Whtyll

8

Whtyll

    Athlor had come over to the house, Jhl wasn’t asking why. It was a lovely mild morning, so they were out on the side verandah. He kept glancing sideways at the text-blob which reposed in solitary splendour on a highly-polished silver tray on the cane table next to his mother’s swing, but since he didn’t ask, she wasn’t gonna volunteer. It had taken them a while to get through the large, uh, well, call it morning tea, they’d generally had them back home on the farm, and given that Dad and Bht, and Bhl before he got his own place, would’ve been hard at work since shortly after crack of second dawn, they’d needed them. (Mum would’ve got up at crack of first dawn, of course, to chivvy the culture-pans into action.) True, Mum’s morning teas hadn’t featured balls of left-over curried grpplybeast steak mince fried up in batter (First Cook Kadry had a Whtyllian name for them but it wasn’t a need-to-know), but they had been nearly as substantial.

    Now Athlor leaned back in his cane chair, smiling a little, and allowed his gaze to wander thoughtfully over the lawn, where a dozen looghoids were slowly and peacefully chomping their way through his father’s choice lawn grass. “Whtyllian Blue Star,” he murmured.

    Jhl twitched. “Huh?” That morning tea sure had been filling.

    “The grass: it’s a Whtyllian variety,” he murmured.

    “Oh. Up—” BURP! “Pardon me. Up its.”

    “And so say all of us. Does Dad know you’ve got that number of looghoids out on his sacred Whtyllian lawn?”

    “Nope, but as he isn’t dumb, he’s probably guessed, if he’s bothered to think about it.”

    “Mm.” There was a short silence. Jhl didn’t break it, she didn’t wanna know.

    Then he said: “I thought you ought to know. Vanna and I are breaking up.”

    Jhl sighed. Athlor was tall, black-haired and blue-eyed, a very attractive being—very like his father in looks, in spite of the long plait that Shan couldn’t stand—and had never been short of female admirers—since before he could walk, actually. He’d never had to hold back: under Expedition Regs procreation was mandatory. Unfortunately the Regs also very much encouraged bond-partnership, and so Athlor had got bond-partnered when he was eighteen in New Whtyllian years. Under IG law that wasn’t of legal age for a humanoid (and nor it should be, given that in Bluellian years it was barely seventeen!), but his father, curse his vacuum-frozen Whtyllian eyes, had encouraged him. They’d produced three kids, and then busted up. Athlor had been twenty-three. He then fathered a succession of other kids, but hadn’t got bond-partnered again for another three years. Not Vanna, no: M’wlli’in-Glyn, a Whtyllian whose birth was almost as good (his father’s term) as his own. Shank’yar had been very, very pleased. That had lasted one full year of screaming rows and ceaseless infidelities on both sides.

    Vanna had been a few years later, poor girl. She wasn’t quite humanoid, she had a bit of Friyrian, one of her grandmothers having been a friymanoid, and she was a lovely-looking girl with a tinge of blue in her pearly-pale skin.

    She had the sweetest temperament of any being Jhl had ever meet including all Thwurbullerians, so why her plasmo-blasted youngest son hadn’t settled down to blissful domesticity with humble gratitude—! They had a couple of kids, in whom Athlor took no interest whatsoever.

    “Who is it?” she said resignedly.

    He reddened. “No-one! She’s leaving me!”

    “Really? Good on her, wouldn’t’ve thought she had that much nous,” she croaked in astonishment.

    “You might show some sympathy!”

    “I don’t feel any,” said Jhl frankly. “Any other being in the Known Universe would’ve gone down on its humanoid leg-joints and thanked the Federation for its undeserved good luck in getting Vanna. But all you’ve done—apart from fathering those two poor little sprogs, do you even know what gender they are?—all you’ve done is get up anything female and endowed with the right-shaped genitalia!”

    “That’s disgusting, Mum!” he cried, redder than ever.

    “True, though. Well, by my count, and I freely admit I don’t know about all of them, there were two Nblyterians, granted in their female stage, but humanoids can’t produce offspring with them without considerable genetic manipulation which I happen to know you haven’t got the mind-powers for, so don’t give that as an excuse; a Friyrian that granted was M and F, but was certainly better endowed down below than most male humanoids; and, lemme see, one gilled humanoid—and if you wanna know, in addition to not being nearly as pretty as your bond-partner, she didn’t think much of you, don’t you know they do it underwater, you asteroid-brain?—one black-skinned humanoid who was bond-partnered to someone else; one Human var. Fanged—and to get up her behind her bond-partner’s back you musta been ready for Mullgon’ya, one of the uses of those fangs the males have got is to tear ’em off their rivals, didn’t you know that, either?—one grey-skinned humanoid, dunno if you looked at her, but part of that grey was meankoid, not that that’d be any reason to refrain, in the case of those without bond-partners that were expecting sexual fidelity; and, uh, one, two… I make it five of the palish-skinned Human var. Official sort, but as I say, I don’t know the lot, and I don’t want to!”

    Athlor glared.

    “So?”

    “All RIGHT!” he shouted. “She bores me silly, if you must know!”

    Jhl wasn’t surprised. Vanna was a really lovely girl, but bright she was not. But as he’d known her all of their lives, this must have been obvious to him. “Then it was both unkind and immoral of you to offer her bond-partnership, Athlor,” she said grimly.

    “I— Look, it wasn’t like that! Why do you always think the worst of a being?” he said bitterly.

    Why, indeed? Jhl eyed him drily but didn’t speak.

    “Look, I thought we could make a go of it!” he said angrily.

    “Right. This would have entailed trying.”

    “I did try!”

    “Not noticeably you didn’t, Athlor, but I think that it was trying, in your terms. I did point out to your plasmo-blasted father that unless we were gonna end up on a real Pioneer World where we’d have to work very, very hard at things like ploughing square glps of barely fertile land for the next hundred IG years, indiscriminate bond-partnering, not to say indiscriminate having it off when you felt like it, probably wouldn’t be very good for the average humanoid psyche, but gee, he didn't listen.”

    “We’ve all worked hard!” he cried indignantly.

    “Not under pioneering conditions, though, except for the first handful of years, when you were only a kid. The plasmo-blasted engineers got the pwld muck doing its collapsed space mok shit, uh, one, two… right, only five local years after we got here. Let’s see: twelve… you’d have been barely seventeen.”

    Athlor swallowed hard. “Mum, you’re getting me mixed up with the clones again,” he said with difficulty.

    “Eh?”

    “Yes!” he cried, very flushed. “I was eighteen, I’m a year older than Vt R’aam Thirty-Two and his brothers!”

    “Oh, of course,” she said heavily. “It was the year your vacuum-frozen father let you get bond-partnered. He had that load of Whtyllian qwlot-soaked diplos shipped out specially for it, together with the greatest load of Whtyllian lordship-type space junk it’s ever been my misfortune to lay eyes on!”

    “The house needed it: talk of Pioneer World conditions!”

    “I’m a Bluellian: I liked them,” said Jhl flatly. “But in case we’re overlooking my point, if you’d spent the last thirteen or fourteen local years digging over a small farm by hand without benefit of blobs, you’d be with your first bond-partner still, because you’d be so tuckered out every night you wouldn’t be fit for anything but snoring off after a large meal of something really palatable, like steamed hu grain and looghoid stew—joogher, probably, if you’d managed to catch one without benefit of blobs.”

    “Ugh!” he said, looking in a startled way at the grazing jooghers on the lawn.

    “Yes, well, on a Pioneer World they’d be meat, Athlor,” said Jhl heavily. “Not plasmo-blasted pets.”

    After a moment he said sulkily: “I suppose I get it. We’ve had it too easy, that’s it, isn’t it?”

    “Pretty much—yeah.”

    “Well, I—” He broke off, scowling unseeingly at the Whtyllian grass lawn with its decorative local fauna. Finally he admitted: “I do feel as if I need a challenge.”

    “Yeah. Getting up as many females as is possible within the local day isn’t much of a one, though we were all young once. And that degree of yours is nothing very much—well, it’s a good degree, I’m not saying any correspondence course from a New Rthfrdian Third or Fourth School wouldn’t be—but don’t pretend you didn’t do it with both appendages tied behind your back while standing on your head.”

    “No, well, you’re right, actually, Mum. But you said yourself that academic qualifications weren’t the half of it, and my stats were meaningless unless I pulled my head out of my text-blobs and got some experience of life!”

    Uh—had she? Oh, yeah: back before Su went off into collapsed space and near-slime, it seemed a megazillion lifetimes ago…

    “It’s all right, we all know she’s your favourite, you needn’t bother to shield it,” said Athlor heavily.

    “Eh?”

    “Yes! For Federation’s sake, Mum, you practically go to sleep after one local hour in the same room with the other girls—well, I fully share those sentiments—and R’jt’s such a conformist goody-goody he bores you solid, and Wm’s such an élitist you can barely stand the sight of him! And I’m just as much of a disappointment as the rest of them, don’t bother to deny it. Su’s the only one you actually like.”

    After a moment Jhl said on a weak note: “I do love you all, you asteroid-brain.”

    “Yes, but you don’t like us.”

    After a moment Jhl said on a weak note: “Su was a late baby… I think you’re too young, and quite probably the wrong sex, to understand, Athlor. And… well, I suppose she’s more of a Bluellian than the rest of you. Certainly than vacuum-frozen Wm, never mind he looks as like your Uncle J’f as two Whtyllian peas in a pod— That reminds me! Clone Vt R’aam Twenty-Four!” she bellowed.

    A middle-aged gardener appeared abruptly from behind a nearby bush. Athlor eyed him in some irritation: why didn’t Mum stop the clones from eavesdropping, for Federation’s sake!

    “Yes, madam?”

    “Whtyllian sugar-snap peas were mentioned recently,” said Athlor’s maddening mother.

    “Oh, yes, indeed, madam! The first crop’s ready: I’ve picked a great big bowl for First Cook, for this evening!”

    “Good, well, pick a few more, I think Athlor’s staying. –Are you?”

    “Um, yes, please,” he said weakly. “For, um, a while, if that’s okay, Mum.”

    “Sure. Pick a few more, Vt R'aam Twenty-Four, and whatever you do, don't let a looghoid within sniffing distance of them.”

    “No, madam, don’t you worry! The blobs are working good on them new fences the Chief Engineer blobbed up for us before it went off-world.”

    “Good show. Off you trot, then.”

   “Yes, madam.” Casting a lingering, regretful look at the text-blob on his mistress’s silver tray, the gardener retreated.

    “We based them on the restrainos the better-off farmers round Dad’s way used to use to keep the grqwaries in—or out, in the case of the cocks, in the mating season,” said Jhl on an airy note, not meeting her offspring’s visual organ.

    “You mean to tell me you used up Trff’s time fencing off your veggie garden?” he croaked.

    “Yeah. Don’t worry, it blobbed up a few spares and showed some of the other engineers how to do it, so now any being that wants to can stop the plasmo-blasted creatures from gnawing— That reminds me! Vt R’aam Twenty-Four! On the double!”

    The gardener appeared again, panting—though not very hard, it wasn’t a very long way from just behind that bush. Athlor gave him a jaundiced look.

    “Yes, madam?”

    “I want to pwld some seeds over to my brother Bhl on Bluellia, and I think we could send him a couple of those new fences, too, eh? Can you sort out something that’d strike a Bluellian as exotic but won’t die in the first frost?”

    “Of course, madam! It’ll be my pleasure, madam! Um, do they got sugar-snap peas and like that over there, madam?”

    “Assume they haven’t, okay? And anything native but not frost-tender, goddit?”

    “Yes, madam!” he beamed. “On the double, madam!” And he disappeared on the double.

    “Has he really gone this time?” asked Athlor sourly.

    Jhl didn’t bother to check. “Probably. What were we talking about?”

    “You were bawling me out, I think.”

    “Uh—no, I’d finished that. Oh, yeah: you want a challenge! So you ought, at your age.”

    “Yes,” he said sourly. “What were you doing, at my age?”

    Uh—Asteroids of Hhum! Er—no, come to think of it: as the New Whtyllian year was a bit shorter than the Bluellian one, she’d have been older than Athlor by the time Shan involved them in what BrTl, who’d done more than one stint as an Official Lost Cause Guide during his leave, had once brilliantly called a “lost cause”.

    “Let’s see. At your age… It musta been about when the blobs went, through no fault of ours, for once, just when we were gonna collect a cargo of—uh, never mind what, it was marginally IG-legal.”

    “What do you mean, the blobs went?”

    “Oh, well, if you must have it. We were trundling along in hyperdrive, minding our own business and keeping our olfactory organs clean, when a plasmo-blasted Huyajhangwanian hypered up on something—klupf, I think—blasted into the precise IG co-ordinates we happened to be occupying at the precise IG microsecond. Don’t say you thought that was impossible, that Huyajhangwanian proved it wasn’t. I had to shoot the ship into hyper-hop. Poor old Trff was so drained when we came out of it,” she recalled with a little smile, “that it referred to BrTl as ‘the BrTl.’”

    Athlor choked in spite of himself.

    “Yeah. Well, there you are. The ship’s blobs were pretty well blobbed out—hadda turn the grav. off, even, to get us to,”—her big dark eyes twinkled—“the third moon of Pkqwrd, where we dropped the BrTl off, on account of his-its mass-energy, not to say his propensity to require the ship to feed him to sustain life, poor old BrTl!”

    “No wonder he goes on about the dump,” he said weakly.

    “Yeah. Then me and Trff limped off to the dump where I hadda trans-ship, because vacuum-frozen Shan had kindly got me a Wavey-Spacey call-up to some diplo junket regardless of whether I wanted it. And Trff took the ship off somewhere utterly elsewhere and re-blobbed it.” She shrugged a little. “But more generally, I was doing what my relatives referred to as risking my stupid neck hauling barely IG-legal cargoes of this, that, and the other round the two galaxies. Earning a living, in other words.”

    Reddening, Shank’yar’s youngest son retorted: “Right, so you want me to go out and earn my living, is that it?”

    “Chance’d be a fine thing, Athlor. But it couldn’t do you any harm, that’s for sure.”

    “And might do me some good. And when do you want me to join the plasmo-blasted Space Service?” he said bitterly.

    “I don’t, you asteroid-brain. I joined up to get off vacuum-frozen Bluellia. And you can’t be a trader captain, the bottom dropped out of that little game when the plasmo-blasted engineers discovered what blobbed-up pwld’ll do to the average cargo. Well, there are still opportunities for those who don’t mind piloting Bhylloblasters hauling very large, very heavy cargoes very, very slowly round the two gal— No, it doesn't appeal to me, either, or to any being with a life-span less than that of a Thwurbullerian and with about the same urge for excitement.”

    “Um, no. I don’t know what I want to do,” he said miserably.

    Jhl had got that some time ago. Unfortunately she couldn’t think of anything that might appeal. Unless— No.

    “Lost Cause Guiding? Like BrTl used to do during his leave?” he croaked.

    “Uh, well, the risk element’s there, if you want risk. The guide sometimes ends up as food for the Lost Causers. Lost Causes do tend to be a bit like that.”

    ”Aren’t they all tourists, though?” he croaked.

    “Rich ones, yeah. Rich hungry tourists. It can be fun, though it has its share of boring bits, and it can be very, very dangerous.”

    “Um—yeah. Um, well, I’ll talk to BrTl— Oh, rhoofer shit! Um, well, I’ll pwld him a text-blob.”

    ”Er—yeah. Well, he may reply.”

    “Yes. Um, would you be wild if I went over there?”

    “Me?” Jhl was about to say she wouldn't be wild, what was he on about, the asteroid— Oh. She swallowed hard. “Um, dear,” she said in a very, very weak voice, “I’d really rather you waited until Trff and your father get back and, um, Trff can confirm that the plasmo-blasted PBTTs are safe.”

    “Yeah, and Dad can confirm the Line isn’t gonna appoint any more elderly Nblyterians as captains.”

    “Ye-es. I think he wants to see the whole PBTT thing taken over by the Service, actually. Well, they can impose some pretty strict regs, you see. That or he’s gonna buy out the Line and impose them himself,” she admitted.

    “Yeah. Okay, Mum, no collapsed space until I get your okay. But Lost Cause Guiding does sound… Well, Dad’ll say it isn’t a worthwhile career, and it isn’t, but at least it sounds challenging!”

    “It’s that, all right. But if you’re gonna do that, you’ll need to—”

    “Not the dreaded First-Year Academy mind-exercises!” he begged, half-laughing.

    “Yes,” said Jhl definitely. “They’ve saved BrTl’s miserable hide a few times, I can tell ya. You can get started on them first thing tomorrow morning.”

    Athlor was about to say he wasn’t her crew, she couldn’t make him— He thought very much better of it. “Okay. It’ll do me good whatever I decide to take up. My mind certainly feels as if it needs exercising.”

    “It does,” agreed Jhl grimly.

    Right, Athlor acknowledged wryly. Aloud he merely said mildly: “And now, could we possibly break down and admit that’s a text-blob from Dad on your tray and we all want to hear what’s in it?”

    “It isn’t from Shan, it’s from Su,” said Jhl heavily.

    Ooh! came the excited emanations from all around them.

    “Wrong,” she said heavily. “He’s dumped her on Whtyll—”

    “Mum,” he said with a laugh, “we want to hear it anyway!”

    We want to hear it anyway! they all broadcast involuntarily.

    Groaning, Jhl gave in. And once they were all settled—Fl’Jfaffl on Athlor’s knee, whether or not it remembered who he was—she got on with it.

    After a delicious week of freedom with BrTl on Booj’lly, doing nothing more demanding than eat Whizzo Burgers and drink maxi-galaxy shakes while they avoided the cultural delights of Academica—the place went in for amateur live theatre, almost as silly as the ditto back home on New Whtyll in which D’ffni and her bond-partner were closely involved—it was a real shock to Su’s system to be summarily removed by her parent and deposited on Whtyll at the Vt R’aam palace.

    The seasons there marched with Bluellia’s, but the temperate zone where the extensive, nay, vast properties of the Vt R’aam family were situated was not nearly as temperate as Booj’lly, and Su really felt the chill. Emotionally as well as physically, although Cousin Raj, his bond-partner R’shn, who was one of Mum’s cousins, and of course Aunty M’mri’in, R’shn’s elderly mother, all made her very welcome.

    But great splintered shards of quog, “Cousin Raj” was actually Lord Athlor Raj Kadry Vt R’aam, and even though R’shn was a Bluellian everyone called her “Lady R’shn” or “my Lady” and she seemed to accept it as normal, and the palace was as big as—well, not quite as big as the Intergalactica J’rd’s Main Store, no, but plasmo-blasted-well getting on that way!

    And it was seething—yes, seething—with s-beings in servo-bracelets! Everyone seemed to accept this as normal, too, including the beings themselves, who ranged from Flppus to sentient beings within the Meaning such as lorpoids, humanoids of many varieties, Pizers (the estate office was full of them: they were evidently very good at maths and accounts), and even actual Whtyllians that had been born as s-beings because their parents were s-beings. Absolutely the only good thing you could say about the state of s-being as endured on the Vt R’aam estates was that unlike Dad’s indoor clones they were allowed to keep their reproductive urge—yeah, ’cos that way ya got more s-beings for free, even Su had worked that one out in a split IG microsecond! Of course other beings in other parts of the two galaxies or even in other parts of Whtyll did remove that urge from their s-beings but ya know what? By now Su wasn’t surprised at all.

    The third day she was there, on which R’shn and Aunty M’mri’in took her shopping for warmer clothes, was typical. It started good: Su woke up to find Phyoowella eating the highly decorative potted plant which stood on a small fancy table, hand-carved from real wood, under the bedroom window.

    “Phyoowella!” she gasped, hurling herself out of the giant bed, about the size of an average goperball field. “Don’t eat that! Nasty!”

    Phyoowella replied happily through the plant: “Nice [objective particle] vegetable [nominal particle feminine] me eat. [Subjectless particle] good tastes.”

    “Yes, but Phyoowella, it might be bad! Nasty!” [Subjectless particle] nasty [auxiliary particle] be!

    Phyoowella swallowed. “[Subjectless particle] good tastes, [vocative particle] Su. [Interrogative particle] now [verbless particle] breakfast?”

    “Uh—gee, I thought it was ‘Now [verbless particle] breakfast [interrogative particle]?’” admitted Su limply.

    “No,” replied the Loogher happily. Or, strictly speaking, she’d probably said “[Negative particle],” because according to Su’s Loogher-Intergalactic dictionary, the word “no” was a negative particle in both languages. But gee, who was arguing about it?

    Su examined her narrowly and interrogated her narrowly but she maintained she felt good and the plant had tasted good. At least it had been green, the vegetation of Whtyll looked very like New Whtyll’s, doubtless why Dad had picked the planet in preference to the other o-breather ones the Nblyterians and Thwurbullerians had settled on. Yeah, well, digits crossed, and if she sicked up on the priceless, age-old, real wtmyrian carpets that featured in every room and corridor of the Vt R’aam palace, they could blame the asteroid-brain that had stuck a growing plant into a room with a Loogher in the first place!

    It was slightly unfortunate that the minute she and Phyoowella were washed, dressed and had stuck a toe onto the priceless etcetera of the corridor outside their room two s-beings, one an elderly Whtyllian woman and the other a blue Flppu rather like Fl’Oo-Ooueroii, not only in looks, appeared with appendagefuls of tidy-blobs, broadcasting: Good, now we can clean the room!

    Su cleared her throat. “Hullo, S-Fl’Trinouelli; hullo, S-M’rta.”

    “Good morning, Lady Su!” they chorused pleasedly. “What a lovely day it is today!”

    “Uh—yeah. Um, you’ll find that Phyoowella’s eaten that pot-plant—”

    S-M’rta gasped and backed off.

    “She’s a vegetarian, she won’t hurt ya,” said Su heavily. “Um, sorry about the plant. Um, ya better not put another plant in there, ta all the same, S-Fl’Trinouelli”—it was emanating this intention loud and clear—“she’ll only have a go at it, too.”

    “But I could find a beautiful plant, Lady Su!” it twittered.

    “Yeah, I know, but don’t, okay? She’ll eat it.”

    “Oh, it won’t be for food, Lady Su!”

    “Yes, S-Fl’Trinouelli can find a nice ornamental plant,” agreed S-M’rta.

    Right, that did it. “No more plants of any kind in my room, please: that’s an order,” said Su clearly.

    The blue Flppu bobbed subserviently and the Whtyllian bowed very low, and they both said: “Of course, Lady Su. As you say, Lady Su. My humblest apologies, Lady Su.” Great steaming Vvlvanian magma pits!

    “Good; thanks,” she croaked, and tottered downstairs to, guess what, the smaller breakfast room.

    R’shn was already there, draped in something unlikely (very pink, BrTl would’ve hated it), eating what passed for breakfast hereabouts.

    “Um, sorry, am I late?” said Su numbly, assisting Phyoowella onto a chair.

    “Of course not, Su, dear! Get up when you like, you’re at home here, you know!”

    Er—yeah. At home was where Mum sent a clone to physically hoik you out of your pit if you weren’t up and looking pretty lively shortly after crack of dawn, that was, if Vt R’aam Thirty-Two hadn't already woken you with a nice cup of zi as the sun rose.

    “Ta,” said Su weakly, sitting down.

    R’shn was a pretty woman whose thick, shiny black Bluellian hair hadn't been allowed to go grey like Mum’s and had been allowed to grow very, very long, Whtyllian-style. She was a bit older than G’gg—she was his cousin, too, of course—and quite a bit younger than Mum, but nevertheless Su didn’t feel at all as if she was a cousin, much more like an aunty—the more so as she was now a grandmother several times over. According to various beings’ mind-pictures she had once had the same dainty figure as Mum’s, but these days she was rather plump, though not nearly so plump as her mother. She was, it was very evident to Su, completely good-natured, and kind through and through. And quite bright even though she had had very little formal education. She made happy plans for the shopping they were destined for today while Su tried not to listen and tried not to look as if she was wondering what in the three galaxies the stuff on the breakfast table was. Well, the fruit was recognisable, and Phyoowella was eating a large helping of fruit salad up eagerly—Loogher-style: you picked the dish up and shoved your face into it, but if the Whtyllians didn’t like it, too bad.

    Finally she gave in asked. R’shn was so surprised they didn’t have these on New Whtyll! (Well, they did have something like them, but only at very posh parties with visiting diplos present.) Crisply fried puffs, nothing in them but starch, sucrose and butter, and fried in oil, and then soaked in, get this, real honey. Gee, any bets that they didn’t have these for breakfast because Mum was a Bluellian and had some idea of a healthy diet? And had R’shn completely forgotten where she was from? And these—she was sure Su must know these!—were [unpronounceable Whtyllian name], the cooks (plural, right), just cooked up a little vegetable, well, mixed vegetables, dear, as Su examined one dubiously (right, had about sixteen different veggies in it), and rolled them in something delicious, she thought they’d used little seeds this morning, and fried them in clarified butter! They were yummy, try some.

    Fried in butter? The being was due for Mullgon’ya! No wonder she was so plump! “I’ll just have fruit, thanks.”

    Emanating disappointment, her cousin agreed that fruit was very good for one…

    Eventually the meal was over, Su having refused offers of six more fattening so-called “breakfast” dishes and, guess what? White wheat puffed breads, Mum’s anathema. So R’shn thought they’d better get changed. Su eyed her elaborate wound thing drily: yeah, she better had, all right. She’d already read that it was what R’shn thought of as a dressing-gown. It was even more humungously silly than the Bluellian whatsaname that Dad had adopted for “lounging wear.”

    Gee, didn’t R’shn think these coveralls were quite the thing for a jaunt to the nearest J’rd’s to buy new clothes that were only gonna replace the— Oh, forget it. Grabbing her Loogher’s paw, Su headed glumly back to their room to get changed. She could feel the bewilderment coming off Phyoowella in waves, and no flaming Vvlvanian wonder!

    Right, ya wore a hugely silly Whtyllian coat-thingo over your long Whtyllian-type skirt and your knee-length Whtyllian boots to get into your super-heated lifter and whoosh off to the super-heated J’rd’s: goddit. Swallowing a sigh, Su tried to smile politely and tried not to think at all of what BrTl would of said about the “autumn” outfit her cousin was wearing, and tried to agree nicely that this autumn’s garments were quite charming.

    They weren’t, they were plasma-humungously silly. The main feature was that ya hadda have two huge great rings of fur encircling the bod. One was at the level of the tits if you were a mammalian humanoid female (like they both were, yeah), and the other was at the level of the mammalian humanoid crotch. Matching, see? On the head, if you were very up-market, and there was no doubt Su’s cousin was, you had a giant flat disk, edged with more matching fur.

    And if you were a less up-market being it didn’t run to that last circle of the fur, as they immediately saw on exiting their lifter at the roof-top J’rd’s lifter-entrance (VIPs for the use of: it sent out a message asking their lifter who they were while they were still half an IG glp out). This let you straight into the luxurious, warm, scented atmosphere of J’rd’s without the slightest risk of having to breathe any of the unadulterated chilly Whtyllian autumn air at all. So why bother with the fur-trimmed garments, you might well ask.

    Inside J’rd’s it was revealed, along with the fact that only the very up-market lady-beings were wearing fur trims on their large disk-like hats this “season”, that you didn’t have to wear the two humungous circles of fur on a tight-waisted, long-skirted jacket and a tight, ankle-length skirt with a slit up it to well above the mammalian knee like what Su’s cousin was. Nope, you could also wear the circles on an ankle-length overcoat, or with a long jacket but long, tight pants instead of a skirt, or even, and this was a very flashy-looking lady-being indeed, over skin-tight clingo-tights, hers were bright blue, the fur being a silvery-blue, with a short-waisted top in something silver, moulded to the bod. That hat—now, how did this blob you up—that hat was encircled with the fur but not quite touching and sort of whizzing round and round it!

    It’s done with blobs, sent R’shn on quite a grim note, for her. Don’t stare, dear. That’s one of Lord [Someone-or-Other]’s Pleasure Girls.

    “She looks galaxious,” replied Su. Well, she did!

    “Over-smart,” she murmured. “Though it’s not her fault she’s a Pleasure Girl, poor being.”

    They didn’t have Pleasure Beings in the Third Galaxy, but Su had seen plenty of them on Intergalactica. “No, that’s right, it wouldn’t be. No, um, didn’t Mum do that once?”

    Aunty M’mri’in had of course come with them—though not decked out in this season’s idea of Whtyllian lady-being gear, just in a humungous great full-length coat in a very fine pale grey fur with a giant mound of different, longer, fluffier silvery fur on the shoulders, and a giant bunch of mauve Phang-Phangian senso-orchids sitting cosily in that. She had one of the fur-trimmed disks on her head, though, you betcha Space Issue boots. “Never mind that, dear!” she said quickly.

    “I think she was only in disguise, Aunty M’mri’in, not doing it for real.”

    “Yes, but never mind, dear, it’s all over and done with! And it all turned out splendidly, didn’t it, because here you are!” she beamed.

    Huh?’

    Mum’s got a bit mixed up, Su, but Aunty Jhl was doing it for your father, R’shn explained.

    Had she been ? Oh well; whatever blobbed you up. Su nodded meekly and let them lead her off to…

    “Great steaming Vvlvanian magma pits,” she croaked, goggling at her image in the sim-mirror.

    “Dear, she’s too short for that style,” murmured M’mri’in.

    Frowning, her daughter retorted that she wasn’t, it was just this particular outfit that was too… Blah, blah, blah.

    Five megazillion light-years later they’d found the outfit and Su was in it. Flecked, it was. Encircled with giant rings of fur, it was. Complete with matching fur-encircled disk for the head, it was. Purple, it was. Her relatives maintained it wasn’t, it was “violet”, but back home in the Third Galaxy it would of been purple. Knee-length crippling boots and all. Oh, right, now the J’rd’s assistant was gonna customize them for her, was it? She watched dubiously as the assistant shoved them into the giant shiny J’rd’s-type recycler… Okay, they’d been right all along, the boots were now super-comfortable. Not fit for walking in, with these towering heels, but super- comfortable.

    “They’re not very high, dear!” said R’shn brightly.

    Aunty M’mri’in wasn’t into the knee-length boot thing—well, she was a large being, they’d have looked even more humungously silly on her than they did on R’shn and Su, this was true. She’d chosen a new pair of ankle-length boots—actually they were real cute—in a silver-blue, to match the new silver-blue coat she’d bought—not fur, surprisingly enough, but full-length and complete with a giant, no, super-duper, maxi-galaxy, mega-giant circle of the fluffiest white fur in the Known Universe at tit-level. Not hip-level, though: on a being of her size it would of scared the passing lifter-traffic, yep.

    “Perfect, thank you, dear!” she beamed as the assistant, having duly recycled the boots, tried them on her again.

    She will call them “dear”. Oh, well, it’s just her way, and they don’t seem to mind, sent R’shn on a resigned note to her cousin, as the male lorpoid assistant bowed and produced the lorpoid equivalent of a humanoid smile.

    No, um, are they all s-beings, R’shn? In the giant shoe department the assistants were all wearing pale grey uniforms with a little green trim and this of course meant that the lorpoid was grey all over, apart from the green trim, the green bobble on his little round lorpoid hat, the discreet J’rd’s logo on his high collar, and the green writing on his pale grey lubolyon name-tag: “S-Bojo.”

    All what, dear? Oh, the J’rd’s assistants! Um, yes, well, you’re on Whtyll now, admitted R’shn, biting her lip. After a moment she offered: You do get used to it. I know Aunty Jhl thinks it’s awful but, um, it’s not a bad life.

    Su took a deep breath. “R’shn, the state of s-being implies that J’rd’s owns—actually owns—these beings. How can that be not a bad life?”

    “They do seem quite happy, Su, dear,” offered M’mri’in, as R’shn went very red and looked at her cousin miserably, “but of course you’re right, quite right! It couldn’t happen on Bluellia.” As she spoke she opened the large bag she was carrying over her wrist on a silver chain and producing ten igs from it, handed them to the assistant. “Pop those in your pocket, S-Bojo, dear,”—Su winced, even though she wouldn’t have expected Aunty M’mri’in to know about lorpoid pockets and she was pretty sure that S-Bojo didn’t expect it either—“and mind, they’re for you: don't you go giving them to any of those floor-walker beings like last time!”

    “Mum, I think they have to,” said R’shn uneasily, as S-Bojo bowed and stowed the igs away in a pocket of his suit.

    “Oh, pooh!” said M’mri’in robustly. “What the eye doesn’t see—! We come here quite a lot, Su, dear;” she explained, “well, it is a very nice shop, of course—and I’ve never seen a single one of the floor-walker beings do anything!”

    “No-o… I think their job is just to keep an eye on things, Mum,” said R’shn uneasily, and in a very much lowered voice.

    “Well, exactly!” she said, nodding the disk significantly, and starting to heave herself up. “Oh, thank you, S-Bojo, dear,” she said as the lorpoid hurriedly supported one of her arms with two of his. “Now, shall we have some morning tea before we look at dresses?”

    “But I thought we’d been to the dress department?” said Su limply.

    “What? Oh, no, dear, that was only the suit and coat departments! That soft violet does suit her, doesn't, it, R’shn, dear?” Su was in it. R’shn had explained that normally one wouldn't, of course, but the J’rd’s beings would make a parcel of “that old coat”—the brand new one purchased for her on Intergalactica, right—and put it in a J’rd’s bag for her. M’mri’in had added kindly that she could take the bag home, she was sure one of her little nieces would love to have it, but Su almost managed to take that in her stride, given the vivid pictures she was getting of the usual scenes back on Bluellia on the rare occasions when one of her cousins had actually managed to afford to buy something at the J’rd’s in Bluell City and had brought it and its bag home.

    Feebly she tried to protest: “But Dad bought me lots of dresses on Intergal—”

    Those were very pretty, but last season’s, of course (R’shn), and not warm enough for the Whtyllian autumn (M’mri’in).

    Managing not to roll her eyes, Su let her Bluellian relatives lead the way to the sumptuous J’rd’s cafeteria. By this time she felt so drained she didn’t raise a single objection or even mention the word “calories” when they ordered up a tableload of cream-laden cakes and sweet pastries fried in butter and soaked in honey.

    Choosing dresses for Su—and incidentally one or two things, quote unquote—for R’shn and Aunty M’mri’in—took up the rest of the morning and in fact so long that they decided to have lunch at J’rd’s. Previously Su had greeted with silent scorn the information that after the shopping expeditions her cousin and aunt usually just put their feet up, but when they finally arrived back at the Vt R’aam palace, very, very late in the afternoon, she just tottered into her room and went out like a light-blob on the bed.

    They were due to attend a dinner party at some other Whtyllian palace that evening, so of course Su had to get into one of the new garments. Barely was she washed and in it than R’shn arrived to inspect her, attended by three s-beings bearing combs and, ulp, jewel cases, or Su’s name wasn’t Su Vt R’aam, and um, help, what was that?

    “It’s an evening cloak: I did want to buy you one, Su, but Mum didn’t think you’d get much wear out of it back home, your climate’s so mild. But this one is quite suited to a young girl!” she smiled.

    Er—yeah. Was it? It seemed to be moving slightly.

    “The thing is, the nights are so very cold here, dear—though of course it's not winter yet—”

    Right, goddit, on Whtyll the ladies wore wtmyrian colonies that had been specially cultured to be cloaks to keep them warm in the five IG microseconds between nipping out of the super-heated lifter and going into the super-heated palace. One didn't have to worry about it trailing on the floor, dear, because of course the colony was cultured not to drag. Su might’ve been going to say something, only there was a strained note in R’shn’s voice, so she desisted. Poor R’shn: it was hardly her fault that her bond-partner was a plasmo-blasted Whtyllian lordship who would never have been head of the Vt R’aam family at all if Dad hadn't chucked it in and gone off adventuring to the Third Galaxy.

    “I have been very happy here, Su,” said R’shn firmly.

    “Yeah. What about that weaving BrTl reckons you used to do?”

    “Well, I still do it as a hobby, dear.”

    Right. According to Mum and BrTl the being had had real talent and could’ve sold her hand-woven fabrics all around the two galaxies and made a real success with them and been independent.

    After a moment R’shn said: “Raj couldn't have managed without me, you know, Su. He—he wasn't born to—to all this.”

    “Um, no,” said Su cautiously. Cousin Raj had been very, very kind to her, but it hadn't taken superior mind-powers to see that, though the being was a lot younger than Dad, he’d more or less lost it. Well, he was still with them to the extent of putting on the right clothes at the right time of day—no sinecure, in the sort of life up-market Whtyllians lived—and saying the right sort of diplo things at the never-ending parties, but apart from the diplo manners and the amiability there was very little there. He was very good-looking—not unlike Dad, in fact—with a sad, sweet smile, and a very tired manner.

    He is very tired, poor Raj, returned R’shn. Of course, when he appointed him head of the family Shank’yar was sure that he was doing the best thing—not only for Raj but for the estates and all the beings on them, but— Oh, well. I don’t think that your half-brother Rh’aiiy’hn would have coped, and there was no-one else, really.

    Yeah, well, according to Mum there was half a palaceful of Dad’s part-sons: what it was, the lordship class of Whtyll had long since worked out how to endow their offspring with considerably less than a full share of their lordly genetic encoding: it saved, or such was the claim, endless squabbles over inheritances, when the sons of all the concubines and Pleasure Girls and s-beings and any other female beings that happened along were less than fifty-percent lordship-class. Charming. However, by this time Su had been privileged to meet a few of her less-than-half-brothers and she hadda admit they were all really dim. So yeah, poor Raj probably had been the best candidate. She could see, though R’shn believed she was shielding it from her, that R’shn had once very much fancied Rh’aiiy’hn, but he was a lot older than her and had more or less treated her like a daughter—it was all rather sad.

    “It was all a long time ago…” said R’shn in a very vague voice. She gave herself a little shake and said, with a bright smile: “Well, now, let’s look at you, dear! Goodness, this takes me back! It’s just like having a daughter at home again!”

    Glumly Su resigned herself to the fate of being a surrogate daughter-at-home in a Whtyllian palace…

    Gee, this season’s evening dresses are all mega-humungously silly—there won’t of been a season on Whtyll when they haven’t been or my name isn’t Su Vt R’aam. The prettiest one had moving coloured butterflies on it, it was nice, but mostly it was them rings around the tits again. Don’t panic, Mum, I’m “too young” to have one of the really smart dresses, like what most of the ladies at the dinner and dance were in, with the ring around the tits made by multicoloured blobs whizzing madly round and round so that what the humanoid visual organ perceives is a series of thin, blurred stripes—bit like the rings round Wm’s Planet, back home.

    The smartest lady of all was the hostess, Lady Ksha Nr Kwaingr’mm: she was in one of these dresses, though mind you she’d be nearer to Aunty M’mri’in’s age than R’shn’s. Hers was a very pale fawn and the whirling rings were tan, orange and white—very tasteful. The rings always encircle the upper-arms as well as the bod, otherwise the humanoid fore-appendages would impede their motion, and so the dresses have to be cut very, very low. Well, Lady Ksha Nr Kwaingr’mm’s sure was. Exactly what was stopping it falling right off the tits, don’t ask me! She was very, very thin, verging on the bony, in fact, but so were the majority of the ladies there, so presumably on Whtyll thin is In? Not the natural Whtyllian black hair, nope. Pale fawn like the dress, was what, with—a real subtle touch—the mini-web that was holding it up very high featuring just three or four tiny coloured blobs orbiting through it! I must tell Trff: intersecting elliptical orbits! Of course these blobs exactly matched the ones orbiting the dress.

    By contrast, the host, Lord D’rk Nr Kwaingr’mm, a tall, burly character in correct diplo wear for male humanoids, looked real dull. Dull but rich, that ring on his hefty fist wasn’t made of lubolyon, even I could see that.

    So Aunty M’mri’in sighs and comes out with: “Smart, isn’t she?” as we move on from the receiving line (yet) and into the big reception room. Twice the size of the New Z’therabad town hall—yeah. “She's always beautifully dressed. It’s worth coming here for the clothes alone!”

    Poor R’shn’s looking agonised and tries to shush her only Aunty M’mri’in just goes: “Dear, you’ve said yourself a megazillion times they all pick me up anyway. And it’s not as if I’m criticising.”

    So I go: “No, you’re right, Aunty M’mri’in. She’s like art, really, isn’t she? Better than the Intergalactic Art Museum! …Subtle.”

    Which she was, and Aunty M’mri’in agrees with me. Then she tells me that the mixed white and “violet” (again) flowers in the ring adorning my tits and upper-arms above the white mn-mn silk dress are very suitable for a young girl, dear. And of course I’m—get this—not quite grown-up in real years, aren’t I!

    Real, or, Bluellian. Well, acksherly, she wasn’t far wrong. Because the load of overdressed space garbage at that party could certainly not be classed as real!

    Several of the assembled beings were looking down dubiously at their own chests, whether mammalian or not.

    “Er—yeah, said Jhl, clearing her throat slightly. “Well, all ladyship-type garments are humungously silly.”

    “That one with the coloured butterflies sounds pretty,” noted the bond-partner of one of the gardeners on a wistful note.

    “Uh—well, yeah, Mrsha,”—a Bluellian name, but the being wasn’t a Bluellian, she was a humanoid from Little Beishyungkwo, but all of Jhl’s offspring’s names had been seized upon eagerly by every kind of being you cared to name on New Whtyll, and the only possible conclusion that could be drawn from that was that sentient life was like that. “Whtyllian ladyships always have tended to go in for coloured butterflies, I seem to remember, whether in the hair or round the tuh, um, bod.”

    “Better not tell D’ffni about them or she’ll go mad trying to achieve the same effect,” noted Athlor drily.

    “Yeah. Though no doubt Mrsha—our Mrsha, I mean!” said Jhl, smiling at the gardener’s bond-partner—“could do something with blobs, if she was interested, which thank the Federation, she won’t be.”

    “They seem to go in for fur a lot, madam,” offered the daughter of another gardener, cradling her little H’lln. After Jhl’s daughter H’lln, yep. No, not of Bluellian descent, Jhl and her nephew G’gg had been the only Bluellians in the Expedition Fleet and oddly enough very few had come out later, after the PBTTs had got going. The mother was friymanoid: half Friyrian, half humanoid from C’T’rea, and a very pretty shade of blue. The baby was paler, its father was a Whtyllian.

    “Yeah,” agreed Jhl, looking sideways at the cluster of Looghers on the verandah. “Um, well, they have very cold winters.”

    “Our little Su doesn’t seem to have met any nice boys,” observed First Cook Kadry glumly.

    “No. Well, the ones with brains or gumption or both tend to go off-world, First Cook,” said Jhl kindly, trying not to think about those asteroid-brains of part-sons of Shan’s she’d met back when she was incarcerated on plasmo-blasted Whtyll.

    “They’ll all be at the Academy, First Cook,” noted Athlor slyly.

    “Of course, Lord Athlor!” she said with her jolly laugh, heaving herself up. “Well, it’s time to be getting the lunch on; is there anything you’d fancy?”

    “Never mind what he’d fancy, First Cook,” said Jhl swiftly before her offspring could draw breath. “After that humungous morning tea neither of us is going to have more than a salad and a cup of zi, thanks. And given that we’re all on New Whtyll, we’ll drop that ‘Lord’ Athlor stuff entirely, shall we?”

    First Cook Kadry gulped and looked at her helplessly.

    “That is an order, First Cook,” she said very, very mildly. “You can call him Master Athlor like you did when he was a kid, if you can't bring yourself to just say Athlor.”

    “Yes, madam! Thank you, madam!” she gasped, tottering off back to the kitchen.

    “That goes for all of you,” said Jhl very, very mildly.

    Bowing like anything and with terrific emanations of horror, they all went about their business.

    “In case you didn't pick it up, Athlor, First Cook was about to serve up something that’d blast the Vt R’aam palace’s cooks’ efforts at rich, fattening and disgusting out past the last black hole!”

    “Um, yeah.”

    “I may relent and let her cook something delicious for dinner tomorrow,” said Jhl airily, “but until then, we’re eating sensibly!”

    “No-one was forcing you to scoff those curry balls, Mum,” he said mildly.

    “How true.”

    Athlor eyed her uneasily. She didn’t say anything about Su’s text-blob so after a while he ventured: “Cousin Raj doesn’t sound too good.”

    “No, poor being,” she said with a sigh. “Oh, well, it was a calculated risk.”

    He blinked, rather, but nodded. So that wasn’t it… “It’s Rh’aiiy’hn , isn’t it?”

    Jhl scowled, and didn't reply.

    “You said yourself R’shn wanted Raj, in the end.”

    “YES!” she shouted. She bit her lip. “Sorry, Athlor. It’s wind down the moogletube.”

    “Mum, I know you don’t like talking about it, but if Rh’aiiy’hn was in love with you, he wouldn’t have been happy with R’shn, and in the end I doubt that she’d have been happy with him.”

    Jhl sighed. “No, you’re right. But if you can be that clear-sighted about other beings, how come you can’t manage your own love-life better?”

    He shrugged. “Dunno. Sentient-being nature, I guess.”

    “Uh—yeah. Sorry. Well, Federation knows your father was something like three times your age before he decided what he wanted, let alone decided to do anything like settling down.”

    Athlor had been wondering when she might break down and admit that. “Yeah. Actually I've always wondered why he didn’t get bond-partnered earlier—well, the family must have pressed for it, you’d think.”

    Jhl shuddered. “You never knew his mother! No being was good enough for him in her eyes. Then he got mixed up with Rh’aiiy’hn’s mother: she was a full-blown princess, you see, and for IG years the old she-mok did her best to scheme up a way to get her away from her bond-partner and IG-legally divorced and on Whtyll where the family could lord it over all the other vacuum-frozen Whtyllian families that hadn't snared a real princess to carry on the line.”

    Athlor winced and didn’t express his thought, which was, more or less, no wonder Dad had decided to come out to the Third Galaxy when he’d made up his mind he wanted to bond-partner with Mum!

    “Yeah,” said Jhl on a snide note, “and I warn you now, don’t start to wonder which came first, the decision to head up the Exploration Corps and be the first being from the two galaxies to reach the Third Galaxy or the decision to bond-partner with me, because that way only Mullgon’ya lies.”

    “Mm,” he agreed, clearing his throat. “Sorry.”

    “Oh, that’s quite all right,” said his mother affably: “you can’t help your emanations! Apparently.”

    “All right, I’ll start on those mind-exercises after lunch,” he groaned.

    “Couldn’t hurt,” said Jhl comfortably, leaning back in her big swing.

Next chapter:

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