So a few people of that part of Tir Tairngiri gathered around and gazed at the ten freakish things, burning their eyeballs as they did so.
“I know what you are,” called Nemhead the warrior. “You are five living persons who are bereft of life. And you're two slain giants, but I've never seen a giant yet that could be killed by slaying (I've seen one of the fellows have his head cut off, and he took that head under his arm and walked away with it). And you're three ghosts who have lost your ghosthood. All this because of the great heat you have endured.”
“They are not such things unless we have scientific proof that they are,” Fergus McRoy objected.
“They are either such things or they are senseless simulacrums of them,” Nemhead muttered. “That point will have to be settled. Hey, people-shaped rocks, I haven't any idea what we ought to do with you. If you have an idea, tell it to us.”
The hot statues fumed and spumed but they were not able to speak.
“If they are unable to speak us some proof of themselves, then we'd best not believe in their happening at all,” Fergus McRoy warned.
“I have an idea what we can do with you,” the lady Li Ban said. “We'll attempt a thing, oh smokey stones, because we are all pious and compassionate. We will command you back to life, by a method that we have and we will enforce our command. If you are real, then we will command you to real life. If you are illusions, then we will command you to illusion life. There's no other group in all the worlds that could enforce such a command, and we can do it only because we are holy and pious persons, every one of us. Now we'll leave you here and go and have a prelude feast to give ourselves strength for it. And then we'll come back and pray and fast against you until you decide to obey the law.”
“Bring us a little something too from the feast,” one of the hot statues tried to say to the Lady Li Ban, but his words were lost in his sizzling and crackling. Then the little group of Tir people left the hot stone figures and went into town to eat the prelude feast that lasted all night. The people of this holy and pious group were the ladies Li Ban, Morrighan, Badhbh, Nemain, Macha, and Fann. And they were the warrior-heroes Nemhead, Fergus McRoy, Finn McCool, and Sencha McAllen.
In the morning, these good people returned to the site of the ten hot stone objects that had been fire-balls. They had held the prelude feast all night. Now they would fast.
“We will pray and fast against you to compel you to return to life,” the lady Fann said. “We will persevere until you decide to obey the law in this. The law is that there must be no ambiguous folks on Tir. They must be alive or they must be dead. But they cannot be inbetween or we will classify them as graven images and smash them as images.”
Then this holy group of Tir folk prayed and fasted against the rock-statue people for forty days, or from that Monday morning to the sixth Friday night. This pious group ate no morsel of food and they drank no drop of water at all. They'd give the hot folks no rest until they had come to a decision.
“We fast against you stone people and we pray and we invoke the law,” the lady Li Ban said. “There is a law enacted that decent people should be alive, and you must immediately begin to act like live persons.”
“And you must somehow create scientific proof that you are alive,” said Fergus McRoy, “to allay the impressions of your strange coming.”
“You defy our law at your peril,” the lady Li Ban said, “but we know that our methods are effective. In earlier year we fasted and prayed against great Fergus McRoy here, to force him to arise from his grave. We could enforce the law on a man as great as he. And surely none of you will claim that he is greater than Fergus McRoy.”
“You're pitchblende-picking right I am!” Captain Roadstrum roared with a defiant sizzling and sputtering out of his rock. “Him great, him? Let him go out and get a reputation like ours. Then you can call him great.”
Captain Roadstrum? What impossible thing has come to pass? How would Captain Roadstrum be here on Tir Tairngiri, alive for all we know, and unvaporized by the heat of the terrible nova that had been seen to gobble up his Hornet craft? How would even his great voice be here, shouting defiances out of a sizzling, hot, people statue?
“You maintain that you are greater than myself!” Fergus McRoy challenged, “You haven't even given scientific proof for your existence! Come out of that hot stone, whatever you are, and we'll see who is greatest.”
“Quiet, pipsqueak,” Roadstrum's voice sounded from the stone. “Let me get rid of this hot-rock tunic and I'll teach you manners. This was fine while we were whanging through zero space, but these last eighty days here it's been a little warm. Well, it's bust out now or be a chicken in the eggshell forever.”
There was a breaking-open sound like Doomsday Morning, and a reek like that of the North gate of Hell. Thunder of exploding rock! And Roadstrum had burst his stone sheath and he stood clear. He was a man and no stone statue. Skin-burned and peeling and singed he was, and suffering from the white sickness of those who have been too long in the fire. But he was a living and seething man, in no way odd except for the sparks that showered out from him. He was as complete a man as he had been when he went to his premature death beyond Di Carissimus. He had his foxy, forked tongue primed and ready (this was the tongue made to take the place of that torn out by the Laestrygonian giants). He had one bloodshot eye in his head and the other in his pocket (that was the eye gouged out in the scuffle on Hellpepper Planet).
This was the great Roadstrum himself whom all the cosmos believed to have been dead when his Hornet ship had blown and ignited a full nova. Great Roadstrum was alive and thunderously unwell; and he could say, as his old friend the Hornet Captain Achilles had once said, “It will make a difference, now that I have returned.”
And now he took out that loose eye that he carried in his pocket, his seeing-eye eye, as he always called it, his brother in space and his last companion, and he spoke to it:
“Eye my eye,” he said. “It worked for me. Why hasn't it worked for the other nine? I bet it's just that I'm a bit more pious and a bit more holy than the others. They have to be alive in there. We got the quick-scorch so fast that all our soul and life juices were sealed inside and there was no possible way that any of us could have died. They're all alive there in their hot-stone overcoats, if only they don't kill themselves getting out.”
“Eye, my eye, we'll have us a good time whether our companions survive or not. The two of us against all the worlds, and I bet we'd win. But we'd better encourage these good local people to work on our companions a little bit more. I never did believe that stuff about old friends being best, but they are the more easily gulled, and new friends might not be so soft on the con. Good people, good people, fast and pray for my nine good friends still prisoned in their stones here.”
“You swore that you were greater than myself!” the great Fergus McRoy accused. “You swore an oath by the dread pitchblende that you were greater. Now there is war between us. Now I will unestablish you of all identity, will destroy you by making it be that you never were.”
“Shut up, Fergus!” Roadstrum barked. “I am Roadstrum.”
“I know who you are,” Fergus said, holding his ground. “We get the comic strips here and I read ‘Captain Roadstrum’, but I will not acknowledge that you are real. Lacking scientific proof of your reality, you must give up your claim entirely.”
“Oh, shut up!” Roadstrum barked. “I've no time for boys. Kind lady,” (this to the lady Li Ban) “could you and your folks give my discommoded friends another night and day and night of it with your fasting and praying? Save them from the flame and heat, good lady, and store up merit for yourselves.”
“Oh, I suppose we could,” said the lady Li Ban, “though we're almost dead from hunger and thirst. Yes, we will do it. We will fast and pray against these nine stupid stones again. We will force them to obey the law and to live, or we will force them to declare themselves somehow. And what will you yourself be doing all this while, sir?�
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“There had better be a scientific explanation for a man breaking out of a hot stone.” Fergus McRoy muttered threateningly. “We take a pretty dim view here about unscientific happenings. I'm a fellow at Tir Tech and I can't let something like this pass unchallenged.”
“Why, lady, I believe that I'll go into town and have me a banquet in my own honor,” Roadstrum told the Lady Li. There were sparks shattering off him as he stretched and walked about, flinty, bright sparks, and the odor of puddling iron.
“Let's not forget that you averred that you were greater than myself,” Fergus McRoy was yammering. “Now you must answer—”
“Shut up, Fergus!” Roadstrum shouted. “I'm going to go eat a banquet in honor of myself, and I'll eat you where you stand for first dish if you make any more mouth.”
“Wait up Captain. I'll go with you,” came a huge, boyish voice from the largest of the opaque stones. That voice could only belong to Hondstarfer, the boy-giant, the hammer-handling kid who was the best mechanic along the spaceways. Hondstarfer was alive in there! Could he get out without killing himself?
There was a tortured, tearing roar, the agonized rending sound that stones make when they are split and riven apart by great force. More than that, this was the primordial and all but forgotten moaning (it reminds one of a death-of-mountains moaning) that large stones make when they are in labor to bring forth giants.
And then the actual screaming of stone, the shrieking, the hot gurgling, gasping, gobbling, the rattling and slashing of soft and hard fragments of hot rocks that is called cataclysm.
And then it was a giant indeed who stood there, smoking and glowing and cascading sparks. It was the boy-giant, Hondstarfer himself, grinning and glittering with birth-death amazement and delight. It was Hondstarfer, the hammer-handling kid, with his seven big stone Hammers and with his big head that was like a boulder.
“It sure was getting tedious in there, captain,” Hondstarfer said. “Well, come along to that banquet thing. We'll make it in my honor also. We'll have a few quick whole bulls roasted a bit on the raw side, and then we will work into the meal itself.”
“There had better be a scientific explanation for a boy-giant hatching out of a stone egg here on Tir,” Fergus McRoy grumbled. Sparks from Hondstarfer were showering him and he felt uncomfortable. “I don't like it,” Fergus continued doggedly, “and the local giants aren't going to like it. We take a dim view of—”
“Shut up Fergus!” Hondstarfer shouted in his giant voice, and the sound split apart big rocks that had not even been involved in the fire-ball landings.
“I feel lucky,” great Roadstrum exulted as he stretched and grew. “This is going to be my lucky world. And, if there is not enough luck here accruing to me naturally, then I will manufacture more luck for myself by my own process.” And Roadstrum made the ritual right-hand turn (fordessel) to ensure full luck.
“There is a sleeping hound that raises one ear whenever a man brags inordinately about his luck,” the lady Badhbh warned, “or whenever a man maintains his existence in the face of contrary facts.”
“And there is scientific explanation and sanction for the recompense that the hound extracts,” Fergus McRoy admonished.
“What means it when the hound raises an ear?” Roadstrum asked the lady Badhbh.
“It means either that he can or that he cannot hear you,” Finn McCool explained. “If he then gives but one twitch to his ear it means that he can't hear you. And that means that you are not in being. When the hound can't hear you, you're not anywhere.”
“The hound, is he honest?” Roadstrum asked.
“Reasonably honest, for a hound,” said the lady Badhbh.
“Then he'll hear me,” Roadstrum declared with confidence. “Are there any other portents here that I should be ware of?”
“Ah, the crows of Morrigan!” moaned one of those other ladies. “Ware of the crows of Morrigan. Ware if they be hooded.”
“What means it when the crows are hooded?” Roadstrum asked.
“When they are hooded they cannot see you. And when they cannot see you, then you are not,” the lady moaned. “Ware of the crows of Morrigan!”
“Who is Morrigan?” great Roadstrum asked.
“I am Morrigan,” said the lady. “Ware of my crows!”
“You two look like one-twitch-of-the-hound's-ear men to me,” Fergus McRoy said darkly. “You two look like blind-of-the-crows men to me.”
“Shut up Fergus!” Roadstrum and Hondstarfer both roared. “We go to town to celebrate our own banquet.”
“I'll go with you,” said the Tir hero Finn McCool. “You wouldn't even be able to find the banquet hall. I will show you that there is one hero on Tir who knows how to honor strangers, even if they are non-existent strangers.”
Roadstrum, Hondstarfer, and Finn McCool went into town to devour the banquet in honor of all of them.
2
They live again! The morning stars will carol them!
No mind that viscous villain strive to peril them.
For these be folks of feckless feats heroic all;
Forget their unbelievers, sour and stoic all.
Though crabbed curmudgeons carp “Oh, not that claque again!”
Sing alleluia! Here's the good guys back again!
Great Roadstrum yet; the houri Marg'ret kitteny
Fairfeather, Crabgrass, Cutshark, holy litany
Threefountains, Birdsong, hammer-kid Hondstarfer here,
Clamdigger, big Trochanter, ne'er a dwarfer here.
The way they lived again is pretty if-ic yet,
Our father's rocks! But is it scientific yet?
—The Vinegar Tree
“Hondstarfer,” said the local hero Finn McCool as they strode towards the town or settlement, “have I not heard somewhere that you were of giant's blood?”
“Yes, I am of giant's blood in all my ancestry,” Hondstarfer answered proudly.
“One has but to look at him to know that,” Roadstrum put in his rowel. “He is already twice as tall as I am, and his father was three times as tall. And you, Finn McCool, you are plainly of giant's blood.”
“There are giants and there are giants,” said Finn. “There is blood and there is blood. There are yeses and nos. When I am in ordinary peoples' company, when I am in ordinary giants' company, then I do not deny that I'm a giant. But when I'm in the presence of certain extraordinary giants of Tir, then I do not raise the subject.”
“You do not?” Roadstrum asked. “Well what do you do when you are in the company of these extraordinary giants?”
“I keep mighty quiet then,” Finn McCool of Tir Tairngiri said.
They entered a spacious place by what was either the tallest door anywhere, or was a huge natural entrance to a cave. They went in and took table, and Roadstrum was trying to know what sort of high and darkling place they had entered. There were two different sorts of vast pillars there that went up and up into the invisibility of the high darkness. The pillars of one sort were roughly round, oaken, with the bark still on them, and of a very great diameter. Those of the other sort were less round in a rougher way; they were of an unknown substance; it could not be discerned whether or not they had bark growing on them; and they were of still greater diameter than were the first pillars. Those of the latter sort had huge, sloppy, shapeless, asymmetrical pedestals, and these pedestals themselves were as tall as a man. Roadstrum now saw that the high darkness above them was of an artificial sort. There was a canopy or a firmament or a sky above them and it cut them off from the sun or whatever other light might be up there.
The three heroes (for Roadstrum and Hondstarfer, being Hornet crew members, were both valid heroes; and Finn McCool was a natural-born hero of Tir Tairngiri) called the waiter to come, and they ordered bulls roasted whole, a little on the raw side.
Then there was heard a rattling explosion from the countryside whence they had just come.
“That was great Trochanter,” mighty Roadstrum
said. “He just exploded out of his stone sheath. I'd know the tone of Trochanter, anywhere, in any thing, forever.”
“I hope it goes well with him,” said Finn. “You know that there will be reporters, do you not, Roadstrum?”
“Reporters? Whence? For what reason?”
“Oh, they've been around before. To check on the fireball landings mostly. And now that a rumor has gone out that live people have hatched out of the fire-ball shells, the reporters are sure to be back.”
“Good. I love to talk to newsmen,” mighty Roadstrum said, “and Hondstarfer here could also give them some fine stories. There is nothing in the worlds that he can't make with his stone hammers. As to myself, I have no vanity in me at all, but I love to explain the great things about myself and my companions to all the media men. The things that happen to us do not happen to other people. We are unique even among Hornet farers. I would want to be sure that the reporters get the stories straight. And then, after they've got them straight, I want to be sure that they get all those deft little curves and hooks on the ends of them, those characteristic quirks and curves and twists and hooks that I do so well.”
“Ah, but they'll not believe you, great Roadstrum,” Finn McCool said out of his happy face (he had a face kindred to that of Hondstarfer, large and lank, but not large enough to contain all the drolleries that struggled for a place on it; these ordinary giants do not say or do anything droll, but they sure do have a whole concourse of droll looks on their big faces.)
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 193