Chapter 12 ~ In the Spider’s Lair
Volume 4, Reign of the War Queen
~ 1 ~ It was like making a direct telephone call to the Friend.
Two months before that night in Mickie’s, Captain Marge Hemming had stopped in her New York office, on the way to her new assignment at the Coastal Air Base. There she had learned that Cherokee had, after learning about them from her, stolen five atomic bombs from the Soviets.
Were the atomic bombs part of a plan by the Friend? Although Cherokee had not thought so, Marge had wanted to know, in order to determine how much freedom they had in selling the bombs, and maybe in demonstrating their authenticity.
Sitting alone at her desk, Marge had begun the process of communicating personally with the god: She had removed, and then immediately replaced, the bracelet which had been given to her by Thersa ages ago. At once, she had been in contact with the Friend! Lacking the bracelet technique, she would have had to wait for weeks or months for the Friend to speak to her.
Marge had planned to begin her communication with no mention of the bombs, for it was never wise to ask questions directly of the Friend. Besides, she had wanted to know: Was Thersa’s rejuvenation treatment one of his schemes? Thersa had said that it was not, that no one had ever reversed in age. She had told Marge that the Elixir maintains a person at the age at which he begins taking the Elixir in the Friend’s service. Yet Marge had been experiencing the return of youthfulness to her own body.
Do you know, my old Friend, that I have found my Hemming family yet making the poison by which Ottilie Krüger died? And they have kept the vial from which came Dwight Hemming’s fatal dose. Out of curiosity, I opened the vial and smelled its contents—a thing which is not possible for you, old Friend. The result was astounding! I was inflamed by a bodily passion for you, who have no body! Surely, for the space of several moments, I would have fought my way through any impediment to get to you. Following that, I experimented by exposing another person to the poison. The subject of my experiment was Minnie Hemming, whom I have recently brought into our Circle.
“This is interesting. Please continue."
Minnie’s response was like mine; she found the perfume amorously delicious. Minnie displayed no desire to seek you personally, of course, because she is yet ignorant of your existence. Rather, she accused me, in a violent manner, of hiding her 'Celestial Lover’. Might the Clan be able to use the perfume against us in some way, if they learned about its potency? Next, I tested the perfume on some ordinary people, all of whom displayed no response other than a strong aversion to its “stink”. Then I tested the poison’s scent on Minnie’s son, Eugene Hemming, to whom I had earlier given, without his knowledge, a drop of the Elixir. His response was a sudden lust for me! He was beside himself! I let him have me, and he was quite fresh enough for my pleasure. Well, you are not interested in these details, but you may find interest in the fact that he persisted in calling me his "Cosmic Bitch.”
“In fact, it is of interest to me. How is the perfume made? Who knows how to make it?"
My Friend, the perfume is produced by the breakdown of Dwight Hemming's poison through long exposure to the air. Georg is able to produce only minute quantities of the poison, but it is enough to provide me with a fresh vial of it for any chance need to poison someone. Although the first component of the Separator has the capacity to make gallons of poison—or perfume—Georg has been unable to make the Separator operational again. He adamantly insists that a way exists to do it, because the Separator has worked once. He says that he will yet find that trick of chemistry which has died with Ellie Herder. Georg has told me, also, that the poison is an organic compound of plutonium isotopes—but that fact is known to you.
“Naturally I know it, for I am essential to that element. Do not speak of the perfume to our dear Dr. Kane; it will be a pleasant surprise to him, at the right moment.”
The Friend often set Marge and the other Overlords all to work on the same project, each without the others’ knowledge. Such had been the case recently when agents who had been sent, each independently of the others, by Mortimer Kane and Marge Hemming, had successfully infiltrated the Kremlin. Although that project had been a failure, neither she nor Kane had been blamed.
Marge had planned to transition, while they were speaking of chemicals and the Elixir, to the subject of Thersa’s rejuvenation elixir. But then she had heard the Friend saying, “You say that your chemists cannot make the Separator operational—but how might you, yourself, do it, Marge?"
To her dismay, Marge had realized that she had forgotten the Separator’s possible interest to the Friend. She had been chilled, knowing the position in which she was, now that the Friend had seen a solution which he, himself, was unable to implement. If she were unable to discover the solution and implement it for him, he might be finished with her.
Thousands of years earlier, Thersa had given to Bauda (currently Marge) the bracelet Calling Beacon Device. Because the Device allowed the Friend to find its wearer in order to converse, Bauda had worn it always, in order to be available to him. “Let the others hide!” she had thought, but she had learned from Thersa the technique of suspending a conversation with the Friend by removing the bracelet, then later slipping it on to pick up the conversation with him exactly where she had left it. "How long, during a conversation, may I leave off the bracelet?" she had asked Thersa.
"Perhaps for a few days.”
So, to give herself time to think, Marge had quickly removed the bracelet. The Separator? She had recalled the report from her henchman Witteric, who had assisted Georg in stealing the Separator from the Steinmetz, saying that Georg claimed not to have stolen the Separator from the German government, for it belonged, in fact, to him. Marge, being a consummate thief, had felt that Georg was merely dissembling, as she would have done, about the Separator’s ownership.
Pleased to have so valuable a weapons-making Device fall easily into her custody, Marge had arranged for the Device’s relocation to a warehouse in Havana. Recently, she had ordered Georg to have the Separator moved from Havana to her section of the new Keep in California, and to get it into operation. The Separator had sat silently in the keep, Georg’s efforts having failed to make it operable.
Wondering why the Friend had implied that the problem was not a matter of chemistry, Marge had been thinking that the problem must have something to do with Georg's insistence that he owned the Separator. But that was absurd. …Wasn’t it?
Marge had needed more information. Leaving her own office, she had walked to the dark office in which lurked a certain one of her minions. This creature, who was the memory of all of Marge’s arms dealing operations, from their earliest days, had flashed her cold insect-like stare at the opening door. Seeing Bauda there, she had immediately turned her gaze downward.
“Sister Ermenberga,” Marge had asked her, “was any odd circumstance involved in our first use of Aegean Shipping and Transit—for transporting the Separator to Havana?”
Ermenberga had thought for a moment. Then, speaking down at the table, she had replied, “There was one oddity, Sister Bauda. Aegean Shipping and Transit did not charge us the going rate for first class contraband weapons.”
Marge had telephoned Basil, the shipping firm’s owner.
”Basil, this is Lady Whitaker.”
“What? Are you not dead, my lady?”
“Of course not. How could I continue to make use of your services if I were dead. The truth is that I did not die with my husband in the accident. My countrymen were closing in on me.”
“Well, at least Harold’s body was recovered. I had wondered about yours not having been found…”
“He was not so a good yachtsman as he had imagined. Hearing that he had gone down, I quickly arranged my affairs to create the appearance of having drowned with him. I’ve moved to America and, under the name of Marge Hemming, a born citizen of the United States, I’ve inherited my own Chemical company.”
“As Miss Hemming, I presume?”
“Yes, Basil.”
“Miss Hemming, you do sound bright and youthful, as becomes an heiress.”
“Thank you, Basil. My secrets are your secrets. Today, I need to ask you a question about that old shipment which was my first use of your services.”
“The mysterious Separator. Yes, I remember those days well. Shipping was an honest adventure then.”
“Yes. The Separator for Dr. Georg Kiefer: Why did you not charge your high-risk rate?”
“Georg provided me with documentary proof of his ownership, which my people determined to be valid. The Separator was a documented part of a private research venture, and you had prepaid the bill, so I presumed it to be a legitimate commercial venture of Hemming Chemical which you desired to be expedited.”
“Thank you, Basil. It is a legitimate research project, which only now is coming into its own. I do owe you a favor.”
Next, Marge had contacted Georg and had learned more from him. She had made him show to her the documentation by which Basil had been persuaded of his ownership. She had smiled upon seeing among the small-print terms and conditions at the end of the document, a section inscribed in Old Goth, which she understood perfectly. Basil had explained to her that this standard part of an old document form was written in a language now extinct and unreadable.
