Astroburger frowned. What did she mean by that? He had assumed he would be free to go after making his spermatic donation, but was he to be held captive? And, come to think of it, where exactly was he? Suddenly, the realisation struck him that he was in the womb of this titanic creature. He had just trudged along a five kilometre-long vagina!
“You must be wondering just how your contribution to our well-being is to be made,” the disembodied voice said with a hint of glee. “Well, don’t worry, that’s been considered – most extensively considered. Look around you, Astroburger!”
At first, Astroburger saw nothing – then in the twilight at the far side of the cavern he perceived a prone form. Female, naked, sleeping.
“Go on,” said the voice. “Kiss her awake. You are her Prince Charming.”
The woman, whoever she was – possibly some humanoid manifestation of the asteroid? – was beautiful and… familiar. Astroburger bent towards the sleeping form and kissed her. The kiss brought animation to the expressionless face and with that animation came recognition. Astroburger’s mouth hung open as he stepped back, momentarily stunned. The beautiful, naked woman whom he had kissed awake in the womb of the living asteroid was none other than the one he feared most in the world – the Queen of Reflections, Queen Beia herself!
“I hope you two will be happy together,” said the asteroid.
Lord Maledor chuckled to himself. This was his finest creation so far!
“Where are my parents?” asked Princess Juraletta, as Gorgie fussed with her hair.
“I thought you’d never ask, child.”
“Do I actually have parents?” Juraletta enquired. “I can’t seem to remember any.”
“Mercy, child – what a thing to say!” exclaimed Gorgon so expressively that a dozen of her snakes reared up expectantly. “Of course you have parents. Every living creature has parents – except, of course, gorgons.”
“Then where are they?”
“Patience, child. Your mother is a little indisposed – it’s all the excitement. Never fear, she will appear at the wedding one way or the other.”
“And father?”
“Well, it’s a little hard to explain, but…”
“Where is he?” Juraletta asked in a shrill voice. The odd thing was that the more Juraletta thought about it, the less she could remember of her father. Wasn’t he tall… and quite large? However, all fathers looked tall and large to small children. And didn’t he have a moustache – or was it a beard? And whatever he looked like, why wasn’t he here?
“Well, he’s sort of here,” Gorgie continued, “though not here… he’s in… oh, I don’t know how to explain it,” she muttered miserably – so miserably that Juraletta felt sorry for her and slipped a consoling arm around her.
“No need to cry, Gorgie.”
Juraletta moved to smack a reluctant kiss on Gorgon’s forehead. Just at the moment of osculation, one of the snakes impertinently raised its reptilian neck and Juraletta’s lips made contact with its wriggling head. She recoiled, though in moderate fashion, so as not to hurt Gorgon’s feelings.
“He’s in a… another dimension,” Gorgon blurted out.
“Will he be at my wedding?” Juraletta enquired anxiously.
“Of course, child,” soothed Gorgon.
Meanwhile (as Gorgon went on to enthuse), all of Qwerty was in a quandary over how to make the princess’s marriage to the duke the most memorable event in the universe, or at least, their particular universe. Enormous games were planned – amiable jousts between different life forms, crucifixions of non-sentient jellyfish, and many other unspeakable delights, providing sport and entertainment for all. Possibly some new species could be conjured by or contacted through Sage…
Juraletta found her mind drifting away from Gorgon’s droning outline of spectacular wedding events to the time she spent soaring with the green-skinned man. When she thought of his jawline, muscles, and firm grip, his protective vigour and confidence, his bold stride, his shoulders, his tight little slip of cloth that revealed almost as much as it hid when he leapt about so manfully, she had a warm feeling near the tops of her thighs, where her soft legs joined in a cleft, slipping inside her like the softest of touches, she was liquidly aflame… She touched herself and waves, small at first, then sweeping through her in larger swells, surged up through her body like a cascade of sweet, gentle shocks. Her skin dissolved into a soft flame, flames of desire that she had never felt before.
“Away with the fairies?” Gorgie was giving her a hard, quizzical look.
“Gorgie,” said Juraletta in a wheedling tone, “I was wondering if I might talk to Sage before I get married.”
“Whatever for, child?”
“Well, you have always told me that Sage is so wise, and since I haven’t been married before I thought he – Sage is a ‘he’, isn’t he? – might be able to give me some advice. I’d like to see Sage as soon as possible.”
“Such an impatient child! All right… you’ll need a map.” Gorgon handed her a small ring with an intricate pattern carved into its glittering surface. Juraletta looked at it in puzzlement. How could a ring be a map?
“Put it on your finger, child. It will guide you.”
Juraletta did as she was told and immediately felt a strong pull bidding her to walk to the end of the corridor, take a left turn, pass several doorways… she walked through room after room until she came to a courtyard, partially covered in a small forest. She stepped into the foliage –
“Ouch!”
“Who says ‘ouch’?” asked Juraletta, for she couldn’t see anyone nearby.
“I did,” said a voice from underfoot. “Make that double ouch.”
“I don’t see the need for any ouching,” said Juraletta very reasonably.
“You don’t?” yelped the voice, sounding more hurt than ever. “You horrid, insensitive little girl! How would you like it if I stood on your hair?”
“I’m sorry,” said Juraletta contritely. “I thought it was a forest.”
“Forest indeed! It’s my beard.”
“So you are… a man?” Juraletta asked, for while ‘ouch’ seemed rather a girly thing to say, beards did tend to be masculine.
“Not necessarily,” said the voice in a querulous tone. “There are such things as bearded ladies.”
“Are you a bearded lady?” asked Juraletta with excitement, for she hadn’t met any bearded ladies.
“I am Sage,” said the hirsute one in a solemn voice. “Kindly state the reason for your visit – and desist from trampling on my facial forest.”
Juraletta took a step back into the doorway.
“Thank you,” said the voice in a much more friendly tone. “That’s much better.”
She looked around, but could only see trees and shrubs, bushes and ferns, tufts of grass and sprays of flowers. Nothing, in short, that looked like a man.
“Where… uh… exactly are you?”
“Let your eyes adjust, Juraletta,” ordered the voice, “and you will see me.”
“How did you know my name is Juraletta?”
“I am Sage.”
She looked closely into the tangle of foliage. Gradually, she became aware of a pair of green eyes staring at her from eight feet above the ground. She could discern no other part of Sage, however – not his face, nor his body, not feet nor hands, so there was no way of telling whether he was very tall, or perhaps much shorter and simply sitting on a branch.
“Sage, I’ve come to ask your advice.”
“Of course you have,” said Sage a mite wearily. “That’s all everybody wants – advice. How would you like to do nothing except give advice for ten thousand years? I don’t suppose you feel like playing a game, do you?”
“What sort of game?”
“I don’t know,” said Sage in mournful voice. “It’s so long since I played any, I’ve forgotten them.”
“I thought you knew the answer to everything.”
“Oh, I’m usually
more than adequate with problems,” Sage declared. “But only at the time of asking. You have to ask the right question to get the right answer. And my memory isn’t what it used to be.”
“So that’s your problem, so to speak,” mused Juraletta.
“I disagree. It can’t be a problem.”
“Why not?”
“Because if it were, I would have solved it.”
“Then I had better ask you a problem,” laughed Juraletta.
“That won’t work,” said Sage lugubriously. “That’s just playing with words.”
“I thought problems were made up of words.”
“That doesn’t sound right to me,” replied Sage. “They must be made of something more substantial than that – otherwise people wouldn’t have any problem solving them. In fact, I’d be superfluous. You don’t think I’m superfluous, do you?”
“No, of course not,” said Juraletta, though that was precisely what she was thinking.
“I was just trying to make a philosophic point in a mildly droll way,” said Sage, sounding hurt.
“Making a philosophic point doesn’t really solve problems – in fact, I dare say it complicates what problems there are, and may even add to their sum, so perhaps if you drop philosophy then your problems will shrink – and your clothes should fit,” declared Juraletta, a little out of breath from such a tortuous sentence.
Sage preserved what was, presumably, a sage-acious silence.
“I didn’t come here to play games, though,” said Juraletta. “I came here to ask your advice about my marriage to the Fissionable Duke.”
“It sounds like he’s the one who needs advice,” said Sage, dimpling with difficulty.
“I know what his problem is,” Juraletta continued breezily. “It is a certain readiness to explode. However, I was just wondering about the less explosive side of our marriage.”
“The best recipe for a successful marriage is complete incompatibility,” said Sage in a solemn voice. “It helps if one is male and the other female because, as everyone knows, males and females never get along.”
“Well, we’re not completely incompatible. After all, we’re both Qwertians.”
“In that case,” said Sage gloomily, “your marriage has no hope.”
“That seems rather facilely pessimistic,” Juraletta said in a tart voice. “I’m not so sure you are a sage.”
“Of course I’m a sage,” said Sage. “In fact, I am not ‘a’ sage but, more simply, Sage. Unique in every way. Not excluding my hair.”
“Oh, why is that?” asked Juraletta, thoroughly convinced now that this hairy being was not going to be any help at all, and wondering how best to make an escape.
“First of all, I am called Sage,” said Sage rather grandly, “so how could I ever come to be thus named, unless I was one?”
“Sometimes things are given names they’re not entitled to.”
“For example?” Sage asked in a sceptical tone.
“I can’t think of any examples,” said Juraletta. “Gorgie hasn’t covered examples yet.”
“May I give you the second reason why I must be Sage?”
“Oh very well,” said Juraletta, impatiently.
“My long beard. Only sages have such impressive displays of hairiness.”
“How about an impressive display of sageliness?” asked Juraletta. “After all, anyone – well, almost anyone – can grow long hair. It’s just a matter of hormones, isn’t it?” (Gorgie had schooled her in hormones.)
“Well then – give me a problem,” snapped Sage.
“How many gorgons does it take to –”
“Hold it right there,” Sage broke in. “That sounds like a riddle. I’m no good on riddles.”
“I’ve just remembered a game we could play,” said Juraletta. “Or are you still off games?” Not giving Sage a chance to reply, she simply said, “Impatience.”
“How do you play that?” Sage asked.
“However can you not know how to play Impatience?” Juraletta asked. “Everyone knows the rules by their miserable hearts! It’s very simple – the one who takes the longest to get impatient, wins.”
“In that case, you’ve won already,” Sage declared.
“Why?”
“I’d have thought that was blindingly obvious. Do you have a question yet?”
“Well, what should I wear at my wedding?”
“Nothing red,” replied Sage, relief audible in his voice. “Red will cause the Fissionable Duke to explode. And the amount of clothes is also important – too many clothes could render your bridegroom impotent, and too few might encourage an unseemly expression of his interest in the midst of the service.”
“Well, I hope no one else wears red, too little, or too much,” exclaimed Juraletta. “It would be very embarrassing if my husband exploded at the wedding ceremony. I’d be a widow and a wife at the same time.”
The notion striking her as very funny, she began laughing, and when she stopped, Sage’s eyes had winked off. Like an idea that arrives at the blue hour, he had vanished.
Juraletta retraced her footsteps into the maze of rooms that led back to her wing of Venera Castle, but within a few turns she was lost. She looked at her finger for the ring map – it was not there.
“Oh dear,” said Juraletta to herself, “the ring must have dropped off into Sage’s voluminous hair. I must go back and retrieve it.”
But when she tried to retrace her steps, Juraletta could not find the doorway leading into the courtyard. She walked along echoing hallways, peered out windows, opened doors, went up stairs and down stairs. Within the space of a few minutes she knew that she was hopelessly lost in some unknown part of Venera Castle. Was it a small edifice or the largest palace in the world?
After wandering for a pocket eternity, Juraletta came to a door painted brilliant emerald green, so scintillant it resembled a jewel. It was so beautiful that something exciting must surely exist on the other side.
The door yielded at her finger’s touch.
Rhameo wanted urgently to go hunting – his usual response to any irritation. He considered returning to Qwerty to locate that charming, mauve-skinned young woman whom he had taken flying, but at the thought of the princess, his mind made the terrible leap to the picture he had so recently held of Gloggwetafug. Perhaps she simply didn’t photograph well? Rhameo blanched – he didn’t believe that explanation for a second. His only hope was to find some way to deflect his mother’s wedding arrangements. No use appealing to Zoah, for despite his father’s gruff ways and the electrical charge that ran through his beard, it was his mother who really ruled the empire – at least when it came to organising marriages.
A good time to go hunting and forget his woes! He loaded up his infrared neuronic gun, molecule whip, and orange-tipped cortical command arrows, and strode into the sergeant-at-animals’ office.
“Anything new to shoot?”
“Not on Skorpeo,” laughed the grizzle-pated fellow, thoroughly accustomed to his master’s requests for novelty targets.
“Then anywhere in the galaxy!” Rhameo waved his arms expressively.
“Well, there’s a world called Erath – said to be a simulation of a long-gone world called Earth. It’s filled with wild animals of every size and shape.”
“Are they intelligent?”
“No information on that, sir,” said the sergeant as he scratched his bald head. “Does that matter?”
“Intelligent animals are far more challenging,” said Rhameo. “You should see what I hit this morning. Humanoid and highly intelligent… What are the coordinates of this Erath?”
Within seconds, Rhameo was on his way.
Erath was roughly the same size as Skorpeo, but with an ugly blue atmosphere and hideous green jungles. Too much green was obscene. Rhameo could only hope that his sergeant-at-animals had been right, and prey worthy of hunting lurked within. He pulled his ship into the reception satellite and found a gangly, wizened fellow seated at the fro
nt desk.
“Are you a simulation or are you real?” Rhameo asked the simian concierge.
“I’ve never been sure, guv’,” said the fellow, grinning amiably to reveal disastrous teeth. “We don’t worry too much about things like that on Erath.”
“That means you’re a simulation. Only real people are worried if they’re real.”
The man scratched his head. “You’ll find the tigers real enough.”
“Tigers?”
“An Erath speciality. Kills with a bite to the back of the head. Hunts alone without making a sound, even though it weighs hundreds of pounds.”
“Sounds like just what the doctor ordered,” Rhameo observed.
“Well then, what type of tiger would your doctor like you to stalk? You have your Sumatran, Javan, and Malayan tigers. All very fine beasts, usually around four hundred pounds. No good looking for a Caspian, ’cause they’re extinct. Your classic tiger from India is called a Bengal. Don’t ask me why it’s called a Bengal, ’cause I don’t know – it’s not in the brochures. Now your Bengal is a right good muncher and one, back on old planet Earth, once ate four hundred and thirty-six people – not at one sitting, you understand. Then there’s your king of tigers, the Siberian, which is also called a Manchurian. This beastie is usually about ten feet long and weighs six hundred pounds – though there have been some bigger buggers that’ll weigh in at eight hundred or even nine hundred pounds. A nine hundred pound tiger is no picnic, I assure you – especially in the dark. Then if you tire of tigers, you could have a go at lions. We have African and Indian lions and even some European specimens what are actually African lions without visas. And if you’d like something really exotic, we can cross a tiger with a lioness and get a tigon. Very capable beast is your tigon – can take both legs off with one bite. Cross a lion with a tigress and you get a liger, which grows to a great size and can put a nasty bite in your skull. Now if we cross a lion with a tigon, we get a li-tigon and your average li-tigon is a big bugger of around eleven and a half feet and a weight of a thousand pounds, though he can grow larger. His bite will take your head clean off and if you cross one they can be a bit litigious. Then we can also cross a lion with a liger and get a li-liger, but you lose the stripey effect at that point. Very lethal animal though – can take both arms off without breaking a sweat, though they’ve got a bit of a stutter. If we try mating a tiger and liger and we get a ti-tiger –”
Tropic of Skorpeo Page 6