The heads at the table nodded. Heller was simply amplifying a form common in courts-martial where an officer, found guilty of a felony of magnitude, was being dismissed from service.
Then, to this, Heller added the civil declaration used when a person was reprieved from execution without being found innocent. It was a nice touch, for Hisst had used this countless times on people for his own ends and, in fact, had used it on the Countess Krak. "He is hereby declared a nonperson. Anything he does may be declared or deemed illegal. Anything done to him is not actionable under law."
The clerk was writing busily. Heller thought with some elation that he was going to get away with this without another riot: the wrath against Earth seemed to have cooled off.
He said, "He would seem to be incapable of responding to routine communication. It seems obvious that he is not sane. Do you gentlemen agree?"
The officials at the board looked at Hisst. The marine captain had stepped away with the small voice amplifier: Hisst was just mouthing the same words as before. His eyes were weird, a sort of overbright yellow. The officials looked back at Heller and nodded.
"Therefore," said Heller, "the prisoner is relegated to the Confederacy Insane Asylum and is to remain there in custody for the remainder of his li----"
Suddenly Hisst whipped around. He roared in a deafening voice, "DOWN ON YOUR KNEES! DOWN ON YOUR KNEES, YOU RIFFRAFF! I AM THE GOD OF ALL THE HEAVENS!"
He had yanked the chain out of the hands of the marine! He held it in the air before him. "I WILL STRIKE YOU ALL DOWN! WORSHIP ME! WORSHIP ME!"
Any hope Heller might have had that the population would be less emotional about Earth suddenly went up in smoke.
The first whisper ran through the hall, "The man is mad!"
Then a louder voice: "Use of Earth material has driven him insane!"
Then, "Look what Earth can do!"
Then a screaming shout, "We've been in the hands of a man driven crazy by Earth!"
It all came in a building rush of sound. And it was capped by the howling shout from a thousand throats, "KILL HIM!"
The captain thought he had been ready. He was not. He had had five marines surrounding Hisst.
The crowd hit them!
Daggers out, they stumbled back, trying to bar the surge.
Twenty more marines charged in a phalanx, plowing people away. They got to the crumbling circle.
Screaming people fought to get at Hisst to tear him to bits.
The marines, blades held horizontally, fought to establish a ring.
People were going down, people were being trampled, people howling with ferocity and rage still tried to fight inward.
The trumpets and cymbals were blaring and clashing for order.
A whistle in the mouth of the marine captain was shrieking for reinforcements.
Fifty Domestic Police who had been stationed outside blasted through the door, stingers flashing.
Sparklewater bottles were being thrown.
Three hundred Fleet spacers armed with coils of safety line rushed through the door swinging!
SHAMBLES!
Heller stood up. He got out his hand blastgun and set it to maximum noise. He fired repeatedly into the air! No result!
Then he saw through the hedge of tan uniforms that still sought to defend the prisoner that Hisst was crawling toward this end of the room.
Heller went over the raised table in a headlong vault.
He used his arms as though he was parting waves.
The backs of the defending marines were to him.
He grabbed down and got Hisst by the collar.
He towed him free.
He crawled under the table, dragging his burden behind him.
Heller emerged back up on the dais.
Hisst swung at him.
Heller grabbed the man again in a paralyzing grip. He held him by the back of the collar.
"I GOT HIM!" shouted Heller in that piercing Fleet voice. "HE DIDN'T GET AWAY!"
A Homeview lighting man in a balcony hit him with a spot. The red uniform of Hisst was glaring bright.
Eyes in the room turned from battle and swung to the dais.
The twenty marines suddenly strung out in front of the split-level of the table, preventing further rush.
"THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE!" shouted Heller. "BUT HE CAN'T ESCAPE AGAIN! I'VE GOT HIM!"
A sigh of relief came from the embattled throats.
The riot was over.
CHAPTER 4
A marine major wound Hisst round and round with chains and then, at Heller's whispered direction, wound them around some more. He carted Hisst off to an upper balcony and put him there with electric daggers pointed at his throat, on display and out of the reach of the crowd.
Army casualty teams were going through the hall, handling the injured and picking people up.
Heller sat back down in his chair. A voice sounded just behind him. "You just got a sample of what will happen if you try to give Earth an easy ride." It was the Countess Krak.
He turned. She had brought Hightee and the Master of Palace City. Heller went down the rear steps to them. He pulled their heads close to his and whispered some urgent instructions.
The Master said, "That's awfully short notice!"
"You better learn to open up your throttles, Master," said Hightee. "You're dealing with Jettero Heller. My brother wants it, he'll get it!"
"I did NOT say I would not do it!" said the wizened old man. "Crown and I have already got a good working arrangement going. I love it."
"That's better!" said Hightee. "We haven't got much time. COME ON!"
They rushed off, the Countess with them.
Heller sat back down in his chair and spent the next five minutes cursing Madison. These people were at overheat on the subject of planet Earth: "Mob hysteria" did not even begin to describe it.
He had six proclamations to issue: he had not even completed two of them.
The mop-up was still going on. It was all right. He needed the time. He became aware of somebody standing down below the raised end of the table.
It was Bis. He was laughing. "That's the first time I knew athletics went with that post," he said. "Giving a reason for the riot and then solving it to stop it is the funniest gag I think I've ever seen. You're a wonder, Jet!"
"You want this job, Bis?"
"Good Heavens! What could possibly be wrong with it?"
"Being expected to kill five billion people including friends is what's wrong with it. Here, I'll give you my tunic."
"Oh, no! But I suddenly see what you mean. Can I help?"
"Yes. Go up to that balcony and help that marine major prevent Hisst from doing anything else foolish. We're not through with him yet."
A medical Army general approached Heller and gave him the casualty figures as though this were a battle, not a conference. Because electric daggers had been set to paralyze, only knockouts and minor injuries had resulted. The general went back to the table. Heller glanced up to where they had Hisst in chains on the balcony, then he surveyed the room. He trusted passions were spent enough for him to finish this second proclamation.
He signalled for the cymbals and, when Ihey clashed, he said in a rush, "If you will vote now on the Hisst proclamation as outlined so far, we can conclude this second-----"
A violent waving of hands from the rear of the hall was accompanied by a protesting blast of shouts from there. Heller peered, then he sighed.
"Yes, Noble Stuffy," he called. "What now?"
Noble Arthrite Stuffy, a white bandage across his forehead now, surged once again up to a blank space at the conference table. "Crown, Your Lordship, sir," he said, "just half an hour ago, during the treatment of casualties, we received wonderful news. It greatly influences the sentence of Lombar Hisst."
Oh, no, thought Heller. But he said, "Tell me so we can get on with this."
"By use of our reporters and our newssheet-building security guards, we have had the gre
at good luck to run down and apprehend the so-called Doctor Crobe! We have him right outside. With your permission we will bring him in."
"What," said Heller, "does this have to do with Hisst?"
Noble Stuffy took that for assent and, at his signal, six watchmen brought in Crobe. He was no less a funny-looking creature than he had always been: his too-long arms, his too-long legs, his too-long nose as always made him look like a weird bird. But there was something even stranger now: instead of a crumpled captive, he was striding around like he owned the place. Before he could be stopped, he seized a chair at the table, sat down, crossed his arms and announced, "I am in charge! Take off your clothes!"
The audience gasped.
Heller looked more closely. Those weird eyes! Crobe was either high on some drug or insane—probably both!
"We have traced this man," said Noble Stuffy. "He was once employed by the government as a cellologist and was arrested for criminal misuse of cellology. He was condemned to death. He is a nonperson. Hisst used him to manufacture abominable freaks as was earlier revealed. But this was not the end of his career. He was shipped to the planet Blito-P3 and there studied psy-chology and psychiatry. He became an expert practitioner of these subjects and then was used by Madison for his unspeakable projects in the field of PR. It is our understanding that on the planet Earth, psychology, psychiatry and PR are inseparable."
"That is all very interesting," said Heller. "But please, Noble Stuffy, I wish to complete this second proclamation."
"And so do I," said Stuffy. "With the indulgence of this conference, as an influential member of the publishing world, I wish to propose that Crobe also be assigned to the Confederacy Asylum. And as he is a psychiatrist, supposedly expert in the treatment of the insane, I propose that Lombar Hisst be given to Crobe as a patient."
The audience gasped. Then it began to please them.
Heller unexpectedly blew up. Always an opponent of inhuman measures, he stood up and pointed a finger straight at Stuffy. "You have no idea of what you are proposing! Psychiatrists use tortures you have never even heard of! They drug their patients and send huge jolts of electricity through their brains to destroy nerve responses! And that isn't all! At a whim, they take a steel probe, push it under the eyelids and scramble the prefron-tal lobes! They have no intention of curing anyone: they are simply making it impossible for the victim to get well. Ever! AND THEY KNOW IT!
"Psychiatrists say they do not believe in the soul but they work to destroy any soul a man may have. AND THEY KNOW THEY ARE DOING IT!
"I will not tolerate such an inhuman practice on anyone! Not even Hisst!"
Then he realized suddenly that he was worsening the cause of Earth. Abruptly he stopped speaking.
At the lower level of the table near him, he heard a Domestic Police general whisper to his aide, "See, Earth is so horrible even a seasoned officer cannot abide it!"
Heller stared at the backfeed monitors. He had also horrified the crowds.
Silently, he cursed. He had, without intending to, injured his chances of creating a better atmosphere for Earth.
But he was stubborn and he had his own principles. He sat down. "I will only tolerate this proposal if you modify it. Lombar Hisst will be sent to the asylum and so will Crobe. But they are to be placed in adjacent cells. They are to be held incommunicado: no one may speak to either of them, ever. I will NOT let psychiatry loose in the Confederacy Asylum!"
"But Crobe can talk to Hisst?" Stuffy persisted.
"Yes, but not touch him," said Heller.
"I get Your Lordship's point about not loosing psychiatry in the Confederacy Asylum," said Stuffy. "It would be a disaster. But so long as Crobe is permitted to 'treat' Hisst verbally, I am satisfied. I cannot possibly imagine a worse fate. Thank you."
Heller asked the table for assent and received it. He turned to the clerk and helped him complete the second proclamation. Then he sent it on its voyage for the additional signatures above the Emperor's.
At his signal, a group of Domestic Police took charge of Crobe. The man stood. He shouted, "You are all suffering from penis envy!" He was still shouting it as he was led away.
Another group of "bluebottles" approached the balcony.
Lombar Hisst was on his knees there. He was vomiting. The bluebottles gave the marine major a receipt. They slid Hisst into a black sack, put him on a stretcher and bore him away.
The proclamation, this time, since who should sign had been sorted out, made the round of the table quite quickly.
Heller got it back. He looked at it.
Two down, four to go.
CHAPTER 5
Heller said, "The conference has already passed a measure to abolish the Apparatus and the intelligence practices of Earth. However, the matter was not placed in proclamation form and finalized.
"His Majesty has stated that he does not wish to hear of the planet Earth again, ever. Therefore I propose, in concurrence with his wishes and requirements, that we word the proclamation as follows: 'The Coordinated Information Apparatus is abolished. Never in the future may there be a state organization, independent, devoted to the subject of intelligence.' But at this point, gentlemen, we could very easily get involved in the endless details of what Earth intelligence organizations are comprised of so that we could forbid them. And we would find ourselves mentioning the planet Earth in connection with them.
"As you know, the Army and the Fleet both have intelligence services, vital to the prosecution of a war. We do not know and have no time to untangle the various technologies of intelligence. I, for one, want to get these proclamations completed."
He got nods from the table.
"The abuses of the Apparatus were twofold. The first was recruiting criminals from the prisons to act as their personnel, and the second was to turn those vicious people loose on the population."
The instant he got it out, he knew he had made a mistake. He had been trying to smooth out the wrath of the conference and the crowds. This analysis, while quite correct and succinct, pleasing enough to an engineer, was like throwing burning brands. It brought to vivid view all the horrors the population had been made to suffer.
Snarls in the hall and screams of rage in the streets seemed to indicate that the favored course of action right this minute would be to go find and kill any remaining Apparatus personnel. It looked like the riots were going to surge up all over apin!
Vantagio, he mourned, I wish you were here instead of a target. He felt he was too green to cope with this sort of thing.
In mathematics, if you got an unexpected result, you sometimes had to use it. Maybe math would work. He would use the wrath.
He pulled out his gun and pantomimed shooting. He shouted, "WE WANT THE APPARATUS DEAD AND THIS IS HOW WE ARE GOING TO DO IT!"
It got attention.
They were listening eagerly.
"We word the proclamation that it is forbidden to use FOREIGN intelligence techniques upon the citizens of the Voltar Confederacy! And that the penalty for doing so shall be DEATH!"
It caught their fancy.
"And so that there won't be any question as to what is meant,,! propose that in the proclamation we form a committee with a member from Army Intelligence, a member from Fleet Intelligence and a member from the Domestic Police, that we call it the Anti-Foreign Intelligence Committee with the duty of preventing such techniques from being used against the citizens of Voltar, that the committee have the duty of defining these, that it be placed at Grand Council level and that it be chaired by one who knows this scene and investigated it, namely Royal Officer Bis, suitably promoted. He HATES the Apparatus!"
There was a storm of applause in the hall and on the streets.
Heller bowed and sat down. He got his assent and he got the proclamation written and sent on its rounds.
He mopped at his forehead with his redstar engineer's rag.
There was a lot to this statecraft stuff. Intelligence^ services, no matter where, had a lot o
f things in common. If he had let the original proposal stand, forbidding anything known on Earth to be used by Voltar, it could have crippled Army and Fleet intelligence services, for they did many things similar to those of Earth. An intelligence service was an intelligence service. The thing wrong with the Apparatus—and the way they used the subject on Earth—was that it employed intelligence to repress their own domestic scene instead of enemies in war. And the result was that the government began to wage war on the citizens!
L Ron Hubbard - ME10 Doomed Planet Page 17