Serpent’s Egg

by R. A. Lafferty

  And then there was the arrival of some rough-looking, saltwater gentlemen looking for ‘that little-girl machine who put out the word that she wanted a crew of able-bodied pirates’. And there were some people, most of them rough and poor, who joined some of their earlier fellows under ground. There were common toughs and burglars who arrived and went down to investigate the underground facilities.

  Also there were people (they were clearly people and not apes) who did have a touch of the rhinoid look, of the typhonan look, of the gargoyle-titan look of which the Axel's Apes had more than a touch. Who were these clear humans who also had that look?

  “I can hear those old-settler Apes down in the cave remarking ‘There goes the neighborhood’ as they cock a wary eye,” a local wag said.

  And were the Old Titans the same as Axel's Apes? The ‘Titan Skeleton’ at the Field Museum in Chicago is clearly a human skeleton, and it would have stood two meters and ten centimeters—almost titanic. And old Greek bas reliefs show the Titans with almost-gargoyle faces.

  And there were itinerant workers, skilled and unskilled, who came to the neighborhood and went unerringly to the Apes’ Cavern underground as if they had been there before. And some of them had been.

  The Ape Cavern was a chain of natural limestone caves. Branches of the Arkansas River flowed here underground through some of the windings. And water had always trickled down through the roof of the caverns, forming limestone pillars, and statues (with Gargoyle faces), and hanging swords by their drippings. Seasonably there had been small to medium-sized lakes in the Green Country Valley that roofed the caverns. City sewers crossed several of the corners of the cavern, and there were vaulted and propped passages from the old Hickory Coal Mines. Also there were the casings of half a dozen old, capped, natural-gas wells going down through the caves. These wells had in the last decade been tapped illegally, and the gas was used for illumination and power by the Axel's Apes down there. The caverns were a reminiscence of the original underground cenaculum of the Axel's Apes in that Second Eden in the furthest hill of the Gamu Gofa Province of Ethiopia.

  There was a fissure in the rocks of that big underground room at Second Eden, and methane natural-gas rose out of the fissure and escaped through a hole in the stone roof of the cenaculum. And every night, just at dark, lightning would strike down through that hole in the stone roof and ignite the illuminating gas. So there would be good light all night. And at dawn, the gas would give a single sigh deep down in the fissure of the rocks, and would then bridle and extinguish itself for a while. And at next dark, the lightning would strike down again and would ignite the gas again.

  The case in Apes’ Alley in middle North America was very reminiscent of the case in Second Eden. In this latter-day Apes’ Alley, the Axel's Apes tapped the old wells with iron-zinc-lead pipes of their own making and brought the gas to gas-light fixtures (also of the Apes’ making, out of quartz-glass) to give illumination to the Alley and to other parts of the cavern. And the power-tools of the Apes were also motored by this gas.

  Apes’ Lane or Apes’ Alley was the urban parts of Apes’ Caverns; it was the downtown block. Here were the shops, here were the studios, here were the clubs and meeting halls, here were the places of entertainment including the movie house. This movie theatre showed silent movies only, silent movies made exclusively for this one theatre, the only new silents still made in the world. Mostly Axel's Apes appeared in the silents, but there were also some Humans and some Ambulatory Computers playing roles.

  There were the taverns where mushroom wine was drunk. Wine was a weakness of the Axel's Apes, a weakness which almost took them out of the Unfallen category, but not quite. And there were the Meditation Halls. Axel's Apes meditated a lot. There were the smithies with their gas-fired forges where the Yellow Apes could fabricate almost anything. There was the mint where the gold Somali Shillings (of three-hundred-dollar value each) were minted. Somali itself had never had gold shillings; hers were brass, but the Axel's Apes made gold replicas of them. Yes, the Axel's Apes mined gold which was very near at hand. The Apes couldn't understand the difficulties that humans had in locating lodes and mines. The Yellow Apes themselves could smell and appraise deposits of all metals to distances of two hundred kilometers, through the earth or through the air.

  On Apes’ Alley was the plant where the newspaper was printed for all the inhabitants of the caverns. And there was a hotel for travelers. One non-Axel's Ape person who visited Apes’ Alley said that the shops there had a Dickensian appearance and flavor; and that the persons there, whether ape or human or computer, also had a Dickensian flavor. This was partly because of the fogs (burning underground the natural gas always causes fogs) which were like London fogs of earlier centuries. It was the illuminating gas in the dampish caverns that caused these fogs, yes. And yet the salty ocean was very very near these last several days and nights. And it was the fogs that caused the queerness on everything.

  Word was coming out of the Meditation Halls in that end-of-summer time that in that very year, perhaps even in that very day or hour, the ‘Time’ would come and manifest itself. The ‘Time’, it was believed, would be the ‘Moment of the Awakening of the Second People’.

  “Are you asleep then?” an intelligent computer asked one of the leading citizens of Apes’ Alley. “Are you asleep, my friend?”

  “Aye, we are and I am,” the leading citizen said, “but you can hardly notice it in us. It is like the woman who was married to the man for thirty years. He was drunk almost all that time, and she had never noticed it until one day when she saw him sober. You do not realize that we are asleep until, on some year or day, you will see one of us awake. Oh, it will make a difference when we wake up!”

  A midas with an intricate mind and the name Satrap Saint Ledger had been coming to Apes’ Alley for several years, though he was clearly human. He had a permanent suite at the New Eden Hotel there. And recently, after the mystifying appearance and growing of Inneall's Ocean, he had moved one of his yachts to the beautiful blue body of water. Satrap was an ocean diver by one of his hobbies, and a hydraulic engineer by another. And he had many close friends among the Ambulatory Computers as well as among the Axel's Apes. Whatever the Computers could devise, the Apes could make at their smithies. Now they built a series of locks leading up from Satrap's suite in the hotel into Inneall's Ocean. By these, he could go up from his hotel suite in the New Eden Hotel to his yacht the Annabella Saint Ledger. Up and back again. Oh, it was handy to have a back door like that from one of his private worlds to another! He named the locks and their tube the ‘Allez-Oop’. But the Yellow Apes called the combination the ‘Alley Oop’ or the ‘Up-You-Go’. Satrap Saint Ledger was a close friend of Alpha the boss of Apes’ Alley and Apes’ Caverns. And so also was Inneall, and that is the way that Satrap and Inneall got acquainted.

  Now Inneall the little-girl Computer of the Lynn-Randal Experiment came to Satrap in his suite at the New Eden Hotel, and she brought an ultimatum.

  “I want your yacht,” she said. “I insist that you deed it to me absolutely and without conditions. Well yes, there will be one condition, that you continue to pay the crew and to pay for provisions and ship's stores and such things. But it will be my crew on the yacht, my pirate crew that you will pay, and at top rates. You really have no choice. You are sailing your yacht on my ocean without my permission, so I confiscate it now to settle the issue. This is my ultimatum, and I bet that international law will back me up.”

  “No, yours is not an ultimatum, it is only a penultimatum, an ‘almost final’ declaration, but not a final declaration. I discern that it will be possible to negotiate with you. And I bet that international law doesn't back you up, little tin girl.”

  “I am not a little tin girl. I am, about 88 percent of me, a little wotto-metal girl. But I bet an ignorant midas like yourself doesn't even know what wotto metal is.”

  “How do you think I got to be a midas, you clanking urchin? The great inventor of wotto
metal, Otto Wotto himself, was my maternal grandfather. I tell you that the wotto-metal mine, if I may call it that, has paid out better than all the gold mines in the last thousand years. Which of my yachts do you want, Computerized Lass? I put two more of my yachts on your ocean last night. But I suppose that I had better keep the other four of them in reserve till I see how the climate is between us. How is the climate between us, little sis?”

  “Nervous, midas Satrap Saint Leger, it's a little bit nervous between us. I thought that you’d cave in immediately and give me everything I want when you saw that right was on my side. And instead of that, you seem to mock at me. Be careful! I really do have powers, though there's a mechanistic explanation for each of them. I made an ocean to stand where there were four little valleys before, and I intend to make it thousands of times bigger than it is now. I wonder if you know what I could make to stand right where you are standing now? Well, I want all three craft that you have put on my ocean. And I want the first of them, the one that the Allez-Oop goes up to, the Annabella Saint Ledger, to be my flag-ship. I have sentimental feelings about that one.”

  “So have I, mini-person. It's named for my daughter Annabella Saint Ledger. She’d be just about ten, as you are, if she’d lived. Oh, I’d agree to it all! I’d sign a contract giving at least the flagship to you, and continuing to pay for provisions and crew, but such a contract would have to be signed in blood by both parties, and you haven't any blood.”

  “Yes I have. I have a heart and I have circulating blood. I made the system, and I put it into myself. See, that is my heart there. And the blood is partly human and partly Axel's Ape blood. I got it from my two associates in the Lynn-Randal Experiment. I got it a little bit at a time when they were asleep so they wouldn't know that I was taking it. Now here is the contract of capitulation that I have already drawn up for your surrender. We'll both just sign it, and then my own crew of able-bodied pirates will take over the flagship.”

  “That thing isn't a heart, Inneall. It looks to me like a pump for circulating water in a parlor aquarium, one of the little ten-gallon aquariums.”

  “Yes, that's what it was, an aquarium pump. But what it is now is my heart. And it's plenty big. My own system holds only one gallon of blood. I don't think yours holds much more, the slow way it's coming out. What are you writing? That isn't your name. That's something else.”

  “I am writing a condition that I impose, Inneall, and without it the contract is void. The condition is that you agree that I adopt you as my daughter in place of Annabella Saint Ledger who is dead.”

  “Can I use Annabella Saint Ledger for one of my secular names then?”

  “Oh sure. And you can use the same flag, or you can modify it to suit yourself. The present flag is the Saint Ledger coat-of-arms.”

  “All right. I'll just take the flagship now. I may make demands for the other two yachts later.” Both of them signed the document in their blood. Then Satrap Saint Ledger went up the Allez-Oop to give the crewmen other assignments. And, one hour later, Inneall boarded the Annabella Saint Ledger with the pirate crew that had come to take service with her.

  The Saint Ledger (or Naomh Laoghaire in its Gaelic form) coat-of-arms was a Black Sail-Ship on a Blue Ocean. And on the ship were the faces of three crewmen or personages: the Red Laird, the Yellow Dwarf (the Poupe Jaune or Pope Joan; it had a Gargoyle face); and the Grindstone with the little-girl face (it was the pixie face of Annabella Pansy-Face) cartooned on it. And below the Black Ship was a Green Porpoise of the species called the Persian Gulf Porpoise or the Satrap Porpoise. And that was what was on the coat-of-arms flag of the Annabella Saint Ledger.

  “I'll not change it a jot,” Inneall-Annabella said, “for I am Annabella now. This is the flag that will strike terror on all the oceans of the world.”

  There were now three Dolophonoi-Assassins prowling around. Sometimes they stayed in Apes’ Alley. They wore the Gargoyle faces of Apes, but they were probably not Apes. And yet they could hand-wrestle successfully with the strongest Apes, and very few humans could do that. It almost seemed as if the Axel's Apes were afraid of them, but the Axel's Apes were afraid of nothing. It almost seemed as if the Axel's Apes were angry at them, but the Apes did not have the capacity for anger. Sometimes the Dolophonoi stayed in Structo Lane. Well, they could be Ambulatory and Miming Computers, for those computers can choose whatever faces they want to wear. The Dolophonoi certainly had mechanical parts implanted in them, electronic hearing and smelling, probably electronic strength-reinforcers in hand and arm and leg. They surely had some sort of electronic grapplers to aid them in climbing. But it seemed that the largest component in them was the human. And there were some human elements subtracted from them. They lacked normal human fear. They lacked normal human caution.

  But the Dolophonoi could hunt a prey and kill it. The gamblers’ odds were usually fifty-to-one that the Dolos would achieve kill in a particular case. They were cool, they were stylish, they were elegant. And almost everybody (except the ethicals) always wanted these assassins to succeed. It is all a myth that most people favor the under-dog. Almost everybody is on the side of the top-dog. That had always been the case, but only in recent decades had it been openly the case. And the profession of Dolophonos or Assassin had always been a top-dog profession. What elegant top-dogs they were!

  “I suspect that my imprinting is clear out of control,” Inneall said. “So many things about me are clear out of control.” She was talking to birds, and ordinarily they understood her, but the things she was saying now were a little bit deep for them. She had learned how to talk to birds and animals from the Axel's Apes. “So many things about me have gone out of control lately. I have the ‘Multiple Run-Amoks’ and I'm not sure that there's any cure for the disease. I suspect that the only way to bring me under control is to kill me. That's sort of an argument for me being the Serpent's Egg who'll have to be crushed to an early death. But the strongest arguments are for Ruddy Lord Randal to be the Serpent's Egg.

  “But I am imprinted with human fears and even terrors. Machines do not worry. They do not have apprehensions. They do not have fears and terrors. They do not have emotions, and certainly they do not let their emotions override their reason. But I have emotions, and sometimes I do let them override everything. Machines do not have jealousies, but I have them.

  “Three of the little Ape girls are jealous of me because they believe that Axel is my boy friend. They do not understand about ‘Extra-Species Inhibitions’. But I also am jealous of the little Ape girls because there will be no ‘Extra-Species Inhibitions’ between them and Axel. I believe that I have gotten most of my human imprinting done by the Axel's Apes. I am not sure that there is much difference between Human Imprinting and Yellow Apes Imprinting. The Apes are only humans who wear yellow fur suits. And some of them are losing their yellow body hair at an alarming rate. They take nostrums for it, and still they lose it. What does their molt mean? And Grandfather Alpha is turning gray.”

  That was true. Old Alpha, the alpha male of Apes’ Caverns, was now grizzled gray through all his yellow hair. He was the patriarch of the Caverns. He was the King. He was the Prophet. And he now spent eighteen hours out of the twenty-four in either prayer or contemplation. He believed that the ‘Moment of Awakening of the Second People’ was very near. And he believed that his cavern would waken first and would send the signal to all the ‘Apes in Exile’ in zoos and institutions around the world. He believed that these would transmit, and that then the Holy Apes in Second Eden would waken last of all, though the whole world-wide awakening would take less than five minutes.

  But Alpha who could bend iron bars as if they were weeds spent a lot of time with his children and grandchildren. All of the Apes in the Cavern were kindred and there were just short of fifty of them. They seemed to Humans, and to AMH Computers, to be a little bit childish in some ways. They were all like children who happened to be laden with great genius, and they were all the more juvenile for their gifts.<
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  They went in for puzzles and riddles to an extraordinary extent. They went in for story-telling, and all their stories were animal-and-bird stories. Alpha said that all stories in the world had originally been animal-and-bird stories, and that the Yellow Apes had transmitted them to the Humans, because the Humans (on a queer and gloomy day long ago) had lost the facility of talking to animals and birds.

  Alpha pretended or felt jealousy because the midas Satrap Saint Ledger had adopted Inneall as his daughter. “I have always felt myself to be your father,” he said, “since you have none other. What Human, besides the strange Satrap man (he is a kindred, did you know it? of the young-dead Axel Grindstone who was unwittingly the instrument of our exile)—what Human other than this man Satrap would have known that you needed a father? What animal, except only an alpha bear, would know it? And now I cannot formally adopt you as a daughter since you are already adopted.”