By the Time I Get to Pellax

by Keith Dersley

  BY THE TIME I GET TO PELLAX

  By

  Keith Dersley

  Copyright © 2019 by Keith Dersley

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication, except brief passages for review purposes, can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  Also by Keith Dersley:

  THE PERKIN WARBECK BLUES (1974)

  THE GENTLE ART OF CAMOUFLAGE (1980)

  THE STEEP DESCENT TO PARADISE (1981)

  OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS (1983)

  PEDIMENTS ABOVE (1993)

  CLAPGATE TERRACES (1995)

  FUGITIVE DAYS (1998)

  SKETCHES BY DERZ (2001)

  SCRIBBLES & SQUIBS (2003)

  BETWEEN THE ALLEYWAYS AT THE WORLD'S FAIR (2004)

  PARANOID IN PARADISE (2007)

  MANAGEMENT GOLD NOT ME (2010)

  EVERY NIGHT WAS FRIDAY (2017)

  AND IN THAT GROVE THERE WAS A BAT (2017)

  PRINCE AMONG THE DREGS (2017)

  ALL THE RED BRICK STREETS (2019)

  KNIGHTS OF THE BACKROADS (2019)

  PEOPLE AND PLACES

  Tak Vakrovar - secret leader of the Patriotic Resurgence of Pellax; enemy of the Galerians

  Galerians - usurpers of the throne of Mazarat

  Mazarat - a country on the planet Pellax

  Latonia Fletcher - sent to the Tortuga to inform Lupo Venner about his inheritance

  Lupo Venner - descendant of the Ralladars, the rightful royal family of Mazarat

  Lonnie Pascoe - a singer from Earth; he and Venner work as the duo 'The Top Hats'

  Drax Deerfield - a soldier of fortune sent to eliminate Venner

  Secor - police force in Mazarat

  FAS Tortuga - a 'starliner' which takes tourists around the rim of the galaxy and beyond

  Ted Cutter - Captain of the Tortuga

  Billy Flax - First Officer of the Tortuga

  Pluron - a backward, impoverished planet

  Jycona - a prosperous planet revolving around the same sun as Pluron

  Hollis Pierpoint - an undercover security agent

  Kellagad - a tough space port on Jycona

  Erloch Spurgo - a space pirate from Pluron

  Prince Barratat - nephew of King Lartis, widely regarded as his likely successor

  Mitzi - an attractive womanly android

  - 1 -

  The office building was almost empty. A tall girl with dark hair and blue eyes stood before Tak Vakrovar. 'Your upbringing and education did not lead us to you, nor even your blood,' said Tak Vakrovar, who only that week had secretly been elected Spokesman of the Patriotic Resurgence of Pellax. What did, then? she thought to herself. The daylight in the side room on the eleventh floor was fading. Dull glints came from the gold braid on the livery of the air-taxi firm Vakrovar worked for. 'Not even your beauty had anything to do with it,' he added with a smile. His silver hair combed back past his ears made you think he was one of the gentlemen of an earlier time, before the Galerians ruled the country of Mazarat and most of the inhabited part of the fertile, Earthlike planet of Pellax. 'The recommendations we took note of were of course your character, and your intelligence. You have shown excellent progress in the field of the practical application of software. In this regard, your improvisational skills are outstanding.' 'Perhaps you overrated my abilities if they made you offer to enrol me on a cruise on the Tortuga,' said Latonia Fletcher. She had in her hand a gaudy personalised folder welcoming her as a passenger on the starliner. For a woman of her age to visit the galaxy rim and beyond, with plenty of credits in her purse, enjoying all the benefits extended to a premium passenger, would be like a tour of Paradise. 'No, my dear, we are satisfied in our own minds that we want you, with your insight and intelligence, to size the boy up. You will be clever enough to get aboard the Tortuga without attracting the attention of the Galerians' security services, we are confident of that. As for the Heir, he is now twenty years old, and has been making his way in the world since he was fifteen. You will tell him what his lineage is, and inform him that he has the support of his people and can come back, in secrecy of course, and take his place as the rightful King of Mazarat and Emperor of Pellax.' 'You say he has only the vaguest idea of his entitlement?' 'He knows that his father had Kleissenberg blood, that is all. He was brought up here in Caram as Lupo Venner, the son of a bricklayer and at the moment the boy is working alongside another strolling minstrel on the Tortuga, singing for his supper.' 'I will tell him, and the decision after that is his, right?''Right.'Vakrovar walked to the window and looked down. 'You made sure that you were not followed here?' said Vakrovar.'I did.' They went into the corridor and squinted through the steelglass beyond which the lights were coming on. Along the street a few stragglers hurried home from the office. Vakrovar put on his navy-blue peaked cap. 'May they know nothing until we make our move,' he said. The Galerians certainly had their spies and their police out, every day. Many knew that, to their cost. But Vakrovar and his like now had thousands of men under arms, an underground force full of righteousness, ready for the day. 'It was wonderful of you to undertake this important task,' he said, kissing her brow. 'It's a wonderful opportunity,' said Latonia Fletcher.

  - 2 -

  The Federation Accredited Ship Tortuga was well into another intergalactic cruise. The small stage close to the dining room on the big dish echoed with live show tunes. 'You'd think we were the last remnant in the cosmos doing these live,' Venner said to Lonnie. He adjusted his grey top hat. 'The way they're diggin' it, THEY believe it,' replied Lonnie. There had been a lot of requests today as a number of passengers were leaving within the hour and they wanted a sentimental moment or two of relaxation before bidding goodbye to the ship. So a scratch gig had been put together. 'Can you handle it, Lupo?' Riley had asked Venner. Riley was Head of Entertainments. 'Sure can,' said Venner. 'We radioed Lonnie's cabin and he soon answered yes, though he was supposed to be on a sleep break.'Lonnie is always ready to sing, Venner thought to himself, whether the presentation is big-band, Fender classical and tambourine, or a capella. Unlike a dabbler such as himself, who had drifted into the fantasy-fuelled world of performance because it seemed a pleasant way to employ his time, Lonnie Pascoe sang for the sheer joy of it. He believed in it all. To him it was a sacrament. If they paid him nothing, he would still sing for anyone who would listen. As he was setting up his music stand, along came the spindly warbler, waving cheerily. In the course of that night's gig both the minstrels, who went under the name The Top Hats, got a 'tear in the throat and a lump in the eye' when they started hitting their stride with some of those nostalgic ditties from Earth. Truly, Gershwin had gone galaxy wide and beyond, and Sinatra, Streisand, and Bob Dylan had achieved divinity. Many people would just as soon listen to 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' as they would Ichabar's 'When Last We Entered Toytown'. Lonnie and Drax put across 'The (Gal) I Love', from George and Ira, as well as a few other favourites such as 'That Old Feeling' and 'The Carnival Is Over'. (The latter made a tipsy monopod from a moon in Orion swear up and down he had been incarnated as a gypsy showman hundreds of years before on the banks of the Seine.) In all modesty, they felt, the harmony of their well-lived-in voices could have shattered steel and carved the crystal that night. Their warbling deserved a better audience than a score or so of lovable and superannuated intergalactic sloths. 'Blessings on you, lads. We love to watch you as much as he
ar you, you're a couple of natural showmen, I could tell that from the start,' said an old woman climbing onto her Sensiscooter walking stick. 'Them poems you give out as well, we wouldn't take no notice of that kind of stuff from anyone but you. You tell it like it is, the both of ya. Them's the old days of Earth, Mars, and old Spandura itself, which is where I hail from.' 'Cheering words, madam, and I can tell they're from the heart,' said Lupo Venner, bowing low over his guitar and sweeping the floor with the sleeve of his royal blue jacket. At that moment he felt like an entertainer to his fingertips, the same as Lonnie. 'Taxi approaching the deck!' shouted an usher.

  * * * * * *

  As the taxi drew near to Yellow Deck on the FAS Tortuga with softly humming boosters, the ex-prisoner from Pellax glanced once more at the photograph of Lupo Venner. He stuffed it into his jacket pocket as Rosalind, the woman he had been buttering up, slipped her arm through his. 'What a beautiful ship,' she said as the starliner's tractor beam locked onto them with a nudge. Security men supervised those arriving at and departing from the Tortuga. A group of laughing children ran through onto the big ship. 'I know where the sand pits are!' shouted a little boy, darting along the corridor towards the Holodream Suite. The kids' parents, a flashily dressed group, had now finished having their palm scans. The Random Robot in the shape of a circus clown had picked their party out for this authentication process. 'Only formal is what it is,' said the Robot in a rustic accent designed for maximum reassurance. Rosalind and the slim fellow from Pellax stood patiently in line ready to get onto the cruise ship. 'Drax, baby, why don't you take the full tour with me?' said Rosalind. 'We might be younger than most of 'em on the crinkly cruiser, but it doesn't mean we won't have a lot of fun.' Drax chuckled softly. 'Can you really get into one of these tours?' 'You mean you can't?' she said. 'Isn't it all a bit chintzy and pinkified? Out of Dreamland? I for one need more of a dose of reality with my thrills. Their kind of ass-powdering is not for me.' 'You horrible man!' 'Ah, forget it, baby, I'm sorry,' he said with a smile and a wave of his hand. 'No, go on.' He put a stick of gum in his mouth and looked up at the ceiling tiles, chewing. 'Man or anthropomorph, it doesn't make much difference: each has a habit of now and then showing a fairly bastardised degree of sheer cussedness. There's this urge to overturn the tables. I don't say it's in everybody, some of us do like the tranquil life. But with quite a number of people, give them a Paradise and straightaway they'll want to destroy it. Either that or grab a sight more of it than anyone else can hold on to.' 'Assholes exist, shit happens, so what? Let's not be cry-babies. Live it!' said Rosalind. 'But I think maybe just for the duration of being aboard the Tortuga we can express ourselves, like, in the way that pleases us best, yes?' 'You expressed yourself pretty good a little while earlier, kitten,' said Drax. 'We must make sure we've got cabins that are close to each other.' 'And here I was, thinking we might be able to share one.' 'All right,' said Drax. 'By the way, I hear that Dalhedra is just a dream, and not a sugar-baby one,' said Rosalind. 'We reach it in a day or two. Sounds to me like a great place, and not only for the bars in Krayko City. We could stop over and check the place out together, couldn't we?' 'Maybe, kitten, said Drax. 'I don't think I'll be around for the whole round trip. But at least I can stay with you on the Tortuga as far as Earth.' 'That far?' 'That far.' The skin around the Pellacian's green eyes crinkled up in a smile. 'I've got you till earth?' said Rosalind. 'Big deal.' She stuck her bottom lip out in a way she had plainly been told was adorable. Yes, it will be a good idea to have you with me, my darling, Drax thought to himself. You can help me to blend in as an awfully good fellow.

  - 3 -

  Lonnie Pascoe had got his contract renewed, but Venner was still waiting for the Entertainment Panel's verdict. 'They'll rubber stamp you all right,' said Lonnie as they sat over tall glasses of lager in the bar. 'Even if they don't, so what? Fuck 'em. It's not as if you depend on them for a crust.' 'Of course I don't, but who does, these days? It's all ego now, man, and it winds up just as bad. You know that, and I know it. That piano guy yesterday said the same. You know, relax, everyone in the Federation is well catered to now, cradle to grave. He couldn't understand what was bugging me, could he? All he knew was, I wouldn't go without a thing even if I no longer bring home the credits I get for being one of these so-called stars of the cruiser ship auditorium. But all I want is some sort of, I suppose you'd call it validation?' 'You'd like to get the work you do appreciated, and there's nothing wrong with that,' said Lonnie. 'You like your kudos, you're a sensitive man, and if you don't get a dose of it fairly regular the whole world is full of last week's frigid mulligatawny, right?' 'At least you get it,' said Venner. 'You're one reason why I will be sad to go if I don't get my rubber stamp from Riley. You dish out the sense and you're no phoney, man.' 'Thanks, Ven.' 'Its true. I mean, even with this singing game of ours, you for one know who you are. Gershwin, Sinatra, they're your boys, yeah? You were born on the real Earth, so that's all right for you. You probably know a lot about your heritage. Whereas I was born on Pellax, plastic Pellax, as they call it.' 'Don't run it down, that place gave you a great start for a guy in the singin' game, Ven. They always call it 'Earth Two', after all. You were brought up with the greats playing in the background, man. Sinatra, Bennett, Dylan ... Richard Harris. ' Lonnie called for two more lagers. A dark-haired woman entered the bar and while she was scanning the customers, looking for someone, her eyes locked on Venner. She came up to him. 'Are you Lupo Venner?' 'That's right. And you are?' She got hold of his lapel and pulled him away from an elderly couple standing close by who appeared to have their ears out. After setting up the drinks, Lonnie had disappeared into the bathroom. 'Never mind me. Forewarned forearmed, and all that. I just want to tell you that there's a fellow on the Tortuga, he boarded today and he's out to stop you from, shall we say, fulfilling your potential.' 'Who is? And what potential would that be?' said Venner with a sigh. 'You telling me there's a warbler keen to take my place?' The look she flashed at him from her frosty blue eyes stayed with Venner for a long time. She seemed amazed and also frustrated that he was either unaware of what she was talking about, or playing the fool. She turned and walked out. A crazy notion swept over him for a second, as if he had just thrown a fortune into the dust with a merry laugh. 'Shapely pair of hams there, old sport,' said Lonnie as he returned to the bar and saw the woman flounce out of the bar the same way she had come in. 'What was she doing, selling raffle tickets?' he said, raising the schooner of beer to his lips. 'Uh, no, she was looking for somebody.' 'Hey, I was wondering, Ven, about this Pellax of yours. You never have told me much about it. Do you feel like reminiscing? You'll eat something, right?' said Lonnie. 'Yes, I'll eat.' Lonnie turned and put in an order for sausage sandwiches, then he and Venner adjourned to a table against the back wall. 'I never knew much about your planet, except what everyone says about it being a kind of an Earth Two.' 'What do you want to know?' asked Venner. 'Pellax is the planet I was born on. On the continent of Ochalia in the country of Mazarat. City of Caram.' He smiled, leaning back against the wall and putting his right foot on his left knee. 'Pellax, fair Pellax, is in the Apidanus galaxy, you must have read that, and was colonised by travellers from Earth. San Antonio, Texas, in fact, in the 22nd century. Computer probes had singled the place out because it's water-bearing and its gravity and atmosphere are so favourable to mammals, as well as other forms of life.' 'Great.' 'Yes, our piece of real estate back there revolves around a sun almost the same size as Earth's, and it possesses just the one solitary silver moon as well.' 'Home from home?' 'That's right. Pellax's sun is larger than Earth's and the days are longer. But any discrepancies were hardly noticed by the colonists. They were too busy glorying in the richness of the soil and the abundance of plant and animal life.' 'Right, right,' said Lonnie. 'Virgin territory it was, after the old, exhausted and played-out playing fields of Earth, eh? And everybody knows Pellax had and still has some of the biggest tuskers and most savage cats and venomous reptiles to be found on any planet in th
e cosmos. By the way, have you ever visited the actual Earth itself?' 'Oh yes,' said Venner. 'And I felt down in my boots the famous Pellacian rapture, as if I'd finally come home. You get a giddiness about you for a few days, from the change of air and gravity and so on. But then you seem to kind of click into place and find your pep. A little weird.' 'No, totally understandable,' said Lonnie, signalling for another sandwich. 'What city did you say you were from, Ven? I forget.' 'Caram, in Mazarat, on the continent of Ochalia.' 'Oh yeah.' The beer continued to flow and the conversation drifted to other subjects. Venner's past, though touched with golden hindsight and nostalgia, always felt prickly to him. A vagueness and an uneasiness permeated his memories, and his instinct was to avoid all mention of his origins. There was a tinge of uncertainty, maybe even of shame, to his background, he felt, quite apart from the poverty that he and his parents had endured. If it had been anyone but Lonnie asking he would have evaded questions about his past on Earth Two. People were often quick enough to drop the subject anyway, because to most of them, insofar as they knew anything about the planet Pellax at all, it was the knock-off planet, phoneyville, the whipped margarine of the intergalactic world. Not many people knew that his father was Rollo Kleissenberg, a nobleman whose family had fallen down the slippery ladder a generation or two before in the dog-eat-dog social climate of Caram. He died when Venner was nine years old, and Venner remembered him only as a brooding manly presence, disposed to acts of absent-minded kindness. When his father was killed in a traffic accident, his mother married Wallace Venner, an honest fishmonger who treated his new wife like a princess and his stepson as a crafty if likeable little bastard.

  * * * * * *

  As soon as he had settled into his cabin on the Tortuga, Drax picked up a diagram of the ship to find out where the nearest gym was. Each deck had one. That was something. Every time he thought about the job he had signed up for, his heart sank. Exercise dispelled the tension, for a while. He had let himself in for this after being condemned for killing a man. The fellow had needed killing, everyone in Tiblis, a gold-mining town thirty miles from the city of Caram on 'fair Pellax', agreed with that. Except the secret police of the reigning Galerian dynasty. A well-dressed gentleman had visited Drax's cell and let him know that he was in line to be blotted out by cobalt ray before the end of the week. 'You've had your trial, Deerfield, and you knew what to expect. Your case has caused some controversy among the common folk though. A number of people think you had some justification for putting him out of the way. Your victim, Mr, what was his name? Ah yes, Mr Fulton Spens. You only struck him, what, twice?' 'I don't remember.' 'Who counts, eh?' said the cop, refilling Drax's glass with the clear yellow wine. 'Of course, you've had military training?' 'I did my year,' said Drax. 'I hear that you've got, or you had, a good job working on hologram innovation.' 'On the maintenance side, yes.' Drax sank his head in his hands. He had found himself a toehold in the profession he loved, but so far had not got to the stage where he could bring out any of his own ideas. And now he never would. 'You're a professional man, in other words, and it's sad that your life should be forfeit because of this Fulton Spens, a gambling, drug-dealing individual who thought it was a reasonable to knock your father into the gutter when he failed to contribute a credit or two towards Spens's entertainment budget that night.' 'What is this all leading to?' The Secor man gave a brief laugh like the bark of a Morbian terrier. 'You have before this little episode maintained a clean record in life. That much speaks well of you, I suppose, considering how we're situated these days. And it serves, alongside other qualities, to make you useful to us, potentially. Are you willing to listen to what I am about to put to you?' 'Carry on,' said Drax. 'What do you think of the Ralladars?' 'Not a lot. Every schoolboy knows they were the dynasty that the Galerians took over from. 'Very good. Now obviously, you would not wish to be unpatriotic as well as homicidal, you would not want to see any member of the Ralladar family trying his luck and bringing our gracious King Lartis to his grave or into the gutter.' Drax was apolitical and had never thought about this. 'I am a loyal citizen of Mazarat.' 'You would wish, then, to have Lartis to stay with us as our King, and also Emperor of Pellax?' 'I would, yes.' 'Well in that case you are in a position to help us with our housekeeping, or house cleaning as it were, and get rid of this person.' He threw a photograph onto the table between them. It showed a youth of nineteen or twenty with a half-smile on his face. A student type. Certainly no bruiser. 'He seems harmless.' 'They would be glad to hear you say that, wouldn't they? He's not harmless, not by a long streak of vinegar he's not.' 'I don't have anything against him.' 'Well there you are, if you're not interested,' said the guy sniffily, snatching the picture from the table. 'I didn't say that. What would you expect of me?' 'Let's just say that there he is, working on one of the starliners as an entertainer. To you or me at first sight he SEEMS harmless. They've got him enrolled on the ship as a canary, like. A chirpy song and dance man, that's what he is to them. The good thing for us about that is, it makes him relatively easy to get to.' The Secor man went over and looked out through the bars. 'Now you, Drax, are a fellow who can handle himself, and you have skills that will mean no one should question your presence on a starliner as a hologram technician when we line you up a tiny consultancy job or two in the Holodream Suite.' 'I'm not fully qualified yet,' said Drax. 'It will be a bagatelle, don't worry about that. You won't be signed up for much at all, no problem. It'll be a doddle, boy, nothing more. Right?' 'Right,' said Drax cautiously. 'After all, they have hundreds of guests on those tubs who have many hours in the day which they wish to fill with innocent diversion and amusement. Listening to a minstrel or entering a virtual world for an hour or two, right?' 'Right,' said Drax. The Secor man poured himself another glass of wine and took a swallow. 'You only have to get rid of the guy. Kill him. How, is up to you. Act generous. You'll be able to draw funds from us at any time. 'If I succeed in this, I'll be clear?' 'You'll be clear. And have credits to burn.' From where Drax was sitting this rosy prospect seemed far-fetched. If he fulfilled the contract he would know rather too much to be allowed to live, perhaps. On the other hand, to say yes meant a chance, and if he said no it would be the cobalt ray. 'I'll do it.'