"Maybe the aliens swapped the CDs," answered Nin.
"Maybe we should go back and blow up the rest of the hospital, too," said Nan.
"Are you kidding? We disabled it as much as we can. We now need to put some good distance between us and it," said Sam.
"And then on to the capitol!" said Nin.
"Yes!" agreed Sam.
Chapter Twelve: And Bethagain
"Why not?"
"Oh, come on, Nan. She's probably still pissed about
the Dom Perignon on her hotel tab."
"I bet she didn't remember not drinking it herself." "Maybe, but we need her."
"No, Sam. You might need her. I don't."
"Well, just apologize."
"No. I'm going down to the bar to find Nin. You let us
know when you're done."
Nan left the hotel room at the casino, amazed that
they were back there again. But they'd agreed. They'd
hoped Beth could be persuaded to worm her way into Pinocchibush's inner circle. There she could keep an eye on
things.
"I'm none the better for the wear and tear on my own
old clothes, so ye'd better be keeping to the center lane,"
said Beth to Sam. And so they talked about her role in an
elaborate play designed to humiliate and disgrace Pinocchibush, forcing him at the least to abdicate his throne as
had his father, Pinocchiclinton, whose nose grew out of his
pants. At least his father had not been an imperialist expansionist working in cahoots with oil companies. In Beth's hotel room, following her tirade and the ensuing reconciliation with Sam, the television came on, and
Pinocchibush's ubiquitous face appeared. Nin and Nan returned.
"The broodish attack on the Makil Health Care Center
this afternoon has resorted in one nambatory response on behalf of this excathedra: we have discovered oil in the hill country and must begin drilling immediately to finance our counter-insurrectsurgence effects, er, efforts. We expect
our neighbors to lower all braid terriers—"
The Emperor turned his head to the side to hear something shouted to him by someone off-camera—
—"er, trade barriers and open their arms to the flow of
our oil..."
"Yuck. What an image," said Sam.
"So he's using the attack as an excuse to mine public
lands," said Beth.
"Yeah—our public lands," said Nin. "We've got to stop
that madman!"
"Shh!" said Nan. "Taximeter cabriolets!"
"To thine taximeter cabriolets?" asked Beth, not understanding. She's braided her hair like a terrier, thought
Nin. We've got to change her hair before she enters the
capitol.
Crossing the river to the capitol, they were robbed by
crook trout. One seemed familiar to Nan. "Wasn't he in
Star Wars? The country-and-western bad guy, Darth
Brooks?"
Nin, not listening, shrugged. All Nin wanted was for all
this to be over, to be home again, in the hill, watching satellite TV until boredom brought sleep.
Sam was rehearsing Beth in how to be a sleazy girl.
Nan didn't think she needed much coaching.
Nin went over strategy with Sam and Beth—how to
enter the capitol, where its weaknesses were, where to
penetrate it, and what to do when inside. Nan helped her with her mental sharpening—they played go and chess and skat, worked crosswords and acrostics, and listened to
Mozart.
Seduction wouldn't be enough to guarantee a scandal—Beth would have to "bobbitize" the Emperor, after a
fashion. Sam began working with her on musical scales
and jaw-strengthening exercises. Like a clarinetist, he
wanted to fortify her bite.
"No hands!" he'd yell at her. "Hold that note in your
teeth! No hands!"
Beth was happy to do her bit for the plan. Her family
had been prominent before Pinocchibush had himself coronated Emperor. In the old kingdom, Beth's family had
been haberdashers to the king's family. Beth's family's
outspokenness against the king's imperialistic plans to annex the poorer nations surrounding the kingdom met with
the ire of the king and a dismissal from all official business
in the new empire. Beth's maternal side of the family had
included three members of parliament, so the Emperor's
dissolution of parliament had similarly left that side of the
family disenfranchised.
Thus, Beth had stacks of money and an enormous chip
on her shoulder. She had been but five years old when her
family was kicked out of the inner circle, and she had
grown up fixating on her hatred of Pinocchibush. The Emperor's wrath was growing. He kept appearing
on TV, interrupting Nan's favorite TV show, Daphne the
Diabetic Duck-billed Dinosaur, for sillier and sillier reasons. "We have decided to curfew instead of many" was announced one day.
"You may be aware that we are not seeing you" was
heard as "Naziing you."
Airplanes were being inspected for their "fusel" age. Public mental health funding was no longer going to be
awarded to oxymorons.
Former wards of the court would be rewarded. The psalter was peppered with profound profanation. Anachronistic anarchists would be executed by hangfire.
All watchmakers were to be arrested under suspicion
of aiding and abetting on escaped cockfights.
"No clone could ever be that stupid," said Nin. "He's
got to be the real one. I know we can get to him at the TV
studio."
Chapter Thirteen: TV
The key grip was wagering with the gaffer when our heroes waltzed into Western Sitcom Town.
Jingle jangle. "Howdy, strangers. What brings you to Western Sitcom Town?" asked a sheriff.
Sam put on a Sam Spade accent and said, "We've got you dead to rights, law man. Where are you keeping the talking heads?"
"Oh. You want the talk show and news sets. Studio 13."
"Don't say a word about this to anyone, go it? Or you'll be sleepin' with the fish and chips. Got it?" Then Sam patted the sheriff's paunch and walked off, the others following.
"Why antagonize him? We could have blown it!" demanded Nan outside.
"No. He's used to making his will subservient to that of a superior. All we had to do was show him we were superior and he caved. It's easy. It's basic personality disruption."
"It's messing with people. Remember—you're not supposed to mess with people or you'll get hurt."
"Thanks, Televangelist."
"At least I have no guilt," said Nan.
"Oh, yeah? Where's the money, then?"
"Back up in the hills with the Indians," said Nan.
"Very funny. Anyway, that was no regular sheriff. It was just an android."
"He could be saying the same thing about you." "Sam, I think that was an authentic actor," said Beth. "There's no such thing, babe. They're all androids." "Oh, so you were saying actors make themselves subservient?"
Sam shrugged.
"Sheriffs?"
Sam shrugged again. "Both. Most people, as far as I can tell, are androids. That's how Pinocchibush took over so easily. They are easily duped."
"And we nuts bolted," said Nan.
"Beth, the Emperor is due to arrive in a half-hour. You go ahead, and we'll wait in the commissary."
Beth went ahead to Studio 13. Her fake ID stated that she was an intern.
Surprisingly, the Emperor's dressing room had been left unguarded. It took little effort for her to change into the guise of a chambermaid—they had heard that the Emperor favored them—and hide inside the wardrobe, waiting for his arrival.
The Emperor, as expected, was alone, and he took the bait. He was an odd man in intimacy, Beth discovered, and he wanted her upside down and astride his nose atop the divan. With a bite and a twirl, the Emperor's lower appendage was severed and his mouth duck-taped shut. She taped him to the divan and, with a second, unplanned bite, she bit off the other offending appendage in the middle of his face.
Both of these she took up and quickly flushed down the toilet. She washed her face, changed her clothes, climbed onto the veranda, reentered the building through another window and, before anything was noticed, she, Sam, Nin and Nan were leaving the commissary and walking towards their waiting vehicle. Beth was enjoying an egg salad sandwich that she had purchased from a vending machine in the commissary. The mustard washed the taste of Pinocchibush out of her mouth.
It was not the loss of the lower appendage that eventually proved Pinocchibush's undoing. Of course, rumors of the deed spread rapidly throughout the Empire, and the "Emperor without a Staff" became a pet joke in international diplomatic circles.
Actually, it was the loss of the other appendage that undid the Empire.
The people of the Empire had been able to tolerate their jackass of an emperor so long as they could easily tell when he was lying or if he was being truthful (and, to be fair, there had been a handful of occasions of the latter). What, however, they found intolerable, was not knowing. And without his growing appendage, his word became suspect, which was worse than being ridiculed for lying. One can deal with a liar. One cannot deal with a person who is unpredictable. Within a few weeks, members of the inner circle, now completely paranoid because they could no longer read the Emperor, conspired against him and had him poisoned in his bed. So many claims to leadership ensued that the Empire fell apart into its natural divisions, and life as it had been before once again resumed.
Nin and Nan returned to their hill, alarmed to see the road rebuilt and a new billboard being erected. For the moment, however, they decided not to do anything about it at all.
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