Glory Road

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “No, no!” screamed Rufo. “Stand back! Get clear!”

  A corner of the box was still in sight. With a safety line on me I knew I could get it, even if there was no bottom to the pool. I said so, angrily.

  “No, Oscar!” Star said urgently. “He’s right. We march. Quickly.”

  So we marched—me leading. Star breathing on my neck, Rufo crowding her heels.

  We had gone a hundred yards when there was a mud volcano behind us. Not much noise, just a bass rumble and a slight earthquake, then some very dirty rain. Star quit hurrying and said pleasantly, “Well, that’s that.”

  Rufo said, “And all the liquor was in it!”

  “I don’t mind that,” Star answered. “Liquor is everywhere. But I had new clothes in there, pretty ones, Oscar. I wanted you to see them; I bought them with you in mind.”

  I didn’t answer. I was thinking about a flamethrower and an M-1 and a couple of cases of ammo. And the liquor, of course.

  “Did you hear me, milord?” she persisted. “I wanted to wear them for you.”

  “Princess,” I answered, “you have your prettiest clothes right with you, always.”

  I heard the happy chuckle that goes with her dimples. “I’m sure that you have often said that before. And no doubt with great success.”

  We were out of the swamp long before dark and hit the brick road soon after. Blood kites are no problem. They are such murderous things that if you shoot an arrow in the direction of one of their dives, a kite will swerve and pluck it out of the air, getting the shaft right down its gullet. We usually recovered the arrows.

  We were among plowed fields soon after we reached the road and soon the blood kites thinned out. Just at sundown we could see outbuildings and the lights in the manor where Star said that we would spend the night.

  EIGHT

  Milord Doral ’t Giuk Dorali should have been a Texan. I don’t mean that the Doral could have been mistaken for a Texan but he had that you-paid-for-the-lunch-I’ll-pay-for-the-Cadillacs expansiveness.

  His farmhouse was the size of a circus tent and as lavish as a Thanksgiving dinner—rich, sumptuous, fine carvings and inlaid jewels. Nevertheless it had a sloppy, lived-in look and if you didn’t watch where you put your feet, you would step on a child’s toy on a broad, sweeping staircase and wind up with a broken collarbone. There were children and dogs underfoot everywhere and the youngest of each weren’t housebroken. It didn’t worry the Doral. Nothing worried the Doral, he enjoyed life.

  We had been passing through his fields for miles (rich as the best Iowa farmland and no winters; Star told me they produced four crops a year)—but it was late in the day and an occasional field hand was all we saw save for one wagon we met on the road. I thought that it was pulled by a team of two pairs of horses. I was mistaken; the team was but one pair and the animals were not horses, they had eight legs each.

  All of Nevia valley is like that, the commonplace mixed with the wildly different. Humans were humans, dogs were dogs—but horses weren’t horses. Like Alice trying to cope with the Flamingo, every time I thought I had it licked, it would wiggle loose.

  The man driving those equine centipedes stared but not because we were dressed oddly; he was dressed as I was. He was staring at Star, as who wouldn’t? The people working in fields had mostly been dressed in sort of a lava-lava. This garment, a simple wraparound tied off at the waist, is the equivalent in Nevia of overalls or blue jeans for both men and women; what we were wearing was equal to the Gray Flannel Suit or to a woman’s basic black. Party or formal clothes—well, that’s another matter.

  As we turned into the grounds of the manor we picked up a wake of children and dogs. One kid ran ahead and, when we reached the broad terrace in front of the main house, milord Doral himself came out the great front door. I didn’t pick him for lord of the manor; he was wearing one of those short sarongs, was barefooted and bareheaded. He had thick hair, shot with gray, an imposing beard, and looked like General U.S. Grant.

  Star waved and called out, “Jock! Oh, Jocko!” (The name was “Giuk,” but I caught it as “Jock” and Jock he is.)

  The Doral stared at us, then lumbered forward like a tank, “Ettyboo! Bless your beautiful blue eyes! Bless your bouncy little bottom! Why didn’t you let me know?” (I have to launder this because Nevian idioms don’t parallel ours. Try translating certain French idioms literally into English and you’ll see what I mean. The Doral was not being vulgar; he was being formally and gallantly polite to an old and highly respected friend.)

  He grabbed Star in a hug, lifted her off her feet, kissed her on both cheeks and on the mouth, gnawed one ear, then set her down with an arm around her. “Games and celebrations! Three months of holiday! Races and rassling every day, orgies every night! Prizes for the strongest, the fairest, the wittiest—”

  Star stopped him. “Milord Doral—”

  “Eh? And a prize of all prizes for the first baby born—”

  “Jocko darling! I love you dearly, but tomorrow we must ride. All we ask is a bone to gnaw and a corner to sleep in.”

  “Nonsense! You can’t do this to me.”

  “You know that I must.”

  “Politics be damned! I’ll die at your feet, Sugar Pie. Poor old Jocko’s heart will stop. I feel an attack coming right now.” He felt around his chest. “Someplace here—”

  She poked him in the belly. “You old fraud. You’ll die as you’ve lived, and not of heartbreak. Milord Doral—”

  “Yes, milady?”

  “I bring you a Hero.”

  He blinked. “You’re not talking about Rufo? Hi, Rufe, you old polecat! Heard any good ones lately? Get back to the kitchen and pick yourself a lively one.”

  “Thank you, milord Doral.” Rufo “made a leg,” bowing deeply, and left us.

  Star said firmly, “If the Doral please.”

  “I hear.”

  Star untangled his arm, stood straight and tall and started to chant:

  “By the Singing Laughing Waters

  “Came a Hero Fair and Fearless.

  “Oscar hight this noble warrior,

  “Wise and Strong and never daunted,

  “Trapped the Igli with a question,

  “Caught him out with paradoxes,

  “Shut the Igli’s mouth with Igli.

  “Fed him to him, feet and fingers!

  “Nevermore the Singing Waters…”

  It went on and on, none of it lies yet none of it quite true—colored like a press agent’s handout. For example, Star told him that I had killed twenty-seven Horned Ghosts, one with my bare hands. I don’t remember that many and as for “bare hands,” that was an accident. I had just stabbed one of those vermin as another one tumbled at my feet, shoved from behind. I didn’t have time to get my sword clear, so I set a foot on one horn and pulled hard on the other with my left hand and his head came apart like snapping a wishbone. But I had done it from desperation, not choice.

  Star even ad-libbed a long excursus about my father’s heroism and alleged that my grandaddy had led the charge at San Juan Hill and then started in on my great-grandfathers. But when she told him how I had picked up that scar that runs from left eye to right jaw, she pulled out all the stops.

  Now look, Star had quizzed me the first time I met her and she had encouraged me to tell her more during that long hike the day before. But I did not give her most of the guff she was handing the Doral. She must have had the Sûreté, the F.B.I., the Archie Goodwin on me for months. She even named the team we had played against when I busted my nose and I never told her that.

  I stood there blushing while the Doral looked me up and down with whistles and snorts of appreciation. When Star ended, with a simple: “Thus it happened,” he let out a long sigh and said, “Could we have that part about Igli over again?”

  Star complied, chanting different words and more detail. The Doral listened, frowning and nodding approval. “A heroic solution,” he said. “So he’s a mathematician, too. Wh
ere did he study?”

  “A natural genius, Jock.”

  “It figures.” He stepped up to me, looked me in the eye and put his hands on my shoulders. “The Hero who confounds Igli may choose any house. But he will honor my home by accepting hospitality of roof…and table…and bed?”

  He spoke with great earnestness, holding my eye; I had no chance to look at Star for a hint. And I wanted a hint. The person who says smugly that good manners are the same everywhere and people are just people hasn’t been farther out of Podunk than the next whistle stop. I’m no sophisticate but I had been around enough to learn that. It was a formal speech, stuffed with protocol, and called for a formal answer.

  I did the best I could. I put my hands on his shoulders and answered solemnly, “I am honored far beyond any merit of mine, sir.”

  “But you accept?” he said anxiously.

  “I accept with all my heart.” (“Heart” is close enough. I was having trouble with language.)

  He seemed to sigh with relief. “Glorious!” He grabbed me in a bear hug, kissed me on both cheeks, and only some fast dodging kept me from being kissed on the mouth.

  Then he straightened up and shouted, “Wine! Beer! Schnapps! Who the dadratted tomfoolery is supposed to be chasing? I’ll skin somebody alive with a rusty file! Chairs! Service for a Hero! Where is everybody?”

  That last was uncalled for; while Star was reciting what a great guy I am, some eighteen or fifty people had gathered on the terrace, pushing and shoving and trying to get a better look. Among them must have been the personnel with the day’s duty because a mug of ale was shoved into my hand and a four-ounce glass of 110-proof firewater into the other before the boss stopped yelling. Jocko drank boilermaker style, so I followed suit, then was happy to sit down on a chair that was already behind me, with my teeth loosened, my scalp lifted, and the beer just starting to put out the fire.

  Other people plied me with bits of cheese, cold meats, pickled this and that, and unidentified drinking food all tasty, not waiting for me to accept it but shoving it into my mouth if I opened it even to say “Gesundheit!” I ate as offered and soon it blotted up the hydrofluoric acid.

  In the meantime the Doral was presenting his household to me. It would have been better had they worn chevrons because I never did get them straightened out as to rank. Clothes didn’t help because, just as the squire was dressed like a field hand, the second scullery maid might (and sometimes did) duck back in and load herself with golden ornaments and her best party dress. Nor were they presented in order of rank.

  I barely twigged as to which was the lady of the manor, Jocko’s wife—his senior wife. She was a very comely older woman, a brunette carrying a few pounds extra but with that dividend most fetchingly distributed. She was dressed as casually as Jocko but, fortunately, I noticed her because she went at once to greet Star and they embraced warmly, two old friends. So I had my ears spread when she was presented to me a moment later—as (and I caught it) the Doral (just as Jocko was the Doral) but with the feminine ending.

  I jumped to my feet, grabbed her hand, bowed over it and pressed it to my lips. This isn’t even faintly a Nevian custom but it brought cheers and Mrs. Doral blushed and looked pleased and Jocko grinned proudly.

  She was the only one I stood up for. Each of the men and boys made a leg to me, with a bow; all the gals from six to sixty curtsied—not as we know it, but Nevian style. It looked more like a step of the Twist. Balance on one foot and lean back as far as possible, then balance on the other while leaning forward, all the while undulating slowly. This doesn’t sound graceful but it is, and it proved that there was not a case of arthritis nor a slipped disk anywhere on the Doral spread.

  Jocko hardly ever bothered with names. The females were “Sweetheart” and “Honeylamb” and “Pretty Puss” and he called all the males, even those who seemed to be older than he was, “Son.”

  Possibly most of them were his sons. The setup in Nevia I don’t fully understand. This looked like a feudalism out of our own history—and maybe it was—but whether this mob was the Doral’s slaves, his serfs, his hired hands, or all members of one big family I never got straight. A mixture, I think. Titles didn’t mean anything. The only title Jocko held was that he was singled out by a grammatical inflection as being the Doral instead of just any of a couple of hundred Dorals. I’ve scattered the tag “milord” here and there in this memoir because Star and Rufo used it, but it was simply a courteous form of address paralleling one in Nevian. “Freiherr” does not mean “free man,” and “monsieur” does not mean “my lord”—these things don’t translate well. Star sprinkled her speech with “milords” because she was much too polite to say “Hey, Mac!” even with her intimates.

  (The very politest endearments in Nevian would win you a clout in the teeth in the USA.)

  Once all hands had been presented to the Gordon, Hero First Class, we adjourned to get ready for the banquet that Jocko, cheated of his three months of revelry, had swapped for his first intention. It split me off from Star as well as from Rufo; I was escorted to my chambers by my two valettes.

  That’s what I said. Female. Plural. It is a good thing that I had become relaxed to female attendants in men’s washrooms, European style, and still more relaxed by Southeast Asia and l’Île du Levant; they don’t teach you how to cope with valettes in American public schools. Especially when they are young and cute and terribly anxious to please…and I had had a long, dangerous day. I learned, first time out on patrol, that nothing hikes up that old biological urge like being shot at and living through it.

  If there had been only one, I might have been late to dinner. As it was, they chaperoned each other, though not intentionally, I believe. I patted the redhead on her fanny when the other one wasn’t looking and reached, I thought, an understanding for a later time.

  Well, having your back scrubbed is fun, too. Shorn, shampooed, shined, shaved, showered, smelling like a belligerent rose, decked out in the fanciest finery since Cecil B. DeMille rewrote the Bible, I was delivered by them to the banquet hall on time.

  But the proconsul’s dress uniform I wore was a suit of fatigues compared with Star’s getup. She had lost all her pretty clothes earlier in the day but our hostess had been able to dig up something.

  First a dress that covered Star from chin to ankle—like plate glass. It seemed to be blue smoke, it clung to her and billowed out behind. Underneath was “underwear.” She appeared to be wrapped in twining ivy—but this ivy was gold, picked out in sapphires. It curved across her beautiful belly, divided into strands and cupped her breasts, the coverage being about like a bikini minimum but more startling and much more effective.

  Her shoes were sandals in an S-curve of something transparent and springy. Nothing appeared to hold them on, no straps, no clips; her lovely feet, bare, rested on them. It made her appear as if she were on tiptoe about four inches off the floor.

  Her great mane of blond hair was built up into a structure as complex as a full-rigged ship, and studded with sapphires. She was wearing a fortune or two of sapphires here and there on her body, too; I won’t itemize.

  She spotted me just as I caught sight of her. Her face lit up and she called out, in English, “My Hero, you are beautiful!”

  I said “Uh—”

  Then I added, “You haven’t been wasting your time, either. Do I sit with you? I’ll need coaching.”

  “No, no! You sit with the gentlemen, I sit with the ladies. You won’t have any trouble.”

  This is not a bad way to arrange a banquet. We each had separate low tables, the men in a row facing the ladies, with about fifteen feet between them. It wasn’t necessary to make chitchat with the ladies and they all were worth looking at. The Lady Doral was opposite me and was giving Star a run for the Golden Apple. Her costume was opaque some places but not the usual places. Most of it was diamonds. I believe they were diamonds; I don’t think they make rhinestones that big.

  About twenty were seated; two
or three times that many were serving, entertaining, or milling around. Three girls did nothing but see to it that I did not starve nor die of thirst—I didn’t have to learn how to use their table tools; I never touched them. The girls knelt by me; I sat on a big cushion. Later in the evening Jocko lay flat on his back with his head in a lap so that his maids could pop food into his mouth or hold a cup to his lips.

  Jocko had three maids as I did; Star and Mrs. Jocko had two each; the rest struggled along with one apiece. These serving maids illustrate why I had trouble telling the players without a program. My hostess and my Princess were dressed fit to kill, sure—but one of my flunkies, a sixteen-year-old strong contender for Miss Nevia, was dressed only in jewelry but so much of it that she was more “modestly” dressed than Star or Doral Letva, the Lady Doral.

  Nor did they act like servants except for their impassioned determination to see that I got drunk and stuffed. They chattered among themselves in teenage argot and made wisecracks about how big my muscles were, etc., as if I had not been present. Apparently heroes are not expected to talk, for every time I opened my mouth something went into it.

  There was always something doing—dancers, jugglers, recitations of poetry—in the space between the tables. Kids wandered around and grabbed tidbits from platters before they reached the tables. One little doll about three years old squatted down in front of me, all big eyes and open mouth, and stared, letting dancers avoid her as best they could. I tried to get her to come to me, but she just stared and played with her toes.

  A damsel with a dulcimer strolled among the tables, singing and playing. It could have been a dulcimer, she might have been a damsel.

  About two hours along in the feast, Jocko stood up, roared for silence, belched loudly, shook off maids who were trying to steady him, and started to recite.

  Same verse, different tune—he was reciting my exploits. I would have thought that he was too drunk to recite a limerick but he sounded off endlessly, in perfect scansion with complex inner rhymes and rippling alliterations, an astounding feat of virtuosity in rhetoric.