"Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne" (1966/1967)
"There's a piece here on Pete Teilhard putting him into context as a talented science fiction writer with a talent for outré burlesque. The Brainworld Motif was overworked when he tackled it, but what a shaggy comic extravaganza he did make of it! And there's Muldoom, Zielinski, Popper, Gander, Aichinger, Whitecrow, Hornwhanger—we owe so much to the juice of the cultists! In the main line there are whole congeries and continents of great novels and novelists." — "Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne"
BRAINWORLD SENSATIONS INC. The time-involuted fully developed world which has reached OMEGA point and turned back on itself—a solid planet of high-intensity brain stuff. Raiders come to plunder it, to use part of the brain stuff for organic calculators, part for hallucination food (mad mushrooms) and part for common meat food. They load up on it and leave. But the planet is time-involuted, so they return again and again to it and relive the raid, never able to get beyond those moments. They first land at a primitive world where the inhabitants are given to vivid dreams and hallucinations. It is within the corpus of brainworld. The leader of the Sensations Inc. has remained on brain-world. He suffers the ultimate sensation—infinite pain and terror—as compensation for the infinite peace of brainworld. — Story notes
“Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne” is surely one of the most beloved of all Lafferty’s stories. The thrown elbow at de Chardin is a fairly early blow in an assault Lafferty would continue in his fiction. What isn’t widely known is that Lafferty considered writing a Brainworld story himself, but apparently it fell through. In an exceptionally disordered section of his papers, one finds bits and pieces under the headings “Brainworld” and “Sensations Inc.” The revised names and unfinished prose show Lafferty working out the characters and premise and then, I think, cannibalizing it for other works.
The reference to the Omega suggests this was a chambered bullet aimed at de Chardin. Lafferty imagines a world that has reached that point, become a solid planet of concentrated brain matter, and folded back upon itself in time. Raiders harvest that matter for organic calculators, hallucinatory food, and ordinary meat. But there is a problem. The planet’s temporal structure traps them: they return repeatedly and relive the raid, unable to get beyond those moments. Their leader gets stuck on Brainworld, suffering infinite pain and terror “as compensation for the infinite peace” of the planet.
Intriguingly, some of the material concerns travelers who experience the same dreams when passing through particular regions. Some dreams are familiar; others bring suicidal melancholy or literally frighten people to death. Dreams may therefore exist outside individual dreamers. This material may have fed into the Hopp Equation Space passages in Past Master, while the Brainworld conceit also appears in “Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne.”
In this Institute for Impure Science outing, Gregory Smirnov and his colleagues conduct time experiments with the past using Epiktistes. The first go-around, they set up the death of Gano before he can organize the ambush of Charlemagne’s rearguard at Roncesvalles. Gano is better known as Ganelon, the infamous traitor and Roland’s stepfather in The Song of Roland. The name will also be familiar to genre readers from Roger Zelazny’s Amber novels. In any case, this time tampering opens communication between the Christian and Muslim worlds. And snap, the present of the story is rewritten as a consequence of the meddling: the city grows, artistic and intellectual activity blooms, new people and machines join the group. At the same time, memories have changed, so the Institute crew believes the experiment has had no effect.
For their second experiment, they prevent John Lutterell from reaching Avignon to challenge William of Ockham’s teachings. In the history they now remember, Lutterell had checked a philosophy that Gregory believes could have destroyed their world. They remove that restraint to discover whether an intellectual dispute can have consequences on that scale. After the intervention, only Gregory, Aloysius Shiplap, Valery Mok, and Epikt are present. They now sit around a table, which has become a rock. Epikt is no longer the supercomputer we know, with his extensions, but a woven mask with a speaking tube. The group’s historical evidence is a notched stick. They eat skunk and hickory nuts. Once again, they think their attempt to change the world has failed.
They now turn to folklore for a way out. The three human Institute members recall the tale of the three wishes, in which the last wish undoes the damage caused by the second. They also remember Willy McGilly as a folk hero who used a slippery-elm dart. Aloysius makes and fires such a dart, and an Avatar dies on the Road from Nowhere to Eom, presumably the Avatar sent to kill Gano.
Familiar members of the group pop back into existence, though the story does not describe the recovered world in detail. The usually overshadowed Cogsworth recognizes that he was absent from the previous version of events. Diogenes proposes another experiment, but Valery forbids it, recalling the skunk and warning them not to repeat what they did.
The most interesting piece of writing on the story is this one by Paul Kincaid. He argues that the characters are trapped in repeated experiments with history. He concludes: “The godgame can only be repeated.” I like the essay because it offers a reading I think will tempt readers, but it also rests on an assumption I disagree with. It gives too little weight to Valery’s last words. The ending also deserves to be read alongside Lafferty’s later account of history. Recall that Valery remembers what happened and tells the others to stop. The story leaves it an open question whether they will listen. This is another instance of Lafferty leaving the narrative with incomplete closure.
First, Kincaid is right about the recklessness of the second experiment. Gregory is bored with the world around him and wants change. Willy wants to cut the jugular, while Aloysius knows that they may destroy everything. They suspect that the experiment could be disastrous, and they throw caution to the wind.
The three-wishes tale fits their conduct. The husband is angry that his wife has wished for a sausage when she could have asked for more. His second wish causes the trouble that the third must repair. Gregory is similarly dissatisfied with what he has, though the first experiment has given him a world full of things to enjoy.
The machines already know this tale before the second experiment. Chresmoeidy drops the line about the sausage, Proaisth quotes the verse about traveling a road three times, and Epikt says:
“Oh yes, it’s the three-cornered tale that ends where it begins. But it is good sausage, and we should enjoy it; many ages have not even this much.”
Epikt then helps carry out the experiment. Gregory’s half-memory of another Ockham does not stop him either. His remark reminds us that this account of Ockham belongs to an altered history and should be treated accordingly. Kincaid notices these memories, and there is reason to doubt that remembering will change their conduct. They have already ignored what they know. They may do so again.
In the primitive world, they recall enough of the tale to try to repair the damage. Gregory remembers the sausage, Valery tells the first two wishes, and Aloysius supplies the ending. Speaking through the mask, they work out the tale together. Gregory calls it old, then says he made it up that morning. Whether he remembers it or invents it remains unclear.
Kincaid calls Epikt a false god, and the chanting and magical materials give the scene a ritual character. In this history, the Institute members have made a magical object and consult it, taking turns supplying its voice. They also argue with its answers and fill in what it has forgotten. Aloysius proposes reasoning with the “damned magic mask.” The narrator continues to count Epikt among the four minds present and, after objecting to describing him as nothing but a mask, calls him “the first Ktistec machine.” Like his colleagues, Epikt has changed because of the experiment. He remains one of the investigators. That does not rule out misplaced belief in him, but neither does the scene establish that they have made him a substitute for God. Kincaid’s further conclusion that God is absent and escape therefore impossible goes beyond what the scene shows.
Their recovery does not establish that they will stop experimenting. They use another intervention to undo the consequences of the earlier ones. Cogsworth knows that he was absent from the previous version, but he offers no opinion about whether they should continue. Valery does, hence the much-quoted line:
“Oh, no, no!” Valery forbade. “Not again. That way is rump of skunk and madness.”
Valery, who calls herself a “primordial” in Arrive at Easterwine, has wanted decent food, clothing, and entertainment throughout. Her wanting it all to stop need not mark any great change in her character. She just does not want to go through that experience again. We never learn whether the others listen, and their earlier actions give us reason to doubt that they will. Kincaid concludes that their ignorance leaves them unable to know they should stop. Yet Valery remembers enough to give them a reason to do so.
If Valery gets her way, something remembered from a vanished world will change what they do in the recovered one. Cogsworth also knows, paradoxically, that he was absent from the previous world. His return suggests a figurative journey from Nowhere to Eom, since eom is Old English for “am”. In his later speech “The Day After the World Ended,” Lafferty describes how the loss of a civilization impairs our ability to remember it. Yet bones and stones survive, and may help people build another world with some continuity with the last. He ends the speech by making his listeners characters in an unfinished story, able to help determine what happens next even though they cannot step outside it. Valery’s wish for a comfortable life offers no assurance that her colleagues have wised up.
*A deep cut: the story mentions Kapteyn's star, which connects it to one of Lafferty's best poems, "From Alpha World of Kaptein's Star."
