snickered grimly. “Like I’m going to win in a wrestling match with ten tons of claws and teeth.”
“But the Vorpal sword can defeat the creature. It’s part of the game.”
“My what?” I asked stopping in my tracks. This was a crazy SupeR-G after all. Perhaps I had some power I hadn’t realized. “So how could I defeat the Jabberwocky?”
“Your Vorpal sword, there in the sheath at your side. It can defeat the beast.”
I gazed down at my belt and saw there was a sword of some sort on my left side. I grasped the ruby encrusted hilt, almost afraid of what I might be armed with. I drew the blade that gave a metallic ring as it was unsheathed.
The polished edge of the sword shimmered in the dim light, glistening as if it had a beam of sunlight trapped just beneath its surface. I tested its weight and balance. The blade hissed through the air, almost as if it were a living thing, with almost no effort on my part. If ever there was a magic blade, this is it.
“You see!” the Dormouse cried, jumping from the helmet and standing on its hind legs in the lush moss underfoot.
“It does seem… magical.”
“The Vorpal sword can defeat the Jabberwocky. And that is your job. To defeat the monster and save Alice.”
“You’ve seen this done before?”
“Well… No. But I’ve heard —”
“Does the phrase ‘fools live to fight another day’ mean anything to you?”
The Dormouse started to protest. But before I could re-sheath the sword and race away from the field of battle, I heard Alice’s distant scream.
I tried to ignore it. I tried to wrestle with my conscience and prevail.
But this time I could not. There was something about her, about a damsel in distress — or perhaps it was simply the programming of the game.
At any rate, I found myself turning toward her cries and hoped I would be more successful with the Jabberwocky than I had been in battling my heroic tendencies. I hurried down the path, feeling like a cow climbing the last ramp in a slaughterhouse.
Chapter 9
Jacque Thuriot de La Tribunat
My Emperor had rewarded me with a week’s vacation at his lunar getaway. I’m paid well, but not well enough to ever go to the Moon — except through the generosity of the state. This was my fifth such vacation, and I never tired of it.
I made the long, and thankfully uneventful, trip from Earth in just two hours and 25 minutes on a French-made hyperdrive shuttle. I begun my day in Paris; now I was bouncing along the lunar surface, my tired muscles feeling like they had new life in the low gravity.
I squinted at the distant horizon. The gray mountains jutted upward at steep angles, their surfaces almost dazzling in the raw sunlight, contrasting sharply to the bleak, colorless black of space. For a moment I realized how alien the place was, something I almost took for granted. “Funny how quickly the abnormal becomes the norm,” I mused.
“Pardon, Commander?” Durant asked, his voice crackling over the radio.
“The Moon,” I replied. “Its landscape seems almost — commonplace.”
“Only because you’ve spent some time away from Earth. It warps your esthetic tastes.”
I chuckled. “Perhaps so, my friend. Peut-être .” I glanced toward my space-suited companion whose grinning face was barely visible inside the silvered glass helmet. When I’d first visited the moon, it had been to escape the pressures of my job for a few days — and to get away from my now-divorced wife. But now I found myself coming back again and again, even though the emperor would have sent me to any spot on Earth, or perhaps even to Mars if I’d asked for such locales. The Moon had a pull I couldn’t understand. L’amour de la lune.
The Emperor maintained a less-than-modest apartment near the Voltaire Lunar observatory, allowing me to catch less expensive flights aboard government supply ships, a perk of my job and rank.
“Just three hours from now,” Durant said, breaking into my train of
“But the Vorpal sword can defeat the creature. It’s part of the game.”
“My what?” I asked stopping in my tracks. This was a crazy SupeR-G after all. Perhaps I had some power I hadn’t realized. “So how could I defeat the Jabberwocky?”
“Your Vorpal sword, there in the sheath at your side. It can defeat the beast.”
I gazed down at my belt and saw there was a sword of some sort on my left side. I grasped the ruby encrusted hilt, almost afraid of what I might be armed with. I drew the blade that gave a metallic ring as it was unsheathed.
The polished edge of the sword shimmered in the dim light, glistening as if it had a beam of sunlight trapped just beneath its surface. I tested its weight and balance. The blade hissed through the air, almost as if it were a living thing, with almost no effort on my part. If ever there was a magic blade, this is it.
“You see!” the Dormouse cried, jumping from the helmet and standing on its hind legs in the lush moss underfoot.
“It does seem… magical.”
“The Vorpal sword can defeat the Jabberwocky. And that is your job. To defeat the monster and save Alice.”
“You’ve seen this done before?”
“Well… No. But I’ve heard —”
“Does the phrase ‘fools live to fight another day’ mean anything to you?”
The Dormouse started to protest. But before I could re-sheath the sword and race away from the field of battle, I heard Alice’s distant scream.
I tried to ignore it. I tried to wrestle with my conscience and prevail.
But this time I could not. There was something about her, about a damsel in distress — or perhaps it was simply the programming of the game.
At any rate, I found myself turning toward her cries and hoped I would be more successful with the Jabberwocky than I had been in battling my heroic tendencies. I hurried down the path, feeling like a cow climbing the last ramp in a slaughterhouse.
Chapter 9
Jacque Thuriot de La Tribunat
My Emperor had rewarded me with a week’s vacation at his lunar getaway. I’m paid well, but not well enough to ever go to the Moon — except through the generosity of the state. This was my fifth such vacation, and I never tired of it.
I made the long, and thankfully uneventful, trip from Earth in just two hours and 25 minutes on a French-made hyperdrive shuttle. I begun my day in Paris; now I was bouncing along the lunar surface, my tired muscles feeling like they had new life in the low gravity.
I squinted at the distant horizon. The gray mountains jutted upward at steep angles, their surfaces almost dazzling in the raw sunlight, contrasting sharply to the bleak, colorless black of space. For a moment I realized how alien the place was, something I almost took for granted. “Funny how quickly the abnormal becomes the norm,” I mused.
“Pardon, Commander?” Durant asked, his voice crackling over the radio.
“The Moon,” I replied. “Its landscape seems almost — commonplace.”
“Only because you’ve spent some time away from Earth. It warps your esthetic tastes.”
I chuckled. “Perhaps so, my friend. Peut-être .” I glanced toward my space-suited companion whose grinning face was barely visible inside the silvered glass helmet. When I’d first visited the moon, it had been to escape the pressures of my job for a few days — and to get away from my now-divorced wife. But now I found myself coming back again and again, even though the emperor would have sent me to any spot on Earth, or perhaps even to Mars if I’d asked for such locales. The Moon had a pull I couldn’t understand. L’amour de la lune.
The Emperor maintained a less-than-modest apartment near the Voltaire Lunar observatory, allowing me to catch less expensive flights aboard government supply ships, a perk of my job and rank.
“Just three hours from now,” Durant said, breaking into my train of
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