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

by R. A. Lafferty

  Crescentia Houseghost came, barefoot through the spring-pool to Ranwick there. Now she was wearing some sort of skirted thing above her long bare legs. “Old Ranwick who loves slurpy springs and slurpy spring pegeids, love me also,” she said, “and come down to breakfast while you love me.” She took him up on her and carried him through the spring and away. So they went down to the lodge with only slight dalliance, such as can never be entirely eliminated when dealing with a pegeid.

  They came to the lodge and had breakfast, and Ranwick Sorgente stayed on with the Houseghosts afterwards.

  “Ranwick Sorgente,” Cliveden Houseghost said to him that day, “do you ever come onto old bronze? Very old bronze is what I mean.”

  “Yes, I often come onto bronze that seems very old to me.”

  “How old? Have you had training in metals, and in archeo things generally?”

  “Yes, I've had training. Oh, I've come onto good bronze that had to be a quarter of a million years old at least, where it was.”

  “But bronze is an alloy that does not occur in nature.”

  “I know, Cliveden, but if one removed all the things that ‘do not occur in nature’ there wouldn't be much left.”

  “Do you know what this is that I have here, Sorgente?”

  “No, but I have come across it—not in nature, of course, since it is one of the things that ‘do not occur in nature’, but in certain unnatural enclaves in the middle of nature. It's an older alloy than any of the bronzes, I believe.”

  “Crescentia tells me that you collect springs, Sorgente, that you have made yourself familiar with more than ten thousand springs. Is there a reason why you have selected springs, out of all phenomena?”

  “A love affair only, Cliveden, and I can't account for it. Springs are incomplete. I can complete some of them a little bit. That is what love is, to me. There's a shameful secret connected with every spring. That totals up to quite a frustration in ten thousand times of it.”

  “I would like to get that down,” Cliveden said. “I believe it's an aspect of a major problem that I'm working on. I wonder if you would, now and then as the days go by, write down some of your impressions about springs in this folder here? I believe that the pertinent parts of your impressions will well up naturally to be recorded here.”

  “Yes, they'll well out of me like a spring itself,” Ranwick said. “I'll do it, I suppose. Or, if it does begin to flow by itself, I'll not impede it.”

  “I've had other accidental visitors a little like you,” Cliveden said. “I seem to collect visitors who fit in with my subject of study. I believe that you are sent to me to clarify a part of my work. Other visitors have recorded impressions in folders that we have here. We will dip into them at our leisure.”

  “All right,” Ranwick said. He liked it here, but he felt a danger. There were sink holes here somewhere where one could break through and fall into caverns for a small or a great distance. Ranwick often came onto such dangerous sink holes when he was tracking streams up to their spring sources.

  Ranwick went out with Crescentia Houseghost that afternoon to look for other springs. She was barefooted and boisterous, a long-legged bay colt of heroic size, a rover and a rock-climber, and it was hard to keep up with her. She went always at a canter, over the up-meadows and glades and rocks, through clumpets of saw-grass as if there was no harm in them. She'd go breast deep in the tumbling waters of the brooks, and she would race up slopes. Then she would swoop back on Ranwick with lavish affection and wet smoothiness. Once she pulled him down in the grass with her to lie on her lanky body and her full but somewhat angular breasts. She lapped his face with her tongue as if she were a mother cat and he were her kitten. “Oh, you funny tasting man!” she said. “I will roll you in spice-grass, and then I'll eat you.” He made love to her arched neck and her throat.

  With sparkling surprise once more, they found another spring late in the afternoon.

  “It is perfect, it is perfect,” Crescentia said, and she went chin-deep into the pool of the spring, letting the gushing water fall heavily into her upturned face.

  “It is not perfect,” Ranwick said, “and I wouldn't want it perfect. But—”

  “But it's so natural,” Crescentia said, “and so exuberant.”

  “No, it is not natural,” Ranwick told her. “That's the awful secret. And its exuberance is contrived. I wonder if yours is, Crescentia?”

  “Not my exuberance, something else. You were playing with my throat. Did you hear it ticking there? I don't know what it is or why I have it.”

  “I wonder where the pegeid of this spring is?”

  “Oh Ranwick, can't I be the pegeid of this spring too? I'll not share you with another one here. If she comes, I'll pull her down under the water with me and drown her.”

  “A pegeid can't drown, Crescentia.”

  “No, we can't, can we? I'd forgotten that. That's the way I can tell them apart.”

  They went back to the lodge by a rambling way. They went down by a different valley, crossing and recrossing a skittish stream. They would find the spring-of-origin of this new stream tomorrow. Crescentia who was barefoot carried the shod Ranwick on her back several times when she waded and crossed and recrossed the stream. He loved to ride on her exuberant hips. He made love to her strong arched neck with his encircling arms, and to her rank, yellow, mane-like hair with his face in it. Oh, she was an heroic colt! But there were many awkwardnesses about her that would lose points at a colt show.

  “You think there is something unnatural about the springs,” Crescentia said. “Cliveden thinks there is something unnatural about the rock-strata themselves. Do you think that there is something unnatural about me also?”

  “Yes, something unnatural about every pegeid, something especially unnatural about you. I wish it weren't so with the springs and their pegeids, and with you.”

  “Oh, I think we will stay just as we are,” she said.

  They came to the lodge just at dark. It was peaceful there, even though it was a bristling and animalistic sort of peace. There was high and pleasant interest in the lodge with the Houseghost couple. They dined and drank; they talked and read and examined specimens and artifacts.

  “I set pieces in, and I set other pieces in,” Cliveden Houseghost said, “and none of them explains the very large piece that is in excess. You and your springs, Ranwick, are a very welcome piece. Crescentia here is puzzled that you find springs unnatural. She has always been puzzled that I find so large a portion of the world to be unnatural.”

  “Is she puzzled that you find her unnatural, Cliveden?” Ranwick asked.

  “Yes, I am puzzled,” Crescentia told both of them. “Oh, but I am natural. I have no tricks at all in me except a few natural ones. And you have told me what I am, Ranwick, a pegeid. I never knew the name before. Tell us the names of some of the other ten thousand springs.”

  “Oh, there's Frenchman Spring, Miser's Gold Spring, White-Tail Spring, Joe Creek Spring, Sore Foot Spring, Pot Luck Spring, Wilson's Ditch Spring, Whistling Kettle Spring, Chicken Thief Spring, Run Rabbit Spring, Ornery Cow Spring, Bidding Tongue Spring, Pray-Me-Flow Spring.”

  “Why is it named that?” Crescentia asked.

  “As a pegeid, you know that it's forbidden to ask the meaning of a spring's name. But Pray-Me-Flow, well, it's above a poor town in a frugal country, and it has no water to waste. It will stand dry until the women come to it with buckets and jugs. Then the women pray for water, and the spring gushes until it has filled all their containers. Then it will gush no more till someone else prays for water.”

  “Oh, that's a miracle then,” Crescentia said.

  “No. It's not quite the same as the miracles at Three Miracle Spring, for instance. Pray-Me-Flow really does find her water hard to come by. But every spring is a miracle. It is the miracle of striking a rock with an Aaron's rod and having the water gush out. Aaron's Rod Spring, by the way, is in Alabama. The miracle is no less pleasant and no less stunning when i
t is repeated ten thousand times. But every miracle has deep underground roots. It isn't all darkness underground, not on the insides of the hills and earths and mountains. The underground water brings its own sort of light to the open air sunshine. There's an explosive sparkle to the water breaking from underground to the light. The water will never again be so bright as when it first gushes from underground. It would be perfect, it would be perfect if only, if only there weren't, aw no—” Ranwick strode about as if having difficulty with what he wanted to say.

  “Something sticks in your throat, Ranwick,” Crescentia said. “What?”

  “The fact that every spring has a contrived throat; yes, a shockingly artificial and contrived throat.”

  “Come play with my throat,” Crescentia said.

  “Here is the folder of notes that our last special guest before you jotted down,” Cliveden said. “Read them at whatever pace you will. I hope you will find them interesting. In fact, it is imperative that you find them interesting. We are forming up an interlinked pattern in this, Ranwick, and you are one of the links. Our last guest was an Englishmen, Nigel Graystone. You will notice that he titles his notes ‘Rock Gardens of the Mesozoic’. I don't believe that he meant the title for a humorous tag at all. It's an apt description of the contents which are very detailed. One could almost, by following the directional hints given in these notes, build and detail a world of one's own. All that would be needed is adequate material (and there are hints on how that material might be acquired), and a place to set it down (and there are other hints as to how that place might be arranged for). You requisition these stones. You follow these patterns. And you make a world. And it will be a codified world: that's a requirement.”

  Ranwick took the folder with the Nigel Graystone notes.

  “Where is Graystone now?” he asked.

  “Dead,” Cliveden said. “He drowned about a year ago.”

  “Would you like to make a world, Crescentia?” Ranwick asked her, “a world after the heart's desire and such?”

  “Oh, I thought that I had made this one,” she laughed. “It's quite a bit after my heart's desire. I like it. It's almost loose enough. It's almost natural enough also, though you two say that it isn't.”

  Ranwick would read scraps of the Graystone notes, and then he would stride about. Crescentia sat stretched out like the big grinning water-cat that she was. Cliveden was doing things with shavings of metal and drops of regents, and examining his results under a microscope. Crescentia pulled Ranwick onto her long-leggy lap, and he now loved her like the ten thousand and first spring. “This Nigel Graystone knows about rocks,” Ranwick said then. “Last month I asked a seaman what he knew about rocks. I am on ship often: I do not find all ten thousand springs in one country. ‘I know pretty much about rocks,’ the seaman said. ‘They're mostly made out of salt. There are different kinds of salt in the world, and that makes the rocks look different. A rock is just like a wave, only very much slower. Remember that, and you won't go very far wrong on rocks or waves either one.’ That's what the seaman told me, and I think he was right. And this Nigel in the notes, he goes on and on about patterns in the rocks. He seems to see more patterns than there are.”

  “Oh probably not,” Cliveden Houseghost said. “If the pattern isn't there, you'll know it. Stay away from the places that don't have the imposed pattern; stay away from the perfectly natural places. You'd be extinguished there. I believe that there are several such natural places on the Earth yet, untampered-with places, unpatterned places. Stay away from them, Ranwick. They are insane and inane ('Inanis et vacus,’ God called them in his original Latin), and they'll turn you insane if you linger with them any time at all.”

  “I don't want a pattern imposed too blatantly,” Ranwick said. “I don't want it imposed on nature. I am looking forever for that unspoiled nature.”

  “You are confused, Ranwick,” Cliveden Houseghost said. “To impose a pattern is not to spoil. It is to unspoil. Everything is waste and worthless and weird in the beginning. It is uneven, and it is spoiled, stripped of everything. It will do you to death and not know it, for primordial things have no mind. But the very word is tricky, as though the world might have been spoiled and stripped in time. No, it wasn't; it was before time. It wasn't a thing done; it was the original case. The underlying emptiness is too spoiled to be comprehended by any of the senses. The chaos is under everything, and it cannot be lived in; it cannot even be died in comfortably. It is spoiled and it is rotten in the first state, and I hope that will not also be the last state. Do you understand what had to be done? The world had to be unvoided; the chaos had to be unchaosed; the spoil had to be unspoiled; and it must be continued. Everything has to be patterned and structured, continuously. That is the real beginning: the patterning. But in some cases, all the patterning possible still isn't enough. In one case very near to me it isn't.”

  Crescentia had gone to sleep, and Ranwick rose from her lanky thighs. “I don't think so, Cliveden,” Ranwick said. “There had to be a simple nature first.”

  “No, there did not. The simple did not come first. The murderous confusion and complexity came first. And then came the simplifying, the ordering, the patterning, the abstracting, the unspoiling. The seaman you talked to told you a little about waves. Let me tell you about them also. Waves have a history, the most fluid history ever and the most incredibly indexed. The ‘Wet Process Transparency Recorder’ of waves beats any dry process microfilming there is, and it's all life-sized.

  “Waves, as the seaman told you, are just like rocks only faster. Ten minutes of waves is equivalent to a million years of rocks, so waves may be used as a speed-up tool. There are developments and maturities in waves that have not yet appeared in rocks, so they may also be used as a prediction tool. With both, we have the spectacle of great and Cyclopean constructions, of bridges and roads and battlements, of walls and revetments, and most spectacularly of topless and toppling towers, building and collapsing underground or underwater. All geology is concerned with these towers growing underground. They go up and up, and one of them out of a thousand will even raise its head through the earth surface itself, but most collapse while still underground. They will have built themselves very high, and when they topple they will do so with a breathtakingly speedy fall. They may plummet as much as an inch a century. These primordial towers and their falling worked towards confusion. They broke patterns. They raised clouds of underground dust.

  “It was to unconfuse the rubbled towers and to slow their toppling that reinforcements, most of them horizontal, were driven among this world-forest of steeples, of pillars, of columns, of towers indeed. The reinforcements tied the tower-trees together and induced regularity in rocks, and in waves. That is what Nigel in the notes writes about. These reinforcements are in the water as well as in the earth. Water towers build and collapse within short seconds, so it is necessary to structure them to avoid a return to total chaos. There are balks, beams, wedges, struts, rafters, joists and studs being erected constantly out of the more responsible salt and the more ordered water. These watery reinforcements are real, and they may be seen in a certain light. Were this not the case, then all the water in the world would be chaotic water. But with a deliberate process of ordering and unspoiling, every successive tower, though it may live for but one to thirty seconds, lives in a tradition of orderly growth and collapse. Crescentia, great child, rise and go to bed.”

  Crescentia rose, apparently without awakening, and went off to bed, like a zombie. “There's some disturbing passages in the notes, yes,” Ranwick said. “I read: ‘There is a second stabilization or unspoiling very late, right in the middle of the Mesozoic. It is disguised as a series of massive vulcanisms, but they were no more than disguises. It was a contrived, intrusive, artificial concretion of most strategic economy, and it was massive in effect. We still live on that deposit of stability and patterning of that too-orderly Mesozoic intrusion.’ That's what your visitor wrote, Cliveden. If that passage
means what it says, then the whole world will have to be reclassified, will it not?”

  “The world will have to be classified as almost entirely artificial at a late date, yes,” Cliveden said. Then he seemed to change the subject a little bit as he went on:

  “You have heard about megalithic constructions in Peru, in Mexico, in Anatolia, in India, in Ankor, on Malta, all over the world, Ranwick,” he said. “These big, man-heaped constructs have been called Cyclopean, and they do have a sort of half-blind, one-eyed, monocular aspect to them. There is one observation always associated with their descriptions; that their stones are fitted and seated so accurately that not even a knife-blade can be inserted between the stones. This seems the more amazing since the stones are highly irregular of shape in their many-tanned bulk, and they are sometimes set into massive walls four or five of them thick, and they fit interiorly and exteriorly, each stone touching and surfacing perfectly with six to nine other stones. And they are of such a weight that not many fitting trials could be made, of such weight indeed that it is unknown how they were set into place even once.

  “This thing is not possible even in miniature, Ranwick. The shrewdest sculptor, working in softer material, cannot do it. A machinist cannot do it with all his gauges, and a patternmaker cannot do it. Nobody can get more than three irregular pieces to fit even approximately. No, there is no way that it could be done with megastones; no way except one.”

  “And what way is that, Cliveden?”

  “Oh, the stones have to be manufactured in place. They have to be very soft and malleable, almost liquid, when they are fitted so closely. They fit as water fits its bucket because they are poured like water.”