Lem, Stanislaw (31 page)

cast-iron hoot owls, were already beginning to strike the hour. He

sped over the drawbridge, took a quick look into the gaping

moat, shuddered, lowered his head and slipped under the spiked

grating of the portcullis—then across the courtyard to the

barbwire bushes and the fountain that bubbled mercury, and there in

the pale moonlight he saw the divine figure of Princess Octopauline,

beautiful beyond his wildest dreams and so bewitching, that he

shook with desire.

Observing these shakings and

shudderings of the sleeping monarch in the palace vestibule,

Subtillion chortled and rubbed his hands with glee, this time certain

of the King's demise, for he knew that when Octopauline enfolded the

unfortunate lover in those powerful eightfold arms of hers and drew

him deep into the fathomless dream with her tender tentacles of love,

he would never, never make it back to the surface of reality! And in

fact, Zipperupus, burning to be wrapped in the Princess'

embrace, was running along the wall in the shadow of the cloisters,

running towards that radiant image of silvery pulchritude, when

suddenly the old gatekeeper appeared and blocked the way with

his halberd. The King lifted the bag of ducats but, feeling their

pleasant weight in his hand, was loath to part with them—what a

shame, really, to throw away a whole fortune on one embrace!

"Here's a ducat," he said,

opening the bag. "Now let me by!"

"It'll cost you ten," said

the gatekeeper.

"What, ten ducats for a single

hug?" jeered the King. "You're out of your mind!"

"Ten ducats," said the

gatekeeper. "That's the price."

"Can't you lower it a little?"

"Ten ducats, not a ducat less."

"So that's how it is!"

yelled the King, flying off the handle in his usual way. "Very

well then, dog, you don't get a thing!" Whereupon the gatekeeper

whopped him good with the halberd and everything went spinning

around, the cloisters, the fountain, the drawbridge, and Zipperupus

fell —not asleep, but awake, opening his eyes to see Subtillion

at his side and in front of him, the Dream Cabinet. The Cybernerian

was greatly confounded, for now he had failed twice: the first time,

because of the King's craven character, the second, because of his

greed. But Subtillion, putting a good face on a bad business, invited

the King to help himself to another dream.

This time Zipperupus selected the

"Wockle Weed" dream.

He was Dodderont Debilitus, ruler of

Epilepton and

Maladyne, a rickety old codger and

incurable lecher besides, with a soul that longed for evil deeds. But

what evil could he do with these creaking joints, these palsied arms

and gouty legs? "I need a pick-me-up,” he thought and

ordered his degenerals, Tartaron and Torturus, to go out and put

whatever they could to fire and sword, sacking, pillaging and

carrying off. This they did and, returning, said:

"Sire and Sovereign! We put what

we could to fire and sword, we sacked, we pillaged, and here is what

we carried off: the beauteous Adoradora, Virgin Queen of the

Mynamoacans, with all her treasure!"

"Eh? What's that you say? With

her treasure?" wheezed the quimsy King. "But where is she?

And what's all that sniveling and shivering over there?"

"Here, upon yon royal couch, Your

Highness!" barked the degenerals in chorus. "The sniveling

comes from the prison-eress, the above-mentioned Queen Adoradora,

recumbent on her antimacassar of pearls! And she shivers first,

because she is clad in naught but this exquisite, gold-embroidered

shift, and secondly, in anticipation of great indignities and

degradation!"

"What? Indignities, you say?

Degradation? Good, good!" rasped the King. "Hand her over,

I'll ravish and outrage the poor thing at once!"

"Impossible, Your Highness,"

interposed the Royal Surgeon and Chirurgeon, "for reasons

of national security."

"What? I can't ravish? I can't

violate? I, the King? Have you gone mad? What else did I ever do

throughout my reign?"

"That's just it, Your Highness!"

urged the Surgeon. "Your Highness' health has been seriously

impaired by those excesses!"

"Oh? Well, in that case…

give me an ax, I'll just lop off her, ah, head …"

"With Your Highness' permission,

that too would be extremely unwise. The least exertion…"

"Odsbodkins and thunderation!

What blessed use is this kingship to me then?!" sputtered the

King, growing desperate. "Cure me, blast it! Restore me!

Make me young again, so I can-—you know—like it used to

be… Otherwise, so help me, I'll… I'll…"

In terror all the courtiers,

degenerals and medical assistants rushed out to find some way to

rejuvenate the royal person; at last they summoned the great Calculon

himself, a sage of infinite wisdom. He came before the King and

asked:

"What is it that Your Royal

Highness wishes?"

"Eh? Wishes, is it? Hah!"

croaked the King. "I'll tell you what he wishes! He wishes to

continue with his debaucheries, saturnalian carousals,

incontinent wallowings and wild oats, and in particular to defile and

properly deflower Queen Adoradora, who for the time being sits in the

dungeon!"

"There are two courses of action

open to us," said Calculon. "Either Your Highness

deigns to choose a suitably competent individual, who will perform

per procuram everything Your Highness, wired to that individual,

commands, and in this way Your Highness can experience whatever that

individual experiences, exactly as if he had experienced the

experience himself. Or else you must summon the old cyberhag who

lives in the forest outside the village, in a hut on three legs, for

she is a geriatric witch and deals exclusively with the

infirmities of advanced age!"

"Oh? Well, let's try the wires

first!" said the King. And it was done in a trice; the royal

electricians connected the Captain of the Guard to the King, and the

King immediately commanded him to saw the sage in half, for this

was precisely the kind of foul deed in which he took such delight.

Calculon's pleas and screams were to no avail. However, the

insulation on one of the wires was torn during the sawing, and

consequently the King received only the first half of the execution.

"A paltry method. The charlatan

deserved to be sawed in half," wheezed His Highness. "Now

let's have that old cyberhag, the one with the hut on three legs!"

His courtiers headed full speed for

the forest, and before long the King heard a mournful singsong, which

went something like this:

"Ancient persons repaired here! I

renovate, regenerate, I fix as good as new; corroded or scleroded,

why, everyone pulls through! So if you quake, or creak, or shake, or

have the rust, or feel the ache, yes I'm the one for you!"

The old cyberhag listened patiently to

the King's complaints, bowed low and said:

"Sire and Sovereign! Beyond the

blue horizon, at the foot of Bald Mountain, there flows a spring, and

from this spring there flows a stream, a stream of oil, of castor

oil, and o'er it grows the wockle weed, a high-octane antisenescent

re-juvenator—one tablespoon, and kiss forty-seven years

goodbye! Though you have to be careful not to take too much: an

overdose of wockle juice can youthen to the point of euthanasia and

poof, you disappear! And now, Sire, I shall prepare this remedy tried

and true!"

"Wonderful!" cried the King.

"And I'll have them prepare the Queen Adoradora—let

the poor thing know what awaits her, heh-heh!"

And with trembling hands he tried to

straighten his loose screws, muttering and clucking all the while,

and even twitching in places, for he had grown most senile, though

his passion for evil never abated.

Meanwhile knights rode out beyond the

blue horizon to the castor-oil stream, and later, over the old

cyberhag's cauldron vapors swirled, whirled and curled as concoctions

were being concocted, till finally she hastened to the throne, fell

on her knees and handed the King a goblet, full to the brim with a

liquid that shone and shimmered like quicksilver, and she said

in a great voice:

"King Dodderont Debilitus! Lo,

here is the rejuvenescent essence of the wockle weed! Invigorating,

exhilarating, just the thing for dalliance and derring-do! Drain this

cup, and for you the entire Galaxy will not hold cities enough to

despoil, nor maidens enough to dishonor! Drink, and to your

health!"

The King raised the goblet, but

spilled a few drops on his footstool, which instantly reared up,

snorted and hurled itself at Degeneral Tartaron, with frenzied intent

to humiliate and profane. In a twinkling of an eye, it had

ripped off six fistfuls of medals.

"Drink, Your Highness, drink!"

prompted the cyberhag. "You see yourself what miracles it

works!"

"You first," said the King

in a barely audible whisper, as he was aging fast. The cyberhag

turned pale, backed away, refused, but at a nod from the King three

soldiers seized her and, using a funnel, forced several drops of the

glittering brew down her throat. A flash, a thunderclap, smoke

everywhere! The courtiers looked, the King looked—nothing,

not a trace of the cyberhag, only a black hole gaping in the floor,

and through it one could see another hole, a hole in the dream

itself, clearly revealing somebody's foot—elegantly shod,

though the sock was singed and the silver buckle turning dark, as if

eaten with acid. The foot of course, along with its sock and shoe,

belonged to Subtillion, Lord High Thaumaturge and Apothecary to King

Zipperupus. For so potent was that poison the cyberhag had called the

wockle weed, that not only did it dissolve both her and the floor,

but went clear through to reality, there spattering the shin of

Subtillion, which gave him a nasty burn. The King, terrified, tried

to wake, but (fortunately for Subtillion) Degeneral Torturus managed

to bash him good over the head with his mace; thanks to this,

Zipperupus, when he came to, was unable to recall a thing of what had

happened when he was Dodderont Debilitus. Still, once again he had

foiled the Cybernerian, slipping out of the third deadly dream, saved

this time by his overly suspicious nature.

"There was something… but

I forget just what," said the King, back in front of the Cabinet

That Dreamed. "But why are you, Subtillion, hopping about on one

leg like that and holding the other?"

"It's—it's nothing, Your

Highness … a touch of rhom-botism… must be a change in

the weather," stammered the crafty Thaumaturge, and then

continued to tempt the King to sample yet another dream. Zipperupus

thought awhile, read through the Table of Contents and chose, "The

Wedding Night of Princess Ineffabelle." And he dreamt he was

sitting by the fire and reading an ancient volume, quaint and

curious, in which it told, with well-turned words and crimson ink on

gilded parchment, of the Princess Ineffabelle, who reigned five

centuries ago in the land of Dandelia, and it told of her Icicle

Forest, and her Helical Tower, and the Aviary That Neighed, and the

Treasury with a Hundred Eyes, but especially of her beauty and

abounding virtues. And Zipperupus longed for this vision of

loveliness with a great longing, and a mighty desire was kindled

within him and set his soul afire, that his eyeballs blazed like

beacons, and he rushed out and searched every corner of the dream for

Ineffabelle, but she was nowhere to be found; indeed, only the very

oldest robots had ever heard of that princess. Weary from his long

peregrinations, Zipperupus came at last to the center of the royal

desert, where the dunes were gold-plated, and there espied a humble

hut; when he approached it, he saw an individual of patriarchal

appearance, in a robe as white as snow. The latter rose and spake

thusly: