Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 2 Part 16

Quite a bit could be made from this. The railway was twenty miles away, and there was no stop. He had rolled off it and crossed the desert to make his mark. He might have been a lonesome hobo as colored men are likely to be on that run. And he had a long old walk to the next stop. And he made what was then the highest chalk-mark on the cliff. And he had climbed alone nine feet higher than it was possible to climb to make it.

That was all until the professor came. The professor was G.A.D.

Potter, for his name was Gamiel Audlich Dagobert, all of which he hated. But he liked to be called Gad.

"Gad, Gad," his a.s.sociates would say, "you could rope down from the top or use a 'copter to read the scratches. There is no reason to waste asummer on the Tor. There are better things found digging in the ground than you ever will find on the side of a cliff."

But the professor was a cliff-climber and a chalk-marker, and he had an exaltation to go the highest. We will not tell you what he carved on the cliff, for it was pedantic and stilted, and he had prepared many drafts of it before he went up the cliff the last time.

He spent six weeks in his tent at the foot of the cliff with his wife, Aurora, and they prepared as though it were Everest. They drilled holes and set lead s.h.i.+elds in the rock with eyelets for the ropes. They spun webs of lines and hauled and pulled and rappelled, and did all the things that cliff-climbers do. They cut hand holes and foot holes, and even established a camp "A" two thirds of the way up. And to it they went up and down on a rope ladder where Little Fish-Head and Bo McCoy had climbed like monkeys.

But maximum effort is required for maximum achievement, and the professor was remarkably persevering, as all professors are, and Aurora was remarkably good natured, as all professors'wives must be.

Early in the morning of the last day of spring they went up their ropes and scoop holes till Aurora stood firmly on a newly hewn ledge where Bo McCoy had hung on air. Than the profossor climbed onto her shoulders and made the highest chalk-mark.

We will not record what he carved, as he has already done so, and besides, as we said, it was too stilted and stylish. But yet like all the other marks it was capable of variant and fuller translation. In a later time by another professor who might not have the key to the precise letters themselves, it would be more correctly translated as follows: "I have slain the nightmare and set down the terror. I have climbed beyond dizziness on a cliff that once hung down from the sky before there was a world below it. Even the eagles when they were now would not fly this high. And this above all, while others have ridden on the wind, I only have ridden on the daughter of the wind. This is a red-haired G.o.ddess, a strong slight amazon, a magic anemonead with hair like a red sea and shoulders soft and sweet as the night itself. She sways beneath me but will not break, and the early sun is on her and she is silver and flame. Her neck is of living ivory."

And the rest of it would be very hard to translate even by the best paleocalligraphist. But he would know that this was the hand of an ancient poet who had climbed a dizzy cliff to write a hymn to the dawn.

CONDILLAC'S STATUE.

or Wrens in His Head.

Condillac made a man-sized statue. You did not know that he could make a statue? All philosophers can do all things whatsoever, if only they put their hands to it. He made the statue from a thrust of granite that already stood there. This granite seemed sometimes brown, sometimes green, sometimes blue, but always frog-colored, and never lifeless. Three big men did the rough work, a smith, a wood chopper, and a stonecutter; and Condillac himself did the fine work. He intended the statue to be of n.o.ble appearance. It would have been n.o.ble if cut out of travertine marble; but things cut out of granite can only be comic or oture or grotesque.

His friend the brainy doctor Jouhandeau -- but that crabby old occultist was a friend of n.o.body -- added a thing to the statue according to the plan they had.

The statue stood on the edge of Condillac's estate of Flux, near Beaugency, in the small park there just off the mule road that ran north to Chateaudun, and just off the river Loire itself. It was a fine small park with a gus.h.i.+ng spring that fed a bucket-cistern and a large horse-trough.

And people came there. Wagonmen and coachmen and mulemen stopped at this park. It had heavy gra.s.s all the way from Flux to the river. Hors.e.m.e.n and honest travelers, vagabonds and revolutionaries stopped there; boatmen from the Loire came there to enjoy a few hours. There were big shade trees and fine water in the summer, and plenty of underwood and stone hearths for the winter. There were old sheep sheds toward the river where one could sleep in the sour hay.

Children came there from town and country. Basket-women came out from Beaugency to sell bread and cheese and apples and wine to the travelers. And everybody who came there would like the statue.

It was a burlesque thing, a boy-man ma.s.s with a lumpish loutish body and a very big head on it. It had a grin almost too wide for that lived. Its face was slack and vacant most of the time, but in a certain shadow-hour it became a face of curious profundity. It was a clodhopper, a balourd.

The statue stood there a month, "till it should be accustomed to the site," as Condillac and jouhandeau said. After that, the two of them came in deep evening and opened the head of the statue. (Even the kids who climbed on it had not known that the head would open.) Jouhandeau made the first connection in that head. Then they sat on one of the great stone benches of the park and talked about it till the late moon arose.

"Are you sure it is still alive?" Condillac asked the crabby doctor.

"I myself do not believe in life," jouhandeau said, "but it is still alive, as you understand life."

"And you are sure that it was wiped clean?"

"Oh, absolutely, indiscussably. It gets its first sensory impressions now."

"if you can do such a thing, jotihandeau, then you can do a thousand other things. It shakes me even to think of them."

"I can do them, and I will not. I do this only to oblige you, to aid you in your studies. But you will be proved wrong; and you will not admit that you are wrong; so it will all be for nothing."

"But others will someday do what you can do now, Jouhandeau."

"Perhaps in two hundred years. I am not much more than two hundred years before my time. After all, Cugnot's automobile is regarded as more curiosity by everyone. It will be more than a hundred years before such things are made commercially. And here is one greater than Cugnot: myself."

After a while, night men came out of the boscage of the river meadows to look for prey; and Condillac and Jouhandeau slipped back through the trees to the estate house before the rising moon should discover them to the night thieves.

And now the statue was getting its first sensory impressions.

"Old Rock can smell now," the kids told the people.

"How would a statue smell with a stone nose?" the people asked.

"Does he snuffle or move or anything? How do you know that he can smell?"

"We don't know how he can smell with a stone nose," the kids said, "and he doesn't snuffle or move or anything. But he can smell now, and we don't know how he can."

Old Rock could smell now all right. And there was one other thing he seemed to do sometimes, but it was hard to catch him at it.

Lathered horses, foam-whitened harness, green goop in the horse trough, those were smells of the little pirk and the big country. Wet flint stones, grickle birds and the mites on them; river gra.s.s and marl gra.s.s and loam gra.s.s; oaks and chestnuts, wagon-wheel grease, men in leather; stone in shade, and stone in sun; hot mules, and they do not smell the same as hot horses, mice in the gra.s.s roots, muskiness of snakes; sharpness of fox hair, air of badger holes; brown dust of the Orleans road, red dust of the road to Chateatidun; crows that have fed today, and those who have not; time-polisbed coach wood; turtles eating low grapes, and the grapes being bruised and eaten; sheep and goats; cows in milk, now stilted colts; longloaves, corks of wine bottles, cicadas in pig-weeds; hands of smiths and feet of charcoal burners; whetted iron on travelers; pungent blouses of river men; oatcakes and sour cream; wooden shoes, goose eggs, now-spread dung, potato bugs; thatciicrs at work; clover, vetch, hairy logs of b.u.mblebees. There are no two of these things that have the same smell.

The kids said that the statue could smell even with a stone nose. He stood and smelled for a month, and the smells informed his stone.

Then Condillac and jouhandeau came at night, opened the head of the statue, and made the second connection. Afterwards, they sat on one of the stone benches and talked about it till the late moon rose.

"I will prove that there are no innate concepts," Condillac said. "I will confute all foolish philosophers forever. I will prove that there is nothing in the mind but what goes in by the senses. You have obtained prime mature brain matter, s.n.a.t.c.hed out of its dwellings at the moment before its deaths, blended in its several sources, and swept clean by your own techniques. It is an empty house here, and we introduce its dwellers one by one. Why do you say I will be proved wrong, Jouhandeau?"

"I do not believe that there are any innate concepts either. I do not believe that there are any concepts of any sort, anywhere, ever. But what you call concepts will crawl into that mind, not only by the senses through the stone apertures, but by means beyond you." They argued till the night-bats and the night-sickness flew up from the river to look for prey; then they slipped back through the trees to the estate house.

"01d Rock can hear now," the kids told the people.

"Oh, cut the clownerie, kids," the people said. "How could a statue hear with stone ears?"

But he could hear. And there was the other thing that he still seemed to do, and now the kids caught him at it sometimes.

Ah, a whole catalog of different sounds and noises. Old Rock stood and listened for a month to the manifold noises that were all different. By the sounds and the noises he informed his stone. He began to understand the sounds.

That month gone by, Gondillac and Jouhandeau came at night, made the third connection inside the head of the statue, and sat and talked about it till the late moon rose.

"Old Rock can see now," the kids said.

"Ah, there is something funny about that statue," the people agreed.

"It no longer has stone eyes, but live eyes that move. But what is so wonderful about seeing? A pig or a chicken can do the same thing."

But there was that other thing that Old Rock-Head did, that he had been doing for some time. The statue laughed, openly and loudly now. He chuckled, rooted in the chuckling earth.

"Well, how can he laugh?" Condillac asked. "We haven't made such a connection. Indeed, we couldn't have. We couldn't have influenced him in this unknowingly?"

"Impossible," said Jouhandeau. "Neither of us has ever laughed."

Well, Statue stood and saw with his eyes for a month. Perhaps it was not wonderful (wonderful is an innate concept, and therefore cannot be), but it was a new dimension. The b.u.mpkin eyes twinkled and stared by turns, and the stone grin became even wider.

Condillac and Jouhandeau came by night to their monthly appointment, opened the head of the statue, made a fourth connection, and sat talking about it till the late moon rose.

"The Rock-Head can talk now," the kids told the people.

"Oh, we know that," the people said. "He talks to us too, but whatis so wonderful about talking if it is no more than his talk? Big as he is, he talks like a half-grown kid. The fellow must be r.e.t.a.r.ded."

Yes, he was, a little; but he began to catch up.

But the first person that Statue had talked to was his maker, Condillac himself.

"Statue, you are a tabula rosa," Colidillac said to him.

"I don't know what that is," said Rock-Head. "Talk honest French, or I cannot understand you. Such is the only talk I have heard in the month I have stood here with loosened ears."

"Your brain was a tablet shaved smooth," said Condillac, "and we have let sensations into it one sense at a time, from the most simple to the most complex. This is to show that you may be functional without innate ideas. I will have to give you a name, Statue."

"Rock-Head is my name," said Statue. "The kids named me. They are friendly most of the time, but sometimes they are rock-throwing rogues."

"But you can have no idea of friendly or unfriendly," Condillac said. "These are only empty words that people use. You can have no idea of good or bad, of beauty or ugliness, of form or deformity, of pleasure or pain, Yours was mature brain matter, though swept clean, and none of the childish entrances could have been made, as with others. We have not yet hooked up your sense of touch, and we may not; it would mean running tendons all through you. Contamination may enter by the sense of touch. But now you can have no idea of justice or injustice, of elegance or inelegance, of wealth or of poverty. In fact, all these opposites are meaningless, as I will prove through you. They are only the babbling of blind philosophers."

"But I do have these ideas, Condillac," Rock-Head insisted. "I have them strongly. I learned right smells and wrong smells; right tones and wrong tones; right shapes and forms and colors, and wrong, Oh, may I always choose the right things, Condillac!"

"Statue, you sound like an idiot preacher-man. There are no right things or wrong things, there are no innate ideas. There are no things in-place or out-of-place. I prove this all through you."

"Condillac, you are the Abbe of Mureaux, and you draw pay for such,"

Rock-liond said. "You would be in-place there. You are out-of-place on your estate Flux."

"What is the matter with you, Statue?" Condillac demanded. "You are flighty and wan-witted."

"Wrens in my head, they say of me. It's a country expression, Condillac. Besides, I have them literally, quite a pleasant family of them inside my stone head. Learn from the wren wisdom!"

Condillac angrily beat on the lower part of the statue with his leaded cane, breaking off toes. "I will not be lectured by a rock!" he crackled. "You have not these ideas originally, and mature brain matter will reject such. Therefore, you have them not! Reason is the thing, Statue, rationality. We promulgate it. It spreads. It prevails. The tomorrow world will be the world of total reason."

"No, it will be the Revolution," said Rock-Head. "A world condemned to such short fare as bleak reason will howl and cry out for blood."

A long-tongued woman came to Rock-Head. "My confessor told me that, whenever I feel impelled to repeat gossip, I should whisper it to a statue, and then forget it," she said. So she whispered it to Rock-Head for an hour and a half.

In the cool of the evening, Rock-Head repeated it, loudly and stonily, to the quite a few people who were enjoying the evening there, and he found himself the center of interest. But he was uneasy about it; he didn't understand why the confessor had instructed the woman to tell him such things.

One evening the revolutionaries gathered and talked at the foot of Statue. "It should have happened in our fathers' time," one of them said.

"Let it now be in our own time. We may not rightly push this thing off on our sons. The poor become poorer and the corrupt become more corrupt. How many does it take to upheave a world? There are five of us here. Up! Up!

Five for the Revolution!"

"Six," cried Rock-Head. "I am for the Revolution too. Up, up, arise!"

"Statue, Statue," one ofthem asked, "how long have you been able to hear?"

"I'm in my third month of it, fellows."

"Then you have heard us before. You know what we stand for. We will have to destroy you."

"It is only a statue, Fustel," said another of them. "It would be superst.i.tion to destroy it. And we are enlightened."

"But what if he blurts out our slogans which he has heard, Hippolyte?"

"A good thing. Let the statue cry slogans, and the people will be amazed."

"Up with the Revolution!" Rock-Head cried again. "But I am not sure that you fellows provide a sufficient base for it. I visualize creatures with a narrower and more singular bent. I will string along with you, but meanwhile I will see what I can do about having real revolutionaries made."

"Have you noticed the now carp in the horse trough, Rock-Head?" the occult doctor Jouhandeau asked as he came by to visit one day.

"Yes, the kid seems to be in some kind of trouble. I'd comfort him if I could get down to him. But how do you know he's a new carp? People don't notice such things."

"I put him there, Rock-Head," said Jouhandeau. "And I put a human child's brain into him, shaved smooth, of rouce, and trimmed to fit. He can smell and hear and see, but he could do as much when he had a fish's brain."

"Jouhandeau, that kid's scared to death."

"Couldn't be, Rock-Head. Where could he have the idea of scared? Are you contradicting the wise Condillac?"

"Jouhandeau, I am friend to revolutionaries, but all the revolutionaries sound deficient to me. Make me revolutionaries who will do the thing!"

"Anything to oblige a stone-headed friend. I have already done some thinking along this line. I will not even have to transfer brains, or flop like vultures over the dying to rob them of these things. I can take st.u.r.dy farmers and townsmen and intellectuals as they stand, destroy certain small nodules in their heads, and we will have them ready to go. I treat them for the escarbilles, a disease of which I have never heard, and they even less.

But I stop them in the reoadways and tell them that they are afflicted and that I can cure them in a moment. And I do cure them in a moment, of something, but not of the escarbilles."

"Will they have a narrower and more singular bent?"

"They will, Rock-Head, so narrow and singular that you could hardly believe it."

A young fellow was smooching his girl and loving her up in the park.

"I want to do that too," Rock-Head called out loudly.

"All right, come down and do it," said the girl. "It's fun."

"But I can't come down," Rock-Head complained.

"Then you can't do it," the girl said, and they laughed at him.