Scarborough Fair and Other Stories (19 page)

He held out a strongly muscled arm to her. He wore only a loin cloth and a few posies around his neck and she could see that all of him was as strongly muscled as the arm. His voice was familiar, tender and warm as he said, “Come, my Tonda Roga. The time has come for you to save the world as we know it. By the way, you look stunning in your ceremonial robes.”

“Thanks,” she said, rising to her feet--or rather, her foot and cane, with the help of his strength. “It's not very practical but--”

“Tonda Rogas usually also wear eight inch spiked sandals for running through the tunnels but in view of your injury, we relaxed the dress code,” he told her.

“It's nice to be special,” she smiled up at him, feeling woozy from the pain potion or the smoke, or maybe just the moons and stars, she didn't know. But she thought she would drown in his eyes.

“You are special. I have come to love you, titian haired earth girl. I pray to our benign native gods that you do not perish on your mission of mercy.”

“Me too,” she murmured, her lips so close to his she could flick out her tongue and taste them.

“But now,” he said, stepping aside so quickly she nearly fell over, “It is time for you to brave all. Farewell, my brave beauty!”

“Bye!” she said, and, taking the proffered torch, stepped through the arch and into a long long tunnel whose floor descended rapidly.

It also twisted and turned as it descended and branched off many times. Victoria had covered that eventuality in the Cadet Academy however and began unravelling the hem of the diaphanous garment so she could find her way back.

But though her training and her spirit were equal to any task, her body was not doing so hot. Her leg hurt and she stopped to rest just where the tunnel forked and twisted again. After a few minutes, when she'd caught her breath and the pain subsided to a slightly duller ache, she leaned forward, holding her torch in front of her, to peer into one of the passages. An orthodontist's nightmare of stalagmites and stalactites over and underbit each other into an impassable mass through one passage.

She pulled the torch back and stuck it into the other branch of the tunnel. She could see nothing so she scooted forward on her bottom and thrust the torch around the corner.

The torch guttered and flared, guttered and flared, and in its fitful light, she could see nothing but grayness. She inched forward a bit more and stretched her hand forward to balance herself. She touched something hard and brittle and looked down. It was a bone! A bone sheathed in white diaphanous material. Like what she was wearing. Oh dear. Next to it was a grinning skull.

She looked away, up into the light of the smoking torch, and made out other bones poking through the grayness. She got only a glimpse, but it looked to her as if the gray matter was composed of zillions of fine threads. Then a portion of the thread extruded and gobbled her torch.

For just a moment before the light went out, she saw through the grayness, far back beyond it to what seemed to be long sinuous moving shapes that seemed to be waving at her. And still shapes that looked like pairs of wings, trapped in the incredibly tangled web. And of course, more slender young girlish bones.

Then with a singeing smell and a slurping sound, her torch was extinguished and she was alone in the darkness.

She backed away, trying to rise to her good leg, but as she rose, something slithered forward, touching her bare toe, and sucked at the tip of her cane. Holding onto the cave wall, she backed further away and ever further.

What was she doing? A Space Cadet never retreats!

Pulling forth her Space Corps knife, she cut through the slithery material and severed a sample. It did not seem to be alive actually, but lay still in her hand, soft and fine as Asian silk.

“Aha!” she said pluckily to herself, an idea dawning as she recognized certain pieces of this situation as a monstrous blowup of something she was already intimately familiar with.

For though the web threads weren't silk as she knew it, it was certainly some sort of silky fiber. And though the previous Tonda Rogas had been engulfed by it, Victoria in her more sophisticated wisdom doubted that it was a hostile life form. After all, the people of this planet believed there was a web down here and the stuff she held in her hands was what webs were made of.

It seemed to her that what was necessary was a little ingenuity and good old fashioned Space Corps knowhow. And, of course, the right tools.

When the next surge of gray stuff popped out at her she slipped to the side and shook her finger at it before hobbling into the adjoining cave. Groping with her slender fingers, she found the tip of a stalagmite. With the sawzall blade of her knife, she cut off the tip at a point where it was about five diameters wide. Then she cut about a half inch below the first cut, and lifted off a fairly regular disc shaped piece of the stone. Using the laser-punchall beam, she bored a hole in the center to slip her cane through. It was a perfect fit, of course, and stopped a few inches from the bottom.

There was also a small flashlight beam on her knife and with this, she saw that beyond the shallow shelter of the stalagmite cave, the gray matter had gotten really pushy and extruded several more feet into the main tunnel. Instantly, the sensitive Cadet realized why. When she had seen the “dragons” they had seen her and were wiggling in anticipation of her saving them! Poor things! That was what had happened before and they'd ended up killing the very Tonda Rogas who had come to help them. But of course, those had just been simple village girls, not Academy trained and space-seasoned Corps Cadets!

She reached out and grabbed a handful of the gray web and gave it a saucy twist around her cane just above the rock whorl. Then, when it was secure, she dropped it and began spinning.

The gray matter spun and spun and every time her makeshift spindle was full, she cut off the thread and attached another hunk to spin more. Soon she had cleared a large enough path for herself to escape, retreating back the way she had come.

The party was still going on and seemed to be a wake in her honor.

Indignation overcame her as she saw the natives dancing and wailing over her supposed fate instead of showing some initiative.

Standing in the archway she cried, “Hear the Tonda Roga! I have returned and I have devined the nature of your problem!”

The crowd, as one person, albeit not a very brave one, shrank back and looked at her as if she was a ghost, which, considering the ensemble they'd given her to wear, she no doubt appeared to be.

The doctor however, looked toward her with his mouth agape and his tear reddened eyes filled with wonder and hope. “But--but how?” he asked.

She shrugged and tossed her flaming locks, her green eyes flashing. “I'm a professional. Those other girls simply shouldn't have tried being a Tonda Roga on their own. You sent me to be a human sacrifice, didn't you?”

“No, I swear. It is simply written that the Tonda Roga will be a woman and ye shall know her by the holes in her
unga rao roga
, just as I told you. I personally couldn't be more delighted to see you. But--”

“No, I have not yet saved your planet from destruction from within. No one person can do that, however valiant. It will take all of you to do that. This party is traditional too, isn't it?”

“It is written that we shall watch for the Tonda Roga for five days and five nights after she enters the underworld.”

“Good. Now I know why you were all called here. I want everyone to go into the woods and start collecting branches and rocks.”

“But whatever for?”

“We have a yarn to spin,” she told him in her perky, mischievous way, deliberately being mysterious. “I'll reveal all in my own time.” She gave him a wink. He blushed.

* * *

It took plenty of hard work, encouragement and grit but she had the problem completely under control two weeks later when a landing party from her ship appeared in the courtyard.

“You're out of uniform, Cadet Fredericks,” Captain Flash Morgan said with a low appreciative whistle.

“Like it?” she asked, twirling to show off the slight tulip skirt of her slithery saffron silk slip, which she had just been modelling for the doctor.

“Very much, but what's going on here?” he asked, taking in the long line of people stretching from the cave, through the courtyard and out the doors of the hospital into the woods, where spindles, looms, tatting shuttles, crochet hooks and dyepots were busy transforming the gray fibers into colorful, slinky material and strips of lace.

“Just saving the planet, sir,” she said with a snappy salute. “As ordered.”

“Isn't she wonderful?” the doctor asked from a kneeling position. He had been about to kiss the hem of her garment when the crew showed up. Darn it, Victoria thought mutinously, if momentarily.

“And can you tell me, Cadet Fredericks, just how you're doing that?”

“Because she's the Tonda Roga,” the doctor said.

“I asked her,” Captain Morgan told him.

“No need to be rude, sir,” Victoria reminded her superior officer of his diplomatic obligations. “The doctor, I'll have you know, is the high priest of this planet and by doing a--er--reading, he discovered I was supposed to save it. Of course, I'd already saved it from the Hasslebads but the reason it NEEDED saving was because the internal net, this sort of organic technical thingy inside the planet, had broken down. Only a Tonda Roga could fix it, but since it was sacred here, none of the other girls had a clue what to do and ended up getting enveloped.”

“So you slew the monster with your laser gun?”

“No, sir. My laser gun was broken, sir. In the crash when I was injured destroying the hasslebad ship, sir. But I didn't need a laser gun. See, nothing malevolent was at work, actually.”

“It wasn't? But it enveloped all those girls?”

“An avalanche isn't malevolent, sir, but it still kills people. This was more like a flood--of all these little silky things, wiggling out and tickling me all over. I had a torch with me and before my torch went out I saw that there were these long wormlike creatures way back in the tunnel. When I felt the gray stuff trying to roll over me, I realized it was similar to silk. It's the stuff the web is made of and the wormthings--”

“The dragons,” the doctor corrected.

“The dragons, are like giant silk worms. Only problem is, over the years, being sacred and all, they've multiplied too often and have spun so much silk that they can't escape to become giant moths. The silk was blocking all the tunnels and exits and there was so much of it there was no longer any room for anything else except for the worms, who pushed it out into the tunnels a little farther with every movement. That's how come it enveloped the other Tonda Rogas.”

“She diagnosed our planet's ailment. Its arteries were clogged,” the doctor told Captain Morgan. “The gods told her that we must accept the bounty not needed for the web and make of it useful items. Always before cloth woven from the web was sacred--it is from it that our
unga rao roga
come, and our other ceremonial garments. But it was very scarce, emerging from the ground only at certain holy places. Now, however, all are to wear sacred garments both inner and outer, giving the dragons space to weave, room to grow and time to fly.”

“The giant moths are the early warning system,” Victoria said. “They sense spacecraft within a certain distance and communicate this to their children, the dragons, who cause the web to send off certain biochemical signals that make the planet sort of er--disappear. Kind of like a chameleon.”

“Good work, Fredericks,” Captain Morgan said. “But what I don't get is how you figured all this out?”

“Well, sir, fine fabric has always held a certain--fascination for my family. And I knew how to repair cloth from an early age. My mother was extremely particular about the condition of my --er--
unga rao roga
and didn't want me ever to go out with holes in my underwear. Naturally when the spinning, weaving, and dying portions of primitive culture survival came up in Space Cadet Academy Survival Skills 101, I paid close attention to these portions as vital to good grooming and wardrobe maintenance. It came in handy, as did my handy Space Corps knife. I owe my training and equipment--and my mother--my life.”

“And we owe the lives of our people and that of our planet to this lovely young lady, our Tonda Roga...” the doctor said, taking her hand with a sigh.

“Well, sir,” Captain Morgan said, checking his chronometer, “It's always a pleasure for the Corps to be of service. We're glad to have had one of our people instrumental in saving you folks here on Hotel Whiskey. But now Cadet Fredericks must return to the ship and receive her commission as Ensign Fredericks of the Space Corps.”

The doctor and High Priest snapped his fingers and the three hundred handmaidens sprang forth, each bearing a full set of lingerie made to Victoria's measurements and in every color of the rainbow. They piled the garments around Victoria's feet while she squealed with glee at each new arrangement of lace, each naughty or nice detail, each glowing color.

Then, taking Victoria's hands in his, the doctor looked deeply into her eyes and said, his voice trembling with suppressed passion, “My sweet titian haired earthling Tonda Roga, you must take these
unga rao roga
back with you as a token of our thanks and esteem. In place of your holey undergarments, we give you holy undergarments to wear and remember our reverence for your beauty and bravery. It will warm my--uh--heart, to imagine part of us so close to certain parts of you.” Then he turned so that he stood beside her, facing her superior officer and now his voice with its quaint charming accent was full of primitive dignity and nobility, “As for you, sir, were you sleeping at the Academy when they taught that diplomacy requires you to learn the name of a world as it is called by its own inhabitants? Our world is not called Hotel Whiskey, but is named for the lovely trees that grace its surface and provided the wood for the first sacred spindle. As for this gorgeous and valiant creature, she may be to you Cadet Fredericks or even Ensign Fredericks, but to us she will always be our own Tonda Roga, Fredericks of Holly Wood.”