by Anthology
“Look,” he said, “this movie is set in the thirties, right? And Wilder plays a gentlemanly character, a theater director with good manners.”
“Okay. So?”
“So when she answers the door, he doesn’t take his hat off, even though you’re supposed to take your hat off when you meet a woman. But he doesn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s just the maid. If she’d been the lady of the house, the hat would have come off.”
“But he takes it off when he goes inside,” I said.
“ ‘Cause you did when you went into somebody’s house. That’s old-style hat etiquette. Like you go into a restaurant, it’s hats off. You go into a bar, it stays on.”
“I see people wearing baseball caps in restaurants all the time.”
“Yeah, now,” he said. “Go back fifty, sixty years, you didn’t.”
“And this has to do with what?” I said.
“With time travel. Specifically, with time travelers.”
“Time travelers?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Assume that someday, somebody invents time travel.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Hey, give people a million years to look into it, who knows?”
I shrugged and didn’t say anything.
“The thing is,” he went on, “time travel only has to be invented once and then we’ll have time travelers showing up all through history—not to mention visits to see dinosaurs and sabertooths.”
“Would anyone really want to travel through time?” I said.
“Sure. Researchers. Tourists. Criminals altering their present by manipulating the past. Religious pilgrims. Collectors. Who knows what motivates people a million years from now?”
I shrugged again.
“The thing is,” Medgar said, “the further back they come, the less likely they get all the details right—the little things like hat etiquette that nobody in the future knows because nobody in the past ever wrote it down.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“Because everybody already knew what to do with their hats.”
I tried to change the subject. “Who did you vote for on that TV show?”
But he wouldn’t let it go. “No, listen, here’s the thing. You know the people you see downtown, you wonder did they just come down from the mother ship?”
“Those people are mentally ill,” I said.
“Sure, most of them. But maybe one or two are the earliest explorers from one million A.D. They’re the ones who did the first reconnaissance so that the later time travelers can blend in better.”
“You don’t talk about this kind of stuff to people you work with, do you?” I asked. “Or your other neighbors?”
“No, I just thought of it. Anyway, the latecomers are pretty well camouflaged but there will still be things that will be out of synch—like the hat thing. We look for that stuff, we can find the time travelers.”
I took out a cigarette and tapped one end of it against the back of my hand, then put it in my mouth.
“Hey, yeah,” he said. “That’s a good one. People haven’t done the ciggie tap since everybody switched to filters.”
He laughed, then he saw the look on my face.
“Sorry,” I said, although a moment later he was a lot sorrier.
I put his ashes in a plastic sack and carried it out to the chute. Then I went back for the Wilder tape. Somebody upslope would want to study it.
THE HOLE ON THE CORNER
R.A. Lafferty
Homer Hoose came home that evening to the golden cliché: the un-noble dog who was a personal friend of his; the perfect house where just to live was a happy riot; the loving and unpredictable wife; and the five children—the perfect number (four more would have been too many, four less would be too few).
The dog howled in terror and bristled up like a hedgehog. Then it got a whiff of Homer and recognized him; it licked his heels and gnawed his knuckles and made him welcome. A good dog, though a fool. Who wants a smart dog!
Homer had a little trouble with the doorknob. They don’t have them in all the recensions, you know; and he had that off-the-track feeling tonight. But he figured it out (you don’t pull it, you turn it), and opened the door.
“Did you remember to bring what I asked you to bring this morning, Homer?” the loving wife Regina inquired.
“What did you ask me to bring this morning, quickheat blueberry biscuit of my heart?” Homer asked.
“If I’d remembered, I’d have phrased it different when I asked if you remembered,” Regina explained. “But I know I told you to bring something, old ketchup of my soul. Homer! Look at me, Homer! You look different tonight! different!! You’re not my Homer, are you! Help! Help! There’s a monster in my house!! Help, help! Shriek!”
“It’s always nice to be married to a wife who doesn’t understand you,” Homer said. He enfolded her affectionately, bore her down, trod on her with large friendly hooves, and began (as it seemed) to devour her.
“Where’d you get the monster, Mama?” son Robert asked as he came in. “What’s he got your whole head in his mouth for? Can I have one of the apples in the kitchen? What’s he going to do, kill you, Mama?”
“Shriek, shriek,” said Mama Regina. “Just one apple, Robert, there’s just enough to go around. Yes, I think he’s going to kill me. Shriek!”
Son Robert got an apple and went outdoors.
“Hi, Papa, what’s you doing to Mama?” daughter Fregona asked as she came in. She was fourteen, but stupid for her age. “Looks to me like you’re going to kill her that way. I thought they peeled people before they swallowed them. Why! You’re not Papa at all, are you? You’re some monster. I thought at first you were my papa. You look just like him except for the way you look.”
“Shriek, shriek,” said Mama Regina, but her voice was muffled.
They had a lot of fun at their house.
Homer Hoose came home that evening to the golden cliché: the u.n.d.; the p.h.; and 1. and u.w.; and the f.c. (four more would have been too many).
The dog waggled all over him happily, and son Robert was chewing an apple core on the front lawn.
“Hi, Robert,” Homer said, “what’s new today?”
“Nothing, Papa. Nothing ever happens here. Oh yeah, there’s a monster in the house. He looks kind of like you. He’s killing Mama and eating her up.”
“Eating her up, you say, son? How do you mean?”
“He’s got her whole head in his mouth.”
“Droll, Robert, mighty droll,” said Homer, and he went in the house.
One thing about the Hoose children: a lot of times they told us the bald-headed truth. There was a monster there. He was killing and eating the wife Regina. This was no mere evening antic. It was something serious.
Homer the man was a powerful and quick-moving fellow. He fell on the monster with judo chops and solid body punches; and the monster let the woman go and confronted the man.
“What’s with it, you silly oaf?” the monster snapped. “If you’ve got a delivery, go to the back door. Come punching people in here, will you? Regina, do you know who this silly simpleton is?”
“Wow, that was a pretty good one, wasn’t it, Homer?” Regina gasped as she came from under, glowing and gulping. “Oh, him? Gee, Homer, I think he’s my husband. But how can he be, if you are? Now the two of you have got me so mixed up that I don’t know which one of you is my Homer.”
“Great goofy Gestalten! You don’t mean I look like him?” howled Homer the monster, near popping.
“My brain reels,” moaned Homer the man. “Reality melts away. Regina! Exorcise this nightmare if you have in some manner called it up! I knew you shouldn’t have been fooling around with that book.”
“Listen, mister reely-brains,” wife Regina began on Homer the man. “You learn to kiss like he does before you tell me which one to exorcise. All I ask is a little affection. And this I didn’t find in a book.”
�
��How we going to know which one is Papa? They look just alike,” daughters Clara-Belle, Anna-Belle, and Maudie-Belle came in like three little chimes.
“Hell-hipping horrors!” roared Homer the man. “How are you going to know—? He’s got green skin.”
‘There’s nothing wrong with green skin as long as it’s kept neat and oiled,” Regina defended.
“He’s got tentacles instead of hands,” said Homer the man.
“Oh boy, I’ll say!” Regina sang out.
“How we going to know which one is Papa when they look just alike?” the five Hoose children asked in chorus.
“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation to this, old chap,” said Homer the monster. “If I were you, Homer—and there’s some argument whether I am or not—I believe I’d go to a doctor. I don’t believe we both need to go, since our problem’s the same. Here’s the name of a good one,” said Homer the monster, writing it out.
“Oh, I know him,” said Homer the man when he read it. “But how did you know him? He isn’t an animal doctor. Regina, I’m going over to the doctor to see what’s the matter with me, or you. Try to have this nightmare back in whatever comer of your under-id it belongs when I come back.”
“Ask him if I keep taking my pink medicine,” Regina said.
“No, not him. It’s the head doctor I’m going to.”
“Ask him if I have to keep on dreaming those pleasant dreams,” Regina said. “I sure do get tired of them. I want to get back to the other kind. Homer, leave the coriander seed when you go.” And she took the package out of his pocket. “You did remember to bring it. My other Homer forgot.”
“No, I didn’t,” said Homer the monster. “You couldn’t remember what you told me to get. Here, Regina.”
“I’ll be back in a little while,” said Homer the man. “The doctor lives on the comer. And you, fellow, if you’re real, keep your plankton-picking polypusses off my wife till I get back.”
Homer Hoose went up the street to the house of Dr. Corte on the comer. He knocked on the door, and then opened it and went in without waiting for an answer. The doctor was sitting there, but he seemed a little bit dazed.
“I’ve got a problem, Dr. Corte,” said Homer the man. “I came home this evening, and I found a monster eating my wife—as I thought.”
“Yes, I know,” said Dr. Corte. “Homer, we got to fix that hole on the comer.”
“I didn’t know there was a hole there, Doctor. As it happened, the fellow wasn’t really swallowing my wife, it was just his way of showing affection. Everybody thought the monster looked like me, and Doctor, it has green skin and tentacles. When I began to think it looked like me too, I came here to see what was wrong with me, or with everybody else.”
“I can’t help you, Hoose. I’m a psychologist, not a contingent-physicist. Only one thing to do; we got to fix that hole on the comer.”
“Doctor, there’s no hole in the street on this comer.”
“Wasn’t talking about a hole in the street. Homer, I just got back from a visit of my own that shook me up. I went to an analyst who analyzes analysts. ‘I’ve had a dozen people come to see me with the same sort of story,’ I told him. ‘They all come home in the evenings; and everything is different, or themselves are different; or they find that they are already there when they get there. What do you do when a dozen people come in with the same nonsense story, Dr. Diebel?’ I asked him.
“ ‘I don’t know, Corte,’ he said to me. ‘What do I do when one man comes in a dozen times with the same nonsense story, all within one hour, and he a doctor too?’ Dr. Diebel asked me.
“ ‘Why, Dr. Diebel?’ I asked. ‘What doctor came to you like that?’
“ ‘You,’ he said. ‘You’ve come in here twelve times in the last hour with the same dish of balderhash; you’ve come in each time looking a little bit different; and each time you act as if you hadn’t seen me for a month. Dammit, man,’ he said, ‘you must have passed yourself going out when you came in.’
“ ‘Yes, that was me, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘I was trying to think who he reminded me of. Well, it’s a problem, Dr. Diebel,’ I said. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
“ ‘I’m going to the analyst who analyzes the analysts who analyze the analysts,’ he said. ‘He’s tops in the field.’ Dr. Diebel rushed out then; and I came back to my office here. You came in just after that. I’m not the one to help you. But, Homer, we got to do something about that hole on the corner!”
“I don’t understand the bit about the hole, Doctor,” Homer said. “But—has a bunch of people been here with stories like mine?”
“Yes, every man in this block has been in with an idiot story, Homer, except—Why, everybody except old doubledomed Diogenes himself! Homer, that man who knows everything has a finger in this up to the humerus. I saw him up on the power poles the other night, but I didn’t think anything of it. He likes to tap the lines before they come to his meter. Saves a lot of power that way, and he uses a lot of it in his laboratory. But he was setting up the hole on the comer. That’s what he was doing. Let’s get him and bring him to your house and make him straighten it out.”
“Sure, a man who knows everything ought to know about a hole on the comer, Doctor. But I sure don’t see any hole anywhere on this comer.”
The man who knew everything was named Diogenes Pontifex. He lived next door to Homer Hoose, and they found him in his back yard wrestling with his anaconda.
“Diogenes, come over to Homer’s with us,” Dr. Corte insisted. “We’ve got a couple of questions that might be too much even for you.”
“You touch my pride there,” Diogenes sang out. “When psychologists start using psychology on you, it’s time to give in. Wait a minute till I pin this fellow.”
Diogenes put a chancery on the anaconda, punched the thing’s face a few times, then pinned it with a double bar-arm and body lock, and left it writhing there. He followed them into the house.
“Hi, Homer,” Diogenes said to Homer the monster when they had come into the house. “I see there’s two of you here at the same time now. No doubt that’s what’s puzzling you.”
“Dr. Corte, did Homer ask you if I could stop dreaming those pleasant dreams?” wife Regina asked. “I sure do get tired of them. I want to go back to the old flesh-crawlers.”
“You should be able to do so tonight, Regina,” said Dr. Corte. “Now then, I’m trying to bait Diogenes here into telling us what’s going on. I’m sure he knows. And if you would skip the first part, Diogenes, about all the other scientists in the world being like little boys alongside of you, it would speed things up. I believe that this is another of your experiments like—Oh no! Let’s not even think about the last one!
“Tell us, Diogenes, about the hole on the comer, and what falls through it. Tell us how some people come home two or three times within as many minutes, and find themselves already there when they get there. Tell us how a creature that staggers the imagination can seem so like an old acquaintance after a moment or two that one might not know which is which. I am not now sure which of these Homers it was who came to my office several moments ago, and with whom I returned to this house. They look just alike in one way, and in another they do not.”
“My Homer always was funny looking,” Regina said. “They appear quite different if you go by the visual index,” Diogenes explained. “But nobody goes by the visual index except momentarily. Our impression of a person or a thing is much more complex, and the visual element in our appraisal is small. Well, one of them is Homer in gestalt two, and the other is Homer in gestalt nine. But they are quite distinct. Don’t ever get the idea that such are the same persons. That would be silly.”
“And Lord spare us that!” said Homer the man. “All right, go into your act, Diogenes.”
“First, look at me closely, all of you,” Diogenes said.
“Handsome, what? But note my clothing and my complexion and my aspect.
‘Then to the explanations:
it begins with my Corollary to Phelan’s Corollary on Gravity. I take the opposite alternate of it. Phelan puzzled that gravity should be so weak on all worlds but one. He said that the gravity of that one remote world was typical, and that the gravity of all other worlds was atypical and the result of a mathematical error. But I, from the same data, deduce that the gravity of our own world is not too weak, but too strong. It is about a hundred times as strong as it should be.”
“What do you compare it to when you decide it is too strong?” Dr. Corte wanted to know.
“There’s nothing I can compare it to, Doctor. The gravity of every body that I am able to examine is from eighty to a hundred times too strong. There are two possible explanations: either my calculations of theories are somehow in error—unlikely—or there are, in every case, about a hundred bodies, solid and weighted, occupying the same place at the same time. Old Ice Cream Store Chairs! Tennis Shoes in October! The Smell of Slippery Elm! County-Fair Barkers with Warts on Their Noses! Horned Toads in June!”
“I was following you pretty good up to the Ice Cream Store Chairs,” said Homer the monster.
“Oh. I tied that part in, and the tennis shoes too,” said Homer the man. “I’m pretty good at following this cosmic theory business. What threw me was the slippery elm. I can’t see how it especially illustrates a contingent theory of gravity.”
‘The last part was an incantation,” said Diogenes. “Do you remark anything different about me now?”
“You’re wearing a different suit now, of course,” said Regina, “but there’s nothing remarkable about that. Lots of people change to different clothes in the evening.”
“You’re darker and stringier,” said Dr. Corte. “But I wouldn’t have noticed any change if you hadn’t told us to look for it. Actually, if I didn’t know that you were Diogenes, there wouldn’t be any sane way to identify Diogenes in you.
You don’t look a thing like you, but still I’d know you anywhere.”
“I was first a gestalt two. Now I’m a gestalt three for a while,” said Diogenes. “Well, first we have the true case that a hundred or so solid and weighty bodies are occupying the same space that our earth occupies, and at the same time. This in itself does violence to conventional physics. But now let us consider the characteristics of all these cohabiting bodies. Are they occupied and peopled? Will it then mean that a hundred or so persons are occupying at all times the same space that each person occupies? Might not this idea do violence to conventional psychology? Well, I have proved that there are at least eight other persons occupying the same space occupied by each of us, and I have scarcely begun proving. Stark White Sycamore Branches! New-Harrowed Earth! (New harrow, old earth.) Cow Dung Between Your Toes in July! Pitchers ’-Mound Clay in the Old Three-Eye League! Sparrow Hawks in August! ”