Orbit 7 - [Anthology] Read online

  Perhaps, just at the last moment, I will call out to him and he will discover me here.

  How will it be, finding a not very attractive, one-foot high, completely naked woman in the lost and found department? Not so young anymore, either. (But he is not so young, and quite completely bald.) How will it be finding a woman who was, to say the least, peculiar . . . different, even when she was of normal height?

  Will he blush, seeing me? Would he take me home with him secretly, hidden in the satchel? Keep me, perhaps, in a comfortable corner of his room with a little box for my bed and a cushion for my mattress? Of course sex will be impossible between us. . . .

  But this is ludicrous.

  No. No. I will not call out. I will not ... I will never reveal myself. If I have to perish at the bottom of a garbage heap, I will not ever call out.

  <>

  * * * *

  Old Foot Forgot

  by R. A. Lafferty

  “Dookh-Doctor, it is a sphairikos patient,” Lay Sister Moira P.T. de C. cried happily. “It is a genuine spherical alien patient. You’ve never had one before, not in good faith. I believe it is what you need to distract you from the – ah – happy news about yourself. It is good for a Dookh-Doctor to have a different patient sometimes.”

  “Thank you, lay sister. Let it, him, her, fourth case, fifth case or whatever come in. No, I’ve never had a sphairikos in good faith. I doubt if this one is, but I will enjoy the encounter.”

  The sphairikos rolled or pushed itself in. It was a big one, either a blubbery kid or a full-grown one. It rolled itself along by extruding and withdrawing pseudopods. And it came to rest grinning, a large translucent rubbery ball of fleeting colors.

  “Hello, Dookh-Doctor,” it said pleasantly. “First I wish to extend my own sympathy and that of my friends who do not know how to speak to you for the happy news about yourself. And secondly I have an illness of which you may cure me.”

  “But the sphairikoi are never ill,” Dookh-Doctor Drague said dutifully.

  How did he know that the round creature was grinning at him? By the colors, of course; by the fleeting colors of it. They were grinning colors.

  “My illness is not of the body but of the head,” said the sphairikos.

  “But the sphairikoi have no heads, my friend.”

  “Then it is of another place and another name, Dookh-Doctor. There is a thing in me suffering. I come to you as Dookh-Doctor. I have an illness in my Dookh.”

  “That is unlikely in a sphairikos. You are all perfectly balanced, each a cosmos unto yourself. And you have a central solution that solves everything. What is your name?”

  “Krug Sixteen, which is to say that I am the sixteenth son of Krug; the sixteenth fifth case son, of course. Dookh-Doc, the pain is not in me entirely; it is in an old forgotten part of me.”

  “But, you sphairikoi have no parts, Krug Sixteen. You are total and indiscriminate entities. How would you have parts?”

  “It is one of my pseudopods, extruded and then withdrawn in much less than a second long ago when I was a little boy. It protests, it cries, it wants to come back. It has always bothered me, but now it bothers me intolerably. It screams and moans constantly now.”

  “Do not the same ones ever come back?”

  “No. Never. Never exactly the same ones. Will exactly the same water ever run past one point in a brook? No. We push them out and we draw them back. And we push them out again, millions of times. But the same one can never come back. There is no identity. But this one cries to come back, and now it becomes more urgent. Dookh-Doc, how can it be? There is not one same molecule in it as when I was a boy. There is nothing of that pseudopod that is left; but parts of it have come out as parts of other pseudopods, and now there can be no parts left. There is nothing remaining of that foot; it has all been absorbed a million times. But it cries out! And I have compassion on it.”

  “Krug Sixteen, it may possibly be a physical or mechanical difficulty, a pseudopod imperfectly withdrawn, a sort of rupture whose effects you interpret wrongly. In that case it would be better if you went to your own doctors, or doctor: I understand that there is one.”

  “That old fogey cannot help me, Dookh-Doc. And our pseudopods are always perfectly withdrawn. We are covered with the twinkling salve; it is one-third of our bulk. And if we need more of it we can make more of it ourselves; or we can beg some of it from a class four who make it prodigiously. It is the solvent for everything. It eases every possible wound; it makes us round as balls; you should use it yourself, Dookh-Doc. But there is one small foot in me, dissolved long ago, that protests and protests. Oh, the shrieking! The horrible dreams!”

  “But the sphairikoi do not sleep and do not dream.”

  “Right enough, Dookh-Doc. But there’s an old dead foot of mine that sure does dream loud and woolly.”

  The sphairikos was not grinning now. He rolled about softly in apprehension. How did the Dookh-Doctor know that it was apprehension? By the fleeting colors. They were apprehension colors now.

  “Krug Sixteen, I will have to study your case,” said the Dookh-Doctor. “I will see if there are any references to it in the literature, though I don’t believe that there are. I will seek for analogy. I will probe every possibility. Can you come back at the same hour tomorrow?”

  “I will come back, Dookh-Doc,” Krug Sixteen sighed. “I hate to feel that small vanished thing crying and trembling.”

  It rolled or pushed itself out of the clinic by extruding and then withdrawing pseudopods. The little pushers came out of the goopy surface of the sphairikos and then were withdrawn into it completely. A raindrop falling in a pond makes a much more lasting mark than does the disappearing pseudopod of a sphairikos.

  But long ago, in his boyhood, one of the pseudopods of Krug Sixteen had not disappeared completely in every respect.

  * * * *

  “There are several of the jokers waiting,” Lay Sister Moira P.T. de C. announced a little later, “and perhaps some valid patients among them. It’s hard to tell.”

  “Not another sphairikos?” the Dookh-Doctor asked in sudden anxiety.

  “Of course not. The one this morning is the only sphairikos who has ever come. How could there be anything wrong with him? There is never anything wrong with a sphairikos. No, these are all of the other species. Just a regular morning bunch.”

  So, except for the visitation of the sphairikos, it was a regular morning at the clinic. There were about a dozen waiting, of the several species; and at least half of them would be jokers. It was always so.

  * * * *

  There was a lean and giddy subula. One cannot tell the age or sex of them. But there was a tittering. In all human or inhuman expression, whether of sound, color, radioray or osmerhetor, the titter suggests itself. It is just around the corner, it is just outside, it is subliminal, but it is there somewhere.

  “It is that my teeth hurt so terrible,” the subula shrilled so high that the Dookh-Doctor had to go on instruments to hear it. “They are tromping pain. They are agony. I think I will cut my head off. Have you a head-off cutter Dookh-Doctor?”

  “Let me see your teeth,” Dookh-Doctor Drague asked with the beginnings of irritation.

  “There is one tooth jump up and down with spike boot,” the subula shrilled. “There is one jag like poisoned needle. There is one cuts like coarse rough saw. There is one burns like little hot fires.”

  “Let me see your teeth,” the Dookh-Doctor growled evenly.

  “There is one drills holes and sets little blasting powder in them,” the subula shrilled still more highly. “Then he sets them off. Ow! Good night!”

  “Let me see your teeth!!”

  “Peeef!” the subula shrilled. The teeth cascaded out, half a bushel of them, ten thousand of them, all over the floor of the clinic.

  “Peeef,” the subula screeched again, and ran out of the clinic.

  Tittering? (But he should have remembered that the subula have no teeth.) Titter
ing? It was the laughing of demented horses. It was the jackhammer braying of the dolcus, it was the hysterical giggling of the ophis (they were a half bushel of shells of the little stink conches and they were already beginning to rot), it was the clown laughter of the arktos (the clinic would never be habitable again; never mind, he would burn it down and build another one tonight).

  The jokers, the jokers, they did have their fun with him, and perhaps it did them some good.

  “I have this trouble with me,” said a young dolcus, “but it makes me so nervous to tell it. Oh, it do make me nervous to tell it to the Dookh-Doc.”

  “Do not be nervous,” said the Dookh-Doctor, fearing the worst. “Tell me your trouble in whatever way you can. I am here to serve every creature that is in any trouble or pain whatsoever. Tell it.”

  “Oh but it make me so nervous. I perish. I shrivel. I will have accident I am so nervous.”

  “Tell me your trouble, my friend. I am here to help.”

  “Whoops, whoops, I already have accident! I tell you I am nervous.”

  The dolcus urinated largely on the clinic floor. Then it ran out laughing.

  The laughing, the shrilling, the braying, the shrill giggling that seemed to scrape the flesh from his bones. (He should have remembered that the dolcus do not urinate; everything comes from them hard and solid.) The hooting, the laughing! It was a bag of green water from the kolmula swamp. Even the aliens gagged at it, and their laughter was of a pungent green sort.

  Oh well, there were several of the patients with real, though small, ailments, and there were more jokers. There was the arktos who—(Wait, wait, that particular jokerie cannot be told with human persons present; even the subula and the ophis blushed lavender at the rawness of it. A thing like that can only be told to arktos themselves.) And there was another dolcus who—

  Jokers, jokers, it was a typical morning at the clinic.

  One does whatever one can for the oneness that is greater than self. In the case of Dookh-Doctor Drague it meant considerable sacrifice. One who works with the strange species here must give up all hope of material reward or material sophistication in his surroundings. But the Dookh-Doctor was a dedicated man.

  Oh, the Dookh-Doctor lived pleasantly and with a sort of artful simplicity and dynamic involvement in the small articles of life. He had an excited devotion and balanced intensity for corporate life.

  He lived in small houses of giolach-weed, woven with careful double-rappel. He lived in each one for seven days only, and then burned it and scattered the ashes, taking always one bitter glob of them on his tongue for reminder of the fleetingness of temporal things and the wonderfulness of the returning. To live in one house for more than seven days is to become dull and habitual; but the giolach-weed will not burn well till it has been cut and plaited for seven days, so the houses set their own terms. One half day to build, seven days to inhabit, one half day to burn ritually and scatter, one renewal night under the speir-sky.

  The Dookh-Doctor ate raibe, or he ate innuin or ull or piorra when they were in season. And for the nine days of each year when none of these were in season, he ate nothing at all.

  His clothing he made himself of colg. His paper was of the pailme plant. His printer used buaf ink and shaved slinn stone. Everything that he needed he made for himself from things found wild in the hedgerows. He took nothing from the cultivated land or from the alien peoples. He was a poor and dedicated servant.

  Now he stacked some of the needful things from the clinic, and Lay Sister Moira P.T. de C. took others of them to her own giolach house to keep till the next day. Then the Dookh-Doctor ritually set his clinic on fire, and a few moments later his house. This was all symbol of the great nostos, the returning. He recited the great rhapsodies, and other persons of the human kind came by and recited with him.

  “That no least fiber of giolach die,” he recited, “that all enter immediately the more glorious and undivided life. That the ashes are the doorway, and every ash is holy. That all become a part of the oneness that is greater than self.

  “That no splinter of the giuis floorboards die, that no glob of the chinking clay die, that no mite or louse in the plaiting die. That all become a part of the oneness that is greater than self.”

  He burned, he scattered, he recited, he took one glob of bitter ash on his tongue. He experienced vicariously the great synthesis. He ate holy innuin and holy ull. And when it was finished, both of the house and the clinic, when it had come on night and he was houseless, he slept that renewal night under the speir-sky.

  * * * *

  And in the morning he began to build again, the clinic first, and then the house.

  “It is the last of either that I shall ever build,” he said. The happy news about himself was that he was a dying man and that he would be allowed to take the short way out. So he built most carefully with the Last Building Rites. He chinked both the buildings with special uir clay that would give a special bitterness to the ashes at the time of final burning.

  Krug Sixteen rolled along while the Dookh-Doctor still built his final clinic, and the sphairikos helped him in the building while they consulted on the case of the screaming foot. Krug Sixteen could weave and plait and rappel amazingly with his pseudopods; he could bring out a dozen of them, a hundred, thick or thin, whatever was needed, and all of a wonderful dexterity. That globe could weave.

  “Does the forgotten foot still suffer, Krug Sixteen?” Dookh-Doctor Drague asked it.

  “It suffers, it’s hysterical, it’s in absolute terror. I don’t know where it is; it does not know; and how I know about it at all is a mystery. Have you found any way to help me, to help it?”

  “No. I am sorry, but I have not.”

  “There is nothing in the literature on this subject?”

  “No. Nothing that I can identify as such.”

  “And you have not found analogy to it?”

  “Yes, Krug Sixteen, ah—in a way Ihave discovered analogy. But it does not help you. Or me.”

  “That is too bad, Dookh-Doc. Well, I will live with it; and the little foot will finally die with it. Do I guess that your case is somewhat the same as mine?”

  “No. My case is more similar to that of your lost foot than to you.”

  “Well, I will do what I can for myself, and for it. It’s back to the old remedy then. But I am already covered deep with the twinkling salve.”

  “So am I, Krug Sixteen, in a like way.”

  “I was ashamed of my affliction before and did not mention it. Now, however, since I have spoken of it to you, I have spoken of it to others also. There is some slight help, I find. I should have shot off my big bazoo before.”

  “The sphairikoi have no bazoos.”

  “Folk-joke, Dookh-Doc. There is a special form of the twinkling salve. My own is insufficient, so I will try the other.”

  “A special form of it, Krug Sixteen? I am interested in this. My own salve seems to have lost its effect.”

  “There is a girlfriend person, Dookh-Doc, or a boyfriend person. How shall I say it? It is a case four person to my case five. This person, though promiscuous, is expert. And this person exudes the special stuff in abundance.”

  “Not quite my pot of ointment I’m afraid, Krug Sixteen; but it may be the answer for you. It is special? And it dissolves everything, including objections?”

  “It is the most special of all the twinkling salves, Dookh-Doc, and it solves and dissolves everything. I believe it will reach my forgotten foot, wherever it is, and send it into kind and everlasting slumber. It will know that it is itself that slumbers, and that will be bearable.”

  “If I were not-ah-going out of business, Krug Sixteen, I’d get a bit of it and try to analyze it. What is the name of this special case four person?”

  “Torchy Twelve is its name.”

  “Yes. I have heard of her.”

  * * * *

  Everybody now knew that it was the last week in the life of the Dookh-Doctor, and everyone
tried to make his happiness still more happy. The morning jokers outdid themselves, especially the arktos. After all, he was dying of an arktos disease, one never fatal to the arktos themselves. They did have some merry and outrageous times around the clinic, and the Dookh-Doctor got the sneaky feeling that he would rather live than die.

  He hadn’t, it was plain to see, the right attitude. So Lay Priest Migma P.T. de C. tried to inculcate the right attitude in him.

  “It is the great synthesis you go to, Dookh-Doctor,” he said. “It is the happy oneness that is greater than self.”