Serpent’s Egg

by R. A. Lafferty

  The young female human Henryetta was a contrary person. The Human species is the most contrary in the world. And Henryetta was the most contrary human that most people have ever seen. She had a very strong will, and she excelled in everything; but none of them was weak-willed. Now in the second-stage combined experiment, she was associated with a group of her contemporaries all of whom also excelled in everything. Even Luas the unobtrusive angel had an angelic will. Strongness and weakness are terms that do not apply to the will of even the least of the angels. The angelic will cannot be moved by either humans or machines, not even by so devious a human as Henryetta.

  Oh, there were clashes! Henryetta was quite a delightful person, but she battled to have her way in everything. And with her contemporaries she could have it in only about one case in twelve.

  She was pleasant though. (It was a ‘given’ that all four of the Experiments and all their participants should be pleasant; they’d have been scrubbed else.) And Henryetta was loyal! To the other eleven she pledged her entire being.

  “You are one of those who will not really be happy until you are shedding your blood, Henryetta,” Lutin the young female python told her. “You will shed your blood for your passionate beliefs and loyalties until you have no more blood to shed. And then you will grow more blood and shed it again. But you will recover every time until the last time.”

  “You are mistaken, Lutin,” Henryetta said. “I am squeamish and frightened at the sight of blood, most especially my own. No, no, no, I would never shed blood willingly.”

  “I am not mistaken. I am never mistaken,” Lutin said. “You will shed your blood avidly and passionately. Shedding your blood will be your great act of love.”

  “Oh you slithering bumbler, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what you're talking about, snake,” Henryetta protested.

  Lutin the young female python was a pleasant enigma. Indeed she could foresee the future, as can all pythons, but she could not always explain it well. Hers as a snake-eye view, and it missed many significations. Though she kept herself neat and her skin always freshly oiled, yet many persons (not of the Eleven, of course, but some of those in the next circle of friends) felt a repugnance for her even when they were impressed by her fine qualities.

  But others were taken by her completely. She had a surrogate human father who would do anything for her, as Satrap Saint Ledger would do anything for Inneall. When this patron saw Lutin's disadvantage at the Game of Lacrosse, he immediately had an electric runabout made for her, and it was ready within an hour. It was smaller than the runabout of Marino, but it would turn more sharply. But Lutin without aid could ambulate at least seven miles an hour. She was not a slow snake, and she did not get out of breath in a strenuous game. She was merry, she was quippy, she was inventive, she was gregarious. But now, in the latter days at the End of Summer, she had her mournful and withdrawn moments.

  “It is the Kangaroo, the Kangaroo in the Sky,” she explained. “It has moved into the sign of Virgo, and it will slay one of several of us.”

  “Tell us more. You have to tell us more. Cannot you see the faces of those of us it will kill?” Inneall demanded.

  “I can see them. I don't want to see them. I'll not tell them,” the young pythoness stated firmly and tearfully.

  And then there was Dubu the young female bear. The other eleven of them called her ‘Little Mother’. She seemed more human than any of the twelve, though two of the twelve were indeed human. Ruddy Lord Randal seemed only about eighty-five percent human. He looked quite a bit like one of the Red Raiders of Mars. At one time it was believed that the Red Raiders of Mars were fictitious. And when they were discovered in fact, they still seemed to have a strong fictitious element. Ruddy Lord Randal the Red Laird surely had some of the Red Raider look in him. And Henryetta was capable of an unhuman touch of snootiness. She resembled the sect of Ambulatory Computers who called themselves ‘The Grandees’.

  “Dubu is the only commoner among us,” Henryetta said. “All the rest of us, whether human or animal or angel or machine, are aristocrats; and we represent the rarified one percent of whatever is our species. Oh, Oh, Oh, what will we do, Dubu, with all those countless billions of unwashed commoners? I wonder whether they're necessary at all.”

  “Yes, they are necessary,” Dubu answered in that ‘ruf-ruf’ voice that bears use for human talk. “We are the tree. You are only the top leaf on the tree. It's the one that quakes and moves in the wind as though it were an aspen leaf, the first one to fall when the inclement weather comes. And I'm unwashed myself. I don't use water. I use a curry comb instead. Curry combs are too good for horses, but they're just right for bears.”

  Dubu always insisted that she was one-sixteenth human, and the registries confirmed this of her. And yet the thing was widely doubted. Dubu had been voted by her contemporaries in the Experiments as the one least likely to be the Serpent's Egg, as the one least likely to be marked for destruction.

  Schimp, the young male chimpanzee, was quite erudite, and he didn't let you forget it. He had both his doctorate and his masters by the time he was eight years old, and it's unusual for either a human or animal or computer to be degreed so early. He regularly wore academic cap and gown. Nevertheless he was quite boyish even though ten years old is much older for a chimp than for a human or an Axel's Ape. Or machine, or almost any animal.

  Gajah, the unborn female elephant! Oh, she'll show her tail and trunk and face one of these days. Give her time, give her time! She is herself an ‘Empress Elephant’ and probably she is even a rare ‘Wonder of the World Elephant’. Give her time to be born! Give her time to amaze all of us.

  “Not so,” said Lutin the young pythoness. “She will not be born. She will never be born.” And then Lutin went into another of her weeping spells.

  Carcajou, the young male wolverene, what is one to say of him? If the unfallen angels were to have a representative, even a withdrawn and reticent representative, among the Twelve (and they had one in Luas) then the fallen angels surely deserved to have their representative also. And they had him in Carcajou, for the Wolverenes are half animal and half devil: this has always been known of them. Carcajou was shockingly evil. And yet he was totally a member of the group of the Elite Twelve Contemporaries. Carcajou could not be believed in anything, not even when he swore “Thieves’ Honor, it's true!” He was treacherous, he was traitorous, and yet he was One-of-Them. He was personable and pleasant when he wanted to be. And his intelligence, it was not clear-off-the-scales as were the intelligences of the other Eleven: it was clear-off-the-secret-scale that goes much further and which is not known of by one tester in a million.

  And finally there was Popugai the young male parrot. He was no ordinary parrot. He was a Kea or Nestor Parrot (Nestor Notabilis) from New Zealand. This is the large and strong parrot which, in its wild state, kills and eats sheep. It is a very high flyer. And Popugai had a rare gift. Not only could he remember everything that he had ever heard, but he could understand everything he had ever heard. All his life he had listened to records three hours every day, and three hours every night while he slept. So he knew the basic vocabularies of six hundred human languages, and of many thousands of insect, reptile, animal, and bird languages. And he pronounced all of them perfectly.

  Carcajou the devilish Wolverene had also listened to all the records. Popugai and Carcajou were much together since Gajah, the third member of their experiment, was unborn and slept a lot. As a devil, Carcajou already knew all languages. But again, as a devil, he pronounced them roughly and without elegance. As a companion of Popugai he acquired elegance in his speech so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect.

  Of all the Twelve (except Luas) Popugai had the best overview, the best ‘long view’. He was condor-winged and eagle-eyed. He could fly two miles high and could see meadow mice on the ground from that height. He could see problems and disputes from the same lofty viewpoint. Oh, the Eleven liked Popugai, even beyond the w
ay they liked everyone.

  The Twelve took up the game of lacrosse during those final End-of-Summer Days. It was a special game, played only by aristocrats and by the most uncommon of commoners. It was descended from the Irish game hurley, and it was brought to America by the Irish Monk Saint Brandon in the year 536. Saint Brandon, besides being the most adventurous and most voyage-taking man of Ireland, as well as the most holy, was also the best hurley-player, the only one ever to carry the rating of a nine-goal player.

  Lacrosse had been taken up by some of the Red Indian tribes of America; and there was never a time, after its introduction by Saint Brandon, that it was completely unknown on the North American Continent. And now it was taken up by the Twelve Great Contemporaries. And they played the game as if they were born to it.

  The unborn Gajah was the best player. She played it by directing her mother telepathically what moves to make; and the mother elephant was hard to stop in full charge. Marino the seal and Lutin the pythoness played from their electric runabout cars. Popugai the big parrot was hard to defense when he took to the air with the ball bagged in the pocket of his crosse-stick held in his powerful beak. And Carcajou was hard to defense when he went underground with the ball, digging like the devil, as fast as a man might walk, and coming up no one knew where, but usually within easy striking distance of the goal, often between the goal-keeper and the goal. Lutin the pythoness was also hard to defense when she went underground. She was not as fast a digger as Carcajou, but she sometimes dug long tunnels at night when the others were asleep, and she had their entrances camouflaged well. But it was the raw vigor of Lord Randal and Axel that usually won the victory for their side.

  One evening at the end of the Lacrosse game, just before dark, Axel suddenly stated that he had just received a message (but nobody had seen a messenger come). Axel said that he must go down to the cavern and sleep for three days and three nights (seventy-two hours) and that perhaps he would wake after that. If he did wake, then the entire Community of Second Humanity in the World would follow his triggering and would wake up also.

  “And if he does not wake up,” said Lutin, “then none of them will ever wake up. They will sleep forever, in a deeper sleep than is their regular wont.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  STRUCTO LANE

  The scienced, reasoned future fills the Lane

  And draws mechanic-like its plotted breath.

  The pattern holds, set, formal, stylized, sane

  Of predicated joy and measured death.

  Ape Lane and Ape Caverns were closed tightly, locked, guarded, and double-guarded when the Eleven (the Twelve less Axel) tried to enter just about dark on that ‘First Evening of the Last Three Days’. It was the beginning of the First Night of Summerset.

  The Eleven learned that most of the non-Axelians had been asked to leave several hours before. “A deep sleep will come over all who are here,” they were told, “and the going odds are nine to three that none of the sleepers will wake from that sleep, at least not in this millennium.”

  All those who had rooms or suites in the Second Eden Hotel, the only hotel in Ape Lane, were each given three Gold Somali Shillings (value about a thousand dollars) so that they could find lodgings outside of Ape Alley and Ape Caverns.

  “And the movie theatre will stand empty, and the mint will strike no coins. The mushroom wine will not be drunk, and the conversations will not be heard in the clubs. The Holy Fire will not burn. And all will sleep,” so one of the leading Axels (it may have been Alpha himself) explained it as well as he could, and already he was getting drowsy before the hour had come.

  Among the gate-guards to Apes’ Caverns were half a dozen of the Dolophonoi or Assassins, and they were jumpy, skittish, unsettled, and frightened. For once they were not arrogant.

  What happened just before the Eleven had arrived at the screened and hidden gates to Apes’ Caverns was this: With the coming of the dark, a lightning bolt had struck down from the sky as it did every night, down through a fissure in the limestone roof of Apes’ Caverns, and it had ignited the main jet from the old gas well. All the gas jets had been turned off one hour before as was done every late afternoon. “Cast out the old fire and wait and pray for the new,” was the pseudo-scriptural explanation for this practice. So then the night-fire was lit again by the lighting, and so the traditional holy blaze would be enjoyed again for another twenty-three hours.

  But not this night.

  A giant hand came down through the fissure. It was large and powerful and numinous. The wrist of it was ten meters or thirty-three feet in diameter. This was attested by two notaries. Every night the striking down of the lightning on its exact hour was attested to by three notaries, one a human, one a computer, and one an Axel's Ape. But only two of them were able to attest to the big hand coming down a moment later. The Axel's Ape notary had been struck down into deep sleep between the lightning and the hand, and he did not at all see the giant hand come down. The hand smothered the fire that the lightning had lit, smothered it before it could ignite the other gas jets in the caverns.

  “Not tonight,” spoke a spacious and thunder-edged voice from the lowering sky above the fissured room of the caverns. “Not for three nights. All those in the caverns are now cast into Holy Sleep for three nights and three days. True guards, you will guard the caverns truly. False guards, you also will guard the caverns truly. Your blood is hostage for this.”

  The Dolophonoi or Assassins knew that they were the false guards referred to by the thunder-edged voice in the lowering sky. They knew that their blood was hostage and that they must guard true.

  “Nobody goes into Ape Cavern, nobody,” spoke a more honorable sort of guard, one of the Ambulatory Computer Species.

  “I know a way to get into Ape Caverns,” spoke the girl-computer Inneall-Annabella who sometimes referred to herself as Bloody Mary Muldoon the Pirate Queen. “I know an unguarded way into Ape Cavern.”

  “Little-girl Computer,” said an honorable guard of the human species, “Do not try to use the Alley Oop down from your ship into that suite at the Second Eden Hotel. The locks of the Alley Oop are already jammed with the bodies of several persons who believed that they knew an unguarded way into Ape Caverns. Do not try to get in.”

  So the Eleven (the Twelve minus Axel who was in holy sleep somewhere inside Ape Caverns) went over to Structo Lane, another interesting place which was plush with luxury not to be found in Ape Caverns.

  Structo Lane was ‘The Last Refuge of Cranky Bachelors’, among other titles that had been given to that place. Crankiness at that time had almost disappeared from the human community under pressure of the levelers. Using such slogans as ‘Eccentricity is out’ and ‘Bland is Better’, the levelers had driven the cranky people out into the deserts and down into the undergrounds. And now it began to happen that a stubborn remnant of cranky people were passing themselves off as Ambulatory Mime-Human Computers (AMHs) and were edging themselves in under the Computer Aegis. Most of these cranky people were singles, and most of them were male.

  The Ambulatory Computers themselves had no real sex, of course: but it had become their custom to declare themselves for one sex or the other. And ninety percent of them had declared themselves to be male. The ten percent who declared themselves to be female were thus outnumbered nine to one, so they made themselves nine times as intense on the sex issue. They insisted that fifty percent of all Computers should declare themselves to be female. Then they amended the fifty percent to fifty-seven percent to atone for past inequities. They used the slogan “There can be no freedom until there is equality; be it compelled therefore, in the name of freedom, that all AMH Computers shall conform to the fair fifty-seven percent in their declarations.” It wasn't a good slogan even though it was put to music and sung in all sorts of places. A good slogan, whether a human or a computer slogan, should be capable of being spoken in a single breath.

  But, as of now, the majority of the Ambulatory Computers who had set th
emselves up in Structo Alley were eccentric and male. And the majority of humans who joined them in that plush place were also eccentric and male.

  Satrap Saint Ledger, one of the surrogate grandfathers of the little-girl Computer Inneall-Annabella, was also human, eccentric, and male. He was a cranky widowed bachelor. He had joined Structo Lane just this evening because he had been told firmly that he could not use his suite in the Second Eden Hotel in Ape Alley for three nights and days, and probably not after that time either.

  Satrap Saint Ledger was a man who liked to be in control of a situation. He had been puzzled by the ‘Holy Sleep’ being cast on everyone in Ape Caverns for three nights and three days. What was happening to the yellow, blue-eyed, begeniused Apes anyhow? Did you know that the blue-eyed apes do not look superior to other apes when they are asleep and their blue eyes are closed? Satrap ran through all the scriptures and pseudo-scriptures (he had them all firmly in his head) and he found only doubtful applications or none at all to the deep-sleeping Apes. He needed to have intelligent discussion with somebody on this, but the intelligent blue-eyed apes were all asleep, and himself had to get clear away from Ape Caverns. Well then, he would go to the next best place.

  In Structo Lane, Satrap fell into the company of a distinguished (brilliant even) Ambulatory Computer named Livius Secundus. They had consulted together on various subjects in previous times, since Livius was the Computer designated-and-surrogate father of Inneall-Annabella just as Satrap was her undesignated surrogate grandfather. Theirs were two hard and flinty minds that always struck sparks from each other. And then the two of them were joined by a human man albeit a strange one, Felix Culebra y Columba, the man who was the designated father-and-guardian of Lutin the young female python of the Experiments. When their three minds held encounter, they would have all the dimensions that were practical, and perhaps they would have some of the ultimate answers.