* * * *
Nine chimes sounded from the old clock in the steeple of Father Karl’s church, and Herr Zimmer did not appear.
Doctor Eckardt, who had been chosen again to hold the stakes, came forward and whispered for some time with Professor Baumeister. The professor (if the truth were known) was beginning to believe that perhaps Lame Hons had decided it was best to forfeit after all—though in fact, if anyone had looked, he would have seen Lame Hans sitting at the bar of the inn at that very moment, having a pleasant nip of plum brandy and then another, while he allowed the suspense to build up as a good showman should.
At last Doctor Eckardt climbed upon a chair and announced: “It is now nearly ten. When the bet was made, it was agreed by both parties that if either failed to appear—or appearing, failed to play—the other should be declared the winner. If the worthy stranger, Herr Zimmer, does not make an appearance before ten minutes past ten, I intend to award the money entrusted to me to our respected acquaintance Professor Baumeister.”
There was a murmur of excitement at this, but just when the clock began to strike, Lame Hans called from the door of the inn: “WAIT!” Then hats were thrown into the air, and women stood on toetips to see; and fathers lifted their children up as the lame Herr Zimmer made his way down the steps of the inn and took his place in the chair that had been arranged in front of the board.
“Are you ready to begin?” said Doctor Eckardt.
“I am,” said Lame Hans, and opened.
The first five moves were made just as they had been rehearsed. But in the sixth, in which Gretchen was to have slid her queen half across the board, the piece stopped a square short.
Any ordinary player would have been dismayed, but Lame Hans was not. He only put his chin on his hand, and contrived (though wishing he had not drunk the brandy) a series of moves within the frame of the fourteen-move game, by which he should lose despite the queen’s being out of position. He made the first of these moves; and black moved the queen again, this time in a way that was completely different from anything on the paper Hans had given Gretchen. She was deceiving me when she said she did not know how to play, he thought to himself. And now she finds she can’t read the paper in there, or perhaps she has decided to surprise me. Naturally she would learn the fundamentals of the game, when it is played in the inn parlor every night. (But he knew that she had not been deceiving him.) Then he saw that this new move of the queen’s was in fact a clever attack, into which he could play and lose.
And then the guns around Kostrzyn, which had been silent since the early hours of the morning, began to boom again. Three times Lame Hans’s hand stretched out to touch his king and make the move that would render it quite impossible for him to escape the queen, and three times it drew back. “You have five minutes in which to move,” Doctor Eckardt said. “I will tell you when only thirty seconds remain, and count the last five.”
The machine was built to play chess, thought Lame Hans. Long ago, and they were warlocks in those days. Could it be that Gretchen, in kicking about . . . ?
Some motion in the sky made him raise his eyes, looking above the board and over the top of the machine itself. An artillery observation balloon (gray-black, a German balloon then) was outlined against the blue sky. He thought of himself sitting in a dingy little shop full of tobacco all day long, and no one to play chess with—no one he could not checkmate easily.
He moved a pawn, and the black bishop slipped out of the king’s row to tighten the net.
If he won, they would have to pay him. Heitzmann would think everything had gone according to plan, and Professor Baumeister, surely, would hire no assassins. He launched his counterattack: the real attack at the left side of the board, with a false one down the center. Professor Baumeister came to stand beside him, and Doctor Eckardt warned him not to distract the player. There had been seven more than fourteen moves—and there was a trap behind the trap.
He took the black queen’s knight and lost a pawn. He was sweating in the heat, wiping his brow with his sleeve between moves.
A black rook, squat in its iron sandbags, advanced three squares, and he heard the crowd cheer. “That is mate, Herr Zimmer,” Doctor Eckardt announced. He saw the look of relief on Professor Baumeister’s face, and knew that his own was blank. Then over the cheering someone shouted: “Cheat! Cheat! Gray-black pillbox police caps were forcing their way through the hats and parasols of the spectators.
“There is a man in there! There is someone inside!” It was too clear and too loud—a showman’s voice. A tall stranger was standing on the topmost bench waving Heitzmann’s sweat-stained velvet hat
A policeman asked: “The machine opens, does it not, Herr Professor? Open it quickly before there is a riot.”
Professor Baumeister said, “I don’t know how.”
“It looks simple enough,” declared the other policeman, and he began to unfasten the catches, wrapping his hand in his handkerchief to protect it from the heat of the brass. “Wait!” ordered Professor Baumeister, but neither one waited; the first policeman went to the aid of the other, and together they lifted away one side of the machine and let it fall against the railing. The movable circuit card had not been allowed to swing back into place, and Gretchen’s plump, naked legs protruded from the cavity beneath the chessboard. The first policeman seized them by the ankles and pulled her out until her half-open eyes stared at the bright sky. Doctor Eckardt bent over her and flexed her left arm at the elbow. “Rigor is beginning,” he said. “She died of the heat, undoubtedly.”
Lame Hans threw himself on her body weeping.
* * * *
Such is the story of Lame Hans. The captain of police, in his kindness, has allowed me to push the machine to a position which permits Hans to reach the board through the bars of his cell, and he plays chess there all day long, moving first his own white pieces and then the black ones of the machine, and always losing. Sometimes when he is not quick enough to move the black queen, I see her begin to rock and to slide herself, and the dials and the console lights to glow with impatience; and then Hans must reach out and take her to her new position at once. Do you not think that this is sad for Lame Hans? I have heard that many who have been twisted by the old wars have these psycholanetic abilities without knowing it; and Professor Baumeister, who is in the cell next to his, says that someday a technology may be founded on them.
<
* * * *
There’s no accounting for fads ... or is there? What about the sudden popularity of books like A Grammar of the Tibetan Language and Tectonic Geology and the Coming Fifth Ice Age, both of which became overnight bestsellers in dirty-book stores around the world? Surely there must be a sensible explanation for this, and we can trust R. A. Lafferty to figure it out. Of course, it depends on what we mean by “sensible.”
R. A. Lafferty is the most individualistic writer in science fiction; his short-story collections include Nine Hundred Grandmothers, Strange Doings and Does Anyone Else Have Something Further To Add?
* * * *
BRAIN FEVER SEASON
R. A. Lafferty
1
“Here’s a puzzler,” said Barnaby Sheen. “One of the hottest new items in the porno stores, not only in this country but worldwide also, is A Grammer of the Tibetan Language by A. Csoma de Koeroes. Odd name that! Does anybody know what he is? There are hasty translations of the grammar into a dozen languages within the last thirty-six hours (things go very fast in the porno field). Does anybody know why the heavy-breathing, rheumy-eyed passion boys and girls should have this sudden interest in a Tibetan grammar?”
“It is funny,” said Doctor George Drakos, “and I sure cannot see any reason for it. There’s some sort of symbolism or transference, I suppose.”
“As I recall it, Koeroes’ book was printed in Calcutta in 1834,” Cris Benedetti said. “If there is a venereal element in it, it should have surfaced long ago. Several generations of British civil servants studied
it. But I don’t believe it ranks among the great grammars, even for Tibetan.”
“Austro!” Barnaby Sheen called loudly. And then there was a carrying whisper from the inner or omygosh room: “Car-rock, oh, oh, what now?” Austro had learned to whisper most imperfectly (his people were unacquainted with the thing), and his whispers weren’t quiet ones.
We always said that if anything should go wrong anywhere in the world, Barnaby Sheen would immediately suspect young Austro of having a hairy thumb in it. “Yes, and I’d be right to suspect him,” Barnaby would always maintain. “He would have a hairy thumb in it, no matter what it was.”
“Austro!” Barnaby called still more loudly.
“Carrock! I just got to go down to the laboratory, Mr. Sheen,” Austro jabbered as he came from the inner room and made for the stairs down to the front door. “Whatever you want, it has to wait. I got to get down there right now.”
“Don’t tell me I have to wait, boy,” Barnaby said. “It’s eleven at night. The lab has been closed for hours. Whatever it is that you want will wait till tomorrow, Austro. Come here and talk.”
“No, no, I got a hot smart idea,” Austro protested. “I got to go to the lab and get it down on stone right now. We can’t take chances on me forgetting it.”
“You have stone tablets here, Austro,” Barnaby said. “You’ve been hammering and chiseling on them in the omygosh room all evening. You can cut a hot idea into any of the stones so you’ll remember it. You never forget anything anyhow. Roy Mega says that you never learned the trick of forgetting, and he hasn’t been able to teach you. That’s why you have such a cluttered mind. Austro, what do you know about the Tibetan language?”
“Carrock, it’s tone-talk, a little bit like we talk at home. It’s singsong stuff, but I never learned it very well. Oh Mr. Sheen, I got to go right now!”
“Austro, do you know why an obscure Tibetan grammar should suddenly become a hot item in the porno stores?”
“Mr. Sheen, you know I’m not old enough to go into the porno stores.”
“No, but you’re old enough to avoid a direct answer to a straight question. Austro, if this little puzzler were handed to you, what first step would you take toward finding the answer?”
“Carrock, I’d triangulate in on it. I’d find where the puzzler originated and where it spread from. Oh, oh, oh, why don’t I learn to swallow my tongue? Why do you ask me questions? I’m just a twelve-year-old kid. Got to go right now!” And Austro ran down the stairs and out of the house.
Barnaby Sheen phoned Roy Mega at his mysterious number at his mysterious room. Nobody was sure where Roy Mega lived, but Barnaby Sheen believed that the young man had a room rigged up in that very house. Barnaby’s was a big and junky house (most persons know how many rooms there are in their houses and where they are, but not Barnaby), and Roy had a cavalier way with space, and with telephones. Barnaby was sure that he was paying the phone bill on Roy’s mysterious phone at least.
“Roy!” Barnaby barked into the phone. “Do you know why an obscure Tibetan grammar should suddenly become a hot item in the porno stores?”
“Do you believe me the sort of young man who goes to the porno stores?” Roy asked out of the phone. “I’m hurt. Besides, it isn’t obscure any longer. Got to hang up now. Got to go down to the lab and work on a hot idea.”
“Hold it, Roy, hold it!” Barnaby ordered- “Tell me just exactly what you and Austro have been working on in the lab for the last three days. I do pay the bills there. You do work for me. I have the right to know what you’re doing.”
“Oh, we’ve been working on the relationship of shape to smell to season, Mr. Sheen. And especially on the relation of subliminal shape to subliminal smell to forgotten season. Sorry. Got to go now.”
“Hold it, Roy!” Barnaby pressured. “Can there be a subliminal shape? Or a subliminal smell?”
“Oh, sure. We make them all the time. You think that things down underneath don’t have any shape? Or that they don’t have any smell? Keep reading the journals and you’ll find out about our stuff. We really can’t take time to inform every jasper of all the smart things that we’re doing.”
“Roy, if you were asked to solve the problem of Tibetan grammars suddenly becoming hot items in porno stores all over the world, where would you start?”
“I’d start the same place as with any other problem. I’d find out where it starts. Then it’s easier to find out what it means. I’d triangulate in on it and find out who created the situation and started the problem to rolling around the world. Oh, oh, oh, I’ve got to invent an automatic guardian for myself! We hadn’t decided what we wanted to do with it yet Why do I say things? Got to go now! Got to go down to the lab for one of those brilliant sessions.”
“Hold it, Roy! You’re out of order,” Barnaby crackled. “Now I-”
“The person is out of order. This is a recording,” came over the phone. And already there were rapid Roy Mega footfalls going down a back stairway of the house. Wherever Roy’s mysterious room was, it was toward the back of the house somewhere.
“I will bet that triangulation shows the origin of the puzzler to be right here in our own city, Barnaby,” Doctor George Drakos said cheerfully.
“I will bet it shows that the origin is in your own lab building,” Harry O’Donovan said.
“I will bet it shows the origin to be in the noggins of Austro and Roy Mega,” Cris Benedetti said, “in those two orbs that beat as one.”
“Why should such things be done in my own tents, and I have not done them?” Barnaby demanded in his scriptural boom. “That would be near treachery.”
Roy Mega was a young man of the species Genius who worked for Barnaby Sheen at his lab. He was from a downtown family. Austro was a still younger man of the species Australopithecus who also worked for Barnaby in his house and at his lab. He was from the Guna Slopes in Africa.
And this was really an interesting puzzle. Well, why do you think that the Tibetan grammars had become just about the hottest items worldwide in the porno stores? And why do you think that other items almost as strange had become almost as hot?
For, by the next morning (the third morning that the new tendencies had been noticed), there were very many of the sudden and learned items going hot guns in the porno stores. These were mostly writings and clips and tapes and presentations of an apparent nonporno sort. Many of them clearly fell into the hot-brain classification. And there was a double puzzle connected with all the things.
First: not one of the porno owners or operators around town knew how he had happened to order, for instance, a hundred and twenty copies of Masterman’s Tectonic Geology and the Coming Fifth Ice Age, nor even how he knew there was such a book to order. And second: nobody knew why the habitual customers of the porno stores should buy and devour such a book so eagerly, so hotly, and with such absolute mental and personal comprehension of it. For the porno folks did comprehend the new material: and some of it would be thought difficult.
Yeah, and then there was the second part of the first puzzle: none of the publishers or manufacturers knew how he had arranged to have so many copies of the items available at that time. They had published a hundredfold above the expected, and they were being snapped up at a hundredfold above the expected.
Why, just consider some of the items. There were old and erudite works by Tobias Dantzig and Erwin Panofsky and Basil Wiley and Samuel Noah Kramer and J. Huizinga and Bertrand Flornoy and Karl Mannheim and Albert Einstean and Hans Vaihinger. Until the last two days or so one didn’t find such things in the porno stores at all. They simply hadn’t been sold anywhere by the tens of thousands every day before, and they hadn’t been available in such volume till some strange anticipatory impulse had moved the publishers and manufacturers to unusual production.
There were young and pulsating works by Hildebrand Muldoon, Peter Zielinski, Robin Popper, Martin Gander, Virgil White crow, Titus Hornwhanger, Albert Cotton. It was a boom in snappingly live informat
ion, but why was it flowering in the sleazy soil and not in proper pots?
By noon of the third day, there was a flood of second-generation or feedback works, most of them from the new Porno Ancilla Press, which had four thousand titles (of incomparable brilliance) stocked and selling before it was forty-eight hours old. Yes, things had always moved very fast in the porno field, but now they were moving in new directions.
The wonder was not in the ability of the porno people to meet and master such works of cosmology and extratemporal history and nonorganic psychology and shape-and-perspective chemistry and chthonic electricity. All peoples have about the same mental and personal ability and about the same quantity of power and apperception. The wonder was that the porno people, having for a long time devoted themselves to a different complex of things, should now come with such hot interest to the fields of dynamic information and implementation, to the kinetically constructed scientific-scholastic-innovative fields.
Universe 7 - [Anthology] Page 16