“To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.”

—Charles Bukowski

“Opening a can of sardines can be art.”

—Charles Bukowski, later that day

“Why, I have a marvelous suggestion!” Von Schmidt announced excitedly, returning from his conference with the servants. “I’ve been longing for guests of taste and outstanding erudition to share my conservatory and private collection with for quite a while now. Gentlemen, ladies, please do follow me!”

“I say! It’s a jolly fine idea indeed!” the scaly professor concurred. “Such a distraction would go a prodigious way toward taking our hearts away from this unpleasantness. Right ho!”

“I come here to make business, not look at stuffed aliens, but all right,” the Russian agreed. “Still, cannot be as good as Kunstkamera in Sankt Peterburg. Kunstkamera best collection of freaks in the universe.”

“Well, if everyone must have their say on the matter, I object to caging animals for entertainment,” the Princess said, “but given my present state, I imagine a protest would be taken somewhat ironically. However, I would like to ask, if my opinion has any weight at all in this house, that Calzoni’s unfortunate companions be taken good care of. Their present condition is unseemly.”

“Madam, this is not irony, merely a humorous coincidence. Irony would be you seeking to acquire one of the caged animals,” Jean said with a condescending smile.

No, the Princess thought, irony would be two royal marines ironing the smugness out of you two.

Von Schmidt looked at the dazed girls. “Don’t worry about the poor dears, they will be taken good care of.”

One Jean chuckled, giving the Princess an uneasy feeling.

“You mean—” the Princess started.

“Given comfortable accommodation and advanced medical care,” Von Schmidt said. “Cruelty toward one’s inferiors is admittance of one’s own insignificance.”

As they were speaking, the footmen were already busy removing the unsuccessful bidders from the walls, floor, and even ceiling of the banquet hall. Two remarkably similar housemaids stepped seemingly out of nowhere and gently half-led and half-carried the girls outside. Drones would have been much more effective, but a true nobleman makes sure he is served by humans—anything else would be loss of decorum and the gateway to the most embarrassing gossip. Drones, efficient, but lacking in style, were for the bourgeois, who were really nothing more than proletariat with too much money on their hands.

As the Princess suspected, the method by which the assembled party left the room was highly unorthodox and needlessly extravagant. The gravity field shifted gradually as the ceiling opened to allow the confused guests to slowly drift upward into a lavish exhibition hall. The hall was coldly elegant, being composed of obsidian, dim LEDs, and countless glass cases. As soon as the party reached the other floor, the gravity returned to standard level and the ceiling closed, becoming a new floor and sparing them the confusion of subjective gravitation.

How the footmen remained on the banquet floor was a mystery. Her first guess was magnetic boots, but this wouldn’t explain why their hair didn’t stand up or pockets turn inside out. Her second guess was extremely localized application of the Jodorowsky principle, but this would be too extravagant even for Von Schmidt, as well as in contradiction with established natural law.

Her contemplation was interrupted by loud and scaly clapping. “I say!” Professor York shouted in a booming voice halfway between bass and trumpet. “That is the most dashed remarkable thing I’ve ever seen, and I do happen to have wings and take constitutionals in hard vacuum. Herr Von Schmidt, my sincerest compliments! You have truly outdone yourself tonight, old fish! Why, I’m absolutely pipped.”

“Is really amazing, yes,” young Ivanov affirmed. “Is more useful than Princess to Russian people. Many live on small planets, weak gravity make their bones weak, their muscle degenerate.”

The Princess found the Russian’s dismissal of her worth as a commodity oddly disheartening. She was, after all, the most desirable bachelorette on Terra according to the Marquis Marcel de La Bourdonnais’s popular les amendes le plus excellents, and rather enjoyed the attention that came with the meaningless title, notwithstanding the power and wealth that came from her actual title. This sentiment reminded her of Grand Capitalist William Okana of the Outrageous Merchant Guild, who told at dinner about his fateful trip to Sinii IV, of which he was the sole survivor. The natives, who were of the man-eating variety, had consumed all crew members, but shooed Okana away on account of his diseased appearance. She still remembered his lamenting tone as he complained, “My skin condition isn’t that bad, is it?”

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Looking around, however, the Princess had to admit that the tabloids didn’t do Von Schmidt’s gallery justice, neither in scope, nor in opulence. Since no ready means of escape presented themselves for her exploitation, she decided to enjoy Von Schmidt’s legendary collection of curiosities, which, even at a glance, offered alien articles from the farthest reaches of space, the horror vacui as it were, as well as historical artifacts from old Terra and bizarre oddities from Mars and Neptune.

The display cases appeared to be made of common glass, a base material only used by Chinese warlords to execute traitors and defamers of the Son of Heaven and by poor people to make windows. Finding it hard to believe that a man such as Von Schmidt would resort to such vulgarity, the Princess decided to keep a safe distance from the cases, at least until she managed to trip someone into one of them to assess their true nature and capabilities.

The first item to catch her eye was the collector’s edition of the great Russian cosmonaut Count Kir Strugatsky’s Zvjezdnyii Pute, a vivid account, too vivid according to the tzarskaya academia, of the Admiral’s five-year mission of exploration into the Kuiper Belt. However, what made this tome a prized possession was not its contents, but its exquisite delivery—a six-foot-tall and several miles long scroll, with life-sized, hand-drawn images of various alien flora and fauna. These included the controversial post-surrealist depiction of a rozovoi warlord by Sir Jeremy Cermak-Baryshnikov, whose honorary titles were stripped and artistic license revoked following the publication of this drawing and the ensuing diplomatic scandal.

Opposite the Zvjezdnyii Pute was the rozovoi parody, Explorations of Human Space, a True Account. This vicious satire of humanity was published as an archaic hardbook describing human planets and habits in the most unflattering terms. The book’s most fascinating feature was its ability to somehow recognize the holder’s native tongue and automatically translate itself into this language, deliberately employing poor grammar and hard-to-read fonts. According to Von Schmidt, this book delivered the most fascinating performance when it was handled by readers of the canine persuasion.

The next stand included the last work of the great artist Sir William Shaquille Yamamoto. Despite being one of the most prized works of this paradigm-shifting visionary, those without extensive art education, such as was the Princess’s privilege, could have easily mistaken it for a roll of used toilet paper. This masterpiece of conceptual art was originally a commentary on humanity’s wasteful nature and the obsessive need to soil any pristine surface and render it unusable for future generations. However, its message became obsolete with the introduction of nanotechnology. Namely, humanity was still flawed, but it no longer employed toilet paper.

“Mon ami, I expected better from you,” Jean said, passing two copies of the banned mystical works He Kaine Diatheke and Biblia Hebraica. “This is so … bourgeois.”

“Why, you have me all wrong, my beautiful friends. I have no atavistic sentimentalities. I am tempted to believe in God for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.”

After these, and several other literary and artistic masterpieces, Von Schmidt picked up a box made of carved camel bone and brass. “When opened, the box hands you a cigar and lights it with an artificial metal hand,” he said, and offered each guest the opportunity to check the truth of his claim. All but the Jeans politely refused. Von Schmidt helped himself to a cigar as well.

“Do enjoy the cigars, my dear friends, and do keep in mind that each one costs more than what you make in a year.” Von Schmidt smiled an innocent smile of easy superiority and walked quickly to a large holding cell inside which was a nude human couple, a young woman and a slightly older man, both sickly pale and malnourished. The man was smoking a pipe and reading the famous Second Constitution era American adaptation of Dostoevsky, Disruptive Antisocial Behavior and Adequate Corrective Response. The young woman was rather unceremoniously attending to an itch on a fraction of her anatomy that will not be mentioned on account of its discussion constituting disruptive antisocial behavior that would inevitably lead to an adequate corrective response, something that any writer of prudence cares to avoid.

Both young woman and older man appeared oblivious to the small crowd of onlookers. This led the Princess to suspect the glass case was a two-way mirror. She looked at the other guests, their reactions ranging from mild blushes to predatory grins. For her part, the Princess felt quite incensed and somewhat embarrassed. She’d never actually seen a naked man before and was frankly somewhat underwhelmed.

“What is the meaning of this shameful display, Von Schmidt?! I’ve known you to be a scoundrel and an eccentric, but I never imagined you to be a deviant as well!” she heard herself saying, forgetting that she had enough troubles of her own.

All eyes turned to Von Schmidt.