Ron Goulart - A Whiff of Madness

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Ron Goulart - A Whiff of Madness v1.0

Cover art by Josh Kirby.

FIRST PRINTING, AUGUST 1976

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

O K

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

DAW BOOKS, INC.

DONALDSON A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHER

1301 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS

NEW YORK, N.Y. 10019

Ron Goulart

A WHIFF OF MADNESS

In the Barnum System

CHAPTER 1

The lizardman, lycra cloak fluttering and allseason turban jiggling, came charging across the vast

chill lobby of the publishing center. He planted himself directly in the path of Jack Summer. "A fine hour

to be arriving for work!" he boomed. "Where is she?"

"Who?" Summer was a middle-sized, wiry, sandy-haired man of thirty-one, and right now his

skin was tanned that particular shade you get after a few weeks on Neptune. He glanced up at one of the

several ballclocks that floated here and there in the Coultdrome lobby. "Eleven A.m. Barnum Standard

Time isn't—"

"My wife, that's who!" The large greenish lizardman gave his turban an angry adjusting pat "My

wife! She ran off with you! Which is—"

"Wait now," Summer told him. I admit I've run off with a girl on occasion, but never with a

lizard." The lizardman gave an openmouthed snort, causing his forked tongue to unfurl and snap, "Not

one of my lizard wives, you pink-cheeked gigolo!" After another snort he tugged a fat wallet out of one of

his cloak pockets. A flick of his green scaly wrist snapped the wallet open, allowing a string of glossy

tri-op photos to unfold. "One of my humanoid wives!"

"... Sixteen, seventeen," counted Summer. "Quite a collection."

"This is the one to which, as if you didn't know, I allude!" A green finger jabbed the thirteenth

photo from the top. "This one! Her name is Lorna!"

"Lorna." Summer leaned down to study the picture of the ravishing, sparsely clothed blond.

"Name doesn't ring a bell, and I can't say I've ever—"

"Doesn't ring a bell!" bellowed the lizardman, tugging at something else under his cloak. "My

second most favorite humanoid wife departs from my happy home, leaving nothing behind save a

scribbled note indicating she's fled with you, and you babble about bells ringing!" He yanked a horsewhip

free. "I vowed I'd horsewhip any man who dared—"

"Is that what that is you're clutching, a horsewhip?"

"Yes, and you little realize the trouble I had procuring this one! Since there are no horses here on

Barnum, I had to have this one teleported all the way from—"

"Lorna, did you say?" Summer reached into a pocket of his tunic. "It's possible I do remember

her after all. Let me consult my addresswheel and perhaps ..." A stungun appeared in Summer's tan hand.

He fired directly at the outraged husband.

The lizardman froze, horsewhip half raised.

Summer put his gun away, gestured at two guards across the publishing building lobby. "Dump

this guy someplace," he suggested.

The catman guard said, "Golly, Summer, you roving reporters surely lead a roguish life."

The other, a chubby human, asked, "Did you really run off with this gent's wife?"

"No, but I think maybe she's the blond who grabbed my private parts during the masked ball on

the spaceliner trip back from Neptune," answered the reporter. "Lord knows who she really ran off

with." "Ah, the muckraking life." The catman sighed while taking hold of the stunned lizard by the

elbow. "Standing guard for Mr. Coult you never get your private parts gr—"

"Should a ravishing blond, with her hair over one eye like this, show up in quest of me tell her I've

been sent to some planet like Murdstone to do a Muckrake Magazine story."

"Sure thing, Summer," said the chubby guard. "Would you mind if I made a play for—"

"Nope, that would be an excellent idea." He left them, then hurried across to an ascend tube.

A naked black girl was standing next to the entrance door. "Welcome back, Jack."

"Hi, Nardis" The door whooshed open and he allowed her to enter the chute ahead of him.

"I hope this thing lets me out on the right floor this time," said Nardis. "I'm due up at Galactic

Knitting to pose for a cover."

The powerful currents of air wafted them upward. "I didn't know you could knit."

She scratched a buttock. "Oh, yes, I have terrible domestic urges sometimes. Last night I baked

a pie. I suppose I ought to get help."

"Or move to another planet. Now on Neptune, in the Earth System, they still—"

"I read the pieces you did from Neptune, Jack, on that water rights scandal. Very incisive."

A door opened and Summer was tossed out of the chute before he could reply. Joyous

pipe-organ music surrounded him on his way to the Muckrake editorial-floor reception desk. "Hello,

Pepper."

The lovely green girl kneeling behind the dark-wood desk said, "Oh, howdy, Jack. Excuse me if

I don't give you a welcome-back hug."

Summer was studying the stained glass windows and the icons, sniffing at the incense smell in the

air. "Coult changed the decor again."

"His wife did."

"I thought she favored Old West Earth."

"Different wife," replied Pepper. "Mr. Flowers is in the conference room down at the end of

Corridor C. Oh, and don't forget to genuflect before you go in."

"I'll try. Bye, Pepper."

"Thought your pieces on the Neptune water business were very incisive, Jack."

"Thanks."

The organ music followed him down the somber corridors and into the large Gothic cathedral

which was apparently the new editorial conference room. "Fred?"

"Up here, Jack." His weary, lanky editor was seated in a pew toward the front of the church,

near a lifesize statue of a four-armed blue saint. "Here under Blessed Mother Malley."

Overcoming an impulse to tiptoe, the reporter strode down to sit next to Fred Flowers. "This

wife's taste isn't quite up to the last one."

"She's an even larger bimbo, too," said his tired-looldng editor. "Well, let's see if I can give you

your new assignment before the choirboys get back."

"Choirboys?"

"We get 'em every hour on the hour; supposed to be uplifting. A hundred of the little buggers,

made by a Swiss watchmaker on Murdstone, and every damn one of 'em is towheaded and freckled."

Flowers jabbed at his gaunt cheeks to indicate where some of the freckles appeared. "I want you to go

out to Peregrine, Jack."

"That looks like Coult himself in that stained glass window there," observed Summer, pointing

with a thumb, "sitting at the right hand of God,"

"It is; the bimbo with the halo is the current wife of the enormous Coult publishing empire."

"Don't much like women with their hair down over one eye like that"

"She has a very interesting backside, so I'm told," said Flowers. "Now about this assignment on

the planet Peregrine."

"Yeah, she does have a nice ass, now you mention it. Something you don't often see in stained

glass window figures." Summer returned his attention to his editor. "What do you want me to write about

on Peregrine, the civil war?"

"Everybody knows civil wars are corrupt. Muckrake's readers are tired of that sort of expose,"

said the weary Flowers, slumping farther down in his pew, "What I want you to dig into for me is a little

scandal concerning King Waldo the second."

"He's the ruler of Laranja East, isn't he? Laranja East and Laranja West are the territories having

the civil war."

"Yep," replied Flowers. "Our stringer out there sent us word King Waldo is killing people."

"Is that newsworthy? Kings and presidents are always—"

"This guy is putting on a slouch hat, a black cloak, and gray gloves, Jack, to strangle little old

ladies. Our stringer—"

"You mean King Waldo is the Phantom of the Fog?"

"Looks very possible. Seems he—"

Bong!

The cathedral vibrated as an unseen bell tower struck the half hour.

"Oh, that nitwit bimbo and her interesting backside." Flowers grimaced. "Anyway, Jack, there

appears to be a strong likelihood the good king is the phantom strangler. Lots of rumors to that effect are

floating around the territory."

"Has the palace had anything to say about the charges?"

"The king's press secretary maintains it's a media plot to smear the monarch."

Summer toyed with the prayerwheel dangling from a hook on the back of the pew in front of him.

"Whether or not Waldo's the killer, he's not going to take kindly to my walking into his territory to nose

around.""Yep, the king's very touchy about the rumors that he's a crazed pattern murderer. At his last

press conference he threatened to horsewhip the newsman who—"

"That's right, they have horses out there," said Summer. "Okay, so I'm going to need a cover

story, a plausible reason for being there."

From a wrinkled pocket in his rumpled tunic the editor withdrew a photo of a plump,

shaggy-feathered birdman. Holding the photo out to Summer, he said, "This lad claims to be Mulligan

Starbuck."

"So?"

"Mulligan was lost at sea at the tender age of nine, twenty-two long years ago," Flowers dropped

the picture on Summer's lap. "Five weeks ago, according to our Peregrine stringer, this fellow in the

photo appeared on the doorstep of the Starbuck estate in the Laranja East countryside. He swears he's

the missing Mulligan, the long-lost heir come home to roost." I've heard of the Starbucks. Lot of money."

"Right, the Starbucks are one of the richest families on the planet. They're in railroads, oil, steel,

copper, and weapons. With the war between East and West in full swing, they're raking in fantastic

profits.""The head of the family is Wattas Starbuck, as I recall. What's he think about this claimant?"

"Denies entirely he's little Mulligan grown to manhood. However, Wattas's old mother, Lady

Thorkin, has accepted the lad. She believes in her heart he's her long missing grandson and has given him

the run of the estate, making for some tension around the Starbuck homestead. The Starbuck claimant

affair is causing quite a frumus, charges of fraud are in the air, and there may well be a trial." Flowers

slumped a bit more. "It's the kind of situation Muckrake might well write up."

"I should be able to convince Waldo's people, and anyone else curious, I'm in Laranja to dig into

the Starbuck affair "

Flowers closed his eyes for a few seconds. The light from one of the stained glass windows made

rainbow patterns across his weary, lined face. "Something else I better tell you, Jack. We're going to

need pictures and I have to assign you, somewhat against my will, a partner. If you can get me a shot of

King Waldo skulking through the foggy back streets of the capital city in his phantom gear, or maybe

actually in the act of grabbing some old bimbo by the throat I'll—"

"Talma!" realized Summer. "You're teaming me up again with Palma, the horniest photographer in

the Barnum System ... if not the entire cosmos."

"Yep, him," admitted the editor. "He claims he's reformed, after getting himself almost killed on

Mala-gra"

"Malagra, the pesthole of the universe. Is Palma still there?"

"No, he's on Peregrine, doing a picturespread on the public executions in Laranja East," said the

weary Flowers. "Therefore, he's got a perfectly respectable excuse for being in the territory."

"I doubt Palma's much reformed," said Summer. "Every time we've worked together in the past

he—" "Glorious! Glorious! Glorious!"

Little automaton choirboys were marching out onto the cathedral altar, singing.

"You're ten minutes ahead of schedule, you little clockwork twerps!" Flowers shouted at them.

"Glorious! Glorious! Glorious!"

Standing, Summer said, "I'll pack When do I depart for Peregrine?"

"Ten tomorrow from Barnum Spaceport-two," said his editor. "Try to keep Palma from causing

an incident, will you? Don't go screwing around too much yourself."

"I assure you," said Summer, grinning, Talma's behavior and mine will be nothing less than

saintly." Flowers sighed. "Well, good luck."

"Glorious! Glorious! Glorious!" sang the choirboys.

CHAPTER 2

The parade flowed along the wide cobblestone street. A marching band of scarlet-uniformed

birdmen passed the corner where Summer had been forced to stop because of the thick crowd of

parade watchers. It was forty degrees Celsius on the glaring midday streets of the capital city of Laranja

East. The newly arrived reporter was anxious to get to the Laranja-Sheraton and out of the sun.

"Excuse me," he said to the twin fat ladies immediately in front of him.

They continued licking at their strawberry ice cream cones, ignoring him.

Six dozen steam-operated military robots went clanking by, followed by several squads of

virginal young blond girls in white lycra tunics. Each girl carried a placard that said: Kill the Dirty Bastard!

Summer managed to nudge a few paces to the left, which brought him up against a broad,

feathered back. "Mind if I try to cross?"

The birdman kept pecking at his suetburger, moving not.

Virginal redheads trooped by. Cut Him in Chunks! Spill His Guts!

"Pardon me." Summer elbowed around the hefty birdman, shoved one of the fat ladies aside, and

made it to the edge of the curbstone.

A dozen gold-braided policemen were galloping by, mounted on white stallions.

"My, look at those horsewhips, so many of them," remarked a fat lady.

"What do you suppose the man without his pants is meant to represent?" asked her twin.

"What man without pants, Alma?"

"Right there, Dolores, that bald man trotting along in the wake of the horsemen with the dozen or

more angry high priests in hot pursuit"

"Palma!" said Summer.

It was indeed the bald photographer, clad in a candy-striped singlet and a pair of sky-blue briefs.

The howling catmen on his trail wore flowing black and gold robes, and were waving double-edged

golden swords. "Sacrilege! Defilement!" they were shouting. "Profanation!"

Dodging white horses, Summer reached his friend's side to begin running with him. "You were

supposed to refrain from trouble."

"I'm trying," panted Palma, "I'm trying. That's why I'm attempting to outrun this particular bunch

of crazed fanatics."

"Sacrilege! Debasement!" cried the nearest robed catmen, who were not more than a dozen feet

behind. "What did you debase?"

"Oh," said Palma, "I merely patted a nun on the keaster."

Sprinting, Summer got alongside one of the galloping policemen. "You won't mind my borrowing

this?" He tugged the horsewhip out of its saddle holster.

Stopping where he stood, Summer told Palma, "Head for that alley over there." He cracked the

whip, tufts of fur fluttered up in the glaring air, and the lead priest fell down. While the whip was still

wound around the fallen man's furry ankle, Summer jerked it and caused the priest to trip the next two

pursuers.

Palma meanwhile was streaking for the narrow alley between two towering neobrick buildings.

After felling three more priests and avoiding the angered mounted policeman, Summer took off.

In the alley he asked, "Why'd you stroke some nun on the rear end, anyway?"

Palma sprang for the top of the nearwood fence at the alley's end. "Foolish damn thing to do,

since I'm basically a tit man," he admitted. Wheezing, he struggled over the fence and dropped down into

the miniature golf course on the other side. "Of course I didn't even realize she was in holy orders, seeing

as how she was naked at—"

"How'd she happen to be naked?" Summer joined him on the turf.

Running down the sloping field of the tiny golf course, the bald photographer replied, "Women

usually are naked in the ladies' wing of a Turkish bath. See, through a perfectly honest mistake I

happened to wander into—"

"Never mind." Summer glanced back over his shoulder. "They've ceased chasing us."

Palma slowed down, wiping his hand across the top of his glistening bald head. He was roughly

the same height as Summer, nearly two years older. "You wouldn't expect Quakers to be so vindictive,"

he said. "Though it may be the Peregrinian splinter—"

"What was the parade about?"

"Nothing much; another public execution this afternoon."

"Fore, for mercy's sake!" cried a dwarf they were approaching. "Fore!" He swung his golf club in

the air several times.

"Excuse us." Palma bowed toward the man and his midget spouse. He and Summer had to cross

a stone bridge over a small scummy lagoon to reach the street "Did you happen to notice the knockers

on that midget broad? If you multiply those tits by three it's fairly astound—"

"Why are the citizens of Laranja East having a big parade for this public execution?"

"They always have parades, sometimes a carnival or a masked ball," explained Palma. The girl

who ran the bear-baiting concession at the last carnival had a momentous set of chabobs, Jack. The

nipples, mind you, measured full—"

"Did you leave your pants at the Turkish bath?"

Palma looked at his unclad lower limbs. He went over and sat on a green lucite street bench. He

rubbed at his bald head, not meeting Summer's eyes. "Well, Jack, as a matter of fact, my trousers are at

the Galactic Express Teleport station on King Waldo Skyway."

"Oh, so?"

"I went in there to teleport a basket of assorted fruit to a young lady on Malagra in

commemoration of her twenty-first birthday," said Palma, "and this brunette who was manning the fruit

desk turned out to have the most incredible set of whammos these old orbs have—"

"OK, it'll be easier to buy you a new pair of pants."

"Don't you want to hear the stirring account of how I got from the G.E.T. office to the Turkish—"

"Nope." Summer rested one foot on the bench. "I want to hear about our assignment here."

"Coming along smoothly. We've got an appointment to call at Fallen Oaks tomorrow morning."

"What is Fallen Oaks?"

The Starbuck estate, some fifty miles to the north of this fair city. We're going to interview and

photograph Mulligan Starbuck and his doting granny."

"What about our stringer? I want to talk to him."

"Yeah, he's the editor of the local paper out there, which is entitled the Starbuck Company

Town Weekly. Only a few miles from the estate; we're to see him after we call on the claimant."

Summer said, "Have you heard anything more about the Phantom of the Fog?"

"He did in another old lady last night," said Palma. "Rumor has it King Waldo the second can't

account for his time during the hours when the deed was done."

"Is King Waldo actually the phantom? For that matter, is the claimant really Mulligan Starbuck?"

said Summer. "We've got some interesting questions to answer."

"I think better with my pants on," said Palma. "Let's wend our way, unobtrusively, to the nearest

fashionable clothier."

CHAPTER 3

"A veritable fairyland, eh?" said the owlman who was sharing their first-class railroad carriage

with them. He rubbed his gloved hands together while making a satisfied hooting sound. "The lofty towers

shimmering in the glowing miasma, the pillars of fire shining like beacons for the weary traveler, eh?"

Palma coughed. "Hard to see the fairyland through all this smoke."

The chuffing steam train was carrying them through mile after mile of factories. Hunching,

soot-smeared buildings were set in a forest of spewing smokestacks and chimneys. Columns of orange

flame ripped up through the gray smoky morning, millions of sparks flickered, yellowish fog swirled

around everything.

"Smoke, sir?" the owlman's eyes went wide; his feathers bristled. "Why, that's the stuff from

which dreams are made. That, gentlemen, is the future taking shape under our very noses." From his

flowered waistcoat he took a business card "I don't believe we've introduced ourselves."

"That's true," agreed Summer.

"I am Benton Fruit-Smith."

Palma accepted the proffered card. "Work for the Starbucks, eh?"

"Damned proud to be able to answer in the affirmative," said Fruit-Smith. "I'm with the Child

Labor Division, a position which allows me ample opportunity to exercise my humanitarian tendencies."

"Like kids, do you?" Palma rolled the business card around his forefinger, tapped it against the

sooty window.

"Dote on them, sir," replied Fruit-Smith. "It is one of the sorrows of my life, I must admit, that

Mrs. Fruit-Smith and myself have never been blessed with an egg." He rubbed a gloved knuckle at the

corner of his eye. "I suppose that's why I'm so concerned with the welfare of the tots and tykes who

labor for us in the myriad clean and homelike Starbuck factories. 'You're positively softhearted when it

comes to them whelps, Ben,' the foreman of the tallow plant remarked to me only last week. 'Yes, I

suppose I am,' was my rejoinder. It breaks my heart whenever one of the little darlings takes a header

into a tallow vat. One of my greatest days was the day I persuaded the Starbucks to approve the

purchase of a long pole with a hook on the end of it." He blinked at Summer and Palma. "To fish the little

rascals out with, do you see?"

Palma sneezed. "You're a very good person, Mr. Fruit-Smith," he said. "In fact, you may well be

the very type of person I'm seeking." He paused to stroke one of the cameras hanging around his neck

"I'm always on the lookout for great humanitarians to photograph for Great Humanitarians Magazine."

"Ah, sir, I don't feel I'm a great man." The owlman ruffled his chin feathers. "Is it the Great

Humanitarians assignment which brings you to our territory?"

Palma leaned across the carriage, lowering his voice. "Actually, Mr. Fruit-Smith, and I ask you to

keep this confidential—"

"You can count on my discretion, sir."

"My partner and I are here to look into the Starbuck claimant affair."

"Eh?" Fruit-Smith's facial feathers perked up. "Oh, that's a shocking business, sir; a most

unfortunate event in the annals of a great family."

"You don't think the claimant is authentic?" asked Summer.

"Not a bit of it, sir." The owlman shook his head. "Why, I once dandled little Mulligan on my

knee at a Starbuck Upper Echelon Employees and Their Immediate Families Picnic. I can tell you this

great lout is no more Mulligan Starbuck than I am. Indeed he—"

"Starbuck Company Town Station."

"Excuse us, Mr. Fruit-Smith," said the bald photographer. "We must disembark here."

When they were on the platform in front of the shingled station Summer said, "Fruit-Smith should

spread our cover story fairly far and wide."

"Let us hope," said Palma. "You know, Jack, I'm getting interested in this Starbuck claimant

thing. You think this guy could really—"

"Our main reason for being here is to talk to the editor of the Starbuck Company Town

Weekly."

"Say, have you noticed the yonkers on that young lady standing over there holding the

horsewhip? Observe how they point directly at you. That's what I call an honest tit, one which can look

you square in the eye,"

The lovely auburn-haired girl approached them now. "Would you be Mr. Summer and Mr.

Palma?" she inquired.

"We would," Summer said.

"I'm McNulty, sent from the main house to drive you to your interview with Lady Thorkin and

Mr. Mulligan," said the girl.

"Why not allow me to drive," suggested Palma. "It would—"

"Exactly as I surmised." McNulty frowned at him. "You're just exactly the sort who'd like to see

me returned to some secondary, subsidiary position ... after I've struggled long and hard to achieve the

situation I now have within the Starbuck household. I'll drive the carriage; it's my job."

The carriage was drawn by a pair of brandy-colored horses. Summer climbed in.

Palma hesitated beside the vehicle. "Wouldn't it be more egalitarian if I rode up in front there

beside you, Miss McNulty?"

"Suit yourself," replied the girl. "You must promise, though, to make no further comments about

my breasts."

Palma bounded up next to her on the driver's seat. "What gave you the idea I was doing that?"

"The simpering expression on your silly face, the moony glint in your eyes." She cracked the whip

across the horses' flanks. "Get up there... An interest in breasts is most childish."

"On the contrary." The carriage commenced rolling down a graveled road away from the train

station. "My fascination has increased with maturity. When I was a beardless, though curly-haired, lad I

had little interest in breasts, as you call them, at all."

"A man of your obvious intelligence should be able to look beyond breasts to the mind within. An

intellect has no breasts or secondary sex characteristics."

"I'd hate to think such a thing. For instance ..."

There were no more factories now, hardly any smoke in the late morning sky. Fields of grass and

stands of sturdy trees spread away from both sides of the gently climbing road.

Summer clasped his hands behind his head, and whistled softly with the tip of his tongue pressed

to the roof of his mouth.

"How do you do," said the plump birdman who was leaning against the sundial in the north corner

of the immense formal garden. "I'm Mulligan Starbuck."

"Like bloody hell," muttered the lizard butler who'd escorted Summer and Palma out here.

"That will be quite enough, Delap."

"Ruddy perishing fraud, says I," said the lizard butler as he departed.

"The servants, alas, haven't all accepted me the way dear Gran has." He gestured with a

feathered hand at a white-painted wrought-iron bench. "Won't you please sit down, gentlemen."

Palma did.

Summer remained under a decorative arbor arch. "Does all of the staff—"

"Sit down, hurry up," Mulligan glanced anxiously about. "We don't have much time before the old

lady shows up. I have to talk to you."

"About what?" Summer moved nearer.

"Mully? Mully, little pet, where are you?" There was a rattling off in the bamboo sector of the

garden. "Mully, don't tease your poor gran."

Mulligan said to Summer, "I want you to know why I'm really—"

"Mully, I fear I'll perish amidst this dreadful bamboo."

"We're right over here by the sundial, dear Gran," called Mulligan. He hit the side of his leg with a

fist After some more rattling, and a bit of crackling, a very old birdwoman came stumbling into view.

She wore a loose-hanging flowered lycra dress, and supported herself with two ebony canes. Her yellow

beak was laced with fine cracks; most of the feathers from the top of her head had fallen out There he is.

There's my sweetest little Mully, my long-lost honey-bunch, my little dumpling come back to me from the

womb of the vast deep. And good morning to you, gentlemen."

Palma popped to his feet. "Good morning, Lady Thorkin." He bowed over her half-feathered old

hand. "I am Palma, the noted photographer, and my associate is the justly famed Jack Summer."

"We're honored that two such esteemed journalists as yourselves," said Lady Thorkin, "have

journeyed across the limitless gulf of space to help spread the truth about my little buttercup to the far

corners of the universe."

That's our specialty," Palma told her. "Last year alone we publicized three dumplings, two

buttercups—"

Summer cut in. "We'd like to hear what you have to say, Lady Thorkin."

The birdwoman chuckled. "I never tire of discussing my little prodigal dumpling; do I,

honeybunch?"

"No, certainly not, Gran." Standing behind her back, Mulligan pointed to himself and then to

Summer, silently beaking the words, "Want to talk to you alone."

While guiding the old woman to a wrought-iron chair, Summer shot the claimant a puzzled look.

"Why?" he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

"It's about—"

"Hounds!" said Palma.

Barking and baying had started off beyond the rose bushes.

"I'm afraid," said Mulligan, "that Father has let the killer dogs loose again."

CHAPTER 4

"Thank you so much; well be relatively safe up here," gasped Lady Thorkin as Palma boosted

her to the top of the enormous greenhouse. "You're a real honeybunch, even though you don't have any

hair." The bald photographer took a position near the ancient birdwoman. "Don't have any feathers

either, but despite such handicaps—"

"Your father knows we're out here interviewing you, doesn't he?" Summer asked the claimant.

Mulligan was squatting on several neoglass" panels. "Oh, yes—which is why he unchained the

dogs," he said. "He doesn't approve of my talking to reporters." Three ferocious Venusian police dogs

had located them, and were leaping and snarling directly below.

"Does he approve of the hounds rending your sweet old granny asunder?" inquired Palma.

"He usually calls them off before they do any serious harm. Although last week a caricaturist

from Interstellar Punch had his—" Boom! Bam! Boom!

"Goodness me," exclaimed Lady Thorkin, "the steam hounds must be on the blink again."

Chunks of metal began clattering down around them, smashing holes in the neoglass squares.

"My father was recently persuaded to add steam-operated robot hounds to his kennel,"

explained Mulligan. "They don't function as smoothly as he was led to believe; notably the boilers in some

of the creatures."

Boom!

"I fear that was Rex," said the old birdwoman.

A plastic dog snout clinked down on Palma's head, bounced off and fell into the greenhouse.

"Your favorite robot, was he?"

"Yes, he had a really agreeable personality, for a machine. Many's the time—"

"Are you scoundrels ready to come to terms?" Five more huge and nasty dogs, three real and

two steam-driven, had come charging through the shrubs. Close on their heels stalked a middle-aged

birdman in a tweed suit.

"It's Father." Mulligan brought his beak close to Summer's ear arid lowered his voice. "I won't be

able to tell you what I want to now. You'll have to try to get back some—"

"You there, the chap with the hairless pate, are you John Summer?" Wattas Starbuck,

surrounded by howling dogs, was shaking a feathery fist at them.

Palma inched closer to the edge of the slightly slanting neoglass roof. "Do you mean to say you

don't recognize me? A man whose incisive photographs are known far and wide throughout the Barnum

System of planets as well as the Earth System? A photographer whose name is a household word in the

farthest reaches of the galaxy. I am Palma."

"If you're not this rogue Summer, I'll thank you to intrude no farther, sir."

"I'm Summer," said Summer.

"Yes, I should have guessed from that sneaky look in your eyes, the mean slant of the mouth, the

cringing attitude as you crouch there in abject fear. Obviously you're a journalist."

"We'll have to get together again sometime when you don't have your dogs."

"I doubt not I can best you in a fair combat, sir." He silenced his dogs, who sat staring anxiously

at the group atop the greenhouse. "Many a poacher has reason to dread the name of Wattas Starbuck.

With naught but these two fists I've—"

"I'm not in the mood to play mine's-bigger-than-yours," cut in Summer. "Do you have anything

else you want to chat about?"

"I didn't expect anyone in your profession to be so forthright," said Wattas. "Very well, sir, we

will come to the point. This so-called interview was arranged without my knowledge or consent. The

Starbuck clan has been enough smeared and maligned by the media. Like our dedicated king, and other

great men of the age, we are targets for the unjustified darts of the pygmies of the press. I will allow you

and your associate to depart unmolested by myself or my faithful pack of fearsome dogs. You must,

however, promise to print not a word about your visit here today. You must, furthermore, never attempt

to interview this fawning impostor or my barmy old mum again."

"Oh, Watty, you're not being the dumpling you once—"

"Well, Summer, do I have your word, for what it's worth?"

"Sure," said Summer.

"Hold on, Jack," said Palma. "Freedom of the press is like a flaming sword and we oughtn't to

allow our right to speak out to be trampled by a pack of hounds and—"

"Might as well admit we've been beaten," said Summer. "Mr. Starbuck, we accept your terms."

"Good, I assumed you, being a mealymouthed coward at heart, would." Wattas bent close to

one of the dogs. "Back to the kennels, the lot of you."

With regretful gazes at their lost prey, the dogs sulked away along the lanes of flowering plants.

"Don't forget," whispered Mulligan just before Summer and Palma leaped to the ground.

When they were passing, with several burly servants close behind, through the outer gates of the

Starbuck estate Palma said, "My strong extrasensory powers tell me Wattas Starbuck knew we were

coming. He staged his little dog show to impress us."

"No doubt," said Summer. "Let's hope we impressed him with the fact we came to Peregrine

solely to interview his spurious son."

The bald photographer was scanning the roadway. "Looks like Miss McNulty and her famous

straightforward hangers are not here to give us a lift back to town," he said.

"We'll walk."

"Mulligan conveyed the idea he had something important to tell us " Palma kicked at the white

gravel. "Wants to persuade me he's the real thing."

"Might be more than that," said Palma, stroking his head. "Well let's see what Mayhew has to

say." "Mayhew?"

"The editor of the weekly."

"I forgot his name."

"Not like you."

Summer halted, stood for nearly a minute staring back at the Starbuck mansion. "Something ..."

he said. "What?"

"I don't know yet."

The lane ran out of cobblestones and turned to dirt It was midafternoon, but the sky over the

company town had a sooty twilight look. The lane was empty except for a dead dog sprawled in front of

a narrow tight-shut tailor shop.

"You can't beat a big city for excitement," observed Palma, wiping dust off his scalp.

Spotting the faded Town Weekly sign, Summer Said, This street's too empty, too many blinds

pulled down, too many shutters up."

"Could be business hereabouts is going through a periodic decline."

Summer approached the neoglass door of the newspaper office slowly. The door stood a few

inches open. He pushed it, then went inside the shadowy room beyond.

There was a thick smell of printer's ink in the air, and something else.

"Gunpowder," said Palma.

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RonGoulart-AWhiffofMadnessv1.0Copyright©,1976,byRonGoulart.AllRightsReservedCoverartbyJoshKirby.FIRSTPRINTING,AUGUST1976123456789OKPRINTEDINU.S.A.DAWBOOKS,INC.DONALDSONA.WOLLHEIM,PUBLISHER1301AVENUEOFTHEAMERICASNEWYORK,N.Y.10019RonGoulartAWHIFFOFMADNESSIntheBarnumSystemCHAPTER1Thelizardman,lycracloa...

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Ron Goulart - A Whiff of Madness

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