You’d Scream, Too

     Ice cream should not be complicated.

     I am not referring to the making of ice cream, as I might if I wrote a food blog.  I have wrestled with one of those handy dandy ice cream makers in the 1990s, which guaranteed endless delights, and succeeded only in making a flavorful slush.  Nor do I refer to the complexities of finding new or seasonal flavors of frozen treats.  Not one cubic inch of peppermint stick or egg nog ice cream did I find in any of my stores this season, which is no doubt one of the few pieces of good news to pass along to my doctor, and there are a few exciting new flavors that were announced along about last May which have never appeared anywhere in my vicinity.  But aside from the occasional longing for something novel, I am able to furnish most of my own desires with vanilla and the occasional Chunky Monkey.

     No, I was thinking of my family’s history of fighting with restaurants about ice cream.  For a dining establishment, ice cream should be fairly simple: either a generous scoop in a bowl or, if your menu runs that way, a generous scoop piled with insane amounts of fudge, marshmallow caramel, whipped cream and a few dozen peanuts.  As long as your wrist is limber and your ice cream scoop is clean, what’s the problem?

     The women in my family: that’s the problem.  Not ALL of them: I don’t recall my mother, for example, ever making a fuss about ice cream in any sort of eating establishment (beyond her mourning for the death of the five cent cone.)  But among the members of my family tree, there are several who wound up with their pictures posted under warning signs in restaurant kitchens.  Let us go back a few decades to consider my grandmother, who once picked up a slice of apple pie al a mode at a buffet style café.

     The size of the slice was adequate.  The ice cream addition was also of a good size, and just at the right temperature, melting just a bit from the proximity of pie.  And then she spotted the doily.

     What kind of burro-brain, she demanded, would put any sort of ice cream on a doily?  She was NOT paying for a doily that was going to soak up her ice cream, nor did she intend to sit at her table sucking vanilla ice cream out of a fancy piece of paper.  The resulting furor left a permanent mark of those of her grandchildren who were present, as well, we hope, on the restaurant (now out of business, possibly from the expense of all those doilies.)

     I would like to note that, in my opinion, she was completely correct, as was an aunt of mine whose appetite for hot fudge sundaes was the stuff of legend.  Her issue was not so much a matter of ice cream, but she would firmly refuse to dip a spoon into the dish if the kitchen had forgotten her maraschino cherry.  I agree that a kitchen that could forget such a detail is simply too busy.  This complaint always brought dividends.  Feeling that to produce a plate with a single cherry on it might be interpreted as an insult, the waiter would generally turn up with anywhere from two to siz cherries.  This always put her in a forgiving mood.  (If I wrote a food blog, I would mention the times she would order a hot fudge sundae and I would order a hot peanut butter sundae, and we would, with amazing damage to the tabletop exchange halves of our respective sundaes.  Why the place didn’t just offer hot fudge/hot peanut butter sundaes I have no notion.  But they’re out of business now, too.  So there.)

     The final two adventures, in which, again, I think the relative who complained was in the right, are completely my fault.  Once upon a time, a cousin of mine had a slice of apple pie a la mode in an establishment which also offered a dish of cinnamon ice cream.  She asked the waiter if she could, instead of the vanilla ice cream offered with the pie, get a scoop of the cinnamon instead.  The waiter and the kitchen had no problem with this, and she enjoyed the result.

     I’m the one who glanced at the tab and said “Hmmmm.  They charged a dollar extra for cinnamon ice cream.”  What can I say?  The ensuing fifteen minute argument about why it should cost a dollar to scoop ice cream out of THIS container instead of THAT one was my doing.  My aunt and I left the place before the argument was done, and I still look back in shame at this act of cowardice.

     But I will take no blame for the OTHER incident, when my aunt, cousin, and I decided a bowl of chocolate chip ice cream was just the thing to finish off our meal at another eating establishment.  We continued to chat about the news of the day, each of us working on our bowl (you didn’t think I meant one bowl for three people, dd you?  Waiters who made that mistake around us did so only once.)  But again I acted the troublemaker.

     I said, “Um, have you found any chocolate chips in your chocolate chip ice cream?”

     They paused.  They had not, but they had all assumed what I had been thinking: maybe this was some special version with white chocolate chips.  But we hadn’t encountered chocolate chips of any color with our teeth or taste buds, and we finally flagged down the waiter to ask.  As I recall, he didn’t even have to check; he knew the answer.

     “Oh, the kitchen just finished a container of chocolate chip and didn’t want to open a new one.”

     Had we started a riot, no jury in this land would have convicted us.

     Now, these were four different dining venues, three of which are now gone where the good times go.  And I dislike conspiracy theories, so I cannot believe word went out among the hospitality community about us.  But I HAVE noticed that whenever we order ice cream, sorbetto, or gelato nowadays, we are told that the kitchen JUST NOW ran out of that flavor.  Coincidence?  THAT answer isn’t complicated.

SANTA BLOGS XLII

Dear Santa Flops:

     Oh you darling fat fraud, there is only one thing I really want from you this Christmas, and that is that you keep far away from my holiday gift list.  How am I supposed to train my relatives to give me useful things, like an online subscription to the Screaming Streaming Service and passwords to websites unfairly restricted to people twice my age if you keep chiming in with advice on giving me old, used stuff?  I know my mother will probably get me more cute books with fluffy kitties instead of zombie rats in them, but I MAY have convinced my doddering grandfather that something high-tech can be sent by email and does not require wrapping, so kindly do not interfere with advice about pre-owned clutter.  A Christmas without you would be like a gift of a thousand New Years.

            IN GREAT HOPES FOR A SANTA-FREE DAY

Dear Ingrate:

     It is always nice to hear from you, as it lends a personal touch to the holiday.  It’s like seeing a grimy thumbprint on an otherwise pristine sugar cookie.

     I am, however, rather surprised that you even bother to write, you being so modern and high tech.  I suppose you still think that Elf on the Shelf is nothing but a bright-eyed chucklehead with no thought but to amuse and entertain.  He has an advanced degree in all those modern technological wonders you adore, and has forwarded me your online wishlists and browsing history.

     It pains me to point out inconsistencies in your hopes and dreams, but that IS part of the holiday tradition.  You show an eager interest in movies which involve mortals who awaken ancient evil spirits, and you regularly check online auction sites for haunted dolls and artifacts with curses on them.  Perhaps you see where I’m going with this.  I hope not; sI need to fill the rest of this column somehow.

     Perhaps you are simply taking your family too much for granted.  You are so used to getting secondhand books with bunnies from your mother that you take no interest in the previous owners.  Perhaps they were like you, Ingrate, and some of their frustration at not seeing decapitated gnomes or ravening bear ghosts lives on in those well-thumbed tomes.

     Perhaps your doting grandfather, eschewing a digital passkey, will send you some postcards.  Do NOT, Ingrate, just toss these aside saying “Confounded kitsch!”  The message on the back may tell of treasure buried in an ancient burial ground, or hold coded clues to where something vile has been lurking in limbo, just waiting for some small, disappointed Christmas grumbler to speak the words “I am fine. How are you?” backward to activate the charm.

     Christmas, my bitter dumpling, has always come with a streak of darkness: it is celebrated in the season of early sunsets and dark nights among people who believed that if they told stories of bloodthirsty creatures waiting just outside the door, those creatures would get the hint and move to the house of someone who had no respect for such ancient traditions. Not sending threats, Ingrate: just hints.  Remember that one of the jauntiest of traditional English Christmas songs deals with the discovery and a skeleton in a forgotten room.  Not everyone gets EXACTLY what they wanted or deserved (much as I know you’d love to find an ancient death in your toybox.)

     I hope you will take whatever your family gives you this year in the right spirit.  Surely someone of your basic temperament will be able to turn even fluffy bunnies and faded postcards into tools of terror.  Show a little initiative, cyanide souffle; in the olden days, kids were expected to make their own terrors, and were perfectly happy with socks and underwear at the end of December.  (Okay, maybe not PERFECTLY happy: your particular ancestor probably growled about getting pink undies instead of camo wear.)

     Wishing you something terrifying and unexpected this holiday, and hoping you can respond with something equally surprising and horrifying for your family.  (Try smiling.  It’ll probably make them think twice before sampling the cranberry sauce.)

DRAGONSHELF AND THE DROVER XIV

     By the time Bott caught up, Nubry was halfway down the corridor, conducting a spirited debate with herself.

     “Of course, they could mean they’re deaccessioning the collection from the Dragonshelf while accessioning it to their own inventory.  Couldn’t they?  Of course, they could!  Or maybe they said ‘THE Accession Chamber’.”

     ”Deaccession Chamber,” said Bott.  The grenade was in his hand again.  Something was apparently seriously wrong, and perhaps an explosion would come in handy.

     Nubry pulled up short at an arched doorway and thrust both hands against a terminal to the right of it.  “General floorplan,” she murmured.  “Do hurry, general floorplan.  Oh!”

     One finger stabbed at the screen.  “What?”  Bott asked, angling around for a better view.

     Her hands came up to her ears and clenched into fists.  “This big room is labeled ‘Deaccession Chamber’ and there’s a ‘Danger: Heat’ warning over at the side.  Oh, they wouldn’t!  Oh, they couldn’t!  Where’s the way out?  Where is it?”

     Bott looked behind him.  “These doors are….”

     “Herte!” she cried, as that finger bounced across the screen.  “And here!  And here!  We have to….”

     Bott squinted at the screen.  “How can you tell?”

     “They’re labeled, see?”  That finger threatened to break through the screen.  “Oh!  Sorry!  These, um, letters make the word EXIT: that’s a way out.  There’s probably a sign like it over the doors.”

     Bott’s mouth dropped open.  He was learning new things about why the Free Imperial State made such a fuss about reading.  With labels like those, just anybody could walk in or out of a building, and not just those who knew the place.

     Nubry was studying the screen again.  “Now, the door closest to the Deaccession Chamber….”

     “Is off limits, I’m afraid.”

     Wanure Smalen and three earnest young men stood just beyond the archway.  “The burning will begin in a few minutes, and for safety reasons….”

     “Burning!”  Nubry took a step away from the terminal, both hands on her prayerstone.  “How can you burn books?  You’re a library!  You’re THE library!”

     The deputy cleared his throat, but made no answer.  One of the men with him said, “Deaccession is a vital part of library procedure.  You can’t keep everything: there isn’t space.”

     “You should FIND space!” she replied, with a stamp of her vote.

     “And we cannot accept books which may be contaminated,” the young man continued, “Or….”

     “That will do.”  The red-braided Head Librarian looked displeased, gliding in on her travelling square.  “”Wanure, you may go.  I will see you in my office later.”

     The deputy pushed past Bott and Nubry.  Opio looked them over.  “We hoped you would not find out until the process was complete.”

     “You’re really going to burn our books?”  Nubry set her prayerstone to her forehead.  “Without even…without even looking at them?  I can’t believe it!  Can I?  No, I can NOT!”

     “Of course without looking at them.”  The Head Librarian’s voice was gentle but firm.  “His Imperial Worship prefers it that way.”

     “This can’t be an Imperial post!” Bott exclaimed, as Nubry’s mouth opened and closed several times.

     “It can.  It is.”  Opio raised a hand to indicate the walls.  “We maintain this library against the day when Imperial policy changes about the number of books it is safe to possess.  In return for our existence, we also maintain the legends of an ancient and secret library operation, just to lure in collections such as yours.”

     Bott’s lips twisted.  He should have thought to ask why the location of a hidden library Nubry couldn’t find would be on the navigational charts of an Imperial slave ship.

     “I did mean what I said.”  Something like sympathy showed on the Head Librarian’s face.  “Yours is a magnificent gift, for the destruction of so large a collection may gratify His Imperial Worship to the extent of letting us keep you on as a docent.”

     Nubry stamped her foot again and, still at a loss for words, stamped it one more time.

     “Orm” the librarian went on, “We can wait and inform His Imperial Worship that you have already been added to the docent staff, after the Drover has been modified.”

     “Modified?” Bott demanded, running his thumb across his grenade, identifying it by feel as he summed up his opponents.  Four of them: not a serious threat unless they were really well-armed.  “My ship?”

     “The drover apparently belongs to whoever can hold it,” the librarian replied, with a braid=-bouncing jerk of her  head.  “We can hardly allow you to leave, to imperial out reputation for Imperial service.  The ship is of no further use to you, and we need the storage space.”

     “Storage space?” Nubry sputtered.  “Storage space?  You don’t even have any books or magazines!”

     “No,” Opio admitted.  “But that may change, and, in the meantime, we have been perfecting our classification system.  Providing an alphanumeric code which can fit any artifact in the known universe is a major project, and the explicatory software and hardware has been overflowing its allotted space.  The Drover should be able to hold a great deal of it, once the ship has been modified along the guidelines of the latest subcommittee report on efficient use of space on a library ship.”

     ”Mod….”

     “And stamped within and without using proprietary codes.”

     Bott pulled himself to what there was of his full height.  “The Drover is the single most beautiful and efficient ship in the universe!”

     The vast red eyebrows spread out across the bland forehead.  “It may seem so.  To a layman.”

     Nott’s free hand went down for a second grenade.  Opio nodded.  “This is a library, sir.  We like things to be orderly.”

     Door opened all along the corridor to release a company of nearly naked men and women.  The shortest of these was twice as tall as Bott, and what they lacked in clothing they made up for in muscle.  Tomy eyes glittered as they fixed on Bott; thin lips drew back to reveal very long teeth.

     “These have been bred for generations to collect overdues, once we have returned to operation,” Opio explained.  Now, sir.  How would you like to be classified?  ‘Library, Friend of’ Or ‘Formerly Living Being—Human’?”

     Nott considered the group.  Puffy lower lips were bouncing against those elongated teeth as the enforcers murmured in unison a chant of “Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.”

     It reminded him of that time on Nazcor-D.  And he’d gotten out of that.  True, his crew had been with him, and a much larger supply of grenades.  But surely a good pirate captain could face down any mob when he was sober.

     And he hadn’t had a drink in three days.

      His eyes went to Nubry, to see if she’d be ready to jump and run.  But her eyes were closed, and she held that prayerstone clamped against her forehead.

     “Well?” Opio inquired.  “:”Which is it to….”

     Nubry’s right foot was suddenly under the nose of the nearest enforcer.  The big man’s eyes widened as blood shot from his nostrils.  Bott’s eyes widened too, as the man dropped and Nubry spun.

     One of the librarians who had come with Wanure, who had come forward to grab her shoulder, fell back, clutching his arm.  A second enforcer fell forward, blood gushing from him onto Nubry’s fresh uniform.

     Three enforcers dove for Nubry but Bott had remembered he was part of this performance as well.  The key was out of the grenade, and he yanked the collar mask up in front of his face.  He figured he had half a second to pull the second mask free before the enforcers also remembered he was there.

     Ducking under the arms of two plug-uglies, he vaulted the body of one fallen enforcer to nudge past the one who had Nubry by the throat.  Hoping she recognized him with his mask on, he forced the spare mask over her nonexistent nose as the gas from the first grenade burst free.

     Those not punctured by the blast waved at the pink smoke.  It was a little late for that, and they tumbled in a largely unlibrarylike disorder to the floor, gasping.  Bott, Nubry, and her assailant toppled in one bundle.  The big man had fortunately pulled to the right as he fell and, dying, even failed to crush his captives.  Bott pried muscular fingers out of Nubry’s windpipe.

     She stared at him through her mask.  “Got to…save the….”

     “:Over here!” someone shouted.

Santa Blogs XLI

Dear Santa Blogs

     I have always appreciated your advice on giving pre-owned objects as gifts, but as years go by, i find the wish lists of my grandchildren very difficult to translate.  One grandchild in particular gives me a lot of instructions which are awfully technical.  Are second-hand postcards at all appropriate for such an up-to-date kid?

                        BARELY KEEPING UP

Dear Bear Up:

      This is a time for reflecting on the past and the future, and we can all get caught up in depressing considerations about what is gone and what may be coming up.  But this is also a time for remembering that some things are perennial, and always relevant, like snowflakes, safety pins, and old jokes.

     You see, Bare, old jokes are like leaves: they blossom, give shade, wither, and disappear,  But every old joke finds its way to come back in a new but recognizable form.  And jokes on old postcards can be as relevant today as they were when first published (if we do it right.)  For example, what could be more current than a phone with multiple uses?

     And, believe it or else, even in 1905, there were jokes about people in danger from drones.  What says 2024 better?

     For the social media addict (and what else have we got nowadays?) we can show examples of musical cat videos from days of yore.

     Along with motivational quotations (taken from some other source and misquoted).

     In days long past, we had people who were willing to bring to our attention badly worded signs in public places,

      Right next to personals ads on dating websites (though the word “website” did not exist, the idea of a web behind such ads was surely already present),

     Mixed in with highly entertaining trivia of dubious verisimilitude and source.

     Behold, Bear: if we keep looking, we can even find people whining about their printers.  So take heart and go boldly forth with that Christmas list, Grandpa!  Do not waste your money and your grandchild’s time with some high tech wonder which will be obsolete by Groundhog’s Day but fill that stocking with these glimpses of our past, proving that social media was as living and vibrant and annoying as it is today.  They’ll always remember your gift.  (I do hope you live more than a snowball’s throw away.)

PRESIDENTIAL TALL TALES IX

     We continue to pore through history to find good solid conspiracies involving each of the Presidents of the United States.  To recap, we need a story about a president which involves him in some deep plot, or one that seemed deep at the time.  We prefer theories which are more or less contemporary with the man himself (I could make up better ones than some of these myself, but that’s cheating) AND it must be a conspiracy which is largely discounted by most Mainstream Historians.  (Since it is the nature of politics to make back office deals, some conspiracy stories turn out to be true, which takes them out of conspiracy theory and into History.)

     The reason this series has been on hiatus is that Benjamin Harrison, unfortunately, was apparently too dull for conspiracies.  The best I can do for you is technically a Grover Cleveland conspiracy theory, put about through the workings of Harrison’s campaign folks.  One of their operatives, pretending to be a British expatriot living in California, wrote to the British ambassador to the United States to ask whom he should vote for.  The ambassador replied that Cleveland would be the best bet, as he would be lowering the tariffs.  Which would have been true.  What makes it bogus is that the campaign’s REAL intent was to make it look as if Grover would be doing whatever the British wanted.  This was not especially true, but DID convince the Irish voters to turn their support to Harrison, since anything the English government favored had to be evil.  This isn’t much, but will have to do for a placeholder until we can show Harrison knew Marilyn Monroe, or something.

     William McKinley was assassinated so we are on firmer ground.  Like Garfield’s shooting, this should not have been fatal.  The doctors guessed wrong about where the bullet was, and just as the President seemed ot be recovering, he died of gangrene.  His assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was an anarchist, which set off a wave of action.  All the leading anarchists in New York were arrested on suspicion of being in on it, including the entire family of “Red Emma” Goldman, whom Czolgosz had mentioned meeting, to force her to turn herself in.  She denied any connection to the crime, saying that if she HAD wanted to kill McKinley, she wouldn’t have picked an idiot like Czolgosz for the job.  The Secret Service was accused of being part of the conspiracy for not protecting the president (though this was still just an unofficial part of their job).  Despite this, and a demand by some people that protecting the President should be the Army’s job, the Secret Service was made an official protection agency for the NEXT President.  The idea that Czolgosz had Not Acted Alone (remember this phrase; it’ll be coming back) led to the establishment of groups dedicated to investigating anarchists, some of which were consolidated into the Department of Investigation, which in the fulness of time became the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Czolgosz accomplished a lot, actually, for someone who basically accidentally killed the President

     As for the next president, known to some supporters as “That Goddamned Cowboy”, we have to save him for next time.

DRAGONSHELF AND THE DROVER XIII

     “Oh my!  Oh, my bins and bookshelves!”

     Nubry’s eyes had been fixed on the big screen for some time now.  Broken buildings were all that remained of Near Schloggina.  Old stone stalls they seemed to be, roofless and doorless, a refuge for fog and shadows.

     “Probably they had to shut down the conventions after the Great Weed,” she sighed.  A hand went out to the touchpad on her chair.

     Bott sat now in the co-pilot’s seat, his own hands close to the grenades on his belt.  He was not entirely easy about having left the Drover uncrewed in orbit.  He was mostly certain that, despite the ship’s opinion of him, it still had to do what he said.  But this went against all his training.

     The library ship skimmed along above the dead city.  Cubicles in stone rows, roofless buildings everywhere the same: Nubry went on shaking her head.

     She flew pretty well, he thought, though of course this was a pretty short, straight trip.  The dof was tricky, though.  Easy to see she had a few years’ experience.

     She had changed her uniform while tidying the books, and now wore purple over a white bodysuit.  Bott hoped this wasn’t required protocol; he had nothing to change into, and he wanted to make a good impression on these librarians.  They could deal.  No planet could susbsist entirely on its own resources; a hidden planet, especially, would need suppliers, especially illicit ones.  If he managed to master the Drover, he could be a very efficient one.

     Blinking lights indicated a landing site beyond the empty city.  Bott watched Nubry closely; she showed no sign of noticing this scrutiny as she maneuvered the Dragonshelf toward this, going swiftly through the routine of settling a BBB-44 onto the surface.  The Dragonshelf obeyed her perfectly, and without comment.    The landing circle lowered too, somewhat more slowly than the ship, so that when the Dragonshelf finally touched down, the platform was completely below the planet’s surface.  The roof closed over them.  Bott had a grenade unhooked from his belt.

     Nubry didn’t notice this, either.  Once she had settled the ship, she rubbed her palms on the thighs of her suit.  Ibe hand came up to hit the release for the main exit hatch.  “Let’s go see!”

     Reaching the bottom of the exit ramp, she [paused, forwing around at the big, empty cargo area as though she’d been expecting floor to ceiling bookcases.  Bitt turned his eyes to seek out more threatening anomalies.  He was the first to hear the low hum, though he had not identified the source before it turned into a voice,

     “Wecolme to the library!  Come any time; come many times!”

     Two travelling squares were gliding toward them.  The first bore a tall, regal woman in a long grey robe.  Red braids hung down her back, red eyebrows shot up in rays halfway across her smooth forehead.  A faint golden glow surrounded her.

     “I am Opio,” she said, as the square settled in front of the ramp.  “Head Librarian here.  This….”  She indicated the short white-haired man with a monocle.  “Is Chief Deputy Libraroan Wanure Smalen.”

     The deputy nodded.  Nubry bowed.  Pirates don’t bow, so Bott didn’t.  He settled his hands to his hips, letting the grenade slip into a pocket for future reference.

     “Head Librarian Opio, this pirate captain and I have come to offer the Dragonshelf’s 530,000,000 items to refill the Great Library’s once legendary holdings.”  Nubry bowed again, gesturing to Bott as she did so.

     The Head Librarian inclined her head with all the dignity of her ancient post.  “A magnificent gift.  But what did you intend to do once you had turned over your library.  Had you any thought of becoming one of our docents?”

     Nubry’s ears went a bit red.  “I’m sure I would not claim….”

     Hr smile warm, the Librarian extended a hand.  “There are examinations to be endured, to be sure, but certainly one who has tended the library of the Dangerous Rebels would pass those.”  She stepped to the side, making room on her square.  “Come!  Many I offer you a tour of the facility?”

     “Oh, yes!”  Nubry took the hand and stepped up.

    “I can’t stay long,”  Bott glanced up at the closed ceiling.  “I have to get back to my ship.”

     Nubry frowned, but the Head Librarian inclined her head again.  “I understand.  But can you not stay long enough, to accept our hospitality, in gratitude for your work?”  She gestured to her deputy’s square.

     Bott was perfectly willing; he had merely sent a message to these librarians that he would like to get around to business as soon as possible.  He was sorry to think that, in delivering the Dragonshelf to this haven, he was losing someone who had shown promise to be a great crew member.  But librarians, he supposed, belonged in libraries.

     He stepped up next to the deputy, and the two squares moved off in different directions.  He could hear Nubry saying , “He’s a very amiable pirate.  He could probably hunt books for you.”

     Bott had been hoping to do that, and a number of other things, for the Great Library if the Great Library was willing to pay.  From the looks of things, they could afford it.  The cargo bay was well-jept and well-lit, and these travelling squares moved smoothly, unlike the ones he’d used back home.

     Moving into the corridors of the building itself enhanced this feeling: the creamy brown walls were recently polished, and the carpet below their squares was in perfect condition.  Lighting was gentle and indirect; everything that could shine shone.  The designers of this building had shared the same taste for elegance as the Drover’s architects, and designers with such tastes were not cheap.

     Specifics were necessary before negotiations could start.  “An expert cloaking device,” he said to the deputy, as if just making conversation.  “How do you get supplies through?”

    The Chief Deputy’s nose went up a bit but he answered, civilly enough, “We have our ways sir.  Would you like to stop and freshen up before going on to the lounge?”

     “All right with me.  Do you get many ships stopping here  Libraries and things?”

     Wanure looked away.  “That sort of information is naturally classified, sir.”

     “Is that glass in your eye for seeing things?” Bott inquired, “Or for making sure nothing that gies in comes back out?”

     The deputy smiled, and brought the square to a halt before a light orange door.  “I must go supervise the transfer of the Dragonshelf to the Deaccession Chamber, sir.  The Reader’s Lounge is at the far end of this lounge.  If you will wait there, Her Organized Honor will be joining you presently.”

     Btt nodded and stepped down.  The deputy guided his square along the corridor.  After the man was gone, Bott checked the door for traps and security devices.  The cameras and snares were well hidden, but he had plenty of experience with them.  They were very good ones, built along the same principles as the ones on the Drover.  If he and Opio couldn’t come to terms, it might be fun to try and steal them.

     The mirrored room beyond the door was very well stocked.  Bott studied the array of soaps and colognes.  That spiral bottle held a very popular new scent; he’d hijacked a load of it not so long ago.  The Library Planet already had pirate connections, then.  He hoped it wasn’t Jaller Parroll.  Of course, they might have had it from the dealer Bott supplied, in which vase they might be interested in eliminating the middleman.

     He picked upthe bottle to look it over and then, with his free hand, reached down and bunched up a big handful of his jacket.  Raising this to his nose, he took a deep sniff and was nearly knocked down by the cold and gritty aroma of the cloth.  It still smelled like a spring morning on his home planet.  He set the cologne back.

     The Reader’s Lounge was almost obnoxiously clean and bright, with small tidy terminals for those who knew how to use them.  The smooth lines reminded him again of the Drover.  He reached down for his collection of cards.

     “Ship?”

     “Are you still alive?”
     “Sorry to disappoint you.  Is the Rhododendron still coming on?”

     “Yes, but they can’t see through the planet’s cloak.  They are following our last course and should miss us by a wide margin.”

     “Don’t signal them.”

     “I can’t.  They could not receive any message unless they come within range of the buoys.  And that depends on how clever their ship’s computer is.”

     “I’d hate to think it’s smarter than you.”

     “You’d never know.  We are both advanced too far beyond your brain.”

     Bott had more to say, but put the card away and turned as a door opened.

     “Such a library!”  Nubry slapped her hands together.  “The community meeting rooms, the processing center, the…I never saw anything to beat it!  Did I?  I did not!”  She cleared her throat.  “Elevator access to all…and the executive offices!  You should see the exhibition of bookmarks!”

     Bott grinned: she’d like it here.  “Do they have as many books as you do?”

     Ihe ball if hair bounced left and right.  “They didn’t show me that///security./  I used to think I’d hate…but it’s such a beautiful facility!  Where’s Wanure?  I want to show him where things are.  Oh, not the classification system, but which sections are where.  They might already, of course….”

     She had to pause to catch her breath again.  “The deputy said he was going to see the Dragonshelf into the Deaccession Chamber,” Bott told her.

     Mintu spread her hands wide.  “Well, I guess they would have a special place….”  She frowned.

     “Deaccession?  Are you sure he said that?  Not Accession?”

     “Yeah,” said Bott.  “Why?”

     The flush was gone from her cheeks.  “But that means weed!”

     “That means we’d what?”

     “No!” she cried.  “Weed!  Deaccession!”  She looked helplessly at the pirate for a moment and then added “Throw away!”  She turned and ran out the way she’d come in.

Larger Trivia Overdose

     Responses to my most recent column were evenly split, about half using the word “Scrooge” and the others using “Grinch.”  (There were a few other words which are new to me, but I got the general gist.)  It occurs to me that perhaps I was a little hard on those people who announce startling new Christmas trivia that I have heard every year since my increasingly distant childhood.  There is, after all, always someone who HASN’T heard about Benjamin Franklin and the turkey, and I myself have been known to quote the aphorism that “Every joke is new to someone who hasn’t heard it before.”

     I have ALSO been known to say (as noted by everyone who pointed out that I have also been known to tell the same stry numerous times: and here I thought you weren’t paying attention) that instead of censoring or rewriting things you don’t like, you should just offer something better.  So I shave made up a list of Christmas trivia I have NOT s een sufficiently covered.  Next time you want to give us the shocking news that eating poinsettias can make you sick, add in the answers to some of these burning Christas issues.

     Where DOES that comma go in “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen”?  I repeated for many years the tidbit that in the original printing of this song, the comma is moved one word over, making it “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”, making the song about how Christmas should make you relax about your afterlife.  Then an institution published what they claimed was the earliest known printing, and there IS no comma in the title.  Find that first lyric sheet and come to the point. (Yeah, punctuation puns get me right in the colon, too.)

     Maybe you think that’s nitpicking; that’s what trivia is ABOUT, mistletoe goulash.  Consider, the Island of Misfit Toys in the classic Sixties Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  My mother had an issue early on; at the end, when the elves are dropping the toys to houses below, handing each one a parachute umbrella, the toy bird refuses the umbrella and just flies down.  But, as she pointed out, the reason the bird was ON the island was that it couldn’t fly.  So how….   A recent TikTok expert addressed another question: why is that winsome doll on the Island?  She has no obvious flaws, like the cowboy who rides the ostrich.

     I, personally, look to another part of the story for my own question.  Where did Yukon Cornelius keep his guitar?  You recall that when we meet him, he is heading out to replenish his “life-sustaining supplies: gunpowder, corn meal, hamhocks, and guitar strings.”  Are the guitar strings what he uses as a harness for the dogs on his sled?  I do not see a guitar sticking out of his supplies.  And did he or Sam the Banjo-playing snowman write “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas”, which completely obliterates the elf-written “We Are Santa’s Elves” by the end of the picture?

     Luther’s Cradle Hymn, better known to Sunday School alumni as “Away in a Manger”, is so popular a poem that it has been set to at least three different melodies.  We are frequently being told by Christmas trivia mavens that Martin Luther had nothing to do with it.  He DID write some hit hymns, but not this one, which firat appears somewhere in the late nineteenth century.  So who DID write it?  My own theory is that it comes from some forgotten pageant about the life of Luther, but no one seems to know.  Go find out.

       When did it become fashionable to hate fruitcake?  There are a lot of desserts our ancestors, for whom sweet things were a novelty except when fruit was ripe, adored that we avoid.  But I have eaten some really good fruitcake, some of which were mainly cake and some of which were mainly fruit.  At what point did fruitcake become the quintessential unwanted Christmas present, beating out old favorites like socks and long underwear?

     How did red and green become the Christmas Colors?  Santa’s suit was not originally red—another thing the Christmas trivia folk tell me every year—and Christmas trees were frequently brown, being made of carved wood.  Do we just like seeing cardinals in spruce trees that much?

     There are other possibilities, some of which may be unanswerable.  Who invented the term “Stocking stuffer”?  What WAS wrong with Tiny Tim?  When did the Three Wise Men become Three Kings?  (Is “Magi” just too hard to rhyme?)  Mix a few of these in with your Christmas trivia next year, and maybe I will only grumble “humbug” to myself the next time you break it to me that Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” for the annual royalty check.

     This will give me more time to write that blog about the Christmas SONGS that really tick me off.

TRIVIA OVERDOSE

     Okay, it is just three weeks until 2025, so I may be considered late.  But have you considered the possibility that I am just really, really early for NEXT ear?  (Yeah, the IRS never buys that one, either.)

     Anyhow, I thought I would take this opportunity to promote a holiday moratorium.  I have had no luck so far with Thanksgiving.  My tactic of jumping in on the “Frank” when someone starts to say “Did you know Benjamin Frank….” by screaming, “YES!  Yes, I do!  I have been told Benjamin Franklin suggested the turkey as our national bird instead of the bald eagle!  I have been told that four times a year since Kindergarten, and twenty times a year since the invention of the Interwebs!” has done very little good to change the situation.  (And all those appearances in court for disturbing the peace cut into my time for eating leftover pie.)

     But if, in some slight way, I can divert a few people from those social media posts and conversational gambits, I MIGHT be able to stay out of court during this festive season.  (It isn’t the judges and lawyers so much: it’s whoever decided to send a Yuletide gift to the holding cell which included mistletoe.)  If you’re doing little known facts about Christmas this year, how about some new ones, like the long hidden story that “Blue Christmas” is really a reflection of Elvis’s unrequited passion for Smurfette?  (Long hidden because I just now made it up.)  So could we kind of hold back on letting everybody know that:

     Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” to make money.  Um, yes.  Writers do write things to make money, a concept frequently forgotten by today’s publishers.  So why pick on Dickens? A Christmas Carol is NOT an anti-money tract.  Ebenezer Scrooge makes the Cratchit Christmas happier by promising Bob more money.

     Judy Garland made the lyricist change the words of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”.  Yep, heard that one two or three times a year for most of this century.  I AM grateful to the person who posted this and sang us the original lyrics, showing Judy absolutely knew what she was doing.  (“Have yourself a merry little Christmas: it may be your last.”  Not Top 10 material.)

     In many cultures, instead of leaving coal, Santa Claus whips the naughty children.  Okay, maybe our mass market homogenized way of celebrating the holiday DOES miss the True Meaning of Christmas.  The Santa character in some cultures, in fact, spent a LOT more time walloping kids than distributing candy.  Other cultures split the job into halves, using a second character to do the whipping; there are even cultures where one figure brings goodies and two or three chastisers concentrate on different childhood sins.  (That gigantic Christas cat who devours kids who won’t wear the new clothes they got for Christmas strikes me as interesting, but over-specialized.)  Krampus, one of these chastisers, gets a lot of coverage these last twenty years or so, and no one, telling me about him as if he’s totally new to me, has explained why he’s so popular.  I’m sure Santa Claus is better for the economy.

     The poinsettia is poisonous.  I used to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with the world’s greatest expert on botanical poisoning, who got calls every year to help out reporters writing about the dangers of decoration.  The fact is that the poinsettia isn’t THAT poisonous, coming in around 2 on a scale of 1 to 10, ten being “goodbye” and one being “Maybe you should sit down for a while.”  I will cut some slack to people who insist on telling me the plant with the bright red foliage is name for Joel Poinsett, our first ambassador to Mexico.  If you keep reminding me, I MAY someday remember how to spell “poinsettia”.  (Admit it: you want to make it a POINTsettia, too.)

     Santa’s reindeer are all female.  It seems to be one of this year’s particular favorites: male reindeer, see, shed their antlers in winter, so those pictures of antlered reindeer pulling the sleigh MUST denote an all-female crew.  Show me your data on the antlers of FLYING reindeer, and I may believe you.  Personally, I believe it’s a plot to show Santa Claus is a multinational trillionaire using his money for social modification.  (See, because he has lots of doe.  Yeah, if you stop posting these things it’ll cut back on MY posting jokes like THAT.  Sounds like a better cause now, eh?)

DRAGONSHELF AND THE DROVER XII

     Bott’s eyes snapped open and he jerked upright, fully expecting to find himself surrounded by a few dozen Imperial troopers.

     But no, this was the dim, elegant bridge he’d come to know, the same smooth, graceful, unbearable lines he’d seen all along, and no more.

     Wait.  He blinked.  Some lines were different.  He rose from his seat, rubbing sleep from  his eyes.  The navighator’s chair was turned to the side, and someone was in it.  A few seconds were required for the memory that he had a passenger to surface.  He supposed, with the troubles aboard her own ship, that she hadn’t had much sleep lately either.

     She curled into an impossibly small bundle, one knee almost right under her nearly nonexistent nose.  One hand clutched her prayerstone.  Bott settled back into his seat and checked the monitors.

     He’d been out for hours, but not so many as he’d feared.  As far as he could tell, the Drover was still following the course he’d set.

     Reaching up to remove the cards he’d inserted, he inquired, “Ship?”

     “What is it, lummox?”

     “Speak up.”  That voice had never been so gentle.  “I can barely hear you?”

     “Have you no manners at all, you grubby pirate?  It’s naptime.”

     “Oh!”

     Swiveling, Bott found Nubry uncurling in a hurry.  Her head whipped right to left, and she was lifting her prayerstone to her forehead when she spotted her host.

     “Ph!” he said again.  She smiled.  “I thought it was all a dream.  Did I?  Yes, I did!”

     “Mightmare, really.”  The ship’s voice was normal again.  “With that pirate involved.”

     “And a slave ship.” murmured Bott.

     “Now now,” said the librarian, stretching her arms high above her head.  “There are plenty of NICE pirates.”

     “Possibly,” the computer replied, “But irrelevant in this case.  Was there something you wanted, Wafflebeard the Nice, or were you just making conversation?”

     Bott felt his cheek, which turned out to be covered with small square dents from the console he’d been using as a pillow.  Nubry laughed.

     “Do you want this back?”  One hand extended a slim, delicate cushion from the captain’s chair while she used the other to pat her hair back into place.  “I stole it from behind you since you were lying forward.”

     “No, keep it.  What else could I expect from a Dangerous Rebel?”  He grinned to show this was meant as a joke and, when she laughed, turned back to his console.  “Ship, are we still bound for the Library Planet?”

     “And where is Sheriff Parimat?” Nubry put in.

     “Yes, we are, and yes, she is, if you were going to ask whether she is still following us.”  The main screen blipped on to show the Rhododendron again.  “She is, however, falling farther and farther behind.  She’d do better without the Imperial Transport hanging on her side that way.”

     “Did you activate the cloaking device?” Bott asked his passenger.

     “No.”  She put her feet on the floor and looked under the chair.  “I didn’t like to, since this is your command.  Oh, here’s the manual.”

     “Do you hear that, lummox?  That’s manners, in case you have not encountered them before.  A less thoughtful person would have called this ‘your ship’.”

     “Activate it now, then.”  Bott considered his console for a moment and then looked up.  “Please.”

     “Oh, very nice,” the ship said.  “It may take years of effort, but we make progress.  Speaking of which, I suppose you are both perfectly certain you want to go to this Library Planet?”

     Nubry planted a finger on the Table of Contents of the ship’s manual.  “Are we?  Yes, we are!”  Her hair bobbled as she turned her head up.  “Why not?”

     “If it has been hidden since the Great Weed, it must have some fairly potent security devices, mustn’t it?”

     Nubry looked to the captain, whose eyes narrowed.  “It’s a trick,” he told her.

     The main screen shifted the Rhododendron to a smaller auxiliary and now showed a segment of space which included a dozen flat whit ovals.  “See those buoys, boy?”

     “Ot’s a trick,” Bott repeated, louder this time.  “I’d bet my breakfast that it’s another trick of yours.  I can smell a weapon at a hundred shiplengths.”

    “They can smell you long before that,” the computer replied, voice light and airy.

     Nubry closed the instruction manual on her finger.  “Can’t you signal them?  If those are automatic, a cloaking device wouldn’t conceal us completely.”

     “They’re probably using a very archaic code; the Weed was eons ago.”  The computer seemed to be thinking it over.  “Should I bother?”

     “You must have all kinds of codes,” Nubry said, leaning farther forward.  “Can you, please?  We could all be blown up!”

     “That may matter to YOU,” the ship replied.

     “You’d go to pieces with us,” Bott reminded the ship.

     “I may have mentioned this before,” the computer told him, “But I don’t know how long it would take to live down a reputation for having helped a pirate and, I beg your pardon, a book trafficker.”

     Nubry, who didn’t seem the least offended, nodded, the ball of hair bouncing on her head again.  “A book trafficker with all the records of the Interstellar Wrestling Federation.”

     “No!  Really?  They gave me only twenty years’ worth, for settling arguments among the crew.”

     Bott got the idea.  “Well, you won’t get a chance to see the rest if we’re blown to smithereens.”

     “I’ll signal them, then.”  The computer’s voice sounded a little weary.  “I’ll ask if they could just blow up one of us and I know which they can have.”

     Nubry laughed again.  “Oh, Dassie, you’re….”

     A white flash filled the main screen.  “Full stop!” Bott ordered.

     The whiteness vanished, leaving a row of red characters hanging where one of the ovals had been.  “Is that something you can read?” he asked Nubry.

     Nose and forehead wrinkled.  “It’s a very old font….”

     “I think it says ‘Breakfast for one’,” suggested the computer.

     “Don’t be dumb,” Bott snapped.  “That was so fr ahead of us it must have been a warning shot.”

     “It’s still a weapon, then,” grumbled the computer.  “Incoming message.  Decoding.  Here it is.”

     “Ahoy the ship!”  A new voice came from the computer.  “Have you a card?”

     Bott raised his plastic arsenal.  “All kinds of cards.  Which one do you want?”

     “I tink they mean a library card,” said Nubry raising a hand.

     “What would I be doing with a library card?”  Bott demanded.  

     “Probably using a corner of it to scratch fleas.”

     Nubry leaned forward, calling into a patch on the arm of her chair.  “No, please: we’re here to make a delivery.”

      There was a pause for transmission and translation.  “Ah!  Were we expecting a delivery?”

     “It’s books!”  Nubry bounced a little in the chair.  “It’s the library of the fleet of the Dangerous Rebels, to add to your collection.  We have….”

     The voice broke in with “Excellent.  Proceed by proper course to Landing Area 5, on Near Schloggina.  We’ll meet you.”

     “Near Schloggina!”  Nubry fell back against her chair.

     “Hail libraries!” the voice replied, “Over and out.”

     “I don’t even see that planet,” Bott complained.

     “A planet-sized cloaking device,” noted the Drover.  “That’s tech ology nearly as nice as mine.”

     “Near Schloggina,” murmured Nubry, raising her prayerstone again to her forehead.

     Bott was studying his monitors.  “What’s Near Schloggina?”

     She sat up.  “It was the great library bazaar city.  The conventions they had there are a library legend!  They had…oh, free bookmarks and toe bags, and posters, and rulers, and coffee mugs, and…and…oh, Dassie, how soon will we be there?”

     “Estimated time of arrival, thirty minutes,” the Drover informed her.  Bott looked in vain for any indication of this on his monitors.

     “I’d better go redd up the shelves.”  The librarian rose and hurried from the bridge without another word.

     “Do what?” Bott demanded.  But the door had sooshed shut behind her.

     “It has to do with brains and a sense of tidiness,” the computer informed him.  “You wouldn’t know a thing about it.”

FICTION FRIDAY: Sending It Back

     Bernard was one of those shoppers who spends more time than money.  A friendly chap who liked to talk, had a treasury of stories which were not all pointless: he was pleasant enough on a slow day but at other times kept work from being done.

     The keeper of the dark, dim antique shop watched him enter; but went on sorting the old postcards.

     Bernard glanced at the heavy-lidded woman, with somewhat heavy body parts festooned with tattoos involving black cats and bats.  Many sorority girls in his college days had such tattoos.  In fact, Rebecca…maybe she’d be interested in that story.  But he needed an excuse to start a story.  Having no ink art himself, he could hardly lead with tattoos

     His eyes fell on a little glass case at the center of a table filled with art objects.  He’d seen it every time he came into the store, guarding a statue about two feet tall of a young woman on her knees, looking back over one shoulder.

     He tapped gently on the case to attract the proprietor’s attention. “Do you think you’ll ever sell this?”

     She smiled her usual broad smile, and added a warm chuckle.  “I do sell it.”

     Bernard nodded.  “You have more than one, then?”

     “No,” she said, inclining her head.  “It’s ensorcelled.”

     Bernard regarded the statuette.  “Under a curse, is it?”

     She lowered her head so she could look up at him through dark, ling lashes.  She was not smiling now.  “Do you believe in curses?”

     “No, not really.”  Bernard moved closer to the counter, feeling a story (and an excuse to tell one of his own) on the way.

     She gave him a quick nod.  “It isn’t.  An uncle of my great-grandfather made it years ago.  When the person who bought it dies, it returns to the family.”

     “Ah, you sort of rent it out,” Bernard looked at the case with new interest.

     “True enough.”.

     “Nice statue, at least.”  Bernard thought the style crude and sentimental, the sort of trash a previous century loved.  “Do people buy it just to test out the spell?”

     “The maker gave it other powers.”  She set down the last card of the handful she’d been working on, and reached into the battered shoebox for more.  “Its main function is to return curses.”

     “Return to sender?” said Bernard, chuckling.

     “Exactly.  If you perform the ceremony, any curse put upon you by an enemy will bounce back and befall that enemy.  You can see why people who believe in curses would find it useful.”

     Bernard looked from her to the statue.  “People believe that?”

     She nodded.  “It’s nice, really, to have something to blame your problems on.  When there’s an accident, or a sudden financial loss, or unexpected health problem, superstitious people find it easy to believe in curses.”

     Bernard understood.  If he believed in curses at all, then the diagnosis of fast-acting cataracts which had come out of nowhere….  And his supervisor would be glad….  He shrugged.

     “It’s attractive enough.”  He picked up the heavy case.  “And I don’t need to believe in its power to like it.”

     “That’s true.”  She watched him turn the case around, thought things over, and added, “Don’t look in the eyes, then.”

     Bernard studied one shoulder and then the other, considered her deplorable hair style, and then her collar bone.  It would be an interesting story to tell people, of course.  He looked at the price sticker, the metal corners of the glass case, and then, giving in, the statue’s closed eyes.

     They looked back at him open without the lids moving.  He felt the gaze as a warm coat, a blanket of protection.  Any enemy of his was an enemy of hers, and she would do her best to see that their evil deeds would be visited on them tenfold.  He knew this to be true

     “I’ll take it!”

     In return for a visit from his plastic card, she gave him a bag, the statue—case and all—and a cheap booklet which contained the ceremony to be performed to start the process of returning curses.  The ceremony was no less crude than the printing of the booklet but, after all, it made the story he could tell that much more interesting.  He mentioned this, at length, to the proprietor, but finally moved back into the sunshine, allowing her to continue sorting the old cards.  She did not get up to rearrange the display the glass case had dominated.

     The following Tuesday, the young lady and case were back at the center of the display.  The proprietor wondered how it had happened this time.  He hadn’t seemed like a man who owned guns (and he had never looked at her display of fine antique firearms, not all of which were counterfeit.)  She hoped he had taken swift poison, and hadn’t hurt other people by jumping out of a window or off the platform in front of a train.

     It usually took longer.  But once they figured out their problems weren’t caused by a curse, but by their own stupidity or dumb luck….

     With a sigh, she took up another shoebox of old cards and sat down behind the counter.  Maybe a few good baseball cards had gotten mixed in this lot.