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

by R. A. Lafferty

  But the Gaea people were being torn apart by tides and concussions. They were drowning in boiling mud, in boiling air. Then there was a horrible constriction. They were being forced through the suffocating gullet of the most dread dragon of them all. Yes, swallowed up.

  “It's nothing but a psychic storm, people,” said the boyish voice of Glic. “Don't they have them on Gaea too? Keep saying to yourselves ‘This is fun, is fun.’ We might make it through and get loose.”

  Then they were through the gullet and into the very maw of the devouring dragon. And the maw heaved and launched. It was moving through space!

  No, it was a dragon's maw only in a manner of speaking. The Chute had been a very tight gullet to go through, but it had been the Chute that swallowed them up. Now they were inside Quiz Ship and it was in acceleration away from Paleder World.

  “We're loose, we're loose, and Paleder's the Goose,” eight little dragons were chanting.

  Little dragons or not, they were loose and in flight. Four of the Quiz Ship people were there. And there were nine dragons who had begun to shed their dragonness. Some of them were becoming approximately human children. One of the fastest-shedding of them was Glic, who was recognized by his voice.

  “You sure are lucky we wanted to go with you, or you'd never have made it,” Glic chirped. He was a red-headed little boy with a bit of dragon spirit still abiding in him.

  “One of us is missing,” Manbreaker Crag grumbled. “There are only four of us now and there are supposed to be five. Does anybody know which of us is missing?”

  Questor Shannon was at the controls of Quiz Ship now, though the only direction he was able to give it was “Away from here! Get us loose!”

  Then they were loose, and Questor was singing a glum ditty, but his voice was a little more cheerful than usual:

  “After the world is over,

  After the minds are gone.”

  “It was a bust, of course,” Jingo Blood was saying. “Their famed technology was wonderful, I suppose. But it was not wonderful for us. And it was not for export.”

  “Oh, you are wrong, lady!” eight children with tatters of dragonness still clinging to them cried out.

  “You are still sick from the psychic storm, people,” Glic cried. “But look at the bright side—us. I am here, and with me are seven companions more witty than myself. We know a lot of that technology, but we don't lock ourselves inside it. That's why we wanted loose from Paleder, so we wouldn't become post-people too. They had become post-space-flight, and where would that leave an adventurous person like me? We know the gadgets and technologies, though. Eight brainfuls of technologies you're getting with us.”

  “One of us is missing,” Manbreaker insisted. “Bodicea, which one of us is missing? Oh, it's Bodicea who isn't here.”

  “I'm here,” she said.

  “Bodicea, get out of that dragon suit!” Manbreaker roared.

  “It isn't a dragon suit. It's me,” she said. “I wasn't quite ready to grow up anyhow.” Nevertheless, the dragoning was falling off her in big pieces, and soon it would be gone.

  “We're just little kids,” said a little girl who still had her hair full of dragon scales, “but we're insufferably smart on that technology already. We can't give you enough of it to turn you into post-people with everything completed, but we can sure give you enough to pop your eyes. I bet we can set all the Gaea guys to gaping with what we know.”

  It wasn't really too difficult to understand the Demotic or Low Galactic that the children spoke.

  “We couldn't see any future in that post-people stuff we were supposed to grow into,” another of them said, “but we look forward to life with backward people like you.”

  “I knew we'd stumble on the answer,” the Empress Jingo guffawed. “ ‘Creative Chaos’, that was the answer.”

  “Thank you,” Glic said. “You're lucky we met you.”

  Mud Violet

  “Properly to carry out the next assignment for this class, it will be necessary that you die,” the instructor said. “Some of you may not want to do this. If you do not, I will have to demerit you as for any other neglected assignment. There are several straight-A students in this class, however, and I am sure that they will want to continue so. To them I say ‘Carry out this assignment.’ ” This instructor of the young — we didn't like him. We (who were no longer young) were Barnaby Sheen, Dr. George Drakos, Harry O'Donovan, and Cris Benedetti, the four men who knew everything; and myself who did not.

  There are nine basic colors: hylicon, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and mystes. There are persons who say that there are more basic colors than these: but they confuse hues with colors, or they list non-basic colors such as the purples and magentas and the variously named non-spectral violets and reds. To such persons we can only say ‘You are mistaken.’ There are other persons who say that there are fewer basic colors than these listed here, that the first and last colors of our list are not visible colors at all. To such persons we can only say ‘Go get your eyes fixed.’

  The three most knowledgeable authorities on this subject (God, a cosmopolitan; Iris, a Grecian lady; and E. I. Watkin, an Englishman) agreed that there were these nine basic colors in the bow in the clouds and that all other colors are contained in them.

  The present account is suffused with the first of these colors, hylicon. This color, lying in the wave band between 400 and 3,900 angstroms, is sometimes called ultra-violet. The color may be seen by many humans and by many other non-simian primates (pay attention, we are making important distinctions here). There are persons of the very finest sensibilities who can see this color clearly and can see all manner of objects suffused by this color; they say that it is like the finest violet color, but incredibly extenuated. There are likewise persons of the very crudest sensibilities who can see this color; they say that it is the color of mud.

  Unless you are a person of admirably noble (or of disgustingly coarse) sensibilities, you will not understand this account at all. We're sorry about that.

  Loretta Sheen died when she was just sixteen years old. Her father, however, said that she didn't die, that she wasn't dead. He said that she had merely put herself into a spiteful state, out of perversity. This was an act quite out of character for her. She was mostly a good girl. Six other young persons of Loretta's acquaintance died the same weekend, and most of them died violently. These six were Harvey Clatterbach, Willow Gaylord, Elroy Rain, Violet Lonsdale, Barry Limus, and Priscilla Rommel. The families and friends of these six accepted the fact that they were dead: they hadn't the mental slipperiness of Loretta's father, Barnaby Sheen. The six young people looked dead and acted dead; and they were buried as being dead. Not quite so with Loretta.

  The whole idea of it began in a special high school psychology class taught by an instructor named Edmund Weakfish. “Participation psychology is the only psychology of any value,” Weakfish was saying. “We have had good success with this here and have come to some sound understandings. To understand a person we must become that person. To fathom a phenomenon you must be that phenomenon. And as we have been studying abnormal psychology by this method I am pleased to see how abnormal many of you have become.”

  Edmund Weakfish the instructor was a dull-looking person. He appeared to have been molded, in face and body, out of much-used modeling clay or putty, to have been molded by one with not much talent for molding. Edmund was of a dull putty color and of a shapeless plasticine shape. Yet he was said to be a young man of unusual bent, and a high school should have several unusual instructors.

  “Harvey Clatterbach has come to understand the psychology of a thief by becoming a thief,” Weakfish was commenting. “Willow Gaylord has entered into the psychology of a pregnant woman by becoming a pregnant woman, and without the usual procedure. It is true that her doctor has called it a false pregnancy, but that was merely because of loss of nerve and illusion on Willow's part. A serious student of psychology would be able to go all the w
ay with it, to achieve complete parthenogenesis and give birth, simply by putting herself into the state of mind of a pregnant woman and persevering in it.”

  “Would I be able to do it?” Elroy Rain asked Weakfish. Elroy had something of a kidder in him, a type of boy who was often a pit-fall to a psychology instructor.

  “No, you would not be able to do it, Elroy,” Weakfish told him. “It would be more difficult for a boy in any case, but it would not be impossible. It would be impossible for you only because you are not inclined enough to seriousness. Someday, I will find a male student interested enough to accomplish this. It will be something of a vindication of my teaching.”

  “You said once that I could make myself invisible,” Loretta Sheen blurted out as if she had been puzzling over this till it flooded over.

  “You yourself said once, Loretta, that you could make invisible things visible,” Weakfish reminded her. “Specifically, you are the girl in our class who is able to see poltergeists. And now you have several of the others able to see them. What is the difference? Yes, you could make yourself invisible if you entered fully into the state of mind of an invisible person. I am not sure, in any of these cases, whether it must be a real person whose state of mind one enters. I intend to find out.”

  “What if we come first, and we set up a state of mind in another person?” Violet Lonsdale had asked. “I believe I have done this. I schizo'd myself by entering into the state of mind of a schizo girl, but I think I beat her to it. She was only a little bit that way at first. Now we are both that way. My other person is named Mary Mondo. The other girl's other person is named Alice McGivern, and her primary person is named Janita Krupp. This other girl is very much torn up by it, but I'm not. I'm stronger than she is, and my other person Mary Mondo is the strongest of us all.”

  “Actually you are quite weak, Violet,” Edmund Weakfish said, “and you are cracked wide open. I believe that Mary Mondo will take you over almost completely and that it will be a good thing. The other double person, whoever and wherever she is, will probably destroy herself. This all fits in pretty well with my theories.”

  “There is something that went wrong with my own experiment,” Barry Limus said. “I think it had something to do with our trying to study poltergeists. I think that was what made you give me that assignment.”

  “I'm sorry, Barry,” Weakfish said. “I forget what assignment I gave you. It slipped my mind. More than that, it seems that it has been made invisible to my mind by its own nature. Into what state of mind did I assign you to enter?”

  “Into the mind, the long dead mind (you said it would add a new element to our experiments) of the person who made those peculiar old Central American figurines that we were looking at in the Gilcrease Institute. Well, it wasn't the state of mind of a dead man that I entered into, so that part of the experiment is voided. That mind, if it is a mind, is still as alive as it ever was. Those three figurines weren't made by a man. They are either fossils of poltergeists or they were molded or carved by poltergeists.”

  “That wouldn't be possible,” Priscilla Rommel interrupted. “A poltergeist couldn't make anything, and you couldn't enter into his mind. He hasn't any mind, not really. He's misnamed. There isn't any geist or spirit in him at all. He's sheer matter.”

  “Then why can't we see him?” Weakfish asked. “Except Loretta possibly, except several more of you a little less possibly, and probably through her; we can't see them. Why aren't poltergeists generally visible if they are sheer matter?”

  “Mere matter is always invisible,” Priscilla maintained. “It becomes visible only when touched with spirit. Mere matter may recognize itself in other ways though. I have always suspected that Loretta is mere matter with none, or very little, spirit.”

  “I have lots of spirit,” Loretta Sheen protested. “Oh, we will tangle, girl, we will tangle!”

  “How is it that all of us see rocks, for instance?” Weakfish asked. “I suppose that all of us can, and surely rocks are somewhat lacking in spirit.”

  “I don't know,” Priscilla said. “I haven't worked out that part in my mind yet.”

  “Well, poltergeists, whether they contain spirit or not, are your outside assignment for the weekend,” Weakfish told them. “I personally believe that they are no more than dead people. To study them best I believe that you must go and live with them. To do this, it is probably necessary that you die. I recommend this to you but I cannot compel it.”

  “How would we get back?” Elroy Rain asked.

  “A good participation psychologist would think of something, if he had a reason to come back at all. Probably you would put yourself into the state of mind of one risen from the dead. I believe that the poltergeists are somehow incompletely dead people. When you die you will likely enter the world of such a color that palters and such are visible to you. This is the world of color named ultra-violet or hylicon.”

  “Sometimes we call Barry ‘ultra-violet’,” Willow Gaylord said, “because Violet Lonsdale says he is a little beyond her. Ah, that's kind of a private joke.”

  “But if we die we will have all the colors, or none,” Loretta Sheen argued. “This is really what it is all about, the succeeding or failing, what used to be called the saving or damning. We'll have all or none. How would we have only this fringe color?”

  “Die compromised,” Weakfish the instructor said with that facial tic that was sometimes mistaken for a grin. “Die completely compromised and frustrated.”

  “What if we only pretend to die?” Loretta asked.

  “I believe that is what poltergeists have done,” Harvey Clatterbach said. “They are people who have died with certain mental reservations about it, and then perhaps they have been stuck with it.”

  Weakfish left it with them then. Loretta told the others that she was going to do it, to pretend to die. Several of the others said, “We will go with you if you really go.” That was Friday evening.

  Loretta Sheen died in convulsions on Saturday morning. Her father Barnaby Sheen took it oddly. “No, she isn't dead, George,” he insisted to Dr. George Drakos who was his friend and physician. “She has merely put herself into a spiteful state. I suppose it is partly my fault: I'd lost contact with her. What is a father to do when a child becomes so alienated and casual? But she isn't dead.”

  “Barnaby, she has been dead for four hours,” Drakos said firmly. “We both saw her die in those empurpled convulsions. Naturally I had to report it. Are you really in a daze, man? You wouldn't let the priest in. You said that he was one of those damnable new priests who engineered such satanic alienation, and that you wouldn't let him get a further hold on her. And you wouldn't let the lads from McGee's Funeral Home take her after I had called them. Barnaby, she is cold dead, and the clock stands at noon. What will you do? What will I do?”

  “You have already reported her dead, George; that is enough for you to do. I will keep her here till she comes to her senses, in the several meanings of that phrase. There is no law against that. I will declare this room to be a crypt or shrine, and I will keep her here.”

  “But at least she must be embalmed, Barney.”

  “No. I am afraid that it would make it more difficult for her. We will not eviscerate her temple. She has already suffered too much transformation.”

  “Barney, I can't leave you here like this. What shall I do?”

  “Pray, George. We need the prayers of even a half-good man.”

  The young friends came in to see the stark dead Loretta. Barnaby didn't forbid them. He disliked them all slightly, as he would dislike members of any alien species, but he accepted it that they should visit her. The young friends talked to Loretta. Barnaby didn't find it overly worthy of note (though George Drakos would have been horrified at it, if he were still there, and he was a doctor) that Loretta answered them. She answered them in an unlocated voice that resembled her own very little, and yet it had her signature on it.

  “Will we still tangle, girl?” Priscilla Ro
mmel taunted her corpus.

  “No. We be tangled,” Loretta answered, but not out of her mouth or throat. Possibly it was out of her stomach. Possibly it was from some other point in the room, or outside it.

  “Have you really gone, Loretta? Shall we go with you?” Harvey Clatterbach asked her. Harvey had been in love with Loretta, but now he had become a mechanical sort of contraption. He had a noisiness, even a sort of brightness about him; so have many mechanical contraptions.

  Loretta answered Harvey and the others. She answered in the same unlocated voice with her own slight signature but little of her old timbre in it. She talked in syllables and words, and her father Barnaby raised his head in cracked pain and loss. He couldn't understand her words. He could get no meaning from them at all. He would never be able to understand her again.

  But the tin-eyed young people understood her. They talked with her for some time.

  “We will come along too, if you say that's all there is to it,” Willow Gaylord pronounced with a new jerkiness. “I think that's what we've all been looking for, something with not much to it.” Willow had been quite a nice little girl. Odd.

  And Loretta, or the noise that had formerly been Loretta Sheen, continued to answer from some unidentified location. And the others talked to that location.

  “If ever come out, what is like, anyhow together with what's it for, won't have to do, take it loose, what else but rap, break it like bananas, stuff it we'll glide, door hole and all, why not, cream it wheeze, gouch,” Elroy Rain was saying in words but no sense. None of them ever made sense again.

  Not even Violet. Not even Barry who was a little beyond Violet. Not Priscilla Rommel. They talked, but now even their words could not be recognized as words in any language. They were a racket and clatter; nothing beyond.