The Urban Safari – c2. Just another day in "Nature Corner"
Johanna Smith-Rhodes smiled, happily. She was in her environment, doing things she loved, and was totally at home.
The same could not be said for Emmanuelle-Marie Lapoignard les Deux-Épées, who was uncharacteristically ill at ease. Normally Emmanuelle moved through life with the grace of a cat and was at ease anywhere: today she felt like a cat in a training school for Lipwigzer attack dogs.
Monty raised a lazily inquisitive head and his long forked tongue flickered out to taste the presence of the second female human. Emmanuelle took a reflexive step back.
"Oh, really, Emmie. It's not thet bed!" Johanna said, with a little smile. "Enywey, I fed him yesterdey. He won't need enother mouse until tomorrow!"
Emmanuelle forced a weak little smile. She tried to ignore the fact that her colleague was wearing a six-foot python as if it were some sort of featherless boa. Then she remembered what the word boa meant in Morporkian. It was not a happy association.
I must not show fear in front of the pupils, Emmanuelle reminded herself. But name of a name, Johanna's pet shop!
"People in some clubs would pay good money to watch things like that, cherie!" she said, seeking to make light of it.
"Really, Emmie! Do I look like Miss Dixie vaBoom?" Johanna laughed.
"There is a certain resemblence about the snake, yes. Although Miss vaBoom generally wore fewer clothes!"
Johanna shrugged. Monty moved sinuously with her shoulders.
"Well, if working as an Essessin ever stopped peying me a wage, I might consider it. The femily beck Home would be shocked, though!"
The Animal Management Unit at the Assassins' Guild School was the size of a small warehouse. It represented a major investment for the Guild, but Johanna had argued for it, on the grounds that in the normal course of things, the current dedicated facilities at the old Guild School were too small and too outdated to sustain a breeding programme for those animal species the Guild normally cultivated for its own rather specialised purposes. A more holistic approach was needed, she had argued, which in the long run would save the Guild money, as well as providing an invaluable teaching and research facility.
Rather than breeding tree frogs twenty or thirty at a time, why not have a simulated natural habitat for them, which included ample supplies of their prey animals, so that at any one time the Guild could be sure of a couple of hundred to be culled and processed? This would be more economic, as well as providing the appropriate botany for classroom study without the time and expense of sending a field trip to Howondaland. Gathering them in would also provide a useful practical training exercise for students.
Similarly, amongst those useful animals the Guild had always bred, in a pretty much ad-hoc way, similar management programmes could be instituted for those species of scorpions, spiders, and tropical arachnids which had always been so useful and instructive for the Assassins' Guild. And a tropical habitat involved tropical plants. Given time, the Guild could have some of the finest species of poisonous flowers, carnivorous plants and lethal flora of any college in the temperate zone. This also meant income from selling surplus products, or selling and trading in rare plants. While botany was not Johanna's primary field of study, she was sure Mrs Bellamy, the botany mistress, would support her idea, and perhaps be so kind as to help fine-tune the details? And of course Mr Mericet, the Poisons master, would welcome an ample, practically guaranteed, flow of raw material for his classes, as well as a one-stop-shop for graduate Assassins needing to replenish their personal stocks with successful contract completions in mind. And those really exotic ingredients occasionally required by Miss Sanderson-Reeves, the Domestic Science mistress, might also be produced in house.
As a self-contained self-supporting unit, food animals for larger predatory species would also be bred here, and mice, toads and common frogs would also, of course, be in ready supply for dissection by biology students. This spared the Guild having to buy them in from outside.
Johanna, supported by Davinia Bellamy, and other staff members with an interest, had got her Department, and she now presided over an empire of animal cages, sealed natural habitats, classrooms, and laboratories on the AMU site.
Emmanuelle, while pleased her friend had found a niche in the teaching and research structure of the Guild, repressed another shudder.
"Emmie, he's just being friendly!" Johanna reassured her, as the python flowed in her direction. Then she spoke the words all non-pet-people never want to hear.
"He's just a big softy, really!"
These are famous last words, spoken as a universal law just before the Rottweiler's low threatening growl becomes a muffled crunch, or the Siamese cat hisses and lashes out with a paw full of razor blades, or the Vampire Goldfish of BhangBhangDuc leaps from its bowl and goes unerringly for the jugular.
Seeing her friend's worried expression, Johanna took pity and returned Monty to his herpetology tank, where he obediently slithered off into the undergrowth, nodding at a terrified and transfixed mouse in a "just wait till tomorrow, chum" sort of way.
"So what did you want to see me about?" Emmanuelle inquired, regaining some of her composure.
"An idea Lord Downey hed when he visited. Let me show you."
She led the way down the rows of shelves, cages and animal habitats, pointing out little curiosities on the way. Emmanuelle jumped as a huge serpent rose up from its coils and bumped threateningly on the reinforced glass of its tank. It was twice her size and was menacingly banded in red and green. It followed both women as they passed and bared its fangs to them by way of greeting.
"Howondalandian Spitting Mamba," Johanna said, casually. "The one we rescued from a Post Office mailbox lest week. Ebsolutely lethal, Emmie. A meximum security enimel."
"So I perceive" Emmanuelle said, weakly. "And the student who was bitten?"
"Is recovering et the Lady Sybil, end reflecting on his overconfidence. Which is no bed thing. When he recovers, I'll heve him feed the snake a few rats, so he cen get his nerve beck. Or I might find him a mate."
Emmanuelle raised an eyebrow.
"The snake, thet is, not the student. Think of it, Emmie! If I cen get a female Spitting Mamba, I cen stert a controlled breeding programme!"
"You are sure the one in the tank is male, cherie?"
"Of course it is, I took care to look! It would mellow him a little, to have eccess to a female. They ere not the Disc's best mothers, large snakes. She will ley her eggs, bury them end cover them with earth and rotting vegetetion, then forget about them. I cen recover the eggs and ertificially incubate two or three, then raise them in a secure hebitet. The other eggs cen go to a cless for study and dissection"
Emmanuelle was starting to suspect there was something slightly warped about her friend's passion for dangerous animals. She will go to the opposite end of a snake from where the fangs and the poisons are, just to look under its tail to see if it is a boy or a girl serpent. But then, look at the nature of the School where we both teach. Perhaps I too am warped in a useful Assassin way.
"We heve to milk the snakes for poison from time to time. Shell I show you?"
Emmanuelle shuddered. Her teaching speciality was swords, daggers and bladed weapons. In her opinion, poisons were for other people. In every respect.
"No, thank you."
They stopped at a group of students who were feeding habitats full of juvenile cobras, miniature versions of the adult.
Johanna paused and spoke to them about how and why baby cobras should be fed, and reminded them that it would soon be time to split up the colony again, as cobras are territorial animals and need space to themselves as they grow. Satisfied, she let them get on with it. The two teachers walked on.
"Here we are at the eviary." Johanna said, indicating the huge wire-mesh and frame structure that soared right up into the roof space. Birds could be seen flying in the eaves. "Generelly speaking, there are no poisonous or venomous birds, elthough the Vindictive Cheffinch of the Genuan Delta lays eggs whose shells are virulently poisonous to predators breaking them open to get at the contents. We hev a breeding colony in Cage Twenty-Seven, for the eggshells.
"Here we hev the Bald Eagle of the Howondalandian Central Plain, elthough it is a more specialised sort of vulture. It is en impetient bird, which doesn't see why it hes to wait for something to die first. Note the cruel hooked beak and the long rending talons.
"End here we hev our raven colony. Now this is one of the things I wented you to see. Lord Downey's idea wes thet those Houses named efter enimels should edopt their House enimel end look after it. Lady T'Malia hes Scorpion House. Her pupils hev edopted a scorpion tank, and pey for its upkeep. Did I tell you we hev secured the contrect to breed scorpions for the Petricien's scorpion pits at the Palace, by the wey? Mr Mericet hes Cobra House, which is self-explenetory. Mr Nivor has Viper house. His pupils hev a tenk of spitting edders. Bill Bradlifudd has Tree Frog House. My own students are Raven House. You'll see this cage hes the House crest, to show Raven House pupils hev a special interest here."
Emmanuelle went pale, seeing the hideous implication.
"Mais…un moment!" In times of stress, she reverted to Qurmian. "Les… araignées? La veuve noire?"
"Lord Downey insists." Johanna said, masking a smile. "He noticed Bleck Widow House isn't yet represented, end esked me to telk to you. Come back this wey…"
Johanna led her friend by the hand down a different aisle. "Lepidoptera, the study of insects. But pessing on. Here we hev Erechnida, the spiders, our finest collection!" she proclaimed. "This is the Heptothermidae, which is harmless to humans. In the next tenk, the Lycosa raptoria, whose fengs bring creeping ulceration and necrosis. End here we ere, Emmie, the Bleck Widow! Her kiss is fifteen times more toxic then thet of the rettlesnake end is highly neurotoxic, which is to say it ects directly on the central nervous system…"
"Johanna, I've got the point! Bienvenue a mon cauchemar…"(1)
Johanna relented. Privately, a little part of her was grinning broadly at seeing the suave and sophisticated Emmanuelle, a born city girl, placed in extreme discomfort for once: it squared her personal account for all the little put-downs and jokes she'd received as a student, a shy and reserved country girl sharing living space with an impossibly glamorous, superior, and beautiful femme d'affaires. They were friends, they'd been through intense Assassin training together (2) and could be nothing else, but every so often it was good to see the boot on the other foot. Johanna had only ever managed revenge once before, and that had been during Wilderness Survival lessons, where she had excelled and Emmanuelle, away from the city, had lagged, needing generous support from the colonial country bumpkin who had been born to it since day one.
"You don't need to supervise personelly." she reassured Emmanuelle. "Just put the word out for volunteers from Bleck Widow House, end I'll show them whet needs to be done. Lord Downey thought a little prize might be in order to the House thet best looks after its totem enimel?"
They moved on from the spiders, Emmanuelle shaky, Johanna stowing away the knowledge of her friend's apparent arachnophobia for future reference. Most ironic, for the housemistress of Black Widow. Especially since Emmanuelle shares character traits with the spider – she too devours her mate after sex, metaphorically speaking…
"They were thinking of re-naming Tump House as Mantis House." Emmanuelle said, changing the subject. "Fitting, as the praying mantis eats her male after they have had congress. But poor Alice, she ends up with the stick insects! How boring for her!"
Both women laughed.
They walked on, past the mongoose enclosure, and past a stack of very large empty cages.
"Have you ordered giraffes and elephants, cherie?" Emmanuelle inquired, nodding at them.
"I cen't justify very large animals as yet." Johanna sighed, regretfully. "The Guild's priorities are for enimels of a venomous or poisonous nature. Lions and tigers and lerger enimels hev no venom or poison end so, no direct interest to the Guild. I do hev a brace of duck-billed platypi on the way from Fourecks, though. They hev poison glands. Although I am near to persuading the Council thet owning a bleck penther might be of interest and hev teaching relevence. The silent, deadly, essessin of the jungle, you see."
Ennanuelle nodded, hoping that such animals would be placed in really secure natural habitats.
"Those cages, I think they mey be needed in the future. The Petricien said to me that the city's hippopotami, the ones kept by the College of Heralds, are old, end he wents an insurance policy egainst them dying. So he may entrust me with raising a pair of celves to replace Roderick end Keith for ceremonial duties. The Council will no doubt edvence funding to build a lerge emphibious hebitet for them."
"That makes sense. You cannot have a city without its city animals. That's bad luck." Emmanuelle agreed. They walked out into the light of day, Johanna regretful, Emmanuelle relieved.
"Miss Smith-Rhodes?" The man calling for her was in the standard Dark Clerk uniform of black suit and bowler hat. She turned to face him.
"Lord Vetinari sends his compliments and asks if you can attend on him at the Palace. He believes your skills are needed."
Johanna nodded.
"Off you go then, cherie! Better you than me!"
"I mey need you yet!"
1 (1) Alice Cooper fans out there must have got the references by now?
2 (2) See my story The Graduation Class for Emmanuelle and Johanna's early relationship as students.