Rogue Princess

Chapter 1

CLAUDE GODWIN became involved with the princess as follows:

In driving north from Santa Barbara, most people follow Route US 101, which cuts inland across the base of Point Conception. Some, however, take the secondary road that runs along the seashore around the Point—via Jalama and Surf—leaving 101 at Gaviota and rejoining it at Arroyo Grande. It is a winding road, much of it blasted out of cliff sides where the Santa Ynez Mountains come right down to the Pacific. The road runs along a rugged and almost unpeopled stretch of coast, forming a great contrast with the shores southeastward, which—ever since California became the most populous state about the year 1990—have been almost solidly built up from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

On an October afternoon Claude Godwin was driving his fellow-actor, Westbrook Wolff, along this scenic stretch and explaining why he intended retiring at the early age of thirty-one:

"... so I can make thirty grand a week; what good does it do me? Coming on top of the income from my securities, Uncle gets ninety-four dollars out of every additional century, leaving me a lousy six bucks, which will buy one Sunday newspaper."

Wolff sighed. "Wish I knew how you did it. I've known a lot of actors, and never yet knew one who could save up enough to live on in ten years. By the time Uncle, and your agent, and your ex-wives have all had a crack at your stipend—"

"Not to mention the parties; the ponies; the contractor who puts in your swimming-pool; the tailor who makes you a suit a week out of imported Tibetan yak-wool, and so on. I avoid the alimony problem by staying single; I live in a small house without a swimming-pool and stay away from parties and ponies.

"That's why they call me MacGodwin," he concluded. He was a dark young man, handsome in a histrionic way, and rather on the small side. For hero roles the studio put lifts in his shoes.

"But then you're not a typical actor," said Wolff; "in Hollywood you stand out like a sunflower in a coalscuttle."

"I am an individualist; you are eccentric; he's nuts. I never did like the damned show-business anyway. What I always wanted was to be a scientist. You know, like that Doctor Rotheiss I played in Crimson Dawn"

"Why don't you?"

Godwin sighed in his turn. "You just don't walk into a casting-office in some scientific institute and get taken on as an electrogeologist. I did go see old Dr. Goff—you know, the president of Cal Tech. I told him I knew I wouldn't stay young and handsome forever. Hell, I'm no great actor; I'm just a guy who can jump around in front of a camera with a wig and a sword and leer at the dames. Well, I told the old geezer about my secret craving. Says I: 'Dr. Goff, I think I could be a real honest-to-Goldwyn scientist if I had a chance, but how do I go about it? I can't see enrolling here as a frosh with the sobsisters from all the papers and picture-mags breathing down my neck. So what?'

"He squints at me and sprinkles some cigar-ashes down his shirt-front, and says, 'Take this,' and hands me a book off his desk. 'Go through it and do all the problems; then come back. If you still wish to become a scientist we shall go on from there.' "

"Did you?" said Wolff.

"That's the sad part; even sadder'n when I got bumped off in Fatal Decision. It was a math book: plane, solid, and analytical geometry. I struggled through about half and gave up."

"Doesn't sound like you, Claude."

"No, does it? But I got to where the funny little diagrams and equations and things just went round and round when I looked at them. I couldn't make sense of them even by sitting up all night over a bucket of coffee. Maybe if I'd had a normal education, instead of being in show-business from the age of six weeks, it might have been different. But it's too late to go back again and begin over, like I did in Three Wishes.'"

Wolff yawned and stretched. "Oh, well, maybe there's some other science that doesn't require so much math. Say, haven't we seen enough of this Godforsaken scenery? How about a stretch on the beach?"

THEY HAD just come around Point Arguello and the road was undulating along a stretch of sand-dunes between the Coast Range and the sea. Godwin looked for a place to park and presently found a turnout; he stopped the Studebaker and got out, not bothering to raise the top because at that time of year the climatic engineers allowed rain only on Wednesdays.

They climbed down the sandy, grassy slope to the beach. A few yards away, a heavy surf boomed against the hard-packed sand. The beach was a small crescent, with its concave side facing seaward—perhaps a hundred yards long—and terminated at each end by a rocky promontory. The landscape seemed devoid of human life. Shoreward the olive-brown hills bore a scattering of oaks among the scrub.

Godwin took a sharp look to make sure that he could see his car from where they were, and started north. At the promontory, he and Wolff had to scramble over the rocks and found themselves at the beginning of another little crescent of sand. They plodded north to the next promontory and were climbing over these rocks when Wolff (who being the taller was in the lead) drew in his breath sharply and held out a hand in warning.

Godwin halted, thinking that perhaps his friend had surprised a family of sea-lions or some such denizens of the wild. Wolff silently beckoned. Godwin moved up beside the other actor.

Just beyond the rocks, at the beginning of the next beach, a girl was lying nude on her back upon the sand, asleep in the sun. She was a girl of pretty good size— "brawny" was the word that occurred to Claude Godwin. She was moderately pretty in a flat-faced, Oriental way, as if she were part Asiatic, but there was nothing Mongoloid about the carroty-red hair stirring in the breeze. Dark glasses protected her eyes from the sun, and her head lay on a handkerchief spread out upon the sand. Beside her a neat pile of clothing was held down by a small camera.

Wolff whispered: "Boy, ain't that something? What'll we do?"

Godwin murmured: "She's liable to get a bad burn sleeping in the sun that way, even this late in the year."

"She probably didn't mean to go to sleep; but we can't exactly wake her up to tell her so."

"N-no. On the other hand we can't just walk off as if nothing had happened ..."

"Say!" hissed Wolff. "I got an idea!" He outlined a plan.

"Swell," said Godwin. "But which of us does what with what?"

"Oh, I take it and you're in it."

"No sir! You'd make a better model than I."

"Can't! I'm running for king this winter!"

"Let's flip then."

WOLFF WON the toss. He cautiously climbed down and picked up the camera, while Godwin removed his clothes and piled them on the rocks. When he was as nude as the girl he climbed down and stood beside her.

"If she wakes up now we'll have some explaining to do," he whispered.

"Don't make me laugh or she will. Now lie down beside her. No, on your back; no point doing it on your stomach."

Wolff retreated a few paces, adjusted the camera, and took a photograph of the recumbent pair. The automatic film-winder purred faintly and stopped with a click at the next frame. Godwin started to rise, but Wolff motioned him back, took two steps, and shot a picture from another angle.

This time Godwin did get up. While Wolff replaced the camera on the girl's pile of clothing, Godwin climbed back up on the rocks and dressed with guilty haste. When he had finished, both men crept down off the promontory on the south side and hiked swiftly back the way they had come. When they had put enough distance between themselves and the girl they let out their pent-up mirth in raucous war-whoops, capering and slapping each other on the back. "Boy, wait till she gets those pix back from the drugstore!" "What I wouldn't give to see her face ..."

"Hey!" said Godwin suddenly. "Suppose she recognizes me? I may not be Hollywood's most popular actor, but my puss does get around. My agent says I packed 'em in at Julianehaab in The Honor of the Clan."

"What's Yooly-anna-hawp?"

"The capital of Greenland. Since the climate-control boys melted off the ice-cap, the Greenlanders have become the world's most fanatical movie-goers. There's nothing else to do on the long winter nights."

"You mean, not much else. But I wouldn't worry; your last few pictures all had you wearing a mustache, so they wouldn't know you without it."

They came to the place where they had first reached the beach and climbed back up the slope. When they were back in the car, Godwin drove slowly, peering ahead.

"Whatcha looking for?" said Wolff. "Her car. She musta parked somewhere; nobody lives along this stretch ... Ah, there it is!"

He slowed to a crawl as they came abreast of another parked automobile. This was a typical Hollywoodian vehicle: an enormous pink Cadillac convertible with imitation python-skin upholstery. Godwin said; "You'd swear that was a star's car, now wouldn't you? But I've never seen our sleeping beauty around the studios."

"Neither have I. She doesn't look to me like star-material, anyway; she might belong to some actor or producer."

Godwin speeded up, saying, "We could look up her license-number, but it's not worth the trouble. And what do I wanna get involved with strange dames for? I got enough trouble holding off the ones I know already."

"Well, you'd have a time convincing anybody who sees those pix you're not involved with her." At Godwin's look of alarm Wolff added; " 'S all right, Claude old boy. When the paternity suit comes up I'll testify for you; I'll say you're impotent."

"That would be a big help. But I'm not worried; I look different without my makeup, and I'm too short to run for king, like you; and some day I'll quit this racket anyway."

Westbrook Wolff did indeed intend to run for King of the United States of America, at the decennial contest to be held in Washington in December. For, following the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century, the world— in a frantic search for stability and security—had revived the obsolete institution of monarchy. The United States had done so in a more rational manner than most nations. Instead of the nation's entrusting the choice of the monarch to the vagaries of heredity, the king and queen were chosen from Hollywood's bravest and fairest for ten-year terms at a beauty-contest in which the U. S. Senate served as judges.

IN DUE COURSE, Claude Godwin returned to Hollywood. After several months of miscellaneous movie work he was chosen for the title role of Sabatini's Scaramouche, being remade for the eighth time in two centuries. When inevitable delays postponed shooting for a few days he let himself be talked into attending a party at the house of his leading lady, Gloria Malloy.

About twenty-three hundred Godwin surveyed the scene and found it not to his liking. In one corner, Gloria Malloy was giving the English actor, Beaumont, the lowdown on the sexual aberrations of Hollywood, in the process accusing practically every denizen of cinematographic jungle of being queer in one way or another. In another corner, Vakassian, the script-writer was complaining to Cuevas, the bit-player, about the crass materialism of the motion-picture industry. In the third, Gloria's husband, Lauder the cameraman, was making love to Cuevas's wife. The fourth was occupied by a roaring crapgame involving Finkelman the producer, Novalis the director, and McCarthy the sound-technician. McCarthy's girl had fallen into the swimming-pool and had been sent home in a taxi, while Novalis's girl had passed out and been carried upstairs to recover.

Claude Godwin had heard and seen it all before and found it boresome. Despite his almost complete lack of formal education, he liked to picture himself as a serious thinker, interested in world affairs and the latest advances in the arts and sciences. Inevitably, he found that very few cared to discuss such matters, and those few usually had some axe to grind and were willing to lecture him on their pet obsession but not to listen to his replies. "To hell with it," he said, and let himself quietly out the front door just as Gloria plunged into an account of the alleged necrophilia of Horton the singing-cowboy star.

The Studebaker was parked in the driveway behind Finkelman's all-chrome Mercedes-Benz. Godwin got in, started the engine, and pressed the button that actuated the parking-wheels, so that the car should sidle crabwise out of its space without the necessity of cramping the wheel. (This was now regular equipment on Super De Luxe Ultra Imperial models; on the plain Super De Luxe Ultra Special or standard line it was extra.)

Claude Godwin set the control lever on the steering-column for sidewise travel, stepped on the foot-brake, released the hand-brake, and started to let the foot-pedal up slowly, when he became aware that something was not normal. Some whisper of sound told him that he was not alone in his car; that there was, in fact, a man crouched behind the front seat ...