Narabedla Ltd by Frederik Pohl Page B

unconscious, all right, but being unconscious isn’t at all the same as a good night’s sleep. I was shaky with fatigue—well, I was shaky, anyway. Part of it was fatigue. Part of it was the dawning conviction that somehow or other L. Knollwood Stennis had got himself into worse trouble than any tax audit.
    “Don’t worry,” said motherly Norah Platt. “It will all straighten itself out after a while.”
    She had said it before, guiding me around from weirdness to weirdness. She kept on saying it. She was a tiny little woman, with a white bush of hair and a pink, horsy face. She beamed up at me with bright blue eyes as she led me along a corridor, doing her best to be reassuring.
    “Are you really two hundred and whatever it is years old?” I asked her.
    She sighed and smiled forgivingly. “Oh, Nolly—may I call you Nolly?—you’re so full of questions. Yes, I am, but it’s better if you let Sam Shipperton tell you all that sort of thing. I’m sure he will, as soon as he’s ready to see you. In there, please.” And when I went “in there” it was a nearly bare room, with a door ajar. “Sit there,” said Norah, “and wait till Sam calls you.” She bustled over to peek in the door.
    “He’s here, Sam,” she called. “Have you got his sandwiches?”
    “On the table,” said a man’s voice. It sounded impatient, and then it lowered volume as it returned to a rumbling and chirping conversation on the far side of the door.
    “Eat,” said Norah, taking the lid off a covered dish to see what was under it. Sandwiches, wrapped in a white linen napkin. She approved. “Yes, these are fresh cut, and they look quite nice, don’t they? You haven’t eaten a thing, have you?”
    I ignored the sandwiches. I said, “Who’s Sam Shipperton?”
    “But you’ve met him, dear! He’s what you might describe as our booking agent. He’s the one who arranged your audition. Poor dear man,” she said sympathetically, “you’re all confused, aren’t you? And you haven’t had any sleep, and I suppose you’re quite confused by all this.”
    “You suppose exactly right!”
    “Yes, well, it’s always easier when you come as a volunteer. Still, once you make the adjustment you’ll find it’s quite nice here.”
    “Start with that! Where’s ‘here’?”
    “Why,” she said patiently, “I’m told that this is the second moon of the seventh planet of the star Aldebaran, but’ we just call it Narabedla. Won’t you try your sandwiches? I asked for the chopped cheddar and watercress specially, but if there’s something else you’d rather have—”
    “What I’d rather have is answers!”
    She pursed her lips. “Oh, indeed? Answers to what questions?”
    “Well, to begin with, what are all these Loony-Tunes?”
    “Loony-Tunes?”
    “The funny-looking things! The creatures !”
    “Ah, the natives .” she said, nodding. “They are a bit offputting at first, aren’t they? Well, to begin with, let’s take the ones who were auditioning you. Meretekabinnda is the Mnimn—the little short one in front, you know?—he’s really quite nice, and very interested in Earth music. Then there’s Barak, who’s a Ggressna, and I think there might have been an Aiurdi and a J’zeel. I’m afraid I didn’t really pay much attention to them—it was a rather last-minute engagement, you know, and I simply didn’t look. I suppose one of the Eyies of the Mother was there as well, but they’re so small one doesn’t always see them. Well, one wouldn’t, would one? I mean, that’s more or less what makes them so useful to everyone, isn’t it?”
    I snarled, “How would I know?”
    “Yes, of course,” she said soothingly. “Is that the sort of thing you wanted to know?”
    “You left out the most important part! They aren’t human.”
    “Well, of course they aren’t human, Nolly,” she said crossly. “We don’t perform for human audiences here, do we? It’s all the Fifteen Peoples—at least, the few