CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: LEOTARD ANGELS

The clones in black leotards aren't necessarily what they seem to be....

Griselda couldn't help sniggering.

The whole idea of the fresh-faced young police officer arresting the hoary old professor was the sort of thing that would make anyone see the funny side of life, and snigger.

“What you laughing at?” growled Professor Stroggleoff. “What's so funny, you silly young tart? I'll soon sort this impetuous copper out, see if I don't! Of all the cheek, thinking he can put his gauntlet on my shoulder!”

And he stood as tall as a man of his restricted dimensions could and clapped his hands above his head like a ballet dancer about to do a pirouette. The sound was the kind of snapping noise you might imagine a gigantic electric spark making as it whizzed at the speed of light between two terminals, and it was followed for a few moments by an unnatural silence which was, itself, soon broken by a pattering noise from outside the room.

“Now what's he up to?” growled the constable, frustrated and still wearily aware that he was badly in need of sleep.

“That sounds like the patter of tiny feet,” observed Lucifer.

“I can guess who it is,” whispered Griselda. “You are an evil man, Stroggleoff,” she added. “I'll tell you one thing for free: you'll never be Pope. Oh, I know you have to be a selfish, deluded kind of crook to become any kind of pontiff, but you take the biscuit when it comes to pure, unadulterated evil!”

“How dared...” began the professor. But he was interrupted by the door to his office flying open and four young women resplendent in black leotards that they were still hitching into decency barging in.

“What the....” whispered Lockemup.

“Ah, I thought so,” hissed Griselda. “Your clones! The young ladies you have grown in your laboratory to be clones of....” here her voice petered out when she realised she had no idea who they were to be clones of.

“One of them was going to be you!” snapped the professor. “I was going to empty the essence of you into one of these sweet lovelies and kill you, you interfering old b***h! Nobody would have found out because you'd still be here in everything but your original flesh! And you'd be completely under my command like these lovely young creatures are! Now, I suppose, I'd better put a bubbling jar Anne Boleyn into one of them and kill the original, because she's too old and ugly to be use to man nor beast - nor me in bed! And it'll be perfectly all right if I do because they are all her physical clones!”

“So that's what your secret of longevity is,” murmured Griselda. “It's not immortality or anything like it, is it? What you do is trap the essence of a person in a bottle of vodka and then feed it to the empty body you've cloned from … from ...from something!”

“From Anne Boleyn,” sneered Stroggleoff. “I took her DNA way back when silly King Henry brought her here, and every time she's grown older and more disgusting than she usually is I make her drink a special tincture...”

“And then it would be off to Targon Woods like it's been off to Targon Woods twice before,” murmured Griselda. “A neat enough solution as long as nobody sees that sad little grave and adds one and one together.”

“She'd still be alive once one of her clones got up to speed with the essence of Anne Boleyn,” sneered the Professor. “Anyone coming looking for her would be shown her, smiles and youth and everything still intact, but just a different but identical physical body.”

“Who's going to come looking for a queen who had her head chopped off centuries ago?” asked Griselda.

“Exactly. The perfect scheme until you came along with your meddling ways,” growled Stroggleoff.

“And to think I never meant to meddle in anything,” sighed Griselda. “You're a silly old man, jumping to conclusions just because one of your students has enough magic in her little finger to bring your citadel falling to the ground. It doesn't mean she's going to, you know.”

“It matters not a jot what your scheme really was now that I've got the better of you!!” barked the Professor. “And now I'm going to recreate her as someone young and desirable.”

“You mean, with the vodka you've already stored all of her memories in?” asked Griselda. “And that's what you were going to do with me? Empty my memories into one of those callow young things?”

“After I'd distilled out a few of your less desirable qualities,” agreed Stroggleoff. “That needed doing, that did. I couldn't have a repulsive creature like you competing with me in the world! And I will become Pope, I most certainly will! I've spent all of my long life aiming for that elevated position, and I have all the qualities. I teach all sorts of religious claptrap and I don't believe a word of any of it! That's the thing about popes, and how they get their power. They don't believe the stuff they claim to live by. It's a strength that has given their church the longevity it's had, and will keep it going on and on down all the years of the future! And I'll be the first pope with a beard long enough to sweep the floor before me as I march along, the mightiest of pontiffs, the great and glorious Pope Stroggleoff!”

“You're mad!” sneered Lucifer. “The maddest creature I've ever met, and I've met some, I c-c-can assure you! Take my big brother f'r instance...”

“You'll never be Pope!” snapped Constable Lockemup. “You're under arrest, and after what you've just said for us all to hear you're going to spend the rest of your life behind bars.”

“It's not a crime...” began Stroggleoff.

“Capturing a person's soul might not be a crime on the statue books, but in my eyes it's the worst of offences, and if the law won't punish you, I will!” snapped Griselda, shaking the last vestiges of the vodka from her system and feeling more like her old self. She had never liked the effects alcohol had on her usually sharp intellect. It diminished her powers, and in her eyes that meant it diluted her.

“We'll see about that!” growled Stroggleoff, and he pointed at one of the young leotard-clad women. “Get undressed!” he barked. “You're next for the transfer!”

There was a vacuous expression on the girl's face as she slowly slipped the shoulder straps of the leotard past her shoulders and down her arms, revealing the most splendid breasts. Those breasts made Lucifer swallow and Lockemup look the other way. If ever a pair of breasts were worth looking at and invited the young males to grope them, those were. Yet the expression on the girl's face, the blank, hollow-eyed emptiness like that of a vacuum chilled the heart and made Griselda shiver.

“This is awful,” she breathed. “I can't conceive of the kind of mind capable of such monstrosity! What do the girls feel and think? What is the essence of them?”

Stroggleoff sniggered. “They don't feel anything!” he boasted. “My word is their every command if I issue certain quite simple orders, but beyond that they have no understanding. Not until, that is, the essence of a living person is poured into their empty minds and they grasp everything that living person knew in the whole of his or her life. It's a clever scheme, and will never fail me. Physically cloned from one person they await being filled by another! They will never be either, but a weird amalgam of both, which is fun, don't you think? And while they wait to be someone they wander around the University going to lecture after lecture that they haven't a hope in Hell of understanding!”

“And you think that's all right?” asked Lucifer. “You think th-th-that's the right way to treat other people? How would you like it if it was y-y-you, then?””

“Me? But it isn't me! And I can treat other people how I like because I'm in charge and they're not, you twallop!” almost roared Stroggleoff. “Other people? They're not other people! They're empty husks waiting to be filled, and they're mine, I tell you: all mine. They're mine because I made them!”

Then, to his eyes if not everyone else's, the impossible, or if not impossible, improbable, happened.

One of the clones detached herself from he others. It was the young woman who had started undressing, and by this time she was totally naked with her black leotard like a shadowy pool at her feet and they could plainly see that she had more than merely splendid breasts. Her entire body was like that of the most perfect of women, the texture of her skin, the fineness of her hair, the gentle curve of her waist and buttocks To Lockemup's eyes she had splendid everything, and he swallowed at the vision of her perfection. But that wasn't what was impossible or improbable.

Instead, she detached herself from the others who were still wearing their monochrome leotards and she walked up to Professor Stroggleoff.

Then, with a small smile of almost unbelievable hatred on her face she raised one hand and swiped him as hard as she could across the face so that he rocked back on his heels and howled with unexpected pain.

“There you are, Pappa Pope,” she said in a voice that was melodious and clear and sparkling with intelligence. “There you are Pappa Pope, that's from me and all of us. A gift, you might say, from God.”

Then she turned to Griselda.

“Nice legs,” she whispered. “Nice legs, momma Griselda, nice, nice legs.”