dookh-Doctor Drague. The dolcus and the arktos had reported that the man was resting badly and was not properly disposed.

  “I have an analogy that may ease your mind, Dookh-Doctor,” the Lay Priest whispered softly, “ease it into great easiness, salve it into great salving—”

  “Begone, fellow, your salve has lost its twinkle.”

  “Consider that we have never lived, that we have only seemed to live. Consider that we do not die, but are only absorbed into great selfless self. Consider the odd sphairikoi of this world—”

  “What about the sphairikoi? I consider them often.”

  “I believe that they are set here for our instruction. A sphairikos is a total globe, the type of the great oneness. Then consider that it sometimes ruffles its surface, extrudes a little false-foot from its soft surface. Would it not be odd if that false-foot, for its brief second, considered itself a person? Would you not laugh at that?”

  “No, no. I do not laugh.” And the Dookh-Doctor was on his feet.