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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “There are rumors of tidal waves,” said another disciple.

  “This we will not tolerate for a moment!” Cachiporro swore, “neither the waves nor the rumors. There is sky-business involved in this somewhere and we will not permit it. If the waves are running, let them stand still!”

  Would you believe it? The waves everywhere in the world stood still. They were taken by surprise, perhaps, but they had always obeyed the voice of Authority wherever given.

  “Let the rumors run no more,” Koster spoke like fire. “Let all such talk cease right now. Let the rumor-men's minds be befuddled and their tongues be like rocks in their mouths.”

  It happened just like that. Rumor everywhere was frozen in midspeed, and the tongues of all the mongers were like rocks in their mouths. These things can be stopped.

  “The migrating birds will halt in midair!” Saul Trumait commanded. “Not one wing will beat till we say it may beat again.”

  And all the migrating birds were frozen motionless in midair.

  “Look, look!” one of the more excitable disciples cried out. “It's like lava flow bursting up through the pavements outside, up through the sidewalks, up under this very floor, it seems like.”

  “Oh, that is us,” Saul Trumait said easily. “Where do you think we draw our power from? We also have our fathers.”

  “Let the people stop their wandering,” Cachiporro ordered. “Should there be a revolution that is not ours? Let all vehicles stand still at once. Let the wandering people not set another foot down.”

  And quite a few persons of the world were paralyzed with one foot in midstride. These three men were really very powerful.

  “Let the fires and bombings stop if they are not our own fires and bombings,” Koster commanded. And all except the privileged bombings and fires ceased.

  “Is there anything else of the divergent unlawful—that is not of the true unlawful going on?” Trumait asked, breathing a little heavily from the power that had been flowing through him. “What do our special monitors show? Is there anything going on that is not ours?”

  “There are still earthquakes; there are still people laughing; and there are other lava flows which do not seem to be yours,” said one of the disciples who was fiddling with the instruments.

  “Let the false lava stop!” Cachiporro commanded. “There must be no lava that does not come from our own fire fathers.”

  “Let the people's laughter cease,” Koster roared. “Let it scorch their throats.”

  “May the quaking leave off right now,” Trumait ruled. “We are the only earth-movers.”

  “Stop, you fool things, stop!” Pedro Cachiporro ordered. “We are the only authority and we order you.”

  “Halt!” Koster barked. “We are the power.”

  “Let none of it move,” Trumait commanded.

  And it all stopped.

  The red lion and the red tiger and the red wolf looked at each other with thunderous triumph; and the disciples adored. The three men themselves were Revolution, they themselves were the Moving Powers of the world and nothing could move without their instigation.

  “Ah, something is beginning again,” said the disciple who was fiddling with the instruments. It had been a short but momentous pause. “It's like a new kind of earthquake now, a new sort of lava flow, a different shape of world waves. Hear it? You don't need instruments. Hear it?”

  It all broke loose. It broke wide open. What world-noise was that? Laughter, world-laughter. The three unpowered leaders diminished and their faces cracked like clay pots. It was the whole world laughing at them, in new mountains that had not been mountains a moment before, in craters that were fire-new craters, in pinnacles and persons that had just been renewed. The whole world was laughing at the three creatures that shrank and shattered and turned into unnameable miniscules.

  This was Revolution, and the revolutionaries had never stood tall enough to touch the least hairs on its toes.

  The continents began to detach each from each and to drift. Whether they would move much or little during the Jubilee depended on their own proclivities and states of mind, but they were free to move. And it was not a thing of a million years or a thousand. It was the thing of an hour. There were world disturbances, of course; there were three-mile-high waves here and there, and such; but there were no more disturbances than could be expected from such causes.

  “There is land below that isn't charted,” said the navigator of the plane that was carrying the president and the congresses. “Chart it then if it will make you happy,” the pilot told him. “That is Hy-Brasil, an old land come back. I bet it felt that it had been submerged long enough.”

  “And you're coming down too soon, coming down to no possible land,” the navigator said an hour later. “You'll hit open ocean.” “Oh no. We'll hit risen land,” the pilot insisted. “See it there now. Is it not fresh and shiny with the seawater still rushing off its risen flanks and the spray of it rising a mile high?”

  The plane came down to Lyonesse which had been the mother of assemblies a long time ago, which had sunk into the ocean a long time ago. It was a good town and a good land, and it seemed glad to be back.

  Other planes and various craft were also arriving at Lyonesse. They were homing in on it from everywhere. The crafts carried the governing bodies of more than two hundred commonwealths, and all those parliamentary and official types were beaming and bright and happy. What town they would form there now would be a curious one, but there are advantages in having all governing bodies gathered together in one place where they will not bother the peoples of the world.

  And in another place there were three wise men walking in that first noontime of the Jubilee. Perhaps these three men had once had the names of Ruil and Amerce and Romer, but they did not have those names now. They were walking in a direction that had not yet been renamed. They would not sleep that night where they had slept the night before, nor would any other person in the world. They had sandals on their feet; they were wrapped in cloaks and euphoria; they had staffs in their hands; and they carried (from some old symbolism or from some new joy) lighted lanterns in the daytime — three wise men.

  “That is a wooly mammoth,” a woman whooped. New creatures appeared by the instant, new mountains (though some of the mountains fell down again as soon as they raised), new people, new myths walking about on new legs.

  “I thought it was our wooly dog,” the man guffawed. “I'm glad it isn't a dog any more.”

  A man was shooting barbs from a bow and they turned into birds in the air. (On Jubilee day, the way you see it is the way it is.)

  “No, we name the animals all over again today,” the woman chortled, “and that is a wooly mammoth.”

  The world pace had quickened. The ground smoked and quaked and some of the people fell down dead: but all the people were gay with the thunderous noise of Jubilee. The man and the woman and the wooly mammoth were running and laughing and barking after the wise men, and they would be able to run forever if they wished—

  About A Secret Crocodile

  There is a secret society of seven men that controls the finances of the world. This is known to everyone but the details are not known. There are some who believe that it would be better if one of those seven men were a financier. There is a secret society of three men and four women that controls all the fashions of the world. The details of this are known to all who are in the fashion. And I am not.

  There is a secret society of nineteen men that is behind all the fascist organizations in the world. The secret name of this society is Glomerule.

  There is a secret society of thirteen persons known as the Elders of Edom that controls all the secret sources of the world. That the sources have become muddy is of concern to them.

  There is a secret society of only four persons that manufactures all the jokes of the world. One of these persons is unfunny and he is responsible for all the unfunny jokes.

  There is a secret society of eleven
persons that is behind all Bolshevik and atheist societies of the world. The devil himself is a member of this society, and he works tirelessly to become a principal member. The secret name of this society is Ocean.

  There are related secret societies known as The Path of the Serpent (all its members have the inner eyelid of snakes), The Darkbearers, the Seeing Eye, Imperium, The Golden Mask and the City.

  Above most of these in a queer network there is a society that controls the attitudes and dispositions of the world—and the name of it is Crocodile. The Crocodile is insatiable: it eats persons and nations alive. And the Crocodile is very old, 8,800 years old by one account, 7,349 years old if you use the short chronology.

  There are subsecret societies within the Crocodile: the Cocked Eye, the Cryptic Cootie and others. Powerful among these is a society of three hundred and ninety-nine persons that manufactures all the catchwords and slogans of the world. This subsociety is not completely secret since several of the members are mouthy: the code name of this apparatus is the Crocodile's Mouth.

  Chesterton said that Mankind itself was a secret society. Whether it would be better or worse if the secret should ever come out he did not say.

  And finally there was — for a short disruptive moment — a secret society of three persons that controlled all.

  All what?

  Bear with us. That is what this account is about.

  John Candor had been called into the office of Mr. James Dandi at ABNC. (Whisper, whisper, for your own good, do not call him Jim Dandy; that is a familiarity he will not abide.) “This is the problem, John,” Mr. Dandi stated piercingly, “and we may as well put it into words. After all, putting things into words and pictures is our way of working at ABNC. Now then, what do we do at ABNC, John?”

  (ABNC was one of the most powerful salivators of the Crocodile's Mouth.)

  “We create images and attitudes, Mr. Dandi.”

  “That is correct, John,” Mr. Dandi said. “Let us never forget it. Now something has gone wrong. There is a shadowy attack on us that may well be the most damaging thing since the old transgression of Spirochaete himself. Why has something gone wrong with our operation, John?”

  “Sir, I don't know.”

  “Well then, what has gone wrong?”

  “What has gone wrong, Mr. Dandi, is that it isn't working the way it should. We are caught on our own catchwords, we are slaughtered by our own slogans. There are boomerangs whizzing about our ears from every angle. None of it goes over the way it is supposed to. It all twists wrong for us.”

  “Well, what is causing this? Why are our effects being nullified?”

  “Sir, I believe that somebody else is also busy creating images and attitudes. Our catechesis states that this is impossible since we are the only group permitted in the field. Nevertheless, I am sure that someone else is building these things against us. It even seems that they are more powerful than we are—and they are unknown.”

  “They cannot be more powerful than we are—and they must not remain unknown to us.” Mr. Dandi's words stabbed. “Find out who they are, John.”

  “How?”

  “If I knew how, John, I would be working for you, not you working for me. Your job is to do things. Mine is the much more difficult one of telling you to do them. Find out, John.”

  John Candor went to work on the problem. He considered whether it was a linear, a set or a group problem. If it were a linear problem he should have been able to solve it by himself — and he couldn't. If it were a set problem, then it couldn't be solved at all. Of necessity he classified it as a group problem and he assembled a group to solve it. This was easy at ABNC which had more group talent than anybody. The group that John Candor assembled was made up of August Crayfish, Sterling Groshawk, Maurice Cree, Nancy Peters, Tony Rover, Morgan Aye, and Betty McCracken. Tell the truth, would you be able to gather so talented a group in your own organization?

  “My good people,” John Candor said, “as we all know, something has gone very wrong with our effects. It must be righted. Thoughts, please, thoughts!”

  “We inflate a person or subject and he bursts on us,” August gave his thought. “Are we using the wrong gas?”

  “We launch a phrase and it turns into a joke,” Sterling complained. “Yet we have not slighted the check-off: it has always been examined from every angle to be sure that it doesn't have a joker context. But something goes wrong.”

  “We build an attitude carefully from the ground up,” Maurice stated. “Then our firm ground turns boggy and the thing tilts and begins to sink.”

  “Our ‘Fruitful Misunderstandings,’ the most subtle and effective of our current devices, are beginning to bear sour fruit,” Nancy said.

  “We set ourselves to cut a man down and our daggers turn to rubber,” Tony Rover moaned. (Oh, were there ever sadder words? “Our daggers turn to rubber.”)

  “Things have become so shaky that we're not sure whether we are talking about free or closed variables,” Morgan gave his thought.

  “How can my own loving mother make such atrocious sandwiches?” Betty McCracken munched distastefully. Betty, who was underpaid, was a brown-sack girl who brought her own lunch. “This is worse than usual.” She chewed on. “The only thing to do with it is feed it to the computer.” She fed it to the computer which ate it with evident pleasure.

  “Seven persons, seven thoughts,” John Candor mused.

  “Seven persons, six thoughts,” Nancy Peters spat bitterly. “Betty, as usual, has contributed nothing.”

  “Only the first stage of the answer,” John Candor said. “She said ‘The only thing to do with it is to feed it to the computer.’ Feed the problem to the computer, folks.”

  They fed the problem to the computer by pieces and by whole. The machine was familiar with their lingos and it was acquainted with the Non-Valid Context Problems of Morgan Aye and with the Hollow Shell Person Puzzles of Tony Rover. It knew the Pervading Environment Ploy of Maurice Cree. It knew what trick-work to operate within.

  Again and again the machine asked for various kinds of supplementary exterior data.

  “Leave me with it,” the machine finally issued. “Assemble here again in sixty days, or hours—”

  “No, we want the answers right now,” John Candor insisted, “within sixty seconds.”

  “The second is possibly the interval I was thinking of,” the machine issued. “What's time to a tin can anyhow?” It ground its data trains for a full minute.

  “Well?” John Candor asked.

  “Somehow I get the number three,” the machine issued.

  “Three what, machine?”

  “Three persons,” the machine issued. “They are unknowingly linked together to manufacture attitudes. They are without program or purpose or organization or remuneration or basis or malice.”

  “Nobody is without malice,” August Crayfish insisted in a startled way. “They must be totally alien forms then. How do they manage their effects?”

  “One with a gesture, one with a grimace, one with an intonation,” the machine issued.

  “Where are they?” John Candor demanded.

  “All comparatively near.” The machine drew three circles on the city map. “Each is to be found in his own circle most of the time.”

  “Their names?” John Candor asked and the machine wrote the name of each in the proper circle.

  “Do you have anything on their appearances?” Sterling Groshawk inquired and the machine manufactured three kymograph pictures of the targets.

  “Have you their addresses or identifying numbers?” Maurice Cree asked.

  “No. I think it's remarkable of me that I was able to come up with this much,” the machine issued.

  “We can find them,” Betty McCracken said. “We can most likely find them in the phone book.”

  “What worries me is that there's no malice in them,” John Candor worried. “Without malice, there's no handle to get hold of a thing. The Disestablishment has been firmly
established for these several hundred years and we hold it to be privileged. It must not be upset by these three randoms. We will do what we must do.”

  Mike Zhestovich was a mighty man. One does not make the primordial gestures out of weak body and hands. He looked like a steelworker — or anyhow like a worker at one of the powerful trades. His torso was like a barrel but more noble than ordinary barrels. His arms and hands were hardly to be believed. His neck was for the bulls, his head was as big as a thirteen gallon firkin, his eyeballs were the size of ducks' eggs and the hair on his chest and throat was that heavy black wire-grass that defies steel plowshares. His voice — well he didn't have much of a voice — it wasn't as mighty as the rest of him. And he didn't really work at one of the powerful trades. He was a zipper repairman at the Jiffy Nifty Dry Cleaners.

  August Crayfish of ABNC located Mike Zhestovitch in the Blind Robbin Bar which (if you recall the way that block lies) is just across that short jog-alley from the Jiffy Nifty. And August recognized big Mike at once. But how did big Mike get his effects?

  “The Cardinals should take the Colts today,” a serious man there was saying.

  “The Cardinals—” Mike Zhestovitch began in the voice that was less noble than the rest of him, but he didn't finish the sentence. As a matter of fact, big Mike had never finished a sentence in all his life. Instead he made the gesture with his mighty hands and body. Words cannot describe the gesture but it was something like balling up an idea or opinion in the giant hands and throwing it away, utterly away, over the very edge of contempt.

  The Cardinals, of course, did not take the Colts that day. For a moment it was doubtful whether the Cardinals would survive at all. From the corner of the eye, red feathers could be seen drifting away in the air.