by Hugh Cook
‘So you can imitate a conjuror’s voice,’ said Varazchavardan coldly. ‘What else? Do you juggle oranges as well?’
‘You won’t speak so pertly in a moment,’ said Zozimus.
Then his cousin Sken-Pitilkin exerted what power was left to him. The slab of rock on which Varazchavardan was standing lurched into the air with the Master of Law tottering for balance on its surface. To the height of a man’s head it rose. Then it fell equally suddenly. It hit the ground with a crash. It broke asunder. Varazchavardan was sent reeling. He cried with pain as he collided with his fellow wonderworkers, jolting his broken collar bone most cruelly.
‘Kill them!’ gasped Varazchavardan.
Doubtless there would then have been a great slaughter if it had not been for the intervention of a Power.
‘Begeneth!’ roared a voice of breaking rocks and rolling thunder.
This single word of Toxteth brought the warring factions to order instanter. The owner of the voice moved into view. It was the Hermit Crab. As onwards paced this eremitic dignity, the sundry delinquents cowered down and began to plead for merciful consideration. As when the Great Ocean is sdrred to storm, and sailors by fraughts of sea dismayed to their knees downfall and send aloft their prayers, so did the wonderworkers shrink and babble in their terror, as if before them was a dragon of the Qinjok Ranges, or a monster unmagnanimous of the Scorpion Desert.
Their apprehension was understandable. One can scarcely hope to contend successfully with the Hermit Crab, any more than one can wraxle a dragon to a standstill, forge ploughshare to sword with a hammer made from a feather, or shout down a thunderstorm when one’s throat is near choked off by squinancy.
‘Varazchavardan!’ roared the Crab. ‘Get off my island! Now! Before I turn you inside out!’
Nixorjapretzel Rat was already running. Certain other wonderworkers were retreating also at a pace scarcely consonant with dignity. Varazchavardan saw how things were — and joined the general retreat.
‘Now,’ said the Hermit Crab. ‘What’s going on here?’
Everyone began speaking at once.
‘Silence!’ roared the Crab. Then, when silence was granted to it: ‘Chegory! Speak! Tell me — what is happening?’
‘Uh,’ said Chegory, feeling a welter of incoherent words beginning to force their way from his throat, ‘uh — it’s — just give me a moment.’ He stopped. Counted to five. Then to ten. Calmed himself, gathered his thoughts, then said: ‘There is a demon. It’s called Binchinminfin.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ said the Hermit Crab.
‘It possesses people,’ said Chegory. ‘Sometimes one person. Sometimes more than one. It’s possessed me. Right now. That’s why you hear me speak in Odolo’s accents. But it’s also possessed everyone else you see here. A group possession. But it’s weak. Strong enough to control our accents, not strong enough to control anything else. Not entirely, anyway. We think. We hope. But it will gather strength. Given time. We understand you want to talk to it. To talk about becoming human. Well, it’s here. We guess it can speak through us. That’s why it’s changed all our voices. Minor tactics, you see. It being able to speak unnoticed. To change our counsels. So… say what you’ve got to say to it.’
The Hermit Crab was silent.
Clicking its claws.
Chegory was sweating.
He had a dreadful abodement. Something terrible was about to happen. He was sure of it. Perhaps: perhaps his death. He looked around. At the bile-green Laitemata carpeted with solid dikle. At the blue, blue, intensely blue sky. At the bloodstone of Jod. The white marble of the Analytical Institute. The white marble-chip path he had begun to lay right round the island. Behind him he heard Artemis Ingalawa say:
‘That was good, Chegory. That was very well said. I always knew you had potential.’
Olivia took his hand. Squeezed it. He turned to her. Saw her eyes limpid, liquid, trembling with tears. She too knew this might be their last moment, and that the Crab might kill them in incontinent fury. Yet she managed a slight smile. She was so brave! So brave — and so beautiful! So full of life!
Chegory and Olivia gazed upon each other.
Then they kissed.
They kissed, and were oblivious to the world around until the voice of the Hermit Crab brought them back to reality — abrupdy. They broke apart and faced the monster.
‘I have thought,’ said the Hermit Crab slowly. ‘I have thought carefully about this business of becoming human, and most certainly it is what I want. I would like to negotiate with the demon on this matter. But for that I need the demon in one body. I can’t negotiate with so many voices. After all, since you’re all mimicking Odolo’s accents, how can I tell when it’s you who speaks and when it’s the demon? Let Binchinminfin assume a single body. Then we will negotiate.’
There was a silence.
Then the Crab said, in a voice suddenly rising to thunderous anger:
‘If the demon does not comply with my wishes — Now!
— then I will incinerate all of you. Immediately!’
Each of the humans confronting the Crab then felt a lacerating painshock. They staggered. Olivia fell. Chegory caught her, lowered her to the ground.
‘Olivia!’ he said. ‘Olivia, what’s wrong, what’s wrong? Olivia, wake up! Olivia!’
But it was no good. Olivia was unconscious. Chegory knew what had happened. Doubtless the Hermit Crab knew also. In any case, Pelagius Zozimus happily gave it the news, speaking in his own voice rather than Odolo’s strange, foreign accents:
‘There you are, you see! The demon’s abandoned the group for the one girl. She’ll come round soon enough. Binchinminfin will be in full possession. Then the pair of you can negotiate.’
‘She will never regain consciousness,’ said the Hermit Crab heavily.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Chegory. ‘Of course she will!’
‘No,’ said the Crab. ‘For I must kill her. Now. To expel the demon Binchinminfin from my domain.’
‘But — but — you, uh — it’s the — the demon’s to help you! Be human, be, be like, like us, okay, arms, legs, you want that, don’t you?’
‘I want to be human,’ said the Hermit Crab, ‘but a demon can’t be trusted to help me.’
‘Then why did you — why did you say you — I mean — if you didn’t want, if you-’
‘I knew it to be my duty to expel the demon,’ said the Crab. ‘This I knew from the time I was first told there was a demon loose on Untunchilamon. Yet from what I know of such Powers I thought I might find myself unequal to the task. I might get killed in the battle. Or at least injured. Therefore, Chegory, I let it be known that I wished to do business with the demon. Thus I hoped to lure it here so I could take it unawares and destroy it while it was defenceless. Thus it has proved.’
Then the Crab advanced.
‘No!’ screamed Chegory. ‘No, you mustn’t, you can’t, I won’t let you!’
These stupid Ebbies! They never know when they’re done for! How could an ignorant redskin like Chegory Guy take on the dreaded Hermit Crab? Did he have magic? No. Allies? Yes, but these were as powerless as he against the Crab. Did he have a fool for a foe? Most definitely not. Did he then have weapons? Yes! A little knife which he had drawn from a boot sheath. But what good was that? None. If he had gone up against the Crab with such a toy, his splinter of steel would have been as useless as a toothpick to a dragonkiller.
Axes, that’s the thing! Axes! If you must kill someone, an axe is the way to do it. Ah the strength that surges into your limbs when you heft the weight of that weapon, when lusts murderous and urgent strain toward their consummation! But we digress. Suffice to say that Chegory Guy had failed to provide himself with an axe, and had naught but a bodkin-bright frog-stabber in hand as he stepped forward to intercept the Hermit Crab.
‘Stand out of my road,’ said the Crab, in tones no different than those in which he had said (in the oh-so-recent but oh-so-different past) ‘Stan
d out of my sunlight.’ ‘You can’t do it!’ said Chegory. ‘I won’t let you!’
‘Brave words,’ rumbled the Crab. ‘But empty. Much I’ve endured these last few days, but tolerance is at an end. Stand aside, and I will destroy the woman’s corpse and the demon both.’
‘She’s not a corpse!’ said Chegory in high distress. ‘She’s alive, alive, she’s still alive, don’t, you mustn’t, you’re a — you’re a murderer!’
The Crab muscled toward him. Then Chegory screamed with blood-blind wrath, with anger deranged, with passion virulent, with rage obscene. Screaming, he struck. So screamed his ancestors when they with their harpoons transfixed some hapless cetacean, dooming a sentient being to death most cruel so they could drag its corpse to shore to cut it up for dogmeat.
Blood will tell!
But the Hermit Crab had rather more resource than a dumb whale about to fall victim to a slew of villainous Ebrell Islanders. As Chegory struck, the Crab exerted the merest fraction of its Power. Chegory was flung backwards. He sprawled amidst the stones.
The Hermit Crab marched on implacably.
‘I will destroy girl and demon both,’ said the Crab, opening its claws (first left, then right) then closing them (first right, then left) with nut-crunching clicks (and here, to know the full force of the argument of those claws, you must understand that the nut in question in the metaphor immediately above is the coconut.)
‘No!’ screamed Chegory. Then again: ‘No!’
In extremis, with the life of his true love in danger, this was all the eloquence this Ebrell Islander could muster to his assistance. Just one single word, and that entirely negative. And yet, your average Ashdan liberal will ask us to accept these people as our equals!
Chegory screamed again, then closed his eyes as the Hermit Crab closed with Olivia. There was another nut-crunching click. She had been cut in half! So thought Chegory. Then his eyes stumbled open (thanks to the urging of a bloody Curiosity, perhaps) and he saw that Olivia was not yet dead. Instead, a cocoon of mauve light had been spun around her body.
As Chegory watched, Olivia’s body rose into the air. There it hung free-floating. The air crackled where it intersected the mauve cocoon.
‘What are you doing?’ said Chegory, voice thick with fear and panic.
‘I am proposing to cook the sole significant impediment to my peace on Untunchilamon,’ replied the Crab. ‘Stand back! Some heat will spill from the cookery.’
‘You can’t!’ said Chegory. ‘You mustn’t!’
‘What am I supposed to do?’ said the Crab. ‘Let a delinquent demon run amok on Untunchilamon provoking firefights four times a day? You’ve seen its work already. What next will it do? Turn the sea to custard?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ said Chegory, near-weeping in fear and panic. ‘But you can’t, you mustn’t, you can’t bum Olivia.’
‘I can,’ said the Crab. ‘I can. I must. I do.’
Yet it had not done so. Thus Chegory babbled all the faster. Hoping and thinking. Or — let us be realistic, now, and remember that it is an Ebrell Islander we are dealing with — at least trying to think.
‘Look,’ said Chegory, ‘look, look, please don’t, you can’t, you — you mustn’t, I, I’ll — hell! — just give me a moment, okay, that’s all I ask, just one moment, please — come on, okay? Just a moment to talk with — well, with that. Olivia. The demon. Whatever.’
‘Talk would be of no consequence,’ said the Hermit Crab. ‘Stand back! It will get hot!’
By now the warning had been twice-repeated, suggesting to Chegory that the Crab had ethical reservations about incinerating an innocent Ebrell Islander along with the demon-possessed Ashdan. So Chegory moved closer.
‘Talk would be of consequence,’ he insisted, with that bloody-minded stubbornness for which the Ebrell Islanders are so famous. ‘There’s — there’s secret strategies. That’s what it is. Negotiating strategies. A special secret. Family secret. I can’t tell you more. Oaths and all that, you know. I’m sworn to secrecy. But I can fake out the demon, I know it. Just give me a few moments alone with Olivia. In private. That’s all I ask.’
‘You mean,’ said the Crab, ‘you have a method whereby the demon can be persuaded to banish itself?’
‘Exactly!’ said Chegory.
‘That is very — very interesting,’ said the Crab. ‘If you let me learn the method then I will let you try it.’
‘I can’t tell you!’ said Chegory desperately. ‘I’ve sworn an oath! I can’t tell!’
‘So,’ mused the Crab, ‘you’ve sworn an oath not to tell. Very well. Then let me listen.’
‘No, no,’ said Chegory. ‘I can’t, I can’t, you’d — you’d upset the demon. I bet it’s scared of you, really, you’re so strong, and, um, look, I’ve been good to you, haven’t I? All these years, I mean, I brought you lunches, didn’t I? Okay, it was buckets and all, that’s not good enough, I see that now ^ T, but who else was there, okay? And — and I did ask if you wanted anything. I did ask. I was your friend, wasn’t I?’
Silence.
Then, from Chegory:
‘Wasn’t I?’
The Crab sighed.
‘I’ll let you talk to Olivia,’ it said. ‘But I must have a means of learning what took place. If you truly do have a method for banishing demons then I must learn it. There is so little which is new which is worth learning. So… let Shabble stand within earshot. You have sworn an oath not to tell. Very well. Don’t tell! But let Shabble listen. Then Shabble can tell me hereafter.’
‘That… that’s okay,’ said Chegory weakly. Then, looking round: ‘Shabble? Shabble! Where are you, Shabble?’
‘Up here, Chegory darling,’ sang Shabble.
‘Then come down!’
Within the free-floating cocoon, Olivia was stirring. As Shabble joined young Chegory, the Hermit Crab opened and closed its claws with further formidable clicks, then said:
‘Clear the island. Everyone — go. Into the Institute. No, Zozimus, get back, I don’t want to talk to you. Or you, Pokrov. Off you go! Vanish! Yourself likewise, Ingalawa.’ This clearance took quite some time for there were some very strong-willed humans among the onlookers. But, after renewed threats and a minor demonstration of force (two rocks melted to slag by the Crab) the last of the spectators retreated into the Analytical Institute. Chegory was left alone under the burning sun with Shabble, the Hermit Crab and the cocooned Olivia. The Crab said:
‘I will give you a reasonable amount of time. But not infinite time. Do not try my patience.’
Then it withdrew.
From the cocoon, Olivia spoke. But not in her own voice. No: she used the accents of the conjuror Odolo. She was without doubt possessed by the perfidious Binchinminfin. ‘What is this thing?’ said Binchinminfin.
‘A cooker,’ said Chegory. ‘The Hermit Crab plans to incinerate your body.’
‘Oh,’ said Binchinminfin. ‘Then there’s not much I can do about it, is there?’
‘You must do something!’ said Chegory. ‘You’ll die if you don’t.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Binchinminfin. ‘Most likely I’ll end up back where I started from. I didn’t think much of the place before I left it — but now I’m here I’m revising my opinion. I’m suffering from — what’s the word for it? Homesickness, that’s it!’
‘Then,’ said Chegory, ‘if you’re ready to go, why don’t you just, well, go!’
‘The death of my host is required,’ said Binchinminfin. ‘Let the Crab burn the body. I don’t need it any longer!’ ‘But — but it’s Olivia’s body! Olivia’s my — she — we — we’re in, well, not exactly that, but we — you can’t — uh-’ ‘Oh, don’t go on like that,’ said Binchinminfin. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m weak from too much psyche-hopping. It’s a dreadful strain, this jumping from mind to mind, from flesh to flesh. I can’t take much more of it.’
‘Then jump just once!’ said Chegory. ‘To — to Varazch
avardan, say!’ He looked at the Harbour Bridge. There was no sign of the Master of Law, who must have reached the mainland. ‘Yes, Varazchavardan, go to him, you’d be safe then.’
‘Too far,’ said Binchinminfin.
‘Then — um — well, me. We’d be unconscious, of course, but, uh, the Crab, well, we’re old friends, okay, it won’t bum me.’
Thus did Chegory dare and bluff. He did have a faint hope of survival if the demon Binchinminfin took him over once again. After all, the Crab did owe Chegory something for all those long years of lunchtime waiterage. Chegory was, after all, the closest thing to a friend that the Crab had on Untunchilamon. He was prepared to run the risk. To sav e Olivia.
‘Actually/ said Binchinminfin, ‘if I came to you we wouldn’t be unconscious.’
‘Why not?' said Chegory.
‘Don't you know anything?’ said Binchinminfin. ‘No, I suppose you don’t. Very well! To put it in simple terms even an Ebrell Islander could understand, I have your mental register in my psychic concordance. First possessions are done by brute force. Reoccupations are smooth because I have the data to interlock my psyche with yours. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘What you’re saving, yes, yes, we’d not be unconscious, okay, I get that, okay, well, do it then, we could run, okay, get away, Shabble — Shabble, you’d help us, you would, wouldn’t you? ^ 5
‘Help?’ said Shabble. ‘Do something naughty, you mean? I can’t! Fd get into trouble.’
‘No you won’t/ said Chegory. ‘I’ll look after you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.’
‘Reallv?’ said Shabble. ‘Really and truly?’
‘Have I ever lied to you?’ said Chegory.
It was a persuasive argument. For Chegory never had lied to the lord of fight. Till now.
‘I’ll do it, Chegory,’ said Shabble.
Then, in moments, Chegory briefed Shabble on what he wanted.
‘Okay/ said Chegory, ‘we’re ready. You know what to do.’
‘I’d rather,’ said Binchinminfin, ‘that you did it.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Chegory.
‘I mean, this time I’m just along for the ride. At least at first. At least while we’re escaping.’