Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 1 Part 34

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 sanct.i.ty 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 surpa.s.s all existing Earth records. It is simply a question offiner 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 repet.i.tion 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 const.i.tuting them a pilot Earth PTA. b.) A little constructive book-burning, particularly in the education field. c.) Judicious hanging of certain malingering students.

POLITY AND CUSTOM OF THE CAMIROI.

ABSTRACT FROM REPORT OF FIELD GROUP FOR EXAMINATION OF OFF-EARTH.

CUSTOMS AND CODEXES TO THE COUNCIL FOR GOVERNMENT RENOVATION AND LEGAL.

RETHINKING.

Extract from the day book of Paul Piggott, political a.n.a.lyst: Making appointments with the Camiroi is proverbially like building with quicksilver. We discovered this early. But they do have the most advanced civilization of any of the four human worlds. And we did have a firm invitation to visit the planet Carnfroi and to investigate customs. And we had the promise that we would be taken in hand immediately on our arrival by a group parallel to our own.

But there was no group to meet us at the Sky-Port. "Where is the Group for the Examination of Customs and Codexes?" we asked the girl who wason duty as Information Factor at the Sky-Port.

"Ask that post over there," she said. She was a young lady of mischievous and almost rakish mien.

"I hope we are not reduced to talking to posts," said our leader, Charles Chosky, "but I see that it is some sort of communicating device.

Does the post talk English, young lady?"

"The post understands the fifty languages that all Camiroi know,"

the young lady said. "On Camiroi, even the dogs speak fifty languages. Speak to it."

"I'll try it," said Mr. Chosky. "Ah, post, we were to be taken in hand by a group parallel to our own. Where can we find the Group for the Examination of Customs and Codexes?"

"Duty! Duty!" cried the post in a girlish voice that was somehow familiar. "Three for a group! Come, come, be const.i.tuted!"

"I'll be one," said a pleasant-looking Camiroi, striding over.

"I'll be another," said a teen-age sproutling boy of the same species.

"One more, one more!" cried the post. "Oh, here comes my relief.

I'll be the other one to form the group. Come, come, let's get started. What do you want to see first, good people?"

"How can a post be a member of an ambulatory group?" Charles Chosky asked.

"Oh, don't be quaint," said the girl who had been the information factor and also the voice of the post. She had come up behind us and joined us. "Sideki and Nautes, we become a group for cozening Earthlings," she said. "I am sure you heard the rather humorous name they gave it."

"Are you as a group qualified to give us the information we seek?" I asked.

"Every citizen of Camiroi is qualified, in theory, to give sound information on every subject," said the teen-age sproutling.

"But in practice it may not be so," I said, my legal mind fastening onto his phrase.

"The only difficulty is our over-liberal admission to citizenship,"

said Miss Diayggeia, who had been the voice of the post and the Information Factor. "Any person may become a citizen of Camiroi if he has resided here for one oodle. Once it was so that only natural leaders traveled s.p.a.ce, and they qualified. Now, however, there are subsidized persons of no ability who come. They do not always conform to our high standard of reason and information."

"Thanks," said our Miss Holly Holm, "and how long is an oodle?"

"About fifteen minutes," said Miss Dia. "The post will register you now if you wish."

The post registered us, and we became citizens of Camiroi.

"Well, come, come, fellow citizens, what can we do for you?" asked Sideld, the pleasant-looking Camiroi who was the first member of our host group.

"Our reports of the laws of Gamirci seem to be a mixture of travelers' tales and nonsense," I said. "We want to find how a Camiroi law is made and how it works."

"So, make one, citizens, and see how it works," said Sideki. "You are now citizens like any other citizens, and any three of you can band together and make a law. Let us go down to Archives and enact it And you be thinking what sort of law it will be as we go there."

We strode through the contrived and beautiful parklands and groves which were the roofs of Camfroi City. The extent was full of fountains and waterfalls, and streams with bizarre bridges over them. Some were better than others. Some were better than anything we had ever seen anywhere.

"But I believe that I myself could design a pond and weir as good as this one," said Charles Chosky, our leader. "And I'd have some of those bushes that look like Earth sumac in place of that cl.u.s.ter there; and I'dbreak up that pattern of rocks and tilt the layered ma.s.sif behind it, and bring in a little of that blue moss --"

"You see your duty quickly, citizen," said Sideki. "You should do all this before this very day is gone. Make it the way you think best, and remove the plaque that is there. Then you can dictate your own plaque to any of the symbouleutik posts, and it will be made and set in. 'My composition is better than your composition,' is the way most plaques read, and sometimes a scenery composer will add something humorous like 'and my dog can whip your dog.' You can order all necessary materials from the same post there, and most citizens prefer to do the work with their own hands.

This system works for gradual improvement. There are many Consensus Masterpieces that remain year after year; and the ordinary work is subject to constant turnover. There, for instance, is a tree which was not there this morning and which should not be there tonight. I'm sure that one of you can design a better tree."

"I can," said Miss Holly, "and I will do so today." We descended from the roof parklands in the lower streets of Camiroi City, and went to Archives.

"Have you thought of a new law yet?" Miss Dia asked when we were at Archives. "We don't expect brilliance from such new citizens, but we ask you not to be ridiculous."

Our leader, Charles Chosky, drew himself up to full height and spoke: "We promulgate a law that a permanent group be set up on Camiroi to oversee and devise regulations for all random and hasty citizens' groups with the aim of making them more responsible, and that a fullscale review of such groups be held yearly."

"Got it?" Miss Dia called to an apparatus there in Archives.

"Got it," said the device. It ground its entrails and coughed up the law, inscribed on bronze, and set it in a law niche.

"The echo is deafening," said our Miss Holly, pretending to listen.

"Yes. What is the effect of what we have done?" I asked.

"Oh, the law is in effect," said young Nautes. "It has been weighed and integrated into the corpus of laws. it is already considered in the instructions that the magistrate coming on duty in a short time (usually a citizen will serve as magistrate for one hour a month) must scan before he takes his seat. Possibly in this session he will a.s.sess somebody guilty of a misdemeanor to think about this problem for ten minutes and then to attach an enabling act to your law."

"But what if some citizens' group pa.s.ses a silly law?" our Miss Holly asked.

"They do it often. One of them has just done so. But it will be repealed quickly enough," said Miss Dia of the Camiroi. "Any citizen who has his name on three laws deemed silly by general consensus shall lose his citizenship for one year. A citizen who so loses his citizenship twice shall be mutilated, and the third time he shall be killed. This isn't an extreme ruling. By that time he would have partic.i.p.ated in nine silly laws. Surely that's enough."

"But, in the meantime, the silly laws remain in effect?" our Mr.

Chosky asked.

"Not likely," said Sideki. "A law is repealed thus: any citizen may go to Archives and remove any law, leaving the statement that he has abolished the law for his own reasons. He is then required to keep the voided law in his own home for three days. Sometimes the citizen or citizens who first pa.s.sed the law will go to the house of the abolitionist.

Occasionally they will fight to the death with ritual swords, but most often they will; parley. They may agree to have the law abolished. They may agree to restore the law. Or they may together work out a new law that takes into account the objections to the old."

"Then every Camiroi law is subject to random challenge?" Choskyasked.

"Not exactly," said Miss Dia. "A law which has stood unchallenged and unappealed for nine years becomes privileged. A citizen wishing to abolish such a law by removal must leave in its place not only his declaration of removal but also three fingers of his right hand as earnest of his seriousness in the matter. But a magistrate or a citizen going to reconst.i.tute the law has to contribute only one of his fingers to the parley."

"This seems to me to favor the establishment," I said.

"We have none," said Sideki. "I know that is hard or Earthlings to understand."

"But is there no senate or legislative body on Camiroi, or even a president?" Miss Holly asked.

"Yes, there's a president," said Miss Dia, "and he is actually a dictator or tyrant. He is chosen by lot for a term of one week. Any of you could be chosen for the term starting tomorrow, but the odds are against it.

We do not have a permanent senate, but often there are hasty senates const.i.tuted, and they have full powers."

"Such bodies having full powers is what we want to study," I said.

"When will the next one be const.i.tuted and how will it act?"

"So, const.i.tute yourselves one now and see how you act," said young Nautes. "You simply say, 'We const.i.tute ourselves a Hasty Senate or Camiroi with full powers. Register yourselves at the nearest symnbouleutic post, and study your senate introspectively."

"Could we fire the president-dictator?" Miss Holly asked.

"Certainly," said Sideki, "but a new president would immediately be chosen by lot; and your senate would not carry over to the new term, nor could any of you three partake of a new senate until a full presidential term had pa.s.sed. But I wouldn't, if I were you, form a senate to fire the present president. He is very good with the ritual sword."

"Then citizens do actually fight with them yet?" Mr. Chosky asked.

"Yes, any private citizen may at any time challenge any other private citizen for any reason, or for none. Sometimes, but not often, they fight to the death, and they may not be interfered with. We call these decisions the Court of Last Resort."

Reason says that the legal system on Camiroi cannot be as simple as this, and yet it seems to be. Starting with the thesis that every citizen of Camiroi should be able to handle every a.s.signment or job on Camiroi, these people have cut organization to the minimum. These things we consider fluid or liberal about the legal system of Camiroi. Hereafter, whenever I am tempted to think of some law or custom of Earth as liberal, I will pause. I will hear Camiroi laughing.

On the other hand, there are these things which I consider adamant or conservative about the laws of Camiroi: No a.s.sembly on Camiroi for purposes of entertainment may exceed thirty-nine persons. No more than this number may witness any spectacle or drama, or hear a musical presentation, or watch a sporting event. This is to prevent the citizens from becoming mere spectators rather than originators or partakers. Similarly, no writing -- other than certain rare official promulgations -- may be issued in more than thirty-nine copies in one month.

This, it seems to us, is a conservative ruling to prevent popular enthusiasms.