Aurelia

by R. A. Lafferty

  Law is the Road-Map of Happiness.

  Grace is the Gift of Happiness.

  Justice is Happiness in society.

  (“These phrases have a this-worldly sound,” Sinkman writes, “and I am sure that they have already been used by this-worldly writers. But perhaps they will serve as implicit translations of Aurelia’s thoughts.”)

  I belong to the jot-and-tittle party. (This is Aurelia-presumed again.) I do believe in the law always. There are barely visible lines of the law that inscribe us wherever we are. They open to let us pass, or they hold firm and refuse to let us pass. No one is really ignorant of these lines. To break the lines is to break the law and to forfeit claim to happiness. There are four corners to every day, and the days are the pieces of each life. At each of the four corners of the day (midnight, six o’clock in the morning, noon, and six o’clock in the evening) one addressed the Father of Lights “Make us good. Make us happy. Keep us so.” If we do not mark these four corners of every day, the days may take an evil turning. In a world that is measured one day at a time, the omissions of these communications will be detrimental.

  “I foresee that these simple statements, more than anything else, can lead to the death of Aurelia,” Sinkman writes, “even though she has not actually made these statements. The popular intuition will get these words from her as they are in her thoughts. And they run counter to what is perhaps the most rampant taboo on Earth. I have too vivid a premonition of the ‘Death of Aurelia’ because of the four-corners statements for there to be any possibility of it not happening.”

  This is the sixth age of the world, as it is of every world, the long final age that may be longer than all the rest of them put together. Or it may end yet this night. Because it is the sixth age everywhere there is not much difference between the worlds.

  A government should be nomadic, but everything else should remain in its ordained place. The longing of people to overthrow governments applies only to sessile governments. There is no way and no inclination to overthrow a moving government. Instead of saying “How can we get rid of it?” the people will say “when will it be coming around again?” The medieval kings and their courts were usually migratory. (Were there medieval kings and their courts on this world? What world is this anyhow?) They followed the circuit-ride of governorship as it is correct that they should. And they brought the news and the impregnating interchanges to the people, things of very delicate adjustment. This was on the principle of the fewest number of moving parts making the most efficient machine. But, in the present time and world, the media have pre-empted the royal prerogative of carrying the news. This makes for debasement of news and the entry of falsehood. People move out of guilt, or in search of something. But let them find what they search for and they will no longer wander; for one place is very like another. Let the people stay in their places, and the whole pageant of the world will pass before them in orderly fashion.

  The present “forms” of civilizations are generally the correct ones. They need but to be poured full wherever their level falls. Beware of those who propose new forms! Be wary of communities in place of families, of urban-rural conglomerates in place of towns, of peer-group pensions in place of homes, or exurbinae in place of neighbourhoods, of alpha males in place of fathers. And do not multiply the making of jugs when so many fine old jugs stand empty.

  Sinkman believes in mind-reading journalism, and he insists that he can pretty well read Aurelia’s or anyone else’s mind. We will see in several days whether she really thinks like that or talks like that.

  Much of Sinkman’s appraisals are in the forms of mathematical tables. We are not certain that his reading of Aurelia’s mind is this correct, particularly when he has never seen her and refuses to visit this area to remedy that. “I see her internally,” he says. And he writes a mixture of sense and doubtful sense.

  “Such governorships have had good effect in the past. I have made a shaggy graph (which I will not show in this story) showing what our world-level would be without these irregular, light-touch visitations from ‘Shining World,’ from ‘Dark Companion,’ and from Delphinia. It’s a bad level without them.

  “And yet even a light-touch intervention has a bad aspect. The ‘Shining World’ people make us feel as if we were token people only. That is why we cannot accept anything from them and why we must do violence to their gifts.”

  And Sinkman says that there is a certain horror going through the world now because we fell strangely compelled to kill Aurelia. And we don’t want to do it.

  5

  Machiavelli and the Aurelian Ethos, by Kirol Grabman. I do not understand this book and I do not like Kirol Grabman. I believe that this book is no more than senseless grubbiness. I advise the reader to save his money and not buy this. Oh, I notice that it is a no-charge book put out free by the Kirol Grabman Foundation. And now I remember other books that have been given free by the Kirol Grabman Foundation. Is poison a bargain just because it is free? I will not review this book.

  6

  The Mathematics of the Aurelian Curve, by Arthur Airim.

  Airim, charlatan or genius or both, opens and then closes the curtains capriciously in this study that is by turns fascinating and frustrating. Airim writes himself into some contradictions here, and he escapes from them by some of the darkest obfuscations ever. His mathematics is as easy or as difficult as he wishes to make it. It is with his mathematics that he opens and closes the curtains.

  But he defends himself from charges that his interpretations and predictions are on the level with astrology and palmistry and lost continentism and dynamic analysis and visiting astronautism. “Aurelia is a visiting astronaut, yes,” he writes, “but everything about her is on a higher level than visiting astronautism.” But he does not really prove that he can read character and predict fate and lives by his analytical mathematics.

  Airim says that his ‘hypo-psychic character interpretations’ are no more than analytical geometry applied to the real world and the persons in it. As to the geometrical curve of the Aurelia person, Airim believes that it has an invisible counterpart to every segment of it. But just what is the invisible counterpart of a geometric curve? Airim admits that he doesn’t understand it, but he is certain it is there.

  Well, there are invisible depths to the mathematics here. There are a few unexpected sea-serpents in those depths, but it’s mostly murk there. Airim says that Aurelia will work a light trauma on the whole world. But a sharper thing that he says is that “The Salient and outstanding characteristic of the Aurelia curve is that it terminates so suddenly.” And he makes it sound sinister the way he says it.

  This is for students of the various new analytic geometries and other analytics, but not for everyone.

  7

  All That Glitters is Not Gold—The Underworld and The Floating-World Connections of Aurelia, by Jimmy Candor.

  To scarifying reporter Jimmy Candor we own such nomenclature as ‘dynamic apathy,’ ‘creative loitering,’ ‘dark-sides advocacy,’ ‘precursor reporting,’ ‘macho cookery,’ ‘constructive defamation,’ ‘diatonic intercourse,’ ‘compassionate hatred.’ All That Glitters is perhaps compassionate hatred, and it may be constructive defamation. That it is defamation there is no doubt.

  Jimmy Candor has a hyper-flatulent python, a circumcised chimpanzee, an hermaphroditic ocelot, and a Sicilian donkey that has received a human heart transplant. He has a rubber razor that cuts by supersonics. He uses his supersonic razor extensively in this book.

  Condor states that Aurelia had made unerring contact with criminals and super-criminals at every turn since she came here, and has made contact with no other sorts of people whatever. Her first contact was with an escaped convict whom she murdered, and there are hints of a long connection between them. Then there were the two professional highway-looters posing as tow-truck operators; two supposed rodeo wranglers, but the grass they transport isn’t for their horses’ mouths; a gang of young ‘with-it’ criminals
; a number of persons of a murder-rite religious sect; international super-Mafia persons Karl Talion, Blaise Genet, Julio Cordovan, Helen Staircase (“How did it just happen that these four notorious criminals were all together in the vicinity of Aurelia’s ‘landing’ when not two of them had ever been on the same continent at the same time before?”); then there were the two diabolists Herr Boch and the Prince of Nysa. And after that, and still dominating the front stage, was the tall tycoon Rex Golightly who is possibly the most evil man in the world. And at the Golightly residence ‘Potlach’ there has been a veritable parade of crime leaders, the scum of the earth coming from all over the world to see Aurelia. There have been criminal mathematicians and speculative philosophers and raw-grabmen, but criminals all. So maintains Candor.

  Observers at the landing site say that Aurelia slighted Jimmy Candor and news-female Susan Pishcala and thought them funny, and that is the reason for Candor’s animosity. Candor says that he has no animosity, but only concern for the earth which is under strange and criminal attack and perhaps is being eaten up by a female cancer. He promises clarification in the second volume of All That Glitters that should be published later today, and in the third volume that will be published tomorrow.

  Candor ends the volume with an appeal to ‘constructive murder’ in the brave words “It is expedient that one person die for the multitude. I finger that person now—Aurelia!”

  8

  How Human is Aurelia?—Bird Bones and Basal Metabolism, by ‘Cipher.’

  According to ‘Cipher,’ some people say that Aurelia is the most graceful person they have ever seen; others say that she is the most awkward they have ever seen. Well, she does have a movement and bearing that is unusual and has ever been called inhuman.

  Aurelia is light weight, but this isn’t because she comes from a heavy-gravity planet; she doesn’t. She has a very slow heartbeat, but she has all the characteristics of a person with a very rapid heart-beat. Her temperature (amazing, amazing!) varies between 22°c and 44°c and she is able to control it. “Why, changing it is as easy as standing up or sitting down,” she says, “and I am sure that you could control your own temperature with very little practice.” Her bones, according to a Jefferson’s Fluoroscope, are hollow and full of air. And her very flesh is aerated.

  She gives people electric shocks when they touch her, and the young men say that it is a pleasant sort of shocking. She commonly glows in the dark, and it makes an exciting sort of fire-dance when she walks at night. But she can go dark when she wants to—“—just turn my electric skin-charge inside out, that’s all,” she says. And it is her electric skin, her body aura, which is the only part of her that is ever seen, that is the basis for her amazing mimicry. “I just stack it and sculpture it however I wish,” she said. “You do it too, but you don’t see your own auras so you are ignorant of your doing it. But you people, when you fall into either an accidental or a purposive group, tend to look like each other, and every group takes in a ‘group look.’ You don’t see it, but sometimes the camera sees it.”

  People seldom remember Aurelia’s exact words, so ‘Cipher’ says, and a sound-track of her conversations may vary impossibly every time it is played. Aurelia does not speak in exact words. She speaks in thoughts wrapped very loosely in words, and the wrapping is variable. As was the case on Pentecost morning, everybody hears in his own tongue.

  Aurelia can call on amazing reserves for temporarily increased strength, speed, endurance, apperception, intelligence, intuition, artistic performance, and charismatic show. “I can be three times as smart,—” she says, “for about three minutes, and then I run out of wind.”

  Is she human? ‘Cipher’ asks it. Yes, he says, she is a member of the ‘wide-definition human race.’ Is she of an archaic branch of the ‘wide definitions’ then? Quite the contrary.

  She is of a younger human race, perhaps the youngest of them all, an exploding variation that in its sudden mutation may not be more than twelve generations old. She is the latest thing in human people. She is ‘Tomorrow’s Child.’ Look at her! Your own great, great, great grand-children may look like her, but you do not.

  But Aurelia will not have offspring. On her own ‘Shining World’ she failed the course ‘First Essays in Marriage and Reproduction.’ She says she will try it again sometime when she isn’t nervous, but probably she isn’t meant to survive. She is what biologists call a ‘Terminal specimen,’ and biologists can tell.

  9

  Will It Ever Be Fun Again?—The Aurelian Revival, by the Board of Governors of Romp Publications.

  The book Will It Ever Be Fun Again? is fun at least. Sunspots and constellations, cosmic cycles and happiness moments! It is fun! We wash our hands in joy as we drink from the fun fountain when coming onto this. Blue Birds and Roses!—did anyone ever see things going so right? The new ‘fun days’ are part of the Aurelian Effect or the Aurelian Revival, so the Board of Governors of Romp Publications says.

  Why call it a revival? Because, while there has been perhaps a lot of significance in recent decades on this world, there hasn’t been a lot of fun. And yet people remember, or think that they remember, or at least have a nostalgia for, the Grand and Funny Days and Year when things really were fun. Those days and years are not to be found on the calendars, perhaps, but they are found in another part of annals.

  Well, what was it that was so much fun in those days, whether those days were fictionalized or not? It was just the rolling along that was fun, so a survey by Romp Publications says. It was sing alongs, it was dance alongs, it was talk alongs, it was walk alongs, it was play ball alongs and swim alongs, it was picnic alongs. And sometimes it was just sit in the glider alongs or sit by the fire alongs. It was stay up late alongs, it was hit tune of the day alongs. It was walk in grace alongs, it was go to the show alongs, it was horseback riding alongs. It was even argue philosophy and theology alongs and raise a family alongs. It was people coming through with a bang. Jokes from then aren’t too funny now, but they were completely funny then. There was a shattering immediacy and a delight of recognition. It was just a glow that came upon certain times and places and gave the feeling: “It’s fun now.”

  The coming of Aurelia had brought such a glow. This is all the more odd since not one person in a million had yet seen or heard Aurelia, or had had any experience with her at all. But many more of them will see and hear and experience her, and half of that pleasure is its anticipation. And Aurelia will be out among them in intense and funful ways later today, or tomorrow anyhow.

  Aurelia appears in almost every comic strip in the world this morning. All the top tunes of the morning are Aurelia-type horn tunes. There is a growing spate of ‘Little Aurelia’ jokes—“She’s only an oculist’s daughter, but two glasses and she makes a spectacle of herself.” Sure they’re funny jokes, if you belong to the Aurelia Fun Festival.

  ‘Aurelia Ballet’ was to be found everywhere in the latter part of last night and this morning. It is a sort of story-telling dancing. It has sprung out of the ground suddenly. It is like old silent-movie or silent-radio sequences, except that it is accompanied by mountainous noise, the horns of the howling canyons and the wind-bags of Aeolus. It is more fun than Square-Dancing or Round-Dancing. It’s a form of the Dance-Opera, of the Hootenanny.

  People say that they will see Aurelia more today and tomorrow, that she will take to the roads and hills and meadows. She is a peripatetic phenomenon, they say, and peripatetics are always fun.

  Well, is she is a peripatetic, why doesn’t she move? She will.

  The sad thing about this is that the people haven’t had much fun for fifty years now. But this week they are having fun again, ‘New-Wine Fun.’ It will be only disputed fun for seven days, the prophets say, but it’s more than we were having before.

  This is all very mysterious, and the Board of Governors of Romp Publications make the comment “What is more fun than a good mystery?” Aurelia is a good mystery, and much else. Even the new and pertin
ent saying of the prophets “The generation is responsible for all the Blood of the Prophets spilled since the beginning of the World” is funny, and it calls up a mental cartoon of the Prophet Aurelia spilling a great crockful of blood on the carpet and saying “They made me do it.”

  Even the coming death of Aurelia is fun in its way. There is a spate of “Aurelia’s Wake” stories going around that are really funny.

  The musical scores in this book are well done.

  10

  How Square Must We Be?—The Implications of Acceptance and Humiliation, by the Editors of Free Spirit Daily.

  “There is the saying that the craven people beg and the upright people steal, and the completely empty people accept mutely,” so begin the Editors of Free Spirit Daily in their new book How Square Must We Be? In this, Free Spirit Daily stands at the opposite pole to The Movement For The Return of Squareness And The Acceptance of Free Gifts. And there is always the statement that the last freedom is the ‘Freedom to be Truculent’ about a situation.

  “We will not accept even implicit government from either Aurelia or her shadow,” they write. “On the whole, we would more readily accept it from the shadow. The shadow offers us fewer insulting enticements. And he offers us a bleak front that we can more easily relate to. But we say ‘No’ to the shadow, and we say ‘Ten-Times No’ to Aurelia.

  “We fulminate, yes. And fulminations do not have to have a clear target. Today we fulminate against an unclear target, the Aurelian skip-glitter.

  “It may be that other worlds could accept such light-hearted governorships without a qualm and without feeling compromised. Well, we cannot. We have lost too much of ourselves along the way to allow to be torn down that little wall where we can turn to bay. He have lost our honour and our honesty, our purity and our seemliness. We have kept swine in our body-temples, and we have befouled our own nests. We have lost our taste, and we have even given up the arrogance of our bragging tastelessness. We have been the partisans of every popular dishonesty and the enemy of every unpopular truth. We have made the one to be popular and the other to be unpopular.