Tropic of Skorpeo

by Morrissey, Michael

  As always, Sage had known and shown the way. Where would Qwerty be without the all-knowing Sage, the Fissionable Duke reflected as he sank his molars into a basketball-sized lump of iridium. What a tasty metal it was…

  The first thing Princess Juraletta noticed about her husband-to-be as he walked slowly across the room to meet her was that he sounded like a piece of old machinery (though of course, the princess had never been exposed to machinery), and smelled of worn-out quarries (though of course, the princess had never been exposed to a quarry, worn out or otherwise). All the metals he had consumed over the years had left a residue in the joints that made a distinct grinding and clanking sound, and his breath smelled like a Ganymedean metalarium (though of course, she had never smelled a Ganymedean metalarium). Juraletta’s ever-informative Gorgon had warned her that the Fissionable Duke would not smell of roses nor of cinnamon, but of open-cast mining. These off-putting first impressions were compensated for by the genial tick in his eye, and his natty jacket of bejewelled metal. Could it be that this metal-munching patriarch was unnerved by his pale young princess?

  “Master Duke!” cried Gorgon. “May I introduce you to your bride-to-be, Princess Juraletta.”

  “Pleased… ah… I’m sure.” The Fissionable Duke stumbled over his words, suddenly conscious of the small fragments of rock that were lodged in his beard. He bowed stiffly, with a slightly rusty groan.

  “Now I’m going to leave you two love birds alone for a while,” breathed Gorgon, slipping away into the shadows.

  “Are you… ah… hungry?” enquired the Fissionable Duke, his geriatric grimace revealing glittering shards of ytterbium between his teeth.

  “Reasonably replete,” replied Juraletta with a nervous glance at his overloaded table.

  “How about some dysprosium? It sits well in the… ah… tum tum with some terbium and… ah… a smidgen of europium. And for indigestion, I cannot speak too highly of the stomach-settling properties of ytterbium. And… ah… yttrium is good for headaches, and –”

  “I am not indigested,” said Juraletta calmly. “And I don’t suffer from headaches.”

  “Ah… I see. I thought princesses were a delicate breed, and always suffered from headaches.”

  “I am unusually robust for a princess,” said Juraletta. “I’ve been through the pea-under-the-mattress routine, and I didn’t feel a thing. Why, only this morning I was…” She was about to blurt out ‘flying at a thousand feet with a good-looking young man’ when she realised that it wasn’t very tactful to mention to her intended groom that she had been gallivanting among the clouds with a young prince. She quickly amended her words to “walking about for quite some time and I suffered no ill effects.” (‘Except that Gorgon growled at me,’ she nearly added.)

  “In that case,” said the Fissionable Duke, “how about some gadolinium? It’s sweeter than honey. That is… ah… if you have the palate for it,” he concluded rather lamely.

  The princess, who had been dreading her meeting with the duke and had been momentarily put off by first impressions, realised that he was a rather kindly if awkward old fellow who only wanted to please his intended bride.

  “And where do you walk about when you walk about?” asked the Fissionable Duke as he gestured her towards a chair.

  “Oh – all over the castle,” said Juraletta as she sat, crossing her legs demurely. Where else would she walk? Silly old duke – didn’t he know anything? “The castle is very large, you know. The largest in the world.”

  “Is it indeed?” replied the Fissionable Duke, dragging his eyes away from Juraletta’s ankles, which had been inadvertently exposed. “I thought it… ah… not that large.”

  “Well, I’m smaller than you, so it seems huge to me,” said the princess, smiling nervously. “I understand it contains thousands of rooms, though I’ve only seen a few. By the way, do you play Dinosaurs and Asteroids?”

  “What’s an asteroid?”

  “It’s what iridium arrives in,” replied the knowledgeable princess.

  “Do you know anything about children?” asked the Fissionable Duke rather abruptly, sweat standing out on his forehead as he dragged his eyes from the young lady’s décolletage.

  “Only that silly old Gorgon keeps calling me one.”

  “Ah… It occurred to me you might know how one goes about engendering one.”

  Though Juraletta knew that the duke was besotted with rare earths and had thought about little else during the last few hundred years, she was rather surprised to see his eyes go wide as she leaned over to adjust her skirts.

  The duke swallowed hard. Cleavage both front and back!

  “I’m sure Gorgie will know,” said Juraletta.

  “Who?”

  “Gorgie. Oh, I’m sorry – that’s my secret name for Gorgon. Please don’t tell her I let you know. She’d never forgive me. Never!”

  “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me,” said the Fissionable Duke amiably. “Well, I’ll see you at the wedding – I must get back to my dinner now. Ah… you will be at the… uh… wedding, won’t you?”

  “I’m sure it won’t take place without me,” laughed the princess.

  Leaping to her feet, she made her way from the room with a provocative little skip. The antediluvian duke watched her leave, eyes drawn to the nimble sway of her hips as she passed through the door and out of sight.

  “Stalactite of ice,” he muttered, and returned to his meal with something of a swing in his step.

  Prince Rhameo looked at the walls of the palace in disgust. The vast panorama of Skorpean victories over the barbarians of Gologtha was rendered in four dimensions and covered five thousand years of heroic conflict, with improbably noble Skorpean warriors besting the barbarian nasties of Golgotha, slaying robot armies, and slaughtering mutant dragons that spat fireballs the size of small planets. The finest art in the empire, it heaped dazzling praise on his forebears, promising future glories… Rhameo yawned. Pundit had lectured him on the significance of the symbolism until the prince had fallen into a catatonic doze from which only a horrifying nightmare (of a nocturnal escapade with Teleporteus at the Gardens of Fleschimor – his brother’s attempts at the erotic usually resulted in catastrophe) had jerked him awake. Rhameo, in short, was not having a good day, and now his sibling, who could jump from planet to planet by merely thinking of the intergalactic co-ordinates, had appeared in the flesh and was mocking him once again.

  “A whole morning hunting, brother,” sneered Teleporteus in his reedy voice, “and all you have to show for it is a few strands of musical skyray’s wing stuck in your hair! What were you doing out there? Shooting at your own shadow? The High Prince of Alphab and future ruler of Skorpeo should be made of sharper stuff!”

  “Lighten up,” Rhameo mock-snarled. “You sound more and more like Father.”

  Teleporteus glared at him. “I may sound like him, but be assured that I will make a better job of siring heirs than he did with you.”

  “That is heresy, Brother,” Rhameo said. “If Pundit or our father ever hears you say such a thing, you will be cooked in despair oil and thrown to the Saccharines.”

  “A sweet death, to be sure,” Teleporteus brayed like a spavined mule complaining about a heavy load. As he laughed, his long face and prominent nose increased the horsey resemblance, and did little to help him rival his older brother in the looks department.

  “How very droll,” Rhameo replied. “By the way, Brother, have you ever heard of a place called Qwerty?”

  “Doesn’t my brother know anything? What kind of a ruler will you make?”

  “Have a care, puppy, or I’ll teach you a lesson,” growled Rhameo, flexing his battle-hardened muscles, more than certain that he could trash his brother in the twinkling leer of a Slutoid’s oily glance. “Now give me the benefit of your superior knowledge.”

  “Have you heard of Dimension Door?” Teleporteus asked.

  “Of course.” Rhameo cuffed his young brother’s closely cr
opped bullet head.

  “Fifth stop is Qwerty, I hear. A pathetic little armpit of a world of scant interest to Skorpeo. However, our father, Zoah the Wrathful One, has forbidden entry to it. We suspect it has warlike tendencies.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself? He advances upon us.”

  Rhameo felt the ground shake beneath his feet and turned to see the crackles of electrical energy emanating from his father’s voluminous beard. Flames flowed across the emperor’s armour and sparks spat as he punched a massive fist into the palm of his other hand. None would disagree that the thousand-year-old ruler of Skorpeo was a formidable sight, at least when fully clothed. Over the years, however, rumours had emerged from the whorehouses of Fleschimor that the mighty emperor was somewhat less mighty when detrousered, and for the past five hundred years any who so much as admitted to having heard such stories were summarily executed. There was a particularly persistent story asserting that the more disastrous the emperor’s night of whoring, the louder he was the next day…

  “You there!” Zoah bellowed, causing Rhameo to make a mental note to slip more little blue pills into his father’s dinner. “Knaves who call yourselves my sons! What good is it if I have only idle bones for offspring? Teleporteus, what have you done about the rebellion in East Alphab? Speak!”

  “Quelled it, sire.”

  “That’s not what I hear, you green-eared whelp! My advisers tell me the Volgogths are organising themselves in preparation for an assault, and laughed at your fissionic poniards.”

  “A fissionic poniard is no laughing matter, sire,” protested Teleporteus.

  “Nevertheless, the Volgogths guffaw behind their shields,” Zoah barked. “I will not have guffawing! See to it at once, use every means necessary, and show no womanly pity! And what of you, Rhameo?” the emperor asked in a softer tone.

  “He’s been hunting, sire,” said Teleporteus.

  “Hunting?” repeated Zoah, feigning surprise. “Well, that makes a change from needlework!” Slapping his tree-trunk-sized thighs, the emperor laughed uproariously at his own jest. “And what did you catch, Rhameo?”

  “Nothing, sire,” Teleporteus interjected before Rhameo could answer.

  “Silence, puppy!” shouted Zoah. “Let your brother answer for himself. Rhameo, what was thy catch?”

  “A skyray, Father.”

  “Musical or atonal?”

  “Musical, Father.”

  “Thank God for that,” exclaimed Zoah. “I cannot abide those atonal skyrays – they are like harpies to my ears. Speaking of harpies, that scurrilous molecular structure called my wife seeks a chamber with you, boy. See you to it.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Oh, and Rhameo – be nice to her. Do as she wishes. There is a dark complexion to her mind that troubles the blood. Attend her well. She has a surprise for you and I think it will be… a most agreeable one.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “And now my keen young warrior,” Zoah said, turning to Teleporteus, his initial gruffness abated, “let us decide what we can do about the Volgogths. They have a weakness, I understand…”

  As Rhameo made his way through the corridors on his way to chamberise with his mother, he felt distinctly uneasy about the surprise that his father had mentioned. The last ‘surprise’ had been horrendous – the empress had sent him to one of the outer worlds for his ‘educational improvement’, and after battling forty-eight alien life forms (many of them with decidedly disagreeable eating habits), and nearly being killed twenty-six times, Rhameo had not felt enlightened so much as exhausted. Still, there had been some benefits – his exploits in the Outer Worlds were legendary among his well nigh two thousand siblings, and whenever insolent brothers challenged his credentials in battle he had simply to say ‘Outer!’ and they dropped the subject. Even the arrogant and scheming Teleporteus had to admit that Rhameo was a valiant warrior.

  Figuring that his mother’s business couldn’t be too urgent, Rhameo allowed himself a quick visit to the Pleasure Vault where, on a platform of crimson satin, a nymph undulated her sinuous way through a mating dance with her own hologram. Self and image indulged in a lesbian-narcissistic orgy of thigh and breast that would have tempted a time priest into abandoning his chronometers and his vows not to connubialise. Rhameo grinned as he swallowed a moderate duration time capsule, which elongated the next ten minutes by the power of four.

  The nymph had grown a phallus – as had her hologram – though whether actual body or hologram had instigated this hermaphroditism was unclear. And which was genuine body and which hologram? Rhameo pondered philosophically. She unzipped the prince’s trousers, and he leaned back with a sigh.

  “You’re the best, darling,” he murmured.

  When she had completed her task, the prince had a nanonap and awoke as refreshed as a Hellenic philosopher who had taken the waters before shouting ‘Eureka!’

  “Once a philosopher, twice a pundit,” said a voice that Rhameo instantly recognised. Now what was Pundit doing in a place like this? Well, that was Pundit’s style – turn up unexpectedly and embarrassingly. No doubt his were not the only prying eyes, and unimportant siblings lurked somewhere in the shadows of the pleasure vault.

  “This was meant to be a sensual occasion rather than a philosophic one,” said Rhameo as he turned. Pundit was a tall, thin, pencil-moustached, suave, sly sort of humanoid, full of acidic wisdoms which entered the mind, he himself declared, ‘like a scimitar’s blade waxed with babe’s blood’.

  “And whoever said sex and philosophy were enemies,” laughed Pundit. “There is an ancient quarrel between the sensual and the cerebral, but I think the two should be enjoined.”

  “Is that why you are here leering with the best of us?”

  “Oh Rhameo, Rhameo – where is thy mind, Rhameo? Tell me – did you ever hear of thy brother, Mindgassis? Now there was an adventurous fellow! He went through the Outer Worlds like a fissionic poniard through a Volgogth’s skull.”

  “Hmmm, quite… Pundit, what do you know about marriage?”

  “Marriage, Prince, should not be the cherry on the cake of bachelordom – it should be the cake itself. First you must have the right ingredients, then know how to mix them, and finally apply the necessary amount of heat. If prepared correctly, your marriage may contain a modicum of nutrition and neither offend the palate nor upset the stomach.”

  As usual, Rhameo had no idea what Pundit was talking about. That, he suspected, was Pundit’s secret – he had only to talk nonsense with sufficient gravity and everyone would accept it as the wisest advice in Skorpeo.

  “Are you to be married?” asked Pundit.

  “Not if I can help it,” said Rhameo. “I have a lot more hunting to do.”

  “Our prince should not grow overly fond of boyish pursuits.”

  “Why so?” said Rhameo with a grin. “In any case, it takes a man to hunt.”

  “A good prince should be ambitious,” Pundit droned, “though ambition is merely the apex of the iceberg of greatness. Greatness, however, should be covert rather than overt. A king is never more kingly than when his right arm lacks cognisance of the chicanery of the left. If a king does not have a good wife, then that king will have thin blood in the small hours. If time is the nub of indecision then –”

  “Thank you, Pundit, that’s all the wisdom I can handle for one morning,” Rhameo said, standing quickly and eyeing the exit, for Pundit had been known to go on in this vein for several days without stopping. “I must take my leave, for I have been summoned to chamberise with Mother.”

  Rhameo found her in noisy congress with a hairy galople.

  “Take no notice of this shaggy fellow,” she said, as Rhameo stood, cross-armed in her doorway. “The only excuse for his existence is that he serves me well. Be off with you, hirsute baggage!”

  By not so much as a flicker of his finely sculpted lips did Rhameo indicate that there was anything unusual about finding his
mother in flagrante with a strange life form. After all, he had found his father is more peculiar situations, and the gods knew that he himself had been tempted to try the famed and hairy delights of the galople ladies.

  “Rhameo, I have something important to discuss with you.”

  Gritting his teeth, Rhameo nodded. He hadn’t the slightest doubt that she wanted him to do something he didn’t care to do.

  “My wicked past?” he jested.

  “No – your glorious future,” his mother said. “You are the heir to the throne of Skorpeo, and Zoah, my good husband – well, actually he isn’t that good, is he? My partly good husband, then, is rapidly running out of Voronoffs, as the jungles of Skorpeo are down to their last swing of monkeys.”

  “There are no jungles on Skorpeo, Mother, as you well know – only gardens. And the Voronoffs are non-monkeyed creatures created in a laboratory by the ingenious Pundit.”

  “Oh, that’s what he told you, did he?” said the empress. “That old windbag has never worked a day in his life. He wouldn’t know the inside of a laboratory from a hairy galople’s bottom! Be gone, hairy baggage, didn’t you hear my dismissal the first time?” She spanked the galople’s baboonishly reddened bottom and it scampered off into the shadows. “Aside from talking in pompous riddles, Pundit is as idle as an overweight tortoise. Are there still tortoises, by the way, or have they fallen by the wayside like so many life forms?”

  “Only through –” Rhameo had been about to mention Dimension Door, but, remembering that it was a forbidden terrain, amended his words to, “Only through laboratory cloning.”

  “No doubt that’s what Pundit has told you, but I’m sure that somewhere on –”