Constant Fire

"… they never did separate properly, you see," said Ron Ron Ron.

"Separate?" Miss Ming seized the chance given her by the pause in his monologue. She spoke brightly. "Properly? Why, that's like my Swiss cheese Plant. The one I used to have in my office? It grew so big! But the leaves wouldn't separate properly. Is that what happened to yours, Ron Ron Ron?"

"We were discussing strength," said Ron Ron Ron in some bewilderment.

"Strength! You should have met my ex. I've mentioned him before? Do

The two men looked at her in silence.

Li Pao sucked his lower lip.

"And that was saying a lot, where Do

"Ushshsh…" said Li Pao.

"Really?" Ron Ron Ron spoke in a peculiar tone.

The silence returned at once. Dutifully, Mavis tried to fill it. She put a hand on Ron Ron Ron's tubular sleeve.

"I shouldn't tell you this, what with my convictions and all — I was polarized in '65, became an all-woman woman, if you get me, after my divorce — but I miss that bastard of a bull sometimes."

"Well…" Ron Ron Ron hesitated.

"What this world needs," said Mavis as she got into her stride, "if you ask me, is a few more real men. You know? Real men. The girls around here have got more balls than the guys. One real man and, boy, you'd find my tastes changing just like that…" She tried, unsuccessfully, to snap her fingers.

"Ssssss…" said Li Pao.

"Anyway," Mavis was anxious to reassure him that she had not lost track of the original topic, "It's the same with Swiss cheese plants. They're strong. Any conditions will suit them and they'll strangle anything that gets in their way. They use — they used to use, I should say — the big ones to fell other trees in Paraguay. I think it's Paraguay. But when it comes to getting the leaves to separate, well, all you can say is that they're bastards to train. Like strong men, I guess. In the end you have to take 'em or leave 'em as they come."

Mavis laughed again, waiting for their responding laughter, which did not materialize. She was valiant:

"I stayed with my house-plants, but I left that stud to play in his own stable. And how he'd been playing! Betty said if I tried to count the number of mares he'd serviced while I thought he was stuck late at the lab I'd need a computer!"

Li Pao and Ron Ron Ron now stood side by side, staring at her.

"Two computers!" She had definitely injected a bit of wit into the conversation and given Li Pao a chance to get on to a subject he preferred but evidently neither of them had much of a sense of humour. Li Pao now glanced at his feet. Ron Ron Ron had a silly fixed grin on his face and was just grunting at her, even though she had stopped speaking. She decided to soldier on:

"Did I tell you about the busy Lizzie that turned out to be poison ivy? We were out in the country one day, this was before my divorce — it must have been just after we got married — either '60 or '61 — no, it must have been '61 definitely because it was spring — probably May…"

"Look!"

Li Pao's voice was so loud that it startled Mavis.

"What?"

"There's Doctor Volospion." He waved towards where the crowd was thickest. "He was signalling to you, Miss Ming. Over there!"

The news heartened her. This would be her excuse to get away. But she could not, of course, show Li Pao how pleased she was. So she smiled indulgently. "Oh, let him wait. Just because he's my host here doesn't mean I have to be at his beck and call the whole time!"

"Please," said Ron Ron Ron, removing a small, pink, even-fingered hand from a perfectly square pocket. "You must not let us, Miss Ming, monopolize your time."

"Oh, well…" She was relieved. "I'll see you later, perhaps. Byee." Her wink was cute; she waggled her fingers at them. But as she turned to seek out Doctor Volospion it seemed that he had disappeared. She turned back and to her surprise saw Li Pao sprinting away from Ron Ron Ron towards the foot of one of Abu Thaleb's monsters, perhaps because he had seen someone to whom he wished to speak. She avoided Ron Ron Ron's eye and set off in the general direction indicated by Li Pao, making her way between guests and wandering elephants who were here in more or less equal numbers.

"At least I did my best," she said. "They're very difficult men to talk to."

She yawned. She was already begi

3. In which Miss Ming fails to find Consolation

The elephants, although the most numerous, were not the largest beasts providing the party's entertainment; its chief feature being the seven monstrous animals who sat on green-brown haunches and raised their heavy heads in mournful song.

These beasts were the pride of Abu Thaleb's collection. They were perfect reproductions of the singing gargantua of Justine IV, a planet long since vanished in the general dissipation of the cosmos (Earth, the reader will remember, had used up a good many other star systems to rejuvenate its own energies).

Abu Thaleb's enthusiasm for elephants, and all that was elephantine, was so great that he had changed his name to that of the ancient Commissar of Bengal solely because one of that legendary dignitary's other titles had been Lord of All Elephants.

The gargantua were more in the nature of huge baboons, their heads resembling those of Airedale terriers (now, of course, long-extinct) and were so large that the guests standing closest to them could not see them as a whole at all. Moreover, so high were these shaggy heads above the party that the beautiful music of their voices was barely audible.

Elsewhere, the commissar's guests ate from trays carried upon the backs of baby mammoths, or leaned against the leather hides of hippopotami which kneeled here and there about the grounds of Abu Thaleb's vast palace, itself fashioned in the shape of two marble elephants standing forehead to forehead, with trunks entwined.

Mavis Ming paused beside a resting oryx and pulled a tiny savoury doughnut or two from its left horn, munching absently as the beast's huge eyes regarded her. "You look," she remarked to it, "as fed up as I feel." She could find no-one to keep her company in that whole cheerful throng. Almost everyone she knew had seemed to turn aside just as she had been about to greet them and Doctor Volospion himself was nowhere to be seen.

"This party," she continued, "is definitely tedious."

"What a supehb fwock, Miss Ming! So fwothy! So yellah!"

Sweet Orb Mace, in flounces and folds of different shades of grey, presented himself before her, smiling and languid. His eyebrows were elaborately arched; his hair incredibly ringleted, his cheeks exquisitely rouged. He made a leg.

The short-skirted yellow dress, with its several petticoats, its baby-blue trimmings (to match her eyes, her best feature), was certainly, Mavis felt, the sexiest thing she had worn for a long while, so she was not surprised by his compliment.

She gave one of her little-girl trills of laughter and pirouetted for him.

"I thought," she told him, "that it was high time I felt feminine again. Do you like the bow?" The big blue bow in her honey-blonde hair was trimmed with yellow and matched the smaller bows on her yellow shoes.

"Wondahful!" pronounced Sweet Orb Mace. "It is quite without compahe!"

She was suddenly much happier. She blew him a kiss and fluttered her lashes. She warmed to Sweet Orb Mace, who could sometimes be such good company (whether as a man or a woman, for his moods varied from day to day), and she took his arm, confiding: "You know how to flatter a girl. I suppose you, of all people, should know. I'll tell you a secret. I've been a bit cu