Spot ads themselves weren’t usually done on Homeview, so the fact that they had been running now every hour for the last thirty-six was creating something of a sensation. There was hardly anyone who did not know that something was going to happen tonight. That “takes her life in her hands” was not understood at all. Was she going to do death-defying feats on the stage or what? The billions and billions of passionately devoted Hightee Heller fans reacted in a number of different ways. A few of them got physically ill at the idea of anything happening to “their dear Hightee.” Alarmed calls had been jamming the circuit boards of Homeview all day from every part of the planet and some from other planets which only had delays measurable in hours.
The news followed. As a lot of day programming was given over to the trial, the news itself could get on with other matters. Mention was made that the fighting on Calabar seemed to be diminishing as Apparatus troops pulled out. Several papers were speculating on the target of some punitive strike, guessing at which of several unconquered planets. One said that a race had developed a new and devastating weapon and needed preinvasion chastisement and a usually informed source mentioned that it might be Blito-P3. Lombar grinned like a toother at that: Madison had told him that such a leak “prepared the public mind.”
Then the musical came on with a roar from the studio audience. The performers were all introduced, as is usual. Then with a fanfare the curtain went up and to the downbeat music, playing in a dirge version of ragtime, the devils and the beaten people howled and moaned. The show had begun. Hightee stepped out and in a brilliant aria described the scene and the history of her brother and herself.
Madison glanced at Lombar. He seemed to find the antics of the red devils and the abuse of the people a source of gratification. He hadn’t really grasped the import of the play.
The brother went through his duplicity, the sister described it all in song, the choruses and scenery were superb.
Lombar seemed to be musing about something as he watched. He even once or twice tapped his boot toe in time to the music. Such was Lombar’s ego that he seemed to be missing the point. But Madison knew that no one else on Voltar was missing it. They all knew that Hightee’s brother was Jettero Heller. The lead male star in the piece, by Madison’s covert interference, was a handsome blond youth from Manco, six foot two.
Then in the latter part of the play, just before the final scenes, Hightee Heller as the outlaw’s sister is seen standing on the cowcatcher of an improbable locomotive of a train that is being robbed. Boxes and bags of loot are being taken off. Another robber comes to her, opens a box and says, “Look, we found some of the devils’ clothes, ha, ha, we found some of the devils’ clothes.” And he holds up a scarlet Apparatus general’s uniform.
Madison, at that moment, looked at Lombar. The Dictator of Voltar was sitting there stunned.
Hightee, at that point, throws back her head and laughs. Then she draws a six-gun and fires it in the air to attract the attention of peasants in the nearby fields. These all run up and Hightee sings them a song.
With the crazy downbeat rhythm and singing as only Hightee could sing, the ballad went:
The devil’s going to get you
If you don’t watch out.
The devil’s going to cheat you
Before you know he is about.
He’s going to hit you,
With a great big stick.
He is going to smash you
With a fist that’s quick.
But if you saw the devil
When he was skinned,
You would really find,
He was just a bag of wind.
For the devil was bred
In a lowly slum
And every unknown father
Was a gutter bum.
The point of this song
Should not be missed.
I am singing about
(mouthed only) ———— ————!
There is no mistaking the words that Hightee’s lips form. They can only be “Lombar Hisst.” But in their very silence, they are ten times as loud as if they had been spoken.
Then the robber holding the uniform inflates it with gas and it does a crazy dance as it rises. The stage-play brother rushes up, draws his six-guns and shoots the uniform full of holes. The peasants and robbers all go into a wild carnival of dance, stamping on the uniform and finally burning it in effigy.
But that wasn’t the only thing that went into wild motion. Lombar was up out of his chair, waving his arms about wildly and leaping. “That’s me! That’s me she’s singing about! I’ll kill her! I’ll maim her! She is holding me up to ridicule! Oh, Gods, I get the point of this play now! She’s telling the people to revolt and tear me to bits!” He shook both fists at the screen and would have lunged into it but he tripped over a stool and began to roll around on the floor, frothing at the mouth.
The convulsions lasted until the burning of the effigy on the screen, and then Hisst lay there in a twisted pile, staring at the set as though in a catatonic stupor.
The rest of the play ran off, the brother and sister were both hanged and their bodies seized down into a grave and the vast cast all sadly sang the last song the sister had sung. Then they chorused The Outlaw theme song again, but with celestial overtones, and the face of Hightee and factually the face of Jettero Heller himself looked down from heaven. Madison’s last touch had not been known to anybody except the bribed technician.
The studio audience went into yells and applause that Madison thought better than to complete. He turned the set off.
Lombar somehow got himself straightened out and fell into a chair.
“Now you see why I was worried,” said Madison.
“It’s Heller,” said Lombar. “Heller put her up to this. All Voltar knows Jettero Heller is her brother. It didn’t take that last picture of his face to drive it home! It’s a plot against my life! I’ll order a Death Battalion to raid her house and shoot her down at once!”
Madison said, “Lombar, all famous figures have to be able to withstand ridicule. It’s one of the rules of the game: ridicule the mighty. But be calm, they have played right into your hands. I am glad that you have seen that. You can get even with her and can get Heller to show up. All you have to do is sign this note.”
Lombar looked at it. A savage look replaced the shock that had been dominating him. “That’s brilliant!” he said and signed it, stamped it.
Madison took it back to see that it was all in order. It said:
ARREST HIGHTEE HELLER AND HOLD HER. THEN BARGAIN WITH HER BROTHER AND GET HIM TO COME IN. THEN KILL THEM BOTH.
LOMBAR HISST
“Make sure you get that executed!” said Lombar with a ferocious snarl. “I’ve never been so affronted in my life!”
“I knew you’d see your way out of this,” said Madison. “You can now ignore the details. Leave the rest up to me.”
J. Warbler Madman was about to pull off the PR caper of the age.
PART EIGHTY-ONE
Chapter 4
The arrest of Hightee Heller took place in the street before the huge dome studio of Homeview.
She had been told that a group of notables and fans from Mistin wished to present her with that planet’s symbolic flower. There were some notables there all right, but they weren’t from Mistin. They were Death Battalion men in civilian clothes.
Madison had his own camera crew placed on a ledge that outcropped from the dome: it was thirty feet above and could look down on the whole scene. There was another crew there, on the scene itself, assigned by the manager of Homeview. There were several reporters and photographers from papers.
The street was just a typical Joy City street, lined with shops that sold knickknacks and pretty clothes. The main entrance to the dome, however, was imposing, for the pavement just in front of it appeared to be made of gold. It was there that the deputation stood.
Hightee Heller came out of the building: she was dressed in a white gown and gold
gloves. Such presentations were quite ordinary: she would simply go down, accept whatever it was, smile, shake hands, thank them and withdraw. It was a little ceremony that took place several times a week. She was usually only accompanied by a couple Homeview ushers to carry away the present or award or whatever it was. No one would have dreamed of flanking Hightee with security men, for in all her career, no one had ever laid a finger on the Homeview star or even frowned at her in public.
She might have been checked by the fact that the deputation was so silent. Usually such groups were more numerous and gave a little cheer when she appeared. This one just stood there, the man in front holding a bouquet.
She was five feet from the apparent leader. He extended the bouquet toward her stiffly. Still moving forward, she put out a hand toward it.
He dropped the flowers to the pavement.
They had masked the blastgun in his hand!
A whistle screamed.
With a single movement, two hundred men stepped out of the different shops. They wore black uniforms and carried rifles. The street was suddenly totally lined with these troops.
From the back of the deputation, a man strode forward, throwing off a cloak to reveal himself as a colonel of the Death Battalion.
Hightee turned to re-enter the building.
Two Death Battalion soldiers blocked her way. She turned back to the “deputation.”
The colonel’s boot crushed the fallen flowers. “Hightee Heller, I arrest you in the name of Lombar Hisst!”
The two ushers made a sudden rush to protect Hightee.
Two actors, placed there by Madison for that purpose in Apparatus uniforms, smashed blood bags into the faces of her protectors! It looked exactly like they had been killed! They fell.
A member of the “deputation” raised and dropped a black sack over Hightee.
Four Death Battalion troopers grabbed her as though she were a bundle and rushed her into a personnel carrier.
Two hundred Death Battalion troops struck down the people who had stopped, stunned, in the street. They raced for their vehicles.
With a shattering roar of takeoffs, the street was empty except for pedestrians collapsed upon the walks.
Then people began to run out of the building and out of the shops. They looked around. They stared at the sky in horror. A woman began to scream.
Madison had the cameraman fade out on the crushed bouquet. It looked as though the battered flowers bled.
He was grinning. It had been carried live, as a special, over all Homeview.
It was on the streets in an hour:
HIGHTEE ARRESTED
BY HISST
Madison had it all scheduled. Later papers would carry that her whereabouts was unknown, later ones would headline the beginning of the riots, tomorrow it would be:
BILLIONS MOURN
Madison now had other things to do.
PART EIGHTY-ONE
Chapter 5
For three days, the Gris trial took second place. For all three of those days Madison had been beaming a message to Calabar. The message had been carried on all military wavelengths: these were known to be monitored by the rebels. The message, over and over, had said:
JETTERO HELLER. ON THURSDAY MORNING YOUR SISTER, HIGHTEE HELLER, WILL BE AT HERO PLAZA, GOVERNMENT CITY, VOLTAR. IF YOU DO NOT LAND THERE AND GIVE YOURSELF UP, AT NOON SHE WILL BE SHOT.
LOMBAR HISST, DICTATOR OF THE CONFEDERACY.
On Wednesday night, Madison leaked it to the papers. On Thursday morning it was being carried throughout the Confederacy.
Orders were crackling on every Apparatus, Domestic Police and Army line to control and suppress riots.
Hero Plaza is a circular expanse. It is two hundred yards in diameter. There is nothing there but clear pavement since it is often used for affairs of state. In the exact center is a completely plain circular pillar fifty feet tall and about twenty feet in circumference, led to by three circular steps. The only decoration or inscription is on the front edge of the top step: it says, “Dedicated to the Heroes of Voltar.” Madison had chosen it carefully.
Entering the plaza were eight boulevards, usually crammed with traffic. Today each boulevard, at the plaza’s edge, was blocked by an Apparatus tank.
At nine o’clock, Hightee Heller, gowned in white, was taken to the pillar by a Death Battalion squad. She was without her gloves now and the shoulder of the dress was torn. Her golden hair was in disarray but it still looked like a halo.
Her eyes were calm as she looked at the Apparatus general who, in his red uniform, was directing the squad.
A camera crew was close to hand, one of the several on duty at the plaza now. Hightee saw the microphone pointing in her direction.
“Jettero!” she suddenly shouted, “If you are listening, don’t come in here! They mean to kill you!”
The general had acted slightly late. He clamped his beefy hand over Hightee’s mouth. At a gesture, three of his squad chased the camera crew away. But Madison, hidden by a tank at the plaza edge, saw that other crews were covering. It was all going live to the whole Confederacy.
The Death Battalion took a chain. It was twenty feet long and had big links. They clamped one end of it on Hightee’s left wrist; they ran the length around the pillar; they fastened the other end to Hightee’s right wrist. They made sure the links were solid. She was chained now with her back to the pillar.
The squad drew back.
The heavy guns of the eight tanks at the boulevard ends trained around on Hightee.
Madison grinned. What a tableau! Beauty chained to a pillar. A vast clear area of pavement. Eight deadly muzzles, ringing the plaza, poised for destruction.
And then things started to go slightly wrong. Possibly the crowds—which, despite roadblocks, had gotten into the boulevards—had been in the grip of unreality. This couldn’t possibly be happening: it was too monstrous. But when the Apparatus general had dared to actually touch Hightee to silence her, a roar and mutter had begun to rise.
There must have been a hundred thousand people in those boulevards. There were only two or three thousand Apparatus troops forming barricades to block them.
The barricades buckled.
There was a roar of Apparatus stunguns.
Missiles flew from the crowd!
Apparatus troops charged them!
The Domestic Police were conspicuously absent. The Apparatus knew very little about crowd control.
For twenty minutes there was hand-to-hand fighting.
The crowd in three boulevards managed to break through the barricades. The tanks at the plaza end had to swivel their turrets about and fire.
Then the boulevards were full of stunned and bleeding bodies, civilians and Apparatus alike.
Two Apparatus relief regiments came in and boxed the mobs in the streets from the far end.
It was not until 10:20 that some kind of order was restored. But it was not very thorough, for people from the rest of the city were now surging up, and it took three more regiments to hold barricades as far away as a mile in each direction.
Madison had his eye on the big clock in a tower a thousand yards away. He supposed that Heller would wait until the last minute. At least he hoped so. He had no slightest notion that Heller would surrender. Besides, it would have wrecked his plans.
That clear space out there, a hundred yards in radius from the pillar where Hightee was chained, was ample for someone like Heller to land troops.
Madison did not think his own safety was at risk at all, for he didn’t think that Heller would use artillery—it would endanger Hightee. Madison’s greater worry was himself getting into the cameras: accordingly he was wearing a General Services gray uniform and he had altered his features with makeup and masked them with sand glasses. If any action started, he was going to step through the port of this tank.
The digitals of the distant clock were flashing second changes. He looked back at the tanks: their muzzles, freed now from crowd control, w
ere pointed back at Hightee.
She was being pulled against the pillar too tightly by the chain. Her stretched-out arms must be half killing her. Her ripped gown had slid half off her shoulder. But she was looking at the sky.
Then Madison heard it.
A sort of booming sound.
IT WAS DIRECTLY OVERHEAD!
Villainy Victorious Page 40