New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers (27 page)

11

I’
LL BET YOU NEVER HAD AN ADVENTURE
in your life.

The savant Aldahondo, whose best remembered
bon mot
is “nothing ventured, nothing lost,” would have approved. He had no truck with adventure. He held his life tightly, so that none might touch it and thereby do it damage. And so do most of us. We live lives we know to be safe, comfortable, and dull.

Secretly, however, we envy those who toss dice over their lives. Adventure is theirs. But Solomon “Biff” Dreznick had lost his life three times in a reckless pursuit of danger and knew not adventure. Adventure is not adventure to those who cannot feel.

Secretly, we envy those who dare greatly in the name of romance. Adventure is theirs. But Gillian U was many well-dared miles from home and bound, moreover, on purposes that could only be called romantic, and she knew not adventure. Adventure is not adventure to those who have to deal with the strange and frightening.

But why do you crave adventure? Life and death surround you. Your lives are chanced every day. And you, you confident people, stride through life dealing with danger and romance so automatically and professionally that you never even notice them.

You have adventures. Aldahondo had adventures. He just never admitted the fact to himself. Admit the fact to yourselves. Go ahead. Find your adventure in the common experience of every day.

Like Villiers.

* * *

The light was beginning to fade, the sky to clear, and the air to cool when Fred and Gillian arrived back at camp.

Villiers said, “I’m glad you’re back. I need somebody to go fetch water. Tired?”

Fred stripped off his pack. “Not overly. I could use a good dinner, though.”

“Ready in a minute. Somebody has to go for water first.”

Gillian took off her pack. She was tired, but not exhausted.

“We’re going to have company after dinner,” Villiers said.

“That same bunch?” Fred asked.

“Augmented by thirty.”

“Thirty! This was going to be a simple vacation.”

“Yes, I remember. But life offers us possibilities we can’t foresee. They have to be taken advantage of. We’re going to put on a concert for the thirty tonight. And then Torve is going to put on a solo performance.”

Fred touched his mustache, and then sighed. “Oh, all right. Damn you, Tony. If I didn’t enjoy that band, I wouldn’t play tonight.”

Villiers smiled. So did Gillian. She looked at her still-blistered fingers and then decided that yes, she could and would. She looked up and smiled again.

Villiers looked at her and raised his eyebrows, making the minutest of nods toward Fred.

She shook her head.

Fred said, “What is that plonk doing hovering up there?”

Villiers said, “That’s Claude. I can’t get rid of him. I wonder what he’ll make of our music.”

After a minute, Gillian rose and picked up the bucket to fetch water in. Villiers was concerned with the food and Fred was talking.

She walked down the path, swinging the bucket pensively. Tonight.
Yes
, not maybe. The problem was that your mind wouldn’t let you. You have to fool it.

You might start a conversation—if conversation was your forte. You might start a conversation beginning, oh, a million miles away, and leisurely drift with it. The mind soothed. The mind soothed. The tongue carrying the burden. Then you hand the tongue the words you want to say, and they are spoken before the mind can forbid. If you could talk.

But she couldn’t. So she walked, swinging the bucket and thinking.

The answer came when she was halfway back up the hill, walking sideways holding the filled bucket with two hands, one elbow held higher than the other against the slant of the hill. The answer came and she set the bucket down. She clapped her hands once and she smiled broadly.

But, then—she still had it to do.

* * *

Admiral Beagle ran his finger down the back of the long blade. He rubbed his hands together. He seized the sword in a two-handed grip, interlocking the forefinger of his left hand with the little finger of his right hand and laying his left thumb along the sword hilt and under his right thumb. He addressed the small tree.

Hola.

Admiral Beagle was magnificent. The sapling was so overwhelmed by the fury of his attack that it offered no defense; so hypnotized was it by the magic of his blade that it suffered pain without protest. A slice to the left, a slice to the right, and the decapitating stroke—snip, snap, snorum.

* * *

Fred said, “I should have gone for the water, but I wanted to talk to you, Tony.”

“It doesn’t hurt a guest to lift a hand.”

“I suppose not.” Fred sat on a rock. He looked at Villiers busying himself around the fire. The wind batted hands with the fire.

“Have you ever loved a man?” Fred asked. Villiers absorbed the question. “In what sense?”

“Sexually.”

“Not yet. Why?”

“Oh, it’s this business of finding out who you are. I thought I knew pretty much, and now I’m not so sure that I do.”

“Why not?”

“It’s this David, of all people. I touched him today and it gave me such a shock that all I could do was babble something inane about gloves. I’ve been wondering about it all afternoon. I’ve got to say that I find him attractive.”

“Minor lapses count for little in the generous eyes of a benevolent heaven. God will wink at a single sip of wine or an occasional lustful gaze.”

“Oh, it’s not that, Villiers. I don’t mind, except for the reassessing it’s going to take. But I’ve been thinking about David. Should I tell him to go home, or do you want to take over his Big Beaver training? I don’t think I should continue. He’s too young.”

Fred picked up a stone from the ground and flipped it at Claude the Plonk. His aim was better than Villiers’, perhaps because his intentions were less hostile.

“I wish you would stop that,” said the plonk.

When a small pink cloud talks to you, a variety of responses are possible. You can beat your breast and tear your hair, either in fear or in celebration. You can let your eyes roll up and fall back in a dead faint, but then that will cause you to miss much of what is happening.

Fred said, “Do you mind telling me why I should?”

“Yes,” said the plonk. “I’m God. And what is more, I will not wink at a single sip of wine or an occasional lustful gaze. I set a higher standard that that. And I’m not altogether sure I approve of homosexuality, so mind your step.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“No, but you were thinking of it.”

* * *

Ah, the motive power of fan mail. Clifford Morgenstern had spent years wondering which secret force unaccounted for was disturbing the predicted flow of color within his pantograph. Then a letter had come from the Tanner Trust and told him.

The little galloping madman said, “I’m Clifford Morgenstern,” as though that were the key to mysteries.

Comroe looked up. “Yes, may I help you?”

“Don’t you recognize me?” Morgenstern said. “My name is famous. Everybody knows me. I wrote
Color Selection in Galactic Pantography
. You read that, sir, and you will never be the same. Here, let me show you a letter I got from a bright young man on Shiawassee. He knows his books.”

“I’m not supposed to read on duty,” Comroe said politely. “May I be of service to you?”

“Yes, I want that cretinous Admiral Beagle. I have words to say to the man.”

Comroe, of course, was unable to serve exact directions, but suggested that Green Mountain might be a place to make inquiries. “Because that’s the direction the rest of the circus has traveled,” is the way he put it in his mind. He reserved the words.

When Morgenstern had gone off to rent a small bicycle, Comroe shook his head.

“My third author,” he said, “and they were all like that.”

* * *

Solomon “Biff” Dreznik lay aimed like an arrow on the hillside. He had been there all afternoon.

His head was lifted slightly in the grass. His legs were straight, his heels set together. His arms were pressed against his sides. He pointed himself and let the power grow.

He had seen the last of Villiers’ trap making and with admirable professionality recognized it for what it was. He smiled a smile of icy contempt. He sneered a haughty sneer.

The power continued to build within him. From his nether regions warm fires flowed. He couldn’t let them go too soon. He pushed at the red with cold black thoughts, and it pushed back, and a tension built. At first, black holds easily, but then red’s power grows. It becomes a struggle between equals. When black can hold no longer, red bursts forward and the power discharges.

Solomon “Biff” Dreznik lay aimed like an arrow on the hillside, gathering power.

* * *

“I don’t ask much of you,” said Claude. “Just that you do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly hand in hand with me. Figuratively speaking, of course.”

“You’ll forgive me, sir . . . Is ‘sir’ sufficiently respectful?”

“Yes, but you’ll have to put more emphasis on it.”

“You’ll forgive me, Sir,” said Villiers, “when I tell you that mere assertion is not sufficient to compel belief. If you do indeed desire to be worshiped, as you say you do, I think you had better offer some evidence of your divinity.”

“Why should evidence be necessary to belief?” the plonk asked.

“For some people it isn’t,” Fred said. “For us it is. I’m indeed sorry.”

“And I as well,” said Villiers. “Dinner is ready and it cannot be stayed. You will have to give us leave from the discussion until we have eaten.”

“Sir,” the plonk added in correction.

“Sir,” said Villiers, accepting the criticism.

“You should take note of the fact that man does not live by bread alone.”

“Not by bread alone, but by bread.”

Fred said, “All I can say is that you aren’t much of a God if you don’t understand human needs.”

The plonk accepted the rebuke. “Oh, all right,” it said. “What kind of evidence would you find sufficient?”

Villiers said, “I think it would be better, Sir, if you made offer of evidence. After all, you should know if anyone.”

“You mean I have to guess what evidence you might choose to believe?”

“Think about it while we eat,” said Villiers.

He called Torve from the tent where he had been reading. He served Torve his singular vegetarian meal, and then served the others and himself.

After a few minutes, the plonk said, “Would a bolt of lightning do?”

* * *

Ralph stood up and crossed to the railing of the veranda. He stretched. He was feeling pleased with himself.

He turned and said to Smetana, “Do you think well of your bargain?”

“Was not so bad, I think. Maybe enthusiasm does count more than skill.”

Ralph picked up the mandolin. “I think we’d better be starting soon.”

Smetana said, “It’s so pleasant here. A shame to move. Maybe a few minutes more.”

“No, I think we ought to start,” Daisy said. “It will be just as pleasant as we walk.”

Smetana looked at her tenderly. “You know me too well.”

Ralph went down the steps of the veranda and then turned, enjoying the feeling of having eyes on himself. He held the mandolin up like a baton before the building.
Rap, rap
. Attention. And a one, two, three, one, two, three.

Demagogue Ralph, leading his people. They collected at his call and he started them off for Maude Binkin Memorial Campsite and their rendezvous with the cultural wave of the future.

* * *

Kuukkinen said, “I don’t suppose there is any doubt now, Phil. You owe me seven royals.”

“Easy come, easy go,” said Finch. He raised his head.

“Is Dreznik still lying there?”

“Yes. I think Mr. Guillaume and I will have to maneuver our way down to the road and warn Villiers. Unless you want to join in an attack on Dreznik.”

Kuukkinen considered. “No, I don’t think so. Are you aware you’re going to cost me my chances with Villiers?”

“Not at all, Elmo. Not at all. We’ve only seen Dreznik. We haven’t laid eyes on you. In fact, if I were in your place I should be happy to have a decoy.”

“A lot of good a decoy will do me if Dreznik kills Villiers before I can count coup.”

“An excellent point, Mr. Kuukkinen,” Guillaume said. “Excellent. We’ll do our best to save Villiers for you.”

“But not to tip him off,” said Finch.

After they had gone, Kuukkinen rose to his knees and peered down the hill. It was growing too dim to see the camp. Dreznik was a lean black smudge in the grass.

* * *

“How about a miracle? Would that do?”

Villiers said, “What do you consider a miracle?”

“Transubstantiation is generally considered a good one.”

Villiers shook his head. “No, insufficient, Sir. It can be accomplished by mechanical means.”

“Raising the dead?”

“No, much as I’d like to see you do it, and I would, that too is a modern commonplace.”

“I’m beginning to think that I should account stubborn skepticism to be a serious sin. Beware, your credit is growing thin with me.”

“Not at all, Sir. I’m merely treating you with the high seriousness you deserve. Surely you must count the worship of false gods as a serious perversion of natural order.”

“Oh, I do. I do.”

“Well, then, if I look closely at you, it is not out of disrespect, but that I might know you better.”

Fred said, “If I may be pardoned a possibly impertinent question, why have you not previously manifested yourself?”

“I was only elected comparatively recently.”

“By whom?” Villiers asked.

“By the other plonks. When the times dictate, we gather together and elect one from among us to be God. I haven’t been God long. I’m still getting used to it.”

There was the noise of singing from the road signaling the approach of Ralph Weinsider and his band of revolutionists.

Villiers said, “I think I hear our guests.”

Torve said, “Yes. Is guests come to hear
Frobb
.”

Fred took a warm-up toot on his kazoo.

Villiers turned to Claude. “Sir,” he said, “we would be honored to have your company tonight. We’re having entertainment, and after the end of the formal evening, I’m sure there will be opportunity for polite converse. I look forward to continuing our discussion.”