Now, here in the auditorium, a hundred ladies of the “club” were gathered in breathtaking suspense, and Madison’s grin widened as he peered through the slot from which he could view them. Although many were middle-aged, they looked in full bloom. They had recaptured some of their lost youth and life, viewed through a marijuana haze and sex, and seemed remarkably attractive.
Crobe took the stand. This time they’d kept the LSD away from him, and expecting more if he delivered, he was on his good behavior. The little speaker was in his ear and all he had to do was repeat the script being read over it.
“Ladies of quality, ladies of fashion, ladies of sparkling eyes and resurged youth,” Crobe began—and it was pretty good even though he was saying it in a very flat voice— “I know how concerned you have been about the state’s reluctance to try the insane lunatic Gris. As you doubtless read or saw on Homeview, Lombar Hisst, Dictator of Voltar, promised that psychotherapy would be attempted in the Gris case.
“Now the grave danger, ladies, is that Gris will be released upon the public totally insane, that he will continue to slaughter and burn and rampage throughout a helpless population.
“Hisst, poorly advised, directly ordered me to attempt a solution through psychotherapy. It was reasoned that if the foul fiend could be made sane, it would then be safe to turn him loose.
“I demurred. I tried to point out that this criminal lunatic Gris was entirely off the Freudian scale. Most of you heard the lecture where I took that up took that up took go on go on.
“I said to Hisst, ‘The chances of success are so remote they are not worth . . . calculating.’ He ordered me to do it anyway. Then I told him that anyone chosen to do this thing might very well be facing certain death. But he said, ‘What is one woman more or less? Find a volunteer and make her do it!’”
“The brute!” ran the whisper around the room.
“Now, as you know you know you know quit repeating, according to Freud, sex is the basis of everything. If the true sexual basis of a criminal could be awakened, he would reform and become sane. That is proven scientific fact like all psychiatry.
“So what will be attempted is to bring light into the life of Gris in the hope that it will reform him, bring him back to sanity and remove him as a threat from our society.”
The women nodded.
“But,” cried Crobe, “as I told Hisst, the experiment, while noble, has two drawbacks: one, the chances of this working on somebody totally off the classification scale are almost nonexistent; and two, it is almost certain death for the volunteer. Shout yet we have actually found a volunteer.”
Crobe stood there, since no words were coming into his earphone now. An usher led forward the volunteer.
It was the Widow Tayl!
She was dressed in purest white. She looked virginal. Her head was bent forward, her smoothly straight hair fell across her face. She clasped her hands in front of her. She had been directed to perfection, to look like a maiden being brought before the altar in a primitive sacrifice. She stood before them, eyes cast down.
“This woman,” said Crobe, “in a spirit of purest patriotism, is willing to risk her life in this undertaking. I regard with awe her devotion and fearlessness in servicing . . . serving the state and people. I give you Pratia Tayl wait for applause.”
The assembled women stared. They felt a surge of awe. Then some began to cry.
“I am therefore,” said Crobe, “appointing a committee under the chairwomanship of Lady Arthrite Stuffy to call upon Lord Turn and insist that he permit the marriage and nuptial night of Gris and this woman in the Royal prison.”
The audience gasped.
Madison grinned.
PART EIGHTY
Chapter 2
A very disturbed Lord Turn faced the committee of ladies in his chambers the next morning. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. But he had never been pounded by press in all his life and he was getting cowed. Even his own family was not speaking to him lately, and this mass of determined women he saw before him were, many of them, on remarkably good terms with his family.
“But Lady Arthrite,” he sputtered, “nothing like this has ever happened before. A marriage to take place in my prison? It’s unheard of.”
Lady Arthrite fixed him with a gimlet eye. “Lord Turn, we have consulted legal experts. Our family attorneys tell us that there is no regulation against it! You are NOT covered by the law this time. Any objection by you would be purely personal!”
Lord Turn digested that. He was a letter-of-the-law man and he knew she spoke the truth. It had suddenly become too personal. Then he grasped at an out. “Marriage is a thing to which the man must agree. I doubt very much that Soltan Gris would want to get married!”
“He must be asked and we must hear if this is the case.”
Lord Turn raised his eyes to the ceiling. There were no regulations up there to be read. He looked back at Lady Arthrite. “Very well. We will go ask Gris.”
Now, the Apparatus is an intelligence service and it has ways and means of getting information. And, this time through a warder’s wife, Madison had learned that Soltan Gris had finished writing his confession.
Actually, Gris, these days, had put on some weight through lack of exercise, and food eaten regularly. Just now he was sitting in the tower cell wondering what to do with his time.
He had delivered the massive confession. For a couple of days thereafter he had worried a bit, thinking he would now be executed. Then he began to realize that judges take a long time to read things and maybe he had a few more breaths of life left to breathe.
The orders that he stay away from the window did not have to be repeated to him: he knew in his bones that Lombar Hisst would move the planet to get at him. He had heard some crowd shouting something or other outside the prison on some occasions but he had not dared go to the window to look and he could not understand what they were saying: they were too distant. No information had come to him. He knew nothing whatever about the press campaign against him.
He was somewhat puzzled therefore to hear many footsteps coming up the tower stairs and a buzz of voices. Female voices? How strange!
There was a jangle of opening plates and then the groan of his iron door.
A guard came in and pointed a weapon at him.
The room was suddenly full of women!
Gris’ wits promptly went into a spin.
He recognized none of them.
Their gaze upon him was hostile in the extreme.
Panic gripped him and there was no place to run.
A hooded figure, very slight of build, advanced toward him. It came very close.
He felt a note being pushed into his hand.
Almost hysterical, he glanced down at the note. It said:
If you don’t say yes I will tell them about the baby and they will tear you limb from limb.
The figure before him then lifted a hand and took hold of the top of her hood and pulled it off.
Gris went into petrified shock.
IT WAS PRATIA TAYL!
“For the good of the state,” she said, carefully coached, “I have volunteered to marry you.” And, out of sight of the others she jabbed a finger at the note.
Gris, very close to fainting, could not speak.
Lord Turn, at the back of the group, snarled, “Well, answer her! Speak up so we can get about our business!”
“Say yes,” hissed the Widow Tayl.
Gris took a look at her slitted, determined eyes. He looked at the hostile faces of the other women.
It suddenly occurred to him that he could buy a little more life. He could postpone his execution simply by setting a forward date, a month away, for this marriage.
“YES!” he shouted.
Lord Turn was amazed.
Hope suddenly lit the faces of the women.
“Good,” said the Widow Tayl, “we will be married right here this afternoon. Be ready.”
Gris tried to open
his mouth to speak.
The cell was empty and the door clanged shut.
PART EIGHTY
Chapter 3
Madison, of course, had the headlines set and ready to go. By noon, papers were all over the streets with variants of the headline:
SACRIFICIAL BRIDE
TO REFORM GRIS
Of course, there were statements by Crobe to the effect that it was a nearly impossible feat. He could not possibly guarantee any success due to the fact that Gris “had come to him too late”—the usual psychiatric hedge they used on Earth.
But what attracted public attention, as Madison knew it would, was the probable fate of a beautiful woman. Thousands upon thousands of people began to gather on the lower slopes of the Royal prison. Many were weeping, none had any hope, all thought it was a cruel thing to do and all thought that the nobility of Pratia Tayl was beyond any possible estimation.
Madison didn’t even need his own camera crew. Homeview had covered the deputation going in and coming out and it was down there now in the afternoon sunlight, putting on the air live this vast throng of gathering people, getting close-ups of faces, getting opinions. He had hardly had to tell the manager of Homeview what to do at all.
For Madison had another mission of his own. With Apparatus-provided credentials and in the uniform of a General Services officer, he was going to act as the “bridegroom’s friend,” a necessary personnel of the ceremony.
The guards searched him for weapons and poison and promised him that they would be watching through the slot with a gun on him if he so much as made a gesture at Gris. And they let him in.
Gris was lying on his bunk in a state of collapse. He had failed utterly to buy his month. The thought of being married to the Widow Tayl was only offset by the fact that he would not live very long anyway.
The bunk was actually an inset ledge in the stone. When a pad was on it, as now, it had only about four feet of clearance to its overhead.
He saw what he took to be a General Services officer being let in. That didn’t necessarily mean Apparatus. He had expected they would send someone to help him get ready, and sure enough the fellow had some boxes under his arm. He was also reassured when he saw a gun barrel trained through the cell view-slot. So he lay there watching.
Then suddenly the features under the cap began to register.
In horrible shock he shot upright!
He hit his head!
It didn’t knock him out. It sent his wits spinning. He thought he was at 42 Mess Street, New York City. No, he must be on the yacht Golden Sunset.
Madison? It was MADISON!
“Oh, no,” said Gris. “No, no, no!”
Madison found a stool and sat down beside the bunk. “Well, Smith,” he said in English, “I mean Gris. I certainly hate to see an associate of Mr. Bury’s in trouble. Don’t be concerned. I am here to help you out.”
Gris went into terror. “Oh, please, dear Gods, Madison. Don’t act as my PR!”
“Of course not,” said Madison. “I am your friend. I will do everything I can to see you come out of this in great shape.”
“Oh, no, no, please. Please Madison, don’t help me.”
“Oh, nonsense, Gris. That is what friends are for. Now listen to me carefully. You are going to get out of this with flying colors.”
“You mean . . . you mean I have a chance of getting off?”
“Oh, more than a chance, Smith. There are people working day and night to keep you from being executed. It’s the very last thing your friends want!”
“I have friends?”
“Why, of course, you have! You have no idea how much has been done for you already. We’re going to get you brought to trial.”
“WHAT?”
“Absolutely. Not only that, it will be a fair trial. You don’t think the Widow Tayl is desirous of becoming a double widow, do you? Why, no. She’s got money by the ton and she will hire the very best attorneys. I can assure you that you have a very long and very interesting life ahead of you.”
“Madison, for the love of your mother, don’t torture me this way. I haven’t got a chance. You’re just up to something horrible. I know it!”
“Oh, Smith, I’m shocked. You are not my client. I’m still working on Heller.”
“You are?”
“Of course. You and I are just the old team, Smith and Madison. Same as always. But I probably haven’t got all day to talk to you, so you better remember what I’m telling you. When you get up on that stand, I want you to accuse Heller as the sole reason for all your woes.”
“But that’s true,” said Gris. “He is!”
“Excellent! I knew you would agree. So when they put you on trial . . .”
“They won’t try me. They’ll just execute me. And if I ever walk out of this prison, Lombar Hisst will have me cut down ten feet from the gate.”
“Don’t give it a second thought. I am Lombar’s right-hand man—or he is mine, I forget which. So if we get you to trial, you do what you’re told. Understand?”
“All you want me to do is accuse Heller?”
“Right.”
“Any and all crimes I can think of?”
“Right!”
Gris started to come out of it. He began to see some light. “They’ll realize he’s the one behind all this.”
“Right.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Good. Now we’ve got to get you ready for your wedding.”
Madison had to keep his smile from spreading into a triumphant grin. Gris didn’t even suspect how absolutely diabolical the real plan was!
PART EIGHTY
Chapter 4
Late that afternoon, the marriage took place in the prison.
Lord Turn would not permit camera crews inside and they had to be content with what they could shoot from outside the courtyard gates.
The late afternoon sun made the grim old castle a dark silhouette and fell upon the countless thousands of people who covered the flanks of the hill. Priests were passing amongst them, exhorting them to pray, and the crowd sat or knelt, young and old, covered with a blanket of buzzing sound.
When the marriage priest and the friend of the bride and friend of the groom appeared at the gate, exiting, the priest made a sign that the marriage had been performed. A combined sigh of hope from thousands of throats swept down the hill like a wind.
All eyes were fixed on the highest tower now, for they knew that the sacrificial bride and the hated Gris were there, alone. Nobody from the crowd left: they knew that at midnight the wife would depart the prison. They prayed for her. Would the therapy work? Would she ever be seen again alive?
The sun went down. The moon Niko rose: it bathed the ancient fortress with an eerie light; it made the uplifted faces a greenish haze on the hill.
The crowd did not miss the fact that an ambulance stood outside the gates, a medical team ready. As the Homeview announcer said, when the cameras panned it, it was there to grasp the possible hope that the bride, no matter how abused, could be treated and kept alive.
But what went on outside the prison and what went on inside were two different things.
During the ceremony, Gris had been numb as stone. Pratia Tayl, on the other hand, with sparkling eye, had been chattering like a loose cogwheel. And when the two friends and priest had left, she was not even disconcerted by the fact that a guard remained at the blastgun slot, ready to intervene.
Pratia had brought a basket containing a wedding feast which had survived the minute inspections and tests given it. With movements not unlike a golden songbird, she hopped about, spreading the comestibles upon a glittering cloth. She was popping bits and pieces at Gris’ mouth—and missing much of the time—even before they sat down formally. They were missing because Gris was too numb to open his lips.
“Oh, you just wait,” prattled Pratia, “we’ll have such fun. You won’t have to work anymore, for you’ll be out of the Apparatus. And all you’ll have to do is simply lie on
a bed and I’ll throw food at you like this. Your heaviest exertions will consist of simply sleeping and (bleeping). Isn’t it marvelous? Have another berry.”
Gris was in the total grip of unreality. He had been peacefully in this tower for months, his only companions a vocoscriber and his materials. Occasionally, the inmate in the next cell would scratch on the wall; now and then a bird would sit on the window ledge and chirp and fly away. All this commotion sounded to him like a din. There seemed to be, as well, some sort of a swelling moan outside he could not account for, for he was still under orders not to go near a window.