Authors: Walter Jon Williams
“Well,” Maijstral said. “Soon you’ll be Lord Drago, so I thought you’d better be prepared. That’s all, Roman—you may go.”
“Sir—”
Maijstral rose and held out his hand. “Thank you, Roman. You have always given complete satisfaction.”
Slowly Roman rose from his chair. He held out his hand, recollected the chair arm was still in it, switched the chair arm to the other hand, then took Maijstral’s hand and clasped it. Maijstral winced as bones took the strain.
“Thank you, sir!” Roman bellowed.
Maijstral winced a second time at Roman’s astounding volume.
“You’d best go and prepare,” he said. “We’ll be leaving in a few minutes.”
“Very good, sir!” Roman roared, turned on his heel in formal military fashion, and marched out, the chair arm still in one hand.
Maijstral massaged his wounded hand, looked down at the genealogy, and smiled.
He had always thought that Roman would make a good lord. Every so often he and Roman were compelled to travel incognito, and Roman had on occasion operated under the name of Lord Graves, a perfectly genuine person who happened to be Maijstral’s distant cousin. Roman had been so splendid at being Lord Graves, at adopting the proper mix of lordliness, condescension, and noblesse oblige, that Maijstral had often found it very odd of the universe that he, Maijstral, was the lord, whereas Roman, who was so much better at it, was the servant.
Of course Roman also
believed
in lords, and emperors, and so on, and Maijstral didn’t. Perhaps conviction added something to Roman’s performance that Maijstral, for all his birth and training, lacked.
There was a knock on the door, and then Tvar entered. Maijstral sniffed her ears.
“How fare our guests?”
“Drexler, Manderley, and Chang have been safely locked in Savage Simon’s dungeon. Drexler has also been persuaded to forfeit his sixty novae and change.”
“Very good.” Maijstral would make the sixty novae part of Roman’s—Lord Drago’s—endowment.
It wasn’t enough to support a lord for
very
long, but it would make a good start, and Roman could always steal some more. And it was more than Maijstral had to his name when he joined the nobility at his father’s death.
“We’ll leave as soon as Conchita gets back,” he began.
“Right here, boss.”
The camouflage holograms dissolved and Conchita floated down from the ceiling.
“Conchita,” Maijstral said, “you must some day allow me to introduce you to the concept of a
door
, and of the
door-frame
, on which you may
knock
.”
“Sorry,” Conchita said, “but the window was open, so I just flew up and came in. It seemed quicker than going the long way.”
“Do you have our disguises?”
“Well—mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“You asked for five, boss, but I could only find four.”
Maijstral raised his eyebrows. “You could find only four Elvis holograms in all of Memphis?”
Conchita looked apologetic. “There’s a high demand, boss, with the Memphis Olympiad coming up next week. And there’s some kind of big ceremony going on right now, pre-Olympiad, with pilgrims from all over. You know how much Elvis’s admirers like to dress up like him, right? Well, I called all over Memphis and I only got four holograms.”
“Well,” Maijstral sighed. “Can’t be helped, I suppose.”
Conchita brightened. “But I got a fifth hologram. It was the last one the store had.”
“What does it look like?”
“Ronnie Romper.”
“
Ronnie Romper?
”
“Yeah. The puppet from the children’s videos. I really liked him when I was little.”
Tvar lolled a Khosalikh smile. “I
adore
Ronnie Romper!” she said. “I used to visit the Magic Planet of Adventure every week.”
Maijstral, it is apropos to remark, did
not
adore Ronnie Romper. He believed that the little puppet, viewed by everyone else as a harmless vehicle for juvenile delight, was in fact a horrid omen of doom.
This was not precisely superstition, but rather a product of some dubious inductive reasoning: a maniac assassin had once tried to cut Maijstral in half while wearing a Ronnie Romper disguise; and therefore Maijstral always viewed any close association with Ronnie Romper as an invitation to homicide.
If not precisely logical, the view has a certain consistency. That’s inductive reasoning for you: it’s sneaky, but at least it’s based on data.
“How are we going to sneak Ronnie Romper into Graceland?” Maijstral demanded.
Conchita gave it some thought. “Well,” she said, “if Ronnie’s with
us
. . .”
Maijstral surrendered. Obviously it was his fate to take Ronnie Romper into battle.
“Very well,” he said. “But let’s leave at once, before I think better of it.”
*
The main gates of Graceland were jammed: pilgrims, both human, Khosali, and otherwise, a great many of them either dressed as Elvis, wearing Elvis masks, or disguised by Elvis holograms, were swarming up against the stanchions, trying to get into the festival. Music boomed indistinctly in the distance, all bass notes and rhythm. The far-off roar of an audience rose and fell.
“Why you are Ronnie Romper disguising?” asked one Troxan. The tiny alien, who normally would have stood about as far from the ground as Maijstral’s navel, was floating through the crowd on an a-grav harness ornamented with rhinestones, a cape, and a standing collar.
Maijstral found himself devoutly wishing he’d given the Ronnie Romper disguise to someone other than Roman, who by virtue of his height was far from inconspicuous.
It occurred to him that, insofar as Roman’s answer to the alien’s question might be to remove the Troxan’s head from his shoulders, he should answer the question himself, and quickly.
“We’re coming from a party,” he said.
“I am climaxing this system my unbusiness journey,” the Troxan said. “Most event making, friend finding grand tour.”
To his horror, Maijstral realized that he
knew
this particular alien—his name was Count Quik, and Maijstral had met him on Peleng.
It really wasn’t Maijstral’s fault that he hadn’t identified the Troxan immediately. Identification of Troxans is one of the minor arts, as they all have the same bodies, multilayered onion heads, and more or less fixed expressions. Sound resonates between the various cartilaginous layers of their heads and gives Troxans the most acute and discriminating hearing in the galaxy.
Maijstral cleared his throat and lowered his voice, afraid that his speech would prove fatally recognizable to the Troxan.
“I’m afraid we’ve run out of time,” he growled. “So sorry. Good-bye.” He began to elbow his way back to the rear of the crowd.
“Farewells, Mr. Maijstral,” the Troxan said politely.
Maijstral clenched his teeth and continued his progress to the rear of the crowd, the others in his party following.
“Was that Count Quik?” Kuusinen asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you think he will give us away?”
“He didn’t last time.”
“Last time he didn’t catch us in the act of breaking and entering.”
“Either way we’ve got to act swiftly, and crowding in front of the main gates is the least expedient way I can think to deal with the situation. We’ll find a side entrance, and our identification codes should get us in. Once past the perimeter, we’ll go straight to our destination. Very likely we’ll get the business over with before Count Quik even gets to the main gate.”
“Very good.”
Out of the blue, a woman marked by a stiff, distinctive hairstyle charged right through the midst of them, knocking Roberta to the ground in her haste before she disappeared into the crowd. Media globes circling the woman’s head marked her position in the crowd as she ran on. Kuusinen and Maijstral bent to pick Roberta up.
“Are you all right?” Maijstral asked.
“I’m fine. Wasn’t that Mangula Arish who just knocked me down?”
“I don’t know,” Maijstral blinked. “Was it?”
The party scattered before a flying wedge of Mayans, who likewise disappeared into the crowd at a run.
“What’s going on?” Roberta demanded.
“I haven’t the vaguest . . .” Maijstral began, and then his blood froze at the sight of the Baron Sancho Sandoval Cabeza de Vaca bearing down on him, waving his cane.
“Are you sure my holograph is functioning?” Maybe, he thought, all these people were r
ecognizing
him.
“You look fine,” Roberta said.
“Let’s get out of here anyway.”
They made their escape before the elderly Baron Sancho could hobble up to them, then circled around Graceland’s perimeter until they discovered a gate, the entrance that led to Love Me Tender Street.
“If we’d had time to develop a plan,” Maijstral pointed out, “we would have come here at the start.”
Assuming the dignified mien of the Elvii, Maijstral led his group toward the gate, which obligingly rolled open at his approach. Two guards stationed behind the gate snapped to attention, and a third presented a portable log-in scanner and pen.
“Please sign in, sir.”
Nothing for it but to continue, Maijstral decided. He reached for the pen and signed “Elvis Presley” in what he hoped was a bold hand.
The guard looked at Roman. “Why the Ronnie Romper disguise?” he asked, then turned pale at the sound of Roman’s answering growl. His hand automatically rose to the pistol at his belt.
“We’ve been to a party,” Maijstral said, in what he hoped was the voice of an old man. “My friend has a bad case of indigestion.”
“Hrrrr,” Roman agreed.
The guard’s suspicion dwindled, but didn’t vanish entirely. “And why are
you
disguised?” he said. “You’re one of the Elvii—you
already
look like Elvis.”
Inspiration struck Maijstral. “Ahhhhhh,” he said, drawing out a world-weary sigh. “Even I sometimes yearn to be young again.”
“Oh,” the guard said. “Gotcher.”
Maijstral led his group through the gate. The guard looked after Roman as he passed.
“By the way,” he added, “my kids love your show.”
Maijstral discovered, once inside, that Love Me Tender Street was crowded. Several concerts were going on at once in the various auditoriums and open-air concert venues, and more visitors were entering every second. The sound of music and the roar of the crowds were much louder. Maijstral’s group found it slow going, but they made steady progress until a group of children spotted Ronnie Romper and ran up to join the party.
“Do your Pumpkin Dance!” one of them demanded.
“Take us to the Magic Planet of Adventure!” said another.
“The Pumpkin Dance!”
“Where’s Cap’n Bob?”
“Sing the Pangalactic Friendship Song!”
Graceland, Maijstral realized, was a tourist mecca; and the tourists, seeing a holographic video character, were assuming that this was part of the
entertainment
.
Maijstral was on the brink of explaining that Ronnie was very busy now, in the midst of an adventure that was taking him from the Magic Planet of Adventure on a mission to Graceland to rescue Elvis from danger, but he found his explanation preempted by Roman himself.
Roman leaned over the children, raised his arms, and bellowed “
Buzz off!
” in a voice that froze the entire crowd in their tracks.
The children turned pale and fled, all except for the youngest, who wet himself, sat down, and began to cry. The child’s mother rushed up to the child and picked him up in her arms.
“
Beast!
” she shouted at Roman’s retreating back.
“Perhaps we’d better fly,” Maijstral said. “We’ll be more conspicuous, but we’ll make better time.”
They triggered their a-grav harnesses and rose into the air. Maijstral led them onto shade-lined Big Hunk O’ Love Boulevard toward the center of Graceland, triggering as he flew his darksuit’s sensory enhancements that increased his range of hearing and vision. An unforeseen consequence of this decision was that he could hear with unusual clarity the comments of the crowd below.
“What’s this on my shoe?”
“Look! It’s Ronnie Romper!”
“Hi, Ronnie!”
“Hrrrr!”
“My kids love your show!”
“I didn’t know Ronnie was so
huge
. He’s so little on vid!”
“Hey, Ronnie! Where’s Auntie June and Uncle Amos?”
“Sing the Pangalactic Friendship Song!”
“What’s this on my shoe?”
And then, lurching down the avenue, came a sight that Maijstral scarcely required enhanced vision in order to detect. It was a frightening figure, horribly disfigured, as tall as Roman and as powerful as a colossus.
It was Milo Hay, the fiancé of Major Ruth Song. After the double thrashing he’d received from Prince Hunac’s bodyguard and then from Roman, he’d been strapped into an exoskeleton to enable him to heal while moving about normally—if, that is, being strapped into a humanoid-shaped collection of gleaming, articulated metal can be called “moving normally.”
Hay marched onto the boulevard with a hiss of hydraulics and a clank of metal. His face was covered by the semilife patches that were sopping up his bruises. Despite all his injuries, he had a strange, dreamy smile on his face, doubtless a side effect of overeffective painkillers.
Hay turned and began clanking down Big Hunk O’ Love Boulevard in the same direction as Maijstral’s party. Maijstral’s blood turned cold.
“Faster,” he said, and increased speed.
Hay looked up as Maijstral’s group passed over his head. His dreamy smile widened. He waved.
“Ronnie Romper!” he said. “I love your show!”
At the geographical center of Graceland, surrounded by a company of guards in full dress uniform, stands the monument known as the Heart of Graceland. The huge gold-sheathed obelisk, in the shape of a giant torch, is by far the tallest freestanding structure in Tennessee, and on clear nights the Eternal Flame surmounting the structure can supposedly be seen from Pikes Peak. Long reflecting pools stretch from the monument in each of the four cardinal directions.
Maijstral dropped to the ground and his entourage followed suit. Moving with the dignity of authority and old age, he approached the main gate. A guard captain pointed a detector at him, read the display, and promptly saluted.