Though this was true, the years had not been without their effect in other ways. Certain tics of character had reached a mature growth, chiefly an unawareness of other people that bordered on autism. Thus, she breezed right on with her soliloquy, oblivious of my attempts to introduce Julie to her.
“And speaking of your father, I assume you’ve already met my new companion?” By the solicitous manner in which she laid her hand on St Bernard’s leathern thigh, she robbed that “companion” of whatever sense it might have had of the euphemistic. “It was he who insisted that we stop by at Swan Lake. I was reluctant, since it is hardly a major attraction. Nothing on the order of Titan, which is positively another Bayreuth! You may be interested to know that St Bernard is our leading Titanic tenor. You’ve no doubt heard of his Lohengrin, and as for The Ring…”
“Actually, Clea,” I broke in determinedly, “we’re not such great Wagner fanciers here, you know. Our Master inclines more to the French and Russian end of the spect…”
“As I was saying, St Bernard said we had to stop by, so he could meet you and Pluto—Pluto is somewhere about too, no?—because, you see, St Bernard happens to be your brother.”
“But—Motherlove… isn’t that rather…? I mean, if he’s my brother, then isn’t this a matter of—if you’ll excuse the expression—inbreeding?”
St Bernard’s hand reached for the battleaxe hanging at his side, but Clea stopped him.
“Nonsense, White Fang! He bears no relation to me whatever. Shame on you, for making such a suggestion! You know your father sired several hundred children. St Bernard was his son by Sieglinde of Titan years before I ever met Tennyson White. I suppose, if you want to pick nits, you could say that St Bernard is your half-brother. But he’s no more related to me than his father was—or, rather, that is his relation precisely.”
I made a slight bow in acknowledgment of this unexpected bond, but St Bernard, not content with small gestures, came gallumphing forward to clasp me in a half-brotherly, titanic embrace, which I sidestepped by sitting down quickly at the console. “A feast!” I declared. “This definitely calls for feasting and song.”
I vanished the arch and dialed for an Anglo-Saxon Banquet Hall, moderately stylized, with an Automatic Tumbler. Julie quickly whisked herself into a few yards of brocade and a high-peaked hat, and I got into something suitable in cloth-of-gold. Pluto was called for and arrived in short order in a cardinal’s gowns. St Bernard, a true and reverent knight, had to get back down on one knee to kiss the cardinal’s ring.
“Mead!” I shouted to the robots in attendance (all done up, appropriately, in fustian). “Roast boar! Venison! Hecatomb of roast beef!”
“Hecatombs is anachronistic, Cuddles,” Julie advised.
“Well then, if you’re such a hot-shot Medievalist, you order!” Which she did—and in Old High German at that. As she told me later, though, our Master helped with irregular verbs. When she finished, Petite added her own postscriptive request in English for butter brickle ice cream.
While we sipped before-dinner meads, the Automatic Tumbler tumbled and a Robo-Jester came around to the table and made deliciously bad jokes, which St Bernard seemed to think as jolly as they had been on opening night a thousand years ago. Maybe it was the mead. Alcohol-wise the stuff was perfectly innocuous, but our Masters supplied through our Leashes the exact degree of inebriation that each of us was aiming at. Clea filled us in on her missing thirteen years (and they were just about what one would suppose they’d been, judging by their effect on her: the style of Titan—Clea’s style—was very Wagnerian, very passionate, and very, very big); then Pluto gave an account of our neglect and redemption, which I don’t think Clea heard because St Bernard was tickling her all the while. After the fish course, some partridges, and a suckling pig with truffles, Clea and St Bernard sang the second act of Tristan und Isolde for our benefit. Julie, to escape listening to it, went blotto on her Leash.
This done, and much mead later, St Bernard proposed to give an exhibition of his skill at axe-throwing. They have this whole Middle Ages bit on Titan. We upended the oaken dining table and painted a human figure on it as a target. St Bernard insisted that we make wagers against him. I did have my doubts as to how well he would do, since he was having difficulties just remaining upright at that point—but every axe sank into the wood right where he told it to. Petite was clamorous with admiration.
“Hoi-ho, Maedchen! Does the sport please you?” St Bernard lifted Petite to his shoulder. “Would you like to join it?” She nodded, smiling, eyes aglow.
“Now, see here, St Bernard—enough’s enough! If you’re getting delusions of singing William Tell, I can assure you it isn’t in my daughter’s repertoire.”
“Oh, let him have his way, or he’ll get into a pet,” Clea advised.
“It’s exactly because I’m afraid he shall get into a pet—with that axe of his—that I worry. If you have so much confidence in him, Motherlove, why don’t you let him use you as a target?”
“I have, many times. It’s terribly dull. I mean, you just stand there. I wish you hadn’t gotten him so loaded. He always gets this way when he’s had more than he can handle. Next he’ll be sentimental. I hate that!”
St Bernard, meanwhile, had posed Petite before the dining table and gone back twenty paces to take aim. The blade of the axe he was using was fully a third of the total length of my daughter.
“Stop, madman!” I screamed, but too late—already the axe was hurtling at Petite, seeming to wobble as it turned end over end about its center of gravity. I rushed forward, as though to catch it in flight…
There now, good fellow, be comforted! Your Master is watching and he won’t let anything ill betide. Calmly, calmly.
If I had not had so much mead myself, I would not have needed the Leash’s reminder. For what could there ever be to worry about at Swan Lake with my Master ever watching over me?
When St Bernard had finished his demonstration to Petite’s and his own immense satisfaction, I stepped up to the board and pulled out the axes. “Now,” I said airily, “let me show you how we throw axes at Swan Lake. Julie, step up here!”
Julie, who had been sailing through heaven at the end of her Leash until this moment, came to with a start of real fear. “Cuddles, are you out of your mind? I will not!” But quickly her features assumed a milder expression, and I knew that our Master had whispered his reassurances to her. She took her place before the target.
I opened my demonstration with an axe that sliced neatly between Julie’s legs, rending the thick brocade of her gown. Then I threw one underhand that snapped off the peak of her cap. Then several perfect throws as I stood with my back turned to Julie. St Bernard gasped at the daring of the feat. I concluded my show of skill by spinning an axe not end over end but sideways, rotating about the shaft like a top.
I bowed to St Bernard’s thunderous applause. “Thank you,” I said, as much for my Master’s assistance as for St Bernard’s applause.