Lafferty, RA - SS - Among The Hairy Earthmen.pdf

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This is an allegory that contains a good deal of subtlety. It is
an entertaining and fanciful story by a writer who, although a
relative newcomer to science fiction, has developed a unique
understanding of his craft. Incidentally, Mr. Lafferty prefers
the title "A Pride of Children" for this story.
AMONG THE HAIRY EARTHMEN
R. A. Lafferty
There is one period of our World History that has aspects so
different from anything that went before and after that we can
only gaze back on those several hundred years and ask:
"Was that ourselves who behaved so?"
Well, no, as a matter of fact, it wasn't. It was beings of
another sort who visited us briefly and who acted so glorious-
ly and abominably.
This is the way it was:
The Children had a Long Afternoon free. They could go to
any of a dozen wonderful places, but they were already in
one.
Seven of themfull to the craw of wonderful places
decided to go to Eretz.
"Children are attracted to the oddest and most shambling
things," said the Mothers. "Why should they want to go to
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Eretz?"
"Let them go," said the Fathers. "Let them seebefore they
be goneone of the few simple peoples left. We ourselves
have become a contrived and compromised people. Let the
Children be children for half a day."
Eretz was the Planet of the Offense, and therefore it was to
be (perhaps it recently had been) the Planet of the Restitution
also. But in no other way was it distinguished. The Children
had received the tradition of Eretz as children receive all
traditionslike lightning.
Hobble, Michael Goodgrind, Ralpha, Lonnie, Laurie, Bea
and Joan they called themselves as they came down on Eretz
for these were their idea of Eretzi names. But they could
have as many names as they wished in their games.
An anomalous intrusion of great heat and force! The rocks
ran like water where they came down, and there was formed
a scarp-pebble enclave.
It was all shanty country and shanty towns on Eretz
clumsy hills, badly done plains and piedmonts, ragged fields,
uncleansed rivers, whole weedpatches of provincesnot at all
like Home. And the Towns! Firenze, Praha, Venezia, Londra,
Colonia, Gant, Romawhy, they were nothing but towns
made out of stone and wood! And these were the greatest of
the towns of Eretz, not the meanest.
The Children exploded into action. Like children of the less
transcendent races running wild on an ocean beach for an
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afternoon, they ran wild over continents. They scattered. And
they took whatever forms first came into their minds.
Hobbledark and smoldering like crippled Vulcan.
Michael Goodgrinda broken-nosed bull of a man. How
they all howled when he invented that first form!
Ralphalike young Mercury.
And Lonniea tail giant with a golden beard.
Laurie was fire, Bea was light, Joan was moon-darkness.
But in these, or in any other forms they took, you'd always
know that they were cousins or brethren.
. Lonnie went pure Gothic. He had come onto it at the tail
end of the thing and he fell in love with it.
"I am the Emperor!" he told the people like giant thunder.
He pushed the Emperor Wenceslas off the throne and became
Emperor.
"I am the true son of Charles, and you had thought me
dead," he told the people. "I am Sigismund." Sigismund was
really dead, but Lonnie became Sigismund and reigned, taking
the wife and all the castles of Wenceslas. He grabbed off
gangling old forts and mountain-rooks and raised howling
Eretzi armies to make war. He made new castles. He loved
the tall sweeping things and raised them to a new height. Have
you never wondered that the last of those castlesin the late
afternoon of the Gothicwere the tallest and oddest?
One day the deposed Wenceslas came back, and he was
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possessed of a new power.
"Now we will see who is the real Emperor!" the new
Wenceslas cried like a rising storm.
They clashed their two forces and broke down each other's
bridges and towns and stole the high ladies from each other's
strongholds. They wrestled like boys. But they wrestled with a
continent.
Lonnie (who was Sigismund) learned that the Wenceslas he
battled was Michael Goodgrind wearing a contrived Emperor
body. So they fought harder.
There came a new man out of an old royal line.
"I am Jobst," the new man cried. "I will show you two
princelings who is the real Emperor!"
He fought the two of them with overwhelming verve. He
raised fast-striking Eretzi armies, and used tricks that only a
young Mercury would know. He was Ralpha, entering the
game as the third Emperor. But the two combined against
him and broke him at Constance.
They smashed Germany and France and Italy like a clutch
of eggs. Never had there been such spirited conflict. The
Eretzi were amazed by it all, but they were swept into it; it
was the Eretzi who made up the armies.
Even today the Eretzi or Earthers haven't the details of it
right in their histories. When the King of Aragon, for an
example, mixed into it, they treated him as a separate person.
They did not know that Michael Goodgrind was often the
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King of Aragon, just as Lonnie was often the Duke of
Flanders. But, played for itself, the Emperor game would be
quite a limited one. Too limited for the children.
The girls played their own roles Laurie claimed to be
thirteen different queens. She was consort of all three Emper-
ors in every one of their guises, and she also dabbled with the
Eretzi. She was the wanton of the group.
Bea liked the Grande Dame part and the Lady Bountiful
bit. She was very good on Great Renunciations. In her
different characters, she beat paths from thrones to nunneries
and back again; and she is now known as five different saints.
Every time you turn to the Common of the Mass of Holy
Women who are Neither Virgins nor Martyrs, you are likely
to meet her.
And Joan was the dreamer who may have enjoyed the
Afternoon more than any of them.
Laurie made up a melodramaLucrezia Borgia and the
Poison Ring. There is an advantage in doing these little
melodramas on Eretzi. You can have as many characters as
you wishthey come free. You can have them act as extrava-
gantly as you desirewho is there to object to it? Lucrezia
was very well done, as children's burlesques go, and the
bodies were strewn from Napoli to Vienne. The Eretzi play
with great eagerness any convincing part offered them, and
they go to their deaths quite willingly if the part calls for it.
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