Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordperson

by George Alec Effinger

  I go, "There's no reason to be afraid. The stars are not what you think. I know. I come from a world that has studied them for many centuries."

  "She's mad! The Stars have driven her insane!"

  "Listen to her!" Segol goes. "She told me the same story long before the Stars appeared. She speaks the truth."

  "Yes," I go, "there are other stars in the universe. That's just something you're going to have to learn to live with. But not as many as that." I pointed up, and noticed that the eclipse had moved on past totality, and a teeny tiny thread of red light was starting to grow on one side of Beta.

  "Then what are all those thousands of points of light?" goes Sor.

  "Tonight is a night for revelations and strange truth," I go. I'm always pretty good in a crisis like that. I can talk my way out of anything. Hey, you know that. You were my roommate, right? "Lagash, your six suns, and the other twelve stars in the universe are surrounded by a huge ball of ice."

  "Ice?" goes Segol. He sounded like he was having just a little bit of trouble buying it.

  "Sure, ice," I go, acting kind of ticked off that he doubted me. "What did you think, that the universe just sort of went on and on forever? That's so real, I'm totally sure."

  "A wall of ice," Sor goes. "The Book of Revelations speaks of a Cave of Darkness. I don't see why there can't be a wall of ice as well."

  Now everyone had stopped trying to grab me by the throat. They were all like hanging on my every word, okay? "But what are the Stars?" someone goes.

  "The Stars are an illusion," I go. "What you see up there are only the reflections of the dozen real stars, shining on the craggy ice wall of the universe."

  There was this silence. I held my breath 'cause everything would be totally cool if they believed me, but I'd have to start fighting for my life again if they didn't. Five seconds passed, then ten. Then all at once they all went "Ahhhh."

  Sor goes, "It's the divine truth!" I saw tears running down his face. "Look!" goes Segol. "Beta! It's coming back!"

  Sor waved his arms around and got their attention. "Let's hurry back to Saro City," he goes. "We can spread the news and keep our brothers and sisters from burning our homes. The other suns will rise in a few hours, and then life must go on as before. We must tell the others what we've learned, and broadcast the information to everyone on Lagash." Then they turned and marched away, without so much as a thank-you.

  When we were alone again on the road, Segol came over to me. He had this big, spazzy grin on his face. "That was really something, my dear," he goes.

  "My name's Maureen, and this is the last time I'm going to remind you. If you have trouble remembering that, you can call me Princess." Well, Bitsy, I know I was sort of stretching the truth, but sometimes I liked to think of myself as sort of almost engaged to Prince Van of the Angry Red Planet. I mean, a woman's reach should exceed her grasp, or what's a mixer at Yale for?

  "Then congratulations, Maureen. You were outstanding. You have saved us from centuries of Dark Ages. I think you'll always be remembered in the history books of Lagash."

  I shrugged. "What can I say?" I go. "It's like a gift."

  Segol nodded, then hung his head in shame. "I guess I owe you an apology, too. I wasn't much help to you during the battle."

  " 'S all right," I go. "You weren't really ready for all those stars." I was just being gracious, you know? I'd been a little zoned out, too, when I saw how many there were, but I got over it.

  He looked back up at me, as grateful as that awful Akita puppy Daddy brought home for Pammy's birthday. "Perhaps you'd permit me the honor," he goes, "of asking for your hand in marriage."

  I was like too stunned to say anything for a moment. I wiped Old Betsy off on this dead guy's shirt and slid her slowly back into the scabbard. Then I go, "No, I won't permit you the honor of having my hand in anything. Nothing personal, okay?"

  He was disappointed, of course, but he'd live. "I understand. Would you answer a question, then?"

  "Sure, as long as it's not like way lewd or demeaning to all women."

  He took a deep breath and he goes, "Is it true? What you told the Cultists? Is it true that Lagash is in the center of a gigantic ball of ice?"

  I laughed. I mean, how megadumb could he be? I wasn't surprised that Sor 5 and his crowd swallowed that story, but I didn't think a real astronomer would buy it. Then I realized that this was not the World of Super-science, after all, and that Segol was just a poor guy trying to understand like the laws of nature and everything. I couldn't bring myself to weird him out any more than he already was. "Right, like totally," I go. "Maybe someday your own Observatory will figure out the distance from Lagash to the ice wall. I used to know, but I forgot."

  "Thank you, Maureen," he goes. Suddenly he'd gotten so humble it was ill. "I think we'd better hurry back to tell Aton and the others the news. Beenay and the rest of the photographers should have captured the Stars with their imaging equipment. They were all prepared, of course, but even so they may have given way to panic." He looked down at the ground again, probably remembering how he'd bugged out of there in panic even before the stars came out.

  I'm sorry, Segol," I go. "I can't go back to the Observatory with you. I'm needed elsewhere. I've got to flash on back to Earth. If I wait much longer the eclipse will be over, the sky will get light, the stars will go out for another two thousand years, and I'll never see my dear, dear friend Bitsy ever again." Sure, sweetie, even in this moment of awful tension, I thought of you. You believe me, don't you?

  Segol sighed. I suppose you must go, then. I'll never forget you, little la —I mean, Maureen."

  I gave him this sort of noblesse oblige smile, but I stopped short of getting all emotional and everything. "Farewell, Segol 154," I go. "Tell the others that someday, when you've proved yourselves worthy, my people will welcome yours into the Federation of Planets. Until then, one last word of advice: Try to discourage anyone who starts fiddling around with radio astronomy. I think it will make you all very, very unhappy."

  "Radio astronomy?" he goes. "How can you look at space with a radio?" "Never mind, just remember what I said." I raised one hand in the universal sign of "That's all, folks." Then I raised my supplicating arms to the stars, went eeny meeny miney mo, and whooshed myself on out of there.

  * * * * *

  I'M SORRY I had to listen to the whole story. By the time Maureen finished it, we had finished off all the strawberries, and a quiche with nothing in it is like tortellini salad without the tortellini. In the months that Josh and I had been together, he'd taught me a lot about food and everything. We didn't have supper anymore, we dined. And then like I did the dishes.

  Anyway, it was getting late, and you know I had to rush her out of there, and I tried to explain to her but she just didn't want to listen, so then I put my back against her and shoved her toward the door, and I guess she got annoyed or something 'cause then I shoved some more but she wasn't there and I fell on the kitchen floor and she was standing over me with her sword in her hand and she had on what she called her warrior-woman expression, and I could just see the headlines in the Post: QUEENS WOMAN DIES IN SHISH KABOB TRAGEDY. Josh would never be able to face our folks again. So I go, "Back off, Muffy." Wrong thing to say.

  "You're as bad as those ape-things in the center of the Earth!" She was screeching now.

  I go, "Just bag your face, will you? Some roommate you are. Where's that old Greenberg School bond we used to have?" That got to her. She sheathed her jeweled sword and calmed down. She helped me get up and dusted me off a little. "I'm sorry, Bitsy," she goes. I noticed she was blushing.

  "All right, I guess," I go. We looked at each other a little longer, then I started to cry for some reason, and then she trickled a couple, and we started hugging each other and bawling, and the front door opened and I heard Josh coming in, and all he needed was another unexplained visit from his favorite Savage Amazon, so I go, "Maureen, quick, you've got to hide!" And then I felt like we were all on I L
ove Lucy or something, and I started to laugh.

  She laughed, too. Josh didn't laugh, though. Sometimes it's like we only see his friends, and why can't I ever have my friends over? Josh goes, "Because my friends don't wave broadswords around on the subway." I suppose he has a point there.

  * * *

  The following story I wrote for The Fantastic Adventures of Robin Hood, edited by Martin H. Greenberg (no relation to Muffy's alma mater). The book was a tie-in with the Kevin Costner film. As usual, I tried to steer clear of what I thought some other authors might attempt—here are no singlestick competitions, no flights of feathered clothyard shafts, no roistering beneath the sheltering boughs of Sherwood. I did a lot of research for this story, and now I know what a placket is, even if I don't particularly care.

  * * *

  Maureen Birnbaum

  Goes Shopynge

  by Elizabeth Spiegelman-Fein

  (as told to George Alec Effinger)

  IT HAD BEEN a couple of years since I'd seen Maureen ("Muffy") Birnbaum, and the time had passed in quiet, domestic bliss, sort of. The old Mufferoo tended to insert herself into my life like a migraine headache, and then leave suddenly, and in-between I forgot how awful it was having her around. And now she had this gigantic broadsword that she threatened you with if you called her by her old nickname. I was her favorite target because we'd been roommates together back at the old Greenberg School. One of the migrainish things about Maureen was that she still looked like a high school junior, while I was now a twenty-six-year-old married woman.

  Something else annoying about Maureen was that every single time she showed up, she'd just finished some bizarre adventure on another planet or somewhere, and she had to tell me all about it. It started off with Mars. She'd whooshed off to Mars and killed a bunch of monsters and things, and fell in love with this absolutely def—did I use that right? Part of being twenty-six is losing track of what the kids are doing to the language—prince. She'd been trying ever since to get back to Mars and Prince Van, but her steering component failed her regularly. And she refused to notice that I had a life, too, even if it was just a fern-filled apartment in Queens and a shelf of Richard Simmons aerobics tapes.

  Another thing that I just like really hated was that I was now a married woman, and my hard-working Josh, when he wasn't seeing patients, didn't want to have to hear about Muffy's latest exploit—he didn't really like her, and could you blame him? Somewhere in one of these stories I recorded how she'd made her grand entrance during our honeymoon night. I used to be called Bitsy, but in the last nine years I'd become Elizabeth to everybody but certain members of my family whom I couldn't re-educate. And lately Josh and I had hyphenated our names in honor of the baby that was due in another four months. We just didn't have much in common with Miss Birnbaum anymore.

  So things were going along just fine, with me sweating to the oldies and sharing the pre-natal experience with Josh, when one afternoon when my husband was out communicating the golf experience with some professional men in his building, who should whoosh into my nice, clean kitchen but Muffy—I mean Maureen—Birnbaum. It was migraine time, and before I said a word to her, I went into the bathroom and took some of the pharmaceutical requisites Josh had left around for just such an emergency.

  "Don't I look nice?" asked Muffy. "Tell me I don't look nice."

  Well, she did look nice, dressed like a normal grown person instead of wearing the science-fiction magazine cover outfits she usually schlepped around in. "You look terrific, Maureen," I said. "You lost a little weight, maybe?" This is never true when one woman says it to another. It was just part of the getting-older ritual that I'd learned. Maureen had missed all that, spending her time adventuring God-knows-where.

  "They wrapped my things for me. Old Betsy—the broadsword—and the gold brassiere, and the dagger and everything else. Didn't they make a nice package out of it?"

  I was afraid to say "Who made a nice package out of it?" because that would only lead into the latest exploit, but before I could say anything, she started in without a molecule of encouragement from me.

  * * * * *

  IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when I whooshed back to earth from Lagash to find myself in Merrie Olde England. I half-expected myself to end up in the New York Transit System, as I usually do, but not this time. I knew it was London because there were these big red buses and everybody talked funny. I'll just leave in the buses and leave out the funny talking, because it got to be really boring and tedious and a lot like the Dave Clark Five after a while, and who wants to sound like the Dave Clark Five? I usually whoosh back here, or around here, but there I was in London. The great thing about London, aside from all the historic things you can see, is that I landed right near a mall. A mall like we have here, with a food court and silly things hanging from the ceiling, but strange shops you've never heard of.

  Well, I could've gone to the British Museum, I suppose, or the Tower of London, but there was this mall right in front of me. And it was called the Sherwood Forest Mall, because apparently they'd torn the forest down a long time since, and put in freeways—which they call motorways—and yogurt shops and what-all. So I sort of sauntered into the Sherwood Forest Mall, wearing my metal bikini and armed to the teeth. Nobody seemed to notice, either, which was kind of strange.

  I walked around the mall for a while, and it was just a burn, Bitsy, I mean, there were only jeans shops and record stores and the usual. I was ready to H. T. P.—hit the pavement, you know? Then I met this nice couple at a newsstand. We were checking out what was happening in each other's country; I wanted to know what was going on in Great Britain, and they wanted to know what was buzzing in the States. We got to talking, and the next thing we knew, we decided to go upstairs and have some lunch. Lunch in England is really hitting, if you check out the right places. In the Sherwood Forest Mall, there were only two good places, a fish-and-chips place that I wanted to give a miss to, and a cute little teashop like we don't have over here. I voted for the teashop, and since I had the broadsword, I won.

  We were just lamping out in front of the teashop, talking, and I introduced myself. "My name is Maureen Birnbaum, interstellar adventuress," I go. The guy, who was totally buff—goes "And I am Robin Hood, and this babe-o is Maid Marian. Perhaps our reputations have crossed the great water?"

  "Robin Hood?" I go. "The Robin Hood. The arrow in the center of the target guy, the enemy of the Sheriff of Nottingham and all bad heinies like that?"

  He blushed, but the crushin' girl spoke up. "Yup," she goes, "that's us."

  Maybe I should have asked to see Robin or Marian's ID before we started out on this venture. "But I thought you lived like entire centuries ago," I go.

  "As long as there is a Sherwood Forest and evildoers about, we're sort of immortal," goes Robin Hood.

  "But there isn't any Sherwood Forest."

  Maid Marian shrugged. "There was a jankin' bunch of trees before you came into the mall, wasn't there?"

  You could hear my jaw drop. "That's Sherwood Forest?"

  "What's left of it," goes Robin Hood.

  "What about the Merrie Men?" I spelled "Merry" in my mind the olde way, to honor the gang.

  "They're down by the Video Arcade," goes Robin Hood. "You should see Little John on the flipper tables."

  "Little John!" I go. This was Robin Hood. "Like I've always wanted to meet you. See, I'm like this barbarian hero-type, and I've always wondered how I'd measure up to a real hero like you. Maybe we could have a contest or something."

  "Well," goes Robin Hood, stroking his well-trimmed beard, "longbow archery is like out, because that's my big thing."

  "Right," I go.

  "But we could singlestick across a log; I've been beaten at that before. Or we could try pikes or—"

  "No, no, even at your best, I think I'd have the advantage over you," I go. "You don't know the adventures I've had and the victories I've like won."

  "Well, if you think so," goes Robin Hood, kind of sour
ly I thought.

  "I know," goes Maid Marian. "How about a shopping duel, right here in the mall!"

  "Lady," I go, "I was born to shop. You've never seen an American, pridefull-of-country, all together in patriotic merchandising splendor."

  "I have no fear of foreign economic imperialism," goes Maid Marian. "I come from a very well-to-do family. The Monceux clan; perhaps you've heard of it?"

  "No," I go, "I'm afraid not. Do you have an acquaintance with the Birnbaums? The New York Birnbaums?"

  "A shopping duel it is, then," goes Robin Hood. "There shall be three events: a formal outfit; a normal daily outfit; and casual attire. I have no doubt that my Maid Marian will triumph in all three."

  "Well," I go, "if there's one thing I know, it's clothesisimo."

  "Couldn't tell it from the costume you're wearing now," goes Maid Marian.

  "It's not much to look at," I go, "but it's serviceable and just what the contemporary female barbarian is wearing these days."

  Maid Marian goes, "It's well past noon. We should meet back here about twoish with the formal outfit? And then fourish with the daily clothes? And then sixish with the casual attire. Then we can have dinner here in this tea shop.

  "Two hours each?" I go. "To shop for three complete outfits?"

  "It's a duel," goes Robin Hood. "Let the time limit be a part of the challenge."

  "That's fat, then," I go. "I'll go along with whatever you say."

  "And no like sneaking out of the mall to find some better shops," goes Maid Marian.

  "Pretty dopey, Marian," I go, and I head off to see what the Sherwood Forest Mall had in the way of clothing stores.

  After passing a lot of typical women's wear stores, I found a pretty classy place called Rhodes and Maxwell. You could tell they were exclusive because the mannequins in the windows only had half a head each. I went into the shop, not thinking in the least of how I was mostly undressed. The fashion coordinator—in America she would have been a saleslady—approached me as if I were just another matron coming in looking for a ball gown. She pretended not to notice Old Betsy, my trusty broadsword, or any of the rest of my tough, fierce raiment. "Yes?" she goes. "May I help you?"