Aurelia, Page 3

  “Yes, we’ll confound him then. We’ll confound him,” Aurelia agreed.

  Then the ‘with-it’ people were upon them.

  “The horns, the horns! Can we blow the horns?” the people of the multi-media ‘with-it’ group whooped as they arrived with that hectic slow-speed that befuddled persons sometimes believe is speed indeed.

  “No, you may not. I’m sorry,” Aurelia said. “The ship will kill anybody who tampers with the horns.” Aurelia didn’t know whether this was true or not. She had intended to fix it that way, but she was not sure whether she had.

  “It’s worth it,” one of those ‘with-its’ said. “I’m half there already, and I won’t even know it when I go the rest of the way.” This person then began to make the horns of Aurelia’s ship holler and roar and trumpet. The ship did kill him then, but the person still continued to play the discordant horns. The person had become an instant ghost, a new ghost of a very slow and lazy instant. And, in truth, for him, the lines between the life and death states had already been eroded. But he did add strikingly original elements to the discords of the seven horns.

  “Come to my luxury cabin at once,” the tycoon ordered as he arrived with part of his menage to the place were Aurelia was holding a sort of hillside court. “These peanut-pushers will not be able to make you a substantial offer. But I can offer you an open-minded agreement in a new series of growth enterprises.”

  “I will not come to your cabin at once,” Aurelia spoke stubbornly, feeling a little mistrust, though the tycoon was obviously the only intelligent person there. She didn’t want to be taken too fast. She hadn’t found her bearings on this world yet, nor even found out which world it was.

  But the sound-box shape of the particular 6A45D language that the people spoke in this place had communicated itself to Aurelia now, and she was speaking and understanding much better. Nevertheless, she still used illusion to communicate, both as to the words she comprehended without really hearing and as to those that she made understandable to the people without really speaking them.

  “Aurelia, girl, have you ever done any rodeo announcing,” one of those horse-herders asked her as he cantered up. “We’re always supposed to be on the lookout for celebrities we might talk into it, and I bet you’d be a natural. You’re wholesome and horsey. And you being from off-earth, we can bill you as the Shining Angel who has had experience with those great rodeos in the sky. Being an angel would make you an added attraction.”

  “But I’m not an angel really,” Aurelia explained. “I misunderstood the word at first. They’re a different species entirely. They’re bodiless, and, ah, they’re a little bit tedious too. No, I haven’t done any rodeo announcing. I don’t know quite what it is, but I am not turning it down. Let me consider it for a couple of days. I want to do as many different things as I can while I’m here.”

  “The other one, the dark-star one who landed the same time you did, do you think that he’s ever done any rodeo announcing? We could bill him as a devil who has wrangled the hottest horses in hell. If we had both of you at the same time, we’d have a double added attraction.”

  “No, I don’t know for sure who he is, but I’m pretty sure he isn’t a devil,” Aurelia said, “and I’m pretty sure that he hasn’t done any rodeo announcing. But I cannot give a firm commitment at this moment. Wait a couple of days.”

  The two horse-herders were rodeo wranglers and hazers, former performers and announcers who were now overtaken by the beginnings of age, and they were travelling with cars and horse-trailers from last night’s rodeo to tonight’s. And they had stopped in this vicinity to allow their horses to loosen their legs in this mountain meadow in the cool night. They were more pleasant representatives of this world than some that Aurelia had made.

  “Horse-wranglers,” Aurelia said, “you look straight, so tell me something straight. What world is this? Is this Sad-Dog planet?”

  “Sis, with a line of talk like that, you’d be good, good,” they said in admiration. “We just got to get you for a rodeo announcer.”

  “I have a contract here,” said one of the females of the ‘with-it’ people, “for the licensing and manufacture and marketing of Aurelia dolls and designs and marionettes and animated cartoons, and for more than a hundred different Aurelia devices and premiums and tie-ins. If you will sign this contract here, we will all cover ourselves with immense wealth and prestige.”

  “But this isn’t a contract that you have in your hand,” Aurelia explained to the ‘with-it’ female who seemed to be in a perpetual fuzzy state. “This is a large pandanus leaf that you have here. And the thing that you have given me to write on it with is not a pen or a stylus. It is a skewer or shish for spearing things and turning them over a fire to roast them.”

  “Oh, I thought that this was a contract and a pen for you to sign it with,” the fuzzy-brained ‘with-it’ person said. “If I can find a real contract and a real pen, will you sign it then?”

  “I don’t think so,” Aurelia said. “We will see, but I don’t think so.”

  “Can you hit high C?” another female of the ‘with-it’ people asked.

  Aurelia hit high C. She was really a very voicy girl—“and just alien-enough-looking to make a go of it,” one of the ‘with-it’ males said.

  “That’s too clear,” the female ‘with-it’ said. “Can you sing it muddier?”

  Aurelia sang it muddier. So liked to sing, and she would try to do it in the local way.

  “We may as well pull it in, Angel,” said one of the young men with the ‘Joe’s Tow Service’ truck there. “We won’t promise that it can be fixed, but if anybody can fix it then ‘Joe’s Repair Service’ can fix it. It isn’t the kind of space-ship that you see around here every day, so it won’t be safe to leave it here in the mountain meadow. It’ll be stripped by kids and vultures, and then you will never get away from here in it. Let us take it in and get it under cover. If we can’t fix it, we will tell you so, and you won’t owe us for anything except the estimate. And if we can’t fix it, we can probably give you top price for the hull. ‘Joe’s Salvage Service’ pays top price for every sort of hull.”

  “Go ahead and take it in,” Aurelia said, “and get them to work on it. I won’t want it today or tomorrow, but if things go wrong here I may want it pretty quick after that. Price is no object, not to me anyhow. That’s not my department.”

  “We’d better tie onto it and put a claim flag on it,” the tow-man said. “And we’ll radio for another and heavier truck to come and help us with the tow. I wonder what misguided genius designed this thing anyhow?”

  “You won’t need to radio for a heavier truck,” Aurelia said. “See this string that I tie onto it. Just lead it by this string and it will follow. Cluck your tongue at it if it holds back. Oh, I designed it. There’s a lot of things wrong with it, aren’t there?”

  “I believe that this is one of those worlds made up entirely of atypical sectors,” Aurelia lectured herself then. She tried to remember which and how many of the worlds of her sort were atypical worlds, but the information refused to come forward when she reached for it.

  “Eminent Aurelia,” one of the millennian sectarians said, “now that you are here, will you make all things new? If we start our big millennian service today, will you be our feature speaker and healer?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll try to,” Aurelia said. “I don’t seem to be arranging things very well. Where is that music coming from?”

  “That’s the River Boat on the Lake,” one of the tow-truck men said. “Actually, it is named the ‘River Boat Queen.’ If you’ve got the talent, they’ve got the games. And the stakes are high. You’re antagonist is already there, and he’s winning. You can see the black flag flying by the boat lights. That means that they’ve got a ringer there and he’s ringering them. The boat is really the only lively thing this time of night out in these mountains.”

  “We’ve got getter games and better stakes at my luxury cabin,” the
tycoon said. “Come along with me. These people are all amateurs. The big deals aren’t here in the middle of this horse pasture or mountain meadow. Come along, girl.”

  “No. I won’t go with you to your luxury cabin now,” Aurelia said. “Maybe later tonight or tomorrow I will.”

  “Who is he anyhow?” Aurelia asked a certain young man who had arrived. She was referring to the tycoon with the menage and the luxury cabin.

  “He is one of the Magi, the first one to appear, and he wants to contribute to your manifestation,” the young man said. “His gifts are genuine and his motives are pure, though they were not always so. He wants to manifest you and protect you at the same time. He really is a wise man from the east. He really did see your lightning some days before it happened, and he came here to wait, and he obtained a luxury cabin. He loves to give gifts and potlatches. He works fast. Wait a bit though, sis. There will be others.”

  “Others what?”

  “Other Magi. There are either three or six or nine or twelve of them. They will all be here for your epiphany. That will be quite soon. Don’t deal with any of them till you see the gifts of all of them. And now I wonder if you will go with Susan Pishcala here into the broadcasting van so she can examine you?”

  “Why should she examine me?” Aurelia asked, “I examine. I am not to be examined.”

  “She must examine you to see if you are indeed the Governess of the World, the manifestation that we have had advance reports on. The Governess, when she comes, is to have certain cabalistic marks on her by which she is to be known.”

  “Yes, that’s so,” said one of the Millennian Sectarian girls. “We want to see them too. It’s all down in our Holy writ. Even an angel must be put to the test.”

  “I am not an angel, and I will not be tested,” Aurelia said. “Ah, just what are these marks that I’m supposed to have, and how could you know about them?”

  “They are a series of birth-marks,” said a certain young man. His name was Jimmy Candor. “Ah, well, they are semi-cosmic, I suppose. And perhaps they are crude in their symbolism, as is all the mythology about the ‘Governess.’ There is also a series of Governess jokes that are pretty raunchy, and the Governess comic strip is conventionally vile. But you will not be able to escape either the test or the jokes or your comic-strip image either.”

  “No, no, the image is of someone else,” Aurelia said. “I have come here by random accident, and I could not be known here. Yes, I will escape the tests and the jokes and the image. I will refuse them.”

  “Then there will always be doubt whether you are the true ‘Governess of the World’ or an impostor,” Jimmy said. “We have a series of questions to ask you. Will you answer?”

  “No, I won’t,” Aurelia said. “I have one question to ask. And will you answer?”

  “Certainly,” Jimmy Candor said, and Susan Pishcala seemed to agree. “We answer all questions candidly, as all genuine persons do, as all impostors do not do.”

  “What world is this?” Aurelia asked.

  “It is a world where an impostor is going to find a hard go of it,” Susan Pishcala answered for both of them. Yes, and she answered for all genuine people. And the two of those news people turned away and left Aurelia and drove away in their news-van.

  “I hardly know what to say,” Aurelia mumbled to the world at large. “What if I am an impostor?”

  “Come with us then,” said a large young lady. “We are all impostors in our set. We are masked people. We are the floating world. Come float with us. Your Little Girl Lost look is very well done, you know. Come to the River Boat. There’s always good game going on there.”

  “I thought that was a lake and not a river,” Aurelia said.

  “The River Boat goes where it will, on Sea or Lake or Sewer. I like your other look too, Aurelia Angel, your double look, you know, your ‘Take me to your leader’ look with your own double take of it ‘Hell, I am your leader.’ It’s neat the way you do it.”

  “I like it too,” Aurelia said. “Please tell me something. Is this world Skokumchuck? Is it Bandicoot? Is it Hokey Planet? Is it Gaea? Is it Yellow Dog? Is it Horners’ Corner, or Hellpepper Planet? Which is it?”

  “Karl Talion is working on a continuing essay named ‘The Nine Thousand Names of the World,’ the big lady said. “He will love you for supplying him with such good names.”

  Aurelia was having trouble making ordered sense out of the surface of this world, and out of the surface-creatures of this world that she was supposed to govern. But somehow she went onto the River Boat with the big young lady.

  Then, a minimum of moments having gone by, they were (a table-full of them) playing cards on the River Boat. The card game they were playing was ‘brag,’ and a man named Blaise Genet had been winning the hand. But he was winning temporarily, difficultly, and with every sort of doubt. He sat next to Aurelia, and he once put his hand under her chin and turned her face to him. He looked into her eyes. He saw his own face and person, large and complete, and in more than full detail. He could see everyone else in the gambling salon in full detail also, and all the furnishings of the place. “You are a kaleidoscope, but you aren’t real,” he said.

  “We used to play ‘River Carnival.’ We used to pay ‘Masques.’ ” Aurelia said.

  “We are playing those games now,” the large girl named Helen told her.

  “Did you ever consider going into the looking-glass business, Aurelia,” that Blaise Genet said. “I never saw such fidelity of reflections.”

  Blaise had also seen in the pool of Aurelia’s eyes that he had to win this hand of cards. He was already beyond his limit, and his life was on the line. Karl Talion, the huge man who played with them and dominated the play, had set a dagger-knife on the table to remind Blaise and any others of them that their lives were on the line. “And you say that I’m not real,” Aurelia chided Blaise Genet.

  Blaise, who seemed to be having an identity crisis about both himself and the world, had a crawling apprehension that the River Boat might be a real world after all. He was trapped, trapped, and he would need to break out of the trap. (Aurelia understood this apprehension of Blaise better than she did his words. It was more elemental.)

  There was an expensive shabbiness about the whole thing, about the man Blaise himself, about Julio Cordovan, the man with a thousand faces, who was one of the party at the table, about Helen Staircase who was the largest living cheesecake doll in the world (she said that her name meant ‘strong cheese’ in German), about the tall and powerful Karl Talion who always seemed to be wearing a clean-shaven and pleasant mask. Only Aurelia did not seem expensive (she was priceless rather), or shabby (her simple shininess was not shabby). But there was even an expensive shabbiness about the cards they were playing with. What was it?

  Oh, the cards, they were not unique. They were arty and clever, but they were machine duplicated. Somewhere there were other packs of cards identical to them, a sordid thought. And somewhere there were other machine-duplicated persons identical to Blaise Genet and to all the others. Except Aurelia.

  There was one other man at the table, playing cards, and yet not playing with the others. This was the very old man, Michael Strogoff, who was blind and who played by himself with blank cards.

  There were ten thousand vivid details in that big gaming room, and nine thousand of them were machine duplicated. But how could Blaise see so many and such vivid details in the reflecting pools of Aùrelia’s eyes? He returned to look in them again and again. Some attention should be paid to those thousands of vivid details. And some attention should be paid to the suave, angry, big man Karl Talion who had several times banged the knife into the gaming table, and picked it up, and banged it down again.

  “If you are in too deep, Blaise,” he said heavily, “if you are in so deep that you cannot pay at the end of this hand, then I will open you up with my knife here and I will kill you. That is the end of you. I see now that you cannot win this hand. Even if you win everything on thi
s table, it still will not be enough for you to pay off at the end of this hand. So you must die. Make up your mind to die, Blaise boy, and make up your mind that you will not sniffle and carry on about it.”

  “I have one card still to draw,” Blaise said.

  “What is the matter with all of you?” Aurelia asked. “You don’t act quite like people.”

  “Oh, we’re spaced out,” Helen Staircase said. “We are irrational elements.”

  “But this is so childish,” Aurelia said. “We get spaced out one day in fourth grade class, and we plump all the pleasure out of it. And then we leave it behind us as the childish thing that it is.”

  “If I were governing a world,” Helen grinned, “I’d do something about it.”

  “There is no card that you can draw that will save your life or your soul,” big Karl Talion told Blaise Genet. “You did understand that you were betting both of them, did you not?”

  “There is one card I can draw that will save me,” Blaise insisted, “and it comes down that it is one of the three cards left. And it’s four quarts of your blood to be drained off if I draw right. You did understand that we bet four quarts of blood along with all else, didn’t you?”

  “I can bleed four quarts and still live,” Karl Talion said. “You can’t, Blaise. That much blood is the death of a boy, but not always of a man.”

  The jams one can get into playing ‘brag’ on a River Boat at night! But ‘brag’ is a game with a lot of death-banter in it. Sometimes the cards come up death, and sometimes they come up banter only.

  Blaise Genet drew and showed his last card. The huge Karl Talion grasped his knife from the gaming table and crashed it with terrifying force into the rib cage of Blaise. And Blaise groaned and fell back. It was then seen, however, that Talion had reversed the knife with it, and it was not the blade but the hilt of it that had been hammered with such force against Blaise.