“Her name is Princess Hatari,” Sal said. “I’ve invited her over to dinner. See that the chaps get cleaned up as quickly as they can, all right?”
“Yes. sir! Is she pretty, sir?”
“Pretty troublesome,” Sal muttered.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Never mind. Just tell everyone to get ready. Dress uniforms.”
Dick Fogarty saluted and left.
“What are you going to do, sir?” Toma asked.
Sal said, “I’ll tell her that we’re enemies after dinner.”
CHAPTER SIX
Sal asked the princess to wait for half an hour while Dick Fogarty detailed a group of men to act as caterers’ assistants. They found plans for a party in an old manual. The men went to work at once, hanging bunting up on the walls, gluing paper emblems into prominent positions, waxing the floors and replacing dead light bulbs from the big overhead electric candelabra in the Officers’ mess. Suitable music was found in the ship’s library: baroque pieces which lent the air of stately procession that the military loves so much, as well as military two steps, and marches for tuba and trumpet.
Sal supervised it all. It was important to him to get this right.
The officers wore their best uniforms for the occasion. In their neatly pressed whites, with military caps pulled over their eyes at a rakish angle, they looked the very soul of the military establishment.
The autocook was reprogrammed to Banquet Mode. It took a few minutes for it to get used to the change, so long had it been doling out GI rations based upon Spam and rehydrated mock chicken. Now, however, the finest and most exquisite of foodstuffs were taken from ship’s stores, defrosted and reconstituted with loving attention.
At the appointed time, the mess hall was brilliantly lighted with real candles set upon the sideboards. The long table was set with an immaculate white table cloth. The settings were laid with the squadron’s finest china and silverware, taken out of storage for this gala occasion.
The room had been hastily re-paneled in genuine redwood shingles, part of the booty taken from the sacking of Oregonia, Planet of the Big Trees.
Salvatore sat at the head of the table, resplendent in the red and purple uniform of a bubaldar second-class in the Sforza Condottieri. His second-in-command, sometimes known as Dirty Dick, was cleanly shaven for a change. He sat at Salvatore’s left hand. The place of honor on his right was reserved for Princess Hatari.
The officers talked quietly among themselves. They were not allowed to drink until the guest of honor had arrived, but they were permitted to smoke.
Ever since the invention of the artificial lung replacement operation in 2307 by Doctors Baxter and Cough, cigarettes had regained their previous role as chic indulgences. There was no reason now for anyone in the civilized galaxy not to smoke, since the lung replacement operation was simple and painless, involving no more than the sniffling of a tiny pill up a nostril, which, seated in the remnants of the tattered and blackened lung, would presently expand and exfoliate, like a growing sponge, dissolving old lung material and expanding until it occupied a predetermined mass.
A smart slap on the back was sufficient to start the new lungs working. If no one was around to perform the requisite back-slap, one could thump oneself on the chest with a patent chest-starter supplied free of charge. The new lungs worked even better than the original models, and it was often wondered why mankind had not thought of this centuries ago, rather than forego the pleasures and benefits of smoking.
R.J. Reynolds the 25th, present President of the Universal Humanoids Assembly, and a direct clone of his famous tobacconic ancestor, had endorsed the product himself. Non-smokers were looked down upon as “not quite men, if you know what I mean.” Even Sal smoked, though at sixteen, he was still on his original set of lungs.
The princess made her appearance, to a round of applause from the officers. She was clad in a white ballgown that embraced her splendid figure with a tactility that could not be overlooked. She had little fire opals in her ears, and a necklace of emeralds around her neck. Brilliant as her jewelry was, her eyes, which ranged in color from amethyst to sapphire depending on the lighting, outglittered them all. She seemed a symbol of all that was finest in the ancient art of planetary ruler-ship, and the officers applauded as she took her seat on Sal’s left.
“Princess,” Sal said, “you are most welcome to our battleship. Allow me to introduce my officers.”
Introductions were made and duly acknowledged by the princess. At last they could turn to the real purpose of the evening: eating, and, above all, drinking.
“Allow me to serve you a portion of this duck aspic,” Sal said. He could be gracious, this teenage leader of the Sforza StarSwarm in the Semiramis region.
“You are most kind,” Hatari said. “And what is that beige-colored dish with the complicated lid at the far end of the table?”
“That is a gruel of stewed peacock tongues,” Sal said, “lightly seasoned with marjoram, vermillion and censta, and mixed with a base of carrot and lilies. But permit me also to serve you this dish of baby Belgian beets stuffed with tiny bifurcated breadfruits, a specialty of the island stars of the far Outreach.”
“How courteous you are!” exclaimed the princess. “I could only wish that you were a man several years my senior, because we could then get together and enjoy those pleasures which hitherto I have enjoyed only in the pages of sleazy novels and ancient soap opera tapes.”
“Princess,” said Sal, “that is a good and courteous declaration on your part. Perhaps we can discuss it further at a later time.”
“Perhaps we can,” the princess said. “I will have Kukri remind me, since a princess cannot be expected to remember everything.”
“And who, pray tell, is Kukri?”
“He is my companion, servant, and banker,” the
Princess said.
“Of what race is he, if I may enquire?”
“He is a member of a race also called Kukri.”
“Forgive my denseness, Princess,” Sal said, “but is he perchance of an invisible race? For I have not seen him here at this banquet ”
The princess laughed, a mellifluous sound. “He is still in my spaceship, recuperating from his hibernation. I have sent a message to him in Hibernation Mode, requesting his presence, and he has signified through modem that as soon as he comes out of his petrified yet necessary sleep, he will be happy to join us.”
“That is good news indeed,” Sal said. “Allow me to present my second-in-command, Dick Fogarty. And this many-tentacled creature here on my lap is Toma, a spider-robot, perhaps my best friend here in Space as well as my humble servant.”
Toma folded his two topmost tentacles in a hieratic gesture. Fogarty said, “Pleased to meetcha, Princess. The presence of a lady queen or princess looks fine indeed in our humble mess hall.”
“How genteel,” the princess said, fluttering her eyelashes.
Just then there was a knock at the space-lock.
“That would be Kukri,” Princess Hatari said.
Sal made a gesture, and two giant regimental Nubians, especially unfrozen and revivified for this occasion, tall dark men with gorgeous many-colored turbans, unlocked the hatch and threw open the great circular door. Standing in the doorway was a small creature about the size of a badger. He had an otter’s whiskers, and pointed ears like a wire-haired terrier. He wore a red plaid coat which, open at either end, allowed his head and bushy tail to protrude. Animallike he may have been, but a lively intelligence shone in his brown eyes and each paw had three fingers. Over the coat, he wore a green and silver cloak with high collar, breeches, and a small gray felt cap that might have been of sentimental value to him, since it afforded him little in terms of spectacularity.
“Hello,” he said, “I’m Kukri of the Kukris.”
“You are the princess’ banker, I believe?” Sal said.
“And her friend, too, I would like to believe.”
“Come, take
your seat here at the table.” Sal turned to the bodyguard standing behind him with drawn laser rifle. “Put that down for a moment and fetch an omni-species adjustable chair for Kukri.”
The chair, a superAmes with fourteen adjustable posture-planes and twenty-three degrees of softness, was quickly produced.
“This will do nicely,” Kukri said. He pattered across the room on all fours and jumped up to the chair, which was positioned between Hatari and Sal.
“Tell me, Princess,” said Dick Fogarty, “if you have already been appointed to a planet, what do you need with a banker?”
The Princess laughed—a sound like tubular bells, only somewhat higher in pitch.
“I can see, Sir, that you know not the ways of royalty. We are supposed, when we come to a new planet, to throw a party for all the inhabitants. That costs a pretty penny. And although we get it all back in taxes, it must be paid for at the time. As you probably know, Universal Caterers accept nothing but solid money of a kind that can be traded easily on any interstellar exchange, market or bourse. So it was incumbent upon me to find a means of financing the aforesaid feast in order not to bring shame upon my home planet of Excelsus, and my ancestors, whoever they might be.”
“That makes sense,” Sal said.
“I’m glad you think so,” Hatari said.
“Tell us, Princess,” Sal said, “how did you come to lose this world we are to get back for you?”
“I have always wanted to own my own planet,” she told Sal and his officers, simulated fire from the simulated wood fireplace making her eyes sparkle. “There’s just something about it, having a whole world all to yourself. So when Mr. Kukri here offered to finance my obligatory coming-out party, I jumped at the chance.” Mr. Kukri said, in a squeaky high-pitched and slightly pompous voice, “On my planet we do not say ‘jumped at the chance.’ We say ‘speeded into the mouth of opportunity.’”
“How interesting,” Sal said, with a frown.
“Thank you,” the Kukri said, secure in the self importance that imbues many badger-like creatures. “Yes, I was happy to finance the princess in her endeavor. And there’s something my race gains by it, too.”
“Indeed?” said Sal.
“By the terms of my deal with the princess, we gain a home. Know, gentle Sir, we Kukri had been searching for a planet of our own for quite some time. It was tragic how we lost our own, but that is another story. You see, as you may have noticed, we are nonhumans, so from the princess’ point of view, it would be as if we were not there. That makes it possible for her to share a planet with us without actually sharing one, if you know what I mean.”
The Princess said, “So Kukri advanced me the money for the party and a few other things, like a throne, and I signed the papers and got title to Melchior and was just preparing to move in when I learned that, between the time of my acceptance of the offer and my actual arrival, a tribe of Balderdash had moved in and thrown things into an uproar.”
“Couldn’t you have them served with papers?” Sal asked. “I thought there were agencies of the Universal Ruling Board who took care of matters like this.”
“Naturally, we applied to the proper authorities,” Hatari said. “But you know what it’s like in the bureaucracy.”
“I understand the situation a little better now,” Sal said.
“Are you going to help us?”
“Perhaps we could discuss that after the banquet.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
After the banquet, the badger-like Kukri tapped at the door to Sal’s stateroom.
“The door’s unlocked,” Sal called out.
Kukri entered. “You sent for me, sir?”
“You are Princess Hatari’s banker, is that correct?”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“You paid her a considerable sum to allow your race to share the planet Melchior with her.”
“Yes sir, we did. I signed the agreement myself. I had to find a home for my people.”
Sal said, “I see by my atlas that Melchior is four fifths water. Were you disappointed when you discovered there was little land?”
“Not at all. We Kukris plan to evolve quite soon into a water-breathing species.”
“Why should you want Melchior so badly?”
“It is a planet whose atmosphere fits our needs just as it is. We can’t afford to replace the air.”
He went on to explain that the Kukri race had been having many troubles in recent years. Once, they were quite a respectable species. They got along well with everyone. Then it was noticed that they had no opposable thumbs. Since intelligent races were always known to have opposable thumbs, the Kukris were downgraded to “intelligent animals” and their credit rating was irreparably damaged. Nobody wanted to trust an unintelligent species, not even though they were a race that held sing-songs involving millions of participants. That was considered interesting instinctive behavior, but hardly worthy of being called intelligent.
The trouble was, the Kukri weren’t very ingenious mechanically, and this put them at a disadvantage against all of the other intelligent species. They could talk up a storm, but they couldn’t even open a can with a standard can opener, much less drive a screw with a screwdriver or do anything that required the use of an opposable thumb.
There were two types of opposable thumbs available those days in prosthetic device form. One was purely decorative, looked just like a genuine opposable thumb, and was rather more imposing than many of that ilk. But it couldn’t move. It was a model of a thumb rather than a working thumb in itself.
Those who could afford it bought the other device, a genuine opposable thumb. This thumb could not only touch all the fingers of the hand without assistance from the other hand, but also could bend at various angles of 360 degrees due to its ingenious ball-and-socket jointure.
Those who had these thumbs were even more dexterous than those born with natural opposability. The thumbs were constructed so, during sleep, the opposability feature could be turned off, in order to store up energy for the next round of use. This gave them advantages over other races with the old-fashioned natural kind.
“So you see, Sir,” Kukri said, “the gaining of this planet means everything to us. We have nothing left to sell. Our own planet, Kukriphipolis, has no resources left. We sold them off years ago. Even our crops have been sold far into the future, to the Grumphul Debt Collectors who put them to uses too esoteric to mention. In fact, we Kukris are planning to slink off in the night, all of us, and move lock-stock-and-barrel to the new planet. We need to avoid the bailiff who will strip us of our life support systems.”
“But if it’s mostly water,” Sal said, “what will you do? You’re not amphibious yet.”
“Not yet. We have already invested heavily in prefabricated underwater cities by scraping together the last wealth our planet afforded us: the last big trees, the semi-precious ores, the trash fish, the varmints canned for dog food, everything we could put together. We made a bargain with the princess, and I was sent along to make sure the terms were carried out.”
“I’m afraid you’ve gotten yourselves into one hell of a mess,” Sal said.
“Looks that way,” Kukri agreed morosely.
“You must have known her claim to a Sforza contract was invalid. “
“I suppose I did, sir.”
“Your people really haven’t behaved very intelligently in this.”
“I suppose not. But will you get our planet back for us?”
“I had better discuss that directly with the princess.” Sal said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Sal and Toma were alone with Princess Hatari in the gloomy reception room just behind the mess hall, the young commander lost no time getting right to the point.
“Princess, you haven’t been playing fair with me.”
“Why do you say that?” she said evasively.
“You lied to me, for one thing. I’ve looked over that contract you cited. I don’t see your name as one of th
e contracting parties.”
“You checked up on me, huh?” the princess said, walking into the room and haughtily seating herself near the TV console.
“Your name doesn’t appear as a signatory to the contract you cited. What’s the story, Miss Princess, and, for that matter, what place are you a princess to? I mean, one doesn’t meet princesses every day.”
“Especially if one is only sixteen years old,” the princess said with a little bite to her voice. “But know, young man, that I am a born princess of the planet Fulvia Liviana.”
Salvatore turned to the robot. “That strikes a bell, though F can’t think why. Ever hear of the place?”
“Of course,” the robot said. “It’s the mail-order royalty planet out near Archimedes, where you can send in a few hundred credits and get a parchment giving you a title and even a bit of land to go with it.”
“Oh, this is outrageous!” the princess said. “Am I to have my royal credentials questioned by a weird octopus and a young squirt who thinks he’s hot stuff because he commands a battleship?”
“This young squirt saved your life,” Sal said quietly. “Of course, you may prefer to return to your spaceship and go away. The Balderdash are probably lurking nearby.”
“I’m sorry,” Hatari said. “I just hate being asked questions in an intimidating manner. You have rather a stern way about you, you know. Attractive, but stern.”
“So I have been told,” Sal said.
“I’m sorry I called you a squirt. And I apologize to you, Toma.”
“Actually,” Toma said, “we consider it a compliment to be likened to octopi.”
Sal said, “Let’s get back to business. Princess Hatari, you have not properly identified yourself as a Sforza client.”
“But I gave you the contract number!”
“Your name is not on it as a contracting party.”
“It’s not? It must have been an oversight.”
“Hardly. You are mentioned in the contract, but as the Enemy.”
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