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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Heh, heh,” the Last Man Who Remembered crowed to the people. “They ragged and they nagged. And what can you do with naggers and raggers? Get rid of them, that's all.”

  And an officer of some high station addressed the crowd briefly: “Ours is a world to be lived in. It is a complete world. It is the way we like it.”

  They had the semifinals of the regional pig-sticking tournament then, and some of the best riders and lancers in the nation took part. They had three hundred marching hands, but they often had more than that at their weekly festivals. They had thirty speakers, loaded with wit and program, and limited to thirty seconds each. They had the second half of the football game then.

  All of these things were carefully balanced and interspersed. And again and again they cut back to the ‘Last Man’ for his remarks:

  “Heh, heh,” the Last Man Who Remembered cackled. “They thought that we couldn't get along with them. We showed them. There used to be the saying ‘You can't live with them and you can't live without them.’ And then there came along a taller saying ‘The hell we can't live without them!’ ”

  “This ‘Last Man Who Remembers’ will soon be on his way out of the world,” an official announced. “He will be accompanied by a boy, and by the pet pig of the boy.”

  The select dozen Horn-Boys blew with such trumpeting power that there were, here and there in the assembly, burst ears and blood running down jowls. The boys blew superbly: but one of them, so it was bruited about by those who understand high trumpeting, blew incompletely. This incomplete trumpeter would have to be killed, the rumor said. But one always hates to see a boy chopped even before he even becomes a man.

  There was a heavyweight prize fight, very good, and it ended in a knockout in four rounds.

  “Heh, heh, they were always more trouble than they were worth,” the Last Man Who Remembered was cackling to the assembly. “Well, we did give up something when we gave them up, heh, heh, but I'm the only one who remembers what it was, so it won't matter to the rest of you.”

  “There are still some few persons who are incomplete and unsatisfied,” another high official announced. “There's about one of them in a million. They believe that they're missing something. Some of them even believe that the missing element lingers on the other side of the hills. But all of us who have our sanity and balance know that there is nothing worthwhile over the hills, that we're not missing anything. What could there possibly be that we don't already have?”

  The twelve loud trumpets spoke again, and then one of them predominated. It didn't win place for loudness or for excellence either. It won a temporary first place by the trickiness of its time. There was shocking joy in that tune, but there was more joy in the knowledge that there would be extra bonus blood spilled that night.

  “Hey, hey, ‘tis said that some of them are still left in the OTHAFA valleys,” the Last Man Who Remembered crowed. “I never believed it.”

  And now the action picked up pace and moved to the climax. Twelve trumpets shouted together. And then eleven of them fell silent, and a single one kept on with its strange tune that seemed to be requiring an answer or at least a counterpoint. “It's the only tune that he can play,” people with special trumpet knowledge told their neighbors. Then the lone trumpeter with his conch-shell trumpet still roaring and soaring came to the very center of the arena. His pet pig was at his heels; and the finest riders and lancers came to that same center which was really the coursing area.

  The Last Man Who Remembered, wired for sound so that none of his observations might be lost, was brought to that same central area.

  “Heh, heh, we got rid of them,” he cackled. “Good riddance. They kept the whole world in a turmoil. How is it that the trumpet-boy knows about them though? Well, no matter. He'll be going with me.”

  Tom Halfshell, the trumpet-boy, still played. The expert pig-lancers were in the mule-saddles to make their kills and send the three creatures on their ways.

  “Heh, heh, they're well forgotten,” the Last Man crowed. “They were one kind of fun, but there were so many other kinds of fun that you couldn't have when they were in the world. Why, you couldn't even have a pig-sticking pageant with them around.”

  A lancer got the old Last Man then. He was down, dead on the turf then, with a self-satisfied grin on his face. And an era was over.

  Tom the trumpeter blew powerfully and disturbingly again. A lancer killed the pet pig, a very tricky small target. The little pig was stretched out on the turf at the head of the dead Last Man.

  Tom blew his powerful half-tune again. Then it was cut off sharply by a lance. He was down dead, and he was placed on the turf at the feet of the dead Last Man.

  That was the end of the pig and the boy and the man, and of any secret that they might know.

  But an answer to the tune of Tom Halfshell arrived then, distantly, but clear and carrying, from ‘over the Hills and far away,’ played on the unplayable trumpet-shell of the Butterfly Moon Sail.

  This really was an answer to Tom's tune, a convincing answer, and it thunderstruck a million men and boys — while seven notes of it sounded — and then — it was cut off sharply — by a murdering lance.

  There is no faking a lancing.

  And there is no avoiding a countervailing action. A countervailing action is presupposed by an action on this side of the hills, just as matter presupposed antimatter. The anti-creatures in the ‘over the hills and far away’ (OTHAFA) regions (what was the name of them when they still lived in this plane of the world? — Yes — ‘Women’) they could not let one of their own persons go intuitive and evocative, not any more than could the men on this side of the hill. Silent and sharp murder (how fitting an instrument is the lance!) may be the only possible response in some cases, in the case of a trumpet-call that threatens to play havoc in just seven notes. If you suppress a secret you must suppress the anti-secret also.

  Jack Bang's Eyes

  1.

  If those stone-white statues had not been dug out of the ground or otherwise presented to view it would have been necessary to invent them. Indeed, more of these statues were invented than actually survived, but this leads us into shady territory. There are a dozen different ways of looking at people and things. People really do have the stone-white-statue look on one of their surfaces, the one between their electrical coronas and their dermal-consensus surfaces. Seeing people so is a valid schematic way of seeing them.

  It is all right when they are represented as unmoving statues. But it is less than all right when they are seen as living and moving persons in this white-statue state. They are like great white grub-worms when they move, and yet this is themselves in their pure lines and surfaces undistracted by such things as color and tone. This is one of the superior visions of people.

  But often there's a guard (a dragon really) set to take retribution on anyone who promulgates this one of the superior visions. The dragon has struck and blinded most of the excavators of the classical marbles. What happened to Thomas Bruce the seventh earl of Elgin when he brought those famous marbles from Greece to England and so into the daylight? What happened to that French ambassador who took the Venus de Milo from Melos to Turkey on the first stage of its epiphany? What happened to the persons who ‘presented’ the Laocoon, and the Torso of Cleopatra, and the Apollo of the Belvedere? Blinded every one of them, that's what happened to them; blinded by disease or accident or assault. And it is the discoverer of the Venuses in particular who are struck blind for their temerity in presenting these forms in a new manner of seeing.

  What happened to the promoters of the Venus of the Vatican, the Venus of Medici, the Venus of Capua, the Capitoline Venus, the Venus of the International House of Doughnuts? Every one of these innovators had his eyes cut out by a knife wielded by an angry guardian dragon in human form.

  (The Venus of the International House of Doughnuts was Katherine Hearns. The one who saw and enabled others to see her in her pristine forms was Jack Bang. And the dragon
who cut out Jack's—ah, we come to him and to all of them pretty quickly now.)

  2.

  “Jack Bang's Eyes.” Yes, that's what Flip O'Grady wrote down on his scratch pad when Winston Urbanovitch asked him, in the coffee-and-doughnut shop. “What are you flipping pennies on now, Flip?” Flip O'Grady, a hot-handed chimp who worked for Doctor Velikov Vonk in the Probability Division, flipped pennies on a lot of improbable things. “Flipping pennies on Jack Bang's Eyes,” he wrote.

  “Jack Bang's Eyes? What's the odds on them now?” Winston had asked.

  “Ten thousand to one against,” Flip wrote.

  “And what are you trying to narrow the odds to?”

  “One hundred to one against,” Flip wrote. Flip O'Grady mostly communicated by writing on his scratch pad and by winking. He didn't talk much.

  Once, seven or eight years before, he had been the best talker of any of his bunch. He could say one hundred and twelve different words clearly. But Flip hadn't liked that talking bit it all. Now that he was no longer with the ‘Experimental Alternate Groups Speech Center’ but was working for Doctor Vonk at the ‘Probability Division of Creative Mutations’, Flip didn't talk at all.

  Flip O'Grady was a chimpanzee of mature years and unusual intelligence. He stood a full four feet tall. He was employed as a penny-flipper at the ‘Probability Division’: it was under the directorship of Doctor Vonk, and so was Flip.

  Flip was a hot-handed chimp, and he could influence odds constructively. His talent was directional and authentic. When put on the scent of a case he could give pretty accurate odds on that case with the tabulated results of his coin flipping.

  The mechanics of it were simple enough. Flip O'Grady flipped pennies on a little table that was covered with green velvet. An electronic scanner recorded the results. It doesn't take a very sophisticated scanner to tell whether a penny comes up heads or tails. But the calculation on a case might be very intricate and they didn't follow point-for-point the percentage of the flips.

  Flip O'Grady flipped pennies for eight periods of forty five minutes each during twenty-four hours. He flipped coins twelve times a minute. More often than that would give randomized rather than authentic results. The flipping was dogged hard work as Flip O'Grady did it, steep psychic stuff with preternatural aspects, and he sweat a lot on the assignments. He wore a T-shirt and boxer shorts when he flipped pennies. After every flipping session he took a brisk five minute shower. Then he put on horn-pipe pants and sports jacket for a forty minute coffee-and-doughnuts break. He took most of his breaks in the International House of Doughnuts, but also in Speedsters Café and in Zabotski's Bagelrees. The flipping, the shower, and the break comprised a cycle.

  Flip lived in a little cottage that was eight feet by eight feet square. It was really a ‘Garden Giant Little Gem Prefabricated Tool Shed’, the deluxe or two-window model. Flip had fixed it up according to his own exceptional taste, painted in three tones, and with red simulated tiles on the roof. It was heaped and overgrown with flowers.

  Flip was a flower person and a gardener in his off hours. At home, away from his penny flipping assignments, he wore a saffron yellow robe when working with his yellow roses, a luxurious red robe when working with his red roses, and a black robe of midnight velvet when working with his moon lilies. He was the most pleasant and most respected chimpanzee in that part of town. He was also a statistical prediction apparatus that contained an uncertainty factor.

  That uncertainty factor was presently focused on Jack Bang's Eyes.

  3.

  “Only one mutation in a million is likely to be of benefit to humankind even if established. There is no way of changing this ratio. And only one beneficial mutation in a thousand is ever established. There are many ways to change this ratio. If we change the likelihood of a beneficial mutation being established from one chance in ten thousand to one chance in one hundred, then we are well on our way to success. One chance in a hundred million, starting from scratch, is on a higher order of hope than one chance in ten billion. We will gird for battle if we have one chance in a hundred million. For battlers, those are not bad odds at all.”

  —Quantum Gambling and Mutational Improvement

  Doctor Velikov Vonk.

  Jack Bang had always been dizzy. Until he was grown, he had thought that everyone suffered from similar dizziness, that it was the natural state. And he had always had trouble with his eyes, and he supposed that everybody else had the same troubles. Then, along about the time of his twenty-seventh birthday, his eyes got much worse. He realized then that he had disabilities that others didn't have. But here was the funny part of it. As his eyes got worse, his sight got better. And there developed very peculiar compensations to his distress.

  Jack Bang was a light-eyed Gypsy, an affront to nature. He was always bleeding this bright water-color fluid out of his eyes, and he always looked ridiculous from it with the green and blue and hazel and gray running down his face. Not only could he not see very well, he couldn't hear very well either. He always had the sensation of being in a box that was not quite right side up and of peering out of it through misshapen and watery lenses.

  His name was a nickname. Jack was jak or yak and it means an ‘eye’. And Bang means crippled, or sick; or crazy. So the nickname, Jack Bang, which became his realname, meant crippled eyes, or sick eyes, or it meant crazy eyes. It was George Meropen who had hung the ‘crazy-eye’ name on Jack, and Jack was afraid to take it off. He was very much afraid of Meropen, of the way that George was always fondling that flip-handle knife of his and practicing his sinister look, so Jack's name remained Jack Bang.

  Jack Bang, an unofficial poet in the life business, was sweet on Katherine Hearne who worked at the International House of Doughnuts. And Katherine was sweet on almost everyone in the world, but perhaps she was less sweet on Jack Bang than any of them.

  Jack's eyes got worse when he was twenty-seven years old. But, at the same time, he received a number of visual compensations and fall-outs. Some of the new compensations had to do with Katherine Hearne. It had now become a special pleasure to look at her. The fact was that Jack Bang was seeing her in several new ways.

  “I wish you wouldn't look at me like that, Jack Bang,” she said. “It gives me the creeps.”

  “This is the way I've always looked at you, Katherine,” he said. He blinked, and the color from his pale blue-green gray eyes ran down his face as it always did.

  “No. You're looking at me different now,” Katherine insisted. “Don't look at me those new ways. It bothers me.”

  “It bothers me too,” Jack Bang said. “But I like the way it bothers me.”

  “Don't you look at her crooked, Crooked-Eyes,” George Meropen warned Jack Bang in an angry voice. “I'm telling you, keep looking at her like that and I'll cut your eyes out.”

  Jack Bang did keep it up. And George Meropen did cut his crazy eyes out. But those were only small incidents in the train of events.

  4.

  “Our main difficulty is in recognizing a real mutation when we see it,” Doctor Vonk was saying. This was the same day, and was also in the International House of Doughnuts. “An important new mutation is difficult to discern, since everything and everybody is a bundle of mutations tied together with uncertainty factors.” “Right!” Flip O'Grady the hot-handed chimp agreed on his scratch pad.

  “All mutations tend to be feverish at first, since they are distractions and disturbances,” Doctor Vonk continued. “We can pick up most of the new human mutations by the fever factor alone. A person with a strong mutation running in him will have a temperature as much as two degrees higher than will a person without a mutational infection.”

  “Would you like a ‘Kool-It’ tablet for your fever, Jack?” Katherine Hearne asked Jack Bang. “You're emitting like a little old stove.”

  “No, I kind of like this fever,” Jack Bang said. “It's fun.”

  “So we can pick up bearers of mutations by instruments,” Doctor Vonk said. “W
e pick up a lot of folks who are just plain sick, but we pick up most of the people experiencing mutations also. But we can often detect a mutation most readily by its effect on the world around it. We've been recording one syndrome of effects around here for some time.”

  “An effect on the world?” asked a man eating a blueberry doughnut.

  “Yes,” said Doctor Vonk. “The world reacts to its being entered and observed in any new mutational way. Individual aspects of the world at large react with a response akin to irritation and nervousness.”

  “Boy I'll say,” Katherine Hearne affirmed. “It bothers me. It gives me the creeps.”

  “And a primary mutation always travels surrounded by a sympathetic crowd of minor mutations,” Doctor Vonk said. “It is wrapped in a cloud of analogies.”

  “That's going to be a tough bunch of Apple Glazes over at the Imperial Doughnut Palace,” Oliver the doughnut cook remarked.

  “How can you know that?” asked a girl who was eating Swedish cream puffs.

  “By the smell,” Oliver said. “Adrian at the Palace mixes his dough too tough sometimes, and you can smell it as soon as he starts to bake a batch.”

  “The Imperial Doughnut Palace is four miles from here,” said the girl who was eating the puffs.

  “Yes, I know,” Oliver agreed, “and it surprises me. Until just the last couple of days ago I could only smell such things about half that far.”

  “A noteworthy mutation will always appear in several individuals at the same time,” Doctor Vonk said, “and sometimes in subsidiary forms. Thus, the mutation that we are studying has to do with incredible heightening of the power of sight, but it induces heightening of other sense powers in other persons. I myself am now able to read the dates on the coins in my pockets by running my fingers over them. I didn't used to have so fine a sense of touch. I have been studying a primary mutation for five days now, and Flip O'Grady here has been narrowing the odds on it. Yes, one person around here has recently achieved something new in sensual acuity. The odds are very long against anything coming of this singular manifestation, but Flip has been narrowing those ends by his ongoing incorporation of the factor into the probability field. But this primary mutation is surrounded by whole nations of sympathetic mutations.”