Not To Mention Camels

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Oh, yes. Mut is Satterfield.” Pilgrim liked throwing that strong man to these strong-tooths.

  “What, old Transcendent Muscles Himself is one of the masked men? Old Strength-in-Serenity? Oh, the public will rend him! There has to be something to get him for. Something, many things.”

  And the young Lords swarmed out like a cloud of gnats. Somewhere they would find or fake or manufacture the gnat of evidence against the great strong man, Strength-in-Serenity, Strength-in-Purity, Satterfield, who was now revealed as the man behind the code-mask, Mut. Always the Lords could find a gnat’s-weight of evidence against any man, and always that gnat’s-weight would be enough to declare ruination.

  Were they Lords of the Gnats for nothing? Many of these young Lords Spiritual had already scattered to hunt down and hamstring this strong man.

  For a people, even a good people, do not pass gnats easily, once they have gotten inside them. They will huff and puff and strain and turn purple, all over one adolescent gnat. And the gnat must be dissected, minutely dissected before it can be passed. It would never go out all in one piece. This selective passing is an oddity about even good people. They can pass out easily many very large objects, not to mention camels.

  Pilgrim was eating mock-pizzle pie now, the genuine pie being out of season. But the mock pie was good, it was prestigious, it was expensive. The basic ingredient was from the clutter-buck rather than from a bull, but ah, it was an open secret that some of the most current people ate the mock-pizzle pie by preference even when the real thing was in season. Joy at board! What can unjade a jaded appetite like mock-pizzle pie!

  An older and more elegant Lord Spiritual came to Pilgrim then. This was a man of fine appearance and distinction, and he bore the old and noble family name of Fairfronter. He wore the rare “Golden Shovel Pip” as a mantle brooch. But he also wore the even more rare “Pilgrim Staff” which was smaller than a mote in the eye. It was seldom recognized, even by the heraldry experts, what the small Pilgrim Staff was and meant. What it meant was that the bearer belonged to Pilgrim Dusmano and his cult, that he worked always to establish the Pilgrim image and cult.

  “Is it final that you will leave tonight, Mr. Dusmano?” the Lord Fairfronter asked with anxious pain. “This world just won’t be the same without you. Even from a purely technical point of view, you have advanced the posthuman personality beyond any others. But why do you leave so soon? Your cult has not yet outdistanced the others. Like all fine things, it takes its while to rise above the coarse growth around it. And when you do leave, whom will we look to for our leader? Have you nominated a replacement?”

  “A replacement for myself, Fairfronter? Who but a further me could succeed me? Yes, it is final that I leave tonight, unless—well, unless I get some different notion. We intuitive ones know that times and directions are never final. Oh, as to appointing a leadership for those whom I leave behind, I can always send instructions back to you here.

  “It may be yourself who will receive those instructions and play the leader. Could you be the burning voice and hands and body in lieu of myself? Could you represent the electronic-anointing in place of me? I build my system on world after world, and I leave my worlds shining behind me like the trail of a snail or a slug. I span those worlds with my personal celestial body. And this digesting of world power and world experience is as much internal to me as it is external. Each time I open a new world or a new stage of my life, it is like coming onto a never-before-noticed portal in my inner being. I open it, and I come upon a whole new rich suite of rooms already prepared for me in my interior.

  “I suspect that the worlds really live in me and not I in them. My personal and cultish indwellings are as varied as they are rich. Really, I can never get enough of me. And always I can, wherever I happen to be, cut the throat of a human calf or a human sheep and send him back, or forward or anywhere, with a message. But my message will be the same burgeoning message forever: ‘Don’t think. Scintillate.’ Thought is one mental process that must be excised out of us. There are so many patterns of mind that are better than thought.”

  “Is it possible that such dingy madness can really be of effect?” the man Evenhand, who was the unmasked Consul and who had the code name of Rut, was asking. He could listen anywhere. He did not entirely despise electronic or postelectronic technology. And he had been listening for a small moment to Pilgrim Dusmano. “Lords of the Gnats indeed they all are, and he is the slightest of them. For that reason, I suppose, he will become their mad king. Until finally he returns to his own place.”

  “I should have killed him this morning,” Mut said, “but it wouldn’t have mattered. They are fungible, interchangeable, and there are so many of them. There is no limit to the articulating of artificial personalities, and Pilgrim has at least attained a certain cohesion that a quick substitute might lack. Yes, such dingy madness really is of effect, Evenhand, in our temporal vales. Every world that collapses does so by such a dingy madness eating out its brains and substance.”

  “Our faith commands us to love the sinner and hate the sin,” Evenhand said, “but does it command us to love a reticulated mechanism that grinds out sin like sausage? Yes, I suppose it does. That mechanism of a Pilgrim, except for—except for being himself, could have been human.”

  “But I have lately begun a new and improved practice of taking my own place when I leave,” Pilgrim was saying back at the Media Club.

  “What? How do you mean it, Mr. Dusmano?” Fairfronter asked.

  “Why, I’m a bundle of sticks, Fairfronter. I’m a million long and skinny sticks bundled together. Each person is something such, though I doubt if anyone has so great a variety as myself. The sticks are my parallel persons. No one person, no one stick, not even the one here present at table, can be a very great part of me. But when I go, I can always send another self after me as Paraclete. Every parallel of me is truly myself, but we cannot see this clearly yet. Our eyes are still darkened, ’tis said. But myself, I have become remarkably bright-eyed these last few cycles. And today, by a sudden mutational jump, I have developed jewel eyes which bring in unbelievable light to me. The fragments of me cannot communicate with one another on a conscious level. And yet we do communicate, for we are the architects of our own personality. It is possible that you and the other members of my inner cult may recognize my replacement, the alternate me, when he comes. If not, someday some others will recognize another parallel. Nothing of me will ever be lost. I leave it to you. If he seems to be a false replacement, or too slight an arrival, then you will dispose of him. It will be me whom you are killing, of course, but I can stand a lot of killing. The winnowing out of my lesser selves is not displeasing to me. There is no way at all— Well, there is one all-but-impossible way, but we’ll not consider it. There is no way that all of me can be trapped and destroyed in one body. Ah, Fairfronter, you may want to polish up some of these sayings a little and incorporate them into my cult.”

  “I will, sir, I will. But the sayings will not be like yourself. Are there any arrangements that you want us to make for tonight, Mr. Dusmano? Have you decided how it is that you want to die?”

  “Ah, there are at least two good possibilities of my being murdered. I always like that, if I have time to get into the right state of mind for it. I don’t like to be caught unawares by my own murder. When I have my mind controlled, I can turn the power of the assault to my own advantage. No, the only arrangements that you people can make are to stand by and await possible orders. I am very flexible on these things. Oh, Fairfronter, the assailants are always so tense. Have you noticed that? I will see you later in the day or the evening, then, Fairfronter.”

  “Yes, and do be careful, Mr. Dusmano. You are the only cult figure for us. I really wish you weren’t.” Fairfronter left the company of Dusmano and talked to other persons in the Media Club.

  Pilgrim Dusmano ate meerschaum cheese, which is made from cetacean milk. He ate it with one of those special small-cupped long-handled spo
ons with which informal diners have always eaten meerschaum cheese.

  Another young Lord Spiritual came and sat at table with Pilgrim. But there was something very tricky about this young Lord. He was from the Provinces, and very little was known about him. But contrary things about him quickly became evident. The young Lord had a furtive look, and a real Lord will never, anywhere, have a furtive look.

  The young man had the heart of a spy. For several hours Pilgrim Dusmano, with his mutated jewel eyes, had been able to see within people. The young Lord had the heart of a spy, and it beat fearfully through his bosom. Worse, it was the heart of a squeamish spy, a weak heart, a flutter heart in a flutter person. This man was no real Lord Spiritual. Oh, he would have his credentials in order, but he could never be lordly in his viscera. He was named Trenchant, and the more genuine of the younger Lords Spiritual had taken to calling him “the Rubber Knife.”

  “Mr. Dusmano,” this mock Lord now said nervously (the false Lord had been speaking for some time, but to no particular moment), “you are a great man and I am abashed to challenge you. Yet I am obliged to question you, even though all the others here accept you without question. Is it possible that you are in the middle of making a great mistake?”

  “No. I make many mistakes, young camel, but always on the side of temperance,” Dusmano said. “I made the mistake of acquiring only one million dollars today instead of two million. I made the mistake of rearranging only twenty young minds instead of forty. I made the mistake of raping only one young man and one young woman today instead of half a dozen of each. There are days when the energy runs low, and the fullest pleasure seems rather in doing less than doing more. Yes, this is a mistake, but it isn’t a great one. I have killed only one man today. That’s a mistake, for the day is already half done. I can’t count messengers as killed persons, for with them the killing is only a technicality.”

  “You will have killed nine by tonight if you aren’t stopped,” the mock Lord said. “Don’t you know that in hounding down the Consul and others, you are knocking out some of the props that support the world? What if the human world itself collapses?”

  “Oh, if this and other worlds collapse, perhaps we will enter the postworld era. Worlds are arbitrary divisions anyhow, and we could surely find some better grouping or arrangement of things. I question whether worlds are authentic categories or if they matter.”

  “Well, I am going to try to stop you in your destructions, Mr. Dusmano.”

  “How stop me?” Dusmano sneered. “Why would anyone want to stop me? I am an elemental force. As well want to stop the wind or the sun. But I will not be able to count all these kills as mine. We athletes of the kinkier pleasures do not count our assists as full kills. I do intend to have another full kill very quickly though.”

  “Evenhand is such a good man,” the young mock Lord said. “Even the Forum Lords, the Pressmen Lords, the Tinsel Lords, the Media Lords cannot find one bad thing against him. And they have been searching for several hours.”

  “Oh, young colt, we’ve found any number of things against him. Even for a Consul to be unmasked is for him to come under an evil omen,” Dusmano said. “And should a man be counted good who is under a bad omen? In this, the postanarchic age, the arkhē or rule of any Consul or official is bad, and it is made bearable only by a mask. But when the mask falls, then we must deem him—”

  “But it was you and yours who tore the mask off him! And after you have torn it off, you convict him of not having the mask on.”

  “Certainly, young goat. A lack of agility in a Consul or anybody is bad; and it shows a lack of agility to be trapped in something so simple. There are other things. On the day that Evenhand became Consul three years ago, there was an earthquake in the Western Sierras.”

  “The average is more than two such quakes a day in the Westerns.”

  “The average, yes. But there are days of no quakes at all. Would not fair fate have given a good man an unquaking day for his first one in office? And there are worms in the apples on the Oceanic Coast. Would this happen if a good man were in office?”

  “These things are not guilts, Mr. Dusmano! They are not reasons; they are not failings!” the mock Lord cried vehemently. “They are gnats; they are mere gnats! They are the little gnats of the age of unreason.”

  “Would there be gnats in the time of a good Consul?” Dusmano asked, making that let-us-be-reasonable gesture with his flowing hands. “We must avoid, young calf, not only the reality of evil but also the merest whisper of it. You have heard of the Lords of the Gnats? Gnats, mock Lord, are the whispers of evil.”

  “But I’ve heard that you yourself are a member of the Lords of the Gnats.”

  “So I am. But I’m no whisper of evil. I’m a shouting of evil. Don’t you know that all worlds and all words have been turned upside-down?”

  “But how do you justify such madness, Mr. Dusmano? How do you justify this detailed straining at gnats, you and your sort, when you consider the great and ungainly camels that you have swallowed whole and passed through you and out again?” Trenchant the mock Lord was challenging. “Yes, you pass them through complete with hair and hump and hoofs, and never a difficulty at all.”

  “Cleansing for the tract, camels.” Dusmano smiled. “Very.”

  “Here, sir, are the Lords Pressmen, the Lords Forum, the Lords Articum, the Lords Tinsel, yes, and the Gnat Lords. Here are all the Lords Spiritual and Lords Media who have declared permanent revolution against the people and their delegates!” the spy, the mock Lord named Trenchant, was calling out angrily. “I do not believe that such people as you should be called Lords Spiritual at all.”

  “Have a care, young hogget,” Pilgrim warned. “You have tripped the alarm with your anticultic and antielectronic reasoning and vehemence. Now the young Lords gather like buzzards.”

  And some of the younger Lords Spiritual were gathering ominously against the mock Lord, Trenchant; against the excited spy. Trenchant was not a good spy. By his raising his voice and passion in the club of his enemies he forfeited the right to be considered competent in even this temporary craft.

  “There was a man who served as Consul, without thanks and without pay, a totally good man,” Trenchant, the mock Lord, was arguing blindly in a thick and heavy voice. “And this good man will be torn apart limb from limb if the temper of this day holds the way that you have planned it. Why, great man, why?”

  “The people will develop a taste for the blood of totally good Consuls,” Dusmano said. “We encourage them in ‘freedom of taste.’ And you do not?”

  “Your machinations call to heaven for vengeance!” the mock Lord shrieked.

  “They call. But who will answer?” Pilgrim Dusmano laughed.

  “Mr. Dusmano, you are not the true Peter Pilgrim of myth!” the incompetent spy stormed. “You are another and falser Pilgrim. And your whole cult is false.”

  This struck Pilgrim. If he was not the Peter Pilgrim of myth, then who was he? He knew that in reason he could not be that Peter Pilgrim. But he knew that they lived in the postreason era. In clear and simple unreason he would still be Peter Pilgrim, that authentic person of himself. Was he not himself a Media Lord and an Eidolon Lord? Or was he himself a mere eidolon made by drunken Lords for their amusement?

  Several hard-eyed young Media Lords came and seized the mock Lord. They half blew out his life candle with their first assault. They left one eye dangling on the mock Lord, a throat torn open, and the man bloodily unmanned. They’d have killed him in an instant. But—

  Pilgrim Dusmano intervened.

  “My kill,” Pilgrim said sternly. The disregard of precedence and the lack of ritual had offended him. The young Lords fell back, properly abashed.

  “How do you want to do it, sir?” they asked. They deferred to Pilgrim now, as a cult figure. “With knife, mace, or cleaver, sir?”

  “With my hands,” Pilgrim said. And Pilgrim was powerful with his hands. Never mind that a man code-named Mut had hand
led him like a child that morning. After this day, Mut would handle no other man like a child, ever. But Pilgrim handled the dangle-eyed spy, Trenchant, that false Lord Spiritual, as though he were a segmented worm. A fool should never be allowed to live; and this sniveler had been a fool to play a double game as Lord Spiritual.

  Pilgrim tore loose the tendons and broke the bones of the man. Strong pleasure flowed in from the strong, killing hands. Pilgrim broke the body open as though it were a bloody box. He quickly had the heart and the great omentum out and in his hands. He had the flickering life in his fingers, and he extinguished it with his terrible grip. Swift, sure pleasure, vital and mortal, that! The beauty of unshaping a corpus and raveling the life and intricacy clear out of it! Quick joy, and quick final glutting on that joy. And Pilgrim was finished with his kill.

  Others of the Lords then broke the body down further, and they passed pieces of it to many interested organizations that had representatives there. Then several of the young Lords gathered up what was left of the false Lord. They took the remaining pieces of him back to the kitchen and hung them on butchers’ hooks.

  Pilgrim, almost surfeited with such pleasure, went out to smoke and to drink interprandial rum on the veranda. There was surfeit of other things. There is always a certain ennui about the last day of one’s life, after it has been decided that it will be the last day. And Pilgrim was waiting for the interruption that he knew would come.

  Noah Zontik, who was both a Lord Temporal and a Lord Spiritual, who wore both the pin of the Golden Shovel and the small Pilgrim Staff of the Pilgrim Dusmano Cult, came and joined Pilgrim there. And Pilgrim quickly and quietly affixed an insignia to his own mantle when he heard Zontik approach. It was the Iris Umbrella of Zontik himself. It was the sign that Pilgrim was under the protection and advocacy of Noah Zontik as a client of his.

  “You have been behaving reprehensibly today, Pilgrim,” Noah said sternly. “And it is my business, since I hold contract to guard and protect you. Moreover, you are my friend from the very heart. I worry for you more than for any other client or friend I have. In addition to this, I share a madness with many others: I belong to the Pilgrim Dusmano Cult. Oh why, why? Why have I traded my reason for such a trivial madness? You are utterly wrong about almost everything, Pilgrim, and yet I find myself giving surety for you, even to God. I don’t understand myself, and you are like to lose your life this night, Pilgrim, for your sinfulness.”