“Adopt me as a granddaughter then, old gray-head,” Inneall said.
“All right, that way would be better anyhow. Now I will tell all the Dolophonoi that you are under my protection. I will regard it as a personal offense if one of them kills you.”
Inneall did have a designated father before either of these adoptions however. He was one of the more elegant and more intelligent AMH Computers, and he lived in a super-lush penthouse in Structo Lane. He might be said to have come by the luxurious dwelling honestly, for he had written a florid work ‘On the Innate Love of Luxury and Elegance in Ambulatory Computers and Kindred Machines’. Between Inneall and this plush designated father on Structo Lane there was some play of intellectual lightning, but no particular warmth.
“One thing, Inneall, that little-girl voice of yours is a little bit too little-girlish,” Satrap Saint Ledger said as the two of them walked along Cypress Lane that was now part of the shore of Inneall's Ocean. “Couldn't something be done about it?”
“Of course. I have lots of voices. I researched you, of course, before I hijacked you of the yacht, and I knew all about your daughter who had died when she was five years old but would have been ten now. I had her voice profile when she was five years old lifted, and I had this voice made from it. I hooked you on it, didn't I? But I see now that it was an over-hook. I'll switch to my Bloody Mary Muldoon voice now just to give you some idea of the extent of my repertory. You'll find that I have a wonderful variety in my voices.”
“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety … She makes hungry while most she satisfies.”
“I love men who can quote things. Ruddy Lord Randal and Axel are both getting pretty elegant at it.”
“Your Bloody Mary Muldoon voice, my dear, is very remindful of the voice of my late wife. Do not overdo that voice either.”
CHAPTER SIX
END OF SUMMER
The End of Summer and its strange behest:
“Now live forever, or draw final breath!
Beware the Sleeper wakened! Guard him lest
He grow too young. Best crush with early death.”
—Dolophonos Delphicus
The week at the End of Summer that year was the week when the Animals talked again, something they had not done for nine thousand years. Oh, the very experimental animals, the one-in-a-million animals, those scanned for the Experiments, had been talking here and there for a decade. But in that Last Week of Summer, talking animals became pretty general, and this amazed the people, momentarily at least. It was a real Seven-Day Wonder.
But it quickly became apparent that the animals hadn't very much that was important to say. If you're going to have talking without very much to say, you might as well leave it to the people.
But the last three days of that week, The Three Days of Summerset, exhibited prodigies of several sorts.
There were other Experiments very similar to the Lynn-Randal Experiment going on. These experiments of young people of several different species growing up together were named for the surnames of the persons in charge of them, usually a married couple. And surnames of married couples had just been unrandomized by law. The names were to be arrived at this way: both the bride and the groom selected their favorite half of the surname they were born with. Then, during the marriage ceremony, the priest or other officiating person flipped a coin to determine whether the wife's or the husband's contribution should come first in the new surname. And the names of the experiments were the names of the sponsors of the experiments, such as the Lynn-Randal Experiment, the Wintergreen-Luna Experiment, the Dorantes-Saleh Experiment, the Gruenbaum-McGregor Experiment.
Three of the Experiments were merged with the Lynn-Randal Experiment in the final days of them all. The Wintergreen-Luna Experiment had a young male seal named Marino, a young male angel named Luas, and a young female human named Henryetta.
The Dorantes-Saleh Experiment had a young female python named Lutin, a young female bear named Dubu, and a young male Chimpanzee named Schimp.
The Gruenbaum-McGregor Experiment had an unborn female Indian Elephant named Gajah, a young male wolverene named Carcajou (it had an evil intelligence, and yet its intelligence was clear off the scale), and a young male parrot named Popugai.
The number of species deemed worthy of such experiments had greatly increased now. Hyper-Intelligence Scanners had been set to cruising, and they took many billions of readings. It was discovered that every species of sufficient size to have a significant brain would throw intelligences that were so high as to be clear off the scale. It might throw them one time in a thousand, or one time in a million, or one time in a billion. And when an intelligence was clear off the scale, it could not really be rated further. No one could say whether it was higher or lower than another hyper-intelligence. But it was suspected, perhaps a little bit unreasonably, that the Gruenbaum-McGregor Group was just a little bit more intelligent than any of the other three groups.
The four experimental groups were thrown together, on the North Shore of the growing Inneall's Ocean, at a beautiful place named Heart's Desire Cove. Inneall's Ocean was now growing mostly to the South and East. It was capturing the valleys of the Verdigris, Grand, Illinois, Arkansas, and Middle and Lower Mississippi Rivers, and it seemed as if it would fill the whole area that had been filled by the Mid-American Ocean thrice in geological times. Yes, of course Inneall was making the Ocean grow. But the other eleven young people in the four experiments were each of them doing something equally important, though perhaps not so showy.
The twelve young persons got along beautifully together from the very beginning of their relationship. All of them knew that they had less than a week of End-of-Summer-Days until their experiments were busted, and they all suspected that the experiments would be busted violently. Well there had been other experiments, and yet each experiment was different. These four experiments were really shooting twelve flaming arrows on problematic trajectories. And when the flaming arrow has completed its trajectory and been observed, what will happen to it then? If it has decided to take on a life of its own, something grim may happen to it.
Media persons came out to Heart's Desire Cove. But they were not drawn so much by the opportunity for serious scientific investigation as by the desire to see just how active a part the unborn elephant would take in the activities. And it took a large part in them.
Gajah was handicapped very little by her circumstances. The unborn Gajah was intelligent even for an elephant, and she responded to the drum language that Inneall set up to communicate with her.
Her mother Riesin (the Giantess) had already devised a ‘thump’ language to speak to the unborn baby elephant, but the thump language was more pressure and percussion than sound. The language that Inneall and Gajah set up worked perfectly. It was quite a small drum that was intruded into Riesin's womb, for a larger drum would have been impractical. Within an hour, Gajah could not only communicate with the drum, but she could jazz and rag it also, better than Inneall could do with her larger drum.
Marino the Seal was King of the Cove, of the Ocean for quite some distance around. He was perfect in the ocean, but to get around on land without undue awkwardness he had been given a little electric vehicle. Now he asked for and got an electric vehicle big enough to hold and carry eleven of them. Gajah could not ride on it until after she was born, and after that she would still have been too big to ride it without clumsiness. But, as it would happen, Gajah never would be born.
But Gajah was lively and alive for all that. She trumpeted faintly (one may not trumpet strongly in the unborn circumstance) and her signature was more in her trumpeting than in her drumming. And her wonderful concepts came through telepathically and delighted the other eleven.
There had always been a belief among humans of the sillier sort that the gestation periods of elephants is ten years. Really, the time of African Elephants is a little more than twenty months, and the time of Indian Elephants is a little less than twenty months. (The tw
o are not the same creature at all, not being mutually fertile, not even having the same number of chromosomes: the only thing they have in common is that both of them look like elephants.)
But this bit of silly human folk lore was correct in a special case, in a very special case. Every now and then (some elephants say that it is every five hundred years; some elephants say that it is every thousand years) an elephant of absolute genius will appear, the elephant that makes all other elephants worth while. These are the ‘Wonder of the World Elephants’. They are always born to Empress Elephants, who are themselves very exceptional. In the case of a birth of a ‘Wonder of the World Elephant’ the gestation period of the Empress Elephant, the Mother Elephant, is indeed ten years. Riesin the mother was an Empress Elephant, and her daughter Gajah was supposed to be a ‘Wonder of the World Elephant’. Gajah would be very special: very special to the elephants, that is; humans didn't believe all the elephant legends.
But Gajah's long life-before-birth did make her a sort of contemporary of the other Children of the Experiments. The eleven others were all approaching their tenth birthdays. And Gajah, in a way, would be ten years old when she was born, and she was scheduled to be born on about the birthday of the eleven. (The Big Birthday would really be spread out over the last three days of summer, The Three Days of Summerset.)
Gajah herself couldn't ride on the electric vehicle of Marino the Seal; but the mother elephant Riesin ambled along beside the electric vehicle and its eleven passengers. The thirteen of them (the eleven in Marino's electric dray and Riesin and the unborn Gajah) made the whole north shore of the Ocean joyous, and especially the part of it called Heart's Desire Cove.
Heart's Desire had become a great entertainment center, all within a week. The midas Satrap Saint Ledger had built the Center as a Memorial Park to Inneall. A feature there was ‘Computer-Enhanced Human Music’, and all sorts of music lovers came there. The birds also were faithful listeners and participants. Human music alone had never touched them much, but the enhanced music struck a cord with them. Sometimes there were whole choruses of larks and catbirds and mockingbirds and of the multi-songed cardinals. There was even the mightiness of ten-thousand voice crow-calls. And the swifts and swallows and even the evil shrikes did air dances when the people and the ‘people’ danced.
And the fast-lunch and fast-drink places were attractions for old and young. Each of the Eleven had a specialty named for him on Hot Dog Row. (It had been discovered and verified that the Hot Dog was really the ‘King of Foods’.) There was even Hay a la Riesin, bales of bluestem hay soaked with aromatic sauces and with Oats Imperial added. This was offered for the riding horses of the many sportsmen who came to the Cove, and it became the joyous favorite of many vegetarian people. And the Specialties, the Specialties of the Cove! Where else could one get Hot Coon Sandwiches? Where else Ocean Catfish garnished with Crayfish Tails? Where else Persimmon Wine? Where else Choc Beer made as Mother Used to Make It?
Sea Food was big on Heart's Desire Cove, and some of the new and princely places were Sea-Food Charley's, Sea-Food John's, Sea-Food Elroy's, and Elmer Springer's Sea-Food Castle. But several of the Eleven found their best eating at the bait shops which had sprung up with the coming of the Ocean Water. There were multi-colored Rio Sidewalks all along the stony shore, and Sidewalk Cafes with their umbrellas that were all the colors that are hidden in sunshine.
Water Sports were wonderful on the Cove. Two Fast and Scampering Boats, The Jolly Roger and the Crabby Roger, had been provided by the midas Satrap Saint Ledger. They were provided for the use of the Eleven. They were really entitled to Inneall-Annabella now as Ship Boats of the pirate ship the Annabella Saint Ledger. Lord Randal the Boy Human and Marino the Boy Seal were the assigned pilots of these Speedsters, and they churned up Inneall's Ocean for miles around. And there were dozens of other speed boats that sportsmen had put on the Ocean and which had their berths at Heart's Desire Cove.
At night there were the bonfires on Ocean Shore. They were built out of folk memory, and they were built because it was chilly. The End of Summer was the end of August, and it had never previously been chilly in that neighborhood at that time except in that eerie year of 1983.
When the queer and dim sun sank now, it became chilly, and by midnight it became cold. The End-of-Summer Sun was queer and dim and garish in those terminal days (there weren't many of those days, and their dramatic cycle would be played out quickly) at Heart's Desire Cove. It was as if the sun's power locally (over a pretty large locality) was being diverted to something else. And that was exactly the case. Certain of the Ambulatory Computers were able to plunder the environment to make such changes in their part of the world as they wished to make. Inneall-Annabella was an Ambulatory Computer who had the ‘Multiple Run-Amoks’, as she called her happy sickness. She was an Out-of-Control Ambulatory Computer. She was diverting considerable of the Sun's power to the making of her ocean; and she was doing this on a conscious, on an unconscious, as well as on the strange miming-mechanostic level of mind, the ‘twilight limes’ that only machines have. Oh, the garish sun!—especially at Heart's Desire Cove. Oh the garish gegenschein, the glowing midnight sky! Oh the bonfires that burned the leftover boughs and boles of summertime! The trees of the neighborhood of Heart's Desire Cove had all turned to shrieking autumn colors in a single day and night, too soon, too soon for autumn's cold to come.
Oh the Campfire Songs that the people and the ‘people’ sang and intoned on the rocky shores of the Cove on those chilly End-of-Summer nights! They sang ‘Star People’ and ‘Skokemchuck Rag’, ‘Bandicot Blues’ and ‘World Village Medley’, ‘Ambulatory Ambles’ and ‘The Socsollabcomdem Party Potlatch’, ‘New Directions Ramble’, ‘Charisma Concerto’, ‘The We-Owe-A-Lot-To-Otto-Wotto Hootnanny’, ‘The Sixth Dream of Molly Mechanicus’, ‘New Entity Rock’, ‘Oh New Rice Feeds the Far-Flung World!’, ‘Interspecies Intermezzo’, ‘Inneall's Ocean Hallelulah’.
Inneall-Annabella (who sometimes called herself Bloody Mary Muldoon the Pirate Queen) always felt embarrassed when the pleasure people sang the latter song around their campfires. But Inneall was a computer, and computers cannot feel embarrassment. Well then, Inneall felt an ‘Emotion-without-a-Name’ whenever ‘Inneall's Ocean Halleluiah’ was sung with its rousing chorus.
Every night, some of the Computers sang ‘Moon People Vaunt’, a song that always caused at least a small amount of friction. Only Computers lived in the Moon Colonies. Humans couldn't live on the Moon without elaborate support systems. But Computers could live anywhere, even on the blistering hot surface of Venus or on the killingly cold surface of Jupiter. Properly speaking, of course, the Computers were not capable of such a thing as ‘vaunting’. Well, the attitude they expressed would do for ‘vaunting’ till the real ‘vaunting’ came along.
But everybody could enjoy such sing-a-longs as the ‘Excitements Hot and Cold Suite’ and ‘It's the Crustacean in Me’ a song of aeons-spanning nostalgia; and ‘Going Home Over The Star Bridge’.
The birds joined in with the Human and Animal and Computer singing, but they didn't have such powerful parts as they’d had when the Birdmaster was still among them. The Birdmaster was a probably-human boy who was bird-brained in the popular meaning of that term, or at least he was simple-minded. But he could marshal and inspire birds by the thousands and the tens of thousands. He could assemble myriad-throated choirs and orchestras of birds. But now the Birdmaster had gone away. No one knew where he had gone or whether he would return.
Of the Eleven (or the Twelve if you count the unborn Gajah) contemporaries in the group of the Four Experiments, the young male seal, Marino, had the fastest intelligence and the fastest wit. It was said that his intelligence wasn't as deep as that of some of the others, but that was a mere quibble. As well complain that an arrow in shining flight didn't have enough ‘depth’ to it. Marino was pleasant, he was personable, he was really the ultimate in friendliness. His mind and his personality and his outgoing spirit
gleamed as his hide gleamed with its wetness in the sun when he came out of the water. Nobody had so many new ideas as had Marino. Nobody started so many things.
But perhaps he had too many friendships to have any really incandescent friendship. And perhaps the many beginnings he made were not carried through by the others because there was something flawed about those beginnings. “He is too mechanical, too machine-like”, Inneall said about him, and Inneall liked Marino very much. And Inneall herself was a machine, and Marino was not. But her appraisal was correct.
Luas, the young male angel, was the misfit among them. Oh, he equaled young Marino in total friendliness, and he excelled him in the agility of his intellect. The mind of Marino was really incredibly fast; but the mind of Luas was instantaneous. And, with Luas, the mind and the body were one. Oh, he hadn't a real body but only the illusion of a body. Well then, the mind and the illusion were one. Speed was something that the serene Luas did not have. But he had the ability to be in more than one, and in more than ten, places at the same time; and that obviated the necessity of speed.
One difficulty was that Luas had remained more of an observer than a participant. Luas had been obtained with great difficulty by the Wintergreen-Luna Couple. There was nothing phony about Luas. He was a genuine angel, and therefore he belonged to a different universe. But Kersten Wintergreen-Luna had been resolute about getting an angel, and she moved heaven and earth to get one. One condition of the assigning was that the angel who was loaned for the Experiment would not be greatly missed. Luas was a genuine angel and he had all the angelic qualities. But he didn't have them overflowingly. Yes, he was such a one as would not be greatly missed in the angelic society; and yet the other members of the Experiments would have missed him greatly if he had been taken from them. Oh, he was of one of the lower classes of the highest of creatures.
Serpent’s Egg Page 7