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

by R. A. Lafferty

  This is the sort of jibing that Frenchmen of a certain sort sometimes indulge in, but it must be understood that both Melchisedech and Biloxi were both remarkably handsome men and were splendidly arrayed.

  “Do not on any account draw that sword from that scabbard,” Melchisedech spoke as one having authority.

  “And what happens if we do?” Cyrus Dimbeau asked.

  “If you draw it but an inch, two-thirds of the people in the world will fall into a deep sleep,” Melchisedech stated. “And they will die in their deep sleep if they are not rescued from it quickly. The only means of saving them is to put the sword back full-way into the scabbard.”

  “Fair enough,” said Cyril Dimbeau. “We'll make try of the affair.” There was one other scientist there with the two brothers, and there were ten strong workmen and laboratory assistants there. These ten assistants grabbed Biloxi and Melchisedech and put them under tight restraint. And the three scientists were melting the flux out from between the Sword and its sheath.

  “It will move now,” Cyrus Dimbeau said. “I believe it will move just about one inch.” And Cyrus drew the Sword just one inch out of its scabbard. The ten assistants fell down in deep sleep and rolled around on the platform.

  “You were right. It worked,” Cyril Dimbeau said. “The ten assistants have fallen into deep sleep. The other five of us, we three scientists and you two sea spooks, are still awake. That is two thirds of those in this miniature world who are so stricken, and I assume that it applies to the maxi-world also. And if I pull the Sword out the rest of the way?”

  “The World will come to its end,” Melchisedech said.

  “Fair enough,” said Cyril. “I always wanted to be there when the World ended, but I didn't know quite how to manage it. Pull the Sword out, brother.”

  But when the ten assistants had fallen down into deep sleep, they had of necessity released Duffey and Biloxi from their tight grip. And while Duffey had been parleying with the scientists, Biloxi had retrieved the still melting flux that had been poured out from between the Sword and Scabbard. Now he poured it back in, and it sized the Sword and Scabbard together once more so that they would not separate easily.

  “How clumsy of me!” Biloxi Brannagan apologized. “I stumbled with the bucket of flux and I spilled it. Now you will have that little melting task to do all over again.”

  “Damned oafs!” Cyril Dimbeau hissed. “Get back into the Ocean whence you came.”

  “Let me have it,” Duffey said. “I know a way to melt the flux out of it again in an instant. Then you can go ahead and pull the Sword all the way out and destroy the World if you're so minded.”

  “Well, hurry it up!” Cyril Dimbeau barked.

  Duffey took the Sword and Scabbard, now tightly welded together again. But, with an incredible clumsiness, he dropped the thing off of the platform, and it went down, down, down, nine miles deep in the ocean, and then it began to bore its way one hundred meters deep into the mud and lime ooze to find its old place again.

  “Oops, oops, oops, I dropped it, fellows. I wouldn't have had that happen for anything.”

  “Oafs, oafs,” Cyrus cried in hot anger. “Now we'll have to go all the way down to get it again.”

  “Get what?” Brannagan asked them. Brannagan had cannily spread the Forgetfulness Mesh over them and they couldn't remember the episode at all. The ten assistants, now rescued from their deep sleep, stood waiting for orders. And no orders came.

  “Well, it was a pleasant visit,” Cyril Dimbeau said finally. “I'm glad you couldn't stay longer.”

  Duffey and Biloxi sailed away then, and left the bathysphere people there, taking samples of ocean fleas at middle depths. But they could not remember at all about the Sword and the Scabbard.

  “We are going to have to find a way to lose that thing a little more securely,” Melchisedech Duffey said. “In four hundred years someone is likely to stumble on it again.”

  But it is good to have suspense-and-fun adventures every day well before noon.

  A bit later in the day, at Gdansk on the Baltic, near the mouth of the Vestula, a stranger came to the Argo, he having the air of not being a stranger at all. Now it was the plain case that any Argo man should always recognize any other Argo man, anywhere, at any time. The only slight exception is that a man fallen from Grace may not be completely recognized at once. Well, neither Brannagan nor Duffey recognized this man immediately. They should have seen through every disguise. The land they were in had been in the hands of the New Infidels for some years, and it may be that caution was called for.

  “You bring the Brotherhood itself into danger if you fail to recognize me,” this stranger said. “It is by this one thing only that the Brotherhood may be broken. Do not fail it! Know me now!”

  Well, this stranger was a mixture of disguises. He had a black hat on his head, and ear-locks, like an old Jew, but he had a wide and treeless face, like a Polish landscape; for the faces of Poles are always like the constantly changing and always lop-sided map of Poland. But this man also had the blue eyes of Scandinavia and the square hands of Holland.

  “The Ship will know me,” the man said. “The piece of Talking Oak in the Ship's wheel will know me and speak.” And the piece of Talking Oak in the Ship's wheel did speak, and it said “I know him.” But Duffey and Brannagan still looked at each other, and at the man.

  “We will all lay our identifications out here,” Melchisedech Duffey said. “We will see who are Men of the Argo.” Duffey rubbed his hands together and produced a large gold coin with the King's Crown of Salem on one side and with the Bread and the Wine on the other. It bore as superscript the magic name of ‘Melchisedech’, and as subscript the words ‘Thou Art Forever’. Melchisedech set the big coin on the steerman's sideboard there in the cabin. He had identified himself, though he had not been questioned.

  Biloxi Brannagan rubbed his hands together and produced an even larger coin of the reddish gold of Ireland. It had the Celtic cross of Christ on one side of it, and a Coracle Boat on the other side. It bore the Holy name ‘Naomh Brandon’ of Saint Brandon on it. Brannagan had also identified himself, though this swift lion of the sea had not been questioned. Oh certainly Biloxi Brannagan was Saint Brandon, always and forever.

  The stranger then rubbed his own two hands together. This formed a shower of sparks from which was formed a large and living two-headed eagle, but no coin or medallion. The stranger had a lot of style in these things however, and Duffey and Brannagan began to recognize him by his florid style. The man grinned and grimaced in a stagey manner. Yes, he was a real magician. All the real ones have this staginess about them. From his own mouth he took one thin half of a coin, and from one of the mouths of the living two-headed eagle he took another thin half of a coin. He put the two halves together and there was a small clap of thunder. That was good show. On one side of the thus produced coin there was the same two-headed Eagle of Poland. On the other side of the coin was an ornate Crock or Pot or Night Charley. But there was no name on the coin yet.

  The man then pulled the name ‘Kasmir Gorshok’ from the other mouth of the two-headed eagle, and he fastened it on to the coin. He set the coin beside the other two on the steersman's sideboard and the other two did not reject it. This man was Kasmir Gorshok, the Casey of the Crock of the low middle ages. He was Casey Szymansky of Chicago, the Casey of the Zodiac. And he was a true Argo Master.

  Kasmir (Casey) waved the two-headed eagle to fly away, and it flew away into the interior of the country. “That will bring their numbers up to nine,” Casey said. The two-headed eagles of Poland had been an endangered species for a long while, and whenever their number fell below nine it was feared that their extermination was near.

  So Melchisedech Duffey and Biloxi Brannagan sailed with this stranger-no-more, an old companion in magic and grace, on further adventures on the kaleidoscopic voyages of the Argo. But it was very mysterious that they had not recognized him at once. How had he changed?

 
“But something has gone wrong with things,” Melchisedech said that same day as they wrangled around in shallow seas and treacherous estuaries. “There is a treason smell about our Holy Ship. It's as if Judas himself were aboard.”

  “As you know, we transport Judas only one night a year,” Casey explained to Melchisedech as to a child. “And then we carry him across one narrow water only, and we are done with him in an hour. Then we use the herb Rosemary to remove the treason smell. So there can be none now. And this is not even that day or night of the year.”

  It is true that the Argo did transport Judas on the short voyage to Hell one night a year. But there were theological implications in the fact that he must be so carried once every year. It was almost as though his transporting to Hell were not permanent or irrevocable; at least some cultists believed that.

  “There's a saying that one of the Masters of Holy Argo Herself will turn traitor,” Melchisedech said darkly.

  “And the second part of that saying declares that it will be an affair between that Argo Master and God Himself alone,” Kasmir said. “What is it to thee?”

  At Karl-Marx-Stadt, near the upper waters of the Mulde, the Argo Masters destroyed a new incursion into logic that carried the tentative title ‘I Wake Up Forgetting’. Possible effects of this queer logic had been spilling out into various presents, and they were not good. There was hardly enough water to float the Argo at Karl-Marx-Stadt, and there was scarce enough draught-way for that incursion into logic either. But the logic piece was baneful even as it attempted to launch itself off the sand bars and float free.

  Duffey and Brannagan and Casey Gorshok burst in on a young man in ragged underwear and sobbing with excitement as he scribbled furiously on tattered pieces of paper. The young man was named Ralph Rolfe and he was English on his father's side.

  “Oh bother me not, ghosts, burglars, poli spies, followers of static philosophy,” Ralph begged miserably as the three Argonauts burst into his room. “I must get it all down on paper before I forget it! Paper, paper, are there no more pieces of you here? For the love of Logica Perversa herself, give me good paper to write upon!”

  Casey Gorshok gave pieces of paper to the distraught young man, and he gathered them in from that nervous person again when they were fully written. And pretty soon the young man ceased his frantic writing and half-collapsed upon himself.

  “That isn't all of it, that isn't near all of it,” the young man jittered, “but it is the vital keys to it. It is all gone out of my mind completely now, but there should be enough mind jogs and memory hooks down on the pieces of paper for me to recreate the great and crooked system by. And this I will do when I am more clear in my mind. Have I pants somewhere? Do I not ordinarily wear pants? Have I coffee here? Do I not ordinarily drink coffee?”

  Brannagan found the pants for the excited young man, and Duffey made coffee for him. And by and by he was more composed.

  “It is a completely new system of perverse logic that I have discovered,” the young man said, “or a completely new system that has discovered me and employed me as its medium. It will drive out all the other systems of logic as a shrew drives out mice. It has come to me in my sleep a dozen times and I have always forgotten it as I wakened. I knew that if I could get certain key words and symbols written down, I would be able to put it together from them when I was in a clarified and wakened state. For a long time I have slept with a candle lit and with writing materials beside me to jot down the key words when I wakened, and for long time something has gone wrong every morning. This morning, after I had received the great and crooked message once more, I was told in a sad voice ‘This is the last time that it will be given to you. Get it down this morning or lose it forever.’ Well, I would get it down this time, for there was not anything else that could have gone wrong with my precautions and procedures that had not previously gone wrong. I had allowed for everything.

  “I was mistaken in my supposition. While I slept mice came in and ate most of the writing paper that I had by my bedside, and they left only small ragged pieces that they had gnawed around the edges. But I had to get the great system written down. I filled up even the smallest piece of paper that the mice had left. Oh, kind gentlemen, you do have all the pieces, do you not? And you have them all in order as I wrote them?”

  “I have them all in order, yes,” Casey said.

  “And they will be destroyed in the same order that you wrote them, in the same order that Casey has them,” Melchisedech said. “Destroyed they must be.”

  “No, no, no!” the young man jittered in a broken voice. “I have the system in my mind no longer. I spilled all the treacherous things out of my mind and down on the paper. It is an entirely new thing. It will turn the world awry and set it by the ears.”

  “New and awry things usually do set the world by its ears,” Melchisedech said sadly. “But the world can hardly stand a new and crooked and entirely harmful system of logic at this time. Believe me, we are not narrow minded or arbitrary about this. It is a bad and slippery thing that you have almost introduced, young man. It has come close to being born many times. Again and again and again it has come close. But now we will luckily be rid of it this time also.”

  “Give me those pieces of paper or I will shoot you all,” the feverish young man cried. “Have I a gun here to shoot you all with? Do I not usually have a gun here?”

  Brannagan found the gun and gave it to the young man. Duffey found the bullets for it and gave them to him. The young man put the gun to the right temple of Casey Gorshok and fired it with a loud explosion. But he was a fraction of an instant too late. Duffey and Brannagan and Casey had already retreated out of that time and place. The exquisite sense of timing that all Argo Masters have is one thing that never leaves them.

  This ‘Sudden Withdrawal’ was a device they used often. They had carried out their mission and prevented a tricky thing from being born. It wasn't an ordinary tricky thing or it wouldn't have been assigned to Argonauts. There was something absolutely new in trickery in the devilishness of it.

  But, if their mission in this had been carried out perfectly and completely, the adventure could not even have been told about. The adventure and all memory of it would have been wiped out with the thing itself. And the adventure is told about. It is only the loose end adventures with something left over that can be remembered and told.

  “I shudder to think of what would have happened if it had taken effect,” Duffey speculated. “The last such thing that took effect put mankind into a twist for four hundred years, and this one could have been much twistier. Casey Gorshok, just to be doubly sure of this matter, I did not hear the sound of the pieces of paper being destroyed. Let us hear that sound now.”

  “Ah, I just thought that I might read a bit of them, Duff.”

  “No, Casey, no! Destroy them at once!” Brannagan insisted. “No one of even ourselves could be immune to their effect. You especially would not be immune. Destroy the little pieces of the logic system, Casey, and let there not be division among us.”

  Casey destroyed some pieces of paper.

  “Is that all of them, Casey?” Duffey insisted.

  “All but three of them. Shoal water ahead! Watch the steering!”

  “I see no shoal water ahead, Casey!” Brannagan spoke with a voice full of menace. “Destroy them, Casey, all of them.”

  Casey destroyed three of them. “One, two, three,” he counted. But had there been more than three left? Had there been others that Casey did not destroy?

  “Destroy the fourth one, Casey!” Melchisedech ordered.

  “I destroyed all three of them. Reefs ahead!” Casey bawled. “Shorten sail! Beat to the wind! Do various nautical things! All hands aloft! Awk, I see that one last little piece of paper did flutter over the side undestroyed, but the ocean depths have it now, so no harm done,” Casey stated.

  “What if a devil-fish should find it and save it?” Melchisedech asked. “Our mission is not perfect until that one
piece is destroyed. Do you not have a particular devil-fish who is mascot to you, Casey Gorshok? Have I not noticed it following us in these very waters? What if we should—”

  “I can't hear you, Duffey, with this violent wind blowing.”

  “There is no wind. But here it is that we enter new waters. Destroy that paper when thy devil-fish brings it to thee, Casey. I will not remember to remind you of this again. Sometimes the amnesia works for us and sometimes against us.”

  At Weinsburg on the Nechar River, the Argo Masters cured a young man of stuttering. This was a brilliant man with a mind like a burning sphere and the will to move worlds. And there was a red fury about everything that he did, and this caused him to be a great overturner. He had all excellent abilities and talents, and the stuttering had been the only defeating and frustrating ailing that he had. The Argo Masters broke in on this brilliant man suddenly.

  “How how how d-d-did y-y-you g—” the young man began to question their intrusion.

  “Ephthatha,” said Melchisedech Duffey, “be thou opened.” The young man's lips and tongue were loosened and he stuttered no more. The young man looked at them in that burnished way that all very brilliant persons have, and he seemed a little bit disturbed.

  “Have I asked to be cured?” he challenged them then.

  “In a way you did ask to be cured of your stuttering,” Melchisedech said. “You have complained angrily of your affliction to High Heaven. You have sworn that the clear river of your thoughts was roiled by the stuttering obstruction of your lips and tongue. You have sworn that you would move worlds if only you were free of this misfortune.”

  “You did not answer my question,” the brilliant man said. “Of course I complained. This complaint was a part of my stock and trade. It was a means I used to work myself into a wrath. Of course I was furious against my affliction. It was a stepping stone to my being furious against other things. How else could I have been furious so constantly and so easily? No, I did not ask to be cured. Afflict me again and restore me as I was.”