“Wrackwolf,” he said, “I understand that you have been busted out of homicide to the bunko squad because of a few paranoid views that you've picked up. I suspect that your heart is still in homicide though. What I am concerned about is a bunko antic that hasn't even happened yet, but it's so outrageous that it could lead to a homicide committed by myself if it comes out wrong. Are you interested in halting a compounded crime before it happens?”
“The Harps, you mean? They don't interest me much. Oh sure, anyone can see nine miles away what's coming. But there just isn't any cure for the ignorance of college people, and I'm always half happy when they're took. My only interest would be in Jon Skaber trying to hide them in his workshop, but that's unlikely to happen. They intend to border-jump, I think, and to get to spending their gains right away.”
“How would Skaber hide anyone in his workshop?” Greatglobe asked. “Oh, hide them as models, you mean? I'd heard that you were a little bit on the other side of the hedges in some of your mental processes, Wrackwolf. You're crazy, man.”
Lyle Wrackwolf swelled up. He turned the color of angry leather, and he fumed.
“I'll not be laughed at,” he said in his heavy voice. “I'll not be derided by you. Fugitives do come to Jon Skaber's place, and some of them do not leave. I have followed them here and I know this. I come sometimes and sit and whittle and try to haunt the truth out of Jon, but he haunts me instead. He makes little replicas of the fugitives. He has them there openly for anyone to see. Then, after days or weeks or months or even years, the replicas will disappear from Jon's place. And at the same time, the fugitives will be back in town. Their hunters will be gone by then, you see, or they'll be in the pokey. If their hunters were the law, then arrangements for plea bargaining or such will have been made. If I was the hunter, then maybe I will have been handcuffed by a lay-off order from above. But the models are there when the men are gone, and the models are gone when the men have returned. And Jon Skaber gets more money from the models he doesn't sell than from those he does.”
“Oh, Sweet Swedes of Svanstein! You really believe that guff, Wrackwolf?”
“This Jon Skaber, Greatglobe, is a Scandinavian as I am, and with a touch of something older. I have checked back on him. I cannot say that he is a criminal, but his family in the old country did hide fugitives by some grisly device, and they did make models of the fugitives. And Jon Skaber follows the family trade. There's a strain of Laplander-magic in his family.”
“Have you the Laplander-magic strain also, Wrackwolf? Is that what makes you so—”
“So superstitious? I do have the strain in me, yes. And I'll not be laughed at for having it. Listen, Greatglobe, I've looked at some of Jon Skaber's models in a way that you wouldn't know to look. I've locked eyes with some of those five-inch-tall models. And there was recognition and fear that passed from their eyes to mine.”
“Whooo, Wrackwolf, this is too much! And you're dead, dingy serious. No, no, don't flex those big hands at me. For personal reasons I'd rather not be strangled to death just now. Oh man, you are so wrong that it's past the comic and into delirium. He has enough magic to spook you, but no other magics, other than his magic art.”
“Maybe I know a couple of magics that he doesn't know. He doesn't use wood, but I know what can be trapped in a block of wood that's been hollowed out with a Laplander knife. But I don't think the Harps are the kind of fugitives who'd want him to hide them. They will go first class when they go, and they'll go on a border jump. And you will be in trouble, man, because they'll go with the college money that you're responsible for. You're about to be made into a very stenchy goat, Joe College Greatglobe, and you laugh at me!”
“I'm not laughing, Wrackwolf. Stop them, somehow! They are a crime on its way to happen, and my superiors insist that I trust them.”
“The assurances of superiors last about as long as an October snow when a hot spell comes. And there will be a hot spell, man, for you. But theirs will be a time-delay crime. Their act will not become criminal until it is certain that they're not coming back. Maybe they will go to Rio. Maybe it is in Rio that they have located the electronic reticle that is such a wonderful buy. You're a sitting duck, Joe College Greatglobe.”
It was the next afternoon that Joe Greatglobe the purser and George Whitewater the proctor were in Skaber's workshop with him. Skaber had new-made models of the two Harps on his little display table there, and the models seemed to spill an irony over the two sheepish college officials. “Wrackwolf the Detective says that the models are here in your shop when the fugitives they represent have disappeared, Skaber,” Greatglobe said in a poor attempt at lightness, “and he said that when the models disappear that means that the fugitives have returned. He's hit it half right in this particular instance, hasn't he? I've a nervous feeling that the Harps really have skipped, or are in hiding. Where have you hidden them, Skaber?”
“You're almost too nervous to joke with,” Jon Skaber said, “but I'd be more inclined to trap the Harps than to help them escape. They didn't come to see me to be hidden, though. Honestly they didn't. They looked in on me for a moment, but it was only to taunt me for the last time.”
“You were apparently the last person to see them, Jon. After they converted the cashier's check into cash they came here. And where did they go then? There's no further trace of them at all. Wrackwolf the Detective says that I will become a very stenchy goat in this affair. And I guess that I am.”
“Wrackwolf is very anthropomorphic in his thinking and notions,” said George Whitewater the proctor. “He'll have you turned into a goat, and he'll have human fugitives turned into miniature models. Jon, he really believes that you reduce living persons to models. And that you can inflate them to persons again when danger is past.”
Wrackwolf the Detective came in without knocking. “I want the money, Jon Skaber,” he said, “the half a million dollars in currency that the Harps had when they came here. Have you miniaturized the money also?”
“Find the Harps, Detective. Then you may find the money. But theirs isn't a crime till it's sure they aren't coming back. It isn't your business yet, Detective.”
“Yes it is. There's another crime being done here, an unnatural crime. I have found the Harps. They came here and they did not leave. So they are still here, there on your table. So is the money. I'll take it and check it out.”
Wrackwolf reached and with canny fingers was under the coat and shirt of the five-inch-tall model of Diamant Harp, and he came out with a small strip of something. “The money belt,” he said. “I'll check it out.” Wrackwolf went out with his small acquisition.
“Ah, that was funny!” Jon Skaber sighed and snickered a minute later. “We will have a drink on that, men. I guess poor Wrackwolf will be put away sooner or later. They've busted him down to one department after another. Now he's in small-time bunko, but he still thinks he's on life-or-death stuff.” They drank it fast, and then they drank it a little bit slower. They talked slur-tongued after a while. And then Jon Skaber tried to waken his two newest models out of their grubby slumber to taunt them and display them. He shook them, and then they were half awake.
“For your sins of misproportion we will taunt you yet,” said the model of Rayona Harp. “You do us badly. There is no way that quality can be separated from quantity ever.”
“Jon's work is not true at all,” the model of Diamant Harp said. “There is no such thing as a true model of anything. We want our money that the shabby detective stole. We want to get out of here.”
“I recognize parts of their conversation,” George Whitewater said, “so they are actual recordings that you made unbeknownst to them. And you are dubbing in other parts of it. You're a genius, I suppose, Jon. But in the actual executions, as Rayona says, you do them badly. There's a distortion in all of it.”
“I don't admit there is any distortion in my work,” Jon said. “It's all true.”
Detective Wrackwolf came in without knocking, but now he
seemed a bit chastened.
“I'd hoped we'd be able to check the serial numbers on the miniaturized money,” he said, “but the experts at the lab say it'd take a week even to devise the instruments to unpack it and magnify it for photographing. But I know it's the same money, and that there's a way to reconstitute it.”
Jon and the purser and the proctor laughed then. They drank again, and Wrackwolf glowered at them. But they hadn't been able to side-track their troubles for long. Greatglobe and Whitewater rose to go. They were sure that the Harps had decamped with college money, and that they, Greatglobe and Whitewater, were going to be held highly accountable for it. Greatglobe and Whitewater left, and Jon Skaber went out into the street with them.
“Each to his own burden,” he told them. “I still have the deranged detective who seems disposed to linger on and on.”
“Deranged, Jon?” Whitewater asked. “Or is it just that you feel his hot footprints on the back of your neck? But thank you for commiserating with us. The Harps may not really be gone. Three times before we've thought they'd skipped, and they hadn't. But it escalates. Once we thought they'd skipped with thirty thousand, then with seventy thousand, then with a hundred and sixty thousand. Is this one big enough for them? We may be unnecessarily nervous. They may be as honest as the day is long. Ah, it's getting dark already, and so early.”
The purser and the proctor went up the dusky road to the college quad, and Jon Skaber went back into his own place where his own burden still waited.
And Lyle Wrackwolf the Detective still remained. He sat and he sulked. He took a curious block of wood out of his pocket and he whittled on it. He looked for a long time at the models of the two Harps. And he made deep and gouging cuts in his block.
“Aren't you going to put back the two-and-a-half-inch-long money belt on the model of Diamant Harp, Wrackwolf?” Jon Skaber asked. “While you have it, it detracts from the authenticity of my model.”
“No, I'm keeping it for evidence.”
“Isn't that a different sort of snuff you're stuffing into your lip, Detective Wrackwolf? You're a total stereotype, you know, and you mustn't change these little details about yourself.”
“It's vansinnig-ongras snuff, Jon Skaber. Why do your hands begin to shake?”
“My hands never shake, and they never fail me. That isn't the sort of wood you usually use, is it, Wrackwolf? It doesn't seem to cut well. And it's not your usual knife. Ah yes, mad-weed snuff, I've heard of it. Aren't you mad enough without it?”
“Possibly I am, but every shaman uses it when starting on a trick. Oh, the wood cuts well enough. No, the knife isn't edged as well as today's knives, and I don't usually use such wood as this. It's coffin spruce.”
“There isn't any coffin spruce in this country.”
“It didn't come from this country. It's from Lapland. I've had it a long time. I knew I'd need it some day. It looks rough, but it finishes off to a pleasant sort of textured smoothness. On the inside it does. You'll like it.”
Jon Skaber yawned widely. “Wrackwolf, you begin to get on my nerves today,” he said. “I'll have to ask you to leave. You have no business here.”
“You stretch your jaws when you yawn, Jon, but mine will outstretch yours. Ah, which snake will swallow which, I or you? Ask me to leave if you will, but I'm not going till I've completed my task. I'm working towards the apprehension of a criminal, and that is my business, inasmuch as I have any business after being busted down and down again.”
“You're looking for your criminal here, Wrackwolf? Time is running on you, man.”
“Yes, here, Jon. Would I be sitting here if the criminal were somewhere else?”
“You're insane, Wrackwolf, even without the mad-weed snuff.”
“Probably so. I've suspected for a long while that I was crazy. And my doctor more or less told me that I was, though with weasel words. He said I'd get along better though if I kept busy at something. So I will keep busy trapping the criminal.”
“Wrackwolf, please try to understand. I am not a criminal. I do not hide people. I do not shrink people. I am an artist in one particular small field, that of making models. And now I am tired of your present company. Yes, so I will alter it. No wonder your knife doesn't cut well. It's—”
“Oh, just an old Laplander magic knife. Flint blade, reindeer-antler handle. It cuts well enough if one has strong hands. I'll hollow out the coffin spruce block. And it will fit. It will always fit. You make your move too late, Jon Skaber. I had already begun mine. Why does your chin barely come to the edge of your display table now? Stand up to me now! Remember that you used to be of about my height, and both of us very big. Now what size are you? It isn't working very well, is it?”
“Why, why, I—no it isn't working right, Wrackwolf. You should be the one—”
“I should be the one who's shrinking? But I'm head and shoulders taller than you now, Jon Skaber. You've started to shrink, and you'll continue. You really thought that you could shrink me. You thought that the white giant could shrink the black giant? Aye, you'll fit into the coffin by the time I get it finished. Maybe I'll get my old job back if I go in and show them the master criminal encoffined in a little block of coffin spruce that I can hold in the palm of my hand. The Harps didn't come to you to be hidden, did they, Jon? I was wrong about that. They came only to taunt you one last time. But you shrunk them anyhow.”
“Wrackwolf, you're insane.”
“One of us is, Jon Skaber, but which one? That's puzzled me a little bit. Yes, now you're not even as tall as my navel, are you? Let's play it that the one who has to shrink and get into the wood-block coffin is the crazy one to let himself be so taken: that's you. But the stronger magic man has to be crazy to make it work: that's me.”
“Wrackwolf, crazy man, listen to me,” Jon Skaber spoke in fear and anger. “I am not a criminal. I do not shrink people. I am a peaceful craftsman. And I am not being shrinked myself, not, not, not—”
“I think the money will be all right after I've unminiaturized it. It will be real money again. I'll have the coffin ready for you in a bit. Yes, Skaber, you are shrinking. And deforming.”
“Yah, now you'll see what it's like, wise-guy Jon,” the model of Rayona Harp taunted in a squeaky miniaturized voice. “It's the trapper trapped.”
“No, no, Wrackwolf,” Jon Skaber, the Light Swede, the Light Giant, still protested. “Don't attempt it further. Don't! There's reasons why you must not! I'm a good man. I haven't done any of those wild things. They're all in your mind. I can't shrink people. I haven't any of that Lapland magic.”
“I can. And I have,” Lyle Wrackwolf the Dark Giant said. “Now where are you? Oh, down there. You can't get out, Jon. Not if you're too small to reach the door knob. Not if you're too small even to reach the top of that one step that goes up to your outside door, and it's only ten inches high. Oh, you're a bad job, Jon Skaber. And your face, your face! You deform so much when you shrink! The Harps were right. Models are never very accurate.”
I'll See It Done And Then I'll Die
“Rambo, you're right about to the end of your pictures, aren't you?” Gifford Hazelman asked him. “It's a wonderfully decorative idea, but you have carried it too far. Oh, why do you wear white socks with black shoes and pants? It pains me. And you just don't have room for another picture anywhere, do you?” Gifford Hazelman wore a gold pin with the logo ‘1-1-1’, which meant “of the one percent of the one percent of the one percent,” or “one in a million.” And he and his group believed that they were “one in a million” persons who had achieved Pragmatic Perfection. In this city of eight million persons there were eight persons who had achieved Pragmatic Perfection. Of course they knew each other and consciously formed a group.
“Oh, I have room for many more pictures in this room,” Rambo Touchstone told his visitor-friend Gifford. “I can put them on any empty place at all, or in the white or unfilled portion of a larger picture. Pale skies are legitimate places to put them. And I we
ar white socks with black pants and shoes because these are the colors of the things that I have the most of.”
“Haven't you any taste at all, Rambo? My PP friends all have perfect taste.”
“Oh certainly, Gifford. I have quiet tastes and noisy tastes. I have excellent tastes in some things and terrible taste in others. I even have enough taste to not get into arguments about taste.”
“But not enough taste to avoid splitting infinitives. One wants to take you and complete you. You love clutter, Rambo. But you have poor taste even in clutter.”
That was partly true. Rambo liked crowds and congregations of objects about him. Being generally too poor to have statuary, and his apartment being too small for that sort of clutter, he had pictures, pasted-up pictures. He had more than ten thousand pictures pasted up on the walls of his studio room. Some were smaller than postage stamps; some were as much as a foot square; most were in between. The pictures were cut out of travel brochures and advertisements, out of catalogs, out of Arizona Highways Magazine and Oklahoma Today and Gourmet, from art calendars of former years, from Antiques journals, from all sources whatever.
The doors, the jambs, the sills, the baseboards, the window framing, the mullions between the glass panes, and all wall space (whether hidden behind books and other things or not) were covered with pictures. “They make themselves known by their pervading influence even when they're hidden,” Rambo said. It was an amazing clutter. But there was a muted blending as well as howling clashes of colors and arrangements and contrasts. There was some taste in the collection and assembly.
“I'll rejoice when you don't have another square inch on which to paste another picture however small, Rambo,” Gifford Hazelman crowed.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 313