Bluellia

6

Bluellia

    Jhl roused, blinking, on the side verandah to the sound of panting and emanations of huge excitement. Clone Vt R’aam Forty-Nine, managing to give the impression that he’d run all the way from New Z’therabad. Huh? A what from where?

    “Recorder-blob, ma—dam!” he panted. “From—Blu—el—(pant, pant)—lia!” (Pant, pant.)

    “Not a recorder-blob from Blu—” By the three-tongued blurryankers of Trypthfymia, it was! Jhl paled.

    “Good—news—madam!” he gasped.

    “Oh,” she said weakly, not asking how he knew.

    “Covering—text-blob—madam!” he gasped.

    “Right. From Leader Vt R’aam, is it?” she said, anticipation waning.

    “Yes, madam!” he beamed.

    Jhl looked at the recorder-blob. Then she looked at Clone Vt R’aam Forty-Nine’s innocent, excited face. (He was a Whtyllian—different batch from Vt R’aam Thirty-Two, however.) Er—better not: with Shank’yar you never knew. He had a great—far too great—sense of the fitness of things, but on the other appendage he could be extremely, uh, more than frank. Several steps down from frank. Explicit, was about it.

    “Um, there could be private things in it,” she said in a weak voice. “I’ll just have a look at it and, um, then I’ll call you all.”

    “Yes, madam!” he beamed. “Thank you, madam!” He exited to the sounds and emanations of excited speculation and anticipation from the background.

    On, she sent. True, there were a couple of Looghers dozing by the swing, but they weren't going to take in— Oops, here he was, smiling that meaningful smile of his right into the eyes and gee, she’d been wrong about them Looghers, never seen a being of that size and physique move so fast!

    “Hullo, darling!”

    “Yeah, hullo to you, too,” agreed Jhl. What in Federation was he wearing?

    “Like it?” he said, turning slowly and revolving to show it off. “It’s the traditional male costume of Bluellia—extremely comfortable.”

    “Extremely comfortable in mn-mn silk, yeah. A Bluellian—will you shut up for ten IG microseconds!—A Bluellian’d be lucky to have a bit of embroidery on it in mn-mn silk, and at that he’d have to have inherited it from his great-grandfather, and, now hear this! IT LOOKS LIKE YOUR PLASMO-BLASTED DRESSING-GOWNS!”

    “I’ll bring a couple home with me—very comfortable lounging wear.”

    Jhl groaned and collapsed limply back against the pillows of the swing.

    “I thought I’d come over with Su-Su—see her settled in,” Shank’yar’s smiling three-dimensional image explained.—Jhl had been doing a bit of vine trimming earlier and there were some clippings on the table next to the swing: she threw a leaf at the smirk.—“Well, see if she was really going to be able to stand it with Bhl and S’zaan, or if she’d drive them potty within the week complaining about how FW it is. But actually she seems to be taking it in her stride. It’s still summer here, of course: that helps.”

    Uh—was it? Well, if he said so.

    “But of course I can’t stay—got a meeting set up with the Fleet Lords—”

   “Here we go!” she groaned. Yeah, yeah, he was gonna pull strings with Space Fleet Command—he put it much more delicately, of course—and get that series of Relay Stations set up, one every five strides between the two galaxies and here, blah, blah…

    Personally Jhl wouldn’t have approached Space Fleet at all: they were the defence arm of Space Service (though admittedly the Fleet Lords could wield considerable influence, depending on just which personalities happened to be the Lords at the time): wouldn’t they want some vaguely defence-related reason for setting up a megazillion and two Relay Stations? Who did he imagine he was gonna represent as liable to attack the Federation from the direction of the Third Galaxy? The Looghers? ’Cos there Vvlvanian-cursed-well weren’t any other breathing native beings to speak of over here! New Nblyteria had worms, a few crawling insects, and something that lived in the water but didn’t have fins or a skeleton—the Nblyterian term translated as “water-worm.” And New Jishowulla had a real exciting range of flying insects and uh, marine crustaceans, was what D’ffni called them. None bigger than the palm of Jhl’s hand. Aw, gee, yeah, that’d be it: those New Jishowullan moth things were gonna band together into an Invasion Fleet!

    “But never mind that!” he was saying with the famous wave of the hand..

    “I won’t,” Jhl assured the image grimly.

    “What I’m really calling for, darling—well, and to let you see Bhl’s and S’zaan’s house, of course!”—another wave, different in kind but nevertheless fairly sickening, too—“is to let you know that Vt R’aam Thirty-Two’s been accepted by the Academy!”

    “Oh, good,” said Jhl limply. He was assuring her that of course the clone would stay on with Su and then when Month 8 rolled round he’d pop on over and collect him (his very words), and drop him off at the Academy and etcetera but Jhl just sent STOP! And, this time not in the direction of the recorder-blob: Anyone who wants to view the master’s rec— Gee, here they all were. Well, not quite all: Cook’s grandson was back at First School where he did oughta be and Clone Vt R’aam Seventy-Two had been officially relieved of his duties as boot-boy and was back at Second School full-time, and if they had any more of those so-called “free” days he could sit right down in the sitting-room and work at his maths.

    ... “Good!” concluded First Cook Kadry, beaming.

    “I knew he could do it!” agreed Clone Vt R’aam Forty-Nine.

    “Aye, he’s not thick,” allowed the elderly Clone Vt R’aam Seventeen.

    “No,” agreed Jhl, smiling at the being.

    “Bit of a pity, though,” he added with a sideways glance at Vt R’aam Forty-Nine: “used to run the house real good.”

    Vt R’aam Forty-Nine was currently more or less performing the duties of butler. Given that Shank’yar was at the other side of the Known Universe and that Jhl did not actually need the services of a butler. And how or if he ran the house was absolutely none of Vt R’aam Seventeen’s business: the former Head Grqwary Herder was currently I/C Estate Poultry, in other words he looked after the few grqwaries out in the little paddock behind the orchard (fighting First Cook Kadry over when or if they might be ready for the pot—right), the flock of Whtyllian ducks that Guess Who had insisted upon, and the flock of C’T’rean po geese that had mysteriously appeared upon the property. Well, the man’s original had been a C’T’rean, so it was probably a genetic predisposition. Well, possibly. Or he’d done it to annoy all the Whtyllian clones—yeah.

    “Yes,” said Jhl in a firm voice, ignoring the by-play completely; “he did, and I’m sure the Academy will foster his organisational abilities. Um—the rest of it seems to be about my brother's house: do y—” Yes. Natch.

    So they all watched avidly. Yep, that was a Bluellian farmhouse, all right. Vt R’aam Seventeen waxed very keen: perhaps he didn’t know that back on C’T’rea ordinary beings lived in huge slot-towers without a blade of grass to be seen: only the very, very rich had gardens. First Cook Kadry seemed almost equally keen, which proved what Jhl had been trying to tell Shank’yar for the last three local years: it was time the being was honourably pensioned off: Federation knew she’d more than done her duty to them, the Exploration Fleet and flaming Vvlvanian-cursed Space Fleet itself.

    The consensus was, it was a lovely house, and they had lots of blah, blah (read, “space junk”), and it looked very comfortable and Su was sure to feel right at home! Well, she might once her father stopped embarrassing her by draping himself in traditional Bluellian male full-skirted robes, yeah. No-one wore them. They were seen only on HISTORICAL SOCIETY NUTTERS at NUTTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY FAIRS— Oh, forget it.

    Fl’Oo-Ooueroii’s conclusion more or less represented the norm: “What a pretty dressing-gown! And will Vt R’aam Thirty-Two have to wear a uniform?” Well, they all immediately looked at Jhl eagerly—except the odd one or two beings like First Cook Kadry that had been in the Service, of course—and emanated: Ooh! Will he?

    “Oy,” she said to her nephew at a suitable time that evening—when he’d come in from his plasmo-blasted potting sheds or whatever it was he was closeting himself in these days.

    “What?” replied G’gg’s sim-image, looking cautious.

    “Ya wanna see a lovely recorder-blob pwlded at mega-humungous expense all the way from your mum and dad’s place?”

    “What of?” replied G’gg cautiously.

    “Shan in a flaming Bluellian chu, mainly.”

    “No, in that case. How are Mum and Dad?”

    “Good, but given S’zaan was out with Su when he made it and Bhl was cutting hay over in what I think he meant was Forty Acre, they didn’t get to send a personal message.”

    G’gg merely replied: “Is Su in it?”

    “Nope.”

    “Right. S’pose BrTl and Trff aren’t—no. In that case, I definitely won’t bother, ta.”

    “Wise man,” she recognised sourly.

    “You were right,” noted her nephew: “he has reverted to his Whtyllian Lordship persona.”

    “YES!” she shouted terribly. G’gg’s sim-image blenched. “Uh—sorry, G’gg, no need to take it out on you. Well, I suppose it was inevitable.”

    “Yeah. Prolly partly reaction to thinking Su had been reduced to slime by that vacuum-frozen PBTT,” he said kindly. “Hey, talking of Whtyllian, Jhlli’s cows are doing real good; wanna come on over and see them?”

    “Oh, why not?” she groaned. “Just run it by L’Thea first, will ya?”

    Looking mildly surprised, her middle-aged nephew agreed he’d run it by his long-suffering bond-partner, and blobbed off.

    “Yeah,” said Jhl to herself with a sigh. “Oh, well…”

    Su’s dad’s disappearance in the general direction of Intergalactica had been viewed with undisguised relief by Su, S’zaan and Bhl. BrTl’s was better disguised but they were all sure it was there. Trff’s was entirely disguised but as it admitted two IG microseconds after they’d waved off the lifter that he’d commandeered from Federation-knew-where to lift him around the plains of an astounded Bluellia: “Good, that’s the last of him-it for a while, it uses the term loosely,” no-one was in any doubt of its sentiments, either.

    “Yes,” said S’zaan rather weakly. BrTl and Trff seemed completely at home. She’d never thought that they’d even remember her and Bhl from that time they’d come with Jhl for Galaxy Day—well, true, her sister-in-IG-law claimed that the it-being claimed it never forgot anything, but many of her other reports had seemed to contradict this assertion. And they did know from G’gg’s reports over the years that the xathpyroid had the greatest difficulty in telling one humanoid from another. Well, fair enough, all xathpyroids looked alike to her and Bhl. No, well, true, BrTl was the only one they’d actually met in person, but they’d seen plenty of them on the Services and neither of them could have sworn they weren't looking at BrTl each time.

    But actually, on arriving at the farmhouse Trff had pointed its antenna at her and said: “Different dwelling, but this is one of the same beings. Oh, yes, G’gg’s genetic encoding. Hullo, S’zaan, good to see you-it again.” And BrTl had said: “I’d have said it was the same dwelling. How are you, Bhl? Still making that local intoxicant?” Which was pretty good, given that they hadn't thought he’d taken in a word of Bhl’s and Bht’s ramblings about their famous—infamous’d be more like it—Galaxy Day brew.

    “Right, let’s get on with it!” said BrTl happily.

    “Bhl,” said S’zaan on a weak note as the two of them prepared to depart in the direction of the infamous brew shed, “Federation knows I don’t care how much of the stuff you make, so long as you don’t blow yourself and BrTl up in the process— All RIGHT, you know what you’re doing! What I was gonna say, are you ever gonna get through it all?”

    “BrTl, here, can put away a fair few IG—whaddare those things, again?”

    “IG megalitres?” offered BrTl.

    “Uh—right. Think so. We just say barrels.”

    “I’ve noticed that.”

    “BHL!” shouted his driven bond-partner. “What are you going to DO with five hundred IG megalitres of the stuff?”

    “Five thousand, Gramma,” corrected the very small Tmmi Smt Wong into the sudden silence in the front yard of the Smt Wong farmhouse.

    Bhl cleared his throat. “Uh—yeah. Well, uh, Galaxy Day presents?”

    “Get out of here,” she groaned.

    Taking this for permission, Bhl and BrTl vanished shed-wards, followed by an eager Tmmi.

    “I could go and keep an eye on them, if you like, madam,” offered Vt R’aam Thirty-Two meekly.

    S’zaan sighed: she already knew the being wasn’t interested in their plasmo-blasted fermented muck. “No, that’s okay. Appearances to the contrary, Bhl does know what he’s doing, him and his brother learnt how to make the muck at their dad’s and granddad’s knees.” He looked in a startled way in the direction of her knees. “Bluellian saying, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two,” said S’zaan in a weak voice. “And while we’re on the subject, would you mind very much not calling me madam, now that Su’s dad’s not here any more?”

    “But I— What shall I call you, then?”

    “Call me S’zaan, for Federation’s sake, you’re on Bluellia now!” replied S’zaan rather loudly.

    “I—I hardly feel that would be appropriate.”

    S’zaan took a deep breath. “After you’ve been doing it for a while, it will feel appropriate. Especially as no-one else on the entire planet addresses anybody as ‘madam’!”

    “I see, S’zaan,” he said, swallowing.

    “And don’t bow, either,” added Su mildly.

    “No, Young Mistress: I had gathered that that is not usual practice, here,” he said politely.

    “It could help you-it,” offered Trff.

    “Uh—no, thank you very much, Great It-Being,” he croaked.

    “Call it Trff, you-it’s on Bluellia now,” it reminded him happily.

    “Yes. Trff,” he said, swallowing again. “Of course.”

    “Well, what shall we do today?” it said happily to S’zaan.

    “Um, well, at this time of year the moonberries are ripe down by String Creek: I thought Su might like to come and help pick them for jam.”

    “Jam?” it said, pointing an antenna briefly at her. “Oh! Cooked up moonberries with lots of any locally available sucrose substance, allowed to set and served cold from Mum’s fancy dish after being stored in special containers in a special cupboard: it sees.”

    “I think we all do, now!” admitted S’zaan with a weak laugh.

    “Yeah, only not what moonberries are, Aunty S’zaan!” objected Su.

    “Oh, don’t you have them on— No. Um, so Jhl hasn’t mentioned— She wouldn’t have, no, even though your grandma made moonberry jam every summer of her life. She left that culture-pan to M’mri’in, but she handed it on to me when she went to Whtyll to live with R’shn and Raj. Ooh!” she gasped.

    “Sorry, S’zaan, it forgot that beings on Bluellia aren’t used to mind-prods.”

    “Yeah,” she said drily, “and apparently you forgot that I hadn’t forgotten what I was talking about, Trff. Moonberries are small berries about the size of blrtlberries, Su, do you have them on— Mok shit,” she muttered. “Well, um, quite small,” she said, holding up her hand with the forefinger curled into a tight circle, “about as round as a Bluellian farthnum, but that wouldn’t— Ow! Who was that?”

    “Me,” admitted Su quickly. “Sorry, I didn't mean to mind-jab you. I think there’s one in your apron pocket.”

    “Oh, yes; change from the grqwaries’ milk I sold— Uh, yeah.” Feebly she produced it. The three of them stared at it solemnly—well, Trff pointed one of its antennae at it, same diff.’ “About this round, see? They’re white when they’re ripe.”

    “White berries?” croaked Su.

    “Yes. Our moons are white, aren’t yours?”

    “Um, only one moon, Aunty S’zaan. Um, yes, ’tis whitish, I suppose. Well, sometimes it looks bluish.”

    “Blue-greyish,” murmured Vt R’aam Thirty-Two, looking dubious.

    “Ours are white,” said S’zaan in a very firm voice, “and so are moonberries. Geddit?”

    Everybody got it, so they went off to collect some baskets and—NO BLOBS! Bluellians did not pick moonberries using blobs!—To collect some baskets. And they would walk on their own appendages over to String Creek, S’zaan had never heard of taking a bubble for that distance, what had Su’s mum been letting her get away with?

    They’d got about halfway when she realised what the kid had been on about. Trff wasn’t complaining but it was definitely lagging behind, and those plasmo-blasted tentacle-things of its were hopeless at walking—hopeless! S’zaan bit her lip. “Um, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two, would you mind giving Trff a bit of a hand?”

    “She it-means would you-it carry it, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two,” it translated helpfully. “Oh! No, thanks; it’s okay!”

    “It isn’t,” said Su, frowning. “I knew it’d be too far for you-it! –It’s not a walking sort of being,” she explained to her aunt.

    “Yes, it is!” it lied valiantly.

    “Mok shit; how did you and BrTl and Jhl get from the bubble-train stop to Bhl’s dad’s place, that time?” demanded S’zaan grimly.

    “We didn’t get off at the stop, but it sees what you-it means. Walked.”

    “Who walked?”

    “BrTl and Jhl. BrTl carried it,” Trff admitted on a glum note. “Well, there was all this wet, cold, messy stuff lying aroun— Ooh!”

    Vt R’aam Thirty-Two had simply lifted it up. “Snow,” he said mildly. “Drifts of snow, Trff. It’s my pleasure, ladies.”

    “Ladies?” said S’zaan weakly in her niece’s ear as they forged on.

    “At least it wasn’t ‘madam.’”

    “Right. Uh—is there a plural?” she hissed

    “You don’t wanna know!” Su assured her fervently.

    On second thoughts, she was so right! Hefting her baskets, S’zaan strode on over the flat Bluellian terrain, trying not to let her thought wander in the direction of two baskets per being made eight…

    After quite some time she became aware of a sort of tickling in her head. “Uh—what, dear?” she said limply.

    “He’s very strong!” hissed Su.

    S’zaan looked somewhat weakly at the clone’s straight back as he forged ahead with Trff and four good-sized Bluellian baskets. He’d need to be. Those old baskets of Bhl’s mum’s weighed an IG ton when they were full of moonberries!

    … Right, String Creek was probably called that because it was very narrow, and meandered through the fields, looking like a piece of string. Now that we all knew what a piece of string was. Zll couldn’t be a very practical planet, that was for sure. And the berries didn’t grow on vines, no, and surely all the New Whtyll berries couldn't grow on— Mostly vines but some on big bushes. Except desert what? Well, these berries grew on little plants, like very short little bushes, goddit? Good! And as there were megazillions of ripe ones, let’s get picking!

    At first Trff claimed that none of the moonberries were white. Then, after S’zaan had shown it what a ripe one looked like, and Su and Vt R’aam Thirty-Two—they were gonna have to find another name for that poor being: you simply couldn’t go on calling a sentient being by a number!—when they were happily picking, it reported it had found one!

    S’zaan was reduced to dazed gaping. They were surrounded with the things—surrounded with them! It was quite possibly the best year for moonberries in Bluellia’s history!

    “Aunty S’zaan, it’s being literal. See, the shade of this one here’ll be exactly the same, prolly within some old maths thing, um, tolerances or something, as that other one you showed it. You gotta speak to it different, see? I’ll show you. –Trff, now hear this. See the berries in my basket? These are all what the human eye perceives as white. Yeah, ’tis odd, eh?”—She winked at her aunt.—“Yeah, okay, you-it saw that. Right; now, averaging these whitish shades out, one arrives at a pretty general notion of whitishness, give or take five percent. –Ya gotta say that,” she explained to her dumbfounded aunt. “Okay, any berries that fall within those parameters oughta be picked. –Don’t say ‘can be,’ or it’ll leave them sitting on the bushes,” she explained. “Oughta be picked and will be picked by the Slp-Og V. Trff, that’s an order. Goddit?”

    “Goddit,” it agreed mildly, beginning to pick with three tentacles at once—one of them was behind it! How could it see those ones?

    “You only think it’s behind because of the way it’s been facing. Well, pretending to face,” said Su calmly. “Come on, they won’t pick themselves, eh? Though it’s right, you could get a blob to do it very efficiently.”

    Limply S’zaan bent to the berries again. “When did it say that?” she ventured after some considerable local time had passed.

    “Eh? Oh. Well, more or less all the time, but it specially sent it when you first suggested picking them back in front of the house, and again when we got here and you showed us the ripe one, and again when it had found its one real white one.”

    “I see,” she said feebly.

    “Ya get used to it,” Su assured her kindly.

    Maybe, if you’d lived with the being all your life. But in her opinion it’d take that long. And heck, if it did that much nagging—call it emanating or sending, it was nagging here on Bluellia—no wonder the beings over on New Whtyll had given in and were using blobs for harvesting those desert berries, and blobs for harvesting those other ones that G’gg went in for, and blobs for, if you please, netting plasmo-blasted grqwaries!

    … “It didn’t eat any,” she said limply when they’d staggered into the house in a state of heat, exhaustion and sticky bloatedness as to three of them. Even the clone, when he’d realised how many moonberries String Creek offered, hadn’t held back. Especially as S’zaan had explained in words of one syllable that they did not want a whole houseful of bottled moonberry jam. And that every other household in the district would also be making moonberry jam at this time of year, because moonberries grew down by all the creeks.

    Trff had gone off to its room, so Su explained cheerfully: “No, it doesn’t eat ordinary o-breather stuff. Don’t worry, its FW pack feeds it. But it’ll really eat agar-agar, if ya can make it.”

    “Yuh—um, yes, of course I can! Why didn’t you tell me, Su?”

    “Think we were all being polite, Aunty S’zaan!” she said with a laugh.

    “Er—mm,” admitted S’zaan, as those frightful dinners with Su’s dad sprang vividly to mind. Not that he didn’t have lovely manners—and considerable charm—and of course he hadn't criticised a thing. Unfortunately that had made it worse, really.

    “Only for real humanoid beings, Aunty S’zaan!” said Su merrily, hugging her arm. “Think I’ll have a wash, that okay?”

    “Oh, Federation, yes, dear! I’m going to, too. –Vt R’aam Thirty-Two,” she said clearly, since he was looking thoughtfully from the kitchen table, groaning under the weight of moonberries, to the culture-pans: “after we’ve picked the berries, we always use the hygiene cabinets!”

    “In that case, S’zaan,” he said with a sudden brilliant smile—S’zaan staggered, and grabbed at her niece’s arm—“picking moonberries on Bluellia is just like picking kinkerberries on New Whtyll, blobs or not! Thank you!” And he vanished.

    “Su,” croaked her aunt, groping for a chair, “that man is gorgeous! Why didn’t your plasmo-blasted mother warn me?”

    “Eh?”

    “Haven't you noticed? When he smiles or—or lets himself go for a minute?”

    “Um, I suppose,” said Su uneasily, standing on one leg. “Um, he is a clone, ya know,” she said in a lowered voice.

    “Oh, go and have your wash,” said S’zaan tiredly.

    “Um, yeah,” she agreed uncertainly, vanishing.

    S’zaan drooped all over her laden kitchen table. “Mad,” she muttered. Though it was true that in Bluellian years, Su was scarcely twenty— No. Mad.

    “It’s noticed that she-it hasn’t really noticed him-it, too,” offered Trff.

    “Yes!” she gasped, suddenly bolt upright. “Where did you spring from?”

    “It knows that one, Jhl often says it, too. From its excellent Guest Room, S’zaan.”

    Its pale jade fluff did look cleaner, come to think of it. Definitely less sticky—no burrs, either. “Uh—good: so that hygiene cabinet’s working okay for you now, is it?”

    “Yes, great!” it said jauntily. “Shall it add the berries to the culture-pans for you-it?”

    “Uh—no, they gotta be cleaned, first, Trff. Uh—I usually get the tidy-blobs to—” Gee, it had got them doing it! “Um, thanks,” she croaked.

    “No problem!” it assured her happily. “You-it’s wrong about that clone, though. He-it and Su can’t do that repro stuff you-it’s thinking about.”

    S’zaan went very red. She hadn’t expected the it-being to pick up that sort of thing. And she hadn’t really been thinking—well, heck, not that explicitly!

    “It picks up everything,” it noted mildly. “It does drive some beings to Mullgon’ya, figuratively speaking, yes. You-it hasn’t grasped its meaning. That impulse is turned off in him-it because he-it’s a clone.”

    Her jaw sagged.

    “No, you-it didn’t know that about clones before, did you-it?” it noted proudly.

    S’zaan shook her head numbly. “Are—are all clones like that?” she croaked.

    “No.”

    “Um, are you being literal, Trff?” she ventured, licking her lips.

    “No, it’s answering you in your-its terms, S’zaan. Many clones are not like that. On the Vt R’aam estate only the indoor clones have that impulse turned off. It’s usually done by the cloning engineer at the orders of the being who ordered up the clones.”

    “Him,” ascertained S’zaan grimly.

    “Yes,” it agreed simply.

    She took a deep breath. “How Jhl could ever agree to bond-partner with a man like that—!”

    “Yes, it’s beyond it and BrTl, too,” it agreed glumly.

    “So, um, is he gonna be like that forever, poor being?”

    “It doesn’t kn— Sorry. It sees what you-it means. No, when his-its clone status is rescinded, the senior cognate will arrange to have the impulse turned on. Jhl made him-it promise to,” it ended, sounding vague.

    “I’m sure she did, but why didn’t she stop him having it turned OFF?” she yelled.

    “She-it didn’t know he-it was gonna do it until—”

    “Right. Goddit.” She breathed heavily.

    “She-it thinks it’s up to Su’s generation to do something about the clones,” Trff offered. “It’s tiring for her-it, being continually on her-its guard against any and all encroachments, unreasonable orders, or just plain taking advantage when the back’s turned and the mind’s switched off.”

    “Yuh— Oh! Living with him. Too right.”

    “Why not pop up to your-its hygiene cabinet for a nice H2O shower, S’zaan?”

    Limply S’zaan popped.

    … “Eh?” said Bhl sleepily when she’d revealed the horrible truth in their privacy of their room that night.

    “Yes! Evidently it’s quite normal in other parts of the plasmo-blasted Federation to order up a batch of clones and specify that. It makes for peace around the home,” she said grimly, “if one’s servants haven’t got their minds on it.”

    “I can see it would, yeah.”

    “Bhl, it’s disgusting!”

    “Ssh! Uh, look, S’zaan, I agree with you, but heck, Jhl got the man to agree to free all the s-beings on the Expedition Fleet’s ships and to outlaw the flaming servo-bracelets entirely in the Third Galaxy, that’s not nothing, ya know!”

    “No, well, I agree. And Trff did say he did it behind her back. –The gardeners can do it,” she added dully. “Most of them have got families. It’s only the indoor servants and the office beings where he specifies it’s gotta be turned off.”

    “Yeah. Vt R’aam Thirty-Two looks male enough,” he said cautiously.

    “What? He is, biologically, he’s not a capon, you asteroid-brain!”

    “Oh, right. Goddit,” the poultry farmer agreed mildly.

    “Trff reckons Shank’yar’s gonna have it turned on again, when they do the uncloning,” she added with a sigh. “I suppose that’s something.”

    The bed shook slightly.

    Lights ON! “Are you laughing, Bhl Smt Wong?” she hissed furiously.

    “Don’t spit!”—Lights lower!—“I was just thinking what a shock it’s gonna be for the poor bastard. –Well, think about it, love. They’d have to turn it all on at once, eh? I mean,”—he cleared his throat—“me and Bht and J’f were bad enough, in our teens, but that was gradual, in comparison—see?”

    She must have seen, because she was gulping.

    “Yeah,” said Bhl with a certain satisfaction. Lights off! The bed shook again.

    “Stop laughing,” said S’zaan weakly.

    The bed continued to shake.

    “Gosh,” she concluded in awe.

    “Yep!” he gasped. “’E won’t know where to put ’imself—so to speak!”

    S’zaan said nothing, but the bed shook again, and this time it wasn’t down to Bhl.

    “A social?” echoed Su dubiously. “What is it, Uncle Bhl?”

    “Eh? Don’tcha have ’em on— No. Right. It’s like a dance, love.”

    “Bhl,” warned S’zaan, trying in vain to get some sort of mind-message through that solid xrillion head of his, “didn't we more or less decide not to go?”

    “Eh? ’Course we gotta go! Everyone’s going!”

    “Yuh— Um, come in the kitchen for a minute, Bhl.”

    “I don’t think he needs to, S’zaan,” said BrTl kindly from the corner of the room that they were letting him use as a xathpyroid corner, once Su had explained what that was and several large articles of furniture had been carted up to the attic by a grinning Wm Smt Wong and a grinning R’g Smt Wong—some sort of cognates, BrTl hadn't tried to figure out what, he had at least recognised they were males, which was a lot better than he’d done the first time he was here. “Not if you're only going to explain that xathpyroids and it-beings don’t dance.”

    “Um, yeah, you are broadcasting it real loud, Aunty S’zaan,” agreed Su apologetically.

    “Oh,” said S’zaan limply, sitting down again and averting her eyes from the sim-receiver, which was showing three-dimensional morons cavorting mindlessly in the wake of some plasmo-blasted sports fixture, which was all her bond-partner ever blobbed onto. At least Trff had shown them how to blob out the noises, that was a plus.

    “But we can dance, actually,” BrTl added mildly.

    “Heck, even I can manage a square dance!” agreed Bhl breezily.

    “That looks like a very interesting dance, Bhl, it thinks it could do that. In fact, it’s not unlike one of the dances BrTl and it did that time we were on You-Know-Where with Jhl and G’gg—isn’t it, BrTl?”

    “Huh? Oh! Old Rthfrdia, you can say that now, Trff, that do’s over and done with.—Thirty-odd IG years since,” he murmured to himself. “Oh, yeah: ’tis rather like it, eh? G’gg did it, too,” he recalled.

    G'gg’s mother’s jaw dropped: G’gg had been fifteen in Bluellian years at the time.

    “Who with?” asked Bhl with interest.

    “Oh, everyone—that was the point.”

    “No: one quarter, give or take five percent, of everyone,” said Trff severely.

    “Eh? Hang on…”

    “There were two groups, BrTl.”

    “Oh, so there were! Well, there you are. One quarter of everyone—his line went thataway, and the opposite line—think they might have been female beings, those that had gender—went the other way, and after going up and down and, uh, think it was hands across, yeah, Bhl,”—Bhl jumped—“well, appendages across, puts it better, there we all were, back where we started from!”

    “Not all: it wasn’t. It went round and round and the opposite way, but then it was going the wrong way, but a being put it right—several beings, several times,” Trff recalled, “and then it did it all again, that was the procedure, only it didn’t know that it was time to stop, but G’gg stopped it!”

    “Just lemme get this straight,” said Bhl, grinning. “G’gg aged around fifteen actually danced?”

    “Yes,” they both agreed pleasedly.

    “With beings of the opposite gender?”

    “Yes,” they chorused.

    Bhl went into a helpless sniggering fit.

    “That’ll do,” said S’zaan weakly. “So, you do like dancing?” She tried not to think of the size of their so-called Community Hall.

    “Sure,” said BrTl easily.

    “Oh, sure, S’zaan!” Trff agreed.

    S’zaan eyed it drily. “If you say so, Trff. Well, uh, there’ll be lots to eat, BrTl.”

    “Good. And drink?”

    “There will if we bring a barrel or two!” noted Bhl, grinning.

    S’zaan gave in. “Oh, well, I suppose we might as well go, then.”

    … “Come over here, Bhl,” she said evilly in her bond-partner’s ear.

     Looking mild, Bhl allowed himself to be pulled away from the immediate vicinity of the barrel he’d proudly mounted on a table, not to say from his plasmo-blasted peer group. All of whom of course were present at the social not to dance, but to drink themselves silly.

    “What?” he said mildly.

    “Where do I start? Well, first, why are you filling that poor clone full of— No, scrub that, you won’t be able to tell me why, it’s ingrained behaviour. What intergalactic idiot has given the dim males of the neighbourhood—yes, them!” she snapped as he looked over at the peer group—“the idea that Vt R’aam Thirty-Two is a vacuum-frozen sports-clone?”

    “Dunno. Well, don’t look at me!” he added in an injured tone. “Well—uh—well, so what? They’re showing the being a plasmo-blasted good time!”

    “Bhl, every single one of them has greeted him with some inane remark about the Big Game or the Match of the IG Week or some such space garbage!”

    “Uh—yeah. Well, um, think they think a clone’s gotta be a sports-clone, love. Well, heck, those sports-beings all are, ya know!”

    S’zaan drew a very deep breath. “Right. That’s One. Two, do you intend filling him full of that muck until he actually falls over, or what?”

    “Eh? Well, see, thing is, they all wanna drink with him: they think he’s a sp—”

    “YES!”

    “Well, whaddelse you expect him to do? Well, let’s face it: he’s not gonna nip behind the barn with a little piece of—”

    “Bhl Smt Wong!”

    “Well, ’e isn’t, is ’e?”

   “That will do. And who, may I ask, is going to carry him out to the lifter? You? Your sons?” She gave the two nearest of her offspring an evil look. Tm and R’g grinned cheerfully.

    “Nuh—BrTl, I guess.”

    “Bhl, he’s drinking it by the barrel!”

    “Be fair, love: basin. No, well, Trff reckons it doesn’t affect him much—lot of local brews don’t. Uh, something to do with not being spirits, see?”

    “Don’t you dare to give him any of that moonshine of Wlli Smt Bl’k’s!” she hissed.

    “Uh—no. Well, better safe than sorry, ya right, love. That was a pretty bad do, that time that green being was out here inspecting poor ole P’tt Brn Smt, eh? But it come right in the end, and swore it had never tasted a better drop! Mighta been green, but it was game! –What was that for?” he croaked as his bond-partner gave him a vicious push.

    “Just go back to your silly mates. And DON’T give Vt R’aam Thirty-Two OR BrTl spirits!”

    He hadn’t been gonna, had he? Looking virtuous, Bhl returned to his old mates.

    … “Your little niece seems to be enjoying herself, S’zaan!” said P’m Mttn Lee brightly.

    S’zaan smiled weakly. Su had danced with the grinning, inarticulate, clod-hopping J’m R’sn Smt. She had danced with the grinning, inarticulate, clod-hopping P’tt R’sn Smt. She had danced with the grinning, inarticulate, clod-hopping Bhl R’sn Smt. She had danced with the grinning, inarticulate, clod-hopping M’km R’sn Smt III. She had danced with the grinning, inarticulate, clod-hopping Bht R’sn Smt. Not all brothers, some of them were cousins, but at the moment Su’s aunt felt very strongly that that was irrelevant. She had danced with J’ni Mttn Lee in glorious clod-hopping person. P’m had looked anxious during that one, but brightened as her youngest offspring, instead of laying his meaty hand and stolid heart at Su's feet, had immediately deserted her to go and lurk in a corner with his silly mates. Su had also danced with the grinning, inarticulate, clod-hopping R’g Smt Wong, Jr., but given that she was his father’s cousin, the fact that he was as inarticulate and clod-hopping as the rest of them was just was well.

    She had also danced with—and this was what made these local socials really exciting—old R’g R’sn Smt and his brother, old Frdd R’sn Smt, Bhl’s dad’s cousins. Frdd had had to use his chemo-blob in the middle of his, but he’d finished it, too right. And with old Wlli Bl’k Lee, twice as fat as the pair of them put together. She had started to sit out with J’f Bl’k Lee, the old man’s youngest son by his third wife (in succession, fours weren't legal on Bluellia), but S’zaan had smartly put a stop to that. J’f Bl’k Lee was already on his third round and had daughters older than Su was. She didn’t need to be a mind-reader to realise that (a) Su thought that that woulda made it better and that (b) Su thought it was funny.

    At the moment Su was revolving solemnly in a catching-dance with Trff—fortunately the one dancing the male rôle was not required to catch its partner bodily—so P’m took the opportunity to hiss: “What is it?”

    “Uh—it’s an it-being, P’m. From Zll, originally,” she added without hope.

    “Oh. That green being that tried to brighten up that asteroid-brain P’tt Brn Smt’s ideas for him wasn’t one of those, was it?”

    Not trying to explain, S’zaan replied: “No. Not fluffy.”

    “Oh, no, nor it was!” P’m looked ruminatively at the dancers. “What was it, then?”

    “Dunno,” replied S’zaan mildly.

    “No… What a pity that good-looking sports-clone doesn’t seem to want to dance, S’zaan.”

    S’zaan took a deep breath. “Could any being, filled as full of Bhl’s unspeakable brew as what he is?”

    P’m gave a loud giggle. “No, probably not!”

     S’zaan smiled reluctantly. “Exactly.”

    “What a pity, though, dear, he’s such a good-looking man!”

    Well, that made another of them that didn't know about clones. Sure enough, now she was going on about their N’dria and the undesirable bond-partner she’d quite recently got an IG-legal divorce from—and blah, blah…

    “Um, sorry, what was that, P’m?” she said groggily.

    “What was it you said that pretty blue pet of Su’s was, again, dear?”

    Not trying to explain the Loogher wasn’t precisely a pet, S’zaan replied: “A Loogher. There's lots of them on New Whtyll. All different sizes, too.” Not trying to explain there were several species of looghoid.

    “I must say, it’d make a lovely Galaxy Day present for a little girl!”

    Something like that. Given that throughout the too-long period of Su’s dad’s stay at the farm it had spent the entire time hiding in the egg shed (there were no eggs: the young grqwaries were about three-quarters-fledged and gangly, at this time of year), having to be brought frequent relays of food and petted at frequent intervals in order to stop the piercing keening that it apparently was too thick to realise would attract Shank’yar’s attention. Which it certainly had done—yes. It had really got on Bhl’s wick, too, which just showed there was one thing they had in common besides their gender. The plasmo-blasted creature had emerged two days after he’d left, and had proceeded to dig several holes in their veggie garden, incidentally ruining Bhl’s giant squash, which he’d been nurturing for next month’s Giant Squash Competition, and eating up all of the nice little green beans which S’zaan had been about to serve up to her visitors done a very special way that was a recipe of her old gran’s, and of course leaving all the great big coarse, hoary beans that no-one in the extended Smt Wong family would eat.

    “Between you and me, P’m,” she said on a grim note, “the being can be a plasmo-blasted nuisance.”

    “But it’s so pretty! …I suppose the clothes’d cost a fair bit, though. I don't think you can buy dresses with three sleeves, here.”

    “Um, actually that's just a fancy of Su’s,” said S’zaan weakly. “I gather that back on New Whtyll they don't wear clothes. Um, well, they are all furry.”

    “Of course!” said Pam, brightening. “Well, that’d make it much easier!”

    “Yes, but P’m, they forage,” said S’zaan grimly.

    “Forage?” echoed P’m blankly.

    Grimly S’zaan told her about the episode of the dead giant squash—the creature had bitten its main stalk in two, was what, plus and gnawed the fruit. P’m was duly horrified. Well, given that her bond-partner had won the Giant Squash Competition five years running and it was his only interest in life outside of drinking huge quantities of brew—

    … “I’ll bring him,” said BrTl obligingly when the social had ground to a conclusion at last and the sweating Frog Creek Fooners had emptied the last lot of dribble out of their foons, stowed the instruments away, and accepted the last dregs from Bhl’s last barrel.

    “Would you? Ta, BrTl,” sighed S’zaan.

    “No problem.” BrTl tucked Bhl’s lightly snoring, comatose form under his right arm.

    “You can leave that new mate of his,” noted Su, directing an evil look at the lightly snoring, comatose figure of the clone. –He still looked gorgeous, to the unprejudiced mind, her aunt noted silently.

    Replying mildly, “He's not heavy,” BrTl picked him up in a pseudopod.

    S’zaan was almost used to the way he suddenly shot them out, now: she managed not to recoil. “Well, that’s i—” No, it wasn’t, BrTl was casually hefting Bhl’s empty barrels in a few more pseudopods. “Um, ta, I suppose, BrTl,” she said weakly. “Um, you can drive a lifter, can you?” she croaked as they staggered out to the thing.

    “Sure!” he said in astonishment. “Uh—might have to do something about the driver’s seat, though,” he admitted.

    “Tear it out, for mine,” she sighed, collapsing onto the front passenger’s seat.

    “Aunty S’zaan, what about the plates?” said Su anxiously, getting into the back seat.

    “Forget the plates, dear,” she sighed. “Uh—no, it’s okay, P’m’s gonna take them all home and clean them. Well, she’ll use the recycler for the ordinary ones but I suppose she'll have to get the tidy-blobs to do those fancy ones of Pt’Rshaa Lee Brn’s.”

    “Mm. Um, that’s the same name as Aunty Pt’Rshaa, isn’t it?” said Su cautiously.

    “Yes, but she’s much more like your Aunty Lle’onee’ya, what with the plasmo-blasted plates and the fancy tablecloths. Um, former Aunty Lle’onee’ya, I s’pose I should say.”

    “Um, yeah. What did happen to her?”

    “After J’f dumped her in favour of a later model, ya mean?”

    “If this is the yellow-head-furred being I'm remembering, wasn’t she a bond-partner? Don't think you can have later models of them, can you?” noted BrTl with his head at about the level of S’zaan’s knee, closely investigating the driver’s seat.

    “Uh—not literally, no.”

    “Oh, figure of speech—right. Oy, Trff, can you see any blobs associated with this here seat? Vvlvanian curses, thought not. Um… Plan B.”

    S’zaan watched with a lack-lustre eye as he wrenched the thing out and retreated to the back of the vehicle to dump it in with the other space débris Bhl kept there. “What, dear? Oh: your Aunty Lle’onee’ya. Well, she did get bond-partnered again, but it didn't last. I think she went off to one of those pleasure-planets, in the end. Well, she got a hefty lump sum out of vacuum-frozen J’f, that was the day we all thought the grqwaries were gonna fly.”

    “Oh, good,” agreed Su. “Stop patting Trff, Phyoowella; it’s not a— Good on ya, Trff.”

    “What did it do?” asked S’zaan fearfully.

    “Gee, you can ask it yaself, it’s right here!”

    “Um, what did you do to the plasmo-bluh—um, to the being, Trff?”

    “It’s all right, S’zaan, the being won’t understand a word you-it says, she-it refused with lots of terrible whistling and hooting to wear the expensive translator that Leader Vt R’aam had had cultured up especially for her-it,” it said cheerfully. “It took the patting urge away. –Entirely,” it admitted after a pause.

    “Good on ya!” said S’zaan with feeling, silently thanking the Federation she’d been at the other side of the Known Universe when that little scene had taken place. That frightful racket of the creature’s, plus and refusing to wear something mega-expensive he’d had made for it? Help!

    “No, you’re wrong, it was good,” said BrTl, getting in cautiously. “Ah! That’s better! No hyperblobs, eh? Never mind, we’ll manage.”

    “Hang on tight, Aunty S’zaan,” advised Su detachedly.

    “I always do!” admitted S’zaan with a smothered laugh as, as usual, the thing went BUMP! and BrTl gulped: “Federation! Sorry!” and then went “Whee-eee-eee,” and he gulped: “Mok shit, what’d I— Think we’re right!” And Trff said: “It’s got them: go.” And the thing rose up magically in dead silence and whooshed along like a real lifter!

    “That's Trff,” said Su after a while. “I don’t think your clapped-out blobs are gonna be able to do that for Uncle Bhl.”

    “It’ll blob them up a bit,” it offered calmly.

    “Thanks, Trff,” said S’zaan weakly, “but if you do, he’ll drive it as close as possible to light speed and blob the things out again within the week.”

    “It sees. In that case it’ll tinker with the blobs a bit, so as he can’t,” it said calmly.

    S’zaan smiled weakly. “Ta,” she croaked.

    “No problem!” Trff assured her in the local vernacular.

    … “Thanks awfully, BrTl,” she said limply after he’d put the snoring Vt R’aam Thirty-Two and the snoring Bhl to bed.

    “That’s okay. It was a good evening,” he said amiably.

    S’zaan looked up at him doubtfully. “Was it? Su explained that that plasmo-blasted brew doesn’t really affect you.”

    “No. Well, get a mild tickle after six barrels of the stuff. That’s okay, I had lots to eat!”

    Yes. Fortunately she had warned all the local cooks about the amount he could eat. Not that everybody didn’t usually bring far too much food anyway. “Good. Um, BrTl, how long are you going to hang around in the two galaxies?”

    “Dunno. Just came along to see if Su was okay, really. Well, and to calm Jhl down: she was in a state over the idea of Y-K-W going off in a PBTT with just Trff. Never seen her so upset. Well, she was pretty bad that time Y-K-W lost it and hadda wear the handy humanoid excreta-moppers and be put to bed in his old mum’s house, but this time she was worse. Thought he was gonna be reduced to slime like she thought Su had been, you see.”

    S’zaan swallowed hard. “Mm. Um, would you mind awfully not saying that? It makes me feel terribly queasy.”

    BrTl peered down at her. “Sure it’s not the effect of that whipped-up grqwaries’ milk the local culture-pans seemed to have smothered all the cakes in?”

    “No, my metabolism’s used to that.”

    “Oh, right. In that case I won't mention it again. Um, what were we talking about? Oh! Um, yeah, I’ll probably hang around for a bit… See what Trff wants, I s’pose… Um, the Br-cognate from the PBTT’s being brought back in a vacuum-frozen DSRV,” he reminded her glumly.

    “Oh, of course: I’m so sorry, BrTl: I’d completely forgotten. Yes, of course you'll want to attend the funeral. So, um, I should think that means you’ll still be here when Vt R’aam Thirty-Two’s uncloned, won’t you?”

    “I’d say so, yeah. Why?”

    “Well, uh…” What had Jhl said about the way xathpyroids did it?

    “Culture-pods,” BrTl reminded her.

    “Of course, yes! Like great big—” S’zaan broke off, clapping her hand over her mouth.

    Too late. “Great big hoary bean pods,” said BrTl mildly. “Yes, that’s exactly what they look like. Um, not sure what I’m picking up, here, but we don’t have that sort of stuff that Bhl and Bht had. Well, the immature cognates get very silly when the neck-hair starts to grow—very silly; but—uh, yeah, stupid speeding in bubbles and lifters does usually come into it, how did you know?” he said in amazement.

    “They’re all the same at that age!” replied S’zaan with a mad laugh. “Uh—sit down, BrTl, what I am thinking of?”

    Emanating mildness, BrTl sank down onto her bedroom floor. “I’m not sure what this testosterone stuff is, but xathpyroids don’t need it. We just contribute pseudopods to the culture-pod, we don’t have repro stuff like humanoids.”

    “No.” S’zaan looked at him doubtfully.

    “Oh, great splintered shards of quog, I geddit! The clone! He’s gonna go potty, right?”

    “Potty is pretty much the word, yeah. See, it’ll all—all be at once.”

    “Yeah. He is a pretty sane being, but—yeah, I geddit. –Gee, that bad, were they? Eh? The third cognate was worse?”

    “What?” Suddenly she saw, clear as if she was talking to him, plasmo-blasted J’f Smt Wong, Bhl’s younger brother, in a pale yellow scintillion clingo-suit. She gasped.

    “Think that was what he had on, that Galaxy Day. Dad was ropeable, right?”

    He meant Bhl’s dad, of course. “Right!” she agreed fervently. “Oh—I see! Yes, J’f was just as bad as Bhl and Bht in the driving-clapped-out-bubbles-far-too-fast stakes, especially ones that didn’t belong to them, and much worse with the repro stuff with silly teenage girls. He was always very good-looking in humanoid terms, you see, and he didn’t even have to chase the girls, they chased him.”

    “I see. Gee, those girls in your mind are as silly as D’ffni was,” he said in awe.

    “Was she?” said S’zaan weakly. “Mm. Well, um, there you are. I think Vt R’aam Thirty-Two might need a—a stable influence.” She looked at him pleadingly.

    “Sure! And a being to hoik him out of nnru dives, I get the picture, S’zaan!” he said breezily. “I’d be glad to.”

    “Thanks very much, BrTl!”

    “That’s okay… He’ll be at the Academy by then,” he said thoughtfully.

    “What?”

    “Yes. Going in with the Month 8 intake, and this uncloning takes several IG months—all the vacuum-frozen IG civil servants have to have their digits in the nymbo cheese pie, ya see. But don't worry, I know loads of xathpyroid cognates on Booj’lly!”

    “I thought that was a holiday world?”

    “Eh? No, think you’re thinking of Mollyjollyholly, S’zaan. Booj’lly’s the planet where they have the Academy. Quite a good choice, really: lots of moons for practising take-offs and orbiting and so forth. O-breather, with a nice pale green sky,” he said with satisfaction.

    “I see. I don’t know why, but I sort of thought it was on Whtyll,” she said limply.

    “Nowhere near it. Oh! Right, ya do get the impression they own most of the Known Universe, don't ya?”

    “Too right,” she agreed gratefully. “So, um— Well, Su’s very fond of the being, and he saved her life, so—”

    BrTl promised amiably to keep an eye on him until he was used to his neck-hair. And S’zaan, taking it as meant, thanked him fervently and went to bed happy.

    BrTl went cautiously along to Trff’s room.

    Not asleep. It turned round sleepily in its nest.

    “Yes, you-it is. I’ll come back in the morning.”

    “No. Speak, BrTl,” it said, getting out of the nest.

    BrTl sat down cautiously—the room was very suitable for an it-being, S’zaan had even kindly had the tidy-blobs paint it pale pink to remind Trff of the pink sands of Zll (having mixed up the pink sky and silver sands of Zll with the pink sands of Carnuva, where J’f had retired to, they had concluded). But a little small for a xathpyroid.

    “S’zaan thinks I oughta get on over to Booj’lly with the clone and keep an eye on him when his neck-hair starts to grow.”

    “His-its neck-hair has already grown. They depilate it, not a custom that appeals to you-it or to any xathpyroids,” it reminded him.

    “You are asleep.”

    “It’s not! Oh, it sees, when he-it’s been uncloned. Yes, those testosterone things will start to race round his-its blood, that’s quite right, BrTl!”

    “Uh—is it? Picked up that picture from S’zaan. Eh? Little tubes?”

    “Yes. Remember that do on the third moon of Pkqwrd?”

    “Don’t remind me!” he groaned. “Oh. Oh, that do! Great steaming Vvlvanian magma pits! You mean it’s gonna be like Dohra and the DorAvenian only worse?”

    “Much, much worse,” it said tranquilly.

    “But that was…”

    “Messy,” agreed Trff. “Yes. It thinks that’s largely why S’zaan wants you-it to accompany him-it. “

    “Mok shit! And I thought it was only gonna be hoiking the being out of qwlot bars and nnru dives!”

    “That, too,” it said mildly. “It’ll come, too, BrTl.”

    “Oh, will you-it?” he said gratefully, sagging. “Thanks awfully, Trff!” And he went off to his Guest Room feeling quite warm and happy.

    It wasn’t until he was waking up to the pale yellow daylight of Bluellia that it struck him: what if Leader Vt R’aam ordered Trff to be utterly elsewhere, doing something with the plasmo-blasted pwld or something, just at the time when the clone did something plasmo-blasted silly that he couldn’t handle?

    No, it sent, don’t worry, BrTl. That clone saved Su’s life! If it comes down to a choice between him-it and Y-K-W, the it-being’s on the clone’s side!

    That was good to know. More or less. It was a lovely o-breather day for a gallop over the rolling plains of Bluellia and he for one was gonna go out and enjoy it, and not allow his thoughts to wander for an IG microsecond in the direction of what if, some day in the future, it should come to a show-down between Lordship His Magnificence Leader Vt R’aam and the clone over, just as a for instance, that idea of Jhl’s that clones should all be free beings…

    Firmly closing his mind to the Trffish emanations of on-the-clone’s-side-ishness, he went out into a perfect Bluellian summer’s day.

Next chapter:

https://theadmirableclone-sf.blogspot.com/2023/11/boojlly.html