Ellison Wonderland

Donnough’s front breezeway were 2/Lt. and Mrs. Wayne M’Kuba Massaro.

“Come on in, come on in, “ Bill chuckled at them. “Yo’s in the kitch fixing dinner. Here, Lotus, let me have your hood.”

He took the brightly-tinted hood and cape offered by the girl, a striking Melanesian with an upturned Irish nose and flaming red hair.

He accepted Wayne Massaro’s service cap in the other hand and stuck the apparel to the rack, which turned into the wall, holding the clothing magnetically.

“What’ll you have, Wayne, Lotus?”

Lotus raised a hand to signify none for her, but Wayne Massaro made a T with his hands. He wanted a tea- ball with a shot of herro-coke.

When Bill had jiggered the mixture together, warmed it and chilled it again, when they settled down in the formfit chairs, Donnough looked across at the other lieutenant and sighed. “Well, how’d it go your first day up there?”

Massaro frowned deeply.

Lotus broke in before her husband could answer. “Well, if you two are going to talk shop, I’m going in to see if Yo needs help; “ She got up, smoothed the sheath across her thighs, and walked into the kitchen.

“She’ll never get used to my making the war a career,” Wayne Massaro shook his head in affectionate exasperation. “She just can’t understand it. “

“She’ll get used to it,” Bill replied, sipping his own hiskotch. “Lotus still has a lot of that Irish blood in her… Yo was the same way when I came in.”

“It’s so different, Bill So very different. What they taught us in the Academy doesn’t seem quite true up there. I mean—” he struggled to form the right phrase, “—it’s not that they’re going against doctrine…it’s just that things aren’t black and white up there—as they said they’d be when I was in the Academy—they’re grey now. They don’t start the morning bombardments on time, they drink coff when they should be posting, and—and—” He stopped abruptly, and a hardness came into the set of his head. He jerked quickly, and bent to his drink.

“N-nothing,” he murmured, principally to himself.

Donnough looked disturbed.

“What happened, Wayne? You flinch-out when the barrage came over?”

Massaro lifted his eyes in a shocked and startled expression. “You aren’t kidding, are you?”

Donnough leaned back further, and the formfit closed about him like a womb. “No, I suppose I wasn’t. I know you better than that, known you too long.”

There was a great deal of respect and friendship in his words. Each man sat silently, holding his drink to his lips. as a barricade to conversation for the moment. Filtered memories of shared boyhoods came to them, and talk was not right at that moment.

Then Massaro lowered the glass and said, “That jato raid came off pretty badly didn’t it?” The subject had been altered.

Donnough nodded ruefully, “Yeah, wouldn’t you know it. Oh, hell, it was all the fault of that gravel- brained Colonel Levinson. He didn’t even send over a force battery cover. It was suicide. But then, what the hell, that’s what they’re paid for.”

Massaro agreed silently and took a final pull at the tea-laced highball. “Uh. Good. More, daddy, morel” Donnough waved a hand at the circle-dial of the robot bartender set into the recreation unit against the wan.

“Dial away, brother frat man. I’m too comfortable to move.”

A gaggle of female giggles erupted from the kitchen, and Yolande Donnough’s voice came through the grille in the ceiling. “Okay you two heroes…dinner’s on. Let’s go.” Then: “Bill, will you call the kids from downstairs?

“Okay, Yo.”

Bill Donnough walked to the dropshaft at one corner of the living room, and slid his fingernail across the grille set into the wall beside the empty pit. Downstairs, in the lower levels of the house—sunk fifty feet into the Earth—the Donnough children heard the rasp over their own speakers, and waited for their father’s words.

“Chow’s on, monsters. Updecks on the double!”

The children came tumbling from their rooms and the play area, and threw themselves into the sucking force of the invisible riser-beam that lived in the dropshaft. In a second they were whisked up the shaft and stepped out in the living room:

First came Polly with her golden braids tied atop her round little head in the Swedish style. Her hands were clean. Then Bartholemew-Aaron, whose nose was running again, and whose sleeves showed it. Verushka came next, her little face frozen with tears, for Toby had bitten her calf on the way upshaft; then Toby himself, clutching his side where Verushka had kicked him in reflex.

Donnough shook his head in mock severity, and slapped Polly on the behind as he urged them to the table for dinner. “Go on you beasts, roust!”

All but Verushka, the children ran laughing to the dining hall which ran parallel to the tiled front hall of the house. Dark-haired Verushka clung to her daddy’s hand and walked slowly with him. “Daddy, are you goin’ to the moon tomorra’?”

“That’s right, baby. Why?”

“Cause Stacy Garmonde down the block says her old ma—”

“Father, not old man!” he corrected her.

“—her father’s gonna shoot you good tomorra’. He says all Blacks is bad, and he’s gonna shoot you dead. Tha’s what Stacy says, an’ she’s a big old stink!”

Donnough stopped walking and kneeled beside the wide, dark eyes. “Honey, you remember one thing, no matter what anybody tells you:

“Blacks are good. Whites are bad. That’s the truth, sweetie. And nobody’s going to kilt daddy, because he’s going to rip it up come tomorrow. Now do you believe that?”

She bobbled her bead very quickly.

“Blacks is good, an’ Whites is big stinks.”

He patted her head with affection. “The grammar is lousy, baby, but the sentiment is correct. Now. Let’s eat.”

They went in, and the children were silent with heads only half-bowed—half staring at the hot dishes that popped out of the egress slot in the long table—while Donnough said the prayer:

“Dear God above, thank you for this glorious repast. and watch over these people, and insure a victory where a victory is deserved. Preserve us and our state of existence…Amen. “

“Amen.” Massaro.

“Amen.” Lotus Massaro.