“Consider that whole fat mountain of a nation! That cornucopious overflowing from this Big Rock Candy Mountain of legend! Are not all things for all people? Shall we perish from want in our miserable lowlands and seacoasts while ‘they’ live in ease in their rich hackberry thickets!
“Why should we be beholden to the Fat-Land People for most of our food and our clothing, for our machinery and our music and our books, for our motor-carts and our trains and our telegraph lines, for our entertainments and excursions, even for our sins?
“Consider their Kentucky precision machine shops with their manufacture of Kentucky rifles and reapers and motor-wagons and trains that obsolete our own factories. But I will tell you all an open secret!
“Not all the self-development money sent to us by rich Appalachia goes for the things that were intended. We divert a big part of it. We buy guns and cannons from England. We buy grenade-launchers and mortar-guns from France. This will be our self-development. And, when we have arms enough, we will invade and take what is ours by right. We'll be top dog then.”
“Did you know that the future of our great land of Appalachia once hung in the balance, that it once depended on the flip of a coin? This was in the year 1788 when the frontier state of Franklin, of which our Appalachia is the overgrown child, was threatened with extinction. The state had endured for four years. Then the traitor John Tipton tried to betray the State back into the hands of North Carolina. Had he succeeded, our own fat Appalachia might now be thin and starving. The great leader of Franklin, ‘Nolichucky Jack’ Sevier, the hero of the Battle of Kings Mountain, seemed uninterested. ‘It will not matter much one way or the other,’ he said. And the settlers along the Watauga and Holston Rivers were ready to surrender themselves back to North Carolina. The only supporters of Independent Franklin seemed to be the Sons of the Twelve Cabins, very rough mountain men. They came to Governor Sevier in a fury. ‘We want to keep our Free State of Franklin,’ they said. ‘There are certain hotheads who want to turn the Free State into a Free Nation,’ Sevier said. ‘Yes, we are those hotheads,’ the Sons of the Cabins boasted. ‘And we can whip them all, the twelve of us, and you.’
“ ‘Oh, I'm not doubting that we can whip them,’ Sevier said, ‘but is it important that we do it?’
“ ‘It's important to the twelve best men on the frontier,’ the twelve best men said. ‘Well then, I'll flip for it, you twelve against the world,’ Sevier cried, and he pulled a Spanish scored dollar out of his pocket, ‘Crowns for the return to the Carolina folks. Shields for our free land in our fat mountains and rivers.’ And the scored dollar came up ‘shields’. The Free Men of Franklin confronted the troops from North Carolina and they faced them down though they were outnumbered twenty to one. And when the Free Frankliners looked them in the eye, they looked all three million people of the United States in the eye. They stared down those three million too. So was the fate of our nation decided.
“Had it been otherwise, had the coin come up ‘crows’, we would not now be our own thriving selves under our Child of God flag, that banner of the fat pig with the Beams of Heaven shining down on it. Had it been otherwise, we would not have grown into a great realm of the thirteen states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Outer Virginia, Western Carolina, Lupkin, Tom Bigbee, Tishomingo, Izard, Giradeau, Terre Haute, Gallatin, Oklafalaya, and Kansas; with our Capital at the District of Watauga.
“Had it been otherwise, we would not be here to send relief trains to the lowlanders, the United-Statsers. And who would feed them if we were not established in our fat mountains?”
—Child's History of Appalachia
A relief train pulled into Pittsburgh from Appalachia. It was heavy with foodstuffs and clothing; it had some tools and machinery and vehicles; there were a few carloads of radios and luxury appliances. This was one of the daily free trains into that town. But the people of the town looked at the slowing train and spat.
“They used to wait till we unloaded before they spat their disdain,” a trainman said.
At the unloading, the townsmen insisted that the trainmen should unload all the goods. The trainmen said that the locals could unload the material, as it was being given to them. “For us to unload it would be a little too much of a bad thing,” a trainman said. There was an argument at the trainside. Several of the trainmen were kicked in the shins. Then a trainman punched a shin-kicker in the nose. That was really all there was to the incident.
But the State of Pittsburgh protested this outrage to the Free Nation of Appalachia. It asked for execution of the nose-punching trainman, and punitive damage of a hundred billion dollars. Then other states of the Union supported the State of Pittsburgh in its demands. And other rabble-roosters went to work on the people.
A rabble-rooster in Port Chicago was haranguing his ruddy-necked fellows. “I call for war. United States blood has been shed on United States soil. A poor man in Pittsburgh has had his nose blooded by an insulting Appalachian; cartilaginous damage may also have been done. This is a national insult, and we will be redressed.
“These fat-country people who use every foot of their land, who are so rich and provisioned, they will disgorge! It's an open secret that we have arms from Canada, that we have been spending for this purpose almost all our ‘lend-a-hand’ moneys received from Appalachia.
“They are a people in the rich heartland (which should be our own heartland) enjoying dew-berries and blueberries, June berries and huckleberries and elderberries, blackberries and gooseberries; enjoying hazelnuts and butternuts; pleasuring themselves on tomatoes and musk melons; the rich Appalachians! Consider their crackerjack factories in Council Bluffs and their alligator farms in Memphis! Regard the wealth of their windmill-makers and rubber-plant growers. Be amazed at the daily wages of their iron-makers and cucumber pickers. Do you know that even the poor people in Appalachia have pumpkin every day?
“Men, enlist for this adventure against the Appalachians. There will be loot. And every man-jack of you may seize one of those Appalachian girls for his own.”
A rabble-rooster in Red River Narrow State was blowing and going: “We are only the lean ring on the outside of this promised land. But they, the rich Appalachians, they are the fat hole of the doughnut. Do you know that they have found ways to get olives to grow in their land? And lemons and oranges and coconuts? Do you know what millions of pounds of honey they take from what billions of bees? Do you understand that they make six potatoes grow where only one would grow in our country? Do you know that they tamper with their trees so that they have apples to pick on Christmas, and that they can get nine cuttings of clover a year in their hay fields? Do you know that not ten miles from here they have a factory that makes cactus taste like beefsteak? Do you know that they make better Horse Whisky in Kentucky and better Mule Whisky in Tennessee than we are able to make anywhere? Why has God given them land so much better than our own? He hasn't. It's the Devil who deals good fortune to the Appalachians.
“We have asked that the Appalachians share equally with us, but what they give us are only half shares. Well, we will take by force what they will not give by friendship. We here in Red River Narrow State have been setting aside half of what the Appalachians send us under the labor-for-neighbor plan. We have been buying firearms from Mexico with this. So have the peoples of most of the other states of the Union. We're near ready.
“I can promise that we will eat high on the hog when we despoil Appalachia. I can promise you gold, girls, and glory. We will knock them off their fat mountain and then we will be king of the mountain.”
The people of the United States Union mounted assault against the people of the Free Nation of Appalachia, the richest and best-provisioned nation in the world. The attackers had a few guns and cannons from England, they had launchers and mortars from France, they had some moose guns from Canada. And they had maybe a hundred dozen Mexican trade pistols. It was a very late and very inept revolt against the conditions. It was a senile, tatterdemalion, foolish, even ins
ane invasion.
But what to do about it? These invading people were footsore and hungry within half a day. They were lost in the landscape even before reaching their own borders. They were bogged down. They would be dying in two days. They needed every help.
Or was what they really needed?
No, no, do not even think of that. Oh, there was a temptation to take ungovernmental steps, to take inhumane steps, to take un-Appalachian steps to abate this nuisance!
But that must not be allowed.
The only way to regard the invaders was with compassion and embarrassment.
By what fate had such a situation ever come about?
Smoe And The Implicit Clay
1
There is belief that the Indians had fast cars before the flood. They remembered them more than did other people when mankind was reconstituted, and more than other people they knew what to do with them.
—THE REEFS OF EARTH
“Donners, I called you in here on a hunch, just as I called in the latest (Oh God!) computer on a hunch,” Colonel Crazelton of the Inquisition said. Crazelton always seemed like a volcano waiting its turn to erupt. “We have a problem, or we are going to create a problem for the purpose of getting it solved. There's been a cloud on the mind of every computer and man who's touched this case, and I'll have no peace till it's cleared. If only I could get straight answers to straight questions. Who was there, Donners? That's the straight question.”
“Who was where, Crazelton? I've heard that question ‘Who was there?’ or ‘Who was already there?’ several times since I walked into these Sepulchres today. I think that the walls are mumbling the questions. Dammit, Crazelton, what are you trying to ask me?”
“I'm trying to ask you whether there was ever anyone already there when you got there. You've been on initial landing parties to more than a hundred worlds. Was there ever anyone already there when you got there?”
“Anyone? Or anything?”
“Anyone preferably. Any human or near human. Any person. Who was there first?”
“Well, there's an old serviceman's legend that ‘Kilroy was here’ first. And he did get around for several centuries there, I suppose. He's worn down to a wraith now though. Likely he was always a projection. And yes, of course projections can write short declarations or claims or taunts on walls or whatever. They've often done it. I've caught several glimpses of Kilroy myself. He is not at all a nonentity as has been claimed. He's really an imposing figure, for all his haziness: a tall, rangy wraith with a far-off look in his eye.”
“Kilroy isn't the one, Donners,” Colonel Crazelton said. “The new computer that we have working on the job now has assembled a bucket of information on Kilroy. He agrees that Kilroy has a far-off look in his eyes, which may be why he failed to see someone who was right under his nose. And Kilroy may have set this peculiar nonseeing pattern, if he is as ancient as has been claimed for him. But our new computer (Are they so much smarter than man anyhow?) says that the answer we are looking for now is ‘Who was there when Kilroy got there?’ And this new computer on the job said that he wanted to interview the man who had been on more initial landings than any other. That's you, Donners, and I had already sent for you before the computer put in his request.”
“I suppose I'm the one then, Crazelton. I've been around a lot. You have a new computer on this ill-defined job?” Donners had developed a grotesque facial tic and an oddity of speech and manner. Many of the space pioneers get a little bit odd.
“We have had five computers on this job before this one,” Colonel Crazelton admitted. “None of them could state the problem cogently or even be sure that there was a problem. But they all thought that there was a cloud on the records and that it went clear back to the beginning. It bothered them. They were like old punch-drunk fighters trying to brush imaginary flies or cobwebs or clouds out of their eyes. And each of those first five computers was larger, more intelligent, more advanced, and more sophisticated than the one before it. We couldn't go any further in that direction. There aren't any machines more intelligent or more advanced or more sophisticated than those five. So we decided that—”
“—that you had been going in the wrong direction, Crazelton?” Donners finished for him. “So you got one that was less intelligent, less sophisticated, less advanced than these. You got one that was used to imaginary flies and cobwebs and clouds, not bothered at all by them. You got a machine like—”
“Like Epikt. In fact we got Epikt.”
“Oh God!” Epikt was the Ktistec machine associated with the Institute for Impure Science. He was a showboat and a comedian. Except for his brains and flexibility and intuitions he wasn't much of an improvement over humans.
“And Epikt said that he wanted to check out the man who had been on more initial landings than any other. And when I told him that you were that man he said—”
“He said ‘Oh God!’ ”
“Yes.”
“Colonel Crazelton, what's the name of that gadget that's hanging with its nose over the edge of your ashtray? I've seen them before. They remind me of someone. But I can't remember their names.”
“Oh, there it is! I couldn't see it a while ago. I thought someone had swiped it. Very often I can't see it and think that it's been stolen or misplaced. It's a Smoe. They are made out of unbaked clay, I think. They were first in vogue about two hundred years ago. Interesting little conversation pieces, except that you always forget that they're there, or forget to see them. It hangs by its nose over the edge of anything and pops those one-way eyes at you. Just a little statuette, a head only, and the nose is the handle of the head.”
“Oh, yeah. I always forget what you call them. I think I've got a couple of them somewhere, but I never seem to notice them. I've known guys that look just like that: not known them very well though.”
Epikt, the intelligent Ktistec machine, arrived at the Inquisition Sepulchres. (And the Sepulchres weren't as gloomy as all that, just big, statued, white slabs of buildings, functional really.) Epikt arrived in the form of one of his hasty extensions. This Epikt-extension was duded out in walrus mustaches, sky-blue eyes as big as plates, and a paunch that would measure two meters around. Watch out for him when he uses a big paunch, or anything big and bulky. That means that he is carrying quite a few of his brains with him. All the leading computers can make working extensions of themselves, but most of them don't go so heavy on the whimsy when they do it. “Ah, Donners, to business first,” Epikt said as he drew on a cigar through an arty cigar holder. “And after we have solved our business, then you may be permitted to regale me with a few tall tales. I have a photograph here. It is of yourself and those who accompanied you on one of your initial landings. It is Donners' World, in fact. Can you name me the five people who appear in this picture, Donners?”
“Sure, Epikt. There's myself, and Bernheim, Marin, Procop, Scarble.”
“Five persons, Donners?”
“Certainly. We were a five-man team.”
“Point out the five in this picture, Donners.”
“Why, there's myself. There's Bernheim. There's Marin. There's Procop, who we had to report as disappearing completely: but who can say whether he stayed disappeared? There's Scarble, who later got cobwebs on the brain from the giant spiders. Five men.” Donners looked at the picture for a moment longer as though he would name something else. Then he shrugged his shoulders. He looked at Epikt the showboat machine. The cigar holder that Epikt was using was in the shape of a Smoe, a big-nosed Smoe. “Have Smoes come back?” Donners asked. “I seem to be seeing more of them lately.”
“That you're seeing more of them doesn't mean that there are more of them,” Epikt cautioned. “I wish you could get away from that human logic of yours. Back to the picture: who's the sixth man there, Donners?”
“Sixth man? There isn't any sixth man. I wish you would let things alone!” Donners exploded suddenly. “Yes, Epikt, I see where you're pointing. But that's only—well, that's on
ly the fellow who was there, I mean, his name was—Epikt, I don't believe that he had any name! He used to tickle me though. I remember once when he said—but how could he have? How could I remember an impossibility? And why do I feel funny?”
“That thing in the picture is a nonoptical illusion, Donners,” the Epikt extension said, “and sometimes the nonoptics do make the head swim. Luckily this picture was taken on biofilm so it could be analyzed as to the composition of the pictured objects. And they have been analyzed. He isn't a sixth man, Donners, though he looks mighty like one with the light and arrangement of the picture. But he's just a big outcropping of clay.”
“Just a pile of clay there? Are you sure, Epikt?”
“Of course I'm sure,” said the machine Epikt. “Am I a man that I should have doubts?”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 190
