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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Are you one of the red-clay folk, Kilroy?” Colonel Crazelton asked him. Things were jumping their fences and breaking down their gates.

  “Partly, partly,” Kilroy said. “I go way back. Whatever was first, I've got some of it in me.”

  In the near distance, they heard the dapper voice of Epikt becoming less dapper.

  “Bear grease and beaver brains, how corny can you get?” Epikt was sneering and shouting. “You should be arrested for impersonating a thinking machine. And your name isn't even a categorical descriptive name!”

  “Feather-Spring-Go-Fast is my name,” they heard something say in the lessening distance. Colonel Crazelton and that tall, rangy wraith with the far-away eyes and the name of Kilroy went into Wolf-Rib's Barrelhouse to have a few cool ones.

  And then it was that the tight logic, the orderly rationality of the situation, really began to come to pieces. The Investigation was getting too big for its format.

  When does a case have a beginning and middle and end?

  When it has only one dimension.

  But it was multidimensional inside Wolf-Rib's Barrelhouse. Donners and Procop and the maxi-taxi driver were boozing together with a few boozem buddies, and Crazelton had the term ‘Revisional Clay’ come to lodge suddenly in his mind.

  There was a large Smoe figurine at the end of the bar. Its nose was hooked over the bar and the funny head was rocking and bobbling on its nosey pivot. Crazelton took it by the scalp lock to lift it and examine it. And it was too heavy to lift as casually as that. It was no Smoe figurine; it was a Smoe man, standing and alive, and drinking choc beer. It looked at Crazelton with hard little eyes. It hadn't been hanging with its nose hooked over the edge of the bar. It was simply of short stature, and that's where the nose had come to rest.

  A woman was making parfleches out of fine, flexible leather or skin.

  “What do you make them out of?” Crazelton asked her. “You haven't any deer on this world, and buffalo hide is too thick and stiff for such work.”

  “Old-man skin,” the woman said. “I use that. It's just right.”

  “How do you get it?”

  “Just take it off them. Those old men sure do holler and carry on though. All I take is the skin.”

  Another woman was fetching a lance. And a third woman came into Wolf-Rib's place. “Joanna Sweetstomach says that you promised to marry her,” this woman told Colonel Crazelton. “Yeah, she says she's going to have you, or else she's going to keep the boots. She sure does like those boots, now that she's got the buffalo hokey off of them.”

  Ah, it was really going to pieces now.

  Colonel Crazelton was suffering impressions of world after world after world of implicit clay that was almost being called into animation. These worlds bucked and buckled like drunken water. They were seas, and Colonel Crazelton was seasick. The worlds were clay-colored oceans, and they heaved with billions upon billions of half-animated Indians. Indians making up the heaving world-waves, with their buffalo and their small game! What else was roiling and boiling in that clay-sea? There were the fast and snazzy cars waiting for the archangel of cars to come and evoke them into metallic animation. There were the later horses, clay-maned, snorting out of that underfootness. There was the crowding, churning multitudinousness of it all.

  “I'm breaking apart into pieces,” Colonel Crazelton gasped. “Reason fails us, and what is left? No world is firm, no foundation is solid. I am falling endlessly into a bottomless pit.” Crazelton felt himself mistreated by every implicit Indian everywhere.

  “Naw. That's what I thought once,” Procop reassured him. “I thought I'd had it till I'd bust. But you can't fall very far here, Colonel. The ground's mighty high all around here. You'll go native like I did; and when you do that, you'll go invisible for a little while. That's what's really known as being the ‘Reversional Clay.’ And Joanna Sweetstomach wouldn't be too bad to go native with.”

  “So Indians is the answer,” Crazelton said softly and with some awe at the magnitude of the whole affair.

  “What was the question?” one of those Smoe-faced Indians asked.

  “Indians is the answer,” the colonel repeated. “It's Indians who were already on every world before the initial landings were made. On old world it's Indians who were in Africa before the black men came, who were on the Weald before the blue-woad men came there, who were on the Yellow River (man, there's a lot of clay along the Yellow River!) before the yellow men came there. It's Indians who were already in every square rood of every earth from the beginning. We can't take a step anywhere without stepping on an implicit Indian face in the heaving clay, without stepping on a Smoe nose hooking up out of the nervous ground, without treading buffalo hump — oh, this is insanity! Let's away from here, Dormers and Epikt, and make our dismal and earth-heaving report.”

  But Epikt was busy. Epikt was still giving unshirted Ned to—to what? To a— “What slap-dash guys ever threw you together anyhow?” that Epikt was carrying on. “Knotted cords to count and calculate with! Porcupine quills for analysis and prediction! And for intelligence — beaver brains! Boy, are you a mess!” To an Indian brain-machine it was that Epikt was shoving scorn and harangue. An intelligent Indian machine! Who would have believed that possible?

  “When I consider my own degree of sophistication, and then look at you—” Epikt tried to continue.

  “Oh, stuff it, white-eye contraption!” said the Indian brain-machine, who was named Feather-Spring-Go-Fast. There was the smell of scorched clay in the barrelhouse, or at least the smell of exasperation.

  “Epikt, is this all scientific?” Colonel Crazelton cried. “Can the very clay of all the worlds be made out of Indians and their animals?”

  “Oh, sure, Colonel, why not?” Epikt answered. “They had to make it out of something. It looks like they made it out of the lowest thing they could think of. What's lower than the Indians and their animals and their—ugh—contraptions? Feather-Spring-Go-Fast, you make me ashamed of being a machine. I bet your brains aren't even dynamically balanced.”

  “Hey, you ever wrestle an Indian?” a lady said to Crazelton as she came into the place. “It's all right. Joanna Sweetstomach says that she don't want you anyhow.”

  “No, no, I don't wrestle much any more,” Crazelton said with a touch of embarrassment. “Epikt, this is all as amazing as it is tasteless,” Crazelton said a very little moment later (there had been a bucking and screaming of fast cars in between, and they were all in Bum-Drum's Bar now). “When the first explorer crossed the first high range, Epikt, and wondered whether anyone could possibly have been there before him — Epikt, those ranges were made out of people and stuff that had been there long before him. He wasn't striding over new Earth under new Heaven. He was striding upon the upturned faces of those unevoked ancestors, and those faces had watched the new Heaven since it was really new.”

  “Something like that, Crazelton,” said Epikt, not much willing to be distracted from his own pursuit. “Now then, little clap-trap Feather-Spring-Go-Fast, you don't even have—Hey, what do you think you're doing!”

  “I think I can make something out of this,” the proprietor Bum-Drum mumbled. Bum-Drum had just removed a piece from Epikt with that deft and wrenching movement as if he were tearing a wing off a chicken. “I'm fixing to invent a clock,” Bum-Drum said, “if the people will only decide whether they want it to be forty-four or forty-five-hour days. And this piece of you sure looks like a piece of a clock, Epikt.”

  “But that piece is necessary for my mental balance,” Epikt protested. “With that piece gone, I'm likely to be a little erratic.” Other persons came and pulled other pieces from Epikt, and he did become quite erratic.

  “Hey, you ever do any romancing?” a lady said to Crazelton as she came into the place. “It's all right. Joanna Sweetstomach says that she don't want you anyhow.”

  “No, no, I don't romance much any more,” Crazelton said with a touch of embarrassment.

  “Epikt
,” Colonel Crazelton said a little moment later (there had been a jolting and noisy interlude when they all rode on young and half-broken horses, and they were now in the Skinny Wife Bar and Grill). “Epikt, what we see now, even with our new apperception, may be no more than the tip of the iceberg, than the nose of the Smoe. No, that part's wrong. The nose makes up at least half the Smoe by bulk. But it isn't just the surface, it's the immeasurable depth also. You could dig a well forever and not come to the bottom of Indians.”

  “Hey, there's even a well of blue-eyed Indians,” a fellow named Three Coonskins said. “Not a very big well, but there's a well for every kind of Indians. I bet I can make something out of that piece there.” And Three Coonskins pulled an intricate piece off of Epikt.

  “Protection, protection!” Epikt howled. “I'll report it to the sector police. You're taking vital pieces off of me!”

  “Can the sector boys police every little piece of clay on every world?” Three Coonskins asked. “Here, I'll give you something in place of it.” Three Coonskins pulled a piece of clay from his leg, blew on it to animate it, and set it into Epikt in place of the piece that he'd stolen. “Now you're part Indian,” Three Coonskins told Epikt. But the new piece made Epikt even more irrational than he had been. He began to boast, and those fellows there will eat boasters alive. After a while they will.

  “And now I take something to replace my replacement piece,” Three Coonskins said, and he took Epikt's Smoe-form cigar holder. “And now I'll just have your cigars too. They're no good to you without a cigar holder. And I always liked to make a clean sweep.”

  “Come, Cabbie, come, Donners, come, Epikt,” Colonel Crazelton was saying after another while (they had all ridden travois in the interval, and now they were in the Happy Rattle-Snake Bar), “we've solved the question of who was already on every world and continent when the first explorers got there. And we've raised, I'm sure, dozens of other questions. And now I find myself becoming highly nervous. I can take no more of this place. Let's go back to Earth immediately.” “Donners and I are going native for a while,” the maxi-taxi cabbie said, “like Procop here did. He says it's a lot of fun. Yeah, can't see us very well, can you, Colonel Weak-Eyes? It's fun to merge in with the background, with the ground itself.”

  “The renewal experience alone is worth it,” said the once-more invisible Procop.

  “I will settle with these clods before I go, Colonel,” Epikt spoke madly. “Feather-Spring-Go-Fast, you're a fink and a fraud! And that's really all of you? There isn't anything to you except what's here? But the Main Me is elsewhere, and what you see here is only one of many extensions of me. The Main Epikt has so many brains that we dip them out by the bucketful whenever we want to provision a major mobile extension. But you, there is nothing to you except that silly lump over there.”

  “Last call, everybody!” Feather-Spring-Go-Fast sang out. “Anybody want any last piece of him?” And the folks there (the action had now moved to the Wet Dog Tavern) began to pick Epikt clean of interesting pieces. And he made the mistake of being defiant and boastful.

  “Destroy this mortal coil here before you, and I still exist in a finer place,” Epikt bantered them. Whoof, that mortal coil wasn't going to last very long, the way they began to cut it up.

  “Help, help, murder, murder,” the frightened Epikt howled then. But a big Indian reached into him and took out his howler and rowler, and thereupon that Epikt extension was muted forever. And the remnants of him were quickly taken, down to the smallest piece.

  “I am alone and deserted,” Colonel Crazelton said after another while. “How ever will I get back to Earth?” “Oh, I'll take you,” a lean Indian said. “I always liked Earth. I wonder if Prairie Dog's Pancake Palace is still there on Earth, just over the Osage line from T-Town.”

  “Yes. I imagine that Prairie Dog's is one of the enduring places. But that vehicle won't go to Earth, will it?”

  “It sure doesn't look like it. It's worn out and the back-end of it is shot. I made it myself, and I'm not a very good mechanic. I can't even get insurance on it any more, or I'd heap it. But it's gone to Earth before, and I bet it'll do it again. Let's have a couple for the road, and then we'll hit that sky-road.”

  They had them for the road at Joe Shawnee's Sky-High Club, and at the Pit Stop, the Boar Coon, the Wooden-Legged Buffalo Bistro and Brasserie, and at the Stuck Buck Bar. Then they flew to Earth.

  The agreeable Indian left Colonel Crazelton off at the Institute for Impure Science. Then he went to Prairie Dog's Pancake Palace, which was just across the Osage line from the Institute.

  “Indians, Indians!” Colonel Crazelton cried as he burst into the Institute.

  “To the loopholes, everyone!” the great Institute Director Gregory Smirnov ordered. “We'll give those red-spleens a whiff of grapeshot. Aw, wait a minute. Whose side are we on anyhow?”

  “The answer is Indians,” Colonel Crazelton said. “Indians is what was already there whenever the first discoverers got there.”

  “Well, of course we were there,” Valery said. “Why wouldn't we have been there?”

  “You are Indians?” Crazelton asked.

  “Isn't everybody?” Glasser inquired.

  “Of course we're all Indians at the Institute,” Gregory said. “And almost everywhere else. Always, everywhere, under every condition, you should assume that people and things are Indian, unless it is clearly stated that they are something else.”

  “You didn't think that yellow or black or white guys would carry on like we do, did you?” Aloysius Shiplap asked. “So now you are straight about everything, are you, Crazelton?”

  “Not quite, Shiplap, oh, not quite! I've just developed a new phobia. I can't take a step, not a step. Oh, how will I live if I'm afraid to step anywhere?”

  “Why, Colonel, I kind of like it,” Valery said. “Grind my heels into them! I like it!”

  “What is the difficulty, Crazelton?” Director Smirnov asked.

  “I like it too,” Aloysius gloated. “That's why I go walking so much. That's why I wear calks on my shoes.”

  “Just what is this phobia, Crazelton?” Smirnov asked again.

  “Oh, the faces, the faces! It's the billions of faces, Smirnov, staring up at me from the implicit clay, through the pavements, through the structures, through the sidewalks. Wherever I step I'm stepping on those waiting faces. Oh, I can't do it. I can't step anywhere. What will I do? I would be a murderer and oppressor in my feet and legs!”

  “I say that those who won't have the fun don't deserve it,” Valery said sharply.

  Aloysius Shiplap was whistling the old drag tune “Cut off my legs and call me shorty.”

  And down in the bowels of the Institute Building, the Main Epikt was building a new mobile extension with spikes on its boots. You wouldn't believe the grin on the Main Epikt, or the spikes that he was putting on those boots!

  Hound Dog's Ear

  1

  From final flame like Phoenix, they are born again

  Of ripened age and rank, and hard as horn again,

  To fall afoul of Tairn giri authority,

  And hooded crows of Morrighan's sorority,

  And Finn McCool, untractable, untrounceable,

  And Lady Badhbh whose name is unpronounceable.

  They fly again, these heroes we forgot about?

  Aye. Resurrection out of flame is brot about.

  These things are sworn? They're true in all their craziness,

  But resurrections have a hexing craziness.

  Their advent adventitious stand we stout on it

  Lest doubting hound-dog people cast a doubt on it.

  Our oath: on archive world we found this crunch of them.

  Adventure new we've just dug up a bunch of them.

  —Reconstituted Space Chantey

  Prodigies were happening on Tir Tairngiri. The skies had been on fire, and the fire-prodigies seemed to be sowing their seeds. There were ten of the smaller fire prodigies that
came to ground on a little bald-headed area on Tir there. They came like fire-arrows out of a greater fire-ball. And that greater fire-ball was believed to have been cast out of one still greater by more than a dozen orders, so great that it caused whole systems to melt in all their worlds, and the flint-stones of them to run like hot wax. Tir Tairngiri was only barely out of this desolated region.

  Sophisticated mechanisms in distant places were activated when the ten smaller fire-balls landed on Tir. A shuffling mechanism on Archive World got the scent and signature of the arriving complex. It knew what the thing was, or it knew ghost of what thing it was. And it began to record every possible new adventure belonging to that thing which had been believed to be dead.

  The people of Tir did not look at the fire-balls (they were still too hot and too bright), and they hadn't the sophisticated mechanism to record them. They only took note of the fact that they might want to take note.

  “Without scientific proof, we will not believe that these ten fire-balls have fallen onto Tir,” the hero Fergus McRoy said. “And, to me at least, they are mighty unscientific-seeming fire-balls.”

  Well, but there was the seeming of ten objects glowing on the ground of Tir, objects that had arrived as fire-balls. And there was the larger, and flame-hot, ball of the next higher order moving in tight orbit around Tir Tairngiri. From its distance, about three kilometers high at its every passage, it very much resembled a ruined hull of a ship (for it was too small to be a satellite), twisting in lamed and painful orbit, empty, abandoned, and good for nothing even if it should ever cool.

  The ten glowing objects (which had come as fire-balls) remained on the ground of Tir for forty days, or from Wednesday morning till the sixth Saturday night. By then they had cooled enough so that it was barely possible to look at them. They were seen to be ten people-shaped rocks or statues. Five of them were opaque, two were translucent and three were transparent. Really, they looked like people, or else like the graven images of people. “It is unscientific that these should be people-shaped,” the Tir hero Sencha McAllen said. “We'll not believe in any of this stuff without strong reasons. Who can trust one's eyes when looking into such brightness!”