The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  He presided with gusto at the feast that followed, served at the tables in the courtyard. Huge tuns of wine were broached; flesh, fish, and fowl of every kind, roasted or more delicately prepared, were brought in from the castle’s steaming kitchens. Music and merriment prevailed, and the Prince made a great hit with the populace when, at the banquet’s end, he stood and, in a great bass voice, yodeled for them and demonstrated his cuckoo watch to tumultuous applause.

  That night he spent as little time as possible with Humphrey who, he was beginning to suspect, took an unnecessarily pessimistic view of things.

  Next day, he and his Princess led the women’s pilgrimage to the mound of the Labyrinth. They rode in a gold-and-ivory chariot drawn by six milk-white oxen, undoubtedly in honor of the Minotaur’s male parent, each of which was ridden by one of the more comely bull-dancers. As all the younger women in the procession were attired, like their Princess, in Minoan bodices, the Prince found the proceedings by no means as boring as he had anticipated, and at that night’s banquet he outdid himself.

  On the third day, the royal couple’s chariot once more led a procession to the mound. However, as this time it was the men’s pilgrimage, Papa Schimmelhorn found it much less interesting. Still, he watched the athletic contests with enjoyment, challenged some of the sturdier young men to Indian-wrestle, complimented them generously whenever he overcame them, and accepted his Princess’s praise with a princely dignity. After the feast that followed, he sang songs in German, French, English, and bad Italian. His subjects were entranced, and Sarpedon Mavronides especially was impressed. “Her Highness spoke the truth,” he told Mrs. Mavronides. “He is a veritable demigod. Surely the Gods themselves sent him here to Little Palaeon, to govern us and guide us.” He shook his head as ominously as Humphrey ever had. “Let us pray for his survival.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn did visit Gustav-Adolf and Humphrey for a few brief moments, annoying the former by rumpling his back fur, and worrying the latter by telling him vot a goot time he vas hafing, and that all his fears were unfounded. Then he hurried back to his Princess without even bothering to take off his armor.

  She removed it for him. She told him of her love for him, of her pride in his magnificence and his accomplishments. As they lay in bed, Niobe brought them wine.

  “This, dear heart, has been the most splendid of our festivals, and you have made it so. And tomorrow you will see its culmination, for tomorrow is the day of sacrifice.”

  “You mean die animals? Die sheep und goats und lidtle chickens?”

  She stroked him soothingly. “Ah, love, I can read your mind. Do you fear that you shall have to slaughter them? I know that you are far too kind and gentle, too truly brave, for that. Besides, we stopped slaying them publicly ever so long ago, when we gave up human sacrifices, so everything’s already been attended to; the cooks have taken care of it. Tomorrow, late in the afternoon, we’ll take them to a certain door that leads into the Labyrinth and leave them in the chamber there with proper ceremony. In the morning, they will be gone. The Minotaur will have accepted them. And then—then will come the climax.” Her clever hands distracted his attention. “I’ll tell you all about it at suppertime tomorrow.”

  “Ach, I can vait!” chuckled Prinz Owgoost, drawing her to him.

  * * * *

  The days had not passed as pleasantly for Gottfried Rumpler as they had for Papa Schimmelhorn. To compound his worries, he began receiving anxious calls from the Schweizerische Frauenbank’s junior officers, enquiring as to the whereabouts of their president. Was she actually on her Mediterranean island? And if she was, why was she refusing all calls from them—calls on business matters of great urgency? The idea of any Swiss banker, male or female, deliberately ignoring such transactions was unthinkable, and normally love could have had nothing to do with it. No, he told himself, there could be no doubt that Fräulein von Hohenheim was no longer sane, and that in her madness she might not only bring their venture to utter ruin, but also do irreparable damage to the Rumpler Bank itself and to the Rumpler reputation. The question now was whether he and his allies could assemble, make effective plans, and reach Little Palaeon in time to save the situation—and the poor, demented Fräulein from herself.

  He paced interminably up and down, in his office, in his home; he snapped rudely at Miss Ekstrom and treated his petite amie so churlishly that she burst into tears and took a cab back to her own apartment. He made unnecessary phone calls to Mama Schimmelhorn, begging her to assure him once more that Little Anton was really on his way from Hong Kong. He had his private jet held in instant readiness, and went over the flight plans with his pilots and Herr Grundtli time and again. Accompanied by the most expensive psychiatrist in Zürich, who had been sworn to utter secrecy, they were to fly directly to New Haven, where they would pick up their two passengers. They would then fly to Lisbon, staying there the night. From Lisbon, they would fly to Crete directly, where a specially chartered helicopter would be waiting for them. He and Herr Grundtli would be discreetly armed with Sig-Neuhausen automatic pistols; he had no clear idea of how these weapons would be used, but was determined to take no chances.

  There are times that try men’s souls, and the souls of Swiss bankers are not immune to them. Delays plagued Herr Doktor Rumpler. Little Anton, after arriving a day late in New Haven, phoned him to explain that he would be unable to accompany his great-aunt after all, because of urgent business for Pêng-Plantagenet, but that he would go over the situation very carefully with her so that she wouldn’t (as he put it) go off the deep end the minute she caught sight of Papa and the Princess. “Softly, softly catchee monkey, as we say in the Far East,” Little Anton told him; and Dr. Rumpler, disappointed in this loss of a reinforcement, agreed unhappily that any softening-up that could be done on Mama Schimmelhorn would probably be worthwhile. Then one of his pilots reported that something on the plane had to be worked on for a few more hours. Then the psychiatrist was called away to attend the spectacular nervous breakdown of a notorious international figure traveling through Switzerland. None of the delays were too long, but by the time he finally was able to take off, Gottfried Rumpler was by no means his usual resourceful, redoubtable self. He even, at the last moment, allowed Herr Grundtli to persuade him that it would be wiser to go unarmed.

  They picked up Mama Schimmelhorn not long after Prinz Owgoost and his Prinzessin, in their chariot, led the men of Little Palaeon on their pilgrimage to the mound of the Labyrinth; and Mama Schimmelhorn immediately set out to put everything in its proper order. She questioned Herr Rumpler closely about the Fräulein’s background, ancestry, and commercial qualifications, about his own involvement with her, about why it had been necessary for Papa Schimmelhorn to work on a little island in the Mediterranean, and about the strange impulse that might have led such an unusual woman to fall in love with a dirty old man who could not keep his hands off pretty pussycats.

  Dr. Rumpler did his best to answer her, perspiring freely and helping himself liberally to brandy and soda despite her warnings that it vas nodt goot for him. Sometimes he would point out that he already had gone over the whole business with Little Anton, who was supposed to have told her all about it, and she would say to nefer mind, chust tell it all again; and sometimes, to complicate matters, the psychiatrist, Dr. Nymphenbourg, would confuse the issues very learnedly. She continued the inquisition almost without interruption across most of the Atlantic, and by the time they reached Lisbon she knew almost as much about Little Palaeon and its Princess as Dr. Rumpler did. She knew that some strange pagan religion was practiced there, that visitors were unwelcome, and that until Papa Schimmelhorn had shown up the Fräulein had had the reputation of being a confirmed man-hater. It was all very curious. It did not fit in at all with her ideas about Swiss banking practice, and she said so.

  Gottfried Rumpler agreed with her. He told her that he admired her astuteness, but pointed out pol
itely that the transmutation of lead into gold didn’t really fit in with those practices either, and that extraordinary ventures required extraordinary measures.

  Mama Schimmelhorn snorted. She smelled a rat, she told him, and it was indeed fortunate that he had begged her to come along, because whenever she had smelled a rat she never yet had failed to get things quickly under control. She indicated the vicious tip of her umbrella. “Don’dt vorry!” she declared, “I get him shtraightened oudt—in der short-ribs vith der bumbershoot!”

  Next day, at Lisbon, they were delayed again—the landing gear had shown signs of stickiness, and the pilots did not want to risk taking off until all had been set in order.

  They were delayed again on Crete, where the chartered helicopter was unendurably delayed. Gottfried Rumpler, who had hoped to set down in the Fräulein’s courtyard early in the afternoon of what was—though of course he did not know it—the Day of Sacrifices, did not reach the castle until long after nine P.M. In the clear bright light of the full moon, the edifice was fully visible from some distance away, though everything seemed very still and only two lights showed.

  The helicopter pilot asked whether he should set her down, and Dr. Rumpler snapped, “Of course! Of course!” They settled gently. The pilot shut the engines off. They disembarked, Mama Schimmelhorn disdaining their helping hands.

  No one was there to greet them. They waited. After a few minutes, they saw a tall, solitary figure striding across the court toward them. It halted, glared at them reprovingly, and informed them in Greek that they were trespassing.

  The helicopter pilot translated.

  “Trespassing?” shouted Gottfried Rumpler, using his colonel’s voice. “I am Fräulein von Hohenheim’s associate in business. I am the co-employer of this man Schimmelhorn, and this lady who accompanies me is Frau Schimmelhorn. Do you understand, Herr Mavronides—for I assume you are Herr Mavronides? We are here to find out what is wrong. We demand to see the Fräulein immediately!”

  “The Princess is not here. She is occupied with matters of grave import elsewhere. You cannot see her.”

  “Then we demand to see Herr Schimmelhorn!”

  “You cannot see him either.” Sarpedon Mavronides’s voice, mournfully and ominously, dropped a full octave. “His Serene Highness, Prince August, has disappeared. He has been missing since suppertime, three hours after we had finished with the sacrifices. Her Highness is frantic. She is searching for him, and so is everybody else on Little Palaeon—and so far we have found no trace of him. We tremble to consider what may have happened!”

  “Maybe he got avay again und iss chasing naked vomen!” Mama Schimmelhorn muttered scornfully; and Sarpedon Mavronides, though he looked at her as though she had just committed lèse majesté, estimated her potential very accurately and refrained from answering.

  None of them saw another figure, smaller and slighter than Mavronides, who had started to dash out of a castle door toward the helicopter, then hastily checked himself and slithered back out of sight.

  Meister Gaspar Gansfleisch had not been searching for his missing Prince. Nor had he expected a helicopter to arrive with Dr. Rumpler, Mama Schimmelhorn, and their companions. As soon as the Princess had ordered everybody on the island to comb the island for Papa Schimmelhorn, he had activated his alarm-clock communicator.

  He had been waiting eagerly for someone else.

  * * * *

  The Day of Sacrifices had gone very well for Papa Schimmelhorn. He and his Princess made love and played at making gold. Throughout the morning and early afternoon, there were no ceremonies to distract them; and when he finally had to resume his armor so that they could lead the sacrificial procession in their chariot, he felt that he hadn’t a care in the world. Ahead of them, the six white oxen—now ridden symbolically by members of the kitchen staff—walked slowly and with great dignity, tinkling silver bells as they tossed their patient heads. Behind them came Ismail, driving the station wagon and pulling an enormous flatbed trailer piled high with sacrifices. Behind him followed a pickup truck and another trailer, and several wagons drawn by assorted beasts of burden, all similarly laden. Papa Schimmelhorn, who had expected at least slaughtered animals and bloody carcasses, was tremendously relieved to see that everything had been very neatly wrapped, much as Mama Schimmelhorn wrapped her butcher-shop purchases for the freezer.

  “You are surprised, my love?” laughed the Princess. “Do not be. Legend tells us that in the early days, we used to slay the creatures at his very door, and then drag them into the chamber where these are going to be put. He would accept them, but always it made him terribly angry. After a time, he would throw out the skins and all the other parts he didn’t want, and then for hours the hideous noises he so often makes would torture us, and all Little Palaeon would quiver with his wrath. But he would keep no part at all of the human sacrifices, so finally we decided that he didn’t like their taste, and we stopped offering them. We also started wrapping all the parts he wanted. It seemed the sensible thing to do.”

  The procession moved very slowly, enlivening its progress with song and merrymaking, but finally it reached a limestone portal projecting from the mound, where there was a bronze door, green with age. There Gaspar Gansfleisch awaited them with several of the castle servants. He knelt abjectly as their chariot rolled to a halt before him. He offered his back to the Princess as a carriage step, and cried out in admiration when Papa Schimmelhorn picked her up bodily and leaped out carrying her.

  Graciously, she nodded to him. She stepped up to the door, opened it with a huge bronze key, flung it wide. A gasp from the assembled islanders acclaimed her action. She spoke, addressing the Minotaur in a high, clear voice. She praised him in archaic Greek, his power and majesty; she implored him to grant them fertility for their cattle, their crops, their families, to protect them from storm and strife, vermin and disease; she begged him to accept their poor and humble sacrifices. Sarpedon Mavronides whispered a running translation into his Prince’s ear.

  The Prince looked in. The chamber was enormous, paved and lined with cold limestone; and dark passages could be seen leading out of it. Under Mavronides’s direction, the islanders started unloading the sacrifices, carrying them in, stacking them very neatly along the walls.

  When they had finished, the Princess spoke again, echoing everything she had said before. Then she closed and locked the door again and, bowing repeatedly as she backed away, returned to the chariot. A glad cry went up as Papa Schimmelhorn lifted her into it, and the procession started back as it had come.

  It was almost evening, and a gentle, warm breeze was blowing. The Princess moved closer to her Prince. Her hand played with the edge of his narrow goatskin skirt. “Now, my own hero,” she said softly, “now we shall return. Once more we shall make love. Then we shall sup, and I shall tell you the one more role that you must play, the greatest, noblest, mightiest role of all—tonight at midnight, when the moon is full, when it has risen.”

  “Ach!” cried Papa Schimmelhorn, his vinegar bubbling up within him at the thought of the roles he had already played. “It iss hard to vait!”

  They went back to the castle. They made love, and it seemed to him that this time the Fräulein loved him with what was, even for her, an unprecedented passion, her eyes burning with her ardor, her lips on fire.

  Afterwards, she insisted that he once again put on his armor, except of course his helmet, before they dined; and while they ate and drank she was strangely silent. Finally, after a long time, she looked at him intently and said, “Oh, love, the time has nearly come! At midnight, the Fourth Day starts, and all the omens have been favorable. Now I can tell you that which you must do, how you shall do the greatest deed in Little Palaeon’s long history!”

  Puzzled, he looked at her enquiringly.

  She seized his hands. Leaping up, she pulled him to his feet. “T
his very night,” she cried, “we shall return to the Portal of the Sacrifices at midnight, just you and I and Sarpedon Mavronides, and once again I shall unlock the door and fling it open. And then, my Prince, my Hero-Prince! Then you shall stride forth in all your strength, like the demigod we know you are, and challenge the foul Minotaur to mortal combat!”

  Papa Schimmelhorn’s jaw dropped. He gulped, uttering a bullfrog croak.

  She embraced him. “Not in four thousand years,” she declared triumphantly, “has any man ever dared to face him thus! But you will face him—aye, and fight him to the death, and slay him! I’m certain of it! And if, by some remote mischance, the gods do decree otherwise, we will make rich sacrifices to your shade, and you will never be forgotten on Little Palaeon.”

  “Shveetheart,” gasped Papa Schimmelhorn, “you—you made der choke? Nicht wahr?”

  She looked a little puzzled, a little hurt. “Now surely you are joking, are you not?” said she. “Were you not to confront the Minotaur and destroy him, how could I allow you to sire my sons?”

  He shuffled his feet uncomfortably. “Ja, ja,” he stammered, “I—I haff forgotten aboudt that. So—und it must be tonight?” He half-tried to smile. “B-before ve make luff any more?”

  “Tonight!” she told him. “This night of the full moon! We start within the hour!” She handed him his helmet. “Here, place this on your noble head and take your spear.”

  The idea was seeping through to Papa Schimmelhorn that the lady meant exactly what she said, that within the hour she wanted him to face a terrible being more than ten feet tall, wily with the cunning of more than four millennia, with great sharp horns, clawed fingers, and—