“You, former Hon. Sec. of this government, are charged with going outside the limits of your onseckish duties and of attempting to commit mayhem or murder upon the person of one of Her Absent Majesty’s subjects, the said subject being Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan to the one-hundred-and-fifty-first generation; and you are further charged with the abuse of an official instrument of this Commonwealth government in designing and encompassing the said unlawful purpose, to wit, one mutated sparrow, serial number 0919487, specialty number 2328525, weighing forty-one kilograms and having a monetary value of 685 minicredits. What say you?”
Houghton Syme CXLIX buried his face in his hands and sobbed.
“Aunt Doris, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead. I feel it.”
“Nonsense, Lavinia. He may be in trouble and we might not know. But with all that money, the government or the Instrumentality would use the Big Blink to send word of the change in status of this property. I don’t mean to sound cold-hearted, girl, but when there is this much property at stake, people act rapidly.”
“He is so dead.”
Doris was not one to discount the telepathic arts. She remembered how the Australians had gotten off the incarnate fury of Paradise VII. She went over to the cupboard and took from it a strangely tinted jar. “Do you know what this is?” said she to Lavinia.
The girl forced a smile past her desperate inward feelings. “Yes,” she said. “Ever since I was no bigger than a mini-elephant, people have told me that jar was ‘do not touch’.”
“Good girl, then, if you haven’t touched it!” said Aunt Doris dryly. “It’s a mixture of stroon and Paradise VII honey.”
“Honey,” cried Lavinia. “I thought no one ever went back to that horrible place.”
“Some do,” said Lavinia. “It seems that some Earth forms have taken over and are still living there. Including bees. The honey has powers on the human mind. It is a strong hypnotic. We mix it with stroon to make sure it is safe.”
Aunt Doris put a small spoon into the jar, lifted, spun the spoon to pick up the threads of heavy honey, and handed the spoon to Lavinia. “Here,” said she, “take this and lick it off. Swallow it all down.”
Lavinia hesitated and then obeyed. When the spoon was clean she licked her lips and handed the clean spoon back to Aunt Doris, who put it aside for washing up.
Aunt Doris ceremoniously put the jar back on the high shelf of the cupboard, locked the cupboard, and put the key in the pocket of her apron.
“Let’s sit outside,” said she to Lavinia.
“When’s it going to happen? The trance — the visions — whatever this stuff brings on?”
Doris laughed her weary rational laugh. “Oh, that! Sometimes nothing at all happens. In any event, it won’t hurt you, girl. Let’s sit on the bench. I’ll tell you if you start looking strange to me.”
They sat on the bench, doing nothing. Two police ornithopters, flying just under the forever grey clouds, quietly watched the station of Doom. They had been doing this ever since Rod’s computer showed him how to win all that money: the fortune was still piling up, almost faster than it could be computed. The bird-engines were lazy and beautiful as they flew. The operators had synchronized the flapping of the two sets of wings, so that they looked like rukhs doing a ballet. The effect caught the eyes of both Lavinia and Aunt Doris.
Lavinia suddenly spoke in a clear, sharp, demanding voice, quite unlike her usual tone: “It’s all mine, isn’t it?”
Doris breathed softly, “What, my dear?”
“The Station of Doom. I’m one of the heiresses, anyhow, aren’t I?” Lavinia pursed her lips in a proud prim smug smile which would have humiliated her if she had been in her right mind.
Aunt Doris said nothing. She nodded silently.
“If I marry Rod I’ll be Missus and Owner McBan, the richest woman who ever lived. But if I do marry him, he’ll hate me, because he’ll think it’s for his money and his power. But I’ve loved Rod, loved him specially because he couldn’t hier or spiek. I’ve always known that he would need me someday, not like my Daddy, singing his crazy sad proud songs forever and ever! But how can I marry him now… ?”
Whispered Doris, very gently, very insinuatingly: “Look for Rod, my dear. Look for Rod in that part of your mind which thought he was dead. Look for Rod, Lavinia, look for Rod.”
Lavinia laughed happily, and it was the laugh of a small child.
She stared at her feet, at the sky, at Doris — looking right through her.
Her eyes seemed to clear. When she spoke, it was in her normal adult voice:
“I see Rod, someone has changed him into a cat man, just like the pictures we’ve seen of underpeople. And there’s a girl with him — a girl, Doris — and I can’t be jealous of him being with her. She is the most beautiful thing that ever lived on any world. You ought to see her hair, Doris. You ought to see her hair. It is like a bushel of beautiful fire. Is that Rod? I don’t know. I can’t tell. I can’t see.” She sat on the bench, looking straight at Doris and seeing nothing, but weeping copiously.
Aunt Doris started to get up; it was about time for the poor thing to be led to her bed, so that she could sleep off the hypnotic of Paradise VII.
But Lavinia spoke again, “I see them too.”
“Who?” said Aunt Doris, not much interested, now that they had found their information about Rod. Doris never mentioned the matter to any masculine person, but she was a deeply superstitious person who found great satisfaction in tampering with the preternatural, but even in these ventures she kept the turn of mind, essentially practical, which had characterized her whole life. Thus, when Lavinia stumbled on the greatest secret of the contemporary universe, she made no note of it. She told no one about it, then or later.
Lavinia insisted, “I see the proud pale people with strong hands and white eyes. The ones who built the palace of the Governor of Night.”
“That’s nice,” said Aunt Doris, “but it is time for your nap…”
“Goodbye, dear people…” said Lavinia, a little drunkenly.
She had glimpsed the Daimoni in her home world.
Aunt Doris, unheeding, stood up and took Lavinia’s arm, leading her away to rest. Nothing remained of the Daimoni, except for a little song which Lavinia found herself making up a few weeks later, not knowing whether she had dreamed some such thing or had read it in a book:
Thus came news of Rod, unreported, unrepeated; thus passed the glimpse of the Daimoni in their star-hidden home.
“Father, you can’t be here. You never come here!”
“But I have,” said Lord William Not-from-here. “And it’s important.” .
“Important?” laughed Ruth. “Then it’s not me. I’m not important. Your work up there is.” She looked toward the rim of the Earthport, which floated, distinct and circular, beyond the crests of some faraway clouds.
The overdressed lord squatted incongruously on the sand.
“Listen, girl,” said he slowly and emphatically, “I’ve never asked much of you but I am asking now.”
“Yes, father,” she said, a little frightened by this totally unaccustomed air: her father was usually playfully casual with her, and equally forgot her ten seconds after he got through talking to her.
“Ruth, you know we are Old North Australians?”
“We’re rich, if that’s what you mean. Not that it matters, the way things go.”
“I’m not talking about riches now, I’m talking about home, and I mean it!”
“Home? We never had a home, father.”
“Norstrilia!” he snarled at her.
“I never saw it, father. Nor did you. Nor your father. Nor great-grandpa. What are you talking about?’
“We can go home again!”
“Father, what’s happened? Have you lost your mind? You’ve always told me that our family bought out and could never go back. What’s happened now? Have they changed the rules? I’m not even sure I want to go there, anyhow. No water, no beaches, no cities. Just a dry dull planet with sick sheep and a lot of immortal farmers who go around armed to the teeth!”
“Ruth, you can take us back!”
She jumped to her feet and slapped the sand off her bottom. She was a little taller than her father; though he was an extremely handsome, aristocratic-looking man, she was an even more distinctive person. It would be obvious to anyone that she would never lack for suitors or pursuers.
“All right, father. You always have schemes. Usually it’s antique money. This time I’m mixed up with it somehow, or you wouldn’t be here. Father, just what do you want me to do?”
“To marry. To marry the richest man who has ever been known in the universe.”
“Is that all?” she laughed. “Of course I’ll marry him. I’ve never married an offworlder before. Have you made a date with him?”
“You don’t understand, Ruth. This isn’t Earth marriage. In Norstrilian law and custom you marry only one man, you marry only once, and you stay married to him for as long as you live.”
A cloud passed over the sun. The beach became cooler. She looked at her father with a funny mixture of sympathy, contempt, and curiosity.
“That,” she said, “is a cat of another breed. I’ll have to see him first…”