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

by R. A. Lafferty

  But Cubic was still stunned by the problem he had been working on, and still more stunned by the answer.

  “Eighty Million Years!” thundered in his mind almost as loud as the electronic amplified thunder of the Lolling Tongues. “You put eighty million years end to end, and—”

  Then Basil Cubic wailed.

  Oh, Those Trepidatious Eyes!

  Winchilsea, the restaurateur was a prideful man. He sold arrogance, he sold elegance, he sold exclusiveness. And he provided the best and most adventuresome fare in town, and perhaps in the world. It was only before the three Epicures that he was subservient. He groveled for their approval. No dish could be truly good or adventuresome unless they certified it so. The three Epicures met the first Tuesday evening of every month in a private alcove of Winchilsea's Far Eastern Restaurant.

  “We do not ask that you satisfy us, Winchilsea,” Alban Raffels, one of the Epicures, would say. “We do not ask for a faultless or even an adequate dish. We don't require gratification. We demand ecstasy.”

  Alban Raffels was Commissar of the Gross Arts.

  “We are impossible to please,” said Vanessa Van Wyck who was another of the Epicures, “because it isn't mere pleasure that we wish. We do not ask to be pleased, but to be astonished. And we are easily astonished: it takes no more than total novelty and total excellence, and the transcendence to be found in one dish in a million. Astonish us now, Winchilsea.”

  Vanessa Van Wyck was Commissar of the Fine Arts.

  “We ask for adventure. We ask for discovery,” said Cushman Sweetbasil, the third of the Epicures. “We ask for the future here tonight on stoneware platters. We no longer, as earlier members of the Epicurean Dynasty did, require on a platter the head of the restaurateur who fails in our expectations. The heads have proved to be mostly gristle and bone and have been no real improvement over the dishes that have failed. We do, however, require of the person something much more appalling than the loss of his head. No, no, 'twould spoil the mystery and horror to explain it.”

  Cushman Sweetbasil was Commissar of Extraordinary Aesthetics. And the Commissars, in those days, wielded the power of death and damnation over private citizens.

  So, once a month, in breathless trepidation, Winchilsea provided the best and most adventuresome food in the world to the three Epicures. And he would wait in great uneasiness for the verdict from the three of them. His eyes would be like large stoneware saucers as he waited. “We will let you know, Winchilsea, we will let you know,” Sweetbasil would say as he assaulted a new presentation with only a two-tined fork and a horn spoon. “Why are you apprehensive? Do you doubt yourself?”

  Oh, those apprehensive eyes of Winchilsea!

  “Why do you worry?” Vanessa Van Wyck would ask as she worked her way into some new succulence with lancet and Malayan chopsticks. “You don't worry for the morrow do you? Isn't it wonderful that we are so highly placed? It is because we are so highly placed that, if we are not astonished, there will not be any tomorrow for you.”

  Oh, those tremulous eyes of Winchilsea!

  “We almost envy you for the rich flavour of your apprehension, Winchilsea,” Raffels mumbled as he worked his way into a transcendent (though bony), roasted excellence, using a Swiss army knife with its scissors and saw and blades and awl and scoop-spoon. “Did you know that absolute excellence and abysmal failure are no further apart than the width of one Mandarin mushroom? And, to us, all failures are abysmal.”

  Oh, those trepidatious eyes of Winchilsea!

  So Winchilsea worried and fretted, and he worked himself into a state of hysteria by the time of the first Tuesday evening of every month. But it was a creative hysteria and he continued to supply transcendent excellence, month after month. And he compensated for his anguished position before the Epicures by his withering scorn and arrogance towards all his other customers.

  But, one first Tuesday evening, Winchilsea enjoyed a surprising success. “Snap-Dragon steak!” Sweetbasil cried with uncontrollable delight at the first morsel. “No, no sauce, nothing else. This is perfect! Ah yes, just one drop, careful, one small drop of that New Iberia Alligator-Sail Sauce. Perfection! A new god is enshrined tonight!”

  “Oh, it's the roasted tail of the fabulous Anagenno Draco Draco,” Vanessa Van Wyck sang her delight. “They did survive the Ming dynasty. Delight, delight!”

  “Baked Pop-Tail Parfait!” Alban Raffels pealed his pleasure. “Let time stand still! This is the high instant of salivary lightning! It's struck!”

  Yes, those Epicures knew real excellence when they met it.

  August Winchilsea shone with pleasure for many days after that. He had scored a triumph. And it might be repeated, with judicious variations, again and again.

  The Anagenno Draco Draco is the giant snap-tail lizard. Indeed it had not become extinct at the time of the Ming Dynasty, for Winchilsea had come into possession of three of the creatures by accident. These had been sold to him as ordinary giant lizards to be used for lizard-tail soup. Then he discovered that they were snap-tails. With that discovery, came the days of delight. The Anagenno are the most intelligent lizards or dragons in the world. They are the best natured. They are the most anxious to please. And they are the most sensitive, but these rare and giant snap-tails had a sensitivity beyond that of any other creature.

  When frightened, snap-tails will snap their tails off, or at least the last long section of their tails. And they are able to grow new tails to replace the ones they have lost. The tail or tail sections of all these lizards are highly edible. Those of the Anagenno or Draco Draco are of the most noble edibility in the world.

  The snapped-off tail sections would dress out to about forty pounds each, and they could be regrown three times in twenty-four hours. The giant lizards themselves weighed about one hundred pounds each when in good tail.

  It was only necessary to frighten the creatures badly to make them snap. And then they would be put into the nutrient vat for tail regeneration. Nine tail sections of forty pounds each, sliced into one pound servings on that buzz-saw that was always buzzing in the charnel room right off the kitchen, would give three hundred and fifty snap-tail steaks a day. And anything approved by the Epicures for the month would go for a hundred dollars a plate. And it could be done the next month and the next, and maybe even the month after that.

  A proven pleasure might be served to the Epicures more than once, but not an automatically repeated pleasure. Oh, but there were variations and garnishments. It could be done.

  The three Draco Dracos were very friendly and they became part of the family around Winchilsea's Far Eastern Restaurant. They were even given the names of Maco, Caco, and Draco. Lizards have almost human hands, and these big snap-tail lizards had almost human dexterity. They were able to do much of the work in the kitchen, even to the preparation of their own tails. They learned how to use the buzz-saw, the nutrient bath, and the oven. And they rolled their eyes in delight when they sniffed their own savorine.

  It took more ingenuity every day to scare them enough to snap their tails off (since they had become so friendly and generally unafraid). But when was ingenuity ever in short supply around Winchilsea's Restaurant?

  But, as the first Tuesday of the next month approached, Winchilsea felt the return of his apprehensions. He had never been more secure, but he must still plan and improvise and execute with his old genius. All garnishes must be considered and all savories. And the little tricks of fine cookery must be enhanced. Oh, don't blow it now, Winchilsea, when you have the main thing already approved.

  To aid him in his enterprises, Winchilsea got in a twitchy person known as Herman Boggle-Eyes. No, he didn't get him in to aid in the preparation of the exquisite foods. He got him in to scare the snap-tail lizards. These had now become so friendly and trusting that they laughed at attempts to scare them. But Boggle-Eyes, a person with terminal Grox Disease, had a really fearsome appearance and voice and he succeeded in scaring them to the snapping point for a while yet
. Things were bright around there.

  “Winchilsea,” Boggle-Eyes said one day, and Winchilsea went white with fear at the very sound of that voice, “I'll not be able to scare them three times a day till the end of the month. It's wearing pretty thin. Let's try it once a day.”

  So they did it once a day only, even though it meant a great loss of revenue. It is the business of all snap-tails to be scared when it is called for. Why couldn't they, good fellows though they were, fulfill that requirement?

  “Winchilsea,” Boggle-Eyes said one day a week before the fateful Tuesday, “it is simply no use. I can not scare them even once a day. I may, just possibly, be able to scare them one more time. On the fateful day itself we will see.”

  So they dispensed with the scaring entirely for that last week before the first Tuesday, and the Snap-Tails grew in friendliness and trust. Winchilsea continued to devise variations for the great coming presentation, sauces, spices, flavorings, garnishes. He experimented with exotic varieties of Poke weeds and fungi. He obtained genuine Manchurian apples and Turkestan sheep pellets. He brought in bottled swamp-gas from a real Dixie Land swamp to burn in his ovens instead of the bland natural gas from the mains.

  Of course he could not use old steak. The snap-tail steak must have been snapped fresh within one hour. And one whole forty pound chunk must be served to each of the Epicures. It was theirs to select the best morsels, but they must be given a holocaustic hunk from which to make their selections.

  But it went well. It went right into late Tuesday afternoon as the baking hour approached. Winchilsea had his ovens just as he wanted them. He had more than one hundred sauces and additives lined up. He went to the carcass room with its ever spinning buzz-saw and its charnel aroma.

  “The tails, Boggle-Eyes, where are the tails?” he asked. “Everything else is ready.”

  “Still on the lizards,” the terminal Grox Disease monster croaked miserably. “I can't scare them, Winchilsea. I can't scare them even once more.”

  “Get out! Get out!” Winchilsea shrieked. “I abhor a failure.”

  And Winchilsea ran Boggle-Eyes and all of the kitchen help out of there with his screeching. All that were left were three giggling lizards facing him and a deadline to meet.

  “Won't scare, huh!” Winchilsea roared. “I'll scare the tails off you, I bet!” And he put on a fearsome display of shouting and gesturing for a livid five minutes. The lizards didn't scare. They applauded by clapping their human-like hands together. They had been scared too many times, and by an expert. They were sorry about their own failure to produce, but they weren't scared. And they couldn't snap if they weren't scared.

  Then Winchilsea waxed thrice livid and carried on furiously. In his frenzy, he stumbled and fell into the buzz-saw, and it cut off one of his legs just below the hip. No one else was there. The lizards were distressed, but they didn't know what to do. As Winchilsea had become very noisy about losing his leg, the snap-tail lizards put him into the nutrient vat to grow it back again.

  But he drowned instead.

  There was still a deadline to meet, an oven waiting, and the important thing still undone. The snap-tails tried to jam Winchilsea's leg into the first place they thought of. It was too long. They cut it in three pieces on the buzz-saw and then jammed it in.

  “We do not ask you to satisfy us, Winchilsea,” Alban Raffels one of the Epicures was saying. “Oh, you're not Winchilsea, are you? You're the three snap-tail dragons yourselves. So much the better. We'll cut out the middle-man. Or is it that you have cut him up? We demand ecstasy! Why are you fearful, little dragons? Do you doubt your own competence?” Raffels was working his way into the transcendent (though encased in burnt fabric) and roasted excellence of the presentation using his Swiss Army knife. The presentation was somewhat longer than the platter, but was otherwise all in order. But would the Epicures like the presentation? That was the worry.

  Oh, those apprehensive eyes of the snap-tail dragons!

  “We ask for adventure. We ask for discovery,” Cushman Sweetbasil was saying. “We ask for the future here tonight on stoneware plates. Oh, the future is longer than the plate, isn't it? Where is Winchilsea? Oh, I guess it won't matter.”

  Sweetbasil assaulted the excellent meal with only a two-tined fork and a horn-spoon.

  “Why are you apprehensive?” he asked the dragons. “Do you doubt yourselves?”

  Oh, the tremulous eyes of the snap-tail dragons!

  “We are impossible to please,” said Vanessa Van Wyck, “because mere pleasure isn't what we wish. We wish to be astonished. Where is Winchilsea? Oh, I guess this is enough of him here.”

  Vanessa worked her way towards the succulence with lancet and Malayan chopsticks, but she had started at the wrong end and it looked as if she would be there a while.

  “If we are not properly astonished, Dragons, there won't be any tomorrow for you. Oh, don't go to pieces over it. Don't snap your tails. We will let you know.”

  Vanessa had the piece of Winchilsea's leg with the shoe on it. And she was tasting the shoe first, and she was so deliberate about it. Would the Epicures like the presentation? That was the worry. They were so slow about it all, and so much depended on it. Fiddling with shoes and baked pants.

  Would they never get to the meat of the thing! Worry! Apprehension! Trepidation!

  Oh, the trepidatious eyes of those dragons!

  Marsilia V

  “The Island of New Guinea is a nearly submerged mountain-range in the shape of a bird. And the Vogelkop Peninsula is the head of the bird. The Flora is the most fantastic in the world. The Fauna, to me, is less so.” That was the entry in the notebook of Lieutenant Littlejohn. The lieutenant was unfortunate in his family name. A burly man might carry a name like Littlejohn without notice. The lieutenant could not, for he was small. He was unable, by taking thought, to add anything at all to his apparent age. He was an unfinished spooky colt. And his sterile upper lip quivered when he was excited.

  In bare lip, he was unique in the battery. Every other man had grown a whacker of a moustache in the nine months they had been on Guinea. Two hundred and thirty-three men in the battery had grown moustaches. One, Lieutenant Littlejohn, had not.

  Actually, he was unable to grow one, but it was believed that he could have done it if he had tried hard enough. Charley Redwolf had grown one, and Charley was an Indian. Indians grow them with difficulty, and Charley had done it on sheer determination. He had sunned his upper lip for an hour a day with a handkerchief over the top part of his face. He had followed the advice of a Melanesian boy and every night he had applied wisps of kunai grass soaked in the urine of the Cuscus or Coconut Possum. Redwolf hadn't done much else in those nine months, but he had grown a moustache.

  There was a strong feeling in the battery that Lieutenant Littlejohn could have done it also if he'd had the heart for it. Littlejohn was not greatly respected by the men.

  He was left much in peace now, but it hadn't always been so. He had abandoned some of his more interesting hobbies, and others he now carried out furtively. He had given up his butterfly collecting entirely for the length of his service. There is a stigma attached to a butterfly collector. There are several men even today who will do imitations of Littlejohn and his net, and these imitations are hilarious.

  And yet, what's so bloody funny about it? Butterflies are interesting, and the net is the proper instrument for taking them. And some truly fantastic varieties had been seen at the stop-off stations of the battery.

  But on Guinea, things were better. Here everybody became odd, so individual oddities were less noticed. Littlejohn wandered by himself through the jungles. He went up and over the cliffs, and down deep ravines. He learned which of the boggy meadows could be crossed and which could not.

  And when he came to very secluded pools, he stripped and swam. But these had to be secluded. Even so, he often heard mocking whistles as of jungle birds. Few birds were unknown to the lieutenant, and he knew the names of two of these
whistlers. They were Sergeant Rand and Corporal Mueller.

  And Littlejohn made entries and drawings in the notebooks that he always carried with him. He drew in a boyish and unsure hand, plants, trees, rivers, rocks, insects. He named and classified and described them, as—

  “Marsilia Vogelkopiensis. Pteridophyta. Hydropteridales. Of the Water Fern Family. Four-lobed leaf. Of a green-purple color that I have never before encountered in nature. The unusual aspect of this Marsilia is that the Sporophyte is not truly aquatic. It drifts on a morasmal underlay. Reproduction is heterosporous.”

  Littlejohn always carried a rock hammer and a thimble-sized bottle of reagents. And he read the rocks as if they were newspapers.

  PFC Hebert, the tough Cajun, and his shadow, PFC Brooks, came on him one day.

  “Ah, Lieutenant Renoncule, are you looking for gold?” asked Hebert.

  “Not in particular, Soldat Croupe d'un Raton.”

  “You shouldn't have called me that, Lieutenant.”

  “You shouldn't have called me Buttercup. I realize that I am known so, but not commonly to my face.”

  “I didn't know you understood. Are you looking for gold?”

  “No. Though I come on traces of it several times a day.”

  “Where you got your stash? There should be someone like us who knows.”

  “There is no stash. I do not collect it, it would not be remunerative.”

  “Yeah? How remunerative wouldn't it be?”

  “A diligent man, working in the most promising streams, might realize eight or ten cents worth a day.”

  “Maybe you realize more than that. Maybe you are real diligent. We will be watching.”

  They were large, rough men. Good hearted though; just mean everywhere else.

  Littlejohn made a further entry in his notebook—

  “I have discovered an entirely new variety of crow or rook today. So far I have heard only its distant ‘caw’ and found one feather, and that quite old. Yet I know that they go together. I will soon have proof. This will shake ornithology to its roots.”