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

by R. A. Lafferty

  But I wish it were not the case.

  Were it not so, then whole new areas of speculation could be opened up. Very many things, geological and geographical, archeological and anthropological, could be seen from a new viewpoint. And yet, as they tell us again and again, this is an imperative that cannot be bent or broken. The theory that ice-caps are accompanied by low seas, and that the melting of them is accompanied by higher seas, is as adamant a theory as is the theory that the speed of light is the limit of all speed.

  This means that it was during the very deep ice ages, when that terrific amount of water had been sucked up out of the oceans, that the land-bridges were formed; those from Asia to Alaska; those across the North Atlantic connecting (not always at the same time) Labrador to Greenland, Greenland to Iceland, Iceland to a more extensive Scandinavia; that connected Britain to the continent. It would have to be that they were formed in the deep Ice Ages when so great an amount of water was locked up in the ice-caps and the levels of the oceans consequently lowered. And it would have to be during such a deep Ice Age that men first crossed from Asia to America, madly traversing eight thousand miles of ice and snow from habitable land to habitable land, from one uncrowded land to another uncrowded land. Whatever impelled them to such madness. I shiver at the folk memory of it that wells up in me.

  And it had to be in such a deep Ice Age that most of the pleistocene plant and animal migrations took place between Asia and America and between America and Europe. The migration had to be over the same terrible routes back when they really had winters — a hundred thousand years long. This, of course, must include the migrations of many species that are killed by simple frost. It is a breathtaking thing, and it could not have happened any other way.

  The dates and periods themselves are so loose and allow so great a margin of error that recurrent land-risings could as well have taken place during interglacials as during glacials—if only the theory could be bent to fit such a thing. Rather than have such migrations take place during the terrible Wurm Glaciation (The Wisconsin Ice Age in America), it would have been much more pleasant to set them in the preceding Third or Sangamon Interglacial, the most total of the meltings. We feel a compassion for the people and animals and plants setting forth on such terrible and insane migrations in the time of very deep ice and cold. We would help them if we could. But it is impossible. Others have tried it and been broken in the attempt.

  Belloc wrote in 1926 (in his controversy with H. G. Wells over the outline of History, in which controversy the two men wrote books back and forth as rapidly as other men would write letters) that it was not absolutely certain that low seas corresponded with glacial periods and high seas with interglacials. And it was on this point that Wells whipped him, completely and to be remembered forever, with his magnificent display of scorn. And so the day was saved for ‘science’. (Belloc had been leading on points up till then; a good sportscaster would have carded him about seven rounds out of nine.)

  Boule had written in 1906 much more strongly on the same subject, stating (against all reason) that Ice Ages were periods of very high seas, and that interglacials (with the partial or complete melting of the ice-caps) were always periods of very low seas, with the Continents standing up at their highest points.

  The arguments given by these two men were novel, but they will not stand the test of logic. What could be expected of Belloc (a layman in all sciences except History) who stated that the wonder stories of Wells were important, but that his science (on which the great Wells so prided himself) was often silly parroting? This certainly shows a lack of proportion and judgment in Belloc. Moreover Belloc, on the word of his contemporaries, was sometimes given to levity on even serious subjects. He was the straight-faced kidder, and it often could not be determined whether he was kidding or not.

  And again, since both Belloc and Boule began life as Frenchmen, logic could hardly be expected from them in any case.

  A simple analogy will show why the established theory (low seas during Ice Ages, high seas during time of melting) cannot be challenged.

  The Ocean Seas as well as the Continents are afloat on the Earth's magma, the solid flow. The Underlay is very heavy; the Ocean Seas as well as the Continents are comparatively light, of the same order. The whole may be considered as a complex liquid balance considered over a long period of time, and we are talking about long periods of time. The principle of Isostasis (vertical sections of Equal Weight floating on the heavier Magma) applies to the Ocean as well as to the Continental Lands.

  Therefore, the Continents can be considered as rafts floating in a pond. Let us consider one such rogue raft floating in such a pond. The pond is very deep, and a hundred such rafts could not touch bottom. The raft floats free and easy, and it floats very low in the water.

  The Raft has on it a very large empty water-tank. We do not know how the tank came to be there, but it is essential to the analogy. This is a very warm period. There is no ice anywhere, so the water is very high and it comes up quite high on the floating raft.

  Then comes an Ice Age, not suddenly, but steadily and relentlessly. The water from the Oceans is deposited on large parts of the Continents as Ice to a depth of more than two miles. This takes a hundred thousand years, a long enough period to give Isostasis a chance to work.

  In our analogy, water is pumped from the pond into the large empty water-tank on the raft. This will, of course, lower the water level of the deep pond, and make the raft ride higher in the water. And, as yet more water is pumped out of the pond and into the water-tank on the raft, the water level of the pond is lowered still more and the raft floats still higher in the water.

  And when the maximum amount of water has been pumped out of the pond and into the water-tank on the raft, the level of the pond will be so lowered that the raft (with its added load) will now float freely in the air above the lowered level of the pond.

  We love logic and its relentless conclusions. It is so much more solid a thing than the wispy novelties. But in this case we feel a certain nostalgia for a thing that is impossible.

  But suppose, in some Science Fiction context, that it were possible (as we have just shown that it is not) that the Raft should sink lower the Pond when a very great load was placed upon it, and rise higher when the load was removed. In that case we would now be in the early period of an isostatic adjustment of rising continents, and in a few thousand years we should see the land-bridges appear once more.

  We had a reverie recently of a sea of sub-tropical grass reaching (with only a few little gaps and straits constantly opening and closing) clear across the North Atlantic Ocean. There was another such grassy bridge across the North Pacific. Men and plants and animals migrated for many thousands of years in a warmer and more abundant climate than we have ever had since. Species that would be killed by a breath of frost grew and spread in a world that had no frost. Pond and brook fishes traveled from one world to another, and birds of limited range. Hardwood and softwood trees, in their thousands of varieties, made the trip both ways, leisurely and pleasantly. Earth-worms and hop-toads made the trip, and day-flies and gnats.

  This was the spacious Sangamon Interglacial that might have been, the finest weather and the most emerging land ever.

  Could such a thing have been, a hundred anomalies in a dozen sciences would be solved; the suspiciously greater antiquity of man in America than the present theory allows; the identity of sub-tropical plants in both hemispheres; Ice Age beach marks in Scandinavia seven hundred feet higher than present beach-marks when in all logic they should be seven hundred feet deep in the ocean; the existence in America of an archaic race, the lank, noble-nosed, straight-eyed plains Indians who are not Mongols. So many things would fit in so much more neatly if the theory could be changed.

  But it can not be. There are certain irrefutables. Ice Ages are periods of Low Seas (the more heavily-loaded Raft riding ever higher on the waters of the Pond). And, when all the Ice is finally melted, the present Sea-Por
ts of the World will be under deep water (the Raft, with its load completely removed, will finally be submerged by the rising waters of the Pond).

  Camels And Dromedaries, Clem

  “Greeks and Armenians, Clem. Condors and buzzards.” “Samoyeds and Malemutes, Clem. Galena and molybdenite.”

  Oh here, here! What kind of talk is that?

  That is definitive talk. That is fundamental talk. There is no other kind of talk that will bring us to the core of this thing.

  Clem Clendenning was a traveling salesman, a good one. He had cleared $35,000 the previous year. He worked for a factory in a midwestern town. The plant produced a unique product, and Clem sold it over one-third of the nation.

  Things were going well with him. Then a little thing happened, and it changed his life completely.

  Salesmen have devices by which they check and double-check. One thing they do when stopping at hotels in distant towns; they make sure they're registered. This sounds silly, but it isn't. A salesman will get calls from his home office and it is important that the office be able to locate him. Whenever Clem registered at a hotel he would check back after several hours to be sure that they had him entered correctly. He would call in from somewhere, and he would ask for himself. And it sometimes did happen that he was told he was not registered. At this Clem would always raise a great noise to be sure that they had him straight thereafter.

  Arriving in a town this critical day, Clem had found himself ravenously hungry and tired to his depths. Both states were unusual to him. He went to a grill and ate gluttonously for an hour, so much so that people stared at him. He ate almost to the point of apoplexy. Then he taxied to the hotel, registered, and went up to his room at once. Later, not remembering whether he had even undressed or not (it was early afternoon), he threw himself onto the bed and slept, as it seemed, for hours.

  But he noted that it was only a half hour later that he woke, feeling somehow deprived, as though having a great loss. He was floundering around altogether in a daze, and was once more possessed of an irrational hunger. He unpacked a little, put on a suit, and was surprised to find that it hung on him quite loosely.

  He went out with the feeling that he had left something on the bed that was not quite right, and yet he had been afraid to look. He found a hearty place and had another great meal. And then (at a different place so that people would not be puzzled at him) he had still another one. He was feeling better now, but mighty queer, mighty queer.

  Fearing that he might be taken seriously ill, he decided to check his bearings. He used his old trick. He found a phone and called his hotel and asked for himself.

  “We will check,” said the phone girl, and a little bit later she said, “Just a minute, he will be on the line in a minute.”

  “Oh, great green goat,” he growled, “I wonder how they have me mixed up this time.”

  And Clem was about to raise his voice unpleasantly to be sure that they got him straight, when a voice came onto the phone.

  This is the critical point.

  It was his own voice.

  The calling Clendenning laughed first. And then he froze. It was no trick. It was no freak. There was no doubt that it was his own voice. Clem used the dictaphone a lot and he knew the sound of his own voice.

  And now he heard his own voice raised higher in all its unmistakable aspects, a great noise about open idiots who call on the phone and then stand silent without answering.

  “It's me all right,” Clem grumbled silently to himself. “I sure do talk rough when I'm irritated.”

  There was a law against harassment by telephone, the voice on the phone said. By God, the voice on the phone said, he just noticed that his room had been rifled. He was having the call monitored right now, the voice on the phone swore. Clem knew that this was a lie, but he also recognized it as his own particular style of lying. The voice got really wooly and profane.

  Then there was a change in the tone.

  “Who are you?” the voice asked hollowly. “I hear you breathing scared. I know your sound. Gaaah — it's me!” And the voice on the phone was also breathing scared.

  “There has to be an answer,” he told himself. “I'll just go to my room and take a hot bath and try to sleep it off.”

  Then he roared back: “Go to my room! Am I crazy? I have just called my room. I am already there. I would not go to my room for one million one hundred and five thousand dollars.”

  He was trembling as though his bones were too loose for his flesh. It was funny that he had never before noticed how bony he was. But he wasn't too scared to think straight on one subject, however crooked other things might be.

  “No, I wouldn't go back to that room for any sum. But I will do something for another sum, and I'll do it damned quick.”

  He ran, and he hasn't stopped running yet. That he should have another self-made flesh terrified him. He ran, but he knew where he was running for the first stage of it. He took the night plane back to his hometown, leaving bag and baggage behind.

  He was at the bank when it opened in the morning. He closed out all his accounts. He turned everything into cash. This took several hours. He walked out of there with $83,000. He didn't feel like a thief; it was his own; it couldn't have belonged to his other self, could it? If there were two of them, then let there be two sets of accounts.

  Now to get going fast.

  He continued to feel odd. He weighed himself. In spite of his great eating lately, he had lost a hundred pounds. That's enough to make anyone feel odd. He went to New York City to lose himself in the crowd and to think about the matter.

  And what was the reaction at his firm and at his home when he turned up missing? That's the second point. He didn't turn up missing. As the months went by he followed the doings of his other self. He saw his pictures in the trade papers; he was still with the same firm; he was still top salesman. He always got the hometown paper, and he sometimes found himself therein. He saw his own picture with his wife Veronica. She looked wonderful and so, he had to admit, did he. They were still on the edge of the social stuff.

  “If he's me, I wonder who I am?” Clem continued to ask himself. There didn't seem to be any answer to this. There wasn't any handle to take the thing by.

  Clem went to an analyst and told his story. The analyst said that Clem had wanted to escape his job, or his wife Veronica, or both. Clem insisted that this was not so; he loved his job and his wife; he got deep and fulfilling satisfaction out of both.

  “You don't know Veronica or you wouldn't suggest it,” he told the analyst. “She is—ah—well, if you don't know her, then hell, you don't know anything.”

  The analyst told him that it had been his own id talking to him on the telephone.

  “How is it that my id is doing a top selling job out of a town five hundred miles from here, and I am here?” Clem wanted to know. “Other men's ids aren't so talented.”

  The analyst said that Clem was suffering from a tmema or diairetikos of an oddly named part of his psychic apparatus.

  “Oh hell, I'm an extrovert. Things like that don't happen to people like me,” Clem said.

  Thereafter Clem tried to make the best of his compromised life. He was quickly well and back to normal weight. But he never talked on the telephone again in his life. He'd have died most literally if he ever heard his own voice like that again. He had no phone in any room where he lived. He wore a hearing aid which he did not need; he told people that he could not hear over the phone, and that any unlikely call that came for him would have to be taken down and relayed to him.

  He had to keep an eye on his other self, so he did renew one old contact. With one firm in New York there was a man he had called on regularly; this man had a cheerful and open mind that would not be spooked by the unusual. Clem began to meet this man (Why should we lie about it? His name was Joe Zabotsky.) not at the firm, but at an after-hours place which he knew Joe frequented.

  Joe heard Clem's story and believed it — after he had phoned
(in Clem's presence) the other Clem, located him a thousand miles away, and ordered an additional month's supply of the unique product which they didn't really need, things being a little slow in all lines right then.

  After that, Clem would get around to see Joe Zabotsky an average of once a month, about the time he figured the other Clem had just completed his monthly New York call.

  “He's changing a little bit, and so are you,” Joe told Clem one evening. “Yeah, it was with him just about like with you. He did lose a lot of weight a while back, what you call the critical day, and he gained it back pretty quick just like you did. It bugs me, Clem, which of you I used to know. There are some old things between us that he recalls and you don't; there are some that you recall and he doesn't; and dammit there are some you both recall, and they happened between myself and one man only, not between myself and two men.

  “But these last few months your face seems to be getting a little fuller, and his a little thinner. You still look just alike, but not quite as just-alike as you did at first.”

  “I know it,” Clem said. “I study the analysts now since they don't do any good at studying me, and I've learned an old analyst's trick. I take an old face-on photo of myself, divide it down the center, and then complete each half with its mirror image. It gives two faces just a little bit different. Nobody has the two sides of his face quite alike. These two different faces are supposed to indicate two different aspects of the personality. I study myself, now, and I see that I am becoming more like one of the constructions; so he must be becoming more like the other construction. He mentions that there are disturbances between Veronica and himself, does he? And neither of them quite understands what is the matter? Neither do I.”

  Clem lived modestly, but he began to drink more than he had. He watched, through his intermediary Joe and by other means, the doings of his other self. And he waited. This was the most peculiar deal he had ever met, but he hadn't been foxed on very many deals. “He's no smarter than I am,” Clem insisted. “But, by cracky, if he's me, he's pretty smart at that. What would he do if he were in my place? And I guess, in a way, he is.”