Aurelia

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I will do anything for you, anything at all, Aurelia,” Uncle Gifford would say. “You and I, Aurelia, are the only two really advanced persons around here. We are not bound by the rules that bind lesser persons. And, come to think of it, the lesser people are not bound by any rules either. Do you not find clothing oppressive in such warm weather?”

  “Not at all,” Aurelia said. “I have thermostatic skin, of course, I do not feel the heat ever. I wear clothes for modesty and ornament.” Aurelia had never heard of thermostatic skin on people. That was one of the things she made up.

  “Be nice to me and I will give you anything, anything,” Uncle Gifford said.

  “Well, bring me Cousin Clootie’s head on a platter then,” she told him. Cousin Clootie was the one of whom she had caught the unclear but remembered whiff in the corridor when she was talking to Uncle Silas.

  “Would you like to play nature games?” Uncle Gifford asked. “Would you like to skinny dip? Would you like to show me some of the more advanced techniques from your ‘Shining World?’ You would be surprised at the techniques that we have here. Here, here, there is nothing secret or hidden about me. I am all unencumbered, as you see. Do you know that everyone from this huge and palatial cabin has gone off somewhere now, except Cousin Clootie who is lurking somewhere in the corridor? Come, my dear, we have so much to show each other. Oh, come, come, this is the end of the charade. Now! I said now!”

  This was a slippery situation for Aurelia. She had resolved not to break or kill anyone else on this world. Everyone from the huge palatial cabin had indeed gone off somewhere, except possibly Cousin Clootie who had been whiffed unclearly but disturbingly. And Uncle Gifford was intending to take things by unctuous violence. What do I do? Aurelia had never tied the Instrumental Knot. Did she remember how it was supposed to go?

  Aurelia was alone on a world that she didn’t even know the name of, a young and weak girl defenceless and unarmed, without friends anywhere near, and confronted by a sanctionless and sloppy fiend. And the fiend had a hold of her, avid to force his evil will on her, with his fetid breath rattling his whole body (that was a good phrase; Aurelia had read it in a book once), and with his instrument actually barking and howling in its passion.

  Poor Aurelia. What could she do?

  She tied an Instrumental Knot in it, that’s what she did.

  That man Uncle Gifford made quite a noise about it when it happened to him. And he kept up the noise for some time, until the empty luxury cabin had filled up again with curious and apprehensive persons. Some persons do not know about the Instrumental Knot. They regard it as only a legend of ‘Shining World.’ Experts were sent for and flown in.

  “Dear girl,” said the knot expert who had been rushed in by the Navy. “Do you know how to untie this knot?”

  “Oh sure,” Aurelia said, “but it can’t be untied in a single day. Maybe not in a single week.”

  “Dear girl,” said the consulting doctor, the world’s foremost expert on every sort of constriction. “This knot has brought things to a topographical impasse. There isn’t any way to untie it. The whole Universe would have to be pulled through the loop to untie this knot, and that’s impossible. Girl, there has never been seen anything like this on this world before.”

  Oh, that Uncle Gifford was making a big and painful noise about it all!

  “Just what world is this anyhow?” Aurelia asked. “Really, I want to know. You tell me what world this is and I might tell you something about that knot.”

  “Is there a way to untie that knot, Aurelia? He might die of it, you know.”

  “He might, yes, but he shouldn’t have let himself get in such bad condition. But no funny Uncles ever die of little things like that. Yes, there is a way to untie it. Certainly the whole Universe had to be pulled through the loop to untie it, but that’s easier than it sounds. Here, I’ll write down how to do it. And you write down the name of this world. Is it Ragsdale? Is it Paravata? Is it Yellow Dog? Is it Gaea? Is it Aphthonica? Uncle Gifford sure is roaring loudly, isn’t he. I bet he’s really hurting.”

  “Yes. A knot like that will inflict the worst pain known to man,” the doctor said. “Ah, how simply it is, now that you write it down. I’ll untie it in just a moment and have him out of his agony. But this last twist, that will still hold it, won’t it, Aurelia?”

  “Yes. That’s the time twist. You still can’t untie it till the time runs out.”

  “And when will that be, Aurelia?” asked the doctor who was the foremost constriction expert in the world.

  “When I leave this world, that’s when the time will be out on it. Then you will be able to untie the knot if you follow those instructions. By the way, what is this world? I will just read its name that you have written here. —Ah, nothing. Say, does invisible ink on every world use a banana-oil base? When will it come clear? When will I be able to read it?”

  “When you leave this world, Aurelia,” the consulting doctor said. “You have a special shine on you when you’re playing tricks, do you know that? When you have left this world, then you will be able to read its name. You can’t know where you are, but you can know where you have been.”

  “A dirty ethnic trick you pulled, consulting doctor,” Aurelia said.

  “A dirty ethnic trick you pulled, shining person Aurelia,” the doctor said.

  And Uncle Gifford howled and roared.

  “Aurelia,” said the tycoon Rex Golightly, “if you will not untie the knot, can you not at least shut Giff up some way?”

  “Oh sure,” Aurelia said. She chopped Uncle Gifford over the oesophagus. This blow is known on most of the worlds, but they have brought it to the highest pitch on ‘Shining World.’ The voice of Uncle Gifford was killed completely, for how long a time was not known. But his suffering was now more and not less than it had been before.

  “I have received a note that you are in great danger here, Aurelia,” the tycoon Rex Golightly said that evening. “I am taking silent precautions, but I wonder if you could tell me where the danger is most likely to come from?”

  “No. It could come from anywhere,” Aurelia said. “I am in great danger here, but I would be in danger of assassination anywhere on this world. All who govern strange worlds are in danger of death every minute of their governorship.”

  “I will defend Aurelia,” young Uncle Silas said. “When she retires tonight, I will sleep like a faithful dog across her doorway. No one will be able to get in without wakening me. And if I wake I will howl till the whole cabin hears.”

  “That isn’t a bad idea, Silas,” Rex Golightly said. “You aren’t good for anything else. Maybe you will be a good guard dog.”

  So that night, Uncle Silas, the muddled boy with the pin-whiskers and the doggy eyes, slept across Aurelia’s doorway to give her protection. And no one could go in there without wakening or dispatching Uncle Silas first.

  But did he provide safety enough?

  There was, for one thing among many, a strange guest among the young people of the luxury cabin. The young persons of the family had been calling him Cousin Clootie that day, but they had no idea what sort of cousin he was of theirs. Aurelia had caught an unclear whiff of Cousin Clootie in the corridor. She had caught a clear whiff of the Dark Antagonist on the River Boat. She knew now that they were the same. This was the person who had arrived onto this world only minutes after Aurelia herself had arrived. She didn’t know anything about him, and yet she shivered over some of the implications.

  Yes, the Dark Antagonist (under the name of Cousin Clootie) was a guest at ‘Potlatch.’ The sons of the house did not really know him, but they said that they knew him and that they could vouch for him.

  The next morning began badly. Young Uncle Silas, still lying across Aurelia’s doorway to protect her, was found to be decapitated.

  Oh come on! Do not take it so easily. Do not be urbane and brave about this. Of course he was a befuddled youth who was good for nothing. But Aurelia had liked him more than any
of the others. So had the tycoon Rex Golightly. Silas or Simon, had been befuddled but good. The others of the kindred were brighter and sharper, but not quite such good persons. But everybody in the cabin was shocked and broken up by it.

  Or were they?

  Cousin Clootie came and gazed. He was the Dark Antagonist. He came from elsewhere. The veins of his temples throbbed and crawled as if black lightning were flickering about him, but he showed no emotion. His was a fire-blackened iron face. And yet there was nothing at all that anyone could say against him, and he had given them no grounds for suspicion.

  People came to dispose of Uncle Silas. They loaded his body onto a bier and began to carry it away, but they left the head there.

  “Oh, no, no,” Aurelia cried, and she carried the head and ran after them.

  “They do not need the head, Aurelia,” Rex Golightly explained patiently. “Identification has already been made. He was known. He really was a blood kindred of the family. The body will fulfil all legal requirements. They’ll not need the head. We can throw it out anywhere. You’re getting blood all over you. Yes, the head is very fresh cut, possibly only a minute before you or someone else rose to a noise. Silas may have been an obstacle. He may not have closed his eyes all night until he closed them just a moment before he was killed. And then it may have been too close a call with the dawn for the assassin to kill you. I understand how you fell, Aurelia since he may well have given his life to save yours. But throw the head away anywhere.”

  “Oh, no, no,” Aurelia cried. She ran after the bearers of the bier and place Uncle Silas’ head in his own arms. And yet there was something incomplete about the act. On ‘Shining World,’ they had wailers who were professionals and who knew how to wail a dead person. On this world, whatever it was, they seemed to have no such thing.

  “There should be professionals,” Aurelia said dully to Rex Golightly, and she was all smeared and blurred with still fresh blood.

  “Yes, professionals, Aurelia. I did have several in the house, and yet somehow I trusted to an amateur, poor Uncle Silas going away there, for your ultimate protection. I should have known better. Today I will have in a real professional the best bodyguard in the nation.”

  Yes, that morning had begun badly.

  By the permission of the tycoon Rex Golightly, several of the genial Special Interest Advocates had been talking to Aurelia that day. They wanted to hear about the latest Special Advocacy Techniques on ‘Shining World.’ They wished to discover whether there was not something in them that they could adapt to their own world.

  “Which is?” Aurelia asked brightly, but they would not rise to her bright bait.

  “I have a theoretical and perhaps practical question also, Miss Aurelia,” said a talented special interest manipulator named Kirol Crabman. “I am wondering what sort of instructions you are given in the schools of ‘Shining World’ about the ‘raw-grab’ situation. There is a corporation that I wish to possess cost free. It is named the Southern Land Company, and it has been going its own quiet way. How would a ‘raw-grabber’ grab it off?”

  “What is the name of your own company, Mr. Crabman?” Aurelia asked.

  “Crabman’s Take-Over Enterprises.”

  “And there is no connection between the companies, now or previously?”

  “No. None.”

  “Well, first you must change the name of your company to the Northern Land Company. This sets up a name counterpoise to the Southern Land Company that you are going to take over. Or else you can set up a raiding branch of your company to be named the North Southern Land Company. Then you turn to the media and have them go heavily on the ‘Oh, what is this fence that divides them!’ motif. All media everywhere like to go heavy on the O WITFTDT motif. Have them wail ‘Oh, why must there be this division?’ Have them pontificate ‘Oh, that there should ever be any ‘Northern’ or ‘Southern, shame! There should only be the great and noble Land Company itself. Have them puff it up, and then go to the churches which form the most subservient arm of the media. Have them set up ‘Prayers for Reunion.’ Have them demand that the unelected and illegal and divisive ownership of the Southern Land Company shall abdicate before any settlement can be negotiated. They you move in with the active phase of the take-over.”

  “And what is that, little girl Aurelia?”

  “Infiltrate and invade, with blessings and banners flying. Infiltrate the Procurement, Purchasing, and Internal Management departments of the Southern Land Company. Have your allies ready to scream ‘Lookout!’ if there is any objection. Bring in duplicate desks and crowd them in beside every desk of the old and illegal southern operation, and staff the desks with your own ‘Freedom’ persons. Have ‘Coalition Now!’ slogans boomed over the sound system of that “illegal’ southern operation. Have writs issued forbidding interfering with any of the Liberation People occupying their new desks and carrying out their duties of reorganizing the firm. Reiterate the claim that the innocent infiltrators who are only interested in ‘liberation’ are being arrested and held in ‘monkey cages.’ Have students for Liberation kidnap and kill the president of the old and illegal Southern Land Company. Have the United Churchmen for Liberation and Reunion reissue the famous statement for the erased president of the discredited firm ‘The World is Better for his going and Cleaner for his Death.’ United Churchmen for Liberation love to issue statements like that.

  “Then, with the support of everyone flowing in, you can feel free to move a little bit more roughly and directly. Take it over! And then demand reparations from whomever you can think of.”

  “And that is what they teach you in your schools about pushing a ‘raw-grab’ situation, little girl?”

  “That’s the basis of it. I suppose that one can improvise for the individual case.”

  “But that is the same thing that they teach in the vocational schools of our own world here,” Kirol Crabman said. “Really, I expected something a little more ingenious and imaginative and developed from a representative of ‘Shining World,’ something more in line with the ‘wave of the Future.’ ”

  “Ah, but the raw-grab device is a ‘Wave of the Past,’ ” Aurelia said, and there was no way that Crabman could understand her. “Say is this Kolokynthekephale or Pumpkin-Head World?”

  “No, of course this is not Pumpkin-Head World. Oh, you are joking, girl.”

  “And I myself have a theoretical and perhaps practical problem,” said that talented Peoples’ League spokesman and advocate Peter Principle. “When a leader whom one hates and loathes is riding high, how does one bring him down?”

  “Trust to gravity is one way,” Aurelia said. “All leaders, like all of everything else, tend to come down sooner or later. Their underpinning erodes and they crash. Or are you in a hurry?”

  “The Peoples’ League has been in a hurry to destroy him for twenty years. We were sure that we had done it once. He was dead and buried. And then he resurrected and manifested himself, and the second coming of that man was worse than the first.”

  “Find out his great sins and his great weaknesses and publish them and howl them up,” Aurelia said.

  “He doesn’t have any,” Peter Principle stated miserably. “We’ve been over him with a curry comb for more than twenty years and haven’t found even one nit. His only sin is his tedious sinlessness. He hasn’t grafted, he hasn’t been a lecher, he hasn’t failed to deliver on any of his promises. But he has blocked us in some of our expansions and appropriations. We dream of him hanging and turning slowly in the wind. We dream of urinating on his grave. Oh, will those happy dreams ever come true!” But Peter Principle was grinning. He either did not really feel strongly on this subject, or his happy dreams had already come true in every case of this type.

  “Remember that the persistent hammer will finally drive the nail into the coffin,” Aurelia said. “Do not give up if progress seems slow. And always remember that good men are easier to crucify than bad men. And realize that every man when skinned takes on
a repulsive aspect and can hardly be looked at without loathing.

  “Find something, or make something. If you have established the climate, the details will not matter. What things are manufactured against a man do not have to be deep at all; only about a sixteenth of an inch deep. And remember that people love to hate. Red-flag the man with the hate flag, draw bright blood on him, and blow the hate bugles. That’s all that is needed. Skin him! By machination or by media, skin him! Then hoot him to death because he is skinned and bloody. It will get easier and easier.”

  “And then what?” Peter Principle asked pleasantly.

  “The victory is when two hundred million persons breathe through dilated nostrils ‘Let him hang and turn slowly in the wind.’ That is it,” Aurelia said.

  “And the people will not see through such a transparent device, little girl?”

  “Of course they will see through it, and they will go along with it. It is an audience participation assassination.’ That is the mortal sin of them. They love to hate. Give them a sharper hatred and they will beat a path to your door.”

  “But that is the same thing that we teach in People’s League schools on this world,” Peter said. “I expected something a bit more inventive from the think-halls of ‘Shining World.’ ”

  “I’m sorry,” Aurelia said. “We really haven’t bothered to go beyond this. It is practical. It is passionate. And it gives the people flesh and bones that they can get their fangs into. Say, is this Hokey Planet that we are on?”

  “No, of course this isn’t Hokey Planet,” Peter said. “Oh, you’re joking, girl.”

  “And I have what is perhaps an impractical problem to ask you about, young girl,” said George Cheros the astronomer. “There are some things that even the most primitive people believe they understand in depth, and one of them is practical astronomy. We do not believe that we are too primitive here on this world, and we—”