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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “This fun will be for you and me, boss. Consider the world spread out. What is it?”

  “It's a world too fine for me to live in any longer,” Albert said. “Everything and all the people are perfect, and all alike. They're at the top of the heap. They've won it all and arranged it all neatly. There's no place for a clutter-up like me in the world. So I get out.”

  “Boss, I've got a hunch that you're seeing it wrong. You've got better eyes than that. Look again, real canny, at it. Now what do you see?”

  “Hunchy, Hunchy, is that possible? Is that really what it is? I wonder why I never noticed it before. That's the way of it, though, now that I look closer.

  “Six billion patsies waiting to be took! Six billion patsies without a defense of any kind! A couple of guys out for some fun, man, they could mow them down like fields of Albert-Improved Concho Wheat!”

  “Boss, I've got a hunch that this is what I was made for. The world sure had been getting stuffy. Let's tie into it and eat off the top layer. Man, we can cut a swath.”

  “We'll inaugurate a new era!” Albert gloated. “We'll call it the Turning of the Worm. We'll have fun, Hunchy. We'll gobble them up like goobers. How come I never saw it like that before? Six billion patsies!”

  The Twenty-First Century began on this rather odd note.

  Frog On The Mountain

  He woke to mountains, as the poet says. Really, there is nothing like it. The oceans and the lowlands were made long ago, according to legend. But the mountains are made new every morning. It took some doing. His name was Garamask, and he had done it.

  “I hate space,” Garamask had said when he decided on it, and the crewmen had been surprised.

  “Why do you, Mr. Garamask?” the Captain had asked him. “You've logged more time in space than I have. You've been to many more regions. And you've made more money in the space business than anyone I know. I never saw a man so eager for voyages or for new worlds as you. You're so expansive a person that I thought you were in love with the expanse of space.

  “I love movement and travel,” Garamask said. “I love worlds! But in space, the feel of movement and the sense of travel is quickly lost. And space is not expansive. It is shriveling.

  “I have, let us say, a passion for a certain unkempt and mountainous world, but space comes near to destroying that passion in me; for I have seen that world appear on the scope like a microbe, and I will watch it disappear like a microbe again. I have studied epic and towering things under the microscope. And when I put away the microscope, I know that the towering things are really too small to see. From the aspect of space, all the towering and wild worlds that I love are things too small to see or to believe in. I love a big world, and I hate space for spoiling that bigness.”

  “Paravata isn't so big a world, Mr. Garamask,” the Captain told him.

  “It is! It's big! It's huge!” Garamask insisted. “And I'll not have it spoiled. It is the largest possible world on the man-scale, and I will not let that scale suffer by comparison. It's a world as large as a man can get around on with ease, without becoming less than a man. It's half again Earth's gravity, so it calls out our strength. It has an atmosphere that keeps one on an oxygen binge, so it gives the strength something to draw on. It has mountains that rise ten thousand meters, the highest mountains anywhere that a man can climb in his proper body and without apparatus.

  “And I won't have it spoiled for me! I'm rich enough that you can't regard me as a nuisance. I've given my instructions. So, follow them as regards me.”

  “Mr. Garamask, weren't you ever young?” the Captain asked him.

  “I am young yet, Captain. I am physically the fittest man on this ship. And this is a very young and aspiring idea that I am effecting now.”

  “Ah, were you never something else, Mr. Garamask, not quite so young, and much more awkward?”

  “I don't know what you mean, Captain, but I suspect that I never was. Follow my instructions.”

  The instructions of Garamask were that he be sent into a sustaining sleep, and that he be landed and lodged on Paravata of the Mountains while he slept. He did not know when Paravata was picked up microbe-sized nor when it grew a hundred million times to the size of a pea. He did not see the planet grow to twice the size of Earth. He missed the landing.

  He was taken from the ship at Paravata Landing and transported a hundred kilometers to the mountain lodge. He was installed there as befitted a man of means. He slept a determined number of hours, as he had planned it, and he woke in the very early morning. He woke to mountains.

  He went out into the keen air of Paravata or Paravath, finding himself in the middle of the small town of Mountain-Foot. He had a warrant for arrest and death in his wallet; and he had a singing curiosity about this world whose vital civilization had suddenly been frozen in motion, whose people, the Rogha (the elites, the excellent ones), had disappeared or very nearly disappeared and whose place had been taken by the oafish Oganta, and this almost within living memory. He was on a hunting trip in depth: he would hunt on the three stage mountain to kill Sinek the cat-lion; Riksino the bear, Shasos the eagle-condor, and Bater-Jeno the crag-ape or the frog-man (depending on the translation). This was said to be the most challenging hunt in the galaxy. And most likely he would die on the triple mountain, for no human hunter had ever bagged all four of the creatures and survived the thing; though Oganta hunters were said to have done the trick.

  On the second level, Garamask was hunting for the answer to the riddle: what had happened to the Rogha elites? Could those few who were left not be strengthened in their hold? Could their civilization not be unfrozen? Might it not be discovered what queer hold the oafish Oganta had over this Rogha remnant? How had the excellent ones fallen (willingly, it was said) to their inferiors?

  On the third level, Garamask was hunting for a murderer, the Oganta, Rogha, Animal, or Man who had killed Allyn. Allyn had been a close friend, but Garamask had not realized how close until after the event. It had been given out that Allyn, on the same hunt, had been killed by the Bater-Jeno, the crag-ape or the frog-man. Allyn, however, had newly appeared to Garamask in a rhapsody-dream and said that this was not so. He had been killed, said Allyn, by his guide and hunting companion, who had been an Oganta named Ocras, but who might not now be in Oganta form.

  “I believe that we have been close,” Allyn had said, “though we never spoke of our closeness. Avenge me, Garamask, and take the lid off the mystery of Paravath. I was so very close to uncovering the mystery myself.”

  “What had you found, Allyn?” Garamask had asked; but appearances in dreams often seem hard of hearing; they speak but they do not listen.

  “Uncover it, Garamask,” Allyn had repeated, “and avenge me. I was so close to it. He ate into the base of my skull and so killed me. He ate my very brains as I died.”

  “But what did you find when you came so close, Allyn?” Garamask had asked once more. “Tell me what you had going, so I will know what to look for.”

  “I was so close to it when I died,” Allyn said.

  Apparitions are as stone-deaf. They speak their message but they do not hear. You may have noticed this yourself.

  Garamask was not a great believer in dreams, but he had desired this hunt for a long time; he had, in fact, intended to accompany Allyn on his hunt, but had been prevented by affairs. And he had known at the time of the dream, had not known till he had gone carefully over the report, that Allyn had indeed been killed by having his skull eaten into. Now Garamask tested it a little.

  “My guide, will he be Ocras?” he asked the gangling Oganta who was manager of the hunting lodge.

  “Ocras? No, he is no longer a guide. He has been translated out of this life.”

  “But there was a guide named Ocras?”

  “There was one time a guide named Ocras, who is no more. Your guide will be Chavo.”

  But there had been a guide named Ocras, and Garamask hadn't known the name except in the rhapsody-dre
am. Then Garamask saw one of the Rogha survivors walking proudly in the early keen air. He went to him at once, meeting him on a rocky slope.

  “I have an intense interest in you and all your kind,” Garamask began. “You yourself are the face of the mystery. You are imposing in a way that I could never be; I can see why you are called the elite, the excellent ones. You are so startlingly in contrast to the Oganta here that everyone for worlds around is puzzled over it. You are kings. They are oafs. Why do they take you over?”

  “I suppose it is the day of the oafs, pilgrim-man,” the Rogha said easily. “I am Treorai, and you are the man Garamask who made preparations to wake to mountains. You have taken up the challenge of the three-stage mountain. It's a high aspiration to kill the four creatures there. One who has done it will experience a deep change.

  “As Allyn did?”

  “I knew him when he was here. He did not kill the four creatures. He was killed by the fourth.”

  “He has told me, outside the lines as it were, that he was killed by something other.”

  “Allyn would not lie, even outside the lines. You have misunderstood him. Did he say that he completed the hunt and killed the fourth creature?”

  “He said that he had killed Sinek the lion, Riksino the bear, Shasos the eagle; but, no, he did not say that he had killed the Bater-Jeno. He said, however, that he was murdered by something else.”

  “No, Garamask, he was killed by the fourth prey. A creature is often fuzzy in his mind about his own manner of dying. He was a wonderful fellow, though, for a man.”

  “Treorai, why has your civilization come to a grotesque halt? Why have you Rogha, in your manifest superiority, all but died out? Why have the rough rampant Oganta taken over? A dozen of them couldn't take one of you. You have the presence that would dumbfound any attack. I can feel it like magnetism. Is it a genetic thing that has happened?”

  “A genetic thing, a ghostly thing, a sundering thing really, Garamask. But it isn't finished, and there is no apathy here. What we Rogha have lost, we will regain, by any means whatsoever. This eclipse will pass from us.”

  “Why don't you simply annihilate the Oganta, Treorai?”

  “You are an educated man, Garamask, but your speaking of the Paravath language is imperfect. I simply do not understand your question. I have some World-English, if that would help.”

  “Treorai, why do you Rogha not simply annihilate the Oganta?” Garamask asked the excellent Rogha in World-English.

  “No, Garamask, I have not so much of the idiom as I thought,” said Treorai. “Your question is simply incomprehensible in whatever language it is put. Ah, your guide has peeped out to see if you are ready. Grab him quickly, or he will go in and be back to sleep again. The Oganta are not morning types. And the sun should not find you still at Mountain-Foot. It should find you at least two hundred meters aloft. See that ledge there! It is a wonderful place to catch first sun.”

  “I see that it will be,” said Garamask. “And it will take some inspired climbing to get there in time. If I live I will see you again, excellent one.”

  “High hunting, Garamask! A very strong hunter with a very good guide may kill the first three creatures. To kill the fourth, the hunter must transcend himself.”

  Garamask started up the Mountain Domba (the first mountain of the three-mountain complex) with Chavo his booming Oganta guide. The Oganta are rangy and solid creatures, and strength and endurance is their birth-right. Say what you will about the loud oafs, they are strong climbers! And Garamask was a very strong man who had climbed on heavier-than-World worlds before.

  And, ah, there is sometimes an advantage in knowing the Paravath language imperfectly. Garamask could tune Chavo out. It took all his attention to follow the language, and his attention was mercifully on many other things as they went up. And yet Chavo laughed and boomed incessantly, like boulders clashing together.

  A queer and unfinished looking creature was this Chavo, were all the Oganta. (Climbing, climbing hard and high, they'd catch first sun on the fine ledge yet.) A queer creature! “The male European moor frog (Rana arvalis) is covered with a light blue bloom like a plum,” the anthropologist-naturalist Wendt had written two hundred years ago, but Wendt had never heard of the world of Paravata, nor of a blue-blooming moor frog two meters tall. (Climbing hard and high, there was another shade of blue bloom in the morning light, and the keen air was like World brandy.) “Those naked goblins with human hands and infant bodies,” old Wendt had written again, but Wendt never envisioned an infant body that would weigh two hundred kilograms here, and two-thirds that much on Earth. Chavo the Oganta was a lot of oaf!

  It was all moss-covered rocks, and tiger grass growing between them. It was nowhere difficult to get foot-or-handhold, but it was steep and it was heavy. They came to the fine ledge and took it just at first sun. They rested there.

  “You do not like me, Papa Garamask,” Chavo was booming. “But I will make you like me. We Oganta like to be liked. We will go to any lengths to be liked.”

  “You go too far for it, I believe,” said Garamask. “When will we meet the Sinek?”

  “We will meet sineks and sineks from here on up, but they will bound away from us and will not stand. Then we will meet Sinek himself, and he will stand.”

  “You talk as though there were only one of the species who would be dangerous. And yet, surely, a dozen of these very dangerous sineks have been killed.”

  “There is only one at a time, Papa Garamask. Whether it is always the same one that is translated back to live on the mountain, or whether one inherits from another, we do not know. But always there are many sineks, and there is Sinek himself. It is time to arm before we go up higher.”

  Chavo broke the stuff out of his pack. No shot-weapon might be used on the mountain hunt; even bow and spear-thrower and sling were ruled out. The animals had them not, so the hunters might not have them. It made for a harder hunt. The hunting and killing must be by direct confrontation and intimate encounter. Garamask clipped the claw-gauntlets over the backs of his hands, binding them by wrist and palm straps. He had been proud of his crushing grip, of his massive hands and forearms; but could he with these deliver lion blows on the lion himself? He bound on the elbow and knee and toe and heel daggers, needle-pointed, double-bladed, curiously curved. He bound on the crotch and throat armor. He slipped the casing fangs over his own dog teeth. He slipped the casing fangs over his own dog teeth. He bound on the cap with the skull saber. Chavo similarly equipped himself. Well, the animals of Paravath had such claws and fangs (not all of them having the same ones), so the hunters could have such also.

  “It will be much harder to climb in this,” Garamask grumbled.

  “It will be, Papa Garamask,” Chavo said, “and the climb itself becomes much harder. Some hunters take the spikes and claws off and hook them ready in their belts, and they are surprised by Sinek or Riksino or Shasos, and die for it. Some climb, clawed and daggered, and slip and fall to their deaths.”

  “Which is best, guide?”

  “Whichever way you would rather die, Papa Garamask, so select it. That will be best for you.”

  “I do not intend to die on the mountain.”

  “Shall we turn back now, Papa Garamask? You make twelve World-men who have come to hunt. All die on the mountain. None goes all the way through the full hunt.”

  “One man, Allyn, went all the way, Chavo. And then he was murdered. I have climbed with him and hunted with him, and I'm as good a man. I intend to go all the way, and I do not intend to be murdered.”

  They climbed strongly, Garamask silent, Chavo booming and croaking with incessant talk that Garamask tuned out. The Oganta climbed, clawed and daggered and fanged and armored. That was the best way then. Garamask did likewise. He didn't envy the Oganta his youth and towering strength. Garamask had his own strength and he enjoyed testing it. But he envied the Oganta, a little, his fangs. Garamask had no such giant canine teeth to support the giant saber-fangs.
He had no such bull-bowed neck, nor skull-massif, nor buttressed and ridged upper jaw to support such sabers. But he had donned a pretty good set of fangs himself and he believed he would know how to use them.

  From one jagged turning, Garamask caught a dizzy view of Daingean City far away. The excellent Rogha had been builders at least equal to men. Now their cities were almost emptied of them, and the oafish Oganta lived in them like animals denning. Then the jagged turning became even more jagged, and Garamask could not afford another glance at the city.

  They ate aran-moss and cobble-moss, and pods of tiger grass. They chewed green coill-nuts for water. They climbed high and hard. Then Garamask caught the whiff and the spoor of the spook animals, and he knew it out of the cellar of his mind.

  “Ah, this is the world you live on,” he breathed, “and you are not imaginary at all. Animal who is no animal, I know what you are.” Garamask slavered when he called out because of the great fangs capped to his dog teeth. “The old Greeks called you the all-animal, and pictured you as made out of parts of many. And men said you were the Asian lion, or leopard, or tiger, or rock-lion, or American puma. And all the time you were yourself, the legend animal.”

  “Who do you talk to, Papa Garamask?” Chavo asked in some alarm. “Do you talk to the grandfather of Sinek?”

  “To the great-great-grandfather of Sinek, oaf. In the rain forests, they told poor men that your name was jaguar, but the poor men knew better. In the old South of the Conglomerate States on World, they told that your name was puma or cougar, but the poor cracker-men always knew your real species. Spook animal, I come after you!”

  “Papa Garamask, throw but a rock into the thicket and it will slink off. It is only one of the sineks, it is not Sinek himself. He seldom hunts so low or so early. And do not talk to the grandfather of Sinek, or he will come in your dreams and eat through your live throat and kill you.”

  “Damn you, oaf, it is Sinek himself! He hunts low and early today. Grandfather of all the animals, I fight you now! Panther!”