Mission: Earth "Doomed Planet" (4 page)

Into this stunned tableau rushed J. Walter Madison. He was wearing a General Services officer's gray uniform and sand goggles. Thundering hard on his heels came his director and camera crew. "Oh, heavens!" cried Madison. "I am so glad I found you, Chief!" It was no accident that he knew Hisst was there: he had been having him tailed. Madison came to a halt before the stunned Hisst. He pointed at the headlines on the desk. He pretended he was short of breath. "I tried to get them to hold the announcement until I consulted you but the traitors wouldn't wait!" What an awful lie that was! He had had his reporters, armed with copies of Heller's letter, leak the news to every paper. He had only been waiting outside the antechamber until he had seen the papers brought in. Lombar was staring at him. The generals were staring at him. Madison gave the director and crew a hand signal to go live, straight into the Homeview circuits for the whole Confederacy, as arranged by the manager at his orders. "Quick, quick!" cried Madison. "We've got to take fast action to disprove this rumor. Open that door fast so we can show the whole Confederacy that the Emperor is still there!" Lombar at the desk saw with horror, from the flickering camera lights, that they were on the air! He moved suddenly to mask himself with Madison's body. Then he saw Heller's baton lying there: convulsively he snatched it up and put it behind his back. He was trying to think of something, anything that would prevent this disclosure. His own generals, not in the know, unwittingly undid him. In various voices, they all said differently and urgently the same thing, "Yes, for Gods' sakes!" "Open up the door!" "This is catastrophe!" "Check that bedchamber!" Madison was grabbing keys and opening plates. Lombar was too paralyzed to stop him. Madison got the door open and slammed it wide. He and the generals rushed in. Lombar was knocked into their midst by the director.

THE ROOM WAS EMPTY!

The cameras played all around the Royal bedchamber. Madison saw very clearly that the room had not been occupied for months: food in the pans was decayed, excreta on the bed covers was dry. Swinging up the covers to pretend to look under the bed, he hid the evidence. Madison, leaping up, cried, "It must have been just last night! Oh, heavens, I'm afraid for the Emperor's life!" Then Madison saw Lombar was holding something behind his back. "What is that you've found?" he shouted. He grabbed the baton and the cameras zoomed in on it. Madison examined it, holding it to be shot, "The evidence! He left evidence! This is Jettero Heller's officer baton! Now we know for sure who did it! The outlaw Jettero Heller has kidnapped Cling! Oh, catastrophe! Oh, woe! We are undone!" Madison made a slight signal to the director and the cameras promptly began to cover the room minutely. It took them off of Lombar. Madison got behind Hisst's back and whispered urgently in his ear. Lombar came out of his shock. The cameras centered on him. "Yes, yes!" shouted Lombar. "Instantly! Generals! Order all Fleet and Army units to pursue him! The villain has escaped to Calabar!" The director had the cameras pan as all the generals rushed off to issue the orders. Madison gave the cameras and director a signal to stop. The moment Lombar saw the flickering lights go off, he sank down soddenly in a chair. "Oh, this is terrible," he groaned. "Oh, no, it isn't!" said Madison. "This is just great! It's the very thing you have been waiting for! Violent civil unrest, no Emperor. The Army and the Fleet now out of the way. The great opportunity has arrived!" "Opportunity?" said Lombar in new shock. "This is disaster!" "No, it's not," said Madison. "The throne is empty. Lombar, you are about to become Emperor!" "No, no," said Lombar. "I need the body of the last monarch to show a duly convened assembly of Lords! I need the regalia! It's gone!" "Details, details," said Madison. "Here, fortify your nerves. This is no time for palsied hands." He took out of his pocket a flat pint bottle of the very best counterfeit Scotch that Bolz had been importing. There was only one change Madison had made in it: it held a minute quantity of LSD. Lombar took a swig. It burned its way down. He felt his blood begin to flow again. He took another swig. "Now, that feels better, doesn't it?" said Madison. He turned. "Get set up, director."

The Imperial Palace staff were scared blue. They had been locked in their rooms for months and now, dug out of the servant living quarters by Death Battalion officers, they were quite certain they were about to be executed. It was with great relief that they found, when they had been herded into the immense throne room, that they were only expected to set it up. The vast domed hall was a thousand feet in diameter and a hundred feet from golden floor to sky-blue ceiling. On the dais solidly sat the mammoth throne of Voltar, of shimmering violet stone inset with jewels. It was dusty and as cold as a tomb. It took two hundred staff half an hour to sweep it down and polish it up. They couldn't quite understand what was happening, for the place was also swarming with men in the aqua-green uniforms and badges of Homeview who kept using gutter words they didn't think Homeview men used. Two Royal palace valets and a seneschal balked when ordered to open up the chests of robes: this was supposed to be a ceremony supervised by the Lord of Wardrobe who was not there. They got knocked and kicked by these strange "Homeview men" and lost no time after that in complying. A man the others called "Costumes" made them indicate which were the coronation robes and then the Death Battalion people herded the palace crew back to their quarters and locked them all in once more. They felt relieved to be still alive. In the vast throne room, the director pointed at the electronics security expert and said, "You roustabouts help him set this place up. Don't forget the gadgets." He looked over to where the circus girls and whores were clustered and he yelled, "You (bleeps) help people get dressed. And get dressed yourselves. We got too many (bleeped) women, so all but three of you dress like men. And no (bleeping) around!" A logs man, working over to the side, yelled, "Hey, director, this paint won't dry in under three hours!" "(Bleep)!" yelled the director. "Just tell people to be careful." Lombar, sitting in the antechamber, was still a bit numb from shock. His yellow eyes were sort of glazed. "I still can't figure how they found out," he maundered. "Oh, reporters are pretty awful," said Madison. "Do you talk in your sleep?" "I don't think speed makes you talk in your sleep," said Lombar. "Maybe it was the heroin." "Well, that will do it every time," said Madison. "I sure wish you'd told me. We could have been spared a lot of this." "I guess I'm lucky you jumped in," said Lombar. "You sure are," said Madison. "Here, have another swig of this. It's a counterirritant." Lombar took another drink. Madison looked at his watch. He would get the beginning LSD effects about an hour after that first swig. He had twenty minutes to go. The counterfeit Scotch itself was already making Lombar pretty mellow. A general came in. "All orders have been issued to the Fleet and Army. Some admiral wants to know if we have any pinpoint coordinates on Calabar itself." "Just tell him to look all over," said Madison. "Use every ship he's got and report progress." "Tell him he doesn't need any coordinates," said Lombar. "Just kill everything living on Calabar!" "That would endanger the Emperor!" said the Apparatus general. "I'm pretty certain he's dead anyway," said Lombar. "Clarify any orders on that basis." "If you say so," said the general and withdrew. It upset Madison slightly to have amateur help on a PR caper. But he shrugged. Heavens only knew where Heller was by now. Obviously this kidnap was months old. After that sister rescue, Heller might have gone anywhere: Manco? Earth? Who cared? All he wanted was •he headlines. He began to dream up sighting reports and hairbreadth escapes he would manufacture. He didn't even need the Fleet and Army reports! He had great confidence in his client eluding everything sent after him. At that moment, despite earlier setbacks, he was absolutely certain that he would shortly have the most immortal outlaw anyone had ever heard of. Eventually, of course, Heller-Wister would be caught and hanged but that always happened to outlaws and was to be expected. Meanwhile, what headlines! And, oh, my, wouldn't Mr. Bury be pleased! Red carpets for Madison the length and breadth of what might remain of Earth.

Two circus girls came in and began to strip off Lombar's clothes. "What's going on?" said Lombar, pretty drunk. "Just you be patient, sweetiebun," Flip said. "We'll have you out of these general's rags before you can spit. We're experts." They had Lombar naked. He stood there teetering. "Hey, that's a nice (bleep)," said Flip. "I think so, too," said the other girl. "Chief, have we got time?" "Shut up," said Madison. "Look, Lombar. Look at this." Madison was holding up a golden Royal robe: it was worked with jewels against shimmerfabric to make patterns of comets, suns and planets. They seemed to move when you twitched the cloth. For an instant Lombar recoiled. He had a Royal robe in his office at Spiteos that had been stolen from a tomb, and in private he had often donned it to admire himself. But it was death for anyone not of Royal blood to wear one of those in public. He had a sudden wave of paranoia. He had a spasm of nausea that he misinterpreted. He held on to his stomach and fended the robe off. Madison glanced at his watch. Yes, it was about time for the first nausea and palpitations of LSD. He handed Lombar the Scotch. "Take another small swig and you'll feel better." Lombar took another swallow. It warmed him. The spasm passed. The girls got him into the Royal coronation robe. They slid sandals of gold and jewels onto his feet and would have combed his hair except that Madison, behind his back, was pointing urgently at his watch. Madison made a gesture to Flick in the door and the man sped off. He and the girls got Lombar walking. The LSD, the minute first dose, had begun to bite. "Set" now was very important: the state of Lombar's mind. "You are the most powerful being in the entire universe," said Madison. "You must keep your mind dwelling on that." Lombar nodded and somehow concentrated. They got him down the hall to the great doors of the throne room. "Setting" was now the thing, all-important to LSD trips. Two women, dressed like Lords, bowed and swung wide the doors. A burst of glorious music hit Lombar. The Imperial Palace band, dug out of the cellar and performing now with the sealer's gun on them, played violently in their recessed stage. "Lights! Camera! Action!" bawled the director. Madison melted back. He didn't want his own body in this. He could claim Lombar had gone crazy and ordered it, if worst came to worst, and his crew would back him up. But he didn't think any worst would come of it. He was dealing out a fait accompli. Those flickering cameras were plugged straight into Homeview, live to the whole Confederacy. The two actors in Lords' robes escorted Lombar down a shimmering path that made it appear he was treading on sunbeams. The whole hall was FULL OF PEOPLE! Hundreds and hundreds of them! Admirals of the Fleet, generals of the Army, Lords beyond count! They all bowed and stood up straight and bowed again. They kept doing that because that's what they were designed to do. They were all electronic illusions ripped out of General Loop's town-house. The only live people in the place were the musicians and Madison's crew and Lombar! Lombar was getting his "setting" all right. To the swell of Imperial music, if a bit off-key from musician fear, Hisst proceeded in the steadying company of the two actors dressed like Lords, followed by the two circus girls costumed likewise. The director noticed the assembled throng was bowing a few times too often and began to concentrate on Lombar's face. A strange look was beginning to suffuse it. Heavens only knew what internal pictures were spinning through his LSDed brain now! They got him to the throne dais. Here he was supposed to kneel. He wasn't accustomed to doing that and he tripped and had to be hurriedly righted. The director with a hand triple-screen monitor edited it out. He had three cameras running and the two roustabouts, as substitute cameramen, were not completely steady but it would do. A whore in a pontiffs robes now came in from another door, followed by two cooks dressed as priests. The "pontiff" walked up to the kneeling Lombar and made some signs over his head she hoped were right, then turned and took the regalia chains from one "priest" and hung them around Lombar's neck. They clanked properly because they were gilded iron. She then turned and took the "scepter" from the other "priest" and handed it to Lombar. It was only papier-mache and Lombar, clutching convulsively, bent it. The director switched on a crowd camera and hissed into a radio for a props man to rush in and straighten it out. That done, he cut back. They got Lombar up and onto the throne. "The crown," the director hissed. "You forgot the (bleeped) crown." He cut back to the mechanically bowing crowd. The two "Lords" got Lombar back on his knees. Impromptu, Flip and the other girl, who had dressed him and had now gotten into the robes of noble ladies, grabbed the pillow the crown was sitting on and did a sort of a dance, carrying it between them. The director thought it was very nice. Nobody had seen a coronation for upwards of a century, so it didn't matter, in his opinion. He cut the dance in. Flip and the other girl let the "pontiff" take the crown off the pillow. The paint was still wet and the "pontiff" wiped her hands off on her gown before she went on. Lombar's hair, not combed, was pretty unruly and hard to stuff under the crown. The thing was too small. But she got it on someway. "Say something!" hissed the director into the "pontiff's" ear-radio channel. "I think it will stay on," said the whore to all Voltar. The two "Lords" got Lombar off his knees and onto the big throne. Flip and the other girl didn't know what to do with the pillow. But it had been impromptu thus far and they would carry it off the same way. Flip tossed the pillow over her head in an elegant gesture and then she and the other girl, with a bouncing costume display turn, did what they always did in handling fake-throne tableaux in the circus-did an arm snake dance in front of Lombar's face and then settled elegantly on either side of him below the arms of the throne, heads at the level of his waist. Suddenly Madison remembered that in the pressure of other things, he had forgotten to write the announcement, much less give it. All Voltar was watching but they didn't know what in Hells they were looking at. "Now!" hissed the director into the electronics man's channel. Nothing happened. Then the electronics man hissed back over the radio to the director, "Somebody tripped over the (bleeped) plug!" Lombar was getting restless. Lord only knew what was passing through his mind. As LSD gives a time speedup, he certainly wasn't aware of the fact that, due to somebody accidentally disconnecting something, there was a blank in the program. But Flip was aware of it and, sitting on the floor beside the throne, she showed that she was a born and trained trouper. The subject of this display was getting restless. There were slits in the side of the very ample and overflowing robe. Unseen by the camera, she slid her nearest hand through one and passed it softly over Lombar's thigh, hidden by the garment. Lombar's yellow eyes flared for a moment in surprise. Flip, hand and forearm hidden now through the robe slit, sat facing forward with an expression which was very lofty and noble. Lombar settled down. He put his head back. A look of ecstasy began to steal over his features. The lofty and noble expression on Flip's face was retained. But her eyes flicked sidewise for a moment and then her eyelids began to twitch in rhythm. "Lovely, lovely," whispered the ecstatic Lombar. "That's great," hissed the director, "hold it just like that." And then to the electronics man, "Hurry up!" "Got it," came the answer. Lombar was stiffening out his legs. Then his yellow eyes flared wide. Four, count them, four electronic-illusion angels came winging down out of the blue dome of the vast hall. They hovered right over his head! One of them, a delicate, ethereal thing, suddenly said in a deep male voice-the electronics man couldn't find the girl who was supposed to do this-"Well, Hisst, old boy, you finally made it and it's about time!" Lombar shuddered in ecstasy. Flip's face, noble and lofty, was still registering a rhythmic twitch. Her lips parted slightly in concentration. Madison was wildly signalling to the director, giving him a sign to zoom in and hold. With the beatific smile on Lombar's face filling the frame and trying to cut out the tangled hair now smeared with wet gilt from the crown, the director made a camera hold. Madison had a mike now. He tapped it with his finger-boom, boom. It was live. "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Voltar Confederacy," he said, "we have just brought you live, live, live, the crowning of Lombar the Magnificent. Due to circumstances beyond our control, a hiatus has occurred in the Royal line of Voltar. The outlaw Jettero Heller stole Cling the Lofty and it was vital during this time of national unrest that the throne be filled. In a self-sacrificing moment, Lombar Hisst, lately Chief of the Apparatus and more lately Dictator of Voltar, heeded the resounding demands of the multitude and took the throne by popular acclaim. This program has been brought to you by the courtesy of the Grand Council. Long Live Lombar the Magnificent. He will give his all." And at that moment, Lombar did give his all. Flip's hidden efforts came to culmination. "Oooh!" groaned Lombar as his body gave a convulsive jerk. Flip grinned. The director held upon the face a moment more while Lombar panted. "Cut," the director said. "That was beautiful!"