Attention Saint Patrick | Page 3

"she'll tell her grandfather, and
he'll collar somebody and use those gimlet eyes on him and the poor
omadhoum will blurt out that on Eire here it's known that St. Patrick
brought the snakes and is the more reverenced for it. And that'll mean
there'll be no more ships or food or tools from Earth, and it'll be lucky
if we're evacuated before the planet's left abandoned."
The solicitor general's expression became one of pure hopelessness.
"Then the jig's up," he said gloomily. "I'm thinkin', Mr. President, we'd
better have a cabinet meeting on it."
"What's the use," demanded the president. "I won't leave! I'll stay here,
alone though I may be. There's nothing left in life for me anywhere, but

at least, as the only human left on Eire I'll be able to spend the rest of
my years knockin' dinies on the head for what they've done!" Then,
suddenly, he bellowed. "Who let loose the snakes! I'll have his heart's
blood----"
* * * * *
The Chancellor of the Exchequer peered around the edge of the door
into the cabinet meeting room. He saw the rest of the cabinet of Eire
assembled. Relieved, he entered. Something stirred in his pocket and he
pulled out a reproachful snake. He said:
"Don't be indignant, now! You were walkin' on the public street. If
Sean O'Donohue had seen you----" He added to the other members of
the cabinet: "The other two members of the Dail Committee seem to be
good, honest, drinkin' men. One of them now--the shipbuilder I think it
was--wanted a change of scenery from lookin' at the bottom of a glass.
I took him for a walk. I showed him a bunch of dinies playin' leapfrog
tryin' to get one of their number up to a rain spout so he could bite off
pieces and drop 'em down to the rest. They were all colors and it was
quite somethin' to look at. The committeeman--good man that he
is!--staggered a bit and looked again and said grave that whatever of
evil might be said of Eire, nobody could deny that its whisky had
imagination!"
He looked about the cabinet room. There was a hole in the baseboard
underneath the sculptured coat of arms of the colony world. He put the
snake down on the floor beside the hole. With an air of offended
dignity, the snake slithered into the dark opening.
"Now--what's the meeting for?" he demanded. "I'll tell you immediate
that if money's required it's impractical."
President O'Hanrahan said morbidly:
"'Twas called, it seems, to put the curse o' Cromwell on whoever let the
black snakes loose. But they'd been cooped up, and they knew they
were not keepin' the dinies down, and they got worried over the work

they were neglectin'. So they took turns diggin', like prisoners in a
penitentiary, and presently they broke out and like the faithful creatures
they are they set anxious to work on their backlog of diny-catchin'.
Which they're doin'. They've ruined us entirely, but they meant well."
The minister of Information asked apprehensively: "What will
O'Donohue do when he finds out they're here?"
"He's not found out--yet," said the president without elation. "Moira
didn't tell him. She's an angel! But he's bound to learn. And then if he
doesn't detonate with the rage in him, he'll see to it that all of us are
murdered--slowly, for treason to the Erse and blasphemy directed at St.
Patrick." Then the president said with a sort of yearning pride: "D'ye
know what Moira offered to do? She said she'd taken biology at college,
and she'd try to solve the problem of the dinies. The darlin'!"
"Bein' gathered together," observed the chief justice, "we might as well
try again to think of somethin' plausible."
"We need a good shenanigan," agreed the president unhappily. "But
what could it be? Has anybody the trace of an idea?"
The cabinet went into session. The trouble was, of course, that the Erse
colony on Eire was a bust. The first colonists built houses, broke
ground, planted crops--and encountered dinies. Large ones, fifty and
sixty feet long, with growing families. They had thick bodies with
unlikely bony excrescences, they had long necks which ended in very
improbable small heads, and they had long tapering tails which would
knock over a man or a fence post or the corner of a house, impartially,
if they happened to swing that way. They were not bright.
That they ate the growing crops might be expected, though cursed. But
they ate wire fences. The colonists at first waited for them to die of
indigestion. But they digested the fences. Then between bales of more
normal foodstuffs they browsed on the corrugated-iron roofs of houses.
Again the colonists vengefully expected dyspepsia. They digested the