Page 2 - Fables volume 3

The Great Lizard’s Decree

The Great Lizard had relented, after pestering and pleading by his
daughter, to reinstate his son-in-law. The latter had been one of the
clan’s dabblers in biology charged with creating a species of hairless
mammals as a renewable food source for mosquitos. Son-in-law’s
error was in conferring intelligence on those easily-bled bipeds as
their only defense against much larger predators. The Old One,
however, was not fond of collective punishment; a king must have a
court, after all. Thus he had aimed his wrath at the young reptile as
1
the ultimate engineer of the world’s destruction by nuclear warfare.
But the human-insect-lizard food chain was an irresistibly attractive
design: it just needed some tweaking. And the exile’s abilities were
undeniable. He could run the changes on DNA like no one else in
the family. So he was summoned back into the fold.
Son-in-law, released from his transformation to a bottom-feeding
arctic sea slug, shook ice-cold water from his scales and goggled at
the Great Lizard. “Am I forgiven?” he hoped against hope. The
family had been forced to hold its councils high in the branches of a
drought-parched banyan; he scrabbled desperately to hold on to its
bark while his claws defrosted.
“What?” barked the old lepidosaur. “Is that what you’ve learned?
Spineless snails give me the creeps: that’s why I turned you into one.
Well, toughen up and listen up. You’re back because my daughter
convinced me that you should be given the chance—notice, ‘the’
chance, not ‘a’ chance—to fix another cosmic cock-up. Your only
talent, other than pulling the nictitating membrane over her eyes,
seems to be genetic tinkering. Now, go tinker with those meddling
soft-skinned monkey-brains: they are back, and this time they are
ruining our habitat.”
Son-in-law wasted no time scuttling off down the trunk and
disappearing among exposed roots. The Great Lizard sat and stewed
in his ichor, counting the ecliptic cycles with the claws of his left hind
leg. All the while impressions of destruction assailed his keen senses,
with no obvious let-up: indeed, if anything, the pace was accelerating.

1
See “How his Son-in-Law Earned the Great Lizard’s Displeasure”, in Fables, vol. 1
(1983).
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