“Oh, take it easy, Red-face,” said the alieness Delphina Oakley. “We're not wearing any of those things. Where is your humor? Do you think we're crazy enough to put on such heavy things? We've just got ourselves painted so it looks like we're wearing chains and shackles and manacles. This is just for fun. We thought your hearing room needed a little bit of it.”
Delphina's voice, to an absolutely analytical ear, would have sounded horribly unhuman and made up of frightful and unarranged discords. But who can maintain an analytical ear all the time? To a sleepy and inattentive ear, Delphina sounded delightfully young-woman human, with a lilt and a gaiety and a mocking.
“We owe so much to you, Thelma Brightbrass,” Doomdaily said in a proud voice to that citizeness then. “Tell us how you discovered that your husband, Caleb Brightbrass, was taken over and replaced by the alien Caleb Outback. Madras, what have you done to yourself? I still say that you look different.” “You think the Madras-trick is easy to do?” that aide asked. “You try to do her sometime.”
“My husband, Caleb Brightbrass, began to act a bit odd about the time that the new people moved into the neighborhood,” Thelma was saying. “I didn't object to it. In every way except one he was a lot better than he had been. He was wittier for one thing. I should have been suspicious right there: my Caleb was always a rock-head. We mixed a lot with those new people and they seemed to be very nice folks, so that was all right. I knew that Caleb had become more like them than like the old folks, and that was all right too. I never had so much fun in my life, for about a week. In every way except one, life was a lot better than it ever had been. But after about a week I said ‘Hey, wait a minute’ to myself, and I got damned suspicious.”
“And in a week they had their people-trap almost ready to trap the town,” Doomdaily orated. “Oh, how many towns have already become completely alien, and who can tell the difference? And then, Mrs. Brightbrass?”
“Then I said to Caleb, ‘Are you a man, or what are you anyhow?’ ‘Ah, I'm a nonfunctioning male,’ ” Caleb said. ‘I believe that's the way you'd have to define me in your terms. Be patient with me for a little while. We often suffer these transition disabilities.’ That's when I knew it wasn't my Caleb. That's when I knew that it was some other Caleb who had taken his place. Not that my Caleb didn't have nonfunctioning spells now and then, but he never was smart enough to use words like nonfunctioning and transition.”
“Do you know how the alien came to use the name Caleb Outback instead of Caleb Brightbrass?” Doomdaily asked.
“Oh, Outback was my Caleb's maiden name,” Thelma said. “He used it sometimes for fun. But I believe that it's the aliens' code that they can't take over a person or a person's name exactly. Well, that was when the scales fell from my eyes and I took a good look at Caleb and the rest of them. And when I saw what I saw, then I blew the whistle on them.”
“Elmer Fairfoot! Take your feet off that table!” Judge Doomdaily roared at the alien Elmer in the dock. “Even an alien can have manners. Do you think it's civilized to have your shoes on the table?”
“I'm not wearing shoes,” the alien Elmer Fairfoot explained reasonably. “I just have my feet painted to look like it.”
“Anthony Krebs, come to the vesting room at once!” the loudspeaker blared in an over-judgely voice. “Oh, lay off, Kenneth, I'm in session,” Doomdaily argued with the speaking apparatus. “You took Madras, and she seems to be changed since she got back. And Anthony is the only other aide I have. Besides, there isn't any such thing as a vesting room.”
“Anthony Krebs, come to the vesting room at once!” the loudspeaker overruled Doomdaily. “Be quiet, Doomdaily. Send that young man in here right now.”
But Anthony Krebs had already disappeared out of the hearing room.
2.
In Australia, the trees and other wild plants simply aren't related to the trees and plants of the northern hemisphere. None of the life there, either animal or vegetable, is related to life in other parts of the world. Close examination will reveal that the sets of things are utterly and outrageously different.
But a less close examination will not reveal this. A blended landscape of Australia cannot be distinguished from a blended landscape of the northern hemisphere in corresponding climate-zone and season. And this in spite of the fact that the southern grass is not grass, the bushes are not bushes, the sedges and reeds are not sedges and reeds, and the trees are not trees. Every smell and sound of an Australian landscape will be different from anything found anywhere else, but the totality and the effect of the smell and sound and sight will be the same as in a corresponding part of the world. A maddening identity of the big picture is arrived at without using any similar pieces. There's a weird compensation and balance and camouflage at work here.
—Arpad Arutinov, The Back Door of History
Yowl, yowl, the dogs do howl, The aliens come to town…
—“Alien Identification Handbook Boogie” (fifth verse)
“You six aliens can fool the careless eye and ear,” Doomdaily was saying, “but here in Center City we are people of the closer examination. There is nothing about you that can escape us.”
“We four aliens,” said the alien Rollo Marquette. “There are only four of us here in the dock now, but we have painted ourselves to look like six of us. And do not look at us closely, Judge Careful-eyes, or you will find that you're looking in a mirror.”
“Buck Bigchester,” Doomdaily said to another of his good attesting citizens. “Recount for the record how you yourself became suspicious of this nefarious troupe of aliens. What did you first notice to be wrong about them?” “I first noticed a bunch of things that were just all right about them,” Buck said, “and most of them were about that girl Bridget Upjones there. I went for her the first time that I saw her. She had everything.”
“Couldn't you tell that her texture was more vegetable than animal, Buck? And that it was unsubstantial vegetable at that? Couldn't you tell that she had two sets of eyes, one above the other? Couldn't you tell that parts of the velvet gown she wore were still alive? Or that she smelled like impure ammonia?”
“Yeah, but she said that they had to use live paint for part of those color effects. And she said they had to use color because they just weren't there without all that color to complement them. And she put a little bit of that hot sauce stuff behind her ears, and it combined with the ammonia and came out smelling like ‘Wonder Woman Number Nine.’ Oh, I guess that I knew her teeth weren't like real teeth. And then she had those little fiddlefoot crabs that ran in and out of her ears. They made up for what was lacking in her ears, she said, and the total effect was human. None of that strange stuff could subtract from a girl as pretty as Bridget was.
“But I got a little bit suspicious the night I took her out to the Four-State Fair and we stopped in front of the weight-guesser with his scales. He would guess anybody's weight within three pounds or he would give them a three-pound box of candy. Now this weight-guesser was a real professional, and besides they have a lot of people around carnivals and fairs who aren't strictly human. He turned green when he saw Bridget, though, and he began to shake. ‘Two pounds,’ he said ‘You weigh two pounds.’ Bridget sat in that swinging seat that is part of the scales. And she didn't weigh anything, not anything it all.
“ ‘So I hit it within three pounds,’ the weight-guesser said. ‘I win. Now you get out of here. You don't belong around here. You don't belong on this world at all.’ ‘Oh, no. I win,’ Bridget told him. ‘Two pounds is not within three pounds of nothing. Anything at all is an immeasurable distance from nothing at all. They're of different orders. Now you give me my box of candy!’ She got it too. She scared him into giving to her. Those people like Bridget don't like to lose, not a bet, not a game, not anything.”
Anthony Krebs came back into the hearing room. “You look different, Anthony,” Doomdaily said. “I don't know what it is, but you look just a little bit different. Well, is it my time? Is it tim
e for me to go yet?”
“Don't rush it,” said Elmer Fairfoot the alien. “In a moment, in a moment.”
“Judge Daniel Doomdaily, come to the vesting room at once!” the loudspeaker sounded in the voice of some overjudge.
“I don't even know where the vesting room is,” Doomdaily started to protest. “Oh, it's all right. I feel that I'm being guided there.” And the judge left the hearing room.
“Six little aliens,” the citizen Fulgence Sorrel razzed in a tired but amused voice. “Delphina Oakley, Bridget Upjones, Evangeline Guillford, Elmer Fairfoot, Rollo Marquette, Caleb Outback. Six of you in the dock. But are there only three of you now? And you are painted to make it look as if there were six of you?”
“Three of us here now,” said alien Elmer Fairfoot, “but try and count us.”
“And you're not really shackled and chained,” Fulgence said. “They are only things you painted on for fun. And we can't avoid being taken over by you?”
“Why should you want to avoid it?” Elmer asked. “Why do you object? These migrations are common. You've taken over yourself. That little deformity inside each of you, that person whom you sometimes call your subconscious, is what is left of a person who was supplanted by you. He is the one who, looking at it one way, had title to your body before you did.”
“I'm getting mighty hot about this,” the citizeness Thelma Brightbrass interrupted. “There's a fishiness here that smells to heaven for vengeance.”
“But, Elmer, I have not personally supplanted anyone,” Fulgence said reasonably.
“No, but now all of those in your line of generation are born stratified. The supplanted ones, those who would have been born independently if it weren't for the usurpation by you people, are now born with you and within you. In some places seven different strata have been counted. In this place, one more stratum will be counted very soon. Don't fight it, Fulgence. It gives depth to us all, and we do need a place to stay.”
“Who will take me over?” Fulgence asked.
“There's something the matter here and it gets matterer all the time!” citizeness Thelma exploded.
“I will take you over, Fulgence,” the alien Elmer Fairfoot said. “You are the closest thing to an intelligent one in your group, and I in mine. We will be in accord. And I'll listen to you, down under there where you'll be, quite often. Maybe as much as a half minute a day.”
“Thanks, Elmer,” Fulgence said. “Will I get a velvet gown?”
“No, only a torso paint-job for the present, but it'll look like a velvet gown for a while. Later, but not much later, there will develop a synthesis of apparel to serve our common person.”
“Doesn't your paint weigh anything?” Hazel Sorrel asked.
“Oh, yes, but we use just enough of it to bring us up to zero,” the alieness Delphina Oakley answered her.
“Well, what do you want here, Delphina?” Hazel asked her.
“Bodies.”
“Aren't those bodies that you have there?”
“Not good ones. They haven't any substance. We had to leave substance behind the way we traveled,” Delphina told them.
“I'm getting damned mad about this whole thing!” citizeness Thelma announced.
“How many of you are there, anyhow?” Hazel asked.
“Oh, there are just as many of us as we can scrounge up for,” Delphina explained. “If we can locate more bodies there will be more of us here to use them.”
Judge Daniel Doomdaily came back into the hearing room.
“Now we will quickly dispose of this case,” he said, and caressed Madras O'Connell with judicial authority.
“There's something the matter with Madras,” Thelma railed, “and there's something the matter with Anthony Krebs, and now there's something the matter with Judge Doomdaily. Look at Madras! Her clothes are different!”
“I'm not wearing clothes,” Madras said. “I just got myself painted to look like I am.”
“Maybe she's a nonfunctioning female now,” Thelma challenged.
“Not now,” cried Madras, or whoever she was. “Oh, not now!”
“That nonfunctioning interval was a bit tiresome for many of us,” Judge Doomdaily said. People, he did look somehow different. He looked a lot different—
“But now we can function again,” said the judge, or whoever he was. “And now we will quickly dispose of this case, and of much else.”
Oh Whatta You Do When the Well Runs Dry?
The deep well of unconscious cerebration.
—Henry James
For you never miss the water till the well runs dry.
—Rowland Howard
The well ran dry on November 7, 1999 (a Sunday). And when that well ran dry, then everything that mattered came to a halt. It took a few hours for the multitude to realize that it had all stopped. A few of the smart ones knew it almost at once, and a smaller few knew that nobody could be very smart again under the new conditions.
Miss Phosphor McCabe woke up very early on the morning of November 8.
“I never felt so empty-headed in my life,” she told herself. “Usually I have all kinds of things going on up there. Most times my head is as busy as three airports. Something's gone wrong. Fortunately I have friends who'll know what to do.”
You remember Miss Phosphor McCabe. She lives in that big pink pagoda on that hill on the north edge of town, and she has lots of unusual friends.
“Now I know what's happened,” Miss Phosphor said. “The well's gone dry. I better get some of my friends to see what can be done about it.”
She got hold of a couple of her friends and told them about the well.
“Yeah, we know,” the special friends said. “We'll give them a little while yet.”
Clear dry, was the well? There was none of the sparkle water left anywhere? Oh, there were little bits of it in isolated pockets here and there, but there was an impediment to its use. In the isolated pockets the water was no longer moving; and so it lost its sparkle. When it did not move or sparkle it could not be received or enjoyed as extraordinary water. It was ordinary now and it couldn't satisfy the thirst for the extraordinary. (This is metaphor, yes.) What had dried up was not a well or pool or ocean of physical water. What had dried up was wit, and artistry, and congruence, and enjoyment, and the sparkle of the spirit. What had dried up was creativity in every form; and could the calling of all the committees in the world bring it back? Several self-constituted committees had assembled very early to see what could be done. The problem was to rekindle the wit of the world and get it to flowing again (This is mixed metaphor, yes.)
The problem might be quite urgent. Will a witless world die immediately? Or will it (worse case, perhaps) continue on a witless way for aeons?
The world had waked up witless on the afternoon of November 8 (afternoon by artificial universal world time). Oh, some people had gone to bed witless and distraught. Some people had felt the assault of witlessness in their sleep. And there were some people who still rose in the mornings instead of in the afternoons. But it was afternoon when most of the world woke witless and with the sense of having lost something. “It is no good saying that we knew it would happen,” the great cosmologist Norbert Hsu mumbled. “We didn't. Oh, several of us predicted it, but we all had the strong inner feeling that it could never happen. After all, this is the well that had never run dry since the beginning of life on Earth. Ah, Irene, you look dowdy today, and that's another thing that we all knew could never happen.”
Irene Komohana hissed with the intake of her breath. She had been regarded as the most stylish woman in the world, but she didn't resent Norbert's in-passing statement that she was dowdy now. She knew that it was true.
Seven persons had come together (this was in an un-pink building on the south edge of town), by natural reaction, from several parts of the world, within two hours of the drying of the well. These seven persons had a natural affinity for each other. They were (or perhaps now it was “they had been”) the aware
st of the aware. They had always been the first ones to know things, and they were surely among the first persons on Earth to realize that the well had run dry. These seven had been as smart as any people you will find anywhere, and already they realized that neither they nor any others were going to be very smart in the new case. Norbert Hsu, Carlos Liosa, Agnes Belka, Edwin Senate, Irene Komohana, Sedgewick Dollo and Joshua Santa Cruz were the once talented seven: but were they talented now? Had all talent necessarily dried up?
“What has dried up is the ‘Idea Well’,” Carlos Llosa, the great public servant, said: and they all groaned at the phrase. The “Idea Well,” what a rosy-posy name! Be assured that none of them would have named it anything as banal as the “Idea Well” if they hadn't suddenly found themselves in the post-idea state.
“What we must do is treat it like any other well that runs dry,” Carlos plowed ahead without a trace of any idea in his skull. “Maybe we will give it a little acid treatment as is given to oil wells when they fall off their flow. Or we will set guns down in its depth and perforate its formations. We might put it under saltwater pressure and hope for some response. Or we locate and cement its leakages as well-men sometimes do with water wells. We set in barriers, or we break out barriers, to let ground water or rogue streams flow into it. We calculate its accretion and its depletion, and we compel the second to be less than the first. And the well may recover… a little bit… sometime.”
“But this well offers a difficulty in that we don't know where it is,” Agnes Belka pointed out. “We don't know the physical location of this well: we do not even know whether it has physical existence.”
“It's true that we have no idea how to locate it,” Joshua Santa Cruz agreed, “since all ideas dried up when the well dried up. We can't do anything about it since what is lost is our ability to do anything about anything.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 226
