|
|
Simon pulled. The reek of unfriendly compost assailed his nostrils. He was glad for the hanky. After much struggling, the scope virgin popped out. "You are a giant slug." "The lineaments of beauty are debatable," said the slug. "I may have misrepresented myself so as to be pleasing in your sight, Big Eye." The giant slug undulated, slurped and sloshed. "A small deception. What you see is what you get." She executed a haughty turn like a fashion mannequin at the end of a runway. "Bonnie is absolutely not going to believe this." Simon cupped his hands and called, "Bonnie! There's someone here I would like you to meet." A well kept sixty-something woman came to the screen door. "Yes, darling?" She was all smiles; a heart-rending odor of muffins and pot roast with gravy followed close behind her. "Your wife is very understanding to let you out alone with a princess of the blood," said the scope virgin. "Is she a jealous type?" "Don't go there," Simon whispered. "Could you possibly come in the house with me and show her I'm not sliding into senile dementia?" "I am afraid I would leave a slime trail," said the slug. "Simon, always bringing things home." Simon's wife searched warily, scanning the back yard for a probable source for her husband's enthusiasm. "Well, what have we today?" Bonnie's eyes froze on the Princess Ackaetia. "Oh, a great big slug, how very interesting. And how very disgusting. Now we will have to put out bait before we're overrun. Our lettuce will be ruined. Put a peach basket over it." Bonnie executed a quick swivel to stomp back into the house. "At your age, too. Dinner is on hold." As Simon pondered pot roast denied, the hand which held the kaleidoscope hung dejectedly at his side. A midge or a gnat buzzed from the tube. It performed a series of aerial acrobatics as if getting its bearings, then flew in ever smaller circles about his head. A beam of polarized light flashed between the insect and the tip of Simon Alexander's nose. "Ow!" Simon grasped his nose and hopped about in agony. The insect then dove at the scope virgin. The bug was angry. "Big Eye! Should he fire again I am undone!"cried the Princess Ackaetia. Simon, through his pain, paused to stare at the insect--hovering, prepared to strike--and the slug. "I beg your pardon?" "Swat him. If he cannot have me, he has sworn to kill me lest a more acceptable suitor find favor in my eyes." "Huh! How about that." Simon raised his arm and swung the kaleidoscope. There was a "ding" as of a BB hitting a can. "Gotcha." Mylar mirrors and glass beads went flying. The kaleidoscope was demolished. "Shattered into pieces! My poor, dear oubliette. Now I shall never, ever get back home again. By-the-bye, you have also just destroyed Prince Philo Gulesi's battle cruiser." "Sorry. I thought it was a bug." "Prince Philo's ship was government property; the over-taxed underclasses will be grumpy. And you have wrecked my gateway in the process. But where are my manners?" said the scope virgin. "You have saved my life. Thank you." "Your suitor? But he, Prince Philo, is--was--so small. How do you, ahh..." "The females of my kind are considerably larger than the males. Or they smaller--whatever. This is an economy of scale." Simon checked the ground for kaleidoscope parts. "Even if you picked up everything you could find there'd still be something missing," said Princess Ackaetia. "This is a universal law; you'd have a bag of parts is all. And even if you could get them all back together again the refraction indices would be all wrong." "The Boy Scouts built it; we can fix it. It may take a while. It has been sixty years." "Meanwhile, I am here. And Prince Philo Gulesi is nowhere. This has created an imbalance that will cascade through the fabric of space-time." "Simon!" Simon's wife opened the screen door a crack. "Yes, dear?" "You are talking to it." "But..." The screen door snicked shut. "Very observant, your wife. We may safely ignore her," said the scope virgin offhandedly. Simon turned to follow his wife into the house. "Stay." Simon stayed. "Ever-amplified, this space-time anomaly will pack all the destructive power of Prince Philo's demolished cruiser, plus the mass of a displaced princess of the House of Urnoous, multiplied to the 27th power. We shall have some serious mischief." The regal petulance disappeared from the Princess' tone. "I don't mean to be any trouble--thanks for my deliverance and all--but there is great peril ahead." "Thank you for filling me in," said Simon. "Could we talk about this later? Bonnie has a pot roast going for tonight." "No, now. We shall have to manufacture so many kaleidoscopes that one of them will have to have the correct dimensional refraction. This will require volunteers. They must be the same who made the original kaleidoscope. We shall have to whistle up these Boy Scouts of yours and negotiate a fix." "But they will be old, scattered..." "You did it once; you can do it again. Prince Philo's regent is not going to wait on your Bonnie's pot roast. There will be a war of succession in addition to our space-time anomaly. Billions of lives will be extirpated. Shake a leg." "We'll have to get you covered up. Not everyone would understand..." "This 'peach basket' of your wife's sounds appropriate."
|