Bestiary! (28 page)

"Come on, Bessie," cried Simpson, seizing the crate and dropping it to the floor with a jarring thud. "Don't make me look bad. Come out and show yourself." He tipped it over and the sphynx spilled out in a tumble of feline body, bare breasts, and goshawk's wings.

"Isn't she a beauty?" Simpson demanded. The sphynx looked at each of us in turn as he spoke, her bosom heaving and her eyes wild. You could trace the ripples of fear on her tawny flanks. Her eyes were blue. "Don't ask me how I got her through customs. Trade secret. The things I do for the Club! Wilkes, bring me a Scotch. I want to toast our new mascot."

"Simpson, you're mad," objected Haskins. "This . . . this creature is a miracle! A myth come to life! It can't—it
shouldn't
exist, and yet ..." He stretched out a hesitant hand. The sphynx sniffed it warily, cat-fashion, then allowed him to stroke her fur. Slowly an enchanting smile spread across her face; she closed her eyes and thrummed.

"Where did you find it? How? ..." demanded Dix-well.

Simpson shrugged. "That's a story I'm saving to dine out on."

It was Chapin, as usual, who cast a sopping-wet blanket over the whole affair. "We cannnot keep it ... her .. . here," he decreed from the height of three hundred years of Puritan ancestry. "Quite aside from an obvious violation of U.S. Customs law, we cannot. This is a dangerous animal, Simpson. A monster!"

"Don't you know what sphynxes eat?" put in Hobbs.

Well, of course
we'd
all suffered through the Oedipus tale in the original Greek at prep school. However, none of us really liked Chapin, and it was hard to ignore how prettily the little sphynx purred and snuggled when Haskins scratched between her wings.

"Oh, for God's sake!" Simpson spat in exasperation. "She's never taken a bite out of me, if that's what you mean. Besides, this one's purebred; can't eat manflesh unless it's gotten according to the code. I watched them for at least a week before I nabbed Bessie, and the only time I saw one of them chow down on a local boy was when he got stupid and arrogant enough to try his hand at the Riddle." You could tell Simpson meant the Riddle to be capitalized by the way he said it.

"What riddle?" Chapin asked in minuscule. We had long suspected his education lacking. Who has not heard of the immortal riddle the sphynx propounds? What is it that goes on four legs at morning, two at noon, three at night? We also had to supply Chapin with the answer: man.

"So you see," Simpson went on, "she's harmless. A, she can only ask the Riddle in Greek—doesn't speak a word of English, besides making cat sounds. B, she can't hurt a fly with it since every schoolchild knows the answer to that old chestnut. And C, unless the victim's willing to be questioned, she can't touch him.
Now
have we got a mascot?"

We did. We all grew rather fond of Oenone, as she was renamed. Only Simpson would call a sphynx "Bessie." She lived in a kennel in the woodsy clump off the eleventh tee and never needed leashing. It was great fun to do a round of golf and stop by to visit our unique Club pet. She bounded from the kennel or the woods when called and perched on a large boulder, like her famous man-eating ancestress. There she would jabber at us in flawless Greek, cocking her head expectantly, her rose-petal tongue darting out to lick needle-sharp fangs.

"Sorry, Oenone"—we all chuckled—"no riddles today; and the answer is man." This sent her slinking back to the kennel where Wilkes fed her 9-Lives mackerel and changed the newspapers lining the floor.

When winter came, it was Wilkes who offered to take Oenone to live with him in the groundsman's cottage. We saw little of her until spring, although I once surprised the two of them in the Club library. Wilkes was reading, and Oenone, perched on the wing chair's back, almost appeared to be following the text. When he turned a page too quickly, she hissed. He became aware of me and hastily stood up.

"Just relaxing a bit. I do enjoy a good book," he said. I glanced at the book, a paperback mystery. Despite his polished facade, Wilkes was hopelessly addicted to tales of ruthless women, spies, and blackmailers.

Oenone leaped from the chairback and rubbed against his legs. "She looks well. You're taking good care of her, Wilkes," I remarked.

"Oh, she's no trouble. Very affectionate, she is. And smart? Personally"—he lowered his voice—"I've never cared much for cats. But she's different."

I looked at Oenone's human face and pert breasts. Wilkes was innocent to the obvious. So were we all. That spring the disappearances began.

The first to go were Reynolds and Kramer, a pair of busboys, to be followed in rapid succession by Thomson, Jones, and Green, caddies. At first no one missed them; a certain turnover in personnel is expected at any club.

Then it was Wilkes.

The police were little help. Theories flew, but the Club remained beyond implication. Or so it did until the bright May morning when Dixwell announced he was going out to cure his slice and did not return.

"This is atrocious," fumed Chapin, consulting his watch every five minutes as we sat in the bar. "Dixie swore he'd give me advice on my IBM holdings; said he had private news. Must be keeping it to himself, make a killing and leave his friends out in the cold."

Wearily I stepped down from the stool. "If it's so important to you, we can seek him out on the greens."

Chapin took a cart; I opted to walk. It was better for my health, especially in view of Chapin's driving. So it was natural that he got to the eleventh tee ahead of me by nearly ten minutes. When I came trudging over the bank shielding the sand trap I heard the whine of Chapin's voice from the woods and assumed he'd found Dixwell. Only when I came nearer did I realize that the second voice was female.

"I'll tell you honestly, Chapin," she said, "I don't like you; never have. Don't think I don't know who proposed feeding me generic tuna at the last Club board meeting. Why should I tell you if Dixie's come this way?"

"You're doing just fine on 9-Lives, from the look of you." Chapin's voice was harsh. "Mackerel's brain food; how long have you known English?"

Oenone's reply—who else could it be but Oenone?came calm and measured. "I don't owe you answers. You have it all wrong. It's you who must play with me; by the old rules."

Chapin's barking laugh was so loud I thought I'd come upon them soon, but I only found the golf cart. They were deeper in the woods, and as I pressed on I heard him say, "And if I don't, you won't help me find Dixie before the market closes, is that it? Dying to ask that stupid riddle after all these years, aren't you?"

"Call it an ethnic whim."

"I call it blackmail; but okay." I could imagine Chapin's fatuous grin. "Ask. What have I got to lose? But the answer is man."

"Is it?" Oenone purred. The rumbling shook the blackberry bushes. I was at the edge of her kennel-clearing, about to announce myself, when I tripped over something and sprawled out of sight just as the sphynx propounded her riddle. "Who was that lady I saw you with last night?"

"Man!" snapped Chapin automatically, then goggled.
"What
did you say?"

I raised myself on my elbows and saw her. She had grown, our sweet Oenone. She was as big as a Siberian tiger, and her steel grey wings fanned out suddenly with a clap of thunder. There were blots of dried blood on her breasts.

"I said," she replied sweetly, "you lose." She pounced before he could utter another word.

I lunged away, sickened by the scream that ended in gurgles and then silence. Something snagged my feet a second time, and I went down in a deafening dry clatter, falling among Oenone's well-gnawed leftovers. I spied Dixwell's nine iron among them. Gorging, she ignored me as I tottered off.

We mounted an armed hunt, but in vain. Sphynxes are smart, as witness Oenone's quiet scholarship, learning English and—no doubt—a more suitable set of riddles. She knew she'd never make her full growth on 9-Lives mackerel. She was gone; literally flown the coop. Where she went is anyone's guess. America is larger than Greece, and there is wilderness still.

Perhaps there will come reports of backpackers unaccounted for, campers gone too long in the high country, mysterious vanishments of hunters and fishermen. Will they chuckle, as we did, and dare her to ask her silly riddle? Arrogance is never the answer to the sphynx's question. Oedipus himself was never educated at Yale.

Of course, look where it got him.

Simpson has been blackballed from the Club. Under the circumstances it was the least we could do.

THE SEA SERPENT

Of all the creatures portrayed in this anthology, the sea serpent is the only one who may actually
exist
in the corporeal world as well as in the world of the imagination. At the very least, it is the one fabulous beast whose existence is still widely
believed
in by a significant percentage of the contemporary population. For instance, there are probably very few (if any) citizens of the modern world who still believe in the actual physical existence of, say, griffins or sphinxes or centaurs—but every year there are dozens of eyewitness reports of sea serpents (or USOs, as they are sometimes called: Unidentified Swimming Objects), as there have been year after year for centuries. There are literally thousands of reports of sea serpents, many of them by trained observers: naturalists, oceanographers, experienced seamen, naval officers, submarine crews. Sometimes they have been seen by hundreds of witnesses at once, as in the famous nineteenth century sighting by the crew of HMS
Daedalus.
Nor are sea serpents restricted to the open ocean. Similar creatures known as "lake monsters" have been reported from lakes all over the world. The Loch Ness Monster—familiarly known as "Nessie"—is the most famous of these elusive creatures, but there is also "Issie," the monster of Japan's Lake Ikeda, "Champ," the monster of Lake Champlain, "Ogopogo," the monster of Western Canada's Lake Okanagan, "Manipogo," the monster of Manitoba's Lake Winnipegosis, the Black Beast of Quebec's Lake Ponenegamook, and Iceland's Lagarfljdtsormur, among many others.

Whether sea serpents exist in fact or not, they have been alive and swimming in the imagination of various writers for hundreds of years. In the funny and richly-detailed story that follows, the famous fisherman Izaak Walton sets out in search of the biggest sea serpent of them all .. .

Howard Waldrop is one of the best short-story writers in the business, known for his strong shaggy humor, offbeat erudition, and bizarre fictional juxtapositions. He has won both the Nebula and the World Fantasy Awards for short fiction, and his stories have appeared in
Omni, Universe, Playboy, Shayol,
and elsewhere. His first solo novel,
Them Bones,
was published last year as an Ace Special.

God's Hooks

by

Howard Waldrop

THEY WERE IN the End of the World Tavern at the bottom of Great Auk Street.

The place was crowded, noisy. As patrons came in, they paused to kick their boots on the floor and shake the cinders from their rough clothes.

The air smelled of wood smoke, singed hair, heated and melted glass.

"Ho!" yelled a man at one of the noisiest tables to his companions, who were dressed more finely than the workmen around them. "Here's old Izaak now, come up from Staffordshire."

A man in his seventies, dressed in brown with a wide white collar, bagged pants, and cavalier boots, stood in the doorway. He took off his high-brimmed hat and shook it against his pantsleg.

"Good evening, Charles, Percy, Mr. Marburton," he said, his gray eyes showing merry above his full white mustache and Vandyke beard.

"Father Izaak," said Charles Cotton, rising and embracing the older man. Cotton was wearing a new-style wig, whose curls and ringlets flowed onto his shoulders.

"Mr. Peale, if you please, sherry all round," yelled Cotton to the innkeeper. The older man seated himself. "Sherry's dear," said the innkeep, "though our enemy, the King of France, is sending two ships' consignments this fortnight. The Great Fire has worked wonders."

"What matters the price when there's good fellowship?" asked Cotton.

"Price is All," said Marburton, a melancholy round man.

"Well, Father Izaak," said Charles, turning to his friend, "how looks the house on Chancery Lane?"

"Praise to God, Charles, the Fire burnt but the top floor. Enough remains to rebuild, if decent timbers can be found. Why, the lumbermen are selling green wood most expensive, and finding ready buyers."

"Their woodchoppers are working day and night in the north, since good King Charles gave them Ieave to cut his woods down," said Percy, and drained his glass.

"They'll not stop till all England's flat and level as Dutchman's land," said Marburton.

"If they're not careful, they'll play hob with the rivers," said Cotton.

"And the streams," said Izaak.

"And the ponds," said Percy.

"Oh, the fish!" said Marburton.

All four sighed.

"Ah, but come!" said Izaak. "No joylessness here! I'm the only one to suffer from the Fire at this table. We'll have no long faces till April! Why, there's tench and dace to be had, and pickerel! What matters the salmon's in his Neptunian rookery? Who cares that trout burrow in the mud, and bite not from coat of soot and cinders? We've the roach and the gudgeon!"

"I suffered from the Fire," said Percy.

"What? Your house lies to east," said Izaak.

"My book was at bindery at the Office of Stationers. A neighbor brought me a scorched and singed bundle of title pages. They fell sixteen miles west o' town, like snow, I suppose."

Izaak winked at Cotton. "Well, Percy, that can be set aright soon as the Stationers reopen. What you need is something right good to eat." He waved to the barkeep, who nodded and went outside to the kitchen. "I was in early and prevailed on Mr. Peale to fix a supper to cheer the dourest disposition. What with shortages, it might not pass for kings, but we are not so high. Ah, here it comes!"

Mr. Peale returned with a huge, round platter. High and thick, it smelled of fresh-baked dough, meat, and savories. It looked like a crooked pond. In a line around the outside, halves of whole pilchards stuck out, looking up at them with wide eyes, as if they had been struggling to escape being cooked.