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Chapter 3

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Meanwhile, Jennifer the Complete had been having adventures of her own. Somewhat bored by the unadventurous sex and automatic food she was being offered at the party, she wandered off on her own, beyond the transparent doors that filled the King’s palace, and into the antique silences beyond. She had already accidentally gate-crashed a subsidiary party of the ambassadorial group from Menthilium-Pornostactate in their portable glass sphere which supported a peculiar atmosphere of dense hydrogen. They did not seem to mind her intrusion, although it rankled slightly with her QGA conscience that they were all heavily indulging in the illegal drug, anti-matter alcohol. But just for that evening she decided to live and let live. By the time she left, the Menthilium-Pornostactatians were getting very sober indeed.

“Ah, wondrousness!” said a sparkling voice from 6.6° beyond her field of vision as she penetrated another vast and ridiculous chamber of the King’s premises. She turned to fix the speaker with her rigid eye before he had finished off his exclamation mark. It was a short, silvery thing, with a hat.

“Am I stepping on the toes of presumptuousness to assume a guess that this might possibly could be Jennifer the Complete?” it said, very quickly.

“No,” said Jennifer, very slowly.

“Ah, Wondrous!” said the thing again. Jennifer stroked her ears. It was an instinctive gesture. They had been admired on many an occasion. The thing was speaking the language of her home-world, No. 44, but not very well.

“Allow me to intersect myself into the interstices of your internal monologue. I may happen to be the Unhatted Stoic, at least in an alternative universe quite unlike our own, but I remain your most abrupt acquaintance, R R Arre.”

He proffered a tiny black disk. Jennifer responded with a Blank Look Grade 8.

“My life history, from three separate accounts, my passable criminal record, my medical records, the transcripts of my ongoing psychotherapy sessions and an overview of my DNA structure… works on any standard QGA reading device,” it said.

Jennifer slipped the disc into an invisible pocket where it was ground into dust by her slim portable recycler. She smiled (the special Wexxon-Valdera-Fessock smile which she’d done her final thesis on at the QGA ambassadorial college – it inspired trust and confidence superficially, later giving way to a quagmire of doubt and misgivings).

“You speak fortyfourian,” she said brightly, “I am mildly surprised and wish to express gratitude.”

“Expressed!” said R R Arre with a surreptitious shimmer of his metallic surface.

“But I must now guess at your planetary origins also, else undergo the forfeit of spinning twice and whistling thrice… alas Arre, I am at a loss. I can only say with certainty that you hail from the Symmetrical Regions. My astro­geography is weaker than a tiny little newly blossoming flower.”

It was a lie.

Arre span on his heel-like appendages, and beckoned Jennifer towards a towering, heavily secured door, beyond which she could observe the party still in progress. She scanned the Hall of Excessive Celebrations for her companion Milon the Assassin, but found him not. The King was absent also.

“Let us rejoin the regaling revellers,” said Arre, “and I shall enlighten you…”

Jennifer thought. Milon was missing. It boded something or other, and she needed to find out what. Arre really was admiring her ears. He knew more about her culture than was officially permissible. She decided to test him.

“Okay then let’s go, you little shit-sniffing bastard,” she said, pointing her forefinger at Arre’s head. The forefinger clicked as she tensed a muscle.

Arre’s brittle smile fell off and clattered embarrassingly to the floor, only to reveal a new one, identical to the last. “You are too kind”, he said, “and had I thighs to slap I would slap them with abandon.” He moved forward to take Jennifer’s arm as they turned to re-enter the party. For the first time in S~ years Jennifer was worried. In a way it was kind of a relief. He’d often wondered whether she’d ever remember how. The first time was during the ritual duel that all fortyfourians must undertake on the day they are born. This was no less serious.

The doors wobbled open at a slight push from Jennifer’s hand, but it was still quite impressive. The two of them stepped onto the moving/greeting walkway.

“So tell me Arre, from where do you hail?” said Jennifer, as she swiftly shook hands with a small crowd of android dignitaries who had been positioned alongside the walkway.

“Hail I do indeed, for that is a most elegant, if somewhat tiresome pun in our culture. I was born on the Bostick Moon of Superlative, where sharp white rocks hail continuously from the sky.”

“Hence your compact and resilient appearance...”

“An accurate and astute interruption, oh Completed one, but if I may continue…”

“But if you would excuse me from preventing your continuation, just for the present, I do believe I have a smattering of Bostick-in-the-orbit-of-Superlative, with which I would repay your gracious attention to my mother-tongue…”

And here, as they rounded a sharp corner on the moving walkway, passing the rare sight of a Hovnivact’s hole-dance, and carried smoothly on to the several kilometres of buffet tables, Jennifer began to speak what she knew of Bostickian…

“IT IS SUCH A LONG TIME SINCE I LEARNT YOUR LANGUAGE, SO I MAY BE A LITTLE RUSTY”, she said.

Arre had to hold onto the rail to prevent himself collapsing off the walkway with horror. “HOW DARE YOU!” wailed Arre. “I SHALL CERTAINLY COLLECT MY MINIONS AND LEAVE AT ONCE!”

“IS THERE A PROBLEM?” said Jennifer, in her best Bostickian, managing to conjugate the intricate participles. “HAVE I MADE SOME DREADFUL INTERGALACTIC FAUX-PAS?”

Arre’s facial region twitched and writhed in silvery rage. “YOU’LL REGRET THESE HARSH WORDS WHEN OUR GOVERNMENT DECLARES WAR ON THE ENTIRE GALAXY!” he screamed.

“WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WILL YOU NOT HELP ME POLISH UP ON MY PRONUNCIATION?”

“I’D RATHER DIE! PLEASE DESIST FROM BATTERING MY ALREADY MUCH ABUSED LANGUAGE! I INSIST THAT WE SPEAK IN OFFICIAL QGA FROM THIS MOMENT UNTIL I CAN CONTACT THE BOSTOCKIAN MILITARY!”

There was a moment’s confused silence between the two of them as they glided serenely past the Menthilium-Pornostactates’ buffet table, which was stacked with bowls full of Menthilium­-Pornostactate excreta.

“Well”, said Jennifer, in QGA “what was all that about?”
“Thank-you”, said Arre in the same tongue, now his polite normal self. “I don’t think you really have enough grasp of Bostockian etiquette to speak our language with efficacy.”

“Evidently not… would you deem to explain?”

“Most speedily. What you are unaware of is that Bostockian religious degrees are very restrictive.”

“What is the dominant religion by the way?”

“Well, we worship an obscure deity who is called the God of Sharp White Rocks Raining Down on Your Head. We are able to translate the wishes and demands of our god by the pattern of Bostockian casualties due to White’ Rock Injuries, which are numerous.”

“As would be expected.”

“Agreed, though I hold a slight reservation against the irony of your tone. Our God has decreed, on repeated occasions, that nearly all of Bostockian language is the most foul and abrasive blasphemy against his Sharp and Heaviness, and is thus forbidden upon pain of death.”

“By what means?”

“By means of being crushed by a hail of sharp white rocks.”

“Aha. And so is there anything you are allowed to say with piety?”

“Oh yes, most certainly. But those things are very limited in their usefulness. There is a list you see, which all Bostockians are required to learn by heart, the List of Ordinary Profanities. There are 900 of them. Each is a phrase which is used as a shocked and vengeful rejoinder to someone who may have uttered a blasphemy. Such as ‘Would you cast aspersions upon He who is your Creator and Destroyer you disgusting Heathen?’ or ‘How can you say such dreadful and cruel filth! I shall report you to the high priest this minute!’ These are the only things we are allowed to say.”

“Life must be very dull then, out on Bostick.”

“I would say quiet, not dull. Quiet, apart from the deafening roar of sharp white rocks hitting the ground unceasingly. And there is one day in our religious calendar on which we can say whatever we please without fear of retribution.”

“How nice!”

“Isn’t it?”

“So you’ll forgive my unwitting disregard of your native manners?”

“Oh no, that’s quite out of the question. I will contact General Queue this very evening, and by tomorrow morning your home planet will be nothing but a radioactive wasteland scattered with the twisted shapes of broken buildings and corpses.”

“Ah,” said Jennifer thoughtfully.