Short Fiction - R. A. Lafferty (i can read book club .txt) 📗

similar symptoms. Yet contagion there was impossible, such extreme precautions had been taken for the protection of the worms.

But Georgina did not respond to treatment. And Hickle’s Disease was definitely spreading. Sharper young doctors fresh from the greatest medical schools were called in. They knew all that was to be known of all the new diseases. But they did not know this.

Georgina felt queer now and odd things began to happen to her. Like that very morning on her way to work, that old lady had stared at her.

“Glory be,” said the old lady, “a miracle.” And she crossed herself.

And Georgina heard other comments.

“I don’t believe it. It isn’t possible,” a man said.

“Well, it sure does look like it,” said a woman.

So Georgina took off at noon to visit a psychiatrist and tell him that she imagined that people were staring at her and talking about her, and what should she do. It made her uneasy, she said.

“That’s not what is making you uneasy,” said the psychiatrist. Then he went with her to the laboratory to have a look at some of the other women suffering from this Hickle’s Disease that he had been hearing about. After that, he called the young doctors at the laboratory aside for a consultation.

“I don’t know by what authority you mean to instruct us,” said one. “You haven’t been upgraded for thirty years.”

“I know it.”

“You are completely out of touch with the latest techniques.”

“I know it.”

“You have been described⁠—accurately I believe⁠—as an old fogy.”

“I know that too.”

“Then what could you tell us about a new appearance like Hickle’s Disease?”

“Only that it is not really new. And not, properly speaking, a disease.”

That is why, even today, there are superstitious persons who keep McGonigal’s Worms in small mesh cages in the belief that they insure fertility. It is rank nonsense and rose only because it was in the M.W. laboratory that the return of pregnancy was first noticed and was named for one of the women working there. It is a belief that dates back to that ancient generation, which very nearly became the last generation.

The official explanation, is that the Earth and its solar system, for a period of thirty-five years, was in an area of mysterious cosmic radiation. And afterward it drifted out of that area.

But there are many who still believe in the influence of McGonigal’s Worm.

The Polite People of Pudibundia

“Well, you will soon see for yourself, Marlow. Yes, I know there are peculiar stories about the place. There are about all places. The young pilots who have been there tell some amusing tales about it.”

“Yes. They say the people there are very polite.”

“That is the honorable ancestor of all understatements. One of the pilots, Conrad, told us that the inhabitants must always carry seven types of eyeglasses with them. None of the Puds, you see, may ever gaze directly on another. That would be the height of impoliteness. They wear amber goggles when they go about their world at large, and these they wear when they meet a stranger. But, once they are introduced to him, then they must thereafter look on him through blue glasses. But at a blood relative they gaze through red, and at an in-law through yellow. There are equally interesting colors for other situations.”

“I would like to talk to Conrad. Not that I doubt his reports. It is the things he did not report that interest me.”

“I thought you knew he had died. Thrombosis, though he was sound enough when first certified.”

“But if they are really people, then it should be possible to understand them.”

“But they are not really people. They are metamorphics. They become people only out of politeness.”

“Detail that a little.”

“Oh, they’re biped and of a size of us. They have a chameleon-like skin that can take on any texture they please, and they possess extreme plasticity of features.”

“You mean they can take on the appearance of people at will?”

“So Bently reported.”

“I hadn’t heard of him.”

“Another of the young pilots. According to Bently, not only do the Puds take on a human appearance, they take on the appearance of the human they encounter. Out of politeness, of course.”

“Quite a tribute, though it seems extreme. Could I talk to Bently?”

“Also dead. A promising young man. But he reported some of the most amusing aspects of all: the circumlocutions that the Puds use in speaking our language. Not only is the Second Person eschewed out of politeness, but in a way all the other Persons also. One of them could not call you by your name, Marlow. He would have to say: ‘One hears of one who hears of one of the noble name of Marlow. One hears of one even now in his presence.’ ”

“Yes, that is quite a polite way of saying it. But it would seem that with all their circumlocutions they would be inefficient.”

“Yet they are quite efficient. They do things so well that it is almost imperative that we learn from them. Yet for all our contacts, for all their extreme politeness coupled with their seeming openness, we have been able to learn almost nothing. We cannot learn the secret of the amazing productivity of their fields. According to Sharper, another of the young pilots, they suggest (though so circumspectly that it seems hardly a suggestion, certainly not a criticism) that if we were more polite to our own plants, the plants would be more productive for us; and if we gave the plants the ultimate of politeness, they would give us the ultimate of production.”

“Could I talk to Sharper, or is he also⁠—”

“No, he is not dead. He was quite well till the last several days. Now, however, he is ailing, but I believe it will be possible for you to talk to him before you leave, if he does not worsen.”

“It would still seem difficult for the Puds to get anything done. Wouldn’t a superior be too polite to give a reprimand to an inferior?”

“Probably.