AN AFTER-DINNER SHOW;
DISCUSSIONS OF HORTICULTURE
Dinner took
approximately four hours to serve, and consisted of tiresomely
symbolic courses prepared by master chefs from the various
dominions of the al-Matsumoto empire—all sixty of them. The
resulting cultural mélange was certainly unique, and the
traditional veal tongue sashimi on a bed of pickled jellyfish
couscous a l’Olympia lent a certain urgency to my inter-course
staggers to the vomitorium. But I digress: I barely tasted a single
bite, so deeply concerned was I for the whereabouts of my
cyberdoxy.
After the last
platter of chili-roast bandersnatch in honey sauce was cleared and
the dessert wine piped to our tables, the game show began. And what
a game show! I sat there shuddering through each round, hoping
against hope that Laura wouldn’t be called this time. Ibn
Cut-Throat was master of ceremonies, with two dusky-skinned eunuchs
to keep track of the scorecards. “Contestant Number One, Bimzi bin
Jalebi, your next question is: what is His Excellency the Prince’s
principal hobby?”
Bimzi rested one
elaborately beringed fingertip on her lower lip and frowned
fetchingly at the audience. “Surfing?”
“Aha ha-ha!” crowed
Ibn Cut-Throat. “Not quite wrong, but I think you’d all agree she
had a close shave there.” The audience howled, not necessarily with
joy. “So we’ll try again. Bimzi bin Jalebi, what do you think His
Excellency the prince will see in you?”
Bimzi rested one
elegant hand on a smoothly curved hip and jiggled seductively at
the audience. “My unmatched belly-dancing skills and”—wink—“pelvic
floor musculature?”
“I’m asking the
questions around here!” mugged the vizier, leering at the audience.
Everybody oohed. “Did you hear a question?” Everybody oohed even
louder.
“Pip-pip,” said
Toadsworth, quietly. He continued, “I detect speech stress
analyzers concealed in the pillars, old boy. And something
else.”
“Let me remind you,”
oozed the vizier, “that you are attending the court of His
Excellency the Prince, and that any untruth told before me, in my
capacity as grand high judicar before his court, may be revealed
and treated as perjury. And”—he paused while a ripple of
conversation sped around the room—“now we come to the third and
final cutoff question before you spend a night of delight and
jeopardy with His Royal Highness. What do you, Bimzi bin Jalebi,
see in my Prince? Truthfully now, we have lie detectors, and we
know how to use them!”
“Um.” Bimzi bin
Jalebi smiled, coyly and winningly, at the audience, then decided
that honesty combined with speed was the best policy:
“a-mountain-of-gold-but-that’s-not-my-only—”
“Enough!” Cut-Throat
Senior clapped his hands together, and her aborning speech was
arrested by the snicker-snack of eunuch katanas and a bright squirt
of arterial blood. “To cut a long story short, His Excellency can’t
stand wafflers. Or gold diggers, for that matter.” He glanced at
one particular section of the audience—standing under guard and
white with shock—and smiled toothily. “And so, now that we’re all
running neck and neck, who’d like to go next?”
“I can’t bear this,”
I groaned quietly.
“Don’t worry, old
fellow, it’ll be alright on the night,” Toadster nudged
me.
To prove him wrong,
Ibn Cut-Throat hunted through the herd of candidates and—by the
same nightmare logic that causes toast to always land buttered side
down except when you’re watching it with a notepad and counter—who
should his gaze fall on but Laura.
“You! Yes,
you! It could be you!” cried the
ghastly little fellow. “Step right up, my dear! And what’s your
name? Laura bin, ah, Binary? Ah, such a fragrant blossom, so
redolent of machine oil and ceramics! I’d spin her cams any day of
the week if I still had my undercarriage,” he confided to the
crowd, while my pale person of pulchritude clutched a filmy veil
around her and flinched. “First question! Are you the front end of
an ass?”
Laura shook her head.
The crowd fell silent. I tensed, balling my hands into fists.
If only there was something I could
do!
“Second question! Are
you the back end of an ass?”
Laura shook her head
again, silently. I tried to catch her eye, but she didn’t look my
way. I quailed, terrified. Laura is at her most dangerous when she
goes quiet.
“Well, then! Let me
see. If you’re not the front end of an ass, and you’re not the back
end of an ass, doesn’t that mean you’re no end of an
ass?”
Laura gave him the
old fisheye for an infinitely long ten seconds, then drawled, in
her best Venusian butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth accent, “Why, I
do declare, what is this ‘ass’ you speak of, human, and why are you
so eager for a piece of it when you don’t have any
balls?”
I was on my feet,
staggering uncertainly toward the stage, as Ibn Cut-Throat raised
his fists above his head. “We have a winner!” he declared, and the
crowd went wild. “You, my fragrant rose, have passed the first test
and go forward to the second round! My gentles, let it be known
that Laura Binary has earned the right to an unforgettable night of
ecstasy in the company of His Excellency the Prince!” Sotto voce to
the audience, “Unforgettable because she won’t live terribly long
afterward—but it’s the thought that counts, heh heh!”
I saw red, of course:
dash it, what else is a cove to do but stand up for his lady’s
honor? But before I could take a step forward, meaty hands
descended on each of my shoulders. “Bed time,” rumbled the guard
holding my left arm. I glanced at his mate, who favored me with a
suggestive leer as he fingered the edge of his blade.
“Flower bed time,” he echoed.
“Ahem.” I glanced at
the stage. Laura struggled vainly while a cadre of guards as
grotesquely overaugmented as old Edgy wrapped her in delicate
silver manacles. “If you don’t mind, old fellow, I’ve got a jolly
good mind to tell your master he can take your daisies and push
them—”
“Bed time,” Miss Feng hissed urgently behind my
right ear. “We need to talk,” she added.
“Okay, bed time,” I
agreed, nodding like a fool.
Guard number two
sighed dispiritedly as he sheathed his sword.
“Petunias.”
“What?”
“Not daisies.
Petunias.”
“Bed time!” Guard
number one said brightly. I think he had a one-track
mind.
“We were supposed to
bury you under the petunias if you resisted,” Guard number two
explained. “It’s so hard on the poor things, they don’t get enough
sunlight out here and the soil is too alkaline—”
“No, no, see, he’s
quite right; if we bury him, he’s supposed to be pushing up daisies,” said Guard number one, finally
getting hold of the conversation. “So! Are you going to bed or are
we going to have to tuck you—”
“I’m going, I’m
going,” I said. The homicidal horticulturalists let go of me with
visible reluctance. “I’m gone,” I whimpered.
“Not yet, sir,” said
Miss Feng, politely but forcefully propelling me away from the ring
of clankie guards surrounding the stage. “Let’s continue this
discussion in private, shall we?”