A Convention ~ and Other Things

© 2010 by Mr. David R. Dorrycott

Songmark and Songmark characters copyright Mr. Simon Barber.

Used with permission. Time Period 1937

Edited 6-2010 for Typos

Chapter One

“You may go in now Miss Van Pugpug” the grey, long furred doe sitting behind a massive stainless steel desk announced.

Charlene Van Pugpug, B movie actress and not a bad looking vixen herself stood, setting aside the magazine she had been reading. “Thank you Miss Goring” she answered. It was never wrong to be polite her mother had taught her, and her friend Jean had agreed with that sentiment. Just because the rabbit had probably been hired for her chest and lack of modesty shield on her desk didn’t mean that she slouched on the job, and she had been polite. Walking to the only other door in the room (its opposite led back out into the hallway) Charlene opened it and walked in.

Sitting behind his desk across from the vixen as she entered was Kab Langly, a fat Kodiak bear and head of the studios. Nothing happened at Republic that he didn’t have his paw in at the beginning, and only the Studio’s owner Yade was above him. Behind the bear curtains drifted in the morning breeze, a light breeze caused by the office being on the fifth floor drawing away the smoke of his ever present cigar. To Charlene’s left was a couch, very well used she knew from her own experience. “You wished to see me Mr. Langly” she asked, stopping behind the over stuffed fits-anything chair meant for most visitors.

“Have ah seat Charlene” the bear ordered, setting his ever present cigar in an ashtray, where its smoke was quickly carried out a nearby window. He noted where the vixen was headed and cleared his throat. “Not there Charlene. First, your too damn good an actress to need that anymore. Second, Yade’s aside, I personally like you and third. I saw what your friend Jean did to those roustabouts that assaulted you. Ah got no desire to spend the next year learning to walk again.” He smiled as she returned to the chair, settling down as comfortable as she could.

Of course, the shear harem outfit she was currently wearing, combined with skillful makeup left very little to the imagination, and was a very pleasant view to the bears mind. “How’s shooting going” he asked.

K.L. was not known for small talk, so Charlene took his question seriously. “Mr. Updyke appears to have a handle on the story sir” she answered. “Nancy is giving him trouble, but then she loves giving Directors trouble. She’s really talented enough to be worth it. I think she’d have been A list two years ago if she didn’t make so much trouble. Still we are on schedule, though over budget I hear. My own scenes should end today or tomorrow. Next Monday at the latest if Nancy doesn’t throw another temper-tantrum.”

“Good. What do yah think of the story?” KL asked.

“Its crap sir” the vixen answered, fighting to keep her tail still. This man could blackball her in an instant, she’d never stand in front of a movie camera again. Not even for those filthy adult movies DAKA made at night. He’d done it enough before, including two actress’s that Charlene had worked with at one time or another. But he had asked, and Jean had warned her that ‘lies tend to build up, until they kill you.’ “Its just another T&A film, with a little sword play to make it look like an Arabic myth. You really should replace Thompson. He only writes T&A stories, and he’s always on set trying to make time with us.”

“Would” KL agreed. “Except his movies tend to make a pretty good profit, and this time of year we need every penny we can get. ‘Es not the only male that likes ah T&A movie either. Lotta men’l pay their last quarter for eighty minutes of escapism, and tah see ah beautiful girl in as little as tha Hays office lets us get away with now. Its hard times out ther, ahn if that public wants escapism, they go for it. ” He leaned forward, his eyes obviously locked on Charlene’s chest. “And you dear Charlene, though ah beauty, are wasted in this movie.”

Having in the last seven years become used to being treated as a thing, not a woman, the vixen simply took in a deep breath, absently giving the bear what he wanted. At least it hadn’t been the couch she was relieved to know. She hadn’t brought any precautions with her, and it was her fertile time. “I am on contract” she reminded the bear. “I do what I am told. All that aside sir. Why am I here?”

“I have a job for you” KL admitted. “That writer, the Songmark girl. She hasn’t answered our letters. We need tha new series Charlene, and we need Jean in it. You see, when the board, that means God Yade’s himself, looked at the accounts. Well that series she wrote. Invasion From Selene? It was the highest grossing series we ever made.” He paused, looking around his office a few minutes.

“Granted. Letting Haster’s son write a script with yah in it was a monument to stupidity. Shadow was supposed tah be Petunia’s swan song. One that would let us bring her back later if we wanted to. The Master, its garbage. Nothin but garbage. Even if he is ah major owner, second only tah Yade. Petunia radio controlled by a device implanted in her brain? Impossible to believe, tha tubes alone wouldha boiled her brains in minutes. Damn story was only a teenage wet dream. Yah wore what? Ragged shorts ahn a torn shirt half that series? Ahn no Silver Star. Its what killed yer series hard Charlene, and I won’t let that happen in these studios again.”

“That isn’t in my education sir” Charlene admitted. “Business I mean. I’m just now taking Art classes. Business is beyond me sir.”

“Art?” the bear asked, surprised. “Why art?”

“My value to Republic as a B actress sir is my looks. I would be a fool to think that I will be an actress in fifteen years. Perhaps as little as ten years. A B actress doesn’t make that much money anyway, and her parts are always small. Even if she’s the lead character, she gets paid a tuppance compared to the male actors. I need another career, another source of income for my future. I like art sir, and I’ve been told by several very good artists that I show promise. That I have talent. But getting back to the subject at paw. You wish me to write to Lucy Ullrich?”

K.L. sat back, slightly surprised by what the vixen had just said. Not many actress’s realized that they just didn’t have what it took to break into the A list. Charlene might, but no one had ever cast her as a lead, except for the Petunia’s serial. They took one look at that chest, those impossibly deep eyes and decided without trying that Charlene’s only real ‘talent’ lay on her back. He’d seen enough of her work to know better by now. Not that she didn’t have talent on her back, as he knew from personal experience. It took more than talent and looks to get an acting part at Republic Studios, and she was one of his private stock.

“No Charlene. I want you to go see her. In person. And ah want you to get Jean back on board. Both of them, whatever it takes. Even it that means on your back.” He picked up two magazines from the clutter of his desk. “Have you seen these?”

She looked at the titles. “E’Tol? Ullrich sent me copies of that story. I happen to like horror. But this ones rather bloody in my opinion. Too much blood, not enough horror. It would turn the audiences stomach and Hays would never let that much gore on the screen.”

“Your right, which is why I’ve asked her, several times, to make a script from this. Something that will pass the Hays office but still give the viewers their moneys worth. She’s never answered. Even when I offered her six big ones, and a deadline. Not a peep.”

Charlene thought for several minutes. “Its got a good hook” she admitted. “Especially the end of chapter one. No one’s ever killed off the hero before. Certainly not in the middle of the series. And I know exactly what happens to the poor girl. Lucy was quite happy to explain what isn’t in the story. Mother to a demonic invasion. Gone mad she becomes the loving Queen to the monster that took her. Ends up thrown live into a bonfire by a preacher.” She shrugged, which did amazing things to her nearly nothing outfit. “I’ll do my very best sir, but don’t expect miracles. You know as well as I do that if a writer doesn’t want to write something, not even explosives will move them.”

“Yeah” KL agreed, retrieving his cigar to take a puff. “But you got something better than explosives. Ahn I’m orderin yah to use it. All of it. Hold back nothing ahn I mean nothin. Plus. I’ve got a project for you, in reward if your win. Its tha carrot. Stick comes later.”

“That being sir? A Shrine movie? Why not just shoot me in the head here and now. I may be under contract sir, but she’s at another studio and I won’t work with her.”

KL laughed again, a deep rumbling sound coming from the bears chest. “Oh no. No Candyworld for you if yer successful. That project is reserved for Nancy Randell. Her next big part. She needs tha learn who runs this studio. I have had enough o’ that attitude o’ hers. No, hold on a moment.” He turned to dig in a box of scripts, cursing when the fire fell off of his cigar. From the rapid slapping motions it must have fallen into his shoe. With a curse that reddened the vixens ear-tips he threw the dead stodgy out his window, then soon came up with a script. “Damn that burns” her cursed, stomping his right foot a moment. Finally he held up the script.

“Revenge of Dracula’s Daughter. A top of tha line B movie Charlene. Yade himself hasn’t seen this. I’ve been holding it, for the right moment.”

“And I play whom sir” the vixen asked, feeling the hairs on her tale begin to bottle. A top of the line B movie meant that, with a little push from the studio it could go A, if the audience liked it. A B movie actress’s dream. Why, even if she was nothing more than the first victim. She fought down her excitement. “What part sir” she asked again. She expected victim, or the leads assistant. What he said next stunned her.

“Lead. Yer part is Lucy Westenra’s unknown child by tha Count. Characters name is Alexandreina Westenra. Ahn your getting vengeance for tha death of both yer parents. First victim is old Van Helsing himself. Course, yer killed in tha end by Van Helsing’s grandson. Or it looks like tha, there’s two endings to this script. I’d like your Lucy to look over it. Could be his granddaughter, were still lookin at tha part. Gotta find ah good actor or actress and their aint that many near A level’s in our stock sides you.”

“Why not offer it to Jean” Charlene asked as sudden inspiration struck her. “She isn’t under contract sir, but she’s really good. And already a member of the Actors Union. We work well together, and it will draw in the Petunia’s fans. That is an automatic break even for the studio.”

K.L.. looked at the vixen before him, his mind sliding along ancient, pre-written tracks and coming to a completely wrong conclusion. ‘So it really is like that with you two’ he thought to himself. ‘Damn, what a loss.’ After that moment of refection, he had come to an erroneous conclusion that would affect Charlene’s acting career for the rest of her life. Accepting he may have lost one of his favorite toys, the bear smiled. “Okay, if yah can get her, she’s athletic enough tah do her own stunts. Save us a bundle too since she’s not contract. Which will help if Yade’s gives that project of Haster Junior a green light. I’m scared that it’s a studio killer. Well, we can even write in ah flying sequence. Her chasin you through tha skies inna old bi-plane, you inna bat costume trying to outmaneuver her. Mah-be even ah seduction scene. I’ll get Arthur looking at it. Its his baby after all, but he likes Lucy’s work. Wants to work with her. Done then. When your current films done, get tha accounting. Everything you’ll need will be waiting. And Charlene. There is a downside to this. Fail me, and its Candyworld for you. With Nancy. I’ll personally sell both your contracts to that studio myself, not just loan Nancy to ‘em to play with their little monster.”

He took a deep breath, then shook his head no. “I don’t like threats Charlene, and I hate have’n to threaten my really talented artists. Artists like you. But Yade’s in on my neck. I think he knows what gonna happen if Haster gets his way, and Haster has something on Yade. God I’d love tah have the money to start my own studio. Get away from all this politics. Between Haster and Yade their gonna run Republic into the ground. But the choice is yours girl. Get that Ullrich woman on board, and Jean. Or say hello tah Twentieth Century-Fox and tha Shirley Shrine.”

“I’ll kill myself first” the vixen answered as she stood. “And I mean it.”

“Loss for tha world girl, but remember. There are thousands like yah out there. I give ‘em, but I don’t take threats little vixen. Carrot, stick. Your choice. Shoot yourself its ah loss, but I’ll have someone else before yer body hits the floor. Just don do it on Studio property, we don’t need the bad publicity.” He stared his starlet down, remembering the bright, outgoing and certain woman who had once starred in her own series. Months of standard studio treatment had broken that. Another few months and he’d lose a good talent. Something had to happen, but all he could do was ease up on his own desires. Anyway, Goring was just outside he remembered.

“I’m making a point of giving you this chance Charlene” he continued. “To resurrect your series from the ashes of The Master. Try having Ullrich write that disaster as a fever dream or something. But its all on you, so don’t fail.” He picked up an envelope from his desk. “This too. We get one of these every week. Do the studio a favor. Stick around long enough tha drop by and say hello. Studio will pay yah to stay. Take Lucy with you iffin yah can. See Costuming, the’ve got your old outfit ready. I’ll even ship a trunk fulla old props tha be waitin for yah to give away. Saved ‘em from tha’ scape pile I did. Probably just five or six teenage boys in dads parlor, but it’s a coup for the studio. I’ll even arrange a photographer, so give one of those boys a sisterly kiss. When the photos come in I’ll have tha studio publicist do ah big deal about it. Charleen Van Pugpug, while working with her favorite scripter on tha next Petunia serial, attends tha first annual Spontoon Science Fiction Convention. Big splash in tha society pages.” He tossed the envelope in the vixens paws, waiting as she opened it.

A flyer came out. Obviously run on a spirit duplicator, printed on cheap paper that had allowed the purple ink to bleed slightly it announced the First Annual Spontoon Science Fiction Convention. She read the address and laughed softly. “Main Island, Main Village. Nineteen Cantaloupe Way. I actually have been to Main Village K.L., it’s a rather nice place. But its aimed at tourists. You really want to go to the Western shore of Main Island for the real thing.” Her voice was flat though, seeing as what her future could be. Returning the flyer into its envelope she kept it. “Okay K.L. You want it I’ll do it, and I may just have fun too. I’ll drop by as Petunia. With a bunch of 8x10's Jean and I had made special for such things, if you ever sent us to one. If that’s all sir, I’m expected on the set soon.” She stood then, turned and left. All the while feeling that her world had just come crashing down around her. Shrine made a point of trying to ruin the career of any actress she felt too pretty, too talented or just took a dislike too. And she was damned good at what she tried. Charleen was still under contract for five more projects. K.L. had her by the tailroot, and the bear knew it.

As the vixen walked out, K.L. turned to toss the script back where he had pulled it from. He used that as an excuse to lean down as if to slip it back in the stack carefully. It allowed him an excellent view of the vixens swinging tail as she departed. It was drooping slightly more than when she had entered he noted, but even so, it was a damn fine looking tail. Too bad it was Jean’s tail, because he had really wanted to ask Charlene to marry him one day. Well, he’d get the word out. If she survived the next year, certain parts would open up that no one would have hoped to offer the vixen. After all, even the Hays office couldn’t block everything. Though they tried. Oh did those busy body no-talent do-gooders try. As he sat up the bear sighed. There were thousands of wanna be actress’s out there. One had to be as exciting as Charlene Van Pugpug. Or, as was listed on her birth certificate, Georgia Patricia Willingswood. Picking up his phone he started the wheels in motion to locate a replacement for the vixen. Just in case she did shoot herself. Actors were so flaky and Charlene would not be the first after all. But if she went A list, he would still need a replacement B actress as talented, as beautiful and as intelligent. And fast.

Chapter Two

Nine days later a Pan-Am flying boat drifted gently into Spontoon Islands harbor. As always the pilots professionalism impressed the always watching eyes. Pan-Am hired only the best, and it showed. Soon after landing, the twenty four year old vixen actress found herself setting up in a small bungalow. She had chosen to stay at the same small ‘resort’ that the half-cougar Jean Ullrich had used on her last two visits. It was comfortable, the owners were polite, and it only cost a third of the amount that she was allotted by the studio. It also had some wonderful memories. Plus the extra money would look good in her retirement fund. That fund being the purchase of land, actually a ranch, West of her hometown of New Ulm, Minnesota. As she had told K.L. The chances of any B level actress having a career after her looks started to fade was slim to none, and Jean had a habit of saying that Slim always seemed to be on vacation. From long experience she tended to agree with her friend.

By the time she had settled in comfortably it was well after lunchtime. She could simply call Songmark the vixen knew, but this was Sunday. In her experience the chances of anyone spending their Sunday sitting at a phone was infinitesimal. Or at least her long experience with studio secretaries and most of Hollywood told her that. That there was always someone to pick up the phone at Songmark, even if it was just a Gate Guard, would surprise her. So she decided to travel to Eastern Island. Jean had often mentioned that during school term there were always two girls watching the gate and fence line. So it was just over an hour and a quarter later that she arrived at Songmark’s gate.

“Foxy swingin her tail comin to tha gate” the coyote Liberty Morgenstern announced as Charleen walked towards Songmark’s gates. “You want her?”

Her partner, and third year classmate Brigit Mulvaney, glanced at the woman. “Soft. Not a problem” the red furred Erie girl observed. “We can take ‘er, and give ‘er to Tatiana. She’s been mopin since her wife left for England.

“Yeah” the coyote agreed. “Strange how when yer forced inta somethin, yah eventually end up likin it.”

Her companion shivered, the green eyed Irish Setter shaking her head no. “Ahn iffin I go tha way. Please tah be ah shooting me in tha back of me head.”

“I’d be delighted” Liberty agreed. “Ah, here she is.” As she stepped forward the coyote gave the approaching woman a smile. “And how may we be helping you?” she asked in her most friendly way.

Charleen in return gave the third year Songmark girl her friendliest smile. “Good afternoon Miss Morgenstern, and Miss Mulvaney” she said in greeting. “If you would be so kind, I would like a few words with one of your Instructors.”

“Ah, and you would be?” the coyote asked. She hated to be at a disadvantage, and this vixen had just managed to do that with a simple greeting.

“Charleen Van Pugpug” the vixen answered. “A simple actress of no real importance.” She opened the small purse that hung by a strap off her shoulder, reaching in to withdraw an even smaller case. From that she withdrew a card, offering it to the coyote. “My card.”

Accepting the card Liberty passed it back to Bridgit unread. Looking at it might allow the vixen time to withdraw a weapon from that purse, and was that wire cable sewn into the fabric strap? This was no normal civilian.

“Charleen Van Pugpug” Brigit read from behind the alert coyote. “Actress, Republic Studios. Call or walk over?”

“Call” Liberty answered. She knew that anyone could have cards made up, and that purse strap modification along with how the purse fell bothered her. It was something a Songmark student would come up with. Not some little actress in the middle of Hollywood. She listened as Brigit spoke on the phone, then found herself a little shocked when the Irish Setter informed her that Miss Devinski wanted the vixen escorted in.

Opening the gate she waved the older woman inside. “I’ll escort yah” she explained, only to be surprised when Charlene laughed at her.

“Your afraid? Of little old me? Oh please” the vixen said with true humor. “Jean told me that third years are paranoid, but this is actually quite funny. Very well, if you will lead I promise to follow. And I promise not to hit you in the back of your head with my lead lined purse.”

‘Lead lined’ Liberty thought as she turned to lead the vixen. ‘Well, that would explain the wire, and how it hung. But why carry such extra weight?’ She held that question, a minute later opening the office door to allow their visitor in, but not entering herself. Once she closed the office door Liberty hurried back to the gate. ‘Now this is an odd visitor’ she told herself.

“Welcome back Miss Pugpug” the yellow furred hound known as Miss Devinski said as the door closed.

Charlene grimaced. “If I had it to do over Miss Devinski, I would kill my agent for that name. Instead, I fired the little weasel. My real name is Willingswood. Georgia Patricia Willingswood. If you must call me Miss, please use Willingswood. Charleen is okay, I like the name. In fact I prefer it.” She shivered. “But you must be aware of how many off color jokes have already been made of Pugpug by now.”

“All right then Charlene, and I am Catherine. If you would be so kind” the hound replied. “Please have a seat, and tell me please. How may Songmark be of help to you?”

“Assassinate K.L. and Yade?” the vixen asked as she slid into a canine style chair that just happened to be available. “No, don’t. I signed that contract with my eyes open. Like Jean told me, you live by your word, or your nothing. I need two things Miss Devinski. Jean Lynn Morris and Lucy Penny Falling Star Ullrich.”

Miss Devinski sat back in her chair, studying the vixen sitting across from her. “Lucy is on Casino Island Charlene. She won’t be back until just before sunset song. Much too late to speak with you. Jean, the last I heard from her was just after end of schooling this year. She and two other Songmark graduates took off on an Archeological trip with her husband and his assistant. So far we haven’t heard from any of them. May I ask the why though?”

Quietly Charlene explained about the new script, and the need for Jean in the next serial to appear as Silver Star. Finally she threw in the kicker. “And I need her to help me break into the A list Catherine. This vampire movie is different than any made before. I’ve read the script, there is an awful lot of thought that’s been into it. It reads more like a Sherlock Hound story than the typical bloodsucker. With Lucy’s sweet touch it will be good enough to put me into the A list, and that will keep me in film until I’m a long toothed grey furred old vixen. It’s a once in a lifetime chance for a B list actress, and I need both Jean and Lucy to pull this off.”

“What about after. When you are A list” the hound asked. “What about them?”

“Oh, I’d dump Jean and Lucy in a second. Surround myself with yes-furs. Start drinking heavily, marry and divorce a dozen times..” Charlene stopped, noting that Miss Devinski wasn’t smiling. “Then I’d sign up for the lead in a Shirley Shrine movie and spend the rest of a very short life in a rubber room” she finished.

“If I believed you about dumping your friends” the hound said slowly. “I would have you dragged out of my office and thrown out the gates. Naked.” She steepled her paws. “I will grant Lucy’s dorm the evenings off for three days, Monday to Wednesday. But limited to Eastern Island. You may meet with her at Song Sodas for three hours each day. This as a favor Miss Willingswood. A favor I will want repaid.”

“Uh huh. My neck in a noose?” the vixen asked seriously. “Or on my back. In your bed? Right now both options are quite acceptable.”

“Shrines neck in a guillotine would be a better choice” the hound admitted. “No Charlene. More than some little bad press has been released by a certain now defunct Aeroschool. One whom I will not name. I would like you to do something for me. I would like for you to arrange a small film about Spontoon Island. A travel film. One where Songmark is seen in a very good light. No lies, film what is true, but in good light.”

“I cannot promise anything Catherine” Charlene admitted. “But I will speak with K.L. Republic does have connections with travel film makers. James A. Fitzpatrick comes to mind as one. I will give you my word to try.”

“Good enough. And had I said you. On your back, in my bed” the hound asked.

“I would be there” Charlene admitted. “I need those two, and I will pay whatever it takes to get them.” She shivered sightly. “It isn’t like I haven’t done so before. I am no virgin Catherine. Not in any definition of that word. I am used goods. Not a woman to call your friend.”

Miss Devinski laughed softly. “Be careful young vixen, for you are delightful on the eye. Someone may take you up on that offer to open your arms. Very well then. I will see what I can do about Jean. Lucy. You’ll have to deal with her yourself. Just be careful, she is on Casino Island for a serious reason. One that just might find you on your back. With her.”

Charlene blanched. It had been just idle talk, but to... “If I have too” she answered softly. “I would much prefer not with her. She would hate me forever. But for her. Maybe.”

Catherine stood, holding out her paw. “Then don’t mention it to her. I wish you luck Charlene. I truly wish you luck. But as you with the travel films, I can only promise to do my best where it comes to finding Jean, or any Songmark graduate.”

Standing, the vixen accepted the hounds paw, unsurprised at the strength she found there. Jean and Lucy both had shown that strength. Songmark women were a new breed, and Charlene liked that breed. As she walked back towards the gate alone, the vixen silently prayed that it was a breed that would multiply. If nothing more than to put males like K.L. back in their place. As partners, not owners.

After she had left Miss Devinski walked over to her filing cabinet. There, she withdrew a single stained envelope. It had arrived almost two months after the expeditions departure. In it Jean Morris. No, Jean Marklin the hound reminded herself, had mentioned other letters that she had sent. Letters that had not arrived, but that was not unusual considering the route that they would have taken. Stolen by native workers hoping to find a dollar or two within them. Thrown away when nothing worth selling was found.

Jean had written about a huge underground series of vaults. Vaults that her group was discussing wither to explore, or reseal and leave for the next expedition. Three Songmark graduates were on that expedition. To lose three at one time. That would be a disaster beyond all disasters. Wasn’t Henrika bad enough? And Molly, as much trouble as she had been, had been promising. Biting her upper lip Catherine Devinski wondered if she was going to have to ask Amelia’s dorm to become involved. Considering the English housecats style, that could result in half an island vanishing. And Madagascar was a rather large island at that.

A little later that afternoon Charlene found herself speaking to K.L. long distance. As the McGee resort had only one public phone, and that being in a closed alcove, it proved to be an uncomfortable and rather warm situation. Still she listened quietly as the Kodiak Bear explained things that were happening, and how important it was to get that script. “I don’t care if you have to shanghai that woman” the bear was saying. “The Board just finished looking at all the accounts for our last five years, after Yade forced them into it. That script by Ullrich was the biggest grosser for all the serials, and that’s saying something. We need a hot property now. That damn Haster project is gonna suck tha life outta Republic. We’ve already sold five contracts since you left Charlene. So you get that script, understand?”

“Yes sir” the vixen agreed. She knew now exactly where she stood. Against the wall, with guns pointing at her heart. As an A actress she could tell K.L. off, maybe once, and get away with it. As a B list actress, he actually held her life in his paws. In the least it would be the casting couch for her for the rest of her career. More likely a ‘month or year away at his seclusive mountain ranch.’ As his private mount, if she upset him enough. Maybe longer if he wanted. Charlene had been to that ranch once, as an invited visitor. Watching as three B list actress’s in the studio’s disfavor went around naked, on all fours, while some A list actor or actress rode on their backs with reins in their paws. She shivered. Better to blow her own brains out than be treated like that. “I’ll get the script K.L., no matter what it takes” she promised, the life gone out of her voice now.

“Be sure that you do” the bear demanded from his end of the line. “Yade himself decided he wans yah to see it through right. So your stayin there until its done, and done right. Understand? Now don’t forget to check customs. That shipment of old props ought to be in. When is that convention again?”

“Next weekend K.L.” the vixen reminded her employer. “Six days.”

“Right. Very well. See Koolgin and sons. Their on Casino Island somewhere. They should have the studio contract by now but double check. Anything else?”

Charlene sighed softly. “I have an appointment with Miss Ullrich at 6pm on Monday. It will last until 9pm local time. Since our times are so different, do I call you, or just send a telegram?”

“Call, I’ll be here until after midnight” the bear answered. “Maybe longer. Press is sniffin around about somethin, and I need to find out what. Distract ‘em if its dangerous. Nancy outta do good for distractin. She likes tah drink after all. But if this mess hits the financial pages too soon our stocks gonna tak ah nose dive. Good luck Charlene, and goodbye.”

She hung up the phone, only then noticing that her paws were shaking. If Lucy Ullrich said no, then her own career was dead. Maybe, maybe she might get radio work. But that was no career for a real actress. “And I thought being typecast was the worst that could happen to me” she said to no one as an image of herself, on all fours, wearing nothing but a bit and saddle came to mind. Taking several deep breaths she put on her ‘everything went right’ face and exited the phone room, though she was sick to her stomach. This she put up as stress, and her moon. So, stay here until the script is done. At studio expense. Well there were an awful lot of very handsome Tourist Guide’s around, and Jean had shared her knowledge of precautions. It wasn’t going to be that bad of a time. Was it?

Chapter Three

A little after Sunset Song Lucy Ullrich found herself standing before two of her tutors. “You have discovered a way to scratch that itch?” Miss Blande asked. Her voice was that of one asking the time of day.

“Nah yet Mam” the half cougar admitted. “But we’re getting progress.”

“I see. You will have an answer before this time next week. I will not have further complaints from your classmates.”

“Yes Mam.” Lucy Ullrich was mortified. Who would have thought that having an imagination capable of creating the popular horror stories that she wrote, would also have the side effect of... Lucy blushed. Well they were quite vivid dreams.

“You had a visitor today” the hound Miss Devinski announced. “One Charlene Van Pugpug.”

“Ah missed her?” the cougar asked, her tail drooping in dismay.

“Today. Yes. She will be waiting at Song Sodas for you from six to nine PM for the next three days. I understand that you agreed with Miss Blande that you would write a certain script?”

“Yes mam. I’ve ahn outline in mah head right now.”

“Very well.” Miss Devinski stood, stretching as if tired. She had used this act against Nikki with great success during the mares three years at Songmark, and was aware that the black mare still harbored a very deep, dark desire concerning her. She was happy to see that she still had the same effect upon her current student. It was good to have a body that was appreciated the half Labrador thought. “You will not inform Miss Van Pugpug of this. There is a project that we, at Songmark, have asked for her to arrange. You will be certain to insure that she has done so, before agreeing to write this script.” She pressed her fists into the small of her back for a few seconds, the act forcing her chest out, tightening her blouse considerably. “Now, I’m off to see Helen for the night. Miss Blande?”

“May I ask..” Lucy started, then shut her muzzle. Of course she couldn’t the young second year thought.

“Actually. You need to know” Miss Blande answered as she too stood to stretch. It had been a long day after all, hadn’t it? “A travellog of the Spontoon Islands. With Songmark shown as it is. Not as Ave Argentum has painted us to be. We enjoy the truth young Lucy. We do not abide lies. We would like to see filming started before you sign that contract, though I still expect to see serious advancement of that work. In your spare time. Now, is there anything else?”

“No Mam’s” the cougar answered. Her tail was now solidly locked sideways, but Miss Devinski had just left the room. Leaving with just the right amount of sway in her hips to indicate exactly what she was expecting tonight. Helen Whitehall was a very, very lucky woman the cougar admitted to herself, still too immature to understand that she was being played by professionals. The Huntress Lucy had spent the day with hadn’t quite figured out how to scratch that itch, at least not after receiving a special message less than an hour after Charlene had arrived at Songmarks gates. Oh it had been fun, exciting, but somehow the Texan had been left wanting more than she had gotten. Even though she had gotten exactly what she had paid for. Yet she had been so very very close when their time ran out. Had Lucy known that it was by orders of her instructors, she would have exploded. That they were using her as leverage against Charlene, and Charlene against Republic Studio’s would have humiliated the Texan had she even suspected. The vixen was her friend after all.

“Very well” Miss Blande decided, pulling her blouse down with a snap, the act causing it to stretch in very interesting ways. She then brushed it as if there were something stuck to it. “You have Gate Guard duty in fifteen minutes. You had best get along.”

“Yes Mam”. Lucy turned and hurried off, that itch now becoming a nagging burn. She whimpered softly at the pain her locked tail was giving her. Her tutors were nothing if not skilled in using their students weakness against them. All the Texan would have to do was ask the third year Florence what happen during the Summer break to discover that truth. Unfortunately, it never occurred to her to do so. It would be a very difficult night for Lucy Penny Falling Star Ullrich, and her three roommates.

Not a minute after she had left Miss Devinski returned. “Forgot water taxi money” she explained as she opened a drawer, taking out a small clutch purse.

Miss Blande laughed gently. “Are you trying to turn every girl here sapphic?” she asked.

“Only the pretty ones” the hound answered with a knowing smile. “Seriously though. No. Lucy has a problem. Since she’s abstaining from males until after she graduates, it would have taken her about ten minutes at the Lotus to find someone worthwhile to fix it. Instead, she sits in her room writing. That is not what we train girls here to do. We train them to go out and face their problems. Overcome them, and move on. She’s been using the excuse that she needs to write for a year now. Sending her to see Charlene while that itch is a building flame will make things even more difficult for her, as I think that Charlene has a real interest in that cougar. I hope that this is all that it will take with Lucy. Bringing out the Dom in Nikki was hard. Very hard. Now, you know where to find me. I promise I’ll be back before sunrise song.”

“Using the secret tunnel?” Miss blande asked.

“One of them” the hound admitted. “Gods, if the girls ever stumbled across those. But they would have to work at Song Sodas to find them, and that we never allow. Good night.”

Miss Blande laughed, her own tail curling. “As if you’ll get a wink of sleep” she answered, watching in amusement as the hound departed again. Helen Whitehall had her hooks deep into her American friend. One day Catharine would admit that she was in love, and then she would have to find someone to train to replace her. Just as Miss Pelton had. It was the circle of Songmark’s instructors.

“Crate 725-A” the black footed feline clerk repeated the next morning, checking Charlene Van Pugpug’s identification papers against the shipping paperwork in his paws. “Seventy-two pounds, pre-paid. Are you declaring?”

“That I am being basely used by my studio?” Charlene asked. “I certainly do so declare good sir. Seventy-two pounds, that is an impossible weight for me to carry. And that kind sir, is not an act. I can manage fifty, for about thirty steps.”

“Most of that weight is probably in tha crate and packing” the older male admitted. “Still. We gotta check its contents. Preferable with you present.”

Charlene shook her head in amazement. Back in America Customs would have ripped the crate apart, taken the best items, then packed it back up as though they had never touched it. Here they wanted her present? “Certainly. I would be delighted to watch as you burly, naked to the waist well muscled males crack open that case. Sweating under the exertion and heat. Your muscles rippling with effort, your tails held high. While your ripe male scents quickly filling the room as you labor for little me. It will be quite the entertainment for me. Especially as I will be watching from behind, and taking score.”

For the first time in years the clerk blushed. Charlene had just put him on display, and seemed eager to enjoy the view. “Well, we don’t really haf-tah” he started, only to have the vixen wave him down.

“Please. No special conditions for me. I’m just a B actress. But if you don’t need to inspect my shipment, I’m certain that I could get Shirley Shrine to come here again. I understand that she has a great deal to inspect. Everywhere she goes. And much enjoys having her things inspected.”

A look of pure horror filled the felines face. “No. That... That’s not necessary. If you’d come this way please...” Being on display he abruptly decided, beat all-hollow having to deal with that little monster again.

Thus Charlene spent the next three hours delightfully explaining what each prop was, which serial, or movie it had come from and laughing at some of the things that had been added. “Oh I am certain that a Science Fiction fan wouldn’t be interested in Count Dracula’s hat, cape and cane” she happened to mention when one of the hounds held it up. “Just please, don’t let the cat out of the bag until its over. I want this to be a surprise for them.”

“Could I” the hound asked, indicating the items.

“Oh please, do try them on. Though I dated him twice, I never saw Lugosi in it. I’d love to see what it looked like in real life.” As soon as the hound had dressed the vixen gasped in delight. “Oh you must keep them” Charlene exclaimed. “They look perfect on you.”

And thus it was that Spontoon Islands first vampire actor was born. For once donning the cape and hat, the elder basset hound looked quite the part. Along with being a fan of the horror movie, knowing both lines and how to act.

Another hour plus, and several very personally signed photographs later, Charlene arrived back at the McGee resort with a rather muscular wolverine carrying the crate on a dolly for her. The crate was much too large to fit though her cabins door, so Butterfly McGee had it placed in the storage shed. There were, the vixen had realized, enough bits and pieces in that crate to give out to twenty times the number of expected convention goers. Including the little nearly naked nickle plated statuette of her that had been used in the worst of her series, as a mind control device. That she decided, she would give away as a reward for the best of something. What she wasn’t certain, after all. Why did go one in Science Fiction conventions she wondered. But she had decided to show up by surprise so she couldn’t just ask.

Butterfly did ask what was in the crate, and Charlene was quite happy to tell her. “Is something. Maybe. Flash Gordon?” the bovine asked.

“A couple of ship models” the vixen answered. “One of Mings, the other Flash’s. And one of Dales costumes, her wedding dress Ming had her wear think it was. Why?” the vixen asked.

“Is a Priestess who is great fan of Flash Gordon” the older bovine explained. “Comes often, to listen to the radio show.”

“And you would like to give her something?” Charlene asked. “I think I can do that, but only for her. No one else. And those boys, your word that you will not warn them that I am coming?”

Butterfly smiled. “I much love good surprise myself” she answered. “No, I ask no one to tell them.”

She helped as Charlene carefully open the crate again, and it was but a few minutes to withdraw the costume and one of the two wrapped wooden space ships. Studying the costume Butterfly clicked her tongue against the top of her mouth. “Too long. I must make adjustments” she decided.

“You know the Priestess measurements?” Charlene asked, surprised.

“Oh yes. Have made things for several Priestess’s.” She thought about her favorite priestess, and the mouses secret desires. “This will be... fun.” Then, after helping to re-seal the crate she was off to start sewing, carrying Ming’s craft and the dress under her huge arm.

Shaking her head in disbelief, Charlene checked her watch. It had been a busy day, still there was enough time for a late lunch, or earlier dinner. And a visit to Koolgin and Sons before heading to Song Sodas. She decided to visit the photographers first.

“I’m told yah want a script” Lucy Ullrich said in greeting as she entered one of Song Sodas many private rooms. This one did not have an ultra-thick door, nor heavy soundproofing. It did though have an internal deadbolt, which the cougar had openly slid closed. Charlene looked much as she remembered her. A few pounds heavier, stress showing in her eyes but all the important parts were still attached. “So KeeL didn’t take yah to pieces like yah thought? Everything still seems to still be stuck on in tha righ places.”

Charlene laughed, but there was no humor in that laugh. “K.L., not Keel. Not for want of trying Lucy. But Jean walked up to the bear, shoved him against the wall and said “If you hurt her. So much as a finger claw or fur tip. I will make a rug out of you. Clear?” She looked away from the cougar. “Poor K.L., he’s a Kodiak Bear. No one corners a Kodiak Bear but she did, and she made it stick.” Her words ended with a sad sigh. “I fear though that he is now absolutely certain that Jean and I are lovers, and Jean has absolutely no interest in our own sex. Certainly not in me. Nor I her. Well Jean can deal with K.L. He owns my contract so I’m stuck with him. I’ve imagined though. A lot lately, but it would have to be the right woman.”

“Nothin wrong with not bein interested in yer own kind” the Texan admitted. “I prefer males ten tah one, but ah like tah ride tha wild mare noh an then.” She picked up her waiting tea, taking a sip. “Jus like I like it” the cougar observed.

Charlene waved her paw as though pushing something insubstantial aside. “Your easy to remember. Tea, hot like the British like it, one cube, no milk. Lucy, why won’t you take the job? K.L. is offering six thousand, and he’s never paid more that six hundred for a B series script. He’s never paid more than three thousand for any script.”

“I’m too busy” Lucy answered. “Songmark gives me just enough time to wash, maybe eat and kind-a get a few z’s now and then. Write? Only on Sundays, and not often then. Now that are forcing me to take my passes and use them, while leaving my typewriter in the room. Its only gonna get worse next year.”

“I see.” Charlene thought for a few minutes, than came to a decision. “Lucy, I’m going to put my cards on the table. We’re too good of friends for me not too. This is for me too. You see, if I don’t come back with a script it’s a Shirley Shrine movie for me. And when I get out of the Happy Home, if I do, it’s the casting couch. At best. At worst, three to six months on K.L.’s ranch as his private mount.”

“Private mount?” the Texan asked.

“Republic movie actress’s who really, really foul up.” Charlene stood, wrapping her arms around herself. “We get two choices. Tossed into the pool, which means the worst producers, the worst scripts and no say in what we wind up doing. Mainly that means getting shipped to different countries to play leads in terrible films with bad food, bad water and no medical care. Or worse, DAKA films. Adult entertainment, one step above walking the wharf for returning sailors. Or the ranch.” She started to sit, then stood again. “Three to six months wearing rubber hooves, walking on all fours and the only clothing we get is a saddle and bit. Playthings for the A list actors, Actress’s and the boys at State Government. Of course we could go home. Break the contract, end up owing the studio everything we make until we’re white furred skeletons. Of course K.L. likes me, so I’d probably avoid the ranch. But it would be the casting couch. And when I finally caught, and I will, tossed out on my ear. Or worse, he’d ask me to marry him and I would have too. Lucy. B level is where most wanna-be’s end up. Occasionally a B level makes it to A, but they have to have talent, work hard and of course. Get spotted by the right director. I’ve been lucky so far. The right series, the right director and when Jean dropped into the mix, the perfect co-star.”

She finally sat. “But that’s all over now. Jean’s gone, you’re the writer that they demand and my director is off making a cowboy serial. I’m out on a limb on my own, K.L. knows it and he’s squeezing. Why? Because you and I are friends, and the perverted old bear believes that Jean and I are lovers. Hell Lucy, other than kissing her behind that bedcloth for the European releases, we haven’t touched each other like that. I’m certain Jean would gut me like a fish if I tried, even if I was interested, which I am not. Not her. Now this, and I have to be all happy for this convention on Saturday.”

“I don’t have ah hearts ahn flowers bone tah pull on” the half cougar half whispered. “They do all tha to writers too?”

“Hell no. They just stop answering calls, trash scripts unopened. No more invites to parties, snubbed in the social scene” the vixen answered. “But writers can get into other things. We actors? Maybe the stage, but its full, so its hard. There’s radio, but that’s a certain career killer. Me? I’d rather play brood mare on the ranch for six months than work in radio. Nasty little box. It’ll never be worth anything compared to the silver screen.”

Lucy sipped her tea some more. With Charlene she wasn’t always certain when the vixen was acting, or telling the truth. This though, this sounded like the real deal. “Law don’t care about this ranch?” she asked gently.

Charlene gave a short bark in response. “Hell, the Chief Inspector for the state is a constant visitor. He likes blondes. Preferably otters. Being as he’s a stallion himself, he’s broken a couple of girls already who fought him. By broken, I mean they are still at the ranch. They don’t want to be anything else. ‘Geddie up little filly’ is his favorite line I hear. And the Governor’s been out there once that I am certain of. I was there when he was, and he asked K.L. about me. Scared me to death it did. That slimy weasel is nothing but pure evil.”

Lucy stood as well, holding her mug in her paw. “I’ve got mah own orders Charlene” she admitted. “No script till tha travellog starts filmin. Even iffin your tellin me that real deal, I can’t. Ahn honestly, turn that flake story inta a episode series? It aint got the legs Charlene. It really don’t.”

“Travel log?” The vixen asked. “Oh God I forgot all about it. I don’t know what K.L. will decide about it. But that’s all? Just that?”

Lucy shrugged, she had turned her back to the vixen, not willing to look at her while she talked. Crying women bothered her. She always wanted to go all mommie on them, and all dancer on the heads of those who caused it. Usually with her shotgun. “What else yah got tah offer Charlene. Six thou? Ah’d want tah have full control of tha script. It wouldn’t be E’tol though. Something like it, but different.”

“I might get you control” the vixen answered. “We have three days to talk, and I’ll get on K.L. tonight. But you asked what else I have to offer? Lucy. Turn around.”

Lucy turned around and gasped, feeling her jaw drop while almost losing her grip on her mug. Her friend now stood before her in nothing but her fur and shoes. Having somehow undressed, completely, without the cougar hearing her. She felt her tail lock solidly, a certain indication that this was what she wanted.

“Me Lucy. I’ll give you me. For how long you want” the vixen said. “A night, a week, a month. Forever if you want. I’m yours. If you want me.”

It took Lucy Ullrich more than a minute to gather herself together again. Before her stood the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, and she was offering herself. “No” she finally husked, and hating herself for saying the word.

“I’m not good enough for you?” Charlene asked. “Why not?”

“Because you’re my friend” the cougar snapped, slamming her near empty mug of tea on the table. “Ahn I don use mah friens. Ever.”

“Not even if they want to be used” the vixen asked, though she didn’t move. She was trembling to much to chance any movement right now. She felt so weak, as if someone had poured water over her and taken her strength.

“Get dressed” Lucy ordered. “Ahn we’ll talk. But not.. Not like this.” With a force of will she managed to release her tail, but it wouldn’t last long she knew. And that fire inside her was now a raging bonfire. She gulped, took a deep breath and continued. “You lyin about tha ranch?”

Carefully Charlene picked up her dress, and in the doing so showed Lucy how she had pulled off the stunt. It was held on by only three buttons, and other than built in breast support there was nothing worn underneath it. “Not a word is a lie Lucy. It is getting better. More eyes watching, it used to be a lost worse I’ve been told. There is something else you need to know. Two things, since I’m being so open about things.”

Pouring herself another mug of tea from the insulated pot on the table the cougar waited. Besides, the show was good, even if it was her friend. “Go ahead, wha are they” she asked, her imagination running wild. That was a very enticing tail Charlene had she abruptly realized. And it had just been offered to her. Maybe her no had been a bit abrupt.

“If I can get you, and Jean on board. And if the project is a success. There is a movie script waiting with my name on it. Lead in a high class B movie, the kind that have been known to go A on occasion. Dracula’s daughter. Oh I get killed in the end, but I’m the main character. And they want Jean in it as my counter.”

“Maybe go A list yerself?” the cougar asked, her tail threatening to lock again as Charlene settled her breasts into their support structures. ‘She’s my friend’ the cougar reminded herself. ‘Even if she did offer.’ It calmed her tail, but barely.

“I could. B’s get maybe one chance in their entire career to go A. Otherwise, your looks go you have two choices. Quit, or go character actor. Sadly, I am no character actor.” She sat across from her friend, picking up her coffee. “That is a really special talent, one I honestly wish that I had. Its just escaped me.”

“Like tha Mexican actor in tha last serial?”

Smiling the vixen nodded yes. “Yes, exactly like him. He’ll have bit parts until the day he dies. Probably even a few sidekick roles in major movies. Me? Waitress maybe. Old woman in the background. If I’m lucky. I’ve got looks Lucy, damn good looks. But I’m twenty-four and those looks are going to start fading soon. When they are gone, I’ve got nothing to sell the studio. Not as a B actress. Not really. That’s why I’m studying art. I like to draw and paint. Maybe by the time that last studio dumps me around my thirty-fifth birthday I’ll be good enough to make a living at it. But I’d rather act. I am a good actress. A real good actress.”

“Ahn tha second thing” Lucy asked, waiting for that shoe to drop.

“I’m in love with you” the vixen answered bluntly.

“CRAP!” Lucy snapped. “I do noh need tha right now Charlene.”

Charlene took a deep drink of her cooled coffee. It tasted foul, but she forced herself to drink. “So when would be a good time?” she asked. “Should I have it put on my tombstone?”

“You don understand” the cougar snapped. “I’ve been havin troubles. Tha kind tha makes yah go out huntin someone to help yah with. Your mah friend Charlene. Mah best friend outside of Helen, and she’s off galavanten with Lady Allworthy. I don wanna use yah. I don wanna LOSE yah.” She took a deep breath. “Ah don use friens.”

Nodding her head in agreement the vixen took a deep breath before continuing. “Its out in the open though. We’ll deal with it later, but believe me in this Lucy Penny Falling Star Ullrich. You would never be using me. So lets set it aside and discuss this script. Oh, and would you like to attend this convention with me?”

“What kinda convention” Lucy asked warily, to have the folded flyer placed in her paws. “Science Fiction?” she asked after reading. “Why?” She knew that Charlene was changing the subject radically, but the way she felt right now, she was happy for the vixens tact.

“Probably a couple teenage boys in dads carport, or backyard. I have to show up in costume, give a dog and pony show, hand out a bunch of old props that were headed for the dump and have photos taken for the studio to use in a big publicity production. Its gonna be about as boring as it comes. I’d like to have my best writer with me. My best friend next to Jean. That would be you. I promise not to grope you while we are there.”

“Jus before ahn after” Lucy growled. Charlene only smiled in response. “All right.. Dependin if we get ah pass. From ten am tah four pm. Thas not too long.”

“I promise to buy you a meal, then lock you up in my resort room until you come up with an outline for that script” the vixen laughed.

“Tavellog” Lucy reminded her friend.

“Done and done” Charlene agreed. “I’m staying at the McGee’s, its good, cheap and not filled with fat noisy tourists.” She checked her watch. “And it has wonderful memories. Oh damn, its time you left.” Standing Charlene walked to the door, opening it for her friend. As Lucy started to pass the vixen made a noise, causing the cougar to look up. When she did Charlene stole a kiss. “I do love you” she whispered, then giggled weakly as the embarrassed Songmark student hurried back to her school.

Chapter Four

“She will do it K.L., under conditions” the vixen said into the McGee phone. She was curled up, her fluffy tail in her lap. She was uncomfortable, her stomach was twisting and she was feeling sorry for herself. After all those letters between them, she had thought that she had judged the cougar. Thought that she had chosen the right time. Thought that her offer couldn’t be refused. Then, in her big dramatic moment, Lucy had said no. It still hurt, and she had fallen in love with the Texan. Standing there, naked, with the cougar staring at her it had crystalized. She did love her. That just made the rejection hurt even more.

“What conditions” the bear asked. His voice sounded hollow, as though he were talking into a tin cup. Knowing him, Charlene wouldn’t put that bit of melodrama out of mind, but more than likely it was his speakerphone.

“She wants that travallog started before she writes a word. And she wants control over the script.” Charlene answered.

“Ah donno about the script Charlene” the bear answered. “She’s not a member of the writers guild. Least that I know of. Offer her something else.”

Charlene shivered. She was about to admit that her best offer had failed miserably. “She is a member of the writers guild K.L. Robert Windslong signed her up as part payment for her first script. And she wants to write something like that story, but different. Lucy claims it won’t stand up to an expanded storyline.”

Silence answered her. She waited until K.L. returned to his phone. When he did, the hollow sound was gone. Speaker phone the vixen realized, and now he was off it. “How much different” the bear asked.

“I don’t know K.L. I honestly don’t know” Charlene admitted. “I’ve seen a lot of her work. Stuff she never offers for publication. A lot of the latter is plain blood freezingly frightening. She calls it her dark half.”

“I need that script Van Pugpug. What exactly have you offered her so far?”

“Me” the vixen answered softly. “K.L., I offered me, as long as she worked on the script. She said no. K.L., I don’t have anything else to offer her.”

Silence answered her again. Then... “She said no? What is she, crazy?”

Stifling a laugh of pure amusement Charlene answered her employer. “Maybe she’s just not interested in girls K.L. After all, not every woman is you know. No matter what Thompson writes for you, there isn’t any virus called the Sapphic Seed. I could have jumped her, but she is Songmark and a second year. She’d have broken both my arms and left me standing there in my fur for anyone to take.” Charlene didn’t mention that jumping Lucy had not been within her desires at the time. Falling on her back though, that had been.

“I see. All right, get me an outline. What she thinks is better. Offer her a part if you have too. Just get it so I can get Yade off my tail. Its short enough already.”

Stunned, the vixen pulled her phone away from he head, looking at it as if it had just licked her ear. Finally she returned it to where it needed to be. “K.L. What’s going on over there.”

Again silence answered her, then there was a soft click. As though someone had hung up. For a moment she thought it had been K.L. hanging up. Then he returned. “You’re my best B actress, and your as loyal as they come” the bear answered. “Plus, hell Charlene, you know this. I was in love with you once. So I’ll tell you the truth. But if it gets out, your on the ranch the rest of a very, very long life. As a breeder. So you really want to know?”

“I think that I need to know K.L., and I never knew you loved me” she admitted. “I guess I’m just too self centered, I’m sorry. I think I missed a grand opportunity.”

“Self centered? Not you. Busy with your life. Okay then. Its Haster’s son” the bear answered. “Remember I told you he wrote ah movie? Do you remember Madame Satan?”

Charlene racked her memory. It was getting hard to concentrate but along with being an actress, movie trivia was a hobby of hers. “Barely. DeMille right? I think if I remember correctly, it was the biggest flop MGM put out that year. Nineteen thirty right?”

“Bang On. Damn Charlene, no wonder I never win against you in movie trivia. Most people won’t even admit they heard of it” the bear answered.

“It was just before my time K.L.” the vixen reminded her employer. “My first time in front of a camera was when I was seventeen. That was ‘31 you remember. I was just starting with Mammoth when Yade took over, Republics my only studio.”

“Actually, no” the bear admitted. “I don’t keep up on anyone’s career but my own. Well Haster loved the thing. And he bought the remake rights. His son is in the middle of rewriting it. Its gonna cost the studio too much, and he wants all our best in it. That means you too, as Martha - Angela's Maid. It’ll be a flop again, its just too busy. Boards probably gonna kick Haster out, he owned Mascot remember? “

“And couldn’t pay his bills like the rest” Charlene supplied. “K.L. This is long distance and its costing you plenty.”

“I know I know. But we need something blockbuster to afford that flop. Without it, yer gonna be sold. Half our contracts will be sold, maybe as many as two-thirds. A list too. Just to keep the studio from collapsing. So here’s the bottom line Charlene. Get that script. Get those girls. I’ll get Windslong to direct, Updyke to produce. Do this, I get you that film. Don’t, I have tha toss your contract into tha pile. And Charlene, I’ve no idea where you’ll end up. It could be DAKA. They’ve nosed around about you before. Either way, because of this mess we will have tah pare down our stock no matter what. Now that you know, what’s your answer.”

Ice water was washing through Charlene’s veins as the bear spoke. Republic had always been one of the smaller studios. But that one untalented idiot could cripple the studio. She shook, trying to fold into herself. Republic had been her only studio. She’d started with that lucky break as a bit part actress, worked her way up to where she was now. To lose it all, start over who knew where.

“Charlene?”

“I’ll do whatever I have to K.L. My word” the vixen almost whispered. “Even if I have to sell myself to her. Goodbye.” She hung up and almost cried. Business wasn’t her best subject. Oh she could balance a checkbook of course, but even she could read the financial section. An average cowboy serial costs $40,000 to make. Petunia’s last flop came in at $38,500. A big budget movie maybe two or three hundred thousand. The entire studio was only worth about a million, maybe a million and a quarter. If she remembered rightly, Haster owned thirty-five percent of the preferred stock. Maybe a little more. It would cost the studio at least half a million to buy him out because he wouldn’t want to go. But he was a greedy man when it came to money. And a vindictive man. He’d been crossed before, when he lost his studio to Yade. And he was no idiot. He had to know his son hadn’t any talent as a writer. Maybe he was using this as a way to get back at those who had hurt him. After all, Madam Satan had a net loss of almost $400,000. That would kill a Poverty Row studio. Any Poverty Row studio. Picking up the phone again she called Songmark.

It was Miss Devinski who answered. “Well hello Charlene. Lucy? Its after sunset song Charlene. An emergency? What kind? Not over the phone? I see. Come to the gate, I’ll listen. If I agree its that important, I’ll let you talk to her. Yes, right now. Good-bye Charlene.”

Forty minutes later the rather ill vixen was sitting next to the yellow furred hound just outside of Songmarks gate. Still shaking she had explained everything, and now waited to discover the hounds answer. Even in the islands warmth she felt like she was dripping icewater.

“I agree you are in a difficult. A dangerous situation” the hound admitted. “That taken, its not an emergency. I can’t let you see Lucy until tomorrow evening. That is just how it is.”

“I.. I see” the vixen answered. It seemed so easy to talk with this woman, and Jean had several times mentioned that if you couldn’t trust Songmarks Instructors, then you couldn’t trust anyone in the world. So she opened up completely. “I guess that for me, seeing my entire career go down in flames is a disaster. But for someone else, its just the way things go.” She shook herself yet again. She was doing that a lot since that phone call she realized. Taking a deep breath she lifted her head, looking past the canine towards Songmark’s dorms. “Jean has always had the right answers. I guess that because Lucy is Songmark too, that I thought she would know what to do. That’s awful foolish of me, isn’t it?”

“Not really” Miss Devinski answered. “Look, think about it. Really, what can you do? You admit that it would cost a half a million dollars to buy out this ferret. Songmark isn’t worth a hundred thousand, and I know for a fact that Miss Ullrich hasn’t that kind of money. I do not know anyone on these islands with that kind of money to throw away. And half a million my dear. You yourself admit that Republic Pictures is only worth, at best three times that. A half million dollars for only thirty-five percent? No one is going to spend that kind of money for such a bad return. And in the middle of a depression at that. Remember, its not certain that any Poverty Row studio will survive.”

Charlene threw up her paws in defeat. “I’m just so used to Hollywood” the vixen admitted as her tail wound around one leg. “Someone always has money to spend. Miss Devinski... If I had the money, I would buy the entire studio. I love the movies that much. But all I have is my land, and that’s only two or three thousand, if I could get a loan, or sell it.” She sniffed, fighting back tears. “If only Jean were here. She would know what to do, how to make it work.”

Miss Devinski wasn’t used to counseling someone who wasn’t a Songmark student, but the puzzle pieces were beginning to fall into place like they always did for her. “Are you in love with Jean” she asked, probing.

Charlene laughed. “Jean? Oh please Miss Devinski. You know better than that. She’d gut me if I every tried anything. And no, I’ve never really been attracted to HER. She’s my best friend, and I mean in or out of Hollywood. We get drunk together, chase the boys, pull the Hay’s Office’s tails, come up with story ideas. You know that scene where her panties show? The black lace ones? That was her idea, and we spent simply days searching for the right pair. Even then, she had them adjusted. She was hoping for a full rear view. They...”

The vixen blushed so her eartips went dark. “They have a slit, in the right place. She wanted that series to be her swan song from Hollywood. Wanted to make sure that no one would ever approach her to play in another movie. But Windslong went ballistic. AFTER he watched the dailies. About thirty times I think. We had to reshoot the whole scene the next day. That film though, it vanished. She still has the panties though.”

It was hard for the hound not to break up laughing. That was exactly what most Songmark girls would have tried to get out of something that they didn’t like. After she had regained control of herself the hound continued her probing. Something didn’t fit, and could only fit in one way. But that didn’t make sense. Not with what information she currently had. “So this convention you want to take Lucy too. How many people do you expect?”

“Convention? She told you?” Charlene was shocked, her jaw almost fully open.

“My dear Miss Willingswood” the hound laughed. “We require our students to report everything. We keep confidences, but we require that they do report. We want no repeat of certain events, and we do everything that we can to protect our students. But to do so, we must have information. So yes, she told Miss Blande.”

“Oh.” Looking sheepish the vixen turned her attention back to the hound. “You won’t tell them, will you? Its supposed to be a surprise.”

“Certainly not. I love surprises like that myself” the hound admitted. “So, how many.”

“Seven to nine I would guess” the vixen answered. “No more than ten.”

Miss Devinski reached over to pat the girls paw. “I have it on good record that, aside from you two, there will be eleven. It is in Mr. Koerkers back yard. He’s the basset hound that you gave the vampire costume too. And I would bet good shells that he is near bursting to tell his children. He has a grandson about fifteen, and a granddaughter about thirteen who are big on Flash Gordon and the like. I know because we do business with Customs all the time, and he’s a nice man. If a bit movie crazy. Like you I think.”

Charlene thought for a few minutes. “Eleven? That means four or five items each, and a lot left over. Oh well, I’m certain the local dump will accept them.”

“Items? By items, you don’t mean.. Props do you” the hound asked softly.

“What? Props? Oh yes. From Republics old movies and serials.” She opened her purse, taking out several papers pinned together. “The studio doesn’t have the money to store everything, so K.L. arranged a bunch of junk to be shipped over. Props from Isle of Sunken Gold, Vultures of the Sea, The King of the Kongo, The Shadow of the Eagle, The Mystery Squadron, The Phantom Empire, The Hurricane Express and all the Petunia serials.” She folded up the pages. “Along with several movie one sheets, some Buck Rogers radio scripts and Flash Gordon things that somehow found themselves on Republics lots.”

“Stolen?” the hound asked.

Charlene shrugged “Maybe. I doubt it though. Hollywood is cutthroat, but your just hurting yourself to steal something from another studio. More than likely brought in by bit actors trying for parts. Even purchased from the other studios to save money. When your not under contract, part of your pay can be the costume you wore. Not many of the studios save things. Costumes end up getting tossed in piles to rot for example. Its not like say, UFA is going to make another Metropolis. So things shipped over from the continent for display tend to be abandoned. It is just too expensive to ship them back. The same goes locally. Being folded into Republic, Mascot isn’t going to make another Isle of Sunken Gold for example. So things just pile up. They get given away, thrown away, reused, modified or just plain lost. Why, I have with me five episode scripts from the Petunia serials, one of the episodes from the Flash Gordon serial and the entire Ace Drummond serial. One of the Petunia scripts was written by Lucy herself. Its Episode Seven, ‘When Hearts Touch.’ Props are useless after a movie. There just wood and tin with a little paint, or used scripts that are thrown away. Just junk.” She shrugged again. “Though I have complete scripts for everything I’ve been in. I like reading them, and remembering.”

“What you think of as junk, some people would kill to own” Miss Devinski admitted. “Like the Ace Drummond script. It’s the whole story?”

“Yes, but its different actors scrips. So one episode might have been marked for Ace, another for Peggy, another... Well honestly I can’t remember all the parts. I wasn’t in it you see.” Charlene felt the energy building in her as she talked about her craft. About the things she knew. It was one of the reasons that she and Jean had become such good friends. They both had a love of their own expertise, enjoyed talking about it and enjoyed listening to the other talk about theirs. “But yes, it is the entire story.”

“I think that Songmark might like having that. It was written partly by Eddie Rickenbacker after all. What would you want for it.”

“Lucy” the vixen answered immediately. “I mean, to talk to Lucy. Tonight.”

Another piece clicked into place with a sharp snap. “And you have been in love with my student for how long?”

True to form Charlene blushed again, but in the gathering darkness one had to be very close to see it. “Five or six months. That I’m certain of” Charlene admitted. “But it doesn’t matter. I offered myself to her, and she said no. She said, and I quote; ‘Crap! I do not need that right now Charlene.’” She shook herself yet again. It was becoming a bad habit. “Its really hard Miss Devinski, to open yourself like that when you’ve been living with the sharks in Hollywood as long as I have. And get shot in the heart for it. If I’d known she was going to say that, I never would have tried. In Hollywood, no matter who it was they would have taken me. Then dumped me when I became tiresome, or couldn’t advance their career any further. It was hard to tell her, and it hurt like I’d been stabbed when she rejected me.”

Miss Devinski nodded in agreement. “Stay here” the hound ordered, then stood and walked to the gate.

Less than three minutes later a young cougar came near flying out of her second year dorm, barefoot and still dragging her Songmark shirt on. While Charlene watched from the darkness of the shaded bench there were words spoken between the two. Then Lucy Ullrich, her tail lowered, walked alone over to the waiting vixen.

“Yah realize that you just got mah tail ripped off ahn shoved up mah butt pointy end first” she said in greeting, plopping down on the bench, but away from Charlene. “Yah have any idea how deep inta a students life these women dig? Do yah?”

“No Miss Ullrich, I really didn’t” Charlene admitted, sliding as far away from the Texas cougar as she could. The benches cool wood felt good. “We were just talking about the things I brought over for the convention, and film making in general. Then all of a sudden she asked me how long I’d been in love with you. Honest Lucy, I wasn’t going to mention it at all. I know you hate me already.”

Lucy snorted. “Hate you? Darlin, I don’t hate you. I just. Well, I like yah as a friend. I like havin friends ahn I wanna have kittens. Havin a woman drop her drawers in front of me and professen her love.” Lucy looked up at the darkening sky, noting that the stars were awfully bright tonight. “Was like having mah airplane suddenly start talkin to me. Charlene. I like you. I trust you. Your ah dream come true. But love you? Hon, I’ve never thought of yah like that. Yer Charlene Van Pugpug. Actress. Beautiful. Big girl in tha serials. Untouchable by tha normal sod walker. I’m jus a part time writer ahn a student.” She shook her head side to side. “Iffin we’d been near ah bed when yah pulled that. Yeah, I mightah lost it. But that was ah public place. Ah waitress couldha come in anytime. Just... Just let me have time tah think.”

Charlene smiled gently. “All right. But I want you to know this Lucy Ullrich. Script or no script. My heart belongs to you. No one else. And in Hollywood, two thirds of the men like their own kind, and a third of the women. We won’t even make waves. I promise, or I’ll leave show business and be your companion wherever you want to go. But, honestly. Lucy. That isn’t important right now.”

“Isn’t...” The cougar looked hard at her companion. Well looked, until she realized that she WAS getting interested again. “What is important enough to get me dragged out of my bed, and if you didn’t notice, wearing only my Songmark shirt and panties?”

“Pretty ones too” Charlene answered with a weak giggle. Then she sobered up and explained what K.L. had told her. By the time she had finished Lucy’s own jaw was wide open. “And I like your tonsils too” Charlene said in ending.

Closing her mouth Lucy shook her head no. “Mah families entire holdings are, well they’re split up. When ah marry or hit twenty-five ah get a quarter. I’ve two sisters and ah ah brother after all. But even then, I’d have tah sell everything. And like Miss Devinski said, there ain’t no future in tha movies right now fer ah small studio. Noh with tha Depression going. Oh, I could cash in tha last of my educational fund, but tha’s only thirty-thousand. I’ve already paid Songmark in full.” She shook her head no again, having unconsciously moved a little closer to the vixen. “You need ah consortium. Ah lot of people with ah little money to do this. So iffin it fails, no one gets hurt too much. I’d say, ten people with ‘bout thirty-five thousand each. Maybe less, if yah could arrange Republic’s stock to drop in value. Without really hurting tha company I mean.”

“If that movie gets made” the vixen said, edging slightly closer to her prey. “If it does, and gets released the entire studio may go bankrupt. But then it wouldn’t be worth owning. They would first sell off everyone’s contracts to pay the debts, sell the studios, rights to scripts. Equipment, buildings. Everything.“

“How much tah just start your own studio” Lucy asked softly, for oddly they were now only a few inches apart.

“Oh God. To start a new studio? Buy land, build studios, offices, find scripts, talented people. Get a stable of good actors and actress? Today? At least a million. Maybe twice that, if you wanted to succeed. You need to have a years running cost in the banks first, because even a simple serial. Well from brainstorming to release. Your talking two months. Then you have to pay the labs, distributors, wait for the theaters to pay and hope that you have something the public wants to see. Realistically, four or five releases until you hit your stride. Eight or nine months to break even at best. And I am under contract for five more projects, no matter what.”

“Yeah, and you would be our A list actress iffin we could pull it off” Lucy agreed. “Having yah stuck at another studio fer who knows how long would be a killer. Let me think. Alpha Rote mentioned tha one of her wifes friends is stinkin rich. Maybe, well leah me have two or three weeks.” She turned to look at her waiting Instructor, her ears still stinging from the verbal lashing she had gotten. “And you’ll get your script. In six weeks. So let yer bear know you are gonna be here six more weeks.” She turned to face Charlene, only to have the vixen throw herself into her arms.

“I knew I loved you for some reason. Your just as smart as Jean” Charlene cried as she hugged the stronger cougar.

“Ahn iffin yah don’t let me go” Lucy gasped, “Ahm gonna deck yah. People ar wachen girl.”

“All right” Charlene agreed, her mood darkening just as quickly at the rejection. Carefully she released the cougar. “Until tomorrow afternoon. Then we brainstorm the script. You promised!”

“Ah promised” the cougar admitted, standing. “Ahn will yah please let go of mah tail?”

“Make me” Charlene challenged, batting her eyes.

In answer Lucy gritted her teeth, twisted and pulled her tail from the vixens grasp. “Tah-morrow” she hissed, stomping away.

A few moment later the hound Miss Devinski sat beside Charlene again. “You have the girls laughing” she noted. “They need that. I believe that you owe Songmark a script?”

“Come with me to the McGee resort, I will place it in your paws myself” Charlene agreed.

“After watching you with Lucy?” the hound laughed. “No thank you. Tomorrow, before you meet Lucy. Or she doesn’t have a pass until you return to America.”

Standing Charlene looked down at the hound. “You are a devious, calculating, manipulating bitch” the vixen stated.

“Thank you.”

“And I like you. Tomorrow, my word.” Taking one last look at Songmarks gates Charlene shook her head no. “I’d never get past the gates, would I?” she asked.

“Not alive, no” the hound agreed.

“Then I better start planning Lucy’s seduction in my rented rooms tonight. She said no to my naked body. What else do I have worth offering her.”

Miss Devinski stood again, now looking slightly down at the actress. “Try offering her your heart. We don’t get many truly Sapphic girls. Lucy walks both paths like the majority people think are Sapphic. Its going to take a great deal of effort on your end to turn her eyes away from men forever.”

“Oh no Miss Devinski. You have me wrong” the vixen admitted. “Not forever. Just long enough to marry me. I understand its legal here?”

“But not in America” the hound reminded her visitor.

“That never stopped Tallulah Bankhead, Beatrice Lillie, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, or Gladys Bentley” the vixen answered. “And I like men too, I just can’t ever see myself living with one. Certainly not now.” She held up a scarp of cloth. “Maybe, one day. Maybe I’ll give Lucy her panties back. Then maybe not.”

“You are a scrappy little fox” Miss Devinski laughed. “So holding her tail...”

“With one paw, and sharpened fingerclaws on the other” Charlene continued.

“Very well done. Two points to you for that. Now good night Miss Willingswood. And please, take Lucy’s name. I am so tired of changing students paperwork.”

“If I win. I will Miss Devinski. I promise. I’ll be Charlene Ullrich, and if anyone wants, they can make jokes about the initials C.U.” Then the vixen left, carefully heading down to where the water taxis waited, while a certain hound walked to Luch Ullrich’s dorm room. To ask a now embarrassed girl about a certain piece of cloth.

“It won’t work that way” Lucy argued. “You can’t have mind control. Not and expect your audience to believe you.”

It was the next afternoon and Charlene was feeling miserable. She had thrown up on the water taxi last night, and again today. That didn’t count her cramps, diarrhea and just plane exhaustion. She was a physical disaster and she knew it. No wonder Lucy had turned her down. She wasn’t worth having.

Rubbing the side of her muzzle the vixen Charlene tried to think. They had another ten or fifteen minutes before Lucy had to leave, and this was the second of three afternoons that Miss Devinski had promised her. “That’s what killed The Master, wasn’t it” she asked tiredly. She had been up all night, working on the outline that Lucy had sent over via special messenger at noon. That messenger being one shrew named Alpha Rote, who had proven to be impossible to understand. She was still trying to make sense of it after almost seven hours. It was so hard to think though, and she was now past the middle of her moon. Aspirin normally helped, but she was so stressed out that the abnormal cramps were killing her. She almost never had cramps. She had never thrown up even when sick. For a moment she wondered if she had been pregnant and was miscarrying.

Lucy had noticed the vixens discomfort, but if Charlene didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, the cougar was going to honor those desires. She had though slipped out and called the McGee resort and now Butterfly herself was on her way over. For the bovine, Charlene’s lithe, though top heavy form wasn’t going to prove any problem. But in deference to the vixens pain, she had dropped her Texas accent. “That was one part of it” she agreed. “Mind control outside of a comedy scares the average viewer. They get the nagging feeling that, if it were true, then the Government would be using it. Since it doesn’t, then it can’t. Its suspension of disbelief. Remember what Jean taught you?”

“Yes.” Charlene abruptly grimaced in pain. “I think so. Ouch, um... Never ask your audience to disbelieve more than one thing. She said she’d read that somewhere. It worked with our scripts.”

“Right. So Haster had what, a teenage boy who had discovered a way to control a grown woman’s mind. All he had to do was capture her, drag her home in a cart in the middle of the night, preform successful major brain surgery in a dirty basement with tools from around the house, then implant a powerful radio and a couple of vacuum tubes into your brain. And what did he do with her? Robbed banks and killed his Principle. Of course he did insert those scenes where it appeared that he had his way with you in the European release. God I’d like to get that fool in a back room for one minute.”

“Just one?” Charlene asked.

“I’m a Songmark second year Charlene. I can kill with one hit.”

Looking over to her friend the washed out vixen managed to hold back the worst of her moan of pain. “Then please prove it” she whispered. “Kill me” she gasped before passing out.

Chapter Five

Charlene woke in a hospital bed with no one around. Carefully she tried to move, only to find herself with tubes in her shaved arms and rather private places. “Nurse” the vixen called several times. Since the rooms door was open an otter nurse did appear, after only a minute or six.

“Please to take easy” the otter asked, hurrying to check Charlene’s pulse. “You’ve been in that bed two days now, you were very ill.”

“With what?” the vixen asked. There were very few diseases that bothered healthy foxes, and most of those were terminal. The idea of being ill frightened her.

“Food poisoning” the nurse answered. ”Combined with your period, it almost killed you.”

“Food poisoning? From where?” the vixen asked, her voice very weak. “I only ate at the McGee resort, and food I’d brought with me.”

The nurse wrote something on Charlene’s chart, then deftly slipped a thermometer into Charlene’s muzzle, easing it gently under her tongue. “Quiet now, I need a reading. Your friend Miss Ullrich and Mrs. McGee examined everything. It was bottle of olives. They had enough Salmonella bacteria to kill a healthy horse. You are very lucky girl. Miss Ullrich visited twice, will be back today. In afternoon. Now you rest. Liquids, rest best thing for you. You be out by Friday. Back to old self by Saturday. Just little weak.” She withdrew the long glass thermometer, reading it. “One hundred seventy two. Perfect.”

“If your planning on slow cooking me for dinner” the vixen managed weakly. “Really, what temperature.”

“You are full fox or half-breed” the nurse asked seriously.

“Full fox” Charlene answered, knowing the why of the question. But still not liking that it had to be asked.

“It is normal then” the otter answered. “You be on your feet, out by this afternoon. But take things easy. If Ullrich not act fast, you may have died. Oh. You owe Song Soda ten shell for clean up. You vomit, pee, diarrhea and blood. Think you even drool from eyes. Bad time for you. Very bad time. Songmark teach smart girls. Ullrich not even pause, she carry to school nurse still vomiting. You must be special her do that.” She gave the vixen a smile, then hung up the chart and left.

Looking around Charlene found a glass of water, one that she empted rather quickly. Food poisoning meant complete diarrhea, which meant loss of body fluids, which meant death by dehydration. That explained the bottle of clear liquid currently dripping into her left arm. She had been lucky the vixen knew. Had she been in her bed at the resort, chances were that she would have been found as a cold slab of meat in the morning. At least all her problems would have been over. As she replaced the now empty glass with its glass straw on the end table she noted an envelope. It took a couple of tries, but she managed to snag it.

It turned out to be a letter from Lucy. After reading it Charlene felt a lot better. Not only were things looking up between her and the cougar, but Jean had arrived yesterday afternoon with the entire expedition. Safe and well. Exhausted, but safe. And at the moment that was the best news that Charlene had been given in a long time.

“Trying to kill ourselves are we” a well known voice asked several hours later.

Charlene opened her eyes from her light nap, to stare in fascination at the mouse standing by her bed. “Your fat” she exclaimed.

“The word is pregnant” the mouse shot back. “Five months pregnant thank you very much. My husband must had gotten me on our wedding night, which for me is perfect. You though. You look dead.”

“Worn out” Charlene admitted. “Still getting a few cramps, but I’m okay. You’ve talked to Lucy?”

“And Miss Devinski and Miss Blande” the mouse answered. “You want to buy Republic Studios it seems.”

Charlene blinked, then forced herself to sit up. It was hard lifting her head to look at her friend. Jean stepped forward, sliding a pillow under the vixens head then returned to where she had been. “I’m told its expensive” she said. “But that, under certain circumstances, it could be done.”

Jean pulled the insides of her shirt pockets out. “Sorry. I think that between my husband and I we have a couple of dollars. But Leroy has that. May I sit?”

“Be my guest” the vixen answered, pointing to the rooms only other furniture. A metal stool.

“Better than the rocks we sat on for months” Jean admitted. “And bugs do not taste better after eating them for months.”

“What happened” Charlene asked.

“Earthquake. Cave in, stuck several hundred feet underground. One aging, randy old Professor of Ancient History, three nubile, hungry young Songmark girls and a very hot young graduate student. Unfortunately, our backup on the surface didn’t survive. So we wasted three days trying to contact dead people. After that, it was search the caverns until we stumbled upon a way out. That only took three and a half months.”

“How did you survive” the vixen asked, amazed.

“We ate the graduate student” Jean answered, then she smiled. “Well, we did. Eventually. But not that way. Bugs, moss, anything semi-organic. Ran out of supplies in three weeks, thank God for Songmark training or we would have died down there. What’s bad? There wasn’t even a death trap. Just a bunch of old libraries. Basically walls filled with scrolls sealed in clay tubes that looked like honeycombs. A couple of streams with blind fish and insects and an altar where ‘the virgin’ was supposed to be sacrificed. When Jaspir translated that it took about ten seconds to make certain that the last virgin among us wasn’t. We’ve all, Songmark girls that is, we’ve learned that strange things hover around ancient altars, and chancing one of us being demon chow wasn’t in the cards.”

“I take it that the young lady in question didn’t put up a fight?” Charlene asked.

“Actually, she helped,. She’d been eyeing Leroy for years. He was her instructor at university after all. Then after we escaped we discovered that whatever had been around that altar was long gone. Waste of effort. What was worse, the virgin was supposed to be an unintelligent animal.”

“I see, and the girl?”

Jean Marklin shrugged. “I now have a co-wife. One who is about three months along. At least she’s pleasant company, intelligent and a damn good poker player. Now enough about me. We’ve been discussing this studio mission of yours, and we think that it can be done. As long as you don’t mind a little collateral damage.”

“Explain” Charlene demanded.

“Simple enough. Pick off the weaker parts one by one until only the two strong ones remain,. Then crush them.” Jean reached into another pocket, taking out a paper. “Devinski offers 200,000. Kart-Tombs 21,000. Your fiancee 31,200. That’s a quarter of a million, with two requirements.”

“What” the actress asked, stunned at the numbers.

“You are head of this consortium, and you marry Lucy the day after Songmark lets out next summer.”

Charlene blinked before she answered. “Head? The second item yes. Yes yes yes. But business isn’t my strength.”

“Doesn’t have to be. Any Songmark graduate could run a business. But you know the movies inside out. You know who’s good, who’s not worth keeping. You know a good project from a flop. We need that. If we are going to get involved Charlene, its to make a profit and expand as fast as possible. Not just break even.”

“Oh. Well, I will sell my land. That will raise about two or three thousand. Not much, but its all I have.”

“And that’s another point” the mouse continued. “Your willing to put everything into this. Everyone else has a fallback. Just never ask where the money came from. Its all legal, but its everyone’s secret.”

Charlene remained silent for a long time, her eyes closed as she thought. Take Republic Studios with only at best a third of what its real value was? “Preferred stock cannot vote. If we control only fifty-one percent of voting stock, common stock” she said, her eyes still closed. “Six million shares of common stock are outstanding, at a current value of ten cents a share. Stocks are sold in blocks of one hundred, so not counting brokers fees, it would cost ten-dollars a block. Brokers fees are seven percent, so add a dollar forty, if you buy in blocks of 1000.” She opened her eyes. “Can’t be done.”

“Never say never” the mouse reminded her vixen friend. “Carmen Velasquez will return tonight. Her family has quite a bit of money, so I will talk to her myself, though I’ll have to have her wife with me. Maybe that will add in enough. It just might appeal to her, to own part of a movie studio. After all, her own country is heavy into movies, and you have to admit that Hollywood hardly puts any Mixtexaians in their films.”

“Still, how are you planning on doing this” Charlene asked from her bed.

“Simple. Delicate but simple. You make a complete list of the talent worth having. Then we start rumors, release real information, a few choice lies. Most is real information. Say what Haster’s kid did to Petunia, and what he plans to do with that movie. Then a few choice, unconfirmable lies. Undeniable as well. We hit them on their flanks. Where it hurts, the pocket books. How much does an actors contract cost?”

“Variable” Charlene answered. “Mine is supposable worth eighteen hundred. That is the amount of money I would have to pay the studio to get out of my contract, at this moment. I am a B talent, and have five projects yet to go. It can swing from a hundred dollars to forty-thousand for someone like Tom Mix. But that’s fair auction value. Actually, the truth is. Until we have completed our contracts the actual value. To the studios, can’t really be determined. It could be nothing, if all our projects are flops. Its just a piece of paper promising that so and so will do such and such work for X amount of dollars. If a studio is hurting for money, the other studios are the only people who would bid. Then it depends on if they want said talent or not. And just how bad that they want to hurt the other studio. If DAKA wants you, you can kiss your career goodbye. They make nothing but cheap adult movies.”

“Ouch.” Jean leaned back until her shoulders touched the wall. “And things like film, land, buildings and stuff?”

“Land has a specific value assigned by the county or city. Film is a stock cost from Kodak, Republic process in-house. It’s how Yade took over Monogram and the rest. They owed so much money for processing that he told them ‘Join up or face foreclosure on outstanding lab bills.’ It was win win for him. He got the business’s either way. But every business has its outstanding debt. Its how they run, on credit. Its almost all open records. Some is in the dark. Mob money mainly.”

“Not Songmark, or Kart-Tombs” Jean replied. “They have no debt. So we find out who Yade owes, then scare them into thinking he’s about to default. They scream for their money, and its tight because of this Haster kid so he dumps his less useful talent. Right?”

“Pretty much” Charlene admitted. Abruptly a light went on in her head. “And having sold contracts, you have others thinking he’s running short of ready cash. Stock holders sell short, and that causes the value to drop. The more it drops, the less stable that Republic looks. No one advances credit, he has to sell his own voting stock for operating funds, it lowers the value...” She smiled. “You are a devious woman Jean. If I wasn’t already in love.”

“I’d still say no. Who told you that you didn’t know anything about business” she asked.

Charlene blinked. “I don’t. I’ve never taken a business class. But when you start the ball rolling, it just goes. You know this wouldn’t have a chance, except for the Depression and Hasters kid at the same time. You could put someone out of business if you had three things. Enough of their stock, the ability to accept a loss and the willingness to sell short. So how low do we have to go to get the stock?”

This time the mouse sat up. “Your doing so well” she said. “You tell me.”

Charlene closed her eyes again, thinking. “With 125,000 to start. Two cents a share to get it all but you never will. Four cents to get a majority. And I’ll throw in my 2000 or so and that gives us a better buffer. Plus whomever else you can get involved.”

“But at two cents, they would go bankrupt. Right?” the mouse asked.

“They could” the vixen agreed. “But Yade is greedy. He’s power hungry. Republic stock has hit bad times before. At one point it was a penny a share, that’s how Haster got so much. But that was at the very worst of the Depression. When everyone was struggling. He’ll sell preferred stock to keep that from happening. We can ignore that for now, because he has to sell it to the other founders. I’ve seen a copy of the agreement. If they haven’t much free cash, or don’t want it he’s going to hurt. He’ll have to go to the market. But even at two cents a share, that doesn’t change the fact that Republic owns free and clear their land, buildings, equipment and other gear. It just means they have no cash flow for new projects. They could wait it out until the funds come in from theaters. Plus Yade will keep his best talent. I’ll go, probably in a lot, but I’ll be sold off. And at two cents the stocks still a hundred and twenty thousand. He started the whole thing for less than half that. We’d be fighting others to buy it at four cents, unless we could poison pill the company. Or better, make people believe the companies a poison pill. We would have to hit hard and fast so Yade won’t have time to think of it or react. Say if we could get him out of the country, then hit while he’s in-route and out of communication. Say on a plane over the Atlantic. He likes to go to Europe. But will he when we need him too?”

“Isn’t Yade a stallion?” Jean asked softly.

“Yes, purebred Marwari. Proud of his heritage and has an insatiable hunger for purebred mares.” Charlene admitted “Burns through ‘em and God help the occasional little woman that happens to catch his eye. Its been rumored he accidently killed a mink when he was in High School with his rough lovemaking. Nothing was ever proved, and he stays away from minks no matter how approachable they make themselves. But who are you going to find and get to Europe in time?”

“Does Republic get unsolicited screen tests from other countries” the mouse countered.

Charlene laughed as deeply as she could. “Hon. Dozens a day. All the studios do. But Yade doesn’t look at them. Not unless...” She paused. “They are of a really sexy mare. Innocent and purebred. Jean, who do you have in mind? And how.”

“Nikki, and by trickery” the mouse explained. “You ever meet Nikki?” She took the slowly shaking head as a no. “Lets just say that when the Gods poured Nikki’s mold, they poured in a whole extra bottle or three of sex appeal. Its just too bad she likes girls, because there isn’t a straight male who’s ever met her that hasn’t wanted her. She’s also known as the Red Lily.”

Charlene just shrugged. “I’ve heard the name around Jean, from you mainly. But I’ve never met her.”

Abruptly the otter nurse walked in, interrupting the twos conversation. “You two have had enough time. Now Mrs Marklin. If you will please leave, the Doctor would like to see if Miss Van Pugpug is still alive. She should be leaving Friday morning, so you can see her then.”

“Her accents slipping” Charlene stage whispered, then snickered. “This whole nation is nothing but B actors.”

“You just guessed?” the mouse laughed. “Tomorrow morning, and we will have a plan.” She nodded to the nurse, then stood and left.

“Now lets just take your blood pressure” the otter said as Jean left.

“Take yours” Charlene quipped. “I wanna keep mine.”

Chapter Six

At Kart-Tombs later that day the black mare known as Nikki Ibarra Lily Benevedo laughed. “Me? Screen Test? Oh yeah. Sure. “ She took a drink of the hot coffee that her feline wife Malou had poured for her. “Your serious, right?”

Jean nodded yes, thanking Malou for her own cup of coffee. “I can’t do it” she admitted, patting her growing belly. “And truth be told, I wouldn’t interest him. Being a stallion, he has a serious thing for mares. Preferably purebred, innocent and pouring sex appeal.”

“And just where and I supposed to be living” the mare asked, patting her lap for the siamese to settle into. “Red Russia?”

“I thought that the Fillypines would be a good choice” the mouse countered. “For two reasons. One, you do know the area and high society accent. Two, if we started the main assault two hours after he left Hawaii, it’d be a day or two before he could hope to react. Much less return. Nikki, when you put on all the charm, and you can, its hard for a straight woman to say no.”

“Yeah, but you still managed. Seriously though” Nikki asked. “All this to keep one non-Songmark girl employed? What’s next, take over the American government?”

“Thirty Songmark can do” Malou giggled, folding her own lithe body deeply into the mares impressive breasts. “Own all USA. Take over world.”

“Don’t bet on it” Nikki countered as she sat her oversized coffee mug aside. She had no desire to accidently burn her wife. “It’d take thirty five girls to do it. Really Jean. I agreed to put my ready cash into this, just as Katherine did. A chance to own part of an American Movie studio? Certain income if war does come and we have to un-ass Spontoon for a few years. But take it over?”

“Really” the mouse agreed. “Normally I wouldn’t even try, but things are lined up perfectly. One, there is a civil war going on inside Republic. Its still low key though. Second it is the Depression. Money is tight and any weakness makes backers pee their pants. Third, this Haster, who’s starting the civil war, is using his kid. And that kid is about as talented as a dead rock. Finally, Yade’s own weakness. Your perfect. We set up a screen shoot, you in the sexiest outfit you own. Acting as innocent as you can, but enough sultry to light the fires. We start our probing attack the day before your film arrives. Being as they screen the films at night, Yade won’t see it until the next day. Two, three days he’s off for this hot mare. We are still releasing nothing but the truth. Until zero hour. And I said hard Nikki, not impossible. Truth is, if you’d push a little harder, I would have fallen like most others.” She held up her paw as the mare started to open her mouth. “Too late, you lost your chance. I have my own pet man now. And he is very good at fulfilling my own special needs.”

“My loss. So who’s our inside man” the mare asked.

“Charlene.”

“That will be dangerous” Nikki stated. “She’s not Songmark. They catch on. Hon it may be Hollywood, but she’d be found floating in a sewer with her throat cut just as fast. Or dropped off a speedboat fifty miles out, with an anchor bound to her feet. She’s got guts though.” Their conversation, and planning went on until long after midnight.

Saturday morning Charlene van Pugpug carefully got up from her bed at the McGee resort. She was still weak, but her body no longer wanted to just lay down and die. Plus her moon had ended last night, so she felt like she would live. Since the resort had but one shower for each sex, she found herself sharing her morning cleansing with a rather nosey hedgehog. More than once she explained that no, she wasn’t an actress. Yes, she had seen Petunias Perils. Yes, it was uncanny how much she resembled the lead actress and yes, she was already engaged so no she didn’t need to meet the womans son. It was easy to lie to the nosey little woman. She was an actress after all. Breakfast she had paid extra to have in her room. There had been no argument from Butterfly, certainly not after the first young guest had run around screaming that there was a real live actress staying in the same resort as he was.

Finally Jean and Lucy arrived. Jeans husband Louie was at her arm, and though the mouse agreed to wear her eye patch there was no way her costume would fit. Certainly not her belt of necessaries, so Lucy agreed to wear the belt. She absolutely refused to try on the costume though. They met their photography team at the water taxies and traveled across together. Charlene’s crate was already pre-positioned at the Koerker home that they were heading to, having arrived very early in the morning to be greeted by a very excited set of grandparents.

Nineteen Cantaloupe Way turned out to be a nice, two story stone and timber home. It was painted various colors of blue, with two giant smiling yellow suns to each side of the front door. There were at least half a dozen bicycles in the front yard, indicating that the ‘convention’ was well under way. Getting up her courage Charlene went up and rang the door buzzer. Almost immediately the same elderly basset hound from the customs shed arrived. “Great, their in tah back. I can get into costume” Mr. Koerker said, just before vanishing. His wife, another basset hound, quickly took his place.

“Oh my, so many. I must make more lemonade” Mrs Koeker said in greeting. Opening the door wide she waved the group in. “This way please, come along. Oh this will be such a surprise for the children. Come come come.”

Silently following the elderly hound, Charlene and her four companions soon found themselves stepping out into a makeshift alien planet. There were eight foot tall painted canvas’s of a landscape that must have come from magazines, along with the eight foot tall ‘base’ of a needle style spaceship sitting on broken terrain, its fins painted in excellent three-dimensional detail.

“Somebodies got real talent” Lucy commented. She stepped closer to the nearest canvas as it blew gently in the morning breeze. She inspected the short brush strokes for several minutes before giving judgement. “Darn good.” She decided, stepping aside as Jean joined her.

“Its as good as what we’ve had in the series” the mouse informed her group. “This ship is better than anything I’ve ever seen. Now this is real talent.” Sounds of laughter caught their attention, reminding the group why they were here. “It’s a maze” Jean realized. “And they should be coming out... over there.” She pointed at an opening blocked with colored ribbons. “Lets say we set up.”

Charlene turned around to the elderly Mrs. Koerker, asking the Basset hound about the crate she had sent.

“Oh that, behind here” the woman answered, pulling back a painted cloth to expose the crate. “We not open but have wreaking bar ready, it so you could get into it easy. Nothing touched.”

“Thank you.” Charlene pulled the cloth closed, staring at the space suited hero holding a ray gun that faced her. “Amazing” she whispered before turning to the photographers. “Shoot everything” she ordered. Immediately the two began setting up their cameras.

Those voices were getting louder, but being in the native language the vixen couldn’t understand what was being said. She finally turned to the mouse, who had a rather strange expression on her face. “What is it” she asked.

“Their recreating ah Flash Gordon escape” the mouse answered. “Right after tha aborted wedding. Ahn Dale.. Dale is bein played bah an Honored Mother.”

“A priestess?” Charlene asked, shocked. Since when did religion and science fiction mix. “Which one” the vixen asked.

“Iffin I am gettin it right” Jean answered. “That mouse Oharu. We’ll know ina moment, here they come.”

An oversized teenage polar bear stepped through first, his back to the adults as he pointed a wooden ray gun back the way he had come. He yelled something, then added “ZAP ZAP ZAP!” The sound of a body falling came soon after, followed by a campy, over acted groan of pain. A moment later a shorter, adult mouse fem stumbled out, falling against him in a badly played swoon. “DALE!” the bear gasped, easily snatching up the ‘unconscious’ mouse.

Charlene stared at the amount of chest fur the mouse was showing. Butterfly McGee had taken quite a bit of liberty with that outfit. It might though. Just might pass the Hays office. But not in that position. Abruptly the bear noticed the five adults and yelled again. When he did the mouse opened her eyes, studying the visitors from upside down.

“Welcome” she said in a voice that was sweet. A voice anyone who had met her when she had first arrived on Spontoon over a year ago would never have believed. “Are for convention fun?” she asked. Then looking up at the startled bear she said something in Spontoonie and he almost absently eased her down to the ground. Straightening her costume Honored Mother Oharu Wei came forward. “You” she said, pointing at the vixen. “Charlene Van Pugpug, Petunia. You, Jean Morris, Silver Star. You, Lucy Ullrich. Writer.” Turning to her hosts the mouse held out her paws. “Petunia’s Perils come to visit” she called in bad English. “All speak English please.”

What followed was a madhouse. In moments the three were surrounded by ten teenagers while the Priestess mouse slipped away, going into the house to help with refreshments. Charlene found herself bombarded with questions, as did Jean and Lucy. It was almost impossible to make any sense until one of the teenage girls gave a screech, causing everyone to look. What they saw caused an explosion of laughter as the top hatted, cape wearing Basset hound was apparently having lunch from the young hounds throat.

“Granddah” another hound called, slowly making his way over to the busy ‘vampire.’ “If you kill Reesah, who’s gonna make fudge tomorrow.”

“Oh yes, fudge” the ‘vampire’ echoed. He stood up, helping the mixed breed girl to stand. She was, Charlene noted, bright red from laughing. Turning to his three visitors the ‘vampire’ appeared to study them. “Songmark, Songmark” he said, then his eyes went wide. “LUNCH!”

His advance was stopped by Lucy stepping between him and the vixen Charlene. “My woman” the cougar announced.

A second later the basset hound stomach growled. “But I’m so hungry” his whined.

Giggling, Charlene placed a paw on Lucy’s shoulder, pointing at the other, slightly older girl. An Ocelot. “What about her?” she asked.

“Alliacea! Yes!” Holding his cape with open the play actor rushed to the Ocelot, who quite perfectly swooned, landing on her back across a covered picnic table with a great deal of neck exposed. A moment later her body was covered by the cape wearing play-actor.

Meanwhile the polar bear managed to get everyone else quite. Turning to his visitors, he looked at the photographers who were busy ‘catching’ everything on film. “One of you eggheads find some chairs” he ordered of his friends. “The good ones.” Then he smiled at Charlene. “Welcome” he said in greeting. “We never really expected anyone to come. Certainly not real live actors. But your more than welcome here.”

“Thank you” Charlene answered, though still feeling weak herself she made certain that Jean had the best seat before she herself sat. “I came to work with Lucy on a script, and Jean happened to be passing through on her way to meet her husbands family. So we thought that we’d see what a Science Fiction Convention was all about. I’ll be honest, I was expecting to find everyone discussing books. Not actually having this much fun.”

Just then the ‘vampire’ walked between them, an obviously dead Ocelot held in his arms. “Ah, lunch was sweet. Now to turn her into my Thrall!” He managed a respectful burp, and the girl he was carrying giggled. “Fresh virgin Ocelot, nothing better for any old vampire.” Then he very carefully eased the girl Alliacea down onto her feet, patted her head and went inside. “Must help with the refreshments” were his parting words. Alliacea made her way over to Reesah, settling down on a stone beside her. She giggled again as she pulled out a fur comb and began straightening her neck fur.

“I’m Carlos” the Polar Bear explained. “Leader of this motley crew. You’ve met Honored Mother Oharu, Reesah and Alliacea. The rest are Brian, Twobirds, Lance, Ricky, Fredrik, Ken and Simon.” As he spoke each boy stood, then sat again. “Lance and Reresah are siblings. They live here with their grandparents. Simon and Alliacea are twins. The rest of us are just us.”

Understanding that it was her turn Charlene spoke. “And as your Priestess said, I’m Charlene, this is Jane and that’s Lucy. Lucy wrote two of our best serials. The two men with camera’s are here to film everything. K.L., my boss, wants to do a special release about your convention. If its all right with you.”

Looking at his friends the bear shrugged. “Can we have copies of the photographs?” he asked.

“Done” the vixen agreed with a smile. “Now, we want to know as much about you and your group as you want to know about us. So lets switch questions, and first names only. Please? First, who painted those amazing backdrops?”

It was Alliacea who answered. “Honored Mother Oharu and I sketched them out. I painted them in because she didn’t have the free time.” She swallowed. “Jean. Everyone believes that you and Charlene are in love. But its obvious your pregnant.” She left it there, embarrassed a bit by her noisiness.

Jean though laughed. “Okay” she said, having noted that Reesah had found a notebook and mechanical pencil. “Let me get this set right, and on record. I haven’t any interest in girls. In fact I’m married to a very wonderful professor of Archeology named Leroy Marklin.” She patted her swollen abdomen. “And this is our first pup. We are hoping for a boy. Now, Petunia and Silver Star are in love. In fact, they are married now. But secretly, so please don’t tell anyone.” She looked to Charlene, who bit her lip, glanced at Lucy then shook her head no. “Now Charlene, she and I tend to chase the boys at bars when we’re on location. Something I won’t be doing any more. But if you boys are interested in chasing her, I won’t stop you.” She silently giggled at the hungry look all the boys gave Charlene. Not one made a move or sound though.

She leaned back, easing the stress on her back before asking her next question. “So what do you guys normally do back here.”

This went on for over two hours, not slowing even while refreshments were served. Even Honored Mother Oharu answered her own questions, surprising the three adult women by admitting that she thought Flash Gordon was a twit, and that Dale should really marry Ming.

“But Ming’s the bad guy” Jean gasped.

“Yes” the mouse agreed. “And how many women like little bad in their mates? Belle has little darkness inside. She is great fun when lets free. I have little darkness. All do. If take all darkness away have disaster. If take all light away same thing. Ming has daughter. If all dark, he kill her long ago. Yes?”

“I guess so the other mouse admitted. “But its just a radio show.”

“Tell me” Oharu ordered, her voice abruptly changing. This the three realized, was the true voice of a Spontoon Priestess. She was teaching, and she was serious. “Silver Star. She just fictional character. Or have part you in her.”

Jean blinked a few times. “I guess I have tah agree. But, yer ah Priestess. Ahn science fiction. It says other worlds. Other peoples. Tha doesn’t cause you problems?”

Oharu held a paw up yo her mouth stopping herself from laughing. “Silver Star. I Priestess Shinto and Spontoon. There no law either that this only world with intelligent beings. I look up at night. So very many stars. Cannot believe that no other words out there. People out there. Would be horror if we only planet with life. Would be what Christians call hell. To be alone, among so many stars. Yes?”

“Tha” the Songmark mouse admitted. “Was not what I expected.” She turned her attention to Charlene, who was herself mulling over the priestess’s words. “About time tah give out tha toys. Righ?”

“What? Oh, yes. Lucy, will you help me? Seeing as Silver Star has gone all sofa girl on us and gained so very much weight.” She smiled at her friend. “Silver Star will not be capturing me tonight!”

That caused a great deal of laughter, then the teenagers went silent as the crate was unveiled. After the two had opened it, and started taking things out, one could hear the soft wind whisper above so silent it had become.

“Since I was coming K.L. arranged a few things to give out. Their just junk, things that the studio has earmarked for the garbage. And not all is Science Fiction related, but he did the best he could.” With Lucy’s help the vixen began giving things out. The scripts she discovered were well received, and she found herself and Jean signing each one of the Petunia’s scripts. Lucy signed the ones she had written, adding little sidelines to each signature. When the ship model came out the oos and ahhs were nearly overwhelming.

“Honored Mother should have that” Carlos announced, though it was obvious that he really wanted it. So did the rest.

“Have one. Mings ship” the mouse priestess announced. “And dress. Not need two ship. No place for.”

“Then who should we give it too” Charlene asked. There were still a dozen or so items to dig out, and it was the only ship model. It was Carlos who came up with an answer. “When does Lieutenant Wilma Deering first show up” he asked.

“1928, the book Armageddon 2419 A.D” Reesah answered almost instantly.

“We have a winner” the polar bear announced. “Of our first trivia contest.” Though the others groaned and playfully complained, no one argued the point as Charlene carefully placed the wood and tin Flash Gordon ship model into the hounds paws. The look on the young girls face was of absolute astonishment. It was as though she had been given the world. Of course, of hardwood and at twenty four inches in length, it wasn’t light either.

“They all have costumes on” Lucy noted. “Yah got anything special in there Charlene?”

“One of Silver Stars first belts, a robot head and raygun from The Phantom Empire. And a bunch of never used movie posters for various mystery and science fiction movies.”

“Right, then this is what we do. You, me and Jean. We decide who’s costume is best, and tha top four get those things.”

“Add talent too” Charlene added. “You kids up to it?” The response was overwhelming, so while the teenagers prepared themselves Charlene set everything out. “Each winner get to pick what they want” she explained. “First place goes first. Forth place gets the leavings. Only one item each. Except of course the posters. They all go as a lot. Honored mother?”

“I must not” Oharu answered. “This is a real costume, I did not make it. These adventures made their own costumes. And I have enough. This dress, the model. To ask for more would be show greed. I have time with them. That most important to me.”

“I guess that goes for the art as well” Charlene asked, thinking of that nickle plated statue of Petunia still hidden in the box.

“Yes. Very” the mouse agreed. “This day is for them.”

Charlene nodded in agreement. “Your nice people Oharu. I need to find time to talk with you.” She turned to the group. “Okay, everyone come out one at a time from that exit” she pointed at the fluttering ribbons, “Do your Schick, then have a seat. When we have been bribed enough... I mean tallied the scores, we’ll announce the winners. We are looking for costume, acting and vocals. Oh Brian. Is that a Petunia script I saw in your jacket?”

“Uh. Yes Mam” the coyote admitted. “But its no good. Really.”

“May I read it before we leave?”

“Uh.. Sure. If you want” the boy agreed. “But its really no good.”

“Thanks. But let Jean, Lucy and I decide if its no good or not. All right, Carlos, you send ‘em out. Your last please.”

So the three women sat, watching children from fourteen to seventeen try their best to act as their favorite character, made notes and broke up laughing when Twobirds came out. He stood right at the entrance and announced “I am a guard of the glorious Emperor Ming the Merciless. Nothing will ever get by...” Abruptly a very female figure stepped out of the entrance, wacking the feline ‘guard’ on his head with a rolled up newspaper, then she dragged his ‘unconscious’ body back into the hidden corridor.

“For a Priestess” Lucy commented. “Oharu does get into the action.”

Jane shrugged. “Priestess’s have to take time off. To recharge their batteries. Playing the linen limbo isn’t the only way to get rid of stress. You’ll learn.”

Lucy turned to look at the vixen Charlene, who was still laughing so hard she was having trouble sitting up. “I see what you mean. But there’s a lot to be said for the limbo.”

Jean shook her head side to side. “Second years” the mouse said softly. “You’ll learn. Eventually.” She looked back at the ‘stage entrance’, noting that Mings guard was now sitting in the audience area and Oharu had again gone inside. This time to help clean up. One just did not expect that from a religious figure. “Next please” she called.

Once their little impromptu contest was over and the prizes awarded, Charlene removed the very last item. It was that statue, and though not anatomically correct, it was in the still popular art deco style. It had probably cost the studio eighty dollars to make, and she had seen the one Hasters son had kept. That one was anatomically correct, and unlike this one, completely undressed. For the first time she felt that she would like to beat that kids head in with his private little fantasy statue. ‘Instead’ she thought. ‘We’ll just steal his studio. And his damn statue.’ She noted that Jean and Lucy were pouring over that script, and making notes in its margins. Poor kid, he’d probably never write another thing in his life.

“All right, last item” she announced, catching the attention of everyone but Jean and Lucy. “I’ve decided to give this to the person who created these wonderful backdrops. Since Honored Mother Oharu has declined anything, It goes to Alliacea. And may I say this young lady. When you hit eighteen next year, send me a letter. Studios are always looking for a talented artist and you certainty are one. I’ll be happy to sponsor you at Republic.

When the ocelot stepped forward to accept her prize she gasped. “Its you” she said in delight.

“Well we didn’t have a spacehip, which would have been a whole lot better fit” the vixen admitted. “You can always use it as a nut cracker.”

“Oh no, never” Alliacea gasped, running her fingers over the object as though it was the most precious thing in the world. “And thank you.” She abruptly kissed the vixen on her cheek and hurried back to her seat.

Amused, Charlene looked at her watch. “We better do the last photographs” she announced. “Since this thing was supposed to be over almost an hour ago. So, who wants to have their photo taken with a bunch of old ladies?” She laughed as every paw went up, including one of that priestess paws, who had silently returned. Such a strange woman, but so easy to talk too.

The last thing they did before leaving was to give Mrs. Koerker Silver Star’s eyepatch. The old basset hound slipped it on only after being heckled by her grandchildren, looking into a wall mirror to see what it was like. “Oh, I am the naughty pirate Queen. Aren’t I” she laughed, slipping off the patch and hiding it in a pocket of her dress. Then it was time to leave.

Chapter Seven

Later that afternoon after Charlene said goodbye to Jean, who was headed for her hotel room, her husband and of all things. Expecting co-wife. A little later she settled down for dinner with the cougar Lucy. “How bad did you two rip up Carlos’s script” she asked as she opened the menu. They were at Parrys, mainly because they had eaten there before.

“Noh too bad” the cougar answered. “Lotta notes tho. Stuff ah felt he should expand on. Liked that he didn’ make ah big deal about Petunia ahn Silver Star bein involved.” She looked up as the waiter arrived. “Coffee, black” she ordered. “Ahn tha chefs salad please. Vinegar.”

“Very well Madam” the Russian answered, accepting her menu. “And you Madam?”

“I think the same” Charlene decided. “I really don’t feel like a heavy meal tonight. I think I laughed too much today.”

“Very good Madam.” Taking Charlene’s menu the waiter seemed to vanish.

“He’s good” Charlene noted.

“Yeah. This was ah fun day. I’ve never met people tha really read mah stuff. Just that occasional letter. Ah need to do this more often.”

Charlene reached across the small table, taking both of the cougars paws into her own. “You need to write full time Lucy. I know writers with a tenth your talent who make more in a month than Songmark charges for a full school year.”

“I’m not givin up Songmark Charlene. First, ah already paid tha full cost, and I don waste money. Second, ah really do want tha education.” She looked at the delicate paws encircling her own, Songmark roughened paws. “Yer right though. I do love tah write.” She broke away as their coffee arrived, feeling the tingle in her paws from Charlene’s touch. She still wasn’t sure, and was really happy that Jane hadn’t spilled the beans about her own feelings at the convention. “Ah just don’t know. I was so sure when I arrived. What I wanted to do. But tha more I learn, the less interesting what ah planned is.”

Charlene silently sipped her own coffee. They were in uncharted waters now. Oh, the vixen knew exactly where she was going, but would the cougar be there when she arrived? And what was before them. The teenagers convention, their energy, their imaginations had been a breath of badly needed fresh air. But ahead waited a battle. One the vixen knew she was unready for, but could never dare to lose. Perhaps tomorrow would give her the answer. For now, it was enjoy a light meal, and the company of the woman she now was certain that she loved. But was uncertain if the emotion was reciprocated.

Early the next morning Charlene awoke to the sounds of a songbird. Opening her eyes she looked out the window, to see a bright yellow, white and black bird sitting on a tree limb, singing its morning song. Rolling out of bed she stood, rubbing her eyes. Another day battling tourists for the bath, breakfast in her room, then a meeting with the Consortium. She looked back at her bed, empty. No sweet cougar had followed her home last night. No sweet memories were made. Mainly, the vixen believed, because she hadn’t pushed the matter. A student had arrived and spoken to Lucy. There had just been time for the cougar to give her a sweet goodnight kiss. Then she was gone. No sweeter taste had Charlene encountered in her life. But now. Now she had to ready herself for the day.

So she soon met with Nikki at the Double Lotus, a place Charlene had discovered was a safehaven for all women. Whether you were Sapphic or not. No one pushed, and if it looked like you needed privacy, you got it. No one leaned over your shoulder or suggested a private room somewhere. Not that it couldn’t, or didn’t happen. But you had to be looking. The five women who owned the Double Lotus were very strict with the few rules that they had after all. It was a family place, not really a bar that also served food. Your family just happened to be other women.

“Thins are lookin up” the mare announced over her beer. “Carmen’s in, a hundred K. She’s over talken with tha Clip Joint about infermation.”

“The Clip Joint” Charlene asked over her own small goblet of wine. She was beginning to fall from yesterdays high, and when she had called Songmark they had told her that Lucy would not be speaking to her. What had she done to anger the cougar Charlene wondered. “A fur styling business?”

“Nah. ‘S’place owned bah nother couple Songmark Girls. Tha Rotes. Just opened, buh these people clip stuff from newspapers. Gotta pretty good filin system. Carmen said tah expect her in ahn hour. Seein what tha have on tha Republic, ahn settin up ahn account.”

Looking into her wine the vixen thought over events. Yesterday had been like a holiday. Talking with actual fans, learning how they really saw the old series, and how excited they were that there would be another. Now she was back in this insane idea she had started. “You all act like this is a military operation” she said quietly, so as not to catch others attention.

“Is. Yah wanna take down ah Republic. Be it government er business. Yah hafta hit both tha same way. Tha’s how Government works. Ahn thas how Business works hon.”

“And do you treat your personal customers the same way?” the vixen asked.

“You wanna fin out hou Red Lily works hon. Then you sign tha contract, yah pay tha cost.” Leaning closer the mare stared into Charlene’s eyes. “Yeah, its in yah” she decided, leaning back. “But do yah really wanna let it out? Yah really want tha Red Lily tah bloom in yer body?”

“No” Charlene admitted. “Not right now. Later, when I’m older. I think yes. But I’d rather find out why Lucy abandoned me before acting on my current feelings. Which, I will be honest with you, is to take you up on that training right this instant. Just so I can forget her.”

Nikki giggled, a strange sound from such a large mare. “One of ‘er roommates goh into ah fight. Broke ah Chinamans arm she did. Then in mah opinion, she shouldah broke ‘es neck. ‘E tried tah kitnap her yah see. But fightin gets yah restricted tah tha dorms till tha laws done. All of yah. One for all, all fer one in Songmark.”

“Like the three musketeers?” the vixen asked.

“Yep. Ah, here comes Carmen, and she’s got paper. Thin’s lookin up ah see.” Nikki waved the anteater over, motioning Charlene to make room for her. “News?” she asked as the Mixtec sat.

“Good. Bad” the anteater reported. “Good, they take the job. Only $100. Cash though. Bad. It take three week full report. As they say, they not Pinkertons.” She pushed the brown envelope towards Nikki. “Have interesting material, fast typist. Very yummie vixen. Pretty like this one. Not so big chest.”

“Sandra Azrua” the mare supplied while opening the envelope. “She belongs to Beta Gordon. That halfbreed Chipmink-squirrel. And if you can prove that those are their birth names, I’ll be your slave for a month.”

“Your accent?” Charlene asked in surprise.

Nikki snorted in amusement. “Dahlin, mah accent it comes ahn goes. As ah need. This here, its business. Business needs tha pure unnerstandin. So ah drop mah accent. Iffin its all-righ with you.”

“I yield to the prosecutor your Honor” the vixen answered, carefully pitching her voice low and sultry.

Beside her the anteater shivered. “Yield. With voice like take. You get me to yield to you” she added. “Is very sexy voice.”

“Thank you” the vixen replied. “And a great number of voice training sessions. Now Nikki, you were saying?”

“Those two showed up just before the new school year” the mare continued. “Brand new passports, sequential series. Same with their drivers license numbers. Odd, license from Missouri. Address’s are in Creekside, which happens to be exactly where Nancy Rote lives. Add that Nancy’s wife is Alpha, and the senior of those two is Beta. Catching my drift?”

“Someone slipped up” Charlene agreed. “Or didn’t have much time.”

“Latter. I did some reading” Nikki continued. “I’ll have the papers dropped off at your place tonight. You should know your friends, and your enemies.” She pulled the typewritten pages out, looking over to Carmen. “Are you in or out?” she asked softly, though she already knew that answer.

“In. I talk patron” the anteater answered. “Father. He think worth try. Allow one hundred. If make promise find jobs good Mixtexa actors. Is happen?”

“Charlene?” the mare asked, turning her full attention onto the vixen.

“If we are successful” the vixen answered. “First, I am but a figurehead. Less. I think that Lucy should be the public face of our consortium. I am but an actress, she and I have little money involved. Second, yes. There are a number of want-to-be talents who paint make-up on and play Mixtix and Amerindian. I’d like to replace them with the real thing. Same for darkfurs. There is a market for good darkfur stories and no one is looking at it. If we could get into Spanish language theaters, and theaters that darkfurs attend. I think that we could carve a large audience away from the big boys.”

She sipped her wine, noting as she did so that it was now empty. “No more wine” she said at Nikki’s look. “Coffee please. Now, there are a great number of Mixtexa stories that would fit the screen quite well. Everything from horror to love stories. I’ve seen a few with friends. What would you think Carmen. A couple of good scriptwriters as well?”

“My parents own two studio” the anteater answered. “To break into American market? Yes. You give word?”

Reaching across her chest Charlene offered her right paw. “You have my word Carmen” she agreed.

As Carmen shook her new business partners paw she giggled. “You break word, I have Nikki break you” she warned.

Nikki nodded, making certain that the American vixen saw her. “That would be on the house Carmen. Too bad for Lucy, if she decides to accept your offer. But I think I can find another vixen to warm that cats bed.”

Charlene shook her head lightly. “If you two think that you are going to scare me, forget it” she explained. “This fails, and K.L. or Yade finds out. I’ll be spending my life on K.L.’s ranch. A bit in my mouth, a saddle on my back, rubber hooves on my paws and feet.” She swallowed. “And nothing else. A plaything for the rich and famous. Until my looks go. Then probably an unmarked grave in the desert. Carmen’s love slave? That Nikki, would be heaven in comparison. Especially since her wife is so beautiful.”

“I no let you touch my Alexia” she warned.

“You Carmen” the vixen countered. “Will not be home all the time. I shall steal her from you. She will leave you, taking me with my own leash, and never return to your sweet arms.”

“What want bet” the anteater demanded.

“You. On a collar and leash. All your life if I am right” the vixen answered. “Me the same way, if I am wrong.

For a long moment Carmen thought. Then she looked at the vixen and pointed. “Real?” she asked softly.

“Mamma natures gifts” Charlene answered.

Carmen swallowed. “I no make bet. Alexia is breast girl. She likes sleep... Oh stop this. Nikki, what say you?”

“I’ll train either one of you, or both” the mare answered without looking up from her reading. “Interesting. Republic is having a consistent cyclic money flow problem.”

Turning their attention back to the business at paw both women became serious. “Yes” Charlene agreed. “About November of every year Yade draws money from some account to keep the studio afloat. About twenty-thousand or so. It varies I’ve heard. Then by February he’s passed those funds back. No one knows where they come from, or where they go. But the state government has investigated and found no illegality.”

“No ideas yourself?”

“None” the vixen admitted. “All I know is that he does this around the fifteenth. Be he never goes anywhere, and the money is still deposited.”

“Then he has a silent partner.” She looked up from the papers. “Carmen, get back to the Clip Joint. Get them to track down who’s transferring these exact amounts to.. What is that bank Charlene?”

Opening her purse the vixen withdrew her checkbook, passing it to Nikki. “My checks are drawn on the same bank as Republic Studio’s uses. It makes it simpler for me to deposit them.”

“Bank of America National Trust and Savings Association” Nikki read, writing the name on a slip of paper with the deposit amounts and dates. “Move girl, Miss Devinski is picking up those red stones.” She slid the checkbook back to Charlene. “Sixty-one dollars and eleven cents?” she asked as Carmen hit the door.

“Red stones” the vixen countered.

“Deal” Nikki agreed.

“It is exactly enough to get me through to the end of this quarter. If I do not have a project by then, K.L. will advance me exactly $100.” She stared at Nikki. “And yes, it’s the Casting Couch until I repay it if I borrow that money. Its written in my contract, but you’d have to be a damn good lawyer to find it. Or I could spend a weekend at the ranch. And no, I’ve never spent a weekend at the ranch.”

“But you have lain on the casting couch” Nikki completed.

“I’m a B actress Nikki. Even A actress’s lay on that couch. Do you think me a blown in the snow virgin or something?”

“Jean?”

Charlene shook her head no. “No. Jean stomped out. But she got the job anyway.”

Nikki stared hard at the vixen across from her. “Takes a strong woman to do that, just so a friend can get a job” she whispered.

Charlene looked down at her paws. “If you ever tell her. I will kill you. She’s the best damn friend I have ever had. If she found out, she’d spit in my face and never talk to me again.”

Nikki reached over, taking the smaller vixens chin in her paw. With her strength it was nothing to raise that face, and see the tears falling from those eyes. “First hon. You could never kill me. Second, my word I will never tell anyone. But third, you have a lot to learn about Jean. I think she would be amazed at what you did for her. I’m certain she wouldn’t hate you for doing it. How many times?”

“Four times for every episode she was ever in” the vixen admitted, the admission tearing a sob from deep within her chest. “From day one.”

“I think that I shall rip this K.L.’s arms off, and beat him to death with them” the mare decided.

“Please don’t Nikki” the vixen begged. “Oh, he’s a product of Hollywood yes. But he is the best damn producer at Republic. He knows what needs to be known, and how to get it done. Who’s the best for what project and when not to push. He’s an animal with a deep dark side, but he’s loyal to his employer, and he’s needed to keep the other, darker animals away.”

“And his ranch?”

Charlene took a deep breath, getting her emotions under control. How did this mare manage to rip her open so easily she wondered. “Has to stay. The people who can shut down a studio. They expect the parties. They expect the B actress’s to be available. Even the occasional A actress. I’ll go at least once, to make certain that no one thinks me too good.”

“What do you think Lucy will say?”

“Nikki” the vixen whispered. “I’m in love with Lucy. It isn’t a two way street. She’s probably the best Science Fiction and Horror writer we can get. But me? Oh please Nikki. She said no. I stood there, naked in front of her. My arms open, ready fall on my back. She looked at me, then she said no. She isn’t going to care. And she isn’t going to know. And I won’t ask any woman to do something that I won’t do.”

“I like you Charlene van Pugpug” Nikki decided. “You know what has to be endured. What can be changed and what may not be changed. Men rule this world of ours sweet vixen. And they are base creatures of their pleasures. Most of them. That makes them weak. You want Republic Pictures because you have dreams. We want Republic Pictures because through it, we can advance to concepts of Songmark. I want you to come to my home tonight. I’m going to tell you a truth not every Songmark girl knows. Only the best.”

“Then you’ll collar me, and break me” Charlene asked.

“No. I will have a surprise for you, but that will not be it.” She signaled the waitress, making an obscure sign with her fingers. A moment later the waitress laid two copies of The Daily Elele between them. “Coffee, two. Ahn tha pot” Nikki ordered, dropping a quarter shell piece into the woman’s paw. Picking up the top paper she sat it aside, pushing the other copy towards Charlene. “What is on the front page?”

Turning the English edition to her Charlene read. “Headline says Roosevelt calls a Special Session of Congress” she read. “There are reports on Europe, the Navy is...”

“Go to the last page” the mare ordered. Shrugging, the vixen closed the paper and turned it over.

“There’s an article about us attending the convention” she said in surprise. She read. “It just says that there was a meeting of film fans that was attended by the actress’s Charlene van Pugpug and Jean Morris. Autographs were given and a good time was had by all.” She looked up. “This, this is all?”

“Something you need to understand little actress” the mare explained. “What is important in one place, holds no importance anywhere else. Unless you can get your message across to the entire world, it will always be lost in the noise of others. Now read this one.” She pushed the native copy across.

“I.. I can’t. I can read English and French, but not the local language. But that is a wonderful picture of everyone on the front page.”

Gently Nikki retrieved the paper. “Full page story Charlene. Names everyone, tells about that impromptu costume contest. Good idea that. Giving that statue of yourself to the artist. How you were respectful to Honored Mother Oharu, and gave her both the costume and ship model. A lot of people here know about Oharu’s love of Flash Gordon. She likes adventures, and adventures that happen on other planets? She goes gah-gah over them. You may not know it, but she never had a childhood. So she’s having it now. A little at a time, but if anyone has earned it. She has. Full front page report in the native edition, blurb in the English version. That tells you what?”

“What I already knew Nikki. That what is important in one place, holds no importance in any other. I will have to hire someone to read this to me.”

“Smarter than I thought” the mare agreed. “And you do that. Any of the McGee’s older children would be delighted too. Honored Mother Oharu is well liked by that family, and for reason. This is why we want that studio. To release pictures with Songmarks message in it. To open peoples eyes, a little at a time. And I will tell you that message in detail tonight. For now, women are equals with men. Not slaves of men. Ah, Carmen has run, she has returned.”

When the anteater settled down beside Charlene it was obvious from her scent and the heat beating from her body that she had run. “Money comes from U.S. Steel” she said breathlessly. “Is special account, advertising.” She grinned. “They say they expect that question. Will find out who controls account. They seem have special friends in high place.”

“We have but a month Charlene. Best we start now, gather your purse because I want your opinion on my ‘screen test’ film.”

“You? On the film?” Carmen asked.

Covering her eyes with one paw the mare stood. “Come on, might as well be cooked for the goose as well as the gander.” So with the two following her, Nikki walked to the counter, payed her bill (which included the untouched coffee) and walked out.

Chapter Eight

Two hours and three viewing’s later Charlene and Carmen were sharing a meal, laughing about the ‘screen test. “Never I thought to see Nikki innocent so.” the ant eater gasped.

“If she showed any more cleavage, you could park a truck in it” Charlene agreed. “She made it look like a perfect accident, that microphone stand falling and pulling down her blouse. Yade’s going to have a coronary. Just how large is that mare?”

“I think she make you. Myself. My Alexia and your Lucy with over some” the anteater answered. “Is big mare more ways one.”

“Lucy isn’t mine” the vixen admitted softly, her emotions abruptly hitting a wall. She picked at her meal a bit more, but the fun was gone from her heart. Abruptly she stood. “I think I need to go home. Thank you for the company.” She then laid three shell notes on the table as she left. A surprised, and worried Mixtea anteater watching her go.

Nikki though was busy herself. She was currently sitting in Mrs. Whitehalls home, the two hounds sitting across from her. “Its dooable Catherine” she reported. “Carmen brought in the extra hundred thousand you said we would need. That makes six members of the Consortium. Of course, we all know that Alexia and Malou are part of this, but not in an active way. We were lucky, that extra money trail turned out to be open records. But why U.S. Steel is helping Republic Studios stay afloat, this I do not know. Yet. There is only the one problem still.“

“Lucy and Charlene” the hound Catherine Devinski filled in. “No, I cannot allow Lucy a pass, nor may you have her for your standard two weeks. She is a Songmark student, and thus by our agreement untouchable by you. That way.”

“Breakin her open won’t help” Nikki admitted. “And I don’t honestly think I could. Without destroying her. Who’s on guard duty tonight.”

“The Rote dorm, the Cranium Island Rote” Devinski answered. “And as normal, the dogs are released at sunset song until just before sunrise song. Unfed.”

Nikki laughed softly. “Those sire’s are hungry for girl-flesh now. Didn’t they corner one girl last year?”

“Two actually. One managed to dance her way out of the problem.” Devinski grimaced. “The other chose a different approach. Not one I would suggest, but she’s a cross breed, the sires are mules or near mules and neither of her parents are hounds. So it didn’t cause a problem. And they are still deathly scared of you.” She turned to Helen, who was listening quietly. “Nikki kicked all three males over the fence. It was rather amusing to find them outside the gate at sunrise song, meekly waiting to be allowed back in.”

“Threw, not kicked” Nikki corrected. “If I kicked them, they would have been badly hurt. And their sister would have been extremely angry at me. Even if their mother isn’t Songmark, she spent her last month there before giving birth, and she still visits now and then. She comes under the Songmark umbrella.”

“Nikki” Helen asked. “You know why I’m giving Catherine the money. And your story really doesn’t surprise me, I’ve read of such before. Its too bad the sires are most likely mules, they seem quite delightful. But the problem is Lucy, isn’t it. She doesn’t know if she really wants Charlene or not. Restricted to the dorms until this legal mess is over, she may not have time or the inclination to find out. Correct?”

“Yes Mam” the mare agreed. “I know how it was for myself. It took months before I tried, and more months before I was certain. Which truly angered my family. We just don’t have months.”

“And how, may I ask, are you going to settle this?”

Nikki looked at Catherine and smiled. The hound turned to her love and answered that question. “She is going to break into Songmark and kitnap Lucy Ullrich. Then return her ten minutes before wake up, which Monday will be thirty minutes before Sunrise song. In the hours between, she is going to shove a vixen and a cougar into the same bed, with orders to find out or forget it.”

“Pretty close Catherine” Nikki agreed. “Except the shove into bed. There will be a bed, but wither they get into it or not is up to them. It’s a win win situation for me.”

“Howso” asked Helen.

“If Lucy accepts Charlene, then the project goes full steam ahead with them. If she refuses her, I get the vixen as my pet project for two weeks. And we still move the project forward. Just without Ullrich or van Pugpug. Because the vixen will vanish.”

“Why” both hounds asked together.

“Because she’s deathly in love with Ullrich. Not first or second love. But the kind that builds slowly. She won’t be worth anything if the cougar rejects her, and once I’m through with her.” She shrugged. “I can find her a place. Probably in Australia. There is a really nice straight Persian down there that would love caring for an artist. She will never, ever be what she was. You see, she’s talented. Highly talented. Talent sits on the edge of madness. If I take her, it’ll be all I can do to keep her from madness, which I will. But she’ll lose that talent to act. Forever.”

Helen looked aside, gathering her thoughts. “Then why destroy her.”

“Because its what she will want” Catherine Devinski answered. “Nikki takes no women who does not read her contract, understand every word and no woman who does not pay in cash. I helped write that contract Helen. It says, and I quote; ‘By accepting this training, you understand that you will never be the same. What you will be cannot be known. But whatever you were, that will be gone.’ I’ve seen all of her work. That statement has never been a lie. To step into the Red Lily’s parlor is to cast off what you were, and become something different. Normally something better. But like Crystal, Nikki cannot always be certain. Charlene though.” She turned to face the larger mare. “You looked into her eyes, didn’t you.” she asked.

“Today” Nikki admitted. “That vixen has in her to be the best actress in this generation, but she’s holding it back because she’s been hurt too much. And she has the ability to destroy herself exactly like Crystal, but for a different reason. If not me, then madness. But, if I can make a crack in that cougars armor. It might just be enough. Ullrich may be exactly what that vixen needs to become a whole woman again.”

“A crack? How” Helen asked.

Nikki grinned. “Scare her. She knows about me, and it’s a common line that I grab a girl now and then. No one knows its just the instructors pulling chains, but if she thinks I’ve taken her for my own harem. She’ll fight, but I’m a graduate. Hell, I survived Cranium Island. That little second year won’t have a chance.”

“I thought no one survives Cranium Island. Not sane” Helen Whitehall noted. “Are you saying that you are not sane?”

Nikki sucked in her lower lip, her tail going abruptly flat behind her. “I’ve been tested by every Priestess” she answered. “I’m different than I was, but I’m sane and uninfected. Even Oharu gave me a free pass, and I’ve stood before that little bomb in North Village. If I were other than I look, those last two would have erased me. No, I’m not fully sane. Watching as a flower slowly devours a tourist girl, ignoring my bullets and no way to help her. Then finding her boyfriend, the rich playboy I was sent to find as part of a living cliff wall, and still alive. Being chased by things I couldn’t see, but could hear and smell. No Mrs. Whitehall. I’m not totally sane anymore. I never will be. Its what allows me to do what I do, and why death no longer frightens me. I’ve seen what is worse than death. I’ve experienced it.”

She looked directly at her old instructor. “It was Catherine that saved me. She had followed me, knowing somehow, but too late what was going to happen. I owe her my life. And a lot more than that.” She looked down at her paws. “You see, until then no Songmark girl had been to Cranium island. Oh we knew the stories, that Rain Island crew that flew too close for example. But you come out of Songmark and you think that your ready for anything. The money to return Junior was huge, I’d lost Louise and I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t interested in living anymore. Not really. If there had been a way to get to that girl at first I probably would have joined her. Willingly. When Cat found me I was a mad, white eyed mare running for her soul. And Catharine Devinski saved it. Though I lost my aircraft. You see I’d landed on the beach. By the time I got back it was covered with... things. But my soul for an aircraft? That was a cheap payment.”

Catherine nodded in agreement. “She pays Helen. By work like this. Cracking Lucy’s armor is childs play for this woman. I guarantee that most women don’t stand a chance against her. That is why she’s so selective.”

“What about me” the afghan asked. “What if she decided to take me, just to get at you.”

“The only way to tell is let her look into your eyes. One of the things her experience on Cranium Island did. She can truly see your soul through your eyes. She’s seen mine.”

“That’s what calmed me” the mare admitted. “What saved me.”

Helen laughed. “Well Miss Benevedo. If you can truly see my soul, take a look. “ Helen turned her gaze directly on the mares eyes, and was shocked to feel something enter her. It left almost as quickly, but Nikki seemed satisfied.

“Cat. You could leave her with me for a lifetime. She has already seen true darkness. I can do nothing to her, or for her. She is that much stronger that I. Which is probably why you are in love with her. Have you selected your replacement yet?”

“There are two possibilities” Devinski admitted. “Though I had hoped that Amelia or Helen would take my place. They were my top two choices.”

“Hum. Well, I have to meet with a certain vixen an hour after sunset song. So I best be readying my kitnapping so that my surprise is waiting her I promise I won’t ruin her Cat. But hurt her? She’d going to fight.”

“I suggest a sand sap, while she is still asleep” Catherine Devinski offered. “She will be tired, we’ve had them paw scrubbing the hanger all day.”

“Sand sap it is. Good day, and Mrs. Whitehall? I’d much like to be Maid of Honor at your wedding, when in happens in three of four years.” Standing Nikki turned and let herself out. The very last thing she heard was Helen Whitehall saying “If you are really going to marry me, I will not wait four years.”

Chapter Nine

Lucy Ullrich began to wake. There was something wrong. A strange scent. She barely managed to open her right eye when the world left her. Oddly, her three roommates remained in dreamland. Then, perhaps the burning incense had something to do with that. It took Nikki barely three minutes to bind her prize, slide her into the canvas bag she had brought and leave, taking the incense burner with her. Sometime later one of the others would wake, sniff the air and note the odd sweet smell, then slip back to a very deep, very restful sleep.

Nikki though ignored the four guard dogs that watched her from a few feet away as she studied her way over the fence. They seemed to smile at her so she winked back at them. “Tell yah what” she whispered. “Tomorrow nigh I’ll leave fresh meat out for ya. Nice warm Songmark first year.” She paused to pet the four, then was over the fence and away before the second year Alpha Rote made her anti-clockwise patrol.

Alpha stopped as she reached that place minutes later, looking around. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t determine what. Yet the dogs had not alerted, still she decided to tell her partner and report it to the night instructor. Even though that meant waking her up.

Sometime later the cougar Lucy Ullrich woke. She was in a dark room and bound. Gently she started working at her bonds, trying not to make a sound. Abruptly there was a deep throated chuckle. “Mos second years lern tah sharpen tha inside of ah claw er two. How yah think yah lost yer panties to tha vixen.”

“That was how?” Ullrich said. “So, I’ll remember that. Who are you.”

“Red Lily, an yer min. Didn’ Songmark warn yah tha I take a prize every year or two?”

Fear pounded in the cougars heart, she did have a sharpened claw. Two to be exact, but she’d just discovered that the rope she was bound with had a steel wire core. There was no way a claw, sharpened or not, was cutting through that. “So wha do yah want with me” she asked, wincing as she heard the fear in her voice. Thin, but it was there.”

“Theres ah rhino tha wants yah. Payed pretty good he did. I figure ah week, two ahn you’ll sign that marriage contract of yer own free will. Afte all, yah been seen oggling tha local male talent. No loss there.

“Maybe I’ve changed my mind” the cougar challenged.

“Wha? Yah mean that cute vixen? She’s sellen herself tah me tahnigh. Yah didnah want her, so she’s endin it all.”

“Charlene would never do that.” Lucy struggled, but the knots holding her simply tightened as she did so.

“Better stop. Is ah trick ah learned from ah Cipangu woman ah trained. Harder yah fight, tighter it gets. Till yer paws ahn feet fall off.”

“BITCH” Lucy screamed. What answered her was a light coming on, blinding her.

“Maybe” admitted the mare. “Buh tell me. Yah really interested in tha bit o’ fluff? Aint much between tha eyes worth worrin about. An don worry bout Songmark. They lose ah girl now ahn then. Thel’ jus figher yah couldn’t take it ahn ran off. Girls do yah know.”

Fighting, Lucy managed to get herself into a sitting position, though it pinched her tail (which was currently tied to the back of her neck.) “All right. You have me. But I’ll fight you every inch of the way” the Texan warned. “Find a way to keep Charlene from selling herself to anyone, and I won’t fight. I’ll do what you want. I’ll learn. I’ll be a perfect wife to this rhino. But only if you get Charlene to forget me and go home.”

“You really love her?” the mare asked, her accent vanishing.

“I don’t know” Lucy snapped. “I know she doesn’t deserve what your doing to me, but I don’t know if I love her. Hell, the only two kiss’s we’ve had was one she stole and a quick goodbye. I was going to find out, then the restriction. Dammit Nikki. You have me. You’ve obviously gotten away with this before. So you don’t need her. Please, if you’ve any heart. Save her.”

“We’ll see my petty little kitty.” Standing the mare walked over to her captive. “Open wide now.”

Frightened, the Songmark second year opened her mouth, to have it filled with something hard. A moments work and she felt a strap being buckled behind her. “Free taste. It isn’t often anyone gets this, without paying for it. Now listen my little toy. I will leave that door open, if you make one sound both you and your little friend vanish. Understand?”

Lucy nodded her head yes. She didn’t like the binding at all, but the gag in her mouth wasn’t that bad. Without a sound she watched as the frightening mare walked over, turned out the light and left. It would be half an hour before Charlene arrived.

Charlene sat, her back to an open door as Nikki poured wine. “You were going to tell me about Songmark” she nudged before sipping her wine.

Nikki nodded. “Songmarks true mission is to build strong women. Not just strong physically, but morally. Right now the majority of men treat woman as toys, or slaves. Take the Arabic nations and Africa for example. When Catherine Devinski and her best friends started Songmark, their main mission was to teach women to survive. It is why only twenty students are selected each year. It is not to turn girls Sapphic, as many believe. Even many parents that send their daughters here. The instructors really have no idea what a girls tastes are when they accept them.”

“That’s why Lucy hates me. Because I offered and that isn’t what she wants.”

“I honestly don’t know that Charlene” the mare admitted. “It could take months for her to decided one way or another. You really should give her time. You may be lucky after all, she may be interested. But afraid that your playing her.”

“I would never do that” the vixen answered. “I really, really love her. I wasn’t sure, not until I got the guts up to undress before her. I’ve been used too many times, and I’ve used my body too many times. Like when I got Jean that job, and kept paying K.L. with my body so he would keep her around. I didn’t love her, I’ve never been interested. But Nikki, she’s my only real friend. She doesn’t want anything from me, everyone else does.”

“We are drifting off the point Charlene” Nikki reminded her visitor. “But you did that just to keep someone you like around?”

“I like, and I trust. So what is Songmark’s reason to buy into Republic Studios anyway.”

“Beyond Silver Star, name another strong female character” the mare countered.

“That’s easy. There isn’t one” the vixen admitted. “So, you want more strong female leads?”

“It isn’t that easy Charlene. Actress’s like you are rare. Strong, but not overpowering. And writers like Lucy that can turn a good word. Sex doesn’t matter except for the actress. Nor does sexual taste. You’ve woken us to a once in a lifetime chance. Were taking it but we want you and Lucy. We can do it without you, now that we have the information, but we desperately would rather have the two of you with us. You to play the parts, and find others who can do so. Lucy to write the stories and find other writers. But it has to look like plain entertainment. That’s how people learn, through entertainment. Getting Songmarks word out to the masses, that a woman can be strong, intelligent and in control of herself yet still be equal to the man she loves. Maybe in a hundred years we can change attitudes. These religious freaks, and I don’t just mean Christians Charlene. These religious freak that rule women like slaves need to be re-educated, and the movies right now are our best hope. Short of putting a bullet in some goat herders head that is.”

Charlene laughed. “You’d run out of bullets fast” she warned.

“I know, and it isn’t the way to change the world. Knowledge, understanding and acceptance are. Force never does anything but cause a knee-jerk reaction the other way, unless it benefits men.”

Charlene took a deep breath, looking away from the mare. “Its not a utopian world your after is it. Just acceptance that we are all equals.”

“Right the first time.”

“That would be nice Nikki. But... I’ve just now come to my decision. I know what your fee is. I have it here. If you’ll give me the contract I’ll sign it. Its just, I didn’t know how much I loved Lucy until I lost her. And well, even with a script and Jean, its only a matter of time before my contracts sold. Probably to Twentieth, where that little monster is waiting to suck my brains out. She will Nikki, so I’d rather choose my own destruction. You really don’t need me, there are a lot of good A actress’s out there that would jump at that kind of part. And A actors that would support them. But without Lucy. Dear Nikki. I’m tired. I’m sick of the casting couch and I am just too tired to care anymore. I’ve never loved anyone like this before, every time I see something nice I wonder if Lucy would like it. If she would like living in Hollywood, or if I would be happy in some jungle with her. I can’t do this anymore Nikki. I’m broken, I’m bleeding and I’ve lost the very last thing I felt important to me. I just need it to end. Please.”

“Your sure about this? What if Lucy later does decide your what she wants.” Nikki asked softly.

“There are a lot of women like me out there. She’s smart, she’s beautiful. And she has a huge heart, she’ll find someone.”

Nikki stood. Turned and picked up a waiting contract. Dropping it in front of her visitor she looked into the vixens eyes again. This was it, this was the tipping point. ‘Oh God’ she prayed. ‘Let this work.’ “Read that, I will test you on its contents before I let you sign it. But I want you to remember those kids, and the girl that you promised to find a job for. This is a one way road Charlene. When you go down it the gate locks behind you. There is no way back. Because understand this, what you are right now, this instant, you will not be come sunrise song. I’ll go prepare the room for you.”

Walking away from the vixen she entered that back room, shutting its door before kneeling beside the wide eyed cougar. “You heard. This is it Lucy. Choose her, or walk out when she comes in. If you walk out, never say a word to her because by morning, she won’t be Charleen van Pugpug ever again. If she signs that contract, her name will be Sand. In a week she won’t remember you. In two she won’t remember herself. She’ll freely marry that rhino that wants you. He’s easy, you or her. Doesn’t matter to him as long as its one of the Sapphic women from those movies. Then she will move to Africa and be happy giving him little rhinos. Do you understand me?” When Lucy nodded yes Nikki started untying her. “Work the kinks out while I grill her. Hear her crying? I can tell you now that she’s going to sign, but I’ve burned contracts before. The cost to burn this one is her heart. Make sure, because her love for you is the kind that burns forever. You are only ever going to get one shot at this. Miss, and you’ll never have another chance. Now I’ll let you undo the gag.”

Standing Nikki waved to the bed. “I have to have you back in five hours. Can you burn yourself forever into her heart in four, or do you make you way back as you are, and leave me to burn myself into that gentle heart.”

“I’ve decided” the cougar answered softly, setting the gag aside. “Send her in, she’s mine. But I’ll ask for something to wear to get back to Songmark.”

“Maybe your wearing it. The fur you were born in. I did it, Louise did it. Damn near every Songmark girl worth being a Songmark girl has crossed that wire in her fur. Just watch out for the dogs, they’re a bit randy right now. I promised them a first year this week, and I keep my promises.”

Lucy shook. “I understand. So some poor first year is going to find herself naked among those dogs? And when she begins swelling? What then. What price do we pay, and pay. When is it too much.”

“Call it a learning experience. Sleep with one eye open. You think I’m the only Songmark graduate to slip in and out? It’s a game with us, keeps us on our toes. My partner does it weekly, especially since she was almost kitnapped by slavers last Spring. You’ll do it too. As for the girl, those mutts are mules. A sentient mother, a normal father. Proof that no thief enters Songmark and gets away untouched. Now rub those wrists and ankles, she’ll be coming in here soon. Hide behind the door, she’ll close it when she comes in and turns on the light. Four hours to brand yourself into that heart, not a second longer.”

Returning to the other room Nikki found Charlene waiting, tear tracks matting her facial fur. “It is surprisingly short” the vixen announced. “My new name will be Sand? Why.”

“Because sand, when heated becomes crystal. And Crystal can be exceptionally beautiful.”

“You have a way with words. You were going to quiz me?”

Nikki nodded, then started asking questions. When she was finally satisfied that the vixen really had read the entire contract, short as it was, she told Charlene to sign.

Picking up the waiting fountain pen the vixen started to sign, then blushed. “Two things Mistress. First, your pay.” She pushed a sealed envelope over to the waiting mare. “I wired K.L. for money. He doesn’t know why, and he never will. I’m owed that and more anyway.” She watched as Nikki opened the envelope, counting out the shells slowly.

“Correct” the mare agreed. “You have just purchased your new life. I hope that you will be satisfied with it.”

“I hope so too. Second, if I may be so bold. What will you do with me, when you have finished.”

Nikki picked up the money again, staring at the young, talented and very beautiful vixen across from her. “You have a talent as an artist. I’ve a buyer in Australia that has asked if I find an artist, that I send her too her. Australia is a long way away from Hollywood, and she lives in an opal mine in the outback. She isn’t Sapphic, but she is very lonely. Maybe you can change her. Crystal will know how. Sand doesn’t.”

“A woman, how fitting. Thank you.” Carefully Charlene wrote her name, her real name. Then blowing on the paper she waited until the ink dried. “Done. I am your property now Mistress” she said, pushing pen and paper across to the mare.

“Only after I sign.” With a flourish Nikki signed her own name. “Now Sand” she said forcefully. “You will stand, undress and throw your clothing in that bag. You will not wear clothing again until I allow it. Understand?”

“Yes Mistress” the vixen agreed. She stood, quickly getting out of her clothing and shoving it into the cloth bag. A bag that had a familiar scent. Standing again she waited, arms to her sides. She truly believed her life over and done with.

“Sand, your fate is in that room” Nikki stated. “You will enter, close the door and turn on the light. Your trainer for tonight is waiting. You will insure that you submit fully, or I will enter. It will not be pleasant if I enter. Now go.”

Nikki watched as the vixen followed her orders. “Damn” she whispered. “Such beauty. If we didn’t need her so badly, but Cat would come down on me hard. Once was enough. Enjoy your four hours girl.” She watched as the door closed, then the light went on within. There was a moment of silence, that a gasp of pure surprise. “LUCY?” she heard the vixen yell.

“On the bed Sand, we have training to do” came the answer. A moment later the bed squeaked and Nikki smiled. Picking up the contract and bag she headed outside, where the trash burner waited. It would work out after all. Thank God.

Chapter Ten

Lucy Ullrich looked absolutely stupid in Charlene’s clothing. For one, the bodice was much too large, as was the hips, but not near as much. “I have tah get in, in bed without bein caught” she asked the woman beside her.

Nikki shrugged. “Better than poor Sand. She has to get back to the McGee resort with nothing but the key to her room.”

“Training? Or test.”

“You’re a Songmark student Lucy. Every breath is a test. Now Blande is watching. Try not to be caught, your dorm couldn’t stand the demerits.”

Lucy stood, looking towards the gate. Both girls were talking, one getting ready for her search of the fence line. Across from her, at the fence waited four dogs, their tongues lolling as they watched.

“I promised you a first year” Nikki whispered. The dogs looked at her, then one patted the ground twice. “Two?” the mare asked. The dog nodded its head yes. “Damn. Two then. But only because we need Lucy. Now do your thing.” Nodding to her three of the dogs trotted off to a section of the fence far away from where mare and cougar waited.

“Remember” Nikki warned Lucy. “Until you marry, her name is Sand.”

“You burned the contract” Lucy countered.

“Did you see me? No. You were too busy with your new play toy. Too busy burning your soul into hers, and you did. By God did you burn yourself into her. I couldn’t have done better. I think I shall take you as a student. After Songmark. Have you decided how you feel about her?”

“But the smoke... All right. Learning experience” the cougar agreed. “Yes, I’ll marry her. And I’ll take very, very good care of her.” She paused, looking towards the glow of Casino island a moment. “Your student? That might be interesting” she admitted.

“Good, any moment now...” Dogs excited barks caused both gate guards to turn and look. As one they raced off. When they did Nikki and Lucy ran to the fence, the mare bending her knees, making a cradle of her paws. Lucy leapt, her bare right foot settling into that cradle. Then she was flying.

‘Damn she’s strong’ the cougar thought, remembering to somersault. She hit the ground hard next to the waiting female guard dog, who licked her face. Then she stripped out of Charlene’s dress. ‘Smoke, no unders. Char... Sand wore cotton. So that’s what she burnt’ the cougar realized. Turning she raced for her dorm, barely slipping under the covers before Miss Blande entered.

“Ten mile, full pack. South Island. Lets go lets go. You have five minutes. Move it children. This isn’t a resort spa.” She looked at Lucy and gave the girl a wink, then was gone. It was a very, very exhausted cougar who finally found her bed four days later.

But it had been worth it.

That Friday night several women were meeting in Helen Whitehall’s home. Helen herself was playing hostess, while making certain that her son, now a toddler, did not get into too many things. “Nikki. Did it work” she asked.

Nikki was holding a large mug of hot coffee, having just taken a sip when Helen asked. She held up a paw. “Barely” she answered as soon as she swallowed. “God please don’t put me in that position again Cat. Please.”

“You still have the contract” Catherine Devinski noted. “And the money.”

“Yes” the mare agreed. “A sword over their heads they are well aware of. Should they break up, Charlene is mine. It should be enough.”

“I wonder though” Catherine said as she blew on her own coffee. “Two first years, neither hounds, were discovered in the back section of Songmarks property this morning. Both were in their fur, a bit roughed up and being held by the dogs. Strangely, the dogs were not barking. Nor did either girl know how she ended up where she was. It appears that the dogs searched them, quite thoroughly. Eight demerits each for their Dorm. Security has never been higher.”

“Damn mutts upped the price” Nikki admitted. “What about your intruder?”

“Ah. She seems to have gotten away. Though we still have the Shrew Rote dorm searching just how she got in, why she dropped her clothing, how she got out and what did she take. I believe that their reports should make interesting reading. Alpha has been attending her forensics classes and making excellent marks. Oh, and that report of an Euro running naked on Casino Island. Classy.” She picked up an 8x10 glossy of naked vixen. “To bad they missed the photograph. I hear that it was so blurry that it could have been anyone. Charlene is rather attractive though.”

“Sand” Nikki corrected. “Until the wedding.”

“I’d like to read those reports” Helen admitted as she accepted the photograph. “Very nice” she observed before passing it to Carmen. “Now to the real business. “What new reports regarding the Republic Carmen?”