You have read that Mauve’Bib had no playmates his own age on Cowboydan. Yet have you read that he had wonderful companion-tutors? No, you have not. And why not? Because you spent all last night on the visiphone with your friend Marcie. Now go to your sleeping module and do your homework, and don’t you dare come down until I summon you via communinet phaselink.

—from “A Teenager’s History of Mauve’Bib.” by the Princess Serutan

The boy Pall, dismissed from the presence of the Revved-Up Mother George Cynthia Mohairem after his ordeal with the multicolored cube, brooded in his room. The next day he would, with his family, his retainers, and his braces, board the Guild ‘Ighliner and leave Cowboydan forever. Yet his thoughts dwelt not on leave-taking, but on word-having, for the final moments he had spent with the old woman had rendered him troubled of brain.

“You may be the Kumkwat Haagendasz, boy,” she had said. “Or, you may be just another duff’r, strutting with pride every time you fry an egg yolk-whole. We shall see.”

“And if I am the Kumkwat Haagendasz?” Pall had asked. “What’s in it for me?”

The question had obviously taken her aback. “For you? Why… a legacy of over three hundred generations of mouth-watering recipes—”

“I don’t need recipes,” he had replied. “I’m fifteen. I need… something else…”

“Need? What can you need? You are the son of a Duke!”

“Bee-eff-dee!” Pall had snapped, surprised at his own boldness, his own impulsiveness, his own sheer obnoxiousness. “What good’s that? It gets me into Boni Maroni, granted. So I end up as pastry chef for some nouvelle Aldebaran place on Vega 4.”

“You mind your manners, boy,” the woman had said, sweeping her robes together and exiting the room in a huff. The last thing Pall heard was her muttered, “Spoiled little brat.”

Am I? he wondered. Yet his mind seethed with it-wasn’t-fair resentment. Other youth had friends their own age—boys with whom to out-hang, girls with whom to around-mess. All he had were adults. Well, perhaps things would be better on Arruckus.

A noise sounded behind him. Without looking up he knew it was Safire Halfwit, his father’s Mantan and chief Character Assassin. “Your mother’s like a pack of gum—” the man began.

“I know,” Pall replied. “Five sticks for a nickel.”

Halfwit stopped before the boy and frowned. “What’s wrong, lad?” he said, his aged, seamed face a leather sofa on which Time and Care had sat once too often. “These Insult Drills bore you, eh? Then wait and see how bored you are when confronted with an enemy younger and smarter than old Safire, facing Rankout to the death, with no quarter given.” He glanced about the room, saw that most of the furniture was gone, shipped to Arruckus. “Glum about the move, is that it?”

“Will Arruckus be dangerous?” Pall said, almost eagerly.

” ‘Every place is dangerous to the man who talks to his shirt,’ ” Safire Halfwit quoted. “Mark ye that for wisdom, boy.”

“What about the Freedmenmen?” Pall urged. “What are they like?”

Questions, questions. Halfwit suppressed a smile. What am I, the Encyclopedophilia Prophylactica? “A careful people,” he said. “Hungry, manic-depressive, overweight. Remember, lad, you speak of a people who’ve almost never known the pleasures and satisfactions to be had from eating an entree.”

“They live on nothing but desserts?”

“Desserts, aye. And, of course, the beer. Also on whatever nutrients they can glean from the creatures that roam the sugars.”

“Creatures?” Pall had heard legends, but surely—

“Why, lad, don’t tell you’ve never heard of the giant pretzels.”

Then it was true! Tales, he’d thought—the exaggerated ramblings of traders, smugglers, and manufacturers’ reps who’d returned to the court on Cowboydan with accounts of enormous animal-snack hybrid creatures a hundred meters high. “There really are such giant pretzels, Safire?”

The Mantan, his cheeks seamed naugahyde, his eyes weatherdulled pools of vinyl latex, nodded. “Great roving things they are,” he said. “They say a salt-boulder falling off the back of one of ‘em can crush a man.”

“Well, whoever that man is, he’s a fool!” came a voice from the doorway.

“Gurnsey!” Pall cried with pleasure. For it was Gurnsey Halvah, the Duke’s troubadour-jester-torpedo. Hunch of back and wall of eye, Gurnsey lumbered in with his twelve-string rickenbacker slung over his shoulder. This he now took down, and tuned the strings, saying to the Mantan, “What be this bag o’ farfel yer makin’ fer t’sell the young master, now, Halfwit, eh? With yer tales o’ giant pretzels patrolling the sugar hills o’ the world called Doon?”

“No bag of farfel, this, Gurnsey,” Halfwit said, eyes crinkling with mirth. “You’ve seen the pretzels yourself.”

“Aye, ‘tis true,” Gurnsey said. To Pall’s wide-eyed look of wonder he added, “The adult ones, the full-grown, ‘ll reach a size as big as this castle. The young ones, the nuggets, stand as high as yer ducal nose, lad. The Freedmenmen call the big ones the Three-Ring Yokes of Madness.” He winked. “Why, then, here’s a conversation with a twist.” Halvah chuckled, nodded, winked, cocked an eye, wiggled an ear, added: “And a salty one a’ that!”

Pall smiled, then frowned. He normally enjoyed Gurnsey’s company—of all his father’s men, Halvah was the one Pall was sure he was smarter than. But today his mood was low, besetting him with a yearn keening. Safire Halfwit noticed his melanchol.

“Something’s troubling you, Pall,” he probed. “What is it? That is, if you can confide in a couple of broken-down old soldiers who’ve given blood and brawn for their Duke, the good Lotto.”

“Aye, and a lot o’ Duke he be, too!” Gurnsey said, chortling. “But stay, lad, here’s a tune of our new home…” Lifting up the rickenbacker, he struck a chord and sang:

“O-h-h-h, the girls of Cowboydan ‘ll take it in their hand,

But we prefer the ladies of Arruckus.

We bring ‘em some tuna on ryes,

An’ a side of Aldebaran fries,

Then we go an’ collect our prize,

‘Cause we know that they’ll perform sexual intercourse with us.”

Halvah winked at Pall. “Why d’ye think they call such a tune a lay, eh, boy?” Pall began to laugh, and Halvah smacked him hard across the face. “Keep yer guard up, you young pup, have ye learned nothing from old Gurnsey?”

“And what could any man learn from you, ye gnarled old skrobbnig?”

All turned as Drunken Omaha, the Duke’s chief bodyguard, lumbered into the room. It’s getting crowded in here, Pall thought. Why aren’t these men helping to pack?

Gurnsey cocked his good eye toward Omaha and said, jestingly, “Why don’t ye go and stick yer head in a bucket of kreznum, Omaha?”

“And you the same,” retorted the massive, blocky man. The two embraced each other, and the chamber resounded with their comradely backslaps.

“Ah,” said Omaha. “What a fine schnagg it is, to serve so noble a tzid, and bear arms with such goodly klormers. Come, Gurnsey! Play us a flotz!”

“There’ll be plenty of time for that once we’re settled on Arruckus,” came a well-modulated, commanding voice.

All whirled to see Duke Lotto himself in the doorway. He wore the dark gray jumpsuit and tiny red alligator insignia of House Agamemnides. The three men crowded into Pall’s room to accommodate him.

As always, Pall experienced a profound sense of how much his father was his father, and not another thing, such as a chair.

The Duke nodded greeting, the weight of his preoccupation a burden that would crush. I must feign ease, he thought. Else betray my disquiet and infect it plague-like among the help.

“Gentlemen, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I’d like a few moments with my son.”

The three men nodded, took their leave, left.

“Father…?” Pall said when they had gone. “The ‘Ighliner—is it really as big as they say?”

The Duke paused; his son was yet a boy. This is my son, he thought. And I? I am his father. The Duke allowed himself a brief smile. How very convenient that is.

“Bigger,” he said. “The Schlepping Guild’s monopoly on space travel permits it to scale up its operation. Economies of largeness have a way of overcoming the flexibility sacrificed when multi-use options are jettisoned in favor of scale.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

This is my son, the Duke thought. Else I’d slug him for offmouthing thus.

“What I mean is, Pall,” he said. “The Schlepping Guild has a monopoly on space travel. They can do anything they want.”

“Is that why we live in cold stone castles and do everything as it was done fifteen thousand years ago?” Pall asked. “Do they have a monopoly on everything invented since the Middle Ages on Old Earth?”

Lotto nodded. “Everything except weapons, radio, and small appliances. You learned about the Industrial Revolution, didn’t you?”

Pall said, “About six centuries ago, all the people around the Empire revolted. They feared they were in danger of being replaced by machines made from industry. So they destroyed all the… technology and stuff.”

“Exactly.” The Duke’s face was an ottoman on which his awesome historic responsibility had for decades put up its feet. “Mankind was plunged into pre-technological chaos. It’s taken that long for us to regain what level of development we have today. Our political system now rests on an uneasy concordat—a word which, as I’m sure you know, has something to do with grape jelly, but which somehow also means an agreement.”

“Yes,” Pall nodded. “But what are the basic elements of our civilization, Father?”

“The Emperor and his Imperial House stand in tenuous counterpoise to the Great Big Houses, of which Agamemnides is one, and the unofficial alliance of the Schlepping Guild and the Boni Maroni,” the Duke explained. “It is said that if the Guild, with its superior transportation technology, and the Boni Maroni, with their stores of culinary expertise, could ever agree on a smooth working partnership, there would emerge from that detente a catering service such as the universe has never seen. Unfortunately…” Lotto shook his head. “The two groups barely tolerate each other. Well—you know your mother. She’s Boni Maroni. Ever try getting her to co-operate on something that isn’t her idea? Mur-der!”

Dare I speak thus? Lotto thought suddenly. The boy is but a boy. Then he thought sardonically: A boy, yes—but not too young to begin learning about that damnable enigma that is women.

“Father, when we take over Doon, and control the bottling of the beer… will we be rich?”

The Duke permitted himself a moment’s satisfied smile, thinking how cogent that question was. “Relatively speaking,” he murmured. “But our enemies will keep us busy trying to defend ourselves. We may end up spending our wealth on arms, and men, and bribes, and direct-mail advertising.”

“Which enemies?”

“House Hardchargin, for one. The Baron has made no secret of his desire to destroy us. And the Emperor, Shaddap himself—he fears the respect I command among the Great Big Houses.”

“Then why are we going to Arruckus?” Pall asked.

“For what we gain by going,” the Duke set forth. “Namely, a thing I call beer power. But enough…” This talk had drained him. “Finish packing.” He strode from the room.

He’s no help either, Pall thought with his superior ability to think. Even if there is wealth to be gained from the move to Doon, it’ll all be tied up in the business.

This realization focused within him in a sudden sparkflash computation, and in the clear brilliance of that illumination, the boy Pall understood a profoundness. His life, hitherto a child’s plaything, devoid of direction—seemingly! Or had there in fact always been a plan—a plan within a plan within a plan (whatever that meant (whatever that meant (whatever that meant)))?—was now encompassed by a terrible purpose. He knew the meaning of the word terrible, and he knew the meaning of the word purpose. And therefore he understood deeply the meaning of “terrible purpose.” Unless he, in the solitude of his deeply brain-filled mind, misunderstood this revelation, and was in fact confronted with a “terrible papoose.”

What could that mean?

No, it was purpose—and he knew what it meant. Likewise did he know, with resonant clarity and un-dimmed thunderclapping immensity, that his terrible purpose would guide him, will-he nill-he, across time and space itself, practically everywhere. And that purpose knelled the mind of the boy Pall in an echo of the words he had shared with the Revved-Up Mother George Cynthia Mohairem, and with his mother the Lady Jazzica, and with himself.

There’s no way out of it, he thought. I’ve got to get a job.