Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 9, September 2006

The Mankiller of Poojeegai by Walter Satterthwait

Everybody wants to know about the Mankiller. “Tell us about the Mankiller, tell us about the Mankiller!” Sometimes I wonder — what is it with you people? Haven’t you got anything better to do? Haven’t you got lives?

Okay, fine. The Mankiller. Don’t forget to put your donations in the hat.

It happened back in the Old Days. Looking back on those times, it seems that the sun was always shining in a bright blue, cloudless sky, that the grass was always swaying in a warm, sweet gentle breeze. That life was always just about perfect.

Which is ridiculous, of course. Things seem that way now because Memory is a better storyteller than even an old pro like me. It deliberately forgets a few items, items like cave bears and saber-toothed tigers and pestilence, and it polishes up everything that’s left until it’s all gleaming and shiny. And if that’s not storytelling, I don’t know what is.

Right. The Mankiller.

I was in the cave, pounding acorns, which was my share of the division of labor, or part of it. I also gathered the acorns, and when the flour was ready, I rolled the dough and I baked the bread. Ursula, my wife, ate the bread. That was her share.

I was just finishing up when Ursula came sauntering into the cave.

“Marta wants to see you,” she said.

Inside me, I could feel my heart dislodge itself from the walls of my chest, getting ready to sink. “See me about what?” I asked.

“How should I know? Make sure you clean off before you go.”

She was a beautiful woman, Ursula, with the most impressive eyebrow ridge I’ve ever seen, one that ran from ear to ear over her deeply set dark brown eyes, like a ledge. Occasionally, I still dream about that lovely brow of hers. But as a person, she was sometimes a bit difficult.

I stood up and I brushed flour from my arms. “Marta didn’t say?”

“No. But one of those smelly Outlanders was with her. And so was your friend Berthold.”

My heart sank.

“You’ve got flour on your chin,” said Ursula.

Within fifty feet of Marta’s cave, I could smell the stench of Outlander.

We didn’t socialize much with the Outlanders back then. This was partly because we had some fairly strong cultural taboos against mingling with strangers — and the Outlanders were nothing if not strange — but mostly because, to put it delicately, they stank. It was a vile smell, something like cumin, but darker and stronger and more penetrating, the smell of a cumin that had grown moldy and rotten. Over the years, they’ve grown a little less rank. Or maybe, like all my other organs, my nose is coming up short these days.

Inside the cave, Marta was sitting on her ceremonial throne, wearing the ceremonial lion skin over her shoulders. Gunnar, her consort, was sitting on one of the rocks in front of her, and Berthold the Meadmaster was sitting on another with that damned leather sack of his resting between his legs. A third rock was taken up by the Outlander, who was dressed in standard Outlandish garb: a pair of leather pants and a red plaid shirt. Around his wrist he wore a bracelet of black pearls. The Outlanders were big on jewelry.

Here in the Royal Chamber, the stench was a lot stronger. Gunnar, I noticed, was sniffling. He was a sensitive lad.

I nodded to Marta. “Greetings, Most Slender of Queens.”

“Greetings, Doder, Son of Watt. I believe that you know Bob, the leader of the Outlanders.”

I nodded to him. “Greetings, Bob.”

“Hey, man,” he said. “What’s happening?”

Although his use of The Language was a bit peculiar, Bob spoke it surprisingly well. I’ve heard people say that the Outlanders are stupid. From my own personal experience, this simply isn’t true. They do look odd, I admit, with those slippery bodies and those pathetic tufts of hair sprouting from their tiny heads. And they do possess a few bizarre habits, like worshiping thunder gods and wearing clothes. And they do, of course, stink. But I’ve never had any doubts about their intelligence. They’re the ones, after all, who invented the bow and arrow — definitely a big improvement, huntingwise, over trying to sweet talk a mammoth into leaping off a cliff. All in all, they’re very clever fellows.

“And naturally,” said Marta, “you know Gunnar.”

“Greetings, Doder,” said Gunnar, who coughed slightly. His eyes were watering. But so, by then, were mine. Reek was wafting from Bob like gas from a swamp.

“Greetings, Gunnar,” I said.

“And Berthold is an old friend,” she said.

That was an exaggeration, but I nodded. “Berthold,” I said.

From his rock, Berthold smiled one of his cryptic smiles.

“Berthold,” said Marta, “has need of your assistance.”

“In what way, Your Awesomeness?”

“There has been a tragedy among the Outlanders.” She turned to Bob. “Please explain to Doder.”

“The Mankiller of Poojeegai,” he explained.

“What’s a Poojeegai?” I asked him.

“That’s the name of the village, man. Our village.”

I hadn’t known their name for the village. We always referred to it as The Sink of Stinks. “And what’s this mankiller?” I asked him.

“That’s what we call it, man. It’s a lion. It kills people. It’s killed three of us already. You remember Tammy?”

“Yes.” Tammy was one of their females.

“She was the first. That was last week. Over the weekend, it killed Wally the Water Bearer. And then yesterday, man, it got Art the Archer. A friend of his, Lou, went in to get him this morning, and poor Art was scattered all over the living room.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “What’s a living room?”

“That’s the part of the house where we mostly hang out. It’s just off the kitchen usually, where we do all the cooking. You know about cooking, right?”

“Of course I know about cooking.”

“Anyway, that’s where Art was scattered all over.”

“Terrible. But how does Berthold fit into all this?”

“Berthold’s going to help us stalk the thing.”

I turned to the Meadmaster. “That’s very generous of you, Berthold.” I turned to Marta. “Your Suppleness, I’m afraid that this time I won’t be able to assist Berthold.”

“And why is that?”

“I’m allergic to cats. Big cats, little cats, any kind of cat. I get hives.”

“You need have no fear,” she said, a remark that always strikes me, no matter who makes it, as monumentally shortsighted. “The Great Mother will protect you.” Marta was the Great Mother’s local representative.

“Sure, I understand that, your Slimness. But the thing is—”

“You were of great help to Berthold in the matter of The Disappearing Necklace of Pretty Blue Stones. And also in the matter of The Mysterious Destruction of Poor Ulrich.” She could do that, talk in capital letters. It’s something that comes easily to queens, I’ve noticed.

“Yes,” I said, “but—”

“The Great Mother has spoken,” she said.

“Right,” I said. “Absolutely.” You didn’t argue with the Great Mother.

Berthold stood up, lifted his leather sack, and held it out to me. “Let’s be off then, shall we, Doder?”

I took the sack. It was filled with crocks, and the crocks were filled with mead. And so, usually, was Berthold.

Outside, I took a deep breath of fresh air. It wasn’t as fresh as it might have been, because Bob and his fumes were traveling alongside me, but it was still better than the air inside Marta’s cave. Berthold walked on the other side of Bob, sipping now and then from one of his crocks.

“Tell me something, Bob,” he said. “Before the lion killed Tammy, had it bothered any of you?”

“No,” said Bob. “Tammy was the first.”

“And how large a lion is it?”

“Huge, man. At least eight feet long. You should see the tracks.”

“Have you actually seen the lion itself?”

“Nope. No one has, except Leo.”

“If my memory serves me, Bob, Leo is blind.”

“Well, yeah, sure,” said Bob, “in the sense that he can’t see anything. But he’s a soothsayer, right? And he’s an expert on lions. He saw it in a vision.”

“Ah. But no one has observed the lion visually?”

“Nope. For one thing, it only shows up at night, when we’re all asleep. And for another thing, it’s magical.”

“Magical, in what way?”

“It can disappear whenever it wants to. We’ve tried to trick it, man. But the tracks lead down to the river and then disappear. Leo says it’s a ghost lion.”

“I see.” He drained the last of the mead. “Doder?” Reaching back around Bob, he handed me the empty crock. “Another, please.”

“You should talk to Leo,” Bob told him.

“Indeed,” said Berthold.

I handed Berthold another crock. That was my share of this particular division of labor.

He pulled the cork, handed that to me, and took a drink from the crock. “Have you left Art’s body as you found it?” he asked Bob.

“Sure. Everyone wanted to bury it, but I figured you’d want to see it first.” Like us, the Outlanders believe that death was contagious and like us, they buried a body as soon as it became one — said a quick word or two, “Nice fellow, too bad,” and then planted it as deep as possible.

“Excellent,” said Berthold, and took another drink of mead.

We crossed the mastodon tracks and came to the river, and we walked alongside that for a while. It was a beautiful day, one of those bright polished days that Memory, in recollection, is always multiplying. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the grasses in the meadows were shimmering. The breeze was warm and gentle, and it was probably sweet too; but with Bob walking beside me, I had no way of knowing.

It took us nearly four hours to reach the Outlander village, but I could smell it after three and a half. Even with Bob walking beside me.

As we approached it, we came upon an old male Outlander sitting on the riverbank, a fishing pole in his hand. Fishing poles were another Outlander improvement over the traditional way of doing things. The traditional way meant standing in the stream with your hands dangling in the water and waiting for a fish to swim between them and surrender. Not a lot of them did, usually.

He had a big head of hair for an Outlander, a bushy white mane. It swung along the shoulders of his red plaid shirt as he turned to face us. I saw that his eyes were as white as his hair.

Bob said something in Outlander gibberish, and the old male responded in kind.

“This is Leo,” Bob told me. “He’s our lion guy.”

Berthold could speak Outlandish, and he did so now. The old male’s empty eyes widened, and he babbled something in return, and the two of them were chattering merrily away. Berthold claimed that Outlandish was a beautiful language, precise and elegant, but to me it always sounded like a box of pebbles tumbling down a hillside.

“They’re talking about the lion,” Bob told me.

The old male was doing more than talking now. He was making claws with his hands and sweeping them through the air. He was growling. He was hunching his shoulders and glowering right and left, his teeth bared, and then he was making claws with his hands again. Like Bob, he wore a bracelet, but his was made of lion’s claws, six or seven of them that rattled as he waved his arms.

It was a fine performance, and it lasted for about ten minutes. Berthold stood there, watching, sipping from time to time at his crock. Every so often Bob would translate a scrap of the old male’s monologue for me. “It lives in caves at the center of the earth... It’s angry at us because we don’t offer it enough sacrifices... It’ll kill anybody who tries to find it...”

Terrific, I thought.

Finally, the old Outlander’s energy, or maybe just his story, ran out. Berthold said something else. The old male grinned, leaned forward, reached into the water, and pulled out a length of rope. Attached to the end of it was a flopping yellow fish, about two feet long. Berthold said something. The old male nodded proudly, then added a few more bits of cheerful gibberish.

“He wants to know,” Bob explained to me, “if we’ll all join him for dinner.”

“Not if he’s serving that fish,” said Berthold. “It’s a kraydon, and deadly poisonous.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Bob. “He thinks it’s a trout. One of the twins will switch it on him before they cook it.”

“The twins?” said Berthold.

“His daughters. Geena and Leena. They’re the village virgins.”

“Village virgins?” That was me, making my first contribution to the conversation.

“Yeah. They’re sacred. They’re going to get sacrificed next year.”

“Sacrificed?” I said. “Virgins?”

“Right,” said Bob. “To the thunder god. For the crops.”

“But that’s — ouch!” Berthold had kicked me in the shin.

“That’s what?” said Bob.

“Doder meant to say, That’s wonderful,” said Berthold. “And personally, I think that dinner would be a splendid idea. Now, Bob, suppose you show us to Art’s house.”

The last time I visited the village, lively Outlanders were milling enthusiastically about, stinking the place up, naturally, but looking very colorful in their red plaid shirts, laughing and sporting with each other in that childish way they have, which Berthold always found charming and which I always found, well, childish. Today, however, the village seemed deserted. The death of three of your neighbors within a week can put a damper on your enthusiasm, even if you’re an Outlander.

Art the Archer’s house was on the edge of the community. Like the others, it was a rambling wooden structure. At one side was a small, fenced-in enclosure that held a threadbare goat and a very tired-looking ram. Both of them eyed us suspiciously as we walked up to the front door. By this time, I was breathing entirely through my mouth.

One of the Outlanders was standing guard at the door, a short stabbing spear resting on his red plaid shoulder. He gibbered at Bob. Bob gibbered back and then turned to me. “He’s asking when they can bury him.”

Berthold said something to the guard, and the guard looked from Berthold to Bob, shrugged, and stepped aside for us to enter.

Inside, the place was a mess. Like all Outlandish furniture, the stuff in Art’s house was made from wood, and his chairs and tables and cabinets had been crushed and smashed, their fragments scattered around. And, as Bob had said, fragments of Art had been scattered around too. Most of him was lying in the corner, naked, curled into a stiff, ragged ball, torn and clawed, but bits and pieces of him dotted the walls, the floor, and even, in a few places, the ceiling. Flies were buzzing everywhere, tipsy, astonished at their good luck.

Berthold crossed the floor and squatted down beside the body. “Doder?” he said, holding up his empty crock.

I pulled out another crock, pulled out its cork, stepped across the room, and exchanged it for the empty one. I slipped the empty into the sack.

Berthold took a sip of mead. “What impresses you most about the body?” Berthold asked me.

“Well,” I said. “For one thing, it’s very dead.”

He frowned sourly. “An extremely astute observation.”

He glanced across the room. “What’s that?” he asked, and stood and strode across the room to a shattered cabinet. Squatting down again, he lifted away some chunks of wood and revealed three golden figurines. The Outlanders were fond of gold figurines, and even I knew that each one of them possessed a few. These were about two inches tall. One was a fish, one was a crab, and one was a scorpion.

Berthold turned to Bob. “Are these the only figurines that Art owned?”

“He kept pretty much to himself,” said Bob. “I liked Art, but I didn’t know much about him. You could talk to Bill, Tammy’s husband. He and Bob used to hang out together. But why’re you asking, man? A lion wouldn’t bother with a figurine.”

“Not unless, as Leo says, it was some sort of ghost lion.” He stood. “Where are the tracks you mentioned?”

“This way,” said Bob, who led us out of the room and through the kitchen to a back door. “This was open,” he said, “when Lou found the body.” He opened the door and pointed to the ground. The earth was hard, worn down by many years of passage, but you could make out the pads of a lion’s feet and the deep indentations of its claws.

“A large one, eh, Doder?” said Berthold.

Large was an understatement. The lion that made those tracks had been enormous. “We’re not really going to track this thing?” I asked him.

“Not as yet. Bob, where exactly is Bill’s house?”

“I can show you,” said Bob.

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. I know you must have things to do. If you’ll tell me where it is, I’m sure that Doder and I can find it.”

“Okay, sure. Is it all right to bury him now?”

“Certainly. Will we see you at Leo’s house for dinner?”

“Sure.” And then Bob gave us directions, and Berthold and I set out for Bill’s house.

As soon as we were out of earshot, Berthold said to me, “Doder, in the future, unless I ask for your opinion, please keep it to yourself.”

“What? You mean that thing about virgins?”

“Exactly. It’s not a good idea to ridicule someone else’s religion.”

“Sacrificing a virgin? That’s a religion?”

“How is their sacrifice any different from ours? At the next Vernal Equinox, we’ll be sacrificing Gunnar.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, “but that’s the way things are supposed to happen. I mean, Gunnar’s a man. We’re talking about virgins here, two of them. All right, they’re Outlanders. But still, it’s an incredible waste.”

“I understand your feelings. But I’d prefer that, when anyone else is present, you keep them, and your opinions, to yourself.”

“Fine,” I said. “Fine.”

“I’ll have another crock, please.” He handed me the empty one.

No one else was present, so I ventured an opinion. “You’re going through those crocks pretty quickly.”

“This is at least a three-crock problem,” he said.

I handed him another crock.

Bill’s house was near the center of the village, just off the central square. It was a bit larger than Art’s and in better shape. In the enclosure at its side stood a gigantic gray bull. It glowered at us from beneath a colossal pair of horns as we approached. Just outside the house’s front door was a large set of weighing scales.

“What are those for?” I asked Berthold.

“Bill is the tax collector,” he said. “In exchange for a percentage of crops, the Outlanders receive an equal weight of manure from that animal,” he nodded toward the bull, “to fertilize the fields for next year.”

“They hand over part of what they make, and they get bull manure in return?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s what they call ‘agriculture’?”

“No,” he said. “They call that ‘politics’.”

“How come you know so much about them?” I asked him. “The Outlanders.”

“They intrigue me. Their enthusiasm, their love of technology. They are, I believe, the wave of the future.”

“And what does that make us?”

He smiled another cryptic smile. “The wave of the past.”

“You’re kidding.”

“As you ought to know by now, Doder,” he said, “I never kid.”

On that breezy note, we climbed up the steps and Berthold knocked at the door. After a moment, it was opened by a short Outlander male who wore the usual plaid shirt, but this one was gray rather than red. Berthold said something in Outlandish, and the male stood back and gestured for us to come in.

The interior of the “living room” was like the interior of the similar room in Art’s house, but without the damage. Berthold and the Outlander chattered for a while, and then the Outlander led us back through a corridor to what was apparently a sleeping chamber.

Here, damage had been done. On the sleeping box lay a stained and torn cloth mattress, tufts of straw poking through ragged rents in the material. Deep scratches ran along the wooden wall. More dark stains covered the wooden floor.

Jabbering away, the Outlander walked to the window and opened it. Berthold asked him something, and the Outlander frowned, then went to a cabinet against the far wall and opened that. He reached in and pulled out a pair of small gold figurines, a goat and a bull. Berthold asked him some questions, the man answered them.

Berthold said something else, and the Outlander lowered his head and kept it there for a moment. When he raised it, a few tears were trickling down his cheek.

Berthold jabbered a few more words and the Outlander nodded.

Berthold turned to me. “Come along, Doder.”

Outside, he handed me his empty crock. I took it, handed him a new one, and asked him, “That was Bill, Tammy’s husband?”

“Yes.”

“How come the lion didn’t kill him too?”

“He was away, visiting relatives in another village.”

“Lucky for him.”

Berthold turned to me. “He lost his wife, Doder.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.” Berthold wasn’t married, of course.

He took a thoughtful sip of mead.

“Did you find out anything else?” I asked him.

“One or two things. One of which is suggestive, and may even be crucial.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“All in good time.” He was like that, Berthold, very secretive. By this point, as I later learned, he knew pretty much exactly what had gone on in the village. You’d think that he’d be willing to share his knowledge with the person who was carting around that damned sack of his.

But no. “First,” he said, “we must speak with the relatives of Wally the Water Bearer.”

And so we spoke to the relatives of Wally the Water Bearer, his aunt and uncle, inside their house, and a lot more jabbering went on. They hauled out some more gold figurines and jabbered some more, and then Berthold and I left.

“What is it with the figurines?” I asked him when we got back outside. “Why do the Outlanders keep them?”

“They represent constellations of stars. The Outlanders believe that the stars, and particular groupings of them, can affect our lives.”

“How? They’re just little pinholes in the Great Mother’s Evening Gown.”

“The Outlanders have a somewhat different belief system.”

“I’ll say. How come you keep asking about the figurines?”

“Each of the dead Outlanders had a collection of them. From each collection a figurine was missing.”

“From Art’s too?”

“Yes, according to Bill.”

“Well, obviously,” I said, “the lion didn’t take them.”

He smiled. “Obviously,” he said, “the lion did.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“All—”

“Yeah, right, all in good time.”

“Patience, Doder.”

Easy for him to say. He wasn’t carrying twenty crocks of mead.

“Come,” he said. “We must interview a few more Outlanders.”

Which we did, three or four of them in different parts of the village. More jabbering. Finally, when we got outside the last of the houses, Berthold turned to me and said, “I believe it’s time for dinner.”

“You’re really going to eat, in the middle of all this stink?”

“Food isn’t the only thing that’s served at dinner.”

“Yeah? What else is?”

“Sometimes,” he said with a cryptic smile, “the Truth.”

The Truth, just then, was that I wanted to take a swing at him with the sack.

The house of Leo, the lion expert, was an old one, far from the riverbank where we first met him. When we knocked on the door, it was Bob who opened it.

“Hey, man,” he said to Berthold. “Come on in. How’s it going?”

Leo’s house, inside, was pretty much the same as all the others, except that in here, standing beside a large dining table, there was a pair of twins. They were identical young females with identically long black hair, and they wore bracelets of lion claws, spotless leather pants, and freshly washed red plaid shirts. They were slender and sleek, and I suppose that from an Outlandish point of view they were fairly attractive. Neither of them had an eyebrow ridge like Ursula’s, naturally, and I’ve never really been fond of hairless skin. But they were handsome enough, as specimens of their species, and it seemed a pity to me that they were going to be sacrificed next year. I was pretty sure that even among the Outlanders, there weren’t that many virgins around.

“It goes well, I think, Bob,” said Berthold. “And these are, of course, the twins.”

“Oh yeah. This is Geena, this is Leena.”

Right away, I have to admit, they surprised me. As Bob gibbered away in Outlandish, they smiled and nodded. The one on the left, Geena, said slowly but clearly, hesitating only a little, “Hey... man.” The one on the right, Leena, said, “What... is... happening?”

Berthold smiled. “Congratulations. Your accents are excellent.”

“Thanks... man,” said Geena.

“We speak four... distinct... languages,” said Leena.

“And all of them extremely well, I’m sure,” said Berthold.

“Dinner is nearly... ready,” said Geena.

“We’ve got to go... help Dad in the kitchen,” said Leena.

“We’ll be right back,” said Geena.

As they left, Bob turned to Berthold and said, “So. When do we start stalking the lion, man?”

“I have been stalking it,” said Berthold, “since I arrived here.”

“Huh?”

“All in good time, Bob.”

Just then, Leo entered the room and gave a hearty gibberish shout of greeting. Grinning hugely, moving here in his own home as though he weren’t blind at all, he came around the table and offered his hand to Berthold, who shook it enthusiastically with his own, and then to me, who shook it. When no one was looking, I wiped mine clean on the curtain.

We all sat down at the table, and the young women served the food. There was salad and fish (trout now, not the poisonous kraydon). Throughout the meal, the conversation was mostly small talk. The young women demonstrated their facility with The Language. Berthold and Leo jabbered away. Bob asked me why I wasn’t eating, and I told him that I’d eaten a large lunch.

It was during dessert — cookies and milk, which I also couldn’t eat — that Berthold sat back against his chair and said to Leena, “Tell me, Leena. Which of you killed your neighbors, you or your sister?”

Bob, whose mouth was filled with milk, promptly spat it out across the table. No one was sitting opposite him, fortunately.

“Come again?” said Leena, looking confused.

“It had to be one of you,” said Berthold. “One of you was seen shortly after each of the murders. None of the witnesses thought anything of it — after all, the victims were killed by a lion.”

“Hey, man,” said Bob. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“As Doder will tell you, I never kid. Doder—?”

“He never kids,” I said.

Berthold frowned impatiently. “Doder, when you told Marta you were allergic to cats, you were speaking the truth, were you not?”

“Absolutely.” You didn’t lie to the Great Mother’s representative.

“How allergic are you?”

“Very. I get hives if I go into a room where a cat used to be.”

“And yet this afternoon, when you were in a house that had apparently been visited by a lion, you had no reaction at all.”

“Well, no,” I admitted. I glanced over at Leena and Geena, who were exchanging puzzled looks.

“Hey, man,” said Bob. “Those marks on Art’s body and the others. They were made with claws.”

“Yes,” said Berthold. “By those claws—” he pointed to Leena’s bracelet. “Or by those—” he pointed to Geena’s. “As were the lion tracks outside Art’s house in the earth.”

Old Leo frowned, maybe sensing that the meal wasn’t working out. He cocked his head and gibbered something.

“But those were lion tracks,” said Bob.

“Either twin would have known what lion tracks look like, and how to duplicate them. Their father is, after all, the local authority on lions. Tell me this, Bob. If it was a lion who killed your neighbors, why didn’t the beast eat them?”

“Well, uh...”

“None of the victims had been eaten. No parts had been taken. A few had been redistributed, yes. But none had been removed. No, Bob. One of the sisters killed your friends and made the death look like the work of a lion.”

“Why?”

“So no one would suspect her true motive.”

“Which was what?”

“Theft. The theft of a gold figurine. One was stolen from each victim.”

Leo gibbered something, turning his head left and right.

Bob patted him on the back impatiently and asked Berthold, “Why steal a figurine?”

“To provide herself with finances.”

“But neither one of them needs finances, man. They’re sacred, both of them. So long as they’re here, they get everything they want.”

“Yes. So long as they’re here in your village. But if one of them wanted to leave?”

“But why would either one of them want to?”

“To avoid being sacrificed.”

Bob shook his head. “Oh no, man. That can’t be right. Being sacrificed, man, that’s an honor.”

Berthold smiled. “On that matter, Bob, one of the sisters disagrees with you.”

“But sacrifice is a great honor,” said Geena.

“A great honor,” echoed Leena.

Leo gibbered. Bob patted him again and said to Berthold, “Okay, okay, look. I’m not saying you’re right. But what makes you so sure it was one of them and not both of them?”

“Only one of the twins was ever seen.”

“What,” I asked, “if they took turns?” I was pretty pleased with myself for coming up with this.

“Absurd,” said Berthold. “If both were involved, they would have worked together at making the deaths seem the result of a lion attack. Two people would have been able to claw the bodies, falsify those tracks more quickly. And both twins, in that case, would have been seen afterward. But in fact, only one was seen.”

He turned to Bob. “The question is, which one? And I believe I know of a simple method by which that might be determined.”

“What’s that?”

“You need merely place both of them in a locked room for a period of twenty-four hours, under close supervision. You see, I believe—”

“We can’t do that,” Bob told him.

Berthold blinked in surprise. “Why not?”

“They’re sacred, man. Chosen by the thunder god. We can’t do that. Lock them up. Supervise them. Not unless they break a rule.”

“One of them has broken a rule. She’s killed three of your people.”

“That’s what you say. You don’t have any proof.”

Leo gibbered loudly, almost a growl. Bob snapped something in Outlandish.

Berthold looked across the table at the two young females. They looked calmly back. If one of them were secretly gloating, she gave no sign of it.

Still staring at the women, Berthold said, “Bob, the villagers with whom I spoke told me that the sacredness of Leena and Geena resides entirely in their twinhood. Is that true?”

“Sure. If they weren’t twins, identical and all, they’d just be normal women.”

“I should think then, that the two of them, both honored to be chosen for sacrifice, would make an effort to remain identical.”

“Naturally. Didn’t you see the way they ate? If one of them takes a bite of fish, then the other takes exactly the same sized bite. If one of them eats two cookies, so does the other.”

“Ah.” Suddenly Berthold smiled at the females. “You both claim to be innocent, is that correct?”

“Absolutely,” said the two of them in unison.

“Then neither of you would object to a small experiment that will serve to establish that innocence.”

The females looked at each other, looked back at him. “Not me,” said Leena. “Not me,” said Geena.

“Excellent. Let us all retire then to Bill’s house.”

A few minutes later, we all stood outside Bill’s house. Along the way, Bob had explained the situation to Leo, who was now gibbering angrily and waving his arms. Bob was trying to quiet him.

The sight of the twins, or maybe the sight of Berthold and me in their presence, had drawn a small crowd. They gathered in a semicircle around us, muttering in gibberish.

Berthold walked over to the large set of scales set up beside the front door. “Geena. Please step on one side of the scale.”

Geena looked at her sister and then walked forward. The scales held two wooden plates, each suspended on ropes. Geena grasped the ropes on one side, lowered the plate they held, and stepped gingerly onto it. The plate sank to the ground.

“Leena,” said Berthold. “Please step on the other.”

Leena hesitated. She glanced around at the crowd.

Berthold smiled. “This will take only a moment.”

Leena walked over, grabbed the second set of ropes, and stepped onto the second plate. As she sank slightly, her sister was lifted from the ground. For a moment or two, swaying slightly back and forth, the two females rose and fell in turn.

Between the two plates was an upright wooden rod that swung back and forth before a curved beam. Along the beam, at regular intervals, were lines carefully painted on the wood, to indicate by how much the items being measured might differ in weight. It was a clever piece of equipment. But, as I’ve said, the Outlanders were very clever fellows.

We watched as the two females bobbed for a bit, one going up as the other went down. The rod swung left and right.

No one spoke now. Bob had somehow managed to silence Leo.

At last the females, and the rod, stopped moving. The rod pointed very slightly to the left of center.

Leena weighed a fraction more than her sister.

Before any of us, except Berthold, realized what this meant, Leena leaped from her plate. Her sister shot to the ground, her knees buckling beneath her, as Leena sprang toward the street.

Bob grabbed her. She swung a fist at him. He caught that and twisted it up behind her back. Wrapping his left arm around her neck, he said to Berthold, “What? What is it?”

Geena had gotten up from the ground. She ran now to her father, who was beginning to gibber again.

“There was one thing that could ruin Leena’s plan,” said Berthold. “One thing that, if found, would instantly reveal her guilt.”

“What?”

“The last figurine. The one she took from Art’s house this morning. If the figurine were found on her person, she would be lost.”

“She swallowed it,” I said.

Berthold looked at me, surprised. And then he smiled. “Very good, Doder.” He turned back to Bob. “She did, indeed, swallow it. If you will place her in confinement for a day or so, sooner or later the figurine—”

“I get you,” said Bob, struggling to hold on to Leena. “The figurine will, uh, show up.”

“Exactly.”

And it did, too, as Berthold told me the next day.

The figurine, as it happened, was in the shape of a lion.

Berthold got a big kick out of that. He thought it was very ironic. He liked irony, Berthold.

But for me, the best part of the story was that it had a happy ending. Not for Leena, of course. Because she was beheaded and buried before breakfast the next morning. But for Geena. With Leena gone, she was no longer a twin, and the Outlanders had to forget about sacrificing her.

No, I don’t know what happened to her. Within a few months, my poor wife, Ursula, was dead and I was on my way to—

But that’s another story.

On your way out, now, don’t forget those donations.