Canto 26 – The Duke with the Curly Mustache
A quick search of three hardened underground structures that Dana Cole knew about yielded nothing but empty rooms and crying concubines from Nefaria’s harem. It wasn’t until the densitometer in Trav’s gloved hands booped out the presence of a hidden chamber that they found something of value.
“We can cut through right here,” said Goofy pointing.
Tron used his pulse-laser as a cutting tool and made a new door in the wall. As the slag fell inward, the adventurers found a prison room with three disheveled prisoners within. One was a handsome, curly-haired adult with a handlebar moustache. The other two appeared to be young boys, though one of those was a Lupin Freak and the other had pointed ears and extra-large eyes.
“Are you rebels?” asked the man with the moustache.
“Of a sort,” confessed Tron. “We are corsair raiders, come to take the treasures of White Palm. Who would you be?”
“You’ll not get a ransom for me, if that’s what you’re thinking.” The man’s lantern jaw was set in a hard line. His blue eyes flashed with resolve.
“We didn’t come here for that,” said Maggie. “We came to get revenge on Count Nefaria, and Goofy here killed him.”
“Nefaria’s dead?” asked the man, stunned. “I thought no one would ever catch up with that snake.”
“Please, kind sirs… madam, are any of you a medic?” asked the Lupin boy.
“I can put my hands on Doctor Courtney Blake,” said Tron. “Why?”
“Hassan here is wounded, and his leg is infected.”
Maggie the Knife kneeled beside the wounded boy. She gently peeled away the torn and bloody pants caked to the wound. “Oh, gawd!” was all she could say.
“Get Courtney Blake,” Tron commanded of Sheherazade. The dark-skinned beauty moved swiftly back up the tunnel.
“What is your name, son?” Maggie asked, looking at the white-furred dog-boy.
“I am called Sahleck Kim. The Peri here is called Hassan the Elf. Our friend and master is called Duke Han Ferrari.”
“Duke Ferrari? The Duke of the planet Coventry?” asked Tron. “I thought you said you weren’t worth any ransom. Coventry is one of the most densely populated worlds in the Galtorr Imperium.”
“Yeah, well,” said the Duke, “they don’t want me back. The Imperium paid Count Nefaria a hefty fee to dispose of me permanently.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Maggie.
“I’m the leader of the Revolutionary Star-World Brigade. We have been working towards a reversal of the last Unification War, trying to split our planets away from the Galtorr Imperium.”
Tron laughed. “Now there’s an idea whose time has come. You have any forces on your side?”
“We have troops aplenty, but no space fleet. The Imperium holds a lock on that. Independent space fleets have all been decimated or incorporated into the Imperial Space Navy.”
“They haven’t decimated my fleet yet, though they’ve tried real hard,” boasted Tron.
“How many ships are in your fleet?” asked the Duke, a new fire of revolution beginning to spark up in his blue eyes.
“Tron! The boy is going into a coma!” cried Maggie. “Without immediate attention, he’ll die.”
The boy, a Peri Freak created by Faulkner Genetics to be a living, creative computer, was trembling and sweating as he appeared to be asleep. Any thought of other things left both Tron and Duke Han Ferrari.
“Where’s that medic!” roared Ferrari.
“Dr. Blake!” shouted Tron into his commo dot, “Get here now, or face my wrath!”
As if by magic, the pirate doctor appeared wielding mini-computers and med-robots. In no time the leg was amputated and the Peri saved.
True Treasures Take Time
I now have six good books and one embarrassing one published. They represent stories I have been crafting, revising, telling, and retelling for over 40 years. They represent things that happened to me in real life and people I have known and loved in real life that have all been transformed in the wizard’s crucible and witch’s cauldrons of my bizarre imagination. They contain some of my best magic spells and some of my most worthwhile wordsmithing, by which I mean writing in ways that give the spellchecker fits.
I tried to tell you this story about telling stories yesterday, but my computer glitched and burped and spontaneously deleted more than half of what I wrote just as I was finishing it to publish it. So the complex part I had planned to explain this Paffooney was lost and the resulting tantrum I threw kept me from remembering and rewriting.
But it was fortunate that I delayed the repair of this post until today. Because last night my daughter finished her end-of-the-year art project for school, and the snafu-demons have inadvertently given me the opportunity to include it here.
It is a soft sculpture dragon made of felt and hand-sewn. She didn’t tell me what his name is, or even that it is a him, but one can imagine that it must be something like Rumple-Tum Sneezer, or something equally awkwardly foolish like that. One can imagine it because one has a slightly off-kilter and Disney-demented imagination. But the whole project took a boatload of time, and you can see she crafted it with great care and skill.
Treasure takes time to create. We who attempt to create it in the red-hot forges of our stupid little creative heads put all the skill we have acquired over time into it. And the endeavor renders something of value almost every time. Time… time… time… Treasure takes time. And now I need to hurry and publish this before the computer tries to fart it all away again.
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