L. Neil Smith - North American Confederacy 02 by Nagasaki Vector

Cabin lay in a broad, warm pool of buttery electric light.

7 Zootier than Thou
    Olongo Featherstone-Haugh, America’s twenty-fifth President (not countin’ Gallatin’s final term an’ “None-of-the-Above”), was an Everest of flesh in an avalanche of reddish-black shag carpet. Only it wasn’t the United States, but the “North American Confederacy”—and the list of former Chief Execs included four women, two Indians, a black guy, an’ a French-Canadian Chinese.
    But I’m gettin’ aheada myself.
    Havin’ seen my little fire extinguished carefully, Koko shepherded us aliens down to a rambling three-story mansion she honestly regarded as a modest working ranch-house. A whitewashed timber fence separated lawn from pasture; the usual moron’d lined up head-sized rocks along the graveled pathway an’ painted ’em—incandescent pink. Freenies musta thought it was a ticket queue.
    Maybe it only seemed like a three-mile hike around back. Even this late, somebody was stirrin’ in the hangarous kitchen, a graying female Koko addressed as “Grandma Goldilocks,” who plied us all with fresh hot biscuits, more butter’n I’d ever seen collected outside a USDA warehouse, scrambled eggs, an’ heaps of tiny, oddly-flavored, thin-sliced steaklets. My companions appreciated the gallons of steaming coffee. So did I. Never keeps me awake when I don’t want it to—I can take a cup t’bed with me like warm milk.
    Before very long, I was seein’ double; too much food, too little sleep. My fuzzy hostesses frog-marched me, the seemingly tireless Freenies taggin’ along, to a guest-room down a half-kilometer of corridor. Kept thinkin’ about the Yankee who fell into a Texas swimmin’ pool an’ went down hollerin’, “Don’t flush it!” Exceptin’ for that Roman REM extravaganza ’bout an hour later, I hit the pillow an’ didn’t return to the land of the livin’ until three o’clock next afternoon—naked as a jaybird.
    Well, if it hadn’t embarrassed the simiennes, it wasn’t gonna embarrass me.
    The fat quilted coverlet was gaily printed with cattle brands an’ cactuses. The bed-frame, constructed outa Conestoga wagon wheels, matched another one hung horizontal from the ceiling mounting half a dozen chimneyed lamps. The walls were spongy, weathered mesquite, an’ the throwing on the floor mighta once been a gorilla itself, except for the baling-hook claws at its comers an’ a nasty Ursus horribilis snarl I damn near shoved my foot into gettin’ outa bed.
    Found my clothing, crisp an’ spotless, in a mock saloondoored closet, courteously left open. A momentary panic subsided when I noticed the field-density frammis lying with my other pocketry on a beer-barrel dresser, in a lamp rigged out t’look like a tiny hand-pumped horse-trough. Without thinkin’, I began climbing back into Academy greens, but somethin’ rebellious started me riffling through the other outfits left for me t’choose from.
    Trousers here were sturdy, baggy, flared, with extra-wide belt-loops, as if everybody lifted weights in their off-hours an’ needed kidney support. There were tunics of a military cut (overlookin’ the almost Yamaguchian patterns and colors), a sorta Nehru-necked sportscoat the Shah of Egypt mighta liked, whose bottom edging swept the terracotta floor, an’ right beside it, three regular no-foolin’ kilts, complete with sporran, two of ’em honest plaid—an’ one paisley, for Ochskahrt’s sake! Also a couple hooded numbers halfway between a cape and a serape.
    I kept my Airborne Rangers in preference to the pointy-toed monstrosities at the bottom of the closet, selecting a pair of pleated orange pants—the most conservative at hand—and an epauleted robin’s-egg blouse. I was prepared t’get laughed at for what I was throwin’ together—after all, nobody trained Mrs. Gruenblum’s little boy for this mission—-an’ make corrections later. Under one of those cloak-things, silver-gray an’