1
Su At Home
“You won’t like Whtyll,” warned Su’s mum.
Su eyed her tolerantly. “I know that, Mum.”
“Or Bluellia,” she said heavily.
Mum was a Bluellian, so Su eyed her uncertainly this time, and said: “Thought you reckoned it wasn’t so bad?”
“It’s not as bad as plasmo-blasted Whtyll, but then, few places are. But if you think New Whtyll’s a boring primmo dump that can’t see further than its next crop, if as far—and I’d be the last to argue with you on that one—then I can guarantee you won’t like Bluellia, because, never mind it’s been occupied by humanoids for forty IG millennia or more, while we’ve only been on this dump for a few years, the two of them are plasmo-blasted clones!” She took a deep breath. “Clones, Su.”
Su nodded limply: she knew what clones were, all right, New Whtyll and the other occupied planets of the Third Galaxy were full of clones—well, Dad’s Expedition Fleet hadn’t carried enough beings to populate several empty worlds, so they’d had to use the cloning-blobs. That was, once they’d got to the Third Galaxy (it had taken about twenty IG years), and had found (a) that the rest of the Federation hadn't discovered instantaneous being-displacement and got here before them, and (b) that contrary to the theories current back in Federation space, the Third Galaxy was not full of, take your pick, sentient c-based life-forms not dissimilar to themselves, or very different but still c-based life-forms immensely superior to themselves but strangely willing to share their immensely advanced technology, or tremendously advanced life-forms with nothing in common with themselves but mind-powers and, strangely, no interest in occupying and populating the immensely fertile planets— Whatever. Zero, summed up the number of sentient c-based life-forms with any sort of intelligence the great First Federation Expedition to the Third Galaxy had found in the Third Ga—
“There’s no need to MOCK!” shouted Jhl angrily.
—Galaxy. “No. Sorry, Mum, I didn’t mean to broadcast. Well, none of you could know.”
“No,” said Jhl Smt Wong Vt R’aam with a sigh. “No.”
What the Third Galaxy was largely full of, the First Federation Expedition had discovered, was giant gas planets, huge frozen ice planets, make that huge planets of frozen gases, enormous dust planets, and bare rocks. Lots of rocks; there had been huge cosmic explosions megazillions of years ago, stars imploding or exploding or whatever, and there were immense asteroid belts here, there and everywhere. Lots of comets, too: the sky of New Whtyll was great fun at night.
Within three New Whtyllian years of the Expedition’s arrival (by which time Su, who was the youngest of Jhl and Shank’yar Vt R’aam’s seven kids, was nearly five New Whtyllian years old) every planet had been blob-scanned and only three, count ’em, three, were habitable c-based ones, and no life-forms of any discernible intelligence above that of your average Friyrian Flppu had been discovered. According to the Olds, Flppus were Class 390 beings back home, which made them borderline under the Meaning of some old Act the Olds were always going on about—which was pretty much borne out by the pet ones that the Vt R’aam kids had all grown up with and in fact been nannied by, and in Su’s case pretty much brought up by: her humanoid mum was a Space Fleet Captain and her humanoid dad was the Expedition Leader and a Space Fleet Admiral and they were both pretty busy beings, not to say, when you came right down to it, far more interested in their jobs and each other than they were in any of the offspring. And particularly the last, who had been, Su’s siblings were unanimously agreed, an oversight.
Su didn’t mind being an oversight—well, that was humanoid biology for you, wasn’t it?—but she did rather mind not being as bright as her six brilliant and much older siblings and thus the object not just of their kind toleration, but also of Mum and Dad’s. Being a Bluellian, Mum was always scrupulously fair to her, but this didn’t manage to hide the toleration. Dad wasn’t: he was a Whtyllian, and he treated her like a cute little pet. Su hadn't minded for about the first eleven years of her existence. Over the nine years that had followed, she had minded.
What made it worse was that she didn’t look much like the rest of the family: she looked, if you were being strictly objective about it, like a cute little pet. Mum was shortish, but slim and very vigorous, and Wm, Mrsha and H’lln were just like her, and Dad was tall, slim and very vigorous, and R’jt, D’ffni and Athlor were just like him. Su was short, plump and had no impulse whatsoever to hurl herself down precipitous grass slopes on sheets of lubolyon pinched from the Expedition’s stores or strips of heavy bark peeled off the local morgher trees, to hurl herself down bubbling, boiling rapids in flimsy stitched-together sheets of morgher bark, or to jump off said morgher trees into a howling gale supported only by a cloak made of the local rhoofer leather and some blobs liberated from the Expedition Fleet’s dwindling Official Blob Store. Like not only all six siblings but also Mum and Dad did with monotonous regularity. “Fun”, was the word.
Su’s three shorter siblings all had the very shiny, thick, straight black hair that Mum had had in her younger days and big, dark brown, slightly slanted eyes like Mum’s, and R’jt, Athlor, and D’ffni all had Dad’s bright blue, very slanted eyes and the thick, black wavy hair he’d had in his younger days. D’ffni wore hers long, it looked wonderful, and so did Athlor, in a big plait, which enraged Dad: it made him look, or so he claimed, like a Friyrian. But R’jt, the eldest son, to all intents and purposes a clone of Dad, wore his short like a Whtyllian lordship-class male did oughta, or such was the claim, and certainly no other Whtyllians in the Expedition Fleet refuted it. –Su had once, in a very bad mood with Mum, told her angrily that she didn’t know why she’d had R’jt the hard way, he was such a clone of Dad she needn’t have bothered, but Jhl, far from going into matronly dudgeon, had nigh to laughed herself sick over it; so Su’s anger had, as usual in such confrontations, evaporated. Su had black hair but hers was a mad riot of curls and her eyes were neither blue nor very dark brown but an odd sort of dark blue-grey. If they hadn’t been the same shape as Mum’s there would have been nothing, really, to indicate she was one of the family. Or so Su was glumly convinced.
“And I dunno,” said Jhl with a sigh, “who you imagine you’re gonna go to, Su.”
Su had been under the impression there were a megazillion boring FW rellies on both Bluellia and Whtyll; she eyed her uncertainly.
Jhl sighed again. “Look, it took us twenty point two IG years, give or take, to get here. Time for your brothers and sisters to grow up and for R’jt and Wm and D’ffni to get bond-partnered,” she reminded her.
Su glared sulkily. “So?”
“And we’ve been here, in IG years— Uh, never mind. Eighteen local years,” she said somewhat weakly: maths was very much not Su’s strong point.
Su glared again. “So?”
“So, Shan’s old mum died ages back—not that you’d’ve wanted to meet her, that’s for sure. Before the first lot of pwlded beings made it over here.”
The pwld muck was some sort of mineral or metal or something and the engineers did something to it with their blobs and if you were in a ship like Dad’s Expedition ships it made the hyperdrive fifty times as fast or something and if you were in a PBTT (Pwlding Being-Transmuter/Transporter) it made the hyperdrive five zillion times as fast. Not instantaneous, no, the engineers hadn’t yet managed that one for beings, though they’d long since cracked it with cargo.
Put it like this, where it had taken Mum and Dad and their lot twenty-plus IG years to get here, that was like, um, well, more than twenty New Whtyllian years, anyway, now it only took three and a bit IG months to travel between the Third Galaxy and the Federated Worlds of the Two Galaxies. If you could afford it. And provided your ship had the right co-ordinates fed into it and blah, blah, blah. Or put it like this, that was as much as Su wanted to know, ta very much.
“Um, yeah. Um, there’s lots of other rellies, though, aren’t there?”
“Just shut up and let me think!”
Su shut up, eyeing her doubtfully. Finally Jhl said heavily: “There’s your half-brother Rh’aiiy’hn: I had a text-blob from him in last week’s cargo delivery. But he’s pretty old, Su: Shan had him when he wasn’t much more than a boy. And he always overworked horribly at that stupid job of his.”
Rh’aiiy’hn was probably old enough to be Su’s grandfather, ’cos Dad was awfully, awfully old. Still horribly spry and fit, though. When Mum was in a bad mood with him she claimed it was because of all the revolting nips and tucks and chemo-blobbings and stuff he’d had done back in the two galaxies. “Um, so?” said Su cautiously.
“I don’t think he’s very well, dear,” said Jhl with a sigh.
“Oh.”
“His mum was quite a bit older than Shan. She died yonks back.”
Dad didn’t like Mum to use “yonks”, it was Bluellian slang—or any Bluellian slang, really. “Mm,” agreed Su cautiously.
“They were the only decent ones on that side of the family, really…”
“Um, yeah. Um, what about Cousin Raj?”
Jhl cleared her throat. There was a plasmo-blasted lot of family history in there that she and Shank’yar hadn’t bothered to impart to the kids. Not to say, a good deal of what the Bluellians called dirty clingo-bedding and that most beings preferred not to recycle in public. Back on Whtyll everyone thought the being that was now head of the Vt R’aam family was Shan’s cousin but, for reasons it was best not to go into, he was actually one of Shan’s part-sons… No, well, he was a decent enough being and between them, Shan, Rh’aiiy’hn and she had managed to blob up his mind-powers considerably, and he had done very well indeed managing the family property, but he was bond-partnered to one of Jhl’s nieces and several of their sons were just the right age for Su, and really, the relationships were just too…
“I don’t wanna get bond-partnered to an FW Whtyllian!” said Su angrily.
“Understandable,” said Jhl glumly. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to broadcast. Uh—look, Raj and R’shn would make you very welcome, but they live a formal sort of Whtyllian life—lots of diplo mok shit,” she said without hope: none of the New Whtyllians had a notion what that was, of course. “Formal entertaining,” she said without hope. Su was looking both blank and mutinous. “Uh—remember that time your dad held that huge reception for that bunch of F Reppos and qwlot-soaked diplos— Um, for the delegation of Federation Representatives and diplomats?”
“That was a one-off!” said Su on a scornful note.
“It was for us, thank the Federation!” replied Jhl with feeling. “But Lords of Whtyll have formal dinners like that most nights of the week and throw giant receptions— Uh, well, I’m not sure, but from your dad’s memory-store I’d say at least two or three an IG month, plus attending several more every IG week. Plus unending diplo balls, and if you thought that thing R’jt gave for their anniversary last month was pathetic and boring, believe you me, you ain’t seen nothing yet!”
Su glared sulkily but didn’t say she didn’t believe her. The more so as her mother was sending her a vivid mind-picture of herself suffering in a tightly-wound elaborate garment with a real stupid thingo on the head and her feet in crippling shoes, attending just such a ghastly do. Finally she said in a small voice: “Did Dad drag you to that?”
“Mm? Oh—no. That was another story entirely,” said Jhl with a little sigh. “Uh—no, but here’s one he did drag me to!”
This time the dress was even tighter and seemed to be composed entirely of large white lace flowers with giant gaps between them showing giant pieces of Mum. Su went very red.
Jhl eyed in her in some amusement, though reflecting that she and her own siblings would have been equally—no, even more horrified, at the idea of their mum and dad as sexual beings. “That was yonks before we decided to go on the Expedition and get bond-partnered. He pretty much blackmailed me into the whole bit—dress and all. No, well, I asked him for a favour— Never mind. Him all over.”
“I suppose it is quite pretty,” said Su in a tiny voice.
“Yes, I’ve never denied he has exquisite taste,” said Shank’yar Vt R’aam’s bond-partner very drily indeed.
“Mm. Um, who are all those beings, Mum?”
“A clutch of play-beings and asteroid-brained diplos with nothing better to do than junket round the two galaxies attending F-Day celebrations. Uh—not merely Federation Day, dear,” she added on a weak note: “of course everybody in the Federation celebrates that every year. I meant the day a new planet’s received into the Federation.”
“Oh, I see. Um, why aren’t we in it properly, Mum?”
Why, indeed? Jhl sighed. “According to Federation Regs, that your father ought to have checked before we came, a planet occupied by non-indigenous beings has to have been settled for at least twenty local generations or five hundred IG years, whichever is the longer, before it can join as a full member.”
“Rhoofer shit,” said Su numbly in the local vernacular.
“Quite. Uh—no-one’ll understand if you say that back in the Federation, Su. ‘Mok shit’ is the vernacular over there. Only do me a favour and don’t practise it in front of your father, will you?”
“Um, no, I won’t. Um, have you two had a row?” asked Su cautiously.
“No,” said Jhl heavily. “Not a row, as such. Only he doesn’t particularly want you hypering off to the other side of the Known Universe.”
“’Tisn’t that far!” said the girl who had grown up on New Whtyll.
Jhl managed a faint smile. “Right. Not in these days of collapsed space. Uh—where was I? Oh, yeah, assorted rellies. Your grandma and grandpa on my side popped off long since, Su. Well, they weren’t young, in Bluellian terms, when I left. Your Uncle Bht’s dead, too. Well, he was about forty-five in Bluellian years when I left, so… Don’t look at me like that, Su, Bluellians work for a living and don't spend intergalactic megafortunes on nips and tucks and chemo-blobbing like lordship-type Whtyllians: the average life expectancy on Bluellia isn’t much more than half of what it is on plasmo-blasted Whtyll. Lessee… Your Aunty M’mri’in’d be pleased to see you, for sure, but she went to live on Whtyll with R’shn and Raj when Bht died. Bhl and S’zaan are still going strong, though they’re not young…”
“G’gg’s mum and dad, right?” she said eagerly.
Jhl’s nephew G’gg Smt Wong had come with them to the Third Galaxy. Jhl said heavily: “Yes, but they are nothing like G’gg, Su. Nothing like him. Geddit?”
“All right!” she said huffily.
“Ninety-nine point nine repeating percent of Bluellians are stay-at-homes,” said Jhl drily. “Um, well… Pt’Rshaa died about five local years back, Su.”
Su’s Aunty Pt’Rshaa, whom of course she had never met, had been Jhl’s only sister: Su eyed her warily. “Yeah.”
“Too many chemo-blobs,” said Jhl with a smothered sigh. “Oh, well. You’d have loathed her, anyway, she’d’ve tried to cram you into some unlikely would-be-ladyship-type garment and bond-partner you to something frightful.”
“Um, yeah. Wasn’t she the one that got bond-partnered and divorced four times?”
“Five, in all,” said Jhl drily. “That’s my point: no hand at picking men.”
“I geddit,” Su conceded weakly.
“Uh—there were four offspring, I think, but I’ve lost track of them. They were all as dim as her, though.”
“Mm.”
Jhl eyed her drily. “That’s It for my side, unless ya fancy a stint on Carnuva at your Uncle J’f’s plasmo-blasted nirvana garden.”
“NO!” shouted Su.
“No, well, he made it, it took a lifetime but he made it. Left Space Fleet with the rank of Vice-Admiral—don’t bother to laugh—former Ambassador, still retaining the title, and a nirvana garden on one of the tastiest planets in the Federation, should your taste run to relaxing on pink beaches under a tropical sun while the reetli fruit drop off the trees into your waiting mouth and trains of s-beings bring you chilled glasses of— Yeah. Though if you did go, you’d be able to gratify my curiosity and find out just what favours he did the Carnuvese while he was Ambassador to get that giant property out of them.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said her daughter sourly, “’cos he’d have a huge great strong mind-shield up like you and Dad and R’jt and everybody!”
Not everybody. Jhl sighed, but didn’t correct her.
“Um, well, could I stay with Uncle Bhl and Aunty S’zaan for a bit?” she ventured.
“I'm sure they’d love to have you. But I’d better warn you, they live in a farmhouse that’s perhaps got a few more light-blobs and culture-pans and assorted space junk than the average house here, but is otherwise a clone, and grqwary farming is just as boring there as it is here.”
“They can’t all farm grqwaries!” cried Su crossly.
“On Bluellia? No, some of them grow grain, but we’re from a grqwary-raising area.”
She was sending her a mind-picture of it: under a pale blue sky very like New Whtyll’s sky, a flat greenish-yellow plain stretched as far as the eye could see, dotted with hundreds of large, flightless birds. Very slowly pottering, the way grqwaries did. Su wasn’t absolutely sure whether it was on purpose or not but nevertheless she cried: “It can’t be that boring!”
“Mm? Oh—yeah. ’Tis. Well, why do you think I shook the intergalactic dust when I was—a bit younger than you, I suppose. Old enough for—”
“Boring old Space Fleet Academy: YES!” she shouted.
“It wasn’t boring, if you liked maths,” Jhl murmured.
“Maths and mind exercises, don’t bother to spare my feelings, Mum!” replied Su bitterly.
“Su, if you’d stop brooding about what you haven't got, and make the most of— No, all right, it’s not gonna be any more effective now than it was the first time I said it. Do you want me to pwld a text-blob to Bhl and S’zaan in the next diplo bag, then?”
Su nodded hard, looking at her pleadingly.
“All right,” said Jhl heavily, “but don’t say you haven’t been warned.”
So the text-blob was instantaneously pwlded to the big Tri-Galaxy Interchange on Whtyll in the two galaxies at the expense of the New Whtyllian Government (given that Su’s dad was now the Leader not only of the former Expedition but also of the entire planet) and, with a slight delay for sorting, not terrifically fast even if blob-assisted, forwarded instantaneously to the Bluell City Cargo Reception Terminus, where after a wait of only a local week it was discovered and sorted into the correct sorting-hole for Area 683G (or “over Frog Creek way” in the local vernacular), where it sat for only two local weeks before being put on the mail bubble for Area 683G and flown quite fast, considering the age of the mail bubble, to Postal Reception Office 683G. Where it would probably have sat for all time had not Part-Time Postal Reception Officer P’tt Brn Smt’s little grandson discovered it while playing out from under his grandfather’s humanoid feet.
“Cripes!” said Part-Time Postal Reception Officer Brn Smt. “What’s this, then?”
“A blob, Grampa!” squeaked Wm Brn Smt. “C’n I have it?”
“Uh—hang on. Grqwary shit,” he muttered. “Uh—no, ya can't have it, Wm, it’s for Bhl Smt Wong. From—” he swallowed, “the Third Galaxy.”
“Nah!” cried Wm scornfully. “No-one gets blobs from the Third Galaxy, Grampa!”
“Looks like Bhl has. Cripes. Uh—better get on the comm-blob, I s’pose,” he muttered, giving this useful adjunct to the sophisticated life a look of dislike.
“I’ll do it, Grampa! What’s his frequency?”
“Uh—dunno.”
Competently Wm consulted the comm-blob, ascertained it did have the frequency, and called the farm. After that it was easy, Bhl Smt Wong came right on over in his clapped-out lifter and fetched it. Well, right on over with a short stopover at M’km R’sn Smt’s place for an IG-illegal jab of hyperblob to hyper the lifter’s blobs up a bit.
S’zaan was thrilled to learn that “little Su” would like to come over for a visit, and Bhl didn’t mind, so after a bit of head-scratching and some not altogether efficient consulting of the Intergalactic Encyclopaedia, and certain accusations of letting the sim-receiver’s blob get clapped out without telling one’s bond-partner again, they both gave in and admitted their ignorance. And Bhl called up M’km R’sn Smt and he came over in his IG-illegally hyperblobbed lifter with a text-blob and showed them how to get a message into it.
S’zaan thereupon ordered Bhl firmly not to entrust it to “the mail”, in other words that asteroid-brained old P’tt Brn Smt, but to take it into Bluell City and post it at the Bluell City Intergalactic Mail Centre. Very fortunately she said this in front of M’km, who was able to point out to his two elderly cousins that this was wrong, the IG Mail Centre only accepted mail for the two galaxies, this blob’d have to go to the Bluell City Cargo Centre. “And be lost for a megazillion light-years!” screamed S’zaan, beginning to retail the history of her last order of new bedroom furniture from the J’rd’s Catalogue…
After the obligatory amount of red-faced scowling the two males admitted she was right, and wanted to know All right, what next? Whereupon the brilliant S’zaan called her brother-in-IG-law J’f Smt Wong on Carnuva and, successfully routing the s-being that answered his comm-receiver, spoke to the Ambassador himself and got the Word. Take it to the Whtyllian Embassy in Bluell City and J’f was gonna give them a sim-call and warn them to expect it, and MENTION SHANK’YAR VT R’AAM’S NAME WHEN YOU GET THERE! Words to that effect. Naturally Bhl, though he hardly knew Shank’yar Vt R’aam, couldn’t stand the plasmo-blasted Whtyllian and resented like fury his having taken his little sister to the other side of the Known Universe, and naturally M’km couldn’t stand the being— NEVER MIND ALL THAT!
Oh, well, at least it’d mean a trip to Bluell City! the two males reflected happily, neither having what Jhl would have considered mind-powers but both perfectly well aware of what his relative was thinking. And as Bhl’s old lifter was far too clapped-out to make the trip—
“And drop that text-blob off at the Embassy before you make a bee-line for the nearest qwlot house and drink yourselves silly,” said S’zaan tiredly.
So they did that.
And as a result of all this, the message saying that Bhl and S’zaan would love to have little Su was received on New Whtyll only three local weeks after the steam had definitively started coming out of Su’s father’s ears and he’d started stomping round the house yelling about Intergalactic asteroid-brains and not pulling their digits out and by the Federation, he was gonna get onto the Whtyllian Ambassador to the Federal Government in person, and he’d see every last official from the IG Postmaster General itself down sacked if it was the last thing he did, and like that. None of which meant he wanted her to go, of course.
“Your father wants to talk to you, Su,” said Jhl dully some days later.
Su gave her a defiant, sulky look.
“Just try and remember,” said Jhl without hope, “that he’s an elderly being who loves you, Su.”
Su went very red.
“Go on, he’s in his study; for Federation’s sake get it over with.”
Su trailed out, scowling.
Jhl sank back on her flop couch with a sigh and, trying to close her mind to any emanations from the direction of the study, picked up a local newspaper—text-blobs were in short supply in the Third Galaxy but there was an oversupply of trees on New Whtyll—and, not without some blinking of the newly readjusted shades, began to read a long and extremely boring forecast of the state of the grain trade for the next five years. Given that she and her nephew G’gg were the only beings from an agricultural world in the Expedition Fleet and given that he had refused point-blank to do it, she had been appointed Agriculture Minister. Nevertheless she probably wouldn’t have bothered with this report, she’d just have scanned the maths in the official blob report, only unfortunately it was written by one, Athlor Vt R’aam…
Su went out the full-length polretrolux windows that opened onto the gracious white-painted wooden verandah of her parents’ elegant three-storeyed wooden house. She trailed along the verandah in the dappled semi-tropical shade under drooping masses of apricot-flowered native ming vines, grapevines laden with immature fruit (imported from Whtyll), pink-flowered pwoggy-klingle vines (also from Whtyll) and bright yellow-flowered star-pear vines (imported from Friyria), past gaily coloured ceramic tubs of nodding white, pink, puce and pale yellow Phang-Phangian senso-orchids and bright apricot or blue native ginger plants, many of their flower spikes as tall as she was, without noticing any of them. A clone in the short, tight white jacket and baggy white Whtyllian pants that all her father’s servants wore was sitting on a pretty blue-painted cane chair just outside the open door of the study. Su went past him without noticing him and into the study, blinking as her eyes adjusted after the light-filled verandah.
Shank’yar Vt R’aam was sitting at the big desk that had been carved for him out of the first tree that the settlers had felled on New Whtyll—so the story ran. The wood had been used first as part of their first house, or some such space garbage, who cared. He didn’t raise his still-handsome silvered head but said absently: “There you are, Su-Su. Sit down, my pet, I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Reddening crossly, Su sat down. She was NOT a pet, and how many times had she asked him NOT to call her by that stupid pet name!
After some time Shank’yar set down the text-blob he’d been reading and looked up at his youngest offspring with the glinting smile that in its time had charmed megazillions of impressionable female beings not so nearly related to him. And some of them, as well: Mrsha and D’ffni were completely under his opposable digit.
“Five hundred and thirty-seven,” he said mildly.
“Eh?” croaked Su, wondering if Dad had finally lost it.
“Not yet,” he murmured. “You won’t have to stay on this primmo dump and be a prop to your old mum just yet. You’ve asked me not to call you Su-Su five hundred and thirty-seven times.”
“Maths!” replied Su with loathing.
“Mm. I can’t help it. Or the Su-Su bit: Su is a Bluellian name, it was your mother’s choice, you know,”—Su hadn't known, actually: she glared—“and to a Whtyllian it doesn’t seem to have enough syllables. Which reminds me, have you been practising your Whtyllian?”
“A bit,” replied Su grumpily.
He swallowed a sigh. “If you go there, or meet any Whtyllians of our class—”
“Class!” interrupted Su with loathing.
“Of our class,” he repeated mildly, “they will expect to hear you speak it, translators or no.” They were both speaking Intergalactic, as all the members of the Expedition Fleet and their descendants or clones did; he switched to Whtyllian and said: “Have you?”
“I said! A bit!” shouted Su, perforce in Whtyllian; he would probably have ignored her if she’d gone on using Intergalactic, or lost his rag or— Whatever.
Shank’yar Vt R’aam sighed. “With BrTl, I perceive.”
BrTl was Mum’s former First Officer, a male-tended xathpyroid, something like six times Su’s height, counting his neck, and thirty times her bulk, not to say possessed of three times as many legs as she and o/h-breather where she, like all the humanoids who made up the bulk of New Whtyll’s population, was merely o-breather, but nevertheless he was pretty much one of Su’s closest friends, so she glared and said: “So? You’ve admitted yourself that his Whtyllian’s pretty good!”
“Yes, but you’ve picked up a Slaetho-Xathpyrian accent, darling!” The wide, still-strong shoulders shook a little and his slanted blue eyes twinkled.
His daughter didn’t smile. She leaned forward and said angrily: “Maybe if you ever took the time to talk to me, Dad, I wouldn’t of!”
“Wouldn’t have,” he corrected, wincing. “I suppose that’s true enough. You know I’ve got responsibilities, Su.”
“Give them up,” said Su sourly. “Give some other being a chance.”
“Show me the other being,” he murmured.
“R’jt’d do it like shot,” said R’jt’s little sister sourly. “He wouldn’t change a thing, you’d never have to worry that everything wasn't just the way you wanted it.”
“Precisely,” he said drily.
“Eh?” croaked Su.
“Don’t say that, Su; whatever BrTl may have told you, nice beings don’t.”
Su glared.
“Say ‘What did you say?’ if possible in a polite tone, or ‘I beg your pardon?’ according to context,” he said heavily.
“Eh—Um, I mean, I beg, um, What did you say? I mean,” said Su crossly, reddening, “I didn’t get that last word!”
Sighing, he switched back to Intergalactic. “Context.”
“Oh. Oh, right, I geddit,” agreed Su in Intergalactic. He said nothing, but he was emanating a certain amount of depression. She licked her lips and said uneasily, switching back to Whtyllian: “Sorry, Dad. We can talk Whtyllian, I don’t mind.”
“Thank you,” said Shank’yar politely to his youngest daughter. “You can’t hope to understand what it’s like, never to hear your native language spoken.”
“Um, yes. Mum’s Whtyllian is awful.”
“Mm. Her Slaetho-Xathpyrian, however,” he said wryly, “is quite good.”
Su swallowed. “Dad, before they had pwld she was stuck on her ship with BrTl and the it-being for years, hauling cargo, there probably wasn’t that much else to do.”
“I tell myself that, but I’ve no doubt whatsoever that had the inept BrTl been humanoid instead of xathpyroid, your mother would never have dreamed of bond-partnering with me,” he said on a sour note.
“I don’t think so,” replied Su sturdily. “I’ve thought about it quite a lot. I’d bond-partner with him if he was humanoid, no question, even though I s’pose he’d be too old for me, but I really don’t think Mum ever would of, I mean would have: she thinks he’s pretty much of an asteroid-brain, on the one appendage, and then, on the other, he’s much more like a son to her.”
It was Shank’yar’s turn to swallow. “I’ve never seen that in her,” he said shakily.
“That’s because you’re jealous,” replied Su simply.
“Er—yes.”
“Honest, Dad!”
“Mm,” he said, trying to smile. “Thank you, Su-Su, darling. I’ll try to absorb it affectively as well as cognitively.”
“Yeah, do that,” agreed Su comfortably.
There was a short silence. Shank’yar fiddled with the text-blobs on his immaculate desk and Su looked at him expectantly.
“Su-Su, my pet,” he said at last, “I was going to suggest you might like to take BrTl with you—”
“You’re mad!” replied Su with conviction. “Look, she might never of wanted to bond-partner with him, but he’s besotted with her, ya must know that! Asteroids of Jollifer, he practically went into a full-blown depression that time she went over to New Jishowulla for six months! And it’s really near!”
“I know,” he said with a sigh. “But I don’t like to think of you going all the way to the two galaxies alone, Su-Su.”
“Dad, it only takes three months!”
“A little over three IG months, darling, that’s nearly five local months, and I’m afraid you can expect to feel very nauseous for, well, certainly part of that time.”
“They’ll give me a chemo-blob,” replied Su indifferently.
He looked at her with something like despair: Su-Su got sick on anything that moved. For Federation’s sake, she’d even been sick that time BrTl had taken her and four of her small nephews and nieces for a ride on his back along the Ming Stream—
“I was eight!” said Su indignantly.
“Er, sorry, darling, was I broadcasting? No, well, you can’t deny you threw up on the boat when we went over to Pleasant Island to see G’gg’s tropical horticultural experiments, and then, coming home by bubble you weren’t any better, were you?”
“They didn’t have any chemo-blobs,” replied Su, scowling horribly.
Shank’yar sighed. “No, well, don’t say you haven’t been warned… Isn’t there any being you’d like to take with you?”
“The Flppus are too old,” replied Su simply.
“Mm. Not necessarily a being on that level.”
Su was silent.
“What about one of G’gg’s boys or girls?”
Su snorted. “Dad, all they can think about is their stupid bubbles and their stupid hu fields and yi’ish fields!”
“Surely Jhlli isn’t that bad?”
“She’s worse! Last time she called all she could talk about was some stupid Whtyllian cow her and her dad have cultured up from some germplasm G’gg got off one of those awful bio types in New Z’therabad: she reckons she’s gonna make a megazillion clones from it and make a fortune selling the milk! As if any beings’d buy that sort of muck when they can get good grqwaries’ milk, real cheap!”
The Whtyllian looked at her limply. “Er—‘really cheap’, darling, not ‘real cheap.’ I see… Possibly I’ve got G’gg’s children mixed up: I thought Jhlli was only your age?”
“What’s that got to do with it?” retorted his daughter strongly.
“I see… So G’gg’s still into that germplasm stuff, is he?”
Su shrugged. “Seems to be. Oh, well, whatever blobs you up. Those mingo-mns he cultured up were good, mind you.”
“Yes; delicious.” He looked sideways at her. “Pity they won’t grow anywhere but on those two small islands in the Tropical Zone.”
“Yes!” squeaked Su, going off in a gale of giggles. “Oh, well, better luck next time! Um, I s’pose I could take Dangerous, if you like.”
Her father swallowed. The name was a joke. Dangerous was a Loogher, one of the native New Whtyllians, all mild-natured vegetarian creatures bearing some similarities to the marsupials of the Federated Worlds of the Two Galaxies.
There were almost no native mammals on New Whtyll, apart from a few small rodent-like creatures. According to the Expedition Fleet’s geologists and zoologists many worlds of the two galaxies of the Federation had also been through such a period. The looghoid fauna ranged in size from very small to very—well, quite large; none of them were as large as Jhl’s friend BrTl, and certainly not as large as the Thwurbullerians who’d settled New Jishowulla. Looghers were middle-sized ones: Dangerous came about to mid-thigh on Su when he was in his normal upright position, a sort of squat balanced on the three short hind legs and the short, broad, flattened tail. According to the biologists he was classed as Sentient Being-Level 396—somewhat below a Flppu, yes.
Looghers had a language, of sorts, but no writing or anything approximating to art or music, and they were, so far as the Expedition Fleet’s members and their descendants and clones had been able to ascertain, incapable of learning Intergalactic. Those who wanted to communicate meaningfully with a Loogher had to learn Loogher or wear a Grade-A, Space Issue translator. Most of the settlers simply gave up and kept the beings as pets, a state in which the Looghers appeared perfectly content.
Dangerous, who would now be considered middle-aged in Loogher years, was one of the many infertile males of his race: family groups normally consisted of one dominant fertile male and a number of females, the males who hadn’t managed to snare a mate apparently remaining infertile. Even for a Loogher he wasn’t bright, but he was extremely good-natured and in his time had allowed little Su to dress him in almost any style you cared to name, up to and including a pink frilled skirt to match his short thick, pink body-fur, shading out to dark grey down the middle of the back and tail—even though Looghers normally didn’t feel the need to wear clothes at all: unlike male mammalians their genitalia were not exposed. And it was Shank’yar Vt R’aam’s personal belief that even had Dangerous’s been exposed there would have been very little to see.
“Would he stand up to collapsed space very well, though, Su?” he croaked.
“Um, I wouldn’t think so. He was awfully sick, much sicker than me, that time on the boat; do you—” Obviously he did remember. “Yes. And I think he might be homesick: he’s not young, you know, and he’s never even been off-world. Um, maybe I could take Phyoowella instead?”
This was a blue female Loogher of about the same number of local years as Su herself: not a Loogher name, but one awarded her by a very little Su, under the mildly malicious influence of the youngest Vt R’aam son, Athlor, the “Phyoow” part referring to the smell of an unwashed Loogher that had fallen into something unpleasant, and the “ella” apparently being Athlor’s idea of an Intergalactic feminine suffix.
“Why?” said her father limply. Phyoowella was even more brainless than Dangerous and considerably less useful.
“Um, dunno. Company?” ventured Su. “Well, it was your idea to take some being!”
Rapidly Shank’yar passed in review a vision of little plump black-haired mammalian Su accompanied by nothing but a plump little blue furry Loogher jaunting across the Known Universe…
“All right, no need to shudder all over, I get the picture!” said Su crossly.
She didn’t, entirely.
“The PBTT’ll be perfectly safe!” she added indignantly.
That proved she didn’t entirely, even if he hadn’t already seen as much for himself. He took a deep breath. “I’m sending a responsible being with you, and kindly do NOT argue!”
Su sighed. “All right, but does that mean I can’t take Phyoowella?”
“Take her if you must—if she wants to go, she is a free being, or so your mother claims,” he said heavily. “Vt R’aam Thirty-Two can go with you.”
Su’s jaw dropped. Clone Vt R’aam Thirty-Two was a man of mature years—at least thirty—and her father’s butler: according to Dad, the best butler he’d ever had.
“Don’t argue, my mind’s made up.”
“Yuh— Uh— Dad, he might not want to come!” she hissed.
“The clone belongs to me,” said Leader Lord Shank’yar Vt R’aam in a hard voice: “it is entirely immaterial whether he wants to or not.”
“But everybody’s supposed to have free will,” said Su limply.
“Rubbish. Clone rights here are exactly the same as they are within the Federation,” he noted coldly.
“Mum’ll be furious if she finds out that you’ve told him he has to go.”
“I dare say.”
Su gulped. After a moment she said in a small voice: “Well, whose clone is he?”
“Mine,” said her father coldly.
“What? He doesn’t look like you!”
“What? Oh, I see what you mean. Uh—some of the germplasm from the crew who died when Ship 40 encountered that asteroid belt when we were five IG years out, I think. Well, I don’t know, Su: I merely ordered some Whtyllian clones with a reasonable amount of mind-powers!” he said impatiently.
“I’m gonna look him up,” said Su with determination.
“Look him up by all means. The sim-receivers are at your disposal. If you have any trouble over authorisation, please get back to me,” said her father politely.
Su got up, scowling. “I’m gonna look a right asteroid-brain, trailing across the galaxies with a butler in tow that calls me ‘Young Mistress’ or ‘madam’ all the time!”
“You and your pale blue Loogher,” he noted sweetly.
Su’s jaw trembled. “You can be really horrible, Dad!”
Shank’yar sighed. “I didn’t mean to be. Can’t you see I only want to keep you safe?”
“I suppose so,” said Su sulkily.
He got up. “Come here,” he said, coming out from behind the desk.
Su suffered herself to be held in a very hard embrace while he kissed her rounded cheek, on request resignedly planting a kiss on his cheek. As usual, he smelled faintly of what Mum claimed were Bluellian snu flowers—it was some chemo-blob muck he used.
“I am gonna look him up,” she warned.
“Mm? Oh—yes. Do,” he said politely, releasing her. “Off you go, my pet, I’ve got work to do.”
Su stumped out, looking baffled.
Smiling very slightly, Shank’yar Vt R’aam returned to his immaculate desk.
“Look,” said Jhl some days later as the two of them relaxed over pre-dinner drinks: “if you don’t want her to go, Shan, tell her she can’t, for Federation’s sake!”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “I suppose she has to try her wings—if she doesn’t, she'll resent me for the rest of her life,” he noted with a sour grimace.
“At least that’s sunk in,” she muttered.
“Mm. Uh—darling, you remember that time you came to Btcx on the Wavey-Spacey secondment, and the inept BrTl and the it-being were stranded on—uh—think it was the third moon of Pkqwrd?”
“Uh—yeah, I do, actually,” said Jhl very limply indeed: “me and Su were talking about that plasmo-blasted dress with the lace daisies not long since.”
“Really?” He smiled, showing the still-pearly teeth. “It suited you. Weren’t the dresses lovely, back in those days? Pity Intergalactic fashions have changed so much.”
His bond-partner eyed him tolerantly. “You’re getting old, ya mean.”
“That, too,” he agreed tranquilly.
“Was there more?” asked Jhl politely, as he seemed to have sunk into a reverie.
“Mm? I found the most delightful set of Willunian diamonds—brooch and earrings—in the new J’rd’s branch before that ball, and didn’t work up the guts to buy it for you,” he said reminiscently.
Jhl gulped.
“See? The citizens who claim their Leader’s well under his bond-partner’s Bluellian opposable digit aren’t far wrong,” he said smoothly.
“Hah, hah,” replied Jhl weakly. “That’s It, then, is it? Rude lace daisies and one sale J’rd’s actually failed to make?”
“Mm? Oh—no. Didn’t that rather pleasant Friyrian captain you wanted me to speak to end up bond-partnering with a humanoid girl?”
“Yes,” said Jhl heavily. “That was what it was all about.”
“Was it, darling? Yes, I dare say it was. What was his name? Cr—Uh—Ccrainchzzyllia!” he recalled pleasedly.
Jhl’s jaw sagged.
“Wasn’t it? The Silver WF Line,” he remembered.
“Yuh—uh—yeah,” she croaked. “Hinnover City to one of the Playfair One Orbiting Transit Station— Shan, what are you on about?”
“Wasn’t the humanoid a pretty little pink-skinned girl?”
“You’re seeing her through BrTl’s eyes,” she groaned.
“Am I? But you met her, didn’t you, darling?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she groaned. “She was a pink being, and the gill-collared one was besotted by her and did eventually bond-partner with her in the mammalian teeth of his, or strictly speaking her/s, gill-collared family, and what are you on about?”
“I just thought they might be some nice people for Su to visit,” he said calmly.
Jhl goggled at him. But he actually seemed sincere. So she just closed her eyes and moaned: “Get me another drink, for Federation’s sake!”
He didn’t get up, he just sent: Another small qwlot for your mistress, please, and Clone Vt R’aam Thirty-Two in person came in smoothly with it.
It and a goodly measure of spring water, unasked and unprompted: he was, of course, completely under his master’s opposable digit. Jhl didn’t even bother to scowl at the pale concoction handed to her, she just drank it off thirstily.
Find me the address of a Captain—possibly ex-Captain—Ccrainchzzyllia of Friyria, who was with the Silver WF Line about thirty IG years back, he then ordered.
“Certainly, my Lord,” said Clone Vt R’aam Thirty-Two smoothly, bowing.
“Hang on, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two,” said Jhl as he was about to depart.
“Yes, madam?” –Strictly speaking “my Lady” or “your Ladyship” would have been more correct to his Lordship’s bond-partner but Jhl had informed Shank’yar that if any of the beings he insisted on surrounding his lordly self with even though the house was less than a hundredth of the size of the plasmo-blasted palace back on Whtyll were to call her any such thing, she’d go back to Federation space and divorce him, not necessarily in that order. So they didn’t. The result of this was that every time Vt R’aam Thirty-Two addressed her as “madam” she could feel his emanations about the impropriety of the expression he had to use, but too flaming-Vvlvanian bad!
“Your master’s spoken to you about going back to the Federation with Su, I think.”
“Yes, madam,” he said, bowing slightly.
Jhl swallowed a sigh: it was no use asking Shank’yar’s beings not to bow to her, they’d go into orbit immediately. “I know you’d do an excellent job of looking after her, but do you want to go?” she asked without hope.
“Of course, Mistress. I’m looking forward to it extremely,” he said smoothly.
Usually Jhl made a point of allowing the servants their privacy, but she gave in and looked at Vt R’aam Thirty-Two’s thoughts. He appeared to be looking forward to it extremely, but as one, S. Vt R’aam, had had several Whtyllian digits in that particular nymbo cheese pie—
Shank’yar was merely sipping Whtyllian zhr’ee, not emanating anything, but then, that was him all over. Ignoring him, Jhl said grimly: “Vt R’aam Thirty-Two, whatever your master may want or have mind-suggested, do you want to go?”
“Yes, madam. I’ve never been further than New Jishowulla. I’m greatly looking forward to seeing something of the Federated Worlds of the Two Galaxies.”
Right, well, that was as good as it was gonna get. Sighing, she conceded: “Well, Su can count herself lucky. You certainly looked after me very competently when we went to New Jishowulla.” –It was a Thwurbullerian world, for Federation’s sake! They were the most placid and reasonable sentient beings in the Known Universe! She couldn’t have been safer in her own bedroom with fifty of Shan’s plasmo-blasted indoor servants guarding the door! Oh, and his fifteen gardeners lined up outside the windows. Well, yes, the system ensured that sixty-five beings were housed, clothed and fed, and their families, in the case of those who had them, but— Forget it. He was too old to change, and she’d always known that.
“Thank you, madam. Will that be all?” said the butler politely. –The reason he never asked that of Shank’yar was, of course, because the two plasmo-blasted males were in something as near to a mind-symb as made no diff—
Rubbish, said her bond-partner’s cool voice in her head.
Blast it out your ear, Shank’yar! Jhl sent crossly. “Uh—no, actually, that isn’t all, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two.” She cleared her throat. “I’m afraid that Su’s declared her intention of—uh—looking you up.” She looked at him apologetically.
“Yes, Mistress,” he said politely.
“Vt R’aam Thirty-Two, I don’t think you understand!” said Jhl in despair. “On the New Whtyll Clone Register!”
“Exactly, madam.” He paused, but his mistress just looked at him limply. “Will that be all, then, madam?”
“I suppose so,” she said limply.
“Thank you, madam. Dinner will be served in twenty minutes.”
“Good,” said Jhl dully. “Uh—no, hang on, what is for dinner?”
“Chef”—the being’s rank was actually First Cook but Jhl had long since given up trying to make any being under her bond-partner’s sway, not to say opposable digit, refer to her as that—“has prepared a delightful selection of Whtyllian dishes toni—”
“Vt R’aam Thirty-Two, if you’re about to tell me she’s laid on another banquet when there’s only the three of us at home—”
“No, indeed, Mistress!” he said quickly. “One dish of grpplybeast meat with the blasterberry sauce that my Lord is so fond of: the style called hashi’mah’hshi back home,”—Jhl swallowed a sigh: “back home?”—the poor being had, of course, never set toe on any of the worlds of the Federation, let alone vacuum-frozen Whtyll itself—“one dish of yellow Bluellian squash with the sweet, spicy soured-milk sauce—grqwaries’ milk, of course, madam—and one fried green vegetable dish, h’rta-k’rta style.”
“Ooh, good. –Green?”
“Not Whtyllian blue kale, no, Mistress.”
“Thank the Federation,” said Jhl simply. “With steamed hu grain?”
“Er, Chef was intending to serve white wheat puffed breads— No, madam. The hu grain for roughage, of course: I’ll tell her.”
“Thanks. Oh, and no more than two dishes of pickles, please.”
“Very good, madam,” he agreed smoothly, bowing and exiting.
Jhl took a deep breath.
“I know: terribly good for my colon,” said Shank’yar quickly.
“True, with the five thousand pickles that First Cook Kadry was obviously about to serve up, it would have been scoured anyway,” said Jhl grimly.
“Mm. I promise I’ll eat the hu without a word of complaint,” he said meekly.
“I wasn’t thinking of the words so much as the emanations. You’ve even got R’jt kicking up over eating it, and he grows the stuff!”
“I don’t believe I ever asked him to copy me,” he said heavily.
“Uh—no. Oh, I see! He admires you, that’s all, Shan. And don’t blame me, I contributed the normal amount of genetic—”
“Yes, hush. I think it was a little overpowering for him, being brought up on the ship…” He paused. “Though I can’t see that in the same circumstances, Drouwh—”
“Shan, this is old ground,” said Jhl tiredly.
“Mm. Sorry. Talking of Drouwh, should we send Su to him on Old Rthfrdia?”
“Is he still doing the Lord Protector mok shit?” his bond-partner asked cautiously.
“No, he’s gone back to his estates. Not the area where you were that time, darling, that was only a hunting lodge. The principal estate’s in the Reaches.”
“Uh—” Jhl thought about this particular son of Shank’yar’s: he’d be about her own age, so most of his kids were probably grown up; would there be anybody on his plasmo-blasted principal estate for poor Su to even talk to?
“Old Rthfrdia has a cooler climate, but it’s not unlike New Whtyll,” he said mildly.
“It’s primmo enough!” agreed Jhl with feeling.
He looked at her doubtfully. “Darling, I thought you were happy here?”
Jhl went red. “I am. I love our house, I’d never want to leave it.”
“No. Good.”
“It’s just— Well, there’s nowhere to zip off to, supposing one was allowed to get in one’s lifter and zip. And don’t tell me I’m too old for the Marpen Ice Fields and so forth: I know it. I suppose I was really thinking of the attitudes on Old Rthfrdia, rather than the amenities. –They must have senso-tissues now, wouldn’t you think?”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “And we’re setting up a senso-tissue culturing plant in New Z’therabad, it won’t be long now.”
Jhl smiled sheepishly. “No. Sorry, didn’t mean to say that, it just slipped out. Um, now don’t take this the wrong way, Shan, I know you’ve always thought Drouwh had more to him than the rest of your kids, ours included, but do you honestly think Su’ll be able to stand him?”
A dull flush mounted to his golden-tan cheekbones. “I don’t see why not.”
Oh, Federation! thought Jhl in dismay. Now I’ve hurt his feelings! “Yeah, um, it’s just that he was pretty stiff as a young being: what’ll he be like now, after thirty-odd IG years of ruling the planet?”
“He may have mellowed.”
Yeah, and grqwaries might fly, but as it hadn’t happened within recorded history, it was unlikely to do so in their lifetimes!
“I could always sound him out,” he offered.
Sound him out? Look, for family reasons alone, setting aside the diplo courtesy a retried world leader would believe he owed to another world leader— “Yeah, why not?” she agreed limply.
He nodded pleasedly. “We’re really got quite a list of reliable people she can go to,” he noted happily.
Something like that—yeah. Poor Su!
Next chapter:
https://theadmirableclone-sf.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-question-of-clone-vt-raam-thirty-two.html