The planet Earth, as was only proper, became the seat of Imperial government. Moscow was chosen as the site for the principal Imperial Palace, with subsidiary palaces in New York, London, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and Los Angeles. Imperial court took place at any of these locales, but the administration of the Empire was a business that occupied nearly a third of Earth’s population either directly or indirectly. Because of the fact of Earth’s central position in the Empire, the various nobles of Earth held far more actual power than their titles indicated. The counts of Moskva and Los Angeles, for example, held more real power than most earls and marquises; more power, even, than a great number of dukes.
(Manley, Traces of Royalty, slot 176.)
Jules and Yvette had no sooner arrived back on Earth than they found a message waiting for them, along with any number of reels of computer output. The Service accountants had completed their financial survey of galactic trends, and the results were all ready to be analyzed. Rolling up their figurative sleeves, the pair dug in and started the monumental task.
Three days later, certain trends were beginning to make themselves evident. Through eyes made bleary by fatigue and staring at too many numbers, the d’Alemberts looked at the graphs they had drawn and began making some conclusions. ‘It looks fairly certain,’ Jules said wearily, ‘that there are unaccounted influxes of cash in Sectors Two, Thirteen, Twenty, Twenty-Two and Thirty-Five. The money just disappears once it goes in there, as though they were dumping it in a hole.’
‘Or a secret army,’ Yvette pointed out.
‘That is the more logical guess. Thirteen and twenty, in particular, are the big gainers. I find it interesting that Durward, which is in Sector Ten, shows no unusual cash problems whatsoever.’
‘Confirming y our guess that it’s only a decoy.’
Jules shrugged. ‘Perhaps. At any rate, we now have some new facts to play around with. Let’s see what we can do with them.’
They requested - and got - the complete dossiers on the rulers of each of the suspicious sectors and their families. Another whole day was spent going over these records, then they had another conference.
‘Every one of them is beyond reproach,’ Yvette said dejectedly. ‘Not a single scandal has marked any of those families for at least a hundred years. If Banion is involved with any of them, he’s managed to keep himself squeaky clean for quite a while.’
‘He would, of course. He’d do everything in his power to escape detection until he’s ready to make his move. Even so much as a traffic ticket could bring him to the attention of the Service’s computers. But I’m more convinced than ever that the person we’re looking for is somewhere within that group.’
‘Swell, but how do we narrow the field? As I said before, we can’t just go around sticking nitrobarb into grand dukes until we find the right one.’
Jules considered the problem. ‘The only way,’ he said, ‘is to get to know them better, get ourselves in a position of trust that we can work from.’
“There’s only two of us, so we can’t hire out as servants to all our suspects.’
‘Khorosho, then we find some service that we can perform for all of them equally. What’s faddish in the Upper Court this year?’
‘Physical fitness, from what I read on the newsrolls. Everybody and his noble brother has a private gym and a personal instructor to keep him from getting too flabby. Being in top condition has become an obsession in the higher echelons. Of course, we were into it before it became stylish.’
‘I’d say that’s just about perfect for us. It’ll let us get close to them without their realizing what we’re up to.’
‘But how will we make them come to us?’
‘Make them?’ Jules smiled. ‘They’ll consider themselves lucky if we let them!’
One month later, safe within the confines of his private office, the Head was talking to a tall, thin man with graying hair who, while old, was in no sense decrepit. Duchess Helena sat across the room with her shapely legs crossed, sipping nonchalantly at a cream liqueur while her father and his friend talked.
‘I’m afraid they’ve even got me confused, Zan,’ the older man said. ‘What can it all mean? Under no circumstances is the Circus to go to Durward, they say, and preferably it’s to remain here on extended performance. That’s easy enough to arrange, it’s a popular enough attraction. Carlos and Carmen Velasquez are not to report in, they say, and nothing that pair does, however wild, will be of any importance. That’s fine, too. But what is the meaning of this beauty parlor business right here on Earth? It doesn’t make sense!’
‘Not a beauty parlor, Bill,’ the Head said quietly. ‘A massagerie deluxe. Or rather, “The House of Strength of Body and of Heart.” ‘
‘Little difference. Do you at least know what they’re doing?’
‘Very little; and what’s more, I don’t particularly want to know. They’re the top people I have...’
‘Potentially,’ the other pointed out. ‘Remember, the thousand point test only measures potential. They’ve never had field experience on any case this major before.’
‘Well, if they can’t handle it we might as well surrender now. I haven’t got anybody more qualified on hand at the moment.’
‘I think Jules d’Alembert could handle anything,’ Helena said quietly from her corner, but her remark went unnoticed by the two men.
‘I think I may have been a little too supervisorial on this matter before,’ the Head continued. ‘Having the boss constantly peering over his shoulder tends to distract an agent and discourage initiative. I’ve given them this job and their father’s given them their training; the rest is up to them. Besides,’ he added significantly, ‘while Ithink I’ve weeded all the traitors out of the office here, I don’t know for sure. Too much contact with them might break their cover.’
‘A good point,’ the older man nodded.
‘I would hazard a guess that they have some particular suspect or suspects in mind who would be likely to take an interest in body building. This, you will note, implies that they have reached the stage where they can narrow their attention to individuals ... I don’t know who they have in mind, but I consider it a hopeful sign.’
‘But staying so far away from Durward...’
‘May be the best thing they can do. So many good agents have already died there that it might just be a trap. Anyway, as long as the d’Alemberts are working on this case I’ll give them anything they want, no questions asked.’
‘That’s only right, especially since they want so little from us. I still find it hard to believe that they don’t ask us for expenses. I know the Circus’ taxes are rebated, but surely they spend more than that on Empire business.’
‘My guess is, they don’t. The Velasquez couple is a large outlay, certainly, but they frequently counter it with cheaper disguises. And the Circus is so successful that its taxes are ridiculously high. The Duke won’t tell me how high, of course - he’s a funny man that way. I asked him once if we didn’t owe him some money, and he told me if I wanted to count kopeks I should get myself a job in a grocery store.’
The old man laughed. That sounds just like him, all right. But DesPlaines is a rich planet, you know, and Etienne d’Alembert is a tremendously able man - as well as being one of my best friends. Well, I’d better leave you to your work now. I like talking to you when I’m feeling low, Zan; you give me a lift.’ He raised his nearly-empty glass and gave the Service salute: ‘Tomorrow, fellow and friend. May we all live to see it.’
And, when they finished drinking the toast, His Imperial Majesty William Stanley, Tenth Emperor of the Empire of Earth and all human domains, rose to his feet and walked majestically out of the room.
Helena grinned up at her father. ‘You didn’t exactly lie, I know; but if he knew as much as we do I bet he wouldn’t feel so uplifted.’
‘He has troubles enough of his own without having to worry about ours- or about the loyalty of his own grand dukes. Besides, we don’t know yet who’s behind it. It could be someone outside their five suspects, just as easily as not.’
‘Do you really think so?’
The Head turned away. ‘I don’t know. I’ve known each of them for years. That’s another reason why I want to stay out of the d’Alemberts’ way; I don’t want my personal feelings to influence the case.’
The girl got up from her chair, walked across the room and began massaging the back of her father’s neck tenderly. ‘if we had even a good suspicion, he’d get a shot of nitrobarb,’ she said. ‘But all we’ve got on paper is a suspicious flow of cash into some places where it shouldn’t be. That’s not enough evidence to convict a cockroach, let alone a grand duke before the High Court of Justice. But how under the sun and moon and eleven circumpolar stars can this glorified gymnasium help solve the puzzle?’
‘I haven’t even the most tenuous idea, my dear and just between us two, I’m as curious about it as you are.’
A ten-story gravity-controlled building in the Mytishchi district of the sprawling urban complex that was modern Moscow had been remodeled from top to bottom. All the work had been done by the high-grav personnel who now occupied the building. The facade; now three stories high with marble statues of Atlas serving as pillars on either side of the immense doors, was topped by a triple-tube brilliant sign that flared its red light into the open air
DANGER -THREE GRAVITIES - DANGER
On each side of those monstrous portals, in small, severely plain obsidian letters on a silver background, a plaque read ducos
The pre-publicity campaign for this health spa had been as successful as it was subtle. For weeks before the opening, the rumor had spread softly through the upper strata of the court that this House of Strength would cater only to the topmost flakes of the upper crust - and that was precisely what it did. Applicants, even from the nobility, were turned down by the scores. Its first clients - and for a week its only clients - were the extremely powerful Count of Moskva, his Countess and their two gangling teenage daughters. Since this display of ultra-snobbishness appealed very strongly to the ultra-snobbishness of the high nobility of the Capital of Empire, ‘ducos’ raised snobbery to heights seldom attained anywhere in history.
After the first week, pressures became very great, and the House of Strength of Body and of Heart ‘relaxed’ its standards the merest bit and admitted two grand dukes and their families neither of whom were suspected of participating in the Banion matter in any way. The fees charged for these personal services were literally astronomical, but none of the customers complained; they were really getting their money’s worth, though they would hardly have guessed that the man working on improving their bodies was actually the best male athlete in the Empire.
The d’Alemberts had decided between them that Yvette should stay pretty much out of sight this time around. The opposition would be on the lookout for a team of Des Plainians; if Jules appeared to be alone, it would allay any suspicions they might have about him. So the distaff member of the pair had once more gone into disguise - one of the more difficult she’d ever done, for it is hard on anyone - particularly a young, attractive person like Yvette - to intentionally make herself less attractive than she really was. Yet that was what she had done. She added lines to her face and padded her cheeks out to make herself appear twenty years older. Her clothes, while chic, were more matronly in fashion and gave her a slightly dowdy appearance. She wore her hair in an unbecoming bun and became Gospozha Henrietta Berger, the middle-aged appointments secretary and assistant to ducos.
One night in the middle of the third week of operations, Jules came out to his sister’s desk after the rest of the staff had gone home. ’How’re you doing, sis?’
‘I’m being bored out of my skull,’ she replied. ‘Of all the deadly situations I’ve ever been in, the worst is being ennuied to death. Give me an army of angry mobsters with blazing blasters, any time; this desk jockeying’ll put me in an early grave. Any luck with the case?’
‘A few bites here and there, but nothing solid. But the more I think about it, the more likely Sector Twenty looks to me.’
‘In that case, let me clue you in on something I’ve been mulling over for a few days. I wasn’t going to mention it until I could thicken it up a bit, but since you brought the subject up, how does this sound? You know that Duchess of Swingleton, the snooty little jamtart who’s supposed to be the daughter of Grand Duchess Olga of Sector Twenty?’
Jules raised an eyebrow. ’Supposed to be?’
‘Well, is then,’ Yvette laughed. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have put it quite that way, but I’ve gotten so used to sneering at nobility these last few weeks that it comes out naturally now - in my own inimitable ladylike fashion, of course.’
‘I wouldn’t put that “quite that way”, either. If it were me on the receiving end of that sneer I’d use my fist on you as a dental drill.’
‘Duchess Tanya certainly would like to, if she dared. I’ve been giving her the royal snoot all along, and she’s burning like a torch. Her mother takes the whole thing in stride, but little Tanya is acting as though our snubbing her were a royal affront.’
‘You and I have both known a lot of spoiled little noble brats who act that way at the drop of a hat.’
‘Perhaps; but the thought keeps crossing my mind that perhaps this girl knows she may be in line to inherit far more than Sector Twenty if the solar wind blows the right way.’
Jules stiffened. ‘You’re implying, then, that she may be the Bastard’s daughter?’
‘I’m implying that we should check her out, since she could be a weak link in the chain.’
‘All right, refresh me on her dossier.’
‘Only child of Grand Duke Nicholas Otamar and Grand Duchess Olga of Sector Twenty, so she stands to inherit a good deal right there; ultra-beautiful; was married at age nineteen to Duke Titos Boros of Swingleton, who was eighty-nine at the time. Suffice it to say that two years later, Duke Titos departed our spiritual plane, leaving the planet Swingleton to his daughter by a previous marriage - and leaving Tanya Boros, nee Otamar, with the title of Dowager Duchess at age twenty-one. That was four years ago, and she’s made no attempt to change her status in the meantime.’
‘And you think she’s taking your insults a little too seriously for a dowager duchess? Perhaps. But if she’s only twenty-five now, wouldn’t that make her a bit young to be the Bastard’s daughter?’
‘Maybe you plan to get senile at an early age, but it doesn’t affect most men. Look at our Emperor, for example. He’s only a year younger than the Bastard would be now, and he’s got a daughter who’s twenty-three.’
‘Point noted and well taken,’ Jules admitted.
‘All I’m saying,’ Yvette elucidated, ‘is that if she is Ban ion’s daughter, she seems to be the perfect way to attack. She has so many soft spots she’d make an ideal target.’
‘Yes, it might be interesting to attack her soft spots.’
‘Wipe that grin off your face, you lecherous brute, or I’ll report you to Vonnie. Duchess Tanya is beautiful, athletic, rich, talented, noble and spoiled rotten. She’s emotionally retarded, too, with the maturity level of a fifteen year old. Her hobby - or perhaps I should say her vocation - is men, and she works hard at it. She’s about as choosy as a bitch in heat, which is an apt description even if I do say so myself. ‘So my thought is this: if we can give her the idea that Gospodin ducos is the guiding force behind the House of Strength I’m positive she’ll redouble her efforts to get you to coach her yourself - personally. You, of course, give in with great reluctance, but instead of bowing down and worshipping her like all the other men do, you act like - and even say that - you wouldn’t be caught dead with her at a catfight, to say nothing of in bed. If I’m right, she could blow up like a bomb and let slip with something she shouldn’t say.’
‘All right,’ Jules said with a smile and a shrug. ‘I just hope Vonnie appreciates all the sacrifices I make for her.’
Three days later, Jules accompanied Yvette to the four-story mansion that served as home to the Dowager Duchess of Swingleton. The large house was staffed by a dozen servants - all except two being lusty young men and was furnished in lavish decadence. Brocade draperies in deep rose shades enhanced the walls, while plush pink carpeting underfoot made walking an absolute pleasure. The furniture was upholstered in wine colored velvet and thickly padded for maximum comfort.
The Duchess Tanya reclined on a divan at the far end of the room. She was a tall girl - at least ten centimeters taller than Jules- and as beautiful as a Grecian statue come to life. She wore a silver lame dress that accentuated every line of her body. A mass of platinum colored hair was arranged high upon a proudly held head. Her face had a look of self-indulgence about it, but there was a gleam of intelligence shining behind those dark blue eyes as she watched Jules enter. A predatory smile tickled the corners of her lips.
After Yvette formally presented him, Jules walked slowly around the divan once, studying the Duchess’s form from every possible angle. Finally he scowled and said, ‘Maybe I can do something with this, but there doesn’t seem to be much of anything there to work with. Peel, girl, and I’ll see.’
‘Peel?’ The girl’s head went even higher, her eyes blazed with cold indignation. ‘Are you talking to me?’ she flared. ‘I’m talking to a mass of fat and a little flabby meat that ought to be muscle but isn’t,’ he replied caustically. ‘Do you expect a master sculptor to make something of a tub of clay without touching it? If you are burdened with modesty, I suppose you could wear a bikini or tights - although how you can imagine that I, ducos, would become sexually aroused over such a slug’s body as yours is completely beyond my comprehension.’
‘Get out!’ Trembling with rage, she pointed at the door. ‘Leave my home at once!’
He gave her his choicest, top-deck sneer. ‘Madame, nothing could possibly please me more. I detest making house calls in this abominably weak field you consider gravity, and was only prevailed upon to do so by my secretary, who assured me that you would make an ideal client.’ He turned to glare at Yvette. ‘I see I shall have to have some words with her upon my return.’ With that, he spun on his heel and walked coldly toward the door.
‘Wait, you! Turn around!’
Jules stopped and slowly turned, making certain that the sneer was still engraved on his features. ‘Yes?’
‘I will remind you that I am the Dowager Duchess of Swingleton, one of the richest planets in Sector Twenty!’
‘And I will remind you, madame, that I am ducos. There are hundreds upon hundreds of duchesses and dowagers, but there is only one ducos. I am unique.’
Jules could see that the fiery young girl was struggling to control her temper and, after a second, that anger had been banked. ‘Wait, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll put on a swimsuit. After all, I do want to find out whether you’re any good or not.’
She left the room for five minutes, but when she came back - dressed in twenty centimeters worth of fabric more than nothing - ducos was even less impressed with her physique than before. ‘Lard,’ he muttered as his talented fingers objectively explored nearly every square centimeter of her body. ‘Flabby, unrendered lard. It will be a great challenge, to be sure, but ducos is equal to the task. I am told you have your own gymnasium within your house; take me to it.’
‘Why, aren’t we going to your place?’
He looked at her in amused and condescending surprise. ‘Are you that stupid? You’d fall flat and could barely get up, because you’d be carrying the weight of two other dowager duchesses as well as your own. The titles alone would be too heavy for you. It’ll take a month of work here before you’ll be able to enter the House of Strength. To your gymnasium, I say. Vite, vite!’
The Duchess reluctantly led Jules and Yvette to her gym, which was as fully equipped as could be expected for an amateur set -up. ‘First,’ Jules said, stripping to his shorts, ‘I shall show you what we accustomed to three Earth gravities can do easily here on Earth.’ He then proceeded to go through a routine of such vigor and violence that the apparatus creaked and groaned, and the very floor of the room shook. In spite of herself, the Duchess applauded when he was done.
‘Now,’ said Jules, acknowledging her applause graciously, ‘I shall show you what a fair Earth gymnast such as perhaps I’ll be able to make out of you- can do,’ and he demonstrated that, as well. Duchess Tanya, who’d thought she kept herself in pretty good condition, was frankly astonished.
‘Now I’ll find out what you can do if anything. Let me see fifty fast push-ups, right now.’ The Duchess tried gamely, but made it only to twenty-seven before her arms gave out and she collapsed onto the mat. Jules scowled over her, a sight that both frightened and enraged her. She swore to herself that she would never give him the occasion to sneer at her again if she could help it.
Jules worked her unmercifully for half an hour, which was about all she could have taken. To her credit, Jules noted that she did not complain once, no matter how harshly he treated her. Finally he said, ‘That’s enough for today, poor thing.’ Then, turning to Yvette, said, ‘Give her a massage in steam, and go deep. After that, the usual.’
‘No,’ the girl said between pants as she recovered her breath from the last exercise. ‘I want you to do it yourself. They say you’re the tops, and I want nothing but the best.’
Jules pretended to consider that. ‘Perhaps that would be best,’ he announced. ‘That way I will be able to tell more exactly how well you are developing. Alors, let us proceed to the steam room.’
The Duchess was careful to have her maidservant present in the steam room to act as chaperone. She needn’t have bothered. Although the serving girl was shocked - or pretended to be - at the idea of a three- quarters naked man working his hands over the body of her completely naked mistress, Jules was the only one in the room who was, apparently, unaffected by the entire process. He was merely an expert masseur working at his profession, nothing more.
This procedure went on daily for about a week. Jules now left Yvette back at the office because, as he said, ‘I think I can get further along with her if you’re not around to inhibit her.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Yvette winked at him, even though she knew Jules considered the lovely Duchess a duty and nothing else. Since the Duchess was actually a strong, healthy, athletic girl, splendidly built and agile both physically and mentally - despite. ducos’ derision- she learned fast and developed fast. But for the first time in her life, she had struck a man and bounced. He seemed disinterested in either her title or her manifest physical charms. It was, to her, an intolerable situation - and a situation that got no better at all as time and their relationship progressed.
Even after more than two weeks he stayed coldly impersonal and more than somewhat contemptuous. He was, and he remained, a master wasting his talents on material entirely unworthy of his skill. He paid no attention whatsoever to any of the little flirtatious ploys she made in his direction.
One day, however, when she had become a pretty fair gymnast and was very proud of her accomplishments, her maidservant disappeared before the massage was to begin. ‘We don’t need her any more, I don’t think,’ she said softly. Lying back on the massage table with her wispy garment draped only loosely over her breasts, she shot him a seductive glance calculated to arouse even a statue to passion. ‘Do we?’
It is an enormous tribute to Jules’ nobler instincts- and to his love for his darling Vonnie - that he was able to conquer the basic animal urges that were coursing through his body at that moment. ‘I don’t, that’s for sure,’ he said with his familiar sneer. That expression had become so maddening to her over the past few weeks that she wanted to bash it back into his skull with a sledgehammer. ‘And if you are trying to seduce me you’re wasting your time. You are a lump of unfinished plasticine that I am trying to mold into something halfway worthwhile. You mean nothing else to me. I’d no more consider intimacy with you than with any other warm mass of poor-grade clay - or ten kopeks’ worth of cat meat, for that matter.’
That did the trick admirably. The Dowager Duchess’s temper blew sky high, and the fire in her eyes could have melted steel. ‘You clod!’ she screamed. ‘You common oaf! You base born peasant! I should have you staked out and flayed alive for treason like that. I could...’She stopped her screaming suddenly and her eyes widened just the tiniest bit. The expression in them was unreadable.
‘Shut up, bitch!’ he snapped back at her, timing his interruption so perfectly that she knew he could not have been paying attention to what she’d been saying. ‘My birth, high or low, has no bearing in this matter. I am ducos. I am trying to mold you into what our Creator intended you to be: His instrument to beget men, not the milksops and flabs currently infesting this sinful planet Earth.’
‘Oh? Don’t tell me you’re a Puritan!’ she exclaimed, very glad indeed to change the subject. Her outburst of anger was almost completely forgotten. ‘I should have known it, though, by all that hair.’
‘An ex-Puritan,’ he corrected her. ‘1 differ from my former colleagues in that I don’t believe that everything pleasant is sinful. But neglect of that Divine instrument known as the human body most certainly is. Lie back and I shall continue the massage. 1 will ignore your display of temper, provided it does not happen again, in the light of the progress you have made to date.’
Work went on, exactly as though nothing had happened. Four days later she graduated into the House of Strength itself, doing as well there as could be expected from a native of a one-gee planet.
And she managed to convince herself, quite easily, that she had not revealed any hint of the secret that had been held silent for sixty-seven years.