“Sometimes I believe that sanity is overrated, that we are not lacking a dimension on Klepsis, but that we have an added dimension. I haven’t much good to say for prehistory, though I created two hundred years of it here, apparently; it is pure insanity. But I believe I might find good things to say for meta-history, for the beyond-history. We may have a little of it here.
“We have built many large buildings on Klepsis, but in the case of every one of them there is lingering doubt as to whether they were built indeed. There has been doubt as to their reality. In several cases it is now known that the buildings were completely hallucinatory, and yet their existence was accepted by tens of thousands of persons for several decades. People were born in them and lived in them and died in them.
“There is even some slight doubt as to the reality of Ravel-Brannagan Castle. (It really should be ‘Brannagan Castle’ only. David Ravel the Elegant Interloper built only the three north wings of it, and he added the one hundred cupolas which make it look a little cheesy.) About two percent of the people who used to come here from other planets could not see the Castle at all. And, not being able to see it, they would walk right through its location and not be discommoded by its walls or ramparts at all. This was a distressing situation. To nullify it, and following the advice of my advisers, I instituted the ‘My God What Grapes!’ countermove. That is to say, we offered the luscious and highly hallucinatory ‘Summertime Grapes’ (they were native to Klepsis, but they were named for my wife Margaret Summertime) at every point of entry on Klepsis, at every customhouse, and we edicted them to be offered in every private home that offered regional hospitality. So off-planet visitors were inducted quickly into our native patterns of hallucination, and the embarrassing anomalies were done away with. We also receive secondary hallucination from our beasts and birds. Indeed, some of the earlier names for Klepsis were ‘Crazy Deer Planet’ and ‘Drunken Bird Planet’ and ‘Dancing Fish Planet.’ Oh, we do have a goofy world here.
“As to mass hallucination, or as to mass resistance to hallucination, the general rule we now follow on Klepsis is that if ninety percent of the people see a thing, then that thing is to be regarded as real. This is known either as the Pragmatic Sanction or as the Categorical Imperative. I forget which. But difficulties remain, and that is why I need an historian.
“The second complicating factor here on Klepsis is that, in the early days when I feared that I could never get enough people to populate my planet, I called for phantoms from everywhere to come and give it the appearance of being populated. And the phantoms did come from everywhere. There were deep-space phantoms, there were planetary and asteroid phantoms, there were unbodied phantoms and anthropoid phantoms. And there were some of the phylum that is incomparably evil.
“Later, when it seemed that I would have a fair number of people to inhabit my world after all, I told the phantoms that they were dismissed. But many of them refused to be dismissed. They used various devices to become documented, the most usual of which was being born to a human mother. There was a sudden wave of human pregnancies that were completely unexpected. And the things were born with adult intelligence, safe from suspicion, and devious in their ways. And they used dozens of other tricks. They remain here yet, large numbers of them in full and visible phantom form, others of them blinking on and off, being sometimes visible and sometimes invisible, and still others of them entering into local creatures such as parley birds or Malcomb’s coneys, rendering such creatures absolutely goofy. Those in human form hold high places and are of great influence. They will be hard to get rid of.”
A small, brilliantly colored, and rather determined bird flew into the walk-in tomb. It flew right through Brannagan’s Ghost. That was all right. It flew right through Seneschal Fidelis, the soggy man. That was almost all right, too. But then the bird flew right through me. That was not all right, not all right at all. The bird flew out of the walk-in tomb again. It flew out through a wall and not through the door.
“It is a Banner Bird,” Brannagan’s Ghost said. “Did it not look like a bright and flaunty banner though? This is the species that worries me and engenders doubt in me. It is the only native species of any sort on Klepsis that will not eat any of the hallucinatory plants, that will not take them in any form, that will not eat anything that has taken them. Ergo, it is the only sane and nonhallucinating creature on Klepsis. Since it does not hallucinate, it does see through things that are pure hallucinations. It does see through them, and it does fly through them too.
“But where does that leave us? If we are hallucinations, whose hallucinations are we? And can pure hallucinations have consciousness of their own, as we seem to have, or as I seem to have? But there is no use in hanging too much importance on this. The Banner Bird is not accounted very intelligent even by other birds.
“The difficulties remain. Every person or creature of any sort on Klepsis, except only the Banner Bird, suffers from hallucinations. And at least one third of the persons on Klepsis, many of them in high station, are phantoms.
“There is a third difficulty, and it is myself. Until I go, other things cannot come, things that most other planets have. If this is a backward world, then it is mostly myself who have kept it backward. Oh, I am right in a lot of the aspects of the problem. I am right in preaching the Joys of Illiteracy, although I am unfortunately literate myself. Besides having a peg leg, I walk with a paper crutch, as does almost everybody in officialdom. I am right in my recommendations to keep intuition as the guiding force, and that the pompous thing Reason must be kept on a tight bridle. I am right in insisting that a genuine Klepsis is better than an imitation Camiroi. But did you know that Klepsis Clubs are an in thing on Camiroi now among the young people? They dress in the pirate costumes of Klepsis of a hundred years ago. They phantomize at their meetings. They have imported the ‘My God What Grapes’ grapes, and they hallucinate, and thus bring back what had once been stamped out on Camiroi.
“While I still stir and walk and talk, even in my ghost form, then Klepsis is kept in its time of legend and prehistory. But when I can no longer walk and talk, even as a ghost, then the history of Klepsis can begin. My fear is that the earlier chapters of Klepsis may be inferior history. But I am very curious as to what our history will be, and there is no way I can know it. It cannot begin while I am here, for I am unhistorical and an obstacle to history. As an underling once said to a superintendent, ‘You ought to be here sometimes when you’re not here, and see what happens when you’re gone.’ I am impatient that you solve this problem for us, Distinguished Historian and Duke Tyrone. Is there anybody else in your party who might speculate fruitfully on things like this?”
“There is one of us, named Fairbridge Exendine, from the Trader Planet Emporion, who is known as the Penny Philosopher.”
“Then, enlist him in our cause and in our discussions, Historian And we will discuss for a while, but not for a long while. Very soon I will insist on clear decisions and clear definitions. And if I do not get them, I will initiate clear action. One of the ever-green underground classics of all the planets is the Big Brannagan Book of Tortures, scribed by myself. Ah, there is a lot of meat to be found in that book, mangled meat mostly.”
“Many-times grandfather, you would not really invoke merciless cruelty,” Princess Thorn jibed him. “I know that you would not.”
“Unspeakable favorite of mine, I would. What is wrong with merciless torture if there is a loophole in it? While there is some doubt about reality being reality, then there is some doubt about torture being torture. And there is some doubt about cruelty being cruelty. I might take refuge in that doubt.”
“Many-times grandfather, you no longer have the living followers, and you no longer have the power, to impose torture on anyone,” Thorn tortured Brannagan’s Ghost at its most sensitive point.
“Want to bet, pet? You should see the ghost of brave David Ravel cringe when in the presence of me. He is afraid of me, and he loses his elegance in his fear. I
still have powers more subtle than you know about. I am still the root from which this planet grows.”
“I wonder whether you are not a double root, August Ghost,” I said. “I would like to know more about the ‘forgotten twin’ phenomenon.”
“That’s a two-Bandicoot evocation and tale, is it not, Green Robe?” the old ghost asked.
“Probably three. You’d have to evoke several ghosts, probably including some of your own early ghosts. But I always enjoy these trips back, and it may inspire the historian here with some of the mystery of Klepsis.”
“What are you—the devious Jesuit behind the throne?” I asked the always merry-looking cleric.
“There is no throne in Klepsis, Historian. And I am no Jesuit. I am a member of the Green Robe Order of Saint Klingensmith. We’re the good guys. We wear the green hats. Dripping man, go get the Penny Philosopher. Brannagan’s Ghost wants him to be present also.”
“Yes,” said the dripping Seneschal (how long would that man drip, anyhow?), and he went out, but not by the narrow entrance into the walk-in tomb by which we had entered. He went out by a sudden opening in the floor of the tomb. So then, the tomb of Christopher Brannagan, and the den of Brannagan’s Ghost, had an underground connection with the treasure caverns.
The Green Robe lit a very thick and long Bandicoot hallucinatory cigar and gave it to Brannagan’s Ghost. The August Ghost smoked deeply, then began to blow the smoke out in strange sculptured forms that were burlesques of each of us there. He blew an excellent caricature which was of the flaming orange-yellow-red brotherhood.
“By the way, Historian, this Green Robe is a thrice grandnephew of mine,” Brannagan’s Ghost said. But the smoke-caricature seemed to have a certain depth that the fleshed Green Robe lacked.
Brannagan’s Ghost, smoking deeply, blew a caricature of the soppy Seneschal who had just left us on the errand. And this burlesque was of a rather dry and incisive and perhaps profound man, not quite in accord with the man himself, who had not yet recovered from his sogginess and winyness.
Brannagan’s Ghost blew a reproduction of my Princess Thorn. The smoke of these Bandicoot cigars carries a flame-glow while it coils and uncoils. The reproduction was of a much younger Princess Thorn (though she was still quite young), of the little-girl Princess who used to visit the cranky old ghost in his tomb.
“Many-times Grandfather Ghost,” Thorn said now. “You were my best friend in the world then, after the mechanical dog in the Castle, but you do me great wrong in this representation. I was never as malevolent as that.”
“You were,” the old ghost growled. “Yes, you were.”
The smoke showed that Thorn had been a very pretty little girl. I looked at Thorn and I noticed for the first time that she was very pretty in her present self. Well, of course she was, but it was not the first or second or tenth thing that anybody noticed about her. With her, it was only a trifle. But the flame-smoke younger Princess Thorn did have real malevolence in her. When she was exiled into the wilderness for her unspeakable sin, there must have been real and shattering sin involved.
Brannagan’s Ghost next blew a smoky takeoff of me. There was derision in it. There was humor. There was irony. But all these things were from Brannagan’s Ghost, not from me. The smoky takeoff of me showed a person a little too weak for my liking.
“Please, my love,” Thorn whispered to me, quite obviously feeling that I should be able to give a better account of myself even in smoke. “Look somewhat distinguished, act somewhat distinguished, say something distinguished, even think something distinguished. My many-times grandfather’s ghost has not known you before this evening and night, and all the impressions that he has of you are from this ongoing night. Please tip the-balance a little bit. I don’t want you to come through as a simpleton. Appear distinguished. Function distinguished. Let your blood-flow and your brainwaves be distinguished. Let your adrenaline flow with power and distinction. Breathe distinguished. Do this for me.”
I tried it. I thought distinguished, and I sat distinguished (on a stone outcrop of the tomb). I tried to let my blood-flow be distinguished; to let my vibrations be distinguished. I tried to breathe distinguished. But of all my efforts, my breathing was the only one I had any control over.
I’m afraid, though, that I merely inflated myself and puffed myself out with air. I pouted my chest out, and my smoke image did the same. It was funny and grotesque when it puffed itself, like the frog of the pond. Brannagan’s Ghost laughed. The Green Robe laughed. I myself laughed, but it must have been an ambiguous laugh. I had never felt less distinguished in my life. And Thorn was crying softly.
Then, up through the floor of the walk-in tomb, there came the soggy Seneschal Fidelis along with Fairbridge Exendine, the Penny Philosopher from the Trader Planet Emporion. Brannagan’s Ghost brightened to see Exendine. (He had not brightened up either time he had seen me.) He blew away the takeoff of myself and then drew heavily on the Bandicoot stogie for new smoke.
Then the ghost spoke rather heavily (rather ghostishly, I should say) around the smoke that was curing in his mouth and gullet and lungs.
“You people, even those who know me best, do not realize the power or the scope of the images (nay, of the real beings) that I can evoke,” he spoke. “This power is almost without limit. Once I even attempted to evoke God the Father, to have him come to me in ghost. He did not come, but He sent one of His angels. ‘Be quiet,’ the angel told me. ‘You are an exasperation. There are not nearly enough quiet hours in your days.’ This advice was good, so I then began to have many more quiet hours in my days. But according to the formula for invocation as I worked it out by myself, I should have been able to call up anybody. Or rather, I should have been able to call up anybody living, and that includes God the Father. Indeed I may have done so. I believe that God the Father sometimes goes around in disguise, as did the Sultan Haroun Al-Raschid on Gaea-Earth; and the Father Himself may have come to me disguised as one of His angels. But I can evoke all humans, alive or dead, whom I have ever known. I may evoke some of them now to settle a question that has been bothering me for these several centuries.
“There was a trial held on me, you know. It was called by the person whom I loved more than any except my wife in the world, and it was found against me. It was a ‘Commission in Lunacy,’ and I did not accept its findings. I wonder whether I will accept them now? I have an overwhelming suspicion that they were correct.
“And I had other powers, and perhaps I still have tatters of them. I had, of course, the power of bi-location, as many great men do have. This may be connected, Duke Tyrone Historian, with the forgotten-twin syndrome. Indeed, one of the findings of the commission was that I was a forgotten twin. This was one of the findings that I did not accept.
“And I also had the power of introspection to a degree that I have never heard of any other person having. Listen, I have taken voyages by ship (both the ship and the crew and myself being diminished a million or more times) into all the interior passages of myself, through all the valves of my heart and through all the wheezing and roaring tunnels of my lungs, through my genes and through my spleen, and especially through the great straits and caves of my brain. I take these voyages less frequently than I used to, but I have just decided to take one tonight. And all of you here will go with me, as diminished crew on my diminished ship. That was always one of my pleasures—introspection. This introspection or looking-at-self-from-within’ I can do with these voyages, and few others can do it that way.
“I will invoke and convoke that old commission again. And I will go voyaging again. I do not know which I will do first, or whether I will do both of them at the same time.”
Another person came into the tomb. Or perhaps he solidified there and did not come in through any of its entrances except that named “apparition.” I knew, with such apperception I have as an historian, that this was the person that Brannagan’s Ghost had just spoken of as ‘the person I have loved more than any except my
wife.’ It was a man bigger in many ways than Brannagan himself, and more compassionate in all ways.
EIGHTH CANTO
A Commission in Lunacy
“And now, Duke Tyrone Historian, you have not given me any indication at all of the insight an historian should have,” Brannagan’s Ghost was speaking to me. “Tell us now, who is this man who has just appeared?”
“Oh, Januarius O’Grogan,” I said in as offhand a manner as I could manage. This man had to loom big in the Klepsis story, and from such scraps of Klepsis history as I had been able to pick up that evening and night, only O’Grogan had a stature comparable to Brannagan.
“You are right,” Brannagan’s Ghost said. “You may not be entirely hopeless.”
“Christopher Begorra Brannagan,” the O’Grogan Apparition chided. “Is it for the business of that same old Commission in Lunacy that you are calling up us dead people again? The trouble, Chris, is that I am not usually bothered by lunacy unless I’m with you. It’s catching, you know. It’s the most dangerous and most mortal of all the epidemic diseases. Well, there are inoculations against it, and I believe that I’ve availed myself of them.”
“Yes, it is for the same Commission, Januarius. It must be settled now. But I have never been convinced that lunacy is all that bad. I often have good words to say about it. I do not remember at the moment whether I ever committed to paper my minor masterwork, The Pleasures of Lunacy, but if I haven’t done so, I should.”
“I told you at the time, Chris, that you should allow all the proceedings of the Commission to be on tape, but you would not allow it to be done. Tapes do not forget nor falsely remember. Ghosts do. And ghosts do not like to be bothered by amateur evokers, amateurs even after two hundred years of practice. Oh, some of the ghosts, those who abide in a worse place than this, are grateful for a little surcease from their torments while they testify. Others, like myself, who abide in the better place, may resent having to come back to this dingy world. I’d resent it myself except that I enjoy being with you, for the love that I bear you. You certainly don’t intend to have a complete reconstruction of the Commission proceedings, do you now, Chris?”
Annals of Klepsis Page 11