Annals of Klepsis by R A Lafferty

Author:R A Lafferty [Lafferty, R A]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781473213593
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2016-01-28T21:00:00+00:00

EIGHTH CANTO

A Commission in Lunacy

“And now, Duke Tyrone Historian, you have not given me any indication at all of the insight an historian should have,” Brannagan’s Ghost was speaking to me. “Tell us now, who is this man who has just appeared?”

“Oh, Januarius O’Grogan,” I said in as offhand a manner as I could manage. This man had to loom big in the Klepsis story, and from such scraps of Klepsis history as I had been able to pick up that evening and night, only O’Grogan had a stature comparable to Brannagan.

“You are right,” Brannagan’s Ghost said. “You may not be entirely hopeless.”

“Christopher Begorra Brannagan,” the O’Grogan Apparition chided. “Is it for the business of that same old Commission in Lunacy that you are calling up us dead people again? The trouble, Chris, is that I am not usually bothered by lunacy unless I’m with you. It’s catching, you know. It’s the most dangerous and most mortal of all the epidemic diseases. Well, there are inoculations against it, and I believe that I’ve availed myself of them.”

“Yes, it is for the same Commission, Januarius. It must be settled now. But I have never been convinced that lunacy is all that bad. I often have good words to say about it. I do not remember at the moment whether I ever committed to paper my minor masterwork, The Pleasures of Lunacy, but if I haven’t done so, I should.”

“I told you at the time, Chris, that you should allow all the proceedings of the Commission to be on tape, but you would not allow it to be done. Tapes do not forget nor falsely remember. Ghosts do. And ghosts do not like to be bothered by amateur evokers, amateurs even after two hundred years of practice. Oh, some of the ghosts, those who abide in a worse place than this, are grateful for a little surcease from their torments while they testify. Others, like myself, who abide in the better place, may resent having to come back to this dingy world. I’d resent it myself except that I enjoy being with you, for the love that I bear you. You certainly don’t intend to have a complete reconstruction of the Commission proceedings, do you now, Chris?”

“No, Januarius, I was always a skipper, and I’ll skip and choose here. But perhaps I’ll balance that out by having some parts of it repeated again and again.”

Januarius O’Grogan, dead about a hundred fifty years, appeared to be about thirty years old. I had not yet learned to make the slight mental jog to bring the years of Klepsis and of Gaea-Earth into accord, so my estimates of apparent ages of persons was very rough. I believe that he appeared to be about the age he was when the Commission in Lunacy was convoked. He was of the age that he had been when the things being recreated took place. So would they all be. And now half a dozen other persons began to take on an appearance and shape and substance there in the walk-in tomb.

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