Austin confronts Orozgo in his cliffside palace, exposing a 30-year conspiracy: murders, poisonings (like Rusty Winkleman’s), and institutional takeovers—from Berkeley to the Vatican—to enforce "Atoms and void" ideology. He accuses Orozgo of trading immortality with Curtin, a supernatural entity manipulating both worlds through Another Kingdom, while Orozgo denies it but admits vague memories of a shadowy deal. Austin demands immunity in exchange for retrieving the book—held by missing sister Riley—that could disrupt Curtin’s rule over 11 lands, leaving Orozgo desperate as his empire crumbles under supernatural threats and betrayal. [Automatically generated summary]
You're about to hear the second season of my fantasy suspense story, Another Kingdom, performed by Michael Knowles.
I think you're going to love it.
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In our last episode, Austin temporarily eluded Orozgo's thugs by returning to the heart of Curtin's maze in Edimont.
There, at last, he confronted Curtin's dragon and destroyed it, breaking out of the maze.
Moving on, he entered the country of Menaria, where he found an ancient Roman-style city of stone statues, statues that came to life at moonrise and attacked him, forcing him to escape back into the clutches of the assassins, Slick and Moses.
And now, episode nine of Another Kingdom, performed by Michael Knowles.
I turned and stepped through the veil of transition back into Orozco's mansion.
I knew I was only delaying the moment when the Menarian guards washed over me and cut me to pieces.
But at least delaying the moment delayed the moment, if you see what I mean.
Also, it was part of the strange quality of this fantastic other world that I always half-believed each visit there would be my last.
I always harbored a vague hope that once I was back in the real world, I would get some modern medical care and find a cure for this insanity.
And Galeana and Edumond and Menaria and all the 11 lands would become just bad memories, just symptoms of my former madness, a disease I used to have.
And then there was this.
I had no idea how I was going to fend off the bloodlusting charge of so many statue soldiers.
But I did have at least the first glimmer of a notion about what to do next in Oregon.
I had a plan.
Sort of.
I flashed back into the mansion just where I had left it, dodging through the doorway into the short hole with Moses recovering his balance and going for his gun behind me.
Two running steps brought me abreast of the pedestal with the vase on it.
A tall, thick pedestal made of some dark, heavy wood with carved brass inlays on its sides.
I glanced over my shoulder and there was Moses, his gun leveled at me.
He was about to shoot.
I hurled myself behind the pedestal and dropped into a low crouch just as the big thug fired.
His gun roared three times.
I screamed in fear as the hole shook with the deafening blasts.
I don't know where all the bullets went, but one of them must have hit the pedestal because the heavy wooden stand shuddered violently and the pottery vase tilted off the top of it and spilled down through the air to shatter into shards on the floor beside me.
Now this, ducking behind the pedestal, this had actually been the first part of my plan.
But I couldn't remember the rest.
The gunshots had totally scattered my thoughts.
I could not for the life of me think of what I was supposed to do next.
It was something really clever, something like what I'd done in the altar room with the dragon, the long dagger.
For the moment, though, all I could think about was whether I'd been shot.
I was frantically examining my body, searching for blood and wounds.
There were none.
Then it was too late.
Moses charged into view.
His gun was pointed straight at me where I crouched, cowering against the wall.
He could have killed me right then and there, but he didn't.
He just looked down at me and shook his head as if I were a pathetic fool, which I guess I was.
Get on your feet, asshole, he said.
A second later, Slick was there beside him.
He'd come running at the sound of trouble.
He had his own gun drawn in one hand and my backpack dangling from his other.
When he saw me crouched against the wall, surrounded by pottery shards, he bared his teeth in a grin of raw anger.
He tossed the backpack to the floor but held onto his gun.
Stepping forward, he reached down and grabbed the front of my sweatshirt in his fist.
You heard the man.
Get up, punk.
Suddenly, I remembered the rest of my plan.
Furious, Slick hauled me out of my crouch.
And as I went up, I seized hold of a sharp wedge of broken pottery.
I grabbed the back of Slick's head with one hand and jammed the shard into his eye.
That was it.
That was my plan.
Well, originally, I was going to knock the vase off the pedestal myself and then hide the shard until I could use it as a weapon, the way I'd hid the long dagger in the cellar of Horror Mansion.
But then, when Moses started shooting at me, I forgot to knock over the vase.
I forgot everything.
I forgot my own name.
Luckily, the vase had fallen and broken anyway.
So when my brain cleared, when my plan returned to me, I improvised.
I grabbed the shard and used it on the spot.
You wouldn't have thought a tough guy like Slick would scream like he did, that wild, high-pitched, squealing scream like a wounded rabbit.
But the blow had struck him dead on, and the point of the shard had caused his eye to explode in a burst of jelly.
It was ugly to see and must have been even uglier if you were on the receiving end of it.
Anyway, Slick squealed and reeled and dropped his gun and clutched his face with both hands.
And the gun fell onto the hallway runner, and Moses was turning to look at his partner in round-eyed horror.
And I swept Slick's gun up off the floor.
And Moses saw me do it and turned and tightened his finger on the trigger.
And I shot him.
Bang!
Three times, the gun jolting in my fist.
He was a giant of a man, Moses was, a big target.
I didn't get a chance to aim, and I wasn't exactly a sharpshooter anyway, but I hit him eventually.
The first bullet went into the wall behind him, scattering plaster.
The second bullet made his jacket flutter as a black hole appeared in his shoulder.
His hand flew wide and his gun flew out of it.
He staggered back against the wall.
The third bullet hit him smack in the center of the chest.
He looked surprised, and then he looked dead.
He slid down to sit on the floor, staring at me, slack-jawed, empty-eyed.
I was already on the move.
Still gripping the gun, I grabbed my backpack.
Frantic, I ran back toward the door, back toward the second-floor gallery.
All I wanted was to get out of that house.
But the second I stepped across the threshold, I heard shouting from the floor below.
I cursed.
I had forgotten about the other guards down there, still searching for me.
They had heard the gunshots.
They were charging into the foyer, charging up the main stairway to see what was going on.
There was no escape for me in that direction.
I turned quickly, wildly, clutching my backpack, clutching Slick's gun.
I ran for the door down the hall, the one that led to the back stairs that had brought me up here in the first place.
The next moment, I was in the stairwell, racing down.
I reached the door at the bottom.
I didn't bother to try to open it.
I knew it was locked.
I lifted my knee up high and kicked out, hitting the door just below the knob.
The door flew open.
I burst out into the downstairs hall.
I rocketed down the corridor like there was fire shooting out the back of me.
I knew the guards must have heard my breakout.
I knew they'd be running to the gallery rail to try to shoot me down from above.
I had to beat them to the front door.
I got there, seized the knob.
There he is!
I heard someone shout above me.
I pulled the front door open.
The cold air washed over my face.
Then, the gunshot I was expecting.
A sidelight shattered.
They'd missed me.
I plunged out the front door into the night.
Then I was across the drive and into the forest, running wild.
Pines like specters loomed around me.
The forest depths yawned black ahead.
Here and there, the risen moon dodged in and out of view above the treetops.
It made the white bark of quivering aspen glow in the shadows.
At first, I heard the men behind me, shouting, giving chase.
I saw the beams of their flashlights dancing crazily over vines and branches.
But not for long.
A few swift seconds and I was deep, deep in the forest, impossible to trace in all that tangled darkness.
I ran until I tripped on something.
A root, I guess.
I spilled to the earth headlong, jarring my shoulder, bruising my rib, scraping the back of my hand.
Even that didn't stop me.
I leapt to my feet on the instant and, an instant later, I was running again.
There was no way for me to retrace my steps, no way to come out of the forest where I'd entered it.
But I knew my general direction and kept the moon to the right of me.
When I finally flew past the tree line and burst out onto an empty dirt road, I felt pretty certain that I wasn't far from the passage.
I was gasping for breath by then, hacking, sweating, but I still didn't stop.
With my backpack slung over one shoulder now and Slick's gun still gripped in my hand, I hided up the dirt road as fast as I could go.
And yes, I found my car, there where the dirt road ended.
I slid in behind the wheel fast, tossing my pack and the gun onto the passenger seat.
I started the engine and swung the facade around and hit the gas.
I'm not sure how I got away from there or why exactly.
If the bad guys had come after me, if they'd come down the mansion's main drive in their jeeps, they could have blocked the dirt road and stopped me cold, or forced me into a shootout anyway.
But they never showed.
I drove on, unimpeded.
My guess is, they had more trouble on their hands than they could deal with back at the house.
Slick and Moses were both badly wounded, maybe dead.
They needed emergency attention and help.
In fact, after I reached the paved road again, I could hear sirens behind me, and I imagined a line of cop cars and an ambulance heading toward the mansion as I sped away.
And away is where I sped, all right.
I drove and drove and did not stop driving.
The woods went on and on until the road seemed never-ending.
It felt unreal.
Just darkness at the windows, just trees, their silhouettes, just night as if eternal, and solitude and the deep quiet underneath the engine noise.
It came back to me now, how alone I was.
No texts, no email, no internet, no friendly faces.
I couldn't even coax a song out of the radio.
I felt again that great dislocation, the break in the golden chain of communication that binds us to the modern world, that makes us always together, never alone.
It weighed on me, weighed heavily.
I was thrilled just to see a street sign, a sign of life.
I followed the arrow, and soon there was another sign, and another, and I made my way to the freeway, heading south.
The traffic was sparse, but I was glad to see it.
Glad to see there were other cars, other headlights, other faces in the dark.
The world had not yet ended.
I drove.
The moon went down.
The stars grew dim.
The sky brightened.
Dawn.
My gas ran low.
I got off the freeway to fill up.
I found a little diner with a clutch of tractor trailers parked in the lot outside.
I nestled my car among the big rigs, where it wouldn't be easily spotted.
I stuffed my gun into my pack, and as I did, I saw that Slick had dumped my phone back in there.
It didn't mean much to me at that moment, but it would.
I shoved the pack under the passenger seat.
Then I went into the diner and bought a sandwich, bacon on a roll.
I brought the sandwich out to the car, but I was suddenly too exhausted to eat it.
I set it on the seat beside me.
I tilted back the driver's seat.
I closed my eyes.
But I couldn't sleep, not right away.
Images from the shootout kept playing in my mind.
Slick's eye exploding, the gun bucking in my hand, Moses sinking down the wall.
It's one thing to kill a dragon, but another thing to kill a man.
I didn't regret it, but I didn't much like it either.
And what was I going to do now?
I could not go on like this forever.
I could not go on like this another day, in fact, with the cops after me for murder.
With the murderers after me, my parents against me, my brother against me, my sister gone, hiding, terrified, in danger.
No friends I could reach.
No way to clear myself in a world Orozgo seemed to own.
No way to stay alive beyond a day or two.
Despair and die, Slick had advised me.
I despaired and I slept.
I woke up slowly, my body aching, my eyes glued shut with sleep.
When I managed to pry my eyelids open, I saw it was bright day.
The sunlight splashed on the windshield, blinding.
I raised my arm to shield myself from the glare.
I straightened in my seat.
I remembered where I was.
I slumped.
I sighed.
I sat in the car and ate my cold bacon sandwich, chewing morosely, tasting nothing.
Slowly, though, as I ate, my sense of my situation began to coalesce.
Clues started coming together in my brain.
Answers to my questions began to suggest themselves.
By the time I swallowed the final bit of bacon, I had an idea.
I wrestled my backpack out from under the seat beside me.
I unzipped it and rooted inside until I found the phone.
I looked in the call history, and sure enough, there it was, the number Slick had dialed when we were in the banquet hall.
I pressed the redial button and held the phone to my ear.
I listened to it ringing once, twice, a third time.
My stomach fluttered.
Then, a click and a voice.
That voice I had never forgotten, slick and smooth and ancient as a snake's, with a vague and vaguely romantic accent.
Mr. Lively, he said.
His tone was flat and murderous, and I answered him.
Call off your dogs, Orozgo.
We need to talk.
At the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea stood a palace of stone and glass.
Magnificent.
It spread across my windshield as my car emerged from the trees.
I approached it over a long and level drive.
To the left and right of me stretched a green and treeless meadow.
You could trace the ocean wind as it passed over its grasses.
It seemed like the moving hand of an invisible god.
The meadow ended suddenly at an arching edge of whitish stone.
Beyond that was the water, still and calm and dark under a drifting morning mist.
I had prepared for this encounter as well as I could.
I had driven all day from Oregon to Santa Barbara and then spent the next day in a small motel on a side road just outside of town.
Once again, I had sat at the motel's public computer.
I had worked through searches until I found what I needed to know.
I had gone into the city and bought some fresh clothes on State Street, tan slacks, gray polo shirt, and blue sports jacket.
I didn't want to take this meeting dressed like a kid in a sweatshirt and jeans.
Gate and Guard00:03:09
The whole time I was preparing, I was watchful, but more or less relaxed.
I knew there was a chance Orozgo's thugs would come after me, or the police would come after me, or Orozgo's thugs who were the police, or vice versa.
But I didn't think they would.
The old billionaire and I had made a truce on the phone, and I believed he wanted this meeting, wanted to hear what I had to say.
That night when I watched the TV news, there was no mention of me, no mention of the melee in Oregon or of Billiard Ball, none of it.
I expected as much.
Finally, the next morning, I set out for the address he'd given me.
I'm pretty sure I was followed during the entire drive.
The same three cars kept trading places in my rearview mirror.
One of them was a California Highway Patrol Cruiser.
They kept their distance, but they never let me out of their sight.
I tried not to let it bother me.
We all knew where I was heading anyway.
I got off the freeway at the community of horse farms and estates known as Hope Ranch.
I wound down a long country road under a canopy of autumn oaks.
At the end of the road, I turned up a hill and climbed through residential streets until I reached a manicured hedgerow that didn't quite hide the stone wall behind it.
There was a gate there and a gatehouse.
Two armed guards stepped from the little cabin and a third stayed inside, watching through the big window.
One guard approached my car and asked me to step out.
He was smiling in that friendly way, friendly fascist smile in California.
I guess the sunshine makes our fascists mellow.
When I was standing beside the car, he patted me down, looking for a weapon.
The other guard climbed into the passat and searched in the glove compartment and beneath the seats, front and back.
Then he popped the trunk and searched in there.
I had left Slick's gun in my backpack in the motel, so there was nothing to find.
At last, the first guard nodded to his pal in the guardhouse.
The gate swung open, its motor grinding.
I drove onto the property through a stand of trees, then out into the meadow.
I reached the house and parked next to the other cars already sitting at the edge of an enormous cul-de-sac under a low concrete balustrade.
Riley's dented little passat looked ridiculous between a classic Rolls and a brand new Tesla.
There was a Lamborghini nearby, too.
It looked like an orange rocket ship.
The half acre in front of the house was elegant and beautiful, a walking maze of low bushes with a fountain burbling at the center, vines with red and purple flowers climbing over the surrounding balustrades, a graceful front path to a graceful front stairway flanked by marble cherubim.
This was the third of Orozgo's mind-bogglingly elaborate estates I had been to, if you counted the mansion in the woods and the one at the top of the Beverly Hills.
I wondered how many he had, in how many cities, in how many countries all told.
And while I'm describing the landscape, I guess I should mention the gunmen.
They decorated the place like lawn gnomes, if your lawn gnomes happened to dress in black and wear mirrored sunglasses and jackets that bulged at the armpit where they carried their gnomish semi-automatics.
Confidence Shattered00:15:23
Mirrored glasses or no, I could feel their watchful eyes following every step of my approach.
I walked up the path to the house.
It was massive.
Two stories, but as long as several football fields, gabled roofs linked to circular bays and walls of enormous windows everywhere.
Below the cliffs, the sea stretched out into the mist.
I could smell the salt water on the dancing breeze.
The front door opened as I came near.
A butler stood at attention on the threshold.
I assumed he was a butler.
Half butler, half hooligan, whatever.
He was clearly packing heat like all the others.
He led me through wood-paneled rooms, past a marble fireplace carved with crests, and finally through an all-glass door and outside again to the red slate patio in back.
The patio sat on the very edge of the cliff, enclosed by another one of those graceful stone balustrades.
The sea was all around it so that it seemed to be floating in mid-air.
And there he was, my old pal, Serge Orozgo, the man who employed my mom and dad and brother and who had been trying to murder me for days.
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Seated at the head of the glass breakfast table, he had the misty ocean stretched out behind him like a backdrop.
It was only a little while since I'd seen him last, but it seemed like forever.
Passing back and forth between the real world and fantasyland had messed with my sense of time.
He was dressed like a tycoon villain in a spy movie, wearing a classic smoking jacket, ruby red with a black collar, a white shirt underneath, open at his waddled neck.
His square head was topped with silver hair.
His face, the nearly transparent skin on his weirdly unwrinkled cheeks, the unnaturally wide stare of his pale blue eyes, was the face of a baby perpetually startled at the fallen state of the world.
He was using a tiny fork to spear berries out of a hollowed melon.
He didn't look up when I stepped out of the house, just went on eating.
Sit down, Austin, he said.
It was the tone a lordly father would use with a wastral son.
I sat down in the filigreed metal chair across from him.
The butler gunman hovered beside me, hands clasped before him.
Can I offer you something? Orozgo said, still eating berries, still not looking at me.
Coffee, I told him.
The butler shimmered away like Jeeves if Jeeves was strapped with a Glock.
Then we sat there in silence, Serge Arazgo and I.
No sound between us but the wind off the water and the hiss of distant waves.
He went on picking out berries with his melon fork, examining them, popping them into his mouth, chewing them, as if chewing them were the most fascinating thing a fellow could do.
More fascinating, certainly, than conversing with me.
I guess this treatment was supposed to make me nervous.
No need.
I was nervous already.
There were no illusions between us now.
I knew who he was and he knew I knew.
His gunmen were all over the place.
He could snap his fingers and they'd snap my neck.
I only had one chance to get this conversation right.
That said, there was something different about him, different from the last time we met.
It was subtle, but I could see it in those weirdly infantile, weirdly reptilian eyes.
It was revealed in the slight tremor of his forkhand, and even in this whole elaborate performance of his, ignoring me and so on.
Was he afraid?
Is that what it was?
It felt like that.
But afraid of what?
Of me?
Seemed unlikely.
Of something, though.
Last time we dined together, he had been confident.
Looney, but confident, as you'd expect a rich and powerful madman to be.
But now, something had taken the confidence out of him.
That was how it looked to me, anyway.
I waited for him to start the conversation.
Finally, he set the melon fork on the melon plate beside the melon.
He slouched back in his chair, make-believe regal, his hands folded on his lap.
He went on chewing the berry in his mouth until I wanted to shout at him to stop all the damn berry chewing and get down to business.
Then he did.
You've killed three of my men, Austin, he scolded me sternly.
Have I?
I've lost count.
One of them, Moses, was a police detective, and his partner, Detective Jameson, has lost an eye.
Sorry, I said.
Are you?
No.
And yet you come to me for protection.
I come to you to make a deal.
You do want my protection, though, don't you?
Well, you could stop trying to murder me.
That would help.
Perhaps, but there'd still be legal consequences for you.
I'm not all-powerful, you know.
You're powerful enough.
I can't override the law.
Oh, sure you can.
Well, he conceded the point with a shrug.
Still, I can't stop Detective Jameson if he wants revenge.
An eye for an eye, and all that.
That is too bad, I said coolly, because you don't want me dead, Orozgo.
I'm the only one who can help you now.
So you said on the phone.
So I did.
Man, I sounded suave and confident, didn't I?
Even to me, who knew I was neither.
But I figured he could see the fear in my eyes same as I saw it in his.
We were each playing a role at this point.
I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled out a sheet of motel stationery, folded in half.
I unfolded it and held it out to him.
He hesitated, watching the paper fluttering and crackling in the breeze between us.
He seemed to think it was beneath him to do the work of reaching for it.
But I waited him out and he finally did reach.
I watched him carefully as he examined the page.
The results were very satisfying, very dramatic.
I won't say he went pale because he was already white as a snake's belly, but an expression of purest terror came into his surprised baby eyes.
He tried to hide it, but his lips trembled and got wet at the corners.
I pressed my advantage.
That's him, isn't it? I said.
He didn't answer.
He handed the paper back to me.
His hand trembled like his lips.
I took the page and glanced at it myself.
I wasn't a great artist, but I could draw a likeness all right, especially a likeness that had been burned into my memory like this one.
The raisin face with its beady, gleaming eyes, the little tuft of gray hair on his head, the tuft of gray beard on his chin.
It was a good drawing of the wizard Curtain.
This is your guy, right?
The cowled guy who came to you in your dacha all those years ago, after you'd pillaged your billions from what used to be the Soviet Union.
When Orozgo answered me now, there was no pretense.
His voice trembled like his hands and his lips.
He spoke to me with what seemed a new sincerity.
And sure, why not?
I was the one person on earth who shared his secret, who believed him and understood.
I thought he was a dream, he said in a soft tone of amazement, so soft the sea breeze nearly carried the words away.
I thought the whole thing must have been a dream.
Even now, when he started coming back to me, his shape, his shadow, in the holes at night, in the mirror behind me, I thought.
He laced his fingers on his belly to keep them still.
They were shaking so badly it took him two tries to get them laced.
I think he's like that here, I said, slipping the page back into my jacket.
In this realm, I mean.
He's a mind thing, like a dream, like a phantom.
Even in photographs, he comes and goes.
It's different there, in the other place.
The other place, he said cautiously.
Galiana, Edumund, the places in the book, another kingdom.
For a moment I thought he was going to pretend he didn't understand me.
But then he said, You've been there.
You've seen him?
I nodded.
I've seen him, clearly as I see you.
His name is Curtin.
Curtain.
He seemed to roll the word around in his mind to see if it fit.
And is he?
He didn't finish.
I thought to myself, is he what?
Horrific?
A demon?
The devil himself?
I flashed on the mansion in the Edimond woods, the dragon in the mansion, the horrible, bloody end of that endless dinner there.
He's kind of like you, Serge, I said brutally.
He works on people's minds to get control of them.
I know, he said softly.
He's powerful like you too.
But also like you, he's not all powerful.
He can be beaten.
Can he?
Yes.
By you?
No, but I can help.
There, you mean, in this other kingdom.
Yes.
But what happens there happens here.
I've got the scars to prove it.
Orozgo didn't answer.
He fidgeted with his hands.
He licked his lips.
I leaned forward, toward him, resting my forearms on the glass tabletop.
What was your original deal with him? I asked.
He offered you what?
Fame, power, the chance to brand an era with your name.
The Orozgo age.
It's so long ago, he muttered, his chin sunk on his chest.
Like a dream.
I can't remember.
Oh, sure you can.
So all this time you got to shape the world, run the world in some quarters.
And what did he get?
What did you offer him?
This was really getting to him now.
He was truly agitated.
He lifted a quivering hand to his forehead, massaged the uncannily smooth flesh there.
Oh, I don't know.
I don't know.
Nothing was ever mentioned clearly.
Nothing was spoken aloud.
Like I said, a dream.
Oh, it was no dream, Orozgo.
You promised him something in return for this immortality of yours.
When I said that word, immortality, his hand fell.
His eyes suddenly flashed up at me.
I said, Oh, wait.
It wasn't immortality, was it?
Not real immortality.
Is that what you're afraid of? I asked him.
Dying?
No, no, no, he murmured, but I wasn't convinced.
We all die, Orozgo.
I know that, he said irritably.
So what the hell did you offer him?
Your soul?
That made him even more irritable.
He grimaced and waved his hand.
Don't be ridiculous.
There's no such thing as a soul.
If I cut you open, would a soul spring out of you?
No.
Just guts and blood.
Atoms and void, that's all.
Yeah, I'd heard this routine already in the Times article.
And as I say, I wasn't convinced.
I leaned back in my chair.
But he'll take the book instead, is that it?
Bring him the book and you're squared away.
Otherwise, the original deal stands.
Is that it?
He made exactly the same gesture as before, a grimace, an irritable wave, as if to erase my words from the air between us.
I told you, I'm not even sure he's real.
In fact, I don't believe him.
Just shadows in the dark.
An image in the mirror.
This persistent urging in my mind.
It's some delusion of old age, that's all.
No.
I remembered the photo in the Times, the vanishing image in the window of the house, there and gone.
He's real, all right.
And he wants the book.
He wants another kingdom.
It's the portal between his world and ours.
If he can get his hands on it, he can control them both.
Ah, he said.
But if I get it first.
Well then, who knows?
Just the little of it I've already read gave me the power to flash back and forth between one place and the other.
If I could read the whole thing, what could I do then?
Control my passage?
Do magic?
Summon the Emperor Anastasius, alert his armies, restore Ilinda to her throne?
And isn't that what Curtin's afraid of?
Isn't that why he wants you to stop me?
Why he wants you to bring him the book?
What he loses there, he loses here as well.
I watched him as I spoke.
He averted his eyes guiltily.
He knew something, or thought he did.
But before he could answer me, his faithful butler-slash-assassin came in with the silver coffee service.
Orozgo and I both retreated into the corners of our minds while Killer Jeeves set my china cup before me and poured.
It gave me a chance to consider how insane this conversation was.
Two lunatics arguing over their delusions.
Milk and sugar, said the butler.
Black, I said.
Out he shimmered.
I stared at Orozgo.
Orozgo stared down at the patio slates.
I've had my people look into it, he said finally.
There are ideas out there, theories, on the dark web.
You know this sort of thing.
Very complex, very deep conjecture.
It begins with the very origins of life.
Even before the advent of DNA, the very process of replication that defines life involves the creation of a symbolic representation of the organism.
You see what that means, yes?
Life itself is metaphor.
A link between matter and meaning.
Every story, from King Lear to Hey Diddle Diddle, is a bridge between those two.
Every one of them rearranges the human brain to make that connection on a quantum level, channeling uncertainty out of the random and into, and so on.
You know that scene in horror and science fiction movies where someone explains the completely ridiculous setup in pseudoscientific terms that the screenwriter plucked out of a Wikipedia search?
And you eat your popcorn thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, just get to the mayhem, would you?
Well, this was that scene.
Orozgo started talking in that way billionaires do, where they don't give a monkey's turd about what you have to say because they're the billionaire and you're not.
And he just went on and on, not to mention on, about multiple universes and quantum mechanics and how just the right story could arrange the subatomic particles in just the right brain in just the right way to make the mind capable of passage from one of an infinite number of realities into another.
On and on.
I couldn't repeat it now if I tried, until finally I just lost my patience.
Old Evil Man's Fear00:02:35
I slapped the glass table with my palm.
I said, all right, enough, Orozgo.
Now let me tell you what I know, okay?
My deep conjecture.
Startled, he stopped.
He stared.
Who the hell interrupts a man with billions of dollars?
Me, that's who.
What I know is that you're an old and evil man.
You're scared of dying, and I don't blame you.
If there's anything, anything at all, even vaguely resembling a god at the helm of this blood-soaked universe, you are well and truly screwed through all the generations and beyond.
I sneered and shook my head at him.
Rusty Winkleman.
Did it begin with him?
The old chairman of my father's department at Berkeley, my poor old Uncle Rusty.
Was it my dad who poisoned him?
No, my mom, I'll bet.
Uncle Rusty always loved my mom.
She could have talked him into drinking cyanide just to please her.
My father then pretended to discover the body.
Yeah, that sounds like the way they'd do it.
Then my dad came home and told mom it had all worked out just the way they planned it.
And that was what my sister heard when she was crawling around in the walls.
That's why they terrorized her to keep her silent.
And then, lo and behold, my father took over the psychology department and hand-appointed the next chairman.
That's why you put his name on the wall at the 730 Club.
And he was just one of hundreds, wasn't he?
Orozgo sank back in his chair.
He frowned at me, a deep, angry frown.
All that money he had, everyone else kissed his ass and called it ice cream.
He hated being forced to sit here and listen to the truth about himself as if he were some ordinary man.
I sipped my coffee from the china cup, breathed out of it.
Ah, I went on.
That's who those people are, right?
The names on the wall in the banquet room of the 730 house, every one of them, everyone I could remember, everyone I could check, everyone replaced a powerful man, a man who died or who got embroiled in a scandal or a man who just suddenly retired young for no apparent reason.
Heads of departments at prestigious universities, heads of TV networks and news sites, the editor of the New York Times, the guy who hired Charles Head to write that puff piece about you.
The Pope in freaking Rome for all I know.
At hundreds of places all over the country and in Europe too, you murdered the person in charge or blackmailed him or destroyed him with a scandal, and then you installed your own guy, someone dedicated to spreading the gospel of Orozgo.
Atoms and void.
Orozgo's Reign00:08:31
No human rights, no freedom, just Orozgo calling the shots from on high.
Orozgo and his scholars teaching his ideas and writing books about them.
Orozgo and his journalists reporting the news from Orozgo's point of view.
Orozgo and his politicians turning his policies into law.
Orozgo and his movie studios and streaming services and his social media platforms making Orozgo propaganda for the masses.
All the world's Orozgo, and we're just living in it, right?
It's brilliant.
You don't even have to hide the fact you're taking things over.
Because who would oppose you?
The government?
The news outlets?
The academy?
Hollywood?
They're all you.
They're all your guys or trained by your guys or hired by them.
Because you killed or ruined everyone who might have stood in your way, you miserable toad.
30 years, 30 years you've been at it, filling the big positions with Orozgo mind slaves like my mom and dad, my brother.
I shook my head.
Man, oh man, I would have you arrested if you didn't own the police.
We faced each other across the breakfast table.
He had gotten control of himself now, some control.
He'd quieted his trembling, at least.
He lifted himself up in his seat and regarded me as if from a height, doing the lordly father over the prodigal son again.
What is it you want, Austin? He said.
I set down my coffee cup.
It rattled on the saucer, revealing my own unsteady hand.
All the same, I stared right back at him, my teeth bared, my fury plain.
I want my life back, you son of a bitch.
For a moment, he didn't react at all.
Then he inclined his chin, just slightly.
I thought I saw a hint of a sour smile touch the corner of his damp, nervous lips.
Of course.
This was familiar ground to him, a game he knew how to play.
Someone wanted something from him.
Someone was ready to make a deal.
Go on, he said, his tone more certain than it was before.
I want your thugs to stop trying to kill me.
I want your cops to stop trying to arrest me.
I want your newsmen to stop putting my picture on the damn internet.
I want the word to go out that I've been cleared of all charges.
My sister, too.
Riley.
I want her left alone.
He gave a huffy little snort.
His baby blue eyes gleamed.
And what do I get?
What do you have to offer me?
The way he said the word you, I could tell he meant a worm like you.
In answer, I drew myself up in my chair, trying to look as little like a worm as possible.
You get the whole world, Orozgo.
Isn't that what you want?
You give me my life, and you get the whole world.
You want a Roscoe government run by Orozgo experts, spouting Orozgo ideas, reported by Orozgo journalists and turned into Orozgo movies starring guys playing Orozgo?
It's done.
It's yours, every bit of it.
The whole world.
Take it.
It's no good to me.
As far as I'm concerned, you and the world deserve each other.
He gave a soft, miserable laugh at that, lifted his chest and shoulders in a shrug.
I don't need you to get that.
I almost have it now.
Almost, but not quite.
and time is running out.
Any minute now, a big hook will come and yank you off the stage of life and then whatever was left of his miserable laugh faded miserably into a miserable silence.
That's right, I said.
Curtain.
The curtain call.
The final curtain.
He's no dream, Serge.
Whatever deal you made with him, he will collect, believe me.
His power is in the mind, and when that's all that's left of you, stop, stop, stop.
He spat the words like venom, baby blue eyes full of terror.
This is all nonsense.
Nonsense.
I sat back slowly in my chair.
I did my best to simper at him.
I said, kill me then.
If it's nonsense, kill me.
No answer.
Silence.
The sounds of the wind and the sea.
Our eyes met across the table.
He lifted an unsteady hand to his mouth and wiped the spittle from the edges of it.
He took a long breath.
What can you do about it? He asked.
I can defeat him, I said, or help to defeat him.
I'm the only one who can.
God alone knows why, but I'm the one Queen Elinda chose to do the job.
Like you said, the right mind and the right story.
I could see Orozgo considering what I said.
I drove the point home.
That's why Curtin wants the book, right?
To stop me.
To give him the power I'm supposed to have.
If he gets it, do you really think he'll keep his word and let you off the hook?
But if I get the book, if I do what I'm called to do, if I stop him from taking over the 11 lands, he's done.
And you're free.
So there it was, the whole bargain laid out, the deal on the table.
I had said what I had come to say.
Now the decision was his to make.
He sat there thinking it over.
And I sat there thinking, this is the single craziest conversation anyone has ever had.
Why should I trust you?
Orozgo asked me finally.
You said you could get me the book before.
You lied.
I lied so you wouldn't kill me.
Now I'm telling the truth for the same reason.
Our interests are aligned.
I have to beat Curtin to fulfill my quest, and you want him beaten so he doesn't drag you down to hell where you belong.
It's a clear choice, Serge.
You give me my life back and you get the world.
Otherwise, you die and Curtin takes your soul.
Once again, silence.
We sat there face to face, and I felt the sheer googly-eyed nuttiness of our conversation enveloping us both.
It occurred to me that only one of two things could be true right then.
Either we were a pair of maniacs raving at each other like drunken schizophrenics in a hobo camp, or we were bargaining over every single thing that really mattered.
It seemed a long, long time before Orozgo said, I need some time to consider your offer.
How long? I asked.
Until you reach your car, he said.
If I haven't had you killed by then, my answer is yes.
I laughed out loud.
I meant it to seem carefree and debonair, but it sounded a lot more like hysteria, even to me.
My chair scraped on the slate as I pushed back from the table.
Tell mom and dad that my last words were, thanks for the coffee.
I started walking toward the house.
My breath was suddenly short.
My pulse was suddenly hammering in my head.
Everything felt on the fritz inside me, short-circuited, electric, jumbled up.
It was going to be a long walk back across the estate, wondering at every step whether I would reach my car or be dispatched into the netherworld by an Orozgo bullet.
I crossed the patio.
I reached the house.
The butler gunman opened the door for me from within.
And behind me, Orozgo said, What about the book?
I paused.
I looked back at him.
Another kingdom.
How will you find it?
You don't even know where it is.
Sure, I do.
My sister has it.
But she's vanished.
Why do you think you're going to find her when all my people have failed?
I gave what I hoped was a devil-may care smirk.
Because I already know where she is, I said.
And that, I figured, was my cool exit line.
So with my best cool exit line wink of the eye, I turned to the house again and walked right through the open door back into the marble throne room of Menaria, where a horde of screaming centurions was charging toward me.
Spears lowered, swords raised.
Next week, the season finale of Another Kingdom.
Season Finale Directed00:00:53
This has been Another Kingdom by Andrew Clavin, performed by Michael Knowles.
This episode, directed and produced by Jonathan Hay, produced by Mathis Glover.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Associate Producer, Austin Stevens.
Edited by Jim Nicol.
Sound design and mix by Dylan Case.
Audio recorded by Mike Cormina.
Music composed by Adrian Seely.
Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Jessua Alvera.
DIT by Scott Key.
And our production assistant is Colton Haas.
Visual Supervisor, Jake Jackson.
Lead Illustrator, Rebecca Shapiro.
Illustrations by Anthony Clark.
Animations by John Dretzka.
Cole Holloway, Alvin Tyner, and Yi-Han Su.
Another Kingdom is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.