Best Laid Plans

26

Best Laid Plans

    Three Old Rthfrdian days passed. What, if anything, had happened to the Admiral and Trff, Jhl had no notion. She was almost sure that BrTl was in a detention cell not too far from her detention cell. Not that she was picking him up: no. But there was a Bdeeg in the very next detention cell and she could sense its uneasiness at the idea there was a xathpyroid Br-cognate somewhere further down the corridor of the Space Patrol Detention Block. Not that Bdeegs were a xenophobic race, but this particular one seemed to have had a run-in with a Br-cognate at some stage. Apart from the Bdeeg, she couldn’t sense anything. At all. Not even what sort of a vacuum-frozen shield was round this plasmo-blasted Detention Block. Though she would have bet that piece of quog rock which mysteriously seemed no longer to be in her possession, though she was ninety percent sure it had been in a pocket of her Durocloth coveralls when they’d left Whtyll, that it was an IG M.C.-type shield. Curse him.

    “Hullo,” he said mildly, on the fourth day.

    Jhl had been dozing. She sat up with a gasp. “What—”

    The slanted bright blue eyes looked down her mockingly. She goggled at them. And at the dark auburn hair.

    “I'm sorry to see you in such straits, Captain,” he said mildly. “Er—we did meet, at one of the balls during the Federation Day celebrations,” he added politely.

    Whoever in the two galaxies he was, he was most certainly not Rh’aiiy’hn of Old Rthfrdia! Jhl’s mouth tightened.

   “You  must excuse the delay in—er—effecting a rescue,” he murmured. “This ridiculous mistake has only just been drawn to my attention. –Yes, come along in, my dear,” he added over his shoulder.

    Jhl’s jaw sagged in spite of itself as R’shn entered the cell, looking very unsure of herself. “Hullo, Aunty Jhl," she said in a small voice. “Are you all right?”

    “Who in Federation are you?” returned Jhl, rather weakly. She could see perfectly well that it was R’shn, even down to the cellular-level memory of the disease that the plasmo-blasted Full Surgeon had removed. That was, provided that the girl was not (a) a complete illusion being maintained by Collector Lord Athlor Raj Kadry; (b) someone else entirely who had been genetically altered to give a very, very, make that entirely, convincing picture of R’shn; or (c) something that was being suggested in her, Jhl’s, mind, by him. Take your pick.

    “I really am me,” said R’shn in a tiny voice.

    “The whole of Old Rthfrdia knows that, does it?” replied Jhl with every appearance of affability.

    “Um—well, yes,” she said uneasily, licking her lips.

    “Forgive my mentioning it, Captain, but possibly my impression that politics really don't interest you was not an incorrect one,” he murmured.

    Jhl gave him a glance of loathing, and said nothing.

    His shoulders shook silently, and the long mouth twitched, but he refrained from laughing aloud. Jhl had been expecting this trick, so she ignored it. Very possibly he was Shan’s half-brother, whatever else he might have become in the last thirty-odd IG years, but so what?

    “It’s all different now, Aunty Jhl,” said R’shn in a tiny voice.

    “Where’s S’zzie?” returned Jhl blandly.

    “Princess Mh’aaiivh said I’d better not bring her, she didn’t think this place would be very nice for her.”

    Jhl had to blink: she could just hear Rh’aiiy’hn’s mother saying “not very nice.” Very probably, she reminded herself grimly, that was the intended impression. “I see you haven't yet learned that it's the correct local usage to refer to her as ‘the Regent’s mother,’” she noted drily.

    “No! That's just it!” cried R’shn. “It isn’t— He isn’t, any more!”

    “He certainly isn’t, no,” agreed Jhl sourly.

    “I did wonder if you might think to catch up with local events in this part of the two galaxies while you were on Whtyll,” he murmured.

    “Go on, then, give me your version,” replied Jhl in a hard voice.

    “I shall, of course, but later. Please come with us.”

    “It’s all right, Aunty Jhl. We really have come to get you out.”

    “You and him,” agreed Jhl grimly. “All right: lead on.”

    Instead of doing so, he bowed her out with immense courtesy.

    Outside the Detention Block the very carriage in which Jhl had once visited the new J’rd’s was waiting, with the very same horses harnessed to it in the charge of the very same M’k. All of which proved nothing; in fact she was probably incarcerated in the cell block as they greeted her—the horses professing mild pleasure to see her again and M’k touching his forelock and grinning. He wasn’t in the elaborate sparf-laden get-up he’d always worn to drive Jhl and the other ladies, so apparently Someone had slipped up, there!

    Just to spite this Someone she said, having greeted the man kindly, just on the one in a megazillion chance that he really was: “Not wearing your uniform today, M’k?”

    “No, well, I wouldn’t, Lady, that was the royal livery, you see! His Highness has got us all new livery. –Not so blamed fancy,” he added with a wink.

    “None of us are so fancy, these days, thank the old gods,” said the Collector calmly, stretching out a hand to help Jhl in.

    She ignored it, and got in by herself. Not deigning to point out that if this was a rescue, pardon her for not laughing, hadn’t he forgotten a ship-companion or two?

    “BrTl’s just coming,” he murmured.

    Jhl ignored him.

    “Here he is!” said R’shn with a sigh of relief.

    “Hullo,” said BrTl cautiously, coming up to the carriage.

    “Any sign of Y-K-W, in the parts where they had you incarcerated?” replied Jhl blandly.

    “No. Nor of Trff,” he said glumly.

    Jhl waited but the Collector didn’t miraculously produce Trff on cue.

    Did he?

    “Yes,” she said aloud. “In fact the whole thing is remarkably well orchestrated. Here’s R’shn, as you can see. You remember her, don’t you?”

    They’ve already been to see me. Is it her?

    “What do you think?” replied Jhl affably, aloud.

    “I don't know,” admitted BrTl glumly. “Is this some sort of a primmo bubble?”

    “Mm? Oh, words to that effect. Small, isn’t it? It looks as if you’ll have to follow us.”

    BrTl appeared to give up on the whole bit. “You mean, if I’m really here and you’re really here and these nice beings with the four legs each are really here. Yeah. Okay, I’ll do that.”

    “We might as well go, then,” said Jhl affably to the ambient air.

    “Yes: home, please, M’k!” said the Collector cheerfully.

    “Right you are, me Lord!” he responded happily.

    And the carriage jogged off under the mild Old Rthfrdian yellow sun.

    Jhl looked about her blankly as it drew up outside a sort of minor nirvana garden. If the whole thing was an illusion, it was a plasmo-blasted well-maintained illusion. But then, it would be, wouldn’t it, if the IG M.C. was making one last all-out effort to get the Dinkum Megglybits out of them. Or her, if that warm-looking figure loping in their wake was not actually BrTl. True, given that they had Shan in their sticky clutches it seemed pointless, but then, possibly she and BrTl knew more than up until this moment they’d believed themselves to; or possibly the IG M.C. needed to get their inadequate version out of them anyway, given that Shan was probably still blowing bubbles and playing with his toes. Though judging by the quality of that shield back at the Detention Block, they’d already had the lot and then some. In quintupled 5-D triangles.

    It was pointless to say anything, but on the other hand, why not? “This isn't the Royal Palace,” she noted drily.

    “No, that was what I was trying to explain!” said R’shn eagerly. “This is Princess Mh’aaiivh’s own house!”

    “Come along in,” said the mok lover with the colourised blue eyes and the tinted auburn hair, “and we’ll explain everything.”

    The big door opened for them, a bowing servant ushered them in…

    R’shn sank down onto a small hard chair that was apparently placed in the huge front hall of the “house” for that purpose. “Phew!” she said, removing her hat of fine straw.

    “It’s a hat,” said BrTl limply.

    “Yes, of course,” she croaked, goggling at him. “Lots of beings wear them.”

    “It made you look different,” he said feebly. “That is, if you are you.”

    “Mm,” she said with a nervous look at the Collector.

    “It’s quite safe in here, R’shn,” he said kindly.

    “In that case, possibly you could do us all the tremendous favour,” noted Jhl in a nasty voice, “of appearing to us in your true form.”

    “Yes. It’s quite tiring, maintaining the illusion,” he murmured. “Wait.”

    Very gradually the intense blue of his eyes faded, then darkened to a grey, then to a stormy grey. The auburn of his hair shimmered and was suddenly black.

    “I suppose,” said BrTl thoughtfully, “if the cognate could turn itself into a xathpyroid as strong as me in the blink of an eye, that was nothing to one of them.”

    “Quite,” agreed Jhl through her pearlized teeth.

    “I could hardly rescue you as me,” he murmured. “Not to say, bribe the right officials as me.”

     “Did you have to bribe yourself, sir?” asked BrTl with immense courtesy.

    Abruptly Jhl broke down in helpless sniggers.

    The Collector just waited patiently until she’d recovered. “No, minor officials only. I don't want to show my hand at this stage.”

    “Of course not, no,” agreed BrTl politely.

    “If I had merely let you go, Lieutenant, as you are suggesting so deafeningly at this moment, the Minerals Commission might have had some slight idea that I was not playing their game.”

    “You are very loud, BrTl,” murmured R’shn, wincing.

    “All right, then!” he said angrily. “Why in Federation do you have to go on convincing them that you’re playing their game?”

    “I was wondering that. That is, if I’m not an illusion too,” noted Jhl sourly.

    “Come into the sitting-room,” he said with a sigh, opening a door to their right. “If we must have explanations, let’s have them in comfort. –No flop couches, I’m afraid,” he added politely to Jhl.

    “Mok lover,” she replied through her pearlized teeth, going in.

    The sitting-room, sufficiently luxurious, was empty. Jhl did her best to deny angrily to herself the very notion that she’d been hoping to see Trff or Rh’aiiy’hn in there.

    So was I, agreed BrTl glumly. “Or at least a basin of qwlot,” he added glumly, aloud.

 

   Suitable refreshments were hurriedly brought in by a train of servants. After a moment Jhl registered they weren’t s-beings: no bracelets. Uh—well, that meant either that this really was an Old Rthfrdian house, or that the Collector had removed his s-beings’ bracelets for the time being. Or, once again, that the whole thing was an illusion.

    “It’s hard to know where to start,” he said, once BrTl’s first basin of qwlot had reached the third digestive tract and Jhl had crossly vetoed a suggestion—illusion or not—that a further basin, this time of nnru juice, would just wash it down nicely. “Though I feel I must just say, this is not an illusion. I don’t have powers of that type.”

    “Oh, of course not, no,” agreed Jhl sourly.

    “Mmf,” agreed BrTl into his second qwlot. “ –That.”

    “When you were stupid enough to let yourselves get caught by Space Patrol, there was very little I could immediately do about it.”

    “Like, for instance, telling them we were on an official mission, and ordering them to let us and Y-K-W, no, let’s drop the pretence that any being in the two galaxies doesn’t know the lot, let us and the Admiral go,” said BrTl very sourly indeed.

    “Well, they would have proved in an IG microsecond that it was a lie; its only result would have been to land me in a detention cell next to yours. From where it would have been very much harder to rescue you.”

    “He's got a point,” BrTl admitted cautiously to Jhl.

    “Yes, of course he has. The whole thing’s remarkably convincing and will probably continue to be so until the very moment that we spill the lot, the IG M.C. declares Old Rthfrdia to be a treasure planet within the Meaning, and that IG megaton up there lands right on us.”

    BrTl glanced up at the sufficiently elaborate Old Rthfrdian ceiling. “Oh, yes. Splat,” he agreed.

    The Collector sighed, and passed a hand across his forehead. “I’ve spent the last few days half out of my mind with worry— Oh, forget it.”

    “Where’s Shan?” demanded Jhl grimly.

    “Yes, if this is such a safe place to talk, tell us that,” suggested BrTl.

    He passed a hand over his forehead again. “As far as the M.C. is aware, he is in this house, being cared for by his bond-partner.”

    “Have I got this wrong?” said BrTl to Jhl, very puzzled. “Wasn’t that what he didn’t have?”

    “To my knowledge, yes.”

    “His Old Rthfrdian bond-partner. He certainly doesn’t have an IG-legal one,” said the Collector tiredly.

    After a moment’s cogitation BrTl produced brilliantly: “Which one?”

    Regrettably, Jhl broke down in sniggers again. “Sorry,” she said feebly, as a bunch of senso-tissues drifted into her hand. Very pale blue, tastefully monogrammed M.O.R., and if that was an illusion, she’d eat the plasmo-blasted things and the plasmo-blasted not-flop couch for dessert!

    “Princess Mh’aaiivh. It’s her house,” said R’shn.

    “So you say,” agreed Jhl cordially.

    “But he isn’t, really,” she added timidly, glancing at the Collector. He nodded encouragingly and she explained: “Prince Rh’aiiy’hn’s taken him up to The Old Woman. And Trff, of course.”

    There was a moment’s silence in the sufficiently elaborate Old Rthfrdian sitting-room. The senso-tissues drifted towards Jhl again in what some of those present felt bitterly to be a pointed fashion. She grabbed one and crushed it fiercely, just to spite it. Then spoiling the effect, rather, by having to blow her nose hastily.

    “If it’s true,” noted BrTl heavily, after a considerable pause.

    Angrily Jhl threw the used senso-tissue in the direction of where a recycler might have been if they hadn’t been on a primmo. Or if the whole thing hadn’t been an illusion—yeah. “Quite.”

    “I’m sorry, Jhl: we simply couldn’t tell you in the open street,” said the Collector.

    “No,” agreed R’shn, looking at her anxiously.

    “No. Well, tell me why Trff didn’t end up in the next cell to ours,” she said grimly.

    “Somehow its ID turned out to match that of Ambassador Slp-Og V. Slgg,” said the Collector in a dreamy voice.

    “We got onto Whtyll all right as us,” said BrTl dubiously.

    “Well, yes. Nevertheless its ID matched up with that on record here as that of the Lone Delegate from Zll.”

    “How, exactly?” demanded BrTl, two microseconds before Jhl could.

    The Collector’s wide mouth twitched. “I pretended to recognise it, and invited it into a small Inner Sanctum; and when we emerged again it definitely was. Don’t ask me what it did, precisely, or even if its ID disk was physically or even optically altered. All I know is, the records matched exactly.”

    BrTl began angrily: “If it can pull that trick once, why— Oh, forget it, forget it,” he groaned.

    “Yes, well, rest assured that at the moment it’s safe and so are Shank’yar and Rh’aiiy’hn. I suppose,” said the Collector with a sigh, “I’d better fill you in on the political situation. –No, just listen!” he said crossly as Jhl opened her mouth.

    She shrugged. “Go on.”

    It appeared that the Old Rthfrdians, in spite of the combined efforts of the joint faction to persuade them to vote for Amended Choice 542, hadn’t wanted Amended Choice 542. Or very possibly had never watched the political broadcasts at all. The idea of the clan lands devolving to the clanspeople had appealed, however, at least to the clanspeople. The idea of not letting the clanspeople become landowners had appealed to the townsfolk. The Referendum had produced a stalemate: a large proportion of the population had apparently voted by jabbing a digit at whatever blob appeared first to hand, more than possibly with their eyes shut, and the rest had been equally divided between maintaining the status quo and full devolution.

    Naturally IG law had encountered this phenomenon before, so there had been a second referendum, an Old Rthfrdian week later. This time there had been only two choices: full devolution of all clan lands with the complete abolition of the privileged classes, or the status quo. Devolution had won out, though whether this had been a reasoned choice on anyone’s part was open to doubt. Never mind, IG law said there had been a decision.

    Shortly after that, possibly around the time Jhl was riding and grass sledding with Tm-Wm, there had been huge strikes and riots in the industrialised eastern sector. At the end of a week of rioting and looting somehow a new faction had been formed with the object of creating a people’s government. The clanspeople, seeing this very clearly as a move to grab their land back off them, had risen—apparently spontaneously, half a dozen clans taking up arms in different parts more or less at the same time. Rh’aiiy’hn had been unable to do anything, as the last vote had of course abolished the monarchy. The only neutral force in the whole of Old Rthfrdia, noted the Collector wryly, was the IG Militia; and funnily enough they had seemed more than willing to impose martial law. Fortunately for Old Rthfrdia, IG law said that one of the factions had to ask for them to do so, and none of them had.

    “–Not as primmo as they look,” grunted BrTl. Jhl nodded feelingly.

    “Be that as it may, they were certainly slaughtering one another all over the planet,” said Athlor Raj Kadry drily. “Until, that is, a natural leader—er—was thrown up out of the turmoil.”

    “The fat man? Sh’n M’Klui’shke’aigh?” asked Jhl.

    “No,” he said, with an odd look on his face. “Though I agree, he would make an excellent president. No, it was apparently a more or less spontaneous thing. Though certainly resultant on the man’s own move to control his clanspeople.”

    “It’ll be the other cognate,” said BrTl in a bored voice.

    Jhl gulped. “Drouwh?”

    “Yes. They tell me he was always very popular with the factory workers in the eastern sector, as much so as with his own clanspeople. Once the workers turned to him, it was more or less over. Swept to power by popular acclaim.”

    “As what?” croaked Jhl.

    “Who cares?” noted BrTl.

    “He’s adopted the title ‘Protector.’ And whatever his followers might have imagined he intended to do, what he has actually done is to form a parliament of the former Representatives with a judicious admixture of the former Lords, and force through fifty percent devolution in conjunction with full adult suffrage.” He shrugged. “Though one gathers that the next parliamentary elections won’t be for another three years.”

    After a moment Jhl croaked: “What about the Royal family?”

    “Their lands were never clan lands, so their wealth would have been unaffected, but Mk-L’ster is apparently too wily for that. He’s taken fifty percent in the name of the people, and rescinded all their privileges. Including the twenty percent of GNP that he claims used to be their portion.”

    “Um, I think he did once mention that,” agreed Jhl limply.

    “Mm. Well, the whole planet thinks he’s a hero.”

    “Great steaming piles of mok droppings,” she muttered.

    There was a considerable silence in the Old Rthfrdian sitting-room.

    “If I’ve got these cognates straight, which mind you I don’t maintain,” reflected BrTl aloud, “they’ve sort of— ”

    “YES!”

    “ –changed places,” he finished thoughtfully.

    His Captain merely glared.

    BrTl thought about it.

    “Shut up,” warned his Captain through her pearlized teeth.

    “I’m right, though.”

    “Shut UP!”

    “Well, Drouwh-son’s in charge of the whole plasmo-blasted FW dump, you can’t deny it, and Rhan-son’s out of power. You can’t help asking yourself if this was all part of Y-K-W’s plot in the first place.”

    There was another silence, again of the reflective or musing kind.

    “Um, no, BrTl!” gasped R’shn, turning very pink indeed. “I barely even know Lord Mk-L’ster!”

    “Nor does L’Thea, but that apparently didn’t stop any of them,” murmured the Collector.

    Jhl’s cheeks now also tended towards the bwplice side of shlaa. “Just drop it, BrTl.”

    “Pity. It was quite neat, in terms of— Merely binarism!” finished BrTl hastily, shutting up like a dendrion nut.

    “The thing is, Aunty Jhl,” said R’shn, clearing her throat, “I—I do admire Prince Rh’aiiy’hn a lot, but—um, he’s twice as old as me,” she ended in a tiny voice.

    “I see, old enough to be— When you think ‘Dad’, you don't actually mean Dad,” discovered BrTl in a puzzled tone.

    “BrTl, we have been through all this and out the other side a MEGAZILLION times!” shouted his Captain.

    “Have we? Oh, well. –The thing is, Collector,” he explained courteously, “R’shn would quite like to do repro things with Rhan-son but she doesn’t feel comfortable enough with him—forgive me if I’m not translating this correctly, R’shn—to want to be his bond-partner.”

    “There is absolutely no doubt that he read all that about five megazillion IG years, make that light-years, AGO!” noted his Captain, starting off dreamy but ending up very loud.

    “Just clarifying things. Added to which, possibly none of us is here and I’m imagining I'm reading all this. –What happened to that young being, not to be anything-ist, that was a bit like G’gg?” he asked in confusion.

    No-one responded. Though not, in the case of at least one, because she hadn't fully caught his drift.

    Finally the Collector said courteously: “If you mean the ex-Ruler, I believe he and his tutor are living on one of the former royal estates which is being turned into—er—grazing land, I think, with Protector Mk-L’ster keeping an eye on him.”

    “Um, yes,” agreed R’shn uneasily.

    “What about M’ri? What am I saying; what about his plasmo-blasted mother?” asked Jhl in spite of herself.

    “The former Ruler’s Mother has gone off-world, Captain,” said the Collector with tremendous courtesy.

    “Junket. Shopping. The Plentyville J’rd’s,” groaned BrTl.

    “Were you reading me?” asked R’shn faintly.

    “Didn’t have to, R’shn, I got a vivid mind-picture of that being from both of you, well, all three of you,” he conceded, eyeing his Captain warily, “and—”

    “She’s on Playfair Two, not One, actually. But in essence you’re correct,” said the Collector drily. “And as I am sure you are now both aware, M’ri Mk-L’ster is with Prince Allie on the farm.”

    “The Ruler’s Mother’s with H’bl?” croaked Jhl, ignoring the farm bit.

    “Um, yes! Sorry, Aunty Jhl!” gasped R’shn, this time definitely turning bwplice. “I didn’t mean to broadcast!”

    “S/he’s doing it for a joke?” hazarded BrTl.

    “Uh—you’re undoubtedly right,” Jhl conceded limply.

    Silence yet again. BrTl was doing surreptitious arithmetic.

    “Stop it, BrTl,” said Jhl grimly. “Even if you’re not here, STOP IT!”

    “It was so neat,” he said sadly. “What about that nice being that was going to be my assistant navigator?”

    “Um—oh!” said R’shn with a smothered giggle. “Lady Shn’aillaigh! She’s going to bond-partner with Mr M’Klui’shke’aigh! –Go on, BrTl, you can read me, I don’t mind.”

    “I see!” he discovered happily. “They’re all sorted out in pairs, very neat if binarism appeals, except the ones she thought she’d sorted out!”

    “You can tell me—if you’re R’shn, which I am still not conceding,” said Jhl grimly, “exactly what he's reading.”

    “Of course I am, Aunty Jhl, don’t be silly. Um, well, the thing is—”

    L’Thea and Protector Mk-L’ster had, it appeared, had a row. In R’shn’s version, because she hadn’t wanted to go on being L’nnie any more after the Referendum.—“Understandable,” agreed BrTl.—What she had wanted to do was things like learn to pilot a lifter, go back to Third School and do some solid engineering mixed with languages—“Slaetho-Xathpyrian,” murmured BrTl with satisfaction—and wear breeches.

    BrTl looked in a puzzled way at the Collector’s.

    “Gender-dressing,” groaned Jhl.

    “I’ll take your word for it,” he conceded.

    “It is silly, isn’t it?” agreed R’shn. “The thing is, the Protector, I mean Drouwh-son,” she said kindly, “is magma-pit-hot on things like the local gender-dressing customs.”

    “I see. He tried to make L’Thea conform.”

    R’shn nodded fervently.

    “I see! That’s a dress!” he discovered.

    “Yes,” she said weakly.

    “Goes with the hat,” noted Jhl heavily, almost giving in.

    “Yes!” she squeaked. “Especially on Old Rthfrdia!”

    “Go on: laugh,” he groaned.

    The Smt Wong cognates were laughing already.

    “You can see it, can’t you?” he noted when the noise had died down.

    “Mm. Cognates,” agreed the Collector. “I’d say it was unmistakable, but then, that would only be in the case that either or both of them isn’t an illusion.”

    “That’s right, at all events,” conceded BrTl heavily, drooping.

    “How can I possibly convince you both that creating, let alone maintaining, such an illusion is entirely beyond my powers?” he said plaintively.

    “You can’t, sir,” decided R’shn briskly. “I think we might as well give up trying and just—just carry on normally.”

    He smiled slowly. “A young woman of great good sense, your cognate,” he said politely to Jhl.

    “Probably explains,” said BrTl incautiously, “why Drouwh-son had that row with her. –Oh, no: sorry, R’shn. He was L’Thea’s one. –Sorry,” he repeated lamely.

    “It's all right, BrTl: Prince Rh’aiiy’hn really is much too old for me! I mean, he’s awfully handsome and very nice, but—”

    “You’ve got over that almighty crush you had on him, yes,” sighed Jhl. “Don’t go on, thanks.”

    “Possibly part of that crush,” noted BrTl delicately, “if that equates with a desire to bond-partner with him, or do repro stuff, or both, was—um—sort of—um—suggested,” he muttered, poking at the carpet with a toe.

    “Don’t do that!” gasped the Collector in horror, bounding to his feet.

    BrTl goggled at him. “Eh? Oh, help! Flaming Vvlvanian magma pits! –Sorry.”

    “Don’t be,” said Jhl limply. “I really think that was genuine.”

    “Princess Mh’aaiivh won’t mind, BrTl,” said R’shn valiantly.

    BrTl looked hopefully at the carpet, but it didn’t draw back together around the small—smallish—hole. Oh, mok shit. After a moment or two it penetrated that the atmosphere wasn't as putrid as he'd thought it was going to be. Well, bore no relation to the plains of Kell VII in a sulphur storm, put it like that. Or to what happened in a hold where the inordinately expensive atmo-blobs purchased for the purpose had plasmo-blasted well run out before the ship had reached its destination and the plasmo-blasted plush-moss had died. Or even to Mklontia from fifty thousand glps out. “Do you think he really is the Collector after all?” he croaked.

    “I always thought that,” replied Jhl tightly. “I think he may be genuine about some of it. Well, genuine about this really being Princess Mh’aaiivh’s house,” she conceded cautiously.

    “Good. A nice Guest Room would be welcome at this juncture,” he admitted, feeling all six of his knees go saggy at once.

    “Mm. Possibly you might both like a rest,” murmured Collector Lord Athlor Raj Kadry, sending for a servant.

    A train of them shot in instantaneously.

    BrTl felt Jhl begin to object and then he felt her think better of it. “Yes, um, we’ll both have a Guest Room, thanks,” he croaked.

    The Collector having translated this for the servants, they were led off to them. And duly tottered into them and went out like light-blobs.

    “Hullo,” he said cautiously to his Captain’s supine form..

    Jhl blinked blearily at him. “Is it morning?”

    Her chrono-blob began: Seven hours, local— and then thought better of it.

    “Yes,” agreed BrTl heavily. “There’s no Meteo, so that’s genuine daylight outside. –Those aren’t maxi-webs,” he noted, indicating the sufficiently ornate Old Rthfrdian bedroom curtains.

    “Eh?” Blearily she looked at them with her shades lowered. “Uh—no, of course not, this is an Old Rthfrdian humanoid Guest R—bedroom. Um, have you been asleep for approximately three IG millennia?”

    “Yeah,” he agreed glumly.

    “And do you feel as if some being or beings have been right through your mind and out the other side?”

    “No,” he replied cautiously.

    “Nor do I,” said Jhl grimly, sitting up. “So what does that prove?”

    “I was just going to ask you that,” he admitted sadly.

    “Yeah.”

    There was a short silence.

    “This is the place that had the good meat, isn’t it?” he ventured cautiously.

    Groaning, Jhl conceded it was, though noting that it was far more likely, if this really was the house of the being that certain beings were claiming it was, that he’d be offered a choice of dry cereal cakes only fit for grqwaries after five IG years of drought, with Whtyllian cows’ milk. Or, failing that, a mush of vegetable matter with an untranslatable name, also based on a grain. BrTl emanated confusion and disappointment. Or, noted Jhl fairly, very, very, very small eggs.

    “Eggs?” he echoed groggily. “What if I asked for meat?” he groped.

    “The servants would probably go into self-sustaining orbit round this FW dump, but by all means try it.”

    “Hah, hah.”

    “It’s a prim— ”

    “Don’t say it,” he groaned. “Um… Could breakfast at J’rd’s?”

    His Captain had to gulp.

    “Well?”

    “Um, yes, that is, if they do breakfasts in the restaurant. –No, you’re right, they must do, J’rd’s is J’rd’s throughout the Federated Worlds,” she conceded hurriedly.

    “But it would be rude. Right.”

    “A breach of—of local manners, yeah.”

    “We may not even be here,” he said hopefully. “You may be a complete illusion, this gnawing hole where my breakfast should be may be a complete—”

    “YES!” she shouted furiously.

    BrTl just looked at her gloomily.

    “There is absolutely no point in discussing it,” Jhl pointed out grimly. “The only possible conclusion that can be reached is that the whole thing either is, or is not, an illusion.”

    “How true.” BrTl sank down morosely beside the bed and rested his neck on it. What are we going to do?

    Cursed if I know, she admitted sourly.

    A certain period passed without communication of any kind. Except that gnawing hunger that he was probably—well, possibly—not aware he was broadcasting.

    “Shall we just pretend it isn’t an illusion and see what eventuates?” she suggested.

    He replied drily: “Will breakfast eventuate if we do?”

    “It’ll have to, if they want us to think it’s not an illusion.”

    “Will it be an illusory breakfast, though?” he asked meekly.

    Jhl had to swallow. Do—not—laugh.

    Abruptly BrTl broke down in a fit of xathpyroid sniggers.

    When it appeared that the sturdy wooden Old Rthfrdian bed wasn’t going to collapse under the strain Jhl admitted, groping for a senso-tissue and blowing her nose hard: “I have to admit I feel better, illusion or not.”

    “Me, too,” he agreed happily, getting up. “Ever been to the fourth planet in the Chendevvery System?”

    “You mean the seventh.”

    “No! Asteroid-brain! Every adult being within the Meaning goes there more or less on emerging from its culture-pod, that is, if its cognates haven’t taken it there for its emergence day ten IG millennia since! –Avoid the bars on Seventh Level,” he noted by the by, “they all without exception add some sort of local non-intoxicant to the qwlot. The fourth planet!”

    “Isn’t it a Class 764 world? –Forget I spoke. No, I haven’t. Mainly because Chendevvery VII and its watered-down qwlot were quite boring enough. Why?” she groaned.

    “There are beings there.”

    “There would be, that’s part of the definition of a Class 764 world.”

    “Er—yeah. Well, they can communicate, though you may hear claims to the contrary, but mostly they don’t bother to, because they claim that it’s all an illusion.”

    “What ‘all?’”

    “Everything,” said BrTl smugly.

    “Ev— They can’t, they’d be totally paranoid!” she croaked.

    “They are, that’s part of the definition of a Class 764 world, too,” he said smugly. “Breakfast?” He held out a polite pseudopod.

    “Why not?” groaned Jhl. She leant heavily on the pseudopod, since it was there, and they tottered off in search of breakfast.