“You must dress more warmly, Fess,” Count Rory scolded his old family retainer.
“I am indifferent to temperature, my lord and master,” Fess answered. He looked like a stick figure with a head the size of a basketball, which held the computer that served him as a brain.
“Bravely said!” Count Rory cried. “Yet your welfare is as much my responsibility as mine is yours. We must have that door installed.”
“I shall have it done,” Fess assured him.
Lady Elaine looked up in alarm. She certainly did not want a door partitioning the hall.
“What’s done can be undone, sometimes,” Rupert muttered, with a touch on her hand. His mind raced for a change of topic. “Are you in communication with other members of your profession on Terra, Doctor?”
Reves turned his gaze to Rupert, and the topic to his uses. “Only with those at the Eclectic University, Lord Rupert. They assure me that the probe will not be built.”
“It will not?” Rory stared, aghast. “How dare they not sally forth to undertake the Quest that they have sworn!”
It was an odd metaphor for an unmanned space probe that was designed only to broadcast greetings from the Proletarian Eclectic State of Terra, and to record any responses that the frontier planets might make.
Dr. Reves turned back to him. “It would not be the first time the government of the Terran Sphere has refrained from doing something it has promised, milord.”
“Nay, they have been foresworn indeed! The King did promise a Parliament, and forbore to call it; and when the lords did mutter in discontent, he prattled on about the needs of the treasury! As though mere tin could be of concern in affairs of honor! And he did swear to set we lords outlying on an equal footing with those sniveling courtiers who dwell in his capital—yet where is this ‘program of rotation’ he did speak of? Why, dead aborning, so soon as the mutterings of discontent subsided! Nay, he is not a king, but a knave, a craven, a blackhearted scoundrel who has so little semblance of honor as to care only for his own pleasures!” Rory paused for breath, red-faced and trembling. He began to rise as he inhaled for another blast.
“Should we not pity him, Pater?” Robin asked quietly.
Rory’s head swiveled to face him, outrage paling his features. He could only gasp, “Pity?”
“Yes—for his days are numbered. Or his days in office, at least. He cannot put off the calls for election much longer.”
“Aye, for so many lords demand this Parliament that all his horses and all his men cannot suffice to confront them!” Rory smiled, his complexion returning to normal. “Thou hast the right of it—the King must abdicate ere long!” He sat down again, and turned to Fess. “Fill the glasses, butler—for a toast, to Parliament!”
For once, Lady Elaine insisted on the grand old custom of the ladies retiring to the drawing room, all of herself and Rose, leaving the gentlemen to their brandy and cigars (the air-purifying filters were up to the worst of anything old Terra could provide). Rose’s heart warmed at the thought that her sister-in-law was accommodating her father-in-law’s antiquarian preferences, until she realized Elaine was white-faced and trembling, and had taken the first possible excuse to leave the field to the gentlemen. Rose set herself to trying to calm Elaine, while their husbands finished doing the same to Rory.
Dr. Reves sipped his brandy and said, “Your sons tell me you have undertaken the development of a work of fiction of truly staggering proportions, milord.”
“Fiction?” Rory turned to his sons with a scowl. “Why on earth would you have told him it was fiction?”
Robin got a faraway look in his eyes while he tried to dream up a politic answer, and Rupert reddened and cleared his throat to stall for time, but Dr. Reves said smoothly, “No doubt a misunderstanding, milord. I had assumed it to be a work of fiction, since I have never heard of an estate called Granclarte.”
“Oh, but it is more than an estate, milord! ‘Tis the seat of the Kings of Dondedor, and the capital of that realm!”
“Indeed.” Dr. Reves lowered his cigar, frowning. “I blush to admit I am ignorant in these matters. Where is Dondedor?”
“In the Middle Realm, milord, though far from its center. In truth, it is a Marcher kingdom, on the boundary between the lands of Law and Order, and those of Barbarism and Chaos.”
“Ah.” Dr. Reves had become very still, watching Count Rory with all his attention. “And how is it we others are unaware of it?”
“Ah, because you have not opened yourselves to the perception of it, milord! In truth, it lies all about us, and yet infinitely distant, for ‘tis another aspect of reality, and may only be gained by passage through a higher dimension!”
“And you have learned how to make that transition?”
“Aye, and ‘tis only a step away, thereby.”
Dr. Reves held out his snifter to Fess. “And the folk there—are they aware of your presence?”
“Aye, for I am Chronicler to the Court of Granclarte. All come to me to speak of the wonders they have wrought, and the prodigies of their accomplishments!”
“So the events you write of, have actually happened in Dondedor?”
“Are happening, milord, are happening! For oft do I inscribe the beginning of a tale, hard upon its occurrence! Admittedly, I must await the outcome and report, if the events transpire far from the walls of Granclarte—as they have in the quest of the knight Beaubras. I myself beheld the damsel Clematis come into the Court, with quavering words of the coming of the ogre Boartooth, and saw how our noble King Flambeau did send forth his most gallant knight, with a score of men-at-arms at his back, to battle with the monster.”
“But you could not know what happened on that mission?”
“Not until a man-at-arms returned, with news of the encounter—how the knight alone had gone against the ogre, and Oh! Milord! The clash of arms between them was like to make the earth shake! For the ogre hefted high his massy bludgeon, and did smite with all his force at proud Beaubras—but Rovisage, his valiant steed, did dance aside, and the monster’s blow did smash the earth into a basin. Yet whiles he struck, Beaubras drew out his sword Aiguise…”
And on he went, and on. Dr. Reves gazed at him in total concentration, while Robin sat back, smiling, letting himself be drawn into the fascinating, glowing world of his father’s imagination. And, as the tale spun on, even Rupert began to fidget less, and lose some of his look of embarrassment.
“We have come to join you, my dear.”
Lady Elaine visibly braced herself, then turned slowly, with a nice attempt at a smile—and went rigid at the sight of Rory. Rose really couldn’t understand why—the old dear was at his most charming, sweeping a gallant bow to them both and chatting amiably as the husbands held chairs for the ladies and Fess seated first Count Rory, then Dr. Reves, and set a deck of cards on the table. Rose watched Elaine out of the corner of her eye, alert for trouble, but she was between her sister-in-law and Count Rory, so Elaine began to relax a bit. She calmed remarkably as the play progressed and the talk tapered off, and no one was the worse for wear. Pont was an absorbing game, no matter what archaic name Rory wished to call it by. Almost too soon, it seemed, Fess was murmuring, “Lord and Sahib, you have an early day tomorrow.”
“Oh! Yes, I have, haven’t I?” Rory frowned and rose with a sigh. “Well, there’s no help for it—duty must be done.”
“Perhaps we should all…”