Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine

by R. A. Lafferty

  “The qualities are these, Epikt,” said this Gaetan Balbo, the uncrowned king of everything: “Judgment, Comprehension, Consultation, Tirelessness in Power and Purpose, Firm Handling of True Data, Fidelity to the Revelation of the Cosmic Patterns, Holy Fear of the Immeasurable and Measured Use of Present Inadequacies. Seven qualities, Epikt: find who fulfills them best. I believe that the world will collapse into its own vacuum if these categoricals are not filled with proper leadership.”

  I gaze like a calf at the new barn door. If I had a mouth I would gape it open. How have I so quickly become a partisan of this man of the twinkling power? I am machine and I should not become partisan of human things. I catch the warning from Valery, who loves him, from Aloysius, who loves him, from Gregory, who loves him but does not like him: “This guy is as phony as a three-dollar bill.” As unique as a three-dollar bill they should say, and the special engraving on that promissory note is the genesis of a dozen arts.

  Well, I will put myself and this special assaulting man into proper context. I search my distant data-banks for a mot.

  “Yes, seven qualities, Gaetan,” I issue. “I believe that the Holy Ghost phrased them rather better in Isaias, however.”

  “No, no,” Gaetan sputtered (he even sputtered with class). “If the Holy Ghost had understood his business I wouldn’t have to rephrase him. I’ve always considered the Ghost as the least of the three.” (Balbo was actually an atheist in the Latin manner.) “Do not divert me, Epikt, and do not be influenced by these creatures. Forget about the human furniture around here. I look to you for the answers, Epikt. When can you have them?”

  Oh, oh, let us not ignore a thing because we are too close with it. I was impressed by an entity as powerful as Balbo, even more charming, surpassing even him in integrity and grace, surpassing all things in balance and discernment, dripping with charisma. Do you know what real charisma is like from the middle of a glob of it?

  “I can give you your answers immediately, Gaetan, if you will broaden your base,” I issued carefully. “If you will broaden your base so that I may be considered as a person, and I am.”

  “What are you trying to say, contraption?” Gaetan Balbo asked with that special look. (He has me beat with the quizzical expression; I will have to practice it.) “You have already the leader or leaders to fill all the qualities. Who, Epikt?”

  “Myself, Gaetan. I qualify in every respect. I am the best in all seven departments. I am the natural leader of the world.” (How could that man make me doubt myself with that one look?)

  “Pride comes before a fall, machine,” Gaetan twinkled at me disconcertingly. But I am a machine and I should not be disconcerted. I will brave it out.

  “How far before, Gaetan?” I issue. “How far does pride come before the fall? Surely this is a measurable thing. Have you calculated it, Gaetan? I have. There is time enough between, I tell you, there is room enough between. And the pride is a necessity in me here.”

  “No, I will not broaden my base in this, Epikt,” Gaetan told me. “I will not consider you a person in this context. Do your job. Come up with the answers, or fail to come up with the answers. If time does not fail us, if we do not find human persons to fill these niches, then I might have to consider some sort of successor to you—”

  “Successor to me? I am here now!” I protested with a blending of powerful and appealing voice (I began to understand that this personal magnetism business has the great voice as one of its main elements). “I am here. I am almost finished. I am available.”

  “Aloysius!” Valery screamed and whooped at the same time, terror and laughter mixed in her.

  BANG!!! Everyone jumped a meter, except Gaetan Balbo. But Aloysius had got it out almost in time. There was only the slightest tang of burning flesh in the air. Gaetan Balbo, drawing our attention elsewhere, had out-Aloysiused Aloysius; he had lighted one of those cannon-crackers in the hip pocket of Aloysius Shiplap, and he had done it so subtly that we almost had the Bottomless Aloysius in that instant.

  “Was that my answer, Balbo?” I asked rather stiffly.

  “That was your answer, machine. To work, to work, people and machine!!” Gaetan Balbo suddenly exploded in that urbane and bloodcurdling voice of his. And he was leaving, leaving while that fearsome voice still sounded. “Hello, Pyoter,” he said sideways and easily to one of the workmen, a most curious workman. Then to all of us again in his modulated thunder “I will be back, inconveniently and often. I’ll bother you. I’ll harass you. I will pounce upon you all. I will haunt your dreams.”

  And he was gone finally.

  “Brother!” I whistled in a low whistle. I did not understand my own use of the word.

  “After all, he is paying for this frolic,” Charles Cogsworth said weakly.

  It is an exaggeration to speak of Gregory Smirnov (my mentor, my main creator) as physically a giant. He was large, it is true: more than two meters tall, but considerably less than three. He was broad, but spare and loose. His mind also was large and spare and loose. There is some truth to the old belief that giants are often dim-witted; and great Gregory could certainly have stood more illumination in his head. It wasn’t that he hadn’t light there in excess to that given to ordinary men. It was that he had so much more to light up with what light he had.

  He had much larger and more numerous passages in his head than have other men, corridors, caverns, concourses, galleries, mazes, magazines, alleys and avenues, lanes, terminals, mule roads. There was not enough light there for such varied brain-ways. It could not be expected that there would be.

  And there is some truth in the old belief that giants are often patsies. They are too awkward to be feared in battle. They have strength, but not the close-coupled strength that is effective. They have no quickness at all; and they are so easily wounded and caricatured.

  They have, however, great patience and perseverance. They work hard and honestly. They do low and humble things that shorter people would not stoop to do. They can see a little farther than others, which is not surprising. And their strength, though it is not of the effective close-coupled sort, does give them great leverage when finally applied.

  (See Pliny’s De Gigantibus.)

  I continued to direct my own hookup and assembly. There was one workman (he had risen to unofficial position of foreman) who bothered me a little. He was a little like a bear (I intuit bears); he was a little like a man; but there was something about him for which I had no précis type. Ah, I am far from complete. He was the workman whom Gaetan Balbo had called Pyoter (no wonder about that, it was his name); but there was something about this Pyoter which did not fit.

  The human persons of the Institute continued to devise vain things, so it would seem that all of us were occupied. But I had other centers in me that could be doing other things at the same time. I discovered an entertainment and interest in myself.

  I began to read the person-précis in me, singly, and in groups. And once a reader, then a reader forever.

  “I believe that Epikt has a bookworm in him,” Valery said with that frightening smile of hers. (I always expected it to explode like one of Aloysius’ cannon-crackers.)

  Well, I had been wondering about a thing in me, but I hadn’t thought of him as a bookworm. I hadn’t connected him at all with my new love of reading.

  “Are you a bookworm?” I asked him.

  “Do I look like a bookworm?” he asked. “Brainless oaf!”

  As with the workman Pyoter, I had no précis type for this thing either. He was the other, the stranger. He was the outsider inside me.

  “What are you then?” I asked him. (If someone is inside me I have the right to know who he is.)

  “I’m a snake,” he said. “I may later make the claim to be the snake.”

  “You’re too little to be a snake,” I told him. I intuit snakes, and they are all much larger than this thing, and much less grubby. I suspect, in fact, that he is a species of grub. I intuit grubs also.

  “I wi
ll grow,” he spat at me. “Oh, my clatter-brained brother, how I will grow! I am the other side of you. I am the other side of the bite. You generated me and I am your antithesis.”

  “Well, have I cherished a viper in my bosom?” I quipped. (Hey, that’s pretty good.) But how could I generate anyone? I am not yet one day old. How could I generate a snake?

  Now here is a curious past interlude that I read out of a combination of précis. It has to do, remotely, with my own ancestry. It is an untitled episode, but I will call it “The Story of the Giant Who Picked up the Pieces.”

  A young giant who was also a young scientist had been fired from his employment one day. He had been fired to make room for a smaller, brisker, brusker type man. He was very put out about being fired.

  As he scuffed disconsolately along the ragged edge of a park he saw three figures walking toward him. As he looked more closely at them, or as they came nearer to him, he perceived that one of the figures was a woman or a girl, one of the figures was a ghost, and one of them was a living man indeed.

  The young giant knew all three of these creatures. The woman or girl was Valery Mok (actually she was a neotonic thing, would always be a girl, would never be a woman no matter how old she grew); the ghost was named Cecil Corn; and the man was Aloysius Shiplap. The young giant was Gregory Smirnov himself, and all of this was some years in the past.

  All three of the approaching forms seemed as sad as was the giant Gregory himself.

  “What is wrong?” Gregory asked them. He was full of sympathy for any misfortuned one anywhere.

  “Gaetan Balbo has absconded,” Cecil Corn said. “He’s jumped with all the money and papers. I believe he’s gone back to San Simeon. He was always afraid that they’d make him king there, poor man.”

  “Be quiet, Corn,” Gregory snarled. “I do not believe in ghosts. I do not accept ghosts. You are not here.”

  “You’re a poor friend to abandon a man just because he’s lost a little flesh,” the Late Cecil Corn bemoaned.

  “What is wrong, Valery?” Gregory asked her.

  “Gaetan Balbo has absconded,” Valery Mok said. “He’s jumped with all the money and papers. I believe he’s gone back to San Simeon. He was always afraid they’d make him king there, poor man.”

  “Ah, the little bug jumped, did he,” said Gregory.

  “It is the end of the Institute,” said Aloysius Shiplap sadly. I see no reason why the end of the world shouldn’t follow shortly.”

  “Oh, really, it never amounted to much anyhow, did it?” Gregory ventured.

  “Not much,” said Aloysius, close to tears. “It merely represented the highest human aspiration ever.”

  “A trifle,” said Valery. “Merely the only important work done in the world since the Sixth Day.”

  “Nothing at all,” the Late Cecil Corn smiled. “Merely the future itself. Now there isn’t any future.”

  “Be quiet, Corn,” Gregory snarled. “You aren’t here. I hadn’t realized that the Institute was important, and actually it wasn’t. But if a false thing could kindle the three of you—ah—the two of you, then how much more a true thing? I propose that we establish the Institute.”

  “That we reestablish it?” Valery asked.

  “No. That we establish it. We will call it the Institute for Impure Science.”

  “That’s what we always did call it,” said Aloysius.

  “Never mind,” Gregory browsed on. “We will disregard the coincidence of the name. We will forget all past antics of that miserable absconding dwarf.”

  “If he were a miserable dwarf, Gregory, why did you always tremble when you met him?” Valery asked.

  “Nervous habit. I now declare the Institute established. All we need is to order and develop our existing resources. You three—ah—you two, will still have your heads teeming with ideas.”

  “Not me,” Aloysius protested. “Gaetan drained me. He always drained all of us completely. We will have to generate new heads full of new ideas.”

  “We will do it, then,” said Gregory. “The Institute is established. There has been a crying need for it. We will set to work, vividly and astonishingly. We will provide miracles for the multitudes. Has anyone any money?”

  “Eight dollars,” said the Late Cecil Corn.

  “Give it to me,” said Gregory. “A ghost has no need for money. Aloysius?”

  “None, Gregory. I gave my last cash to Balbo. He’ll pay me back a millionfold when he comes back.”

  “Bosh. Valery?”

  “Nothing, Gregory, nothing. I never did fool around with that money stuff. I always let the fellows pay.”

  “Has your unoutstanding husband, Charles, any money?”

  “None for the Institute. None for me till I come off it. All he’s got for me is a bowl of bones sitting out on the back porch. He says if I act like one let me eat like one.”

  “I just believe we will take Charles Cogsworth into the Institute,” said Gregory. “He has a firm grasp on one problem at least. Well, all we need now is a building.”

  “And a director” said Aloysius “We don’t know when Gaetan Balbo will be back. He said he wouldn’t be back till he had a million (‘Hell, make it a billion,’ he said) dollars. Who else could we possibly use for a leader to organize our wild talents?”

  “Look about you,” said Gregory with a curious air of pride.

  “What? Oh, the park,” said Valery. “They sure have let it run down, haven’t they? But it may be our only home now. No, I sure don’t see where we will ever find a leader, now that the great Gaetan is gone.”

  “Look about you,” said Gregory with a curious air of injured pride.

  “Glasser’s uncle has a pig-barn we could use,” said Aloysius, “if we would let Glasser into the Institute.”

  “We might admit some of Glasser’s devices into the Institute as members, but I hardly see that we could admit Glasser,” said Gregory. “There is, after all, the requirement of genius, since we must have rules. Many of Glasser’s inventions exhibit genius, but Glasser does not.”

  “And where would that rule leave you, dear Gregory?” Valery asked. “How big is the pig-barn, Aloysius?”

  “Quite large, quite near, and empty. Glasser’s uncle says that there is no longer any money in pigs. Let’s go see it. Oh, if we could only find a director we could be under way once more.”

  “Look about you, blind people, look about you,” said Gregory with an air of absolutely last-ditch pride.

  They went to the pig-barn. It was large. It had running water and drains and a concrete floor. It had ceramic troughs. It had a silo attached. You never know when you might need a silo. It had rolling acres about it, and a pond and a dam above. Here was room for expansion, and Glasser was heir to all this. He would become owner if something should happen to his uncle.

  “Surely a troupe of geniuses like ourselves could do something about the obstacle of an uncle,” Gregory said. Glasser was admitted as a member of the Institute in a deal for the pig-barn. There comes a time when the rules must be relaxed.

  “And now all we need is a director,” the Late Cecil Corn moaned. “Oh, if only there were a man somewhere of the stature to be director!”

  “Be quite, Corn,” Gregory snarled. “You aren’t here.”

  The first project of the revitalized—ah—of the new and only Institute under its great director Gregory Smirnov was the manufacture of thin water, which nearly got them all lynched. It was—

  But wait! Wait! Something startling has come up. We will come back to this, I promise, back to these gleanings from my old précis readings. But something has just been discovered that is horrifying to the human members of the Institute.

  There are police all over the place. “There is hell to pay now,” says Charles Cogsworth, “hell to pay.” “Let me calculate how much it is to pay,” I issue, “and we will send the bill to Gaetan Balbo. Where are the data? What are the rates?” But it was only a colloquialism that Cogsworth used.


  Policemen all over the place! And what had happened? It was found that one of the workmen who was still completing hookups on distant ramifications of myself had been killed and partly eaten. This happening seemed to revolt most of the human persons and dispossess them of their reason.

  “It will give us a bad name.” Glasser groaned. “It will give us a bad name, and we surely can’t stand a worse name than we already have.”

  “There’s a canker in it, there’s a worm at the heart of it,” Aloysius carried on. “How are we cursed, and we all of us so noble?”

  “I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” said Gregory. “He wasn’t a very good workman. We had even, I believe, given him notice.” But Gregory’s face was ashen and his voice shook out in little gasps. I read him that his feelings were deeply disturbed, whatever his words. He did know what all the fuss was about. And Valery Mok was more than disturbed. “Find out who did it, Epikt,” she chattered with plain blood in her voice. She was white as snow, which I intuit, and there were sudden black circles around her eyes. “Find out who did it and I’ll kill him!”

  “I will not tell you,” I issued. “This has nothing to do with the problem I am working on. Besides, I am amoral and do not take a human view of these things. Moreover, the person who ate the person may have had a reason for it.”