The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Are you as a group qualified to give us the information we seek?” I asked.

  “Every citizen of Camiroi is qualified, in theory, to give sound information on every subject,” said the teenage sproutling.

  “But in practice it may not be so,” I said, my legal mind fastening onto his phrase.

  “The only difficulty is our over-liberal admission to citizenship,” said Miss Diayggeia, who had been the voice of the post and the Information Factor. “Any person may become a citizen of Camiroi if he has resided here for one oodle. Once it was so that only natural leaders traveled space, and they qualified. Now, however, there are subsidized persons of no ability who come. They do not always conform to our high standard of reason and information.”

  “Thanks,” said our Miss Holly Holm, “and how long is an oodle?”

  “About fifteen minutes,” said Miss Dia. “The post will register you now if you wish.”

  The post registered us, and we became citizens of Camiroi. “Well, come, come, fellow citizens, what can we do for you?” asked Sideki, the pleasant-looking Camiroi who was the first member of our host group.

  “Our reports of the laws of Camiroi seem to be a mixture of travelers' tales and nonsense,” I said. “We want to find how a Camiroi law is made and how it works.”

  “So, make one, citizens, and see how it works,” said Sideki. “You are now citizens like any other citizens, and any three of you can band together and make a law. Let us go down to Archives and enact it. And you be thinking what sort of law it will be as we go there.”

  We strode through the contrived and beautiful parklands and groves which were the roofs of Camiroi City. The extent was full of fountains and waterfalls, and streams with bizarre bridges over them. Some were better than others. Some were better than anything we had ever seen anywhere.

  “But I believe that I myself could design a pond and weir as good as this one,” said Charles Chosky, our leader. “And I'd have some of those bushes that look like Earth sumac in place of that cluster there; and I'd break up that pattern of rocks and tilt the layered massif behind it, and bring in a little of that blue moss—”

  “You see your duty quickly, citizen,” said Sideki. “You should do all this before this very day is gone. Make it the way you think best, and remove the plaque that is there. Then you can dictate your own plaque to any of the symbouleutic posts, and it will be made and set in. ‘My composition is better than your composition,’ is the way most plaques read, and sometimes a scenery composer will add something humorous like ‘and my dog can whip your dog.’ You can order all necessary materials from the same post there, and most citizens prefer to do the work with their own hands. This system works for gradual improvement. There are many Consensus Masterpieces that remain year after year; and the ordinary work is subject to constant turnover. There, for instance, is a tree which was not there this morning and which should not be there tonight. I'm sure that one of you can design a better tree.”

  “I can,” said Miss Holly, “and I will do so today.”

  We descended from the roof parklands in the lower streets of Camiroi City, and went to Archives.

  “Have you thought of a new law yet?” Miss Dia asked when we were at Archives. “We don't expect brilliance from such new citizens, but we ask you not to be ridiculous.”

  Our leader, Charles Chosky, drew himself up to full height and spoke:

  “We promulgate a law that a permanent group be set up on Camiroi to oversee and devise regulations for all random and hasty citizens groups with the aim of making them more responsible, and that a full-scale review of such groups be held yearly.”

  “Got it?” Miss Dia called to an apparatus there in Archives.

  “Got it,” said the device. It ground its entrails and coughed up the law, inscribed on bronze, and set it in a law niche.

  “The echo is deafening,” said our Miss Holly, pretending to listen.

  “Yes. What is the effect of what we have done?” I asked.

  “Oh, the law is in effect,” said young Nautes. “It has been weighed and integrated into the corpus of laws. It is already considered in the instructions that the magistrate coming on duty in a short time (usually a citizen will serve as magistrate for one hour a month) must scan before he takes his seat. Possibly in this session he will assess somebody guilty of a misdemeanor to think about this problem for ten minutes and then to attach an enabling act to your law.”

  “But what if some citizens group passes a silly law?” our Miss Holly asked.

  “They do it often. One of them has just done so. But it will be repealed quickly enough,” said Miss Dia of the Camiroi. “Any citizen who has his name on three laws deemed silly by general consensus shall lose his citizenship for one year. A citizen who so loses his citizenship twice shall be mutilated, and the third time he shall be killed. This isn't an extreme ruling. By that time he would have participated in nine silly laws. Surely that's enough.”

  “But, in the meantime, the silly laws remain in effect?” our Mr. Chosky asked.

  “Not likely,” said Sideki. “A law is repealed thus: any citizen may go to Archives and remove any law, leaving the statement that he has abolished the law for his own reasons. He is then required to keep the voided law in his own home for three days. Sometimes the citizen or citizens who first passed the law will go to the house of the abolitionist. Occasionally they will fight to the death with ritual swords, but most often they will parley. They may agree to have the law abolished. They may agree to restore the law. Or they may together work out a new law that takes into account the objections to the old.”

  “Then every Camiroi law is subject to random challenge?” Chosky asked.

  “Not exactly,” said Miss Dia. “A law which has stood unchallenged and unappealed for nine years becomes privileged. A citizen wishing to abolish such a law by removal must leave in its place not only his declaration of removal but also three fingers of his right hand as earnest of his seriousness in the matter. But a magistrate or a citizen going to reconstitute the law has to contribute only one of his fingers to the parley.”

  “This seems to me to favor the establishment,” I said.

  “We have none,” said Sideki. “I know that is hard or Earthlings to understand.”

  “But is there no senate or legislative body on Camiroi, or even a president?” Miss Holly asked.

  “Yes, there's a president,” said Miss Dia, “and he is actually a dictator or tyrant. He is chosen by lot for a term of one week. Any of you could be chosen for the term starting tomorrow, but the odds are against it. We do not have a permanent senate, but often there are hasty senates constituted, and they have full powers.”

  “Such bodies having full powers is what we want to study,” I said. “When will the next one be constituted and how will it act?”

  “So, constitute yourselves one now and see how you act,” said young Nautes. “You simply say, ‘We constitute ourselves a Hasty Senate of Camiroi with full powers.’ Register yourselves at the nearest symbouleutic post, and study your senate introspectively.”

  “Could we fire the president-dictator?” Miss Holly asked.

  “Certainly,” said Sideki, “but a new president would immediately be chosen by lot; and your senate would not carry over to the new term, nor could any of you three partake of a new senate until a full presidential term had passed. But I wouldn't, if I were you, form a senate to fire the present president. He is very good with the ritual sword.”

  “Then citizens do actually fight with them yet?” Mr. Chosky asked.

  “Yes, any private citizen may at any time challenge any other private citizen for any reason, or for none. Sometimes, but not often, they fight to the death, and they may not be interfered with. We call these decisions the Court of Last Resort.”

  Reason says that the legal system on Camiroi cannot be as simple as this, and yet it seems to be. Starting with the thesis that every citizen of Camiroi should be able to handle every as
signment or job on Camiroi, these people have cut organization to the minimum. These things we consider fluid or liberal about the legal system of Camiroi. Hereafter, whenever I am tempted to think of some law or custom of Earth as liberal, I will pause. I will hear Camiroi laughing.

  On the other hand, there are these things which I consider adamant or conservative about the laws of Camiroi:

  No assembly on Camiroi for purposes of entertainment may exceed thirty-nine persons. No more than this number may witness any spectacle or drama, or hear a musical presentation, or watch a sporting event. This is to prevent the citizens from becoming mere spectators rather than originators or partakers. Similarly, no writing — other than certain rare official promulgations — may be issued in more than thirty-nine copies in one month. This, it seems to us, is a conservative ruling to prevent popular enthusiasms.

  A father of a family who twice in five years appeals to specialists for such things as simple surgery for members of his household, or legal or financial or medical advice, or any such things as he himself should be capable of doing, shall lose his citizenship. It seems to us that this ruling obstructs the Camiroi from the full fruits of progress and research. They say, however, that it compels every citizen to become an expert in everything.

  Any citizen who pleads incapacity when chosen by lot to head a military operation or a scientific project or a trade combine shall lose his citizenship and suffer mutilation. But one who assumes such responsibility, and then fails in the accomplishment of the task, shall suffer the loss and the mutilation only for two such failures.

  Both cases seem to us to constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

  Any citizen chosen by lot to provide a basic invention or display a certain ingenuity when there is corporate need for it, and who fails to provide such invention, shall be placed in such a position that he will lose his life unless he displays even greater ingenuity and invention than was originally called for.

  This seems to us to be unspeakably cruel.

  There is an absolute death penalty for impiety. But the question of what constitutes impiety, we received a startling answer:

  “If you have to ask what it is, then you are guilty of it. For piety is comprehension of the basic norms. Lack of awareness of the special Camiroi context is the greatest impiety of all. Beware, new citizens! Should a person more upright and less indulgent than myself have heard your question, you might be executed before nightrise.”

  The Camiroi, however, are straight-faced kidders. We do not believe that we were in any danger of execution, but we had been told bluntly not to ask questions of a certain sort.

  CONCLUSION: Inconclusive. We are not yet able to understand the true legal system of Camiroi, but we have begun to acquire the viewpoint from which it may be studied. We recommend continuing study by a permanent resident team in this field.

  — Paul Piggott, Political Analyst

  From the journey book of Charles Chosky, chief of field group: The basis of Camiroi polity and procedure is that any Camiroi citizen should be capable of filing any job on or pertaining to the planet. If it is ever the case that even one citizen should prove incapable of this, they say, then their system has already failed.

  “Of course, it fails many times every day,” one of their men explained to me. “But it does not fail completely. It is like a man in motion. He is falling off-balance at every step, but he saves himself, and so he strides. Our polity is always in motion. Should it come to rest, it would die.”

  “Have the Camiroi a religion?” I asked citizen after citizen of them.

  “I think so,” one of them said finally. “I believe that we do have that, and nothing else. The difficulty is in the word. Your Earth English word may come from religionem or from relegionem; it may mean a legality, or it may mean a revelation. I believe it is a mixture of the two concepts; with us it is. Of course we have a religion. What else is there to have?”

  “Could you draw a parallel between Camiroi and Earth religion?” I asked him.

  “No, I couldn't,” he said bluntly. “I'm not being rude. I just don't know how.”

  But another intelligent Camiroi gave me some idea on it.

  “The closest I could come to explaining the difference,” he said, “is by a legend that is told (as our Camiroi phrase has it) with the tongue so far in the cheek that it comes out the vulgar body aperture.”

  “What is the legend?” I asked him.

  “The legend is that men (or whatever local creatures) were tested on all the worlds. On some of the worlds men persevered in grace. These have become the transcendent worlds, asserting themselves as stars rather planets and swallowing their own suns, becoming incandescent in their merged persons living in grace and light. The more developed of them are those closed bodies which we know only by inference, so powerful and contained that they let no light or gravity or other emission escape them. They become of themselves closed and total universes, of their own space and outside of what we call space, perfect in their merged mentality and spirit.

  “Then there are the worlds like Earth where men did fall from grace. On these worlds, each person contains an interior abyss and is capable both of great heights and depths. By our legend, the persons of these worlds, after their fall, were condemned to live for thirty thousand generations in the bodies of animals and were then permitted to begin their slow and frustrating ascent back to remembered personhood.

  “But the case of Camiroi was otherwise. We do not know whether there are further worlds of our like case. The primordial test-people of Camiroi did not fall. And they did not persevere. They hesitated. They could not make up their minds. They thought the matter over, and then they thought it over some more. Camiroi was therefore doomed to think matters over forever.

  “So we are the equivocal people, capable of curious and continuing thought. But we have a hunger both for the depths and the heights which we have missed. To be sure, our Golden Mediocrity, our serene plateau, is higher than the heights of most worlds, higher than those of Earth, I believe. But it has not the exhilaration of height.”

  “But you do not believe in legends,” I said.

  “A legend is the highest scientific statement when it is the only statement available,” the Camiroi said. “We are the people who live according to reason. It makes a good life, but it lacks salt. You people have a literature of Utopias. You value their ideals highly, and they do have some effect on you. Yet you must feel that they have this quality of the insipid. And according to Earth standards, we are a Utopia. We are a world of the third case.

  “We miss a lot. The enjoyment of poverty is generally denied to us. We have a certain hunger for incompetence, which is why some Earth things find a welcome here: bad Earth music, bad Earth painting and sculpture and drama, for instance. The good we can produce ourselves. The bad we are incapable of, and must import. Some of us believe that we need it in our diet.”

  “If this is true, your position seems enviable to me,” I said.

  “Yours isn't,” he said, “and yet you are the most complete. You have both halves, and you have your numbers. We know, of course, that the Giver has never given a life anywhere until there was real need for it, and that everything born or created has its individual part to play. But we wish the Giver would be more generous to us in this, and it is in this particularly that we envy Earth.

  “A difficulty with us is that we do our great deeds at too young an age and on distant worlds. We are all of us more or less retired by the age of twenty-five, and we have all had careers such as you would not believe. We come home then to live maturely on our mature world. It's perfect, of course, but of a perfection too small. We have everything — except the one thing that matters, for which we cannot even find a name.”

  I talked to many of the intelligent Camiroi on our short stay there. It was often difficult to tell whether they were talking seriously or whether they were mocking me. We do not as yet understand the Camiroi at all. Further study is recomme
nded.

  —Charles Chosky

  Chief of Field Group

  From the ephemeris of Holly Holm, anthropologist and schedonanthropologist: The word Camiroi is plural in form, is used for the people in both the single and plural and for the planet itself.

  The civilization of Camiroi is more mechanical and more scientific than that of Earth, but it is more disguised. Their ideal machine shall have no moving parts at all, shall be noiseless and shall not look like a machine. For this reason, there is something pastoral about even the most thickly populated districts of Camiroi City.

  The Camiroi are fortunate in the natural furnishings of their planet. The scenery of Camiroi conforms to the dictate that all repetition is tedious, for there is only one of each thing on that world. There is one major continent and one minor continent of quite different character; one fine cluster of islands of which the individual isles are of very different style; one great continental river with its seven branches flowing out of seven sorts of land; one complex of volcanoes; one great range of mountains; one titanic waterfall with her three so different daughters nearby; one inland sea, one gulf, one beach which is a three hundred and fifty mile crescent passing through seven phases named for the colors of iris; one great rain forest, one palm grove, one leaf-fall grove, one of evergreens and one of eodendrons; one grain bowl, one fruit bowl, one pampas; one parkland; one desert, one great oasis; and Camiroi City is the one great city. And all these places are unexcelled if their kind.

  There are no ordinary places on Camiroi!

  Travel being rapid, a comparatively poor young couple may go from anywhere on the planet to Green Beach, for instance, to take their evening meal, in less time than the consumption of the meal will take them, and for less money than that reasonable meal will cost. This easy and frequent travel makes the whole world one community.