Villainy Victorious

by L. Ron Hubbard

  “Well, only the Russians developed those. They received a lot of TV coverage. So I should think that if you avoided the sky-space over Russia, they would be no problem.”

  “Aha!” said the artillery general. “Show us this Russia.”

  Madison walked up to the front of the cave and with a “With your permission” took the remote from the staff officer. He mastered it and the projector began to throw up Earth maps. He found Russia and showed them. (Madison would not have known, since it had happened after his departure, that there was no Russia now.)

  Hisst moved restively. He glared at the generals. “All right, you can go and wrangle someplace else now. But get a general operational plan on this desk by tomorrow!”

  They rose and their aides got their papers together and they left. Lombar, after a bit, became aware that Madison was still there.

  “You’ve been dismissed!” said Hisst.

  “I wanted to see you about Gris,” said Madison.

  “Gris, Gris, Gris! Well, (BLEEP) Gris! He’s the one who is the cause of all this trouble!”

  “Could I ask what all this trouble is?” said Madison.

  “Amphetamines! Intelligence!” shouted Hisst. “If the sun didn’t rise tomorrow and I investigated, I can promise you it would lead to Gris! The Blixo, on its last arrival, should have brought amphetamines. It didn’t. Now there has not been one freighter since! He never kept his intelligence reports up and now we’re going blind.”

  “I can get him!” said Madison.

  That got through to Hisst. But he shook his head. “I’ve sent three assassins into the Royal prison. Gris is still alive! It’s impossible.”

  “You don’t want him dead,” said Madison. “You want him talking.”

  “He let Heller get away from him,” said Lombar in his usual disconnected way. “I’m going to kill him!”

  “I can get Heller, too,” said Madison.

  “Heller has turned all Earth against me,” said Hisst. “I am certain that right this minute Heller is racing through the streets of that planet screaming at the people to attack me! He’s a scourge! The Army and the Fleet won’t make the slightest effort to smash him!”

  “Please,” said Madison. “Let’s open up our coats. Is there some reason you don’t want Gris to talk?”

  The unpredictable Lombar suddenly broke out laughing. Madison did note later that, with Lombar, he very often felt like he was dealing with someone who was quite insane.

  “Did you set Gris up some way?” pursued Madison.

  Lombar was still laughing. Finally he said, “If I were ever accused of anything, nothing could be proved. Every order that ever went to Blito-P3, every shipment that ever came from there, bears only the name of Soltan Gris. He stamped his life away!”

  “Then you wouldn’t mind if Gris came to trial?”

  “What’s a trial got to do with it?”

  Madison said, “A trial that was public, that was reported in the media. Blow by blow.”

  “That’s a funny idea.”

  “You can even try him first in the media and then he’s certain to be found guilty in the court. That’s the proper way to do these things.”

  “How strange.”

  “You’d emerge the hero,” said Madison. “It would help build your image.”

  “Oh, trials have nothing to do with this,” said Hisst, suddenly looking angry. “My problem is how to get the Army and Fleet cooperating.”

  “Is that very vital?” said Madison.

  “He asks me if that’s vital,” Lombar asked an invisible spectator who wasn’t there. “I’d have to withdraw the whole Apparatus from Calabar to invade Earth. At least the Army and Fleet could take over there!”

  “You need the cooperation of the Army and Fleet,” said Madison. “I CAN GET THEM FOR YOU!”

  Lombar stopped. Finally he said, “How?”

  “Let me have all the files and witnesses on Gris. I will get him into the press and on trial. Then I will get him to accuse Heller. It can be done so that the whole Army and Fleet will go chasing after Heller like mad dogs!”

  “Really?”

  Madison took the clipping book he had been carrying. He flopped it open on the desk before Lombar. “These stories are just trial balloons. I wrote every one. They’ll print anything I issue. All I have to do is use the media, and the Army and the Fleet will be in your hands!”

  Lombar was staring at the book, leafing through it. “They are publishing what you say?”

  “I control the media of the Confederacy. It’s just a tool. I can use it to whip up a storm that will give you all the support you will ever need for anything you want to do. I can mold public opinion like it was clay! And that is the key to all your projects.”

  “Miraculous!” said Lombar, still staring at the book. “Crobe? A hero?” Yet here were touched-up pictures of Crobe, front page! Laudatory! Paper after paper!

  “There, you see? And that’s just an exercise to try my muscle. A nothing.”

  “Madison, if you can make them think that that demented old criminal is a hero, then it should be no difficulty at all to make a deserving, preselected man like me . . .”

  “An Emperor,” Madison finished for him.

  Hisst’s yellow eyes grew round and then began to glow. He stood up, towering over Madison a foot. He took one of Madison’s hands in his and stroked it. Then he turned and bawled toward the door, “CHIEF CLERK! GIVE THIS MAN MADISON EVERYTHING HE WANTS! EVERYTHING, YOU UNDERSTAND, OR I WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD!”

  PART SEVENTY-NINE

  Chapter 4

  Outside the sun had almost set. The square was nearly deserted and the Model 99 looked lonely in the rubble.

  Madison handed Cun an enormous stack of printouts, gave Flick an address card and got in.

  “You had us worried,” said Flick as he got the Model 99 moving. “Cun was talking to the driver of that general’s tank beside us: he said that was the whole Apparatus General Staff in there planning a full-scale invasion. When he said ‘Blito-P3’ we flipped! Ain’t that the planet you’re from?”

  Madison was lost in thought and did not reply.

  “Now, I’m from Calabar,” said Flick. “All that war over there worries me. They slaughter whole towns, butcher the kids, rape the women, burn the lot. I should think your hair was standing on end thinking of the Apparatus invading your planet.”

  “Oh, war is just war,” said Madison in a bored voice. “I’m a PR man. Most wars are started by PRs. So what’s there to be excited about?”

  “Listen to that, Cun,” said Flick. “What a cool one! But I guess that kind of attitude goes along with being a murderer. And speaking of murder, get your stinger out, Cun. This neighborhood we’re moving into is a perfect ‘X marks the spot.’”

  They pulled up before a place that was more fallen down than standing: the reek of garbage assailed their noses. Madison walked up some steps at the risk of a broken ankle and banged on a door.

  A man with two tufts of gray hair standing out on either side of his head poked his nose out. “Go away. I’ve just this minute gotten home. I’m entitled to a little peace.”

  “Is your name Bawtch?” said Madison.

  Bawtch tried to close the door but Madison’s foot was in it. “I’ve come to you for information about a man named Gris.”

  “GRIS! Get out of here!”

  “He’s in the Royal prison,” said Madison, “laughing at you all. I’m trying to get him brought to trial.”

  “Come in!” said Bawtch.

  For a revelatory half an hour, Madison, in Bawtch’s best chair, listened entranced. “So then,” he finally said, “I could count on you as a character witness.”

  “I’d walk across the Great Desert just for a chance to testify,” said Bawtch.

  “And if I asked you to give a lecture on him, you’d talk?” said Madison.

  “Indeed I would,” said Bawtch. “Now, thinking this over, I can give you a couple names. They’re just
down the street.” He wrote an address and handed it across.

  At the door, Bawtch shook him emotionally by the hand. “Count on me, Madison.”

  They rolled around the corner and down a hill. They halted before a very decayed boarding house—“For Gentlemen Officers,” it said on a twisted sign.

  A harsh-faced woman came to the door. Madison had learned his lesson: “I’m here to get you to help me hang Gris. I presume your name is Meeley. You were once his landlady.”

  “To help you hang . . .” She whirled suddenly and yelled in the direction of the kitchen. “SKE! COME OUT HERE! WE’RE IN LUCK! SOMEBODY WANTS TO HANG GRIS!”

  Madison found himself in a parlor, drinking hot jolt. He listened while Ske, Gris’ old driver, poured out his tale of woe, interrupted with curses and tales of woe of her own by Meeley. He gathered that Gris had given them both counterfeit bills and had they tried to pass them they would have been executed. But, knowing Gris, instead they had gone straight to the Finance Police with complaints of their own. Their bitterness against Gris had bound them close together.

  Oh, yes, they’d testify at any trial. Gladly, gladly, gladly! At a lecture? Well, they were not really very presentable but they’d be only too glad to say anything Madison wanted.

  Smiling like a toother that was all set to snap up his prey, Madison returned to the townhouse in Joy City. He ignored dinner. There was no time for that. He called his whole staff together.

  He stood upon the platform in the briefing room. He stood very tall.

  “Loyal and hardworking staff,” he said, “this is a milestone. At times PR finds itself on a pinnacle. We are about to influence the courses of empires. We are about to direct the very destiny of the stars. Now listen closely.”

  PART SEVENTY-NINE

  Chapter 5

  Two days later, a very select audience of ninety women sat in the lecture hall on the eightieth floor of the townhouse, conscious that they were being especially favored by an invitation to this highly educational lecture by the famous Doctor Crobe.

  They were also conscious, but this was never mentioned, that if they didn’t cooperate, they would never again get another chance to “get cured” at Relax Island. Also—although this, too, was never even hinted at—if they weren’t agreeable, somebody might forget to renew their free supply of pot.

  What was discussed amongst themselves and to others quite freely was that, as members of high society, they had a positive duty to use their positions—and their husbands—to do good. It didn’t have a spoken name but they were all members of a very exclusive club made up entirely of those fortunate enough to have been “enlightened” at Relax Island.

  Madison had had a little trouble with Crobe. He had sneaked an extra dose of LSD into himself outside his rationing and two roustabouts had had to stand him up in alternate hot and cold showers to bring him around.

  He stood now on the lecture platform, aware that he would get a small jolt through his hidden electric collar if he goofed up, and steadied himself against the desk.

  “Ladies,” he said, repeating what the ear speaker told him to, “you are aware that as the chosen inner circle of the enlightened few, your . . . your social . . . social position has responsibilities. The society we live in is . . . is unfortunately a cesspool of unrestrained insanity and monstrous abuses. Lurking, hidden, out of sight . . . out of sight from common and unenlightened view, the brains of men . . . see the with lusts and ferocity unimagined. It frightens me to see the dangers to which this society is exposed and how ill it . . . it . . . it handles them. It requires stern measures louder it requires STERN MEASURES!” He took a deep breath and steadied himself with his fingers against the desk top.

  “Lean forward. There is a case so monstrous, would you know it, that I do not even describe it to you lean back and stop. You are, after all, gently nurtured ladies and I must not speak of it lest I offend your ears don’t go on.”

  “No, no,” cried Lady Arthrite Stuffy in the front row, well aware of her position as the leader of this select group. “Go on, go on! Do not be afraid to offend our ears.”

  “Oh, yes, go on!” came others’ calls.

  “Look as though you need coaxing,” said Crobe.

  “We don’t need coaxing!” cried a woman. “Tell us!”

  “Go ahead. Well, this case, ladies, is so shout it vile that you will cringe. It is a singular and notable case. It is so notable that it falls totally outside the Freudian band of psychosexual pathology!”

  “No!” came several cries.

  “The case,” said Crobe, “is not anal. It is not oral. It is not genital! It is not even latent! Shout a monster.”

  The women looked appalled.

  Crobe sat down suddenly in a chair. “A woman has come forward to describe this case as an eyewitness. Introduce her.”

  Meeley came forward timidly to the platform, then took confidence from the expectant female faces. “What he says,” said Meeley, “is true. I was his landlady. He never had women in his room. He closed the door when he went to the bathroom. He never spoke properly to anyone. When he wasn’t sneaking in and out, he was lurking in the dirt and filth of his room. There is no describing his obscene and awful thoughts. He also plotted day and night to get me executed just because I used to smile at him and wish him good day. When he skipped out we could find no one to occupy his room. It had such an awful reputation that it is empty yet!” She broke down sobbing and an usher led her off.

  Then came Ske. “I was,” he said, “his long-suffering driver. The deprivations I experienced during that unhappy period of my life have left a brand upon me so deep that my very soul is seared. He used to sit in the airbus trying to hide the grinding of his teeth. And for my faithful service he tried to get me executed. I cannot describe the obscenities that surrounded him!” He broke down as coached and fled the platform.

  Old Bawtch came forward. “I was his chief clerk and it ruined my life. The murders and crimes of this man, strung end to end, would reach half across the universe. The insane things he did culminated in orders to take my life.”

  He left the platform. Crobe, somewhat revived, stood up. “Now, ladies, you can plainly see that insanity rages. The diagnosis of this case is so monstrous that in all the annals of psychiatry there has never been one like it. I have simply look calm and professorial brought up the case to show you how the claws of insanity have dug into the very depths of our culture look like that’s the end.”

  “Wait!” cried Lady Arthrite. “Who is this case and where is he?”

  “Look toward the door. Is the man who informed me of this case still here?”

  “Yes,” said an usher promptly.

  An actor dressed as a warder of the Royal prison came in reluctantly. He was wearing a mask. “Doctor Crobe,” he said, “I told you about this case for the good of the society. If it got out that I had informed you of what the government is doing, it could cause me to lose my job.”

  “Tell them tell them they will all regard your identity as inviolate.”

  The actor turned. “The man is being held in the Royal prison to avoid his being brought to trial. He sits in his cell, protected. What is feared is that if he ever was put before a judge, the things he would divulge would shake the government to its very foundations. Even if they tried him, it would be done in secret. What we warders fear is that he will be released upon the society through a back door and strew the streets with the gruesomely mangled bodies of the poor and innocent. While I know naught of your psychiatry, from just viewing him in his cell, I would say that, in a long career of handling malefactors, he is easily the worst I have ever seen. He defies all descriptions! Yet THEY are hiding and defending him.”

  “What is his name?” said Lady Arthrite Stuffy in an enraged voice.

  “His name,” said the actor, “is Soltan Gris!”

  PART SEVENTY-NINE

  Chapter 6

  Like a maestro conducting a vast orchestra, J. Walter Madis
on went to work on Soltan Gris.

  The highest social circles of Voltar were buzzing about the scandal and, quite in addition to demands from their wives, publishers and editors could not turn anywhere without colliding with the outrage.

  The first headlines read:

  MYSTERIOUS PRISONER

  HIDDEN BY AUTHORITIES

  And this was quickly followed up with:

  WHO IS THE

  GOVERNMENT REFUSING

  TO BRING TO TRIAL?