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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Because I am invisible, Drumhead, except at night when I can be seen by my luminescent coat. I've been thinking, Drumhead, that when J. Palmer Cass is hanged, I might claim his body as next of kin. I might find resuscitable elements of my friend Jack Cass in that dead body. But it would be hard for a dog, especially an often invisible dog, to effect such a claim. Drumhead, if I am an hallucination of yours (which is possible), and if you are an hallucination of mine (which is slightly more than possible), then who are the two guys sitting here?”

  “God bless this wine. I don't know who the two guys are, Junkyard, unless they are ourselves. How is the wine holding up?”

  “I'll push my coaster wagon up the tunnel to the corkscrew cellar tomorrow and bring down another twenty-one bottles of each sort. That'll last another three weeks. There are about seventeen hundred of yours left, so they will last you, on the one-a-day, for nearly five years. As for me, when the common port runs out, there's plenty of common sherry and sauterne and other commons. There is an outré story out of the death house that the famous hairpiece of J. Palmer Cass is not a hairpiece at all but is his own growing hair. Drumhead Joe, I've seen that hairpiece on and off him dozens of times, so I don't know what to believe.”

  “I heard a different death-house story on the same subject, Junkyard. It has it that J. Palmer insisted so strongly that the hairpiece was his own hair that the guards said ‘We can be as stubborn as you are,’ and they shaved the hairpiece right on his head. Then J. Palmer moaned and groaned that, as in the case of Samson, his strength and his magic were in his hair and that he was ruined without it. But the next day, J. Palmer had brightened up; and he announced that the hair was growing long again. And only this morning (or perhaps it was a week ago this morning), I had a letter from a friend inside the big house which said that they wished the execution would hurry up before they had to admit that the hair on that hairpiece really was growing longer.”

  “Check,” said the dog Junkyard. “And mate. I beat you again.”

  “Ah, but you only beat me because I am not at my best today. I'm not really ever at my best any more. Junkyard, what are you doing? What is that blue horror that you're fumbling in your paws? What are you doing to your eyes?”

  “Putting in a set of those blue contact lenses that J. Palmer Cass wouldn't have been J. Palmer without. They've oversized contacts. They had to be oversized to cover the brown pupils of Jack Cass, and my own eyes are almost twins of Jack's. I want to see what the lenses do for my aura. What do they do for my aura, Drumhead?”

  “Gah, they turn me into a trembling ground bird, and you into a hypnotic snake. Take them out, Junkyard.”

  “Aw, Drumhead, I got to practice on somebody! But the attendant from the Bethlehem Institute for the Mentally Disturbed is here for you now. Maybe you'll beat me tomorrow.”

  “I should. I certainly should. Your middle game continues weak, Junkyard. I don't know why I'm so seldom able to take advantage of it.”

  The cheerful young attendant from Bedlam came in. “Are you ready to go back, Mr. Kress?” he asked. “Did you have a pleasant visit with your friend the invisible dog?” “Most pleasant, Charles. But he isn't invisible. You can see him right there, lolling in that Queen Anne chair on the other side of the chess board.”

  “Yes, except that there is neither Queen Anne chair or chess board here, nor visible dog either. Ah, you've been into the wine again, and yet there's neither bottle nor glass in here. You have a trick there, haven't you, Mr. Kress? But visits to this dingy place seem to brighten you up, though I can't imagine any place more depressing than an empty and deserted pawn shop.”

  “Dingy it is, perhaps,” said Drumhead Joe Kress with a touch of defiance. “But it could buy and sell half a dozen less dingy places. Did you know, young man, that there is a million dollars in the nail keg right there?”

  “Interesting, Mr. Kress, except that there is no nail keg right there. Nothing at all is right there where you are pointing. Come along now. It's a pleasant ten minutes walk back. Then it'll be time for your bath. And, after an hours nap, it will be time for your supper.”

  “My middle game isn't all that bad,” the dog Junkyard gloated as he looked at the world through the blue contact lenses which he found to be ego boosters for himself. “What Drumhead Joe Kress had better worry about is his end game.”

  Inventions Bright and New

  “And there is no New Thing under the Sun.”

  —Ecclesiastes

  “An original idea can only be had during the first seven minutes after the beginning of a World. After that, somebody else will already have had the original idea.

  “However, if Hawkins' Principle of ReEntrant Time is correct, we are always within seven minutes of the beginning of the world.”

  —Arpad Arutinov, The Back Door of History

  “Oh, Oh, what was that jolt!” Anna Thursday-Dawn cried out. “There was a distinct jolt that shook me and shook the whole world.” And she blinked three rows of her dazzling eyes. She had a piece of caul or soft eggshell still draped about her head as newborn children sometimes have. And yet she looked at least twenty years old. If the jolt were of a particular sort, of course, she could have been a newborn twenty-year-old child.

  “It must have been a mental jolt,” Hiram Working-Day said. “There are no physical jolts on the Broken-Arrow-to-Tulsa-Light-Rail-Rapid-Transit-Lines, no jolt or unevenness on any of its cars ever. I believe that we have just experienced a beginning though, and one could hardly pass through that without a slight mental jolt. However, we can hardly be expected to interrupt an interesting conversation just because the world has begun. You were saying, John Rain-Tomorrow—?”

  “I was speaking of the ReEntrant Principle,” John Rain-Tomorrow said, “and of how, while it does not deny the validity of beginnings and endings, it does make them to be of relative unimportance. So even if the jolt betokened the beginning of the world, there is nothing unique about such a beginning. A question is whether the world is seven billion years old or seven seconds old. And the answer, for one who is committed to Hawkins' ReEntrant Principles, is that the world can never be more than seven seconds old, that the world is always in the process of beginning, and that the cutting edge of the beginning is always a little less than seven seconds thick. Whenever the world begins, everything that can happen has already happened at least once; every idea that can be entertained has been entertained at least once; and these things are clearly written into the records and residues of the world, whether they really happened or not.”

  “No, no, Oh, no, no, no!” Anna Thursday-Dawn cried out. “I must make inventions that have never been made before. I must have an idea that has never been considered before. Oh, I must. I'd trade my life for such.”

  There were eight of them sitting there on a pair of facing seats on the Broken-Arrow-to-Tulsa-Light-Rail-Rapid-Transit-Line-Early-Prime-Run. They were John Rain-Tomorrow, Anna Thursday-Dawn, Hiram Working-Day, Catherine Tall-Tower, Clarence Bower-Bird, Mary Fat-Land, Andrew Kingdom-Come, and Elizabeth Burning-Brand. Each of the eight held fourteen cards in his hands. If it had been a little bit later in the history of the human race (Oh, say ten minutes later) it would be likely that the eight were getting ready to play cards. But that was not possible in the present case, for playing cards had not yet been invented. These were cards of another sort.

  The eight persons held cards of eight different clans to which they belonged. Each of them held ten numbered Admonition Cards, and three Personage Cards, the King Father, the Queen Mother, and the Warrior Son, for each clan had been founded by such a triad. The eight persons were, as it happened, playing the game of n. n., but not with cards. In the game of n. n., one plays the cards only verbally on the table. Each of the eight also held a Clown Card, which four of them called the Joker Card.

  “Hawkins has carried the ReEntrant Principle further than anybody else,” said John Rain-Tomorrow. His rows of eyes twinkled with humor even when, as now, he was spe
aking seriously. “The first ReEntrant Concept, of course, was that of ReEntrant Space. Sometimes people tried to explain it by talking about the Curvature of Space, but there is no such thing. No! One travels in a straight line always, in one unvarying direction, for a very great distance, and then he meets himself. Oh, it happens, it happens! The thing would be more widely known except that most often there is no recognition on these meetings. And then there is ReEntrant Time. Time is the river whose end merges with its beginning so neatly that nobody notices the junction. And the end of the world always merges neatly with the beginning, but you must remember that the end always comes first.”

  “I like the Principle of Re-Entrant Numbers,” said Hiram Working-Day who had now set thirteen of his cards face-down on the table and was assembling something with his hands. He was assembling something or making something. He had a very small lathe that he was running off a penlight battery, and he was machining incredibly small parts. “One goes down all the regular numbers and through the Number One,” he said. “One goes through all the numbers that are smaller than One, but he does not come to Zero. There is no Zero in the real world. One reaches the smallest possible number such as the smallest microscope could not discern. And then, going one notch smaller, one comes to the largest number possible, so big that a billion telescopes could not scan It. And there is no unevenness nor change of direction. The number that is smaller than the smallest possible number really is the largest possible number, and the sequence from the one to the other is natural and even.”

  “What are you going to do with that laser-beam projector when you get it finished?” Elizabeth Burning-Brand asked Hiram.

  “Oh, I'll put it in my buffalo gun,” Hiram said.

  The name of the game n. n. that they were playing was really “Nifty Notions.” They took advantage of the creative early morning moments on the Broken-Arrow-to-Tulsa-Light-Rail-Transit-Line to attempt Prime Inventions, Original Ideas, Thoughts Never Thought Before, though the world insisted that such things were impossible.

  “What I like is ReEntrant Size,” said Mary Fat-Land. When Mary was entranced by an idea she closed all her many eyes except one pair. “The size goes down, smaller and smaller and smaller, in the magic descent, following down to the smallest sub-atomic particle, till it is itself particularized, and then down to the smallest and smallest particles of the particles. Still one step smaller then, and one comes to countless and unconceivable billions of mega-galaxies, but their totality is still smaller than that ultimate smallest particle. And there is no unevenness along the chain at all. The aggregation of mega-galaxies is such a little bit smaller than the smallest particle that you'd have to put calipers on them to be sure that there really was a difference in size.”

  “What I like is ReEntrant Ideas,” said Catherine Tall-Tower, “and ReEntrant Perception, which is the same thing. An Idea will follow down the Idea Road, and its changes will have nothing to do with size or time or space or movement. And then there will be a ReEntrant Encounter. At the moment of the ReEntrant Encounter, the idea will become an Original Idea no matter how long it has already been kicking around. I'm on the verge of inventing playing cards now, a really Original Idea.”

  “And I'm on the verge of doing away with all eyes except one pair to a person,” said Mary Fat-Land. “All of them except one pair are an illusion anyhow. Let me touch my mind to that Illusion of an Exuberance of Eyes as I might touch my cigar to a child's balloon, and it will burst and be no more. I'll do it. I've done it! And it's all legitimately within the ReEntrant Principle.”

  Why yes, Mary Fat-Land smoked cigars. Doesn't everybody? And children often do have balloons. So the metaphor was a sound one. And the Illusion of the Exuberance of Eyes was exploded forever. At least every person in that Light-Rail-Rapid-Transit Car was reduced to two eyes only. Some of the persons were displeased by the change. And the Light-Rail-Transit Train-of-Cars came to a stop. Two gentlemen from the Rectitude Militia entered the car. Those fellows work fast.

  “What a cheap shabby trick that was!” one of them said. “Why would anybody want to destroy so beautiful an illusion as the Exuberance of Eyes? Animals have two eyes only. Angels have an Exuberance of Many Eyes, and all of them are functional. Until now, Humans have also had (even though it was illusory) the Exuberance of Eyes, though only one pair of them was functional. Who would have done so crumby a thing?”

  “I would have, if I'd known how,” a passenger in the car said. “I never did like that dazzle about my head. I like it better this new way, with only two eyes. I get a better focus now.”

  “He's the one!” the second Rectitude Militia man said. So they dragged the better-focus man out of the car. Then two woodsmen with double-bitted axes reduced that man to a quivering mess that soon ceased to quiver. So they killed the man for causing a disturbance.

  “You let them kill him for what you did, Mary Fat-Land,” Elizabeth Burning-Brand accused.

  “I won't tell anybody if you won't tell anybody,” Mary Fat-Land said.

  “I dislike that form of execution,” Anna Thursday-Dawn protested. “I will invent a completely new way of execution, one which will allow persons to die with dignity.”

  “It is so easy to overlook so much in Hawkins' ReEntrant Principle,” John Rain-Tomorrow said when the Light-Rail Train was rolling again. “His Principle of ReEntrant Time means that it doesn't matter whether that jolt a few seconds ago was the beginning of the world or the end of it. His Principle of ReEntrant Parallels gives us all the workable parallels we need in one sustaining skein. A single world alone would be too frail a thread even to sustain its own continuity. But there are uneasinesses about the parallel worlds. I believe this is because we do not always love our parallel persons as much as we should. Possibly this is because we do not like to admit that each of us alone is too frail a thread to sustain his own continuity. And we can never do or think anything absolutely original, for all our parallel persons will be doing and thinking shadowy parallels to it at the same time. We cannot be first in anything as long as we have parallel persons, and there is an utter frustration in not being first. ‘Through whose veins did my blood flow before it flowed through mine?’ I ask myself sometimes when I contemplate the parallel problem. ‘Who dwelt in this tent of my skin before I dwelt in it? Who was conscious in my brain before I was conscious there?’ For there is a circularity rather than a simultaneity in parallel persons. No one of them can ever be first before the others.”

  Catherine Tall-Tower did invent playing cards then. “And it is an original invention,” she insisted. “No parallel person of myself has invented playing cards, and none will do so before at least a full minute.” They used their clan cards for playing cards, and they began to play two parallel four-handed games. Well, the fact was that four of them were in one universe and four of them in a slightly different universe. How else could eight of them have sat comfortably in two facing seats that would hold only four? Four of them were in one Light Rail Transit Car, and four of them were in a very similar parallel car.

  (Some of the parallel worlds do not even have Broken-Arrow-to-Tulsa-Light-Rail-Rapid-Transit-Lines, and the people drive from Broken Arrow to Tulsa in private vehicles that are called hokomobiles.)

  “The Invention was easy,” Catherine Tall-Tower said, “and it was in two stages. When first I realized that the cards were a Calendar as well as a Clan Almanac and Cautionary, then I realized that there was a game hidden in them also.”

  “How are they a Calendar, Kate?”

  “Oh, the three top cards are number cards as well as personage cards; then everything works. So we find that each hand has thirteen cards for the thirteen moons of the year; that the total number of the playing cards is fifty-two for the fifty-two weeks of the year: that the total value of the cards in the deck is three-hundred-and-sixty-four, and counting the Clown Card as One we come to Three-Hundred-and-Sixty-Five for the Three-Hundred-and-Sixty-Five days in the year. Then we allocate four of the clan
totems for four suits for the four seasons of the year. There is much more to it.”

  They played different sorts of poker. “We would all be better poker players if we still had our Exuberance of Eyes,” John Rain-Tomorrow said. “It is hard to fake it at poker with only one pair of eyes.”

  “One aspect of the ReEntrant Principle that is often overlooked is the Principle of ReEntrant Matter.” Hiram Working-Day cut in, for conversation always goes with card-playing. “By the Principle of ReEntrant Matter, the Creator has made an incomparably easy trick seem incomparably difficult. In the beginning, before the beginning, there would always be some little scrap of matter in the universe. A perfect vacuum is not possible. There would be, at least, a very small fragment, or a fragment of a fragment, of a mu-meson. Then, according to the Principle of ReEntrant Matter, when this fragment of a fragment became still a bit smaller, it would become billions of billions of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. The billionfold galaxies would need to be but slightly smaller in mass than the fragment of a fragment of a mu-meson. And yet the billionfold galaxies would fill all the space that would possibly be.”

  “Would not the fragment of a fragment of a mu-meson also fill all the space that could possibly be?” Andrew Kingdom-Come asked. “Would it not have filled all of the slightly larger space than the billionfold space that followed it?”