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

“Somewhere between the latter two. How many persons do you know by name, face, and with a degree of intimacy?”

“I have learned over the years the names of some of my colleagues, possibly a dozen of them. I am now sound on my wife’s name, and I seldom stumble over the names of my offspring⁠—never more than momentarily. But you may have come to the wrong man for⁠—whatever you have come for. I am notoriously poor at names, faces, and persons. I have even been described (vox faucibus haesit) as absentminded.”

“Yes, you do have the reputation. But perhaps I have not come to the wrong man in seeking the theory of the thing. What is it that limits the comprehensive capacity of the mind of man? What will it hold? What restricts?”

“The body.”

“How is that?”

“The brain, I should say, the material tie. The mind is limited by the brain. It is skull-bound. It can accumulate no more than its cranial capacity, though not one tenth of that is ordinarily used. An unbodied mind would (in esoteric theory) be unlimited.”

“And how in practical theory?”

“If it is practical, a pragma, it is a thing and not a theory.”

“Then we can have no experience with the unbodied mind, or the possibility of it?”

“We have not discovered any area of contact, but we may entertain the possibility of it. There is no paradox there. One may rationally consider the irrational.”

Anthony went next to see the priest.

“How many people do you know?”

“I know all of them.”

“That has to be doubted,” said Anthony after a moment.

“I’ve had twenty different stations. And when you hear five thousand confessions a year for forty years, you by no means know all about people, but you do know all people.”

“I do not mean types. I mean persons.”

“Oh, I know a dozen or so well, a few thousands somewhat less.”

“Would it be possible to know a hundred thousand people, a half million?”

“A mentalist might know that many to recognize; I don’t know the limit. But darkened man has a limit set on everything.”

“Could a somehow emancipated man know more?”

“The only emancipated man is the corporally dead man. And the dead man, if he attains the beatific vision, knows all other persons who have ever been since time began.”

“All the billions?”

“All.”

“With the same brain?”

“No. But with the same mind.”

“Then wouldn’t even a believer have to admit that the mind which we have now is only a token mind? Would not any connection it would have with a completely comprehensive mind be very tenuous? Would we really be the same person if so changed? It is like saying a bucket would hold the ocean if it were fulfilled, which only means filled full. How could it be the same mind?”

“I don’t know.”

Anthony went to see a psychologist.

“How many people do you know, Dr. Shirm?”

“I could be crabby and say that I know as many as I want to; but it wouldn’t be the truth. I rather like people, which is odd in my profession. What is it that you really want to know?”

“How many people can one man know?”

“It doesn’t matter very much. People mostly overestimate the number of their acquaintances. What is it that you are trying to ask me?”

“Could one man know everyone?”

“Naturally not. But unnaturally he might seem to. There is a delusion to this effect accompanied by an euphoria, and it is called⁠—”

“I don’t want to know what it is called. Why do specialists use Latin and Greek?”

“One part hokum, and two parts need; there simply not being enough letters in the alphabet of exposition without them. It is as difficult to name concepts as children, and we search our brains as a new mother does. It will not do to call two children or two concepts by one name.”

“Thank you. I doubt that this is delusion, and it is not accompanied by euphoria.”

Anthony had a reason for questioning the four men since (as a new thing that had come to him) he knew everybody. He knew everyone in Salt Lake City, where he had never been. He knew everybody in Jebel Shah where the town is a little amphitheater around the harbor, and in Batangas and Weihai. He knew the loungers around the end of the Galata bridge in Istambul, and the porters in Kuala Lumpur. He knew the tobacco traders in Plovdiv, and the cork-cutters of Portugal. He knew the dock workers in Djibouti, and the glove-makers in Prague. He knew the vegetable farmers around El Centro, and the muskrat trappers of Barrataria Bay. He knew the three billion people of the world by name and face, and with a fair degree of intimacy.

“Yet I’m not a very intelligent man. I’ve been called a bungler. And they’ve had to reassign me three different times at the filter center. I’ve seen only a few thousands of these billions of people, and it seems unusual that I should know them all. It may be a delusion as Dr. Shirm says, but it is a heavily detailed delusion, and it is not accompanied by euphoria. I feel like green hell just thinking of it.”

He knew the cattle traders in Letterkenny Donegal; he knew the cane cutters of Oriente, and the tree climbers of Milne Bay. He knew the people who died every minute, and those who were born.

“There is no way out of it. I know everybody in the world. It is impossible, but it is so. And to what purpose? There aren’t a handful of them I could borrow a dollar from, and I haven’t a real friend in the lot. I don’t know whether it came to me suddenly, but I realized it suddenly. My father was a junk dealer in Wichita, and my education is spotty. I am maladjusted, introverted, incompetent and unhappy, and I also have weak kidneys. Why would a power like this come to a man like me?”

The children in the streets hooted