The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

On this day his corpulent assistant, Gorden Gaster, had entered and shattered his state of abstraction.

  “I had no desire for company. I was in thought,” said Leo.

  “There are times when company intrudes through necessity,” said Gorden, “and I must tell you that you are a very selfish man.”

  “Of course I am. Perfect detachment is not possible to any other. Were I not consummately selfish I would not have been able to isolate Self. You insist on talking?”

  “Yes. It is necessary, Leo. I have decided, along with one other, to take a certain definite step. You have neglected things that a man should not neglect. You have disregarded the amenities. To a degree I have made this up for you.”

  “I thank you for that. You are a good assistant. You have saved me much time and trouble.”

  “You have also neglected your wife shamefully. And to a degree here I also have taken care of what you neglected.”

  “I thank you for that too — or do I? It may be that you have gone beyond the call of duty.”

  “It may be that I have. And there are further things about yourself that I must tell you, since you seem not aware of them. One is that you have the golden touch. Since the time that you gave me power of attorney over your affairs I have arranged wonderfully. I have mined the goldmine of your notes, and I have marketed extensively. There has been a practical application to almost everything that you have uncovered. The three of us (for we are so incorporated) are now quite wealthy. As soon as you are dead, the two of us remaining, Mathilde and myself, will be the wealthier by one half.”

  “I recently had an examination. I was told that I should live another thirty years.”

  “We have just had an examination of another sort. We have decided that there is no point in your living another hour. We believe that life bores you.”

  “It does in a way. But I still need the body for a basis of operation until I have achieved perfect detachment.”

  “That's a pity. But we won't wait. I have often wondered why you kept a loaded gun in this little desk here. It is what we decided that I should use.”

  “O, that's an old continuing experiment in psychokenesis. I can, under good conditions, cause the little gun to go downstairs by itself and fire a few rounds on the pistol range there. But the experiment has not been a success. The gun fires very poor scores on the range, and I believe that it also cheats. Most of the bulls' eyes seem to have been made at almost point-blank range.”

  “I had no idea you had gone so far along that line. Well, this is the end for you, Leo. You have been our golden goose. But we will wait for no more eggs. There is enough already in your notebooks to keep me busy and rich for the rest of what would have been your life. And you are in the way here. You are very inconvenient.”

  “You mean you are going to kill me?”

  “You astonish me. To find that the world's greatest mind, when enough hints are shoveled to it, can actually reach a straight conclusion, that is almost more than I expected. Yes, I am going to kill you, Leo.”

  “I ask you, I beg you not to.”

  “You beg? You? Where is your detachment?”

  “Buried under my terror. I had never given death a serious thought. I always considered it a silly arrangement. Now the possibility of its finality horrifies me. Don't, Gorden! Man, don't do it!

  “I wouldn't worry, Leo. In two seconds it will be done. Oblivion has no regrets.”

  “I need more than two seconds. Gorden. Give me ten.”

  “Ten? Why?”

  “An experiment with death itself. I've always wanted to try. It'll take a few seconds to arrange it in my mind.”

  “Always the scientist. Leo. All right, ten seconds but no more. And the time has started.”

  It is hard to achieve perfect detachment, but also separation, and transference, and the goal not even selected. But one can hurry astonishingly in a crisis. At first Leo could not see another living thing in the room except Gordon Gaster. But yes, yes, there was another. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. He achieved detachment. He achieved separation, leaving his body to exist briefly in unbodied thought.

  And he achieved not a second too soon. For Gorden Gaster, with the cruelty of his kind, jumped the gun; and he shot the body of Leo Skatterly dead.

  This was precarious. Leo had never before left his body for more than a second or two. And he could not return to a dead body. He had escaped the trap, but for what? It was like a high dive he was afraid to try, a leap across an abyss. But he knew that transference was possible. He dared it, and disappeared with muted mind into the fishbowl.

  That was the way that the mind of Leo Skatterly (the world's greatest scientist in a small field) entered the body of Cuthbert the goldfish. And Cuthbert himself, with no great mind in the matter, withdrew to a small drowsy corner of his own brain, and let his master reign in his place.

  There is frustration in having the finest mind in the world and not being able to implement it. O, he had time enough for abstract thought now. It was just that he hadn't the means for concrete action. There are few things you can do in a fishbowl, even if you are a goldfish. You can practice your strokes and dives and turns. You can frolic with Gwendoline. But this brought on a problem. Though now an ichthus, Leo had never been an ichthyologist. He knew little about fish. He did not even know to what species the goldfish belonged. And of the carnality of goldfish he was totally ignorant. He hoped it was not the rutting season for goldfish, if they had such. He did not want to appear ignorant. (He had always liked to do his duty in all things.)

  But it was then, before he was fully acclimated to the bowl, that his old wife, Mathilda, came into the room. Leo (or Cuthbert) had doubted the statement of Gorden Gaster that Mathilde had conspired to the murder. So he was now quite interested when she approached his old dead body. She hummed a little tune. Was it—? no it couldn't be— “I'll be glad when you're dead you rascal you!” He had no ear for music. It was likely that it was a tune that only sounded like the other. Yet she seemed very calm about finding him dead. She tidied up a few things and went over the room closely. She painted her own mouth carefully, and then ruffled her hair with a studied carelessness. She looked at herself in a mirror, and winked. Then she went to the window, opened it calmly, and began to scream.

  That was on odd way for a wife to behave on finding her husband dead. Possibly a form of delayed shock, but inexplicable by any behavior pattern that Leo had ever known. So it was that a slight doubt sowed itself in the mind of Leo Skatterly concerning his human wife, Mathilde.

  There were then several hours or several days that passed with a parade of broken events. A goldfish sleeps often, and on waking has no way of telling what day it is. But likely it was the same day when the men came into the room and removed the old body of Leo Skatterly. He hated to see it go. It marked the end of a certain phase of his life. And moreover he had no idea where he was ever to get another body.

  He wasn't all peaceful in his mind. He possessed the body of Cuthbert in doubtful tenure. For one thing Cuthbert was still there, though, having deferred to Leo, he had agreeably gone to sleep. But there might come a time when he might not be willing to defer. And in a showdown Cuthbert knew more about being a goldfish than Leo did. It was a question whether there would be some sort of conflict with the two minds inhabiting one fish head.

  But just how does a goldfish establish contact with the rest of the world? Leo had decided that he must make known to Mathilde that he was not dead, that he was inhabiting Cuthbert instead. He still trusted her in spite of her odd behavior. If a man (or a fish) cannot trust his own wife, then whom can he trust?

  When she came to feed them that night he tried to catch her eye. Possibly he did catch it, but she did not understand. There was no real rapport there.

  Well, if the finest mind in the world cannot find a way to communicate from a fishbowl, then he had better abdicate and let some of that silly new blood take over. But how to communicate? By code,
radio, audio, graphic, visual? Probably the visual was best. And for tools there were only the pebbles in the bottom of the bowl.

  He set out to arrange them. He would arrange them to say: “Mathilde, I am Leo. I am not dead. I am temporarily in the body of Cuthbert the goldfish. I trust you, though I must say some of your recent actions are deuced peculiar. Go at once to my notebooks in the cabinet against the north wall of this room. Take out notebook 44 C 2 and read from paragraph 152 C to the end. When you have digested the information there then come to the bowl again and I will spell out further instructions.”

  That was what he intended to spell out with the pebbles. But an environmental limit was placed on his ambitions. The same thing had happened to him before. When he was a little boy it had happened with a gift of a ninety-eight cent Structo set with a picture on the cover of a girdered bridge that could only be built with the twelve dollar and ninety-eight cent set. There were just not enough pieces.

  And there were not enough pebbles. There were only thirteen pebbles in the bottom of the bowl. And what can you spell out with only thirteen pebbles? Leo finally spelled out his name, Leo. He did it using three pebbles for the L, six for the E, and four for the O. It was a square O, but it was better than no O at all.

  Now perhaps when Mathilde saw this she would partly understand, and would bring him more pebbles to spell more words. But it would be cumbersome. It took him all night just to spell Leo. For one thing, a space has to be cleared first, and then the pebbles laboriously rolled into place with the nose. This involves nosing most of the pebbles twice. And another detriment was Gwendoline, who joined into the game and began to roll the pebbles around also, but at random.

  “God rot it, Gwen,” he told her in ichthyglos, “leave them alone if you don't know what you're doing.”

  But she could not at all understand, and she sulked and interfered. But she was also his wife in a way and had some rights. When she finally went to sleep it was too dark to spell, and he had to do it by the very early light next morning before she woke.

  Then there was nothing to do but wait for Mathilde to see his sign and take action. But she did not come till mid-morning, and then she was accompanied by Gorden Gaster, the murderer.

  “Angel,” said Gorden, “there is really nothing to do here. And I believe the room might depress you. Let's stay out of it.”

  “I don't depress as easily as that, precious. And I'd like it to be at least clean. They're going to be examining it again today, darling, purely as a formality, and I pride myself on my housekeeping.”

  It was surely peculiar that Mathilde should be calling Gorden such names as precious and darling. It gave Leo a feeling that everything was not right.

  “If you'd help, Gorden, we could get it done in no time at all and be off.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Dust. There's the duster.”

  “Impossible. My asthma you know.”

  “No, I didn't. Well, you can run the vacuum. It's in the closet.”

  “That might be dangerous. I have a bad back and any untoward effort—”

  “Well, G.d., G. G. you can feed the fish then. That isn't very heavy work. Do you think you can manage it?”

  “O yes, I can manage quite well. I have a fish of my own, you know.”

  Damnation! That man was coming to the fishbowl. Leo (Cuthbert) Skatterly tried to disarrange the word he had spelled; but he was in a hurry and stubbed his nose, and then Gwendoline rolled the pebbles back into place as fast as he scrambled them.

  And Gorden Gaster came to the bowl and saw the name that was spelled there.

  “Ah, Leo,” he said softly. “There you are. I had wondered what your last experiment was and if it had been successful. I see that it has been, but you are at a disadvantage. There are so many things that militate against a goldfish in this world. There may be countless geniuses among them, but who would ever know? Yet a goldfish who spells could be dangerous. We may have to make other arrangements for you.” Then Gorden put a finger in the water and stirred the pebbles, after which he called across the room to Mathilde:

  “Honeybun, I have a fish of my own, as I told you. Since I will be moving in here as soon as things are settled, I thought it might be a good idea if I brought my fish over and put it in with these.”

  “Will they get along?”

  “O, perfectly. Goldfish are very clannish.”

  “Bring it on over then.”

  And Gorden bent low over the bowl and spoke to Leo:

  “Skatterly, old fish, let's see you get out of this one. You'll like my fish, Fang. He looks like a goldfish but is part Burmese fighting fish. He isn't very big, only a little larger than you. But he can eviscerate you in ten seconds. Good time that, what? Now this poses a problem for you, doesn't it? We will see what taking thought will do for you now. Cheers.”

  They were gone then, Mathilde and Gorden. And it did pose a problem. Leo brooded and was in a bad humor. No person has a right to kill another person twice; it is a little too much. On the other hand, Leo had the nagging feeling that if you permit a person to kill you twice, in some way you merit the second death.

  And then with a feeling of horror he heard them return, and he knew that the new killer was in the room. Gorden had Fang in an ice cream box full of water. He poured the whole thing into the bowl. It left milky traces about them and had a peculiar taste.

  And Fang, the goldfish who was part Burmese fighting fish, looked at Leo-Cuthbert with icy eyes, but did not attack. Not then he didn't, not while Mathilde and Gorden were still there. But already they showed signs of leaving.

  “They will soon mix. Fish are always bashful at first. They'll get acquainted as soon as we leave them. Come along dear.” And Gorden left with Mathilde.

  Imagine a shark four inches long if you are only three inches. Imagine a lightning-killer and you in a goldfish bowl with him and no escape. Gorden had given Leo ten seconds (less two) before he killed him. How do you ask a killer fish to give you ten seconds? How do you practice detachment under the circumstances? And where in the room was there another living creature to which Leo could transfer? Yet it had to be done.

  Leo-Cuthbert achieved a detachment of a sort while certain slices of his underbelly were detached from himself. And he almost achieved separation, as lengths of viscera were separated from himself. Then the introductions were over, and Fang came in for the kill; there was no doubt of it.

  And once more it was like a high dive that Leo was afraid to take, like a leap across an abyss — but he must get it off to however unlikely a goal was left him. So he achieved separation.

  Then Fang struck and broke the body of Cuthbert in half, and there was no life left in it at all.

  He didn't know how long he had been a fly. Probably not long. A long-term fly isn't afraid of falling, and does not cling in terror to the mesh of a curtain. It seemed that he only gradually became conscious of his new state. But he was a fly, whoever he was and however he had become one. Then it began to clarify, and memory swept over him like a diaphanous wave.

  In The Garden

  The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So they skipped several steps in the procedure. The chordata discerner read Positive over most of the surface. There was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought on the body?

  Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then it came, clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.

  “Limited,” said Steiner, “as though within a pale. As follow the rest of the surface to find another, or concentrate though there were but one city, if that is its form. Shall we on this? It'll be twelve hours before it's back in our ken if we let it go
now.”

  “Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of the world to make sure we've missed nothing,” said Stark.

  There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of analysis, that of the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the designer of it were puzzled as how to read the results.

  The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator had refused to read Positive when turned on the inventor himself, bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He told the machine so heatedly.

  The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that Glaser did not have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a difference, the machine insisted.

  It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.

  And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read Positive on a number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not even read music. But it had also read Positive on ninety percent of the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi it had read Positive on a two-inch long worm, one only out of billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all was shown by the test.

  So it was with mixed emotions that Steiner locked onto the area and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.