Рафаэль Лафферти - The Best of R. A. Lafferty

“The living dolls seem a part of something much deeper,” Ceran said. “There’s a whole complex of things to be un-raveled. The key may be the statement of the Proavitoi that they do not die.”

“I think they die pretty young, Ceran. All those out and about are young, and those I have met who do not leave their houses are only middling old.”

“Then where are their cemeteries?”

“Likely they cremate the old folks when they die.”

“Where are the crematories?”

“They might just toss the ashes out or vaporize the entire remains. Probably they have no reverence for ancestors.”

“Other evidence shows their entire culture to be based on an exaggerated reverence for ancestors.”

“You find out, Ceran. You’re Special Aspects Man.”

Ceran talked to Nokoma, his Proavitoi counterpart as translator. Both were expert, and they could meet each halfway in talk. Nokoma was likely feminine. There was a certain softness about both the sexes of the Proavitoi, but the men of the Expedition believed that they had them straight now.

“Do you mind if I ask some straight questions?” Ceran greeted her today.

“Sure is not. How else I learn the talk well but by talking?”

“Some of the Proavitoi say that they do not die, Nokoma. Is this true?”

“How is not be true? If they die, they not be here to say they do not die. Oh, I joke, I joke. No, we do not die. It is a foolish alien custom which we see no reason to imitate. On Proavitus, only the low creatures die.”

“None of you does?”

“Why, no. Why should one want to be an exception in this?”

“But what do you do when you get very old?”

“We do less and less then. We come to a deficiency of energy. Is it not the same with you?”

“Of course. But where do you go when you become exceedingly old?”

“Nowhere. We stay at home then. Travel is for the young and those of the active years.”

“Let’s try it from the other end,” Ceran said. “Where are your father and mother, Nokoma?”

“Out and about. They aren’t really old.”

“And your grandfathers and grandmothers?”

“A few of them still get out. The older ones stay home.”

“Let’s try it this way. How many grandmothers do you have, Nokoma?”

“I think I have nine hundred grandmothers in my house. Oh, I know that isn’t many, but we are the young branch of a family. Some of our clan have very great numbers of ancestors in their houses.”

“And all these ancestors are alive?”

“What else? Who would keep things not alive? How would such be ancestors?”

Ceran began to hop around in his excitement.

“Could I see them?” he twittered.

“It might not be wise for you to see the older of them,” Nokoma cautioned. “It could be an unsettling thing for strangers, and we guard it. A few tens of them you can see, of course.”

Then it came to Ceran that he might be onto what he had looked for all his life. He went into a panic of expectation.

“Nokoma, it would be finding the key!” he fluted. “If none of you has ever died, then your entire race would still be alive!”

“Sure. Is like you count fruit. You take none away, you still have them all.”

“But if the first of them are still alive, then they might know their origin! They would know how it began! Do they? Do you?”

“Oh, not I. I am too young for the Ritual.”

“But who knows? Doesn’t someone know?”

“Oh, yes, all the old ones know how it began.”

“How old? How many generations back from you till they know?”

“Ten, no more. When I have ten generations of children, then I will also go to the Ritual.”

“The Ritual. What is it?”

“Once a year, the old people go to the very old people. They wake them up and ask them how it all began. The very old people tell them the beginning. It is a high time. Oh, how they hottle and laugh! Then the very old people go back to sleep for another year. So it is passed down to the generations. That is the Ritual.”

The Proavitoi were not humanoid. Still less were they “monkey-faces,” though that name was now set in the explorers’ lingo. They were upright and robed, and swathed, and were assumed to be two-legged under their garments. Though, as Manbreaker said, “They might go on wheels, for all we know.”

They had remarkable flowing hands that might be called everywhere-digited. They could handle tools, or employ their hands as if they were the most intricate tools.

George Blood was of the opinion that the Proavitoi were always masked, and that the men of the Expedition had never seen their faces. He said that those apparent faces were ritual masks, and that no part of the Proavitoi had ever been seen by the men except for those remarkable hands, which perhaps were their real faces.

The men reacted with cruel hilarity when Ceran tried to explain to them just what a great discovery he was verging on.

“Little Ceran is still on the how-did-it-begin jag,” Manbreaker jeered. “Ceran, will you never give off asking which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

“I will have that answer very soon,” Ceran sang. “I have the unique opportunity. When I find how the Proavitoi began, I may have the clue to how everything began. All of the Proavitoi are still alive, the very first generation of them.”

“It passes belief that you can be so simpleminded,” Manbreaker moaned. “They say that one has finally mellowed when he can suffer fools gracefully. By God, I hope I never come to that.”

But two days later, it was Manbreaker who sought out Ceran Swicegood on nearly the same subject. Manbreaker had been doing a little thinking and discovering of his own.

“You are Special Aspects Man, Ceran,” he said, “and you have been running off after the wrong aspect.”

“What is that?”

“It don’t make a damn how it began. What is important is that it may not have to end.”

“It is the beginning that I intend to discover,” said Ceran.

“You fool, can’t you understand anything? What do the Proavitoi possess so uniquely that we don’t know whether they have it by science or by fool luck?”

“Ah, their chemistry, I suppose.”

“Sure. Organic chemistry has come of age here. The Proavitoi have every kind of nexus and inhibitor and stimulant. They can grow and shrink and telescope and prolong what they will. These creatures seem stupid to me; it is as if they had these things by instinct. But they have them, that is what is important. With these things, we can become the patent medicine kings of the universes, for the Proavitoi do not travel or make many outside contacts. These things can do anything or undo anything. I suspect that the Proavitoi can shrink cells, and I suspect that they can do something else.”

“No, they couldn’t shrink cells. It is you who talk nonsense now, Manbreaker.”

“Never mind. Their things already make nonsense of conventional chemistry. With the pharmacopoeia that one could pick up here, a man need never die. That’s the stick horse you’ve been riding, isn’t it? But you’ve been riding it backward with your head to the tail. The Proavitoi say that they never die.”

“They seem pretty sure that they don’t. If they did, they would be the first to know it, as Nokoma says.”

“What? Have these creatures humor?”

“Some.”

“But, Ceran, you don’t understand how big this is.”

“I’m the only one who understands it so far. It means that if the Proavitoi have always been immortal, as they maintain, then the oldest of them are still alive. From them I may be able to learn how their species—and perhaps every species—began.”

Manbreaker went into his dying buffalo act then. He tore his hair and nearly pulled out his ears by the roots. He stomped and pawed and went off bull-bellowing: “It don’t make a damn how it began, you fool! It might not have to end!” so loud that the hills echoed back: