“O Princess!” replied Ferrix. “We possess suitable apparatuses constructed on the principle of regenerative feedback coupling, though of course all this is in water. These apparatuses present a veritable miracle of technology, yet even the greatest idiot can use them. But to describe the precise procedure of their operation I would have to lecture at considerable length, since the matter is most complex. Still, it is strange, when you consider that we never invented these methods, but rather they, so to speak, invented them- | selves. Even so, they are perfectly functional and we have | nothing against them.”
“Verily,” exclaimed Crystal, “you are a paleface! That which you say, it’s as if it made sense, though it doesn’t really, not in the least. For how can one be a cemetery without being a cemetery, or program progeny, yet not program it at all?! Yes, you are indeed a paleface, Myamlak, and therefore, should you so desire it, I shall couple with you in a closed-circuit matrimonial coupling, and you shall ascend the throne with me—provided you pass one last test.”
“And what is that?” asked Ferrix.
“You must…” began the princess, but suddenly suspicion again entered her heart and she asked, “Tell me first, what do your brothers do at night?”
“At night they lie here and there, with bent arms and twisted legs, and air goes into them and comes out of them, raising in the process a noise not unlike the sharpening of a rusty saw.”
“Well then, here is the test: give me your hand!” commanded the princess.
Ferrix gave her his hand, and she squeezed it, whereupon he cried out in a loud voice, just as the sage had instructed him. And she asked him why he had cried out.
“From the pain!” replied Ferrix.
At this point she had no more doubts about his palefaceness and promptly ordered the preparations for the wedding ceremony to commence.
But it so happened, at that very moment, that the spaceship of Cybercount Cyberhazy, the princess’ Elector, returned from its interstellar expedition to find a paleface (for the insidious Cybercount sought to worm his way into her good graces). Polyphase, greatly alarmed, ran to Ferrix’s side and said:
“Prince, Cyberhazy’s spaceship has just arrived, and he’s brought the princess a genuine paleface—I saw the thing with my own eyes. We must leave while we still can, since all further masquerade will become impossible when the princess sees it and you together: its stickiness is stickier, its ickiness is ickier! Our subterfuge will be discovered and we beheaded!”
Ferrix, however, could not agree to ignominious flight, for his passion for the princess was great, and he said:
“Better to die, than lose her!”
Meanwhile Cyberhazy, having learned of the wedding preparations, sneaked beneath the window of the room where they were staying and overheard everything; then he rushed back to the palace, bubbling over with villainous joy, and announced to Crystal:
“You have been deceived, Your Highness, for the so-called Myamlak is actually an ordinary mortal and no paleface. Here is the real paleface!”
And he pointed to the thing that had been ushered in. The thing expanded its hairy breast, batted its watery eyes and said:
“Me paleface!”
The princess summoned Ferrix at once, and when he stood before her alongside that thing, the sage’s ruse became entirely obvious. Ferrix, though he was smeared with mud, dust and chalk, anointed with oil and aqueously gurgling, could hardly conceal his electroknightly stature, his magnificent posture, the breadth of those steel shoulders, that thunderous stride. Whereas the paleface of Cybercount Cyberhazy was a genuine monstrosity: its every step was like the overflowing of marshy vats, its face was like a scummy well; from its rotten breath the mirrors all covered over with a blind mist, and some iron nearby was seized with rust.
Now the princess realized how utterly revolting a paleface was—when it spoke, it was as if a pink worm tried to squirm from its maw. At last she had seen the light, but her pride would not permit her to reveal this change of heart. So she said:
“Let them do battle, and to the winner—my hand in marriage…”
Ferrix whispered to the sage:
“If I attack this abomination and crush it, reducing it to the mud from which it came, our imposture will become apparent, for the clay will fall from me and the steel will show. What should I do?”
“Prince,” replied Polyphase, “don’t attack, just defend yourself!”
Both antagonists stepped out into the palace courtyard, each armed with a sword, and the paleface leaped upon Ferrix as the slime leaps upon a swamp, and danced about him, gurgling, cowering, panting, and it swung at him with its blade, and the blade cut through the clay and shattered against the steel, and the paleface fell against the prince due to the momentum of the blow, and it smashed and broke, and splashed apart, and was no more.
But the dried clay, once moved, slipped from Ferrix’s shoulders, revealing his true steely nature to the eyes of the princess; he trembled, awaiting his fate. Yet in her crystalline gaze he beheld admiration, and understood then how much her heart had changed.
Thus they joined in matrimonial coupling, which is permanent and reciprocal—joy and happiness for some, for others misery until the grave—and they reigned long and well, programming innumerable progeny. The skin of Cybercount Cyberhazy’s paleface was stuffed and placed in the royal museum as an eternal reminder. It stands there to this day, a scarecrow thinly overgrown with hair. Many pretenders to wisdom say that this is all a trick and make-believe and nothing more, that there’s no such thing as paleface cemeteries, doughy-nosed and gummy-eyed, and never was. Well, perhaps it was just another empty invention—there are certainly fables enough in this world. And yet, even if the story isn’t true, it does have a grain of sense and instruction to it, and it’s entertaining as well, so it’s worth the telling.
Copyright
Copyright
A CONTINUUM BOOK
THE SEABURY PRESS