They got out and stared at the palace.
“Jesus!” said Teenie.
A door opened, one that was inset into the massive entrance grills.
An old man with a stick in his hand, gray beard flying, raced toward them.
“Be off! Be off!” he screamed. Then he drew himself up in his tattered rags and shouted, “You’re trespassing! This is the domain of the Planet Flisten. Fly away fast or I’ll call the guard!”
The major-domo waddled up to him. “Governor Spurt, I will wager you do not even have a guard! Down on your knees, you oaf!”
“Down on my knees in hells for you!”
The major-domo turned, “That is an insult you cannot forgive, Your Majesty. This place is a disgrace: the walks are clogged with weeds, the fountains aren’t even running. Compare it to the beautiful condition you found your palace in Palace City in, hold an immediate trial and let us fertilize the grass with his blood. That is my recommendation. I await your command.”
The old man had been gawping. Now he began to shake. “Did you say ‘Your Majesty’?”
“Her Royal Majesty Teenie the First!” said the major-domo and unsnapped the Exterior Division scroll before the bugging eyes of Governor Spurt.
“Oh, my Gods!” wailed the old man. “We have a QUEEN!”
Faces popped out of palace windows.
The old man rushed forward and fell prostrate at Teenie’s feet. Talking, blubbering really, with his face pushed into the pavement, he said, “Oh, forgive me, forgive me. Mercy! We did not know you existed. We did not know you were coming. We have had no warning. Fifty years ago when dear Queen Hora died, Exterior Division people came and locked up all the chests. We have had no money for paint or material of any kind. No one has come from the mainland. None of us can go. We raise our own food and fish in the sea. We have not forgotten protocol, we drill it every week! Please, please, Your Majesty, don’t execute me on the day your coming has made the happiest day of my life!” Then he stopped for a moment and said, “No. You can go ahead and execute me if it will give you the slightest moment of pleasure.”
Governor Spurt reached out and put her foot on his neck and he clung to it, caressing it.
“I don’t want your life,” said Teenie. “I want you to show me the deepest, rottenest dungeon that you’ve got.”
“Oh, good, you’ll put me in it. It is more than I deserve.”
Teenie looked up. The earlier shout of the old man had been overheard. At least two hundred people, young and old, had come scurrying out of the palace, half-naked and in rags, and were now prostrating themselves on the terrace, steps and landing target. They were all sobbing.
Teenie turned to the major-domo. She removed her foot from the back of Governor Spurt’s neck. “Will you tell this idiot to get up and lead the way to that dungeon?”
Madison had a chill. Was that why she had brought him here? To put him in it?
“Your Majesty,” said the major-domo, “if you are choosing to be merciful despite this man’s offense, could I recommend that you at least let me tell these people to clear some of the debris off the steps and brush the halls so that it will not soil your feet to enter?”
Teenie gave a slight motion with her hand. Governor Spurt instantly kissed her foot and scuttled backwards. He leaped to his feet and bawled at the crowd, “GET BUSY! CLEAN THIS PLACE UP FOR YOUR QUEEN!”
One would have thought, from the ferocity and volume of his voice, that he would have blown them all over backwards but this was not the case. They rose with awe upon their faces and like a wave across them, the look changed to adoration. They started throwing kisses and then took up the bellow of a big fellow at the back: “LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!”
Governor Spurt finally got them going back inside.
Restlessly, Teenie paced about. She had something on her mind and she was not paying too much attention to her surroundings. But, inwardly driven to be in motion, she walked up a path, all weed grown but festooned with heavy-scented flowers, and came to a spot where she could overlook the valleys below.
Madison, somewhat anxious, trailed after her. He looked at the breathtaking view. “How lovely,” he said, hoping it would soothe her. “It’s a garden spot like I have never seen before. Even the softness of the breeze kisses one. And how restful! Even the song of the birds is a lullaby.”
“Shut up,” said Teenie. Then she looked around. “It’s a pretty place, all right. Too (bleeped) pretty, if you ask me! I thought, like it said in the book, it was all black cliffs and rocks.”
One of the sergeants came up with a message from the major-domo. “It’s cleared enough for you to enter now, Your Majesty. But please watch your step, some of the paving is loose.”
Teenie gave her red glove cuffs a twitch and promptly strode down the path. She stamped up the steps and across the terrace. They had the gigantic front doors open now and the ragged staff was lined up on each side, all kneeling, trying to catch her eye.
Governor Spurt was waiting with a burning torch. But Teenie paused beside her major-domo. “If you can get any sense into these people, have somebody assemble my regiment out in front.”
The major-domo bowed and turned back and Teenie followed Governor Spurt.
Men who had suddenly remembered they were sergeants and guards were opening doors ahead of her. A man who was probably the seneschal, for all his rags, was jangling opening plates as he hurried on ahead.
“What are you doing with that wooden torch?” Teenie’s Palace City guard officer demanded of Governor Spurt. “Where are the lights?”
“Oh, sir,” said Spurt, “we ran out of fuel bars way back when I was a boy. Even this wooden torch is a luxury. So many of the people here were nobles and courtiers and high-level technicians that they had quite forgotten folk arts. It took us three years after dear Queen Hora died to work out how to weave the hair of the woolly animals into rope. We never have reevolved the skill of making cloth. We do very well to just weave baskets to carry fish and food, and we could only do that because some of them, as little girls, used to make flower garlands and flower caps. It is a terrible shock, when you are a high-level technology, to suddenly have to flounder with the primitive. The steppingstones upward to a high technology all disappear and one tries in vain to go back down them: everyone has forgotten how.”
“I didn’t ask for a lecture,” said the guard captain. “I asked you where the lights were. I see we are entering tunnels back into the mountain and I’m not letting Her Majesty go any further until there’s light.”
Spurt hastily said, “Oh, I’m sure the electronics and electrical devices all work. There just isn’t any fuel. . . .”
The guard officer pushed him aside and strode ahead. Looking along the walls, he finally found a panel. He scraped off the mold and dust, found the catch, opened it and then, taking a spare electric saber battery from his belt, pushed it into a slot.
Nothing happened.
Disgustedly, he recovered his battery and with an acid glare at the governor said to Teenie, “Your Majesty, this place is getting impossible. I think these tunnels go way into the mountains and deep down. I must ask you not to proceed.”
“I got to have a dungeon,” said Teenie. “The deeper and darker and more awful, the better. Lead on!”
Following the sputtering, sparking torch, their shadows eerie on the walls, the group proceeded.
At length, having descended very deep into black rock, they came to a series of openings. There was a guard room. Then there were chambers lined with cells, their doors all corroded and hanging awry. Finally there was a large chamber which seemed to contain a forge and the remains of whips. Teenie patted a slab of stone which lay, filth-encrusted, at its center.
Madison realized it was a torture chamber and when he saw the look on her face by torchlight he felt his hair rise.
She found there were two cells just beyond it, little more than dark holes. She took the torch and peered into them, one after the other. S
he found some old shackles.
“These,” said Spurt, “are left over from the ancient Teon sea people. I’ve only been down here once, when a courtier sixty years ago lost a pet snug. These dungeons scared me half to death. Could I ask Your Majesty to withdraw from such an awful place?”
Teenie was testing the remains of a door on one of the holes. “This has got to be repaired,” she said.
“Oh, yes, Your Majesty,” said Spurt. “We’ll clean it all up.”
“No,” said Teenie. “Leave it as filthy and awful as possible. I only want it fixed so no one can ever get out. And repair those torture implements, too.”
Madison could stand it no longer. “Teenie, what ARE you up to?” he said in English.
“This,” she said, “is all for Gris.”
“Gris?”
“Yes! The moment I heard torture dungeons existed over here, I had to come at once. They’re torture dungeons, all right. A real horror picture. They’ll do just fine. I am going to put Gris right there in that hole and then every day for the rest of his life I am going to torture him and hear him scream and blubber and beg. I’ll carve on him for years and years!”
“Wait a minute, Teenie. You haven’t got Gris. He’s in the Royal Courts and Prison!”
Teenie, in the torchlight, fixed him with an awful smile. “That’s my military campaign. Queen Hora kept her regiment here. I’m going to smuggle them out and in the dark of night I’m going to storm the Royal prison and get Gris!”
“Teenie, you can’t ask that of anyone. It would be death to try!”
“The men of the regiment were all Flisten nobles, sworn to give their lives at the whim of their queen. In each generation, only the strongest of their descendants were permitted to join the regiment. You are going to get me the arms and transport! And I am going to get Gris!”
“Teenie,” said Madison in shock. “Teenie, listen to me. I can get Gris brought to trial. It will take a long time and lots of work. I can hammer away in the media, try him in the press and absolutely force them to try him. And,” he added in desperation, for his whole plan for Heller depended upon it, “I can guarantee the trial will go on and on! He’d suffer mentally no end!”
“That isn’t the suffering I want to see,” said Teenie. “I want him right here under my sharpest knife. For years.”
Real desperation seized Madison. He could see them both being killed. “Teenie, what if somehow I arranged it to get him sentenced at the trial and into your custody?”
“I’d have to wait too long,” said Teenie. She turned to the governor and began to give minute orders about the cell and the torture chamber and the implements. It took her quite a while.
A radio crackled on the guard captain’s belt. It was the major-domo. “Please inform Her Majesty that her regiment is assembling. They’ve had to get word to the villages and farms. But they should all be ready for review by the time you have come out.”
Madison had not realized how deep they had come into the mountain until he tried to walk back up. The foul and ancient air didn’t help him catch his breath as he toiled on up the ramps. It took them nearly half an hour to get back into the halls.
A sergeant knelt and would have used a handkerchief to brush off Teenie’s boots but women from the palace pushed him aside, and though their cloths were animal skins, they got the stains and mold off Teenie’s black suit, boots and red gloves.
Then Teenie walked through the hallways and salons toward the big entrance door.
She strode across the terrace. She reached the top of the outside steps.
She stopped dead.
About five hundred men were standing there in an orderly parade. Their faces were handsome, their physiques magnificent. Obviously the product of noble lines, every one, the titled sons of officers of long ago, mothered by titled ladies of Queen Hora’s court. They were young and they were splendid, despite their rags.
An old man, evidently their colonel, stood straight as a ramrod before them. At the sight of Teenie, he and the whole regiment knelt.
“Your Majesty,” the colonel bawled, “we have not forgotten protocol. We lie ready to do our duty. We are only too anxious to do Your Majesty’s bedding.”
From five hundred throats, a song arose:
Oh, welcome to us,
Oh, welcome to us.
We greet you, dear Queenie,
And promise sex plus!
And then, at a signal from the colonel, they all rose up.
But what had stopped Teenie was the flowers in their hair, whole crowns of them. They had no weapons in their hands nor any sign of any.
They began to form rings by squad and then began to dance, plucking flowers from their garlands and tossing them into the air as they circled with skipping, mincing steps like girls.
Teenie sank down on the top step.
She lowered her head and began to cry.
The regiment stopped in consternation. The major-domo waved his hand at them and they scattered like chaff and vanished.
Teenie’s sobs grew very marked.
Madison knelt beside her.
“They aren’t soldiers,” sobbed Teenie. “They were bred for bed. Oh, Maddie, what am I going to do?”
Madison did not tell her he could recruit five hundred criminals that would take on a Death Battalion in a day! Oh, no. It didn’t suit his plans. He was very clever, that Madison. He didn’t even push her.
“Maddie,” she said brokenly, after she had sobbed for a while, “do you think you actually could get Gris sentenced to my custody?”
“Well, as I am very fond of you, Teenie, as a favor to you, I am absolutely certain that I can.”
“Then I’ll help you follow your plan to try him in the press,” said Teenie, feeling a little better, “and when he is sentenced get custody of him.”
A ragged maid was trying to dry Teenie’s tears with a scrap of animal fur.
Teenie looked at Madison suddenly. Her eyes went very hard. “But there’s one thing you got to know, Madison. If you fail to get me custody of Gris, you’ll be right there in that cell yourself!”
Madison had no slightest idea of how he could possibly accomplish such a thing. He had just been talking.
He backed up, nodding in little jerks. “I won’t fail you, Teenie.”
Gods, was he in for it now!
PART SEVENTY-SEVEN
Chapter 1
The second Madison entered the townhouse in Joy City he got to work. He felt that he was marching to the solemn beat of drums and that noble victory beckoned from a nearer point.
How could he fail? He was the most accomplished PR since Julius Caesar, of this he had no doubt. Caesar, an Earth king of long ago, had come, he had seen and he had conquered all of Gaul. Madison would do the same to Voltar. Lack of confidence was not one of Madison’s faults. Historians, dear reader, may wish it might have been, for when all this coverup is exposed, it is very plain that J. Walter Madison was bent upon a course which would alter the history of not only Voltar but of Earth. Some poet once said that the pen is mightier than the sword: in this case one was testing if PR was mightier than the combined good sense of all the leaders of two empires. And as we follow the actions of Madison and others, we shall certainly see if it was. So read on, dear reader, read on. You’ll be flabbergasted!
Teenie, he had left at Palace City. Reencouraged, she was making plans to ready up the island for the receipt of Gris, but reconciled that his incarceration there would take some time. Madison had even gone so far as to discuss with her how she could shake loose Endow from some of the maintenance money for the island to buy an air-coach and some fuel bars and new torture implements. She had decided to teach Too-Too, Endow’s dearest catamite, a new way to kiss and was sure that would do it. So Teenie was no barrier, at least for a time, though he shuddered at what might happen if he failed to get her custody of Gris.
He now had his roustabouts clear out a seventy-sixth floor large salon and set it up with tab
les. He sent out a crew logistics man to get vocoscribers, paper, pens and copies of every newspaper published, not only on Voltar, but on all one hundred and ten planets.
Then he called together four of his criminal reporters and stood before them, tall and commanding in the glittering light of dawn.
“You are now,” Madison said, “creative artists. Lay aside the habits of drudgery and facts. Unleash your imaginations. You are now, from this moment, public relations men. At once, without delay, begin to write news stories of the crimes of one Soltan Gris, an Apparatus officer languishing in the Royal prison.”
Mission Earth Volume 9: Villainy Victorious Page 25