Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 2 Part 22

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 sc.r.a.pe 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 lauglhng! 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 Dookli-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 all 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 plant. 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 c.h.i.n.king clay die, that no mite or louse in the paiting 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 c.h.i.n.ked both the building 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 a.n.a.logy to it?"

"Yes, Krug Sixteen, ah -- in a way I have discovered a.n.a.logy. 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."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 a.n.a.lyze 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 att.i.tude. So Lay Priest Migilia P.T. de C. tried to inculcate the right att.i.tude 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 falling drop indeed, of the time when it was brook. It may say 'There's too d.a.m.ned 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 sulphur 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, gra.s.s, 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 att.i.tude, so it was necessary that many persons should hara.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on.

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 inuin 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 h.e.l.l forever than suffer happy obliteration! I'll burn if it be the that burn. 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 a.n.a.logy that may case 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 Dookli-Doctor was on his feet.

"And in much less than a second, that pseudopod is withdrawn back into the sphere of the sphairikoi. So it is with our lives. Nothing dies. It is only a ripple on the surface of the oneness. Can you entertain so droll and idea as that the pseudopod should remember, or wish to remember?"

"Yes. I'll remember it a billion years for the billion who forget."

The Dookh-Doctor was running uphill in the dark. He crashed into trees and boles as though he wished to remember the cras.h.i.+ng forever.

"I'll burn before I forget, but I must have something that says it's me who burns!"

Up, up by the spherical hills of the sphairikoi, bawling and stumbling in the dark. Up to a hut that had a certain fame he could never place, to the hut that had its own ident.i.ty, that sparkled with ident.i.ty.

"Open, open, help me!" the Dookh-Doctor cried out at the last hut on the bill.

"Go away, man!" the last voice protested. "All my clients are gone, and the night is almost over with. What has this person to do with a human man anyhow?"

It was a round twinkling voice out of the roweled dark. But there was enduring ident.i.ty there. The twinkling, enduring-ident.i.ty colors, coining from the c.h.i.n.ks of the hut, had not reached the level of vision.

There was even the flicker of the I-will-know-me-if-I-meet-me-again color.

"Torchy Twelve, help me. I am told that you have the special salve that solves the last problem, and makes it know that it is always itself that is solved.""Why, it is the Dookh-Doc! Why have you come to Torchy?"

"I want something to send me into kind and everlasting slumber," he moancd. "But I want it to be me who slumbers Cannot you help me in any way?"

"Come you in, the Dookh-Doc. This person, though promiscuous, is expert. I help you --"

ALL PIECES OF A RIVER Sh.o.r.e.

It had been a very long and ragged and incredibly interlocked and detailed river sh.o.r.e. Then a funny thing happened. It had been broken up, sliced up into pieces. Some of the pieces had been folded and compressed into bales. Some of them had been cut into still smaller pieces and used for ornaments and as Indian medicine. Rolled and baled pieces of the sh.o.r.e came to rest in barns and old warehouses, in attics, in caves. Some were buried in the ground.

And yet the river itself still exists physically, as do its sh.o.r.es, and you may go and examine them. But the sh.o.r.e you will see along the river now is not quite the same as that old sh.o.r.e that was broken up and baled into bales and rolled onto rollers, not quite the same as the pieces you will find in attics and caves.

His name was Leo Nation and he was known as a rich Indian. But such wealth as he had now was in his collections, for he was an examining and acquiring man. He had cattle, he had wheat, he had a little oil, and he spent everything that came in. Had he more income he would have collected even more.

He collected old pistols, old ball shot, grindstones, early windmills, walking-horse thres.h.i.+ng machines, flax combs, Conestoga wagons, bra.s.s-bound barrels, buffalo robes, Mexican saddles, slick horn saddles, anvils, Argand lamps, rush holders, hay-burning stoves, hackamores, branding irons, chuck wagons, longhorn horns, beaded sc.r.a.pes, Mexican and Indian leatherwork, buckskins, heads, feathers, squirrel-tail anklets, arrowheads, deerskin s.h.i.+rts, locomotives, streetcars, millwheels, keelboats, buggies, ox yokes, old parlor organs, blood-and-thunder novels, old circus posters, harness bells, Mexican oxcarts, wooden cigar-store Indians, cable-twist tobacco a hundred years old and mighty strong, cuspidors (four hundred of them), Ferris wheels, carnival wagons, carnival props of various sorts, carnival proclamations painted big on canvas. Now he was going to collect something else. He was talking about it to one of his friends, Charles Longbank, who knew everything.

"Charley," he said, "do you know anything about 'The Longest Pictures in the World' which used to be shown by carnivals and in hippodromes?"

"Yes, I know a little about them Leo. They are an interesting bit of Americana: a bit of nineteenth-century back country mania. They were supposed to be pictures of the Mississippi River sh.o.r.e. They were advertised as one mile long, five miles long, nine miles long. One of them, I believe, was actually over a hundred yards long. They were badly painted on bad canvas, crude trees and mudbank and water ripples, simplistic figures and all as repet.i.tious as wallpaper. A strong-armed man with a big brush and plenty of barn pain of three colors could have painted quite a few yards of such in one day. Yet they are truly Americana. Are you going to collect them, Leo?"

"Yes, but the real ones aren't like you say."

"Leo, I saw one. There is nothing to them but very large crude painting."

"I have twenty that are like you say, Charley. I have three that are very different. Here's an old carnival poster that mentions one."

Leo Nation talked eloquently with his hands while he also talked with his mouth, and now he spread out an old browned poster with lovinghands: "The Arkansas Traveler, World's Finest Carnival, Eight Wagons, Wheels, Beasts, Dancing Girls, Baffling Acts, Monsters, Games of Chance. And Featuring the World's Longest Picture, Four Miles of Exquisite Painting.

This is from the Original Panorama; it is Not a Cheap-Jack Imitation."

"So you see, Charley, there was a distinction: there were the original pictures, and there were the crude imitations."

"Possibly some were done a little better than the others, Leo; they could hardly have been done worse. Certainly, collect them if you want to.

You've collectcd lots of less interesting things."

"Charley, I have a section of that panoramic picture that once belonged to the Arkansas Traveler Carnival. I'll show it to you. Here's another poster: "King Carnival, The King of Them All. Fourteen Wagons. Ten Thousand Wonders. See the Rubber Man. See the Fire Divers. See the Longest Picture in the World, see Elephants on the Mississippi River. This is a Genuine Sh.o.r.e Depictment, not the Botches that Others Show."

"You say that you have twenty of the ordinary pictures, Leo, and three that are different?"

"Yes, I have, Charley. I hope to get more of the genuine. I hope to get the whole river."

"Let's go look it one, Leo, and see what the difference is."