Meanwhile, Somewhere in Space...

9

Meanwhile, Somewhere in Space…

    BrTl wriggled his shoulders experimentally. The Wavey-Spacey sparf flashed and glittered in an impressive manner and the seams of the uniform creaked ominously. “I’ve grown,” he reported.

    “Xathpyroids don’t grow in their adult stage, do they?” replied Trff airily.

    “Then how do you explain this?” he said as both underarm seams gave, with a loud pop. Two loud pops, in all.

    “You’ve grown outwards!” explained Fl’Oo-ooueroii, giggling madly.

    “Shut up. You’re supernumerary, remember?"

    “Yes, Great BrTl!” it squeaked, bobbing frantically.

    “It may have something to do with those roast grqwaries on Galaxy Day,” noted Trff. “Just a theory, of course."

    Fl’Oo-ooueroii and Tm-Wm giggled madly. P’ll tried not to giggle, and choked.

    BrTl removed the uniform glumly. “Recycler?” he said to Trff.

    “It would, yes.”

    BrTl chucked his uniform at the recycler. Again. With sparf, he sent.

    The recycler immediately responded: More material needed.

    “Hunk of space junk,” he muttered.

    “What shall we do?” squeaked Fl’Oo-ooueroii. “If Great BrTl is going to be a convincing Lieutenant-Pilot, he’ll have to have a uniform!”

    BrTl took a deep breath. “I AM A L— Oh, what’s the use?” he muttered.

    “Maybe I should put its bracelet back on?” said P’ll nervously. “I mean, after all, Slp-Og V. Trff’s back aboard officially, now. Um, no, I don’t mean officially, I mean really.”

    “Maybe we shouldn’t be here,” said Tm-Wm, looking nervously round the ship’s bridge, to which BrTl had most graciously invited the party from the Addra. “What if some being wonders what we’re all doing here and probes us?”

    “Courtesy visit,” said BrTl briefly. “One Space Service load of sparf to another.” He looked hard at the Fleet Commander’s jacket which, being superbly tailored to Shank’yar Vt R’aam's precise measurements, was having trouble adjusting itself to Tm-Wm’s fractionally slighter frame. “I’d tell that uniform to stop bothering, if I were you,” he added kindly.

    “It won’t take any notice of me,” explained Tm-Wm glumly.

    “Ah,” he returned politely. “Was there something?” he added politely, as P’ll gave a nervous cough.

    “He-it wants Fl’Oo-ooueroii’s bracelet,” explained Trff helpfully.

    “Oh, yes! Of course!” said BrTl cordially. P’ll cringed, and Tm-Wm actually took a couple of steps backwards. “Where did we put it, Trff?”

    “You-it put it down the hyperdrive. With its key,” returned the engineering mind calmly.

    “Oops! Silly me,” he said, baring his teeth in a really excellent simulacrum of a mammalian smile.—Tm-Wm gasped and shrank. P’ll turned pale but stood his ground.—“You’ll have to look in the hyperdrive if you want it, I’m afraid, P’ll,” he added politely.

    “That’s all right, First; Fl’Oo-ooueroii can stay like that,” he said, gulping.

    “Whose was it, originally?” asked BrTl with tremendous courtesy.

    “Um—actually it was Grandmother’s,” he said faintly.

    “Really?” cried BrTl in his best social manner.

    “She used to give me ooff-puffs and iirouelli’i juice!” it squeaked, bobbing excitedly.

    “Liar,” they all said automatically.

    “I could contribute something to the recycler, Great BrTl,” it said, not perceptibly abashed.

    “What?” he replied suspiciously.

    “Wait!” The blue Flppu shot out, to return almost immediately with a crumpled wad of...

    “Senso-tissues? What you were hoarding these for?” said P’ll blankly.

    “Um, Grandmother’s s-beings all think senso-tissues are the last word in luxury,” Tm-Wm explained weakly. “They sort of, um—”

    “Recycle them?” asked BrTl, poking at the wad with a cautious digit.

    “Um, well, not exactly. Um, they clean them and then—um—”

    “Spit it out!” said P’ll irritably, for once sounding almost like their father.

    “They’ve got a black market going. Not just Grandmother’s, of course: all the s-beings on the estates round our way. They sell them to one another.”

    “Yes! But you can have these for nothing, Great BrTl!” squeaked the Flppu, bobbing madly.

    “Can I bear to deprive you?” he wondered.

    “Please! It would be a privilege!” it squeaked.

    Groaning, BrTl opened the teeny, weeny change purse that he kept blob-locked to his left foreleg. “Oh,” he said, looking at the magnificent sum of two Bluellian farthnums, one Vvlvanian IOU—definitely not worth the piece of shed bttrr-bttrr skin it was written on—and a Sfthnyxerian public bubble token.

    “It would like the token,” said Trff, as Fl’Oo-ooueroii bobbed excitedly.

    On the token was inscribed, in Intergalactic of course, there being no native Sfthnyxerian language or indeed any native Sfthnyxerians: “Thrbsh Public Transport System. One Section. IG-illegal Tender Outside Sfthnyxerian Space. IG (HW) Reg. 647895/00321-Q/5497-W1200000014/8994/3.a.” In very small characters indeed.

    “Would you?” he croaked.

    “Oh, yes, Great BrTl! Humblest thanks, Great BrTl!” it gasped.

    Shrugging slightly, BrTl gave it the token, adding kindly: “I suppose you’d like to put the senso-tissues down the— Now what have I said?” he sighed as it gave a high-pitched wail and shot behind Tm-Wm.

    “Nothing!” the young man gasped, clutching at his legs. “Ow! Don’t do that, Fl’Oo-ooueroii! –It’s just that Father threatens to put them down the recycler if they misbehave!”

    “Has he ever done it?” BrTl enquired courteously.

    “No, of course not,” said P’ll crossly.

    Some of those present would not have taken a bet on this. However, BrTl merely noted: “Incapable of anything approaching reasoned thought,” and, holding them tenderly with the tips of his digits, put the senso-tissues down the recycler.

    The recycler made gulping noises.

    “The Addra’s doesn’t do that,” said Tm-Wm dubiously.

    “Indeed?” returned BrTl smoothly.

    There was a pause. No-one spoke but the recycler continued to make noises.

    Finally P’ll said weakly: “Isn’t it taking rather long?”

    “BrTl’s rather large,” explained Trff.

    “Yes, but the Addra’s one—” Tm-Wm broke off. Not in time, however.

    “You see,” BrTl explained with tremendous clarity, not to say geniality: “not all of us can afford a super-deluxe, first-class, grade-A, lordship-type, Playfair-Two-style, hyper-hyper, maxi-galaxy customized vehicle to trot round the Known Universe in.”

    Tm-Wm went very red and burst out: “It’s not MY fault! And no being made your friend do whatever it is she’s doing for Father!”

    “That’s true, BrTl,” conceded Trff.

    “WHAT?” he bellowed.

    When the bridge light-blobs had ceased flickering and Fl’Oo-ooueroii had been detached (again) from Tm-Wm’s legs, Trff conceded: “To a large degree."

    “Oh, to one of those!”

    P’ll cleared his throat nervously but rather fortunately before he could speak the recycler gave a loud belch and produced BrTl’s new uniform.

    “Better?” asked Trff.

    “Yes,” he said, wriggling his shoulders experimentally. The Wavey-Spacey sparf flashed and glittered in an impressive manner.

    “Where will the Grand Occasion Saddle go?” asked Fl’Oo-ooueroii, circling him excitedly.

    BrTl took a deep breath but Trff said quickly: “He-it won’t wear it with his-its uniform. It wouldn’t be Regulation.”

    BrTl swallowed a sigh. “Fl’Oo-ooueroii, go and—um... I know: in Jhl’s cabin you’ll find a whole bowl of new senso-tissues. Ignore the Vt R. monogram on them, and—uh—have half of them.”

    “New ones?” it gasped.

    “Yes. But you’ll have to catch them first.”

    “Yes, go on, Fl’Oo-ooueroii,” agreed P’ll. “Um, and is there anything useful it could do, First?” Bravely ignoring the fact that BrTl was goggling at him, he said: “Supervising the cleaning, that sort of stuff.”

    Groggily he replied: “Uh—like cleaning the companionways? Uh—I suppose it could oversee the tidy-blobs.”

    “Me, First?” it squeaked, overcome.

    BrTl rolled an eye wildly at P’ll but the young man merely said mildly: “Yes. Off you go.” So he croaked feebly: “Yes. Do that.”

    The Flppu bobbed about forty-seven times and then shot out, all lit up under the combination of its coming treat and great responsibility.

    “Good one,” noted BrTl. “I’ll bear that in mind."

    “Um, no, don’t,” replied P'll guiltily. “Grandmother thought she could put them to useful work, once, so she tried them on overseeing the tidy-blobs in the s-beings’ quarters. –Remember?” he said to Tm-Wm.

    “Ye-es... I think I was away at school. Oh, do you mean that time old S-K’mhla broke her—Um, yes,” he said uneasily.

    “They’re very enthusiastic, you see. No sense of moderation,” explained P’ll glumly. “I’m sorry, First, it was all I could think of.”

    “I've got a lot of neck. And several legs,” mused BrTl.

    “I could send it back to the Addra—”

    “No,” he sighed. “I think it’s happier here.”

    “Yes,” agreed Trff.

    “This sentiment would have nothing to do with the perceived link between the cognito-perceptive powers of the average Flppu and whatever it is that blobs have got, of course,” he noted.

    “No, Jhl’s going to buy it one for that,” it replied calmly. “Is you-it ready?”

    BrTl smoothed his uniform glumly. “Yes. I suppose so.”

    “What—what would you like us to do, Chief Engineer?” gulped P’ll.

    “Nothing,” it replied in surprise.

    “Just sit quietly,” advised BrTl kindly, sitting.

    “Yes,” said P’ll meekly, sitting down in a very unobtrusive seat that would have been assigned to an assistant to the assistant navigator had they ever had one. Or either.

    “Sit there,” said BrTl firmly, as Tm-Wm remained standing, there being only the assistant navigator’s and pilot’s seats free.

    Tm-Wm sank meekly to the floor, not-quite-fitting Fleet Commander’s uniform and all.

    “He-it won’t eat you-it if anything goes wrong,” said Trff mildly.

    “I wasn’t thinking that!” gasped P'll.

    “No, the other cognate being,” it said.

    “If anything goes wrong,” said BrTl very politely: “it will be deemed by all to be the fault of the Vt R’aam family. –Won’t it?” he snapped at P'll.

    “Yessir!”

    “No. She-it believes she-it did it of her-its own free will. Therefore in her-its terms she-it did,” said Trff.

    “Father didn’t make her, did he?” gasped P’ll.

    “Not in the way you-it’s thinking, no. It needs to concentrate now,” said Trff.

    P’ll and Tm-Wm watched in awe.

    BrTl didn’t watch, there was nothing to see when a Ju’ukrterian it-being concentrated. Just a ball of pale green fluff, sitting there. He stared fixedly out at deep space instead.

    There was a long pause. During it a faint sound became discernible, and those whose powers of concentration were not as great as those of a Ju’ukrterian it-being began to perceive with a sort of sinking in their middles that this sound might just possibly have been interpreted as proceeding from an over-excited blue Flppu rolling at high speed up and down an over-polished companionway.

    Just when P’ll was feeling he couldn’t bear it a single moment longer and would have to rush out to see what Fl’Oo-ooueroii was up to, Trff said: “Finished.”

    “Is she there?” croaked BrTl.

    “Of course.”

    “WELL?” he shouted.

    Trff adjusted a light-blob. “It could explain this better if you-it had sprtzz-fibres.”

    “Oh, well! I’ll rush out and get a transplant! Where would be the best place? Sh-Rn’s Quog Cave in Thrbsh?”

    “No, the one on Playfair Two’s— Sorry!” gulped Tm-Wm.

    “Shut up. That’s an order,” said his part-brother through his pearly teeth.

    “She-it isn’t sending a message, in your-its terms,” Trff explained.

    “We knew she wouldn’t be. Get on with it,” said BrTl through his crunchers.

    “In any case,” it hooted on what sounded suspiciously like a dubious note, “it doesn’t think she-it’s capable of sending a message, it uses the term ‘think’ loosely. Well, it didn’t feel like it, it uses the term ‘feel’ very loosely.”

    Tm-Wm shivered, and P’ll’s handsome golden-brown face turned a sickly bluish-grey shade, as BrTl said, very quietly: “Would you care to clarify that?”

    Trff hooted sadly: “It’s trying to. It’s very difficult. It could say it in Ju’ukrterian,”—BrTl breathed deeply—“but that wouldn’t help, because you-it wouldn’t know those... terms. Or concepts. It uses the terms loosely.”

    There was a short pause, during which BrTl breathed deeply.

    “Will she be able to carry out the mission for Father?” croaked P’ll.

    “There’s no way of telling that at this stage, Lieutenant,” it replied politely.

    “What’s wrong? Is it the klupf?” asked BrTl tightly.

    “There is a quantity of... fumes, it thinks. Yes, klupf fumes.”

    “IS SHE ALL RIGHT, ASTEROID-BRAIN?” he roared.

    P’ll looked at him gratefully. Even Tm-Wm, though he did cringe, looked grateful.

    “It’s trying to explain, BrTl. She-it is physically what you-it would define as well. Her-its system isn’t used to so much meat.”

    “What?”

    “However, as the humanoid eye-teeth indicate—”

    “All right: she’s on a protein trip, is that what you’re trying to say?”

    “No. The protein will aid her-it to dispel the klupf fumes, once her-its system has recognised it and learned to put it to best use.”

    “Good,” he said limply.

    “But she-it doesn’t know who she-it is.”

    Dead silence on the bridge. –Though the high-pitched whistling continued in another part of the ship.

    “What?”

    “The it-being concludes that this must be the case. The semi-sensory impression that bore the mark of Jhl came from a being which had marked itself as Pleasure Girl Roz.”

    “WHAT IN THE TWO GALAXIES DID YOU DO TO THAT PLEASURING BLOB?” he roared.

    The bridge shimmered with silence. Even the distant whistling had ceased.

    “It customized it so that she-it wouldn’t believe she-it was a Pleasure Girl, of course. Well, you-it saw her-it afterwards, did she-it think she-it was a Pleasure Girl?”

    “What about delayed action?” he asked keenly.

    “There was no delayed action in that blob, BrTl. True, Fleet Commander Vt R’aam may have believed there was, but it removed it.”

    “I see.”

    “Possibly the question arises, was there some other built-in delayed action which the Fleet Commander successfully concealed from—”

    “No, it doesn’t, Trff,” he sighed. “None of us think a Vvlvanian-cursed Lord of Whtyll’s got anything on a Ju’ukrterian it-being.” –The part-brothers gulped, and eyed each other cautiously, but made no protest.

    “Then there was no delayed action.”

    “No. So what went wrong?” demanded BrTl grimly.

    “The it-being thinks that possibly the effect of the klupf plus the stress of the mission and—er—what went before,” it said, pointing a cautious antenna at Tm-Wm, “have combined to induce a state where because she-it wishes to escape from the consequences of her-its choice, she-it believes she-it’s someone else. And the Pleasure Girl persona was ready to hand.”

    “Wasn’t it, just,” he agreed grimly.

    Trff produced a low, anxious whistling noise.

    “All right, it wasn’t your fault,” he sighed. “No blame. –Uncharted space.”

    Yes, it agreed gratefully.

    There was a long silence.

    “What are we going to do?” asked P’ll weakly at last.

    “Yes; I mean, if Father’s sick—” Tm-Wm quailed under his brother’s glare. “Well, I do know that!” he said crossly.

    “Nothing,” said BrTl grimly. “Those are your orders.”

    “It will remain in contact,” stated Trff.

    “Here?” asked BrTl. “We could get you closer. –Not in that, not in that,” he sighed, as P’ll cleared his throat nervously.

    “No, there’s no point, BrTl, this is good,” Trff assured him.

    “We’re a megazillion glps from the x’nb-web, though,” he objected.

    “Not really...” it murmured.

    BrTl sighed. “Well, is she safe, at least?"

    “Oh, yes. Very comfortable.”

    BrTl eyed it grimly. “May one ask if you-it knows precisely where?"

    “That isn’t discernible. But it’s probable she-it’s still very close to where the lifter crashed.”

    BrTl leaned down so that his head was very close to Trff's antennae. “Where—did—the—lifter—crash?”

    “It doesn’t know: it was Jhl who fed the coordinates—”

     Quickly P’ll said: “I’ve got the coordinates that Father gave me, BrTl.”

    “Well, why didn’t you— Oh, what’s the use?” he muttered, as P’ll produced a pocket notebook with the coordinates in it.

    BrTl looked at them. He held the notebook out to Trff. “Memorise these.”

    “Yes,” it said.

    BrTl held the notebook up very, very high. “Are there any other highly treasonable not to say actionable bits of vital information that just happen to be recorded in this delightful auxiliary?”

    “Um—there’s an address in Plentyville that—”

    “TO DO WITH THE MISSION!”

    “No,” said P’ll, swallowing. “I’m sorry, First. You won’t tell Father, will you? He told me not to, but... I’ve got a rotten memory,” he said miserably.

    “Fancy. Follow me, Lieutenant. –You, too, cognate,” he said in an evil voice to Tm-Wm.

    The part-brothers followed him miserably.

    OPEN!  he sent.

    The hyperdrive hatch opened immediately, there must have been something about his tone...

    BrTl hurled the pocket notebook down the hyperdrive. The hyperblobs immediately started work on its blob, though the other parts of it came hurtling back. BrTl had been expecting this, and he side-stepped. The remains of the notebook hit P’ll on the forehead, shattered with a loud plop, and fell in a megazillion little shards to the floor, where a tidy-blob immediately began tidying them away.

    “Serves you right, asteroid-brain,” he noted.

    “Sorry, First,” the young man gulped, rubbing the sore place.

    “Your hyperdrive’s bigger than the Addra’s,” said Tm-Wm in awe.

    BrTl, though it could not have been said he did so with terrific eagerness, grabbed him by the scruff of the Fleet Commander's collar just as he was about to put his head down it. “Do you want your asteroid-brain scrambled, asteroid-brain?” he said heavily, sending Close! at the hatch.

    “Um—no. Would it—”

    “Yes,” they both said.

    “Father let me look down ours.”

    “He was shielding you,” said P’ll tiredly.

    “A danger to himself and all who ship aboard him, isn’t he, your cognate?” noted BrTl cordially.

    “Yes. Only he is loyal,” said P’ll glumly. “And he has got Father’s build.”

    “One of those may be a point in his favour,” he noted, leading the way back to the bridge. When he got there he got the ship to pipe Visitors going ashore, and P’ll took the hint. With some help from BrTl they went back to the Addra Reonia-5.

    “Um...” said BrTl, fiddling with the collar of his uniform.

    “Mm? Oh. Nothing new,” reported Trff. “She-it’s eating a lot.”

    “Yes. I mean, is she? That’s good.”

    “Wasn’t you-it going?” said Trff vaguely.

    “All right, then, get out there in the Vvlvanian-cursed pod!”

    “It’ll be all right,” it said in mild surprise.

    “And take something to EAT!” he shouted angrily.

    “It’s got plenty of supplies. And its lovely new FW pack, if it does run short.”

    BrTl scratched his shoulder with a hind leg while simultaneously wrenching at his collar. “Uh—when the Fleet Commander, um, went out like a light-blob, would the shield round that vacuum-frozen Addra of his—”

    “Yes. It’s put it back,” it said.

    He sagged slightly. “Oh. I didn’t dare look, to tell you-it the truth. Um, would it be more like a Ju’ukrterian shield or more like a vacuum-frozen Whtyllian lordship shield?”

    “Very like a Whtyllian Fleet Commander shield."

    “Thank the Federation!” he said, sagging visibly this time.

    “In fact not discernibly different from a genuine Whtyllian Fleet Commander shield to any but the—”

    “Yeah, yeah,” he said, recovering himself.

    “–Ju’ukrterian mind.”

    “That’s good. Because do you know, just for a moment, there, I had this crazy idea that you were about to say ‘To any but the Ju’ukrterian mind or the probe of a Space Patrol captain!’ Silly me!”

    “It’ll come with you-it, if you-it likes,” Trff responded serenely. “It can maintain the contact with the semi-sensory emanations from Jhl just as easily there as here, if you-it’s nervous.”

    “I’m NERT NORVOUS!” he roared.

    Trff waved an incredulous antenna at him.

    “All right, I’m nervous,” he said grimly. “I’ve never done any diplo stuff before, this uniform’s a Vvlvanian-cursed bad fit, and who knows if this IG ID of the Fleet Commander’s is going to hold up under—”

    “ –the probe of a Space Patrol captain.”

    “Very funny, Trff. For a Ju’ukrterian, almost witty,” he noted.

    “All right, the shades of an IG C&E being. No-one.”

    “What?”

    “No being knows if your-its ID will hold up, BrTl,” it said politely.

    BrTl looked at it incredulously but it appeared serious. “Quite,” he said, breathing deeply.

    “It isn’t due to join the delegation until later, it could come with you-it, in the meantime.”

    “Look,” he said heavily: “for the purposes of the delegation, I’m supposed to be Lieutenant-Pilot BrJk. How many instances are there in the Known Universe of a Slaetho-Xathpyrian Wavey-Spacey Lieutenant-Pilot and a Ju’ukrterian anything let alone a Chief Engineer jauntering around the Known Universe together?”

    “One,” it said instantly.

    “Think about it,” advised BrTl.

    “Oh. Yes. When it views it in that light—”

    “View it in that light,” he advised.

    “It’ll get into the pod, then,” said Trff tranquilly.

    They traversed the slippery companionways with due caution and BrTl assisted it glumly into the pod. “Trff,” he said.

    “Mm-m?”

    “Are you—um—semi-sensing? I’d better not talk to you,” he gulped.

    “No. It means, yes. The it-being is in touch... Talk, BrTl,” it said.

    “Yes. Um, it will be you, won’t it?” he burst out.

    “What will?”

    “YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN, STOP PRETENDING!”

    “If you-it won’t think it’s been prying,” it murmured.

    “I don’t even think you’re a you, get on with it!” he cried.

    “Yes, you-it does,” it said. “The it-being believes it would be preferable if the contact with Jhl was maintained by the Slp-Og V. Trff.”—BrTl swallowed.—“However, if a message has been decoded by the time a Ju’ukrterian is due to join the delegation, this it-being will go. The it-being will maintain the contact. The term ‘contact’ is used very loose—”

    “Trff, are you coming or NOT?” he cried.

    “It will if it can,” it said simply.

    Sometimes you wondered, you really did. “Good,” he croaked.

    “Yes. –The Full Surgeons may be doing things to L’Thea,” it said.

    “What?” he cried.

    “Nothing bad. Is this your-its xathpyroid paranoia, or have your-its mind-patterns been shaped by your-its rough spacer’s life?”

    “Launch that pod before I do it for you!” snarled BrTl through his crunchers.

    “It’s going.” Trff launched.

    BrTl pressed his noses to the port and watched sadly as the minute spot that was Trff in its pod blinked and steadied itself somewhere in the middle of deep space.

    He was about to return to the bridge and get going for Mullgon’ya—heavily disguised as himself visiting the incarcerated Jhl, of course—when he was abruptly swamped by the immensity of the it-being’s universe-wide net of awareness. The sensation lasted only a moment. BrTl tottered back to the bridge along the slippery companionways feeling that on the whole he’d rather have been left with that image of little Trff alone in its pod a megazillion, megazillion glps beyond the last black hole, thanks all the same.

    “I’m her First Officer,” he repeated loudly and slowly, putting his face very close to that of the false Jhl’s Full Surgeon.

    The Full Surgeon was a Friyrian, a female-tended one, though this was not immediately obvious, especially not to a xathpyroid, and she was not impressed. “Indeed?”

    “Lord Shank’yar Vt R’aam sent me!” he said desperately, feeling as if his neck-hair was ceasing to filter—though it couldn’t be, this section of Mullgon’ya was definitely o-breather.

    “Indeed?”

    Breathing heavily, BrTl let her see his IG ID.

    “According to this you’re a Lieutenant-Pilot BrJk, currently on secondment to the New Qrbgg delegation to Old Rthfrdia’s Federation Day celebrations. –Well?”

    BrTl bared his teeth, not in a simulacrum of a mammalian smile, and said: “I’m bigger than you and my mind-powers are as good as yours,”—this latter, though true, was a frightfully ill-mannered thing to say and he had to restrain the urge to scratch a shoulder with an off-hind foot—“and if you don’t take me to her I’ll reduce you to a megazillion minute shreds that EVEN YOUR TIDY-BLOBS WON'T BE ABLE TO PICK UP! Now, LET ME SEE HER!”

    “Who?” the Friyrian returned with super-blandness, struggling to penetrate his mind-shield.

    BrTl maintained the shield with no difficulty whatsoever, after all he’d never have reached Lieutenant-Pilot if he hadn’t been able to cope with the mind-probes of such as mere Full Surgeons, and snarled, struggling to penetrate her shield, not so easy: “Don’t give me that! Captain Jhl Smt Wong, and make it fast!”

    “I didn’t hear you, Lieutenant!” she said, starting to pant slightly, the gills in her neck opening and closing visibly. –Almost as bad-mannered as comparing mind-powers, if you were a Friyrian.

    BrTl pinioned her arms with one of his and a pseudopod, and said, closing his other hand round her neck—they were such slender beings and his hand was so large that this was very easy to do: “How would you like it? Choked first and then bits ripped off you with my crunchers,”—he bared them again—“or bits ripped off first? The latter option appeals to me,” he added politely, “but the choice is yours.”

    The fainting Full Surgeon’s mind said weakly: If he’s this upset about L’Thea he must be either genuine or a genuine spy; oh, dear, what shall I do? and he released her abruptly.

    “Are you all right?” he said, rubbing her where he sort of thought her heart or something might be.

    “Yes. Don’t rub my stomach, I’ve just had breakfast,” she said weakly.

    “Oh. Sorry. Um, do you need heart massage?”

    “No.” The Friyrian grabbed a handful of neck-hair and put it to her gills. “Sorry. Better now, thank you,” she said after a moment, releasing the hair.

    “You’re welcome. Can I see L’Thea now?” he said. “I really am BrTl—look."

    The Full Surgeon looked. “Thank you,” she said weakly. “Lord Vt R’aam would have had me thrown to his Whtyllian dogs if I’d let you see her on just your say-so.”

    BrTl wasn’t sure what Whtyllian dogs were but he was sure her fate would have been a nasty one. If he’d let on he’d known L’Thea wasn’t Jhl before penetrating the being’s mind-shield he didn’t know what, exactly, Fleet Commander Vt R’aam would have had done to him, but it would have been something along the lines of being broken to Ordinary Spacer, Third-Class, and then thrown into a Vvlvanian magma pit with a rr’trr tied to his tail. –After a bath in mok shit, quite.

    They went out of the Full Surgeon’s office by its garden door. BrTl asked politely as they traversed the charming gardens: “Are these real?”

    “The lawn and the flowers and shrubs are, yes. The Meteo’s controlling the sky, of course. Pretty, isn’t it?”

    He looked up dubiously. Very pale blue with tiny fluffy white clouds. All right if you liked very pale blue. “Designed to appeal to mammalian humanoids, is it?”

    “Yes. Well, I do prefer pale yellow, myself.”

    “I like bright green,” he admitted with a sigh. “Um—that’s as close as you can get in Intergalactic, I’m afraid. Um... sort of bright jade green?”

    “Yes; I’ve been to New Qrbgg, it’s a lovely place,” she said with the faint tinkling noise that was the Friyrian equivalent of the humanoid smile.

    “It never gets really cold there,” he agreed on a glum note. –Not that the temperature of the Lord R’jt Vt R’aam of Whtyll Memorial Nursing-Home was not completely comfortable. Completely. Didn’t even need his new FW pack, though he was wearing it on principle. Well, on the principle that the ship was guarded only by a shield and a potty blue Flppu.

    The Full Surgeon was a very highly educated being. She’d done intergalactic history as her third subject. She glanced at BrTl’s heavily furred body and allowed herself to tinkle just very, very faintly.

    “I’ve brought L’Thea these fruits,” he said as they approached one of a row of little chalets. Pretty, if alarmingly small to the xathpyroid eye. “Is she allowed them?”

    “Let me see.” The Full Surgeon opened the box carefully, so as not to disturb the huge bow on it. Green, what else. She politely didn’t remark on this. The fruits were all green, too, but Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia did not remark on this, either. The humanoid system was capable of enjoying many green fruits, though not many fruits in a state of greenness. “Mm, ffjjiis: yes, these are fine,” she said pointing to the highly scented ovoid  ones.

    “Good.” The scent alone made BrTl feel queasy but he didn’t mention this. “The trader captain swore they were all suited to the humanoid metabolism.”

    Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia tinkled politely. “Was it a humanoid?”

    “Er—no, a Mklontian; only it hadn’t been on Mklontia for a megazillion IG years: those fruits don’t smell, do they?” he said anxiously.

    “Only of themselves.” She sniffed at a thin green thing, which to her eye was the same shade as the ffjjiis, though she knew to his it wouldn’t be. “These Phang-Phang lady-fingers are fine: she’ll love them, to humanoids they taste like jolly-lollies.”

    “Two galaxies,” he said numbly. “The whole of Phang-Phang smells like that."

    “Yes. I like it, I spent a holiday there once, but I know xathpyroids don’t care for it."

    “No,” he said with a faint shudder.

    Swaying slightly in the resultant breeze, Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia picked up a plumpish, smooth-skinned thing about as long as her hand, and pointed at both ends. “Oh: a star pear: humanoids can’t eat them when they’re green, Lieutenant.”

    “Oh,” said BrTl, very dashed.

    “It’s all right: they can eat them when they turn yellow. This one should ripen up nicely in about two weeks."

    “Good. –Where does the star come in?” he asked.

    Tr’pplghnn’tia held it up, tinkling gently. It had deep flutings or serrations or something along its sides. “When cut into cross-wise sections—see?”

    “Uh... Oh. Silly me. Well, I’ve never eaten one. Um, those little round shiny ones have got big stones in them,” he said, pointing.

    She sniffed one cautiously and recoiled: they were almost as scented as the ffjjiis. “I think these must be what humanoids call green plums: I’ve never seen them. I’ll have them checked out: if they are green plums, they'll be perfectly all right for her metabolism.”

    “Great. Those aren’t bad,” he said, indicating the larger round ones with the dimpled skin. “They’re watery inside but the outside’s good.”

    “Er—yes.” The Full Surgeon picked up a very green New Rthfrdian grapefruit and said weakly: “Humanoids only eat the inside. This one will be ready when its skin turns yellow.”

    “Oh. They eat a lot of yellow fruit, do they?” he said foggily.

    Tr’pplghnn’tia didn’t attempt to explain, she just said: “Yes.” She inspected the xll-xllberries but they were deliciously ripe and as there was no known c-based organism that didn’t enjoy them—their other name was olfacto-mutable berries, they tasted different to every species—didn’t comment on them. “What are these?” she added.

    They were smallish, though a lot bigger than the xll-xllberries: perhaps three bites to a polite being of L’Thea’s size. Flattened oviforms with shiny skins. BrTl had bought them because he’d liked the broad green strip on one side of them, though unfortunately on the other side they were either all bright pink, or bright pink with a yellow stripe through it. He’d turned them all with their green sides up.

    She sniffed one and tinkled delightedly. “I think they must be mn-mns!”

    “Yeah,” he admitted. “The trader captain I got them off said the usual ones’d be too expensive because of, um, something about pre-Fed Regs.” He cleared his throat slightly. “Duties, or something. These are, um, samples.” –The captain had got them from a warehouse that had got a shipment from Old Rthfrdia. Since these transactions were strictly IG-illegal while Old Rthfrdia was waiting to enter the Federation he eyed her warily, but without result: Friyrian body-language was not precisely expressive to the xathpyroid eye.

   “I’ll get them checked out, too, but I’m almost certain that’s what they are. Are the other sides—oh, yes.” She politely refrained from turning them that way up so they'd look prettier.

    “Those are hairy pwoggy-klingles,” BrTl then pointed out. “They grow in the warmer parts of Whtyll, so I thought they’d be all right.”

    “Yes.” Tr’pplghnn’tia eyed them cautiously, as Friyrians were allergic to the hairs on them. However, they enjoyed the inside parts of them as much as humanoids did. She usually ate preserved ones, when she could get them, which wasn’t often. Lieutenant BrTl must have spent a fortune on these fruits for L’Thea!

    “I tried one, my FW pack said it would be all right for my metabolism, but the hairs tickled going down, and it didn’t taste of anything, much.”

    “I see. You usually eat the insides only,” she murmured.

    “Ugh, that slimy bit? Oh, well, to each its own,” he said, politely baring his crunchers.

    “Yes. –There’s no need to smile, Lieutenant,” she murmured.

    “Eh? Oh—forgot! I’ve spent a lot of time with humanoids over the last few IG years!” he said with a cheerful laugh.

    This time as she swayed in the resultant breeze Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia had to clutch at him. BrTl supported her with a kindly pseudopod. “Those last ones are ban-ban-bans. Jhl’s crazy about them, so I thought they’d be all right.”

    Ban-ban-bans were definitely an acquired taste. Probably a sophisticated spacer had, indeed, acquired it. Tr’pplghnn’tia didn’t think the simple young humanoid being that the nursing-home had discovered L’Thea to be would have, however.

    “You don’t eat the spines,” he added.

    “No.” She eyed the triple-jointed spiny ban-ban-bans dubiously and wondered how to put it politely. “Er—these are an acquired taste, for humanoids, Lieutenant,” she said feebly.

    “Yes: Jhl says the first segment’s just ‘ban’ and the second one’s more like ‘ban!’ and the third’s a real ‘BAN!’” he chuckled.

    “Uh—yes, I didn’t mean... We’ll try her with them, when they ripen up,” she said weakly.

    “Good.” BrTl put the lid carefully back on the box. "Is this her room?”

    “Yes. You’ll have to stoop, Lieutenant, this wing is built to humanoid scale, I’m afraid.”

    “I noticed,” he said, stooping horribly. Ouch, his neck!

    L’Thea was sitting up in a humanoid bed, unfortunately not the sort with a neck-rest.

    “Hullo, L’Thea,” he groaned.

    “BrTl! I’m so glad to see you!” she cried, bursting into tears.

    BrTl allowed her to throw her arms round a section of his neck and bawl while he patted her back with a kindly pseudopod, but noted glumly to Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia: “You’ve de-Jhllified her.”

    The Full Surgeon removed her translator—BrTl registered dazedly that L’Thea wasn’t wearing one—and said in excellent Slaetho-Xathpyrian: “Yes, of course. But you’ll find she’s a nice little being. She’s a New Rthfrdian, but don’t worry, we’ve de-New Rthfrdia-fied her, too. We get a lot of custom from there: it’s odd, the humanoid psyche is capable of dreaming up these rigid moral codes, but apparently incapable of keeping to them. Well, of enjoying keeping to them!” She tinkled gaily, replaced her translator, and said loudly over L’Thea’s sobs: “The Lieutenant’s brought you some lovely fruits, L’Thea. Don’t eat anything you don’t recognise. I’ll send a servo-mech along in few minutes to analyse the rest.” She tinkled gently, and left.

    BrTl went on patting L’Thea’s back, as nothing else suggested itself. After quite some time he ventured: “Don’t be sad. You don’t have to do that water-out-of-the-eyes stuff, you’re safe here.”

    She sniffed and sat up, smiling muzzily at him. A handful of ugh, very pink senso-tissues immediately floated over to her from the bowl on the dressing-table. The bowl was also pink. So was the coverlet on the bed. So was the carpet—a coarse woven thing, not a wtmyrian colony, how down-market. The maxi-webs were not pink and, as he verified with a blink of his shades, were doing a good job. Well, at least what they said to each other wouldn’t be overheard by any wandering beings in the garden. BrTl sighed slightly and allowed his eyes to rest on the wonderful peaceful green of the grass outside.

    “Yes! Isn’t it a lovely room?” she said, blowing her nose and allowing the senso-tissues to mop her face.

    “Yes,” he lied. “If I sort of knelt down, do you think I could rest my neck across the end of your bed?”

    “Ooh, that’s a good idea! The rooms are awfully small here, especially after the ship!”

    “Yes.” BrTl knelt with some difficulty, there wasn’t much room to manoeuvre, and rested his neck on the bed. This meant he had to sort of twist his head round to talk to her but never mind: it was better than standing with one’s neck in a sort of loop, pressed down at about its tenth vertebra by the ceiling.

    “They’re all very kind to me, of course, only they’re all awfully clever,” she said wistfully.

    “Uh—are they?”

    “Yes, they’ve all done Fourth School degrees and so on. I was only starting my Third School degree when it all happened,” she said, smiling at him.

    “Oh. Uh—what?"

    “Oh, of course you don’t know! They’ve got my memory back! They said Lord Shank’yar Vt R’aam did the kindest thing he could have at the time, without actually being a Full Surgeon!” she said with a giggle.—BrTl goggled, was that superior in L’Thea’s eyes to being a Lord of Whtyll and a full Fleet Commander?—“But it wasn’t a cure, of course!”

    He eyed her narrowly, as much as he could from his position. “Ah. What did he do?”

    “He blocked out all of my memory, and then he put a bracelet on me. So of course I thought I was his s-being.” She smiled sunnily at him.

    “You were his s-being,” he said blankly.

    “Yes, but I wasn’t originally! I was an archaeology student on Colony 678-M/B.”

    “Oh. –Oh, galloping grqwary gizzards, not that Pioneer World on the Outer Rim that was raided by smugglers about three IG years back?”

    “Yes,” agreed L’Thea serenely. “They killed almost everyone. Even the children, it was dreadful! Some of them—um—ate some of them, too,” she said, gulping.

    BrTl nodded, smugglers tended to be like that. Then he found he hadn’t nodded, though the bed had shaken, so he said: “Yes. Smugglers tend to be like that. How did you escape?”

    “I ran down a tunnel in our diggings. It caved in and I thought I was dead. Only when I woke up I wasn’t, Lord Vt R’aam had found me. Isn’t he wonderful?” she sighed.

    “Possibly to small impressionable humanoids of the opposite-tended gender he is, L’Thea.”

    L’Thea giggled. “Something like that!” she squeaked.

    BrTl looked at her with a less jaundiced eye. “Yeah.”

    “Anyway, I was hysterical when his men found me and so Lord Vt R’aam put me out. Then he had a look at my mind and it was so frightful that he blotted out my memory entirely.”

    “And put the bracelet on,” he noted drily.

    “Yes. He was a lovely master,” she sighed. “I never went on his Seeker after that, of course, but I've been on the Addra Reonia-5 loads of times.

  · “Uh-huh. –Oh, you mean he was actually on duty when he landed on this Pioneer World and rescued you! So, you can remember it all, now, can you, L’Thea?”

    “Yes. But Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia’s made it so as it doesn’t hurt. She’s wonderful, BrTl!” she said earnestly.

    “Uh-huh.” BrTl was wondering whether Fleet Commander Lord Vt R’aam had actually wanted his s-being’s mind cleaned up. Oops. Too late now.

    “If only I was cleverer, I’d be a Full Surgeon,” she said wistfully. “But I’m not much of a mind-reader, I’d never manage that side of it.”

    She couldn’t shield worth an ig, either. “No,” he agreed kindly. “You could go back to your archy-whatsit, though, eh?”

    L’Thea sighed, and nodded, and offered him the box of fruit.

    “No, thanks, it’s all for you,” he said politely. “Er—like the bow?”

    “It’s beautiful! A lovely shade of green!” she beamed.

    BrTl didn’t think the xathpyroid expression of pleasure would be appropriate. Not in a room this small. So he bared his teeth politely, mammalian-wise, and she seemed to accept it.

    “Ooh! Ffjjiis!” she cried, opening the box.

    “Glad you like them,” he replied weakly: the smell was even worse when they were bitten into: it seemed to sort of ooze into every nook and cranny of your neck-hair. “Doing a lot of study, are you?” he said kindly, looking at the piles of textbook blobs, and the sim-receiver with only three available Services on its list: Intergalactica Correspondence Third School, Intergalactic Encyclopaedia, and New Rthfrdian Graduate Library.

    She pinkened and nodded, and the receiver offered hopefully: Like a Service, Great BrTl?

    “No. And who told you to call me that?” he groaned, trying not to breathe.

    The receiver returned in a puzzled tone: It’s in the blobs.

    “Br’l,” said L’Thea with her mouth full of her third ffjjii.

    “Mm?” he managed, trying not to breathe.

    She swallowed and allowed a senso-tissue to wipe her fingers. It then—thank the Federation—mercifully disposed of itself and its ffjjii scent. “What’ll happen to me after the mission?”

    “Uh—” He lifted a hind foot towards his shoulder but stopped just in time: they probably charged you fifteen rafts of super-igs for absent-mindedly busting the ceilings of Mullgon’ya nursing-homes. “Well, if you’ve got your memory back and so on, I should imagine you’ll go home. To your family!” he added proudly.

    “But I can’t: they’re dead.”

     BrTl rolled an eye at her in horror. “Were they on this Pioneer World, too?’

    “No, they were FWs!” she replied scornfully.

    “Ah.” There was a short pause. “FWs, eh?”

    L’Thea gave an explosive giggle. BrTl chuckled slightly, though as the bed creaked ominously he had to stop rather hurriedly. In mid-chuckle, as it were.

    “My parents were quite elderly when I was born. They died when I’d just started Third School.”

    He managed to fight his way through all the mammalian terminology sufficiently to say: “I see. Um... brothers?"

    “I have got one brother. He’s a stuck-up FW bore and a prig. He’s a chrono-blob engineer.”

    “Got it, got it,” he agreed.

    “He’d make me bond-partner with some horrible boring FW New Rthfrdian, I feel it in my bones! –That’s a New Rthfrdian saying, sorry!” she said with a giggle, as BrTl stared at her well-covered skeleton.

    “I see. Is bond-partnership a sort of, um, FW Reg on New Rthfrdia?” he asked politely.

    “No, but it might as well be! The place is really horrible, BrTl. Being someone’s bond-partner is all a girl can do, really! Well, they let you go to Third School, that’s quite acceptable, you have to be educated enough to make a good mother for your children, you see, and then they partner you off with some boring, vacuum-frozen FW!”

    “Oh. Have you got any children?” he asked dubiously.

    “No, of course not!” she said in amazement.

    “Oh. Well, why did they send you to Third School?”

    After a certain amount of confusion on both sides they got that one sorted out, and BrTl produced a pack of cards. Not easy, in view of his semi-prone position. “Pick a card. Odds you stay with the ship after the mission, evens you don’t get left behind, and Admirals and lesser sparf we take you with us.”

    She giggled loudly, but looked at him dubiously. BrTl very slowly closed one eye. She giggled again, looking very relieved, so it must have been a wink, all right. You were apt to forget all your acquired behaviour-patterns, hyperdriving through the two galaxies in search of exotic c-based fruits suitable for the mammalian humanoid metabolism accompanied only by a bright blue Flppu.

    “Fl’Oo-ooueroii sends its regards,” he said, letting her deal. –Seven card stud, natch. Admirals wild.

    “I miss it,” she admitted. “Ten of squares. Are you gonna raise me, or not?”

    BrTl sorted his cards slowly with the aid of a couple of pseudopods. “Double your bet and up you fifty.”

    “FIFTY? You’re cheating!” she shouted, scattering the cards to the end of the Known Universe.

    BrTl picked them up slowly. “Yeah, but it was fun while it lasted,” he admitted.

    L’Thea giggled, nodding, and offered him the box of fruit. Oh, well. He took a hairy pwoggy-klingle. After a while the tickling sensation all the way down the throat became almost... Well, not enjoyable, that was too strong a word. Bearable? Mm… somewhere between bearable and neutral, really.

    Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia nobbled him as he was making his way quietly back to the entrance, some time later. Glumly he followed her to her office. Possibly she required something rare and difficult to locate in the two galaxies?

    “Thank you,” she said, as a servo-mech proffered a tray. “Yours, I believe?” she said politely, offering him the translator he’d lost to L’Thea.

    “Um—I did lose mine,” he said cautiously.

    “Yes, I know. Gambling is not allowed in the nursing-homes, Lieutenant. And nor is money or credit of any kind,” she said, taking the lordly sum of two crumpled igs, their IDs barely legible, one Bluellian farthnum and a Vvlvanian IOU from the tray. “Thank you, S-49A. Would you tell Full Surgeon Fl’nhrr’htia we’ll be ready for him in about fifteen minutes?”

    “Yes, Full Surgeon,” it agreed, withdrawing.

    “An A?” said BrTl, diverted.

    “Yes, we have A’s and B’s. The B’s only do the gardens, of course."

    BrTl swallowed, he’d never even seen an A before.

    “As you must have seen, L’Thea is completely cured. She’s only in bed because after her treatment she needs plenty of rest and because—er—we feel it would be wiser in view of Lord Vt R’aam’s expressed wishes."

    “Wouldn’t it!” he agreed with a slight shudder.

    Tr’pplghnn’tia held firmly to the edge of her desk. “Mm. However, in view of the lack of recent news from Whtyll,”—she looked hard at him but BrTl merely emanated blandness—“we feel it may not be possible to keep her here for very much longer.”

    “Look, if he isn’t keeping the payments up, um, I’ve got a few super-igs in my account,” he said glumly.

    “They would not pay for one day’s food for even such a small being as L’Thea, Lieutenant,” she said with a kind tinkle. “You realise that there are no natural resources on Mullgon’ya at all? Everything has to be shipped in.”

    “Couldn’t you grow stuff? Well, not the meat, but the rest of it?”

    “No. Our consultant economist has determined that the maintenance of our varied atmospheres is the only cost-effective use of our Meteorologist.”

    “You’ve lost me, you used the words ‘economist’ and ‘cost-effective’,” he sighed.

     She gave a little unbelieving tinkle. “Be that as it may, all our food is shipped in. And we are not worried about L’Thea’s bill, that’s been guaranteed by the Bank of Whtyll.”—BrTl swallowed.—“However, we are worried about any... unforeseen consequences.”

    “Got it,” he sighed. “Any time that Captain Smt Wong needs a revivifying run to—well, Playfair Two for a whllubbly-gell bath, for instance—give me a call. This is my frequency.” He whistled it into her comm-blob.

    Thanks, Great BrTl, it sent.

    “Are all your blobs Special Offer?” he croaked.

    “No!” said Tr’pplghnn’tia with a loud tinkle. “They’ve been talking to L’Thea, the child thinks the world of you!”

    BrTl swallowed loudly and shuffled his feet, remembering only just in time that some beings had carpets that they preferred without huge holes in them.

    Refraining with an effort that made her slender neck ache from looking down at her carpet, the Friyrian said: “Now, the matter I wished to speak to you about—”

    She didn’t want something impossible to obtain throughout the two galaxies, she wanted him to give one of the Full Surgeons a lift. “Whtyll?” he groaned. “Why? Why me?”

    Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia replied firmly: “We felt it was the logical move. You’re Captain Smt Wong’s trusted lieutenant, and she’s Lord Vt R’aam’s—er—”

    “Yeah, she’s Lord Vt R’aam’s er, but does that mean she’d do odd errands for his mother?”

    “Possibly not. But it does mean, or so we feel, that he might ask you to do an errand while the Captain was not feeling one hundred percent,” she said firmly.

    “Who are ‘we’?” he said weakly.

    “The Full College of Full Surgeons, of course."

    “Are you all in on this?” he gasped.

    “Naturally.”

    If there’d been room, BrTl would have sat down. As it was, he felt all six of his knees go saggy at the same time. Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia immediately called for a basin of qwlot. There was some good in the being.

    When he’d downed it she said: “Well, may I send for Full Surgeon Fl’nhrr’htia?"

    “Send for the Full College of Full Surgeons, if you like,” he groaned.

    “That won’t be necessary. We have already sat on Lord Vt R’aam’s case. Full Surgeon Fl’nhrr’htia is fully briefed."

    “Fully briefed,” he groaned. “What’s her alibi, if it isn’t too much to ask, Full Surgeon?"

    “His,” she corrected mildly. “He’s an expert in a minor ailment of the mammalian—er, you’d call it a toe-bone, I think.”

    BrTl goggled down at his toes. Xathpyroids, as he was sure the Full Surgeon was perfectly well aware, suffered from almost precisely the same ailment, in fact he and Mum had had a lovely cosy chat about it on the farm this Galaxy D—

    “Galloping grqwary gizzards, are you asking the Known Universe to believe Lady Vt R’aam would send for a Full Surgeon from halfway across the galaxies for her BUNIONS?” he roared.

    When the maxi-webs had ceased shaking the Full Surgeon replied with a faint tinkle: “Why not? The lordships and ladyships of Whtyll are like that!”

    That had sounded like a sardonic tinkle to him. BrTl eyed her narrowly.

    Tr’pplghnn’tia tinkled again and said: “We’ve all been de-Friyria-fied, you know!”

    “Thank the Federation for that,” he groaned. “Hyperdriving through the two galaxies with an un-de-Friyria-fied Friyrian and a potty blue Flppu aboard isn’t my idea of your average nirvana garden!”

    “Is it potty?” she asked eagerly.

    “Yeah. Polishes the companionways night and day like a mad thing. Gets itself sort of juiced-up by rolling up and down ’em. The whole ship’s a death trap."

    “Some fool told it the companionways were its responsibility?”

    “Got it, got it,” he groaned.

    “They’re all like that, it’s genetic. We could do a DNA job on it—”

    “No. Thanks, but no thanks,” he said, as another thin, bipedal turquoise-skinned figure came in.

    “Ah, there you are, Fl’nhrr’htia,” she said. “I should warn you, Lieutenant BrTl’s blue Flppu’s gone into responsibility over-drive.”

    “Really?” he said eagerly. “How do you do, Lieutenant? We could do a DNA jo—”

    “No,” he groaned. “And I should warn you, it’s a free ship. My Captain’s a Bluellian.”

    Fl’nhrr’htia replied stiffly: “Full Surgeons are routinely deconditioned of all cultural stereotyping, Lieutenant."

    And the rest. “Yes, the Full Surgeon, here, has just told me you’ve all been de-Friyria-fied."

    “De— Oh, very amusing,” he said weakly.

    “Do you play cards?” asked BrTl without hope. “Pkwr? Whim-wham?”

    “I never gamble, Lieutenant,” he said with a superior little tinkle. “I know several board games. Pwm?”

    Yeah, right. It was going to be a fun trip.

    “Well, I think that’s it, really,” said Tr’pplghnn’tia. “I have your frequency, Lieutenant,” she added politely.

    Her and the vacuum-frozen Full College of Full Surgeons, yeah. Some secret mission this was turning out to be!

    Outside the main gate, Fl’nhrr’htia looked round him in a numbed way.

    “Looking for something?” asked BrTl politely.

    “Yes—er—where’s your transport?” he asked feebly.

    “My what?”

    “Didn’t you—uh—how did you get here from the spaceport, Lieutenant?” he croaked.

    “I galloped, of course.”

    The Friyrian's gills opened and closed a couple of times.

    BrTl took pity on him—he was sometimes overcome by these soft impulses in the company of very thin beings but usually deeply regretted it, from one cause or another—and said genially: “How’s your credit, Full Surgeon?”

    “My credit?” he echoed numbly.

    “Yes. Like in, supposing we were to call a bubble and you were to just casually say to it, ‘Hullo, bubble: take me and my friend to the spaceport,’ would it?”

    “Would— Is this some sort of joke? If so, I’m afraid I don’t get it,” he said stiffly.

    BrTl eyed him blandly. “It’s no joke, Full Surgeon. Of course, speaking for my o/h self, it’s a nice h-breather day for a lovely gallop through the un-meteo-ed stretches of Mullgon’ya—”

    The Full Surgeon was calling a bubble.

    “That was a fun trip,” he noted sourly. “Varied. Jolly.”

    Fl’Oo-ooueroii bobbed up and down madly in an effort to help him straighten his uniform collar but didn’t even manage to reach his wither. “It was awful, why did you let that Friyrian on board, Great BrTl?”

    “Let? Let? Me, let?” he said wildly.

    “But no being could make you, Great BrTl!” it gasped.

    “Ho, ho, ho,” he noted. “–Do I have that right?"

    “Yes: Lord Vt R’aam says it sometimes when he’s in a bad mood,” it squeaked anxiously.

    BrTl sighed. “Yeah. –Sorry,” he added as Fl’Oo-ooueroii picked itself up from the far side of the bridge and returned cautiously.

    “If you were to kneel, I could straighten your collar!” it offered eagerly.

    “Oh, go on. Lady Vt R’aam’s magma-pit-hot on straight collars, is she?” he asked glumly, kneeling.

    “Yes, and on all matters of etiquette!” it squeaked. “And you mustn't refer to her as ‘Lady Vt R’aam,’” it added anxiously, tweaking at the collar.

    “Eh?”

    “‘Lady Myr-Lah gh K’ml Vt R’aam,’ or just ‘Lady gh Vt R’aam.’ Never ‘Lady Vt R’aam.’”

    “I won’t ask why,” he groaned.

    “Because the old Lord is dead.”

    “Oh, very clear, very clear. –Is it straight?”

    “Yes. You’re much harder to valet than a humanoid lordship!” it puffed. “You won’t tell Lady gh Vt R’aam I’m aboard, will you?”

    “Fl’Oo-ooueroii, she knows. She knows what Trff’s doing, she knows you’re here to make up for Trff's body weight— Oh, forget it, forget it,” he sighed. “At least one being in the Known Universe hasn’t got a clue what we’re up to!”

    After a puzzled moment it said: “Not Lady gh Vt R’aam, though."

    “No,” said BrTl heavily, creaking upright.

    “I could get the tidy-blobs to polish the companionways while you’re out, if you like,” it said wistfully. “They’re getting very shabby since Full Surgeon Fl’nhrr’htia took my polishing-urge away."

    “Uh—that won’t be necessary, thanks all the same,” he said, gulping.

    “I wish L’Thea was here,” it said sadly.

    “Yeah. Me, too. She said she missed you, did I say?”

    “Yes: many times, Great BrTl!” it squeaked gratefully.

    “Well—uh—” What could a bright blue Flppu do that would be useful, or at least not endanger the lives, not to say the necks, of other beings, all by itself on a Ju’ukrterian-shielded ship on vacuum-frozen Whtyll? “Look,” he said finally, “I think our credit’s good here. Well, what I mean is, I don’t think it is our credit, I think it’ll be Lord Vt R’aam’s. I’ll blob onto a few Services for you. And, um, would you like something nice to eat?”

    “Iirou—”

    “No juice,” he said firmly. “I think it might run to ooff-puffs, though.”

    “Humblest thanks, Great BrTl!” it squeaked, bobbing frantically.

    BrTl saw it safely installed in front of the sim-receiver with its ooff-puffs—rather unfortunately on the bridge, as the cabins were all full. But naturally the ship had far too much sense to let it near anything that even looked like a control, so that was okay. It was making an awful mess with the spores from those puffs, though. Then, pausing only to tell the recycler it night as well stay in the On mode in order to absorb as many of the spores as possible, he went. Glum but determined.

    “It’s a decent size,” he conceded, goggling up at Whtyllian towers and spires and stuff as a humanoid being in a long, heavily-furred Blrtltonia-cloth robe open over a gauzy zpandria-cloth blouse and baggy blue scintillion breeches came wandering down the front steps.

    “Hullo, BrTl. Welcome to our home,” the being said.

    BrTl eyed it warily: he could see it was Tm-Wm, but he wasn’t too Vvlvanian-cursed sure who Tm-Wm was supposed to be at this precise moment. Especially with that on his head. “Hullo,” he said cautiously. “Um, do I address a Lord of Whtyll, Great Sir?"

    “What? Oh! No, it’s all right, you can say anything on the estates.”

    “Then what’s that on your head?”

    “Mm?” he said, sounding for one IG microsecond horribly like his father. “Oh! S-G’mmy, isn’t she sweet?” He removed the furry decoration from his zpandria-cloth turban and held it out. A small sentient being. It didn’t smell sweet to BrTl.

    “Very,” he lied. The small being was wearing a small bracelet, surprise, surprise.

    “Do you think she looks good with this blouse? It’s one of Father’s, of course, just in case an unexpected guest arrives: then I can be glimpsed from a distance—you know?” He giggled.

    “Yes,” said BrTl glumly. “May we go in? I see it’s winter on your planet,” he added politely.

    “No, it’s spring!” returned Tm-Wm in surprise.

    “Ah,” he said.

    “Are you cold?"

    “Only round the extremities. My FW pack’s coping remarkably well with the rest of me.”

    “Come in,” said Tm-Wm weakly.

    After that it wasn’t long at all before he was ushered into the presence.

    “My s-beings are making you comfortable, I trust?” said Lady Myr-Lah graciously.

    “Yes, Lady gh Vt R’aam,” he replied humbly. “And the Guest Room is most comfortable: a wonderful stall!”

    Lady Myr-Lah gh K’ml Vt R’aam inclined her head very slightly. Then there was dead silence. BrTl looked thoughtfully at the maxi-webs shimmering semi-opaquely before the long windows with their splendid vista of row upon row of dark blue-green forested hills.

    “What is the news?” she said at last.

    He restrained an impulse to scratch his shoulder whilst tugging at his collar. “Uh—well, nothing further, really, Lady gh Vt R’aam. Um, P’ll and Tm-Wm must have reported, surely?”

    “A pair of semi-sentient idiots,” she pronounced coldly. “Well?”

    “Um, Trff’s made contact with Jhl, and she’s physically well but she seems to be under the impression that she’s a Pleasure Girl. A real one, I mean.”

    “Is there any chance it could been mistaken about that? If she’s playing that rôle?”

    “I doubt it,” he admitted glumly.

    “What are the odds?” demanded the old lady grimly.

    “I’d lay you a megazillion Huyajhangwanian oddlis to one that it isn’t mistaken. And if your Ladyship would care for a few rafts of oddlis— No,” he said sadly.

    “I have no interest whatsoever in your cargo, Lieutenant,” she said coldly.

    Her and the rest of Whtyll, actually. BrTl swallowed a sigh.

    “Did the lifter crash where it was supposed to?” the old lady then asked.

    “We don’t know. Whatever it is that Trff’s doing, it isn’t, um, position-specific. If the coordinates were right she’d have landed right in this evil D’ru’s back yard.”

    There was a pause. BrTl saw the terrifying old lady’s lips were very tight. There’d been something very odd in her reaction when he mentioned the evil D’ru, but as she had a Whtyllian shield up almost as strong as her son’s had once been, there was no point at all in trying to see what.

    “The it-being has not—” She broke off. One thin hand clenched on the arm of her chair. BrTl was forcibly reminded of the claws of a Gervaynian kryy, just before it pounced on its prey. “I think I am right in saying that all it has been asked to do is listen for confirmation that the Captain has picked up Shank’yar’s son’s—that is, his cognate’s encoding. Yes?”

    BrTl nodded meekly, humanoid-wise.

    When the Njneeainwearian crystal chandeliers had ceased playing a Njneeainwearian song of greeting, Lady Myr-Lah said: “The it-being did not report confirmation. It seems to me that this might be because Captain Smt Wong has picked up the encoding without being aware she was doing so.”

    BrTl goggled at her numbly. Finally he managed to croak: “Um… Ugh. You mean if she doesn’t know who she is, then she won’t know, if she picks up the encoding, that it’s the encoding she’s supposed to be looking for? And so she won’t be trying to confirm that she’s been successful?”

    “Quite. Now, if she had found the encoding under those circumstances, would the it-being, firstly, have picked the fact up, and secondly, have reported it?”

    He tugged at his collar. “Well, actually… Well, picked the fact up, yes. But what it reports depends on what it’s been asked to report, so if it didn’t get the right order— I don’t mean right, exactly,” he gulped, recalling whose order it had been, “but, um, the order that fitted the circumstances,” he amended miserably, “then it might have picked up anything at all, and not reported it.”

    “So I suspected. Can you make contact with the Slp-Og V. Trff?”

    “Um—well, I can, yes,” he admitted lamely.

    “Contact it, and interrogate it closely,” she ordered, getting up. “I shall be with my son. Send an s-being with a message when you have your reply, whatever it is.” She swept out. Some tidy-blobs scurried in her wake, making sure the hem of her garment was not contaminated by the wtmyrian carpet. The ornately wound garment was pink and silver. She had another garment round her shoulders, silvery-pink. And a heavy matched set of necklace and ear-drops in the very, very rare variety of quog: the pinker side of shlaa. Why were humanoids so fond of pink? –It was true that the carpet was composed of a multiplicity of linked wtmyrian colonies, in an intricate pattern that represented flowers in a lawn. But as it was a pink lawn the overwhelming impression was of pink. Ugh.

    “It’s me,” he said cautiously.

    “Of course it’s you-it,” returned Trff placidly.

    “Uh—I’m in hyper-hop, like you-it said.”

    “Good. Is you-it in trouble?”

    “No. Um—well, depends on whether you call being at the mercy of a Gervaynian kryy that’s hungry for meat being in trouble.”

    “In terms of the commonly perceived space-time continuum, you-it’s nowhere near Gervaynia,” it pointed out.

    “Neither of me: quite,” he agreed acidly.

    “Well, what’s the matter, BrTl?”

    “The old Gervaynian kryy wants to know whether you semi-sensed that Jhl had received an impression of the mind-encoding of this son of You-Know-Who, even though she didn’t know she had. –Well, I mean, how could she know she had, if she thinks she’s some Vvlvanian-cursed Pleasure Girl?” he ended heatedly.

    “Yes.”

    “WHAT?” he roared.

    “Yes. –Is you-it receiving me, BrTl?” it hooted anxiously.

    BrTl was flapping his neck-hair up and down in an endeavour to improve its filtering. “Yes!” he gasped at last. “Why didn’t you SAY?”

    “It just did.”

    “BEFORE!” he roared.

    “No being asked it. And it wasn’t asked to report that, it was asked to report when Jhl had a message confirming—”

    “Yes! All RIGHT! No message of Vvlvanian-cursed confirmation! –Literal-minded engineering asteroid-brain,” he muttered grimly.

    “Is you-it all right?”

    “NO! Listen, asteroid-brain, if she’s found him, all we have to do is get down there and locate her, and hoik her out of it!”

    “Yes, but the mission wasn’t—”

    “CURSE THE MISSION!” he roared.

    “We can’t get down there, anyway.”

    “With the delegation!” he snarled.

    “Oh. Yes. But we were going anyway, weren’t we?” it said in bewilderment.

    “Listen, asteroid-brain,” said BrTl through his impressive teeth: “hasn’t it dawned that we’re all in the mok shit up to our sprtzz fibres? The original plan did NOT include the fact that as we speak, His You-Know-Who-ship is sitting up in his bed playing with his toes able to say two words one of which is translated as MEANINGLESS NOISE!”

    “No-o... Well, you-it and it certainly believed the plan didn’t. However, the it-being had its doubts.”

    The hyper-loop in space, or whatever it was that their frequency was on—BrTl didn’t pretend to understand—shimmered with silence for a few IG microseconds. Then he managed to overlook it—all of it.

    “Never mind that. A being could go mad in very short order trying to out-guess You-Know-Who’s plots. The point is, she’s found this pup of his. Uh—sorry: son. Mission complete.”

    “Ye-es… It doesn’t think you-it’s asked it the right question... Though of course it doesn’t know what the right question is,” it whistled on a plaintive note.

    This sort of situation had occurred before. Not often, true. But it had occurred. So BrTl returned with tremendous restraint: “Then tell me the answer, Trff."

    “The answer seems to be that the encoding belongs to the evil D’ru.”

    “I knew it!” he shouted.

    “No, you-it didn’t.”

    “Uh—no. Slight exaggeration. But when the evil D’ru’s name was mentioned I picked up a very funny reaction from the old kryy.”

    “Then she-it knows that, as well as all the rest,” it concluded.

    “So she does! Would you-it like to tell me what all the rest is?”

    “It would like to, but it can’t, because it doesn’t know it all, BrTl.”

    He breathed heavily, though, true, this was the answer he’d expected. “Now, you’re sure, are you-it, Trff? Y-K-W’s encoding found in evil D’ru?”

    “Yes. In fact it’s possible that discovering this fact was another reason for Jhl’s retreating into the Pleasure Girl persona. –Not its subject, of course,” it murmured.

    Restraining a cough, he asked cautiously: “Is humanoid psychology any it-being’s subject?"

    “Well, no. The we-it has knowledge of similar cases, however.”

    “Don’t cite them,” he said hurriedly.

    “No, it’d take too long,” it agreed placidly.

    There was a short pause, during which BrTl thought furiously. Eventually he said: “Tell me anything else related to the mission that you-it semi-sensed or concluded or both.”

    After an appreciable IG microsecond it said: “The it-being thinks that there might be two of them. Two brothers. Like Bhl and Bht are to Dad… It’s all very complicated,” it said sadly. “The it-being is unsure of this, but it is possible that Jhl may also be in contact with the other one.”

    BrTl thought it over. Two of them. In that case possibly the intel the Fleet Commander had given Jhl had been right as far as it went. Which had been about half as far as it ought to have gone. “She’s in contact with Rhan-son as well as evil D’ru-son? Good. In that case, that’s the mission: our bank account’s starting to look healthy again!”

    “Ye-es... Would a son have mammary glands?”

    There was a short silence across the hyper-hop loop.

    “I’m pretty sure not,” he said weakly. “Aren’t the ones with the mammary glands, um, like sons, only female? Aren’t they those bumps, like Jhl’s got?”

    “In that case, there may be three, though the suggestion of a third one is very faint.”

    “Oh, the more the merrier!” he said madly. “Forget I said it, Trff,” he added quickly. “Uh—three. Well, how’s she gonna tell which is which?"

    “If one is called Rhan then it must be the one the Fleet Commander wants,” it returned logically.

    BrTl had begun to wonder about that, actually. What with pleasuring-blobs and klupf trips, not to mention gold scintillion skimpies and fifty percent, max., of the intel. In fact he’d begun to wonder, though aware a being could quickly go mad that way, why the Fleet Commander had sent Jhl there at all. Possibly the aftereffects that Trff had removed from the pleasuring-blob had only been intended to make her more amenable to any future suggestion Shank’yar Vt R’aam might put to her—the Fleet Commander was more than capable of thinking of that sort of spin-off. More than. But aside from that... “Fine. Lovely.”

    “Is you-it grinding your-its teeth?” it whistled in alarm.

    “Only in anticipation, I assure you. –I’m going,” he added abruptly. “I’ll contact you if I've got anything to tell you."

    “Yes— No— Wait—”

    But BrTl had broken the connection.

    “Contact it anyway,” said Trff sadly. It knew he-it wouldn’t, though: Hot-head was BrTl's middle name; in fact, he-it’d been known as Br-Hot-head-Tl in his-its time at the Academy. One of the reasons why he-it was now only on the Reserve List, instead of piloting his-its own ship. Well, one of the many. Automatically it continued to monitor the emanations from Jhl. At the same time it concentrated hard on working out a logical explanation for what were beginning to appear as the Fleet Commander’s machinations, and a safe way to get Jhl off Old Rthfrdia whilst leaving the ship’s bank account looking healthy. It was aware that humanoid actions seldom lent themselves to logical explanation, so the one solution was as likely of discovery as the other, really. Nevertheless it went on looking for them.

    Lady Myr-Lah gh K’ml Vt R’aam was aware of what her son was up to, certainly. However, she would never have claimed that any logic entered into the business.

    “The cursed fool,” she said tightly, as Full Surgeon Fl’nhrr’htia straightened from his detailed examination of the gurgling, bubble-blowing, toe-clutching Shank’yar.

    “One has to admire him for his courage, my Lady,” he returned politely.

    Shank’yar’s mother snorted.

    Fl’nhrr’htia held out a kindly slender hand and allowed the Fleet Commander to suck one finger energetically. “Pray don’t despair, Lady gh K’ml Vt R’aam: the College has every expectation of seeing your son returned to normal very soon,” he said with a kind little tinkle.

    Lady Myr-Lah knew all about Mullgon’yan nursing-homes. “Soon” in their terms more or less equated to what any other being of the Federated Worlds would have called a megazillion light-years. “Soon?” she said acidly.

    “A matter of perhaps two Whtyllian years,” he said soothingly. “It will take some effort, of course, and will not be inexpensive,” he murmured.

    “How much?” she said grimly.

    “The Full Surgeons are not asking, this time, for credits from the Vt R’aam family.”

    “Another nursing-home?” the old lady said, rather blankly. The present one was rarely up to full capacity, it charged so much.

    “No. Our present space is adequate in the present economic mega-climate,” he replied politely.

    “What, then? Some of the part-sons for your disgusting mind-experiments?” she sighed. “Take them all, Federation knows they’re only a drain on the estates."

    “A generous offer, my Lady,” he bowed. “But our laboratories are fully supplied, at the moment.” He gave a slight cough. Friyrians didn’t naturally cough so the sharp Lady Myr-Lah recognised it as a learnt behaviour pattern and was immediately even more on her guard than she had previously been.

    “Well?” she said, this time sounding bored.

    Fl’nhrr’htia acknowledged the boredom with a very faint tinkle. “The Full Surgeons are interested in the fact that Old Rthfrdia has vast tracts of grazing land.”

    “You want real estate?” she said dazedly.

    “No, my Lady. A guaranteed supply of first-class grain and meat products. We have no wish to be involved in, er, land deals, or indeed land management.”

    “My son does have an interest in some real property on Old Rthfrdia, but I’m not at all sure that that covers the grazing rights. But I dare say that could be managed.”

    “Indeed. You understand, my Lady, we are not thinking merely of our meat- and grain-eating clients, though of course any saving in that area would be a bonus. No, we have certain interests in the commodities market, which we wish to expand.”

    That was now pretty clear to the old lady, and she nodded slowly, carefully shielding from him any suggestion that Shank’yar’s claim to vast tracts of Old Rthfrdian grazing land depended on the death of one or both of his sons.

    Calmly she said: “I can give you no assurance that we will ever have substantial holdings on Old Rthfrdia. Anything could happen there after the Referendum: we may not be able to purchase agricultural land.”

    “The mere assurance of your influence in the matter, should it ever come to pass that your family does acquire an interest, is all the Full Surgeons require,” he said smoothly.

    Lady Myr-Lah replied very grimly indeed. “Very well, Full Surgeon, you have my assurance.” She paused. “For what that’s worth. My son’s incapable, and according to yourself will remain so until well after Old Rthfrdia’s Federation Day, and his sole representative there is a drugged girl trader captain who’s labouring under the misapprehension that she’s a Pleasure Girl.”

    “Yes. But the commodities market is always a gamble,” he said with a very faint tinkle.

    Suddenly the old lady gave a bark of laughter. “That’s very good, for one who informed the inept Lieutenant BrTl that he doesn’t gamble!”

    “Gambling games are so boring, don’t you find? Everything depends on the turn of a card or the throw of a die. The market, however, depends on factors which may be very precisely calculated.”

    “I dare say,” she said drily. “Can you start?”

    “Certainly.” He bowed, and sat down by Shank’yar’s bed.

    “Call me if you need me.” She went out, looking grimly pleased.

    In the corridor she found Lieutenant BrTl, pinioned by five sets of restrainos and fourteen sweating s-beings.

    “Release him! –Well?” she said to her major-domo.

    He bowed and replied smoothly: “The s-beings were acting under my instructions, Mistress. You had asked not to be disturbed while you were with My Lord and the Full Surgeon, and Lieutenant BrTl insisting on disturbing you.”

    “I see. Very well, S-R’aam, you did well. You may go. –Come to my quarters, Lieutenant.”

    BrTl followed her meekly.

    “Green!” he said, sagging visibly.

    “Mm? Oh—yes. I’m rather fond of green. The downstairs sitting-room’s rather too pink, isn’t it? It was my mother-in-IG-law’s taste. Greatly admired by the local nobility and gentry,” she said, shrugging slightly, “so I've left it. The carpet’s priceless, of course. I believe the wtmyrian colonies were trained for three years before they could achieve and maintain the required pattern.”

    “I prefer this one, Lady gh Vt R’aam. Nice and green. Especially the untranslatable-noise shade just there and the untranslatable-noise shade over there.”

    To Lady Myr-Lah all the green parts of the carpet looked the same shade, and certainly the wtmyrians all belonged to the one colony: they would never have clung together successfully otherwise. “Er—yes. Please, sit, Lieutenant. What have you to report?”

    BrTl near as blazes saluted. He swallowed, and managed to reply in a hard voice: “First, I’d like to get something clear. The Fleet Commander gave Jhl the coordinates of this evil D’ru’s estate because he thought he’d kidnapped Rhan-son. Is that right, Lady gh Vt R’aam?”

    “Yes. –Please don’t keep calling me that, Lieutenant, it makes you sound like a Flppu. Just ‘my Lady’ will be perfectly acceptable.”

    “Uh—yes, my Lady. Well, you were right. Jhl had picked up the encoding, and Trff didn’t report that she had, because she wasn’t sending any message of success.”

    “As I thought: the Ju’ukrterian mind. Very well, Lieutenant, whose encoding was it?” she demanded grimly.

    BrTl had been intending to tackle her grimly on that very point. Limply he admitted that Trff thought it was the evil D’ru’s. She just nodded. He sagged, and the flop couch his neck was resting on sank to the limits of its tendrils. After quite some time he said: “Since my Captain’s in what could fairly be called the mok shit, saving your presence, my Lady, would you care to explain all this?”

    “Has she picked up Rhan?” she returned tightly.

    “Uh—it didn’t seem too sure. Well, it did seem sure there were two of them. But it said one of them had mammary glands, and then it admitted there could be three.”

    “Mammary glands? Oh—yes, there was a girl,” she recalled without interest. “I suppose we do owe you some sort of explanation. My son does have two full sons on Old Rthfrdia. They have different mothers, of course.”

    BrTl tried very hard not to emanate blankness.

    The old lady gave an impatient sigh. “The mother of the second son has turned out to have a—a mental weakness. At first Shank’yar thought, in view of that son’s possible heritage from her, that it would be sensible to write him off. –Not that!” she said sharply to his fuddled thought. “To leave him out of account. And certainly never to reveal to him what his true parentage was.”

    “Oh,” he said numbly. That mattered, did it, to a mammalian?

    “But as they grew up— Have you heard of the expression ‘putting all your grqwary eggs in one basket?’ Mm. Well, Shank’yar decided not to do that. D’ru, the younger son, is a much more pragmatic personality than Rhan. At one stage it began to seem that they might agree about certain matters to do with arrangements on Old Rthfrdia after Federation Day,”—BrTl sniffed slightly but she ignored this, apart from glancing warily at the ornaments on a little table nearby—“but then it became apparent that their views were not going to coincide, after all.”

    After a dazed moment he said: “You mean he’s been backing both of them?”

    “Precisely. Neither of them knew about it, or that there was Vt R’aam money supplied to their supporters more or less directly and—er, indirectly, in various enterprises. Investments, and so on.”

    “I see. I think. Well, he is famous throughout the two galaxies for playing both ends against the middle.”

    “Quite. However, he was not doing this for a profit. Not a monetary one.” She ignored his strong emanations of disbelief and said: “He wished to choose an heir.”

    “Oh. Doesn’t your property automatically go to the members of your glkp group?”

    The old lady was about to wither him, but perceived he was genuine. “Not in humanoid societies. And in this case, there are two planets involved: the matter falls under—”

    “IG law,” he said, shutting his eyes.

    “The jurisdiction of the Intergalactic Court, certainly. The law is quite clear: they will not,” she said, eyeing him drily, “be in litigation for a megazillion light-years. Under the Intergalactic Law of Succession (Humanoid), for a son to inherit, the father must formally recognise him as his heir. There are certain tests which can prove if a man is the father of a given person, but that is irrelevant in this case. The law only requires the father to recognise the heir. If a person claims to be an heir and is not so recognised he has no claim on the estate.”

    “I've got it. All the Fleet Commander has to do is name one of these sons as his heir. That’s nice and simple,” he said approvingly. “So why doesn’t he?”

    “He wishes for a worthy successor.”

    BrTl’s jaw sagged. It was just as well that flop couch was there. “He sent her in to test them, didn’t he?”

    There was a short pause. “That was at least part of his intention, certainly. He wished to see whose side she would range herself on, not only politically, but… Which she would choose as a man,” she ended with infinite distaste.

    BrTl emanated bafflement.

    “In your terms, Lieutenant, repro stuff.”

    It sank in. “And then he’ll give her to that one!” he choked, laughing himself silly.

    When a green Flppu, accompanied by a mauve Flppu, had rushed in and rescued the little table and removed the irretrievably damaged ornaments, Shank’yar’s mother said coldly: “That may be amusing to you, Lieutenant, but let me assure you the thought of Captain Smt Wong of Bluellia as the mother of my son’s grandchildren does not in the least amuse me!”

    “The mother—” The mind-picture she was broadcasting was pretty clear. “She won’t,” he said feebly. “I can promise you one thing, Ladyship, she won’t do that. No matter whether the Fleet Commander wants her to or not. In fact,” he gasped, shaking slightly, “especially not if he wants her to!”

    “Really? –Yes, S-Fl’Eeaiimeiia, take it right away,” she said as the green Flppu hurried in and picked up the little table.

    “She’s refused his lordly Fleet Commander’s self for the last megazillion IG years: is she likely to fall for one of his litter?” he said weakly, trying not to shake again.

    “I said that to Shank’yar, Lieutenant. His reply was: ‘Aren’t you failing to take into account the effect of a Playfair pleasuring-blob on the mammalian female psyche?’ Don’t tell me the it-being removed the after-effects of the blob,” she said, as he began to. “We know that; Shank’yar was most amused by it.”

    “You’re not claiming there was something hidden in that blob that Trff didn’t spot?”

    She rose, eyeing him drily. “I’m not claiming anything of the sort. Just ask yourself this: how many women of Captain Smt Wong’s age did you meet on Bluellia who were not bond-partnered?”

    She had gone through into an Inner Sanctum by the time BrTl found the breath to reply: “None. But then, we didn’t meet any that had Master’s Tickets, either!” Somehow it didn’t sound all that convincing, alone in a room with a good-sized wtmyrian colony. He walked glumly to the door. It opened immediately and he was faced with a row of obsequiously bobbing Flppus. “I haven’t broken anything else,” he said heavily. “But check, by all means.”

    Glumly he mooched off to his Guest Room for a good think. He wasn’t at all sure of his facts, and wished very much there was some sensible being there whom he could ask—Jhl’s sister-in-IG-law S’zaan, for example. He rather thought that, whatever might have been the case on vacuum-frozen Whtyll, in some humanoid societies the idea of a man’s trying out a suitable candidate for bond-partnership before passing her on to his son wouldn’t go down at all well. Setting aside the feelings of the candidate, he had an idea that the son might not fancy it. Not judging by the sons he knew: he thought of Bhl or Bht, and his mind boggled. Who else did he know that was a son? Well, J’f, but he was a selfish little vacuum-frozen grqwary dropping that hadn’t brought Mum any blrtlberries for Galaxy Day: you couldn't count him. Tm-Wm and P’ll? Ho, ho, ho. Bother, that was the sum of the sons he knew. But even with only them as examples he was still far from convinced that Fleet Commander Vt R’aam’s idea would work. And he was very far from convinced that the pleasuring-blob would have any effects on Jhl's psyche once she got over the klupf. Shank’yar Vt R’aam might imagine he knew her, but he hadn’t been her ship-companion for the last several IG years…

    Finally he went off to the ship and hopped into hyper-hop.

    “That’s very logical,” it said pleasedly. “It explains all the impond—”

    “TRFF! SHUT UP!” he roared.

    “What?” it whistled crossly.

    “I know this is a stupid question,” said BrTl through his teeth, “–stop that, Fl’Oo-ooueroii!—but would she do it, do you think?”

    “What?”

    “Bond-partner with one of these vacuum-frozen FW sons of You-Know-Who!” he shouted.

    “There’s a used senso-tissue in your-its pocket that Fl’Oo-ooueroii would like: that’s why it’s pulling your-its shin-hair,” it returned tranquilly.

    Breathing heavily, BrTl detached the excited Flppu from his left hind leg, and gave it the tissue. It bobbed off excitedly with it. “Well?” he said evilly.

    “The consensus is, she-it may do,” it said glumly.

    After a moment BrTl said: “That’s very helpful.”

    “One theory is that the Fleet Commander may have dreamed this plan up as a way of gaining ascendancy over her-it. In order to assert his-its power, as she-it wouldn’t bond-partner with him-it.”

    “That had dawned, thanks, I’m not that thick!” he returned huffily.

    “Then there’s the genetic theory: that he-it’s chosen Jhl’s genes as suitable in every way to be combined with his-its. –Mammalians do that when they reproduce,” it reminded him.

    “It’s a theory, yeah. Myself, I’d plump for both, rather than one, given this is You-Know-Who.”

    “Yes, both is very likely,” it agreed.

    BrTl sighed heavily. The consensus was that she might? Well, if she did, what in Federation were the two of them going to do? Jaunter round the two galaxies without her?

    “What’ll become of it and you-it?” it hooted sadly, doubtless picking up his thought.

    “You’re the Ju’ukrterian, you tell me,” he sighed.

    “The we-it can’t foretell the future in the way the phrase is commonly understood: it thought you-it knew that?” it whistled mournfully.

    “I thought I knew a lot of things,” he said heavily. “Keep listening for her,” he warned.

    “It is.”

    “Good,” said BrTl. Grimly he broke the connection.

    The Flppu bobbed back. “Many ladies would welcome the opportunity to bond-partner with My Lord!” it squeaked

    “Shut up. You’ve got the wrong end of the ban-ban-ban, anyway. And he isn’t your Lord any more. Unless you’d like to wear a bracelet again?”

    “No, no, Great BrTl!”

    “No. And anyway, Jhl is NOT ‘many ladies’! She isn’t ANY lady! And GET OUT!” he roared.

    Fl’Oo-ooueroii vanished. BrTl didn’t feel any more cheerful, though. Especially when it dawned that before he shot off to the delegation he’d better go and tell Lady Myr-Lah gh K’ml Vt R’aam that he was going. And more especially when he looked at his chrono-blob and it informed him brightly that he’d missed Whtyllian dinnertime.

    The elderly lady eyed him drily. “Four IG months is rather a long time to be stuck with a diplomatic delegation, isn’t it, Lieutenant?”

    “Yes. Well, there’s always the cargo of oddlis,” he said with super-optimism.

    “One of those planets where they spoil their children hopelessly is what you need,” she said thoughtfully. “Phang-Phang, for instance.”

    He winced, but replied: “Good idea, my Lady.”

    “Though I did hear that they've also become a popular toy with the younger set on Playfair Two.”

    He brightened slightly. “I may try it. –Lady gh Vt R’aam, what’s to become of L’Thea?” he croaked.

    “What? Oh, the s-girl that Shank’yar put in the nursing-home! I’ve no idea, Lieutenant, she’s merely there as a ruse. I suppose he’ll take her back into his household. Why, do you want her?”

    “Uh—yes,” he gulped. “Please.”

    Lady Myr-Lah shrugged. “Take her: she’s yours”

    “Thank you, my Lady,” he gulped.

    “But she must stay there as Captain Smt Wong until you rescue the Captain or until my son says she may be removed.” She held out her claw-like hand politely, humanoid-wise. “Thank you for your assistance in this matter, Lieutenant. I hope you do manage to rescue your Captain. But I should warn you that my son is seldom wrong where women are concerned. I think you may arrive on Old Rthfrdia four IG months hence to find her bond-partnered to one of my grandsons.”

    Her son had been wrong enough where women were concerned to propose bond-partnership to one, Jhl Smt Wong, trader captain. BrTl kindly didn’t remind her of this, after all she’d been very helpful about his cargo. He bowed over her hand and went.

    “Well, my Lady?” said Fl’nhrr’htia, as she came into Shank’yar’s room.

    “An idiot,” she said shortly.

    “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, entirely... Look, Shan, here’s Mum!” he cooed. “Smile at him, my Lady,” he suggested with a tiny sigh.

    “I am capable of many things, as you must know, Full Surgeon,” replied the old lady harshly. “But not of that!” She turned and swept out of the room.

    Fl’nhrr’htia went on playing with Shank’yar, holding a string of bouncing oddlis for him and encouraging him to clutch at them. Good therapy. It had been very kind of Lieutenant BrTl to donate them.

    BrTl took off at an IG-illegal speed and went into hyperdrive the split IG microsecond they were out of Whtyllian space.

    “Where are we going, Great BrTl?” gasped Fl’Oo-ooueroii, grabbing the sides of its seat in panic.

    “Nowhere! I don’t care!” he snarled.

    “I’m frightened!” wailed the Flppu.

    “So am I,” said BrTl under his breath. “So am I.”