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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I have heard it said by an erudite man that it would be wonderful to have located recording microphones at various spots in the time and place of history. Oh, but it has been done. We use such microphones all the time! I have never found a dingle or dale on this earth in which there were not many such microphones. Stones are the most common recorders. Everywhere, to a person with informed eyes and ears, these stones shine and shout their presence. It is in their thin (but not so thin as a non-historian might imagine) patinas that we may read complete histories.

  “We commonly lift or peel off transparencies at six-second intervals. Each such transparency will give a detailed and accurate analysis of the air for its period, temperature, direction of wind, light intensity (whether in shade or sunlight or dark night or bright night, even, from the angle of the shine, the hour of the day, and the day of the year), sulphur content of the air, significant pollen, aroma, and quality generally. Do you realize that it would take fewer than three hundred billion such six-second intervals, fewer than three hundred billion such transparencies to carry us back through the last fifty thousand years of history, the period in which we are interested, the period since our own first appearance? We can go deeper, of course, but frankly we have not the technique to go more than ten times deeper, or to about half a million years. Beyond that, we lose accuracy. But why should we go deeper than our own period? In those murky depths, we find only animals and uncouth creatures and peoples who are not ourselves.

  “But we can slice the transparencies much thinner than six seconds. We can slice them down to a hundredth of a second for any period we wish to focus on. The six-second interval is merely cruising speed or hunting speed. The patinas deposited on good rock surfaces can be lifted down to the thickness of a single molecule.

  “Complete visual pictures, from any aspect or direction, can be reconstructed of anything whose light or shadow fell even indirectly on one of our stones. We can get detailed pictures of animals, of plants, of people as they lived and moved thousands of years ago. We can reconstruct color pictures of the clouds moving overhead, and we can read the spectra of those clouds. We can reconstruct anything that was ever visible, that was ever to be discerned by any of the senses, that was ever subject to any sort of analysis. Give us a dozen tuned stones (they resonate to each other, and those of the same locale will always know each other) and we can reconstruct a complete countryside for any period we wish. Nor would upheavals which seem to scramble the record make as much difference as you might suppose.

  “We can trap sounds and play them back with perfect fidelity. We can play the song of the ancestral cicada that had two more chromosomes than have its descendants. The old cicada (it is only coincidence) has two more notes to its song. We can say what the two disappeared chromosomes were. We can even, by very advanced technique, duplicate those chromosomes.

  “And smells! Of course they are even more simple than sounds to lift in the transparencies. We can go back and pick up nearly every scene complete for the last fifty thousand years. We can do it at ten times that depth, if there were anything interesting happening there. And patinas and deposits on stones are only one of the dozens of tools that we have for such historical reconstruction.”

  “If I had a rock in this room, could it tell me the hanky-panky that my husband pulls when I'm gone?” a woman asked. She was a walk-in from the street, a mere jaywalker: she wasn't an associate of the Pop Historians. “If it takes a special rock, where could I get one?” she asked.

  “Oh, it takes at least a dozen seasons to set patina layers so that they can be removed as transparencies,” the speaker said. “I don't know why this is so, but it does protect and make privileged all current information from the hot eyes and gawky ears of suspicious persons. You wouldn't be interested in hanky-panks that are more than a dozen years old, would you?”

  “I sure would,” the woman said. “I want to find out about them as far back or as close up as I can go. Where can I find one of these rocks?”

  “Oh, any rock will do,” the speaker said. “But just any technician will not do. We exercise a certain discretion in just what the patinas should reveal. But many things other than rocks have secrets.”

  “Aye, goatskins have secrets too,” Duffey told his beard. He had been thinking about the parchment that he had found nailed to his door that morning. Now he was inspired to use his own technique to lift transparencies and tracings from it. The parchment was still on the door. Duffey realized that it was a proclamation and was intended to remain there for the stay of the Royal Pop Historians.

  He rolled a violet light through the throng and to the door. Several of the people—the child-hero, the hoyden, the Countess and others—were very interested in his doings. They followed him about as he made his hookup.

  “Why do you use that obsolete apparatus?” the child-hero asked him. “There is nothing intuitive about it at all, nothing dumfounding. I wouldn't be caught dead with an apparatus that wasn't in some way dumfounding.” Duffey's violet light was not obsolete. He had bought it that very year. His older violet light had been obsolete but still workable. But neither of them had been very intuitive or dumfounding in their operation.

  “What is with you children?” Duffey demanded. “This does not make great speeches, but it works. Well, what is the latest thing you Pop Historians would use to divine the depth of this goatskin?”

  “For such primary work as that, where the levels are of the doings and undoings of people (some of them probably human), and with so few such recordings, a peach branch would probably be the newest and most sophisticated device,” the child-hero said. “It must be a forked branch, and it must be cut like—”

  “Like a dowser's forked stick,” Duffey finished. “Yes, I have one of them somewhere. I often use it. And also I often use my violet light here.” In his business as art dealer and pawnbroker, Duffey often examined things by his violet light. It would bring out underlays of paintings. It would bring out filed-off serial numbers of pawned equipment. And also he often used his dowser's forked stick (his was from a red peach tree). It would tell whether blood had been shed in the history of an article or artifact. It would tell particularly whether there was a murder in the history of ownership of an item (only the forked rod of the red peach tree would tell this latter). But the forked sticks told all these things scientifically and not intuitively.

  For this particular job, the violet light was best. The parchment was a palimpsest, written over many times and scraped imperfectly. Its latest underlay was quickly made manifest under the violet light. It consisted of some unfamiliar verses of Boethius, but in his overly familiar style.

  “I never cared for his doggerel,” Duffey said. “It would be valuable in a money way, I suppose, but essentially his stuff is completely worthless. May the weed-cutter take him!”

  “He was never really one of our group,” the child-hero said. “There was just too much of the human element in him.”

  The next latest underlay was a first-century copy (or the original) of the Fourth Gospel. It had the sweep of understanding and authority in its lettering.

  “A fine hand,” Duffey said. “I wonder if it was his own?”

  “Oh, it was, it was,” the hoyden said. “Did you ever know him, Duffey? He was one of our group. And he was so patient and thoughtful. He once put up more than two hundred of us in a small sheepshed. I don't know how he did it, but he made us feel at home. That was one of the better segments of our always continuing meeting. Yes, this is the original. But of course the thing can be found in print now, so there's no need to save even good hand.”

  The third latest underlay was a spate of priceless drivel of the classical Greek era. Well, what more can one say about it? It was priceless. And it was drivel.

  “It's fake, of course,” the child-hero said. “All of the classical period was a fake. There wasn't any classical period. You'll hear more of that. It's a favorite colt of Cyrus Roundhead, who will be speaking by and by.�
��

  Then, a bit deeper on the goatskin, there was a highly polished passage of epic from one of the pre-pre-Homerics.

  “No need to flash that into the light of the day,” Duffey said. “It would only confuse the scholars.”

  “He belonged to us once,” the child-hero said, “but then the weed-chopper cut him down. There were lots of defections among the pre-pre's.”

  A bit earlier then, and there was an imposing, closely written, clearly alphabetical screed from the pre-alphabetical time. It might easily establish itself as the earliest alphabetical writing known. And below this there were many depths of writings and scrapings. But Duffey, not wishing to tip his hand, went no deeper.

  “Times are hard,” he whispered hoarsely in his shyster voice, for he had come under the influence of a part of himself that he could never control, “and I don't know where the devil I'd ever find a buyer for the thing. But I feel generous today, and I cannot resist the plea in your entreating eyes. I'll go nine dollars for this worthless old piece of goatskin.”

  There were peals of laughter from the child-hero and the Countess and several others of the people there. But for the kindliness of it, the laughter would have shriveled Duffey irreparably. The laughter meant that the parchment was not for sale. It meant that not nine or even nine million dollars would touch it. It meant that Duffey was a perfect clown. So he accepted that role. But he would dearly have loved to have that parchment for nine dollars or even nine thousand. He put his violet light away. The parchment would never lodge permanently in Melchisedech Duffey's Walk-in Art Bijou.

  Back in the auditorium, the main and largest room of the Duffey buildings, the opening speaker was still holding forth on stones and their patinas.

  “We forget that our time scale is purely conventional,” he was saying, “and that all events are pretty much simultaneous. Take the case of God, and the Person who presently holds most persuasive claim to that position. There was a sort of vacancy several months ago and the question was which strong man would seize the opportunity. There was one (who almost certainly had suffered a human interval) who had mutated quite recently (though some maintain that it was his second mutation) and who had learned the total trick of time dealing while doing so. He then intruded himself back into time, into history and history's records, into the oceanic unconscious mind that is shared by both creatures and uncreatures—and so he became God. Certainly he is all-powerful and all-knowing and all-present now; part of his peculiar mutation was his mastering of the tricks of power and knowledge and location. And certainly he created the worlds. At least he created the historical evidence that he had created the worlds. That's almost the same thing.”

  “How long has he been established in this position?” Duffey asked from the floor.

  “About three weeks,” the easy speaker said.

  “I'd certainly challenge one who went back no further than that in his power,” Duffey maintained stubbornly, “even if his power included the mastery of historical evidence and of simultaneousness.”

  “Oh, he is being challenged,” the speaker said. “There are at least three main challengers. Back to our subject, for simultaneity remains a deep mystery that is beyond many of us. Stones of the countryside are not our most important records, as there isn't very much going on in the country. Transparencies and live tracings may also be lifted from city stones, whether they are natural or artificial. Several of our members are, at this very moment, busy at lifting transparencies from certain strategic stones that are built into the Decatur Street Opera House of this very city. Sometimes one hears the expression, ‘If these stones could only talk!’ People, we initiates know that these stones can talk!

  “There are several special stones in and around the old opera house which is our demonstration for today. Know you all that there is a private corner in every inspired builder; and this private corner of the person knows about special stones. It may know about them only while the man is asleep, but it knows. And the man, while the construction of the building is going on, will convey the command (he may convey it without knowing he does it, or he may know that he does it and still wonder at himself) that several special stones are to be built into and around the building. And the building will then become memorable; it will become resonant and in accord with its town and its times; it will accumulate living legends and memories and ghosts. The old opera house in this city is such a building.

  “Two dozen cheap gemstones or gimcracks on the inside of that building do hold the total record of the short but tumultuous two-hundred-year history of the building. They not only have the all-sense recording of every performance that has been played on those boards, but they have the record of every person who has attended each performance; they have the record of every gesture of every person—of every accent and sigh and word and whisper of every person; and also, by highly scientific extrapolation of every contingent datum, they have the probable content of even the most improbable thoughts of every person who has ever been there. Minor miracles of intrapolating gestures and expressions into thought have been wrought. Major miracles in extracting fine transparencies from stony patinas have been achieved.

  “The gimcrack stones have the glow of every wax candle or rush light that ever lighted the performing house; they have the hot-wax smell, the rush-fat smell, the evocative rag-wick stench. They have the glittering and guttering of the bear oil, the whale oil, the lard lamps. They have the whispering sound and flicker of old illuminating gas flames, the garishness of the limelights and the carbide lights, the later and stronger shine of the electrical chandeliers and of the mercury spotlights. Ah, do any of you remember the unearthly whiteness of the old sodium lights? The stones will remember it.”

  The speaker had a stone that was apparently set in his turban, but closer examination would show that it was set into his head. The stone was one of the best, and it had recorded many scenes in many years.

  “And there are some quaint stones set in the outside of the building, and also in the surface of Decatur Street itself,” the speaker went on. “There is one old dalle or flagstone that would be recognized as distinguished by any investigator. It was set in the midst of the random rocks when the road was first laid out. This stone developed a will of its own, and it has survived a dozen changes. By accident (but there are no accidents), it was not discarded when the first random stones were thrown out and the slates and mudshales were brought in for a better finish; and the special flagstone survived when those old slates and mudshales were replaced by ironstone cobbles. It maintained its place even when the cobbles were replaced by bricks. It prevailed again when it was buried clear up to its eyes in asphalt. What things it could tell if it had tongue! Well, we will give it tongue now. It remembers the underbellies of thousands of horses and carriages that stomped and rumbled over it. Ah, what great horse vehicles those were! Who now living, except possibly our host Duffey, remembers them all? The Acme Royal Top and the Acme Open, the Southern Beauty, the Fulton Road Cart, the Livery Special, the Farmers Canopy Top Surrey, Johnson's Jump-Seat Buggy, the Imperial Carriage, Dempster's Three-Spring Handy Wagon, Drexel's Eight-Horse Dray, Pontiac's Special Milk Wagon, Hallock's Grocery Cart, the Sears Famous, the Road Runner. Ah, I see brimming eyes at the mention of these things. The fragrance of road apples will always be a primary part of nostalgia.”

  “What is the purpose of these rhapsodies, Countess?” Duffey asked the girl.

  “Actually, we don't have much detailed history of our own,” she said, “and we sure don't want to borrow any history of second-rate humans. But we can steal some of their things and their memories, and we can claim them for our own. I'm on the nostalgia kick myself. Ah, the fragrance of road apples! I wonder what they were like?”

  “That stone in Decatur Street remembers the quickening snap and bang of whips,” the speaker said, “and their airy swishing. Ah, the Cowles Buggy Whip: we shan't see its like again! The Jacksonville Drover, the S. R. and Co.'s Australian, the Wes
tern Mule Skinner, the Milford Quirt, Hodson's Superior Horse Whip, the San Antonia, the Fancy, the Never-Break Dog Whip, the Elko. What days do these not bring back! The cursing of wagoners, the rattling of whiffletrees, the jangle of even-chains! Some of these things still live in the blessed place, and others have been cut down by the weed-hacker.

  “The stone remembers the underside of old streetcars. It even remembers the round punchings of old streetcar transfers wafting down on the easy breeze, and the odor of trolley ozone. It remembers the underside of every automobile that ever went down Decatur Street, and we dare not roll their names off our tongue lest nostalgic riots ensue. The stone recalls faithfully every two-legged and four-legged walker of the street. And it remembers, from the underside also, the jeweled sky of eighty thousand nights. It's a very talkative old stone, and it is talking to our experts and their instruments at this moment.”

  The speaker had two large and complex shining blue eyes. They may have had special small remembering stones set into their irises.

  “What about stones that look to the other direction?” asked a person who was not a full member of the Royal Pop Historians and Flesh Weeders. “Are there any stones whose patinas have recorded future events?”

  “There are stones whose living surfaces and depths reveal events in every direction,” the speaker said. “There are no ‘future’ events. Future is only the name of a putative direction so designated by those who have really lost their directions. Oh, certainly, it is quite easy to lift transparencies and tracings and reproductions of what are commonly called future events. All common stones will serve for all purposes, but exceptional stones are needed to give fine and minute service. Those that record best from all directions are the half gem — or gimcrack stones — the spars, the garnets, the imperfect crystals. But those which focus more aptly in the direction misnamed ‘future’ are the hard, prismatic crystals. The small and resonant crystals of the early radio days had part of this directional secret. The quartzes and natural rock crystals, the sphere-formed crystals, all real crystals can see quite clearly into the future direction. These sphere-formed rock crystals that are tuned to the historical future direction are known commercially as ‘crystal balls.’ ”