The Magnificent Wilf Read online

  “How shall I dress for it?” Lucy had asked.

  “Oh—you know,” said Tom. “However you like—something formal. These are Aliens, remember. They don’t know anything about Human clothes.”

  “Hmph!” said Lucy.

  Chapter 7

  “The Jaktals certainly picked an impressive place for their Embassy,” said Lucy, as they rode the gently rising escalator that wound like an extended pathway through the garden, alive with all the colors of summer flowers. It was not quite sunset, and the broad portals of the entrance were only a short distance ahead of them.

  “It ought to be,” said Tom. “They paid ten tons of gold for it.”

  “Ten t…” Lucy stared at him.

  “I’m not making it up,” said Tom. “They actually did pay ten tons of gold for it. Bought it.”

  “They bought it?” said Lucy. “Just for one night?”

  “That’s right,” said Tom. “They sent a Spandul—that’s one of their subject races, who was acting as their advance representative—around looking for a place they’d like. He saw this one, traced the person who owned it, and asked him what was the most important medium of exchange on the Human world. Whoever it was said ‘gold.’ The Spandul asked him, ‘how much gold do you want for it? We’d like to buy it.’ The person who owned it thought they were kidding and said, jokingly, ‘ten tons.’ So, they gave him ten tons of gold.”

  “What’s that worth in ordinary money?” asked Lucy.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Tom. “But I’d think it ought to be enough to buy this place several times over. Even if it didn’t, there’s a certain amount of fame that would come from selling your home to Aliens for ten tons of gold. At any rate the Jaktal Embassy bought the place for one night’s use—they’ll be gone tomorrow,” said Tom. “Ah, we’re almost at the entrance now. The Spandul that greets us will already know who and what I am, so we don’t need to go through any introductions. I know the proper words to say, anyhow, after my latest work with the briefing device. I’m full of Alien information, including ‘Phrases of Custom.’ ”

  “Do I say anything?”

  “Not unless you want to,” answered Tom. “Just be nonchalant. You do this sort of thing every day. Ho-hum.”

  “But certainly the Jaktal Embassy must know you’re an Alien Technical Advisor, Grade One, with the Secretariat; and suspect you of being here to study them?”

  “We hope the title won’t mean much to them.”

  “You sound nervous, honey.”

  “I am not nervous.”

  “Then why are you biting your nails?”

  “I am not biting my nails,” said Tom. “I never bite nails. I just thought I had something stuck between my front teeth, that’s all. I don’t know why you always keep talking about me biting my nails … Ah, good evening Spandul,” he said in English. “My card. I am Thomas Whitworth Parent, and this is my mate, Lucy Thorsdatter Parent. Beware the zzatz.”

  “You are welcome, sorr!” hissed the Spandul in the same language. It was about three feet high, black, lean as a toothpick and had a mouthful of vicious-looking needle-sharp teeth. It stood just within the golden glow of the light from the arched inner doorway. Its large, green eyes glittered at Lucy. “Welcome alssso, Lady. Enter please. Here you will be safe from zzatz”

  It took their cloaks; and they proceeded on through the entrance into a long, high-ceilinged hall, already well filled with humans and aliens of all varieties. Most of the other men there were either in evening dress or business suits. All of the women were in floor-length, formal gowns. Lucy had gone shopping, the day before they came here, after asking him about what would be worn, and was now wearing a long, dark blue dress, nipped in at the waist, that fitted her beautifully. It was low-cut at the neck to show off a small but brilliant necklace of blue sapphires she had inherited from her great-grandmother. Her hair was up.

  “Ha!” said Lucy, seeing what the other women were wearing.

  “What?” asked Tom.

  “Nothing,” said Lucy. “What’s ‘zzatz’?”

  “Means ‘a most unfortunate fate,” muttered Tom back. “Ah, good evening, Monsieur Pourtoit,” he said in French. “I don’t believe you’ve met my wife.”

  He introduced Lucy to a tall, thin gentleman with a sad face and a broad red ribbon angling across his white dress shirt under his dinner jacket. The gentleman acknowledged the introduction gracefully.

  “Elle est charmante,” he said to Tom, bowing to Lucy.

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Ambassador!” said Lucy. “I can see—”

  “However, if you’ll excuse us,” said Tom, catching Lucy by the hand, “we must be going.”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Pourtoit, with irreproachable politeness and only one slightly lifted eyebrow. Tom towed Lucy off.

  “Well, all I was going to say was—” Lucy started to whisper, in Tom’s ear.

  “Ah, Brakt Kul Djok! May I present my wife, Lucy Thorsdatter Parent?”

  “Well, well, honored I am positive!” boomed a large Alien, looking something like a hippopotamus with a stocking cap on, but no other clothes. “A fine young lady, I can see at a glance, hey, boy?”

  The walrus-sized elbow joggled Tom almost off his feet.

  “See you coming up in your world, hey? Hey? Alien Technical Advisor, Grade One, I hear! Wonder what type of entertainment and food this Jaktal puts out tonight, hah? Never tell about these Imperial-minded Alien types, hey, ho?”

  Tom laughed heartily. He and Lucy moved on, Tom introducing her every few feet to some new human or Alien of the diplomatic circle. Finally they found themselves at the punch bowl, were given a couple of large flute-style glasses full of punch, and—going a little further—were able to find a small alcove out of the crowd.

  “I’d been wishing there was someplace to sit down,” said Lucy, once they were seated. “What I don’t understand is how they can have a banquet for so many different kinds of people and Aliens. I should think getting the right food for everybody would be just about impossible.”

  “Well,” said Tom, “they do have a number of different foods for those who can’t eat anything but their own special diet. Of course, also, it’s necessary to stay clear of what might offend anyone.” He took a large swallow of the punch. “But you’d be surprised how much in common tastes are, among different intelligent, animal life forms. It’s all animal flesh and vegetation, in every case. Of course, we can’t digest most Alien dishes, and some of them would even—not so much poison us—as cause a massive rejection in our bodies. But looked at from the galactic point of view it’s all pretty much the same.”

  “Still,” said Lucy, making a small face, “some of them must taste …”

  “Some, of course,” said Tom. “But a lot of Alien foods are quite tasty, and even can be digested by the human body with profit. I’ve been surprised myself, these last few weeks, at the diverse items I’ve encountered.”

  “Oh!” said Lucy.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What do you think’s in this punch?” said Lucy, examining her glass with suspicion. “Fruit juice and alcohol. Earthly fruits, of course. Now,” said Tom, “let’s just run over the schedule for the evening. First, we’ll be having entertainment.”

  “Oh, Tom—wait a minute,” said Lucy, looking past him. “Listen. How sad!”

  “What?” he said—and then he heard it, too. A voice from just around the corner of their alcove, and through a small archway leading away somewhere, was pouring out a thin, heartbreaking thread of melody.

  Tom stiffened suddenly.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, “I’ll see.”

  He got up and went around the comer. At the other end of an empty room, he could see a further doorway from which light was showing. He went forward and looked into the lighted room beyond. At this moment Lucy bumped into him from behind.

  “I told you to wait for me!” he whispered angrily at her.

  “You did not
. You said, ‘wait a minute.’ Anyway,” whispered back Lucy, “there’s nothing here but that big jelly mold on the table.”

  She pointed to an enormous, three-tiered mass of what seemed to be gelatin, with pale colors of blue, yellow and green washing progressively through it. It sat on a silver box set on a white tablecloth—itself on a table with wheels. The table was the only furniture in the room.

  “You know what I meant!” said Tom. “And somebody was singing here.”

  “It was I,” said the jelly mold in sweet and flawless tones of English.

  They stared at it, but Tom made a swift recovery.

  “May I present my wife?” he said. “Lucy Thorsdatter Parent. I am Thomas Whitworth Parent, Alien Technical Advisor, Grade One, of the Secretariat for Alien Affairs, here on our human world.”

  “I’m awfully pleased to meet you,” said the jelly mold. “I am Kotnick, a Bulbur.”

  “Was it a Bulbur song you were singing?” asked Lucy.

  “Alas,” said Kotnick, “it is a Jaktal song. A little thing I composed myself; but sung, of course, in Jaktal—though unfortunately with a heavy Bulbur accent.”

  “But you sing so beautifully!” said Lucy. “What would it sound like if you sang it in Bulbur?”

  “Alas,” said Kotnick, “there is no Bulbur to sing it in. There is only Jaktal.”

  Lucy looked at Tom, questioningly.

  “It’s a manner of speaking,” Tom said to her, hastily. “There are a number of intelligent races that have been subjugated by the Jaktal but come from different planets. The Jaktal, however, are the ruling ones. The language and everything else takes its name from the rulers.”

  “Indeed, yes,” said the Bulbur, with an odd little sound very like a choked-back sob. “And properly so.”

  “I knew about Spanduls, Gloks, and Naffings,” said Tom, looking at it. “But we haven’t heard about you Bulburs, along with the rest of the subordinate races of the Jaktal.”

  The Bulbur turned pink all over. “Pardon my immodesty,” it said, “but I have been brought by our overlords especially for the occasion.”

  “How nice,” said Lucy. “We’re very happy to have you.” The Bulbur made the odd little choked sound again. Meanwhile, Tom had stepped closer to it and lowered his voice. “Ah?” said Tom. “Perhaps, then you can tell me—”

  “Did the Sorr and Lady wisssh somesing?” interrupted a sharp hissing voice.

  Tom and Lucy turned abruptly to see a Spandul like the one that had admitted them to the Embassy. It was standing in the doorway. Beside it was a sort of four-foot-long worm reared up like a cobra, with its mouth open and fanglike teeth curving down from its upper jaw.

  “Oh!” said Tom. “No. Nothing. Nothing at all. We heard this Bulbur singing and wandered in to meet it.”

  “It ssshould not sssing!” hissed the Spandul, looking at the Bulbur, which quivered and went almost colorless.

  “Well, it wasn’t really singing,” said Tom. “Sort of just humming. Well, we’ll have to be getting back to the punch bowl. Glad to have met you, Kotnick.”

  Still talking, Tom took Lucy’s arm and led her back past the Spandul and the wormlike being; and out into the shadowy area giving on the entrance to the Reception room. The wormlike being slithered past them into the room and the Spandul fell in beside them, its needlelike teeth glittering at them.

  “Guestsss,” it hissed, “will find it mossst comfortable in main hall area.”

  “I imagine you’re right,” said Tom. “We’ll trot on back. Nice of you to show us the way. See you later, then. May there be no zzatz beneath this roof, tonight.”

  “There will be no zzatz beneasss sssiss roof tonight!” replied the Spandul, fixing them with its green eyes as they moved out again into the hall.

  “Well,” said Tom, “how about another glass of punch, Lucy? I could use one, myself.”

  “I should say not,” said Lucy. His eyebrows wigwagged at her angrily. She looked at him, puzzled, for a moment. “Why yes, on second thought, a glass of punch would be just the thing.”

  “Yes,” said Tom, “and we can sit down in our alcove.”

  They got new flutes full of punch and took their seats in the alcove.

  “Ah, Lucy,” said Tom, “how wonderful it is, here at this amazing Jaktal reception, and the two of us sitting together, out of the crowd. It reminds me of the first night we met, and how I fell in love with you at first sight.”

  Lucy stared at him again. “But you didn’t,” she said. “And anyway it wasn’t anything like this. I was in the row behind you at the homecoming game when we were at college, and some of the coke I was drinking just happened to fall on your program with its list of players—”

  “I mean before that,” Tom hastily interrupted. “The night with the full moon, at the homecoming ball a year before. I saw you for the first time. You were wearing something like—well, like you’re wearing now—and I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I got all my nerve and came up to you, but you didn’t even seem to notice me. So I—”

  Lucy put her hand up and felt his forehead.

  “Cool,” she said, thoughtfully. “So, that was where we really met, was it?”

  “Yes,” he said, a tense note in his voice. “I remember every moment of it. I remember how I finally did get the nerve to speak to you. I asked you to dance. And we danced. It was like floating on air. Lucy—why don’t we dance now?”

  “Yes,” said Lucy, “why don’t we?”

  They left their drinks on a small table in the alcove and walked out into the center of the floor. A band had been playing very politely and quietly on the far side of the room, and just a few couples were beginning to dance to it. Tom slipped Lucy into his arms, and they also began to dance.

  “Just what is going on?” she demanded in his ear, under the sound of the music.

  “I had to talk to you some place where we couldn’t be overheard,” said Tom, speaking into hers. “Even though they’ve been here only a couple of days, the Jaktal Embassy will undoubtedly have had this place completely bugged. Undoubtedly, they’re trying to listen to us now, since we discovered that Bulbur. But I’m hoping the music will cause too much interference.”

  “Then you did know about Bulburs before we found him —or whatever it is,” said Lucy.

  “They were at the bottom of the list of the subordinate races conquered by the Jaktals,” said Tom. “But the presence of this one here confirms what the Secretariat has been suspecting. At least, Domango Aksisi and I have been expecting it; since we’re the only ones who’ve had the full briefing from the devices the Oprinkians delivered to us from the Sector Council on Cayahno.”

  “I take it Domango is worried about these Jaktals?”

  “You couldn’t be more right,” said Tom. “For certain diplomatic reasons the Oprinkians couldn’t give us a direct warning; we just got a general impression that we ought to keep our eyes open where the Jaktals were concerned. But until six months ago, we hadn’t had any contact with that Race at all. Since then they’ve been steadily increasing their contact with us; and they have a large and powerful spatial empire.”

  “They could take us over easily?” said Lucy.

  “That’s right. They’d need an excuse, of course; but they seem to have a conqueror psychology, as indicated not only by the data supplied us by the Oprinkians on the other races who are on the Sector Council, but by the history of their expansion at the expense of intelligent, if barbarous, Races like the Spanduls, Naffings, and Gloks.”

  “Was that one of them? That wormlike thing with fangs?” Lucy asked.

  “Yes. A Naffing,” said Tom. “They aren’t much more intelligent than an adult chimp, actually. But dangerous. However, to get back to the important part of the business, recent information seems to indicate that even with our Alien allies, we’d be at the mercy of the Jaktal Empire, if they decided to move against us right now.”

  “Would they?” Lucy shivered.


  “We don’t know. That’s just it. Their Ambassador talks peaceful relations; but we can’t make this match up with the character he and his subservient races show. You’ll see what I mean when you get a look at Bu Hjark, the Ambassador.”

  “But what’s it all got to do with us—with you?”

  “Well, you remember how Domango thought we did a good job with that Oprinkian? Well, we’d heard that there was a Bulbur being brought very quietly into the Embassy here, at the time their Ambassador arrived. The Bulbur—he, she, or it; we don’t even know that much yet—seems entirely different from the rest of the Jaktals’ conquered Races. So what does it mean? What’s the Bulbur’s place in the organization? What does it showing up here mean in terms of the Jaktal attitude toward us and our Alien allies?”

  “I can see where we need to know more,” whispered Lucy. “Ouch!”

  “What happened?”

  “You just stepped on my toe.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Quite all right. Nothing I like more. Go on.”

  “Well,” said Tom, as they whirled around together, “it’s hard to concentrate on two things at once. As I was saying, Domango thought we might be able to get the information— you and I, that is—where official and unofficial other methods might fail.”

  “And why wasn’t I told about this before we came?” asked Lucy.

  “Our intelligence and analysis people had to have their chance first,” said Tom. “If they got the answer, I was simply to forget it, myself, and not mention it to you at all. But we’ve now passed the deadline for getting that word to me. It ended when we entered this embassy.”

  “You could at least have let me know what you knew,” said Lucy.

  “Domango specifically asked me not to mention it to another soul until I got word—or failed to get word—from the intelligence people,” said Tom. “But we’re clearly on our own now; and already you’ve found out for us where the Bulbur is —I was guessing it would be under lock and key, somewhere. Now we know it’s in that empty room without a crowd around it. The next step is up to me. I have to have a chance to talk to it alone.”