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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Oh, I'll call it Jubilee,” George Ruil said.

  “A thing named Jubilee back when the world was young, when men were not quite men yet?” Romer questioned.

  “The world was older then,” Ruil offered. “It grows younger all the time, as any geologist can tell you; it sloughs off its old incrustations. And men were always men.”

  “Let us not get into your prejudices on that, George,” Ralph Amerce begged. “But you really don't give us anything to look at or handle. What was Jubilee?”

  “It was as strong an urge as that to propagate, as strong as that to survive,” Ruil offered. “It was and is a cyclic necessity. Can we be true people without it?”

  “We were animals when we had it, if we had it,” Amerce said. “Yes, we can be, and we are now, true people without it. It's only one of your odd little theories, George. If such things once happened, why then they happened. But they had no real purpose.”

  “Only to renew the world and everything that moves upon it,” George Ruil maintained, “only to provide impregnation and contrast and culture and moment. How will we be renewed now? What will provide these things for the world today?”

  “We do quite well now, George,” Romer said, “better, I believe, than when we lived in trees and swamps and caves. I wouldn't change anything of it now, George, even if I could.”

  “I'd change a lot of things of it now, if I could,” Amerce smiled. “But it was no more than a curious cyclic thing, George, and it is finished forever.”

  “A man would be foolish to say that about the years, Ralph, especially to say in the twelfth month of the year that the cycle of the years was finished forever. I believe that this cycle also begins to come around now.”

  “What's the worry, George?” Romer asked. “It will be the matter of some thousands of years. If we do see the signs of it, we will not be here to see the thing itself.”

  “No, it is not the matter of some thousands of years,” Ruil contradicted. “The effects and the readjustments may take several thousand years, but the Jubilee itself is one day. One day only, friends. The nervousness before it may be of some hundred or two hundred years, the early skirmishing may be of a month or so, but the Jubilee itself is in one day. Today (I have just learned it myself) is the day.”

  “Have you anything at all to go on, George?” Wilburton Romer asked him.

  “Only a timetable of my own construction, contradictory in many places, full of gaps everywhere. An old prophecy ‘That no creature on earth will sleep tonight where he slept last night.’ The fact of a certain uneasiness in the world for the last two hundred years. Has anyone else noticed that? And a hunch; a hunch, men, almost as strong, I believe, as the thing itself was, will be.”

  “And what will you do with your little hunch, George?” Ralph Amerce asked him out of that pleasantly ironic face. “I guess I should take it to the president. He should be advised of a thing like this.”

  —Three learned men in the academic center of a learned metropolis, talking about a thing that hadn't happened in the last three thousand years, maybe not in the last thirty thousand years, that perhaps had never happened at all, that had left none but very dim and confused footprints if it did happen.

  And one of them was going to the president to tell him that the thing was urgent.

  And there had been some early skirmishing, though of less than a month. It had been time for the bears of Crater Valley to find themselves burrows and hibernate. They didn't do it, though. Instead, they gathered together, the three hundred of them from the three thousand square miles of the valley; they climbed the south ridge of the valley, they went over it and continued to the south. Nobody had ever seen three hundred bears traveling together like that. But now a forest ranger saw them come out of the valley, and another ranger saw them a hundred miles further south, still going rapidly and happily. So the event was reported.

  Red squirrels of the northern part of the country moved down into the territory of the gray squirrels of the south. It was no great thing, only three or four million squirrels. The larger gray squirrels did not oppose the red squirrels, they began to pack their own belongings to move out of their way. They were very slightly grumpy about it as if to say, “We're going, we're going, but aren't you just a little bit early with it?” Radio astronomers had reported that there had been, only last night, a break in the pervading sky harmony (which the radio astronomers do not refer to as the Music of the Spheres), that there had been a very intense high-pitched signal (“Like a whistle in the break in the music, the everybody-change-partners whistle in a country dance, the everybody-change-chairs whistle in Musical Chairs,” one of the astronomical assistants said), and that now there was pause with the sky harmony greatly muted.

  And another bit of early skirmishing, less than a month a-going, twenty-seven days in fact: Charles Malaga was sweating as fry-cook in a little café in Aloalo on a mid-Pacific island, and his friend Johnny Ofutino was eating fish of his fry.

  “Somebody has to go first,” Johnny Ofutino said. “The ray-fish went this morning, the turtles are going to start this evening. What's the matter with people?”

  “I don't know, Johnny, what's the matter with us?” Charley Malaga asked.

  “Somebody has to go first,” Johnny Ofutino still insisted. “Let's us go first, and then some of the rest will follow along.”

  “All right, wait'll I turn the fires off,” Charley Malaga said.

  “No, turn them way up,” Johnny Ofutino told him. “Throw stuff on the fires. Burn the café down.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  They burned the café down and went out and launched a fishing boat that had paddles and a half-sail. The sea was running right for them, as they knew it would be. They went all that day and that night. In the morning a small engine-ship came by with half a dozen such small boats in tow. Men threw them a line from the ship, and Charley and Johnny also went into easy tow.

  About eight hundred other such assemblages were afloat by the second day. It wasn't a very long voyage: they had taken voyages twice as long in their earlier days. It didn't take them much time, even under such small engines: twenty-seven days. So they came to a pleasant land and landed.

  The Polynesians had finally discovered America. But their arrival caused only a small flurry of interest. Several dozen of these same Polynesians had been to America before; but if you consider that as an obstacle, then you do not understand the meaning of discovery.

  Pacific ocean fish and cetaceans were crowded up at the Pacific end of the canal. Some of them seemed to be in a chomping hurry. Most of these had been able to get through the canal for several days, but now many more had crowded up at the Pacific end. And very many more were going around the Horn. There was no good reason for it. The Atlantic was not that much better an ocean than the Pacific. But there comes a time when it seems as if you have lived in one place long enough. It was just that the fish and cetaceans and shelleys and sea-stars felt that it was time to make a change.

  “Did you get to make an appointment with the president, George?” Wilburton Romer asked as George Ruil returned to them. “No need for an appointment now,” Ruil said. “They seem pretty informal there today and I got the president himself on the phone while he was having breakfast. I'm not sure that I got my message over to him, but something is moving with them there and I don't believe it matters whether he understood me exactly. I don't understand it exactly myself. ‘I believe you are absolutely right,’ the president told me. ‘I believe that everyone is absolutely right. And we are going to do something. I believe that we are all going to get in a plane. They are making a big plane ready now. It will hold nine hundred persons. I will get in it with the congresses and we will go somewhere. We aren't decided yet whether we should blow up all the buildings here when we leave. There are dissidents who say that we should not.’ ‘Where will you go in the plane, Mr. President?’ I asked him. ‘I am not sure about that,’ he said. ‘Is it important which way a
plane goes? There are several dissidents who see no reason to get on a plane and go somewhere today. There are always dissidents in government. They say that nothing has happened. I tell them that if all of us get on a plane and go somewhere that that will be something happening. It is possible that the pilot will know where the plane is going. If he does not know then perhaps someone will instruct him.’ That is what the president said. He didn't seem to be his usual incisive self this morning.”

  “Curious,” said Ralph Amerce. “I don't seem to be my usual incisive self this morning either. You really believe, George, that there is a catastrophe brewing?”

  “No, man, no! Does Jubilee sound like catastrophe to you? How could anyone misunderstand it so? It is the adjustment of the whole world. Oh, there will be what in other circumstances would be called destruction, but we will not call it that. Certain mountains will decide that they have been in one place long enough, and they will get up and walk. Why should the mountains be denied this pleasure? Is there not in scripture the passage about the hills gamboling like lambs? The ice, perhaps, will decide that it has been in bondage for too long a time and it will explode gloriously over great areas. Possibly the magnetism of the earth will be reversed; we know that that has happened before. How would you feel if you had been named North for a million years? And assuredly the fountains of the deep will be broken open. Some millions of persons will die, I'm sure: I am even more sure that they will die joyously. Get into the spirit of it, men.”

  “To me the spirit of it is a lazy and peaceful one, George,” Wilburton Romer yawned. “Though the rational part of me says that nothing at all has happened, nevertheless I now accept that the renovation is about to happen. Will we keep our same names, do you think?”

  “Oh no, I'm sure we will not,” Amerce declared, himself getting into the spirit of it. “Why should we keep our same names? Why, there have been echoes of this all through plain historical times, George, and we all too deaf to hear them. The sober accounts of Velikovsky and Wesley Patten and Father O'Connell have been treated as if they were subject to doubt. Even the Fortean documentaries have been laughed away as if they were—well—Fortean. But I see pieces of it everywhere now. The folk-wanderings themselves were only aftermath to such a Jubilee. The simultaneous conflagrations all through the archaic civilized world were part of the thing itself. ‘Trees walking like men’ were only a small bright portion of it. What could have been more irrational than the Rhinoceros coming to Africa during one of the Jubilees, than the Camel appearing (of all places) in Asia during another? What could have been more outlandish than Madagascar sinking (all except the top of its head) into the Ocean, and the Island Africa rising to become a continent? We can look back on all these previous Jubilees with new eyes now. Well, but there should be portents bursting all over the place.”

  “There are, Ralph, there are,” Wilburton smiled. “I've just been catching the morning radio news with my west ear. Flying jackrabbits have been seen all over the country. A few were seen back in the year 1945, you know, but they were considered a hoax. A herd of unicorns had been sighted in Nebraska, and they were supposed to be extinct. More than a hundred saucers have landed this morning. The small creatures from them say that they are people too: and they do look like small people. They say that they have been living in the Little Sky, not in the Big Sky, and that now the Little Sky is falling down. Besides, they were tired of living in one place and were ready for a change. They had been nervous about things for some years, they say; they'd have come down before but they feared that the earth was not really solid and they'd sink into it. But anyone who wants a change can go into the Little Sky as soon as it's stabilized again, they say.

  “And the covers have been taken off of diverse lands, Scandinavia and Arabia among others; and many millions of people are pouring out of them. These are two of the secret Wells of the World that have always populated the world. A thousand valleys of Scandinavia have had the delusional cover pulled off of them, and the sleeping millions in these valleys have awakened. And the old Arabian kingdoms have awakened today. What had appeared to be sand was only a false cover pulled over them. ‘We thought the sky had been hanging a little low these last several thousand years,’ one of the millennia-old Arabian kings is reported to have said.”

  “All that on the morning news?” George Ruil asked from somewhere under his arched brows, “How rum. And how confirming. And what has the news to say at this moment?”

  “The announcers are complaining of troubles in their own studios, George. They're having trouble getting their buildings to burn. But high explosives are being brought in, and many of the persons will evacuate the buildings as they are fused off. They're having a lot of fun at it too. Ah, that station has just gone off the air. That's the third one to go off in five minutes.”

  “Your goldfish, George, they're climbing right out of the bowls,” Ralph Amerce gasped out in some wonder. “And they're making a pretty purposive way across the floor.”

  “I'll open the front door for them,” George Ruil said as he rose to do it. “They want to be out and traveling too. Come along, goldies, come along, flop right over the threshold. That's it. Hey there, watch it, don't step on the goldfish!”

  “We're sorry, we're sorry,” said strangers at the door, “but you can't renew a world without breaking a few goldfish. It's all right, we just stepped on one, the rest will be able to make it to the curb, and everything's flowing gutter-full there; someone's turned on all the fire hydrants. Are you gentlemen ready to leave?”

  “Oh, I suppose we could get ready pretty quickly, strangers. Where are you from?”

  “From the west, I believe, or some such direction. We've been driving all night. We got here and we said: This is just the sort of place we want, as soon as it's burned down.”

  “We'll make it as quick as we can, men,” George Ruil said. “Come along, Ralph and Wilburton. Let's gather such irrational things as we might want to take with us. A fine day for it, friends.”

  “A fine day for it, friends,” said the strangers at the door.

  “Not like a thief in the night,” Ralph Amerce murmured mystically. “Like a bright-faced boy in the bright morning.”

  Various things were happening in the world. Great numbers of American Indians came out of nine separate holes in the ground. They had just gone down for a little nap, they said, and somebody had put them under a trick and caused them to sleep for a thousand years. It would not greatly matter, they said: likely they hadn't missed anything important. A happy woman was leading her brood of children along a smoking road. “What happened to the twins?” she asked. “The big dogs got them, mama,” one of the brood answered, “the big dogs are acting funny.”

  “Oh darn,” the woman said, “I wanted them to see all the nice things that are happening today.”

  Dazed and smiling multitudes were moving out of Greater Armenia and Turkestan. Chinamen were setting out in thousands of junks to discover the South Sea islands. Housecats gathered in moving mobs everywhere, and the rumor ran through their mobs that the King of the Cats himself would appear in his majesty. Snakes gathered by the ten thousands at Portpatrick in Scotland and vowed they would swim the Channel to Ireland or die in the attempt. But the land rose before them and they passed over dryshod. (What? Are snakes shod with shoon? On Jubilee day, perhaps.)

  And still nothing had happened.

  Then it began to happen a little. The gentle quaking. The beautiful fire in the air and in the ground. Euphoria pouring out of every crevice. The rumbling like old forgotten music. The continents were winding up their anchor chains.

  And at, well, pretty much the same time, three other men were met with about a dozen disciples. These three men were, in the current view, the three most powerful men in the world. Their names were — if you are any kind of revolutionary at all you will know them — Saul Trummit the red lion of England, Pedro Cachiporro the red tiger of Mexico, Arpad Koster the red wolf of Moravia, and they were
met in reddish New York. These men controlled the complexes inside the complexes. “Nothing has happened,” said Trumait. “We have not planned anything to happen just now, so it will not be possible for anything to happen. How could anything happen if it were not of our instigation?”

  “But there is rumor of things happening,” one of the disciples said, “and there are fires and bombings everywhere. And people are wandering about.”

  “There should not be any fires or bombings unless we have ordered them,” Cachiporro muttered. “Fires and bombings are an art and we are the directing artists. There cannot be too many of them, that is true, but they must always be done for proper effect. We alone understand the proper effects. And the people have no right to wander about unless we have incited them to it.”

  “There are the beginnings of earthquakes,” another of the disciples said.

  “Then we will put an end to the earthquakes,” Koster rasped. “There will be earthquakes only when we command them. It is time that the earth learned that it has masters.”

  “The dogs have all gone wild and developed the running sickness,” a third of the disciples said. “The birds have all gathered in huge flocks and started to migrate, and not at all in their usual directions. Some of the fruit trees are blooming again and it isn't the season for it. Some of them have begun to fruit a second time this year, and that isn't the strangest part of it. I myself have seen, this very morning, walnuts growing on an apple tree, and there weren't any signs of them there yesterday.”

  “Well, we will immediately put a stop to all that,” Trumait declared. “We have the powers, we are the powers, we have all the power of the red-devil earth and we will use that power. We aren't given rule over the elementals for nothing.”