"Enough to pay you off," I said. "And we'll make it five thousand
because _I_ found it. Stow this somewhere. It's perfume."
He did. "Find anything else?"
"Nothing that would interest you. I'll be ready to blast off as soon as
I've had a shower."
Rene shrugged.
The perfume, when we returned to Earth, proved to be worth what he'd
said it would be. A lot of people wanted to know where I'd gotten it.
"The crops on Odoria," they said, "are entirely sewed up by Odoria,
Inc."
"They certainly are," I always replied agreeably.
It took all I cleared from the perfume to put a down payment on a ship
and hire an expert on fertilizing perfume flowers. But this time _I_
wanted to run the show.
Mr. Picks shook his head sadly when I told him to replace me
permanently.
"You have a great future ahead of you in studs and neck clasps," he
said. "Why not take a little time and reconsider your decision? Or--"
"Nevermore," I answered.
* * * * *
Not until five years later did I find out what happened to the rest of
good old Uncle Algernon's fortune.
I was stretched out on a gently undulating force-field in my interior
patio, a huge, scarlet fan-flower tree sifting in the sunshine. Leda,
her pink hair flowing down to her knees, was just emerging from the
pool of grilch milk. She bent to an Aphrodite of Cnidos position.
"Perfect!" I said, and threw away my cigarene.
"Depart!" I told the robot, who came rolling in.
"But, master, it's the Cha'n of Betelgeuse, Lord of the Seven Planets
and the Four Hundred Moons."
"Get dressed, Leda," I said regretfully. "We have company."
I'd never met him, but I knew he was one of Uncle Isadore's best
friends and I felt obliged to see him.
The Cha'n had several meals and four cigarenes, maintaining a
courteous silence all the while. Then he loosened his belt, reached
into his furry pouch and handed me a piece of copper scroll.
It was a check for five million dollars.
"You won," he told me. "Or lost, as the case may be."
I just looked at him.
"I was holding it in trust for you," the Cha'n explained, "in
accordance with your Uncle Isadore's last wishes."
I blew a perfect smoke ring, let it float before my face for a perfect
moment, and then asked, "And suppose I had lost? Or won, as the case
may be?"
"I was to save it to try on your son, the gods permitting you have one."
"If necessary," I told him, "I'll try it on him myself, O Cha'n of the
Seven Planets and the Four Hundred Moons."
"Call me Charlie," he said.
End of Project Gutenberg's From An Unseen Censor, by Rosel George Brown
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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