Alice, smiling—was there some malice in it?—introduced Burton and Star Spoon. Burton shook his hand and said, at the same time that Maglenna did, “We’ve met.”
They talked for a few minutes, recalling their old acquaintanceship while the line of people waiting to greet the hostess or be introduced grew longer, and then Burton said, “I say, Alice, how did you know of him?”
“Oh, I met Monty in 1872 when I was twenty years old and he was thirty, at a ball given by the earl of Perth. We danced together quite a few times …”
“Did we ever,” Monteith said.
“… and I saw him several times after that. Then he went off to the States, where he came close to dying, an outlaw shot him, quite accidentally, though, and he did not return until 1880. By then, I was married.”
“I was unable to keep up our correspondence,” Maglenna said. “I did write her about my disability, but my letter never got to her. And so …”
Some androids, at a signal from Alice, picked up the chairs in which Burton and Star Spoon had arrived and carried them across the field to the east end. It would have been quicker and more efficient for them to have flown the chairs to the parking area, but Alice had not had the time or had not wished to take the time to program them to operate the chairs.
Burton listened as Alice told Star Spoon in detail how grief-stricken she had been when she had believed that Maglenna had lost interest in her. Partway through her story, he decided that he had heard more than enough of that. He excused himself and wandered around until Star Spoon rejoined him.
“Did you know about Mr. Maglenna?” she said.
“No!” he said savagely. “She never mentioned him in all the many years that she.was with me!”
“It’s very fortunate that they’ve finally been reunited. Just think, if it weren’t for you, they would have never found each other.”
She was smiling as if she were very pleased. Was that because Alice was happy? Or, unhappy creature that she was, did Star Spoon get satisfaction from knowing that he was anything but glad about Maglenna? Some people were so abysmally wretched that their only joy was that others also suffered.
31
They took a ride on the rollercoaster, but Star Spoon got sick during the up-and-down-and-arounding and threw up in the seat. The android operating the ride called two others to clean up thei mess after Burton had told him to do so.
“You seem even more nervous today,” Burton said.
“It’s all those strange creatures,” she said, waving her hand.
She was not; of course, familiar with the beings with which Carroll had populated the Alice books and which the real Alice had brought to life. They made her uneasy, because she had not been conditioned to them through the books. What made her especially nervous was the Jabberwock, which looked exactly like Tenniel’s illustration. Its scaly body was that of an attenuated dragon, and it had leathery dragon wings, but the exceedingly long and relatively thin neck, and the narrow face, which looked like a very evil old man’s, and the absurdly long toes of the front paws made it like no other dragon in myth, legend or fictional literature. It was huge, its head reaching to thirteen feet when it stood upright. The Jabberwock, however, did not venture upon the field but prowled around within a confined area under a gigantic oak, its long tail always lashing.
“It frightens me,” Star Spoon said.
“You know that it’s been programmed not to hurt anybody.”
“Yes, I know. But what if something went wrong in it? Look at those terrible teeth. It has only four, two above and two below, but think what those teeth could do if they bit down on you.”
“You need a drink,” he said, and he steered her toward a table. The androids serving there were a Fish-Footman, a Frog-Footman and a White Rabbit. The former two wore the eighteenth-century garments and white powdered wigs Tenniel had portrayed. The White Rabbit had pink eyes, a stiff white collar, a cravat, a checked coat and a waistcoat. A gold chain inserted by a stud into a buttonhole in his waistcoat was attached at the other end to a large watch in a pocket of the waistcoat. From time to time, the White Rabbit took the watch out and looked at it.
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