New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers (6 page)
Read New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers Online
Authors: Alexei Panshin
“These girls seem to be in order,” he said at last. “But what about you?”
Angrily she stabbed at the top paper. “That. That is mine.”
“Oh. Oh, yes. Picture doesn’t look much like you.”
While they were talking, the girls enjoying their keeper’s discomfiture, a gentleman separated himself from the others in the waiting room. He walked to where the Trog was standing apart and spoke with him for several minutes. The Trog had his back to the counter and Alice had a clear view of the gentleman. He was young and well-dressed, short and slightly built. His hair was brown and hung free. His features were not so regular and perfectly fashioned that he could be called handsome, but he had definite presence.
Alice attracted Louisa’s attention with a bare nudge. Without turning her head, she whispered, “How about that one?”
The gentleman apparently took note of their gaze. He glanced at them, glanced again, and then returned his attention to the Trog towering over him. He finished speaking and the Trog turned and walked flatfootedly away. Phibbs made no comment on his departure.
Alice suddenly found her arm tightly clutched by Louisa, the other girl making the lightest of excited gasps.
The young gentleman walked directly up to them. He salaamed and said, “Miss Parini, how delightful to see you. I must confess it’s something of a surprise.”
Alice could hardly contain herself. “Miss Parini” was no one but Louisa. And Louisa was inclining gracefully.
“Mr. Villiers,” she said.
Mrs. Bogue, stacking her papers together again, turned and said, “What is it that you think you are doing?”
In a barely audible whisper, Louisa said, “She’s taking us to school.”
Villiers, who may have heard Louisa, had already turned to Mrs. Bogue and salaamed beautifully.
“My good madam,” he said. “Your servant. I am a friend of some standing with Miss Parini’s family. May I join your company? I have been here in Star Well some few days, and I think I may know my way here well enough to save you time and extra steps.”
“Well,” she said, “I must say that it is pleasant to meet a young man for once who has sense.”
“Anthony Villiers,” he said, and smiled.
Make no mistake about it, he could be charming when he cared to be. I confess I don’t understand the ins and outs of charm. Godwin introducing himself in this manner would have seemed sinister, oily and dangerous, never winning. Villiers, ordinarily reserved, won Mrs. Bogue immediately and with no apparent effort. There is no question: life is not fair. I hope you didn’t think it was.
* * *
Phibbs said, “Sorry, these papers aren’t sufficient. I know my book and none can say I don’t. Any Restricted Sentient that comes through, I got to register . . . ah, register his . . . ah, Red Card, Permit to Travel, and . . . ah, record his destination and length of stay.”
“He’s a fellow clergyman, sir,” said Srb. “Do you mean to doubt his integrity?”
“I don’t know what I mean. Where was I? Yes, look, regulations aren’t my business. I just do my job. I pay—I mean I get paid for doing what I’m supposed to do and I know what I’m supposed to do and he can’t go through, and that’s all.”
Torve said nothing. He just stood there on his great flat feet like a lump.
Srb said, “He can’t leave on a ship unless he checks out through you. Am I right?”
“Yes. No! Yes! Look, go away. Your papers are all right and you’re holding up my line.” Phibbs motioned for Srb to move on. “And, uh, you stand over there out of the way for a minute.”
Srb said, “I’ll see if I can’t get you released.”
“Thank you, but is not necessary, I think,” Torve said. He removed himself from the line and stood where Phibbs had indicated.
Srb picked up the bag he was carrying by hand, gathered his skirts about him and like a great red water animal out of his element betook his fatness into the waiting room. He paused, looked at the people about him one by one, and then moved on.
Normal practice for a newly-arrived passenger who intended to spend any time in Star Well would be to go immediately to the Accommodations Desk in the waiting room. The only exceptions would be people leaving within hours and the very few who could not afford to pay nine thalers a day for an inferior room and who chose to wander as inconspicuously as they could manage from one public area to the next. Srb, of course, did not fall into either of these exceptional categories, but nonetheless he did not go to the Accommodations Desk.
He was looking over the people in the waiting room with some exasperation for the third time. He was standing near the exit, and was about to abandon the room altogether when an urgent “Hsst” brought his attention about. Behind him, just outside the waiting room, was a tall, awkward-appearing, soberly dressed young man.
The boy made a recognition signal in his palm. Left little finger, right palm, cross drawn bottom to top, right to left, and quadrants dotted in proper order. Srb responded with the countersign.
“You, I take it, are Junior Lieutenant Adams.”
“Yes, sir, General Srb.”
Srb was not a general in any military organization nor even in any of several religious or charitable hierarchies. He was an Inspector General of the Empire, in rank equal to a Commodore in the Navy, and merited the appellation of general as a title of courtesy. He was himself a Mithraist with some private interest in the subject of comparative religion, but he was not a priest. He often dressed as one, however, the better to pass without undue attention in strange and suspicious sectors. A fat layman is one thing; a fat priest something else altogether. One can be questioned without embarrassment and the other cannot. Embarrassment is perhaps not the grandest and noblest way of putting others off-stride, but Srb cared little for niceties, rather more for results, and a great deal for his own safety and comfort. And he was not altogether unaware of the little privileges, portions, and propitiations that a priest automatically attracts—what might be called the benefits of clergy.
“Why didn’t you meet me in the waiting room in a normal fashion?”
“Him,” Adams said, pointing to Villiers, who was now engaged in conversation with the Trog. “I didn’t want him to see us together.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Anthony Villiers. I think he
knows
something.”
“Just what does he know?”
“That’s the trouble, sir. I’m not sure.”
“Perhaps we had best meet in your rooms, then. Give me your number and we’ll be certain that he doesn’t see us together.”
Only when Srb had the number and location of Adams’ room and Adams himself had departed did Srb finally present himself at the Accommodations Desk. By then there were several people ahead of him. He took his place in line and set his bag down. As he did, Torve the Trog, having left his place by the line, came up.
“Is all right now, “ he said.
“Is it?” said Srb. “Very good, my friend. Shall we meet for dinner as we planned?”
The man just ahead of him in line turned at the sound of his voice. “Oh, Padre,” he said, “I hadn’t realized you were there. Please go ahead of me.”
“Why, thank you, son. Bless you.”
“I will see you later for dinner,” Torve said, and left the waiting room. Before Srb reached the head of the line, the man who had been pointed out to him by young Adams also left in company with Mrs. Bogue and her five young female charges.
* * *
Now, Villiers was there to meet Torve the Trog. When Torve stepped to the side, Villiers crossed the invisible line that kept those in the waiting room separated from the arriving passengers. He took no notice of the other arrivals but went directly up to Torve.
“Same old thing?” he asked, although that was not the primary question in his mind.
“Is as usual,” Torve said.
“The day we find some proper papers to copy, things will be much simpler.”
“Oh, I do not mind.”
“What are the conditions?”
“Wait here one minute.”
“Hmm. That’s not so bad. Now the important thing. The remittance was not on Luvashe. Did you find it on Morian?”
“No,” said Torve the Trog.
“God help us. I’ve halved my bills here, but I spent my last royal yesterday. I’m down to pocket change.”
“I found news,” Torve said. “Remittance was on Morian but we had left, so was urgented forward to Yuten.”
“Well, that’s some relief. No doubt they’ll be surprised to see us turn up again so soon. In any case, this will take some thinking about.”
“Minute is up.”
“Good.” Villiers told Torve how to reach their quarters and how the door might be convinced to let him enter. “I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. I see someone I think I know.”
“I have composition to think on. I will meditate until you arrive,” said Torve.
“Thurb.”
Villiers approached the covey of females, and Torve, his minute of waiting at an end, turned and walked away. Phibbs said nothing. He took no notice of the departure. When the line had passed him and he was closing up his counter, he may have had the feeling that he had mislaid something, but if he did, he didn’t mention it.
5
M
AN ONCE THOUGHT FIRE TO BE THE WRATH OF THE GODS
unleashed. Man learned to unleash a little wrath, too. Man once thought that flying was a sport reserved for the pleasure of birds, bats, and horses, but man learned how to share their pleasure. A thousand things, dimly understood, feared, thought beyond control, have been added when their time has come around to the grab-bag list of the possible. Still, some few things elude understanding, and of these one of the chiefest is the kid business.
For a time, control was thought to be within reach. Parents could order their children to specification as they might order a home, clothing, or any items of style. Happiness? Not by a damn sight. Ignorant parents found themselves saddled with children far more intelligent than themselves. Society found itself with a preponderance of females or males as the winds of fashion blew. And there simply is no way to turn a child in on a new model when the old one is found to be not quite as advertised or when one’s tastes change.
Over five or six hundred years, all sorts of experiments were undertaken, but somehow in these modern times most babies continue to be born by the traditional method—catch-as-catch-can. The experiments never fulfilled expectations. No parent who can afford it will willingly settle for a malformed or idiot child, but neither will he order a child from a checklist.
But ordinary kids are unsatisfactory, too. One might wish that every parent could have a child who was consistently agreeable, never disputed authority, never disobeyed a sensible dictate, and in time grew up to be something he could understand and approve of. But children, even ones ordered from checklists, simply don’t come that way.
In a family of conformists, at least one child will turn to cropping his head bald and performing contortionist exercises in the name of sport. In a family of the bizarre, at least one child will long for the security of a billion people who will dress, think, eat, work, and play as he does, and comfort him. There is no way to prevent it. If you will remember, Socrates was condemned to death for corrupting the youth of Athens. He never did. The parents simply didn’t know what time it was and needed someone to blame things on. And by private report, the Nashuite Emperor finds his second son’s interest in Morovian Agrostology both perplexing and disturbing and has had any number of royal rows with him, during which he has tried to convince the boy to drop his study of grass in favor of more fitting pursuits. And, as might be expected, he has had no luck.
The results of a twenty-two year study of parent-child relations begun in 914 by the Petenji Institute indicated that in those days there was an eighteen percent chance that a parent would consider that his grown child had turned out badly, and a thirty-seven percent chance that he wouldn’t understand him even if he were willing to accept him. And this says nothing about the ordinary conflicts involved in raising a child. I don’t suppose that six hundred years have changed matters appreciably.
Poor incompatible families have a greater problem than rich ones. At best, a poor father can send his boor of a son off to work in a field six miles in an opposite direction, ignore him at meal times, and spend his evenings in a different corner. A rich father has a more effective traditional ploy known as the remittance. In essence, a young man is requested to travel—anywhere—and is provided with a reasonable amount of money as long as he stays away from home.
This may be a happy solution—if the money arrives in the proper place at the proper time.
* * *
When Villiers returned to his rooms, Torve the Trog was sitting on the floor making
thurb, thurb, thurb
noises. His anatomy and fashion of sitting were such that his knees overlapped and his brown furry feet stuck out to the side. They were broad, spatulate things, not at all his most attractive feature. In actual fact, he had little to offer in the way of attractive features. He was large and lumpy and fur-covered, and his head seemed not to be in proper proportion to his body. What he most resembled, in fact, was a six foot tall mammalian toad that by some freak of nature walked upright. The one thing that kept him from being repulsive was his bulgy blue eyes. They were not merely little circles of blue—they were glowing aqua orbs that a medieval king would have been proud to trade a minor daughter for. A minor king might well have made that his major daughter. Even in these more enlightened times, Trog’s Eye Blue has a connotation of appealing warmth.
The
thurb, thurb, thurb
noises were High Art. Villiers was not sure of the principles of the art, however, and Torve was unable or unwilling to explain them, but which of the two Villiers was also uncertain. At times he thought it was a matter of rhythm, at times modulation, at times subtle changes in amplitude. In any case, though he might not understand the art form in its own terms, nonetheless he did not find it objectionable. Think of it as the random chirping of a cricket or the wurble of the Fidelian ironworm.
“ . . .
Thurb
. . .”
Villiers let the door slide shut behind him and began stripping off his clothes.
“Catch the boot, will you, Torve,” he said.
The Trog helped him to remove the tightly fit high-heeled boots and Villiers sighed in relief.
“There are times when I think my feet are spreading. Or perhaps they’re still growing.”
He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. Torve returned to his composition. Even if Villiers had not been informed that Torve was inventing rather than practicing something he had put in final form, he would have known, or thought he would. It lacked a certain necessary
je ne sais quoi
of a polished work. Villiers lay listening for some minutes, putting his thoughts in order. Then abruptly he rose and crossed to the service corner. He left the picture off, feeling no need to honor a minor functionary with the sight of him in his underclothing. But for you who might be interested, their color was beige, his stocks were calf-length and well-filled, his body-piece cut with some looseness, and his curdler a Grene & McKenna worn in a reverse holster on his left hip. Villiers asked to be connected with Accommodations.
“
Thurb. Thurb
. . . .”
“This is Mr. Villiers in the Palatine Suite.”
“Oh, yes, sir!”
“It seems that my plans have altered somewhat. I’m not leaving tonight as I told Mr. Shirabi. I’ve decided to remain here at Star Well for some few days more. Will I be able to retain my present rooms, or will it be necessary for me to change them?”
“Pardon me, sir. I’ll check.” The clerk turned in the service screen and checked quickly. “No problem at all, sir. You can stay just where you are.”
“Very good,” said Villiers, and prepared to sign off.
“A moment, sir. I can’t see you and I keep hearing an odd throbbing noise. Is the service in order?”
“Perfectly in order. Thank you.”
Villiers turned. “Well, the least of our problems is settled.” He sat again on the bed. Idly he tugged at the fringes on the canopy. “What we are going to do for enough money to leave here and reach Yuten, I don’t know.”
Without looking up, Torve said, “Is no need to worry. All will come to evenment.”
“Hmm?”
“No need to worry. I do not worry.
Thurb. Thurb
. I have confidence.
Thurb
. In time fullness, many lines of occurrence come together—they make . . .” Words failed him and with paws he made a rounded motion and then planed it smooth. “We go then to Yuten, have money, all is well. See you?”
“I understand that you are confident.”
Torve brightened. “Ah, you see.”
“No.”
“Oh, well, you are still good fellow, Tony. You understand little, but you are still good fellow.”
“Thank you. For lack of any choice, I’ll accept that as a compliment.” Villiers pulled the holster free of the body-piece, the grip-tite backing making its usual skritchy protest at being parted from what it had seized so tenderly. He set the holster down and began to strip off his stocks.
“Who was young female girl creature?”
“She’s the daughter of a man I met several years ago—more than a bit of a rogue. One of the Parini-Blinoff-Branko Clan.”
“These names?”
“They’re all related to each other. If you meet a man with one of those names, it’s a sign to be wary.”
“But you call the father rogue? You?”
Villiers laughed. “Am I a rogue, Torve?”
Quite seriously, Torve said, “In some times.”
Villiers laughed again. “Mr. Parini is a rogue in all times. In any case, Louisa Parini is being taken by that engagingly horrid woman to school on Nashua. I know the school. A school I was expelled from—for roguery—used to have us practice our hardly learned manners on their girls. I don’t envy Louisa. I think Miss McBurney invented stuffiness.”
“You are dressing to go out?”
“Yes. I have Mrs. Bogue’s permission to escort Louisa to dinner in the Grand Hall. A few thalers isn’t going to affect our bill particularly, and I think she will enjoy herself. Would you like to join us?”
“No. Is thought, but I have seeing with Mithra Priest Srb. We will eat dinner. He understands little, too, but is needful for lines of occurrence that we . . .” He again made his rounding and planing motions.
“And our traveling together—is the key to that lines of occurrence, too?”
“Ah, you do understand.”
“No,” Villiers said. “But pleased as I am that our lines of occurrence coincide, little as I understand the principle, from my side I would say the cohesive force was friendship.”
“How could friendship be so important? I do not understand.”
Villiers was delighted. “I knew it. The day would come, at long, long last, and at last it has.
You
don’t understand.”
“
Thurb.
Is my new composition. No, you have very strange mind. I do not understand. But is no mattering: favorable line of occurrence and friendship travel together. I like you—means nothing to me. Line of occurrence grabs you by neck and will not re-free you—means nothing to you. We still go to Yuten together and both of us are happy.”
“I’ll be happier when the bills are paid and we are on our way.”
“No need to worry. All will come . . .”
“I know. I know. All will come to evenment.”
“Please tell me when is time to go to Yuten.”
“I will.”
* * *
Alice Tutuila bounced on the bed and said, “Oh, wow! Dinner in the Grand Hall, and Mrs. Bogue is letting you go. How did you
do
it?”
Louisa was looking through her clothes. “I don’t know what I should wear. Help me decide, Alice. I’m so excited!”
“But who is he—Mr. Villiers, I mean? You never told me. How do you know him?”
Alice aimed the questions in Louisa’s general direction without anything so time consuming as a check to see which, if any, reached their intended target. Louisa, for her part, was insulated by her concern for her appearance, her mingled excitement and apprehension, and her own stream of comment. The result was a mild sort of bedlam, thoroughly enjoyed by both girls, but enjoyed rather less by Alice when she realized how little she was receiving in the way of cold, hard, specific information. She rose from the bed and crossed the room.
“What have you got there?” she asked. “Oh, no, that won’t do. Here, let me help you.”
She
hmm
ed her way through Louisa’s dresses. “How do you expect to have him make you his mistress and carry you away in any of
these
? You’d better wear something of mine.”
They crossed to inspect Alice’s wardrobe. “Isn’t it nice to have some
room
? I feel like just standing and breathing.”
“It is better, isn’t it? At least you’re not going to sit up and bang your head tonight.”
“Here. Try this on. I didn’t let Mother see I took it, but I figured it might come in handy. It’s very stylish.”
Louisa held it up. “I can see. There isn’t a lot to it, is there?”
“That’s the point, silly. Now go on.”
Louisa crossed to the dressing room. In a moment she said, “I can’t reach all the fastenings.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get them. Let’s see what you look like.”
Louisa posed in the door. “It’s not that it’s skimpy. I just don’t think I’m quite ready for it yet.”
She was right. It hung where it should have clung, partly because she lacked something of Alice’s height, partly because she lacked something of Alice’s development.
“I suppose you’re right. We may have to make do with your blue. It’s nice enough, but it’s so
young
.”
“Well, I’m young. I am young.”
“But how can you get him to carry you away to a life of passion? Not in your blue.”
“That was
your
idea, Alice. I just want somebody to help me.”
“Do you think he will?”
Louisa took the blue dress to the dressing room and tunneled into the fabric. Her muffled voice said, “I don’t know. I’m going to ask him.”
“Who is Mr. Villiers and how do you know him?”
“I don’t know exactly who he is. He and Daddy know each other from sometime, and he stayed with us once. I thought he was older then, but he’s not really very old, is he?”
“Less than thirty, I think,” Alice said. “He does seem nice, but maybe a bit stiff.”
Louisa came out. This dress indisputably fit better, and actually became her more. The dress had a wholesome look, and she, like it or not, as she might not now, but certainly would later when she had time to appreciate the advantages, did also.
“Fasten me, please,” Louisa said.
Alice came to her assistance. It is a perplexing question why women’s garments should invariably be made in such a fashion that either contortion or assistance is required to close them. It is certainly not an insoluble problem to design closures that do not interfere with the lines of the clothes and are still within ready reach. The easiest answer might be that there are advantages in being able to ask to be done or undone.
Louisa said, “He really isn’t that stiff. At least I don’t remember him that way. I remember him as being very funny.” She began to look through her extra trappings and hangings.
