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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “No, you may not escape,” Snapjudge flashed back the stilted thought. “As I have judged you, so you are judged.” But he was startled by his own arrogance. Was this the beginning of uncertainty? But why should a Prejudicial Analyst ever be uncertain?

  “That young man is prescient,” Snapjudge told himself. “How could I have missed that? His orbital index is too low for him to be a prescient. Easy, Jim, easy. Were there true prescients, we Prejudicial Analysts would be obsoleted. We'll not let that happen.” Then Snapjudge was taken by a cold chill. It was not over the idea of prescients; it was over something that happened years before.

  Two dozen years back, in a biology laboratory period, Jim Snapjudge, his eye to a microscope, had been examining a slide at four hundred power magnification. And something had drifted onto that slide that had no business there. It was a face that barely missed being a human face, that missed even more narrowly being a demon face. And it had winked sardonically and chillingly and crookedly. It was because of that not-quite-human face on the slide that Jim Snapjudge did not become a biologist. He became a Prejudicial Analyst instead.

  Why bring that old puzzlement up now? Well, the young man (whose name was approximately Godfrey Halskragen) had winked with exactly that same sardonic and chilling and crooked wink as had the blob under the microscope years before. Yes, it was an amoebic wink. And it meant that there was in this Godfrey Halskragen some thing, too small to see with the plain eye, that would contradict with absolute stubbornness whatever analysis Snapjudge should make. There was plain revolt there.

  At that time there was still some prejudice against Prejudicial Analysts. But why should there be? Why this irrational recoil that appeared so often and so foolishly? We are not commonly in court of law and pledged to hold no previous information on a subject. Then we should not, as a normal thing, be required to have minds wiped clear of all memory or manifestation. We are not meant to be like little ducks who wake up in a new world each day. For a pre-judice is simply a pre-judgment, a decision based upon previous as well as immediate evidence. If I found certain things to be true yesterday, why may I not take them into account in making a decision today or tomorrow? If a certain person has taken advantage of me last week, why must I trust him in an identical situation today? And actually, using the guidelines of previous situations and encounters and persons, we can tell almost everything about a person merely by looking at him. Even if he puts his head in a sack, we can tell much about him by the sack he selects and the way he fashions it to wear.

  This man is Scotch, I say for an instance, and the Scotch lean to a certain sort of character. This man has lewd and vulgar ears, and they are the sort of ears that criminals often have. This man has a pronounced septum between the nostrils, and such persons are proud without reason, self-centered to the point of having no very clear idea of the outside world; they are dishonest and presuming. Or this other man has greedy thumbs. What should I do, put gloves on my eyes so I do not see them?

  Should one be required to say of a person or situation ‘I will accept no evidence on this man or thing except today's evidence generated today?’ There cannot be any such segregation of evidence. The very shape of a man's head is evidence, and it was shaped in the course of his whole lifetime and only a little bit today. The way that a man walks is evidence of what he is. His name is evidence that goes back through his whole ancestry. A man with the first name of Howard will be one sort of man. A man with the first name of Harold will be of another sort. There is nothing accidental about this. But one who must make an appraisal today cannot wait for a man to act like a Howard or a Harold. Only a small chunk of the picture will be revealed in one day or in one season. It must be supposed that the man will act in such a way as previous evidence indicates, the supposition being based on the man's own past actions where they may be ascertained, and on the past actions of hundred of other people of the same type.

  The use of such suppositions is named Prejudice. Their directed use is named Active Prejudice. And the really effective and illuminating use of a corpus of suppositions is named Prejudice as a Work of Art.

  The work of Prejudicial Analysts is always Prejudice as Work of Art.

  Each person is a total walking history of himself. The history is total in that it gives not only what the person has done but also what he will do. These histories aren't even very hard to read, not for Prejudicial Analysts.

  Another person was now approaching Jim Snapjudge from ahead. She was a dusky young lady who was dressed loudly in the primary colors so that she was like a column of happy and shouting flowers. Outside of her brightly colored clothing, she was rather commonplace in appearance, or at least she was so to common eyes. To the eyes of an expert Prejudicial Analyst she was not too uncommon either, and she was quickly placed. She was placed into relatively simple categories. She was placed firmly, irrevocably, and in considerable details. ‘Twenty-one years old last March.’ Jim Snapjudge was sending, receiving, and recording in the annotation more rapid than voice, ‘and her name may very well be Teresa Tuesdaychild. Hers isn't a continuing surname. It was given to her by her mother, out of whimsy, and all in one piece. In her line there had been, for practical purposes, parthenogenesis for three generations, for they were not marrying ladies in her ancestry. Teresa came up here from the shallow-clay in the South, from the little piney woods and the nanny-goat hills, but all of those ladies go into the towns when the years for it arrive. And each of those ladies has a bosomful of gold pieces.

  ‘This Teresa has a well-paying job in a highly technical field and she fulfills it amazingly. It isn't that she is a person of much technical training. Indeed she lied cheerfully about her qualifications to get this job, and she also presented forged articles and certificates that were provided by a person called John the Forger. But she does have great intuition, strong tactile intelligence, penetrating imagination; and there are few technical problems that can stand up against her. She has so much vitality that she must constantly be sharing it with others. She is one of the bright-star people with the tide running always in her favor. And, so far as she knows, she is quite happy.

  ‘She is a person of several different lives, and she moves easily from one into another. But, though she has a solid hold on all the up-town things, money, happy employment, fulfillment of leisure, variety in her own person, attention of many young gentlemen on the rapid rise (one of them a double-ducky buckaroo of great moxie and moment), though she has contagious gaiety, though she has multiplying group interests, yet she is going down to Rhineland tonight without any of her friends. She will find sordid encounter there and she will meet her ruination, the nature of which remains a little foggy even to a Prejudicial Analyst.’

  Well, that was the quick judgment.

  This dusky girl who might be named Teresa Tuesdaychild had now gone on past Jim Snapjudge. And, a short moment later, Snapjudge did (for the second time that day) a thing that he did very seldom. He looked back. And Teresa, who had gone by him, also looked back, and their looks met.

  “Must it really be my ruination?” the thought of the young lady lightened back at Snapjudge, and her full vocal intonation was somehow in that thought. “Are you quite sure what sort of encounter I will have down in Rhineland, in the Ruination Bar and Grill and Candy-House where Elm Street ends on the River?” And she flashed Snapjudge a dusky and not very friendly grin.

  “I have read you, and that is the way you are read,” Snapjudge bumbled back in his mind, angrily and uneasily. “What, has another one challenged my Prejudice today? How could I miss two prescients within a quarter of an hour? Can it be only coincidence that there should be a pair of intuitives in one afternoon?

  “Well, it's plain that the fates of these two are connected, and it's just as plain that both of these are a little bit stubborn about accepting their fate. I've wondered about this irrational stubbornness where I've met it in others. And a good Prejudicial Analyst isn't supposed to have to wonder about very many things.
”

  Jim Snapjudge stopped at the local station in beautiful downtown Kronstadt, Ohio. He was to appear for a minute interview on Interviews With Agnes at three oh seven o'clock, so he walked into the sending area at exactly three oh seven.

  “Oh!” said Agnes, “I thought you would be late.”

  “Any Prejudicial Analyst could have told you I wouldn't be,” Snapjudge said. “My personality profile should indicate to anyone capable of understanding that I am always on time, exactly on time.”

  “Mr. Snapjudge, you are here to defend your profession of Prejudicial Analyst against public opinion which has always held that there is something malodorous and crippling about prejudice,” Agnes began the interview.

  “I am not here to defend but to attack,” Snapjudge said. “I am here to attack the hypocrisy of those who would prejudge prejudice. To be without prejudice is to be without roots or trunk. But I doubt if you even know the meaning of 'prejudice', Agnes.”

  “I know the original literal meaning on which you have built such a house of hate, yes,” Agnes maintained stoutly. “And I know the true, developed, organic meaning that now obtains. This is the shriveling, defaming, hating, murderous assault on all that is decent; and you are a shriveled, defaming, hating, murderous person.”

  “Ah, you're foaming at the mouth, Agnes. You should wear a bib. I repeat that I attack the hypocrisy of those who prejudge prejudice, you being one of them. You are categorically against all prejudices (prejudgments) of any sort, and yet on this one thing you prejudge more strongly than any Prejudicial Analyst that I have ever known. Really, why are you against intelligently based prejudgment?”

  “Because it is fallible, because it is sometimes inaccurate, because it is presumptive—”

  “What isn't? Are not all judgments fallible? Working infallibility is the most that can ever be obtained.”

  “No. The Final Judgment is not fallible. I'd almost wish it were this moment so I could hear it find against you, find against you forever. You really wouldn't call yourself a fair and unbiased man, would you now, Mr. Snapjudge?”

  “You are prejudging the Final Judgment, Agnes, you who are so strongly against any prejudging? And, yes, I would absolutely call myself a fair and unbiased man. Even-minded, that's me; always a bad word for everyone.”

  Snapjudge felt that the quip didn't quite go over. The people who are against prejudice are against humor also.

  The buzzer sounded, and the minute Interview with Agnes was over with. A minute was what Agnes said it was, and now she was interviewing a spokesman for the Ethical Party.

  Walking in the street again, Snapjudge was assailed by second thoughts once more. “What if I'm wrong?” something wailed in him. But a Prejudicial Analyst cannot admit that he is wrong in his basic, so Snapjudge put this doubt resolutely out of his mind.

  The expert Prejudicial Analyst has two most useful aids which, however, are still not in very good repute. It is unfortunate that they are not, for as repositories of information they are overflowing vessels. These two main props are Phrenology and Folk Belief. Phrenology (that old House of Our Fathers) is back again and it has been repaired to a high degree of validity. It is the reading of character and predilections and life determination from the head bumps and head shapes and from other related evidence. There is the analysis of the skull itself and of the plastic-fleshy covering of the skull. And then the shape and disposition of the whole body comes into the game. A recent expansion of the field is kinetic phrenology which embraces the movements as well as the shape and texture of a person. Even the lay and whorl of the hair (Negro hair, Jew hair, Slav hair, Indian hair) indicates what a person must be. Hair on the back of the second phalange sections of the fingers, that indicates cruelty; and a great lot of hair there indicates outright sadism. Hair in the ears, that indicates doltishness and animalism. And the feet, the feet! They would tell almost everything if they were allowed to. The Prejudicial Analyst is at such a disadvantage when people go shod! And yet a practiced analyst can tell enough. There are some things that can never be hidden by leather or plastic.

  Surface marks on the skin! There are little weather-marks or crinkle marks on the faces and throats of all persons, and these grow with age. These are the nexus marks, usually starred, five-pointed for Christians, six-pointed for Jews. Then there are the un-starred, diamond shapes of Negroes, and the lotus marks of the Hindustani people. These marks indicate both the apparent and the hidden blood of examined persons. The marks do not lie, but individual persons sometimes lie. And yet it's a fact that one without a strong spirit of prejudice is scarcely able to interpret these marks at all.

  And ears, ears! No Prejudicial Analyst can ever have enough of ears. No good man ever had bad ears. There are criminal ears, there are lazy ears, there are the itching ears that are mentioned in Scripture. And there is a human characteristic that must go with every ear form. There is an invariance here.

  And there are many extensions of the simple science of Phrenology. Every extension of the body is an extension of the science of the body. Dogs belonging to persons, for an instance, are extensions of those persons, and they are to be analyzed as ancillaries and extensions. These and other appurtenances, living or unliving (a house belonging to a person may be such an appurtenance) give absolute indication of a person's character and direction.

  So many things to be considered, dewlaps, throat-swellings, bull-humps on the backs of necks, the shape of a voice which is the shape of a thorax projected into the air, grizzled eyebrows (especially when they are Manx or Welsh), these all will tell very much to one who is truly devoted to Prejudice.

  That which has been will be again, and again, and again. When a correlation has been discovered to exist in one hundred persons it will also exist in the one hundred and first.

  And names, names! Names are shapes and textures and movements, they are short-hand representation of living persons. And they are also evocative magic. So it is that names form the transition between Phrenology and Folk Belief which is the other strong limb of the Prejudicial Analyst.

  It is hard to comprehend just how very many things names may tell to a Prejudicial Analyst. But how the Analyst himself tells names is the easy part. It is almost to cheat, to take the cross-section from the small end of the log. Even to the student analyst it is almost the case that every person comes with his name printed boldly in plain letters on his forehead.

  Take newborn twin calves that look exactly alike. There is no possible way that one can tell them apart until they are named. But name them, and each will immediately look like his name to such a degree that it becomes quite easy to tell them apart. This is not imagination. Ask any farmer or small rancher who has kept a modest herd (not many over a hundred animals) so that each animal may be known by appearance and name. Appearance and name will interact very strongly.

  But humans grow much more in the direction of their names than do animals. Consider persons hearing the names of Clarence, Jerome, Horace, Freddy, Eustace, Emily, Rex, Alice, Ralph, Agatha, Isidor, Mona, Dwight. You get the idea? One asks the names of these people only out of politeness. One knows their names, for they are spelled out on the very faces of them.

  This most striking trick of the Prejudicial Analysts, naming names of persons never seen before, is really the easiest trick in the whole repertory. Anyone can do it. You can do it yourself with a week's practice.

  But there are other tricks that are not easy. The divining of a stranger's total personality and total life, past, present, and future, from such evidence as is immediately apparent is not an easy thing. But it can be done. It requires almost slavish adherence to analogy and precedent. Such divining requires acceptance of the formula ‘What type has done, the individual will do.’ It requires uncommon sense, and a man-trap memory for millions of details. It requires assurance. It requires confidence. It requires the synthesis of all these things. And it requires, for it to be done with a sparkle, reasoned happiness on the part of the Anal
yst.

  But Jim Snapjudge was unhappy without apparent reason. It couldn't be anything preying on — What? Are things back where they started? Yes, they are. Jim Snapjudge, in an uncommon fit of mind-wandering, had walked completely around beautiful downtown Kronstadt and he was back where he had started. But now he knew why he was there. In the building above him was the office and clinic of his friendly enemy and formidable competitor, Jonah Hirnbrecher, the other leading Prejudicial Analyst in town.

  Doctors must sometimes go to other doctors. Even lawyers go to other lawyers in certain circumstances. Priests go to other priests to be confessed: even Popes must do so, except Leo the First for whom an angel provided that service yearly. Gamblers visit other gamblers. And Prejudicial Analysts must sometimes, for the preserving of their equilibrium, consult with others of their kind. Jim Snapjudge went up to see the other Analyst, Jonah Hirnbrecher.

  “Good afternoon, Jim,” Jonah said, and subvocally he added “Damned Wasp!”

  “Good afternoon, Jonah,” Snapjudge gave his greeting, and voicelessly he added “Damned Jew-bug!” This subliminal name-calling was only a little ritual knife-whetting that they used. It certainly didn't imply unfriendliness.

  “I suppose that you, as a foresightly person, have made arrangements to turn all your cases and clients over to some other Analyst in the event of your timely (for to an Analyst nothing is untimely) death,” Jonah asked matter-of-factly. “I suppose that you can make this transfer by a single act that is as simple as jerking a drawstring. I rather hope that the transfer will be made to myself.”

  “Sure, it's to you, Jonah,” Snapjudge said. “You're the only other Prejudicial Analyst in town. Has my death become timely?”

  “Oh yes. Tonight.”

  “All right.”

  Jim Snapjudge made a phone call. It was an act as simple as jerking a drawstring, and by that act he turned over all his cases and clients to Jonah Hirnbrecher.