The Snake

Twenty

Eastman watched a squad of blue-helmeted TPU cops form a wedge and start to bull their way through the crowd. If they were going to try to collar the Puries, they were in for serious trouble. Maybe the crowd would allow them to take some names, but that was the limit. Never mind that the Puries had burned up Central Park-they had killed the killer, hadn't they? They were the heroes of the hour, weren't they? He shrugged. Maybe the cops would have sense enough to act prudently.

The crowd murmured ominously and offered resistance to the passage of the TPU wedge. Walk away from it, Eastman told himself, you're just an Emergency Service cop on special assignment whose job is now finished, even if somebody else did it for you. Fade out of the picture, you're too old to brawl with an aroused citizenry.

He saw someone burst out of the crowd like a cork popped from a bottle, elbows flailing, face dark and scowling. It was Converse, still carrying his snake catching stick. For a moment they came face to face.

Eastman started to speak, but Converse muttered, "So long" and moved on.

Sore loser, Eastman thought. He listened to the voice of the crowd. It was swelling to a roar, peppered with obscenities. He saw fists being formed.

He sighed, and began to push his way through the crowd, toward the stalled TPU wedge. "Police. Make way. Police officer."

A hand reached out from somewhere and ripped his Hawaiian shirt down the front.

Marvin Thurman, a television reporter assigned to shooting "man in the street" reactions, spotted the Police Commissioner's limousine two blocks south of where the snake had been killed. The P.C. and the mayor were in the car, which was barely able to move because of the hordes of people who had poured out into the street.

Pushing his microphone through the window of the limousine, Thurman said, "Mr. Mayor, have you been informed that the snake has been killed?"

The mayor's pale, unshaven face lit up. "Wonderful. I didn't doubt for an instant that New York's finest would once again display their ability to cope with a difficult and unique problem." He turned to the P.C. "Congratulations, Comraissioner, to the dedicated and tireless men of the NYPD."

Thurman, who was far too clever for his own good, refrained from telling the mayor who bad killed the snake. Instead, he said, "What about the Puries? What will be done with them?"

"They will be prosecuted for arson, and all the other crimes they have committed, to the fullest extent of the law." The mayor pounded on the side of the limousine for emphasis, and the commissioner, who was devoted to his car, winced. "There is no room for lawlessness and vigilantism in this great city, and it will be punished accordingly."

"I see," Thurman said. "Does that include the Puries who killed the snake?"

The falling open of the mayor's mouth was recorded for posterity in fall color. So were the rapid changes his complexion underwent from ashen to bright pink to nearly black. But the epithet he flung at Thurman-"cocksucker"-went unrecorded because the Police Commissioner, with lightning-fast anticipation, had covered the microphone with his hand.

A police detachment, led by a Deputy Inspector, in deference to the subject's importance, arrived at Purity House, and was admitted without incident. The Reverend Sanctus Milanese, who was fully dressed and obviously expecting the visit, offered no objections to accompanying the police to headquarters. He was fully cooperative and jovial in manner.

As he was being helped into his red-lined cape he said smilingly to the Deputy Inspector, "I can come to no harm since I am under the divine protection of a holy trinity-God, my attorney…" He nodded to the distinguished white-haired man by his side.". and the grateful people of New York who, when all others had failed, I delivered from the cruel and merciless limb of Satan."

But once outside the mansion, perhaps at the sight of the television cameras, the Reverend's demeanour changed. Spreading his cape, he dropped to his knees, made a steeple of his hands beneath his chin, and turned his face upward to the skies.

"Dear God," he said in a hushed tone, "I give Thee thanks. Again hast Thou prevailed over Evil, wielding, as the sword in Thy strong right arm, Thy faithful and humble followers, the members of the Church of the Purification. For Thy great trust, o Lord, we do bless Thee and rejoice.

Amen."

It might have been high noon, Converse thought, as he walked aimlessly southward on Central Park West. At 2 o'clock in the morning, streets were alive with people, some streaming toward the center of the action, others returning from it, all of them feeling, perhaps justifiably, that they were actors with a role to play in the drama. He was astonished to see how many children were out, some as young as six or seven, apparently unattended by parents.

The streets were still clogged by official vehicular traffic. Police cars, fire engines, several ambulances. The fires in the park all seemed to be under control but smoke still climbed upward from a half-dozen different areas. The heat of the night seemed to have intensified, the humidity had thickened, and, where it reflected neon, the sky was the color of dirty blood.

"Hey, Mark, wait up."

Her voice reached him from the rear, and it sounded winded, so that he knew she must have been chasing him. She looked terribly pale, and he guessed that she had witnessed the slaughter of the black mamba.

She said, "I got a stitch in the side before, that's why I dropped out.

First time that's ever happened to me."

"Yes, well…" He really didn't feel like talking to anybody, even Holly. "It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"For me it is. I ran the marathon in the park the last two years and both times I damn near finished. I got blisters."

They were walking slowly, ambling, and people were staring at the Pilstrom tongs. A kid, about two inches taller than a fire hydrant, tried to grab the tongs. Converse lifted it beyond his reach and scowled at him. The kid collapsed to the pavement in laughter.

Holly said, "I just don't want you to get the idea that it would have been any trouble keeping up with you."

"Yeah."

"What does yeah mean?"

He noticed that she was carrying a pad and a ballpoint pen. "You were in the right place for a scoop, right?"

"You're going to have to stop using that word. Anyway, there were more reporters there than civilians-the dailies, the wire services, the television, the radio, and a reporter and a photographer from my own paper." She put the pad and pen into her bag. "I just made a couple of notes. You know, the old fireplug reaction."

He looked straight ahead as they walked, but he was aware that her face was turned up to him, in some sort of silent pleading or, at least, serious questioning. From time to time her shoulder brushed against him.

Then she reached for his hand. He withdrew it from her.

"Okay," she said. "You want me to go away?"

He shrugged.

"I guess I can take that any way I choose," she said. "I choose to take it as meaning that you don't want me to go but are too tight-assed to say so. Well, all right, but I can be tight-assed, too, and if I don't get any response soon-"

He reached down and took her hand.

"Better," she said. "But talk to me. Or at least look at me."

He said, choking with anger, "I could have bagged it. There wasn't any need to kill it."

She shook her head. -There was a need. The situation cried out for an execution, for catharsis."

"They savaged it to bits." He swore under his breath. "Screw it. Screw everything. Things will be better in Australia."

"You're thinking of going to Australia?"

"What's wrong with Australia?"

"It's too far."

"By plane?" He glanced at her face. "Oh, you mean too far from here?"

"I mean too far from me. Didn't you, for Chrisesake, know that's what I meant?"

"I'll only be gone a couple of months. Wouldn't you wait that long?"

"I could try, but we're living in a very impatient century. Nobody ever waits for anybody anymore."

He said, "You're not being reasonable."

"Right. Not being reasonable-that's what it's all about, Buster."

She looked angry, and there were tears in her eyes. Goddammit, Converse thought, I can't make up my mind this fast. I need time-say until we reach the next streetlamp.

The flames had swept over the burrow and scorched the earth black. They had set the fallen tree afire, and seared the two entrances, but they had not reached inside, and if the snake had remained in the burrow she might have survived unharmed.

She had mated in the spring at the breeding grounds near Elisabethville, and laid hereos in the burrow three days ago. If they survived hunting animals and the winter cold, they would hatch out in the spring.

Each egg that came to term would produce a twelve-inch-long black mamba, resembling the full-grown snake in every particular except color. Each would be light green on top, and pure white on the underside. Each would be highly aggressive, in the way of young snakes, and its venom, from the very instant of birth, would kill a large rat.

The snakes would grow very rapidly toward their mature size of ten or eleven feet. But, long before then, their venom would be potent enough to kill a man or a horse.

The eggs were approximately the size of a hen's eggs, oval in shape, and white in color. There were thirteen of them.