INDULGENT SPIRIT
by Tom Leonard
5. POWER STRUGGLE IN SPACE
5.1 The Factions Conspire
The next day Rick Stent received a visit from a Professor of Renewable Energy in the huge palace suite which Rick shared with his three Atum wives and two poodles.
A Zazin and leading Thermite, the professor still felt outraged by the unjust execution of her colleague Thermus Z5 several months previously, after Thermus was denounced for treason by the Living Incarnate.
Rick and his first wife Drew whispered a few words of polite welcome before retiring with the professor to the padded privacy capsule in their sound-proofed master bedroom.
The professor felt more than adequately protected against the officially appointed 'listeners' by the high quality insulation. She advised Rick and Drew that eighty-three Zazins on the two-hundred member Grand Council of Katrina now felt that the pontiff should relinquish her chairpersonship and stand trial for the way she mistreated Thermus Z5. The professor also thought that the vast majority of the Zazins on Katrina were as all-accepting as the Atums, and that they longed for a leadership that was more conciliatory towards other species.
“It's a bit too early to think in terms of a coup,” responded Rick. “Captain Korchov and her flight lieutenant expressed similar opinions when they came here last night. However, they believe that the special police would be willing, in such circumstances, to constrain the Walrusians to their home sphere, but say that we'd need to confirm this with Chief Superintendent Nam Nimisch. She devised a highly efficient sphere-sealing procedure a few years back when she put the Godmothers out of business. Unfortunately I'm at loggerheads with her. She seriously mistreated me when I was tried for terrorism."
"We'll all need to make compromises," replied the professor, with a conciliatory look. "Admiral Nimisch is a personal friend of mine. Indeed two of our mutual second cousins run the safari park on Kepler XY20. I'm sure that she can be persuaded to lend us her support."
"But she's over the edge in political terms," argued Rip.
"Nam does express alt right views on specific issues, but I'm sure that you can co-operate with her as you both wish to rid yourselves of the Living Incarnate. To put it frankly, your coup will undoubtedly fail without Nam's assistance."
"I'll think about it," conceded Rip, "but lots more planning is needed, and it would be expedient for us, in terms of popular support, to hold fire until the Incarnate next flies right off her dystopic handle."
"Agreed!" replied the professor. "We shouldn't have to wait for long, Sunny blows her fuse big-time whenever she hits a stumbling block. And maybe we can find a smoking gun. That could speed everything up,"
Drew felt relieved that her husband was behaving so responsibly. However, this did not prevent her from embarking on a risky adventure during the early hours with her fair-haired lover Chi Kit and the crafty pumanid Kim Catworthy.
5.2 Search for the Time Machine
Rip drank liqueur brandies with a sweaty amigo until well after midnight, before curling up with her on the sofa and falling asleep. Thereupon, Drew put on a dark hooded cloak, pressed a special button on her mobile, and stole out of the palace suite with a security fazer in her left hand.
Drew found Kim Catworthy and a bloke wearing a death mask hiding in the washroom down the corridor. She covered her head with the hood, and gave the masked person a love squeeze. It was, as expected, her handsome friend Chi Kit. She could tell that from the jam-jar shape of her manhood.
"Let's stroll around until my tail vibrates," whispered Kim, and so they all did, investigating many a nook and cranny in the palace and its multiple basements as they did so.
Three hours later, they began to doubt that there was a hidden time machine anywhere in the place. There were said to be only ten Kalman-Bucy machines in existence, and any one of them would have been detected at a distance of a hundred feet by the tracker under Kim's tail (which Kim had purloined from the Control Complex).
As a final thought, they decided to explore the Sacred Chapel of the Divine Spirit. When they entered the eerie place, a horseshoe bat flew down from the belfry in the rafters, and Drew felt increasingly neurotic.
The pink substitute for an altar seemed to be on the blink, but the fluorescent green pulpit was emitting humming sounds. Kim felt a twinge in her tail, though it didn't vibrate.
Then through the haze in Drew's head, she heard a voice saying "This is Ophelia beaming in one more time. What you are looking for does not exist in this universe. What you will find is hidden under the holy lectern."
"Did you hear that, Chi?" asked Drew, all of a dither.
"Of course I did!" replied Chi, ripping the lectern off the top of the pulpit. Thereupon a compact Harris-Easterner time-compression device fell crashing to the ground, its sixteen dials glowing in the pink fluorescence.
"I'm a expert on these state-of-the-art contraptions," said Chi. "Let's see how the bluddy Zazins fixed the dials to force the time compression."
"This could be the smoking gun," predicted Drew, pulling herself together. "Our revolution could now happen sooner rather than later".
Chi got a double split-jointing before breakfast, and, while he was a bit uncomfortable about it, both Drew and Kim purred in delight. Then Kim licked Chi all over with her long, thick tongue, and Chi's spunk spouted, in a majestic creamy arc, onto Drew's flat chest.
5.3 Ramifications Galore
The Living Incarnate Sunny Z1 was blissfully unaware of any plots when she called for order at the start of the next meeting of the Grand Council of Katrina. Indeed she called a break in a session on ‘Simplifying Interspecies Rights’ to enjoy a caviar and shrimp sandwich. But the charismatic pontiff was wiping the sauce off her lips when a company of Novogrian police poured in with lasers at the ready. The special police were accompanied by three platoons of Zazin civilian militia, headed by a Professor of Renewable Energy of note. The citizens secured garrotting wires around the necks of all council members thought to be hard-line Sunny supporters, and tightened the nooses.
“Guards!” howled the pontiff, as a plump Zazinian bishop expired under the stress. “Where are the Walrusian Guards when I need them?”
“They’re playing hooky, darling,” growled Chief Superintendent Nam Nimisch, who’d entered Prahu Hall with a group of highly concerned inter-species citizens, “and there’s nobody left to save you."
"What are you on about?" howled Sunny.
"Your chief technical expert snitched on you. He admitted, when we infested his spleen with a swarm of locusts, that he helped you to use a Harris-Easterner machine to compress time on Torus. You didn't consult your bluddy Ophelia at all! Your lies and trickery have caused endless mental suffering for the relatives of the creatures whose lives you compressed."
"Not true!" raged Sunny. "Not true!"
"It's certainly true that hundreds of your political rivals have been foully put to death over the last five years. Would you like to be throttled or thrown down the chute?”
Realising that the game was up, the pontiff rose proudly to her feet. “Living Incarnates do not beg for mercy, Instead I appeal to my beloved Ophelia for eternal salvation. She wishes me to entwine with her in Paradise.”
“You must be joking!” howled a fair-headed ruffian running through the mêlée.
Chi Kit seized the pontiff’s pigtails and twisted them around her head. During the fiery struggle that followed Sunny bit Chi's ear and left a scar on his neck. But he succeeded in dragging her away from the Throne of Pre-Destination, and when she was flattened by an enormous police constable, Chi took possession of the prestigious throne itself.
“After our forthcoming elections,” announced Chi, as the pontiff was wrapped in rusty chains from her ankles to her neck. “Katrina will be ruled by a People’s Democracy. However, until the votes are counted all important decisions will, by divine decree and various secret straw polls, be made by Nam Nimisch, Drew Rainbow and myself. Rip Splint is the first candidate to submit her name as a possible co-president, and Admiral Nimisch is also in the running. I'm even wondering whether to stand myself."
"But you're just a whipper snapper!" complained a concerned Eaglid. "What are your qualifications?"
"I was awarded a doctorate of law at aged eighteen, and I was a leader of the youth movement on Planet Pretorius at age fourteen. We overthrew the racist government."
"That sounds very promising," brown-nosed Nimisch. "You'd be a great co-president to work with."
Chi thought that it was a good time to suck up too.
"Thank you for your support, Admiral," he replied. "It will be wonderful to work with a truly great war hero like yourself."
"Don't forget about her," growled Nimisch, pointing at Sunny Z1, who was lying, wrapped in chains, in a pool of her own vomit.
"Thank you for reminding me! With Drew’s and Nam’s agreement and by popular demand, I sentence the pontiff and her hard-line supporters on this council to be constrained in the Hard Labour Trianguloid for posterity.”
"On starvation rations," prompted Nimisch. "She doesn't even deserve to eat."
"Y-yes Sir," stuttered Dr. Chi Kit. "On bread, water, and a tiny daily portion of raw meat for life."
“Ophelia will sustain me," howled the Living Incarnate, “and I'll be back. You heathens should mark my words!”
“I’ll stifle you first, darling,” said Chi, rubbing his neck.
And a holo-image of a goddess in a coat of many colours appeared in the air above the Throne of Pre-Destination.
"I am an indulgent spirit," said the holo-image, "and I am well pleased."
CHAPTER 6: RENEWAL AND DISASTER
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