The Poison Oracle Read Online Free

grapes if you ask her,” he said slowly in English.
    “Yes, yes,” said the prince, suddenly thrilled. He was both jealous of and fascinated by Dinah. Morris sorted the necessary symbols on to the coffee-table.
    “What they mean?” said the prince.
    “What do they mean?”
    “What do they mean?”
    “Good. You can say the words as we put them down.”

    white crescent:  please
    white square:  Dinah
    yellow circle with hole:   give
    blue/white square:  grapes
    black square:  (to) person other than Morris or Dinah
    “The prince must say please to the ape?”
    “Well . . .” said Morris, then shrugged. It was a nice point. Neither Dinah nor the symbol language was covered by the new agreement.
    “OK, OK,” said the prince charmingly. Morris clicked his fingers for Dinah’s attention and she climbed carefully down from her nest on top of the wardrobe, dangling from her left paw the forlorn skeleton of her bunch of grapes. The Prince arranged the symbols in a very precise line.
    The coffee-table was just the right height for Dinah to read from when she was on all fours, and she did so with her usual quick sniffing sound, as though she somehow smelt the meaning. The message puzzled her. She read it three times, then with a dubious gesture offered the grape-skeleton to the prince, who backed away as if it were something the Koran declared unclean. Morris sorted through the satchel again and made a second message.

    yellow square:  thing with no name
    red circle with hole:   negative verb
    blue/white square:  grapes

    Dinah sniffed at the symbols, laid the grape-skeleton down on the yellow square and sniffed at the symbols again. She chattered a little to herself as she re-read the first message, then moved resolutely towards the kitchen door, where she stopped and glanced at Morris over her shoulder. He made a “Go” gesture to her.
    The buzzer sounded as soon as she broke the beam to the photo-electric cell. The prince laughed. She looked back and Morris made the “Go” gesture again. With a nervous leap she was gone
    “She is not take?” asked the prince.
    “No, she will not take anything. But please will you give her a few of the grapes when she comes back?”
    “I give,” asserted the prince, “. . . a few.”
    Morris smiled. The boy was his father’s son, in his quick calculation of the possible profits of generosity. Dinah emerged with the stalk of a bunch of grapes clenched in her fist and offered them to Morris, who had the negative red circle ready and showed it to her. She sniffed again at the message on the coffee-table, frowning; then, with the same hesitation and doubt she often showed in the early stages of learning a new skill, she offered them to the prince. He carefully broke off a twig of grapes and handed them to her. She smacked her lips and leaped for her nest with them.
    Morris got up and stopped the buzzer. For a moment he thought there was something wrong with his ears, but the prince, too, was frowning and staring at the ceiling.
    “Aeroplane!” he said, first in Arabic and then in English. “Big!” he added after a few seconds.
    Morris nodded. Q’Kut was not on any conceivable route from anywhere to anywhere. The air-strip’s only users were the Sultan’s executive jet and the old Dakota that flew in such luxuries as grapes and apes. The sweating Italians who manned the oil-derricks, up in the hills on the far side of the marshes, had their own strip, but by the sound of it this plane was aiming to land here. Already the prince was crouched against the window, craning for a sight of it.
    “Lo!” he squeaked in Arabic. “See! See! See!” he added in English.
    Morris strolled over, uneasy, but could see nothing because of the overhang of the floor above. He knelt to bring himself to the prince’s level and immediately saw the big red and blue plane whining away with flaps down and black smoke streaking from its four jets. The prince bounced with the thrill of