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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Thomas, what a fund of deep drollery you have! My fit of depression is all but gone. But seriously, Castlereagh, what is this business about Doctor Forester? He must be unbalanced. You mean he has actually threatened you?”

  “Forester has done a little work in emanations himself. I went to him for a skin rash, and he discovered parts of my device embedded under my hide. He caught on pretty fast. He learned that my projected personality was an artificial one. He learned a few other things as soon as he started thinking. Now he says he's going to kill me. I've been fooling around with his wife pretty seriously, you know.”

  “You and Maisie? Oh, that is the joke of all jokes. For a moment I thought that you were serious.”

  “I am. Madigan, if a man says he will kill me, then that man is already dead. If I have any talent at all it is for anticipating an event. The murder of Doctor Forester in this present month will be a curious one, and it will reach to the level of your own office; but you will not be there for it. It will be a crude one. I always kill crudely. James, I talk and talk, but you have no ears for what I say.”

  “No ears for your humor, Castlereagh? I haven't enjoyed anything so much in months. I am rejuvenated and recharged. Thomas, come to the high point of it! What is your ‘Wonderful Invention’?”

  “Wait, James, I must make a phone call. And then I must mix for you a special brandy.” And Thomas Castlereagh went to do so. He returned after a short interval. He gave Madigan the brandy.

  “And what did you add to my brandy to make it special, Thomas?” Madigan asked.

  “Oh, the oldest venom of all, conium maculatum. It goes well with all wines and brandies. Strikes direct to the heart. Taste it and thank me for it.”

  “I taste it I thank you for it,” said Madigan.

  “Thank me that I have spared you the burnt almond taste, at least. I hate such clichés in poisonings. Ah, the marvelous invention? It is simply the Aura Machine. I was fooling around with electronics which I luckily misunderstood. And I was studying bodily emanations and auras as the expression of personality. I stumbled on a way of modifying my own aura. “I found that the aura, and its great effect upon the ambient, were really very simple things that might be simply reproduced. Those who speak of personal magnetism are correct. There is a strong magnetic element; also a strong element of the electrical corona effect; and there is another emanation that works on the subliminal sense of smell. Quite simply, I could make my own aura! I could make it to project any personality and appearance that I wished for myself… I made to project the personality and appearance of Respectability, Distinction, and Utter Rectitude. I fabricated such an artificial personality for myself that nobody, under any conditions but the most fantastic, would ever be able to believe any evil of me.

  “Could such a simple thing work, James? It could. A duck call is a simple device, and a duck is a complex one. Yet a duck will be fooled by a duck-call sounded by a man. A duck will even come to the artificial call in preference to the real, if the artificial is made with sufficient care. I employed all the art I was capable of in making my own device; and mostly it has sufficed.

  “It didn't take much: a subcutaneous device which I inserted myself; a selenium plate set into my head by a quack butcher; an apparatus embedded in my throat to give my voice what I wanted; a power pack; a harmonic booster. I tried it on my lowest day, as I have told you, and it worked. At first I was a little afraid of overdoing it. Then I discovered that there is no way of overdoing the respectability bit. People saw my face, not as it was, but as a respectable one. I became the man who could do no wrong. It was a grand trick, and I worked it down to the nub.”

  “Thomas, you slay me!”

  “True. You finally understand. No, you do not. We both forget that I have no humor. Madigan, my device was so good that it could even fool an ordinary camera. However, I devised a camera with an astatic filter that cuts the emanating aura. It's good for a man to remember sometimes what he really looks like. I still have the face of a fox-faced sneak.”

  Madigan's chuckle had become like an earth-wave. “It's like something out of those odd little magazines with the surrealistic covers, Thomas. Have you ensured that your—ah—marvelous invention will not die with you?”

  “Sure. I've willed the secret to a small group of cutthroats sometimes in my employ. Their looks are against them. They remind me of me. They need it. And when I am gone, they will carry on the evil work that is so close to my heart.”

  “What a wonderful man you are,” said James Madigan. “From what deep well do you draw your flowing humor. Thomas, I feel giddy! I'm suddenly ill. Call my man for me. I may not be able to get home alone.”

  “I did call your man, James, just before I poisoned you, and told him that you were dying. He'll be here shortly. I had to tell my story to someone, and I could not let that someone live if he believed it. And after all, who will suspect me of poisoning you, just because we were drinking together with no one else present when you were given the needled brandy? My thing will hold. It will be another of those most baffling crimes ever.”

  “Ah, your wonderful humor, Thomas! But I am quite sick.”

  “Dying, I tell you. Dammit, man, can't you get it through your head that you're dying before you die? I want you to believe me! It's less fun when you don't believe me. James, I kill you! Act like a man being killed!”

  “You are such a wonderful man, Castlereagh. If I am somehow called away, and it seems that I am, I'll miss you woefully.”

  “Believe me that I kill you, Madigan! It's no fun if you don't believe.”

  But James Madigan died with a blissful smile, happy in the presence of his golden-hearted friend. It was enough in life to have known him.

  “I had better take the other one tonight also, and have it done,” Thomas told himself. The fox-face flickered there for a brief instant, as it sometimes did when he was alone. “And then I'll turn it up as far as it will go, and damn the headaches. This one will take everything I've got.” These were two of the most mysterious murders ever. The poisoning of Madigan was clearly murder; and the bloody bludgeoning of Doctor Forester could have been nothing else. And yet they seemed impossible of solution. There was no clue. No nothing.

  The drink of Madigan had been poisoned, that of Castlereagh had not been. And yet they had been together for the long evening, and no one had intruded. And the affair of Doctor Forester was truly weird. Thomas Castlereagh, taken by a strong premonition, had gone to the home of his close friend the doctor and been admitted. Something happened then, a thing so shocking that Castlereagh does not retain the memory of it. From his attempt to intervene, apparently, he was covered with the doctor's death blood, and he held the death weapon in his own august hands. Whatever fell intruder did the thing remains a mystery.

  These foul murders cry to Heaven for vengeance, but we of Earth are baffled when we try to answer that cry. All is riddle.

  A certain commentator best encapsuled the feelings of us: “The sympathy of the nation and the whole world goes to Thomas Castlereagh. So great and good a man, and he suffered such sorrows in the past! And now to be deprived of his two closest friends in a single night! The heart groans.”

  McGruder's Marvels

  There were four bids, and there should have been only three. Only three firms in the country were capable of making so miniaturized a control station. Three bids were in quite heavy packets. The fourth was in a slim envelope. This was Opening INV-3MINCON3999.

  “Ah, here are the bids from Micro Machinists Amalgamated, from Intensive Instrumentation, and from DOW-MEC-TEC,” said Colonel Ludenschlager. “It isn't likely that any of them will be less than two years, and we need it within two weeks. We are whipped before we start!” He struck the table with a ringing thud. “But what is the anomalous intrusion, the small envelope bid, Dinneen?”

  “It's from an M. M. McGruder,” said Colonel Dinneen. “The second M is in quotation marks. We may have a case for the prosecution here. The
Joker Act was set up for just such stuff as this. There has to be a ceiling put on cranks.”

  “There was a certain McGruder in Manhattan when I was a boy,” Colonel Schachmeister smiled. “I spent many pleasant moments in his, ah, Hippodrome, I believe he called it. It was a narrow place off a narrow cigar store, and only about three could get in at one time, if they were small, and we were. Best show I over saw for a dim, though. What is the address of this one?”

  “Here in D. C.,” said Dinneen. “It would be a rundown address even without the ending ‘Apt. 3, room 4-E, use cellar steps off small alley.’ Some address! And the phone number of the Rowdy-Dow Bar and Grill is given. It's written in an old and probably insane hand. We will prosecute with compassion, possibly.”

  The chime chimed for 9:30. It was opening time. And they opened the bids.

  They quickly made the basic résumé:

  1. Micro Machinists Amalgamated. Basic Module: $2,106,740.00. Estimated Time: 25 months. Exceptions and Alternatives: 256 (detailed). Follow-Up Units: $260,000.00 ea. Estimated Time: 30 days each for first 6, grading down to 21 days each for additional.

  2. Intensive Instrumentation. Basic Module: $2,004,000.00. Estimated Time: 721 days. Exceptions and Alternatives: 228 (detailed). The Follow-Up Units: $248,000.00 ea. Estimated Time: 28 days each for first 4, 19 days each for additional.

  3. Dow-Mec-Tech. Basic Module: $1,999,999.98. Estimated Time: months. Exceptions and Alternatives: 204 (detailed). Follow-up Units: $235,000.00 ea. Estimated Time: 21 days each for first 9, 16 days each for additional.

  4. M.’ M.’ McGruder. Basic Module: $24.00. Estimated Time: 24 hours. Exceptions and Alternatives: none (undetailed). Follow-Up Units: $24 ea. Estimated Time: 24 hours each — “this keeps going on as long as I live or as long as you buy them, whichever is first. Note: Got one made already. Come try it. I need the $24.00. I don't see how anybody can make them cheaper than this.”

  “We run into the impossible,” said Ludenschlager sadly. “We need one within two weeks or we may as well forget the program. And if we forget the program, we may as well forget everything. It is not for personal aggrandizement that we seek this (except for Dinneen a little), but for the good of our country and the world. There has to be a way out of this delay.”

  “How about McGruder?” Schachmeister laughed sourly.

  “Oh, we'll prosecute him under the Joker Act, of course,” Lodenschlager growled, “but now we have the taller thing to tackle. We have to find the way. Two years will be too late; we'll be done for by then. Two weeks will almost be too late. We must somehow break the time barrier in this.”

  “We're whipped, we're whipped!” Dinneen wailed, “and our enemies will rejoice over us.” He turned on three toes and strode gloomily out of the room.

  “The Covenant,” it said. “Large, hard-roasted, de-oiled, white peanuts under the Goober John trade name. Three a day, and they must be Goober John Number Ones. Failure to provide them will void the Covenant.” “There will be no failure,” said Malcomb ‘the Marvelous’ McGruder. “It shall be done.”

  “We like-stuff pledge fulfill the Covenant,” it said.

  The micro-miniaturized control station, the “bullet brain”, had to handle thirteen data flows at once. It had to do other things, including the monitoring and inhibiting of the world. It must be practically indestructible. And it had to be about the size of an eraser on a pencil. This small size was of the greatest importance. The smallest model of this which would handle such data properly was about a cubic meter, and it weighed a thousand kilograms. And it was itself a miniaturization.

  The project is still classified, so we cannot in conscience give deep details of it. The project is still active, and perhaps an answer can be found for it this second time. Ah well, we lost the first race, and the most populous one-third of our nation; but we lost it hard. We had them near beaten for a little while there. Another year, and DOW-MEC-TEC will have their first module ready. It will probably be far too late, it will likely do no good at all, but you never know. The slimmest hope remains…

  But now they were looking very hard for that answer the first time: the three colonels, the High Commission of the colonels, the potential saviors of their country and the world. It was not for personal glory they sought this (except Dinneen a little) but for the ultimate good of the ultimate number.

  Colonel Dinneen strode up and down endless corridors, booming like a canary in his odd voice. He didn't want the thing in two years, he wanted it in two minutes, right now.

  Colonel Ludenschlager shuffled old brain-buster notes looking for a miracle. He had an impediment there; he didn't believe in miracles.

  Colonel Schachmeister walked desolately through the city, praying for the instant miniaturized control station. He walked and walked; but where did he walk?

  “It is my unconscious leading me somewhere,” he mumbled. “And I will flow my unconscious wherever it leads, like a man in a dream.”

  That Schachmeister was an unconscious phony. It wasn't his unconscious leading him anywhere! It was his conniving own self walking furtively where his own dishonesty would not allow him to walk openly. And he had that address graven on his brain by a micro-stylus.

  There was something about a three-foot-wide Hippodrome from his boyhood; there was something of the credence in the incredible: and both these things were shameful to him as a man of science, and a colonel moreover.

  Well, it was a shabby enough neighborhood. The alley was worse, and yet even this was not the final alley. He found it then, the “small alley”, hardly a skunk track. He followed it. He knocked crunchingly on a door and near lost his hand in the termite-eaten wood.

  “Be careful there!” an ancient voice blatted out like slats falling down in an old bed. “Those are friends of my own people, and my people will not have them discommoded. After all, they are quiet, they do no harm, and they eat only wood.”

  “It — it's the same McGruder! It is Malcomb ‘the Marvelous’ McGruder himself, the Grand Master of McGruder's Marvels!” Colonel Schachmeister detonated in wonder.

  “Oh sure, little boy,” came the wonderful voice like an old organ filling with noise again and blowing the dust off itself in doing so. “And it's the same little Heinie Schachmeister! Why aren't you in school today, Heinie? Oh, I notice that you have grown, and perhaps you are too old for school now.”

  “It's marvelous to see you again, Marvelous!” Schachmeister breathed in awe. “I had no idea that you were the same one, or that you were still alive.”

  “Come in, little Heinie. And what are you doing? I have never seen your name in the Flea-Bag, so I suppose you have failed in your early ambition.”

  “Ah, McGruder, I don't know what the Flea-Bag is, and I forget what early ambition of mine you refer to.”

  “The Flea-Bag, Heinie, is a mimeographed sheet that still circulates among the members of our dwindling profession. And your early ambition was to grow up and have fleas of your own.”

  “Wish I had done it, McGruder, wish I had done it, especially on days like this. Some of my happiest hours were spent watching McGruder's Marvels, that greatest of all Flea Circuses, in that little hole in the wall.”

  “In the Hippodrome, you mean, Heinie? Do you remember the Coachman Set?”

  “Yes, yes, and the flea up on the coachman's seat, in livery, and with the whip! McGruder, when you screwed the three sections of the microscope together, you could see the very braiding of that coachman's whip. And the flea in harness! The harness was perfect, and had little bells on it. The bells had clappers, and you could hear them jingle when you screwed that little thing into your ear. And the flea in harness was shod, with real horse-shoes, or flea-shoes.”

  “More, Heinie, more! The shoes had authentic calks on them, and nails! And the nails were of no ordinary sort, but were ancient horseshoe nails with the oblong wedge-shaped heads. You could see that when you screwed the fourth section into the microscope. And you remember the lady fleas insid
e the coach, Heinie?”

  “Yes, yes, dressed in old Empire style with the high hair on them, and the flounce stuff. And when you screwed the little thing into your nose you could smell their perfume. What was it, McGruder?”

  “Printemps. And you may not know it, but there were eight petticoats on each of those lady fleas, and the microscopic lace on even the inmost of them was done with loving care and surpassing detail, more than the nine hundred loops on the bottom round in the style that is called punto a groppo. Your eyes used to boggle at my little things, little Heinie.”

  “My mind boggles at something now. That was forty years ago. McGruder, I know you were good, but this passes reason! You still have your little lathes and turners and instruments here, but you did not make a miniaturized control station with such!”

  “Of course not, Heinie. The detailing for the little control station had to be a thousand times finer, actually eight thousand times finer, than anything I could do on my little lathes. I'm surprised you could ask such a silly question, Heinie.”

  “Is that the control station there, Marvelous?”

  “That's it, Heinie. Take it along and try and send me the twenty-four dollars if it works. I'll have another one this time tomorrow if you wish. It's nice to have seen you. I'm always happy when the little boys come back to see me again.”

  The Marvelous McGruder still had a certain threadbare elegance about him.

  “McGruder, how did you make the control station?”

  “Trade secret, Heinie. You remember my patter. Everything was always a trade secret.”

  “McGruder, I'm going to ask you the silliest question I've every asked anyone in my life. Did your fleas, somehow, manufacture the thing?”

  “Certainly not, Heinie! What's the matter with you anyhow? What do they make the colonels out of nowadays? No wonder we're in trouble! You know how hard it is to get fleas to wear clothes even for a few seconds? You know how hard it is to teach them even the most simple trick? Heinie, fleas are stupid, and so are you! No, I will settle that. Fleas did not, in any way at all, have anything to do with making that miniature control station. I didn't have much to do with it myself. Subcontracted it, really. No, I will not give you any more information about it. Take it and try it. Bring me the twenty-four dollars if you are satisfied. And now you had better get along or your keiferin of a mother will be after me for letting you loiter so long in my place. Oh, I forgot! You're a big boy now.”