Space Chantey

by R. A. Lafferty

“Haven’t you any loyalty at all,” he asked in his sorrowful voice, putting on the act a little.

  “I don’t think so. We weren’t constituted with any,” she said.

  “But I am sure you would work for us against the Polyphemians.”

  “Work against those fellows and get put in the pot? Not me. And they’re not bad at all. They’re so blamed mean that it’s fun. There come times when we like our fellows real mean,” she said.

  “We will remember that when we are out again and you with us,” threatened Crewman Trochanter. “Mean, Margaret, real mean. And you won’t like it.”

  “Oh, but you’re not going to get out. You’re in it for good, and they’re going to eat you up every one.”

  But Roadstrum used his special wheedle on her then, talking to her privately in a low voice through the grille. What words he used we do not know; but remembering that he now had a forked tongue, and that he had become something of a diplomat on Nine-worlds, we know that he found apt words.

  Margaret did agree to work for them and spy for them. She still wanted to go to Earth with them. She had heard that the men there were willing.

  It was on the following morning, their second day on Polyphemia, that Di Prima was taken. He had always been the fattest of them. He went with a joke on his lips about his name and he being the first of them taken, but in spirt he was uneasy. And the other men all raged at the idea of one of their companions being taken and being roasted and stewed and then eaten. They roared and ranted, and the Polyphemians mocked them to still greater fury. And they ate in their wrath and put on a sheath of hasty angry fat.

  Late that night one of the Polyphemians came to them and told them that Di Prima hadn’t been very good.

  “Fat enough, but not rampant enough,” he said. “But we expect much more of all of you. Rampant rams! Rage and grow! Oh you will be prime stuff!”

  And they were all driven almost insane by the angry mushrooms in their broth. But Margaret came to them a little later and told them that the mocking Polyphemian had lied.

  “Yes he was good! I always liked Crewman Di Prima, but I never liked him so much as at the banquet. He was the best man ever. Really!”

  “You ate? You ate part of him?” Captain Roadstrum asked, and he was aghast.

  “What else would I eat? He was the banquet. And he was good good good!”

  Thereafter they all thought of her a little differently, now that she had feasted with the high Polyphemians and had eaten one of them. And she also thought of them in a different way and looked at them with odd anticipation.

  Crewmen Fracas, Snow, Bramble, and Crabgrass went to be eaten, one each day. Bangtree went. Oldfellow and Lawrence went. Each went a little less gallantly than had his predecessor, and now the jokes on their lips were of a strained quality. They were still the brave crewmen, but it does rag you this being taken out and eaten one at a time.

  “We can’t go on like this,” Roadstrum moaned. “We have to play our ace to survive. Why, oh why, won’t they take our ace? Another day and we’ll go clear mad and eat him ourselves. How can they resist him?”

  Their ace was the twenty-first man who had appeared among them after the correct count had been twenty. The secret about him was that he was not a man at all but a kit. He was a kit, and the men had each one of them carried a part of that kit strapped to his belly to be assembled when a real emergency arrived. Their situation in the Polyphemian dungeon was such an emergency, and they had assembled the kit.

  His name was Esolog-9-Ex and he was a build-it-your-self pseudanthropus kit. You never know when you are going to need such an automaton, and many hornet-men had formed the habit of carrying such portions of one.

  The men had had fun with Esolog-9 in the past, particularly in the happy days of the war. You remember the time they had constructed him into a cardshark? Into a hillbilly? Into a peddler? One of the best had been when they constructed him into a crackpot general. This pseudo-general issued a series of the weirdest and most asinine orders ever heard. They resulted in more than ten thousand men going to their deaths needlessly. It was excessive, but it was funny.

  On Bandicoot the natives had found parts of such a kit on dead soldiers of the back-drift of the war, had assembled him into a ruler, and he still rules Bandicoot today. For these kits could be built to be anything in man form.

  And in the Polyphemian dungeon the crewmen had built Esolog-9 into a fat man. He was not an ordinary fat man. He was made to rant and rave more than any of them. And another element was set into him, a sialagogue that tantalized the men, that set up such a flow of juice in them all that they almost drowned in their own slaver. They’d have stuck a fork in him if they had one. The wonder is that they did not eat him themselves. And the high wonder of it all is that the Polyphemians had left him so long.

  Day after day the Polyphemians selected other men, fat, but not so fat as Esolog; succulent, but not so succulent as he; ravening, but not with his own special rage.

  “Why do they not take him?” Roadstrum moaned again. “We go to our deaths, and it seems as if they will leave the finest one of us till last.”

  And the point is that the Ace-in-the-Hole, Esolog-9-Ex, was booby-trapped. To eat him was to suffer the swelling death, the exploding death. One would swell and swell and swell, to three times one’s size, to nine times one’s size, to a thousand times one’s size. One would explode and completely destroy oneself and everything around.

  “Why don’t they take him, and we be released from our misery?” all the men groaned.

  Then, one afternoon, Margaret told them that the Polyphemians would take Esolog-9 that very night. They knew, of course, that Esolog was the best of them all, and they had been saving him for a very special occasion. That special occasion had arrived. Some cousins of the Polyphemians from another place had come to visit them. That night would be the finest of all banquets, and Esolog-9-Ex would be the crown of the feast.

  “He will destroy them all,” said Roadstrum. “Then you will bring us the keys to the dungeon, Margaret, and we will escape. But see that you are at a safe distance from it, and most especially see that you do not eat any of him.”

  “I say I will not, and I say I will not,” said Margaret, “but can I be sure that I will not? Oh oh oh, he will be good! How can I say I will not eat a little bit?”

  “Margaret, Margaret, it would be your destruction,” Roadstrum warned. “You must be very shrewd in this. Do not eat any of him. And be far distant when the Polyphemians have eaten fully.”

  “I say I will not, and I say I will not, but can I be sure I will not?”

  The Polyphemians came for Esolog-9 in the early evening. He went to his death as dapper a dog as ever went, and his joking was genuine. He was cool; he hadn’t a nerve in him. You had to admire him, even if he was no man at all, but an assembled kit. And he raved and ranted as was expected of him when in the hands of the Polyphemians. He was perfect.

  The men waited the news, and Margaret brought them hourly bulletins. She reported that the Polyphemians had begun on him. She reported a second time that the Polyphemians had devoured him all except for a few pieces hardly to be seen. And finally she reported to them that the Polyphemians had begun to swell and swell and swell.

  “You know where the keys are, Margaret? You will be able to find them in the wreckage?”

  “I know where they are. I will bring them to you as soon as the show is over.”

  “And don’t get too near, Margaret.”

  “No, no, I’ll stay well clear of it.”

  And Margaret did not have to report to them when the big thing came. It was a rumble like walls going down; it was a sound like a distant dam bursting. Then it was an explosion that shook all Polyphemia to its deepest roots.

  By the time their ears were functioning again, Margaret brought them the keys and let them out. Starkhead did not come out. He had eaten nothing since they entered. He was peculiarly inert and cold to the touch and offensive to the no
se. One never admits that a hornet-man is dead, it is against the code, but they buried him there in the floor of the dungeon.

  And they could not budge Crewman Burpy. He had grown grosser and fatter than any of them, fatter even then Esolog-9, but the Polyphemians had passed him up. He was too placid; they had such sheep of their own; there was nothing rampant about him. He had grown so heavy that he could no longer stand on his own legs, and they left him without a lot of regret.

  Freedom from the dungeon, and now the freedom of the skies. No need now to repair the crippled hornet. There were men left to man one craft only, and it would be a little crowded, so large had they grown.

  Deep John looked at himself. “Men, men, it was hobo heaven,” he said, “and out of it alive. Whoever saw a genuine hobo with such a pot on him.”

  So they enskied. They were in high space. And in time they would regain their fine lines and their wonderful tempers. Freedom freedom!

  “Boys, I don’t feel well,” said Margaret the houri.

  “You shouldn’t, you female cannibal,” Roadstrum growled. “You saved us in the end, but you didn’t treat us at all well in the middle.”

  “Boy, I feel terrible,” she said.

  “It is a wonder you do not die of remorse,” said Captain Puckett.

  “Remorse this is not. I’m going to burst.”

  “Look out, look out,” Crewman Clamdigger warned. “Maggy was fat, but not that fat. She’s three times the size she was when we loaded in the hornet.”

  “You ate, you ate part of him!” Roadstrum howled furiously.

  “Only a little sliver. I don’t care. It was worth it. Boys, I’m going to burst.”

  And she had already taken up three-quarters of the hornet and crowded all the men, gasping and straited, into a tight corner. She had begun to rumble, and she would go any minute, and all with her.

  “She’ll blow! She’ll blow!” howled the frightened men. “She’ll blow, and she’ll blow up the ship and all of us with her.” And there came the still deeper rumble that one hears just before the sundering explosion.

  Perils! And there would be more of them. And they were still years from home.

  The Chantey pleads a lapse and leaves a doubt of it.

  We don’t know how the hearty crew got out of it!

  What tales you hear with reason may you doubt them all.

  They could not be! And yet the men got out them all.

  Remember not the jokes they made to bluff it off,

  What ghastly thing they suffered, and to sluff it off.

  Withhold the question where such brave men cry a lot.

  Remember also hornet-crewmen lie a lot.

  Ibid

  CHAPTER SIX

  A feckless fate had foiled their path and ditched them there.

  A lady with a lilty way had witched them there.

  She thought to light a scorchy flame at least in them,

  And had to settle for the risen beast in them.

  Fell dangers from the charmer and the hair of her,

  Beware of her! Beware of her! Beware of her!—

  As deft and devious as Ancient Niccolo—

  Now sing her song, strum harp, and pip the piccolo.

  Ibid

  IT WAS scramble on all their data. Their direction and course were gone. They found themselves in the mysterious realm of middle space, which has no real bearings. But there are shoals and obstacles there.

  “What is here, you confabulating canister?” Roadstrum demanded of the data log. “What things are these drifting in the space about us?”

  “Here there are warlocks and mandragoras and witches,” the navigation data log issued.

  “When your machines start to go droll on you you’re in trouble,” Roadstrum growled. “I can get wise answers from my men. I don’t need a machine for that.”

  “He thinks he is men,” Crewman Bramble explained. “He has been with men always and does not know other machines.”

  “Fix the idiot thing, Bramble. Fix it,” Roadstrum ordered.

  So Crewman Bramble fiddled with the data log a while and then announced that it was fixed. “Bad connection,” he said. “That’s what I always say, isn’t it?”

  “All right, Log, now give a straight answer,” Roadstrum ordered. “Where are we, and what are these drifting things about us?”

  “Here there are warlocks and mandragoras and witches,” the log issued once more. “Kill me, torture me, I can say nothing else.”

  “Who has been feeding nonsense to this machine?” Roadstrum demanded.

  They had narrow misses of collisions with things that apparently weren’t there at all. The things seemed solid till very near approach, and then they faded to mist. It was illusion space they were in.

  “Ram them, ram them,” Roadstrum roared every time an object loomed up. “If we pass through them without harm we will know that they aren’t really there.”

  “All right,” issued the data log, and they rammed through several objects that had seemed quite solid, jagged, rocky, quite large bodies.

  “What if we don’t pass through them without harm, Roadstrum?” Captain Puckett asked.

  “Don’t know. I suppose that will mean they are real, if we have a real collision.”

  “And it may mean that we aren’t real any longer,” said Crewman Clamdigger. “We could get unreal awful easy smashing into one of those things that was really there.”

  There was another one of them looming up, a round little world of gold and green. It was overdone. It was too arty to be real. Whoever had thought it up may have had a certain feeling for art, but none at all for planetary dynamics.

  “That’s the phoniest one yet,” Roadstrum laughed. “Ram it, Log, ram it. I can see into the mind that made it up.”

  “So can I!” cried Margaret furiously. “It is Aeaea, the Aeaea mind. I hate her! Ram it, canny can, ram it!”

  And the navigation log soared the hornet into ram it, and then somehow slackened off a little. They came in at too low a speed for a real ramming job, and the world took on further reality from their hesitation.

  “You fumbling idiot,” Roadstrum fumed. “You half accepted it on its own terms, so now it is half there. Too close to it to veer now, and it’s getting too solid to take a chance going right through. Slow it and land. What happened to you anyhow?

  “Lost my nerve,” the navigation data log issued.

  “Oh, that damned Aeaea!” Margaret exploded again. “I’ve run into it and her a hundred different times in different parts of the universe. She and that silly planet of hers! She doesn’t have a regular place. She hangs it anywhere. And now we’ve got to land on it. I hate her!”

  They landed on Aeaea. They made a bad landing. They first buried themselves in the soft surface that was like smoke. Then they had to back out and let it solidify. They got out and walked, and it was tricky. Aeaea hadn’t made her world very thoroughly. For the place was not charted and not generally believed in. The surface was full of nothing-holes. But it firmed, it firmed, it became a workable theory, it became a fact.

  “Aeaea!” Roadstrum hooted. “We all know that it shouldn’t be here. Whoever heard of coming onto a myth in actuality. I’d say annihilate all myths and be done with it.”

  “Easy, easy, fine Roadstrum,” Margaret cautioned. “What do you think I am?”

  “Oh, but this breaks it, Maggie! It would hardly startle me to hear the lady sing.”

  “No, no, Roadstrum. Give her an ear and she’ll take it all. She’s worse than the Siren-Zo, and she has a more hideous song. Let’s zoom away from this place; it becomes too solid.”

  But it did startle Roadstrum when he heard the lady sing. It startled them all when they heard it. It was high and clear, and not far away. There was an artiness about that singing that is beyond art. It would have been better if it were not quite as good, but it was remarkable singing.

  They were in the center of the singing, and they were all trapped. Then they were
in the center of a new silence, in a world inside the song. And there was a nice enough lady there, but could she be Aeaea herself?

  “We are strangers, lost and bemused,” Roadstrum said to the lady. “We landed here by accident. We are looking for the lady who was singing, the lady who (according to silly myth) is identical with the planet and who sang the planet into being.”

  “And now we have found you,” Margaret interrupted rudely. “Scat, you wood pussy, down on your four legs and skat!”

  “The Margaret be mute!” the lady ordered, and the Margaret was frozen into an angry crouching statue. Fire in her eyes and slaver on her mouth, but she could not move or speak.

  “I am the lady,” the lady said then, “and there is no lady here except myself. I am Aeaea. To my notion there is no other lady anywhere. And I resent your calling this a silly myth. I made the myth and it is not silly; charming rather. Well, come along, come along! You are my things now, and you will come when I call you.”

  They all followed her like children—they did not know where.

  They came to fine quarters, or perhaps it was that the fine quarters came to them. These things seemed to form about them, and there was no real distance traversed.

  “A dish, a doll, a droll, a dream,” Crewman Clamdigger breathed.

  “A girl, a grig, a gleam, a glom,” Crewman Trochanter gobbled.

  And Margaret hissed. She would never remain entirely mute, that one. She was still unable to move, yet she was still with them in their quarters. There was something the matter with these quarters. They seemed not to be designed for people at all. For something, but not for people.

  “Be you all at ease,” said the lady Aeaea in her musical voice. “When you have rested and eaten there will be time to admire me. The Margaret may eat from the bowl on the floor, and the rest of you in your fine stalls—ah cubicles. The mighty Road-Storm will come and talk with me.

  “A larkin, a limpet, a lass!” admired Captain Puckett. They liked the lady.

  “All right, girl,” Roadstrum said when they were alone. “I have a few questions. They will be to the point, and I want answers.”