I kept repeating to myself that I must not panic and at all times retain a queenly posture in case I should be so unfortunate as to be detected. To this end I adjusted my headscarf, hopelessly awry after my Devil's-Staircase driven ascent, and its accompanying false perm (they formed a single unit so as to reduce the number of emergency adjustments I might be called upon to make under stressful circumstances), briefly checked my make-up which I assessed as condition E - requiring attention but passable at a range of 10 yards or 20 cubits or 9 ells, the vexed question of which unit of measurement to adopt had not been resolved by the time Louise was deployable. Spectacles normal. Hacking jacket in tolerable condition. Shona skirt muddied, but would just have to do. Wellies deplorable and traditional walking crook absent - I had decided that, though lending an increased air of verisimilitude on the highland plateaux, it would be too cumbersome an object to store within the confined space of the pod and would only give me that extra something to think about and forget; its major advantage would have been to act as part of the trompe l'oeil system, the crook, towering over the full-skirted figure, would have tricked the eye of the casual observer into converting the visual data, a six-foot cross dresser, into the physically diminutive but infinitely more potent image of HM on an unescorted field trip. In the castle grounds or indeed in the interior, should Louise and I penetrate so far, the crook would have looked as out of place as a sceptre at a barbecue.
"We might at least have been informed," Male 1 complained, "or do you think this is part of Q2's project? Well I suppose we had better make a report."
"And lodge a formal plea for consistent updates," this was the Female.
"No use flushing the pan after the cobra has struck!" put in Male 2 in a mock sub-continental accent. At which I was unable to restrain an unqueenly guffaw.
I had no need to be concerned that I should be detected. The uproar from the mangabeys had displaced all other sounds. They had taken an intense abiding dislike to me, perhaps they were not so easily deceived by externals as the average human, and no doubt were expressing their disdain of my attempt to assume the identity of one with whom they were on familiar terms. The absence of a crook might well have been a deciding factor, animals and children are often disconcerted by changes in appearance that go unnoticed by adults, and if the mangabeys were a royal favourite, it was more than likely that I had missed some vital element in the ritual of greeting.
"Those mangabeys! What's got into them this morning? They seem to be pelting something in the bushes!"
It was only then that I realised the havoc that was being played with my headscarf and that even my precious Hasselblad was being exposed to ruin. The mangabeys' missiles of choice were masticated fruit. It was imperative that Louise went into action before I was reduced to a reeking bipedal midden. The unregal absurdity of my appearance was entering unclassified, perhaps unclassifiable zones. I shielded my remote as best I could from the rain of mucal pulp and selected, as best I could manage, her loudest bray, the cadmiumorange, but to my horror the board was overridden by the sugar-pink diode. This would be a real give away and for the first time I thought of giving up my mission, surrendering myself to the authorities in the shape of the tweeded trio and abandoning all hope of ever establishing a link between our beloved monarch and the trans-lunar world. Curiously it was the pink diode that brought me back to my senses and the enormous investment of my sponsors, which in turn recalled my duty to the public and beyond that, most important of all, my commitment to truth. As Cage, in the shape of the mangabeys, began to overwhelm even Ligetti, I struck back with Elgar and the opening of the cello concerto, on that high note I would triumph and for the sake of the Stone of Scone I I touched the sugar-pink diode on my pad.
"Design your own sarcophagus! Leave the nuts and bolts to us. Any material,! any time! any place! Make your tomb an epicentre of pilgrimage for millions. It's never too late to become a celebrity. Our models start at a mere $5,000 and the sky is limited only by your imagination. Safe in a Winged Worlds sarcophagus at last!"
I could only just make out this audial copy above the cacophony of the mangabeys, but my geologists were almost up against the "magnificent beast" as they kept calling her, and I was disturbed to notice that they stepped back in alarm. I would have to put Louise through some more natural seeming paces, perhaps an evacuation of wastes and most certainly a canter off scene. It was becoming essential that I should regain the security and mobility of the pod even in my lamentable condition.
Steelblue for standing, chocolate 1 for canter, but first she had to be wheeled in a desired direction and her movements had to be sufficiently leisurely so as not to alarm my audience lest they should fall back on my position. Such finesse was all but impossible under the circumstances, I was operating the pad with an instrument about the size and shape of a snuff spoon and with the attentions of the mangabeys it was comparable to trying to give a virtuoso performance on the koto in the path of a column of fire ants (a species which I feel certain is of "no concern" on the IUCN list without even checking Louise's files, and which must certainly be present in this royal lost world), and Louise rose to her feet with a series of unauthorised earth-shaking coughs (cornflowerblue as I later discovered in the acres of time which were yet to come when I was to hang for hours suspended upside down in her belly, but all that in its due place). I must I have inadvertently touched eggshell for evacuation for, as she wheeled (wheat, so easily confused with eggshell by my untrained eye - and at this point I realised that to operate Louise with peak dexterity I would have to spend months training my eye to the very precise wave-lengths of her diode board thereby acquiring an instinctive ability to associate wave-length with function so that like some creature from another world I could draw my puppet on these invisible strings without giving a thought to the medium). Before the consequences of this sudden thought could send shivers down my spine Louise had sprayed her three observers with a deluge of stale urine accompanied by a shower of semi-fermented dung (it was a fortuitous evacuation of her waste cysts, but one that very probably saved the expedition; neither the engineers nor I had considered the possibility of onboard fermentation and if her tanks had exploded I cannot think of the chain reaction that would have ensued without shuddering for my own safety, the functioning of Louise, even the personal safety of my quarry).
The cries of the geologists momentarily eclipsed the screams of the mangabeys.
"Somebody must have spliced a hippopotamus gene!" I overheard as I sent Louise on a wild canter up the slope to our point of entry, confident that the range of the remote, like an extendable halter, would bring her back to my side. The next few minutes were amongst the most action packed of my life and such was my fear of failure that they seemed to pass through another dimension, slowed to an eternity. I was approaching an event horizon in my mission, one false step and I would become, in the words of Professor Hawking, spaghetti.
As the squelch of the geologists' brogues receded I was brought back to my own reality by the crash of a durian by my right flank. If it had struck my head, as I am certain the mangabeys intended, I would have suffered serious, if not fatal cranial injuries. And where there is one durian there is sure to be another - a saying which I made a mental note to supply Male 2 with should I ever have the opportunity of addressing him socially. The time had come to evacuate, in my own mode, the area. The mangabeys were making my position untenable, they had already reduced my handsome tweeds to such a state that I would have to adopt the role of wild woman of the Cairngorms and for the time being abandon the mask of royal authority for the fear generated by the evidently unstable and superficially repellant marginales.
First I sent a command to Louise to wheel and to make her descent at a gallop. This was a tricky manoeuvre on the pad involving frequencies that were almost indistinguishable to my eye and was further compounded by the complicated sequencing which was of the utmost importance lest I should send my greatest asset tumbling over the north corrie. I pressed ghostwhite for gallop with a call to a deity I did not believe in, then wheeled myself and began to run as fast as my studded wellies and sodden Shona skirt allowed downhill with my troop of mangabeys in close attendance.
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