The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  Charles thought, “Not that sour old prune!” Surprised at himself, he swallowed the words just in time.

  Betty snickered. “Poor Cousin Aurelia! I simply can’t get over her staying locked in with nothing but Vegetable Remedy. Why, it tastes just like shoe polish. And it’s all because she’s scared to death to eat or drink anything here. She believes that Sugar Plum’s really an—an uninhibited planet!”

  She stopped. She stared at the captain. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m afraid,” he said, looking very serious, “that you don’t understand. Your Cousin Aurelia is right.”

  Betty wilted. “You can’t mean it!”

  “I don’t know exactly what does it. Maybe it’s something in the water and air and food—”

  Charles stared at the plates on the table in horror.

  “It’s nothing you need be afraid of,” the captain went on. “You see, its effect just depends on the kind of person you are way inside.”

  Betty began to perk up. She eyed Charles appraisingly.

  “Is Charles the right kind of person?” she asked.

  “I’m sure he is, and your cousin is, too, though she keeps it pretty well hidden. If they weren’t, Sugar Plum would soon let us know it, believe me.” He grinned. “And now let’s all go a-courtin’. I’ll get my guitar and call Herman.”

  He went to the door and whistled, and instantly a large reddish creature came lolloping in. It saw the guitar and blinked eagerly.

  Betty linked her arm in the captain’s. “Come along, Charlie.”

  Charles fumbled around. He was scared.

  Then Betty looked over her shoulder and smiled. It was a completely new smile. He had never seen it before. It made him tremble with apprehension.

  “You know,” she said softly, “I think it’ll sort of be fun being uninhibited.”

  Charles knocked over a glass, and his chair, and he paused only to drink some more water.

  “So,” he shouted, “do I!”

  “I suspected you might,” said the captain.

  * * * *

  Together they went out on the porch and sat down in a swing; and, for a few moments, in silence, they watched Sugar Plum’s two moons sailing through the strange, perfumed sky. The larger was celadon green; the smaller, off-white, was glowing, gleaming.

  Finally, “Cousin Aurelia?” called Betty.

  “Betty, are you out in the dark with that man?”

  “Charles and I both are. But he isn’t a pirate any more and he’s really quite nice. Besides, he’s going to sing to you.”

  “You tell him to go away—far away. I’ve barricaded the window and I have my sharp scissors. I warn you, if he makes one false move—”

  “This is where I came in,” remarked Charles.

  The captain settled back, tuned his guitar, and started to sing in a warm bass-baritone, with Herman whistling a tenor obbligato through his nose. Betty and Charles thought the effect was charming, even if Herman did tend to go a bit flat on the high notes.

  First, the captain sang Down by the Old Mill Stream and Sweet Genevieve. Then he tried a number of sentimental arias from the more respectable operas, and The Lost Chord, and several other old favorites.

  Occasionally, Cousin Aurelia sniffed loudly, but she said nothing until his serenade came to an end.

  “Betty!” she called. “Can you hear me?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Tell that person out there that it has done him no good to make those ungodly noises. My fingers have been in my ears all the time.”

  “You must’ve been really a sight,” giggled Betty.

  “Betty! You—you sound different, somehow.”

  “Oh, I am! So is Charles. We’re both uninhibited now.”

  There was one cry of horror from Cousin Aurelia and then silence.

  Betty turned to the captain. He looked downcast, and Herman did, too.

  “We’ll just have to try something else, something clever,” she told the captain. “Cousin Aurelia seems dead set against you. It’s because of your being a pirate, I guess.”

  * * * *

  Charles and Betty spent the next couple of days avoiding any mention of the captain’s former profession and helping him think up new ways to uninhibit Cousin Aurelia. He tried singing again, this time with an augmented chorus of Herman’s relations. When that also failed, he cooked her a fine mushroom omelette. Then he caught her a young animal with lavender ears to keep as a pet and he spent a whole evening readingSonnets from the Portuguese aloud at her window.

  She responded with sniffs and with occasional scraping noises of furniture being moved to reinforce her defenses. Finally, to Betty’s distress, she pushed out a note announcing that henceforth she would have nothing to do with the Buttons—and that no one could tell her that poems like those were Victorian.

  Before the third day was half over, the Captain was moping around, Charles was peevish, and Betty had started to worry and fret.

  So, in the late afternoon, they went on a picnic. Followed by Herman, and by the four-armed dining room robot carrying two wicker hampers, they walked around the lake to a broad grassy knoll where the strange square trees grew in a circle, and prisms of quartz leaned from the ground like Druids turned into stone. While they ate, the night advanced softly, its moons weaving crystalline shadows of celadon, rose, and old ivory.

  * * * *

  Betty waited until the last hint of daylight had vanished. Then, “It’s lovely,” she whispered. “Poor Cousin Aurelia, it’d all be so simple if she’d only come out, but—oh, I’m afraid that it’s hopeless!”

  “Hopeless?” Charles snorted. “It’s easy. We’ll break into her room, me and Burgee, and hold her while you pour some of Sugar Plum’s water down her gullet. She’ll be fixed up before she finds out what hit her.”

  “We mustn’t do that,” the captain said stiffly. “We can’t employ violence.”

  “Look who’s talking!” Charles was amused. “An old pirate like you. Robbing ships, making passengers walk the plank into space, shooting people with ray guns, and—”

  “Shh!” Betty warned. “Charles, that isn’t polite. You know he’s sensitive about—”

  The captain seemed to be strangling. “And I thought it was snobbery!” Then he exploded with laughter. He lay back on the grass and he howled.

  The Buttons stared in amazement, and some creatures came out of the trees to see what the uproar was all about.

  The captain sat up. “What century is this?” he asked.

  “The Twenty-second, of course,” answered Betty. “But—but why?”

  “I just wondered. I’ll tell you later.” He controlled himself with an effort. “But we really mustn’t use force on Aurelia, even in such a good cause. It might turn her into the wrong kind of person.”

  “Turn her?” Betty repeated sadly. “I’m afraid that she already is. I don’t think she’ll ever come out. I’m afraid she’ll do something desperate.”

  “I’m worried, too,” the captain admitted, “but I’m certain she is the right kind. The wrong kind of people can’t live here. Sugar Plum doesn’t like them.”

  Betty and Charles both looked puzzled.

  “I’ll try to explain. It happens within a few hours, even if they aren’t uninhibited. If they are, then it’s practically instantaneous. It’s a—”

  He broke off and looked up at the sky with a frown. There was an angry red glow right above them, a far-distant roar.

  They leaped to their feet. The glow brightened swiftly. It seemed to be headed straight for them. The sound filled the air.

  “We have visitors!” shouted the captain.

  “Wh-who?” stammered Betty. “The police?”

  “They don’t
use braking jets any more. It’s an obsolete freighter.”

  “Oh!” Betty put her hands to her face in terror. “It’s the Beautiful Joe. That man Possett—he’s coming back after Cousin Aurelia!”

  The red glow passed to the northward. They saw the ship’s shape for a moment, spurting flame, slowing. Then it dropped out of sight. The ground shuddered briefly. There was quiet.

  The captain grabbed Betty’s arm. “They’re down in the clearing. Quick! When he dropped you, did Possett take anything with him?”

  “Just a fresh supply of water.”

  “My God!” blurted Charles. “That means they’re—”

  “Uninhibited!” yelled the captain. “And they’re the wrong kind of people. Betty! Charles! Can you run? Hey, Steward, give them a hand!”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” snapped the robot, hoisting the hampers and reaching an elbow to each of the Buttons.

  “Then let’s go. I hope we can make it in time to save them!”

  “Them?” gulped Charles, as the robot started to run.

  But the captain already was too far ahead to have heard him.

  * * * *

  Pulled by the untiring robot, Charles and Betty made very good time, but they couldn’t catch up with the captain. They had to make several stops to get their wind back, and they were still half a mile from the house when they heard her.

  “Help! Murder! Police! Save me!” screamed Cousin Aurelia.

  “He—he’s got her!” puffed Charles, as the shrieks died away. “Hurry!”

  When they got to the house, it was empty. Not even Herman was there. In the living room and the hall, there were signs of a titanic struggle. The door of Cousin Aurelia’s room hung wide open.

  “Look!” Charles gave it a great goldfish stare. “She unlocked it herself!”

  “He probably told her—he was rescuing her—from the pirate,” panted Betty.

  “We—we’ll have to go on—” Charles felt his legs start to collapse—“to the clearing.”

  The robot put two arms around him, and one around Betty.

  “You will rest for three minutes,” it stated, leading them to the living room and seating them gently. “I will bring brandy.”

  The brandy was welcome. They drank it in gulps, and worried about Cousin Aurelia, and the robot fanned them considerately while they did so.

  Then, again, they were off. In less than ten minutes, they looked down on the valley, on the clearing. They caught sight of the Beautiful Joe. The voice of the waterfall reached them.

  And so did another one. A man’s voice. A deep one.

  “Ow!” it yelled hoarsely. “Let me up! Ow! Let go!”

  Charles moaned. “We shouldn’t have waited for brandy. Now they’re killing him, too!”

  With the robot behind them, they raced down the hill, splashed through the stream, broke through a circle of giggling Sugar Plum natives and goggle-eyed creatures.

  “Don’t give up!” croaked Charles. “We’re coming!”

  On the grass were four figures. Two were thrashing around and being sat on. Two were doing the sitting.

  The Buttons braked to a stop. Something was radically wrong. The larger of the two thrashing figures was being sat on by Cousin Aurelia!

  “Try to kidnap me, will you?” Slap. “Make me throw myself into that pool!” Slap. “And swallow a gallon of water and have to drag myself out!” Slap-slap-slap. “You will, will you?”

  “Ow!” cried the figure. “Leg-go!”

  Aurelia looked over her shoulder. She spied Charles and Betty.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Bear a hand here with Possett!”

  “You don’t have to hold him,” called Captain Burgee, dismounting from Loopy the mate. “He can’t get away. Sugar Plum’s got him.”

  They both rose and the two writhing figures continued to writhe.

  “They’re scratching,” Charles exclaimed.

  He wasn’t quite right. The skipper and the mate of the Beautiful Joe were trying to scratch, but they didn’t have enough hands. They were groaning, and bleating, and begging for aid as they wriggled.

  Cousin Aurelia gave Possett a push with her foot.

  “I’m soaked to the skin,” she announced. “Betty, help me off with this dress. If I don’t wring my petticoat out, I’ll catch something.”

  “Why, Cousin Aurelia!” Charles blurted. “In front of the captain?”

  “And why not?” she demanded. “I have undies on, don’t I?”

  The captain broke in, his voice urgent. “We’ve got to get these characters back aboard in a hurry! They can’t live on Sugar Plum; they’re the wrong kind of people. I started to tell you. They’re allergic to the critters, the trees, the natives—to everything here. You, Steward!” He beckoned. “Call the crew of the Beautiful Joe.”

  The robot ran to the ship. It whistled. Immediately, four other robots appeared.

  “Bosun,” said the captain to the one in the lead, “Captain Possett is ill. He is—er—delirious. The mate, too. Carry them in. And take off quickly for New Texas.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” The bosun saluted.

  They lifted up Possett, who was grunting and swearing. They hoisted the weasel-faced mate. The hatches clanged shut. Fire burst from the stern. The ship lifted.

  When there was quiet again, Cousin Aurelia looked at the captain. She examined him carefully.

  “Hm-m-m,” she murmured to Betty. “Not bad. Not bad at all!”

  Then, “Alexander Burgee,” she declared, “every bit of this is your fault. If I hadn’t escaped from that man and jumped in the pool—well, I don’t know what might’ve happened. The least you can do is carry me back to your house.”

  * * * *

  At midnight, Charles and Betty sat in the living room. They hadn’t had time to get used to the change in Cousin Aurelia and they still looked at her unbelievingly. She was wearing a gay housecoat of Betty’s, too tight in just the right places. She had let down her hair, tied it with a ribbon, and she’d put on a gay smear of lipstick. She was exceedingly merry.

  “I can’t imagine how I stood it,” she was saying, “for so many years. I mean, being such an old frump.” She laughed brightly. “Why, I was almost as bad as poor Charlie!”

  “Well, at least I never locked myself in to get away from a pirate,” Charles retorted.

  The captain stood up with a chuckle. “Say, that reminds me.” He went to a bookcase, opened a thick volume, and gave it to Charles. “I want you to read something here.”

  Charles saw that it was Jane’s Dictionary of Space Transportation. He looked up enquiringly.

  The captain was pointing at a word.

  “’Pirate,’” Charles read, sounding puzzled. “’Pirate, originally a criminal who attacked and robbed ships at sea (see: Earth, planet) now obsolete in this sense. At present, term applied to—’” Charles hesitated—”’to persons engaged in space salvage, especially to captains of vessels employed in such work.’”

  Charles turned red. Betty flushed. Cousin Aurelia started laughing her head off.

  “Times change,” the captain said soberly. “Do you want me to show you my license?”

  The Buttons were much too embarrassed to answer.

  “Well, if you don’t, I hope you’ll excuse us. Aurelia and I would like to sit in the swing and look at the stars for a while.”

  “I want to be told just how far away Boston is,” she said as he helped her to rise. She wrinkled her nose. “I’m certainly glad that here on Sugar Plum we’re safe from the wrong kind of people—all those horrible Victorians.”

  The captain’s arm went around her.

  He winked at the Buttons.

  “A few of them weren’t so bad,” he said gently. “A few
of the real ones.”

  And, as they left, he slipped the copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese into his pocket.

  “Well, now that we’ve sort of lost Cousin Aurelia,” said Betty, “I wish I could have one of these adorable animals on Sugar Plum for my very own. As a pet, you know. It might help as a substitute for Cousin Aurelia’s company.”

  “And what’s wrong with me for a substitute?” Charles wanted to know. “It seems to me that you can forget Cousin Aurelia for a change and give me a little consideration.”

  She looked at him appraisingly and then at her watch.

  “I never thought of that,” she said. “It’s time for bed.”

  Later, she sat up, studied him hard for a moment, and shook her head wistfully.

  “Oh, Charles, you’d be perfect,” she said, “if you only had lavender ears.”

  “That shouldn’t be much trouble,” he answered gravely. “I’ll signal a passing spaceship, get to New Texas and have my ears tattooed. Good enough?”

  She nuzzled against his neck.

  “Wonderful, darling. It would make you look so—so Bohemian!”

  It was the finest compliment Charles had ever received.

  GNURRS COME FROM THE VOODVORK OUT

  When Papa Schimmelhorn heard about the war with Bobovia, he bought a box-lunch, wrapped his secret weapon in brown paper, and took the first bus straight to Washington. He showed up at the main gate of the Secret Weapons Bureau shortly before midday, complete with box-lunch, beard, and bassoon. That’s right—bassoon. He had unwrapped his secret weapon. It looked like a bassoon. The difference didn’t show.

  Corporal Jerry Colliver, on duty at the gate, didn’t know there was a difference. All he knew was that the Secret Weapons Bureau was a mock-up, put there to keep the crackpots out of everybody’s hair, and that it was a lousy detail, and that there was the whole afternoon to go before his date with Katie.

  “Goot morning, soldier boy!” bellowed Papa Schimmelhorn, waving the bassoon.