Short Fiction - R. A. Lafferty (i can read book club .txt) 📗

It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that perfection.

“So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming, Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver, Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices as listed below. Ask for Brochure⁠—Eden Acres Unlimited.”

Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose names were “Snake-Oil Sam,” spoke to his underlings:

“It’ll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We’ll have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven’t had any well-equipped settlers for six weeks. It used to be we’d hardly have time to strip and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of.”

“I think you’d better write me some new lines,” said Adam. “I feel like a goof saying those same ones to each bunch.”

“You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the pomegranate. People aren’t becoming any smarter⁠—but they are becoming better researched, and they insist on authenticity.

“This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar it. It isn’t greed or the desire for new land so much⁠—though that is strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you have to acquire your equipment as you can.”

He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and power packs to run a world.

He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at the rather large pile of bonemeal in one corner.

“We will have to have another lion,” said Eve. “Bowser is getting old, and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb.”

“I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the crackpot settlers will bring a new lion.”

“And can’t you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It’s hell.”

“I’m working on it.”

Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:

“Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty⁠—”

“And you had better have an armed escort when you return,” said Father Briton.

“Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?”

“It’s as phony as a seven-credit note!”

“You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by our senses? Why do you doubt?”

“It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds. Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible, zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers.”

“What?”

“If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn’t be afraid of a game of checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally.”

They looked at the priest thoughtfully.

“But it was Paradise in one way,” said Steiner at last.

“How?”

“All the time we were there the woman did not speak.”

All the People

Anthony Trotz went first to the politician, Mike Delado. “How many people do you know, Mr. Delado?”

“Why the question?”

“I am wondering just what amount of detail the mind can hold.”

“To a degree I know many. Ten thousand well, thirty thousand by name, probably a hundred thousand by face and to shake hands with.”

“And what is the limit?” Anthony inquired.

“Possibly I am the limit.” The politician smiled frostily. “The only limit is time, speed of cognizance and retention. I am told that the latter lessens with age. I am seventy, and it has not done so with me. Whom I have known I do not forget.”

“And with special training could one go beyond you?”

“I doubt if one could⁠—much. For my own training has been quite special. Nobody has been so entirely with the people as I have. I’ve taken five memory courses in my time, but the tricks of all of them I had already come to on my own. I am a great believer in the commonality of mankind and of near equal inherent ability. Yet there are some, say the one man in fifty, who in degree if not in kind do exceed their fellows in scope and awareness and vitality. I am that one man in fifty, and knowing people is my specialty.”

“Could a man who specialized still more⁠—and to the exclusion of other things⁠—know a hundred thousand men well.”

“It is possible. Dimly.”

“A quarter of a million?”

“I think not. He might learn that many faces and names, but he would not know the men.”

Anthony went next to the philosopher, Gabriel Mindel.

“Mr. Mindel, how many people do you know?”

“How know? Per se? A se? Or In Se? Per suam essentiam, perhaps? Or do you mean Ab alio? Or to know as Hoc aliquid? There is a fine difference there. Or do you possibly mean to know in Substantia