“You could order one at the Sunspot and have it sent here by special—”
“You know that a Three Planets must be drunk within thirty seconds of mixing for the first sip to have its ideal flavor.”
“Then—”
“All right,” Quinby said. “You let us know when your honored guest arrives, and we’ll have a Three Planets for him.”
The Head looked doubtful. “If you think you can— A bad one might be more dangerous than none—”
“And if we do,” I interposed hastily, “you’ll reconsider this business of the usuform robots?”
“If this mining deal goes through satisfactorily, I should be strong enough to contemplate facing Robinc.”
“Then you’ll get your Three Planets,” I said calmly, wondering what Quinby had seen straight now.
We met Mike at the Sunspot as arranged. He was drinking a Three Planets. “This is good,” he announced. “This has spacedrive and zoomf to it. You get it other places and—”
“I know,” I said. “Find a site?”
“A honey. Wait’ll I—”
“Hold it. We’ve got to know have we got anything to go on it. Guzub! One Three Planets.”
We watched entranced as he mixed the potion. “Get exactly what he does,” Quinby had said. “Then construct a usuform bartender who’ll be infallible. It’ll satisfy the Martian envoy and at the same time remind the Head of why we’re helping him out.”
But all we saw was a glittering swirl of tentacles. First a flash as each tentacle picked up its burden—one the shaker, one the lid, one the glass, and three others the bottles of rum, margil, and vuzd. Then a sort of spasm that shook all Guzub’s round body as the exact amount of each liquid went in, and finally a gorgeous pinwheel effect of shaking and pouring.
Guzub handed me my drink, and I knew as much as I had before.
By the time I’d finished it, I had courage. “Guzub,” I said, “this is wonderful.”
“Zure,” Guzub glurked. “Always I maig id wondervul.”
“Nobody else can make ’em like you, Guz. But tell me. How much vuzd do you put in?”
Guzub made his kind of a shrug. “I dell you, boys, I dunno. Zome dime maybe I wadge myzelv and zee. I juzd go zo! I dunno how mudj.”
“Give me another one. Let’s see you watch yourself.”
“Businezz is good by you, you dring zo many Blanedz? O Gay, ere goes.”
But the whirl stopped in the middle. There was Guzub, all his eyes focused sadly on the characteristic green corkscrew-shaped bottle of vuzd. Twice he started to move that tentacle, then drew it back. At last he made a dash with it.
“Exactly two drops,” Quinby whispered.
Guzub handed over the drink unhappily. “Dry id,” he said.
I did. It was terrible. Too little vuzd, so that you could taste both the heavy sweetness of the rum and the acrid harshness of the margil. I said so.
“I know, boys. When I zdob do wadge, ici bothers me. No gan do.”
I gulped the drink. “Mix up another without watching. Maybe we can tell.”
This one was perfect. And we could see nothing.
The next time he “wadged.” He used precisely four and a half drops of vuzd. You tasted nothing but the tart decay of the vuzd itself.
The next time—
But my memory gets a little vague after that. Like I said, I’m a whiskey drinker. And four Three Planets in quick succession— I’m told the party went on till closing hour at twenty-three, after which Guzub accepted Quinby’s invitation to come on and mix for us at my apartment. I wouldn’t know. All I remember is one point where I found a foot in my face. I bit it, decided it wasn’t mine, and stopped worrying about it. Or about anything.
I’m told that I slept thirty-six hours after that party—a whole day and more simply vanished out of my existence. I woke up feeling about twelve and spry for my age, but it took me a while to reconstruct what had been going on.
I was just beginning to get it straightened out when Quinby came in. His first words were, “How would you like a Three Planets?”
I suddenly felt like two hundred and twelve, and on an off day at that. Not until I’d packed away a superman-size breakfast did he dare repeat the offer. By then I felt brave. “O.K.,” I said. “But with a whiskey chaser.”
I took one sip and said, “Where’s Guzub? I didn’t know he was staying here too.”
“He isn’t.”
“But this Three Planets— It’s perfect. It’s the McCoy. And Guzub—”
Quinby opened a door. There sat the first original Quinby usuform—no remake of a Robinc model, but a brand-new creation. Quinby said, “Three Planets,” and he went into action. He had tentacles, and the motions were exactly like Guzub’s except that he was himself the shaker. He poured the liquids into his maw, joggled about, and then poured them out of a hollow hoselike tentacle.
The televisor jangled. Quinby hastily shifted the ike so as to miss the usuform barkeep as I answered. The screen showed the Head himself. He’d been there before on telecasts, but this was the real thing.
He didn’t waste time. “Tonight, nineteen thirty,” he said. “I don’t need to explain?”
“We’ll be there,” I choked out.
A special diplomatic messenger brought the pass to admit the two of us and “one robot or robotlike machine” to the Council building. I was thankful for that alternative phrase; I didn’t want to have to argue with each guard about the technical legal definition of a robot. We were installed in a small room directly off the Head’s private reception room. It was soundproofed and there was no window; no chance of our picking up interplanetary secrets of diplomacy. And there was a bar.
A dream of a bar, a rhapsody of a bar. The vuzd, the rum, the margil were all of brands that you hear about and brood about but never think to see in a lifetime. And there was whiskey of the same caliber.
We had hardly set
