Again, Dangerous Visions Read online

  Chug was striking a pose. Something was humming away inside him, the product of a vast, anticipatory content. He stood gracefully with one polished boot stiffly ahead of the other one. He twirled and twirled his dandy whiskery waxed mustache. His eyes glittered and appraised and swept the murmuring crowds of notables, as well as the clouds of bewinged thin television screens bursting with the excited faces of worshiping Zephran teenagers. He felt fine for now, having overcome for the moment his terrible grief over the blow-up of Mother Earth, and he was determined to bask in the glowing worship these Zephrans radiated.

  He already had been asked some questions, all about Earth.

  "Wars? Wars? Nope, ain't no more wars on Earth," Chug answered truthfully.

  "This is splendid," he was told.

  (Everybody on the planet was listening to this conversation, except that it was the gort season, and therefore a hundred thousand Zephrans were out hunting gorts. These gorts—however, that is not a part of this story.)

  "What can you tell us in general terms about the possible future relations of Earth and Zephyrus?"

  "The relations will be the very best," Chug assured them. Ya damn betcha: No Earth.

  "Is it perhaps true that you, acting for Earth, will return to us the secret of faster-than-light ships?"

  A question to flutter the heart. Avowed Chug, crossing a finger, "I aim to give it to ya!"

  "Is it perhaps true that our ships will then be allowed in Earth's skies?"

  "Better not make it for a couple Zephran years!" Chug said, hastily computing. "And approach kinda slow in case there's some kind of—er—flare-up!"

  "Then our age-old offense against the Mother World has been forgiven?"

  "Ain't nobody holding a thing against ya!"

  His questioner, an elderly and most handsome man who was in the position of mayor of the welcoming city of Matchley, said apologetically, "If you will speak more slowly. The refinements of the mother tongue have been lost to us."

  While he talked, while he equivocated, the contented purring in Chug stopped. In fact, his purr-engine had been running down for some time. Because there was someone in this room who made his fur—what the hell!—who made his skin crawl. He knew who it was: the non-Zephran who had brought his ship in and who had made unkind remarks that no Zephran would make to a worshiped Earthling. Where was he, who was he?

  In that crowd of worshiping faces, Chug had no idea.

  If he could just find somebody who wasn't worshiping him.

  Just then a small warm hand slipped into Chug's hand. Startled at first, he looked down into the peachiest face he had ever seen; peachy and creamy and plump all the way down to its pink toes. "Why, hullo!" said Chug, showing his delight at this intrusion by instantly clicking around facing her, and giving her all the attention he had given the officials crowding the room. "I am delighted!" he said for emphasis. It never failed! Here he was, crowding forty, and a bachelor, and this eighteen-year-old knew what he was: she knew!

  "Hi hi," she said. "Ips!"

  "Ips!" said Chug.

  "Rightly. What we want to know, we, the teeming teenagers of our worshiping planet, what we want to know is, what does it on Earth?"

  "What—uh—does it?"

  "Yah. Flickly. What's the WORD?"

  "The word," said Chug. "Hah! The WORD!?? Ah." Out of his intuition, he desperately selected the answer. "Ching—that's the word!"

  "Ching!" she screamed on sudden tip-toe, then clapping her hand over her mouth. "Halla-hoo! I'm sorry!" she said to the assembled officials who nonetheless watched her and listened to her with what seemed a supreme indulgence. She raised her voice again, however, and she had one of those healthy, tingly, musical female voices that could knock over fences.

  "Hah, all witches," she shouted. "Ching's the WORD! That's what does it!"

  The bewinged television screens flipped and sailed and a myriad thin screams sounded.

  Chug realized she must be getting her message across to all the teenagers on the planet; (except those who might be out hunting gorts).

  "This is miraculous," she said, still snuggling her warm hand in his. "You've come all the way from Earth to give us the WORD. Already ching is the big thing. I myself am already a ching-witch, if you follow. My name is Alise."

  "And my name is Humpty Dumpty."

  "Break a leg," she acknowledged. "By any chance, Sir Chug, would you happen to know, uh, just one Earth dance?"

  "Just one? I ain't no peanut-vender, girl! Watch this!" Chug's legs moved in entrechat and cabriole, his feet and knees jiggered, and his arms were all over, finally clapping his hips. "See that? Up in the air and down on the ground, all in one breath." She became very faint at this. Her eyes crossed. Chug took the opportunity to try to settle a nagging fear. He turned smartly to his host, the mayor of Matchley.

  "As you can see, sir," he began, "I ain't up on the pecking order in this situation. Here are you gentlemen, and here's this very ching young lady, really a credit to the teeming teenagers of Zephyrus—"

  "There is really no difficulty, here," he was assured. "Our teenagers are alert, kind, and intelligent, and outnumber us. Ips!"

  "Ips," said Chug, and was fascinated by the chorus of "ips" that ran around the room. Moreover, the mayor of Matchley's feet were tapping, and his eyes were bright and glistening as if in anticipation, or some other emotion Chug failed to recognize. Chug's own feet were tingling. His fingers were feeling a little snappy. Zephyrus, what a place. "Mr. Mayor," he hummed, "you people were ching before I ever got here. And I'm glad of that, I'm glad of that."

  "He's glad of that, he's glad of that," hummed Alise, by this time standing very close and examining his chest medals.

  "And I want to thank you, yes, all of you, indeed I do, before I demonstrate, before I do, a few of the more popular dance numbers they used to have—well, that they got on Earth. But in particular I would like to thank the wappo gentleman who brought my ship to dock."

  "Wappo," mused Alise warmly. "Wappo!" Her index finger shot up into the air.

  "And I would like to thank him personal," amended Chug, tapping his foot unconsciously to some hot music suddenly coming from somewhere!

  Chug's host nodded somewhat dubiously, and spoke to an aide; who moved a few steps to another aide, who then spoke to his aide, who disappeared through a door. A minute later another aide hurried back into the room, and spoke hurriedly to the mayor, who then began to turn very red. The elements of the small comic opera did not escape Chug.

  What the hell! he thought, astonished. They run questions around in circles. Nobody knows nothing. "Your pardon, sir," he said out loud while he felt his fingers snapping uncontrollably in his head, "it don't matter right now, not when we got to show this here young miss some of the vital folk dances of old Earth. But—"

  "You see," the mayor of Matchley said, wiping his face, "nobody seems to know who was on the landing board at that hour. Now on a civilized planet like Earth, tomatoed equipment would have brought your craft in, but here on Zephyrus we still work—sometimes as much as an hour a day. It's possible that some records have been kept, and that the man or woman who brought you in—"

  "A man!" said Chug. "A man's voice!"

  "Well, perhaps not, Sir Chug, if you'll pardon me. You see, the voder is usually programmed in the masculine range—"

  Chug felt giddy. Of a sudden his population of possible enemies was doubled. Somebody who was very knowledgeable knew things about him. How much did that person know? Maybe old Chug better give up and give them the bad news. About Earth. About there ain't no Earth, kiddies, there ain't no ching dances, there ain't no Earth left to forgive you! Then what becomes of old Chug? Old Chug—a dried-out piece of Earth dung, that's what! He almost wept at the thought.

  But the way things were—ah!

  He snapped his fingers and twittered his feet to the beat of the invisible music that ching-witch Alise turned on.

  The way things were, he was a hot-shot and duly
constituted representative of Earth's billions. Let it be.

  "Let it be," he told his charmed audience who were watching his twittering feet and quite forgetting that they were notables greeting the duly constituted representative of Earth's billions. "Let it be," said Chug, becoming motionless in a slight crouch. "That's the name of the newest hot-shot dance on old Earth. You don't do nothing! You do all your dancing with your thinking, and your thinking moves your muscles around inside 'til you think you're gonna tear apart.

  "The tintinabula is tearing the air apart meanwhile, and then we come to the last eight bars, and that's when we can let go. We're wound up like springs, and we go flying up in the air, if the anti-gravs are on, pin-wheeling and gyring and gimbaling in the wabe.

  "And then there's the ching-honey-cha-cha."

  "Ching-honey-cha-cha!" screamed Alise, clapping her hand to her mouth. "Halla-hoo! I'm sorry!" she said to everybody.

  "The ching-honey-cha-cha goes like this," said Chug, calling it out in rhythm. "Begging your pardon, Your Honor."

  "Ips, ips," protested His Honor the mayor. "We quite understand." He pressed back, creating a space.

  "Come on in, young pink thing," droned Chug, snapping his fingers. "Watch my feet. You come on in now."

  Alise came in. That girl knew what she was doing. She and old Chug danced for the whole planet, except for the gort-hunters. Alise came in and knew what she was doing. Those feet with the peachy pink toes had been around.

  Alise was under his ching, giggling, her thready red hair scalloped in front to the unexpected shape of two devil's horns.

  "Sir Chug, you got the pointiest ears!"

  That was unsettling.

  "Not that pointy," said Chug, growling. "You watch your language, miss."

  "Pointy!" giggled Alise. "Like a cat!"

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

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

  "You have, else you wouldn't 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 worshiped 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 worshipful 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 repetitive 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 worshiped 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 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.

  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—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 worshipful 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-sloshing grav-speed Chug almost offered to take them for a ride in his faster-than-light space-ship!

  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?"

  "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 of a drink?"

  "A Blue Hyacinth."

  "To Sir Captain Ratch Chug!" the worshipful Zephrans cried, hoisting the drinks high, and after that the revellers worshipfully 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, stiffeni
ng. "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, mispronouncing. "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.