Aurelia

by R. A. Lafferty

  Herr Boch did indeed have the beginnings of small, velvety, branching antlers. They had sprouted out of their nubs only since Herr Boch had known Aurelia, and only since he had stopped using the blue caustic powder to inhibit them.

  “My question,” Aurelia said, “and I wouldn’t know how to ask it of anyone else, is what age of the present world are we in here? I assumed that we were in the sixth and final age, but are we? Has the Compensation been made yet or not?”

  “This is the World of the Compensation, Aurelia,” Herr Boch said. “It is the only such world. Yes, the Compensation has been made.”

  “But there are five or six other worlds that also claim to be the World of the Compensation,” Aurelia said, “and only one of them can be.”

  “The others, they lie in their beards and they lie in their bowels if they say that they are,” Herr Boch growled in the grand old phrase. “This is the only world of the Compensation.”

  “And we are subsequent to it here too?” Aurelia said. “How far after it? On this world, has Rome fallen yet?”

  “It has, Aurelia, too millennia ago. And in one more millennium it will rise again. Rome has fallen on almost every world. Aurelia, you preach the doctrine of final happiness, and there are many symbols of this. For me there has always been only one such symbol, one goal in life. That would be a true artefact from ‘Shining World.’ I would give anything for such an artefact. I do not want it for wealth, for I already am the richest antique dealer in the world. I want it for myself and for what it symbolizes. Yes, I would give anything for it.”

  “Oh, give the monkey a kind word and tell him what you want,” Aurelia said. “He’ll be glad to shinny up to the ship and bring an artefact of some kind down to you.”

  Herr Boch went to talk to the monkey that Aurelia had made, and the Prince of Nysa came to talk to Aurelia.

  “It is near cock-crow time, Aurelia,” he said, “and I will give you a horn to blow the cock-crow tune on. I heard you talking to Herr Boch about antlers and horns. You believe that horns are more predilected to evil than antlers are, and that is the truth of it. You also believe, from what you said yesterday, that strong and horned men are a rarity on this world. You are mistaken there. There are whole legions of them; they are dedicated to evil and destruction; and they will destroy you. But I left their company several millennia ago, and it was then that I had myself polled or dehorned. I have saved my two horns though. The evil has gone out of them by now, and they have a strong and carrying tone. I have just given one of them to that strange manifestation who is named ‘Cousin Clootie.’ Now I give the other one to you. Blow the cock-crow blast on it so that the day will know it is time to begin.”

  The Cavalcade had started a little while before dawn. Now, at prime dawn, they would stop for Ientaculum-breakfast. Aurelia took the horn (it was a very large, fluted goat-horn) from the Prince of Nysa. She blew a powerful cock-crow blast on it, and the cock joined in. And all the people sat in their large circle for Ientaculum.

  But there were things tumbling out of the horn as Aurelia blew it. They couldn’t be evil things, since evil had gone out of these horns as it had gone out of the Prince those millennia back when he had become a magus. But there was a cloud and a fog of multitudinous small creatures coming out of that blown horn. Many of them were red-eyed and glowering. If not evil, they were at least neutral or compromised.

  Birds, fanged birds! These were very small birds as coming out of the clouds from the goat-horn that Aurelia had just blown. And yet they showed the straining and lean power required of large birds, and the apparent proportion of weight to span that indicated that they were really very large birds. (With birds, as with so many other things, the very most difficult of them were made first. These were the largest birds that could possibly fly. Then later, and still later, the smaller and easier-to-make birds appeared.)

  These were the large and difficult birds seen through demagnifications, and yet no detail was lost in their reduction. The thousand-faceted eyes of each of them glittered in every separate and impossibly small facet. It was as though quantum vision did not apply to the viewing of these birds.

  Out of the horn came flying-dragons, flying-reptiles, sky-flying fish. There were winged spiders and hydras. There were also sea-stallions and sea-cattle, and deep-sea tigers. Sea-serpents also, and land-serpents. There were the ancient three-humped camels of Arabia Felix. Behemoths, Leviathans, Mammoths, Mastodons! There were the big cattle that were earlier than the small cattle of today. (How can you tell big cattle when they are miniaturized? Never mind, you can tell.) There were fire-foxes and muscular apes. But mostly there were the horned animals, trumpeting and squawling. What do you think makes horns blow such masses of sound anyhow? One doesn’t get something for nothing. Multitudes of creatures contribute their honking and hooting to every horn blast. A truly empty horn makes no noise at all.

  All of these creatures had been obtained in Nysa when the Prince had first been Prince there. Most curious were the unfinished creatures dragging mud and slime of twice their bulk around with them. They were the creatures still being born out of the slime.

  Big insects, yes big insects, elephant-sized insects! One could tell their real size from their proportions. Aurelia laughed and shook the horn, and ten thousand more creatures swarmed and poured out of it.

  “Can you see them?” the Prince of Nysa asked.

  “Of course I can,” Aurelia answered. “Why should I not see them?”

  “Many persons can’t see them at all,” the Prince said, “but we know they’re there, coming out of every horn always. It’s the shape of the horn that allows this, for all horns are much larger on the inside than on the outside, having channels and hidden space that can house almost anything. You know that the whole universe swarmed out of a horn that was blown quite by accident. Astronomers know it as the ‘Big Blow.’ Were that not so, we simply would not be.”

  “No, that is not true,” Aurelia said.

  It was unsalted Jew-Bread dipped in red wine that morning, figs instead of dates, morning-manna instead of cheese, mare-milk instead of goat-milk, roast goose instead of duck, perry in place of apple cider, prairie-cock instead of wood-cock. But one breakfast as day-opening is very like another, so long as both of them are blessed.

  There was some activity around Herr Boch now. He had set up an Antikenladen, an antique and artefact shop, to deal with the immeasurably valuable ‘Shining World’ artefacts that the Aurelian monkey had brought down to him from the little space ship. There was a multiplication here, for the monkey had brought down only one double handful of small treasures, and now Herr Boch had set up six pavilions filled with them, and he had a dozen shop people showing them to connoisseurs and collectors who had assembled. There just hadn’t been any such showing of dazzling art objects within memory.

  Towards the end of the Ientaculum-breakfast, there was a little bit of unpleasantness when a dowdy woman approached Aurelia very much as she had approached her the day before.

  “Have you thought any more about the yin-yang balance?” she asked. “You had better think about it, or it will have your life.”

  “No, I will not think about it,” Aurelia said. “It is all a false compensation and a false balance. It is a little bit of evil that the enemy has devised to blur people. I do not believe that if I want to walk up stairs I must first dig a compensating hole in the ground for balance. I do not believe that every time we light a light we must also light a darkness for balance. I wish you would quit fooling around with those lopsided yoyos. There’ll be an accident with one of them.”

  “There cannot be,” the woman said. “They will go to their harmless targets only, and return again from those harmless targets. There is no way they can be deflected by any earthly material to do damage to any earthly person.”

  “They’re so much out of balance that someone is going to get killed by one of them.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” the dowdy person said, “and t
hat someone to be killed is you.”

  Aurelia was so displeased by this bad-taste encounter that she hurried the departure of the Cavalcade along. And just then she heard the companion horn blow, the other horn of the Prince of Nysa that he had given to Cousin Clootie. So the Cousin was still following them relentlessly, only a few minutes behind their schedule.

  “Are the beasts that are tumbling out of his horn more shadowy beasts than those that are tumbling out of mine?” she asked herself, but she knew that they were.

  “Everybody up!” she cried loudly then, and she blew her horn another blast and disgorged further swarms of creatures. “Be ready for the journey while I give the cock-crow first-corner-of-the-day insight:

  Happiness is a habit that can be acquired. Yes, and it must be acquired by each of you or you are lost forever and my own record as governor will be very bad. I spoke last night about the revolt against the idea of unhappiness being always tied to evil. Well, happiness and goodness do make a fair fit together. I know that there is another revolt against the whole idea of goodness. If I followed my first idea and inclinations as governor, I would bring up heavy fire-power and blast all such brainless rebels to cinders.

  Is habit mere routine? Can we be happy with routine happiness? Yeah, we can. Routine means “on the route,” on the high road, not down in the gutters. And it is better to be clean and dry and clear-eyed on the road than to be wet and dirty and red-eyed in the gutter. The whole thing goes by free choice, and it is better to make a rational choice than an irrational choice.

  People, you are not listening to me hard enough! I have just made a statement that shakes all the fog out of the world and puts things into clear perspective. It is better to make a rational than an irrational choice, I said, and the very mountains jumped like kids and bleated “Why didn’t we think of that?” It would be so much easier to govern people if they paid attention then earth-shaking things are said. If I had suggested that you must do some great and mountainous thing to achieve ultimate happiness, would you not try to do it? When I say “Make a rational choice and all things will be added unto you,” then do it! Don’t gap like goopers.

  The building of a good habit is the building of a good road through a swamp or jungle. So who is that who is hooting over there in the bushes? I’ll have your bloody throats out of you if you hoot at me when I preach sweet reason to you. There are habits of kindness; there are habits of peace and patience; there are habits of wit and humour; there are habits of stunning genius and achievement; and all of them are yours by the method of easy rationality. Did you not know that the jagged-flame lightning and rolling thunder are mere habits that nature has developed? They are rational and beautiful and resounding habits, and they get the job done with style. Nature could have developed other habits nearly as striking (Don’t you love striking lightning? They don’t have it on all the worlds,) not nearly as seemly, and that would be everyone’s loss. The name of un-outstanding habits is “grubbiness.” The name of no habits at all is “chaos.”

  There is nothing easier and more rational than the high habits of the intelligently aimed road that knows its target. And that road takes us to the edge of the world and off it to “Final Happiness” and to “The Father of Lights.”

  SECOND PRANDIUM

  In several of the morning journals that appeared just after Ientaculum-breakfast was completed, there were angry pieces by Jimmy Candor the obdurate reporter. These pieces were as rapid as they were angry, for they referred in part to words that Aurelia had barely finished saying. But it was a very quick-media world. It was Aurelia’s final phrase ‘The Father of Lights’ that roused his murderous anger. So he wrote in the ‘Morning Ponder’:

  “The Aurelian creature has clearly broken the ‘Forbidden Phrase Law’ known as h.r. 752,996,669. Fifteen minutes have passed since she used an unallowable phrase and the authorities still have not acted. She walks free in her shameful and brazen way. She has also broken the ‘Freedom from Harassment Law’ known as h.r. 752,996,670. There is even the report that she committed this offense once previously, yesterday or the day before. It is true that these two h.r. bills have not been enacted into final law, but they have not been rejected either. They are hanging in the deferred area sometimes called the ‘enforce them if you can’ classification. Well, we believe that we can enforce them.

  “The Aurelia creature speaks very much about the ‘rational.’ What is more rational than the decision that the ‘Freedom From Harassment Law’ is intended to protect us from hearing references to any Deity? ‘Father of Lights’ is clearly a deity-term and as such it insults almost all of us. The law still provides for such things as ‘Citizens’ Arrest.’ The law still provides, in extreme cases, for such things as ‘Citizens’ Executions.’ This is an extreme case. We will wait for the authorities to act on this, but we will not wait for more than an hour or two.”

  The several other pieces by reporter Candor were somewhat more violent. It seemed that the more he thought about Aurelia the madder he got. The bodyguard Marshal-Julio was thoughtful when he read these reactions in the morning journals. He told Aurelia that she should look like the news-female Susan Pishcala if any unfriendly person should come near.

  Marco Rixthaler, the son of the Magus Melchior, was very much hung and strung with Aurelia. And he felt that any suit he might launch was hopeless. In reality, Marco was up to the quality of the brightest of the young people of ‘Shining World,’ and he was the only son and heir of a magus; and magi have position on all the worlds and are qualified and accepted by their own excellence and reputation. Marco was intelligent; he was charming and of fine appearance; he rode on a speckled mule that was the pride of its species; and he had a rational heart in him such as Aurelia wished might be found in everyone. But somehow he feared that Aurelia was of another sort and above his station.

  “I would like to touch you,” Marco said. “If only I could touch you.”

  “Are you out of your ‘Kiss the Girl of Your Choice’ tickets from the Happy Ramble Show-Wagon? But you really don’t need tickets,” Aurelia said. “That’s just for fun.”

  “I’m not out of them. But it’s just like kissing an electric field.”

  “You’ve got to go deeper, Marco. Is there a problem? Tell me what it is.”

  “Yes. It just seems that you’re a different sort of person entirely and that I would never be able to reach you in any way. Are we essentially different?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Marco. Let’s compare our ‘Cogency Scans’ and see whether they fall within a close enough bracket.”

  “I—ah—I don’t have a ‘Cogency Scan,’ Aurelia.”

  “Then take one on yourself. It can be done in an instant.”

  “I—ah—don’t know what a ‘Cogency Scan’ is, Aurelia.”

  “Oh Great Green Grampuses!”

  Aurelia eyed a piece Wolf Children in Perspective by Nathanial Nutting in the Morning Perspective, which had just come to her hand hot off the press:

  “The so-called Sky-Wolf Children are a little to the left of the Bangla Wolf-Children of last autumn and a little to the right of the Little Green Wolf-Children of Lothogoth in February. In the latter case of the Little Green Wolf-Children, six soaps competed to see whether any of them could wash the green off the children. Sparkle-00 Soap did it, washed them clean and revealed that they were very ordinary children. Rack one up for Sparkle-00 Soap.

  “But who can state the precise topography of such peripatetic myths. Is it all a question of how far out, or how far in the sponsors of these things are? These two present Sky-Wolf Children (the name is given by the press and not by their sponsors) are travelling with a large carnival, Whack and Zack Miller’s Show-Country Shows, though the children say that it is the carnival that is travelling with them. These present children are cultivated by a cabal of international frauds and criminally rich men, Rex Golightly, Melchior Rixthaler, Gasper Grootgrondbezitter, Balthasar Doppiocroce and others, though what use these crimina
lly rich men intend to put the wolf-children to is not yet even guessed. The two children talk mostly in grunts and wolf barks. The girl is coated with a shining gold paint, and the boy with a shining ebony paint. The girl calls herself Aurelia or Little Eva, and the boy calls himself Cousin Clootie or The Dark Encounter. So at least is the report that we have received. Each of them claims to have been sent to govern this world for a while.”

  “It just seems that you are on a higher plateau,” Marco Rixthaler said.

  “Aw fishnets, fragrant fishnets!” Aurelia growled with unclear meaning.

  On the second morning of it, only a couple of trucks from breakfast-food companies were gathering the morning manna to have it analyzed. “It will yield more adjectives than it will substance,” one of the b-f workers said. And indeed the manna did have a fruity, nutty, honey-like taste. But with so much else to eat, the people just weren’t bothering about gathering it on this second morning, though it had fallen copiously. The birds liked it though, and so did the ground-squirrels and the meadow mice. And it gave a pleasant aroma to the whole countryside.

  “Are you an impossible goal?” Marco Rixthaler was asking dreamily. “Are you completely above aspiration? One might hope—could we ever, Aurelia—?”

  “One might hope just about anything,” Aurelia said. “Let’s just see if we might be compatible. I don’t even know how many chromosomes the people of this world have. How many do you have, Marco?”

  “I don’t know, Aurelia. I don’t know how many.”

  “Well humpbacked haystacks, count them!” Aurelia exploded, though pleasantly. “Don’t just gawk. Count them now.”

  “I don’t know how, Aurelia.”

  “Then, Marco, there is an intellectual impediment whether there is a physical one or not. No, I’m afraid that we just couldn’t ever, Marco.”

  By and by they were all seated in their circle for the Second Prandium meal. Aurelia scanned the Mid-Morning Cogitator as she second-breakfasted.