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

by R. A. Lafferty

  They went in their grand getups through the streets. Trashmen were loading their scoop trucks again and again with the debris. It was mostly broken effigies of people and animals that were loaded into the trucks: polyvinyl bits, styrofoam bits, clay bits, plastic bits, paperboard bits. Oh, sometimes there was a bloody member mixed in with it: a leg, a head, a dripping loin that seemed to be of real flesh and vein and blood. The animal pieces had also come from the destroyed people. Many of them pass through the animal on their way back to clay and trash.

  Duffey, Zabotski, Finnegan-not-Finnegan (the younger painter), Mary Virginia, Margaret Stone, the child-hero, Salvation Sally, the Urchin, the Countess, the Royal Pop Historian named Cyrus Roundhead, maybe some others, they were all together at that big plush oaken table at Girardeau's. They were splendid and supreme and superb; they were escharotic and noetic; they were mutated and metamorphosed and specified (is that the verb meaning to change into a new species?); they were euphoric and willful and wonderful and transcendent.

  “Only not all.”

  There was somebody who said “only not all” because at least one of them would fail of splendor and would betray all the new and splendid things. Well, whoever it was, he would be done away with this night.

  “Just what is it that you Royal Pop Historians are doing in our town, Roundhead?” Stein asked him. Things were beginning to clarify themselves.

  “Oh, we're making selective recordings of the last remnants of humankind,” Roundhead told them. “The last pocket of humankind is here in your city. I say selective recordings, for this is very tricky. The records will not be as things originally were. They will be as we say that things originally were. Objectivity in these things is fine when it is properly directed by ourselves.”

  Mary Virginia still had the broken body of the child with her, the last child that she had killed on safari. She wasn't making quite such a big thing of it now, but she wasn't quite ready to throw it away.

  “It's one of the old kind, Mary Virginia,” the Countess told her. “It wouldn't be good for anything even if it were still alive. You know what it is, don't you?”

  “I know that it's human,” she said. After a while she let one of the waitresses take it and dispose of it. No, that's inaccurate. Margaret Stone took it from her and said that she would give it to one of the waitresses to dispose of.

  But Margaret lied.

  “I just remembered that there isn't any Decatur Street Opera House in this town,” Duffey said with a puzzled grin. You're not supposed to puzzle too much when you're possessed by euphoria. “I just remembered that there isn't even any Decatur Street in this town,” Mary Virginia said.

  But they were both wrong.

  “Are we being elegant enough?” Margaret Stone asked. She asked it with a certain duplicity or irony or bitterness, some such thing as the humans used to have in their speech, as would soon be gone out of all speech forever.

  “Oh, yes. You're in the clear. You'll pass easily,” the hoyden said.

  Horse carriages were waiting in the streets outside. They had really elegant horses. They were Thunder Colts who are part artifice, part legend, and part horse. But, inside, Girardeau's Irish Restaurant had become a work of living art. Transcendent persons are themselves works of art; their transcendence flows from themselves to their groups and from both to their surroundings. Any resulting arrangement must of necessity be perfect. Every person in the great dining hall was so seated as to contribute to the most striking composition of appearance and voice and aura. Every order served became a part of an olfactory and gustatory orchestration. Each gesture and nuance of the thousand diners (Girardeau's didn't used to be so large; it used to seat only forty-eight) was part of a living panorama and pandemonium. There was nothing accidental about the deeply textured and strong, musky scene. There would never be anything “accidental” again. It was all a perfectly fitted and balanced contrivance, ruthlessly beautiful, or horrible, depending on the sensibilities. The only ineptly clashing notes to be met with there were provided by the several persons present who had no sensibilities. They were Zabotski and a very few others. Bloody death be upon them!

  But even the human remnants and preservations might be arranged and toyed with and enjoyed. They were interesting bric-a-brac in the now all-ways interesting world. But they were much more handily arranged and enjoyed after they were dead.

  “We are unable to account for the Human Interval,” the man Roundhead was saying. “I do not believe that any of us splendid people were ever human, and yet our bodies appear very similar. But the body is related to the person and the species only as the brain is related to the mind: to furnish a temporary haven, that is all. It may be that both the humans and ourselves moved into bodies that had been developed by a still more primitive species. Myself, I can live in a house of almost any shape; the body isn't important to me. The body and the brain cannot live without their hosts, the person and the mind; but the converse may not be true. I believe that a species may travel, like flame, through many bodies of various sorts through that of the totem animal, through that of the contrived effigy, even through that burlesque thing that is called human.”

  “What is wrong with the human thing?” Zabotski flared up.

  “Human mental processes are subject to error, and they are almost wholly lacking in true kinetic intuition,” Roundhead explained. “Humans have the sicknesses of introspection and guilt. They have the sickness of depth, but sanity is always a surface phenomenon. They have the sickness of awkwardness, and this is the most incurable sickness of them all. Thunder is the specific against most of these sicknesses; but who was it that prescribed it for us? Humans are crude and tedious and full of malodorous trash. Humans, Zabotski, are like you.”

  “What is special about Duffey here?” Stein asked.

  “Not much,” Roundhead said, “except that he is one of the oldest of us bright ones.”

  “And what is—ah—unspecial about Zabotski?”

  “Oddly enough, Zabotski has been invaluable to us since we have been in this town,” Roundhead said. “He spots the humans for us, dozens and dozens of them. He is old human, but it is a multitude of other old humans that he hates. He leads us right to them. Ah, as soon as we clear them out in this town, then they will all be gone forever, except for the very few that we miss. But we will track them all down and sink them. The human ship will be the one that left no wake.”

  “Nothing at all to be left?” Stein asked. “Not even the echo of an empty vat?”

  “Nothing at all left?” Margaret asked. “Not even ‘The Perfume of an Empty Vase’?” Margaret herself, who seldom wore such deceptions, was wearing the perfume named “The Last Night of Her Life.” She also wore a sullenness that was unusual for her.

  “No wake, no remnant, no impact, no influence from the human thing,” Roundhead stated resolutely. “We eradicate the thing completely!”

  “How chorasmian of us!” the Countess exclaimed.

  “I think there will be a legacy,” Zabotski said sullenly, “and that I will be part of it.”

  “So will I be,” said Deutero-Finnegan.

  “Was humanity really a species apart from us?” Roundhead talked to the tableful and to himself. “Or was it a disease that afflicted us for a little while? Possibly it was both—a double, donkey-headed monstrosity. But it will not be either. When we arrange the human things, in their histories, even in their possible influence on ourselves, we will arrange them in our own ways. We will arrange that they drop into a bottomless void whence there is no echo.” Time was running apace. The people began to enter the horse carriages to travel to the opera.

  There was a Decatur Street in that town, though there hadn't been before. It was fed into by the Grand Concourse through which a thousand horse carriages came without crowding. There was a Decatur Street Opera House, one of the great opera houses of the world. It had a great façade of laughing stone, of memorable incandescence. The special stones recorded the flo
od tide of arrivals at the Opera in its stylized splendor under the jeweled sky. And the splendid people dismounted and went grandly in. “Only not all.”

  For there were ultimate tests set at the doorways, and it was known by kinetic intuition who must be tested. A dozen out of a thousand were taken. They were made to wash their hands in ashes, and they washed their hands in flame. And several persons came there without being compelled by the kinetic intuition. They failed the test, every one of them who came to it. They failed it in dirty flame and curling smoke.

  Zabotski, of course. He was flagged out by everyone's intuition. He was a stubborn and unregenerate human—devoid of euphoria, devoid of intuition, empty of transcendence. The ashes were in large bronze basins. They were the aromatic ashes of newly burned and very stubborn flesh, or flesh that had not broken down into trash and trifles as it died. These test ashes were really a little bit special, if anything of the unrelieved human can be called special. Zabotski rolled his big hands in the dead ashes. And the ashes burst into stifling and reeking flames. Zabotski gave out with a horrible, wrenching sound that was both a moan and a laugh.

  There was a blood roar from the bright people entering the opera. It was known that Zabotski was unrepentingly human, but the pleasure was not dulled by its being expected. Zabotski was big and wild and loud and silly, and there was a lot of blood and fun to be got out of him. Powerful men put a halter over his head, a bit in his mouth, and a rope around his neck. They began to lead him away and into the opera house by the animal entrance.

  “I'll leave me a wake, you!” Zabotski roared (it was a half-animal roar, for the mouth bit had a tongue spike to it). “I will strew me a path in this world and out of the door of this world! I will make me remembered!” He did strew a pretty wide path of a half-dozen strong men, but he was only living back in his youth for a furious moment. He was too old and fat, and he was overpowered and dragged away. But he left a stenchy wake from the smell of his burned and burst-open hands — human-stenchy.

  Well, what was there in human ashes that would still kindle fire at the touch of kindred flesh? There was something that remembered.

  Then, a short moment later, there was an out-of-order incident, a happening that was not anticipated at all. A person came out of the crowd to the total consternation of all the intuitive people. This was a slight, quick, powerful young man with a big nose, and with sudden moves. This man had been a puzzle around town to various sorts of people; he had been a puzzle even around the Walk-in Art Bijou and the Pelican Press. Stein had named him Deutero-Finnegan because of his supposed resemblance to dead Finnegan and because of the real resemblance of his paintings to those of Finnegan.

  This man was not compelled by the sure intuitions of the crowd to declare himself. But he did so. He left the concourse of the people entering the opera house and went to one of the large bronze basins that held cold human ashes.

  “There is a mistake,” one of the marshals of the opera said to him. “You're not questioned at all.”

  “This is no mistake,” Deutero-Finnegan said. And he declared himself by putting his hands deep into the ashes. They flamed from his touch, but not with the black-red, reeking flame that had been the case with Zabotski. It was a pale flame, yellow at first, then deepening a bit and shifting to orange color.

  “You can withdraw,” the marshal of the opera said. “We all know you're not human. We know you're new and splendid and sane. Why do you young men like to be eccentrics? Why do you love the extravagant gesture?”

  “I won't withdraw,” the young artist fellow, the Finnegan-image, said. Then his face crumbled and broke with the realization of the pain of his burning hands. “I am human, if I die to be human,” he shuddered the words out. He staggered as he watched the flames and his hands.

  “It's not quite the right color,” he said. The color deepened a bit when the flesh began to support the flame. “Still not the right color,” the young man croaked as he watched the now rich orange flame. “I'll have to work on that color.”

  Strong men put a rope around the young painter's neck and led him into the opera house by the animal entrance. They didn't inflict the bridle or bit on him.

  Seconds later, there was another out-of-order incident, one still less anticipated than the episode of the double Finnegan. But who was the person who broke out of the concourse and ran toward one of the oracular ash pots?

  “Come along inside!” Duffey was insisting to his party with curious haste. “Come, Sally. Come, Mary Virginia. The show is inside, not here.”

  “Wait, I want to see who it is!” Salvation Sally protested being hurried.

  “Inside, inside!” Stein was insisting with false heartiness. “They are supposed to have some excellent prelude music tonight. We don't want to miss it.”

  “I'll not be rushed!” Mary Virginia objected strongly. “Where's Margaret Stone?”

  But the small party was swept inside by the concourse of people.

  Of course the prelude music was excellent. There was the “Painted Thunder Suite” by Kandarsky. The Countess and the child-hero left the party. “We're in the bullfight, you know,” they said.

  There was the “Shining Mountain Fugue” by Palfrey. The hoyden left the party. “I'm in the Thunder Colt Games, you know,” she said.

  “Where is Margaret Stone?” Mary Virginia asked again.

  “She must have gotten lost in the crowd,” Salvation Sally said.

  “Nobody could lose Margaret, not anywhere, not ever,” Mary Virginia objected.

  One does not come to the opera house to hear excellent prelude music or to wait overlong for the curtain to rise. It is all right to wait just long enough for anticipation to peak, yes, but then—

  —but then the curtain didn't rise at all in the Decatur Street Opera House that night. Instead—

  But Margaret Stone hadn't entered the opera building with her party. She hadn't gone in with the press of people. She became instead the least-expected episode of the evening. She was the second of the out-of-order persons who went to the oracular ashpot.

  She put her hands deeply into the human ashes, and these ashes were cold and grainy and dead. She flicked her tongue. She often did this before making a sparky statement. She flicked her tongue again, and there was genuine, Holy Ghost fire playing about it. She scooped up ashes with her tangled and tense and electric fingers and put them to her mouth. They flamed.

  Then she cascaded the handsful of flame over her head and face and arms, and seemed unburned by them. They were garish, tumbling, orange flames.

  “Still not quite the right color,” Deutero-Finnegan had said as he watched from the animal entrance of the opera house.

  “You can withdraw from this childish prank,” the marshal of the opera told Margaret. “You are not human. You have not been charged with any offense. We know that you are superb, that you are noetic, that you are intuitive. Why do so many of the genuine people insist on flamboyant gestures? Withdraw from this insanity thing! Be splendid!”

  “I will not withdraw from it,” Margaret said. “I will be human in death, at least. And I'll be splendid in flame.”

  They put the rope around her neck to lead her away, but she turned it into a rope of fire that drove all her oppressors back. Then she moved of herself, with that quick, dancing step she used, into the animal entrance of the building.

  Instead of going up, the opera house curtain was sundered to nothing. It was struck by lightning; it was burst and rent by the simultaneous thunderstroke; it was inflamed; and it was gone. The Decatur Street Opera House was the only place in town that employed this effect.

  The scene was a blood-and-sand arena. The act was a bullfight. It wasn't the Spanish thing; it was the earlier Cretan Bull drama. The music was the “Bull Waltz.” The Countess, the child-hero, and nine other young persons leaped over the bulls, vaulted on their horns, curveted clear over them, escaping the horns, escaping the hooves. This was all a beautiful action. The young people had th
eir waists drawn very small by bronze cinctures.

  Each of the young persons would defy a bull and do a flying handstand on its horns. Then there would be an interval when the bull was given a human person to mangle to death. The humans were sliced and gored by the curving, whetted horns; they were trampled and torn open by the thunder hoofs; and they were broken to pieces by the violent bull impact. In their being broken open, the humans spewed out some blood, much entrails, and still more trash.

  “It is because we who order their deaths are so intuitive that we force them to reveal their inner essence,” said Cyrus Roundhead, who was in the loge with the Duffey party, “and the inner essence of humans is always trash. Ourselves, who have no inner essence and who are entirely and splendidly on the surface, contain no trash at all.”

  Zabotski was one of the humans to be killed by the bulls. He made a good show. He gave his bull back bellow for bellow. He pawed the sand in mimicry of the bull. He put down his own head to meet the impact. He was dislocated and smashed and broken open, and he died in his own blood and serum and trash. He did, however, give one more defiant bellow after he was dead, a thing that startled the spectators.

  “What we must do is create a cycle of heroic memories of ourselves as a species,” Roundhead was saying. “But wherever will we discover any heroic material to adapt? If only we could acquire it by legacy!”

  After some minutes, the arena scene was that of bears and retiarii, or net wielders. The lithe young people in this act tangled the rushing and maddened bears in their flung nets, took them off their feet with the force of their own rushes, rolled them like huge and angry balls, scorched and burned them with white-hot prods. “Is not the music exquisite?” Roundhead asked proudly, for he himself was one of the marshals of the opera. “It's the ‘Bear Ballet’ by Brhzhlozh.”