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

by R. A. Lafferty

  Peredacha was something of an actress, for all the Programmed have a talent for mimicry. She considered the role for a moment, and she put all her talent into it.

  And she did it! She made herself into the most pathetic urchin since the Little Match Girl. Yet she was a Programmed and not a Human; it was as though a gear box should put on a waif's shawl and turn tear-jerker.

  They brought her in.

  “Papa!” Peredacha cried and rushed toward Gnevni.

  The attendants had closed between them to prevent damage when the anger of the low man should rise like a jagged wave.

  The show should have been greater than the one that Wut had once put on for less reason. Gnevni was a bigger man with more power of anger, and the situation was even more ridiculous. It should have set records on the decibel-recorder, filled the room with brimstone, and enriched the vocabulary of scatology.

  But it didn't.

  The face of George Gnevni was slack, and he shook his heavy head sadly.

  “Take the child away,” he said dully. “I will not be responsible for my feelings today.”

  It was a new morning and George Gnevni must return to his brutal livelihood. A too-happy puppy came bounding up to him — a bundle of hysterically gay yipes with a waggling rump and tail hitched on to them.

  “Hello, little fellow,” Gnevni said and bent down to pet it. But the puppy was not programmed for such treatment. It was made to be kicked by angry men. It threw itself into a series of reverse somersaults and heart-rending wails as though it had been kicked indeed.

  “Oh, the poor little toy!” said Gnevni. “It has never known kindness.”

  “Look, Gnevni,” said an inferior sort of man who came up, “the dog was made for one thing only — so that twelve or thirteen of you hotfires could kick it every morning and get into your mood. Now kick too.”

  “I won't do it.”

  “I'll report you.”

  “I don't care. How could anyone harm that poor little tyke?”

  The Crippled Old Lady came up, shaking as with palsy. “A glorious good morning to you, my good man,” she said to Gnevni.

  “And a fine morning to you, my lady,” he said.

  “What? You're not supposed to say that! You're supposed to kick my crutches out from under me and then knock me down and trample on me. It helps get you in your mood. Crippled Old Ladies are infuriating sights to the Very Angry Men; they make them even angrier. Everybody knows that.”

  “I just don't believe that I will do it today, ah — Margaret, is that not your name? A fine day to you, my dear.”

  “Knock off that fine day stuff! I have my job to do. I'm a mood piece. You blow-tops are supposed to kick out my crutches and tromp me down to get in your mood. Now start kicking or I'll report you.”

  “Do so if you must, my dear.”

  Gnevni went to his job in the Cortin Institute Building, and there he was good for nothing. Mad? He wasn't even sullen. He was puzzled and pleasant, and when you have one of the old stand-bys go pleasant on you you're in trouble. He was civil to everybody and gave them all the jitters. He completed his mechanical tasks in an hour — finding them much easier when he attacked them calmly. But he wasn't supposed to find them easier.

  So there was consternation in the Department. Gnevni had been the best producer of them all. They couldn't let him go by like that.

  “Damn you, get mad!” under-doctor Cotrel shouted and shook him. “We won't have any malingering on the job. Get mad and start putting out.”

  “I just don't seem able to get mad today,” said Gnevni honestly.

  “You double-damned will get mad, you crud-head!” pursued under-doctor Cotrel. Cotrel seemed rather upset himself. “Under-doctor Devon! Over-doctor Ratracer! Director Duggle! Come help me with this pig-headed fellow. He won't get mad.”

  “He's got to get mad,” said under-doctor Devon. “We'll make the filth-eating fink get mad.”

  “It looks bad,” said Director Duggle. “He was at only half efficiency yesterday, and today he's good for nothing at all. Well, put him through the routine. We can't have him going sour at us.”

  They put him through the routine. It was brutal. It would have made a roaring devil out of the sweetest saint. Even spectators commonly became white with fury when such a thing was put on, and there was no limit to the effect on the victim. Gnevni endured it with composed sorrow but without anger. And when even the routine didn't work what more could you do to him?

  Under-doctor Cotrel began to cuff and kick him: “Get mad, you slimy sulphurous son of a she shink! Get mad, you mud-headed old monkey! Get mad, you dirt-eating mutt-head! You slobber-mouthed donkey, get mad!”

  They brought in others. They even brought in Peredacha — hoping she would have a more positive effect on him than she had had the day before. But Gnevni brightened up to see her.

  “Ah, it is my little daughter! I sent you notes at intervals through the evening and night, but I guess you did not receive them. It is so wonderful just to see you again.”

  “Why you bat-whiskered old bum, was it you who sent those notes? ‘Sweet papa.’ You? By the shop where I was made, I never heard of anything like it before!”

  “Do not be cruel, Peredacha. You are all that I care for in the world. With you I could become a new man.”

  “Well, not being human I guess I can be humane. I'll look after you, ugly papa. But they don't want you to become a new man; as the old one you were the best they had. Come now, get mad for the people. It's your job.”

  “I know, but I'm unable to do it. I have been thinking, Peredacha, that since you are my daughter in a way — cortin of my cortin and adrenalin of my adrenalin — perhaps the two of us might go off somewhere and —”

  “Holy howling hog!” Under-doctor Cotrel took off in a screech too high for the human ear to follow, so perhaps only Peredacha heard and flushed. And then Cotrel broke up completely. He kicked and beat on Gnevni. He shrilled and sobbed and gobbled. And when his sounds once more became intelligible it was a screaming, “Get mad, damn you, get mad!”

  Cotrel was a lean man, but powerfully corded and muscled, and now every cord of muscle and nerve stood glaringly out on him black and purple.

  That man was plain frantic in his displeasure at Gnevni. The flying foam from his lips flecked the room — something you would not have expected from under-doctor Cotrel.

  “It is all right,” said Director Duggle. “Gnevni was about finished in any case. The best of them are only good for a year or two — the pace is a terrific one. And we are lucky to have his replacement ready at hand.” “Replacement?” roared the livid Cotrel. “He's got to get mad! There isn't any replacement.” And he continued to strike Gnevni.

  “I believe that the director has you in mind, Cotrel,” said over-doctor Ratracer. “Yes. I am sure of it.”

  “Me? I am under-doctor Cotrel! I make five hundred Guzman d'or a month!”

  “And now you will make five,” said Director Duggle. “Grinding poverty is a concomitant of your new job. I had suspected you had a talent for it. Now I am sure. You begin immediately. You become the latest, and soon I hope the best, of the Very Angry Men.”

  Cotrel became so, and immediately. Gnevni had been good. Wut before him had been one of the best. But for carrying-on noise and stink generally, there was never such an exhibition as Mad Man Cotrel now put on — getting into the spirit of his new job.

  He was the maddest man you ever saw!

  What's The Name Of That Town?

  “Epiktistes tells me that you are onto something big, Mr. Smirnov,” Valery said, turning to her companion. “Epikt has the loudest mouth of any machine I was ever associated with,” Gregory Smirnov growled. “I never saw one that could keep a secret. But this one goes to extremes. Actually, we don't have a thing. We're just fiddling around with an unborn idea.”

  “How about it, Epikt?” Valery asked.

  “Big, real big,” the machine issued.

  “What are
you doing now, Epikt?” Valery wanted to know.

  “Talk to me, dammit! I'm the man, he's the machine,” Smirnov cut in. “He's chewing encyclopedias and other references. It's all he ever does.”

  “I thought he went through them all long ago.”

  “Certainly, dozens of times. He has all the data that can be fed into a machine, and every day we shovel in bales of new stuff. But he's chewing it now for a very different purpose.”

  “What different purpose, Mr. Smirnov?”

  “It's difficult to say because I haven't as yet been able to state it to him. We're trying to set a problem where it seems there ought to be one—ironically. I doubt that he's sincere now. He can be quite a clown, as you should well know.”

  “I know that you two are onto something good,” Valery said. “The more you deny it, the more I'm sure of it. Tell me the truth, Epikt.”

  “Big, real big,” Epiktistes issued to Valery.

  “Valery,” said Smirnov. “You're a woman and you might be inclined to say something about this to other Institute people. Please don't. We don't have anything yet and it makes me nervous to have hot little people breathing down my neck.”

  “I won't say a word,” Valery swore with grave insincerity. She winked at the machine, and Epikt winked back at her with three tiers of eyes. Valery Mok and Epiktistes had a thing going with each other.

  Valery was nearly as bad as a machine at not being able to keep a secret. She had the whole Institute staff excited about what Smirnov and Epiktistes were working on. The staff consisted of Charles Cogsworth, her own over-shadowed husband; Glasser, the stiff-necked inventor; and Aloysius Shiplap, the seminal genius.

  They were all after Smirnov and his machine the next day.

  “We've been together on every project,” Glasser said. “Valery tells us that the problem hasn't been properly formulated, and that Epikt has only accepted it ironically. We're pretty good at formulating problems, Gregory, and a little sterner than you when it comes to dealing with clownish machines.”

  “All right, this is the way it is, Glasser,” Smirnov said reluctantly. “My first statement was, we should seek to discover something not known to exist, by a close study of the absence of evidence. When I put the problem to Epiktistes in this generalized form he just laughed at me.”

  “That would have been my first impulse too, Smirnov,” said Shiplap. “Don't you have a better idea of what you're looking for?”

  “Shiplap, I had the feeling of trying to remember something that I'd been compelled to forget. My second statement wasn't much better. ‘Let us see,’ I said to Epikt, ‘if we cannot reconstruct something of which even the idea has been completely eradicated; let's see if we can't find it by considering the excessive evidence that it was never there.’ In this form, Epikt accepted it. Or else he decided to go along with me for the gag. I'm never quite sure how this clanking machine takes things.”

  “Well, no hole can be filled up perfectly,” said Cogsworth. “There will either be too much or too little of whatever is being used as the filler, or it will be of a different texture. The difficulty is that you didn't give Epikt any clues. There will be a million things forgotten or repressed that will show an irregularity of fill. How will Epikt know which of them is the one that you are somehow trying to remember?”

  “Item. The buried thing will have a buried tie with my boss man Smirnov,” Epiktistes, the machine, issued.

  “Yes, of course,” said Glasser. “Has Epikt turned up anything?”

  “Only a bushelful of things that seem to mean nothing,” said Smirnov sadly.

  “Item. Why, in Hungarian dictionary-encyclopedias of a certain period, is there padding between the words Sik and Sikamlos?” Epiktistes asked.

  “I follow your thought, Epikt,” Glasser agreed. “That could be a clue to something. If the idea and the name of something were expunged from every reference, then, in all original editions, other subjects on the same page would have to be padded slightly or another subject set in. This filling might be hurried, and therefore of an inferior quality. So, who knows a word that is no longer used and that comes between Sik and Sikamlos? If we knew the word would we know what it meant? And would it help us if we did?”

  “Item. Why is the young of a bear now referred to as a pup when once it may have been known as a cube?” Epikt issued.

  “I've never heard the young of a bear referred to as a cube,” Shiplap protested.

  “Epikt has come on that by our omission-appraisal method,” Smirnov explained. “There is probably an imperfect erasure working. I believe that cube is a distortion of a word that has somehow been forced out of folk memory. Epikt has this clue from a ballad which I believe is far removed from the main suppression or it would not have survived in even this distorted form.”

  “Item. Why is the awkward word coronal used for the simple doubling or return of a rope? Why is not a simpler word used?” Epikt asked.

  “Has Epikt considered that seamen have always used odd terms and that landsmen often adopt them?” Cogsworth asked.

  “Naturally—Epikt always considers everything,” Smirnov answered. “He has thousands of items now, and he believes that he will be able to put them into a pattern.”

  “Item. Why is there a great hiatus in period jazz? It's as though a great hunk of it had been yanked out by the roots, in the words of one Benny B-Flat.”

  “Smirnov, I know that your machine has unusual talents,” said Glasser, “but if he can tie these things together he's a concatenated genius.”

  “Or a cantankerous clown,” Smirnov said. “I know that he has to have some emotional release from the stress of his work, but he often overdoes it with humor and drollery.”

  “Item. Why is reference to the Amerindian peace pipe avoided as though some obscenity were attached to it, and none is discoverable?”

  “That's a new one while we're standing here,” said Smirnov. “He's accumulating quite a few of them.”

  “Item. Why is—” Epikt started.

  “Oh, shut up and get back to work,” Smirnov ordered his machine. “Let's leave him with it until tomorrow, folks. It may begin to pull together by then,” said Smirnov, stalking off.

  “Going to be real big,” Epiktistes issued to them after his boss man had left. “Boys and girls, it's going to be real big.”

  The next day they combined the meeting around the machine with a party for Shiplap. Aloysius Shiplap had grown—for the first time ever, anywhere—left-handed grass. It was not called that because it whorled to the left, but because the organic constituents of it were reversed in their construction. Left-handed minerals had been constructed long since, and perhaps they also occurred in nature. Left-handed bacteria and broths were long known, but nobody else had ever grown anything as complex as left-handed grass. “In everything, its effect is reversed,” Shiplap explained. “Cattle pastured on this would lose rather than gain weight. If there ever develops a market for really skinny cattle I'll be waiting for it.”

  They tossed off a good bit of Tosher's Gin as they got into the celebration. Tosher's is the only drink that will buzz up both humans and Ktistec machines. There is a flavoring used in Tosher's that gets machines high. The alcohol in it sometimes has a similar effect on humans.

  Epiktistes got as mellow as a Pottawattamie County pumpkin. Ktistec machines are like the Irish and the Indians. They start unwinding when the gin begins to flow. Their behavior could become quite wild unless carefully watched.

  And the Institute people were also having a good time.

  “I wouldn't have him any other way,” said Smirnov. “When he relaxes, he relaxes all over the place. Hawkins' machine literally bites people when it's frustrated by a difficult problem. Drexel's smaller machine comes all apart throwing arc snuffers and solenoids and is mighty dangerous to be around. There are worse sorts than this clown of a machine I have—though he does get pretty slushy when he's in his cups.”

  Valery Mok had gathered up a bunch
of Epiktistes' utterances and slipped them into cocktail cookies. Glasser, eating one, chewed on a bit of the metallic tape. He pulled it slithering, off his tongue, and read—

  “Item. What was the mysterious name written by a deaf moron on the wall of the men's room in an institution in Vinita, Oklahoma?”

  Epiktistes giggled, though the item may have been serious when he issued it.

  Cogsworth pulled one out of his mouth, stripping the crumbs from it with his tongue as it came.

  “Item. Why does Petit Larousse take five lines too many to say almost nothing about the ancient Chibcha Indians of Columbia?”

  At this point Valery went into her high laugh that would even make the alphabet sound funny.

  Shiplap pulled one out of his grinning mouth, and it seemed an extension of his grin as it came.

  “Item,” he read. “What is there about the Great Blue Island Swamp that puzzles geologists? Or—in the old bylining manner—how recent is recent?”

  Tosher's is giggle juice. Glasser's laughter sounded like a string of firecrackers going off.

  Smirnov extracted the utterance from his cookie in the lordly manner. He read the utterance as though it were of extreme importance—and it was.

  “Item. What peculiarity is almost revealed by the faded paint of old Rock Island and Pacific Railroad boxcars?”

  “Oh, stop giggling, Epikt, it isn't as funny as that!”

  “It is, it is,” bubbled Valery. Then she nearly choked bringing out from her own cookie a very long tape, and she read it with a very gay voice:

  “Item. Why, when the gruesome Little Willy verses were revived among sub-teenagers in the early nineteen-eighties, were they concerned almost entirely with chewing gum? In their Australian and British homelands six decades before, they were concerned with everything. But here we have gruesome verses about forty-nine different flavors of gum. As for instance,

  Little Willy mixed his gum

  with bits of Baby's cerebrum

  and Papa's blood for Juicy