Teenie looked all around at them, beaming and pleased. “Oh, dear trusted people. You are so sweet to be among. I thank you.” And she began to name different sections of the staff, thanking each personally. Then she cried, “I love you all!”
They gazed at her with adoring eyes. The major-domo was about to say something else when a squabble broke out. Six women who, from their uniforms, were maids, were hissing and snarling at each other.
An old woman, stern and beautifully uniformed, was at them at once, speaking to them sharply for causing a disturbance. The major-domo went over to them.
It developed that they were having a dispute as to which two of the six should take the night watch and put Teenie to bed. It was quite bitter. It seemed that some of them had been switching watches. The major-domo pointed with authority at two of them whose watch it really was: they would take it! This pair stood promptly taller, their faces very proud. And then they suddenly stuck their tongues out at the other four and raced upstairs to get Teenie’s bath ready. The abashed four, who had sought to interlope, looked at Teenie and knelt with both knees on the floor with a trace of fear. She smiled at them and they let out a sigh and then smiled back. It struck Teenie funny and she threw them a kiss and began to laugh. The whole staff began to laugh. Then, “Long Live Your Majesty!” they cried.
Teenie opened her mouth to tell them all good night when the guard captain in flashing silver caught her attention and pointed way over to the wall where Madison cowered.
“(Bleep) that guard captain,” choked Madison. Teenie had obviously forgotten all about him, for now she frowned and looked toward him as though she had noted some unwanted bug. The staff looked toward him as well and glared: evidently his crime of provoking their darling Queen Teenie had circulated through the whole, vast palace.
The guard captain and Teenie engaged in a whispered conversation. Then, with two guards flanking her, she followed the captain over to where Madison sat.
“They reminded me,” said Teenie, in English, “that I have several dress fittings in the morning and gardening in the afternoon. They couldn’t find time to fit in a trial, so we’ll have it now. Guilty or not guilty?”
“Of what?” wailed Madison.
“In the confines of a palace, unless he is dealing with a person of higher rank,” said Teenie, “the nobleman has the power of life and death over offenders to his property or person.”
“I didn’t offend you!” cried Madison in English. “I was just trying to get your help! You NEED me!”
She turned to the guard captain and, in Voltarian, she said, “He pleads guilty as charged. Enter it in the palace records.”
“TEENIE!” cried Madison, “You MUST listen. . . .”
“I don’t have to listen to you,” she said in English. “You’re guilty as hell and you know it. You never even lifted a finger to stop that (bleep) Gris. You got yourself into this mess because you didn’t play ball with me.” She shifted to Voltarian, “I therefore pronounce the prisoner guilty and the sentence is to be carried out without fail.”
The guard captain nodded.
Madison said, “You haven’t said what the sentence is!”
She was speaking in English again. “Well, Maddie, I get all heated up conducting these classes; they sometimes bring me to the brink of (bleep) and I ache. I’ve always wanted to break that fixation you have on your mother. So you’re sentenced to coming up to my bedroom and (bleeping) me until I’m all limp and satisfied.”
“OH, NO!” screamed Madison, and cringed back so hard his chains rattled. Then he thought in quick streaks of blue light and inspiration hit him. “Look,” he said, “right down under that floor there are 250 boys! I can still hear the music pound! Any one of them would—”
“Maddie,” she said sharply in English, “you got your wires crossed. The moment I start (bleeping) one of those pages, the rest would be so jealous of him they’d slaughter him! Besides, I’m making them into perfectly good catamites and it would ruin them.”
“You’ve got men on this staff!” cried Maddie in English.
“They’re commoners and they’d be executed if they were found in bed with royalty,” said Teenie, continuing in English. “I’m too fond of them to put them at risk. Queen Hora used to use noble guard officers: she had a whole regiment of them. But they are not here. So can the chatter, Maddie. You’re for it, me bucko boy.”
Madison was shuddering to the depths of his soul. “No,” he pleaded. “The answer is no!”
Teenie smiled and it made him flinch. He knew this wasn’t all of it.
“All right,” she said, glancing at her Mickey Mouse watch, “just sit there and think it over. This guard captain has orders that if you don’t come up to my room tonight, then, straight up sharp at 6:00 AM you are to be taken to the dungeons and executed with an electric axe. So if you change your mind, your guard here will have orders to bring you up to my room, no matter the hour.”
She gave him a little mocking wave and turned away.
The staff insisted that she sit on a little silver seat with handles as she might be too tired after her long evening to walk up the stairs, and they bore her off, up the golden steps and out of sight.
PART SEVENTY-TWO
Chapter 11
For a very long time Madison sat, and he sat in the deepest gloom. The metal chair was cold, the chains were colder and the guard’s electric axe, with its racing sparks, chilled him even more.
It was dark now in the hall. The rock music from below was only the faintest thumping, more like the mutter of some hungry beast than music.
Half-seen in the dimness, the painted angels on the walls seemed to look at him. He had little doubt that he would be joining the real angels soon and spend the rest of eternity sitting on some cloud holding a useless harp. Madison knew he could never learn to play it.
At length he was able to struggle up out of his shock, enough to think about his terrible conflict: If he did go upstairs he would die; if he didn’t go upstairs he would die.
He had been very well brought up: He had to be true to his mother at any cost, even his life. Since he had been a baby it had been dinned into him that boys who did not sleep with their mothers were unnatural and it had been proven to him without doubt, even in his schools, where the word of the psychiatrist Freud was five times holier than God’s. Unless one had a firm Oedipus complex, expressing libidinous desires for one’s mother, one could never hope to be a genius at his trade. To abandon it would be a negation of his own wits. Without this bright spark, according to all Freudian teachings, he would fall into crass mediocrity, descended to a mere hack or drudge. There was no such thing, according to psychologists, as a genius who was not neurotic. Without that genius—which Madison never doubted—he would die professionally. Like all PR men, belief in himself was the first thing one had to establish and only then could others believe in him.
But his mother had reinforced it by continually reminding him of how indulgent she was. After his father departed she had not burdened him with another whom he could only hate, and how very few mothers would bother to give a son this much attention. His mother was a dear thing, still quite pretty at forty-nine. When he thought of all the sacrifices she had made for him, foregoing all other men, the least he could do was reciprocate and forego all other women. But it went deeper than that: completely aside from any Freudian orders from his child psychologist, made more real with mild electric shocks, he truly loved her. She had warned him repeatedly of the dangers of other women, as had his current psychiatrist, and colliding in life with such heartless creatures as Teenie, he agreed with them utterly. It would not only wreck him mentally to have sex with Teenie, it would break his mother’s heart. She would probably commit suicide, a thing she often had to be prevented from doing, and he knew, if that happened, he would promptly do the same.
No, to go up those stairs and get in bed with Teenie would be the end of all he knew. Impossible! That was out. Better to die
at dawn. Far better.
His thoughts turned to Heller. Victory had been almost within his grasp when everything had come so unaccountably unstuck. The headlines he had been getting for Heller had been magnificent! He fondly recalled the stories about Toots Switch, Maizie Spread and Dolores Pubiano de Cópula. Absolute masterpieces, guaranteed to stamp the name of Wister indelibly forever upon the public consciousness. Wister would have become known, as those trials progressed, as the greatest outlaw lover in history. And such plans he had had, to embellish and add glitter to the outlaw part of it! Wister robbing the Federal Reserve Bank had been the least of his PR projections. He could have made it all soar to greater and greater heights. He could have had every law enforcement agency in the world, every one of them from Nazi Interpol right on down to the meanest town cop, absolutely baying on Wister’s trail and slavering to catch him. It would have ended with the biggest public execution man had ever known. Wister would have been absolutely IMMORTAL!
Then he brightened up. He could do the same thing here if he had a chance. That the man’s real name was Heller made no difference in his plans. He was tireless enough to simply scrub his other work and start anew. They had Domestic Police. They had the Army Division. And even if the Fleet might be lukewarm at first, he could heat them up. If he worked this right, he would have the whole Apparatus behind him.
He began to daydream in the dim and empty hall: headlines about Heller robbing the estates of Lords and giving the proceeds to the poor; Heller robbing spaceships, 18-point type; Heller kidnapping the daughter of some earl or duke and story after story of her pleading with him piteously to be raped—how the public would LOVE it! Headlines of Heller robbing every bank on every planet of the entire Confederacy, each one with a new twist, each one with new blood, each one with new staggering amounts of loot being given to the poor. What a hero he would be! Heller, the most hunted outlaw in 125,000 years! Confederacy history! MAGNIFICENT!
Then he had another idea: He could hyphenate Heller’s name. He could call him Heller-Wister and rake in and rake over ALL the earlier stories, spreading them throughout the entire Confederacy. No, his earlier work was NOT lost—it was only being amplified!
Ah, now he was getting somewhere. And he could safely begin to dream the greatest dream of all: Madison walking up to Bury in a sort of offhand way, “Well, Mr. Bury, I finally finished a job for you. Heller-Wister is immortal.” And Mr. Bury would take him by the hand, tears of gratitude sparkling in his eyes, and in a voice charged with emotion, say, “Madison, you are restored to grace. Please, please accept the presidency of FFBO and please forgive me for ever doubting you for a second. Never again will I chase you in Army tanks!”
The glow faded. A chill wind blew in the hall. The reality of the situation was that, right now, if Bury even caught sight of him, even providing he could get home, he would be stood up against a wall and shot. It was death if he did not succeed with Heller-Wister. Death without even the comfort of a blindfold or cigarette: it was a good thing he didn’t smoke.
A bit of the rock music from down below beat for a moment more loudly against the floor. The rhythm sounded so much like Earth that it gave him pause. He began to get a sort of hunted feeling: Bury was sort of supernatural—maybe he could even reach him here! When he thought of possible links between Rockecenter and Lombar, he began to shiver. Oh, it was surely death indeed if he did not somehow get to work on Heller-Wister!
The current guard shifted position slightly and the axe emitted a puff of ozone. It brought his mind to Teenie.
Up to now he had been thinking that if he went upstairs and went to bed with her, she would then help him. He realized she had made no guarantees of that whatever. All she had promised was that if he went upstairs and slept with her, he would not be executed at dawn!
It was a problem wherein if he did he would die because of his mother and if he didn’t he would die because of Bury. It wouldn’t help him at all to go up there.
Obviously, this required some other solution!
He was usually good at getting ideas and had always been proud that, because of the Oedipus complex, he was a genius at it. But tonight his mind seemed bankrupt.
He glanced at his Omega wristwatch. He had been sitting here for two hours! What a long time for him just to sit without getting a single constructive idea! He took a grip on himself. After all, he was a PR man, a true-blue professional.
He would be orderly. He would now skim over everything Teenie had said to him since the moment he found her by the pool. It didn’t take long. He tried it again.
Suddenly he stiffened in his chair.
HE HAD IT!
If it didn’t work, he would only be dead anyway.
IF IT DID, HE COULD FINISH HIS JOB ON HELLER-WISTER!
Madison looked up at the guard. Calmly, keeping all signs of elation out of his voice so the guard would suppose him to be operating in defeat, he said, “Take me upstairs to your mistress.”
OH, GOD, THIS HAD TO WORK!
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.”
Villainy Victorious Page 10