Damon Knight - Orbit 15

The technology of Amor Town in the disputed year was anachronistic and atrocious. There were the steamboats which could not have been if that were a proper sequence year. But the steamboats were there and, especially in the mornings, were always blocking dry and rubbled streets. It is believed that they steamed out on the morning dew and were stranded when the dew dispersed. The steamboats, old sternwheelers or sidewheelers, had names like Hierophant’s Show Boat, April Queen, Joanie’s Show Boat (the show girls on that one were named Joanie, Janie, Jeanie, Junie, Johnny, and Ginny), The Big Casino, Fruity-Tootie’s Show Boat, and Five Card Charley’s River Rag-Tag. It seemed that these steamboats properly belonged to some other place and time (improperly, all places and times belonged to Amor Town in the disputed year).

And then there were the automobiles (if you will permit our coining an illegitimate word from one Greek and one Latin root). These were machines: they ran on Wheels and were powered by smoke. They were also called the Clown Cars, and they ran around on the green grass of Love Plaza. They ran erratically, in circles and in loops. They exploded so as to shake the whole town. They buckled in the middle and left droppings, sometimes a pile of clowns who untangled themselves and ran in pursuit of their vehicles, sometimes a pile of camel excrement steaming and fragrant, sometimes a roaring lion who soon burst into flames, showing himself to be only a paper lion. Sometimes the clown cars reared up on their hind wheels and honked terrifying horns.

But, besides the steamboats and the clown cars, there wasn’t much real technology in Amor Town.

(Here a tambour makes drumming sounds.)

I love with every orifice,

I love each dampish channel red,

I love all flesh alive and dead,

I love the bottomless abyss.

—Joan Hedge-Green (Papess at Amor)

(Here the drumhead of the tambour splits.)

(Here a ram’s horn sounds.)

Nor guessed the situation bit,

Nor found the Lord so dull a lover,

Nor used the love-as-catchword kit

A multitude of sins to cover.

—Archipelago

(Here the ram’s horn cracks.)

(Here a percussion triangle rings “ting, ting.”)

The eternal triangle.

—Anon., 1907

(Here the broken triangle sounds “tunk, tunk.”)

(Here a postboy’s horn blows three notes.)

Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end.

—Chesterton

(Here the postboy’s horn blows three more notes, but far away.)

Love was the theme of Amor Town, and the triangle was the symbol and shape of that contingent society; the triangle, and its solid form, the tetrahedron. The sound of it was triangular, the groupings were triangular, and its prismatic light was triangular. Joan Hedge-Green herself formed an immediate love triangle with her two lovers, the Clown-Devil and the Maid of Wands. (“Glory, love, and love some more for Babylonian Jane” as Rudyard said, but not quite.)

Every person in Amor Town was a ravening lover. (“So I move mountains and I love them not, then I am nothing,” as Paul said, but not exactly.) Each lover had its own Ares and its own Aphrodite, and each was by turns Ares and Aphrodite to others. This was the triangle repeated over and over again in the love plane, the interlocking loving that is not accountable ever. (“Blessed be that love that shatters all its offspring on the stones,” as the Psalmist said, but not precisely.) But the plane does not go up far enough, and it sure does not go down far enough.

But, in addition, each lover had its masked lover or Hermes. This additional masked lover placed each lover in three love planes instead of one. This worked to construct the love pyramid, or love in depth. It was a nesting, close-fitting form, and it multiplied endlessly. It was the most simple crystal possible, and it propagated itself forever. It filled, or would fill, or might fill all the worlds and all the universes. (“And, for your love of love, lead apes in hell,” so Will the Bard said, or almost said.) (“I love the jupe, I love the jape, I love the Tartarusian ape,” so Joan of Amor said.)

This was the inward-turning construct that had no limits, and it had very few needs beyond itself. There was food in the Fleshpots of Egypt district of the town; there was other food in the Rivers of Babylon district; and there was very strong food in the Ovens of Moloch purlieu.

There were all the turn-on and plug-in devices in the Ships of Tarshish neighborhood. There were all attractive falsities in that barrio named the Groves of Arcady. There was music, and when the music failed, there was noise that failed not forever. Municipal arrangements were excellent. Law had been dissolved in love. (“Love, and let the law go hang,” as Austen said, or very nearly said.) The garbage collectors had been dismissed as being unneeded (if you love it, it isn’t garbage). The police had been disbanded. The firemen had been dismissed (if it burns, it is love, and should not be quenched). There were no magistrates; there were no officials at all; there was no thought for the morrow. There was the year that could not end, for it was self-contained and inward-turned. There was love and love alone, and it went on and on and on.

(“It’s the longest year I ever did see!” Valery Mok, observing from another place and time, swore. “There has to be an end to it.” Valery drew the Shining Man card. She was not doing badly, but she was disgusted.)

The thing wrong with perfection is not that it repeats itself, but that it stands still in its first instance and freezes time. The thing wrong with love is that the false will so often supersede the true. The thing wrong with that town was that it was introverted and backwards: there are those who will live in it forever, but there are also those who will break out of it. The thing wrong with that year was that it began to come apart before the first week of June.

(“What, what, why are they climbing over the walls to get out of that town?” Charles Cogsworth asked in amazement. “Malcontents,” Director Gregory Smirnov said. “There are always some. Continue with it, Epikt.” “Might I not go on automatic?” Epikt asked from the great department of him that was under their feet. “And I could leave a couple of my extensions to monitor the thing.” Not those two extensions, though: the Johnny Greeneyes extension was quickly over the hill and far away. The Ancient Scribe extension became so inconspicuous that he was invisible.)

And then there was a sort of explanation that Epikt dredged up from the depths of his data banks: “Satan, in his person of Lucifer, was the first of the Flaming Ducks, and he is the father of them to this day.”

The author of that is unknown except to Epikt. But the flaming ducks continued to rain down on the Institute Building and on the ridge above and beyond. You got tired of those ducks, but these were poverty days with the Institute and its members. The members were eating a hard-times lunch of bloody giant bread and flamed duck.

“I hear there will be a new giant moving into the neighborhood,” Gregory said.

“Oh, that’s good,” Valery beamed. “It made me feel pretty uneasy to be all out of giants.”

“I just don’t know what causes a lustrum year,” Glasser said crankily.

“I believe they happen because people are ordinarily so good that provision must be made in some place apart for even the shadow of evil that is in them,” Valery said happily. “So that toy evil must be vented in a toy year. That’s all there is to it.”