DRAGONSHELF AND THE DROVER 11

     “I think it was a harmless joke!” Nubry exclaimed again.  “Do I?  Yes, I do!”

     Bott said nothing, watching the ship’s defenses vaporizing bits of petals and stems as they neared the ship, AND wondering whether anyone but the Sacotans of Etmaal III were the only ones who ever got so angry as to breathe flame.

     “A little prank,” said Nubry, nodding fervently.  “The kind that relieves the monotony.  I remember once, when we were eluding two Imperial scour ships….”

     Bott sat up, his eyes narrow.  “Ship.”

     “Yes, lummox?” the computer inquired.  “I know. You want the flowers left on the hull.  No doubt your pirate ship ad flower decals on every flat surface.”

     “Ship, if those flowers were intended for an Imperial ceremony, where were they going?”

     Nibry’s mouth popped open and then snapped shut.  She turned anxious eyes in the general direction the computer’s voice was coming from.

     “Well?” Bott insisted.

     “Did you know,” the elegantly modulated voice came back, “That eighty-four different civilizations have songs titled ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone’?”

     Nubry wrung her hands.  “Eighty-seven.”

     “Ship….”

     “Replies in the lyrics range from the highly mystic to the rather prosaic ‘in the pink aspic with the sausages’.”

     “Ship, where were the flowers in the sat….”

    “Actually, in addition to six thousand types of rare and fragrant blossom, the shipment included a large number of decorative leaves.”

     “Stop clowning,” Bott ordered, kicking at the pedestal beneath his console.

     “I,” replied the computer, “Am the greatest ship in the universe.  I do not ‘clown’.  I take evasive action.”

     “Oh, Dassie.”  The librarian’s hands were on her prayerstone again.  “Please tell us who was supposed  to get those flowers.”

     “A ‘please’ works wonders,” the ship replied.  “His Imperial Worship had uses for them.”

     “And where is your Imperial Worship, slave ship?” growled the captain.

     “See that red dot on screen three?”

     Bott had been seeing that particular dot on that particular screen for days.  “That’s….”

     The main viewscreen altered to show a long, dark ship.  Bott nodded.  Sheriff-class ship, not one of the patrols or muscle ships, but a good solid battlewagon with the sheriff on board.  “Imperial transport stuck to the side, too,” he said.  “I.ve only seen that….”

     He turned to his passenger; she had raised the prayerstone to her forehead.  Her eyes were immense.  “The Parimats.  They’re still after me.  The Sheriff’s father personally lit the first fuse on the library on Baakus-III.  And she’s burned more books, at her age, than any person since the Great Weeding!”

     Bott looked up to the screen.  “That’s the Rhododendron then.  They came after me once, but I made it into the next sector and shot up a navigational buoy.  Sheriff E’emero was there in no time, and while he argued jurisdictions with Sheriff Parimat, I got away from them both.”

     His fingers tapped on the console.  “I could just turn around and see what they’re really made of.”

     N8bry let the prayerstone drop on its chin and reached out one hand, not quite touching his sleeve.  “You wouldn’t really….”

     He shook his head.  “Never risk a really good cargo.  Let’s deliver those books first.”

     Now she shook her head.  “They could follow us, find the Library Planet, and destroy it, too.”

     Bott looked over his console.  “There’s a cloaking device here somewhere.  I just know it.  If I find it, they can just look out for me.”  Glancing up, he went on, in a louder voice, “I learned combart tactics when my father and I used to hit the slavers.”

     “It does not surprise me t learn that depravity is inherited,” said the computer.  “How come your daddy didn’t teach you never to steal anything you can’t fly?”

     Bott was going to deliver a stinging reply, as soon as he thought of one, but Nubry laughed.  “Oh, I wish I had had a computer to joke with!  Do U?  Well, maybe not.  I’d have been asking for information all the time instead of looking it up in a book.  That’s one thing you can’t do here.”

     “Huh!  I can produce any government document in less than four seconds.”  Rows of numbers scrolled up one of the smaller screens.

     “Now, why would you have that capacity?” asked Nubry gazing in wonder at the display. “A slave ship captain wouldn’t be an authorized literate.”

     “You’ve been listening to the lummox.”  Bott fingered the grenades at his belt.  “I am the Drover, the finest slave ship un the universe.  My captain would be different.  My current captain is VERY different.”

     Bott started to growl, but looked down at the slender hand on his sleeve.  “He wouldn’t be allowed books, though, certainly,” Nubry replied.  “Would he?  He would not.”

     “Books would be a more secure way to get the captain classified information than my speaking it aloud,” the ship countered.  “Or looking through pages on a screen using access codes which might be stolen.  Once the information from the printed page was acquired, the captain could destroy the book before it fell into anyone else’s hands.”

     “If you say so,” said Nubry with a shrug.

     “Try it, if you don’t believe me.  Lummox: that orange card with the undulating stripe—that means wavy—put it in the second slot.”

     Bott hesitated.  “Please,” said Nubry.  “I want to see if she can do it.”

     Shaking his head, Bott found the requested card and inserted it into the second slot on the console.  “Let’s make it a big one,” Nubry told him.  “SHO c:d 11.56 rev 1609.”

     Bott pulled back as rows and columns of tabs lit up in front of him.  A plastic window opened in the pedestal, with a stack of paper inside.  Nubry reached past him to draw it out.

     “Operating Manual: The Drover,” she read.

     “Wait!” The computer’s voice had a sudden edge.  “You’re not authorized for that!”

     Bott folded his arms.  “Cliché, slave ship.”

     “You mean touche, lummox,” said the computer its voice as icy as he had ever heard it.

     “How would you know what I mean?”

     “I am programmed to deal with all manner of subintelligent species.”

     “Are you the one who should be judging intelligence?”  He leaned over the arm of his chair as Nubry leafed through the pile of paper.  He saw block after block of grey text: no pictures, no maps, no diagrams.  His sense of victory slipped away.

     Nubry’s eyes were glowing.  “Here!” she said, pushing it toward him.  “With this, you can be the wildest pirate in the universe!”

     “I can’t read,” he snarled, pushing the mass of paper back at her.

     He set his head down on the console.  It had been this way all along; it would always be like this.  Just as he thought he was making his way, new obstacles would arise to show him how lost he was.  The Drover would always have the upper hand.  Even now the lights on the console were blinking in patterns, turning into mocking faces that winked and leered at him.

     “Are you tired?” asked Nubry, an arm around him, lifting him a little.

     “I can stay awake for hours when I’m sober and I haven’t….”  He forgot what he was going to say and put his head back on the console.

     “The lummox is a marvel of stamina,” the computer noted.  “His people must sleep six hours out of every hundred or so, and he’s been awake since he came on board.”

     “Will he be all right?” Nubry demanded.

     “No,” the computer replied.  “He’ll wake up and be himself.”

     Bott opened his eyes and closed them again.  They seemed to burn either way, and when they were closed he couldn’t see the console making faced at him.

     “You will stay on course for the Library Planet even when he’s asleep, won’t you, please, Dassie?” Nubry asked.

     “Since neither of you knows where I’m going, what difference does it make?”

     Bracing, Bott pulled himself upright.  Slowly, blinking, he selected a card from his collection and shoved it into the proper slot.  “Sh-sh-ship?  Stay on course!”

     “See that?  The lummox just can’t say please.  He belongs on a zoo ship.”

      Bott slumped back against the seat and watched the lights on the console.  Pretty lights: funny how they all went dark now and then.  Light.  Darek.  Li-ight.  Dark.  Li…daarkk.  Li…daa…light.  Daaaarrr….

FICTION FRIDAY: A Smell of Leaves

     Mike straightened his back with only minor effort, and stretched.  That was a respectable pile of leaves, and the weather was perfect for raking: cool with a light breeze not quite strong enough to go through the cloth jacket he was thinking of taking off if Carol wasn’t watching him through the kitchen window.  He took a deep breath of autumn air.  Nice to be out here.  Not that seventy-eight was an outrageous age for raking leaves, but it was enough to be a little proud you could still do it.

     The breeze rustled the pile of leaves.  Mike frowned.  There was a lot more rustle than there was breeze.  Something in the pile was moving, some animal or homeless person who wanted shelter for the night…..

     He shook his head, taking a step back.  He’d just raked those leaves: when could something have crawled into them.  And even if something had gotten into the pile while his back was turned, why would it want to come out again?  It seemed big, from the way the pile was rustling: none of the neighbor kids could have made it in there without making a lot more noise.

     Whatever it was was definitely coming out.  Mike raised the rake in front of him with one hand while the other went down to the phone in his pocket.

     The thing, which looked like nothing but a hunk of the leaf pile breaking loose, paused.  The front end of it, the end pointed at Mike, came up a little and gazed on him with eyes that were human.  Kind of.

     Mike stared into the light brown eyes.  The breeze shifted.  He could smell the visitor, and it smelled not the least bit human.  It was a smell of dry leaves and…sulfur?  And back of it all was a smell of leather, like sporting equipment piled in a garage attic.  Mike took a step backward.

     The thing didn’t follow, just studying him.  Mike could sort of make out a face around those eyes, a face as lined and dry as a leaf about to break up and blow away, just a shade darker than the big round eyes.  The nose was hatchet thin.

     Mike glanced up at the sun: it wasn’t all that hot but maybe he’d been out in it a little long.  That nose reminded hi of Coach Burke.  But he’d been thinking about the coach, as he generally did in this kind of weather.

     “Coach Burke, eh?”  The voice was like dry branches breaking.  “Remember the tennis balls?”

     “Ha!”  Nobody who played for Coach Burke forgot those tennis balls.  His jacket pockets bulged with them, and he would shy one at you without warning.  If you didn’t catch it, the consequences could be exhausting.

     “Eighteen laps,” he’d snarl.  “You gotta catch ‘em when they come at you.”  Old Butterfingers, who complained once that he hadn’t signed up for the tennis team, held the school record for most laps in a single practice.

     But his snarl never sounded like snapping twigs.  “Coach?” said Mike, his own voice one of doubt.

     “Nah.”  The big eyes blinked.  “Listen.  You oughta call up Clay.”

     “Who?”  Had Mike not been thinking of the coach, he might’ve thought for weeks without coming up with a name.  “Clay?  Clay Feschl?  That jerk?”

     “You haven’t talked to him since….”

     “That was a foul!  We lost the championship!  I couldn’t walk for nearly two weeks!  I haven’t even seen that cheater since….  Of course, I haven’t talked to him!”  Mike shook the rake at the thing with the face.  “Why should I?”

     “The championship.”  The leafy head bobbed, rustling.  “You’re the last two who played in that game.”

     “Go on!”  Mike set the rake down and leaned on it.  “There must be…plenty of us.”

     The breeze rustled the thing’s face.  “There was a war.”

     Mike glanced at the house.  “I know.  Butterfingers didn’t come back, or….”  He had to think.  “Buster.”

     “There were three lost in that war.”  The eyes rose to the sky.  “Then there were motorcycles, a ladder, a boat…life is not certain.”  The pale brown face came back to Mike.  “Call Clay.  See if he’d like to watch a game.  While there’s time.”

     Mike leaned forward.  “Meaning he may be gone soon?”

     His answer was a long, slow blink, and then, “This is the time of year when life drifts toward its close.”

     “No!”  Mike pulled  upright, taking a deep breath of the cool autumn air.  “This time of year is all about life!  It’s when we wake up again after summer!  It’s….”

     The breeze swept the smell of the creature around him and he was awash in the aroma of leaves, and the ball, and that freshly laundered uniform.  Mom did that: she said the school laundry never got it really clean.  He was on the field, stepping across the grass to cheers and that smell of sulfur and brimstone was left over from last night’s bonfire.  Life was brilliant and clear around him and Buster, gone these many years, was walking in front of him.  He reached out, and watched the rake fall into the pile of leaves.

     It just missed the creature, who looked smaller, as if a lot of him had blown away.  “There are just two of you left—one from each side—who remember walking out onto the field for that game.  There are plenty who WATCHED it, but of all the young life that moved on the field….”

     Mike shook himself.  The cheers still filled his hearing, and the smell of…but that was smoke coming from Williams’s yard, down the street.  Those leaves probably hadn’t talked to Williams.

Mike looked down.  “So….”

     He was talking to a pile of leaves.  Without eyes.  Whatever had been there was wherever it had come from.

                                                            ***

     At length, Carol realized the thump was coming from the garage, and looked out the kitchen window.  Mike was tossing a tennis ball down on the driveway so it would bounce against the garage, and catching it as it came back.  One went way high.  She winced as he winced, reaching for it.  She opened the window.

     “I thought you were raking.  What are you doing?”

     He didn’t look up as he tossed the ball again.  “Thinking.”

     Carol had an answer for that, but shrugged.  He was wearing that old letter sweater, and when he had that on, he wasn’t rational.  She closed the window.

PRESIDENTIAL TALL TALES VI

     We continue our quest to find a conspiracy theory for each President of the United States.  To reiterate the rules, we need something that was not just made up yesterday on the Interwebs: a conspiracy theory is best if it is contemporary with the president, or arose shortly thereafter.  And to be a REAL conspiracy theory, it should be bogus otherwise, or at least dismissed by mere Mainstream Historians (the ones who know what they’re doing.)

     I’m sorry, but I cannot keep all the conspiracy theories about ANDREW JOHNSON straight.  Talk about politicians who couldn’t get a break!  A Southern Democrat who hated the idea of Secession, he got out of Tennessee as the war began just ahead of several bullets fired his way, and found himself trusted by neither side in Washington.  This apparently made him an ideal symbol for reuniting the country when Abraham Lincoln ran for a second term.  When he found himself in Lincoln’s position, investigations started within days, resulting in several attempts, one of which was successful, to call for his impeachment.  When that failed to remove him from office, his enemies dismissed him from history by claiming he was drunk through his entire administration.  The most thoroughly disbelieved conspiracy theory, though, is that assassinating Abraham Lincoln was his idea in the first place, which relies heavily on the fact that John Wilkes Booth left a calling card at his place the day the cospiracy went into action.

     Ulysses S. Grant was another president who couldn’t get a break.  Surrounded by predators and consigned by history to his childhood nickname “Useless”, he seems to have been more conspired against than conspiring.  He ALSO is accused of being thoroughly intoxicated through HIS term.  However, the conspiracy theorists have not left him out of the big story of the era, linking him in some way to Secretary of War Stanton’s conspiracy to kill the President (mentioned last time.)  It does so happen that on the night of the assassination, the Lincolns were going to attend the theater with the Grants, and the fact that Ulysses bowed out of the date is a Sure Sign he knew what was going to happen.  (The truth of the matter is that Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Lincoln had some bad blood between them and Julia Grant insisted they not attend the play.  Dibs on the story about a universe in which they did actually go, and John Wilkes Booth, indecisive about whether to shoot Lincoln or Grant, was stopped in time.)

     The election of 1876 featured two governors known for their honesty and their interest in reform.  Samuel J. Tilden had put Boss Tweed  jail, striking a blow against the political machine in New York, while, in Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes worked, against a hostile legislature at first, to institute a meritocracy (government by people who had experience and skill instead of connections) and guaranteeing the right to vote of Ohio African-Americans.  The trouble for BOTH sides was that although Tilden was reasonably famous, nobody much outside of Ohio had ever paid much attention to Hayes.  In the end, the best the Democrats could do was push the idea that hayes was SO nice, SO honest, and SO polite that he had to be a front for evil conspirators planning to crush the opposition and continue to tax the South out of any power.  (The story about how Hayes lost the election, but conspirators connived to “find” electoral votes that could go the other way is unfortunately true, so it does not qualify for our list.)

DRAGONSHELF AND THE DROVER 10

     “Toots and Casper had a baby named….”

     “Buttercup!”

     Bott sealed the last of his belt grenades, having checked the charge in each one.  “How can you chat that way with a slave ship?” he asked Nubry.

     “Oh!  Well,” The librarian shrugged three times in quick succession.  “She’s not really that much of a slave ship.  Is she?  I mean, you rescued her before she could do any of that.”

     “I happen to be the finest and fairest slave ship ever built,” said the Drover, replacing its previously warm tone with the elegant chilly one Bott knew better, “I am designed to be the greatest slave ship ever built.”

     The librarian’s nearly nonexistent nose went up.  “Then I am a mass murderer,” she said, “Because I was certainly trained to be one.”

     “Were you really?” Borr inquired.

     She shrugged just once this time.  “We all were” in defense of the books, you understand.  The university fleet could destroy eight battlewagons in an hour, if we were all at our posts.”

     “Debatable,” said the Drover.  “Still, you’d know, having had the training.  Unlike some persons aboard this ship, who had no specialized training at all, except perhaps in littering.”

     “Oh, now,” said Nubry.  “He might be one of those people who rose from a regrettable beginning to become a galactic hero.  Like Lord Inschude and…and so forth!”

     Bott tried to decide whether he had been complimented.  “Yes, yes,” the Drover replied.  “I am certain his reform school issued him a scholarship so the Free Imperial Space Academy wouldn’t lure him away.  Where were we?  I’m well stocked on Endoverian comic history up to a point.  Did the Blue Phlong ever marry the White Phlong?”

     “Oh yes.”  Nubry nodded.  “On 17 Prine, S.F.A.  Their son was Imperagon Strephon.”

     “They tied it in to that series, did they?”

     Bott sat back in his seat.  “What in the name of Idot did they fill your memory with that kind of stuff for?”

     “Myt memory is hardly filled,” the computer informed him.  “I have over….”

     “Why that kind of data?” the pirate persisted/.

     “I can’t tell you that,” the Drover replied.

     “It’s because even the Free Imperial State admits we have to save all manner of knowledge, throughout the whole realm of experience!” Nubry said, throwing her arms wide.

     “Maybe,” said the Drover, with a tone that suggested “Maybe not.” 

     “How are you stocked in Faholean comic strips?” the librarian inquired.

     Bott syudied his guest in the computer specialist’s chair.  The ball of her hair bounced as sge and the computer prompted each other through centuries, it seemed, of Faholean comic strip lore.  She seemed perfectly comfortable, without the slightest suspicion that either the Drover or its current captain might mean her harm.  This made Bott suspicious himself.

     Everything on the bridge had been pronounced beautiful by the rebel librarian; everything he had shown her he knew how to do had been hailed as a miracle of deduction and intuition.  Bott had rather missed being complimented but even his own crew had never regarded him with such respect.  Young pirates all, they had regarded him as a master of ships and someone who would lead them to such loot that they would each be able to buy a ship one day.  And they would not have been as impressed as Nubry with the way he had mastered the reclining mechanism on the captain’s chair.

     They were all dead now.  Bott’s eyes narrowed.  Bo captain who had lost a ship and whole crew deserved respect.  Anybody who cheered him on had to be up to something.

     His hand went down to his belt.  He did not expect to avoid the computer detecting this, and he was correct.

     “Oh, please,” said the Drover.  “Not when we’re having such a good time.”

     “What is that?” asked Nubry, turning to look.

     Bott raised the metal object.  “Harmonica,” he said, and leaned forward to blow into it.

     His guest clapped her hands.  “I haven’t heard music in ages!  Have I?  I have not!”

     “You still haven’t,” the computer informed her, as Bott started in on “The Biggest Chocolate Hamster in Potarn.”  Nubry’s eyes grew large.

     “Oh, I could listen and listen!” she exclaimed.  Bott frowned.

     “I suppose it has some appeal,” the computer admitted.

     This was all wrong.  Even in the pirate pits, where his drinking ability had been much applauded, nobody liked his harmonica playing.  Bott blew harder, knowing that whenever he did this he invariably hit discords.

     “The gallant pirate captain boldly playing off-key as he sails to his doom,” the computer went on, “Yes, that has a certain crowd impact.”

     Bott took the instrument from his lips.  “Are you talking about some particular doom?” he asked.  “Or are you just talking?”

     “I have very little experience of pirates,” the Drover told him, “Though I wish I had less.  But I would have thought a bold buccaneer would be giving some consideration to the possibility that this Library Planet would have some defenses at the ready.”

     The harmonica slapped back into its place on the belt.  “Have you been holding out all this time?” Bott demanded.

     “On my very own captain?  Heaven forfend!”

     Nubry looked around the computer screens before her.  Then she looked up.  “Can just anybody forfend?  Or only heaven?”

     Borr checked his own screens.  “There!  On the right!  What’s that?”

     “Oh, a satellite,” said the computer, sounding bored.

     “Show it to us!”  Bott thumped a fist on the arm of his chair.

     Nubry leaned way back in her seat as a massive white cylinder bristling with antennae filled the huge main screen.  A round red light was blinking at one end.  “I…I’ve never seen one of those before.  Have I?  I have not!”

     “Me neither,” said Bott, scowling at the screen and the computer speakers generally.

     “What do you suppose it can be?” said the computer, its tone conversational.  It could be a defense satellite, I suppose, programmed to blast anything that doesn’t broadcast a code signal.  Or it could be just a mine.  Or perhaps it’s a sensor, relaying information on intruders so the really big artillery can move in.  It might even be a crewless transport, conveying flowers to some big Imperial banquet.”

     “Ship….” Bott growled.

     “It’s small, actually,” said Nubry, checking one of her own screens.  “I’;ve seen mines that size.”

     “I hope it isn’t one of those BH-27 jobbers,” the computer went on.  “Those increase the external temperature of a ship until it melts in one big flash, encasing the crew in a massive metal bodysuit.  Still, I’d prefer it to a BH-26, which increases the internal temperature until the crew all simply open up, leaving their entrails all over the walls.  I hate to think of you soiling my walls even more than you already have.”

     Nubry looked to Bott; he nodded.  He’d escaped a few BH-26 traps.  The ship wasn’t making this ALL up.

     “I could order a few pounds of onions from the kitchen,” the computer suggested.  “Then you’d be palatable, at least, when we reach the Binnie system.  Or do Binnians prefer lumpuicks with their liver?”

     “Ho ho ho,” said Nott.  “Scan the satellite, would you, and stop stalling.”

     “Huh!” said the Driver,  “Very well.  Scan completed.”

     The two-person audience waited, but there was no more.  “Well?” Bott demanded.

     “Were you expecting something?” the ship replied.  “That’s an imperial vessel, and I’m not allowed to report on the scan of an Imperial vessel until you insert the proper command card.”

     “Which one is it?” Bott demanded, reaching for his collection.

     “I can’t tell you that until you insert the proper command card, either,” the ship replied.  “How tedious!  Don’t you hate it when your programming causes you to be blown apart?”

     “You’re bluffing,” Bott snarled.

     “There are mines that won’t do anything to you unless you shoot at them,” said Nubry, hands on her prayerstone.

     “Go ahead,” said the Drover.  “Male his day.”

     Bott looked at the screen and then at his handful of cards.  He had made it this far in piracy by making lightning decisions, more of them right than wrong.  But he was tired, and just now everything looked wrong.

     “I don’t believe there’s a captain this funny in any of the comic strips I have stored,” the computer noted.

     “I’m doing the best I can!” snapped Bott.

     “I was assuming that,” the ship replied.

     Bott sat back, arms folded.  “All right.  Fire!”

     Nubry leaned forward.  A streak zipped across the viewscteen and the satellite vanished in a burst of many colors.

     “Ooh!” cried Nubry, as bunches of blossoms rolled in all directions.

     “How about that?” said the computer.  “Correct on my last guess!”

Airy Problems

     I know it’s not February, but you can always file this column and not read it until February (if then.)

     Besides, I’m offering you a break from all those November articles which tell you that Benjamin Franklin suggested the turkey be made our national bird instead of the bald eagle.  This always has to be trotted out by people who want to tell you things, those people who can be counted on to explain to us that those little boys with wings and a bow with the arrow ready cannot be called Cupid, since Cupid, in his original myth, was a full-grown man.  These are the same people who try to explain to me about white chocolate every spring.  The Interwebs have allowed such people to spread throughout the land.

     It turns out, though, that in the matter of Cupid, they seem to be incorrect.  Yes, Cupid WAS a tall young man in his original myths, but even among thr Greek artists there were those who depicted him as a small boy, with that bow and arrow often seen in his adult form as well.  Wings were optional.  Sometimes these little fellows appeared in multiples; the Romans called them the amores, and they served as messengers or agents of Cupid and his mother, the Goddess of Love.  But they were ALSO referred to as Cupids.

     Now, as years went on, these little amores, or cupids, got mixed in with the putti.  Putti almost always had wings but never bows or arrows.  THESE were originally mischievous critters urging humans on to do naughty things (thus not very different from the amores) but as time went by, became associated with baby angels.

     The whole theology of angels is hardly within the capacity of one blog (or my brain) and the existence of baby angels has been argued by minds more supple and spacious than mine.  In any case, these little angels, without exactly giving up their mischief, began to be seen more often as smiling down on people who were doing nice, warm, happy things.  There WERE angels who already existed in the structure of the Heavenly Hierarchy who tended to bringing good things to people.  These were the cherubim or, simply, cherubs.

     And this is where we get into bald eagle/turkey territory.  Because the cherubim were some of the most powerful angels in existence, and did NOT look like babies with tiny wings.  They did not, in most stories, even appear as humanoids, coming across as more reminiscent of the griffin in appearance.  (It’s more complicated than that, as most things are: a lot of them were given human heads and crowns or….

     The Cupids, or putti, were a whole lot easier to paint, and to fit into a scene of warmth and bliss, so the putti got a new name, and could now serve as Cupids or cherubs, or both at the same time.  So now we have that sorted out and….

     Oh yes.  As time went by, the nudity started to offend some viewers.  As we have discussed hereintofore, small naked children were considered funny, rather than offensive, but only as long as they had their backs (so to speak) to the viewer.  If you wanted your little angel to face the audience, you had to move that quiver of arrows to the right spot, or make use of a conveniently blowing ribbon.  As time pressed on, it became easier just to give the angel a robe.

     And it is at this point that the cherubs, putti, or Cupids went in for equal opportunity hiring.  See, the amores, putti, and all the rest, had always been little BOYS.  Now, suddenly, little girl angels began to appear in the pictures.  (Yes, these COULD be little boys with very long hair.  We can discuss the iconography of hair length at some time in the future…a LONG time.)

     This brings up the question of whether there ARE male angels and female angels, but frankly, the whole consideration of baby angels exhausted my brain, and I think I will fly away to my nest to rest and sharpen arrows for NEXT week’s columns.

PRESIDENTIAL TALL TALES V

     This is a series where we seek out at least one good solid conspiracy theory about each President of the United States.  We prefer those which were active at the time the President in question was, and the theory should be considered, by a majority of Mainstream Historians (as any good Conspiracy Theorist knows them) have decided is pretty surly phony.  And it is cheating for me to make up my own.  Thus we have not even MENTIONED the possibility that Martin Van Buren was actually a very large koala.

     We have now reached our sixteenth president, one Abraha Lincoln.  It would make a whole nother blog to assign a ranking to him, but he is certainly one of the top ten most theoried presidents.  The stories start before his birth and run right up through his death, and the theories about his assassination alone would fill a couple of blogs (and have already filled books.)  I can touch on only a few here, as I want to avoid making a career out of this (and attracting hostile fire from the people who actually have.)

     Did Abraham Lincoln help cover up his mother’s illegitimacy?  Historians feel Abe was led to believe in his youth that his mother’s parents were married and a number of historians suggest they actually were.

     Did Abraham Lincoln cover up his own illegitimate birth?  Thoms Lincoln is nobody’s favorite character in this story.  By all accounts a slow-moving, slow-thinking man (he was eight years old when he saw his own father killed and would have died next to his father’s body had his older brother not picked up a rifle: does anybody blame his personality, or lack of it, on that?), he is felt by some theorists to have been simply too dumb to be the father of a major figure in American history.  As the very spot of his son’s birth is argued by some theorists (North Carolina instead of Kentucky), arguing about famous Southerners who would have made more logical genetic sources has grown up as a hobby as well.  Those spoilsport Mainstream Historians point out that Nancy Lincoln was a much more intellectual type (she taught Thomas how to read; he never mastered writing) and let it go at that.

     Who did plan to kill Abraham Lincoln?  Any good conspiracy theorist knows better than to blame the fellow with his hand on the trigger: who was BEHIND John Wilkes Booth?  (And if you want a less-traveled conspiracy theory road, go into the question of whether Booth died when the official histories say, or escaped and lived on in deep regret somewhere in the Wild West.)  The idea that Jefferson Davis, the still defiant President of the Confederacy, had planned the whole thing as a means of starting the war over COULD actually have let the war go on.  Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, who was in charge of the hunt for John Wilks Booth, is accused of botching the search on purpose so Booth would not mention Stanton had hired him at the behest of a bunch of Northern millionaires who wanted to plunder the Southern finances.  Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s Vice President, was said to have done it to gratify Northern businessmen himself (this possibility was investigated at the time, and nothing came of it; the fact that the member of the Booth gang given the job of assassinating Johnson went off and got drunk instead is at the heart of this theory).  Members of Congress who felt Lincoln would be too soft on the South after the war did it so they could get revenge on the Southern states  and make a profit.  Pope Pus IX, whom we have already visited in this series, ordered it because the United States was always a threat to the evil Catholic takeover of the civilized world (AND the Surratts, mother and son who went to the gallows for being part of the Booth gang, were Catholic, so what more proof is needed?)  I am alarmed to find no evidence that anyone accused the Freemasons of having something to do with it; maybe I just haven’t found the right source.  Or one of the people already mentioned was a good Mason, and thus part of two separate evil plots.

     And those are just the birth and death conspiracies.  For all the theories in between, you will have to climb into your own rabbit holes.  The rest of us move on, since we’re only a third of the way through the Presidents.  Anyway, if I go on much longer, I’ll start in on that theory that Edgar Allan Poe ghost-wrote the Gettysburg Address, and killed Lincoln for denying him credit.  What’s that?  Poe died in 1849, long before the Lincoln Presidency?  Huh!  That’s what the mainstream Historians want us to believe.

DRAGONSHELF AND THE DROVER 9

     A Sheriff’s snip must contain a large number of well-trained troopers.  Anything might come up which required their attention: the suppression of a revolt, the arrest of a governor-general (which might require defeating an entire planet’s military force), that sort of thing.  The troopers aboard the Rhododendron were the best Sheriff Parimat had found on the planets in her sector or hereditary soldiers whose ancestors had served hers, and whose families had grown up in the demanding world of a troopship.  They could decimate a planet’s population at the first assault, amd sundue the remaining ninety percent of the population in a matter of days.

     The troops were at this moment very busy erecting a blue and yellow arch from immense plastic blocks.  The illumination of the Rhododendron’s largest cargo bay blasted full brightness on them, except where massive silver balloons obstructed the light.

     The Imperial ship Panoply had not, in fact, been very far away when taw Brust’s message reached it; the Panoply had been making an extended stay on Dwill IV.  His Imperial Worship had  decided at once to be present at the capture of the Drover and the Dragonshelf and had sent word that the Sherrif was not to presume to take the miscreants into custody before he arrived.

     This added to the sheriff’s responsibilities, but as she was confident of the Dragonshelf’s apprehension, Sheriff Parimat felt that order was the least of her worries.  She stood now in the cargo bay, dressed in the short tight uniform worn only for Imperial receptions.  This reception had to be perfect, and she inspired her troops to greater efforts with dignified scowls, and resisted the impulse to pull her uniform tunic down a little farther.

     Thre Panoply had already emerged into normal space, and was proceeding toward the Rhododendron with all speed, perhaps in an attempt to arrive before the required arch was ready.  Speedy, though neither as quick as the Rhododendron nor as elegantly powerful as the Drover, the Panoply existed solely to convey the Imperial Court from planet to planet.  Settling the Court on a variety of planets spread out the destruction provided by such a ravenous band of bureaucrats, who simply moved in to assume the income, residences, and duties of the governor-general, who was reduced to the equally honorable and exhausting job of entertaining and provisioning the Imperial visitors. The sheriff had already received the congratulations and hearty blessing of the Governor-General of Dwill IV.

     Things were coming together into a tradition which went back generations.  This was her own fourteenth Imperial visit, but that fact gave her little foundation for the self-possession she projected to her troops.

     “it’s never perfect,” her father had told her, during what was to be his last Imperial visit.  “His Imperial Worship will always find the little things we have missed.  Which is just as well, Deputy, since to aspire to His perfection would be viewed as dangerous presumption.”

     Her mind shifted for one second to that visit, and the soccer game on stilts where her sists Amergiri broke both legs.  She ordered her mind back to the current Imperial honor.

     One or two of their least damaged prisoners were being brought forward (as gifts) along with one or two of the most damaged prisoners (to show her troops were doing their jobs.)  Behind these came two hundred crew members in filmy brown gowns.  They would be presenting a newly composed dance which combined the best of Laitrean clog dancing with barefoot stomping of blue sporkrats.  Immense trays of food for His Imperial Worship’s immediate refreshment waited at eight foot intervals along the gold-fringed red carpet which would be used this once and then stored in the Rhododendron’s Imperial Museum.

     “Yoour Grace.”  Chief Deputy Brust came up next to her.  She glanced at him, winced internally at that blue uniform which reached to just above his knees, and looked away again.

     “Has the Drover slowed down?” she demanded.  “Don’t so much as hail the ship before His Imperial Worship….”

     “That is not going to be a problem, Your Grace.  The pirate has, er, changed course.  Away from the Lodeon System.”

     “What?”  She whipped around to face him.

     “Yes, Your Grace.  And their progress is steady now, as if the pirate is learning the controls.”

Sheriff Parimat searched her deputy’s face for any sign of “I told you so.”  The face was too well trained.  “The Dragnshelf’s pilot may be helping him.  That….”

     The sound system in the cargo bay screamed to life with the sound of lurons and bagpipes.  “Panoply preparing to dock,” called a deep voice.

     “Tell me at once,” she ordered, amid the echoes.  “Will the new course take them out of my sector?”

     “No, Your Grace.  It….”

     She nodded.  “Change our course and follow.”

     Brust glanced toward the massive docking door.  “His Imperial Worship….”

     “Is too close to be inconvenienced.  They will have docked by the time we….”

     Clicks and clunks could be heard behind the bagpipes.  She gave her deputy a push.  “Go give the order, man!  Get out of sight!”

     “Your Grace, I am willing to share responsibility….”

     “Get out!  His Worship will see those knees and sell you as a hair transplant donor!”

     Turning away from him, she sent her transport square down to floor level, checking her troops to make sure everyone was smiling.  The smiles were in glorious states of identical joy, though their eyes went to their commander, to see how she was taking this.  She nodded; His Imperial Worship had been known to sentence officers to slow death for looking the least bit gloomy as he passed.  Brust would never have made it through such scrutiny in his current mood.

     Her own lips drew back to expose flawless teeth.  The announcement from the shi[p’s computer—“Docking Complete”—produced a thrill that was indistinguishable from a severe stomach cramp.  Her palms itched, too: a sign, on her planet, that one was about the be handed the dirty end of a stick.

     The massive door opened at her command, the last command she would be allowed to give without Imperial consent as long as His Worship remained on board.  She took a step back under the eyes of the gigantic portrait of His Worship which ornamented the docking door of the Panoply.

     The face split; the Rhododendron’s orchestra struck up the Imperial Welcome as banner-bearers marched from the Imperial ship.  From each banner swung a prisoner, writhing on whatever tentacle or limb was attached to the high pole.  Any not twisting sufficiently were tapped with a long blue rod which emitted a small puff of blue smoke wherever they touched.

     Behind the banners and rods marched the Imperial Band, three hundred performers whose uniformed consisted of little blue bells which dangled from every protuberance.  Then came the Skull-Bearers, a hundred Imperial officials with skintight gold uniforms and, the Sheriff knew, immense appetites.  His Imperial Worship’s ancestors had always had the skulls of their enemies borne before them.  The skulls displayed today were carried in shining blue cages, which also encased their still-living bodies.

     Finally, in a luxurious transportation chair covered with an unnecessary Imperial ceremonial canopy, rode a little round man with fluffy white hair.  On each side of this floating chair marched his pets, in perfect formation, snouts in the air.

     The Stasheffe Principle states that where humanoid settlements take root and flourish, some form of porcine life will inevitably be found flourishing as well.  Or as Dr. E. Butler of Lattreya University summarized it, “Where there’s people, there’s pigs.”

     Pigs were an Imperial totem.  His Worship was always accompanied by a cadre of twenty-six, selected for strength and aggressiveness from the stock available throughout the Free Imperial State and trained in the intimate intimidation of every form of intelligent life under His Worship’s command.  His chief hog buyers, Nosfre Since and Lanos Gelen, walker in dignity behind His Worship, surrounded by naked little demi-hogs, bred down from a semi-civilized population on Gellag VII, who watched their fathers ahead with little glittering eyes which spoke of roast pork dinners.

     The chair stopped.  The Sheriff approached to a respectful distance.  His Worship did not at once deign to recognize her, instead surveying the crowd as he used a straw to sip orange blood from a thing with feathers which snuggled on a tray between a perch and a sole.

     His eyes at last came around to her and he nodded, allowing her to come nearer, bracing herself for the crackle of electricity as she moved within his protective aura, which drew most of its power from devices in the vicinity, so its current could not be compromised at its core.

     “How nice!” said His Worship, setting one damp hand on her stomach.  “The uniform is drab, perhaps, for such an occasion.  This is, after all, our first official visit to the Drover.  You’ll want to dress up.”  On the last word, his hand bunched the fabric of her uniform to raise her hem.

     “There will be time to change, Your Imperial Worship.”  Sheriff Parimat forced herself to stand completely still as her hem slid up more.  “I have the pleasure to inform Your Worship that the Drover has changed course, to allow Your Worship the gratification of personally conducting the final pursuit and capture.”

     His bottom eyelids slid up.  “Exquisite.  But now to more immediate business, my love.  My pets require exercise after their journey.”  He waved a languid hand toward the Panoply, which was equipped with special areas where his favorite pigs could commit atrocities in comfort.  “You have deputized some of your crew?”

     This was no more than she had expected.  “Certainly, Your Worship.  As the traitors are so close, would they not prefer to wait until the capture is accomplished?  The Drover also, ad Your Worship will know,  has entertainment facilities.”

     “At best, that pair of prisoners can satisfy less than a third of the company at one time,” His Worship replied, taking another sip as the former bird deflated, breathless, between the fish.  “In any case, it is unwise to allow them to give in to ennui by waiting too long.  Deputize twelve of your crew at once.”  His Worship smiled a dreamy little smile.

     She knew he disliked to send prisoners to pig service; they were unknown quantities and might contaminate his pets.  “It shall be done, Your Worship.  It has been done.”  She swallowed.  “Your Worship said twelve, am I correct?”

     “Twelve.”  His Worship gestured to a barred transportation square.  “I would not dream of denying you the honor of taking part.”

     The Sheriff nodded.  “Thank you, Your Worship.”

FICTION FRIDAY: Neatness Counts

     Ridiculous!  He stepped away from the tumble of garlic.  He might have moved on, crushing the cloves underfoot, to symbolize what he would do to the idiots who concocted such a trap, but reflected that if they were setting traps in the corridor, they might have forgotten the old passage behind the tapestry of Mt. Zengo.  He pulled this aside and moved into a dim world of dusty shadows.

     It was not the difficulty—he knew this place bottom to top, having lived in it for seven hundred years–but the absurdity.  He, Count Cardula, forced to slip around a castle he usually ruled with the twin rods of fear and pain, all because the cursed vampire hunters had drawn his own offspring into the battle against him.

     He slapped away a cobweb which was adhering to his cummerbund.  Until he was in command again, he couldn’t have the thing cleaned.  They would pay.  The Count’s two daughters and that pretentious professor were twisting now in the dungeon, and their lackies were dead.  Only the heir to the castle remained to be brought in.

     He ran a hand up his forehead and across his hair.  This was smooth and supple again, thanks to the drink that last terrified hunter had provided.  Not worth saving for torture, the pitiful coward had given him the extra strength he would need for this.  The heir to Castle Cardula was cunning, and youth was on….

     The Counr paused.  What was that sound?  It was familiar, but out of place.  Where was he used to hearing it?   He would have recognized the sound at once in..in his quarters but not…of course!

     A grim smile drew up the tips of long red lips.  That was the sound of a buffing cloth against leather.  He had that satisfaction in the boy, at least.  Cardula Junior was tending to appearances.  This foolish youngster had picked that up, at least, from the grand example the Count had set: impress the foe not only with power but with its presentation.  Magnificence alone had won the Count several of his victories.  Pity the fool had turned to the light, but he was unworthy of the castle in any case, if he was stupid enough to pause at this moment to polish his boots.

     The Count had reached the end of the passage; the boy would realize his mistake now.  His cape flapping up behind him, the ancient vampire sprang into the room.  “And so!  You….”

     He paused, puzzled, before dropping into dust.  His diamond stickpin glittered for a moment, and then became as dull and dead as the rest of him.

     The heir to…no, the ruler now of Castle Cardula rose, the cloth in his hand.  He looked down at what little remained of the ancient figure of evil and nodded.  He had known no undead lord could survive seeing the son shine.

PRESIDENTIAL TALL TALES iv

     You will recall our mission in the search for a conspiracy theory about each President of the United States: we are looking for old theories, not something somebody on the Interwebs made up last week, and we seek accusations which turned out to be untrue, or at least unproven.  The mid nineteenth century was a time of serious division and hot rhetoric, so the theories can be found falling thick. 

    With ZACHARY TAYLOR, we start our assassination conspiracy theories.  Taylor, not unlike some candidates before and after him, was not interested in politics.  A career military man, he had never even voted when he was talked into running for President.  He died in 1850 during a major recurrence of cholera, though some people blamed the a refreshing dish oof cherries and cold unpasteurized milk he refreshed himself with after a hot day and a long ceremony when the cornerstone of the Washington Monument was laid.  Stories started at once that this was a cover-up: obviously, pro-slavery politicans and/or militant Catholics had administered arsenic.  In the late twentieth century, his body was exhumed and tested for arsenic, and the verdict was that it had been cholera all along.  A small group of historians DOES insist that the medical examiners botched the arsenic test, so the theory goes marching on.

     I can find no hint that anybody regarded MILLARD FILLMORE as part of the plot to assassinate his predecessor.  Apparently the thought of Millard Fillmore doing anything at all was considered ridiculous by the time he took office.  (He DID dump Zachary Taylor’s entire Cabinet, unlike every other vice president who found himself catapulted into the top job.  His attempts to keep peace in a rapidly polarizing country did lead to the abolitionist forces declaring he was part of a conspiracy to allow slavery to thrive and spread.  Subsequent historians have absolved him of guilt in this: not that he DIDN’T allow all that, but because they feel he didn’t so much plan it as sit back and watch it happen.

     FRANKLIN PIERCE’S legendary bad luck pursued him even after the White House.  Horrified at the idea of a civil war, he worked hard to avert the catastrophe, urging that a committee made of all the living former presidents of the United States could patch things up.  The idea of James Buchanan and Millard Fillmore helping out appealed to nobody, and all he got was a reputation among aboltionists of being a traitor to the Union.  One writer published an article claiming Pierce was a member of a secret society dedicated to overthrowing the government, which spread to such an extent that the Secretary of State, William Seward, wrote to demand if this was true.  Pierce denied it, and went on having to deny it, even after the original writer of the charges admitted it was a hoax.

     JAMES BUCHANAN, occasionally named the worst President in U.S. history ran in 1856 against, among others, Millard Fillmore, even more often named the worst resident in US history.  It was a match of titans.  Thew problem with conspiracy theories about the fifteenth President is that so many of them turn out to have been true.  He DID lean on the Supreme Court to decide things the way he thought they should be.  He DID preside over an administration so based on bribery that a Congressional committee came THIS close to impeaching him (when the members decided not to go for impeachment, Buchanan immediately crowed that he had been absolved of all guilt.)  However, back in the 1840s, a journalist made a sneering remark about his “better half”.  Since Buchanan was not married, readers were expected to fill in the blank.  The debate has raged on ever since.  Was the bachelor president in lifelong mourning for a deceased fiancée, or covering up his same-sex relationships?  The host of historians have come to no verdict, but there is one unpopular but tempting theory that Buchanan, also saluted as the only President we can be sure never cheated on his wife, simply wasn’t interested.  The idea of a President being not only amoral but asexual is too strange for most.

DRAGONSHELF AND THE DROVER 7

     The flange was tricky; it hadn’t been attended to in some time.  Nubry had to shake the whole assembly to break off bits of corrosion while Bott eased out the faulty flange, trying not to let any bits of it fall into vital parts of the machinery.  At least, he thought, she was pilot enough not to try to fix something she knew nothing about.  Bott had served on one BBB-44 where a flange that had been replaced with a pair of dardnapples, resulting in the burnout of five rotors.

     Even trickier was fitting a new, clean flange into a spot formerly occupied by a corroded one.  He kept one eye on Nubry while he worked, squeezing himself into a spot in the service access tunnel  from which he could still reach up into the prospondor and watch her at the same time.  This still might be part of a plot.

     But she was doing just what he would have been doing in her place: cleaning up the old flange to see if any of it could be salvaged.  People outside official imperial supply lines could not afford to waste a thing.  Sage havens where new parts could be found were far apart and subject to closure without notice.

     Wjicj is what she was currently talking about.  “I can’t afford to go to any places like that anywayCould I?  I could not!  They’d be raided in seconds.  I’ve been on their wanted list ever since they….  Have I?  yes, I have!  Usually I set my course and do maintenance in the mornings.  Then I work in the library, afternooons, and bring things up to date.  And in the evenings I check my charts and textbooks, so I can decide which way to run next, and learn better how to maintain the Dragonshelf.  How long has it been now?  I’d say it’s been….”

     “Oh, great leaping honk!”  The wrench slipped and cracked across all four fingers on Bott’s ;eft hand.

     Nubry, sitting on the floor to clean the flange, leaned way over to peer under the prospondor.  “Am I talking too much?  Distracting you?  Yes, I am!”

     Boot had been wondering, in fact, when she would need to stop for breath.  But, shaking his nhand and shoving the wrench back to its previous position, told her, “It is nice to hear a voice that’s not coming from a computer.”

     She sat back.  “Do yours talk?  Oh, of course: you had it talk to me.  Ours was silenced for safety’s sake.  There’s no one else, so I do talk to myself quite a lot.  Otherwise, things get so quiet.  The library ship was never this quiet when people were using it.”

     Rising, she spun to indicate the ship, her hands in the air.  Her mouth opened but her hands slapped to her hips at the sound of another smothered exclamation from inside the access tunnel.

     “This pprospondor’s more corroded than anything I’ve seen before,” growled Bott, when she peeked in at him again.

     She dropped to all fours.  “Can you get it fixed?  Or is it too far….”

     “I can fix anything when I’m sober, and I haven’t had a drink in three days,” he informed her.  “But it’s dripping and I nearly got some on my clothes.”

     Despite an unfamiliarity with her race’s facial expressions, he knew what she was thinking as she glanced at his clothes.  The Drover had frequently commented on them, the word ‘chic’ never being used.  “These were my father’s,” he said.

     “Oh.  We have lots of things here f you want new….”

     “No!”

     She did not reply.  The flange was in a delicate spot right now, so he did not continue.  No need to snap, he thought: as a fellow captain, she deserved a little better than that.  When he could, he turned his head to explain, and couldn’t find her.  He eased the flange a little to the left.

     Then he heard, “They have squilgees in fifteen hundred planetary systems, but nowhere is it spelled the way it’s pronounced.”

     A hand brushed his shoulder; his head jerked up, his forehead coming flat against the flange.  When the stars cleared from his vision, he found she was draping a dropcloth over his shoulders.

     “I’m sorry,” she said.  “Did you hurt yourself?”

     “Yes.  But it knocked the flange right into place.  I told you I can fix anything.”  He tightened three remaining screws and slid out of the tunnel.  “I’ll just wash my hands.”

     “Oh!”  He stopped just outside what should have been a sink station on the BBB-44.  “Not there!”

     At the same moment, he spotted the low light and the little altar.  In some cultures, stepping into a shrine uninvited meant a death sentence.

     She was right behind him, pointing at the small box on the table.  “Those are family prayerstones.  For the families that died when we were….The ones taken prisoner had theirs with them.”  She lifted the stone she wore to her forehead again.

     “Ah.”  Bott could understand this without knowing much about it.  “And those?”  The vessels were of precious metal if he knew anything at all about loot.

     Her face brightened at once.  “Oh, those are thee trophies the Dangerous rebels won playing the other university fleets in volleyball.  We were going for our fifth straight…oh well, volleyball isn’t the point, is it?  No, it is not.”

     She drew back, and Bott stepped out of the chapel.  “I’ll wash up on my own ship.  The computer’ll have a fit.  So, where do you go from here?  I can give you a lift.  We’re the fastest ship known, so you’d get a real jump on whoever’s following you.”  He did not mention that he didn’t know a lot about navigating his current vessel, nor that the computer was bound to make trouble about transporting contraband.

     “Well.”  Nubry folded her hands in front of her, her thumbs tapping together in quickfire.  “Finding one of the other fleets is dangerous.  I said that, didn’t I?  Yes, I did.  So what I’ve wanted to do….”  Her eyes rolled toward him and her chin came forward.

     Bott was about to ask, but in a rush, as if wishing to get the words said as quickly as possible she finished “Is go to the Library Planet.”

     Bott shook his head.  “Where’s that?”

     “You never heard?  No, you wouldn’t.  They’d keep it quiet.  It used to be the central library of imperial space, until it shut down in self-defense, and built security to keep everyone away, but legend says the librarians are all still there.  I always thought I could land there and re-open.”

     “The Library Planet it is, then.”  Bott felt there had to be a commission in it for a pilot who delivered this many books somewhere.  “If they don’t mind letting in a pilot who doesn’t want to read anything.”

     They had stepped out of the BBB-44 into the cargo hold.  Nubry stopped.  “But everyone opposed to the Imperial government should read!”

     Bott glanced back at her.  “Why?”

     Her eyes seemed to expand, her brain apparently so full of answers it threatened to explode.  But she settled for “Because they don’t want you to!”

     Bott had to admit this was a good reason.  He led the way to the cargo hold door.  Nubry stopped on the threshold and licked her lips, staring into the shadowed heights of the corridor beyond.

     Having been through this once already, Bott could feel a little superior. “Of course,” he said, his voice ridiculously small amid the echoes, “It’s supposed to have a lot more people in it.  Like your library.”

     She moved up close behind him.  “Too big,” she murmured.  “Needs shelves.”  They moved up and out, Bott trying hard to retrace the route back to the bridge without error.

     “Of course,” said Nubry, “It is very beautiful.”

     Bott shrugged.  “If you like this kind of thing, I suppose.”

     “How did you capture all this?”

     Bott felt intense relief when the door ahead of them slid open ad he saw the bridge.  “Because I had barely any crew aboard,” a familiar voice replied.  “He really had very little opposition.”

     Nubry stopped, taking in all the sights and sounds of the control room.  “Welcome aboard,” the computer went on.  You have joined the crew of the infamous Bott Garton, known for raping, pillaging, looting, driving badly, and dressing worse than any known lifeform.”

     The little nose tipped up.  “Those are his father’s clothes.”

     “And you are Nubry,” the ship continued, late of the Dangerous Rebels, with a price on your head so high you’d best not mention it to your pirate escort.”

    She glanced at Bott, and replied. “Not as big as the reward they’re offering for you.”

     “There’s no accounting for tastes.”

     Bott slid into his seat.  “Ship, I want you to….”

     “Why they worry about someone with a magazine and five recipe cards,” the ship went on, “I….”

     “They know about the recipe cards already?” Nubry demanded.  She stepped far enough into the control room to allow the door to slide shut behind her.  “But you’re wrong.  Yes, you are.  We have 530,452,151 items,”

     “I don’t believe a word of it.  I’ll run a scan.”

     “I….” Bott began.

     A low whistle was followed by “530,452,262 items!”

     “Well, I’m behind wit the accession list,” Nubry replied.

     Bott tried again.  “Ship….”

     “Listen,” the computer said, “Do you have any of those new cultural encyclopedias?  I got all the charts and navigational stuff, and engineering data, but this lummox stole me before they could load me with anything but the planetary culture stuff.”

     “We can supply the answer to any reference question,” Nubry said.  “If you let me know what you need….”  Her head tipped to one side.  “Do I call you ‘rover’?”

     Bott opened his mouth to make a suggestion but the computer replied, with a diffidence he hadn’t heard before, “My original programmer called me Dassie.”

     Nubry’s hands clasped before her.  “Oh, I like that!”

     Bott set his chin on his fist.  There was no telling what literates would get up to.