“Carrock, no, no, leggo, Harry!” Austro cried and broke away from O'Donovan and out of the room.
“Fame and fortune, Austro!” Harry was calling as he panted after Austro down the street outside. “I'll turn you into the sunshine man, the golden man, the golden skyrocket.”
“Carrock, no, no, not me!” Austro hollered. But Austro was already a skyrocket of sorts. That kid could run, and Harry O'Donovan was too old and short of wind to catch him ever. Austro disappeared over the hill, with Harry falling farther and farther behind.
The Wooly World of Barnaby Sheen
I have a lot of Fiat in my soul and can myself
create my little world.
—Beddoes, Death's Jest Book
Barnaby Sheen made a world. It was a miniature, of course, and was not a sphere. It was only a model section of the earth's mantle, half covered with ocean, half by a surrounding continent. It was in volume about a cubic meter (though it wasn't cubic), and it weighed about 4,500 pounds.
Barnaby could have made it heavier except that he would have had to reinforce the floor of his study to do so. So his selection of rock was not as exact as it might have been; it was rather on the light side. The make-up of Barnaby's world was dictated by certain restrictions.
“Oh, well, so was the make-up of God's world,” Barnaby said. This wasn't any random job though; keep in mind that Barnaby Sheen was one of the great geologists and cosmologists of the century.
There was a clear dome over Barnaby's world, perhaps to contain atmosphere if atmosphere should develop. There was already a slight amount of room atmosphere in it, for Barnaby did not strive for absolute vacuum. There were several rods of various function coming up through the dome, but it was all sealed.
“Is there any life in it?” Mary Mondo wanted to know. She always wanted to know what life was and whether there was life in this or that, doubt having been cast on whether there was life in herself.
“Probably is,” Barnaby said. “I sterilized most of the stuff, but not to perfection. For my purpose it won't matter whether there is life in it or not. I made it as a model to use in certain tectonic observations. I want to see when weather appears in it, and when the hills begin to weather down. I will see when the rivers appear and when the runneled erosion starts. I'll watch sediment washed out of the rocks to become soil or ocean-bottom deposit. I'll see the downgrading of the land, and then possibly I'll see the beginning of the uplift, or the mountain-building.”
“When do you think some change might be noticed in your model?” Harry O'Donovan asked.
“Oh, maybe in fifty thousand years,” Barnaby said.
“And you're going to sit and watch it for fifty thousand years?” Harry inquired.
“Might as well,” Barnaby said. “I'm not doing anything else right now.”
“But your model hasn't its own gravity, it hasn't its own sunlight, it hasn't its own motion,” Doctor George Drakos protested.
“I know it. It isn't a very good model,” Barnaby said. “But I believe that I can use it to short-cut a few problems.”
“Fifty thousand years doesn't seem like a short-cut,” Cris Benedetti commented.
“Oh, I can be running tests all the time,” Barnaby told us. Barnaby was an excellent geologist, but not a proper one. He was a seismograph man, and all seismograph men are unorthodox geologists. They have only one advantage over proper geologists: they can locate oil when the proper geologists can't.
Barnaby set off a miniature blast deep in his rocky model. He read the result on some of his meters.
“What does it say?” Harry O'Donovan asked him.
“It says that it's about a meter from the continental surface to the bottom of the tank.”
“But you already knew that. That's the way you built it.”
“Sure, but this is confirmation.”
Austro, Barnaby's Australopithecine houseboy, had a jeweler's glass screwed into his eye and was carving something very small; Austro had developed a lot of hobbies. Mary Mondo was hovering over Barnaby's world, very interested. George Drakos, Cris Benedetti, Harry O'Donovan, and myself were playing pitch and watching Barnaby Sheen watch his world. Quite a while went by. It was late at night when we broke it up. “Close up those things when you're through and put out the lights, Austro,” Barnaby said as he ushered us out.
“Carrock. Okay,” Austro answered with the jeweler's glass still in his eye.
And there was another voice which only those with coarse ears can hear. It was from that ghost-girl Mary Mondo.
“Let's fake it, kid,” she said to Austro, and I didn't know what she meant.
The next evening we were all in Barnaby's study again, though ordinarily we met there only about once a week. “Hum, candle wax, yellow-gold candle wax,” Barnaby said as he looked at his world. “What an odd effect that candle wax should form on the outside of the dome.”
Two of the rods that came up through dome had binocular attachments on them. They were periscopic rods and attached to lighted microscopes, one on the surface of the continent, and one buried deep in the continental mass. Direct observation could be made, up to a thousand power. Should there be change in the rock structure, it could be detected by comparing photographs on a scanning machine.
“There are quite a few fossils in the rocks,” Cris said as he observed through the rod to the buried microscope.
“Oh sure, that part is mostly Dawson Limestone,” Barnaby said. “Always full of fossils.”
“Some of them are pretty small, considering the magnification,” Cris said.
“Certainly, some of the creatures of the period were pretty small,” Barnaby said.
“Are they alive?” Mary Mondo asked.
“No, of course fossils aren't alive, Mary,” Barnaby said, “but once they were.”
“Fiat anima,” Mary Mondo said distantly, but I may have been the only one with ears coarse enough to hear her.
“Why is the dome a little fogged on the inside, Barnaby?” Harry O'Donovan asked.
“The dome is the sky,” Barnaby said. “I don't know why it's fogged. Maybe because of the unbalance of normal pressure outside and near vacuum inside.”
“But wouldn't that make it fog on the outside?”
“I don't know. I'm not a physicist,” Barnaby said.
“What's on the continental plain near the river?” George Drakos asked. “It looks like a city.”
“What river?” Barnaby asked. “There can't be a river yet. Oh yes, that crack does look a little bit like a river. And the roughness of that rock does resemble a very small city a little. I'll move the surface microscope a little closer to it tomorrow and study it. But limestone is like clouds; one can see all sorts of configurations in it, can imagine almost any shape or thing in it.”
We played Michigan, George Drakos, Cris Benedetti, Barnaby Sheen, and myself. Harry O'Donovan had taken over the world-watching job tonight. “There's something very small moving around and hopping around in there,” he said after a while.
“Nonsense, Harry, you've got specks on your spectacles,” Barnaby said.
“Fiat imber,” the poltergeistic Mary Mondo mumbled, but none of them seemed to hear her. Often poltergeist folks are inaudible except to us gamey-eared ones. “Fiat nubes,” she mumbled.
“Barnaby,” Harry said, “there's mist and clouds forming inside that, ah, sky. Real clouds.”
“What luck,” Barnaby said. “I hadn't expected them for thousands of years.” But he didn't seem much interested, and he didn't stop playing cards. Austro was still carving little things and he still had that jeweler's glass in his eye. Loretta had begun to breathe in a heavy and troubled way, and it's always startling when a sawdust-filled doll does that. Mary Mondo blinked off and on, appearing and disappearing in that way of hers; she was particularly larkish tonight.
“Fiat fulmen, fiat tonitrus, fiat pluvia,” Mary said almost inaudibly.
There was a little flicker of light.
“What's that?” Barnaby asked. “One of the bulbs about to blow?”
There was a little rumble.
“What's that?” Barnaby asked. “Your stomach, Cris?”
“No. Don't be vulgar.”
There was a whispering sound that was hard to place.
“What's that?” Barnaby asked.
“Rain,” said Harry O'Donovan. “It's raining in your world.”
Well, why shouldn't it lightning and thunder and rain? Mary Mondo had told it to. We all went to look. It was raining real rain out of real clouds under that sky-dome that wasn't more than a meter in diameter. It was lightning and thundering and raining out of black thunderheads, and the river was already flowing down that crack in the continental plain, the crack that Drakos had already called a river.
“There's a contradiction there,” Barnaby said. “The rain is real rain, so the drops are real drop-sized. They have to be; they're ruled by the laws of surface tension and such. But any of the drops would be a hundred times bigger than the biggest building in that ‘city’ on the river. Rain would be a disaster for such a city and its civilization. It would be like water masses of a mile diameter falling on the town again and again. No, that can't be a city or it can't last.”
“Don't worry about it,” Drakos said. “The smaller an object or creature is, the less vulnerable it is. Surface against mass, you know, and all that.”
“Kids,” Mary Mondo whispered (but only those of uncircumcised ears could hear her), “we got to fix that. We got to make littler rain.”
“Just what do you know about this, Mary?” Barnaby asked. He had heard something out of her, but he hadn't distinguished the words.
“About what, Mr. Sheen?” she asked with the assurance that only a ghost-girl can have.
“About, ah, about the city on the plain of the continent of the little world.”
“The name of it is Phantasmopolis,” Mary said. “It was founded by the great Mondinus in the Year Four A.M.M.”
“Phantasmopolis would be ghost city or poltergeist-ghost city,” Barnaby mused. “But what is A.M.M.?”
“Anno Mary Mondo,” she said. “The city is in my own era. I've been dead for four years, you know, and that city was founded last night by the great Mondinus.”
“Founded by candlelight, Mary?”
“That wasn't a candle. It was a sun.”
“You're making all this up, Mary.”
“Yes. I'm making it all up. Wait till you see what I make up tonight.”
“Austro, do you have a finger in this?” Barnaby demanded.
“Carrock, me a finger? I'm all thumbs.”
We returned to our card-playing. The storm died down in Barnaby's model world. And when it was late we all went home.
But we were back again the next evening. Whether Barnaby was tired of our company or not, we had become interested in the goings-on of his model world. “Hum, two kinds of wax on the outside of the dome today,” Barnaby said. “Besides the yellow-gold wax, there is silver-white wax. What an odd effect! I wonder if our real sky gets different kinds of wax on top of it.”
Barnaby, Cris, Harry, and myself sat down to play high five. George Drakos had taken over the job of world-watcher tonight.
“Barnaby, there really are little live things moving around on your world,” George said. “They are mostly around the city, and the city has grown considerably.”
“Bosh,” said Barnaby.
“No bosh to it,” George insisted. “The microscope reveals pretty fine detail on some of the buildings.”
“Double bosh,” Barnaby said.
“What scale did you build this on, Barnaby?” George asked.
“Why, no particular scale. The rocks are on their own scale. Who can change the scale of atoms or molecules or cells? It's a mechanical model, that's all.”
“Barnaby, down inside the continental mass there's an almost perfect mammoth skeleton,” George Drakos said, “except that it's a million times too small.”
“As I said the other evening, one can see almost any form one wishes in limestone, just as in clouds,” Barnaby said.
“Bosh to you,” George told him. “Barney, I tell you that there really are small living creatures in your world, quite lively living creatures.”
“Mighty uninteresting,” Barnaby said. “I didn't build the world to study living creatures. And just what species are they, good doctor?”
“Pulex, I believe,” Doctor Drakos said.
Mary Mondo was flitting around. Austro was scratching himself. Loretta was stirring a bit and breathing: it was as if she were laughing silently. “Barney, there's miniature waves in your ocean,” Drakos said, “and there is some evidence of tidal action.”
“Any whales in the ocean, George?”
“Don't see any, Barney. Only one species of life on the world. But some of them hop on and off the water just as easy as they do the land.”
“Why aren't you carving little things, Austro?” Barnaby asked his houseboy.
“Carrock. Finished them,” Austro said.
“Just how little are the things you can carve?”
“Carrock, real little, boss. You wouldn't believe it.”
“Like little mammoth bones? And little city buildings?”
“Carrock. Like little everything, boss.”
“How did you get them inside the world?”
“Carrock, I didn't. I'm not the one with the ghost hands.”
“Fiat terrae motus!” Mary Mondo ordered.
“What, Mary?” Barnaby demanded. “How can a man play cards with all that conversation going on? What's that little rumble? Not more toy thunder?”
“Barney, I believe that you have an earthquake going on in your world,” Drakos said. “Quite a severe one for the size of the world.”
“Good. Has it destroyed the city?”
“No. The city seems to be solid enough, Barney. But its inhabitants are hopping around in a pretty nervous fashion.”
“Get ready for it, kids. Don't miss it!” Mary Mondo chirped so clearly as to be heard by every ear in the room. “This is going to be good.”
“Be quiet, Mary,” Barnaby ordered. “Oh, did you use a silver-colored candle last night?”
“That wasn't actually a candle, it was the moon. We improvise a lot. Fiat eruptio!” Mary cried disobediently. “Fiat — dammit, what's the word for volcano? Oh yes, it's volcano. Fiat volcano.”
“Mary, I said to be quiet with that stuff,” Barnaby ordered again. But who can give orders to a ghost-girl?
“Barney, I believe that there is indeed volcanic activity on your world,” Drakos said. “There's lava flow, there's smoke and belching flame, there's explosion.”
“I'll blow my top!” Barnaby howled and threw down his cards. “Is there no peace in this house?”
But it was rather Barnaby's world that blew its top. The volcano went out of control. Pebbles came out of it at escape velocity and shattered the dome, the sky. There was exploding fire that threatened the whole room. And there was something else, something hopping with excitement and fear and biting for blood, that came out of the model world at the same time.
“Water, water, get buckets of water, Austro.” Barnaby ordered.
“Carrock, water, water,” Austro said, and he began to bring it. But it was dangerous to get too close to that world. There was explosion after explosion. There were bits of firecracker—and that's a thing hard to explain—with the firecracker paper still sticking on them. And some of the hot lava overflowed the world and started fires on the rug.
“We may have to let it burn itself out,” Barnaby said as he scratched himself in general bad humor. “I wonder how long it will take.”
“A volcano seldom exhibits violent activity for more than a thousand years,” George Drakos said, grinning crookedly. “But you're not doing anything else for a while, are you, Barney?”
“Great concatenated catastrophes!” Barnaby cried out. “My house is on fire, and somethin
g is biting me to death. What's biting me?”
“Fleas,” said George Drakos.
“They don't mean to. They're scared,” Mary Mondo said.
“Fleas!” Barnaby screamed. “Where did the fleas come from?”
“From your world,” Drakos said. “I told you it was inhabited.”
“They came from Austro originally,” Mary Mondo tattled. “I gathered some of them off him and put them in there so the world would be inhabited.” Austro hung his head and blushed. I wouldn't have believed that the leather-colored kid was capable of a blush.
Explosion, eruption, fire and brimstone, crash, bang, and burning cinders!
“My house is on fire, my shirt is on fire, and my houseboy has fleas!” Barnaby groaned. “What worse can happen?”
The volcano really went into action then to show him what worse could happen. Sulphur and brimstone, flame and ash and hot lava!
“I bet this is the last world I ever build,” Barnaby sounded. “Oh, and my houseboy has fleas.” We could hear Barnaby but we couldn't see him. We couldn't see anything. Then it really got hot and dense and noisy. You don't run into a volcano like that every day.
Berryhill
A house, it is said, is not a home until it has known a birth, a wedding, and a death. So Berryhill was not a home, though the Berrymans had lived in it for sixty years. The Berrymans were people who were not born, never married, and apparently did not die. In every town of less than a thousand persons in this nation, there is a decayed house on the outskirts that has given rise to eerie stories. Eerie stories find their natural home in small towns, for a ghost population is always largest where the human population is smallest; and the ghosts take over completely when the humans disappear.
The stories of the Berrymans were of long growth. Not only were the Berrymans peculiar old people; there were other oldsters in town who remembered when they had been peculiar young people. The three of them, two brothers and a sister, were tight recluses. They had no friends; they did not mingle at all with the people of the town. When one of them was even seen outside of their house, it was an event to be reported. It was never known for certain whether all of them were still alive. A year, two years might go by when a certain one of them had not been seen at all. But, soon or late, sight would be had of all of them, never together: Nehemias with his black beard, Habacuc with his white, Sophronia in her ancient dress and wearing what was perhaps the last sunbonnet in the world. They were still alive for a while yet.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 163