Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 2 Part 15

August Crayfish carefully waited a moment and watched. A man walked out of the Blind Robbin and talked to another man in that little jog-alley.

From their seriousness it was certain that they were talking baseball.

"The Cardinals --" the first man said after a moment, and he also made the gesture. And seconds later a man playing eight-ball in the back of the Blind Robbin did the same thing.

August was sure then. Mike Zhestovitch not only could shrivel anything with the gesture, but the gesture as he used it was highly epidemic. It would spread, according to Schoeffler's Law of Dispersal, through the city in short minutes, through the world in short hours. And no opinion could stand against its disfavor. Mike Zhestovitch could wreck images and att.i.tudes -- and possibly he could also create them.

"Do you work alone?" August Crayfish asked.

"No. The rip-fix and the b.u.t.tonsew girls work in the same cubbyhole," Mike said with his curiously small voice.

"Do you know a Mary Smorfia?" August asked.

"I don't, no," Mike said, a certain comprehension coming into his ducks'-egg-sized eyes. "And you are glad that I don't? Then I will. I'll find out who she is. I see it now that you are a wrong guy and she is a right girl."

Then August Crayfish spoke the slogan that would be unveiled to the ears of the world that very night, a wonder-fully slippery slogan that had cost a hundred thousand dollars to construct. It should have warned Mike Zhestoviteh away from his mad resistance.

Mike Zhestovitch made the gesture, and the slogan was in ruins. And somewhere the Secret Crocodile lashed its tail in displeasure.

"Do you want to make a lot of money?" August Crayfish whispered after a long reevaluation pause.

"Money -- from such as you --" Big Mike didn't finish the sentence, he never did. But he made the gesture. The idea of a lot of money shriveled.

And August Crayfish shriveled so small that he could not climb over the threshold of the Blind Robbin on the way out and had to be aided over it bythe shod toe of a kind man. (This last statement is a literal exaggeration but it is the right direction.) Nancy Peters of ABNC located Mary Smorfia in the King-Pin Bowling Alley, where she was a hamburger waitress and a beer buster. Mary was small, dark, unpretty (except for her high-frequency eyes and the beautiful gash across her face that was her mouth), lively, smart, busy, a member of that aberrant variety of the human race that was called Lalian.

"Snorting Summer should take the Academy Award," one nice guzzling lady at the counter was saying to another, "and Clover Elysee is the shoeless shoo-in for best actress of the year."

And Mary Smorfia made the grimace. Ah, it was mostly done with the beautifully large mouth and yet every part of her entered into it, from the blue lights in her hair to her crinkly toes. It was a devastating, all-destroying grimace. It gobbled up, it nullified and it made itself felt to a great distance. The nice guzzling lady had not even been looking toward Mary Smorfia but she felt the grimace like a soul shock, and she herself did the grimace with a wonderful distortion of the features that weren't made for it.

And the grimace swept everything like quick contagion or prairie fire. Snorting Summer -- gah! Clover Elysee -- guggling gah! Those things were finished forever, beyond laughter, below derision. And Nancy Peters of ABNC noted the powerful effect carefully, for the original words of the nice guzzling lady were the very words that ABNC had selected to be echoed a hundred million times whenever the awards were thought of.

"Do you work alone?" Nancy Peters asked Mary Smorfia.

"Kid, I am so fast they don't need anyone else on this shift. I'm like silly lightning."

"Did you ever think of becoming an actress, Mary?" Nancy asked in honey-tones.

"Oh, I made a commercial once," Mary said out of her curly gash-mouth (she had to be kidding: she couldn't really have a mouth that looked like that). "I don't know whether I sold much of my guy's soap but I bet I got a lot of people off that Brand X. Ashes it was, worse even, after I monkey-faced it. They say I'm a natural -- but once is enough."

"Do you know a Mike Zhestovitch or a Clivendon Surrey?" Nancy asked.

"I don't think so," Mary said. "What league do they bowl in? I bet I will like them both, though, and I will remember their names and find them."

Nancy Peters was nervous. She felt that the annihilating grimace was about to strike again on Mary's lightning-gash mouth. But it was time for the test of strength. Nancy spoke the new slogan that had been selected for presentation to the world that very night, a wonderfully convincing and powerful slogan that should bring this random Mary Smorfia to heel if anything could. And she spoke it with all the absolute expertise of the Crocodile's Mouth behind her.

The Grimace! And the slogan was destroyed forever. And (grimacing horror turned inward) Nancy caught the contagion and was doing the grimace herself. She was quite unable to get the thing off her face.

Sheer humiliation overwhelmed the Nancy person, who had suddenly been made small. And somewhere the Secret Crocodile lashed its tail in displeasure and unease.

"So you want to make twenty thousand dollars, Mary?" asked after she had returned from the jane where she had daubed her flushed face and cooled her fl.u.s.tered body.

"Twenty thousand dollars isn't very much," Mary Smorfia sounded out of her panoramic mouth. "I make eighty-eight fifty now after everything. I could make a lot more if I wanted to go along with the cruds."

"Twenty thousand dollars is very much more," Nancy Peters said enticingly.

"It is very much more cruddy, kid." Mary Smorfia grimaced. Grimaced!Not again! Nancy Peters fled in deflated panic. She felt herself dishonored forever.

Well, do you think it is all watermelon pickles and pepper relish, this unilaterally creating all the images and att.i.tudes for the whole world?

It isn't. It is a detailed and devious thing and the privileged Disestablishment had been building it for centuries. (The Establishment itself had been no more than a figure of speech for most of those centuries, a few clinging bits of bark: the heart of the tree had long been possessed by the privileged Disestablishment.) Three quick random persons could not be permitted to nullify words from the Mouth itself.

Morgan Aye of ABNC located Clivendon Surrey in Speedsters' Cafe.

Clivendon was a lank and fair-haired man with a sort of weariness about him, a worldliness that had to be generations old. He had the superior brow and the thoroughbred nose that isn't grown in short centuries. He had the voice, the intonation, the touch or Groton, the touch of Ballie, the strong touch of other inst.i.tutions even more august. It was a marvelous voice, at least the intonation of it. Clivendon's employer once said that he didn't believe that Clivendon ever spoke in words, at least not in any words that he was ever able to understand. The intonation was really a snort, a sort of neigh, but it carried the cresting contempt of the ages in its tone. And it was contagious.

Clivendon was really of Swedish extraction and had come off a farm near Pottersville. He had developed that intonation for a role in a high school play. He had liked it and he had kept it. Clivendon was a motorcycle mechanic at Downhillers' Garage.

"Do you work alone?" Morgan Aye asked Clivendon.

"Naeu. You work alone and you got to work. You work with a bunch and you can slip out from it," Clivendon intoned. Yes, he talked in words and the words could be mostly understood. But the towering intonation was the thing the world-wilting contempt of the tone. This man was a natural and Morgan felt himself a foot shorter in the very presence of that tone.

"Do you know a Mike Zhestovitch or a Mary Smorfia?" Morgan asked fearfully.

"That's a funny thing." The tone cut through ear-wax and the soft spots of the spleen. "I had never heard of them but Mary Smorfia called me up not thirty minutes ago and said that she wanted both of us to meet Mike.

So I'll meet them in about twenty minutes, as soon as the clock there says that I'm supposed to be off work at Downhillers' Garage."

"Don't meet them!" Morgan cried out violently. "That might be the closing of the link, the setting up of a league. It might be an affront to the Mouth itself."

The tone, the neigh, the snort, the sharp edge of a wordless intonation sent Morgan reeling back. And there were echoes of it throughout Speedsters' Cafe and in the streets outside. The tone was as contagious as it was cutting.

Morgan started to speak the newest selected slogan from the Mouth -- and he stopped short. He was afraid of the test of strength. Two very expensive slogans had already been shattered today by these randoms. "No malice in the three," the computer had said and: "without malice, there's no handle to get hold of a thing," John Candor had stated. But somewhere in that mountainous and contagious contempt of tone that belonged to Clivendon Surrey had to be some malice. So Morgan Aye reached for what had always been the ultimate weapon of the Crocodile's Mouth. It always worked -- it always worked if any malice at all existed in the object.

"How would you like to make five thousand dollars a week?" he whispered to Clivendon.

"What garage pays that much?" Clivendon asked in honest wonder. "I'm not that good a motorcycle mechanic."

"Five thousand dollars a week to work with us at ABNC," Morgantempted. "We could use you in so many ways -- that marvelous scorn to cut down any man we wished! You could lend the intonations of your voice to our --".

The neigh was like a thousand sea stallions breaking up from the depths. The snort was one that crumbles cliffs at the ends of the earth.

Morgan Aye had gone ghastly white and his ears were bleeding from the transgression of that cutting sound. There were even some words in Clivendon's sounding.

"Why, then I'd be one of the birds that picks the shreds of flesh from between the teeth of the monster." Blinding and hooting contempt in the tone and Morgan Aye was in the street and running from it.

But the echoes of that intonation were everywhere in that part of town, soon to be all over the town, all over the world. It was an epidemic of snorting at the Crocodile's Mouth itself.

Fools! Did they know that this was but one step from snorting at the very Crocodile?

The ring had closed. The informal league had formed now. The three randoms had met and united. The Mouth was affronted. Worse than that, all the outpour of the Mouth was nullified. The whole world was rejecting the catchwords that came from the Mouth, was laughing at them, was throwing them away with the uttermost gesture, was monkey-facing them was snorting them down, was casting them out with bottomless contempt.

This was the short reign of the secret society of three, who did not know that they were secret. But in their day they closed the Mouth down completely. It was filled with mud and swamp reeds and rotting flesh.

The Secret Crocodile was lashing its tail with acute displeasure now. The Crocodile's Mouth had become quite nervous. And what of the little birds that fly in and out of that mouth, that preen the teeth and glean sc.r.a.ps of flesh and slogans and catchwords there? The birds were in quite an unhappy flutter.

"There is open conspiracy against us by a secret society of three persons," Mr. James Dandi was saying, "and all the world abominates a secret society. We have this thing to do this day -- to cripple it forever in its strength. Otherwise we will be cast out and broken as ineffectual instruments and the Crocodile will bring in strong persons from the c.o.c.ked Eye or the Cryptic Cootie to take our places. Surely we are not without resources. What is the logical follow-up to the Fruitful Misunderstanding?"

"The Purposive Accident," John Candor said immediately. "Take care of it, John," Mr. James Dandi said. "Remember, though, that he whose teeth we preen is the very bowels of compa.s.sion. I believe this is the salient thing in the world in our day. The Compa.s.sion of the Crocodile."

"Take care of it, people," John Candor said to his seven talented ones, "remembering always that the Crocodile is the very belly of compa.s.sion.

"Take care of it," the seven said to the computer, "always within the context of the jaws of compa.s.sion."

The computer programmed a Purposive Accident to happen and manufactured such props as were needed. And the Purposive Accident was very well programmed.

There was no great amount of blood poured out. No persons were killed except several uninvolved bystanders. The secret three were left alive and ambulant and scathed only at their points of strength.

It happened in the block between the Blind Robbin Bar and Speedsters' Cafe' when all three members of the secret society happened to be walking together. The papers called it a bomb, they call everything a bomb that goes off like that. It was really a highly sophisticated homing device with a tripart.i.te programming and it carried out its tripart.i.te mission.

All three randoms, former members of the short-lived secret society,are well and working again. Mike Zhestoviteh is no longer a zipper repairman (it takes two talented hands to fix those zippers), but he still works at the Jiffy Nifty Dry Cleaners. He runs one of those big pressers now which he can easily do with his powerful and undamaged left hand and his prosthetic right hand. But without his old right hand he can no longer make the contagious primordial gesture that once dumbfounded the Mouth and all its words. You just cannot make the big gesture with a false hand.

Mary Smorfia still works at the King-Pin Bowling Alley as hamburger waitress and beer buster. She is still small, dark, unpretty (except for her high-frequency eyes), lively, smart, and Italian. Her mouth is still a gash across her face, but now it is twice as great a gash as it used to be, and it no longer has its curled liveliness. Its mobility is all gone, it will no longer express the inexpressible, will no longer shatter a phrase or an att.i.tude. Mary Smorfia is as she always was, except that now she is incapable of the famous grimace.

Clivendon Surrey is again a motorcycle mechanic at Downhillers'

Garage and again he spends most of his time in Speedsters' Cafe. His vocal cords are gone, of course, but he gets by: he is able to speak with a throat microphone. But the famous intonation, the neigh, the destroying snort are all impossible for him.

The trouble is over with. Now again there is only one organization in the world to create the images and att.i.tudes of the world. This insures that only the standard att.i.tudes of the Disestablishment shall prevail.

In our opening catalog we forgot one group. There is another secret society in the world composed of the good guys and good gals. It has no name that we have ever heard except just the Good Guys and Good Gals. At the moment this society controls nothing at all in the world. It stirs a little, though. It may move. It may collide, someday, even with the Secret Crocodile itself.

THE CLIFF CLIMBERS.

The cliff faced south and was rough and sheer. It faced off against a mesa world, but it was not a mesa; it was a vagrant spire standing up alone. As you came to it from the south it was easy to go on either side.

There was no necessity to climb it, and it could not be climbed to the top.

But there was a kind of game to see how high it could be climbed.

A long time ago (but not as long ago as these first cliff-climbers) we played a game in the second grade. There was a little cemented area that was closed at one end by a concrete wall. The game was to run at it and see how far you could run up it, and to leave a chalk mark there as high as you could reach. The ultimate was nearly achieved, the very apex beyond which it was not possible to go, nor to leave a higher chalk mark. Then some of the big boys from the third grade tried it and made a shambles of the game; for naturally they could run up farther and reach higher and leave chalk marks above all the old ones.

The game on the cliff was about the same. The first chalk-mark was made by Little Fish-Head, and at a dizzy height. He wrote: "My name is Little Fish-Head and I climbed this cliff in the thirty-sixth year of the thirty-sixth period. I can see the river from here and it cannot be seen from any lower point. I have climbed nearer to the sun than any man who ever lived. And now may G.o.d watch over me on my long hard journey."

This translation is by Professor Potter, who climbed the cliff at a later period. What Little Fish-Head did was to scratch the picture of a fish high on the cliff wall, or a stylized object that might have been a Fish, and was anyway longer than it was wide. There was a triangle at one end of it which tile professor said was a fish-head. And there was a small triangleor wedge mark apart and just beyond which the professor said was tile signature, Little Fish-Head. On the side of the fish (if it was a fish) were six scratches of which one was longer than the rest. Speculatively this meant by six, which is to say thirty-six; and as one side of the fish was so marked, the other side of the fish which can no more be seen than the other side of the moon was doubtless intended to be marked that way also. This meaning, the thirty-sixth year of the thirty-sixth period, would date the sketch accurately as being 1296 years after the beginning of the first period, and would make it (the professor said) the earliest absolutely certain date in history if we only knew when the first period started.

He really could have seen the river from there, a striking view, and it could not be seen from any lower point. There was a circle scratched above which was the sun, that is G.o.d, and there was a jagged line going to the right which meant a rough journey ahead, and a long old journey it was.

It was translations like this that earned the professor the reptutation for brilliance fir beyond the call of duty.

But I will tell you the true story of Little Fish-Head. I have attained to it by ways as brilliant and fantastic as those of the professor, but they sound sillier and you'd hoot at me if you know my methods.

Little Fish-Head was the last of the horse thieves under the old recension. After him there were eleven thousand years when there were no horse thieves. This corresponded to the period when the horses had disappeared from the continent. As the last of the old horse thieves, he stole the last of the old horses.

Professor Potter and the other professors have puzzled over the disappearance of these first horses. But it was no mystery. They disappeared, as have so many other of the vital things, because they were over-regulated. The first regulation went out in the thirteenth period to the effect that men of the Horse Fly Totem could not ride horses. Some of them quit their totem (there are always a few who will apostisize at the initiation of unjust laws), some of them quit riding horses, and some of them continued to ride till they were hunted down and executed.

Then it was enacted that only those of settled estate and tangible property could ride horses; and they were absolutely forbidden to vagabonds and beggars, who had the most vise for them. Then a very high horse tax was enacted which discouraged all but the very wealthy from keeping up. After this it was decreed halt only kings, caciques, and tax collectors could own them. And finally there were only nine horses in all the Western world and they were all in one royal keep.

It was then that Little Fish-Head -- that is not his real name, that is only a stupid mistranslation of Professor Potter -- that Little Fish-Head did some serious thinking.

"If I kill the eight and ride away on the ninth, then n.o.body in the world can catch me. I will be as fleet as the storm and will tower over all the footmen of the world."

So he killed the eight horses and rode away on the ninth. There was a great outcry, but an outcry of footmen cannot bring a man down from his horse. Fie rode away on the last great stallion, and goaded it all day long, as he was in a state of exaltation.

At evening when it had run all day it fell dead at the foot of the cliff. This surprised Little Fish-Head, who knew very little about horses and thought they would run forever. It was then that he climbed the cliff to a dizzy height and scratched a dirge as tall as he could reach. This was the inscription that the professor in his pride had misread. It was not a stylized fish at all. It was a stylized horse without any logs, for it was lying down dead. And the little triangle was not the signature of Little Fish-Head, but the soul of the horse leaving the body, triangular rather than square or round to indicate the incompleteness of the soul of a n.o.ble but irrational animal.

What the inscription really said was this: "Oh my horse, All the swiftness is now gone out of the world.

No mail again can go higher than his own height, Nor more fleeting than lie was born to go.

The last man has ridden on the last wind, And only the dust can ride on the whirlwind now.

I have climbed to this height To write that the high aspiration was only a dream.

And if even a horse dies How can a man live forever?"

The next chalk-mark was made about nine thousand years later and was nearly a foot higher. There had been no improvement in the art of climbing meanwhile, but it had been scratched by a taller man.

It was a double wavy mark like a snake or a river, followed by an abrupt despairing downstroke. Professor Potter had made nine tentative translations of this. The seventh of the nine has now been proved by a miracle of scholarship too intricate to explain to be the correct one. This is it: "There is no water and I have traveled for days in agony. I have climbed this Cliff to look for the river. I see it, but I will die before I can go that far; it would take me three days to reach it. I had thought I could climb as high as the clotid and wring it out, but the little cloud has pa.s.sed and there is no other. The sun has become my friend now, but he is as much at a loss as I what to do. But at least I have seen the river before I die."

After that it was only nine hundred years before the next climber achieved. And he carved these letters: "Paso per aqui A-Dmo 1519 Mayo 19 Jose Ramires Castillo y Sanches."

This message is too definite and leaves little to the imagination.

He was not thirsty, for he did not carve like a thirsty man. He was not overly weary, so perhaps he had come on one of the new horses. Nor had he (the professor said) come alone. There were drill holes in the rock where rope hooks had been placed, and he must have had at least two a.s.sistants.

But we cannot picture him more clearly than this.

And oddly the next chalk-mark was made exactly four hundred years later. And it read: "Pinon Gap High School Seniors 1919 Clement Kincaid, Freddy Stockton, Manuel Cervantes We Are The Tops."

And in the high school annual of that year there were their three pictures on a page by themselves ent.i.tled "The Topper Club, The Most Exclusive in the World."

And to continue the spate of climbers in the very next decade was a higher entry: "Bo McCoy, I am the Real. I am a Bo. 1925 June Tenth."