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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “He has done so,” said Gilberto Levine-and-O'Brien, the double of the Holy Artemis.

  “He is doing so,” said Herman Hercules, the double of Holy Ercule.

  “He will do so,” said Count Finnegan, the double of Holy Hedayat.

  When Count Finnegan and his two companions left the Argo, the Coryphaeba-fish, with their ringing brass-fretted shell-horns, stayed by that shore of the ‘Ringing Rocks’ where the Three had landed, and they did not follow the Argo further.

  Melchisedech Duffey and Biloxi Brannagan and Kasmir Gorshok, the three Masters then asail on the Argo, declared themselves in perpetual session to guard against the coming of the Antichrist onto the Argo.

  “Prophecies are made for man and not man for prophecies,” Melchisedech swore. “If a prophecy is bad for man, or if it signifies the end of man, then we will contravene it. Myself, I cannot recall a prophecy that the Antichrist will sail on the Argo to Megiddo.”

  “I believe that it is somehow combined with the Judas Prophecy,” Casey said.

  “And it may be necessary that it should happen,” Biloxi Brannagan gave the worried opinion. “It may be needful that this Evil Person of Mystery shall go to Armageddon, as scripture calls today's Megiddo. Scripture tells us that this, along with other related things must happen.”

  “ ‘It is necessary that it happens, but woe to him by whom it happens,’ that is what God-In-Scripture said,” Melchisedech maintained. “My own prayer is ‘Let this misfortune happen if it must. Only not yet!’ Let this woe, which will be eternal, not fall on us. Not on myself, not on thee Biloxi, not on thee either Kasmir, and not on Holy Argo itself. Somewhere there are experts at detection and scrutiny who could set up conditions so that this ‘Person of Mystery’ could no way come onto the Argo. Who are these experts? Where will we find them?”

  Finnegan and his companions had left the ship by then, and the Argo was on further adventures.

  “Oh, the highest experts are to be found in their graves,” Kasmir said, “or we'll find them still struggling in the World Militant, or we'll find them still unborn. Or in fiction. Damn this flitting fog!”

  “Bless rather than damn this flitting fog,” Melchisedech said. “It means that some of the most direful things are not of absolute finality at this time. We will find the experts at once, wherever they are, and we will procure their services. See to it, Gorshok! See to it, Brannagan! See to it, myself!”

  Well, they got such as they could of the experts in scrutiny and detection. Some of these were indeed fictitious, and they were routed out of their fictional graves. Some of them were authentic persons behind fictional disguises, and these were plucked either out of their lives or out of their deaths. All the better ones insisted on anonymity before they would give advice: so these will appear under code names. So it happens that they will all be called by the names of famous detectives, whether these are their code names or their real names. They are here called Philo Vance, Father Brown, Doctor Thorndyke, Max Carrados, and Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen. And thus they advised how to keep a person from entering:

  “Fireplaces are often the key to situations like this,” Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, also known as the ‘Thinking Machine’, said. “I always regretted that I could not use a fireplace in my justly famous ‘The Problem of Cell 13’, but fireplaces are seldom found in standard jail cells. When one considers a room or a building or a ship, one says ‘This is a cube, however much it is distorted.’ We still have the problem of entering or leaving a cube. And a cube is made up of four sides, distorted maybe, and a top and a bottom: or four bulkheads and an overhead and a deck if it is a ship. Something coming into this cube must come in through one of the four sides, or through the top or the bottom. Aha yes, that is the classic statement. But then comes the classic exception that is so often forgotten: ‘Have you remembered the fireplace?’ More people have gone wrong by not remembering the fireplace than by any other thing. The fireplace is not really a wall, it is not really a ceiling. But what is it? Are there any fireplaces on the Argo?”

  “There are a few,” Kasmir Gorshok said. “I suspect that many of them are state-of-mind or subjective fireplaces. Every study, every den, every wardroom, on ship or off, has to have a fireplace. There is no satisfaction in such a place without one. But a fireplace need not have an exit to the outside world. A Sorcerer in particular should have a fireplace. He uses the shapes that appear in its fires for the assembly and selecting of his thoughts and figures. He will also use it as a Sorcerer's Furnace or an Alchemist's Retort. He will use it for conjuring, or just because a sorcerer would be lost without a fireplace and a fire. There are a number of Sorcerers affiliated with the Argo, so there are a number of fireplaces on her. But, as I say, they need not have outlets to the exterior world. They may be subjective fireplaces, blind fireplaces.”

  “Blind spirits may enter by blind fireplaces,” the Professor said, “and I believe that we are dealing with such here. And once they are inside they can turn themselves into almost anything. Do you Sorcerers or Masters have access to or command of any Firedrakes?”

  “Oh, certainly,” Kasmir said. “We can command all the Firedrakes, all the fire-dragons we wish, and they will come.”

  “Then set a Firedrake to guard each fireplace,” the Professor said. “And take ordinary precautions about all other entrances. Watch all these things, and the code-named ‘Man of Mystery’ will not be able to come on to the Argo.

  “The thing to keep track of is who goes out and who comes in,” said the person using the name of ‘Max Carrados the Blind Detective’. “Do not trust anyone. If more persons come in than go out, then there are additions to the people here. Sound every alarm then, for you have an illegal entry. Break down the security into sections. Make it check out for every person, even for yourself, most especially for yourself. And the person who has more entries than exits is himself the guilty one. I have a suspicion that one of you present here is the ‘Man of Mystery’ and that he does not yet know that he is. Watch particularly whether you do not sometimes wear a disguise when you come in or come aboard. Sawed-off shotguns, strategically placed, are a good solution to this problem. They will blast and kill anyone who has an entry that is not balanced by a previous exit.”

  “One of the answers is to be found in the eleventh movement of Andreyev's Zauberkonzert,” said the expert who was code named Philo Vance. “Or the answer may be found in the eleventh movement of anything at all, but not so clearly. If you have any feeling for African Violets, you will clearly understand the answer. I would recommend however that African Violets be felt for themselves alone. See my justly celebrated monogram ‘The Inutility of African Violets’. A consummate cribbage boardsman will know the answer instantly, as will a master of the Around-The-Mountain maneuver at American checkers.” “I dispute you there, Mr. Vance,” said Melchisedech Duffey. “I am the Master of the Around-The-Mountain trick at checkers, but I do not know the answer to the problem of keeping the person code-named ‘The Man of Mystery’ off the Argo. Myself, when I really know the answer to something, I can usually state it in three words.”

  “Oh certainly, I can do that also,” Philo Vance said.

  “Well, what are your three words, Philo?” Melchisedech asked.

  “Get a dog,” said Philo Vance, the Master of Detection.

  “The hardest man to throw out of a place is the man who is already outside,” said the man code-named Father Brown. “And the hardest man to prevent entering a place is the man who is already in. Well, it's been a pleasure, gentlemen. And since Philo and the others have already solved the problem for you, I bid you all good day. Remind me not to walk directly off the ship until a plank or a ladder or some such device is provided. I'm absent minded about these things, and sometimes I get a good drenching that way. You know that the original meaning of ‘drench’ in Old English is ‘To Drown’, but I don't want to apply this meaning to myself.” “But has the problem been solved?” Branna
gan asked. “Do we know how to deal with the Man of Mystery and keep him off the Argo ship? What, after all, has Philo told us?”

  “Perhaps an English Bulldog would be the best sort of dog in this case,” code-named Father Brown said. “The English Bulldog will quickly realize it when something familiar turns into something strange and wrong. Deal with it quickly when that moment arrives.”

  “I'll do it!” Melchisedech cried with delight. “I'll get an English Bulldog. I know one I can trust.” And the Argo Masters sent all the code-named Detectives and Scrutinizers back to their stations, whether in life or out of it.

  “Not Gunboat Smith,” Kasmir Gorshok spoke with a touch of worry after the detectives had gone.

  “Yes, Gunboat Smith,” Melchisedech insisted. “That is one English Bulldog that I trust all the way.”

  “But Gunboat never liked me,” Kasmir spoke with perhaps a touch of fear. “We just don't get along together well enough to be on the same ship.”

  “Gunboat Smith it will be,” Melchisedech spoke with heavy finality. And it was but a short adventure to pick up Gunboat Smith where he was Old-English Bulldog-in-Residence at the Old Wooden Ship bar and grill in Galveston, Texas.

  There was a lot of growling on the Argo for the next several days. The English Bulldog Gunboat Smith growled at Kasmir Gorshok, and Kasmir Gorshok growled at Gunboat Smith. This was surprising conduct on the part of Gunboat Smith. He had always been accounted a very friendly and intelligent Bulldog, probably more intelligent than the average patron of the Old Wooden Ship. And his ability to sense a wrong person from a right person was extraordinary.

  Equally surprising was the close friendship that sprang up between Gunboat Smith and Pseudo-Zorokothora, which is to say the Pseudo-Melchisedech.

  “Sure, and their tails are about the same length,” Melchisedech grumbled, “little nubs and not much more. I fail to see how either of them would give much aerodynamic balance. But I trust the instincts of each creature. If they like each other then they are both well recommended.”

  Otherwise the ship was in good shape. Closed circuit burglar alarms were installed at every passage and rat-line of the Argo, and the Firedrakes were on constant patrol. It would seem that no person could enter the Argo uninvited, either by land or air or sea, or from under the sea.

  But phenomena of every sort were infiltrating and surrounding the ship in their multitudes. Something of a still poorly formed aggregation was trying to board the Argo, or was already paying homage to somebody on the Argo. This was the beginning of something familiar turning strange and wrong. Gunboat Smith let them know about it as well as he could, and they all felt it.

  “Has he come already?” Biloxi asked, “and has he been given authority over the World?”

  The Argo was picking up an entourage of boats and ships, large and small, and some of them were of unrecognizable flag and registry. There were musical sounds from the Sea, but these were of a greatly different music from that which had accompanied the Argo when it carried Count Finnegan and Gilberto and Herman Hercules. The Sea itself was something that was turning wrong and strange. There was a new magnetic wind blowing. Strangeness isn't to be classified too quickly.

  The musical sound (or anti-musical sound) that accompanied them now was possessed of a different magnetism. It was as if consensus and polarity had been abrogated. The ears of Duffey and Brannagan and Gunboat bled a lot in those hours. New and dazzling things were happening to smell and vision, and even to tactile feeling. There was a pleasant clamminess in the air. Can there be a pleasant clamminess? Something new in excitement and fascination was creating itself.

  The Ship Argo was following a course of her own selection, or perhaps She had been instructed by persons unknown to follow this course. She was moving eastward at a fair speed, but not at Argo speed. She was not (as she usually was) moving against the wind and the waves. Now she was carried along by the wind and the waves that had obviously been tampered with. And those wind and waves were paying open homage to the Argo, or to someone on board the Argo.

  “Morning sickness! Me, morning sickness!” Melchisedech moaned one morning. And he was sicklied all over with a new dullness.

  “I've got it too, Duffey,” Brannagan said. “I'm like a landsman on his first rough sea. Have you noticed the sea though? It's different. It's of a different texture and aim and intent. Duff, it's paying homage to a different thing. I had a discussion with some fellows once. What, we considered, if the materialists and the secularists were right? What if there were no things beyond? What would the Sea be like then? These were all fellows who knew the many faces of the sea well.”

  “The Sea would be glassy,” they said. There was consensus on that. It would swell and it would trough, but it would still be of an opaque and dull glass. It would heave, perhaps, but it would not crest. They had all seen such Seas for very short seconds. But the Sea, by ordinary, pays true homage, pays brilliant homage. And it is not of that opaque glassiness. We see a wrong ocean now.”

  “And I will heave, perhaps in a moment,” Melchisedech Duffey muttered, “but I will not crest. Yes, what homage the Sea is paying this morning is to a different thing. I know too what the world would look like if it were secular. I've seen quick snatches and pieces of such a world: places where, in autumn, the leaves turn from green to dull brown with no brilliant interval; steppe land where it goes to deep snow and deep freeze with neither rime frost nor hoar frost coming first; tropical trash lands where it does not lighten nor thunder at all; swamps too dismal to have swamp-lights or fox-fire or St. Elmo's Fire. Ah, I do feel queasy this morning, Brannagan, and I do think queasy. In my black little heart it seems that I welcome all the brilliant things going out. But my heart isn't usually that black.

  “It bothers me that I don't respond against it,” Duffey said. “I'm less a man than I was yesterday, and it doesn't bug me out. Have you heard what rot that piece of Talking Oak in the Ship's wheel has been talking lately? It's all other seas and other plaudits now. Why does it bother us so little?

  “The Talking Oak in the wheel, it says that it has been baptized in the Spirit and is speaking in tongues now. There's more than a thousand craft following us and surrounding us, Brannagan. What is the big attraction? Above all the other atmospheric changes, it's becoming more shimmery now, which means that we are even further and more uncertainly into the future. It may break at any time and send us back into one of the presents, or cast us up on one of the shores of the ‘Sea of the Lost Years’. If it's going to happen, I hope it happens before the Argo and ourselves disgrace ourselves. Do you believe that these things may, by their numbers and their confusion around us, succeed in getting the code-named ‘Man of Mystery’ onto the Argo?”

  “Is it going to be a slow and uneventful event, this taking us over?” Brannagan asked.

  No, it wasn't completely uneventful. Just after sundown that night, events began to happen. An effigy seaman (a what?) came and said that the compass in the binnacle was awry. The needle deformed itself and kept pointing to something on the Ship itself, something below decks.

  “It is the magnetism,” the effigy seaman said (what had happened to all the real seamen?). “It is a personal magnetism that deforms needles.”

  There was a series of sharp explosions on the Argo. Exploration revealed that every mirror on the ship was shattered, but not a piece of glass had fallen from any of them. One looked in the glass now and saw himself in a thousand aspects, a different reflection in each shattered fragment. This was cubism come into the world as actuality. Then when one looked away from the mirror, one saw the whole world as shattered and cubistic.

  “It's the only way to see the world,” another effigy seaman yiped. “This is the new depth and dimension, the freedom from integrity. Praise it, praise it!”

  “Oh shut up!” Melchisedech growled.

  Very many people were on the Argo now. Gunboat Smith had very nearly bitten the legs off of many of them, and still they came. They
were coming over the sides of the ship. They were coming up from the depths of it. There would be no way to keep out the ‘Man of Mystery’ with so many unidentified people coming in.

  People cried out in tongues, and talking dogs interpreted what they said. Gunboat Smith was not able to come to any of the talking dogs, though he railed furiously against them. The world had changed, or it had been given over to a queer power.

  And there was a real attraction to the power. The Argo was going at a greater rate towards the East, though there was no longer any way to verify directions. And the smell of a hot and rocky land was near. This was the Abomination of Desolation that is spoken of by the prophets, and it was entirely too attractive an abomination.

  A crooked peace settled over everything. All breathing stopped. Then the Great One appeared, out of the bowels of the Argo.

  “We've just gone a little further into the future than we should have,” Brannagan said. “But how do we go back?”

  “I think we can go back simply by refusing it,” Melchisedech said, “but all these poor people cannot go back. They live in this time and they are deluded in this time. And now I understand that the Holy Argo cannot go back until she brings her mysterious passenger to land.”