A Whiff Of Madness Part 9

"Monstrous. To plot the cold-blooded murder of a loving, loyal machine simply to further-"

"He might not be the only one who goes," Hesslin warned the old doctor. "I don't want to rot here, or turn into a quivering wreck like you. If you try to foul up any escape plan I swear I'll-"

"I don't quiver."

"The whole thing sounds foolhardy," put in Hare, "and yet-"

Thump! Thump!

Dr. Yach blinked. "Who can that be thumping on our cell door at this hour? We never have callers after dinner, never. Can they have received word already of your monstrous designs on-"

"Shut up!" said the catman, hunching and watching the door.

"Special charitable visitor," announced a thin voice outside.

It's the princess, Summer told himself.

The heavy door opened. "What a wonderful feeling, to be able to do something worthwhile with my vast fortune."

A plump birdman stepped in. It was Mulligan, the Starbuck claimant.

CHAPTER 14.

Rain hit the ironwork and gla.s.s hard and fast, then rolled more slowly down the curving sides of the huge domed buildings. The night wind shook the wild gra.s.s and tangles of spiky weeds that filled the wide streets.

"It was lovely here once," said the Scarlet Angel, the wind worrying her long red hair. "I remember being brought one autumn when I couldn't have been more than ten. Very gawky I was then.

They were leading their horses along an overgrown street which cut through the center of the long-abandoned exposition grounds. "You could never have been awkward, Angel."

"Ah, but I was. Long and lean, skinny and hardly more sure on my feet than a newborn colt."

In the center of the weedy street loomed a fifty-foot-high statue of a military gentleman who held a sword on high. Since the statue had been made not of metal or of stone but of some kind of papier-mache the old campaigner had several gaps in him where his mesh-wire skeleton showed through.

His sword was in a particularly woeful shape.

"I truly appreciate your helping me out," said Palma."Since it was my fault you missed your rendezvous in Ravenshoe," said the girl, "it is only fitting that I arranged another meeting with Tully Keep."

"Little did I realize you and the celebrated guerrilla were chums."

"Outcasts of various kinds tend to get acquainted." She nodded to their right, turned onto a weed-thick lane leading by a vast gra.s.s-infested trough which had once been a marble pool. The fountain rising up from the pool's center was made of the same material as the giant soldier.

"I expected to find guerrillas camped out in the mountains or the jungle."

The Crystal Gardens lie at the edge of an area that's seen much fighting in recent years. No one has visited it in a good long while, so it makes a suitable temporary headquarters for Tully Keep and some of his men," said the Scarlet Angel. "Obviously he never stays in one place long."

"Keep's not on either side really, is he?"

"He believes King Waldo and the government of Laranja East are corrupt and must be replaced.

But the rulers of Laranja West are hardly better," explained the girl. "He, therefore, opposes both sides.

It's his hope that he'll be able to bring off a coup and-"

"Oops!" Palma noticed a man, inside a gla.s.s-walled exposition building, watching them. The man wore a two-piece woodsman suit and held a blaster rifle. "A guard over there."

"Yes, he's the third we've pa.s.sed since we pa.s.sed through the gates."

"My keen eye is losing some of its keenness. This is the first guy I've spotted."

At the end of the lane was a circular building of multicolored gla.s.s panels and white wrought iron. In the doorway, arms folded, stood a white-furred catman. He smiled, making a purring sound, and came out into the hard rain. "Angel," he said as he embraced the girl, "still a road agent, eh, dear friend?

When are you going to abandon those defective oafs and come over with us?"

Three men appeared from out of the wet darkness. They led the horses away.

"Your profession simply doesn't pay as well as highway robbery, Tully." The girl backed out of his arms. "This is Palma, one of the most excellent photographers in the Barnum System or the entire-"

"I know your work, my friend." The guerrilla leader held out a paw. "You've done some splendid picture spreads for Galactic Geographic."

"Yes, I have," agreed Palma, "You want to talk to me, my friend?" Keep beckoned them to follow him into the multicolored dome.

There were even rows of flower beds crisscrossing the circular gravel floor, the flowers long since dead or taken over by magnificent weeds.

The white-furred catman led them to the center of the large room and offered them white wrought-iron chairs.

Palma sat close to the Scarlet Angel, resting one hand on her shoulder. "I had some questions to ask you when I commenced on this quest, Keep," he said. "En route a few more things have aroused my curiosity."

"You want to know if good King Waldo is the Phantom of the Fog," said Keep. "We'll come to that topic in a moment ... but what are your more recent sources of puzzlement, my friend?"

"We had our path crossed at the Knuckle and Chin," continued the bald photographer. The Laranja West troops behaved pretty much like soldiers I've encountered in most parts of the universe.

The Laranja East lads, though, didn't. They appeared to be crazed, considerably goofy.

Reminded me of some Venusian Buddhists I met once who had the habit of now and again running amok."

Keep nodded. "So they're field-testing it on a much larger scale than we figured at first."

Testing what, Tully?" asked the red-haired girl. "You must know something, Palma, about the use of chemical and biological weapons."

"Sure, people have even used them on me," he answered. "All that kind of thing was outlawed by the Barnum Accords of a few years back. No planet, no territory in our system is supposed to use anything like that."This particular chemical-biological invention is being used by Laranja East on its own troops,"

said the catman.

"Something to pep them up?"

"Exactly. It's a spray. One whiff and your average soldier turns, for a period of an hour or more, into a kill-crazy and absolutely fearless warrior."

Thoughtfully Palma rubbed at the rain-speckled top of his head. "Any idea who invented the stuff?" The spray is being manufactured, at a secret factory somewhere in Laranja East, by the Starbuck clan."

"How about a guy name of Dr. Ferrier ... is he connected with the Starbucks?"

Keep said, "Not that we know. Why?"

"His name came up." Palma twisted a strand of the Scarlet Angel's hair around a finger. "You have an inside source of information about the activities of the Starbuck folks."

Keep grinned, whiskers perking. "Yes, my friend, a fairly highly placed informant."

"Aha! The claimant is a fake-he's one of yours."

"Yes, the Mulligan Starbuck you met at the family estate is working for us," said Keep. "When we first got wind of this new killer-producing spray some months ago I decided we needed a better source of Starbuck facts than we had."

The rain bounced on the colored panels high above. Palma watched that for a moment "Mayhew, our stringer-he was supplying information to you, too, wasn't he?"

"Yes. I'm sorry they did him in."

"That was to keep him from telling Summer and me anything. Mayhew was able to mention two people before he died: you and this Dr. Ferrier."

"Mayhew never lived to pa.s.s on what he knew about Ferrior to me," said the guerrilla.

"Could be Ferrior is the chap who invented the stuff," said Palma. "And it is possible the king is sniffing the spray himself on the sly."

"That would explain why he turns into a nighttime killer ... yes," said Keep. "If Mayhew believed that, I tend to believe it as well. What we lack, as yet, is proof."

"Mayhap by now Summer's got something out of Ferrier," Palma said. "Oh, yeah, another thing I'm curious about."

The Scarlet Angel said, The stagecoach."

"Yep, the coach. Right after I left it the d.a.m.n thing exploded," said the photographer, "Due to the fact I was being dragged off into the wilds by a gang of cutthroats I didn't get a chance to go back and dig into the wreckage. I know some kind of bomb had been planted."

"We didn't plant it, if that's what you're thinking," Keep told him. "We only use that sort of device on rare occasions, against important government toadies."

"You haven't heard any scuttleb.u.t.t about who arranged the fireworks?"

"None, friend Palma."

Palma said, "I have to a.s.sume the people who got rid of Mayhew were trying to do me a similar favor. Which means all my cautious skulking around in the wilds of Laranja East hasn't been as un.o.btrusive as I hoped."

"You were not followed here to the Crystal Gardens, that I can a.s.sure you. You and Angel are free to remain here for-"

"Nope. I'm about due to meet my partner back in the capital."

The Scarlet Angel said, "We are to part then, dear Palma?"

"Not until tomorrow," he said.

CHAPTER 15.

"You can eat the apples, the zingos, the grout sandwiches, and the salt.w.a.ter taffy," said MulliganStarbuck while lifting the checkered cloth off the picnic basket hanging over his feathered arm. "Don't, however, touch the gherkins, the pemican-on-rye sandwiches, the popcorn b.a.l.l.s, or the tomato. Oh, and you can drink the lemonade but not the iced tea."

"What sort of benevolent visit is this?" complained Hesslin. "I haven't had a gherkin since I was locked away to rot and now you-"

"The reasons for the restrictions will soon make themselves manifest." Mulligan set the wicker basket on the cell floor and motioned Summer to follow him into a corner. Moving was easier for the reporter now, though still painful. "I'm breaking my cover sooner than I'd intended, Summer. After Princess Joline told me you were here I decided you'd have to be sprung. If all goes well we'll get Dr.

Ferrier, too. Won't be a bad night's work." He stroked his beak. "I'm not who you thought."

"You mean those are fake feathers?"

"Oh, I'm an authentic birdman, but I'm not the Starbuck heir," he explained. "I'm an agent for Tully Keep."

"My partner's been looking him up. How does the princess fit in?"

"Joline isn't quite as dim-witted as she likes to appear. She, unbeknown to her father, has been aiding various liberal causes for quite some time. She has also, now and again, provided us with information. Joline is aware that I'm a false claimant. When she determined you were really Jack Summer she paid me a visit at the estate. The result of which you see."

"I figured she'd forgotten all about me."

"A common feeling when you're locked up, as I well-"

"Gah, these are the toughest gherkins I've ever sunk a-"

"I cautioned you against them." Mulligan s.n.a.t.c.hed the green pickle from Hesslin's paw.

Old Dr. Yach was slowly chewing on a chunk of taffy. "Perhaps you can explain the real purpose of your visit."

"I'm here to help the lot of you escape from St Charlie's," replied Mulligan.

"Escape from here is well-nigh impossible," said Hare.

"Not if you apply technology and money," said Mulligan. "Thanks to Lady Thorkin's fondness for me I've been able to avail myself of both." He dropped to his knees beside the yellow basket. Resting the pickle on his palm that Hesslin had tried to nibble, he opened it down the center to reveal a squat silver rod. "Universal lockpick."

Hare asked, "Don't they have some sort of detection gear visitors have to submit to?"

"This thing's made out of a new Starbuck alloy the average friskmachine (also made by the Starbucks) cannot detect," explained the birdman. "My only problem in swiping this lockpick from one of the family labs was picking the lock to get at it."

Hesslin stopped eating, reached out and took up the lockpick, "After we use this on our door, then what?"

"The iced tea." Mulligan unscrewed the cap on the thermos. Unseaming his tunic he poked at his chest feathers. "Which one ... ah, yes, here." He plucked a feather and dropped it into the liquid in the thermos. From the picnic basket he next took the tomato. "Made of a new Starbuck plastic. Stuff it into the top of the jug, like so, and it makes a spray nozzle. There we are. This particular spray will knock out any guard as far away as five feet."