Manshape by John Brunner

see what their fellow-citizen was up to. Some small argument was going on.
    It ended, and a box was handed up from behind them, with gingerly care. Rungley took it in one brawny hand and with the other slapped the lid open. Reaching inside, he produced a long and squirming snake.
    With part of her mind Alida reflected how amazing was the effect such a creature could have on an audience like this, most of whom could never have seen one except in a solido recording. Gawking at animals in cages had ceased to be popular centuries ago; what zoos remained were for educational purposes and research, and access to the wild conservation zones was even more strictly regulated.
    Yet here were modern humans reacting in the way that, primitive scientific accounts reported, their extinct cousins like chimpanzees and gorillas would have done: cringing at the mere shape of it…
    A solid wave of silence seemed to pass through the assembled multitude, like a phonon zone in supercooled helium.
    Rungley bent forward, letting fall the box, and thrust his thick tongue between his teeth. The snake struck.
    By the fangs sunk in his tongue, he drew its head into his mouth. And bit.
    And spat the dead head to the floor, along with a reddish spray of saliva mixed with blood.
    There was an awed pause, punctuated by screams. Then came a thunder of applause, and yells of, “More!
More!”
    Alida stood transfixed, almost deafened by the pounding in her ears. Even when a voice she recognised spoke close to her she could not tear her gaze away. She said only, “What do you want?”
    It was Koriot Angoss. And he answered, “To know what I did wrong! I spotted you on the monitor cameras, and I was sure you couldn’t be here by chance—”
    “I am!” she interrupted. “I swear it! Yes, I am!”
    “But
why?”
Angoss moaned. “Rungley’s a cheap mountebank! He’s planted snakes among the crowd so he can do what you just saw, and it’s a trick that Persian conjurers used to do in pre-atomic times, and on Riger’s we find it too disgusting to be entertaining. And I thought Earthsiders were past the stage where killing animals was thought amusing! Can’t you invoke a conservation law? Even if he brought his own snakes?”
    “You told Jorgen he was safe to be let loose!” Alida countered, turning at last to face Angoss.
    “But I didn’t realise he was going to pull this trick as a crowd-pleaser! Importing snakes can affect the ecology—why didn’t Bella Soong file a complaint?
    And if people on Earth no longer enjoy killing for its own sake,
why are they cheering?”
    Alida made to cobble together excuses, more for her colleagues’ sake than her own, but was interrupted. The hawk-faced man in the blue robe had turned to them.
    He said, “This fellow Rungley-one of you is from his home world?”
    “I am!” Angoss admitted.
    “I present myself: Lancaster Long of the planet Azrael. I have been watching this preacher since his show commenced. We do not have snakes on Azrael, but my understanding is that they can sometimes be venomous, and I have seen him bitten three or four times without exhibiting any ill effects. Has he selected non-venomous species, and if so, what is there of interest in his performance?”
    “They aren’t non-venomous,” said Alida; her tongue felt almost too thick to articulate her words. “But he’s immune.”
    A glare of distaste crossed Long’s regal features.
    “Does he know it?”
    “Oh, sure!” said Angoss bitterly. “Do you imagine he’d take the risk if he weren’t?”
    “I see!” Long spoke in a tone like winter wind. “I had hoped that here for once was a person who took life seriously. Instead, it turns out he’s a cynical trickster, and people are glad to be deluded by him. It’s of a piece with everything I’ve seen since I was inveigled into coming here.”
    Nettled by his scornful manner, Alida said, “Explain!”
    “Why do you need an explanation? A man is not poisoned by water; would