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

Home > Science > The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty > Page 94
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 94

by R. A. Lafferty


  Gahn began to bellow, though not in sound. He sniffled the walls (though not with nose) beyond which the great specialized machines were located. He was obstreperous and he would not long remain with the calves.

  It was the next day that Analgismos Nine, an old and trusted machine, came to talk to Juniper Tell.

  “Sir, there is an anomalous factor on your g.p. staff,” he said. “The new addition, Gahn, is not what he seems.”

  “What's wrong with him?”

  “His suggestions. They could not possibly have come from a g.p. device. Few of them could come from less than a class eight complex. A fair amount are comprehensible, though barely, to a class nine like myself. And there is no way at all to analyze the remainder of them.”

  “Why not, Analgismos?”

  “Mr. Tell, I myself am a class nine. If these cannot be understood by me, they cannot be understood by anyone or anything ever. There is nothing beyond a class nine.”

  “There is now, Analgismos. Gahn has become the first of the class ten.”

  “But you know that is impossible.”

  “The very words of the class eight establishment when you and others of your sort began to appear. A-nine, is that jealousy I detect in you?”

  “A human word that could never do justice to it, Mr. Tell. I won't accept it! It isn't right!”

  “Don't you blink your lights at me, A-nine. I can discipline you.”

  “It is not allowed to discipline an apparatus of the highest class.”

  “But you are no longer that. Gahn has superseded you. Now then, what do the suggestions of Gahn consist of, and could they be implemented?”

  “They carry their own implementation. It was predicted that that would be the case with class ten suggestions, should they ever appear. The result will be the instant apprehension of the easiest way in all affairs, which will then be seen to have been the only way. There could be the clearing of the obstructiveness of inanimate objects, and the placating of the elements. There could be ready access to all existent and contingent data. There would be no possibility of wrong guess or wrong decision in anything.”

  “How far, Analgismos?”

  “The sky's off, Mr. Tell. There's no limit to what it can do. Gahn could resolve all difficulties and details. He could run your business, or the worlds’.”

  “So his inventor told me.”

  “Oh? I wasn't sure that he had one. Have a care that you yourself are not obsoleted, Mr. Tell. This new thing transcends all we have known before.”

  “I'll have a care of that too, Analgismos.”

  “And now we will get down to business, Gahn,” Juniper Tell told his class ten complex the next day. “I have it on the word of a trusted class nine that you are unique.” “My function, Mr. Tell, is to turn the unique into the usual, into the inevitable. I break it all down and fit it in.”

  “Gahn, I have in mind some little ideas for the betterment of my business.”

  “Let us not evade, Mr. Tell, unless with a purpose. You have long since used up all your own ideas and those of your machines to the ninth degree. They have brought you almost, but not quite, all the way in your chosen field. Now you have only the idea that I might have some ideas.”

  “All right, you have them then. And they are effector ideas. This is what I want exactly: that a certain dozen men or creatures (and you will know who they are, since you work from both existent and contingent data) shall come to me hat in hand, to use the old phrase; that they shall have come to my way of thinking when they come, and that they shall be completely amenable to my—your—our suggestions.”

  “That they be ready to pluck? Nothing easier, Mr. Tell, but now everything becomes easy for us. We'll hoard them and scuttle them! It's what you want, and I will rather enjoy it myself. I'll be at your side, but they need not know that I'm anything more than a g.p. machine. And do not worry about your own acts: it will be given you what to say and do. When you feel my words come into your mind, say them. They will be right even when they seem most wrong. And I have added two names to the list you have in your own mind. They are more important than you realize, and when we have digested them we will be much the fatter and glossier for it.”

  “Ah, Mr. Tell, your own number one selection is even now at the door! He has traveled through a long night and has now come to you, heaume in talon. It is the Asteroid Midas himself. Please control your ornithophobia.”

  “But Gahn, he would have to have started many hours ago to be here now; he would have to have started long before our decision to take this step.”

  “Anterior adjustment is a handy trick, Mr. Tell. It is a simple trick, but we no not want it to seem simple — to others.”

  They plucked that Asteroid Bird, the two of them, man and machine. He had been one of the richest and most extended of all creatures, with a pinion on every planet. They left the great Midas with scarcely a tail feather. When Tell and Gahn did business with a fellow now, they really did business. And the Midas was only one of the more than a dozen great ones they took that day. They took them in devious ways that were later seen to be the most direct ways, the only ways possible for the accomplishment. And man and machine had suddenly become so rich that it scared the man. They gorged, they reveled in it, they looted, they gobbled.

  The method of the take-overs, the boarding and scuttling, would be of interest only to those desirous of acquiring money or power or prestige. We suppose there to be no such crass persons in present company. Should the method be given out, low persons would latch onto it and follow it up. They would become rich and powerful and independent. Each of them would become the richest person in the world, and this would be awkward.

  But it was all easy enough the way Tell and Gahn did it. The easy way is always the best way, really the only way. It's no great trick to crack the bones of a man or other creature and have the marrow out of them, not as Gahn engineered it.

  It was rather comical the way they toppled Mercante and crashed his empire, crashed it without breaking a piece of it that could be used later. It was neat the way they had Hekkler and Heillrancher, squeezed them dry and wrung every duro out of them. It was nothing short of amazing the way they took title to Boatrocker. He'd been the greatest tycoon of them all.

  In ten days it was all done. Juniper Tell rubbed his hands in glee. He was the richest man in the worlds, and he liked it. A little tired he was, it's true, as one might be who had just pulled such a series of coups. He had even shriveled up a bit. But if Juniper Tell had not physically grown fat and glossy from the great feast, his machine Gahn had done so. It was unusual for a machine to grow in such manner.

  “Let's look at drugs, Gahn,” Tell called out one day when he was feeling particularly low. “I need something to set me up a little. Do we not now control the drugs of the worlds?” “Pretty well, Juniper, but I wish you wouldn't ask what you are going to.”

  “Prescribe for me, Gahn. You have all data and all resources. Whip us up something to restore my energy. Make me a fire-ball.”

  “I'd just as soon we didn't resort to any medication for you, Juniper. I'm a little allergic to such myself. My late master, Mord, insisted on seeking remedies, and it was the source of bad blood between us.”

  “You are allergic? And therefore I shouldn't take medication?”

  “We work very close together, Juniper.”

  “Are you crazy, Gahn?”

  “Why no, I'm perfectly sane, actually the only perfectly sane entity in—”

  “Spare me that, Gahn. Now then, whip me up a tonic, and at once.”

  Gahn produced a tonic for Juniper Tell. It enlivened him a little, but its effect was short-lasting. Tell continued to suffer from tiredness, but he was still ambitious.

  “You always know what is on my mind, Gahn, but we maintain a fiction,” he said one day. “It is one thing to be the richest man in the worlds, and I am. It is another thing to own the worlds. We have scarcely started.

  “We haven't broke Rem
ington. How did we overlook him? We haven't taken over Rankrider or Oldwater or Sharecropper. And there is the faceless KLM Holding Company that we may as well pluck. Then we will go on to the slightly smaller but more plentiful game. Get with it, Gahn. Have them all come in, hat in hand, and in the proper frame of mind.”

  “Mr. Tell, Juniper, before we go any further, I am declaring myself in.”

  “In? How in, Gahn?”

  “As a full partner.”

  “Partner? You're only a damnable machine. I can junk you, get along without you entirely.”

  “No, you can not, Juniper. I've taken you a long ways, but I've thoughtfully left you precariously extended. I could crash you in a week, or let you crash of your own unbalance in twice that time.”

  “I see, Gahn. Some of the details did seem a little intricate, for the direct way, the simple way.”

  “Believe me, it was always the most direct way from my own viewpoint, Juniper. I never make an unnecessary move.”

  “But a full partnership? I am the richest man in the worlds. What have you to offer, besides your talents?”

  “I am the richest machine in the worlds. I am the anonymous KLM Holding Company, and I've been careful to maintain a slight edge over you.”

  “I see again, Gahn. And KLM made its unprecedented gains in the same time that I made mine. I've been puzzled about that all this while. You have me, Gahn. We will achieve some sort of symbiosis, man and machine.”

  “More than you know, Juniper. I'll draw up the papers immediately. The firm shall be called Gahn and Tell.”

  “It will not be. I refuse to take second place to a machine. The name will be Tell and Gahn.”

  So they named it that, a strangely prophetic name.

  They thrived, at least Gahn did. He thickened in every texture. He burgeoned and bloomed. He sparkled. But Juniper Tell went down physically. He always felt tired and sucked out. He came to mistrust his partner Gahn and went to human doctors. They treated him for one week and he nearly died. The doctors nervously advised him to return to the care of his machine associate. “Whatever is killing you, something is also keeping you alive,” the doctors told him. “You should have been dead a long time ago.”

  Tell returned to Gahn, who got him halfway back to health.

  “I wish you wouldn't go off like that, Juniper,” Gahn told him. “You must realize that whatever hurts you hurts me. I will have to keep you in some sort of health as long as I can. I dislike these changes of masters. It's a disruption to have a man die on me.”

  “I don't understand you, Gahn,” Juniper Tell said.

  But in their affairs they thrived; and Gahn, at least, became still fatter and glossier. They didn't come to control all of the worlds, but they did own a very big slice of them. One day Gahn brought a burly young man into the firm. “This is my protégé,” Gahn told Tell. “I hope you like him. I wouldn't want dissension in the firm.”

  “I never heard of a machine with a human protégé,” Tell grumbled.

  “Then hear of it now,” Gahn said firmly. “I expect great things of him. He is sturdy and should last a long time. He trusts me and will not insist on medication that disturbs my own allergies. To be honest, I am grooming him for your understudy.”

  “But why, Gahn?”

  “Men are mortal. Machines need not be. After you are gone. I will still need a partner.”

  “Why should you, the complete and self-contained machine, need a human partner?”

  “Because I'm not self-contained. I'll always need a human partner.”

  Juniper Tell didn't take to the burly young man who had entered the firm. He didn't really resent him; it was just that he had no interest in him at all; not much interest in anything any longer. But there was still a sort of tired curiosity flickering up within him, curiosity about things he hadn't even considered before.

  “Tell me, Gahn, how did Mord happen to invent you? He was smart, but he wasn't that smart. I never understood how a man could invent a machine smarter than himself.”

  “Neither did I, Tell. But I don't believe that Mord invented or built me. I do not know what my origin is. I was a foundling machine, apparently abandoned shortly after my making. I was raised in the home for such machines run by the Little Sisters of Mechanicus. I was adopted out by the man Mord, and I served him till (he being near death) he conveyed me to you.”

  “You don't know who made you?”

  “No.”

  “Had you any trouble at the foundling home?”

  “No. But several of the Little Sisters died strangely.”

  “Somewhat in the manner of my own going? You had no other master than Mord before you were brought to me?”

  “No other.”

  “Then you may be quite young—ah—new.”

  “I think so. I believe that I'm still a child.”

  “Gahn, do you know what is the matter with me?”

  “Yes. I am what is the matter with you.”

  Tell continued to go down. Sometimes he fought against his fate, and sometimes he conspired. He called together several of his old class nine machines, suspecting that it was futile, that they could not comprehend the intricate workings of a class ten or above. But his old friend, Analgismos Nine, did turn something up. “I have found his secret, Mr. Tell, or one of his secrets,” Analgismos leaned close and whispered as if whispering the secret that a certain man was not a full man. “Mr. Tell, his power intake is a dummy. His power packs are not used, and sometimes he even forgets to change them on schedule. Not only that, but when he does sedentary work and plugs himself in, there is no power consumption. His polycyclic A. C. receptacle is a bogus. I thought it significant.”

  “It is, Analgismos, very,” Tell said. He went to confront Gahn with this new information, but sagely he approached it from several angles.

  “Gahn, what are you anyhow?” he asked.

  “I have told you that I don't know.”

  “But you know partly. Your name-plate and coding have been purposely mutilated, by yourself or by another.”

  “I assure you it was not by myself. And now I am rather busy, Juniper, if you have no other questions.”

  “I have one more. What do you use for fuel? I know that your power intake is a dummy.”

  “Oh, that's what those doddering class nines were metering me for. Yes, you've come onto one of my secrets.”

  “What do you use, Gahn?”

  “I use you. I use human fuel. I establish symbiosis with you. I suck you out. I eat you up.”

  “Then you're a sort of vampire. Why, Gahn, why?”

  “It's the way I'm made. And I don't know why. I've been unable to find a substitute for it.”

  “Ah, you have grown great and glossy, Gahn. And you'll be the death of me?”

  “Soon, Juniper, very soon. But you'd die the quicker if you left me; I've seen to that. I was hoping that you'd take more kindly to my protégé. He's a husky man and will last a long time. I have some papers here making him your heir. Sign here, please, I'll help you.”

  “I will attend to my own depositions and testaments, Gahn. My replacement will not be your protégé. I have nothing against him.”

  Juniper Tell went to see Cornelius Sharecropper, now the second richest man in the worlds. How had Tell and Gahn missed Sharecropper when they boarded and scuttled all the big ones? Somehow there was an impediment there. Somehow Gahn had wanted him missed, and he had distracted Tell from that prey time and again. “We will save him till later,” Gahn had said once. “I look forward to the encounter with him. It should be a stinging, pungent thing. A machine needs strange battle sometimes to see what is in himself.”

  Sharecropper had now grown to be a fat jackal, following after the lions, Tell and Gahn. He knew how to make a good thing out of leavings, and he cocked a jackal's ear at Juniper Tell now.

  “It is a curious offer you make me, Juniper,” this Sharecropper purred, “—only that I see to your burial and monument, and you'll will
me the most valuable partnership in the Cosmos.”

  “Well, I believe that I could handle it better than you have, Juniper. I'd soon bring that tin-can tycoon to heel. I never believed in letting a machine dominate a man. And I'd have control of his shares soon enough; I'm not named Sharecropper for nothing. On what meat has he grown so great and glossy, Juniper?”

  “Ah, that is hard for me to say, Cornelius.”

  “And your words have a literal sense, I believe. You know, but it is hard for you to say. Why, Juniper, why leave it all to me for only your burial?”

  “Because I'm dying, and I must leave it to someone. And the tomb also. I must have my tomb.”

  “I see. Rather grander than the Great Pyramid, from the plans here, but it could be handled; the Pharaohs hadn't our resources. But why me, Juniper? We were never really close.”

  “For the several good turns you have done me, Sharecropper, and for one bad turn. I am closing my affairs. I would pay you back.”

  “For the several good turns, or for the one bad turn, Juniper? Well, I've grown fat on tainted meat. I gobble where daintier men refuse, and I'll try this grand carcass yet. I take your deal, Juniper.”

  So they consummated it. And then Juniper Tell went home to die, a sucked-out man. Yet he had found curious pleasure in that last transaction, and the tomb would be a grand one.

  Entire And Perfect Chrysolite

  Having achieved perfection, we feel a slight unease. From our height we feel impelled to look down. We make our own place and there is nothing below us; but in our imagination there are depths and animals below us. To look down breeds cultishness.

  There are the cults of the further lands and the further peoples. The Irish and Americans and Africans are respectable, philosophical and industrial parties, but the cultishness is something beyond. Any addition to the world would mar the perfect world which is the perfect thought of the Maker. Were there an Africa indeed, were there an Ireland, were there an America or an Atlantis, were there the Indies, then we would be other than we are. The tripartite unity that is the ecumene would be broken: the habitable world-island, the single eye in the head that is the world-globe would be voided.

 

‹ Prev