“Well, there’s truth in that, of course,” Lord Blunt grumbled, “but really! To try to rectify it by pretense!”
He wasn’t the only one to be upset by Count Rory’s rambling—but in Lady Rose’s case, it was a matter of genuine concern. “Come, look at the beauties of our landscape!” the Count told her, and drew her over to the great quartz port in the drawing room. “Does it not fill you with a sense of peace?”
“Well—now that you mention it, there is tranquility in it.” Rose was Robin’s wife, but her attachment to the old Count went quite beyond that. She had come to have genuine affection for him, in spite of his occasional tempers and continual whimsies. So she gazed out at the harsh plain, filled with small craters and jutting spikes of rock, starkly lit by the shrunken sun. “But I do so miss the snows of the Catskills at Christmas time!”
Rory turned to her, his manic mood abated in sympathy. “Ah, poor waif! Poor Terran-born! To be thrown amidst the harsh crags of this drifting asteroid! I am wrong to bring you to the window! Come, let us return to the drawing-room, and the warmth of camaraderie!”
“No, no!” Rose caught his arm just as he turned. “It has a beauty of its own, Beau-Papa, this severe landscape of yours! It is only at such times as the Christmas season that I miss my home! The love that surrounds me is more than recompense for the loss of my homeland, with its crowding and rudeness and noise! At least on Maxima there is, as you say, tranquility!”
“Tranquility indeed!” Rory enthused. “The gently-rolling lawn, the hills that rise beyond it, verdant with pines! The dusty road where the laborers stroll home from their toils, amidst the hedgerows of a summer’s eve!”
Rose looked up at him in surprise, then tried to hide a thrill of alarm. Surely he was not seeing the same landscape as she was! “You… will not venture out unattended, surely, milord?”
“No, of course not! Who ever heard of a knight embarking on a quest without his squire? No, wherever I wander, Fess will journey with me!”
“Quite a relief,” Rose said. “I’m sure Fess would not let him go out on the surface without his pressure suit, or a safety line. But, Robin, I’m afraid for him!”
“Oh, he’ll be all right, my dear, never fear!” Robin embraced his wife, partly in reassurance, partly to hide his own concern.
“But he said that someday, he must wander through the whole of ‘this land of Dondedor,’ to see the sights the nobles of the court speak of!”
“Well, I’ll ask him to let me join his excursion,” Robin promised, “and I’ll tell Fess to call me, no matter where I am or what I’m doing.”
“Oh, I know I’m being silly to worry!” Rose sniffled. “But, darling—what is ‘Dondedor’?”
Rory gave up and turned away from his manuscript with a sigh. “I cannot heed the tales the knights have but lately told me, good Fess. When e’er I attempt to envisage, the picture of the face of my daughter-in-law rises up to obscure it, woebegone in her yearning for her lost home.”
“But the Lady Elaine can summon the torchship to whisk her over to her parents’ mansion in a matter of minutes, milord.”
“No, no, Fess! Our poor waif from Earth!”
“But the Lady Rose is happy in Chateau d’Armand, milord.”
“Well, yes, that is so,” the Count reflected, “but at the holidays, she misses her home terribly. She was commenting to me only today on her longing for the Snow of Yesteryear—or, at least, those of Michigan.”
“We could arrange a diorama, milord.”
“Why, what a wonderful idea!” The old Count looked up, eyes glowing. “See to it at once, Fess! Snow all over the chateau! Even the Dower House! Just what the poor lamb needs!”
“As you wish, my lord. Of what dimensions do you wish the diorama to be?”
“Diorama?” Rory looked up. “Oh no, Fess! No diorama! The real chateau—all of it!”
“But… my lord…” Fess’s computer-brain added up the gallons. “Where are we to obtain so much snow?”
“Why, from ice! We’re sitting on an ice mine, you know, Fess.”
“I am aware of it, milord.” Fess had supervised the building of the chateau. “But it will take a great many cubic kilograms of ice—and we will have to shave each one…”
“Take all you need!” Rory waved away the objection. “Whether we store it under the chateau or in it, what difference?”
“Evaporation, my lord—or rather, sublimation, I should say. With no air, there will be no atmospheric pressure, and the crystals of ice will turn instantly to gas, without passing through the liquid state.”
“Yes, yes, I know what ‘sublime’ means, outside the field of aesthetics! But surely, it’s cold enough outside to prevent such a problem.”
“Only at night, sir—and the asteroid does face the sun now and again.”
“And the radiant energy might warm it enough to sublime?” The old lord frowned. “I shouldn’t think so—but certainly it warrants a test run. Melt the ice, boil it, and condense it as you shoot it out over the rooftops. Try it on the roof of the northwest gable, and if it doesn’t sublime, we’ll know we can do it.”
“And if it does, boss?”
“If it does…” The old lord scowled, deep in thought. Then he looked up, his face clearing. “Change it, Fess! Knock off the odd electron here and there. Make the ice crystals cling to one another. If they’re boded so tightly, they’ll stay solid.”
“And how am I to do that, sahib?”
“Bah! That’s just engineering!” The old lord dismissed the problem with a wave of his hand. “Run it through your circuits and see how it computes! Surely you can handle the details, Fess. Just see to it that my daughter-in-law has some snow for Christmas!” He turned back to his viewscreen, happily able to dismiss the problem of Rose’s unhappiness.
Fess turned away to begin executing his orders, and decided it would be easier to run a wire grid and have the rooftops generate a low-level force field.
Matters came to a head when Lady Penseclos forgot her clutch bag at dinner and didn’t come back for it until the next day—after all, she knew the robots would no doubt have picked it up and be holding it for her. But in mid-afternoon, she had nothing else to do, so she came looking—and found a housekeeping robot trying to polish the silver while Rory was pinching its hip-rod and patting it on its universal joint. The robot didn’t notice, of course—it had no sensors in those areas—but it was completely stymied by his ‘commands.’
“Come, little butterfly! Let us sip the nectar while the roses bloom!”
“Does my lord wish a glass of apricot juice? I shall fetch—”
“Not your juice, my little blossom, but your petals!”
“I am equipped with servo-motors, my lord; there is no need for input of manual energy.”
“Oh, but I have great need for fulfillment!”
“Luncheon is past, but if your lordship is feeling peckish, the kitchen can certainly provide for your needs.”
“But it is you who I wish to have fulfill my needs, my little ruby!”
Lady Penseclos turned pale and backed away far more quickly than she had approached. Fortunately, the old lord did not see her, but kept up his dialogue with the robot, and Lady Penseclos could turn to run and fetch Lady Elaine.
“He’s doing what?”
“Flirting with one of the household robots,” Lady Penseclos panted. “You really must come put a stop to it, Elaine!”