“There’s one good thing about these big buttons put out by the bunch at the Solomon Izzersted Institute,” the Ifrit grinned, “and they’ve already put out more than a hundred different sorts of buttons. All of them are too big for Solomon himself to wear. All of them have too many words to be made smaller. Why don’t you order a complete set of the buttons for yourself, Princess Monika?”
On the subject of giant-finding, there was an interesting Editorial-Article in the Broken Arrow Daily Ledger Special Eighth Day Overseas Edition. The Broken Arrow Ledger was one of the very few papers in the world that actually published an Eighth Day paper. The Editorial-Article was entitled They Will Not Serve and was subtitled More in Sorrow Than In Anger. And this was the text of it: –
‘For the most important position in the world (which is at the same time non-appointive and non-elective) there has not been even one serious candidate. Possibly (though we would rather not believe this) this is because there is no remuneration or prerequisites attached to the job. Possibly it is for the requirement of ‘Giants Only’ for the position, though this has always been a loosely-construed requirement. It is true that several of the recent recruits to the ranks of the Scribbling Giants have been less than seven feet tall; but it is still popularly (and perhaps correctly) felt that the Top Giant should top that mark. And out of the six billion persons on this world there are hundreds of thousands (perhaps as many as a million) persons at least seven feet tall. It is true that all the recent ex-Scribbling-Giants had begged to be replaced so that they could die in peace.
‘But there should be volunteers. The health of the world depends on this high position being filled. The bleak refusal We will not serve is not the right answer. And Giant Despair who lives in Doubting Castle is not the right answer.
‘It has been said, by Samuel Butler, that although God cannot alter the past, historians can. So the historians’ is no mean calling.
‘It has been said further that the two most illustrious vocations are to be a giant, and to be an historian. How could anybody not be attracted to the possibility of being both of them at once?
‘What heart should not throb at the prospect of becoming the Foremost of the Giants who Write the World? Why are all the giants or quasi-giants in the world not shouting “Here I am, here I am”?
‘But paradoxically there is one bright spot in this picture. Solomon Izzersted, a Broken Arrow native who is known as The Smallest Man in the World, has sworn that he will deliver a true giant who will become Top Pillar of the World. Solomon Izzersted is a man of integrity and trust. We hope, for our own sake and for that of the world, that he is able to fulfil his promise.’
“It’s a planted story, of course,” Caesar Oceano said. “Broken Arrow is his home town. And his cousin (or at least the cousin of the late John Barkley Towntower) is the owner-editor of the Ledger.”
“What does it matter if it’s a planted story,” Denis asked. “An unplanted story will not grow.”
And then there was an article in the Wall Street Journal Special Eighth Day Overseas Edition. The Journal was another of the very few papers in the world that actually published an Eighth Day paper. And the Wall Street Journal text was: –
‘It was once said that with the coming of the World of Computers –, the World of Mythology would disappear completely and the World of Fact would have arrived. Was ever any notion more mistaken? The clear fact is that the World of Computers is entirely a world of Metaphor and Mythology. That is the whole purpose of it. We already had the World of Fact. Oh, the poor, dingy, hopeless, small-minded World of Fact! It didn’t deserve much, but it deserved at least to have its nakedness clothed with metaphor and mythology. The World of Computers is bearable. The old World of Fact was ceasing to be.
‘Even the Quest for Reality of the talented but diminishing Group of Twelve has now changed (without their knowing it) into the Quest for Acceptable World Metaphor.’
One of the blessings of the Eighth Day is that the dead and the living mingle there on easy terms of friendliness and familiarity. The dead seem a little more talented, but there is no wall between the two groups, and the individuals hardly notice which is which. The dead remember life as a minor early experience, and they believe that they received more than it was worth when they relinquished it. “Why worry about life,” they tell the living. “It’s only temporary.”
But for this particular Eighth Day, there was quite a bit of interest shown by the dead in the living because of the events of the week that was coming to an end. “It’s quite a good show,” some of the dead said. “Not really top drama, perhaps, but it’s almost top as suspense drama.”
And another gracious dead person said “Living people often wonder whether their world dramas are actually happening, whether they are indeed real. Well, the apprehensions caused by those dramas are certainly real, and that is the reason those apprehensions must be removed. In recent days, some fastidious people have questioned the very existence of the Institution of Scribbling Giants Who Write the World. And they have questioned whether the world failures have been due to the Giants’ failures in writing the world. But it doesn’t matter whether the Giants are real or not. What does matter is that they are important. There is good evidence that the Aeon which is just beginning will be the Aeon of the Scribbling Giants and of the flow and movement and direction that they give to the world.
“The first Seven Pillars of Righteousness, the first of the Pillars that Sustain the World, those of the Seven Sustaining Saints, are of waning importance. Certainly there is plenty of holiness in the present world. The second Seven Pillars of Righteousness, those of the Seven Sustaining Technicians, are not presently of overwhelming importance. Certainly there is plenty of technology and gadgetry in the world. But Oh, the third Seven Pillars of Righteousness, the Seven Scribbling Giants who write the scenarios of the world, never has the world needed them so much as today. For the world is aimless and arrant when it has no narrative flow or way or direction or impetus to move it. The world is goofy when it has no such direction.
“If I were alive again, I would wish to fill the most important and the most self-sacrificing job in the world, that of Top Scribbling Giant. Oh, why is there not more animation in living people! How can they leave such things undone!”
It was when the Eighth Day was coming to its close that a sudden wave of reassurance passed through all the living people. And a feeling of satisfaction at the solution of the world drama passed through the dead. What had happened? What had broken the world fever and brought a feeling of peace and hope to all?
“Habemus Gigantem,” said the true Ifrit who had been evoked that day by Monika Pantera in rubbing the true lamp. “Habemus Gigantem,” he said, “We have a Giant.”
And everything from the magnetism and gravitation of the world to the efflux of Helium-4 was once more right with the world.
“Who is it, Ifrit? Who is the new Giant?” Monika asked. “Do you know who he is?”
“His demotic name will be the Riant Giant or the Laughing Giant. And his hieratic name must remain secret. No, I don’t know who he really is. But I know that it drew all the energy from two galaxies, quite distant galaxies, to find him and complete your gift.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On the Ninth Day of the Week
‘He’s taller than the wind or rain,
And like the lightning bold.
A joyful monster comes again
As monsters came of old.
‘The sponsors loom from far and fey,
And brassy trumpets blow,
A Giant’s born to us today.
O let the people know!’
IN A GREEN TREE, Auctore.
After Sunday in the regular sequence, the next day is Monday. But in special cases for special persons, Sunday is followed by the Eighth Day of the Week, which does not intrude on ordinary time. And then Monday follows on the Eighth Day of the Week.
The Ninth Day of the Week, however, is somewhat di
fferent. Its twenty-four hours are represented by twenty-four seconds of regular time, and these may be used up on any of the seven days of the regular week. So if a special person, a very special person (for there are only about a thousand of the Ninth Day People in the entire world) should blink for a full second (a full second is about the equivalent of three-and-a-third ordinary blinks) he may be living an hour in the Ninth Day of the Week. Or it may be merely that his eyes are a little tired.
But all the reduced remnant of the Group of Twelve were Ninth Day People, as was the Countess Maude Grogley. Most of them had only just now realized that they were Ninth Day People.
Some of them went to find the New Giant, the New Top Giant of them all, wherever he might be. They went to New York where the soothsayers had said that he might be found.
“What is that wooden cudgel that you have in your hand, Caesar?” Gorgonius Pantera asked him.
“It’s a baseball bat of a special kind called a fungo bat. The wood is so lively and resilient that it will drive a baseball an extraordinary and unaccountable distance, for which reason the fungo may not be used in scheduled games but only in practice. Though I no longer have the time to play baseball (we have to give up so much when we advance into our ‘age of leisure’) yet I am one of the Summertime Boys forever. I love to get out on the early days of summer and hit fungos. Today I feel that I could hit a baseball a mile if I should have the opportunity.”
“I have never seen a baseball,” Gorgonius Pantera said sadly.
“But you have been seeing something the exact size and shape and appearance and weight as a baseball for several days now. The head of Solomon Izzersted, I mean, and he’s almost all head. Pow, pow, I bet I could hit it a mile.”
“Not without good reason, I hope,” Jane Chantal High-Queen laughed.
“Oh the devil with the reasons! I’d just like to see how far I could hit it. I used to play on a Seamans sand-lot team in San Francisco and every year in early summer I get lonesome for the game and want to go out and hit a few long fungos at least.”
“You’re full of deception in this, Caesar,” Gorgonius puzzled. “I hear distant trumpets now. Yes, there’s about ten thousand of them. We had better zoom in for a nearer look at whatever’s happening. Isn’t that an odd place for the full moon to be, when the sun is already up, and there shouldn’t be more than a half-moon in the sky anyhow, and it isn’t in the sky. Oh, it isn’t the moon at all, it’s somebody else. They’re playing the Coronation Day of the Giant Sequence from my great Giant Suite now. In all modesty, I love it! Well, what is that which looks so much like a full moon on the dais or bandstand in the park?”
“I believe it is the Giant,” Mary Brandy said, “and he looks like somebody we know. Like somebody we know, but on a different scale entirely. Oh, he can’t be the Giant! But I’d know that spherical grin of his anywhere!”
“It is the Riant Giant, the Eighth Wonder of the World,” cooed one of the lady spectators to them. “Oh blessed are my eyes that I should live to see this!”
“We’d better duck behind the scenes somewhere and find the perpetrator of this,” Drusilla said. “Denis Lollardy, since you are the world’s greatest authority on three-dimensional pantographic projection, cannot we find where this giant is being projected from?”
“Of course I can,” said Denis who was laughing “but let me enjoy this marvelous projection for a few moments first. It’s a real circus, you know. And I’m a little boy again whenever there’s a circus in town.”
Oh, of course the Riant Giant, the Laughing Giant, was wonderful. It was a hundred feet high, and as round and ruddy as the full moon itself. With that grand spherical smile; with that multi-depth face that he had to have from his natural father Iofel, sometimes known as the Trickster Angel, the most ethnic of the angels; with that para-theatrical confidence-inspiring voice, the Laughing Giant was perfect in the role. It had been known that he could imitate a thousand different voices; but now it was the thousand-and-first voice, of some fortunate recent encounter, that he was imitating. He was perfect.
But possibly not perfect enough.
It’s true that the Laughing Giant wasn’t the only one who was laughing now, but there is laughter and laughter. A few hundred thousand of the people were laughing now, most of them in good natural tone, but some of them in sharp derision.
And some of the trumpets were openly laughing too. Oh, not a lot of them, maybe seven hundred of them out of the ten thousand. Not every hasty trumpeteer is adept at doing the ‘jackass laugh’ on the trumpet. But Jane Hunting-Horn Chantal was adept at doing that jackass laugh without using an instrument at all. She was truly the artist of all the arts.
“Has he lost them?” Gorgonius asked. “It’s close.”
“Not entirely lost them, no,” Denis Lollardy said with his own intricate laugh. “There is no way that he could ever lose a crowd entirely. He’ll always be good at what he’s good at.”
“And now I must leave you, but only for a short time,” the Laughing Giant laughed. “But I will never again be far from you. You will see me again and again, individually and by your millions of eyes. I must now be about my business of writing the scenarios of the world, with some help from my six assistants. I will write the futures. I am the futures. You have a Giant again now, and all’s right with the world.”
Then the Riant Giant disappeared from the three million persons who had been watching him live (they live, not he) and from the three billion persons who had been watching him on several sorts of videos.
“After him, Denis, lead us to him!” Gorgonius cried out. “There are irregularities about all of this that must be regularized immediately. And he doesn’t hold the position that he thinks he holds.”
“He’s slipped to a new covert!” Denis Lollardy yowled in a voice that had happy hunting-horn tones in it, “but he’s still in the same plush warren. Tally-Ho! We’ll have him. We’re onto his scent!”
They were into a large and astonishingly beautiful building, which flashed its name, on a pardonably garish huge new sign East of Laughter World-Wide Publications Building, and they were ascending a great sweeping stairway (“Oh No, Oh No!” Denis cried, “it’s a wonderful forgery of one of my own forgeries!”) and up and into the Solomon Izzersted Testimonial Memorial Ballroom. And their prey was there.
“I knew that you would have to come to my spring to drink,” their prey said. “There was nowhere else for you to come to. I hold all the trumps and all the aces. And now I greet you as a father greets his sons and daughters. Gorgonius Pantera, successor to the Alpine Giant; Drusilla Evenrood, successor to the Hsiang Giant; Jane Chantal High-Queen, successor to the El-Khatar Giant; Caesar Oceano, successor to the Sanrio Giant; Denis Lollardy, successor to the Timbuktu Giant; Mary Brandy Manx, successor to the Illacrove Giant: meet me now, here where I have entered into my glory! I am King Solomon Izzersted, successor to the Top Giant Atrox Fabulinus and new Top Giant of the World!”
“There are irregularities about all of this that must be regularized right now, Solomon,” Gorgonius said ponderously.
“Set them aside for twenty years or so, Gorgonius, and perhaps they will regularize themselves,” Solomon said in his royal-purple voice. “Really, there was never any doubt about who my choice would be. It had to be myself, from the very first. What do you have there, Caesar?”
“You know what it is, Solomon. It’s a fungo baseball bat.”
“I am perfect for this highest job,” Solomon ecstasized. “Was there ever such a delightful paradox, the smallest man in the world becoming the biggest giant in the world! Consider the litany of my attributes! I am the son of Iofel the Trickster Angel. I was born twice, in a way, the second time when I was torn from the navel of John Barkley Towntower by the ravening teeth of Prince Leonardo; so I am truly born From the Panther’s Teeth. If there isn’t a prophecy-and-legend connected with that, there will be. I renewed my youth in the fountain Foinse na n’Og, and I can go back to it every century
or so and renew my youth again. But what one of you can penetrate that narrow-throated fountain to its depths? And who else but me will be able to conduct Think-Small Tours into the interiors of atoms? Who else caused the genuine Ifrit from the Vasty Deeps to cry out ‘Habemus Gigantem, We Have a Giant.’ That was at the exact moment when the sudden Wave of Reassurance passed through all the living people. Who else had figured out the way to make this set-up pay at least a billion dollars a year so that we will become the seven highest-paid persons in the world? Who else –?”
“How far is it from here to the back of this Solomon Izzersted Testimonial Memorial Ballroom?” Caesar Oceano asked. “How far, Solomon?”
“It’s the largest ballroom in New York City, of course. If there was a larger one I’d have it. It’s four-hundred-and-fifteen feet from where we stand to the back of this hall. Why are you swinging that fungo baseball bat, Caesar Oceano?”
“I’m just wondering whether I could hit a baseball from here to that back wall. I never hit very high for average, but I sure was a long-ball hitter! I might as well give it a try –”
“There isn’t any baseball here, Caesar,” Solomon Izzersted said in puzzlement. “Oh, no, no, no, no, not what you’re thinking, Caesar. You’re joking! But you don’t joke with the Top Giant of the World.”
“Whatever gave you the idea that you were the Top Giant of the World, Solomon?” Gorgonius asked. “Even if you were the replacement of Atrox (and that confused old dead giant still refuses to approve you or anybody), you wouldn’t be Top Giant. The position rotates. The successor to the Top Giant is never the new Top Giant: he’s the new Bottom Giant. Everybody misunderstood the situation there, and I neglected to correct the misunderstanding. The successor to the Timbuktu Giant is the Top Giant now. And that successor is, yes, Denis Lollardy. And now that I remember it, Denis was the last one to accept giantship, in his case Top-Giantship. And of course it was when, just after the Sanrio Giant had slipped over the line to death and Caesar Oceano had succeeded to his giantship, that the Timbuktu Giant was felt to have died and Denis succeeded him to Top-Giantship, it was then that the Wave of Reassurance passed through all the people, reassurance and hope and relief.”
East of Laughter Page 21