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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “It's not really bad fish the way it's fixed,” Barnaby admitted. “The garnish is so strong that one can't taste the fish, and the fish is so strong that one can't taste the garnish. But where did it really come from, Austro?”

  “There's a pool about a mile from here, Mr. Sheen. It's plain loaded with those big old fish. And the banks and bottom of it are loaded with those big old plants. It was Dog who first discovered it.”

  “Your glasses are cracked, mister,” Susie Kalusy said to a fish-eating man there. “That's all right, little girl. They never did fit me. I don't look through them. I look over them.” He was a nice man.

  “The pool's only a mile from here, Austro?” Barnaby Sheen asked. “Which way?” “Up.”

  Pleasures And Palaces

  “A superior smile is the sovereign wonder-worker,” Griggles Swing said to Belinda Greenglow on a Monday evening. “One smiles superiorly at God and is one-up on him. But if God would smile superiorly at man, he must do so anthropomorphically, on man's own terms. The morning stars snickered and the little hills melted like wax when this was first discovered.” Griggles Swing was called the ‘swinger’, and not merely from the consonance of his name. It was an old term. A complete person, vivid and powerful, high-spirited and vigorous, multi-talented and of a many-dimensioned intelligence, one who was master of all the arts (and especially the art of living) had once been called a ‘swinger’. With the coming into favor of more fractured and specialized persons, the old swinger-type of the complete person had nearly disappeared: but what few of them were left were still of great power and influence. And they weren't really old, not any of them. Most of them, as was the case with Griggles Swing, were ageless.

  It was the swingers themselves who had done the most to extinguish their own type. In no field had the complete swinger been stronger than in that of genetic engineering. And, as genetic engineers, they had seen the advantage of developing specialized persons. This was a necessity for the advancement of the human condition. “Nine specialized persons can do almost anything that one complete person can do,” was one of the sayings of the genetic engineers, “and it is much easier to obtain nine specialized persons than one complete person.” It was really a question of economy.

  There are some roles that no person can act out unless he owns them, though Abel Riordan could fill almost any role that you could imagine. The best actor can fill roles a little bit above his living station, but not much above it. Abel was not an actor though; he was one of the specialized doers.

  There are some physical gestures that not everyone can make; but there was not any gesture that Mary Irish could not execute. She found cameras turned on her constantly to record her gestures for instruction films to show to the young. This was the way it should be!

  There are some jokes that not everyone can tell, but find one that Victor Hornspoon couldn't! There are some clothes that not everyone can wear, but Belinda Greenglow could wear anything.

  One has to be really wealthy to give the impression of great wealth. And, while one can give the impression of being handsome without being so in fact, one must be of a fairly high intelligence to be able to give the impression of super-intelligence. Some things can be faked more easily than others. Even those specialists officially classified as ‘fakers’ cannot fake everything. Swing's four best friends, among them, could fill almost every role and implement almost every quality, but it was only a complete person such as Griggles who could fill all the niches by himself.

  Swing knew more than a hundred thousand people personally (people were his field, and he based his work on the broadest possible sampling); but it might be said that he knew only four persona well. Not everyone is capable of knowing certain special persons well, and only these four knew Swing with real knowledge and apperception. These four brilliantly fractured and specialized persons were Belinda Greenglow, Victor Hornspoon, Abel Riordan, and Mary Irish. They knew Swing but even they didn't know where he came from.

  “You are an unknown country, Swing,” Belinda said to him as they dined that Monday evening at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. (Nasi goreng and satay were the dishes for supper.) “You, more than anybody, have modified humanity,” she told him. “You engineer people with great scope end logic, and you always seem to have a clear base and aim. But what is missing from your program (which is the program that is almost universally accepted) is the beginning of it. What is your own base and beginning, Swing? I have heard people ask ‘Whence is this paragon?’ And I also ask ‘Whence?’ Where do you really come from?”

  Not everybody can eat satay splendidly. It is eaten directly off the red-hot skewer, and a gauche person can burn his tongue badly. And yet to omit the slurping sizzle of tongue on hot skewer is equally gauche, as not showing enough appreciation of the régale. The splendid way is to carry enough drool on the tongue to sizzle the skewer loudly and still preserve the tongue succulent and unscathed. Both Swing and Belinda Greenglow ate satay splendidly, with daring and grace and civilized competence.

  “The name of my original home wouldn't mean anything to you,” Swing said.

  “Try me.”

  “The name is sometimes translated as ‘The Palaces’ and sometimes as ‘Land of the Heart's Desire’; but the name itself would sound like nothing to you; it would hardly sound like speech.”

  “Is your original home on World?”

  “Oh no. I came like a country boy to World to make my fortune; it is town to me. But all towns are a little bit common to one who has known real country.”

  “Is it on one of the Nine Worlds?”

  “No, not one of the nine.”

  “Well, is it on one of the Nineteen Worlds?”

  “Yes, it's one of the nineteen, so it cannot be a really remote place. Belinda, you know that many people have badgered me to find out where I come from, and they haven't found it out. It's the characteristic of a secret place that it shouldn't be found out. And even you cannot out-badger the badgers.”

  “It's no skin off my tongue, but is it—I know that this is hardly possible in the case of you—is it from some sort of shame that you will not tell people where you come from?”

  “No, not from shame, Belinda. It's from overweening pride that I keep it a secret.”

  “Is there anything special about the place?”

  “Of course there is. It is special beyond guessing.”

  People were grinding out films of them with cameras as they dined.

  “Were I with anyone else in the world, I would think that they were taking pictures of me,” Belinda said. “But when you are here, I know they are taking pictures of you. Were there special things you did in your homeland that people don't ordinarily do?”

  “Yes. We flew. We flew through the air. Many peoples do not do this.”

  After the supper, they made an evening appearance at the Haw Paw Villa, or the Tiger Balm Gardens. Both Swing and Belinda Greenglow were in the people-immersion area of genetic engineering, and they commonly met several thousand people several times a day. These meetings were always going on everywhere in the world as the people strove to further realize their peoplehood. Swing and Greenglow were gracious and they were significant, and they contributed to the people-awareness explosion everywhere they went. Near the end of his last speech of the evening, Swing announced that he was contributing a million straits dollars to get a campaign going for a new people-improvement hospital and information center to be built there. Almost every evening of the year, Griggles Swing contributed at least a million of the local specie to a people-improvement institution. A great man could hardly do less.

  “You are a man without antecedents, Swing,” Victor Hornspoon told him as they dined Monday evening (it was the next evening, but Swing had crossed the date-line so it was again Monday) at the Rara Bagara House at Lapoa Timu. (Falsoa-ma-malie was the dish of the supper.) “The quirk is that you always place great emphasis on antecedents, Swing. You state that a person with no antecedents is no person
at all. Well?” “I have extraordinary antecedents, Victor,” Swing said. “They are a strong element in all of my procedures and procurements. My own antecedents have now become archetypical to the best antecedental-genetic-engineering practice.”

  “Your own antecedents are a basis that we build everything upon? But we do not know them, so we don't know what we're doing.”

  “When we build excellences into human persons, Victor, we do not build up or upon. We build down, which is another way of saying that we refine. We cut down. We carve out. We sculpt.”

  “From what stones do we sculpt, Swing? Is it from the ‘Magnificent Blanks’ that you sometimes speak of?”

  “Yes, and there are such things, though you all smile at such statements from me as though I were concealing something behind a fanciful notion. There were even some Magnificent Blanks on this world once. The Cro-Magnons were such, and most of the people still carry some of their blood. The essence of the ‘Magnificents’ is that they should be large-brained and long-lived and vigorous; and that they should have a certain style, which is the same thing as grace, or as power-in-balance. And the essence of the ‘Blanks’ is a sort of hairy invisibility, a condition in which nobody will look at them twice, in which nobody will pluck or plunder them before their time.”

  “And you have really found such a genetic stock, Swing? And it is the ‘neutral basic power-blocks’ of your own genetic manipulations?”

  “Yes, it's the strong neutral basic, Victor. Enclaves of it are more rare than you might believe. I had to go to the very limits of the Nineteen Worlds to find it. I had to touch a preserve that I had intended to leave alone. In fact, I had to go all the way back to— to— to—”

  “To where, Swing?”

  “To where I started. But it's a strong building material, and there are no hidden hazards in it at all. You yourself, in part of your ancestry, are of the filial two generation of this healthy stock. And you and your sort are the heartiest bunch of fractured and specialized persons that one would dare hope for.”

  “Then, Swing, not only do we not know where you come from, but if we be of these magnificent blanks that you will not name, then we don't know where we come from either. And yet it does set one up a little bit to know that he derives in part from a secret nobility.”

  “That it does, Victor. I'm going home later this week. I haven't been back there for many years.”

  They ate with great vigor. They had to. Not everyone can eat falsoa-ma-malie with splendor and style, but everyone will come to its eating with great vigor or he will not come at all. The question was ‘What diamond will cut this diamond?’ Or ‘What teeth will tear this toothed-flesh?’ The malie is the iron-flesh shark. Some customers who come to this dish are given razor-sharp, stainless-steel teeth to fit over their own teeth. And some are given teeth of the iron-flesh shark itself to attach to their own teeth to eat itself. Only heroes refuse both sets of auxiliary teeth and use their own. Both Griggles Swing and Victor Hornspoon were such heroes. Both had that extraordinary strength of jaw and arm (one had to tear the very tough food to pieces with the hands before attempting to eat it) that belongs to the Magnificent Blanks. Perhaps one person in a hundred can attack this food with such vigor and shearing power as to conquer and consume it with his own tools. And perhaps one person in a hundred thousand can carry the thing off with splendor and style. Victor Hornspoon was such a special person, though barely. Griggles Swing was such a person, complete and with never a doubt of it. His accomplishments always reflected style upon style and splendor upon splendor. To be such a person as Swing, that was to be completely civilized.

  Not everyone can correctly tip the waiter for such a meal. In the Rara Bagara House at Lapoa Timu (and nowhere else in the world) one tips the waiter by placing a coin in his ear when he bends for the ritual blowing-out of the shark-oil lamp near the end of the meal. The waiter can tell the size and weight of the coin that is slipped into his ear. From the relation of the weight to the size, he can tell whether the coin is bronze or silver or gold. By a peculiar development of the otological muscles, the waiter is able to fling back the coin from his ear with a ringing rejection if it is of too small a value (indicative of the cheapness in the customer) or of too large a value (indicative of ostentatiousness in the customer). But Swing, who never erred in things social, had no fear of rejection. He responded perfectly to the custom he had never met before. He was truly civilized.

  After supper, they made an appearance at White Shark Stadium. There was an important seminar in genetic engineering going on there, and they met in fecund relationship with the several thousand delegates. And, near the end of his last speech of the evening, Swing announced that he was contributing a million south-sea-bubble dollars to get a campaign going for a genetic-engineering hospital and institute. Almost every evening of the year, Swing contributed at least a million of some coin to an institute of this sort. A truly civilized man could hardly do less.

  “You have become the loose mathematical answer to quite a number of problems. The answers to these most sophisticated problems will not be in the form of numeration or quantity, nor of function or proportion; the answers will come in the forms of special persons. And the same problem (if there could ever be a same problem in those higher realms) will have a different answer every time it is posed; for the answer will be a different person every time. But you yourself have been the answer to more than a dozen intricate problems. No one else has ever been the answer to more than two or three.” “I am more generalized and less fractured than others, Abel. It's a pity that there couldn't have been more of my sort, but the system of specialized persons is more efficient. I'm going home later this week, Abel.”

  “To your original home? You'll be followed, of course. There's a lot of curiosity as to your place of origin.”

  “I'll not be followed all the way,” Swing said. “They will leave my trail at some point. They will believe that it was a fetch or doppelgänger of myself that I sent on such an improbable way to deceive them. They will check back to pick up the trail of the real me. But I am not capable of deception. There is a practical sort of invisibility surrounding my place of origin, but it isn't intended to deceive. I could bring some of you home with me, I suppose, but it would be to small purpose. The important thing is not where I (and many of you in the derivative way) came from. The important thing is where we are going.”

  “You have heard the news of the special voting, Swing? You've been voted the most civilized person on earth.”

  “It's an honor, of course, but I'm not surprised. After all, I engineered and set up most of the categories on which the judging was based. The real subject of the voting was ‘What person best fulfills the role of Griggles Swing?’ And the answer was ‘Griggles Swing himself best fulfills that role.’ ”

  Could even Swing and Abel Riordan eat beef bawlie splendidly? It hadn't the challenge of some foods, and a challenge is always an element in splendor. It wasn't as dangerous to the tongue as was the satay on its flame-hot skewers. It wasn't as iron-flesh tough as was the falsoa-ma-malie. But it had a life of its own. It bawled in a loud and disconcerting fashion. Some people said that it was the jokers in the Mule Box Kitchen who made the bawling sound with bullroarers whenever a customer cut into or bit into the ‘beef bawlie’. This is not true. The beef moved of itself and it sounded of itself. Nothing that has ever lived can ever be completely dead, and the ‘beef bawlie’ at the Mule Box in K.C. is a testament of this.

  But, yes, Swing and Riordan did eat it splendidly. All things great and small are done splendidly by truly urbane persons.

  After the supper, they went to the old Monarch Stadium. There was an important caucus of several thousand genetic engineers going on there. Abel Riordan spoke to the meeting, and then Swing spoke to it. And he answered questions. “What would you consider the hallmark of a really civilized person?” a person asked.

  “To be able to regard God with an amused tolerance that contains the th
reat that it might change to an unamused intolerance, that is the hallmark of a civilized person,” Swing said. Then, a little later on, Swing announced that he was giving a million new-revisional dollars to the Hall-Mark Institute of Urbanity and Genetic Engineering that would be constructed in K.C. Almost every night, Swing gave away a million locally-adjusted simoleons for something or other. The grand gesture can hardly be made with less than a million.

  “You do know that you're the most imitated person on earth, don't you Griggles?” Mary Irish asked him as they dined Wednesday evening at the Gerookte Aal in Ostend of Flanders. (For supper they were having hotchpotch stew and sugared potatoes.) “Are people still trying to imitate the inimitable?” Swing asked with none of that true modesty that is sometimes found in the strangest people. “We great originals do not really like to be imitated. I'm going home tomorrow, Mary, for the first time since I left. I feel the need of renewal. I will refresh myself at the fountain that is my favorite ancestor, the younger me. It's an odd feeling to go back within yourself.”

  “It's like eating this hotchspotch stew here, Swing. I always feel that I may be swallowing a million of my ancestors.”

  “No, no, Mary, there's very little chance of that. The people who live in hotchpotch stew are on a variant line. But I'm going back home, where everything is fresher and more original.”

  “Belinda Greenglow told me on voxo that your people fly through the air where you come from. Really, Griggles, I don't see even the stubs of wings on you, though you've always appeared to be extraordinarily powerful in the shoulders and arms.”

  “Yes Mary, it takes extraordinary power in the arms and shoulders to fly as we do. In my clan, we're born with this power.”