The Plant Engineering Company was right to the left of the Big Star Detective Agency, between it and the Hasty-Wasty Planned Obsolescence Company. They did some amazing things at PE. They engineered plants for every need and botany. They had a nutty tree or bush that grew nuts so fast that a prize was offered for anyone who could ever pick them all. The bush had a capacity of only twelve nuts, but it would regrow them faster than any two-handed person could pick them off. The bush would have solved the hunger problem of the world, if only the nuts had been edible. But a half dozen other plants that PE had engineered had solved the world hunger problem. They had done this more than a week before, but the word hadn't got to remote areas yet.
And they had engineered, at PE, plants that would walk and talk — really — and these had been used (one use among very many for them) by Madame Gussaud at her wax works as scaffolds or armatures to build wax columns on. This accounted for the flexibility or liveliness of some of her creations.
Wait a minute! Someone else is coming into the Big Star Detective Agency.
Edith Thornbush burst into the Agency, and a rush of words burst from her as she came. “I have this compulsion to confess that I stabbed Harry Kingfixit to death!” she burst out. “Say, confessing is fun, isn't it? Is it generally realized that confessing is one of the great creative acts? I believe, if I just let myself go, that I could confess to such a flood of things as would knock the ears off you.”
“Did you actually kill Harry Kingfixit, Mrs. Thornbush?” Roy asked.
“Oh, there's no way of telling,” Edith said, liplessly as it were, and as if it were someone else using her voice. “There is no sharp line between kill and not-kill. I banged a dagger into one of those gawky look-alike people that were hiding among the wax figures in the wax museum. It might have been Harry I knifed (I hoped it was, I still hope it was), or it might have been one of the others, or nothing much at all.”
“Can you say which of these bodies is the figure that you banged the dagger into?”
“No I can't. They're all alike,” Edith said without moving her mouth. What was this business of her talking without seeming to talk?
The Animal Engineering Company was right across the Lane from the Big Star Detective Agency. The AE had formerly been named Dog Designers Incorporated. They did some amazing things at AE. They had branched out a long ways from their old Dog Designer days of the week before. Now they were into everything. They had designed the Basic Ape that, with a bit of further creative tampering, could pass for any new-departure simian or bear or human. Madame Gussaud at the wax works had been using Basic Apes for two days now. She used them for her living wax figures as they were patient and would accept infusions and grafts. They would pose well. They would also work well and could do simple tasks like sweeping the floor or pouring wax; and they would (this was something that had been discovered within the last hour and a half) readily accept the new false face patterns that were so prevalent about the Lane this morning that they seemed to infest the very air.
AE had been using rubber blood in its Basic Apes for several hours, and this, blinking on and off, will simulate other bloods, animal or human or whatever, and will function well in many conditions.
“Oh, here they are,” False Face Flaherty cried and he strode into the Big Star Detective Agency, “the three figures that were swiped from the wax works. Swiping, as some people don't seem to realize, is a form of theft. I'll just take them along back to my place as I have an agreement with the wax works.”
“I own them now,” Cornelia Falselove said, “and you will keep your body-robbing hands off of them. I may be able to make something out of them, or use them for receptacles.”
Ophelia Izobret burst into the Big Star Detective Agency.
“I have this compulsion to confess that I stabbed Edgar Thornbush to death,” she burst out. Ophelia looked dazed and these words had come out of her mouth with very bad synchronization. It almost seemed as if Cornelia Falselove had been speaking the words for Ophelia.
“Well, that accounts for all three of the knifed figures,” Roy Mega said. “And I'm not sure just what else it accounts for.”
The Human Engineering Company was just to the right of the Big Star Detective Agency, between it and the Cat-Rat Fur Company. They had been doing some amazing things at HE. One of the mottos at HE “We can change the colour of your eyes in nine minutes” will give you a pale blue idea of what they were doing there. “See us, and you will never be the same again” was another motto a bit on the chilling side. HE was able to supply Basic Persons, coordinated humans with the personality and brains denatured. These went beyond the Basic Ape. They could not only perform simple tasks such as sweeping floors or pouring wax, but they were able to complain about them while doing them. Madame Gussaud used many of the Basic Persons at her wax works, and countless other firms along the Lane used the product.
“Are you trying to peddle these waxwork glories as our husbands, boys?” Judy Kingfixit asked of the three murdered figures on the floor that may or may not have been wax. Then Judy's face changed a bit and she said in words that were badly synchronized with her mouth, “Oh, I guess it will be all right then. I'll accept whichever one you say is mine if this is the state he happens to be in.” Then her face changed back to its first case and she spoke again in her regular voice “Damnit, Cornelia, you are not spokeswoman for us. I, at least, will speak for myself. Get out of my mouth and get out of my voice.” “Oh, I believe that it will be suitable for Cornelia Falselove to be spokeswoman for the three involved ladies, just as it is suitable for me to be spokesman for these three incapacitated or dead gentlemen,” False Face Flaherty said. “Connie and I will settle whatever needs to be settled. And then we will inform the six of you of the settlement, or else we will not inform you of it.”
“Find out who False Face Flaherty really is,” one of the dead wax-or-flesh men said hollowly.
“How?” Roy Mega asked that length of stuff on the floor.
“Take him apart,” the figure said. So Roy Mega and Austro began to take False Face Flaherty apart.
“Find out who Cornelia Falselove really is,” Ophelia Izobret asked.
“How?” Austro asked her.
“Take her apart,” Ophelia said. So Roy and Austro began to dismantle Cornelia Falselove just as they were dismantling False Face Flaherty.
Ahhhh! Zombie Plant, Basic Ape, Basic Person with denatured brains and personalities, rubber blood, wax work (hexagon) structure modules, consensus figures and artificial figures! That's what False Face Flaherty who had all the girls and all the money was. That's what Cornelia Falselove was also.
Did False Face Flaherty really represent Harry Kingfixit and Edgar Thornbush and Hamlet Izobret as a corporate person?
What false process had put together such corporations?
“We leave it to you our clients whether you should pay us or we should refund to you,” Austro said. “Have we located your husbands for you? I don't know. That's a question in semantics, and palaeanthropologists say (from the shape of our skulls) that we australopithecines were probably weak on semantics. What we have here are three boxes that your husbands have been in now and anon, and likely they are in them presently to a limited extent.”
“What if we insist on having all there is of them?” Edith Thornbush asked. “We didn't contract for you to locate only pieces of our husbands. What if we insist that you produce them completely?”
“I suggest that the demand be lodged by all there is to you then,” Roy Mega said. “You here present are only three boxes that three ladies have been in now and anon, and likely you are in them yet to a limited extent. But essential elements of you are missing or are hiding out somewhere.”
A harried little man came into the Big Star Detective Agency. “Have you heard about the Murders of Speckled Fish Road?” he asked, speaking in a very apprehensive voice.
“Ah yes, interesting case,” Roy Mega said. “Do you wish the investigation to b
e reopened? Ah, let's see, just when was it that the Speckled Fish Road Murders took place?”
“They are likely to take place this very afternoon or night unless I can get expert help in preventing them,” the nervous little man said.
“Ah yes, we will put you on hold for a while. Please be patient. We are winding up a triple-murder case now with our famous dispatch and efficiency.”
“See how busy we are,” Austro said. “Let us now move to a consummation of the Wax Museum Murders. All we need is good faith from all parties, and we have not been getting that. There is hanky-panky somewhere in that you three ladies slew the figures of each other's husbands and not your own. This is related to what is known as the fooling-around syndrome. As to the stabbings or ‘murders’ themselves, they really don't amount to very much.”
“It was slicker than going over an alley fence to a ‘little game’ (in the old comic-strip context of that situation),” Roy Mega said. “The three men slipped out of their skin and bones and left them behind. Every man needs a hiding-place, and the trail to it should be crossed by as many false clues as possible. The men delivered their empty skin-and-bone boxes over to a corporate person of their own creation, False Face Flaherty. That was the second stage of their evasive trail to their hideout.”
“Why should they want to evade us when they love us so much?” the box that Edith Thornbush had been in now and anon asked.
“Why should they want to evade us when they love us so much?” the waxwork box in which Hamlet Izobret had lingered now and anon asked. “But the dames have their hideouts slicker than anything we could devise, and they spend a lot more time in them.”
“You are so tedious sometimes, that's why,” Judy Kingfixit said.
It was what is sometimes called a Mexican Standoff. The boys of the Big Star had solved the disappearance of the husbands (and the technical murders of them or of the carcasses that they used now and anon), but they hadn't solved any of it very resoundingly. And the ladies might have made a case that nothing had been solved, “but it would be like opening a can of crocodiles,” as Ophelia Izobret said. Nobody was very proud of the outcome.
There had been this very decadent influence (an unreal influence, really) along Broken Bench Lane for several days, and now the shattered fruit of that decadence had come to market. Simplicity had gone from the Lane.
It was decided that all should go to the Hot Sauerkraut Sandwich Drive-In for lunch and to discuss the financial aspects of the thing over hot sauerkraut sandwiches, try to resolve the who-owes-whom question.
And then the murderous malarkey-men of the media broke over them in wave after smelly wave!
“Which one is the illustrious Professor Austro who has made the ‘Quotation of the Season?’ a half dozen of those flashpans bayed the question.
“I am the illustrious Professor Austro,” Austro said. “Ah, which ‘Quotation of the Season’ is it, boys? I get off a lot of good stuff.”
“The illuminating statement ‘The real question is whether there is any criminality in crime?’, that is the quote that has rocked the country for the last six minutes,” said one of the media men there. “Who else but the Great Professor Austro would have the temerity to phrase such a thing? The whole world must have skipped a second to hear an utterance so utter.”
“Everybody change watches one second to pick up the skip,” said Roy Mega ungallantly. “I never remember whether we set them up a second or back a second.”
“Is there any particular childhood influence to which you might attribute your brilliance, Professor Austro?” a reporter-in-depth asked.
“What is ‘brilliance’?” Austro beamed like a beacon. “Ah, we always ate a lot of rock soup when I was a kid on the Guna Slopes.” Austro liked the adulation.
“Would you care to tell us, Professor Austro, what brand of rock soup it was?”
“Ah, we're on live and nationwide, are we? It was Rocky McCrocky Rock Soup!”
“I will just take two hundred dollars worth of stock in this Rocky McCrocky Rock Soup,” Judy Kingfixit offered, and Austro had the money out of her hand before she finished.
“The news services are running five minutes behind in trying to supply data on you,” said another newsie. “There hasn't been such a single-quotation stir since Tuesday.”
“Professor Austro,” a back-up analyst interposed. “There are two disassembled bodies here on the floor—” (They were those of False Face Flaherty and Cornelia Falselove: the three stabbed figures had risen and were waiting to go to the Hot Sauerkraut Sandwich Drive-In.) “Are they some of the debris of your murder investigating trade?”
“Oh certainly, certainly,” Austro bubbled the words out. “You can't have a murder investigation without breaking a few bodies. These last three murders we just solved, though, weren't our most successful ever. There's loose ends hanging out of them everywhere. We did solve them, and we contributed solutions to the nature of reality at the same time, but we didn't solve them with our usual verve and style.”
“Professor Austro, what would you say was your most towering characteristic?”
“My modesty.”
“Are you sure that this monkey-faced kid is the Great Professor Austro?” one of the reporters-in-breadth asked Roy Mega.
“He's the only Austro there is,” Roy said, “so he has to be the Great Professor Austro. The Great Professor Austro? Oh, what a wet nose he's become now!”
“A wet nose, sir? What do you mean?”
“He's drinking the first of the four wine cups. It's enough to turn any kid's nose wet.”
“What is the first of the wine cups, sir?”
“The cup of adulation. It's sometimes called Monkey Wine. He's sure going to be hard to get along with from now on.”
“Do you solve any of the murders yourself, sir?”
“Only all of them.”
“And who are you yourself sir?” the newsie asked. “Are you someone important?”
“Of course I'm important. I'm the Great Professor Mega.”
“Ah, cut it out, Roy,” Austro begged. “You're poaching on my rock pile.”
“The Great Professor Mega!” another newsie gasped.
“You're, you're even newer than the Great Professor Austro!”
“Let me tell you about that—” Roy Mega began to unroll his tongue.
The Only Tune That He Could Play
or
Well, What Was the Missing Element?
Tom Halfshell was taking his major in Trumpet-playing, his minor in Nostalgic Folklore, and his outreaching corollary in Monster-Morph. “That isn't a perfect balance, Tom my son,” his father had said. “The selection is too soft. It's a soft art, a soft science, and a soft speculative synthesis. My son, you had better introduce a harder and more manly element into your studies.”
So Tom took up Hard Geography for his sustaining corollary. This gave him four fields of study beyond the basics, a heavy schedule for even an intelligent young man. And this got Tom where it hurt, because he was not very intelligent. He was intuitive, he was rhythmic, he was effervescent, he was enthusiastic; and he was a young man of tone and taste. But he just wasn't very intelligent.
Still, he got good acceptance by both his elders and his contemporaries. And the hard hand of friendship will help one through almost any course.
Tom and three of his friends, Cob Coliath, Duke Charles, Lion Brightfoot, manly boys all, talked about his deficiencies and advantages, and the varying joys of the world, as they hunted fierce hogs with spears from muleback one spring morning.
“You are an unmatched half, Tom,” Cob Coliath shouted as he doubled back on his coursing mule after a very tricky and tangle-footed hog, “and ours is a world full of unmatched wholes. Complete yourself, Tom, complete yourself!”
Anything to do with man's best friend the swine is a worthy occupation, and lance-killing is a particular joy. The swine is meat and leather. He is also ferocity and fun and friendship. Spilling hogs' blood i
s almost as tall a thing as spilling one's own.
“Complete myself, that's what I'm trying to do!” Tom howled as he killed the boar with an absolutely perfect lance-thrust, from a bad angle, and already past the beast. And the other young men gasped in admiration.
Tom Halfshell wasn't as big or as strong as these other young men. He hadn't their tough intelligence, or their dedicated hardness, or their steadiness of hand. And yet he had more spectacular kills than any of them, with a real virtuosity of lance and mule-handling and boar-butchering. He was the least of the four in every element that should count high in boar-spearing, but he made the most kills, and he made them more dazzlingly than the others.
One of the things he had was trickiness, a quality not much understood.
“Unmatched Halfshell Tom,” Duke Charles sang as he led the charge after more of the fierce and bristling porkers. The four young men had killed nine hogs, and they had three more to go this morning. “Halfshell Tom, it always seems that there should be another half to you somewhere. When they spun the naming wheel, it stopped just right for your name. You do so many things well, and still you are not complete. Why not? There's an OTHAFA element in incomplete things. The rest of us are complete. Watch that porker!”
The porker, a solid, tusked boar, cut back into the feet of Tom's mule and knocked the beast down. It cut back a second time on a shorter radius and charged Tom who had barely found his feet after being thrown. It was in too close for Tom to use the lance blade, and he used the lance butt and spun the charge of the boar twice. And then the boar had him—
—but Lion Brightfoot had the boar then, with a slicing, almost backhand thrust of his blade, as Lion's mule, a clattering hack who enjoyed his work, brought him in exactly to ‘top kill’ position on a long sweep.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 251