Post by icebear on Feb 19, 2010 13:15:42 GMT -5
A story about time travel from bearfabrique, originally published in the Fantek/Gateway's journal in the early 90s:
bearfabrique.org/Fairytales/d38
38-Double-D's
(A Mississippi Baptist in Harun Ar Rashid's Harem)
As has been noted elsewhere, the lifespans of star-bears are
vastly greater than ours; a 200 year voyage into the cosmos is
to them as a trip to the corner grocery store is to us, more or
less. The transport systems which they use move at just under
the speed of light through the voids of deep space. Beyond
that, they are capable of moving about rather freely in
localized space-time environments, that is to say, that within a
period of roughly 1500 years and an area of roughly
10 million of our miles, they posess the capabilities of
teleportation and time-travel.
They use these capabilities only upon arrival at some
destination and then as little as at all possible, since the
experiences give them headaches and other nasty side effects.
They regard such technologies as a last resort, to be used when
something they feel they must observe gets missed due to the
impreciseness involved in traveling the distances which they do.
Nonetheless, a number of the portals required for such dealings
were set up on this planet in prehistoric times, and three of
these were still functional as recently as 1946. One such
portal was located near old man Reynold's farm on the outskirts
of Ourtown, Mississippi, in a wooded area near the little town's
softball field.
A goodly number of the inhabitants of Ourtown had then recently
returned from far corners of the earth and from the great war,
and were in the process of settling down to a normal life; this
number included the Baptist minister, Wilbur Q. Muffin.
Wilburque (pronounced like 'barbeque') as he was called, had
served as a chaplain and, since the islands on which he had
served were undermanned, as an occasional anti-aircraft gunner.
Having thus disposed of Tojo, he was settling back into the
comfortable routine of dealing with the lesser villians of the
world (such as Satan), and into his normal pursuits of sin
(which he sought to eradicate), and softball.
Sin had waxed mightily in the world during the war years, and
required Wilburque's constant attention; cola drinks were being
sold by machines of all things, and these were popping up
everywhere. The automobile, formerly a perogative for the
well-to-do, was becoming a source of sin for middle class
people. Boogie-woogie music was everywhere, and people had been
DANCING everywhere since the war ended. In fact, on the evening
our story begins, Wilburque had had so trying a day dealing with
sin and people seeking to escape from it, that he had had no
time to change into athletic clothes and had barely made it to
the ballpark at all. To the amusement of the other
participants, he was warming up in the dugout still dressed like
Elmer Gantry.
In fact, Wilburque was a genuinely good outfielder and a better
hitter. For all the ribbing he took, he was to Ourtown what the
Babe had been to New York. The only problem arose when Ourtown
played Friendlyville and, as fate would have it, this was the
case. This was a coed league, and the problem had something to
do with the Friendlyville pitching staff. Patty Campbell was at
least five-eleven, possibly even six feet tall, mindbendingly
pretty, with dark brown hair and auborn streaks, and REALLY
strong. The ball was coming in fast, and with a lot of action
on it. And there was something else you noticed about Pattie.
"That girl could toss you over her shoulder an' carry you off,
Wilburque!" shouted Hank Gardner, Ourtown's pharmacist.
"That's right, Wilburque, them's 38-double-d's. A baptist don't
see that too often!" This from the hardware store owner,
Billy-Ray Jessup.
Wilburque stepped up to the plate. It had been almost 100
degrees during the hot part of the day, and it hadn't cooled off
that terribly much. Real softball uniforms were still scarce;
Patty had her summer WAC uniform on with the top button undone.
The beads of sweat which stood on her forehead and cheeks only
heightened the impression of classical form and grace. Sweat
was also causing the WAC blouse to cling to the 38-double-d's
somewhat.
"Billy-Ray could be wrong..." thought Wilburque to himself;
"Those could be 38-TRIPLE-d's! Look at how they turn with her
arm as she releases the ball!!"
"STRIKE ONE!" yelled the umpire.
"Snap out of it, Wilburque!!!" yelled Jesse Turner. "You've hit
harder pitchin' than that!!"
"Jus' watch the ball, boy, the BALL!" shouted old Ed Hargus,
the Ourtown coach.
"Come on Wilbur, calm down, just concentrate on the ball!"
thought Wilburque to himself. "There's enough sin in the world
without you gettin' involved in it... Almost any girl you'd
ever see with tits like that would be top-heavy, but she's not,
and nothing seems to sag anywhere at all... like a Greek
statue."
"STRIKE TWO! shouted the umpire.
"There's gotta be some way to get this guy to watchin' the ball
'stead of my tits!" thought Patty. "Maybe the ol'... DAMN!"
Patty's hand was sweaty and she knew the ball had gotten away
from her no sooner had she released it.
"You're OUT!!!" shouted the ump, and in fact Wilburque WAS
out... cold.
An appropriate fuss was made over Wilburque and he was led to
the bench to recouperate; the injury was not calamitous. For
the pourpose of unusual events, however, the evening was just
getting started. Patty was flustered, and was letting up on her
fast ball just a tad. The next batter, Bubba Kyler, hit a hard
liner past the first baseman and, before the right fielder could
make a move on it or even collect his wits and react, two of old
man Reynold's young hounds bolted onto the field, one of them
snagged the ball, and they made off into the woods with their
trophy.
This brought the game to a temporary halt. For whatever reason,
a spare ball was not to be found, and the players and a number
of the spectators set off in pursuit of the miscriant pups. In
his dazed state, Wilburque got to thinking he was being left out
of something and set off after the others.
Wilburque hadn't been in the woods three minutes before he
stumbled onto the kind of a twisting path which only a Baptist
minister would find. The path led into a really dense area of
growth and then disappeared, and it seemed to Wilburque that he
heard hounds baying further on into this strange area. In fact
Wilburque thought he was hearing a kind of a far-off howling,
like the sound of a storm moving in on the South Pacific.
Following the strange sound, he proceeded further into the
tangle of vines and saplings and underbrush into a strand of
really old trees when, suddenly, there was a brilliant flash of
orange light, and then everything went dark again.
Boring jobs increase in number as you go backwards in time.
There is no shortage of boring jobs now. There were lots and
lots of boring jobs in 1945 and 1946; being a chaplain on a
Pacific island, for instance. In the year 780 AD, in the hill
country of Northern Iraq, there was a job which was boring
beyond anything which our age has to offer; guarding the portal
of the star- bears. Absolutely nothing had happened there for
over 800 years, and yet Harun Ar-Rashid Ibn Muhammed Al-Mahdi
Ibn Al-Mansur Al-Abassi wanted it guarded. Harun Ar-Rashid, of
course, was the Caliph and the familiar figure from "1001
Arabian Nights" and, at the time, was occupied in a campaign
against the Byzantines.
Ali Ibn Muhammed and Kareem Ibn Muhammed had been guarding the
star-bear portal for 43 stultifying days when the portal lit up
and Wilburque, still dazed, stumbled through. "Allah moves in
mysterious ways..." mumbled Ali. "I had prayed for something to
break up the monotony of this accursed place and you, my friend,
are not entirely what I had in mind, but I guess you shall have
to do..." They tied Wilburque to a spare horse and rode
post-haste into Baghdad to the sargeant of the guards who, not
knowing what to make of Wilburque, escorted them to the captain
of the guards, then to the minister of lost persons, to the
adjutant in charge of unusually strange-looking foreigners,
through several other layers of beurocracy and, finally, to the
grand vizier Yahya himself.
"In the name of Allah the merciful, the beneficent, the
compassionate, the Lord of mankind, may Allah strike me dead if
I lie, we were faithfully guarding the portal of the star-bears
when this goofy-looking sucker stumbled through. As Allah is my
judge, he is from the dominions of the star-bears, my lord."
"So must he be!" exclaimed Yahya. "Verily, I have seen much of
the world, from the border lands between India and Khitai to the
dominions of the Greeks, and I have never seen anybody like this
person. Surely he is not of our world!"
"Surely you know that he may not be harmed, my lord." said the
captain of the guard. "The star- bears will come for him; we
must find some way to occupy his time until they do."
"He is quite obviously not a star-bear..." said the grand
vizier, "nor is he from any land which we have knowledge of, and
we cannot know for a certainty what business the star-bears
might have with him, but we CAN make a fairly good guess as to
what manner of person he is and his customary occupation;
anybody that goofy looking has to be a eunuch!"
"Good eunuchs are getting to be hard to find these days." said
the interior minister, Maxmoud Ibn Said Ibn Muhammed, also in
attendence. "We've had ads up all over the city for months now,
and hardly a taker. I'll tell you what; give him to me, and I
shall set him to work as a masseur in the Lord Caliph's harem
for the time being and, when the star-bears come for him, inform
me and they shall have him. Meanwhile, he would be better were
he to sleep for a day or so; he has had a nasty blow to the
head. Have the physician see to it."
Thus it happened, that when Wilburque finally recovered from the
concussion and began to come around, it was to the murmer and
gossip and happy laughter and chitter-chatter of what sounded
like some sort of a womens' convention. "Ah!" thought
Wilburque, "the Womens' Christian Temperence Union, God bless
em, I must have stumbled into one of their meetings!"
Wilburque opened his eyes. "Uh, this isn't the WCTU..." he
mumbled. He was in what appeared to be a truly grandiose
version of a Turkish bath, with marble columns supporting an
arched roof with glass skylights, and hanging gardens. The
floor and walls, where such were to be seen, were of marble
tile, and this somehow or other heated from underneath.
Numerous little pools and bathing areas abounded within the
strange compound, and were partitioned one from the other with
silken hangings of various sorts and decorative dividers of
wonderous art, seemingly of gold and silver. Wilburque was in
what appeared to be a scene from Scherherezade, or 1001 Arabian
Nights, and he had no way of knowing that was precisely what he
had stumbled into. There were more women than Wilburque had
ever seen in one place before, and these of every possible sort.
There were women with every color of hair and of complexion,
European women, tall African girls, dark-haired beauties from
China and Korea. There were tall ones, short ones, leans ones,
(pleasingly) plump ones, women in their mid thirties and even
one or two who appeared to be in their early forties, girls who
appeared no older than 14 (the Caliph didn't have to sweat
whether or not that was legal), and all ages in between. The
ugliest one would have won beauty contests in 30 of the 48
states (there were 48 in 1946) and, to say that these were
seductively or scantily clad would have been understating the
situation.
Attire in the particular womens' convention at which Wilburque
found himself appeared to consist mostly or gold and silver
chains and ornaments, bracelets, earrings, silk of varying
degrees of translucence, and sandals. There was a murmer of
excitement as the denizens of this strange gathering noted that
their new guest had rejoined the living; laughter and blushes
as Wilburque's astounded gaze fell on one and then another and
another of them, a few winks and knowing smiles, and one merry
little blonde somehow got up the nerve to rush up and pinch
Wilburque's derrierre, and then ran squeeling and laughing back
into the crowd.
"Yipe!" thought Wilburque out loud, "how did she do that
through that suit?" And then Wilburque noticed that he was no
longer wearing the suit. He was, in fact, wearing green sandals
which curled upwards at the toes, and orange and purple
pantaloons of a billowy and opaque material, and a kind of a
vest of green silk. Wilburque blushed.
"I don't suppose it would do any good to ask if anybody here
speaks English?" he queeried. No takers. The mixture of
languages which wilburque was hearing was strange enough to
convince him that nothing from hiw school days was going to help
much, unless... "Wait a minute, here!" he thought; "I'm a
baptist minster and a bible scholar of sorts, and that means I
probably ought to speak Greek... "Milaei kaneis edw Ellhniks;"
he asked. There were several takers on this one (Byzantine
captives), and two of these stepped forward, introducing
themselves as Anna and Elena.
"Before any of this started happening, I was at a softball game
at Ourtown Mississippi." Wilburque began. "If I didn't know
better, I might think that I was seeing some sort of a large
scale violation of the laws of physics..."
"That is the main specialty of the star-bears, or at least so we
have been told." replied Anna. "The interior minister's
lackeys brought you here in a dazed condition and told us that
you were a eunuch; we couldn't help but notice that that does
not appear to be entirely the case.." giggled Elena, blushing.
"There will be hell to pay when the Caliph returns!"
"Caliph??" started Wilburque.
"Harun Ar-Rashid Ibn Muhammed Al-Mahdi Ibn Al-Mansur Al-Abassi,
the lord Caliph." Replied Anna, "...the big boss." He is
involved in a military campaign against against the Byzantines
at the present, and is expected back in about four months."
"What exactly is this place then? Where am I??" queeried
Wilburque. He was beginning to guess where he was, but he
somehow continued to hope that either the Friendlyville pitching
staff or some other women's group with which he was familiar,
was somehow simply treating him to some sort of an elaborate
practical joke. Such was not the case.
"Why, Wilburque, you are where every man on this earth dreams of
being, and would kill and die to get to!" replied Elena. "You
are in the harem of Harun Ar-Rashid Ibn Muhammed Al-Mahdi Ibn
Al-Mansur Al-Abassi, the world's most fabulous garden of
pleasure and delights!!"
"Garden of unbelievable mind-numbing boredom!" interjected Anna.
"Those clowns guarding the star-bear portal think they have a
boring job, but they were only there for 45 days and you
stumbled through. The last time Harun Ar-Rashid was through
here was a year and a half ago and Allah alone knows when he
might return, and even when he is around, each of our chances of
getting anything out of it are around one in 300."
"I take it there are 300 of you here." said Wilburque. "I would
have figured being a wife or concubine of the Caliph was an
honor of sorts; any of you would win beauty pageants where I
come from. That brings up a kind of a sore subject... I've got
to get back to Mississippi before much longer..."
"Allow me to explain our world to you a little, Wilburque."
replied Elena. "Being here is our punishment for being too
pretty. An ugly girl can learn to cook or sew and lead a
reasonable enough life, a pretty girl can become a warrior's
wife, but a too pretty girl is good only for starting fights and
blood fueds amongst the young war-lords of the various clans.
This the Caliph cannot permit; such fueds would weaken his
kingdom and lay it open to invasion from the barbarous hordes to
the North and East. Therefore, girls such as ourselves are
traditionally given to the Caliph as wives and concubines. We
are going out of our minds... We shall contrive to return you
to Mississippi before the Caliph returns, but you are going to
have to help us with several of our problems first."
"What do you have in mind?" queeried Wilburque.
"I would assume, that even in a place such as Mississippi you
would have heard or read of the labors of Herakles." replied
Elena. "We have in mind to set three tasks for you and, if you
perform them faithfully and well, we shall return you to the
star-bear portal and to Mississippi. The chiefest obstacle to
our finding any means to alleviate boredom here is that asshole
grand vizier Yahya, who watches us from secret vantages at
unpredictable hours. We may not think of killing him, for the
Caliph in all likelihood would replace him with one worse, but
we must bring him down several notches. This is your first
labor, Wilburque!"
"This is the same person who decided that I was a eunuch? asked
Wilburque.
Anna and Elena nodded assent.
Wilburque smiled for the first time since his arrival in
Baghdad, a sort of a devious Baptist minister's kind of a smile.
"When and under what circumstances do you or anybody here ever
come in contact with him?
"Mostly at various state functions." replied Anna. "For
instance, this Thursday, there will be a dinner for the Indian
ambassador, and several of us will be in attendance as dancers
and serving girls."
"Do you have access to a competant alchemist, or a scholar
learned in the properties of the various minerals of the earth?
"The university retains several such." replied Elena. "We would
assume they were as susceptable to bribes and intrigues as most
men. We have messengers who we can send on such errands should
need arise."
Wilburque had served in the most concentrated and concerted
military effort in all of history. All who had served had
stories to tell, and more than a few of these were wondrous and
exotic. A cousin of Wilburque's had served in the OSS, a
precurser to the present CIA, and had told Wilburque the
following story: that occasionally Americans had needed to
replace some Japanese or German official with one of their own
spies for a day or two, and that squirt-guns and chemical
solutions had been devised for this. The German official would
be made to smell like human waste for several days (during which
he would hide in shame while the American look-alike assumed his
place). The OSS figured that a Japanese official having
suffered the same fate would merely be assumed to have been
working in his rice paddy; no big deal. They figured, however,
that the average Japanese had never heard of or seen skunks...
Wilburque and two Arab scholars reconstructed formula B of the
above over the next two days, and when the evening of the dinner
for the ambassador arrived, they were ready. They in fact
improved on the basic idea of OSS eau-de-pole-cat; they
concocted the mixture in binary form, using part A to stuff figs
with, part B, dates. Elena and three Turkish girls served as
dancers at the occasion, and they so contrived that Yahya was in
the only spot with ready access to both figs AND dates, other
guests being served other items, and the horror went down in
grand style, with guests, servants, and all others fleeing in
all directions. All in court were convinced that Yahya was a
victim of blackest and vilest sorcery.
The celebration in the harem lasted into the early afternoon.
"In this land, there must be locales in which black, thick oil
and oily substances bubble to the earth's surface from the
depths below." said Wilburque.
"Indeed that is so... why?" queried Anna, still giggling.
"I expect somebody from the court to ask advice concerning the
grand vizier. I shall require a large barrel of the blackest
and stickiest of such substances to be found, and about ten
chickens."
"You shall have them!" replied Elena. "Wilburque, we honestly
had no idea as to what manner of man you might be at first, but
we are beginning to suspect that you might be a Mullah or a
priest of some sort... would that be a reasonable guess?"
Wilburque nodded.
"There nonetheless appears to be more than that to you somehow."
said Elena. "You appear to somehow surpass normal priests and
mullahs in experience."
The mullahs in fact did turn to the strange visitor from
star-bear dominions for advice regarding the unfortunate Yahya,
and Wilburque affected considerable shock and dismay upon
hearing the conditions of the grand vizier's plight. All were
of a mind that demonic possession was the only rational
explaination for what had transpired; Wilburque admitted to
having beheld that particular sort of deviltry once previously
in his wanderings, in the islands beyond Khitai.
"This is the work of none other than the Grand Etherial Demon
'Oki-Fenokee'." said Wilburque in a very matter-of-fact tone, an
utter dead-pan expression on his face. "The vile smell will
subside in two or three days, but it will choose its own times
to return, UNLESS the proper ritual is performed."
"If you could but tell us what this ritual might consist of, we
pray thee..."
"The ritual will seem surpassing strange, but you must bear in
mind that the sorcery you describe and the demon which brought
it about are from strange lands. Strange lands have strange
customs and rituals."
The following morning, the grand vizier was to be seen seated in
a chair atop a 20' pole which had been planted in the ground in
the center of the bazaar. He was dressed entirely in tar and
chicken feathers, and was chanting the following ritual chant:
"I'm a cranky old Yank, in a clanky old tank, on the streets of
Yokahama with my Honalulu mama, singin the beat-oh, beat-oh,
flat on my seat-oh, Hiro-hito blues..."
"Without that asshole Yahya to watch over us..." Elena was
saying, "it is now possible that we might devise some means of
amusing ourselves and overcoming the boredom of this place.
What we have in mind is this, Wilburque. When the guards
brought you to us, you were covered with sweat and dust, and you
had in your possession a leather-covered ball, which had some
animal's tooth marks on it. At first a few of us believed that
you had arrived from some sort of a battle, but then the reality
of the situation dawned upon us. You had been involved in some
grand sort of a sport, had you not?"
"Softball!" replied Wilburque. "A sacrament of the Baptist
church!"
"I KNEW it! chimed in Anna. "We have taken the liberty of
having our clothiers produce a fairly large number of uniforms
entirely like the one which you had on, and which you apparently
wear to play this 'softball' in..." Wilburque could see that
the women who were beginning to gather around Anna were dressed
entirely like Baptist ministers... white pin-stripe shirts and
ties, dark grey suits, and the entire nine yards: a kind of a
Tom Landry chick. "Your second labor, Wilburque, is going to be
to teach us all to play 'softball'".
With Yahya out of the way, this was in fact possible. Wilburque
simply announced that this was the real purpose for which the
star-bears had sent him to Baghdad, and the lackeys now in
charge did not have the brains or the mental toughness to
question the edict. A rudimentary ballfield was constructed in
a park area adjacent to the harem, Louisville sluggers began to
roll off of arrow lathes, chain-mail armourers provided the
necessary cages and fences, and while beer was not feasible in a
Moslem nation, hotdogs began to proliferate. Spring training
began in earnest and, after about three weeks, there were nine
fairly believable teams. Aside from the harem women, other
eunuchs and assorted lackeys and beurocrats joined in, and a
co-ed league was established.
"Do you spend most of your time in Mississippi playing softball,
Wilburque?" Anna asked.
"Not really. Softball is a sort of a hobby or passtime with us.
My main job in life is to eradicate sin, although it's getting
harder every day just to keep track of what sin amounts to, much
less eradicate it. I would have figured life would have gotten
simpler once the war was over, but it hasn't happened..."
"Do you mean a war against the Byzantines or Romans, or a war
with nomad tribes? queeried Anna.
"This was a war so gigantic that it engulfed the whole world."
replied Wilburque. "My people won it and a minister like myself
would like to think that was because God was on our side, but
the sorry truth is we won it because the other side tried to
fight it according to warrior codes and we conducted the war as
if it were a business operation. I've been trying to figure out
what sort of a moral to get out of that, and I can't come up
with anything."
'I cannot easily picture a war that vast, but I will tell you
the moral of that tale, assuming it is true." said Elena. The
one "sin" which Allah punishes most predictably and most
ruthlessly is stupidity, and it sounds as if your opponents were
guilty of that and were punished for it. But, Wilburque, you
must certainly know that you cannot eradicate sin. The world
would cease to function altogether... sin is to everyday
affairs as grease is to wagon wheels. Besides, even if you were
to magically somehow eliminate sin from the world, what would
you do for a living the next day? Become a eunuch in your
little town in Mississippi?"
"I never really thought about that." replied Wilburque. "Are
you telling me that I'd have to reinvent sin myself the next
morning just to keep my job?"
"That would have to beat the WPA." said Anna. "What we are
trying to work our way around to does not concern gigantic sins
such as wars, but just ordinary little sins, such as women
favor. You will recall that we said we told you we would set
three tasks for you to complete before we returned you to
Mississippi? You have fulfilled the first two admirably, and we
now need to explain the third and final task we mentioned..."
"Quite aside from being a mullah" said Elena, "you appear to be
a man of vast experience. What do you know about lust, and raw
passion, and hot dates and things of that sort?"
"Those are pretty serious sins." replied Wilburque. "That
could get you into a lot of trouble..."
"The trouble which we are experiencing with these things"
replied Anna, "is that it has been two years since any of us
have had any of them. That's how long that asshole Caliph has
been out on his goof campaign against the Byzantines, and for
all we know, he may decide to become a Byzantine and stay there."
"You, Wilburque, are going to have to correct this vast
miscarriage of justice and public policy!" said Elena."
"You can't possibly mean..."
"Ah, but I am afraid we do, Wilburque. There are worse things
which might happen to somebody in your position."
"You mean just you and Anna...??"
"Oh, but certainly not, Wilburque... we mean everybody: the
blonds and the brunettes, and the tall ones, and the short ones,
and the thin ones and the stocky ones, and the forty-year-olds
and the fourteen-year-olds, and..."
"But I'm a minster! I'd certainly go to hell for that!!"
"That is hypothetical, Wilburque." replied Anna. "There is
nothing hypothetical about what would happen were the Caliph to
return and find you here. For sure, you'd not have to pretend
to be a eunuch!"
"Ouch!" thought wilburque out loud. "You must understand,
however, that I am a minister... I've never been married, and I
really have had no experience with women at all..."
"That is no problem!" giggled Elena. "We shall teach you; when
you leave here, you shall know at least as much about women as
the Caliph Harun Ar-Rashid Ibn Muhammed Al-Mahdi Ibn Al-Mansur
Al-Abassi himself!"
"Which isn't saying much..." said Anna, "but it's a start."
"How much time do we have for all of this??" queried Wilburque.
"The Caliph is due back in about four months." said Anna.
"One condition..." said Wilburque.
"And what might that be?"
"No dancing."
"Agreed!"
Four months later, Harun Ar-Rashid Ibn Muhammed Al-Mahdi Ibn
Al-Mansur Al-Abassi was arriving in Baghdad. "I'LL BE A SON OF
A BITCH" he shrieked. I can't even go out on a simple
god-damned war for two lousy years anymore without this place
falling apart!!! What's that asshole Yahya doing
tarred-and-feathered like that and singing that Hoagy Carmichael
boogie; and what the hell are all of those crazy women doing
over there in that field. What the hell is this!!??"
"It is the will of the star-bears, Lord. A representative of
theirs instructed the women in softball, and their will cannot
be denied. You might learn the game by observing..."
At about the same time, sort of, and again attired in the
remnants of his minister suit, Wilburque found himself facing a
creature with glossy, dark brown fur, and the creature was
laughing at him.
"You can relax, I don't eat Baptist ministers, I eat fish...
here, want some?"
"No I'm fine, I just need to get back to Ourtown Mississippi,
June 8, 1946, somewhere around 6 PM. I don't suppose there's
any chance..."
"You've been leading a kind of a rugged life down there!"
smirked the star-bear. "My bosses might consider adding a
Baptist minister to our collections, but I suspect we've already
got enough sex maniacs... I'll see what I can do."
Wilburque stumbled back through the star-bear portal, through
the tangle of ancient trees, and into the arms of Patty
Campbell.
"My God!" exclaimed Patty. "We'd just about given up
searching... we were afraid something really bad might have
happened to you... you poor little bear! What in the world,
where on earth did you get those green shoes??!"
"I'm all right now." replied Wilburque, noticing the green
slippers which still curled up at the toes. "I guess my own
shoes must have gotten ruined and the leprechauns gave me these;
here, I'll toss them back for them." Wilburque actually took
the slippers off and tossed them back into the thicket.
"That'll be one less thing to have to explain!"
Wilburque and Patty were quite alone; other searchers had
wandered far afield, trying to cover as much area as possible.
"You know, I'll be damned if I'm going to go through life
worrying about having your blood on my hands because you can't
concentrate on the ball while I'm pitching!" said Patty. "Here!
let's get the curiosity over with..." and, suiting action to
words in front of the astonished Wilburque, she unbuttoned the
WAC blouse and removed it, and then undid the 38-double-D bra
and took it off.
"There are those who might say" said Patty, "that a Baptist
minister wouldn't know what to do with a pair of
38-double-D's..."
"And four months ago, they'd have been right." replied
Wilburque.
"But the funny thing is, that I've had a sort of a crash course
since then, and if all you need is somebody who knows what to do with 38-double D's..."
"Oh my GOODNESS, Wilburque!!! I guess I said that to the wrong
person!! Oh MY...!!!"
FINIS
bearfabrique.org/Fairytales/d38
38-Double-D's
(A Mississippi Baptist in Harun Ar Rashid's Harem)
As has been noted elsewhere, the lifespans of star-bears are
vastly greater than ours; a 200 year voyage into the cosmos is
to them as a trip to the corner grocery store is to us, more or
less. The transport systems which they use move at just under
the speed of light through the voids of deep space. Beyond
that, they are capable of moving about rather freely in
localized space-time environments, that is to say, that within a
period of roughly 1500 years and an area of roughly
10 million of our miles, they posess the capabilities of
teleportation and time-travel.
They use these capabilities only upon arrival at some
destination and then as little as at all possible, since the
experiences give them headaches and other nasty side effects.
They regard such technologies as a last resort, to be used when
something they feel they must observe gets missed due to the
impreciseness involved in traveling the distances which they do.
Nonetheless, a number of the portals required for such dealings
were set up on this planet in prehistoric times, and three of
these were still functional as recently as 1946. One such
portal was located near old man Reynold's farm on the outskirts
of Ourtown, Mississippi, in a wooded area near the little town's
softball field.
A goodly number of the inhabitants of Ourtown had then recently
returned from far corners of the earth and from the great war,
and were in the process of settling down to a normal life; this
number included the Baptist minister, Wilbur Q. Muffin.
Wilburque (pronounced like 'barbeque') as he was called, had
served as a chaplain and, since the islands on which he had
served were undermanned, as an occasional anti-aircraft gunner.
Having thus disposed of Tojo, he was settling back into the
comfortable routine of dealing with the lesser villians of the
world (such as Satan), and into his normal pursuits of sin
(which he sought to eradicate), and softball.
Sin had waxed mightily in the world during the war years, and
required Wilburque's constant attention; cola drinks were being
sold by machines of all things, and these were popping up
everywhere. The automobile, formerly a perogative for the
well-to-do, was becoming a source of sin for middle class
people. Boogie-woogie music was everywhere, and people had been
DANCING everywhere since the war ended. In fact, on the evening
our story begins, Wilburque had had so trying a day dealing with
sin and people seeking to escape from it, that he had had no
time to change into athletic clothes and had barely made it to
the ballpark at all. To the amusement of the other
participants, he was warming up in the dugout still dressed like
Elmer Gantry.
In fact, Wilburque was a genuinely good outfielder and a better
hitter. For all the ribbing he took, he was to Ourtown what the
Babe had been to New York. The only problem arose when Ourtown
played Friendlyville and, as fate would have it, this was the
case. This was a coed league, and the problem had something to
do with the Friendlyville pitching staff. Patty Campbell was at
least five-eleven, possibly even six feet tall, mindbendingly
pretty, with dark brown hair and auborn streaks, and REALLY
strong. The ball was coming in fast, and with a lot of action
on it. And there was something else you noticed about Pattie.
"That girl could toss you over her shoulder an' carry you off,
Wilburque!" shouted Hank Gardner, Ourtown's pharmacist.
"That's right, Wilburque, them's 38-double-d's. A baptist don't
see that too often!" This from the hardware store owner,
Billy-Ray Jessup.
Wilburque stepped up to the plate. It had been almost 100
degrees during the hot part of the day, and it hadn't cooled off
that terribly much. Real softball uniforms were still scarce;
Patty had her summer WAC uniform on with the top button undone.
The beads of sweat which stood on her forehead and cheeks only
heightened the impression of classical form and grace. Sweat
was also causing the WAC blouse to cling to the 38-double-d's
somewhat.
"Billy-Ray could be wrong..." thought Wilburque to himself;
"Those could be 38-TRIPLE-d's! Look at how they turn with her
arm as she releases the ball!!"
"STRIKE ONE!" yelled the umpire.
"Snap out of it, Wilburque!!!" yelled Jesse Turner. "You've hit
harder pitchin' than that!!"
"Jus' watch the ball, boy, the BALL!" shouted old Ed Hargus,
the Ourtown coach.
"Come on Wilbur, calm down, just concentrate on the ball!"
thought Wilburque to himself. "There's enough sin in the world
without you gettin' involved in it... Almost any girl you'd
ever see with tits like that would be top-heavy, but she's not,
and nothing seems to sag anywhere at all... like a Greek
statue."
"STRIKE TWO! shouted the umpire.
"There's gotta be some way to get this guy to watchin' the ball
'stead of my tits!" thought Patty. "Maybe the ol'... DAMN!"
Patty's hand was sweaty and she knew the ball had gotten away
from her no sooner had she released it.
"You're OUT!!!" shouted the ump, and in fact Wilburque WAS
out... cold.
An appropriate fuss was made over Wilburque and he was led to
the bench to recouperate; the injury was not calamitous. For
the pourpose of unusual events, however, the evening was just
getting started. Patty was flustered, and was letting up on her
fast ball just a tad. The next batter, Bubba Kyler, hit a hard
liner past the first baseman and, before the right fielder could
make a move on it or even collect his wits and react, two of old
man Reynold's young hounds bolted onto the field, one of them
snagged the ball, and they made off into the woods with their
trophy.
This brought the game to a temporary halt. For whatever reason,
a spare ball was not to be found, and the players and a number
of the spectators set off in pursuit of the miscriant pups. In
his dazed state, Wilburque got to thinking he was being left out
of something and set off after the others.
Wilburque hadn't been in the woods three minutes before he
stumbled onto the kind of a twisting path which only a Baptist
minister would find. The path led into a really dense area of
growth and then disappeared, and it seemed to Wilburque that he
heard hounds baying further on into this strange area. In fact
Wilburque thought he was hearing a kind of a far-off howling,
like the sound of a storm moving in on the South Pacific.
Following the strange sound, he proceeded further into the
tangle of vines and saplings and underbrush into a strand of
really old trees when, suddenly, there was a brilliant flash of
orange light, and then everything went dark again.
Boring jobs increase in number as you go backwards in time.
There is no shortage of boring jobs now. There were lots and
lots of boring jobs in 1945 and 1946; being a chaplain on a
Pacific island, for instance. In the year 780 AD, in the hill
country of Northern Iraq, there was a job which was boring
beyond anything which our age has to offer; guarding the portal
of the star- bears. Absolutely nothing had happened there for
over 800 years, and yet Harun Ar-Rashid Ibn Muhammed Al-Mahdi
Ibn Al-Mansur Al-Abassi wanted it guarded. Harun Ar-Rashid, of
course, was the Caliph and the familiar figure from "1001
Arabian Nights" and, at the time, was occupied in a campaign
against the Byzantines.
Ali Ibn Muhammed and Kareem Ibn Muhammed had been guarding the
star-bear portal for 43 stultifying days when the portal lit up
and Wilburque, still dazed, stumbled through. "Allah moves in
mysterious ways..." mumbled Ali. "I had prayed for something to
break up the monotony of this accursed place and you, my friend,
are not entirely what I had in mind, but I guess you shall have
to do..." They tied Wilburque to a spare horse and rode
post-haste into Baghdad to the sargeant of the guards who, not
knowing what to make of Wilburque, escorted them to the captain
of the guards, then to the minister of lost persons, to the
adjutant in charge of unusually strange-looking foreigners,
through several other layers of beurocracy and, finally, to the
grand vizier Yahya himself.
"In the name of Allah the merciful, the beneficent, the
compassionate, the Lord of mankind, may Allah strike me dead if
I lie, we were faithfully guarding the portal of the star-bears
when this goofy-looking sucker stumbled through. As Allah is my
judge, he is from the dominions of the star-bears, my lord."
"So must he be!" exclaimed Yahya. "Verily, I have seen much of
the world, from the border lands between India and Khitai to the
dominions of the Greeks, and I have never seen anybody like this
person. Surely he is not of our world!"
"Surely you know that he may not be harmed, my lord." said the
captain of the guard. "The star- bears will come for him; we
must find some way to occupy his time until they do."
"He is quite obviously not a star-bear..." said the grand
vizier, "nor is he from any land which we have knowledge of, and
we cannot know for a certainty what business the star-bears
might have with him, but we CAN make a fairly good guess as to
what manner of person he is and his customary occupation;
anybody that goofy looking has to be a eunuch!"
"Good eunuchs are getting to be hard to find these days." said
the interior minister, Maxmoud Ibn Said Ibn Muhammed, also in
attendence. "We've had ads up all over the city for months now,
and hardly a taker. I'll tell you what; give him to me, and I
shall set him to work as a masseur in the Lord Caliph's harem
for the time being and, when the star-bears come for him, inform
me and they shall have him. Meanwhile, he would be better were
he to sleep for a day or so; he has had a nasty blow to the
head. Have the physician see to it."
Thus it happened, that when Wilburque finally recovered from the
concussion and began to come around, it was to the murmer and
gossip and happy laughter and chitter-chatter of what sounded
like some sort of a womens' convention. "Ah!" thought
Wilburque, "the Womens' Christian Temperence Union, God bless
em, I must have stumbled into one of their meetings!"
Wilburque opened his eyes. "Uh, this isn't the WCTU..." he
mumbled. He was in what appeared to be a truly grandiose
version of a Turkish bath, with marble columns supporting an
arched roof with glass skylights, and hanging gardens. The
floor and walls, where such were to be seen, were of marble
tile, and this somehow or other heated from underneath.
Numerous little pools and bathing areas abounded within the
strange compound, and were partitioned one from the other with
silken hangings of various sorts and decorative dividers of
wonderous art, seemingly of gold and silver. Wilburque was in
what appeared to be a scene from Scherherezade, or 1001 Arabian
Nights, and he had no way of knowing that was precisely what he
had stumbled into. There were more women than Wilburque had
ever seen in one place before, and these of every possible sort.
There were women with every color of hair and of complexion,
European women, tall African girls, dark-haired beauties from
China and Korea. There were tall ones, short ones, leans ones,
(pleasingly) plump ones, women in their mid thirties and even
one or two who appeared to be in their early forties, girls who
appeared no older than 14 (the Caliph didn't have to sweat
whether or not that was legal), and all ages in between. The
ugliest one would have won beauty contests in 30 of the 48
states (there were 48 in 1946) and, to say that these were
seductively or scantily clad would have been understating the
situation.
Attire in the particular womens' convention at which Wilburque
found himself appeared to consist mostly or gold and silver
chains and ornaments, bracelets, earrings, silk of varying
degrees of translucence, and sandals. There was a murmer of
excitement as the denizens of this strange gathering noted that
their new guest had rejoined the living; laughter and blushes
as Wilburque's astounded gaze fell on one and then another and
another of them, a few winks and knowing smiles, and one merry
little blonde somehow got up the nerve to rush up and pinch
Wilburque's derrierre, and then ran squeeling and laughing back
into the crowd.
"Yipe!" thought Wilburque out loud, "how did she do that
through that suit?" And then Wilburque noticed that he was no
longer wearing the suit. He was, in fact, wearing green sandals
which curled upwards at the toes, and orange and purple
pantaloons of a billowy and opaque material, and a kind of a
vest of green silk. Wilburque blushed.
"I don't suppose it would do any good to ask if anybody here
speaks English?" he queeried. No takers. The mixture of
languages which wilburque was hearing was strange enough to
convince him that nothing from hiw school days was going to help
much, unless... "Wait a minute, here!" he thought; "I'm a
baptist minster and a bible scholar of sorts, and that means I
probably ought to speak Greek... "Milaei kaneis edw Ellhniks;"
he asked. There were several takers on this one (Byzantine
captives), and two of these stepped forward, introducing
themselves as Anna and Elena.
"Before any of this started happening, I was at a softball game
at Ourtown Mississippi." Wilburque began. "If I didn't know
better, I might think that I was seeing some sort of a large
scale violation of the laws of physics..."
"That is the main specialty of the star-bears, or at least so we
have been told." replied Anna. "The interior minister's
lackeys brought you here in a dazed condition and told us that
you were a eunuch; we couldn't help but notice that that does
not appear to be entirely the case.." giggled Elena, blushing.
"There will be hell to pay when the Caliph returns!"
"Caliph??" started Wilburque.
"Harun Ar-Rashid Ibn Muhammed Al-Mahdi Ibn Al-Mansur Al-Abassi,
the lord Caliph." Replied Anna, "...the big boss." He is
involved in a military campaign against against the Byzantines
at the present, and is expected back in about four months."
"What exactly is this place then? Where am I??" queeried
Wilburque. He was beginning to guess where he was, but he
somehow continued to hope that either the Friendlyville pitching
staff or some other women's group with which he was familiar,
was somehow simply treating him to some sort of an elaborate
practical joke. Such was not the case.
"Why, Wilburque, you are where every man on this earth dreams of
being, and would kill and die to get to!" replied Elena. "You
are in the harem of Harun Ar-Rashid Ibn Muhammed Al-Mahdi Ibn
Al-Mansur Al-Abassi, the world's most fabulous garden of
pleasure and delights!!"
"Garden of unbelievable mind-numbing boredom!" interjected Anna.
"Those clowns guarding the star-bear portal think they have a
boring job, but they were only there for 45 days and you
stumbled through. The last time Harun Ar-Rashid was through
here was a year and a half ago and Allah alone knows when he
might return, and even when he is around, each of our chances of
getting anything out of it are around one in 300."
"I take it there are 300 of you here." said Wilburque. "I would
have figured being a wife or concubine of the Caliph was an
honor of sorts; any of you would win beauty pageants where I
come from. That brings up a kind of a sore subject... I've got
to get back to Mississippi before much longer..."
"Allow me to explain our world to you a little, Wilburque."
replied Elena. "Being here is our punishment for being too
pretty. An ugly girl can learn to cook or sew and lead a
reasonable enough life, a pretty girl can become a warrior's
wife, but a too pretty girl is good only for starting fights and
blood fueds amongst the young war-lords of the various clans.
This the Caliph cannot permit; such fueds would weaken his
kingdom and lay it open to invasion from the barbarous hordes to
the North and East. Therefore, girls such as ourselves are
traditionally given to the Caliph as wives and concubines. We
are going out of our minds... We shall contrive to return you
to Mississippi before the Caliph returns, but you are going to
have to help us with several of our problems first."
"What do you have in mind?" queeried Wilburque.
"I would assume, that even in a place such as Mississippi you
would have heard or read of the labors of Herakles." replied
Elena. "We have in mind to set three tasks for you and, if you
perform them faithfully and well, we shall return you to the
star-bear portal and to Mississippi. The chiefest obstacle to
our finding any means to alleviate boredom here is that asshole
grand vizier Yahya, who watches us from secret vantages at
unpredictable hours. We may not think of killing him, for the
Caliph in all likelihood would replace him with one worse, but
we must bring him down several notches. This is your first
labor, Wilburque!"
"This is the same person who decided that I was a eunuch? asked
Wilburque.
Anna and Elena nodded assent.
Wilburque smiled for the first time since his arrival in
Baghdad, a sort of a devious Baptist minister's kind of a smile.
"When and under what circumstances do you or anybody here ever
come in contact with him?
"Mostly at various state functions." replied Anna. "For
instance, this Thursday, there will be a dinner for the Indian
ambassador, and several of us will be in attendance as dancers
and serving girls."
"Do you have access to a competant alchemist, or a scholar
learned in the properties of the various minerals of the earth?
"The university retains several such." replied Elena. "We would
assume they were as susceptable to bribes and intrigues as most
men. We have messengers who we can send on such errands should
need arise."
Wilburque had served in the most concentrated and concerted
military effort in all of history. All who had served had
stories to tell, and more than a few of these were wondrous and
exotic. A cousin of Wilburque's had served in the OSS, a
precurser to the present CIA, and had told Wilburque the
following story: that occasionally Americans had needed to
replace some Japanese or German official with one of their own
spies for a day or two, and that squirt-guns and chemical
solutions had been devised for this. The German official would
be made to smell like human waste for several days (during which
he would hide in shame while the American look-alike assumed his
place). The OSS figured that a Japanese official having
suffered the same fate would merely be assumed to have been
working in his rice paddy; no big deal. They figured, however,
that the average Japanese had never heard of or seen skunks...
Wilburque and two Arab scholars reconstructed formula B of the
above over the next two days, and when the evening of the dinner
for the ambassador arrived, they were ready. They in fact
improved on the basic idea of OSS eau-de-pole-cat; they
concocted the mixture in binary form, using part A to stuff figs
with, part B, dates. Elena and three Turkish girls served as
dancers at the occasion, and they so contrived that Yahya was in
the only spot with ready access to both figs AND dates, other
guests being served other items, and the horror went down in
grand style, with guests, servants, and all others fleeing in
all directions. All in court were convinced that Yahya was a
victim of blackest and vilest sorcery.
The celebration in the harem lasted into the early afternoon.
"In this land, there must be locales in which black, thick oil
and oily substances bubble to the earth's surface from the
depths below." said Wilburque.
"Indeed that is so... why?" queried Anna, still giggling.
"I expect somebody from the court to ask advice concerning the
grand vizier. I shall require a large barrel of the blackest
and stickiest of such substances to be found, and about ten
chickens."
"You shall have them!" replied Elena. "Wilburque, we honestly
had no idea as to what manner of man you might be at first, but
we are beginning to suspect that you might be a Mullah or a
priest of some sort... would that be a reasonable guess?"
Wilburque nodded.
"There nonetheless appears to be more than that to you somehow."
said Elena. "You appear to somehow surpass normal priests and
mullahs in experience."
The mullahs in fact did turn to the strange visitor from
star-bear dominions for advice regarding the unfortunate Yahya,
and Wilburque affected considerable shock and dismay upon
hearing the conditions of the grand vizier's plight. All were
of a mind that demonic possession was the only rational
explaination for what had transpired; Wilburque admitted to
having beheld that particular sort of deviltry once previously
in his wanderings, in the islands beyond Khitai.
"This is the work of none other than the Grand Etherial Demon
'Oki-Fenokee'." said Wilburque in a very matter-of-fact tone, an
utter dead-pan expression on his face. "The vile smell will
subside in two or three days, but it will choose its own times
to return, UNLESS the proper ritual is performed."
"If you could but tell us what this ritual might consist of, we
pray thee..."
"The ritual will seem surpassing strange, but you must bear in
mind that the sorcery you describe and the demon which brought
it about are from strange lands. Strange lands have strange
customs and rituals."
The following morning, the grand vizier was to be seen seated in
a chair atop a 20' pole which had been planted in the ground in
the center of the bazaar. He was dressed entirely in tar and
chicken feathers, and was chanting the following ritual chant:
"I'm a cranky old Yank, in a clanky old tank, on the streets of
Yokahama with my Honalulu mama, singin the beat-oh, beat-oh,
flat on my seat-oh, Hiro-hito blues..."
"Without that asshole Yahya to watch over us..." Elena was
saying, "it is now possible that we might devise some means of
amusing ourselves and overcoming the boredom of this place.
What we have in mind is this, Wilburque. When the guards
brought you to us, you were covered with sweat and dust, and you
had in your possession a leather-covered ball, which had some
animal's tooth marks on it. At first a few of us believed that
you had arrived from some sort of a battle, but then the reality
of the situation dawned upon us. You had been involved in some
grand sort of a sport, had you not?"
"Softball!" replied Wilburque. "A sacrament of the Baptist
church!"
"I KNEW it! chimed in Anna. "We have taken the liberty of
having our clothiers produce a fairly large number of uniforms
entirely like the one which you had on, and which you apparently
wear to play this 'softball' in..." Wilburque could see that
the women who were beginning to gather around Anna were dressed
entirely like Baptist ministers... white pin-stripe shirts and
ties, dark grey suits, and the entire nine yards: a kind of a
Tom Landry chick. "Your second labor, Wilburque, is going to be
to teach us all to play 'softball'".
With Yahya out of the way, this was in fact possible. Wilburque
simply announced that this was the real purpose for which the
star-bears had sent him to Baghdad, and the lackeys now in
charge did not have the brains or the mental toughness to
question the edict. A rudimentary ballfield was constructed in
a park area adjacent to the harem, Louisville sluggers began to
roll off of arrow lathes, chain-mail armourers provided the
necessary cages and fences, and while beer was not feasible in a
Moslem nation, hotdogs began to proliferate. Spring training
began in earnest and, after about three weeks, there were nine
fairly believable teams. Aside from the harem women, other
eunuchs and assorted lackeys and beurocrats joined in, and a
co-ed league was established.
"Do you spend most of your time in Mississippi playing softball,
Wilburque?" Anna asked.
"Not really. Softball is a sort of a hobby or passtime with us.
My main job in life is to eradicate sin, although it's getting
harder every day just to keep track of what sin amounts to, much
less eradicate it. I would have figured life would have gotten
simpler once the war was over, but it hasn't happened..."
"Do you mean a war against the Byzantines or Romans, or a war
with nomad tribes? queeried Anna.
"This was a war so gigantic that it engulfed the whole world."
replied Wilburque. "My people won it and a minister like myself
would like to think that was because God was on our side, but
the sorry truth is we won it because the other side tried to
fight it according to warrior codes and we conducted the war as
if it were a business operation. I've been trying to figure out
what sort of a moral to get out of that, and I can't come up
with anything."
'I cannot easily picture a war that vast, but I will tell you
the moral of that tale, assuming it is true." said Elena. The
one "sin" which Allah punishes most predictably and most
ruthlessly is stupidity, and it sounds as if your opponents were
guilty of that and were punished for it. But, Wilburque, you
must certainly know that you cannot eradicate sin. The world
would cease to function altogether... sin is to everyday
affairs as grease is to wagon wheels. Besides, even if you were
to magically somehow eliminate sin from the world, what would
you do for a living the next day? Become a eunuch in your
little town in Mississippi?"
"I never really thought about that." replied Wilburque. "Are
you telling me that I'd have to reinvent sin myself the next
morning just to keep my job?"
"That would have to beat the WPA." said Anna. "What we are
trying to work our way around to does not concern gigantic sins
such as wars, but just ordinary little sins, such as women
favor. You will recall that we said we told you we would set
three tasks for you to complete before we returned you to
Mississippi? You have fulfilled the first two admirably, and we
now need to explain the third and final task we mentioned..."
"Quite aside from being a mullah" said Elena, "you appear to be
a man of vast experience. What do you know about lust, and raw
passion, and hot dates and things of that sort?"
"Those are pretty serious sins." replied Wilburque. "That
could get you into a lot of trouble..."
"The trouble which we are experiencing with these things"
replied Anna, "is that it has been two years since any of us
have had any of them. That's how long that asshole Caliph has
been out on his goof campaign against the Byzantines, and for
all we know, he may decide to become a Byzantine and stay there."
"You, Wilburque, are going to have to correct this vast
miscarriage of justice and public policy!" said Elena."
"You can't possibly mean..."
"Ah, but I am afraid we do, Wilburque. There are worse things
which might happen to somebody in your position."
"You mean just you and Anna...??"
"Oh, but certainly not, Wilburque... we mean everybody: the
blonds and the brunettes, and the tall ones, and the short ones,
and the thin ones and the stocky ones, and the forty-year-olds
and the fourteen-year-olds, and..."
"But I'm a minster! I'd certainly go to hell for that!!"
"That is hypothetical, Wilburque." replied Anna. "There is
nothing hypothetical about what would happen were the Caliph to
return and find you here. For sure, you'd not have to pretend
to be a eunuch!"
"Ouch!" thought wilburque out loud. "You must understand,
however, that I am a minister... I've never been married, and I
really have had no experience with women at all..."
"That is no problem!" giggled Elena. "We shall teach you; when
you leave here, you shall know at least as much about women as
the Caliph Harun Ar-Rashid Ibn Muhammed Al-Mahdi Ibn Al-Mansur
Al-Abassi himself!"
"Which isn't saying much..." said Anna, "but it's a start."
"How much time do we have for all of this??" queried Wilburque.
"The Caliph is due back in about four months." said Anna.
"One condition..." said Wilburque.
"And what might that be?"
"No dancing."
"Agreed!"
Four months later, Harun Ar-Rashid Ibn Muhammed Al-Mahdi Ibn
Al-Mansur Al-Abassi was arriving in Baghdad. "I'LL BE A SON OF
A BITCH" he shrieked. I can't even go out on a simple
god-damned war for two lousy years anymore without this place
falling apart!!! What's that asshole Yahya doing
tarred-and-feathered like that and singing that Hoagy Carmichael
boogie; and what the hell are all of those crazy women doing
over there in that field. What the hell is this!!??"
"It is the will of the star-bears, Lord. A representative of
theirs instructed the women in softball, and their will cannot
be denied. You might learn the game by observing..."
At about the same time, sort of, and again attired in the
remnants of his minister suit, Wilburque found himself facing a
creature with glossy, dark brown fur, and the creature was
laughing at him.
"You can relax, I don't eat Baptist ministers, I eat fish...
here, want some?"
"No I'm fine, I just need to get back to Ourtown Mississippi,
June 8, 1946, somewhere around 6 PM. I don't suppose there's
any chance..."
"You've been leading a kind of a rugged life down there!"
smirked the star-bear. "My bosses might consider adding a
Baptist minister to our collections, but I suspect we've already
got enough sex maniacs... I'll see what I can do."
Wilburque stumbled back through the star-bear portal, through
the tangle of ancient trees, and into the arms of Patty
Campbell.
"My God!" exclaimed Patty. "We'd just about given up
searching... we were afraid something really bad might have
happened to you... you poor little bear! What in the world,
where on earth did you get those green shoes??!"
"I'm all right now." replied Wilburque, noticing the green
slippers which still curled up at the toes. "I guess my own
shoes must have gotten ruined and the leprechauns gave me these;
here, I'll toss them back for them." Wilburque actually took
the slippers off and tossed them back into the thicket.
"That'll be one less thing to have to explain!"
Wilburque and Patty were quite alone; other searchers had
wandered far afield, trying to cover as much area as possible.
"You know, I'll be damned if I'm going to go through life
worrying about having your blood on my hands because you can't
concentrate on the ball while I'm pitching!" said Patty. "Here!
let's get the curiosity over with..." and, suiting action to
words in front of the astonished Wilburque, she unbuttoned the
WAC blouse and removed it, and then undid the 38-double-D bra
and took it off.
"There are those who might say" said Patty, "that a Baptist
minister wouldn't know what to do with a pair of
38-double-D's..."
"And four months ago, they'd have been right." replied
Wilburque.
"But the funny thing is, that I've had a sort of a crash course
since then, and if all you need is somebody who knows what to do with 38-double D's..."
"Oh my GOODNESS, Wilburque!!! I guess I said that to the wrong
person!! Oh MY...!!!"
FINIS
