The Stranger - Max Frei [245]
“Now is a good time to do some of those exercises I taught Max, Marilyn,” my companion advised me. “You shouldn’t get so upset about things that happened long ago, when we weren’t even there.”
“Words of wisdom!” I exclaimed, and threw myself into Lonli-Lokli’s breathing exercises.
In about ten minutes I was absolutely calm. The mysteries of an exciting new World were gradually being revealed, and this was a great boon. Nonetheless, I still thank fate that the wonderful revelations of my colleagues didn’t come down on me all at once.
“Mr. Abora Vala just sent me a call,” Lonli-Lokli said. “The caravan is going to stop for lunch now. You have behaved perfectly this morning, Marilyn. Try to keep it up. By the way, I have long wanted to remark that in doing his breathing exercises, Sir Max breathes just as sharply and unevenly as he speaks. You should do something about it.”
“All right, I’ll try,” I murmured. “Do I really speak so poorly?”
“Yes, of course, but it will pass in time. Let’s stop, Marilyn. Get ready to change the subject, all right?”
“Agreed. By the way, our Master Caravan Leader doesn’t have bad timing, either. I could eat a horse.”
“No, Marilyn: ‘I’m hungry as a horse,’ or, simply, ‘I’m famished.’ Mr. Vala has no sense of timing whatsoever. Our caravan leader just stops at the taverns whose proprietors pay him for delivering clients.”
I laughed.
“How do you know, Glamma?”
“I looked him in the eye when we met.”
“Oh, I see! Still, he stopped just on time. I’m very hungry.”
“Here we go, then,” said Shurf, and chivalrously helped me out of the amobiler.
The meal was nothing to write home about; for me, anyway. As a budding gourmet and the favorite pupil of Sir Kofa Yox, I wasn’t about to jump for joy at your average country cooking. But our traveling companions turned out to be ordinary, dull tavern philistines. I was surprised to realize that the wonderful new World I so adored was not perfect. I suppose the average inhabitants of all Worlds are rather lackluster. I wasn’t exactly dizzy with delight at the prospect of socializing with a large number of these good-natured, simple souls. But a journey is a journey, and even such annoyances as bad food and the uninspiring company of fellow travelers had its charms.
After lunch I persuaded Lonli-Lokli to let me drive the amobiler. He didn’t want to risk it at first; my common sense didn’t exactly fill Sir Shurf with confidence. But Lady Marilyn begged him so!
After an hour of crawling at a snail’s pace, I was rewarded.
“I would never have imagined that you could exercise such restraint,” Shurf said.
It occurred to me that this was the biggest compliment I had ever been paid before.
“Why are you so surprised, Glamma? If someone tells me ‘you mustn’t,’ I fully intend to heed the advice.”
“This isn’t merely about things one must or must not do. The amobiler moves at the speed its driver wishes it to, and our wishes are often at odds with necessity.”
“Really? Are you serious? Good golly! I had no idea.”
“You didn’t know?” asked Lonli-Lokli. “I was sure you were simply fulfilling your childhood dream of high-speed racing when you got behind the levers.”
“No! Up till now it just seemed to me that I wasn’t as cautious as other drivers, and pushed it to maximum speed.”
“Of course, that’s what I had in mind when I didn’t want to let you behind the levers. Only there’s no ‘maximum speed.’ It’s all a matter of the driver’s inner speedometer. I underestimated your self-control, however. I believe I owe you an apology.”
“You shouldn’t apologize, Glamma. That’s nonsense. So all this time I’ve been driving this jalopy, I didn’t know how it worked. I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!”
I sighed, and wiped the drops of perspiration from my forehead. Too much strange, new information for one day.
“The important thing is that you know how to drive it. And you can’t be an uncle, even a monkey’s. You keep forgetting who you are, my dear.”
We rode in silence until deep in the night.