Free Shakespeare's Planet by Clifford D. Simak Page B

doing it.”
    â€œThat’s what you’ve been doing with it?”
    â€œSure,” said Carnivore. “Easy way to do it. Something in the pond that eats it up. Probably glad I throw it meat.”
    â€œYou ever see this thing that eats the meat?”
    â€œNo, but meat is gone. Meat floats in water. Meat thrown in pond never floats. Must be eaten.”
    â€œMaybe your meat is what makes the pond stink.”
    â€œNot so,” said Carnivore. “Always stink like that. Even before the throwing of the meat. The Shakespeare here before me and he was throwing of no meat. Yet he said it stinks from the time he come.”
    â€œStagnant water can smell pretty bad,” said Horton, “but I never smelled it this bad.”
    â€œIt may not be really water,” said Carnivore. “It is thicker than water. Runs like water, looks like water, but not as thin as water. Shakespeare called it soup.”
    Long shadows, extending from the stand of trees to the west, had crept across the camp. Carnivore cocked his head, squinting at the sun.
    â€œThe god-hour is almost here,” he said. “Leave us go inside. Beneath a stout stone it is not too bad. Not like in the open. Still feel it, but stone filters out the worst.”
    The interior of the Shakespeare house was simple. The floor was paved with slabs of stone. There was no ceiling; the single room was open to the roof. In the center of the room stood a large stone table and around the room ran a chair-high ledge of stone.
    Carnivore gestured at it. “For sitting and for sleeping. Also place to put things.”
    The ledge in the rear of the room was crowded with jars and vases, weird pieces of what seemed to be small statuary, and other pieces for which, at first glance, there seemed to be no name.
    â€œFrom the city,” said Carnivore. “Objects that Shakespeare brought back from the city. Curious, perhaps, but of value slight.”
    A misshapen candle stood on one end of the table, stuck to the stone by its own drippings. “It gives the light,” said Carnivore. “Shakespeare fashioned it of fat of the meat I killed so he could use it to pore over book—sometimes it talking to him, sometimes, with his magic stick, he talking back to it.”
    â€œThis was the book,” asked Horton, “that you told me I could see.”
    â€œMost certainly,” said Carnivore. “You may, perhaps, explain it to me. Tell me what it is. I ask the Shakespeare many times but the explanation that he gave me was no really explanation. I sit and eat my heart out to know and he would never tell. But tell me one thing, please. Why did ne need a light to talk with book?”
    â€œIt’s called reading ,” Horton said. “The book talks by the marks upon it. You must have light to see the marks. For it to talk, the marks must be plainly seen.”
    Carnivore shook his head. “Strange goings-on,” he said. “You humans are strange business. The Shakespeare strange. He always laughing at me. Not outside laughter, inside laughter. I like him, but he laugh. He makes laughter so he be better than I am. He laugh most secretly, but he lets me know he laughs.”
    He strode to a corner and picked up a bag fashioned out of an animal skin. He hoisted it in one fist and shook it and a dry rustling and scraping came out of it.
    â€œHis bones!” he shouted. “He laughs now only with his bones. Even the bones still laugh. Listen and you hear them.”
    He shook the bag viciously. “Do you not hear the laughter?”
    The god-hour struck.
    It still was a monstrous thing. Despite the thick stone walls and the ceiling, its force was not greatly diminished. Once again, Horton found himself seized and laid bare and open, to be explored and this time, it seemed, more than explored, but absorbed as well, so that it seemed, even as he struggled to remain himself, he became one with whatever it was