Miss Feng cleared her throat and looked at me reproachfully. "Sir did did promise his sister to look after the beast in person, didn't he?" promise his sister to look after the beast in person, didn't he?"

I stared at her, somewhat taken aback. "Dash it all, are you implying . . . ?"

Miss Feng handed me my preemptive victory cigar. She continued, in a thoughtful tone of voice: "Has Sir considered that it might be in his best interests-should he value the good opinion of his sister-to bring Jeremy along? After all, Lady Fiona's on Mars, too, even if she's preoccupied with the apres-ski circuit. If by some mischance she were to visit the Emir's palace and find Sir sans Jeremy, it might be more than trivially embarrassing."

"Dash it all, you're right. I suppose I'll have to pack the bloody pachyderm, won't I? What a bore. Will he fit in the trunk?"

Miss Feng sighed, very quietly. "I believe that may be a remote theoretical possibility. I shall endeavor to find out while Sir is enjoying himself not dying."

"Try beer," I called as I picked up my surf board and climbed aboard the orbital delivery jitney. "Jeremy loves beer!" Miss Feng bowed as the door closed. I hope she doesn't give him too much, I hope she doesn't give him too much, I thought. Then the gravity squirrelizer chittered to itself angrily, decided it was on the wrong planet, and tried to rectify the situation in its own inimitable way. I lay back and waited for orbit. I wasn't entirely certain of the wisdom of my proposed course of action-there are few predicaments as grim as facing a mammoth with a hangover across the breakfast table-but Miss Feng seemed like a competent sort, and I supposed I'd just have to trust her judgment. So I took a deep breath, waited another sixty seconds (until the alarm chimed), then opened the door and stepped off the running board over three hundred kilometers of hostile vacuum. I thought. Then the gravity squirrelizer chittered to itself angrily, decided it was on the wrong planet, and tried to rectify the situation in its own inimitable way. I lay back and waited for orbit. I wasn't entirely certain of the wisdom of my proposed course of action-there are few predicaments as grim as facing a mammoth with a hangover across the breakfast table-but Miss Feng seemed like a competent sort, and I supposed I'd just have to trust her judgment. So I took a deep breath, waited another sixty seconds (until the alarm chimed), then opened the door and stepped off the running board over three hundred kilometers of hostile vacuum.

The drop went smoothly-as I suppose you guessed, otherwise I wouldn't be here to bend your ear with the story, what? The adrenaline rush of standing astride a ten-centimeter-thick surfboard as it bumps and vibrates furiously in the hypersonic airflow, trying to throw you off into the blast-furnace tornado winds of reentry, is absolutely indescribable. So is the sight of the circular horizon flattening and growing, coming up to batter at your feet with angry fists of plasma. Ah, what rhapsody! What delight! I haven't got a poetic bone in my body, but when you tap into Toadsworth outside of the clubhouse's suppressor field, that's the kind of narcotic drivel he'll feed you. I think he's a jolly good poet, for an obsessive-compulsive clankie with a staircase phobia and knobbly protrusions; but at any rate, a more accurate description of competitive orbital-reentry diving I haven't heard from anyone recently.

A drop doesn't take long. The dangerous stage lasts less than twenty minutes from start to finish, and only the last five minutes is hot. Then you slow to subsonic velocity, let go of your smoldering surfboard, and pray to your ancestors that your parachute is folded smartly, because it would be mortifying to have to be rescued by the referee's skiff. Especially if they don't get to you until after you complete your informal inquiry into lithobraking, eh?

There was a high overcast as I came hurtling in across Utah, and I think I might have accidentally zigged instead of zagging a little too vigorously as I tried to see past a wall of cloud ahead and below me, because when my fireball finally dissipated, I found myself skidding across the sky about fifty kilometers off course. This would be embarrassing enough on its own, but then my helmet helpfully highlighted three other competitors-Abdul among them!-who were much closer to the target zone. I will confess I muttered an unsport ingly rude word at that juncture, but the game's the thing, and it isn't over 'til it's over.

In the end I touched down a mere thirty-three thousand meters off course, and a couple of minutes later the referees ruled I was third on target. Perry O'Peary-who had been leading me-managed to make himself the toast of the match before he reached the tropo pause by way of a dodgy ring seal on his left knee. Dashed bad play, that, but at least he died with his boots on-glowing red-hot and welded to his ankles.

I caught a lift the rest of the way to the drop base from one of the referee skiffs. As I tramped across the dusty desert floor in my smoldering armor, feeling fully alive for the first time in weeks, I found the party already in full swing. Abdul's entourage, all wearing traditional kimonos and burnooses, had brought along a modified camel that widdled champagne in copious quantities. He held up a huge platinum pitcher. "Drinks are on me!" he yodeled as Tolly Forsyth and some rum cove of a Grand Vizier-Toshiro Ibn Cut-Throat, I think-hoisted him atop their shoulders and danced a victory mazurka.

"Jolly good show, old son!" I called, ditching my helmet and gloves gratefully and pouring a beaker of bubbly over my steaming head. "Bottoms up!"

"B'm's up undeed!" Abdul sprayed camel flux everywhere in salute. He was well into the spirit of things, I could tell; indeed, the spirit of things was well into him him.

Ibn Cut-Throat's kid brother sidled up behind me. "If Ralphie sama would care to accompany me to His Majesty's Brother's pleasure barge, we will be departing for Mars as soon as the rest of the guests arrive," he intimated.

"Rest of the guests? Capital, capital!" I glanced round in search of my clankie doxy, but there was no sign of Laura. Which was dashed strange, for she'd normally be all over me by this point in the proceedings: my nearly being turned off in front of an audience usually turned her on like a knife switch. "Who else is coming?"

"Lots of people." Ibn Cut-Throat Junior looked furtive. "It's a very big party, as befits the prince's birthday. Did you know it was his birthday . . . ? It's a theme party, of course, in honor of the adoptive ancestors of his ancient line, the house of Saud."

Abdul al-Matsumoto is as much an authentic prince of Araby as I am a scion of the MacGregor, but that's the price we all pay for being descended from the nouveau riche nouveau riche who survived the Great Downsizing hundreds of years ago. Our ancestors bought the newly vacated titles of nobility, and consequently we descendants are forced to learn the bally traditions that go with them. I spent years enduring lessons in dwarf-tossing and caber-dancing, not to mention damaging my hearing by learning to play the electric bagpipes, but Abdul has it worse: he's required by law to go around everywhere with a tea towel on his head and to refrain from drinking fermented grape juice unless it's been cycled through the kidneys of an overengi neered dromedary. This aristocracy lark has its downside, you mark my words. who survived the Great Downsizing hundreds of years ago. Our ancestors bought the newly vacated titles of nobility, and consequently we descendants are forced to learn the bally traditions that go with them. I spent years enduring lessons in dwarf-tossing and caber-dancing, not to mention damaging my hearing by learning to play the electric bagpipes, but Abdul has it worse: he's required by law to go around everywhere with a tea towel on his head and to refrain from drinking fermented grape juice unless it's been cycled through the kidneys of an overengi neered dromedary. This aristocracy lark has its downside, you mark my words.

"A theme party," I mused, removing my face from my cup. "That sounds like fun. But I was planning on taking my gig. Is that okey-dokey, as they say? Is there room in the imperial marina?"

"Of course," said the vizier, leering slightly as a shapely femme wearing a belly dancer's costume sashayed past. I noticed with distaste his hairless face and the pair of wizened testicles on a leather cord around his neck: some people think testosterone makes a cove stupid, but there's such a thing as going too far, what? "Just remember, it's a fancy-dress party. The theme is the thousand nights and one night, in honor of and for the selection of His Excellency's newest concuboid. His Excellency says you should feel free to bring a guest or two if you like. If you need an outfit-"

"I'm sure my household wardrobe will be able to see to my needs," I said, perhaps a trifle sharply. "See you there!"

Ibn Cut-Throat bowed and scraped furiously as he backed away from me. Something odd 's going on here, Something odd 's going on here, I realized, but before I could put my finger on it, there was a whoosh, and I saw the familiar sight of my gig-well, actually it's Uncle Featherstonehaugh's, but as he's not due back for six years, I don't think that matters too much-descending to a perfect three-point landing. I realized, but before I could put my finger on it, there was a whoosh, and I saw the familiar sight of my gig-well, actually it's Uncle Featherstonehaugh's, but as he's not due back for six years, I don't think that matters too much-descending to a perfect three-point landing.

I walked over to it slowly, lost in thought, only to meet Miss Feng marching down the ramp. "I didn't know you could fly," I said.

"My usual employer requires a full pilot's qualification, sir. Military unrestricted license with interstellar wings and combat certification." She cleared her throat. "Among other skills." She took in my appearance, from scorched ablative boots to champagne hairstyle. "I've taken the liberty of laying out Sir's smoking jacket in the master stateroom. Can I suggest a quick shower might refresh the parts that Sir's friends' high spirits have already reached?"

"You may suggest anything you like, Miss Feng, I have complete confidence in your professional discretion. I should warn you I will have a guest tagging along, but he won't be any trouble. If you show him to the lounge while I change, we shall be able to depart promptly. I don't suppose you've heard anything from Laura?"

She shook her head minutely. "Not so much as a peep, sir." She stepped aside. "So, I'm to set course for Mars as soon as the guest is aboard? Very good, sir. I shall be on the flight deck if you need me."

It appeared that Miss Feng was not only an accomplished butler, but a dashed fine pilot as well. Would miracles never cease?

MISS FENG SERVES THE WRONG BEER

Uncle Featherstonehaugh's boat is furnished in white oak panels with brass trim, ocher crushed-velvet curtains, and gently hissing gas lamps. A curving sofa extends around the circumference of the lounge, and for those tiresome long voyages to the outer system there are cozy staterooms accessible through hidden sliding panels in the walls. It is a model of understated classical luxury in which a cove and his fellows can get discreetly bladdered while watching the glorious relativistic fireworks in the crystal screen that forms the ceiling. However, for the journey to Abdul's pleasure dome on Mars, it suffered from three major drawbacks. For one thing, in a fit of misplaced bonhomie I'd offered Edgestar Wolfblack a lift, and old Edgy wasn't the best company for a postdrop preprandial, on account of his preferred tipples being corrosive or hypergolic, or both. Secondly, Laura was still making her absence felt. And finally, as the icing on the cake, Miss Feng had locked Jeremy in the luggage compartment. He was kicking up a racket such as only a dwarf mammoth with a hangover can, and I could barely hear myself think over the din.

"Dash it all, how much beer did you give him?" I asked my butler.

"Two liters, sir," Miss Feng replied. "Of the rather elderly Bragote from the back of your uncle's laboratory. I judged it the least likely to be missed."

"Oh dear God!" I cried.

"Bragh-ought?" echoed Edgy, as a plaintive squeal and a loud thud echoed from the underfloor bay. By the sound of things, Jeremy was trying to dash his brains out on the undercarriage. (Unfortunately, a dwarf mammoth's skull is thick enough to repel meteors and small antimatter weapons.) "Was that a mistake?" Miss Feng inquired.

I sighed. "You're new to the household, so I suppose you weren't to know this, but anything Uncle Featherstonehaugh brewed is best treated as an experiment in creative chemical warfare. He was particularly keen on the Bragote: it's a medieval recipe and requires a few years to mature to the consistency of fine treacle, but once you dilute the alcohol, it's an excellent purgative. Or so I'm told," I added hastily, not wanting to confess to any teenage indiscretions.

"Oh dear." Her brow wrinkled. "One suspected it was a little past its prime, then. I packed another firkin in the hold, just in case it becomes necessary to sedate Jeremy again."

"I don't think that will work," I said regretfully. "He's not entirely entirely stupid. Uncle was working on a thesis that the Black Death of 1349 wasn't a plague but a hangover." stupid. Uncle was working on a thesis that the Black Death of 1349 wasn't a plague but a hangover."

"Blackdeath? Is no posthuman of that nomenclature in my clade," Edgy complained.

BUMP went the floor beneath my feet, causing my teeth to vibrate. "Only two hours to Mars," Miss Feng observed. "If Sir will excuse me, I have to see to his costume before arrival." She retreated into one of the staterooms, leaving me alone with old Edgy and the pachydermal punctuation.

PLEASURE DOMES OF MARS: A PRIMER

I arrived on Mars somewhat rattled, but physically none the worse for wear. Miss Feng had rustled up a burnoose, djellaba, and antique polyester two-piece for me from somewhere, so that I looked most dashing, absolutely in character as a highly authentic Leisure Suit Larry of Arabia. I tried to inveigle her into costume, but she demurred. "I am your butler, sir, not a partygoer in my own capacity. It wouldn't be right." She tucked an emergency vial of aftershave in my breast pocket. It's hard to argue with such certainty, although I have a feeling that she only said it because she didn't approve of the filmy harem pants and silver chain-mail brassiere I'd brought along in hope of being able to adorn Laura with them. Edgestar we dressed in a rug and trained to spit on demand: he could be my camel, just as long as nobody expected him to pass champagne through his secondary reactor-coolant circuit. Jeremy emerged from storage pallid and shaking, so Miss Feng and I improvised a leash and decided to introduce him as the White Elephant. Not that a real White Elephant would have menaced the world with such a malign, red-rimmed glare-or have smelled so unpleasantly fusty-but you can't have everything.

A word about Abdul's digs. Abdul al-Matsumoto, younger brother of the Emir of Mars, lives in a gothic palace on the upper slopes of Elysium Mons, thirteen kilometers above the dusty plain. Elysium Mons is so big you'd hardly know you were on a mountain, so at some time in the preceding five centuries one of Abdul's more annoying ancestors vandalized the volcano by carving out an areophysical folly, a half-scale model of Mount Everest protruding from the rim of the caldera. Thus, despite the terraforming that has turned the crumbly old war god into a bit of a retirement farm these days, Abdul's pleasure dome really is is capped by a dome, of the old-fashioned capped by a dome, of the old-fashioned do not break glass, do not let air out (unless you want to die) do not break glass, do not let air out (unless you want to die) variety. variety.

Ground Control talked Miss Feng down into the marina below the sparkly glass facets of the dome, then sent a crawler tunnel to lock onto the door before old Edgy could leap out onto the surface and test his vacuum seals.

The door opened with a clunk. "Let's go, what?" I asked Jeremy. Jeremy sat down, swiveled one jaundiced eye toward me, and emitted a plaintive honk. "Be like that, then," I muttered, bending to pick him up. Dwarf mammoths are heavy, even in Martian gravity, but I managed to tuck him under my arm and, thus encumbered, led the way down the tube toward Abdul's reception.

If you are ever invited to a party by a supreme planetary overlord's spoiled playboy of a younger brother, you can expect to get tiresomely lost unless you remember to download a map of the premises into your monocle first. Abdul's humble abode boasts 2428 rooms, of which 796 are bedrooms, 915 are bathrooms, 62 are offices, and 147 are dungeons. (There is even a choice of four different Planetary Overlord Command Bunkers, each with its own color-coordinated suite of Doomsday Weapon Control Consoles, for those occasions on which one is required to entertain multiple planetary overlords.) If the palace was maintained the old-fashioned way-by squishy servants-it would be completely unmanageable: but it was designed in the immediate aftermath of the Martian hyperscabies outbreak of 2407 that finished off those bits of the solar system that hadn't already been clobbered by the Great Downsizing. Consequently, it's full of shiny clicky things that scuttle about when you're not watching and get underfoot as they polish the marble flags and repair the amazingly intricate lapis lazuli mosaics and refill the oil lamps with extra-virgin olive oil. It still needs a sizable human staff to run it, but not the army you'd expect for a pile several sizes larger than the Vatican Hilton.

I bounced out of the boarding tube into the entrance hall and right into the outstretched arms of Abdul, flanked by two stern, silent types with swords, and a supporting cast of houris, hashishin, and hangers-on. "Ralphie-san!" he cried, kissing me on both cheeks and turning to show me off to the crowd. "I want you all to meet my honored guest, Ralph MacDonald Suzuki of MacDonald, Fifth Earl of That Clan, a genuine Japanese Highland Laird from old Scotland! Ralphie is a fellow skydiver and all-around good egg. Ralph, this is-harrumph!-Vladimir Illich of Ulianov, Chief Commissar of the Soviet Onion." Ulianov grinned: under the false pate I could see it was our old drinking chum Boris the Tsarevitch. "And this-why, Edgy! I didn't recognize you in that! Is it a llama? How very realistic!"

"No, is meant to be a monkey," explained Wolfblack, twirling so that his false camel-skin disguise flapped about. I opened my mouth to tell him that the barrel Miss Feng had strapped to his back to provide support for the hump had slipped, but he turned to Abdul. "You like?"

"Jolly good, that outfit!"

"Pip-pip," said Toadsworth, whirring alongside with a glass of the old neurotoxins gripped in one telescoping manipulator. I think it might have been a high-bandwidth infoburst rather than a toast, but due to my unfortunate hereditary allergy to implants, I'm very bad at spotting that kind of thing. "Which way to the bar, old fellow?"

"That way," suggested Ibn Cut-Throat, springing from a hidden trapdoor behind a Ming vase. He pointed through an archway at one side of the hall. "Be seeing you!" His eyeballs gleamed with villainous promise.

A black-robed figure in a full veil was staring at me from behind two implausibly weaponized clankie hashishin at the back of the party. I got an odd feeling about them, but before I could say anything, Toadsworth snagged my free hand in his gripper and began to tug me toward the old tipple station. "Come on! Inebriate!" he buzzed. "All enemies of sobriety must be inebriated! Pip-pip!" Jeremy let out a squealing trumpet blast close to my ear and began to kick. Not having a third hand with which to steady him, I let go and he shot off ahead of us, stubby ears flapping madly in the low Martian gravity.

"Oh dear," said Miss Feng.

"Why don't you just run along and see to my chambers?" I asked, irritated by the thought that the bloody elephant might poop in the punch bowl (or worse, dip his whistle in it) before I got there. "Leave the beast to me, I'll sort him out later."

"Inebriate! Inebriate!" cried Toadsworth, hurtling forward, the lights on his cortical turret flashing frantically. "To the par-ty!"

IN WHICH RALPH EXPLAINS THE NATURE OF HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH LAURA

Now, in the normal course of affairs it behooves a young fellow to remain discreet and close-lipped about matters of an embarrass ingly personal nature. But it's also true to say that this story won't make a lot of sense without certain intimate understandings-a nod's as good as a wink to a deaf hedgehog and all that-and in any event, ever since the minutiae of my personal affairs became part of the public gossip circuit following the unfortunate affair involving the clankie dominatrix, the cat burglar, and the alien hive mind, it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to stand upon my privacy. So where a more modest cove might hesitate, please allow me to step in it and, at risk of offending your sensibilities, explain something about my complex relationship with Laura.

I rather fancy that life must have been much simpler back in the days of classical Anglo-American civilization, when there were only two openly acknowledged genders and people didn't worry about whether their intimate affairs were commutative, transitive, or reflexive. No clankie/squishie, no U or non-U, nothing but the antique butch/femme juxtaposition, and that was pretty much determined by the shape of the external genitalia you were born with. Perverts dashed well knew what they were, and life was simple. Modern life is enough to drive a cove to drugs, in my opinion: but as a Butch U Squishie of impeccable ancestry, I have the social option of maintaining a mistress (not to mention the money), and that's where Laura comes in.

Laura is very clankie and very frilly-femme with it, but with a squishy core and just sufficiently non-U to make a casual relationship marginally acceptable to polite society on the usual sub-rosa morganatic basis. We met on a shooting weekend at one of the Pahl avi girls' ranches on Luna, doing our bit for evolution by helping thin the herd of rampaging feral bots during their annual migration across the Sea of Tranquility. She was working her way around the solar system on a cut-price non-U grand tour: laboring as a courtesy masseuse in Japan and a topiarist on Ceres while saving up the price of her next interplanetary jaunt. Her parental unit was sending her a small allowance to help pay her way, I think, but she was having to work as well to make ends meet, a frightfully non-U thing for a cute little clankie princess to have to do. Our eyes met over the open breech of her silver-chased Purdey over-and-under EMP cannon, and as soon as I saw her delicately wired eyelashes and the refractive sheen on her breasts, simultaneously naked and deliciously inaccessible in the vacuum, I knew I had to have her. "Why, I do declare I'm out of capacitors!" She fluttered at me, and I bent over backward to offer her my heart, and the keys to the guest room.

There is something more than a little bit perverse about a squish who chases clankie skirt: even, one might suppose, something of the invert about them; but I can cope with sly looks in public, and our butch/femme U/non-U-tuple is sufficiently orthodox to merely Outrage the Aunts, rather than crossing the line and causing Offense. If she showed more squish while being less non-U, I suppose it would be too risque to carry on in public-but I digress. I trust you can sympathize with my confusion? What else is a healthy boy to do when his lusts turn in a not-quite-respectable direction?

Of course, I was younger and rather more foolish when I first clapped eyes on the dame, and we've had our ups and downs since then. To be fair, she was unaware of my unfortunate neurohormonal problems: and I wasn't entirely clear on the costs, both mechanical and emotional, of maintaining a clankie doxie in the style to which she would expect to become accustomed. Nor did I expect her to be so enthusiastic a proponent of personality patches, or so prone to histrionic fits and thermionic outrages. But we mostly seemed to bump along alright-until that last predrop walkout and her failure to turn up at the drop zone.

JEREMY RUNS AMOK; A DREADFUL DISCOVERY BEFORE DINNER

Among the various manners of recovering from the neurasthenic tension that accompanies a drop, I must admit that the one old Abdul had laid on for us took first prize for decadent (that means good) taste. It's hard to remain stressed-out while reclining on a bed of silks in a pleasure palace on Mars, with nubile young squishies to drop prefermented grapes into your open mouth, your very own mouth-boy to keep the hookah smoldering, and a clankie band plan-gently plucking its various organs in the far corner of the room.

Dancers whirled and wiggled and undulated across the stage at the front of the hall, while a rather fetching young squishie lad in a gold-lame loincloth and peacock-feather turban waited at my left shoulder to keep my cocktail glass from underflowing. Candied fruits and jellied Europan cryoplankton of a most delightful consistency were of course provided. "What-ho, this is the life, isn't it?" I observed in the general direction of Toadsworth. My bot buddy was parked adjacent to my bower, his knobbly mobility unit sucking luxuriously conditioned juice from a discreet outlet while the still-squishy bits of his internal anatomy slurped a remarkably subtle smoked Korean soy ale from a Klein stein by way of a curly straw.

"Beep beep," he responded. Then, expansively and slowly, "You seem a little melancholy about something, old chap. In fact, if you had hyperspectral imagers like me, you might notice you were a little drawn. Like this: pip." He said it so emphatically that even my buggy-but-priceless family heirloom amanuensis recognized it for an infoburst and misfiled it somewhere. "Indiscretions aside, if there's anything a cove can do to help you-enemies you want inebriating, planets you want conquering-feel free to ask the Toadster, what?"

"You're a jolly fine fellow, and I may just do that," I said. "But I'm afraid it's probably nothing you can help with. I'm in a bit of a blue funk-did you know Laura left me? She's done it before several times, of course, but she always comes back after the drop. Not this time, though, I haven't seen gear nor sprocket of her since the day before yesterday, and I'm getting a bit worried."

"I shall make inquiries right away, old chap. The clankie grape-vine knows everything. If I may make so bold, she probably just felt the need to get away for a while and lube her flaps: she'll be back soon enough." Toadsworth swiveled his ocular turret, monospectral emitters flashing brightly. "Bottoms up!"

I made no comment on the evident fact that if the Toadster ever did get himself arse over gripper, he'd be in big trouble righting himself, but merely raised my glass in salute. Then I frowned. It was empty! "Boy? Where's my drink?" I glanced round. A furry brown sausage with two prominently flared nostrils was questing about the edge of the bower where my cocktail boy had been sitting a moment before.

"Grab that pachyderm!" I shouted at the lad, but I fear it wasn't his fault: Jeremy had already done him a mischief, and he was doubled over in a ball under the nearest curtain, meeping pathetically. Jeremy sucked the remains of my Saturnian-ring ice-water margaritas up his nose with a ghastly slurping noise, and winked at me: then he sneezed explosively. An acrid eruction slapped my face. "Vile creature!" I raged, "What do you think you're doing?"

I'm told that I am usually quite good with small children and other animals, but I have a blind spot when it comes to Jeremy. He narrowed his eyes, splayed his ears wide, and emitted a triumphant-not to say alcohol-saturated-trumpet blast at me. Got you, Got you, he seemed to be saying. he seemed to be saying. Why should you two-legs have all the fun? Why should you two-legs have all the fun? I made a grab for his front legs, but he was too fast for me, nipping right under my seat and out the other side, spiking my unmentionables on the way as I flailed around in search of something to throw at him. I made a grab for his front legs, but he was too fast for me, nipping right under my seat and out the other side, spiking my unmentionables on the way as I flailed around in search of something to throw at him.

"Right! That does it!" People to either side were turning to stare at me, wondering what was going on. "I'm going to get you-" I managed to lever myself upright just in time to see Jeremy scramble out through one of the pointy-looking archways at the back of the hall, then found myself eyeball to hairy eyeball with Ibn Cut-Throat's administrative assistant.

"Please not to make so much of a noise, Ralphie-san," said the junior undervizier. "His Excellency has an announcement to make."

And it was true. Human flunkies were discreetly passing among the audience, attracting the guests' attention and quieting down the background of chitchat. The band had settled down and was gently serenading us with its plucked vocal cords. I glanced after Jeremy one last time. "I'll deal with you you later," I muttered. Even by Jeremy's usual standards, this behavior was quite intolerable; if I didn't know better, I'd swear there was something up with the blighter. Then I looked back at the stage at the front of the room. later," I muttered. Even by Jeremy's usual standards, this behavior was quite intolerable; if I didn't know better, I'd swear there was something up with the blighter. Then I looked back at the stage at the front of the room.

The curtain sublimed in a showy flash of velvet smoke, revealing a high throne cradled in a bower of hydroponically rooted date palms. His Excellency Abdul al-Matsumoto, younger sibling of the Emir of Mars, rose from his seat upon the throne: naked eunuch bodyguards, their skins oiled and gleaming, raised their katanas in salute to either side. "My friends," old Abdul droned in a remarkably un-Abdul-like monotone, "it makes me more happy than I can tell you to welcome you all to my humble retreat tonight."

Abdul wore robes of blinding white cotton, and a broad gold chain-first prize for atmosphere diving from the club, I do believe. Behind him, a row of veiled figures in shapeless black robes nudged each other. His wives? His wives? I wondered. I wondered. Or his husbands? Or his husbands? "Tonight is the first of my thousand nights and one night," he continued, looking more than slightly glassy-eyed. "In honor of my sort-of ancestor, the Sultan Schahriar, and in view of my now being, quote, too old to play the field, my elder brother, peace be unto him, has decreed a competition for my hand in marriage. For this night and the next thousand, lucky concubines of every appropriate gender combination will vie for the opportunity to become my sole and most important sultana." "Tonight is the first of my thousand nights and one night," he continued, looking more than slightly glassy-eyed. "In honor of my sort-of ancestor, the Sultan Schahriar, and in view of my now being, quote, too old to play the field, my elder brother, peace be unto him, has decreed a competition for my hand in marriage. For this night and the next thousand, lucky concubines of every appropriate gender combination will vie for the opportunity to become my sole and most important sultana."

"That's right, it's not a date!" added Ibn Cut-Throat, from the sidelines.

"I shall take the winner's hand in marriage, along with the rest of their body. The losers-well, that's too boring and tiresome to go into here, but they won't be writing any kiss-and-tell stories: if they forgot to make backups before entering the competition, that's not my problem. Meanwhile, I ask you to raise a toast with me to the first seven aspiring princesses of Mars, standing here behind me, and their intelligence and courage in taking up Scheherazade's wager." He sounded bored out of his skull, as if his mind was very definitely busy elsewhere.

Everyone raised a toast to the competitors, but I was losing my appetite even before Ibn Cut-Throat stepped to the front of the stage to explain the terms of the competition, which would begin after the banquet. I may come from a long line of Japanese pretenders to the throne of a sheep-stealing bandit laird, but we'd never consider anything remotely as bloodthirsty and medieval as this! The prospect of spending a night with dashing young Abdul gave a whole new and unwelcome meaning to losing your head for love, as I suppose befitted a pretender to the crown of Ibn Saud-never mind the Sassanid empire-by way of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. "I don't think this is very funny," I mumbled to Toadsworth. "I wish Laura was here."

Toadsworth nudged me with his inebriator. "I don't think you need to worry about that, old chap. I spy with my little hyperspectral telescopic todger-"

Ibn Cut-Throat was coming to the climax of his spiel: "-Gaze upon the faces of the brave beauties!" he crowed. "Ladies, drop your veils!"

I gaped like a fool as the row of black-garbed femmes behind the prince threw back their veils and bared their faces to the audience. For there, in the middle of the row, was a familiar set of silver eyelashes!

"Isn't that your mistress, old boy?" Toadsworth nudged me with his inebriator attachment. "Jolly rum do, her showing up here, what?"

"But she can't be!" I protested. "Laura can't be that stupid! And I always forget to remind her to take her backups, and left to her own devices she never remembers, so-"

"'M 'fraid it's still her on the stage, old boy," commiserated the Toadster. "There's no getting around it. Do you suppose she answered an advertisement or went through a talent agency?"

"She must have been on the rebound! This is all my fault," I lamented.

"I disagree, old fellow, she's not squishy enough to bounce. Not without pulverizing her head first, anyway."

I glanced up at the stage, despondent. The worst part of it was, this was all my fault. If I'd actually bothered to pull myself out of my predrop funk and talk to her, she wouldn't be standing onstage, glancing nervously at the court executioners on either side. Then I saw her turn her head. She was looking at me! She mouthed something, and it didn't take a genius of lip-reading to realize that she was saying get me out of here get me out of here.

"I'll rescue you, Laura," I promised, collapsing in a heap of cushions. Then my mouth-boy stuck a hookah in the old cake-hole, and the situation lost its urgent edge. Laura wasn't number one on the old chop-chop list, after all. There'd be time to help her out of this fix after dinner.

AN AFTER-DINNER SHOW; DISCUSSIONS OF HORTICULTURE