“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!”
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