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.
The Way Mickey’s Mind Works
If you’ve read any of the crap that Mickey wrote about before in this goofy blog, you probably already suspect that Mickey’s mind does not work like a normal mind. The road map above is just one indicator of the weirdness of the wiring that propels Mickey on the yellow brick road to Oz and back. He just isn’t a normal thinker.
But having a few bats in the old belfry doesn’t prevent the man from having a plan. If you read all of Mickey’s hometown novels, you will discover he hasn’t written them in time order. Main characters in my 2016 novel weren’t even born yet in my 2017 books. If you look at them in chronological order rather than the order written, you will see characters growing and changing over time. A shy kid in one novel grows into a werewolf hunter in the next. A girl who loses her father to suicide in a novel not yet completed, learns how to love again in another novel.
Multiple Mickian stories are totally infected with fairies. The magic little buggers are harder to get rid of than mosquitoes and are far and away more dangerous. And there are disturbing levels of science-fiction-ness radiating through all of the stories. How dare he think like that? In undulating spirals instead of straight lines! He doesn’t even use complete sentences all the time. And they used to let that odd bird teach English to middle school kids.
But there is a method to his utter madness. He started with the simpler stories of growing up and learning about the terrors of kissing girls when you are only twelve. And then he moved on into the darker realms of dealing with death and loss of love, the tragedy of finding true love and losing it again almost as soon as you recognize its reality. Simple moves on to complex. Order is restored with imagination, only to be broken down again and then restored yet again,.
And, of course, we always listen to Mr. Gaiman. He is a powerful wizard after all. The Sandman and creator of good dreams. So Mickey will completely ignore the fact that nobody reads his books no matter what he does or says. And he will write another story.
It is called Sing Sad Songs, and it is the most complex and difficult story that Mickey has ever written. And it will be glorious. It also rips Mickey’s heart out. And I will put that ripped-out heart back in place and make Mickey keep writing it, no matter how many times I have to wash, rinse, and repeat. The continued work is called Fools and Their Toys. It solves the murder mystery begun in Sing Sad Songs. This re-post of an updated statement of goals is the very spell that will made that magic happen. So, weird little head-map in hand, here we go on the writer’s journey once again and further along the trail.
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