Prostho Plus

by Piers Anthony

  "And look there!" he said, moving on.

  It was a forest, but like none she had known on Earth. Each huge tree was barrel-shaped, its foliage on the outside, its fruit hanging inside. She learned that when the fruit became ripe it dropped so that more could be grown on the same stem. There was preservative gas within the hollow centre, so that the tree gradually filled with its own fresh fruit, a natural storehouse. There was enough stockpiled in this one forest to feed several cities for months.

  "And there!"

  Now they came upon an ocean of water-colour-paint water. Geysers plumed from its sparkling depths into the sky, forming ambient vapour-scapes of every lovely hue. Swallow-tails spun within these falling mists, spraying rainbows from their wings.

  "This is my empire," the Monarch said. "This is power, this is beauty, this is joy." And Judy had to agree.

  They returned to the palace. "Why don't you build a dental clinic in this time," she inquired, "so that no citizen needs to have lived without proper care: The best food is wasted if your teeth are poor, and no one can be happy when he has a toothache."

  "What I do now can only affect myself," he reminded her. "And you, to a lesser extent. But in our normal time I shall build a clinic for the future."

  She checked his teeth. "There is some damage, but I'm sure that proper care will preserve these for the rest of your life," she said. "Brush them after every meal, and brush the rest of your mouth too, to disturb the bacteria. Use the dental tape, don't eat any more processed carbohydrates than you really have to, and have your mouth checked every six months."

  "But who will do the checking?"

  That moth problem again! And of course the Monarch could not summon any off-world dentist to work on his teeth, in this flashback status. "I suppose you'll just have to do the best you can by yourself. That isn't ideal, but it will certainly help."

  Then she cleaned his teeth carefully, though her tiny six-year-old hands were clumsy at so specialized a task. She reviewed him on the techniques of dental-prophylaxis until she was satisfied that he knew exactly what to do.

  Finally they returned to the present. There was some awkwardness about her tangled clothing that amused the Monarch, but he was too fatigued to laugh long. He collapsed almost immediately, frightening her. Twenty years seemed to have been a terrific strain on his system.

  The Monarch was old again, but did seem to be in better health than before, as though his attention to diet had helped more than his teeth. And his teeth were improved; he was still able to chew most foods without discomfort.

  If human beings had the ability to impart their knowledge to their younger selves, as the Monarch had done, they might all have superior teeth, she thought wistfully.

  Months passed. Judy was well treated at the palace, and from time to time (figuratively) the Monarch summoned her for conversation. He was inordinately proud of his preserved teeth, and gave her full credit for the advice that had in effect restored them. But her service to him had ended; she could leave Lepidop at any time she found somewhere better to go.

  Yet there was a certain lingering dissatisfaction. His teeth were not perfect, and she knew that he concealed occasional pains, not wanting to admit this flaw in the gift. It would have been so much better for him to have had the regular supervision of a dentist (even a moth dentist!), for the patient simply could not do everything for himself.

  She was increasingly nervous, too, because she had not heard from the University. Trach was long gone and she had no idea how to reach him. She might have placed an interplanetary call, but this was expensive and she did not have a planet to reach. He could be anywhere in the galaxy.

  Had the dinosaur notified those authorities of her whereabouts? Had they in turn notified Dr. Dillingham? Had he been interested enough to put in a requisition for her, or whatever it was at this level? She had supposed that Dr. Dillingham had been satisfied with her performance, back on Earth, and might like to have her as his assistant again. But as a University administrator he would rate the best, and she could not delude herself about her status there. She was used to his mannerisms and individual techniques, and that was all.

  She made use of the comprehensive Lepidop library of dental information, studying the configurations of the dentures of a thousand alien species. She visited the lowly moth dentists, and found them a good deal more knowledgeable than the opinion of the butterflies suggested. She asked the translator about the university—its procedures and hierarchy. She waited.

  Nothing. Either the message had not got through, or Dillingham was not interested. She was helpless.

  "I have had a taste of better health," the Monarch said, shaking his faintly orange wings. "It incites me to desire more. If twenty years did this, what might thirty do?"

  That would be equivalent to sixty, by her scale. He would in effect be twenty—at the very prime of life. Of course, nothing short of a complete overhaul from the moment of conception on would provide him with absolutely perfect teeth, but—

  "If I begin caring for my teeth in the flush of my youth, at the time I first emerged from the chrysalis, they will remain strong forever!" he cried.

  She kept forgetting that the butterfly lifecycle differed from her own. Perhaps that was time enough.

  "Come, my dear—take my hand."

  She tried to stop herself, but his word compelled her just as though she were a butterfly subject. "Wait!" she cried, suddenly realizing what thirty years would mean to her. "I can't go back to—"

  And the vertigo overcame her.

  It was much worse than before. She felt as though she were being turned inside out through the mouth and dipped in lye. She felt, she fought, she expired, she emerged into—

  Nightmare.

  The choking crying bleeding miasma of extinction. Her arms were bound in mummy wrappings, her eyeballs were rotten. She screamed with the soundlessness of an anguished ghost. Maggots were feeding on her tongue, flames on her wings.

  She had tried to go back to four years before she had been born.

  But it was not her own demise she experienced. The Monarch was dead. His ancient husk of a body dangled from her hand when she stood, and when she tried to let go his desiccated appendage it fell apart.

  "Murderous alien!" the purple court butterflies cried, discovering her in her guilt. "You made the Monarch attempt the impossible. You crucified him on your short life-span, and he is four years defunct, and now the Empire will fall!"

  Judy found no way to protest. She had led him on to it, however unwittingly.

  "You shall die the death of a thousand lights!" they screamed. "Moths shall spit on your remains!"

  They put her with all her possessions in a cocoon tower near the apex of the castle. She could see beyond the strands to overlook the lovely countryside, but she could not break the tough webbing or force it apart in order to escape. It was like invisibly barbed wire. In any event, it was a long, long fall to the moat, and sharklike beetle larvae cruised that dreary channel.

  Butterflies swooped from the sky, their wings translucent in the sun. Each carried a beamer pointed towards Judy's prison. Some of these rods were silver, some black, some green—all the hues of Lepidop. The insects zoomed at her in single file, and from each weapon a narrow light speared into her cage.

  At first she flung herself aside, trying to avoid the profusions of beams, but she could not escape them all. Then she discovered that they did not hurt her. They were merely lights, that illuminated her prison momentarily and faded harmlessly.

  Was the execution, then, a bluff?

  Pain blossomed in her leg. One of those lights was a laser!

  An hour and several scorches later she figured it out. At irregular intervals a butterfly would approach carrying an orange rod—the colour matching the wings of the dead Monarch. This was the laser—the beam she had to avoid.

  But it was nervous work. She had to watch every butterfly, and there were always several in sight. The beamers were not easy
to see until almost within effective range, so she had only a moment to spot the orange one and dodge its pencil-thin sword of heat. The web-flung bars of the cage inhibited her view at critical moments, too. The beams were somehow set to have effect only in her vicinity; they passed through the cage strands harmlessly, and dissipated beyond the cocoon. She was the only target; when her attention lapsed, she got stung.

  So far the wounds had been painful but not critical. Eventually a laser would be sure to strike an eye or some other vital spot, and then...

  The death of a thousand lights. She understood it now. A hundred thousand threats, one thousand actual attacks. One or two strikes she could forget; ten or twenty she could suffer through; one or two hundred she could survive with proper medical attention. But a thousand would surely finish her. Those she managed to avoid still took their toll, for she could not relax at any time while watching for them, and sleep would be impossible.

  Sometimes one laser followed another consecutively. Sometimes half an hour passed between shots, though the innocent-light butterflies swooped past steadily at intervals of five to ten seconds. The average laser came around fifteen minutes. That would be four an hour, she calculated feverishly, or almost a hundred in a twenty-four hour span.

  It would take ten days for the torture to expend itself. Far longer than she could remain alert. Eventually she would sink into unconsciousness, from fatigue if not from wounds.

  The death of a thousand lights.

  Her eyes ached. The constantly oncoming butterflies blurred. They no longer seemed beautiful; they were wings of horror. Always one passing close, its light aiming, stabbing. Always one a few seconds behind, its beamer lost in the distance. And others, trailing back into the sky—an ominous parade of beating wings.

  She cried out. She had nodded off without realizing it, hypnotized by the steadily cruising, flexing wings. A laser had scored, singeing a strand of her hair and scorching one shoulder. It was as though a white hot poker had been jammed against her, destroying flesh and bone to a depth of a quarter inch and cauterizing its own wound.

  Night came, but no relief. Now the moths were marshalled to the task, their rods softly glowing in the same array of colours. This was no favour to her, she knew. She had to be given a chance to spot the orange ones. Otherwise her vigil would be useless, and she would have simply to lie down and let the beams come. That would remove half the torture and shorten its duration.

  She nodded off again, and was struck again—but this time she had been fortunate enough to pick up almost thirty minutes of sleep. That enabled her to remain alert for several more hours.

  Then the blurring resumed, and would not be denied. She had a tightening headache, and she knew that the long dismal end was coming. She would waste herself away, fighting it, but her point of no-hope was incipient. All she had wanted to do was to rejoin Dr. Dillingham; the cruellest part of it all was his failure to respond. He would have responded, she was sure now, had he been told. Maybe the University had buried the message as crackpot. Maybe he already had a thoroughly competent galactic assistant...

  She chided herself for feeling sorry for herself, then reacted angrily: now was the best of all times to feel sorry for herself!

  A larger light showed in the distance. She thought it was the rising Lepidop sun, and marvelled that the night should have passed so quickly. But it seemed to be star-shaped. And not natural. With an effort she unblurred enough to make out the glint of metal. A machine of some sort, flying through the air, but no aeroplane!

  From it a searchlight-sized beam emerged, sweeping across the planet. Was this the final laser?

  She screamed involuntarily as the huge light found her and bathed her blindingly, but she did not burn. The machine came down its headlight as though it were an Earthly locomotive. She could make out no detail of its shape.

  Her cage exploded. She felt herself falling, still blinded. She heard the chitter of untranslated moth protests. Something hard caught her arm and hauled her up roughly.

  "None but I shall do him die!" a metal voice boomed. Now she knew she was hallucinating, for translators could not fly. "And thou willst join him there."

  "I know that!" she snapped hysterically. "At least give me some butter for these little burns..."

  And that was strange, for she was not the hysterical type. She wondered when the end would come.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  "Doctor, you need an assistant," Oyster said. He had retracted almost entirely into his shell for an executive snooze, but the ubiquitous translators picked up his watery mumble and spewed it forth full-volume in English.

  An assistant? Dillingham had already come to that conclusion. He sat behind such a towering mound of paperwork that he could not properly attend to his duties. In fact, he could not always even remember his official title correctly, with so much else cluttering his mind. At any moment he could be popped off to some simple assignment that invariably turned out to be murderously complex in detail.

  Actually, no paper was involved. But computerized busy-work and multilingual red tape amounted to the same thing. Every tiny plastic card, of the thousands on his desk, represented some problem of some student that he had to rectify in some manner. Yes, he needed help on the interminable details of his office. He had had no assistant since leaving Earth, and he had never fully adapted to that lack. How he wished he could take a mid-session snooze, as Oyster was doing now!

  Oyster's assistant was Miss Tarantula, a marvel of arachnid efficiency. In the office or the operatory, at the University or in the field, her eight arms seemed to tie up every loose thread before it appeared. It was because of her that Oyster's desk was clear, and Dillingham realized jealously that if he had an assistant even half as competent his own desk would soon be relieved of its burden. Yet she tended to make him nervous, despite his efforts to repress his Earthly prejudices. She was not really a man-sized spider...

  Oyster poked an antenna out of his shell. "Set up a series of interviews for a prospective assistant," he said to her. "Land-going, aesthetic, competent, unattached females—"

  "The first is waiting in the anteroom," Miss Tarantula said. That was the way she was: anticipatory. "If Dr. Dillingham cares to interview her now—"

  "But there's no point in merely talking with her," Dillingham protested. "I have field assignments as well as office routine. I have to know how she functions in a variety of situations, particularly under stress. If—"

  "Naturally," Miss Tarantula said. "You are scheduled to make a promotional tour of planet Hobgoblin today. She will accompany you on a trial basis."

  "But that's not a stress situation. A routine visit—"

  "The director also wishes you to investigate certain complaints of a sensitive nature."

  So now it came out. Debating points with Miss Tarantula was futile. The slightest twitch of her hairy front leg brought the web tight. And Oyster himself was no slouch at making things routinely impossible; he seemed to feel that this was good practice for the Directorship. Certain complaints of a sensitive nature? That meant that half a mis-step could result in a lynching!

  Except for the Jann. The huge robot's meticulous guardianship was not entirely welcome, but was a fact of Dillingham's new life. If there were trouble on Hobgoblin...

  Dillingham felt a headache coming on. "All right. Brief her and—"

  "All taken care of, Doctor," Miss Tarantula said. Naturally. It was not that she was helping Dillingham, for she was hardly concerned with bipedal mammals; it was that her boss had made a directive and she was being efficient.

  The door opened. A grotesque mound of warty blubber slid into the office. It drifted to rest before Dillingham, smelling of castor oil. A black orifice gaped. "So pleased to meet you, Doctor D," the translator said. I am Miss Porkfat, your trial basis assistant."

  Aesthetic, competent, female...

  Dillingham had no doubt that by the standards of her own species Miss Porkfat was all of these. And he could not
afford to question any of it, lest he betray an un-University prejudice of taste.

  "Very good, Miss P," he said. "Please arrange passage for three to planet Hobgoblin, and notify the authorities there of our itinerary."

  "Three, Doctor?" Her voice, audible just beneath the translation, was pleasantly modulated, at least.

  "Three. The Jann will be coming along."

  She extruded a snail-like eye-stalk. The orb focused on the shining robot. A quiver started there and travelled on down her body before it dampened out. "Yes, Doctor." She oozed over to a private-line translator, asked for interplanetary, and began making the arrangements.

  Grade A, so far, Dillingham thought as Oyster woke and smiled benignly from inside his shell. The Jann robots were supposed to have become extinct several thousand years ago, but their terrible reputation lingered on in galactic folklore. Miss Porkfat had excellent presence if her only reaction to the sight of a functioning Jann was one eyeball-quiver.

  But still she reminded him of infected slug-meat.

  The Hobgoblins were surly creatures: short, big-headed, flat-footed, and ugly by humanoid standards. "What's that Jann doing here?" the customs official demanded in a whine that even the translator caught. "We don't allow sentient robots on our planet."

  "He—has to travel with me," Dillingham said. It was complicated to explain.

  "He'll stay in the locker, then." The official gestured to the guards. "Put this tin in the cooler."

  The squat troopers advanced on the huge metal creature. Dillingham saw trouble coming, but was powerless to circumvent it. The Jann was as deadly a sentient as the galaxy had ever known, and had sworn to protect Dillingham for fifty years. To do that, he had to stay close. Evidently the inhabitants of this planet had little respect for past reputations, or they would never have gone near the Jann.

  The uniformed goblins took hold of either arm. They were barely able to reach up that far, and looked like squat children beside a stern parent. They tugged.

  That was all. The Jann did not budge or take overt note of them. Fortunately.