Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 2 Part 12

They used to tell it so.

One comment on this burial story: The Shelni do have careful burial.

But the burial crypts are plainly dug, not by the six-fingered Shelni, but by the seven-clawed Skokie. There must be substance to the Skokie burial-person. Moreover, the Skokie, though higher on the very low scale than the Shelni, do not bury their own.

Furthermore, there are no Shelni remains going back more than about thirty equivalent years. There are no random lying or fossil Shelni at all, though such remains are common for every other species here.

The second story (of the first day).

The Shelni Who Turned into a Tree This is how they tell it.

There was a woman who was neither Shelni nor Skokie nor Frog. She was Sky Woman. One day she came with her child and sat down under the Shelni tree. When she got up to go she left her own child who was asleep and picked up a Shelni child by mistake. Then the Shelni woman came to get her own child and she looked at it. She did not know what was wrong but it was a Sky People child.

'Oh, it has pink skin and flat eyes! How can that be?' the Shelni woman asked. But she took it home with her and it still lives with the Shelni and everyone has for-gotten the difference.

n.o.body knows what the Sky Woman thought when she got the Shelni child home and looked at it. Nevertheless she kept it, and it grew and was more handsome than any of them.

But when the second year came and the young Shelni was grown, it walked in the woods and said 'I do not feel like a Sky People. But if I am not a Sky People, then what am I? I am not a Duck. I am not a Frog. And if I am a Bird, what kind of Bird am I? There is nothing left. It must be that I am a Tree.' There was reason for this. We Shelni do look a little bit like trees and we feel a little bit like trees.

So the Shelni put down roots and grew bark and worked hard at being a tree. He underwent all the hardships that are the life of a tree. He was gnawed by goats and gobniu; he was rough-tongued by cattle and crom; he was infested by slugs and befouled by the nameless animal. Moreover, parts of him were cut away for firewood.

But he kept feeling the jug music creeping up all the way from his undertoes to his hair and he knew that this music was what he had always been looking for. It was the same jug and tine music that you hear even now.

Then a bird told the Shelni that he was not really a tree but that it was too late for him to leave off growing like a tree. He had brothers and sisters and kindred living in the hole down under his roots, the bird said, and they would have no home if he stopped being a tree.

This is the tree that is the roof of our den where we are even now.

This tree is our brother who was lost and who forgot that he was a Shelni.

This is the way it has always been told.

On the second day it was remarkable how much Holly had come to look like a Shelni. Ah well, she has come to look like every sort of creature we have ever studied together. Holly insists that the Shelni have intelligence, and I half agree with her. But the paragraph in the basic manual of this world is against us: "-- a tendency to attribute to the Shelni an intelligence which they do not possess, perhaps due to their fancied human resemblance. In maze-running they are definitely inferior to the rodents. In the manipulation of latches and stops they are less adept than the earth racc.o.o.ns or the asteroid rojon. In tool handling and true mimicry they are far from equal to the simians. In simple foraging and the instinct for survival they are far below the hog or the harzl. In mneme, the necessary prelude to intelligence, they are about on par with the turtles. Their 'speech' lacks the verisimilitude of the talking birds, and their 'music' is below that of the insects. They make poor watchdogs and inadequate scarecrows. It appears that the move to ban shelniphagi, though perhaps sincere, is ill-advised. After all, as an early s.p.a.ceman put it, 'What else are they good for?'

Well, we have to admit that the Shelni are not as intelligent as rats or hogs or harzls. Yet I, surely due to the influence of Holly, feel a stronger affinity to them than to rats or hogs or c.o.o.ns or crows or whatever. But no creature is so helpless as the Shelni.

How do they even get together?

The Shelni have many sorts of songs, but they do not have any romantic songs in our sense. After all, they are small children till they die of old age. Their s.e.xual relationship seems distinguished either by total unawareness or by extreme bashfulness.

"I don't see how they bring it off at all, Vincent," Holly said the second day (which was yesterday). "They are here, so they must have been born. But how do these bashful and scatterbrained three-year-olds ever get together to bring it off? I can't find anything at all in their legends or acting patterns, can you?

"In their legends, all their children are foundlings. They are born or discovered under a blueberry bush (my translation of spionam). Or alternately, and in other cycles, they are found under a quicken tree or in a cuc.u.mber patch. In common sense we must a.s.sume that the Shelni are placental and viviparous. But should we apply common sense to goblin folk?

"They also have a legend that they are fungoid and spring out of the ground at night like mushrooms. And that if a Shelni woman wishes a child, she must buy a fungoid slip from a Skokie and plant it in the ground. Then she will have her child ready the next morning."

But Holly was depressed yesterday morning. She had seen some copy by our sponsor The Singing Pig Breakfast Food Company and it disturbed her: "Singing Pig! The Children love it! Nourishing Novelty! Nursery Rime Characters in a can for your convenience! Real Meat from Real Goblins! No fat, no bones. If your can has a lucky number tab, you can receive free a facsimile Shelni jug flute. Be the first on your block to serve Singing Pig, the meat from real Goblins. Cornstarch and natural flavor added."

Oh well, it was only an advertis.e.m.e.nt that they used back on World.

We had our recording to do.

"Vincent, I don't know how they got here," Holly said, "but I know they won't be here very long. Hurry, hurry, we have to get it down! I will make them remembered somehow."

Holly got them to play on the tines that second day (which was yesterday). There had been an impediment the day before, she said. The tines may not be played for one until the second day of acquaintance. The Shelni do not have stringed instruments. Their place is taken by the tines, the vibrating, singing forks. They play these many p.r.o.nged tuned forks like harps, and in playing them they use the tree roots for sounding boards so that even the leaves in the air above partake a little of the music. The tines, the forks are themselves of wood, of a certain very hard but light wood that is sharp with chert and lime dust. They are wood, I believe, in an early stage of petrifaction. The tine fork music usually follows the jug flute music, and the ballads that are sung to it have a dreamlike sadness oftone that belies the childish simplicity of the texts.

Here are two more of those ballad stories that we recorded on the second day (which was yesterday).

The Skokie Who Lost His Wife This is the way they tell it.

A Skokie heard a Shelni jug flute jugging one night.

'That is the voice of my wife,' the Skokie said. 'I'd know it anywhere.'

The Skokie came over the moors to find his wife. He went down into the hole in the ground that his wife's voice was coming from. But all he found there was a Shelni playing a jug flute.

'I am looking for my poor lost wife,' the Skokie said. 'I have heard her voice just now coming out of this hole. Where is she?'

'There is n.o.body here but myself,' the Shelni said. 'I am sitting here alone playing my flute to the moons whose light runs down the walls of my hole.'

'But I heard her here,' said the Skokie, 'and I want her back.'

'How did she sound?' asked the Shelni. 'Like this?' And he jugged some jug music on his flute.

'Yes, that is my wife,' said the Skokie. 'Where have you hidden her?

That is her very voice.'

'That is n.o.body's wife,' the Shelni told the Skokie. 'That is just a little tune that I made up.'

'You play with my wife's voice, so you must have swallowed my wife,'

the Skokie said. 'I will have to take you apart and see.'

'If I swallowed anybody's wife I'm sorry,' said the Shelni. 'Go ahead then.'

So the Skokie took the Shelni apart and scattered the pieces all over the hole and some of them on the gra.s.s outside. But he could not find any part of his wife.

'I have made a mistake,' said the Skokie. 'Who would have thought that one who had not swallowed my wife could make her voice on the flute!'

'It is all right,' said the Shelni, 'so long as you put me together again. I remember part of the way I go. If you remember the rest of the way, then you can put me together again.'

But neither of them remembered very well the way the Shelni was before he was taken apart. The Skokie put him together all wrong. There were not enough pieces for some parts and too many for others.

'Let me help,' said a Frog who was there. 'I remember where some of the parts go. Besides, I believe it was my own wife he swallowed. That was her voice on the flute. It was not a Skokie voice.'

The frog helped, and they all remembered what they could, but it did not work. Parts of the Shelni could not be found again, and some of the parts would not go into him at all. When they had him finished, the Shelni was in great pain and could hardly move, and he didn't look much like a Shelni.

'I've done all I can,' the Skokie said. 'That's the way you'll have to be. Where is Frog?'

'I'm inside,' said Frog.

'That's where you will have to stay,' the Skokie said. 'I've had enough of both of you. Enough, and these pieces left over. I will just take them with me. Maybe I can make someone else out of them.'

That is the way the Shelni still is, put together all wrong. In his wrong form he walks the country by night, being ashamed to go by day. Some folks are startled when they meet him, not knowing this story. He still plays his jug flute with the lost Skokie Wife's voice and with Frog's voice.

Listen, you can hear it now! The Shelni goes in sorrow and pain because n.o.body knows how to put him together right.The Skokie never did find his lost wife.

This is how it is told.

And then there was the second story that we recorded yesterday, the last story, though we did not know it then, that we would record of the Shelni: The Singing Pigs This is how they say it.

We have the ancient story of the singing pigs who sing so loud that they fly up into the sky on the tail of their own singing. Now we ourselves, if we can sing loud enough, if we can jug the flutes strong enough, if we can tang the tines deep enough, will get to be the Singing Pigs of our own story. Many already have gone away as Singing Pigs.

There come certain bell men with music carts. They play rangle-dangle Sky music. They come for love of us. And if we can hurry fast enough when they come we can go with them, we can ride a tin can over the sky.

Bong! bong! that is the bell man with the music cart now! All the Shelni hurry! This is the day you may get to go. Come all you Shelni from the valley and the stream and jump on the cart for the free ride. Come all the Shelni from the meadows and the woods. Come up from the tree roots and the holes underground. The Skokie don't get to go, the Frogs don't get to go, only the Shelni get to go.

Cry if the cart is too full and you don't get to go today, but don't cry too long. The bell men say that they will come back tomorrow and every day till there are no Shelni left at all.

'Come all you little Singing-Pig-Shelni,' a bell man shouts. 'Come get your free rides in the tin cans all the way to Earth! Hey, Ben, what other animal jumps onto the slaughter wagon when you only ring a bell? Come along little Shelni-Pigs, room for ten more on this wagon. That's all, that's all. We'll have lots more wagons going tomorrow. We'll take all of you, all of you! Hey, Ben, did you ever see little pigs cry when there's no more room for them on the slaughter wagon?' These are the high kind words that a bell man speak for love of us.

Not even have to give a burial tooth or other tooth to pay for the ride. Frogs can't go, Skokies can't go, only the Shelni get to go!

Here are the wonderful things! From the wagon, the Shelni get to go to one room where all their bones are taken out. This does never happen to Shelni before. In another room the Shelni are boiled down to only half their size, little as little-boy Shelni. Then they all get to play the game and crawl into the tin cans. And then they get their free ride in the tin cans all the way to Earth. Ride a tin can!

Wipe off your sticky tears you who miss the music cart today. Go to sleep early tonight and rise early tomorrow. Sing your loudest tomorrow so the bell men will know where to come. Jug the flutes very strong tomorrow, tang the tines deep, say whoop! whoop! here we are, bell men.

All laugh when they go with the bell men in the music cart. But there is story that someday a Shelni woman will cry instead of laugh when they take her. What can be the matter with this woman that she will cry? She will cry out 'd.a.m.n you, it's murder! They're almost people! You can't take them! They're as much people as I am. Double d.a.m.n you, you can't take me!

I'm human. I know I look as funny as they do but I'm human. Oh, oh, oh!'

This is the funniest thing of the story, the prophecy thing part.

Oh, oh, oh, the woman will say, Oh, oh, oh, the jug flutes will echo it. What will be the matter with the Shelni woman who cries instead of laughs?

This is our last story, wherever it is told. When it is told for the last time, then there will be no more stories here, there will be no moreShelni. Who needs stories and jug flute music who can ride a tin can?

That is how it has been said.

Then we went out (for the last time, as it happened) from the Shelni burrow.

And, as always, there was the riming with the five-year-old Ancient who guarded the place: "What to crowing?"

"Got to going."

"Jinx on Jolly, Golly, Holly!"

"Were it other, Bug, my brother!"

"Holly crying. Sing her flying, Jugging, shouting."

"Going outing."

Now this was remarkable. Holly Harkel was crying when we came out of the burrow for the (as it happened) last time. She was crying great goblin tears. I almost expected them to be green.

Today I keep thinking how amazingly the late Holly Harkel had finally come to look like the Shelni. She was a Shelni. "It is all the same with me now," she said this morning. "Would it be love if they should go and I should stay?"

It is a sticky business. I tried to complain, but those people were still ringing that bell and chanting "All you little Pig-Shelni-Singers come jump on the cart. Ride a tin can to Earth! Hey, Ben, look at them jump on the slaughter wagon!"

"It was inexcusable," I said. "Surely you could tell a human from a Shelni."

"Not that one," said a bell ringer. "I tell you they all jumped on the wagon willingly, even the funny looking one who was crying. Sure, you can have her bones, if you can tell which ones they are."

I have Holly's bones. That is all. There was never a creature like her. And now it is over with.

But it is not over!

Singing Pig Breakfast Food Company, beware! There will be vengeance!

It has been told.

CROCODILE.

The bas.e.m.e.nt room smelled of apples and ink. The editor was there as always, filling the room with his presence. He was a heavy man-image, full of left-handed wisdom and piquant expression. The editor alivays had time for a like-minded visitor, and George Florin came in as to a room in his own home and sat down in a deep chair in front of the "cracker barrel."

"It's been a rough day," Florin said. "That makes it doubly good to see you."

"Except that you do not see me at all," the editor said. "But it is quite a presence that I project -- all the kindly cliches rolled into one.

All the prime comments commneted so perfectly once again. The man I took for model was Don Marquis, though he was a columnist and not an editor in that earlier century. He kept, as you might not recall, a typewriting c.o.c.kroach in his desk drawer. I keep a homunculus, a tiny manthing who comes out at night and dances over the machinery inserting his comments. He is one of our most popular characters, and I give him some good lines."

"The conviction cannot be escaped that the mind most akin to mine is not a mind at all," said Florin. He spoke pleasantly, for all that his stomach growled. "You are an amazing personality, though not a person. You seem all sympathy, and are yourself incapable of pathe, of suffering. You are humane but not human: humorous, and without the humors. You haven't aface, probably not a body, certainly not a spirit, though you are usually in high spirits. You have integrity, though you're not even an integer. You're a paradox, my editor, though without a doxa of your own."

"Your style has come to resemble my own, Florin," the editor said.

"Rather fruity for a human, do you not think? Yet I find it about right for robots. We're rather simple creatures."

The rather simple creature was the editor of "Rab i Rabat, the World's Most Unusual Newspaper." He -- it -- was located in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Press Building, which housed what one wag called "the World's Most Usual Newspaper," a ma.s.sive daily. But Rab i Rabat was not ma.s.sive. It was a small paper produced by a robot for robots, or for the elite of robots who were up to such things.

Florin called the editor "Rab" when he called him anything, and the creature had given up correcting him.

"I am not an editor. I am a newspaper," Rab had explained it to Florin at their first meeting. "Myself, being nothing, or rather being six different affiliated machines, have no name except my several technical names. I am a bank of telemagnetic devices. The data goes directly and continuously to my subscribers. Some of my subscribers are human. They find something in me that they can no longer get elsewhere."