Orbit 15 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  And many of the buildings were no more than burlap cloth new out of China (so many things were new out of China, the feeble tea, the sleepy poppy, the tuneless music, the lack of giants) and tent poles. But these buildings showed their own solidity without weight (the sleepy poppy was partly responsible for their showing of solidity), and their own dazzle. In the presence of this dazzle, burlap is almost sunshine-color, it is almost gold, almost yellow, almost rich brown; and it is made out of the holy hemp and the unholy jape-jute.

  These near-weightless buildings were peculiar in their horned domes, in their toadstool towers, in their lacelike pillars. Burlap shapes much more easily than stone, though its strength is less. The buildings would have blown down in a good wind, but for the long, disputed year there was no wind at all, no hint of a storm, not even a breeze.

  It’s true that in one region there was a semblance of a breeze now and then, and little bells (like sheep bells or goat bells) seemed to tinkle in this breeze. But it was all masquerade. Close examination would have shown that each bell was shaken by a small worm to cause the tinkling. They were woolly worms, caterpillars really. And a very close examination would have revealed that each of these caterpillars had its head notched in an inhibiting incision: the thing would never come to term; it would never be more than a caterpillar.

  And also there was something wrong with the tinkling of the small bells. Fine examination would have shown that each of them was cracked, as was their sound. In this region also there were trees with leaves too green, and meadow flowers with blooms too yellow and too red. There was sodded grass that was not true grass. There was a rank goatishness over everything, but it was not the whiff of honest goat. This false breeze and false greenery were in the region of the court that was called the Groves of Arcady.

  St. Peter’s looked distorted and deformed. But St. Peter’s was not built yet? It may not have been, as you know it; but it was built of bark and burlap and lashed poles. It was a burlesque of what it later became. There is no law that a burlesque of a thing may not appear before the thing itself.

  The afore-cited traveler to Amor in the disputed year has written that the tongue of the people was langue d’oc and that the ears of the people were asses’ ears. Others have said that the ears more resembled goats’ ears. The people could waggle their strange ears, and many had painted them motley colors, one yellow and one red. But there was nothing artificial about the strangely mutated ears. They were well rooted, and they were robust, the only robust things about those folk. And they had to be. The noise there was loud. Even the great mutated ears often bled bright red blood from the overpowering sound. And the sense of balance which lives in the inner ear was often destroyed. This accounts for much of the eccentricity of the chorea or St. Vitus dancers. They were the wobblies. The shattered and shattering noises also deformed other wavicles: those of light (for they made all colors into a crooked dazzle, and they manufactured colors where there could not be colors); the olfactory wavicles, so that the cloying bloodiness of giant bread, the sky-scorching feather smell of flaming ducks or quail, the burning pine knots of the steamboats, the rotten-roses floweriness of the court were all blended into a tall symphony of smell; the radio wavicles that mutated till they brought programs from the distant past (“This is station alex, Alexandria, Egypt, bringing you the Year One Wonders”) and from the distant future (“Station kvoo, Bristow, Oklahoma, bringing a program sponsored by Johnny Horany the Hamburger King”). But it was the sound wavicles that predominated, that had made the ears become the highlights of the heads.

  There was amplification for the electrical guitars and other instruments. This amplification had been made possible by the insoluble genius of Sparky McCarky. That wandering man, the Unholy Fool of the Hebrides, had brought, in jugs, from his native Benbecula Island, a quantity of the spectacular lightning that nests in the crags there. He had brought this jugged lightning to Amor Town; he had installed plug-ins where it might be tapped, and so his lightning had been turned into amplified sound.

  The music and the lyrics weren’t much. One couldn’t hear them for the sound. There was a sort of projection in midair of the musical scores and the words of the lyrics. Some say that they were projected as on a visual screen; others say that it was a multi-media screen. Some of those poets weren’t bad. Dante was there for part of the year. Others of the great ones were there for a while, but finally the bad poets drove out the good ones.

  In one central part of Amor Town, the sound reached such a strength that it sustained itself thereafter. When hands were removed from the instruments, the instruments still dinned on. When singers left, their voices remained. There was no stopping them. And when, beyond this noisy centrality, in the other fun spots—(The Gory Ox, The Calamity Howl, The Whoop Coop, The Gayety Gate (where Gayety Unrestrained sang with her sinewy voice)—the sound died away during the rare sleeping hours, that sound could be “lighted” again at the great, self-sustaining noise center, and it could be carried on a vibrating string to any of those bistros, there to rekindle the dead sound.

  ~ * ~

  The technology of Amor Town in the disputed year was anachronistic and atrocious. There were the steamboats which could not have been if that were a proper sequence year. But the steamboats were there and, especially in the mornings, were always blocking dry and rubbled streets. It is believed that they steamed out on the morning dew and were stranded when the dew dispersed. The steamboats, old sternwheelers or sidewheelers, had names like Hierophant’s Show Boat, April Queen, Joanie’s Show Boat (the show girls on that one were named Joanie, Janie, Jeanie, Junie, Johnny, and Ginny), The Big Casino, Fruity-Tootie’s Show Boat, and Five Card Charley’s River Rag-Tag. It seemed that these steamboats properly belonged to some other place and time (improperly, all places and times belonged to Amor Town in the disputed year).

  ~ * ~

  And then there were the automobiles (if you will permit our coining an illegitimate word from one Greek and one Latin root). These were machines: they ran on Wheels and were powered by smoke. They were also called the Clown Cars, and they ran around on the green grass of Love Plaza. They ran erratically, in circles and in loops. They exploded so as to shake the whole town. They buckled in the middle and left droppings, sometimes a pile of clowns who untangled themselves and ran in pursuit of their vehicles, sometimes a pile of camel excrement steaming and fragrant, sometimes a roaring lion who soon burst into flames, showing himself to be only a paper lion. Sometimes the clown cars reared up on their hind wheels and honked terrifying horns.

  But, besides the steamboats and the clown cars, there wasn’t much real technology in Amor Town.

  (Here a tambour makes drumming sounds.)

  I love with every orifice,

  I love each dampish channel red,

  I love all flesh alive and dead,

  I love the bottomless abyss.

  —Joan Hedge-Green (Papess at Amor)

  (Here the drumhead of the tambour splits.)

  (Here a ram’s horn sounds.)

  Nor guessed the situation bit,

  Nor found the Lord so dull a lover,

  Nor used the love-as-catchword kit

  A multitude of sins to cover.

  —Archipelago

  (Here the ram’s horn cracks.)

  (Here a percussion triangle rings “ting, ting.”)

  The eternal triangle.

  —Anon., 1907

  (Here the broken triangle sounds “tunk, tunk.”)

  (Here a postboy’s horn blows three notes.)

  Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end.

  —Chesterton

  (Here the postboy’s horn blows three more notes, but far away.)

  Love was the theme of Amor Town, and the triangle was the symbol and shape of that contingent society; the triangle, and its solid form, the tetrahedron. The sound
of it was triangular, the groupings were triangular, and its prismatic light was triangular. Joan Hedge-Green herself formed an immediate love triangle with her two lovers, the Clown-Devil and the Maid of Wands. (“Glory, love, and love some more for Babylonian Jane” as Rud-yard said, but not quite.)

  Every person in Amor Town was a ravening lover. (“So I move mountains and I love them not, then I am nothing,” as Paul said, but not exactly.) Each lover had its own Ares and its own Aphrodite, and each was by turns Ares and Aphrodite to others. This was the triangle repeated over and over again in the love plane, the interlocking loving that is not accountable ever. (“Blessed be that love that shatters all its offspring on the stones,” as the Psalmist said, but not precisely.) But the plane does not go up far enough, and it sure does not go down far enough.

  But, in addition, each lover had its masked lover or Hermes. This additional masked lover placed each lover in three love planes instead of one. This worked to construct the love pyramid, or love in depth. It was a nesting, close-fitting form, and it multiplied endlessly. It was the most simple crystal possible, and it propagated itself forever. It filled, or would fill, or might fill all the worlds and all the universes. (“And, for your love of love, lead apes in hell,” so Will the Bard said, or almost said.) (“I love the jupe, I love the jape, I love the Tartarusian ape,” so Joan of Amor said.)

  This was the inward-turning construct that had no limits, and it had very few needs beyond itself. There was food in the Flesh-pots of Egypt district of the town; there was other food in the Rivers of Babylon district; and there was very strong food in the Ovens of Moloch purlieu.

  There were all the turn-on and plug-in devices in the Ships of Tarshish neighborhood. There were all attractive falsities in that barrio named the Groves of Arcady. There was music, and when the music failed, there was noise that failed not forever. Municipal arrangements were excellent. Law had been dissolved in love. (“Love, and let the law go hang,” as Austen said, or very nearly said.) The garbage collectors had been dismissed as being un-needed (if you love it, it isn’t garbage). The police had been disbanded. The firemen had been dismissed (if it burns, it is love, and should not be quenched). There were no magistrates; there were no officials at all; there was no thought for the morrow. There was the year that could not end, for it was self-contained and inward-turned. There was love and love alone, and it went on and on and on.

  ~ * ~

  (“It’s the longest year I ever did see!” Valery Mok, observing from another place and time, swore. “There has to be an end to it.” Valery drew the Shining Man card. She was not doing badly, but she was disgusted.)

  ~ * ~

  The thing wrong with perfection is not that it repeats itself, but that it stands still in its first instance and freezes time. The thing wrong with love is that the false will so often supersede the true. The thing wrong with that town was that it was introverted and backwards: there are those who will live in it forever, but there are also those who will break out of it. The thing wrong with that year was that it began to come apart before the first week of June.

  ~ * ~

  (“What, what, why are they climbing over the walls to get out of that town?” Charles Cogsworth asked in amazement. “Malcontents,” Director Gregory Smirnov said. “There are always some. Continue with it, Epikt.” “Might I not go on automatic?” Epikt asked from the great department of him that was under their feet. “And I could leave a couple of my extensions to monitor the thing.” Not those two extensions, though: the Johnny Greeneyes extension was quickly over the hill and far away. The Ancient Scribe extension became so inconspicuous that he was invisible.)

  ~ * ~

  3

  That was the year that lost its luck.

  That was the year of the flaming duck.

  And then there was a sort of explanation that Epikt dredged up from the depths of his data banks: “Satan, in his person of Lucifer, was the first of the Flaming Ducks, and he is the father of them to this day.”

  The author of that is unknown except to Epikt. But the flaming ducks continued to rain down on the Institute Building and on the ridge above and beyond. You got tired of those ducks, but these were poverty days with the Institute and its members. The members were eating a hard-times lunch of bloody giant bread and flamed duck.

  “I hear there will be a new giant moving into the neighborhood,” Gregory said.

  “Oh, that’s good,” Valery beamed. “It made me feel pretty uneasy to be all out of giants.”

  “I just don’t know what causes a lustrum year,” Glasser said crankily.

  “I believe they happen because people are ordinarily so good that provision must be made in some place apart for even the shadow of evil that is in them,” Valery said happily. “So that toy evil must be vented in a toy year. That’s all there is to it.”

  “I wonder when there will be another lustrum year?” Aloysius Shiplap asked, somewhat worried.

  “Not right away, I don’t believe,” Director Gregory Smirnov assured them all. “None of the signs of it are present. And the people, while very good in these last few decades, are not quite good enough that it spills over, not so overpoweringly good as to require being counteracted by a toy evil in another time and place.

  “Aw, feather dusters!” Gregory swore suddenly. “I’m getting mighty tired of eating flaming duck. And it doesn’t help as much as it did to call it quail or swan.”

  “We must all be careful not to be too good, lest we precipitate the thing,” Valery warned. “If only we could have salt with the damned duck! But the doctors all say that we should forego salt in favor of sulfur. Here, Greg, I’ll make you a good hard-times sandwich, break-bone bread, holy cow, flamed—ah—grackle, blood pudding, offal—no, really, they say it’s good for you— yellow sulfur, and that good new Moloch mustard. Here, eat it hot, Greg, eat it hot.”

  “Oh, all right,” Director Gregory Smirnov said glumly.

  ~ * ~

  The stranded riverboat was hooting mournfully over on Fourteenth Street. It would have to wait many hours yet before being able to float on the morning dew. And the dew was never near as drenching as it should have been. In one week, the steamboat had been able to move only two and one-half blocks on the morning dews: no more than eighty yards a day.

  There were many people dancing the chorea in the streets. One of them was dressed as St. Vitus, and several of them were holy. And always there was the towering noise behind it all, a noise that had once been music.

  There were a few discouraged-looking holy cows, inquiring of people (somehow or other) the way to the Cow Palace. There was a person who said that he was the son of the Pied Piper. He was piping the children into following him, and they were being drowned in the reservoir.

  There was a newly appeared, sad-looking person in motley or clown suit. He had mean-looking mustaches; he had a little spike beard; he had red-rimmed eyes. He was unkempt. He looked like the Devil.

  The children of the large birthing of the week before (they who had walked and talked on the day of their birth) had now taken over most of the city offices. And there was one of them in particular—ah, well, never mind, there is one like that in every large birthing.

  There had been further huge, bloody globs falling from the low sky. It was believed, however, that they were the last remnants of some old giant, that they were not from the new giant who had not indeed arrived yet.

  “Scrat!” cried Valery as she played the Strange Lover card.

  ~ * ~

  And still there were the flaming ducks, all of them capons, stenchy and outrageous, thudding, thudding, thudding to earth day and night. One does get tired of burnt duck.

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  ~ * ~

  PALE HANDS

  Doris Piserchia

  Whom do you lead on Rapture’s roadway, far,

  Before you agonize them in farewell?

  ~ * ~

  2021, and what had we to show for it? Overpopulation, for
one thing. What did people see in each other? I read pornography by the pile, thinking I might find the answer there, but I didn’t. It cost me a great deal, that erotica, because it was forbidden. The only way to get it was from pushers who charged according to how expensively a buyer was dressed. I always wore my oldest dress whenever I went on the hunt for porno.

  Everyone spent their first six years of life in the Conditioning Center in Illinois. I didn’t remember what I learned there, and no matter how much I questioned my friends, they told me nothing about their memories or their personal lives. It made me feel ignorant.

  I cleaned masturbation stalls for a living. There must have been millions of them. One side of Fifth Avenue was my territory, the other side belonged to Lydon. I didn’t know his last name. He came after Pisby died. Pisby was a dirty old man who spent too much time in the stalls. With that bad heart of his, he shouldn’t have pumped his beef so much.