Рафаэль Лафферти - The Best of R. A. Lafferty

“ En daktulos, at the toes of, that’s what the original form of the expression was,” Oread told him.

“Be quiet, little girl,” the instructor muttered darkly. “—when mankind stood at the foothills of the alphabetical concept and looked up at the mountain, it was hard then.”

“Yes, the first alphabets were all made out of hammered iron,” Oread told the world, “and they were quite hard.”

“The same was the case with simple arithmetic,” said the instructor, disregarding Oread with a deep sigh. “It is easy as we look back on it in its ordered simplicity. But when it was only a crying need and not yet a real concept, then it was hard, very hard.”

“Sure, it was made out of iron too,” Oread whispered to Selim. “Why does he get so mad when I tell him about things being made out of iron?”

“It’s just a weakness of the man, Oread,” Selim whispered. “We’ll have to accept it.”

“And so we are probably at an end,” the instructor was ending his class for the day. “If we cannot come up with a new dimension, with a new symbolism, with a new thought and a new concept (having no idea at all what they should be) then we might as well end this class forever. We might as well, as a matter of likely fact, end the world forever. And on that somber note I leave you till tomorrow, if there should be a tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Zhelezovitch,” Oread said. “I’ll make it for you tonight.”

Just after closing time that evening, Oread Funnyfingers went by City Museum to see Selim. Selim Elia worked as night watchman there to help pay his way through the University. There really wasn’t much to do on the job. He sat at a big administrator’s desk and studied all night. Studying all night every night is how he got to be a genius. Oread had brought some sandwiches with her.

“Peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches made out of iron,” Selim joked.

“No, they’re not of iron,” Oread said solemnly. “One would need iron teeth to eat an iron sandwich.”

“Surely a funnyfingers could manage iron teeth.”

“Oh, our third set comes in iron, but for me that should be many years yet.”

“Oread, I want to marry you.”

“Everyone calls you a cradle-robber.”

“I know they do. And yet we’re almost exactly the same age.”

“There’s so many people here,” Oread said. “Terra Cotta People, Marble People, Sandstone People, Basalt People, Raffia People, Wooden People, Wax People. I will have to find out from my uncles which ones are real. Some of them aren’t, you know; some of them never lived at all.”

“We have one of your friends or uncles here, Oread, in wax. Over here.”

“I know where. You have all three of my uncles here in wax,” Oread said. “You might not recognize them from the forms of their names on the plaques, though.

“I don’t think they’ll come out though, Selim, since they’re made out of wax instead of iron. Effigies should always be made out of iron.”

“What do their names mean, Oread?”

“No, they won’t come out. I’d have to be a bee-brain to evoke anything out of wax.”

“Oread, I love you very much.”

“No, they won’t come out at all. I’ll have them come over here themselves some night and make iron effigies of themselves. Then you can get rid of those silly wax ones.”

“Little iron-ears, I said that I loved you very much.”

“Oh, I heard you. You won’t be alarmed when they come out some night to make the effigies? They’re kind of funny-looking.”

“So are you, Oread. No, I won’t be alarmed. Why should a Syrian be alarmed over fabulous people? We’re fabulous people ourselves. And if they’re your uncles they cannot be dangerous.”

“Sure they can. I am. You said yourself that I’d set the flaming ducks after you again. I go home now, Selim, to get my homework made, and also to make that concept-symbol system for Mr. Zhelezovitch the instructor. It’s important, isn’t it?”

“I’ll go with you, Oread. Yes, it’s important to Zhelly and to the class and the course. It’s true that he might as well end the class forever if he doesn’t find it. But it isn’t true that we might as well end the world if we don’t find it. It’s not quite that important.”

“Who will watch the museum if you leave? I want very much to make this correctly and understandably for Mr. Zhelezovitch. I am a Funnyfinger, and making things for people is the whole business and being of the funnyfingers.”

“Oh, tell Kelmis to watch the place for me. Will it take long for them and you to make the concept?”

“Sure, he’ll watch it for you. Even a Waxman-Kelmis will be faithful in that. Oh no, they never take very long to make anything for anybody any more.” (Time had slipped by, though not much of it; Selim had a sporty car that he drove like a flaming rocket; and it wasn’t very far to the northwest side of town. They were out at the Funnyfingers’ place now, and into the back, back rooms that turned into tunnels.) “They never take very long to make things anymore,” Oread was continuing, “not since that time, you know, when God got a little bit testy with them on Sinai when there was a little delay. They first made the tablets out of iron entirely, and they wouldn’t do. They had to make them out of slate-stone with the iron letters inset in it, and the iron had to be that alloy known as command iron. Since then they are all pretty prompt with everyone, and they follow instructions exactly. You never know who it really is who places an order.

“Kelmis has the original all-iron set. I’ll get him to show them to you some time.”

“Where do you get your stories, Oread?”

“I tell my mother that I make them out of iron.”

“And where do you really get them?”

“I make them out of iron.”

Selim talked easily with the three uncles while they wrought and hammered the white-hot parts that Oread was to assemble into a symbol concept.

“How is it that you work inside a little hill in Oklahoma?” he asked them. “Shouldn’t you be in the forests or hills of Phrygian Ida? How did you come to leave the Old Country?”