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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Don't say that, Gifford,” Rambo begged. “When I have filled every available space, then I must die.”

  And Gifford guffawed so loudly as almost to bring his own taste into question.

  “You fetish-worshiper!” Do you really believe that, Rambo?” he asked when he could speak through his laughter.

  “No, I don't allow myself to believe it, not very often. It's true though; and my not believing it won't make it any the less true.”

  “You are quaint, Rambo, in so many ways, and you are not at all perfect,” Gifford said. “Are you still going with Miss Georgia McGown? She's common, you know. She's of small-tradesman stock.”

  “Why do you come around to see me, Gifford, if you don't like my style of dress, or my grammar, or my girl?”

  “You should see the things I don't like about all the other people who aren't of my absolute inner circle, all the other people who haven't achieved Pragmatic Perfection. There's many dozens of things I hate about most of them. You come closest of anyone I know, Rambo, who hasn't come all the way. And we, I, do need one more. All seven of my inner friends are perfect, in attainments, in taste, and perhaps in other things. There is nothing really that I can do with or for them. But I have undertaken your reformation, Rambo Touchstone, and I intend to devote what's left of my life to it. When you are perfected, then my life will be complete. Is that not big of me?”

  “Big, yes, Gifford, and rather ungainly of you also.”

  Rambo Touchstone supported himself mostly by doing articles for the Moxie-Polaroid Crystal Gazette. Articles in Moxie-Polaroid are entirely in mathematics and symbols, of course. And being articled to Moxie was an acceptable occupation even in the view of Gifford Hazelman. So many of Gifford's acquaintances were intolerably imperfect because of their occupations! Rambo also did pieces, under other names of course, for the various Adult Algebra publications: but Moxie-Polaroid was his protein and halo-hormone sustenance. Rambo sat for hours every day before his mathematical typewriter. And many moments, when the inspiration did not flow, he diverted himself by selecting and pasting up small pictures on the vanishingly empty areas of his room.

  Three evenings a week, Rambo diverted himself with Miss Georgia McGown. On two of these three weekly evenings, Georgia would cook Rambo a supper at her place, and on the other allocated evening he would cook her a supper at his. They would talk a little bit sometimes. And they would play Crack-a-Stack which is done with five-card hands, with dice, and with markers on a board. It is a good game. It teaches flexibility of mind and easy adjustment to events.

  Georgia McGown was indeed of small-tradesman stock. She had a vacant look much of the time. But, when she smiled, it turned into an inhabited look. She was too broad in the beam, too heavy of haunch. She had dull mousy hair, and she said the same things over and over again. She wouldn't have done for a person of perfect taste. But she was kind. And she was a personal friend of Rambo Touchstone. That counts for a lot.

  “You always have that same book in the same place on the same table,” Georgia said now. “All your other books move and change, but I don't believe you ever touch this one.”

  “Yes, I pick it up sometimes and hold it, Georgia. But I don't allow myself to open it. You see, Georgia, it is the last book I will ever read. Crack!”

  When Rambo cried “crack” it meant he had won a hand at Crack-a-Stack.

  “Why is it the last book you will ever read, Rambo?” Georgia McGown asked.

  “You heard about the man who said he couldn't die yet. He hadn't read King Lear.”

  “No, I never heard of him, Rambo. Tell me about him.”

  “He resembled me in this, Georgia. I can't die yet, until I have read this book. It's The Nutmeg Man by Mackley. But when the time for it comes, then I'll read it. And then—”

  “And then you'll die. What fun! No wonder Mr. Hazelman teases you and calls you quaint. That's like when they say ‘See Broken Arrow and then die.’ There's that spider, I know. And there's the pictures that you paste up on your wall. How many things are there all together that you'll die when you've finished them?”

  “Seven, Georgia.”

  The spider was one of the newer fetishes. The spider-person was extending a web from a midpoint in the room towards the corner. When the web reached the corner, then Rambo would die. Rambo himself did not interfere with the building of the net (he did not know, he had never known, who made up the unbreakable rules of these fetish games), but the web might be interfered with by natural causes, breezes and such. Of recent weeks, and unbeknownst to Rambo, Georgia McGown had been a natural force interfering with the web, never drastically, never obviously, but enough to destroy in one evening what the spider had done in one week. But the web came very near to reaching the corner several times. The spider was becoming cannier and more avid for its goal.

  “Do you think the Cow-Pokes will win the pennant, Rambo?” Georgia asked about mid-July that year. “Ever since I was a little girl I've been praying for it, and they've never won it yet. They have got to win it someday. And this is the latest in the season that they've ever been on top. I wish that they'd get more than half a game ahead sometime. Crack!” (Georgia had won a hand of Crack-a-Stack.) “There's a pretty good chance that they will win it this year, Georgia. It's never been quite so close a threat before. I mean they never had such good prospects.”

  “You don't seem very enthusiastic. Don't you just love the Cow-Pokes?”

  “Yes, I've loved them all my life, Georgia, but I'm selfish. If they win the pennant, then they will play in the Dixie Series. And if they win the Dixie—”

  “Oh, this is sheer delight! You die if the Pokes win the Dixie Series that they've never even been in yet. That makes it real sticky. I'll have to pray for them to win the pennant but lose the Dixie Series. This is going to be hard to handle.”

  “Oh, it's no great thing, Georgia. People die every day, maybe because of a coincidence of related serial numbers on dollar bills in their pockets, maybe because a crack in their driveway lengthens till it finally links with two other cracks, maybe because their name is misspelled in the new phone directory and that massive misspelling drives it over the number of times that they can have their name misspelled and live. Crack!” (Rambo had won that hand of Crack-a-Stack.)

  “Do you think we should stop playing Crack-a-Stack, Rambo?” Georgia asked. “If you believe you'll die only after you hit a 99,999 score, why not just stop playing it? Then you won't die at all. We've played more than a hundred thousand games, so the odds say that you might get hit any time.”

  “Quit playing Crack-a-Stack! What other game is there? But if I quit playing it, then I don't know what happens to the guarantee. If I stopped playing, maybe I could die any time and not just after I had hit 99,999.”

  “Crack,” said Miss Georgia McGown. She'd won a fast hand there.

  “Rambo, my friend, I know that I irritate you with my admonitions and exhortations,” Gifford Hazelman said. “It is just that I am anguished to see a flawed person of so much potential. And you are the only flawed person whom I associate with. You are personable and gracious. You have acceptable occupations. You show strong indications of intelligence and humanism. There are a number of things arguing for your inclusion in the ranks of the elite. But you are not even pragmatically perfect. This makes it very awkward. You have seven faults. I work constantly to cure you of these seven. If I should finally succeed in ridding you of all seven of them, then my life would be complete.” “I'm sure I have more than seven faults, Gifford you funny duck. They ought to at least count up to eight or nine.”

  “No. Seven. And of several of them you are virtually cured. One, you still wear clash-colors, but you wear them less than you used to. Two, you have just split an infinitive, but you are ninety percent cured of that. Three, you adhere to Ranwick's No-Contest Philosophy rather than to Hardcastle's No-Design Philosophy, but I see clear signs that you may be maturing there. Four, even yet you sometimes forget a primary
rule of style and use two hands for your backhand shots at raquets. Five, you order French dressing instead of Blue-Cheese dressing for your salad before a red-meat meal. Six, you still go with Miss Georgia McGown who is of small-tradesman stock. Seven, you subscribe to a number of fetishes as being either causative or coincident with your own death.

  “Rambo, there are not nearly enough of us persons of perfect taste around, and you come so close to it! Give up these squalid shortcomings and make my life complete. I believe that we will soon have five of your failings disposed of. For the other two, going with Miss Georgia McGown and subscribing to death-fetishes, we must make special efforts. But it will be worth it to you to extirpate these two final failings. Rambo, no person of taste and intelligence goes with Miss McGown. And no person of taste and intelligence believes in death-fetishes.”

  “Georgia is the only person I know who's intelligent enough to play Roundhouse Crack-a-Stack. And if I don't die of fetish fulfillment, then I may die of some appalling disorder. I hate disorder, and there is something orderly about fetishes.”

  “Ah, Rambo, it's generally believed in the PP crowd that pseudo-intelligence and not real intelligence is what's used in Crack-a-Stack,” Gifford said. “And those symmetrical five-sided dice that you use in the game, you know that they're geometrically impossible. They're plain wrong, and they give a person the vertigo just to see them roll about. But you're just shuffling words, Rambo. Just how many of those death-fetishes do you believe in?”

  “I believe that I will die when there is no more room to paste up even one more picture in this studio. I believe that I will die when I have read Mackley's The Nutmeg Man. I believe that I will die when that spider-web reaches the corner of the room. I believe that I will die if the Cow-Pokes ever win the Dixie Series. I believe that I will die if I ever score 99,999 at Crack-a-Stack. I believe that I will die if I ever break off my relationship with Georgia McGown. I believe that there is a certain hourglass, as yet unrevealed to me, that has my name on it. I believe that I will come into possession of it, and then I must turn it to the last three minutes. And I must die when those last three minutes have run out. And I believe that I will not die at all unless these things are fulfilled.”

  “And if some of them are fulfilled and others are not?”

  “I believe that will not happen. They will all be fulfilled at just about the same time. Then I'll die.”

  “Rambo, don't you see how silly this all is?”

  “Certainly. This is the essence of a fetish: that it be recognized as completely foolish, and that it compels acceptance nevertheless. But death-fetish is not nearly as silly as is death itself.”

  So it went on till the last week of September that year. Rambo Touchstone spent three evenings a week with Miss Georgia McGown. And he articled for the Moxie-Polaroid Crystal Gazette. And he saw Gifford Hazelman off and on. Then Rambo phoned Gifford one night. “Gifford, I feel a near certainty that I'm going to die in a few minutes,” Rambo said. “Would you like to come over?”

  “Oh, certainly, certainly,” Gifford answered him. “Thanks. I'll be right over. Don't die till I get there.” And Gifford Hazelman was there almost at once.

  “Ah, feel like dying, do you, Rambo?” he asked in that jocular tone that he did so badly. “Maybe I can show you just how foolish it all is. We might as well bring it to a crisis, and maybe a blown crisis will get you over your fetishism. And then I will have you cured of all your faults except one. You have a Crack-a-Stack board set up? Were you going to play with—her?”

  “We did play a bit, but now she has left. We've quarreled irrevocably, and now we are finished with each other forever. And that ‘forever’ that I have left will be, I fear, of short duration.”

  “Wonderful, Rambo, wonderful! Oh, there may be a pang for a while, but it could never have worked out. Remember what stock she is from. Now we will just demonstrate the foolishness of your fetishes and get you to abandon them. Then you will be perfect, just as all my PP friends are. I believe you will take my place in the circle then, and I will ascend somehow to a higher plane. My life will be complete when you are perfected. So give me the details, Rambo. Why do you think that you're going to die?”

  “There isn't room for even one more smaller-than-a-postage-stamp picture to be pasted up in this room, Gifford. It's absolutely full. So I can die any time as far as that is concerned.”

  “The end of ingenuity, is it? Really, I don't know how you found places for the last few thousand of them.”

  “The spider-web has reached the corner of the room, so I can die as soon as feasible as far as that condition goes.”

  “Yes, the web seemed to receive a lot of setbacks, but now it's complete.”

  “The Cow-Pokes are playing the New Orleans Pelicans in the deciding game of the Dixie Series right now, and it's gone into extra innings.”

  “So I know, Rambo.”

  “I scored 99,999 at Crack-a-Stack this evening, before I quarreled irrevocably with Georgia. So the score fulfills one condition, and the breaking off with Miss Georgia McGown fulfills another. That's all but two of them. And I've read all of Meckley's The Nutmeg Man except the last half a page.”

  “Good, good. Now when you have finished that last half page, and when the hourglass with your name on it (I see that you've acquired that) has run its last three minutes, then you are just about compelled to die. Silly, isn't it?”

  Gifford's cravat-radio gave them the news that the Cow-Pokes had beaten the Pelicans in the Dixie Series, which surprised neither of them. Then Gifford turned the hourglass over and the sand began to run again.

  “It's running, Rambo,” he said. “In three minutes you will die. Or will be cured of your fetishes and delusions. Time's running, Rambo. And you really believe that you will die when all the sand has run out?”

  “Somebody will die when it has all run out.”

  “Did I hear a laugh somewhere?”

  “Probably a person of small-tradesman stock.”

  “I'm so glad that you're rid of her, Rambo. And now, if you can be rid of the fetish thing, you'll be pragmatically perfect. And my life will be—”

  “Yes, I know, Gifford. Only a minute and a half of sand left. Well, it was a long joke and I've had a lot of fun out of it. I never had any fetishes, Gifford. I just had fun. Sand's almost run out, Gifford.”

  “And you, my friend, have shed all your faults and may join the pragmatically perfect ones. And my life becomes complete. Oh! Wait, wait! Easy there whoever you are! I didn't mean it like that. ‘Complete’ has two slightly different meanings. I meant the other one. I didn't intend for the condition to tie in with—I'm stricken, Rambo.”

  “You're dead, Gifford,” said Miss Georgia McGown as she came out of the dinette. Rambo hadn't really broken off with her. He'd just said that he had to have fun with Gifford. But Gifford Hazelman was dead. His life was complete, as he had said that it would be.

  “I win,” Georgia laughed. “I bet that it'd kill him, and you bet that it wouldn't. He was so idea-ridden and so hooked on the fetish stuff that it had to kill him. And we agreed that whoever won the bet would get credit for ten hands of Crack-a-Stack.”

  “Yes, it gives you a good edge over me this evening, Georgia,” Rambo said. “It's a wonderful game that can include such side-games as ‘The Death of Gifford Hazelman’ in its workings. But look out, Georgia. You're ten hands ahead, but I feel in ‘good stack’ tonight. Let's play! But he's got your chair.”

  “Oh, I'll just put him in the bath tub,” she said. She tossed the stiffening Gifford over her shoulder and so took and disposed of him. Being a little bit broad in the beam helps a girl to do things like that. And Rambo Touchstone phoned the building superintendent and told him that there was a dead man in the bath tub and that it constituted a malfunction of that facility according to the lease.

  They played. “Crack!” Rambo cried within minutes. He had won a hand at Crack-a-Stack and was now only nine behind for the evening. The
building superintendent came in and disposed of the corpse in the bath tub by a trick that is known only to building superintendents. And Rambo and Georgia went on with the game with a flash of five-card hands and a rolling of symmetrical five-sided dice which are geometrically impossible.

  “Crack!” Georgia cried. She would not easily be overtaken.

  Crack-a-Stack develops character. And it teaches flexibility of mind and easy adjustment to events.

  The Effigy Histories

  “If a large meteor should light in the middle of my neighborhood, would it be worth my while to step outside and see it? If the meteor should knock my house askew so that my floor was at an angle of 38°, would it be worth my while to investigate? Oh no, I see that the room isn't really slanting at 38°. That's an illusion. Nevertheless, I just believe I'll step outside for a look at the meteor of the meteoric illusion. I understand that the meteoric phenomenon is named Karl Effigy.”

  —Diogenes Pontifex.

  “The fact is that tonight I have been in the presence of a man of apparent infinite wisdom, a man who knows everything. This man, who is named Karl Effigy, has to be one of the Magi with all the timelessness that belongs to them. He has the aura of power that goes with total wisdom. He has a person-pattern that is an arc of the circle of perfection. Yet he is quite young. Doctor Claymore says that Karl Effigy is like the colt that has just swallowed one of Doctor Squibb's Magic Pellets and found that it is real magic. The marvelous ‘Histories’ of this Karl Effigy give only an incomplete idea of the wonderful person he is.

  “There must be something wrong or missing from this paragon. But what? Perhaps I should appoint myself Devil's Advocate and try to find a flaw in him.”

  —Arpad Arutinov, Cosmo Club Minutes