Aurelia

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Oh stop that, stop it!” Aurelia howled. “You have no reason to do that.”

  “But I have a reason,” said a very large man, and he shot Aurelia in the right round with an executive-sized needle. “I have a good reason for this. I do hope that it straightens you out. If I am going to shoot you for an arrow, at least you must be a straight arrow.”

  “But I don’t want to be an arrow at all,” Aurelia objected to the idea.

  “It’s a little too late to change the plans now,” the large lady said. “But be as good an arrow as you can be. And after you die you may come back as a replica or a statuette.” This lady was grinning. Contingent people of her sort have humour?

  Then the mysterious people left Aurelia, or she left them. But there was some lurking going on. Aurelia hoped there wasn’t any hard feelings. She was almost certain that some of the needle people had been Karl Talion and Julio Cordovan and Blaise Genet and Helen Staircase; and maybe Herr Boch or the Prince of Nysa, and almost certainly the original tycoon. Aurelia was a little bit miserable with the dull confusion of her wits and the sharp stinging of arm and midruff and thigh and round.

  But not for long. Pleasure and euphoria welled up in her. One, at least, of those needles had carried a joy jolt, and it lifted her up.

  “What world are we on?” she asked a boat’s official there. “I’m not unhappy or frightened now. The shots took care of that. But I still wonder what world I’m on.”

  “Not on any world,” the boat’s officer said. “No, we’re on water. Watch it slide under us! One of the morning papers says that you’re an impostor. It’s that Jimmy Candor who says that you’re an impostor and not a real governess at all. I think he’s wrong. Watch the water slide under us! We’re on the water, not on the world.”

  “Can’t we be on the water on the world.”

  “Not really,” the officer said. “Rest your mind here. You have travelled too far. We’re on the water only till we tie up to land. Be at peace.”

  “But, dammit, what world will it be when we come to land?” Aurelia demanded.

  “Oh, didn’t they give you a route-table when you got your ticket? That shows where you will be at every stop-over.”

  “It is time that I established my suzerainty over this blinking world!” Aurelia declared with sudden heat. “I will govern it, and I will not be pushed around.

  “Come along then,” said the tycoon. “At my place you can govern. Here you cannot. The international people wanted to abduct you, each to his own land. Well, I want to abduct you to my own, and my own land is wherever I happened to be. The important people will all come to my house, and with them you can deal. Come with me to my luxury cabin.”

  “All right,” Aurelia said. “Your needle was the only one that knew what it was talking about. I’ll go with you.”

  It was morning when Aurelia arrived with the tycoon at the luxury cabin, so there were the morning papers of all the great cities of the world on a sideboard there.

  “Now, I think we will—” the tycoon began.

  Well, newspapers of whatever kind are a certain simplicity, and Aurelia could assimilate great globs of them simultaneously and easily. She assimilated this glob from the Kansas City Star:

  “Just after midnight of April Fool’s Day there appeared the April Fool’s story of the year. Well, it has always been a good story, and it always appears on April Fool’s Day, every five or six years. This is the one of the arrival of a governor (in this case a governess) from a ‘Shining World’ to rule our Earth, secretly but powerfully, for the period of a year. There is a refinement this time, in that a ‘Dark Counterpart’ is also supposed to have arrived at the same time. For people who believe in the Single Tax, Astrology, Flying Stogies, the Democratic Party, Salt-Free Diets, Cheiromancy, and Trade Unionism, there might be validity here. For the less credulous, there is none. There must be many people in on this hoax, for it has circumscribed the world in a few hours, and it is well detailed. There is even agreement on the landing place of the ‘Shining Person.’ There is something else; an escaped convict, confused in his mind and needing hospitalization, has been found, murdered at the ‘landing site.’ This part has been verified. Is this not carrying an April Fool joke too far? We ask for a non-fooling-around investigation of the murder and the attempt to cover it up with out-of-this-world blather.”

  Then the New Shansi Old Journal gave the following:

  “We must all be of better appearance and behavior, now that Aurelia is among us. Do we believe in Aurelia? We believe in the ‘Shining People Tangency’ whether the principal of it is named Aurelia or not. Something splendid has touched us! Let us reflect a little bit of that splendour in our own conduct. We have been cynics for too long. Let us not be jealous of shining civilizations that are perhaps better than our own. Let us be better than we are, and worry not that someone may be better than ourselves. We recommend that you read thoughtfully the news account on page A-2 and the editorial on page E-1.”

  Well, Aurelia found her own name mentioned in all the papers. It was not always headlined, but it was pinpointed in all of them. She was known by them all; she was accepted by many of them; she was even understood by a few.

  But Aurelia had just arrived during the night barely past. How was she known world-wide so quickly? Well, whatever world this was, it was one of the rapid-media worlds. Aurelia tried to remember which and how many of the worlds of her sort and selection were rapid-media worlds, but that unremembered information simply slipped away from her mind-grapplers.

  The Prairie Dog Town Prolocutor, the largest circulation daily in the world, had this to say:

  “The irony is that it is a slightly retarded ‘Child from the Stars’ who has reached us this time. Using very sophisticated tele-scan, we have measured the abilities and intelligence of the ‘Aurelia’ entity. Yes, perhaps she belongs to the ‘Shining People,’ in type more than in intensity, but she would not rank among the ‘Shining People.’ This is evidence that there is a clear over-lap between ‘Shining People’ Intelligence (verified as to fact, though still unlocated as to source) and ‘Earth People’ Intelligence. This lets us go so far as to say that our latest ‘sophisticated tele-scan’ device would compare favourably with ‘Shining People’ devices. We have further evidence for our view; our tele-scan reveals that the Aurelia Ship (we will have its location pin-pointed and we will examine it physically today) is made of material presently beyond our analysis. We do not have any substance so excellent. But the scan also reveals that the design of the ship is curiously flawed in a dozen respects. Our best designs are better than the design of the Aurelia Ship.

  “Yes, we believe in Aurelia. Our tele-scan reveals that that is her name, or very close to her name. We believe that she is from ‘Shining World.’ And we do have hard evidence for the existence of ‘Shining World.’ We even believe that she has been sent to govern our world for a while, unobtrusively and benignantly. See the tele-scan tele-photos on page B9.”

  One inexcusable thing about the newspapers, they gave the small information but not the large information in their datelines and placelines. They always say what town they are published in and what country they are published in, but they do not say what world they are published in. And this is what Aurelia particularly wanted to know.

  The Dobson City Telegraph was blunt about it:

  “This Aurelia belongs to the ‘Flying Stogie’ myths. Consider the sort of people who have been promoting her, or at least have been in her company through much of last night. There is Karl Talion the phoney, and Julio Cordovan the phonies’ phoney. There is Helen Staircase ‘the biggest confidence woman in the world.’ There is the Prince of Nysa. There is the notorious Herr Boch. These persons were all attending, on a River Boat near notorious Mountain Lodge, what is unofficially called ‘The World’s Convention of Sharpies, Promotional Princes, and Confidence Persons.’ This is phoneydom itself. And the ‘Shining World Space-Ship’ just happened to land where they were hold
ing their convention. Oh, look for some transparent exploitation from this! Most of the conventioneers are notorious foreign agents grinding nationalistic axes here.”

  The Citadel City Sentinel was very concerned however:

  “Aurelia is in mortal danger. There have been several attempts to murder her on our own world during the night just passed. An ‘escaped convict,’ conveniently allowed to escape and given the ‘contract’ on her life, assaulted her right at the landing site. By an accident still not explained, the assassin lost his own life instead. Then there is the mysterious ‘Dark Antagonist’ who has been trailing Aurelia with murderous intent all the night. There was also an attempt by three unidentified men to throw Aurelia overboard from a River Boat into the churning water, and this attempt was barely thwarted. We now have evidence that Aurelia has been drugged by needle and commandeered by the notorious tycoon Rex Golightly and brought to his luxury cabin ‘Potlatch.’ We do not believe that Golightly himself will murder her (he has other designs), but we do believe that she is in danger of being murdered at Golightly’s place, as is the notorious Golightly himself every day of his life. We say that she must be rescued from there and given the best protection that our world can afford. She is, after all, some sort of ambassador or minister or governess from ‘Shining World.’ We are organizing the ‘Committee to Free and Protect Aurelia,’ and we hope the committee will have fifty million members worldwide by noon today.”

  Aurelia (she was a bit slow only in comparison to the other ‘Shining People’) digested this information and that of fifty other morning papers of the world instantly.

  “Now I think that we will—install you here and make you comfortable, and in a half-hour or so you will begin to meet the people who really matter,” the tycoon Rex Golightly finished the sentence that he had begun an interval before. “Do enjoy yourself here, Aurelia. You will love ‘Potlatch,’ and ‘Potlatch’ will love you. You will see why I call it my luxury cabin.”

  Aurelia knew about luxury, of course. In school she had studied ‘Luxury as a Fine Art,’ ‘The Implementation of Luxurious Living,’ ‘Luxury as the Meaningful Alternative,’ such courses as that.

  And she knew about opulence. Back home, every family of the ‘Shining People’ lived in a state of opulence for one day every month for the good of their souls.

  Aurelia even knew about Conspicuous Consumption. Almost every family of the ‘Shining People’ had one small and suspected, and second-rate, art work that had cost a month’s earnings. But that was only for token. On ‘Shining World’ there were such mountains of things waiting to be galvanized into some kind of use that the question was always “What can we conspicuously consume today?”

  Aurelia had been in the homes of many of the ‘Shining Princes’ of her own world, so she felt the pleasant shock of recognition and welcome and kinship for the tycoon and his menage, and for the luxurious cabin that housed them all.

  Here was luxury, here was opulence, here was conspicuous consumption.

  The cabin-house ‘Potlatch’ had what every good house should have, one hundred rooms for comfort and utility, facilities for Spartan dining (the ancient Spartan dining halls would sit three hundred persons in the plain elegance that the soldier-princes liked, and the ancient models were followed here), chapel, library, art gallery, theatre, gymnasium, natatorium, dens, bars, game-rooms, club-rooms, courts for racquet and non-racquet events, in-cabin botanical gardens with their aerated glass walls merging with the larger botanical gardens outside, arsenal, moat (filled with carp), tarn (filled with croppie), trout stream (full of trout,) fountains (full of fountain fish), game park (full of deer and bison and black bears), fields of big blue-stem grass and their cattle, stands of pecan trees, waving fields of peanuts and strawberries, race-courses, English Gardens, Italian Gardens.

  Oh well, no cabin can have everything. ‘Potlatch’ had a lot.

  “It really does remind me of home,” Aurelia said.

  The guests in the cabin were mostly ambassadors of different sorts, from cartels, from countries, from organized intellectual movements, from urbane hatchet groups, from moss-back unions (“One hundred and fifty years of moss can’t be wrong!”), from slave-block and indenture-block organizations, from the structured satanisms, from the privileged corn and porn groups, from the scientific and psychological and mathematical covenants, from the ‘consensus creation’ foundations. The lobbies of the cabin were full of lobbyists. The cabin-home ‘Potlatch’ was on the premium country-home circuit and it drew top guest. But they were adult guests. One almost forgot that ‘Potlatch’ had been there less than a week, and that it was really a tent.

  Of the younger visitors, there were gilded youths, topaz youths, pomade youths who were the cherished and impressive companions of the in-family young people. About the young people, Rex Golightly had just received an anonymous note.

  “There is an assassin among the gilded youths of your house. Your own sons do not know him, but they will say that they do. They do not know half of their guests, but they are impressed by them all and they will swear that they can vouch for them all. There will be distinguished and special blood of your cabin and on the thatch of your cabin if you do not act incisively. The name of your cabin will have to be changed from ‘Potlatch’ to ‘Murder.’ ”

  Well, what was the tycoon Rex Golightly going to do about that?

  And then in the cabin, there was the permanent menage, the family itself. Say, they were something! There was something for everyone in the extensible, related and unrelated family of that pleasant tycoon Golightly.

  This is the family that, for a while, adopted Aurelia that ‘Shining Person,’ governess of the world, the family that clasped her to its breasts (the asp bites that she got from this were slight ones) and thoraxes, to its bony rib-cages and its happy paunches, to its many-cockled hearts.

  There was Rex Golightly himself, a man of high talent and taste that went well with the spacious vulgarity that he had first adopted for notice and gain and later had adopted for itself alone. There was his wife Redfire and his morganatic wife Burnt Umber. There were the brothers and sisters of tycoon Rex and his two wives, persons of talents more obscure and less useable. There were all the children of Rex, and the cousins and removed cousins. But Aurelia, who possibly was also kindred, for Rex insisted that there was a blood relationship between the Golightly’s and the ‘Shining People,’ was most reminded of home by some of the ‘goofy uncles.’ Simon Golightly was her favourite among them.

  “I am embarrassed to ask anyone else so I will ask you,” Aurelia said to that Uncle Simon on the first morning. “What world is this? Yes, I really want to know. Yes, everybody gives me the ‘Aw Haystacks, this is the end!’ look whenever I ask, but you already have that look permanently, so it won’t matter. Dammit, is this world Bandicoot?”

  “Ah, Bandicoot, Bandicoot, dream planet of my youth,” Uncle Silas drooled. “I was a soldier on the second invasion of Bandicoot. Those were the joyful years, the peaceful years. I fear that no years like them will ever come again.”

  “But if you were on the invasion force to Bandicoot,” Aurelia said, “then this is either Skokumchuck or Hokey Planet or Gaea or Beggars’ Choice or Sad-Dog Planet. Those are the only worlds of my assignment and type that have invaded Bandicoot in the present century. Oh tell me, Uncle Simon, what force were you with?”

  Uncle Simon was bearded like a pard, like a very young pard. He had pin-whiskers like pin-feathers. Aurelia could not well judge the age of persons of this world, but she believed that Uncle Simon was not too many years older than herself. He was not an old man at all. He was on some medication or trip-facient that made him vague and bumbling. Nevertheless, Aurelia liked him better than most of the kindred, even though adjustments might have to be made on anything he said. Sometimes he gave his name as Uncle Simon, and sometimes as Uncle Silas, so he was called by both.

  “So, on a bright day of my youth we invaded Bandicoot,” he said.


  “But what world was Bandicoot invaded from?” Aurelia asked softly.

  “From this one, of course,” Uncle Silas said. “Would we invade from some other world? Contrary to the old saying, you can get there from here; but you can do it only if you start from here.”

  “But what world is this that we’re on?” Aurelia asked. “I know that the question is silly, but I am willing to look silly for asking it. There’s no other way to ask, and I want to know. What world is this?”

  “Be quiet, little girl, and listen to my story,” Uncle Simon or Silas said. Someone passed by in the corridor and Aurelia got an unclear whiff of whomever it was.

  “It’s odd that you two young people should have arrived the same day, and you are so different,” Uncle Silas remarked. “And yet somehow you are linked together. Ah, our general when we invaded Bandicoot, he as General Ratwell. He was bow-legged. But he had one of his legs shot off the morning we got to Bandicoot. ‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ the general told an orderly. ‘Run to Supply and get a ‘replacement.’ The orderly ran to get an artificial leg, but he brought a straight one and not a bowed one. General Ratwell was more than furious when he saw this. ‘It will not match!’ he howled. ‘Go get an artificial bowed leg.’ The orderly went to Supply again, but the only artificial legs they had were straight ones. ‘What a way to run an army,’ the general roared. ‘This is a scandal beyond believing.’ ”

  “I think so too,” Aurelia said. She kissed Uncle Silas and sauntered away. Pin-whiskers and all, she was sure that Uncle Silas was not very much older than herself.

  Then there was Uncle Gifford Redwing who was a ‘funny uncle.’ Gifford had the voice and delivery of a cheap-shot comedian. People often laughed when he came to the punch line in his patter. If they did not, then he would come to the same punch lines again and again until they did laugh. Uncle Gifford was very fond of Aurelia, and there was no way he could keep his hands off her. He had the idea that the ‘Shining World’ that she had come from was a very permissive place, and he wished to show that his own world was equally permissive.