An Imperfect Princess (12 page)

“Greatly,” he
said, and reached out to take one of the bags of gems, half expecting the box
to bite him.  He poured the contents of the bag into his hand.  They were all a
mixture of the same kind of gem, some of them rough cut, others finished.  He
could tell from their brilliance that they were diamonds.

“So do our
worlds.  Pure metals and gemstones have important properties for our
technology.”  She bit her lip in frustration.  “Yet again the words for your
language are lacking.”

“We use them
mostly for decoration,” he said, carefully pouring the diamonds back into their
velvet bag.  Several bags alone were probably worth more than his entire
estate.  “The pendant you were wearing, for example.”

“Ah, what is the
name of the stone?”

“Black opal.”

“Black opals–and
I assume that other colors of opal as well, unless they have other names–are
not so useful.  They are useless for technology, in fact.  So for us, those are
decoration.”  She peered at his clothing.  “Might I have that pendant back?”

He reached into
his breast coat pocket and handed it to her.  She stared at the stone, and then
slipped it onto her neck. 

“It matches your
hair,” he said, once again wondering about the ice blue highlights he had
observed in the sunlight.

“Ah, not
really.  As you saw in the pictures, my mother and cousin have a closer hue;
they have the light refraction effect without the underlying brown tones.”  She
patted the coif that Mitsy had helped her with after her bath.  “I’m quite
dowdy compared to them,” she said, and he got the impression it was an honest
statement as far as she was concerned.

Even if she
claimed to be from another world, she is very human, James thought.  However,
she was anything but dowdy!

“Back to the
subject at hand.”  He took a deep breath, trying to get his raging hormones
under control. He pulled out one large, flawless diamond from the bag.  “I will
accept this as payment for assisting you in... whatever it is you need to do.”

“Excellent!” she
clapped her hands together, startling the sleepy fairy in her hair again. “I
need to build a device that will send a message to my cousin Vaz at a speed
faster than light.”  She piled a few more things onto the floating sled, and
then closed and locked up the box.  “Actually, I don’t need a device so much as
I need an amplifier.”  She picked up what appeared to be a single pane of
glass, similar to the block she had melted, but with silver hinges along the
side.  She opened it up almost like a book, and then set it on one side on the
dash.

“More
technology.  This is a device that can process information very quickly.  It
calculates numbers and does all sorts of tasks.  By the theory of civilization,
you'll probably see these within a hundred years or so in primitive form.” 

“It looks like
glass,” he said flatly, unimpressed.

“That’s because
it is not running. Watch.”  She pressed her palm on the flat surface, much as
she had done to unlock the ship itself. 

After a moment,
the glass calculating machine made a chiming sound and started to glow from
within.  The glass appeared lit and stained and a row of foreign characters
appeared on the bottom pane, while pictures formed on the top.

Everything up
until this point had seemed surreal, as if he was dreaming.  Her story, her
vast treasure, even her inhuman bluish hair–his might had been seeking
plausible explanations for them, even as his eyes told him that what he was
seeing was nothing like what he knew to be possible.

And yet, here
was this little calculating machine, which she began tapping at as if it were a
piano.  Instead of music, it made tiny little clicking noises.  The image on
top of the screen changed a few times.

“Here,” she
said, showing him the newly changed picture.  “Your sun is here.  My home world
revolves around a sun that is out here.”  She pointed to another star on the
unfamiliar night sky that had appeared on the screen.  “This fuzzy cloud is the
Konkastian Empire.”  A red cloud appeared around a dozen stars, including the
one she had said was her own world.  “My mother and cousin live on Montares,
the monastic planet, which is within the territory but still considered its own
sovereign nation.  If anyone were to attack that world, they would be hurled
with the curses of a thousand gods, so not even the Konkastians dare to claim
it through violence.  The planet would simply disregard their claim and refuse
to cooperate.”  She bit her lip.  “I need to send a message to them with a dark
matter transmitter, which can travel faster than light.  Otherwise it will take
over a thousand years to reach them.  Now, this machine has the capability of
sending such a message, but not to over a thousand light years away.  I would
need to triple the power output.  Fortunately, all I need is a metal antennae,
a power source, and a little time.”

“You must
forgive me for being overwhelmed,” he said, reaching out to touch the tiny
computer.  “This has been a lot to absorb all at once.”

“Yes,” she
agreed.  “Unfortunately, until we can concoct that power source, I’ll have to
conserve the... ah, no words in this language yet.  The power itself.”  She
sighed and typed at the machine for a few more minutes.  “Oh well, there is
much work to be done.”

She gathered a
black block of the same shiny stuff she had used to repair the windshield and
stepped outside to repair the damaged fin.  As she stood on her tip-toes to
reach the damaged area, he was treated to the sight of her slender ankles below
the ill-fitting dress. 

She really was a
very beautiful woman.

Cursing
mentally, James tried to get himself under control.  He hadn’t felt so out of
sorts since he had been a teenager.  He told himself that it was merely due to
his enforced celibacy over the last few years and the mental upheaving he had
been receiving in the last few hours.  Was it possible that going mad also
turned you into a rutting stag?

When she was
done with her repairs, she slapped the side of the ship, almost as if it was an
unruly child that needed to be punished.  The gesture was endearing and oddly
maternal.

“I am done
here,” she said, smiling at him again.

She had perfect
teeth.  He had never seen such perfect teeth before. They flashed a brilliant
white in her olive complexion, and they were so straight as to almost appear
artificial. 

He wondered what
it would be like to run his tongue along those teeth, to nibble on those lips,
to kiss that olive skin.

What on earth
was
happening
to him?

Their walk back
was markedly different from the walk they had there.  For one thing, she was
hauling a vast fortune as well as technology beyond his wildest reckonings.  
She had tossed a blanket over the sled to hide its lack of wheels.

However,
something more fundamental had changed.  They were still complete strangers,
but the spark between them had been an indication of other potential. 

He no longer
doubted her story, although he did still doubt his sanity.  He fingered the
diamond in his pocket. He would have it set in a ring for Clarissa for her
coming out.  She had already spent her entire provision as well as every pence
of her allowance on her wardrobe, but potential suitors would notice she wore
no jewels.  The dowry he had promised her was decent –he was wealthy enough to
do that for her – but he also had to think of Marilyn as well as his own future
potential heirs.

He had a
fanciful vision of children scampering around the woman beside him, their silky
straight brown hair twinkling with impossible blue highlights.

“Have you ever
considered having children?” he asked aloud, immediately regretting it.  It was
not a question one asked of a short term acquaintance.

But she took no
offense.  “It never occurred to me.”  She was an odd picture, dragging her
mysterious floating pallet behind her.  Her modified dress was nearly falling
off.  While the modiste was here, he decided, he’d tell her to order some
properly fitting dresses.  The thought of her generous bosom bursting out of
one of Mitsy’s hand-me-downs was disconcerting, but his lust filled mind couldn’t
shake it.  “The last two years have been all about survival... and before that,
I was trying not to think about my future at all.  Knowing you’ll probably be
married off to someone not of your choosing tends to put a gloomy outlook on
your future.”

“I suppose,
being a princess, you were probably destined for a political match.”

“Yes.”  She
sighed, hauling her burden up the steps to the portico.  The “anti-gravity
sled,” as she called it, seemed to have little problem with the grand
staircase.  An ordinary cart with wheels would have had to have been carried. 
“But, tradition dictated I could set a condition.”

“That seems
reasonable.”  He opened the door for her, much to the astonishment of Wilkins. 
He shook his head at the poor old man, who could only gape as their unusual
house guest dragged a wagon full of things straight up the steps of the estate
house.

“Is there a
laboratory or something here where I can take these things?”

“Yes, in the
basement.”  He looked at the cloth-covered chests of gold and gems with an
unreadable expression.  “That is probably the safest place for everything,
except the dress.”

“Of course.” 

He pulled aside
his butler, who had gone very pale, and murmured in his ear, “Miss d’Munt has
rescued some things from her ship with my permission.  She is taking the rest
of her items to my basement to show me how they work.”

The old man
closed his gaping mouth, finally managing to regain a little composure.  “My
lord, Mitsy said she fancied herself a princess.”

“Well, she did
hit her head very badly.”  James sighed.  “The truth is a little stranger, but
not that far off the mark, it seems.  She will be seated at dinner with us.”

“Very good,
sir.”  The butler shook his head as he watched the earl follow the stranger
down the stairs. 

Eneria was
delighted at the laboratory.  James was an amateur naturalist, and he had
everything from skeletons of animals to rare plants to a small model steam
engine.  She understood that he had studied science and mathematics at a
university, and that was how he was able to fill in some of her missing words
to describe her world.

“You said you
needed a means of generating electricity? I have a dynamo,” he said, and showed
her a very primitive generator.

She hefted the
tiny machine, eying it critically. “Ah, so you do have them . . . but this is
far too small.  I can make a better one.”

She wasted no
time in setting up her own work area, and she flitted around the lab collecting
cogs, wood, metal, wires, and pieces of glass.  After a confused description
and several frustrating minutes of communication, he produced something he
called a “velocipede” and she clapped her hands in joy, as it was more or less
exactly what she needed.

She would have
happily worked all night, but after an hour he gently pulled her away from her
computer and told her it was time for dinner.

Her growling stomach
told her not to argue, and she followed him back upstairs reluctantly.  She was
attempting to create a much bigger human powered electrical generator.  The
velocipede had the general shape she needed; she wanted to attach some pedals,
cogs, and ropes and pulleys and things. She also needed a battery, but she’d
worry about that later.

“Enny?” Aijo’s
tired voice piped up from her hair as she settled down at the dinner table.

“Good evening,
sleepyhead.  Did you have a good nap?”

“A shorter one
than I wanted, but I recharged enough.  What did I miss?”

“Oh, just a
secret laboratory with all the goodies we’ll need to build our amplifier.”

“Excuse me,”
Clarissa said, in English.  “Who were you talking to, and what language is
that?”

Oh, right, Enny
thought, startled.  Clarissa hadn’t met Aijo yet.  This could get complicated
fast.

Sometimes the
naked truth was the most effective deflection. It was something she remembered
her mother saying.

“I was speaking
my native tongue, Lathlian,” she said, and then pointed at Marilyn.  She
winked, hoping it was effective.  “I was talking to a fairy.”

“Oh?” Clarissa
said, looking at Marilyn as well.  “You really ought not to encourage her.”

Enny made
shushing motions at Marilyn, who giggled as Aijo fluttered over to a
candelabra.  “I’ll behave today, I promise.  Uncle James already threatened to
make me eat upstairs once today.”

Enny winced as
her stomach growled again.  She was concerned about making any mistakes about
dining etiquette, but Aijo had apparently witnessed at least one meal and
everything more or less matched up to the Lathlian custom.  There were two
silver forks, a spoon, and a steel knife at her setting, as well as a china
plate on a wooden charger. 

She picked up a
fork and stared at it, admiring the craftsmanship.  Lathlian forks only had two
prongs, not four, and a long stick for a handle.  This one had a flattened
handle, with intricate decorations, and a careful polish. 

She could make
one like it.  Maybe she could make one that was even better.

Hopefully, for
today at least, she would be able to eat with it without messing up.

James entered
last, and their dinner was served in courses.  The food was well prepared,
although at least one of the vegetables served tasted so bitter to Enny she
almost spit it out.  As it was, she carefully placed it back onto the plate, un-chewed.
Bitterness, she remembered, tends to indicate an incompatible chemical. 

Clarissa and
Marilyn picked at their food, hardly eating any of it, so Enny didn’t feel too
bad leaving the nasty vegetables on her plate.  James ate perfunctorily, and
Enny began to wonder if he enjoyed anything out of life at all.  Her mother had
been much the same.  No joy in anything, not even her exquisite art.  Enneria
also felt that much of the food was going to waste and wondered if they had
ever thought about telling the chef in the kitchen what they actually wanted to
eat.  Narin d’Munt’s personal chef always made meals tailored to them; her brother
had always had lots of bread and meats, while her own had been mostly fruit and
vegetables.