“Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.”

—Samuel Butler

“If it is common, it is beneath me.”

—Professor Herbert York

“Girl! I your only friend!” Madam Chang barked straight into the Princess’s ear.

The Princess shrieked with surprise, quickly composed herself, and said, “I can easily bring to mind several cockroaches, and one magnificently filthy rat who lives in the kitchen and actually eats cats, whom I consider better friends.”

“Hah! You make funny! Very good!” Madam Chang laughed for about three-tenths of a second, opening a mouth seemingly too big for her head. “But! I only one here who want preserve you! Help me help you!”

“And what would that entail? In case you failed to notice, my resources are presently limited to a 3,000-Comet haircut and a ferret that has half a mind to eat me.”

“Ah! You ready to listen! Good!” the Chinese lady yelped enthusiastically and detached a single butterfly from her dress. Another quickly moved to take its place. “This blue butterfly is magnifier! Makes current strong!” She handed the butterfly to the Princess.

The Princess examined it, but didn’t touch it. “If you’re looking for an electrician, I imagine you could find in the Terrestrial Bulletin several whose services are less expensive to acquire than mine. Or do you plan to employ me in the faculty of an assassin?”

“Assassician! Yes! Kill ghost! You press butterfly to spiral! I make sure Von Schmidt no look! Room becomes cut off in full!”

“And this is good because …?”

“This make fat banker gone! Cleanse room of ghosts!” The old lady accented her intent with a wide and wild sweeping motion, which the Princess had to dodge to avoid losing an eye to the pirate queen’s long black nails.

“Oh.” The Princess rather enjoyed the mental image of the greedy Swiss with his vast empire of mines and secret laboratories, with his armies of killers and lawyers, impotently punching the screen like a teenager banned from a virtual ball on account of ungentlemanly conduct. And what could possibly be less gentlemanly than trying to buy the eldest issue of one of the prime houses of Terra as if she were a prize horse?

“I do like this scheme,” the Princess said. “I like it very much as a matter of fact. Would you like to drink on it?”

“Yes! Give the Veerhurbarten!”

The Princess filled two glasses with the spiked cocktail she’d prepared earlier. She pressed her glass to her lips, pretending to partake, and watched in satisfaction how the old lady again opened a mouth too wide for her head and dumped the contents of the glass into her gullet in one fell swoop before heading back to the others. The Princess waited for Madam Chang to start a loud argument with the assembled guests, drawing all the attention to herself, before unassumingly walking to the wall and pressing the butterfly against an exposed portion of the grid. This was followed by the acrid smell of burning plastic. Doubtlessly, had she not worn a suit made of superinsulating polymers, she would have been twitching most indignantly on the floor at the moment, with at least two fingers turned to charcoal. However, the suit had reduced the potent jolt to mere unpleasantness, which the Princess, used to her hair being combed in the old fashion—slow and torturous—managed to easily stifle.

She looked toward the assembled guests, searching for the banker’s hologram, but it was nowhere to be seen. Everyone seemed to pretend he was never there, a lie she felt all too comfortable helping perpetuate.

More importantly, Madam Chang was snoring on a sofa nearby—a wonderful opportunity for more mischief. The Princess activated her personal anti-kinetic device and went to sit near the drowsing pirate, pretending to be interested in the conversation taking place around her. Still holding a wineglass in one hand, she used the other to deftly brush the dress of Madam Chang for the agent of dream manifestation, which the Princess decided to call phagonrios until a better name was suggested to her. All around her, insults and insinuations in more languages than there were guests flashed like lasers on a battlefield. Many of them concerned her, but none of them were aimed at her, leaving her free of any obligation to respond.

Several butterflies launched themselves at her, but slowed about an inch from her body as if their environment had suddenly changed from air to honey. Robbed of most of their kinetic energy, they were no more than pretty toys hanging in midair. Should her shield have failed, even for a fraction of a second, or had the butterflies been programmed with more complex attack routines, the Princess’s price would have experienced a most remarkable drop. However, fortune favoring the brave, the butterflies turned out to be unsophisticated assailants, unaware of the complexities of attacking shielded opponents, allowing her shield to absorb all kinetic energy without heating so much as ten degrees.

Quickly locating the device, the Princess now held in a sweaty hand under the table a most remarkable treasure of the horror vacui. The object resembled a gaudy, somewhat ephemeral version of the terrestrial nautilus. There were two sets of locks on the little creature—the first was a primitive clockwork apparatus and the other an anti-kinetic field generator that kept it in a continuous state of stasis. The latter had a clearly discernible ON/OFF switch.

Being a most enthusiastic naturalist and no less business-minded than any of the guests, the Princess had to battle the urge to keep the creature for later study. However, there were more urgent matters to attend to at the moment and sacrifices had to be made.

Hoping her sleight of hand was as good at fooling her enemies as it was at amusing her friends, the Princess hid the phagonrios inside her suit in a compartment ordinarily reserved for her sniffer.

Excusing herself, she walked toward Calzoni’s escorts, sweet things leaning against each other as they dreamed of faraway homes. The man could have easily found women who would be happy to go along. Any peasant girl would do just about anything for the opportunity to see other planets, to sleep on silk and satin, to sip drinks and taste delicacies that cost more than her homestead made in a year. What girl wouldn’t want to see live dinosaurs or wear dresses that changed form and color on command, instead of the ugly spray-ons of the lower classes?

But it was never about seduction with Calzoni and his Venusian ilk. It was about subjugation, about superiority gained from crushing the weak and conning the strong. He had brought these girls along because they hated him, because they didn’t want to come, because he bloody well could. Perhaps he even considered it as a punishment for some imagined slight. A wave of nausea washed over the Princess as she imagined her fate, should Von Schmidt elect to deliver her into this revolting mafioso’s hands. She could deal with being a political or corporate hostage, there was no shame in that, but Calzoni was no lord or executive. He was, quite simply, beneath her. The desire to do some evil to this man became almost a biological necessity, one the Princess was all too happy to indulge.

Wishing to steer the girls’ dreams in the right direction, the Princess gently whispered a few words into the albino woman’s ear. She would have whispered more, but Calzoni spotted her and shouted from across the room, “Hey, leave the putanas alone! You will have enough time for chit-a-chat on the way back, little Princess!”

The Princess gave him a mean look and returned to her spot by the negotiations table. Presently, the party leaned over a pipelike contrivance which, according to the Jeans, was capable of transforming the atomic weight of any element with minimal loss of atomic weight. In addition to enabling one to cheaply manufacture any element, its capacity to directly transform matter into energy could serve as a highly destructive personal weapon, or a nigh inextinguishable source of cheap energy. Jean had confessed, with no small degree of pride, to having uncovered the device in a xenological dig, which was French for stealing from the natives, thus making it unique and irreplaceable.

Listening with genuine interest, the Princess leaned down as if to scratch her calf and shoved the phagonrios under the sofa. Next, she lowered the switch and braced for impact.

A cylindrical object with wings of white feathers materialized in the air above Calzoni to the sound of a triumphant classical choir. After an instant of confusion, the object thrust itself at the man in a clear attack trajectory. Terrified, Calzoni made a dash for the door, amazingly jumping over the table in a single leap. Despite his surprising agility, the large man didn’t even manage five steps before the massive apparition, now about the size of a horse without its legs, had knocked Calzoni off his feet and started pounding him mercilessly, smashing bones and sundering muscles and organs effortlessly. Drones tried to destroy the manifestation with laser and microwave beams, but the damage they caused was purely cosmetic and did nothing to slow down the phantasmagorical attacker.

As soon as it was clear Don Calzoni would not be standing up, now or ever, the thing rapidly changed direction and sped out of the room, passing through a wall and leaving a green stain of high viscosity in its wake.

The guests, now all on their feet, approached to examine the jigsaw puzzle of clothes, flesh, and bones that had been Calzoni. The serving staff, apparently a more squeamish lot, were visibly dismayed.

“A dream come true,” the Princess said to herself.

“A dream to some, a nightmare to others,” Von Schmidt said, and went to confer with an older looking servant. They spoke quietly and in an odd dialect of German, the only expressions the Princess managed to catch being, “Herculean task” and “under the sofa.”

“Is blasted pirate!” The Russian youth was the first to speak following Calzoni’s spectacular demise. “I tell you again and again, you should never invite her! All here true aristocrats. She just pirate. She bring the dream shtuka here, sleep off during important negotiations, and soon after, Von Ludendorf gone and Don Calzoni dead! Is clear—”

Von Schmidt raised his hands in a pacifying manner. “Please, gospodin Ivanov, I’m sure—”

“No, Von Schmidt, he’s speaking the truth!” the Princess interrupted, trying to sound hysterical, rather than enormously pleased with herself. “This old hag threatened that she would hurt me if I didn’t do as she commanded … look!”

The Princess showed her burnt glove and scratched armor to all present. “She demanded that I apply some electrical gadget to the wall … as if I were some common servant girl!”

There was a whoosh and Madam Chang’s head rolled to the floor. Not a single drop of blood was spilled, nor did the body stir even slightly. A second later, the sofa split apart, the edge smoking from the blow. The floor underneath had a long, perfectly straight burn mark as well.

“I have heard enough!” Tanaka shouted, his face grim. “There is subterfuge of war and there is disgrace of larceny. Former is commendable. Latter is reprehensible. This lowborn pirate has brought shame to us all by her mere presence!” It was implied by his words that he was behind this swift execution, though by what means exactly he effected it, the Princess couldn’t begin to guess.

Professor York looked indignant. “I say!” he raised his voice an octave. “I say!”

“Why you always say, ‘I say’ before saying anything?” the Russian asked, while loading something red and foul smelling to his plate, his appetite obviously unaffected by the carnage. Perhaps in Russia, such manner of expeditious expiration of questionable characters was common practice, the Princess mused, not without appreciation.

“I realize that in Russia or Japan, a dinner with only 50% casualties is considered an astounding success, but among civilized people, it is most outrageous!” Jean said, looking away disgustedly. “Let us move to a different room at once. This is most disagreeable with the digestive process and while I cannot attest to others, I have not had my fill yet!”

You will soon enough, the Princess thought.