Tropic of Skorpeo
Page 20
Happily, he set about plotting its course. Still later, in the wee small hours, he consulted his Simulacran Ground Analyser and discovered strange things moving through the crust – giant worms over three hundred kilometres long were boring through the planet, slowly reducing it to a hollowed out world, a veritable sphere of gruyère. The customary anthelminthic procedures seemed to have failed miserably, and while it would take time, Simulacra would eventually shrink and crumble until there was nothing left but a handful of celestial buckshot and a writhing mass of worms.
Humming contentedly, Astroburger went about saving Simulacra from its multi-disastrous fate.
“Empress,” said Zoah in his sternest voice. “My son and the princess are to wed – immediately!”
He was seated on his magnificent throne looking every inch an emperor. The sun shone in through the palace windows making lovely zebras of light on the marble floors. Flame-coloured birds flew overhead, their cries like cold music. He glared at the waiting courtiers who were lined up like dutiful soldiers, eyes respectfully lowered in the presence of the mighty monarch whose glance could quell a regiment of crazed Punkoids.
“Immediately, is it?” the empress enquired scornfully, raising her tugga tugga glass to her lips. “And when did anything get done immediately around this outfit? And you, yes you, Princess! I hope you can keep my son in line! He needs discipline and must not be spoilt, for he has been spoilt silly by his indulgent father already. Are you with me, girl? You seem to be in a trance. Contemplating your honeymoon night, no doubt. I know all about young brides – I was one myself you know, about a thousand years ago. Now, where was I?”
“Disciplining your son.”
“Quite. You must not take any nonsense; rule with a firm hand. If he wants to go hunting for Siberian tigers, that’s fine, as long as he keeps his hair tidy and he’s back in time for dinner. Get that smirk off your face – I’m telling you this for your own good and the good of our two –”
“Empires?” Juraletta suggested.
“Well, I hardly call a young princess and a gorgon with bad breath an empire, but yes – our two empires. Now, where was I?”
“Join the two empires?”
“Yes, quite so. You must fuse, better to marry than to sizzle like a sausage, as the saying goes –”
“I know,” Juraletta said. “My first hus–” then she realised that the story of the Fissionable Duke’s ferocious combustion was perhaps best not related to her imminent mother-in-law.
Luckily, the empress seemed not to have noticed Juraletta’s words. “But make sure you keep the upper hand. Slyly. Men are just overgrown babies, as I’m sure you know.”
“Yes, Empress, of course – overgrown babies.”
“Good. Even though you appear to be a brainless flibbertigibbet, you seem to have a few neurons in good working order. And the prince’s table manners – well, he doesn’t have any.”
“Don’t worry – I’ll sort that out.”
“I see… so you’re planning to control him, are you? Just remember – he is my son, and the heir to a vast empire. You must respect him.”
“Even though he is an overgrown baby?”
“Even babies need respect.” The empress gave a smile so razored it could have been slipped between the building blocks of the pyramid of Cheops. And seeing that display of canines at her impudent jest, Juraletta breathed a sigh of relief. For the empress – by her scolding words – had accepted her as a daughter-in-law.
“His green skin and your mauve epidermis should combine to give a rather interesting shade of goldy-beige,” continued the empress gushily, pausing only to swallow a long draft of tugga tugga juice. “I assume you are planning offspring? If you cannot promise to provide a baker’s dozen of mewling urchins, I cannot bless this union. I trust you are familiar with the necessary routine to engender children – disgusting though it may be?”
“Of course, Empress,” said Juraletta. “And we will wed as soon as possible! Just as soon as I put on some more makeup.”
“Nonsense – princesses don’t need makeup.”
“I crave it,” said Juraletta. “I met a Slutoid, you see, and I’ve learned the error of my naïve ways. I am no longer the plain Jane of yore – I’ve been taught to make myself up like Lady Gaggadinia, so my days of being a moisture bundle are numbered!”
Perhaps I have gone too far, thought Juraletta. But then something rather odd happened. The Empress of Skorpeo, who hadn’t been known to laugh for three hundred years, broke into a prolonged snicker. Her risibility easily qualified as a rich adenoidal braying that echoed around the alabaster palace walls like a nannygoat relieving itself from a headache.
“Once a moisture bundle, always a moisture bundle,” she cackled.
“I’m a regular little Slutoid now,” said Juraletta archly. “Have you looked into my eyes? Do you see moisture? Do they look innocent?”
“A bride doesn’t have to be innocent, objectively, but she must certainly convince her husband of her ingenuousness,” the empress declared. “A slut is not what the doctor ordered. You must maintain a patina of innocence even if you have been deflowered, for while a princess can act how she likes behind closed doors, in public she must appear as pure as a spring flower. In short, I want you mascaraless and in a gown of pure white, not looking like a Slutoid.”
“If I am not allowed to drench my eyelashes with mascara, I won’t marry your son even if he is the handsomest stud in the galaxy,” Juraletta pronounced haughtily. “I’m no longer an innocent roaming the Corridors of Peep in my nightie. I am a grown woman now – an adult. I have chest rockets. And if it comes down to it I may chose to stay single.”
Zoah sighed. “Child, what is your heart’s desire?”
“The prince, I suppose. But he and everyone else has to accept my eyes, whatever their adornment.”
“I do accept your eyes, darling,” said Rhameo.
“So the union of our two worlds depends on face paint,” mused Zoah. “And the poor girl is simply suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.”
“I have no idea what a Stockholm is, but when it comes down to it perhaps mascara isn’t really the issue,” said the empress.
“Then what is, Mother?” asked Rhameo
“Her bosom.”
“By the gods, Mother. What’s wrong with her bosom?”
“She has two of them.”
“Are you saying I can’t handle four breasts?”
“It’s nothing to do with handling them – my worry is that it’s not very Skorpean, is it?”
“Now we see your true colours, Mother – you were happy for me to marry a giant slug from Volgogtha, but four breasts are beyond the pale? And besides – Juraletta is not Skorpean. She is Qwertian. Qwertian royalty.”
“I think we should proceed with the wedding now,” said Zoah. “Perhaps this young lady having twice the number of breasts we are used to on our world indicates that she is twice as fertile. Perhaps, my dear, that means that we shall have twice as many grandchildren?”
The empress paused, cogs turning almost audibly in her head. “Twice as many grandchildren?” she muttered quietly, then sat sharply upright, and smiled indulgently. “I can perhaps see the political advantages in this joining of our worlds. And what will you call your first born? Names are important, don’t you think? So… defining!” She raised her glass to her lips, then frowned. “Ah – damn! No tugga tugga juice to toast the newlyweds!”
“Ahdamn,” repeated Juraletta. “Quite an interesting name. I like it.”
“Like what? What are you talking about, child?”
“Adam.”
Prior to the wedding, Juraletta was attended by Gorgie who fussed over her makeup and hair.
“I think I would like my hair Rapunzelised,” Juraletta said giving a sweet smile, with a tad of sadness in it.
“Has that dwarf been getting to you, dear?”
“Oh, he’s all right once you get to know him.”
“Fo
rtunately, I have not had the privilege,” cackled Gorgon.
“All friendship is a privilege,” said Juraletta.
“You know something?” said Gorgon, “You’re absolutely right.”
“And we are friends, aren’t we, Gorgie?”
“Always, Princess. Do you want your ears to show or be covered by your hair?”
“Half and half.”
There was a knock at the door, and it was immediately opened by a familiar person.
Teleporteus.
Shielding his eyes with one arm, quick as a cat, he threw a black bag over Gorgon’s head before she had time to blink, and tied it in a knot. He secured her to a chair and slinked, grinning, towards the princess.
“What do you want?” snapped Juraletta.
“That should be obvious – I’m here to spoil your wedding.”
“Get out!”
“The opposite. I’ll be getting in. What do you think of that?”
“You disgust me, and the only thing you’ll be getting in is Prism. Leave now, or I’ll call the guards.”
“Just try – they’ve been disabled by love toads.”
“That which has been disabled can be re-enabled.”
He smirked at her. “I think Rhameo underestimates you. You are of high intelligence.”
“Intelligent enough to have nothing to do with you.”
Stepping closer, he smiled at Juraletta down the length of his nose. “How about a kiss?”
“I’d rather kiss a Punkoid,” she spat.
“Well, there’s an idea.”
“Are you leaving now?’
“Not yet,“ he said with a sneer. “I haven’t got what I came for –”
When he grabbed Juraletta by the wrist, he was surprised to feel the strength in her arms. She slapped him. He took the blow and laughed, “Go on, hit me again. I like a bit of slap and tickle, without the tickle.”
She did, and he didn’t laugh this time.
“Quite the little hellcat when you’re aroused, aren’t you?”
Juraletta struggled against him as she looked desperately around for a weapon. She couldn’t believe her luck – one of Rhameo’s broadswords was leaning against the dresser. He must have left it there earlier, for of course it was unsuitable for a groom to wear a sword to his wedding. You can be so careless, my prince.
“Guards!” she yelled, focusing her gaze intently over Teleporteus’s shoulder. “Arrest this man.”
He turned to face the guards, then spun back as he saw that he had been tricked. Juraletta stomped on Teleporteus’s foot, driving the heel of her ten-inch white wedding stiletto straight through his boot, and then she lunged for the sword, grasping it with both hands. By the minor moons of Jupiter it was heavy, but fear and desperation rocketed warrior adrenalin into her arms. Lifting the sword aloft, she raised it to strike.
Teleporteus was pale as he clutched his foot. “Why, you vicious tart –”
Her first slice took off his protecting hand and chopped deep into the side of his neck, spraying a jet of warm green blood into her face. His head lolled to one side like a broken doll. Her second stroke severed it as cleanly as a piece of fruit. The head fell, bounced off his punctured foot, rolled over, lay still. For a moment his headless body stood like a guillotined statue, then toppled downwards.
“You were saying?” she said as she stepped over the corpse. “Now come on, Gorgie – get out of that bag this instant. We’ve got a wedding to get to, and this is no time for playing Hide and Shriek.”
The wedding of Rhameo and Juraletta took place within the palace’s ivory and alabaster walls, adorned with fine frescoes showing every glorious (and inglorious) victory over rival empires, and it went off like a charm quark. Millions cheered and danced as the stunningly dishy couple were crowned King and Queen of Skorpeo (and Qwerty). Thus two great empires were united.
As they took their wedding vows, Gorgon stared too intently at the prince thereby accidentally turning him to stone, and had to blink hard twice to quicken his blood. The guests, thinking it was a deliberate example of dark gorgonic humour, applauded wildly.
The dwarf gestured as though to cast a spell but the only effect, whether magical or not, was to make people smile more broadly. The unicorn whinnied like a Venusian wind, and a final scatter of diamond-shaped leaves shimmied from its shanks. The giant clapped his hands so loudly that frescoes cracked and mosaics dropped from the walls. Pundit declared that time had never more been more amiably frozen.
The Fool murmured one of his witticisms which some heard as, “The universe, God’s daring dictionary, has left us the joyous task of turning its gassy morphemes into an arcane language clever enough to bewilder fumbling apes into gesturing gods,” though some heard a poetic whimsy about the two colours of the couple forming an incomparably glorious rainbow.
And the Empress of Skorpeo, normally so critical, amazed everyone by weeping tears of joy.
“Her skin may be purple, but her heart is as green as emerald!”
Michael Morrissey is the author of eleven volumes of poetry, two short story collections, three short novels, and a memoir. He has had a book column in Investigate magazine (recently renamed and reformatted as HIS / HERS) for thirteen years. He has edited five other books – mainly short stories – and published numerous feature articles and also been active as a columnist.
In 1979, he was the first Writer-in-Residence at the University of Canterbury, and in 1985 the first New Zealand writer to participate in the University of Iowa International Writing Programme, earning an Honorary Fellowship in Writing. In 2012, he was appointed Writer-in-Residence at the University of Waikato. His more than 80 published short stories range from neo-social realism to the surreal and the postmodern. A film by Costa Botes of a Morrissey story, “Stalin’s Sickle”, won the Grand Jury prize at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France in 1988.
A feature-length documentary by Botes, Daytime Tiger (2011), deals with Morrissey’s experience of manic depression (aka bipolar disorder), also the subject of his 2011 memoir, Taming the Tiger.
Michael Morrissey
Image courtesy of Ian Wishart / Investigate
First published in 2012 by Steam Press Ltd
© Text: Michael Morrissey, 2012
© Cover art: Kura Carpenter, 2012 (kuracarpenterdesign.blogspot.co.nz)
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing with the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review, as permitted under copyright laws, no part may be reproduced by any process, nor transmitted, nor translated without prior written permission from the copyright owners. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher. Michael Morrissey has asserted his moral rights.
National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Morrissey, Michael, 1942-
Tropic of Skorpeo / by Michael Morrissey.
ISBN 978-0-9876635-3-5 (pbk.)—978-0-9876635-4-2 (epub) —9780987663559 (mobi)
i. Title.
NZ823.2—dc 22
Stephen Minchin at Steam Press is grateful to the following people for their support and encouragement through the course of this project: Ange Minchin for everything, Ang Jenkins for being hugely positive in the early days, and Elizabeth Heritage for her awesome editing and proofreading.
ebook conversion by Steam Press Ltd.
The author would like to acknowledge the help of the University of Waikato’s Writer-in-Residence Programme and Creative New Zealand in the writing of this book.
STEAM PRESS
www.steampress.co.nz stephen@steampress.co.nz
FUN FANTASY CONFUSION CATASTROPHE
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