Duration 2.03
Lacer Fallacet, after the Violent Unknown Event, had a dark head, calloused hands and barked in Agreet like a person unwilling to use words. She owned a succession of voiceless bitches all named after female aviators, and her favourite Tulse Luper story was the Photographer's Dog:
"Amongst other material, a naturalist took a photograph of a dead dog on a beach. The corpse was a week old and covered in flies. The naturalist returned home, took a film from his camera and sent it to a reputable laboratory. The film was developed and printed and returned by post to the naturalist who opened the small parcel in his study. Comparing the prints with the negatives the naturalist had cause to hold one of the photographs in his teeth. It was the negative of the dead dog on the beach. That evening the naturalist died of an infection.
His body, covered in flies, was found by the police a week later and photographed."
Lacer Fallacet suffered from rheumatism, muscular spasms and a loss of taste buds. She was classified as an elderly female woman. The VUE knocked three inches off her height and added three stone to her weight. According to her godson Rapper Begol, Lacer was born on Bardsey Island where dogs hunted seagulls and learned to imitate their cry. Before the VUE, Lacer had variously been a child-minder, a maths-teacher and a pastry-cook. She had worked in Sweden as a swimming instructress, a dietician and a veterinary assistant. Lacer married a pharmacist from Brougan and had two daughters who later married Russian pilots. Lacer's grand-daughters came to England on Bird-Fall Scholarships and, having gained political asylum, now live in Canada.
Whatever her other attributes, it is certain that Lacer Fallacet has not been able to teach her dogs to fly, though she may have witnessed, on a visit to the Ukraine, laboratory tests that suggested dog-flight was not impossible. Six months after the VUE the first dog Lacer took up in a plane was a spaniel named Harzy after Frau Inis Esterházy. But the first solo flight was reserved for a three-year-old Boxer bitch called Louise. At lacer's command, Louise jumped from an Olympus helicopter at one thousand feet and landed on loose straw in a barley-filed outside Copenhagen. The second jump was from two thousand feet, and was unsuccessful. The dog landed in a children's playing-field. Lacer was threatened with prosecution but the charge could not be made to stick.
In the end she was fined three cronen for exercising a dog in a public place without a lead.
The Falls Biographies
