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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Maybe things will go on as they were and nobody will notice the difference,” Edwin Senate said.

  “Yes, things will go on as they were,” Sedgewick Dollo agreed. “For a few hours, or even a couple of days they might go on. Things might continue on for about as long as fingernails continue to grow on a corpse.”

  But there were little things cropping up all over the place to indicate that things wouldn't go on quite as they had before. Fewer people were dying (that was noticed almost immediately), and nobody was dying spectacularly. Is dying, especially spectacular dying, a creative act? It seemed so. But about as many people were being born as before, though there didn't seem to be quite as much meaning attached to the act. People were being born without accompanying prodigies, and without any premonition of coming greatness. The extraordinary had gone out of people, those already present and those arriving. For there was this other thing: if people weren't dying as much, neither were they living as much. “It just isn't the same thing anymore,” folks were heard to say. “It just really isn't living anymore.”

  Musicians couldn't improvise. They had nothing left to improvise with. The art of creative lying came to an end. Profanity became tired: it became louder and more in use, but it was repetitious and unoriginal. Pornography similarly lost gusto and increased in stridency. Jokes died out, and intuitions died. Problem-solving was a lost talent. And the roily oil that had made the slide through life so much easier had now lost its slickness and turned into an abrasive.

  The incredible creativity by which (and only by which) persons had managed to get along with each other at all was gone. There had used to be (just two days ago there had used to be) a super-creative person in every group, in every viable couple, at every human meeting, at each crossroads or confrontation of any kind. At least one third of the persons in the world had been super-creative in personal relations. If it hadn't been so, then personal relations would have been impossible. Now the super-creativity was gone and personal relations had become a gruesome remnant.

  Suicides and showboat deaths were down, but dumb accidents were up. It looked as if the death rate might soon adjust itself. The accidents, the accidents! It really takes quite a bit of creativity for even the most obscure person to live for a long span. The amorphous and ever present gray creature named “accident” is escaped only by the employment of creative wit. And when that weapon is no longer turned against it, the “accident” moves in, slowly but relentlessly, chomping.

  Great multitudes of people were getting lost. They got lost on their way to work: they got lost on their way home. They could no longer recognize their proper houses. Some of them could no longer recognize their proper mates. After all, people do look pretty much alike. It takes a lot of native wit and a number of mnemonic tricks to be able to recognize one's own wife or husband out of the mass of humanity. And native wit and mnemonics shriveled and died when no longer nourished by the strong and sparkling water. The whole systematic world was going to break down right away.

  (“We will give them a couple of days yet,” small groups of Forteans said to each other. Some of these Forteans were friends of Miss Phosphor McCabe, and others of them were unknown to her.)

  “We will strictly ration the water from this special ocean-well,” Carlos Llosa said positively. “We will enforce a regulation that each person must deposit three liters in the pool for each two liters that he withdraws. I have information also that there is a small but constant, and natural and unhuman, flow into the well, and that it will soon give us a working pool again if we can halt the panic withdrawals. We will emphasize a ‘Don't think! Thinking consumes substance from the collective unconscious’ campaign for a week or so. And, if we then have something to ration, we will ration it most strictly and without favoritism.” This was the second day that the seven special persons of natural affinity had been holding their meeting. There wasn't much left of their natural affinity now. And there wasn't much left of their specialism.

  “How can we ration it?” the great cosmologist Norbert Hsu demanded. “How can we force a person to disgorge into this well of the group unconscious? How can we limit what he will withdraw? We don't even understand the mechanics of the dipping out of this well. Will we give a person a chit entitling him to withdraw so many bright ideas a week?”

  “Yes, that is exactly what we will do!” Carlos declared. “Don't laugh. It can be done. Any such thing is mere regulatory or administrative procedure.” (In his private life, Carlos Llosa was President of the United States, and he had been competent in the administrative procedure field.) “Any process or decision can be implemented, once it is set into its proper medium and context, and once enough creative imagination is brought to bear on its problem.”

  “You are wrong, man, wrong, Joshua Santa Cruz contradicted him. “Perhaps it could be done, if the problem in question were anything else. Any process or decision can be implemented, except one. Surgeons are seldom successful in performing serious operations upon themselves. The hammer can shape and hammer out anything except itself. Enough imagination cannot be brought to bear upon this problem when the problem is that we have completely run out of imagination.”

  “The well shouldn't have failed so soon,” Edwin Senate argued. “We have been wasteful and prodigal of its substance for not much more than a hundred centuries. Oh, certainly we reaped what we did not sow, and we gathered where we did not scatter. But we have been contributing to that pool for hundreds of centuries, and our unhuman brothers had been doing so for thousands of centuries. It shouldn't have gone dry yet.”

  “Well, we had been consuming the capital at an extraordinary rate,” Joshua Santa Cruz remarked, “and at the same time we had reduced the numbers of unhuman contributors to less than a tenth. And if it isn't empty then what is wrong with it?”

  “I've never really believed in the Collective Unconscious as an ocean-well from which we dip all our ideas and inspirations,” that high stylist Irene Komohana protested. “I just don't like the idea of drinking out of a well that every sort of creature pours into. It isn't stylish. It's revolting. It's positively Fortean!”

  (“We will give them a little while yet,” the small groups of Forteans said to each other.)

  The old theory about the “Collective Unconscious” seemed almost to be proved by its failing. This was the thesis that there was one under-mind that was shared by all humans. Extremists said that it was also shared by all animals, mammals, birds, fishes, frogs, snakes, lizards, earthworms, bees, ants, crickets and midges. Further extremists said that it was also shared by all plants from the trees of the forest to the grass of the fields to the seaweeds of the oceans. And others thought that it was shared by inanimate things, too, things that had been alive especially: wood, and vegetable loam, and limestone that had been built up by small deposited bodies. And the further-outs maintained that all the fire-rocks also contributed to it. And it was known that ghosts, familiar spirits and unarrived souls had once contributed greatly to the ocean-well. This Collective Unconscious was a huge underground and trashy ocean or pool or cistern or well (all the terms apply to it). In it were all unborn and unthought things, and all quasi-existences and abominations. In it were the spent arrows that had once been shot upward but had not risen high enough to reach the light and so become thought. They had fallen back and shattered, but even in their dissolved forms they were still piercing shafts of ideas.

  In the Collective Unconscious were the paradoxes of existence as propounded by toads, the rhapsodies of rotifers, and the streams-of-consciousness of sunfishes. There were the grotesque limbs of millions of creatures the rest of whom had not been created. There were the everted contents of dragons' stomachs and the everted and maldigested contents of countless minds.

  The fruits of child labor, of the children of a thousand species, were thick in that stew. This was the grinding and horrible labor, ill paid and inefficient, going on always for endless hours, in pain and apprehension and fear. Here were the
mephitic deliriums of the poor souls in Purgatory and the roaring insanities of the lost souls in Hell. Here was all the broken logic of the ghost nations, and the specious daydreams of the rotting dead.

  It was a strange and astringent stew in the pool of the common unconscious, but it was one of the waters of life. It was the manure and the fertility from which all thoughts and ideas were formed. It was the raw material (oh, was it ever raw material!) from which all the sudden intuitions were put together, those winged notions that are called originality and creativity.

  That huge and ungainly splashy darkness was a Ouija or planchette board that produced automatic thought as well as automatic writing. It was spook infested. It bubbled up, from the one blind well, into the billions of minds; and it was somehow instrumental in generating all lively and consequential thoughts. And the detritus of those billions of sharing minds fell back down into the well to add to its slurpy mass.

  But, about a hundred centuries ago, one of the member species of this Collective Unconscious had begun to consume its substance at an uncommon rate. Those of this species became the lords who reaped where they had not sowed and gathered where they had not planted. But there were many contributors to the substance of the harvest. How would one species run it dry?

  Well, there had been many contributors, but now there were not near as many. When more and more trees and land plants and plankton plants of the sea (those whose business it is to supply oxygen for the world), when more and more of them are destroyed, then there is less and less usable oxygen for the world. And, following this analogy, when more and more of the contributing species to the subterranean pool are destroyed (wiped-out animals, extirpated ghost nations and airy nations and fire nations of beings, souls with their communication and rapport broken), when great numbers of such contributors are reduced or destroyed, then there is less and less of the mysterious underground sparkling stuff, the substratum of cognition, to supply the active minds of the world. More is dipped out of the shaggy well than is put into it, so there would come a time when the well would go dry.

  On November 7, 1999 (and on the several days that followed), the well made noises and produced symptoms that indicated that it had gone dry. The offending species was that of the prodigal human people, feverishly thinking and creating and originating, and it was they who had pumped the well dry.

  Simple orientation was one of the things that had failed. Simple orientation had always been a complex and continuing syndrome of creative thoughts and acts. And creative thoughts and acts cannot continue unless they are nourished by the strong broth out of that paradoxical well. People who lose their simple orientation will not be able to perform even simple jobs, and they sure will not be able to perform complex tasks. The breakdown was at hand: deprivation, suffering, starvation! The world was falling apart.

  “Have you ever heard of a large city getting its water supply through huge pipes and conduits and not knowing whence those pipes lead, not knowing the location of the lake or reservoir or source that they are tapping?” This was Joshua Santa Cruz giving the doleful appraisal to the others of the special-seven group. “Well, the world is a large city, and it has been getting its supply of peculiar water through pipes and conduits: and it has no idea of the location of the source that feeds those pipes and conduits. “People, we must find this well of the world, this dire but necessary ocean of the Collective Unconscious. Various evidence shows that this pool does have physical existence and location, and yet we cannot find it anywhere on the Earth or under the Earth. We have to find it if we are going to revive it. Oh, it is an impediment not to be able to think clearly these last several days! How I miss my ideas! How I miss my old logical thought-train! How I miss my mind!”

  “Mr. Dollo,” said a secretary-lady who came in (the building in which the special-seven group was meeting was the establishment of Sedgewick Dollo in his exile), “that Miss Phosphor McCabe has called again and says that she has friends who know where the well is and what to do about it.”

  “Sedgewick,” Irene Komohana chided, “Miss Phosphor can't be real! She has to be a tall story that you made up. Isn't she the lady who lives in the pink pagoda? You made her up us a latter-day legend for your town here.”

  “Wan-witted as I am, I'm not sure whether I made her up or not,” Sedgewick Dollo confessed. “Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to think straight again!”

  “Miss Phosphor says that they have you where it's short,” the secretary continued. “And she says that you will have to come up to their spring to drink.”

  “The saying is ‘have to come down to my spring to drink,’ ” Edwin Senate said dubiously.

  “Miss Phosphor inflected the ‘up’,” the secretary said.

  “Tell Miss McCabe that we will see her and her friends,” Sedgewick Dollo pronounced sadly.

  The friends of Miss Phosphor McCabe were plainly of a Fortean race, but they were not of the Stutzamutza subrace as Dollo had expected. There are, of course, many varieties of the Fortean people. “We Forteans are not organized,” one of them said. “We would not be true Forteans if we were. And so we have no leaders nor spokesmen. But I have a love of talking, and mostly they find it better to let me talk than to shut me up. I am Hiram Cloudhopper and I am moved to compassion to see that such arrogant and ignorant folks as yourselves are in trouble. You people are no more organized than we are, but you believe that you are. You accept so many things that stand in defiance of all reason that it seems you'd believe anything without question. So we will talk to you, since Miss McCabe says that several of you are good folks. And yet your credentials aren't much.”

  Norbert Hsu in private life was president of the World Federation of Scientists. Carlos Liosa was President of the United States. Agnes Belka was First Secretary of Greater Russia. Edwin Senate was Premier of United Africa. Joshua Santa Cruz was Pope of Rome. Irene Komohana was High Stylist Emeritmus of the Best Dressed Women of the World, as well as Prime Minister of Asia and Polynesia. Sedgewick Dollo was Emperor of Latin America in Esteemed Exile.

  Their credentials weren't much? What do you call credentials where you come from?

  “Ah, ladies and gentlemen (though neither term seems appropriate to you) of the sprawling and possibly imaginary realm of Fortestan,” the great cosmologist Norbert Hsu was saying, “there is one question that we must put to you: can you put water back in the well?”

  “There is always plenty of water in the well,” Hiram Cloudhopper told them, “but it's a bit compartmentalized there and one compartment of it runs a little low just now. Your difficulty is that you've been too proud to dip out of the well with the dipper of the crooked handle. You do not even recognize the great dipper which, with its queer handle, will dip from the other side of any barrier. You have relegated the dipper to legend as The Great Horn Spoon, but you do not really know it. Your problem is over with now, though. There is plenty of water. Set aside your pride and drink.”

  “But the well's run dry!” Agnes wailed.

  “Not really,” Cloudhopper said. “Only one small compartment of it has run dry. And it has run dry only because, on some level or other, you showed yourselves too particular about what came into it to fill it up.”

  “But all those animals voiding into it—” Irene began to protest. “And it would have been still worse if we hadn't—”

  “What animals?” Cloudhopper asked. “You don't know just how raunchy some of the animals can be. You should see some of the animals in our part of the well.”

  “This well of the unconscious, it does have a real location in physical space?” Hsu asked. “We haven't been able to find it anywhere on Earth.”

  “Oh, it isn't exactly on Earth,” Cloudhopper told them. “It's up in the air about twenty-seven miles above the Earth. In the Fortean Universes, almost everything is twenty-seven miles above the Earth: the moon and the sun and the planets, and the stars and the farther stars.”

  “How can a well or ocean be subterranean when it'
s twenty-seven miles up in the air?” Carlos Llosa demanded.

  “What's wrong with that?” Cloudhopper the Fortean asked. “There are plenty of subterranean caverns and caves and oceans twenty-seven miles up in the air. You just don't know what the interior of the sky is like. And whoever told you that your own topography was the only one or the correct one?”

  “Just what do you people want for reviving the well?” Llosa asked cautiously.

  “Oh, nothing at all,” Cloudhopper said. “We were going to fill your compartment up for you anyhow. We were just having a little fun by delaying it a couple of days. But you people began to suffer too much, so we will call off the fun.”

  “When can we use the well again?” Llosa asked.

  “Oh, within five minutes. We'll just whistle up to the boys there to knock out a barrier or two and let your compartment fill up. You'll have to get used to it though. It is stronger and tastier than any water that you've had before. It might be too strong for a few of you.”

  So, within about five minutes' time, this particular portion of the well of the Collective Unconscious filled up again. People could draw on it once more. The people quickly became creative again, enough so that they could maintain their roles in the world. The deprivation, the suffering, the starvation were mostly halted. The world did not quite fall apart, but it had been close. People could think again and enjoy again. They had their ideas back, they had their old logical thought-trains back, they had their minds back. They could die creatively and spectacularly again, and they could jive stupendously, some of them, and originally.

  So then it was all as it had been before the well ran dry?

  No, it was not. It would never again be the same as it had been before. This was strange water coming out of the well now, and the thoughts and actions that it nourished were more extravagant than any heretofore known. There came a weirdness over the whole of regular humanity, and it would be permanent. You know what rough and shouting people the Forteans had always been? You remember what rude strutters the Boschites were? You know the loud and glittering insanity of the Dalikites, and the perversity and perfidy of the Albionians? These shabby, crude, delirious dregs of humanity had always lived on rocks in the lower skies and in shanties on the outskirts of our own towns.