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

by R. A. Lafferty

  Where are you getting folks? Where are you got?”

  Zorro would sing that in his happy, foxy voice. And no town or region would ever be the same. Nobody was going to unshuffle all those moved houses and pads. Rather were the identity glasses shuffled from person to person, and such a one was told that he had now become such another one so as to be able to live in the new town or street to which he had moved.

  And Zorro would do smaller things with equal joy and agility. He'd pulverize the strings of all the swine-whines (the strum-slums, the guitars) making it impossible for the people to Sing the Thing. He'd darken the sets of the surrogates, and tie the tongues of the babble. He'd bring clouds of birds and troops of squirrels and chipmunks from somewhere. He'd erupt the pavements to give his foxes place to den. This Zorro or Azorro had his own temple-horns of sandy red hair, fox hair. He was Vulpes Dei, the Fox of the Devil, and he had the appearance of an eleven-year-old boy.

  These were the four offenders, the children of the powers: and the powers were now outlawed, were declared to be nonexistent. The only solution to it was to make it that the devil-children should also be nonexistent.

  This would be done. The four manifestations had been seen and identified: they'd been Judas'd. Now they'd be obliterated, charred to their very charcoal, and then even their charcoal vaporized.

  The Monitored World had freed itself of all powers and manifestations and devils some years before. Now it had total peace, and it must never more allow itself to be troubled by aberrants. There had been, though the memory of that was almost eradicated now, certain troubles and even certain bloodletting when that old freeing was secured.

  But a symbol had been seized and set in that past time. A version of it had been decided upon and that version would remain. This is the way the world operates. Events must follow out of a single selected strand, and all other events be cut off.

  When God was finally and officially dead, then certain pronouncements were made about the great corpse of him. These pronouncements became the fact of the matter, and all subsequent facts were based on them.

  The corpse had been, in reality, that of a sky-whale (cetus ceruleus, the azure-whale or the sky-whale) that had crashed to the earth from the sky, or at least had been found smashed on high ground beside a seashore after a high storm. Certain trippers said that they had seen the corpse fall from the sky, and that they had experienced the fact that it was the body of the finally dead God.

  Sound decisions were made by sound men about the great corpse. If it weren't for such sound decisions there'd be nothing firm in history at all. An examination of the great corpse showed (as it was expected that it would show, as it had been decided that it would show) that this was not only the corpse of God but the corpse of the Devil as well; it showed that the two had been one and same all the while. This was demonstrated by certain telling marks on the corpse (skeptics said that there was no telling what the telling marks might be).

  For there was some opposition to the Official view — for a while. Men who knew whales said that the corpse was simply the corpse of a whale (not even a particularly large whale) that had been flung onto the high beach by a storm; they said that larger whales had been flung higher on that same beach by other storms, and no great thing had been made of them. It hadn't fallen from the sky at all, they said: it wasn't the corpse of either God or the Devil.

  But, against this specious view, the official view prevailed and was accepted. Facts become facts when the time is ripe for them, and the time was ripe for this. There was some trouble and some blood-spilling about it, but the Freedom and the Consensus were attained in a short while. It had all been quite a few years before this present. Only the chained philosopher still remembered all the details of it clearly.

  For various reasons (linguistic, quasi-historical, vestigial collective-unconscious, etc.), it was decided that the double-named and double-natured dead monster would always be referred to as the Devil or the Demon (in that transitional period when he must be referred to at all). And any manifestations or powers or supposed powers still lingering would be called Devil's Powers or Devil's Children. The eruption of such manifestations had become more and more seldom now. The windy old corpse and all its works had about disappeared.

  The Free, Monitored World had quickly become loose and fragmented. There was no great need for unity or for wide-ranging communication. Things were much the same everywhere. Old Dostoevsky had written “If God (the Devil) is nothing, everything is permitted.” And, of course, everything was permitted — except the manifestations, the twitchings of that old corpse. Old Chesterton had written that when man denied God (the Devil), he would not believe in nothing, but he would believe in anything. And, of course, man did now believe in some things almost coherent; he believed in anything and everything — except that there were things surpassing belief. If the genuine experience had disappeared (and it was realized that it had), yet there were surrogates of every thing to take the places. Indulgences were indulged. Freedom was by fiat. Apprehension was apprehended and strong-armed into dungeon. If travel had all but disappeared, yet tripping had come into its own. If law was found incompatible with freedom, yet there were certain lawless Lions who gathered into strong Prides and imposed their patterns.

  And the patterns were privileged. They must not be threatened, not even by remembered things that came in the forms of small children.

  Because of such threatening, several of the larger Lions, with a Judas and the Chained Philosopher present, discussed the latest (and, it was hoped, the last) series of nuisances.

  “There are four of these kids of the Devil,” one of the big Lions was saying. “You can deliver them to us, Judas? You say that when they have passed (too swift to be taken) on one of their sprees, they sometimes go to a quiet place and become very quiet and unseeing. You say they can be taken then? You'll deliver them to us then.”

  “I'll deliver them to you then,” the Judas said. He also was in child-form, but a little older of a child than the unholy four.

  “Three of them we can burn to charcoal,” the big Lion said. “They'll give us no problem. But the Dan won't be burned with the rest. He's a special problem to us Lions. I believe the intent is that we eat him up. I don't see any problem in that either, but there is rumor of a problem. Tell us what you know about it all, and about these four, Chained Philosopher.”

  The Chained Philosopher had an iron collar around his neck, and a chain from it to an iron ring set in an iron wall. Once there had been three Chained Philosophers. But two of them had (it was some years ago) lunged against the collars and chains in unphilosophical defiance and broken their own necks. Now only their iron-collared skeletons remained.

  But the third of the Chained Philosophers had kept himself alive, and he was even cared for. The big Lions believed he was of possible use. Sometimes one might wish to ask questions of this one man who still remembered outlawed things.

  “As you say, three of them you burn to charcoal, or can try to,” the philosopher agreed, “and the fourth one is a special problem to Lions: and the Frizzes, the Enforcers, are under the Lion Emblem. But, for all that, we are simply talking about small children, no more, no less.”

  “They're different from other children!” the Big Lion challenged the Chained Philosopher.

  “Yes. Most children now are a little less. These are as children should be.”

  “But what is there about the boy Dan that spooks the Lions, the Frizzes, the Enforcers, ourselves?”

  “Only the fact that he is a real person, not a surrogate person.”

  “Why do they all wear their hair like horns growing out of their temples?”

  “For fun. It's the least strange and the least hairy of the styles. Why do you yourself affect the pig-wig?”

  “The girl Annina, what does her name mean?”

  “Only little Anne, or Nancy.”

  “I think it means something else. And the boy Quick Mick. His name, as given, is M
ichael. But I have different information that the name may really be Missel. Is that significant, Chained Philosopher?”

  “Not very. It's probably old feeb-Hebe.”

  “The boy Zorro, what does his name mean?”

  “It could mean Fox.”

  “Well, what would Azorro mean?”

  “It could mean un-Fox, but it probably doesn't. Likely it's also feeb-Hebe.”

  “Both the old spooks, who turned out to be one and the same in their corpse, were feeb-Hebe in their original stories, were they not?”

  “Yes, in one of their main origins, Lion.”

  “How can the old corpse still send out waves so long after it has smashed and crashed?” the Big Lion asked. “They were the same in the corpse. They are dead. True, Philosopher?”

  “No, the two are in no way the same. And neither of them is dead.”

  “If you know more than the rest of us do, why are you chained in an iron collar, Philosopher?” the Lion inquired shaggily. “What answer do you give to the iron fact that holds you?”

  “You have me there, Lion. There is something pretty ironic about the fact of the iron.”

  Another of the Lions was questioning Judas a little. The Judas was a boy about thirteen years old. “Just what is it that the four Devil's kids do, and how do they do it?” the conniving Lion asked.

  “Oh, they do everything, everything,” the Judas said. “They just plain get larkish. I could do everything too when I was with them. But I couldn't do the things as well as they could. That's why I got jealous and left them. I believe that all kids and everybody could do everything once, a long time ago; and these can still do the things.”

  “A long time ago? You mean before the great carcass fell down from the sky and the old Monster was declared dead for ever?”

  “No. I think it was before something else that was a long time before that.”

  “Now you say that the four kids, after they have been—ah—‘larkish’, will go to desolate places (which you know) and will be very quiet and unseeing for a long while. They ‘adore’; I believe that is the word you use. They become like happy statues then, and they can be taken. And you'll bring us to their place so we can take them?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you say you know their times. Do you know when they'll go on a lark again?”

  “I think they've begun already,” the Judas said. “I think they're on a big one, and I wish I was with them, if I wasn't jealous. Three days from right now I'll have brought you to them. All the play will be over with then and they'll be in transport. Then take them! Burn up three of them! Eat up the other one of them!”

  “Did you ever hear of anything like that, Chained Philosopher?” the first Lion, the big Lion, asked the man who was constrained in the iron collar. “Oh yes, Lion, it used to happen. I was even on the fringes of such a group myself in my youth. I am happy to hear that it still happens.”

  “Then they do go into transport, and they may be taken? And there's no way we can fail to have them in this?”

  “Sadly enough, I don't see how you can fail in destroying them. A side-light though: they'll be very heavy when in the ecstasy state. Such was the well-attested case of the children at Garabandal in Spain several centuries ago. It will take eight or ten strong men to lift one child from the earth and break him out of his spell.”

  “We'll have the strong men, Chained Philosopher. We'll remove this last threat, this final twitch of the monstrous carcasses. The hell kids will have raised their last hell.”

  The Judas was right, though. The kids had already gone on another lark. The hell kids were raising plenty of hell for a while. They outdid themselves. They raised earth-swells, merry pitching for some of the people, nauseating sickness for others. They raised thunderheads that were carven masterpieces: indeed the horned heads of the four of them could be seen in the clouds by some. This ain't a thing to put Lions and Frizzes at their ease. The devil kids made particular rain to fall. Particular rain doesn't fall equally on the just and the unjust. It fell overwhelmingly and drenchingly (even fatally in several cases) on such people as the devil kids did not accord with; but it dampened the acceptable people not at all. They dazzled with selective lightning: it lighted up all the worthy folks with a sort of comic glory; it left the less worthy ones invisible in their own darkness, invisible even to themselves.

  The kids brought a gathering noise, a running ground-thunder with them; or was it thunder? It was a whooping clattering sound, at least. It was unpatterned, but with a difference: it was the only unpatterned sort of noise that found no wide welcome in that sour ambient. It was laughing, it was thunder-laughing, and it hadn't been heard much for a long time.

  Something else the kids dragged along with them: it can only be called the Heroin Itch. Oh, it did liven the people up! — but some to their misery and some to their delight.

  The kids did all their old devil tricks, but quicker, brighter than before. They gladdened and moved the grass and the rocks. They brought trees suddenly to new leaf, and not always to their own proper leaf. They set the very earth a-crawl with happy worms. And more people fell under the devil spell of the kids than had ever done so before. All the monitors of the monitored free world were set to clanging by the kids.

  “Shout! The hills jump in their hocks and their hams.

  Whistle! The billabongs gambol like lambs.”

  There was Quick Mick with his raveled temple-horns who set the hills to hopping and the brooks to skippering. Then Azorro gave a really bristly, foxy tone to it:

  “Bleed a red laughter in dying and borning!

  Burst! It is day of the judgment this morning!”

  The passage of children was very broad swath, and they cut their enemies down like patches of burdock. They had a wild enthusiasm on them; but what is wrong with that word? And Annina of the Horns seemed completely out her head:

  “I sing a red tune for the sharks in the sea.

  Hark! It is really benignant of me!”

  But they didn't seem completely benignant, the things that the devil's kids were doing now. In this their last sortie, they did starker things than they'd ever done before: mind-blowing things, brain-blowing things literally. In certain fetid pads, the passage of the children left great globs of blown-brain on floor and wall and ceiling. It was judgment morning for a long time. The passaging kids couldn't be taken and they couldn't be found. They left their passage trails in cloud and earth and water. It was a wilder and more general larkishness than they had ever shown before. It was an enthusiasm double enthused, but what was a little bit wrong with that word? Enthuse means the un-God, the in-Theos; not the in-Devil. The kids themselves weren't bedeviled, though they had roused un-dead devils to the angry alert.

  It was antic, and it passed. It left nothing but echoes in the hills, and who can backtrack the sounds that created echoes?

  Nevertheless, the Judas had been correct. The four children went local again, and the Judas knew the location. It was in a flinty, thorny, small-bush place, acrid and angular in its formations, sharp and garish in its colors, having the illusion of an iron and wine taste, and the non-illusion (the powering presence) of a pungent and fetid odor. The ‘odor of sanctity’ is not all lilacs and roses, nor is sanctity (the sacred, the sacer) a thing that stays within straited limits. It is too stark and rank for those limits. It pertains to holiness and sacredness; but also to awfulness; and further, to cursedness, to wickedness, execrability; to devotion; and again, to seizure and epilepsy.

  Now the ‘odor of sanctity’, the smell of the thing (stay with us; strong smells and stenches are the vitality itself), is compounded of the deepest and most eroding of sweating, the sweating of blood and blood-serum; of nervous and speaking muck of adrenal rivers; of the excited fever of bodies and the quaking deliriums of minds; of the sharp sanity of igneous; and the bruised rankness of desert bush. Oh, it is a strong and lively stench. It's the smell of adoration, of passion seized in rigid æstivation. />
  Dan was prostrate on the flinty ground. Annina of the Horns was on her broken and bleeding knees. She'd been driven to them, crashed to the earth onto them with a sudden force ten times her own weight. Azorro stood erect, or as erect as a fox can stand, with head thrown back, holding the sun in his gaze and letting it not move. Quick Mick sat nearly on the ground (possibly a slight distance above the ground) as though he were sitting lightly afloat in water, one foot dangling down and touching the stones. In his hands he held a large and apparently round object, half again the size of his head. That the object was invisible was no detriment; quite clearly it was solid and weighted.

  All four of the children were taken there, by the Lions, by the Frizzes, who seized advantage of them in their ecstasy. It was as the Chained Philosopher had said: the children were unnaturally heavy in relation to the earth. It took eight or ten strong men to lift each child up from the earth and break his spell; to lift Azorro the fox out of his foxish rapture, to break Annina from knees onto her feet again; to separate the dangling toe of Quick Mick from casual flint earth. And there was sparking and blue corona at each separation.

  But the men did not touch Dan. They came around him and bent to lift him from his prone position. But they hesitated. How was it that he shivered them all so that they held back from touching him? But Dan unproblemed the problem. He rose of himself, laughing and dusty, and went along with his three companions and their guards. They went to the place of judgment.

  “Take off your shoes!” was the first thunderous judgment given when they had come to the place. It was one of the rough Lion-Men who gave this judgment and order. “None has shoes on free world for thirty years, except the devil's kin to disguise their cloven feet. This is the first judgment. Take them off!”