Flick had a sudden, obscured fight with the attendants and opened the door himself. Although he seemed to be having great trouble breathing, he stood there, straight as a rod, waiting to help her out and bow.
But Hightee did not get out. She turned to Madison. "You know, Madison, you're a nice fellow. But any friend of Jettero's would be. I'm absolutely bowled over by that-what's its name? Piano beat? You get the writer to do the rest of the book and I'll do the show."
When she had disappeared inside the dome, Flick said, "You're an absolute wonder, Chief. I actually drove her in the car! I'm a totally changed and reformed man!"
Madison didn't even hear him. As they took off, he was grinning from ear to ear.
He had a stage image being manufactured by the most popular star on Voltar, the guy's own sister! And he would soon, with other media, fit Heller to it.
He would soon put an end to this mediocre hero worship Heller now experienced and push Heller's name to the heights of true immortality.
And he began to hug himself. He had a bonus! When the musical had been aired and when she had found Heller for him, he would have another headline. It would run:
HELLER BURNS TEMPLE
KILLS THOUSANDS
OF PRIESTS
ROBS SACRED IDOL
OF PRICELESS EYE
TO GIVE PRESENT
TO HIS SISTER
Sure-fire! She would even have shown the evidence on Homeview. He could use the story on an off day when he didn't have more exciting news to print about Heller.
He was REALLY making progress now!
Chapter 3
They were nearly home when Flick turned around. "Chief, I just thought of something. When you were busy with Hightee Heller, you got a viewer-phone call from Queen Teenie."
Madison was jolted out of his euphoria. All his influence rested on Teenie Whopper, who was busily misrepresenting herself as royalty and holding her position through making page boys into catamites. It was, however, to Madison, the equivalent of a Royal command.
"Go up and hover!" he commanded nervously. "If she gave you a connection, call it back at once!" He was very jittery: apparently, due to time lag, it was difficult to call from Palace City. Was Teenie in town?
A piece of upholstery unfolded and a viewer-phone was staring him in the face.
Teenie's face appeared. She looked provoked. "I've been waiting out here in the desert beside this God (bleeped) message center for an hour! It's going to ruin my complexion!"
"Oh, I'm sorry!" said Madison.
"Why didn't you call back?" she snarled.
"Oh, I've been meaning to call you. But I got tied up."
"Tied up with Hightee Heller! You owe me a progress report on Gris!"
"Well, actually," said Madison, "I've been working up to that."
"Listen, Madison. This 'all promise and no delivery' is just the way PRs work. I know! You get busy, you lunkhead. I'll come back to this message center at sunset and if you don't have something to report on Gris by then, I'll have your cotton-picking head!" She hung up violently.
Women! Oh, his mother had taught him well. They were
trouble!
He thought fast. He glanced at his Omega watch and saw that he only had about two hours left of the day. He thought faster. Suddenly, he said, "Fly me to Government City, Royal Courts and Prison!"
"What the blazes? Chief, are you all right? Did High-tee run you out of your head?"
"It's another woman. An almost-woman."
"Look, Chief, we were just lucky getting in and out of the Domestic Confederacy Prison. You get near a Royal Prison and that's that!"
"Fly!" said Madison.
They flashed above the traffic lanes and lanced along toward Government City.
Madison soon saw the forbidding structure. It was perched upon a craggy hill, a fortress disdainful and aloof from the mundane matters of the worlds.
Flick didn't land in any courtyard: that was forbidden to anyone except the Emperor. Instead he landed on the sloping road outside its gates. He wouldn't move any nearer than a steep one hundred yards.
"Good-bye, Chief" said Flick. "It was great while it lasted."
"Shut up," said Madison. He got out and toiled up the pavement. It was heavy going for him, due to the increased gravity.
Above him loomed the towering pillars of the outer gate. As it was still daylight, guards were standing there, stiff as statues, on the other side of the heavy grill.
"I want to see somebody," said Madison to the nearest guard.
The man just kept on standing there. Madison was not as much as a fly.
Madison got out his identoplate and showed it. The guard didn't even look at it.
An officer was coming up, electric saber clanking. "What's this unseemly disturbance out here?"
"It's no disturbance," said Madison. "I've got to see somebody in here."
"Well, that's informative," said the officer. "All it lacks is his name, your business and what plot you are involved in to subvert the machinery of state. Be off."
"Look," pleaded Madison, "this is a matter of life and death."
"There's plenty of both in here," said the officer. "They're doing life, most of them, and we have assorted brands of death. Now get out of here!"
"Please, please," said Madison. "It's my life I'm talking about."
"Talk away," said the officer. "In living memory, no one has had the nerve to walk up this road to this gate and ask to get in...."
The statue guard said, without moving his mouth, "Correction, sir. Gris did."
"Gris!" said Madison. "That's it. I am his dearest friend. I must see him!"
The officer bent his head way forward and looked at Madison through the bars. He suddenly walked off and Madison fidgeted nervously. He could see the officer talking into a courtyard call box.
The officer came back and gave a signal to open the gates wide enough for Madison to slip through. Then he gave another signal. The gates clanged shut and two guards ceased to be statues and abruptly took Madison by the arms, one on each side, and marched him forward saying, "Hup! Hup! Hup!" the same way Madison had heard his criminals chant. Was he under arrest?
They followed the officer into the main entrance and through the vast echoey halls. The officer opened a door and they were in a courtroom. They walked Madison straight across it and stopped him in front of a door.
The officer frisked him, appropriated his identoplate and went through the door. He came back and held it open.
The two guards catapulted Madison into a room. It was a stone-walled chamber but it had a rich rug on the floor. A huge block of stone, like a desk, had another rich hanging thrown over it. An old man, dressed in black, was in a chair behind the desk staring out the window.
The man swivelled the chair around. He picked up Madison's identoplate and looked at it. He fixed Madison with a wintry eye.
"So you're a friend of Soltan Gris. Well, well. I am Lord Turn. You can speak freely here."
Madison took it that they must be alone but he heard a clank behind him. The officer was standing against the far wall, keeping an eye on him.
"I just wanted to make sure he was all right," said Madison, lamely. "I want to see him."
"Do you have a Royal order?"
"No," said Madison.
"Then how could you possibly expect to be able to see a prisoner here?"
"I am very dose to Lombar Hisst, Spokesman to His Majesty."
"Hmm," said Lord Turn. "Tell me... Madison? Do you know anything of the crimes of Gris?"
"Well, sir, I did not come here to testify. He may– – "
"No, no. This is not a court you're standing in. You couldn't testify anyway unless a court was in session. Let me put this another way. Do you know Royal Officer Jettero Heller?"
"Well, yes, Your Honor– – "
"Your Lordship," corrected the officer fifty feet away.
"... Your Lordship," said Madison. "I do know Jettero Heller."
"Do you know where he is?"
"Well, no, Your Hon-Your Lordship."
"Blast!" said Lord Turn.
"I know there's a general warrant out for him," said Madison, "and I would be happy to– – "
"General warrant, piffle," said Lord Turn. "I am holding his prisoner here. And I am quite sure that Jettero has a very good reason to put this Soltan Gris in Royal custody. But I DO wish the lad had given me a note or something to say what Gris has DONE!"
The conversation had gone all sixes and sevens for Madison. He realized he could not now say that Gris was a criminal to end all criminals, as he had already said he was his friend, thinking they would let him have visitors. Maybe they could get him for contempt or lying to a judge. The cold chill of this stately place was gnawing into him.
"I'm looking everywhere for Heller myself!" he said in a desperate effort to appear helpful.
"And you haven't found him?"
"No, Your Lordship, but I have lines out."
Lord Turn looked at him and then barked a short, dry laugh. He punched a couple of buttons on his desk and a court clerk appeared first, being just next door.
Lord Turn said, "This is a man named Madison. I see what this is all about now. It's just another crude attempt by Lombar Hisst to bypass all normal procedures. For some reason, Hisst does not want to produce a Royal warrant or even a Royal pass. He's sent another man in here to see Gris." He turned to the guard officer. "Did you find any poison on this Madison here?"
"No, Your Lordship."
"Oh, heavens," said Madison, "I wasn't sent here by Hisst!"
"You just said you were," said Turn.
"I just wanted to make sure my friend Gris was all right!" wailed Madison.
A warder had come in in response to Turn's second buzz. He rattled his opening plates.
"Is the prisoner Gris all right?" said Lord Turn to him.
"Chipper as a songbird, Your Lordship. Just sitting there all day and half the night dictating his confession. He's on his third roll of vocoscriber paper. Singing like a songbird, too, Your Lordship."
"Well, maybe someday we'll know what this is all about," said Turn. "That's all, Warder. Now, Clerk, look at this identoplate. Stamp it on something. And leave an order at the gate that this Madison is to be let in if he ever finds where that dear boy Jettero has gotten to."
Mistaking this for kindness, Madison said, "Could I see Gris for just a moment?"
"And," said Lord Turn to his clerk, "issue another order for Gris not to be permitted to stand near windows. I think Hisst is trying to assassinate him." He turned to Madison. "Now, as for you, if I find out that you have found out where Jettero Heller is and have NOT told me, I will have you picked up on a judge's order and thrown into a detention cell until you tell me why you withheld the information." He turned to the guard officer. "Throw him out!"
Chapter 4
Madison picked himself up off the pavement, wishing the guards had not taken the order so literally.
Flick kept out of sight until he was sure the gate was closed and then he ran out and, accompanying the limping Madison, tried to brush him off.
"I told you not to go near that place," said Flick.
Madison didn't like this decline of image. "I shouldn't have gone for the guard's saber. I should have aimed for his windpipe."
"Comets! Well, at least they threw you out instead of in. Even His Majesty is careful how he orders that lot around."
As Madison climbed into the airbus he noticed the sun was almost set. He had Flick go up a few thousand feet. He thought hard for a few moments and then suddenly a plan came to him.
He straightened up his clothes, put on a reassuring face and called Teenie.
She answered instantly. "That's better!" she said. "I'm sure," and there was a threatening edge in her voice, "that you have good news. Did you see the (bleepard)?"
"Oh, yes," said Madison. "And Teenie-I mean, Your Majesty-you would be absolutely boiled over. I spoke of you and he gave the most insulting laugh I have ever heard."
"WHAT?"
"And he leaned back, idly eating grapes-he's getting fat as a pig-and he said, 'Madison, when you see her, give her my best: up her (bleep)!'"
"Oh, the (bleepard)."
"Yes, I thought so, too. They've got him writing his memoirs and he showed me some of them, what he thought were funny passages about you. He absolutely rolled on the floor with laughter over his own jokes! Oh, I could have killed him, but the warders were right there and they'd taken away my knife. Such a crass exhibition of unfeeling callousness, I have never before witnessed in my life."
She had gone white as a sheet.
"He's bragging," continued Madison, "of how he led you on just for the pleasure of casting you aside."
She was grinding her teeth. She suddenly snapped, "That settles it!"
Madison went into sudden alarm. He had overshot his mark. He had not intended for her to do anything. His plan was very simple: he would simply begin to try Gris in the press and push it to such a public pitch that the Emperor would have no choice but to issue a Royal order for a trial. Then, under that guise, he would get Gris to start testifying all sorts of accusations against Heller and he could make these into headlines that would shake the universe.
It was a very good plan. Just plain straight PR, Earth style, done all the time. But it required preparation and work and time. It didn't need any sudden interventions.
Teenie had not gone on speaking. Madison said, "What settles what?"
"They're not even going to try him, are they?"
"Well, they will if I work on it hard enough."
"Yah? Well, Madison, you be out here at dawn tomorrow. I see back of you on this viewer-phone, you've got a new car. Fuel it up. We're going to take a trip."