Enigmatic Pilot

“And neither of them can talk?”

“No,” Mulrooney assented, concerned about how much harm he had done. “But their wits are as sharp as any, and I could not ask for better companionship. Besides…” He grinned. “There is something to be said for women who can’t answer back.”

This attempt at levity drew an immediate response from the two mute sisters. Mrs. Mulrooney the seamstress launched a ball of woolen socks, while Mrs. Mulrooney the gymnast whipped off a shoe. Both missiles struck their target full in the face.

“Bah! Ladies!” the professor complained. “You see what I mean? You have no reason to feel any pity for these two, young lad. They are more than able to look out for themselves! It is I who am outnumbered.”

Mrs. Mulrooney No. 1 licked an end of thread and darted it through a needle with a grin of vindication, while Mrs. Mulrooney No. 2 clapped her feet.

“And now,” said the professor. “Won’t you repay our candor and tell us your story? It’s plain you have one. Else you would not be so far from Zanesville.”

Just then a sound came from behind the cloth partition in the corner. The showman and his two wives showed no sign of acknowledgment. Perhaps a child was sick behind there, Lloyd thought, although the idea of having two wives still occupied him. Two wives this side of the curtain seemed to increase the possibilities of what lay behind. He tried to focus on the professor’s query.

Ordinarily he would not have satisfied such a request with much detail, but as a result of his time with St. Ives he was growing more secure in his ability to gauge people’s character and, as the professor had trusted him with a confidence, so he related as best he could his family’s trek from Ohio and their hopes of beginning a new life in Texas (save for the mystery that his uncle had referred to in his letter and the nature of his relationship with Miss Viola).

The professor and his two mute wives were both entertained and reassured by the boy’s account. “We are all strangers and pilgrims,” the showman summed up when Lloyd was done. “I wish you well on your journey to Texas. We are headed north for the heat of summer and then back south when autumn comes.”

It was at this point, just as Lloyd was thinking that it was time for him to get back to his father and how he hoped the professor would give him a bottle of the tiger powder, that another sound came from behind the screen partition-a very odd sound that was soon followed by odder noises still.

“What was that?” Lloyd asked when he could no longer resist.

“What?” answered the showman coyly.

“That. That!”

“Hmm. Yes…” the showman was forced to acknowledge now as the sounds grew odder and louder. “They’re awake.”

“They?” the boy repeated. “Who are they?”

Mulrooney’s face fell as if he had put his foot in his mouth again.

“The Ambassadors from Mars. The strangest strangers and pilgrims you will ever see,” he said at last. “But, my boy, you must swear not to tell a soul, because it’s not my intention to exhibit them yet.”

“Exhibit them?”

“Well, my commitment is not to exploit them but to help them maximize those features that offer such singular advantages if understood properly and positioned effectively. As their sponsor, I am obliged to insure that such an arrangement is practicable and sustainable-in a word, sufficiently profitable to cover the costs of their maintenance.”

“May I see… them?”

Knowing that the child, with curiosity now aroused, would not be likely to give in and go, the professor reluctantly motioned for him to approach the cubicle. This boy has got under my skin in the damnedest way, Mulrooney thought to himself, as he pulled back the swath of drape to reveal a sight that made even Lloyd’s mouth drop open.

The figures were dressed in clothes that conjured up images of Washington and Jefferson at the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

“I call ’em Urim and Thummim,” the professor announced. “Or the Ambassadors from Mars. Don’t know what they call themselves.”

The creatures who now stood before Lloyd were remarkable individuals by anyone’s standards. Short but not exactly dwarfs, they were obviously brothers-both microcephalics, or pinheads. They were Negroid, perhaps, but pale-skinned, with highly distorted features and an animalish clicking-grunting type of language.

“Why do you call them the Ambassadors from Mars?” Lloyd asked.

“I don’t plan to outside the smaller burgs,” replied the professor. “Wouldn’t do a’tall to get the tar bubbling.”

“You mean to fool folks,” the boy chided.

“My young friend, let me say this about that. As a rule, people like to be fooled. If you mean inspired, surprised, delighted-made to wonder and to wish for things. If I can make the world bigger and brighter for a moment for some boot stone or put even a tintype star in the eye of some leather-skinned lass, where’s the crime in that? But when you say fool, you not only make it sound cheap, you make it sound easy-and t’aint always so. You can’t fool or enlighten all the people all the time, son. That’s why it’s so very important to be clear about who you are trying to fool or enlighten at any given time.”

“But they’re not from Mars, are they?” the boy continued (which stirred the Ambassadors into a fit of clicking and grunting).

“No,” agreed the professor, twisting his mustache. “They’re from Indiana, far as I know. That’s where I found ’em, at any rate. But their story is just as hard to swallow, in its own way. The free niggers looking after them swore on the Bible that these two were dropped out of a tornado.”

“A tornado?” Lloyd puzzled.

Mulrooney held his hand over his heart. “Urim and Thummim came down out of the storm unharmed about two years ago, they said. No hint of where they started from or who their real family was. The niggers took it as a sign from the Almighty and took ’em in, but they kept ’em hidden in their barn for fear of someone doing ’em harm.”

“So you bought them?” Lloyd asked, thinking back to how he had been hidden away in the family barn.

“The nigger and his wife were damn grateful when I proposed taking the boys off their hands. But now, when you see the lads in the sumptuous duds designed by the Ladies Mulrooney, prognosticating and pontificating in their mumbo-jumbo, who can but conclude that they are emissaries and apostles from some distant kingdom of celestial grandeur far beyond our ken?”

This assertion prompted more clicking and grunting from the Ambassadors, and the showman observed how closely the boy was listening.

“You look like you understand them.”

“I think I could, with a little time,” Lloyd replied.

“Balderdash! You can’t tell me there’s anything to their doggerel. Or if there is, only they know it!”

“No,” Lloyd answered. “I think it’s a real language-a spoken one, anyway.”

“Oh, they write, too-if you can call it that,” the professor remarked.

“Could I see?” Lloyd cried, unable to hide his interest.

“My boy, you’re as curious a specimen as they are in your own way,” the professor replied. He went to a trunk, which made Lloyd wince with the recollection of Miss Viola, and produced a large handful of paper scraps all covered with a tiny but precise cuneiform-like writing. Holding the dense lines of unknown symbols together was a repeated icon that resembled the spiral shape of a tornado.

“Now don’t be telling me you can read this!” the professor scoffed.

“Well, not yet,” Lloyd agreed. “But maybe…”

“Son, all the clever men in the world would be a long while in unraveling the secret of this doodling. And it may well be that there is no secret-that they’ve just scribbled and scrawled to please themselves and what looks good is good enough.”

Lloyd noticed a wooden matchbox, or what he first thought was a wooden matchbox, edging out from under the Ambassadors’ bed. It was in fact triangular in shape, rather like a hand-size metronome, and when he picked it up