Again, Dangerous Visions Part 3

"I got claws, too, if you wanna know. And you're gonna get scratched!"

"I've been scratched before, mister! You got sharper claws?"

So that was the way it was gonna be.

That was was the way it was with Sir Captain Ratch Chug and the ching-witch Alise. the way it was with Sir Captain Ratch Chug and the ching-witch Alise.

Alise was a witch, besides being very ching, and you could well believe it if you had seen them nights taking off on degravitized brooms whizzing through the sky to their rendezvous with ching teenagers who wore faddy black peaked hats and twirled sorcerers' mustachios. Sir Captain Ratch Chug, sallow and pocked of face, runty and stunted, mean and sneaky to the core, was a fair representative of the glory of old Earth. The Zephran kids in no time at all reflected this significant collision with another and superior culture by wearing smart uniforms, sporting pointy ears, and looking sallow.

"I'm gonna cras.h.!.+" moaned Chug early in his Zephran career steering his broom one night over the spitting sparkling lights of Puckley, a fun-city run by teenagers. "We're gravving down too fast!"

"All the extra lives you you got," the whizzing Alise informed him, "you don't have to worry!" got," the whizzing Alise informed him, "you don't have to worry!"

"What!" gasped Chug. "Who's got extra lives?" got extra lives?"

"You have, else you wouldn't have, else you wouldn't purr afterwards! purr afterwards! Halla-hoo," cried the whizzing Alise to the packed teenagers on the roof below as she upended and landed with Chug safe behind her. "Hah, all witches! Tonight Sir Captain Ratch Chug of the wors.h.i.+ped Mother World brings us the California Schottishe! The Badger Gavotte! The Patty Cake Polka! The Ching-adaidy-do! Position, varsouvienne!" Halla-hoo," cried the whizzing Alise to the packed teenagers on the roof below as she upended and landed with Chug safe behind her. "Hah, all witches! Tonight Sir Captain Ratch Chug of the wors.h.i.+ped Mother World brings us the California Schottishe! The Badger Gavotte! The Patty Cake Polka! The Ching-adaidy-do! Position, varsouvienne!"

"I don't know no Badger Gavotte," snarled Chug in her peachy pink ear. "How come you know what I don't know half the time?"

"I know," said Alise, bobbing her hairy horns wisely, "I read it in a book in a place I happen to know name of Flora," as the wors.h.i.+pful Zephran kids swarmed around and the 4/4 beat took over.

So that was the way it was, until hyacinthus-time.

Hyacinthus-time, however, was of the future, and Chug was by his nature very much of the present.

A lot could be said about the life of Sir Captain Ratch Chug on the planet Zephyrus. He was the sensation of the season and the season after that, and then the one after that. What he did was to sustain a pitch, and just before it broke bring in some drums; and then he wouldn't let those drums get quite off the ground until he was manufacturing new sounds. In fact, he did help some music technicians build a tintinabula (translates random atomic motion into orchestrated sound) just so he could dance the ching-maya. Those split sounds drove the Zephran kids wild.

"All is illusion," Chug told the Zephran kids. "That's what the ching-maya and the tintinabula are telling you. You don't really hear that music, you don't really do them steps. The sound is just split up to sound in your head, and what you think is motion is just repet.i.tive creation."

"All hail Chug the guru!" cried the sometimes too-spirited Alise.

Chug lived in a palace, a floating palace, with big golden eagle wings that flapped him around the planet. Quite a sight. Of course, the flapping wings were illusion too, because anti-gravs were built into the wings and everytime they flapped they nullified gravity in certain directions so that he went where he wanted to or up or down.

He was down most of the time, sampling the wild social life of the planet. But he was up much of the time too, receiving visitors, all of whom wors.h.i.+ped him. He had thirty rooms to receive people in, rooms thick with the green and yellow furs of gorts on floors and walls, and with big roomy couches, and pillows of soft eider in every corner, and numerous mirrors which caught slanting beams of soft and sometimes whirling light proceeding out of mysterious alcoves set into the ceilings and walls. Here and there were pools with fountains where fish swam, and cages where canaries flew, and goldfish bowls. Truly, Chug's palace was a place to relax in. And Chug, when he wasn't out bringing Earth culture to Zephyrus, or conferring with historians, or fending off some of the delicately probing inquiries of Zephran scientists, usually could be found relaxing, his purr-engine revved up, sunk into a couch surrounded by pillows, or in bed with eyes half-closed, listening for the soundless approach of a servant announcing visitors. Ah, Chug was happy happy happy. This This was what he had been looking for all his life. was what he had been looking for all his life.

Only sour note was that non-Zephran, whoever he-she was, who knew all about him all about him.

Ugh! Better forget that.

Until Earth's wave-front of tell-tale light caught up with him and wrote across the sky for all to see: LIAR!.

And so, at last, came hyacinthus-time.

"You're such a fibber," said Alise, peachier than ever and two Zephran years (equal to one Earth year) older. "Last night you was out prowling- prowling-catting around, as it were; and you told me you was having a interview with the scientist fellas. That's all right."

"Well," said Chug. "Come here."

"Thank you," said Alise.

Indeed he had been out prowling and catting around but it had been with the scientist fellas themselves after an exhausting interview. They went into a whiz-bar where the wors.h.i.+pful Zephrans fought to buy him drinks. What with the drinks and the fact that the whiz-bar actually was whizzing through the air with fascinating changes of liquor-slos.h.i.+ng grav-speed Chug almost offered to take them for a ride in his faster-than-light s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p!

He groaned to think about it.

"Then what happened?" asked Alise, delightfully pulling at his whiskery mustache. "What happened after you said you wouldn't?" what happened?" asked Alise, delightfully pulling at his whiskery mustache. "What happened after you said you wouldn't?"

"Nothing happened!"

Except somebody ordered drinks from the tomato and everybody in the bar crowded around toasting Chug, the revered man from the Mother World.

"What kind kind of a drink?" of a drink?"

"A Blue Hyacinth."

"To Sir Captain Ratch Chug!" the wors.h.i.+pful Zephrans cried, hoisting the drinks high, and after that the revellers wors.h.i.+pfully helped Chug back to his sky-high home, and flew for a while outside his door chanting a drunken song which went, "AI! AI! AI!"

"Flickly," said Alise, "I never heard of no song like that, and I never heard of no drink like that! Tomorrow night at the Skitterly festival we'll order Blue Hyacinths and find somebody that knows AI! AI! AI!"

"No!" said Chug, stiffening. "Look, girl, I do the ordering and I do the singing. I don't want no Blue Hyacinth and I don't want no song that goes AI! AI! AI!"

"Why not?" asked Alise. "What's wrong with a Blue Hyacinthus?" she asked, misp.r.o.nouncing. "What's wrong with a song goes AI! AI! AI!" she asked, crooning into his pointy ear so it sounded like a Greek lament.

Hyacinthus! Hyacinthus! Hyacinthus! Very nearly inaudible, the name beat against Chug's micro-consciousness with the chat-a-chat flutter of tiny wings.

Then he awoke one morning and things were very bad.

Hyacinthus!

He was feeling it. Something wrong, not like before old Earth blew, but something different. Like music, old music, thinly off in the distance, calling him awake like a broken bugle. Like the old days, when the screamers were coming!

Here he was, safe, high above the city in his floating flying palace, halfway out of his lovely dreams, and something was terribly wrong.

"Hi hi, Old Hump," said Alise, sitting with a thump on his bed with its golden coverlets while he opened a slitted eye.

"You used to call me Sir Chug," said Chug. "Now you call me Old Hump. What you got there?"

"I brung you a present," said Alise, who prided herself on having learned the new lingua lingua Ge which Chug brought to this planet almost three Earth years ago. "It's that bowl of goldfish you was admiring in the shop in Stickley last weeklette when we was on that party where you taught us wors.h.i.+pful Zephrans the Charleston." Ge which Chug brought to this planet almost three Earth years ago. "It's that bowl of goldfish you was admiring in the shop in Stickley last weeklette when we was on that party where you taught us wors.h.i.+pful Zephrans the Charleston."

"The Charleston? That wasn't supposed to be for six months," he groaned out loud, sitting up. "I was drunk! I'm gonna run out of dances!"

"You know lots of dances." Alise patted her red hairy horns and turned a mirror on to view herself in. "What about the Jarabe Tapatio? That's the Mexican Hat dance."

"I know! But how do you you know?" know?"

"I read it in a book, up on a planet I know named Flora."

"Flora! Ain't no planet named Flora!"

"It's a kind of invisible planet which I just happen to know. Then there's the Chug Step. Kinda pushy."

He glared.

"Then," she went on, one-half an eye on him, "there's a waltz they had in a place they used to call Denmark called Little Man In A Fix."

"WHAT?".

Here was this girl, this peachy, creamy girl, this adored, lovely, once-in-a-lifetime girl, needling and prodding him. He was certain of it. She knew things about him! She was the one who brought his s.h.i.+p in! It couldn't be; no, no!

"How's about some square dances?" she asked brightly. "There's one called Somebody Goofed!

"How's about Birdie In A Cage?" She chanted, talking it up,

"Up and down and around and around Allemande left and allemande aye Ingo, Bingo, six penny high, Big cat little little cat cat Root hog or DIE!

"Besides," she said, catching one of his astounded eyes in the mirror, "do you have have six months?" six months?"

"Do I have six months," Chug croaked from a dry throat.

The tiny wings were the pinions of bats, flapping in the caverns of his intuition. Hyacinthus, they flapped, before he was able to close off the hideous sound.

"Whaddya mean, do I have six months?" he snarled, swinging out of bed in his silken glitter of mandarin pajamas. Then in fright he squeezed the thought back. HYACINTHUS!!

"And whaddya mean, giving me goldfish for a present? goldfish for a present?" he gasped. "I'm onto you, girl. You're after me. You always have been!

"Here I am, the most respected man on the planet. I'm a goldmine of information about the Mother World. Savants have written books about me. I'm important. Big. Beloved. I've changed the cultural life of the teeming teenagers of Zephyrus. Given 'em fads, whooped 'em up, taught 'em jitterbugging-"

She was under his chin and pressing his nose in with a curved forefinger. She cooed, "I know. You're a cool cat."

"And whaddya give me?" he raved. "Goldfis.h.!.+"

"But you like like goldfis.h.!.+" goldfis.h.!.+"

"Only to look at!"

"That's what I brung 'em for, to look at. What else do you do with 'em?"

"Eat 'em!" snarled Chug. "Like I'm gonna eat you one of these days!"

She giggled. "You are are a cat," she said. "I knowed that when I first seen you. They took your mom and dad's chromosomes and tweezered in some cat genes, now didn't they? You come out of a laboratory, Old Hump. You come out mewing and spitting and clawing. Then they pa.s.sed a law because they didn't want any more human cats. a cat," she said. "I knowed that when I first seen you. They took your mom and dad's chromosomes and tweezered in some cat genes, now didn't they? You come out of a laboratory, Old Hump. You come out mewing and spitting and clawing. Then they pa.s.sed a law because they didn't want any more human cats.

"You're a cat, Old Hump. And that's the reason you always land on your feet!"

Old Chug was on his feet and stalking and circling and spitting and pulling frustratedly at the long hairs of his dandy, waxed, whiskery mustache.

"You're a little bit telepathic?" he inquired.

"A little bit," she admitted. "Like you! Flickly, you know know when there's trouble ahead-like now. when there's trouble ahead-like now.

"Wanna meet my father?"

"I guess I better," said Chug trailing stupidly after her through the thirty rooms of his cus.h.i.+on-strewn furry-rugged palace with its whispering tinkling fountains and its s.h.i.+ny gold canary cages where he had lived his dream of purring contentment when he had been able to stop thinking of that demon wave-front of shattered Earth's light catching up with him! Now! soon!-it would all explode out of time, like the plaint of a brook, like the juice of a leaf!

Soon Alise was las.h.i.+ng her horse-and-buggy across the sunny skies of Zephyrus. Every time those anti-grav hooves kicked at the air the buggy shot ahead. "Gee!" cried Alise, hanging onto the reins. "Haw!" she said, and "Haw!" again for a left U-turn, and finally, "Whoa!" The motors quieted down.

Alise's father had horns growing out of his head.

"They aren't real horns," the slim father confessed shyly, taking off his headpiece and hanging it on an air-peg where it bobbed fitfully. "My real ones were sawed off when they sent us from Flora to study the cultural life of Zephyrus."

"Flora was nowhere," said Alise helpfully, standing close to Chug and stroking his arm. "We didn't have nothing to do. Nothing Nothing. We come here, flickly, to bring back some dances and some fads and wild wild things. And guess what, Old Hump? We found you! Wasn't we lucky?" things. And guess what, Old Hump? We found you! Wasn't we lucky?"

Chug was sweating, gazing upon these two who gazed back upon him benignly and pleasantly and most alarmingly. He attempted to move away from Alise and her stroking hand.

"Aw," she said, her peachy pink lips drooping. Chug sat weakly down, his head throbbing. Now he was really feeling it, the terrible thing that had gone wrong with his world. "Flora," he muttered.

"Yes," said the father in his shy manner. "Flora, wife of Zephyrus, but divorced for some time, as it were. We keep our planet s.h.i.+elded from the Zephrans, invisible to them, one might say, to keep them from destroying us."

Chug's head came up. "Zephrans? Destroy you?"

"Oh, yes," said Alise, happily placing herself on Chug's knee and diddling her fingers under his ear. "The Zephrans would tear us apart like that if they knew we were on their planet. So we had to saw off our horns.

"Oh, yes. We grow horns. Something about the climate, I'm sure."

Chug looked askance at the beauteous head and then shuddered his glance away. "The Zephrans are n.o.ble, gentle, tall, courteous and G.o.dly. They wouldn't hurt anybody!"

Both Alise and her father laughed gently.

"Hyacinthus," said the father, removing his headpiece from the air-peg and placing it back on his head and then turning on a mirror while he fitted it. "Surely you remember the Greek G.o.d Zephyrus who was jealous of Hyacinthus and caused his death. Zephrans think of Earth as Hyacinthus."