The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  “I think it’s wonderful!” said Xorxan. “Do tell us more.”

  So Papa Schimmelhorn told them the whole story of his kidnapping, and of how he had not only restored the lost virility of the tiny men of Beetlegoose Nine, but also liberated them; and they murmured their approval, agreeing that female chauvinism, which they had seen in action during their stay there, was every bit as bad as its male counterpart.

  “But tell me,” said Zongtur, refilling all around, “after such adventures, what are you doing here?”

  Papa Schimmelhorn decided that it would not be really politic to tell them the entire story, not about Niki and Emmy and his tempestuous wrestlings with the Princess, so he gave them, if not a General Admission, at least a Parental Guidance version of his saga, finally explaining that the Princess had made him an honorary Prince to reward him for contriving the gold-making machine, but that the success had gone to her head and she had demanded that he forthwith challenge the Minotaur himself to mortal combat—something he was much too civilized to do. He also told them how, trying to hide from her, he had inadvertently stumbled into the very Labyrinth he was trying to avoid.

  “Well,” remarked Zongtur, “it’s certainly lucky you didn’t break in through the front door. I would have had to turn up the protective field, the one that keeps the wigglies out, and that would have been most unpleasant for you.”

  “Die vigglies?” asked Papa Schimmelhorn.

  Xorxan shuddered. “The place is full of them! Some are long and slithery; others buzz and fly around, or creep on all sorts of horrid legs. And they all bite or sting.”

  “But the field does keep them out beautifully,” Zongtur added. “And it also works very well on the natives, almost as well as my music. All I have to do is turn it up high enough, and none of them, especially those who don’t live on this island, will come near the place. Sometimes, in the old days, some of them would try breaking in, but it always drove the poor things mad. Quite often, when they’ve been threatened by invaders, I’ve had to come to their assistance. I dare say that’s another reason they bring me sacrifices. Don’t you think so, Xorxan?”

  “I’m sure it is,” she said. “Thank goodness it’s only the drive that’s broken down, so that the field’s kept working. Besides, I don’t know what we would have done without lights, or hot water, or the freezer.”

  “Well,” Zongtur growled, “it certainly took those natives long enough to find out that we didn’t want our sacrifices at the door with their throats cut and all the hair on. It was several centuries before I could stop doing my own cleaning and skinning and butchering and freezer wrapping—imagine that!—and then we only managed to get the idea over to them by turning down the music and the field whenever they brought things all cut up and wrapped.”

  They discussed the difficulties of living in a spaceship buried in the center of a Labyrinth on Little Palaeon; and then they told him all about Jekem, their home planet, where the average lifetime was seventy to a hundred thousand Earth-years, and artists and philosophers were the aristocracy. Papa Schimmelhorn learned that they had had space travel for so long that ordinary people took it in their stride; he learned that they were unaggressive, fighting no wars but taking excellent care of themselves when the circumstances warranted. He heard a great deal about their arts, their universities, their philosophies and theologies. From Xorxan, he learned that male and female Jekemsyg all participated, that she herself was a performing artist and therefore rather more frustrated here on Earth than Zongtur was. He also learned that they had pets on Jekem, mostly cats imported from the big women’s planet.

  “And we do get awfully homesick,” Xorxan told him, “especially when we think that we may never go home again. For a while, before it became obvious that they’d destroy themselves first, we thought the peoples of this planet might advance enough to develop interstellar travel, and either be able to fix our drive for us or at least relay a message to the JSSA—”

  “Der JSSA? Vot iss?”

  “The Jekem Spaceship Association. They have an excellent emergency service, but there’s no way for us to get in touch with them from a planetary surface, not at this distance.”

  “Papa here thinks that maybe he could fix our drive,” said Zongtur a little dubiously.

  “Well, I don’t see why he couldn’t, because he certainly is a genius—and an artist too. Zongtur, why don’t you take him back into the engine room and show it to him. and I’ll come with you and bring the wine.”

  “First, let me show him the control room,” Zongtur said. “Maybe it’ll give him some idea of how things work, and anyhow we’ll have to go there to find the owner’s manual.”

  The ship was heavily compartmented, and they passed through several bulkheads dividing more of the living quarters before reaching the control room. It was impressive in its simplicity. There were two huge seats before a panel of manual switches, readouts, video screens. There were several gadgets that made no sense at all. No lights blinked. No dials registered.

  “Everything’s automatic these days,” declared Zongtur. “Most of those switches are never used, and if they have to be the computer tells us how. The thing simply runs itself—when it is running, that is. You just tell it to give you a look at the right star charts, and tell it where to go, and it takes you there. Then, when you reach a planet, it lets you know if it’s safe to land—if the air is breathable and all that sort of thing, and if the indigenous life-forms have advanced enough to be really dangerous.”

  He picked up the owner’s manual and began thumbing through it. “Luckily, everything’s explained very simply,” he told Papa Schimmelhorn. “So I’ll probably be able to translate it even if I don’t understand it. I do hope I get all the terms right.”

  Finally they reached the engine room, and it was immediately apparent that, whether the drive worked or not, the ship itself was very much alive.

  “There’s some sort of power plant—atomic, I suppose—that keeps things going.” Zongtur pointed at a group of four massive ovoids reaching from floor to ceiling. “It’s just the drive itself that’s shot.”

  The drive stood all alone in the middle of the compartment, and it did not share the austere design characteristics of the rest. Instead, it looked more as though it had been conceived and brought into being by Papa Schimmelhorn himself. Twice as big as the gold-making machine had been, it possessed mysterious moving parts, equally mysterious crystalline transparencies showing highly complicated, presumably electronic assemblies. Built into it were several enormous solenoids, apparently fashioned of ceramic wire.

  Papa Schimmelhorn gazed at it ecstatically, and his subconscious at once reared up on its hind legs and whispered in his ear, Chum, this is going to be duck soup!

  There were benches along the wall, and he clambered up on one of them, letting his legs dangle and forgetting all about his goatskin skirt. He motioned to Zongtur and his wife to join him.

  “It iss beaudtiful!” he told them. “Nefer haff I seen a dingus except mein own vhich iss so—how do you say it?”

  “Esthetically satisfying?” suggested Zongtur.

  “Ja! Und mein subconscience says if noding’s missing I can fix—maybe efen if. Ach, I am so glad I came! Vhere are die tools?”

  “Tools? Well, there’s some sort of kit that came with it when we bought it, but the salesman said we’d never need it. It should be somewhere around….”

  He began rummaging in boxes and storage lockers, and finally found the kit stashed in a closet with what appeared to be spare parts for something.

  “Is this it?” he asked.

  Papa Schimmelhorn opened it, and his subconscious told him instantly that it was what he needed.

  “Okay, Herr Zongtur,” he said cheerfully. “You read der book, und translate so maybe I can undershtand, und I vill take apart.”

>   “Take it apart? But—but can you get it back together?”

  He assured them that of course he could.

  For several hours, then, while Zongtur and Xorxan translated, he worked happily away, dismantling the cosmic-ray converter, reducing the black-hole simulacrum to its component parts, and adorning the deck around the drive with a neatly arranged row of miscellaneous hickuses.

  Occasionally, he grunted with satisfaction as some unsuspected function was revealed, or cried out joyfully at the cleverness of the design, holding up a part or two and exclaiming that even he could never have contrived it quite as well.

  Gradually, as he worked, his hosts’ fears were lulled, for it was obvious that, at least when it came to taking things apart, he really knew what he was doing.

  Presently, Xorxan began to sing snatches from a few light songs of her husband’s composition—she explained that singing them in full would take much too long—and at around three A.M. she prepared a snack for all of them, of goat’s-milk cheese, and the best sausage of Little Palaeon, fresh fruit, and wine.

  It was almost daybreak when Papa Schimmelhorn, with a shout of triumph, held up a convoluted metal-and-ceramic object for their inspection.

  “Only look!” he bellowed. “Ho-ho-ho! Chust vun lidtle vire inside comes loose. Maybe vhen they put it in somevun iss thinking of his lidtle lady Jekemsyg, nicht wahr?”

  “Then you can fix it?” gasped Zongtur.

  “Nein,” laughed Papa Schimmelhorn. “I do nodt fix. Ve chust throw avay, und chump anoder vire across die socket terminals.”

  “Throw it away?”

  “Vith it, der designer vas maybe nodt so shmart. Vithoudt it, if you vant, you can go ten times as fast.”

  “My goodness!” Xorxan was impressed. “That would be seventy times the speed of light instead of only seven. We could get home much sooner.”

  “You’re sure it’ll work?” Zongtur asked.

  “Ja, ja! But after breakfast, anyvay, I fix it so if you are shcareed or do nodt like you can put back.”

  While Xorxan prepared their breakfast, he fastened the wire firmly back in place, then jumped another wire across the terminals. Point by point, he showed Zongtur how to put it back the way it was. “But,” he added, “I think you do nodt haff to. You ask der computer. It vill undershtand.”

  They breakfasted merrily, Papa Schimmelhorn with an excellent appetite, and the two Jekemsyg elated at the prospect of perhaps finally leaving Little Palaeon for home. Afterward, Papa Schimmelhorn took a short nap, declaring that he really wasn’t very tired, and then spent the rest of the morning putting the drive back together again.

  “Und now ve test,” he announced.

  They returned to the control room. Zongtur sat himself down in one of the two chairs. He turned the computer on. In his own language, he told it what he wanted. The computer answered him in the same tongue.

  “Vot does it say?” asked Papa Schimmelhorn.

  “It says, All systems are go!” answered Zongtur.

  He snapped an order. Abruptly, the earth shook. The ship’s entire hull started to struggle against the earth and stone that held it. Just as suddenly, it stopped. The computer spoke again.

  “I—I can’t believe it! It—it says our drive is now ten times as efficient as it was before!”

  “Of course,” said Papa Schimmelhorn.

  “Oh, how can we ever thank you?” Zorxan bent down and kissed him with her nose. “At last we can go home! At last my Zongtur’s work will get the recognition it deserves! I can just hear the critics now!” Her countenance lit up. “Why don’t you come with us? You can stay thirty or forty years and then we’ll bring you back.”

  “I am sorry,” Papa Schimmelhorn told her. “I luff to see your planet, but I must predty soon go home to Mama—if die Prinzessin iss nodt too angry und lets me go. But I haff a lidtle friend, only so high….” Briefly, he told them of Humphrey and his plight. “All he vants iss to get to oudter shpace, so from der body his shpirit can be free. Maybe vith you he gets a ride?”

  “Of course,” Zorxan said sympathetically. “Just bring him to us here before we leave. And now, surely you’ll stay to lunch? We can’t let you hurry off like that after all you’ve done for us!”

  “I shtay for lunch. You are a goot cook, chust like Mama. Maybe someday I come to Jekem und visit you.”

  Xorxan hustled them back into the dining room. “We really must celebrate! I’ll open up a bottle of Jekem wine—it’s almost our last one.” She busied herself preparing luncheon in the adjoining kitchen while Papa Schimmelhorn told Zongtur about his doubts and trepidations regarding his own return to the Princess.

  “I think,” said Zongtur, “that you won’t need to worry. If she’s in love with you—and especially when she hears who we really are, and sees our ship take off—well, somehow I don’t think you’ll have any problem after that.”

  “Take off?” Papa Schimmelhorn was astonished. “But how—how do you take off before they shofel all die rock und shtone und everything avay?”

  “No problem,” Zongtur answered. “The ship’ll simply push it all aside.”

  At lunch, they talked about each other’s planets, and about the big women’s world, and other curious places the Jekemsyg had visited. They ate roast lamb, and finished with a wonderful dessert Xorxan had made from her own recipe. They drank the famous wine of Jekem, which privately Papa Schimmelhorn didn’t think was very good.

  Then, just as they were finishing, a buzzer shrilled and on the wall one of seven red lights went on.

  “Well!” said Zongtur. “It’s the main door, where they leave the sacrifices. I wonder what they want.”

  “I can imachine!” Papa Schimmelhorn told him unhappily. “It iss die Prinzessin chasing me!”

  Zongtur patted him gently on the back to reassure him. “Just come with me,” he said, handing him his helmet. “We’ll meet them, and I’ll explain everything…. Darling,” he called to Xorxan, “turn on my symphony, one of the more dramatic passages, but not too loudly—at least not at first.”

  * * * *

  The well-ordered lives of eminent Swiss bankers are seldom disturbed by such creatures as Minotaurs, or even by their close facsimiles. Therefore it speaks well for the efficacy of Humphrey’s love potion that Gottfried Rumpler’s only thought, on first seeing Zongtur, was for the safety of his Philippa, just as hers was for his own. Wishing that he had brought his Sig-Neuhausen, he tried to shield her with his body. She tried to do the same for him. The maneuver simply brought them a little closer to the Minotaur. Sarpedon Mavronides, who had lived all his life knowing that the Minotaur was there but who had never seen him, was frozen in his tracks by sheer terror. Only Mama Schimmelhorn kept her head.

  Just as her husband had, she recognized the Jekemsyg immediately. “Vot nonsense!” she exclaimed. “He iss nodt a Minotaur. He iss from der planet Jekem, far avay. They are very cifilized, und I have met maybe his relatifes on Beetlegoose. Und he does nodt haff Papa in die claws.”

  In this, of course, she was quite correct, for Zongtur had simply taken Papa Schimmelhorn’s arm companionably.

  The moment of first recognition came and went. Her eyes narrowed. “But he does not haff der pants on!” she remarked severely. “Maybe he iss a dirty old man Jekemsyg?” She became aware of her husband’s strange attire. “Und vot iss? Papa in der Greeker monkey-suit? Und vithoudt undervear, chust der lidtle shkirt?” She advanced upon him, umbrella at the ready. “Der Jekemsyg vithout der pants on und you vithoudt der undervear! Come here at vunce. I lend my shawl so you are decent. Chust vait till ve get back home. This time, I teach a lesson.”

  It had taken Papa Schimmelhorn only a few moments to recover from his original shock, and then he had taken in the whole situation at a glance. He saw his wife, black dress, black
bumbershoot, and all. With a sinking heart, he beheld his Princess clinging to Gottfried-Rumpler and looking up at him with an expression now only too, too familiar. He realized that he no longer was a Prince with princely privileges, and he knew at once that Mama Schimmelhorn had met Humphrey, had confiscated the leftover love potion, and had used it to maximum effect. Vell, he thought, brightening up, maybe iss for der best. Odervise, vith only der lidtle shkirt to cofer me, und Mama here… He shuddered at the thought. Anyvay, I am now off der hook vith die Prinzessin.

  Obediently, with a simpering smile, he came to Mama Schimmelhorn, took the shawl she thrust at him, and wrapped himself modestly.

  Before he could say anything, Zongtur spoke up. “Madame,” he rumbled in Beetlegoosian, “I am Zongtur, the composer. As I know you are aware, I am a native of the planet Jekem, and I have been marooned on this savage isle for nearly five thousand of your years.”

  “Vell,” snapped Mama Schimmelhorn, “you at least could put der pants on. On Jekem people do nodt go around like dot. Your vife vould nodt like.”

  Zongtur admitted that she was quite correct—that his wife strongly disapproved. Then he explained that much against his will he had gone along with what the natives of Little Palaeon expected, with what seemed to turn them on.

  Mama Schimmelhorn eyed her husband. Shrewdly, she eyed Dr. Rumpler and the Fräulein. “I am chust here vun day,” she said, “but already I undershtand. I do nodt haff anoder shawl or I vould lend. Maybe you can open der bumbershoot und hold in front.”