Dramocles: An Intergalactic Soap Opera by Robert Sheckley Read Free Book Online Page A

shook her head. “Dramocles is not so crafty, and he has not the patience for such an enterprise.” But there was a note of uncertainty in her voice, and Chuch pounced on it.
    “What do you really know of him, Dru? To you he is always dear old Dad, incapable of doing wrong. You are blinded by your love for him. Even though his present actions shriek treachery, you refuse to believe it.”
    “Dramocles, treacherous? Oh, no!”
    “Your feelings do you credit, my sweetling. But remember, you are more than his daughter. You are priestess of the Great Goddess, and it is your sworn duty to serve truth and liberty. If any other king had done as Dramocles has done, you’d condemn him out of hand. Because he is your father, you deceive yourself with pathetic evasions.”
    Drusilla’s mouth trembled, and she rocked from side to side. “Oh, Chuch, I’ve been trying to convince myself that there’s sense and reason in all this, that father has not broken his vows and forsworn his good name. But he has taken Aardvark, and now invades Lekk!”
    “What conclusion do you draw?” Chuch asked.
    “I cannot pretend to myself any longer that he’s not power-crazy, stung by the virus of crazed ambition. The prospect for mankind is clear–war, pestilence, and death. Oh, what can we do?”
    “We must stop him,” Chuch said, “before his madness engulfs the Local Planets in a catastrophic war. He’ll thank us for it later, when he comes to his senses.”
    Drusilla stood up, her face a field of dubiety across which the black hounds of fear chased the white fawns of hope.
    “But how?”
    “I have a plan whereby we can check his ambition, and leave him no worse off than before.”
    “I would not have him harmed!”
    “Nor I.” He noted her expression and laughed. “I know, we’ve never gotten along, Dramocles and I. We’re too alike for that! But I’ve always secretly admired the old man, and I’d gladly lay down my life for him. After all, he is my father, Dru!”
    Drusilla’s eyes were shining with tears. She said, “Perhaps this will bring the family closer together at last, and then it will not all have been in vain.”
    “I’d like that, Dru,” Chuch said quietly.
    “Then you have my word that I’ll follow your plan, Brother, as long as it brings no harm to Dad.”
    “You have my most solemn word on that.”
    “Tell me what I must do.”
    “For the moment, nothing. There are some matters I must attend to first. I’ll contact you when the time is right.”
    “Let it be so,” Drusilla said.
    “Till later, then,” Chuch said, bowed deeply, and left the chamber.

 
    13
    Down in Tarnamon’s lesser banquet hall, Vitello was taking his supper of cold turkalo pie. Turkalo was the unique cross between the turkey and the buffalo, achieved only in Ystrad and kept a secret because it seemed good to keep such a thing a secret. Vitello found it tolerable fare, and washed it down with a flagon of opio wine from the poppy vineyards of Cythera.
    “Give us more of this stuff,” he said to the serving wench. “It gets cold a’night in these parts, and a man must make shift to protect himself. Protection! Who deals with the great ones puts his ass in a sling, as the ancients have it. Yet might not a groundling aspire? Is life nothing more than other people’s achievements? Given a vestige of a chance, what might not a Vitello achieve?”
    “What did you say?” asked the serving girl.
    “I asked for more opio wine,” Vitello said. “The rest was an internal monologue despite the use of quotation marks.”
    “You shouldn’t talk to yourself,” the girl said.
    “Then who should I talk to?”
    “Why, to me, since I am here.”
    Vitello looked at her keenly, though without really registering her. It was important to stick to business, to get ahead in this world. Was this girl something he could use “in the context of equipment,” in Heidegger’s immortal phrase, or was she simply a supernumerary not worth