adventures

would be nice if we could all sing something to celebrate our mutual closeness.'
'Oh, can we sing?' Rose turned eagerly to Bernice, smoothing back the colourful braids in her
hair. 'Can we, Professor Summerfield?'
Doran glanced laconically up from where he was tossing sticks into the fire. 'Yes, Bernice. Know
any good songs?'
'Can we call her Bernice?' Rose looked between Bernice and Doran. 'Is that allowed?'
'Virtually everything is allowed,' Bernice replied, glancing at Doran over her glasses again. 'Call
me whatever you're comfortable with, as long as it's flattering.'
'Then I shall call you Benny,' Rose cut in quickly. 'And I bet you know some good songs from
all that time you spent exploring space.'
'I heard she was in the military,' Arex added, with a wry glance at Benny. 'Oppressing my
people and anybody else who stood in Earth's way.'
Bernice closed her eyes for a moment. This must be what being a mother was like. At least
Arex was now baiting her with a touch of self-mockery. 'I was conscripted, straight out of the
Academy, yes, like a lot of us were during the wars. I bailed out of a troopship on the way to a
battle, joined a dig by faking my qualifications, and worked my way up to being in charge of many
expeditions. I gained my doctorate on the run, through experience. Any more questions?'
'Gosh,' said Rose.
'Now, as to the matter of music . . .' Bernice took off her glasses and dropped them into her
top pocket. 'I know several campfire ditties, but few as appropriate as this one. Some of the
words may be strange to you. They come from old English, from an era that I specialize in.' She
took a deep breath, and began to sing. 'It was on the good ship Venus . . .'
On the other side of the dunes, further from the towers of the Perfecton city, Menlove Stokes
looked up from his painting, and frowned. 'Is that some sort of desert creature howling?'
'Not unless it knows some very rude words,' chuckled Professor Candy as he wandered by,
clutching a glass of champagne. He stopped for a moment to take a look at Stoker's canvas,
winced, and moved on.
The academic staff had set up camp a mile or so from the archaeology site, and had spent the
last two weeks trying to justify their presence. Stokes had his painting, of course. Candy had been
sunbathing in a pair of outsize shorts, and Hettie and Lucinda had spent the time arguing over the
best word to describe the beautiful desolation that surrounded them. They'd got to the point of
agreeing that it should be a new word, a word never heard before. Hettie had settled on 'lituminous',
Lucinda on 'scithering', and from that point both ladies had become entrenched in their
points of view. They were now settled in sofas at opposite ends of a wilderness barbecue and wine
tasting, a crowd of other academics milling around them.
Professor Epstein, who was a specialist in Chelonian Literature, with a neat little beard and a
pair of tape-repaired glasses permanently attached to his nose, was waving a vegetarian sausage
meaningfully, and explaining the nature of his work to Professor Owl, an elderly, rather buxom
cosmologist, who used a monocle and was never without her grey cardigan. 'They don't have a
word for comedy. That's the whole schtick with these martial races, they have to take themselves
so seriously, because, if they don't, their society collapses. They're almost an adolescent race, and
you know adolescents –'
'Once.'
'They think that the only art form that's valid is melodrama, a bunch of serious individuals
yelling at each other about serious subjects. And those subjects invariably require those characters
to use and carry weapons. The mark of a sane society, Professor, of any sane person, is comedy.
The ability to laugh at oneself. You introduce a hint of comedy into a culture like the Chelonian,
and –' he made a vast deflating gesture '– the whole thing falls apart.'
Candy had been listening, nodding. 'Ooh, that's exactly what my academic speciality is about,'
he began, and started enthusing to them.
Professor Warrinder was scampering from one end of the party to the other, trying to please
both Hettie and Lucinda with his choice of wines.
He arrived at a hop to fill Stokes's outstretched glass, and gazed at the artist's canvas in wonder.
'Why, it's lovely,' he chittered.