“L-let’s get out of here!”
The committee and the two members of the cabinet returned to the shore. There was no boat. It was far away, headed for the mainland.
“Shenanigans!” said Sean O’Donohue in a voice that would have curdled sulphuric acid. “I warned him no shenanigans! The dirty young bog-trotter’s left us here to be eaten up by the beasts!”
The solicitor general said hastily: “Divvil a bit of it, sir. We’re his friends and he left us in the same boat—no, he left us out of the same boat. It must’ve been that something important occurred to him—”
But it was not convincing. It seemed highly unconvincing, later, because some long-delayed perception produced a reaction in the dinies’ minuscule brains. They became aware of their visitors. They appeared, in a slow-motion fashion, to become interested in them. Slowly, heavily, numbly, they congregated about them—the equivalent of a herd of several hundred elephants of all the colors of the rainbow, with small heads wearing plaintive but persistent expressions. Long necks reached out hopefully.
“The devil!” said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, fretfully. “I’m just thinkin’. You’ve iron in your shoes and mainsprings in your watches and maybe pocket knives in your pockets. The dinies have a longin’ for iron, and they go after it. They’ll eat anything in the world that’s got the barest bit of a taste of iron in it! Oh, it’s perfectly all right, of course, but ye’ll have to throw stones at them till the boat comes back. Better, find a good stout stick to whack them with. Only don’t let ’em get behind ye!”
“Ye will?” roared the solicitor general, vengefully. “Take that!” Whack! “Tryin’ to take somethin’ out of the gentleman’s hip pocket an’ aimin’ to grab the rump beyond it just to make sure!”
Whack! A large head moved plaintively away. But another reached hopefully forward, and another. The dinies were not bright. The three committeemen and two members of the cabinet were thigh-deep in water when the boat came back. They still whacked valorously if wearily at intrusive diny heads. They still had made no progress in implanting the idea that the dinies should go away.
The men from the mainland hauled them into the boat. They admitted that the president had returned to Tara. Sean O’Donohue concluded that he had gone back to supervise some shenanigans. He had. On the way to the mainland Sean O’Donohue ground his teeth. On arrival he learned that the president had taken Moira with him. He ground his teeth. “Shenanigans!” he cried hoarsely. “After him!” He stamped his feet. His fury was awe-inspiring. When the ground-car drivers started back to Tara, Sean O’Donohue was a small, rigid embodiment of raging death and destruction held only temporarily in leash.
On the way, even his companions of the committee were uneasy. But one of them, now and again, brought out a small piece of whitish rock and regarded it incredulously. It was not an unusual kind of rock. It was ordinary milky quartz. But it had tooth marks on it. Some diny, at some time, had gnawed casually upon it as if it were soft as cheese.
* * * *
Faint cheering could be heard in the distance as the ground-cars carrying the committee neared the city of Tara. To those in the vehicles, it seemed incredible that anybody should dare to rejoice within at least two light-years of Sean O’Donohue as he was at this moment. But the cheering continued. It grew louder as the cars entered a street where houses stood side by side. But there came a change in the chairman of the Dail Committee, too.
The cars slowed because the pavement was bad to nonexistent. Trees lined the way. An overhanging branch passed within two yards of Moira’s grandfather. Something hung on it in a sort of graceful drapery. It was a black snake. On Eire! Sean O’Donohue saw it. It took no notice of him. It hung comfortably in the tree and looked with great interest toward the sounds of enthusiasm.
The deathly pallor of Sean O’Donohue changed to pale lavender. He saw another black snake. It was climbing down a tree trunk with a purposeful air, as if intending to look into the distant uproar. The ground-cars went on, and the driver of the lead car swerved automatically to avoid two black snakes moving companionably along together toward the cheering. One of them politely gave the ground-car extra room, but paid no other attention to it. Sean O’Donohue turned purple.
Yet another burst of cheering. The chairman of the Dail Committee almost, but not quite, detonated like a fission bomb. The way ahead was blocked by people lining the way on a cross street. The cars beeped, and nobody heard them. With stiff, jerky motions Sean O’Donohue got out of the enforcedly stopped car. It had seemed that he could be no more incensed, but he was. Within ten feet of him a matronly black snake moved along the sidewalk with a manner of such assurance and such impeccable respectability that it would have seemed natural for her to be carrying a purse.
Sean O’Donohue gasped once. His face was then a dark purple. He marched blindly into the mob of people before him. Somehow, the people of Tara gave way. But the sides of this cross street were crowded. Not only was all the population out and waiting to cheer, but the trees were occupied. By black snakes. They hung in tasteful draperies among the branches, sometimes two or three together. They gazed with intense interest at the scene below them. The solicitor general, following Sean O’Donohue, saw a black snake wriggling deftly between the legs of the packed populace—packed as if to observe a parade—to get a view from the very edge of the curb. The Chancellor of the Exchequer came apprehensively behind the solicitor general.
Sean O’Donohue burst through the ranks of onlookers. He stalked out onto the empty center of the street. He looked neither to right nor left. He was headed for the presidential mansion, there to strangle President O’Hanrahan in the most lingering possible manner.
But there came a roar of rejoicing which penetrated even his single-tracked, murder-obsessed brain. He turned, purple-face and explosive, to see what the obscene sound could mean.
He saw. The lean and lanky figure of the chief justice of the supreme court of the Planet Eire came running down the street toward him. He bore a large slab of sheet-iron.
As he ran, he played upon it the blue flame of a welding torch. The smell of hot metal diffused behind him. The chief justice ran like a deer. But he wasn’t leaving anything behind but the smell. Everything else was close on his heels.
A multicolored, multitudinous, swarming tide of dinies filled the highway from gutter to gutter. From the two-inch dwarfs to the purple-striped variety which grew to eight inches and sometimes fought cats, the dinies were in motion. They ran in the wake of the chief justice, enthralled and entranced by the smell of hot sheet iron. They were fascinated. They were bemused. They were aware of nothing but that ineffable fragrance. They hopped, ran, leaped, trotted and galloped in full cry after the head of the planet’s supreme court.
He almost bumped into the stunned Sean O’Donohue. As he passed, he cried: “Duck, man! The dinies are comin’ tra-la, tra-la!”
But Sean O’Donohue did not duck. He was fixed, stuck, paralyzed in his tracks. And the dinies arrived. They ran into him. He was an obstacle. They played leapfrog over each other to surmount him. He went down and was merely a bump in the flowing river of prismatic colorings which swarmed after the racing chief justice.
But there was a limit to things. This was not the first such event in Tara, this day. The dinies, this time, filled no more than a block of the street. They swarmed past him, they raced on into the distance, and Sean O’Donohue struggled to a sitting position.
His shoes were shreds. Dinies had torn them swiftly apart for the nails in them. His garters were gone. Dinies had operated on his pants to get at the metal parts. His pockets were ripped. The bright metal buttons of his coat were gone. His zippers had vanished. His suspenders dangled without any metal parts to hold them together, nor were there any pants buttons for them to hold onto. He opened his mouth, and closed it, and opened it again and closed it. His expression was that of a man in delirium.
And, even before the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the
solicitor general could lift him gently and bear him away, there came a final catastrophe, for the O’Donohue. The snakes who had watched events from the curbs, as well as those which had gazed interestedly from aloft, now began to realize that this was an affair which affected them. They came out and began to follow the vanishing procession, very much as small dogs and little boys pursue a circus parade. But they seemed to talk uneasily to each other as they flowed past Sean O’Donohue, sitting in the dust of the street, all his illusions vanished and all his hopes destroyed.
But the people of Tara did not notice. They cheered themselves hoarse.
* * * *
President O’Hanrahan held himself with some dignity in the tumble-down reception hall of the presidential mansion. Moira gazed proudly at him. The two still-active members of the Dail Committee looked uncomfortably around them. The cabinet of Eire was assembled.
“It’s sorry I am,” said the President of Eire, “to have to issue a defiance to the Eire on Earth we owe so much to. But it can’t be helped. We had to have the black creatures to keep the dinies from eating us out of house and home altogether. We’ve been fightin’ a rear-guard battle, and we needed them. In time we’d have won with their help, but time we did not have. So this mornin’ Moira told me what she’d done yesterday. The darlin’ had used the brains God gave her, and maybe holy St. Patrick put a flea in her ear. She figured out that dinies must find metal by its smell, and if its smell was made stronger by simple heatin’ they’d be unable to resist it. And it was so. Ye saw the chief justice runnin’ down the street with all the dinies after him.”
The two members of the committee nodded.
“He was headin,” said the president, “for the cold-storage plant that Sean O’Donohue had twitted me was empty of the provisions we’d had to eat up because of the dinies. It’s no matter that it’s empty now though. We can grow victuals in the fields from now on, because now the cold rooms are packed solid with dinies that ran heedless into a climate they are not used to an’ fell—what was the word, Moira darlin’?”
“Torpid,” said Moira, gazing at him.
“Torpid,” agreed the president. “From now on when there’s too many dinies we can send somebody runnin’ through the streets with a hot plate to call them into cold storage. We’ve pied pipers at will, to help out the black creatures that’ve done so much for us. If we’ve offended Eire on Earth, by havin’ the black creatures to help us, we’re sorry. But we had to—till Moira and doubtless St. Patrick gave us the answer ye saw today. If we’re disowned, bedamned if we don’t hang on! We can feed ourselves now. We can feed some extra mouths. There’ll be a ship droppin’ by out of curiosity now and then, and we’ll trade with ’em. If were disowned—we’ll be poor. But when were the Irish ever rich?”
The committeeman who was a manufacturer of precision machinery mopped his forehead.
“We’re rich now,” he said resignedly. “You’d be bound to learn it. D’you know what the dinies’ teeth are made of?”
“It’s been said,” said President O’Hanrahan, “that it’s bor…boron carbide in organic form. What that means I wouldn’t know, but we’ve got a fine crop of it!”
“It’s the next hardest substance to diamond,” said the committeeman dourly. “It’s even been guessed that an organic type might be harder. It’s used for the tools for lathes and precision machinery, and it sells at close to the price of diamonds of industrial quality—and I’ll make a deal to handle all we’ve got. What Earth don’t need, other planets will. You’re rich.”
The president stared. Then he gazed at Moira.
“It’s a pity we’re bein’ disowned,” he said mournfully. “It would be a fine thing to be able to tell the grandfather Eire’s rich and can feed more colonists and even maybe pay back what it’s cost to keep us here so long. It would be a fine thing to hire colonists to build the houses they’ll be given free when they’re finished. But since Sean O’Donohue is a stern man—”
The ship owner scratched his head. He’d paused on the way to the presidential mansion. He’d had restoratives for his distress. He’d looked at the bottom of a bottle and seen the facts.
“I’ll tell yea,” he said warmly. “It’s the O’Donohue’s been battlin’ to keep the colony goin’ against the politicians that wanted to economize. He’s made a career of believin’ in this world. He’s ruined if he stops. So it might be that a little bit of blarneyin’—with him desperate to find reason to stay friends, black creature or no black creatures—”
The president took Moira’s hand.
“Come, my darlin’,” he said sadly. “We’ll reason with him.”
* * * *
Long, long minutes later he shook his head as Sean O’Donohue stormed at him.
“The back o’ my hand to you!” said Sean O’Donohue in the very quintessence of bitterness. “And to Moira, too, if she has more to do with you! I’ll have naught to do with shenanigannin’ renegades and blasphemers that actually import snakes into a world St. Patrick had set off for the Erse from ancient days!”
It was dark in the old man’s room. He was a small and pathetic figure under the covers. He was utterly defiant. He was irreconcilable, to all seeming.
“Renegades!” he said indignantly. “Snakes, yea say? The devil a snake there is on Eire! I’ll admit that we’ve some good black creatures that in a bad light and with prejudice yea might mistake. But snakes? Ye might as well call the dinies lizards—those same dinies that are native Erin porcupines—bad luck to them!”
There was an astounded silence from the bed.
“It’s a matter of terminology,” said the president sternly. “And it’s not the name that makes a thing, but what it does! Actio sequitur esse, as the sayin’ goes. You’ll not be denyin’ that! Now, a diny hangs around a man’s house and it eats his food and his tools and it’s no sort of good to anybody while it’s alive. Is that the action of a lizard? It is not! But it’s notorious that porcupines hang around men’s houses and eat the handles of their tools for the salt in them, ignoring’ the poor man whose sweat had the salt in it when he was laborin’ to earn a livin’ for his family. And when a thing acts like a porcupine, a porcupine it is and nothing else! So a diny is a Eirean porcupine, native to the planet, and no man can deny it!
“And what, then, is a snake?” demanded President O’Hanrahan oratorically. “It’s a creature that sneaks about upon the ground and poisons by its bite when it’s not blarneyin’ unwise females into tasting’ apples. Do the black creatures here do anything of that sort? They do not! They go about their business plain and open, givin’ a half of the road and a how’d’y-do to those they meet. They’re sober and they’re industrious. They mind their own business, which is killin’ the Eirean porcupines we inaccurate call by the name of dinies. It’s their profession! Did yea ever hear of a snake with a profession? I’ll not have it said that there’s snakes on Eire! And I’ll denounce yea as a conscienceless politician if yea dare to put such a name on the honest, friendly, industrious Eirean porcupine eaters that up to this moment have been the savin’ of the colony! I’ll not have it!”
There was a long silence. Then Sean O’Donohue spoke dryly: “Porcupine eaters, you say? Not snakes?”
“Not snakes!” repeated the president defiantly. “Porcupine eaters!”
“Hm-m-m,” said Sean O’Donohue. “That’s better. The Dail’s not immune to blarney when it’s needful to accept it—and Eire back on Earth is hard put for breathin’ room you say can be had from now on. What would be the reason for Moira standin’ so close to you?”
“She’s marryin’ me,” said President O’Hanrahan firmly.
Sean O’Donohue’s voice was waspish.
“But I forbid it!” it said sharply. “Until I’m up and about and able to be givin’ her in marriage as her grandfather ought to be doin’! Ye’ll wait the few days till I’m able! Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said the president. Meekness seemed called for.
> “Then begone!” snapped Sean O’Donohue. Then he added sternly: “Remember—no shenanigans!”
The solicitor general watched them depart on a wedding journey to a cottage in Ballyhanninch, which was on Donegal Peninsular, fronting on the Emmett Sea. He waved, like the assembled populace. But when they were out of sight he said darkly to the chief justice and the Chancellor of the Exchequer:
“I didn’t have the heart to bring it up before, but there’s the devil of a problem buildin’ up against the time he comes back.”
“Which problem?” asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, warily.
“It’s the sn…the porcupine killers,” said the solicitor general. “Things look bad for them. They’re out of work. Even Timothy. There’s no dinies to speak of for them to earn a livin’ by killin’. It’s technological unemployment. They earned their way faithful, doin’ work they knew an’ loved. Now they’re jobless. There’s no work for them. What’s to be done? Put ’em on re [remainder of text is missing]
There was a pause. The solicitor general said firmly:
“I mean it! They’ve a claim on us! A claim of the highest order! They can’t starve, it’s sure! But would you have them have to hold mass meetin’s and set up picket lines and the like, to get justice done them?”
“Ah,” said the chief justice. “Some way will turn up to handle the matter. Like Sean O’Donohue was sayin’ to me yesterday, at the very bottom of a bottle, we Erse can always depend on St. Patrick to take care of things!”
The Second Murray Leinster Megapack Page 91