“So do I, Inneall. But I'm afraid that we (poor pirates that we are) aren't quite worthy of our own legend. I wish that you could get some fellows more worthy than we are to play our roles in this.”
A rather nervous man came to Persimmon Manor and asked to see Donatus O'reily who was to be hanged, and Satrap Saint Ledger the owner of the manor, and the seconds of the to-be-hanged Donatus, and other interested persons. And when he got to see them all together he talked to them.
“I want to ask the favor that I might be hanged here in this Manor at the same time that Donatus O'reily is hanged,” the nervous man said. “I don't want to be killed in the roads and my body left for the dogs to devour, for mine is a consecrated body. My misdemeanor is reckoned as even more serious than that of Donatus O'reily, so I throw myself upon the consideration of all of you and ask this favor.”
“Nobody's misdemeanor is more heinous than was mine,” Donatus spoke with pride. “I tried to save a Serpent's-Egg young person from being executed. What could you possibly have done that was as heinous as that, nervous man?”
“What I am is reckoned as more heinous than what you have done, Donatus,” the nervous man said. “I am a Priest of the Old Religion. It has been discovered of me, and now my life is forfeit. But I don't want my consecrated body to be eaten by dogs.”
“Well, I surely wouldn't want a Priest of the Old Religion to be hanged on the same gallows as myself,” Donatus O'reily said. “That would be pretty demeaning to me.”
“You can come onto the Ship Annabella Saint Ledger for as long as you wish,” Lanternjaw Lunnigan said. “Most Pirates still adhere to the old religion.”
“No, I must die,” the nervous man said.”
“We could have you stoned to death on the shore at an earlier hour than my hanging,” Donatus said. “There won't be any dogs there, now that this has become a diminishing island. And we could cover your body with some of the lead-bars so that it will never float free.”
“All right,” said the nervous man. “That's a good way.”
“And where will you stay in the hours until then?” Satrap asked.
“In the Priests’ Hole,” the nervous man said. “There's a Priests’ Hole in this Manor. I hid in it several times during the lifetime of Tom Dooley. We shall never see his like again.”
So they arranged that the nervous man should stay in the Priests’ Hole until the hour of his execution, and that he should then be stoned to death on the island shore in front of Persimmon Manor.
“We here and now elect and direct that Ruddy Lord Randal will be our Captain,” Popugai the boy parrot blurted out suddenly. “Yes, I know that we are a covenanted intellectuality, all for one and one for all, share and share alike, none superior and none inferior. Nevertheless, one of us is always the practical and effective Captain. Now that we come to our hour of crisis and perhaps of total destruction, that one must be named, and his name is yours, Ruddy Lord Randal. You may not refuse.”
“Why should I refuse?” Lord Randal asked. “Certainly I'll be the Captain. There was never any other possible choice except Axel, and he is detached from our company for a while, perhaps for as long as a thousand years. This is a great and probably a final moment. This time tomorrow, We Nine will be fewer than Nine.”
Of all of them, Ruddy Lord Randal spoke the least. Something of the impression that he gave can be heard in the nickname ‘Tarzan’ that Inneall sometimes used for him, from an old book-movie comic-strip character that she had researched. He was a real Jungle-Boy type. He was a better climber than either of those ape boys, Schimp or Axel. He was as fearless as a machine, and as strong as one. He was instant in his decisions and unyielding in his beliefs. He was good-natured and loyal. He did not give the impression of having a mega intelligence except for his balanced sanity. But the scanners said that he was a rare mega. The popular idea was that he wouldn't be popular with the common people because he was fair, even red, and the common people were all a part of the dark ‘tide of color’. But this popular idea was wrong. He was quite popular with such of the common people as came into contact with him. Well then, he would be the Captain of the Nine and of whatever allies they might have when they came to their hour of crisis and perhaps of total destruction.
Invisible Alfred was in the house Persimmon Manor part of the time. His voice howling ‘Repent, Repent!’ could be heard in various rooms far and near. Sometimes his staring eyes could be seen, and sometimes the inside of his gaping mouth. But he impressed the carry-over guests in Persimmon Manor even less than he had impressed the crowd of ten thousand on the Ocean Shore.
“All that we can see of you, Alfred, is your eyes and sometimes the inside of your mouth,” a guest named Anastasia Blickworthy told him. “How do we know that you're not a dog? What we can see of you looks as much like a dog as like a person. And your voice sounds like that of one of the new talking dogs.”
“Did I say that I wasn't a dog?” Alfred asked with that soft power in his voice. “I don't know what I am, except that I'm a Prophet. Baalam's Ass was a Prophet, and he was an Ass. My voice got rusty when I was in that one-hundred-gallon paint drum for those nine thousand years. By coincidence, it is the same nine thousand years that have passed since dogs and a few other animals talked before. And now that they have started to talk again after nine thousand years, their voices are rusty, as is mine. Perhaps I am a dog. But, as I remember it, I was a man before I became invisible.”
The four ‘seconds’ of Donatus O'reily, those who were honor-sworn to hang him at the appointed time whether he in honor agreed to it or whether he dishonorably tried to back out of it, they were these: the Lady Anastasia Blickworthy, the Gentleman Jamestown Wixon, the Couple Clement and Rose-of-Sharon Montdrago. Well, these four, more than the other guests, had become a part of the new extended family of the Royal Kids, of the Experimental Nine. And they shared with each other the problem of the house Persimmon Manor which perhaps was haunted.
“We are like the people who were somehow trapped or pledged to spend a night in a murder house,” Dubu the young girl-bear said. “The people in such a situation always say ‘Let's stay together no matter what happens.’ And yet their numbers are always being whittled down one by one.” (The main reading of the girl-bear Dubu was murder-and-horror novels.) “Satrap Saint Ledger, you own this house. Do you know that it's haunted?”
“This house Persimmon Manor is built entirely of persimmon wood,” Satrap said. “It was built by the great-great-grandfather of Tom Dooley and also of the great inventor Otto Wotto; those two gentlemen inherited the house jointly. Otto who was rich gave his share of the house, and of much else, to Tom Dooley who was poor. Tom Dooley died in this house, done to death by ghosts and devils, as he wrote in his log book. But Tom was a nervous and irrational man, and he may have imagined some of the ghosts and devils. Tom's will (an analysis showed that it was written in alligator blood, an odd thing really) left the house to me. In the thirty years since then I have lived in the house for an average of four months a year. That is longer than I have lived in any other one place. I have a nodding acquaintance with several dozen ghosts who live here, but I've never had any trouble with any of them.
“Persimmon wood is more subject to haunting than is most other wood. The persimmon is a very old and perhaps an experimental tree. It has lots of built-in defects. It is a tree that goes back to the animistic period of mankind, and haunting is only one of a hundred aspects of animism.
“But so far, Dubu, you are here only in daylight. And I doubt very much that you will spend the night here. Your analogy is false. Without the hours of darkness, whatever hauntings you may encounter here are of no consequence.”
“This is daylight, yes, and yet there is a form of darkness all around us,” Dubu explained. “We are being infested by invisible persons, and Invisible Alfred is the very least of them. And invisible persons bring their own darkness with them. It is what they hide in. Even harmless and inept Invisible Alfred brings dar
kness with him.
“This is daylight, and I have a sudden penchant to put all your carry-over guests to sleep. That may keep them from killing each other, unless some outsider is doing the killing. And the way the water is rising now, an outsider had better be either outside or inside of the house, for he soon will not be able to come in and out except by one attic window which soon will be the only thing above water. I do have the power to put groups of people to sleep, you know. It's the bear in me, and it's the hibernating impulse that I can transfer. Do you want me to put all your carry-over guests to sleep and the hypothetical outsider also, Satrap Saint Ledger?”
“Not just yet, Dubu, not just yet,” Satrap said.
“Satrap Saint Ledger, my qualified Grandfather, you own Persimmon Manor and you are making it waterproof for us,” Inneall-Annabella alias Bloody Mary Muldoon said in a suggestive voice. “It may be waterproof now, but it doesn't seem to be proof against much else. Why is it that people can walk right through the walls of this house so easily?”
A Dolophonos-Assassin had walked right through the solid walls of Persimmon Manor and was gazing with a sardonic grin at the Nine. He was Menace Personified. But Ruddy Lord Randal and Schimp and Carcajou closed in on the killer with their short-bladed knives at the ready. And the Dolophonos-Assassin melted away from the midst of them.
“Why is it that people can walk right through a wall of young warriors?” Satrap asked quietly. “That wall of young warriors doesn't seem to be proof against anything.”
On a lower level of one of the east wings of Persimmon Manor there was a horrible little room where no room should be. It is sometimes said (and denied twice as often) that every genuine old ranch house has such a room, such a closet, with (more often than not) a skeleton in that closet. Inneall-Annabella who had researched such things, found the room in Persimmon Manor. She opened the door of the dusty room and found those three sisters sitting on the floor and spinning and measuring lengths of thread out of the straw that covered the floor.
“How did you three sisters get here to the Persimmon Manor from the little room in the aft hold of the Ship Annabella Saint Ledger?” Inneall asked those three weird ones.
“We do not go from one place to another, Bloody Mary Muldoon,” the spinning sister said. “We become apparent in a place if we have spinning and measuring and cutting to do in that place. This isn't to say that we aren't still in that horrible little room in the aft hold of that Ship. It is just that we are more apparent here now, and less apparent on that ship and other places. We can be in innumerable places at one time. We’d never get all the spinning and measuring and cutting of the world done otherwise.”
“I ask you to be less apparent here now, and more apparent in places a long way from here,” Inneall said firmly. “And I ask you to do it right now.”
“Oh Bloody Mary Muldoon, you salt-water Gypsy, we remember your spirit in other bodies,” said Atropos the cutting sister. “If you are nimble when I cut your life thread, you may be able to jump into a human body this time. Don't you remember it as being more fun to be a human than to be a machine? The pride of youth is upon you, but your thread is one of those running under my fingers. Shall I cut your thread now?”
“No, not yet, not quite yet,” said Inneall-Annabella the little-girl Computer who was also Bloody Mary Muldoon. “Wait till I get back. I won't be very long about it.”
She closed the door of that horrible room and went rapidly away from that place. These three ugly sisters are the Fates, but neither intelligent humans nor animals nor computers believe in their existence.
Inneall went and got Dubu the girl bear who could cast spells of sleep on people of all sorts. She also got some thin thread of wotto metal which is the toughest substance known.
Inneall and Dubu went to the little room where the three sisters were still sitting on the floor and spinning thread out of straw and measuring it and cutting it. Dubu cast a deep sleep over the three. Then Inneall took the very thin threads of tough wotto metal and pushed them up into the marrow centers of the threads of herself and the other eight Royal Kids and their friends, all the threads that the measuring sister had been running under her fingers.
“Let her try to cut some of those threads now,” Inneall said. “She'll break that scissors of hers sure.”
“I suspect that she has other pairs of scissors that you don't know about.” Dubu said of the sleeping Atropos the cutting sister. “I suspect that she had countered such tricks before.”
“I do what I can,” Inneall said, and they left the three ugly sisters sleeping there.
“What are the odds, Mr. Donatus O'reily?” Marino the boy mega-seal asked. “Since you have dabbled in Serpent's Eggs to the extent of forfeiting your life for helping one of them, you must know something about them. One of our group was killed on the suspicion of being a Serpent's Egg, of being a Mega-Person of unruly proclivities. And we are told that the odds of such a person appearing are a million-to-one against it. But our group is still stalked by the Dolophonoi-Assassins, and apparently still under the suspicion of it containing a Serpent's Egg or Eggs. What's the odds that a second of us should be a Serpent's Egg, or a third of us, or a fourth, or a ninth.”
“It would seem that the odds would be prohibitive,” Donatus said, “but I don't know how steady is the mathematics of the Serpent's Egg case. It may be that Serpent's Eggs come in clusters when they come. But I wouldn't worry about it. True Mega-Persons never worry.”
“Aye, that's true. But Serpent's Eggs are false Mega-Persons in one sense, and we do worry.”
“I am not sure that new talents are appearing in the world,” Satrap was saying thoughtfully. “Oh, I believe in the ‘Enlargement of the World’ and I believe that it is happening right now. But I think that it is being enlarged out of elements that have been held in reserve, that have been kept in reserve for substantial periods, the last period being these most recent nine thousand years. Take the case of Riesin the Empress Elephant walking northward to the Elephant Graveyard in India. She showed ability at bi-location or trans-location, moving from a path in midland America to a path in India without missing a step. So the ability hasn't been absent from the world. It just becomes more common now, and persons other than elephants at their moments of death will possess it. And the ability of animals to talk hasn't been absent; it has just been much more rare than it is for these last several days. I remember when I was a boy and we had an old and faithful dog. She was finally dying one night, and I sat up with her. For the last hour of her dying she talked to me, rationally and clearly, and she gave me good advice. No, the ability of animals to talk hasn't been absent from the world. It has been possessed by old and good dogs at the hour of their deaths, but it hasn't been much noticed. Now it is being used by other animals than old dying dogs.”
Well, there had been a real murder mystery going on in Persimmon Manor all that morning. It concerned the carry-over party-guests in the house, but so far it didn't concern any of those guests who were best known to the Nine. Even Dubu the young female bear and an expert on Murder Mysteries clapped her paws in admiration at the gory, unfolding plot of it. At eight bells (Four A.M. that morning), one of the guests had given out with a ringing scream and had then been found murdered in the most bloody and mysterious fashion. Thereafter at every hour, another screaming guest was cut off in full wail and was then found in a violently murdered state. At four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve o’clock there had been such resounding murders, nine of them so far. But one o’clock had gone by without a murder, and now it was several minutes past that hour. And the guests began to grumble.
“This cannot be allowed to stop,” several of the guests said. “This is the finest murder mystery ever devised, and somebody is ruining it.”
“Inneall, I believe that we are ruining it,” Dubu said with a touch of guilt in her voice. “It was because I put those three ugly sisters to sleep.”
“I know,” said Inneall
.
“And you put threads of wotto metal, the toughest substance in the world, down the middle of the life-threads of everybody in the house. And now, even though the sisters have waked up, Atropos cannot cut the threads. It is our fault. And it does shoot a wonderful murder mystery.”
“I know,” Inneall said. “It is beastly of us.”
“Why don't you Nine Royal Kids go out for a walk,” Satrap Saint Ledger suggested. “One of you might be the mistaken victim of an irrational and diabolical killer here. Yes, you kids go out and walk.”
“Where? On the water?” Schimp asked with scorn. “The Island is just about a-wash now.”
“Yes, on the water, or under the water,” Satrap said. (He didn't know that Inneall and Dubu had already balked the murders for a while.) “I’d feel better if you were all out of here till these mysteries are solved. Why don't you go down and see the wonderful things that the whales are building. There's plenty of diving gear on the Annabella Saint Ledger.”
“I have a great sickness these last several hours,” Lutin the young pythoness said. “I’d better not go.”
“Yes, go for a cool walk under the cool water,” Satrap insisted. “And then you will enjoy a great health for the next several hours.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
SLEEPWALKERS’ SERENADE
“I'll use my slumber as a foil
For guarding you, for saving you.
I'll scheme, I'll cheat, I'll lure, I'll moil.”
“What will you do, what will you do?”
“My plan they trap, my plan they break.
The work-in-sleep is quite mis-spun.
The Enemy is wide awake.”
“What have you done, what have you done?”
—Sleepwalkers' Serenade
Serpent’s Egg Page 15
