It was certainly an irrational and unacceptable covenant and declaration. To allow twenty-one paupers to grow where one had grown before was not tolerable. Fortunately our leaders and their advisers had developed a flexibility of mind lately. They were too fastidious to kill the twenty-one persons outright (and it would have been illegal anyhow), so they simply declared them (retroactively two hours before the publishing of the covenant) to be dead and their property to be under the control of state-appointed referees. The twenty-one misguided persons thus became non-persons; and non-persons may not be paupers or anything else. Anyone who has ever been a non-person, even if by accident or mistake, even if for no more than twenty-four hours, knows that non-persons become so literally.
While they were waiting for the death-tryst of the Last Pauper John Bochtan with Hit-Man Henson to roll around at twenty o'clock, there was a little panel show at the GBLLSYMS with various pundits, scientists, pseudoscientists, and other voicey people as to whether the extirpation of the poor people of the world could really bring about natural or unnatural disasters to the world. ‘Calamities of the Last Pauper’ by coincidence had just been named hit-song of the week, and it was played slowly as background music for all that follows. You who are too young to have seen the denouement of the Death of the Last Pauper on the Greenbaum-Brannagan Late Late Speak Your Mind Show (and ninety-six percent of today's population are too young to have seen it), you should set that old song ‘Calamities of the Last Pauper’ (you have only to uncork the proper one of the ‘Remembering Jugs’ and let it seep out), you should set that old song playing softly as you read this explication. The song and the remembering jug may be better known to you as ‘The Last Hit-of-the-Week Song in the World’. “What we are asking ourselves is whether there may indeed be unpredictable consequences to the extinguishing of the Last Poor Man,” said Hiram Nonchalant.
“No, we are not asking ourselves that,” Cecelia Shadowbox contradicted, “for in the present world nothing is unpredictable. Whatever has to happen will happen. If there are calamities that have to happen now, and it seems that there are, then they will happen regardless of what happens to the Last Poor Man.”
“The scan of 30,000 planets of the size and circumstance most like to Earth indicates that two out of three of them are in ice ages. On about ten percent of these, the ice is total, covering the whole planet. In other cases, it is a ring of volcanic activity and fire making a double belt between the tropic that says ‘Thus far and no farther’ to the advance of the ice. On the planets that are not presently in an ice age, there is always a fair degree of civilization according to our instrumental analysis. There is also a belief by the dominant fauna that the mental attitudes of that dominant fauna have almost everything to do with keeping the ice away, with keeping the winds away, with keeping the excess waters locked in the rocks where it belongs, with keeping the salt locked in the oceans where it belongs. The concept of ‘poor’ is absent on many of these planets, but the concept of ‘compassion’ seems always to be present. One way or another, the dominant fauna believes that such qualities in itself keeps a rein on the elementals.” So said John Upperjohn, a pundit in Comparative Planetology.
“The Wooly Rhinoceros has come back,” Cecelia Shadowbox said. “It has come back because there will soon be a niche in nature for it to fill again, and whatever niche there is to be filled be filled. The mechanism for the return of the Wooly Rhinoceros is not important, only its drive to come back. Really, it was those nuts at the Institute for Impure Science who brought seven pair of the beasts from High Tibet and turned them loose on our continent. I always say that you can't have an Ice Age without the Wooly Rhinoceros.”
“Frazer in his Golden Bough fills several pages with tribes (not all of them primitive) who believe that the presence of poor people in the world keep disasters at bay, and who believe that disasters are certain to come if ever the poor people disappear completely,” said Hiram Nonchalant.
“And whatever Frazer put in his Golden Bough, however silly and grotesque it seems, will be verified by subsequent discovery and event,” commented Cecelia Shadowbox who was a pseudo-scientist of great renown.
At that moment (it was one minute before twenty o'clock) John Bochtan, the Last Poor Man in the World, strode boldly onto stage in Studio One of the Greenbaum-Brannagan Late Late Speak Your Mind Show. And when he strode onto stage he seemed to fill that stage. He had presence.
Pasqual Ratrunner hissed at Bochtan. Selma Halfloaf of the Women's League for the Elimination of Poverty hissed at him. The host of the show, Brannagan, forgetting for a moment his well-known impartiality, hissed at the last poor man, and Hit-Man Henson with a long barrel pistol in his right hand and with his left hand twisted curiously into a fist, hissed at Bochtan and began to circle him in a clockwise direction.
“Whatever is going to happen is already on the way to happen here,” John Upperjohn said. “Let us not attribute causation to any coincidence such as may be spun off by the happenings. The death of the last poor man cannot cause things that are already underway when he dies.”
“That is like saying that a knife is going to cut John Bochtan's throat in just a moment whether or not it finds an instrument to wield it. Hit-Man Henson's wielding the knife will be no more than an unnecessary coincidence. The knife doesn't need Hit-Man, except for the sake of appearances.”
“Exactly,” John Upperjohn said. “Now you understand causation. An event will try to find an agent to make it look plausible, but the destined even will take place whether it finds an agent or not.”
“Drop the pistol, Hit-Man,” John Bochtan the Last Poor Man spoke as one having power. “You cannot stand against my resolution and personality. Drop it, I say!” Bochtan, the last poor man, had his imposing head thrust forward relentlessly, and he crowded Hit-Man into a corner. Hit-Man leaned back from Bochtan, and Bochtan leaned over him further and further. “Drop the pistol, Hit-Man!” Bochtan commanded strongly out of his threatening face, and his imposing head and stretched-out neck were right over Hit-Man. And Bochtan looked straight down at Hit-Man, eye to eye. “Drop it, Hit-Man!” he spoke with overpowering menace.
Hit-Man Henson dropped his long-barreled pistol with a heavy clatter. Then, with an easy motion he reached up and cut Bochtan's overhanging throat with a short knife that he'd been holding in his left fist. He cut it thoroughly. And John Bochtan, the Last Poor Man, died instantly.
“The last poor man in the world in dead,” Hiram Nonchalant said, “and nothing happens.”
“And nothing happens,” Cecelia Shadowbow gave him the echo.
“And nothing happens,” John Upperjohn gave him the second echo. “But if what I think is going to happen does happen, remember that the world has been there from four to twelve times before.”
And nothing did happen. Nothing. Not for about twenty seconds.
Then there came down a news bulletin from the top floor of the GBLLSYMS Tower itself. The top of the tower was swaying three meters in a very strong wind, the news bulletin said, and it had never swayed more than three centimeters in any wind before. It was raining, sleeting, hailing, snowing all at the same time, so the news bulletin continued to rattle, and little balls of fire were falling from the sky into the streets. Turkey Mountain, on the other side of the river, seemed to be turning itself into a volcano. There was already from six to ten feet of water everywhere, but most of it seemed to be coming up from the ground rather than down from the sky. The temperature had dropped seventy-two degrees almost instantly; that was forty degrees Celsius.
The news report coming down from the top of the tower also said that the strong winds had blown all the feathers off the brass goose that adorned that top. This brass goose was a shining mechanism that would publicly lay a brass egg whenever a program in the studios below it laid an egg. The goose and its feathers were all one solid brass casting, so it must have been a very strong wind.
For a while there I feared that I would not be able to wrap this acc
ount up properly. I had used up everything I had to write on. And I had gone out hunting four days straight and not killed the prey I needed to finish this chronicle. But this morning I killed one in the first hour, a large, male, Wooly Rhinoceros. In another hour I had what I needed out of the carcass. Now I have something to write on again. And now this can become a nine-rhinoceros or eighteen-shoulder-blade story. It gives one a feeling of spaciousness to have room to finish properly. There are two questions that have been hanging fire here for several days. I will answer them now, and that will be the wrap-up.
QUESTION: Is the story a true one, or is it just another of those fanciful stories set ‘in the land where the ice is now’?
ANSWER: It is a true story-set ‘in the land where the ice is now’. It happened right on the edge of where the ice is now, for the Turkey Mountain Volcano has created a little green oasis in the middle of the ice here. Oh the ark that was on top of Turkey Mountain? It's still there. It didn't quite float off. The water rose just high enough to slew it around in a different direction. Noah Lamechson of the Hundred-and-first generation still lives in it up there now with his family, on the very edge of the volcano.
QUESTION: What thing is most necessary for a young person wishing to become a writer.
ANSWER: A good spoke-shave of matched flint-stones is the most necessary thing for a young person wishing to become a writer. Without a good spoke-shave, there is no way to fashion a good lance. Without a good lance there is no way to kill a grown Wooly Rhinoceros. And really elegant writing can only be done on the shoulder-blade bones of the Wooly Rhinoceros.
Do not cheap-jack it, young people. Do not settle for less than the best. Do not write on the shoulder blades of a cave bear. A cave bear is much easier to kill. It may be killed in its sleep. But what you write on its shoulder blades will lack elegance. The shoulder blades of the Wooly Puma may be used for writing elegant short poems. And the Wooly Puma is almost as dangerous as the Wooly Rhinoceros to encounter and kill. But its shoulder blades are not big enough to allow longer and more substantial writing.
Do not, in any case, write on a bull's shoulder blades. The inferiority of the writing on such a surface will give you away.
For elegant narration, there is nothing like the shoulder blades of the Wooly Rhinoceros to write on, an obsidian blade set in antler handle to cut the letters into the elegant bone, and “Fat John's Dragon Blood Ink” (he really makes it from Dire Wolf blood) to fill in the notches and cuts for high visibility.
Go first-class in everything you use if you wish to attain distinction.
Faith Sufficient
Remember how it is written on the holy skins: “If you have faith sufficient you shall say to this mountain ‘Remove from here and cast thyself into the sea’ and it will do it.” Well, on that morning they tried it. Several of the big prophets and wrestlers tried it, for they did have faith. They groaned with travail and joy, they strove mightily, and they did move the mountain and make it cast itself into the sea.
—Days of Grass, Days of Straw
The mouse and the handyman had a little game every day with the pecan, the mouse pushing it with all his physical strength, and the handyman pushing it with faith and telekinesis. But then the mouse would seem to double his strength, and they would play the game to a standstill.
“Brother Mus, my employers are rather overdoing this thing,” Brother Gus the handyman said. “I wonder why they have become so extravagant in their manifestations. John Salt is likely to challenge them on the genuineness of them. He is riled by such arrogance. I may have to leave their employ as I left that of the extravagant persons at the laboratory. Oh certainly you will go with me wherever I go. You and I are one.”
The mouse winked at Brother Gus and giggled, proving that he was a mouse of at least human intelligence. While Brother Gus was turned down by the extravagance of the manifestations and by the pomposities where he worked, he did believe very much in Faith Healing. It was by Faith Healing that he had healed the holes in the head of Brother Mus. Brother Gus himself pronounced their names with the old-world soundings of ‘Brother Goose’ and ‘Brother Moose’, and yet they were properly Brother Gus and Brother Mus or Brother Augustine and Brother Mouse.
They had been companions since the mouse was one of those in a bunch that Brother Gus was supposed to destroy after they had been used in experiments.
“The mice of this bunch are all insane now and so they must be nullified,” so Enforcer Doctor Dolphus at the Lab had told Brother Gus. “They have all had extracts from the brains of slightly insane humans implanted into their own brains. Now some of them think they are gods and some of them think they are humans, and their intelligences as well as their paranormal powers are greatly enhanced. The extracts contained ‘faith toxin’, but in several cases it was accidentally accompanied by a modicum of ‘flaming faith toxin’. So they must be destroyed just as I would have a human person who was so afflicted destroyed if I had the authority to do so. The bright-eyed one in particular should be destroyed. He would be a peril to the world if he were released.”
But the bright-eyed mouse had become a personal friend of Brother Gus, and so Gus had been incapable of destroying him. Brother Gus quit his job at the Lab that day, and he took the aberrant bright-eyed toxin-tainted mouse with him.
Now the two of them worked for the ‘Scientific Ecumenical Psychological Encounterful Covenant For Faith Healing and For Civic Management’ which was on Meadow Lark Mountain, a small mound between Turkey Mountain and Rock-Crusher Road. The people at the Covenant knew that Brother Augustine was working for them, and they even gave him a slight fee and a place to sleep for the labor that he performed. But they didn't know about Brother Mouse at all.
And then one day, Brother Gus discovered Brother Mus pushing the pecan around without touching it at all. Ah, the mouse himself had Faith Sufficient as well as telekinetic ability, both of them in small and mouseful ways, of course.
Frockless Sister Mary Anne Humility was in total disgrace, and she found herself the object of scorn and derision of Frockless Sister Domina Specially-Esteemed-By-The-Spirit. Well, what had happened was this: at an Ecumenical and Encounterful meeting of the Covenant preceding the Faith Healing the night before, Sister Humility had been ‘slain’ by the Spirit. This was presumptive of her, and the manifestation was almost certainly bogus. At these encounterful meetings, the higher-ranked and most worthy of the people would stand in squealing rapture as the Spirit began to blow. Then the Spirit would sweep through the hall and ‘slay’ the select ones, but not the unselect. The most worthy ones, after looking over their shoulders to be sure that the less-worthy ‘catchers’ were ready to catch them, would shriek and then throw themselves backwards in total ecstasy. This put the seal of acceptance on their worthiness. But last night, the lowest-ranked of the ‘catchers’, Frockless Sister Mary Anne Humility, had herself been ‘slain’ by the Spirit, a total surprise to herself. Sister Humility had conked out and fallen backwards with a thud, this in the split-second between Frockless Sister Specially-Esteemed-By-The-Spirit glancing over her shoulder to be sure that Frockless Sister Humility was ready to catch her and the same Frockless Sister Specially-Esteemed throwing herself backwards in the formalized ecstasy. So Sister Specially-Esteemed had falled uncaught with a ‘thud’ as well as with an added ‘clunk’. “I was badly injured because of your presumption and your bogus ‘being slain’,” Frockless Sister Domina Specially-Esteemed-By-The-Spirit railed angrily. “I could have been killed while being ‘slain’.”
“Ow, thou got nowt but a knot on thy noggin, and it nowt bigger than a dove's egg,” Frockless Sister Mary Anne Humility protested. “There is nowt ever a danger of the ‘slaying’ killing one.”
“Who are you to tell me there is no danger? Who are you even to presume to be ‘slain’ by the Spirit? Your arrogance and your brass have burst all bounds. Soon you will be pretending to be able to speak in the Unknown Tongues which only those very much advanced in t
he Spirit are allowed to speak in. You are nothing! You are disobedient! Learn your place!”
As the ancient and perhaps holy Enniscorthy Chronicle has it:
“Oh arrogance, Oh pride, presumption sinful!
Learn thou thy place, thou blatant brass a skinfull!”
The Frockless Sisters had abandoned their Sisterly Frocks or Habits because their Inner Light would always shine out of them and identify them to the World without any such artificial costuming.
John Salt issued a challenge to the whole ‘Scientific Ecumenical Encounterful’ bunch, and this sent a tremor through the entire Covenant and all its ramifications. John Salt had been a phoney faith healer, and now he had left off all of that and went about the country exposing all the healers he believed to be phoney. He had kept most of the fulgent eloquence he had larded on so thick when he had been a phoney, and it still stood him in good stead. “A stench has come unto my nostrils from Meadow Lark Mountain in the south midlands,” he fulminated through his beard like an old prophet, “the stench of false works and of healings faked by grubby devils and attributed to the Lord. I will post ten thousand dollars as earnest money and as wager that I can duplicate by natural means any ‘healing’ that the Meadow Lark Mountain Mountebanks attribute to the Holy Spirit. I maintain that the Larks are not on the flightways of the Spirit at all. If the Meadow Lark Mountain Mountebanks are really concerned about the lame and the halt and the blind as they say that they are, let them win the ten thousand dollars from me and apply it to their works of mercy. I know that their ‘take’ is good, but ten thousand dollars is at least equal to one or two of their average collections. Where is their faith if they will not leap at this opportunity? I will rattle the bars of their narrow cages till they accept my challenge. I will shake the mountains till their roots squeal like pigs if the Mountebanks will not enter the arena against me.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 302