Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (47 page)

“Nanny dear, I’ve found the answer, the old linear shorthand. Just slashes, dots, and dashes, and you won’t have to worry your hand and head over cursive abbreviations. It’s a simple style, and we can practice together.” She climbed up on Claudia and kissed her lovingly. “One would think this might have occurred to that egotistical know-it-all whose name escapes me.” The infant turned her auburn head. “Why, good morning, Dominie Manwright. What an unpleasant surprise.

“You’re right, Claudia,” Manwright growled. “She’s too damned old for your kids. Diaper her.”

“My sphincter will be under control by tomorrow, Dominie,” Galatea said sweetly. “Can you say the same for your tongue?”

“Guh!” And Manwright withdrew with what he hoped was impressive dignity.

Of course, she shot up like a young bamboo plant and filled the house with joy as she entertained them with her escapades. She taught herself to play Manwright’s Regency harpsichord, which was sadly out of repair. She convinced Igor that it was a monster in the making, and together they refinished and tuned it. The sound of concert-A on the tuning fork droned through the house with agonizing penetration. The others were forced to eat out because she gave Igor no time for cooking.

She studied linear shorthand with Claudia and then translated it into finger language. They had glorious raps, silently talking to each other until Manwright banned the constant finger waggling, which he denounced as a damned invasion of vision. They simply held hands and talked into each other’s palm in their secret code, and Manwright was too proud to ask what they were gossiping about.

“As if I’d get an answer anyway,” he growled to Corque.

“D’you think that’s her mystery surprise, Reg?”

“Damned if I know. She’s unexpected enough as it is. Rotten kid!”

She stole liquid licorice from Igor’s sacred pantry and tarred herself; phosphorus from Manwright’s sacred laboratory and irradiated herself. She burst into Corque’s dark bedroom at three in the morning, howling, “
ME METHOPHYTE MOTHER FROM GANNYMEEDYI YOU KILL ALL MY CHILDERS
,
ALIEN INVADER FROM OUTSIDE SPACE! NOW ME KILL YOU!
”

Corque let our a yell and then couldn’t stop laughing for the rest of the day. “The beautiful shock of the apparition, Reg!” Manwright didn’t think it was funny.

“That damned child is giving me
real
nightmares,” he complained. “I keep dreaming that I’m lost in the Grand Teton mountains and Red Indians are chasing me.”

She sneaked up into the sacred penthouse and decorated the robotlike neutrinoscope with items stolen from Manwright’s wardrobe. The construct assumed a ludicrous resemblance to the Dominie himself.

The innocent child fast-talked E & A Chemical delivery—“My Daddy forgot to order it. So absent-minded, you know”—into an extra gallon of ethyl alcohol which she poured into the marble pool and got the piranhas disgustingly drunk. Then she jumped in and was discovered floating with her plastered pals.

“Doesn’t know the meaning of fear, Reg.”

“Pah! Just the Pasionaria I programmed.”

She stole two hundred meters of magnetic tape from the library and fashioned a scarecrow mobile. The gardener was enraptured. Manwright was infuriated, particularly because art-dealer friends offered huge amounts for the creation.

“But
that’s
her charming unexpected, Reg. Gally’s a born artist.”

“Like hell she is. That’s only the Hester Bateman I gave her. No
yet. And the nightmares are continuing in sequence. Those damned Red Indians have cut me off at the pass.”

Claudia took Galatea to her home, where the girl got on famously with Claudia’s two sons and brought them to Manwright’s house to demonstrate a new dance which she’d devised called: “The Anthro Hustle.” It was performed to a song she’d composed entitled: “Who Put the Snatch on Gorilla Baby?” which she banged out fortis-simously on the harpsichord.

“Bring back the tuning fork,” Manwright muttered.

Corque was applauding enthusiastically. “Music’s her surprise kink, Reg.”

“Call that music?”

Corque took her to his Saturn Circus, where she mesmerized him into letting her try riding bareback and leaping through burning hoops, acting as target for a knife thrower, trapeze aerobatics, and thrusting her auburn head into a lion’s mouth. He couldn’t understand how she’d persuaded him to let her take such horrifying risks.

“Perhaps cajolery’s her mystery quality,” he suggested. “But she did miraculously well, Reg. My heart was in my mouth. Gaily never turned a hair. Pure aplomb. She’s a magnificent creation. You’ve generated a Super-Popsy for Valera.”

“Guh.”

“Could her unexpected kink be psychic?”

“The redskins have got me surrounded,” Manwright fretted. He seemed strangely disoriented.

What disturbed him most were the daily tutoring sessions with the young lady. Invariably they degenerated into bickering and bitching, with the Dominie usually getting the worst of it.

“When our last session ended in another bitch we both steamed for the library door,” he told Corque. “I said, ‘Age before beauty, my dear,’ which you must admit was gracious, and started out. That red Popsy snip said, ‘Pearls before swine,’ and swaggered past me like a gladiator who’s wiped an entire arena.”

“She’s wonderful!” Corque laughed.

“Oh, you’re insanely biased. She’s been twisting you around her fingers since the moment she was poured.”

“And Igor and Claudia and her two boys and the CB repair and the plumber and the electronics and the gardener and the laundry and E & A Chemical and half of my circus? All insanely biased?”

“Evidently I’m the only sanity she can’t snow. You know the simple psychological truth, Charles; we’re always accusing others of our own faults. That saucebox has the impudence to call me intransigent, stubborn, know-it-all, conceited. Me! Out of her own mouth. Q.E.D.”

“Mightn’t it be the other way around, Reg?”

“Do try to make sense, Charles. And now that the Grand Teton breastworks are making her top-heavy (I think maybe I was a little too generous with my Egyptian programming) there’ll be no living with her vanity. Women take the damned dumbest pride in the thrust of their boozalums.”

“Now Reg, you exaggerate. Gaily knows we’d all adore her even if she were flatchested.”

“I know I’m doing a professional job, and I know she has too much ego in her cosmos. But next week we start
schlepping
her to parties, openings, talk-ins, routs, and such to train her for Valera.
That
ought to take her down a peg. The Red Indians have got me tied to a stake,” he added gloomily.

“Canapés?”

“Ta evah so. Lahvely pahty, Ms. Galante.”

“Thank you, Lady Agatha. Canapés?”

“Grazie, Signorina.”

“Prego, Commendatore. Canapés?”

“A dank, meyd’l. Lang leb’n zolt ir.”

“Nito far vus, General. Hot canapés, dear Professor Corque?”

“Thank you, adorable hostess. Igor’s?”

“Mine.”

“And perfection. Don’t be afraid of the Martian consul. He won’t bite.”

“Canapés, M’sieur Consul?”

“Ah! Mais oui! Merci, Mademoiselle Gallée. Que pensez-vous du lumineux Dominie Manwright?”

“C’est un type très compétent.”

“Oui. Romanésque, mais formidablement compétent.”

“Quoi? Manwright? Romanésque? Vous me gênez, mon cher consul.”

“Ma foi, oui, romanésque, Mademoiselle Gallée. C’est justement son côté romanésque qui lui cause du mal à se trouver une femme.”

“These damn do’s are a drag, Charles.”

“But isn’t she wonderful?”

“And they’re making my nightmares worse. A sexy Indian squaw tore my clothes off last night.”

“Mi interesso particolarmente ai libri di fantascienza, magia-orrore, umorismo, narrativa, attualità, filosofia, sociologia, e cattivo, putrido Regis Manwright.”

“Charles, this is the last literary talk-in I ever attend.”

“Did you see how Gaily handled those Italian publishers?”

“Yes, gibes at my expense. She put iron claws on her hands.”

“My dear Reg, Gaily did no such thing.”

“I was referring to that sexy squaw.”

“Então agora sabes dançer?”

“Sim. Danço, falo miseravelmente muchas linguas, estudo ciên-cia e filosofia, escrevo uma lamentával poesia, estoirome com experiências idiotas, egrimo como un louco, jogo so boxe como up palhaco. Em suma, son a célébra bioroid, Galatea Galante, de Dominie Manwright.”

“She was magnificent dancing with that Portuguese prince, Reg.”

“Portuguese ponce, you mean.”

“Don’t be jealous.”

“She’s heating the claws in a damned campfire, Charles.”

“Didn’t you ever fight back, Sandy?”

“Yes, I know, he’s a bully. But all bullies are cowards at heart. You should have fought him to a standstill, like me. Did he ever make a pass at you?”

“Un-huh. Me neither. He’s an arrogant egomaniac, too much in love with himself to love anyone else.”

“What, Sandy? Me? Give the come-on to that dreadful man? Never! Did you?

“Uh-huh. And he didn’t even have to lash himself to the mast. Iceberg City. Ah, Mr. Jessamy. So sweet of you to give us your box for the concert. I’ve just been comparing notes with your adorable wife on our common enemy, whose name escapes me. He’s the gentleman on my right, who slept through the Mozart.”