"I hope you're joking," said Madison.
"Well, yes, actually I am," said Flick. "He has a chute so he can dump them into the River Wiel."
They sped across the green countryside and soon were over the masses of tall buildings which housed the bulk of the government. The vast area at the upper end skirted tall cliffs which fell into the River Wiel. This section was the oldest and most decayed part of Government City, and the Apparatus, while not the oldest, was certainly the most decayed part of the government and had fallen heir to it.
There was a square, occupied by a central building which was surrounded by broken pavement and monuments to forgotten glory. All of this would seem to indicate that the Apparatus was also old but this was not true: the service was really quite young as things in Voltar go. It was only that the other parts of the government would no longer live in this place where the fountains no longer ran and the statues were missing heads and legs.
As the Model 99 swept in to land, there was immediate trouble to find a parking place. Wide as the surrounding pavements were, they were covered with randomly parked tanks and vehicles.
Flick squeezed in between a personnel carrier and a flight command car, each of which bore a general's guidon. Cun opened the door while ogling some of the drivers.
"There's something going on here," said Flick. "These are the vehicles of the Apparatus General Staff! You watch it, Chief. They're the most vicious (bleepards) in the Confederacy!"
Madison got out. He felt a little conspicuous in his gray business suit. He made his way through clusters of officers and men in mustard uniforms, black uniforms, green uniforms, every one of them badged with the Apparatus symbol which, if you looked at it from a certain angle, did resemble a bottle.
An overly dressed young woman with a snug on a leash was sauntering in front of the main door. Another one, considerably underdressed and with a hard face, was impatiently twirling a cane. The latter accosted Madison, "How much longer is this silly meeting going to go on?" she said.
"I have no idea, madam," said Madison.
"Well, if you're going in there, you just tell General
Buc that his mistress has been waiting for five (bleeping) hours. I'm fed up!"
Madison went up the broken steps. Two sentries in mustard barred his way. An officer bawled at him, "Madison? Where the blast have you been? Get the Hells in there and fast!"
Madison found himself being propelled across a cluttered lobby and then down a flight of stairs. The officer thrust him into a crowded room.
The place looked more like a cave than an office. It also stank.
Generals in red uniforms were sitting in chairs around the rough rock walls. In the recorded strips of this meeting they look just like Manco Devils.
Lombar Hisst was sitting behind a desk, also uniformed in red. He was turned sideways, watching a staff officer with a remote control in his hand who was electronically chasing an orange arrow around on a projected map.
"This is Omaha" the staff officer said. "According to earlier intelligence advices, it is a sort of military nerve center. Estimates are that it will take a million men, after it is occupied, to hold the position and fan out eastward."
"A million men!" commented a general. "That means no supplementary reserve."
"Well, if we are denied the right to simply bomb New York..."
"That has to be denied," said Hisst. "It would obliterate the installations that must be seized in operational condition in New Jersey. That requires a solely infantry approach, moving through cities on a slaughter basis. Are you afraid of casualties?" he asked the first general with a sneer.
"No," said the first general. "I was simply hoping that some way the Army could be coerced into participation. We only have about four million troops. When distribution to other continents is examined..."
"We could simply concentrate on the United States," said another general.
"No, no, no," said a general with artillery badges. "There are more than twelve nations that are nuclear armed, according to reports. Failure to make this an infantry action on all continents could result in some hysterical nuclear involvement. If the objectives of the chief are to be attained, we have to prevent their use of hydrogen bombs from one country to another across oceans. I think you would find the objective areas totally contaminated and unusable."
An aide bent over Lombar, "Your Excellency, the Earthman has finally arrived."
All eyes swivelled to Madison. (To do him justice, he might not have understood completely that what was under discussion was an invasion of Earth, for the meeting transcripts do not, of course, give internal thoughts of those speaking. Madison's own logs shed no light on this.)
The general of artillery was the one who spoke. "What is the range and thermal penetration potential of an MX3 missile?"
Madison said, "I'm sorry. I don't have it at my fingertips. But I don't think it's much to be worried about. The full project was, if I recall, challenged by the General Accounting Office because of cost overruns and was suspended. I remember reading about it."
"Ha!" said the artillery general. "Good man. So that's a system we don't have to worry about. Now what about the satellite killers? Thosecould be used against spaceships."
"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?"
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!"
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's 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 hard working 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."
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 so
cial... 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... seethe 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.
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