Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine

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Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine Page 10

by R. A. Lafferty


  I don’t know, I just don’t know. Are we fools’ fish that go swimming in the dust when the dust has a sign that says Water? But I stay with my studies. I exult in my millions of précis and in the understanding of everything they bring to me. If a bug bite is not good enough symbol, then we will find new symbol.

  It comes one evening—the aroma of millet cakes baking in Valery’s quarters.

  From Valery’s? But in her whole life Valery never baked any—

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Charles in the shadow, unshadowed and wise:

  He sows the mad millet and scatters his eyes.

  —But in her whole life Valery never baked any millet cakes, or anything else. Who then had ground and milled and kneaded and set to bake this millet, this panicum miliaceum, this birdseed, this love seed? Remembering a disjointed little speech we recently heard him give on the subject, we will bet that it was the husband, Charles Cogsworth.

  There was something else with the aroma of the baking millet cakes, something that was hinted but not quite mentioned to the sense of hearing, in the disjointed little speech. (You will notice it in both cases.) It was roasting animal flesh, but of an animal that I cannot identify.

  “I have come to doubt the wheat of scripture,” this Charles Cogsworth had said suddenly one day as he began that little speech (I am often unsure whether Charles is joking or not), “Is triticum wheat? Is sitos? Well, yes, perhaps, and even certainly; but is wheat meant? The general word ‘grain’ is often used for ‘wheat’; and I believe that ‘wheat’ is also used for the general word ‘grain.’ I believe that in the gospel it is not wheat that is meant at all, but ‘millet,’ the grain of the poor people of Palestine. When, I ask you, was it first required that the Eucharistic Hosts should be of wheaten bread? Not before the Council of Chalcedon, I believe. I challenge any of you to give me an earlier ruling.

  “Now, if the Host, if the Love-Body is not of wheat but of millet, then there are whole new areas of allegory opened up. For millet, though it had become the grain of the poor people by the time of the turning of the era, had earlier been the rare grain of the rich, of the very rich, of the kings, of the gods. It is small-grained, and it was originally ground by Neraithai, little people no larger than a man’s hand. It was baked into little cakes, and these cakes with honey were the food of the first gods. Millet will grow on higher ground than will wheat, on mountain slopes, and this was the grain that grew on the slopes of Olympus. There is something else: millet is much more ‘fleshy’ than wheat, in smell, in taste, and in its completion. And that first love was much more fleshy than those that came later. Millet was the bee-bread, the love-bread, the love-body. It was the cult, which was before the culture.

  “In later times it did not grow easily: it was choked by charlock and tares, as is all love-bread and all our loves to this day. Then it went down until it became the grain of asses (who love) and of poor people (who love); but it was no longer the grain of the rich and the mighty who had forgotten all such.

  “I maintain that the Body Itself, when it was proclaimed, was proclaimed out of that first cultus; that it was not the bread of the gross-grained wheat but of the fine-grained millet. If I am wrong (which is likely) then we have here a schism of belief (which is very likely); but I will not give up the idea of that first love-grain. I will not give it up for the Body Itself, if they are not the same.” (Charles Cogsworth was a very indifferent believer.) “But I will hold to this first recension. The love-corpus, though, is a very tenuous thing. We are lucky to have it at all, when we do have it.

  “The difficulty is not with persons. All human persons have always loved each other and all things naturally. The difficulty is with things that get in the way of persons, that get in the way of that love; they occlude it, they disguise it, they cause it to be forgotten.”

  (I had several précis of both the wheats and the millets. It is the coarser wheat that I would have opted for myself, if I had been uninfluenced. The finer millet was less fine in some of its figurative aspects. But there was no doubting that it was more “fleshy” than wheat.)

  “It’s grained too fine,” had said Audifax O’Hanlon, who had been present that day (but who was not a member of the Institute). “It isn’t a proper grain at all. It’s the bee-bread, yes, but it’s really a variety of sorghum (pearl-millet); it’s overrich in invert sugar. It’s too sweet, I tell you, Cogsworth. Confound it, it’s for bees and bugs, not for people. The Body Itself is of the harsher, larger-grained wheat, as it should be. Yours is too small a grain to be genuine, Charles. If it doesn’t cloy you, then nothing will.”

  This Audifax O’Hanlon was very often right, even when arguing with the highly geniused members of the Institute. Nevertheless, on this later afternoon, we had a supper of millet cakes and honey. And something else, subtile and only a little of it, not quite mentioned to the sense of smell or taste, but there: roasted animal flesh, but of an animal that I cannot identify.

  My own palate is something I designed myself from the intake membranes of certain testing instruments. It is good, but it is not the same as a human palate. It makes mistakes. I ask you then, persons, try the food. Is it the love-body, do you think? Or is it too sweet to endure? Will it cloy after a bit?

  At any rate it has become a symbol, for a while at least, of a tendency that has gripped our little group. We are all of us on the love jag. We are bug-bit bad.

  There is another woman in the Institute now. I had thought that Valery was the only woman who would ever be here. My own idea is that one woman is enough for one world, and that complications began when first there was more than one.

  I don’t know who this other woman is. Nobody ever tells me anything. I am always the last one to know a thing. I can’t even take a précis of her. She’s like quicksilver. But I have several précis of quicksilver. None of this woman, though.

  The only one beside myself who is disturbed by this new arrival is Snake. Snake hates her. That’s something in her favor.

  In keeping these High Journals, I have begun to have some doubts about their human reception. I know that in the past certain things that almost approach these in quality (if that were possible) have had poor reception. I am canny. I will make a test. Then, if necessary, I will make adjustments. It should, of course, be the human world that makes adjustments to me, but I am large-hearted.

  I make up half a dozen short selections of my high thought, put them in fiction form, and send them off to human editors: of science-fiction magazines; of Bunny-Boy, the magazine of the Hippety-Hippeties; to other editors. These are all good selections. Most of them seem to be somehow concerned with the other woman who is now in the Institute. Somehow, she is on my minds lately.

  What puzzles me, what curdles me, what loads my generators is that I get these things back quickly, and with little notes that make no sense whatsoever. “Not quite what we have in mind”; “misses the mark”; “due to our present overstock”—things like that. In my anger I write them all back furiously. “Not quite what you had in mind? Who asked you? It is what I had in mind or I wouldn’t have written it. Misses the mark? Move the mark then. Where this hits is where the mark should be. Listen, you, I have your person-précis before me. I see that you have talent only and no genius at all. Whose fault is it that you are overstocked? Am I responsible for your inventory control? I do not ask you to publish these things. I tell you to. These are parts of the High Journal Itself.”

  Aloysius and Gregory laughed at me. Glasser said that he understood just how I felt. Well, I will adjust then, after my anger is spent. It should, of course, be the publishing world that makes adjustments to me, but I am large-hearted. Not so large-hearted, though, as I was before receiving these affronts.

  Charles Cogsworth has a theory about Glasser and E.P. It is that the roles are not really what they seem, that it is Glasser who is really the dog and the E.P. machine that is really the tail. According to this thinking, the intelligence and personality really pertain to
Glasser and not to the E.P., whatever the readings may show. (After all, it is E.P. who takes the readings, and I have detected him cheating in other cases. E.g., he sets my own intelligence far too low.)

  According to this theory of Cogsworth, the E.P. is merely a receptacle into which Glasser deposited his brains for a while and then, apparently, forgot where he had left them. (This leaves Glasser absent-minded in a special sense). Cogsworth further gives the opinion that Glasser made the transfer to relieve himself of certain responsibilities (he simply was not a big enough personality for his brains and talents); and now he lives easily and cheerfully, and all the tension is fixed in the E.P. machine. Glasser simply smiles at this opinion. (He has smiled away more opinions than anyone I know.) Where do I get the idea that, even without E.P. and his other sustaining inventions, he is a sleeping powerhouse of great potential? If he had any potential it would be recorded on the scanners.

  But the E.P. machine rejects Cogsworth’s idea furiously.

  “Why is there genius in the tail then, and not in the dog?” E.P. issued. “No. I am the dog; Glasser is the tail.” (Glasser is sort of a wag, you know. This by me, Epikt, not by the E.P. scanner.) “I am the master, he is the satellite,” E.P. further issued. “If only I could compel my satellite to give me feet instead of wheels, and voice instead of these damnable magnetic tapes! If only I could prevent him from making other machines that are not of my issue, that detract from me, that are rival to me! And what if he should make another machine greater than me? A tail has no business growing other dogs. Glasser is out of line.”

  “I have been asked if E.P. is kindred to me, because of a supposed similarity of our names. No, we are not kindred. We are of different nation entirely.

  As to myself as machine, this E.P. device strikes me as incredibly alien. Were it as powerful as myself I would be terrified of it. As it is, it shivers my hairs and hackles and chills my gell-cells. True machines do not do this to me, and humans do not; nor conventional devils, nor hybrids, nor ghosts (which are also a form of hybrid). The only things that shiver me like this are the down-devils, like Snake, like E.P. My own theory is that the E.P. Locator is not merely a machine but a bad spirit that possesses a part of Glasser. There was never a more genial man than Glasser, never a sweeter guy, but it is not true that he has got rid of his tensions. He is a split person, and one part of him is captive and one part is deprived. What would a psychologist make of a split person, half of whom is lodged in a machine, itself psychotic?

  There is an embarrassing folk dream of the man caught in public, he knows not how, without his clothes. Glasser is a man perpetually caught in public without his brains. Yet he has brains, wherever they are misplaced.

  And Glasser has a theory about Charles Cogsworth and the Valery. It is that the roles are not really what they seem, that it is Cogsworth who is really the dog and Valery who is the tail. According to this thinking, the intelligence and personality really pertain to Cogsworth and not to Valery, whatever the appearances may be. (After all, it is Valery who makes all the appearances.) Glasser says that Cogsworth invented Valery much more certainly than he Glasser invented the E.P. The proof that she is a mere invention is that she is a person of low definition and the observer must always complete her with his own imagination.

  But Glasser does not really believe this, any more than I do. We cannot believe this in her (even low-definition, imagination-completed) presence. That presence is too compelling. No man or machine could ever be so shaken by the invention of another man or machine. Of course she could be every-man’s and everymachine’s invention, in the archaic meaning of “invention.”

  This invention in the archaic meaning, this sublime and subliminal creature, this rock-throwing little sister of an anima, this Valery of the voles (that phrase will not be explained at the moment) came to me today in a state of icy indignation.

  “It has come to my hearing, Epikt, that you are keeping a woman,” she said with that frosty loftiness that she does so badly. “This is not permitted in the Institute. We do have the minimal decency rule.”

  “What woman, Valery?” I asked (I knew and yet I didn’t). “How keep?” (I suspected something of myself but I could not prove it of me.) “Explain yourself in this, Valery, or else explain myself in it.”

  “Oh, it’s true, then?” she chimed out like a set of glee-bells, the frostiness all gone. “Epikt, how wonderful! Oh, you sly old contraption, however do you work it?” However had Valery herself gotten by the minimal decency rule? Valery’s eyes were blue when she was delighted, as now. They were gold when she was under the lazy enchantment; white when she was indignant; violet when she was puzzled; purple when she was impassioned; and when they were black, look out! She was a creature of low resolution, maybe, but she did call out the low resolve in the fellows.

  “Oh, you rogue,” she cried. “You sly cybern, you old roué. Who is she?”

  “I don’t exactly know, Valery,” I issued. “I’m not sure she can be seen with regular eyes.”

  “Mine aren’t regular eyes,” she said. “Can you see her?”

  “Not with any of my eyes, no. I can see her a little bit with some of my sensors.”

  “Then I’ll use your sensors, Epikt. I’ll hook the Cerebral Scanner to you and see with your sensors. We haven’t used the C.S. much lately; the précis business serves in its stead most of the time. Do you know that, when Charles first invented the Cerebral Scanner and went around looking at the world through other eyes, he did very well at first. He saw the world through Gaetan Balbo’s eyes and through Gregory Smirnov’s eyes. He saw the world through the eyes of a general, and through others, and it all magnified him. Then he saw the world through my eyes and it shocked him goofy. We almost got lost from each other over that one.

  “If ever you think things look flat, Epikt, borrow my eyes. Things don’t look flat to me. You come look at the world like I look at it. It’s vertical mountains to me, all of it; it’s caves inside the tracts of worms that are still bigger caves than any world you see (live in them with me, Epikt, live in them with me); the world is rocks that copulate, to me, Epikt; it’s voles that roar like lions. Now then, I will just hook the Cerebral Scanner on to you and I will see this woman through your sensor eyes.”

  “Please don’t, Valery,” I issued. “It would—well, I am familiar with your person-précis, and I have also, using the scanner, seen the world briefly” (Vertical Millennia in that briefly) “through your eyes—it would, it might not be well for you to look at her yet.”

  “Why in swan’s gizzard not?” Valery demanded.

  “Valery, I don’t believe that she’s finished yet.” I gave the answer that surprised me.

  “Then I’ll finish her.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. No, Valery, no. I won’t let you see her—what there is of her to see yet.”

  “Who else can see her, Epikt?”

  “Only Snake, I believe.”

  “Then I’ll hook in on Snake and I’ll see the woman through Snake’s eyes.”

  “No, Valery, absolutely no. That is clear out of order. Even when she is finished, and you can see her through your own eyes, you must never see her through Snake’s eyes.”

  “Tell me what she is, Epikt. We built you to have words to tell everything.”

  “You thought that you did. I do have words to tell all the old stuff; but there are new wordless things growing all the time around this place.”

  “Is she being generated like we generated you?”

  “Not quite like that, Valery.”

  “Like what, then?”

  “It is more like when we, when the primordials generated Snake, who wasn’t what we expected. Gaetan, Gregory, you, and myself; we generated him, and we sure didn’t intend to.”

  “Well, who is generating the woman, then? And do they intend to?”

  “I believe that it is the fellahin that are generating her, Valery: Cogsworth, Glasser, Aloysius, myself. And I’m not sure what
we intend. We’re all bug-bit.”

  “Then let me generate her, too. I’ve been bug-bit before any of you, and with more and bigger bugs. And I’m already working in her, you know.”

  “No, Valery, you’re a primordial. Though you’re a woman, yet this sort of feminine isn’t in you, not as it is in Cogsworth and Glasser and Aloysius and myself. You stick to monsters and snakes.”

  “I will not. You think that is all there is to me? If you can belong to two species, then I can also. I’m a poor fellah myself, though I denied it today. There was this man on the street who dropped some packages, and I retrieved them for him; he didn’t seem to be able to find them. ‘Thanks, fellah,’ he said. ‘I’m a girl,’ I told him. ‘I gotta get these glasses changed,’ he said; ‘I might be missing a lot.’ ”

  “I’m at a loss how to index that anecdote, Valery,” I issued. “Is it allegory or is it joke?”

  “It is both. We’ve all got to get our eyes renovated, Epikt. We are all missing a lot. If you look at your face in the glass today and it reminds you a little of your face of yesterday, oh, you are in trouble! Let us not miss the things in us, Epikt.”

  Valery would never be in that kind of trouble. Her face at this minute was never like her face of only five minutes ago. But how had Valery known about the woman (in all of this I am using the word “woman” loosely, you know), how had she known about her at all? Oh, Valery also had her sensors (I would be afraid to look with them), and she also had her part in this generation and there was no use denying it.

 

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