Old Foot Forgot

by R. A. Lafferty

..Dookh-Doctor, it is a sphairikos patient," Lay Sister Moira p.T. de c. cried happily. "It is a genuine spherical alien patient. you've n"r*i had one before, not in good faith. I believe it is what you need to distract you from the—ah—happ,rz news about yourself. It is good for a Dookh-Dojor to have a different patient sometimes."

"Thank you, luy sister. Let it, him, her, fourth case' fifth case or whatever come in. No, I've never had a sphairikos in good faith. I doubt if this one is, but I will enjoy the encounter."

Th" sphairikos rollecl or pushed itself in. It was a, big one, eitfrer a blubbery kid ir a full-grown one. It rolled itself along by extrudirrg and withdrawing pseudopods. And it came to rest grinnitrg, a large translucent rubbery ball of fleeting colors.

"Hello, Dookh-Doctor," it said pleasantlY. "First I wish to extend mY own qrmpathY and that of mY friends who do not know how to speak to you for the hnppy new-s about yourself, And secondly I have an illness of which you may cure me."

..But the sphairikoi are never i11," Dcokh-Doctor Drague said dutifully.

How did he know that the round creature was grinning at him? BY the colors, of course, bY the fleeting colors of it. TheY were grinning colors.

"My illness is not of the body but of the head," said the sphairikos"

"But the sphairikoi have no heads, ffiY friend."

..Then it is of another place and another name, Dookh-Doctor. There is a thing in me suffering. I come to you as Dookh-Doctor. I have an illness in my Dookh"'

..That is r:nlikely in a sphairikos. You are all perfectly

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balanced, each a cosmos unto yourself. And you have a central solution that solves everything. What is your name?"

"Krug Sixteen, which is to say that I am the sixteenth son of K*gt the sixteenth fifth case son, of course. Dookh-I)oc, the pain is not in me entirely; it is in an olcl forgotten part of me."

'Rut, you sphairikoi have no parts, Krug sixteen. you are total and indiscriminate entities. How would you have parts?"

"ft is one of my pseudopods, extruded and then withdrawn in much less than a second long ago when I was a little boy. It protests, it cries, it wants to come back. It has always bothered ffi€, but now it bothers me intolerabfl. rt screams and moans constantly now."

"Do not the same ones ever come tackp"

n'No. Never. Never exactly the same ones. Will exactly the same water ever run past one point in a brook? N;. We push them out and we draw them back. And we push them out again, millions of times. But the same one can never come back. There is no identity. But this one cries to come back, and now it becomes more urgent. Dookh-Doc, how can it be? There is not one same molecule in it as when f was a boy. There is nothing of that pseudopod that is left; but parts of it have .o** out as parts of olher pseudopods, and now there can be no pirtr left. There is nothing remainitg of that foot; it has all been absorbed a million times. But it cries outt And I have cornpassion on it."

"Krug Sixteen, it may possibly be a physical or mechanical difficulty, a pseudopod imperfectiy withdrawn, a sort of rupture whose effects you interpret wrongly. In that case it would be better if you went to your own doctors, or doctor: r understand that there is one."

"That old fogey cannot help ffi€, Dookh-Doc. And our pseudopods are always perfectly withdrawn. We are covered with the twinklittg salve; it is one-third of our bulk. And if we need more of it we can make more of

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it ourselves; or we can brg some of it from a class four who make it prodigiously. It is the solvent for everything. It eases every possible wound; it makes us round a, bils; you should use it yourself, Dookh-Doc. But there is one small foot in me, dissolved long &so, that protests and protests. Oh, the shrieking! Th9 horrible dreams!'o

..But the sphairikoi do not sleep and do not drearrr."

*Right errlrrgh, Dookh-Doc. But there's an old dead foot o] mine that sure does dream loud and woolly."

The sphairikos was not grinning now. He rolled about softly in ir How did the Dookh-Doctor lanow

that it was apprehension? By the fleeting colors. They were apprehension colors now'

..Krug Sixteen, I will have to study your case,'" said the Dookh-boctor. "I will see if there are any references to it in the literature, though I dont believe that there are" I u,ill seek for analogy. I will probe every possibility. Can you come back at the same hour tornorrow?"

"I will come back, Dookh-Doc," Krug sixteen sighed. *I hate to feel that small vanished thing crying and trembling.'"

It rolled or pushed itself out of the clinic by extruding and then withdrawing pseudopods. The little pushers came out of the goopt surface of the sphairikos and then were withdrawn into it completely. A raindrop falling in a pond makes a much more lasting mark than does the disappearing pseudopod of a sphairikos.

B;l long lgo, in hir boyhood, one of the pseudopods of Krug sixt"** had not disappeared" completely in every respect.

*There are several of the jokers waiting,' Lay Sister Moira p.T. de c. announced a little later, "and perhaps some valid patients among them. It's hard to tell,"

..Not *rrg;h*, sphairikoi?" the Dookh-I)octor asked in sudden anxiety.

"Of course not. The one this morning is the onlY sphairikos who has ever come. How could there be any-

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thing wrong with him? There is never anythirrg wrong with a sphairikos. No, these are all of the other species. ]ust a regular morning bunch."

So, except for the visitation of the sphairikos, it was a regular morning at the clinic. There were about a dozen waiting, of the several species; and at least half of them would be jokers. It was always so.

There was a lean and giddy subula. One cannot tell the age or sex of them. But there was a tittering. In all human or inhurnan expression, whether of ,orrrr[, color, radioray or osmerhetor, the titter suggests itself. It is just around the corner, it is just outsid", it is subliminal, but it is there somewhere.

"ft is that my teeth hurt so terrible," the subula shrilled so high that the Dookh-Doctor had to go on instruments to hear it. _-"They are tromping pain. They are agony. r think I will cut my head off. Have you a head-off cutter, Dookh-DoctorP"

'Let me see your teeth," Dookh-Doctor Drague asked 'ith the beginnings of irritation.

"There is one tooth i.tmp up and down with spike boot," the subula shrilled. *There is one jag like poisoned needle. There is one cuts like coarse rough ,u*. There is one burns Iike little hot fires."

'Let me see your teeth," the Dookh-Doctor growled el'enly"

"There is one drills holes and sets little blasting pow,Cer in them," the subula shrilled still more highly. "Then he sets them off. Ow! Good nightl"

"Let me see your teeth!!"

'?eeefl" the subula shrilled. The teeth cascaded out half a bushel of them, ten thousand of them, all over th; floor of the clinic.

"Peeefr" the subula screeched again, and ran out of the clinic.

TitteringP (But he should have remembered that the subula have no teeth.) Tittering? It was the laughing of

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dernented horses. It was the iackhammer lrraying of the dolcus, it was the hysterical giggling of the ophis (they were a half bushel of shells of the little stink conches and they were already beginning to rot), it was the clown laughter of the arktos (the clinic would never be habitable again; never mind, he rvould burn it down and build another one tonight).

The jokers, the jokers, they did have their fun with him, and perhaps it did them some good.

"r have this trouble with me," said a young dolcus, "but it makes me so nervous to tell it. Oh, it do make me nervous to tell it to the Dookh-Doc."

"Do not be nervous," said the Dookh-I)octor, fearing the worst. "Tell me your trouble in whatever way you can. I am here to serve every creature that is in any trouble or pain whatsoever. Tell it."

*Oh but it make me so nervous. I perish. I shrivel. I witl have accident I am so nervous."

"Tell me your trouble, my friend. I am here to help."

*Whoops, whoops, I already have accidentl I tell you I am neryotrs."

The dolcus urinated largely on the clinic floor. Then it ran out laughing.

The laughiilg, the shrillitrg, the braying, the shrill giggling that seemed to scrape the flesh from his bones. (H* should have remembered that the dolcus do not urinate; everything comes from thern hard and solid.) The hootirg, the laughing! It was a bug of green water from the kolmula swamp. Even the aliens gagged at it, and their Iaughter was of a pungent green sort.

Oh well, there were several of the patients with real, though small, ailments, and there were more iokers. There was the arktos who—(Wait, wait, that particular iokerie cannot be told with human persons present; even the subula and the ophis blushed lavender at the rawness of it. A thing like that can only be told to arktos themselves.) And there was another dolcus who—

Jokers, jokers, it was a typical rnorning at the clinic.

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One does whatever one can for the oneness that is greater than self. In the case of Dookh-Doctor Drague it meant considerable sacrifice. One who works with the strange species here must give up all hope of material reward or material sophistication in his r,r*o,rndings. But the Dookh-Doctor was a dedicated man.

Oh, the Dookh-Doctor Iived pleasantly and with a sort of artful simplicity and dynamic involvement in the small articles of life. He had an excited derrotion and balanced intensity for corporate life.

He lived in small houses of giolach-weed, woven with careful double-rappel. He lived in each one for seven days only, and then burned it and scattered the ashes, taking always one bitter glob of them on his tongue for reminder of the fleetingness of temporal things and the wonderfulness of the returning. To live in ot house for more than seven days is to becorne dull and habitual; but the giolach-weed rvill not burn well till it has been cut and plaited for seven days, so the houses set their own terms. One half d"y to build, seven days to inhabit, one half duy to burn ritually and scatter, one renewal night under the speir-sky.

The Dookh-I)octor ate raibe, or he ate innuin or ull or piorra when they were in season. And for the nine days of each year when none of these were in season, he ui" nothing at all.

His clothing he made himself of colg. His paper was of the pailme plant. His printer used buaf ink and shaved slinn stone. Everything that he needed he made for himself from things found wild in the hedgerows. He took nothing from the cultivated land or from the alien peoples. He was a poor and dedicated servant.

Now he stacked some of the needful things from the clinic, and Lay Sister Moira P.T. de C. took others of them to her own giolach house to keep till the next duy. Then the Dookh-Doctor ritually set his clinic on fire, and a few moments later his house. This was all symbol of the gfeat nostos, the returnirrg. He recited the great rhap-

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sodies, and other persons of the hurnan kind came by and recited with him.

"That no least fiber of giolach die," he recited, "that all enter irnmediately the more glorious and undivided Iife. That the ashes are the doorwsy, and every ash is holy. That all become a part of the oneness that is greater than self.

"That no splinter of the giuis floorboards die, that no glob of the chinking clay die, that no mite or louse in the plaiting die. That all becorne a part of the oneness that is greater than self."

He burned, he scattered, he recited, he took one glob of bitter ash on his tongue. IIe experienced vicariously the great synthesis. He ate holy innuin and holy ull. And when it was finished, both of the house and the clinic, when it had come on night and he r,vas houseless, he slept that renewal night under the speir-sky.

And in the morning he began to build again, the clinic first, and then the house.

"ft is the last of either that I shall ever build," he said. The hoppy news about himself was that he was a dying rnan and that he would be allowed to take the short walz out. So he built most carefully with the Last Building Rites. He chinked both the buildings with special uir clay that would give a special bitterness to the ashes at the time of final burning.

Krug Sixteen rolled along while the Dookh-Doctor still built his final clinic, and the sphairikos helped him in the building while they consulted on the case of the screaming foot" Krug Sixteen could weave and plait and rappel amazingly with his pseudopods; he could bring out a dozen of them, a hundred, thick or thin, whatever was needed, and all of a wonderful dexterity. That globe could weave.

"Does the forgotten foot still sr:ffer, Krug Sixteen?" Dookh-Doctor Drague asked it.

"ft suffers, it's hysterical, it's in absolute teror. I don't

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know where it is; it does not know; and how I know about it at all is a mystery. Have you found any way to help ffi€, to help itP"

"No. I arn sorry, but I have not."

"There is nothing in the literature on this subject?"

"I{o. it{othing that I can identify as such."

"And you have not found analogy to it?"

"Yes, K*g Sixteen, ah—in a way I harse fiscovered analogy. But it does not help you. Or me."

"That is too bad, Dookh-Doc. well, I will live with it; and the little foot will finally die with it. Do I guess that your case is somewhat the same as mine?"

"No. My case is more similar to that of your lost foot than to you."

"well, I will do what I can for myself, and for it. It's back to the old remedy then. But I am already covered deep with the twinkling salve."

"So am f, Krug Sixteen, in a like way."

"I was asharned of my affiiction before and did not mention it. I{ow, however, since r have spoken of it to you, I have spoken of it to others also. There is some slight help, I find. I should have shot off my big bazoa before."

"The sphairikoi have no bazoos."

'Folk-joke, Dookh-Doc. There is a special form of the twinkling salve. My own is insufficient, so I will try the other."

"A special form of it, Krug sixteenP I am interested in this. My own salve seems to have lost its effect."

"There is a girlfriend person, Dookh-Doc, or a boytriend person. How shall I say itP It is a case four person to my case five. This person, though promiscuous, is expert. And this person exudes the special stuff in abundance."

"No_t quite my pot of ointment I'm afraid, Krug Sixteen; but it may be the answer for you. It is speciati end it dissolves everythrg, includirrg objectionsP"

"ft is the most special of all the twinkling salves, Dookh-

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Doc, and it solves and dissolves everything. I believe it will reach my forgotten foot, wherever it is, and send it into kind and everlasting slumber, It will know that it is itself that slumbers, and that will be bearable."

*If I were not—ah—going out of business, Krug Sixteen, I'd get a bit of it and try to analyze it. trvhat is the name of this special case four person?"

"Torchy Twelve is its name.

"Yes. I have heard of her."

Everybody now knew that it was the last week in the tife of the Dookh-Doctor, and everyone tried to make his happiness still more huppy. The rnorning iokers outdid themselves, especiatly the arktos. After all, he was dying of an arktos disease, one never fatal to the arktos t6emselves. They did have some meny and outrageous times around the clinic, and the Dookh-Doctor got the sneaky feeling that he would rather live than die.

He hadn't, it was plain to see, the right attitude. So Lay Priest Migma P.T. de C. tried to inculcate the right attitude in him.

"It is the great synthesis you go to, Dookh-Doctof," he said. "It is the huppy oneness that is greater than self."

"Oh I know that, but You put it on a little too thick. I've been taught it from rny babyhood. I'm resigned to trf..

"Resigned to it? You should be ecstatic over it! The self must perish, of course, but it r,vill live on as an integral atom of the evolving oneness, iust as a drop lives on in the ocean."

"Aye, Mig*a, but the drop may hang onto the memory of the time when it was cloud, of the time when it was falling drop indeed, of the tirne when it was brook. It may say 'There's too darnned much salt in this ocean. I'm lost here.'"

"Oh, but the droP will want to be lost, Dookh-Doctor. The only purpose of existence is to cease to exist. And there cannot be too much of salt in the evolving oneness.

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There cannot be too mtrch of anything. AII must be one in it. Salt and sulphur must be one, undifferentiated. Offal and soul must become one. Blessed be oblivion in the oneness that collapses on itself."

"Stuff it, lay priest. I'm weary of it."

"Sfuff it, you sayP I don't understand your phrase, but I'm sure it's apt. Yes, yes, Dookh-Doctor, stuff it all in: animals, people, rocks, grass, worlds, and wasps. Stufi it all in. That all may be obliterated into the great—may I not coin a word even as the master coined themP—into the great stuffinesst"

*I'm afraid your word is all too apt."

"ft is the great quintessence, it is the h"ppy death of all individuality and memory, it is the synthesis of all living and dead things into the great amorphism. It is the—"

"rt is the old old salve, and it's lost its twinkle," the Dookh-Doctor said sadly. "Ffow goes the old quotationP When the salve becomes sticky, how then wilt you come unstuckP"

I'[o, the Dookh-Doctor did not have the right attitude, so it was necessary that many persons should harass him into it. Time was short. FIis death was due. And there was the general fear that the Dookh-Doctor might not be properly lost,

He surely came to his time of happiness in grumpy fashion.

The week was gone by. The last evening for him was come. The Dookh-Doctor ritually set his clinic on fire, and a few minutes later his house.

He burned, he scattered, he recited the special last-time recital. He ate holy innuin and holy ull. He took one glob of most bitter ash on his tongue: and he luy down to sleep his last night under the speir-sky.

He wasn't afraid to die.

*I will cross that bridge gladly, but I want there to be another side to that bridge," he talked to himself. "And if there is no other side of it, I want it to be me who

16l

knows that there is not. They say 'Pray that you be happily lost forever. Pray for blessed obliteration.' I will not pray that I be happily lost forever. I would rather burn it, a helt forever than suffer huppy obliteration! I'll burn if it be me that burn. I want me to be me. I will refuse forever to surrender myself."

It was a restless night for him. Well, perhaps he could die the easier if he were wearied and sleepless at dawn.

"Other men don't make such a fuss about it," he told himself (the self he refused to give up). "Other men are truly hapily in obliteration. Why am I suddenly- different? Otfuer men desire to be lost, lost, lost. How have I lost the faith of my childhood and my manhood? What is unique about me?"

There was no answer to that.

"Whatever is unique about ffi€, I refuse to give it up. I will howl and moan against that extinction for billions of centuries. Ah, I will go sly! I will devise a sign so I will know me if I meet me again."

About an hour before dawn the Lay Priest Migma, P.T. cle C., came to Dookh-I)octor Drague. The dolcus and the arktos had reported that the man was resting badly and was not properly disposed.

"I have an analogy that may ease your mind, Dookh-Doctor," the Lay Priest whispered softly, "—ease it into great easiness, salve it into great salving—"

"Begoile, fellow, your salve has lost its twinkle." "Consider that we have never lived, that we have only seerned to live. Consider that we do not die, but are only absorbed into great selfless self. Consider the odd sphairikoi of this world—"

"What about the sphairikoi? I consider them often." *I believe that they are set here for our instruction. A sphairikos is a total globe, the type of the great oneness. Then consider that it sometimes ruffies its surface, extrudes a little false-foot from its soft surface. Would it

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not be odd if that false-foot, for its brief second, considered itself a person? Would you not laugh at that?"

"No, no. I do not laugh." And the Dookh-Doctor was on his feet.

'And in much less than a second, that pseudopod is withdrawn back into the sphere of the sphairikoi. So it is with our lives, Nothing dies. It is only a ripple on the surface of the oneness. Can you entertain so droll an idea as that the pseudopod should rernember, or wish to remember?"

"Yes. I'll remember it a billion years for the billion who forget.'

The Dookh-I)octor was running uphill in the dark. He crashed into trees and boles as though he wished to rernember the crashing forever.

"I'll burn before I forget, but r must have somethirrg that says it's me who burnst"

Up, up by the spherical huts of the sphairikoi, bawling and stumbling in the dark. Up to a hut that had a certain fame he could never place, to the hut that had its own identity, that sparkled with identity.

"open, open, help rnet" the Dookh-Doctor cried out at the last hut on the hill.

"Go away, manl" the last voice protested. "All my clients are gone, and the night is almost over with, What has this person to do with a human man anyhow?"

ft was a round twinkling voice out of the roweled dark. But there was enduring identity there. The twinkhrg, enduring-identity colors, coming from the chinks of the hut, had now reached the level of vision. There was even the flicker of the l-will-know-me-if-I-meet-me-again color.

"Torchy Twelve, help me. I am told that you have the special salve that solves the Iast problem, and makes it know that it is always itself that is solved."

"why, it is the Dookh-Doct Why have you come to TorchyP"


"I want somethitrg to send me into kind and everlasting slumberr" he moaned. "But I lvant it to be me who slumbers. Cannot you help me in any way?"

n'Come you in, the Dookh-Doc. This person, though promiscuous, is expert. I help you—"