Chapter 5
“ ... In the first Course, there was a Shoulder of Mutton, cut into an AEquilateral Triangle; a Piece of Beef into a Rhomboides; and a Pudding into a Cycloid. The second Course was two Ducks, trussed up into the Form of Fiddles; Sausages and Puddings resembling Flutes and Hautboys, and a Breast of Veal in the Shape of a Harp. The Servants cut our Bread into Cones, Cylinders, Parallelograms, and several other Mathematical Figures.”
—Lemuel Gulliver, A Voyage to Laputa, &c., Chapter 2
* * * *
On reaching the eastern seaboard, Cygnus cruised along it for several hours. Even now, after some years of their operation, showing airships off to the most thickly populated areas of the country was good advertising, and also helped NTC reap poorbore profits from various slotpay observation decks and scenic lookout points on the Empire State Building, the Soleri Model Mushroom City, Old Cape Cod, and so on.
Moreover, sightseeing from aboard was major promotional material for travel by airship; and it made excellent sense to fortify the passengers against three or four days of flying over the Atlantic Ocean by allowing them to sate themselves on views of the last continental land mass and great centers of human population they would see before reaching Europe.
For dinner this first night, tables for two were set up in the promenade deck, beside the windows, so as to take every advantage of the panorama.
The M.’s Olympian elected, however, to eat alone in their VIP Suite. Perhaps this signified their divine displeasure with those puny mortals who had irked them since their arrival aboard, as by the dinner hour everyone save Oziah Gillikin, M. Windsong, and possibly Miz Ming seemed to have had the misfortune of doing in some matter large or small. Or perhaps they simply disdained the ship rule of mixing and matching dinner companions, although for divinities of their exalted fortune it might have been waived.
The honeymooners caused some surprise by not following the Olympians’ example, but instead joining their fellow passengers and even submitting to the lottery which assigned dinner partners tonight at tables for two.
Obersturmbannfuehrerin von Cruewell consented, with ironic grace, to draw the names from First Officer Flier’s hat, matching herself with the Firebird; Belladonna the Ribald with Flier; the Musician of the Spheres with Second Officer Wright Airborne; Angela with Oziah Gillikin; Corwin with Dr. Caduceus; Captain Denne with the stowaway M. Tolliver, who was allowed into the party in deference to his wounded leg; and—as if by some divine whimsy higher than that of the M.’s Olympian—the Catholic madre with the Pagan priest.
With Third Officer Altocumulus on watch in the bridge, the airship glided smoothly at a quarter of a mile above the curving coastline. Due to the number of small tables and the increased distance to and from the galley, M. Stewart and Miz Ming assisted M. Garson as waiters. Even so, it was a leisurely meal which filled two hours from aperitifs to mints, while the diners enjoyed their slowly changing views of eastern coastal states, with their manicured showcase urban areas, picturesque slums, and scraps of preserved semi-wilderness. The golden gloaming of late afternoon flamed into crimson sunset, then melted by imperceptible degrees into ever-deepening blue dusk against which the lights of nocturnally inclined humanity appeared, at least from thirteen hundred feet, to outshine the stars. While most of the continent’s interior cities had gone to minimum night illumination for environmental and astronomical reasons, the eastern seaboard still boasted—or was cursed with—a high proportion of urban areas exempted from low-light guidelines.
Corwin had read somewhere that airship officers had not eaten with their passengers during the Intermission between Acts I and II of the Last Great War. He believed that the same tradition was still maintained in Hindenburg II, with its greater sticklishness about twentieth-century authenticity. He suspected that it had been dropped from the Melon’s etiquette in favor of a more nautical approach to officer-passenger social relations as much for the pleasure of the former as of the latter.
Menus were of practical value only for reality perceivers, a mere nostalgic prop for most fanciers. About midafternoon, Miz Ming had passed out sets of six alternate dinner menus. After careful perusal, each passenger selected one bill of fare, initialed it, and gave it back. The purpose of this ritual was to entertain them and predispose their own mindsets. Except in cases of food allergies, most fanciers perceived their comestibles as they consciously or subconsciously chose to perceive them.
Corwin dined on beef consomme, sole meuniere, roast duckling, and poire belle helene. So did his tablemate, Dr. Caduceus, who was a realizer; and so, he thought, did Captain Denne and Mother Frances, though M. Windsong’s stated vegetarian preferences appeared to have been respected as guaranteed. It might fall within the bounds of coincidence that, given the choice of six different menus, three reality perceivers would all choose the same one. But as nearly as Corwin could observe, all the fanciers were likewise served roast duckling, with the exceptions of M. the Ribald, who ate beefsteak, and the Musician of the Spheres, who had another gourmet vegetarian meal like M. Windsong’s.
Either Corwin was in partial reality mode and roast duckling was in fact the basic order of the evening, reflecting the far from uncommon practice of serving all fantasy perceivers the house specialty no matter what they ordered; or his own world wanted to see everyone save the vegetarians and The Ribald partaking tonight of roast duckling. He inclined to the former theory, but had reached the conclusion some months ago that such culinary considerations rarely merited long attention. At least his wine and that of his tablemate looked different, though poured from the same bottle. Dr. Caduceus candidly confessed it to be house rose’. For house wine it was a good vintage, as one would expect aboard a Nostalgic Transport Corporation vessel; but at first sip it struck his tongue as amontillado. To his considerable relief, it soon settled down into a modest, pleasant chablis. For many months he had never found himself drinking amontillado save in moments of anxiety or depression.
* * * *
“But why on earth should you be anxious or depressed this evening?” Angela questioned him two hours later, when they had excused themselves from the long postprandial coffee and brandy social in the lounge.
“Why in the sky, do you mean?” A weak wordplay, so he tempered it with a grin.
“Valkyrie didn’t growl at you once all afternoon.”
“His Olympian Majesty frowned on me much oftener than once. My failure to be in immediate attendance upon his arrival might have sufficed to alienate him beyond repair, even without the complication of M. Juno fancying me her Ganymede.”
“Well, Jove wanted me to be his Hebe, but he finally settled for Miz Ming. So Juno will just have to settle for M. Stewart or Amahl Garson.” Angela giggled. “My, weren’t they busy this evening? I hope, for their sakes, the Olympians take most of their meals with the rest of us. I’d take Amahl, if I were her.”
“Easy enough for you to be flippant, Pundita. Your name’s written much more lightly than most of ours in Jove’s Book of the Damned. The thunderbolt destined to consign half your fellow passengers, including your adoring spouse, to oblivion should do no more to you than singe those golden curls.”
“And then I will take Amahl!” She splashed an armful of water at him.
They had reserved the bath for ninety minutes tonight; but since no one else had reserved it until seven o’clock tomorrow morning, they could stay, if they chose, till their fingertips were bath-salted raisins—a state that was even now approaching. The computer screen on the door, completely opaque but with the same message displayed on both sides, gave the bath schedule for the entire eastward leg of the trip, provisional upon the water holding out.
The bath was a twenty-first-century airship innovation. Daedalus and Dvorchac, whom NTC called “the twin geniuses of design and engineering,” had been able to achieve it only through maximum utilization of modern techniques for recycling water to
and from the ballast containers, collecting rainwater when available to replace dropped ballast, and using all extra weight allowance for additional water ballast. Thanks to reaping virtually all his profits from passengers, Cygnus had additional tonnage available for water that in the twentieth-century airships would have gone for freight and mail service. Hindenburg II still clove, for authenticity, to the strictly rationed showers that had represented his prototype’s highest advance in personal lavation aboard dirigibles; and Corwin had heard it rumored that occasionally the nozzles spluttered dry in the midst of someone’s shower-bath, as an added fillip of the true, antique flavor. The bath chamber might have been enough in itself to decide Corwin and Angela on choosing Cygnus rather than Hindenburg II as their Melon.
Every paying passenger except the madre and M. Windsong—who thriftily limited themselves to showers—had signed up for at least one bath. The honeymooners had paid the rather exorbitant price in triplicate: one bath this first night, one midway, and one the morning of the day they were scheduled to moor at Yamboli. Should the water give out prematurely for any reason, they would receive monetary refund in place of their later baths. But they would have had this first one.
The M.’s Olympian had scheduled five baths and grumbled at Captain Denne for refusing to bend NTC guidelines any further and permit them two every day of the flight.
“I think,” Angela remarked, “I’ll try to persuade them to give Mother Frances one of their baths and Winterset another, as gifts for services rendered.”
“What services can the good madre have rendered them?”
“Opposition, of course! After all, every religion thrives on controversy, doesn’t it?”
“Mmm. M. Windsong might accept a gift from them, but I doubt that Mother Frances would.”
“Well, then, let’s offer her one of ours!”
“Your generosity, my love, falls little short of saintliness.”
“Why shouldn’t it? Don’t people expect honeymooners to be generous?”
“Perhaps. But it’s far from the only or even the chief thing they expect of honeymooners.” He made a dive for her.
The bathing pool was an oval about two meters long by one and a half across, done in plastifoam tile with a marbelized surface, and cushioned around its circumference with a fifteen-centimeter squeezable guardrim. The pool could be filled to any water level between chest high and neck high on a seated or reclining bather, depending on the bather’s preference and budget, the water being sold by the liter. In tribute to the honesty of fanciers as a class, purchasing was partly on the honor system. A re-settable gauge on the tap, as well as decorative marks on the pool’s inside surface, measured the amount of water drawn; but neither catch nor lock was there to prevent anyone from stealing an anonymous, unauthorized dip.
Environmental-formula soap, bath salts, oils, and unguents were complimentary, as was the after-toweling talc they could either shake on manually or receive in spraydust from wall nozzles.
The Melon was still cruising along the coast, to give his passengers maximum viewing time of the city lights. At about midnight he would turn eastward across the ocean. Meanwhile, the urban areas sprawled out below like firework displays with all sparks arrested in place, save for the gliding red and white and occasionally blue, green, or amber points of vehicular traffic, which from this distance appeared smooth and slow. The newlyweds had toned down the chamber’s wraparound illumination, with its separate controls for ceiling, wall, floor, and pool, to blue minimum, partly to enjoy those city lights below and partly to safeguard their own modesty. The bath and bedroom windowalls were of one-way steelglass, but it could be difficult for young people raised in one of history’s puritanical moods to remember this, especially when the lounge and promenade windows were of two-way steelglass so that individuals on the ground could exchange waves with passengers in the airship. Not until she and Corwin were safely in the pool had Angela tabbed the button that caused the mural of Neptune’s Court to slide back, exposing the windowall and allowing their view of the seaboard panorama.
“So you’d take M. Garson, would you?” said he after a while, when again they resumed speech.
“If I were Juno Olympian. After all, Poe, she can’t have you!”
“And why the callow young waiter in preference to the urbane and obviously experienced M. Stewart?” Corwin had his own theory. There was a certain stance of self-assured deference which quite a few reality perceivers assumed when employed as servants to the Fancy Class, a posture that hinted: “You may be our superiors in wealth; but we support ourselves, as you could not, with our own gainful labor; in competence we are your superiors, in all else save paltry pelf your equals or better; and we honor you by deigning to serve you.” M. Andrew Stewart seemed to wear that aura more obviously than did most. Still, the young bridegroom was curious as to whether his bride might have a more feminine reason to state in explanation of her hypothetical preference.
“Well, I’m not sure.” She shrugged elaborately, raising another cascade of splashes. “Neither one of them is a bit like you, of course, but ... I suppose I might be able to mold Amahl into something a little more nearly like you, in time, and I don’t think anybody could ever mold M. Stewart into anything. He’s already too set in his ways! You can tell. What did you think of Dr. Cecily?”
He turned his thoughts back to the ship’s medical officer. “An adequate dinner conversationalist. Not stimulating, but pleasant.”
“What? After your tasting amontillado while sitting across from her? No deep, smoldering tensions between her and half the crew?”
“Quite possibly, but she kept any such emotions well beneath the surface. As I understand matters, she enjoyed the opportunity to practice her medical expertise this afternoon on Master Tolliver and M. the Ribald. No doubt it put her into a good mood.”
“Winterset said Belladonna had only a few scratches. She likes every chance to sport big bandages. Like you, Pundit.” Angela winked, then went on in graver mode, “But they say poor Jemmy’s leg was rather badly chewed.”
“I can envision that all too plainly,” said Corwin, musing on Valkyrie’s fangs.
“And they both lost their swords. Jemmy shrugs it off and says NTC will pay him more than it was worth, but Belladonna takes her loss very hard.”
“Adding a rich new tangle of animosities to the catalog: M. Tolliver and M. the Ribald versus one another and also, presumably, versus both the captain and the obersturmbannfuehrerin who separated them and caused their loss. All in all, there is certainly sufficient explanation for my amontillado without blaming it on the so-far innocuous-seeming Dr. Caduceus.”
“Yes, but they’ll work it out. Belladonna and Jemmy are really very much alike, you know. Mother Frances says Jemmy’s even accessorized in period. Like Belladonna, except that Jemmy’s accessories are cocked hat, vest, and high boots.”
“I saw him in the full costume of his chosen role and world,” Corwin observed gratefully. He would have been still happier to have seen the highwayman in the garb of the Venerable Edgar’s early nineteenth century; but that of the eighteenth, in full detail rather than merely accessorized, also denoted working fantasy perception. Since here in the bath Corwin seemed to be in utter reality mode—he hoped because the bath was so opulent in itself—he relished every evidence (even the amontillado) that his fantasy mode had been operative earlier that day. “Similarity of temperaments,” he added, smiling at his own pretentious profundity, “can prove a firmer basis for enmity than for friendship.”
“Oh, piffle-poffle! And they couldn’t hurt Dr. Junge even if they really wanted to, because of Valkyrie, and of course Captain Denne is sacred on board her own ship. Who knows?” Angela went on, trying to whip the disappearing bath bubbles once more into a stiff froth. “Before the trip’s over, Jemmy and Belladonna may ask Captain Denne or Mother Frances or Winterset to marry them, and then he can mov
e out of Ozzie’s stateroom into Belladonna’s.”
“How did you find M. Gillikin as a dinner partner, Pundita?”
“Oh, Ozzie’s a darling.” There were very few personalities whom Angela would fail to consider darlings, in the casual and platonic sense, on initial acquaintance; but Corwin always enjoyed hearing her cast her votes for the basic goodness of the human spirit. He joined her in agitating the water. To his perception, they were more successful in creating a miniature maelstrom than in replenishing the bubbles. She, however, was soon at play with mounds almost as high as her head. These mounds were invisible to him; but the occasional tiny sphere that flew up from the water’s surface, shimmering in the soft blue light for a moment before it burst—tasting of starfruit if it struck on lips or tongue—was tangible; and a healthy fancy like Angela’s needed no more than this to build whole castles of bubbles, airy trifles that soap bubbles were in the most real of modes.
* * * *
“I just had a terrible thought!” said Angela. “Suppose someone were to drown taking a bath in here?”
“Good heavens! My morbid fancies are beginning to infect even your mind, Pundita.”
“No, it’s just a thinksafe.”
“The pool is rubber or rubberine, with a sandy bottom—plastisand, I assume, for the minimum weight. The pool’s rim is luxuriantly cushioned, and the surrounding floor is of thick sponge-grass.” He squeezed the foam guardrim. “Should you mistrust my perception in this, reread the brochure in our suite. Fatal falls seem highly unlikely on such soft stuff as surrounds us here, and in the rare event of a sudden turbulence, we may rest assured that one of our stewards would check the bath immediately. All that the most careless bather need fear would seem to be fainting or falling asleep in the bath.”
“Well.” She smiled. “It was a silly thought, wasn’t it? Why, you’re as safe here as in any groundside bath.”
“Safer, I should say, than in many. And several times more comfortable.”
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 73
