"You've got men on this staff!" cried Maddie in English.

"They're commoners and they'd be executed if they were found in bed with royalty," said Teenie, continuing in English. "I'm too fond of them to put them at risk. Queen Hora used to use noble guard officers: she had a whole regiment of them. But they are not here. So can the chatter, Maddie. You're for it, me bucko boy."

Madison was shuddering to the depths of his soul. "No," he pleaded. "The answer is no!"

Teenie smiled and it made him flinch. He knew this wasn't all of it.

"All right," she said, glancing at her Mickey Mouse watch, "just sit there and think it over. This guard captain has orders that if you don't come up to my room tonight, then, straight up sharp at 6:00 A. M. you are to be taken to the dungeons and executed with an electric axe. So if you change your mind, your guard here will have orders to bring you up to my room, no matter the hour."

She gave him a little mocking wave and turned away.

The staff insisted that she sit on a little silver seat with handles as she might be too tired after her long evening to walk up the stairs, and they bore her off, up the golden steps and out of sight.

For a very long time Madison sat, and he sat in the deepest gloom. The metal chair was cold, the chains were colder and the guard's electric axe, with its racing sparks, chilled him even more.

It was dark now in the hall. The rock music from below was only the faintest thumping, more like the mutter of some hungry beast than music.

Half-seen in the dimness, the painted angels on the walls seemed to look at him. He had little doubt that he would be joining the real angels soon and spend the rest of eternity sitting on some cloud holding a useless harp. Madison knew he could never learn to play it.

At length he was able to struggle up out of his shock, enough to think about his terrible conflict: If he did go upstairs he would die; if he didn't go upstairs he would die.

He had been very well brought up: He had to be true to his mother at any cost, even his life. Since he had been a baby it had been dinned into him that boys who did not sleep with their mothers were unnatural and it had been proven to him without doubt, even in his schools, where the word of the psychiatrist Freud was five times holier than God's. Unless one had a firm Oedipus complex, expressing libidinous desires for one's mother, one could never hope to be a genius at his trade. To abandon it would be a negation of his own wits. Without this bright spark, according to all Freudian teachings, he would fall into crass mediocrity, descended to a mere hack or drudge. There was no such thing, according to psychologists, as a genius who was not neurotic. Without that genius-which Madison never doubted-he would die professionally. Like all PR men, belief in him­self was the first thing one had to establish and only then could others believe in him.

But his mother had reinforced it by continually reminding him of how indulgent she was. After his father departed she had not burdened him with another whom he could only hate, and how very few mothers would bother to give a son this much attention. His mother was a dear thing, still quite pretty at forty-nine. When he thought of all the sacrifices she had made for him, foregoing all other men, the least he could do was reciprocate and forego all other women. But it went deeper than that: completely aside from any Freudian orders from his child psychologist, made more real with mild electric shocks, he truly loved her. She had warned him repeatedly of the dangers of other women, as had his current psychiatrist, and colliding in life with such heartless creatures as Teenie, he agreed with them utterly. It would not only wreck him mentally to have sex with Teenie, it would break his mother's heart. She would probably commit suicide, a thing she often had to be prevented from doing, and he knew, if that happened, he would promptly do the same.

No, to go up those stairs and get in bed with Teenie would be the end of all he knew. Impossible! That was out. Better to die at dawn. Far better.

His thoughts turned to Heller. Victory had been almost within his grasp when everything had come so unaccountably unstuck. The headlines he had been getting for Heller had been magnificent! He fondly recalled the stories about Toots Switch, Maizie Spread and Dolores Pubiano de Copula. Absolute masterpieces, guaranteed to stamp the name of Wister indelibly forever upon the public consciousness. Wister would have become known, as those trials progressed, as the greatest outlaw lover in history. And such plans he had had, to embellish and add glitter to the outlaw part of it! Wister robbing the Federal Reserve Bank had been the least of his PR projections. He could have made it all soar to greater and greater heights. He could have had every law-enforcement agency in the world, every one of them from Nazi Interpol right on down to the meanest town cop, absolutely baying on Wister's trail and slavering to catch him. It would have ended with the biggest public execution man had ever known. Wister would have been absolutely IMMORTAL!

Then he brightened up. He could do the same thing here if he had a chance. That the man's real name was Heller made no difference in his plans. He was tireless enough to simply scrub his other work and start anew. They had Domestic Police. They had the Army Divi­sion. And even if the Fleet might be lukewarm at first, he could heat them up. If he worked this right, he would have the whole Apparatus behind him.

He began to daydream in the dim and empty hall: headlines about Heller robbing the estates of Lords and giving the proceeds to the poor; Heller robbing spaceships, 18-point type; Heller kidnapping the daughter of some earl or duke and story after story of her pleading with him piteously to be raped-how the public would LOVE it! Headlines of Heller robbing every bank on every planet of the entire Confederacy, each one with a new twist, each one with new blood, each one with new staggering amounts of loot being given to the poor. What a hero he would be! Heller, the most hunted outlaw in 125,000 years! Confederacy history! MAGNIFICENT!

Then he had another idea: He could hyphenate Heller's name. He could call him Heller-Wister and rake in and rake over ALL the earlier stories, spreading them throughout the entire Confederacy. No, his earlier work was NOT lost-it was only being amplified!

Ah, now he was getting somewhere. And he could safely begin to dream the greatest dream of all: Madison walking up to Bury in a sort of offhand way, "Well, Mr. Bury, I finally finished a job for you. Heller-Wister is immortal." And Mr. Bury would take him by the hand, tears of gratitude sparkling in his eyes and in a voice charged with emotion say, "Madison, you are restored to grace. Please, please accept the presidency of F. F. B. O. and please forgive me for ever doubting you for a second. Never again will I chase you in army tanks!"

The glow faded. A chill wind blew in the hall. The reality of the situation was that, right now, if Bury even caught sight of him, even providing he could get home, he would be stood up against a wall and shot. It was death if he did not succeed with Heller-Wister. Death without even the comfort of a blindfold or cigarette: it was a good thing he didn't smoke.

A bit of the rock music from down below beat for a moment more loudly against the floor. The rhythm sounded so much like Earth that it gave him pause. He began to get a sort of hunted feeling: Bury was sort of supernatural-maybe he could even reach him here! When he thought of possible links between Rockecenter and Lombar, he began to shiver. Oh, it was surely death indeed if he did not somehow get to work on Heller-Wister!

The current guard shifted position slightly and the axe emitted a puff of ozone. It brought his mind to Teenie.