King of the Scepter'd Isle (Song of Earth)

by Coney, Michael G.

  “It’s a deer. You saw it.”

  Another voice: “You should know we gnomes have a fear of being roasted on spits. It’s probably a deep-seated memory of ancient giantish practices, glimpsed in the umbra. Can you honestly tell me you didn’t feel queer when you stuck the spit up the bottom of that poor thing?”

  Queen Guinevere’s voice, tearful: “We didn’t have time to cut it into little pieces. You really are the most hypocritical little swine! I’ve been feeding you and clothing you for five years now, and all I get in return is nastiness and mistrust!”

  “We trust you, Queen Guinevere,” said the Great Poxy smoothly.

  “You trust me enough to jump to the conclusion that my friends are attacking you. You trust me enough to roll rocks down on me. Lance! Take me away from these ungrateful little beasts, before I kick them into the sea! I never want to see them again, ever!”

  13

  APOTHEGM

  ONE MONTH LATER FANG PAID A VISIT TO JACK O’ THE Warren to discuss the acquisition of a family rabbit, tractable and strong, suitable for carrying a female gnome and three small children. Rabbits being what they are, the depredations of Palomides and Bruiser had long ago been made good.

  Mention of Fang’s home life brought an envious gleam into Jack’s eye. He began to wax maudlin about a gnome from the northwest corner of the forest, with whom he had formed a tentative liaison.

  “I like her, Fang,” he said. “I really like her. Blue-belle.” He spoke the name with careful reverence, like a password.

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “I wish it was.” Jack eyed Fang speculatively. “You’re a gnome of the world. You’ve lived with a female for years. I’m speaking of the Princess of the Willow Tree.”

  “I’d hoped you were, Jack.”

  “And you’re married. I attended the wedding.”

  Fang flushed. His wedding had been marred by a curious incident of which he would rather not be reminded.

  It was a gnomish tradition that the bride’s train should be carried by two children, representing the steady-state population, but at the time of Fang’s wedding, the only gnome-child of suitable age was Fang’s own son, Will. So the second child had to be carved from wood, mounted on wheels, and attached to the end of the train. Will was instructed in his duties, which included keeping an eye on the dummy rolling beside him.

  Gnomish weddings include a parade around a ceremonial fire. This was symbolic of the lust, hopefully as short-lived as the fire itself, that the wedding was supposed to generate in the bride and groom. By the time the parade reached this point, however, little Will had lost concentration. He failed to notice the dummy had cut inward in circling the fire and rolled over some red-hot embers. The wheels burst into flame.

  Will squealed, dropped his corner of the train, and ran. The guests panicked. Gnomes are peculiarly inept at dealing with fires, and Fang alone kept his head. Seeing flames quickly spreading up the train toward the Princess, and realizing that she would not have time to undress before they reached her, he threw her across Thunderer’s back, jumped on, and urged the rabbit into headlong flight through the forest, the blazing dummy bouncing along behind.

  The guests groaned and avoided one another’s eyes. The symbolism was so complex that even Spector the Thinking Gnome was stricken into silence. There was no precedent by which to judge the event. However, every gnome present, watching the flight of bride, groom, and flaming effigy, felt in his bones that the portents were not good. It was the kind of incident one could blame crop failures on.

  Fang and the Princess returned eventually, drenched, having ridden Thunderer into a pond. Oddly they seemed to think the whole affair was a huge joke. They were surprised to be greeted with awestruck horror, beard twirling, and head shaking. They were disappointed when many of the guests crept away quite early, probably to pray to the Great Grasshopper.

  Jack o’ the Warren had an anxious look. “What’s it like living with a female, Fang? When you’re with her all the time—day and night, if you get my meaning, Fang—there are bound to be embarrassing moments. Moments when the depths of existence are plumbed. Moments when the basic nature of life is forcibly brought home to you both. Do you understand what I’m referring to, Fang?”

  “Moments when filth rears its ugly head?”

  “Exactly,” said Jack gratefully. “I knew you’d understand. No matter how careful you are, those moments will arise.”

  “They will. Quite often. You learn to look forward to them.”

  “But it’s different for you!” cried Jack. “As Spector once said, you’re a gnome subject to uncontrollable lusts. You can shrug those moments off.”

  “Spector wasn’t talking about that kind of lust,” said Fang irritably. “He was talking about blood lust. The Slaying of the Daggertooth.”

  “Whatever. You can’t deny you have three children. That tells me something.”

  Fang was fairly sensitive on that subject. “What exactly brought this conversation about, Jack?” he asked coldly.

  “A tragic incident. Bluebelle and I happened to meet near the warren. We greeted each other in friendly fashion. We talked. I was thinking how nice it was to have a normal, intelligent conversation with a female gnome, free from any implications. A small flock of swallows were flitting around the treetops. The rabbits were basking in the sun. The wind—”

  “I have to meet the Miggot shortly.”

  “I was just setting the scene, Fang. I want you to picture in your mind’s eye Bluebelle and me, the swallows and the rabbits.”

  “And the wind?”

  “Perhaps the wind is superfluous,” Jack admitted. “And maybe the swallows are too. This is what happened. Just at the very moment we were laughing at some shared joke, two of those rabbits took it into their heads to indulge in filth. Right then and there, right in front of Bluebelle and me!” He flushed a deep crimson at the recollection. “Clutching and vibrating—you know what rabbits are like.”

  “Bad luck,” said Fang. “How did you handle it?”

  “Well, I tried to pass it off, of course. I babbled on and hoped Bluebelle wouldn’t see them. But it was no good. The sight of those two rabbits triggered the others off, and soon they were all doing it, all over the compound! Well, Bluebelle couldn’t help but notice what was going on. She went a funny color, muttered something, and ran. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “She’ll get over it, Jack. Females are resilient.”

  “Nobody will ever get over it, Fang. I’ll carry that dreadful moment in my memory lobe all my life, and I’ll pass it on to my children, if I ever have any, which is extremely unlikely; and they’ll pass it on, and so on. The memory of my degradation will become a chapter in gnomish history!”

  “But none of your descendants will ever actually recall that memory.”

  “They will if they happen to become Memorizers. Anybody could become a Memorizer, you once told me. It’s just a knack.”

  It was probably at that moment that the great idea occurred to Fang. “That’s right,” he said slowly.

  “Oh, my God!” wailed Jack. “What am I going to do? I wish I’d never resurrected the string. I never had this problem with the bogus rabbits!”

  “The bogus rabbits?”

  “A slip of the tongue, Fang.”

  Fang regarded him thoughtfully. “Doesn’t it seem to you somehow unnatural, that this kind of thing should happen?”

  “Unnatural?” Jack turned a tortured face to Fang. “Unnatural? Not at all. It was horribly natural.”

  “So why were you embarrassed?”

  “Huh?”

  Fang left Jack staring after him in bewilderment, and hurried to his meeting. He found the Miggot sitting on a charred root of the blasted oak, drinking beer and snarling at the hangdog, which sat at his feet. It was a dissolute and depressing sight. The sky seemed to have clouded over, and an unseasonably chilly wind rustled the trees, scattering a few leaves as though winter were around the
corner.

  “Miggot,” said Fang, “pull yourself together and cast your mind back a few years. I want you to recall a conversation we had, just before I was deposed in that coup of Lady Duck’s.”

  “There will be other coups, Fang, believe me. You’ll be back!”

  “Perhaps. Anyway, you’d criticized my urges and compared me to Bison. ‘Bison’s sexual urges are well under control,’ you said. And then I’m afraid I lost my temper, and I said, ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Miggot, that there might be something wrong with your urges?’ And you said, ‘Yes.’ Do you remember that?”

  The Miggot had not had Fang’s practice as Memorizer, but he did have the photographic memory of gnomes. “I remember,” he said. “And then I said, ‘I’m accustomed to dealing with the Sharan and the business of birth and so on.’ ”

  “So you did. But what did you say next, Miggot? Your exact words.”

  The Miggot closed his eyes. “I said, ‘I ask myself questions.’ I might say, ‘What if …?’ And then I’ll say, ‘If that were so, then …’ And following that, ‘But supposing … ?’ And then suddenly I’ll say, ‘ A-ha!’ That’s what I said.”

  “A-ha! What did you mean by ‘ A-ha! ’ Miggot?”

  “It was a cry of discovery, similar to ‘Eureka!’ ”

  “And what had you discovered?”

  “Nothing in particular. All I was saying was that I am in the habit of following my thoughts through and sometimes coming up with interesting answers.”

  “And you came up with an interesting answer about sex, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe I did, but this is hardly the time and place to discuss it.”

  “All right, we needn’t discuss it. All I ask is that you listen to me and tell me what you think.” Hearing no objection, Fang continued. “I was just talking to Jack o’ the Warren, and it struck me how unnatural it is, the gnomish hatred of filth. We’re the only creature in the world that feels like this. The Princess once said something interesting about that. She said it might be because the kikihuahuas created us with some kind of mental block, so we wouldn’t fill the Earth with gnomes. We don’t need to multiply, you see. All we need to do is maintain our population so we can do our job.”

  The Miggot displayed some interest. “A mental block? That makes sense. It could hardly be a physical incapability. That would be impractical, and our ancestors are very practical people.”

  “I don’t have that mental block, Miggot. And neither does the Princess.”

  “But I have it, thank God.” The Miggot’s face creased in disgust. “Can you imagine how appalling it would be, to want to indulge in filth with Elmera?”

  “But if you wanted to, it wouldn’t be appalling.”

  “Logically you are correct, Fang. But in my bones I know it would be ghastly. It always has been, and it always will be. The struggling and the sweat and the horrible nakedness! A gnome can keep his boots and cap on for it, but not much else. Ugh!” He shuddered. “And yet … I don’t deny I’ve sometimes wondered if we gnomes are really normal members of the animal world.”

  “Well, we’re not, because we have the mental block. And if there is a block, there must be a key.”

  “No. It’s locks that have keys, Fang, not blocks.”

  “Ask yourself, Miggot—what prevents you from becoming a Memorizer? And the answer is: There’s a mental block that bars access to your memory lobe. I had that mental block, too, some years back. But when the shytes first started circling over my father, his duty compelled him to instruct me in the Memorizer’s art. And he did this by unlocking the block. Or unblocking the lock,” he said quickly, seeing an objection trembling on the Miggot’s lips, “with a key.”

  “What was the key?”

  “This is strictly between you and me, Miggot. It’s a long poem thing called the Memorizer’s Apothegm. Very long, and pretentious too. It starts off ‘Out of the wombs of the Tin Mothers . . .’ And it gets worse. If I didn’t know better, I’d think my father invented it himself. You know what he’s like. Anyway, it took a long time to learn. But when I’d mastered it—the very first time I was able to repeat it without a mistake—I could suddenly remember all kinds of things, going right back to the spacebat and the kikihuahuas!”

  “So,” said the Miggot, now thoroughly interested, “you’re suggesting there might also be an apothegm for filth?”

  “I prefer to think of it as a sexual apothegm, Miggot, because I’ve never really been able to think of sex as filth. To me filth is what gathers in the corners of the room, and under the bed, and on my father’s shoulders.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what sex is like. Sex and your father’s shoulders have a lot in common. But I’ve always been an open-minded gnome, Fang, and I can see what you’re talking about. I just have to make a very difficult mental switch, that’s all.” He screwed up his eyes and concentrated for a moment. “No. It’s no good. I can’t make it.”

  “But you will, when you’ve learned the sexual apothegm.”

  “Why should I want to learn the sexual apothegm?” asked the Miggot, surprised.

  “If every gnome in the forest learned it, our race would be saved! We must multiply or die, Miggot!”

  There was a long silence while the Miggot chewed thoughtfully on a lump of charcoal he’d picked from the root. At last he said, “Even if you knew it, Fang … you don’t know it, do you?”

  “No, but I intend to search my memory for it. It must be there somewhere.”

  “Even if you knew it, I wouldn’t want to learn it. And neither would anyone else. Nobody could be persuaded to learn a poem that would open their minds to unbounded filth.”

  “But suppose they didn’t know it would open their minds to unbounded filth? Suppose they thought it was just a poem? Suppose the Memorizer’s Apothegm doesn’t need to be long? Suppose the essence is short, but generations of Memorizers expanded it with their love of ceremony. And to make sure someone didn’t learn it by accident. The original sexual apothegm could be just a few simple words.”

  “It might work. It just might work!” The Miggot rubbed his hands together in gathering glee. “Yes! It’s a brilliant idea, Fang! You could make it into a poem yourself, and teach it to everyone at the next Memorizing meeting! Everyone except me, of course.”

  “If I can find it in my memory to start with,” said Fang, suddenly doubtful.

  “Perhaps it’s just not in there,” said Fang, despairing, returning to the present after yet another exploration within his mind.

  “You’ll find it,” said the Princess, leaning over and kissing him on the forehead. “You always succeed in the end. You’re that kind of gnome, Fang.”

  “I never found out how to get to the spacebat.”

  “Perhaps you weren’t intended to. If a poem can unlock secret memories, then other things could. The sight of a comet. A particular event. The key could be something that hasn’t happened yet. But when it happens, suddenly we’ll know what to do.”

  “Perhaps the key to sex hasn’t happened yet.”

  “It has. It’s in there somewhere. It must be, because your ancestors and mine discovered it—otherwise we wouldn’t enjoy making love so much.”

  “I never thought of that.” He smiled briefly before sinking into gloom again. “No. It can’t be right. You can’t tell me the Gooligog ever enjoyed sex.”

  “These things can skip a generation.”

  “You’re right!” He cheered up. “Pass me a beer, love, and I’ll try again. Just keep the children quiet for a while, please.”

  Once again Fang dug into his memories.

  The witch Avalona was everywhere. At one point in the distant past she had so terrified a gnomish Memorizer called Tremor that subsequent Memorizers had found it almost impossible to educe historical events before Tremor’s time. Fang had conquered that particular fear long ago, however, and slipped easily past.

  The events he explored were largely the result of formal Memorizing sessions, al
though many originated from past Memorizers’ personal recollections. A Memorizer couldn’t help but stamp his mark on gnomish history. The memories tended to be arranged in chains by subject matter. Since the chains naturally moved forward in time, Fang had to go back long before the chain arose, pick a promising subject, then follow it forward. Sometimes the chains simply petered out, leaving him in a void; and sometimes they divided off like happentracks, forcing him to make a choice. It was tedious work.

  Occasionally he came upon familiar ground. One ancient Memorizer obviously fancied himself as a teacher, and in addition to Memorizing sessions, he held classes in history. A group of young gnomes sitting on the ground, looking up attentively, appeared in Fang’s mind’s eye. He’d never seen so many gnome-children together before: it was a strange and moving sight. The teacher was relating the fable of the Bat and the Grasshopper, which Fang remembered hearing from his mother long ago. For a while Fang followed the teacher’s memory line; then abruptly it ceased.

  He educed backward again. He paused during the short period when gnomes spoke the ancient kikihuahua tongue, and listened to Avalona teaching them English for her own purposes. No humans were visible in any of these memories. Their happentrack was far removed.

  Then suddenly he found himself in the spacebat, and his memories were those of the kikihuahuas. He’d learned their language some years previously. Monkey-shaped creatures, gnome-sized, they trotted around busily in the dim interior of their huge organic ship. There was never a clue as to how they transported the gnomes to Earth, or how the gnomes were to be brought back. They chattered and worked their genetic miracles, while others slept the centuries away, lulled into hibernation with batmilk.

  Impatient, Fang moved rapidly back to the early days of the spacebat. An incomprehensible number of centuries ago, he stepped onto the kikihuahuas’ home planet.

  One again he met the Tin Mothers.

  Perfect robots, they were as intelligent as their masters the kikihuahuas, and they could reproduce themselves. The kikihuahuas lay around in luxury while the Tin Mothers looked after them. It was an idyllic existence; but, as always, there were malcontents.