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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Why, I left them down in the valley, Robert. That is, ah, down in that little ditch right there. Now you've got me worried again. I'm going to drive the camper down there and unload it. You'd better go on down and lend a hand too, Robert, and quit talking to all these funny-looking men here.”

  And Nina went back to Dublin's place for the camper.

  “It would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for that intrepid woman to drive a car down into that narrow ditch,” the eminent scientist Dr. Velikof Vonk said.

  “You know how that camel does it?” Clarence Little-Saddle offered, appearing of a sudden from nowhere. “He just closes one of his own eyes and flops back his ears and plunges right through. A camel is mighty narrow when he closes one eye and flops back his ears. Besides, they use a big-eyed needle in the act.”

  “Where'd this crazy man come from?” Robert Rampart demanded, jumping three feet in the air. “Things are coming out of the ground now. I want my land! I want my children! I want my wife! Whoops, here she comes driving it. Nina, you can't drive a loaded camper into a little ditch like that! You'll be killed or collapsed!”

  Nina Rampart drove the loaded camper into the little ditch at a pretty good rate of speed. The best of belief is that she just closed one eye and plunged right through. The car diminished and dropped, and it was smaller than a toy car. But it raised a pretty good cloud of dust as it bumped for several hundred yards across a ditch that was only five feet wide.

  “Rampart, it's akin to the phenomenon known as looming, only in reverse,” the eminent scientist Arpad Arkabaranan explained as he attempted to throw a rock across the narrow ditch. The rock rose very high in the air, seemed to hang at its apex while it diminished to the size of a grain of sand, and then fell into the ditch not six inches of the way across. There isn't anybody going to throw across a half-mile valley even if it looks five feet. “Look at a rising moon sometimes, Rampart. It appears very large, as though covering a great sector of the horizon, but it only covers one-half of a degree. It is hard to believe that you could set seven hundred and twenty of such large moons side by side around the horizon, or that it would take one hundred and eighty of the big things to reach from the horizon to a point overhead. It is also hard to believe that your valley is twelve hundred times as wide as it appears, but it has been surveyed, and it is.”

  “I want my land. I want my children. I want my wife,” Robert chanted dully. “Damn, I let her get away again.”

  “I tell you, Rampy,” Clarence Little-Saddle squared on him, “a man that lets his wife get away twice doesn't deserve to keep her. I give you till nightfall; then you forfeit. I've taken a liking to the brood. One of us is going to be down there tonight.”

  After a while a bunch of them were off in that little tavern on the road between Cleveland and Osage. It was only half a mile away. If the valley had run in the other direction, it would have been only six feet away.

  “It is a psychic nexus in the form of an elongated dome,” said the eminent scientist Dr. Velikof Vonk. “It is maintained subconsciously by the concatenation of at least two minds, the stronger of them belonging to a man dead for many years. It has apparently existed for a little less than a hundred years, and in another hundred years it will be considerably weakened. We know from our checking out folk tales of Europe as well as Cambodia that these ensorcelled areas seldom survive for more than two hundred and fifty years. The person who first set such a thing in being will usually lose interest in it, and in all worldly things, within a hundred years of his own death. This is a simple thanato-psychic limitation. As a short-term device, the thing has been used several times as a military tactic.

  “This psychic nexus, as long as it maintains itself, causes group illusion, but it is really a simple thing. It doesn't fool birds or rabbits or cattle, or cameras, only humans. There is nothing meteorological about it. It is strictly psychological. I'm glad I was able to give a scientific explanation to it or it would have worried me.”

  “It is continental fault coinciding with a noospheric fault,” said the eminent scientist Arpad Arkabaranan. “The valley really is half a mile wide, and at the same time it really is only five feet wide. If we measured correctly, we would get these dual measurements. Of course it is meteorological! Everything including dreams is meteorological. It is the animals and cameras which are fooled, as lacking a true dimension; it is only humans who see the true duality. The phenomenon should be common along the whole continental fault where the earth gains or loses half a mile that has to go somewhere. Likely it extends through the whole sweep of the Cross Timbers. Many of those trees appear twice, and many do not appear at all. A man in the proper state of mind could farm that land or raise cattle on it, but it doesn't really exist. There is a clear parallel in the Luftspiegelungthal sector in the Black Forest of Germany which exists, or does not exist, according to the circumstances and to the attitude of the beholder. Then we have the case of Mad Mountain in Morgan; County, Tennessee, which isn't there all the time; and also the Little Lobo Mirage south of Presidio, Texas, from which twenty thousand barrels of water were pumped in one two-and-a-half-year period before the mirage reverted to mirage status. I'm glad I was able to give a scientific explanation to this or it would have worried me.”

  “I just don't understand how he worked it,” said the eminent scientist Willy McGilly; “Cedar bark, jack-oak leaves, and the world ‘Petahauerat.’ The thing's impossible! When I was a boy and we wanted to make a hide-out, we used bark from the skunk-spruce tree, the leaves of a box-elder, and the word was ‘Boadicea.’ All three elements are wrong here. I cannot find a scientific explanation for it, and it does worry me.”

  They went back to Narrow Valley. Robert Rampart was still chanting dully: “I want my land. I want my children. I want my wife.”

  Nina Rampart came chugging up out of the narrow ditch in the camper and emerged through that little gate a few yards down the fence row.

  “Supper's ready and we're tired of waiting for you, Robert,” she said. “A fine homesteader you are! Afraid to come onto your own land! Come along now; I'm tired of waiting for you.”

  “I want my land! I want my children! I want my wife!” Robert Rampart still chanted. “Oh, there you are, Nina. You stay here this time. I want my land! I want my children! I want an answer to this terrible thing.”

  “It is time we decided who wears the pants in this family,” Nina said stoutly. She picked up her husband, slung him over her shoulder, carried him to the camper and dumped him in, slammed (as it seemed) a dozen doors at once, and drove furiously down into the Narrow Valley, which already seemed wider.

  Why, that place was getting normaler and normaler the minute! Pretty soon it looked almost as wide as was supposed to be. The psychic nexus in the form an elongated dome had collapsed. The continental fault that coincided with the noospheric fault had faced facts and decided to conform. The Ramparts were in effective possession of their homestead, and Narrow Valley was as normal as any place anywhere.

  “I have lost my land,” Clarence Little-Saddle moaned. “It was the land of my father Clarence Big-Saddle, and I meant it to be the land of my son Clarence Bare-Back. It looked so narrow that people did not notice how wide it was, and people did not try to enter it. Now I have lost it.”

  Clarence Little-Saddle and the eminent scientist Willy McGilly were standing on the edge of Narrow Valley, which now appeared its true half-mile extent. The moon was just rising, so big that it filled a third of the sky. Who would have imagined that it would take a hundred and eighty of such monstrous things to reach from the horizon to a point overhead, and yet you could sight it with sighters and figure it so.

  “I had a little bear-cat by the tail and I let go,” Clarence groaned. “I had a fine valley for free, and I have lost it. I am like that hard-luck guy in the funny-paper or Job in the Bible. Destitution is my lot.”

  Willy McGilly looked around furtively. They were alone on the edge of the half-mile
-wide valley.

  “Let's give it a booster shot,” Willy McGilly said.

  Hey, those two got with it! They started a snapping fire and began to throw the stuff onto it. Bark from the dog-elm tree — how do you know it won't work?

  It was working! Already the other side of the valley seemed a hundred yards closer, and there were alarmed noises coming up from the people in the valley.

  Leaves from a black locust tree — and the valley narrowed still more! There was, moreover, terrified screaming of both children and big people from the depths of Narrow Valley, and the happy voice of Mary Mabel Rampart chanting “Earthquake! Earthquake!”

  “That my valley be always wide and flourish and such stuff, and green with money and grass!” Clarence Little-Saddle orated in Pawnee chant style, “but that it be narrow if intruders come, smash them like bugs!”

  People, that valley wasn't over a hundred feet wide; now, and the screaming of the people in the bottom of the valley had been joined by the hysterical coughing of the camper car starting up.

  Willy and Clarence threw everything that was left on the fire. But the word? The word? Who remembers the word?

  “Corsicanatexas!” Clarence Little-Saddle howled out with confidence he hoped would fool the fates.

  He was answered not only by a dazzling sheet of summer lightning, but also by thunder and raindrops.

  “Chahiksi!” Clarence Little-Saddle swore. “It worked. I didn't think it would. It will be all right now. I can use the rain.”

  The valley was again a ditch only five feet wide.

  The camper car struggled out of Narrow Valley through the little gate. It was smashed flat as a sheet of paper, and the screaming kids and people in it had only one dimension.

  “It's closing in! It's closing in!” Robert Rampart roared, and he was no thicker than if he had been made out of cardboard.

  “We're smashed like bugs,” the Rampart boys intoned. “We're thin like paper.

  “Mort, ruine, ecrasement!” spoke-acted Cecilia Rampart like the great tragedienne she was.

  “Help! Help!” Nina Rampart croaked, but she winked at Willy and Clarence as they rolled by. “This homesteading jag always did leave me a little flat.”

  “Don't throw those paper dolls away. They might be the Ramparts,” Mary Mabel called.

  The camper car coughed again and bumped along on level ground. This couldn't last forever. The car was widening out as it bumped along.

  “Did we overdo it, Clarence?” Willy McGilly asked. “What did one flat-lander say to the other?”

  “Dimension of us never got around,” Clarence said. “No, I don't think we overdid it, Willy. That car must be eighteen inches wide already, and they all ought to be normal by the time they reach the main road. The next time I do it, I think I'll throw wood-grain plastic on the fire to see who's kidding who.”

  Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne

  “We've been on some tall ones,” said Gregory Smirnov of the Institute, “but we've never stood on the edge of a bigger one than this, nor viewed one with shakier expectations. Still, if the calculations of Epiktistes are correct, this will work.” “People, it will work,” Epikt said.

  This was Epiktistes the Ktistec machine? Who'd have believed it? The main bulk of Epikt was five floors below them, but he had run an extension of himself up to this little penthouse lounge. All it took was a cable, no more than a yard in diameter, and a functional head set on the end of it.

  And what a head he chose! It was a sea-serpent head, a dragon head, five feet long and copied from an old carnival float. Epikt had also given himself human speech of a sort, a blend of Irish and Jewish and Dutch comedian patter from ancient vaudeville. Epikt was a comic to his last para-DNA relay when he rested his huge, boggle-eyed, crested head on the table there and smoked the biggest stogies ever born.

  But he was serious about this project.

  “We have perfect test conditions,” the machine Epikt said as though calling them to order. “We set out basic texts, and we take careful note of the world as it is. If the world changes, then the texts should change here before our eyes. For our test pilot, we have taken that portion of our own middle-sized city that can be viewed from this fine vantage point. If the world in its past-present continuity is changed by our meddling, then the face of our city will also change instantly as we watch it.

  “We have assembled here the finest minds and judgments in the world: eight humans and one Ktistec machine, myself. Remember that there are nine of us. It might be important.”

  The nine finest minds were: Epiktistes, the transcendent machine who put the “K” in Ktistec; Gregory Smirnov, the large-souled director of the Institute; Valery Mok, an incandescent lady scientist; her over-shadowed and over-intelligent husband Charles Cogsworth; the humorless and inerrant Glasser; Aloysius Shiplap, the seminal genius; Willy McGilly, a man of unusual parts (the seeing third finger on his left hand he had picked up on one of the planets of Kapteyn's Star) and no false modesty; Audifax O'Hanlon; and Diogenes Pontifex. The latter two men were not members of the Institute (on account of the Minimal Decency Rule), but when the finest minds in the world are assembled, these two cannot very well be left out.

  “We are going to tamper with one small detail in past history and note its effect,” Gregory said. “This has never been done before openly. We go back to an era that has been called ‘A patch of light in the vast gloom,’ the time of Charlemagne. We consider why that light went out and did not kindle others. The world lost four hundred years by that flame expiring when the tinder was apparently ready for it. We go back to that false dawn of Europe and consider where it failed. The year was 778, and the region was Spain. Charlemagne had entered alliance with Marsilies, the Arab king of Saragossa, against the Caliph Abd ar-Rahmen of Cordova. Charlemagne took such towns as Pamplona, Huesca and Gerona and cleared the way to Marsilies in Saragossa. The Caliph accepted the situation. Saragossa should be independent, a city open to both Moslems and Christians. The northern marches to the border of France should be permitted their Christianity, and there would be peace for everybody.

  “This Marsilies had long treated Christians as equals in Saragossa, and now there would be an open road from Islam into the Frankish Empire. Marsilies gave Charlemagne thirty-three scholars (Moslem, Jewish and Christian) and some Spanish mules to seal the bargain. And there could have been a cross-fertilization of cultures.

  “But the road was closed at Roncevalles where the rearguard of Charlemagne was ambushed and destroyed on its way back to France. The ambushers were more Basque than Moslems, but Charlemagne locked the door at the Pyrenees and swore that he would not let even a bird fly over that border thereafter. He kept the road closed, as did his son and his grandsons. But when he sealed off the Moslem world, he also sealed off his own culture.

  “In his latter years he tried a revival of civilization with a ragtag of Irish half-scholars, Greek vagabonds and Roman copyists who almost remembered an older Rome. These weren't enough to revive civilization, and yet Charlemagne came close with them. Had the Islam door remained open, a real revival of learning might have taken place then rather than four hundred years later. We are going to arrange that the ambush at Roncevalles did not happen and that the door between the two civilizations was not closed. Then we will see what happens to us.”

  “Intrusion like a burglar bent,” said Epikt.

  “Who's a burglar?” Glasser demanded.

  “I am,” Epikt said. “We all are. It's from an old verse. I forget the author; I have it filed in my main mind downstairs if you're interested.”

  “We set out a basic text of Hilarius,” Gregory continued. “We note it carefully, and we must remember it the way it is. Very soon, that may be the way it was. I believe that the words will change on the very page of this book as we watch them. Just as soon as we have done what we intend to do.”

  The basic text marked in the open book read:

  The traitor Gano, playing a multiplex game
, with money from the Cordova Caliph hired Basque Christians (dressed as Saragossan Mozarabs) to ambush the rear-guard of the Frankish force. To do this it was necessary that Gano keep in contact with the Basques and at the same time delay the rear-guard of the Franks. Gano, however, served both as guide and scout for the Franks. The ambush was effected. Charlemagne lost his Spanish mules. And he locked the door against the Moslem world.

  That was the text by Hilarius.

  “When we, as it were, push the button (give the nod to Epiktistes), this will be changed,” Gregory said. “Epikt, by a complex of devices which he has assembled, will send an Avatar (partly of mechanical and partly of ghostly construction), and something will have happened to the traitor Gano along about sundown one night on the road to Roncevalles.”

  “I hope the Avatar isn't expensive,” Willy McGilly said. “When I was a boy we got by with a dart whittled out of slippery elm wood.”

  “This is no place for humor,” Glasser protested. “Who did you, as a boy, ever kill in time, Willy?”

  “Lots of them. King Wu of the Manchu, Pope Adrian VII, President Hardy of our own country, King Marcel of Auvergne, the philosopher Gabriel Toeplitz. It's a good thing we got them. They were a bad lot.”

  “But I never heard of any of them, Willy,” Glasser insisted.

  “Of course not. We killed them when they were kids.”

  “Enough of your fooling, Willy,” Gregory cut it off.

  “Willy's not fooling,” the machine Epikt said. “Where do you think I got the idea?”

  “Regard the world,” Aloysius said softly. “We see our own middle-sized town with half a dozen towers of pastel-colored brick. We will watch it as it grows or shrinks. It will change if the world changes.”

  “There's two shows in town I haven't seen,” Valery said. “Don't let them take them away! After all, there are only three shows in town.”

  “We regard the Beautiful Arts as set out in the reviews here which we have also taken as basic texts,” Audifax O'Hanlon said. “You can say what you want to, but the arts have never been in meaner shape. Painting is of three schools only, all of them bad. Sculpture is the heaps-of-rusted-metal school and the obscene tinker-toy effects. The only popular art, graffiti on mingitorio walls, has become unimaginative, stylized and ugly.