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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I can feel that the tide has turned in our favor,” Captain Castillo said.

  “The tide is too slow and too sour,” Glaukos admonished. “Has the cloud turned in our favor?” He was watching it with his ugly face intently upraised.

  Yes it had. The little white cloud that had intended to pass them to the north was now veering back towards them. It turned black and enlarged itself. It filled the sky over their heads and began to rain on them, softly and steadily.

  “Men, do not just stand there!” the Quevenes called Melas cried. “When there is one good luck try for another one immediately before the first one grows cold. We may yet have meat that we will not have to shudder at when we eat. Help me dig out the buried deer. With our new running luck, it will still be deer when we dig it out and eat it.”

  Esteban came out of his dug water hole with his spade. The armadillos tumbled down into it and howled with delight to find sweet water. Of course it was sweet. The rain water was pouring down into that hole in little torrents. Then Esteban with the spade, and others with rocks and sticks to dig with, uncovered the body of the buried deer. At first it seemed that they had uncovered the face of a human girl, but that was only the tricky afternoon light coming fractured through the rain into the burial hole. It was a doe deer of incomparably gentle expression. It was mildly rotten. It had become loose in the joints and would be easy to dismember and roast and devour. So they dug it out of the hole.

  The deer skinned easily, the mild rot helping. It unjointed easily. Bigger pieces went directly into the flat fire in the hearth stone, and smaller pieces were spitted in the flame-fire for quicker charring and eating. The man divided the tongue of the deer, into five parts, one for each of them, for they were all tongue men this day.

  “Your tongue, your story was the strongest, water-master,” the Quevenes Glaukos told Captain Castillo. “It brought rain for our dying piece of land and good water for our sandy throats.”

  “No, my tongue, my story was the strongest,” the Quevenes Melas contradicted. “It brought deer meat and saved us from starvation. My mind was confused with my hunger and I did not even remember that I had killed and buried a deer three days ago. Then my ‘tongue’ which I told recalled the happening to my mind, so we do not have to starve to death after all. And now our luck has changed to the good. The black buzzards are gone out of the sky, and the white gulls have come to bounce and holler in the rainy air. Gulls are good luck birds.”

  Five heroic stories! Five heroic tongues! (The Quevenes Indians call a ‘story’ a ‘tongue’.) The five tongues hadn't resembled each other very much. They had only one thing in common: all of them had been true.

  “I feel it,” Esteban said. “Something is flowing for us now. Howl, tongue, howl! Burned yourself, didn't you? You knew you'd get burned if you tried that piece of deer meat while it was still hot. But it's better than starving.”

  “I also feel the power flowing in our favor,” Captain Dorantes said. “Oh, from this moment on, greatness has found us!”

  “A wonderful tide and a wonderful favor,” Captain Castillo said. “We will not die in this miserable place. We will travel five hundred hard land leagues to get to other places, but then we will have our crystal day in the sun, in the new sun.”

  The five armadillos waddled off, fat-stomached from the new water they had drunk. They were making satisfied and thankful grunts. They raised their tails in going-away salutes as they passed. Even their skinny tails had row after row of skinny armored scale plates.

  Bank And Shoal Of Time

  THE PEOPLE. All are thirty years old except Peter Luna who is somewhat older than that, whatever year it is.

  PETER LUNA. The genial and dying proprietor of a time post-house or relay-house. He is a door-keeper of time. “I need a matched set of at least five,” he said.

  HENRY KEMP, the “Time-Reconstruction Man”. “You can build time like anything else.” Henry is blue-eyed and shocky-haired and pleasant.

  ANNABELLA MacBEAN, the “Clotted Dream Woman”. She is a large young woman, ruddy of complexion and wit.

  ETHAN FARQUHARSON, the “Intuition-is-the-Key-to-Time Man.” “We have all walked through time in our powerful moments.” Ethan is Scotch, and eagle-eyed and eagle-beaked.

  ROWENA CHARTERIS, the “Did-You-Ever-See-a-Naked-Ghost? Lady”. She is too serious, she is shortsighted, but she is of limitless faith. She is under special auspices.

  ABEL ROARING, the “Time-is-a-Pile-of-Transparencies Man”. “There is no clear line where archaeology leaves off and time travel begins.” He is a rocky and clattering man.

  You'd like Abel. You'd like them all.

  THE PLACE

  Moonwick Estate near Lunel in the Herault Department of the Peoples Republic of France. At Moonwick, Time is a mulch many meters deep.

  THE SEASON.

  Summertime, summertime, summertime. There's nothing like it for time-travel.

  THE PROPS.

  Lark song, the noises of contented cattle and sheep, sound of grapes growing, low fidelity radio playing (with all his money, why doesn't Peter Luna get a good radio?), the colors green, blue, gold, yellow, russet, brown, cloud-white, wheat-yellow, water-gray. Sunshine, sunshine.

  THE TIME.

  A couple of minutes after noon on “Midsummer's Day” of an ambiguous year.

  THE MOTTO.

  “That Most Intricate of Pleasures, Time.”

  1

  This was the message received by a dozen or so experts in the “time attempters” field: “I have succeeded in establishing a creeping time-satellite or time-shuttle at my estate of Moonwick near Lunel in the Herault Department of the Peoples Republic of France. If you are really experts in your field, you will appreciate the importance of this. From this time-shuttle, which is just beyond the ‘shoal’ of all of you to whom I am sending this message, it will be possible for you to launch genuine time probes. I am sending this to a dozen or so and I hope for acceptance from at least five. I must have a matched set of at least five. Some soon. A very little bit after ‘soon’ will be too late for me to transmit the shuttle to you. Bring ideas only. Everything else for frugal and breakthrough living is provided. You will receive various transportation chits and enabling papers. Peter Luna.”

  The World Courier Service (“No questions asked, Messages carried anywhere or anywhen in the world”) delivered these messages to the dozen or so persons who were experts in the time field. And some of the people gave assent and some didn't. So, the next day, the Courier Service delivered airline tickets, train tickets, and International Taxi Coupons to five of the experts who had agreed to go to Moonwick.

  So it happened that, on a sunny day in summer, five cabs drove up to the crumbling stone and rusting iron gateway of the estate Moonwick in the Herault Department of the Peoples Republic of France, not far from the town of Lunel. The taxi cabs arrived from five different directions by five different roads (that's right, there were three main roads and two little dog-leg roads that came together there), and they all arrived about the same time.

  “Why, this is a marvel,” one of the taxi drivers said. “There is a big house back from the gate! Why have I never seen anything except a pile of rubbish there before?”

  “This is as far as I go,” another taxi driver said. “The International Taxi Coupons are specific about this, lady, it's as far as the gate of Moonwick. This is as far as I can take you.”

  “Oh, that's all right,” said the lady whose name was Annabella MacBean. “I wrestle a hundred kilograms of luggage a hundred meters every morning just to stay in shape.”

  “It is funny,” a third taxi driver said. “I don't remember any big house back there either, but it's there today. The gate is as far as I can go, sir. The fare is covered by the International Taxi Coupons, but you are free to tip.”

  In another minute, all five of the taxi drivers had driven off, and five persons stood with their luggage at the entrance of an estate named “Moonwick” according
to the rusting iron letters of the gate overhang.

  “It's Gothic, it's Gulf-of-Lions Gothic,” one of the ladies said. “Oh you! I met you at the ‘Backward-Turn-Backward-Oh-Time-in-Thy-Flight Convention’ in Ghent. You're Henry Kemp, the ‘Time-Reconstruction Man’.”

  “Yes, at the Hotel Schamp at Ghent in Belgium. And you are Annabella MacBean the ‘Clotted Dream’ woman. That was a wonderful meeting! How the minds and their ideas did rattle and bump together! Unfortunately it didn't bear much fruit. How is Gulf-of-Lions Gothic different from any other Gothic?”

  “It's Gothic with the bright sun shining on it. All other Gothic is between haunted twilight and lightning riven midnight.”

  “You, sir,” said one of the men to another, “I met you in Dublin at the ‘Time-Will-Run-Back Congress’. You're Abel Roaring, the ‘Time-is-a-Pile-of-Transparencies Man’.”

  “Certainly, certainly, at the Shelbourne Hotel at St. Stephen's Green in Dublin. You're Ethan Farquharson, the ‘Intuition-is-the-Key-to-Time Man’. I had a feeling that we were very near to a breakthrough at the Shelbourne. We had it and we dropped it. I pledge myself by all that is in me that we'll not drop it if we hold it so near again.”

  “I'm Rowena Charteris,” said the fifth person of them.

  “Oh yes,” several of them recognized her name. “You're the 'Did-You-Ever-See-a-Naked-Ghost? Lady'.”

  “But what shall we do now?” Rowena asked. “Walk to the house and find out who our strange host is? And see if there is some vehicle to transport our luggage there? Oh, oh, why didn't we hear you? Where did you come from?”

  “I came from my house yonder,” said the genial man as he stepped out of his truck. “And you didn't hear me because I didn't make any noise. What are you doing with all that luggage? I told you to bring ideas only.”

  “These are ideas,” Abel Roaring grinned. “All of us are very heavy thinkers.”

  “This truck of mine runs as quiet as a ghost,” the man said. “Load you in, folks, bodies and baggage. Yes, I know all your names. In the high and diffuse company of time speculators, you five weren't quite top-rank, until now. But the top-rank people hadn't enough curiosity to come here, so they are put down and you five become the top-rank people in the Time Affair.”

  “What kind of truck is this that runs so quietly?’,” Roaring asked. They were rolling up the weedy drive to the big house.

  “It's a Walker,” the genial host said. “It's American.”

  “So am I,” Roaring said, “but the Walker Truck refuses to be recognized.”

  “We will have good hunting here,” the host said. “I'm Peter Luna of course. You will already be past the ‘shoal’ when you begin this hunt, and you will have bewildering freedom and opportunity.”

  “My watch has stopped,” Ethan Farquharson said some while after they were pleasantly installed at Moonwick state. With their ears and their eyes they were grazing the fine house and gardens and exploring its excellencies. What a beautiful sunny day in summer! It smelled of new-mown hay and the Hippocrene. “So has mine stopped,” said Annabella MacBean, “and it's a Nicolay Never-Stop Watch. I can take it to any Nicolay dealer in the world and receive one thousand dollars and a new Nicolay Never-Stop Watch because of the failure of this one.”

  “I doubt that it has failed,” said the pleasant host Peter Luna.

  “What gives then, Luna?” Henry Kemp asked him. “My watch has stopped also.”

  “So has mine,” said Rowena Charteris. “Have you stopped time itself?”

  “And mine has stopped,” Abel Roaring came in with it, puzzled. “How far have you gone with things here, Luna? Have you achieved Time Stasis?”

  “Not quite,” Peter Luna said. “It's a requirement that it be missed slightly. I've put my very local time here on slow-jog. After quite a while you will notice that your watches have really moved ahead slightly, very slightly, a second maybe in what will seem like several hours to you. This is an advantage in several ways. The most obvious one is that we cannot use the excuse that we have not time enough to solve the Time problem. Here and now, in the very-long-drawn-out now, we do have time enough.”

  There were all the amenities there, swimming, tennis, golf, walking, eating, drinking. And card-playing, talking on every subject under the summer sun, and talking on their own subject in which, really, all other subjects were contained.

  2

  “—the Unknown Country upon which reposes this tedious and repetitive world.”

  —Belloc

  “And why, young experts, have you not already walked through time?” Peter Luna asked his five guests as they sat at table.

  “All of us have done it, for brief moments,” Farquharson said. “We have done it in rapports and transports of unique experience. But none of us is able to do it at will.”

  “It's quite easy to ramble through time, at unseemly pace, in the future direction,” Luna said. “A fairly simple technique will do it. But one comes to his own hour of death all too soon, and he dies. And the thing is not reversible. He does not return from that little jaunt if he goes too far into the future (‘You know not the day nor the hour’); and he has a very shallow last-years-of-his-life if he's on a fast-tour survey. Possibly he will live thirty years in three minutes, and there's not a lot of satisfaction in that. So I will not recount to you (though I know them) any of the techniques for travel beyond the normal pace into the future. And there is no way that one may travel into the future beyond one's death. One follows his own ordained future then and not the temporal future of the world.

  “But travel into the past! That should be quite simple. Going back before one's birth is not nearly so final a thing as going forward beyond one's death. One can always return from the journey to the time before his birth, if he is able to make a big enough jump. And if he cannot make a big enough jump, he still may come back. I've heard people say ‘I've lived this life before: I'm quite sure that I've lived this life of mine before.’ And I believe that some of them are correct in saying it. But I'm not greatly attracted to that either. We should go back with a leap beyond, and we should return with the great leap. But as to yourselves and your own attempts, have you found something that prevents your going backwards in time?”

  “Of course we've found something that prevents it,” Anabella said. “There are the years that are interdicted to us. It is my own ghost standing athwart them that interdicts them to me. If we could only get past those most recent years that are barred to us, then I believe that we'd have free sailing. It's like shoal water through which we cannot sail at all. But beyond it there is clear water for clear sailing, if only we could get to it. And the interdicted years (we are able to map them out even if we're not able to traverse them) are not of the same duration for everybody. And yet we have just discovered in comparing our data that they are pretty nearly the same duration for us five.”

  “If we had a time-satellite we could take off from a cliff or bank that is beyond the shoals,” Abel Roaring said. “We could be clear of our own interference and we could make fruitful voyages. You wrote in your message that you had a time-satellite here. That's why I came, Luna. Is there one? Where is it?”

  “Yes, I do have one here. It will do what you hope for it to do, and more. It is beyond the shoals and beyond the interference,” Peter Luna maintained.

  “Where is it? When can we see it?” Henry Kemp asked.

  “Oh, you can see it whenever you open your eyes,” Peter Luna told them.

  “You have all guessed that the time journey should be easily made. I believe that each of you has worked out calculations for it, the themes and equations and formulae. You have designs for the hardware. The trip can be made by several different conveyances, and you five have likely hit on the most apt ones. You are able to take all the steps—except the first step. I know that frustrates you. To mix our metaphors, there is a shoal right across the mouth of our harbor and it will not let us come out.”

  Peter Luna could have b
een almost any age. He had truly mastered time, in as far as it might ever have had effect on him. He was not so much handsome as he was deep and interesting. He was attractive, like rubbed amber; he drew people to himself.

  “All time travel is highly personal, subjective, and psychic,” Luna said. “Whatever the mechanism of time travel is, it always has a preternatural starter or ignition. And we ourselves are the obstacle in going back through those nearest years. We cannot go back where we already are. We cannot occupy the same space twice at the same time; nor can we occupy the same time twice, no matter how far distant those two occupations are in space. It is a personal impediment, and it cannot be waived. A person (the hardware is willing, but the flesh interposes) cannot make incursion back into any time in which he already lives. So a person old enough to have learned the lore and techniques of time travel must hurdle at least thirty years of closed-off time before he begins his exploration. Perhaps we follow the law of inverse squares here; and if so, it will take nine hundred times as much power to go back thirty years as to go back one year.

  “The apparent exception, travelers who have hurdled the shoal and got free into the past, but then have come forward through the years of their lives with some mixed memory of the thing, this is no exception at all. These persons are assumed into their own lives, just as reckless travelers into the future are assumed into their own deaths. They merge with themselves. They occupy the same time and place only once.”

  “It would seem that young children would sometimes slip back over the shoal accidentally, it being so narrow in their case,” Annabella MacBean said.

  “And young children do it indeed,” Peter Luna declared. “And especially do the youngest children of all, those still in the womb, indulge in time travel. As you say, they have such a narrow way to go. Ever since the technique for recording and studying pre-natal dreams was discovered, persons have been startled and unnerved and plain flabbergasted by the contents of some of those pre-natal dreams. These unborn children do often have out-of-the-body experiences that are also out-of-the-present-time experiences. ‘He's gone now, for a while,’ an understanding mother will sometimes say, and later she will relate ‘He's back now, but he's tired. I wonder where he goes?’ She knows that the child doesn't take bodily leave of her, but the spirit that is in the child often does take its leave.