Free Can and Can'tankerous by Harlan Ellison (R) Page A

our galaxy, and entered the atmosphere at such a steep angle that only one pod of the great ship survived, crashing into the sea and vanishing.
    On April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck a berg off the Grand Banks and went to the bottom, carrying 1517 souls to their death.
    The race that had come to an unwanted new home in the deeps watched the poor ship die, and felt pity. In their compassion they went to the creature and mated with it; and they lived in harmony for almost seventy-five years, and the progeny of that union swam through the oceans of the Earth undiscovered and unimpeded.
    Then the ghouls violated the tomb. They came to the shell of the mother and they stole. They ravaged the corpse.
    And the children rose, and went in search of the entrepreneurs who had gone through the pockets of the shroud for pennies. And in New York harbor, in the stretch of water known as the Narrows, the first born of that metallic union rose with its gleaming sinewy length, and began exacting vengeance of the parasites that had so dishonored the memory of its mother.
    Now the seacoast of the world is forbidden territory.
    You can see their eyes glowing offshore every night.
     
    M is for MUT
     
    Osiris met her at the fresh fruit counter of the A&P in the Blue Nile Mall. She was squeezing pomegranates. He dallied, pretending to blight the figs, and finally was able to catch her eye. “Horus,” she said, when he returned the eye. “Lovely,” he replied, meaning the Eye of Horus and meaning her , as well, but basically too shy to say it without covering his verbal tracks. “And all-seeing, as well,” she added, dimpling prettily. He smiled; she smiled; and he asked her name. “Isis Luanne Jane Marie,” she said, “but my friends all call me Isis.” He went pink and stammered, and finally managed to say, “May I call you Isis?” and she said yes, that would be lovely, and did he come here often? And he said, oh only to practice a little resurrection in the meat department, and she gifted him with a giggle and a pirouette, and he asked her where she was from, and she said, “Lower Egypt, over that way,” and she motioned toward the parking lot. But Osiris’s heart turned to ash, as he noticed for the first time the cobra totem of Buto on Isis’s perky baseball cap, worn slantwise in the homeboy style so popular at the moment. He was glad he hadn’t worn his falcon’s crest Borsalino, the dead giveaway that he was from Upper Egypt. It would have shamed her immediately—coming from the wrong side of the tracks as she did—actually the lower side of the tracks—and he didn’t know what he was going to do. Because as surely as Aunt Taueret had made whoopee with a hippopotamus, he knew he had fallen in love with this Isis from Lower Egypt, and he knew that his mother was never going to approve of the relationship. He could hear her now: You can’t be serious , Osiris dear ; why , she simply isn’t Our Sort.
    But they began dating on the sly, catching a double-bill during the Haya Harareet Film Festival at the Luxor multiplex, flogging fellahs and feeding the pieces to Nubian lions, sneaking out for a smoke behind the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut; and in general carrying on the way young people in love have carried on since Ra was only a twinkle in the cosmic egg.
    And finally, it became clear to Osiris that he had to come clean; that he could not stumble through eternity without Isis Luanne Jane Marie at his side. So he sat her down one evening in front of the baboon paintings at Tuna Gebel, where they had gone to eat because they’d heard that Gebel made the best tuna in pita anywhere in the Twin Kingdoms, and he told her he was from this wealthy family in Upper Egypt, and his mother was Mut, and if they were ever to be as one they would have to go and see his mother to get her blessing.
    At first Isis was beside herself. She wept and tried to run off, but Osiris held her and soothed her and told her he loved her more than