The R a Lafferty Fantastic Megapack

by R. A. Lafferty

  “S-sent it to Washington.”

  “You bug-eyed behemoth! Do you realize what a trip that will be? You grandfather of inanities, it will be a pleasure to destroy you!”

  “I don’t know what you are, or if you are really. I don’t believe that you even belong on the world.”

  “Not belong on the world! We own the world. We can show written title to the world. Can you?”

  “I doubt it. Where did you get the title?”

  “None of your business. I’d rather not say. Oh, well, we got it from a promoter of sorts. A con man, really. I’ll have to admit that we were taken, but we were in a spot and needed a world. He said that the larger bifurcates were too stupid to be a nuisance. We should have known that the stupider a creature, the more of a nuisance it is.”

  “I had about decided the same thing about the smaller a creature. We may have to fumigate that old mountain mess.”

  “Oh, you can’t harm us. We’re too powerful. But we can obliterate you in an instant.”

  “Hah!”

  “Say ‘Hah, sir’ when you address me. Do you know the place in the mountain that is called Sodom?”

  “I know the place. It was caused by a large meteor.”

  “It was caused by one of these.”

  What he held up was the size of a grain of sand. Marshal could not see it in detail.

  “There was another city of you bug-eyed beasts there,” said the small martinet. “You wouldn’t know about it. It’s been a few hundred years. We decided it was too close. Now I have decided that you are too close.”

  “A thing that size couldn’t crack a walnut.”

  “You floundering fop, it will blast this town flat!”

  “What will happen to you?”

  “Nothing. I don’t even blink for things like that.”

  “How do you trigger it off.”

  “You gaping goof, I don’t have time to explain that to you. I have to get to Washington.”

  It may be that Marshal did not believe himself quite awake. He certainly did not take the threat seriously enough. For the little man did trigger it off.

  * * * *

  When the final count was in, High Plains did not have the highest percentage gain in population in the nation. Actually it showed the sharpest decline, from 7313 to nothing.

  They were going to make a forest preserve out of the place, except that it has no trees worthy of the name. Now it is proposed to make it the Sodom and Gomorrah State Park from the two mysterious scenes of desolation there, just seven miles apart.

  It is an interesting place, as wild a region as you will ever find, and is recommended for the man who has seen everything.

  THROUGH OTHER EYES

  Originally published in Future Science Fiction, No. 47, February 1960.

  I

  “I don’t think I can stand the dawn of another Great Day,” said Smirnov. “It always seems a muggy morning, a rainy afternoon and a dismal evening. You remember the Recapitulation Correlator?”

  “Known popularly as the Tune Machine. But, Gregory, that was and is a success. All three of them are in constant use, and they will construct at least one more a decade. They are invaluable.”

  “Yes. It was a dismal success. It has turned my whole life gray. You remember our trial run, the recapitulation of the Battle of Hastings?”

  “It was a depressing three years we spent there. But how were we to know it was such a small affair—covering less than five acres of that damnable field and lasting less than twenty minutes? And how were we to know that an error of four years had been made in history even as recent as that? Yes, we scanned many depressing days and many muddy fields in that area before we recreated it.”

  “And our qualified success at catching the wit of Voltaire at first hand?”

  “Gad! That cackle! There can never be anything new in nausea to one who has sickened of that. What a perverted old woman he was!”

  “And Nell Guinn?”

  “There is no accounting for the taste of a king. What a completely tasteless morsel!”

  “And the crowning of Charlemagne?”

  “The king of chilblains. If you wanted a fire, you carried it with you in a basket. That was the coldest Christmas I ever knew. But the mead seemed to warm them; and we were the only ones present who could not touch it or taste it.”

  “And when we went further back and heard the wonderful words of the divine poetess Sappho.”

  “Yes, she had just decided that she would have her favorite cat spayed. We listened to her for three days and she talked of nothing else. How fortunate the world is that so few of her words have survived.”

  “And watching the great Pythagoras at work.”

  “And the long days he spent on that little surveying problem. How one longed to hand him a slide rule through the barrier and explain its workings.”

  “And our eavesdropping on the great lovers Tristram and Isolde.”

  “And him spending a whole afternoon trying to tune that cursed harp with a penny whistle. And she could talk of nothing but the bear grease she used on her hair, and how it was nothing like the bear grease back home. But she was a cute little lard barrel, quite the cutest we found for several centuries in either direction. One wouldn’t be able to get one’s arms all the way around her; but I can understand how, to one of that era and region, it would be fun trying.”

  “Ah yes. Smelled like a cinnamon cookie, didn’t she? And you recall Lancelot?”

  “Always had a bad back that wouldn’t let him ride. And that trick elbow and the old groin wound. He spent more time on the rubbing table than any athlete I ever heard of. If I had a high-priced quarterback who was never ready to play, I’d sure find a way of breaking his contract. No use keeping him on the squad just to read his ten-year-old press clippings. Any farm boy could have pulled him off his nag and stomped him into the dirt.”

  “I wasn’t too happy about Aristotle the day we caught him. That barbarous north-coast Greek of his! Three hours he had them all busy combing his beard. And his discourse on the Beard in Essential and the Beard in Existential, did you follow that?”

  “No, to tell the truth I didn’t. I guess it was pretty profound.”

  They were silent and sad for a while, as are men who have lost much.

  “The machine was a success,” said Smirnov at last, “and yet the high excitement of it died dismally for us.”

  “The excitement is in the discovery of the machine,” said Cogsworth. “It is never in what the machine discovers.”

  “And this new one of yours,” said Smirnov, “I hardly want to see you put it into operation. I am sure it will be a shattering disappointment to you.”

  “I am sure of it also. And yet it is greater than the other. I am as excited as a boy.”

  “You were a boy before, but you will never be again. I should think it would have aged you enough, and I cannot see what fascination this new one will have for you. At least the other recaptured the past. This will permit you to see only the present.”

  “Yes, but through other eyes.”

  “One pair of eyes is enough. I do not see any advantage at all except the novelty. I am afraid that this will be only a gadget.”

  “No. Believe me, Smirnov, it will be more than that. It may not even be the same world when viewed through different eyes. I believe that what we regard as one may actually be several billion different universes, each made only for the eyes of the one who sees it.”

  II

  The Cerebral Scanner, newly completed by Charles Cogsworth, was not an intricate machine. It was a small but ingenious amplifying device, or battery of amplifiers, designed for the synchronous—perhaps “sympathetic” would be a better word—coupling of two very intricate machines: two
human brains. It was an amplifier only. A subliminal coupling, or the possibility of it, was already assumed by the inventor. Less than a score of key aspects needed emphasizing for the whole thing to come to life.

  Here the only concern was with the convoluted cortex of the brain itself, that house of consciousness and terminal of the senses, and with the quasi-electrical impulses which are the indicators of its activity. It had been a long-held opinion of Cogsworth that, by the proper amplification of a near score of these impulses in one brain, a transmission could be effected to another so completely that one man might for an instant see with the eyes of another—also see inwardly with that man’s eyes, have the same imaginings and daydreams, perceive the same universe as the other perceived. And it would not be the same universe as the seeking man knew.

  The Scanner had been completed, as had a compilation of the dossiers of seven different brains: a collection of intricate brain-wave data as to frequency, impulse, flux and field, and Lyall-wave patterns of the seven cerebrums which Cogsworth would try to couple with his own.

  The seven were those of Gregory Smirnov, his colleague and counselor in so many things; of Gaetan Balbo, the cosmopolitan and supra-national head of the Institute; of Theodore Grammont, the theoretical mathematician; of E. E. Euler, the many-tentacled executive; of Karl Kleber, the extraordinary psychologist; of Edmond Guillames, the skeptic and bloodless critic; and of Valery Mok, a lady of beauty and charm whom Cogsworth had despaired of ever understanding by ordinary means.

  This idea of his—to enter into the mind of another, to peer from behind another’s eyes into a world that could not be the same—this idea had been with him all his life. He recalled how it had first come down on him in all its strength when he was quite small.

  “It may be that I am the only one who sees the sky black at night and the stars white,” he had said to himself, “and everybody else sees the sky white and the stars shining black. And I say the sky is black, and they say the sky is black; but when they say black they mean white.”

  Or: “I may be the only one who can see the outside of a cow, and everybody else sees it inside out. And I say that it is the outside, and they say that it is the outside; but when they say outside they mean inside.”

  Or: “It may be that all the boys I see look like girls to everyone else, and all the girls look like boys. And I say ‘That is a girl,’ and they say ‘That is a girl’; only when they say a girl they mean a boy.”

  And then had come the terrifying thought: “What if I am a girl to everyone except me?”

  This did not seem very intelligent to him even when he was small, and yet it became an obsession to him.

  “What if to a dog all dogs look like men and all men look like dogs? And what if a dog looks at me and thinks that I am a dog and he is a boy?”

  And this was followed once by the shattering afterthought: “And what if the dog is right?

  “What if a fish looks up at a bird and a bird looks down at a fish? And the fish thinks that he is the bird and the bird is the fish, and that he is looking down on the bird that is really a fish, and the air is water and the water is air?”

  “What if, when a bird eats a worm, the worm thinks he is the bird and the bird is the worm? And that his outside is his inside, and that the bird’s inside is his outside? And that he has eaten the bird instead of the bird eating him?”

  This was illogical. But how does one know that a worm is not illogical? He has much to make him illogical.

  And as he grew older Charles Cogsworth came on many signs that the world he saw was not the world that others saw. There came smaller but persistent signs that every person lives in a different world.

  It was early in the afternoon, but Charles Cogsworth sat in darkness. Gregory Smirnov had gone for a walk in the country as he said that he would. He was the only other one who knew that the experiment was being made. He is the only one who would have agreed to the experiment, though the others had permitted their brain-wave dossiers to be compiled on another pretext.

  All beginnings come quietly, and this one was a total success. The sensation of seeing with the eyes of another is new and glorious, though the full recognition of it comes slowly.

  “He is a greater man than I,” said Cogsworth. “I have often suspected it. He has a placidity which I do not own, though he has not my fever. And he lives in a better world.”

  It was a better world, greater in scope and more exciting in detail.

  “Who would have thought of giving such a color to grass, if it is grass? It is what he calls grass, but it is not what I call grass. I wonder I should ever be content to see it as I saw it. It is a finer sky than I had known, and more structured hills. The old bones of them stand out for him as they do not for me, and he knows the water in their veins.

  “There is a man walking toward him, and he is a grander man than I have ever seen. Yet I have also known the shadow of this man, and his name is Mr. Dottle, both to myself and to Gregory. I had thought that Dottle was a fool, but now I know that in the world of Gregory no man is a fool. I am looking through the inspired and almost divine eyes of a giant, and I am looking at a world that has not yet grown tired.”

  For what seemed like hours Charles Cogsworth lived in the world of Gregory Smirnov; and he found here, out of all his life, one great expectation that did not fail him.

  Then, after he had rested a while, he looked at the world through the wide eyes of Gaetan Balbo.

  “I am not sure that he is a greater man than I, but he is a wider man. Nor am I sure that he looks into a greater world. I would not willingly trade for his, as I would for Gregory’s. Here I miss the intensity of my own. But it is fascinating, and I will enjoy returning to it again and again. And I know whose eyes these are. I am looking through the eyes of a king.”

  Later he saw through the eyes of Theodore Grammont, and felt a surge of pity.

  “If I am blind compared to Gregory, then this man is blind compared to me. I at least know that the hills are alive; he believes them to be imperfect polyhedrons. He is in the middle of a desert and is not even able to talk to the devils who live there. He has abstracted the world and numbered it, and doesn’t even know that the world is a live animal. He has built his own world of great complexity, but he cannot see the color of its flanks. This man has achieved so much only because he was denied so much at the beginning. I understand now that only the finest theory is no more than a fact gnawed on vicariously by one who has no teeth. But I will return to this world too, even though it has no body to it. I have been seeing through the eyes of a blind hermit.”

  Delightful and exciting as this was, yet it was tiring. Cogsworth rested for a quarter of an hour before he entered the world of E. E. Euler. When he entered it he was filled with admiration.

  “An ordinary man could not look into a world like this. It would drive him out of his wits. It is almost like looking through the eyes of the Lord, who numbers all the feathers of the sparrow and every mite that nestles there. It is the interconnection vision of all the details. It appalls. It isn’t an easy world even to look at. Great Mother of Ulcers! How does he stand it? Yet I see that he loves every tangled detail, the more tangled the better. This is a world in which I will be able to take only a clinical interest. Somebody must hold these reins, but happily it is not my fate. To tame this hairy old beast we live on is the doom of Euler. I look for a happier doom.”

  He had been looking through the eyes of a general.

  The attempt to see into the world of Karl Kleber was almost a total failure. The story is told of the behaviorist who would study the chimpanzee. He put the curious animal in a room alone and locked the door on it; then went to the keyhole to spy; the keyhole was completely occupied by the brown eyeball of the animal spying back at him.

  Something of the sort happened here. Though Karl Kleber was unaware of
the experiment, yet the seeing was in both directions. Kleber was studying Cogsworth in those moments by some quirk of circumstance. And even when Cogsworth was able to see with the eyes of Kleber, yet it was himself he was seeing.

  “I am looking through the eyes of a peeper,” he said. “And yet, what am I myself?”

  If the world of Gregory Smirnov first entered was the grandest, so that of Edmond Guillames, which Cogsworth entered last but one, was in all ways the meanest.

  It was a world seen from the inside of a bile duct. It was not a pleasant world, just as Edmond was not a pleasant man. But how could one be other than a skeptic if all his life he had seen nothing but a world of rubbery bones and bloodless flesh clothed in crippled colors and obscene forms?

  “The mole of another’s world would be nobler than a lion in his,” said Cogsworth. “Why should one not be a critic who has so much to criticize? Why should one not be an unbeliever when faced with the dilemma that this unsavory world was either made by God or hatched by a cross-eyed ostrich? I have looked through the eyes of a fool into a fools’ world.”

  As Cogsworth rested again he said, “I have seen the world through the eyes of a giant, of a king, of a blind hermit, of a general, of a peeping tom, of a fool. There is nothing left but to see it through the eyes of an angel.”

  Valery Mok may or may not have been an angel. She was a beautiful woman, and angels, in the older and more authentic iconography, were rather stern men with shaggy pinions.

  Valery wore a look of eternal amusement, and was the embodiment of all charm and delight, at least to Charles Cogsworth. He believed her to be of high wit. Yet, if driven into a corner, he would have been unable to recall one witty thing she had ever said. He regarded her as of perfect kindness, and she was more or less on the agreeable side. Yet, Smirnov had put it, she was not ordinarily regarded as extraordinary.