Philip Farmer - Venus on the Half-Shell

Simon sent in a petition for an audience. Under normal circumstances, he would have had to wait six months for an answer. Since he was the only alien on the planet, and famous for his banjo-playing, he got a reply the same day. The queen would be pleased to dine with him. Formal attire was mandatory.

Resplendent in the dress uniform of the captain of the Hwang Ho, a navy blue outfit adorned with huge epaulettes, gold braid, big brass buttons, and twenty Good Conduct medals, Simon appeared at the main door of the palace. He was ushered by a lord of the royal pantry and six guards through magnificent marble corridors loaded down with objets d’art. At another time, Simon would have liked to examine these. Most of them consisted of phallic imagery.

He was led through the door flanked by two guards who blew through long silver trumpets as he passed them. Simon appreciated the honor, even if it left him deaf for a minute. He was still dizzy when he was halted in a small but ornate room before a big table of polished dark wood. This was set with two plates and two goblets full of wine and a crowd of steaming dishes. Behind it sat a woman whose beauty started his adrenalin flowing, even if she wasn’t strictly human. To tell the truth, Simon had gotten so accustomed to pointed ears, slit pupils, and sharp teeth that his own face startled him when he shaved.

Simon didn’t hear the introduction because his hearing hadn’t come back yet. He bowed to the queen after the official’s lips had quit moving, and at a sign he sat down across the table from her. The dinner passed pleasantly enough. They talked about the weather, a subject that Simon would find was an icebreaker on every planet. Then they discussed the horrors of Shag Day. Simon became progressively drunker as the dinner proceeded. It was protocol to down a glass of wine every time the queen did, and she seemed to be very thirsty. He didn’t blame her. It had been three hundred years since she had had a drink.

Simon told her his life story at her request. She was horrified but at the same time complacent.

“Our religion maintains that the stars, planets, and moons are living beings,” she said. “These are the only forms of life big enough and complex enough to interest the Creatrix. Biological life is an accidental by-product. You might say that it’s a disease infecting the planets. Vegetable and animal life are bearable forms of the disease, like acne or athlete’s foot.

“But when sentient life, beings with self-consciousness, evolve, they become a sort of deadly microbe. We Shaltoonians, however, are wise enough to know that. So, instead of being parasites, we become symbiotes. We live off the earth, but we take care that we don’t ruin it. That’s why we’ve stuck to an agricultural society. We grow crops, but we replenish the soil with manure. And every tree we cut down, we replace.

“Earthlings, now, they seem to have been parasites who made their planet sick. Much as I regret to say it, it was a good thing that the Hoonhors cleaned Earth up. They only have to take one look at Shaltoon, however, to see that we’ve kept our world in tiptop shape. We’re safe from them.”

Simon did not think that Shaltoon society was above criticism, but he thought it diplomatic to keep silent.

“You say, Space Wanderer, that you mean to roam everywhere until you have found answers to your questions. I suppose by that that you want to know the meaning of life?”

She leaned forward, her eyes a hot green with vertical black slits showing in the candlelight. Her gown fell open, and Simon saw the smooth creamy mounds and their tips, huge and red as cherries.

“Well, you might say that,” he said.

She rose suddenly, knocking her chair onto the floor, and clapped her hands. The butlers and the officials left at once and closed the doors behind them. Simon began sweating. The room had become very warm, and the thick ropy odor of cat-heat was so heavy it was almost visible.

Queen Margaret of the planet Shaltoon let her gown fall to the floor. She was wearing nothing underneath. Her high, firm, uncowled bosom was proud and rosy. Her hips and thighs were like an inviting lyre of pure alabaster. They shone so whitely that they might have had a light inside.

“Your travels are over, Space Wanderer,” she whispered, her voice husky with lust. “Seek no more, for you have found. The answer is in my arms.”

He did not reply. She strode around the table to him instead of ordering him, as was her queenly right, to come to her.

“It’s a glorious answer, Queen Margaret, God knows,” he replied. His palms were perspiring profusely. “I am going to accept it gratefully. But I have to tell you, if I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, that I will have to be on my way again tomorrow.”

“But you have found your answer, you have found your answer!” she cried, and she forced his head between her fragrant young breasts.

He said something. She thrust him out at arm’s length. “What was that you said?”

“I said, Queen Margaret, that what you offer is an awfully good answer. It just doesn’t happen to be the one I’m primarily looking for.”

Dawn broke like a window hit by a gold brick. Simon entered the spaceship. A human doughnut dunked in weariness, satiety, and cat-in-mating-season pungency, he slopped in. Anubis sniffed and growled. Simon put out a shaking hand drained of hormones to pet him.

Anubis bit it.

During the banquet with Queen Margaret, Simon had drunk a goblet of the Shaltoon immortality elixir. And just before he left, he was given two vials of elixir for his animals. Simon hesitated for a long time about offering Anubis and Athena the green sweet-and-sour liquid. Was it fair to inflict long life on them? Would he have swallowed the stuff if he had not been drunk with alcohol and the queen’s musky odor?

“It may take several lifetimes, or more, for you to find a place where the answer to your primal question is known,” the queen had said. “Wouldn’t it be ironic if you died of old age while on your way to a planet where the answer you seek was known?”

Simon had said, “You’re very wise, Queen Margaret,” and he emptied the cup. The expected thunder and lightning of imminences of immortality for which he braced himself had not come. Instead, he had belched.

Now he looked at the dog, hiding behind a chair with shame because he had bitten Simon, and at the owl, sitting on top of the chair, her favorite perch, spotted with white.

In the normal course of subjective time, they would both be dead in a few years. The future might show that they would have been far better off dead. On the other hand—Simon was hopelessly ambidextrous—they might be missing a vast and enduring joy if he denied them the elixir. Who knew? They might even find a planet where the natives had a science advanced enough to raise his pets’ intelligence to a human level. Then he could communicate with them, enjoy their companionship to the fullest potentiality.

On the other hand, they might then become very unhappy.

Simon solved his dilemma by pouring out the elixir into two bowls. If the two cared to drink the stuff, they could do so. The decision was up to their limited powers of free will. After all, animals knew what was good for them, and if immortality smelled bad to them, they wouldn’t touch it.

Anubis rose from behind the chair and slinked across the floor to the bowl. He sniffed at the green liquid and then lapped it up. Simon looked at Athena and said, “Well?” The owl said, “Who?” After a while she flew down to her bowl and drank from it.