“You better check on the right-of-way costs before you move any mountains in this township,” one heckler called out from the dark greenery of the park.
“Find out what a permit for moving a mountain will cost you,” another heckle-man hollered. “It costs three thousand dollars now for a permit just to move a house. Mountains are higher.”
“I myself am right-of-way and permit,” the Sky-Rocket showered out. Who did this burning man remind me of? The jaded crown came unjaded a little as it gathered about him. He was bubbles of fire, sparks of blood, love all-encompassing, a near miracle of—you remember the tag line of the joke: “Near miracle. Fell flat on his face”—but why should I doubt the Sky-Rocket? He was powerful magnetism (“You’re not kidding he’s magnetic,” Aloysius said, “a permeometer would read him at more than a million gilberts per cm.”); he was grace in action, he was the man named Sky-Rocket. But of whom did this sparking man remind me so strongly?
“Prove the love pitch,” a female heckler called from the amused but nervous crowd. “Prove that the love push is free from natural laws.”
What? A smell of old-fashioned gunpowder in the air, that’s what.
“This adulterous generation asks for a sign,” the Sky-Rocket crackled, “and the sign shall be given to it!”
“Make it quick, Rocket,” Aloysius Shiplap whispered to the Sky-Rocket. “You’re starting to go off now. You will self-destruct in—ah—ten seconds.”
“This be the sign,” the Sky-Rocket shouted and belched fire, “this the sign that my love is above all natural laws. I ascend! Love, love, zoom, zoom!”
And the Sky-Rocket took off in a flaming arc into the sky with a trail of—
CHAPTER SEVEN
A special event, Aloýs of the ridge,
Who doubted the stream and believed in the bridge.
—And the Sky-Rocket took off in a flaming arc into the sky with a trail of fire and old gunpowder fumes; it rose, hung at its apex, and exploded. It was a sign and a wonder, but it was the end of the entity named Sky-Rocket.
Well, but who had he reminded me of, the Sky-Rocket? Of myself, of course, for he was myself. We had made these three new extensions of myself that day: one of them sublime, the opulent clod who represents what is most successful in man; one of them ridiculous, the pristine poet with the waving hair; one of them overwhelming and overdone, made to cry “Love, love, zoom, zoom,” then to shoot into the sky and explode, to self-destruct.
We had done this for fun, myself with a little help from Charles Cogsworth and Aloysius Shiplap, but it wasn’t for fun only. I had set up this afternoon project which I called Seminar in Love to try to throw new light on a human affliction and obsession. This love thing, which I have been unable to examine directly, leaves its pinion-prints on everything it touches, and I am reduced to studying the prints of it. It is said that this love is the life-force itself, and also that it is the one thing that always goes wrong with life. It is also said (with too much assurance, I believe) that mechanical things can have no concern with this elusive element. Why, then, am I concerned? It’s part of the job they gave me, that’s why. You remember that part of my Official Motif as imparted to me by the Great Gregory Smirnov:
“—to discover proper balance between stimulating challenge and partaking pleasure. To better. To transcend. To adore. To mutate. To serve. To build avenues of love. To overwhelm. To arrive.” (Nor will I forget the addendum of Valery: “Let’s have some fun while we do it.”)
So I work on the problem. I consider these curious humans who are bug-bit. I wish a little that the beard-lice blight would kill this special bug too. I consider, also, one person who I believe raised and introduced some varieties of this bug for a joke.
In my superb mechanical analyses of human persons I sometimes experience mechanical failure. This is most frequent in the special cases of Valery Mok and Aloysius Shiplap. As to Aloysius, I am reminded of the account of the boy and the box. This wasn’t a very big box or a very pretty one. It was battered and shaggy, with those banjo eyes with the lavender circles around them, with the clay feet clear up to the eyebrows, pepper-colored, and looking older than it was. I am talking about a box? Sure, a box.
The boy opened the box and he noticed at once, though he didn’t take in the full implications of it, that the box was much larger inside than outside. He began to unload things out of it, treasures, misunderstood and complicated treasures, old gold with deep incrustations of sea scum, rough maps with the lettering in Chaldee, live birds of the psittacine sort, Arabian gumtrees, clavicles of saints, kidskin scrolls, astrolabes, gnomon dials that will read correctly only at the location of Cos-Megara, the third city of Atlantis, the stones named Shamba that are found only in variant readings of the Apocalypse—all the things that are commonly found in old boxes, but in unusual profusion here.
Then the boy noticed that, however many things he unloaded out of that box, the box still stood full. The box is Aloysius Shiplap, and I am the boy.
I often look on human persons as boxes, and their examination as the opening of boxes. And sometimes I overlook minor and faint markings on the covers of the boxes. I had great difficulty today identifying photographs of the members of the Institute. Some quasi-official was around to verify employment or credit or some such, and I was the only person in the Institute building at that moment. It would have seemed that I would not confuse photographs of Gregory Smirnov with those of Valery Mok, and I did confuse them only for a moment. It would seem that I would not have positively identified as the face of Charles Cogsworth the—“no, no, that’s the back of the photograph. That’s the trademark of the Imperial Photo Lab with the towers of the Mid-America Building in the background. Oh, Lord, are there no regular people here?” Human persons seem to make much of these schematic prints of one of their facial surfaces. Myself I find the electro-coronal surface (4-7 mm. from the epidermal surface) much more interesting, but not very interesting, either. People, you are boxes, and I will lay out your contents and study them like the contents of boxes. The Aloysius box, however, has false walls and false bottom.
There is a bald-faced lie embodied in Aloysius’ person-précis. “It is not,” Aloysius says: “It’s a lightly whiskered lie.” But it is a lie.
Aloysius was not born on Cedar Street in Winedale, Indiana. There is no Cedar Street in Winedale, Indiana. We cannot know that he was born of parents who were neither poor nor honest, as he says. He did not attend Shadowtown Business School in Indianapolis nor Peter College at Oxford. Neither of these institutions is to be found outside of his imagination. He was not married to the Countess Vera Volpe, and he was not touched thereby with the Volpe family curse. I do not believe that he was ever married at all. Such an event will usually make at least a slight impression of the person-plastic. Aloysius did not fight bulls at Cuernavaca, nor was he the composer of the striking drum solo “All the Beautiful Bulls.” Benny B-flat composed that one. Aloysius did not win the world’s middleweight wrestling title from Lord Patrick Finnegan in a famous match at the Fairground’s Arena in Tulsa. He might have thrown Lord Patrick if they had met, though. Aloysius is still pretty wiry. All of these things are to be found in Aloysius’ person-précis in me, but they are in there in a tilted way; they were put in there by his own imagination. Aloysius is a romantic and all these things are whiskered lies.
But I am unable to arrive at the early truth of him. He does have a heavy finger ring that bears the coat-of-arms of the old and impoverished Foulcault-Oeg family, but he won this ring at poker from Willy McGilley. Not that Aloysius has much to do with Willy McGilley and his Wreckville bunch; he plays poker with them one night a week; that is all. He beats those guys, too. That statement can be made of no other man in the world.
We are not about to suggest that Aloysius Shiplap is the same man as Professor Aloys Foulcault-Oeg who flared up so suddenly and then disappeared forever. That idea is sheer madness; even as a joke it would be a mad joke. If Aloysius were the Professo
r Aloys, then he would have to be a rather elderly man by now. Aloysius does look a little elderly (it’s those lavender circles under his eyes, it’s those crinkles and lines in his face from grinning so much when he was a younger man), but everyone around here knows that Aloysius is still stuffed full of that young green juice.
Who is Aloysius Shiplap, then, and where does he come from? People, I do not know these things. I am only a data machine, and these things are not to be found in my true data.
What do I know about his backgrounds? I know that he can manufacture backgrounds faster than I can appraise them, and that every one of them will be answered by a deep though cracked echo from his précis.
What do I know about his knowledge? Well, I can’t trap him and I can’t top him. What he doesn’t know he can fake; and his fakery is so full of fruitful fallout that it is more productive than other men’s knowledge.
Is it true that Aloysius is lazy? It is not true at all. If he inveigles other people into finishing the things he has started (and he certainly does do this) it is only to let those others have a piece of the fun also. Aloysius himself gives this as the true reason.
Has he charm? “He can charm the birds out of a tree,” Valery said of him once, “I’ve seen him do it.” “Look closer some time, Valery,” said her unoutstanding husband, Charles Cogsworth; “he gets them out of those trees, yes, but they fall down on their noggins dead. He gets through to bats, though.” No, really, my own analysis reveals that Aloysius has a lot of charm; but humans would never think to apply that word to the puzzling quality as it appears in him.
How would I classify him as a man. I wouldn’t attempt it.
How would I classify him as a machine, then? Say, he’s got cogs in him whose bevel I don’t understand at all.
What is the state of his soul? Perilous, but as yet undamned.
Has he good appearance? There are Mexican squashes that are better looking. Maybe so, but you should see him when he’s out on a real con. He can become the best-looking man in the world, and the best-dressed man in the world, both instantly, and without changing face, figure, or clothes. We have it on the word of real cons that Aloysius Shiplap, if he devoted full time to it, would be the most successful confidence man in the world.
Has he intellect? He has. He can’t hide it, and sometimes he tries to. He has the speed of idea of Gaetan, and the unsuspected depth of Gregory. He has the fecund angular distortion of Glasser, and the fabricating thought-action of Cogsworth. He has the crooked-lightning intuition of Valery, and the solidity of myself. He is endowed with the gates-ajar glimpses of Cecil Corn, the hilarity of intellect of Willy McGilley, the special-event comprehension of Audifax O’Hanlon, the satanic subtlety of Diogenes Pontifex. He can stack up with any of us at our steepest, and we’re the best there are. He’s good.
Why isn’t he a primordial, then? Or an elegant? Why is he a fellah, a commoner, an outside one, an underneath one? I think he likes it that way.
And has he really—I’m sorry that I had to go into that little self-question and self-answer sequence for short moments there (it’s a stand-by or alternate circuit in me)—but the fact is that my main narrative circuit had blown. I’ve got it fixed now.
Aloysius did really cultivate a mock-virus or false-virus and cause us all to catch it. Now we are all bit by two bugs. Aloysius says that they are both false and he hopes they will cancel out. I say that only his is false and trivial, and that the other is true with a shimmering truth. It isn’t that Aloysius is antilove (he has contributed a few, though too few, of the better parts of the woman being generated by all of us in me; I use the term “woman” loosely again); but Aloysius says, as Audifax O’Hanlon also says, that if you catch it from a bug or make it in a lab it isn’t true love.
And he has minority views as to what the woman-form symbol should be.
“She ought to be a little older than the rest of you want, and a little broader in the beam,” he insists. “She ought to be lined and grayed a little, and not of over-good appearance.”
“No, no,” cry Gregory and Glasser and Valery. “She must be of perfect beauty, of exquisite beauty, the most lovable creature or imagery that we can concoct.”
“Aw, buzzard-belches, you miss the whole idea,” Aloysius maintained. “You mix a looker into this and you bring in something else that is lower than love-complete. And a looker doesn’t have to love. She draws it all in. She doesn’t have to radiate it out. You never get anything out of the ones who have the most.”
“Surely one who has the most will give the most,” Glasser said stiffly. Glasser is in love with the burgeoning image, more than any of us.
But Aloysius has taken the lead in a valid experiment. Of course he will let Gregory and Glasser and Cogsworth and myself finish it, so we all may have a piece of the fun, not because he’s lazy. Aloysius put together some pretty fine specifics of what we mean by love-complete. You would almost have said that a thing like that couldn’t be put into words or programming, but he came very near to capturing the essence of it. He’s good. Then he programmed a modified extension of the E.P. Locator with the specifics, stowed the extension onto one of the earth-orbiting satellites, with data-couplers to both E.P. and myself. It works. It locates. As the E.P. Locator basic will locate genius anywhere without fully understanding what genius is, so this extension will locate habitats of love and benignity without fully understanding what they consist of. The device scans, and ultimately it records in myself all human locations in the world where authentic benignity and love obtain.
I have most of them now. I have them all unless unsuspected ones should turn up in supposedly unpeopled wastes of Antarctica. And those loci that I have do not add up to very many: Only seven towns in the world, each of less than a thousand persons; no more than a hundred hamlets; not over half a million families, and about as many singletons.
“We will discover, if we may, just what is to be found in these special loci,” Aloysius said, “and then we will imitate the special thing in our own persons, to the extent that we are adequate persons to compass it.”
“What we will do,” said Gregory, “is extract the special essence that is to be found in these places. Then we will put it through every test possible, inside and outside of Epikt. When we have it analyzed completely, we will synthesize it. We are now able to synthesize anything that we can analyze. And when we have it synthesized, then we will manufacture it on a large scale; and we will spew it out into the world in overpowering quantities. By this, we will change the world, as nobody has known how to change the world before.”
“Aw, coot’s foot, it won’t work,” Aloysius said. “There is a barrier between such things and others.”
“You yourself, Aloysius, have in other experiments shown the barrier between tangibles and intangibles to be a semipermeable membrane,” Gregory Smirnov stated. “Glasser has proved emotion to be an electromagnetic phenomenon; Valery has shown group feeling to be a chemical affinity; Cogsworth has measured the vector velocity of several of the intuitions; you yourself have demonstrated that grace has both weight and valence; I have done valuable work on the in-grace and out-of-grace isotopes of several substances, proving the materiality of grace. Everything has a material base. There is nothing the matter with matter. Life is no more than a privileged form of matter. Love is no more than a privileged form of life. It is an all-one stream flowing along forever. If we did not believe this we would be false to the very idea of the Institute of Impure Science.”
“Aw, brachycera brains!” Aloysius bawled back. “There isn’t an all-one stream like that. The waters above and the waters below were divided from the beginning.”
“Not quite from the beginning, Aloysius,” I corrected him. “On the second day.”
“There is a void between that is wider than the worlds,” Aloysius protested, “and the most we can ever hope for is a precarious bridge over it.”
“Why should we build a bridge to get to where we already are?” G
lasser asked. “We are already in the middle of the open flow, and we have the obligation to be open scientists.”
“We have the obligation to be intelligent scientists, to be intelligent persons,” Aloysius challenged us all (sometimes he is right when he does that), “and it is not intelligent to refuse to see the firmament between that is bigger than the world.”
“Nevertheless, we will go ahead with the program,” our director Gregory Smirnov stated in that crunching way that directors have. “A curse on you and your stubborn mind.”
“A curse on all of you and your uncircumcised eyes and ears,” Aloysius swore, and he stomped out angrily.
Why should there be this element of hate in these arguments about love? I cannot abide these sharp arguments between humans. I am made of more gentle stuff. Oh, why was I not a machine of Oryx or Ostriches?
Things were a little chilly around the Institute for a while. I myself am not sure it is the blessed infection we have caught when it brings these alternate chills and fevers. When Aloysius walks out of our lives it is much more final than when Gaetan walks out, even though we know Aloysius will be back in a few hours.
One of the Wreckville gang stuck his head into the door of the Institute.
“Is Aloysius here?” he asked.
“Nahhh,” Glasser snorted.
“His car’s here,” the Wreckviller said hopefully.
“You want to talk to his car?” Valery asked.
“He’s out stomping on the ridges,” Charles Cogsworth said. “It’s a wonder he doesn’t wear them out.”
Nevertheless Aloysius came back a little before dusk. He never lets the sun go down on his anger. He gave listless aid to Gregory and Glasser and Valery on the method of identifying and extracting the special essence. He somehow has an expert’s understanding of the love-constitute.
But he was not happy with the application. “I could understand Epikt or myself wanting to go about it in this way,” he said, “though I do not want to; but I cannot understand humans wanting to use the mechanical application here. Strange, you are all very strange.”
Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine Page 12