by Don Wilcox
“Oh, sure. The sentence.” He took the paper from Nitti’s hand, an edged up to the microphone. He couldn’t read a word of the writing, but Nitti had practiced him on saying the speech, and now Nitti prompted him with whispers.
“I, Arvo Arvadello, King of the Karridonzan Valley, do hereby administer the punishment of death to this slave—”
Slave—yes, of course—this should have been for him, only they had switched the costumes.
“—for the high offense of breaking his bonds and escaping from the court prison. May the gods of Karridonza—”
What gods? Would the gods approve a turnabout like this, letting a king die for a slave?
“—witness the justice of my act.”
Joe put down the paper, thinking to himself, so this is how it feels to be a king?
Then his white-gloved hand went to his side, so tight that it was going to take an awfully tough nudge from Nitti this time. It was worse because the eyes of the real king were on him. The real king had been drugged too, Joe thought; but he knew what was happening. And he was looking up with the very same expression Joe would have had if he had been down there, about to be sliced away into nothing.
“Reach for the handle,” Nitti whispered.
A sort of breathy o-o-ooh went over the crowd as Joe reached. The gasp seemed to come from all the way back to the crowds at the fence. This was the moment.
“Pull the lever.”
Joe shook his head “There’s someone else coming. I’ll wait.”
“The lever!”
“It’s an officer,” Joe said. “I’ll wait till he comes.”
The microphone caught Joe’s answer. The crowd turned, and the throngs around the yellow walk made way for one of the high Karridonzan officers who was coming in tardily.
“You’re late,” Joe shouted through the microphone. Nitti tried to shush him.
The officer called back, saluting, “I am late for a good reason, your majesty.”
“Then come up and tell me about it,” Joe yelled.
“Now?”
“Now.”
Though Nitti was exasperated, there was little he could do, for a royal command was a royal command. The officer came up, bubbling over with enthusiasm. The crowd hushed, trying to hear.
“I’ve made the most wonderful deal for you, your majesty. You’ll raise my salary for this. As your faithful agent, authorized to make purchases with your money, I have just bought a wealth of new gems for your treasury.”
The agent opened a beautiful silk and leather purse and revealed to Joe and Nitti the good fortune that was theirs. Joe’s eyes widened at the sight. Pearls, rubies, emeralds. Necklaces and tiaras and bracelets and rings—
Nitti gave a gulp that might have choked the microphone.
“You—you bought them?”
“From one of the village merchants. Some peasant lady had offered them for sale—”
“You’ve paid for them?” Nitti was red enough to explode.
“I paid a big price—the king’s money, of course—but look at their value. They are a match for the finest you
have.”
“They are the finest we have!” Nitti roared. “They were ours—already ours, you stupid lout! They belonged to us! We gave them—”
Nitti choked off, more from rage, Joe thought, than from the realization that his words were indiscreet. His hands were trembling, and involuntarily he was clutching the open purse.
The shock of all this was enough to make Joe want to walk out on his job. But no, he was the king. His was the power to make decisions. Sure, as long as the crowd thought he was the king, what could Nitti do?
Joe leaned to the microphone.
“An important official announcement for all people of Karridonza. Two days ago we gave rich gifts to a visitor from another planet, just as she was leaving. But now we find that the gifts have been sold back to us. We believe she is still in our land, masquerading as a peasant woman. If so, we must find her.”
“Yes,” Nitti joined in, the anger in his voice barely controlled. “She may be undermining our institutions!” Joe snatched the microphone away from him. “She may be going around in a daze as a result of an air spinner accident. She departed in an automatic spinner, and it hasn’t come back. It must have crashed in the storm—”
“S-s-sh! We’ll investigate these matters in due time,” Nitti snapped. “Get on with the ceremony.”
“And so, ladies and gentlemen of Karridonza, Joe went on, lifting his hand dramatically and pointing to the condemned man on the bench, “we are going to use the surest means in our power to find this earth woman. This slave whom we are about to execute is also from the earth. We need his help. He can be useful as a decoy.”
“What are you driving at?” Nitti gasped.
“I hereby declare,” Joe sang out to the breathless audience, “that this man’s execution must be postponed!”
CHAPTER XII
Joe’s command over the sashes was unquestioned. The audience may have been disappointed, but there was not much evidence of it, for everyone was curious over the king’s speech about an earth woman masquerading as a peasant. Everyone in the crowd could reflect that he had seen a peasant woman somewhere along the way who might have been the mysterious earth visitor in question. And what was it that Nitticello’s words had hinted about her undermining the Karridonzan institutions? Upon this point there would be plenty of talk in secret. What a townsman or an interplanetary trader might think about slavery was not a thing to be aired in the king’s courtyard.
The condemned man was led back to the palace.
Nitti was white. Chalky white. There was poison in his eyes. His fingers were twitching. He was going to kill someone quick, Joe thought.
He was right at Joe’s side as they marched back to the palace. Sashes were all around them, much to Joe’s relief. There wasn’t a chance for anyone to say anything.
But just wait till that gag is removed from the king’s mouth, Joe thought. That would uncork a nice stream of wildfire. No, Nitti couldn’t let that happen. He’d either trump up a fight or murder the king outright to save his own hide. And Nitti wasn’t a man to sell one square inch of his hide. Not while he was doing so well, lining his pockets with precious gems.
What if the court found out? The very thought gave Joe a pounding headache. Nitti would be a dead duck. He knew it, too. You could tell it in his step.
Up the yellow walk in stiff formation, Sashes on either side, the condemned man being forced along at the head of the procession.
Up the steps to the plaza. Past the row of torch lanterns. Through the columns. More marble steps. The palace reception room . . . What were all those people waiting for? Conferences with the king, no doubt.
Nitti a dead duck? What about Joe? He was on a powder keg of his own. As an imitation king he had now cooked his own goose. Would Nitti ever trust him again? No, not even if he behaved like a perfect puppet for weeks and weeks. He had shot his wad, saving the king from execution. He’d never have another chance to open his mouth.
And still, temporarily the crown was his. The Sashes didn’t know, and as long as they didn’t know, they would step lively at his slightest order.
Supper was served. You could tell from the way the kitchen workers walked on tiptoe and gave you the furtive eye, that they knew things weren’t right. They must have known that Nitti was white with rage about something. Nitti’s tray waited while he ran through his medicines. He was fixing another hypodermic needle.
It was just as well, Joe thought, that the king was pretty thoroughly doped. After another needle Nitti removed the gag from Arvo’s mouth, and he was seen to be in a satisfactory condition. Comfortable enough. But too soggy to stick his neck out and start throwing any accusations around. He seemed to know that he had narrowly escaped death, but he thought it was better to sleep than start bragging about it. Much better to sleep than to be king.
Both Stobber and Nitti kept a close eye on
the situation; but Joe did what he could to guarantee that they wouldn’t run away with things. He ordered two Sashes and a court officer to stand by the “slave” until further notice.
This done, he finished his supper hastily and went out into the reception room to fare some of his troubled subjects.
“Remember your throat,” Nitti said to him, practically grinding his teeth into crumbs. “You’re in no condition to talk.”
“You’d better come along to make sure I don’t,” Joe said, adjusting his regal uniform. “If you can give them the answers, I’ll nod my agreement. Yes?”
“No.”
“Then what shall I tell them? If they want the court to help pay someone’s funeral expenses because the lavender vine visited them with death, what shall I tell them?”
“You go with him, Stobber,” Nitti said. “Make them understand that his throat is bad and all he can say is no.”
Late that night Joe Peterson rolled his bed over against the open window and flopped down, a thoroughly fatigued king. He propped his elbows in the window and stared out at the black night He had taken the precaution to arm himself, earlier in the evening, and had found a friendly Sash who was willing to demonstrate his own skill with a ray pistol for the king’s benefit. The Sash didn’t guess that he was giving Joe Peterson a lesson in the use of a Karridonzan weapon.
Now, with ray pistol at hand, Joe looked out at the night and wondered what mysteries the darkness held. He would try not to go to sleep as long as anyone was stirring in the palace. His life seemed as uncertain as a puff of thistle down, tossed in the breeze.
Had the attendants of the king become suspicious? For all his excuse of illness, his manners must have given him away many times. How could he have forgotten where he kept his own ray pistols? Why should he have stammered over little decisions regarding which clothing he would wear tomorrow? Why had he dodged the simple exercise of signing his name to a court note?
It was a terrific relief to be alone, at last The Sashes on the night shift would play cards outside his door all night, no doubt, but at least no one would barge in without first stirring a commotion—
Unless they came in by way of the window. That darkness—it was something Joe Peterson had never been afraid of before. But tonight the whole hillside around the fortress abounded with people who had made camp for the night. They didn’t want to return to the valley until morning. When Nitticello had ordered them to clear the grounds and go on home, they had only moved outside the limits of the courtyard, and there had bedded down to wait for morning.
Now a few stars pierced the clouds, and Joe felt better. He leaned a little farther out the window and tried to discern the marble ledge down below. He reached down to discover that it was only a foot and a half below his window sill. Beneath it were the windows of the lower floor, he recalled—high arched windows divided by marble columns. But no light emerged from them, and the ledge extended outward far enough to cut off the view.
That ledge would be a perfect catwalk for a prowler, he thought. He tried to dismiss the fancy from his mind. Again he rested his arms on the sill and closed his eyes.
Presently he thought he heard a light swisssssh from the ledge. He laughed to think how he’d kidded himself into imagining he had really heard something.
He opened his eyes. He saw nothing. Just the black shadowy ledge.
Swisssssh!
It was real. He could hear it but he couldn’t see it. Then the long stripe of blackness directly beneath his gaze began to emerge into something purple, like an immense luminous rope. It was there, lying in gentle curves along the ledge.
A blotch of black broke the length of it a few yards away. The blotch of blackness was moving, and it was causing the low swissssssh . . .
And then, to Joe’s consternation, the luminous rope went out.
All was blackness again.
Joe’s blood thawed just enough to resume circulation. For a moment ft had frozen.
Swis-s-s-s-sh!
Nothing to be seen. But the thing was closer. Then came a whisper, almost directly beneath Joe’s elbows.
“Slave! Are you there, slave?”
“Pudgy!” Joe gave a tight gulp. “Pudgy, you scary devil! What are you doing there.”
“Dragged my feet so you’d hear me coming. I just dropped in to pay my respects to the new king.”
“Come in off that ledge. The lavender vine was right there just half a minute ago. It started to turn visible and then it went out again.”
“It’s still here,” said Pudgy. “I’m riding on it. It just now brought me up.”
Joe’s blood froze again. The thing was there, invisible.
Pudgy crawled in the window and hopped onto the bed. “Your majesty! I saw your performance at the execution grounds this afternoon. You did beautifully.”
Pudgy’s talk was welcome. His presence always warmed Joe’s spirits, and just now Joe’s spirits needed warming as never before. But Joe couldn’t converse normally as long as he believed there was a branch of the lavender vine lying invisible right out side his window.
“What happened to it? Is it still there?”
“Well, if I were you, slave, I mean your majesty, I wouldn’t reach my hand down. It’s waiting to take me back. I won’t stay but a minute.”
Joe drew his arms back from the window sill. He mentioned that he had brought a ray pistol along for safety. But Pudgy only laughed and said that that wouldn’t mean anything to the lavender vine.
“What I came to tell you was this, your majesty. You may not be a king much longer. You’d better enjoy it while you can.”
“That’s why I have this pistol.”
“Well, I can’t guarantee that they’ll attempt to snuff your life out without giving you fair warning. I don’t think they’ve gotten around to you yet. It’s King Arvo they’re fixing their designs for.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, it seems that Nitti’s plan of exchanging you two boys didn’t work out quite as well as he had hoped. Just when he thought he had you dangling on a string, it seems that you got up on your hind legs and walked off with the show. Very pretty, my boy,” Pudgy chuckled. “Very pretty, but not safe. In that moment you reduced your puppet value to something like double zero. And there has to be a king.”
“But King Arvo knows what they’ve pulled. Another minute and he’d have been ozone.” Joe said. “How can they ever put him back in the harness?”
“Drugs. Hypnotism. Suggestions and ideas to confuse his sick thoughts. By the time he comes out of it they’re going to have him believing that he’s dreamed up all of this king-switching game himself. Dreamed it after he’d been accidentally bumped by Stobber when they were inside the door of your cell. And they’re going to make him believe that the real happenings were real, except with the characters exchanged.”
“They’ll make him believe that he changed his mind the last minute and saved me?”
“Right. They’ll tell him he went through his regular routine, looking down at the victim as though he imagined the fellow’s plight—and now it seems he was out of his head all the time, imagining that he was that fellow.”
“Ye gods!” Joe muttered. “Can they make that stick?”
“That’s what they’re going to try if—”
Pudgy stopped on the if, and switched to something that Joe would have termed parenthetical. Pudgy had seen that the lavender vine trouble had all at once gathered up into a terrific headache for the whole kingdom. The old timers were saying that there had never been a siege like this before. Nitti had argued that the old timers always said that, whenever the lavender vine stretched out for a few growing exercises up and down the valley. But this time it was worse. It was coming to a crisis. If the king’s fortress was to stand solid and the prime minister was to prosper, something had better be done.
“The point is,” said Pudgy, “the lavender vine is something Nitti has never been able to understand. King Arvo has an
angle that Nitti doesn’t have. And Nitti is going to try to get the secret before he dissolves Arvo into gas. That’s why Nitti and Stobber are getting set to hoax the king out of his real memories of what happened this afternoon.”
“You Said they were going to try it—If.” Joe came back to the unfinished business. “If what?”
“If they can find him,” said Pudgy with a chuckle. “They don’t know it yet, but when morning comes they’re going to find him gone.”
“How do you know?”
“Just for a little joke, I turned him loose—the lavender vine assisting—about ten minutes ago.” Pudgy gave a laugh that Joe thought was definitely froggish, and added, “Well, I’d better go or I’ll lose my ride. Don’t shoot till I get out of range. Bye-bye.”
CHAPTER XIII
In one of the darkened camps within a mile of the fortress, six persons huddled around the dying coals of a campfire. They had become only shadowy figures to each other; and yet, with one exception, each one knew the other as well in the dark as if they were under floodlights.
The single exception was Marcia Melinda. She was the newcomer who, with one act of devotion, had won the inner circle’s confidence.
Around the fire they were awaiting the return of two other members of the inner circle—two men who had volunteered to undertake a daring recue.
Nadoff, the merry, round merchant, was speaking. He was more buoyant than ever tonight. Things had gone much better than anyone had expected.
“To think that we turned the treasure in the nick of time—We got our money! And—The king’s own agent arrived in time to upset the execution. The cause of freedom has gathered great power on this day! Miss Melinda, we could hug you. Oh, you needn’t be startled. We won’t actually hug you, though you’d better keep a stem eye on our younger members, even though you’ve tried to disguise yourself as an elderly woman. Eh, Starwold? Mazoweb? Ah, but you needn’t answer. I am simply beside myself with rejoicing. Listen. Are they coming?”
After a moment’s silence, Nadoff went on. His high spirits didn’t prevent his keeping a clear view of the evils that haunted every slavery fighter in the realm.