Lombar shook his head. "Madison, those Lords would never bow."
Madison continued to appear calm. He wasn't. He was playing for very high stakes. He would get another chance at Wister. If he succeeded, Bury would have to admit he had done his job. If he worked Hisst properly, he could be sent home. He would be on top again! He said, "Mr. Hisst (and forgive me if I am already thinking of you as His Majesty), if I get pictures of Lords bowing to you on TV-Imean Homeview-will you retain me as a PR man with an unlimited budget and a free hand?"
Lombar barked a laugh. "That's a big contract."
Madison said, "But it won't take much to start: just a few thousand credits." Suddenly he remembered Teenie. "And the help of my assistant, Teenie Whopper."
"WHO," said Lombar, "is Teenie Whopper?"
"An Earth girl that came with me."
Lombar suddenly remembered there had been another passenger. "Well, Madison, you can have your Earth girl. But as to money, no. It would be just a waste of cash."
Madison had a sinking feeling. He would have no resources for bribery, no way to hire actors, no way to order Homeview to screen what he gave them. It looked pretty forlorn! But he had to be bold. "But if I succeed in this first bit, will you okay the big contract?"
Lombar could never recall having done so much listening before. No wonder he always avoided it: it was so tiring. He said, "It's impossible to get Lords to bow to me. So I can safely agree to your offer. If you can get such pictures on Homeview, all right. But I'm busy now. Good-bye. Guards! Show this Earthman out."
As it stood, right at that moment, dear reader, Madison's apparent failure with Lombar left Jettero Heller fairly safe; the empty chamber back of Lombar would sooner or later get exposed and the histories of Voltar and Earth might have righted themselves.
Madison's chances of getting much further now looked thoroughly zilch. But only at that moment, dear reader, only at that moment. Huge and diabolical forces, already at work on two empires, were about to get a hefty push!
J. Walter Madison walked down the long curving steps. Inwardly, he felt downhearted: without connections or knowing channels, without money and without even a press card, things seemed pretty hopeless.
He raised a friendly hand to the two black-uniformed guard officers and they merely looked through him and away.
He climbed into his airbus but he didn't have any place to go: he didn't even have a home.
Flick, his driver, said, "Things didn't go so well, eh? At least thank several Gods you are alive."
Was his gloom that obvious? thought Madison. But he did feel down. The chance to get back on the job at Wister-Heller had almost been within his grasp, but his fingers had been too slippery. Curse trying to work with madmen!
"Who runs Homeview?" he said.
"The manager of Homeview," said Flick. "It's on all their program cards. Here's one: I keep it so I know when Hightee Heller is going to sing."
"Heller? Is she any relation to the Royal officer Jettero Heller?"
"She's his sister. Most beautiful woman in the Confederacy, and can she sing! Billions and billions of fans."
Well, that wouldn't do much for him now. He looked at the program. Aha! Homeview was under the Interior Division and that was under Lord Snor. He must be right here in Palace City!
Maybe he could pull something off! He excitedly told Flick to go wherever Lord Snor lived.
They drove through innumerable parks and around innumerable round buildings: there must be thousands of them in these few square miles, all different colors, all basking in this greenish light. But the place seemed unpopulated: patrols of Apparatus guards in mustard uniforms were the only ones upon the walks; Apparatus tanks were the only vehicles.
"Where's all the people?" said Madison.
"Oh, there used to be a lot of them, especially at this time of day: it's near quitting time. Ladies would be strolling with retinues, Palace Guards on every step, concerts going in these parks. But that's all changed. After His Majesty was taken ill he issued an order replacing the Palace Guards with the Apparatus: a lot of families moved to their town or country estates because the
Apparatus would stop and search them. There's plenty of domestics in these buildings but they don't show their faces. There must be only a few hundred thousand people left here now. Used to be two million."
"You seem very well informed," said Madison.
"Ha, ha," said Flick without laughing. "A lifetime as a breaking-and-entering thief sort of trains you to keep your eyes open. Untenanted houses are a prime target. But a murderer like you wouldn't know. You probably got all the dark places in these parks already spotted, though. Here's your address."
They were stopped before a huge round building that evidently combined offices and living quarters. It was bright yellow and had gardens jutting out from its walls.
Madison went up a staircase. An Apparatus guard stopped him, called for an officer. One in mustard yellow came out, looked at Madison's identoplate. "What the blasts is a PR man?"
"A special envoy," said Madison promptly. "I want to see Lord Snor."
"Well, you could be a special envoy from the thirteenth Hell," said the officer, "and it still wouldn't do you any good. You might even get into his quarters and you still wouldn't make it. He used to have a wife but she's gone home to her family. He's got a son but he's in page school."
"What's all this family got to do with it?" said Madison.
"Oh, that's the way things used to run around here. If you couldn't see the top man, you saw some member of his family and slid your message in on that channel. But, frankly, I don't think even they could make it now. Lord Snor just stays in his quarters. He hasn't been seen for weeks. Wait a minute." He stepped inside and looked into a door marked CHAMBERLAIN. He talked a moment and then came back. "I thought maybe you could make an appointment for next week or month or something, but the chamberlain says the only ones that see him are the resident doctors who take in the little packages."
"The little...?"
"The white stuff. Don't play dumb. You know as well as I do what's happening with these Lords. Your best chance of getting anything done in the Interior Division is to go into Government City. The clerks all run it from there anyway."
The "white stuff": that meant dope. "Well, thank you. You have been of great help."
"I wouldn't give you the time of day if you weren't from the Apparatus." And the officer walked off.
Gloom settled in on Madison. The day he began to transact business through clerks had not arrived. And the top men? In sudden revelation, this deserted city was explained. Any minute he expected to see an I. G. Barben truck. Lombar Hisst had this place on dope! Did this explain the chiefs interest in Rockecenter? Did Rockecenter have a connection to that Earth base in Turkey? No, he doubted Rockecenter even knew about these people. But they knew about Rockecenter.
Madison seldom cursed. He felt a bit like cursing now. You could only deal with top men for the things he had in mind, and with insight he knew that from the Emperor on down, here at Palace City, he would be running into hopheads. Suddenly he understood a bit more about Lombar Hisst: the (bleeped) fool must be on amphetamines himself! A speeder! The signs of persecution were there, delusion was obvious. It wasn't to the point of feeling bugs under the skin or aging or losing one's teeth, but it would get there. And he probably had been crazy to begin with.
A chill hit Madison. He had better get his job done on Heller somehow, some way, and get out of this place before Hisst reached raving paranoia and started to kill everyone in sight!