Aurelia

by R. A. Lafferty

  For she came down light and easy. Barefoot and easy, she came down softly. There had never been much weight to her. By the bird-bones of her and her aerated flesh, she did make a soft landing! Then she laughed and ran, and the people followed her. Her peripateticus had begun.

  The Nomad King, The Tall Tycoon had already begun to strike his house, his prefab module tent. Most of it had been taken down already, all except the front wall and a few supporting rooms and that tall turret. Then, as almost all eyes and feet followed Aurelia, those parts were taken down also.

  The bodyguard, finishing with one part of his assignment of threatening people, had been returning to the luxury cabin when he had seen, at a great distance, Aurelia leap off the tower. And then he had seen her land softly and run off.

  He returned hurriedly to the luxury cabin. But it wasn’t there. The last few of the rooms were just rolling off on their wheeled undercarriages.

  “Rex did say something about this, and I wasn’t paying attention,” the guard mumbled. “But where could the great building have gone? It must be up ahead of these remaining little pieces of it. When one works for a Nomad King, one must expect to strike his tent many times in a season.

  The moving pageant carried a many-levelled retinue along with it. Aurelia’s space ship, about thirty meters in the air and with all its horns blowing, was led along by a rope by one of the tow-truck men. Boys in balloons ascended to it and travelled along with it, talking to it, and getting bantering recorded answers. Birds, tookers, hawks, king birds, grackle, black birds, all followed along in crowds as the cavalcade made its bright way along the lake shore.

  It was a parade. It doesn’t take much to start a parade, but it takes something. It doesn’t take much to start a rain, but that takes something too: silver-iodine crystals will do it sometimes; temperature inversion will do it sometimes; clouds overrunning hot standing air will often do it; anything to coalesce on. Well, Aurelia was silver-iodine crystals, she was temperature inversion, she was clouds running over hot standing air, she was something to coalesce on. She started a parade.

  She started a walkabout, a march, a trek, a trudge, a schola, a forum ambulatory, a walking chataquah, a circuit-court, an ambling assize, a concourse, a migration, a pilgrimage, a fanfare, a saunter, a journey, an ambulation. Gautama and Aristotle, Brabant and Hedge-Row Michael all liked to give instructions of the walkabout, and was Aurelia less than they? This was a ‘government ambulatory,’ the kind of governing that Aurelia most liked.

  People joined the cavalcade from the camps of the ‘with-its,’ the millennians, even from the ‘Kill Aurelia Now’ Nation. People came from all the little towns on the lake: Cut-Bait Cove, Black Crook Town, Silky’s Landing, White Water City, Dokey’s Dock. The lines were humming, and soon people would arrive from Tahlequah and Pryor and Big Cabin and T-Town itself.

  Even the fish followed along the shore of the lakes, after the ground parties. And Rex Golightly, the tall tycoon who was also a Nomad King, talked to them as he walked at the tails of his rolling tent-carriers.

  “I know you as old oasis fish,” Rex said. “What are you doing in this lake here?”

  “We don’t know you,” said a fish spokesman. “Not in those dude clothes we don’t.”

  “Yes, you know me,” Rex said. “We’ve met and talked on the date-palm circuit at half of the water-holes of the world. I am a nomad king as well as a tall tycoon. Now I am worried about a ward of mine that I have in my care. You have always told me the truth, even when the stars and the palms of my own hands lied to me. This ward of mine, I will not have anything wrong happen to her. I’d like her to live forever, or as near to that as we can come.”

  “Then she will live forever, or for three days, whichever comes first,” a second fish told tall Rex. “That’s as near to it as we can come.”

  Rex Golightly talked to fish. At one time, when his life had depended on his getting correct information, he got all his information from the fish of the oasis circuit. And it was sound information. But it was held against his reputation that he talked to fish.

  One hour of walking, and then all members of the Journey-Judicial stopped and sat in a circle on the ground. And just how many persons can sit in one circle and converse with each other intimately? Seven, ten, twelve, eighteen? Oh, many more than that.

  Fifty, a hundred, three hundred? Oh, many more than that also. More than that in an intimate circle? Yes, more than that. Above five thousand. That’s about right.

  For more than five thousand persons you might have to form two circles, to keep things intimate. But Aurelia’s circle was just at five thousand persons. That made a close group when they sat down on the grass four times a day by the side of the lake. Without an attracting centre, this would have been too many persons for an intimate circle. But Aurelia (nobody knows why) was a successful and attracting centre.

  Well then, what do you feed that many people, barley-loaves and fishes?

  “That would be possible, of course,” the Prince of Nysa said (he was serving as commissary), “but, since we have more means, we may as well have more variety.” The means were provided by Rex Golightly and others of the kingly crowd. The expertise in these things was provided by Herr Bock and the Prince of Nysa. They had had very much and very long experience in catering to large professional crowds of devotees. Yes, and in being catered to. The Prince was a recognized expert in ancient Greek and Asian affairs. Herr Boch had been seneschal in charge of moving royal courts of the middle ages. And Rex Golightly, who was both a tycoon and a nomad king, was an expert on hospitality of every sort. He had insisted that this ambling court of Aurelia should bear the name of his rolling, hundred-room cabin Potlatch.

  The stops of the large and intimate party by the lakeside were not ordinary stops. They were ritual joys with ancient earth celebrations grafted onto a ‘Shining World’ Mystery Play. They had old elements of the Agrionia, of the Dionysia, of the Lenaea or new-wine feast, of the Anthesteria or flower festival. And at nightfall would come something very like the Greater Dionysia.

  There were grapes. You can’t have too many grapes. Where do you get so many grapes in April? Oh, they are provided by the caterers. And there are the attributes, the nebris or panther-skin, the fox skins, the she-bear skins. “You can’t tell the notables without a skin-card,” someone said. There were masked persons, Sabazius the horned serpent, Silenei with small brow-horns, and there were fluvial characters in general.

  The pertinent constellations were seen in the sky in the bright daylight; the Hyades, the Waggoner, Virgo. Ivy, laurel, grape vine, olive branches were strewn and carried. There were ritual piles of horns of cattle and buffalo and rams, and there were boar-tusk trumpets that counted for horns. Arrows and darts (Aurelia herself was the personification of the arrow). There was another retinue following them. And the bodyguard Julio-Marshal disliked this happening.

  “The first stop of the day always has an irregular feel,” said the Prince of Nysa who had become a sort of master-of-ceremonies of the whole walking court. “Some persons will have eaten very early before setting out. And others do not regularly eat breakfast. Nevertheless, it is time for Ientaculum. Let the cock crow!”

  FIRST IENTACULUM

  “But the cock has already crowed,” the chicken lady said. “He is stubborn, and he will not crow again till tomorrow.”

  “I know a way to make the cock crow,” the Prince of Nysa said, and he started towards it. He did not have to demonstrate. The terrified cock crew for the early Ientaculum breakfast, and five thousand persons ate it in a circle on the grass.

  Many horned creatures had been travelling along with them, and they stopped with the people there, Long-Horn Cattle from the show-herd of the Randy Rex Ranch, Buffalo from the Big Bluestem Ranch, Santa Gertrudis Cattle from the Cow-Town Corrals. Goats and sheep too. This was breakfast time, but it was also a ‘judgment day morning’ which was announced as such by trumpets. So Aurelia, in her role and office of Governor of
the World, would hear cases while she and all of them ate.

  There was salt-bread dipped in either wine or honey. Some like it one way, some another. And some had never tried it before and went by delicious guesswork. Dates, olives, goat-milk, eggs, cheese. Grapes, roast duck, white wine, melon. Oat-cakes, roast pork, walnuts. Ram roast, cider, frumenty, apples, barley-bread. Wood-cock, morning bread, red wine. About the same as you have for breakfast at home, but it tastes better in the open.

  Herr Boch and the Prince of Nysa and other knowledgeable persons went among the sitting crowd and told the people to show their joy and wit and variety “—so that when Aurelia asks, as she will ask, ‘Which world is this anyhow?,’ we can answer ‘All of them.’ ”

  There is no way of remembering the law cases that Aurelia heard (a sort of privacy and impediment was placed upon them, though they were heard publicly), but there were very many of the cases (impossibly many for the time allotted), and the decisions were given with incomparable wisdom as well as with joy and verve.

  Oh, there were joker cases, of course, and one ‘joker execution’ in which a man who had received a death sentence, but in jest, had thought that he was dead indeed, and was rather angry when it turned out that he was still alive and the object of merriment. But all were not cases of litigation. Some were just cases of persons coming to Aurelia with hard or tricky questions, and some were persons who only wanted to touch her, and to find out what the ‘electric feel’ of her was. And sometimes there were slip-ups and plain misunderstandings.

  “Do you believe in the yin-yang principle,” a surly young woman asked Aurelia.

  “No I don’t,” Aurelia answered plainly. “I have no use at all for any of those asymmetrical yo-yos, least of all for the yin-yang. I don’t think they should even be allowed in the same tournaments with regular yo-yos. But the matter is of very small importance.”

  “The yin-yang principle takes death-vengeance on those who believe it to be of very small importance,” the surly woman said. Well, Aurelia had been taught on ‘Shining World’ that there were limits to this business of suffering fools gracefully.

  “What we have here is a little girl playing at Courts-and-Governments,” said George Clavicle who was a Forensic Reporter with World International Press. “Is this really the way that a world should be governed, Aurelia?”

  “I shouldn’t wonder if it were,” she said. “I do hate an over-governed world, and I believe that the only courts should be circuit-courts. If a person is too old or short-winded to catch a circuit-court, he should forget about litigation entirely. I myself am giving an example of a circuit-court, but not a very good one because gaudiness creeps in on account of my being a stranger here and having picked up flush protectors. The best government is that which has to govern hardly at all, which grows rusty with disuse. And yet there should be an oil-can and a can of ‘Bust Rust’ at hand always, and also a large hammer to break rusted joints loose. Over-governing causes care and canker which eat people up. People cannot afford to be careful or there will be time for nothing else in the world. You remember the saying ‘If you can’t be careful, be good.’ The main thing is to be good and carefree. Say, this world isn’t Hound Dog Hulk by any imperial accident, is it?”

  “No, Aurelia, I can state categorically that this world is not Hound Dog Hulk,” Clavicle said firmly. “But the real question is not which world this is as which world you come from, for the pseudonym ‘Shining World’ is like a sunbeam or like quicksilver: it is difficult to nail down. Do you come from Skokumchuck? Or Gaea? Or Yellow Dog? Or Bandicoot? Or Sireneca? Or Hellpepper Planet? Or Dobson’s World? Or Hokey Planet, or Aphthonica, or Horners’ Corner, or Sad Dog Planet, or Gelotopolia? Our own world-locators are almost certain that ‘Shining World’ is one of those twelve.”

  “But those twelve are all among the ‘most likelies’ for being this world,” Aurelia insisted. “And we ourselves may not identify ‘Shining World’ with any of the popular names or chart names. We have to throw all those nicknames back into the hat unread. There is an inhibition placed on us in this respect.”

  “Possibly on us also,” said George Clavicle.

  “Wouldn’t it be funny if I myself did come form Skokumchuck or Gaea or Bandicoot or Yellow Dog?” Aurelia mused. “Who would the joke be on then?”

  The sun was shining brightly and things should be rolling.

  “Everybody up!” Aurelia cried loudly. “Be ready to resume the journey while I give a Cock-Crow Insight-of-the-Morning from Fat Tom the Sage of the Middle Worlds:

  Happiness is both the key and the goal. Every human action must have a goal, or it will not be a human action. The “Object of Desire” is always the Human Goal, but there are false objects and false goals. The goal is not wealth or power or pleasure or well-being or even knowledge. The goal is happiness, which is the true object of desire, and this goal can only be attained by ordered and deliberate will. We do not go to the ticket office and say that we want a ticket to “It-doesn’t-matter-where.” We want a ticket to “It-does-matter-where.”

  There are both internal and external seducers to draw us from the rational goal of happiness. We rightly treat these two classes of seducers in the same way, by refusing to be seduced by them. The “Final Happiness” is neither outside nor inside, but outside-and-above. One name for this “outside-and above” final happiness is “The Universal Good.” Do you know that your words on this world are like sticks that break and will not bend, that are incredibly stiff? Please try to correct this in your words. That we may see this universal good now only through a glass darkly is not a real objection. That is better than not seeing it at all. It is infinitely better to have a sometimes difficult goal than not to have any goal. And there is a peculiar advantage about the final happiness goal. Once gained, it can never be lost.

  But it is said “It cannot be had by natural powers alone.” That does not matter since, for the asking, we can be given “more-than-natural” powers. There really is a fair road that can be followed out, and the name of it is “Present or Imperfect Happiness.” Oh porcupines! In your words, that sounds like grammatical tenses! The means of reaching the goal are simple, distinctive, and proper to every human being. “They are a family heritage that can be claimed only on the grounds of human blood.” Deliberate control is the root of it, and the human ability to choose is essential.

  “The Repulsiveness of Ignorance”—now that is a phrase that is not a sentence for the reason that there can be no predicate to the “Repulsiveness of Ignorance.” But it is an obstacle to lesser people, and once we were blocked by it we become lesser people.

  Cock-Crow thoughts are the brightest of the day, but their dazzle sometimes compels their continuance to a shadier time. The cock-crow sun gets in the eyes. We will continue this at the second corner of the day.

  The retinue was moving again. Several thousand persons dropped out of it, and several thousand others joined. Those who dropped out of it did not necessarily do so completely. There was an announcement that Station KEY would carry the Four Corners of the Day, Cock-Crow, Noon, Evening, Night, as a public service. Many persons had to return to their work, but they would follow the high-lights of the Aurelian cavalcade on the broadcasts.

  FIRST PRANDIUM

  Persons came to Aurelia and asked if it should not be possible to schedule the meaningful periods of her cavalcade so that they would not conflict with the meaningful periods of her ‘Dark Counterpart.’ Aurelia said that this would not be possible since she intended to keep the ‘freedom within wide limits’ schedule for her own activities. And anyhow it would not be possible for anyone to attend on both herself and her ‘Dark Counterpart’ in their corresponding stages because they didn’t have any corresponding stages. Part of the difficulty, she said, was that she did not admit that she had a ‘Dark Counterpart.’

  But the one whom people were calling her ‘Dark Counterpart’ was Cousin Clootie.

  In reality, there wasn’t much that could be
said against Cousin Clootie, except that he was ratty and grubby, and he seemed to take a dark and gloomy look at things, and that he had been wrapped in a hasty mantle of evil. Aurelia would not speak a word against him, though she had a graded series of frowns that she used whenever he was mentioned.

  Cousin Clootie had a retinue of his own? That group was his? It followed on that of Aurelia, and camped only a quarter of a mile or so off from it, so that the fringes of the two encampments mingled a little bit. But how did Cousin Clootie get into this act anyhow? And how did he get even half of five thousand followers?

  Well, anyone who has the boldness to go after it can get a retinue of such size. There was plenty of ground that Aurelia left uncovered, and Cousin Clootie covered it with great seriousness. But he said things that were a little bit coarse, and saddening, and despondent. And some of them may have been untrue.

  “You should have him followed around by a truth squad,” someone told Aurelia.

  “Oh, he says that he’s the truth squad for me,” Aurelia answered. “I suppose that he is. I get carried away sometimes. And I drop bones, and he picks them up and gnaws them. He says that I leave too much meat on them. But he isn’t my ‘Dark Counterpart,’ and he can’t be from a ‘Dark Companion’ world to ‘Shining World.’ There isn’t any such. I don’t know what world he comes from. But then I’ve been convinced that I don’t know the real name of the world that I come from, or that of the world that I’m on now. So I’m not in a very firm position. No, no, I would not like to comment on the ethics of Cousin Clootie. He says that I don’t have governorship over him. He even says that I don’t have sole governorship over this world.”

  April mornings out of doors are pleasant, and cool enough. And many persons had begun to accrete to Aurelia’s cavalcade. There were carnival types who rolled along in show vans, and the hucksters and fawny men of them made offers of merchandise and opportunities to the pilgrims of Aurelia. Aurelia herself bought a Hyperborean wrist watch. It was not presently in running order, but the man said that it would begin to run whenever the wind shifted to the north. It ran by the power of the north wind, the man said, and it was always accurate when the north wind was blowing. Aurelia also bought ten gimcrack rings, one for each finger.