Annals of Klepsis

by R. A. Lafferty

  “We will get all these things for the important visitors at once, at once,” another person in the room below us said.

  “Oh, oh, oh!” Thorn cried beside me, and she pulled the bellpull for instant service. “How could I have forgotten to order things like that?”

  The waiter came into our room instantly.

  “Heaps, oodles, pounds, kilograms, bunches of the ‘My God What Grapes!’ grapes,” she ordered. “There cannot be too much of those wonderful things. And ice water. Well, that’s what the people in the room under us are getting. I never did know what people do with all the ice water they order. It’s like doctors when they come to deliver a baby always wanting a lot of hot water. ‘What’s it for, all the hot water that the doctors always order?’ I asked my mother once long ago. ‘It’s to make instant soup out of,’ my mother said. ‘Doctors are the biggest instant soup eaters in the world.’ And pencils and pens, waiter, hundreds of pencils and pens. And a piece of paper, perhaps even two pieces of paper. Why do you laugh, my love? That’s what the people for the symposium underneath us are getting, and we’re as good as they are.”

  “Indeed we are, Thorn,” I said. I had the waiter bring the names of those who were attending the meeting under us. I recognized the names of all those great scientists and also the persons in ancillary fields, and I recognized the voices of most of them as they began to arrive. All of them had been on the air on all the planets in the various “New Breakthroughs In Science” specials made on Gaea-Earth and Astrobe and Camiroi, and I have always been a sucker for the “New Breakthroughs In Science” specials.

  Oh, now I heard the birdlike but heavy voice of the Asteroid Pythagoras (the only bird that rumbles). This Pythagoras has as a brother, the Asteroid Midas, possibly the richest creature in the universe, who has a pinion on every planet. And the Asteroid Pythagoras was surely one of the most intelligent and informed creatures in the entire cosmos, with a distal feather in every brain-bust. The Pythagoras was an ostrichlike bird with the addition of the great wings of the gigantiornis and the functional hands of the cheirornin. The Pythagoras did not come to any except the most weighty meetings, because of not being invited to the lesser ones. It just wasn’t worth the risk, for the Asteroid Pythagoras was but borderline socially acceptable.

  When crossed in argument, the giant bird would go after the eyes of the opponent with its terrible beak. The informal League of Blind Scientists was made up of learned persons who had lost their vision in fateful encounters with the Pythagoras.

  Very soon I heard the voice of Oliver Roundhead, one of the top brains of Astrobe; Decimus Gormley from World Abounding (there was a peculiarity about Gormley that people didn’t always realize immediately); Aloysius (The Brain Crying in the Wilderness) Shiplap from Gaea-Earth; Sidonia Sopher from Far Tarshish; Alex Braveheart from Camiroi; Becky Breaksticks from Dahae.

  “Why are there no worms in grapes?” Becky was raising her pewter-toned voice from the moment of her entry. “Take all the grapes away. There are worms in apples, in pears, in plums, in sultana fruit, in Dahae dates, and in quigs. Waiter, waiter, bring me fruit that has the possibility of worms. I’ll not be restricted in my options or possibilities. And I don’t want any of these ‘My God What Grapes!’ grapes in this room at all. They offend my sense of fairness. Out with them, out!”

  “In with them, in! I like them. Be quiet woman,” the Asteroid Pythagoras bird screamed-rumbled.

  “Male pig-bird, you be quiet!” Becky flamed angrily. “Male pig-bird!”

  “Watch your eyes, Becky!” Alex Braveheart warned. “It can be very, very, fast.”

  “Why am I the only female here?” Becky demanded. “Throw out that damned bird and bring in another female in the interests of equity.”

  “Why am I the only nonhuman here?” the Pythagoras screech-rumbled. “Throw out that damned Becky-the-Mouth and bring in another nonhuman.”

  “Becky,” I heard Oliver Roundhead whisper, “the Asteroid Pythagoras is a female bird. Know your symposium members.”

  “Oliver,” I heard Becky whisper shrilly, “Decimus Gormley is a nonhuman. Know your symposium members, you and that damned bird too.”

  “Titus the Historian will be proud of us,” I told Thorn, “for recording such thoughty discussions from such brainy scientists. And they have hardly begun yet.”

  “There is the possibility that the damning construct and the damning equation, the Doomsday Equation, may contain one element that hasn’t been taken into account,” Alex Braveheart was speaking in his beautiful baritone (all the more respected scientists have beautiful baritones), “and I refer to the mysterious and malevolent planet of Tarshish. Is it possible that Tarshish is located within our construct? If it is, it changes everything. It even takes the ‘Doomsday’ out of the equation; it proves the equation in error and in need of updating. But also, if it is in our construct, why had nobody seen it in our construct? I feel that Far Tarshish is not far at all. But how to find out? Why has its gravity not affected the construct if it is in it? The fact is that nobody knows where Tarshish is.”

  “I do,” Sidonia Sopher said. “I come from Tarshish. I am a citizen of that orb. I arrived from there only an hour ago.”

  “Well then, give us the astronomical location and bearings and orbit and mass and density and magnetic index of Tarshish, and we’ll get to work on something really momentous.”

  “I cannot. I cannot give you any of these things. I do not know any of them. The data of Tarshish are not like the data of other worlds. They aren’t subject to detailed description. And Tarshish has always been ruled by an anti-scientific clique; and these things are not permitted to be known.”

  “Well, can you tell us whether Tarshish is located within our construct?”

  “No, I cannot.”

  “Is it possible that you do not understand the mathematics and astronomy of the problem, Sidonia?”

  “Oh, I understand the mathematics and astronomy of the problem. I’m as good at mathematics and astronomy as anybody in this room. But I do not understand them in the Tarshish context. Tarshish is not amenable to mathematics and astronomy. And you, you others, there are certain things that you do not understand. Do you understand how a planet may not be a planet in every sense?”

  “Waiter, there is a worm in my apple!” Becky Breaksticks was railing loudly. “This is abominable. If we were on Dahae, heads would roll!”

  “It was madam herself who asked me to bring worm fruits,” the waiter was excusing himself.

  “No, no, no! I asked for the possibility of worms. I certainly did not ask for the actuality of worms. Because I demand that all options be open to me does not mean that I will accept all options.”

  “How did you come here from Tarshish, Sidonia?” Alex Braveheart asked.

  “There are two classes of people who may come from Tarshish to Klepsis or to any other world. The poor and the rich. I am classified as rich, for the line between the two is very low. Of the poor, it is said that they walk, but I do not believe that the poor people of Tarshish travel at all. I came by irregular flight. Regular, scheduled flights have never been allowed to or from Tarshish. Those who take flight from Tarshish are blindfolded, so to speak (they have certain optic nerves pinched off for a while) and are deafened temporarily (by small and casual surgery). They are also brain-pierced to inhibit their sense of direction and their perception of elapsed time and their ability to think logically. Then they are sedated, and so they fly, programmed with after-flight apprehensions and taboos, in an outlaw ship of no registry.

  “They arrive on Klepsis (even irregular flights are allowed to Klepsis only and not directly to any other world) listless and incurious. And it is only after an hour or more here that they look at their papers and find them to be the papers of a completely falsified flight. My papers show falsely that I came from the planet Analos to Klepsis, and they make no mention of Tarshish. It is puzzling, even to a Tarshish person, and probably much more to you.”


  “Such a faked trip probably cost a fortune,” Alex Braveheart guessed.

  “No, Alex, it didn’t. It costs less than a good meal. That also is puzzling.”

  “If we put you in deep trance, do you suppose that you could figure out where Tarshish is, Sidonia?”

  “My after-flight apprehensions tell me that I’d die if I were put into deep trance, so I probably would. But we’ll try it if you believe it important.”

  “A little later, perhaps, Sidonia. Far Tarshish is the name of it in legends and tales. But what if it is really ‘Near’ Tarshish, so near that it falls inside our construct of the presently accepted four suns and seventeen humanly inhabited planets?”

  “What if? What if, Alex?” Decimus Gormley of World Abounding or Aphthonia asked with easy irony. “If Tarshish belongs to our construct, then of course the Doomsday Equation for our construct is proved wrong, in the light of Tarshish’s presence. As it happens, the Doomsday Equation, while not completely wrong, is incomplete. I have completed it. I will unroll the completed and corrected equation now. Gorge your eyes and your mind on it! It will take a while, but my version is absolutely complete, elegant, and correct.”

  There was a silence in the room below us for an hour or so. That amended equation must have had deep stuff in it to take so long to digest.

  “Do you think that I should go down and help them with it?” Thorn asked me. “I’m pretty smart. I’m an Intuitive, and it doesn’t sound as if any one of them is. And besides, I learned middle mathematics at the Castle School from Flobert Traxley, the Man Who Talks to Dragons. I learned dragonry from him too. I know the smell of dragon mathematics, and I can smell it now, up the sound shaft.”

  “No, Thorn,” I told her gently. “In mathematics, those people are completely out of your class.”

  “Then we had better do a little bit of reclassifying. I don’t believe that they are completely out of my class at all.”

  “Decimus, your equation does not provide for the planets of our construct to survive as humanly inhabited planets,” Alex Braveheart was heard to say in the room below after an hour or so had passed.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Decimus Gormley, that nonhuman person from World Abounding, said with obvious pleasure. “Is that part important to you? It just is not possible for the planets to survive as humanly inhabited planets. But it does provide for the planets of our construct to survive as dragonly inhabited planets.”

  After that, I heard no word or sound from the room below for several minutes. Then I heard the rusty voice of Aloysius Shiplap singing softly:

  “Oh, me mother was a dragon

  And meself do breathe the fire,

  But I do not take it kindly

  That my friends should all expire.”

  “Come, my love, rise and go with me to visit an old, old friend,” Thorn said to me about noon.

  ELEVENTH CANTO

  Greater Love Has No Man

  There were knots of people gathered around thirty-three of the thirty-five tall gate doors of Ravel-Brannagan Castle. But these knots of people were all standing back about twenty meters from the Castle gates themselves. Between the knots of the people and the Castle gates there was, in each of the thirty-three cases, a hasty gibbet made out of pot-metal, set up and in business. On each of these hasty gibbets there was a man or a woman hanged by the neck. This was a way that Prince Henry the Pirate had of telling the people, the visitors especially, that they must not press too closely on the Castle while they were waiting to be invited in. One could feel the seething resentment in the knots of stand-back people.

  “It is things like this that give Klepsis the name of being a barbarous planet,” Thorn said bitterly. “It is things like this that make Uncle Henry be Uncle Henry. This is all bad for our fame and reputation.”

  Twenty-eight of these hanging persons had been declared officially dead by the Dead-Man’s Reeve, a minor official who made the rounds of the Castle and the hanging persons, ringing a hand-bell as he walked, crying out the words and warning, “Polite Waiting is the Best: Do Not Be Pushy!” and drawing blood from the left great toe of the hanging persons. If the blood from the toe (the furthest member from the hanged neck) was clotted, that person was declared to be dead. If the blood flowed freely, the person was declared to be either doubtful or still dying. Five of the hanging persons were still officially either doubtful or still dying. One of them had a peg leg, and no test blood could be taken from it, although he was clearly dead. One of the other four was still conscious and was talking in a horribly constricted voice:

  “Do not give up!” the hanging man tortured his words out. “If there were not some way of negating the Doomsday, this Doomsday Prince Henry would not be so adamant in forbidding us to see what is both the point and the person of the Doomsday Equation. Do not be deterred. In our very hanging there is hope.”

  Then that person gave a horrible croaking, and he died. And soon after that, the Dead-Man’s Reeve declared all the hanging persons dead, and he went home to his noonday meal.

  The two Castle doors that had neither gibbets nor knots of people in front of them were those two close-together doors, the Sleeper’s Door and the Wine Door. The Sleeper’s Courtyard in front of the two of them was so filled with old bushes and trash and weeds and spiderwebs that the Sleeper’s Door could not be seen at all from any distance, much less approached. The Wine Door could be approached and entered, by a narrow path, but nobody going past on the cobbled walks would suspect that it was there at all.

  Princess Thorn and I entered the Castle by the Wine Door.

  “I know this old Castle like the rats in its walls,” Princess Thorn said to me. “I have been through every rat-run in this building when I was successively a little girl, a lass, and a woman. Oh, I can talk to the rats in the walls just as Flobert Traxley can talk to the dragons. The Sleeper’s Room is really on the lower level of the En-Arche Bell Tower, but only a person who knows the Castle from inside its walls would ever know that. There are no windows in the Sleeper’s Room, one chimney only, and it is believed that there is only one door to the room. We start this way, my love, because we are devious. We go up the little chimney in this alcove. Yes, isn’t it filthy though! It takes me back to when I was a little girl and was dirty all the time. Speak to me, my rats! Advise me when the way is clear!”

  The rats advised us that the way was clear. We came off from the chimney and were between two walls, both of them of coursed stone. Thorn was a thicker person than myself, and I thought that I could follow her any way that she would go. I barely could. We came to close places.

  “Think fiddlefish, think eel, think snake, think all things narrow,” Thorn encouraged me. And by narrow thought and by narrow contouring we came through the straited places.

  “We are there,” Thorn said. “What is all that trash in my way? That one for you, my love, and this one for me. Look through the eyes and talk through the mouth, but do the first more than the second for a while.”

  “What is it? What am I looking through and what am I talking through?” I asked her.

  “You, my love, are looking through the death mask of Juda O’Grogan-Brannagan, and I through the death mask of his wife Rose Lunaria. This was called the Death Mask Room before it was called the Sleeper’s Room. The alarms of Prince Henry sound only if somebody unauthorized enters the Sleeper’s Room, but we do not enter it. We only look into it and talk into it. One hundred one death masks of the family are built as plaques into the walls here. I notice that stone workers are making a plaque for the one hundred second death mask now. It is no good questioning them. Two of them are always mutes, and the third will answer only two persons: the one whose death mask is about to be mounted and the new regent of the family, or else the heir of the one whose death mask is being set here. Most of the masks are of the eleven high pirates of Klepsis and of their unruly and felonious offspring.

  “Many of the haunts come to their own death masks now and then, and this make
s this room one of the most haunted in the entire Castle. But I used to look through Rose’s mask when I was a girl in the Castle. And, as to Juda, he was the only gentle man ever in the entire family. He’ll not give you away. Sometimes his haunt comes here and sings, ‘Rosa, Rosa, Rosa,’ very softly, but mostly it sings it up in its own watchtower where he strikes the bell with the little hammer for musical accompaniment. Quasimodo, my old, old friend, do you know who this is?”

  “Yes. It is the Thorn, the Thorn, the Red Thorn of Klepsis, she who committed the unmentionable sin and would never settle my curiosity as to what it was,” the most grotesque voice that I have ever heard in my life spoke from an old heaped-up bed in the Sleeper’s Room.

  Thorn and I were not alone in our visit. I noticed that several of the death masks on the walls had living and moving eyes in them.

  “Quasimodo, my old, old friend, are you asleep or awake?” Thorn asked.

  “I am asleep. By law I must sleep always and never awake. It is kind, though dangerous, for you to come to visit me, Thorn.” It was a very deep animal voice, but twisted and muted and talking out of its fleshy smothering with great effort. I had heard the youth-ghost of this person speak on The Dina O’Grogan the night before, but this voice-grown-old was much more weird.

  “Quasimodo, my old friend from my childhood,” Thorn was talking to him. “You have a new code name since I visited you here last. You are the ‘Horseshoe Nail’ now. For want of you will the cosmos be lost?”

  “So I have heard. I hope not. I’d rather save it.”

  “Are you blind now?”

  “Yes, blinded. I cannot open my eyes and I cannot move. Who can say that I’m not asleep? They have made me the substance of a riddle. If I wake up, then all the persons in the universe will vanish, for they were all imaginings in my dreams only. And if I die, then all the persons in the universe will similarly vanish, since there is no way that they can live in my dead brain. I don’t know where the Doomsday people got their facts. A thing like this has never happened before. Why should I cause it to happen now?”