The Undesired Princess (3 page)

3

Hoimon took his hand away with a puzzled frown. “How now? Is not the greatest reward that King Gordius can bestow enough for you?”

“Not that at all,” said Hobart. “This infradimensional world of yours is very interesting, but I can’t stay around to admire it. Want to get back to my work.”

“Strange,” mused Hoimon. “But I fear I cannot help you. I must return to the Conical Mountains to collect my bed of nails, after which I must punish myself for doing violence to the integrity of living creatures in bringing you here and causing the death of the androsphinx.”

“Can’t you even tell me how to get back?”

“Nay, that I cannot. Of all the ascetics of Logaia, I alone have achieved sufficient spiritual perfection to pass from universe to universe.”

“Well—look here, I didn’t ask to be brought; I’ve got every right to return. If you refuse to take me back you’re doing more violence to my integrity; constructively, that is.”

Hoimon frowned. “Now that you put it that way—”

“What is this?” groaned the lion, who had left off shaking the androsphinx’s corpse and ambled over. “Who makes my mistress cry?” Hobart looked around, startled, to see the princess with her hands pressed to her face and her shoulders shaking.

“My love—” she got out “—wants—to go away!”

“Huh?” cried Hobart in new alarm. “I’m sorry, miss, but I’m not your love! I’m a confirmed bachelor! I—”

He stopped at a low rumble from Theiax: “You talk foolishness, champion. Rescuer
always
falls in love with princess and versy visa. You behave, or—”

“What?”

“Guess,” said the lion, showing fangs.

Hoimon the ascetic slapped Hobart on the back. “That settles that, O Rollin,” he said cheerfully, “for I should be committing a greater constructive violence if I conducted you hence, thereby causing Theiax to eat you, than by leaving you here. Farewell!” He took a hitch in his towel, and off he strode twirling his stick.

Hobart watched him go with sagging shoulders. The lion sat down in front of him and cocked his head on one side. “What is matter?” he grumbled. “Man does not look mournful when he marries girl who is clever, good, and beautiful! Look, I do trick!” Here the lion lay down and rolled over. Hobart could not help smiling.

“Better,” said Theiax. “Here comes His Altitude.” The lion lay down and began licking the scratches inflicted by the late androsphinx.

Hobart turned as a faint tooting, and thumping came to his ears. Across the red gravel advanced a procession: undoubtedly the party that had lately occupied the top of the nearest black dome. In the lead puffed a stout, white-bearded man in a long robe and a crown. The party with him included a standard bearer in a glittering brass cuirass—his standard was a pole on which was a square of stiff black material with the word “RAIT” in white block letters—several men in tight suits like that of Prince Alaxius, and some soldiers in kilts and chain-mail shirts; some of these last carried spears and circular shields, others antique-looking muskets.

Princess Argimanda had already started to run to her father. Prince Alaxius gathered up his art equipment and sauntered after, and the social lion padded after the prince. Hobart, feeling more ill at ease without his peculiar company than with them, followed.

The princess turned from the king as Hobart approached and cried: “Father, this is my peerless champion and future husband! His name is—uh—”

“Rollin something,” said Prince Alaxius.

“Well, well,” beamed the king. “Where’s that eccentric Hoimon? Somebody must make a proper introduction, you know.”

“He’s gone,” said the prince.

“Too bad,” wagged the king. “Charion, you’ll have to do it.” He spoke to a tight-garbed, hatchet-faced man at his right; a bald, sinister-looking person with a large black mustache, the ends of which turned up arrogantly.

Charion shrugged. “It’s non-regulation, Your Altitude. Anyhow, I present the puissant prince, Rollin Something. Rollin Something, you stand before that high and mighty autocrat, Gordius the Affable, king of Logaia.”

“R-r-r,” muttered Theiax nearby. “You kneel.”

“Huh? Me?” Hobart looked around.

“Yes, you,” persisted the lion. “Court ekkytet.”

Rollin Hobart’s rugged independence did not take kindly to kneeling before anybody, but he went to one knee, lowering his face to conceal his scowl.

“Arise, Prince Rollin,” said the king. “Welcome to the bosom of the Xerophi family!” He spread his pudgy arms.

Hobart glanced sidewise at the social lion. “What do I do now?” he hissed.

“Embrace His Altitude!” the lion whispered back.

This, thought Hobart, was the damnedest thing yet. He allowed the king to subject him to the double hug used by Latin Americans.

When Rollin disentangled himself from the king, he protested: “There must be some mistake, Your Altitude. I’m not a prince; just an ordinary practical engineer . . .”

The king waved him to silence. “You needn’t be modest with me, my boy. A prince is a king-to-be; you’re a king-to-be; therefore you’re a prince, heh, heh.”

“You mean half your kingdom?”

“Of course, of course; you can pick either half, too.”

“But, Your Altitude, I don’t know anything about running kingdoms . . .”

“You’ll learn quickly enough. Anyway my daughter can only marry a person of the rank of prince or better; hence you must by definition be of the rank of prince or better.”

“That’s another thing!” cried Hobart. “I don’t know where the young lady got the idea I was her—”

“R-r-r-r,” went Theiax. Hobart subsided. Come da revolution you eat strawberries and like ’em, he reflected.

Charion was plucking at the king’s sleeve. “Sire, is it not about enough amenities . . .”

“Eh? Yes, yes, I suppose so. Time to return, of course; the queen must be told and must meet her new son-in-law. You, Charion, take charge of Prince Rollin Something. Laus!”

He spoke to a thin, elderly man in a dark-blue robe and a conical hat. As the word was pronounced to rhyme with “house,” Hobart half-expected to see the oldster display resentment; but he learned eventually that “Laus” was a name, not an epithet.

The king continued: “Get out the wings of the wind!”

The old man shucked a bag off his back, loosened the drawstring, and began to take out small umbrellas and hand them around. Hobart took one and looked at it in puzzlement. There was no cloud in the sky. Everybody was taking an umbrella except the lion Theiax. Prince Alaxius was standing close to the king and talking quickly in low tones; Hobart caught: “. . . a simply impossible fellow, I tell you; look at that suit he’s wearing; it’s of a color that doesn’t exist. And he argues all the time . . .”

“Later, later,” muttered the king. “If he couldn’t argue he wouldn’t have overcome the androsphinx.”

The princess was bending over the lion, who had resumed licking his wounds. She asked: “Dear Theiax, can you return to Oroloia afoot all right?”

“Sure,” grumbled the lion. “Mere scratches.”

“Why didn’t you wait till the androsphinx had shrunk down smaller?”

“That is not sporting,” said the lion.

“Silly males,” said the princess, giving the beast a pat.

Since Charion had been detailed to take care of Hobart, Rollin Hobart attached himself to the sinister-looking courtier. He held out his umbrella and asked: “What’s this thing?”

“The wings of the wind,” replied Charion.

“I know; but what does it
do?”

“We’re traveling on the wings of the wind, Your Dignity. How do you expect us to do that without any wings of the wind to travel on?”

“Yes, but how does it work?”

“Oh. You grip the handle tight, and when the king opens his, you open yours and it takes you. We used to travel as the crow flies, but Laus’ crow-wings were dangerous to use, so last year he invented this.”

“Who’s Laus?”

Charion looked annoyed. “The Wizard of Wall Street, of course.”

“Huh? I don’t get it.”

Charion concealed his exasperation with visible effort. “Laus is the royal wizard; Wall Street is a street built on the city wall, on which is the royal wizard’s official residence. Now do you understand?”

“Ready, everybody?” cried King Gordius. Everybody raised his umbrella.

“Go!” shouted the king, and snapped his wing of the wind open. Hobart did likewise with his. At once a terrific wind smote him from behind and almost wrenched the umbrella out of his hand. His feet left the ground, and he was trailing through the atmosphere behind the device. It swooped this way and that. When he got a glimpse of the rest of the party, now quite a distance off, he observed that they were all sailing along serenely in a sort of formation. The trick apparently was to grip the handle in both fists just in front of one’s solar plexus. Hobart did, and soon found that he could manage the contrivance easily.

He caught up with the convoy, his hair and clothes blown stiffly forward by the gale. A soldier—the commander to judge by his plumed helmet and gold-plated mail-shirt—shouted: “You could use some practice, couldn’t you, youngst—I mean Your Dignity?”

The princess threw him a tender smile that made him shudder. He thought of making a break for freedom, but the sight of the disciplined ease with which the soldiers managed their umbrellas with their left hands and their spears and muskets with their right dampened the idea.

They swept over the string-straight boundary at which the red desert and the blue jungle left off and yellow crop-land began. A city came into view and expanded to a mass of prisms, spires, and domes, every last structure either black, white, red, yellow, or blue. The most remarkable feature was a tall screen or lattice arising from each of the four walls, which formed a square. The streets inside were laid out on a strict gridiron plan. In the center of the square was a cluster of extra-large buildings which Hobart took to be the local Kremlin.

The wind dropped as they approached the walls, and the windborne fliers dropped, too. They came to a running landing on a broad stretch of lawn that ran around the walls. Hobart almost pitched forward on his nose; the officer caught his arm.

“Thanks,” said Hobart. “What’s your name?”

“General Valangas,” grinned the soldier. “Chancellor Charion should have introduced us, but he wouldn’t of course. Here he comes looking for his ward.”

The man with the Wilhelm II mustache came up closing his umbrella. “You made the trip, I see,” he said inanely, staring down his nose. Laus was collecting the umbrellas and putting them back in his bag.

Hobart asked: “Why didn’t we land inside the walls?”

“Laus’ work,” answered Charion. “He doesn’t allow the wind inside the walls, for fear they might bring in an army of barbarians. That lattice—” he pointed “—keeps out the west wind; the others keep out the east, south, and north winds.”

“Are those the only winds you have here?”

“Obviously! A wind is either a north wind or it isn’t!”

The bugler blew, and the drummer drummed, and the king and his company walked briskly up to the huge gate. There were more tootings from inside, and the gate creaked open. An explosion made Hobart start; as his eye caught a puff of thick white smoke drifting from a gate tower there was another report, and so on. By the time the salute had ended they were under the archway.

An arm was slipped through his; it was the red-haired princess, gazing fondly up at him. “Dear Rollin,” she murmured, “let us not start our life together with such cool formality!”

Hobart fumbled for an answer; life together my foot, he thought. He should have taken a firm stand sooner. He should have made a break for freedom while they were flying on the wings of the wind; he certainly shouldn’t have let them get him into this crowded city. Not that Rollin Hobart was so completely hostile to the institution of marriage as he sometimes professed. He had considered favorably the possibility of waiting till he was forty and then marrying some squab half his age; with that advantage of years and experience, he could bring the girl up in the way
he
thought she should go. A romantic marriage would be bad, and an insane union with an incredible female from a delirium-world in which he did not fully believe would be out of the question.

But Hobart said nothing for the present, as he seldom hurt people’s feelings—deliberately, that is—and, more practically, though Gordius might be called the Affable Monarch, he might use an ax on those who presumed on his affability too far.

Besides, to walk down the avenue arm-in-arm with an intoxicatingly beautiful woman was a self-justified act. The people lined the sidewalks and bowed and waved in most entertaining fashion. And the city itself was worth seeing. It reminded Hobart of a world’s fair wherein the exhibits constituted the crowds. Besides the uncompromisingly brilliant colors of the geometrically severe buildings, the people presented an incredibly heterogeneous aspect. The clothes included robes, togas, shawls, gowns, saris, turbans, burnooses, and the hardly decently tight coveralls such as worn by Prince Alaxius and Chancellor Charion. A man in a spiked helmet and white cloak pulled his mount over to one side; the man’s skin was black; not any mere negroid chocolate-brown, but the black of india ink. The mount was a camel-like beast, yellow with black rings all over, like a leopard.

“Good God, what are those?” said Hobart, pointing.

“Those?” said the princess. “Oh, just Ikthepeli savages, in Oroloia to sell their fish.” The savages were a family of tall, flat-faced, butter-yellow people with soup-bowl haircuts. Papa Ikthepeli came first with a spear and a bone through his negligible nose; then came mama Ikthepeli with a baby slung on her back, and then five children, diminuendo. All were quite naked.

“Who is God?” added Argimanda.

“Huh?” Hobart frowned. “Let’s see—the creator and ruler of the universe, or so most of us are taught in my world. Personally I’m willing to concede that He probably exists, but I doubt if He pays any attention to anything so insignificant as the human species.”

“That sounds like our Nois,” said Argimanda. “But Nois is not indifferent to the human inhabitants of this world—quite the reverse. Anybody can see him any time he wants.”