PART SEVENTY-THREE
Chapter 1
The guard hissed sharply into a microphone disguised as a silver button.
Instantly a sergeant sped into the huge hall. He looked at Madison’s guard, who jerked a thumb toward the stairs, and the sergeant nodded.
With a clank and a rattle they struck off Madison’s chains. He stood up and rubbed his wrists and neck.
They thrust him into a washroom and made him strip and bathe. They inspected him. Intimately.
“He doesn’t seem to have any lice or bacteria,” said the original guard, gazing critically at Madison, “but he’s not well equipped. I don’t see how he can give her a good time.”
“Well, listen, you,” said the sergeant to Madison, suddenly flicking a knife out of the back of his silver coat, “if you don’t act nice and give her a good (bleep), I’ll personally use this to cut your (bleeps) off. Is that understood?”
Madison gulped, covered his (bleeps) protectively with his hand and backed up.
They threw a white silk robe on him that still bore a Royal crest and the words, “Property of Queen Hora. Do not use this robe for burial. Return it to palace in undamaged condition.”
“Now, what’s the proper protocol?” the guard asked the sergeant. “I don’t for the life of me recall whether my grandfather said to deliver the man in shackles or gold ropes.”
“Neither one,” said the sergeant. “It was a collar and a gold leading chain. Why, there’s one of them right over on that shelf.” He got it and looked at it. “What do you know? It isn’t true the collar had spikes inside it. My grandmother must have made that up. See, look here,” he showed the guard. “It’s an electric wire. And see here, there’s the activating button at the end of the chain. Oh, no! Its power pack is dead. No sparks.”
“Hey, lucky!” said the guard, gazing into the power recess in a link. “It’s the same type we use in our boot toes. Here, I’ll take the one out of my left boot.” He did so, and when they tested the collar again, it sparked when the button on the end of the chain was pressed.
They put it on Madison.
“Now,” said the sergeant, “if I heard right, the protocol is, you lead him in, bow, and when the queen puts out her hand, you place the chain handle in it, and I think you say, ‘Your Majesty, here is one to do your bidding: pray thee, if he does not please thee, I shall be right outside the door with an electric whip.’”
“We haven’t got an electric whip,” said the guard.
“Well, you can’t go changing protocol,” said the sergeant. “Don’t you go shifting words around. You keep the words just like they are, but if this (bleepard) doesn’t do as he is told, use your stinger.”
The guard checked the inside of his silver boot to see if his stinger was in place and started to nod, but the sergeant interrupted him. “Like I always tell you, be careful of your weapons. The staff would kill you out of hand if anything happened to displease Her Majesty.” He had drawn the stinger out of the other man’s boot.
The weapon was a limber rod about fourteen inches long. The sergeant gripped the handle and the tip glowed.
He raised it and gave Madison a slash across the lower thigh.
YIKES! It gave a stinging shock like the bite of a huge insect! Madison yanked the robe aside and stared at his thigh.
“Oh, that was just low power,” said the sergeant. “You don’t think I’d mark you up just before you went to please Her Majesty, do you? Man’s an idiot,” he commented to the guard. “Now, when you present him and go back to stand guard in the hallway, you keep your ear to the door and if you hear any protests or arguments or if you DON’T hear some moans and squeals of pleasure, you go right back in and sting the hells out of him until he DOES do his job! Understand?”
The guard nodded. “Sure is great to have things running normally again.”
“Well, yes,” said the sergeant. “And you just make sure that Her Majesty doesn’t have to wear her thumb out pushing the button on that collar chain. The darling is entitled to all the fun this fellow can give her.”
“What do I do when she’s through with him?” said the guard.
“Oh, you’ll probably have been relieved by that time and I’ll be hanging around. But if it happens on your watch and she hasn’t told you otherwise, listen to make sure it’s all quiet and has been for some time. Then beckon up one of her maids—probably the one on watch at the foot of her bed—and tiptoe in. Now, this is the tricky part: use your ultraviolet lamp and eyeglass so you don’t wake Her Majesty, and look very carefully at her face. If she’s frowning or sleeping restlessly, take him to the execution hall. If she’s sleeping with a slight smile, then get this fellow out very carefully without waking her and send him back to his regiment.”
“I haven’t got a regiment,” said Madison.
They both looked shocked. Then the sergeant said, “That’s true. Those clothes hanging there are no uniform I ever saw before. Wait a minute. Maybe this is all wrong. Are you sure you’re a nobleman?”
Madison’s mind raced. Despite all these horrible arrangements which he only hoped he could escape, he had to get up those stairs and present his inspired idea to Teenie. He drew himself up haughtily. “I,” he said, “am one of the Knights of Columbus!”
“Is that noble?” said the sergeant. “You see, if a male commoner were to lay hands upon her, protocol requires instant death. So don’t go trifling with us.”
“A knight,” said Madison, “in her native language, means a gentleman-soldier. It is one who has been raised by his sovereign to the nobility. I came here as a knight-errant.”
The sergeant told the guard. “Well, that may be. Tell you what. When you take him out of her bed, put him in one of the better dungeons and hold him and I’ll get this clarified in the morning. If it turns out he isn’t really noble after all, we’ll have the pleasure of executing him anyway. I sure didn’t like the way he was yelling and screaming at her yesterday afternoon. Didn’t sound very noble to me! And if he starts yelling and screaming at her again, take him out of there fast! We don’t want our dear queen getting upset and leaving us.”
The guard gave the chain a yank and Madison, not expecting it, flinched back.
The guard pressed the button in the handle.
It felt to Madison that his neck had been sawed through! It wasn’t an electric shock, it was a tearing sensation. Awful!
“Come along,” said the guard. “Her Majesty awaits.”
The sole of Madison’s foot recoiled from the cold, rough floor stones of the washroom. “You didn’t give me any slippers! At least let me put on my shoes!”
“Barefoot is just great,” said the guard. And he gave the button another push.
Madison gripped his head so it wouldn’t fall off.
He followed.
Everything depended on the next few minutes. He would be a dead man or a hero!
His idea MUST work!
PART SEVENTY-THREE
Chapter 2
He wasn’t being taken up the golden stairs. He was being led up a circular metal set of steps that spiraled back of the walls. It was very dark and from the deadness of the air Madison suspected it had long been out of use. Suddenly a gate with spikes barred their way: he could see small sparks chasing back and forth, skipping from tip to tip on daggerlike extrusions, ready to impale any unauthorized interloper. No wonder Flick said no-no on robbing these palaces. They were FORTS!
The guard did something over at the side and with the groan of long disuse the portal slid aside.
They seemed to be in a dark box now, another thick door facing them. The guard picked up a dusty microphone and said something, evidently to a remote security desk—some sort of numbered password. Then the guard shoved him in front of what must be a closed-circuit camera.
“Demonstrate that you are not under duress, Jinto,” said a sepulchral voice.
Jinto, Madison’s guard, closed his hand on the chain. The dreadful tearing feeling ripped at Madison’s neck and an additional yank threw him off-balance.
Apparently some security post somewhere was satisfied. Beyond the haze of lingering pain, Madison heard the slither and snap of several sets of remote-controlled bolts.
Silently the door slid open and Madison was pushed forward.
A moaning sort of music caressed his ears.
He was hit with a feminine whiff of fragrance and he fearfully opened his eyes.
He was standing in a softly lit room of considerable dimensions. Gently rippling colored lights bathed the walls in ever-changing pastels, soothing, almost hypnotic. Overhead, at first he thought these must be the open skies and then he saw that the stars were slowly dancing in a pattern about a moon which, real as it looked, could never possibly, in nature, pulse with the same ripples as the walls: the ceiling was some sort of an illusion that must change the hour of the day or night on command.
The floor suddenly frightened him. It seemed to be a thick mist, not a rug, and he was standing ankle-deep in it. But he was reassured to find it seemed to be holding him up.
The furniture, delicate and curved, bureaus and chairs and tables, didn’t seem to have any legs; they were just motionlessly floating in place.
The lost feeling he had experienced at his first glimpse of this place—like nothing he had ever heard of or imagined on Earth—was leaving him. The determination to be successful in his visit gripped him again. Where was Teenie?
Then he again felt all unstabilized. Neither he nor the guard were walking, they seemed to have just been standing. But they were moving! Very slowly and gently this floor, without even so much as a ripple, was carrying them down one wall. What he had thought must be some kind of huge bureau was actually the top of a bed!
Madison stared.
It was a dark area of the room. Moans of pleasure were coming from it.
The moving floor made further progress.
Teenie’s hand was visible in a patch of light. It rose up and quivered as she groaned.
The music moaned; the perfume drifted.
The guard gave the chain a slight rattle to attract attention.
The heads of the two maids snapped up with a jerk. They saw who it was and glared at Madison resentfully.
Teenie turned her head slowly and her sex-glazed eyes gradually focused on Madison. Then she closed her too-big mouth and smiled a slow smile.
In a lazy voice, in English she said, “You waited so long, I was finally certain you weren’t coming so I let them go ahead—they wring their hands so when they see me all worked up by dancing and unsatisfied.” She was coming back to herself now and the musing quality was leaving her voice. The lazy smile turned into a grin. “Well, well, Maddie. You finally decided to let me have a crack at breaking you of this mother fixation.” She laughed with delight.
The guard suddenly knelt, bowed his head and courteously placed the handle of the chain in her nearest outflung hand. He said to the misty floor, “Your Majesty, here is one to do your bidding: pray thee, if he does not please thee, I shall be right outside the door with an electric whip.”
Teenie glanced along her arm at it, saw the button and gripped it.
The collar almost took Madison’s head off. He let out a scream! He clutched at the collar with both hands. Teenie looked at the button and looked up at him. The current was off now and Madison was moving his head about to see if it was still on. Teenie suddenly began to laugh. “Oh, Maddie, I see we’re going to have fun! I don’t want to hurt you. I want you to have a marvelous time. So you just be a good boy and do whatever you’re told and I won’t touch the button again.”
Madison was not at all reassured. The bizarre room was already rippling and the tearing feeling had jarred his brain so it now seemed to be spinning. Was the moaning still the music or was it him?
Through the daze, he saw that the maids were also laughing now, but there was a note of cruelty in it that was absent from Teenie’s: he was only too well aware that with this staff he was not amongst friends. And Teenie was no friend either. She had said so! He was trying to marshal his resolution. The guard, after a glare of caution at him, went to stand in the hall.
Teenie, still laughing, was giving them directions.
One maid got up, wrapping a robe about her. With a silken cloth, she began to straighten Teenie’s makeup.
The other maid, a mature and good-looking woman, wiped off her own face with the hem of her scanty covering, got up and began to advance on Madison.
Although he tried to flinch away, she sprayed him with a masculine-smelling powder.
She reached for a pot of grease on a bureau.
Madison looked down at her and flinched.
The maid turned to Teenie and said, “Your Majesty, I think this nobleman must have had a dishrag in his ancestry.”
This made Teenie laugh. She was lying on her side now, looking in Madison’s direction. “Well, wring him out!” she cried.
Madison snatched his robe about him in panic.
The other maid looked over at him in surprise and then began to guffaw.
Madison now had his hands out, trying to keep the first maid from approaching him.
This sent Teenie into gales of laughter. She finally panted, “Oh, Maddie, you’re killing me! Didn’t your mother teach you anything?” And she went rolling about, screaming with mirth at her own joke.
Madison’s eyes were glazed with terror. He was making a blocking motion with his hands.
Two maids’ faces were laughing at him as they knelt in front of him.
Madison was backing up.
One maid had the pot of grease.
Madison was staring down at it.
The other was measuring out some hash oil.
“No, no!” shrieked Madison.
Teenie was convulsed with laughter. “Oh, Maddie,” she shrieked, “you ARE a clown! This time you’re going to be cured of your mother!” She sat up. “After me, you’re going to get those two,” and she pointed to her maids.
“NO!” screamed Madison.
One of the maids, still laughing, moved forward to grab him.
Madison backed up again. Then he saw something.
The end of the chain was no longer held by Teenie. It fell off the bed and hit the floor.
The maid had grabbed him. Madison was looking around wildly.
Teenie went into new howls of laughter.
Behind Madison was a tall bureau.
The maid was trying to kiss him.
Suddenly Madison lashed out with his fist.
He hit the maid in the jaw.
She went down with a crash.
Like an agile ape, he leaped up on the bureau, using the door handles to climb. He got to the top. He yanked the chain handle up after him to get it out of their reach. He was twelve feet above the floor. If the guard came in, he couldn’t even be touched with the stinger.
The sight of him scrambling up and hanging there now had taken them all by surprise. He didn’t know whether they would start to laugh again or yell for the guard to shoot him for hitting the maid.
THIS WAS HIS CHANCE!
Into the hiatus, he shouted, “Teenie! Listen to me! There’s something you don’t know!” Now was the time to launch his beautiful idea. Fate was trembling on the edge of the cliff. Would she listen?
Her attention was on the maid. She knelt at the woman’s side to see if there was a bruise on her face. In a second, if she found a contusion or some blood, she would go berserk with fury.
“Teenie!” he screamed down at her. “Soltan Gris is here!”
Her head whipped round. She stared up at him.
“He’s here!” shouted Madison in desperation. There was a little blood on the side of the woman’s mouth and he MUST hold Teenie’s attention.
HIS IDEA MUST BE GIVEN A CHANCE!
“He’s right here on Voltar!” yelled Madison from the bureau.
Her eyes were on him. The door was also opening and the guard was alert and watching, having heard the raised voice.
“On THIS planet?” said Teenie. “Here?” She was in shock.
“Yes, that’s right! Soltan Gris has taken refuge in the Royal prison, a huge castle! Nobody can get to him. He’s perfectly safe! They aren’t even going to try him!”
“WHAT?” cried Teenie, on her knees but straightening up.
“He’s sitting there safe as can be!” cried Madison. “He’s laughing at everybody! He’s completely beyond reach!”
“THE (BLEEP)!” cried Teenie. Her eyes began to glare.
Madison shouted, “Unless somebody acts, he’s going to go scot-free and even get a medal!”
“THE SON OF A (BLEEPCH)!” cried Teenie, leaping to her feet. “You mean after all he’s done they’re protecting him in safe custody?”
“Exactly!” cried Madison.
Teenie stamped her foot in fury. “Well, god (BLEEP) HIM!”
“And Teenie, if I have your help, I can get him HANGED! You know me and you know what I can accomplish if I’m turned loose! Teenie, if you back me up, then when they stretch his neck I can guarantee that I will personally put your hand on the rope!”
She looked at him: her eyes were furnaces of revenge. “It’s a bargain!” she screeched. “Just tell me what you want me to DO!”
He had assured her he would prepare the plans. He had left her pacing up and down the room, pounding a fist in her palm and then shaking it in the air, swearing luridly in gutter English, vowing that if it was the last thing they ever did, they’d have to GET Gris!
The guard had been told to turn him loose and to admit him to the palace any time he called.
Madison, in the lower washroom, got into his clothes. He was trembling with relief.
Earlier, when he had been sitting in the hall, scanning through everything he had heard her say, a line from an Earth playwright had leaped up, and oh, was Madison glad that he remembered his Shakespeare. “Hell hath no fury like a woman kicked in the teeth.” It had given him his SPLENDID idea and it had worked.
Tonight he had escaped death thrice! Once at the hands of Teenie; again from the threat of being unfaithful to his mother; the third and the far more important one of being wiped out by the deadly Bury.
With Teenie’s influence, cleverly working step by step, he could now get on with his job.
Heller, he thought, here I come!
The universe will never again see such magnificent and skillful PR as would now occur!
He had to be clever, he had to be careful, he had to advance step by step. BUT HE WOULD GET THERE!
PR was the one weapon against which there was no defense. Oh, there were pitfalls on the way that would yawn. But, in gleeful confidence, Madison strode into the Voltar night.
PART SEVENTY-THREE
Chapter 3
Across another night, twenty-two and more light-years away, Heller was talking on a viewer-phone in his New York office to Prahd on another one in the hospital in Afyon, Turkey. There was no problem in being overheard: the viewer-phone operated on a time-skip at the topmost quiver of energy bands and Earth was far from being up to that technology.
The subject of the conversation also involved time. “You can’t rush these things,” said Prahd. “I’ve told you all this before, sir.”
“But he DID speak,” said Heller. “When I entered the room at the palace, as soon as he was aware someone was there, he opened his eyes and spoke. He even recognized what I was.”
“When you got to him,” said Prahd, “he must have been on the tag end of an amphetamine dose. It was keeping him conscious. Some time before that, the quantities of speed he was being given must have set him up for a cerebral hemorrhage, because that’s what he’s got. Speed wrecks the central nervous system and he has had it.”
“You mean he won’t recover consciousness?” said Heller.
“Look, I’m doing all I can to hold on to this sudden elevation to King’s Own Physician. I’m doing all I can to rebuild the nerves and vessels, but you don’t seem to understand. It’s the central nervous system! It’s going to take months.”
“So long?” said Heller.
“I’m being optimistic. Did you know it takes a day of therapy for every day of use anyone has been on speed? I don’t know how long they had him on it. Could have been years!”
“What you’re telling me is that he won’t come around soon.”
“I think I finally got my point across, sir. Of course, I could bring him around so he’d be alert a bit with some amphetamine, but that would then kill him.”
“We don’t want THAT!” said Heller. “Completely aside from our duty to protect him, it would be a rotten thing to do just to get our own heads off the block with a signed order. Skip any idea of it. We’ll take our chances.”
“I didn’t mean it as an out,” said Prahd.
“Well, don’t think of it at all,” said Heller. “You and I are quite expendable. He isn’t. So you just go on doing what you’re doing. Can you switch me over to my lady?”
The face of the Countess Krak appeared on Heller’s screen. She threw him a kiss and then said, “Hello, dear. It’s just like Prahd said. He’s just lying there in fluid, rebuilding. There’s absolutely nothing going on.”
“I know,” said Heller.
“I told them to build up defenses here.”
Heller shrugged. “All right. But I don’t think anybody will come. Ghoul-face doesn’t know we came here. I’ve been giving this some thought and it’s almost funny that he’d issue a general warrant for me: they’re questionable on a Royal officer—courts usually just throw them out. It would take a Royal warrant and he just plain can’t get one issued. It would have to be signed by the person who’s lying there unconscious. Actually, Ghoul-face must be having fits. There was no mention of His Majesty on that broadcast and I don’t think Hisst will admit he’s gone. If he were to do so, the whole Confederacy would go into chaos. There is no heir: the other Royal princes are dead and Mortiiy is forbidden succession for starting a revolt. The Grand Council would have to have a body before they would proclaim Cling dead. So all Lombar can do is blunder around trying to locate me. He’s only got the Apparatus, a small force. The Fleet and Army won’t cooperate on the basis of just a general warrant on me. The Fleet would laugh at him. The ‘drunk’ is on the spot. If he doesn’t dare admit I have the Emperor, then I can’t think of anything he could say or do to get people incensed against me. He’s only got the Apparatus and I’m not afraid of ‘drunks.’ So I quit worrying.”
“Dear, could you be being too calm?” said the Countess.
“That’s my profession,” said Heller. “Keeping calm.”
“I’ve seen you overdo it.”
“What’s being overdone right now,” said Heller, “is our separation. It’s silly you sitting there alongside a fluid tub while I’m having all the fun. I’ve got an AWFUL lot of things to neaten up and I can’t possibly get away from here. So I had Bury contact the Air Force and they’ll be sending a new Boeing Mach 3 Raider for you. They take off and land vertically and can put down in Afyon.”
“WHO?” said the Countess Krak.
“A Boeing,” said Heller. “All the airlines are messed up trying to get back into operation and their backlogs are awful. You’ll be only three hours in flight. I’ll have you met at La Guardia.”
“I mean BURY!” said the Countess, still in shock.
“Oh, he works for us now. I forgot to mention it. But it’s someone else I want you to meet. You’ll like her.”
“HER?”
“Yes,” said Heller. “We need her permission to get engaged.”
“WHAT?”
“Look, your clothes are still in the condo, so don’t bring much. Now that I have verified there is no sense in your staying there, I’ll tell the Boeing to take off. It’ll be there about 2:00 PM, your time. The Silver Spirit will bring you to the condo and you’ll be in time to powder your nose and have a lovely lunch.”
“Wait a minute, Jettero. You’ve got me all in a spin.”
“They better not spin or we’ll court-martial the whole Air Force. Wear your best smile. Tell you all about it when I see you. Love you. Bye-bye.”
“Jettero,” wailed the Countess Krak, “do you think your estimate of this situation is safe?”
But he had clicked off and the screen was dead.
PART SEVENTY-THREE
Chapter 4
An amazed Countess Krak had been saluted on both sides of the world, had been set down to “all runways cleared” at La Guardia, had not even gone through immigration or customs, and had been rushed, sirens screaming, with an escort of six New York motorcycle police, straight to the condo.
She had managed to slip by the beaming Balmor and, despite the tears and sobbings of an overjoyed lady’s maid, was able to change her clothes and get neatened up.
Now as she entered the luncheon salon, she was promptly all messed up again by the hugs and kisses of a smartly uniformed Jettero.
The place was crammed with flowers, the tables groaned with food and strains of triumphal music shook the chandeliers.
Izzy, Bang-Bang and Twoey were clutching at her hands, bowing and beaming in adoring welcome.
There was a one-foot stack of something on the table before her chair, and when she tried to sit down, the stack tipped over and cascaded into her lap and all over the floor. Credit cards! Of every possible company and they all said “Heavenly Joy Krackle,” and the Bonbucks Teller one was in a blue orchid corsage. She was trying to put the corsage on when Balmor and two footmen came in with an enormous gold frame.
It wasn’t for her.
They put it on an easel. It was some kind of parchment apparently printed by special run. It was a banner headline of the New York Grimes and just one story. It said:
NO
DECLARATION!
LEADERSHIP
OF
PRESIDENT
BRINGS
US FROM
BRINK
OF WAR!
The four men went into bellows of laughter!
For the life of her she could see nothing funny in it.
Somewhat petulantly, when she could be heard, the Countess Krak said, “You might at least tell me what you’re laughing at!”
“It’s for the wall of Jet’s study,” said Bang-Bang. “We had it specially reprinted and framed.”
That told her nothing. She turned to Jettero. “And it was mean of you to leave me hanging in midair about Bury and some woman.”
Jettero laughed. “Well, it got you aboard that plane, didn’t it? And without a word of argument about how you should stay in Turkey.”
That made her laugh. “Oh, Jettero!” she said. “Living with you has its moments! Life is certainly never dull. Now please tell me what has been going on.”
They were all sitting down eating prawns now and Jettero began to tell her what had happened in New York and Pokantickle but he evidently kept leaving out pieces of it that had to do with how he had accomplished certain things and the others kept stopping him and correcting him and well before he was finished, she was scared half to death at the risks he had taken. She managed to keep herself from going white and finally said, “So Rockecenter is dead.”
“No, he’s not dead,” said Jettero. “He’s sitting right there,” and he pointed to Twoey. “Between him and Izzy, they own the planet.” He turned to him. “So what are you going to do with it, boys?”
“Raise pigs,” said Twoey.
“Now there,” said Jettero to the Countess Krak, “no problems at all. They’ve got it all worked out.”
“Oh, Jettero, be serious,” she said. “I’m sure there’s some kind of plan or program.”
“Yes, ma’am!” said Jettero. “You’ve put your lovely finger right on it. There certainly is. At four o’clock this afternoon we’re due over at Bayonne. And it’s very important that you dress well and look very proper and prim, for if you are acceptable, we can then schedule the engagement party.”
“Acceptable to WHOM?” she wailed.
“Well, I can’t call her by her title yet because she won’t be invested until Saturday. And that’s the other thing I’ve got to take up with her, the coronation party. And we have to decide upon the date of the engagement party, but I should say it should be the following week.”
“Jettero, I feel like I am going faintly insane.”
“Blame the summer weather, not me,” said Jettero.
Balmor came to the door just then and said to Izzy, “Mr. Bury is on the phone, sir. He merely wants to know if Mr. Twoey will be available tomorrow to address the Swillerberger Conference that will now be held at the White House in the afternoon. He says he’s sorry to trouble you and he has written the speech. He is just verifying.”
“There better be some item on the agenda about pig production,” said Twoey.
“Tell Bury he’ll be there,” said Izzy, “and while he’s on the phone tell him to hold up clearing out the Rockecenter offices until I can see to it personally.”
The cat had been trying to get her attention and the Countess was very glad of the distraction.
The rest of the luncheon went off in a blur and then, dressed somehow and feeling she looked a fright, she was in the Silver Spirit with Jettero, escorted by two Army tanks.
There were things she wanted to say to Jettero, urgent things, but he had the window down and the roar of the huge monsters made it hard to talk. “What are the tanks for?” she said in desperation.
“I haven’t had time to separate from service,” said Jettero.
“Do they always escort junior officers with tanks?” said the Countess Krak.
“Well, no,” said Jettero. “They’re probably afraid that I will forget to turn in my side arms. One signs for them, you know.”
“Jettero, for heavens’ sakes, be serious! I’m worried sick about this Voltar situation.”
“If you go worrying about everything all the time, all you get done is worrying,” said Jettero.
“Some worry is necessary,” said the Countess.
“You’ll never be a combat engineer,” said Jettero.
“I’m not trying to be a combat engineer,” she wailed. “I’m trying to become the wife of one.”
“Ah, well,” said Jettero, “it’s a good thing you decided to put your mind on that. Here’s your crucial test. We’ve arrived.”
They had pulled up in front of a high-rise which rose grandly beside a park.
Two dark, lean Sicilian men carrying submachine guns were there, looking warily at the tanks. One peered into the Silver Spirit and then relaxed.
“Oh, it’s you, kid!” he said. “You better go right up. This place has been in an uproar all day.”
The other yelled into a lobby, “Hey! On your toes! It’s the kid and his moll!”
They were walking through a mob of men in black suits, and swarthy faces that had appeared from nowhere, apparently specially to get a look at her. She felt she was wearing everything backwards and was missing a slipper, for those eyes were very alert and appraising.
Then a whisper reached her, “Jesus, kid, where did you find HER? Cristo, is she a movie star or something?”
It made her feel a bit better, but at the top of the elevator, a booming voice was heard coming down the hall, “I don’t give a (bleep), you (bleepard)! Tell those sons of (bleepches) in Chicago to throw their god (bleeped) drugs in Lake Michigan and begin running rum or I’ll put a hundred hit men on their tails. Now get the hell out of here. I think I heard my kid!”
A very old Italian, beautifully dressed, lugging a briefcase, fled out of the room, almost collided with Jettero, looked at him in a cautionary way and said, “Take it easy in there. She’s on fire!”
An old Sicilian in a white coat hurried up and gave Jettero a reassuring pat and ushered them into a salon of such elegance the Countess thought for an instant she was back on Voltar.
A middle-aged woman, very blond, was sitting on a sofa in a pose of elegance and decorum. She wore a gold-sequined gown and was idly thumbing through a fashion magazine. Then she looked up and smiled politely and said, in a cultured and modulated voice, “Ah, Jerome. How nice of you to drop in.” She extended a hand for him to kiss and he did so.
“Mrs. Corleone,” he said with his most courtly Fleet manners, “may I present my fiancée.”
The woman languidly unfolded and stood. She was six foot six, over eight inches taller than Krak.
“Ah,” she said, extending her hand, “You are the Countess, I presume.”
Krak’s head spun. What was coming off here? How did this woman know she was really the Countess Krak? No one else on Earth knew that!
The giantess was looking her up and down as though she was some kind of a horse. And then apparently, she couldn’t keep the pose up any longer and she suddenly put her arms around Krak and hugged her and then held her off and looked at her and then hugged her again and said, “God (bleep) it, Jerome, this is the most beautiful lady I’ve seen in all my life!” She held her off again. “God (bleep) it, you’re more gorgeous than a Roxy girl. You’d stop the show!” And she hugged her again and said, “God (bleep) it, yes, Jerome! For Christ’s sake, marry her quick before she gets away!”
After a while, the giantess put her in a chair like Krak was some kind of porcelain and, gazing at her with admiration, offered her a silver box with Russian cigarettes—which, of course, Krak didn’t smoke—and called for cookies and milk for Jerome.
And then she and Jettero began to discuss the details of the engagement party and decided on Madison Square Garden and that it would be a week after the coronation. They had a lot of trouble with the guest list because Mrs. Corleone had not yet decided what to do with the mayor’s wife: on the one hand she wanted her there and on the other she didn’t, so that part of it was left up in the air.
They were finally being shown out and Mrs. Corleone turned to Jettero at the door. She said, “No wonder you would never touch those girls at the Gracious Palms!”
Kissed on both cheeks and getting into the Silver Spirit again, the Countess Krak’s head was in a new whirl. What girls?
To the clank of tanks and the beat of a police helicopter that was riding escort overhead, Jettero got her laughing a bit about his unarmed-combat class at the UN’s “favorite hotel.” He was quite witty and charming about it and she forgave him. But she didn’t get a chance to talk to him at all about Voltar at dinner. Although they ate in a most exclusive restaurant on East 52nd Street, The Four Reasons, and although Jettero had said they would have an intimate dinner, he also insisted that the tank officers and crews, two police captains who seemed to have joined the parade and the condo chauffeur also have dinner in the same place; and even if they were at different tables and studiously let Jettero and his lady sit close to each other in candlelight, people kept dropping by who had nice things to say. And from the restaurant manager to the head of Saudi-Yemen Oil, all had to be introduced.
Then they went to a world title prizefight and a whole row had to be cleared out for the tank crews, police officials, bank presidents and a pop star who now seemed to have joined the parade.
The Countess never did figure out who won the fight or why, as she couldn’t understand why neither fighter used any proper blows when they were wide open for them and never once even tapped each other with their feet.
The after-fight late supper was about as intimate as rush hour, as they had now acquired the heads of two TV networks and their guests and it drove Sardine’s half mad trying to serve them all. She hadn’t realized that Jettero knew so many people and even though he assured her that he didn’t, the restaurant manager himself took over a microphone from the MC and convulsed the whole assemblage with a story, which they found hilarious, of Police Inspector Grafferty accidentally getting his face full of spaghetti at the hands of “a certain celebrity” who “shall not be named” as he looked at Jettero.
It was not until they had been in bed for two hours that the Countess Krak found him quiet enough to listen.
“Jettero, I hate to have to bring this up. But please be serious. I’m quite worried about the danger we are in. You just grazed over it on the viewer-phone. I do not agree with your estimate at all.”
He propped his head up on a pillow and she knew she had his attention.
“You don’t know Lombar Hisst,” she said. “I do. For almost three years I had to work at his orders. He’s completely mad. He’s entirely capable of blowing this whole planet up simply to get revenge on it if it thwarted him.”
Jettero yawned. “I don’t think you know what a big job it is to blow up a planet. I even doubt it could be done. It’s even a very great engineering feat just to pull off a planet’s atmosphere.”
“But it could be attacked,” she said. “The populations could be mowed down.”
“Listen,” he said, “you stop fretting your pretty head. In the first place, the planet does have some defenses and they would be an embarrassment to any invader. Even if they were wiped out, which they would be, they still would take a lot of killing. You’d have to land at least a million men to mop the place up. And that would require, in terms of ships, everything the Apparatus has got. In order to conquer Earth, Lombar Hisst would have to pull his ships and troops out of every hangar and barracks in the Confederacy. And they have a lot of other things to do, like suppressing the revolt of Mortiiy on Calabar. Lombar would be spread too thin. And he won’t have any other forces available. He can’t tell anyone we have the Emperor here and the Fleet and the Army would simply yawn at him if he tried to insist they chase all over the place looking for me. They wouldn’t help him invade Earth. They’d think he’d gone crazy.”
The Countess rose on her elbow and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Darling, I know your reputation with the Fleet and even the Army has been excellent and that is as it should be. But I get a horrible feeling about all this. You have forgotten what happened here on Earth: that PR made an awful mess. All that horrible publicity. All those women and all those lies. Remember Madison?”
“Aw, they don’t do that sort of thing on Voltar,” said Jettero. “That goofy PR technology isn’t even known there. And as for Madison, he went in the river.”
“Well, call it woman’s intuition if you will,” she said, “but I’ve got a bad feeling about all this. Please, won’t you worry just a little bit?”
“Lady mine,” he said, “a lifetime is composed of a finite number of minutes. What is happening now is important. I have seen men who well knew they’d be dead in half an hour enjoy a glass of tup most thoroughly. Others spent the same half-hour worrying. They were just as dead but they had missed a glass of tup.”
“You’re impossible!”
Jettero looked at his watch. He said, “You have just wasted one minute of your life. Don’t waste the next one. Give me a kiss.”
“Oh, Jettero, I wish you knew Lombar like I do!”
“I assure you, lady mine, that you are just now in much better company. Come here.”
And though he smothered her with kisses and though he soon had her mind on other things, he did not, that night or in the weeks to come, succeed in smothering her worries.
Somehow she KNEW it was far more dangerous than he said. But he wouldn’t even listen!
PART SEVENTY-THREE
Chapter 5
Haggard with the smell of his own brand of danger, three days later Madison was returning to the Royal antechamber, escorting Lombar Hisst.
Keyed up until it felt his whole insides were going to rip asunder, Madison would know now, in just minutes, if he was to stride on to victory or be left expiring in some unpleasant Voltar gutter, a loser cast away. Just a hair’s width of miscalculation could expose all and even bring him death.
For three days he had worked and worked hard, with the knowledge that a failure at any given point in a complicated chain could leave him lost and condemned forever upon this distant strand and it would wreck forever his last chance to finish Heller.
The major problem had been to prove to Hisst that he, Madison, was such a magical PR that he could get the Lords to bow to Hisst—a thing which Lombar, a commoner, considered utterly impossible—and to get the action shown through the Confederacy on Homeview.
The sequence of minor problems had been hair-raising, each one in itself.
The first incipient nervous breakdown occurred when the son of Snor had been unable to wake his father up long enough to get him to stamp and certify a blanket order giving Madison the run of Homeview. Finally the boy had been persuaded by Teenie to go back and, when no nurses or doctors were about, and out of the sight of the security scanners, get Lord Snor’s seal of the Interior Division out of a desk and stamp the order himself.
The next threatened crackup happened when the manager of Homeview at the Joy City Studios had been unable to believe that Lord Snor would issue such an order and had tried to call Palace City to verify it. Unable to connect with Snor, he had gotten back at Madison—he evidently did not like the Apparatus—by giving him a lousy crew. No director, a scrub team of drivers and crewmen and, worst of all, a cameraman whose wife had just left him and who was not yet recovered from a five-day drunk. “A stinking order from the stinking Apparatus to do a stinking event only deserves a stinking crew,” he had said, little reckoning that he was putting Madison’s life on the line—and he probably would have cheered if he had found out. “We’ll put it in the Family Hour, so hold it on time, for we won’t reprogram all of Homeview just to insert a stinking clip.” Madison had left him wondering what the blazes a PR man was and had had to be content with what he got. Hair-raising!
Then a page had had to sneak into a meeting of the Grand Council. It had only been attended by five members and these were all bleary with speedballs. The page had slipped the prewritten resolution under the palsied hand of the Crown who was stamping something else and then he had to get it logged by a clerk who was too deaf to hear things that were being passed. Madison had crouched outside shivering until the page sauntered out, tapping his jacket to signify he now had a legal order to the Master of Palace City to change building names.
It had taken every credit Teenie could scrape up to bribe the Master to order the name wanted and to make the ceremonial arrangements for the right minute of the day. If this final result, about to be received, did not work, then Teenie would be after his blood again.
And then there had been the struggle of pages and sons to get most of the Lords to feel indulgent enough toward children to agree to attend the affair, followed by the heroic feat of actually getting them into their robes and out there.
Throughout the event, Madison had been too tied up with guiding Lombar to keep an eye on the Homeview crew. It had been HARROWING to have to walk along with dignified mien and resist all cravings to watch that (bleeped) cameraman and see if he even had the thing on, much less pointed at the exact required angle. If Madison had looked, the camera would have gotten him subjective—looking into its lens—like some gawker. So as of right here and now, walking across the antechamber, bringing the chief back to his desk, Madison did NOT know what he had in the can.
Lombar lumbered to his desk in front of the bolted door of the Emperor’s bedchamber and sank down in his chair. There was no telling what his reaction was thus far: he was completely silent.
Madison went over to the Homeview screen and with a bit of fiddling got it turned on. He didn’t know how to calculate the transmission time as the signal had left Palace City through a thirteen-minute future drag, had been transmitted to the planetary network center at Joy City and then had to come back and go through time relays to get back into Palace City time. So he didn’t know how to set the digitals to be sure he was ahead of the program on the screen’s recording strip, which would give him a replay. His palms were dripping and his hands shook.
Oh, God, he was about to do a thing which no PR with any brains would ever dream of doing: showing a client a program which the PR himself had not previewed. With a drunk cameraman, heavens knew what was on that strip and if that camera had even wobbled, Madison knew he would be dead.
He abandoned time calculation. He just yanked the strip ahead at random and hoped he was before the start point he wanted.
He got the afternoon “Family Hour.” There was a picture of a woman rocking a child and crooning while the commentator went on and on about the joys of motherhood.
Madison stole a glance at Hisst but Hisst was just sitting there, eyes upon the screen. Madison couldn’t figure the reaction.
The commentator said that you should never feed a child anything but mother’s milk so that “what gets indrawn with sweet nourishment carries with it, on this channel of deliciousness, a soft and vibrant flow of love and family.”
Madison wished desperately he knew how to fast-forward the strip. He glanced at Hisst to see how he was taking it: the yellow eyes, aside from their ever-present flicker of insanity, were unreadable.
The picture showed a lot of shots of strange animals rutting in dirt and the announcer condemned all beast milk as imparting only lust and greed, and wound up in style.
Now there came a series of views of ancient buildings. SCHOOLS! Oh, thank heavens, this was finally the start of the program they had just enacted.
A rather nasal commentator voice was running along with a history of schools and began to show those which had been named after members of the Royal family and even Emperors.
Madison cast a covert glance at Hisst. He was just sitting there in his gaudy scarlet Apparatus general’s full-dress uniform, more like a brutish devil than a man. One couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
Then suddenly the part that Madison had been waiting for came on. “. . . but times change and the parade of power across the stage of history can ever glitter to new heights. Yesterday it was determined by Lord Snor, Lord of the Interior, acting through the Master of Palace City, to celebrate our dedication to fineness and decency in tomorrow’s noblemen and courtiers and celebrate as well the glory and dedication of our magnificent and relentless protector of the realm, Lombar Hisst, Spokesman of the Emperor . . .” Madison thought the text was absolutely great, for, after all, he had written it himself; but he didn’t quite like the trumpet fanfare: it sounded more like razzmatazz. He glanced anxiously at Hisst to see how he was taking it but Madison could get no reaction at all!
“. . . by changing the name of the Page Royal School to the Hisst Royal School.”
God, thought Madison, he isn’t even blinking. He’s just sitting there! Can’t he see I’ve built in a name association so people will think of him as Royal? Yet, no sign.
There were pictures of the school and past classes, then a picture of the school as it had been today. (Bleep)! It looked a bit shabbier! It was a round pillbox of a building enclosing a hidden sports field; big enough, but some of the blue and red ropes, in stone, had gaps in them and there was even a broken window!
But the cameraman, even though his camera was unsteady, had opened up the view and there were the two lines of waiting Lords!
Martial music!
And here came Hisst striding along to go between the twin lines of waiting Lords, each Lord flanked by a son or a page. They were pretty drugged-up Lords but at this distance one missed it.
NOW, right here, this was the tricky part! If the cameraman erred in any way, Madison was dead, dead, dead!
Hisst strode between the two lines.
THE FIRST ONES BOWED!
Then, as Hisst passed, there was bow and bow and bow. The sons and pages were tugging at their sleeves and every Lord was bowing very low.
Madison was watching so closely he was almost losing his eyeballs. One slightest slip of that camera and he would be executed! And the cameraman had been drunk!
Hisst was through the lines. But it wasn’t over yet. Hisst would be walking that path again presently at Madison’s utmost peril.
On the screen, Hisst stepped into the path of the illusion projector. A technician turned it on. And the electronic illusion of Hisst, two hundred feet tall, like a gigantic red devil, seemed to pat the top of the school and the speakers boomed out as he blessed it.
Screams of cheers racketed. Totally and only boys, and piping and shrill. Were some of them more like animal calls?
One could not tell what Hisst, there at his desk, thought of any of it. No client reaction! Had Hisst seen something Madison had missed? Oh, pray the Lord, no!
Hisst was walking back now. The martial music banged and throbbed. Once more he had to pass between the lines of the waiting Lords.
Would they bow?
Would the cameraman slip?
Ah, the first two Lords bowed, then the second two, then the third pair. . . . Madison was watching every inch of that way like a hawk—or more like a chicken that any instant could get its head cut off.
Every pair of Lords bowed!
Hisst climbed into his local ground car on the screen.
The scene shifted to a cathedral and the announcer said, “We will now bring you to Casterly Church for afternoon vespers.”
It was over.
Madison, however, knew that his own trial was not. The client may or may not have detected something Madison had not seen. The client reaction was everything!
Lombar roused himself. He pointed at the screen and said, “Play that again!” Was he angry? Was he pleased? Had he suspected?
Madison suffered the agonies of the damned while the strip ran through once more.
Then Lombar uttered a shuddering sigh. He said, “They bowed to me.”
Then he sat there for a while.
Then he said, “They bowed to me, Lombar Hisst, a commoner.”
Then he shook his head. He said, “If I hadn’t been there myself, I would never credit it!”
Then he sort of rotated his head and blinked his eyes and said, “Lords? Bowing to a commoner?” Then, “It’s never happened before in the whole 125,000 years of Voltar history!”
Then he was blinking rapidly. “It can only mean one thing. They knew about the angels!”
“Well, I wouldn’t count on them bowing all the time,” said Madison. “After all, we have to prepare the minds of the people to eventually accept you as Emperor.”
“Yes,” said Hisst. “Yes. We have to prepare their minds.” And he was off into some daydream, spinning in who-knew-what part of the universe.
Madison let him spin for a little while but, after all, this was a client and he had to close.
“So you can now honor your promise to me,” said Madison. “An unlimited budget and a totally free hand.”
That brought Lombar out of his spin. He fixed Madison with a stare. The yellow lights in his yellow eyes were strange. “You can’t have a budget. Only a department or section can have a budget. And it would take a Royal order to create a new one.” He checked himself. He must never come so close to saying that there is no Emperor or seal back of that door. “His Majesty is far too ill.”
“But you promised unlimited funds!” said Madison. “You said if the Lords bowed . . .”
Lombar was shaking his head, annoyed. “Why are you making me listen to you? I don’t have to listen to people.”
“It’s because the people have to listen,” said Madison. “To BELIEVE you should be Emperor, they have to listen and I have to see that they listen to the right things and get whipped up about it. It will take PR and it will take time to create the favorable climate. And PR costs MONEY!”
“Money,” said Lombar. “I can only authorize pay. That’s why nobody gets paid much in the Apparatus. I can’t authorize budgets for departments that don’t exist!”
“Then,” said Madison, “as you are a man of your word and worthy to be Emperor because of that, authorize unlimited pay.”
“WHAT?”
“You saw the Lords bow.”
Lombar suddenly blinked and began to nod, sort of bowing himself. Madison slid his identoplate across the desk. He saw a basket of forms and found “Change of Pay.” He wrote “UNLIMITED” on it and slid it to Lombar.
Lombar looked at it and then filled it out and stamped it with Madison’s identoplate and then found his own in his hand and stamped again.
Madison already had the other order written and he slid it under Lombar’s identoplate and it came down on it. The order said:
Lombar Hisst,
Chief of the
Apparatus
and Spokesman for
His Majesty,
Cling the Lofty.
Lombar seemed to have forgotten about him. The chief went over to the Homeview and fed the strip back in. He sat down on a stool before it, cushioned his jaw in his cupped hands and began to watch it again.
Madison knew the man was hooked now in more ways than one. It was time to split with his spoils.
He got out into the hall and out of sight and then leaned weakly against a door, for he felt his knees would give way.
It was an awfully good thing Hisst never listened to anybody.
And who would tell him anyway?
In fact, who knew what the swindle was? Everyone else, watching, would have thought Hisst would know.
The cameraman had made it! He had not missed.
Right back of Hisst, in the golden dress of a page, amongst the crowd of boys, had come Teenie!
In the whole walk in and the whole walk out, she had been right back of Hisst, but cut out of the frame.
The Lords had been alerted by their pages.
They had been bowing to Queen Teenie, not to Lombar Hisst!
Madison’s knees stopped shaking.
He clutched his goodies to his bosom and sped out of the palace.
Though distant still, victory beckoned loud and clear just over the horizon.
HE HAD HIS CHANCE AT HELLER!
Wild exultation began to pound through him as he finally believed himself that it was true!
HE WAS THE ABSOLUTE CZAR OF PR ON VOLTAR!