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

by R. A. Lafferty

  There seemed to be a stinky little bug biting everyone. There were happy-tongued witnesses all over the place. Oh, I and C, where are you when we need you?

  “But there's been a lot of this going on ever since I can remember,” Basil Cubic told his friend Andrew Giro of the arts. This was about a week after their previous conversation. “These unpleasures, these pulings, these manifestations of the unclean spirits, they have been with us always. I've always found that a tough mind and a closed nose was the best way of dealing with them. It's worse now though, isn't it.”

  “Much worse, Basil,” Andrew said sorrowfully. “It's in spate now. It may have achieved critical mass, orbital mass. In that case there will be no return.”

  “Well, I'll just have to let some of the more important problems go then, and bring a little effort and power to this. After all, Cubic Industries is the leading engineering firm in the world, and this should be no more than a routine problem. There's a shortage of qualified help, of course, but maybe this is a job for the unqualified sort.

  “Hey there, some of you latest girls from O'Malley's Agency, call over there and have them send me twenty-five engineers. No, it doesn't matter what kind of engineers they are. All engineers are ingenious. Have them mix them up.”

  “Hurry-begurry!” the wobble-eyed O'Malley's girls sprang to action. A whole chant of these new girls (they were all new: O'Malley had been making them for only about a month) called the order in to O'Malley's on twelve simultaneous telephones.

  “Send twenty-five swinger-binger engineers over to Cubic Industries,” they sang in voices that must have come out of the chorus of 'Three-Eyed Dog', “and be sure that all of them are mixed-up types.”

  “And, in the meanwhile, some of you girls might do some work,” Basil Cubic suggested. “That's really why you are here.” “Oh, if we were less sanctified and less humanized, you would infuriate us with remarks like that,” the O'Malley girls chanted like cracked pewter bells. “You wear your hair so short that we can hardly chew on the ends of it. How are we supposed to have meaningful relations with you. How are we supposed to communicate with you anyhow?”

  CUBIC PROJECT STUDY

  Article Number One

  By O'Malley's Leased Engineer Number Nine

  We have not identified the virus as Mr. Cubic suggested. We are sure now that there isn't any virus. We wish we could be sure that there isn't any Mr. Cubic. There is not any sickness-transmitting virus because there isn't any sickness. This study goes into fundamental fields and starts by asking two questions: ‘What is the basis of human action?’ And ‘How is humanity supposed to act?’ The answer to the first is that the new and exfoliated humanity, being topographically monad, cannot have any basis. The answer to the second question is ‘Stick around a while and watch how it acts. The main show has just begun.’ This is the only action that would seem possible. It is the logical conclusion to the human premise. To the question ‘What is wrong with things?’ we can only answer ‘Nothing is wrong; this is the way it's going to be.’ So what of the laggard remnant of humanity that will not get with it? There is a long history of both of these syndromes. The new and reigning condition is featured by extravagance of behavior coupled with poverty of accomplishment. (Oh, these are our kind of guys!) This was once thought to be the aberration, but this study believes that it is the normal state. The other syndrome consists of what we must now consider an unhuman and chilly condition, a mechanical way of living, a contempt for the great understandings, an incapacity for the ecstasies and raptures and holy-tongued transports and the charismatic group nose-bleedings that have sanctified daily experience. But there was no virus. There is only the cure. Shout, shout, shout! All is as it should be. Let the minds blow!

  “Send leased engineer number nine back to O'Malley's,” Basic Cubic said when he had read the article, “and we will not need a replacement for him.” “Oh, you are prejudiced against him because he never wears clothes,” several of those office girls said in chorus. “When will you learn that free spirits and clothes have nothing in common? When will you let the love that is in you well up and spill all over everything?”

  “It will be a little while yet, kids,” Basil said, “a little while yet.”

  CUBIC PROJECT STUDY

  Article Number Two

  By O'Malley's Leased Engineer Number Seventeen

  How was it ever possible for Mankind to encounter ‘The Wonderful Idea and Phenomenon of Mankind’ and not be overwhelmed by the ecstatic madness? We hope that soon it will not be possible. We shall be continually overwhelmed by the magnificence of ourselves. How was it ever possible for human persons to stand in the presence of that extraordinary constellation of their own qualities and talents without falling into self-adoration? And yet there have been, more in the past than in the present, humans who held themselves aloof from ‘Humanity's Glorious Celebration of Humanity’, but we believe that some mistake has been made. Such things who do not take part in the Humanity Festival are finks and not humans at all. Basil Cubic is such a fink. The only thing wrong with the world is that there are Basil Cubics in it.

  “Send leased engineer seventeen back to O'Malley's,” Basil Cubic said when he had read the article. “There just isn't very much content in his study.” “Oh, you are so shut off from everything alive that you do not know content when it's thrust at you. Be open, be open!” nine of those little O'Malley office girls were jabbering in unison. “Let yourself go. Flush, mush, rush, gush!”

  “Call me fountain, kids,” Basil said, “but get rid of that Number Seventeen.”

  CUBIC PROJECT STUDY

  Article Number Three

  By O'Malley's Leased Engineer Number Seven

  Much of this hinges upon mind-blowing. But mind-blowing must be very selective if it is to fill its purpose. It does not seek to blow out every candle in the mind. It seeks to blow out only one of the candles, a very particular candle that is sometimes called the ‘Signature Candle’ and sometimes the ‘Maker's Mark Candle’. When I blew fifth horn for the old Mind Blower's Combo I knew this. I could pick out any person in that twisted-eared jungle around us and I would direct my own sort of blast at that person. I could blow out just one candle in his head and leave the rest of them burning in him. And that person would be one of ours from that moment on. He would no longer be one of his. Or consider it not as a candle but as a quality or statement that goes to make up (along with the other qualities and statements) what a person is. Whenever we play the ‘Heresy Rag’ I can feel this strongly. There will be grapples or iron claws in our sound then. We will reach out with them into persons, and we will pull out (haireisthai, draw out, select out, heresy out) the special quality or statement, and we will destroy it with a blast of sound. Then that person, who had been sick, will be well. Mechanical Men are always free from the disturbing quality, and many others were either born free of it or had it bruised out of them early. Now we will make everyone free of it. There will be no more special qualities, not anywhere, not ever.

  What has gone wrong with people lately? This is a question that the project-study asks. Nothing has gone wrong lately. Everything is going right. Then what is wrong with our employer Basil Cubic and his ilk? They still have the outlawed signature candle burning in their heads; they still have the ‘Maker's Mark’ statement, burning in their breasts. They must get rid of these things, or we must get rid of them. We are all limbs of one body. Should some of the limbs be stronger than others?

  “Tie a can on leased engineer number seven and send him back to O'Malley's,” Basil Cubic said sourly when he had read the article. “Better stuff than that I can pick up in the alley.” “But you don't,” those little office girls hissed in chorus. “You never pay any attention to things in alleys and you never pay any attention to us. Get dislocated like we are. Get free. Oh you of the fettered tongue and soul! Get loose. Get human. Take off your shoes. Don't you know that everything you walk on is holy?”

  “Some other time, kids
,” Basil Cubic said crossly.

  CUBIC PROJECT STUDY

  Article Number Four

  By O'Malley's Leased Engineer Number Six

  The history of normalcy in humanity is full of funny turns. The first really normal humans were the mechanical people manufactured by Eratosthenes at Alexandria in the one-hundred-and-thirty-fourth olympiad. These mechanical people (seven men and seven women) behaved very much as do modern persons of the fully-realized sort. They did not have the stifling inhibition. Their wonder at the human existence was total, and they felt great glory at being created in the human image. They swooned for joy, they forewent bathing lest any of the blessed human unction might be washed away from their hides, they raised their howls of praise to themselves and to their kindred, they danced and pranced, they talked with their happy tongues, they indulged in gibberish (funnilingus), they clasped each other fervently and uttered incantation phrases which fortunately have not come down to us, they smelled each other about the crevasses and articulations of their bodies and they were impassioned by the smells. They just could not get enough of themselves and of the people-thing to which they belonged. They did new and great things in the arts (creatively destructive things). They continually made little cries and sighs, their noses bled a lot, and they wept and tittered. What is there like the titter to make all mankind akin? And when ecstasy reigns, can logorrhea be far behind? No, it could not. There was instant logorrhea. Tongues bloomed like scarlet flowers, as they are doing once more today. Why such successful persons were destroyed by their maker is still a mystery. But the mechanical humans (down to the great numbers of O'Malley's Assembled People who came on the market only last month) have remained absolutely true to the emancipated and exultant human ideal all through the ages, even though many of the flesh-and-blood humans have fallen short of it.

  By the way, while old-style, unliberated humans are not able to have carnal relations with mechanical people, the new and fully-aware people are able to do so. There are offspring already, and there is no reason why they should not be fertile. Actually, there is no present difference at all between the new and fully-aware people and the mechanical people. They are the same. Oh gnashin' passion, we will all be the same now!

  “Get rid of leased engineer number six,” Basil Cubic told a gaggle of those O'Malley girls. Get rId oF HIM!” “Oh Cubic-begubic, now you're starting to sound like people,” they squishered. “Oh, we have something for you. And then of course you will have something for us.”

  They gave it to him. It was a little dirty white cake of something, and it had a small candle stuck in it and burning.

  “What is it, kids,” Basil asked doubtfully.

  “Tongue scrapings,” they said. “We scrape the coatings from our tongues and save it all because we are a happy-holy-tongued people. And now if you will give us your own tongue scrapings, then you can begin to have meaningful relations with us.”

  “I'm afraid I don't save the stuff, kids,” Basil said.

  “Ow wow-begowgowgow! How inhuman can you be!”

  CUBIC PROJECT STUDY

  Article Number Five

  By O'Malley's Leased Engineer Number Eleven

  We can consider the St. Vitus Dances of past centuries, or the Dances of Death (how could they have been so misnamed?), or the Hamelin dances as types of the ongoing emancipation. We are in this great historical line of people who were right with the world. Those old dancers were like the Fifty-Day Wonder People of the present time. Oh it is a glorious line of the completely-human ones, from the frantic-romantics of yester-century to the beatniks and bippies and lippies and hippies of yesteryear to the unstrung-tonguers of today. There is not anything gone wrong. This is the ideal. We ourselves have been the ideal from the beginning of time. Ah, when the Slippery Rocks are playing ‘When the Fog is on the Noggin’, when we all mingle our bodies and our breaths and our blood, when we experience the great and intemperate attainment, then we are in heaven. This is the ‘Great Human Hound Dog Heaven Number Five’ by the Slippery Rocks themselves. Get lost, Cubic. But sign the checks first.

  “Get rid of that engineer number eleven,” Basil Cubic told those creatures who were supposed to be working in his office. “Get rid of him if it takes a stake through his heart to do it.” “Oh joy-be-goy-goy, hash and grass, you're finally getting with it!” those little creatures rattled. “Lots of us are going on the stake-through-the-heart now. It's a one way go, but what does it matter. Have you heard ‘Stake of My Heart’ by the Irish Indians?”

  CUBIC PROJECT STUDY

  Article Number Six

  By O'Malley's Leased Engineer Number Sixteen

  When an engine just flat-blow-top races like that, it means that the governor isn't working. That's what's wrong with a lot of people now. They're about to fly apart. There's supposed to be a governor or stabilizer in everybody unless they get left out. The governor will always work unless it gets blowed out of commission. Somebody sure has blowed it out of a lot of people lately. I don't know who it is or why they want them blowed out, but they've got a system of it going. People whose governors aren't working aren't really people any more. It's the one thing that makes them people. When they finally fly apart for not having governors, they're only crud. Busted governors are what's wrong. Fix them and it's all right again. That's my recommendation. There is a governor-shop on Eleventh Street that is pretty good at fixing governors for engines. They might be able to repair governors for people too.

  2.

  'For God is not a God of gibberish.’

  —Paul, Corinthians

  'Oh Paul is wrongsy-bongsy! Gibberish is in like Quinn. Let's all make a mighty gibberish around the altar. Gibb, gibb, gibber!

  —Bishop of Oklafanokla (Fifty-Day Wonder Sect)

  “Get engineer sixteen into my office and send all the rest of the engineers back to O'Malley's Assembled People Incorporated,” Basic Cubic told his non-working work force.

  “Oh, Cubic-bubic, you're just not road-worthy,” they told him. “Why aren't you crying like any human person would do? Can't you hear? Can't you hear? Turn it up a little bit girls.”

  “Please don't. Any higher and the walls will fall down,” Cubic said.

  “You mean you don't want the walls to fall down? Ugggh! But listen and cry. That's the Three-Toed Toads rendering ‘Cry All Night’. And you, you're not crying!”

  Ah, it was enough to make a person cry, but Basil Cubic didn't do it right then.

  “Ah, engineer number sixteen, just what sort of engineer are you?” Basil asked with trepidation a moment later. “I'm a sanitary engineer. Yeah, you don't have to say it. I'm sure that some of your best friends are garbage-collectors too. I get sent out with regular engineers a lot of times because of the name of my classification.”

  “Sixteen, you were the only one who went right to the hollow heart of the problem and came up with the correct but difficult answer. Do you have any special qualifications in the human-engineering field?”

  “No. I know garbage when I see it and smell it, that's all.”

  “A rare talent. Hang onto it. But you don't know how to restore a murdered condition to life?”

  “No. That sounds more like a job for the police.”

  Cubic dismissed number sixteen, and began to phone some of the real experts, as he should have done in the first place.

  But one after another of those big men said that the thing was impossible.

  “Dead men we restore to life every Monday and Wednesday afternoon,” one of them said. “But we cannot restore this thing.”

  “Basil, it's a one-way go, as the people say,” another of the big experts told him. “No, the human condition cannot be restored. There are certain unreversibles and this is one of them.”

  Basil called several more and was told in every case that things had gone too far and could not be restored. Dejected, Basil Cubic gazed at the little sign on his desk.

  “We can do anything!” That was the motto of Cubic Ind
ustries. And there was a little handwritten squibble at the bottom of that sign:

  ‘And if we don't know how (and it could happen to you, Basil) we will call Brain McClain at 918-05080208030106 and he will tell us how.’ Basil phoned Brain McClain as the station of last resort.

  And he explained the problem to him. “It has to be solved, Brain, or everything is lost,” he pleaded after he had explained the situation. “You always have the answers. Please tell me if things cannot be restored.”

  “Oh certainly, certainly, everything can be done. Let's see, just what would be the best way to do it—”

  “Yes, Brain, yes,” Basil encouraged. “You say the best way is to take what? To start with a pair of what? Oh. They're a kind of lemur, aren't they? But won't that take a long time—? Oh, not too long, huh. Well, how long for a minimum? About eighty million years? You couldn't cut that by—oh, you couldn't cut it by even six months, huh? And you've likely got it set a little bit low anyhow? And what about some of the other ways it could be done? Oh, this is the only really workable way, huh. All right, Brain. Thanks.”

  Basil Cubic was shaken, and he walked out into a maelstrom of noise in his anteroom. “Oh, you impossible man,” he mouth-read the O'Malley girls scolding him through the miasma of sound. “Why don't you wail? Everybody is wailing. That's the Lolling Tongues doing ‘Wail All Night’, and you do not wail!”