New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers (36 page)
Read New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers Online
Authors: Alexei Panshin
At last he said, “I’m going into town. Run out a flitter, Charles.”
* * *
And at first Charles was too busy to notice. Supervision is necessary if you expect a staff to do more than it possibly can. But Charles was not the only member of the Merry Majordomos on Delbalso by happenstance. He was a member because he was capable of prodigies. His staff not only did more than it possibly could, but it finished with time to spare.
It was only then that Charles truly noticed that the house was empty. All the humans had gone away.
Charles had done exactly as he ought, and the party was ready. But there were no people.
The house was without light, Even Charles’s yellow courtesy light no longer glowed. It was not needed.
With all ready for service—food held hot and cold in stasis, walls strung, entertainments ready for release on command or trip, mechanicals shiny and well-rehearsed, and flower petals in an urn by the door—there was no one to serve.
Charles rolled to the dressing room, and there he looked for some time at a green polka-dotted silk sarong, a diaphanous blouse of cream, and an orange tarboosh. It was only at times like this that being a chattel weighed heavily. He had been built to serve, after all. But not to be abused by orange! At last, however, thinking that he heard the approach of a flitter, he put the uniform on. And he was right—orange did not become him.
He was wrong, however, in thinking he detected a flitter. When he returned upstairs, he found nothing but the robots and mechanicals of the house in gathering. He shooed them into the main hall to wait.
They waited and they wondered.
“Will the people come?” they asked.
“Who knows?” Charles said. “Be patient.” To pass the time, he told them stories in the dark hall as he often had on winter nights when the house was closed and the robots wondered about spring and the reality of Lord Semichastny.
He began: “There was a man dwelt by a churchyard,” which is a good story, full of sprites and goblins, though a trifle sad. However, the mechanicals had heard it too often before and cried him halt.
“Tell another story,” they said.
“And let it be scary,” said the shiny serving table that had brought the message to Villiers.
“But not too scary,” they said.
So Charles began again:
“Once there was an old man and a woman and a little household robot, and they all lived in a house made of hempstalks. The old man had a dog, and he was a little dog, and the little dog’s name was Turpie. And one night the Hobyahs came and said, ‘Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah! Tear down the hempstalks. Eat up the old man. Eat up the old woman. Carry off the little household robot!’ But little dog Turpie barked so that the Hobyahs ran off.”
And he held the attention of the room. As they waited.
7
I
F MY MOTHER’S ADVICE WERE TAKEN AS WIDELY
as she would give it, every man would have two professions. For the common man in a common time, two professions do keep life from becoming commonplace, or so my mother would have it. In headier times, when the palm flourishes and the dates hang heavy and sweet, a second interest keeps a man from bruiting the price of dates over his second helping of date-nut pudding and being a bore to his guests. And in times of drought, a second skill keeps a man.
Like much of the folk wisdom inherited from her simple peasant ancestors, this is sensible conservative advice. It keeps men alive and peasants peasants.
Every man should have two professions—at the least for reasons of security. But lest security become cloying, one of the professions should be a flyer. Something like poetry, or astrology. Or selling ornamental rugs.
Poetry and astrology each had a brief moment of glory, poetry in the days when language was wild and whirling and a man with his words about him could kill with a lightning phrase; and astrology when it was finally realized that everything in the universe affects everything else and that something as consequential as a star or planet must have its effects on human lives. But poetry became shackled by grammars and dictionaries, and astrology became lost in the science of universal ecology. Astrology and poetry have been secondary professions ever since, limited by the normal modesty of people who do not care to have their names linked with stars unless it be done surpassingly well.
As for ornamental rugs, they are notoriously uncertain.
And it is true that two ordinarily chancy professions can be strangely successful in combination. Any pairing of poetry, astrology, and ornamental rugs, for instance, can mean synergetic miracles.
And the trinity, the three-in-one, can mean a saint, a ruler of the sevagram, or Omar Khayyám. Unfortunately, the combination is rare.
* * *
A great heavy bell rolled and tolled above them as Slyne and McBe harried the midnight streets. They coursed a long, sloping cobbleway. Slyne felt close to the questionable Trog. McBe felt terror held in abeyance. As long as he concentrated on following Slyne and didn’t think, he was functional, but when they paused or when he thought, he was afraid.
As the last bell peal finished echoing, they were suddenly surrounded by a crowd of middle-aged men in yellow shorts with embroidered jumper fronts.
“Hold,” they said.
Slyne held, feeling the game whose dim track he had followed so well would escape him. When Slyne stopped, McBe stopped, too. It was that, and not the cry to hold, that caused him to look up. When he saw the strange yellow circle, he nearly fell. He kept his feet by seizing Slyne’s moleskin arm.
“Oh, not now,” said Slyne in a mixed agony of exaltation and exasperation. He inhaled once, a quick sniff, and then he said, “Who are you?”
One swept off a feathered cockade in a grandiose gesture, limited by fat. “Rafael Abdelnoor of the Xochitl Sodality, at your service. You can tell by our colors, of course, that we belong to Schermerhorn House, the best house in the best Monist Association in the quadrant.”
Another said reprovingly, “Don’t be un-Monist, Rafe.”
“Sorry,” said the first, chastened. In less inflated tones, he said, “We’re playing Wonders and Marvels tonight. And we’ve chosen you.”
Then he said to his critic, “I was just enjoying myself.”
Slyne said, “I am sorry. It cannot be. We—my assistant and I—are on urgent affairs on behalf of the Empire. Much as we would like to observe your rituals, I am afraid that we cannot stay.”
Abdelnoor said, “But you’re
here.
That means you’re playing. You shouldn’t be out tonight if you’re not serious about playing. By the way, what are you?”
To this pertinent question, Slyne replied, “I am an Auxiliary Executive Overseer (NIS/9) (Pending).” This was apparent to the trained eye from his uniform, right down to the (Pending), but Slyne did not expect a trained eye in this crowd, so he included the fact.
“No. No, no. What
are
you? What is your ethnos?”
“Oh. I am an Orthodoxou.”
“Well, we haven’t had one of those before.”
What happened next is unpleasant to recount. Mr. Abdelnoor of the Xochitl Sodality had one set of plans for the night and Mr. Slyne of the Rock had another. If they had reasoned calmly with each other, no doubt they could have come to agreement—perhaps a third alternative altogether, halfway between the mountains and the seashore. However, they lost their tempers, raised their voices, and fell into rhetoric.
When the subject became the relative power to command of the Nashuite Empire and the Schermerhorn Chapter of the Xochitl Sodality, windows were opened and the people of the neighborhood made comment.
“Take it away from here! We let you have the streets. Leave us a little peace.”
Mr. Abdelnoor settled his point, which was that while the power of the Nashuite Empire was concededly great, so was it also distant, and that the power of the Schermerhorn Chapter of the Xochitl Sodality, overall totaling considerably less, was immediately somewhat the greater, by having Mr. Slyne picked up bodily by two mature initiates and carried off through the streets. They didn’t pick up Mr. McBe and carry him off, perhaps out of oversight. After all, when it is dark and noisy and sudden, it is extremely easy to be careless of details.
McBe ran after them protesting the oversight, but they were laughing and took no notice. He overtook a trailing two.
“Wait, there! What are you doing with Mr. Slyne?”
“Ho-ho,” they said.
The two turned upon him and used him hardly. They whipped a blindfold over his eyes, and laughed, and spun him dizzyingly until he sat down plump on the damp cobbles.
And then they ran off, their middle-aged feet thumping away into the universal dark that surrounded McBe’s unsettled mind and blindfolded eyes. He sat on the street and cried, and very slowly took the blindfold off. He unknotted it and smoothed it, and then folded it neatly.
While he sat, folding and crying and wondering desolately what to do, happy Christian bells of joy began to chime again.
* * *
It was near peelgrunt, and Villiers had not yet arrived. Parini was not only awake, but agitated.
“Where is he?” he asked. “Do you suppose he took me overseriously when I told him to let us have a good sleep? I never considered him to have much of a sense of humor.”
Miriam Parini said, “But of what use? Those papers for that beast haven’t come.”
“True, but the name has. And Villiers will pay twenty royals for that. What could Treleaven have been thinking of to change his mind so suddenly? Old men are too capricious.”
He began to pace. With Treleaven’s departure, he was suddenly dependent on Villiers’ purse to pay his way free of the Winter-Summer Laws. He tried to see where the advantage lay, and the arguments that would emphasize the advantage. His biggest argument was that he had the name of the man who had twice hired the notorious assassin Solomon “Biff” Dreznik, to put a period to Villiers’s life. That was substantial information.
“Jules, could we ask Zvegintzov’s man for money away? Once off Delbalso we could pay them back in no time, and they know that.”
He stopped. “Not after I just pressured the name out of them. Besides, Zvegintzov’s man was leaving when he called me. There’s no one left to borrow from.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Wait for Villiers,” Parini said. “I suppose I could call around and see what I can find out. Perhaps somebody knows something.”
“Perhaps somebody can tell what happened to the mail from Duden,” his wife said.
“I’ll ask,” he said.
He hurried off to his communications network, cutting through the patio. The Christian’s bells were ringing again and he wondered whether the Christian got the same pleasure from his bells that he got from his communications network. As it happened, the Christian did.
* * *
Slyne was not carried far. He would not cooperate with his yellow-suited captors of Schermerhorn House. He writhed. He kicked. When set down, he would not stand. When picked up again, he was not soothed. He seemed upset. And throughout he made steady complaint. It was not easy to suppress his remarks since they issued from behind the mesh of his sensory amplifier. One hand tried and was nipped severely.
Slyne’s dander was up:
“Dare manhandle an (NIS/9) (Pending)! They have their eye on me, and you will be held to strict accounting for this. They wouldn’t have solved the Diced Strawberry Affair without me!”
That is the trouble with those who love their organizations too dearly. In time of trouble they rely on them, and personal initiative is lost. Slyne was not alone in this. His captors were no better.
Slyne was an uncompromising poor sport, and those carrying him soon grew weary.
“He just won’t play,” they said to Abdelnoor.
After Abdelnoor had his own turn at carrying Slyne—and it would have been un-Monist for him not to have had a turn—he was forced to agree. So he made a signal and they set Slyne down on the pavement.
Abdelnoor faced Slyne severely. He wagged his finger at the wet tip of Slyne’s nose.
“I’ve never met one of your kind before—an Orthodoxou. But I’ll remember you and I’ll see that the word gets passed along. I’ve never seen such behavior. I suppose it’s only what can be expected from the Rock. I can tell you one thing, you’ll never have another chance to play. If you can’t play properly, we just don’t want you around!”
And the body of men all turned away from Slyne and showed him their backs all the way around the corner.
Slyne cocked his head and sampled the night through his amplifier. There was the overwhelming sound of bells.
He thought of tracking back to find the Trog’s trail and then the image of a despairing McBe came to him. He inhaled reflexively.
* * *
“Is it peelgrunt yet?” Villiers asked when he was brought his meal by Ozu Xenakis.
Xenakis ran a bistro and had the greens concession in Delbalso. He charged small fees for use of the green and gardens by singles, couples, and. parties, and his bistro profits paid for the rest. His windows overlooked the green, making his place an easy one for custom to retire to in bad weather, and in good weather the view was pleasant. Even now, in artificial light, it was live and inviting. In addition, as the only spot on Delbalso with an off-world flavor—for Xenakis had spent the first twenty-four years of his life on Luvashe and Posada—his
Centre
was a popular spot for travelers and transients, and the only place on Delbalso mentioned by Wu and Fabricant. It was the place that Lady Oliphaunt had set for her appointment with Villiers—the only place in town fit for an appointment.
Xenakis himself was a good-natured man with overlarge teeth and a ready willingness to talk with anyone on his own subject. He sometimes wondered if the teeth were bad for business and considered having them altered.
“Oh, it’s not yet peelgrunt,” he said. “When it is, you’ll know, right enough. This is the best spot in Delbalso, on Delbalso, for peelgrunt.”
While Villiers was eating, content for the moment with his book posted and peelgrunt still ahead, two men entered the bistro. It was obvious from their manner that they were no more from Delbalso than Xenakis or Villiers. They sat down and ordered. They seemed at odds with the world, finding it duller than they liked.
They were Civilian Research Specialists imported to Delbalso by the Imperial Government to make subtle star sightings and assessments on behalf of the Universal Pantograph Project. This great machine, when completed, it was hoped would model the universe with sufficient exactitude that anticipations might be made. Nashua’s offices were filled with humble men anxious to use any tool that came to hand to further the Empire and Good, and already drooling in anticipation of the Universal Pantograph.
These two men were not power brokers, however. They merely did simple jobs and were paid for them, and the eventual results of their work were distant enough to lack immediacy for them.
One said, “Let’s go back to the Castle.” He looked around the room, empty but for Villiers and Xenakis. “Nothing at all is doing tonight.”
“Let’s look a little longer,” the other said. “It will be weeks before we have another night.”
“Where is everyone?” the first asked. “The only people we saw were some older men running around in red shorts.”
“Oh, those would be from Montague House,” said Xenakis. “It’s the Monist Association’s Xochitl Sodality tonight. Things tend to be quiet on a Sodality night, unless they let you play. Most people stay at home. As you can see, I’m working alone.”
“Monists? Oh, Monists, yes. They’re the ones who put over those Winter-Summer Laws, aren’t they?” one of them said.
And the other said, “They asked us if we were Wonders and Marvels. We said we were just plain us, and they told us to go back to the Rock.”
“They meant the Castle,” said Xenakis. “It’s just a way of speaking they have here.”
He said it gently. He didn’t know what he thought until he said it, and what he said depended in major on who his trade was. A good diplomatic publican and a good man, by his lights.
And the first said to the second, “I told you that you shouldn’t have said we were just us. You should have dressed us up a bit. If you’d told them we were pantographers, maybe they wouldn’t have sent us away.”
Xenakis said, “Well, maybe you can try again later. They’ll be playing all night. The Monists aren’t really so bad when you get to know them. They weren’t really behind the Winter-Summer Laws. That was just a story that was given out. The truth is that the town wanted to get rid of Viscount Semichastny, who lives here in the summer and throws extreme parties. When he’s gone, they’ll change things back in a year or two.”
“Oh, yes,” said the first pantographer. “Lord Semichastny. I heard about him, too.”
“He sold me the sod for the greens out there,” Xenakis said, pointing. “I’ve talked to him several times. He’s really not so bad, either. Not at heart.”
