By Nicholas Arkison
The XO-76 Mindwarp “Bookmobile” touched down on page 89 of Charles Dickens’s Best Stories (Hanover House, 1959) with its usual finesse, which is to say that all the bit characters who watched it crash into an unluckily placed fruit stand were mildly amazed that the dark-haired young woman within was able to emerge in one piece. Alexis herself, however, was well accustomed to her vessel’s eccentricities; as she placed her talking zorille Bolivar on her shoulder and strode through the cold, bleak, biting weather toward the counting-house of Scrooge and Marley (decd.), her Arizona-bred mind was focused on a different grievance entirely.
“How do civilized people live in this climate?” she exclaimed, rubbing her hands fiercely as Bob Cratchit jumped up to take her scarf. “And to think, Dickens described this weather in boisterous detail; then he went to Italy long enough to write a book about it; then he voluntarily came back here. What’s wrong with this picture?”
“Well, don’t look at me,” said Bolivar. “I was born in the Congo, if you’ll recall.”
Ebenezer Scrooge glanced up sharply from his ledger and looked wildly about him: apart from Cratchit, there was no other man in the office at that moment, and the talking animals of Bdekur didn’t visibly move their mouths when they spoke. “Who’s that?” he demanded.
Bolivar’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, just an undigested bit of beef,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Alexis stifled a giggle, and curtsied gracefully to the covetous old sinner before her. “Good afternoon, Mr. Scrooge,” she said. “My name’s Alexis Straulogh, and I’ve been sent to extend you an invitation from the twin queens of Savotory Manor. You’ve heard of it?”
“No,” said Scrooge curtly.
Cratchit, however, perked up his head. “Savotory Manor?” he said. “Not the fabulous chateau at the juncture of all invented worlds, where the most illustrious products of man’s imagination come together in fellowship under its young mistresses’ watchful eyes?”
“Yes, that’s the one,” said Alexis.
“Fancy,” said Cratchit. “Well, this is an honour, Miss Straulogh, and no mistake. I hope you’ll convey my compliments to Queen Liz and Queen Lynn when you get back—not that they’ve any call to regard my opinion, to be sure, but…”
“Yes, yes,” Scrooge snapped. “Come to the point, Miss Straulogh. What’s this about an invitation?”
“Well, Liz and Lynn are holding their first Christmas gala tomorrow,” said Alexis, “and they’ve invited a selection of distinguished characters from thematically appropriate literature throughout history.” She withdrew an engraved card from her purse and placed it on the desk in front of Scrooge. “There’s a sequence of six Latin words written inside; if you read it aloud while holding the card between four and five o’clock tomorrow afternoon, it’ll harmonize your ontic vibrations with the Bookmobile’s and transport you to the Manor. You can bring a plus-one, too, if you like; just say his or her name before…”
Scrooge’s face darkened. “Miss Straulogh,” he said, “I am an extraordinarily busy man, and have no time to spare in any event for frivolous merry-making. But if there is one sort of entertainment more than another in which I would decline to indulge even with no alternative before me but total inertia, it is precisely this puerile institution of Christmas galas.”
Alexis nodded. “Yes, I thought you’d say that,” she said. “But I have to leave it with you anyway, or Liz and Lynn will have my head. Feel free to use it after all, if you should happen to change your mind within the next twenty-four hours.”
“Not likely,” Scrooge grunted.
Alexis smiled faintly. “Well, you never know,” she said. “Good day, Mr. Scrooge.”
She curtsied again, and, after taking her scarf back from Cratchit and whispering to him to give Tiny Tim her love (which very nearly made the poor man faint with the distinction of it), headed back out into the winter fog. “Well, that went well enough,” she remarked.
“I suppose,” said Bolivar. “Though I still don’t get why we didn’t just materialize in the last stave and give him the invitation when he was already primed.”
Alexis shrugged—carefully, so as not to pitch him off. “Not enough dead plot space,” she said. “Liz and Lynn were afraid we’d disrupt the flow of the story.”
“Paranoid.”
“It’s their job.” Alexis dipped into her purse, and ruffled through the remaining envelopes. “Well, let’s fire Warp back up and go call on Della and Jim. Unless you’d rather take a side trip of a few hundred pages to sample some of those famous Mugby-Junction refreshments?”
“You’re a funny girl, Alexis…”
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