Dramocles: An Intergalactic Soap Opera (21 page)

Count John and Queen Anne made their entrance soon thereafter. Although still legally married for the purpose of ruling Crimsole, they no longer lived together. Each had set up housekeeping in a separate sector of the Crimson Court. Each directed only those aspects of government that they found appealing. Anne concentrated on planetary finances, steering the ship of state through the sharp-toothed shoals of insolvency toward the deep blue waters of surplus profits. John devoted himself to popularizing the monarchy and himself through media dissemination. That is to say, he went into show business.

From its inception, Count John’s “View from the Throne” was an interplanetary success. It was a talk show in which John chatted with top personalities from the entertainment and art industries.

One of John’s most frequent guests was Haldemar, King of the Vanir. Haldemar had recently become a notable media star himself, and the head of his own production company. He was unable to attend the Reconciliation Ball because he was currently on location with Skullsmasher, Ltd., shooting
The Fall of the Glormish Empire
, and was already seven days behind schedule.

Adalbert arrived next. The Young Pretender had grown quickly bored with farming on Lekk, and scornful of his neighbor Snint’s simplicity. But he had bided his time, for he expected to return to ruling his ancestral planet as soon as Haldemar and his men were finished looting it.

Haldemar, for his part, had had difficulties. He had expected to despoil Aardvark quickly and get home to Vanir. But alas for human expectations, it was not to be so easy. Due to centuries of inefficient leadership and inadequate security, the Aardvarkians had been forced to develop their own highly idiosyncratic forms of defense. They lived underground. Their burrow towns and villages had no direct entrances, but could be reached only through bewildering mazes of tunnels, passageways, and monstrous tangles of arcaded streets wound round each other like a tangle of vipers.

But this was not all. The passages of the maze were protected, not just by their own complication, but also by stout wooden doors set at frequent intervals and locked with heavy padlocks. Pity the poor barbarian who, after breaking down a dozen or a hundred doors with his double-headed ax, finds that he has only gained access to a dead end, and must retrace his steps and try again.

Haldemar kept his men at it for a while, just out of principle–the barbarian’s belief that there’s always
something
around worth carting off. But at last he had to give up and bring his warriors back to Vanir. Aardvark was so poor as to be virtually loot-proof.

After the barbarians left, Adalbert waited for an invitation to come back home and resume his reign. The invitation did not come. The Aardvarkians had just discovered what the Lekkians had known long ago–that anarchy is perfectly workable as long as there’s nothing much of value lying around.

At last one of Adalbert’s cousins wrote and told him that he was welcome to come home as a free citizen, but he could expect no resumption of his royal privileges. No longer would he get first pick among each year’s nubile virgins. Nor would he recieve the royal food allowance, which had permitted him to import delicacies like bread and meat. Now he would have to eat lentil stew like everyone else, and make do with the girls who would have him, if any.

Adalbert found this prospect unpromising. He left Lekk and came to Glorm. Here he brought a lawsuit against Dramocles, contending that the King had illegally invaded his planet and ended his dynasty, thus putting him out of work. Sensing some justice in this plea, Dramocles awarded Adalbert a yearly stipend, on condition that he spend it anywhere except on Glorm. Adalbert accepted the condition and went to Crimsole, where he practiced drinking and self-pity. His sulky presence at the Reconciliation Ball was a grim reminder that, in a war, there’s always bound to be a sore loser.

Next to arrive was a yellow-robed monk-herald with shaved head. He brought greetings from Vitello and Hulga, who regretted their inability to attend the celebration. After accepting a modest vegetarian lunch and a glass of fruit juice, the herald told his news:

When the war was over, Prince Chuch had returned to Crimsole in a state of deep depression. He sold his unused squadron of cyborg killers, gave Vitello a small bag of golden hex nuts for severance pay, and, accompanied by Doris, took off in his spaceship for parts unknown.

Vitello didn’t know what to do with himself. There were no opportunities for him on Crimsole, now that Chuch was gone. So, accompanied by Hulga and Fufnir, he shipped out on a slow-moving interplanetary freighter, determined to seek his fortune elsewhere. He earned a meager living at various unsavory jobs, first as a crunch-back operator on the Long Pier in Aardvark, then as a middle pumpman in a robot restaurant, then as a stuck tuner for a deviant booth in Port Akadia on Lekk. At last he wandered to Clovis, capital of Druth.

Clovis was the sort of place that attracted anomalies. At least two of the ten lost tribes of Israel had found their way there, as well as refugees from the collapse of Atlantis. But people of Earth stock were only a part of the population. Here were also Anungas, exiled from their distant home planet because of their outlandish custom of eating watermelon pits and polishing the soles of their shoes. Here were the Thulls, outcasts from Lekk who lived in massive stick-and-mud nests in treetops and practiced the twin abominations of fingerpainting and serial music. And there were many others. This heady racial mix had earned Clovis the title of “The Los Angeles of the Local System.”

Vitello and Hulga had trouble assimilating with the Clovisians. Fufnir was the couple’s only friend. Most nights the Demon Dwarf would come over with his little satchel of narcotics, and the three would watch TV and get blasted and complain. Fufnir was having trouble, too. Jobs for Demon Dwarfs were few and far between this year.

Then the last of Vitello’s golden hex nuts was gone. Out of work, broke, homeless, the trio took to the streets. Inevitably, they found their way to the infamous Court of Miracles, where anything could happen as long as it was unpleasant enough.

As they moved through the crowd, Vitello thought he heard a familiar voice. It came from a booth to his right. A tanned young man was telling five or six bored bystanders about a commune named Syncope on one of the moons of Lekk. A slender, sweet-faced young woman accompanied him on a portable harmonium.

It took a moment for Vitello to place the man. But the Levi’s and Fruit of the Loom T-shirt gave him a clue, and at last he exclaimed, “Prince Chuch, is it indeed you.”

“Vitello!” Chuch cried, jumping down from the platform and embracing his former servant. “Doris!” he called to the harmonium player, “See what the Universal Principle has sent our way!”

Chuch had wandered through many strange places, anger alternating with depression in his tortured soul. Then one day, high in the Sardapian Alps, he and the faithful Doris had come across a tall old man clad only in a yellow loincloth, sitting crosslegged beneath an uu tree.

“Greetings, Prince Chuch,” the old man said.

Chuch marveled greatly at this, for he had never seen the man before. “Sir,” he said, “who are you?”

“That is unimportant. You may call me Chang.”

“Where do you come from?”

“My most recent incarnation was on the planet Earth.”

“And how did you know my name?”

“It was foretold that we would meet in this place, at this time.”

“By whom?”

Chang smiled. “That question does not further the understanding.” The old man stood up. “Prince Chuch, I go now to a place called Syncope, where I will found a monastery for the study and dissemination of the Buddhadharma. Will you come with me?”

“Yes, I will,” Chuch said without hesitation. “Whatever this Buddhadharma is, I suspect it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

So it was that Chang, Chuch, and Doris journeyed to Syncope. There they built a monastery dedicated to hard work, simple food, meditation, and the study of the sutras. Other pilgrims came, some to take up the ascetic life, others to stay in the nearby village of Heim, where they gave courses in sensitivity training, rolfing, astral projection, sensual massage, and the like. From time to time Chuch was sent back into the world to spread word of the Law. Now he was returning to Syncope for good. Vitello and Doris went with him, but Fufnir regretfully stayed behind on the grounds that the Monastery of Syncope was not an appropriate place for a demon dwarf.

Chuch and Doris, Vitello and Hulga had been tempted to attend the Reconciliation Ball, but finally decided not to expose themselves to worldly desire and discontent. So they dispatched the herald-monk to tell how it was with them: they had turned from the world to the Noble Eightfold Path; they were disciples of old Chang, tall and erect, with his bald head and long Fu Manchu mustaches.

The celebration was in full swing. Dramocles was having a wonderful time, dancing, drinking, and taking in narcotic substances so rare, unusual, and potent that they were forbidden to the populace at large as tending to induce lese majesty. His meeting with Lyrae, from whom he was now divorced by Royal Express Decree, was not awkward in the least. As the evening wore on and the participants grew drunker, Lyrae and Chemise withdrew to a quiet chamber to discuss matters of interest to young and beautiful women married to middle-aged kings. Dramocles partied on alone.

Presently he found himself in a part of the asteroid that he had never seen before. He opened a door and saw that he had found the control room from which all of Edelweiss’s lighting and sound effects were directed. Two technicians tried to send him away. Dramocles pushed them into the corridor and locked the door behind them. Chuckling, he staggered across the room and fell into a padded chair in front of the main console.

The controls were clearly marked. Even drunk and stoned, Dramocles was able to produce a soft blue twilight within the main ballroom. Next he punched in a fireworks display, and then a dazzling sunset. Getting the hang of it, he selected appropriate music to go with his effects, and these he punctuated with birdcalls and a low rumble of thunder. Mixing and combining, he found that he could come up with combinations of singular artistry, just as he had expected.

“All it takes is a little imagination,” he muttered. He looked around the control panel for something else to do. He found a row of unmarked buttons and punched one of them.

Over his headphones, he heard a familiar whining voice. “… can’t deny that he wronged me. How could he? Yet does he offer to restore me to my throne? Not him, the fat bully!”

There was more of the same, delivered in a monotonous drone that allowed no time for response. It was Adalbert, of course, complaining of how badly Dramocles had used him.

Dramocles grinned. It was apparent that the owners of Edelweiss liked to keep in touch with what was going on, if not for spying and blackmail, then at least to determine the prevailing mood. He pushed another button. This time he listened to Max delivering pleasantries to a young countess from Druth. Then he heard Rufus discussing his collection of toy soldiers with someone. After that there were some voices he didn’t recognize. Then he heard Snint’s unmistakable Lekkian accent.

“We never did receive a complete account of it,” Snint was saying. “What we did hear seemed too bizarre to credit.”

“Ah, but what you heard was true. Otho did indeed return.” The voice was Drusilla’s.

Dramocles leaned forward, his chin propped in his hand, listening intently.

“It was a great shock for the King,” Drusilla said, “to learn that his destiny, upon which he had set such store, was nothing but a contrivance invented by his father for the furtherance of his own diabolical ends.”

“Otho claimed that? Excessive modesty was never one of his failings! And Dramocles believed him?”

“Why should he not?”

“I find this astonishing,” Snint said. “My agents reported on these matters, of course. But, delving deeper, we found that things were not exactly as represented.”

“Now you astonish me,” Drusilla said. “To what do you refer, specifically?”

“We believe the Tlaloc conspiracy never existed.”

“Impossible!” Drusilla cried. “My father had documentary evidence!”

“I wonder if it was like the evidence he invented for the conspiracies on Aardvark and Lekk? Who brought it to the King’s attention?”

“Chemise, who came to us from Earth, where she had fought against Otho.”

“She is a beautiful woman,” Snint remarked, “and she seems to love the King well. But is she truly from Earth? We have only her word for it, hers and Otho’s. They support each other’s contentions, but they produce no evidence. We know that Max was falling out of Dramocles’ favor until he produced this mysterious conspiracy. Now the Tlaloc affair has ended as quickly as it began, Chemise is Dramocles’ wife, Max is secure in his job, and Otho has most conveniently disappeared.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I have no conclusions,” Snint said. “I only point out discrepancies. I wish Dramocles well, and would not wish to see him disappointed.”

“I shall pray to the Goddess for insight,” Drusilla said.

Dramocles waited, but the conversation was finished. He sat for a while, his chin in his hands, lost in thought. When he got up, he was surprised to find himself sober. He left the room, slowly at first, then with a purposeful stride.