“If we could only resurrect the men who first had these visions, we'd have a starting place,” said High-Life. “We've a dozen projects going, but none of them has the touch of a master. Could we find any of these great dreamers —”
“But Maybe Jones is still alive,” said Hilda. “They say he still travels trying to find his place again.”
“Great green gophers! Send for him!” howled Good-Time Charley Wu. “It's originals like him that we want.”
Word came to Maybe Jones on a distant planet that a group of people had some knowledge of the Perfect Place, and that they wanted to pool their knowledge with his.
Maybe burned up very light itself getting to them. This was it!
The Planning City had grown into a vast complex of buildings. Maybe Jones passed the very large building that housed the Bureau of Wonderful Islands. Over its doorway was the motto “Adagios of Islands, O my Prodigal” from Crane.
“Not quite what I had in mind,” said Maybe Jones.
He passed the large building that housed the Bureau of Wonderful Fields. Over its doorway was the motto —
“If I was thirsty, I have heard a spring,
If I was dusty, I have found a field,”
—from Belloc.
“The fields are always too far from town,” said Maybe.
Then, right across the street, he saw it, the small building that housed the Bureau of Wonderful Cities. And over its doorway was a verse from the immortal Hiram Glotz:
“Let sheep lie down in grass! I'll toe the rail!
I've got a thirst that ain't for Adam's ale!
I'll trade your fields of green for bistros brown
Where ‘Dusty’ is a red-haired girl in town.”
“Now that is a little bit more like it,” said Maybe Jones. He went in and boldly announced himself, and they fell all over his neck.
“Margaret!” Maybe cried to the Houri. “You were there! You know where the Perfect Place is!”
“Maybe, I've been everywhere,” she said. “I like them all. I think they're all perfect once you get things to going. I've been told that I lack discernment. Boys, you can't have everything, so that discernment has got to go when it gets in the way of exuberance. No, Maybe, I've run into you lots of times, but I just can't place your place. We'll build it though. Just don't leave me out of it.”
“The pitch is this,” said High-Life Higgins, after they had eaten and drunk and made cheer to excess. “We have now arrived at the three ultimates: Immortality, Heaven, Hell. We have just achieved the first of them. We are now setting up projects to construct the other two, on the premise that one man's Heaven is another man's Hell. We must build final enclaves for people of every choice. We cannot sit idly by and ask what we would do with the after-life. This is the after-life. It became so as soon as immortality was achieved.”
“Will you build my Perfect Place?” asked Maybe with hope.
“Sure. And ideas like yours are what this bureau needs. You wouldn't believe what some of the other bureaus have to work with. They get the arty ducks and the philosophy buffs and the peace-and-benevolence beats. Why, you get on jags like that and you'll be tired of them in a thousand years or less. How are they going to stand up through eternity? The Green Fields might do, for the green among us. The Islands might do, for those of insular mind and soul. But our own small bureau caters to the high-old-time, rather than the peace-eternal, crowd. We believe here (we know we are not the majority, but there has to be something for everyone) that the rooting old good-time town and the crowd that goes with it can stand up to the long-time gaff as well as anything. Would you like to see some of the work we have been doing?”
“I certainly would,” said Maybe. “It might strike me as a little amateurish, but I'm sure it's in the right line.”
“By our total recall methods we are able to reconstruct the Seven Sin Cities of History, Jones. They are the folk dreams that have also been raucous facts. The selection is one-sided, being out of the context of the old Western Civilization from which most of us descend. But they were such a hopping bunch of towns that (under the old recension) they had to be destroyed: by blast-from-Heaven, lava-flow, earthquake, sinking-in-the-sea, cow-fire, earthquake again and fire, hurricane and tidal wave. They were too hot to last.
“Here is Sodom. Now take a close-up of its old Siddim Square District where they had such a noisy go of it before it was wiped out. Go down and sample it.”
Maybe Jones sampled old Sodom. He was back in about an hour.
“It's about as good as you could expect from that time,” he said. “The drinks were too sweet and sticky. So were the girls. The music was only fair. How do you tune a ram's horn anyhow? But, man, it won't stack up with the Perfect Place at all.”
“Try Pompeii,” said Good-Time Charley Wu. “We'll set you down on the corner of Cardo and Decumanus streets. That was the first red light district to be so lighted and so named. Don't cut it too close. Watch out for the hot lava when you leave.”
Maybe Jones was back from Pompeii in half an hour.
“It's strictly Little Italy and Little Egypt stuff,” he told them, but he was smiling. “It's all right for a gag. It's fun. But it isn't on the same side of the street with the Perfect Place.”
“Try Lisbon,” said Hilda. “It's sort of a test. In its own century Lisbon was spiritually of the West Coast of Africa though geographically in Europe. Don't fall in the harbor going in, and watch the earthquake coming out.”
Maybe Jones was in old Lisbon for two hours. He liked it.
“Man, man!” he said. “It's on a tangent, and not the true line, of course. But, were I not committed to the Perfect Place—man!”
“Here's Port Royal before it was sunk in the sea,” said High-Life. “Some like it. Some don't.”
Maybe was out of Port Royal in half an hour.
“It's all there,” he said, “but they forgot to cook it. They even forgot to take the hide off it. People, a place has to have the illusion of smoothness—that's part of the game. No, Port Royal is strictly a short-haul place.”
“Have a go at Chicago before the fire,” said Good-Time Charley Wu. “It had its followers.”
Maybe was back from Chicago in fifteen minutes.
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “We were speaking of cities, and you give me a country town. Size isn't the test. Oh, it's all right for boys, but who's going to be a boy for eternity?”
“Two to go,” said Hilda. “Try San Francisco before the quake and the fire.”
So Maybe tried it. He was smiling when he came back.
“It dates, it dates,” he told them. “For amateur theatricals, yes. For eternity, no.”
“One more,” said High-Life. “Here is Galveston just before the hurricane and tidal wave of 1900. Try Old Tremont Street downtown where it crosses Post Office Street.”
Maybe Jones went down in old Galveston and didn't come back. They sent for him and couldn't find him. He was gone all night. He came back the middle of next morning, looped to the ports and walking with a seaman's roll.
“It's put me in the mood,” he cried. “I'm ready to go to work. Hey, that place has a touch of the eternal! I found a way to tune it and visited Galveston in earlier and later years. I picked up an interesting piece of history too. You know, they never did bury any of the dead people after the hurricanes and tidal waves. They just ground them up and sold them for crab-meat sandwiches. Well, let's go to work. It's brought the Perfect Place back clear to my mind, and I'm ready to get with it.”
“Jones, this is the Empyrean, the eternal fire-stuff, that we hold in our hands,” High-Life said. “I know that these reconstructed legend cities leave a lot out, but men like you will help us put it in.” “Before I start, can we fix it so a man can get higher and higher and never have to come down?” Maybe wanted to know.
“Yes we can,” Good-Time Charley told him. “The hangover, whether physical or spiritual, was a death in miniature. We have whipped it, as
we have whipped death itself. We have a free hand here.”
“There's got to be a catch to it,” said Maybe. “Heavens, or Hells, depending on the viewpoint, will be expensive.”
“Long-term funding is the answer,” said Good-Time Charley. “The longest terms ever—forever. Put it all in. Set it all down, and we will make it that way.”
“Man, man!” said Maybe Jones. He sat down at a table and took a large square of paper. He titled it modestly:
“The Empyrean According to Maybe Jones”
He began to write the specifications, and building was begun on the Perfect Place for people of a certain choice.
“That all the girls be built like clepsydras,” he wrote, “you know, the ancient water-clock. It's a much more sophisticated shape than the hour-glass figure.”
“Put me in,” Margaret cried. “I'm shaped like a pendulum clock. Notice the way I swing sometime.”
(Listen, this isn't a private place for Maybe Jones. It's for all high-flyers everywhere. There will be plenty of room and variety in it.)
“That all the bars be a mile, hell, make it two miles, long,” Maybe wrote. “That there be high liars there who'll make Live-Man Lutz sound like a parson. That they take the sky off early in the morning so you can get as high as you want all day long. That they have girls who'll make Little Midnight Mullins and Giggles McGuire and Belle Hellios and Susie-Q look like sheepdogs. That—”
Hey, get in on this if you're going to. They're building it now! If you are an arty duck or a philosophy buff or a peace-and-benevolence beat, then you can go to hell — to your own appropriate bureau — and be heard. But if you go for the high-old-time stuff, then make your wants known here. If you are of the raffish elite and want to go where you can get higher and higher and never have to come down from it, if you want the good-time town and the crowd that goes with it for a long haul (and it's going to be a very long haul), then howl it out so they'll know that you're interested.
If you want anything at all added, tell them now, and they'll put it in.
Contact them by regular mail, or phone or voxo. Or tear out a sheet of this screed, scribble your wants in the margin, and drop it in any mailbox. It will get there. The address is:
“Bureau of Wonderful Cities. Old Earth.”
That's all you need, but get with it. They're building our place now.
Hands Of The Man
His forearms were like a lion's, sinewed and corded and mountainous. One could hardly help looking at them, and he was looking at them himself. His hands, no less remarkable than his forearms, lay palm-up on the bar. The hands of the man were intricately and powerfully fashioned; on one of the lesser fingers of the left hand there was a heavy gold band three-quarters of an inch thick, and wide. The rest of him was a stocky skyman, fair and freckled. He was blue-eyed and lightly lashed and browed, and he gazed at his hands like a boy.
It was a tavern frequented by skymen and traveling men of all sorts. A spotter had seen the man; and now he came and they talked.
“You are very interested in something,” said the spotter Henry Hazelman.
“Not at all,” the skyman said. “A man who is deeply interested has the same appearance as one who is completely absentminded, as was my case. I was staring at my hands, and both they and my mind were empty. But before I had left off thinking, I was musing on the contrast between the two of them.”
The skyman was named Hodl Oskanian, and the name was the least odd thing about him.
“I was looking at my left hand which I was born with,” continued Hodl, “and at my right hand which I made myself. It is the saying of the palmists that we form the lines of our right hand by the tide of our lives.
“You will notice, my friend, that all the lines of my left hand are graven so deeply that a coin could be stood up in any of them when the hand is flat. Get a hold on your emotions, man, and then look at that Head Line! Should it not betoken genius! You would say that a man with a Head Line like that would be capable of anything, and you would be right. Hold on to your eyeballs with both hands when you take a look at that Heart Line! Notice the Generosity Passage where it goes between the Mountains of Integrity and Nobility. Doesn't it shake you a little to stand beside a man with a Heart Line like that?”
“Yes, something does shake me a little,” Henry Hazelman said.
“Look at that Humility Bump!” Hodl all but sang, “I'll bet I've got more humility than any man in creation! If I ever met a man with a hand like mine I'd follow him to the end of the universes just to shake it. Steady yourself now, friend. Look at that Life Line! It curves clear around the heel of my hand like the Ocean-River circling the ancient world. I couldn't die at less than a hundred and twenty with a Life Line like that.”
“Yes, it is quite a hand,” said Henry Hazelman. “But not the right hand,” said Hodl. “Notice that, while it also is one of the most fascinating hands in the worlds, it is not up to the left which I was born with. It is the hand of a compromised genius. Is there any other kind? It is like the hand of a Leonardo or an Aquinas or an Eoin Dinneen or an Aristotle or a Willy McGilly—the hand of a man capable of reaching the ultimates, but perhaps not of surpassing them. This comparative fuzziness of line is to be found in the right hands of all really great men. Even we fall short of our destiny. Have you the price of a Beer?”
“Yes, here, give my friend a Beer,” Henry cried to the barman. It was the green Beer recently introduced from Barathron, and it had become a favorite of the skymen.
And when the left hand of Hodl flicked out to take the Beer, Henry Hazelman saw what he had been waiting to see. He went away.
Henry went to David Daumier the diamond factor. “It's as big as a hen's egg, David, my word on it,” Henry was insisting.
“To you all rocks are as big as hens' eggs,” David said. “I wonder I never see such small eggs. It would take a hundred of them to make a dozen.”
“I've never given you a wrong turn, David, and I never saw the like of this one.”
“And probably glass.”
“Wouldn't I know the difference?”
“Yes, you would know the difference.” And already David Daumier was going along with Henry the spotter.
“There are little islands in that Head Line.” Hodl still talked to himself and to several who listened in both amusement and admiration. “In anyone but myself it would mean that a person with such islands in his Head Line was a little peculiar. Good afternoon, sir, is my conversation worth a Beer to you? I have said it myself a hundred times that I'm the most interesting person I ever listened to.” “Yes, your talk is worth that,” said David Daumier. “Barman, fill my friend again. That is a gaudy little ring you have there, skyman. The stone is simulated, of course.”
It was the finest diamond that David had ever seen, and he had traded as many diamonds as any man in the universes.
“There's deception in you,” Hodl rebuked him. “Let us be open. You are a professional. There's a little blue light that appears behind the eyes of a professional when he sees a stone like this. Did you know that? You sparkle from it. And the stone is not simulated.”
“A little too yellow.”
“Golden rather. All great diamonds are golden. The small blue ones are for children.”
“We will assume it is hot. Fortunately I can handle it, at somewhat of a discount, of course.”
“If it were hot and of this size, would you not know about it?”
“It isn't from Earth,” said David. “I doubt that it's of any trabant or asteroid. It hasn't the orange cast of those of Ganymede, and I'd know a diamond from Hokey Planet anywhere. Is it from Astrobe? Pudibundia? Bellota?”
“No, it isn't from any of the Hundred Worlds, nor from any licensed planet. I didn't pick it up in any such backyards. It's from a distance.”
“Has it a name?”
“A private name only.”
“Likely it has a flaw.”
“If it had a dozen it would still be peerl
ess. But it has none.”
“Not even a built-in curse?”
“I have worn it in health. I believe it is lucky.”
“Since we admit it has value, why are you not afraid to wear it openly?”
“I'm a full-sized man, and armed, and in my wits. I would not be easily taken.”
“It is too large to market,” said David, “and diamonds are down.”
“To the buyer, the market is always down.”
“If you would set a price—to turn the conversation to the point.”
“Oh, if you like it, I'll give it to you,” Hodl said.
David ordered a drink to settle his nerves before he answered.
“For a moment I didn't recognize your opening,” he told Hodl after he had sipped and swallowed. “Skyman, I would bet that you have haggled prices on Trader Planets.”
“Aye, I've dealt with the gentlemen there and found them not too sharp,” said Hodl. “I left the Traders, shirtless and barefoot, it's true, but not much worse than I was when I went there. I'm an easy mark.”
“I wouldn't like to play poker with you.”
“It is not my game. I am too guileless.”
“Would five thousand interest you?”
“Not very much,” Hodl said, looking at the Bump of Rectitude of his right hand. “I wouldn't stoop to pick it off the floor, but if it were in my pocket I wouldn't trouble to throw it away.”
“Yes, you have haggled on Trader Planets. I could double it, but that is my limit.”
“That will do nicely, David,” said Hodl.
“What? You will go along with me? You will sell?”
“I will sell nothing. Am I a merchant? I will give it to you as I said that I would. But to salve your feelings, I will accept the small sum you have named. Out of respect to you, I would hardly accept a smaller sum with an easy mind. Bring it here and lay it on the bar.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 67
