The Once and Future King (70 page)

The new Arthur, the oiled bolt, was cosseted back to good humour; but he immediately committed the blunder of opening the subject once again.

‘Surely,’ he said, ‘the affections of men, their love and heroism and patience: surely these are respectable things?’

His tutor was not abashed by the scolding which he had received. He accepted the gage with pleasure.

‘Do you suppose that the other animals,’ he asked, ‘have no love or heroism or patience – or, which is the more important, no co—operative affection? The love—lives of ravens, the heroism of a pack of weasels, the patience of small birds nursing a cuckoo, the co—operative love of bees – all these things are shewn much more perfectly on every side in nature, than they have ever been shown in man.’

‘Surely,’ asked the King, ‘man must have some respectable feature?’

At this his magician relented.

‘I am inclined to think,’ he said, ‘that there may be one. This, insignificant and childish as it must seem, I mention in spite of all the lucubrations of that fellow Chalmers—Mitchell. I refer to man’s relation with his pets. In certain households there are dogs which are of no use as hunters or as watchmen, and cats which refuse to go mousing, but which are treated with a kind of vicarious affection by their human fellows, in spite of uselessness or even trouble. I cannot help thinking that any traffic in love, which is platonic and not given in exchange for other commodities, must be remarkable. I knew a donkey once, who lived in the same field with a horse of the same sex. They were deeply attached to one another, although nobody could see that either of them was able to confer a material benefit on the other. This relationship does, it seems to me, exist to a respectable extent between
Homo ferox
and his hounds in certain cases. But it also exists among the ants, so we must not put too much store upon it.’

Goat observed slyly: ‘Parasites.’

At this, Cavall got off his master’s lap, and he and the new King walked over to the goat on stiff legs. Cavall spoke in human speech for the first and last time in his long life, in unison with his master. His voice sounded like a teuton’s speaking through a trumpet.

‘Did you say Parasites?’ they asked. ‘Just say that once again, will you, until we punch your head?’

The goat regarded them with amused affection, but refused to have a row.

‘If you punched my head,’ he said, ‘you would get a pair of bloody knuckles. Besides, I take it back.’

They sat down again, while the king congratulated himself on having something nice in his heart at any rate. Cavall evidently thought the same thing, for he licked his nose.

‘What I cannot understand,’ said Arthur, ‘is why you should take the trouble to think about man and his problems, or to
sit in committee on them, if the only respectable thing about him is the way he treats a few pets. Why not let him extinguish himself without fuss?’

This set the committee a problem: they remained still to think it over, holding the mahogany fans between their faces and the firelight, and watching the inverted flames in the smoky brown of the madeira.

‘It is because we love you, king, yourself,’ said Archimedes eventually.

This was the most wonderful compliment which he had ever received.

‘It is because the creature is young,’ said the goat. ‘Young and helpless creatures make you want to aid them, instinctively.’

‘It is because helping is a good thing anyway,’ said T. natrix.

‘There is something important in humanity,’ said Balin. ‘I cannot at present describe it.’

Merlyn said: ‘It is because one likes to tinker with things, to play with possibilities.’

The hedgehog gave the best reason, which was simply: ‘Whoy shouldernt ’un?’

Then they fell silent, musing on the flames.

‘Perhaps I have painted a dark picture of the humans,’ said Merlyn doubtfully, ‘not very dark, but it might have been a shade lighter. It was because I wanted you to understand about looking at the animals. I did not want you to think that man was too grand to do that. In the course of a long experience of the human race, I have learned that you can never make them understand anything, unless you rub it in.’

‘You are wanting me to find something out, by learning from the beasts.’

‘Yes. At last we are getting to the object of your visit. There are two creatures which I forgot to shew you when you were small, and, unless you see them now, we shall get no further.’

‘I will do what you like.’

‘They are the Ant and the Wild Goose. We want you to meet them tonight. Of course it will be only one kind of ant,
out of many hundreds, but it is a kind which we want you to see.’

‘Very well,’ said the king. ‘I am ready and willing.’

‘Have you the Sanguinea—spell at hand, my badger?’

The wretched animal immediately began to rummage in its chair, searching inside the seams, lifting the corner of the carpet, and turning up slips of paper covered with Merlyn’s hand—writing in all directions.

The first slip was headed
More Hubris Under Victoria.
It said: ‘Dr John of Gaddesden, court physician to Edward II, claimed to have cured the king’s son of small—pox by wrapping the patient up in red cloth, putting red curtains on the windows, and seeing that all the hangings of the room were red. This raised a merry Victorian guffaw at the expense of medieval simplicity, until it was discovered by Dr Niels Finsen of Copenhagen in the twentieth century that red and infra—red light really did affect the pustules of small—pox, even helping in the cure of the disease.’

The next slip said briefly: ‘Half a rose noble each way on Golden Miller.’

The third, which smelt strongly of Quelques Fleurs, and was not in Merlyn’s hand, said: ‘Queen Philippa’s monument at Charing Cross, seven—thirty, under the spire.’ There were a lot of kisses on the bottom of it, and, on the back, some notes for a poem to be addressed to the sender. These were in Merlyn’s writing, and said: Hooey? Coué? Chop—suey? The poem itself, which began

Cooee

Nimue,

was erased.

Another slip was headed: ‘
Other Races, Victorian Condescension to, as well as to Own Ancestors, Animals, etc.
’ It said: ‘Colonel Wood—Martin, the Antiquarian, writing in 1895, observes with a giggle that “one of the
most depraved
of all races, the
now extinct
Tasmanians, believed that stones, especially certain kinds of quartz crystals, could be used as mediums,
or as means of communication…with living persons at a distance!” Within a few years of this note, wireless was imported into the western hemisphere. I prefer to conjecture that these depraved people were a million years in front of the colonel, along the same foul road, and that they had become extinct by constantly listening to swing—music on their crystal sets.’

‘Here we are,’ said badger. ‘I think this is it.’

He handed over a strip on which was written: ‘
Formica est exemplo magni laboris
,
^*
Dative of the Purpose.’

It proved ineffectual.

At last everybody was commanded to stand up, search on their chairs, look in their pockets, etc. The hedgehog, producing a tattered fragment covered with dry mud and crumbled leaves, on which he had been sitting, asked: ‘Be ’un thic?’ After it had been wiped, flapped and dusted, it was found to read:
Dragguls uoht, Tna eht ot og
, and Merlyn said it was the one they wanted.

So a couple of ants’ nests were fetched from the meat—safe, where they stood supported in saucers of water. They were placed on a table in the middle of the room, while the animals sat down to watch, for you could see inside the nests by means of glass plates coloured red. Arthur was made to sit on the table beside the larger nest, the inverted pentagram was drawn, and Merlyn solemnly pronounced the cantrip.

He felt that it was strange to be visiting the animals again at his age. Perhaps, he thought to himself with shame, I am dreaming in my second childhood, perhaps I am given over to my dotage.

But it made him remember his first childhood vividly, the happy times swimming in moats or flying with Archimedes, and
he realized that he had lost something since those days. It was something which he thought of now as the faculty of wonder. Then, his delights had been indiscriminate. His attention, or his sense of beauty, or whatever it was to be called, had attached itself fortuitously to oddments. Perhaps, while Archimedes had been lecturing him about the flight of birds, he himself would have been lost in admiration at the way in which the fur went on the mouse in the owl’s claws. Or the great Mr M. might have been making him a speech about Dictatorship, while he, all the time, would have seen only the bony teeth, poring on them in an ecstasy of experience.

This, his faculty of wonder, was gone from inside him, however much Merlyn might have furbished up his brain. It was exchanged – for the faculty of discrimination, he supposed. Now he would have listened to Archimedes or to Mr M. He would never have seen the grey fur or the yellow teeth. He did not feel proud of the change.

The old man yawned – for ants do yawn, and they stretch themselves too, just like human beings, when they have had a sleep – after which he gathered his wits for the business in hand. He did not feel pleased to be an ant, as he would have been transported to be one in the old days, but only thought to himself: well, it is a piece of work which I must do. How to begin?

The nests were made by spreading earth in a thin layer, less than half an inch deep, on small tables like footstools. Then, on top of the layer of earth, a sheet of glass was placed, with a piece of cloth over it to give darkness for the nurseries. By removing the cloth, you could see into the underground shelters as if you had a cross section. You could see the circular chamber where the pupae were being tended, as if it were a conservatory with a glass roof.

The actual nests were only at the end of the footstools, the glass reaching less than half the way along. In front were plain aprons of earth, open to the sky, and, at the further end of each footstool, there were the watch—glasses in which the syrup was left for food. There was no communication between the two
nests. The footstools were separate, side by side but not touching, with their legs in the saucers.

Of course it did not seem like this at the time. The place where he was seemed like a great field of earthen boulders, with a flattened fortress at one end of it. The fortress was entered by tunnels, and, over the entrance to each tunnel, there was a notice which said:

EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN

IS COMPULSORY

BY NEW ORDER

He read the notice with a feeling of dislike, though he did not appreciate its meaning, and he thought to himself: I will take a turn round, before going in. For some reason the notice gave him a reluctance to go, making the rough tunnel look sinister.

He waved his antennae carefully, considering the notice, assuring himself of his new senses, planting his feet squarely in the new world as if to brace himself in it. He cleaned his antennae with his forefeet, frisking and smoothing them so that he looked like a Victorian villain twirling his moustachios. Then he became conscious of something which had been waiting for consciousness all the time: that there was a noise in his head which was articulate. It was either a noise or a complicated smell, and the easiest way for us to explain it is to say that it was like a wireless broadcast. It came to him through his antennae, like music.

The music had a monotonous rhythm like a pulse, and the words which went with it were about June – moon – noon – spoon or Mammy – mammy – mammy – mammy or Ever – never or Blue – true – you. He liked them at first, especially the ones about Love – dove – above, until he found that they were not variable. As soon as they had been finished once, they were begun again. After an hour or two of them, he was to feel that they would make him scream.

There was a voice in his head also, during the pauses of the music, which seemed to be giving directions. ‘All two—day—olds
to be moved to the West Aisle,’ it would say, or ‘Number 210397/
WD
to report to the syrup squad, in replacement of 333105/
WD
who has fallen off the nest.’ It was a charming fruity voice, but seemed to be somehow impersonal: as if the charm were an accomplishment that had been perfected like a circus trick. It was dead.

The king, or perhaps we ought to say the ant, walked away from the fortress as soon as he was prepared to walk about. He began prospecting the desert of boulders uneasily, reluctant to visit the place from which the orders were coming, yet bored with the narrow view. He found small pathways among the boulders, wandering tracks both aimless and purposeful, which led toward the syrup store and also in various other directions which he could not understand. One of these latter paths ended at a clod with a natural hollow underneath it. In the hollow, again with the queer appearance of aimless purpose, he found two dead ants. They were laid there tidily but yet untidily, as if a very tidy person had taken them to the place but forgotten the reason when he got there. They were curled up, and they did not seem to be either glad or sorry to be dead. They were there, like a couple of chairs.

While he was looking at the two corpses, a live ant came down the pathway carrying a third.

It said: ‘Heil, Sanguinea!’

The King said Hail, politely.

In one respect, of which he knew nothing, he was fortunate. Merlyn had remembered to give him the proper smell for this particular nest; for, if he had smell of any other nest, they would have killed him at once. If Miss Edith Cavell had been an ant, they would have had to write on her pedestal:
SMELL IS NOT ENOUGH
.

The new ant put down its cadaver vaguely and began dragging the other two in various directions. It did not seem to know where to put them; or rather, it knew that a certain arrangement had to be made, but it could not figure out how to make it. It was like a man with a tea—cup in one hand and a sandwich in the other, who wants to light a cigarette with a match. But,
where the man would invent the idea of putting down the cup and sandwich, before picking up the cigarette and match, this ant would have put down the sandwich and picked up the match, then it would have been down with the match and up with the cigarette, then down with the cigarette and up with the sandwich, then down with the cup and up with the cigarette, until finally it had put down the sandwich and picked up the match. It was inclined to rely upon a series of accidents in order to achieve its objects. It was patient, and did not think. When it had pulled the three dead ants into several positions they would doubtless fall into line under the clod eventually, and that was its whole duty.

The king watched the arrangements with a surprise which turned into vexation and then into dislike. He felt like asking why it did not think things out in advance – that annoyed feeling which one has on seeing a job being badly done. Later he began to wish that he could put several other questions, such as ‘Do you like being a sexton?’ or ‘Are you a slave?’ or even ‘Are you happy?’

But the extraordinary thing was that he could not ask such questions. In order to ask them, he would have had to put them into the ant language through his antennae: and he now discovered, with a helpless feeling, that there were no words for half the things he wanted to say. There were no words for happiness, for freedom, or for liking, nor were there any words for their opposites. He felt like a dumb man trying to shout, ‘Fire!’ The nearest he could get to Right and Wrong, even, was Done or Not—Done.

The ant finished fiddling with its corpses and turned back down the pathway, leaving them in the queer haphazard order. It found that Arthur was in its way, so it stopped, waving its wireless aerials at him as if it were a tank. With its mute, menacing helmet of a face, and its hairiness, and the things like spurs at each leg—joint, perhaps it was more like a knight—in—armour on an armoured horse: or like a combination of the two, a hairy centaur—in—armour.

It said, ‘Heil, Sanguinea’ once again.

‘Hail.’

‘What are you doing?’

The king answered truthfully but not wisely: ‘I am not doing anything.’

It was baffled by this for several seconds, as you would be if Einstein were to tell you his latest ideas about space. Then it extended the twelve joints of its aerial and spoke past him into the blue.

It said: ‘105978/
UDC
reporting from square five. There is an insane ant on square five. Over to you.’

The word it used for insane was Not—Done. Later on, he was to discover that there were only two qualifications in the language – Done and Not—Done – which applied to all questions of value. If the syrup which Merlyn left for them was sweet, it was a Done syrup: if he had left them some corrosive sublimate, it would have been a Not—Done syrup, and that was that. Even the moons, mammies, doves, etc. in the broadcasts were completely described when they were stated to be Done ones.

The broadcast stopped for a moment, and the fruity voice said: ‘GHQ replying to 105978/
UDC
. What is its number? Over.’

The ant asked: ‘What is your number?’

‘I do not know.’

When this news had been exchanged with headquarters, a message came back to ask whether he could give an account of himself. The ant asked him whether he could, using the same words as the broadcaster had used, and in the same flat voice. It made him feel uncomfortable and angry, two emotions which he disliked.

‘Yes,’ he said sarcastically, for it was obvious that the creature could not detect sarcasm, ‘I have fallen on my head and cannot remember anything about it.’

‘105978/
UDC
reporting. Not—Done ant is suffering from concussion through falling off the nest. Over.’

‘GHQ replying to 105978/
UDC
. Not—Done ant is number 42436/
WD
, who fell off the nest this morning while working with syrup squad. If it is competent to continue its duties –’ Competent—to—continue—its—duties was easier in the ant speech,
for it was simply Done, like everything else that was not Not—Done: but enough of this language question. ‘If it is competent to continue its duties, instruct 42436/
WD
to rejoin syrup squad, relieving 210021/
WD
, who was sent to replace it. Over.’

‘Do you understand?’ asked the ant.

It seemed that he could not have made a better explanation of himself than this about falling on his head, even if he had meant to; for the ants did occasionally tumble off their footstools, and Merlyn, if he happened to notice them, would lift them back with the end of his pencil.

‘Yes.’

The sexton paid no further attention to him, but crawled off down the path for another body or for anything else that needed to be scavenged.

Arthur took himself away in the opposite direction, to join the syrup squad, memorizing his own number and the number of the unit who had to be relieved.