Part 10 (1/2)
Bill smiled happily. ”You think your Lord is going to let us go?”
”Let you go?” he howled in apoplectic answer. ”Over my dead body - or better yours. Let you go and those two vats of boiling oil we've been stoking all day, sweating and slaving over, will go to waste!”
Bill managed to glugg down one last half-bowl of fermented swill before the soldiers dragged him out of his cell.
CHAPTER 14.
THE CRIPPLED KING.
”What did you say?”
The pitcher and goblet of wine went splas.h.i.+ng off the table and cras.h.i.+ng to the floor as the wild-haired Monarch of the Isthmus of Impotence dragged himself reluctantly halfway to his feet and glared down savagely with fierce blood-shot eyes at his cowering prisoners who were wrapped in heavy chains and shreds of clothing, bare blue bottoms s.h.i.+vering, in the midst of the audience hall. Then dropped back with a groan.
Bill licked his lips, and his heart dived with despair at the loss of all that lovely, if noticeably soursmelling alcohol that was even now dripping onto the floor and swirling down a hair-clogged drain.
”I said, your Royal Impotence, that we are but honest Questers after the Fountain of Hormones.”
”No, no,” screeched the Baron frantically, tugging at his food-spattered robes as though he was about to tear them off with excitement. ”Take it back a few sentences. To the man who sent you!”
Bill and Rick exchanged puzzled glances. It was a fair exchange. ”Well, that would be Doctor Delazny, right Bill?” said Rick, seeming noticeably paler and thinner after his forced incarceration in the dank dungeon.
”Delazny!” screeched the tall sunken eyed man as he tore out handfuls of his lank hair. ”Delazny! Him!”
”Hey, Bill, I got the feeling, somehow, that this guy knows Delazny!”
Bill shook his head in wonderment, his chains shaking in tinkling, semi-musical accompaniment. ”I got the same feeling. Only it is impossible. How could the Baron here even know about Dr. Delazny? He's a human being, sort of, and this guy some sort of archetype. Whatever that is.”
Bill, in true Trooper fas.h.i.+on, had already forgotten most of the details of Dr. Delazny's boring lectures about archetypes. There was no room in his teeny-tiny military-shaped and alcohol-destroyed brain for the concept that the s.e.xual dysfunction of billions of male human beings might create an archetype like this one.
The Baron moaned. A most pitiful, heart-breaking sound.
Baron Barren (for that was his name) tried to stand up from his chair but managed only a wobbling crouch. Bent and disfigured, he teetered there, growing red as a beet, tears starting from his eyes as he attempted to rise up into erect state, failing miserably.
”No, no, I am as human as you. As human as that foul beast Delazny is inhuman.” Beneath swarthy, unkempt brows, glowing eyes squinted at them. He teetered there in that crouch, breathing raggedly, struggling with every ounce of his being to just stay in that one, profoundly embarra.s.sing position. ”Tell me, Bill,” Baron Barren wheezed. ”Did that sodding vivisectionist Delazny give you that foot?”
”Not really. Actually, I got it - well - somewhere else.”
Bill self-consciously tried to put the cloven hoof behind his other leg, as all the repulsive creatures in the room craned their necks and slithered closer to get a better look.
”Don't be too sure, Bill,” snarled Baron Barren, pointing a ragged fingernail. ”Delazny may well be at fault! The man is a pernicious fiend! Author of much, maybe all, of the wickedness in the psychosomatic research field of the Empire. They say that it was Doctor Delazny who made the Emperor's eyes strabismic during elective brain surgery to cure his ingrown toenails. If so, it is just one more mistake amidst a career of perfidy, of which we get glimmerings even here on the Isthmus, thanks to my bio-tech mechanisms!”
”How do you know Doctor Delazny?” asked Rick.
”Do you think that I have spent all my life in this contorted state? Do you think that I was born here in these fiendish environs? No! Can't you see.... Words fail me. It is so tragic! n.o.body really cares. You don't care - you only asked so you can sneer at me! I was the greatest, yes I was. A respected, revered Doctor of Science of the Empire. Even you stupid creatures must have heard of me. Dr. Krankenhaus!
The greatest psychosomatic surgeon in history? It was I, while performing a psycho dissection of a young male's brain, who suddenly realized the truth!”
”Truth?” Bill blinked.
”Yes!” said Baron Barren, sprays of spittle splattering from his mouth in the excitement of his oratory.
”That most males think with their t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es! But no other scientist ever found the actual link! They believed that the gonads only affected the brain through the release of testosterone! But that is only partially true, and I, Dr. Krankenhaus, that fateful day at Hedshrinker U., conclusively proved it! It was my genius that created the s.e.x-Ray - the specialized wavelength X-Ray device that read radiation-type wave-lengths emanating from glands. I shall never forget when I turned up the power, and was finally able to perceive the connection that I had only theorized before. It was a theretofore invisible energy tube, directly connected from the nether regions to the medulla oblongata! It was quite, quite purple in color.
And when I performed a simple bit of castration surgery, a quick whisk of the scalpel, the tube disappeared proving that it emanated not from the brain, but from the other end. Can't you see the importance of that discovery gentlemen?”
”Castrated?” said Bill, his mouth dry, hands shaking, contemplating the one true fear of the eternal macho male.
”Oh, I sewed them back on. I was a great surgeon I tell you! And voila! Zap! That tube reappeared again!
That tube of psychic energy! Through my further experiments I discovered that the tube also led not only to the brain but had a branch as well through a sort of hyper-dimensional link, a leaking psychic faucet you might call it that dropped into a sea of human energy that was swis.h.i.+ng about in a different dimension! The Over-Gland! The very land where we now stand!”
Baron Barren grew so perturbed he fell over. He did not get up; he simply continued his lecture lying on the floor, squirming spasmodically like a beetle on its back when he reached the exciting bits.
”I had an a.s.sistant. Delazny! He spied on everything I did! He soon knew everything I knew, he learned all about the Over-Gland at almost the same instant that I learned about it. I only wished for greater knowledge, greater understanding of the human race, and maybe the Galactic n.o.bel Prize and a nice post at Helior University. But Delazny! Little did I realize that Delazny wanted more! Much more!”
”Yes,” said Rick. ”He wants to bring peace to humanity, to stop the Chinger war!”
Baron Barren snorted and writhed with disgust. ”Bah! Lies! If he has joined up with the Chingers, then dollars to dung beetles he will betray them just as quickly as he betrayed the human race. For it is power that Delazny wants! Endless power! He wants to tap the cosmic energy of the Over-Gland for his own nefarious purposes! But he cannot do this until he discovers the source of that power....”
”The Fountain of Hormones!” said Bill, beginning to understand the easy parts.
”Archetypically speaking, yes. The Fountain of Hormones - the nexus of this particular maelstrom. But alas, no one has ever been able to find it.” He cast a wobbly gesture about him, alluding to his sorry companions. ”Don't you know, if we could find it, we'd certainly use it. Isn't that right, you conked collection of crunched cripples?”
There was a general weak moan of agreement and a feeble thras.h.i.+ng amongst the a.s.sembled creatures.
”I don't understand though, Dr. Krankenhaus or Baron Barren or whatever your name is. If you are the true discoverer of the Over-Gland - then what are you doing here, and in such a sorry state!”
Dr. Krankenhaus snapped his fingers, or at least tried to snap his fingers that only slid greasily over each other, and pointed toward his captives, gurgled orders to his minions. ”Let them go! And get them some trousers - I'm getting a chill just looking at their bare b.u.ms. They are as much victims as we!” As two gnomes raced forward and attended to the locks with jangling keys, Dr. Krankenhaus managed to struggle back onto his throne where he collapsed, heaving with over-exertion.
”Thanks,” said Bill, pulling on the filthy fur trousers and trying to rub some circulation back onto his arms.
”You haven't answered the question,” said Rick.
”No. Sorry. It hurts to even think about what happened.” Dr. Krankenhaus's hands trembled weakly down his face as though to wash out the recollection, and yet clearly to no avail. ”I am sorry to have treated you so shoddily, but it is simply the custom hereabout with potentially dangerous strangers.”
”But how do you not know we aren't spies for Dr. Delazny?” asked Rick.
Krankenhaus chuckled weakly. ”Spies? Hardly. You two are far too stupid for that.”
”Maybe if you tell us your story, you'll feel better,” prompted Bill.
”Ah yes! My story. Has ever a man endured more?”
DR. KRANKENHAUS'S STORY.
Or ”Don't Crush that Pixie, Hand Me the Tweezers”