Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 2 Part 11

It was a rendezvous of ships and boats in an immensity of green islands scattered in a purple-blue sea. It was a staging area for both ships and islands; thence they would travel in convoys to their proper positions, but here they were all in a jumble. There were LST's and Jay Boats, cargo ships and little packets. There were old sailing clippers with topgallants and moonsc.r.a.pers full of wind, though they were at anchor. There was much moving around, and it was easy to step from the ships to the little green islands (if they were islands, some of them no more than rugs of floating moss, but they did not sink) and back onto the ships. There were sailors and seamen and pirates shooting c.r.a.ps together on the little islands. Blujackets and bandits would keep jumping front the ships down to join the games, and then others would leave them and hop onto other islands.

Piles of money of rainbow colors and of all sizes were everywhere.

There were pesos and pesetas and pesarones. There were crowns and cronets and rixdollars. There were gold certificates that read "Redeemable only at Joe's Marine Bar Panama City." There were guilders with the Queen's picture on them, and half-guilders with the Jack's picture on them. There were round coins with square holes in them, and square coins with round holes. There was stage money and invasion money, and comic money from the Empires of Texas and Louisiana. And there were bales of real frogskius, green and sticky, which were also current.

"Commodore," one of the pirates said, "get that boat out of the way or I'll ram it down your throat." "I don't have any boat," said the dreamer.

"I'm not a commodore; I'm an army sergeant; I'm supposed to guard this box for the lieutenant." Oh h.e.l.l, he didn't even have a box. What had happened to the box? "Commodore," said the pirate, "get that boat out of the way or I'll cut off your feet."

He did cut off his feet. And this worried the boy, the dreamer, since he did not know whether it was in the line of duty or if he would be paid for his feet.

"I don't know which boat you mean," he told the pirate. "Tell me which boat you mean and I'll try to move it." "Commodore," the pirate said, "move this boat or I'll cut your hands off. "This isn't getting us anywhere," the dreamer said, "tell me which boat you want moved." "If you don't know your own boat by now, I ought to slit your gullet," the pirate said. It was harder to breathe after that, and the boy worried more. "Sir, you're not even a pirate in my own outfit. You ought to get one of the sailors to move the boat for you. I'm an army sergeant and I don't even know how to move a boat."

The pirate pushed him down in a grave on one of the green islands and covered him up. He was dead now and it scared him. This was not at all like he thought it would be. But the green dirt was transparent and he couldstill see the salty dogs playing cards and shooting c.r.a.ps all around him.

"If that boat isn't moved," the pirate said, "you're going to be in real trouble." "Oh, let him alone," one of the dice players said. So he let him alone.

"It's ritual sacrifice he offers," Rousse said, "He brings the dinest gifts he can make every time. I will have to select a top one from the files for my own Precursor."

Then it was toward the North Sh.o.r.e again as the Precursor dream faded.

It was with a big motor launch now, as big as a yacht, half as big as a ship. The craft was very fast when called on to be, for it was going through pa.s.ses that weren't there all the time. Here was a seacliff, solid and without a break. But to one who knows the secret there was a way through. Taken at morning half-light and from a certain angle there was a pa.s.sage through. The launch made it, but barely. It was a very close thing, and the cliffs groubd together again behind it. And there behind was the other face of the seacliff, solid and sheer. But the ocean ahead was different, for they had broken with the map and with convention in finding a pa.s.sage where there was none. There were now great groupings of islands and almost islands. But some of them were merely sarga.s.so-type weed islands, floating clumps; and some of them were only floating heaps of pumice and ash front a volcano that was now erupting.

How to tell the true island front the false? The dreamer threw rocks at all the islands. If the islands were of weed or pumice or ash they would give but a dull sound. But if they were real land they would give a solid ringing sound to the thrown rock. Most of them were false isiiiids, but now one rang like iron.

"It is a true island," said the dreamer, "it is named Pulo Bakal."

And after the launch had gone a great way through the conglomerate, one of the islands rang like solid wood to the thrown rock. "It is a true island,"

said the dreamer, "it is named Pulo Kaparangan."

And finally there was a land that rang like gold, or almost like it (like cracked gold really) to the thrown rock. "It is true land, I think it is," said the dreamer. "It is named Pulo Ginto. I think it is. It is the land itself, and its North Sh.o.r.e should be the Sh.o.r.e Itself. But it is spoiled this day. The sound was cracked. I don't want it as much as I thought I did. It's been tampered with."

"This is it," Rousse urged the dreamer "Quickly now, right around the point and you are there. We can make it this time."

"No, there's something wrong with it. I don't want it the way it is.

I'll just wake up and try it some other time."

"Second stage called for," Rousse cried. He did certain things with elctrodes and with a needle into Miller's left rump, and sent him reeling back into the dream. "We'll make it," Rousse encouraged. "We're there. It's everything you've sought."

"No, no, the light's in wrong. The sound was cracked. What are we coming to -- oh no no, it's ruined, it's ruined forever. You robbed me of it."

What they came to was that little ca.n.a.l off the River and into the Sixth Street Slip to the little wharf where barges used to tie up by the consolidated wharehouse. And it was there that Miller stormed angrily onto the rotten wooden wharf, past the old wharehouse, up the hill three blocks and past his own apartment house, to the left three blocks and up into the a.n.a.lyst's office, and there the dream and reality came together.

"You robbed me, you filthy fool," Miller sputtered, waking up in a blathering anger. "You've spoiled it forever. I'll not go back to it. It isn't there anymore. What a cra.s.s thing to do. "

"Easy, easy, Miller. You're cured now, You know. You can enter into your own full life again. Have you never heard the most beautiful parable ever, about the boy who went around the world in search of the strangestthing of all, and came to his own home in the end, and it so transfigured that he hardly knew it?"

"It's a lie, is what it is. Oh, you've cured me, and you get your fee. And slyness is the name of your game. May somebody someday rob you of the ultimate thing!"

"I hope not, Miller."

Rousse had been making his preparations for a full twenty-four hours. He had cancelled appointments and phased out and transferred patients. He would not be available to anyone for some time, he did not know for how long a time.

He had a hideout, and isolated point on a wind-ruffled lake. He needed no instrumentation, he believed he knew the direct way into it.

"It's the real thing," he told himself. "I've seen the shape of it, accidentally in the dream sky that hung over it. Billions of people have been on the earth, and not a dozen have been to it; and not one would bother to put it into words. 'I have seen such things --' said Aquinas. 'I have seen such things --' said John of the Cross. 'I have seen such things --'

said Plato. And they all lived out the rest of their lives in a glorious daze.

"It is too good for a peasant like Miller. I'll grab it for myself."

It came easy. An old leather couch is as good a craft as any to go there. First the Earth Basic and the Permeating Ocean, that came natural on the wind-ruffled point of the lake. Then the ritual offering, the Precursor Dream. Rousse had thrown a number of things into this: a tonal piece by Gideon Styles, and old seascape by Grobin that had a conic and dreamlike quality, Lyall's curious sculpture "Moon crabs," a funny sea the by McVey and a poignant one by Gironella. It was pretty good. Rousse understood this dream business.

Then the Precursor Dream was allowed to fade back. And it was off toward the North Sh.o.r.e by a man in the first craft ever dreamed up, by a man who knew just what he wanted, "The Thing Itself," by a man who would give all the days of his life to arrive at it.

Rousse understood the approaches and the shoals now; he had studied them thoroughly. He knew that, however different they had seemed each time in the dreams of Miller, they were always essentially the same. He took the land right at the first rounding of the point, leiping clear and letting his launch smash on the rocks.

"There will be no going back now," he said, "it was the going back that always worried Miller, that caused him to fail." The cliffs here appeared forbidding, but Rousse had seen again and again the little notch in the high purple of them, the path over. He followed the path with high excitement and cleared the crest.

"Here Basho walked, here Aquin, he John de Yepes," he proclaimed, and he came down toward the North Sh.o.r.e itself, with the fog over it beginning to lift.

"You be false captain with a stolen launch," said a small leviathan off sh.o.r.e.

"No, no, I dreamed the launch myself," Rousse maintained. "I'll not be stopped. "

"I will not stop you," said the small leviathan. "The launch is smashed, and none bit I know that you are false captain."

Why, it was clearing now! The land began to leap out in its richness, and somewhere ahead was a glorious throng. In the throat of a pa.s.s was a monokeros, sleek and brindled.

"None pa.s.ses here and lives," said the monokeros.

"I pa.s.s," said Rousse.

He pa.s.sed through, and there was a small moan behind him.

"What was that?" he asked. "You died," said the monokeros.

"Oh, so I'm dead on my couch, am I? It won't matter. I hadn't wanted to go back."

He went forward over the ensorcled and pinnacled land, hearing the rakish and happy throng somewhere ahead.

"I must not lose my way now," said Rousse. And there was a stele, standing up and telling him the way with happy carved words.

Rousse read it, and he entered the sh.o.r.e itself.

And all my read and enter.

The stele, the final marker, was headed: Which None May Read and Return And the words on it -- And the words -- And the words -- Let go! You're holding on! You're afraid! Read it and take it. It is not blank!

It's carved clear and bright.

Read it and enter.

You're afraid.

RIDE A TIN CAN.

These are my notes on the very sticky business. They are not in the form of a protest, which would be useless. Holly is gone, and the Shelni will all be gone in the next day or two, if indeed there are any of them left now. This is for the record only.

Holly Harkel and myself, Vincent Vanhoosier, received funds and permission to record the lore of the Shelni through the intercession of that old correlator John Holmberg. This was unexpected. All lorists have counted John as their worst enemy.

"After all, we have been at great expense to record the minutiae of pig grunts and the sound of earth-worms," Holmberg told me, "and we have records of squeakings of hundreds of species of orbital rodents. We have veritable libraries of the song and cackle of all birds and pseudo-ornins.

Well, let us add the Shelni to our list. I do not believe that their thumping on tree roots or blowing into jug gourds is music. I do not believe that their sing song is speech anymore than the squeaking of doors is speech. We have recorded, by the way, the sound of more than thirty thousand squeaking doors. And we have had worse. Let us have the Shelni, then, if your hearts are set on it. You'll have to hurry. They're about gone.

"And let me say in all compa.s.sion that anyone who looks like Miss Holly Harkel deserves her heart's desire. That is no more than simple justice. Besides, the bill will be footed by the Singing Pig Breakfast Food Company. These companies are bitten by the small flea of remorse every now and then and they want to pitch a few coins into some fund for luck. It's never many coins that they want to pitch; the remorse bug that bites them is never a very large one. You may be able to stretch it to cover your project though, Vanhoosier."

So we had our appropriation and our travel, Miss Holly and myself.

Holly Harkel had often been in disrepute for her claims to understand the languages of various creatures. There was special outrage to her claim that she would be able to understand the Shelni. Now that was odd.

No disrepute attached to Captain Charbonnett for his claim to understand the planetary simians, and if there was ever a phony claim it was this. No disrepute attached to Meyrowitz for his claim of finding esoteric meanings in the patterns of vole droppings. But there seemed something incredible in the claim of the goblin faced Holly Harkel that not only would she be able to understand the Shelni instantly and completely but that they were not lowscavenger beasts at all, that they were genuine goblin people who played goblin music and sang goblin songs.

Holly Harkel had a heart and soul too big for her dwarfish body, and a brain too big for her curious little head. That, I suppose, is what made her so lumpy everywhere. She was entirely compounded of love and concern and laughter, and much of it bulged out from her narrow form. Her ugliness was one of the unusual things and I believe that she enjoyed giving it to the worlds. She had loved snakes and toads, she had loved monkeys and misbegottens. She had come to look weirdly like them when we studied them.

She was a snake when we studied them, she was a toad when they were our subject. She studied every creature from the inside of it. And here there was an uncommon similarity, even for her.

Holly loved the Shelni instantly. She became a Shelni, and she hadn't far to go. She moved and scooted and climbed like a Shelni. She came down trees headfirst like a Shelni or a squirrel. She had always seemed to me to be a little other than human. And now she was avid to record the Shelni things "-- before they be gone."

As for the Shelni themselves, some scientists have called them humanoid, and then braced themselves for the blow and howl. If they were humanoid they were certainly the lowest and oddest humanoids ever. But we folklorists knew intuitively what they were. They were goblins pure and simple -- I do not use the adjectives here as cliche' The tallest of them were less than three feet tall; the oldest of them were less than seven years old. They were, perhaps, the ugliest creatures in the universe, and yet of a pleasant ugliness. There was no evil in them at all. Scientists who have tested them have insisted that there was no intelligence in them at all. They were friendly and open. Too friendly, too open, as it happened, for they were fascinated by all human things, to their harm. But they were no more human than a fairy or an ogre is human. Less, less, less than a monkey.

"Here is a den of them," Holly divined that first day (it was the day before yesterday). "There will be a whole coven of them down under here and the door is down through the roots of this tree. When I got my doctorate in primitive music I never imagined that I would be visiting Brownies down under tree roots. I should say that I never so much as hoped that I would be. There was so much that they didn't teach us. There was even one period in my life when I ceased to believe in goblins."

The latter I do not believe.

Suddenly Holly was into a hole in the ground headfirst, like a gopher, like a ground squirrel, like a Shelni. I followed her, letting myself down carefully, and not headfirst. I myself would have to study the Shelni from the outside. I myself would never be able to crawl inside their green goblin skins, never be able to croak or carol with their frog tongues, never feel what made their popeyes pop. I myself would not even have been able to sense out their dens.

And at the bottom of the hole, at the entrance to the den itself, was an encounter which I disbelieved at the time I was seeing and hearing it. There occurred a conversation which I heard with my own ears, they having become transcendent for the moment. It was in the frog-croak Shelni talk between Holly Harkel and the five-year-old Ancient who guarded the coven, and yet it was in a sort of English and I understood it: "Knockle, knockle." (This from Holly).

"Crows in c.o.c.kle." (This from the guard).

"Wogs and wollie."

"Who you?" "Holly."

"What's a dinning?"

"Coming inning."

So they let us in. But if you think you can enter a Shelni coven without first riming with the five-year-old Ancient who guards it, then it's plain that you've never been in one of the places. And though thephilologists say that the "speech" of the Shelni is meaningless croaking, yet it was never meaningless to Holly, and in flashes it was not meaningless to me. The secret guess of Holly was so.

Holly had insisted that the Shelni spoke English within the limits of their vocal apparatus. And they told her at this very first session that they never had had any language of their own "because no one had ever made one for us"; so they used English as soon as they came to hear it. "We would pay you for the use of it if we had anything to pay you with," they said. It is frog-croak English, but only the pure of ear can understand it.

I started the recorder and Holly started the Shelni. Quite soon she had them playing on those jug shaped flutes of theirs. Frog music. Ineffably sad sionnach skirries. Rook, crow, and daw squabbling melody. They were pleasant, weird little pieces of music that sounded as though they were played underwater. It would be hard to imagine them not played under the ground at least.

The tunes were short just as all tunes of children are short. There was no real orchestration, though that should have been possible with the seven flutes differently jugged and tuned. Yet there was true melody in these: short, complete, closed melody, dwarfed perfection. They were underground fugues full of worms' blood and cool as root cider. They were locust and chaffer and cricket din.

Then Holly got one of the most ancient of the Shelni to tell stories while the jug flutes chortled. Here are the two of them that we recorded that first day. Others who listen to them today say that there is nothing to them but croaking. But I heard them with Holly Harkel, she helped interpret them to me, so I can hear and understand them perfectly in frog-croak English.

Take them, Grisly Posterity! I am not sure that you deserve even this much of the Shelni.

The Shelni Who Lost His Burial Tooth It is told this way.

There was a Shelni who lost his burial tooth before he died. Every Shelni begins life with six teeth, and he loses one every year. Then, when he is very old and has only one tooth left, he dies. He must give the last tooth to the Skokie burial-person to pay for his burial. But this Shelni had either lost two teeth in one year or else he had lived to too great an age.

He died. And he had no tooth left to pay with.

'I will not bury you if you have no tooth left to pay me with,' said the Skokie burial-person. 'Should I work for nothing?'

'Then I will bury myself,' said the dead Shelni.

'You don't know how,' said the Skokie burial-person. 'You don't know the places that are left. You will find that all the places are full. I have agreement that everybody should tell everybody that all the places are full, so only the burial-person may bury. That is my job.'

Nevertheless, the dead Shelni went to find a place to bury himself.

He dug a little hole in the meadow, but wherever he dug he found that it was already full of dead Shelnis or Skokies or Frogs. And they always made him put all the dirt back that he had dug.

He dug holes in the valley and it was the same thing. He dug holes on the hill, and they told him that the hill was full too. So he went away crying for he could find no place to lie down.

He asked the Eanlaith whether he could stay in their tree. And they said, no he could not. They would not let any dead folks live in their tree.

He asked the Eise if he could stay in their pond. And they said, no he could not.

They would not allow any dead folks in their pond.

He asked the Sionnach if he could sleep in their den. And they said, no he could not. They liked him when he was alive, but a dead person hashardly any friends at all.

So the poor dead Shelni wanders yet and can find no place to rest his head.

He will wander forever unless he can find another burial tooth to pay with.