Serpent’s Egg

  “I'll fight, I'll fight!” Inneall screamed.

  “Be quiet a while, girl-machine,” the sea-lice spelled out on the wall. “Miol-Mor will speak through us for a while. All that click-whistling is hard on her larynx. Girl-machine Inneall, stop protesting or you'll not be allowed to communicate privately either. Be good, or be totally silent. And total silence would kill one of your disposition.”

  “I'll be good,” Inneall said weakly.

  Yes, this log-book (it hurts to confess it), along with much else on the current scene, has been more than half lies. Inneall is sorry for this, and so are all the other mechanical folks who have been doing the communicating and annal-keeping of the world.

  But from now on, for a few years anyhow, all the new writing you read will be true. From now on it will be Whales writing it, through the directed-medium (mostly on the unconscious level) of the sea-lice and humans.

  Most critics believe that, in the matter of style anyhow, the sea-lice have the edge over the humans.

  EPILOG BY A SEA LOUSE

  Novelty-seekers are complaining that Inneall's story ends without a real ending. But it's a log which ends only with the death of the logger, and she refuses to die. But, as a sea-louse associated with whales on a new log, I have a slight role as successor, I'll do what I can.

  God promised neither the Golden Apes nor the Whales to be successors to Man, nor did He promise Man that he would have no successor. Inneall's Ocean is only about ten thousand square miles in Eastern Oklahoma, and it was being planned for at least thirty years before Inneall was manufactured. What's in the Big Egg is still secret, but Dubu guessed it and you may be able to do so also. Axel and Lord Randal and Henryetta are in undead comas. The stone covers of their coffins have spring mechanisms that can be activated from the inside. Whales here do not weep one-foot-in-diameter tears. Whales that big could not come up the channels to Inneall's Ocean. They weep five-inch-in-diameter tears. Will there be more of these experiments? The next step will be ‘Experiments in Experiments’. The Kangaroo in the Sky is an optical illusion. Satrap Saint Ledger is not as rich as was believed. He is about to take Chapter Twelve, Bankruptcy. Is Inneall's Log really full of lies? It is, yes, but I believe I can beat her at that. I believe that I can beat her at anything. I’d end this explication if only I could find the right word for a wrap-up of a log. I have it! I have it! It's an Epilog! I love myself when I coin thunderous words like that.

  THE END

  R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002)

  Raphael Aloysius Lafferty was an American science fiction and fantasy writer born in Neola, Iowa. His first publication of genre interest was “Day of the Glacier” with The Science Fiction Stories in January 1960, although he continued to work in the electrical business until retiring to write full-time in 1970. Over the course of his writing career, Lafferty wrote thirty-two novels and more than two hundred short stories and he was known for his original use of language, metaphor and narrative structure.