Megalomania Read online

  How different from the Hudibras norm were the bodies of that astonishing Erth-pair! it was an ingredient of their glamour. Freya didn’t see theirs as superior to Hudibrasian bodies, or vice versa: Hudibrasians had birdy beauty, while the beauty of Erthlings was apian, but both species were human in the ultimate sense of humanity. Sometimes Freya would catch herself fantasizing about amour with one of the men. This daydreaming was guilty, because in fact and by resolute intention she was faithful to Frey—who was likely to interrupt the fantasy with his usual psychic brutality: “God damn it, Freya, will you get off your big duff and start supper!”

  Pop would go the bubble.

  And then, one of them had come! had actually come! True, that one was not the great Croyd; but of course, the Galactic Chairman had to be untouchable. Instead, it was First Minister Trigg, who was great enough, but surely was more approachable—and, she admitted to herself, at least as sexy although of course, Freya would not dream of and anyhow, she was Frey’s faithful wife; besides which, Trigg was accompanied by a lady-captain…

  Freya’s magnificent consort Frey Zauberger was Chairman of the Music Faculty at the University of Inner Hudibras. Frey’s instrument of choice was the ultrasynthesizer; and while of course Freya had always been conscious of Frey’s musical excellence and his intergalactic prominence, she hadn’t entertained the ghost of an idea how excellent, how prominent. Simply, Frey Zauberger was everywhere acclaimed as headmaster of ultra-high-velocity ultrasynthesizing: all this via widely distributed stereo-flakes of his performances, although Frey had never condescended to board a spaceship.

  Rather abruptly, he’d had it with teaching; and he gave notice of his intent to retire at the vigorous middle age of seventy-two. (Freya was a mere chick of sixty-five.) Colleagues arranged for Zauberger a far-out farewell do at a posh oceanside banquet hall on Outer Hudibras; now how in the world would First Minister Trigg have received word? but now he was here specifically for the big event!

  In fact, it was Professor Zauberger on whom Dino depended as a salient tool for bringing off his galaxy-blasting.

  Off her feet he swept little Freya, did that electrical Dino Trigg, melting-sparkling over and into and around her with his all-suffusing charisma; while Kolly slipped an arm around tall Frey’s waist and plied that normally austere musician with wine and affection. All the Hudibras people overflowed with envy. Frey was young and gay again in all his tall dark handsomeness; he and Kolly Kedrin flirted audaciously, she even daring to praise his silver-brocaded nasal snood; he retaliated by tickling her ears with his sensitive meter-long eyebrow antennae.

  Once when Dino and Freya ventured out onto the nocturnal veranda overlooking an ocean gleaming with silver reflected from the Hudibras moons and 30 Doradus, Frey and Kolly caught them out there, and the four laughed and teased each other—in Anglian, of course, that being the interstellar lingua gallia. (Frey’s Anglian was fluently precise, Freya’s was lousy; Dino’s Hudibrasian was brilliant, Kolly’s didn’t exist.) When they reentered the grand salon, with both Zaubergers already intoxicated by this unexpected intimacy with one (Frey knew) or two (Freya imagined) dignitaries at the very highest intergalactic level, they paused and posed in mock dismay as the lights and the rollicking-minor music hit them again, and somebody noticed their entry and began applauding, and the applause grew general, and people at the winebar started shattering wineglasses on the floor. The wines were old-school: not light. The quartet resumed their seats at the central round six-person table of honor with the university chancellor and his little wife, while all around them others were raising conservative hell on the dancefloor. A waiter in a powder-blue tunic hovered so closely over them that they experienced a deciduosity from the fig-leaves entwined in his curly head-feathers.

  This party was a semi-orgiastic bashing of fig leaves! What was the music? balakas? manarchos? anyhow, it bubbled in their blood. Freya was ready to sing, but Kolly diverted her into seduction by the aromatic honey-syrupy tufa-stuff on their platters and the heady winesmell. Into their platter-syrup the waiter spooned something like grated orange peel which luxuriously sank beneath the honey making it heap unguently up; Frey spooned some into his mouth and some into Kolly’s, while Freya did the same for herself and for Dino; and oh, it was heady-right; and Frey suspected that if Minister Trigg should make a speech in Frey’s honor, Trigg would be too happy-drunk to pronounce the words while Frey would be too mellow-afloat to understand them even if they should be well pronounced which was unlikely.

  Somewhere along the line, they had switched seats so that just now Freya sat beside Dino while Frey was with Kolly; and had Freya been sober, she would have been all but overcome by Dino’s nearness in this pagan-delicious party. They poked grapes into each other’s mouths, they washed them down with sweet white wine, they made cake-sops and stirred them around in their golden plate-honey and let it dissolve into their membranes; they sluiced their membranes with dark sweet wine; all of it was wicked, not boorishly intoxicating but just tipsifying enough to induce a graceful level of irresponsibility.

  The chancellor arose and elicited order by waving arms of which he had only two; he was a golden alien recruited from Erth’s Ripon for his scholarship and panache. “Radies and gentlermen, I give you the honoled enteltainel of the evening—le-til-ing Plofessel Fley Zaubelgel!” Sweepingly he gestured toward the entertainment dais which was graced by a bejeweled ultrasynthesizer. Arising from their table, Frey excused himself and started for the dais; passing the chancellor, Frey hugged his shoulders, remarking: “For a Riponese, you have a remarkable Watutsi accent.” Reaching back to counter-hug the Zauberger ribs, he asserted: “The difficulty of acquiring this accent-mastery cannot easily be described.”

  Dino had all-of-a-sudden forgotten about everyone and everything here or anywhere in the universe other than Frey Zauberger. The retiring professor was an unequaled virtuoso of complicated high velocity: one who could make four six-fingered hands and two six-toed bare feet ere— ate the sounding of a hundred-musician Erth-human orchestra, whose antennae actually danced over the controls, who could convolute creatively an already-complex fugue by tripling the left-arms pattern while doubling the right-arms pattern and holding the feet-pattern constant, all without an uncalculated dissonance, and make it finally pan-out in some ingenious coda—for Zauberger had arrived at composing most of his own fugues because no other composer could handle his performing scope. Nobody anywhere was anything like Frey Zauberger, either at ultra-high-tech performance, or at high-tech professional commentary on high-tech music, or at high-tech innovative complication. He was the intuitive-intellective ultramathematician of ultramusic.

  You might not like the ultramusic, Kolly Kedrin reflected, but that would be irrelevant.

  Having finished the piece, having stood to receive the prolonged applause, Frey told them in his crisp reedy voice: “I need to express in softer, more traditional mood my feelings as I depart this beloved institution. My wife, darling Freya, will assist me by singing the lyric.” Timidly departing the table, Freya moved forward, mounted the dais, smiled tentatively, took a position in front of the ultrasynthesizer with her feet together and two of her hands folded before her groin like a child at a children’s music recital. Frey, seated with four hands and two feet and two antennae poised, watched Freya severely and waited; Freya helplessly looked at her husband; Frey nodded; Freya nodded and turned to the audience. After a few haunting mood-music bars (low velocity) from Frey, out came the Freya-voice, a sweet warbling mezzo:

  Bedein ermalder lingschaft

  vas genirnen uns umlauft…

  .. . which was apprehended by entranced Dino as:

  Beyond the halls of ivy

  that surround us here today…

  The subsequent applause was long and loud. The Zaubergers took a bow together; but after that, it was Frey only who kept responding, although icily Frey refused to offer an encore. In time, the applause was for nothing, and it died as Frey’s lower right
hand seized Freya’s left upper to drag her back to their table—where Frey hard-squeezed a Trigg-shoulder and hissed: “Minister, Captain, I’m going mad in here, f gossakes get us outside and let me breathe fresh outer air for a few minutes before the chancellor gets me back in for the funeral oration!”

  Outdoors again, on the dancehall’s oceanside veranda, four people leaned on the rail gazing at semi-turbulent water: Frey, Kolly, Freya, Dino. Frey bit: “Already I’m sorry I retired. Nothing left for me now but to stew in the claustrophobic stews of Inner Hudibras. I used to be able to spend my summer vacations at a plush condo out here under sun and stars; it’s gone; I’ll rot in the hollow.”

  Kolly squeezed one of Frey’s forearms.

  Unexpectedly, Frey snarled: “It might have been a lot different if my stupid Freya had really had all the money she led me to expect before we got engaged.”

  Embarrassed silence. Kolly released Frey’s arm. Freya suffered.

  Dino told the water: “Nonsense, Frey, you’ll have plenty of work, you’re in interworld demand; I’ll be drafting you!”

  “So will I,” Kolly assured Frey.

  Freya squeezed Kolly’s arm. “Oh, Captain Kedrin, you are so wonderful!” But Frey, gazing speculatively at Dino, queried: “Drafting me? How?”

  “I can tell you a good deal more about that very soon. Would you, for example, be so kind as to entertain me in your apartment for dinner say a week from tonight?”

  The eagerness of the affirmative response was, for Kolly, deeply touching. For Dino, it was enormously gratifying: now he could move to the next step!

  6. Foreplay

  Because it was risky for the Sterbenräuber to time-surface near a COM-SAT in stationary Hudibras-orbit, they had left her parked a few centuries uptime and had doried to Hudibras aboard a lifeboat named Flaherty—one of whose convenient properties was, that it could perform limited time-maneuvers. By the time they had reached the surface of Hudibras, just in time for the Zauberger party, they were in germinal actuality. Having found the party-locus, having told Flaherty to hide in nearby woods, they traveled to and from the party in a ground-skimmer which the lifeboat routinely carried.

  In bed aboard Sterbenräuber after the party: “A week,” he murmured, “may conceivably give me enough preparatory time, but I’ll have to start immediately. Now, Kolly, I understand that Flaherty is capable of maneuvering extensively in uptime and down into present germinality?”

  Puzzled, because she had been unable to pry out of him an explanation of his methodology, she told him: “Sterbenräuber scouters are trained to follow this mother ship whitherwhenever, and not much else. They don’t have instruments for deep independent tempigation. But Flaherty is the most adaptable among them.”

  “Then I need Flaherty, and I’ll handle the problem of tempigation without instruments.”

  “Room aboard for me, Dino?”

  “Dear Kolly, I simply cannot spare you from this mother ship! Never forget that we are fugitives. Doubtless your first officer is competent, but you are the only one I trust in case evasive action becomes necessary.”

  “In short, here I’m stuck. A fugitive. Hiding in uptime.”

  “Kolly—”

  She raised a silencing hand. She spoke into her wrist intercom: “Mister Myco, do you hear me? Good. Be so kind as to break out Flaherty for Minister Trigg who will meet you on the operating bridge in five minutes. That is all. Out.” Then cool to Dino: “Cheer up, I’ll probably be out of my snit by tonight. Probably.”

  “I’m delighted, because I may not see you for several nights, and I’d hate to think you were angry about it. I’m off, now. Cheers.” Exit, floating.

  During several days and nights, Command Robot Myco was confused because of the captain’s unusual mood-bile. It didn’t matter to the rest of her crew: they were lower-grade robots.

  Aboard the spaceboat whose size and appointments resembled those of a twentieth-century prenuclear submarine, Trigg checked the instrumentation—which was reasonably satisfactory for celestial navigation but sadly deficient for tempigation. He activated boat-control and queried: “Robot boat, I think the name on you is Flaherty?”

  “Aye aye, Doctor Trigg, sir.” The voder echoed Dino’s own lyric tenor.

  “Splendid, Flaherty. Now, pay close attention. For the moment, we will merely time-surface to Hudibras germinality, and this I know you can do.

  But soon we will be spatiotempigating rather extensively, some billions of years into the past. Now Flaherty, your instruments tell me nothing of your potential for this; your enormously simplified tempometer is calibrated only for plus-twenty-five and minus-twenty-five. Can you explain to me what the calibration means?”

  “With pleasure, sir, whatever pleasure may be. 1 do not originate time-diving; it is always originated for me by the mother ship, I merely follow. When I depart the mother ship at a given time-level, I can tempigate independently between twenty-five centuries earlier and twenty-five centuries later than that zero-level, whatever that level may be. Sir, the notion of moving independently so deep into past time fascinates me, and I do hope that my limitations will not prevent.”

  Dino sighed. “Be easy, good Flaherty; between now and then, I will think of something. Now, be good enough to take us down to time-surface in Hudibras-orbit, and I’ll give you spatio-navigational directions then. Activate.”

  On Outer Hudibras, he search-ranged the planetary exterior, using a tight-spiral hunting pattern beginning at the northernmost bounds of one temperate zone and moving southward through equatorial heat, until he had attained to the southernmost bounds of the other temperate zone.

  At the south pole, then, he ice-brooded—settling, finally, on a pair of localized memories: a dramatic seaside chateau for sale in the benign southern climes of the north temperate zone, and a church in the far north containing the mightiest ultrasynthesizer ever encountered anywhere. Would Zauberger find the meld irresistibly good? Dino bought the ideal seaside chateau, paying in full with Hudibrasian currency stolen from a bank vault by means of an intertime ploy. Having possessed himself of the great house, Dino teleported thither the ideal ultrasynthesizer from the church—which, for all he knew or cared, may have mourned its loss.

  All this got consummated on the very eve of Dino’s dinner appointment at the Zauberger apartment inside Hudibras. There seemed to be every reason for him now to relax, preferably aboard Sterbenräuber where he could involve Kolly in his relaxation.

  Having departed Flaherty at a Sterbenräuber docking hatch, he used the intercom in the airlock to raise Commandroid Myco and to request: “Be so good as to ask the captain if she will join me in my quarters for pre-dinner drinks. And phone me in my quarters in fifteen minutes to tell me whether she is coming. Thank you, Commandroid.” Whereupon he teleported himself to his quarters, not wishing to encounter anybody during a thither-walk. (Such trifling use of his special powers unhaunted Dino had always avoided; now he was finding such use to be enormously rollicking fun.) In his salon, he set his local gravity at six-tenths G, a comfortable Mars-level; and he float-paced, reviewing progress and previewing plans. A door chime interrupted; Dino queried, “Well?” Intercom snap: “This is the captain. Sir, I request permission to enter.” He said: “You are warmly welcome.” She entered, closing the iris-door behind her; leaning back against the door, she surveyed Trigg stormily.

  There was some sort of ill-understood way in which Dino’s lip-closed smile could acquire a tenderness which his eyes and his body harmoniously complemented and communicated to the person whom he was wooing, with an instinctively irresistible persuasiveness. (He could, at will, strengthen the effect with projective hypnosis, but just now he wanted to use no such reinforcement.) Bowing slightly to Kolly, he motioned to paired couches at a small cocktail table near the bar. Outwardly stiffening while inwardly she melted, Kolly moved thither, indolently hop-floating in the low gravity; paused at a couch; looked at him. He nodded; she sat. It entered her mind once again t
o spew out at him the venom that she had been accumulating all week, but a drink would help loosen her for this; arching her back, she glanced at the bar.

  Dino nodded affirmation and waved invitingly at the bar.

  Heigh-ho. Arising, Kolly moved behind the bar and mixed, in a tall glass, an exquisite and unreliably intoxicating pink drink called nisch. She gestured to him with an empty glass, but he head-negated. She returned to the couch, sipped her drink, contemplated it, sipped more generously, swung her feet liquidly up onto the couch, reclined at ease, turned to him.

  She blurted: “What in hell makes you think you’re still welcome aboard?”

  He said while standing: “If I’m not welcome aboard, why in hell are you drinking my drink?”

  “It isn’t yours, it’s mine!”

  “I thought you were making it for me. So then you are a boor?”

  Irritated, she tossed him the drink; he caught it with one hand, spilling little; he sipped it; he went to her, sat on a side of her couch, held the glass to her lips.

  He won.

  Kolly of course went with Dino—who could refuse him anything?—to the private Zauberger dinner. In the Zauberger apartment, now during her second live look at tall, golden, galactically eminent Trigg, pale-eyed diminutive downy-feathered Freya was death-scared of this weirdly handsome alien; but Kolly, grasping the situation, quietly helped Freya along. Freya therefore deployed eager hospitality; and by late evening, their foursome-contexture was most warm and easy.

  That is, between host and male guest it was warm and easy. Both Dino and Kolly were being courteously attentive to Frey’s little wife; but Freya, while feigning warmth, continued timid—a condition which was not ameliorated by Frey’s occasional mouth-corner snarl: “Get him what he wants, dummy!” or “Baby doll, don’t comment, we’re way beyond your depth!” Of course Freya couldn’t all-the-time flitter over them with service, occasionally she had to sit; but then she sat watching and listening like a frightened frosh at a finishing school for girls. Before the evening had developed very far, it became evident to Kolly that the action was going to occur between the men; whereafter she and Freya sat mosdy together, sometimes even holding hands, watching the interplay.