Space Chantey

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I’m a little weary, but not that way. Sorry to have seen you Charisse, or should I say Chiara?”

  “Melisand. I just believe that I will be Melisand.”

  “Hey, Cap’n,” a huge slack-faced man called to Roadstrum. “Come bust a bottle with me. I think I used to know you before I got muddled in the head.”

  “And after the holocaust, God made green grass again!” Roadstrum roared happily. “Trochanter! Spleen of my spleen and aorta of my aorta! Trochanter!”

  “Easy on the sloppy stuff, Cap’n. I like you too. Let me poke you one to see if you’re real. A lot of them aren’t. Hey, you are real.”

  “Of course I’m real!” Roadstrum swore, picking himself up from the floor (Trochanter poked hard). “Did any of the other men survive? Have you seen any of the others?”

  “I talk to Cutshark and Crabgrass quite a bit.”

  “Trochanter, Crewman Cutshark died in the maw of the Siren-Zo, and Crewman Crabgrass was eaten by the Polyphemians. They’re dead.”

  “I didn’t say they weren’t dead, Cap’n. I just said I talked to them quite a bit. I’m addled in my wits now, I’ve told you.”

  Trochanter, the crewman without peer! He was as rough a fellow as Crewmen Birdsong and Fairfeather, who had remained on Lamos to become giants. He was a hornier stag than even Crewmen Clamdigger and Threefountains. An incandescent, heavy, tall man. But some of the light had gone out of him now. He was still heavy, but not so—

  “You aren’t as tall as you used to be, are you, Trochanter?” Roadstrum asked him.

  “Nope, burned the bottom half-meter of my feet and legs off on Hellpepper Planet. You remember that ruckus, Cap’n. Hottest ground I ever saw there! Say, I talk to Crewman Clamdigger sometimes too. I think he’s alive. He seems solider than Cutshark and Crabgrass.”

  “Ah, several of us have survived, then.”

  “Cap’n, anytime you want to go again, I’ll be here. You can’t tell. You just might want to go again sometime.”

  “I will remember,” said Roadstrum. “It is very unlikely, but if I ever go again I will certainly take you along, Trochanter.”

  “Captain,” called the nameless houri, “if you really want to go again, I’ll forget the Charisse and Chiara and Melisand bit and go along. And Crewman Clamdigger is alive. He bought the shell of a junk hornet with his last Chancel. It hasn’t any drive in it, it won’t go at all, it’s not worth a thing, but he lives in it and broods. If you do go again, we have the beginnings of a crew.”

  “It is very unlikely, but I will remember it, Margaret the shape, and great Trochanter the crewman without peer!”

  Roadstrum left the Plugged Nickel Bar with mixed feelings. He had regained part of the strength he needed to face things at home. He strode along with resolute step, and suddenly he discovered that his resolute steps were not reaching the pavement.

  He had been grabbed by the hair of his head, lifted up by a great hand, and was pulled into a second-story window. There was booming laughter that reminded him of that of Bjorn on Lamos. But it was Bjorn’s little boy, Hondstarfer.

  “What on the wall-eyed world are you doing on World!” Roadstrum howled. “Hondstarfer, you are ungent for my sore sclerotics! Hey, did you ever get back far enough to be an old-time railroad hobo?”

  “I got back there, Roadstrum. That’s why I came to World in the first place. But the other hoboes wouldn’t accept me. They were afraid of me. They said I was a railroad bull. What’s a railroad bull, Roadstrum?”

  “Don’t know exactly, Hondstarfer. I didn’t even know the old vehicles were sexed. What are you doing now, you old hammer-handler?”

  “I’m a design engineer for the IRSQEVWRKILOPNIXTUR—”

  “Yes, I know the bunch. They’re a good outfit.”

  “—MURFWQENERTUSSOKOLUV—”

  “I know the bunch, Hondstarfer. This is their building here, is it not?”

  “—SHOKKULPOYYOCSHTOLUNYYOK—”

  “Dammit, Hondstarfer, I said I knew the bunch. No use giving me the entire initials of the agency. How are you doing with them?”

  “—TWUKKYOLUVRIKONNIC—that isn’t the entire initials of the agency, Roadstrum; that’s the short form. Oh, I’m doing pretty good. I’m a seminal genius, they say, and I have the most sophisticated tools ever devised to work with. And I do build some good things for them. I’m quite successful. I’ll tell you something, though. In the daytime, with all those sophisticated tools, and particularly if someone’s watching me, I just stall around. But at night—”

  “Ah, at night! What do you do then, Hondstarfer?”

  “Put away those damned sophisticated tools and get out my stone hammers. That’s when I build the good stuff. Don’t give me away, though, Roadstrum.”

  “No, I won’t give you away. Hondstarfer, poor addled Crewman Clamdigger has purchased the shell of an old junk hornet, and—”

  “I’ve seen it, Roadstrum.”

  “Of course it wouldn’t be possible to put it in flying condition.”

  “I could do it in about an hour, Roadstrum. I’m good on those hornets. You going to fly again? I want to go along.”

  “No. I don’t think there’s a chance in a thousand that I’ll ever fly again, Hondstarfer. It is just that my mind dwells on the old days.”

  Roadstrum left Hondstarfer and the MURFWQENERETC Building then. He had regained the strength he needed to face things at home.

  That song was still going on, and it was still the Chowder Heads singing it. Roadstrum groaned within himself.

  Then he went in and killed the suitors. It seemed to be what was expected of him. It was fun while it lasted. You know how those things are.

  So he had everything now. He had dear Penny again. He had come back home in his deep maturity, home to green World, the world of his youth. He was still a man of means (there were many accounts that Penny didn’t even know about) and he had the ability to multiply those means. He still owed titles to several worlds to the men’s-room attendant on Roulettenwelt, but he saw that by shrewd management he would be able to pay the remainder of this debt.

  He had honor, he had respect, he was a high hero. He still had his health, despite the deep inroads made by events. He had sloughed off all the outer layers of him and became the essential onion, pungent and powerful and of an immediacy that sometimes brought him close to tears.

  He had, you may have forgotten this part, one eye in his head and the other eye in his pocket. He took the other eye in his hand when they wished to discuss matters, and now he talked to it straight.

  “Eye, my eye, everything is wonderful with us. We are home in peace. We have wonderful Penny again. We have the world of our youth. We are honored and respected and one other word which I forget. We have come to the peaceful end of our journey. Why does that sound less exciting every time I say it.?”

  The eye in his hand winked at him dourly. Eye was a tough old gump, not much given to easy enthusiasms. Roadstrum put it back in his pocket and once more contemplated his good fortune.

  He would stick it out at least a week, he had promised himself. He had already stuck it out for three days, and that’s nearly half a week. He didn’t hang around the house much anymore. The Intimate people were doing a series on Penny, and there were always half a dozen of their fellows there getting down her poignant memories of her dead suitors, the more than a hundred of them.

  “There was Thwocky,” she had said. “Shall the first installment be my memories of Thwocky? He was the one you killed first; you remember, Roadsty? Drove the spindle of the player right through his head. Now, of the permissive-motivation of Thwocky, in the impulse patterns and lassitude-conjointment, there are nine salient aspects which I shall discuss as I build up the foundation of our intimacy.

  This can best be understood in the nimbus of the empholeuon motif, which—”

  Penny had always talked like that, but sometimes he hadn’t listened. Now he found it harder and harder to seal off his ear. But it
was still wonderful, all wonderful. He had honor and respect and another word which he had forgotten. He was home from his life journey, he had peace and benignity and benevolence and all good things and happy.

  But there was one word in this setup that didn’t sound right to his ear. Ear, not ears, he now had but one. Which word? What was wrong with a word? What was there of trickery about a word?

  He thought of it while the afternoon deepened into evening. He thought of it while the artificial locusts began to chatter and hammer in the artificial trees. He went home and locked himself in his soundproof room, while Penny was telling revealing things about her suitors.

  All things possessed in perfect peace for the rest of his life! And one word was wrong there? What word was wrong?

  “Eye, my eye,” he said as he took it into his hand. “All things are wonderful, and can you say that anything is wrong?”

  But the eye closed on him in disgust.

  Honor, respect, enjoyment, peace, conjugal love, ease, peace, benignity, peace, perfection, honor, peace. What was wrong with one of the words?

  Peace. How does that sound again? Peace.

  It exploded inside of Roadstrum. He erupted out of the building in a place where there had never been a door, strewing sheets and beams of the building after him.

  “Peace?? For me?? Roadstrum, man, it is yourself you are talking about. Let you not hang it around your own neck! I am great Road-Storm! Peace is for those of the other sort!

  He found his foxy forked tongue, and the roots of a deeper tongue that had been torn out, and gave great voice.

  “I will be double-damned to a better Hell than Hell-pepper Planet if I will have my ending here in peace! Peace be not the end of my epic! An epic has already failed if it have an ending. I don’t care how it ended the first time—it will not end the same now!

  “I break out of it! Nobody will sing the last lines of me! A crew! A craft!”

  His great voice reached all the way to the Plugged Nickel Bar and to the MURFWQENERETC Building. The great voice set up echoes in old addle-brained crewmen, in a heartless houri, in an overgrown kid from Stone World.

  Roadstrum ran away from the bloodless buildings and stood in the open. He took again from his pocket his off eye, his last companion.

  “Eye, my eye,” he trumpeted. “Look at me! There are places we have never been! There is blood we have not spilled yet! Shall we let them restrict us to a handful of worlds. Eye, my eye, are you with me?”

  And the eye came alive and gave a really joyous wink. A hammer-handling kid was already at work on the junk hornet. The lights turned on in dim-witted crewmen who became incandescent again. And others of their kind gathered to them.

  “Men! Animals! Rise you up!” Roadstrum roared. “To come to the end of a journey is to die. We go again!”

  Roadstrum got a craft and a crew. He went away once more.

  Alas, we have the terminal report of him!

  The coded chatter gives the sighted mort of him,

  How out beyond the orb of Di Carissimus

  His sundered ship became a novanissimus.

  His soaring vaunt escapes the blooming ears of us,

  He’s gone, he’s dead, he’s dirt, he disappears from us!

  Be this the death of highest thrust of human all?

  The flaming end of bright and shining crewmen all?

  Destroyed? His road is run? It’s but a bend of it;

  Make no mistake, this only seems

  the end of it.

  If you’ve enjoyed this book and would like to read more great SF, you’ll find literally thousands of classic Science Fiction & Fantasy titles through the SF Gateway.

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  Also by R. A. Lafferty

  The Devil is Dead

  Archipelago (1979)

  The Devil is Dead (1971)

  More than Melchisedech (1992)

  Other Novels

  Past Master (1968)

  The Reefs of Earth (1968)

  Space Chantey (1968)

  Fourth Mansions (1969)

  Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of Ktistec Machine (1971)

  Not to Mention Camels (1976)

  Aurelia (1982)

  Annals of Klepsis (1983)

  Serpent’s Egg (1987)

  East of Laughter (1988)

  How Many Miles to Babylon? (1989)

  The Elliptical Grave (1989)

  Dotty (1990)

  The Flame is Green (1971)

  Okla Hannali (1972)

  Half a Sky (1984)

  Collections

  Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970)

  Strange Doings (1972)

  Does Anyone Else Have Something Further to Add? (1974)

  Funnyfingers & Cabrito (1976)

  Apocalypses (1977)

  Golden Gate and Other Stories (1982)

  Through Elegant Eyes (1983)

  Ringing Changes (1984)

  The Early Lafferty (1988)

  The Back Door of History (1988)

  Strange Skies (1988)

  The Early Lafferty II (1990)

  Episodes of the Argo (1990)

  Lafferty in Orbit (1991)

  Mischief Malicious (And Murder Most Strange) (1991)

  Iron Tears (1992)

  The Man Who Made Models – The Collected Short Fiction Volume 1 (2014)

  The Man With the Aura – The Collected Short Fiction Volume 2 (2015)

  R. A. Lafferty (1914-2002)

  Raphael Aloysius Lafferty was an American science fiction and fantasy writer born in Neola, Iowa. His first publication of genre interest was “Day of the Glacier” with The Science Fiction Stories in January 1960, although he continued to work in the electrical business until retiring to write full-time in 1970. Over the course of his writing career, Lafferty wrote thirty-two novels and more than two hundred short stories and he was known for his original use of language, metaphor and narrative structure.

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © R.A. Lafferty 1968

  All rights reserved.

  The right of R.A. Lafferty to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

  Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  This eBook first published in 2016 by Gollancz.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 473 21357 9

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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