De Camp, L Sprague - The Undesired Princess

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THE UNDESIRED PRINCESS AND THE ENCHANTED BUNNY

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely

coincidental.

thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises 260 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10001

ISBN: 0-671-69875-3 Cover art by Gary RuckleII First printing, May 1990

THE UNDESIRED PRINCESS

* Sprague de Camp

Distributed by SIMON & SCHUSTER 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y.

10020

Printed in the United States of America

K.OLLIN HOBART LOOKED UP from his flow charts through the haze of smoke and

said: "Come in." When the door opened, he added: "Hello, George." Pause.

"Didn't you say something about bringing a friend?"

George Prince answered the hello. He was a young man of no great importance

either in the world wherein he lived or in this story, so there is no point in

describing him. He added: "He'll be along. My gosh. Roily, don't you ever do

anything in the evenings but work?"

"Sometimes. Who's this friend?"

"His name's Hoimon."

"Hermann?"

"No, Hoimon. H-O-I-M-O-N."

"Hoimon what? Or what Hoimon?"

"Nothing; just Hoimon. H-O-"

Hobart gestured impatiently. "Heard you the first time. What is he?"

"He calls himself an ascetic."

Rollin Hobart frowned, or rather the already per-

4 L. Sprague de Camp

manent crease between his eyebrows deepened. He was a rangy, large-boned man,

young but not very, with slick blond hair, a narrow straight nose, and narrow

straight lips. "Listen, George, I'm sorry but I haven't time to admire your

eccentric friends. I've got to figure how to save these guys three-quarters of

a cent per ton."

Prince answered: "This one's different. YouTl see. Oh, by the way, have you

changed your mind about the party tomorrow night yet?"

"Nope. I told you, work."

"Oh my gosh. You don't go anywhere any more." Prince shrugged hopelessly. "I

suppose that now the strike-breaking business isn't so hot—"

Hobart straightened angrily. "Higgins and Hobart are not strike-breakers. I

thought I explained—"

"How about that—"

"It isn't our fault if our investigator exceeded his instructions. It was his

idea to hire those—"

"Yeah," interrupted Prince, "but you and Higgins knew Karsen was a hard egg

when you took him on. So you're partly responsible for that riot—"

"Not at all. You know the judge decided, when Karsen sued us because the

strikers had knocked out all his teeth, that he hadn't been acting as our

agent at the time."

Prince laughed. "That was the funniest darn thing—"

Hobart grinned wryly. "To you, maybe, but not to those on the inside. The

company lost business, the strikers lost their pay, we lost our fee and the

legal expenses, and Karsen lost his teeth. My point just was we were legally

cleared, so we're not strikebreakers. Q.E.D. We're consulting engineers, and

it's only natural that our clients should consult us about (heir labor-

relations problems."

THE UNDESIRED PRINCESS 5

Prince replied: "The trouble with you, Roily, is that you're a black-and-white

thinker; everything either is so or it isn't. That's Aristotelian logic, which

has been long since exploded. You'd make a good Communist if you hadn't got

started in life as a shellback conservative—"

Hobart gave up all effort to concentrate on his engineering figures and

pitched into his friend: "You're the black-and-white thinker, my lad. Because

I accidentally get associated with a strike-breaker, I hate the poor toiling

masses; and from the feet that I think that permanently unbalanced budgets

mean trouble either for individuals or government, you infer I'm a hidebound

reactionary! The trouble with you guys who dabble in social theories is that

you invent a lot of pretty laws and expect the world to conform to them—"

"I only said—" interrupted Prince. But Hobart, once started, was not so easily

stopped.

"And you're wrong about Aristotelian logic's being exploded," he continued in

an authoritative rasp. "All that's happened is that it's been recognized as a

special case of the more general forms of logic, just as plane trigonometry is

a special case of spherical. That doesn't mean it's useless; it's just more

limited in its application than was once thought. We could hardly conceive a

world where Aristotelian two-value logic did apply generally; for instance

everything would have to be red or not red, so nothing would be pink or

vermiUion ..."

"Speaking of which, my friend—"

"I'm not through, George. Matter of feet Plato did have some glimmering of the

concepts of continuity and multiple causation, which Aristotle missed. If

Plato hadn't been so full of foggy idealistic mysticism— what's that about

your friend?"

6 L. Sprague de Camp

George Prince, caught off balance, took a few seconds to get back in his

groove. He finally said: "Well— uh—it's land of hard to explain. I don't know

him very well, and I don't really believe in him yet. But if you see him, too,

he must be real."

Hobart frowned, "I should think so. But what's the matter—seeing things? Too

many hot rums?"

"Yes and no. I see him, but the question is am I seeing something that's

really there?"

"That ought to be easy," said Hobart with an impatient gesture. "Either he's

there or he isn't—"

"There you go!" cried Prince triumphandy. "Either —or! I knew—uh—come in!"

They stared at the door, which opened to reveal a gaunt old man with unkempt

white whiskers. This individual wore an overcoat that Hobart recognized as

belonging to his friend Prince. As far as one could tell, that was all the

oldster had on; below its hem extended a pair of hairy shanks ending in large

calloused bare feet. He carried a rectangular wooden object with hinges and

snaps, about the size of a suitcase.

Hobart asked Prince: "Is—this—your—Mr. Hoimon?"

The apparition himself answered in bell-like tones: "It is true, O man, that

my temporal name is Hoimon. But kindly do not use the term 'mister.' I am

informed that it is derived from 'master.' Such an epithet is most repugnant

to my humility; I do not wish to have superiority over any living thing

ascribed to me."

"Well," said Rollin Hobart, flustered for the first time in a couple of years.

"George, what's—"

"Hoimon will explain, Roily," answered Prince.

Hoimon smiled a sweet, patient smile. "May I," he tolled, "recline?"

THE UNDESIRED PRINCESS 7

"Uh—oh, sure!"

The old man unsnapped the clasps of his wooden contraption and unfolded it,

whereat it was seen to be a collapsable bed of nails or spikes. Hoimon set the

thing down with a solid wooden sound, shucked off the overcoat (under which he

wore a towel-like piece of textile around his middle) and settled himself at

length on the spikes with a luxurious sigh.

For some seconds he sprawled silently. His eyes swept Hobart's room, taking in

the shelves of textbooks, the adding machine, the large iron dumbbells, and

the photograph of Frederick Winslow Taylor on the wall.

When he spoke, it was to Prince: "O George," he said, "is this man indeed

possessed of a keen and logical mind?"

"Keenest and logicalest I know," replied Prince. "One of M.I.T.'s best. Least,

when it's something he's interested in. Outside his special fields you'll find

him a bit narrow-minded. Frinstance he thinks Thomas Dewey's a wild radical."

Hoimon waved aside the question of Mr. Dewey's radicalism. He asked: "Is he

intact physically?"

"If you mean is he healthy, yes. I think he's had his appendix yanked—"

"Look here," snapped the subject of the discourse, "what the hell's the idea—"

Hoimon ignored him, and spoke again to Prince: "And his departure would not

wreak grievous harm or sorrow on those near him?"

"Guess not. Some of his friends would say they wished old Roily was around to

lend his crushing ironies to the conversation, but they wouldn't go into a

decline on account of him being gone. He's a good, steady sort of guy, but not

exactly gemuetlich."

Hobart cleared his throat, and interjected: "What

L. Sprague de Camp

my misguided young friend means, Mr. Hoimon, is that I value my independence."

Hoimon gave him merely a brief glance, and inquired of Prince: "He has, then,

no wives or oflspring?"

"My gosh no! You ought to hear him on the subject—"

Roltin Hobart, who had been polishing his glasses in a marked manner, now

interrupted: "George, I admit you pique my curiosity with this ingenious

nonsense. But I've got work to do; this defense boom isn't going to last

forever, and Higgins and I have got to make hay. When I want a character

analysis I'll go to a psychia—"

"He is also, I see," boomed Hoimon, "a person of strong and determined

character. He will do, I think. But one more thing: Is he adept at the

solution of paradoxes?"

Prince looked blank; Hobart frowned, then grinned a little. The engineer

remarked: "Now how did you know I was a puzzler? Hobby of mine, as a matter of

fact." He picked a small white magazine entitled The Engima out of a pile and

handed it to Hoimon. "I was president of the National Puzzler's League, last

year. Haven't time for that sort of stuff now, though. What is it I'll 'do'

for? Solving a paradox?"

"Precisely," responded Hoimon. "It is without doubt by the providence of Nois

that I was led to the one man in the three-answer world who can best assist

us. Arise, O Rollin, and come with me to Logaia. There is not a minute of your

finite time to be lost!"

"What tbe hell?" scowled Hobart. "What sort of

gag—"

"I have no intention of gagging you," said Hoimon, folding his bed of spikes.

He turned piercing blue eyes on Hobart. "Do not haver and quibble, O Rol-

THE UNDESIRED PRINCESS

lin. The life of the fairest, wisest, and best depends on you. Already the

androsphinx draws nigh unto the Stump of Sacrifice."

"But!" cried Hobart, "what's Logaia, who's this fairest etcetera, what's—"

"All will become clear," said Hoimon calmly. Though he was standing a good ten

feet away, his free arm shot across the room like a chameleon's tongue and

grabbed Hobart by the coat collar of the latter's conservative brown business

suit. The indignant Rollin was hoisted out of his chair and across his desk.

He swung a pair of knobby fists, but Hoimon held him dangling just out of

reach.

"George!" yelled Hobart. "Stop him! Get a cop! He's a nut!"

Prince registered indecision. He said: "Hey, Hoimon, if he doesn't want to go,

you got no right—"

"That will do, O George," rumbled Hoimon. "It is not for you to judge. It is

but natural that one of his character should resist. Waste not your breath in

shouting, as this room is now part of Logaia. By my spiritual perfection I

have caused it to be so, temporarily."

Prince stepped across to the window and looked out. He turned a blankly

dismayed face. "Hey, there isn't anything outside!"

"Of course not," said the ascetic, dodging an extra-long punch that Hobart

threw at him. "Will you open the door, O George, as my hands are occupied?"

"Well—I—"

"Open it!" roared Hoimon.

Prince obeyed, asking hesitantly: "Hey, Hoimon, how can a skinny old guy like

you do it?"

Hoimon replied: "My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is

pure. Farewell, O George.

L. Sprague de Camp

Danger awaits your friend, but also opportunity. We

go!"

"Help!" screamed Hobart. "My glasses!"

"You have them on, O Rollin," And the ascetic,

with the folding bed of nails dangling from his left

hand and a struggling Rollin Hobart at arm's length

from his right, marched out the door.

* * *

As the darkness closed around him, Rollin Hobart tried to slip out of his

coat. But Hoimon had gathered a considerable fold of shirt and vest into his

iron grip. Hobart felt for the ascetic's fingers and tried to wrench them

apart, but he might as well have tried to twist the tail of one of the New

York Public Library's lions.

The environment through which he was being hauled was not the hallway outside

his spic three-roomer, but a dark tunnel. The light from the door of his

living room picked out sides and roof of rock. Hien his feeble illumination

went out sharply, as though George had closed the door. Hobart thought of the

folly of keeping up with lightweight friends whose sole virtue was that they

were fun to argue with.

Hobart continued his struggles long after it was obvious that they were

getting him nowhere. When he finally stopped kicking and clawing it was from

exhaustion. His relaxation allowed his mind to take in the implication of the

tunnel.

He gasped: "What the hell—is—this, the fourth dimension?"

Hoimon spoke softly behind him: "Talk not, O Rollin, lest you draw the cave-

folk nigh."

"Oh, is that so? Well, you answer my questions or I'll raise a hell of a

holler!" Hobart filled his lungs to shout.

THE UNDESIRED PRINCESS

Hoimon conceded: "In that case I must speak, lest you ignorantly bring

disaster upon yourself. Not that the cave-folk would harm me, but you—"

"All right, get to the point! What's the idea of this kidnapping?"

Hoimon sighed. "I fear you resent the high-handed tactics I was forced to use—

"You're damn tootin' I resent 'em! The F.B.I.'s going to hear about this! Now

what—"

"I had to use force, and therefore, unless you abandon your hostility, I shall

be forced to punish myself, oh, most grievously, for having laid constraint

upon a living creature. I should not have considered a course so out of

keeping with my humility, had it not been necessary in order to avert a

greater evil. Know, O Rollin, that by the ancient curse laid on the Kings of

Logaia—hark!"

Hoimon broke off, and Hobart kept his silence for the nonce. Through the

darkness came a shrill sound, like the highest note of a violin; a spine-

tickling cry.

"The cave-folk!" breathed Hoimon. "Now we must hasten. If I put you down, will

you accompany me in orderly fashion? You cannot return to you own world in any

case."

"I'll walk," grumbled Hobart. "What d'you do, unscramble the dimensions?"

"As I am no scholar, I cannot fathom your talk of dimensions. All I know is

that by purity of heart I have acquired powers, said to have been possessed by

certain philosophers of yore, of visiting strange universes like yours, where

the laws of reason hold not and nought is what it seems."

"What d'you mean, the laws of reason don't hold?"

"In your world the earth appears to stand still while the sun goes around it,

but I was assured on good authority that the reverse is the case. In Logaia,

L. Sprague de Camp

when the sun seems to go around the earth, it really does so. Let there be

more progress and less talk."

The shrill wail came again, lending more speed to Hobart's legs than

exhortations from his abductor would have done. A spot of daylight appeared

ahead. Soon they arrived at the exit, and stood on the crest of the fan of

detritus that spread out from the mouth of the tunnel. Hobart swiveled his

head, blinking. The sun was high in the brilliantly blue heavens. All about

were mountains, steep and conical, and somehow not quite right. After a few

seconds Hobart saw what was wrong with them; they were too regular and too

much alike. They reminded him of a lot of ice-cream cones—that is, the cone

part without the ice cream—placed upside down in regular rows on a flat table.

"Come," said Hoimon. The ascetic bounded down a steep trail, swinging his

folded bed of nails, his long white hair flapping behind him. Now that Hobart

got a look at his kidnapper in daylight, he saw that the saintly slave-raider

was not at all a clean person. But for a man of his apparent years he was

uncommonly agile. Probably, thought Hobart, the result of some screwy diet of

nuts and lettuce. The engineer followed, fascinated by the way the towel about

Hoimon's equator stayed in place by the most precarious of firictional holds.

They reached the bottom of the steep slope. The mountains were a phony-looking

golden yellow; so was the scanty grass. An occasional shrub had leaves of a

bright blue. Yes, blue, thought Hobart after a pause to peer. Well, if they

were blue they were blue. He contemptuously dismissed the idea that he might

be dreaming; fear of being insane never entered his mind. If he saw blue

foliage with his own eyes, blue foliage there was, period.

THE UNDESIRED PRINCESS

Tliere was a little flat space between the bottom of one cone and the next.

Hoimon marched briskly along this, skirting mountain after mountain. Hobart,

following, got his breath back after that run down the trail. He used it to

demand to know, in slightly petulant tones, what was meant by all this

nonsense about androsphinxes, Stumps of Sacrifice, and the rest.

Hoimon the ascetic dropped his folding bed beside a gnarly little tree with an

unrealistic geometrical appearance; it reminded Hobart of somebody's attempt

to build an imitation tree out of lengths of {ripe. They would call it a

functionalistic or surrealistic tree, he thought, but nobody had ever

persuaded him that a thing that neither looked, felt, nor acted like a tree

could be made a tree by calling it such.

Hoimon took a grip on the pseudo-tree and broke it off close to the ground.

Then he snapped the trunk across his knee to make a massive four-foot walking

stick. He spoke: "We must hasten, O Rollin, leaving the full account for a

more propitious time. Briefly, know that King Gordius of Logaia is bound by

the curse to offer his first daughter to the androsphinx • upon her coming of

age. As His Altitude has been land to us ascetics, I undertook to find a

champion who would rescue the maiden. You, O Rollin, are he." He set off

briskly again, twirling his stick.

"Interesting if true," groused Hobart. "But listen, mister, I never rescued a

maiden from anything, unless you count the time my secretary got her head

stuck in the waste basket."

"So think you," replied Hoimon serenely. "My search carried me through several

universes, and nowhere ..." His voice died and ceased sharply in Hobart's ears

as the engineer flattened himself against the side of one of the cones.

Hoimon, continuing

L. Sprague de Camp

around the curve, was immediately out of sight. Ho-bart listened, then began

to tiptoe off in the opposite direction.

"Ho!" came the ascetic's deep voice around the curve. Rollin Hobart began to

run. A muscular hand from nowhere came down on his back with staggering force,

and gripped coat, vest, shirt, and a considerable fold of skin. Hobart yelped

as he was jerked off his feet and whisked around the bend by an arm that had

stretched out to a length of at least thirty feet to grab him.

The arm contracted to its normal length, and Hobart found himself looking into

the ascetic's melancholy eyes. Said Hoimon: "Little know you of Logaia, O

Rollin, or you would not try to escape. If you remained in the mountains after

sunset, the cave-folk—lest you try such a stupid trick again, you shall

precede me. March!"

Hobart walked slowly, scowling. He protested: "Maybe you think this is fun,

but I've got a job to get back to!" Hoimon gave him a push that almost sent

him headlong.

"Hasten," said the old man. "Now must I punish myself for using force on you."

Hobart continued: "You're impeding the defense program! My firm has some

important contracts—"

Another push. "The loss of the State of Unity is the gain— Ah!" The last

exclamation announced their exit from the mountains—just like that. There were

no foothills. The two men emerged from the last pair of conical peaks, and

then the country was as flat in front of them as a skating rink, except for a

cluster of hemispherical domes of black rock off to the left.

The black domes rose from a vast expanse of flat pebbly ground, like an

indefinite enlarged gravel driveway except that the gravel was a startling

red.

THE UNDESIRED PRINCESS

Hobart supposed that from this tract's lack of vegetation it should be called

a desert, even though it did not look like any desert he had seen. It extended

to a sharp, straight horizon, unbroken in front and to the left by any feature

except the black hemispheres.

But to the right the landscape was something else. Thirty feet away began a

fantastic jungle. Along a line as sharp as if it had been surveyed the red

gravel gave way to blue moss, and from the moss rose tall, regularly spaced

trees, every one with an implausible even-tapering cylindrical trunk,

apparently covered by black patent leather. The leaves were blue; some were

circular, some elliptical, some other shapes, but all geometrically precise as

though they had been cut out of blue paper to go into a store window display.

In fact, reflected Hobart, this whole garish landscape looked as if it had

been laid out with drawing instruments either by a gifted child or by a

draftsman who had gone insane on the subject of functional design.

He had hardly begun to absorb his surroundings when his attention was

attracted by something else, which riveted his eyesight precisely because it

was not built from a blueprint. "It" was a girl tied to a section of glossy

black tree-trunk, sawn off at the top and planted in the gravel of the desert

a few paces from the edge of the forest. As Hobart crunched unbidden over the

pebbles toward the girl, he realized that she was the most beautiful thing he

had ever seen.

"That," came Hoimon's voice behind him, "is the Princess Argimanda."

THE FIRST FACT THAT ROLLIN Hobart noticed about the Princess Argimanda was

that her hair was red. That was the first thing that anybody from the Earth,

Solar System, or Newton-Einstein universe would have observed, for this was

not a coppery-red or russet, but a real honest-to-gosh red Wee that of a stop

light or a two-cent stamp.

It was also borne upon him as he approached that her skin was very pale, and

the contrast between the white skin and the bright red of her cheeks gave her

a heavily-made-up look. When he got closer it appeared that the color was

natural. She was tall, with delicate features, and wore a loose white knee-

length garment of a very flimsy sheer material. She was tied to the stump by

what appeared to be a few loops of ordinary package-string.

Nor was she alone. A little way off a young man sat on a chair with an ease!

in front of him. This youth wore what looked at first sight like a suit of

long red underwear, which matched his hair.

The princess' blue eyes took in RoUin Hobart, and

THE UNDESIRED PRINCESS

she cried in a strained voice: "Is this your champion, Hoimon?"

"Aye, O Princess," rumbled the ascetic. "How far have the painful proceedings

gone?"

The princess tossed her head toward the black rock domes. "The Court's taken

to the hills," she said. Hobart, shading his eyes, made out a cluster of tiny

figures atop the nearest dome. Some sort of banner rose from their midst.

"And," continued Argimanda, "my dear brother has set up his sketching-pad, so

everything is ready. I sent Theiax into the forest that he might warn us, but

he has not returned. I do hope the androsphinx has not eaten him."

"Might diminish his appetite for you, my girl," said a high male voice. It was

the young man of the long underwear, which Hobart saw was really a skintight

suit of red silk, with a jewelled belt and a little round feathered cap. The

resemblance between the youth and the Princess was obvious. He was nervously

tossing an octahedral pebble from hand to hand, and inquired: "This the

champion, eh? Don't tell me I've set up my kit for nothing!"

Hoimon boomed: "I think Your Dignity might show more concern for the fate of

your innocent sister!"

The young man shrugged. "Can't be helped, you know, so we might as well have

an artistic record."

Hoimon growled, and finally articulated: "O Prince Alaxius, I present Rollin

Ho—"

"Don't bother me with names, old thing," interrupted the artist, "especially

as he'll probably be devoured shortly. Greetings, champion. Mustn't mind me;

an aesthete puts his art first, you know. By the way, what is the color of

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摘要：

THEUNDESIREDPRINCESSANDTHEENCHANTEDBUNNYThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental."TheUndesiredPrincess"copyright©1942byStreet&SmithPublications,Inc.Copyright©1951byL.SpraguedeCamp.Copyright©1990byDavidD...

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