The Dog Said Bow-Wow Read Online Free

to declare that he was authorized to wait as long as two weeks for an audience with the queen, though not a day more.
    “You have received new orders from your government?” Lord Coherence-Hamilton asked suspiciously. “I hardly see how.”
    “I have searched my conscience, and reflected on certain subtleties of phrasing in my original instructions,” Surplus said. “That is all.”
    He emerged from the office to discover Lady Pamela waiting outside. When she offered to show him the Labyrinth, he agreed happily to her plan. Followed by Darger, they strolled inward, first to witness the changing of the guard in the forecourt vestibule, before the great pillared wall that was the front of Buckingham Palace before it was swallowed up in the expansion of architecture during the mad, glorious years of Utopia. Following which, they proceeded toward the viewer’s gallery above the chamber of state.
    “I see from your repeated glances that you are interested in my diamonds, ’Sieur Plus Precieux,” Lady Pamela said. “Well might you be. They are a family treasure, centuries old and manufactured to order, each stone flawless and perfectly matched. The indentures of a hundred autistics would not buy the like.”
    Surplus smiled down again at the necklace, draped about her lovely throat and above her perfect breasts. “I assure you, madame, it was not your necklace that held me so enthralled.”
    She colored delicately, pleased. Lightly, she said, “And that box your man carries with him wherever you go? What is in it?”
    “That? A trifle. A gift for the Duke of Muscovy, who is the ultimate object of my journey,” Surplus said. “I assure you, it is of no interest whatsoever.”
    “You were talking to someone last night,” Lady Pamela said. “In your room.”
    “You were listening at my door? I am astonished and flattered.”
    She blushed. “No, no, my brother…it is his job, you see, surveillance.”
    “Possibly I was talking in my sleep. I have been told I do that occasionally.”
    “In accents? My brother said he heard two voices.”
    Surplus looked away. “In that, he was mistaken.”
    England’s queen was a sight to rival any in that ancient land. She was as large as the lorry of ancient legend, and surrounded by attendants who hurried back and forth, fetching food and advice and carrying away dirty plates and signed legislation. From the gallery, she reminded Darger of a queen bee, but unlike the bee, this queen did not copulate, but remained proudly virgin.
    Her name was Gloriana the First, and she was a hundred years old and still growing.
    Lord Campbell-Supercollider, a friend of Lady Pamela’s met by chance, who had insisted on accompanying them to the gallery, leaned close to Surplus and murmured, “You are impressed, of course, by our queen’s magnificence.” The warning in his voice was impossible to miss. “Foreigners invariably are.”
    “I am dazzled,” Surplus said.
    “Well might you be. For scattered through her majesty’s great body are thirty-six brains, connected with thick ropes of ganglia in a hyper-cube configuration. Her processing capacity is the equal of many of the great computers from Utopian times.”
    Lady Pamela stifled a yawn. “Darling Rory,” she said, touching the Lord Campbell-Supercollider’s sleeve. “Duty calls me. Would you be so kind as to show my American friend the way back to the outer circle?”
    “Or course, my dear.” He and Surplus stood (Darger was, of course, already standing) and paid their compliments. Then, when Lady Pamela was gone and Surplus started to turn toward the exit: “Not that way. Those stairs are for commoners. You and I may leave by the gentlemen’s staircase.”
    The narrow stairs twisted downward beneath clouds of gilt cherubs-and-airships, and debouched into a marble-floored hallway. Surplus and Darger stepped out of the stairway and found their arms abruptly seized by baboons.
    There were five baboons all told, with red