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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “If more people gnawed more bones they'd have better teeth,” the Yeti said.

  “Ugh, platitudes yet!” Catherine shuddered. And we all felt a bit glum.

  “How our great memories have shrunken!” Caesar Ducato lamented.

  “It is and it isn't,” Hector said cryptically. “The moon, I mean. And the way it is, it wouldn't matter much if it was.”

  “Not only has the magic gone out of it, but nothing else has taken its place,” Barry Shibbeen mourned. “What's the word for this place? Oh yes, ‘dingy’. I could cry.”

  “If you cry a tear down into the fissure, it will fall all the way through, and if a sky person should look down and see it through the hole it'd look like a star in the daytime,” Catherine said with sudden poetic insight.

  Young Catherine Palmer blew ‘Retreat’ on the Moon Whistle. We all got into the copter and rattled away from there. “You can't go back,” the proverb says.

  And it's a good thing you can't.

  Calamities Of The Last Pauper

  This account is for those who were too young or too unborn to have seen the denouement of ‘The Death of the Last Pauper’ live (the death was live) on the Greenbaum-Brannagan Late Late Speak Your Mind Show. And ninety-six percent of today's population are too young to have seen it.

  It blew all the feathers off the goose

  This is the day that the storms broke loose.

  —Weatherman Jones

  John Bochtan was the last poor person in the world. Careful accounts of the paupered people had been kept as they vanished everywhere, and now Bochtan was the last of them anywhere. All the more progressive realms had already gotten rid of the last of their poor people, by floating them out of their poverty by massive donations, by reclassifying them out of their poverty by simple judicial hearings, or by sterner methods.

  In England, two years before this, four-and-twenty unrepentant paupers had been hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. Ah, it was good to have something authentic going on at Tyburn again. These executions so frightened the remaining three English paupers that they allowed themselves to be reclassified that very day and in so doing they received substantial estates. Now this John Bochtan in the United States was the last poor person left anywhere in the world.

  The overall cost of ‘Poordom USA’ had shrunk to a fraction of its former imposing self, but it still stood above twelve billion dollars a year. That's too much for just one poor person. And the idea and the personality of this last pauper became unpopular. John Bochtan had a personality that had made him unpopular even when there were numerous paupers. Bochtan was what used to be called a wise guy (they don't have them any more), what used to be called a ‘show boat’ (they don't have them any more either). In addition to being the last poor person in the world he may have been the last wise guy and the last show boat also. And these types simply could not be allowed to exist in a modern society. John had the use of plenty of money and property, including a yacht with crew, but he refused to take title to these things. He swore that they would reclassify him out of this poverty only over his dead body.

  He couldn't be dealt with privately because he had become a public person. He even had (it's sad to say it) a multitude of partisans. John Bochtan had become a big person on the ‘Greenbaum-Brannagan Late Late Speak Your Mind Show’, and the GBLLSYMS was one of the most powerful institutions in the world.

  The ‘Greenbaum-Brannagan Late Late Speak Your Mind Show’ had become a sort of center for world information and opinion. It was mainly to catch GBLLSYMS and similar shows that most of the sets in the world were now ‘Pentacostally-equipped’ (each person could hear the programs in his own language). But of these shows it was only the forerunning GBLLSYMS that had the ‘numenous valves’ on their switchboards. By reason of these, all numenous persons (plapper-angels, demiurges, elementals, principalities, specially-impressed mortals, and God himself) would automatically have preference given to their calls to the programs.

  The demiurges especially were big hits on the GBLLSYMS. Their existence had not even been suspected very shortly before this. They were preternatural but certainly not supernatural creatures. They were goofy, like kids who had never grown up; but it seemed a little odd to speak of never-grown-up kids when referring to these mountain-tall beings. As to the 'invisibility' of the demiurges until very recent months, that may all have been a mistake. Many persons now believed that they had used to see the demiurges out of the corners of their eyes but had not paid much attention to them. Those mountain-tall and smoke-thin guys were really too big to notice.

  Like Weatherman Jones and other persons, certain of the demiurges had now proclaimed themselves very nervous about the threatening disappearance of the poor. “We are the ones who make the winds to blow and the ice to freeze,” they said, “but we do only what we are ordered to do. We will do what we are imprinted to do, but it may be calamitous. It would be better that the world would keep at least one poor person, even if only for a token, than that it should suffer the calamities.” This is what several of them called in to the GBLLSYMS studio one night.

  “It would not be better that the world should keep one poor person, even for a token, not when that one poor person is John Bochtan!” Pasqual Ratrunner immediately called in his contradiction to the program. “I do not believe that these dire calamities will happen if this last poor person is destroyed either in body or in classification. Let us get rid of the calamity we now have (this last wise guy, this last show boat, this affront to all that is regularized in the world, this John Bochtan), and let all rumored future calamities fall where they may.” This Pasqual Ratrunner had been appointed ‘Czar For the Final Extirpation of Poverty’, and he and John Bochtan did not get along well.

  Rattle his bones over the stones;

  He's only a pauper whom nobody owns.

  —Thomas Noel

  And echo to this old Noel verse was given by one of the demiurges calling in to the program:

  “Were paupers' bones unrattled,

  And Paupers’ Truce’ be broke,

  The Sea would be unsaddled,

  And mountains reek and smoke.”

  Well, what was the ‘Paupers' Truce’ that had been imposed upon the world? This truce, and the penalty that the world would suffer if it were broken, was referred to in many of the verses of the demiurges, those mountain-tall kids who never grew up:

  “When everyone is sleek and rich,

  When everyone has money,

  No longer will each rill and ditch

  Run deep with milk and honey.”

  Well. ‘Milk And Honey’ was one of the logos for the wonderful prosperity that had enveloped the world. It figured in some of the very best slogans; and sloganizing had been a powerful factor in creating world prosperity. Nobody wanted to lose the ‘Milk and Honey Circumstance’. And another of the demiurges called in this verse:

  “When none is longer destitute,

  When each is Top Banana,

  No more will bushes flame and fruit,

  No more will fall the manna.”

  But “We will live forever in the Everlasting Days of Manna for the World” was a prime slogan for the world prosperity, and nobody wanted to lose that.

  “The Poor you will always have with you,” wrote Saint John, a man who had seen the end of the world and beyond it through special glasses.

  “The poor we will not always have with us,” Pasqual Ratrunner called in immediately to contradict the Johannan citation. Pasqual saw the world through his own sort of glasses. “We can test it in a second about having the poor with us always. Either hit squad or reclassification can put a sharp end to that last poor man. No use letting an old saying hang around for centuries when it can be disproved instantly by a quick stroke of a pistol or a pen.” John Bochtan, the Last Poor Man, had trouble trying to dodge all the aid trying to heap itself upon him. And when Bochtan, the last of them, was gone, prophetic disaster would come upon the world. This is what popular
opinion (and popular opinion was more and more being created and shaped by the ‘Greenbaum-Brannagan Late Late Speak Your Mind Show’) was believing more and more strongly every hour.

  “God tempers the wind to thaw shorn lamb,” wrote Laurence Stern, another man who saw the world, if not the end of it, through special glasses.

  “If that wind ever comes untempered, look out world!” Weatherman Jones called in to GBLLSYMS one evening. “All rational calculations (this is an open secret among all meteorological and world-science people) indicate that the winds on earth should be averaging over one hundred miles an hour at all times. Why don't they do what they are calculated to do? Why don't the winds blow much harder? No rational answer can be found to these questions. I believe that it's time to go to an irrational answer.”

  Another of the demiurges called in a rime to the show. Yes. God imprinted the demiurges in meter, and they speak mostly in rime:

  “When none be poor and none have fault,

  And all own silver laver; —

  The leaven turns to lump, the salt

  No longer keeps its savor.”

  Weatherman Jones called in on that one too. He had been calling in to the GBLLSYMS studio quite a bit lately.

  “Let us consider the physical calamity if the salt should indeed lose its savor, if the sea should suddenly come unsalted. The heat generated by the sudden unsalting might be sufficient to boil the sea dry. It could be the biggest explosion the world has ever seen. All rational calculations (this is an open secret among all oceanologists and world-science people) indicate that the salting of the sea is a very unstable business that could be reversed at any moment.” Weatherman Jones said this with great conviction and authority.

  “All things shall go where they belong:

  To homey seas swim mullets;

  To bosoms, shots from rifles long;

  And whetted knives to gullets.”

  —Hit-Man Henson

  This Hit-Man Henson (his mother had named him Horace Henson, but he had legally changed his name for advertising purposes) was becoming another regular on the Greenbaum-Brannagan Late Late Speak Your Mind Show. Not only did he call in but he also made personal appearances. And now he made an offer on stage and on camera to Brannagan who was hosting. Greenbaum and Brannagan looked just alike. It was their being mistaken for each other that had led to their becoming acquainted. Now they were each of them on the show for four hours and off four hours; the Late Late show had lately turned into a twenty-four hour show. So Greenbaum and Brannagan saw each other only in passing every four hours; and together they gave the impression of being one omnipresent man who never slept.

  “B or G, as the case may be,” Hit-man said, “I'll kill John Bochtan on your show if he has the courage to face me. It's really a disgrace that we are ninety years into the twentieth century and still have a poor man left in the world. But I intend to rectify that situation. There is no longer any death penalty anywhere in the world. Impenitent killers are all put in the Big Mack Prison, and all of my best friends are there. I miss their companionship. I'd like to be there too. And I'd sure like to get rid of that abominable John Bochtan, the last poor man in the world, the last of lots of things in the world.”

  “I'll face Hit-Man Henson on the show at twenty o'clock tonight,” John Bochtan called in immediately. “I've no lack of courage. I doubt if he'll be able to kill me, but it'll be good show whatever happens. And I should surely get billing above him. I am the last representative of Holy Poverty in the World. I am one of the Masks of God.”

  Several rather eccentric persons had become regulars on the GBLLSYMS lately. Besides John Bochtan, and God, and Pasqual Ratrunner, and Hit-Man Henson, there was Noah Lamechson of the Ninety-Ninth Generation.

  “I'm the fellow who's been building the Ark on top of Turkey Mountain,” he said on the show at eighteen o'clock that evening.

  “Do you expect that calamity to be a flood?” Brannagan asked him.

  “I do, yes,” Noah Lamechson of the Ninety-Ninth Generation said. “That's why I built an ark. If I expected it to be a conflagration, I'd have built a cave with an asbestos lining.”

  “You expect the water to rise to the top of Turkey Mountain?”

  “It's got to. It wouldn't float my ark otherwise. I've got about an hour's work to do on the ark yet. I'd better go do it now. Then I'll fast and pray until the hour comes.”

  “When is the hour?” Brannagan asked him.

  “At twenty o'clock. You have the encounter scheduled here at twenty o'clock between John Bochtan and Hit-Man Henson, do you not. When Bochtan dies, then the disaster begins.”

  “At twenty o'clock, good hearers and viewers,” Brannagan spoke to his world wide audience. “What if it is the case that the only holy thing left in the world is Holy Poverty? And what would be the penalty to the world if that last holiness should be hounded out of the world? Watch the GBLLSYMS tonight at twenty o'clock and find out.”

  Then one of the mountain-high and smoke-thin demiurges called in the verse:

  “The world's a seething, reeking sea

  Of power and of valence,

  And naught but Holy Poverty

  Is Governour and Balance.”

  Weatherman Johns had calculated that if one of these mountain-high and smoke-thin demiurges should be compressed to the density of an average human being, it would have no more than the size and weight and mass of an average human being. They weren't as big as they seemed.

  And almost immediately after this demiurge-verse, God called in another of his own verses:

  “The poor you must always have with you.

  If poverty dwindle and die,

  No more be my kin and my kith you,

  No more be my law for the sky.”

  Some people found this a little bit tinny for God. But, half an hour later, God called in another rimed quatrain:

  “For fear that world no longer scan,

  For fear my peace be broken,

  You'd better keep one paupered man,

  If only for a token.”

  “No, no, no!” swore Pasqual Ratrunner who happened to be on stage at the GBLLSYMS. “We will not keep one paupered man even for a token! And I'm not sure that it's God who's been phoning in those little rimes for the last several nights. I know that the Numenous Valves have been giving his missives priority, but it could be any plapper-angel, demiurge, elemental, principality, nexus, or specially-impressed mortal calling in. Anyone of any of those types can call in from a pay phone in a quick lunch place and say he is God.”

  “I believe that he may well be God,” Schoolman Schroeder called in immediately to voice his opposition to this. “All pieces of this creation are the same to God, and he would in no way disdain a pay phone in a quick lunch place. And we know from proto-scripture that God does often express himself in tinny rimes, in both iambic and anapest meter, especially when using the old Chaldee language. Give him the benefit of the doubt. If there is such a person as he, he holds all the high cards, and he may not like to hear his verses called tinny.

  Weatherman Keil began to call in to contradict Weatherman Jones that night. And then he came down and appeared live at the studio. “Weatherman Jones needs an expert to monitor him and correct his unbalances,” Weatherman Keil said. “This isn't because Jones goes too far in his ranting; it's because he doesn't go far enough. Weatherman Jones says that the heat generated by the sudden unsalting of the sea might be sufficient to boil the sea dry. Did anybody ever hear anything sillier than that? The heat generated will mostly be generated into space. It will probably boil away no more than the top hundred meters of the oceans. But even if it does so, it will not lower the level of the oceans. The main effect of the unsalting of the sea will be that the rocks of the earth (both those under the ocean and those deep in the unoceaned land) will give up their water. Good people in the studio, you look at me as though you do not comprehend me. Do you not understand the explosiveness of what I have just said? I said that t
he rocks of the earth will give up their water. This means that water to the depth of more than a mile will be heaped upon the earth quite suddenly. Those of you who have private planes, listen to me! Go to them at once, gas them up, and take off in them. Fly to the highlands of Colorado. Do it fast and get good places there for yourselves within the present hour. It sure is going to be crowded on all those peaks and highlands. You people who don't have private planes, forget it! Consider yourselves as already drowned.”

  Oh, it was all good show, but the people didn't take it very seriously. ‘God’ had now been identified not as God indeed, but as an enterprising feature-story writer named George Orvil Dunsworth. He had registered his monogram as ‘God’, but that didn't make him God in the usual understanding of the name. He was able to get preference through the numenous valves to the switchboards not because he was a plapper-angel or demiurge or elemental or principality or God himself, but because his hobby was electronics and he had devised a gadget to con the numenous valves.

  And there were glib explanations for almost all the other prodigies.

  But there were new prodigies happening as fast as the old prodigies could be explained away. Twenty-one idealistic persons, men, women, children (three of them were below the legal adult age of fifteen), made a covenant together and published it with the declaration that they would become paupers, conditionally forswearing their property in advance, at the instant of the death of the Last Poor Man John Bochtan (nobody now doubted that John Bochtan would be murdered by Hit-Man Henson at twenty o'clock that night in the view of millions of persons on the Greenbaum-Brannagan Late Late Speak Your Mind Show).