Araminta Station (8 page)

“I’m not bothered,” said Arles, “Oh, my sacred Clattuc elbow! Look yonder at those three lovely creatures! I’ll smell them from morning till night, and ask for more! Namour, you may assign them to me, here and now!”

Namour turned him a cool glance. “Certainly, if you’re willing to pay.”

“How much?”

“They come high, especially those with the black earrings. That means they’re associated with a man. In loose terms: married.”

“What of the others? Are they virgins?”

“How should I know? They still come high.”

“What a pity!” moaned Arles. “Can’t I have just one of them free?”

“You’d have a knife in the ribs just as quickly. The men are not meek; don’t let those placid faces fool you. They don’t like us in the first place, and even less when we start fooling with their girls - unless we pay. They’ll do anything for money, but never try to cheat them. A few years ago a tourist forced himself on a Yip girl while she picked grapes. Like a fool he refused to pay. Two Yips held him while a third pushed a grape stake down his throat - all the way. A nasty business.”

“What happened to the Yips?”

“Nothing. If you play, pay. Better yet, leave the Yip girls alone.”

Uther Offaw glanced skeptically toward Namour. “Does that apply to you? There always seems to be a pretty Yip girl fluffing out your pillows and another running your bath.”

Namour allowed a faint smile to appear on his handsome face. “Never mind about me. over a lifetime I’ve learned a hundred little tricks which I call lubrications. Most of them I keep to myself, but I’ll share one of them with you, free of charge: ‘Never push too hard at anything; it might start pushing back.’”

Uther frowned. “Very profound, and I’m grateful, especially since it’s free. But what’s it got to do with Yip girls?”

“Nothing. Or perhaps everything. You puzzle it out.” Namour went off to deal with the new contingent of workers.

The six youths returned along the Beach Road to the lyceum. In the open-air refectory they discovered a group of girls regaling themselves with fruit ices. Two, Ticia Wook and Lexy Laverty, were legitimate beauties; the other two, Jerdys Diffin and Clöe Offaw, were definitely attractive. All were a year or two older than Glawen and outside his field of interest.

Uther Offaw, though a freethinker, could be most courtly and polite when the need arose. He now called out in his best voice: “Girls! Why do you bloom here unseen in the shade of the gadroon tree?”

“They’re not really blooming,” said Kiper. “They are eating right and left like little gluttons.”

Ticia in a single glance had gauged the quality of the boys. All were either too young or too callow and good for nothing but practice. She looked down at her dish. “A mango smash? That’s far from gluttony.”

“In that case, why bother?”

Jerdys said: “If you must know, this is a meeting of the Medusa Cult, and we are planning our program for next year.”

Clöe said: “We intend to conquer Araminta station and enslave all the men.”

“Hush, Clöe!” exclaimed Jerdys. “You’re giving away cult secrets!”

“We can make up some more. Secrets are easy. I use up dozen every day.”

 “Ahem!” said Arles. “Have you noticed our presence? Must stand here like storks, or are we invited to sit at your table?”

Ticia shrugged. “Do as you like. But please pay for your ices.”

 “No fear. Aside from Glawen and Kiper, you are in company of cultivated gentlemen.”

The four older boys found chairs and managed to squeeze up to the table. Glawen and Kiper were pushed aside and forced to sit somewhat apart at another table: a situation which they accepted philosophically.

Lexy Laverty asked: “Well, then, what have you ‘cultivated gentlemen’ been up to?”

“Just wandering about, discussing our investments,” said Uther.

Kiper called across the gap: “Arles is behind in his classwork, we studied anthropology at the ferry slip.”

Arles said with dignity: “More to the point, we looked over some space yachts. There’s a new Purple prince which I swear I will buy before ten years is out!”

Kiper, who knew no inhibition, called out: “I thought you were saving up for one of the Yip girls.”

 “Aha!” said Ticia. “So that’s where you’ve been! Drooling over the Yip girls like the precocious little lechers you are!”

 “Not Arles!” said Uther. “All he wanted to do was smell them.”

Kiper said: “That may or may not be lechery - although it’s definitely odd.”

 “I’m inclined to agree,” said Uther. “Ticia, what do you think? Has anyone ever wanted to smell you?”

“I think that you are both lunatics! That’s what I think.”

Arles said primly: “I know better than to fool with Yip girls. Do you think I want to be strangled and killed and burned alive and then stabbed just for a bit of naughty conduct?”

Kiper said: “If your mother caught you at it, you’d fare even worse.”

Arles’ face became a thundercloud. “Let’s leave my mother out of it, shall we? She has nothing to do with the case at hand!”

 “What was the case at hand?” asked Kirdy, speaking for the first time. “I’ve forgotten what we were talking about.”

Jerdys said plaintively: “Let’s discuss something really wonderful and interesting, like the Medusa Cult.”

“I’m willing,” said Cloyd. “Do you have a gentlemen’s auxiliary ?

“Not now,” said Jerdys, “We used them all for sacrifices.”

“Ha-hah!” Lexy cried out. “Who is divulging secrets now?”

“Those secrets are well used and no good to anyone.”

Arles said: “Speaking of secrets, I have a splendid idea! Have you noticed that there are four Medusa-type girls here, and also four Bold Lions? Glawen and Kiper don’t count; in fact, they were on the point of going home. I suggest that we join forces and go off to somewhere quiet where we can drink wine and sort out all our old secrets, and maybe work up some new ones.”

“That’s one of Arles’ rare good ideas,” said Cloyd. “I’ll vote yes.”

“And I,” said Kirdy, smiling self-consciously. “There’s two yes votes. Arles will probably vote yes also, which makes three. Uther?”

Uther pursed his lips. “I think that I will reserve my vote until the ladies are heard from. I assume that they will all vote in the affirmative.”

“Silence means assent,” said Arles. “So then -”

“To the contrary,” said Lexy crisply. “Silence in this case means shock and astonishment.”

Jerdys asked: “What do you take us for? This is the Medusa Cult: a very select group!”

Clöe suggested: “Go try the Nixies or the Girls’ Philosophy Club.”

Ticia rose to her feet. “It’s quite time that I was getting home.”

“I wonder why we waited this long,” said Jerdys with a sniff.

The girls departed. The Bold Lions looked after them nonplussed. Kiper broke the silence. “How very odd! One mention of the Bold Lions and the girls dash away as if they were running a race.”

Glawen stated: “Arles has written a book for the use of Bold Lions only. It is called
Manual of the Erotic Arts
. On the first page he should print a warning: ‘Never admit to being a Bold Lion! If you do, the warranty on this book becomes void.’”

Kiper said smugly: “I’m glad that I’m not a Bold Lion. What of you, Glawen?”

 “I’m quite happy the way I am.”

Arles declared grimly: “Neither of you will ever be invited into the group; you can be sure of that!”

Kiper jumped to his feet. “Come, Glawen! Let’s leave before Arles changes his mind!”

Glawen and Kiper departed. Uther made a wry comment: “For a fact, our public image seems to be, shall we say, not superb.”

 “Most odd!” said Cloyd. “After all, we’re not deep-dyed ruffians.”

 “Not all of us, at any rate,” growled Kirdy Wook.

Arles demanded sharply: “What do you mean by that?”

“Your suggestion to the girls that we go somewhere and cuddle was preposterous, if not vulgar.”

“You voted for it!”

“I did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” said Kirdy virtuously.

 “Hmmf! Well, it was an idea. They could have said yes or they could have said no. Who knows? Next time it might be yes. That’s the theory behind a whole section in my book, entitled: ‘Go for it; what can you lose?’”

Kirdy rose to his feet. “I’ve got schoolwork to do. I’m going home.” He departed.

Arles said thoughtfully: “Kirdy can be just a bit pompous at times. He’s not what I would call a typical Bold Lion.”

Cloyd said: “If just for this reason, he improves our image.”

Uther sighed. “You may well be right. Except for Kirdy, we’re a fairly erratic group, at the fringe of civilization . . . I’m going home too. I’m a bit behind in mathematics.”

“I guess I’ll do the same,” said Arles dubiously. “Old Sonorius hit me with an Urgent Notice that I’m supposed to show my mother.”

Uther asked in interest: “Are you going to do so?”

“Small chance of that!”

But when Arles returned to his chambers he found that the lyceum had sent his mother a separate notification.

Chapter I, Part 6

As soon as Arles appeared at Clattuc House, Spanchetta demanded an explanation of the Urgent Notice. “Apparently you are repeating last year’s work, a fact which I am now learning for the first time! Why was I not notified at the start of the term?”

“Of course you were notified!” declared Arles. “I told you myself, and you said, ‘You must do better this year,’ or something like that, and I said I would.”

“I recall no such occasion.”

“You might have been thinking about something else.”

“How is it that you are doing so poorly even on the repeat course? Don’t you ever study?”

Throwing himself down in a chair, Arles cast about for some plausible excuse. “I’m certainly capable of better work, but it’s not all my fault! I blame it mostly on those dreary little bookworms who call themselves instructors. You can’t imagine the stupefying boredom to which they put you nowadays! I’m not the only one who complains. But I get singled out for criticism and bad grades!”

Spanchetta surveyed him with eyes half closed. “Odd. Why should that be?”

“I suppose it’s because I have an inquiring mind and I can’t take everything for granted, just to get a good grade. I consider them a snobbish little clique of pettifoggers, and they know it.”

Spanchetta nodded with ominous deliberation. “Hmm. Why do other students manage so well? Glawen has won a certificate.”

“Don’t talk to me of Glawen! He uses every smarmy little trick imaginable to ingratiate himself! Everyone knows it and everyone but Glawen feels as I do! We all want reasonable teachers, who play no favorites!”

“I’ll have to look into this,” said Spanchetta.

In sudden alarm Arles asked: “What are you going to do?”

“I am going to get to the bottom of the situation, and one way or another straighten things out.”

 “Wait!” cried Arles in poignant tones. “I’d prefer that you just give me a letter, stating that I have many responsibilities and do not need such a heavy concentration of mathematics and science!  It won’t look well if you go down there yourself.”

Spanchetta gave her head an impatient shake, which caused her great pile of ringlets to sway and lurch, but by some miracle maintain their shape. “When I want something, I get it, no matter how it looks. You must learn to be thick-skinned if you want to get on in life.”

 “Bah,” muttered Arles. “I’m doing quite well enough already.”

“If you lose Agency because of bad grades you will sing a different song.”

The next morning Spanchetta took herself to the lyceum and approached Instructor Arnold Fleck in the hall outside the mathematics classroom.

Spanchetta halted. Looking Fleck up and down, she took note of his slight physique, thin pale face and mild blue eyes. Could this be the malevolent ogre of the many revenges so feelingly described by Arles?

Fleck recognized Spanchetta and instantly divined the nature her mission. “Good morning, madame. Can I assist you in any way?”

“That remains to be seen. You are Instructor Fleck?”

“I am indeed.”

“I am Spanchetta Clattuc of Clattuc House. My son, Arles, so I believe, is under your supervision?”

Fleck considered. “Nominally so, and for a fact I see him from time to time.”

Spanchetta frowned. She wanted a brisk businesslike and understanding, without evasions or glib little ambiguities. This Instructor Fleck had made a bad beginning. “Please, sir, if you will! You are Arles’ instructor in mathematics?”

“Yes, madame.”

 “Hm. He seems to be having problems and he insists that he is not to blame. He feels that the material is presented incorrectly.”

Instructor Fleck smiled a cool sad smile. “I will teach him any way he likes, so long as he does the work. He cannot absorb the subject by osmosis; he must do the drills and work out the problems, all of which is admittedly tedious.”

Spanchetta glanced around at the circle of students who had paused to watch and listen, but was in no wise deterred. She lowered her voice an ominous half octave. “Arles seems to feel that he has been singled out for harassment and criticism.”

Fleck nodded. “In this case, Arles has reported the facts correctly. He is the only member of the class who takes a surly attitude toward his work. Inevitably, he is the only one criticized.”

Spanchetta sniffed. “I am thoroughly disconcerted. Clearly, something is amiss.”

“It is a sad case!” said Fleck. “Would you care to sit down and rest until you feel better?”

“I am not ill, but outraged! It is your duty to teach the subject fairly and fully to each member of the class, making every allowance for individual temperament!”

“Your remarks are well-taken! I would feel gloom and guilt, but for a single consideration: each of Arles’ other instructors finds the same problem: a kind of obstinate laziness which defeats the best of intentions.” Fleck looked around the circle of onlookers. “Have you people nothing better to do? This matter is no concern of yours.” Then, to Spanchetta: “Step into the classroom, if you will. It is unoccupied at this time and I have something to show you.”