Free The Metallic Muse by Jr. Lloyd Biggle Page A

knees and pressed his forehead to the ground. “All awaits your pleasure, Excellency.”
    “Arise,” he commanded. “I expect to eat well today. My favorite dishes.”
    “It is arranged. Will you honor your wives with your presence?”
    “Later. The ride was long. I need rest.”
    He followed the bowing figure into the largest of the tents. “My favorite dishes, mind you,” he said sharply.
    “It is arranged, Excellency.”
    He stretched out on a pile of rugs and closed his eyes. Music drifted in from the tent that adjoined his. Pleasantly exotic, it almost made him forget the hunger that seethed within him. He listened until he lost himself in sleep.
    It was afternoon when he awoke. His hunger brought him off the rugs with a bellow. Attendants hurried in, and immediately the music started.
    “I will watch my wives dance while I eat,” he announced.
    He strode haughtily into the adjoining tent and seated himself on a rug-decked dais. An attendant humbly placed food before him. The music grew louder and the scantily clad girls began writhing about with immodest abandon.
    He tasted the warm, watery wine, grimaced, and forced himself to drink deeply. Then he plunged his fingers into a sickly-looking stew, brought out a piece of meat, tasted it, spat it out.
    “In Allah’s name, what is this?”
    “Your favorite dish, Excellency. Camel stew. Would you like a larger portion?”
    He took another piece of meat and worked his teeth futilely on its rubbery texture. “This camel was old before its time,” he snarled.
    “It is the old camels that Allah blesses with flavor.”
    He chewed energetically and forced some pieces of meat down his throat. To his surprise, they stayed down. Still ravenously hungry, he waved the food away and turned his attention to the dancing girls.
    He recognized several of them. A lusty-looking brunette had been Madame Pompadour the last time he was Louis XV. He also saw a former Queen Elizabeth and a former Josephine, and suddenly he noticed, sitting demurely in a far corner, his late Duchess.
    She did have a good figure, and the filmy dancing-girl costume suited it perfectly—much more so than had her Cleopatra costume. She wasn’t the queenly type, he told himself.
    Leaning forward, he summoned her with a commanding gesture. She moved toward him with obvious reluctance, sank to her knees at his feet, and blushed furiously as he drew her up beside him.
    “More music!” he called. “Louder!”
    The twangy, whining notes crescendoed to an ear-straining blast, and the dancers whirled faster. With a sudden impulse he picked up the girl and carried her into the next tent. Attendants fled in discreet panic as he placed her gently on the rugs and began covering her with passionate caresses and kisses. The deft way she plucked the hypodermic syringe from her brief costume delighted him. He pretended not to notice, even when she plunged it into his arm. He counted ten slowly and began to relax. In a few minutes he was feigning sleep, and she carefully covered him with a rug and tiptoed away.
     
    A rotund, turbaned figure, alias James the butler, met the girl as she came out of the tent. “Everything all right, Dr. Rogers?” he asked.
    “I gave him a hypo,” she said. “He was getting pretty worked up. He should be out for several hours.”
    “It’ll do him good. It’s usually a strain on them when they switch characters so quickly. Too bad. For a few minutes I thought he really would come up with a speech. It would have been interesting, getting a Parliament together and letting him deliver it.”
    “Yes. Maybe we pressed him too hard on that speech. Responsibility always makes them regress if they are ready for it.”
    “Don’t I know it! We had Twelve ninety-six ready to cross the Delaware last week, and the strain of making that decision regressed him all the way back to toy soldiers. He hasn’t come out of it yet. But Thirteen-nineteen—I thought he was coming along nicely. He