Camelot in Orbit

by Arthur H. Landis

  I sighed again and turned to rejoin my princess and the others….

  1Hooli stood in the doorway, grinning.

  I said, “You again?”

  “Who else?”

  I shrugged, nodded toward the wet spot on the dais. “He had no sense of humor.”

  “That was brilliant, Buby-the Ripper question.”

  “Your Grail would have done the trick.”

  “Possibly.”

  We walked down the spiral corridor toward the rec-room. I glanced obliquely down at him, our Hooli, with his one bootie and his pompon. “A question, meatball?”

  He snickered. “The answer’s ‘five,’ bubble-brain. So says the Ripper file in your fat head.”

  “Yeah.” I said. “You get an ‘A.”

  They were precisely where I’d left them, except they’d been joined by Rawl who held his head and seemed not to know me. Blood had congealed from his ears and nostrils.

  Hooli touched his shoulders, stared into his unfocused eyes; upon which Rawl looked up at me and smiled. He said, “It seems we’ve won.”

  I smiled back; this, while I kneeled to take Murie in my arms, and just before our weeping Caroween took Rawl in hers.

  Hooli had but to crawl in and out of Murie’s lap-and that was that! Indeed, the ensuing wave of Pug-Boo “goodness” turned on full blast, revived four of the Dark One’s warrior-wizards, too, as well as a single Yorn named Olgit, who was ever after a leader of his people-and young Lors Sernas. Sernas, by falling in a certain way, had stanched his own blood’s flow, thus saving his life ‘til Hooli’s “goodness” touched him.

  The both of them had hardly rejoined us when Sernas’ father and a half-hundred lords and captains of Marack and Om came softly, silently, swords bared, through the now opened doorway.

  Joining us, they viewed the body of the monster with darkened brows, and waited….

  Fel-Holdt saluted Hoggle with his sword!

  We stood, hands clasped, the six of us, the sole survivors of the company. I said softly, “Sirs, m’lords. The creature you called the Dark One is dead. Your world is free!”

  For the next hour or so those were the only coherent words to be spoken by anyone; such was the wave of euphoria that swept the corridors, the great plaza, and all the milling, joyous throng of populace and warriors.

  “The Dark One’s dead! The Lord of Terror has been slain!”

  According to Fel-Holdt, the force-field had disappeared approximately ten minutes prior to my entry to the Dark One’s chamber; apparently, to add to the needed concentration of energy. There’s no way to describe the ensuing bedlam, the riotous feasting, the celebrating, wherein Marackians and Omnians, for one brief and shining moment, were joined in Fregis’ history. The feasting, the drawing up of plans, pacts, and, etc., went on for days.

  On the same afternoon of the following day, however, I rode with Rawl to the scoutship to switch off its’ “null,” while Murie and Caroween had silken tents pitched for the both of us on the green meadows outside the city. The air of late summer was sweet and soft, and we wanted nothing else but quiet and a chance to be alone together. Hooli was with Murie, but without the real Hooli, the host-occupant. So I kicked him out of the tent to be placed in the care of certain Marackian guards.

  Lors Sernas showed up to dine with us, bringing with him, of all things, the lovely Buusti, Lord Haken’s daughter. She seemed none the worse for having been ravaged by our lecherous comrade. Indeed, Hoom-Tet, I’m sure, had in no way lost a son, but, rather, had gained a daughter. Sernas had the good sense to say his “good nights” early, doing so with a most gay and wicked light in his liquid eyes.

  Later, when Rawl and Caroween, too, had gone, we reveled in the warmth of pillows, furs, and each other. I marveled that not the slightest scar remained on Murie’s gold-furred thigh where the spear had pierced it. I marveled at many things! Later, too, small Ripple and Capil peered briefly in through the tent’s flap, blown open by the night wind. A soft breeze raised her hair in gentle pats against her cheek where she slept against my shoulder.

  I mentally sent out the code-word to the Deneb-3.

  There was a delay of at least a minute, indicating that for them, too, the urgency was gone. Kriloy’s tone was mellow. “Well-well-well! Kyrie!” he said. “You know, we were thinking of coming down to get you.”

  “Wrongo!” I exclaimed. I was still a little high from both Murie and a surfeit of sviss.

  “You did it again, Buby,” Ragan chimed in. “When the D.O.’s power weakened we took a chance, moved In to scan. You were beautiful….”

  “That wasn’t very smart”

  “Hey, Buby! Nothing about this whole charade’s been ‘very smart!’”

  “We’ll talk about it”

  “When are you coming up?’

  “Got a few things to do yet Gotta go north to Marack; return Hoggle’s body to Durst, then get the five fleets in motion to retrieve Marack’s army. I doubt me much that the Vuuns will so much as lift a claw to fly ‘em back, now that the battle’s won.”

  “So the Dark One’s really had it.”

  “Y’up.”

  Kriloy intruded. “I had mixed feelings about you and that dinosaur. I was worried. But once you were in his mouth, I figured he had an even chance.”

  I groaned.

  “You really are a bloody bastard.”

  I didn’t like that, not even in joke. “You could have taken my place any time, baby.”

  “With the princess, too?”

  “Watch your mouth. I still owe you one for burning my brain.”

  “Stop the crap, Kyrie,” Ragan said. “We love you and you know it.”

  “You gotta be debriefed,” Kriloy said.

  “Yeah. After my marriage-early Spring. After that, well maybe I’ll bring the first delegation of Fregisian Alphians along.”

  Ragan asked, “Did you ever find the Source of Camelot’s ‘magick?’”

  “Nope,” I lied. “But I’m working on it. You’ll have an instant tape on everything in the next few days.”

  Then we chatted for a bit more, but they could sense that my heart wasn’t in it, so they let me go.

  “Just one thing,” Ragan said. “There seems to be some kind of action in the original gateway on Alpha. We’re going to do a forty-eight hour, in-and-out, and check it off. We’ll buzz you when we return.”

  “Good. I’ll save the tape.”

  “Bless you, Kyrie.”

  “Bless you both,” I intoned.

  “You’ll be promoted,” Kriloy said. “Diamond Star!”

  “Hey, man,” I said, in Hooli’s vernacular, which he’d sponged from my head; which was ancient earth, “I am the ‘Collin,’ man! I don’t need your stinkin’ diamonds!”

  “Out, Kyrie!”

  I closed my eyes for steep, but then he came as I had sort of expected he would. He wore his mortar-cap and gown, and large sunglasses. This time he marched into my consciousness to a far-off choral background of the “Eroica.” The scenario was a graduation ceremony. I, apparently, was the “graduate.” Seating himself in front of what he assumed was my mental line of vision, he adjusted his robe, one bootie protruding, polished his lenses, and said, “Hi, there!”

  “Hooli,” I asked, with a new intimacy, “Why do you do all this?”

  “Why not? It’s the thing I’ve enjoyed the most. All life evolves somewhat the same, Buby; excepting that humanoids are a wee bit different, more complex. Where, might I ask you, in all the myriad of intelligent, saurian worlds, is there a single face ‘to sink a thousand ships’?”

  “Hmmmnn. So you’re not humanoid?”

  “Nope. I told ya.”

  “So what’s up now?”

  “Loose ends. We owe it to you.”

  “Great. Let’s begin with the bubble.”

  “A ploy, to attract your starship, so they would tell you, so you would decide to go to Hish.”

  “You were that sure?”

  “Bub
y! You’re predictable!”

  “But why not the Deneb-3, Hooli? It could just as easily have blasted the temple. Why all this nonsense? Our Fitz died, you know, and Griswall, and one helluva lot of others. I’d like an answer.”

  He smoothed his pleats, said solemnly: “The Dark One’s gadgets, as your Foundation will shortly find out, are for the moment indestructible to your science. A totally different physics is involved in their creation, a different math. Any attempt against them by an alien force (you), before they were deactivated could easily have produced anti-matter, with the end product, unimaginable. That they were also flawed, is true. They would have done precisely what I said they would-fall short of containing the released power of an alien sun. To stop it, there was but one way: They had to be manually, if you will, redirected; in effect, turned off by their own switch!”

  “And only I could do that?”

  Hooli smiled.

  “Why then did you ask me to crash the scoutship in the temple?”

  “To spook you, Buby! Martyrdom, for a hero type is unacceptable. You may have thought for one brief sparkling moment that you were committed to it. But no way! What you’d really committed yourself to was the alternative choice that the temple and the gadgets could be won in a way that would also save your ass. And ‘to save your ass,’ Billy, you’d fight ten times as hard!”

  “Which is what you wanted?”

  “You’re one miserable S. O B.!”

  He winked behind his shades. “Would it help to say that I know of no one else who could have done it?”

  “Sheeeeeh!”

  “It’s true.”

  “Look, Hooli.” I took another tack. “Our goal was a one-on-one confrontation wherein, hopefully, I’d blow the Kaleen away. Still, am I right in concluding that he was tactically stupid, incapable of using his power properly?”

  “His basic problem was that he’d never been taught not to play another man’s game.”

  “Your game?”

  “No, Buby, yours! The game of war in all its phases, is the game wherein you humanoids excel. Example: jacks, tennis, soccar, all have simple rules; but all are won primarily by physical skill. Chess, on the other hand, and war, have an almost four-dimensional quality-time, politics; what you ate last night, etc. The logic of both must be learned. No thinking entity, unfamiliar with the concepts, could ever expect to win the first time out”

  “As for the improper use of his power-no doubt about it. But it would have made no difference, except in the last instance. He figured you for power. How else, in his mind, could you have deflected lightning bolts, shifted the clouds around, blown his wizards to hell, etc. He had decided to retain a sufficient amount of his own to take you out, with the remainder being channeled, for his life’s sake, into the gadgets. In effect, you’d have cancelled each other out. There was always the chance that you would have blown him first.

  But we couldn’t risk it. So we let him see me-and told you about it!”

  “You let him see you?”

  “We sure did, Buby-right after we’d planted the Grail in your head. I even let him see a piece of my mind, a bit of the potentially available ‘goodies,’ so to speak. I linked you to them, too, along with the thought that it would be to his interest to keep us both alive.

  “He then did what we’d thought he’d do. He was even more predictable than you. He used his remaining power to change his form to resemble me, in order to hold you in check for the last few critical moments.”

  I grunted.

  “Actually,” Hooli grinned. “His best weapon was himself. If he’d given you one buggering peep at him in the original, you’d have been flat on your back with instantaneous metabolic imbalance. In essence, if he’d only known it, he could have won-and lost, and taken all Fregis-Camelot with him, in that order…,”

  I thought about that. Then I asked curiously, “What did he look like?”

  “Me, Buby! The real me! It’s not too late. You can still have a peek!”

  I sighed. “I’ll take a rain check.”

  “Well, what else?” Hooli asked.

  “Dahkti, Chuuk, Jindil?”

  “Gone. Oh, there’ll still be Pug Boos in the five northern kingdoms. After all,” he grinned, “everybody loves a Pug Boo.”

  “I’ve wondered about that.”

  “I’ll bet you have,” he exclaimed softly. “Here’s an old paradigm, Kyrie. Stick it up your personal memory bank: Where humanoids evolve there are eventually puppies in the yard, and teddy bears in the play room.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He was up and pirouetting. “Well you said it,” he grinned over a black-gowned shoulder. “You told your princess that except for Pug Boos, all animals on Fregis have six legs.”

  “Fraggin’ spit!” I said.

  “That’s going to change, though. From now on, Pug Boos, like Alphians, will actually reproduce themselves.”

  “Bloody Buddhai” The enormity of what he was suggesting suddenly hit me.

  “Sort of shakes ya, doesn’t it?”

  “But the Vuuns told me-“

  “The Vuuns are dreamers Buby.”

  “Show me, damn it. Prove it!”

  He did. He managed a sort of “cake walk” with sundry bumps and grinds. Then he suddenly reached to whip his gown aside and shout: “See! No belly button!”

  And sure enough his hairless tummy disclosed an area equally barren of anything resembling the mark of a one-time umbilical attachment.

  He returned with a heel-and-toe, buck-and-wing, slanted his mortar-board forward against his shades and said softly in my ear, “It’s about that time, Kyrie. I’ve got to go.”

  “Will I see you again?”

  “That’s hard to say. We’ll try….”

  “Sheeeeeh!” I shook my head.

  He said, still softly, “I’ll miss you, Kyrie.”

  “I’ll miss you, too, Hooli.”

  He then made a couple of skating motions so that his small, round figure began to fade. His voice came faintly- “Goodbye, Collin.”

  I said, “Goodbye, Mr. Chips.”