JEREMY RUNS AMOK; A DREADFUL
DISCOVERY BEFORE DINNER
Among the various
manners of recovering from the neurasthenic tension that
accompanies a drop, I must admit that the one old Abdul had laid on
for us took first prize for decadent (that means good) taste. It’s
hard to remain stressed-out while reclining on a bed of silks in a
pleasure palace on Mars, with nubile young squishies to drop
prefermented grapes into your open mouth, your very own mouth-boy
to keep the hookah smoldering, and a clankie band plan-gently
plucking its various organs in the far corner of the
room.
Dancers whirled and
wiggled and undulated across the stage at the front of the hall,
while a rather fetching young squishie lad in a gold-lamé loincloth
and peacock-feather turban waited at my left shoulder to keep my
cocktail glass from underflowing. Candied fruits and jellied
Europan cryoplankton of a most delightful consistency were of
course provided. “What-ho, this is the life, isn’t it?” I observed
in the general direction of Toadsworth. My bot buddy was parked
adjacent to my bower, his knobbly mobility unit sucking luxuriously
conditioned juice from a discreet outlet while the still-squishy
bits of his internal anatomy slurped a remarkably subtle smoked
Korean soy ale from a Klein stein by way of a curly
straw.
“Beep beep,” he
responded. Then, expansively and slowly, “You seem a little
melancholy about something, old chap. In fact, if you had
hyperspectral imagers like me, you might notice you were a little
drawn. Like this: pip.” He said it so emphatically that even my
buggy-but-priceless family heirloom amanuensis recognized it for an
infoburst and misfiled it somewhere. “Indiscretions aside, if
there’s anything a cove can do to help you—enemies you want
inebriating, planets you want conquering—feel free to ask the
Toadster, what?”
“You’re a jolly fine
fellow, and I may just do that,” I said. “But I’m afraid it’s
probably nothing you can help with. I’m in a bit of a blue funk—did
you know Laura left me? She’s done it before several times, of
course, but she always comes back after the drop. Not this time,
though, I haven’t seen gear nor sprocket of her since the day
before yesterday, and I’m getting a bit worried.”
“I shall make
inquiries right away, old chap. The clankie grape-vine knows
everything. If I may make so bold, she probably just felt the need
to get away for a while and lube her flaps: she’ll be back soon
enough.” Toadsworth swiveled his ocular turret, monospectral
emitters flashing brightly. “Bottoms up!”
I made no comment on
the evident fact that if the Toadster ever did get himself arse
over gripper, he’d be in big trouble righting himself, but merely
raised my glass in salute. Then I frowned. It was empty! “Boy?
Where’s my drink?” I glanced round. A furry brown sausage with two
prominently flared nostrils was questing about the edge of the
bower where my cocktail boy had been sitting a moment
before.
“Grab that
pachyderm!” I shouted at the lad, but I fear it wasn’t his fault:
Jeremy had already done him a mischief, and he was doubled over in
a ball under the nearest curtain, meeping pathetically. Jeremy
sucked the remains of my Saturnian-ring ice-water margaritas up his
nose with a ghastly slurping noise, and winked at me: then he
sneezed explosively. An acrid eruction slapped my face. “Vile
creature!” I raged, “What do you think you’re doing?”
I’m told that I am
usually quite good with small children and other animals, but I
have a blind spot when it comes to Jeremy. He narrowed his eyes,
splayed his ears wide, and emitted a triumphant—not to say
alcohol-saturated—trumpet blast at me. Got
you, he seemed to be saying. Why should
you two-legs have all the fun? I made a grab for his front
legs, but he was too fast for me, nipping right under my seat and
out the other side, spiking my unmentionables on the way as I
flailed around in search of something to throw at him.
“Right! That does
it!” People to either side were turning to stare at me, wondering
what was going on. “I’m going to get you—” I managed to lever
myself upright just in time to see Jeremy scramble out through one
of the pointy-looking archways at the back of the hall, then found
myself eyeball to hairy eyeball with Ibn Cut-Throat’s
administrative assistant.
“Please not to make
so much of a noise, Ralphie-san,” said the junior undervizier. “His
Excellency has an announcement to make.”
And it was true.
Human flunkies were discreetly passing among the audience,
attracting the guests’ attention and quieting down the background
of chitchat. The band had settled down and was gently serenading us
with its plucked vocal cords. I glanced after Jeremy one last time.
“I’ll deal with you later,” I muttered.
Even by Jeremy’s usual standards, this behavior was quite
intolerable; if I didn’t know better, I’d swear there was something
up with the blighter. Then I looked back at the stage at the front
of the room.
The curtain sublimed
in a showy flash of velvet smoke, revealing a high throne cradled
in a bower of hydroponically rooted date palms. His Excellency
Abdul al-Matsumoto, younger sibling of the Emir of Mars, rose from
his seat upon the throne: naked eunuch bodyguards, their skins
oiled and gleaming, raised their katanas in salute to either side.
“My friends,” old Abdul droned in a remarkably un-Abdul-like
monotone, “it makes me more happy than I can tell you to welcome
you all to my humble retreat tonight.”
Abdul wore robes of
blinding white cotton, and a broad gold chain—first prize for
atmosphere diving from the club, I do believe. Behind him, a row of
veiled figures in shapeless black robes nudged each other.
His wives? I wondered. Or his husbands? “Tonight is the first of my
thousand nights and one night,” he continued, looking more than
slightly glassy-eyed. “In honor of my sort-of ancestor, the Sultan
Schahriar, and in view of my now being, quote, too old to play the
field, my elder brother, peace be unto him, has decreed a
competition for my hand in marriage. For this night and the next
thousand, lucky concubines of every appropriate gender combination
will vie for the opportunity to become my sole and most important
sultana.”
“That’s right, it’s
not a date!” added Ibn Cut-Throat, from the sidelines.
“I shall take the
winner’s hand in marriage, along with the rest of their body. The
losers—well, that’s too boring and tiresome to go into here, but
they won’t be writing any kiss-and-tell stories: if they forgot to
make backups before entering the competition, that’s not my
problem. Meanwhile, I ask you to raise a toast with me to the first
seven aspiring princesses of Mars, standing here behind me, and
their intelligence and courage in taking up Scheherazade’s wager.”
He sounded bored out of his skull, as if his mind was very
definitely busy elsewhere.
Everyone raised a
toast to the competitors, but I was losing my appetite even before
Ibn Cut-Throat stepped to the front of the stage to explain the
terms of the competition, which would begin after the banquet. I
may come from a long line of Japanese pretenders to the throne of a
sheep-stealing bandit laird, but we’d never consider anything
remotely as bloodthirsty and medieval as this! The prospect of
spending a night with dashing young Abdul gave a whole new and
unwelcome meaning to losing your head for love, as I suppose
befitted a pretender to the crown of Ibn Saud—never mind the
Sassanid empire—by way of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. “I don’t
think this is very funny,” I mumbled to Toadsworth. “I wish Laura
was here.”
Toadsworth nudged me
with his inebriator. “I don’t think you need to worry about that,
old chap. I spy with my little hyperspectral telescopic
todger—”
Ibn Cut-Throat was
coming to the climax of his spiel: “—Gaze upon the faces of the
brave beauties!” he crowed. “Ladies, drop your veils!”
I gaped like a fool
as the row of black-garbed femmes behind the prince threw back
their veils and bared their faces to the audience. For there, in
the middle of the row, was a familiar set of silver
eyelashes!
“Isn’t that your
mistress, old boy?” Toadsworth nudged me with his inebriator
attachment. “Jolly rum do, her showing up here, what?”
“But she can’t be!” I
protested. “Laura can’t be that stupid! And I always forget to
remind her to take her backups, and left to her own devices she
never remembers, so—”
“’M ’fraid it’s still
her on the stage, old boy,” commiserated the Toadster. “There’s no
getting around it. Do you suppose she answered an advertisement or
went through a talent agency?”
“She must have been
on the rebound! This is all my fault,” I lamented.
“I disagree, old
fellow, she’s not squishy enough to bounce. Not without pulverizing
her head first, anyway.”
I glanced up at the
stage, despondent. The worst part of it was, this was all my fault.
If I’d actually bothered to pull myself out of my predrop funk and
talk to her, she wouldn’t be standing onstage, glancing nervously
at the court executioners on either side. Then I saw her turn her
head. She was looking at me! She mouthed something, and it didn’t
take a genius of lip-reading to realize that she was saying
get me out of here.
“I’ll rescue you,
Laura,” I promised, collapsing in a heap of cushions. Then my
mouth-boy stuck a hookah in the old cake-hole, and the situation
lost its urgent edge. Laura wasn’t number one on the old chop-chop
list, after all. There’d be time to help her out of this fix after
dinner.