The Fifth Head of Cerberus

by Gene Wolfe

  “Annese? What’s the Annese?

  “Oh, them. We called them the abos or the wild people. They weren’t really people, you know, just animals shaped like people.

  “Of course I’ve seen them. Why when I was a child I used to play with the children, the little ones, you know. Ma didn’t want me to, but when I was out playing alone I’d go out to the back of our pasture and they’d come and play with me. Ma said they’d eat me,” (Laughs) “but I can’t say how they ever tried. Wouldn’t they steal, though! Anything to eat, they were always hungry. They got to taking out of our smokehouse, and one night Pa killed three, right between the smokehouse and the barn, with his gun. One was one I had played with sometimes, and I cried; that’s the way a child is.

  “No, I don’t know where he buried them or if he did; just dragged them out back for the wild animals, I’d suppose.”

  A brother officer came in. The officer laid the notebook aside, and as he did so a puff of wind swayed the pages.

  “Feel that,” the brother officer said. “Why can’t we have that during the day when we need it?”

  The officer shrugged. “You’re up late.”

  “Not as late as you are—I’m going to bed now.”

  “You see what I’ve got.” The officer’s lips bent in a small, sour smile. He gestured at the jumble of papers and tapes on the table.

  The brother officer stirred them with one finger. “Political?”

  “Criminal.”

  “Tell them to knock the dust off their garrotte and get yourself some sleep.”

  “I have to find out what it’s all about first. You know the commandant.”

  “You’ll be ready for the spade tomorrow.”

  “I’ll sleep late. I’m off anyway.”

  “You always were an owl, weren’t you?”

  The brother officer left, yawning. The officer poured a glass of wine, no cooler now than the room, and began to read again where the wind had left the book.

  “I don’t know. Might be fifteen years ago, or it might not. Our years are longer here—did you know that?”

  Self: “Yes, you don’t have to explain that.”

  Mr D: “Well, those Frenchmen used to have all kinds of stories about them; most of them I never believed.

  “What kinds of stories? Oh, just nonsense. They’re an ignorant people, the French are.”

  (End of Interview)

  I had been told that one of the last survivors of the first French settlers had been one Robert Culot, now dead about forty years. I inquired about him and learned that his grandson (also named Robert Culot) sometimes referred to stories he had heard Ms grandfather tell of the early days on Sainte Anne. He (Robert Culot the younger) appears to be about fifty-five (Earth) years of age. He operates a clothing store, the best in Frenchman’s Landing.

  M. Culot: “Yes, the old one frequently told tales concerning those you call the Annese, Dr Marsch. He had many stories of them, of all the different sorts.

  “That is correct, he felt them to be of many races. Others, he said, might think them to be all one, but the other knew less than he. He would have said that to the blind, all cats are black. Do you speak French, Doctor? A pity.”

  Self: “Can you tell me the approximate date on which your grandfather last saw a living Annese, Monsieur Culot?”

  M. C: “A few years before he died. Let me think… Yes, three years I think before his death. He was confined to his bed the year following, and his death took him two years after.”

  Self: “About forty-three years ago, then?”

  M. C: “Ah, you do not believe an old man, do you? That is cruel! These French, you say to yourself, cannot be trusted.”

  Self: “On the contrary, I am intrigued.”

  M. C: “My grandfather had attended the funeral of a friend, and it had depressed his spirit; so he went for a walk. When he had been but a little younger he had walked a great deal, you comprehend. Then only a few years before the last illness he ceased to do so. But now because his heart troubled him he walked again. I was playing draughts with my father, his son, and was present when he returned.

  “What did he say his indigène looked like? Ah!” (Laughs) “I had hoped you would not ask that. You see, my father laughed at him as well, and that made him angry. For that to my father he spoke his bad English much, to make my father angry in return; and he said my father sat all day and consequently saw nothing. My father had both his legs gone in the war; it is fortunate for me, is it not, that he did not lose certain other things as well?

  “I asked then that question you have asked me—how did it appear? I will tell you what it was he responded, but it will cause you to distrust him.”

  Self: “Do you think he may have been simply teasing you, or your father?”

  M. C: “He was a most honest old man. He would not tell lies to anyone, you understand. But he might—speak the truth in such a way as to make it sound impertinent. I asked him how the creature appeared, and he said sometimes likes a man, but sometimes like the post of a fence.”

  Self: “A fence post?”

  M. C: “Or a dead tree—something of the sort. Let me recollect myself. It may have been that he said: ‘Sometimes like a man, sometimes like old wood.’ No, I cannot really tell what he meant by that.”

  M. Culot directed me to several other members of the French community around Frenchman’s Landing who he said might be willing to cooperate with me. He also mentioned a Dr Hagsmith, a medical doctor, who he understood has made some effort to collect traditions regarding the Annese. I was able to arrange an interview with Dr Hagsmith the same evening. He is English-speaking, and told me that he considered himself an amateur folklorist.

  Dr Hagsmith: “You and I, sir, we take opposite tacks. I don’t mean to disparage what you’re doing—but it isn’t what I’m doing. You wish to find what is true, and I’m afraid you’re going to find damned little; I want what is false, and I’ve found plenty. You see?”

  Self: “You mean that your collection includes a great many accounts of the Annese?”

  Dr H: “Thousands, sir. I came here as a young physician, twenty years ago. In those days we thought that by now this would be a great city; don’t ask me why we thought it, but we did. We planned everything: museums, parks, a stadium. We felt we had everything we needed, and so we did—except for people and money. We still have everything.” (Laughs)

  “I started writing down the stories in the course of my practice. I realized, you see, that these legends about the abos had an effect on people’s minds, and their minds affect their diseases.”

  Self: “But you have never seen an aborigine yourself?”

  Dr H: (Laughs) “No, sir. But I am probably the greatest living expert on them you’ll find. Ask me anything and I can quote chapter and verse.”

  Self: “Very well. Do the Annese still exist?”

  Dr H: “As much as they ever did.” (Laughs)

  Self: “Then where do they live?”

  Dr H: “What locality, you mean? Those that live in the back of beyond pursue a wandering existence. Those living about farms generally have their habitations in the farthest parts, but occasionally one or two may take up residence in a cowshed, or under the eaves of the house.”

  Self: “Wouldn’t they be seen?”

  Dr H: “Oh, it’s quite Unlucky to see one. Generally, though, they take the form of some homey household utensil if anyone looks—become a bundle of hay, or whatever.”

  Self: “People really believe they can do that sort of thing?”

  Dr H: “Don’t you? If they can’t, where’d they all go?” (Laughs)

  Self: “You said most Annese live ‘in the back of beyond’?”

  Dr H: “The wilderness, the wastelands. It’s a term we have here.”

  Self: “And what do they look like?”

  Dr H: “Like people; but the color of stones, with great shocks of wild hair—except for the ones that don’t have any. Some are taller than you or I, a
nd very strong; some are smaller than children. Don’t ask me how small children are.”

  Self: “Supposing for the moment that the Annese are real, if I were to go looking for them where would you advise me to look?”

  Dr H: “You could go to the wharves.” (Laughs) “Or the sacred places, I suppose. Ah, that got you! You didn’t know they had sacred places, did you? They have several, sir, and a well-organized and very confusing religion too. When I first came I used to hear a great deal about a high priest as well—or a great chief, whichever you wanted to call him. At any rate, a more than usually magical abo. The railway had just been built then, and of course the game hereabouts wasn’t accustomed to it and a good many animals were killed. This fellow would be seen walking up and down the right-of-way at night, restoring them to life, so people called him Cinderwalker, and various names of that sort. No, not Cinderella, I know what you’re thinking—Cinderwalker. Once a cattle-drover’s woman had her arm cut off by the train—I suspect she was drunk, and lying on the tracks—and the drover rushed her to the infirmary here. Well, sir, they got a frozen arm out of the organ bank in the regular way and grafted it on to her; but Cinderwalker found the one she had lost and grew a new woman on that so that the drover had two wives. Naturally the second one, the one Cinderwalker made, was abo except for the one arm, so she used to steal with the abo part, and then the human part would put back what she’d taken. Well, finally, the Dominicans here got on the poor drover for having too many wives, and he decided that the one Cinderwalker made would have to go—not having two human arms she couldn’t chop firewood properly, you see…

  “Am I surprising you, sir? No, not being really human, you see, the abos can’t handle any sort of tool. They can pick them up and carry them about, but they can’t accomplish anything with them. They’re magical animals, if you like, but only animals. Really,” (Laughs) “for an anthropologist you’re hellishly ignorant of your subject. That’s the test the French are supposed to have applied at the ford called Running Blood—stopped every man that passed and made him dig with a shovel…”

  A cat leaped on to the splintering sill of the officer’s window. It was a large black torn with only one eye and double claws—the cemetery cat from Vienne. The officer cursed it, and when it did not go away, began reaching, very slowly and carefully so as not to disturb it, toward his pistol; but the instant the fingers touched the butt the cat hissed like a hot iron dropped into oil and leaped away.

  M. d’F: “Sacred places, Monsieur? Yes, they had many sacred places, so it was said—anywhere a tree grew in the mountains was sacred to them, for example; especially if water stood at the roots, as it usually did. Where the river here—the Tempus—enters the sea, that was a very sacred spot to them.”

  Self: “Where were some others?”

  M. d’F: “There was a cave, far up the river, in the cliffs. I don’t know that anyone has ever seen that. And close to the mouth of the river, a ring of great trees. Most of them have been cut now, but the stumps are there still; Trenchard, the beggar who pretends to be one of them, will show you the place for a few sous, or have his son do it.

  “Did you not know of him, Monsieur? Oh, yes, near to the docks. Everyone here knows him; he is a fraud, you comprehend, a joke. His hands” (Holds up his own hands) “are crippled by the arthritis so that he cannot work, and so he says he is an abo, and acts like a madman. It is thought to bring luck to give him a few coins.

  “No, he is a man like you and me. He is married to a poor wretched woman one hardly ever sees, and they have a son of fifteen or so.”

  The officer turned twenty or thirty pages and began to read again where an alteration in the format of the entries indicated some change in the nature of the material recorded.

  One heavy rifle (.35 cal.) for defense against large animals. To be carried by myself. 200 cartridges.

  One light rifle (.225 cal.) for securing small game for the pot. To be carried by the boy. 500 cartridges.

  One shotgun (20 gauge) for small game and birds. Packed on the lead mule. 160 shells.

  One case (200 boxes in all) of matches.

  Forty lb. of flour.

  Yeast.

  Two lb. tea (local).

  Ten lb. sugar.

  Ten lb. salt.

  Kitchen gear.

  Multivitamins.

  Aid kit.

  Wall tent, with repair kit for, and extra pegs and rope.

  Two sleeping bags.

  Utility tarp to use as ground cloth.

  Spare pair of boots (for myself).

  Extra clothing, shave kit, etc.

  Box of books—some I brought from Earth, most bought in Roncevaux.

  Tape recorder, three cameras, film, and this notebook. Pens.

  Only two canteens, but we will be traveling with the Tempus all the way.

  And that’s everything I can think of. No doubt there are a great many things we’ll wish we had brought, and next time I’ll know better, but there has to be a first time. When I was a student at Columbia I used to read the accounts of the pith helmet and puttee expeditions of the Victorians, when they used hundreds of bearers and diggers and what not, and, filled with Gutenberg courage, dream of leading such a thing myself. So here I am, sleeping under a roof for the last time, and tomorrow we set out: three mules, the boy (in rags), and me (in my blue slacks and the sport shirt from Culot’s). At least I won’t have to worry about a mutiny among my subordinates, unless a mule kicks me or the boy cuts my throat while I sleep!

  * * *

  April 6. Our first night out. I am sitting in front of our little fire, on which the boy cooked our dinner. He is a capital camp cook (delightful discovery!) though very sparing of firewood, as I gather from my reading that frontiersmen always are. I would find him quite likeable if it were not for something of a sly look in those big eyes.

  Now he is already asleep, but I intend to sit up and detail this first day’s leg of our trip and watch alien stars. He has been pointing out the constellations to me, and I think I may already be more familiar with Sainte Anne’s night sky than I ever was with Earth’s—which wouldn’t take much doing. At any rate the boy claims to know all the Annese names, and though there’s a good chance they’re just inventions of his father’s, I shall record them here anyway and hope for independent confirmation later. There is Thousand Feelers and The Fish (a Nebula which seems to be trying to grasp a single bright star), Burning Hair Woman, The Fighting Lizard (with Sol one of the stars in The Lizard’s tail), The Shadow Children. I can’t find The Shadow Children now, but I’m sure the boy pointed them out to me—two pairs of bright eyes. There were others but I’ve forgotten them already; I’m going to have to start recording these conversations with the boy.

  But to begin at the beginning. We started early this morning, the boy helping me load the mules, or rather, me helping him. He is very clever with rop.es, and ties large, complicated-looking knots that seem to hold securely until he wants them loose, then fall apart under his hand. His father came down to see us off (which surprised me) and treated me to a great deal of untenanted rhetoric designed to pry me loose from a little more money to compensate him for the boy’s absence. Eventually, I gave him a bit for luck.

  The mules led well, and all seem so far to be good sturdy animals and no more vicious than could be reasonably expected. They are bigger than horses and much stronger, with heads longer than my arm and great square yellow teeth that show when they skin back then—thick lips to eat the thorn beside the road. Two grays and one black. The boy hobbled them when we stopped, and I can hear them all around the camp now, and occasionally see the smoke of their breath hanging like a pale spirit in the cold air.

  * * *

  April 7. Yesterday I thought we were well begun on our trip, but today I realize that we were merely trekking through the settled—or at least half-settled—farmland around Frenchman’s Landing, and might, almost certainly, if we had climbed one of the little hills near last night’s camps
ite, have seen the lights of a farmhouse. This morning we even passed through a tiny settlement the boy called “Frogtown”, a name I suppose would not much recommend itself to the inhabitants. I asked if he weren’t ashamed to use a name like that when he is of French descent himself, and he told me with great seriousness that, no, he was half of the blood of the Free People (his name for the Annese) and that it was with them that his loyalties lie. He believes his father, in short, though he is perhaps the only person in the world who does. Yet he is a bright boy; such is the power of parental teaching.

  Once we were beyond “Frogtown“, the road simply disappeared. We had come to the edge of “the back of beyond”, and the mules sensed it at once, becoming less obstinate and more skittish, in other words less like people and more like animals. We are cutting west as well as north, I should explain, on a long diagonal toward the river instead of directly toward it. In this way we hope to avoid most of the meadowmeres (at the hands of the old beggar I have already seen enough of them not to want to try and walk across them!), and strike the little streams that feed it often enough to satisfy our needs for water. In any event the Tempus, or so I am told, is too brackish to drink for a long way back from the coast.

  I should have mentioned yesterday (but forgot) that when we set up the tent I discovered we had not brought an ax, or any other sort of implement with which to drive the tent pegs. I chided the boy about this a little, but he only laughed and soon set the matter straight by pounding them in with a stone. He finds plenty of dead wood for the fire and snaps it over his knee with surprising strength. To build the fire he makes a sort of little house or bower of dead twigs, which he fills with dry grass and leaves, doing the whole construction in less time than it has already taken me to write this. He always (that is, last night and tonight) asks me to light it for him, apparently considering this a superior function to be performed only by no less a person than the leader of the expedition. I suppose there is something sacred about a campfire, if God’s writ runs so far from Sol; but, perhaps so as not to overwhelm us with the holy mystery of smoke, he piously keeps ours so small that I am amazed that he is able to cook over it. Even so, he burns his fingers pretty often, I notice, and each time boylike thrusts them into his mouth and hops around the fire, muttering to himself.