“Why, it’s a zimdzig rite!” the Captain cried. “It has to be. That’s why the boy is pinching her. That’s why she’s covered up so—so lasciviously! We—we mustn’t give up now!”
Still on her knees, she turned on Mama Schimmelhorn the sort of look that any adequately early Mexican would have reserved for Mr. Quetzalcoatl fresh off the boat. She seized a long and hard Imperial hand in both of hers, and fell to kissing it. Her officers, kneeling with her, added the chorus of their own appeals.
Mama Schimmelhorn pulled her hand away. Her temper flared. She marshaled all the scathing phrases which, in the past, she had employed against brash salesmen and feminine neighbors whose morality was suspect.
She had no chance to use them.
The sudden animation of the clock had wakened Papa Schimmelhorn. His mind had slipped back into gear, confronting him with the appalling fact of his abduction by lady wrestlers of unsurpassed ferocity and ugliness. It had imbued him with a great yearning to escape; then, finding no instant way to satisfy this urge, it had reminded him of the waiting Prudence Pilgrim.
The synthesis of two such potent concepts was unfortunate. Papa Schimmelhorn lurched forward. He plucked at an Imperial sleeve.
“Mama!” he demanded peevishly. “Mama, you tell die lady friends to ledt me loose! It iss important. Vith my lidtle Prudie pussycat I haff a date!”
* * * *
His listeners heard a great bass voice issuing from a body which, for all its size, was obviously male. They saw a mere man daring to lay impious hands on a most august female personage. The Captain and her officers began to growl and mutter angrily. The little crewmen screamed like wounded rabbits and made vain efforts to escape.
Mama Schimmelhorn experienced a reaction less overt but equally profound. Reminded suddenly that her husband had not been snatched away from the pursuits of innocence, she recalled all those misdeeds Ms. Prudence so aptly symbolized.
Abruptly, she perceived that these large women had treated her with a respect indicative of keen discernment, gentle breeding, and the best intentions. Despite their strange apparel or lack of it, she saw they were responsible and sober citizens. And, as the bosuns took drastic and effective action, she realized that, whatever their trouble with the little men might be, it was not disciplinary. In short, their way of life looked as if it had much to recommend it.
Just as this dawned on her, Papa Schimmelhorn plucked at her arm again. “Hurry up, Mama. Get a viggle on!”
She whirled. “Shudt up! From now, remember who iss boss—und shpeak vhen you are maybe shpoken to—und do vhat you are told!” She punctuated these remarks with her umbrella. Then, turning her back on him, she surveyed the kneeling women, the chastened little men. Smiling generously, she pointed heavenward and nodded several times. She patted the Captain’s tonsured scalp, and said, “Iss okay, shveetheart. Chust this vun time, Mama vill come mit.” Madame-Captain Groolu Hah let out a mighty shout of pure joy. Her officers all echoed her. The men emitted squeaks of pleased alarm, and blushed, and sucked their thumbs excitedly.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Dazzling Madame!” the Captain bellowed. “Thank you, Your Glamorousness! You won’t regret it, I promise you! We’ll do our best to make you comfortable. My quarters don’t amount to much, but maybe if we fix them up they’ll do. And you’ll be waited on by senior officers. And you can have any of our husbands, even the nicest, most expensive ones—”
From Willie Fledermaus, Mama Schimmelhorn had learned a good deal about interplanetary protocol. She shushed the Captain with a peremptory hand, and indicated that she desired first something to sit upon, and then writing instruments.
The Captain beat her breast. “Oh, Your Radiancy! Forgive me! How could I have forgotten?” She poked a nearby Lieutenant. “You—what’s the big idea? Are you going to kneel there staring like a moonstruck man and let the Mother-Empress stand like that? Break out my best chair. Scramble!”
The Lieutenant scrambled. A moment later, a squad of little men entered carrying a chair, and one of their fellows came panting up behind with a big sheet of greenish cardboard and what appeared to be a charcoal stick.
The chair looked as though its maker had been influenced by a bad dream of fuzzy sausages, but Mama Schimmelhorn allowed herself to be enthroned. She took the cardboard, propped it up, and drew a circle from which rays shot out. Holding it so all might see, she said with a proprietary pride, “Der Sun.”
“Dayr-zhtan,” repeated all her officers.
“You don’dt pronounce zo goot,” said Mama Schimmelhorn. “But maybe you vill learn. Now vatch—I show die planets.”
Swiftly, searching her memory of talks with Willie, she sketched in nine reasonably round orbits, gave each a blob to represent its incumbent sphere, and, speaking very clearly, announced their names as she came to them. She transposed Mars and Mercury, got Pludto, Chupiter, and Saturn all mixed up, and installed Trantor where Neptune should have been.
It seemed a little silly to her, but Willie had averred that something of the sort was comme-il-faut when good fellows from one planet and another got together, so she went through with it. As she did so, one circumstance aroused her curiosity. When she came to the third planet from the Sun, all the big women bowed in unison, reminding her of all their previous signs of reverence. So, on finishing the list, she returned to it experimentally. She drew a little orbit and a moon. She repeated, “Earth.”
“Yurr-ruth!” They bowed again.
She pointed at herself—they bowed even more profoundly than before.
She began to cogitate. Me und der Earth—vot iss? Maybe they think I’m somevun else than Mama Schimmelhorn? Der vay they bow und shcrape—as if I vas die Empress Chosephine!
Suddenly, she was inspired. Und vhy nodt? she thought. Who knows der difference? Only Papa—und here he does nodt count.
Curling her lip, she looked down at the diagram. Squarely and harshly, she put her right thumb down over the third planetary blob. “Dot’s me!” she said.
Her listeners’ foreheads almost touched the deck.
Vhy, chust imachine! thought Mama Schimmelhorn. She was delighted—not because she had achieved a perfect understanding with these members of an alien culture, but because now suddenly the full potentialities of the situation became apparent to her. Recalling the powers available to such relatively liberal potenates as Ivan the Terrible, Caligula, and Genghis Khan, she gave poor Papa Schimmelhorn a stony glance. Zo, she muttered, shtill you vould like to chase die pretty pussycats? From now, vatch oudt! I send you to Siberia. I feed you to die lions in der zoo. Off vith der head!
A look of Machiavellian cunning crossed her brow. Und I too must vatch oudt, she told herself, zo der big girls nejer know I am chust me, married to an old goat who von’t shtay home. Mama, you must behafe like you vas Qveen of Shpain und Pordugal.
She tapped her foot. The big girls looked at her. “Okay,” she said, extending the cardboard and the pencil stick, “now show me vhere you liff.”
Carefully, the Captain peeled a layer of the board away. Then she too drew a sun, and orbits, and planetary blobs.
There were fourteen of them.
Mein gootness! thought Mama Schimmelhorn. Anoder shtar!—dot iss more far away even than Chupiter! As her idea of stellar distances was vague, she wasn’t too impressed.
The Captain pointed to the star. “Yar’myut,” she announced with pride. “Yar’myut.” After a moment, observing no reaction, she repeated it a little anxiously. “Yar’-myut?”
“How shtupid!” Mama Schimmelhorn exclaimed. “Der name of your own shtar nodt to know!” She pointed to the star herself. “Beetlegoose,” she declared authoritatively.
The star was not Betelgeuse. It was, in fact, a small red-orange star lying in quite an opposite direction. Betelgeuse, however, was the only astral nam
e she could remember, and she suspected that it would do as well as any.
Dutifully, the big girls echoed, “Bittl-goordz.”
“Dot’s better,” said Mama Schimmelhorn approvingly, and she went on to number all their planets from the inside outward, making them repeat each number after her. When they came to Nine, however, her pupils, with much enthusiasm and many pointings, identified it as their place of origin.
The discovery pleased her. “You see?” she said indulgently. “Zo simple! Now ve know all aboudt—you are die ladies from Beetlegoose Nine!”
“Bittl-goordz Naheen!” shouted the ladies happily.
“Dot’s right—but shtill you don’dt pronounce. Maybe to learn der English you are nodt shmart enough. Veil, I learn to shpeak your langvidge anyhow. Iss easy, because I am a Shviss.”
She broke off. The Captain had pulled away the second diagram, and, with the utmost diffidence, was making motions indicative of the desire to draw. She gave permission graciously. “Zo, Lidtle Eva, you vant to tell me something? Go ahead.”
With bold, broad strokes, the Captain sketched what seemed to be the sections of a thick-cored tangerine. Swiftly, she scribbled lines cutting off the top third of the core and dividing each outer segment into three parts. She added several wiggles vaguely resembling companionways and hatches.
A spaceship like a grapefruidt on der inside! marvelled Mama Schimmelhorn. Villie should only see—ach, he vould nodt beliefe!
The Captain outlined her own quarters on the floor plan—one very large room with a figure to represent herself, and a smaller adjoining chamber inhabited by several little men. She showed herself moving into less commodious quarters. And she depicted Mama Schimmelhorn, complete with bumbershoot, installed within the premises so lately vacated. Then she indicated proudly that the new tenant was welcome to any little men who happened to be left around.
“There!” she whispered to her sister officers. “At any rate, she’ll see our hospitality’s completely civilized.”
But Mama Schimmelhorn saw nothing of the sort. “Ridiculous!” she snapped. “You think you leafe der lidtle shqvirts behind zo Mama puts to bed und gifes der medicine? I show you who iss Qvenn!”
She took the pencil stick. Quickly, she scratched out all the little men. Crudely but unmistakably, she drew in Papa Schimmelhorn and Gustav-Adolf.
There were exclamations of astonishment—at the Imperial kindness in refusing to deprive her inferiors of their husbands even temporarily, at her courage in having her huge, hairy servitor quartered next to her, and at the peculiar customs of a world where such goings-on were unremarkable.
The Captain thanked her volubly. “Of course your cat can have my husband-room, Most Tempting Madame,” she declared, “and your—your cat-bearer can stay there too. You can control him if anybody can, I guess. Besides, I’m going to put my own sweet little Tuptup in there with him, to keep him company, and to call for hel—I mean, to be there just in case—”
A flurry of feet and a short-lived, gurgling scream told them that the small gentleman in question had been collared in attempting to escape his new assignment.
“Tuptup’s really very brave,” explained the Captain. “At home, I let him go out in the dark all by himself. He’ll be a little nervous right at first, and not be able to keep things on his stomach probably, but afterwards I’m sure they’ll be good friends. And now there’s—well, there’s one more thing—”
She hesitated, blushing furiously.
“Shpeak up,” urged Mama Schimmelhorn. “I am a married woman.”
Pointing at Papa Schimmelhorn, the Captain made it clear that trousers were unspeakably obscene by polite Beetlegoosian standards. She sketched a sequence in which the pair in question was first removed and then exchanged for a decent and decorous colored frock.
Mama Schimmelhorn snickered—the idea appealed to her. She made appropriate motions of consent.
The Captain barked her orders. The burly bosuns began converging on their prey. Gustav-Adolf quitted his perch, trotted over to Mama Schimmelhorn, leaped to her lap, and settled down to purr.
And Papa Schimmelhorn, warned by some occult instinct, tried unavailingly to edge away, and made despairingly defiant noises in his beard.
The bosuns paused, looking to the Mother-Empress for encouragement.
She smiled at them. “I tell him to hold shtill,” she said, “zo you can take der trousers off und put inshtead der lidtle petticoat. Ach, he vill look zo cute!”
Papa Schimmelhorn roared incoherently. “Und do nodt argue,” she ordered him, gesturing at a large Commander nearby. “Now giff der clock to Mrs. Elephant, zo no vun breaks it vhen der pants come off.”
“Nein! NEIN! I vill nodt giff avay!” He stamped and spluttered; and the bosuns, obviously impressed, started to back off.
Mama Schimmelhorn hefted her umbrella. “You vant me to get tough? Nincompoop, better you listened more to Villie Fledermaus. Vhen in Rome, ve do like Romers do. Ve are going to visit vith die shpace-ladies, who think I am a Qveen. They are Beetlegoosers.” The last word penetrated—but Papa Schimmelhorn assumed that it referred, not to a place of origin, but to some alien custom of unexampled quaintness and barbarity. He uttered a batrachian gulp, and passively allowed the Commander to take the cuckoo clock.
After that, and once the bosuns had solved the mystery of the terrestrial zipper, the ceremony went forward smoothly. Many were the exclamations of wonder and astonishment at the sights revealed, and many the cries of mingled disappointment and relief when the Mother-Empress intervened to permit him to retain his shorts.
They removed his sports-coat and his shirt, his socks and shoes. They measured him. A dozen little men came running in bearing bright bolts of cloth which, with timorous twitters, they held against him for Mama Schimmelhorn’s comparison. She considered each one carefully, wondering aloud whether it suited him and if Ms. Prudence would approve of it. Finally, she chose a Shocking Pink, with a rather toxic yellow for frills and edging. The cloth was spread out on the deck. The little men squeaked happily, and crawled around it, busy with shears and glue. In no time at all, the frock was ready, and a pair of bosuns pulled it down over Papa Schimmelhorn’s unresisting head.
Everyone looked pleased, and there were numerous comments on his improved appearance. Then the Captain sang out a cheerful order, and Mama Schimmelhorn was hoisted—Gustav-Adolf, chair, and all—onto the broad shoulders of half a dozen officers. Three little men with nose-flutes took up positions in front of her, immediately preceding the proud Commander with the cuckoo clock. Papa Schimmelhorn, flanked by his bodyguard, was prodded into line. The Captain signaled. The nose-flutes tootled a gay, though slightly bronchial, air. And the Mother Empress was borne in triumph to her new quarters.
Sheer intelligence does not necessarily determine the rate at which an organism adapts to its environment. Papa Schimmelhorn, with a mind several times as powerful as any previously measured in the known Universe, made no voluntary adaptations whatsoever during his first hours aboard the ship. Mama Schimmelhorn, much lower on the scale, started at once to plan how she could force the environment to adapt to her. But Gustav-Adolf, the measure of whose intellect was a mere squiggle, gave it a quick going-over, snarled at it a few times, and took to it like a duck to water.
He accompanied his mistress to the Captain’s quarters, containing a monstrous pancake of a bed, a lot of hairy sausage furniture in bilious colors, and several badly-tinted pin-up pictures of little men. Expressing his immediate disapproval of the local odors, he decided to explore. He mewed at the door leading to the anteroom, and was not astonished when it opened automatically.
Before him he beheld a much smaller chamber, furnished only with five tiny cots and a huge portrait of the Captain. Four of the cots had been pushed together to form a single couch against one wall, and on it,
rocking his head between his hands and groaning miserably, sat Papa Schimmelhorn in his brand-new frock. The fifth cot was in a corner as far away as possible. Tied to it by a leg, and obviously in a state of abject terror, cringed a little man whose personality reminded Gustav-Adolf instantly of mice. His hackles rose. Stiff legged, he started stalking. The little man attempted to escape beneath the bed. Gustav-Adolf stopped and looked back over his shoulder to see if Papa Schimmelhorn would join in the sport. He waited for a minute. Then, discouraged by his friend’s disinterest as well as by his quarry’s lack of gumption, he shrugged disgustedly. Tail high, he went to the second door, mewed at it, and strode out into the passageway.
For some time, he had been aware that he was by no means the only cat aboard, and had been following his nose toward the promise of feline fight and frolic. Now an odor assailed his nostrils which, though peculiarly anemic, could have originated only with another tomcat. He lowered his ears, swelled his tail, and assumed his best hungry tiger pose.
“Mum-um-um-blurk!” he roared. “Blah-h-rowow-ooOOH-ROW!” which in Cat meant, “Ah, y’ dirty bum! I’ll beatcha brains out! I’ll tear ya limb from limb!”
He launched himself around the corner—straight into the midst of eight or a dozen tiny tomcats congregated around an alcove in the wall. Spitting, they took off vertically; spitting, they hit the deck again; then, mewing pitifully, all but two fled. This unhappy pair—a yellow and a scrawny black and white—found themselves trapped within the alcove by Gustav-Adolf’s massive bulk.
He regarded them in astonishment. “Huh!” he growled disgustedly. “Joov’nile delinquens! Punk kids playin’ big. Y’ pantywaists!” He bared his inch-long fangs. “Y’ wanta fight?” Neither of the pantywaists was tempted by this offer. “Mew-mew-mew-mew!” chattered the yellow one. “D-d-don’t you dare touch me. Just don’t you d-dare!”
The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack Page 10