Serpent’s Egg

by R. A. Lafferty

  “No, I don't think so,” Ruddy Lord Randal answered him. “He isn't connected with our movement, and we don't have any movement; he is only a stowaway on our Ship. But we think it's fun to have somebody like him around. We were all of us getting too serious, what with the different death threats that seem to be hanging over us. And he's a good man with a paint brush, with an invisible-paint brush. He painted with us all night last night, or I think that he did. Since he closed both of his eyes and his mouth so paint wouldn't get in them, so he explained it, we couldn't be sure that he was there or that he was painting. But the work went so well and so swiftly that everybody must have been working.”

  “The general idea is that you Royal Kids are a bit phoney yourselves,” Roy said. “Do you really think that there's a world conspiracy to kill the bunch of you because you're too intelligent?”

  “We have never said any such thing,” Henryetta protested.

  “I didn't ask whether you had said it. I asked whether you had thought it.”

  “I think it sometimes,” said Dubu the young female bear. “People are either planning to kill us or to scare us to death. It's not because we're too intelligent, no, but maybe we're too awkward for somebodies’ planning.”

  “Well, I don't think it,” Inneall said. “Something is going to happen and I can't give a name to it. This is the second day of the last three; but I don't know whether it's a dire day or time for everybody, or just for our group. It's fun watching things unfold though, like a mystery story or a mystery play.”

  “Do you believe that the critical times known as ‘The Enlargement of the World’ are at hand? And what does the term mean to you?”

  “Oh, I coined that term,” Inneall said, “but I don't especially believe in it. I don't know what it means to me. I think it means that I was just getting smart-talky. It is used interchangeably with the term ‘The Fulfillment of the World’.”

  “What are you Royal Kids going to do with the discredited Prophet Invisible Alfred now?”

  “We're trying him out as second cook,” Carcajou said. “He thinks he can learn the work. But he's tricky. We can never tell whether he's at work with his eyes and mouth closed, or whether he's wandered off somewhere.”

  In the aft hold of the Ship Annabella Saint Ledger, there was a horrible little room where no room should be. It is sometimes said (and it's denied twice as often as it's said) that every ship has such a room. It is a closet, and very often there is a literal skeleton in that closet. In extreme instances, the skeletons will talk out of their boney mouths and answer questions; and it is the skeleton that the mate of the ship will sometimes go to for instructions when the ship is in dire peril.

  Inneall-Annabella, who had researched such things, went down into the aft hold of the Annabella Saint Ledger and found the little room. She opened the door and found those three sisters sitting on the floor and spinning and measuring lengths of thread out of the straw that covered the floor.

  “Ah, Bloody Mary Muldoon,” the third of the sisters said to Inneall-Annabella (Bloody Mary Muldoon was Inneall's shipboard name or pirate name), “the pride of youth is upon you, and yet yours is one of the threads that are running under my fingers. Shall I cut it now?”

  “No, not yet!” Inneall cried harshly. She went out of there and up into the sunshine of Top Deck, but she was curiously depressed by the encounter.

  Invisible Alfred made three more numinous and prophetic speeches to three other multitudes of people that day, but they weren't successes. More and more people were laughing at him, and he was completely discredited. He didn't seem discouraged though. He just closed his eyes and mouth and went away. Or else he did not go away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE HOUSE ON TOM DOOLEY's ISLAND

  A house with guests at happy stead,

  It's all I've ever wanted,

  No matter if they're quick or dead,

  No matter if it's haunted.

  —A House with Guests. Kevin Keats.

  The Ship Annabella Saint Ledger docked at Tom Dooley's Island at a little dock that had been completed only an hour before. Yes, but it was already too low in the water. The Island was indeed sinking. The ship flew its landing flag so people would know that the landing berth was occupied. That land flag was the only thing about the ship that was visible to the common eye.

  Then the Royal Kids, the Covenanted Nine (Axel and Gajah and Luas were gone from the original Company of Twelve), and the Pirate Crewman Lanternjaw Lunnigan with them, came onto the Island and went to the Big House that was named Persimmon Manor.

  “That name will have to be changed,” Henryetta remarked.

  “That name will not be changed,” said Satrap Saint Ledger as he met them, and Henryetta knew that she had gone as far as she could go in one direction at having her will with Satrap. Satrap had just arrived with his two friends, Livius Secundus the Ambulatory Computer who was an Historian by trade, and Felix Culebra y Columba the Compassionate Naturalist, the human person who was both wise and guileless.

  They arrived on one of Satrap's other yachts, The Filchman's Daughter. For actuarial purposes, the Annabella Saint Ledger was still registered to the name of Satrap Saint Ledger though in fact he had given that craft to the little-girl computer by his sworn word and by a quit-claim deed. Owners of five or more yachts got better insurance rates than did owners of less than five yachts, and that was the reason for that.

  Satrap and his two friends also went into the Big House Persimmon Manor. It was just about noon of the Second Day of Summerset. Persimmon Manor was a very large house, and it's a good thing it was.

  It was a good thing because there were remnants of five or more previous parties still holding forth at the big house, and those remnants were still on the revel. Persimmon Manor was the ultimate in large ranch houses. It had been built by the grandfather of the late Tom Dooley back when ranch houses were really spread out. There were now thirty-two of these carry-over guests from previous parties, not counting some who had already died there that day. These guests had not been paying attention to the exterior world and they did not know that Inneall's Ocean (they had never heard of Inneall nor her Ocean either) had surrounded Tom Dooley's Hill and had now turned it into Tom Dooley's Island. They weren't current with the exterior world, but they were current with the world that mattered, the world of their own supra-world fellowship and consensus quality. Make no mistake about it, all these thirty-two carry-over guests were quality people, and all of them shared a happy circumstance in their lives and conditions: ‘For them, no party ever had to end.’

  Of course the thirty-two carry-over guests were enchanted to meet the Royal Kids, the Nine, the Children of the Experiments. It was a case of quality calling to quality.

  The thirty-two carry-over guests did not understand what was going on with the thirty tons of calking compound that were being applied to make Persimmon Manor waterproof, nor with the five hundred tons of lead-bars that were being distributed on the house and in it to keep it from floating away. But, when told of it, they readily believed it that Tom Dooley's Hill, which had now become Tom Dooley's Island, would sink into the Ocean on the Third Day of Summerset.

  “Oh, we'll stay,” they all declared. “There's no reason that sinking to the bottom of the Ocean should dampen the party. If the blood that has been shed in the house this morning can't dampen our spirits, certainly sea-water can't do it.”

  “But why are you Royal Kids so concerned over the calking and the lead-weighting of the place?” one of the guests, a lady named Rose-of-Sharon Montdrago asked some of the nine.

  “I don't know exactly,” Inneall said, “but it seems as if, somehow, after today or tomorrow, I and several of the others will be living here, bottom of the Ocean or not.”

  “I don't know exactly either, pet,” said Rose-of-Sharon, “but it seems to me that, somehow, after today or after tomorrow, you and several of the others will be dead, bottom of the Ocean or not. You know that the term ‘Ro
yal Kids’ which people have taken to calling you now is an euphemism for ‘Serpent's Egg Kids’. Almost all of you are doomed to die or my name isn't Rose-of-Sharon Montdrago.”

  “Maybe we can escape that fate somehow,” Henryetta voiced a hope.

  “I won't say that escape from sure death isn't possible since I myself have recently escaped it,” Rose-of-Sharon told them. “But my escape route has been plugged up now.”

  “What was your escape route?” asked Dubu the young female bear.

  “Oh, I myself had been classified as a Serpent's Egg, and the hot-breathed killers were after me to do me in. Then it was discovered that there was an error in my record. I simply wasn't intelligent enough to be a Serpent's Egg, so my amended record says. I was unclassified from it. I even lost my Mega Person rating. I am still in the top one tenth or one tenth of one percent of people; but I am no longer in the top one tenth of one tenth or one tenth of one percent of the people. I have never been so ashamed of anything in my life.”

  “Poor butterfly!” said the young female bear Dubu.

  At the heart of the carry-over partying was Donatus O'reily who was to be hanged. He was to be hanged by his friends at cockcrow of the Third Morning of Summerset which would be the thirty-first morning of August. As to why he was to be hanged by his friends and not by a common hangman, that has to do with an Affair of Honor.

  Honor had become big in the Floating World, the world that is our haven and our home. Honor had reigned as one of the leading cultural indicators for the entire summer. There were persons who said that honor was only a fad or a fetish or a compensation, and that it would soon pass away to make room for some other fetish. But other persons insisted that the ‘Resurrection of Honor’ was a real and valid thing and was long overdue. Some of the rituals that accompanied the ‘Resurrection of Honor’ were a little bit extravagant and overdone. But at the core of them all was the bright ideal of Honor Itself.

  Well, Donatus had committed a hangable misdemeanor, so he must hang. But Donatus was also a declared member of the Natural Nobility so, by a rule that had been in force for a month or more, he was instructed to have the hanging ritual carried out by friends of his own choosing, wherever he wished. But he could not change the assigned time which must be at Cockcrow of the Third Morning of Summerset. That was the hour and day when all hangable persons of the Natural Nobility in the world should have the deed done, on their own initiative. Well really, it was only those members of the Natural Nobility who had committed hangable misdemeanors since the middle of July of that year when the custom went into effect. But thereafter it would be a yearly sweep of twelve-months misdemeanors.

  Some of the hangables with their seconds had gone to James Mortimer's Gallows Guesthouse (its former name had been James Mortimer's Gracious Guesthouse) on Kure Island just a few short sea-miles east of the International Dateline. Official Cockcrow on Kure Island was the latest anywhere in the world. Others such as Donatus O'reily had simply procured late-crowning cocks. Donatus had got a Drake Passage Cock from Wollaston Island off Cape Horn, and those cocks, anywhere in the world they may be, do not crow until the sun warms Wollaston Island; and that is late on August 31 which is Winterset Day south of the Equator.

  “What was your hangable misdemeanor, Donatus O'reily?” Henryetta asked him. “You seem like such a nice man, except for your criminal ears, that it's hard to imagine your doing anything hangable.”

  “It was trying to save a Serpent's-Egg young person from being executed,” Donatus said sadly, “and that's just about the most heinous offense there is. Well it's no good being sorry for it now.”

  “I'm worried about what will happen to us your favorite pirate crew,” the pirate crewman Lanternjaw Lunnigan said to the Nine, to the Royal Kids. “As I understand it, you nine will all either be dead by the end of Summerset, or you will be living in this house that will then be at the bottom of the Ocean, or else staying in some of the megalithic structures that the whales are building, also at the bottom of the Ocean. Well, pirates don't die willingly, and they don't live underwater very well. They sure don't live long lives under water. In any case, will you have accommodations for us when you are down under?”

  “We may have room for one of you,” said Carcajou the young man or boy who used to be in wolverene form. “We may take one of you to live with us down there to give us information on various things when we write up our copious logs and memoirs. But that one won't be you. You will be the Captain of the Ship Annabella Saint Ledger. Yes, I know that you crewmen are a covenanted piracy, all for one and one for all, share and share alike, none superior and none inferior. Nevertheless one of you is always the practical and effective captain, and that one is you. We make it official now. You are the Captain of the Annabella Saint Ledger forever, as long as a splinter of her shall remain, as long as one molecule of you shall remain. We have now made you Captain, and you must remain on the Annabella Saint Ledger and never leave her.”

  “Well, will we be released from our allegiance to you Royal Kids when you are gone? Can we go where we want to? Can we raid where we wish?”

  “Oh no, no!” Inneall refused that. “We might want you again, in a year, in ten years, in a hundred years. You must remain here in the neighborhood of the old Heart's Desire Cove. You must maintain the Ship in total invisibility. And you must remain on the ship until you all die and become skeletons if it comes to that, and of course it will. Oh, you'll like it.”

  “And what will we live on?” Lanternjaw asked hopelessly.

  “Oh, on Ocean Fish,” Schimp suggested, “and on Sea-Turtles. They've been seen coming to this part of the Ocean since early morning. You forget that this really is an Ocean. And the water that comes into this Ocean area from the several creeks and streams nearby will be fresh enough for you to drink near the mouths of those streams. And of course you can raid in this particular neighborhood. Most of the people who are building cabins on this new Ocean Shore will only be here for weekends. And they'll be City People during the week. It'll be easy to ransack their places when they're gone. You can keep yourselves painted with invisible paint and wear painted clothes when you go a-raiding, and you can change back to unpainted clothes when you're back secure on shipboard and want to see where each other is. When you're invisible, and when you have an invisible ship to get away on, you'll be mighty hard to catch. And if they do catch you somehow, just think what havoc a bunch of you invisible men with invisible short-bladed knives can work on cumbersomely-armed people. It'll be fun.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Lanternjaw said without real enthusiasm. “But the truth is that I'll miss you kids. Yours are the only mega minds that I've ever rubbed against and it's been an enlarging experience, the biggest thing in my life. I've begun to come to intuitive knowledge just from associating with you, but I know that I'll lose it if I'm removed from you now. The other pirates are my friends, of course, but they're as uninteresting as I am. It'll be dull without you Royal Kids.”

  “How can you say that?” Inneall asked. “I have always considered pirates to be the most interesting and romantic of people. That's why I researched them. The pirates were the first technicolor people when all others were somewhat drab; that's one way to say it. And you on the Annabella Saint Ledger can become the greatest pirate legend ever, greater even than the legend of the Flying Dutchman. Just think of all the people who will come to try to see the invisible ship! They will follow Fish-Report to find you. The Ship is not painted with invisible paint below the lowest water-line of course, so it is visible to the fish and to the fish-eye view. And when, after the years have gone by and all of you are dead except the last one, and the flesh is rotted off the bones of all of you except one, then your skeletons will be visible. They won't be painted with invisible paint. Just imagine some mega-bold person, who has found you by Fish-Report, climbing over the gunnels of the Invisible Ship (that's pretty chancy in itself) and then seeing the skeletons apparently standing on air, one of them seeming to be s
teering by an invisible ship's wheel, three of them seeming to stand on an invisible yard-arm to reef an invisible sail, and others of them doing other invisible things!

  “And then the brave interloper and discoverer who comes onto the invisible ship will hear the wildest yelling and squawling that ever he heard, up over his head. He'll look up, and there'll be you, Lanternjaw? You'll be clear coon-dog crazy from loneliness and weirdness, and nothing of you can be seen except your hideous wide-open staring eyes, and the inside of your mouth when you holler and yell and scream. Oh, what a legend that will make! And what a song the songsters will make about the invisible ghost-ship with the crew of skeletons still standing at their invisible stations, and the coon-dog-crazy Captain of the Ship (that'll be you, Lanternjaw, up in the invisible rigging) who seems to be nothing except two staring eyes and the inside of a shouting and screaming mouth. I bet the song they make about you pirate-skeletons will be as good a song as ‘Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine’. To have inspired something will be to have lived! And it will have been to have died too! I bet it'll be wonderful.”

  “I bet so too, Inneall,” Lanternjaw said in a very soft voice. “But how could you know about an old song like ‘Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine’? You're too young to rightfully remember it. And so am I.”

  “I've researched all the old songs, Lanternjaw. The way I'm made, I've got connections. I can research a hundred different subjects elsewhere while I am talking to you here. I have thoroughly researched more than a million subjects and I'm not capable of forgetting a single detail of any of them.”

  “It might be fun to forget just one detail sometime, Inneall.”

  “I know it would, Lanternjaw, but I'm just not capable of it. Oh, I love the legend you'll generate when you're all dead and rotted except the last one of you, and he clear coon-dog-crazy. I love it, I love it!”