Moreaugarin's crusade

"Moreaugarin splits the stuff with us."

"Look here, Gunner, do you trust him? I don’t. I suggest that we play his game up to a point then in some way or other we get rid of him."

"We thought about that."

"Who’s "we"? What do you mean?"

"Well, there are others: Brulla, the man with the talking parrot and a barrel organ, Ploto the butcher from Venus, Vlasko the Trumpeter, Gargarelli the Philosopher, Totora the Circus man, and one thousand other rogues, just the best of the whole lot."

I joined them. I had nothing to lose but my life. Seeing only the bright side of things, the boys in the gang were as playful as kittens. At the break of day we set off to Moreaugarin’s fabled castle. It lay beyond the high piles of radioactive waste, on the edge of the ocean. We had the colly-wobbles with hunger when we got there. We nearly broke down the gates of his castle. Moreaugarin the serpent treated us gently. Easy does it. Soft spoken. Honeyed eyes. Tricks we all knew…

He gave a speech. Without losing any of his starch, he showed us he still had the fab gift of gab. He was perched on that funny-looking machinery puffing out sulfurous clouds. You’ll never see the like of it again so no one knew whether it was a scarab, a mechanical octopus, a demon of plastic, glass and metal or only a chimera.

The machinery had sparkling red spheres. Silver shafts full of spikes. Multicolored prisms to read your past, present and future. A huge Fulton dynamo. Snaking inflatable pipes. Fire balls. A one-ton piston. A German revolving beacon light. A steel rammer. A Van der Graff jar. Shiny and slippery scaffolding. Catwalks. Cellophane snakes and winding holograms. Organic aggregates from which fearsome soldiers were born. A transparent pyramid emitting blue streaks of lightning. A launching pad. And a supercomputer Mettryks.

Moreaugarin walked stiffly up and down the bridge deck and shouted at the top of his voice.

"Welcome, my lions! My tigers! My brave fighters! I remind you that occult forces are trying to bring shame to my name. My scientific genius is not acknowledged. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals sued me for allegedly experimenting on a brontosaurus, which I reactivated without their approval. Hah, hah, hah! Moreover, they even want saddle the nuclear bomb ob me. But forget those pygmies! We’ll show them good and clean, tigers! Quite soon! Swellings? Spittles? Booming farts? Vomit? We’ll dump them all … and now, listen to me carefully! The Ideal City was brought to Earth. By Pilgrims. Intruders from beyond the cosmic horizon. They laid their hands on Its walls and carried It all over the Universe. We shall free It."

That was nice. Soul lifting you may say. But we all really wanted to know how much of it would be ours. Moreaugarin began fuming. He gave a piece of his mind. He gave us a hell of a laundering. He said:

"You ignorant pitiful bums! Can’t you get it into your goddamned heads that you will be the Deliverers of the City? In the name of the Cross, we shall fight, my tigers! The Ideal City belongs to man. He was born in It millions years ago. He was banished from It. He was robbed of the City when he was still unable to speak. It is I, Moreaugarin, who will free It again! We’ll do it together, my knights!"

That was pushing a little too far. Knights. We were all weathered soldiers who had fought planetary wars.