Not To Mention Camels

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I told you that I wanted him dead and done for!” the brigadier shouted in white anger. “You’ve bungled it, the bunch of you! You can’t even kill a man definitively. Heads will roll, I tell you!” And the brigadier stomped out.

  Doctor Ravel, with a grimace, whistled a couple of bars of that current song hit, “Heads Will Roll.” But the humor of it deepened and lowered when the person-tone of dead Tisman took up the same haunting tune. There was a bit of horror gnawing at them in the area there, but also some ultra-purple fun.

  “I said that I half understood how he might have been loved,” Doctor Funk said. “Now I understand it a bit more than half. But what have we here? Ah, ulp, nothing.”

  Well, Tisman had taken something with him: his memory, his identity, and the container for his consciousness. These are things that can be weighed, and they were. But had Tisman left any new and compensating thing in the place of what he had taken? Likely he had. And likely it was stolen, to be suppressed, by the first of the monitors who discovered it.

  Doctor Wilcove Funk, taken by strange impulse, concealed the thing and held it in his hand. He hid it pretty well there, and he hid fairly well the fact that the thing shone through the flesh and bones of his hand. And he concealed, for a few days, the fact that it overflowed his hand and occupied the world, in a very thin but complete manner. Well, the world at any one time is pretty completely occupied by some several dozens of such very thin things, very diluted things. They aren’t much noticed, but anyone who is occupied in the careful weighing of the world would be able to weigh these all-extending thin things also.

  “It always puzzles me what happens to the data,” the pale Doctor Ravel mused. He always paled a bit when a jump death was successful. Such things always drew energy from every sensitive person present. “It’s as though one went back to play again an old record or tape or cassette and found that all the sound-fossils had been erased or scraped clean. But how does one erase a brain? What could have happened to those particular signature brain tracks of Tisman? He could at least have left us the footprints of where they had been, couldn’t he? Or are the footprints the essence of it all? It may be that valid footprints can create a new person to fill them.”

  “Yeah, he took them with him,” Doctor Funk said, disappointed that they had failed to catch these things in their careful nets, defeated once more in this project, but a trifle glad that this prey had escaped their hunting. “He took a lot of things with him, many more than most jumpers take. And if he left a token, well, he left it to be hidden. This man Tisman was an adept.”

  “At what?” Doctor Austin asked.

  “At dying, of course. He may even remember doing it,” Funk said. “Well, he escaped our nets. He got away. He world-jumped.”

  “Where to?” Doctor Ravel asked him sharply.

  “I don’t know,” Funk answered with a touch of sorrow. “There are shadow worlds all around us when we deal with such obstreperous dying folks. I can’t touch the worlds myself, or see them. I seem to get a small noise from them sometimes, though, a noise that is in my own tone. We try to net knowledge here, of course, but I’m not too sorry when a dead man escapes us with something much thinner than his skin. I can’t see what law is broken by a dead man jumping to another milieu. When they fight extinction hard enough, I find that I’m partisan to their fight. It is very hard to enforce laws against dead men in any case.”

  “I always feel guilty when I write ‘dead’ to the record of one of these jumping persons,” the short-spoken coroner told them. “There should be several special categories for them: possibly, ‘Dead, subject to continuance,’ or, ‘Not so dead as all that.’ Alive and dead surely aren’t the only two alternatives.”

  But, “Adept at dying” or not, “Not so dead as all that” or not, Pilger Tisman was buried later that day.

  There seemed to be only one mourner, Maria del Mar, a young and taut-faced girl about whom little is known other than that she was a cult follower of the cult figure Tisman.

  Wait! There was another, but he hung back at some distance. He mourned with a silent, sobbing motion, but he did not come near to the burying. He was named Jacob del Mar; he was a brother of Maria, and he was another cult follower of Tisman.

  The powerful friend and the powerful enemy of Tisman were not in evidence.

  All of this happened about fifteen years before our subsequent action. Or it may be that a fifteen-year leap to upstream cliffs had created the illusion of such an interval. There is no proved correlation between the different worlds.

  2

  With stones for bread, for fishes snakes,

  For men synthetic leaders chilly,

  The god Electronus now makes

  Creations of Old God look silly.

  Neo-Creational Procedures File

  It was once believed, by many speculative scientists, that there might be dozens of billions of life-supporting worlds in the universes. These worlds were thought to be scattered throughout space in whatever were the more apt or green or fortunate spots for growing worlds. This multiplicity of worlds was assumed even before the discovery of a Prime World from which the multiplicity might proceed. It was not even understood then that there must be a prime before there can be a procession. Nevertheless, these speculative scientists were correct.

  And it was once believed, by many nonscientists and pseudoscientists and fringe people, that there might be—in quite a different way from the first instance—dozens of billions of life-supporting worlds in the universes. But the fringies and nonsuches and pseudos understood this numeration of worlds to be of a slightly different arrangement and order than the hardhead scientists had supposed. These worlds were not to be scattered throughout space. There was not any space in such scatterable sense. These worlds were all to occupy the same familiar local space. They were the tree-worlds or the branch-worlds or the crossroad-worlds, and there was only one tree that they might grow upon. The nons and pseudos and fringies sometimes called them the alternate worlds. And the persons of these wide-eyed groups were quite correct in their suppositions.

  There was a third belief that was held by many determined and brilliant, though spotty, folks. This was the belief that there was only one world and that all possible persons were in it. This belief maintained that there were not even dozens of billions of souls or persons in that one world; that, in fact, there were only about three and a half billion souls available; and that there could be no more ever. And it maintained that almost all of the possible souls were already bodied in the world at this present time; that a firm limit would soon make itself felt; or that there would be catastrophe. There were others, of the same sort but of slightly different views, who said that all souls had been poured into flesh long ago, and that three of every four persons in the world now were not true persons but only reflections of persons. This belief was that the prime count was for prime souls only, and that all others were shadow souls or derivative persons who did not have a like force, who were not real at all in a strict sense. These several grouped beliefs were mainly about the transmigration of souls, the jumping from death to life in another body, sometimes remembering what had gone before, more often forgetting. And the persons who held these several similar beliefs were absolutely right to hold them.

  And at the same time that these three true theories were current, it was maintained by at least one person (his name was Pilgrim Dusmano) that there was no contradiction in these theories and no reason for conflict: that these three beliefs were only three aspects of the same thing, if, that is, one should take a tri-mental view of space and of being and of several other things.

  The space of the countless universes—this was Pilgrim’s contention—was identical with the familiar local space and was in no way larger than that local space. One space did not contain the other; one space did not go beyond the other; they were of the same measure. A man with a good right arm might throw a stone clear across space, but of course it would be an endless rock tha
t he threw.

  “My presumption,” Pilgrim Dusmano was saying to his students, “—for I cannot call it theory, since, once it is entertained at all, it goes beyond itself and makes all theories obsolete—my arrogant presumption and absolute claim is that there are these dozens of billions of alternate worlds right here right now. My claim requires a new way of looking at space and a new way of looking at being. Since these new ways are required, they will be supplied. The multiple worlds in the space that the scientists have loved for so long are really out there. Ah, but ‘Out There’ is also ‘In Here.’ The apparent celestial locations of distant galaxies are but notes upon the sky maps for the purpose of giving the names of those clusters in cipher, for there is no room to write them down all in one place; the notes must be written in the margins. This requires a new way of looking at margins, which are spaces outside of accepted spaces. The distant locations are true ones, however. But here we run into the problem of bi-location. For, wherever else all the worlds are, they are also all in one place—here.”

  “I don’t understand old Dusmano at all in this world,” said James Morey, a pleasant young man who was a student of Pilgrim Dusmano. “Well, then, since I do not understand him at all in this world, and if his presumptions have any validity at all, it must be that some alternate me in some alternate world understands him. There have been alternate selves of me who really revered him, and I don’t know why that should have been so. It may be that his effect is cumulative. But, as of now, he doesn’t seem like much.”

  “Amorality is implicit as a total thing in my claim,” Dusmano was saying, “or it is implicit in all cases except one out of dozens of billions. Recompense cannot be real; debt and guilt are not real; punishment and death are only illusions. We do not die. We pass into an alternate world and we live again there. This has been going on for as long as mankind and its bodies and souls have been going on. But perhaps we are now able to improve this metacosmosis, this transmigration of worlds. Our world-jumping need not be random. It should be the object of our careful study.

  “Some of you here may be enamored of your own childhoods. Well, then, repeat your childhoods, and do it as often as you wish. And do it in as many different costumes as you wish. It may be well for you to die, in the common understanding of that word, in childhood to get back to that time more easily. The eldest of you here is not more than twenty years old; you are still children. If you want to be of an earlier age, you have only to leap upstream in your next world-jumping. Or do you like it as it is now? Leave it as it is, then. Do not jump unnecessarily. Go on for another year, or two, or three. Then kill yourselves by the method of your own choice. It isn’t final. And you can remember that it is you who jump. You can even remember much of your present life, in hooded form perhaps, if—well, you can remember it if you remember to remember. There are certain distractions in every death, and you must learn to ignore some of them. The continuity of memories requires a certain attention at the moment of dying. You can, within reason, select the quality of life you wish to jump to. And you can, with a little practice, return at almost any age you wish. And there’s nice choice and wide variety if you bring a stubborn mentality to bear on the selection. There are, for instance, enclaves where boy children are born with beards and moustaches, and where females are born figured and busted and in full speech. Those are only examples, but they are true ones.

  “Myself, I like the young adult role. I came here fifteen year ago, to age fifteen. I’ll go on with it now for another ten years. Then I’ll shift again. Ah, I recall one environs where the young male adults were horned and hoofed during the rutting season. Oh, that season! For a six-week interlude, there is nothing like it. I sometimes believe that I will go back there every springtime. It’s one of the most easily attained of all the environs.

  “Is it real? you ask. Oh, not completely real. I’d say that it’s about as real as the world we’re in now.”

  “I don’t understand Mr. Dusmano either,” Howard Praise mumbled. “He’s a little unreal when he implies that the worlds are a little unreal. I’m on the edge of joining his cult, but what if there is nothing in him at all?”

  Then Howard spoke aloud. “Sir, are you really suggesting that we kill ourselves?”

  “Suggesting it, yes,” Dusmano said pleasantly, “but it isn’t a weighted suggestion. It’s better to have your dying under your own control than under the misdirection of others. After all, death is seldom final. It is so only in one very rare case. It is one of the things that one would best do for himself. Self-destruction is one strong possibility that is always open to us. We should use this flexibility of the universes. It’s harder, though, when we die at the last minute. We sacrifice very much flexibility when we do that, and our reappearances will be duller instead of brighter. There are too many persons who go always from dull to still duller lives, and there may be no cure for them. They do not remember, they do not scheme, they do not seize. But I bring words to you bright young people here today: Everything is allowed to you. And I cannot see any limit to the number or spaciousness of the lives you will be able to live.”

  “Mr. Dusmano is right, of course, but I don’t understand him,” said Rhinestone Suderman, a large, fair-haired young female person. “I keep saying there’s no way I could ever be attracted to him. And I keep knowing I’m wrong every time I say it.”

  “Mr. Dusmano is wrong, of course, and I do understand him,” said Mary Morey, a freckled, rusty-haired, unlarge girl who was in the middle of a tangled and worried adolescence. It would be wrong to say that Mary was bug-eyed, although both her eyes were in quite high relief. “But I am a partisan of his. I am with him all the way, to the grave and beyond, to an endless series of graves and a tedious series of beyonds. And he really isn’t very much: hardly anything at all. Why am I caught up by a daemon like him?”

  And then Mary said in a louder voice, “What is the catch to it, Mr. Dusmano? I’ve asked you before, often, in other places, at other times. I forget where or when they were, since I’ve only known you for this week here. But there is always a catch. What is the catch that weighs on the other side of the balance?”

  “It weighs so lightly that we will not even mention it,” Pilgrim Dusmano assured Mary and the class. “There are billions of chances against its ever happening to you. So we will disregard the slim chance that the evil might fall.”

  “But there is one chance that it will all go wrong?” Mary asked. “Anything that can be named has its chance of happening. And we know that rational odds do not prevail in random anachronicities.”

  “How do we know that?” Pilgrim asked.

  “It says that in our arithmetic book,” Mary answered. “But the one bad case, if it comes, might be billions of times more severe than all the good cases, out of compensation. There is a catch. Name the catch to us.”

  “No! I’ll not name it to you! I’ll not think of it at all!” Pilgrim Dusmano said with sudden starkness. “I’ll limn out the bright opportunities for you this morning, and that is all there will be time for. That is all there is ever going to be time for. Never, never think of the extremely improbable failure. That way is madness.”

  In due time, Pilgrim Dusmano completed his lecture to the young people; then he left them. And they were about to leave.

  “Wait a bit,” Rhinestone Suderman told them all. “Is anyone here interested in forming a Pilgrim Dusmano cult?”

  “But he’s so mixed up,” Howard Praise muttered.

  “Say that he’s ‘chaotic,’ rather,” Rhinestone suggested. “This gives us more scope. In one of the mythologies, great things were brought out of chaos. And if we must start a cult, let us start it on the broadest possible basis: chaos. Dusmano is our man, the chaotic man, soon to be more than man, with our aid.”

  “But must we start a cult?” James Morey asked with a little resentment.

  “Of course we must. We’re compelled to,” Rhinestone said.

  “Compelled to? By what?” H
oward Praise wanted to know.

  “By a compulsion, of course. By a blind compulsion. All cults are started by such compulsions.”

  But, later that morning, Pilgrim did give a name to that narrow foul chance that lurked so impossibly small in the statistics.

  “The name of the obdurate thing is Prime World,” he told his associate and one powerful friend, Noah Zontik. “Its prospects are as small as a grain of sand compared to a solar system medium in size. That’s about what the contrary chance amounts to.”

  “A grain of sand is a nuisance even in a giant’s shoe,” Noah said. “Well, is there really such a thing as Prime World?”

  “I think so. In simple mathematics, there has to be one, or there has to have been a Prime World. It would have been best to posit Prime World first of all, to derive from it and to multiply the derivations, and then to destroy the prime original, which was sure to have been inferior. But the Lord of the Worlds doesn’t always seem to know what best to do with his own devices, and in simple ethics there has to be a Prime World now. Some first object has to have cast the first shadow; and that shadow-caster must remain for proof, and to teach humility to the universe. But Prime World has surely long since been—pardon me, Noah—overshadowed by its shadows.”

  They were talking in the Prismatic Room of the Personage Club.

  “Why is even the possibility of a Prime World so much of a threat to you, Pilgrim?”

  “Because logic would prevail on Prime World. That is so on the word of leaders in a dozen sciences and speculations. And there is nothing so irrational as logic. It has all the narrow sequence of an old mule track. It is one-dimensional and one-directional. It would be murderous to such a man as myself, eternally murderous. They keep accounts on Prime World; ultimate accounts, I mean. They keep crabbed, careful, fetishistic accounts. Oh, Noah, would I ever have to pay!”