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

by R. A. Lafferty

  His eyes, his shape, his everything were just as they all had been when he left Monica Hall twenty years before. He had been a gilded youth then—or at least he had been plated over with a very shiny substance. He still was, he was still that youth, but in his depth he was a full man, sure and mature, and with the several appearances together and unconflicting. For he was also the boy he had been thirty years before, in no detail changed. He had been a loud-mouthed kid; but smart all the time, and smooth when he wanted to be. Now there was a boy, a youth, and a man — three non-contradictory stages of him — looking out of his gray eyes. His complexity impressed me strongly. And it also impressed four men who were not as easily impressed as I was.

  There were five men who knew everything; and there was myself. We met loosely two or three times a year. The five men who knew everything were this John Penandrew (he was in banks as his father had been); Dr. George Drakos, who was Greek and who used to go to Greek school in the evenings; Harry O'Donovan, who was a politician as his fathers had been forever; Cris Benedetti, an ex-seminarian who taught literature and esoterica at the University; and Barnaby Sheen, who was owner of the Sooner State Seismograph Enterprizes.

  These five men were all rich, and they knew everything. I wasn't, and I didn't. I belonged to the loose group by accident: they never noticed that I alone had not become rich or that there were evident gaps in my information.

  We had all gone to school together to the Augustinians at Monica Hall, and minds once formed by the Augustinians are Augustinian forever. We had learned to latch onto every sound idea and intuition and hold on. At least we had more scope than those who went to school to the Jesuits or the Dominicans. This information is all pertinent. Without the Augustinian formation John Penandrew would never have shattered—he'd have bent.

  “I've decided not to die in the natural course of things,” John Penandrew said softly one evening. The other four of those men who knew everything didn't seem at all surprised by his declaration. “You've given enough thought to it, have you?” Cris Benedetti asked him. “That's really the way you want it?”

  “Yes, that's the way I want it,” John Penandrew said. “And I've considered it pretty thoroughly.”

  “You've decided to live forever then, have you?” Barney Sheen asked with just a hint of boyish malice.

  “Naturally not to live forever here,” Penandrew attempted to explain. “I've decided to live only as long as the world lasts, unless I am called from my plan by peremptory order. I am resolved, however, to live for very many normal lifetimes. The idea appeals to me strongly.”

  “Have you decided just how you will bring this about?” Dr. George Drakos asked.

  “Not fully decided. I've begun to consider that part only recently. Of first importance is always the decision to do a thing. The means of carrying it out will have to follow that decision and flow from it. There is no real reason why I shouldn't be able to do it though.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Cris Benedetti said thoughtfully. “You're an intelligent man and you're used to tall problems. But there have been other intelligent men and, as far as I know, none of them has done this thing.”

  “Do you know of any really intelligent man who has decided to do this and then has failed in the doing?” Penandrew asked.

  “No, not if you put it that way,” Cris admitted. “Most problems remain unsolved simply because they have never been tried seriously in the proper framework. And there are legends of men (I presume them to be intelligent) who have done this thing and are doing it. Not very reputable legends, though.”

  “Well, what is it then, an elixir of youth that you'll be seeking?” Harry O'Donovan asked in his high voice.

  “No, Harry, that idea is clearly unworkable. It couldn't be taken seriously by anyone except a youth,” Penandrew talked it out carefully. “It will not be an elixir of youth: it will be an elixir of all ages that, I believe, is the crux of the matter. I do not want to be only a youth forever—or for a very long time—I am more than just a youth now. It would not be possible to remain a youth forever.”

  “Then what?” O'Donovan demanded. “I don't believe you've thought this out very thoroughly, John. Do you want to live for a very long time and you be getting older and older and older all that time?”

  “But I have thought it out pretty thoroughly, Harry. I will get old only at one end, only in depth. I will become a complete man, and then still more complete. I believe that there is no record of any complete man ever dying—that's the thing.”

  “I believe there is no record of any complete man at all,” George Drakos said. “That's really the thing.”

  “There's probably been a large handful of us,” Penandrew said. “I know pretty well what I want to do and I know pretty well what it consists of. I will become every aeon of myself simultaneously; then I will have become a complete man — and then I will not die. There is a meaning within a meaning of the old word aeon. Aeon means ages. But the plenoma or plentitude is made up of substantial powers called aeons. I maintain that these two meanings are the same. In Gnosticism, the aeon is one of the group of eternal beings that combine to form the supreme being — all of them are eternal and simultaneous, but no one of them would be eternal out of combination. I believe that there is analogy on the human plane; and I intend to become that analogy, to be all my ages simultaneously and forever, to be every aeon of myself. I will be forever a boy, forever a youth, forever a man, and forever an old man. I'm already something of this multiple appearance, I'm told. I guarantee that I'll be a boy forever. I'll nail down that end.”

  “And what happens when the old man in you gets older and older and dies?” Drakos asked.

  “I don't know what will happen, George, but I'm certainly interested in knowing. Possibly I will assume a still older man, and then a still older. I'm not sure there is a necessary connection between very old age and death. It may be, though, that the extreme aeons of me will pass over the edge and give me a foot in each world. I'd like that. The possibilities are almost endless. But I believe that the boy in me, the youth in me, the man in me will live for innumerable lifetimes.”

  “Oh brother!” Harry O'Donovan sounded in his high voice. “And how will you be doing it all? Not by talking about it, I'll bet.”

  “Yes, I will do it by considerable talking about it and by much more thinking about it,” Penandrew ventured. “It is not a thing for gadgets or apparatuses, though I may employ them some. It is a thing, I believe, of mental and physical disposition; and I tell you that I'm well disposed towards it.”

  This John Penandrew who lived in the big house on Harrow Street was married to Zoe Archikos. Barnaby Sheen would like to have been married to her. So would Cris Benedetti and Harry O'Donovan. So would George Drakos except that she was his cousin. Zoe was a creature that has become fairly rare these last twenty-five centuries: a blonde Grecian, a veritable Helen, a genuinely classic model with that brassiness that must go with it. The bronze age understood the necessity of this high brass, but we have forgotten. Oh, she had form and life, she was perfection and brindled passion—and she was also the blast of a brass horn. John Penandrew was fortunate in having her; she should have been elixir enough for anyone. But he was fortunate in almost everything.

  “The fathers tell us that Adam, in his preternatural state, enjoyed all ages at once,” Barnaby Sheen said. “So it is not strictly true that he had no childhood, even though he was created adult. He was created all ages at once. It was a good trick till he broke it. And, by coincidence, I recently ran into the still surviving legend of the one man who, since Adam, is most persistently believed to have been all ages at once and to be still alive.”

  “Coincidence, which is simultaneity, is valid when it touches a simultaneous man as I am becoming,” John Penandrew said with what would have been pomposity in another man. “Ah — where did you run into the latest legend of Prester John, Barney?”

  “In Ethiopia. I have several crews doing petroleum explo
ration work there and I visited there recently. Some of the simple local workmen talk of the everlasting man as if he were a present-day presence.”

  “Near Magdala, was it?” John Penandrew asked with sudden eagerness.

  “About seventy miles northwest of there, in the Guna slopes.”

  “I was sure it was near. Magdala, of course, is a modern name-form of old Mogadore, the legendary kingdom of Prester John.”

  “That's impossible,” George Drakos cut in. “Anyone with even an elementary knowledge of the Amharic language would know that the one name could not change into the other.”

  “Anyone with even an elementary knowledge of anything would know that both names are from the Geez and not the Amharic language,” Cris Benedetti sneered, “and there is a strong possibility that the two names are the same, George.”

  (It is sometimes confusing to have these acquaintances who know everything.)

  “But you can't do it, John,” Cris continued, “in Ethiopia or anywhere. You can't be a simultaneous man. You haven't the integrity for it.”

  “Why not, Cris? I pay tithes of cumin and that other stuff. I love my wife and many other persons. I have a pleasant way with my money, and I do not grind the faces of the poor. Why haven't I integrity?”

  “You have common decency, John, but not integrity,” Cris said. “I use the word to mean unified totality and scope — that is integrity in the theological sense. I use the word as Tanquerey uses it.”

  (They used to study Tanquerey's Dogmatic Theology in the seminaries. Now they study rubbish.)

  “There are several ways I can go about this,” Penandrew said. “I believe that we originally had this simultaneity and everlastingness as a preternatural gift. Then we were deprived of it. But it remains a part of our preternatural nature. This means that we must be deprived of it all over again every day or it will flow back into us. It could be as simple a thing as actinic rays depriving us of this handy gift of everlasting life. I've studied these possibilities a little. I could have a series of silver plates or baffles set into my head to combat the rays. That's one way.”

  “What're some other ways?” Barnaby Sheen asked.

  “Oh, proper disposition of mind and body. Induced mystical states combined with my natural powers and proclivities. I believe that there may be gadgetry employed as a trigger — but only as a trigger for the alteration. I believe that it will be mostly realizing a state of being that already belongs to us, something that belongs to our preternatural nature.”

  “Or our unnatural nature,” Barnaby said. “You didn't use to play so loose with words. What're some other ways, John?”

  “Oh, I may go and find Prester John and learn how he's been doing it these thousands of years,” John Penandrew said. “And I will go and do likewise.”

  “Did you ever hear anything like that, Laff?” Barnaby asked me.

  “Has the subject ever been handled in your—ah, pardon my smile—field?”

  “Several stories have handled the subject,” I said, “but not in the variation that Penandrew wants to give it.”

  II

  Saying: O grandfather,

  the little ones have nothing of which to make a symbol.

  He replied, saying:

  … they shall make of me their symbol.

  … the four divisions of days (stages of life) they shall enable themselves to reach and enter…

  Legends

  Appendix to a Dictionary of the Osage Language

  —Francis la Flesche

  John Penandrew was out of town for about a year. When he came back, he had a different look to him. Oh, he had simultaneity now! He really had it. He was the boy he had been thirty years ago; he was the youth he had been twenty years ago; he was the man he should have been now; and he was also an older man. He was all these several persons or ages at once, much more than he had been before — all of them, completely and unconflictingly. He had pulled it off. He was truly the simultaneous man. But that isn't exactly what we mean when we say that he had a different look to him.

  In all his simultaneous persons he had something just a little bit lopsided about him. One eye was always just a little bit larger than the other. There was more than a hint of deformity, and there shouldn't have been — not in this complete man.

  But he was the complete man now. He had done it. He had pulled the coup. He was wound up all the way and he would live forever unless he flew apart. This was no fakery. You could feel that he had done it.

  He lived in the big house on Harrow Street with the brassy, classy Zoe and they lived it to the hilt. There wasn't ever anyone in such a hurry to have so much fun so fast. They were perfervid about it. But why should he be in such a hurry when he had forever?

  Well, he had money and he had talent and he had Zoe. The boy was strong in him now (he had been a loud-mouthed kid, but smart all the time and smooth when he wanted to be); the youth was in him very strong (he had been a gilded youth, or at least a very brassy one); and the man and the older man were vital and shouting in him. The Penandrews were cutting a wide swath and they were much in the papers. But what was John's big hurry now?

  “Add one dimension, then you might as well add another,” he grinned with a grin a little too lopsided for a complete and simultaneous man. “Speed, that's the thing. Speed forever, and lean heavy on that hooting horn.”

  But it was another year before myself and those five men who knew everything were all together again.

  John Penandrew lolled with his lopsided grin as though he were too full of mischief to talk. And Barnaby Sheen wound into one of his cosmic theses, of which he had hundreds: “Just before the Beginning, there was a perfect sphere and no other thing,” Barnaby spoke in his rich voice. “At least it supposed itself to be a perfect sphere — it had no imperfect spheroid with which to compare itself. It suspected that it was revolving at a very high rate of speed, such a rate of speed that it would immediately fly apart if the rotation could be established as fact. But in relation to what point could it be rotating?

  “It was not in space—there was no space beyond it; how could there be? It could not be in motion, of course, there being nothing relative to it. Neither could it be at rest—in relation to what could it be at rest? It was not in time nor in eternity, there being nothing to pose it against in either aspect. It had no size, for there was nothing to which it might be compared. It might be a pinhead in size, or a mega-megalo. It had no temperature, it had no mass, it had no gravity—all these things are relative to other things.

  “Then an exterior speck appeared. That was the Beginning, as the sphere's lone existence had not been. The mere speck was less than one billionth to the billionth power the diameter of the sphere and was at much more than a billion billions of diameters from it. Now there was both contrast and relationship.

  “Now there was size and mass and temperature, space, time, and motion; for there was something to relate to. The sphere was indeed found to be in furious and powerful rotation, now that it could rotate in relation to something. It was in such rapid rotation that it deformed itself with its own centrifugal force, it ruptured itself, it flowed apart completely and everything thence is from its pieces.

  “But if the speck had been ten times the size it was (still too small for any eye ever to see) the universe would have been only one tenth as large, forever, in every aspect.

  “What happened to the speck? Was it consumed in the great explosion? Probably not. Likely it never existed at all. It was a mere illusion to get things started. Say, I consider that an excellent ‘In the Beginning’ bit. Can you use that, Laff? Can you make a piece out of that piece?”

  “I will use it some day,” I said.

  “The important thing about that speck was its duration,” John Penandrew licked the words out with a tongue that now seemed a little lopsided. “It lasted for much less than a billionth of a billionth of a second. It was in contrast to the short-duration speck that the then-happening cosmos acquired its
delusion of immortality.”

  “You are sure it is a delusion, Pen?” Cris Benedetti asked anxiously, as though much depended on the answer.

  “Yes, all a delusion,” Penandrew grinned. “We cosmic types call it the workable delusion, and we will work it for all it is worth.”

  “Tell us the truth, Penandrew,” Barnaby Sheen said gruffly. “Did you really do it? And how did you do it?”

  “I really did it, Barney. I'll not die. I'll dance on your graves and on the graves of your great-great-grandchildren. I'll make a point of it. I'll dance naked on the graves as David danced before the Ark.”

  “Why such frenzied pleasure in our going, Pen?” Cris asked with some hurt.

  “It's the boy in me. He's a bit monstrous now and he's me. I can't change him, or any of us, or it will all collapse. It's mine. I'll hang onto it. I'll bow my back. I won't give an inch ever. I've got a mindset in me now—that's a big part of it.”

  “Yes, I believe you did pull it off, Penandrew,” Barnaby said slowly. “How did you do it, though? By elixir? By plates against the rays? By Prester John's secret? How?”

  “Oh yes, I finally lifted the secret from Prester John himself and now I will not die in the natural course of things. But I'll not tell you about it. You don't need to know about it. Why should you want to know?”

  “We also might want to avoid dying in the natural course of things,” Doctor George Drakos said softly.

  “No, no, that's impossible!” Penandrew shouted. “I won't be done out of it by anyone. I'll hold onto it for dear life—and that is exactly the case of it.”

  “Is it an exclusive thing?” Harry O'Donovan asked, “and it can't be shared?”

  “It cannot be shared,” Penandrew said harshly. “It isn't anything like you think it is. It isn't at all as I thought it would be. It became a freak in its general withdrawal. It's a jealous thing. It's a snake in the hand and it must be held tightly. It isn't the preternatural thing I thought it would be. It's an unnatural thing now—and only one person in the world can have it at a time, for all time. I won't let go of it. Hack my hands off—but I won't let go of it!”