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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Yes. That's right. It would have filled it,” Hiram Working-Day said.

  One of the four-handed games being played now was Worcester Whist, and Hiram Working-Day was Clown or Joker or Dummy, so he had laid his cards down.

  “I have just made a truly Bright and New and Original Invention,” he said, “and I will try it out now.”

  Disregarding the signs that are in all Light-Rail-Rapid-Transit cars, “Please Open Window Before Shooting Buffalo,” Hiram shot his rifle through a window and killed a buffalo on a knoll two hundred meters from the speeding train-of-cars. He killed the buffalo, but he did not break the window.

  Hiram was a good mechanic. Not everyone could have machined such an attachment for a rifle on the way to work in the morning.

  “That is not a Bright and New and Original Invention,” Mary Fat-Land protested. “Some of the militias have been using laser-beam pistols for a week.”

  “Laser-Beam Pistols are not Laser-Beam Buffalo Guns,” Hiram Working-Day explained. “When citizens ordinarily kill buffalo with their high-velocity carbines, the meat packagers have a messy time of it. They have to cut deep into the animal to get the bullet, and then to interpret the code cut on the nose of the bullet, all this before they cut up and process the animal and deliver it to the address of the one who shot it. But my laser-beam buffalo gun leaves the coded brand right at the point of the death burn. And it records the minute and second of the kill. No interloper or poacher could possibly record an earlier time. Yes, this is a Prime New Invention, something never known in the world before, and it gladdens my heart.”

  “I have just invented Daylight Savings Time,” Andrew Kingdom-Come announced.

  “Yes, so you have,” John Rain-Tomorrow agreed. “My watch sprang forward one hour and I wondered why. But it isn't really a first class invention. Oh, it'll give us an extra hour of daylight every day. But in a few months it'll be nullified again.”

  “No, it will not. Some smart lawyer will take the whole world to small claims court on the issue and get a writ against turning the clocks back ever.”

  “As to myself, I believe that I have just invented a way to defy the ReEntrant Circularity that tyrannizes all the universe,” John Rain-Tomorrow said. “I believe that the world was created this morning, or it will be created in a few moments while it is still morning. Whenever it is created, it is created in motion. It has its built-in stratified residues and memories, memories in rocks and memories in living brains, memories of previous times that probably did not exist… I fear there is not any test by which we can be sure whether the world has begun or not, whether we ourselves have lived or whether we are only stratified residues and memories. According to the Relentless Circularity, there is no real difference between having already died and not having been born yet. There is no mathematical way to battle the circularity. But there is another way to battle it, and its name is derision. When a perfect circle is drawn huge out in the vasty void, people are impressed and they say ‘It is the image of God himself.’ But if somebody draws a monkey's tail on that perfect circle, people will say ‘Oh, it is only a monkey!’ No matter how big it makes itself it is only a monkey. I intend to draw a monkey's tail on an impressive circle in the sky, and when people see it after dark tonight they will say ‘Oh, it is only a monkey with a tail,’ and they will laugh it clear out of its path.”

  “On what ‘Circle in the Sky’ do you intend to draw a monkey-tail tonight, John Rain-Tomorrow?” Clarence Bower-Bird asked.

  “Oh, I have already drawn it. With me, to think is to do. But you will not be able to see it until tonight. I've drawn the tail on Casey's Comet which has been threatening the world. And now it will threaten the world no more. It will be intimidated by our laughter, and it will veer off its course. Can any of you imagine anything more comical than a comet with a tail?”

  They couldn't, no. They laughed pleasantly about it. Then Anna Thursday-Dawn became pensive.

  “It has given me the idea of my life,” she said. “It has given me my Invention Bright and New. I said a while ago that I disliked the current modes of execution, whether axemen closing in on a victim with their double-bitted axes, or persons forming a ring around a victim and stoning him to death. I said that I would invent a method of execution to let a person die with dignity. Now I have done it. And it is the analog to John Rain-Tomorrow's putting a monkey-tail on a circle in the sky. I will have a loop of rope, and a tail to that loop.”

  The Light Rail Train-of-Cars was slowing for the Sixth-and-Main Tulsa Disgorgement. But before the train stopped there were two gentlemen of the Rectitude Militia in the car. Those fellows work fast.

  “Nobody leaves the car for just a moment,” they said. “Ah, yes, this is the lady who has just invented the noose. It is declared illegal, of course. We will use it on her, and then we will never use it again.”

  “Oh how nice!” Anna Thursday-Dawn cried out. “I'll be first to use it.”

  “Yes, the first and the last, the only one ever. This is an invention too original ever to be repeated.”

  “But why not for others? I want everybody to be able to die with dignity.”

  “If all criminals knew that they would be allowed to die with dignity, everybody would become a criminal,” the gentleman explained, “and that would throw all society into unbalance. Come along, sis, out of the car. There's a tall and ornate lamp-post right at the beginning of the mall.”

  “Oh yes, that will be splendid,” Anna Thursday-Dawn said. And everybody went out of the cars. The gentlemen of the Rectitude Militia threw one end of a rope, the “monkey's tail” end, over an arm of the lamp-post. And the other end was placed around the throat of Anna Thursday-Dawn in a beautiful hangman's knot.

  “Why is this better? Why is it more dignified? Why is this happier than any other execution, Anna?” Elizabeth Burning-Brand asked.

  “Don't you see? With the stonings and axings, the soul is driven out of the body and will have to wander homeless forever. But with my Hangman's Noose, the throat is constricted and the soul cannot fly out from any of the apertures of the head. So it will be saved. Everything is saved. Oh, I have this really original idea, this truly Bright and New invention. I'm delighted. And, as this gentleman says, it is an invention too original to repeat. The more I think of that the more I love it. Ready when you are, gentlemen!”

  Oh, the happy and transcendent sense of being right! Some people have it even when they are wrong. Anna Thursday-Dawn died in the happiness that she had accomplished a bright and new invention, that she had a truly original idea that nobody would be able to steal from her.

  And her happiness was infectious. All her friends, and the rest of the morning people around there also, went to work with happy dispositions. And that is appreciated in a world where many things are not happy.

  The Man Who Made Models

  Jon Skaber, the Light Swede, made models. “But somebody should make a model of Jon to reduce him to life-size,” Rayona Harp needled. “If he were reduced to life-size he'd be as ordinary as the rest of us. Yes, and if his hands were reduced to human-size, they'd lose their canniness.”

  In fact model-maker Jon Skaber was a very huge man, and his talented hands were of extraordinary size. Jon had been a Small-College All American end when he played with Central Minnesota Normal. With his big hands he could catch a football as though it were a baseball, and he could ramble with power when he caught it. He was a well-made man, but would he still be well-made in a scaled down model of himself? As to his hands, was their size their very nature, and would reducing them change their nature?

  It was the small things that Jon did with his big hands that were so remarkable. The models he made almost defied belief. He taught Art at CMN now, and model-making was the main art he taught. His work was rapid and sure and true.

  “No, Jon's work is not true at all,” Diamant Harp said. Diamant was as pickish a person as was his wife Rayona. He flashed disdain whenever he looked at the models that
everyone except himself and Rayona thought were excellent. “There is no such thing as a true miniature or model of anything,” Diamant said. “And likewise there can be no such thing as a true blow-up or projection from a model. Every architect secretly realizes this. His buildings simply will not look enough like his drawings. Every composer realizes this. His work played by an excellent and full-sized orchestra is not really much like his notations and scores. Every legislator of intelligence knows this. The law as it makes its way in society isn't really very much like the law as enacted in session.”

  “Diamant, you'd stretch anything to prop an argument,” said Joe Greatglobe (Joe College) who was the purser at CMN.

  “My models are true,” Jon Skaber insisted. “And the talk of you two picky, off-key Harps is false.” Jon didn't like people to watch him making his models, or at least he didn't like the Harps to watch him making them. Jon made model furniture, model houses, model towns, and wax-fleshed model people. He made models for various departments at the college, and he made models for industry. Others he made for advertising and publicity and displays. He made a lot of them for the money he could get from collectors, and he made a lot of them for fun. He made a model witch-doctor for fun and revenge, and by his own account he made it in self-defence.

  The witch-doctor was a wind-up toy model, but the winder was the only metallic thing about it. There was an old joke to be told with the showing of the witch-doctor model. Jon told it to Joe Greatglobe and George Whitewater (Joe and George College) now, the two Harps being absent that day.

  “You recall the generic cartoon showing the British safari-type man in pith helmet and bushwhacker mustache and such. He was about five inches tall, and he was standing on a bar and drinking miniaturized planters' punch out of a miniaturized glass. He was surrounded by full-sized drinkers, or at least by the heads of them. And the caption of the cartoon was ‘Tell us again, Sir Cedric, how you told that witch-doctor off.’

  “What is not generally known is that the same week that this cartoon appeared in the New Yorker, a corresponding cartoon appeared in the Gold Coast Gazette in Africa. It showed a five-inch tall witch-doctor surrounded by the heads of full-sized black drinkers, and the caption of it was ‘Tell us again, Boka Magani, how you told Sir Cedric of the bushwhacker mustache off.’ ”

  The witch-doctor model, as did most of Jon's ‘living models’, spent most of his time in a sort of waxy slumber; but sometimes he could be stirred to wakefulness. Jon would wind him up and rouse him up. Then the little witch-doctor would speak, in a slurred manner, in dignity and sorrow, and with only small touches of bitterness and anger. He would wait his time, he said, and perhaps the times would actually change some day.

  “What's that you have him programmed to speak, Swahili?” Joe College asked.

  “No, of course not,” Jon said. “It's Haussa.”

  “You lie,” said George College. “It's Swedish.”

  “I'm worried about the Harps,” said Joe College, the college purser. “They're a problem that could go out of control.” “The problem isn't on my account, is it?” Jon asked.

  “No. You can take care of yourself. It's a question of funds. I don't trust the Harps, but others do. They've moved into purchasing here at the college. They are making some wonderful buys, it seems. They are also taking some wonderful liberties. They deal in cash, in very big cash. Now they are dealing for the Schoefeld Special Electronic Reticle. They'll be carrying a half million dollars of live money unless I'm able to prevent it. I am the purser of the college and am responsible, but everyone else encourages the free and easy operation. But I'll be accountable if those free and easy birds fly. Your dark shadow, the Dark Swede, tells me that they are confidence people well-known on several continents, but nobody takes your dark shadow very seriously.”

  One other person who often visited Jon Skaber to watch him work on models was the detective Lyle Wrackwolf, the Dark Swede.

  “Lyle would be sinister,” Rayona Harp once said, “except that he works so hard at being sinister that he becomes ridiculous instead.” And he came in now, just after Joe Greatglobe (Joe College) the purser left.

  “All right, where have you hidden the bodies today, Joe Skaber?” he gave his usual greeting. “I'll never believe that you haven't bodies hidden here. Your place reeks of bodies.” Wrackwolf had a fat, dark-flushed, florid face with plenty of blood in it, and he was big and bulky. Perhaps he was as large a man as Jon Skaber, even in the hands, but he wasn't made at all in the same style. Wrackwolf was a bit shabby, as are many persons who have been in police world for long years. He had a muggsy face, one on which expressions and masks followed each other endlessly. Wrackwolf made faces constantly and unconsciously.

  “Someday I'll catch you putting a couple guys up here in wax before they disappear,” Detective Wrackwolf said. “Ah, those two there disappeared just two days ago, just when we were ready to close them up. Where did they go, Skaber, do you know? But your wax models of the two aren't accurate. I just barely recognize who you intend them to be.”

  “Yes, they're accurate. All my models are accurate,” Jon Skaber said.

  “No,” Wrackwolf gruffed. “Not accurate. I can do better than that. I will do better than that on those two.” Lyle Wrackwolf took a block of wood from a pocket of the big, shoddy windbreaker that he wore. He began to whittle on it with a hook-bill knife. From time to time he set rolls of other small tools on a small table there, wood-rasps and draw-knives and frows and fluted chisels.

  “I'm a better model-maker than you are, Jon,” Wrackwolf said in his fleshy-throaty voice. “Why do you so seldom use wood in your models? It's the only thing to use, really. But nobody knows for sure what it is that you do use. Three minutes, Jon! I made this one in three minutes. And how long did it take you to make yours? Do you recognize him?”

  “Sure. It's Dutch Griese. Set him beside my original there and see the difference.”

  “Yes, there is a difference,” the detective said as he put his wooden model beside the nobody-knows-what-material model of the same man that Jon Skaber had previously made. “Mine's a lot better, Jon. Yours is alive. Or it is dead. But mine, though better, is only lifeless when I set it beside yours. I have the feeling, Jon, that you are sometimes involved in hiding people that I mean to find.”

  Wrackwolf took another block of wood out of another pocket and began to whittle still another model. And Jon Skaber was working with a very small and very hot furnace, making another model that was alive, or dead, but not lifeless.

  “Are you still whittling on the same block, Wrack?” Jon asked. He didn't mean the block of wood that Wrackwolf held in his hand; he meant the obsession that Wrackwolf had been pursuing. “Are you still believing in ghosts, and me hiding men in their own pockets and such?” Jon Skaber had a certain derision that he kept for Lyle Wrackwolf and his notions; and the tough detective would flush like dark, angry leather whenever Jon Skaber got under his hide.

  “What happened to John Cotton and Alex Mobley, Jon?” Wrackwolf asked sullenly. “And where are the models that you had made of them?”

  “Maybe they weren't really models that I made, Wrack. You yourself said that you believed they were something else than that. But the two men, I understand that they went away for a couple of years, and they came back when you were forced to take the heat off of them.”

  “They went away, Jon, and their models were here on your display table while they were gone. They came back, and then their models disappeared from here. Oh Dammit, Skaber! That laugh of yours can take hunks of flesh out of me, and I'm tough. But I'm getting close to something.”

  “You're getting close to Sillyville, Detective. The men are back. Ask them where they were.”

  “They don't answer very well, Jon. They've gone strange. They're a little bit dim. What turned them into such puny shells of themselves?”

  “Maybe it was their trips. They went, and they returned. It's a ruinous trip in each direction, and they didn'
t go first class. And yourself, Wrackwolf, you get a little bit dimmer every time you go and then come back.”

  Lyle Wrackwolf left in puffing anger.

  Jon Skaber continued working on another model of something. And so, we suppose, did Lyle Wrackwolf, but not in Jon's place for a while.

  “You can make only false models of things, Jon Skaber,” Diamant Harp was jibing again that evening. “It's the essence of a model that it be false.” “No, my models are true,” Big Jon repeated resolutely.

  “You can see that a scaled-down model of a vibrating string will not give the same note as the full-length original,” Rayona Harp said, “but in many other things you don't seem to see this. A horse the size of a mouse can fall off a hundred-foot cliff and not be hurt, but a horse the size of a horse will hit so hard it will break up and even splash. This applies to everything that is wrenched out of scale. Miniaturize the bouquet and taste of Vin Clos Vougeot 48, and what bouquet and taste will you have left? Shrink any object that is of the color of Orange 472 (Slyman Color Chart), and how far will the color of it have slipped? Miniaturize the odor of acanthus, and what will you have? There is no way that quality can be separated from quantity ever.”

  “Oh, some accidentals may slip a bit, but my miniatures are still true,” Jon said.

  “The sound of the west wind rattling through dead weeds will not have the same tone if the wind and the weeds are miniaturized,” Diamant said. “A ‘perfect’ square does not remain quite the same shape if it is miniaturized, and it will not have quite the same number of sides.”

  “Leave me, Harps,” Jon Skaber said. “You sour me.”

  “For your sins of misproportion we will taunt you yet,” Rayona said. But the Harps did go away for a while.

  “Ah, that trashy Harp couple worries me,” Joe Greatglobe muttered. “They claim to have found this great buy in an electronic reticle. Nobody in our physics department even knows what an electronic reticle is. Why must all their great buys be outside of regular business procedure? It's as if they had been building up to this one.” Then Joe Greatglobe went out, and he caught Lyle Wrackwolf the Detective who was coming in to plague Jon Skaber, and he talked to him outside of Jon's workshop.