“We think so too,” Jane Chantal High-Queen said. “Shall I write it, Alpine Giant, that just before you die you will fill your stomach and chest with an extraordinary amount of air? And that you will die with this great pressure of air in you? Then, just after we have put your big hunting-horn in your mouth and covered you up completely, just after we have asked God to have mercy on your inflated ego, the hunting-horn will give such a huge blast of sound that it will shake the whole mountain and startle the whole world? Shall I write all that to happen to you?”
“Yes, write it so, Jane High-Queen. It’s a nice grewsome touch to have the dead giant blow his hunting-horn like that. Write it of me, and I’ll try to conform to it.”
“Do you want me to put this deck of cards in your hand, Alpine Giant?” Perpetua Parisi asked. “On this weird old mountain, you never know who might drop by to visit you in your grave. And after the conversations begin to languish (and it often happens that two dead people can’t find much to talk about) then you can whip out the deck of cards and challenge the other person to a game of Old Maid.”
“Yes, put the cards in my hands and let me be buried holding them,” the Giant said. “Everybody here is full of good ideas. I can feel the world stabilize already, just from the effect of you people and your wonderful ideas. Don’t overextend yourself, Solomon, nor set your mind too completely on high profits. Most of the Scribbling Giants are content to work their very hearts and brains out for very modest stipends.”
“Not the giant that I shall select and promote,” Solomon insisted. “As ox-that-tramples-out-the-corn, he not only will not be muzzled, but he will be stuffed so full that he will have corn coming out of his ears and every other body aperture. Ah, our style is a little bit different, Alpine Giant, but I’m kind of starting to like you.”
And just before the Giant died, just before midnight, just after they had laid him in the earth but before they had gotten him well covered up with dirt and rocks, the giant did fill up his belly and lungs with huge drafts of air. And he died so and was buried so. And there was no sound from him till a hundred seconds had gone by.
Then the hunting-horn did sound in the mouth of the dead giant, but weakly, not at all loud. And that witticism required that it should sound loudly.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
At the Eighth Day of the Week
‘Very early in the History of Mankind it was discovered that God, while he finished the world in seven days counting a holiday, had nevertheless left room for one or more extra days in the week. These days would not be counted in the ordinary times, nor would they be for everybody (unfair as that might seem); but they could be enjoyed in a pleasant place, or in an ‘anthology of pleasant places’, a little bit outside of ordinary time, by all good people who had the wits to reach out to extraordinary time and take them.
‘When various ancient peoples employed the nine-day week they did it because they had heard the report of the extra bonus days; but these bonus days did not avail themselves to the commonalty of those ancients. It was simply that fewer nine-day weeks than seven-day weeks could be fitted into the year, so there was no gain. And yet the thing is done, and more and more in these latter days of the world. People (about a million of them out of the six billion people in the world) really are enjoying, in pleasant places east of the place of pleasure, days that are extra and bonus to their lives.’
THE BACK-DOOR OF HISTORY, Arpad Arutinov.
‘Eighth Day of the Week – this has been described as a Computerized State of Mind. It is both a time and a place and a condition, but it does not impinge on ordinary time or ordinary place, nor is it an ordinary condition. It is an experience, a celebration, a recollection, a reassessment. The ideal, still far from being realized, is that at least one percent of the people should live the eighth day of the week every week. But it is completely unrealistic to describe it as one of the days between Sunday and Monday, for it is not on the same linearity at all.
‘Ninth Day of the Week – a much more rarified computerized state of mind than is the Eighth Day of the Week.
‘There are only about a million people in the world who know about and enjoy the Eighth Day of the Week.
‘There are only about a thousand people in the world who know about and enjoy the Ninth Day of the Week.
‘That is the main difference between them.’
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY IN EARLY COMPUTER SCIENCE, Diogenes Pontifex.
“I’m going to New York at once, to be about my father’s business,” Solomon Izzersted said, “to be about the business of my father Iofel who is sometimes known as the Trickster Angel. The world is now in such a state that I believe only myself, the son of the Trickster Angel Iofel, can get it out of. I go.”
“Stand not upon the order of your going but go at once,” Jane High-Queen laughed. “Oh, the poor Alpine Giant! It was my failing more than his. I didn’t write the hunting-horn episode with sufficient power. Nevertheless, this is not the end of it. I will write it with greater power. People will hear the hunting-horn at nights for many miles around. And they will know that it is the old dead Giant still blowing a lively thunder-tune from the peaks. Gorgonius, you are the Alpine Giant now. Compose the great thunder-tune that he will play.”
“Oh ye of little ears, where is your faith? It’s already sounding and being heard for miles around. Right here it is not heard at all loud, for this is a dead-sound place here beside the dead. Denis, the death-mask of the Giant came out well. Solomon Izzersted, I thought you were in New York.”
“I am in New York. Do you still not understand?”
“It is midnight,” Mary Brandy said. “What day will it be now, and where shall we go next?”
“We must all go together,” Jane Chantal said. “Between the days, it’s a murder house, so we must avoid the trap between. We must all go to the Eighth Day of the Week for long enough to dispel our vertigo and reestablish the balance of the world. The world is suffering from gid, a sheep disease; that is my medical analysis. Well, we know that the Eighth Day of the Week is East of Joy Garden, and there is the warden of Joy Garden now!”
The Warden was the same Archangel who had stood in the street of Dublin six nights earlier.
“Oh, Isradel, it is good to see you again,” Perpetua Parisi said. “Now I’m oriented and at home in the place called The Eighth Day of The Week. You all remember Isradel. The museum catalog that perpetually offers him for sale says that he is a Bronze Statue of an Angel with a Flaming Sword. Property of the City of the Eighth Day. But he is not bronze. He is of Archangel flesh, and he is alive. Angels sometimes move so slowly that people don’t realize that they’re alive. And that is his flaming sword that turned every way, but it turns so many ways that it seems to be a loop. People used to tie up their onagers to him for a hitching post, back when onagers were ridden in the city more than they are now. This is home.”
Oh, of course it was home. The City of the Eighth Day was a ‘cool and pleasant place where it is always afternoon’.
“The world is throwing off its vertigo,” Caesar Oceano said. “Several of us have gone into the Pillars of the World business, myself within the last five minutes. The second and the third of our weird and spacious women have accepted the mantle. Now there are only two of the pillars missing.
“You can feel it. The world is almost well. It is bouncing and jouncing all over the place, apparently filled with boundless energy. Oh, it is moving with real energy!”
“Yes, like a chicken with its head cut off,” Gorgonius Pantera chuckled. “It does show a burst of new energy. But the headless chicken must be fitted with a new head immediately.”
“Oh? What will the new head be?” Monika asked.
“New Atrox. A Scribbling Giant who can take charge now. The Scribbling Giants become the dominant seven now, of the aeon of the world that is beginning, or possibly is not beginning. Yes, yes, the headless chicken must be fitted with a new head, or all the new energy is in vain.”
Oh, a slant-eyed man came to Caesar Oceano then and said that the Sanrio Giant was weary of the world and its ways and wished to die as soon as he could find a replacement. He had sent to ask whether Caesar would be his replacement.
“Yes, at once,” Caesar said, “but in fact it has already happened while you were on the way. It was mind-to-mind between myself and the Sanrio Giant as he died, for his death came on him a little earlier than he had expected. May it be well with you, messenger.”
But was not the Sanrio Giant a slant-eyed giant from the other side of the world? Yes. But have you ever looked at the eyes of Caesar Strange Cargo Oceano?
A man came to Denis Lollardy and said that the Timbuktu Giant was weary of the world and its ways and wished to die as soon as he could find a replacement. The Timbuktu Giant had sent to ask whether Denis would be his replacement.
“Why has he sent to me?” Denis asked. “How has he even heard of me?”
“He’s a great admirer of yours,” the man said. “He admires you as the greatest forger in the world. You may not realize this, but the seven giants who write the world have a lot of sticky situations. One of the seven has always been in charge of forgeries, when they are absolutely necessary. For the last four hundred years, the Timbuktu Giant has been in charge of necessary forgeries in writing the world. Now that he wishes to lay down his load and die, and now that investigation has shown you to be qualified as a giant in all other ways, he believes that you will be the best possible replacement for him, just as you are the best possible forger in the world.”
“Yes, all right,” Denis Lollardy said. “I’ll be a Scribbling Giant, but only because I feel it to be my duty. Who would wish to carry such a twenty-four-hour-a-day load and not be able to lay it down for several centuries?”
Monika Pantera rubbed the genuine Aladdin’s Lamp, and a genuine Ifrit appeared.
“One wish granted, lady, and one only,” the Ifrit said crisply. And then he went into a sort of confusion. “Oh, Oh, Oh, why do you have to look like that? Only once in a thousand years do I draw a lady with purple eyes, and every time it’s sheer catastrophe! The last such wish was so difficult that I had to draw all the energy out of three galaxies to effect it.”
“Draw it out of three far-away galaxies this time, if you have to draw it from outside at all,” Monika said. “But mine is a very simple request. Of the twenty-one Pillars of Righteousness that support the world, one of them is still missing. Replace it before the world itself collapses. This world, energetic and lively at the moment, but behaving like a chicken with its head cut off (the metaphor is that of my noble spouse Gorgonius) must not die. Put another chicken head on it so it won’t die. That is my wish, Ifrit, that you replace the Twenty-First Pillar of Righteousness, the chicken-head of all the pillars, so that the world may not fall down to its destruction. Ah, Ifrit, I really believe that the world will collapse if this isn’t done in a very few hours. Do it quickly, Ifrit.”
“But you are asking me to find the replacement for the Great Giant Atrox Fabulinus! Rather ask me to replace whole galaxies. There is no way, no way!”
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, Ifrit. I knew Atrox personally and he wasn’t so much.”
“But his replacement must fit. You can’t just put any head on a chicken and restore it to health and life. You have to find the head that will fit the chicken. It isn’t so important that a good fit is gotten for the other twenty Pillars of Righteousness. But for the aeon that begins now, the Seven Scribbling Giants will be the stress seven, the leading seven pillars. And everything depends on the head member of the leading or stress seven. Everything depends on finding the impossible replacement for Atrox. How much time do I have, dire purple-eyed lady?”
“You have as much time as the world has, less than twenty-four hours, I believe.”
“I will try it, I will try it,” the Ifrit cried, and he himself was running around like a chicken with his head off.
Then there happened an incident that could only happen on an Eighth Day, and it concerned the Countess Maude Grogley. “Oh!” she cried, “is that not the Foinse na n’Og, the Fountain of Youth there in the Irish Gardens. I will just plunge into it and renew my youth.”
The Eighth Day, being a sort of anthology of pleasant places, had ready-to-hand most of the Wonderful Gardens of the enchanting Lollardy Estate at Lecco in Italy, and the Irish Garden was prominent in them.
“Yes, that is the fountain, Countess,” Gorgonius Pantera smiled, “but the fountain is very narrow-throated, and one must plunge to the very depths of it to have youth renewed. You have kept your figure well, but there is no way you could plunge into the depths of that fountain.”
“Of course there’s a way,” the Countess Maude insisted. “How to explain it to you? Oh, if one must explain things to friends, then they’re not true friends. And I don’t have my daughter Laughter-Lynn here to remonstrate with me ‘Oh mother, don’t let them see you like that!’
“The fact is that the Patrick did not expel quite all the snakes from Ireland. He’s often around in pleasant places on the eighth day, and if you happen to see him you might ask him to verify this. He banished all the snakes who were snakes indeed at that moment. But he didn’t banish the members of the were-snake families. I come from such a family. I am a member of one of the most exclusive societies in the world, The One Hundred Holy Snakes of Ireland. Oh well, there’s nothing to do but change, and then plunge right in.”
The Countess Maude Grogley changed into a snake, a large and rather attractive gold-and-green snake. Then she plunged into the Foinse na n’Og Fountain. Even in her snake form, it was rather straited for her through the narrow throat of the fountain but she made it. It seemed that she was quite a while in the depths of the fountain, but passage of time on Eighth Day is hard to estimate. Then she emerged from the narrow waters, quickly changed back into her Countess Form, and by the sparkle on her she left no doubt that her youth had been renewed.
Where did that infectious laughter come from? Oh yes, the daughter, Laughter-Lynn, was buried under the rock-slide right adjacent to this wonderful Irish Garden. And her infectious buried laughter welled up like silver music at this antic of her mother.
The Countess Maude Grogley was full of surprises, but this shape-change and renewal was one of the five or six most surprising tricks she ever pulled.
Hilary Henry Ardri, the eldest son of Hilary and Jane Chantal Ardri (now Jane Chantal High-Queen), often gave reports from New York to his mother Jane, and to all of them. Mostly he used voxo, but today was Eighth Day and Hilary Henry was an Eighth Day person so he did not need to use anything at all. All Eighth Day persons are able to talk to each other without equipment on Eighth Day.
“Solomon has become very busy in New York,” he said. “The problem of the world is now understood by the common people here, and Solomon is being looked to for a solution. It is absolutely expected that he will unveil a world-saver, the Giant Successor to Giant Atrox. And all the professionals in the field of high promotion are asking ‘Where has this guy been all this time?’ about Solomon. Nobody here is sure just how a giant becomes Top Giant of the Scribbling Giants, but the betting is that it will be through the promotions of Solomon Izzersted.”
And also Solomon was constantly bouncing up in the middle of the reduced Group of Twelve all through the long Eighth Day. He already had multi-local tendencies (it seemed as if he could be several places at once), and on Eighth Day everything was multi-local. Solomon bounced up and down in the middle of them, and at the same time he was bounding up and down in New York and Rio and Singapore and Tunis and Prague and Barcelona and Dublin and other centers of world opinion.
“Gorgonius!” Solomon cried once as he bounced into the scene. “I’d like to use the first nine-hundred-and-twelve bars of your Giant Suite. I really believe that it is the finest music in the world.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, Solomon, but plain old-fashioned flim-flam will. Sure you can use them.
Will it be the Giant Suite for Nine Hundred Pianos?”
“No, Gorgonius, it will be the Giant Suite for Ten Thousand Trumpets. I know that’s a lot of trumpets, but I intend it to be a resounding triumph. Did you know, Gorgonius, that trumpet and triumph are etymologically the same word?”
“So is trump. Don’t get trumped, Solomon.”
“Never, Gorgonius, never. I’ll hold all the trumps.”
And in another turn of that Eighth Day, Solomon came to Denis Lollardy. “Denis, you are the foremost authority on three-dimensional pantographic projection,” he said. “I want you to advise me on a set-up. This will not exactly be a private confab, people, for how could there be walls of privacy among us of the Group of Twelve? It’s only that the rest of you couldn’t possibly be interested in it.”
“Oh, but we are interested, Solomon,” Jane Chantal insisted. “What are you going to project, Solomon? Why do you need a pantograph? With a pantograph, you can make a mouse seem as big as a mountain or as small as an atom. What are you going to project, Solomon?”
“My Giant!” Solomon cried. “Oh, am I ever going to project my Giant!” And he grinned that spherical grin of his. And then he did have a long (nobody can correctly estimate a length of time on Eighth Day) conference with Denis Lollardy, after which he bounced away again in a happy mood.
Monika Pantera was both shocked and amused to notice that the genuine Ifrit whom she had evoked by rubbing the genuine Aladdin’s Lamp, a creature who had been into everything and nothing since his arrival, was now wearing a huge button of the political sort. And the words on the button were: I unreservedly Support the Solomon Izzersted Non-Partisan ‘Find The Giant’ Movement and Congress and I urge that it be Universally Supported.
“I am not sure that an Ifrit should be wearing a button like that,” Monika said. “It seems somehow political.”
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