“It never has.”
“But it's deadly poisonous. People have died of its sting.”
“I don't believe any of our family ever has. I'll ask my wife. Oh, no, I needn't. I'm sure none of my family has ever died of its sting. I just remembered that none of them has ever died at all.”
The man with the hobby of conchology didn't visit the Murex house very much after that. He was afraid of that big seashell.
One day the school dentist had a curious report of things going on in Oliver's mouth. “Little crabs are eating the boy's teeth — little microscopic crabs,” the dentist (he was a nervous man) told Mr. Murex.
“I never heard of microscopic crabs,” Mr. Murex said. “Have you seen them, really, or examined them at all?”
“Oh no, I haven't seen them. How would I see them? But his teeth just look as if microscopic crabs had been eating them. Ah, I'm due for a vacation. I was going to leave next week.”
“Are his teeth deteriorating fast?” Mr. Murex asked the dentist.
“No, that's what puzzles me,” the dentist said. “They're not deteriorating. The enamel is disappearing, eaten by small crabs, I'm sure of that; but it's being replaced by something else, by some shell-like material.”
“Oh, it's all right then,” Mr. Murex said.
“I was going to leave on vacation next week. I'll call someone and tell them that I'm leaving right now,” the dentist said.
The dentist left, and he never did return to his job or to his home. It was later heard of him that he had first abandoned dentistry and then life.
But little Oliver grew up, or anyhow he grew out. He seemed to be mostly head, and his dwarfish body was not much more than an appendage. He and the great seashell came to look more and more like each other by the day. “I swear, sometimes I can't tell which of you is Oliver,” Helen Murex said one day. She was more fond of Oliver and his shell than were any of their brothers or sisters. “Which of you is?” she asked.
“I am.”
Oliver Geography Cone grinned.
“I am.”
Oliver Murex grinned.
Oliver Murex was finally out of school and had taken his place in the family business. The Murex family was big in communications, the biggest in the world, really. Oliver had an office just off the office of his father. Not much was expected of him. He seemed still to be a dull boy, but very often he gave almost instant answers to questions that no one else could answer in less than a week or more. Well, it was either Oliver or his shell who had the almost instant answers. They had come to resemble each other in voice almost as much as in appearance and the father really didn't care which of them answered — as long as the answers were quick and correct. And they were both. “Oliver has a girlfriend,” Helen teased one day. “She says she's going to marry him.”
“However would he get a girlfriend?” brother Hector asked, puzzled.
“Yes. How is it possible?” Mr. Murex wanted to know.
“After all, we are very rich,” Helen reminded them.
“Oh, I didn't know that the younger generation had any interest in money,” Mr. Murex said.
“And, after all, she is Brenda Frances,” Helen said.
“Oh, yes — I've noticed that she does have an interest in money,” Mr. Murex said. “Odd that such a recessive trait should crop out in a young lady of today.”
Brenda Frances worked for the Murex firm.
Brenda Frances wanted round-headed Oliver for the money that might attach to him, but she didn't want a lot of gaff that seemed also to attach to the young fellow. But now Oliver became really awake for the first time in his life, stimulated by Brenda Frances' apparent interest. He even waxed a little bit arty and poetic when he talked to her, mostly about his big seashell. “Do you know that he wasn't native to the sea or shore where we found him,” Oliver said. “He tells me that he comes from the very far north, from the Sea of Moyle.”
“Damn that bug-eyed seashell!” Brenda Frances complained. “He almost looks alive. I don't mind being leered at by men, but I dislike being leered at by a seashell. I don't believe that there is any such thing as the Sea of Moyle. I never heard of it. There isn't any sea in the very far north except the Arctic Ocean.”
“Oh, but he says that this is very far north,” Oliver said with his ear to the shell (When you two put your heads together like that I don't know whose ear is listening to whose shell, Helen had said once), “very, very far north and perhaps very again. It's far, far beyond the Arctic Ocean.”
“You can't get any farther north than the Arctic,” Brenda Frances insisted. “It's as far north as there is any north.”
“No. He says that the Sea of Moyle is much farther,” Oliver repeated the whispers and ticklings of the shell. “I think probably the Sea of Moyle is clear off-world.”
“Oh great glabrous Glabula!” Brenda Frances swore. Things weren't going well here. There was so much nonsense about Oliver as nearly to nullify the pleasant prospect of money.
“Did you know he has attendants?” Oliver asked. “Very small attendants.”
“Like fleas?”
“Like crabs. They really are crabs, almost invisible, almost microscopic fiddler crabs. They are named Gelasimus Notarii or Annotating Crabs — I don't know why. They live in his mouth and stomach most of the time, but they come out when they're off duty. They do a lot of work for him. They do all his paperwork and they are very handy. I've been practicing with them for a long time, too, but I haven't learned to employ them at all well yet.”
“Oh great whelping whelks!” Brenda Frances sputtered.
“Did you know that the old Greeks shipped wine in cone shells?” Oliver asked. “They did it because cone shells are so much bigger on the inside than on the outside. They would put a half a dozen cone shells into an amphora of wine to temper them for it. Then they would take them out and pour one, two, or three amphoras of wine into each cone shell. The cones have so many internal passages that there is no limit to their capacity. The Greeks would load ships with the wine-filled cones and ship them all over the world. By using cones, they could ship three times as much wine as otherwise in the same ship.”
“Wino seashells, that's what we really need,” Brenda Frances mumbled insincerely.
“I'll ask him,” Oliver said. They put their two heads together, Oliver and the cone shell. “He says that cones hardly ever become winos,” Oliver announced then. “He says that they can take it or leave it alone.”
“After we are married you will have to stop this silly talk,” Brenda Frances said. “Where do you get it anyhow?”
“From Shell. I'll tell you something else. The Greek friezes and low reliefs that some student of shells study — they are natural and not carved. And they aren't really Greek things. They're pictures of some off-world things that look kind of Greek. They're not even pictures of people. They're pictures of some kind of seaweed that looks like Earth people. I hope that clears up that mystery.”
“Oliver, I have plans for us,” Brenda Frances said firmly, “and the plans seem very hard to put across to you in words. I have always believed that a half-hour's intimacy is worth more than forever's talk. Come along now. We're alone except for old sea-slob there.”
“I'd better ask my mother first,” Oliver said. “It seems that there is some question about this intimacy bit, a question that they all believed would never arise in my case. I'd better ask her.”
“Your mother is visiting her sister at Peach Beach,” Brenda Frances said. “Your father is fishing at Cat Island. George and Hector and August are all off on sales trips. Mary and Catherine and Helen are all making political appearances somewhere. This is the first time they've all been out of town at once. I came to you so you wouldn't be lonesome.”
“I'm never lonesome with Shell. You think the intimacy thing will be all right, then?”
“I sure do doubt it, but it's worth a try,” Brenda Frances said. “For me, you're the likeliest jackpot in town. Where else would I find such
a soft head with so much money attached?”
“We read a seduction scene in a book once,” Oliver said. “It was kind of funny and kind of fun.”
“Who's we?”
“Shell and myself.”
“After we're married, we're sure going to change that ‘we’ stuff,” Brenda Frances said. “But how does Shell read?”
“With his eyes like everyone else. And the annotating crabs correlate the reading for him. He says that seduction scenes are more fun where he comes from. All the seductors gather at the first high tide after the big moon is full. The fellows are on one side of the tidal basin — and then their leader whistles and they put their milt in the tidewater. And the she seashells (Earth usage — they don't call themselves that there), who are on the other side of the tidal basin, put their roe into the water. Then the she seashell leader whistles an answer and that is the seduction. It's better when both moons are still in the sky. At the Sea of Moyle they have two moons.”
“Come along, Oliver,” Brenda Frances said, “and you can whistle if you want to, but that seawash talk has got to stop.” She took big-headed, short-legged Oliver under her arm and went with him to the chamber she had selected as the seduction room. And Shell followed along.
“How does it walk without any legs?” Brenda Frances asked.
“He doesn't walk. He just moves. I'm getting so that I can move that way too.”
“It's not going to get into bed with us, Oliver?”
“Yes, but he says he'll just watch the first time. You don't send him at all.”
“Oh, all right. But I tell you, there's going to be some changes around here after we're married.”
She turned out the lights when she was ready. But they hadn't been in the dark for five seconds when Brenda Frances began to complain.
“Why is the bed so slimy all at once?”
“Shell likes it that way. It reminds him more of the ocean.”
“Ouch! Great crawling crawdads — something is biting me! Are they bugs?”
“No, no — they're the little crabs,” Oliver told her. “But Shell says that they only bite people they don't like.”
“Wow, let me sweep them out of this bed.”
“You can't. They're almost too little to see and they hang on. Besides, they have to be here.”
“Why?”
“They're annotating crabs. They take notes.”
Brenda Frances left the bed and the house in a baffled fury. “Best jackpot in town, hell!” she said. “There are other towns. Somewhere there's another half-brained patsy in a monied family — one that won't bring the whole damned ocean to bed with him.”
It was later learned that Brenda Frances left town in the same fury.
“That was an even less satisfying seduction scene than in that book,” Shell and his crabby minions conveyed. “We do these things so much better on the Sea of Moyle.”
So Oliver preserved his virtue. After all, he was meant for other things.
An off-world person of another great and rich family in the communications field came to call on Mr. Murex at his home. “We weren't expecting your arrival in quite such manner,” Mr. Murex said. He had no idea of how the other had arrived — he simply was there.
“Oh, I didn't want to wait for a vehicle. They're too slow. I conveyed myself,” the visitor said. They met as tycoon to tycoon. Mr. Murex was very anxious that he and his family should make a good impression on their distinguished visitor. He even thought about concealing Oliver, but that would have been a mistake.
“This is a fine specimen,” the visiting person said. “Fine. He could almost be from back home.”
“He is my son Oliver,” said Mr. Murex, quite pleased.
“And his friend there,” the visitor continued, “I swear that he is from back home.”
“There's a misunderstanding,” Mr. Murex said. “The other one there is a seashell.”
“What is a seashell?” the visitor asked. “Are Earth seas hatched out of shells? How odd. But you are mistaken, person Murex. That is a specimen from back home. Do you have the papers on him?”
“I don't know of any papers. What would such papers indicate?”
“Oh, that you have given fair exchange for the specimen. We wouldn't want an interworld conflict over such a small matter, would we?”
“If you will let me know what this ‘fair exchange’ is—” Mr. Murex tried to comply.
“Oh, I'll let you know at the time of my leaving,” the visiting tycoon said. “We'll settle on something.” This person was very much up on communications. He engaged Mr. Murex and George, Mary, Hector, Catherine, August, Helen, yes, and Oliver, all in simultaneous conversations on the same subject. And he made simultaneous deals so rapid-fire as to astound all of them. He controlled even more patents than did the Murex family, some of them overlapping. The two tycoons were making nonconflict territory agreements and the visitor was out-shuffling the whole Murex clan by a little bit in these complex arrangements.
“Oh, just let me clean them off there!” Mrs. Murex said once where she saw a splatter of small blotches and dust motes on the table that served both for conference and dinner table — the splatter of little things was mostly about the visitor.
“No, no, leave them,” that person said. “I enjoy their conversation. Really, they could almost be Notarii from my own world.” Things began then to go well in these transactions even for the Murex family, just when they had seemed to be going poorly.
The visitor was handsome in an off-worldly way. He was toothless, but his boney upper and lower beak cut through everything, through prime steak that seemed too tough to the Murex clan, through the bones, through the plates. “Glazed, baked, clay, we use it too. It spices a meal,” the visitor said of the plates as he munched them. “And you have designs and colors on the pieces. We do that sometimes with cookies.”
“They are priceless chinaware,” Mrs. Murex said in a voice that was almost a complaint.
“Yes, priceless, delicious, exquisite,” the visitor said. “Now shall we finalize the contracts and agreements?”
Several waiting stenographers came with their machines. Brenda Frances was not among them — she had left the Murex firm and left town. The stenographers began to take down the contracts and agreements on their dactyl-tactiles.
“And I'll just save time and translation by giving the whole business in my own language to this stenographer from my own world,” the visiting tycoon said.
“Ah, that isn't a stenographer there, however much it may remind you of the stenographers where you come from,” Mr. Murex tried to set a matter straight again. “That is what we call a seashell.”
But the visiting tycoon spoke in his own language to Shell. And Shell whistled. Then whole blotches and clouds of the almost invisible annotating crabs rushed into Shell, ready to work. The visiting tycoon spoke rapidly in off-worldly language, his beak almost touching Shell.
“Ah, the Geography Cone shell — that's what the thing is — is said to be absolutely deadly,” Mr. Murex tried to warn the visitor.
“They only kill people they don't like,” the visitor said and he went on with his business.
The annotating crabs did the paperwork well. Completed contracts and agreements began to roll out of the mantle cavity of Shell. And all the business was finished in one happy glow.
“That is it,” the visiting tycoon said with complete satisfaction after all the papers were mutually signed. With his beak he bit a very small ritual wedge from the cheek of his hostess, Mr. Murex. That was a parting custom where he came from.
“And now ‘fair exchange’ for the specimen from back home,” he said. “I always find these exchanges satisfying and fruitful.”
He had a sack. And he put the short-legged, big-headed Oliver into that sack.
“Oh, that's not fair exchange,” Mr. Murex protested, “I know he looks a little unusual, but that is my son Oliver.”
“He's fair enough exchange,” the visi
tor said. He didn't wait for a vehicle. They were too slow. He conveyed himself. And he and Oliver were gone.
So all that the Murex family had to remind them of their vanished son and brother was that big seashell, the Geography Cone. Was it really from the world of the visitor? Who knows the true geography of the Geography Cone?
Oliver sat on the shore of the Sea of Moyle in the far, far north. This was not in the cold, far north. It was on a warm and sunny beach in the off-world far north. And Oliver sat there as if he belonged. There hadn't been any sudden space-change in Oliver. There had been only the slow change through all the years of his life and that was never a great alteration — a great difference hadn't been needed in him.
Oliver was bright and shining, the brightest thing on that sunny morning beach. He had his big head and his little body. He had two shiny black eyes peering out of his mantle cavity. Oliver was very much a sea shell now, a special and prized shell. (They didn't use that term there, though. Seashell? Was the Sea of Moyle hatched out of a shell?) Six sharp-eyed children of the dominant local species were going in close skirmish right over that sunny sand and a smaller seventh child trailed them with absent mind and absent eyes. The big moon had already gone down; the little moon still hung low in the sky like a silver coin. And the sun was an overpowering gold.
The sharp-eyed children were looking for bright shore specimens and they were finding them, too. And right ahead of them was that almost legendary prize, a rare Oliver Cone.
Flaming Ducks And Giant Bread
1
This is the year of clod and clown.
This is the year when the sky falls down.
A huge bloody glob fell in front of Valery Mok with a smash and a splash. It was no small thing. It was at least a thousand pounds of flesh: raw, red, bloody flesh.
“And human,” Valery said. “One can always tell human flesh.” She tasted a bit of the blood on her finger. “Type AB,” she said. (Yet there were those who never believed that Valery could identify blood groups by taste.) “All right,” Valery said then, “who's the joker?”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 175
