Short Fiction by R. A. Lafferty (buy e reader TXT) 📕

“There is a point beyond which politeness is no longer a virtue, Mitzi.”

“I know. If I could change it, I would.”

So the period of the visit was at an end, and Marlow was at his last conference with OMTLM, following which he would leave Pudibundia, perhaps forever.

“Is there anything at all else you would like to know?” asked OMTLM.

“There is almost everything that I still want to know. I have found out nothing.”

“Then ask.”

“I don’t know how. If I knew the questions to ask, it is possible that I would already know the answers.”

“Yes, that is entirely possible.”

OMTLM seemed to look at him with amused eyes. And yet the eyes were hidden behind purple goggles. Marlow had never seen the eyes of OMTLM. He had never seen the eyes of any of the Puds. Even in the Iris Room, in that strangely colored light, it had not been possible to see their eyes.

“Are you compelling me to do something?” asked Marlow.

“I may be compelling you to think of the question that has eluded you.”

“Would you swear that I have not been given some fatal sickness?”

“I can swear that to the very best of my knowledge you have not.”

“Are you laughing at me with your eyes?”

“No. My eyes have compassion for you.”

“I have to see them.”

“You are asking that?”

“Yes. I believe the answer to my question is there,” Marlow said firmly.

OMTLM took off his purple goggles. His were clear, intelligent eyes and there was genuine compassion in them.

“Thank you,” said Marlow. “If the answer is there, it still eludes me. I have failed in my mission for information. But I will return again. I will still find out what it is that is wrong here.”

“No, you will not return.”

“What will prevent me?” asked Marlow.

“Your death in a very few weeks.”

“What will I die of?”

“What did all your young pilots die of?”

“But you swore that you did not know of any sickness I could have caught here!” Marlow cried.

“That was true when I said it. It was not true a moment later.”

“Did all the pilots ask to see your eyes?”

“Yes. All. Curiosity is a failing of you Earthlings.”

“Is it that the direct gaze of the Puds kills?”

“Yes. Even ourselves it would kill. That is why we have our eyes always shielded. That is also why we erect another shield: that of our ritual politeness, so that we may never forget that too intimate an encounter of our persons may be fatal.”

“Then you have just murdered me?”

“Let us say rather that one hears of one who hears of one who killed unwillingly.”

“Why did you do it to me?” demanded Marlow.

“You asked to see my eyes. It would not be polite to refuse.”

“It takes you several weeks to kill. I can do it in a few seconds.”

“You would be wrong to try. Our second glance kills instantly.”

“Let’s see if it’s faster than a gun!”

But OMTLM had not lied.

It is not polite to lie on Pudibundia.

Marlow died instantly.

And that is why (though you may sometimes hear a young pilot tell amusing stories immediately⁠—oh, very immediately⁠—on his return from Pudibundia) you will never find an old pilot who has ever been there.

The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So they skipped several steps in the procedure.

The chordata discerner read “Positive” over most of the surface. There was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought on the body?

Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then it came⁠—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.

“Limited,” said Steiner, “as though within a pale. As though there were but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It’ll be twelve hours before it’s back in our ken if we let it go now.”

“Let’s lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of the world to make sure we’ve missed nothing,” said Stark.

There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.

The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator had refused to read “Positive” when turned on the inventor himself, bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He told the machine so heatedly.

The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that Glaser did not have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a difference, the machine insisted.

It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.

And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read “Positive” on a number of crackpots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not even read music. But it had also read “Positive” on ninety percent of the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi it had read “Positive” on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of billions. For the