PART EIGHTY-THREE

Chapter 1

Palace City was the safest place to be. Not only was it thirteen minutes in the future but, like Spiteos, it was protected from mobs by the simple fact that they could not cross the vast Great Desert on foot or with ground cars. Palace City also had heavy exterior defense bunkers that could shoot anything out of the sky.

Under the yellow mist of warped space, in the great round antechamber of the Emperor, Lombar Hisst sat with his back to the locked and bolted bedroom door and faced his general staff.

A red-uniformed old criminal, whose battle-scarred face also bore traces of debauchery and no sleep, was speaking. “The Army finally took it into their heads to cooperate,” he said. “A thousand transports have landed a million men on Calabar. This freed up the remainder of our forces there and they should be arriving at Apparatus Staging Area Seven by this evening. So, factually, sir, we don’t have any more troops on Calabar, only a few observers. That puts me out of a job as Calabar staff overseer here. And I was wondering if I might not take a little run up into the Blike Mountains. I’ve an estate there. . . .”

“You’ll stay on duty!” thundered Hisst, slapping his stinger down on his desk. “Set up a bureau for future population suppression. This would never have happened if we’d planned for it.” He pointed the stinger at another general. “If Tur there had had his wits about him, if he’d done some advance planning, he wouldn’t be in trouble now. Gas. Set up some gas extermination chambers for troublemakers: I’ll get you the plans from one of the Blito-P3 surveys.”

“Sir,” said the general indicated, “I don’t think there’s any time for construction of anything. Over two hundred Apparatus town headquarters have been wiped out to a man. If I could just have a few troops from the staging areas—”

“Empty a few prisons and put the inmates in uniform,” snapped Hisst. “Do I have to think of everything?”

Tur was already doing that as fast as he could but he held his peace.

“Now you, General Muk,” said Hisst, “how are you coming along with the Earth-invasion staging?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Muk, squirming, “I’ve put the invasion of Blito-P3 on hold. It seemed to me that the two and a half million troops might be needed right here on Voltar.”

“Bah!” said Hisst, glaring at the other generals. “We have a million and a half Apparatus troops to handle Voltar and some of the others. This is no full-scale civil war. It’s just mobs. Sooner or later they’ll get tired of being shot down and that will be the end of it.”

“We are having trouble with suppliers,” said Muk. “The troops that came in from Calabar are short of everything. We can’t seem to get deliveries into the staging areas.” He added hastily, “We are, of course, sending out armored convoys and simply raiding civilian warehouses and we can, of course, accomplish our outfitting. We have had some trouble with mobs burning plants and we have lost eighteen convoys in street fights as of this morning, but we can be invasion-ready in a couple of days, even so. It just seemed to me that with all this trouble, you might need the Blito-P3 force here.”

“No, no, no,” said Lombar. “We’re just fighting riffraff. You others simply need to take stronger measures, that’s all. The invasion goes off as scheduled, regardless of local disturbance.” He gave a short, barking laugh. “Unarmed rabble, riffraff.”

“They seem pretty mad,” muttered a general in the rear. “We’ve already lost over fifty thousand men.”

“Who’s that?” snarled Lombar. “Are you frightened or something? Well, speak up!”

He didn’t get an answer, for running feet sounded in the outside hall.

A staff officer, followed by two men, raced into the room. The others looked up in alarm. The three were carrying huge stacks of papers.

The staff officer dumped his on Lombar’s desk and pointed with a shaking finger. Headlines, full first page:

HELLER KIDNAPS
EMPEROR

Seventy papers said the same.

A general came out of his shock and frantically switched on a Homeview set. The words blared out, “IN THE MOST DARING RAID IN VOLTAR HISTORY, THE OUTLAW JETTERO HELLER HAS KIDNAPPED CLING THE LOFTY, EMPEROR OF VOLTAR!”

The generals stood like scarlet ice statues, eyes filled with the headlines, ears pounded by the din.

PART EIGHTY-THREE

Chapter 2

Into this stunned tableau rushed J. Walter Madison. He was wearing a General Services officer’s gray uniform and sand goggles. Thundering hard on his heels came his director and camera crew.

“Oh, heavens!” cried Madison. “I am so glad I found you, Chief!” It was no accident that he knew Hisst was there: he had been having him tailed.

Madison came to a halt before the stunned Hisst. He pointed at the headlines on the desk. He pretended he was short of breath. “I tried to get them to hold the announcement until I consulted you but the traitors wouldn’t wait!” What an awful lie that was! He had had his reporters, armed with copies of Heller’s letter, leak the news to every paper. He had only been waiting outside the antechamber until he had seen the papers brought in.

Lombar was staring at him. The generals were staring at him. Madison gave the director and crew a hand signal to go live, straight into the Homeview circuits for the whole Confederacy, as arranged by the manager at his orders.

“Quick, quick!” cried Madison. “We’ve got to take fast action to disprove this rumor. Open that door fast so we can show the whole Confederacy that the Emperor is still there!”

Lombar at the desk saw with horror, from the flickering camera lights, that they were on the air! He moved suddenly to mask himself with Madison’s body. Then he saw Heller’s baton lying there: convulsively he snatched it up and put it behind his back. He was trying to think of something, anything that would prevent this disclosure.

His own generals, not in the know, unwittingly undid him. In various voices, they all said differently and urgently the same thing, “Yes, for Gods’ sakes!” “Open up the door!” “This is catastrophe!” “Check that bedchamber!”

Madison was grabbing keys and opening plates. Lombar was too paralyzed to stop him.

Madison got the door open and slammed it wide. He and the generals rushed in. Lombar was knocked into their midst by the director.

THE ROOM WAS EMPTY!

The cameras played all around the Royal bedchamber.

Madison saw very clearly that the room had not been occupied for months: food in the pans was decayed, excreta on the bed covers was dry. Swinging up the covers to pretend to look under the bed, he hid the evidence.

Madison, leaping up, cried, “It must have been just last night! Oh, heavens, I’m afraid for the Emperor’s life!”

Then Madison saw Lombar was holding something behind his back. “What is that you’ve found?” he shouted. He grabbed the baton and the cameras zoomed in on it. Madison examined it, holding it to be shot, “The evidence! He left evidence! This is Jettero Heller’s officer baton! Now we know for sure who did it! The outlaw Jettero Heller has kidnapped Cling! Oh, catastrophe! Oh, woe! We are undone!”

Madison made a slight signal to the director and the cameras promptly began to cover the room minutely. It took them off of Lombar. Madison got behind Hisst’s back and whispered urgently in his ear.

Lombar came out of his shock. The cameras centered on him. “Yes, yes!” shouted Lombar. “Instantly! Generals! Order all Fleet and Army units to pursue him! The villain has escaped to Calabar!”

The director had the cameras pan as all the generals rushed off to issue the orders.

Madison gave the cameras and director a signal to stop.

The moment Lombar saw the flickering lights go off, he sank down soddenly in a chair. “Oh, this is terrible,” he groaned.

“Oh, no, it isn’t!” said Madison. “This is just great! It’s the very thing you have been waiting for! Violent civil unrest, no Emperor. The Army and the Fleet now out of the way. The great opportunity has arrived!”

“Opportunity?” said Lombar in new shock. “This is disaster!”

“No, it’s not,” said Madison. “The throne is empty. Lombar, you are about to become Emperor!”

“No, no,” said Lombar. “I need the body of the last monarch to show a duly convened assembly of Lords! I need the regalia! It’s gone!”

“Details, details,” said Madison. “Here, fortify your nerves. This is no time for palsied hands.” He took out of his pocket a flat pint bottle of the very best counterfeit Scotch that Bolz had been importing. There was only one change Madison had made in it: it held a minute quantity of LSD.

Lombar took a swig. It burned its way down. He felt his blood begin to flow again. He took another swig.

“Now, that feels better, doesn’t it?” said Madison. He turned. “Get set up, director.”

PART EIGHTY-THREE

Chapter 3

The Imperial Palace staff were scared blue. They had been locked in their rooms for months and now, dug out of the servant living quarters by Death Battalion officers, they were quite certain they were about to be executed. It was with great relief that they found, when they had been herded into the immense throne room, that they were only expected to set it up.

The vast domed hall was a thousand feet in diameter and a hundred feet from golden floor to sky-blue ceiling. On the dais solidly sat the mammoth throne of Voltar, of shimmering violet stone inset with jewels.

It was dusty and as cold as a tomb. It took two hundred staff half an hour to sweep it down and polish it up. They couldn’t quite understand what was happening, for the place was also swarming with men in the aqua-green uniforms and badges of Homeview who kept using gutter words they didn’t think Homeview men used.

Two Royal palace valets and a seneschal balked when ordered to open up the chests of robes: this was supposed to be a ceremony supervised by the Lord of Wardrobe who was not there. They got knocked and kicked by these strange “Homeview men” and lost no time after that in complying.

A man the others called “Costumes” made them indicate which were the coronation robes and then the Death Battalion people herded the palace crew back to their quarters and locked them all in once more. They felt relieved to be still alive.

In the vast throne room, the director pointed at the electronics security expert and said, “You roustabouts help him set this place up. Don’t forget the gadgets.” He looked over to where the circus girls and whores were clustered and he yelled, “You (bleeps) help people get dressed. And get dressed yourselves. We got too many (bleeped) women, so all but three of you dress like men. And no (bleeping) around!”

A logs man, working over to the side, yelled, “Hey, director, this paint won’t dry in under three hours!”

“(Bleep)!” yelled the director. “Just tell people to be careful.”

Lombar, sitting in the antechamber, was still a bit numb from shock. His yellow eyes were sort of glazed. “I still can’t figure how they found out,” he maundered.

“Oh, reporters are pretty awful,” said Madison. “Do you talk in your sleep?”

“I don’t think speed makes you talk in your sleep,” said Lombar. “Maybe it was the heroin.”

“Well, that will do it every time,” said Madison. “I sure wish you’d told me. We could have been spared a lot of this.”

“I guess I’m lucky you jumped in,” said Lombar.

“You sure are,” said Madison. “Here, have another swig of this. It’s a counterirritant.”

Lombar took another drink. Madison looked at his watch. He would get the beginning LSD effects about an hour after that first swig. He had twenty minutes to go. The counterfeit Scotch itself was already making Lombar pretty mellow.

A general came in. “All orders have been issued to the Fleet and Army. Some admiral wants to know if we have any pinpoint coordinates on Calabar itself.”

“Just tell him to look all over,” said Madison. “Use every ship he’s got and report progress.”

“Tell him he doesn’t need any coordinates,” said Lombar. “Just kill everything living on Calabar!”

“That would endanger the Emperor!” said the Apparatus general.

“I’m pretty certain he’s dead anyway,” said Lombar. “Clarify any orders on that basis.”

“If you say so,” said the general and withdrew.

It upset Madison slightly to have amateur help on a PR caper. But he shrugged. Heavens only knew where Heller was by now. Obviously this kidnap was months old. After that sister rescue, Heller might have gone anywhere: Manco? Earth? Who cared? All he wanted was the headlines. He began to dream up sighting reports and hairbreadth escapes he would manufacture. He didn’t even need the Fleet and Army reports! He had great confidence in his client eluding everything sent after him. At that moment, despite earlier setbacks, he was absolutely certain that he would shortly have the most immortal outlaw anyone had ever heard of. Eventually, of course, Heller-Wister would be caught and hanged but that always happened to outlaws and was to be expected. Meanwhile, what headlines! And, oh, my, wouldn’t Mr. Bury be pleased! Red carpets for Madison the length and breadth of what might remain of Earth.

PART EIGHTY-THREE

Chapter 4

Two circus girls came in and began to strip off Lombar’s clothes.

“What’s going on?” said Lombar, pretty drunk.

“Just you be patient, sweetiebun,” Flip said. “We’ll have you out of these general’s rags before you can spit. We’re experts.”

They had Lombar naked. He stood there teetering. “Hey, that’s a nice (bleep),” said Flip.

“I think so, too,” said the other girl. “Chief, have we got time?”

“Shut up,” said Madison. “Look, Lombar. Look at this.” Madison was holding up a golden Royal robe: it was worked with jewels against shimmerfabric to make patterns of comets, suns and planets. They seemed to move when you twitched the cloth.

For an instant Lombar recoiled. He had a Royal robe in his office at Spiteos that had been stolen from a tomb, and in private he had often donned it to admire himself. But it was death for anyone not of Royal blood to wear one of those in public. He had a sudden wave of paranoia. He had a spasm of nausea that he misinterpreted. He held on to his stomach and fended the robe off.

Madison glanced at his watch. Yes, it was about time for the first nausea and palpitations of LSD. He handed Lombar the Scotch. “Take another small swig and you’ll feel better.”

Lombar took another swallow. It warmed him. The spasm passed.

The girls got him into the Royal coronation robe. They slid sandals of gold and jewels onto his feet and would have combed his hair except that Madison, behind his back, was pointing urgently at his watch.

Madison made a gesture to Flick in the door and the man sped off. He and the girls got Lombar walking.

The LSD, the minute first dose, had begun to bite. “Set” now was very important: the state of Lombar’s mind.

“You are the most powerful being in the entire universe,” said Madison. “You must keep your mind dwelling on that.”

Lombar nodded and somehow concentrated.

They got him down the hall to the great doors of the throne room.

“Setting” was now the thing, all-important to LSD trips. Two women, dressed like Lords, bowed and swung wide the doors.

A burst of glorious music hit Lombar. The Imperial Palace band, dug out of the cellar and performing now with the scaler’s gun on them, played violently in their recessed stage.

“Lights! Camera! Action!” bawled the director.

Madison melted back. He didn’t want his own body in this. He could claim Lombar had gone crazy and ordered it, if worst came to worst, and his crew would back him up. But he didn’t think any worst would come of it. He was dealing out a fait accompli. Those flickering cameras were plugged straight into Homeview, live to the whole Confederacy.

The two actors in Lords’ robes escorted Lombar down a shimmering path that made it appear he was treading on sunbeams.

The whole hall was FULL OF PEOPLE! Hundreds and hundreds of them! Admirals of the Fleet, generals of the Army, Lords beyond count! They all bowed and stood up straight and bowed again. They kept doing that because that’s what they were designed to do. They were all electronic illusions ripped out of General Loop’s townhouse. The only live people in the place were the musicians and Madison’s crew and Lombar!

Lombar was getting his “setting” all right. To the swell of Imperial music, if a bit off-key from musician fear, Hisst proceeded in the steadying company of the two actors dressed like Lords, followed by the two circus girls costumed likewise.

The director noticed the assembled throng was bowing a few times too often and began to concentrate on Lombar’s face. A strange look was beginning to suffuse it. Heavens only knew what internal pictures were spinning through his LSDed brain now!

They got him to the throne dais. Here he was supposed to kneel. He wasn’t accustomed to doing that and he tripped and had to be hurriedly righted. The director with a hand triple-screen monitor edited it out. He had three cameras running and the two roustabouts, as substitute cameramen, were not completely steady but it would do.

A whore in a pontiff’s robes now came in from another door, followed by two cooks dressed as priests.

The “pontiff” walked up to the kneeling Lombar and made some signs over his head she hoped were right, then turned and took the regalia chains from one “priest” and hung them around Lombar’s neck. They clanked properly because they were gilded iron. She then turned and took the “scepter” from the other “priest” and handed it to Lombar. It was only papier-mãché and Lombar, clutching convulsively, bent it.

The director switched on a crowd camera and hissed into a radio for a props man to rush in and straighten it out. That done, he cut back.

They got Lombar up and onto the throne.

“The crown,” the director hissed. “You forgot the (bleeped) crown.” He cut back to the mechanically bowing crowd.

The two “Lords” got Lombar back on his knees.

Impromptu, Flip and the other girl, who had dressed him and had now gotten into the robes of noble ladies, grabbed the pillow the crown was sitting on and did a sort of a dance, carrying it between them. The director thought it was very nice. Nobody had seen a coronation for upwards of a century, so it didn’t matter, in his opinion. He cut the dance in.

Flip and the other girl let the “pontiff” take the crown off the pillow. The paint was still wet and the “pontiff” wiped her hands off on her gown before she went on.

Lombar’s hair, not combed, was pretty unruly and hard to stuff under the crown. The thing was too small. But she got it on someway.

“Say something!” hissed the director into the “pontiff’s” ear-radio channel.

“I think it will stay on,” said the whore to all Voltar.

The two “Lords” got Lombar off his knees and onto the big throne.

Flip and the other girl didn’t know what to do with the pillow. But it had been impromptu thus far and they would carry it off the same way. Flip tossed the pillow over her head in an elegant gesture and then she and the other girl, with a bouncing costume display turn, did what they always did in handling fake-throne tableaux in the circus—did an arm snake dance in front of Lombar’s face and then settled elegantly on either side of him below the arms of the throne, heads at the level of his waist.

Suddenly Madison remembered that in the pressure of other things, he had forgotten to write the announcement, much less give it. All Voltar was watching but they didn’t know what in Hells they were looking at.

“Now!” hissed the director into the electronics man’s channel.

Nothing happened. Then the electronics man hissed back over the radio to the director, “Somebody tripped over the (bleeped) plug!”

Lombar was getting restless. Lord only knew what was passing through his mind. As LSD gives a time speedup, he certainly wasn’t aware of the fact that, due to somebody accidentally disconnecting something, there was a blank in the program.

But Flip was aware of it and, sitting on the floor beside the throne, she showed that she was a born and trained trouper. The subject of this display was getting restless. There were slits in the side of the very ample and overflowing robe. Unseen by the camera, she slid her nearest hand through one and passed it softly over Lombar’s thigh, hidden by the garment.

Lombar’s yellow eyes flared for a moment in surprise.

Flip, hand and forearm hidden now through the robe slit, sat facing forward with an expression which was very lofty and noble.

Lombar settled down. He put his head back. A look of ecstasy began to steal over his features.

The lofty and noble expression on Flip’s face was retained. But her eyes flicked sidewise for a moment and then her eyelids began to twitch in rhythm.

“Lovely, lovely,” whispered the ecstatic Lombar.

“That’s great,” hissed the director, “hold it just like that.” And then to the electronics man, “Hurry up!”

“Got it,” came the answer.

Lombar was stiffening out his legs. Then his yellow eyes flared wide.

Four, count them, four electronic-illusion angels came winging down out of the blue dome of the vast hall.

They hovered right over his head!

One of them, a delicate, ethereal thing, suddenly said in a deep male voice—the electronics man couldn’t find the girl who was supposed to do this—“Well, Hisst, old boy, you finally made it and it’s about time!”

Lombar shuddered in ecstasy.

Flip’s face, noble and lofty, was still registering a rhythmic twitch. Her lips parted slightly in concentration.

Madison was wildly signaling to the director, giving him a sign to zoom in and hold.

With the beatific smile on Lombar’s face filling the frame and trying to cut out the tangled hair now smeared with wet gilt from the crown, the director made a camera hold.

Madison had a mike now. He tapped it with his finger—boom, boom. It was live.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the Voltar Confederacy,” he said, “we have just brought you live, live, live, the crowning of Lombar the Magnificent. Due to circumstances beyond our control, a hiatus has occurred in the Royal line of Voltar. The outlaw Jettero Heller stole Cling the Lofty and it was vital during this time of national unrest that the throne be filled. In a self-sacrificing moment, Lombar Hisst, lately Chief of the Apparatus and more lately Dictator of Voltar, heeded the resounding demands of the multitude and took the throne by popular acclaim. This program has been brought to you by the courtesy of the Grand Council. Long Live Lombar the Magnificent. He will give his all.”

And at that moment, Lombar did give his all. Flip’s hidden efforts came to culmination. “Oooh!” groaned Lombar as his body gave a convulsive jerk.

Flip grinned.

The director held upon the face a moment more while Lombar panted.

“Cut,” the director said. “That was beautiful!”

PART EIGHTY-THREE

Chapter 5

If the Confederacy had thought it had riots, these were nothing compared to the riots they were having now, the day following the coronation.

A stunned Voltar had not known what to make of the “coronation” event when it had come on Homeview. Word had flashed across mobs and even battles with the Apparatus, and action had suspended while one and all sought the nearest Homeview set in cars, tanks, buildings, stores or homes. At first some thought the rumor that brought them to the viewscreens must be mistaken: Was this some old musical? Or a circus? Or a parody in bad taste?

Voltar takes its Royalty seriously and tampering with it had never been taken lightly. It had prospered and been stable for ages in the old galaxy and for 125,000 years in this one under the political system of a benign monarchy. There had been upsets in the past but these infrequent disruptions in Royal rule, even when occasioned by excessive repression, had been resolved by a conclave of the Lords of the land—of which there were thousands, existing not only on the central planet of Voltar but on the other one hundred and nine planets. A system existed, in other words, for handling the cessation of a Royal line.

In the living memory of most of the four hundred billion inhabitants of the Confederacy, despite their long life expectancy, no coronation had taken place. But they suspected that it would be attended by some vast array of Lords, with pomp, parades, celebrations and even holidays complete with festivals and one’s best clothes. It wouldn’t be over in ten minutes, most of which was being performed without even saying what it was about.

And then, at the end, the statement that that insanely rapturous face was their new monarch and that it was no one less than the head of the organization they had been battling in the streets for days, the Apparatus of trial notoriety, stuffed torches into an already roaring fire. People who had been on the sidelines before burst into the streets with screams of fury. Government offices and buildings that had nothing to do with the Apparatus became the targets for anything one could throw or any weapon one could steal or invent.

Normal conduct of affairs and life all but ceased. In its place rose the anarchy of rage.

The Domestic Police gave up any real effort to control the mobs and in some places even joined them.

The smoke of burning buildings hung like black mourning over thousands of cities. The damage toll was soaring into billions of credits and hundreds of thousands of lives.

Reports of all this, oddly enough, were only being centralized by Madison himself.

He sat in the Emperor’s antechamber at a desk previously used by guard officers. Lounging around the large room were the forty-nine members of his crew. Because they had procured bales of them from Homeview, they were all attired, except for Madison, in the aqua-green uniforms of that organization. The tunics, pants, boots and caps with their goggle-visor bills were easy to slip into. Furthermore, as the news came in, none of them were partial to looking like Apparatus: also, as “Lieutenant” Flick had pointed out, nobody ever looked twice at a Homeview crew—they were accepted as part of the scenery, and while people might be interested in something that was being camera’d, nobody ever looked twice at the crew. The fourteen women backed him up: they thought the uniforms were pretty.

Madison, through the night, had dozed while sprawled across the desk. Lombar was in the Emperor’s bedchamber, excreta and all, dumped there to sleep off the counterfeit Scotch and LSD and maybe some heroin and speed they did not know or care about.

From time to time Apparatus generals came in with reports that the situation was worsening. They would find that there was no one on duty but Madison: he would rouse and blink, hear about some new town going up in smoke and then say, “You just make sure, General, that the Fleet and Army are going after Heller,” and go back to sleep.

About 9:00 AM, some fifteen hours after the coronation, Flip brought him his share of the hot jolt and sweetbuns they had looted out of the Imperial stores.

“Chief,” she said, “you look awful. There’s several bedchambers opening into this room, probably left over from when some Emperor had mistresses. They all got bathrooms. I found an Emperor’s spin razor and spin brush and even a bottle of soap. I didn’t bring you any spare General Services uniform and that one is all sweated up, so I laid out a new Homeview outfit for you. Now eat your breakfast.”

Madison groggily imbibed the sweetbun and hot jolt. He felt better.

“Now,” said Flip, “we can slip into that bedroom, rip off a little piece of (bleep) and you can freshen up and change your clothes.”

Alarm rang through Madison. He suddenly had a bright idea. “No, look. I can’t leave this desk unmanned. So you take over for me here while I go bathe and change.”

“Aw, (bleep),” said Flip. “All right, but you sure are weird. Never mind, I’ll get you into bed yet.” She sat down in the chair he vacated.

Madison looked at the crew. Some of them were dozing, a circle of six were shooting a quiet game of dice for minor loot they had found lying about. Flick was snoring on the floor between Cun and Twa. Madison went into the mistress’ bedchamber to shave, brush his teeth, bathe and change into a Homeview outfit.

An Apparatus general came in and looked around, eyes a bit wild.

“Can I help you?” said Flip in her best approximation of a male voice to fit her costume.

“I got to see Hisst!” he said urgently.

Flip pointed with a polished fingernail. “His Majesty is right over in that bedchamber, sleeping it off. The sideshow is free. We don’t have any nuts for sale, but you can tip me if you want.”

The general hurried toward the Emperor’s bedroom.

“Cheapskate,” muttered Flip. “Hey, Flick! Ain’t there some way we can sell some tickets? Isn’t every day people can see a drunk Emperor.” Then she saw Flick was simply snoring. “(Bleep),” she said. “No enterprise. I could make a fortune with this show.” And she began to tally up the potential profits from tickets and drinks and (bleeps) on the side. She got quite interested.

The crew lolled on, oblivious of the fate that was about to overtake them.

PART EIGHTY-THREE

Chapter 6

The chamber stank of old excreta and new vomit.

The general closed the bedroom door behind him. He stared at Lombar, still in his coronation robe, lying on the soiled bed. The general was somewhat indecisive and he dithered up and down the side of the bed for a bit. Then he decided that the risks of not waking Lombar overbalanced the risks of his wrath. He shook him by the shoulder.

Lombar woke up. It was all right until he tried to turn his head and then the hangover hit him a sledgehammer blow. He winced and then he glared at the general.

“Sir, I mean Your Majesty,” said the perturbed officer, “I’d like to report . . .”

“Your Majesty?” said Lombar. “Quit that! You could get me killed. Are you trying to be funny?”

“No, sir. It’s no joke. You were crowned Emperor yesterday.”

“WHAT? Oh, my head!”

“Sir, Your Sir, don’t you remember anything about it?”

Lombar was trying to move his head. The pain shattered him. He screwed up his face, trying to get oriented. Then he said, “I thought it was just a dream or something. Wait. Is this real?”

“Well, yes, Your M . . .Your Sir, but I have to report that the whole Apparatus Section of Government City is in flames. The troops there fought the mobs and Domestic Police to the last man. I want to call reinforcements for Palace City here.”

“Well, call them, call them,” said Lombar. “Nobody is stopping you. Just a minute.” He was staring down at the soiled coronation robe. “You said I was crowned yesterday. I have no recollection of it. WHO DID THAT?”

“It was all on Homeview, Your M . . . Sir. I believe Madison and his camera crew did it, Sir Majesty.”

Lombar might have been drunk and doped, but all that remained of it now was livid ferocity. “(Bleep) them! Grab a Death Battalion and put Madison and his crew under close arrest. Oh, my head! Then call for your reinforcements. Well, go on! Get out of here!”

“Sir, Your Sir Majesty, there’s something else. An odd alert just came through on Homeview that an important announcement that affects you will be made in just half an hour. It sounded so ominous, we were worried.” Then he saw the animal savagery that was forming on Lombar’s face. Hastily, he added, “Yes, Your Sir, I’ll put Madison and his crew under arrest.” And he rushed out before Lombar took it into his head to kill him.

The general had risen to his rank because he didn’t take on odds he couldn’t handle. He walked right on out past Flip. He went along the hall and out of the building.

Palace City’s streets resembled, already, an armed camp. The general signaled a colonel of a Death Battalion and gave him a crisp order and a caution. Then the general hurried on to a communications tank to order far more Apparatus troops into the town and around its perimeter.

The colonel grabbed a captain of a hundred-man company. Within a brace of minutes, black-uniformed Death Battalion troops went to the various outside doors of the Imperial Palace and entered to converge upon the antechamber through various halls.

The aqua-green uniformed crew were suddenly confronted by leveled blastrifles. The dice game went into suspended animation. Cun prodded Twa and Flick awake. Others rose up staring.

“CHIEF!” screamed Flip.

Madison, who had just finished dressing in a Homeview rig, came out buckling on its equipment belt. He stopped with a jolt.

“You Madison?” said the Death Battalion captain.

Madison looked at the leveled blastrifles and the deadly troops. “I think there’s some mistake. If you’ll just step into the bedchamber with me, His Majesty will straighten it out.”

“His Majesty, or whatever he is, ordered it,” said the captain. “You’re all under arrest. Come along.”

“They’re going to kill us!” yelped Flick.

“No,” said the captain. “You’re simply under arrest. I don’t want any trouble. My advice, knowing something of”—and he jerked his head toward the bedchamber— “I’d move quickly before it’s something worse. Where’s the dungeon in this place?”

Flip leaped up. “Right this way!” She led off down a side hall.

The rest of them shouldered their equipment, cameras and loot.

Madison still would have gone to the bedchamber but the captain blocked his way. “You’re stupid,” said the captain. “You haven’t been in the Apparatus long or you’d know better. Move along!” And he shoved Madison into the wake of his crew.

Followed by the soldiers, the crew was led down a long, curving flight of stairs. They came to a vast place that had a whole wall covered with locker doors, equipment, tables and benches. It had round windows that overlooked a park.

“Well, here we are,” said Flip.

“This is no dungeon!” snapped the officer.

“Captain,” said Flip, “when you have been in as many dungeons as I have, you get to be an expert. Just because this LOOKS like the Imperial galley with its lockers all crammed with food is no reason it isn’t a perfectly satisfactory dungeon for your purposes. Now, if you want to give your troops piles from sitting on stone ledges, that’s up to you. But a smart officer always thinks of his troops above everything. Look at those soft benches.”

The deadly expressions on some of the soldiers’ faces relaxed. It was the captain who laughed.

“Now, we’re only under arrest,” said Flip. “We are just movie people, not dangerous like soldiers, so don’t worry that we’ll try to get away. Maybe Hisstee didn’t like some of the shots we took. Celebrities are funny that way. This will all blow over and there’s nothing like full stomachs. So let’s all just sit down and have a nice party. Girls, start looking in those lockers for some tup. Imperial grade.”

She slipped a very sharp electric kitchen knife into her boot under cover of her gesture toward the lockers.

The captain and the soldiers sat down.

Several criminals studied covertly how to slip the power charges out of the blastrifles now leaning against tables.

Madison handed the captain the half-finished bottle of LSD and Scotch.

The electronics man pulled the Imperial chef’s Homeview set out of its locker and turned it on. His intention was to mask the sound of any commotion if Madison gave the signal to fight their way out of here. Comets, there were certainly enough shots and screams coming out of Homeview, as its crews covered battles and riots, to mask anything short of blowing up the whole Imperial Palace.

PART EIGHTY-THREE

Chapter 7

Lombar Hisst struggled with the coronation robe and with a curse threw it in the corner. If he had appeared in Homeview in that, he had no illusions as to what the penalty would be.

With care, he had built himself into a dominant position and, with care, he could have built it into Emperor. He might have even made it without a body and regalia, given enough dope to use on a conclave of Lords.

But in some way he could not explain, he had been plunged forward too fast. He did not understand that it had happened through alcohol and LSD. But however it had happened, of one thing he was sure: Heads were going to roll!

Curses were issuing from him in torrents. He was enraged beyond any rage he had ever felt before. He was actually quite deadly. He still had troops, he still had guns: he held the center of government. People were going to pay! And pay in blood!

A cold shower did not help much. Lacking any other clothes, he got back into his scarlet general’s uniform. He went into the antechamber: it was cluttered but empty. He got into his desk and found some speed and heroin and gave himself a speedball, a powerful mixture of the two.

Almost at once he felt better, even more deadly but more in control. Factually, at times of crisis such as now, Lombar Hisst was something to reckon with.

The Apparatus General Staff had taken a large chamber at the front of the building. Lombar hit buzzers and very soon those who were at Palace City, the bulk of his generals, were sitting in the antechamber.

“Now, give me your situation reports,” snarled Lombar. And in the next ten minutes he competently ordered a redisposition of troops without even touching his invasion staging areas. The generals were suddenly much heartened and barked orders into their own radios for relay. The population would soon be on the run.

The general who had awakened him was glancing at his watch and Lombar glared at him with annoyance.

“It’s the Homeview,” the man said. “It’s coming on in thirty seconds. May I activate the set?”

Lombar snarled at him to go ahead.

The picture was a running battle between retreating Apparatus tanks and a mob using air-trucks that didn’t seem to care what happened to them. At Homeview, a monitor switched and showed street fighting in the capital of Mistin against a background of smoke and flame.

Suddenly, without erasing the Homeview panorama, a second, brighter picture came on. It was an overplay. That meant it was not coming from the Homeview studios: it was not even coming on Homeview lines. It was being battered into the network by some remote transmitter that might be anywhere, most probably in outer space.

HIGHTEE HELLER!

Behind her were pipes and dials that were probably the back of the bridge of a spaceship.

Her eyes were very intense. Her voice was strong and clear.

“Citizens of the Voltar Confederacy! Hear me! His Majesty Cling the Lofty is ALIVE! It was at his express command and wish that my brother, Royal Officer Jettero Heller, rescued him from captivity by Lombar Hisst.

“The Chief of the Apparatus murdered legitimate successors to the throne. Then, by the use of poisons called drugs, he suborned the Grand Council and through this treachery has sought to usurp the throne!

“At the ancient fortress of Spiteos, long since believed abandoned and radioactive, Hisst has stored enough drugs to poison this entire nation. And he intends to do so!

“Here in my hands you see the Royal regalia: the scepter, chains and crown.” She held them up.

“Army, Fleet, police, officials and citizens! Cast off the usurper! Rally to His Majesty and my brother Jettero Heller!

“DESTROY THE APPARATUS AND LOMBAR HISST!”

The picture went off, leaving the background view of running citizens and flames which had continued throughout.

“Oh, my Gods,” said a general. “We’re finished! It was bad enough without that!”

And then Lombar Hisst showed why Lombar Hisst, the commoner, had come so far. “Turn on the Army and Fleet command channels!” he barked.

A general grabbed levers on another console. The Army General Staff channel was live. He shunted the incoming signal through a decoder.

“ . . . and I don’t think we will get any orders from the Lord of Army. We’ve got to make up our own minds here. So it’s been decided to stay neutral. End.”

“Get the Fleet!” said Lombar.

The general threw more levers and shunted to the decoder. As they were thirteen minutes in the future, they had the advantage of selecting any part of current signals as though they were past. After some blurs, the general settled in on the beginning of a Fleet transmission. The others in the room were very tense. An awful lot depended on this: if the Fleet stayed neutral, too, they could still win.

“Admiral Farb here, Main Fleet Base at Hite. Calling Fleet Admirals Staff. Have just intercepted a public transmission from Hightee Heller on Homeview that concerns the political situation at Palace City and the general state. We are standing by, red alert, with six thousand combat vessels and fifty thousand Fleet Marines. Requesting analysis and orders.”

A slight delay. Then, “Admiral Farb from Fleet Admirals Staff: Know: No orders or directions from Palace City or the Lord of Fleet. Consensus of Admirals Staff: although Hightee Heller is popular, she has no political status. The regalia displayed cannot be analyzed by lapidarists for authentication simply by being seen on Homeview. There is no proof that there are any drugs stored at Spiteos: charts list it as abandoned for the past 125,000 years. She did not produce the Emperor on the screen, which is, itself, suspect. Fleet Admirals Staff order, number available to all vessels and bases, is to restrain independent actions or demonstrations within your own units and to remain severely neutral. End.”

“There you are,” said Lombar. “We are still in control. Issue Imperial Orders to the Army and Fleet, commending their neutrality and confirming it. Issue a statement to Homeview that it is a lie that there are any drugs at Spiteos, that the statements of Hightee Heller are simply a misguided effort to protect her brother. And go right on shooting the riffraff down in the streets: either they’ll get tired or we’ll run out of riffraff.”

“Your . . . er . . . Sir,” said a general, “there ARE drugs at Spiteos.”

Lombar fixed him with a sneer of contempt. “Mobs can’t get across that desert. Let’s get something clear: Properly defended, we can hold Spiteos for years. And another thing: in all our lengthy history nobody has ever been able to make a dent in Palace City. Not even the combined Fleet and Army could take this place. It’s been tried. We’re safe as safe and we’re in control.”

He stood up. He reached for his cap. The generals stood. One said, “Are you going somewhere, Your . . . er . . . Sir?”

“Yes, I’m going somewhere,” said Lombar. “I’m going to grab a flying tank and get to Spiteos. Order another hundred thousand men in there to defend it. I’m going to make sure nobody exposes our store of drugs until they can be replenished by an Earth invasion. Meanwhile, see to the outer bunkers and defenses of this place. We’re in control and mean to stay that way.”

He put on his cap and started to leave. Then he turned to them. “And you can stop this ‘Your Sir’ business, all of you! For better or for worse, I took the throne and don’t forget it!”

“Yes, Your Majesty!” they chorused and promptly knelt.