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Standard by Twelfth
Or, Oh No You Don't
To Dr. V.M., The Onlie Begetter
ACT ONE
Why do these things keep happening to me? Here I am with a wet foot, a shocking pain behind my eyes, and on top of it all, my farthingale's buggered...
Farthingale, eh? Y'see, my sister and I-and not just any old sister out of the whole boiling, but my twin, that's special, you know-we were just coming back from a nice little bank jo---oh, that's not very interesting, you wouldn't want to know about that. Just like they say. Don't trust the teller, trust the vault.
And there we were, plenty of dosh just for once, and what happens but we get caught in a meteor storm. Before you know it, there I was in a life capsule, with a purse full of gold and a trunk full of clothes, that's all very well, except...well, it was hers. At least I had some kit. Half the time, whatever doesn't kill you leaves you starkers.
So I could have bought myself some new clobber, but I got to talking with the free trader captain who picked up the distress signal and docked with my capsule. Pretty girl, lots of nice blonde curls, I like curls. She said the nearest planetfall she could drop me off was chock-full of nasty rebels, and if they saw you were a bloke, they'd either shoot you for a spy or stick a blaster in your hand. Lots of tough girls there, she said, but you could get a bit of old-fashioned chivalry if you tried.
I asked her if the head rebel was a bachelor, she said you could take that to the bank. Queer as a coot he was, and she should know. Yeh, nice girl that. Wish I could remember her name.
Names...the thing about aliases, is you want to stick pretty close. So, anybody asks, Viola Restal at your service. Soon as I worked that out, quick as a wink, there was a yokel. "What country, friend, is this?" I asked, just to make sure.
"D'Illyrium," he said, with a leer. "Come here often?"
What shall I do in D'Illyrium? My sister, she is in Elysium.
ACT TWO
I was utterly pig-sick of dragging that trunk around, by the time I reached the rebel camp. I fluttered my eyelashes a bit, and one of the sentries prodded me along at gunpoint but the other one carried the blasted trunk.
They took me to see the head man-Rossino's his name--he was off watch, in his quarters, sprawled on the floor on a heap of cushions listening to some music. Crikey, if he ever answered a Situations Vacant ad for "eunuch," he'd never pass the physical.
"If music be the food of love, get stuffed," I said helpfully. They didn't take it in good part though.
One thing about being rebels is, well, you keep having to replace them, so they were glad enough to see me. They haled me off right away to learn how to work something called a "teleport," sort of a spaceship without a spaceship. I could hear this voice in my head, the oddest thing, you'd never believe it, saying {{Thank goodness it's someone else's turn to get lumbered now}}. There was this thin girl there with a dreadful home perm, but I suppose she must have been an alien not a real girl. A lot of what happened to that hair couldn't have been on Earth.
Then there was a bloke even bigger than Rossino-not so much taller as wider. Rossino's uncle, as it turns out. Sir Olag Belch. Nasty bugger too. What I heard is, Rossino had a maybe-too-sensitive sense of family. What with the Federation killing his brother and sister and that. It's not fair. He's got his horrible uncle hanging about, and my nice sister's dead.
They all went off to drill or something and left me alone, so I had a look about the place. There was this room, the door was open, or as good as (didn't take so much as a breath of talent), and there was this thing that looked like a very small fruit machine. I was trying to figure out where to put in the money-well, where you'd put in the money if you weren't using slugs. Next thing you know, Rossino's steward sort of materialized. Depressed-looking type, all in black, big gold chain round the neck, always brandishing a laser probe. Keeps trying to squash his mouth down to a thin line, but there's too much of it to make an easy job of it. Ditto nose. Looks like he had a cuddly orc when he was a nipper, that one.
ACT THREE
Next day, they decided it was time for me to earn my keep. Rossino had been trying for ages to strike a deal with this bird named Avalivia, seems she had her own load of rebels, but she was arsed at Rossino for turfing her off his spaceship last time they'd met. Except I got the impression it wasn't really her, but no one ever tells me the beginning of a story, oh no.
They let me have a horse and sidesaddle (diabolical, those things are) and directions to Avalivia's camp and all sorts of passwords and fancy handshakes so they wouldn't think I was from Space Command. Sooner or later her lot let me through to Avalivia's office.
I started to bow, then remembered just in time to curtsey and it doesn't really matter that I trampled all over the inside of the hem, there's lots of it. "Rossino presents his compliments in the cause of Rebel solidarity," I rattled off (they made me memorize that) "And asks that you allow your forces and his to be leagued against a sea of Federation troopers and by opposing, end them."
"Tell him to get knotted," she said.
"Yeh?" I said. "Some rebel you are. You can't just sit there on your arse when we've all got to put a hand in."
"I'll send my soldiers into battle when I'm good and ready. You can tell Rossino that, and he'll just have to put up with it."
"Well, if I was him, I wouldn't just take No for an answer."
"What would you do?"
"If I had to, I'd...I'd nick a hovercar, and put it in stationery orbit over this place. I'd fit up a broadcast telling you that you had to send your people out to fight. There I'd be, day and night, going on about you, Avalivia."
"Jolly good way of keeping this base a secret, that."
"See? Then you'd have to fight, 'cos the battle would come to you."
"You might do much," she said, holding my hand and letting it sort of hover. These corsets, now, they're deathly when you've got to wear them but to look at them, the
whole heaving-bosom thing is sort of nice. She's a pretty girl anyway, short, a bit on the scrawny side, auburn hair, eager looking. "I am not what I play..." I started to say.
Trying to keep my options open, y'know? I could come back the next night, tell her that the gods have worked a miracle...Or nick round the corner, hit some bloke on the head, take his clothes, come back and say I'm my own brother.
What was I saying? Hit some bloke on the head? Was I mad?
And, just somehow, I didn't feel that interested in knocking her off. I sort of felt my forehead to see if I had a temperature--she saw me doing it so I had to pretend I was fainting with exhaustion. She made me sit down on some cushions and fussed about feeding me a blancmange.
I hate blancmange.
I went back to Rossino's camp, and I felt awful about having to tell him that I'd failed.
There's just something about him that you trust, and when he looks at you with those
light-brown eyes--the color of muscovado sugar, but with little green bits in, too many to pick out, you'd have to change your grocer after that, you want him to trust you too, and not feel you've let him down.
"Ah, well, Viola," he said. "It's not your fault. Sometimes I wonder if women are cut out for rebel life anyway."
"Don't say that!" I said. "I've only been here five minutes, I know, but I'm not just going to slope off. Loyal, that's what my family is. Why, if I...if I had a brother, and you told him to hang about somewhere, he'd just sit there like patients on a monument. Serves 'em right for not going private, anyway."
"I was thinking of Avalivia," he said. "Just speaking man-to-man...ah, man-to-girl, of course, Viola, Diana's lip is not more smooth and rubious and thy small pipe is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound."
I started to say, Oi, not so much of the small pipe!, but then I remembered in time.
"Oh, they may have a palate for revolt," he said, "But it cloys."
"It's hard graft having babies, y'know," I said. "They--we--they, I'm a maid after all--wouldn't just be so easy-like about their getting shot."
"Some interesting points, there, Viola," he said, "Bring them up at the next self-criticism session, why don't you? But enough of these weighty matters of state. Do you have a bloke at home?"
"You could say that," I said.
"What's he look like, then?"
"Bit like you, actually."
"You poor girl! You could do better for yourself," he said, patting me on the back.
"The bloody hell I could!" I said.
Rossino looked over at the door. The steward had been standing there...well, who knows how long he'd been standing there? and he was looking at Rossino like you'd look at....like the chalice and the candlesticks and such all sparkling in the Eastern light when there wasn't a lock on the church door...or a whole roast ox if you were starving...
"Yes, Avolio?" Rossino said. He sounded just that bit put out. "Has Avalivia changed her mind?"
"No," Avolio said.
"Oh, well, then I suppose you two had best get off, I've got to go over the terrain maps for the next campaign."
Ladies first, of course, so I swept out of the room. "Age before beauty," Avolio said as soon as he thought Rossino couldn't hear us any more. "Here," he said, coming over to me and pulling something out of the pocket of his doublet. "As you're here anyway, I might as well give you this. Avalivia says you left it at her camp when you visited, and told me to return it to you. I suppose she thinks I'm at everybody's beck and call. And for Jove's sake, be careful-teleport bracelets are scarce and it would be a catastrophe for one to fall into the wrong hands."
"Bracelet?" I said. "I didn't leave any bracelet...." But by that time he had ghosted himself out again. I picked up the bracelet. It had all sorts of bits and bobs on it, and things that made noise. What's all this about? I had to wonder. Avalivia seemed like a sensible sort, pretty fly in fact. So she must be on about something.
Then I got the shivers. She looked me up and down all right, sort of like me getting a right eyeful of Rossino, and she seemed to enjoy slinging the backchat with me. So did that mean that, bearing in mind that she somehow got the misimpression that I was a bird, that she thought I was a bit of all right? Then this whole disguise lark wasn't doing much to keep me out of trouble. Out of the pie-ing pan and into the friar, like the naughty abbot said in the monastery bakery.
Viola. Avalivia. Avolio. All practically the same name, just swapped about. Makes you wonder, that. I mean, if you read this in a Folio by Oxford, you'd say that he couldn't have written that bit, must have been some other bugger. What a carry-on. There's her chasing after me, and me in love with Rossino-I mean, what? I didn't say that...
ACT FOUR
Turns out the fruit machine was a specially posh computer. Me and Sir Olag and his tall skinny mate Sir Del Aguecheek (he's got curly hair too-must bethe humidity, blowed if it doesn't rain every day round here) and Orac-that's his name, the computer I mean-were having a stoup of canary-and-soma and a good old natter. Orac had a cracking tale about Supreme Commander Servalan and the Duke of Clarence in the Tower of London with malmsey up her butt....
Next thing you know, Avolio was there, with a black cloak to cast a pall of cheer over his usual outfit. "Could you make it a bit louder, d'you think?" he asked, with that sly way of his. "Perhaps you might draw the attention of three pursuit ships. This isn't a pleasure planet, you know. Some of us have to work."
"That's right, you have to work," Sir Olag said. "Art anything more than a steward?"
They glared at each other, but Sir Olag has some sort of gadget in his head that keeps him from duffing anybody up, and Avolio knew he wouldn't get any points from Rossino for dropping a flowerpot on Rossino's uncle's head, even or maybe specially if Rossino felt like doing that himself.
I poured another round but the party was spoiled. "Why'd he have to do that?" I said.
Orac piped up. "I know how to take that stuck-up time-server down a peg," it said. By that point I was sleepy, and I had morning watch, so I went off to bed.
There's a nice little spot up the hill, where you can sit down under a cool tree and have a snifter, and you'd probably see anybody who was invading, so it's as good a place to take watch as any. So there I was, when Avolio tiptoed out of the armory, looked all around him--but not up, else he might have seen me--and pulled a rolled-up printout out from stuck inside his shirt.
"'To the unknown beloved,'" he said--he was staring at the printout, so he was probably reading it. "That's Rossino's bar code," he said, to himself like. "And if he wrote poetry, it would be this bad..."
'Jove knows I love,
But who?
Lips, do not move,
No man must know.
I may adore where I command,
But silence, like a laser probe,
With bloodless stroke my heart doth rend,
V.I.O.A. doth spin my globe."
"He commands me," Avolio said. "Adore! I was adored once! And V.I.O.A....well, I'm sure that's Rossino's idea of a secure cipher. "
He went back to reading it. "In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness.
I can tell you're not averse to having greatness thrust upon you. If you want to please me, don't wear black. Do you know what would really suit you? Not black, but...green breeches, and a white tunic, and a red scarf." He shrugged, and unlatched his doublet a little--you could see there was a white shirt underneath. "And perhaps, after a few months, calling my officers about me, in my branched velvet gown--having come from a day-bed, where I have left Rossino sleeping...seven of my people, with an obedient start, will pack up that fat old git of an uncle of his and roll him in a laundry-basket down the hill..."
There was a rustling, and a kind of choking noise, in the shrubbery down below me.
Avolio rolled up the acetate again, and put it back inside his shirt, and walked away.
I started back down the hill, and there was more rustling, and Sir Olag and Sir Del popped out. "Shall this fellow live?" Sir Olag bellowed.
"What was all that about?" I asked.
"A device," he said. "A device that Orac has contrived. D'you know who wears green breaches and a white tunic and a red scarf?"
I shook my head. "The Reumillian Elite Guards," he said, with a sneer. "The last time Rossino was a guest of the Reumillian Elite Guards--well, let's just say they gave him something to remember them by."
Sir Del took a long pull from a stone bottle, started to pass it to me, then got his eyes to focus just long enough to see it was me. He grabbed me by the ruff. "Come out and fight like a man, you bitch!" he said. "Swords! Cudgels! Pistols at dawn!"
"What'd I do? I've got nothing against you."
"Stop beating my time with 'Livia," he said. "It's me she needs. I'm going to marry her," Sir Del said, with a villainous trick of his nether lip--he sort of pushes it out and squints up his eyes.
Not in this world you're not, I thought. Talk about one thing to her purpose nothing. "I'm not much for this dueling lark," I said. "And some gentleman you are, having a duel with a girl."
As it happened, he was standing right in front of the wall of the mess hall--it had The Ten Rebel Credos frescoed on the side of the wall. Number Four--he got out of the way specially--was "The Freedom Party advocates complete equality of the sexes."
"And, anyway, look at this get-up, I'd trip on it and be on my face in a minute."
"Then go beg a roundhose and pins to stick in it of that codpiece daughter Avalivia," Sir Olag said with a laugh that I didn't like the sound of at all. "She thinks she is accomplished with what she lacks."
"Dawn," Sir Del said, "In the orchard."
Then at dinner that night, Avolio--he's usually there before anybody, to fuss about with the trenchers and put short ends in the candlesticks instead of long ones and make sure nobody's brought in a cask of the good stuff instead of the small beer--anyway he was awfully late. Made an entrance, you might say. And made quite an impression on Rossino, who stood up on the dais and pointed and bellowed, "Traitor! Caitiff! The dungeon rot his bones!"
Give him credit, Avolio managed to give three blokes their work cut out for them dragging him off, till one of them cracked him over the bonce with a cudgel.
Took me a while to put two and two together. So it was what you might call a moral dilemma. Of course I couldn't embarrass Rossino by telling him that it'd all been a stupid practical joke right in front of everybody. So I took him aside and told him what was what. In the corner of the wardroom. After I signed off the night watch and went off to get a bit of kip.
ACT FIVE
I kept what you might call a low profile the next morning, hoping that they'd forget all about the duel or at least sober up and decide it wasn't the best idea. I was idly looking out my window when I saw Sir Del, looking like he'd had a right kicking, leaning on Sir Olag's shoulder. Sir Olag cast me a real basilisk look, but I couldn't see why, not like it was my fault.
Then next thing, my jaw dropped and the tears started in my eyes. I mean, there was my best cloak, if you didn't look too close you'd think that ermine was real, and my best velvet doublet. And inside 'em all my best sister. And alive. I ran out to the lawn, and Sebastienne ran up to me.
"Had your father a mole upon his brow?" she asked.
"Gawdsake, Bazzer," I said, ""Course he did. If you don't recognize me dragged up a bit, at least you could recognize the bodice, it's your own flamin' taffeta."
"This is the Space Captain who rescued me," she said, pointing out a great skinny tall geezer who looked a lot like Sir Del only with straight hair. Well, he hadn't been round here long. Funny, that, about captains...they seemed to pass 'em out pretty much One to a Customer.
Sir Del ran up to him and gave him a big hug. "Deeta!" he said. "We all wondered what'd become of you!"
And then Avalivia popped up, on a big white stallion that reared up just when Avalivia saw Bazzer. "Viola!" she yelled. "You're even cuter when you're all butched up!" Then she saw me, and climbed down off the horse to get it all sorted. "Bugger me!" she said cheerfully. "If that doesn't give you a perspective on being unnatural...well, bags I whichever one of you is the girl." I handed off Bazzer on her.
And just as everybody was feeling all happy, Avolio walked past, there'd be grooves in the lawn at this rate, carrying a portmanteau. "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you," he said, and stalked off. You could see us all thinking the same thing at once: not quite the life and soul of the party, but nobody ever said he wasn't clever, and even though the nearest Fed base was half a sector away, he could probably build a Galaxy Class cruiser out of an old broken lute and a couple of crisp packets. So this could be serious.
"Go after him and entreat him to a peace," Rossino said, and Captain Deeta and Sir Del bounded off in his direction. Avalivia and Bazzer went off somewheres, but I wouldn't take my oath it wasn't somewhere with a bed, or at least a patch of bluebells.
So that left me alone with Rossino. "I love you," I said. "Thing of it is, though, I'm not a girl. I can see how for some blokes that's a problem, and even if it isn't, they might say it was unfair not to be told straight off."
"Well, Viola--or whatever your name is" Rossino said, and I sort of mouthed "Vila" at him while he was talking, "I wouldn't mind seeing you in your shirt and hose, or even less. But if we will insist upon taking boys for women...perfection is vouchsafed to none."