The Marquis of Karaburun-Sazan – part II
a reworking of Charles Perrault’s Puss in Boots, by Hans Loë.
If you’d prefer to read this story in book form, this is the link to the kindle (.co.uk version ) [https://amzn.eu/d/0g1JLPy9] & (.com version) [https://a.co/d/0b48kN7h] ;
and this is the link to the paperback (.co.uk version) [https://amzn.eu/d/0bnunWDL] & (.com version) [https://a.co/d/0bolQUiJ].
“Aah! All merciful king! Please send for assistance. It’s my master, while he bathed in the lake, as all great sportsmen and hunters do, a thief came by and stole his clothes that lay on the shore. So now, the Marquis of Karaburun-Sazan is in the water and cannot come out for fear of creating a great spectacle and scandal in front of your majesty. I fear if he should stay in the cold water any longer, he may develop one of those new variants of pneumonia that are going about.”
When the king heard this, he called halt and had one of his equerries ride back to the palace to fetch some of his own clothes so that the bather might be saved.
As the cat ran back to tell his master the news, the king turned to his daughter and pointing at the cat running on two legs like a human, and said, “Don’t those boots suit him? When he stands up in them like that you can see that he’s got a really great ass. It accentuates it. You should get yourself a pair.”
“Time to put on your big-boy pants,” said Swanson to Jeb as soon as a courtier delivered the new clothes to the spot on the shore of the lake at which he’d stripped from his old rags.
He came out of the water a naked peasant farmer, then stepped into the magnificent royal garments as a handsome eligible young buck of standing and presence.
As soon as he clapped eyes on him, the king invited Jeb to his carriage to sit with him a while so that he could thank him properly for all the fresh cowboy meat he’d had delivered to the palace recently.
And the princess was not upset at all about that, because the marquis was young, and extremely, almost oddly, tall, and he was possessed of a face that looked like it had rarely smiled, much like her own which she took for a sign of virtuousness. All in all, she liked him quite well.
Old Swanson, though, being a step ahead, took advantage of his master’s audience with the king and his daughter, and he went ahead of them, on the route they would eventually take back to the palace.
By and by, he came to a large grass field where over a hundred people were making hay.
“Who does this grass field belong to, you people?” he asked.
“The great magician,” they shouted without looking up from their work.
Swanson headed to a small group of people who weren’t doing any work, assuming them to be the managers of those who were.
“Listen,” he said to them. “The king will soon drive by, and when he sees all the industry going on here, he will be bound to ask who the grass field belongs to. If you promise to answer, the Marquis of Karaburun-Sazan, I will see you right with a sterling piece of advice.”
“You’re not going to tip us that dog of a favourite from Prescott’s in the Cesarewitch are you? That piss artist who drives for the king has already done that. The owners make more money out of laying it than they do prize money.”
Swanson laughed. “No such thing my friends. But first you must promise,” which they did.
And as soon as the deal was struck, the cat told them that when he came by, they must be sure to praise the king for his shrewd and generous policies, especially tariffs, being sure to say that all he has done in that regard has secured their prosperity, and made for such good and rewarding work for them to do.
“But it is a lie!” they said. “It’s but hay timing and bullshit manual work that any idiot could do,” they told him. “It pays nothing, and we’re starving. The best we get out of this is the few scrapings we can carry home from what is dropped so that we might feed our own animals, for the magician is a selfish man who wants every last drop for himself.”
“Do not worry my friends,” said the cat. “The king will reward you well for your praising of him. But do your best not to stare at his wig, or the white bit between the edge of it and his makeup. It’s harder than it sounds, and the king is sensitive to being noticed in this way.”
They each nodded their heads, quite fearful now whether they would be able to carry off the awkward social encounter that was heading their way. Then, as Swanson bowed and took his leave, they went out into the fields to make sure that all the workers were apprised of his advice.
Swanson quickly put two or three bends between him and the king’s entourage so that he couldn’t be seen by them, even from a distance. Then next, before reaching the magician’s residence, he came to a grain field. It was so large that you couldn’t see its boundaries. And again, there stood a great number of workers, cutting grain this time.
“Whose grain is this, you people?” he asked.
“The magician,” they told him. “By his magic he has become rich beyond Croesus and owns all the land nearby —all the way up to the estates of Peter Teapot the giant, besides many other treasures. We think he magics up gold sovereigns, so rich is he.”
And again the cat struck the deal with the grain workers as he had with those cutting hay, that when the king arrived at their field, they were to say that it belonged to the Marquis of Karaburun-Sazan. And he taught them, as he had the others, how they must flatter and fawn to the king to guarantee themselves a reward from his largesse.
Finally, just before he landed on the house itself, Swanson came to a magnificent forest where stood more than three hundred woodsmen, all of them working to fell the great oaks which would make wood for the magician’s new creations.
Again he asked, “Whose forest is this?”
And again the workers answered, “The magician’s.”
And for a third time he went through his schtick about the Marquis of Karaburun-Sazan and what they must say to the king when he came by.
So done, Swanson went still further, and as he strode on all the workers stopped to look at him, and because he looked so magnificent and human-like in his boots, they were in awe, and not a little bit afraid of him. And they dared not do other than his bidding.
He soon came to the magician’s palace, and went boldly to the front door and rapped loudly on it.
The magician himself opened it, and looked at Swanson contemptuously.
“Not what I imagined,” Swanson thought to himself as he took in the man before him. The head, almost a perfect cube, could not have been the one he was born with. And its features? It was as if they had been placed with no small amount of guesswork onto a plain face of the cube as it was setting. Not unlike the gold-painted faux-rococo polystyrene of King Donald’s inner chamber, in many ways, he thought.
“Perhaps he used the same techniques,” said Swanson to himself.
“What do you want?” the magician asked.
Swanson gave him a deep bow, taking his new hat from his head with his left hand, crossing his midriff with his right as he did, then said:
“I’ve heard wonderful things of your amazing inventions and innovations. I too am interested in the advancement of animal and human-kind by such matters. I wonder sir, whether I might be considered worthy of an apprenticeship with you?”
At which point he produced from a pouch he carried on his belt, several gold coins of the highest denomination.
The magician said, “Such sums are but a trifle to me.” But he grinned slyly, as if to say, you are ripe for the taking, and may be useful for something.
“Actually, this is a most propitious meeting,” he told Swanson. “We’ve been on the lookout for a couple of small agile members who can get into restricted spaces, and jump onto high things,” he said, though he didn’t disclose who we were, nor what it was they were members of.
Then he examined Swanson in silence for about ten minutes, while he tried to work out whether his mind had betrayed him, and invited the cat to his house without letting his brain know.
Snapping out of the trance with a sudden twitch, he said, “I see you’ve noticed my Neurolink cartridge,” turning his square head slightly to the side to give him a full view of the appliance.
And sure enough, looking just like one of those mini-salt grinders they sold in Kitchen’n’Things: a perfect cylinder of chrome stuck out from the side of the magician’s head just behind his right ear. It stood about two inches proud of his skull but K-holeBokX, as he insisted Swanson call him, assured him that there was at least that much inside his head too.
“What does it do?” asked Swanson, whereupon K-holeBokX laughed without stopping for another ten minutes.
“You should join in,” he said to the cat as he neared the end of episode, “It’s fun, laughing.”
When he finally brought it to an end, he explained that it was a “simple bio-plug that interfaced with the circuitry of the brain.” He did some shrugging for a while to show Swanson what a simple idea it was, then he added, “It means that I can control computers and stuff with my thoughts.”
“What other stuff?” asked Swanson, but K-holeBokX couldn’t think of anything, so he said:
“Food mixers.”
An awkward silence took hold until K-holeBokX ended it by gesturing to Swanson to go into the main reception room, and take a seat on the long, crescent-shaped sofa that faced a 3D mural of the seabed, with a mirrored disco-ball hanging in front of it.
Coming to sit a couple of places along from the cat, he picked up the conversation again. “Its main use is to make up for deficiencies in the brain. And that means whatever lacking or desire you have, and which you can’t make happen with the equipment you’re born with, then you buy a cartridge that’ll do it for you,” and he began shrugging and smiling again.
“One to help you relax; another to help you dream; something to stop you getting brain cancer; another for sums…”
Swanson tried to conjure a smile in return, as he mulled his next question.
“You seem to have the answers to all of humanities greatest issues reduced to saleable commodities,” he said eventually.
“Pretty much,” said K-hole. “The only problem is I don’t have any deficiencies in my own brain, so I haven’t been able to test it out as thoroughly as I wanted to.”
Was that an evil glance he shot him? Swanson wasn’t entirely sure. Nevertheless he readied himself —we’ve been on the lookout for small members.
“You have no assistants, who… may be better subjects for your inventions?” he tried.
“Naah,” said K-hole, shaking his head. “They’d only get in the way. I use bots.”
He began to stare at Swanson again, seeming to drift off into another daydream, when suddenly his eyes looked left and then disappeared entirely from their sockets, before coming back into them from his right.
“Pity really, because I can do things.” He said the words out loud in a sort of slur, seeming not to address them directly to Swanson.
“What things?” Swanson tried. Now, despite his own immense confidence, decidedly nervous.
“Transforming,” said K-hole. “It’s, it’s, it’s… kinda… well, it’s, it’s, it’s…” he stopped, paused, and began again. “It’s like, you know, when you’re one thing, but… fusion… two things but one, or none. I mean there’s your mind, and your brain, and somebody else’s, and even though… there’s spirits too. Sometimes they share the same spirit… but they’ve also got their own… and the whole universe is like swinging. I mean swaying.”
“I see exactly what it’s all about,” said Swanson.
“I realised when I changed a cartridge the other day. I held it in my hand, and before I put the other in, I saw in that moment that I was, you know, neutral.” K-hole smiled.
His big cuboid bonce started to bob around as if it was too heavy for his body to support.
“That’s when I started going down the trans route,” said K-hole.
“That sounds absolutely fascinating,” said the cat.
“I’m back now,” said K-hole, fixing Swanson with a hard stare. “Look, I realised that the best state for everything is neutrality, then we plug and play. One day, it’ll be fully neural and can be run on thoughts and instincts, but for now it has to be cartridges.”
Then he whistled, and a humanoid robot came from another part of the house, shuffling its feet, head bowed.
Swanson resisted a comment, though he felt some sympathy for the machine. It was made of plastic and chrome, and it was slight. Its overall impression was one of an upmarket Dyson.
“Sit down,” said K-hole, and the pathetic instrument went to sit on a chair opposite Swanson.
“Now watch this,” he said, and he twisted the cartridge in his head and removed it, then he lifted up his shirt to pull a stubby memory stick from his belly button, noticeably slowing as he did. Then he plugged both devices into slots on the neck of the robot.
K-hole himself slumped as the robot, with the same staccato stuttering of the man himself, said, “Fancy a game of chess? I don’t advise it by the way. I’m brilliant at it,” at which it started laughing for minutes on end, just as K-hole liked to do.
“You’re him?” said Swanson, to which the bot nodded vigorously.
“You liked that?” said K-hole as he turned the cartridge back into his own head.
“I did,” said Swanson. “That was entirely you inside the bot, was it?”
“It was,” said K-hole. “That was my very essence residing in that plastic beast sat opposite you.”
“Marvellous,” said Swanson. “Do you have any other bots here with which you can do it? You know, things my size that would be easier for me to interact with?”
“Of course,” said K-hole, this time shouting a new machine by name. “This is my portable model.”
A small machine trundled out, seeming to transport itself on unseen wheels. It was not unlike those things that did the vacuuming all day while you were out.
And once more, in front of Swanson’s very eyes, he went through the enabling process with the little bot, again reminding the cat that soon this process would be automated and controlled by thought alone.
As soon as he had himself installed into the bot, Swanson went to stand alongside it. He looked at K-hole’s original organic body as it went deep into its vegetative state, and once he was sure that the master scientist now entirely resided within the mini-bot, he said to it, “Do you want a fight?”
The bot took to its wheels and tried to escape the room, but Swanson sprang after it, soon catching it up, at which point he flipped it, like the quarry he was so used to toying with on the farm. Once upturned, he removed every moving part and visible wire from the bot, then took the cartridge, the memory stick, and any other detachable element of the machine, and put them into the oven at two hundred and fifty degrees. While they cooked, he went back to find the taller neutral bot and knocked its block off with one blow.
The organic brainless body he first suffocated, then he stripped it of its clothes ready to make a gift of its flesh to his friend the chef. He did all that while he waited for the things he’d cooked to cool, and once they were, he broke them into small fragments and scattered them to the winds from the first-floor balcony of what had until then been K-holeBokX’s mansion and headquarters.
.
From the view it commanded, he could make out the king’s entourage as it wound its way back to the palace. He saw that it had come to a halt at the hay field.
“Who does the hay belong to?” asked the king.
“The Marquis of Karaburun-Sazan,” cried all, as the cat had advised them.
“Interesting indeed,” said the king.
Then, just before he pushed the carriage window closed, an old man piped up:
“It’s all because of your eco-metrics majesty. Now that there is no Canadian hay coming to our country, we are growing our own again, better than ever.”
“Yes,” said a younger man, “And with the money we’re making, we have started a banana plantation and soon we’ll be able to sell bananas throughout the republic.”
The king beamed so widely you’d swear it would meet round the back of his neck. “I’m not so sure about that republic talk,” said the king, “but I like the other words you say, and the order in which they came out of your mouth. Here, take this.”
And with that, he tossed a pouch of gold sovereigns in the direction of the farm workers.
“You have a pretty piece of land, Marquis of Karaburun-Sazan,” he said to his passenger.
Jeb smiled weakly without talking.
Next, they came to the large grain field.
“Who does the grain belong to, you people?” shouted the king, careful not to lean his head out of the window of the carriage in case the wind did for his hair.
“The marquis,” they chorused.
And again, one of their number cleared his throat, and shouted over the heads of his fellow workers towards the king. “It’s all because of your econometrics sir. We are busy with work again now, and no longer have to import inferior Russian grains.”
The king whispered to his passengers, “I quite like Russian baps,” then made a crude gesture which brought to Jeb’s mind images of a gorilla preparing for battle.
“Here, take this for all your good words and deeds,” said the king, and this time, he tossed two pouches of gold towards the group of workers, then tapped the ceiling of the carriage for his driver to go on.
“Eh! Marquis! Such large estates! Big estates. Beautiful. They’ll be saying they’re the most beautiful estates in the kingdom,” he said as they rolled on down the road.
Jeb looked up shyly towards the princess, to see if she believed it too.
But her expression gave nothing away.
“Full of rare earths,” the king went on. “You can tell just by looking at it.”
“The earth is indeed a very rare thing,” said Jeb, wondering quite how Swanson had organised all this and whether the lands really were his to talk of.
“I knew it!” said the king. “Soon we’ll be richer than Iceland and Canadia put together! I wonder what more delights you have hidden from us?”
“Not as much as me, pal” thought Jeb.
Thereon they headed to the forest.
“Who does the wood belong to, you people?” asked the king again.
“The marquis,” again was all that was heard. Though none of them said, “He who sits beside you.”
The king took it to be a sign of great humility that this was so, and thought that such a man would suit his daughter very well.
And once more a voice came forth and said, “Had you not introduced tariffs your majesty, none of this could have happened. With all the good wood that is not of sufficiently high quality to use or sell, we have made our own smelting operation, and soon we will be able to furnish the whole kingdom with brand new tin pots.”
This delighted the king more than any of the news he’d heard previously, and this time he threw three pouches of sovereigns at the crowd.
“You must be a rich man Marquis Karaburun,” he said, which, when he was not contradicted by the marquis, impressed him even more than the modesty thing.
Finally they came to the mansion.
Swanson stood at the top of the steps to the house, and as the carriage came to a stop below, he sprang down, opened the door, and said:
“Your majesty, you arrive at the home of my master, the Marquis of Karaburun-Sazan. This honours him greatly, and will make him happy his whole life long.” So saying, he gave another bow to his master, as was appropriate for a servant.
The king stepped out and marvelled at the magnificent building that was almost as large and perhaps more beautiful than his own palace.
Jeb hesitated a moment. It had all happened in such a short space of time, and now this? This imposing statement of wealth? He was overawed, and for a moment, he swayed on his feet, almost losing consciousness.
Swanson approached him quickly and whispering urgently to his ear so that no one else could hear, said, “What’s the matter with you? Soiled your big-boy pants, have you?”
Jeb tried to smile his way out of the vacant expression that had settled on his face.
“Get a grip of yourself,” said the cat. “Don’t blow my good work.” Whereupon, he trotted back to the king’s side to give him a guided tour of his master’s house.
The Marquis of Karaburun-Sazan took the hand of the princess, and led her up the steps towards the main entrance of the house. His house.
It was a sobering experience, and throughout it all he made sure that Swanson was never out of his earshot. And where possible, insofar as he could manage it, he kept himself and the princess at such proximity to her father and his guide that he could invite her to listen to the words Swanson spoke to her father, instead of responding directly to her questions himself.
Then, just as suddenly as it all began, to Jeb’s immense relief, Swanson wound up the brief tour and directed their guests back to the main door again.
“It truly is a home worthy of the title palace,” said the princess. “What exquisite tastes you have.”
“You wrongly flatter me, your majesty,” The marquis replied. “I have people who do much for me. But their work pleases me.”
She giggled lightly and offered him her hand to kiss.
He did, then added “…for now,” and it made the princess laugh heartily.
As they waved goodbye to their new royal friends Jeb felt as confident as he’d been all day, and he regretted slightly that more could not have been made of the moment just passed.
He turned to Swanson and said, “I don’t know whether to congratulate you or shout obscenities. Now, please explain what is going on? Is this our house now? And…”
“It is,” said Swanson.
“…and whose was it before? And where are they now? Heading off into the sunset with a wheelbarrow full of gold sovereigns?”
“Not quite,” said Swanson, and indicated to Jeb to follow him down into the cellar. There he showed him the quite dead body of K-holeBokX and the debris of the broken bots.
“Is that the magician?” asked Jeb suddenly quite afraid.
“It is. And that is why the tour was kept short. Don’t worry, she’s fallen for you,” said Swanson.
“And it looks like the magician fell for you,” he said, “What happened to him?”
“Well,” said Swanson. “He was actually a self-titled, scientist-magician, did you know that?”
Jeb shook his head.
“He claimed he’d developed a way to transition human bodies into other forms —it all happened,” and he inclined his head to indicate the corpse again, “when he was giving me a demonstration of that.”
“Why?” asked Jeb. “What happened exactly?”
“I must choose my words carefully to make sure that I do justice to the scientific process,” said Swanson. “How to put it? He had these strange cartridge things that he plugged into his head…”
The familiar expression of confusion and disbelief returned to Jeb’s face.
“…to interface with his brain,” the cat added, as if that would provide the clarity for which Jeb searched. “They would make him change personality, but further…”
“Hold on a minute with your but furthers,” said Jeb, “he had cartridges that could make him change personality? Explain that first.”
“I know,” said Swanson. “But just go with it. I’ll explain it all later. The important thing is that he could also swap them from his own body into robots, so that in essence, he himself could live inside something or someone else, if he chose to.”
Jeb’s mouth opened wide in astonishment, “Why would he do that?” he asked.
“Later…” said the cat, “he just can. Could. Anyway, he was giving me a demo and he had reached the point where he had begun to trans from a mere nonentity low-charisma nerd, into an absolutely despicable arsehole, living in a bot… whereupon, he fell down stairs.”
On so saying, he looked at Jeb with a blank expression until eventually they met eyes, and in that moment, Jeb understood all that had passed, and he gave Swanson a short solemn nod so that he might know that he’d understood.
Shortly thereafter, the princess was promised to the Marquis of Karaburun-Sazan, such that when the king died, he would become the new king, and with it, the booted cat, his closest advisor.
Swanson though, could not abide to live full time in the palace while the old king still lived. He could not stand to live among the grifters and halfwits in the place, let alone the imbecile king himself. So, soon into their new life there, he returned to the farm where his stepfather, Sasha the swan, still occasionally visited.
It was no longer a functioning farm. All the Kustards had left and none had come to take their place. The barns and buildings were in need of repair, but it was a happy and cosy place for the animals who’d stayed on, and called it home.
When the two met, they hugged each other, and the father congratulated his son on a superbly executed project. “We have our man in there now,” he said. “What joy. You have made me very proud, Lebbie.”
They embraced again, each of them reluctant to break the hug, lest the other saw his tears.
Eventually, his father forced himself apart and wiping his wet eyes, said, “Soon, the seasons will change and I will fly back to Lake Onegin, where I will report your news.”
Swanson tried to interrupt his father, so that he might persuade him from his plans, but he pushed away his remonstrations.
“To have had an imbecile sitting on the throne of America was joy enough but to own the next in succession! My boy, it is the stuff of dreams, and you have brought it about. King Vladimir will bestow the wealth of a small nation upon us. Let me be away to see a little of what that future might look like, and I will return to take you home with me soon, so that you might be properly honoured.”
