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

by R. A. Lafferty

  The judge-advocate flushed and was angry. “I have no patience with invisible kingdoms that do not become visible,” he yammered. “Every small kingdom must be visibly integrated with our large kingdom or it remains misborn and misbegotten forever. Yauk, yauk.”

  “C'mon, Justin,” came an ankle-high voice from a small lady, with the red-thread or fairy mark on her throat and with a Jewel-Bird egg in her navel. “These illuminated people get mighty murderous if you don't use their brand of light. They'll kill you. Let's go to the thirteenth. C'mon.”

  “Well then, maybe we are unborn and misbegotten,” Justin said, “but it might not be as forever as you believe. What souls do you think we are anyhow?”

  “You've the untracked smell on you,” the judge-advocate bayed. “You've been in an illicit place. Gauleiter, where was this prisoner captured. Yauk, yauk!”

  “C'mon, Justin,” the small lady said. Justin went with her.

  “I'd rather not say where I found him,” Gauleiter Rolf Mesange said uncertainly. “We found him in a ridiculous place. Yauk, yauk.”

  “Say where it is!’ the furious judge-advocate ordered. “Yauk, yauk.”

  “Oh, he was in a little cubby-hole between the floors,” said Rolf with plain embarrassment, “and his feet and shoes were sticking out of it.”

  “There isn't any cubicle. There isn't any between-the-floors,” the judge-advocate barked like a fox. “What cubicle was it? Yauk, yauk.”

  “It was the little cubby-hole where the night-watchman keeps his lantern. Yauk, yauk.” Rolf Mesange spoke, and his cheeks were flaming red with the improbability of it.

  Scrub-grubbing fury! Had another one gone deficient, and he a gauleiter?

  “There aren't any lanterns. There aren't any cubicles or caves or cavities. This is an illuminated era. You have named an impossible place. Where did you really bring him from? And—what, what, what? He's gone you say—and where has he gone now?”

  “He's gone back to that same impossible place, I think,” Gladys said. “You forgot to say ‘yauk, yauk’, judge-advocate.”

  Well, six thousand members of the NRBWA weren't able to find that impossible place. There are no finer eyes anywhere than those looked out of by the adepts of the Nuthatch Vision, by those experts of the Little Look, by the elites of the Small Vision as Gateway to the Big Vision; and they couldn't find that cubicle or whatever.

  “You people say that there was a row of cubicles here between the floors?” the judge-advocate kept asking the members of the deficient man's group. “But there is nothing here between the floors. There is not room for cubicles or cubby-holes. And what did you say that the place was like? Yauk, yauk!”

  “It's a little bit like the “Jewel-Bird Song” with the steel-string background,” Sulky Sullivan was saying. “It's a little bit like “Little Red Mark Around My Throat” with git-fiddle. It's something like “Cave in the Cliffs Rag” with wood-winds. There's a lot of that old song “My Blood on Your Hands” with pedal harpsichord in the sound of the place. And “Little Dead Birds” with Swiss bells, that's real soundy for what you're looking for. Yauk, yauk.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?” the judge-advocate asked testily. “The place where the deficient man hides, the place that we can't find, what is it like? Yauk, yauk!”

  “Justin is too big to be with them in their place now. Yauk, yauk,” Rolf said quietly.

  “No, he was never very big. He faked that part all his life. Yauk, yauk,” Berthold Chairmender answered.

  “The place is a little bit like red fish,” Marjory Kiljoy told the scurrying judge-advocate. “And it's even more like gold fish. It's quite a bit like a fountain that gushes inward, that's if you want to know what the place looks like. It's quite a bit like a lantern with a little light still burning in it. But it isn't easy to describe its appearance. You have to be inside it, I think, to see what it does look like. I've never been more than partly inside it. Yauk, yauk.”

  The judge-advocate strode up and down the area in exasperation with his hands locked behind him. A much smaller man strode behind him exactly taking off his motions and attitudes. There were several of the other small persons japing about, but nobody looked at them much. And, really, they were not much to look at: they were all quite small; they all had that thread-thin red line around their throats; and they all had funny faces.

  “It is hard to describe the place for the reason that is a movement and drama and not a place,” Rolf told the judge-advocate. “It should be right here between the floors though. And, since it is what it is, it can only be described in terms of dramatic kinesis. Yauk, yauk.”

  “Then for the love of the Great Northern Nuthatch describe it to me as dramatic kinesis!” the judge-advocate roared like an unhappy lion. “Yauk, yauk!”

  “Could we pick Justin out from the rest of them if we finally found him now?” Rolf said secretly. “Yauk, yauk.”

  “No, I don't believe that we could,” Gladys Gamaliel doubted it. “He's always been one of them, but he blew himself up like a grown-up person, those big feet and all. He always had the line on his throat too, but we didn't know that he'd been murdered. He has a funny face, of course, but all of them have funny faces.”

  There were quite a few of the little funny-faced folks larking around but nobody paid them heed. They were on a different sound-track and sight-track.

  “The dramatic kinesis we're looking for is very contemporary,” said Berthold Chairmender, “like the current murder comedies and haunt skits. It resembles many of the playbills of recent times. It's a little bit like Thirteen at the Table, or Pumpkin Head, or Bright Red Windows in My House. Its movement will remind one of Boat That Never Sailed, or Tumble-Down Nest, or Old Salty Sea, or Lightning-Bolt of Blood. It comes through strong like Mist and Weeping Rain, or Cut by Such Sword, or Die Before I Wake, or Poor Oriflame.”

  One of the little funny-faced folks (he somehow looked like Justin Saldeen) kicked the judge-advocate at shoestring height (it was as high as he could kick).

  “Ouch!” cried the judge-advocate. “Yauk, yauk!” But he didn't look down.

  “The scene that we are looking for reminds me very much of that murder comedy Funny Face,” Berthold Chairmender said.

  “I don't go to the theater often,” the judge-advocate admitted. “An illuminated person hasn't much time for such things. What we need for our search ‘yauk, yauk’, is a working description of—”

  “The thing reminds me quite a lot of That Real Funny Kind of Love,” Berthold Chairmender said.

  Brain Fever Season

  1

  “Here's a puzzler,” said Barnaby Sheen. “One of the hottest new items in the porno stores, not only in this country but worldwide also, is A Grammar of the Tibetan Language by A. Csoma de Koeroes. Odd name that! Does anybody know what he is? There are hasty translations of the grammar into a dozen languages within the last thirty-six hours (things go very fast in the porno field). Does anybody know why the heavy-breathing, rheumy-eyed passion boys and girls should have this sudden interest in a Tibetan grammar?” “It is funny,” said Doctor George Drakos, “and I sure cannot see any reason for it. There's some sort of symbolism or transference, I suppose.”

  “As I recall it, Koeroes' book was printed in Calcutta in 1834,” Cris Benedetti said. “If there is a veneral element in it, it should have surfaced long ago. Several generations of British civil servants studied it. But I don't believe that it ranks among the great grammars, even for Tibetan.”

  “Austro!” Barnaby Sheen called loudly. And then there was a carrying whisper from the inner or ‘omygosh’ room: “Carrock, oh, oh, what now?” Austro had learned to whisper most imperfectly (his people were unacquainted with the thing), and his whispers weren't quiet ones.

  We always said that if anything should go wrong anywhere in the world, Barnaby Sheen would immediately suspect young Austro of having a hairy thumb in it. “Yes, and I'd be right to suspect him,” Barnaby would always maintain. “He
would have a hairy thumb in it no matter what it was.”

  “Austro!” Barnaby called still more loudly.

  “Carrock! I just got to go down to the laboratory, Mr. Sheen,” Austro jabbered as he came from the inner room and made for the stairs down to the front door. “Whatever you want, it has to wait. I got to get down there right now.”

  “Don't tell me I have to wait, boy,” Barnaby said. “It's eleven at night. The lab has been closed for hours. Whatever it is that you want will wait till tomorrow, Austro. Come here and talk.”

  “No, no, I got a hot smart idea,” Austro protested. “I got to go to the lab and get it down on stone right now. We can't take chances on me forgetting it.”

  “You have the stone tablets here, Austro,” Barnaby said. “You've been hammering and chiseling on them in the omygosh room all evening. You can cut a hot idea into any of the stones so you'll remember it. You never forget anything anyhow. Roy Mega says that you never learned the trick of forgetting, and he hasn't been able to teach you. That's why you have such a cluttered mind. Austro, what do you know about the Tibetan language?”

  “Carrock, it's tone-talk, a little bit like we talk at home. It's singsong stuff, but I never learned it very well. Oh, Mr. Sheen, I've got to go right now!”

  “Austro, do you know why an obscure Tibetan grammar should suddenly become a hot item in the porno stores?”

  “Mr. Sheen, you know I'm not old enough to go into the porno stores.”

  “No, but you're old enough to avoid a direct answer to a straight question. Austro, if this little puzzler were handed to you, what first step would you take toward finding an answer?”

  “Carrock, I'd triangulate in on it. I'd find where the puzzler originated and where it spread from. Oh, oh, oh, why don't I learn to swallow my tongue? Why do you ask me questions? I'm just a twelve-year-old kid. Got to go right now!” And Austro ran down the stairs and out of the house.

  Barnaby Sheen phoned Roy Mega at his mysterious number at his mysterious room. Nobody was sure where Roy Mega lived, but Barnaby Sheen believed that the young man had a room in that very house. Barnaby's was a big and junky house (most persons know how many rooms there are in their houses and where they are, but not Barnaby), and Roy had a cavalier way with space, and with telephones. Barnaby was sure that he was paying the phone bill on Roy's mysterious phone at least.

  “Roy!” Barnaby barked into the phone. “Do you know why an obscure Tibetan grammar should suddenly become a hot item in the porno stores?”

  “Do you believe me the sort of young man who goes to the porno stores?” Roy's voice asked out of the phone. “I'm hurt. Besides, it isn't obscure any longer. Got to hang up now. Got to go down to the lab and work on a hot idea.”

  “Hold it, Roy, hold it!” Barnaby ordered. “Tell me just exactly what you and Austro have been working on at the lab for the last three days. I do pay the bills there. You do work for me. I have the right to know what you're doing.”

  “Oh, we've been working on the relationship of shape to smell to season, Mr. Sheen. And especially on the relation of subliminal shape to subliminal smell to forgotten season. Sorry, got to go now.”

  “Hold it, Roy!” Barnaby pressured. “Can there be a subliminal shape? Or a subliminal smell?”

  “Oh sure. We make them all the time. You think the things down underneath don't have any shape? Or that they don't have any smell? Keep reading the journals and you'll find out about our stuff. We really can't take time to inform every jasper of all the smart things we're doing.”

  “Roy, if you were asked to solve the problem of Tibetan grammars suddenly becoming hot items in porno stores all over the world, where would you start?”

  “I'd start the same place as with any other problem. I'd find out where it starts. Then it's easier to find out what it means. I'd triangulate in on it and find out who created the situation and started the problem to rolling around the world. Oh, oh, oh, I've got to invent an automatic guardian for myself! We hadn't decided what we wanted to do with it yet. Why do I say things? Got to go now! Got to go down to the lab for one of those brilliant sessions.”

  “Hold it, Roy! You're out of order,” Barnaby crackled. “Now I—”

  “The person is out of order. This is a recording,” came over the phone. And already there were rapid Roy Mega footfalls going down the back stairway of the house. Wherever Roy's mysterious room was, it was toward the back of the house somewhere.

  “I will bet that triangulation shows the origin of the puzzler to be right here in our own city, Barnaby,” Doctor George Drakos said cheerfully.

  “I'll bet it will show that the origin is in your own lab building,” Harry O'Donovan said.

  “I will bet it shows the origin to be in the noggins of Austro and Roy Mega,” Cris Benedetti said, “in those two orbs that beat as one.”

  “Why should such things be done in my own tents, and I have not done them?” Barnaby demanded in his scriptural boom. “That would be near treachery.”

  Roy Mega was a young man of the species Genius who worked for Barnaby Sheen at his lab. He was from a downtown family. Austro was a still younger man of the species Australopithecus who also worked for Barnaby in his house and at his lab. He was from the Guna Slopes in Africa.

  And this was really an interesting puzzle. Well, why do you think that the Tibetan grammars had become just about the hottest items worldwide in the porno stores? And why do you think that other items almost as strange had become almost as hot?

  For, by the next morning (the third morning that the new tendencies had been noticed), there were very many of the sudden and learned items going hot guns in the porno stores. They were mostly writings and clips and tapes and presentations of apparently nonporno sort. Many of them clearly fell into the hot-brain classification. And there was a double puzzle connected with all these things.

  First: not one of the porno owners or operators around town knew how he had happened to order, for instance, Masterman's Tectonic Geology and the Coming Fifth Ice Age, nor even how he had known that there was such a book to order. And second: nobody knew why the habitual customers of the porno stores should buy and devour such a book so eagerly, so hotly, and with such absolute mental and personal comprehension of it. For the porno folks did comprehend the new material: and some of it would be thought difficult.

  Yeah, and then there was the second part of the first puzzle: none of the publishers or manufacturers knew how he had arranged to have so many copies of the items available at that time. They had published a hundredfold above the expected, and the items were being snapped up a hundredfold above the expected.

  Why, just consider some of the items. There were old and erudite works by Tobias Dantzig and Erwin Panofsky and Basil Wiley and Samuel Noah Kramer and J. Huizinga and Bertrand Flornoy and Karl Mannheim and Albert Einstein and Hans Vaihinger. Until the last two days or so one didn't find such things in the porno stores at all. They simply hadn't been sold anywhere by the tens of thousands every day, and they hadn't been available in such volume until some strange anticipatory impulse had moved the publishers and manufacturers to unusual production of them.

  There were young and pulsating works by Hildebrand Muldoon, Peter Zielinski, Robin Popper, Martin Gander, Virgil Whitecrow, Titus Hornwhanger, Albert Cotton. It was a boom in snappingly live information, but why was it flowering in sleazy soil instead of in its proper pots?

  By noon of the third day, there was a flood of second-generation or feedback works, most of them from the new Porno Ancilla Press, which had four thousand titles (of incomparable brilliance) stocked and selling before it was forty-eight hours old. Yes, things had always moved very fast in the porno field, but now they were moving in new directions.

  The wonder was not in the ability of the porno people to meet and master such works of cosmology and extratemporal history and non-organic psychology and shape-and-perspective chemistry and chthonic electricity. All peoples have about the same mental and personal
ability and about the same quantity of power and apperception. The wonder was that the porno people, having for a long time devoted themselves to a different complex of things, should now come with such hot interest to the fields of dynamic information and implementation, to the kinetically constructed scientific-scholastic-innovative fields.

  And then there were the newly oriented porno people themselves, the hot-brained generation, the nation in a hurry, the scorchy harvest. They were in such rapid movement that even their oddities were a high-speed color blur. One of them came a-touring into Barnaby Sheen's house that third noon.

  “Who turned me on, odd fish?” this visitor asked as he came in on nervous but exuberant fox feet, with two dozen books in his arms and one opened in his left hand. “I was in Singapore, our mother city, the porno capital of the world, and it hit me there. ‘Why don't you have Emanuel Visconti's Costive Cosmologies Freed?’ I howled at the storekeeper. ‘How will I ever live another moment without it? I'm hot for it, man! I have to have it right now,’ I said. And never in my life had I heard of Visconti before. ‘I hope we'll have it in a very few hours,’ the porno man said, ‘I'm mighty hot for it myself, and getting hotter. Oh, there must be some way to speed it up!’ ‘A few hours!’ I exploded at him, ‘I can't wait a few hours. Don't you know when the time of a thing has arrived? What are you doing to get copies?’ ‘I've just been talking to Visconti,’ the man said. ‘He is in Istanbul, and he had begun the work half an hour before I called. It'll take him fifteen to eighteen hours to write it, he says, and it will take several hours for printing and worldwide distribution. It will be twenty hours yet. It's hard to have an item in stock before it's in existence. Here's two dozen red-hot items that might tide you over.’ Something is happening fast, Sheeny. It's happening in half of the world.”

  The man was speed-reading books as he talked. He threw one book over his shoulder as he finished it and opened another.