Except (D) from The Grand Oligarchs of Qinsatorix

                                       

                                                                                   

                                            THE GRAND OLIGARCHS OF QINSATORIX

                                                           by Thomas Hoskyns Leonard

                                                     Excerpt (D) DRAFT VERSION

                                        

                                                                              

“I call for discussion of the princess's covertly proposed revisions,” announced Trithagoras. “Who'd like to get the ball rolling?”

There was a deathly hush for fully thirty seconds. Prince Adam was beginning to nod off when a middle aged Icarian rose to his feet. He was wearing the sack-cloths of a monk and an arch wizard's pointed silver hat.

“I am sure that Das Deutsch-Schweizerisch banking consortium, the Aspenbergians of Stockholm, and the Christian Sagittarians of Amsterdam will much appreciate the proposed amendments to clauses six and seven,” declared Father Revi Savvatan. “However, a couple of the other cliques who think they control Planet Earth may well prefer further amendments to clause five, since it leaves us free to interfere willy nilly in their wars in Europe and their genocide in Australasia. I gather that the Ottoman Knights of Ankara would wish to be consulted, and also the Grand Old Federal Reservists of Philadelphia. It is of course unlikely that the Oxonian and Frutonian Wadhamites will give a damn. They're too stuck up for their own good.”

As the hereditary Interstellar leader of 'Baalites of the Cosmos', Father Savvatan was a highly influential Icarian Phoenician who was much respected for his wisdom, and sometimes mistaken for a manifestation of Baal, the God of Light and Fertility himself. He was descended from the Phoenician Princess Avigail, the very first leader of his organisation, who transposed, with a hundred lusty followers, from Babylon to Qinsatorix during the sixth century BC, married into the Icarian nobility, and spawned twelve interspecies children.

At least the trumped-up joker didn't pull the God-forsaken Finno-Ugrian pedos of Budapest out of the hat, mused Prince Adam. They're a figment of the imagination of a pair of highly xenophobic self-published authors from Uganda. An interstellar Finno-Ugrian conspiracy? That's so Zilchgeist. I'm sure it's confined to Uganda.

“I totally concur with the learned father,” said a wafer-thin Icarian lady with two long hard loaves for breasts who Prince Adam was unable, for the moment, to identify by name, maybe because of a mental block.

“It is we, the Grand Oligarchs of Trivoli, who play Punch and Judy with the populations of the Three Planets,” responded Princess Natasha, looking down her nose. “The assorted splinter groups on Earth should take a hike.”

“Nevertheless,” drawled Trithagoras, rolling his feline eyes. “We could placate our Turkish and American colleagues by inserting the words 'after due consultation with all interested parties' immediately after 'interstellar military operations'. Would that further modification to clause five be acceptable to the esteemed members of this Council?”

When Field Marshall Spunk Spitfire stood up, Prince Adam was impressed by the golden buttons glistening on his bright red uniform, and the twenty or so medals dangling from his chest. Hailing from Swindon, England, he was the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Military Forces on Qinsatorix and most of his officers were either British settlers or mercenaries from Planer Earth. Now in his late thirties, he cut a similarly stoic appearance to the pugnacious twenty-second century American war hero General Elmer Dwightius Eisenhower.

Spitfire's much fêted father, who was also called Spunk like his father before him, had served as the commander-in-chief of the British Colonial Forces on Qinsatorix between 2397 and 2395, only to die ignominiously while trying to usurp the Imperial throne. Spunk the Third was eulogised for his frequently quoted philosophy, 'A small amount of spunk is worth lots of pity'. Unlike his evil father, he was much liked by the monarchy.

“I find the Lord Trithagoras's suggestion to be eminently acceptable,” said Spunk Spitfire the Third. “Perchance I could note in passing that it as ever incumbent on all of us to move in synchonicity with our military-industrial complex. The M.I. complexes on Remus and Earth have long since been too big for their boots, particularly after the biochemical engineers lit up the skies. But on Qinsatorix we act in unison with Grössen Pharma, our increasingly non-Hypocratic medical profession, the financial high flyers, and our wonderfully totalitarian bureaucracy.”

Prince Adam was prone to blurting out highly embarrassing and apparently nonsensical remarks during other people's sane conversation, frequently without realising afterwards what he'd actually said, and this was regarded as one of the key diagnostic symptoms of his highly desperate brain condition. He now surpassed even himself.

“Totalitarianism causes loneliness and isolation,” he blurted. “May the lonely Kafkaesque peasant Pilor stick a red-hot dildo up your droopy backside.”

“What!!” howled Spitfire, turning beetroot.

“And may the Quixotic proles don their visors and tilt at windmills till Kafka's Castle turns to dust,” spieled the prince, again off the top of his head.

Spitfire recovered his composure.

“Inciting revolution are you, young man?” he asked. “Even princelings can be put into orbit chained to the backs of piping hot space rockets.”

Prince Adam recovered his senses. He knew all about Gravity's Rainbow, and didn't want to go there.

“Derr--,” he replied.

“Please don't blurt out any more of your stupid nonsense, Adam,” demanded Princess Natasha. “You know that you don't like being jagged in public. We have four syringes of flupentixol at the ready, and one dose could be enough to paralyse you waist downwards and put you on crutches.”

Adam's legs turned to jelly. He didn't want to be injected in his left D-spot with that toxic psych med.

“Yes, Natasha,” he replied, with his tongue firmly wedged in his cheek. “I'm sorry, Natasha.”

“To return to the business at hand,” said Trithagoras, with a hint of a frown, “I wholeheartedly concur with Field Marshal Spitfire's advice concerning the M.I. complex, though I don't think that we need to make any more additions in this respect to clause 5. Are there any further comments regarding the Princess Natasha's proposed amendments?”

Following a variety of insightful questions from several further Grand Oligarchs, the revised version of their creed was covertly approved by fourteen votes to zero, with Prince Adam abstaining out of spite.

“And now it is time for lunch,” declared Trithagoras, preening his whiskers.

Prince Hamlet was delighted when his domineering wife released him from his lead as they were ascending the elevator to the ground floor, and he promptly bounded into the Lotus Room where he dived into the delicious wild life buffet. However, after he'd demolished a roasted ape-gnome and an octoplum, the hyperactive Prince Adam of Eden sidled up to him with two sugared preying mantises.

“Why don't you chum me to the Emperor Fleance's Amazing Maze?” said Adam. “We could chew the rag together.”

Hamlet devoured one of the mantises like a bear attacking a fish.

“Sure, laddie,” he replied. “You're like a real brother to me.”

As they headed through the Glen of the Craving Ravens, Hamlet remembered his Remusian sweetheart Princess Leah of Fólkvangr who'd died so tragically in the Amalienborg Palace, impaled with a steel spike from ear to ear while the giant hounds chewed at her paws. That was shortly before he was thrown into the Snakes and Ladders Dungeon in Helsinger at the behest of his psychotic stepfather the bull-faced King of Denmark.