Serpent’s Egg

by R. A. Lafferty

  The World had been called the Global Village for quite a few decades: and then a certain number of willful persons decided that it should act like one. It was no great feat to cut out the underpinning of every nation, and that was done. But did not the Nations fall down then as would a building when its ground floor has been completely removed?

  Oddly enough they did not. Thenceforth all nations (and soon they would be called ‘nations’ no longer) floated in the air, but not very high in the air. The Japanese already had the phrase ‘The Floating World’, but with them it meant the ‘Bohemian World’, or the ‘Arty World’, or the ‘Unmoored World’. The unmoored nations drifted together and lost their dividing walls. And then it had become a floating world indeed.

  It became a free-trade world, of course. It became a free-travel and a free-communication world, and very nearly a free-cost world. A person not particularly talented or important might commute daily from his home in Australia to his job in New York City without notable expenditure of either time or money. He could take his morning coffee-break in Paris France, his noon-hour in Tokyo, and his afternoon coffee-break in Rio de Janeiro. Well, these were new amenities in the world, and they had not been possible before the world had become a floating world. Previous mind-sets would not have allowed such flexibility and speed.

  It became a world in which everything and nothing was public. It became a world with very little superstructure. It became a world in which ideas and notions were transmitted instantly to every part of it. But could such a world work?

  Not very well, no. But it worked as well as most of the previous worlds had worked, and better than some of them. And was it truly a world without government? Or was it instead a world with an invisible government? Ah, it quickly became a world of almost-invisible government. The almost-invisible government was the Kangaroo.

  The bare and somewhat disputed facts were that the Kangaroo had enrolled and computerized the whole world with no ado, no great effort. If any person of any species should rise greatly above the mental or psychic level, there would be a most minute analysis of that person. If the Kangaroo didn't like the analysis of that person, it would have him crushed instantly. The Kangaroo went about these things more secretly than would have been believed possible only a short time before.

  The Kangaroo had found, or thought that it had found, the wide frequencies on which the Mind of God operated. And they found the narrow but sharp frequencies which the Mind of God did not seem to monitor at all. The Kangaroo operated on these narrow but sharp frequencies, and no one was found to stand against it.

  The Kangaroo was a Vigilante with the mob element left out. It was an elitist Vigilante with the fewest possible number of moving parts and of moving minds. That's what ruled the world: and on sunny days it was hardly noticed.

  The Kangaroo was the first really successful interspecies venture. Its loosely-construed membership had Human, Ambulatory Computers, and a few superior Animals. It was high-level cosmopolitan. There was no formality, no voting, no appointments. All of that had been a part of the superstructure that had been done away with in the world. A seat belonged to whomever sat in it. And a position belonged to whomever occupied it. Both were subject to violent removal. But the ‘leveler movement’ had been carried through by the Kangaroo when it was only a fledgling.

  One used to think of leveling as trimming the top off something into a semblance of evenness. But these ‘levelers’ trimmed the bottoms off of humanity and computerdom and the world itself. The lower classes of everything were terminated without particular ado, without much apparent suffering, without any great quantity of visible bloodshed. The bereft families did not ask where their inept members had gone because most of the families that had inept members went with them. Persons seldom asked where their neighbors had disappeared to, because usually it was entire neighborhoods that disappeared. The ‘Don't make a big thing out of it’ mentality was rife in the world, so a big thing was not made of the disappearance of eighty-seven percent of the persons in the world. After all, that eighty-seven percent of the persons in the world had made ninety-seven percent of the trouble in the world. In all logic there was much to be said for the ‘removals’.

  Oh yes, there were instances of “—a voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loudly lamenting; it was Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they were no more.” But those conspicuous cases were not so many, likely less than half a million Rachels out of several billion family mothers in the floating world. And such Rachels were sent after the children they mourned, and so they were no more either.

  Well, are not grape-vines pruned for the good of the vineyards? Are not the unthrifty and blighted and aged trees cut out of the orchard? Are not the tares (“This is the harvest time,” had become a popular cry, “and the tares cannot be allowed to grow with the wheat any longer”)—are not the tares plucked out of the grain? Then how much more was the wisdom of pruning and cleansing the vineyards and orchards of humanity? Oh, the bottom of the world was trimmed off, and then the whole thing was healthy from its roots to its crown.

  And only after that was the leveling of the top-side attempted. Oh, excellence was still prized and even rewarded. But there was a certain high-headed and divergent excellence that had to be curtailed. Some of the high-headed blooms were more than exuberant. They were poisonous to the common weal. They militated against the free-and-easy tolerance of the floating world. They were of the garish colors that do not betoken healthy blooms. They made tall and jarring waves, and such turbulent waves were dangerous to the floating world.

  It was better to anticipate and forestall such appearances, the dire fruit of unfortunate combinations and circumstances. It was to anticipate and forestall such disasters that ‘Experiments’ of several kinds were set up, to discern and predict that was the best; and, more important, what was the worst that could be expected to result from unlikely combinations and circumstances and juxtapositions. And often, for the purifying and best utilization of the experiments, it was best to crush such wild and extreme talents before they quite emerged from the egg.

  There were things very secret about the true nature of the Knives or Dolophonoi or Assassins because those who wielded these killers wanted their nature kept secret. Whether they were leucotomized humans, or irascible computers, or aberrant animals were questions unlucky to ask. It was the saying and superstition that those who asked such questions had already been selected to be victims of these special Assassins. The Assassins were like short and sharp-bladed knives wielded by the Kangaroo, and they were designed more for killing than for style or beauty.

  Not only were all humans under the scan, but the entire computer population of the world was also under constant computer scan. But this was not generally felt to be irksome and was seldom even noticed. It wasn't that computers weren't often suspicious, but they were suspicious of different things than were humans. The intricate and intelligent and superior computers themselves were under unremitting scan by their more mechanical and less intricate kindred. The Floating World was a giant boat or ark of remarkable resiliency, but it was floating. And any heavier-then-water boat can sink if it ships enough water. So the old caveat “Don't rock the boat” was modernized and refurbished for the newer circumstances “Don't rock the boat on the mega-scale.”

  Some of the mega-people, the superior and often uncooperative people, were capable of rocking the floating world on a mega scale. So the mega people, though usually they were pearls beyond price, were scanned most carefully from the first signs of their being bigger-then-life in their childhoods when the scanners chirped “Mega, mega, mega!” in early recognition of their talents.

  Who was to decide when a mega-person, an exceptionally talented person, was of that minority of megas who could be a danger to the world? Never mind who was to decide. That also was a secret. But it was always decided, somehow, by someone. And the decision could not be appealed. To appeal such a decision would be like
appealing to smoke or invisibility.

  The Knives, the Dolophonoi, the Assassins, the Pruning Hooks, they were something like smoke and something like invisibility. There seemed to be no defense against them, no keeping them out.

  What if the head of the Kangaroo itself (in the nature of things, any head of the Kangaroo would have to be a mega-person) should be fingered by an early-or-late scan as a wrong-way mega? And what if he then would have to be obliterated? Or were the Cubs of the Kangaroo exempt from this? But it wasn't with them as with other organizations.

  If a person was even a member of the Kangaroo, he would be a member only for special moments. The Kangaroo was an organization that was not an organization, and this gave it a flexibility and immateriality that no other group or society had. And yet the Kangaroo did have its Imperial Heads, one of them after another. All of them were enraptured persons drunken with their mission. All of them were flaming arrows. They went with great accuracy to their targets and destroyed them. And then each one of them himself burned up and died of the ‘Flaming Arrow Syndrome’. Each of them had been a person of mega intelligence when he became Imperial Head, and each of them then became a person in the post-intellectual state for the short and intense while that he held the office. “Intelligence would be an obstacle,” said a person on temporary assignment as Executive Officer of the Kangaroo, “but it is necessary that they have passed through the state of radiant intelligence.”

  Of those who might momentarily be members of the Kangaroo, some of them were humans, some of them were Ambulatory Computers, some of them, not many, were geniused animals. But who could say to which species any of these individuals belonged? When they come into the Kangaroo, they divest themselves of their species and of much else. The Kangaroo flicked on and off, coming into existence and dropping out of existence at long or short intervals. It was the most secret society ever, operating mostly on the unconscious level of its contingent members. It was a somnambulistic apparatus really. But if one should try to grapple with the Kangaroo, then it wasn't there, it wasn't anywhere. In all reality it simply was not.

  Three persons had gone hunting for Dolophonoi-Monsters in the hilly wastelands just North of Inneall's Ocean. These persons were Iris Lynn-Randal who was one of the ‘parents’ of the Lynn-Randal Experiment; Shadrack Saleh one of the ‘parents’ of the Dorantes-Saleh Experiment; and Gregor McGregor one of the ‘parents’ of the Gruenbaum-McGregor Experiment. These three persons had worried unaccountably (and unlawfully, for Citizens of the Global Village were not allowed to worry at all) that some of their ‘children’ would be adjudged to be Serpent's Eggs by the Kangaroo and its appraising scanners and so would be exterminated by those instruments of the Kangaroo, the Dolophonoi-Assassin Monsters. These three persons had been taught by all their indoctrination that they must accept whatever was decided about their fosterlings, that it was not possible to do anything to prevent or oppose the decisions, and that it was not wise to be unhappy about them. So all of their going hunting was impossible; and the venture they went on now was an impossible venture.

  But they did decide to go to the nests of the assigned Dolophonoi and kill them there. When the Dolophonoi were not making appearances to unnerve their selected victims, these particular ones who were assigned to the Young Contemporaries of the Four Experiments made their nests in the Cliffs just North of Inneall's Ocean. These sinister-appearing cliffs were quite new, having been formed by the caving off of the old hillside due to the undercutting of the new Ocean. The three hunters knew little about killing, and they had no weapons and no guide and no very good plan. But they had decided to kill the Dolophonoi-Monsters with their own weapons. No private persons then had any weapons at all.

  Iris was worried and apprehensive that all three of her ‘children’ might be targeted for the Assassins, might be classified as Serpent's Eggs: Ruddy Lord Randal, Inneall the whimsical little-girl computer, and Axel the young blue-eyed ape. She was afraid that Axel (she knew that he had already been cast into an enchanted and perhaps holy sleep) might be killed before he should waken. She could not come into Apes’ Caverns to save him there, but perhaps she could kill the killers before they struck. She was also worried and tortured by dreams and portents indicating the murderous deaths of Lord Randal and Inneall. Iris had seen both of them dead in dream after dream.

  Shadrack Saleh was especially worried about his ‘daughter’ Lutin the young pythoness. Gregor McGregor was tortured with fear of the safety of his ‘daughter’ the unborn Elephant Gajah. Well yes, the fears of all three of the hunters were unnatural, even though they were probable of fulfillment. And the affections of the three for their ‘children’ were certainly unnatural. The ‘parents’ of experiments were not supposed to get emotionally involved in the fates of their ‘children’.

  Iris could communicate with her ‘daughter’ Inneall at a distance. It was the mechanical genius of Inneall that had set up the communication and there was nothing unnatural about it. Iris now communicated to Inneall that she and her companions should create a disturbance or an ‘Unusualness’ to attract the attentions and presence of the Dolophonoi-Assassins. Then Iris and her fellow hunters would slip up to the nests of these killers and avail themselves of their weapons, and then set up an ambush nearby. The Dolophonoi always carried their usual weapons, their short-bladed sharp knives, with them; but Iris and her hunters would not have known how to battle with knives anyhow. Perhaps they could do some good with the unusual weapons of the Assassins, the big guns.

  So it was done.

  The Eleven Contemporaries, the Children of the Experiments, put on a circus; none of them was old enough (by quite a few decades) ever to have seen a circus, that's true. But Inneall had researched ancient circuses while on a nostalgia gig, and she had interested Henryetta in them also. Henryetta had then appealed to Inneall's surrogate grandfather Satrap Saint Ledger to buy them the steam calliope from the antique shop in Structo Lane. (Henryetta had no midas grandfather herself.)

  Satrap bought the beautiful brass-tubed machine. And it was quickly rolled out and put to use. Henryetta could play it, and the only volume that the calliope had was loud. It was the sound of the steam calliope that brought the crowds of pleasure people from the whole shore to the circus, and it was the sound of the calliope that brought the assigned Dolophonoi-Assassins out of their nests in the rock cliffs to the popular Ocean Shore area. The Assassins did not recognize the sounds as music. But they were disturbing sounds, coming apparently from a gathering of their designated prey, and they had to investigate.

  In the circus, all the animals were the Animals. Marino was the Seal. Lutin was the python-snake, the fortune-telling snake. Dubu was the bear. Schimp was the Chimp, Riesin the mother of the unborn Gajah was the Elephant, Carcajou was the Wolverene, Popugai was the Parrot. And all of them were natural-born performers, hams, comedians, incredible athletes and tricksters, consummate showpersons.

  Ruddy Lord Randal in top hat and frock coat from an earlier era was ring-master. And Henryetta, riding on the head of Riesin the Mother Elephant, was the bespangled Queen of the Circus. They gave an amazing two hour performance there at Oceanside which had been Heart's Desire Cove before the lines of the Cove had been obliterated by the growing Ocean. And in the interval between circus performances, they split up into sideshows.

  And the best of the sideshows was Lutin the Pythoness who predicted futures for all who came to her in her tent. She predicted by tarot cards, by crystal ball (which Satrap Saint ledger had bought for her in the antique shop in Structo Lane), by tea leaves, by palm reading, by skull-bump reading, by examining the entrails of birds which she whistled to come within her reach and then caught and tore asunder and spread out. She heckled the Dolophonoi to come to her and have their fortunes told, and the crowd joined her in heckling and bantering those Assassins. And one of them came in to her under the pressure of the heckling crowd.

  “I see failure, failure, failure in the palms of your hands,” Lutin gav
e her reading to that one. “Everything that you try on this mission will turn against you. I see you dead and dismantled if you do not abandon this mission at once. I see things more direful than this in your palms.”

  “Those are not my palms, girl snake,” the Dolophonos said. “I am wearing gloves made from the hide of the gavial-crocodile of India. The gavial is not dead. It still roars with the pain of having these gloves cut out of his hide I wonder now how it would be if I had a pair of python-skin shoes cut from the hide of a living young pythoness? I could be the first in my set to have such shoes. It is part of the fearfulness that we project to mention such things that we have done and might do. Think of it, and you be fearful also!”

  “I know not the word ‘fear’,” Lutin the Python-Snake said. “And I can see through every disguise that you wear whether on hands or feet or face. I see much more direful things coming to you than having painful pieces cut out of your skin. Think of it, and you be fearful.”

  “Give it up, little snake, give it up!” the Dolophonos spoke harshly and suddenly. “Disband your group and be yourself again, for a short while before you die. We ourselves are an indication that your Experiments will not work. We ourselves are the fruit of a false and forbidden Experiment using the same elements as are used in the Lynn-Randal and the other three Experiments. We are damnable mixtures of the human and the animal and the machine, and we have our roots in hell. Do you want to be like the Knives-Dolophonoi-Assassins; do you want to be like ourselves?”

  “No, we do not,” Lutin said firmly.

  “Neither do we, but we are trapped in it,” the Dolophonos spoke miserably. “You may fortune the fortunes as you will, but you cannot fortune your own. We will kill as many of your Three-Group, and of your Twelve-Group as we are able to. We cannot do otherwise. But, for your own good, break up your group before the end.”