by Ron Hubbard
He got busy opening another box. It was a screen like a Homeviewer, but much tinier. "The result is that whatever the subject is looking at appears on this screen."
"Three-dimensional?" I said.
"Oh, no, I'm sorry. It has not advanced that far. But the picture is absolutely brilliant!"
"Range?" I said.
"The activator-receiver can be within two hundred miles of the subject." Ow! How do you run somebody in the United States when you are in Turkey? Too many miles! "Too short a distance," I said.
"Ah, then you would need the 831 Relayer," he said. And he tapped another box. "It boosts it to ten thousand miles. The respondo-mitter signal is picked up by the receiver and it in turn, when connected to the 831 Relayer, resends the signal." He had me breathing again. I had thought all this was for nothing.
For the colonel's benefit I pretended to inspect the parts numbers of the receiver, relayer and the view-screen. Then I said, "But this doesn't take care of sound."
"Ah," said Spurk, proudly. He opened another box. He took the tweezers and held up a tiny object not unlike the first. "This is the simple one. Sound operates on bone resonance. This audio-respondo-mitter can be placed a millimeter or two from the optical one. The samereceiver, relayer and screen have audio channels. Our scientists have thought of everything." Except what an Apparatus officer is liable to do, I thought.
"So," I said, "these two devices, inserted in the vicinity of the temple or eye will carry everything the subject sees and hears to a point within two hundred miles which then can be relayed to a point ten thousand miles. The wave is new?"
"Undetectable! Nonobstructable. No known meters will register it. Actually, it is a very long wave acting as a carrier and conduit for a side band."
"Emotions?" I said.
"Oh, I am sorry. The scientists didn't think of that. I will make a note. Emotions. Good idea. Just sight and sound, I am afraid."
"How about hypnopulsars," I said. "You know, when you strike a button, the subject goes into a trance."
"Oh, I am sorry. We make those but we are all out of stock. Not one in the place." (Bleep). "How about electric jolts to get the subject under control?"
"Oh, those. We did have some. We made up an order for the Apparatus but there is not one left here." (Bleep), (Bleep)!
But I winked at the colonel covertly. "How many of these cranial devices here do you have? How many complete sets?"
"Just two," he said. "They are not production line yet. But we can make them up."
"Let's see the two sets, with all parts and spares and power packs," I said.
He started to lay them out. "Power packs are no problem. It's a two-year, nonfail, all-weather. We had the Army in mind. A spy in enemy territory does not have to report, you see. His superiors just pick up everything he sees and hears. It is reporting by other means that gets spies caught. One can practically be on the other side of a planet and obtain everything wanted from a spy." I was pretending to look at the numbers on the items. Really I was looking to make very sure that everything was here.
He had two sets of boxes stacked up. They were not very massive. I inspected carefully to make certain. "You sure this is all?"
"Absolutely. Spares, power packs, everything. Here's even the installation instructions. It is. I'm afraid, in technical language as it's intended for a professional cellologist, but I am sure the Army has lots of those." He laughed.
That was the last laugh he had this life.
I stepped back, drew my bladegun and shot him in the throat.
The colonel, startled with the fly of blood, was not the steady old campaigner I had thought he would be. I would have supposed he could add it up. I had found a parts duplicate, I was executing the offender. He didn't add it up. He grabbed for his gun! He was turning toward me!
What can you expect of Supply?
"What the Hells are you doing?" he roared at me.
But my concern was not to have a blastgun going off near that sensitive equipment. The resulting magnetic shock waves might disarrange it or something!
The colonel did not get his gun further than pointing at my shoes.
I shot him in the throat! He staggered back. He dropped the gun as he clutched at his throat.
My plans had gone awry. I had thought the colonel would understand. I was a bit off-balance.
Boots were hammering in through the back door!
I had forgotten the driver!
He stopped twenty feet from me. He saw his colonel writhing and dying on the floor in a spatter of blood.
The driver drew his gun. He pointed and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. And then he did something silly. He dropped the gun and grabbed a bayonet out of his boot and started a lunge for me.
I fired and missed! (Bleep) the inaccuracy of a bladegun! It only contained one more blade!
The bayonet was up and coming down. I fired! I rolled to the side.
The driver drove the bayonet two inches into the floor. He fell on it, dead.
Ow, what a slaughterhouse! Blood all over the place! But I reached for the boxes.
"Stiffen, Gris!" It came from the door to the next room! A blastgun pointing.
Chapter 6
My own gun was empty. And that blastgun over there was very steady.
I was caught!
With the act witnessed and the bodies in full view!
A sinister, dark figure edged into the room.
"I told you, you made mistakes, Gris." It was Raza Torr! Provocation Section Chief!
He lifted an object he was holding in his left hand. "I've got full pictures of the entire action here, Gris. Throw down that gun." No point in not doing so. It was empty.
"You're so inept, Gris."
"Call in your men," I said.
"Oh, there are no men. I can handle you. In this camera I have just put everything you just did. It also holds your meeting with the woman outside the hypnotist's office – and that, by the way, was pretty clever, she's been executed by now. I also have your approach to that cellologist in Slum City and I have no doubt he'll be dead shortly. I have your meeting with this dumb (bleepard) of a colonel in the Dirt Club. And I have this very messy mess you just made, totally complete." Talking isn't shooting. Keep him talking. "Then you were the one that blew up my airbus in the Blike Mountains!"
"Andgot back that counterfeit money before you, you dumb idiot, could spread it all around and start an investigation that would lead back to us. You don't mess up by halves, Gris."
"You tried to kill me out there," I said offendedly. "What a thing for a brother Apparatus officer to do!"
"I didn't know that you had a magic-mail setup to send those pictures of me to the Commander of the Death Battalion. That's all you owe your life to right this minute. I WANT THOSE ORIGINALS AND ALL COPIES!" I shrugged. "I don't have them on me. They're at my office. Let me get this straight. If I turn those over to you, you will turn over that camera and its originals to me. Right?"
"You have it exactly! My Gods, I'm worn out worrying about it. Supposing somebody else killed you? And you're prime meat, Gris. So get moving. We'll go to your office."
"How'd you trail me? You're not that good."
"That reminds me you better take the bugs out of those clothes you're wearing. I put them in when you got them. You're inept, Gris." No problem about bugs in this place. They were all over the shelves. He was missing things, too.
"I'll make a bargain with you," I said. "You help me clean this up and then we'll go to my office and swap. You don't want this on the trail."
"True," he said.
"You've got a stolen car outside, right?" I said. He nodded. So I went on. "We call a truce. You help me and then we go. You have my word on the swap." That seemed to soothe him.
I dug around in the colonel's corpse to get the blade out. Messy. Then I flopped the driver over and dug the blade out of his throat. Very messy. Then I got the one out of Spurk's throat. Very, very messy.
; "You look like a butcher!" Raza Torr said. "You're getting blood all over your hands and clothes." Listen to who was talking about blood, the chief of the Provocation Section!
It took me two full minutes to find the blade that had missed the driver. It had embedded itself in the back doorjamb with just a tiny sliver showing. I used some electronic pliers to pull it out.
I opened a cash drawer. There were only a few tokens in it but I put those in my pocket. I left the drawer upside down on the floor.
Then I got a box from the shelf and with loving care put the two complete sets and directions in it and lashed it closed and marked it with a big X.With Raza Torr escorting me, I carefully put it in his stolen car.
I went back and found some more big boxes and ransacked the vault. I didn't know what the stuff was and I certainly didn't stop to read the directions. Who cared what assortment of sophisticated gear I was taking. It had to look like a massive burglary.
I even made Raza Torr carry some of the filled boxes to the stolen car. The back was getting pretty full.
I then really put Raza Torr to work. We lugged the colonel's body out and put it in the back seat of his car. We lugged the driver out and put him in the driving seat.
Then I grabbed a blastick and took the safety off so any jar would fire it and put it in the colonel's cooling hand.
I fumbled a bit with the automatic pilot, finally got it set. I started the car. I engaged it and away it flew, higher and higher in the sky, probably heading for Slum City.
In an hour or so it would probably run out of fuel or crash into another aircar in the traffic lanes.
I found a can of cleaning spirits and poured it over the counter and around Spurk's body. I dropped an igniter in it and the flame exploded up.
"Let's get out of here!" said Torr. He was clutching the camera.
We got into the stolen car.
"I take it back," he said, putting the camera down. "You sure are thorough!"
"I sure am," I said, and I put ten inches of the Knife Section knife into his back.
Flames were leaping up in the store. Far out I heard a fire-alert siren start.
I pushed Raza's body aside and slid under the wheelstick. The aircar soared into the night sky and was quickly mingled with the flow of traffic.
I flew out over the River Wiel. I put the aircar on hover. I pulled the knife out and cleaned it.
Almost over his Provocation Section area, I dumped Raza Torr's body out. Too bad not to have the use of the section anymore but I would soon be gone anyway. Tomorrow, if I thought of it, I would mail those pictures of him murdering the mistress to the Commander of the Death Battalion. A poetic touch. No, maybe to the newssheets. No, better not. Let sleeping corpses lie. One can get too artistic.
I flew to my office area. Nothing and nobody there at this time of night. My airbus was parked and locked. I carried my loot into a basement under my office.
I spent an hour eradicating all trace of Eyes and Ears and pasting labels of Zanco on the boxes. Then I put some I didn't want into the stolen car, set it on automatic and let it fly off to crash somewhere. Help the police is my motto.
Then I put every scrap of clothes that had any blood on it or that led back to the Provocation Section into the permanent disintegrator, washed any remaining blood off myself in the toilet and dressed in my own uniform.
Just to put finishing touches on it all, I wrapped Prahd Bittlestiffender's old coat, his identoplate and suicide note in a package and addressed it to the police. Found by the River Wiel,the note said. I put it beside my desk to be mailed in ten days.
It was all neatening up. I opened my secret blackmail cache under a loose floorboard and took out the originals of Raza Torr's murder. I removed all the strips from his camera, verified them, and put the lot in the disintegrator.
The (bleeped) fool. Had I brought him here, he would have spotted my whole cache and I doubted he would have kept his word. He might even have tried to kill me once he had his hands on these pictures. The (bleeped) fool. As to his own pictures, they were worthless. Every one of me had been in disguise. Nobody could have identified me from them. Still, he had been a witness. And there is an old Apparatus motto that even he should have remembered: the careless die young. I yawned. I locked up. I walked down to my room to get some sleep.
All in all, it had been a pretty active day! But not too unusual in the life of an Apparatus officer. Frankly, it's hard to see how a government could run at all without clever and dedicated people such as us in their employ. The whole structure might come tumbling down!
Chapter 7
The day began a bit sourly. My driver was in a foul mood. When he brought the airbus by to pick me up, I had quite pleasantly asked him if he had had a good time on his night off and all the way to my office I had been treated to "How could somebody with no money have a good time?" and "One would starve if he went long enough without eating" and some distempered tale about some officer that had crashed because his driver was so worried about being a pauper. I was in too good a mood. I ignored it.
At the office, I set him to carrying the "Zanco" marked cartons from the basement to the back of the car and he kept throwing them in so forcefully with comments like "I work myself to death cleaning up this car and here we go again" and "This ain't no truck" that I got out of the back – there would be no room anyway when it was loaded – and bought a sweetbun and hot jolt from a passing vendor. I was pleased to have remembered to take the tokens out of the cash drawer of that shop – I had plenty even for a lunch and supper.
I sat in front eating and when he got behind the wheelstick, a bit hot and sweaty, he went into a new tirade about starving. I told him gently that the sweetbun and hot jolt were all gone and even tipped the canister to show him it was empty, but it didn't help. He actually picked a newssheet off the floor and threw it at me, excusing it with the remark, "I been all through it and can't find a (bleep) thing you were doing! You weren't working last night, you were loafing! It was you that had the night off, not me!" I calmly directed him to fly to the Widow Tayl's in the Pausch Hills suburb and sat there reading the Morning Oh! No!,the dawn newssheet favored by the riffraff. How wrong he was: I had made the front page!
SORROWING SUPPLY COLONEL SUICIDES EX-WIFE IN HYSTERICS OF LAUGHTER Late last night, according to informed sources in the Domestic Police, Colonel Rajabah Stinkins, Supply, Voltar Raiders, took the last firm act to end his tragic life. At eighteen thousand feet over the Great Desert, he blew up himself, his driver and his aircar with a megavolt blastick.
His ex-wife has been hospitalized after hours of uncontrollable laughter. Associates at the Ground Forces Play Club say that even the last minute intervention of firm and lifelong friends failed.
The Voltar Raiders will bury what can be found with military courtesy on Saturday. The public is invited to the feast.
Colonel Stinkins is survived by five lovely children, the older two of whom could not be reached as they are in reform school.
It was followed by a service record biography that seemed to make it clear he had spent a long life at a desk. I looked further. Ah, here was the next: FIRE RAVAGES INDUSTRIAL CITY Last night, a wall of all-devouring flame tore through the night-shrouded electronics district. Fifteen people are missing, mostly watchmen.
A half a square mile of charred and smoking ruins marked, at dawn, what had once been thirty-one thriving businesses.
Fire Department authorities state they have positively isolated the cause to an electrical short in the Jimbo Electronics Toys Plant.
Competitors jubilant. ...
Way down the list of firms consumed by flames was "The Eyes and Ears of Voltar." Nothing about Spurk. Probably had him confused with a watchman. I went on through the paper. Ah, another one: STOLEN CAR FALLS ON HOSPITAL Last night, a vehicle identified as stolen, crashed out of the midnight skies to land on the Hospital of Good Mercy.
The superintendent, Doctor Muff Chuff, who was not there at the time, said
that damage was minimal, confined to the poor children's ward. As the roof collapsed, there is no body count as we go to press. "We were going to abandon that wing anyway," the Superintendent said. "We need more money and have too few doctors. Application for more building funds is being made. ..." I wandered on through the pages. And then, there it was, a small item: APPARATUS OFFICER RUN OVER IN MIDAIR The body of Officer Raza Torr of the Coordinated Information Apparatus was discovered in the small hours of the morning on the banks of the River Wiel. It was discovered by a passing garbage scow.
Police Traffic Investigator Roauf Roauf informed this reporter that evidence clearly showed Torr had been struck by a passing airbus and had fallen ten thousand feet.
I smiled. Leave it to the exacting press to get everything right!
We flew through the beautiful morning and were soon putting down at the Widow Tayl's. And I was so pleased I just sat there gazing toward the swimming bath. What a warm glow it gave me to bring so much happiness to this world.
There sat Doctor Prahd Bittlestiffender at the poolside. He was dressed in a robe several sizes too small for him. He had at least fifteen empty canisters lying about his reclining chair. On his lap he had a huge platter of sweetbuns he was wolfing – one bun, one bite.
Lying on her belly in the grass was the Widow Tayl. She had her robe skirt up around her shoulders and was naked from there on down. She had her chin cupped in her palms. She was gazing with rapt adoration at the doctor.
What a scene of post-carnal bliss! Truly, I felt like a benefactor of the whole race. The waves emanating from the Widow Tayl to Prahd almost shimmered in the morning sun.
Belatedly they noticed that an airbus had landed with a blast, ten seconds before, that had almost blown the leaves off the trees.
I got out. They looked in my direction.
But what was this? The Widow Tayl had patches of bandage on her face and the whole upper part of her torso was swathed in post-operation tape! Had they had a fight? Then I realized that Prahd must be set up and in business already. Practicing, maybe. Getting his hand in. Removing her warts and tightening her sagging breasts.