Sprague de Camp's New Anthology
- Автор: Де Камп Лайон Спрэг
- Год: 1953
- Язык: английский
- Год: Panther
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Sprague de Camp's New Anthology». Краткое содержание книги:
Godwin said: "I remember from a book that one time there was a Danish king of England named Cahoots or something. What happened to his line?"
"The claim of Knud the Mighty comes down to the modern Danish royal house through his nephew Knud II, since both his sons died sine prole. The Arrebo-Hauchs are related to this line, but only by a cadet branch. And as the present King of Denmark will have nothing to do with such an enterprise, we must resort to the remaining line of pretenders: the descendants of Harold of Wessex, which means you, my friend."
"How do you know? They didn't have birth-certificates in the Middle Ages, so you can't trace a line over a thousand years. Who ja think you're kidding?"
"Ah, but we can! Have you ever heard of Viggo Bruun?"
"Nope."
"Naturally not, because we have kept his work quiet. Dr. Bruun is the world's greatest authority on terrestrial magnetism. He discovered the Bruun effect."
"What's that?"
"A permanent impress left in the magneto-gravitic matrix of our planet by every event that happens on its surface; something like the Akashic Record of the occultists. By means of an instrument he has developed, Dr. Bruun can photograph these impressions. The instrument is called a parachron, short for 'parachrono-scope'."
"You mean if you took this here gadget you could see the Battle of Waterloo being fought over again?"
"More or less."
"My Goldwyn, what'll they think of next? But what's this got to do with me and your nutty king scheme?"
"Simple. We have made records of the entire lives of Harold Haroldson and his descendants. We have been working on it for several years, and now have a huge library of the lives of historical characters."
"It'd sure be a big library; a roll of film to give one man's whole life would fill a good-sized room."
"Not so bad as that. You can condense a lot, for example cutting the periods of childhood and sleep. For genealogical purposes you only need the first twenty years or so, up to the time when the man begets his eldest child."
"Could I see some of these movies?"
"Certainly, as soon as the physicians say you may leave. Quarters have been prepared for you at the palace, and the faithful Kaalund will accompany you. Now you must excuse me, please. I take it the prospect of royalty no longer appalls you?"
"I'll think about it. But wait: you never said why you Greenlanders are going to all this trouble. What's in it for you?"
Gram smiled. "A matter of high politics. You know that in theory the King of England reigns but does not rule. However, he has some influence as ex officio chairman of the Commonwealth Conference under the Act of Parliament of 2035, especially right now when the governments of the Dominions are evenly divided over the Assam problem. We wish to accomplish several things such as taking Greenland out of the Scandinavian Union and into the Commonwealth, and a British King faithful to our interest would be very useful. And now good-bye; I shall see you soon."
Though he thought it more prudent not to say so outright, Godwin has made up his mind to resist this lunatic scheme to the last ditch as well as the plan to marry him to Karen. So they put him up as a figurehead King of Great Britain with the idea that Gram would always control him through his wife! From what he recalled of the proposed wife's brawn, perhaps Gram had something there, too.
While Gram had recovered the print of the photograph by Wolff, he had left behind the portrait photograph of the girl herself. Godwin glared at it. A handsome wench even if a little big and squarish. She must weigh nearly as much as he. He pointed to the inscription:
"Hjertlige Onsker, Karen af Gronland" and asked: "How do you pronounce that?"
Kaalund obliged with a jerky, guttural singsong. Godwin, staring at the print, was struck by the thought that Gram might have left it with him in the hope that he would fall in love with it. He cast it from him, saying:
"Sven, put that thing on the bureau, face down. I don't care if she's Crown Princess of Greenland or Queen of Mars; the less I see—"
The door was opened by a nurse who stepped to one side and curtised as another woman entered. Kaalund heaved himself erect again and bowed, crying:
"God Dag, Hoihed!"
Godwin blinked and looked again. Yes, it was the red-haired girl on the beach: Karen Hauch, Princess of Greenland.
CLAUDE Godwin stared. His imagination had been adding little by little to his unwanted fiancée's thews until he pictured her as a veritable female gorilla; and here she turned out to be not so big after all. She was better-looking than he remembered her, even if not quite the beauty that the photographer had made her out in the portrait.
"Well!" she said. "So you are the terrible Claude Godwin!" She spoke with less accent than Sven Kaalund, though her English was not so flawless as the Prime Minister's.
"That's right," he said. "I suppose you want to see what your partner in sin looks like before it's too late?"
"You need not be nasty, Mr. Godwin. After all, it was your own doing that got us into this fix, and I am not liking it any better than you."
"But you know nothing happened!"
"Are you sure?"
"I think you would have woken up," he said dryly. "So why didn't you tell 'em so?"
"I did, but they did not believe. My poor father was terribly shocked by that photograph. So now I am stuck with you"
"What's so terrible about me?" he retorted, stung. "Lots of dames think a movie-star's a pretty good catch."
"Oh, I did not say there was anything really wrong with you. In fact one might say you were quite pretty." (Godwin winced.) "But you know what self-centred and immoral people actors are, and I could have had the captain of the U.S.C. football team. He was a big man."
"Is that so? Well, I could have—" began Godwin hotly, then thought better of what he was going to say. "But let's not fight over who got rocked the worse on this deal. I don't suppose you got any idea how to get out of it?"
"No-o," she said, with a glance at Kaalund, who was taking all this in. "We shall have to make the best of it. Perhaps love will come after the first ten or twenty years."
Godwin realised that they could not make any serious plans for evading their fate in Kaalund's presence, and that Gram was determined to keep Godwin under close surveillance until he had accomplished his aims. While Gram's political objectives sounded no more wicked than most political maneuvers, the thought of being used as a passive pawn in this game made Godwin clench his lists with rage.
"Your sense of humour," he said, "is well-developed but gruesome. When they gonna let me outa this box?"
"Tomorrow, they tell me. And now I must leave to shop down-town for my—how do you say—torso?"
"Trousseau," said Godwin with a shudder. "You got the other already, worse luck."
"And to keep you from being bored by the wait, I am giving you these." She brought out of her handbag a white paper bag which she handed him, saying: "Ne les evalez pas; serrez-les entre les dents."
"Hey!" Sven Kaalund spoke up. "No langvages I am not understanding! You speak English, Dansk, or Eskimo and notting else!"
Godwin blinked in bewilderment. He had a limited knowledge of French, dating back to an abortive singing career, and it seemed to him that she was telling him not to swallow the bag but to do something to it with his teeth.
"Thanks," he said.
"It is nothing. I shall be seeing you again, yes?"
"All too soon, I'm afraid. G'bye, Miss—uh—what shall I call you?"
"The people here say 'Your Highness', but that is too formal for your betrothed. And I do not know you well enough for 'Karen', because we Greenlanders are not using first names everywhere as you do in the United States. So call me 'Miss Hauch'."