My father, the Pahdedbrah Emperor, spent much time—both while conducting the necessary official business of the Imperium and, after, among us, in familial repose—wearing a dress. Did this impair his effectiveness as a ruler? History has already answered. Who asked you, History? we might respond.

—from “In My Father’s House, In His Room, and Especially Rummaging Around In His Junk Drawer,” by the Princess Serutan

Pall shook his head to clear it, looked up with fuzzy, if trained, awareness. Barely more than a few minutes had passed since his experience of possible-futures. He was still seated on the ground, his back against a wall of rock candy. Nearby was the girl-child, Loni. He began to speak to her, then noticed that she was looking beyond him, frowning. He followed her gaze, and saw the man called Janis in dispute with Spilgard.

And Janis was gesturing… toward him!

“He is a documentarist,” Janis said vehemently. “How else explain his skill with the brew, save for his prior experience invading other peoples and cultures?”

“The signs say he is the Laserium al-Dilah’,” Spilgard said. “And his skill is a gift from God.”

“He will have camera crews and soundmen here within a week!”

“Be silent, Janis.”

Janis leaped back and pointed at Pall. “Then I invoke the amway rule!” he cried. “Let us meet in rankout and see which shall prevail!”

Jazzica stepped forward. Pitching her voice to its most irritatingly nasal she began, “Get out of the—”

Spilgard held up a hand. “You must be silent, woman,” he said. “Janis has challenged your bunky. He has invoked the amway rule, as is his right. Now your son must provide Janis with satisfaction. Or, he may find a congenial group of friends, neighbors, and relatives willing to buy the rights to a franchise entitling them to provide Janis with satisfaction. Your son must respond, or be banished.”

“No problem,” Pall called out, rising unsteadily. “C’mon, Janis, le’s go.”

“Your mind is beer-potchkied, Pall Agamemnides,” Loni whispered. “You cannot face Janis in such a state.”

“Why may not I cannot do what any man could maybe… uh…” Pall waved off the girl, impatient with words and unable to speak now in any but the most simple declarative sentences. “Janis. You. Come.”

They approached each other as the Freedmenmen moved back against the cave walls, creating a ring around a clear fighting floor. Pall could sense, amid beerfume mindhaze, that all his awareness training and insult drilling had prepared him for just such an encounter. To the extent that he was able to focus them, he kept his eyes on Janis’s, saw the red-on-red of beer addiction, and an additional red of hate.

He’s angry, Pall thought. That’s an advantage for me. I’ll let him make the first move. He remembered what Loni had whispered to him just prior to taking his stance.

He will attack your mother, she had said. This we have seen him do many times. And beware his ability to reverse, and send your barb back against you. He is fast, if not subtle.

“Off-worlder,” Janis said with contempt. “Your mother is like a pack of gum—five sticks for a nickel.”

It was as she had predicted. Pall replied, softly, “At least I have a mother, Janis.”

His opponent smiled, but something in his eyes betrayed surprise.

A murmur passed among the assembled Freedmenmen. “The boy fights well,” one whispered.

Janis said in a sudden rush, “If brains were birds, your head’d be an empty sky.”

Pall thought, said: “If good sense, sound judgment, and measured temperament were a cat, you’d be a dog.”

“Then I’d bite you!” Janis snarled.

A gasp issued forth from the onlookers. Pall reeled. That was close! he thought.

Jazzica thought, Pall has never ranked-out a man like this before! Is he… capable of prevailing?

A tension had filled the air. All seemed to sense that the next sally would prove decisive. Janis eyed Pall, sneered, “Only a woman drinks beer without a head.” He turned to the crowd, in evident expectation of triumph.

Pall looked downcast, as though Janis’s comment had sunk home and found its mark. It was a feint taught him by Drunken Omaha. Let him think he’s got you, the tutor had counseled. Then open up a mouth.

“Better to be a woman, drinking beer without a head—” Pall said, his deep training prompting him to pause a vital split-second before concluding, “—than to be a man without a head, drinking beer without a woman.”

There came a moment, a split-instant, of infinite silence. Pall stood aside as the larger man drained his face of color, looked like a dead thing.

“I…” Janis began.

But there was no more to be said, no remark that could best the double-flipping retort Pall had sent cutting into the sugar-fat flesh of the man’s self-esteem. Janis turned away and, wordlessly, walked off in a slump of defeat.

Pall started to go after him—and felt a firm hand on his arm. He looked up into the grim face of Spilgard.

“Follow not, lad,” he said. “Janis will do what all Freedmenmen must do, upon rankout defeat. He’ll wander off into the sugars and give his meat to Schmai-gunug.”

“But… why?” Pall asked. “He’s alive, and well, and—”

“And in disgrace, and sulking,” Spilgard growled. “A man thus self-pitying seeks solace, and will find it in food. He’d eat beyond his share of our meager store of entrees—”

“—and bring ruin to the tribe,” Pall said, nodding. “I understand.” He paused, then said, “But here is a thing: you make reference to ‘the meat of the body.’ If meat be so rare on Arruckus, well…” Pall groped for words. “…why not, when someone dies, or is sent out into the wilds… why not take his body, and… you know… meat is meat…”

Spilgard looked at him amazed. “Are you suggesting that we make meat of our people?” he asked. “That we eat their remains?”

“The meat of the body belongs to the tribe, say,” Pall shrugged, blushing red. “Anyway, just a thought.”

“You outgross me,” the nabe said, shaking his head. “Your rankout is excellent. But this eating of the meat of others is a disgusting thing, Pall Agamemnides.”

“Needs a better name’n that, Spil,” one man called. “Like to make a man’s tongue strangle itself to speak it.”

“Aye,” muttered many of the troop.

“True,” Spilgard said firmly. To Pall he said, “We remember when you cried treachery upon first beer-burp, claiming you’d swallowed a demon. Therefore let you be called Assol, which is the word we employ for men who act thuswise ridiculous. That shall be your secret name among us.”

“Assol,” Pall mused, measuring the sound and sense of it. “It’s not the greatest name in the known universe, is it…?”

“It be only your secret name,” Spilgard said with a trace of noticeable irritation. “Now you’ll be wanting an official Freedmenmen name, which all may call you to the meat of your face.”

Pall thought a moment, then spied Loni in the crowd. The moonlight glowed cool silver on the purple napkin around her neck, and he recalled with an inward-warming-up-feeling how she had cleansed his lip of sudsfoam. “What do you call these napkins?” he asked, pointing to those worn by all the tribe.

Spilgard looked puzzled, indicated his own. “Why, Pall who is Assol, it is the color mauve, and it is a bib. We call this a mauve bib.” He looked at the others, shrugging.

“That shall be my name, then,” Pall said. “That, plus my given name, lest I forget my father, and be similarly forgotten by his executors. From this day I shall be Mauve’Bib Agamemnides!”

He shot a glance around the gathered tribe in triumph, yet saw averted eyes, strained smiles hiding embarrassment, heard suppressed titter-laughs.

A voice emerged from the rear of the group. “Pretty stupid name, Spil…”

The nabe stepped forward. “Enough,” he said. “Be you called Pall Mauve’Bib, and there be an end to’t.”

“Yet I am also Duke Pall Agamemnides, if my father be truly fired,” Pall said with a sudden non-boyish sobriety.

“We understand,” Spilgard said.

“And I’m also the Laserium al-Dilah’.”

“Yes, yes, we remember.”

“I also may be the Kumkwat Haagendasz, don’t forget.”

Spilgard turned to the troop, said, “Who is Secretary of the Recording this week? Raita? Write these down on the Pad of Memos, lest we forget this endless, prodigious flood of names, titles—”

Another voice hissed, “Pall!”

It was the Lady Jazzica, who looked on with a feeling of abrupt fear. He must not alienate them with all those names, she thought.

Pall joined her off to one side, said with edgy wariness, “Yes, Mother?”

“These are a proud people,” Jazzica said softly. “They are bound together by strong cultural and social ties.”

Pall’s eyes widened in horror. “Then it’s true!” he cried-whispered.

“What’s true…?”

“You are a documentarist for PBS!”

She shook her head impatiently. “No,” she hissed. “Now listen to me. We can make use of these people to regain control of Arruckus from Baron Hardchargin. Do you understand? The Freedmenmen can help put us back in business!” She permitted herself to glare at him with eyes blazing rage. “But not if you scare them off with all those titles!”

Pall’s face went blank. He looked at his mother with the pan of a dead thing. “No,” he said. “There is something for us here beyond all that, Mother. Something larger than the family business. It is a really big thing I am talking.” Pall’s eyes gleamed bright in the dimness as he whispered, “Religion!”

“Mauve’Bib!” called the gathered Freedmenmen. “Mauve’Bib!”

“My people want me, Mother,” Pall said, and turned on his heel to rejoin Spilgard and the troop.

And they gathered around Pall Mauve’Bib, the off-worlder called Assol, the Laserium al-Dilah’, or whoever he was. Hands pressed his, accompanied by the ritual murmurings.

“I join meat with Pall Mauve’Bib.”

“Your meat is ours. Our meat is yours.”

“Nice to meat you, Pall Mauve’Bib.”

And the Lady Jazzica, looking on, had thoughts in her mind.

Now what will happen?