Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 2 Part 21

But he didn't.

The talk traiicd off, the fire burned down, they went to their sleeping sacks.

Then it was long jagged night, and the morning of the fourth day.

But wait! In Nahuat-Tanoan legend, the world ends on the fourth morning. All the lives we lived or thought we lived had been but drcains of third night.

The loin cloth that the suit wore on the fourth day's journey was not so valuable as one has made out. It was worn for no more than an hour or so.

And, if fact, there was something terminal about fourth morning.

Anteros had disappeared. Magdalen had disappeared. The chimney rock looked greatly diminished in its bulk (something had gone out of it) and much crazier in its broken height. The sun had come up a garish gray-orange color through fog. The signature -glyph of the first stone dominated the ambient.

It was as if something were coming down from the chimney, a horrifying smoke; but it was only noisome morning fog.

No it wasn't. There was something else coming down from the chimney, or front the hidden sky: pebbles, stones, indescribable bits of foul oozings, the less fastidious pieces of sky; a light nightmare rain had begun to fall there; the chimney was apparently beginning to crumble.

"It's the d.a.m.nedest thing I ever heard about," Robert Derby growled.

"Do you think that Magdalen really went off with Anteros?" Derby was bitter and fumatory this morning and his face was badly clawed.

"Who is Magdalen? Who is Anteros?" Ethyl Burdock risked.

Terrence Burdock was hooting front high on the mound. "All come up,"

he called. "Here is a find that will make it all worth while. We'll have to photo and sketch and measure and record and witness. It's the finest basalt head I've ever seen, man-sized, and I suspect that there's a man-sized body attached to it. We'll soon clean it and clear it. Gah! What a weird fellow he was!"

But Howard Steinleser was studying a brightly colored something that he held in his two hands.

"What is it, Howard? What are you doing?" Derby demanded.

"Ah, I believe this is the next stone in the sequence. The writing is alphabetical but deformed, there is an element missing. I believe it is in modern English, and I will solve the deformity and see it true in a minute. The text of it seems to be --"

Rocks and stories were coming down from the chimney, and fog, amnesic and wit-stealiiig fog.

"Steinleser, are you all right?" Robert Derby asked with compa.s.sion.

"That isn't a stone that you hold in your hand."

"It isn't a stone. I thought it was. What is it then?"

"It is the fruit of the Osage Orange tree, the American Meraceous.

It isn't a stone, Howard." And the thing was a tough, woody, wrinkled mock-orange, as big as a small melon.

"You have to admit that the wrinkles look a little bit like writing, Robert."

"Yes, they look a little like writing, Howard. Let us go up where Terrence is bawling for us. You've read too many stories. And it isn't safe here."

"Why go up, Howard? The other thing is coming down."

It was the bristled-boar earth reaching up with a rumble. It was a lightning bolt struck upward out of the earth, and it got its prey. Therewas explosion and roar. The dark capping rock was jerked from the top of the chimney and slammed with terrible force to the earth, shattering with a great shock. And something else that had been on that capping rock. And the whole chimney collapsed about them.

She was broken by the encounter. She was shattered in every bone and member of her. And she was dead.

"Who -- who is she?" Howard Steinleser stuttered.

"Oh G.o.d! Magdalen, of course!" Robert Derby cried.

"I remember her a little bit. Didn't understand her. She put out like an evoking moth but she wouldn't be had. Near clawed the face off me the other night when I misunderstood the signals. She believed there was a sky bridge. It's in a lot of the mythologies. But there isn't one, you know.

Oh well."

"The girl is dead! d.a.m.nation! What arc you grubbing in those stones?"

"Maybe she isn't dead in them yet, Robert. I'm going to read what's here before something happens to them. This capping rock that fell and broke, it's impossible, of course. It's a stratum that hasn't been laid down yet. I always did want to read the future and I may never get another chance."

"You fool! The girl's dead! Does n.o.body care? Terrence, stop bellowing about your find. Come down. The girl's dead."

"Come up, Robert and Howard," Terrence insisted. "Leave that broken stuff down there. It's worthless. But n.o.body ever saw anything like this."

"Do come up, men," Ethyl sang. "Oh, it's a wonderful place! I never saw anything like it in my life."

"Ethyl, is the whole morning mad?" Robert Derby demanded as he came up to her. "She's dead. Don't you really remember her? Don't you remember Magdalen?"

"I'm not sure. Is she the girl down there? Isn't she the same girl who's been hanging around here a couple days? She shouldn't have been playing on that high rock. I'm sorry she's dead. But just look what we're uncovering here!"

"Terrence. Don't you remember Magdalen?"

"The girl down there? She's a little bit like the girl that clawed the h.e.l.l out of me the other night. Next time someone goes to town they might mention to the sheriff that there's a dead girl here. Robert, did you ever see a face like this one? And it digs away to reveal the shoulders. I believe there's a whole man-sized figure here. Wonderful, wonderful!"

"Terrence, You're off your head. Well, do you remember Anteros?"

"Certainly, the twin of Eros, but n.o.body ever made much of the symbol of unsuccessful love. Thunder! That's the name for him! It fits him perfectly. We'll call him Anteros."

Well, it was Aiitcros, life-like in basalt stone. His face contorted. He was sobbing soundlessly and frozenly and his shoulders were hunched with emotion. The carving was fascinating in its miserable pa.s.sion, his stony love unrequited. Perhaps he was more impressive now than he he would be when he was cleaned. He was earth, he was earth itself. Whatever period the carving belonged to, it was outstanding in its power.

"The live Anteros, Terrence. Don't you remember our digging man, Anteros Manypenny?"

"Sure. He didn't show up for work this morning, did he? Tell him he's fired."

"Magdalen is dead! She was one of us! Dammit, she was the main one of us!" Robert Derby cried. Terrence and Etliyl were earless to his outburst. They were busy uncovering the rest of the carving.

And down below, Howard Steinleser was studying dark broken rocks before they would disappear, studying a stratum that hadn't been laid down yet, reading a foggy future.

OLD FOOT FORGOT

"Dookh-Doctor, it is a sphairikos patient," Lay Sister Moira P.T. de C. cried happily. "It is a genuine spherical alien patient. You've never had one before, not in good faith. I believe it is what you need to distract you from the -- ah -- happy news about yourself. It is good for a Dookh-Doctor to have a different patient sometimes."

"Thank you, lay sister. Let it, him, her, fourth case, fifth case or whatever come in. No, I've never had a sphairikos in good faith. I doubt if this one is, but I will enjoy the encounter."

The sphairikos rolled or pushed itself in. It was a big one, either a blubbery kid or a full-grown one. It rolled itself along by extruding and withdrawing pseudopods. And it came to rest grinning, a large translucent rubbery ball of fleeting colors.

"h.e.l.lo, Dookh-Doctor," it said pleasantly. "First I wish to extend my own sympathy and that of my friends who do not know how to speak to you for the happy news about yourself. And secondly I have an illness of which you may cure me. "

"But the sphairikoi are never ill," Dookh-Doctor Drague said dutifully.

How did he know that the round creature was grinning at him? By the colors, of course; by the fleeting colors of it. They were grinning colors.

"My illness is not of the body but of the head," said the sphairikos.

"But the sphairikoi have no heads, my friend."

"Then it is of another place and another name, Dookh-Doctor. There is a thing in me suffering. I come to you as a Dookh-Doctor. I have an illness in my Dookh. "

"That is unlikely in a sphairikos. You are all perfectly balanced, each a cosmos unto yourself. And you have a central solution that solves everything. What is your name?"

"Krug Sixteen, which is to say that I am the sixteenth son of Krug; the sixteen fifth case son, of course. Dookh-Doc, the pain is not in me entirely; it is in an old forgotten part of me."

"But, you sphairikoi have no parts, Krug Sixteen. You are total and indiscriminate ent.i.ties. How would you have parts?"

"It is one of my pseudopods, extended and then withdrawal in much less than a second long ago when I was a little boy. It protests, it cries, it wants to come back. It has always bothered me, but now it bothers the intolerably. It screams and moans constantly now."

"Do not the same ones ever come back?"

"No. Never. Never exactly the same ones. Will exactly the same water ever run past one point in a brook? No. We push them out and we draw them back. And we push them out again, millions of times. But the same one can never come back. There is no ident.i.ty. But this one cries to come back, and now it becomes more urgent. Dookh-Doc, how can it be? There is not one same molecule in it as when I was a boy. There is nothing of that pseudopod that is left; but parts of it have come out as parts of other pseudopods, and now there can be no parts left. There is nothing remaining of that foot; it has all been absorbed a million times. But it cries out! And I have compa.s.sion on it."

"Krug Sixteen, it may possibly be a physical or mechanical difficulty, a pseudopod imperfectly withdrawn, a sort of rupture whose effects you interpret wrongly. In that case it would be better if you went to your own doctors, or doctor: I understand that there is one."

"That old fogey cannot help me, Dookh-Doc. And our pseudopods are always perfectly withdrawn. We are covered with the twinkling salve; it is one-third of our bulk. And if we need more of it we can make more of it ourselves; or we call beg some of it from a cla.s.s four who make it prodigiously. It is the solvent for everything. It eases every possible wound; it makes us round as b.a.l.l.s; you should use it yourself, Dookh-Doc.But there is one small foot in me, dissolved long ago, that protests and protests. Oh, the shrieking! The horrible dreams!"

"But the sphairikoi do not sleep and do not dream."

"Right enough, Dookh-Doc. But there's an old dead foot of mine that sure does dream loud and woolly."

The sphairikos was not grinning now. He rolled about softly in apprehension. How did the Dookh-Doctor know that it was apprehension? By the fleeting colors. They were apprehension colors now.

"Krug Sixteen, I will have to study your case," said the Dookh-Doctor. "I will see if there are any references to it in the literature, though I don't believe that there are. I will seek for a.n.a.logy.

I will probe every possibility. Can you come back at the same hour tomorrow?"

"I will come back, Dookh-Doc," Krug Sixteen sighed. "I hate to feel that small vanished thing crying and trembling."

It rolled or pushed itself out of the clinic by extruding and then withdrawing pseudopods. The little pushers came out of the goopy surface of the sphairikos and then were withdrawn into it completely. A raindrop failing in a pond makes a much more lasting mark than does the disappearing pseduopod of a sphairikos.

But long ago, in his boyhood, one of the pseudopods of Krug Sixteen had not disappeared completely in every respect.

"There are several jokers waiting," Lay Sister Moira P.T. de C.

anounced a little later, "and perhaps some valid patients among them. It's hard to tell."

"Not another sphairikos?" the Dookh-Doctor asked in sudden anxiety.

"Of course not. The one this morning is the only sphairikos who has ever come. How could there by anything wrong with him? There is never anything wrong with a sphairikos. No, these are all of the other species.

Just a regular morning bunch."

So, except for the visitation of the sphairikos, it was a regular morning at the clinic. There were about a dozen waiting, of the several species; and at least half of them would be jokers. It was always so.

There was a lean and giddy subula. One cannot tell the age or s.e.x of them. But there was a t.i.ttering. In all human or inhuman expression, whether of sound, color, radioray or osmerhetor,the t.i.tter suggests itself. It is just around the corner, it is just outside, it is subliminal, but it is there somewhere.

"It is that my teeth hurt so terrible," the subula shrilled so high that the Dookh-Doctor had to go on instruments to hear it. "They are tramping pain. They are agony. I think I will cut my head off. Have you a head-off cuttcr, Dookh-Doctor?"

"Let me see your teeth," Dookh-Doctor Drague asked with the beginnings of irritation.

"There is one tooth jump up and down with spike boot," the subula shrilled. "There is one jag like poisoned needle. There is one cuts like coa.r.s.e rough saw. There is one burns like little hot fires."

"Let me see your teeth," the Dookh-Doctor growled evenly.

"There is one drills holes and sets little blasting powder in them,"

the subula shrilled still more highly. "Then he sets them off. Ow! Good night!"

"Let me see your teeth!!"

"Peeef!" the subula shrilled. The teeth cascaded out, half a bushel of them, ten thousand of them, all over the floor of the clinic.

"Peeef," the subula screeched again, and ran out of the clinic.

t.i.ttering? (But he should have remembered that the subula have no teeth.) t.i.ttering? It was the laughing of demented horses. It was the jackhammer braying of the dolcus, it was the hysterical giggling of theophis (they were a half a bushel of sh.e.l.ls of the little stink conches and they were already beginning to rot), it was the clown laughter of the arktos (the clinic would never be habitable again; never mind, he would burn it down and build another one tonight).

The jokers, the jokers, they did have their fun with him, and perhaps it did them some good.

"I have this trouble with me," said a young dolcus, "but it make me so nervous to tell it. Oh, it do make the nervous to tell it to the Dookh-Doc."

"Do not be nervous," said the Dookh-Doctor, fearing the worst. "Tell the your trouble in whatever way you can. I am here to serve every creature that is in any trouble or pain whatsoever. Tell it."

"Oh but it make me so nervous. I perish. I shrivel. I will have accident I am so nervous."

"Tell me your trouble, my friend. I am here to help."

"Whoops, whoops, I already have accident! I tell you I am nervous."