The Glory of Ippling

The Glory of Ippling, by Helen M.
Urban

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Title: The Glory of Ippling
Author: Helen M. Urban
Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23185]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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GLORY OF IPPLING ***

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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Galaxy December 1962. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this

publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have
been corrected without note. Subscript characters are shown within
{braces}.

He brought them life and hope. Why wouldn't the fools take it from
him?
By HELEN M. URBAN

THE GLORY OF IPPLING
There's an axiom in the galaxy: The more complicated the machine, the
bigger mess it can make. Like the time the planetary computer for
Buughabyta flipped its complete grain-futures series. The computer
ordered only 15 acres, and Buughabytians had to live for a full year off
the government's stored surplus--thus pounding down the surplus,
forcing up the price, eliminating the subsidy and balancing the
Buughabytian budget for fifteen years--an unprecedented bit of
nonsense that almost had permanent effects. But a career economist
with an eye for flubup and complication managed to restore balanced
disorder, bringing Buughabyta right back to normalcy.
Or like the time a matter-duplicator receiver misread
OCH{3}CH{3}OH, to turn out a magnificently busted blonde
sphygmomano-raiser with an HOCH{3}OH replacement, putting a
strain on the loyalty of a billion teen-age girls dedicated to Doyle
Oglevie worship. Doyle-she insisted she was Doyle-he, as it took quite
a while for her hormones to overcome the memory of his easy,
eyelash-flapping, tone-torturing microphone conquests. Put a strain on
his wardrobe, too.
No machine, of course, can compare for complexity with any group of
humans who have been collected into machine-like precision of
operation. Take one time when an Ipplinger Cultural Contact Group
was handed a Boswellister with V.I.P. connections and orders to put

him to an assignment--for his maturity.
* * * * *
Boswellister sat patiently. He squirmed emotionally up and down his
backbone, but he affected a disdainful appearance of patience in view
of the importance of his and his poppa's positions compared with the
pawn-like minusculity of the audience's.
The Blond Terror strode majestically down the aisle of the open air
sports arena, preceded by twenty-four harem-darling dancing girls. The
orchestra wailed an oriental sinuosity of woodwinds and drums,
accompanying the hip-twitching, nearly naked, sloe- (by benefit of
make-up) eyed, black-haired beauties.
Fifteen heavyweights, draped in leopard skins, had preceded the
dancers to set up the Blond Terror's tub on a polar bear rug in the center
of the ring. A dozen luscious watercarriers had emptied their jars into
the tub. Soap and towels, oils and perfumes, mirror and comb, were
arranged on top of a lushly ornamented box that stood by one of the
corner posts.
The Blond Terror vaulted the ropes and stood in the ring, popping his
muscles, waiting for his handmaidens to remove the five layers of
elaborately decorated robes that were draped over his super-manly
body.
Boswellister cringed slightly (inwardly), speculating that the Blond
Terror really was a muscled man. All that man--nearly seven feet tall,
bronzed, developed, imperious, condescending to notice just slightly
the adulations of the women in the packed arena.
The Blond Terror stepped into the tub, carrying out his advertised boast
of being the cleanest wrestler in the ring, a boast he was unable to
prove with ring action through the exigencies of type-casting, for the
Blond Terror was the villain.
The Blond Terror muscled down into the tub. He was scrubbed, then

rinsed. He stood out onto the white fur rug and sneeringly allowed his
handmaidens to pat him dry and powder him down. They held up the
large hand mirror and allowed him to view his handsomeness while his
short-cropped, blond curls were carefully combed.
"Now." Boswellister spoke the order into the lapel receiver. On the
Ipplinger starship a communications tech slapped home a switch and
the solido-vision circle settled over the Blond Terror's head, a halo of
solid light for a complex Ipplinger signal-reaction device.
"Hail Ippling!" Boswellister shouted.
Boswellister strained forward, clutching the seat arms. It had to work!
His equation must be right! The symbol had the proper cultural
connotations. It was bound to capture the audience, put them in the
right mood of awe-struck superstitious