Venus on the Half-Shell by Philip José Farmer Read Free Book Online

tight as a senator from Kentucky and as dry as a government report. Time had sucked out, along with the vital juices, the flesh beneath the skin. But the bones had kept their arrogance.
    Simon looked around the case and found a placard screwed into the side. He couldn’t read it because it was facing outward. On the other side of the coffin, on the floor, he found a screwdriver, a dried-up condom, a pair of panties, and a cheese-and-salami sandwich wrapped in tinfoil. Evidently, some museum worker had had an assignation behind the coffin. Or perhaps the night watchman had brought in a woman to while away the lonely hours. In either case, someone had disturbed them, and they had taken off, leaving behind them the clues he had put together à la Sherlock Holmes.
    Simon blessed them and opened the wrapper. The bread, cheese, and salami were cardboard-hard, but they were edible. He broke the sandwich in half, gave one piece to the dog and gnawed away gratefully at his. The dog, after gulping down his half, looked at Simon’s sandwich and growled. Simon thought he was going to have trouble with him until he understood that it was the dog’s belly, not his throat, which was growling.
    He patted him and said, “You like old bones? You can eat away. But not now.”
    Using the screwdriver, he removed the placard. It bore this legend:
    MERNEPTAH
    Pharaoh from 1236 B.C. to 1223 B.C.
    Thirteenth son of Rameses II.
    He gave Moses a hard time.
    Moses and history had, in turn, given Merneptah a hard time. Everybody considered him to be a villain. When they read in the Bible that he’d been drowned in the Red Sea while chasing the refugee Hebrews, they thought, “Drowning was too good for him.” But this story was a myth. Merneptah, at age sixty-two, had died miserably of arthritis, plugged arteries, and bad teeth. As if this and an evil reputation hadn’t done enough to him, the undertakers had removed his testicles and tomb robbers had hacked his body, incidentally removing the right arm.
    “You’re still useful, old man,” Simon said. He tore off the wrappings and then the penis and threw it to the dog. The dog caught it before it hit the floor and swallowed it. So much for the mighty phallus that had impregnated hundreds of women, Simon thought. Just so the resin-soaked flesh doesn’t give the dog a stomachache.
    Meanwhile he wished that he had something more to eat. His belly was growling like a truck going up a steep grade. If he couldn’t somehow catch some fish, he was going to starve. And then the dog would be eating him.
    Since he had nothing else to do, he decided to think about giving the dog a name. After rejecting Spot, Fido, and Rover, he chose Anubis. Anubis was the jackal-headed Egyptian god who conducted the souls of the dead into the afterworld. A jackal was a sort of dog. And this dog, if not a conductor, was certainly a fellow passenger in this queer boat that was taking them to an unknown but inevitable death.
    Whatever the dog’s old name, he responded to the new one. He licked Simon’s hand and looked up with eyes as big, brown, and soft as Ramona’s. Simon patted his head. It was nice to have someone who liked him and would keep him from feeling utterly alone. Of course, this, like everything, had its disadvantageous side. He was expected to provide for Anubis.
    Simon got up and ripped off the Pharaoh’s right leg. For a moment, he was tempted to chew on it himself, but he didn’t have the teeth or the stomach for it. He threw it to Anubis, who retreated to a corner and began gnawing on it voraciously. A few hours later he had a violent attack of diarrhea which stank, among other things, of resin. Simon got up on the coffin and leaned out over the edge of the case to get fresh air. At the same time, he saw the owl.
    Simon yelped with joy. Since owls lived in trees, and trees grew only on land, land couldn’t be far away. He watched the big bird turn and fly northward until it had disappeared. That