Laurence Janifer - The Neander Ifrit

In fact, Daisy says, she has examined all the seven-hundred-odd cave paintings available for remote examination, and she claims that they are a form of language, a neat oxymoron: a written prehistory.

There are (Daisy says) five possible positions for each leg, including “invisible or not drawn,” six possible positions for the head, and so on, and combinations allow for a great many “basic roots” for words or even, in a way, sentences. Most of the possible positions do turn up in what are labeled later on, as a couple of positions began to be used as “shorthand” for longer but very common expressions.

When all this is to be made public I do not know, but Daisy and LUNY do seem to be on to something here. There is a real prehistory, apparently, that can be read—and some of it, I am very much afraid, doesn’t look like anything in the least plausible. Von Daniken, an entire endless Philip Glass score lull of New Age vapors, and eleven Luddites a-leaping, all put together, look a great deal more plausible than some of this stuff does.

One story in particular...

It seems there was this cave man.

As a matter of fact, it does. He was a Neanderthal fellow, all aspirations and no forrid if you remember the limerick, and one afternoon by the shore of whatever sea it was that he was near, he stubbed one of his hairy toes on a Thing.

(I can’t tell you what sea he was near, or where the hell this all happened; the cave-painters and Daisy and I don’t share anything resembling a coordinate system. Neanderthals are named for the Neander Valley, but they might turn up almost anywhere even remotely plausible, and I’d rather like it to be the Arabian Gulf, and what the hell, it was the Arabian Gulf.)

The thing was a large “extended circle”—apparently some sort of vaguely cylindrical form—made of something harder than seashell. It didn’t break when the cave fellow tried to wrestle with it, and it didn’t bend either.

He seems to have spent some time and some energy on it, either because he thought it would make a good dish, weapon or hat, or because curiosity was alive in the caves, which seems a lot more plausible. (Oh, let’s give this fellow a name. In the records, he doesn’t have one, so we’re entirely free to christen him as we please. How does Dave sound?)

Standing or squatting there by the shore of the Arabian Gulf with this Thing in his hands, he finally tried the right set of motions, and there was a hell of a cloud of smoke, and an even larger and more dangerous-looking Thing appeared.

It was, say the records, nine feet tall (roughly “twice me” for a Neanderthal), comparatively hairless, and possessed of that sort of menacing mien which doesn’t bother to boast or crow or threaten because it knows it is better than you are.

Remember that Dave had a language, at least “on paper” or “on cave,” and therefore, almost certainly, existing as sound too. Language seems to be innate among human beings anyhow, and when we go to the animal experiments... but let’s not. Let’s just remember that he had a language—which enabled this nine-foot-tall Thing to communicate with him.

It said it was an Ifrit. It said it was older than humanity (“humanity” at the time being Neanderthal, but let’s not quibble; if the Ifrit didn’t, and was there at the time, what standing have we?), and had been cursed into humanity’s service.

This did not make a lot of sense to Dave. None of it, from “older” to “cursed.” “Humanity’s service” made a little sense, maybe—the Thing was offering to become his slave.

It was an exceptionally tall and powerful-looking Thing, and as a slave it would be beyond price, so to speak. Dave was, of course, a little suspicious, AKA just plain scared; in his experience big powerful-looking Things, human or otherwise, did not rush up to you with heartfelt offers to serve you; nor is it any different today (“I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you”).

But after a little wrangling, things began to become clearer. A great Mage of some sort (and you can translate “Mage” as anything from “Shaman” to “Ancestor Ghost”) had laid a curse—a set of orders unpleasant to the recipient that could not be disobeyed. These orders involved fulfilling three demands made by any human being who got him out of his container.

You might at this point go and look up “Ifrit” somewhere. A dictionary might do for that, and a dictionary of mythology certainly will. I’ll wait.

OK? Stan, I want to tell you as clearly as I can that I am not responsible for this; I am describing translations received of cave paintings by a computer. Things cannot possibly be more scientific.

So this genie offered Dave three wishes.

Dave, once he got the idea, did not hesitate very long. The first wish he made, the records say, was for a fresh haunch of meat, big enough to feed Dave and his family for a long time (your guess is as good as mine, but it had to be small enough for Dave to lug from the shore back to wherever nearby this particular cave man was living, so “three or four days” looks about right when we remember that there were at least two others in Dave’s family—wife and son—and possibly more). No trouble, says the genie, just wait a second or two, and he snaps his fingers (or whatever it is he does; the translation is anything but specific on this point, and I am not an Ifrit expert—and try saying “Ifrit expert” three times with your mind full of Scotch) and there is the haunch of meat.

Dave gives a cry of joy and starts off with it, and is called back by the genie, who wants to know about the other two wishes. He asked Dave, it seems, if so small a thing as a single set of good meals is all he wants.

It doesn’t seem so small a thing to Dave, of course, but genies don’t miss meals and have no idea how important the one you didn’t get comes to be. All the same, Dave thinks things over.

He would like, he says, to be invulnerable to other cave people and large animals. Is there something that would ward off hurt no matter how big and strong the threatening Thing might be?

(This may in fact have been Dave’s high reach for sheer cleverness; could he get the genie to make him invulnerable to the genie?)

Sure and I’ll do that, says the genie, and r’ars back and makes some passes in the air (or whatever it is he does), and there is an occult flash of light and the genie says: “There you are, now. Diseases, hunger and the thousand natural shocks will still do you in, singly or in battalions, but your specifications have been carefully observed; manufacturer is not responsible for defects due to sheer inadvertence.”

And it’s the genie who suggests they test the new spell, though Dave is a bit reluctant; maybe this has all been a setup so that the genie could kill him and laugh at his stupidity. But at last he is willing that the genie swing at him, and the genie’s fist bounces off and the genie makes a most convincing owoo sound and Dave feels invulnerable, and deserving of it, too, for did he not expose himself to awful pain from the genie’s fist just to test it?

And the genie stops Dave as he is again about to run off, and asks about the third wish. And Dave wonders about the biggest things in his world. And he wonders, and he wonders.

And finally he makes his wish.

He is a family man, after all. And among the Neanderthals he has known there are leaders, and leaders-of-leaders, and once, a long dim time ago, he has heard of a leader-of-leaders-of-leaders.

His son might become such a one. Dave knows that he himself does not have the Right Stuff; he fears things, and one can see from the way leaders act, after all, that they fear nothing whatever. But his son is still sort of new, and changes might be made.