“Must I?” I asked.
“Don't whine!” Fi said brightly. “Nobody will ever take you seriously if you whine, Ralphie. Anyway, you owe me a favor. Several favors, actually. If I hadn't covered up for you that time when Boris Oblomov and you got drunk and took Uncle Featherstonehaugh's yacht out for a spin around the moon without checking the anti-matter reserve in the starboard gravity polarizer...."
“Yes, Fi,” I said wearily, when she finally let me get a word in edge-ways: “I surrender. I'll take Jeremy. But I don't promise I'll be able to look after him if I die on the drop. You realize it's under mortal jeopardy rules? And I can't guarantee I'll be able to protect him from Laura if she shows up again running that bestiality mod your idiot pal Larry thought it would be a good idea to install on her when she was high on pink noise that time—"
“That's enough about Larry,” Fi said in a voice dripping liquid helium. “You know I'm not walking out with him any more. You'll look after Jeremy for two weeks and that's enough for me. He's been a little sulky lately but I'm sure you'd know all about that. I'll make certain he's backed up first, then I'll drop him off on my way to São Paolo skyport, right?"
“What ho,” I said dispiritedly, and put the phone down. Then I snapped my fingers for a chair, sat down, and held my head in my hands for a while. My sister was making a backup of her mammoth's twisted little psyche to ensure Jeremy stayed available for future torments: nevertheless she wouldn't forgive me if I killed the brute. Femmes! U or non-U, they're equally demanding. The chair whimpered unhappily as it massaged my tensed-up spine and shoulders, but there was no escaping the fact that I was stressed-out. Tomorrow was clearly going to be one of those days, and I hadn't even scheduled the traditional post-drop drink with the boys yet....
* * * *
2. The New Butler Calls
I was lying on the bottom of the swimming pool in the conservatory at the back of Chateau Pookie, breathing alcohol-infused air through a hose and feeling sorry for myself, when the new butler found me. At least, I think that's what I was doing. I was pretty far-gone, conflicted between the need to practice my hypersonic p-waggling before the drop and the urge to drink Laura's absence out of my system. All I remember is a vague rippling blue curtain of sunlight on scrolled ironwork—the ceiling—and then a huge stark shadow looming over me, talking in the voice of polite authority.
“Good afternoon, Sir. According to the diary, Sir is supposed to be receiving his sister's mammoth in the front parlor in approximately twenty minutes. Would Sir care to be sober for the occasion? And what suit should Sir like to wear?"
This was about four more sirs than I could take lying down. “Nnngk gurgle,” I said, sitting up unsteadily. The breather tube wasn't designed for speech. Choking, I spat it out. “M'gosh and please excuse me, but who the hell are you?"
“Alison Feng.” She bowed stiffly, from the waist. “The agency sent me, to replace your last, ah, man.” She was dressed in the stark black and white of a butler, and she did indeed have the voice—some very expensive training, not to mention discreet laryngeal engineering, went into producing that accent of polite condescension, the steering graces that could direct even the richest and most irritable employer in directions less conducive to their social embarrassment. But—
“You're my new butler?” I managed to choke out.
“I believe so.” One chiseled eyebrow signaled her skepticism.
“Oh, oh jolly good, then, that squishie.” A thought, marinating in my sozzled subconscious, floated to the surface. “You, um, know why my last butler quit?"
“No, sir.” Her expression didn't change. “In my experience it is best to approach one's prospective employers with an open mind."
“It was my sister's mammoth's fault,” I managed to say before a fit of coughing overcame me. “Listen, just take the bloody thing and see it's locked in the number three guest dungeon, the one that's fitted out for clankie doms. It can try'n destroy anything it bally likes in there, it won't get very far an’ we can fix it later. Hic. Glue the door shut, or weld it or something—one of her boyfriends trained the thing to pick locks with its trunk. Got a sober-up?"
“Of course, sir.” She snapped her fingers, and blow me if there wasn't one of those devilish red capsules balanced between her white-gloved digits.
“Ugh.” I took it and dry-swallowed, then hiccupped. “Fiona's animal tamer'll probably drop the monster off in the porch but I'd better get up'n'case sis shows.” I hiccupped again, acid indigestion clenching my stomach. “Urgh. Wossa invitation list for tonight?"
“Everything is perfectly under control,” my new butler said, a trifle patronizingly. “Now if Sir would care to step inside the dryer while I lay out his suit—"
I surrendered to the inevitable. After all, once you've accepted delivery of a dwarf mammoth on behalf of your sister nothing worse can happen to you all day, can it?
Unfortunately, I was wrong. Fiona's chauffeuse did indeed deposit Jeremy, but on a schedule of her own choosing. She must have already been on the way as Fi was nattering on the blower. While Miss Feng was introducing herself, she was sneakily decanting the putrid proboscidean into the ornamental porch via her limousine's airlock. She accomplished this with stealth and panache, and made a successful retreat, but not before she completed my sister's act of domestic sabotage by removing the frilly pink restraining rope that was all that kept Jeremy from venting his spleen on everything within reach. Which he commenced to do all over great-uncle Arnold's snooker table, which I was only looking after while he was out-system on business. It was the triumphant squeaking that clued me in that we had problems—normally Jeremy manages to achieve a preternaturally silent approach while he sneaks up on one with mischief in what passes for his mind—as I headed toward the stairs to my dressing room.
“Help me,” I said, gesturing at the porch, from which a duet for Hell's piccolo and bull in a china shop was emanating.
The butler immediately rose in my estimation by producing a bolas. “Would this serve?” she asked.
“Yes. Only he's a bit short for a mammoth—"
Too late. Miss Feng's throw was targeted perfectly, and it would have succeeded if Jeremy had been built to the scale of a typical pachyderm. Alas, the whirling balls flew across the room and tangled in the chandelier while Jeremy, trumpeting and honking angrily, raised his tusks and charged at my kneecaps. “Oh dear,” said the new butler.
I blinked and began to move. I was too slow, the sober-up still fighting the residual effects of the alcohol in my blood. Jeremy veered toward me, tusks raised menacingly to threaten the old family jewels. I began to turn, and was just raising my arms to fend off the monster (who appeared dead-set on editing the family tree to the benefit of Fiona's line) when Miss Feng leaned sideways and in one elegant gesture ripped the ancient lace curtains right off the rail and swiped them across my assailant's tusks.
The next minute remains, mercifully, a confused blur. Somehow my butler and I mammoth-handled the kicking and struggling—not to mention squealing and secreting—Jeremy up the rear staircase and into the second best guest suite's dungeon. Miss Feng braced herself against the door while I rushed dizzily to the parlor and returned with a tube of InstaSteel Bulkhead Bond, with which we reinforced the stout oak partition. Finally my stomach rebelled, quite outraged by the combination of sober-up and adrenaline, at which point Miss Feng diffidently suggested I proceed to the master bathroom and freshen up while she dealt with the porch, the pachyderm, and my suit in descending order of priorities.
By the time I'd cleaned up, Miss Feng had laid a freshly manufactured suit for me on the dresser. “I took the liberty of arranging for a limousine to your club, sir,” she said, almost apologetically. “It is approaching eighteen o'clock: one wouldn't want to be late."
“Eighteen—” I blinked. “Oh dear, that's dashed awkward."
“Indeed.” She watched me cautiously. “Ah, about the agency—"
I waved my hand dismissivel
y. “If you can handle Jeremy I see no reason why you couldn't also handle great-uncle Arnold when he gets back from Proxima Tau Herpes or wherever he's gone. Not to mention the Dread Aunts, bless ‘em. Assuming, that is, you want the job—"
Miss Feng inclined her head. “Certainly one is prepared to assume the role for the duration of the probationary period.” Sotto voce she added, almost too quietly for me to catch: “although continuing thereafter presupposed that one or both of us survives the experience...."
“Well, I'm glad that's sorted.” I sniffed. “I'd better trot! If you could see the snooker table goes for repair and look to the curtains, I'll be off, what-what?"
“Indeed sir.” She nodded as if about to say something else, thought better of it, and then held the door open for me. “Good night, sir."
* * * *
3. The Dangerous Drop Club
I spent the evening at the Dangerous Drop Club, tackling a rather different variety of dangerous drop from the one I'd be confronting on the morrow. I knew perfectly well at the time that this was stupid (not to mention rash to the point of inviting the attention of the Dread Aunts, those intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic), but I confess I was so rattled by the combination of Laura's departure, my new butler's arrival, and the presence of the horrible beast in room two that for the life of me I simply couldn't bring myself to engage in any activity more constructive than killing my own brain cells.
Boris Kaminski was present of course, boasting in a low-key manner about how he was going to win the race and buying everyone who mattered—the other competitors, in other words—as many drinks as they would accept. That was his prerogative, for, as the ancients would put it, there's no prize for second place; he wasn't the only one attempting to seduce his comrades into suicide through self-indulgence. “We fly tomorrow, chaps, and some of us might not be coming back! Crack open the vaults and sample the finest vintages. Otherwise you may never know.... “Boris always gets a bit like that before a drop, morbidly maudlin in a gloating kind of way. Besides, it's a good excuse for draining the cellars, and Boris's credit is good for it—"Kaminski” is not his real name but the name he uses when he wants to be a fabulously rich playboy with none of the headaches and anxieties that go with his rank. This evening he was attired in an outrageous outfit modeled on something Tsar Putin the First might have worn when presiding over an acid rave in the barbaric dark ages before the re-enlightenment. He'd probably found it in the back of his big brother's wardrobe.
“We know you only want to get us drunk so you can take unfair advantage of us,” joshed Tolly Forsyth, raising his glass of Chateau !Kung, “but I say let's drink a toast to you! Feet cold and bottoms down."
“Glug glug,” buzzed Toadsworth, raising a glass with his telescoping sink-plunger thingie. Glasses were ceremoniously drained. (At least, that's what I think he said—his English is rather sadly deficient, and one of the rules of the club is: no neural prostheses past the door. Which makes it a bit dashed hard when you're dealing with fellows who can't tell a fuck from a frappé I can tell you, like some high-bandwidth clankie heirs, but that's what you get for missing out on a proper classical education, undead languages and all, say I.) Goblets were ceremonially drained in a libation to the forthcoming toast race.
“It's perfectly all right to get me drunk,” said Marmaduke Bott, his monocle flashing with the ruby fire of antique stock-market ticker displays: “I'm sure I won't win, anyway! I'm sitting this one out in the bleachers."
“Drink is good,” agreed Edgestar Wolfblack, injecting some kind of hideously fulminating fluorocarbon lubricant into one of his six knees. Most of us in the club are squishies, but Toadsworth and Edgestar are both clankies. However, while the Toadster's knobbly conical exterior conceals what's left of his old squisher body, tucked decently away inside his eye-turret, Edgestar has gone the whole hog and uploaded himself into a ceramic exoskeleton with eight or nine highly specialized limbs. He looks like the bastard offspring of a multi-tool and a mangabot. “Carbon is the new—” his massively armored eyebrows furrowed—"black?” He's a nice enough chappie and he went to the right school, but he was definitely at the back of the queue the day they were handing the cortical upgrades out.
“Another wee dram for me,” I requested, holding out my snifter for a passing bee-bot to vomit the nectar into. “I got a new butler today,” I confided. “Nearly blew it, though. Sis dumped her pet mammoth on me again and the butler had to clean up before I'd even had time to fool her into swearing the oath of allegiance."
“How totally horrible,” Abdul said in a tone that prompted me to glance at him sharply. He smirked. “And how is dear Fiona doing this week? It's ages since she last came to visit."
“She said something about the Olympic skiing season, I think. And then she's got a few ships to launch. Nothing very important aside from that, just the après ski salon circuit.” I yawned, trying desperately to look unimpressed. Abdul is perhaps the only member of the club who genuinely out-ranks Boris. Boris is constrained to use a nom de guerre because of his position as heir to the throne of all the Russias—at least, all the Russias that lie between Mars and Jupiter—but Abdul doesn't even bother trying to disguise himself. He's the younger brother of his Excellency the Most Spectacularly Important Emir of Mars, and when you've got that much clout you get to do whatever you want. Especially if it involves trying to modify the landscape at mach twenty rather than assassinating your elder siblings, the traditional sport of kings. Abdul is quite possibly certifiably insane, having graduated to orbital freestyle re-entry surfing by way of technical diving on Europa and naturist glacier climbing on Pluto—and he doesn't even have my unfortunate neuroendocrine disorder as an excuse—but he's a fundamentally sound chappie at heart.
“Hah. Well, we'll just have to invite her along to the party afterward, won't we?” He chuckled.
“Par-ty?” Toadsworth beeped up.
“Of course. It'll be my hundredth drop, and I'm having a party.” Abdul smirked some more—he had a very knowing smirk—and sipped his eighty-year Inverteuchtie. “Everyone who survives is invited! Bottoms up, chaps?"
“Bottoms up,” I echoed, raising my glass. “Tally ho!"
* * * *
4. The Sport of Kings
The day of the drop dawned bright and cold—at least it was bright and cold when I went out on the balcony beside the carport to suit up for my ride.
Somewhat to my surprise, Miss Feng was already up and waiting for me with a hot flask of coffee, a prophylactic sober-up, and a good-luck cigar. “Is this competition entirely safe, Sir?” she enquired as I chugged my espresso.
“Oh, absolutely not,” I reassured her: “but I'll feel much better afterward! Nothing like realizing you're millimeters away from flaming meteoritic death to get the old blood pumping, what?"
“One couldn't say.” Miss Feng looked doubtful as she accepted the empty flask. “One's normal response to incendiary situations that get the blood pumping is a wound dressing and an ambulance. Or to keep the employer from walking into the death trap in the first place. Ahem. I assume Sir intends to survive the experience?"
“That's the idea.” I grinned like an idiot, feeling the familiar pulse of excitement. It takes a lot to drive off the black dog of depression, but dodging the bullet tends to send it to the kennels for a while. “By the way, if Laura calls could you tell her I'm dying heroically to defend her virtue or something? I'll see her after—oh, that reminds me! Abdul al-Matsumoto has invited us—all the survivors, I mean—to a weekend party at his place on Mars. So if you could see that the gig is ready to leave after my drop as soon as I've dressed for dinner, and I don't suppose you could make sure there's a supply of food for the little monster, could you? If we leave him locked in the garret dungeon he can't get into trouble, not beyond eating the curtains—"
Miss Feng cleared her throat and looked at me reproachfully. “Sir did promise his sister to look after the beast in person, didn't he?"
I stared at her, somewhat taken aback. “Dash it all, are you implying...?"
Miss Feng handed me my pre-emptive victory cigar. She continued, in a thoughtful tone of voice: “Has Sir considered that it might be in his best interests—should he value the good opinion of his sister—to bring Jeremy along? After all, Lady Fiona's on Mars, too, even if she's preoccupied with the après ski circuit. If by some mischance she were to visit the Emir's palace and find Sir sans Jeremy it might be more than trivially embarrassing."
“Dash it, you're right. I suppose I'll have to pack the bloody pachyderm, won't I? What a bore. Will he fit in the trunk?"
Miss Feng sighed, very quietly. “I believe that may be a remote theoretical possibility. I shall endeavor to find out while Sir is enjoying himself not dying."
“Try beer,” I called as I picked up my surfboard and climbed aboard the orbital delivery jitney. “Jeremy loves beer!” Miss Feng bowed as the door closed. I hope she doesn't give him too much, I thought. Then the gravity squirrelizer chittered to itself angrily, decided it was on the wrong planet, and tried to rectify the situation in its own inimitable way. I lay back and waited for orbit. I wasn't entirely certain of the wisdom of my proposed course of action—there are few predicaments as grim as facing a mammoth with a hangover across the breakfast table—but Miss Feng seemed like a competent sort, and I supposed I'd just have to trust her judgment. So I took a deep breath, waited another sixty seconds (until the alarm chimed), then opened the door and stepped off the running board over three hundred kilometers of hostile vacuum.
The drop went smoothly—as I suppose you guessed, or I wouldn't be here to bend your ear with the story, what? The adrenaline rush of standing astride a ten centimeter thick surfboard as it bumps and vibrates furiously in the hypersonic air-flow, trying to throw you off into the blast-furnace tornado winds of re-entry, is absolutely indescribable. So is the sight of the circular horizon flattening and growing, coming up to batter at your feet with angry fists of plasma. Ah, what rhapsody! What delight! I haven't got a poetic bone in my body, but when you tap into Toadsworth outside of the club-house's suppressor field that's the kind of narcotic drivel he'll feed you. I think he's a jolly good poet, for an obsessive-compulsive clankie with a staircase phobia and knobbly protrusions; but, at any rate, a more accurate description of competitive orbital re-entry diving I haven't heard from anyone recently.
Asimov's SF, January 2007 Page 15