"Almost"

The room was brick walled, its ceiling low. It was lighted by the score of candles on the tight-together tables. There were roughly fifty thieves and beggars here, almost all of them watching the newly arrived Mulligan, Dr. Ferrier, and Summer.

A man came rattling toward them, a glittering hand outthrust "You must be Jack Summer, sir," he said. "I'm Sparkler, a great admirer of the incisive pieces you've penned. 'Tis my fond hope you'll have time to look into the dreadful way the Thieves and Cutpurses Relations Board is managed during your stay."

"I'd like to clean up first."

"n.o.body minds a little dung around here." Pinned to the affable cyborg's chest was a paper sign announcing: I am over 60% metal Please help.

Mulligan said, "Sparkler's the executive secretary of number two-oh-six. Also in sympathy with Tully Keep and our cause."

"Thieves won't fare any better than they do now," said Sparlder, "until we have a more enlightened form of government."

"What a feast for the eyes, a real feast for the eyes and the intellect." The catman was slowly taking in his candle-lit surroundings.

"Should you have some time, Jack Summer, I'd like to introduce you to some of the other chaps in the guild."

"Got nothing else to do at the moment but hide."

"Fine, then." Sparkler put his bright metal hand under Summer's arm and led him to a nearby table.

A plump man was sitting there eating cheese and black bread and then watching his insides. This was made easy by the plastic window set in his chest and stomach. "You can watch for nothing, Summer," he invited. "I'm Trollybag, the human physiological museum. See the innermost workings of the body, the romance of digestion, and many another wonder all for a single Joline. Cheap at twice the price."

"You must be the center of all eyes at dinner parties."

"I don't get invited out to dinner much."

"Trolly's our treasurer and over here's another of our officers." Sparkler moved to a farther table.

"Pick-purse Red, Jack Summer. Go easy, Red, he's nothing in his pockets, being fresh out of St Charlie's."

"Yeah, so I just learned." The cardinal-headed birdman nodded at Summer. "Pleased to meet you. In my own particular line I'm as gifted as you are in yours."

"An incisive pickpocket, huh?"

"I'm the cream of the crop, the top of the heap. If something's in a pocket, I can get it."

"You're no doubt growing anxious to remove that dung," said Sparkler. "I'll introduce you only to our sergeant-at-arms before allowing Mulligan to escort you to your private quarters. Here he is, the ill.u.s.trious Dr. Roarer."The extremely fat lizardman was dressed in a threadbare yellow suit, sitting alone at a table with a flower-patterned carpetbag beneath his folded green hands. "I'm extremely pleased to make your acquaintance, sir. I hasten to point out, lest there be some misunderstanding in the future, that I am not a doctor of medicine but rather a doctor of podiatry. Would you care to have me examine your feet? As a friend of dear Mulligan the fee will be nominal. Put your feet right up on the table ... even one foot will do for a start. The foot, as you are no doubt aware, is at the heart of all physical ills."

"My feet are about the only part of me still functioning one hundred percent OK," said Summer.

"Perhaps you so believe, sir." Dr. Roarer dug a hand into the carpetbag, rattling the bottles and vials. "Don't be offended, however, if I point out that a man with feet operating at their peak does not fall down and appear before us all bes.h.i.tten, I suggest, and bear in mind I do not prescribe but only advise, that you at least apply a spoonful of-"

"Come along," suggested Mulligan. "I'll show you to the room I've set aside for you."

Summer followed him across the low room and through a wooden door. The room they entered was small, with a wood-framed bed in one corner and an oil lamp burning on the small round bedside table. A ball-style TV set, looking newer than anything else, floated near the bed.

Seated, very stiff and straight, on the bed itself was Princess Joline. "Good evening, Mr. Summer.

I'm very happy to see you got away with no trouble." She rose, holding out her hand.

"Do I genuflect and kiss it?" He moved no closer to the lovely blond.

"Perhaps you'd best leave us, Mulligan," the princess said.

"Sure thing, Princess. I have to get Ferrier settled in for the night." He left them.

There was a single chair in the room. Draped over it was a two-piece streetsuit.

"We a.s.sumed, rightly I see, that you'd need a change of clothes. The size is right, I think, based on information I found in one of those Muckrake bios of you."

"So you finally got around to reading them." Summer picked the suit off the chair back.

"You'd best keep in mind, Mr, Summer, that it takes time to arrange an escape from a place like St Charlie's. We got you out as soon as we could."

"You going to watch me change, or are you going to get out?"

"I'll turn my head away. I have more to say to you."

Summer shrugged, tugged off his boots, and dropped his pants. "If it's an apology, you can skip it."

"No, I have no apology to make. I've already told you we all worked as fast as we could."

"Sure. I'm luckier than old Dr. Yach. Took eighteen years to bust him out."

"You must believe me, Mr. Summer, when I say I was not aware of all the uses St Charlie's is being put to."

Summer pulled his tunic up over his head. "If my old man ran a loony bin I'd make it my business to find out what went on inside."

"d.a.m.n you, Summer, what do you ... excuse me." Angry, she'd whirled around to point a finger at him.

Summer was standing there in his allseason underwear. He ignored the princess and got into the two-piece suit she'd brought. "Not a bad fit."

"You're going out of your way to be nasty to me."

"It's not out of my way, Princess."

Breathing rapidly, lips pressed tight, she walked up to him. "You're feeling sorry for yourself, that's why you're picking on me."

"d.a.m.n right I'm feeling sorry for myself, Princess. Thanks to your dad, good King Waldo, I spent several very long days in St. Charlie's and had a bunch of guys beat the c.r.a.p out of me, pull out some of my fingernails, relocate most of my insides, and prod my private parts with an electric rod. Yeah, I'm sorry about the whole darn thing." He seamed the fly of the pants, seamed the tunic. "You go around fluttering your eyelashes and making your big green eyes wide and bite that lower lip of yours and pretend you're an innocent lamb and everything is a big surprise to you. Maybe so. But I know it was on your father's orders I was stuck in St. Charlie's. That doesn't make me feel any too kindly toward hisonly daughter."

"My eyes aren't green, they're blue-gray."

"My perceptions aren't at their best right now."

"Are you well enough to go to bed?"

"Doesn't take much to go to bed. You just stretch out, pull up the covers, shut your-"

"I mean with me," amplified the princess.

Summer's eyebrows rose. "I hadn't thought about it."

"No? I thought all this feigned anger of yours was all part of the preliminaries, part of your courtship routine."

After a few seconds Summer smiled. "You know, you're probably right."

CHAPTER 19.

"Step lively, you sc.u.m," ordered the black man with the white beard as he prodded Palma in the kidney region with the dead end of his shockstick. The RM is most anxious to have a bit of an interlude with you."

The three Territorial Policemen were urging Palma and the Scarlet Angel along a neolinoleum hallway in the capital city's Worst Offenders Prison. It was early morning, and they'd been traveling all night by coach and then freight train.

The bald photographer nibbed at his back with one land and at his head with the other.

"Considering we're such prize prisoners, you didn't transport us in a very high-cla.s.s fashion. I'm fairly certain that freight car was previously used to haul-"

''Keep moving, you cutthroat rascal!" The black policeman prodded him once again.

'Tis no use to attempt communicating with them, dear Palma," the Scarlet Angel said sadly.

"Save all your wise talk for the RM," advised the catman.

"Who's the RM?"

"You'll find that out soon enough, you gallows bird."

"Maybe I can persuade him to let me contact one of the Coult attorneys on-"

Poom! Kabloom!

"Sounds like he's in an especially foul mood this morning," said the green-feathered policeman.

Palma, "That was the RM who produced that sound?"

"Not half of what he can do when his boiler's on the blink."

Poom! Poom! Slam!

"Has a boiler, does he?"

"Right through that door marked Robot Magistrate, if you please."

Palma was fleet enough to avoid the prod this time. A small courtroom met him beyond the oaken door. Behind a high desk sat a gunmetal robot in judge's robe and wig. Steam was puffing out of his right ear and between several of the metal fingers which held the gavel.

A small round-shouldered catman stood before the Judge, forlornly rubbing at a still b.l.o.o.d.y gash over his eye. "You can't be serious, RM?" he asked in a stunned voice.

Bloom! Bim!

The judge's wig flew a few inches off his head, shoved by a puff of steam. When it settled again the Robot Magistrate said, "I never jest. Fifty-six years on the lettuce farm for you, Lightfinger Neddy, and ten strokes of the whip each morn before breakfast. Next case."

"But, RM, I've a dreadful allergy to lettuce. Makes me fur-"

"Drag the wretch away,"

The only other occupants of the room were two very large lizardmen in gold and white uniforms.

They rushed forward, caught Lightfinger Neddy by the elbows, and rushed him away through a swinging door.Flum! Spoom!

The wig went up nearly two feet, smoke spilled out of both the RM's ears, and his left eyeball popped out to go sailing over his high desk.

Palma caught the eyeball. "Allow me to return your orb, your honor."

"Sir, take your roguish hands off my eye!" boomed the Robot Magistrate. "Do you know the penalty for touching a judge's eye?"

"Not offhand Does it involve the lettuce farm?" He still held the plastic eye.

"Return that at once, swine!"

"Here, catch."

The robot judge missed, the eye hit the wall behind him, bounced, and dropped again to the courtroom floor.

"You despicable cur!" bellowed the RM. "First you touch my eye, then you fling it about as though it were a baseball."

"I wouldn't throw a baseball like that A baseball I'd throw overhand."

"Silence!" The robot was kneeling behind his desk, slapping his metal hands on the floor as he searched for his missing eye. "Aha! Here it is." He reappeared with both eyes in place, and commenced consulting the papers spread out on the desktop. "Ah, yes. So you, sir, are Palma, alias the Bald a.s.sa.s.sin, alias Hairless Avenger. The notorious traveling companion of the ruthless Scarlet Angel."

"I'm Palma the photographer. If you'd allow me to contact the attorneys-"

Boom! Wam!

The robot rose up several feet off the bench, and 3 landed with a clang. "Sir, a highwayman has no right to counsel, especially a baldheaded highwayman who makes a habit of fondling judges' eyes."

"Your honor," said the Scarlet Angel, "this gentleman is not what you say."

"Ah, you I presume are the infamous s.l.u.t known as the Scarlet Angel, the highway robber who has cut a b.l.o.o.d.y swath across the roads and byways of this territory for lo! these many years."

"I am indeed the Scarlet Angel," replied the red-haired girl. "Palma, I can a.s.sure you, is merely a photographer who journeyed here from Barnum to do a story on highway robbery."

"No one ever wants to write about magistrates," muttered the robot.