Blumpkinn and Eszterhazy for a moment spoke simultaneously. What about it? There were only two known Archaeopteryx specimens in the world! One in London, one in Berlin—think what a third would mean! Not only for science, but for Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania and its prestige.
Vlox, with something like a sigh, rose to his feet; clearly the subject no longer much engaged him . . . possibly because his own family and its prestige were incomparably older than the Triple Monarchy and its prestige. “Well, I’ll have it looked for, then. Must be off. Things to do. My wine merchant. My gunsmith. My carriage maker. A turn of cards at The Hell-Hole. See if they’ve finished re-upholstering my railroad car. Tobacconist . . . new powder scales . . . Can I execute any commissions for you, as they say? Haw haw! Tell you what, Engly, damned if I know what you want with this odd old bird, but tell you what: trade it for that funny French painting.” And he donned his tattered sealskin cap (so that he should not be struck by lightning) and his wisent-skin cape (also fairly tattered, but wisents weren’t easy to get anymore), picked up his oak stick, nodded his Roldry nod, neither languid nor brisk, and went out into Little Turkling Street, where his carriage (as they say) awaited him. Some backwoods nobles kept a pied-a-terre in Bella in the form of a house or apartment. Prince Roldran preferred to keep a stable and to sleep in the loft. With taste and scent, no argument.
Silence for some seconds. Such was the prince’s presence, that his immediate absence left a perceptible hole.
Blumpkinn: What do you say, Doctor ’Bert, is the prince quite, [a hesitation] . . . dependable?
Eszterhazy [removing his monocle]: In some things, instantly. He would think nothing of striking a rabid wolf with bare hands to save you. In others? Well . . . let us say that fossils are not quite in his line. We shall see. Any kind of fossils from out that way should be interesting. If the old witch-women have left any.
The Imperial Geologist blinked. “Yes . . . if they’ve left any—Though I suppose . . . imagine, Doctor, they used to grind up dinosaur bones and feed them with bread and oil to pregnant women!!”
“That’s what they did to my own dear Mother. Well, why not? Calcium, you know.”
The Imperial Geologist (the King-Emperor, Ignats Louis, in authorizing the position, had hoped for gold and, no gold being found, had shrugged and gone out to inspect the new infantry boots)—the Imperial Geologist blinked some more. “Yes,” he said. “Well, why not. Calcium . . . I know.”
###
Some years before there had appeared the book From Ram’s Head to Sandy Cape on Camelback, by a New Chum (Glasscocke and Gromthorpe, No. 3, the Minories, 12/-), and Eszterhazy had translated it into Modern Gothic, as he had its successors, Up the Fly River by Sail and Paddle, and In Pursuit of Poundmaker, plus a General Survey of the Northwest Territories (available at Szentbelessel’s Book House near the New Model Road at two ducats per or all three for five ducats, each with eleven half-tone illustrations and a free patriotic bookmark; write for catalogue). From these translations a friendship had developed. Newton Charles Enderson was not really a “new chum,” far from it; he was a “currency lad”; and now he was on holiday from the University of Eastern Australia and hoped to explore some more, in the lands of the Triple Monarchy.
There were a number of not-very-well explored (not-very-well-explored by any scientific expeditions, that is; they had all been very-well explored by the River Tartars, the Romanou, and by all the other non-record-keeping peoples who had gone that way since the days of—and before the days of caches of amber had been found there, and Grecian pottery—the Getae, who may or may not have been close of kin to the ancient Scythian Goths) and rather languid waterways disemboguing into the Delta of the Ister. And New Chum Enderson had wanted Eszterhazy to go exploring with him, in a pirogue. And Eszterhazy had very much wanted to do so. There were several sorts of bee-eaters which had never been well engraved, let alone photographed; skins of course were in the museums, and several water-colors had been made by someone whose identity had been given simply as An Englishwoman, long ago; still semi-impenetrably wrapped in her modesty, she had withdrawn into her native northern mists, leaving only copies of the watercolors behind.
“But I am afraid that our schedules don’t match. Really I do regret.”
New Chum regretted, too. “But I must be back for the start of term.”
“And I for the meeting of the Proposed Canal Committee. Well . . . I know that your movements are as precisely dated as those of Phileas Fogg, so just let me know when you’ll be back, and I’ll give you a good luncheon to make up for your privations. There’s a person in the country who’s promised me a fine fat pullet, and the truffles should be good, too, so—”
New Chum gave a bark, intended for a laugh, of a sort which had terrified Pommies and Aboes alike. “I’m not one of your European gourmets,” he said. “Grew up on damper and ’roo. Advanced to mutton, pumpkin, and suet pud. More than once ate cockatoo—they’d told me it was chook—‘chicken’ to you—and I never knew the difference. Still, of course, I’ll be glad to eat what you give me, with no complaint . . . Ah, by the way. Don’t depend on me much or at all to identify and bring back your bee-eaters. Know nothing of ornithology. Officially I’m Professor of Political Economy, but what I am, actually, is an explorer. Glad to give you a set of my notes, though.” And on this they parted.
###
Two pieces of news. The country pullet would be on hand the next day. Also alas the sister-in-law’s sister of Frow Widow Orgats, housekeeper and cook, had been Taken Bad with the Dropped Stomach—did she require medical advice?—an elf-stone?—no: she required the attentions of her sister’s sister-in-law. The house, with the help of its lower staff, might keep itself for a little while. “And Malta, who I’ve hand-picked meself, will cook for you very well till I gets back, Sir Doctor.” Malta, thought the Sir Doctor, had perhaps been handpicked so as to prevent the Sir Doctor from thinking of her as a suitable full-time replacement—she was not perhaps very bright—but merely he said, “Tomorrow they are bringing up a special pullet for the luncheon with the foreign guest and it may not look just exactly as the sort they sell here at the Hen Mark in town; so mind you do it justice.”
Malta dropped several curtseys, but not, thank God, her stomach; said, “Holy Angels, my Lard, whatsoe’er I’m given to cook, I shall cook it fine, for Missus she’s wrote out the words for me real big on a nice piece of pasteboard.” Malta could read and she had the recipe? Well, well. Hope for the best. New Chum would perhaps not mind or even notice if the luncheon fell short of standard, but Eszterhazy, after all, would have to eat it, too.
However.
The roof of the Great Chamber did not indeed fall in on the meeting of the Proposed Canal Committee, but many other things happened, which he would hope had rather not. The chairman had forgotten the minutes of the last meeting and would not hear of the reading being skipped, pro hac vice, so all had to wait until they had been fetched in a slow hack, if not indeed a tumbril or an ox cart. Then the Conservative delegation had wished to be given assurances the most profound that any land taken for the Canal would be paid for at full current market value; next, well before the Conservoes were made satisfied with such assurances, the Working chaps’ delegation had taken it into its collective head that Asian coolie labor might be employed in Canal construction and demanded positive guarantees that it would not. Then the Commercial representation desired similar soothing in regard to brick and building-stone—not only that it would not be imported from Asia, but from anywhere else outside the Empire—“Even if it has to come from Pannonia!”—something which the Pannonian delegation somehow took much amiss. Cries of Point of order! and Treason! and What has the Committee got to hide? and Move the Previous question! were incessant. And Eszterhazy realized that he was absolutely certain to miss anyway most of his luncheon engagement with Enderson. So he sent word that the meal was to proceed without him, and his apologies to his guest, and he (Eszterhazy) would join
him as soon as possible.
“As soon as” was eventually reached, though he had feared it wouldn’t be. As he was making his way out of the Great Chamber he encountered Professor Blumpkinn, almost in tears. “I have missed my luncheon!” said the Imperial Geologist (he did not look as though he had missed many) dolefully. “They have prepared none for me at home, and in a restaurant I cannot eat, because my stomach is delicate: if anything is in the least greasy or underdone or overdone, one feels rising, then, the bile: and one is dyspeptic for days!”
“Come home with me, then, Johanno,” said Eszterhazy.
“Gladly!”
One might ask, How far can a pullet go? but the pullet was after all intended merely as a garnish to only one course of several; also a cook in Bella would sooner have suffered herself to be trampled by elephant cows rather than fail to provide a few Back-up Entrances, as they were called, in case of emergencies. A singularly greedy guest might become an Untoward Incident in a foreign pension: but not in a well-ordered house in Bella: What a compliment! God—who gives appetite—bless the man! and the order would be passed on, via an agreed-upon signal, to bring out one of the backups.
Going past the porte-cochère of the Great Hall, which was jammed with vehicles, Eszterhazy held up his hand and the red steam runabout darted forward from a nearby passage; almost before it had come to a stop, Schwebel, the engineer, had vaulted into the back to stoke the anthracite: Eszterhazy took the tiller. His guest, an appreciative sniff for the cedar wood-work (beeswax “compliments of Prince Vlox”), sat beside him.
“Who’s that?” asked an Usher of a Doorkeeper, watching the deft work with the steering-gear.
“He’m Doctors Eszterhazy, th’ Emperor’s wizard,” said Doorkeeper to Usher.
“So that’s him!—odd old bird!” And then they both had to jump as the delegations poured out, demanding their coaches, carriages, curricles, hacks, and troikas. None, however, demanded steam runabouts.
“It will not offend you if we enter by way of the kitchen?” the doctor (although his doctorate was plural, he himself was singular . . . very singular) asked the professor.
Who answered that they might enter by way of the chimney. “Cannot you hear my stomach growling? Besides, it is always a pleasure to visit a well-ordered kitchen.” Blumpkinn rang with pleasure the hand-bell given him to warn passers-by—the steamer was almost noiseless—and drivers of nervous horses.
“A moderate number of unannounced visits help keep a kitchen well-ordered.” Besides, with a temporary cook and a guest with a very delicate stomach, an inspection, however brief, might be a good idea: and, in a few minutes, there they were!—but what was this in the alley? a heavy country wagon—and at the door, someone whose canvas coat was speckled with feathers—someone stamping his feet and looking baffled. “I tells you again that Poulterer Puckelhaube has told me to bring this country-fed bird, and to git a skilling and a half for it! ’Tain’t my fault as I’m late: the roads about the Great Chamber was filled with kerritches.”
But, like the King of Iceland’s oldest son, Malta Cook was having none. “You’s heard I’m only temporal here,” she said, hands on hips, “and thinks to try your gammon on me!—but you’ll get no skilling and a half at this door! The country chicking has already been delivered a couple hours ago, with the other firm’s compliments, and the foreign guest is eating of it now. Away with ye, and—” She caught sight of Eszterhazy, curtseyed, gestured towards the deliveryman, her mouth open for explanation and argument.
She was allowed no time. Eszterhazy said, “Take the bird and pay for it, we’ll settle the matter later—Give him a glass of ale,” he called over his shoulder. Instantly the man’s grievance vanished. The money would, after all, go to his employer. But the beer was his . . . at least for a while.
At the table, napkin tucked into his open collar, sunburned and evidently quite content, sat Newton Charles (“New Chum”) Enderson, calmly chewing. Equally calmly, he returned the just-cleaned-off bone to its platter, on which (or, if you prefer, whereon) he had neatly laid out the skeleton. Perhaps he had always done the same, even with the cockatoo and the kangaroo. Eszterhazy stared in intense disbelief. Blumpkinn’s mouth was opening and closing like that of a barbel, or a carp. “Welcome aboard,” said New Chum, looking up. “Sorry you’ve missed it. The journey has given me quite an appetite.” At the end of the platter was a single, and slightly odd, feather. Malta had perhaps heard, if not more, of how to serve a pheasant.
“My God!” cried Blumpkinn. “Look! There is the centra free as far as the sacrum, and the very long tail as well as the thin coracoid, all the ribs non-unciate and thin, neither birdlike nor very reptilian, the unbirdlike caudal appendage, the separate and unfused metacarpals, the independent fingers and claws.”
“Not bad at all,” said Enderson, touching the napkin to his lips. “As I’ve told you, I don’t know one bird from another, but this is not bad. Rather like bamboo chicken—goanna, or iguana, you would call it. Though a bit far north for that . . . but of course it must be imported! My compliments to the chef! By the way, I understand that the man who brought it said that there weren’t any more . . . whatever that means . . . You know how to treat a guest well, I must say!”
Contentedly, he broke off a bit of bread and sopped at the truffled gravy. Then he looked up again. “Oh, and speaking of compliments,” he said, “who’s Prince Vlox?”
“I see the French picture is missing,” said Eszterhazy.
BERNIE
Ian McDowell
New writer Ian McDowell has made only a handful of science fiction sales to date, most of them to Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Amazing, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In the fantasy and horror fields he has been somewhat more prolific, with sales to The Pendragon Chronicles, The Camelot Chronicles, Borderlands II, Book of the Dead III, Love in Vein: Tales of Gothic Vampirism, and others. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Here’s a slyly satirical, blackly funny, and suspensefully fast-paced story that takes on both children’s television and the recent big upsurge in ditto madness, as we get an inside look at TV’s newest star . . .
* * *
Varla stared at the plastic carapace on Steve’s desk. “Look, it’s weird enough that our client is a six-foot-tall iguana, but do you really expect my team to work dressed up as Ninja Turtles? We’re bodyguards, not kiddy-show performers.”
Steve grimaced and scratched his peeling nose. He’d just come back from the Bahamas, where she hoped he’d caught enough UV radiation to cause a melanoma. She hadn’t had a paid vacation in two years, and she and her team were the ones who did all the real work.
He wasn’t meeting her eyes. “First off, Bernie isn’t an iguana, he’s a genetically reconstructed deinonychus . . .”
Varla popped her nicotine bubblegum, a vile habit she’d acquired in her umpteenth attempt at giving up smoking. “I know that, Steve, I was just being rhetorical. But why the goddam turtle costumes?”
He sighed and scratched his nose again. Clearly, the idea embarrassed him, too, and he wouldn’t even have to wear one of the stupid outfits. “Disney wants us to keep a low profile on Bernie’s tour, just like their own security people do at their parks. The masks and shells will disguise your helmets and body armor, and not alarm all the parents who’ve brought their brats out to the mall to see their favorite TV dinosaur in person. Just be glad Disney acquired the Turtles last year. You guys could be having to dress up like Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy.”
Varla, who’d been pacing in outrage, settled her six-foot-two frame back into the vinyl chair and brushed black bangs out of her eyes. “Who are they so worried will be gunning for the big lizard, that they want us in full armor? I didn’t know he was on any pro’s hit list.”
Steve fingered his remote and a nolo freeze frame of Bernie began slowly revolving in the air above his desktop. At one-fifth scale, the image s
houldn’t have been particularly threatening, especially with the oversized purple Nikes and the balloonlike three-fingered gloves hiding his ripping talons, but his bipedal, stiff-tailed body radiated the same deadly power as a pit bull or a great white shark. Varla had serious trouble associating this brutally efficient-looking predator with the low-budget Bernie of her childhood, the sashaying actor in a baggy purple suit who sang nerdy songs about caring and sharing.
“They’re not worried about terrorists,” said Steve, his glasses reflecting the green and purple holo. “Just some crazed fundamentalist with a Saturday night special, who thinks reconstructed dinosaurs are a Satanic plot to undermine scripture. But suppose some loony does pop out of the crowd and take a shot at him? What does your team do, if the guy’s not close enough to take out?”
Varla considered the matter. “Same as with a human client, I guess: get Bernie out of the line of fire.”
Steve nodded through the holo. “Exactly. You’ll have to dogpile him to get him down, and he won’t like that, despite the tranquilizers. His teeth have been replaced with rubber implants, and the gloves and shoes will keep him from using his claws, but he could still do serious damage. The armor’s as much to protect you from him as from flying bullets.”
Varla put her motorcycle boots up on Steve’s desk. “Great. If Godzilla here panics, he may try to kick our heads off. He looks strong enough to do it.”
Steve nodded. “He is, no matter how much padding there is on the bottom of those giant shoes.”
Varla dropped her gum in Steve’s waste can. “When do we meet him?”
###
The combination ranch and studio was spread over a good sixty acres of Texas scrubbrush. They passed through three successive checkpoints, the last manned by two ruby-toothed, Baby-Eagle-toting cholos in Mickey Mouse baseball caps, who directed Varla to park beside the purple barn, where Bernie’s handler waited to meet the team.
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