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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Let's go to Dordogne right now with plenty of drawing materials,” Adrian snapped.

  “But Dordogne is crazy,” Annalouise cried. “Always in what same region, Adrian?”

  “We're crazy, too, to think of it,” Adrian hooted, “but let's go to him right now.”

  “What region, James?” Annalouise insisted. “Always drawn over and over again in what same region?”

  “The belly. Let's go to Dordogne.”

  They had Dordogne on his feet and drawing dorgs so pregnant that their bellies drug the ground. He was dazed, though, and sniffling. “When you've drawn one pregnant dorg you've drawn them all,” he whimpered.

  But they kept him at it. He collapsed, but they jerked him back to the task again. Who knows which may be the quickening stroke? “On your feet, Dordogne,” they yelled, “Do it one more time!”

  World Abounding

  How many habitable worlds there are depends on the meaning given to ‘habitable’ and to ‘world.’ Habitable without special equipment and conditioning is the usual restriction on the first. ‘Of no mean size’ and ‘of no extreme distance’ are two common conditions of the second. Thus Roulettenwelt and Kentron-Kosmon are really asteroids, too small to be worlds. But how about Hokey Planet and such? And how about the distant traveler's-tale worlds? Butler lists only seventeen habitable worlds, limiting them to the fair-sized and generally hospitable worlds of Sol and of the Centauri Suns. So all these were closely grouped. The early notion that double or triple suns would not have planets because of their irregularity had been an erroneous estimate, fortunately.

  Thus, revolving around Sol there is only Gaea (Earth). Around the Sun Proxima (the Grian Sun) are Kentauron-Mikron, Camiroi, Astrobe, and Dahae. Around the Sun Alpha are Skandia, Pudibundia, Analos, and the equivalently-named twins with such different superior fauna, Proavitus and Paravata; and Skokumchuck (the Shelni Planet). Around the sun Beta are the three trader planets, Emporion, Apateon, and Klepsis; tricky places, it is said. But if you think the Traders are tricky, how about the other three Beta Planets? There are Aphthonia (also called World Abounding), Bellota (Butler lists this as a Planet, though there are larger bodies listed as asteroids: he says, however, that Bellota in its present creation is much larger than its size of record, a puzzling statement), and Aranea (or the Spider Planet).

  These latter three are habitable by all definition, but they are generally uninhabited, each for its own unclear reason. It was to clear up the reason and impediment concerning Aphthonia or World Abounding that a party was now in descending hover.

  “We are on this mission because of one phrase, repeated by leaders of five different parties, and maintained in the face of vigorous courts martial,” Fairbridge Exendine, the singling leader, said with a sort of hooked wonder. “I have never been able to get that phrase out of my mind. ‘You'd never believe it’ was the phrase, and the men of the five parties, of the more than twenty parties in fact, would not elaborate on it much.”

  “I hardly believe it either,” Judy Brindlesby said, “and I haven't been there yet. It almost jumps at you. There is certainly no other world that presents so pleasant an appearance from medium hover. The continent named Aegea and the howling beauty of those oceans and seas that invade it so deeply! The river named Festinatio, the largest clear river on any world! The volcano named Misericors! Why should a river be named ‘I hurry’ and a volcano be named the ‘merciful’?”

  “It was John Chancel who named them,” Rushmore Planda said with that curious reverence which all use in speaking of the great explorer. “And it was he who first said that this was the finest world ever, and that it should be left alone to be just that.”

  World Abounding has been visited by the great John Chancel just fifty years before. He had been the first Gaea man on very many of the worlds. It was John Chancel who said that only men should go to work on World Abounding, that it was no place to raise a family. Later he repented even of this and said that nobody at all should go there.

  Chancel had stated that World Abounding was the most generous and fertile world ever, and that its very generosity would blow one's mind. It was his opinion that this was the Hasty Planet of the earliest travelers' tales, and that there was something very much too hasty about it. And he said that the most famous product of World Abounding should never be used at more than one-thousandth strength.

  Gorgos, the magic animal and plant hormone (it wasn't that, but such was the popular explanation of it), came from World Abounding. Cut it a thousand times and it still was the magic growth-trigger. Ah, why cut it at all though? Why not take it at the full where it abounded in its fullness? To be spooked off by too much of a good thing was childish. “Let us examine it as scientists and adults,” Fairbridge said as they came into lower hover, “as balanced persons who know what we are about.”

  The seven balanced persons who knew what they were about were Fairbridge Exendine, the canny commander; the Brindlesbys, Judy and Hilary; the Plandas, Erma and Rushmore; the Kerwins, Lisetta and Blase. They were three couples and one remarkable singling, a superior microcosm.

  They came down easily and safely from low hover as twenty-two parties had come down before (twenty-three if one counts the solo voyage of John Chancel). They were pleasantly staggered by the sudden green power of that place. There was no need of any caution: Nobody of any party had ever suffered even slight injury or sickness on World Abounding. They found such generosity as would gladden any mind and body. It would be difficult, initially, to be scientists and adult about World Abounding.

  Well, revel in the joy then. Afterwards, analyze it all minutely, but without losing any of that joyousness. Do not complain too strenuously about a stacked deck if it is all stacked in your favor.

  They were on the Terraces—“which aren't mentioned by John Chancel at all,” Erma Planda said with a toss of her whole golden body, “and it is only gradually that members of the other parties begin to mention them. Could the Terraces have grown up in fifty standard years?” The Terraces formed a great elongated, stepped plateau, overcome with its own lushness. From the great green broad height of the hovercraft landing, the Terraces tumbled down seventy meters in more than twenty giant steps to the plain. This was all between the volcano and the river, and the Terraces had shoved out into the river to produce gracious rapids with their musical foam.

  “Yes, the Terraces have apparently grown in fifty years, or have been spewed out by the volcano named Merciful,” Fairbridge said. “Chancel described the plain between the volcano and the river and he didn't mention the Terraces at all. He set up a spire for monument in the middle of the plain, and where is it now? I believe that it is engulfed in the Terraces, and I intend to find it. I also intend to find why some of the latter parties refer to the Terraces as the Graves. No member of any party died here. All returned. I have a sudden exuberance come over me and I'll start my digging now.”

  And Fairbridge Exendine had already set the earth-augers to cutting down into the Terraces.

  “I have my own new exuberance,” Judy Brindlesby shouted like a whole covey of trumpets. “Hilary, my clay-headed hero, we will make luscious life together all day and all night.”

  Judy was large, but surpassingly shapely and graceful, like a hovercraft. Her brindled black-red hair was so weighty and enveloping that a lesser woman could hardly have carried it; and it seemed to be growing by the minute, like the grass there. One couldn't actually quite see the World Abounding grass grow, but one could hear it; it made a pleasant squeaking sound. And there was a hint of quick music about Judy's heavy hair that indicated that it was growing and growing.

  “Yes, it is volcanic ash,” Rushmore Planda was saying as he joined Fairbridge at the earth-augers. “It is quite airy ash.” The volcanic ash was chalky white to pearl gray. Then it had a streak of green in it, and another.

  “You are through the first stratum, Fairbridge,” Rushmore said, “and into a layer of compressed vegetation that hasn't even r
otted yet. This is the vegetation that was recently the top of the second stratum; very recently, I believe. This is a curious pile of Terraces.”

  “Oh, it's a holy pyramid,” Erma Planda told them all, “and the Volcano built it especially for the holy people, ourselves. John Chancel said that he always felt himself to be a holy man when be first set foot on a good new world. I feel myself to be a holy woman now.”

  “Do not stuff yourself, holy woman,” her man Rushmore told her. “Chancel preached temperance in all things. Do you have to eat everything you see? Do you have to eat all of everything you see?”

  “Yes, I have to, I have to! And was it not the great John Chancel, he who first warned against this place, who said that there was no possibility of poisoning on World Abounding? Oh, and he said that there was no possibility of over-indulgence here either. He stated that the essence Gorgos has no limits, but that it pretends that it has. Everything that can be chewed or swallowed here is safe to eat or drink. There is no insect or animal that bites, nor worm that gnaws, nor moth that harms. There'll be no extreme heat or cold. The nineteen-day polar tumble combined with the diurnal rotation keeps the air breezy and invigorating. Invigorating, yes, yes, extremely so. More than invigorating. It's a pretty horny world, actually. Rather a rambunctious feeling it gives one. More than that, it—”

  “What has happened to all you girl-folk?” the leader Fairbridge asked, rather puzzled and almost alarmed. “I have never seen you so wild-eyed and charged.”

  “Poor Fairbridge,” Judy Brindlesby needled him. “Never mind, Fairbridge, I'll get you a girl. I'll get you one within a standard month. I promise you.”

  “Impossible, sweet Judy, unless you slay your own mate. We're to be here for a long year, or until we solve the problem, and nobody else will touch down. Where would you get me a girl?”

  “That I don't know. But the very rocks are singing to me, ‘You'll get a girl, Judy, you'll get a girl for old Fairbridge within a month.’ ”

  “Gorgos is not merely a magic animal-and-plant hormone,” Rushmore Planda was speaking with a suddenly improved, new and magnificent voice. “It's a way of life, I see that now. It will impose its own shape on my wife, however much she stuffs herself. It will impose its shape on everything. It is a new pace and a new sort of life.”

  “It may be that its pace is too fast,” Fairbridge warned.

  “Makes no difference. There can't be any other pace here. Get the song of those romping birds there! It's the same beat that Gaea lunatics, treated with Gorgos, begin to sing with as soon as their sure cure begins. Get the whole stimulating, pleasant, almost drunken smell of this planet! Here is not so much the uncanny feel of things seen before, but of things smelled before. All great smells (Can one speak of great smells? Yes, one can.) have a reminiscent element, but with this it is reminiscent of a future. There is a pleasurable mustiness here, that's sure, but it isn't of past time: it's of future time, long waiting, and now beginning to unfold suddenly.”

  “You men are drunk on only the expectation of wine,” Lisetta Kerwin said. “But the one thing I remember from the journal of the great John Chancel was the recipe for making morning wine in nine minutes on World Abounding. And I've already started it. Time's a'running.”

  Lisetta was crushing purple fruit into a high calathus or basket made by pulling the inner corolla out of a giant flower bloom.

  “It would be chemically possible to make a potable fruit alcohol in nine minutes,” Blase Kerwin said, “but it wouldn't be wine. It wouldn't have the bouquet. It wouldn't have the — but it has it. I smell that it has already, and it grows. Here, here, let me swig that —”

  “No, no, it isn't ready,” Lisetta protested. “It still moves itself, it lends its color to the cup, it bites like a serpent.”

  “Look out, serpent and wife, I'll bite back. Have at you.” And Blase Kerwin took a huge draught from the green cup. He turned a bit green himself, but cheerfully so. He lost his voice, and he did a little dance on one foot while he grasped his throat with both hands, but he was quite pleased about it all. There are some things too good to wait for.

  “A little patience,” Lisetta said. “Four minutes yet.”

  Blase still hadn't his speech back but he could howl his high pleasure over the breathtaking encounter. And soon, quite soon, they were all lushy over the singing, heady stuff. It was very difficult to be scientific and adult about World Abounding.

  So they probed the world very unscientifically and kiddishly, except Fairbridge and Rushmore, who still probed the levels of the Terraces. The three ladies especially were happy maniacs and they were all over that abundant land. They caught and rode huge gangling animals. After all, on the word of Chancel and others, everything was harmless. They wrestled with big starfish in the river named Festinatio. They ate the snap-off tails of huge lizards and sent them away bawling and running on their two hind legs. Never mind; the big lizards could regrow their snap-off tails.

  “Those five party leaders who wrote ‘You'd never believe it,’ do you think they were laughing when they wrote it?” Judy Brindlesby exploded the question when she clambered once again back up to the diggings.

  “One of them, I believe, wrote in laughter, Judy,” Fairbridge said. “And one of them, I know for certain, wrote in absolute horror. I don't know about the other three.”

  “Fairbridge, I suggest that we clear out a square about five meters on a side and excavate the whole top level of it,” Rushmore Planda said. “I believe that there is more mystery buried here than we have met in all our lives.”

  “All right, we will do that,” Fairbridge agreed. “The least we can do is see what is right under our feet.”

  “But not there!” Judy trumpeted at them. “Dig here where the people are.”

  “What people, Judy?” Fairbridge asked her patiently. “All the people who have ever been on this world have been accounted for.”

  “Not till we account for them they haven't been. How do I know what people they are till you dig them up? Dig carefully, though. They are real people here. You call yourselves diggers and you don't even know where the people are buried.”

  “We dig where you say, Judy. You are a people-witcher in your several ways.”

  “But don't dig all the time. You're missing it. Life is being lived today and tonight.” And she was off again, leaping down the three-meter steps of the Terraces.

  “I don't know what she means,” Fairbridge said as he set the excavators to work and then adjusted them to ‘Slow and Careful.’ “I hardly ever know what she means.”

  “I believe that I know what she means, Fairbridge,” Rushmore said in an eerie voice with a scarce human chuckle in it.

  So the excavators excavated, moving the light volcanic ash that was below the vegetation. There was real mystery in the ash that was turned up. That stuff was not completely dead.

  “One thing I like about it here is the size of the party,” Fairbridge mumbled as he sensed something near and put the excavators on ‘Very Slow.’ “Seven. That's right, that's just right. That's just how many persons should be on a world. More than that is a crowd. But a man cannot live pleasantly alone. What do you think about that, Rushmore? Isn't seven about right? Rushmore?

  “He's gone. The party isn't seven now. It's one, me. I'm alone. I suspect that they have chosen the better part, though. Yes, I know what Judy meant, and it does come in very strongly here. But it isn't just with them; it's coming up from the very ground here. I'll dig on.”

  Fairbridge dug down till he came to the people.

  It was night. Ancilla, the smaller moon, was overhead; Matrona, the larger moon, had just arisen. Fairbridge went to find the three couples of the party. “They all have the new exuberance on them and they make luscious life together all day and all night. But I have to tell them what I have found.”

  It would be easiest to find Judy Brindlesby, the liveliest of them all. Wherever she was, any man would know it by special sensing. Fairbridge's sp
ecial sensing led him to a river meadow and into a high brake of reeds that still squeaked from sudden new growth. Judy lay there with her clay-headed hero and husband Hilary.

  It was magnificent Judy stretched on her back in giggling slumber. Hilary, chuckling with pleasure, lay atop her and was cutting her hair with great shears: cutting her incredible hair, cutting her superabundant hair, cutting the mountains of her hair. He had sheared off great heaps of it, possibly twenty kilograms of it, and she still had more than she'd had that afternoon.

  “You are almost completely hidden in the reeds, Hilary,” Fairbridge said then. “I'd never have found you, except that any man can sense Judy's presence.”

  “Hullo, Fairbridge,” Hilary grunted pleasantly. “The reeds weren't here when we lay down. They've grown up since. Everything that touches her grows, and she is enlivened wherever she touches this ground. Look at her hair, Fairbridge. She's in accord with it here. Gorgos or whatever the growth element is, she's with it. So am I.”

  “I dug down to people in the Terraces, Hilary.”

  “Yes. Judy said there would be people there.”

  Fairbridge and Hilary went and took Rushmore from the sleeping arms of Erma in the blue-stem hills. And they met Lisetta and Blase Kerwin coming out of the orchards. “Lisetta says that you have dug down to people,” Blase cried vividly. “Oh, for the love of abundant Aphthonia, let's go see what this is about!”

  “I've dug down to people, yes,” Fairbridge said, “but how could Lisetta know it?”