The Warlock's Companion (24 page)

"As you wish,
very
young master," Fess sighed. ''Meanwhile, there is still a matter of tonight's ball. If you are not there, questions will be asked."

"Don't I know it, though! Why do you think I'm going? Besides, if I'm out at a ball, nobody will expect me till way after midnight… Ah, there!" Out of the closet, Rod pulled a set of frills with buttonholes. He slipped it on over his singlet. "Yuck! I like formal shirts, but they're way overdone this year!"

"They lend you a look of elegance, young master boss."

"Elegance have long trunks, Fess—and that's what I need to carry these things in. I just wish I could get out of going to this one last ball."

The robot emitted the burst of white noise that was its equivalent of a sigh. "You may counteract the boredom by reminding yourself that it will be the last one you need ever attend, Rod. Still, some of the young ladies have truly wonderful hearts…"

"And truly deplorable looks, with faces like mashed potatoes. Well, no, I'm being unfair. Strike the 'mashed.' "

"But surely their figures excite your interest."

"Who would know, under all the drapery they have to wear to these things? Probably just as well, too." Rod shuddered. "Not to mention their minds. I mean, the inbreeding here is
really
beginning to show."

The robot forbore mentioning that Rod himself might be something of an example. It wasn't really true, and besides, it would have been a cheap shot. "I must urge you to retain your politeness, young master sahib. There is no reason to visit your own torments on the young ladies."

"Yeah, you're right," Rod sighed. "It's not
their
fault that they're unattractive, or that I'm a misfit who can't settle down and have a good time raising a family and holding down a job, a maverick who needs adventure! Excitement! Independence!" His eyes sparkled and gleamed. "That's the life for me—out on my own! Bound to no one! Rugged individualism! Untrammeled! Self-reliant!" He sighed with a happy smile, then gave his head a shake and turned to let the robot push studs into his shirt. "Pack my bag for me, will you, Fess?"

The ball was every bit as boring as Rod expected it to be. Not that he disliked the starched collar or the swallow-tailed coat; he always got a kick out of being in costume—it made him stand a little taller, and put a spring in his step. He felt like a character out of a nineteenth-century play in his white tie and tails.

And it wasn't the atmosphere of the ball, either. Rod had a bent for the fantastic, had had it for all of his twenty-one years, and had never quite outgrown his childhood games of "Let's Pretend." In fact, he was doing very well in the Maxima Amateur Theater Society and the Light Opera Association of Maxima. No, in terms of stepping into character, he was right at home.

And it wasn't even that the dances were too sedate—Rod enjoyed the waltz and even the minuet; they went along with the acting. No, it was the company—the simple fact that there was no one else there who was interesting to talk to, and certainly nobody female who was good-looking.

"Oh, I love your costume!" Lady Matilda Bolwheel chirped.

"I'm glad you do," Rod murmured. She damned well had better like it, since every man in the place was wearing a variation on it. "And your dress is very fetching." He gallantly forbore to mention what it would fetch.

"Why, thank you." She turned coyly half-away, letting her eyelashes droop, reminding Rod of a 3DT clip of a cow his tutor had shown him when he was ten.

But she was obviously angling for him to ask her for a dance, and there wasn't much else to do. With a mental sigh, he braced himself and said, "Shall we dance?"

She blossomed into radiance. "Why, I'd be delighted!"

And off they went, in a stately whirl of crinoline and swallow-tails.

When the dance was over, though, Matilda kept firm hold of Rod's arm, with the clear intention of monopolizing him for the evening. "Oh, do let's go into dinner together, Rodney!"

"Uh, well, I've been on a diet lately…"

"Ah, there you are, Rodney!" Lady Mulhearn, his hostess, came sailing up like a square-rigged galleon. "How naughty of you to hide with Matilda, when you
know
we must have you circulate! You do know Lady Jenine, don't you?"

The question was purely rhetorical; everybody knew everybody else on Maxima; there were only three hundred thousand of them, and only a few thousand in Rod's generation. "Hi, milady." Rod bowed, thankful that the issue of Matilda had been, at least temporarily, squelched.

"My pleasure, sir." Jenine dropped a curtsy. She had the golden complexion that comes from the mingling of all Terra's races, as had most of the people on Maxima. Rod himself was considerably paler than the norm, but he tanned well. He was a throwback in other ways, too. "There's a new dance out," he ventured. "Have you heard of the gavotte?"

"Oh, I just love it! Shall we prance?"

The line would have been a hopeful sign, if Rod hadn't heard it before in the same 3DT historical that had brought back the gavotte. He turned to make his apologies to Matilda, but Lady Mulhearn was already doing it for him. "You mustn't be selfish, Tildy… No, do go away, Rodney, there's a good boy… After all, when there are so few eligible bachelors, young ladies must learn to share."

The pout was beginning as Rod led Jenine out to gallop.

"And to think this all came from a 3DT epic!" Jenine burbled as she bobbed and weaved. "Didn't you just love Hamlish Hofernung as Louis XV?"

"He lived up to his nickname, that's for sure." Inwardly, Rod sighed. He was in for a good ten minutes of discussion of nothing but the latest tank stars and their exploits. It wasn't that epics were the only thing Jenine was interested in—it was just that they were the only topic she knew anything about. At least she had a modicum of wit, though—or witty lines, provided she'd heard them from an actor.

Dinner surpassed the proverbial bore crashing; it didn't even leave any splinters. Rod had learned how to smile on cue at a very young age; he and his brother had practiced making faces in the mirror, so he was admirably suited to being a good conversationalist. He had perfected the trick of mental activity on two levels, thinking about something interesting with his forebrain while his speech and hearing centers were routed together on automatic, ears picking up cues that his mouth responded to by delivering up the appropriate noncommittal responses. "Is that so?"

"You don't mean it!"

"You don't say…" There were even places for "Uh-huh," and "Yes," and "I thought so myself." But never, of course, for "No," or "I don't agree"; those might take some explanation, and actually involve saying something.

Officially, he had taken Lady Heloise into dinner; she was plain as a prairie, but she at least had a brain, and could comment on the day's news, if nothing else. But by some strange fluke, he had Lady Morwenna on his other side, and Lady Laetitia across the table. The result was a matter of trying to respond to three conversations at once, since none of the girls was willing to wait for either of the others to stop talking before she directed another comment at Rod. He actually had to pay attention to what they were saying, which ruined all the fun—not that it was in any great shape to begin with. Why they couldn't aim their ramblings at their own dinner companions, Rod didn't know—though it might have had something to do with the gentlemen in question being half again as old as themselves. But they had much better prospects than Rod; after all, some money is better than none, isn't it?

Which led to the inescapable conclusion that Rod wasn't the kind of man these young ladies intended to marry (or that their mamas intended for them), but that he
was
the kind they wanted to dance and flirt with.

Why me
? It certainly couldn't have been his looks.

Maybe his conversation. In a desperate attempt to divert attention
away
from himself, he pointed his nose at Marquis Msimangu, Lady Laetitia's escort. "I hear a rumor that you've designed a new robot, milord."

"Why, yes, actually." Hugo came alive with surprise that anybody should be talking to him. "Still full of bugs, of course, but looks as though the damned thing may actually work."

Rod paused a fraction of a second, to let one of the young ladies ask the polite follow-up, but they were all looking as though the lemon in their tea was getting to them. "What kind is it?"

"Oh, a household 'bot. It'll do all the usual—you know, cook, clean, dust, pick up…"

Rod frowned. "Usual, yes. What's the new part?"

"Oh, it makes toast. For those who like their grilled bread
truly
fresh—it has two slots in its chest, and makes the toast right there, by your bed."

"A startling innovation," Rod murmured, picturing himself sitting up in bed and being hit in the eye by two slices of toast. "Really wakes you up in the morning."

Lady Morwenna ostentatiously turned aside and straightened in "surprise."

"Oh! Lady Michelle is talking about that new card game from Terra!" She turned a dazzling smile back toward Rod. "You know, the one you can play without a calculator to hand?"

Rod still couldn't understand why people needed special calculators for bridge and canasta—but then, he had never taken card games seriously enough to try to keep track of which cards had been played. "Really? How's it work?"

"Oh, the object of the game is to match cards by number," Lady Laetitia spoke up, oblivious to Morwenna's start and glare—it had been
her
topic! And she took it back. "Yes, you ask the player to your left, 'Have you any eights?' or some such, and if they have, they must give them to you."

"Intricate," Rod murmured. "What if they don't have any?"

"Why, then they say, 'Go fish!' and you search through the extras."

"It's a great deal of fun," Lady Heloise said, delighted to find something she could talk about. "Frees you from trying to think about the cards, and lets you pay attention to the play."

"Like a drama where the characters are very simple?"

"Oh, you've
seen
the new Notty Alent romance!" Laetitia gushed. "Isn't she just
splendid
as Lady Carstairs!"

"And that wonderfully decrepit house she's brought into, as governess!" said Morwenna. "What a comedown for the poor thing—a lady born, and finding all the money gone when her father dies." A tear glistened at the corner of her eye. All the other ladies were silent, too, contemplating the awful spectacle of actually having to earn their own livings.

Rod cleared his throat, aware that reality should never intrude at a ball. "Your gown is striking, Laetitia." In fact, it almost struck out. "I don't believe I've ever seen that cut before."

"Why, thank you!" Laetitia flushed with pleasure, and Morwenna cooed, "
She
reached Monsieur Valdez first!"

"Really, Titia, you were quite precipitate," Heloise scolded. "I swear you scarcely let the poor man step off the boarding ramp before you were on him!"

" 'She who hesitates is lost,' " Laetitia quoted, looking immensely pleased with herself.

"Mine will be done for Thursday's ball, though, so don't think you'll keep the advantage, Tish."

Laetitia sat back with a pinfeather smile. "A genuine original by an authentic Terran couturier."

Well, that explained it. Rod had heard about the new arrival, and had been so surprised that a Terran designer would actually
choose
to come to Maxima, that he had asked Fess for a brief on the man. The robot had run through the last six months' news, and given him the not-so-startling information that Monsieur Valdez was more widely known by his Terran trade name of Monsieur Iberien. That put the whole thing in perspective. Rod remembered, from his weekly newsfeeds, that Monsieur Iberien had struck out on his own only two years ago, after ten years' apprenticeship in the House of Lachenoir. He had obtained backers, launched his first fall line, garnered unanimous critical censure, obtained absolutely no orders except one from a costermonger who wanted something special for his wife, and had gone spectacularly bankrupt. "I understand he has a novel theory as to what constitutes art."

"Yes, it does seem singular." Sir Gilman, on Morwenna's other side, frowned. "Something about the feeling you get, you know, when you look into a can of worms."

The ladies paled and Rod said quickly, "Well, that was only an example. He says art consists entirely in arousing strong emotional responses, and the nature of the response doesn't matter."

"I certainly receive a great emotional response from looking at
your
dress, Laetitia," Morwenna purred. Laetitia flushed angrily, but Rod said, "Yes, it's called envy." Actually, he sympathized with Morwenna. The dress had only a touch of Monsieur Iberien's theory left in it—the emotion it tried to arouse was surprise, by use of fluorescent colors and patterns of dots running counter to the stripes, and it certainly enhanced Laetitia's appearance, by distracting attention from her face. Rod speculated that Monsieur Iberien might do very well here, after all, as long as he could restrain his artistic impulses and try to give the ladies what would help them. Apparently he had really let himself go, on Terra, and no woman was terribly interested that season in wearing a dress full of fishbait. His fall collection had become a matter of passing the hat in November; the other designers had pooled their resources and paid him to leave Terra, before he brought the whole fashion industry crashing down. He had been able to settle his debts, but had arrived on Maxima almost destitute.

Not for long, though. The ladies of Maxima wouldn't really care what their clothes looked like, as long as they were made by a genuine Terran designer—and his spirits might revive enough to start giving expression to his notion of art again. Rod decided that, no matter what happened to him aboard that freighter, he was
not
coming back for the next season.