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

by R. A. Lafferty

  Well, the saltation might have lasted quite a while except for the nine-inch rain that fell on the area that night and flushed the reservoir out pretty thoroughly. And in three more days, the stuff was pretty well drained out of the mains and service pipes, and people returned to normal.

  “You could make some more of the stuff, Anatole,” Davoreen Merriman said, “and then we could have all the fun all over again.”

  “I could get killed too,” Anatole said. “It was too close. I think I'll drop biotechnics entirely and go into something a little more erudite.”

  “Lost, lost, lost,” the elegant Merald Hilltop mourned. “There were two thousand of the duck-people here, and now there are none at all left. Lost, lost, lost!” “I didn't think one would do any good, papa, would it?” Maryethyl Hilltop said. “I thought there had to be at least two so you could mate them.”

  “With one there might be a scant half-a-chance. We'd shake down the whole world to find the mate who looked most like a duck-woman. We'd try with him again and again and again. We'd never give up. Why, daughter, why? Do you know of one? Tell me, tell me!”

  “Well, there is one, but he said he'd kill me if I told. He's shut himself up in his shack and he sure would be hard to take. He meant it when he said that he'd kill me if I told.”

  “We must all make sacrifices for science, Maryethyl,” her mother Lucretia Hilltop advised her, “even if somebody kills you.”

  “Well, it's that Titus Chesty who always blows his top about everything. He's an old bachelor because he hates women. You'll sure play hob trying to mate him with a duck-woman. But he's got the worst case of the saltations anybody ever saw, and I think — his elbows are turning into wing pinions.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful,” the elegant Merald Hilltop gloated. “We'll get all the legal attachments on him and then we'll seize him.”

  At first Titus Chesty was fairly reasonable. Between his rifle shots out of his shack he'd call out fairly reasonable questions. “By what right do you propose to seize me?” he called.

  “By the right of Eminent Domain,” three government lawyers called back in unison. “You have been declared a World Resource under the Biotechnic Act of 2012. You must mate with all the more duck-like women we find on our worldwide search so that the evolutionary saltation be not in vain.”

  “You have no Eminent Domain over me,” Titus Chesty called back, and he fired his rifle sharply.

  “Oh but we have!” cried the two remaining government lawyers. “We have a special enactment right here.”

  “That for your special enactment,” Titus called back, and shot again.

  “We had better get two back-up lawyers up here for the negotiations,” said the one remaining government lawyer.

  “Why don't we just point a howitzer at his shack and blow him and it away?” one of the Security Guards asked.

  “No, no, we have to have him alive and unharmed,” Josef Prorok said. “He's not shooting as sharp as he used to,” said one of the townsmen who knew Titus well. “After his elbow finishes turning into a wing, I bet he won't be any better shot than the average man.”

  “It's a hope, it's a hope!” Masterman Jordan spoke fervently.

  The sun went down and the moon came up.

  “He's bound to run out of ammunition soon,” Isidore Merriman said.

  “No he isn't either,” a townsman argued. “He has boxes of ammunition stacked from floor to roof of his shanty. He has boxes of everything stacked from floor to roof of his shanty. He'll not run out of food or shot or anything.”

  Whether his elbows were turning into wing-pinions or not, Titus Chesty could still shoot. Every Security Guard who stuck his nose from behind his tree lost the end of his nose.

  Judy Prorok and Irene Jordan and Roxanne Dropforge made up a hoedown ballad named “The Man Who Wouldn't Mate with Duck-Women.” They got a couple hundred people singing it. It had a catchy tune. “That's a peachy ballad,” Roxanne said. “That's a ducky ballad.”

  That was the Summer they all had a lot of fun around the San Pennatus Fault Crest.

  Something Rich And Strange

  I am the biggest and the best,

  I'm full of jive and juices.

  I wear my heart outside my breast.

  My teeth are like a moose's.

  —Buck Tooth Boogie, Anonymous

  George Dander had two front buck teeth bigger than those of any other man or beaver or bull moose in the world. George Dander heard voices, a recent circumstance with him. George Dander was conditionally engaged to an enlarging and charming person named Mary Deare. Except for those three items, he was much like everybody else, pleasant, prodigal, talkative, a bit eccentric, opinionated, and mistaken fifty-one percent of the time.

  Except for his two buck teeth he was handsome, and he was larger and louder than life. Except for the voices he'd been hearing, he had never had any self-doubts at all: but the new voices did have a doubtful quality to them. Except for Mary Deare (a metamorphic creature who was sometimes called the Unwreckable Mary Deare) his life might have been as empty as are the lives of so many billions of other persons.

  Three other young men were also engaged to Mary. The conditions she had imposed on George Dander were that he should get rid of those damned buck teeth, and that he should make a million dollars. He could probably make a million dollars if he put his mind to it. But he sure didn't want to get rid of his buck teeth which were his trademark and his manhood. Ah well, the conditions that Mary Deare had put on her other three fiancés were even more stringent.

  When the voices first came to George Dander he had trouble understanding them because of their foreign accent. But he and the voices soon adjusted to each other. The voices seemed to be right in the middle of George's head and nobody except himself could hear them —except, apparently, the sharp-eared Mary Deare a little bit sometimes.

  But when George was alone (alone with the voices, for he was never really alone since they came to him) he questioned them.

  “Who are you really?” he asked them. “What is your name?”

  “Our name is Multitude because there are many of us,” they answered him.

  “That line has been used before, approximately,” George told them. “Where are you really, the rest of you? Wherever in the world are you?”

  “We are not in this world at all,” they said. “The Name of our world is Synnephon-Ennea or Cloud-Nine Planet. Its direction from here is celestial north.”

  “Why do you send your voices here?”

  “Because we're friendly. We like to talk to all sorts of people. And we like to upgrade the ideas of all sorts of people.”

  “Do you ever visit any other worlds in person, in the flesh?”

  “Oh yes. Perhaps we will visit your world in some very near future: after we have made preparations and shaped the public apperceptions there so we won't appear too shocking to you.”

  “Why did you pick me to talk in my head?”

  “We always seek good paired receptors. Really, we have to have them or we can't make ourselves heard at all. In you we found one of the three best sets of paired receptors on your world. It's a joy to make contact with such an excellent set of receptors as yours.”

  “You mean my buck teeth? Do I pick you up through my buck teeth?”

  “Yes. Does such a thing startle you?”

  “Not entirely. There's a bull moose in the Bronx Zoo who picks up radio programs with his buck teeth. He mostly gets New York City boogie music programs, and the nearby animals listen appreciatively to them too. I had guessed that my case was something like that.”

  “When we come into our kingdom there in your world, one of the first things we will suppress is boogie radio stations. And in the meanwhile we will work through you and through others (especially your girlfriend who has an exceptionally good opportunistic brain) to try to upgrade this world's ideas of beauty. That will have to be done before the time of our coming. Now, to show our friendshi
p, is there anything we can do to make you happier?”

  The seven answers had been in seven different voices.

  “Can you see into the future?” George Dander asked them.

  “We can't see into our own future, but we can see into yours. Our temporal direction is the opposite of yours. Our past is your future. Our future is your past. What would you like to know?”

  “The names of the eight horses who will win the eight races at Blue Ribbon Downs this afternoon.”

  “Gilded Lily in the first.” “Red Beans in the second.” “Cactus Joe in the third.” “Fly-by-Night in the fourth.” “Bangabout in the fifth.” “Copperhead in the sixth.” “Gandy Dancer in the seventh.” “Burglar Dan in the eighth.” The eight answers came in eight different voices.

  George Dander picked up the phone and placed the eight bets, each horse to win in its race. But he was a little bit doubtful of what he had done.

  “Even granting that you've been in the future where the races will be run this afternoon, how could you have all the winners' names so glibly?” he asked.

  “We're smart,” one of the voices said.

  “And if your past is my future and your future is my past, how come we are together so long? Why haven't we passed in less than a moment?”

  “We will always be in the same present, but we will always have arrived at that present from opposite directions,” a voice said.

  “And if Cloud-Nine World (usually regarded as legendary) is four-and-a-half light years from here (even as a legend it is firmly located in the Centauri system) why isn't there a four-and-a-half-year delay in every exchange of ours?”

  “There's an explanation, but it's pretty mathematical and we don't believe you could understand it,” one of the voices said.

  All eight of the horses that George Dander bet on did win their races at Blue Ribbon Downs that afternoon, and George was ahead quite a few bucks. Mary Deare met George as he came back to his house after picking up his winnings. She knew all about it, and she couldn't have known. “Don't relax, George, don't even think of relaxing,” she said. “Have your voices give you the names of the one hundred stocks that will rise most sharply tomorrow. While you're getting them down, I'll phone your broker to have supper with us at the Steak and Ale. And draw a check for twenty thousand dollars, and we'll get our order to buy in to your broker tonight.”

  “I don't have twenty thousand dollars, Mary.”

  “Yes you do, honey. You have twenty thousand two hundred and eleven dollars and nineteen cents in your checking account. Why do you try to conceal things from me when we are conditionally engaged and are practically flesh of one flesh?”

  Thirty-three days later, after hectic betting and buying and selling and manipulating futures with never a slip, George Dander was a millionaire. Mary Deare knew that he had reached it before George knew it himself. She had a quicker mind and she kept closer track of such things. “We'll get married at nine o'clock tomorrow morning,” she told George. “It's all working out beautifully.”

  “Good, good,” George said. “Then you're waiving the other requirement.”

  “I'm waiving nothing. You have an appointment with the dentist in twenty-two minutes. We'd better get down there now. We're going to get those unsightly buck teeth jerked out of your mouth.”

  “But, Mary, don't you realize that I, we, wouldn't be millionaires if it weren't for my buck teeth and my voices? You're killing the golden goose, the golden fleece, the golden buck teeth!”

  “Trust me, honey! I always know what I'm doing. I'm not killing that golden goose. I'm going to put it on a business basis.”

  The dentist pulled George Dander's two priceless buck teeth which were one of the three best sets of paired receptors in the world. And George felt terrible about it. “Don't let them throw them away!” he protested as he came out from under the gas. “Maybe something can be done with them if—”

  “They won't be thrown away,” Mary Deare reassured him. “My, you do talk funny without them! I have them here in my purse. I told you that I was going to put them on a business basis. Come along now. We'll get married in the morning, and then we'll go on a two-day honeymoon.”

  “Why only a two-day honeymoon?” George Dander asked. (He sure did talk funny without his buck teeth.) “Why for only two days?”

  “Because I have a dental appointment on the third day,” Mary Deare said.

  2.

  Nothing of her that does fade

  But does suffer a sea-change

  Into something rich and strange.

  Sea-Nymphs hourly ring her knell

  Ding-Dong— Hark, I hear them, Ding-Dong Bell!

  —Shakespeare, The Tempest

  George Dander had mixed feelings at his wedding. He had a great and worrisome emptiness in the front of his mouth, and he had an awkward and floppy upper lip that was now relieved of its job of at least partly covering his buck teeth. He felt somewhat unmanned.

  On the other hand, he was marrying the Unwreckable Mary Deare, an enchanting creature, a metamorphic creature, a pearl beyond price (“That paltry million dollars is only the beginning, honey,” she had whispered to him, “we'll be big rich”), the Iris goddess at the end of the rainbow. It should be fun. And perhaps he would be more handsome without his big buck teeth (which would now, somehow, be put on a business basis).

  And it was fun, for the two days of their honeymoon. They went to Bald Eagle Cove on Keystone Lake. They ate crawfish tails and Gored Ox Surprise and drank Boilermakers and Sazarac Cocktails. They waterskied and caught catfish and made love. One night they went to a movie at Mannford, and the other night they went to a cow-pasture Rock Concert near New Prue. Yes, all these things were fun when done with the metamorphic Mary Deare.

  And they came back on the morning of the third day because Mary Deare had a dental appointment that day.

  George Dander was absolutely dumbfounded by the appearance of his cherished wife Mary Deare Dander when she came back from the dentist's. “No, no, no!” he said (or he made a pitiful attempt at saying). Try to say “No, no, no” with your two front teeth out: try to say anything with your two front teeth out. “Never, never!” George declared, and he was shaking like a whole treeful of aspen leaves.

  “Thomebody thay it ithn't tho!” he begged.

  “You'll get used to them, honey,” the unwreckable Mary Deare assured him.

  “Really you will, George,” sounded a muffled voice that used to be one of George Dander's own “voices,” and it was coming somehow from Mary Deare's mouth. “It is essential that you not only get used to them, but that you learn to love them, that you come to find them things of beauty. You do understand that this world's ideas of beauty will have to be upgraded before the time of our coming.”

  George Dander tried to scream, but it was somehow pathetic. (Try to scream effectively sometime with your two front teeth gone and your upper lip flapping loosely.)

  And George Dander began to run, and he disappeared over the horizon still running.

  His was surely an odd reaction to his wife's coming home with two large and handsome buck teeth gleaming in the front of her face in place of six smaller upper front teeth that had never done much for her.

  But George Dander had always been a little bit eccentric.

  George Dander came home again after about a month. “Oh, hi, George!” his wife Mary Deare spoke pleasantly. “It's good to see you.”

  “It's good to see you too,” George said, but he didn't really see her. He couldn't yet stand to look at her. One glimpse out of the corner of his eye was enough. George Dander was tired and dirty and discouraged.

  “You'll feel better when you get your bridge with your two new teeth from the dentist,” Mary Deare Dander said. “They've been ready for you for a month. He fitted you for them when you were still out from the gas when he pulled your two buck teeth. You will be nice-looking when you have two ordinary-sized front teeth and your upper lip has unextended itself.” />
  “I will be nice-looking then, but I won't be me,” George Dander said. “Mary, let me give you a little history of the world, and of my family, and of my teeth.

  “When the great Indo-Aryan migration from central Asia to Europe began thirty centuries ago, its languages and words began to diverge. Of their original words, only about a hundred are still to be recognized in most of its branches. There isn't any common word for ocean, for they hadn't lived on the ocean. There isn't any common word for elephant or palm tree for they didn't know these things before their split-up. But there is a common word for teeth, for all of them had teeth. It was don'di in Greek, dens in Latin, and dantis in Lithuanian. It is dent in French and diente in Spanish. The word isn't recognized in English, but we still have dental and dentist. It is tand in Dutch and Scandinavian. With the greatest tribe of all of them (and there are now less than a hundred members of our ‘tribe’ left in the world) the word for tooth is dand and its plural is dander. So my name is George Dander which is George Teeth, and my family name has been ‘teeth’ for a hundred generations. We've always known that our buck teeth were receptors, part of the ‘ivory grapevine.’ People with outstanding teeth have always been in rapport with each other and have known each others' thoughts. Outsiders who noticed this didn't understand it and they thought that it was telepathy at work. Our buck teeth have been handed down from father to son (but never has any female member of the Dander family shown any signs of buck-teethism) for a hundred generations, growing always larger and more beautiful, and they climaxed in me. This isn't the first time we have picked up voices from the stars with our front teeth. But now I am shorn of them.”