When the flood had subsided (this was three days later), they all rose again, rolling the big rocks off their breasts; they cleared their eyes and ears and mouths of the preserving mud, and they resumed their ways and days.
For Velikof Vonk and for Willy McGilly it had been an enriching experience. They had found the link that was not really lost, leaving the other ninety-nine meanwhile. They had grown in cousinship and wisdom. They said they would return to the flats every year at mud-duck season and turtle-egg season. They went back to T-Town enlarged and happy.
There is, however, a gap in the Magi set, due to the foolish dying of Arpad Arkabaranan. It is not of scripture that a set of Magi should consist of only three. There have been sets of seven and nine and eleven. It is almost of scripture, though, that a set should not consist of less than three. In the Masulla Apocalypse it seems to be said that a set must contain at the least a Comet, a Commoner, and a Catfish. The meaning of this is pretty muddy, and it may be a mistranslation.
There is Dr. Velikof Vonk with his huge head, with his heavy orbital ridges, with the protruding near-muzzle on him that makes the chin unnecessary and impossible, with the great back-brain and the great good humor. He is (and you had already guessed it of him) an ABSM, a neo-Neanderthal, an unmissing link, one of that branch of the human race that lives closest to the clay and the catfish.
There is Willy McGilly who belongs (and he himself has come to the realization of this quite lately) to that race of mankind called the Comets. He is quite bright, and he has his periods. He himself is a short-orbit comet, but for all that he has been among the stars. Pieces fall off of him; he leaves a wake; but he’ll last a while yet.
One more is needed so that this set of Magi may be formed again. The other two aspects being already covered, the third member could well be a regularized person. It could be an older person of ability, an eminent. It could be a younger person of ability, a pre-eminent.
This person may be you. Put your hand to it if you have the surety about you, if you are not afraid of green snakes in the cup (they’ll fang the face off you if you’re afraid of them), or of clay-mud, or of comet dust, or of the rollicking world between.
OLD FOOT FORGOT
Introduction by John Scalzi
So, here’s a quick story of mine, relevant to this particular story.
My wife became pregnant when I was twenty-nine years old, and when she told me the news
a) I was ecstatic;
b) I suddenly begun waking up at three in the morning every night with the thought “dude, you’re totally gonna die one day” ricocheting through my brain.
You don’t need to be a genius of psychology to figure this one out. With the advent of our child, I was no longer the final generation on the family chain; a new link would be forged and I would be inevitably pulled into eternity’s maw. I would survive by passing along my genes, not by living forever, which, up to age twenty-nine apparently, was my unspoken assumption.
I got over it. My kid’s pretty great and I don’t mind shuffling off the mortal coil, because I helped make her, and also I wrote a few books people might still read after I’m gone. I’m doing OK.
But that jolt of awareness I got at twenty-nine pops up again every now and then, in a slightly different way. I don’t mind so much that I will die. But I’m sad that I will no longer exist. I enjoy existing. Existing is pretty neat. And while I’m pretty sure that when I no longer exist I won’t mind (I didn’t mind not existing before I was born, after all), right now I’m put out about it. I mean, I put a lot of effort into developing a sense of self, here, people. I don’t get to take it with me? That’s some bullshit right there, I tell you.
It’s selfish of me but I don’t mind that little bit of selfishness. It won’t help me in the end, but until then it gets me along.
As I said, this story is relevant to “Old Foot Forgot,” which is a story that makes me both happy and sad. Happy because clearly Lafferty got where I was coming from. Sad because, well. Oblivion awaits, doesn’t it?
Fine. Bring it on (eventually). Until then: hey, I’m here, man. And I like it.
Old Foot Forgot
“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 a 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 sixteen 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, extended 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.”