“I can’t fly,” said Juraletta.
“You can ride with me,” Rhameo said. “Just as before! Now, away!”
“Please be quiet,” Teleporteus spat. “Brother, wench – come here. There is a faster way home.”
Time to use the tenebrous powers entrusted to me by the Dark Magician, thought Teleporteus. His apprenticeship at the hands of the goatee-bearded mind-conjurer had been long and thorough. He began forming a shimmering mental cloak around himself and each of his three companions.
Hmmm, that is interesting, thought Lord Maledor as he looked on. I wonder who this Dark Magician is? He might be of use to me – who knows, even a challenge…
Lord Maledor was always looking for a challenge, but it was difficult to find when you were the mightiest being in the universe.
Oh really? murmured Lostifar in his ear like a schizophrenic avatar. That honour belongs to me.
Oh does it? thundered Godstar. I am the Lord thy star and I will not have false devils before me.
As Teleporteus endeavoured to conjure the mental energy required to transport the besieged group, Juraletta was surprised to realise that she had been rather curious about being devirginised by Araminta. What would it have been like, and would devirginisation by an Amazon warrior queen really count? That would be something to ask Gorgie – that is, if she was ever going to see her guardian again, as her fate seemed to have taken a different turn. She couldn’t help wondering what Prince Rhameo’s manhood might be like – a deep leafy green, or dazzling emerald?
A shimmering blue light surrounded them. In a flash, they reappeared at the High Court of Skorpeo before the astonished Zoah. The empress’s relief took the form of anger.
“So where have you been, you… degenerate! Don’t you know we’ve been worried senseless? We have suffered the unendurable pain of your emotional cruelty and mental torture. Not knowing if you were going to reappear or if you put shooting a silly creature above your ordained galactic duties. And your beautiful bride, Gloggwetafug, has worried herself to a shadow on your behalf! And what do you care? Nothing! Not a molecule of regret! You were out hunting! And hunting must come first, mustn’t it? Even above the most important marriage in the history of the galaxy, which clearly means nothing to you. What’s the use? I may as well be talking to the dead moons of Uranus! I may as well try and strike up a conversation with an asteroid! I’ll give you something to hunt about! I’ll put you in Prism! Do you realise your irresponsible behaviour has jeopardised the union of our two mighty empires? The Golgogthian ambassador has been looking dastardly daggers at the entire court – as well he might! He has threatened to climb aboard the nearest ship and head back to his home world – as well he might! We, the superior Skorpeans, have been made to look like fools! Like idiotic, imbecilic, moronic nitwits! And what’s that brown goo all over you? Have you been wallowing in the Sin Bins of Throsto? It wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing would surprise me about you. You who call yourself a son of mine are nothing but unpunctual baggage! And who’s this – something you picked up in your jungle travels, I presume? A naked, prune-skinned slut, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I am the Princess Juraletta of the royal purple blood,” said Juraletta. “How dare you call me a slut!”
“A princess, eh?” said the empress scornfully. “I don’t believe a word of it. No princess would stand naked in my court, and neither would she have purple skin! I am not fooled by the colour purple – not for a nanosecond. Purple is poison. Indigo is lethal.”
“We can’t all be emerald,” said Juraletta with dignity. As far as she could tell, the vast majority of green life forms were obscene – Rhameo was the obvious exception, of course.
“I’m afraid, my dear,” intoned the empress, “that the best people in the galaxy have always been verdant or, in the plain language that even a brainless hussy like you can comprehend – green. From which hole have you crawled out of? One of the sexgloves growing in the Gardens of Fleschimor?”
“Mother!” Rhameo began.
“Don’t ‘Mother’ me – she’s the wrong colour. Any fool can see that! Now –”
“I think you’ve scolded the boy enough,” Zoah broke in gruffly. “And you, my dear,” he turned not unkindly to Juraletta, who was wrapping herself in a cloak that Rhameo had handed her, “must go back whence you came. Uh – by the way, which world do you come from?”
“Qwerty.”
“Anyone heard of Qwerty?” asked the emperor.
“I have, sire,” volunteered Rhameo.
“You’re not going anywhere,” snapped the furious empress. “And you” – she pointed a sharp finger at Juraletta – “I’ve seen the looks you’ve been shooting my son. I know what intentions such looks portend.”
At these words, Rhameo blushed the colour of an unripe apple.
“I am to be married, madam,” replied Juraletta with dignity. “I have no intentions, as you call them, upon your sons – either of them.”
“What about the other one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three?” asked the empress.
“I was not aware that madam’s loins were so fertile,” Juraletta said.
“Off with her head!” commanded the empress. “She has insulted the Sacred Tube!”
“If anything happens to me,” said Juraletta evenly, “you’ll have to answer to Gorgon.”
“Oh! I will have to answer to a gorgon, will I?” the empress said with a sneer. “Child, don’t you realise your position? You are at our mercy. Your gorgon cuts no stone in this court!”
When the empress called her ‘child’, Juraletta was so reminded of Gorgie (and it seemed like a long while since she had heard the friendly hissing of her hair) that she began to cry.
The empress rolled her green eyes heavenwards.
While her tears did not mollify the empress, they did at least prove to that imperious personage that her bullying was being taken seriously. The tears had a more powerful effect on Zoah. His majestic countenance softened a whit, for though he was lord of the known galaxy in name, he was powerless before the tears of a virgin.
“There there, child,” he soothed. “We will see you home unharmed.”
“Unharmed?” snorted the empress. “I’ll send this harlot to Prism!”
Zoah threw a caustic glance in the direction of the empress but she was impervious to glances.
And what exactly was Prism? Prism was the empress’s ultimate threat. It was, so Pundit said, a combination of amber, samba, and mamba, the latter being of the blackest variety. The victim was installed in a translucent, amber-like substance where they could move about as though doing a samba while experiencing no sensations in the limbs and therefore feeling as paralysed as if they had been bitten by a black mamba. At the same time, faintly coloured rays of light would sear to the marrow of their bones…
When Zoah stood up, his beard emitted an awesomely loud crackle of energy.
“Teleporteus,” he commanded, “escort this young lady back to her world. Princess, it was a pleasure to meet you, but it is time for you to leave. And Rhameo, go and wash that muck off your body – your wedding is due to begin.”
As she left the gathering with Teleporteus, Juraletta gave a long glance at her handsome prince.
Rhameo had a look of anguish on his face.
“Beia – what are you thinking?” Astroburger asked.
It was odd to be asking his ex-queen such a question, as until their incarceration in the living asteroid, he would have never dared to. After a few days of their plight, however, it was silly not to become more familiar with each other. Now they were making love two or three times a day, their senses were a bewitched swoon, and even though the bond was enforced, paradoxically, it felt natural. Nevertheless, Astroburger wondered if she really was the queen and not some weird manifestation of the asteroid itself. His ‘Beia’ had a long, thin, prehensile membrane attaching her to the wall, which allowed her to move around freely but also served (so Astroburger assumed) as a conduit
for his seed into the greedy maw of the gargantuan being that held them prisoner.
“I was thinking… perhaps we should buy this place,” Beia replied.
“You can’t buy a living asteroid!”
“No, I mean – just these quarters,” Beia said. “I feel very secure here.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,”Astroburger said. “The Queen of Simulacra talking like a housewife – incredible! You actually want to set up home here?”
“Yes, I do.”
“But can’t you see – it’s this thing talking through you,” said Astroburger in an exasperated voice. “You share your bloodstream with it.”
“Yes, it’s quite nice, really – much nicer than being the Queen of Reflections. Do you know, when I was queen –”
“You’re still queen!”
“– I was only in love with myself.”
“So, who are you in love with now?”
“You,” she replied.
“We’ve only been here a few days.”
“It seems longer. Much longer.”
Lord Maledor rolled his eyes. Damn it all to hell – Queen Beia had turned her punishment into enjoyment, converted humiliation into love! How could he ever understand a woman’s psyche? They were mysterious, alien creatures – more unfathomable than the Octopus. As he slumped back in his chair, pink thoughts welled up again, even stronger than before.
Lord Maledor needed a sure-fire distraction… The scene on his screen dissolved and then refocused. Blond brutes in gleaming knee-high boots tramped the streets with wolfish dogs, sniffing out Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and gypsies… And when had this world or any other been fair, thought Lord Maledor as he surveyed the scene. The law throughout the universe was the same – the strong devour the weak. Only in a land called Grease had the strange notion taken root that all men should be equal. In an even stranger system called Christianity, the weak had assumed dominion over the strong, and used the rack, the thumbscrew, the gallows, and the stake to prove that weakness could prevail. Oh foolish doctrine!
So what could be done here? Of course he could become a blond, jackbooted Nazi brute, but the notion had no appeal – Nazidom was banal, while Lord Maledor knew that evil should be exciting! Where was the challenge in becoming a Nazi?
An instant later, and Nathan regarded himself in a shop window. His appearance was more than satisfactory. Dark hair, brown eyes, and with a swarthy countenance that looked Jewish in contrast to the pale Nazis. Where was he? In the streets of Warsore, where he was defiantly not wearing the yellow Star of David. Two young members of the SS emerged from a butcher’s shop and strode towards him.
“You – come with us,” the taller one ordered. They bundled him into a caged van.
Nathan, along with twenty or so others, was driven to a field where over a hundred men and women were lined up in front of a large open grave. A biting north wind scoured the fields, and the imminent victims waited, for bureaucracy in all its forms is unable to work as quickly as one would imagine. A tall, heavily built blond bully approached the line and stalked to the end where Nathan stood. He raised his Luger, pointed it at the first man in line, and Nathan blinked hard. Without changing his expression, the officer put the muzzle to his own head and pulled the trigger.
The officer fell at the feet of the man he had been about to shoot. The others stared dumbfounded, unmoving, while the remaining SS were flabbergasted.
“Shoot them!” shouted the senior officer.
Six more Nazis stepped forward, aimed their guns at the line of men and women and then, at the last moment, turned the guns on themselves. At this point, the officer, seven feet tall and with a cannonball head, strode forward, pulled out his pistol, and shot himself. It was too much for Lord Maledor – in the form of Nathan, he collapsed laughing.
The survivors peered first at Nathan, then at the dead Nazis in bewilderment. For a long moment, nothing happened, and Lord Maledor wondered if they might strip the officers of their uniforms and assume the outward appearance of the enemy. But no, instead they glanced around as if wondering whether this was some kind of trick, and then made their way quickly into the woods, where they disappeared.
Time to move to another zone. Lord Maledor had no sooner reincarnated himself as Judas when he was ambushed by an attack of goodness. It came on without warning, just as they always did – right when he was about to perpetrate some particularly juicy act of evil. He was walking down the street having received his thirty pieces of silver, and he would soon identify the Messiah with a kiss, but he felt an overwhelming urge to give the silver to a poor woman bent almost double beneath a pile of firewood.
“Here, old woman, take this silver and use it to buy your family some food,” he blurted out.
Lord Maledor blushed deepest scarlet at the shame of what he had done. He, the villain, the schemer, was doing good, and the worst kind of good – charity! The shame of it! His attempt to humiliate the Queen of Reflections by making her the conduit for Astroburger’s seed – that too had failed, and love, hideous, revolting love, had flourished in her normally hard heart. And now that he thought of it, reversing the cortical synapses of the Nazis and thereby causing them to shoot themselves could easily be construed as a good deed as well, rather than the cruel enticement for the innocent to commit evil that he had intended.
But I didn’t mean it that way, he thought with desperation. That hadn’t been my intention at all.
He was obviously losing his grip. What had gone wrong? Was there a blight on evil? Was good stronger than he thought? Had he chosen the wrong side?
Was it time, heaven forbid, to change horses?
Juraletta glanced sideways at her escort. She supposed some might consider Teleporteus attractive in a dark, crazed sort of way, but she did not care for him. He had a long nose and his eyes, muddy-coloured rather than purple, were too close together. Gorgie said that people with long noses and eyes too close together were ambitious beyond their capabilities. Mind you, Gorgie’s eyes were so far apart that her rule of thumb made most humanoid life forms of the galaxy excessively ambitious.
Juraletta and Teleporteus hung in a vast, featureless expanse of white. No up or down, no left, right, front or back. They could breathe, but there was no smell. No sound. It was, Juraletta thought, a trifle dull.
“And just how did you meet my brother?” Teleporteus asked in a cold, sneering voice.
“By accident,” said Juraletta, looking away from him with distaste. “In a garden.”
Teleporteus noticed Juraletta admiring his nose, and inclined his head so she could get a better view of his Romanesque proboscis.
“I take it – with fortuitous symbolism – the roses were all in bloom?”
“I think they were… yes, they were!” exclaimed the princess. “How nice of you to remind me of that!”
“My pleasure,” he said, with a dismissive shake of his hand. “So I understand you are to shortly be married. Do you look forward to a long reign over Qwerty?”
“Oh yes – very long,” agreed Juraletta, a bit lacklustre in tone, using a flatness of timbre which she suspected the alert Teleporteus, on whose brows the world hung so darkly, might also perceive.
“May you, in the honeying of your marriage bed, both enjoy the pleasures of Throsto!” said Teleporteus in a pained voice.
The whiteness that surrounded them disappeared in an instant, and was replaced by Qwerty. Glorious Qwerty!
Juraletta smiled as she had never done before, and looked upon the garden, with Venera Castle behind it. The sky was bright, the warm grass lush beneath her feet.
“May we never meet again,” Teleporteus said.
And with that he vanished, and Juraletta made her way across the lawn to the front of the castle. When the drawbridge was lowered, a small, ragged-looking figure was there to meet her.
“Gorgie! I didn’t recognise you.”
Poor Gorgie’s hair was a dreadful mess – the snakes hung li
ke desiccated weeds, and her complexion was a deathly greyish-green. Her eyes were like spider-web-infested mothballs, smoky white and dusted with despair.
“Child… child… what have you done?”
Instinctively, Juraletta realised that Gorgie was worried her virginity had lapsed.
“Don’t worry Gorgie, you silly old girl,” she soothed. “I am still pure!”
“No, I didn’t mean –”
“Of course you did, Gorgie! Don’t tell fibs – especially to the future Queen of Qwerty! Now, where’s the Fissionable Duke? Have all the arrangements been made? What are the guests to eat – apart from rocks? Have you thought about that? Do I have to think of everything? Just what have you been doing while I was away? Gorgie, you know I depend on you. Have my parents arrived yet? I will need Father at my elbow, if we are to follow the old ways. I’ve often thought, why should we follow the old ways? Let us, you and I, forge a new path. Carpe diem. Take this moment, seize it by the scruff of its pallid neck! This very instant – right now! You think you have to be angry with me, don’t you? You think that rage is obligatory. It isn’t! Can’t you see, Gorgie? Oh, it’s so simple. So, now you can be glad to see me, glad to know that I am alive and well and glad that your best friend in the world, the princess Juraletta, loves you. Yes, loves you! Silly, funny old gorgon that you are. Here, let me kiss you – right on your… er… snakes! There there, don’t cry! Don’t, Gorgie! Don’t cry!”
“Don’t! Don’t…” snapped Gorgie, wriggling away. “Don’t you patronise me, you cheeky, hopefully virginal – though I am beginning to doubt it – where was I? – yes – you brainless, four-breasted hussy! And to think I’ve been tutoring your tiny, non-existent mind, which is nothing more than a chemical reaction in your even tinier brain, ever since you squalled your way to life, and what have you learnt? Nothing! Your mind is a vacuum – a void! A black hole! I may as well try and teach one of my serpents to do a Viennese waltz or work out the mathematics of an intergalactic collision than teach you the rudiments of princessly Qwertliness – I’m simply wasting my time with a brainless little girl who… who…”
Tropic of Skorpeo Page 9