Semple grinned. “Believe me, pal. I have a lot to drink in my little kingdom.”
***
“Enter bearing whiskey? That’s an unusual one even for you, isn’t it?”
Dr. Hypodermic came through the door of the padded cell carrying a bottle with no label that was filled with a dark amber liquid. “It’s not whiskey, it’s hundred-proof rum.”
“That makes sense.”
“I thought you might be in need of a drink.”
“Damn right I’m in need of a drink.”
Dr. Hypodermic leaned over Jim and began to unbuckle the strait-jacket. Although Jim was pleased to see the bottle of booze, he made it clear to the Mystere that he was more than marginally pissed off. “You want to tell me something?”
Hypodermic pulled off the strait-jacket. “What’s that?”
Jim flexed his cramped arms and shoulders. “What’s this padded cell routine all about? More negative reinforcement?”
The Doctor pulled the stopper from the bottle, took a hit, and then offered the bottle to Jim. “Here, drink this, mon ami. It’ll put you in a better mood.”
Jim went on massaging his shoulders and stretching his back. “I’d be in a lot better mood if I hadn’t been stuffed in a fucking strait-jacket. Do you intend explaining what that was all about?”
Hypodermic held the bottle under Jim’s nose. “Just drink.”
Jim took the bottle. The bouquet of the rum was highly seductive, but he hesitated before drinking. “This isn’t going to whisk me off to some brand-new Zen hallucination, is it?”
“It’s nothing more exotic than straight booze.”
Jim shrugged, not quite believing Hypodermic, but knowing he had little alternative. He put the neck of the bottle to this lips and discovered, as the raw fiery liquor hit his throat, that his skepticism was well founded. With an electric click and a blinding ultrawhite flash, the padded cell vanished. For a few seconds Jim was blinded by colorful retinal floaters, but as they faded he saw that he and Hypodermic were sitting, if not at the same midnight Crossroads where Long Time Robert Moore had started him on his encounter with the aliens, certainly at one that was very similar. The surrounding fields were covered by so many crop markings, they resembled graffiti in a barrio. By way of an extra nose-thumbing reminder, three Adamski saucers cruised silently across the sky in a triangular formation.
Jim looked long and hard at Dr. Hypodermic. “I can’t trust a word you say, can I?”
The Doctor grinned broadly. “Absolutely not.”
***
Semple opened the liquor cabinet for Mr. Thomas. “Help yourself.”
“That’s the problem. I can’t help myself. The hooves, you know. That’s partially why I had myself reincarnated as a goat in the first place. So I couldn’t pour the sauce for myself, if you see what I mean.”
Semple looked surprised. “I don’t usually act as bartender in my own domain.”
Mr. Thomas looked unhappy. “Then we have an impasse?”
“Not really.” Semple picked up a small bell from a side table and shook it so it tinkled musically. Almost immediately a butler entered. “You rang, my lady?”
“Indeed I did, Igor. We need drinks to be poured.”
“Yes, my lady.” Igor glanced at Mr. Thomas. “A gin and tonic, I would assume, sir?”
“How did you know that?”
“It was self-evident, sir.”
“Was it really?”
Igor was already putting ice in the glass. “Oh yes, sir.”
The goat blinked. Although Igor was not a hunchback in the strict Frankenstein tradition, he fit the bill in most other ways. Round-shouldered in his black tailcoat, he was little more than four feet tall, and his full enigmatic lips and big sad goldfish eyes prompted comparisons with Peter Lorre. He handed Semple a cognac and Mr. Thomas his gin. “Will that be all, lady and sir?”
Mr. Thomas thought about this. “Now that you mention it, I am a little peckish.”
Igor nodded. “I will attend to it straightaway.”
He left the room, but returned in a matter of seconds with a snack plate of lettuce, thistles, and two copies of Vogue. The goat looked at it delightedly. “That’s wonderful, Igor, my friend, exactly what I wanted. You could have read my mind.”
Igor bowed modestly. “I did, sir.”
Mr. Thomas frowned. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“Don’t worry, sir. I never pry.”
As Igor backed out of the room bowing, Mr. Thomas looked up from his plate and glass. “Is he for real?”
Semple nodded. “Oh yes, I didn’t make him. He just turned up one day looking for a job as a domestic and he’s been with me ever since.”
“He does what he does from choice?”
“He’s just a natural seeker after servitude. He’s very good, although now and then he deliberately fucks up. It’s a sign that he wants me to give him a sound ceremonial thrashing. That’s the basic trade-off.”
“And he’s a telepath?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that too much. When one assumes a role of authority, one has to get used to the fact that no secrets can be kept from the servants.”
When Semple had returned to her sanctuary with Mr. Thomas, her first objective had been gratefully to strip off the absurd comic book costume and take a lengthy shower to wash away the accumulated depravity of the outside world. While she accomplished this, she left Mr. Thomas to his own devices in a luxury suite of rooms that had been designed to generate an atmosphere of opulent Renaissance splendor. When she returned, dressed in a robe originally designed by Gianni Versace for Lucrezia Borgia, she moved in full lady-of-the-manor mode. With a drink in her hand, she gratefully sank to a soft reclining couch littered with silk and velvet cushions. “Do you know how good it is to simply relax? I believe I’ve had an overdose of deserts, dinosaurs, and dogheaded gods.”
Unfortunately, this period of relaxation proved only the briefest respite. No sooner had she and the goat settled down to an idleness of alcohol and small talk than alarms went off all over her domain and the noisy footfalls of leather guards slapped down the corridors. The doors of the renaissance suite burst open, and four of the rubber guards hurried inside, weapons at the ready. The leader of the quartet bowed to Semple and addressed her with wheezing breathlessness. “We have detected the approach of an unannounced and unauthorized intruder, my lady.”
Semple seemed doomed to live in interesting times. Both she and Mr. Thomas got to their feet, looking around nervously. “Where exactly is this intruder supposed to arrive?”
“Right here in these rooms, my lady.”
Now Semple was really nervous. She had made a number of enemies in her recent travels, and although she hadn’t thought of it before, she supposed there was always the possibility that one or more of them might have followed her there. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t seen the Dream Warden die on the rooftop in Necropolis. She urgently gave her orders to the guards. “Be ready to shoot on sight.”
The four rubber guards nodded, stiffened, and raised their blasters.
“If some son of a bitch has come here to make trouble, he’ll be blasted to Limbo. I’m really not in the mood for this.”
No sooner were the words out Semple’s mouth than a shimmer appeared in the exact center of the room. Quickly a materializing figure formed inside the shimmer. It was only when the shape stabilized that Semple recognized it and shouted to the guards, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire! It’s Aimee, goddamn it!”
The shimmer faded and Aimee stood in the middle of the room, worried and distraught. Despite her obvious distress, Semple instantly vented all of her shock and surprise on her sister. “Why the fuck couldn’t you call first? You never come here unannounced.”
“I never come here at all.”
“All the more reason to call. My guards almost burned you down.”
“I didn’t want the nuns to know where I was going.”