JEREMY PULLS IT
OFF
The exit was indeed
obstructed by Ibn Cut-Throat and his merry headsmen—with Abdul in
tow, glassy-eyed and arms outstretched, muttering something about
brains. And Ibn Cut-Throat had spotted us!
One thing I will
credit the blighter with: his sense of spectacle was perfect. “Ah,
Mister MacDonald!” he cried, menacingly twirling the antichemwar
vibrissae glued to his upper lip. “How disappointing to see you
here! I must confess I hoped you’d have sense enough to stay in
your room and keep out of trouble. I suppose now you hope I’m going
to tell you all my plans, then lock you in an inadequately secured
cell so you can escape? I’m afraid not: I shall simply have you cut
off shortly, chop-chop. My game’s afoot, and none will stop it now,
for the ineluctable dialectic of history is on my
side!”
“I don’t care what
your dastardly scheme is, I have a bone to pick with you, my man!”
I cried. The two headsmen took a step forward, and Laura clung to
me in fear—whether feigned or otherwise I could not tell. “How dare
you kidnap my concubine on the eve of a drop! That’s not cricket,
or even baseball, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I see you
in any of my clubs, even by the tradesmen’s entrance!” Meanwhile,
Laura thrust a shapely arm inside my abaya and was fumbling with
something in my dinner-jacket pocket; but my attention was fixed on
the villain before me.
“Clubs.” The word
dropped from his lips with stony disinterest. “As if the degenerate
recreations of the oligopatriarchal enemy would be of any interest
to me!” I shuddered: it’s always a bad sign when the hired help
starts talking in polysyllables. One of his nostrils flared
angrily. “Clubs and sports and jolly capers, that’s all you
parasites think of as you gobble down our surplus wealth like the
monstrous leeches you are!” I’d struck a nerve, as I could see from
the throbbing vein in his temple. “Bloated ticks languishing in the
lap of luxury and complaining about your parties and fashions while
millions slave to fuel your banquets! Bah.” Laura unwrapped her arm
from my robe and covered her face, evidently to shield herself from
the scoundrel’s accusations. “When we strive to better ourselves,
you turn your faces away and sneer, and when we bend our necks, you
use us as beasts of burden! Well, I’ve had enough. It’s time to
return your stolen loot to the toiling non-U masses.”
My jaw dropped. “Dash
it all, man, you can’t be serious! Are you telling me you’re a . .
. ?”
“Yes,” he grated, his
eyes aflame with vindictive glee, “the crisis of capitalism is
finally at hand, at long last! It’s about seven centuries and a
Great Downsizing overdue, but it’s time to bring about the
dictatorship of the non-U and the resurrection of the proletariat!
And your friend Abdul al-Matsumoto is going to play a key role in
bringing about the final raising of class consciousness, by
fertilizing the soil of Olympus with the blood of a thousand
maidens, then crown himself Big Brother and institute a reign of
terror that will—”
Unfortunately, I
can’t tell you how the Ibn Cut-Throat Committee for the Revolution
intended to proceed, because we were interrupted by two different
people: by Laura, who extended her shapely hand and spritzed him
down with aftershave, then by Jeremy.
Now, it helps to be
aware that harems are not exactly noted for their
testosterone-drenched atmosphere. I was, of course, the odd
squishie out. Old Edgy was clearly hors de combat or combat des
whores (if you’ll strangle my French), and the Toadster was also
otherwise engaged, exploring conic sections with the femmebot he’d
been chasing earlier. But aside from myself and Ibn Cut-Throat—and,
I suppose, Abdul, if he was still at home upstairs what with that
crab-thingie plastered to his noggin—there weren’t any other
remotely butch people present.
Jeremy had been in
smelly, sullen retreat for the past week. Not to put too fine a
point on it, he was in musth, that state in which a male mammoth or
elephant hates and resents other males because the universe
acquires a crystal clarity and his function in life is to . . .
Well, Edgestar and Toadsworth got there first, minus the trumpeting
and displays of aggression, but I’m sure you understand? There were
no other small male mammals present, but Jeremy was well aware of
his enemy, and his desperate need to assert his alpha-male
dominance before he could go in search of cows to cover—and more
importantly, there was one particular scent he associated with the
enemy from long mutual acquaintance. His enemy smelled like
me. But I
was shrouded in a blackly occlusive robe, while Ibn Cut-Throat had
just been doused in my favorite pheromone-enhanced splash. And
whatever Jeremy’s other faults, he’s never been slow to jump to a
conclusion.
I do not know what
passed through the 80 percent of Jeremy’s cranial capacity that
serves as target acquisition and fire control, but he made his
choice almost instantly and launched himself straight for where Ibn
Cut-Throat’s crown jewels had once resided. Proboscide ans are not
usually noted for their glide ratio, but in the weak Martian
gravity Jeremy was positively areobatic, and he aimed straight for
Toshiro’s tushie with grace and elegance and tusks.
“Tally-ho, old boy!”
I shouted, giving him the old-school best, as Laura took two steps
smartly forward and, raising her skirts, daintily kick-boxed
headsman number one in the forehead with one of her most pointed
assets—for her ten-centimeter stiletto heels are not only jolly
fine pins, they’re physical extensions of her chrome-plated
ankles.
Now I confess that
things looked dicey when headsman number two turned on me with his
ax and bared his teeth at me. But I’m not the Suzuki of MacDonald
for nothing, and I know a thing or two about fighting! I threw the
abaya back over my head to free my arms, and pointed Toadsworth’s
inebriator—which he had earlier entrusted to my safekeeping in
order to free up a socket for his inseminator—at the villain. “Drop
it! Or I’ll drop you!” I snarled.
My threat didn’t
work. The thug advanced on me, and as he raised his blade I
discovered to my horror that the Toadster must have some very
strange fingers in order to work that trigger. But just as the
barber of Baghdad was about to trim my throat, a svelte black
silhouette drew up behind him and poured a canister of vile brown
ichor over his head! Screaming and burbling imprecations, he sank
to the floor clawing at his eyes, just in time for Laura to finish
him off with a flamenco stomp.
Miss Feng cleared her
throat apologetically as she lowered the empty firkin to the floor.
(The brightly painted tiles began to blur and run where its
Bragote-damp rim rested on them.) “Sir might be pleased to note
that one has taken the liberty of moving his yacht round to the
tradesmen’s entrance and disabling the continental defense array in
anticipation of Sir’s departure. Was Sir planning to stay for the
bombe surprise, or would he agree that this is one party that he
would prefer to cut short?”
I glanced at Ibn
Cut-Throat, who was still writhing in agony under Jeremy’s
merciless onslaught, and then at the two pithed headsmen. “I think
it’s a damned shame to outstay our welcome at any party, don’t you
agree?” Laura nodded enthusiastically and knelt to tickle Jeremy’s
trunk. “By all means, let’s leave. If you’d be so good as to pour a
bucket of cold water over Edgy and the Toadster, I’ll take Abdul in
hand and we can drop him off at a discreet clinic where they treat
spinal crabs, what-what?”
“That’s a capital
idea, sir. I shall see to it at once.” Miss Feng set off to
separate the miscreants from their amorous
attachments.
I turned to Laura,
who was still tickling Jeremy—who by now was lying on his back,
panting—and raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t he sweet?” she
sang.
“If you say so.
You’re carrying him, though,” I said, ungratefully. “Let’s hie thee
well and back to Castle Pookie. This has been altogether too much
of the wrong kind of company for me, and I could do with a nightcap
in civilized company.”
“Darling!” she
grabbed me enthusiastically by the trousers. “And we can watch a
replay of your jump together!”
And indeed, to cut a
long story short, that’s exactly what we did—but first I took the
precaution of locking Jeremy in the second-best guest suite’s
dungeon with a bottle of port, and gave Miss Feng the night
off.
After all, two’s
company, but three’s jolly confusing, what?
Afterword—“Trunk and Disorderly”Humor is hard. Sometimes it works, but more often it doesn’t; it’s surprisingly difficult to make other people laugh, as any number of aspiring stand-ups have discovered. Ironically, good humor reads easily, so that we tend to be fooled into thinking that it was a trivial matter to write. One of the finest practitioners working in the English language was P. G. Wodehouse, whose interwar social comedies about the hapless young Bertie Wooster and his long-suffering butler Jeeves have become classics of the field. They’re as light as souffles and as easy to absorb as air—which is why it took me three years of on-and-off blood, sweat, and tears to squeeze out “Trunk and Disorderly,” which at its best aspires to the level of Wodehouse’s recycling bin. In truth, drama is easy; true comedy is murderously difficult to carry off.I was hoping to get a series of stories out of this universe, but in the end I decided to cut my losses and chalked it up as a test run for Saturn’s Children.