The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  “But suppose he does object?” asks Jimmy.

  “Mr Raines,” says Alphonse, “I ain’t teaching my snake politeness through a correspondence school. If he is impertinent ain’t I there to administer the proper chastisement – and stop giving him fish? You leave that to me. And now, as the sun is subsiding, let’s be off.”

  At the end of two hours’ hard walking over sand heaps we came to a low hill, from which we could see a little lake with a few scrub trees on the banks and a shanty at one end.

  “There,” says Alphonse, proud as a peacock, “there is Doolanville. Pleasant prospect, ain’t it? I am thinking of cutting it up into lots and selling it to desirable parties only.

  “Welcome to the Hotel de Doolan,” says he, opening the door and peering into the shanty. “But mebbe you’d rather have the lizards out before you go in. They ain’t very partial to strangers.”

  He steps inside, and raises a racket, and a menagerie of half-a-dozen scaly critters, not counting the land crabs and house snakes, ran out. “Now,” says he, appearing once more, “your apartments are ready, gentlemen. Step inside and register. Sorry all our rooms with baths attached are took; but the lake is convenient and free.”

  By the time we had packed our things away and fixed our bunks the sun had almost set, and Alphonse was rustling around with his pots and pans on the outside, singing to himself. Jimmy and I watched him for a few minutes, and then Jimmy says to me, sorter quietlike: “Is this real or am I dreaming?”

  “Don’t ask me,” says I. “Feels like I ought to wake up myself before long.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “The worst of it is that we are here, and we can’t get our money back at the gate. Looks to me as if we’d have to see it through. But where’s the snake?”

  Just as he spoke, I looked out across the lake, and my hat raised two inches off my head. Of course, I had some faith in all that Alphonse had told us, but I wasn’t prepared to have it all come true so sudden and unexpected.

  Before I could kick myself to see if I really was awake, the snake was almost on us. He come sailing across that lake looking very wicked. He was as big as a water-tower, and I could have sworn that he was long enough to go round Latonia race-track twice, and a lap or so over. He slid across the water, a giant, greased fishing-worm, the last rays of the sun shining on his scales and turning them as white as silver.

  When he caught sight of us, I held my breath. He raised his head out of the water twenty feet or more and back-pedaled, churning up the lake till it frothed. His eyes was bigger than a barrel, and when he opened his mouth, showing a row of teeth resembling a white-washed fence, it was too much for Jimmy. He gave a sort of grunt, and went off into a dead faint.

  As for me, I was fast getting seasick myself and wondering how I could hit the trail back to the coast again, leaving Jimmy and his faint to themselves, when Alphonse stuck his head out of the shanty.

  “Ah, ha!” he cries, stepping out with his frying-pan in one hand and a box of sardines in the other. “Billy has come! Now, I guess you fellows know whether your Uncle Alphonse was toying with the truth or not. Ain’t he a beaut, William – and ain’t you proud he’s your namesake?”

  I was trying to get enough breath back to express my thoughts on that and other subjects, when the snake struck the beach, stopped short, and let out a roar that blowed me over against Jimmy. Alphonse seemed to think it a good joke, and snapped his fingers at the critter.

  “Here, Billy; here, Billy boy!” he calls. “Come and say howdy to your proud old boss and his friends. You mustn’t forgit your manners.”

  The snake ducked down for a foot or two, looked us over suspiciously for a minute, and then brought his head to a level with Alphonse. It wasn’t a head that you’d want a picture of in the parlour, with his big eyes, one green, and the other blue, and long white whiskers. But Alphonse seemed tickled to have him so close, and shoved the open box of sardines at him; and Billy smiled.

  You have never seen a sea-serpent smile, of course, so you can’t imagine what it is. You haven’t missed very much, though, so don’t lose any sleep over it. The inside of a mammoth cave, painted red – that was Billy’s smile. I was glad when he closed it up again, on the box of sardines, for he seemed so tickled with them that he kept his mouth shut and laid his head down on the sand beside Alphonse, like a sick kitten waiting to be petted. Alphonse scratched him with the frying-pan, and the snake lay there purring his gratitude and pleasure for five minutes.

  It was the noise he made – you’d ’a’ thought an engine was getting up steam – that brought Jimmy round. He came to, facing the snake, and when he clapped eyes on him, Jimmy let out a terrific yell. The snake didn’t like it, and before Alphonse could speak to him, he had reared up, the scales standing out on his neck like bristles on a bulldog. The next minute he gave his head a short, sharp bob, and one of those horn wash basins broke loose from its moorings, and shot by Jimmy’s ear, close enough to cut his hair.

  “Wow! Take him away, take him away!” howls Jimmy, making for the shanty, followed by another little sea serpent souvenir. Alphonse waved his frying-pan at Billy, and called: “Behave yourself, Bill! Shame on you!”

  But Billy was scared, too, and he kept firing scales at Jimmy until he reached the shanty and got hid under the boxes and barrels inside. Then the snake’s short ears laid back, showing he didn’t mean anything vicious; he lowered his head again, crawled up a few feet on the beach and butted his nose in the sand at Alphonse’s feet, asking forgiveness for his behaviour as plain as any dog ever did.

  Alphonse sat down and began to talk to his pet, and, not wishing to disturb a little family conversation like that, I sneaked away to find Jimmy, who was having a bunch of assorted fits in the furthest corner of the Hotel de Doolan.

  And that was our introduction to Doolan’s sea serpent.

  It is hard to believe, I know, but inside a week I got so used to have that snake about that I didn’t pay any more attention to him that I would to a big dog. We got to be good friends, too, although I never could find much enjoyment in his sea breath, which was strong and noticeable, him being so affectionate. Every morning when I went for a swim in the lake, he’d see me coming, and he’d cavort and do water gymnastics until I got out. He’d come to my call, just as he did to Alphonse’s, and seemed to try his best to make me feel at home.

  But he never did like Jimmy, I’m sorry to say. That yell he heard Jimmy give sort of prejudiced him, I guess. He didn’t shy any more soup plates, but he just didn’t take any more interest in him, and Jimmy seemed to rather enjoy the slight. It was a mutual dislike, too. If Jimmy could have handed Billy a dynamite sandwich, he’d have done it I reckon; but he never let on to Alphonse that the snake’s vagaries hurt his feelings.

  Even the night that Billy took Alphonse for a ride, Jimmy didn’t look jealous. The snake was laying up on the beach, as usual, and Alphonse was scraping his head with a piece of board, when Billy seemed took with an idea. He slipped his head under Alphonse, raised his back, and started for the lake again, with Alphonse sitting astride his neck, same as a bare-back rider in the circus. Billy took him fast across the lake and back, and Alphonse was so tickled with the experience that he made me try it the next night.

  Every night after that Alphonse and I would have a ride or two, and all Billy asked was a box of sardines and a three-minutes’ scratch of the head. I don’t believe there ever lived a kinder-hearted sea serpent than Billy.

  But, of course, this couldn’t last. The end was bound to come, and it came sudden enough when it did. Alphonse had just announced to us, about two weeks after we had landed, that he thought Billy was ready for his trip.

  “He won’t try to play hookey,” said be, answering my question on that subject. “When we get him to the coast, he’ll be afraid to leave me. I think we’ll start tomorrow, and then – across the water for us, and, fortune waiting on the other side! We’ll have Billy the talk of the world inside of –”

&nbs
p; And that was as far as Alphonse got. Something broke loose under the island just then, and the lake commenced to tear about as if there were a cyclone at the bottom of it.

  Billy looked back at his happy home, slid up on the bank, shoved his head between Alphonse’s legs, and whirled out into the middle of that boiling, roaring sheet of water like he had been sent for. Alphonse at once grabbed him by the ears and yelled for him to go back, but it wasn’t any use.

  As they reached the middle of the lake, there come a noise like Niagara and a dynamite factory let loose at once, and the ground under Jimmy and me began to buckle and crawl.

  I closed my eyes a minute and hung on to Jimmy, trying to think of something fitting to say, and when I opened them again, the lake was gone! In its place was the long ravine Alphonse had told us about, and a big, ugly-looking crack, into which the last of the lake was pouring. Out of the crack stuck a few yards of poor old Billy’s tail. Before I could say a word, that had disappeared, and Jimmy and I were alone!

  The lake was gone, the snake was gone, the earthquake had come and gone, and Alphonse –

  “Come on!” I yelled. “That snake has kidnapped Alphonse, Jimmy Raines!”

  Jimmy made some sort of answer, but I didn’t hear him. I was running down the wet, slippery bed of the lake towards the hole Billy had gone into. It never come to me that Alphonse couldn’t live in the water like Billy could; they had been so friendly and together so much I had forgotten they were different. But when I stumbled over a big boulder and fell flat, the jar brought me to my senses.

  “You are right,” I says, when Jimmy came panting up; “it ain’t no use to hunt Alphonse. He’s gone, and nothing left to show it.”

  Jimmy buried his face in his hands. “Ain’t it terrible?” says he. “Not even a thing to bury!”

  “He bragged too much,” says I, “and he didn’t have his fingers crossed!”

  “But he ain’t dead yet,” says a weak voice from the other side of the boulder, and there was Alphonse, sound and well, though wet and weak.

  “When I’d seen what was happening,” he explained, “I knowed Billy was trying to take me with him back to his home. When we got here I jumped, and hung on to this rock, while the water whirled around me and sucked him down. I skun my knees and knuckles, but I ain’t lost nothing but my snake.”

  We all looked at the little crack that had swallowed our fortunes, but we felt too bad to talk much.

  “I reckon,” says Jimmy, after a while, “that it won’t pay to cry over spilt sea serpents. Let’s make the best of it. We played Billy off the boards, and we lost. It’s back to the States for me!”

  “I guess you are right,” says Alphonse, “and the ’quake seems to have wound up the affairs of the Sea Serpent Syndicate. Well, gentlemen, I’m sorry, but I hope you’ll hold me blameless. I could tame a sea serpent, but I ain’t much on taming earthquakes.”

  The next day we drilled back to the coast. Alphonse wouldn’t hear of us taking him along, though. “My work is here,” says he, “and here I stay.” Then he added very wistful, and the tears pretty close, I tell you: “And if Billy ever should come back, I wouldn’t want him to think I had deserted him.”

  As luck would have it, we sighted a vessel two hours after we reached the coast, and the captain sent a small boat to take us aboard. Jimmy and I shook hands hard with Alphonse, and when we had got aboard the steamer, we watched him until we couldn’t see no more.

  That was five years ago – and we have never heard from Alphonse. So I guess the Sea Serpent Syndicate was dissolved for good and all the day Billy went out with the earthquake.

  YO HO HOKA!

  Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson

  Alexander Jones was in trouble.

  This, of course, is nothing new for a plenipotentiary of the Interbeing League. His duty lies on backward but promising planets, whose natives he is to guard from harm and guide toward full civilization and autonomy; the position carries the rank and pay of ambassador, and it was only because of his special experience with Toka that so young a man as Alexander Jones had gotten the appointment. His colleagues, stiff dignified men given to dressing for dinner even if they had to wear a spacesuit and to talking about the Earthman’s burden, would have pointed out that he was on a comfortably terrestroid world whose inhabitants were not only friendly, but practically worshiped the human race, were phenomenally quick learners and ready to do anything to become accepted into the League.

  They would not have understood that this was just what was wrong.

  Alex’s lean form strode through narrow, cobbled streets, between half-timbered houses, automatically dodging horse-drawn carriages. The “horses” were dinosaurian monstrosities, but otherwise Plymouth was a faithful small-scale copy of what the native Hokas thought its original had been, circa 1800 A.D., in Earth’s England. (This Tokan Great Britain was not to be confused with the one which had been brought up to a Victorian level of civilization; the cultural missions had spotted all imaginable stages of history over the planet, giving the natives appropriate books and equipment, in search of the best starting-point for their education.)

  The Hokas who thronged the streets made a respectful way for him, closing in again behind. He heard the awed whispers: “Blimey, it’s the plenipotentiary ’imself! . . . Look that, Alf, ye’ll allus remember ye saw the great Jones wid yer own blinkin’ eyes. . . . Wonder wot ’e’s after? . . . Prob’ly Affairs of State. . . . Yus, ye can see that on the poor lad, it’s mykin’ ’im old afore ’is time. . . .” The rather squeaky voices spoke English, for the Hokas had enthusiastically abandoned their earlier primitive cultures in favor of the more romantic ways of life the mission had shown them, some ten years ago.

  Until you got used to them, they looked much alike: about a meter tall, portly, golden-furred, snouted – more like overgrown teddy bears with hands than anything else. These citizens were variously dressed: cocked hats, tailcoats, knee breeches; burly dock wallopers in carefully tattered work clothes; red-coated musketeers; long skirts on the females; and no few males in striped jerseys and bell-bottomed trousers, for Plymouth was a major base of His Majesty’s Navy.

  Now and then Alex’s lips moved. “Old Boney,” he muttered. “I keep telling them and telling them there isn’t any Napoleon on this planet, but they won’t believe me! Damn Old Boney! Blast these history books!” If only the Hokas weren’t so confoundedly imaginative and literal-minded; if only they bothered to separate fact and fiction, stopped taking everything they read and heard at face value. There were times when their solemn conviction (be it that they were Victorians, or cowboys, or Space Patrolmen, or Royal Navy tars) almost hypnotized him.

  He turned in at the Crown and Anchor, went through a noisy bar where Hokas sat puffing church-wardens and lying about their exploits with many deep-sea oaths, and proceeded up a narrow stair. The room which he had engaged was clean, though the furniture was inconvenient for a human with twice the Hoka height and half the breadth of beam. Tanni, his beautiful blonde wife, looked up from a crudely printed local newspaper with horror in her eyes.

  “Alex!” she cried. “Listen to this, dear. They’re getting violent . . . killing each other!” She read from the Gazette: “ ‘Today the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin was hanged on Tyburn Hill –’ ”

  “Oh, that,” said Alex, relieved. “Turpin gets hanged every Thursday. It’s wonderful sport for all.”

  “But –”

  “Didn’t you know? You can’t hurt a Hoka by hanging him. Their neck musculature is too strong in proportion to their weight. If hanging hurt Dick Turpin, the police would never do it. They’re proud of him.”

  “Proud!”

  “Well, he’s part of this Eighteenth Century pattern they’re trying so hard to follow, isn’t he?” Alex sat down and ran a hand through his hair. He was sometimes surprised that it hadn’t turned gray yet. “That’s what’s going to be either the salvation or the damnation of this race, Tanni. Their energy, enth
usiasm, learning ability, imagination . . . they’re like a bunch of children, and still have all the capabilities of an adult human. They’re something unique in the Galaxy . . . no precedents at all, and Earth Headquarters expects me to educate them into the standard mold!”

  “Poor dear,” said Tanni sympathetically. “How did it go?” They had flown here only today from the office at Mixumaxu, and she was still a little puzzled as to the nature of their mission.

  “I couldn’t get any sense out of the Admiralty Office at all,” said Alex. “They kept babbling about Old Boney. I can’t convince them that these pirates represent a real menace.”

  “How did it ever happen, darling? I thought the imposed cultural patterns were always modified so as to exclude violence.”

  “Oh, yes, yes . . . but some dimwit out in space learned how the Hokas go for Earth fiction, and smuggled some historical novels into this sector. Pirates, forsooth!” Alex grinned bitterly. “You can imagine what the idea of swaggering around with a cutlass and a Jolly Roger would do to a Hoka. The first I heard, there were a couple of dozen ships turned pirate, off to the Spanish Main . . . wherever in Toka they’ve decided that is! So far no trouble, but they’re probably fixing to attack some place like the Bermuda we’ve established.”

  “Criminals?” Tanni frowned, finding it hard to believe of her little friends.

  “Oh, no. Just . . . irresponsible. Not really realizing it’ll mean bloodshed. They’ll be awfully sorry later. But that’ll be too late for us, sweetheart.” Alex looked gloomily at the floor. “Once Headquarters learns I’ve permitted a war pattern to evolve on this planet, I’ll be out on my ear and blacklisted from here to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. My only chance is to stop the business before it blows up.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Tanni inadequately. “Can’t they understand? I’d like to give those bureaucrats back home a piece of –”

  “Never mind. You have to have iron-bound regulations to run a civilization the size of ours. It’s results that count. Nobody cares much how I get them, but get them I must.” Alex got up and began rummaging in their trunk.