Yondering Read online

  “You and Malley have an appointment with Her Excellency at 1600 hours tomorrow.”

  I was a bit flustered, but I managed to say, “Where?”

  “In her private quarters.” And then, barely managing to keep her voice level, Montesquieu added, “She’s invited you to afternoon tea.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and moved on to serve the next officer, a jovial fatso called Potemkin.

  The guy let out a cheery hoot of laughter and said, “Lucky you, Em,” and patted my bottom. “Monty here doesn’t even get invited to Her Excellency’s cocktail parties, let alone a private audience with tea and cakes thrown in. Do you, Mont?”

  “I don’t have ambassadorial status,” Montesquieu said. “Unlike Ms. Harpenden.”

  “Snakey!” Potemkin chortled.

  * * * *

  Her Excellency’s apartment was sumptuous. A maid conducted us through the gilded vestibule and into some sort of drawing room. The carpets were richly patterned and very deep. The walls were paneled in a dark wood that gleamed slightly in the concealed lamp light. Her Excellency rose from a brocaded sofa and shook our hands.

  “It is with great pleasure that I make your acquaintances,” she said.

  “Yeah, likewise,” Ned said.

  “And you must be Harri,” Her Excellency said.

  “Not me,” Ned said. “Harri stayed behind. I’ve stepped into his shoes. I’m Ned, the Ambassador of Yoof from Earth.”

  “Oh, I thought.…”

  “No. Sue-Ellen had to switch things around a bit. Anyway, this is my mate, Em, Harri’s sister. She’s the Ambassador from Newharp, I’m from Earth. As I’ve said.”

  Ulrike Lewis turned to me. I was tongue-tied. Then I said, “I have known Your Excellency through your poetry since I was in Basic School. I never dreamed I might meet you in person.”

  Ned said, “You’ve forgotten to curtsy, Em.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Her Excellency said, “Ms. Sue-Ellen Harrison spoke most highly of you, Em. She was full of praise for your abilities and your deep commitment to interplanetary peace.”

  “For which a healthy mind and a healthy body are the number one prerequisites,” Ned said with enthusiasm.

  There was another silence. It was clear that Her Excellency was having trouble making the connection. I was having trouble with it myself. She said, “Won’t you please sit down.”

  We did.

  “Use it or lose it, is my motto,” Ned said. “Crook gizzards, fuddled brain, planetary peace down the drain. Snappy innards, noggin clear, planetary peace—no small beer!” Ned then looked modestly at his own feet. “I’m a bit of a poet myself,” he said quietly. “I feel that the deepest, truest thoughts are best expressed in rhyme.”

  I was gripped by a sudden surge of panic. Just what game did Ned think he was playing? Ulrike Lewis might be a bit ancient, a bit past it, but she was a Living Treasure; she had enormous moral standing. The last thing we needed was for bloody Ned to start taking a piss. I was about to say something mollifying. But Her Excellency got in first.

  “One of the traps of rhyming poetry is the tendency to allow the rhyme scheme to dictate the sense of the poem.”

  “What?” Ned said.

  “Why did you finish your poem with the phrase, ‘no small beer’?”

  “It seemed to fit.”

  “Exactly, young fellow. It seemed to fit, but it doesn’t.”

  “Why doesn’t it?”

  “Because you only used it to get a rhyme with ‘clear’.”

  “I wouldn’t underestimate the clear importance of galactic harmony,” Ned said. “The harmony of the galaxies is the harmony of the spheres, and I’ll drink to that in no small beers.” And then, after a short pause, Ned added, “Cheers!”

  This was madness. Ned knew nothing of poetry. The doggerel he was spouting couldn’t fool Her Excellency for a minute.

  Or could it? I suddenly saw Ulrike Lewis through Ned’s eyes. Ned thought she was a mad old crone, and you could see why she might appear that way to him. He hadn’t been brought up on her poetry, he had never won a prize at school—an Ulrike Lewis Medallion for Poetic Excellence. Not that I’d ever won one myself, but I’d always entered the annual competition.

  I brought my attention back to the conversation. Ned had returned to the subject of gizzards.

  “Only the gizzard wizard snouts it out, only the wizard is wise to the tripe, only his nose knows no wipe.”

  “Alas, young man,” Her Excellency said, “you must forgive me if I do not respond immediately to the sense of your verse. I suspect there are cultural referents embedded in it which are known only to native Earthlings, and perhaps to those like Em here who have had first-hand experience of your civilization. What, for instance, is a ‘gizzard wizard’?”

  “I am a gizzard wizard,” Ned said modestly. “It is my humble calling. I go amongst the people snouting it out.”

  “Snouting what out?”

  “Disease, decay, inner putrefaction, impurities of all stamps, rot, snot, even sometimes moral contagion. Although, I try to limit my activities to those items of decay that are consistent with organ replacement therapy. There is no organ that codes for moral contagion. You can’t replace it.”

  “Ah, yes,” Her Excellency said, having finally understood a single phrase. “Organ replacement therapy. Something we Newharpians are very good at.”

  “Indeed you are,” Ned said with feeling. “We Earthlings are deeply in your debt when it comes to the actual growing and replacement of organs. Pity about the diagnostics.”

  “Diagnostics?”

  “Scanners, medical imaging technology, pathology procedures, x-rays, y-rays, z-rays, stingrays, computer-assisted ultrasound tomography, litmus paper, all that sort of crap. By the time the diseased organ starts showing up on those babies, it’s usually too late. As I say, a pity.”

  “Our diagnostic procedures are state-of-the-art.”

  “Sure are, but the art is in a state of Stone Age decrepitude. Lassitude. Vicissitude. It’s lamentable. Lamentable, I tell you.”

  “And you have a better way.…”

  “Wizard gizzardry. Gizzard wizardry. Blizzard drizzardry. The secrets of the Ancients.”

  “The Ancients…?”

  “Old buggers. Old as sin. Knew a thing or two. They knew how to sniff out decay. A single putrefying molecule of decay. That’s all it took. One of those little putrifiers up the nose of an Ancient, bang! The guy was onto it, quick as a flash.”

  “And you have this facility yourself?”

  “Years of study. Arcane tomes. Runes.”

  “I trust you don’t find much to sniff out on The Delegate. We run a very healthy ship.”

  “Meatus.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Meatus.”

  “What about meatus?”

  “Your Excellency has a meatus problem.”

  “I don’t think so, young man.”

  “The number of times I’ve heard that response.…”

  “I’m sure my own personal physician.…”

  “Denial.”

  “What about denial?”

  “It’s natural. Don’t worry about it. Everybody goes into denial at first. They call in their own personal physician. The physician calls in one of the scanner guys. The scanner guy can’t find anything—of course he can’t, his instruments are a thousand times cruder than a gizzard wizard’s hooter. But he tells the victim what he or she wants to hear: you’re in the clear, there’s nothing wrong with you, don’t do anything, relax, have a good time.… And all the while the rot is setting in, establishing itself, making itself at home.”

  “I’m sure that.…”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ned said quietly, “of course you’re sure. And I’m sure you’re right. Forget I said anything about your meatus. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe…. Let’s talk of more interesting things. Now, about me and Em being Ambassadors of Yoof.…”

  * * * *


  And we did. We talked for the best part of an hour about the ceremonies and speeches and appearances at joint sittings of both houses of parliament that we would take part in once we arrived at Skyros. Ned made up little mini speeches, some of them in his awful verse. Ulrike Lewis added bits, argued with Ned about rhymes and scansion. The two of them went at it like old friends, old sparring partners. Ned showed no deference, he was hardly polite—it didn’t seem to matter. I said barely a word; I could think of nothing to say. But slowly my anxiety ebbed. Whatever Ned was up to, he wasn’t going to land us in the soup just yet. At least I thought he wasn’t.

  The maid reappeared, bringing a tray of cakes and tea. Ned looked at her intently for a couple of seconds and sniffed. The maid set the low table and poured the tea. We each had a dainty little plate for the cakes, and a dainty little stainless steel fork to eat them with. Ned held his up to the light, examining it critically.

  “You’ve heard about the theft of the officers’ cutlery,” Her Excellency said.

  “We certainly have. Things are a bit grim in the crew’s mess,” Ned said. “We’d be eating with our fingers, if it wasn’t for John Doe’s supply of Earth knifes and forks.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t say this,” Her Excellency said, “but you do realize that Leading Hand Doe is a prime suspect? He might well have stolen the officers’ silver in the first place.”

  “Rumors,” said Ned philosophically. “The bane of shipboard life.” The way he said it, you’d think he’d spent his entire eighteen years plying the space lanes. “By the way,” he went on. “That maid girl who brought the cakes.…”

  “My body servant, Jennifer. What about her?”

  “Dizzy spells. Has she complained of dizzy spells?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Attrification of the tensor tympani muscle.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “She needs her left tympani replaced. Do that and she’ll be as right as rain.”

  “I was unaware she was sick.”

  “She’s probably unaware herself—at the moment.”

  There was a few seconds’ silence and then Her Excellency said, “I’ll ask her if she’s suffered any dizzy spells.”

  “Might be a good idea,” Ned said. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  We finished our tea and cake. It was time for us to go. Her Excellency accompanied us across the deep carpet to the vestibule door. She shook our hands and said to Ned, “Work on those verse speeches, my friend, but don’t let the need for rhyme dictate the sense. And when you’ve got a good body of work completed, come and see me. Goodbye to both of you.” She shut the door and we were alone in the corridor.

  As we were finding our way back to the crew’s quarters, I said, “She didn’t ask me to come and see her again.”

  “Poor old fossil,” Ned said. “She’s worried sick about her meatus.”

  “And what the hell is a meatus?”

  “I don’t know,” Ned said. “Some chunk of the human body. We’re all made out of meat, after all.”

  * * * *

  Ned Talking

  “Welcome to the laundry,” the gang boss said. “You can breath easier up here. Or down here, depends how you look at it.”

  “The gravity’s less,” I said.

  “We’re nearer the center of the ship. That’s how centrifuges work.”

  I looked around. Huge gleaming steel tubes ran like uncooked spaghetti in bundles that went on forever. Wires and cables flowed down the walls and along the floor twisted and tangled like overcooked spaghetti.

  “What is this place?” I said.

  “The laundry,” the boss said.

  “It doesn’t look like a laundry to me,” I said.

  “We launder the space-time continuum up here,” the boss said. “We fold it up and punch holes through it. It’s the only way. We’d never get from one galaxy to the next if we didn’t.”

  “Makes no sense to me,” I said. “We didn’t do the space-time continuum at Tidy Consolidated.”

  “Naw, I don’t understand it either,” the boss said. “None of us do. We’re just paid to keep the equipment clean. You’d be surprised how much cosmic dust gets into the works.”

  “What do we clean it with?”

  “Rags, mops, brushes.”

  “Sounds a bit primitive,” I said.

  “It is,” the boss said. “You just can’t get the help. Robots are useless, apparently.”

  “How does the dust get in here in the first place?”

  “Spontaneous creation of matter,” the guy said. “It’s a byproduct of hyper-c travel. The ship gets to the other end heavier than when it started. We have to keep shoveling the rubbish out. Half of it’s dark matter, real cosmic crap.”

  “It’s something for nothing,” I said.

  “You could look at it like that. Do you play jongma?”

  “I know how,” I said. “I don’t usually play.”

  “You’ve got to while away the down time somehow. But I’ll introduce you to D’Bridie, she can show you the ropes.”

  The boss looked up into the mass of pipes and stainless steel vessels. He let out a piercing whistle and yelled, “Hey, D’Bridie, come and meet the new chum.”

  I looked where he was looking, but couldn’t see anybody amongst the hardware. A muffled voice yelled something I couldn’t understand. Then I saw a figure, maybe fifteen meters above the deck, balanced on a gantry. As we watched, the figure launched herself backwards into the air, spreading her arms like wings. In exquisite slow motion she performed a perfect backwards somersault, landing lightly on her feet a couple of meters from where we stood.

  “Show off,” the boss said.

  The girl said something I couldn’t understand. Which wasn’t surprising, since her face was masked with a filtration device. She wore the same sort of overalls that they’d given me, although hers were filthy. Her hair was in a bun. The overalls disguised her figure, but I suspected she was thin and lithe. She said something more I couldn’t understand and offered me her hand. I shook it, saying, “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  “I…thought…you…were…meant…to…speak…Newharp,” she said slowly.

  “I do,” I said. “It’s your mask, it muffles things.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” she said and pulled the mask down to her throat. She had a crooked smile—it made her look, well, interesting.

  “Birth defect,” she grinned.

  “Hardly a defect,” I said.

  “That’s why I haven’t had it fixed,” she said.

  “I used to sell body parts,” I said. “I could have talked you into a new smile.”

  “You couldn’t talk me into anything,” she said, sounding like she meant it.

  “I probably couldn’t,” I said.

  “I’ll leave you two to get on with it,” the boss said and wandered off.

  “Come on,” D’Bridie said. “I’m meant to show you what to do,” and she led me to a storeroom. While she was organizing me a mask and brushes, I looked around the store. Mostly the cleaning equipment was on open shelves, but there were one or two closed cupboards. My nose alerted me. I walked over to one of the cupboards.

  “I bet this cupboard is locked,” I said.

  D’Bridie stopped what she was doing, and looked at me in silence for a few seconds, and then grinned and said, “How do you know?”

  “I can smell the stuff,” I said.

  “Like a bloody sniffer dog,” she said. “But hooch stills are only part of the game. It’s advisable not to speak of the laundry’s secrets belowboard.”

  “Belowboard?”

  “The rest of the ship. Here: put this on.”

  She handed me a mask. I put it on. I felt like the masked raider. “I feel like the masked raider,” I said.

  “It won’t last,” she said. “You’ll feel like a chemical warfare victim soon enough. Let’s go.” She pulled her own mask up.

&n
bsp; * * * *

  By lunchtime I was beginning to feel I’d got the hang of the laundry. The actual work was dirty and tedious, but there were plenty of breaks. No one was busting a gut. We didn’t leave the laundry for lunch; apparently, the rest of the crew would have complained about dirty overalls in the mess if we had. There were about a dozen of us, and we ate sandwiches in a cozy little lunchroom with its own tea urn. D’Bridie sat next to me, stirring her tea with a silver teaspoon encrusted with precious stones. I looked quietly round the table. The cutlery was a mixed bunch, some tin, some plastic, some plain silver and gold, some elaborately carved and engraved and covered in precious inlays and stones. I didn’t comment. If I were John Doe and I’d knocked off the officers’ precious eating irons, I too would’ve arranged to have them hidden in the laundry.

  * * * *

  Em Talking

  Flight Regulator Montesquieu approached down the corridor. Not my favorite person, but I always tried to be civil.

  “Good evening,” I said.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said.

  “Please do.”

  “Not here,” she said, as if having a conversation in a corridor was an unheard of barbarity. “In my office.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  She kept on walking. I turned and started to follow her. I was trotting along behind her like a dog. I felt a fool. I increased my pace. I’d walk beside her, regardless of how unpleasant she was. I drew alongside. She didn’t turn her head, but slightly increased her own pace. I did likewise. Luckily the door to her office was only ten meters away, we’d have been sprinting if it were any further. She flashed her ID at the sensor and marched through the opening door. I followed. She proceeded to the swivel chair behind her desk. I dumped myself down, unbidden, in an armchair, ignoring the straight-backed chair directly in front of the desk.

  “Shut the door,” Montesquieu snapped.