The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (102 page)

I spent the rest of the evening talking up the wonders of my imaginary history to everyone I could nail. Most of them seemed to enjoy it, since the court was normally short on laughs. The only one who didn’t seem to be getting a charge out of it was myself. Though the plan had seemed good at first, the more I became involved with it the slower
it appeared. I might flutter around the fringe of these fantastically dull court circles for months without finding a lead to Angelina. The process had to be accelerated. There was one idea drifting in and out of my head, but it bordered on madness. If it misfired I would be either dead or barred from these noble circles forever. This last was a fate I could easily stand—but it wouldn’t help me find
my lovely quarry. However—if the plan did work it would shortcut all the other nonsense. I flipped a coin to decide, and of course won since I had palmed the coin before the toss. It was going to be action.

Before coming I had pocketed a few items that might come in handy during the course of the evening. One of them was a sure-fire introduction to the King in case I felt that getting nearer
to him might be of some importance. I slipped this into an outer pocket, filled the largest glass I could find with sweet wine, and trundled through the cavernous rooms in search of my prey.

If King Villelm had been crocked when he arrived, he was now almost paralyzed. He must have had a steel bar sewn into the back of his white uniform jacket because I swear his own spine shouldn’t have held
him up. But he was still drinking and swaying back and forth, his head bobbing as though it were loosely attached. He had a crowd of old boys around him and they must have been swapping off-color stories because they gave me varying degrees of get-lost looks when I trundled up and snapped to attention. I was bigger than most of them and must have made a nice blob of color because I caught Billy’s
eye and the head slowly slewed around in my direction. One of his octogenarian cronies had met me earlier in the evening and was forced to make the introduction.

“A very great pleasure to meet your majesty,” I droned with a bit of a drunken blur to my voice. Not that the King noticed, but some of the others did and scowled. “I am by way of being a bit of an entomologist myself, if you will pardon
the expression, hoping to follow in your royal footsteps. I am keen on this and feel that greater attention should be paid on Freibur, more respect given I should say, and more opportunity taken to utilize the advantageous aspects of the foraminifera, Lepidoptera and all the others. Heraldry, for instance, the flags might utilize the more visual aspects of insects …”

I babbled on like this for
a while, the crowd getting impatient with the unwanted interruption. The King—who wasn’t getting in more than one word in ten—got tired of nodding after a while and his attention began to wander. My voice thickened and blurred and I could see them wondering how to get rid of the drunk. When the first tentative hand reached out for my elbow I played my trump card.

“Because of your majesty’s interest,”
I said, fumbling in my pocket, “I carefully kept this specimen, carrying it across countless light years to reach its logical resting place, your highness’s collection.” Pulling out the flat plastic case, I held it under his nose. With an effort he
blinked his watery eyes back into focus and let out a little gasp. The others crowded around and I gave them a few seconds to enjoy the thing.

Well
it was a beautiful bug, I can’t deny that. However it had not traveled across countless light years because I had just made it myself that morning. Most of the parts were assembled from other insects, with a few pieces of plastic thrown in where nature had let me down. Its body was as long as my hand, and it had three sets of wings, each set in a different color. There were a lot of legs underneath,
pretty mismatched I’m afraid since they came from a dozen other insects and a lot of them got mashed or misplaced during construction. Some other nice touches like a massive stinger, three eyes, a corkscrew tail and such-like were not lost on my rapt audience. I had had the foresight to make the case of tinted plastic which blurred the contents nicely and hinted at rather than revealed them.

“But you must see it more closely, your highness,” I said, snapping open the case while both of us swayed back and forth. This was a difficult juggling act as I had to hold the case in the same hand as my wine glass, leaving my other hand free to grasp the monstrosity. I plucked it out between thumb and forefinger and the king leaned close, the drink in his own glass slopping back and forth in his
eagerness. I squeezed just a bit with my thumb and the bug popped forward in lively fashion and dived into the King’s glass.

“Save it! Save it!” I cried. “A valuable specimen!” I plunged my fingers in after it and chased it around and around. Some of the drink slopped out staining Villelm’s gilt-edged cuff. A gasp went up and angry voices sounded. Someone pulled hard at my shoulder.

“Leave off
you title-stealing clots!” I shouted, and pulled away roughly from the grasp. The drowned insect flew out of my fingers and landed on the King’s chest, from where it fell slowly to the floor, shedding wings, legs and other parts on the way. I must have used a very
inferior glue. When I leaped to grab the dropping corpse the forgotten drink in my other hand splashed red and sticky onto the King’s
jacket. A howl of anger went up from the crowd.

I’ll say this much for the King, he took it well. Stood there swaying like a tree in the storm, but offering no protest outside of mumbling, “I say … I say …” a few times. Not even when I rubbed the wine in with my handkerchief, treading on his toes by accident as the crowd behind pushed too close. One of them pulled hard at my arm, then let go
when I shrugged. My arm struck against Villelm IX’s noble chest and his royal upper plate popped out on the floor to add to the fun.

Fun it was too, once the old boys got cleared away. The younger nobility leaped to their majesty’s defense and I showed them a thing or two about mix-it-up fighting that I had learned on a number of planets. They made up in energy what they lacked in technique and
we had a really good go-around. Women screamed, strong men cursed and the King was half carried out of the fracas. After that things got dirty and I did too. I couldn’t blame them, but that didn’t stop me from giving just as good as I received.

My last memory is of a number of them holding me while another one hit me. I got him in the face with the shoe on my free leg, but they grabbed that too
and his replacement turned off all the lights.

Uncivilized as my behavior had been, the jailers persisted in treating me in a most civilized fashion. I grumbled about this and made their job as hard as possible. I hadn’t voluntarily entered prison in order to win a popularity contest. Pulling all those gags on the poor old King had been a risk.
Lèse-majesté
is the sort of crime that is usually punishable by death. Happily the
civilizing influences of the League had penetrated darkest Freibur, and the locals now fell over backwards to show me how law-abiding they were. I would have none of it. When they brought me a meal I ate it, then destroyed the dishes to show my contempt for this unlawful detention.

This was the bait. The bruises I had suffered would be a small enough price to pay if my attempt at publicity paid
off in the right quarters. Without a doubt I was being discussed. A figure of shame, a traitor to my class. A violent man in a peaceful world, and a pugnacious, combative uncompromising one at that. In short I was all the things a good Freiburian detested, and the sort of a man Angelina should have a great deal of interest in.

In spite of its recent bloody past, Freibur was woefully short of
roughneck manpower. Not at the very lowest levels of course; the portside drinkeries were stuffed with muscle-bound apes with pinhead brains. Angelina would be able to recruit all of those she needed. But strong-arm squads alone wouldn’t win her. a victory. She needed allies and aid from the nobility, and from what I had seen this sort of talent was greatly lacking. In my indirect manner I had displayed
all the traits she would be interested in, doing it in such a way that she wouldn’t know the show had been arranged only for her. The trap was open, all she had to do was step into it.

Metal boomed as the turnkey rapped on the door. “You have visitors, Grav Diebstall,” he said, opening the inner grill.

“Tell them to go to hell!” I shouted. “There’s no one on this poxty planet I want to see.”

Paying no attention to my request, he bowed in the governor of the prison and a pair of ancient types wearing black clothes and severe looks. I did the best I could to ignore them. They waited grimly until the guard had gone, then the skinniest opened a folder he was carrying and slowly drew out a sheet of paper with his fingertips.

“I will not sign a suicide note so you can butcher me in my sleep,”
I snarled at him. This rattled him a bit, but he tried to ignore it.

“That is an unfair suggestion,” he intoned solemnly. “I am the Royal Attorney and would never condone such an action.” All three of them nodded together as though they were pulled by one string and the effect was so compulsive that I almost nodded myself.

“I will not commit suicide voluntarily,” I said harshly to break the
spell of agreement. “That is the last word that will be said on the subject.”

The Royal Attorney had been around the courts long enough not to be thrown off his mark by this kind of obliquity. He coughed, rattled the paper, and got back to basics.

“There are a number of crimes you could be charged with young man,” he droned, with an intensely gloomy expression draped on his face. I yawned, unimpressed.
“I hope this will not have to be done,” he went on, “since it would only cause harm to all concerned. The King himself does not wish to see this happen, and in fact has pressed upon me his earnest desire to have this affair ended quietly now. His desire for peace has prevailed upon us all, and I am here now to put his wish into action. If you will sign this apology, you will be placed
aboard a starship leaving tonight. The matter will be ended.”

“Trying to get rid of me to cover up your drunken
brawls at the palace, hey?” I sneered. The Attorney’s face purpled but he controlled his temper with a magnificent effort. If they threw me off the planet now everything was wasted.

“You are being insulting, sir!” he snorted. “You are not without blame in this matter, remember. I heartily
recommend that you accept the King’s leniency in this tragic affair and sign the apology.” He handed the paper to me and I tore it to pieces.

“Apologize? Never!” I shouted at them. “I was merely defending my honor against your drunken louts and larcenous nobility, all descended from thieves who stole the titles rightly belonging to my family!”

They left then, and the prison governor was the
only one young and sturdy enough for me to help on the way with the toe of my shoe in the appropriate spot. Everything was as it should be. The door clanged shut behind me—on a rebellious, cantankerous, belligerent son of the Freibur soil. I had arranged things perfectly to bring me to the attention of Angelina. But unless she became interested in me soon I stood a good chance of spending the rest
of my days behind these grim walls.

Waiting has always been bad for my nerves. I am a thinker during moments of peace, but a man of action most of the time. It is one thing to prepare a plan and leap boldly into it. It is another thing altogether to sit around a grubby prison cell wondering if the plan has worked or if there is a weak link in the chain of logic.

Should I crack out of this pokey?
That shouldn’t be hard to do, but it had better be saved for a last resort. Once out I would have to stay undercover and there would be no chance of her contacting me. That was why I was gnawing my way through all my fingernails. The next move was up to Angelina; all I could do was wait. I only hoped that she would gather the right conclusions from all the violent evidence I had supplied.

After
a week I was stir-crazy. The Royal Attorney never came back and there was no talk of a trial or
sentencing. I had presented them with an annoying problem, and they must have been scratching their heads feebly over it and hoping I would go away. I almost did. Getting out of this backwoods jail would have been simplicity itself. But I was waiting for a message from my deadly love. I toyed with the
possibilities of the things she might do. Perhaps arrange pressure through the court to have me freed? Or smuggle in a file and a note to see if I could break out on my own? This second possibility appealed to me most and I shredded my bread every time it arrived to see if anything had been baked into it. There was nothing.

On the eighth day Angelina made her play, in the most forthright manner
of her own. It was night, but something unaccustomed woke me up. Listening produced no answers, so I slipped over to the barred opening in the door and saw a most attractive sight at the end of the hall. The night guard was sprawled on the floor and a burly masked figure dressed completely in black stood over him with a cosh in one meaty hand. Another stranger, dressed like the first, came up and
they dragged the guard further along the hall towards me. One of them rummaged in his waist wallet and produced a scrap of red cloth that he put between the guard’s limp fingers. Then they turned towards my cell and I moved back out of sight, climbing noiselessly into bed.

A key grated in the lock and the lights came on. I sat up blinking, giving a fine imitation of a man waking up.

“Who’s there?
What do you want?” I asked.

“Up quickly, and get dressed, Diebstall. You’re getting out of here.” This was the first thug I had seen, the blackjack still hanging from his hand. I sagged my jaw a bit, then leaped out of bed with my back to the wall.

“Assassins!” I hissed. “So that’s vile King Villy’s bright idea, is it? Going to put a rope around my neck and swear I hung myself? Well come on—but
don’t think it will be easy!”

“Don’t be an idiot!” the man whispered. “And shut the
big mouth. We’re here to get you out. We’re friends.” Two more men, dressed the same way, pushed in behind him, and I had a glimpse of a fourth one in the hall.